City Council/School Board Joint Meeting (Reconfiguration)   9/15/2021

Mayor Walker?

Present.

Vice Mayor McGill?

We heard you speak, so I see you on camera.

Thank you.

Councillor Hill?

I'm here.

and we're awaiting Councilor Snook.

So I'll mark when he arrives.

Thank you, Mayor Walker.

I will now call the meeting to order for Charlottesville City Schools.

Yes, Madam Chair.

Ms.

Bryson-Moresberger.

Present.

Dr. Kraft?

Ms.

McKeever?

McKeever?

Ms.

Puryear?

Ms.

Puryear?

Ms.

Puryear?

Ms.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Wick, I'll turn it over to you.

Let me share my screen and we will get going.

Everyone see that?

I'm gonna try to enlarge my zoom window so I can see you guys.

And

So get the chat window going.

So great.

It's great to be here.

I don't know who had the later night last night, the planning commission or the community design team.

I think we finished up at about 10 after 10, but it's great to be here.

I hope everyone's excited for this conversation.

I know I am.

Whenever we can get a chance to talk about making great spaces and places for kids, that's a great conversation to have.

So thank you for

calling the meeting to hear what we have to say on this.

So we basically got four sections of this and it's an overview of the whole thing that I'm going to give.

And then Kristen is going to talk about engagement and outreach.

Maria is going to talk about the Walker site in the early childhood center.

And then I'm going to close talking about the Buford site and the middle school.

So we can run through all of that

or we can stop after each one of those sections and take questions.

Does that sound like a good approach, Mayor Walker?

Sounds good to me.

OK.

Okay, so I wanted to start tonight with actually a slide that we used in closing when we interviewed for this project back in the pre-pandemic days of the winter of 2020 because I was reviewing all our material to try to summarize all the work that we've been doing and I thought this still worked quite a bit.

When City Council allocated money to start this process and then put an RFP out and we responded to it and

were hired.

One of the things that we said in the interview is that we didn't view our job simply to figure this out in terms of what's the scope and what's the budget and begin to define the terms of this complex problem, but also to get us to yes.

It wasn't enough just to figure it out that this was too important to this community and that we saw our role really in trying to help guide the communication in the community to a yes vote, right?

So part of that is really kind of taking this very complex

idea of reconfiguration and trying to bring as much clarity to it as possible throughout conversations with council, with board, with our community design team and with the community as a whole.

We hope we've been able to do that over this process.

In the process of doing that, we know that coming into this, there's a lot of apprehension, you know, from is this really going to happen?

You guys have been talking about this forever to who's this going to benefit?

How's this going to affect my kids?

A lot of that has been out there, and that's been very part and parcel of our engagement, that strategies to address that issue head on, and Kristen's going to talk a little bit about that.

But we know if we succeed in doing that, and we're going to continue, hopefully, with that work past tonight, then we can move past apprehension to action.

And I think if we can take care of those two things, if we can bring some clarity to this and bring it along to everyone, then not only can we get the yes as a board and as a council, as a community,

I think we can do it together, and that's our goal here, to make this an easy yes vote for everyone when we come to that point.

So we have been trying to put the process in the historical perspective of the school system from the beginning.

So this is a chart that we started showing in our first couple of meetings.

This is to scale, going back to the earliest known records of Charlottesville City School Board.

So you can see there's a lot of things in this to talk about, but

One of the big ideas is that our school facilities are really old, right?

It's been quite a while since we have built something new.

If we do move ahead of this when we're in construction at Buford, CHS will be 50 years old, 50 years since we've done a project of this size, a capital improvement facility of this size, right?

And you can also see that date up there in 1988 when we did the first version of reconfiguration, right?

because we started off with two junior highs on the south and north side and realized that the unfortunate segregation that was really causing in our community and addressed it head on back then to what we have now, a citywide upper elementary school at Walker and a citywide seven and eight at Beaufort.

But that has its own issues, right?

So really going back to when we first put this together, I saw a lot of studies and work that was done starting in 2008

As we've had these conversations over this course of this year, people keep coming up to me and saying, we've been talking about this since 2002.

So really kind of 14 years after that first reconfiguration into upper elementary and middle, we really began to realize that it wasn't the most ideal situation for learners, for our students.

And we should really start to think about a pre-K through five, a six through eight, and a nine through 12 high school, a more typical reconfiguration process, right?

We started studying that in earnest in 2008.

It's now been 13 years.

So this is roughly 20 years on the screen right now.

And you can see where we are in that process.

And moving forward tonight and moving forward next year gets us to reconfiguration in 2026.

So it's important that we get on with this and figure out if we're going to either do it or not do it.

As we zoom in a little bit, we can see that, you know,

2008 was 20 years since that reconfiguration in 1988, that first attempt of dealing with this equity issue in our community.

And it was done in the context of enrollment going down.

Enrollment had been going down about 1% a year.

And so this was a discussion about efficiency.

We could potentially even close Walker and have six, seven, and eight at one campus and move five down with pre-K.

Well, as what happens, and it's frustrating for leaders, you all know this, as soon as you make a decision, the underlying data changes, right?

So all of a sudden enrollment starts going up quite a bit.

So in that context, a whole bunch of work was done leading up to a second school board decision.

So there was a school board decision in 2011 that we should do this with fifth and sixth.

And then a second decision in 2019, I'm sorry, in the end of 2018,

saying, reaffirming the decision, but saying in order to make room for the fifth grade, we'll pull the pre-K out and we'll have a separate pre-K citywide center.

And that will allow us to do reconfiguration and in fact help with some capacity issues.

So from there, the city council allocated $3 million in May of 2019.

And that started us on the process where we are today.

Unfortunately, we had this pesky pandemic that slowed us down for a year.

But we are now in this phase that's in the red circle, the red bracket.

We are at the end of the conceptual phase and we are at the point on the verge of the point of where the yellow arrow is, where there's some decisions to make before we move into the next phase, which we call schematic design, where we'll take a selected option with a selected budget and develop it further until we get to a point where we really get to the big decision in May and March of next year.

about do we pull the trigger on this or do we not?

All right, so zooming in a little further, what we're going to bring to you starting tonight for the very first time is a specific recommendation for an approach for a scope and budget for Buford with construction starting in 2023, a recommended approach to temporarily occupy building A at Walker,

to achieve reconfiguration, and then a recommended approach for a future pre-K center that we would build at Walker when we can fund it.

The process to get here has been, last night was our seventh community design team meeting.

Again, Kristen's going to review this a little bit more, and you can see the meetings that we have ahead of us.

I do apologize, this has been a little break in normal council protocol where

This presentation would have been posted before this, but the whole point of this was to give you the results of a meeting that ended at 10-15 last night, right?

And all of this is material that is on the CCS website, and almost all of it is material that's been previously publicly presented.

But all these future info items and action items that you see on the bottom right side of the screen there will be based on the material that you're seeing tonight, and all those will be in advance of

well in advance.

Zooming back out and looking ahead, these are some of the dates if we move forward in terms of where we have approval to move into schematic design and how that relates to city elections and also our general assembly.

We've talked about the 1% sales tax, where we are in the city budget process, if a sales tax passes, where that election would be, and where we end up with getting ready to go to bid.

So just some context for you to think about going forward on some big dates.

I think this is going to be tonight's decision obviously is going to have a huge impact on the budget discussions leading up to the April decision on the budget next year.

So what do we have to decide tonight?

And so really, in some ways, the decision tonight is not that difficult because it's simply saying, hey, we should set this as a budget and

you and your team should go and continue to finish your current contract and develop this thing out and estimate it again and we'll have a better idea when we make that final decision in March.

So moving forward really is just about spending another $725,000.

That's what's left in this contract, which is just a portion of that $3 million that was initially allocated.

And at that point we would

form our building committees that we have been talking about and really get into the nitty gritty with the educators and get a specific space program for these selected approaches and make sure that we have got a fully built out plan that meets the needs of educators and learners in CCS.

We'll estimate that twice and then we'll have a really good idea of what the same costs before a final decision has to be made.

So in that sense, it's kind of an easy decision, right?

But the bigger point here is that it's about putting a specific price tag on reconfiguration now, prior to the November elections, so it can inform the public discourse and begin to guide the budgetary planning.

And also important is that the council that made the decision to allocate that $3 million, it gives that council a chance to have a vote on this and have a say on this before we get to a new council next year.

When we get to the vote in March,

of 2022, that is when it's really time to commit to spend the money and go.

Go ahead and spend the money to develop the documents fully and get ready to take them to bed.

So that's kind of the bigger moment, the moment of truth there.

So leading up to here, when we started the process, we did a lot of scope and cost exercises kind of based on math and rough square footages, cost per square foot ideas.

We looked at a whole range of things from only building to basically our current capacity, save money all the way up to the recommended build of 1050.

We looked at doing a lot at Buford and none at Walker and some combinations.

And this is one of the first things that we presented with everyone.

And there was a lot of consensus that we shouldn't compromise.

We shouldn't start off the process by compromising.

Build for the capacity we need, 1050 for a middle school at the Buford campus.

and plan properly for the early childhood center and see where we are, right?

So we did that and we looked at some pretty major reconfigurations of both sites to do everything that we possibly wanted that came out of kind of the wish list and the conversations we had with the beginning of our community engagement.

Well, we got that estimated and the numbers were, as I was quoted in the paper, astronomical.

They really were.

And so we knew that from day one.

The first time we presented these was at the CDT5, which was our only in-person one that we did at Buford.

And I think everyone has, you know, from day one realized that this was not realistic and that we had to come down from that.

And no one has been unrealistic about that.

And it's been nice.

We've also, at that meeting, was the first time that we presented this information that was given to us by the city about

what a hypothetical 50, 70, or $100 million project would mean if it was funded solely through real estate taxes.

This information is a little out of date, and I think Mr. Boyles may have some updated information for us tonight on this, but the point is that we have been making sure that we put this information out as often as we can, and all these discussions have been in the context of these are serious decisions that require

some tax increases.

We tried to simplify that a little bit and focus in on the schools.

I showed this slide a couple of times at CDT and school board to say, okay, let's focus on the cost of the school and what might it mean.

There is a PR aspect that kind of advocating for tax increases.

I don't know if this is going to be where it ends up and that's why I put that draft red text in the bottom.

And, you know, definitely we've also heard you guys say and we've been repeating it to the CDT that

Most likely to do everything we want to do in the city, to do the full CIP, we're going to probably need, if we can get the sales tax, a combination of a real estate tax increase and a sales tax.

And everyone has had their eyes wide open about that the whole time.

And we're trying to always talk about that when we talk about the process.

When we presented the final cost estimates from our conceptual work last night, this was the first thing we did.

We put this kind of warning label on the top.

Again, I don't know if that's exactly where we end up.

but that's where we had last night to remind everybody.

So let's get straight to the bottom line of what is going to be recommended tonight, which is a expenditure for work leading up to 2026 reconfiguration of $75 million.

So a $73 million option was selected for Buford.

We have $1.35 million that would need to go into Walker.

to get it ready for that temporary condition that Marie is going to describe to you.

And then, of course, we're going to need to buy some fifth grade furniture when we move fifth grade down.

The idea that there's the elementary school modernizations that are going on right now, we would make sure that we're buying the appropriate pre-K furniture for that so we're ready to move in to Walker, and then we would need to buy some new furniture for our fifth graders.

And then after that, the option that was selected by the community design team

at the early childhood center is the cheaper, not the more expensive one.

But it is still a significant amount of money that we would have to have in the CIP and have to plan for.

So whenever we do that, and we don't know when that is, that's not a small amount and that needs to go into planning.

It's only been estimated in current dollars because we don't know when that's going to happen.

A project of that size with typical inflation adds about a million dollars a year.

So delaying has a significant price for that.

So I want to put this in context a little bit.

We've shown this slide.

We originally did it with the capacity study in 2017, and we updated it at the beginning of this process.

It shows all the projects that have happened that are in planning or under construction or completed in the counties around us.

About $700 million is our rough estimate of new school facilities, public schools, that have been done in the past 10 years.

And if you look at what's just happened this year in 2021, these are all the municipalities in the Commonwealth public school districts that have put out RFPs and are starting projects in today's economic climate.

So you can see a middle school that Loudon's doing for $80 million, Goochland County's doing it next door is doing a new elementary school for $60 million, a renovation addition to a high school in Frederick County, that's Winchester for $73 million, pretty similar scope.

kind of what we'd be doing at Buford and then a range of high schools all the way from big cities like Alexandria and Richmond to smaller places like Stafford County and even Buchanan County in far Southwest Virginia that are ranging from 90 all the way up to almost $150 million.

So all of this is work that is going on and being funded across the Commonwealth in 2021.

So why do this?

Why spend this kind of money and why do it now?

I think there's a lot of good reasons that we have been trying to articulate and listen and repeat back what we heard from the community.

But we know that the middle school transition is really crummy.

It's really disruptive.

And reducing that is going to greatly improve the experience of our sixth to eighth graders and help quite a bit.

Our pre-K resources are scattered among our six elementary schools and limited.

So there's an economy of scale of bringing them together.

And it also would allow, if we bring them together at the Walker campus, there's space there to grow that program.

I think all of us would like to expand pre-K beyond the offerings that we have right now.

And then our learning environments are old and dated.

They're from, you know, Beaufort and Walker, they're from 1966.

And so there's a lot that we can do to meet the specific needs of young children and middle schoolers by renovating these, in addition to improving indoor air quality, energy efficiency, and helping to

Attract and retain teachers, excuse me.

At the end of the day, I think it's important that and why I design schools for a living, it's important to say to our public school teachers, hey, we value the work.

We honor the work that you do.

It's incredibly important to our society and to our kids.

Hey, this is a place that's for and about you.

You matter.

This is important.

That is a significant investment to put into our communities.

Why do it now, right?

Well, these things are really outdated, right?

So again, it'll be 50 years with CHS when we get into this project.

So we just got some really old buildings compared to what some of our neighbors around us in the Commonwealth are doing.

We said we would do this.

We've been talking about it for 13 plus years, several votes on it.

Time is money.

The more we delay this thing, I just showed you the million dollar increase per year on the early childhood center.

When you deal with a project of this size, inflation just will kill you.

It really will.

And then finally, this is the least expensive way to accommodate the growth that we're going to have in this city because reconfiguration creates capacity at every single grade level.

When we're able to free up space to move some central admin to the Walker's campus along with early childhood, that space frees out of Charlottesville High School.

When we move fifth grade down to the elementary school, instead of having 16, 14 to 16,

students in a classroom, we could have 24 to 25.

So across the whole system, and of course, we're building for more capacity at Buford.

So we accommodate growth and touch the whole system by making this move, which is why it's been talked about and embraced for so long.

We know that our buildings are never neutral, right?

They're either working for us or against us.

So the design and operation of buildings clearly has a big impact on student health, on cognitive function,

and on long-term academic performance.

We know this.

It's been documented.

It's been studied well that air quality and daylight and noise had a huge impact on the learner.

We don't need an academic study to tell us that here in Charlottesville because we can see it.

So these are daylight studies that we've done at Beaufort.

And the picture on the right is one of the Beaufort classrooms that has some of the most daylight.

It has two windows in it, and you can see how dark it is.

I took that picture this summer, so on a very bright day outside.

And we also know how noisy these spaces are.

The picture on the left shows a console unit that heats and cools the room like you would have in a motel room.

Everyone's dealt with that noise when you're trying to sleep before.

The noise from those things is almost twice as high

and decibels than what best recommendation practices are.

So our teachers are fighting that.

They're working over that.

These are big deals.

And then finally, you know, our promises on the climate matter as well, right?

The buildings represent about a third of greenhouse gas emissions, the operation of buildings.

And Juwan Walker represent 23% of the total square footage of the portfolio in Charlottesville City Schools.

which is our biggest collection of buildings.

And this is the only project that really has an opportunity to do any significant upgrades between now and 2030 when we have these goals.

So this is really a unique opportunity to do something towards our climate goals.

And then finally, and I think most importantly, this is an opportunity we know from brain scientists that middle school is second only to pre-K in terms of brain development.

And so this is a chance to make an impact in the lives of our future citizens of Charlottesville.

The two projects that are being selected are the ones that could come in and really make a difference in people.

So those are all the reasons, and I think they're important ones, of why we should be talking about spending $75 million.

So that is the overview.

I'm going to stop there before I turn it over to Kristen and see if anyone has questions about that.

I have one question of the slide that had the schools, other schools in Virginia.

Do you, it may be helpful, just a little information about the age of those buildings too.

I don't have that, Mayor Walker.

The, you know, a lot of these are, the Loudoun County is building for growth.

So those are new

campuses.

I know that's the case in Stafford County as well.

They've got explosive growth.

Alexandria City, that project is basically a second campus for what used to be called T.C.

Williams High School.

They've renamed it recently, and I don't recall the new name.

That's a pretty old facility.

I don't know the age of the high school in Frederick County, but we could find that out.

And then the

The projects in Buchanan County are for some very old buildings that are in the floodplain down there that need to be replaced for that reason.

And you can also see the variety and the number of students there.

But I think it's all over the map.

Thank you.

Yes, so we've covered a lot of stuff over our conversations with the working group and CDT.

One of the things that I'm not sure how consistent is, is capacity, right?

The way the Commonwealth of Virginia calculates capacity in a school is because every school different schedules their buildings differently.

The only way to have an apples to apples comparison is to say, okay, every single classroom is going to be fully occupied by students for every period of the day.

And so they assume that's how they calculate capacity.

So I would imagine that 1445 number is based on Virginia DOE capacity.

The reality is, is that

Most schools are programmed six out of seven periods a day.

Teachers need a planning period, and it's just the realities of a schedule work that way.

Well, okay, but my question is more, why is it almost cheaper to build a whole new middle school?

That varies on a lot of things.

Loudoun County does prototype schools.

They take the same exact school just like you would take a fast food restaurant and site adjust it to wherever you are building it.

It is exactly the same and it's plopped down and it's based on a prototype that was designed in the 90s.

So Hanover County does a similar approach.

You can see that Goochland is spending more money on fewer students for an elementary school.

They've also got a bit of a STEM center they're hoping to do out of that money as well.

I have one question.

Can you go back when you were saying the fifth grade classroom capacity would increase?

I'm having a hard time hearing you, Ms.

Morseberger.

Can you go back to the fifth grade classroom capacity that you were talking about earlier?

Did it increase the class, the number of fifth grade classes available?

Yes, and I can let Maria chime in here if I get this wrong.

But the way that you, we have a smaller teacher to student ratio at the pre-K level.

So it is 14 to one for three year olds and 16 to one for four year olds.

I think it's 12 to one for the three-year-olds, but yeah, it's significantly lower than elementary max class sizes.

And the max class sizes at elementary, you know, at their highest are 24 students per teacher, but we do have a class reduction size, size reduction program in the city school, so each elementary has a slightly different max class size.

But the idea is, you know, a classroom within an elementary school that was hosting 16, max 16

Preschool students now becomes a room that can host, you know, between 19 to 24 students.

And then, excuse me.

And sorry, one footnote, also the preschool population has a higher percentage of students with disabilities, and those classrooms are one to eight ratio instructor to students.

All right.

Thanks, Wick.

So the first step that we always do when designing is design the process.

These are the questions that we started off with back in April and May.

Who should we be talking to?

What should we be learning?

This is what our first community design team meeting was all about.

Next slide, Wick.

You all are familiar by now with how we define that into these core groups that have been guiding our process.

The staff level working group that is kind of the high level decision makers and designing the process keeping us moving forward.

The community design team that we've had seven lovely public meetings with and they are all well versed in the ins and outs and have provided essential feedback on the way and those have all been public meetings.

and then the building committees that are going to be staff groups at the pre-K and middle school level that will give us more fine-grained detail as subject matter experts moving into schematic design.

Next slide.

So CDT meetings have been open to everyone, but this is the current roster that's been the most consistent throughout.

You can see there's a mix of appointed and open application members and moving into the next phase, we'll do a re-recruitment effort

for this as well, particularly hoping to get more students involved on the CBT.

Next slide.

In this hybrid world, we've been focused on providing a variety of both in-person and digital ways for families to learn about and engage with the project discussion throughout the summer.

We're just getting started, but so far this has included everything from CBT Zoom meeting discussions that didn't all go to 10, 10 p.m., but were always fun.

and getting out in public for community events and providing kid-friendly activities.

Next slide, Wick.

And most recently, in an effort to broaden this scope even farther, we've brought on four paid peer engagers who've been focusing in on stakeholder groups that we hadn't been as successfully reaching.

I just did another check.

I don't think any of them were able to join us tonight.

Unfortunately, they've all got

Lots of different schedule constraints working around, but they gave a great update last night, both Joe and Shymora did about the wonderful work that they're doing, reaching out.

Specifically, they're focused on, you can see some of the focus areas on the screen, but Shymora has been doing great work reaching out to the Habitat Network, and Joe has been out at Prospect Community Days and West Haven coming up and is particularly focused on engaging our pre-K families.

Next slide, Wick.

So how is this all fed into the design process?

What have we been hearing?

Next slide.

We always return to this kind of squiggle diagram.

We have to go big and explore all the different possibilities to be able to narrow down and get specific because that's the goal with architecture.

We want to get to the physical building at the end.

Next slide.

So Wick just described some of this kind of red bar.

What are our scope and constraints that we've been narrowing in and deciding throughout the past couple months?

And we're going to dive more deeply into kind of what is this blue overlay, the community vision and priorities and values.

And the two of those coming together is what truly makes good design.

Next slide.

So we continuously return to this question.

What defines success for this project?

What does it look like?

We've asked it dozens of times in different contexts to all different groups of people over the summer.

And these are the things that really keep rising to the top of the pile continuously.

Achieve reconfiguration and make sure it really happens this time.

Prioritize the student experience.

That means inclusive, safe, and welcoming spaces where students can thrive as whole people academically, socially, and emotionally.

community-driven design.

We want to make sure to be critical of our own process and that all voices are being included and listened to.

Next slide.

And in terms of specific design criteria coming forward to evaluate the schemes, this is really where we've landed, especially this is driven by feedback in our last two community design team meetings that have been based on the schemes you'll see tonight, as well as a community survey.

that we've done.

So these are the top criteria that keep coming up over and over again, thorough renovations of any buildings to remain, maximizing square footage per student, daylight and fresh air to classrooms and learning spaces, easy access to outdoor space, both at the pre-K level and the middle school level, and appropriately size and define learning communities, especially because we know how beloved the neighborhood elementary schools are.

Great.

All right, I'm Maria.

I've spoken to most of you before, but I'm the project architect for the Walker campus, which, as we have been discussing, is planned to receive the central preschool facility for Charlottesville City Schools.

The first thing that's going to happen, as Wick mentioned, the first change at Walker is going to be that the preschool classes from the city, the whole city, move into building A as a temporary condition.

in 2026.

So the idea is that Buford will be complete.

Sixth grade will move up into a new facility there with seventh and eighth grade and reconfiguration will happen at that point.

Fifth grade will move back to the elementaries and the preschoolers will move to the A building as their temporary facility.

So in order to prepare that building to function in that capacity, we have

come up with this list of improvements, accessibility, signage, and paint just to make people able to get around the building.

A big part of this is actually installing a vertical access lift within building A, which does not have an interior elevator, creating some great outdoor play and learn areas, which we can do

with a small amount of money we can create some really high quality environments outdoors for the early childhood program and then actually a big part of this is some envelope maintenance for building A and this is similar to envelope maintenance and we say envelope it means that the outer walls of the building and the roof what we really would be addressing is the walls painting exposed steel

that has started to rust because paint's coming off and repointing, that means fixing up the mortar at the brick where it's failing.

So it's really just kind of keeping building A from degrading and allowing it to continue to be in function.

At the same time, as we mentioned, there's a price tag

on the fifth grade move in terms of providing them new furniture and not moving the old furniture out of Walker.

You know, the elementaries we've been doing the summer projects where we upgrade the schools a little bit and provide new furniture for each elementary and we're doing that in sequence.

And so the idea is we would buy that level of furniture for all the fifth grade classrooms across the district.

So that's the first change at Walker.

But that needs to not be the only change.

This is something we've talked about.

The temporary condition that's allowing the first project to occur can't turn into a permanent condition.

Reconfiguration does introduce a new transition for preschoolers.

We can't shy away from that in our conversations.

They're now going to have a transition up to kindergarten into an elementary school.

So it also needs to deliver benefits, high quality facility that addresses their developmental needs and also provides those kinds of services and resources that they can't access in their sort of scattered configuration currently.

So,

Temporary condition is check the box on that.

What's our design task at the Walker site?

What we've been tackling over the summer with the CDT is turning part of a 1960s junior high campus that's built on a big steep hill into a place that is made for young children's needs and development and include space for resources for families.

That's social, medical and dental and nutritional services and work around other priority site uses on campus.

There are other things going on on the Walker campus besides the early childhood center.

and allow for future development of the remainder of the site because this facility, even when expanded, isn't going to take up the entire site.

So we need to think about allowing future development on other parts.

And we need to improve the very challenged site circulation, both vehicular and pedestrian and design for a net zero ready facility and other sustainability agendas to meet city goals and within a projected cost that works into the city capital improvement budget so that this project can really happen.

All right, what's the scope?

So at the beginning of the summer we went into this and the identified kind of would-do scope, the ideal situation would be a 32 classroom facility.

This was defined in conversations with Charlottesville City Schools Administration.

This would allow them to increase the size of their three-year-old program to match the size of the four-year-old program.

That ensures a two-year experience for young children in Charlottesville City School preschools and that is shown to improve outcomes and the effectiveness of

Preschool offerings.

So that's the ideal.

You know, the first round of estimates came in and the sticker shock that Wick mentioned came up.

And so the phase with there was identified and a decision was made to do a phase one, a must do level, which is maintaining the existing scope of services.

The program is very between 18 to 20 classrooms.

We are showing 18.

And

that was purely budget-based.

But we are also going to show expansion space in all of our plans so that we know that when funding becomes available, the expansion to 32 classrooms could happen.

And another decision that was reached over the course of conversations this summer was that both of these phases need to have one front door.

Operationally, it needs to be one facility.

That's something that came out in conversations with Charlottesville City Schools Administration.

All right, so here's our site.

Walker.

You can see Gentry Lane is a road that passes through or hits the site on the kind of the bottom left corner there.

That's the southwest.

And then Rose Hill Drive, an important street in our city, tees into the south edge of the site.

And then from the north, that's also there's a connection near the bypass.

It's a very complicated and challenging intersection.

Right now we have fifth and sixth grade in the buildings marked in blue.

A building is the classroom, main classroom building.

B building is their auditorium building.

And C building is the gymnasium.

These are all, it's open air circulation amongst those buildings.

And there's a lot of topographic change.

So

The A building is much, much higher up the hill than the gym building, the C building down the hill.

And that is the challenge of developing on this site.

The north site entry is 56 feet higher than the Rose Hill Drive entry at the south.

And that is more than 16 three-year-olds stacked on top of each other.

So that's an important kind of scalar issue we're dealing with.

So 2026, when our project for the Early Childhood Center begins to be constructed,

The P here stands for preschool.

Preschoolers are going to be in that building A in their temporary condition.

So we have done a lot of work with the CDT this summer focusing on major site elements and you'll hear people in the CDT talk about big rocks a lot.

And that's this metaphor for if you're trying to fit a lot of rocks into a jar.

You need to place your big rocks first and then, you know, smaller rocks you can pack in around those and fit everything efficiently.

So this design discussions have really focused on the big pieces, the major site elements.

We identified the big rocks at the Walker site and which ones need to touch each other, which need to move together as we explore possibilities on the site.

So here in the gold circle, the entry landscape.

This is really what connects the whole project to larger Charlottesville.

It's a space that needs to have a bus loop for drop off, a car loop, a visitor in ADA parking, and

excuse me, it needs to tie in, obviously, to roads of our city.

That was identified in conversation as needing to have a very easy and close connection to the building itself, obviously.

And this adjacency is critical because it supports pick up and drop off logistics, visibility, safety, community connections, and ADA compliance.

So then we have, of course, have our other big rock here, the building itself with an early childhood center with 18 classrooms.

And then another critical adjacency that came out in conversations, and it's something that, you know, we have talked about for a long time in our office in terms of best practice is a tie into play and learn landscapes, especially for this early childhood age group.

This is space for gross motor play.

That means exercise, jumping, spinning,

Outdoor Material Exploration and Imaginative Play.

And I can't emphasize enough that the building and the landscape together serve as the curricular space for this facility.

It's not just the building.

This adjacency is a research-based best practice.

Three and four-year-olds learn through play and outdoor play provides unique benefits.

And we've had some great early childhood experts to come in and talk to us about this as well.

So the added challenge is that we need to have space to expand the building.

Those additional 14 classrooms that we talked about with the same front door.

So that's sort of our big design challenge on the site.

So at the Walker site, we really focused in on this question with the CDT with the multiple options for site entry and the requirement for future phases to use the same front door.

There's a defining decision for this project.

Where do we put the front door?

Once we put that pin in place, that's going to affect a lot of other things.

The answer has implications for which existing buildings are affected by the project now and in future phases.

And once we make this decision, we can really focus energy on developing the very best layout at that part of the site.

So it's really kind of a site within a site, selecting a site within a site.

So we have looked at the very challenged entry landscape situation now.

So again, I'm using gold on the site plan to indicate the entry landscapes.

And here it's as they exist currently for the Walker facility for fifth and sixth grade.

There are currently two entry landscapes.

Neither one is working well and pick up and drop off patterns have changed year to year.

We've talked with a principal at Walker about this.

And

Julie Cousin, Ph.D.

: Concern about traffic has been a prominent theme in community survey responses.

Luckily, the good news is the early childhood center is going to reduce the amount of traffic on the site that way fewer students, particularly in phase one.

We're going from over 600 students to 200 to 250 students in phase one.

Full build out is, you know, 370, 440, depending on that kind of mix of age groups and how many special education classrooms there are.

So it's just, it's fewer buses, but definitely needs to work better.

It needs to be improved for the site to be functional.

So this is what we're tackling.

If we follow our diagram about what our critical adjacencies are, the way the site is laid out, our upper that on the top of the slide, the Gentry Lane entry landscape is two stories above what exists on the site as an available play and learn landscape.

That play and learn landscape is kind of a wonderful place, but it's really inaccessible.

The south entry landscape down on Rose Hill is one story below this space.

And so we were really trying to make these connections that our diagram tells us we need to make in order to provide a good facility for our youngest learners.

So we tried this a lot of different ways.

And we tried moving those green blobs and the gold blobs.

And, you know, in our test fit exercise, we learned that

Wholesale organization of the site is really outside of the budget of this project.

We can imagine some cool things to do, but we can't afford to do them.

So the round of options that you'll see this evening is more limited and strategic.

So we're really trying to tackle what's the best project we can do at this scale of transformation that sets us up well for future site development.

The two conceptual designs you'll see this evening, which are the ones that reached final consideration with the community design team, were not the

Most obvious are the first approaches we took.

They were uncovered as test fits and community conversations helped us to understand the possibilities on the site.

What are the assets?

What are the liabilities?

How can we transform the condition?

And this is just a kind of crazy looking but composite drawing of all the different footprints we studied and the red arrows indicate front door locations that we studied.

So two site approaches were presented to the community design team last night.

and this is an existing conditions drawing so you'll be able to see the change.

The red loop indicates on the left a Gentry Lane scheme and on the right a Rose Hill Drive facing scheme.

So these are options that we had estimated in our August round of pricing or estimating.

So our option one, the Gentry Lane scheme came in about two and a half million dollars higher than option two, our Rose Hill Drive facing scheme.

and that Rose Hill Drive scheme you can see is $22.3 million, the Gentryland scheme $24.78 million.

As Wick noted construction start date is TBD so these are today construction estimates and the final cost will be dependent on when the funding is secured and how much escalation occurs.

So what occurs in both of these proposals is a complete early childhood center with 18 classrooms and support spaces

approximately 48,600 gross square feet, secure, age-appropriate outdoor play and learned spaces, public ADA access to the school's major landscapes, which is really lacking on the site now.

There's no reduction in the total number of parking spaces from the current count and some additions.

And there's no renovation of building A. That's not what we thought we were going to be talking about when we started this process at the beginning of the summer.

because the pre-K is there, the preschool will be there in their temporary condition.

And for actually a lot of other kind of design reasons, we are not proposing an option where we renovate building A into the preschool center.

Both of these options rely on the existing kitchen and loading dock in building A. So there's no major production kitchen included in either of these buildings.

And both of these schemes include school parking lots that are accessed via both Rose Hill and Gentry.

So both, you know, both kind of vehicular connections to the site are still going to be important.

The front door is really about the bus loop, the car loop, visitor parking, you know, the community face, but it's not like all the staff parking is going to be happening at that entry landscape.

So what's different?

All right, so option one on the left, the Gentry Lane scheme, our front door faces north towards the bypass, the drop off and front door are from Gentry Lane.

On the right, you have our option two, the Rose Hill Drive scheme, we've got a south facing front door, drop off and front door from Rose Hill Drive.

Our option one scheme is completely new construction, no renovation.

So this allows this option to be built beside building a while, you know,

the other buildings are occupied.

Our Rose Hill Drive scheme is a 60% new construction, but it's 40% a gut renovation, and that is a repurposing of building B. Option one up on Gentry Lane keeps all of our existing buildings intact on the site, A, B, C, Crow, and the central administration building, which is up at the very north end of the site.

That's that small building

up at the top of the image.

Option two, the Rose Hill Drive scheme keeps building A and admin intact in their current state.

It demolishes building C, the gymnasium building, and it transforms building B, the auditorium, for a new purpose.

So

That is a very renovatable space.

It's what we'd call like a posted beam structure.

So it is, you know, there are no load bearing walls inside.

So we can really reconfigure and, you know, turn it into a new space that meets the needs of the program.

Option one, the Gentry Lane scheme for future expansion.

It relies on building a connector into building A beside it and renovating that space at a future date.

The Rose Hill Drive scheme, its plan for future expansion is via new construction, a wing addition to the phase one project.

The Gentry Lane scheme reconverts, entry landscape reconfigures Gentry entry.

You see this, I don't know if you'll see my cursor, there's this large bus loop.

This is a new feature, major landscape move in front of the school to create a reasonable entry landscape.

The Rose Hill Drive scheme really is improving an existing entry landscape that is there.

It's enlarging it, making the parking work better, introducing a formal bus loop, things like that.

So that's an overview.

We have more materials we can look at in detail if there's any interest in looking at more detail of these schemes.

But the big news is last night we asked the CDT to pick a scheme to recommend.

We asked them, say, tell us, where do you think the front door should be and why?

What should we recommend to local leaders?

The group unanimously selected option two.

That was a less expensive option.

So some of the reasons people cited for this selection was this two story scheme has actually really awesome access from every classroom to outdoor play and learn space.

Fewer Stairs for Kids, Preserving Building A for Future Uses as Needed by Charlottesville City Schools.

Option one, they cited as being less desirable because it's three stories.

So, you know, a lot of the classrooms are three stories above the play and learn space.

And we tried to tackle that kind of separation as best as best we could.

And we can show you some of that if you'd like.

But that accessibility issue

and the challenge of transitions, especially we've talked about students with traumas or movement disabilities, the kind of easy indoor outdoor living that's presented by option to really appeal to people.

And then also the orientation for daylight was cited as one of the reasons it was chosen.

We also asked them to fill out the blank in this question.

The next round of design for the scheme should work to improve or adjust or address what

And so we heard things like access to Crow during the construction process, involving educators to ensure function, that is going to be critical, you know, getting into more detail, really supporting, thinking in detail about the outdoor spaces and how, you know, we could really support realistic use of those spaces and make them the best they can be, and then

Finally, follow up with Rose Hill neighbors about traffic concerns.

And as I mentioned, that was a prominent theme.

And I think it's, you know, it's because the site is functioning so poorly right now.

So we have reached out to, to do an info session with neighbors.

So we're in the process of coordinating that and just

trying to hear in more detail from folks their specific concerns and then also share this information, which we summarized for the first time last night for the CDT about kind of the reduced vehicular loads, the reduced student load and staff load on the site.

So with that, we do have more detailed

representation, some 3D images that we had a ton of fun working on and developing for these schemes, but I won't go into those unless folks want to look at them or have questions that they're helpful in answering.

No questions, Maria, but I don't know.

Okay, I'll just, I'll go through them.

As I, I actually forgot to mention that option two, oh, so this is option one, an aerial.

We did some cutaway floor plans to talk about that entry level, connecting out to the site, you know, option one was working really hard to

help building A out, which has a big cafeteria space that has no accessible entry landscape or, you know, there's not a corollary landscape that is appropriate to the size of public room that that that cafeteria is.

So this is a view from

the Play and Learn Courtyard, looking at the new three-story building, you know, organized some special spaces within the building around that big glassy area so that, you know, celebrating views out to the courtyard and providing a big elevator that a whole class could fit in, trying to make fun ways to go up and down the steep hill between the levels, going inside, this is one of the special spaces we, you know,

Totally, this is like, we would have to talk to educators, obviously, but just, you know, some possibilities for, you know, putting an art center near that big glassy space and a front door view from up on Gentry Lane.

You know, a one story building on Gentry Lane, stepping down the hill and becoming a three story building once you get to its south end.

the Rose Hill Drive scheme, some planned diagrams, demolition of C, how much of the site we're going to be transforming, expansion possibilities.

The triangle site means that if we build at the south, there's just a lot more space to potentially add additions.

Again, the aerial.

Here, the new construction portion.

and then the renovated auditorium.

And I'd be happy to talk about the decision to renovate an auditorium into an early childhood space because that wasn't intuitive to us.

So if anyone has questions about that, it was one of those things that really emerged in conversation.

And when we thought of it, of this particular arrangement, it just sort of clicked that this was providing a lot of what we were working toward in kind of a compact footprint.

This is the entry level.

So the upper level of the Rose Hill scheme contains 14 of the 18 classrooms.

So those are all easy access to a central courtyard, a secondary courtyard that could be a more secluded space if we needed a less stimulating environment for students in self-contained special education classrooms, things like that.

This is the lower level.

That would be the entry level on Rose Hill Drive.

A view of the upper courtyard.

renovated building B on the left, the white building is the new construction portion, and that orange box is the kind of connector between the two.

You know, we imagined, again, a sort of art center inside that connector, the small outdoor courtyard would be on your right here.

and views out to the main courtyard and towards building A. And again, a front door view addressing Rose Hill Drive.

And, you know, you'll have a very prominent, as you drive into the site, you'll be looking straight into this entry landscape and at this building.

Crow Pool just peeking into the image there on the right.

I have two things that came up in the meeting last night that I would have

I just have some questions on one was the parks and rec master plan was mentioned.

Yes, I just wanted to know what was the group's understanding of that and then there was a mention of building a potentially being a new elementary school and I wanted to just understand a little bit better where that conversation.

I heard Jennifer say that it was not anything that was a part of this plan, but I just

know that once we start planning, if things become possible, that we will try to expand there.

Yeah, those are two really important questions.

So thanks for bringing those up.

The Parks and Rec Master Plan is something that has not been performed.

It's something that they want to do starting this year.

So we've had a bunch of conversations with different groups about things that go on on the Walker site besides, you know, students coming to learn.

And one of them is obviously the Crow Rec Center, Poole and Rec Center.

So we reached out to Parks and Rec about that.

They said basically, you know,

They have not been doing improvements to the Crow Pool and Rec Center because the idea was that the YMCA, sorry, with the YMCA Pool and the Smith Aquatic Pool, Crow was going to come offline.

They basically just haven't made a decision about it yet.

And, you know, they've got maybe five or 10 years that they can continue on without investing in the facility before they just got to make a call about it.

And so they are planning to do this citywide master plan.

And I think they haven't hired anyone to do it yet.

But as part of that, you know, they would, I think, finally have this discussion about what's the future for Crow.

And obviously, you know, if they're on the Walker site here, that is something, a vision that

could be honed together with conversations about potential future uses by the city schools on the Walker site.

So, you know, that's essentially saying, you know, the expansion plan, there's a way to do it from the Rose Hill Drive scheme that impacts Crow, that we would build on the Crow footprint, and that's shown bottom right here.

And that's an efficient way to do it.

So if they decide to sunset that facility, you could do that.

or you could build on the other side of where we're showing this scheme in the field, you know, so far in community conversations that play field has emerged as a kind of more significant community asset than the crow pool, but it's just nice to know that that decision could be part of a holistic conversation about, you know,

Parks and Rec lands across the entire city and region, and how does this fit into that picture?

And we could be planning together.

So that's the Parks and Rec question.

The A building and the potential use as a future elementary.

So a seventh elementary was one of the capacity expansion kind of tools in the toolkit that was identified in the capacity study in 2017.

was like, we needed to address, have a plan.

How could we expand our student capacity at every grade throughout the system?

So the ways to grow elementary capacity that were identified coming out of that study with the school board was

three additions.

So like half of our six neighborhood elementaries were studied and deemed to be feasible locations to do an addition.

And the other method, well, there are two other methods.

So one is doing the project we're doing now, as we discussed, and then a third would be a seventh elementary.

And that wasn't like an easy thing to jump into or kind of top contender.

I don't think that would be the first move because it involves

the question of attendance zones, which is a very challenging question that, you know, basically it will be a huge, take a lot of energy and a lot of conversation in the community.

And so it probably wouldn't be the first move to expand capacity.

But, you know, if we're thinking in terms of 50, 100 years down the road, it's good to have that in the pocket and know that there's a place we could put it.

The other use for building A that has been discussed a lot is a place for CCS central administration.

to come together, currently split at two different sites.

This site, 25 staff, and Charlottesville City Schools, the lowest level, I'm sorry, Charlottesville High School, the lowest level of that building has 45 staff.

So, you know, it would be great to bring all those people together, more efficient, they could communicate better, but they don't need all of them building A. So, you know, there are potential futures where, you know, they could be in building A for a while, but, you know,

mixed with wraparound services and, you know, that could happen for a while and then, you know, say in 30, 40 years or whenever, you know, the city reaches some kind of growth where we need to start talking about a seventh elementary, kind of a more office type space could be found for central admin and that north part of the site could become an elementary.

But in our test fits, we did determine it's like we can't fit all the parking for central admin

and all the parking that today an elementary school wants and all the parking are expanded.

You can't have the three things and all the parking that that today people want to do unless you go structured parking.

Any other questions on the Early Childhood Center?

The only comment I would make, especially hearing through it, I just think it does give us a lot more flexibility with the direction that the team's chosen.

for this site.

So despite this being something that is in the future and hopefully, as Maria said, not in the too far distant future, it's important to make a decision.

But again, it gives us a budget number to plan for

but it also allows us to continue to develop these, refine that budget number, refine the documents and get a better figured out facility that we can also understand and render and promote.

We've been talking about private fundraising, maybe to help with this.

And so that's an important piece.

And then finally, as Maria said, that diagram of how pre-K students learn through play

When we spend that $1.35 million to bring the pre-K temporarily to building A, we have to figure out where those play spaces are going to go outside.

And we need a master plan to work with.

I started putting the title master plan on some of these Walker slides and I was like, there are too many unknowns.

I'm going to call this an expansion plan.

We have an expansion plan.

for the early childhood center.

And then, you know, a lot of possibilities on the other side of the site.

And the temporary condition is much more comfortable if construction is happening, frankly, down south here.

You know, it's totally doable to do it up on the Gentry Hill scheme, but it would make it that kind of access to outdoor play and learn

Just to be clear, I'm ready for the public and all of us, this is another phase that's not in our immediate commitment, but it's one that we know is part of our longer term strategy to get this reconfiguration complete, but you do want us to endorse an option this evening as

I think, you know, we wanted to, when we talked about having this joint meeting, so there could be a discussion on these issues before council and board saw them separately as info items.

So it's up to you guys.

I don't think anything has to be decided tonight, but it would be nice to have a sense of the room in terms of where we're going to go with a resolution that we bring to both council and board.

I would just start by just saying like I just

can't say enough about the work that your team has done along with our community and the team that has had these many meetings throughout the summer to kind of get to this point and I think it would take something really compelling in this case for me to be swayed to go in an opposite direction because so much incredible work has been done and a lot of discussions have taken place so I just want to acknowledge that it's just been a heavy lift over a short period of time during a pandemic and

Just it's really exciting to kind of see things kind of coming to some decision points in this timeframe, because part of me wasn't sure it would be possible.

So kudos to you and to all the volunteers who've come forward throughout the summer.

I think that's up to you, Mayor Walker and Chair Torres, how you want to do that?

here towards your preference?

I think we need to, I would like to, the Buford is like, you know, I have constantly said this is the more urgent matter and has the, you know, larger dollar amount.

And I think this

is now going on a pretty long time already.

I agree.

I think, you know, and to me, the decision around Walker, and we can talk about that later, is just to know for sure that we do have the support somehow and or we will and are working towards the support to make that first

transition happened so that we can, you know, whether that was the 1.25 million somehow.

So, but I agree.

Welcome, Councilor Snook.

We have, we've kind of done three of our four parts of this tonight.

First was just an overview.

Then second we talked about engagement that we've been going to all the engagement outreach that we've been doing.

Third, we just finished talking about the Walker site and the unanimous choice of the CDT last night for option two to build on the south side of the site, a Rose Hill Drive scheme.

Before we do that, let me just apologize to everybody.

I did not know when I scheduled what should have been a short hearing at one o'clock that it would end at 745.

So I will go back and watch this on the video that I assume is being made so that I'll get up to speed for the next meeting.

Not a problem.

I don't think anyone realized the CDT last night when it started at six was going to end at 10 after 10 either.

But

If this was easy, anybody could do it, right?

Okay, so let's talk about Buford.

We have developed three schemes at Buford, which we put a lot of work into to send for our second round of cost estimating on Friday the 13th of August.

And then we presented that material and had a discussion

at the previous CDT, not the last night's one, where we didn't have the cost information back and got some round of comments on that.

We were able to then do more community engagement, some survey work, some really good feedback there.

And then last night we presented the cost data.

The cost data was actually presented for the very first time at the previous school board meeting.

Everything that we have presented all along the way has always been in public.

We have designed in public 100% of the time with

and all the material.

So this is the second time this information is being presented.

And let's get into these three schemes and what makes them unique.

So the state average for a new middle school, a new public middle school in the Commonwealth of Virginia is 151 square feet per student for what's being built now.

So we were

We were trying to hit that.

We didn't mean to exactly hit it on two of the schemes, but we did.

So two of these schemes are a little over 187,000 total gross square feet.

When you have all the renovation of the buildings that remain and all the new construction, you add it all up.

That's your total gross square feet.

Option one is a little smaller.

It's at 182, so that represents 147,000 gross square feet per student.

which is almost 4,800 square feet less.

That does add up.

A classroom is 800 square feet, for example.

If you take a classroom and the associated corridors and support space that are required to support this, you know, 4,800 square feet could be six classrooms.

An entire grade, we're planning for 14 classrooms.

So it's almost half a grade.

All three of the schemes have the same amount of student capacity of 1050.

The difference is that when you begin to push that square footage down a little bit, what you lose is the interstitial space, the space in between the classrooms, the breakout space, some of the supporting things, the space that's white on the screen, for example, all the little corridors.

So there's kind of a little bit more space in the other ones.

And so it's not quite an apples to apples comparison.

The orange is a little skinny.

My colleague James last night said you should call it a clementine.

It's a small orange.

So a clementine and two apples.

We got the cost data back.

Up to this point, I have been giving you guys and the public a full range of the cost information.

And what we did is we typically estimate at what something costs current day.

And then we escalate that based on anticipated construction inflation.

to the midpoint of construction.

Well, these are not typical times.

And anyone who's done any home improvement projects over the past couple of months knows what a piece of lumber costs, a sheet of plywood costs, a gallon of paint costs.

It's gone through the roof.

So the first number you see down there is the current price at this very high pandemic supply chain inflated price.

Those have already started to come down.

How far will they come down?

We don't know.

The second number takes that high price and escalates from there.

So it's a very conservative number.

What I am proposing to do and what we did last night to simplify the conversation is to, one, round the numbers.

So we're rounding to half a million dollars.

But I'm also going to show you just the current number.

You may say, Wick, why would you do that?

That doesn't seem very conservative instead of using the more escalated one.

And I think that it's a safe position to be in in terms of cash needs for this project when you think about that inflation may add three, four, four and a half million dollars to these numbers.

But in 2019, the city council allocated three million for it.

And that would be part of this total number.

So for simplification, I'm just going to use one number.

It's that current cost number.

When you do that, you can see that there's not a big delta between these three schemes as we got them back from the cost estimators.

66, 67, and 68 million dollars.

When you compare the cost per square foot, you do see a difference.

So option two, the one in the middle, has the lowest cost per square foot.

It gets you the most school for the least amount of dollars.

whereas options one and two are more similar in that.

These are very much at or even a little below what schools cost and average school costs these days in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

If we look at some of the differences between the schemes, it's really about kind of where we put the new construction.

I'm not going to go into all the detail that Maria did in terms of what is similar and different about them.

but I do wanna quickly walk you through the images and the schemes that were shown last night in a very brief summary.

So starting with the existing aerial, this is your Beaufort site.

So the Smith Aquatic and Boys and Girls Club are the white roofs in the foreground and the dark roofs are our 1960, 1966 buildings in the background.

So this is the first option, which we called renovate more, build less, which is exactly what it is.

This is the option in contrast to the other two that keeps building C. So building C is the gym building at the right side of the screen that's further down the hill.

Keeping that building is a big decision with a lot of implications and we can get into that.

But this keeps building C and adds on to it, connects it to A and has a small addition

a smaller addition at the top left side of the screen.

This is the site plan.

In terms of the three schemes, they all offer not identical but equal site amenities, same number of play courts, same number of parking spots, similar drop-off pickup areas, a garden, outdoor space, etc.

So that's not really a differentiator in terms of making the choices.

and then this is a rendering so that is showing on the right side that is the addition to the front of the building C so you can see the white roof there to the left of building C and looking into the space that would be created in this case because we're building to the west of the cafeteria this is reconfiguring the downstairs of building A

so that the cafeteria in this case looks out to the north since we block the views and the light from it.

And here is a view from inside that cafeteria.

So the west is to the left.

You can see kind of in the orange-red colors through the corridor at the far left side of the screen.

That's looking into the new academic addition.

And then the cafeteria would then orient to the north.

The second scheme, which we call the big room or build compactly,

is the reason that's the lowest cost per square foot is that it builds on a smaller footprint as compactly as possible around a gym, right?

So when you look at it from here, it's a big piece that goes in there and is added.

When you take building C out, you've got more space to work in.

So here you can see when C goes, there's a lot of space to be able to put stuff

This does create a big kind of super block.

And I think this is one of the reasons that this scheme has been maybe the least favorite from the CDT.

I think that's a somewhat accurate statement.

But some views of this, in this case, one of the ideas is that we would come down, all of them get to the lower level of A through site ramps that you don't have now.

So wheelchair accessible ways to get down to the lower level

and then you would have a public concourse here that would really be a living room space for the middle school students between the gym on the right, a cafeteria on the left.

We would open up a stair and bring in some daylight into the library, which you can see up above and then top light the space to make up the fact that we're building where the cafeteria currently has light and views.

The third option

is what we call build in the bowl.

And it's exactly what you would think.

The bowl of space you see there in the center of the screen between Smith Aquatic and Building A is an opportunity to build there and not build straight off to the west of Building A and block the light views like some of the other schemes do.

It also builds compactly in the sense that it builds up.

another level to this, which gives a two-story architectural presence to the front.

So this one, more than any of them, changes the look and feel of the architecture or the exterior of the building, particularly as you come in from Cherry Avenue and are driving in the driveway there alongside Smith Aquatic.

This is the plan here.

This one is one of the reasons this is more expensive is it has a higher area to envelope ratio.

There's more exterior wall that's snaking around there, but what you're getting out of that is a wider variety of outdoor spaces and a large number of rooms with good natural daylight that open up or look into those spaces.

So this is the connector piece, a completely new entryway here where you would come in between the new construction and the exterior of building A.

and then be able to use the building itself and its elevators to navigate and move down all the levels of the site for accessibility.

And then a courtyard space that would be made between a new gym on the left and the existing building A and the dining area on the right.

Pretty exciting space.

So when we had the conversation last night with the CDT and I think this was

I'll take the blame for not being a little more clear about this as we went throughout the summer, but one of our ideas when we did the three options is we wanted to have as many options as possible to deal with multiple costs.

And so what we said is that we're going to show three different levels of renovation of our buildings to remain, building A and B. So the way to really look at this is to kind of take the parts apart because you could take any level of renovation of your existing buildings and combine it with

any of these new builds, right?

So it gets a little complicated when you're trying to get people to discuss this and choose things, but this is what we tried to do last night, that we did do last night, and it's one of the reasons it took so long, was to kind of look at renovation versus new construction.

So I'm going to start with the renovation and zoom in here on A and B. So what you see circled in red are the renovation cost.

And so they're moving from

The right side of the screen, back to the left, option three is a light renovation, option two is a medium renovation, and option one is a heavy renovation.

All three of them are very intensive renovations, starting at $23 million and then going up from there another $2.5 million to the middle and then another $2 million to the top one.

So significant renovations of these buildings.

It's also worth noting that doing nothing, if we just said, ah, scrap the project and leave the kids in the building from 65, you've got about $5 million in deferred maintenance just to keep the buildings as is without doing anything to improve them or modernize them in any way.

Important thing to keep in mind.

So in all these levels of renovation, when you walk in, it's going to look and feel like a new school.

They would be furnished and equipped as modern learning environments.

We'd be able to drastically improve artificial lighting.

We'd connect all the buildings.

We could move the admin suite up.

You could do a lot.

And the renovation levels we're talking about, a good example that was brought up last night, if you're familiar with the Buford Science Academies that were put in in 2013, the four science rooms, that is a light renovation, right?

Because it was just finishes, cabinetry, furniture, and lights.

It didn't touch mechanical systems or plumbing or anything like that.

I'm not going to go into this full detail.

We went through this last night.

But everything that is in the light renovation is in the medium renovation.

And everything that's in the medium renovation is in the heavy renovation.

And you can kind of see that with the different color of the text.

But one of the big things to note is that in a light renovation, because of some of the systems we're working around and keeping in place, the layout of the upper floor doesn't really change.

And we also don't have real opportunity to improve the thermal or the infiltration rates, thermal performance or the infiltration rates of the envelope.

And all the existing HVAC systems either get replaced in kind or fixed up.

So you keep those console units that are loud that I was talking about, they would be replaced.

They wouldn't be as loud.

It'd still be the same kind of difference.

From there, we begin at the middle to look at things that are a step up from that and the heavy renovation, a complete replacement.

So for example, in the middle renovation, we'd still keep all the main ductwork, but we'd reconfigure kind of to a level to improve as much as we could.

And then the heavy renovation is pulling everything out and giving it the biggest renovation as possible.

Here's an easier way without getting into all that architecture geek stuff.

about comparing them.

And this is just a $4.5 million delta between heavy, medium, and light renovations.

So if you think about all the things that affect humans listed on the left there, at the highest level we can really begin to deal with thermal comfort and air quality, acoustic quality, the nature of light, accessibility in bathrooms.

So let me start with the light renovation and explain some of those issues.

The artificial lighting and the accessibility and the bathrooms would be improved in all the schemes.

We would get all that.

We'd have gender neutral, fully accessible bathrooms in all the buildings.

We'd improve the lighting.

We do do a lot of things that that simply aren't up to current day code on that.

And we could also even improve the day lighting.

We could have a couple of holes that we knock in the walls, if you will, to bring some wider windows.

But in a lot of other areas, when it comes to the air quality and acoustic quality,

The thermal cover, it's about the same.

And that's also with the AV and the IT.

Once we step up to that, you know, spend another two and a half million, we can begin to touch a lot of those things.

And a key point here, going back to our climate commitment, it's not until at that point that we can get off fossil fuels.

We can go to a full electric building and no longer be consuming fossil fuels.

At the highest level, we're seeing the most amount of operating savings.

So at the middle level, we estimate it's probably $50,000 a year in operating savings from where you are now.

And at the high, it's double that.

It's probably about 100.

So if we look at this for buildings A and B separately, these are the costs for heavy, medium, and light renovations, $16 to $19.5 million.

Not a big delta on a project of this size.

So one of the things that we

talked about with the CDT last night is, could any of this really be phased if we had to look for a piece to do later?

And the answer really is that, you know, you can do anything with enough money, time, and patience, but that level of renovation at heavy and medium, you really want to do it all at once with nobody in the building.

So if you reconfigure and bring people there, you're going to pull them all out and put them in the trailers.

You potentially could do a light renovation with people in there, just like we did

with the light renovation for the science labs, the Beaufort Science Academy.

But it would take some work.

It would be noisy.

It potentially could be done.

Or what we talked about last night is just leave A as is.

Don't do anything.

And maybe you just fix up the bathrooms, move the admin suite up, and kind of leave it as is.

Well, you can imagine how popular some of those options were with the CDT.

And in fact,

The one thing I think we heard the loudest about the Buford scheme from the CDT was that you have to renovate the existing buildings as heavily as possible.

We have to improve the air quality.

We have to cut down the noise.

We have to take these 50 year old, 55 year old buildings and bring them up and make them the best they can be.

In fact, it was even pointed out like we did these renovations of these science labs and I still I'm freezing or I'm burning up on two sides of my classroom in these

rooms that we renovated just in 2013.

So that was a very, very, I think the strongest recommendation we got out of the CDT was that we really need to limit to heavy renovations and commit to doing that.

The same applies on building B. So we looked at the different options of heavy, medium, and light on building B. And we even brought a recommendation on this one to the CDT and said, you know what, here you probably either need to do it all or do nothing.

Unlike building A, you could reconfigure and more easily do this later.

So I'm going to show you some cost options that take B and say, do it a little bit later.

You can also imagine how popular that was.

So the middle option, I'm sorry, the light renovation option, let me go back, of building B also does not expand the stage and allow the

Fine Arts Program, which we know is so critically important, particularly at Walker, the way it really needs to be when we have six, seven, and eight here.

When we got that huge cost estimate back, one of the first meetings we had was with the Charlottesville City Schools Fine Arts leaders and said, hey, one of the first things that's got to come off the table here is a new auditorium.

Auditoriums are like $800 a square foot to build.

The auditorium that you have, while it's got issues, the size of the house where the seats are is actually within the recommended size for a middle school, and it is big enough to fit an entire grade with a little bit of room, which is your prime criteria.

And they said, yep, I think that makes sense, but what we would need to do is expand the stage.

The stage isn't big enough now.

So if we could expand the stage, have four large music rooms and have plenty of support storage space around them, we can make that work, which again, I think that was just a great attitude by the instructors that we spoke with as we were dealing with this project.

So to come back and kind of not give them that is a pretty, pretty tough pill to swallow.

And so again, renovate and expand this as needed to do the right fine arts program.

part of that big recommendation from the CDT.

If we move from there to the new construction, then it's about taking that heavy level of renovation and pairing it with one of these choices.

So here I'm showing you the cost up top just for that new construction that would be included.

We spent a lot of time on this last night and I think a lot of folks on the CDT really tried to get to option one

People are taking the cost on this seriously, but there are some significant differences there.

We had a conversation last night where we were trying to window it down, and we kind of voted to option two, the middle one, off the island temporarily, but then when it came down to two choices between options three and one, nobody was really comfortable with that either.

I think what we heard

at the end of the day was that after the renovation, heavy renovation is most important.

You have to do that.

From there, we really want to focus in on the most amount of square footage per student.

That dropping below that 151 was an issue.

And if I back up here, if you take the... I'll get to that a second, sorry.

On here,

You can see the cost.

I'm completely screwing this up.

Sorry.

So what we did at this point in this chart is we tried to show the options to lower the cost or delay some costs.

So on the ones where you see the plus eight million on the far right side, that's that idea of taking building B and doing it in a phase two, which was

is roundly unpopular in order to lower the initial cost, right?

When you take off all of the light and medium levels of renovation from building A and building B, you're really left with these three choices between options one, two, and three.

66, 69, and 73.

Remember option one is that clementine.

It's that lean orange, right?

if you increase the square footage of option one, which isn't easy to do because you're keeping building C, so it's equivalent, it's apples to apples, that takes that to $68 million.

So now we're looking at 68 versus 69 versus 73 for what it would take to do the heavy renovation and these different options.

And the unanimous choice by the CDT

was option three that builds in the bowl and redoes, gives a new look to the school and the most square footage and kind of the most variety of outdoor spaces in relation to the new building.

Again, this was talked about quite a bit and everyone took this very seriously in terms of the cost and the difference between them.

But at the end of the day, renovating heavily and doing

as much as we could write when we had this opportunity was the consensus.

This was also a unanimous vote at the end.

This wasn't as clear as our Rose Hill selection.

But at the end of the night, when we reviewed it with the CDT, we say, is it fair to say that your number one priority is a heavy renovation?

And you have to do that.

And that's a line that we just shouldn't cross.

And then after that, it's not as clear.

The unanimous choice for there was building was option three, which is the highest one.

Unfortunately, you know, at early childhood center, it was the lowest price option was the unanimous choice.

This one was was the highest.

So that is all the material I have to present.

Thank you for sticking with us through this, all this.

And I don't know if Chip

Absolutely.

I think I heard the question okay.

Okay, thank you.

If nothing else, we can start talking about money.

I think somebody has a slide up.

If they can.

There we go.

Thank you all.

Our budget team have prepared four scenarios that can fund anywhere from 50 million to $75 million in school capital costs because all require a tax increase

We've also included for the City Council's consideration of what some of the expected operating cost increases that will be seen that will also require a tax adjustment beginning in FY23.

What's not known at this time are other departmental as well as capital costs

especially in operating increases that are from some of our priority strategies like affordable housing needs.

We'll know more about these later on in late winter and early spring, but we wanted because of talking about tax increases, we wanted to make sure that council considered operating increases as well as the capital increases to fund the school projects.

What we have before you is very similar to what many of you have seen already.

Just four or six weeks ago, we prepared scenarios that considered $50 million projects, $75 million, and $100 million.

We've pulled the $100 million away.

and we've replaced those with some other options that would utilize existing CIP projects if we were not to do those and allow those to be used towards the school capital funding.

To be honest, and you'll be able to see in option four, especially the one with the biggest bang for the buck, the one that would make a difference is the West Main Street project.

And so I'll just walk through really, really quickly and then I'll let Chrissy Hamill answer any detailed questions that you might have or let her also just chime in and cover anything that I may have overlooked.

But option one is where we started.

You've seen these figures for several months now that a $50 million bonding issue as it's currently in our CIP

would require a $0.10 debt service tax increase.

The very first scenario we showed you was doing that $0.02 per year over a five-year period.

But we've gone ahead just to simplify it and put that $0.10 into the very first year.

We also in this scenario are showing that just to cover what we

We believe our very close estimates for operating increases would be an additional five cents required.

Again, this is not changing our CIP from what it currently is.

Option two would decrease the amount of tax increase that would be required.

if West Main Street were removed.

That's roughly an $18 million local funding project.

That would bring those tax increases down a little bit.

It would also increase our bond capacity and make it a little bit more manageable and give us some flexibility as some of our other capital needs materialize.

Option three is similar to option one where West Main stays in, but we end up putting 75 million to the reconfiguration.

That would result in a 13 cent debt service

tax increase with, again, a five cent for operating.

This really stretches our CIP.

We would have four plus years of no new projects that we could add to the CIP and would keep us with an exhausted debt service fund balance for a while.

Finally, option four, which we think would meet what the recommendations were that you just heard, would be adequate funding for a $75 million reconfiguration.

That would require reallocating the West Main Street funds to the school reconfiguration.

Again, it would only be a 10 cent

property tax increase for the debt service.

And that's both the school and additional CIP items that are currently in our CIP.

And then again, the estimated 5 cents for additional operating costs.

This brings it down to only about two years where we would have no new projects in the CIP.

And though our debt service fund balance would be exhausted, it would be for a shorter period of time.

These are our suggestions.

There are a lot of variables in this.

And it's why, as Whit said earlier, some of our numbers do change over time.

And as you start to decide which one of the options and we can look at the more detailed cost estimates, we'll be able to provide you a lot more detailed estimates on what the tax increases would be.

Again, I think I definitely need to remind you, this is making the assumption that there is no sales tax referendum and no sales tax increase.

If we're able to get that from the General Assembly and then pass it within our community, that changes everything.

A little bit better estimates from what we were able to provide earlier.

I think WIC referenced that at roughly $10 million per year.

It's probably closer to $12 million per year the sales tax increase would bring in.

We could decide then whether

Well, those funds have to go to school capital projects, but we can then decide what we do with our CIP and whether we continue with school projects with that or put to some of the other CIP needs that we have.

No, I think the only thing I would add here is that what we are displaying here are tax equivalents, so in terms of the penny, but I think it is worth mentioning that even in these slides as we've broken down the pennies for debt service for the school project and then the pennies for the debt service for additional governmental CIP, it is worth noting that those pennies are just equivalent to the actual debt service of those projects.

But in other words, the tax increase that we're talking about is a direct result of adding 50 or $75 million to the CIP.

So if we were not doing that, we would not be talking about a tax increase for

Bethany, Heather Hill, RCP plan as set forth so just we're breaking this out for the sake of the math, but I do just want to be clear that you know the tax increase as we talk about it.

Bethany, Heather Hill, It's not just we wouldn't be talking about a tax increase if we weren't talking about adding a large project all at once, because

The 50 million is a big dollar amount where most of our projects are seven to 10 million and we're able to sort of time and plan those out on a more regimented schedule.

I should make sure I'm cleared about the equivalent in the next budget.

So what will you be asking

of the next budget cycle of the council for like next fiscal year.

Those amounts are going to be all at once and not phased.

that you all come up with.

If you want to start construction in FY23, which is next year, then we have to have the money to sign a contract.

So that means all at once.

When we originally put forth a plan where we were doing two cents a year, that was because we were planning for a project to begin several years down the road, and that was giving you time to sort of build up the money, but we can't, you know, we've got to have the money in order to be able to sign the contract.

No, the cities, just the

Downturn Reserve Fund that we have.

I mean, ideally, a time like the pandemic would be a time that we would be utilizing those funds for if we have held on to them and there's a way for us to use a portion of that to buy us some time so those increases won't hit all at once.

Then I'm just trying to figure out what's possible with this.

Yeah, that's a great point.

And this tax increase that we're talking about here does not include anything related to those tax programs that would be funded in the general fund.

And so this does not address that.

The additional thing in reference to your question on the reserve, our reserve policy is pretty specific about when we can use that.

And it's based on declining revenues.

So this would not qualify per our policy.

Doesn't mean we couldn't explore it.

It probably would not be best practice.

Again, if we're going to venture and agree and sign on the line for a 70 plus million dollar project, we've got to have the plans and the commitment there to do that.

Yeah, I think it's important maybe for us to understand what that the current policies, how they were established, the amount, and then what it would mean if we reduce that amount for something as significant as a reconfiguration of the schools, while being able to maintain, especially the affordable housing commitments that we've made over the past couple years.

And then I know we'll have a

presentation from Mr. Divers on what CHAP and the elderly real estate will look like moving forward.

But that was still basically just where it currently is.

And it should have been expanded, I think.

But if we are talking about these tax increases, then it definitely needs to be factored in.

Yeah, so just real quick on the reserve, just a kind of a brief history on that.

So our reserve policy used to be at 8%.

and back, I'm going to get these dates wrong, but I believe it was back in 2015, 2016.

We looked at that, looked at our upcoming CIP and realized that that was one, a very conservative and low reserve number and comparable to other AAA cities.

It was extremely low.

And we weren't dinged on that from the bond rating agencies because our debt burden was also very low.

In anticipation of needing to add more debt, we went back and discussed it with the rating agencies and said, look, we're going to need to issue more debt.

We know that's coming online.

We're going to come up with a way to strengthen our reserves.

And at the time, we had also had money set aside for the economic downturn that we ended up not needing.

And so we use those funds to increase our minimum fund balance up to the current 17% rate.

3% of that is sort of what we call this, now call it economic downturn reserve.

and again, it's based on reduction in revenues and it's based on the fact that it has to be replenished within three years.

So even at 17% amongst our peers, that's a relatively low reserve, but that's just a little bit of history of how we got there and why that's there.

And again, I'm sorry, I get back to the sub-tax of equivalent.

That also means that if

You know, we've through my time on council every year, there's been, you know, an equivalent to a tax increase, even though the council hasn't changed the rate just by virtue of the market.

So I think what we're trying to get to there is that right now, you know, the way you get an equivalent to a penny is you basically take the tax revenue and divide it by your tax rate.

So for the revenue that we're going to receive or that we're projected to receive in 22 divided by 95 cents, we're getting about one penny at about $845,000.

And then when we look at that and apply that to 50 million, what's the debt service on 50 million?

The annual debt service of that divided by that 845 is about five cents.

So that's the equivalent that we would be looking at.

Now, by the time we are ready to actually issue the debt, our assessments may have changed.

And so a penny may be worth more than 845.

It may be less.

And so that's why we're just at this point talking about an equivalent, because the end goal here is to be able to raise the taxes to cover the actual debt service or the actual, you know, operating increase, but not to say, well, we're going to give you one penny, or maybe it is, that's a decision for council.

Can I ask one picky little question about your slide.

Great question.

Thank you.

Someone actually asked me that earlier in review.

And so I'm feeling prepared for this question.

Bond capacity exceeded in this scenario, there is at least one year and maybe two where we exceed our 10% maximum.

buying capacity exhausted means we got right to that.

We got right to the 10%.

So we passed our target in both cases.

We're above our 9% target.

Okay, then I understand that distinction.

I'm just curious if there is significance to the things that are in red as opposed to just being in black.

That's a highlight to show you what changed from the block on the left side with West Main versus the block on the right-hand side without West Main.

The operational increase is from what we know we're anticipating from the schools based on what's come through with just COVID money.

But what about this additional tax dollars?

So normally when we have additional tax dollars, a certain percentage goes to schools operationally, aside from all this.

That's also a great question and a great highlight.

Has there already been a discussion with the schools to, because we've talked about this before, there are certain increases that

are beyond their control, and they've talked about that.

And so how do we plan, because we're already trying to plan for the 4.5 million that was approved last year, and so how do we plan for those increases in retirement, health care costs, things like that?

Are they factored in somewhere?

A couple questions.

One is, in the scenario where the bond capacity is exhausted or exceeded, would that also mean that the general fund

You know, I think it's a hard question to answer.

We are talking about real estate tax increase.

And so certainly all of that increase, which is our largest revenue source, we are saying is off the table.

So in that sense, probably not much room.

We do have lots of other revenues, but in percent to the real estate, their increases are not as significant as real estate generally.

And so

And then the estimated revenue from if the sales tax increase was approved by the General Assembly and then approved by referendum, that amount of roughly 12 million a year

Does that cover like what percent of the like tax increase equivalence?

Does that cover?

Yes.

So

Let me see if I can answer it another way.

If we thought about this, if we're able to get the sales tax increase and you're able to get $12 million a year, I think what we've talked about tonight is between Buford and Walker, you're looking at about $100 million.

You could get both of those done, pay cash for them and be done in eight years and still having a dedicated revenue source for future ongoing school projects at the tune of $12 million a year.

So to give you some idea in a different manner, roughly every $10 million of debt costs you about $900,000.

So if we just did the rough math, what is that?

I'm not going to try to do it in my head, but that's a pretty significant debt payment.

$12 million gives you a lot of space for a lot of debt.

that would be dedicated to schools.

And do we know if it's even a possible option to use any ARPA money on either the city or schooling to help

So I am going to put Mr. Cullinan on the spot for that one.

Thank you, Chrissy.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of council, members of the school board.

As it relates to ARP,

and infrastructure.

It's fairly limited.

ARP rules call out water, sewer, and broadband as eligible categories of infrastructure.

So obviously, schools don't fit into that.

And the other overriding factor with any ARP money is that it must be in some way or shape

COVID-related.

And so there's still that nexus that you have to achieve with any sort of uses of it.

And it's also one-time money.

While significant, we've only received one tranche, the second tranche of next year.

We certainly hope to receive.

But again, looking at the projects that we're talking about this evening, they pale somewhat in comparison.

The last question I have just right now is in the scenarios that reallocate West Main to the schools project or even the other ones, do those include

Yes, no, we didn't include any of our other CIP projects as an example of if those funds were transferred over to the school reconfiguration.

I'm pretty sure the parking garage would be somewhere between five and seven million dollars, so probably around six million dollars

if we didn't do anything.

What we have been looking at is reserving at least a couple million if we had to create surface lots on the properties that we own on Market Street.

And then the money transferred from West Main would be around 18 million, correct?

And just one thing to keep in mind as we talk about transferring money, like the parking garage and the others, if it's already part of the CIP, which the parking garage is, it's already baked into these numbers.

So whether we're allocating it to the parking garage or whether we allocate it to the school reconfiguration project, we still are looking at the same amount of tax increase.

The only way we're able to get a tax decrease in option two is because we said, look, we're going to take West Main out entirely and we're not going to reassign it.

And so that's why you're able, one, to see a tax decrease because you're going to be decreasing the total amount of debt you'd be issuing.

Your debt capacity is only stressed because then you're freeing up $18 million that you could then assign in the later years when we originally said you're going to have some years with no CIP.

Just wondering if there were some dollars that wouldn't result in an increase.

I thought I remembered that discussion because they were already factored in.

Yeah, if they are already factored in, they do not result in a tax.

I mean, let me back up.

If they're already in the project, in the CIP, then they're already baked in these scenarios.

If we didn't do the school project and they were still in the CIP, we wouldn't have a tax increase.

If they're in the CIP and we do the school project,

Even if we reassign the dollars for the parking garage, for example, to the school project, because it was already in the CIP, it's already in this projection with the required tax increase.

But so the West Main Street project, that's already been factored in, right?

Correct.

So if you look at option one, option one has the $50 million reconfiguration and we're keeping West Main in the CIP.

So we're looking at a 15 cent tax increase.

Basically what we're doing with option four is all the answers are exactly the same as option one, but now we've taken the 15 million and moved it from West Main to the school reconfiguration project, which is how we got from 50

to almost 75.

My question, this is Lashundra Bryson-Morsberger, and sorry if it's repetitive.

So when we're talking about all of these projects and all these slides, it's talking about school reconfiguration and West Main, but you're saying there's still other projects that are being funded, like the parking garage, how much,

I know it's already baked in, but how much money is being out?

I just don't understand why West Main, the costs are here, but the other ones aren't.

And that's a great question.

You know, the projects that we're talking about baked in, we can certainly provide you those.

They are, if you look at the city's five-year CIP plan, the projects that are in the bondable section are those projects.

We also, as part of the discussion, we provide a list that's called our bonds authorized but not issued list.

So those are projects from prior CIPs that were approved.

Those are the projects we're talking about.

The only reason why we pick on West Main, to be quite honest, is it is because it is the largest project that's holding a significant amount of money that really quickly and easily solves our problem.

So that's why it gets picked on for these scenarios.

But they all would work the same way.

You know, if council decides that they want to reprogram another project that they've budgeted, that they've decided they were going to sell bonds to fund, it works exactly like West Main.

Okay, it would just be nice to see it because right now the way we're looking at it is just taxes are going to increase because of school reconfiguration and or the West Main project.

When there are other projects that are being done that maybe we could go back and look at if we're getting to the point where we're exceeding bond capacity or exhausting the capacity, if that's a worry or issue or a stress, why wouldn't we go back and look at all

All of the projects to see where else we can move money around and maybe stagger the costs like the mayor was asking about earlier, you know, finding funds somewhere else to stagger the cost so it doesn't all hit at once and affect the

the bond capacity.

It would just be nice to see because it might be, you might show it and it might be $10 million worth of projects or 15.

I just have no idea what the projects are.

And so right now it just looks like we're paying for a tax increase just for schools, but we're paying for other things and the schools.

So it would be nice to say like these are the things we're paying for instead of the schools and that's why we have to

do this debt and borrowing the debt because here are these other projects like the parking garage or this or that that have been approved that were priorities that we're still going to keep or that we might revisit.

No worries.

And we can definitely provide you those.

But, you know, just to be clear, like when we plan our CIP, we plan out bondable projects and non-bondable projects.

We manage our CIP through what we can afford.

And generally, when the city is looking at bondable projects, we're looking at, I mean, a big project has traditionally been like a $10 million project.

That was a big add.

West Main is a huge ad.

If you look at our historical CIPs in terms of projects, in terms of the dollars, and it's much easier to manage, you know, a $7 million project and paying the debt for that.

We can move it out a year.

We can adjust based on the general fund growth to be able to pay that debt service.

But when we look at a project that is

70 million or even 50 million and we dump that in all at one time, that is what's driving our cost up on the debt service piece and we can't manage that payment just through general growth, which is why that is the actual driver of the tax increase.

But we will absolutely provide you with that list of projects.

But again, if they're planned to be funded by bonds, whether we use them for the parking garage or whether we use them for the school project, as long as we're using those dollars to sell bonds and we're trying to get to 50 or even 75, we've got to pay the debt service on that.

The parking garage, so most of those dollars were in not in 22.

There's only a portion, and I don't recall, maybe Chip does right off the top of my head, how many has actually been adopted, but the rest of that money were in the out years, and so it's still in the plan in terms of our debt and our projections, but it's still

So, waiting for someone else, but I think some, you know, points for council that we need to consider is whether, you know, a decision about West Main Street, which I thought we had made, but that needs to, you know, be made.

And then whether looking at the financial policies and whether we are open to changing any of those, I think a larger discussion around

The capital improvement is something that I've been talking about since I've been here, so I don't know if it's going to necessarily be helpful because it's the entire city and what other departments have said that they need to, so all of those things are factored in.

I think that some of the things could possibly come off, but I don't know how significant that is.

But, you know, I'm looking at one of the budget potential projections for even the school projects.

And like this particular one says 18.8 million over a five year period.

That was two cycles ago.

and it has 6.25 and CCS priority improvements, school lump sum, HVAC replacements and then the CHS roof is on this one.

I'm just wondering

If and I've said this before, but how if we had a discussion about what we are saving, we often talks about like there have been some deferred maintenance that we know that we will have to do anyway.

If we know what those savings would be just in terms of the CIP and the schools, do we know how much of that could potentially go to debt services and.

you know that discussion, the operation discussion, just overall operations.

I am concerned about the walker because here we have a really hard time once we see what the vision could be, you know, kind of tapering it down.

So I'm concerned about once we start, you know, thinking about all the possible uses of building A at a walker site or when we think, you know, we haven't really had the discussion.

a lot about once you're moving fifth graders back into the elementary schools, those costs.

So I am concerned about the operational dollars that these transitions are going to make.

And I was one until I think two meetings ago when I had missed a meeting and came back and that building was sitting like on the parking lot area of

you know the Walker plan just wondering what and I felt like that we were trying to, you know, we were giving up a lot to try to do both of the projects, you know, at the same time so.

I'm also wondering if the schools, and I've said this every meeting, have had a discussion about if we can really put some things on hold because whether we look at it like just another $1.3 million or whatever, it's still those additional dollars that we're having to pay desk services on, or is it a better way to do that?

you know now, so I don't know if just even looking at what's possible, you know with CCS and especially I'm concerned about this as I've stated since last year budget, the increase of the 4.5 million on top of all the other things that the city

Yeah, and just one clarification point to your question.

So the current scenarios do actually leave those regular school funding CIP dollars in.

It's roughly around $3 million a year.

That's the

the money for the lump sum, it's roughly 1.2 million that goes in every year.

There's 750,000 that goes in for HVAC.

There's one and a quarter million that's programmed in for priority improvements.

And then there was a larger project for CHS roof replacement.

All of those are still in and baked in what we're showing you here.

If there was a discussion or a desire to discuss about reprogramming those dollars to the reconfiguration, again, that's the same kind of scenario that we talked about with West Main.

You know, that's a way to get more dollars too.

Yeah, I don't know.

That would be something for, you know, our facilities folks and the school CIP group to help with.

Yeah, I can speak to that to a limited extent.

I think we will probably find that the dollars you could find there will be minimal.

There are some projects coming up at both Buford and Walker that we have in the plan.

And I could give you a specific number tomorrow, but yeah, I think that's because of what you said of every 10 million in debt, a cost of 900,000 towards, you know, debt services.

If we if there's dollars there, then we know that that's maybe some money towards the debt services that we

So the only way that works is if the things that you're talking about were originally envisioned to be paid for by cash.

And the $3 million that we're talking about, they were in the CIP based on the idea we were selling bonds for those two.

So, you know, getting rid of those projects only adds to your bond capacity.

Only if you don't spend it, right?

Yes, that's what I'm saying.

That's correct.

Yeah, we really haven't been pushing a lot of dollars towards anything in those buildings besides kind of need it now solutions and also real maintenance stuff.

I think the biggest thing we've got in our plan right now is building envelope project at Walker, which is somewhere in the half million dollar range.

As much as I certainly agree that, you know, we can call through every project too.

I just, I think it's important that we appreciate the hard decisions that might be have to made on the school CIP side is kind of the same boat that we're in the city in terms of some of the things that are already programmed to our CIP just being things that have just been long awaited or that are, you know, immediate infrastructure needs for the city.

So I just

I think it's important that we kind of understand that context.

I just want to chime in that we are actually having a meeting on CIP stuff, I think, the end of next week or beginning of next week.

So it's not a conversation that we've had, but certainly something that we are

I'll just add, you know, I'm thinking right now, and I've brought this up before, is also how we factor in CIP projects that are not yet in our budget and just sort of how we're going to approach those in the timeline.

because Mayor Walker mentioned any tax increases, I think certainly the community and I think probably council will wanna see that accompanied with increase in the tax relief program.

We still haven't had any strategy to dedicate $10 million a year to our affordable housing strategy and we're not at that level.

PHA has a few affordable projects that are new that they're proposing.

Pipe Burst at Crescent Halls, you know, could very well increase the cost of public housing redevelopment and just how we're going to factor in those needs in terms of our CIP budget.

And I don't want it to sound like an us versus them thing in terms of the priorities, because I know everyone I think here shares that these are all important priorities that we want to make happen.

But the budget situation is difficult and just how we can creatively get there in terms of it's the timing of these projects or certainly the sales tax, you know, squares that circle and solves that issue.

But that's obviously no, there's no guarantee the General Assembly is going to do that at all.

So I just bring that up because it's something, you know, I continue to think about.

And I think those are just unfortunate realities in terms of some of our priorities that aren't yet funded.

And I've said this before, this is where I think our strategic plan comes in and for us to have made decisions about

what affordable housing that we are investing in and at what level we are investing in those and how to maximize like our investment and make sure that we are providing houses for the individual who are having the most challenging time affording to live in this community.

So as people like dream up projects, and this was sort of, you know, my response to the email just had the when they sent that list out about new projects, had they prioritized even amongst themselves what they deemed important that they wanted us to look at.

And I still think we have to or council has to, you know, decide whether their visions for those projects is something that we are

able to invest in, you know, at this point.

So I understand that we are, you know, housing challenged.

Some of the things that I've heard about some of those projects, I still have, you know, some pause about.

But if we make a decision about schools and especially these two buildings, because I think equity should have been highlighted on that

Slide, while we're doing this slide, you know, just at the top of the equation, the students who have traditionally been attending Walker and Buford and the parents who've been unable to pour their kids out, I think is a big factor in why those two schools have been able to deteriorate in the way they have.

You can also see that in the elementary schools, which schools were invested in and what were not.

And so I think that we need to look at this, you know, from that standpoint, too, you know, that our kids deserve better than they've been receiving over the years.

And like, how do we make that a priority?

and if it's affordable housing and the schools, I mean, I think the schools, this joint session came up in our meeting because we need to make a decision about whether we are going to ask everyone involved, school board, city council, budget teams in both places to prioritize this reconfiguration.

And then if it's affordable housing for council, then that needs to be decided and at what amount and

moving forward will require us to either say no to the reconfiguration or yes.

And and then if we are the 100 million has been removed.

So if it's the 75 or 50 or somewhere in between that and just, you know, and then those two factors between Walker, even the temporary portion of it,

Are we moving forward with that?

And have the schools had a discussion about truly what their cost increase would be if we move forward with starting and expanding the preschool at Walker at this time and moving?

I just want to make clear the price tags that showed up on the Walker schemes were for the early childhood center and didn't pay for any admin needs or anything like that.

Yeah, I know that.

I don't really believe that once that space is open and we start moving things, that costs are not going to come up.

So what does the team need from us, I guess, tonight?

You said there wasn't a main decision point.

I think that, again, I think we're looking for

a sense of the room, a sense of the direction and the feeling from both the school board and city council on this.

I think I know where the school board is, but we are looking at an information item to the city council on October 4th.

And if we come with an information item for a $75 million project, I want to make sure that's

expected and not out of the ballpark.

I ribbed Dr. Gurley a little bit at the school board meeting.

That's his first day on the job.

And what a way to start with a big ask.

But we'll be there on the 4th with an information item.

And I want to make sure everyone is clear on the resolution we're going to bring forward for you guys to consider up or down and give us the input of what that should be.

And counsel, one of our decisions we finally have to make is whether the West Main Street, we're going to be able to use those dollars or not towards reconfiguration at any amount.

And that would be helpful, I think, to even know whether, because that is what

helped us move from a $50 million price tag to the $68 or so million price tag.

So just thoughts on that.

The only way I can see West Main Street surviving is if we get this one-cent sales tax for the school reconfiguration.

That's it.

Even at the $50 million reconfiguration level, I don't see it surviving.

on that I would as I said before

You know, I would definitely fully support reallocating the West Main project to schools.

The only way I could really see West Main continuing is just a Hail Mary of if Congress passes the stimulus bill and there's no longer local city money required.

If I can, too, one of the other concerns we have with West Main and waiting until the sales tax referendum, if that took place in next November, because of the smart scale funding, the six year clock is already ticking on West Main.

So, um,

Good evening.

I just want to make a small comment here.

Back in 2007, the community, the entire city of Charlottesville, after many, many months of discussion, decided on reconfiguration.

That is 14 years ago.

That's before many of the projects they're even talking about or even thought of.

And so in that reconfiguration, they know that sixth graders had to go to Beaufort, fifth graders had to go to the elementary schools, and preschools had to go to Walker.

So the community has already told you what they wanted.

Heather Hill, Mr Henderson, I certainly don't disagree, and like my colleagues have expressed, I would prioritize this ahead of West Main.

I think what we have to remember is a lot of decisions were made that, you know, we are all looking at this at this point in time right now, and Heather Hill, projects like West Main had a lot of revenue coming from other sources, and that's, I've said that before, it's been a hard one just to kind of swallow, but I absolutely feel like we're at a point where there's just not another option.

At the same time, I also echo what some of my colleagues have said about just

how challenges it's going to be even with West Main, or even if we get five more million from the parking garage project, there's just going to be a lot of challenges, a lot of limitations for this and people for the future councils for many years ahead.

And so I think that's why we're just, it's not that I don't think there's anyone that doesn't prioritize this.

I would just like to say is probably the maybe the last defender of the West Main Project that I also agree that whatever option we end up taking, it's going to have to be an option that does not include the West Main Project.

I will also say, by the way, that if we were to try to figure out what, quote, the community voted for in 2007, number one, the community didn't vote.

But number two, nobody then imagined that we would be looking at a price tag that's probably by the time the whole thing gets gone up to $150 million or so.

So things have changed for a whole lot of reasons.

And we have to continue to weigh all of those reasons.

In this particular case, however, I am convinced that there is not a good path forward that includes the West Main project, or frankly, that includes the parking garage.

and that unless we get that other money from the ability to impose an extra sales tax, there are a whole lot of things we're not going to be able to do.

and that we are going to end up at some level saying we can't do affordable housing the way we would want to do affordable housing because we are doing the school project.

There are a lot of other things that are going to be kind of up in the air as we try to figure out how to do this.

And as as we heard earlier, yes, there are a lot of choices and a lot of other things that are going to have to get sacrificed in order to make this this rather extraordinary

It's like the boa constrictor swallowing the goat.

We're going to have to swallow the goat and we're going to have to deal with that in a whole lot of different ways.

Do we have to do a formal vote on that?

So we'll have to have this discussion again, or is staff good to go with that?

Because I feel like we've arrived here a few times.

Okay.

No.

All right.

So we're clear on that.

So moving forward with West Main.

Okay.

And so then there, what do you need an agreement on the amount that we're

And how?

I'm sorry, they presented that shows a 50 million.

So I'm not even sure, like, I guess I am confused because I don't, I feel like what we're being asked for is like, are we willing to commit to the 75 million?

Because that's what's been presented and that's what's been worked through with the design group.

From where I sit, that's accurate.

I feel like we're representing the community as expressed through the community design team with a proposal.

Is that the proposal you guys are willing to approve?

I don't know, but it's a proposal that right now I'm assuming you're willing to hear.

At the very least, we're all

at least need to mentally know that that's what's going to be coming forward and be prepared for that, even if we're not ready to address it right now.

And are there questions?

No, I'm sorry, Madam Mayor.

And then that will be the financials that we will be running scenario zone to be able to present to you and especially with your consensus on West Main and the parking garage.

Yeah, we're supposed to.

And just don't forget to factor in the general fund increases with CHAP that'll be necessary for that.

And then, again, the schools and the budget teams getting together to figure out what those dollar amounts that could go towards that services,

how much savings that is or that won't increase in debt service in two ways, because I think we're factoring things in twice in some instances, and that may be helpful for us to understand.

I know it may not be as significant as we need it to be, but when we're talking about paying the debt service to this, and then council,

Also, you know, us looking at those financial policies, I know that we have...

not been open to doing that.

And just as they were implemented, we can tweak them a bit, still making sure that we keep the AAA bond rating and all of those things.

But if there's a way to utilize those services and keep the tax increase, not have that one lump sum to start this project in 23, I would like to

I would say I'm definitely open to

looking at any scenarios and possible scenarios in terms of budget practices, surpluses, et cetera, because I think we are going to need to at least explore every opportunity to make this happen.

And my final thought is I think everyone's already on the same page with this, but just anything that we can do as the city and city council to advocate for that sales tax legislation in the General Assembly, because it really seems like that's going to

I'd also like to just remind people we do here in about two years have almost $10 million that we are going to have to be absorbing into the general fund that is kind of being deferred right now that will be an ongoing between the schools and the fire department right now.

And I believe there was another another department that kind of had a leeway and just this is

Transit, thank you.

This is part of that full picture we have to look at because this, even though it's not the borrowing, it does affect what we, it does affect our CIP and that it's part of our whole budget.

Also, I'm not, I don't know if I'm under, is there a formula

that if we increase taxes, our tax base or taxes, that the schools then get penalized what they receive from the federal or state government.

Hi, this is Kim Powell.

Yes, that is correct.

There is a, that is part of the formula that does impact the LCI, but it's not a significant factor.

There are other factors that are a lot more significant, but there is a relationship.

Okay.

and there's at least a two year lag before it would ever show up.

And it's tough to say what will happen exactly because it's all relative.

Everything in the formulas that determine state funding, it's not just what happens in your locality, it's how each factor moves relative to how the factors move in the other localities.

And I believe that WIC with VMDO said earlier that our taxes compared to other comparable cities

you know, our tax rate is below where some of the others that he referenced, apologies, I don't have that information handy, but the tricky part with trying to project how any given action will ripple through to the state funding is that everything is moving.

It's all ends up being relative to how every other locality moves in that same period.

Gotcha.

And I'm just bringing this up because again, it's part of the whole

Um, and I just, I want us to be aware and prepared as best we can.

Um, I am not against tax increase, just not against one at all.

Um, so just putting that there.

Mayor and counselors, I just want to acknowledge that we are hearing everything you're saying.

We understand and appreciate the scope of everything else that you're factoring into this decision.

And I do acknowledge, we do acknowledge that it's not an easy decision.

and that we are part of this.

We appreciate the work that you're putting into this.

Appreciate Mr. Boyles and your team as far as how you've presented the slides and the options for everybody to consider.

So I do want to

Say thank you to you all for that.

I also want to let you know, as Ms.

McKeever said, we are having our first budget work session next week, which is earlier.

It's an extra work session where we really are committed to looking at

are part of this and looking very closely at our operating budget and how we're spending things and how this is going to intersect and, you know, be part of the big picture and how we can all, as Wick said, get to the yes together.

So, you know, we are committed to doing that as well.

So thank you and I do want to thank everybody for

the presentation, VMDO, WIC, your entire team tonight, and this great conversation.

I just think, Echo, what you said.

Mayor Walker, I'll close out on our end just to wrap it up with what's next.

I'll be submitting the information item to Ms.

Thomas next Friday, that's the deadline, to get on your docket for an information item on the 4th of October.

I will be working with Kim Powell representing the schools and Mike Goddard representing the city to craft the language of that resolution and also the content of that information item.

If there's anything you particularly want to see,

or don't want to see in that, please let me know directly or Kim or Mike.

We probably will not show all the multiple options like we did tonight, just come in with the selected one is where I think we're headed with that.

Thank you, Mayor Walker.

We have 14 people still with us in the audience.

We have three hands raised.

If you'd like to get in line, please click the raise hand icon in the Zoom webinar.

Our first speaker is Michael Joy.

Each speaker will have up to three minutes.

You're on with counsel on the school board.

Yes, good evening, and thank you for this opportunity to speak.

My name is Michael Joy.

I'm a city resident.

I'm a father of two children, one who is currently a fifth grader at Walker and another who is pre-K here in the city.

And I'm also a licensed architect in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

And I wanted to sort of speak in support of the work that Wick and Maria and the team at VMDO presented today.

I'm, you know, being a fellow architect, I really come through and look at these plans at some of these community presentations and some of the online surveys they provided.

And I have to say, with my professional eye, what's being shown has tremendous value, and it's very capably designed and very thoughtfully designed that

I know trying to balance out the budget is challenging and it's not necessarily my area of expertise, but I can speak frankly that what is being shown is of a very high quality where the impact will be beyond just the square footages that you saw presented today.

It engages the landscape and creates amenities and spaces and light-filled areas and communal spaces that are quite elegant and quite clever.

And so I just wanted to commend them and I'm grateful to live in a community that we have kind of homegrown talent like this

that can bring this level of thoughtfulness as these projects are undertaken.

And then another perspective I want to briefly talk about is just being a dad and having seen Walker and its current condition and my son's windowless classroom that he's currently in after a year

of remote learning.

And it's very disappointing to say the least when I went in on the open house day.

And I think Walker is a tremendous facility.

I think it has great bones and I think its possibilities are, you know, can be whatever we want them to be.

And so I'm excited about the opportunity to revisiting some of these properties to sort of breathe new life into them for a new generation of

but also just realize that what's currently there is highly problematic.

And that gets me to my last perspective as a taxpayer here in the city of Charlottesville.

And my concern as we looked at four schemes there is the theoretical fit scheme of not doing anything.

And I think we've seen that for decades past.

And so I understand we have deferred maintenance costs.

The deferred maintenance wouldn't fix the windows that weren't in my child's classroom.

And so I feel that what's currently there doesn't necessarily address equity.

The double transitions are challenging, I can tell from a firsthand perspective.

And I think access to pre-K is challenging here.

So I think what's being presented here has ripples that go far beyond just the initial capital investment.

And I think the benefit will far outweigh this short-term sort of tax conundrum.

And again, I just want to thank

the design team and thank the school board and thank the council for letting me speak.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Chris Meyer, who will be followed by Michael Allen.

Chris, you're on with council and the school board.

Thank you, councilors and school board members for spending your evenings considering this topic.

Also, I'm excited to see our new superintendent, Mr. Gurley, join this evening.

Welcome and thank you.

Well, I didn't participate last night in the final CDT meeting.

I did spend a couple of hours with some of you counselors at the planning commission meeting.

So I'm very aware of the time you're contributing to our community after work in the evenings.

I want to start with my appreciation for prioritizing school funding and upgrading our school facilities in recent budgets.

School infrastructure funding was not prioritized by previous councils before you all, which left us in this conundrum and a huge deficit in building modernization again that you inherited.

I'll note that while city school modernization was not being prioritized prior to your terms, just one local private school between 2006 and 2019 raised $90 million.

Again, $90 million that just one local private school raised.

The point being here, and why I mentioned that, is that there is plenty of money and desire in this community to invest in K-12 education.

And don't even get me started about UVA's $60 million remodel budget for a football center.

One thing that struck me during VMDO's presentations tonight is that it's definitely time for the city itself to make investments because the longer we wait costs only increase at a million dollars a year for the option the community desires.

And this is something that the speaker before me just also mentioned.

Also note,

that many of our peer cities have property tax rates north of $1.10 per $100 as of 2019.

Those peer cities include Richmond, Walls Church, Alexandria, Lynchburg, and Norfolk.

And there are a dozen mores that I can list.

And this is something that Kim Powell brought up earlier also.

It is not abnormal to have a property tax rate of $1.10 or more in order to fairly tax the wealth in the community.

One thing I learned from the Planning Commission meeting last night is that city staff can get creative when tasked to figure out funding infrastructure.

$2 million just for one street sidewalks in last night's example.

They need to do as much with school infrastructure.

Thus, I highly urge you to approve VMDO to move forward with the final design based on the nearly $75 million budget, which I think is what you're doing, and recommend the additional final design for Walker to be updated in the near future.

Many parents are willing to work with our state representatives and you to secure the ability to raise sales tasks and make sure the subsequent ballot initiative is approved.

I am clear eyed that this will mean going forward that council will need to raise revenue in order to afford that cost.

That is the cost I'm personally willing to shoulder and to ensure my children currently in kindergarten and third grade at Jackson Valley Elementary and the rest of the children in this community have access to the school facilities that provide them the equal opportunity to learn and develop into the city's future citizens.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Michael Allen, who will be followed by Holly Hatcher.

Michael, you're on with Council on the School Board.

Thank you, counselors and school board members.

I'm Mike Allen and I'm the band director at Buford Middle School.

The fine arts in our city schools are one of our greatest assets and part of our community's identity.

Buford plays an integral role in developing the exceptional students that make our fine arts known throughout Virginia and beyond.

Currently, the Buford B building, which houses the fine arts, is inadequate for our current needs.

We have a band room that will not fit my entire ensemble.

Our instrumental classrooms are bursting at the seams with no storage for equipment.

Our largest ensembles do not fit on our stage, and our chorus and drama classes are without dedicated classroom space.

They have to share the stage with each other and assemblies throughout the school year.

When we combine students and equipment from Walker, we will add an additional 400 students and 600 instruments.

To my knowledge, the Beaufort B building has not been reconfigured since it was built in 1966.

If this trajectory continues, the renovations on this building may have to last until 2086.

It's incumbent upon us to plan wisely for the increase in students and equipment.

I ask you to take the recommendations of the design team and fully fund the priority of heavily renovation options to both the Beaufort A and B buildings, recognizing that this is an immediate need now and cannot be delayed by breaking this into stages.

I also ask that you follow the recommendations of the design team and move forward on option three for the entire school building.

We want to set our students up for success now and forward through the 22nd century.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Holly Hatcher, who will be followed by Annie Settle.

If you'd like to get in line, please click the raise hand icon.

Holly, you're on with Council on the School Board.

Hi, good evening, everyone.

I just want to thank you for your time and for your leadership.

I'm a Johnson Elementary School parent and have been in the community for 20 years.

I got my start in the city of Charlottesville working on affordable housing.

I think it's incredibly important.

But some of the comments tonight made me a little concerned that we're kind of pitting issue against issue.

And I would just like to affirm some of the other comments that have been made tonight that I hope that when we talk about achieving equity for the city of Charlottesville and ending poverty, that we focus on public education, because if we don't focus on public education, we will never get there.

I really appreciate Dr. Henderson's long view and his advocacy and welcome Dr. Gurley.

We're excited for your leadership and your commitment in carrying us forward.

I also have sent some emails and hope that we will all do the research to look at what we can do as a community to advocate at the statewide level for funding.

I was just looking at a budget.

It helps to have a friend who's a lobbyist in Richmond, but the recent special session

included $250 million on school ventilation projects for qualifying projects to be distributed on a pure pupil basis with local matching dollars.

I will follow that up in an email, but I hope that we just leave no stone unturned in terms of rallying all of our resources.

You have a community of parents who want to work with you and support you in this effort.

We know it's a long game.

We know it's not just about Buford and Walker.

We know it's about

quality pre-K through 12 education and beyond.

So we're here to support you.

Thank you for your leadership.

Thank you.

And our next speaker is Annie Suttle.

And one last call.

If you want to get in line, go ahead and click the raise hand icon.

Annie, you're on with council on the school board.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Annie Suttle.

I am a parent of two children at Burnley Moran Elementary.

I'm a member of the community design team, and I feel like through that process, I've earned an honorary architecture degree.

So thank you, VMDO, for that.

But thank you, school board and city council for all the time that you have spent over the many years on this.

I will say that last night during the four-hour marathon meeting at one point my fourth grader came in and was looking at the screen of some of the mock-ups of Buford and his eyes were so wide open with excitement and I couldn't tell him it was going to break my heart to tell him that that was not going to happen for him and it might not happen for my first grader.

And that's been said over years and years and years from our parents in this community.

And I feel like that's why we can no longer delay.

I can't tell you how many sort of apathetic parents who are public school champions, but they're apathetic about this because their response is, this isn't going to happen.

We've been talking about this for years.

And that is where parents check out of public schools.

That is where parents check out of the future of our community.

I recognize that these are tough decisions that y'all have to make.

I don't envy your position.

But ultimately, your decisions will reflect our community and our community's decision to invest in our kids.

Right now, we all know people who pull their children out of Walker and Beaufort.

They go to private schools, their entire private schools.

built around the fact that there are people in this community who don't send their kids to public schools and everyone is a victim of that, whether you send your kids to public schools or private schools.

So we can fix that.

We have a chance to fix that right now.

I can say, and I would echo a lot of what Holly just said, that speaking on behalf of many parents who are really gearing up

to tap every single funding source we possibly can to piece it together.

Recovery funds, state funds, federal funds, sales tax, philanthropy, whatever we have to do to make this happen, we will make it happen if you commit right now to fully fund this project.

It's time for this community to walk the talk.

to take the first step in recommitting to our kids through public education.

So I'm passionate about it.

I know many of you are as well.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

I've said what I've had to say, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bryant.

I just wanted to echo what the speaker said that I don't want it to feel like schools are being pitted against affordable housing because it's all connected.

You need to be able to afford to live in the community.

You need to be able to send your kids to good public schools.

There's just a lot of items.

that we're dealing with that I don't want to be pitted against each other.

It's all part of it, having a pre-K program that is expanded so more people can use the pre-K who can't currently afford, you know, the private pre-K, all of those things go toward an equitable community.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

Not to put you on the spot, Dr. Gurley.

Again, thank you for joining us tonight.

Good evening.

And I just am thankful just to be a part of the conversation this evening.

And I think I want to echo a lot of what's been said is that, you know, what I've heard

both from city council and from the school board is that we care about children and we want what's best for, we want good facilities for our children.

And at the end of the day, we know that our children learn in quality facilities and we are one system.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

All right.

All right.

I don't believe so.

Again, we look forward to working with our contacts over the next week to finalize this information item piece and doing whatever we can to help generate support in the community.

especially if we're going to get that 1% sales tax.

However we can advocate and help communicate and support this project, we will do.

Thank you.

I'll just thank everyone who has been on marathon calls for

the last couple of nights for their patients.

But I certainly think this is time well spent.

So just to mention about the sales tax, since we have an audience here about it, it's going to take reaching out to contacts and people in other areas outside of Charlottesville.

because it's going to mean the whole generalist, I mean, the majority is going to have to vote for this for us.

Just one note on that, the city of Danville is actually taking sales tax to referendum on this November election.

Yeah, just echo what others said, you know, thank you for all the hard work that the VMDO and the design team have been doing.

You know, I want to be clear-eyed and honest about the budget situation only so we can get to yes on this project.

And I just want to comment on the public housing or the investment in affordable housing.

My comments to keep bringing it up is to make sure, one, that it doesn't get put on the back burner.

For me, that is priority number one, even over the schools.

But I think we need to figure out how to do that and schools.

But even once you prioritize affordable housing in schools, there's this whole host of

Services that our family need that we all know of based on years of neglect and just the implications of poverty.

So we always have to have those discussions because

You know, as we have, you know, had the discussions often about even with our investment per pupil, you know, that some of our kids are not able to flourish and what are those reasons and so we can't exclude

What happens during the time that they are not in school, just like we can't not have the conversation about what we can do within the schools better and differently.

So I just want to make sure that that's that it's understood why I keep bringing that point up.

And the other reason is that I just think that there are some spaces where we can spend money more wisely.

And so it's just

you know to put that on council's radar to make sure that we're spending money as efficiently as possible, but I think that spaces and i've said that before are very important when the renovations and i've said this were done at Johnson, I think, two or three years ago now pandemic brain I don't you know time but um.

Before that, there were some of the same things in those buildings that was there when I was in Johnson and Jim Henderson was my principal.

So that shows you how long that we hadn't made those investments.

And that is not that shouldn't be acceptable to, you know, any of us and especially think what happens at the fifth through eighth grade and some of

You know, the kids that I work and families that I work more closely with over time, if we are talking about this world class education that take, you know, CERM students to any university in this country, UVA, Brown, Duke, you know, you name it, Howard, Hampton, like just the list.

And then some kids don't have those opportunities.

I think that the spaces that

for some of them is going to be a big deal.

And I'm hoping that once we fix it, that they have better outcomes from being in those new spaces.