City Council Budget Work Session   3/16/2023

I woke up this morning, Lloyd hasn't had to defend me yet, so I'm good.

That's it, that's it.

Keep it low, keep a low bar so I don't get upset.

He's wandered away.

I didn't want to say, could we interrupt you for a minute?

Okay, folks, it's a little after six, so let's go ahead and get started and call to order this meeting with City Council, a work session on various parts of the budget.

Do we formally take the roll?

Ms.

Here.

All here and all accounted for.

Mr. Mayor, Council, good evening.

Welcome to this work session on our budget.

This is our second.

Last week we rolled out the city manager's recommended budget and we had several of our agencies come and make presentations to you about their budget and their operation.

Tonight we have several items on the agenda.

First,

We want to talk about the tax relief program.

I'll have Ms.

Hamill walk through that with our Commissioner of Revenue here to our divers to answer any questions that you may have.

Then we will move to our vibrant communities fund allocation and discuss that process and discuss where we ended up in terms of recommendations with respect to that and that was a great process.

You'll know more about it.

It's very transparent and one that I think we all can support and stand behind.

Then we will talk about the Housing Opportunity Program

and the recommendations there.

And finally, what was the last thing?

We'll talk about pathways, government agency funding, talk about pathways, talk about JAUNT, and the African American Heritage Center, which are issues that we need to raise up because it's a decision to be made in each of those categories.

So we started off with Ms.

Thank you.

Good evening, council.

We're going to go through a few slides regarding the tax relief program.

As you know, the commissioner of revenues office administers three programs that provide assistance to homeowners or renters.

Those three programs are the real estate tax relief for the elderly and disabled, the Charlottesville homeowner assistance program, and the rent relief for the elderly and disabled persons.

Here we've budgeted just a little over two and a quarter million dollars across all three of those programs and the proposed budget for FY24 has those at 2.6

Over the last year we looked at these programs and we have tried to previously the city would set each year and Mr. Divers would go through a lot of calculations to determine income levels we have done away with that process and we're using the federal or HUD

guidelines for something that's identifiable for each of those programs we are looking at the median family income and so for the real estate tax relief for the elderly and disabled anyone at the 30% of MFI or 35,000 or below is 100% relief and then moving down through each of the categories finally up to $60,000 receives 40% relief

the Charlottesville homeowner assistance program is income qualifications are the same as the elderly and disabled program.

There's no age limitation and the home value is the average assessed value of taxable residential parcels which according to the latest real estate assessment rounded up to the nearest 5,000 for FY23 that was.

Thank you.

Rent relief for the elderly and disabled again this was a program for the elderly and disabled it reimburses eligible applicants up to 25% of the rent paid out of pocket and the maximum benefit is capped at $1,500 and the net worth which is almost never a disqualifier but is at $125,000 with income of $50,000 or less

So looking at the relief of recipients for calendar year 2022 we had 298 recipients for the tax relief for the elderly and disabled 615 for the CHAP program and 263 for the rent relief for the elderly and disabled

So almost one out of every 20 households in the city benefited from rent or tax relief or CHAP in 2022

When we compare Charlottesville to other localities in terms of the rent relief that they've gathered we've looked at a few I'm sorry real estate we have compared a few of the other localities you can see where the city falls we're at 2.42 percent as a percent of revenue we granted just over 2.4 million dollars

Hello everyone.

I'm here to talk about the Vibrant Community Fund process.

This is a kind of a general summary of what the process, what the findings were.

We don't go into any specific conversations.

specific conversations about particular applicants, but we're going to do an overview here this evening.

As you can see here, we try to keep developing the program from year to year.

We've recently been trying to bring equity in as more of a focus area for the applicants, and I think it's having some impact on how people are doing their work in the community.

We had a development of a new and emerging category for newer, younger organizations.

It was a new way of including more people from the community that haven't applied before, maybe they didn't know about it.

The county continues to operate an independent process for funding local nonprofits, so it's currently still separate.

We had an expanded orientation this year, which included DEI-specific training offered to all applicants and was well attended, I believe.

We tried to increase opportunity for technical assistance through weekly staff office hours.

So we held office hours for two hours a week for the whole time that the application was open.

I believe it was five weeks.

And also this year, housing-related applications were moved to a different process, which we call HOPs, which I believe is being discussed later.

This year we had five funding priority areas, youth, family, and education, economic impact and jobs, health and safety, new and emerging, and arts and culture.

Arts and culture applications are done in a slightly different way.

The first four categories work through a Zoom grants online platform, whereas the arts and culture applications come in a different way.

format, and that's because the questions that we ask of the top four don't necessarily correlate to what the arts and culture groups do, and so they have a separate process.

Similar scoring and reviewing is just done a little bit differently.

Applications are ranked by importance in addressing priority areas, essential, important, helpful, no direct connection, and by application score, the quality, exemplary, solid, fair, and weak.

Equity questions are included throughout the application process.

application evaluation criteria improvements which include requests of organizational DEI statements and other questions related to equity so we do ask for statements about that and how they do it and maybe what metrics or measures they have to show how that's improving what they do whether that's through development of people on their board or through staff or how they engage their clients and constituents

The review team members are intentionally diverse, consists of a blend of consumers of these services, citizens with grant management experience, city staff, and people with nonprofit experience

We held orientations each year for applicants as well as for review team members.

The process includes scoring matrix that's directly tied to each question in the application.

The matrix is reviewed with applicants during the orientation process and we're open to conversation about that throughout the open application period.

We try our best to offer technical assistance

for people that are either curious about their application or if they're new to that.

I would say this year I didn't really do a very good job of collecting that information because requests come through text, email, phone, or office hours, so it's hard to collect and get an aggregate number of that.

But we do have a lot of people coming in for assistance and support for the different parts of the application process.

This is an important note here.

For FY24, the total request for funding was 4.342 million.

and the budget we had was 2.175 and so there was about a double in what was requested versus what was available.

There were a total of 71 program applications submitted and 59 of those received between 90 and 22% of their request.

In the FY24 process, we asked for DEI statements as well as specific questions related to how diversity, equity, and inclusion is demonstrated in their programs.

These questions communicated the city's position about the importance of DEI in our community and generated more open discussion about that.

I think the training we had this year with a local partner really helped

helped applicants understand the purpose behind it and what we're trying to gain through this.

It's not just something we want you to just say you're doing, but how are you doing it and what's the impact around that for citizens and how the city wants to provide services to our community.

and then there were some real work going on out there with how people are really trying to take these things seriously and then kind of merge it into what they do on a regular basis.

It was very exciting for some of these people for what the review teams were reading.

Ongoing efforts and future actions.

We're gonna continue to define success measures for different types of applicants.

We want to keep improving and developing parameters for new and emerging organizations and how to anticipate technical support needs of applicants from year to year.

And then discussions to close the gap between the total requested funds and fund availability, whether that be through an increased fund or potentially managing what we allow to be asked or requested.

And so those are things we're going to have to discuss at some point.

and really want to continue to develop new reviewers and recruit new people from the community to come be part of this process.

This is the funding matrix.

This is how we kind of determine who goes where.

You can see the percentages in each box.

The yellow box, the highlighted boxes are areas in which funding was awarded.

If you feel outside of those categories, no funding was recommended through this process.

and you can see the breakdown there and how those were set up.

And then at the bottom you can see where arts and culture, by the way, if you're gonna go back and add the totals for who was awarded, how many applications, arts and culture are not included in this chart because they come in separately.

and I think that's all I need to point out there.

Can you go back one quick second, Chrissy?

Also want to point out, particularly, other than the fundamental category, which includes programs and operations that the city deems essential to the functioning of city work, I want to point out that youth, family, and education receive the second highest amount as a category, 561,000.

$844.

It was the largest outside of the fundamental groups.

Next slide.

Maybe it.

Yep, that's all for me.

You said that youth education

Aside from the fundamental, the fundamental category is not really its own category.

It's just a collection of, I guess they're mostly public safety-ish programs, but that was the second highest categorical amount.

I'll turn it over to Ms.

Kelly.

Good evening.

For the record, Brenda Kelly, Redevelopment Manager.

I'm going to walk you through the housing operations and program support process, also known as HOPs.

So previously, the affordable housing applications also came through the Vibrant Community Funds.

But based on the new city's affordable housing plan that was adopted, this program was pulled out so that the Office of Community Solutions now addresses affordable housing programs in all categories of funding.

So the affordable housing programs are formally submitted through the Vibrant Community Funds.

This competitive application process is open to not-for-profit organizations that engage in affordable housing related activities that may be requesting operational or program type funding.

Again, this is different than our CAF process.

This is for operation related funding.

Organizations must have substantial presence in the city of Charlottesville and engage in affordable housing activities within the city limits.

Applications were due December 31st and funding was not guaranteed.

We received 14 applications with a total requested funding of over 1.3 million.

and the total funding that was available was 575,000 so similar to the vibrant communities this was more than double the ask than what was available to be funded.

So the CAF committee reviewed the applications.

The City Council appoints the CAF committee members, and that was the agency that reviewed this.

It was basically a similar process to Vibrant Community Funds process.

There's a little different terminology.

So the committee members first reviewed the applications on their own and then as a committee they went through every single application and discussed it and they basically put it into categories of where they thought the need of the service and the importance of the service was and the clarity of the application and the request.

They then went back and similar to Vibrant Community Funds there's a scoring matrix and that follows the evaluation criteria in the application and each of the committee members scored each of the applications and after consideration of the categories they were grouped in and the scorings they came up with

The committee recommended funding these agencies at 90% of their requested funding which comes in just a little bit under the 575,000 maximum funding allocated.

Is that it with the slides?

So if you could just clarify that the citizen funding committee for this is different from the vibrant community funding?

This is the CAF committee which is appointed by city council and that comes following recommendations under the affordable housing plan.

Thank you.

Sure.

Within this lovely book, where is the actual list?

At page 113.

Thank you.

Cool.

So the intergovernmental is the other sort of subset of agency funding that we do.

Most of the agencies that fall in this category are governed by either MOUs or agreements.

They're also largely regional partners.

The budget office works closely with the county budget office in making recommendations for funding with these and so I've provided you with a separate report of those agencies but I'll just flip through these quickly if you have any questions we can go back to them

the Public Defender's Office as you know this is a supplement that we provide they typically what we have funded them is whatever COLA city and county employees are getting we provide that much of an increase last year council did approve some additional funding to supplement some extra positions

and so there was a request to fund a couple additional positions which we the county did not fund or did we at this point there would be an option here because we have proposed a six percent COLA to city employees whether or not we want to increase this to be the six percent

The regional jail, those contract, sorry, that increase is largely for salary and healthcare related increases and contracted services

The Blue Ridge Health District again this is a formula they did request funding for three new positions which we chose to not cover this increase here is largely for health insurance and pay increases that were granted by the state

Blue Ridge Detention Center with our work session last week Ms.

Marshall provided you some information but that increase is largely related to bed days based on our formula Central Virginia Small Business a slight decrease there that was just based on their request

SPCA again this is a formula it's based on per capita and there's a rate set so that's how this number was arrived at Charlottesville Center for Contemporary Arts that's based on previous agreement and the ECC's increase was basically salary contracted services as well as some capital expenses

Jabba requested a slight increase.

This is the first time in five years they've actually requested an increase.

And this was largely to raise their wages, their lowest wages to $15 an hour.

Jaunt, I'm sorry, Jaunt, which we will talk about separately in a few minutes, had a request of 1.9 million.

That's a change of just a little over half a million.

The library this is basically also the second year of them working to raise their their minimum wage it's also funding a there was a part-time position that's now being funded I'm sorry they are funding a part-time position that's for the new drive-up service at Gordon Avenue Library

PVCC that was just based on their requests and pathways Miss Graves is here and she's going to talk to you about that in just a few minutes as well that's a increase that the pathways used to be funded through vibrant community funds and we've pulled that out separately we're now treating it as intergovernmental

Virginia Career Works, this was a slight increase.

It's basically, let's see what I have for that one.

I think that was just formula.

Region 10, no increase.

Could I stop a second?

The comprehensive services is a formula.

Okay.

I'm just curious.

Yep.

It's a formula based on a report that they sent to the state.

let's see Ravana Conservation Alliance those are basically inflationary increases the Central Virginia Partnership for Economic Development they're moving to a new space this also is a per capita charge planning district virtually no changes other than a per capita

Thomas Jefferson Soil and Water, no change, United Way, no change.

The Cooperative Extension Program, they had state approved pay adjustments.

They also are converting a part-time position to full-time in hopes to help alleviate some staff turnover.

and so all these together in FY23 we budgeted about 13 million in 24 just a little over 15 million was requested we've proposed about 14.6 the pathways fund does sort of add to that curve a little bit as that is a half a million dollar request and that was not included in this group last year

So all told for this category it's about a 12.4% increase

Sure.

At this point?

If I'm getting ahead of things, let me know.

So with the jail, when the renovation happens, that line item will show up here a year from now or two years from now or whenever?

Correct.

All right.

So we fund a portion of those positions.

They are largely state funded.

I see.

And they were programmatic, sort of.

I think one was an admin assistant, if I'm recalling correctly, and maybe a nurse practitioner, too.

I believe that that's accurate.

The positions were for very specific programs.

And if I recall correctly,

And again, that's the kind of thing if one partner doesn't fund it, it doesn't make sense for the other partner to fund either.

So now we will address, let's see, I think we had Pathways and Ms.

Good evening, Misty Graves.

I'm the director of the Department of Human Services.

I wanted to give a little briefing on sort of the current state of pathways because it's included in this presentation and sort of looking ahead to what to expect in the next fiscal year.

Currently there is still close to $700,000 of rental and utility bill assistance remaining in the Pathways Fund.

Folks to access those resources must meet eligibility requirements and they would call through the community resource hotline.

So far we've met 797 client requests so far this year and that looks like about $843,000 that have already gone out to individuals who have requested either utility bill assistance or rental or mortgage assistance.

So I sort of project how far these dollars will get us at this current rate that it's being utilized by city residents.

Currently requests disbursements are about $20,000 going out per week up to sometimes as high as $35,000 going out per week.

So I'm looking ahead and estimating about $400,000 additional that will go out before the end of the fiscal year.

Which leaves us with a little bit of a balance heading into FY24.

That balance will carry over for us.

So it will be in addition to the $500,000 that's being proposed for Pathways.

This is a challenge.

This will be a challenge for us, although it's a generous increase from the $84,000 that Pathways was allocated in prior history before COVID.

we have doubled the amount or we're projecting to double the amount of funds going out to residents so this will be a big change in availability of funds to city residents and so our teams are currently sort of strategizing on how we can sort of manage that so that we can meet those requests and make that fund last as long as possible we also have a separate pot of money that we call beyond pathways anything that's outside of

making the rental payment or mortgage payment or utility bill payment.

So, for example, we noticed that with the onset of COVID, we saw an increase of emergency homelessness needs for children with families, families with children.

and also individuals who are medically compromised and vulnerable.

And so there is a small pot of funds that are made available to folks that meet eligibility criteria for an emergency hotel stay for a finite period of time.

We also have another pot of money for support needs that

may include a car repair.

Maybe they're able to make a rental payment and their utility bill payment, but they're not able to plan for an unexpected car breakdown that needs to stay on the road so that they can continue to go to work.

That is another sort of balance that will transfer into FY24.

You can change the slide.

So again, $500,000 is what's in the proposed budget for FY24.

We will carry over some funds from FY23.

We have to understand that we'll have to set aside some funds to compensate staff who are on the front lines handling those phone calls.

So some of that money will go to operations.

Some of the program changes that we are sort of sorting out right now will include

decreasing the amount that's available per request.

So right now folks have $1,000 a month up to $3,000 a year.

Moving into the next fiscal year we will have to change that to be one request per year per calendar year for up to $1,000.

And we may consider limiting it to only housing assistance.

We're going to continue to connect folks with resources all along the way.

Other partners who have stepped up to say, hey, we're not able to do rental assistance, but we can't offer this.

And we kind of work together to refer to some of the other partners that we were working with.

And we're going to make sure that those residents who are in need of support are familiar with those resources out in the community.

So, Misty, just quickly, can you just remind me quickly about what that process is like?

Someone calls and say, you know, I live in the city, I need help with my rent or electric bill.

What type of information

We do.

It is ARPA dollars so we have to keep track of records and they have to meet requirements that were set by ARPA requirements.

So in general, you have to meet a certain income level and you may be asked to offer a bank statement or a pay stub.

You may also qualify, one of the qualifications if you receive federal assistance, so if you receive SNAP,

TANF, if you receive SSI or SSDI, you qualify for the ARPA fund.

Thank you for that presentation.

There will not be more coming in after this.

So after this, we are moving towards more sustainable funds so that we can continue to offer this resource to residents.

So that's where we're starting to titrate back.

And could you explain as well the county's connection with this?

So we will we're sort of the front lines we have the operations so we have the call center software we hire and manage the staff that handle the calls and we work with the United Way they handle the check you know making sure the disbursements go out and they sort of keep the books for us and then we work with Albemarle County we do the same eligibility screening process for Albemarle County residents

Obviously the state's support for additional support for Medicaid is ending in next month as well as SNAP COVID supplemental assistance has ended.

In my opinion, I think it's hard to predict, but if I'm looking at the trend from FY22 being a 600, when we had those benefits in place, $654,000 in disbursements to as those federal and other state programs have pulled back, we're now seeing we're going to probably meet that $1.2 million mark for this year.

Well, I mean, there will be a shortage of financial relief, but we also coordinate with other agencies that our homelessness system of care respond to those increase in needs.

I can't speak to regionally, but I know locally this is the one place that can sort of move that process.

Thank you.

Mr. Sanders Councilors we also felt it necessary to call out one specific situation in regards to vibrant communities applications and I need to take you back to last year in this particular situation the Jefferson School had previously received a large allocation two different times to cover their rent

through what was at that time an equity fund.

It was funded through surplus funds, I believe.

Yeah, that's where it was funded by surplus funds.

That fund no longer exists and the desire for the city to still support that particular expense is still there.

When I brought the item before you last year, it was to provide what I refer to as a bridge.

to give you additional time to get into strategic planning so that you would be able to consider that particular type of request and how you would plan to go forward based on conversations that we had been having at the time.

The fact that we have not gotten the strategic planning process underway now leaves us at a point that that bridge isn't going to get us as far as I had hoped, meaning that the funds that you have provided to them will expire end of June.

so that would leave them without the support from the city to cover their rent and also not what we would consider to be an adequate time to be able to step up and cover that themselves so one of the things that we thought we should do in this moment is to share with you that they did submit a request through Vibrant Communities at the urging of staff to do so so there was a request on record because there hadn't been an official ask on record before and we wanted to make sure that you had that before you

and then at this moment we're asking that you consider an additional bridge to then allow you to get through strategic planning which is now set to begin in May.

You would then be able to complete that process having undertaken the consideration of how you wanna support the Jefferson School going forward in this particular category.

and then by the time that those funds had expired you would have at least been able to allow us to determine how best to go forward with additional consideration of rent so we just wanted to call out to you that one their request for program support was recommended for funding that's $42,000 specifically for the program learning a learning and engagement program

but the rent item was not recommended for funding because it does not really fit within the scope but it really was to ensure that there was a request on record for you to have as you then move into the next phase of consideration of that particular item.

So I spoke with the, and I imagine gonna talk to all of us, the consultant today for the

strategic plan in preparation for a May retreat, I guess.

Not specific.

It really isn't about the Jefferson School specifically.

That wouldn't be a point of deliberation.

It would be council to consider how you want to make investments in nonprofit organizations, set parameters around how far you want to go

I'm just curious whether there is any

Do you have that comparable sort of strategic planning going on on the Jefferson School side of things?

Because if their assumption is that we're just going to continue

Spend $186,000 a year on rent without looking at the question of whether there might be some changes they could be making in their operations.

Sure.

I wouldn't be able to speak to what they are considering in regards to that matter.

Actually, I hope Dr. Douglas might even be online tonight and might actually speak to that herself.

We have not asked that directly of them, so I think that would be more of an organizational matter in that regard.

And I guess connected to that is the hope or our goal for

There are really two aspects to it.

We could give a bridge through the end of this first year which would be November 30th of 23 and then we would have to make some determination of what to do based on what you all had deliberated on and decided.

or you could extend it beyond all the way through the end of our fiscal year which would be June 30 of 24 and that way there would be a potential off-ramp if you were so inclined to suggest something of that nature.

I think it's important and it's fair to understand that we need to at least give them the direction that we want them to have if there is some intention to not fully fund going forward in total.

You've not included it in the budget at this point, but sometime between now and... No, we didn't feel as though it had to be called out as a funding decision for the budget.

Yeah, so that's the last bullet here.

We have $150,000 currently in the budget for the Council Initiatives account, which is where we covered the $107,000 for.

So they're covered now through the end of June.

No.

I'm certain that is what the Jefferson School staff and board would like to know as soon as possible.

So if you're ready to tell me you want me to bring an item to you and give me the parameters for which that item should be framed, I will bring that as the part of the April 3rd meeting.

Yeah, I'll just go ahead and voice my own personal view about this, which might not be wise, but I feel like we've given a bridge to get to the end of this year.

I personally would need some convincing to be able to continue to extend those funds into the next fiscal year.

Happy to have conversations with my colleagues separately and with others in the atmosphere at some point, but that's where I sit right now.

Yeah, I think we can have that larger conversation because I think that we should support them because of the role that they play in the community to have these difficult conversations that we often have.

That's the place that we go.

Yes.

And I agree with the Vice Mayor's points.

You know, I would support funding it through the Council Initiatives Fund.

And I think by next budget cycle, we need to figure out what the long-term situation is going to be.

Quite frankly, my perspective is, you know,

I'm open to longer term basically having the city subsidize.

The Jefferson School, in my view, they're a public asset.

They're very entangled with the city in terms of their history and formation.

And I think it would just be a huge loss to have that go away long term.

And I think that I've, you know, just hearing different from, you know, the overall operation concerns about the management operations that really needs to be discussed, and I think that the strategic plan process can be, that can be included as part of that.

Because we have, the city has a lot of money invested in that, we pay rent as far as the carver, and I think that we gave them

um you know

Yeah, and just to be clear, I think that some level of subsidy, it could be completely appropriate for the reasons you and you have both stated, I would be open to some level of that, I just, at some point, I mean, we've been talking about this, I've been on council for a year, been talking about this for a while, I just would like to know what that

I would add, we actually have been, since I've been on council now three plus years, we've been talking about it since about March of 2020, and we've all acknowledged that the scope of the problem is more than just the Jefferson School of African American Heritage Center.

It's the foundation.

It's the entire scheme.

And aside from everybody sitting there saying, well, gee, this is an interesting problem.

I don't know that anybody has taken any action to sort it out.

I get that this is not the only one of these situations that I think we have allowed to sort of get punted down the road a little bit when we've identified a problem and we just haven't for whatever reason been able to

to take any action on it.

I don't have a strong feeling about it, about whether to give them an entire year's worth or six months' worth.

I agree, I'm not anxious to just cut them off, but I'd like to provide some incentive for the people to actually confront the problems.

And there are problems, and we've all talked about them.

I will take that as I should bring an item before you on April 3rd.

And then we'll talk some more.

Thank you.

Yes.

On the first slide we

And we held up, John, you'll be clear as we work through the slides.

Their request was $1,973,232.

That's a $530,000 increase of 36.7%.

John's total budget is $14,036,000.

Jaunt ended FY22 with a surplus and used some of that surplus to create reserves by the policies of their board.

The reserves are $6.2 million.

They divided in three categories, 3 million for a rainy day fund, 1 million for a capital reserve fund, and 2.2 for working capital reserve.

They decided that 1.2 million was excess to be distributed back to the shareholders, shareholder localities.

In that context, the city of Charlottesville holds five votes.

Albemarle County holds five votes.

and then there were smaller counties have had three votes total, two votes apiece, right.

And Jaunt considered distribution methods.

One was to distribute by 281

$1,171 back to the city based on an expense methodology.

They've done an audit and they decided to distribute back based on expenses.

And then the other is based on local share.

I have expressed my concern or dismay with that methodology as I have to you.

So, the original ask, this is second page now, was 2.114588.

The revised ask was 1.973232.

Shown in the budget is $1,443,000

And we're holding 187,526 in reserve, which comes down to $1,630,607.

When you look at the ask of John, that creates a gap of $342,625.

A little over $55,000, not $61,000 in terms of funds that we would have to find to fully fund their requests.

That's where we are now.

So I served on there for many years, the board with my county transportation hat on and as I recall that if we don't, I mean, we have to kind of parallel the cat service fixed route traffic service that they have like on Sundays and weekends or what have you.

So is this in align with that?

I see Ted Ted is saying yes, yes You want to speak, Ted?

You're correct.

Most of what we do for the city is to provide complimentary ADA service to Americans with Disabilities Act.

ADA enacted in 1990 is a civil right.

And if you provide a fixed route system, you need to provide a complimentary paratransit system for people who can't use the fixed route.

So that's required.

And so our budget is driven by that requirement that we have done on behalf of the city.

Okay.

Well, the biggest part of our increase is dealing with capital.

We are no longer able to access federal and state funds to help buy buses and computer systems that we use to operate the system for the city.

We're not eligible for certain sliver of money.

Now the city is eligible for that money.

No, it's not.

Well, part of it is the board did authorize last week to use this distribution that Mr. Rogers indicated, the $1.2 million, as a first year reduction.

We have seven communities that we provide services to and everyone's getting a proportional share of that $1.2 million.

Next year, FY25, if we run a similar surplus, we would again commit to distributing that again.

So that's not certain.

It depends on how well we do this year.

Okay, thank you.

Do you need a decision on this tonight or this is informational at this point?

It's informational.

So you indicated that you would make adjustments and you might not purchase another bus.

Well, I mean, I was just throwing that out there.

I don't know exactly what of our capital program would be reduced, but to go to your point, our vehicles have a minimum useful life of five years.

The average vehicle in our fleet is 4.2 years old.

so kind of hitting the minimum requirement which does drive up maintenance costs to keep the vehicles on the road.

So somewhere in our capital program we would have to find a way to make it or maybe we're able to work with the city to access some federal funds that we don't access now and that could offset that.

So we're still trying to discuss how to fill some of that funding gap so there could be some hope yet.

Our capital program assumes we spend everything in the same year.

There are supply chain issues with getting buses, for example.

So even though we may have a grant to buy buses this year, it may not be until 2025 before we actually get them and spend the money.

What's your ridership now?

Well, it's going up across the board.

The city share of the ridership, the ADA, is going up almost 12%.

And I have other communities like Greene County going up 30%, 25%.

Luis is going up quite a bit.

Buckingham is kind of staying stable.

So it depends where you are.

But we are seeing increases.

As we come out of COVID, we are seeing much more ridership.

Can you help me understand, you know, I know you changed the methodology for reimbursement that goes to the city, and we've gotten about $200,000 less, which is $200,000 that can't go to pathways, other priorities we've already discussed.

Are you speaking about why we picked one, not the other?

Correct.

Local share is really based on how much each community contributes to John.

John has not had a very standardized approach to asking for money from the different jurisdictions.

FY24 actually is the first time that we're having a more standardized approach to doing money.

So in FY22, there was not a consistent method by which we asked money from communities.

The expense side is knowable, it's auditable.

We can trace it back with a high degree of accuracy as to what each community cost to run service.

So we felt that was a more reliable metric.

Now we weren't trying to

favor one community over another.

We just asked our question, what is the best way to distribute it?

There are probably other ways to do it, but the expense way was seen as an audited figure.

Part of the reason we have a surplus is we underspent our budget because the demand didn't match our projections at that point.

So it just seemed to be a more reliable method of doing it to be transparent and to be equitable.

Again, we weren't trying to benefit one community over another.

Well, first of all, we've never been in a position, to my knowledge, of giving money back to community.

So this is the first time.

And maybe the last time, but hopefully, well, hopefully it is the last time.

But so for this year, based on how we calculated local share

And local contribution is equal to the cost, less federal and state funds.

What's left over is what we ask from the communities.

How John distributed federal and state money to different jurisdictions was not a very straightforward approach.

It was almost arbitrary in some cases.

So based on that, some communities may be underpaid and other communities may be overpaid.

So it didn't seem to be a fair approach, whereas the expenses, we know with some degree of reliability that it costs X number of dollars in Charlottesville and Y number of dollars in Albemarle.

Sorry, just a final question because, I mean, all this has kind of surprised me.

It's been hard for me to make sense of because I haven't been able to look at anything, backing it up, figuring it out.

Well, we made two options, local share and expenses.

We reviewed it to our finance committee first.

The finance committee is chaired by the deputy CFO of Albemarle County, and he and the other member of the committee

We reviewed these options and felt, again, the expense option was the fairest, the most equitable.

Our executive committee looked at it and they agreed.

The full board looked at it.

It was a nine to three vote on our board.

The three people who voted against the measure didn't vote against it because of the methodology.

They just didn't think it was the right time to give money back.

So it was more of a philosophical issue about the distribution as opposed to the methodology.

We did bring it to our shareholders.

There's a slight correction to the distribution.

We distribute it to our funding partners, not our shareholders exclusively.

We have seven jurisdictions, five of whom are shareholders, two of which are not, and we distributed all seven based on the expense method.

And for us to do that, our shareholders had a vote to make that distribution.

I'm puzzled by your statement that the expense method is auditable and therefore knowable when I would think that all you need to know for the local share is what your numerator is and what your denominator is.

Well, it's not local share in the sense of stock ownership.

Okay.

Well, for FY22.

So if we got a total of $7 million in local contribution from our funding partners, then you take the numerator would be what Charlottesville's share of that $7 million is divided by the $7 million.

I guess I'm not understanding why that's not very readily knowable.

No, because the method by which the local shares determined, local contribution, was not a consistent, transparent, equitable approach.

whereas the expenses were better defined by distributing to the local jurisdictions.

But a surplus is a product of two things, expenses and income.

And you say you don't know the income,

A fair share.

Well then that would disenfranchise the other jurisdictions who don't have shares.

Not all of our funding partners have shares.

But again, the word share should be contribution.

It's the share of our expenses.

It's not a stock share.

We have 16 shares outstanding.

The city has five of those shares, which is one-third.

Are there any bylaws or anything that

We've never been in a position to distribute funds before, so this is the new thing.

That's happening this year in FY24.

We're getting a lot of shoot-the-messenger kind of issues.

Louisa, for example, they've seen their thing go way up.

They were informed about not paying their fare.

Sure, they get it.

And the reason we went to a multi-year phase-in was

Partly because of their insistence on that.

So a lot of communities are feeling the impact of us kind of normalizing our distribution method.

So you're not alone in that.

Buckingham saw a 200% increase in their share.

So we're working that through with them.

This is kind of a tough year.

Yes, but the board has already indicated they're not interested in using a rainy day fund in this kind of a circumstance.

So it probably would revolve in reducing expenses.

But I'm hopeful we can find some federal state funds through the city to avoid that situation.

If we could get a normal amount of federal and state funds, our increase would have been $200,000 this year, not $500,000.

And I do admit that this is a new problem for the city to deal with, but the city is...

to my knowledge never contributed federal and state money to John's capital program before.

John has fallen money independent of the city and for many decades the city has benefited from that.

Most urban systems like CAT do contribute their federal and state money to ADA Paratransit.

The city has not done that and we're asking us to do that.

It's a new problem.

So I'm not blaming anybody for it, but I am hopeful we can figure out a solution.

Well, we're kind of getting in the weeds, but there are two types of federal funds, urban and rural.

We get rural money, but we don't get urban.

Well, we used rural money for urban services, and we used it for decades, which we weren't supposed to.

That's part of the problems we run into.

And now we can't do that, and this is the first year, first budget, where we're living with that reality.

The last couple years,

Is there any likelihood that there would be a surplus again next year?

Well, we are running a bit of a state into cash.

So I think everyone is aware of the recent difficulties that Jaunt has had to, you just mentioned the piece about the, we'll call it graciously an error in terms of the way the former management or whatever calculated the share of federal dollars for rural routes.

I know we've had a number of conversations about this and I just think it's worth pointing out to people that you and your board that you have now are working to sort of not just turn the page from the past but turn the chapter, maybe even a new book

in terms of jaunt going forward, and I think some of this is just a recognition that things weren't right in the past.

We didn't know they were wrong, but now we do, and now things will be different going forward, and I think some of this is just the kind of lurch it takes to get from one paradigm to another.

Well, that's well stated.

Other questions?

Thank you.

Okay, so that brings us to the end of tonight's presentations, and it's on the board as we have further work sessions.

schedule and moving down toward adoption of the budget on April 11th.

And we would expect that at one of these meetings we would do as we did last year and engage you in a discussion of where you are.

Thank you.

Oh, okay.

One, I think you answered this last budget session but I forgot.

The Tourism Board, our allocation this year almost doubled.

It's based on a formula and also the lodging tax collections.

So the year prior was really an artificial decrease, if you will, due to COVID.

I know just a few months ago we'd allocated about a million to them through ARPA.

Right.

And I know the state had also directly given them about a million for that purpose.

Yeah.

The Public Defender's Office, are you looking for direction from us?

So our practice has been to increase their contribution by an equal amount of whatever COLA we give to city employees.

The county did 4%.

At one point early in our budget process, we were looking at 4%, so that's what's reflected in this increase here.

It's not material.

That seems worth doing to me.

The SPCA, I know it's formula-funded.

We discussed it some last time.

They have.

We are right now, they're booked for the May 15th work session.

Their executive director will be coming before you basically giving a report because they have not given a report since 2019.

And I also ask that the addressing of what came before you in the form of the letter identifying various concerns from members of the public as well as employees.

So they have agreed to do that.

I have a meeting tomorrow with the county I'm working to do what I advise you all that I would do and that was make sure that the city was aligned with the county and responding to the state because we have an obligation in regards to the operations of the SPCA and there has been additional action taken thus far the state veterinary services office has responded with a desire for corrective action

And one other question is I know some months ago we had discussed as part of the Vibrant Community Fund there being some amount that wasn't allocated.

All of it's allocated.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Yes, please.

Could you help me understand?

CIP.

That is where we can work the magic.

Yeah.

Hopefully it'll go better than last year's.

I mean, last year's was pretty intense.

Yeah.

I thought it went pretty well.

Tongue in cheek, tongue in cheek.

So, my question, I mean, it's not a question, it's a comment maybe from Misty and Brenda, is that, you know, for the funding committees that you all have from the, that you have members from the public, if, you know, if we can make that information available for next year or in the future, when you have openings, so people know how to apply.

I did it for many years, the funding, and it's very, very helpful to understand what's, you know,

some great organizations in this community.

Unfortunately, we can't fund them all, but it's a really enlightening process.

But everyone should have that opportunity to read hundreds of pages of documents.

Any other comments?

Okay, so we're ready for public comment at this point?

We are doing this sort of a hybrid.

We've got people in the room here who may wish to speak.

and I assume that there might be people online who would wish to speak as well and typically what we've done is to alternate one here, one online, back and forth.

You will have up to three minutes to speak and if you are viewing electronically

You can raise your hand if you're on Zoom or star nine if you're coming in by phone and we'll say we'll alternate them back and forth.

Let's first see if there's anybody here who would like to speak.

Anybody?

Let's see.

Starting up front.

Yes, ma'am.

Come on up.

Tell us who you are, where you live.

Good evening.

Thank you for your time.

My name is Asia Green and I am a resident of South Sixth Street, a mother of a nine-year-old boy and the organizer of Forestry's program.

I apologize, guys.

Although the program only started in 2022, we have made great strides.

We have engaged over 100 youth on six out of seven public housing sites.

We have provided community education, identified youth leaders, and worked one-on-one with over 100 young people to provide skills development and encourage their involvement in their neighborhoods.

The voices of youth are crucial to redevelopment, especially as we move forward to Westhaven redevelopment.

There are approximately 250 children living at Westhaven, and FAR will ensure the voices and visions of youth are incorporated into the planning.

We hope that Council will decide to provide vibrant community support for FAR.

As a small citywide nonprofit, we depend on support from this grant to continue our programming.

The youth and their families want this work to continue to grow.

I would like to ask for anyone in the audience who supports FAR to stand up or raise their hands.

Thank you.

I am requesting that the city fund the For Our Youth Program.

This program will engage young residents and community initiatives that impact them, especially redevelopment, safety, and design for recreational spaces.

Thank you, Ms.

Green.

So is there anybody online who would like to speak to us?

Elizabeth Stark?

Ms.

Hi, counselors.

Thank you.

My name is Elizabeth Stark.

I live in the Woolen Mills neighborhood of the city.

I appreciate the counselors and city staff for having this informative meeting.

I'm back tonight to talk about my favorite subject, which is pathways.

Based on the information presented tonight,

It's clear that Pathways, as described, is going to be underfunded.

I know I've been beating this drum for weeks now, but I want to ask again that you consider allocating additional funds to Pathways.

The average rent in Charlottesville is around $1,500, which happens to be around the same amount that tenants tend to owe when facing eviction.

Most renters who fall behind, fall behind a month or more in rent.

meaning that the current proposal is an effective gutting of pathways as written this this fund would only help a small minority of renters avoid eviction we know that we have a serious lack of affordable housing in Charlottesville and the area and once the housing is lost tenants have a very hard time attaining alternative housing both because they have an eviction on their record and because there just isn't low or affordable housing to be found

While the city may be supportive of other programs and services, for instance, for unhoused or those facing homelessness, the best solution is to keep families in their homes and together in the first place.

I would like to ask once again that you consider allocating additional funds

plants, the changes will leave tenants without a vital lifeline as they face eviction and other hurdles.

Thank you, Ms.

Stark.

So next, anyone here next like to speak?

Good evening.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of council, Mr. Rogers and staff.

My name is John Knafsiger.

I'm the executive director of Child Health Partnership.

Child Health has had a longstanding partnership with the city and I'd like to briefly remind you of our work and then explain how it benefits the city to fully fund child health.

First what we do, we have a staff of registered nurses and family support specialists who provide at home support to parents with babies and young children from ages zero to six.

We served 123 children in the city of Charlottesville last year.

Our clients are low income families with infants and young children, pregnant moms, parenting teens, and refugee and immigrant families.

Families are racially and ethnically diverse and represent some of the city's most vulnerable children.

Our registered nurses provide health assessments, prenatal care, postpartum depression screening, developmental assessments, referrals to health and dental providers.

Our family support specialists provide parent training and support, assistance with applications for health insurance, preschool, other services, and connections to resources for housing, childcare, food education, transportation, and much more.

So why is it important to restore funding for child health partnership?

First, our work falls squarely within the priority areas identified by the city, including education, family and youth, health, jobs and diversity and equity.

Our work has consistently led to improved health equity.

Our families have higher rates of immunizations, prenatal care,

well doctor visits meeting of developmental milestones preschool enrollment and parent employment our work really serves all of the city's priorities second funding child health partnership is cost effective for the city our program improves school readiness and family stability supports the work of Charlottesville social services and the Charlottesville preschool program and reduces the need for other future services

Half a century of research has shown that early childhood services can improve life outcomes for children facing adversity, produce important benefits for the community, and generate positive returns on investment.

And so finally, the proposed 45 percent reduction in funding for Child Health Partnership would mean 75 fewer Charlottesville babies and children would be able to receive health and developmental services in the coming year.

The need for child health services is more pressing than ever, and whether you call what we do essential or fundamental or downright critical, please consider restoring funding for child health partnerships so we can continue to serve these vulnerable children and families.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Next on line.

Shelby Edwards.

Shelby Edwards.

Ms.

Hello?

Hello.

We have heard you a little bit.

Hello, my name is Shelby Maria Edwards.

My pronouns are she, her and hers.

I am the former executive director of the Charlottesville Public Housing Association of Residents.

So I'm calling today in support of FAR's application for the youth program.

As Ms.

Asia Green spoke earlier, FAR has served over 100

you since the program started in 2022.

That is incredible work.

And I would also like to add that I had the pleasure of attending Chicago mayoral candidate forum a few days ago, and they identified that in order to promote public safety, which is something that we struggle with in Chicago, but also in the city of Charlottesville, we must have youth programming.

and it must be consistent and we must make sure to find solutions from the people who are actively involved in those communities.

So I implore you all to make sure that you reconsider the application and please consider that FAR has a showing both online and in person.

Per usual, I would like to thank the Charlottesville City Councilors, especially my soror, as y'all continue this work.

I know it can often be thankless, but we so appreciate you nonetheless.

Once again, please support FAR's youth program.

Thank you, Ms.

Edwards.

Okay, next, present.

I'm working my way across.

Anybody?

It's hard to go after Shelby Edwards, but good evening.

My name is Taylor Frohm, and I'm FAR's interim executive director, and I'm here to thank you for the opportunity to share why FAR's youth program deserves funding.

We're grateful for your past support for FAR, and I believe Vibrant Communities funded a modest grant last year to get the youth program started, so we're begging you to give us a chance to keep it going.

As you may well know, FAR is the only organization in Charlottesville led by low-income residents and almost all of FAR's board members have always been and will continue to be black residents.

Investing in FAR is a step in investing for racial equity.

Our model of community education, leadership development and civic engagement

is unique and very impactful in improving the quality of life for hundreds of the city's most vulnerable people every year.

And with Asia Green's efforts, we've been able to get started on engaging the young people who are about a third of the public housing residents.

So it's a very large group of young people who right now are in need of services.

Thank you.

So, online next.

No raised hands.

No raised hands.

Good evening.

My name is Gwendolyn Allen.

I am a FAR intern.

I would like to speak about the, I'm here in support of the youth, financial support for the youth services with FAR.

I live in the 15th Street area.

I am a recipient of the Section 8 program.

However, I used to live on Madison Avenue.

All my children have grown up now.

So as I look around public housing sites, there's a tremendous amount of young children

that are around in each of the public housing sites.

And all of the children are asking questions like who, what, when, where, and why.

They're all inquisitive.

They want to know.

They want to learn.

That's what I get out of it whenever I visit there.

So I'm asking for continued support for the youth services just particularly because

They're young children, they want to learn, they're inquisitive.

With the programs that we had before, there were continued support with nutrition services, the summer program, they could eat during the summertime, there was educational programs going on.

some of the parents enjoyed it just because it gave them a break there was lots of field trips there was gardening going on it was just a great program to have for our youngsters to learn and what more than they're our future children want to learn and I look at it as though if we could teach them things like that we could just minimize childhood obesity if they could learn about exercising 30 minutes a day

They were learning these things and actually taking it to school, sharing it with school teachers, their peers.

It was just such a great organization.

I just ask for continued support for the financing of the Youth Services with the FAR program.

Thank you guys.

Thank you.

Anybody else online?

Good evening.

My name is Paola Cobarrubias.

I'm a community organizer with FAR.

Thank you for the opportunity of allowing me to speak on the FAR youth program and its impact on public housing youth.

So the past year I had the pleasure of working with Ms.

Asia Green to start the FAR youth program and she was an intern back then and now she works with FAR.

So this is a resident-led program that started off with a simple spring event that has grown to partnerships, after school activities, education, empowerment, and so much more.

There is so much I could speak about today specifically highlighting the importance of the program for the far youth, but I want to specifically talk about its relevance to the increased violence Charlottesville has been experiencing in the past couple of months.

There have been many community conversations with the new chief of police speaking about the issue and how it's been addressed.

I don't believe policing is the solution.

Many times it has been proven that rather than increasing policing it is a lot more beneficial for the community especially for the youth when more resources are available to help with preventative work but also to empower youth to use their voice and skills towards positive outlets.

The FAR Youth Program provides those positive outlets.

At FAR we are making sure that the youth speak on the issues going on in their community and find ways to engage with their neighborhood.

This connection is beneficial for their upbringing in a neighborhood where for many years black and brown voices have been marginalized.

Our demographic is public housing youth.

Only a few generations away from the youth that was displaced by the raising of Vinegar Hill in 1964.

So a community that has many times experienced not being a priority to Charlottesville.

The safety of public housing youth is very important to FAR and it should be of importance to the city as well.

By providing funds to the FAR youth program, you're taking a step in the right direction towards addressing violence in the community.

Thank you.

Anybody else online?

Nope.

Okay.

Next in person.

Working our way across.

I'm doing well.

My name is Cameron Gallard and I'm a staff member over at FAR and I too am requesting that the city fund the FAR youth program.

So the youth program does the important work of connecting public housing resident youth to local resources through events at public housing sites.

For our youth to feel welcome, they need to have relationships with youth program providers.

And the FAR youth program introduces youth to the free book bus, to region 10, computers for kids, the presidential precinct, the climate collective,

Child Health Partnership, The College Place, The Looking Glass, The Music Resource Center, Wild Rock, The Bridge, and others.

Thank you.

Anybody else present?

I assume we still don't have anybody online.

I was a resident in South 1st Street.

I'm a resident now in 6th Street.

I'm a FAR intern because I care about the community and I want the advocate for the kids, for the neighborhood.

Today I wanted to specifically speak on FAR Youth Program and it's important

to public housing youth.

I currently take care of small children.

I know that it's important to increase in sources for the youth.

The lack of funding and resources in our community has caused an increase of violence.

In the recent months, the city should continue funding the FAR Youth Program because it gives the sources of education, entertainment, and advocate

If the city cares about making a change with all the violence going on, there should be no debate whether public housing youth deserve any funding, but rather we should talk about an increase in funding.

Our youth needs more outlets express themselves out of school, in school, far provided through their partnership and events.

Thank you.

Anyone else online?

Still no more.

Anybody else present?

Good evening, Mayor Snook, Vice Mayor Wade, Ms.

Puryear, Mr. Pinkston, Mr. Payne, Mr. Rogers, and City staff.

My name is Corey Demchak.

I'm the Director of Programs for the Albemarle Housing Improvement Program, and I'm currently serving as the Interim Executive Director.

Earlier today, the FY24 Housing Operations and Program Support Report was released.

This report compiled by members of the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Committee and city staff provides the basis for the city manager's proposed funding of nonprofit agencies engaged in affordable housing related activities.

Since FY09, which as far back as I could easily verify funding,

AHIP has been continually funded through the Vibrant Community Fund and the ABRT process.

However, this year, AHIP is not being recommended for funding.

In each of the previous three fiscal years, AHIP has received a score of 2A, indicating that AHIP provides a solid, quality, essential service.

For years, the Vibrant Community Fund and ABRT funding, which is now known as HOPS, has provided the critical backbone support that allows AHIP to deliver our emergency repair and housing rehabilitation services directly to city residents.

Without this funding, AHIP's ability to continue to respond to calls from city clients and help the city meet its preservation goals will be greatly diminished.

In FY22, AHIP served 35 city households through our critical rehab and home repair program.

Nine of those households were home to at least one child, 21 of those households were home to at least one senior citizen, and 11 of those households were home to at least one individual with a disability.

AHIP is the only home repair nonprofit operating year-round in the city of Charlottesville.

There are currently 39 Charlottesville households on AHIP's waiting list, and we receive new calls for service each week.

City residents turn to AHIP for help when their heating systems fail in the winter, when it rains and the roofs leak, when their plumbing systems fail, and when dangerous electrical deficiencies threaten their homes.

For those city residents currently on our wait list and for those who will be calling in the weeks and months to come, I respectfully request that you consider supporting AHIP's work through the Housing Opportunity and Program Support Fund.

Thank you.

Anybody else present wishing to speak?

Yes.

So I'm Elise Noyes.

I'm a county resident, but I work at AHIP as well as a client advocate.

And thank you all for your service and being here tonight.

And we're very appreciative of the city's ongoing support for affordable housing initiatives across the spectrum and interventions.

but as Corey mentioned we're respectfully requesting that the city commit more funding specifically to rehab and repair to help effectively address the aging affordable housing stock that we currently have to help preserve it for the individuals there and for generations to come

Part of the city's vision is quality housing opportunities for all and it specifically says our neighborhoods retain a core historic fabric while offering housing that is affordable and attainable for people of all income levels, racial backgrounds, life stages and abilities.

We had one client recently who was a home rehab client so we did a roof replacement HVAC system siding and foundation repairs and she said to us that if we hadn't been able to help her with that she wouldn't have been able to afford the repairs and she couldn't afford to buy a new home in the community anymore.

so she would have had to leave the community she's been here for over 20 years raised her family and I think it's important that we preserve her ability to stay here and for the many others that are in a similar situation and specifically home rehabilitation is a critical way to help preserve existing affordable housing stuff

It's one of the most high return on investment in terms of efficiency per unit, as the HRNA consultants presented in the fall.

We serve income constrained residents, so last year our average client made just $28,000 a year, which is 35% of the area median income.

and we have another client recently who just needed help with an emergency repair he's been in his home for over 30 years raised his children there but because of some health issues had to start using a wheelchair and his home was not accessible so he needed a ramp as well as some electrical and plumbing repairs however the repair which would would cost about five thousand dollars would have been more than a third of his annual income for the year so we were able to do that repair at no cost to him

and he shared that he can now use his wheelchair by himself without aid and he can stay safe and secure in his home so we think it's important to preserve his ability to do that so preserving affordable housing stock helps to improve health conditions for individuals living in their homes so we can often do lead abatements and making the home safer for them and preserving their ability to age in place if they're senior

it helps to preserve wealth and gives them the ability to hold on to what is often their greatest asset as well as gives them the opportunity to pass that on to future generations and it helps with overall community stability and preventing displacement which I think is important to all of us and part of the city's 2025 affordable housing goal states that with the exception of existing public housing over time market pressure will cause most affordable housing to become market rate housing without preservation strategies and we see critical home repair is key to that effort so

Thank you, Ms.

Doniz.

Anyone else present who has not been called on already?

Okay, anybody else online?

All right, so that's, we'll close then the public comment period, and I guess the questions, is there anything we need to do before adjournment?

Is there any questions the council wants to ask of

In terms of next steps, in terms of providing feedback on this portion of the budget, if there's any adjustments or changes we want, where is the time and form to do that?

April, April 2nd?

April 6th.

April 6th, yeah.

so we can prepare you for April 6th to have the kind of robust conversation and decision-making exercise that you... Yeah, and I'll just broadly say I know, you know, last year the process we used is why, you know, I'd advocated for having some money that's unallocated for adjustments.

I think our core problem is there's double the amount of requests versus the amount of money we have.

I think any process is not going to be perfect, and I am still open, like last year, two adjustments, additions.

I'm still in that place.

We were in the last budget cycle.

And I just want to thank all the speakers tonight, Child Health Partnership, FAR, and ABAP.

And we should also acknowledge Ms.

Stark's comments about Pathways Fund.

Oh, yes.

Those are the four things that I heard in CHIP, AHIP, FAR, Pathways.

And obviously, anybody who gets the number of emails that we get, we know that we get a lot of comments about a lot of other things, too, and we'll be

considering what got sent in to us as well.

Now, final comment.

Yes, and that's something I would like to note that the comment has been made, and we get a lot of emails, why haven't you funded the Haven Day Shelter Program?

Well, the answer was, this is the first year we've ever been asked.

So you've asked.

We've got some funding in there.

I'll just say to Councilor Payne's question, I'm happy to be a note taker.

Ends up on the world's biggest spreadsheet.

Right.

Okay.

Well, we've got a lot of work to do, as folks may realize, the budget is new to us as well as it is to the rest of you all, and we're having to take a little time to read through it.

It's only 200-plus pages, plus the 30-some pages on the VCF report, plus the 15 or so pages on the HOPPS report, plus, plus, plus.

We'll keep working at it.

Thank you all for coming.

Nothing further to be done.