City Council Budget Work Session   3/31/2022

We've got everybody assembled.

I'll call this budget work session to order.

And the agenda provides we're supposed to have a roll call.

So, Ms.

Councillor McGill?

I'm here.

Councillor Payne?

Here.

Councillor Pinkston?

Here.

Mayor Snook?

Here.

Vice Mayor Wade?

Here.

Okay, we're all assembled.

So now the work session, the official topic for the work session is a capital improvements program.

This is, of course, something we've been hearing about for a couple of months as it's been refined and reworked.

I will note that after the work session, there will be an opportunity for public comment.

Pre-registration for speaking is not required.

Just raise your hand in the webinar when you're prompted.

So, Ms.

Yeah, well, as you pointed out, Mr. Mayor, this is our capital improvements discussion, capital program, and we've worked with staff to kind of get under the hood a bit, and Ms.

Hamill has put together, and staff have put together a presentation that I think is pretty clear about where we are, provide us for a path for

and making some decisions.

Yes, sir.

For some reason, it never wants to let me do this in presentation mode, so I'm going to try to expand this.

And it's not letting me do anything.

seeing that now?

All right, so this is our budget work session number three.

Again, as we've said, this is on the capital improvements program.

We're going to talk about, again, what's in the proposed five-year CIP, talk about the planning commission recommendations that were put forth.

We're going to talk about some financial policies, some potential amendments, and then some scenarios for a path forward.

So with that, we'll just jump in.

What is a capital improvements program?

It's a five-year spending plan.

It has projects in it that usually cost more than $50,000.

Those projects are generally non-recurring and non-operational, and they typically have a useful life of five years or more.

As we talk about this, a capital improvements plan is really a look forward, but what's not in that plan and what we often lose track of is the projects that were approved in prior years.

So when we talk about the authorized but not issued list, those projects, they're not in front of you in terms of this plan, but they do exist and they are on our books in terms of expenditures.

So I know when we've been going through these debt projections, that is sort of assumed and those projects are also in our numbers.

So looking at the plan in total over the five years, this is sort of a breakdown by category.

There's nothing new here.

We've seen this before.

We have roughly a plan of about 157 million, 121 million of which are 122 year round.

We plan to issue with bonds.

And as of right now, this still includes the total of the $75 million for the school reconfiguration.

2.5 million and 23 and it's 72.5 and 24.

So if we break it down a little bit and look at what's in each of those categories by a specific project, you'll see those detailed here, and you'll notice that in some of these projects, we're putting the project in the year we plan to start the project, and we typically are budgeting not on a cash basis here, but on a project basis.

So, for example, the lump sum to schools, you know, we put in a million two each year.

Those are spread out amongst various projects, whereas the school reconfiguration project is all lumped in 24.

Even though we've talked about in our debt scenarios and others that that's not necessarily when we will issue all of that debt or when we will spend all that money.

We'll be spreading that out on a cash basis.

But for planning purposes, we have to have the money available for the contracts.

And so that's how that's put in here.

So for education, we have roughly 7.1 million planned in 23 and a total of 88.6 million over the five years.

Again, that's including the $75 million reconfiguration project.

Moving on to facilities capital projects, we have roughly 1.4 million in 23 and 7 million over the five years.

Again, you see those projects itemized here.

Public Safety, same concept.

We have the additional funding necessary to actually start the replacement for the bypass fire station.

Again, this is an example where we're looking forward from 23 ahead.

So you see zeros here and you only see 1.2, but there were additional dollars that were approved in prior years to get us to the total project cost, which again is included in our debt projections.

Transportation and Access.

Again, we have lots of projects in this area.

Many of these are recurring on an annual basis.

So you'll see that those dollars are still put in.

Keeping in mind, in this particular proposed budget or version of the CIP, remember that we were originally talking about being out of debt capacity because at the time we did not know the real estate projection numbers.

and other scenarios.

Chrissy, real quick, ma'am.

The question I have on this is, so in the projection you were showing us at one point, there was a $15 million average yearly.

So great question.

Yes.

So the $15 million is basically bond capacity or available bonds that we're just building in, assuming that you would assign any bond eligible project to that amount of money.

We just assumed that that would be roughly $15 million a year.

Doesn't mean it has to be that.

You could do more in one year and less than another.

But just for sake of example, we put in about $15 million.

So in that, as we've progressed through this process, you know, in terms of the CIP, and we were talking about with the school project being out of capacity as such,

That's not the case now.

We know that's not the case.

Capacity is not the issue.

We're moving on to the affordability piece of it.

And so as you think about the CIP and as you work to plan that, you know, we could certainly add projects out here to use up some of that 15 million if we wanted to.

And it will start to fill in next year when we get to this plan, so.

But these are the things that are making up that base 15 million that you were factoring, like the sidewalks and the stuff that we could do.

It could, but these are already in the projections.

So anything that's here in a number, these are already in our projections.

So the 15 million that we've talked about that's in those debt projections would be over and above what's here, or it could include some of the authorized but not issued as well.

So we, I just confused that whole issue and I'm sorry.

So the, basically what we can do is look at that in total.

That's okay.

So basically, this was one table at the $50 million, and we have $15 million a year plus the school project.

So I'm going to back up from what I just said.

The school project is in.

We've got $15 million a year

If we sell the 66 would eat up some of this and then anything in addition over and above.

So we've got 121 plus 66 that's authorized but not issued.

So that gets us to 180 something.

If you added up all of this, anything different, which I think it's about $50 million, give or take, is what you would have to add new in the future years.

I think so, Chris.

I think that what was confusing, it wasn't clear that 15 million would allow us to make some decisions about new projects that can go along with the new sidewalk, et cetera, but that's allowable under this.

And if there are some of the projects that are authorized but not initiated

So like the bypass fire station has been authorized but not issued.

Right.

Yes, because it is in.

So again, if we talk about early on, we had a calculation where we actually calculated the capacity.

At the time, it was 185 million.

And that was basically just the numbers that were added up.

So if we took this and added up all of this, I think it's roughly 221, if I remember my math correctly.

I think that's partially where I think where some confusion is happening just because

Once we've authorized it, it kind of goes, and it's in the previous year's budgets, it kind of leaves our head and it seems like it's gone.

But because it's not issued yet, it actually, we have to factor that into the future.

And I'm assuming that it's those factoring, like our basic stuff that we tend to buy every year, like putting money towards sidewalks and infrastructure that we have to do.

then as well as things that we've already in the past committed to and have even partially started building.

That's what's making up some of these numbers.

And so it's not we're putting in a 15 million ghost number for future needs.

I think you've got it exactly.

Yeah, I think that's a good way to explain it.

It is very confusing to look at this chart on kind of a cash flow basis and then the way the CIP shows it occurring in an annual year but doesn't show the previous authorized project.

There is some in there.

Yeah, we, the authorized but not issued list was actually in the planning commission packet.

I think this when we're putting so many different pieces together, I think that's one of the pieces that has been a little unclear is that's the authorized but not issued is part of these numbers because we can't issue bonds until we start building something.

And so we have we've made these commitments to do these things and have started breaking ground in some cases, but it doesn't mean that we've actually bonded out the money for it yet because we don't need it yet.

And that's why, you know, as I'm sorry to flip back so quickly, but I didn't want to get back here.

That's kind of why when we started this process, we did end up with these zeros here because when we did that math at the time,

you know our capacity was about at 185 million of bonds that we could issue before we got to our 10% policy and so by the time we factored in the projects for this CIP plus the authorized but not issued we didn't have any more capacity here to put it in 27.

Anybody else have any questions on that before we move on?

um park moving on parks and rec um the here are the projects that we have for this and I also want to make it clear so for this purpose of this presentation if you were to go to the budget book um we actually break out what's bondable and what's non-bondable for purposes of this presentation I've just lumped everything into um the category

So not everything on this list is bondable.

Some of these things we plan to fund with cash and they're noted in the budget book.

Just for sake of example here, these are just all the parks and rec projects or all of this facilities development projects.

And one thing I want to point out here is the downtown mall infrastructure repairs.

That is a designated revenue source that is paid from the cafe fees for

on the downtown mall.

So that's why that's extended to 27.

Again, we have the economic development strategic initiatives account and then also the communications technology or the public access account.

That's another one that has a direct offsetting revenue with the PEG fees.

And then we have the citywide infrastructure account here.

and we get to the affordable housing category and these are the things that we have planned out over the next five years.

Again, not taking into account dollars that were appropriated or approved in prior years, but here we have 7.3 million in 23 and 33.8 million over the five years.

So how are we going to pay for all that?

Again, we know that we transfer some portion from the general fund in terms of cash.

That's our 3% policy.

That's 6.7 for 23.

The mall vendor fees we just talked about as a designated revenue source.

We share a few projects that we manage with Albemarle County.

So from time to time, we have offsetting

Revenues from them.

The schools share $200,000 for small cap.

The PEG fees I talked about.

And then again, we have the planned bond issue.

But again, this does not mean we're selling $16.8 million in 2023.

It means that for the projects that we've set forth in this plan, we plan to fund those with that much bond proceeds.

We do not, actually.

So what would happen is that for a project that's all is, I think that's a BDOT project maybe that you're referring to, what would happen is that project will show up on the expenditure side in total with the offsetting revenue.

There would be a revenue line up here, revenue from the Commonwealth of Virginia for the amount of that bond.

And then from a practical purpose, as the project is going on,

We pay the expenses first and then we just apply for a reimbursement from VDOT.

Ms.

Hamill, a question for you.

So in terms of our utilities and the projects that are being done by Public Works, I guess if it's a

a capital project that they're doing, it would show up on this list at some place.

The utility projects do not show up in the CFU plan.

And the reason for that is because the utilities, we treat them as a self supporting enterprise fund, which means that the rates that are collected support not only the operation of that fund, but the projects as well.

And so part of the rate report that Mr. Cullinan and Ms.

Okay.

Are there other beyond that particular infrastructure or utility fund?

Are there other funds out there within the budget that do have capital type projects within them that would not show up on this list?

Okay, great.

And then the only other thing would eventually the plan would be for things like the parking fund.

Once the parking fund was is actually able to become self supporting, then, you know, it may have its own projects.

Got it.

Thank you.

Chrissy, can I ask you to go back to page four?

of your presentation.

And I'm looking at the general fund transfer amounts.

3% is the minimum.

What actually happens in a lot of cases is we're doing more.

And in particular, what has happened is especially with the affordable housing projects such as PHA, they are not bond eligible.

And so as those projects are coming online and as they're cash funded, we're having to put more cash in to cover those.

What I was looking at was we've got 6.7 million for 2023, 7.5 million for 2024, and I was expecting to see 2025, 2026, and 2027 being increasingly larger numbers as well, but they're not.

I think it's a function of how those dollars are actually being divvied up on the cash side in the CIP and I think it's just the 7.5 I think there was a higher need if I

I don't want to pull it up on my screen, but I think if we look at the five-year plan that's in the budget book, if you look on the non-bunded project section, I believe that 7.5 matches exactly the cash projects that were identified in that year.

It could be.

Again, I think it's being skewed because, I mean, the other thing is we could not put any bond issue in, and we could make that cash the full amount of the CIP if we wanted to.

Again, the 3% is just meant to be a target, and what we put on the non-bonded list is largely things that don't qualify for bonds, and so

I guess I was assuming that the 2025, 26, and 27 numbers were the result of multiplying 3% times the projected general fund amounts, given what we expect about inflation and all that kind of stuff.

Okay, that would suggest to me that in those years that if we were to look at the two at the 3% figure and 3% times the the general fund for this year, for example,

would be roughly 6.45 million, I guess, 2023 because of the increase in housing values and so on that bumps up.

But that would suggest that unless we are going through deflation in 2025, 26, and 27, there could be many hundreds of thousands of dollars more cash available

It could be.

I also believe, and I can double check this, but I believe this, we based this 3% on the general fund total that does not include the tax increase.

So the general fund total revenue that you have here is the 216, but remember that includes $9 million.

based on a 10 cent tax increase.

And we didn't adjust it because we weren't planning.

Our proposal didn't use that money.

Well, we'll sort out those details, I suppose, in later years.

But I was puzzled by that.

And I appreciate the clarification.

Anything else going on before we move on?

Okay, so we met with the Planning Commission back in December and presented this proposal to the Planning Commission, or a different version of this proposal to the Planning Commission, and the Planning Commission put forth several recommendations, and so this is a listing of their recommendations and what we did to address them.

One was that they recommended that existing and requested parking structure funding be reduced

to a minimum, and so we basically removed all of the funding that was originally proposed in 23.

It was remaining at $1.3 million.

We took all of that out, and so if you look at this current draft, there is no additional money for the parking garage.

Did not do anything with the dollars that were previously approved, so there is still a balance there that is available, and

Yeah, so how we got there, it was originally we had, I believe it was 2 million in 22 and we had planned for 7 million in 23.

We took 5 million out off the top and reallocated that to the school reconfiguration project, which was how we was part of the equation for how we got from 50 to 75 million.

So that took us down to 2 million.

Additionally, we added as a project the, I believe it's 683 or $638,000 for the Market Street parking garage concrete repairs.

So I'm sorry, if I were to go add all those numbers up, what is the total amount that we still have associated with the garage?

I realize that a large 600k is for repairs, which I can appreciate, you know, and if you don't, that's fine.

If I could just get it later.

Okay.

All right.

Isn't that paid through the parking enterprise fund?

I'm sorry, what was your question?

Not at this time.

So keeping in mind that the parking fund is not quite yet a full-fledged enterprise fund.

We've set it up and it is the plan to move it in that direction.

But at this point, the general fund still relies on many of those parking revenues to balance the budget.

And so if you look at the parking

Fund, you'll see that there's a large number that we have been trimming down each year that comes back to the general fund.

And the plan was to sort of wean it off.

And what also happened on top of that is COVID.

And so we were building up a fund balance there intentionally to help address some of these types of issues.

But with COVID and lower parking

revenues, that fund balance has been eaten away in some respects, and we're trying to build it back up because we also are expecting some similar repairs in similar nature of $600,000 or so that will need to be done to the Water Street garage.

And the plan is to hopefully have enough so that the parking fund can in fact pay for those.

Do we own the Water Street garage?

We do not own the Water Street parking garage.

We do.

We are obligated through the settlement that we arrived at a few years ago with the Charlottesville Parking Center.

to have control of all the spaces.

Some we own, some we rent.

We have nothing to do with those.

Oh, okay.

Correct.

We own that entire building and we lease those spaces to retail tenants.

Yes, if I could return briefly to, I guess, the whatever parking funds we still have kind of hanging out there, it sounds like a million three y'all have removed from the CIP, which is good, and then you have money set aside for repairs for the Market Street deck as well as the Water Street deck.

I'm still a little, I just have a question in my mind about how much money are we actually carrying forward right now for

work associated with the parking vis-a-vis the courts.

And so is the notion to just hold on to that until all of those agreements have sort of

Yeah, well, it's being discussed right now.

Sam Sanders might want to jump in.

He's been leading the talks with the county, so it's being discussed.

Okay, that's fine.

We don't have to go down that path right now, but that's helpful, and I can follow up with Sam later.

Thank you.

Ms.

on ash trees if we're ready.

So the second recommendation from the Planning Commission was to fully fund projects requests for tree planting, new sidewalks, bicycle infrastructure, and hazardous tree removal.

We were able to get a couple of those in.

We did fully fund the $105,000 a year request for ash tree removal.

The original draft had 75,000 in there.

And so we did increase that by 30,000 per year for 23 through 26.

And we added $100,000, which is level funding in FY23 for new sidewalks.

The bicycle infrastructure and the sidewalks account

arguably maybe not enough, but they do, in addition to this money here, they do have existing balances that are able to be spent as well.

They did, thank you, they did put in a request for $100,000, and that remains right now in this current draft at 75.

Absolutely.

The third recommendation was to reduce funding in the economic development strategic initiatives account, small area plans, and the strategic investment area implementation account.

We did look at the strategic initiatives account, economic development strategic initiatives account.

We did decrease the funding by 55,000 in 23 and we took out an additional 30,000 a year in years 24 through 26.

So this is Juan, just quickly on that, how I'm wondering from Chris and, or maybe Courtney, I know she may not be on this meeting, of how long-term that would impact, I mean, where we want to, you know, people to come here and spend money and on meals and things like that, would that, you know, sometimes,

We get a dollar in, we get several more back in taxes and hotels and things like that.

Sure.

So the strategic investment fund is typically for large projects that are capital in nature, physical in nature.

A good example would be the Hillsdale Drive, the first phase of Hillsdale Drive, which was done a number of years ago before the state funded it.

And that enabled the city to work with the developer of that property to have the Whole Foods come to the city.

So

That's a good example where we use strategic investment funds to do that road.

We've also funded studies, parking studies.

We just did a rail study about two years ago with the state.

So we use it for matching dollars for unusual things that come up.

I see.

for that.

Yeah, so you just spoke my thought about the OKmart site.

Is anything that would come up with that?

We hear different things from time to time.

We just want to be

ample and ready if something comes up.

One other comment quickly on transportation items.

And so I know we're just looking now at those that are within the,

for five years, and this is not the forum for this, for what I'm going to request, but it would be something that I would like to consider, and maybe even something we can talk about tomorrow during the retreat, but I would like, I know we have, I don't know, 30 or 40 transportation sidewalk kind of related projects in the CI, in the city CIP in general,

And I would like to just kind of go down the list to each and every one of them to see where we are with each and every one of those projects.

And then once we, you know, we may have to take some off because we know it's not going to happen.

Or, you know, if we have some money put aside for some of them that maybe won't happen until years down the road, that could be some money now that we can use now for maybe affordable housing or the schools or some projects that we

know that we want to do now and then ultimately I will like because it's something I had to do when I was a transportation planner doing sidewalk projects and bike lanes and things is to give quarterly updates to super to

at the time was the supervisors but I would like to see it now because this is a way that we can stay on top of it to say where we are because sometimes some of the hiccups with these projects is something that we can do as politicians you know if it's some hiccup downtown or I mean in Richmond or in VDOT or wherever but I will be you know bringing this up again tomorrow but just to kind of give the heads up because I think that this is going to

tonight's presentation is kind of leaning more towards within the next five years or so.

So moving on, I think we're on number four.

The recommendation was to fully fund the Stribling Avenue sidewalk project, and we're going to present you with a scenario a few slides down on that.

That is not currently in this version, but we have a scenario for you.

The next recommendation was to explore ways to add enhancements to the Drury Brown Bridge, and that's been directed to the Historic Resources Committee to look at as more of an operation or special project there, not necessarily a capital project.

and then the last two were to recommend increasing the budget for CAF and to find ways to fund unfunded affordable housing projects and then lastly to recommend reducing the paving line item to help us maintain a target pavement condition of 65.

So those were the recommendations from the Planning Commission.

Yeah, the last one, this may not be the time or place to discuss milling and paving, but I mean, how does, I'd just be interested in knowing what the city folks, the public works folks think about that.

I think the the commerce to add, they can answer that question.

But just to add some context, I believe to that recommendation, there's about a million two in the budget for paving, and it's a recurring costs across the plan.

And I think the conversation was, if we were looking to add things, they were looking for ways to reduce and that came up as a possible suggestion.

as a line item that could be reduced.

And what I'll add specifically is that, just as a reminder, this is not a recommendation of staff.

We didn't put forth the effort to evaluate if we were wanting to support or not.

We just didn't want to step into that.

So the CIP draft that we're looking at tonight assumes this lower level of paving?

Yes.

The CIP draft reflects a recurring funding for paving that is reduced from dollars we spent in prior years, but is in keeping with the last few years, if you will.

I mean, at one point, I think we were many years ago up to like a million eight, maybe even a million nine a year in paving.

And, you know, it has been reduced slightly over time.

Yeah, I'll follow up separately.

Okay, so moving on, we've kind of talked about what the CIP is, what's in it, and now we want to transition a little bit and talk about the policies that

sort of drive how we put this plan together and in making the decisions that we make.

This is a table we've seen all too often this year.

We've seen many versions of it with many different numbers, but it addresses the calculation of our 10% debt ratio.

So that the 10% is what we put forth as our maximum.

Council added a 9% target to that several years ago.

And so the variables that are subject to change with that are, one, the bond issue amount of, you know, which, as Councilor McGill helped clarify, which I think was a great point, is that the bond issue amount includes new projects in this plan, but also projects that were previously approved.

It also is impacted by the timing of the bond issue.

So in this scenario here, we're spreading out the 15 million plus the school project over the spin rate that's been provided.

But if we had a large project, let's say, or some of the other projects started happening more quickly, then we may, you know, shorten that up and it might not be over this 10 years.

It could be over five.

Again, the interest rates play an impact and the rate of the general fund growth.

This year with the growth with the real estate assessment, again, that completely changed the picture of what our bond capacity looked like.

But if we were in a year that the general fund actually constricted, our capacity would change as well.

The variable relationships, you know, the more debt we issue, the higher our annual debt service payment.

We get reduced capacity if our general fund shrinks or if the interest rates go up.

And we get increased capacity if our general fund grows and if the interest rates are stable or lower.

and Kevin can maybe address this more if you have questions, but I mean, we're in a relatively historically low interest rate.

They can't really go down any further.

I'm sorry.

This is true, although we've said that before, right, Kevin?

The second policy that we concentrate on is the one that Mayor Snook was focused on with his questioning, and that's our 3% PAYGO policy.

We do have a policy about that.

As part of the budget planning process, we do make sure that we're putting in at least 3% cash.

That's a budgeted number.

Sometimes we're doing more.

We actually, because of our additional financial policy with the 17% fund balance policy, and we transfer any excess surplus to the CIP, we actually are averaging about 5% a year.

And this is just a history look back at that.

Again, you'll notice that 21 and 22 are a little bit of an anomaly.

21, we only put in a budgeted transfer of $900,000, which was not 3%.

That is because we used that cash to fund and maintain our commitment to funding the housing vouchers, and the rest of the cash was withheld in the general fund as a reserve.

to take care of any COVID impacts that may have happened that did not materialize.

And so as part of the FY year-end process, Mr. Cullinan presented to you all that 6.7 reserve that we did not need was put back in the CIP.

And so that's the number that you see for 22.

And I'm going to turn this over to Kevin.

I know at one point there were some questions about where did we get that 3% and what's the magic to that number?

Yeah, just a couple quick comments on this.

First of all, I think it's great that you have the 3% funding policy.

We looked at other peer, those that we would call your peers and, you know, there's

only a couple that actually have a ratio you see on the screen, a couple with 3% City of Fairfax has a slightly higher.

What the rating agencies really care about is your historical precedent of what you actually do contribute, whether it's through the policy or year-end additions, and so your history of 5%

PAYGO is a strong contribution to that.

So I think the way you do it is good and adequate.

Any questions on any of the policies?

Okay, so we'll move on to some potential CMP amendments.

These are things that, again, are not in the current version.

There are things that have been discussed throughout our meetings or in different scenarios, and so there are several here that we are going to walk you through.

One in the area of transportation and access, there's the potential for $4.9 million, one being the Stribling Avenue sidewalk.

and the second being the Meadow Creek Trail section three.

For education, the school reconfiguration project.

Again, this is not meant as a recommendation in any means.

This was just a number that we've heard a lot of consensus on and rather than going through a whole bunch of

We've been through an exhaustive amount of scenarios, but this was one that we thought we had heard some consensus on, and so we're going to look at that one.

Moving the project from 75 to 68.8, which is representative, I believe, of option two that was presented by VMDO.

And then there was in the affordable housing category, two projects that were put forth as requests from PHA for the MACA apartments and the Park Street apartments.

So breaking those down a little bit, we'll look at the Stribling Avenue sidewalk project.

Again, this, as we know, the developer offered up an opportunity for a financing agreement of about 2.9 million.

We know that the project and the improvements that are needed, that will probably not be sufficient.

And so based on just a current estimate, again, very rough estimate, we're looking at about 4.2 million

give or take.

And so one way of getting that in the CIP, if that's something council is interested in entertaining, is that we could reassign the 1.3 million that was originally dedicated to the parking garage.

We could assign those bonds along with the financing agreement and that would actually get you to a point where you could add

that project.

I was curious about that because I, of course, we still have some decisions to make about the stribbling project, but I did not realize that the assumption was that we were going to end up doing this

two or three years down the road.

Yeah, that timing issue is that I think that the developer won't be ready, I think in 25 is the year that his first project would be completed.

The sidewalks we discussed whether we, and I think we're still discussing that, frankly, whether we want to put them in, whether it makes sense to put them in right now while the construction is going on and that we'll be having to redo them, you know, because of the heavy equipment up there.

So we had a discussion about that and there's a concern about synchronizing the timing

so it better make sense to preserve the investment.

But the 4.2 is the estimate now that we have using developers' funds.

And our payback would begin when he would complete his first house and his first tax bill would be due.

and we had some concern before about is wanting 100% where we have landed is a 60% split that we would be obligated to pay 60% of the incremental tax increase from the site as a result of the project and the 40% would go to the city.

on presumably shared with the schools.

For whatever reason, we're not hearing you, Brian.

Did not hear what you just said.

Not getting you.

The video do appear to be on for Brian.

Oh, we just heard you a little bit.

In the meantime, Mayor Snook, if I could just add a little bit more to your concern about not necessarily being able to start quickly.

We are definitely facing well over a year of planning on this sidewalk project.

It is that complicated.

Jack isn't on right now, or I would have asked him to kind of share a little bit more of what he described to us, but

There are major conflicts along the entire stretch of scribbling that all have to be assessed significantly, deeply.

So just sort of hypothetically here, if we were to work out some sort of an agreement that caused us to say yes to this project in April, in this coming month, it would still be, that would be fiscal year 2025.

Sure, and if Jack were on, he'd probably be exploding right now that I said it, we could probably get ready in a year, but I will say the earliest yes, unlikely that we would even be that early.

Okay.

I mean, one of the things that, you know, we as counselors have what I've sometimes called the fire and forget mentality.

You know, we've made a decision, okay, y'all are off to the races.

We don't have to think about it anymore.

It's just going to happen.

And the answer is, in many cases, it's not going to just happen.

And it's on us to make sure, Mr. Rogers has been reminding us of that, is that we probably need to just revise our approach to reporting, providing status reports.

I think if we were able to do more of that, then it'd be less of the fire and forget.

Thank you.

How about now, Mr. Mayor?

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Great.

Apologies for that.

It does seem to me that I get the point of why you're thinking it'll be a little bit later in terms of actually doing work and you don't want to put in something that's going to be torn up by construction trucks.

But there's a lot of, it looks to me, sewer work, storm sewer work, underground type work.

and my guess is that this work would need to, if you do your planning in FY23 and start work in FY24, what I want to be careful of is that we don't just say, oh, we're going to do this, and it comes across to people on Stribbling that, you know, we're not really meeting our commitment, so I don't want to tell you how to do your job or anything, but it's just, to me, it would seem like in 24, you're going to have plenty of

opportunity to start running storm sewers.

Could you say a little more?

No, I think I've got it on the financing, but we've got to show it here because we're bonding it.

Okay.

All right.

Okay, so school reconfiguration projects.

Again, this is not meant as a recommendation, but yet another scenario or another option.

We've, in talking with both school board and school management and city management, we've heard a lot of consensus around this 68.8

And so we've also heard conversations with seemingly more comfort with council in the 50 million or so bond area.

And so we put together these two scenarios as an opportunity for how could you get there.

using those two points.

And so again, at the appendix of this, I'm saving you from the chart again.

I think we all know how those charts work, but to show you the math, they are in the appendix of this presentation.

I'm just summarizing that here.

So the first one would be if we issued $54 million worth of bonds,

We talked about applying the FY21 year-end surplus that's currently in the contingency of 6.7 to that.

Schools offered up a potential of 7.5 of their ARP funding that they could contribute towards the project.

And then we would need an additional cash source of about $600,000 and that could get us to $68,800.

If we looked at this in the two methods we've been talking about, if we were to do the debt service increase, again, the debt service increase being for the entire CIP, so that's both for existing debt, existing city projects,

for debt that may be issued for those as well as the school project.

So the complete CIP package with that addition of the school project, if we spread the incremental debt service increase out, it's roughly about $1.9 million a year for three years.

Or if you were to decide that you wanted to do a tax increase, it's roughly equivalent to about five and a half cents or a one-time plop in the debt service month

Oh, it sure is.

Thank you.

Yeah, that scares me too.

Thank you.

This is what happens when you can't see the trees, right?

Thank you.

I will correct that.

The other scenario is the $50 million.

If we were to issue $50 million bonds, again, the same 6.7 cash contribution, the same 7.5 from the schools.

We'd have to find an additional 4.6 from some other source to get us to the 68.8 in that scenario.

And so, again, if we were to incrementally look at the debt service increase, that's roughly 1.8 for the next three years.

Or if you were to do a one-time adjustment, that would be 4.8 million with roughly a five and a quarter cents.

Anybody have any questions there?

You've run so many scenarios on this.

Thank you.

And again, you know, this is only one path forward.

And again, we might be able to get some of that funding from some of these grants with the Build Back Better.

I know we're not counting on any of that, but at this point, all that would do is help reduce

Yeah, I think both of these scenarios provide you an opportunity with variables that are known and you can control.

If the sales tax were, you know, were able to materialize in a future year, if we're able to monopolize some other federal funding or state funding, that only helps.

Okay.

Any suggestions about how to get the other cash source to go from 600 to 4.6?

We're going to get there.

I figured you had something.

So another amendment we've talked about to kind of get through all these PHA put forth two requests that were affordable housing projects.

One was the MACA apartments at roughly 3 million.

The other one's the Park Street apartments at 1.9.

Again, these do not qualify for bond funding.

So they would be cash funding, which would be

Beth Dombkowski, Ph.D.

: Equivalent to a transfer from the general fund or some other source, which we'll also look at.

Beth Dombkowski, Ph.D.

: But just to kind of show you how that would work, the transfer to the general fund would, if we looked at sort of how we have everything programmed you see here at the bottom.

We have 6.7 programmed in 23.

When you get to 25, when this project would come in, that general fund transfer would pop up to 11.5.

So you can see at the bottom, I sort of did a year over year change calculation.

And so you can see that it's sort of not level.

And that would be a big push.

That would be a big sort of cliff to climb in 25 if we planned it this way.

So that's, I'm going to stop on the CIP now and we're going to sort of transition to a couple of things to kind of provide you with some ideas for paths forward.

Yes, and we don't have a particular slide for that, but it is coming in a slide where we're going to talk about some potential fast forward.

Great, thank you.

So our revenue team continues to meet and we continue to run the numbers.

We are getting close to finishing three quarters of 23, I'm sorry, 22.

And we

continue to be sort of in a weird area as it relates to COVID.

These are sort of uncharted waters in terms of there are not a lot of trends for how you manage and what your revenues look like during a pandemic.

And we have with what we know now, we are making a suggestion that we actually amend the 23 budget to look at adding some additional revenue that we expect.

And so those sources would be number one, the personal property tax.

I have this highlighted here because this assumes that we make no change to the tax rate.

So if you were to decide to take Commissioner Diver's recommendation and reduce the rate, it would be something less than this $2 million.

and that would have to be reflected here.

But for the others, the utility tax, the sales tax, lodging and meals, those are, we've bumped those up some based on our current collection rate.

We continue to see growth in those and we continue to see recovery at a faster rate than we originally anticipated.

Same thing for B poll.

And then the meal stacks, that big $26 is just basically a calculation of our policy.

But again, we're both, we're in a fortunate situation that our projections were such that we are actually expecting more than we originally planned for.

It could have been worse.

We could have overshot the mark and we could be looking at negatives.

But again, that's roughly about 3.7 that we can add to the 23 budget.

And as this happens, there's also some big impacts on the 22 budget.

Again, in this scenario, we are projecting roughly just to go to the punchline first, we are projecting a revenue budget surplus.

So I wanna be careful about this because we don't have the other side of the equation for the expenses.

But just looking at the revenue projections, we are looking at roughly a $12 million revenue budget projection of a surplus for 22.

The large part of that is related to just the general reassessment.

We collect half of that in June with the bills that will go out and be paid in June.

So that equates to about $3.4 million.

If you were to decide to do a tax increase, that also would be an impact on 22, and that number would go up.

So for right now, we're just assuming the current rate of 95 cents.

Again, personal property, we've assumed that you're going to maintain the same rate here, no change, that would equate to 900,000.

And then again, you know, sales, meals and lodging are continuing to perform well.

And those performances are equating to almost well over seven, another $7 million.

And then BPOL as well, about 1.7.

So when you look at all of these things, that is potential for a surplus, a rather sizable surplus at the end of 22.

The $12,440,000 figure is the current projection of what the number we normally see in December.

is likely to be.

And Chrissy, what you say, based on what we know today, that on the expense side, given the number of vacancies that we have throughout the government, that the expenditures are going to be lower.

Yes, sir.

And we'll, we plan to present you with a more formal detailed quarterly, it would be a quarter three report for FY22.

We're working on some tools that will be rolling out on the website.

Not that I'm aware of.

When the session ended, I honestly don't know where it was.

I mean, the last proposal that seemed to have some traction was, you know, maybe that the cities would be reimbursed and made whole, you know, or not, or held harmless.

Okay, I'm just curious, are we factoring that potential ding?

Because that's going to be a hit.

Yep.

Yeah.

I just wanted to make sure we keep aware of that, and I'm sure you all, it's just...

Well, and to that end, I also want to say that in the 23 budget, we have pretty much held all those state revenues flat absent any information and because their budget has not yet been approved and there's not really any information out there.

So it is possible that once their budget is approved, we may be coming back to you with some additional amendments.

I don't think there'll be millions of dollars, but we may be coming back to you with amendments on the state revenues as well.

Thank you.

Any questions on any on the 23 adjusted revenues or the 22?

Okay, so what do you do with all this information?

and how could we look for a path forward on any of this stuff?

Again, I want to be clear, this is not a recommendation.

This is just meant to be sort of an exercise with one way to get forward on some of these things, but also to sort of figure out or provide you with a framework for how some of these sources work and how in your thought process and your decision making,

You might be able to use these tools to get you there.

So, of course, one of the options is to not think about any of this as any of these items on this list relate and move forward with a tax increase.

You have that option on the real estate and the meals tax.

We've advertised both of those.

And so they would be one option.

That is not something that's on this list.

Basically, what I'm looking at here are the things that we just talked about.

One, the amendments to the 23 revenue.

That's something we're comfortable with.

Again, I have this $3.7 million number highlighted here because depending on what you do decide with the tax rate,

That number could go up or down.

So that's why that's highlighted.

But for right now, it assumes no change in either the real estate or the personal property or the meals tax.

The other thing is the CIP contingency.

That account has a balance in there.

That is the result of our fund balance policy where we transfer the surpluses to the CIP contingency.

6.7 of that that we've been talking about towards the school reconfiguration project is in this 11 million.

The other is mostly the FY20 amount, which was about 3.9, give or take.

But that's how we got to an $11 million contingency balance.

And then the surplus, I have that highlighted in gray because, again, we can't spend it till we get it, but I want to make you aware, we wanted to make you aware that that's also a potential resource.

And so in looking at that,

you know the 23 revenue, those are things that you want to look at typically in things that will increase your base budget.

So the things that will go on from now until forever, how would you use those dollars?

The contingency and the surplus, both of those are sort of one-time pots of money.

They don't go on forever.

Once you spend them, they're gone.

And so using those kind of criteria, how can we move forward with some of this?

So if we looked at the $54 million bond scenario, we know that we need to increase the debt service base

by roughly 1.9 over three years.

And so for year one, you could actually use some of this new revenue and fund that 1.9.

We've already talked about the 6.7, which would come out of the CIP contingency.

And then in that one scenario where I showed you where we would need the additional $600,000 cash

you could potentially plan to use the 22 surplus for that.

So that would get you to that top line that got you to the 68-8.

And then you'd have years two and three of the additional debt service transfer that you need to fund.

And if you wanted to, you could go ahead and allocate some of those surplus dollars

Dump that into the general to the debt service fund, and you'd have your increase for the debt service on the school project paid for at that point, because it would you would have increased the base and the debt service fund by enough to pay that debt.

So that's one option, again, to get you to that school reconfiguration project if that were the scenario that you wanted to adopt.

Again, you can move these pieces of the puzzle amongst any of these columns.

This was just to try to help you think about this.

If you wanted to go with the PHA project, that has to be a cash funded project.

How could we get there?

Again, those are dollars you could allocate out of the CIP contingency.

You could do that now if you wanted to.

We know we don't need that until FY25 as planned, but you could designate that as sort of a reserve, if you will, in the contingency.

And then you could look to get the extra 216 from the year-end surplus.

if you wanted to do that.

Meadow Creek Trail, you could fund that out of the surplus, the $700,000.

If we look at the operating budget, there are a couple of things that have come to our attention as part of our review.

And so we have a couple of amendments that we are looking to put forward.

The two things, the Paramount Theater and the Festival of Cultures, those were actually discrepancies between the actual scoring in the VCF report and what was put in the budget.

So that's just a housekeeping change there.

The other things were the housing coordinator position that we've talked about to upgrade that position that would be roughly 55,000.

Restoring a funding for one buyer position that was actually a vacant position that was unfunded to balance in 21 for COVID.

and then the sheriff has a need for one vehicle replacement that's not currently funded.

So those items are things that, and that vehicle, again, that could either be in the sort of ongoing

or you could put that in one of these other cash funding things.

The reason in my scenario that I put it here is because we just have a shortage of funding for vehicles in general because that's really an area we've hit really hard to help balance all these things with COVID.

And so, you know, adding that to our base for funding vehicles was a reason why I picked it there.

Couple other things I left as question marks because I wasn't sure of amounts or what you all were thinking, but through some of this we've heard you talk about providing additional funding for the African American Heritage Center, FAR, Computers for Kids, and potentially the Public Defender.

I left those as question marks, but those would certainly be items that you could use with this sort of extra revenue in the general fund.

Moving on, again, sort of one-time considerations.

The Department of Social Services has a program that they use that actually processes all the foster care payments.

They've received notification that that current system has to be replaced.

That's about $150,000 city match.

So that is something that could potentially be allocated out of the surplus.

Same thing for procurement, the e-sourcing software, they've been using a pilot program for that.

That, with training and implementation, would be about 100,000.

We've added potential for two additional buses.

We talked about decreasing the time for routes.

Route 6, I think, is a 60-minute route, and this would help get it down to 30.

The SAFER grant we've talked about a lot.

We've been talking about 1.9.

I just bumped that up to reflect the pay adjustments, both the mid-year and the merit that we have in this budget.

So I've bumped that up to about 2.1.

And then you all also mentioned something about roughly a million dollars to put in a city manager fund that a new city manager could use for initiatives that he or she may want to

implement.

So once you do that, if you use this scenario, again, this is not a recommendation, but this is just a scenario, that still would leave you with about $1.6 million of revenue for 23 that you could allocate to other things if you don't change the tax rates.

and then it leaves you roughly 2.6 million of the surplus that we're currently projecting.

Of course, nothing in this gray column can materialize until the surplus actually materializes.

So those would be things that would be coming December-ish once the audit is complete.

And so again, this was a way to sort of present you with some ways that you could move some of these things forward without having to feel like it's all got to be done in the 23 budget or with necessarily all with the tax increase.

I want to point out that in these scenarios, we have addressed

the major issues for the city without recommending an increase in the current tax rate.

So that leads to other options.

I mean, we are fortunate to have the projected increase of surplus for the end of the year that can be used to finance a number of these projects, but we teed this up

as to give you options in terms of where you, the elected officials, would like to spend these available dollars to address what you think is most important.

This is a great presentation and I appreciate, I love the opportunity to have options and I think that that's what this appears to give us so I may not show it, but I'm ecstatic that we're not put into a corner, you know, we have some options and so this is

very reassuring.

We still have some tough decisions to make.

Yeah, I guess one question I had, and I'm with Vice Mayor Wade in terms of whether we want to get into some of the specifics, you know, for instance, the Public Defender's Office, but I just want to make sure I understand.

So a couple of slides back, there was the notion of an effective tax increase, like the equivalent.

It was the $64 million and the $60 million slide.

Yeah.

So this is the tax increase equivalent.

What you're saying is you think you're able to using our projected surpluses judiciously to sort of walk us through the next three years without a real estate tax increase.

I do.

So let me just show you, I was going to try not to do this, but I think it's important.

So let me just show you what I'm talking about here.

If you look at this scenario, this is for the 50, if we were going to bond, $54 million.

If you look at where we are now, our debt service payment is $11.5 million.

Once we start to layer in the school project, you'll see over here that our debt service goes from the transfer, I'm sorry,

goes from 13 million in this scenario.

So really what that is, is we already were getting an extra $400,000 on the meals tax policy.

And then on top of that, in these three years, I layered in this amount that I'm showing you.

Sorry for going back and forth, but I want you to understand this one nine four seven one one two.

I basically layered that in each of these three years.

That got our base transfer.

Oops, sorry.

that got our base transfer from 10.7 in 22 up to 13 in 23.

And then those three years brings us up to 17 million.

And if you see our debt service, our transfer, if we maintain that $17 million transfer, then here in year four, all that's really added in is the meals tax growth assumption.

and so that gets you those three years of increases get you to a base that is consistent with what we would need to pay for this much debt and it takes advantage of the debt service fund balance it gets us down to about 1.2 and so if we maintain this basically

You don't need the tax increase.

Now, conversely, if you wanted to look at the tax increase, this is what that looks like.

So essentially, we're using our fortuitous and, you know,

heaven sent blessing, I guess, of projected surplus revenue and whatever these long looked for revenue enhancements to help us fund that differential that would have been required by the tax increase and therefore don't think we need to do a real estate tax increase.

That is one option.

I think, you know, the risk here is that something could happen and these two years may not, you know, this surplus maybe doesn't materialize.

You know, I think what I will say is that I think based on the work that's been done on these projections,

I think we feel pretty good about these.

I don't think that we're throwing out a big risk here.

And so, you know, we are three quarters through the year.

And the other side of that is that, as Chris said earlier,

We don't spend it.

It's not eligible to be spent until the audit has been completed and the exact surplus has been confirmed.

And also it seems that if for whatever reason the budget surplus does not materialize to the extent that we've got projected here, so about almost $4 million of this surplus is being proposed to be spent on debt service in a couple of years out there.

And so what that does is A, it buys us a year before we have to decide whether to raise the tax rate, which also buys us some time to see if the General Assembly folks can pull some magic out of the

out of the hat for a sales tax increase and allows us to defer what would be a very personally for me a very uncomfortable situation of trying to add a tax increase, a tax rate increase on top of an already very dramatic assessment increase.

Yeah, the only thing I want to add to, just since we're talking about risk, I just want to be fully transparent about this, is that this 3.7 does assume that you do not take Commissioner Diver's recommendation to lower the

personal property tax rate, and that equates for about $2 million of this number.

So that's a key decision.

We talked about in the discussion not maintaining the current rate.

and reducing it.

And so that's a decision.

I guess I would feel more comfortable if we had like a one cent at least that we are putting towards the school fund.

Not because I distrust any of these numbers or anything like that.

And I trust our staff on this.

So let me just clarify, the short staffing would be savings on the expenditure side.

This surplus here is strictly a function of us recovering from COVID.

But we do know we have to pay a lot of our staff more because we're getting cherry picked from other localities.

I mean, this is just another piece of all of that.

Right, and I don't, you know, I don't think we want to paint a panacea that, you know, there's, this is just a few things, right?

Right, and then, you know, other things you may want to do in the CIP for affordable housing and other things.

So, you know, just to be clear, like, there are things that are not here.

And this still, you know, spins down all your debt service fund balance and a lot of other things.

But again, you know, we talk about a lot of these things.

And sometimes, to me, it feels overwhelming.

I think it's fantastic.

Yeah, very great work.

Very creative.

Thank you.

No.

So I guess one scenario could be we increase meals tax by whatever the mayor was suggesting, half a percent, and then lower the personal property tax

by a certain amount, and maybe those two would offset each other.

There are three things that I had come up with, and I frankly didn't realize that we're going to, I thought we were just talking about a capital improvement plan here, but there are three things related to other budget pieces that I wanted to mention as possible topics for spending increases.

One is that AHIP

is the only organization that got rated as a 2A, and it got the same 35% as the many organizations that were rated 2B.

Now, last year they were 2A, and I think we gave them 60%, not 35%.

I didn't know whether it was anybody's intention that we treat a 2A the same way as we treat 2B, but the consequence is

that AHIP is basically suffering about a $100,000 hit, so to speak, from the city at a time when I don't think the demand for its services in the city is going down.

So that's at least one thing that I'd like to take another look at at some point.

A, was it simply a mistake that they got 35% when they should have perhaps gotten something different?

And B, whether or not it was a mistake at their level, I think it would be a mistake at our level.

The second and third issues are drug court and the therapeutic court, both of which I continue to believe should not be part of the VCF process, should not be subject to reductions, but rather because they are based on agreements that we've got with Albemarle County and with the courts and so on, they ought to be treated, they ought to just be funded, just like OAR's projects, OAR's other projects are.

and I think that that would result in a change of roughly $100,000 or something.

Less than $100,000, I believe.

But those are the other things that I was concerned about.

Finally, I note that this suggestion is to upgrade a housing coordinator position to add another procurement person.

We have generally talked about, without specifics ever being attached, talked about the fact

that there are certain operational capacities that are inadequate in City Hall.

It has been suggested, for example, that one of the reasons why we are behind on some of the projects that are on the AB&I list is that we don't have the project management capacity to do all of those things.

If there are obstacles like that or like, you know, like

like that obstacle in particular.

If there are obstacles like that, we should be identifying them and we should be funding them and we should be removing that as an obstacle.

I guess my question is, are there other positions like that that we, aside from just sort of talking about it when we complain, are we willing to say this is important enough that we ought to fund?

I would say that we need to go back and look at the list that was submitted as a part of the budget and look at some positions that did not get funded.

The procurement position was put on after my

discussion with the procurement staff in understanding their need that is an operational issue.

And so there are others.

Just quickly, Mr. Mayor and Mr. Rogers, I know that I think Monday we're having a work session or information on housing and I hope to get more information on the capacity of our housing and where we are.

I know we need to do a more thorough

analysis of that, but I think we have capacity issues for carrying out projects in a lot of areas in the city in particular, you know, we had talked about some transportation projects.

It's a big issue there as well.

So anyway, I think that, you know, again, we have options now and we can, I will be able to go into these different projects with a high level of confidence of funding them if I know that

I've asked a question Mr. Mayor relative to this scenario of what we're looking at here in terms of the school reconfiguration.

My understanding is you've been able to have some conversations with folks on the school board perhaps

Is that true?

Yeah, and I apologize, Mr. Pinkston.

I think you were the one counselor that I didn't get to talk to since Monday.

But just to let folks know, we had a meeting on Monday.

Ms.

Torres, the chair of the school board, and Dr. Gurley, and Kim Powell, and

Mr. Rogers, Ms.

Hamill, me and Wick Knox, I believe, were the seven of the meeting.

And we talked through some of these issues.

And one of the things we eventually got to, I told the school folks, quite frankly, I was not confident that there were going to be three votes for the full $75 million bondable project.

I should say full $75 million worth of bonds, let me put it that way.

But then I thought that given the concerns that many counselors were having about not wanting to deplete all of our other capacities, if we could get the project down to something in the neighborhood of 50 million to, you know, anyway, 54 I guess is where we wound up, that I thought that there would be a majority on council willing to support that position.

And I will tell you that that wasn't just me pulling things out of the air is based on my conversations with all of you at various points.

And so to make a long story short, we eventually agreed within that meeting that we were all comfortable with the idea of the 68 million or 68.8, they're clear, quick to emphasize, 68.8 million dollar project where we would be deferring the auditorium building and

and deferring it until either further funding, well basically until further funding was available.

And of course that's what we did with Charlottesville High School.

When Charlottesville High School was built in 1974, the Performing Arts Center wasn't finished until 1980, 1981, somewhere around there, because of these kinds of delays in getting everything ironed out.

So we got to the point where they were comfortable with the $68.8 million project, with the recognition that we would work on trying to find the money going forward for the auditorium improvements.

And also recognizing that one of the things we're going to have to confront that this plan doesn't exactly deal with is how do we get to Walker?

What are we going to do what with Walker?

And that's got to be one of the important capacity issues that we're going to have to look at going forward and hopefully our economy continues to rebound and hopefully the money is there and hopefully in another year or two

We can look at it and say, okay, now we know how we're going to do Walker.

Now we know how we're going to do the auditorium.

We're just not there at this point.

There are just too many disruptions over the last couple of years.

We're just not quite there yet.

So we have general agreement among the city staff, general agreement among the city school staff.

Chair Torres thought that her school board would be okay with that.

I told her I thought that a majority of this council would be okay with that, particularly given all of the other things, the capacities that we were going to be able to leave open to be able to do the housing, to be able to do some of the other things that we've talked about.

So I hope I have accurately stated both what went on at the meeting and also accurately stated that my sense

Nice work, Mr. Mayor.

I'd have just a few thoughts to offer.

Sure, fire away.

Likewise, like others, I think this is, you know, a major step forward.

I think this is much closer to the kind of sustainable budget plan that's looking creatively across everything to get to a place that's much more sustainable than we were at the beginning, where there was no plan how to fund these things over the next five to 10 years.

And my biggest concern, you know, throughout the budget cycle has been, you know, in future years, do we have the money to maintain our operations 10 million a year for affordable housing?

PHA project, public transit, and room for climate action planning process.

And I think we're certainly much closer to having assurance that we do have that room.

I would still say I think we should be pursuing some level of tax increase.

You know, I think there is a discussion to be had around the amount this year, where it comes from, you know, I would offer, I think, as best as I can tell, I think it's a reasonable assumption that all our taxing options are regressive.

But I would think that our real estate tax would be less regressive.

than the meals or personal property tax and that we should be looking at that given that it tends to be less aggressive and also has a relief program which we know has gaps but doesn't exist for those other sources and I think we should pursue that so again that in the coming years we have a greater certainty we can afford

the improvements to CAT to get to fixed 30 or 15 minute routes, future affordable housing needs, significant operational needs, as well as whatever implementation of our climate action plan may look like going forward.

And I think we would be

much better off positioning ourselves with some level of tax increases to have greater assurance that we're going to be in that position a couple of years from now, especially when you combine it with the fact that we have a lot of economic uncertainty and a lot of inflation, which I think we can expect to potentially increase our expenditures as well as the cost of some of the investments we've already been making.

And just finally, you know, on that list of some of the things we need to be considering,

I would agree with the mayor about looking at the drug court and therapeutic docket as looking making those contractual agencies.

I would add CRHA to that as well, given the nature of our relationship with them and their position as a quasi

governmental entity on our part that we work closely with.

Likewise, looking at removing CRHA's payment move taxes, which is about $22,000.

And of the list that's on there, I think we do need to be looking at funding for the Jefferson School, as well as level funding for FAR's request.

And so I think those are some unresolved things for this budget that we need to figure out.

That's where I'm at.

Thank you.

Yeah, I think that Mr. Payne's points were very well put.

Certainly food for thought.

The sort of other, I don't want to call it a laundry list, but the extra pieces, particularly the follow-up from the VCF, is the best way, Mr. Mayor, to just sort of send you kind of what I'm thinking for those items and for you to work with

the city manager, or how do we do that?

I mean, I've gotten requests from the CASA folks, which seems like a reasonable thing.

I feel strongly about the public defender's office.

The other ones that are on the list, you know, I support those if we can pay for them.

What you mentioned about AHIP.

So there seems like there's like eight or 10 of these little sort of small things on the side.

you know what those are and what we all can kind of converge on then when we meet again we can speak from that table or that's an idea perhaps if you if all of the counselors could circulate to us to the rest of us counselors as well as the city manager's office and and Ms.

Hamill basically any any changes

to whether it's to VCF or anything else that we think we would want, just as we've got on that list of things on, where is it, page, I don't know,

Page 24, a few things that have question marks by them.

I'd be curious to know what you all think about those particular things.

I'd be curious to know if there are other topics, as I've mentioned, Drug Court Therapeutic Docket and AHIP, but there are other topics as well.

And let's see what pressures there are that come between now and Monday night or between now and next week.

next week.

I think what we were kind of projecting was that we would have, again, a public hearing on Monday night.

And then on the 7th, we had removed the word possible from the notion of that meeting.

It's clear we're going to need that meeting.

And then I would hope that that meeting would be the meeting where we would finally hash out the details and we would come at the end of the meeting with an agreement.

And I think that the statute contemplates that we would officially approve the budget, certainly by April 15th, but we've got April 12th set aside to do that.

That's also, however, it's at 530 and six o'clock is a planning commission meeting.

So that's not going to be a time when I would expect that we would have extended discussion.

So I would like to have the extended discussion.

I'd like to have a decision pretty much made on April 7th.

with that in mind, let's get any last minute changes anybody wants to suggest in by April 4th.

Sound reasonable?

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

So now are we ready for public comment?

Okay.

Sure, Mayor Snook.

Our first raised hand is Elizabeth Stark.

Hi, counselors and city staff.

Thank you so much for holding public comment after this.

Obviously, tonight we've had a lot to take in, a lot of information, but I guess I want to reiterate some things that counselor Payne said, which is that I feel very concerned that the meals tax is going to be among the most regressive taxes we can have.

You know, I have a family of four.

We just ordered pizza tonight.

It wasn't a fancy meal.

It was just like I can't cook dinner kind of situation.

And I know a lot of families and low wealth families in our community experience that.

So to my mind, the real estate tax should be the lever that we're pressing over the meals tax.

And I feel really strongly about that.

The meals tax is regressive.

I think the lodging tax is another option that, you know,

gets funny from people from out of town who can afford to come to Charlottesville and visit for various reasons.

And so the meals tax to me should be actually the very last tax that we raise.

I also heard some things I really like tonight from all the counselors and the city staff.

I know that these are difficult times and you're working hard to

Put a lot of different elements together.

I do want to say that car single person car transportation is something that's been emphasized in our community and obviously across the country.

But if we are going to have an alternative to cars, the bus has to come.

The bus has to be faster than walking, which it currently is not.

I've never ridden the bus because I literally can walk from my woolen mills neighborhood to downtown faster than I can take the bus unless cat comes every 15 minutes.

It won't be a sustainable alternative to cars.

And I also just want to say I hear you talking about affordable housing and finding ways to fund that.

And that is absolutely very important to me.

I also want to say I heard some Councillor Pinkston talking about public defenders.

The fact that they don't make as much as folks in the Commonwealth's Attorney's Office is not okay.

And we know that that is a powerful equity issue that brings people to be disproportionately incarcerated and involved in the legal system.

So

I think those are things you can, you know, fix with the budget.

And I really hope you will.

But I know it's a hard job.

I appreciate all you've done.

Thank you, Mr. Our next speaker is Anthony Blow.

Yeah, can you hear me?

Yes.

Thank you for having me.

My name is Anthony Blow.

I live on 105 Wilson Court near the Rivanna Trail by the Greenbrier Park.

And I just wanted to voice my support for the building of the pedestrian bridge near the Needler Rockhop.

I've been here for 22 years and the park is a godsend, especially during COVID.

And I can't think of better money spent than building that bridge down there.

My son has special needs and we do a lot of trail work down there.

for literally hundreds of hours.

And the last time we crossed over that, we fell and he ended up in the hospital.

He's fine, but we were worried about his back being fractured.

So we haven't crossed since then to work on the other side of the trail.

In my opinion, that would be

Huge, every, you know, I know a lot of people around here that walk to Whole Foods, they walk to Bodo's, they cross over there, you know, they're just trying to walk instead of drive a car, so it would help with transportation a little bit.

It'd be great if we could get that bridge put in.

and then maybe fixing that floating bridge.

A reminder to those wishing to speak, you may click the raise hand icon within Zoom.

If you're joining by phone, it's star nine.

Next up, we have Mariah Wilkins.

Yes, we can.

All right.

Hi, I'm Mariah Wilkins.

She, her pronouns.

I am a housing attorney at the Legal Aid Justice Center and a member of the Charlottesville Low-Income Housing Coalition.

There needs to be both short and long term thinking when it comes to meeting the affordable housing needs of the Charlottesville community.

In the short term, the city needs to plan for when COVID-19 rent relief resources are depleted in the coming months because mass displacement is likely to follow.

In the long term, the city should consider thinking more about sustainable, consistent and creative funding streams for affordable housing funding specifically, especially considering growing affordable housing needs, affordable housing development and redevelopment across the city.

More specifically, West Haven, the largest public housing site in the city, will be a site for some of the deepest affordability in the city with a mix of public housing and other programs for low-income residents.

However, it will require well over $100 million for redevelopment and to maintain that affordability, especially considering the federal law limitations on how many public housing units can return to that site during redevelopment.

As FAR and CRHA collaborate to make plans for West Haven redevelopment, there needs to be a significant commitment from the city to take the issue of deeply affordable housing seriously and understand the ramifications of not taking it seriously.

I also want to advocate for a serious commitment to funding the Park Street affordable housing development, which can be another source and resource for deeply affordable housing in the city.

With that said, my hope is for the city to consider all funding sources for ongoing affordable housing needs, if possible, and if city council votes for any tax increases, putting those discretionary funds towards affordable housing efforts.

Thank you, Ms.

Our next speaker is Nancy Carpenter.

Thank you very much for your time this evening and the due diligence you're giving to this process of the budget again.

I just wanted to support what Ms.

Stark and Ms.

Wilkins have said, especially about the real estate tax increase and the deep commitment

to West Haven as it moves forward through the process for redevelopment in the future.

We really need some boldness of action right now.

I had a thought today about Buford that it is educating students whose grandparents probably went there because that school has been there in 60 years or so.

And so we really need boldness of action

and that level too because the new Buford will be educating the grandchildren of the students that are there now when we need something for the 22nd century that they will be facing in 60 years.

So I would like to be able to see a tax increase that puts more money

towards reconfiguration, answers the question about Walker, provides public monies for public-private partnerships for deeply affordable housing because the middle class, who was the backbone of a lot of this

growth that boomers like me, you know, enjoyed, they're being decimated by these high housing prices.

And I think, you know, you'll need to see more programs that will address the housing affordability needs for a lot of a lot more people than we talk about sometimes, you know, around these tables.

and I hope that the work session you have on housing this upcoming week will really put on the table, you know, what's going on.

I mean, one of the things I see is that a lot of, you know, we're not talking about COVID, but COVID is still out there.

You know, people are still getting sick.

They're still having to stay home.

They're still losing income.

Children are getting ill.

Multiple siblings get ill at different times.

So, you know, in the immediate term,

you know we still have a serious impact from COVID and need to make sure that those folks don't end up you know on the street anywhere because you know if you know that the Salvation Army is closing their family room rooms right now so there will be no emergency shelter for family as the Salvation Army transitions that space for women so yeah a lot going on and I hope that I see that you're up to the task and with bold action and bold activity to

provide for the betterment of our residents.

Thank you, Ms.

Yes, and I just wanted to add that

You know, this has been my first budget process for this is a lot different from the schools where we would have been for the most part can finish by now and I'm looking forward to really talking about how we can more holistically

address these issues tomorrow and Saturday during our retreat so that for some of the issues that we talked about, some of those funding things that we wanted, they can be addressed kind of on the front end and so that we're not feel like we're playing catch up.

I see Mr. Divers got his hand up.

It is.

I wanted to let you know, I did a little reading on, I've got an update on grocery tax.

Okay.

Just basically, it's going to conference, right?

Yes, sir.

Yeah.

So no decisions yet.

Right.

Okay.

Okay.

Well,

I would just like to say I am very impressed with the efforts that we've had from the city manager's office and from Ms.

Hamill.

In part, I want to emphasize how impressed I am with how responsive you all have been in considering the comments that we've made along the way and how each new draft incorporates some of those ideas and you find a way to make this all work out.

without drawing any untoward comparisons has not always been thus.

So any other thoughts?

Yes, yes.

Okay.

Oh, no, no, I was saying yes, I'm trying to speak.

Oh, speak.

I know, I just, again, I wanted to thank city staff.

I know this has been incredibly, this has been a lot of work starting, you know, two years ago, as I know Chrissy's been trying to throw numbers together and trying to put things together.

and it just keeps getting refined and refined and new scenarios look up.

We, you know, two years ago, we had things, we were looking at an economy we thought was, we had no idea what was going to happen, let alone that the possibility we might have this year a $12 million surplus wasn't something I think we were even

beginning to grasp if that would be a reality.

And so I know this has been a painful process many times, and I do want to definitely honor that.

And I do want to reiterate, I just, I really think we should be looking just at a one cent or a two cent tax increase because I just, I don't like

using surpluses.

I like using surpluses for this one time, and I think this is a great creative way, but I do know that we do have upcoming issues that we need to be looking at, and we have bills due.

And yes, we're managing them right now, but I don't know if we're doing the best that we should be doing.

And by putting a one cent tax rate aside,

to a designated school pot, we're hedging our bets on that.

And so I just want to make sure, because I do feel like we're going to have to be raising taxes in the future.

And doing it very gently is a lot easier on people.

OK.

Thank you.

Anything else from any other counselor?

All right, then we are adjourned.

See you all Monday.

Oh, that's right.

Tomorrow.

Yeah.

And Monday.

And then Monday.