City Council Retreat Day 2, 9am - 12pm   8/16/2025

Yeah, so I call us out of recess and back into our call meeting I say for retreat.

We're going to continue this little effort of informing and directing

You've got to get up and move around.

So Josh will work you in that regard and ideally we will just continue to exchange the ideas and gain the understanding and hopefully lead to that ultimate sense of direction that we are looking for to then implement your vision.

Cool?

Good.

What's a trade-off that you've heard?

It's C3.

What's a trade-off that you've heard and understanding where it is?

Thank you all, thank you.

Sometimes I saw some people just write the two things that are at tension in one another or odds with one another.

I wrote down, reflected and read on it regarding regional system creation.

Regarding the regional...

Thank you.

I don't want any of the numbers to be shocked, so I want to give you a little bit of an insight into the numbers that you'll see up there, and then I'll tell you how we're going to use them.

So what we had to do, we thought it was important to make sure that we level set so that the exercise can actually cause the comparison between the choices.

So each of the three top priority areas have been framed with a budget that we offer to you for a 10 year window.

When we look at education,

That is not a number that we've heard.

You heard $176 million yesterday from James.

And tell me what the transit number is.

63.4 million is the transit number.

So the pre-COVID level,

We're trying to get back to a minimum of COVID level and add a couple of enhancements and then we would feel satisfied for the moment.

The $63.4 million is what the local match requirement would be to produce all of that.

It is much, much more expensive to do that, but that is also banking on the idea that the state and federal government is going to be available to help us keep that number at $63.4 billion.

So within that, you see the challenge of that number being smaller, natural mindset, let's go do that one, because it's smaller.

I refer to it with James and Ashley specifically and I think I shared it with Josh.

My job feels like there's a table with a series of levers and they are all set at the middle

Where do we push?

So what is the right setting that we need to make?

But to give you a budget number within which to operate, $110 million for housing, $63.4 million for transit, and $225 million for education, with all the caveats of there's extra money that could be available if we get the tax that the state would allow.

So is the notion that we have to choose one of the three?

You've chosen all three of them.

What we're trying to make sure of is that you are recognizing within each the tensions, the trade-offs, and the opportunities because we're going to have to work that lever system.

We might need to know what the tensions are in the budget that you're asking us to work within as well in order for us to really guide you as you go through that strategy of pushing forward.

That's what we have to bring internalized and bring it back.

With consideration of what we now see as tensions and trade-offs as well.

And understanding the budgeting landscape, the context that we got from being in yesterday, and then also wanting to make sure that you never separate the idea that the community spoke to you a little bit, yes, through the survey.

That's the point of using all of that to then help us understand, do you push or do you pull?

You can kind of point to it.

So what are we supposed to be writing on our note cards?

No decisions made.

Take that further off.

I'll kind of walk through real quick.

You all remember that, recall that?

And then we're going to take a moment and then we're not changing.

Right, so in the area of housing, we have just framed for you that the budget that we're talking about considering over a 10-year period is $110 million.

Some of the trade-offs identified by you all was NIMBY versus it's gotta go somewhere, the cost of lower varying shelters depending on the location, do we invest in multiple sites that distribute people throughout the city or concentrate in one area, what kind of support for outside agencies versus absorbing the work and managing the return on investment within the city, and then lastly placing the shelter in neighborhoods where it is desired.

Just write it, don't stick it yet, just write it down, hold on to it.

By opportunity, do you mean simply how we would choose to resolve the trade-off or do you mean that we're supposed to come up with something new?

Yeah.

Sorry.

We will allow everyone throughout this exercise will get one extra opportunity if you have an extension.

The reality where people go to site or shelter is they don't want to do that.

The trade-off would be whether you

Or whether you figure out a way to distribute the opportunity to the public.

Look, budget plus tension plus trade-offs equals this is how you go with this option.

Mental health concerns get worse if you're not in a home.

It's a trade-off that jumped out of you.

instead of sectioning it out over quite a long time.

Okay, okay.

They are residents as well.

Lloyd, budget, tension, trade-off, and then opportunity that jumped out at you.

It's the old notion of put all your eggs in one basket and then guard that basket, make that basket the best basket it can be.

What tensions have you had with trade-offs and what's the opportunity that jumped out of you?

The opportunity is just finally identifying a final location where it's planned to be a little bit of shelter and making that decision final and moving forward.

I wanted to see if there's anything before we move on to the next.

Would we agree that that is one theme that's jumping out?

And do what?

I think it's the fact that we're ready to do something.

Mental Health Invades, to do that you have to have a schedule to start off somewhere.

and that would be the multiple options.

We're ready to move this down into three

Again, no decision, we just want to theme out your ideas.

And I think these would probably not be too distinctive to this.

So James, if you want to go ahead and read through, so you can kind of hear what's up there.

And finally opportunity costs of staff capacity to monitor and collect analyzed data.

Hold on to that opportunity, what you're having.

Just hold on to the radio, I'll get you posted.

One, would you like to start us off?

Yes.

Looking at the budget, looking at these tensions, looking at these trade-offs, here's the opportunity, I think.

So that is my one step approval process for developments of affordable housing.

Next, considering the budget tensions, trade-offs, what opportunity jumped out of you?

Well, my thought, and partly this is because I hadn't even thought about it at all until yesterday when somebody mentioned this.

If we can get you to think about something, we have won.

We have absolutely won.

That's it.

Maybe that's all right.

After you, sir.

Or should we do more community land trust strategy because that impact is cheaper and meets the biggest needs in the community?

What tension jumped out to you, what trade-off jumped out to you, and then what opportunity was revealed?

But if you could put all that into some sort of like physical data about this is the impact versus this is the benefit of having more people at a spot, I think that maybe they will accept that for themselves.

Thank you.

You know, a building that is X number of square feet no matter how small it is has the same amount of runoff, stories wise, so that's a bit of a focus point.

And then,

Those are the kind of things that can expand our opportunity and increase our budget so we aren't exponentially constrained.

These are just seen working and potentially resetting.

Everything else is kind of individualized by seeing the relying on more data analysis in our decision making around the regulations I presume that we adopt.

Okay.

But again, not diminishing any of them as an individual opportunity, but there's just making an opportunity identified in the space of the process.

On the other side, it's a lot, it's big, and it's definitely having an impact on all development, but specifically, you know, affordability because the margin is so small.

It's saying what tension jumped out at me

So now you want me to take that opportunity.

Lloyd, what tension jumped out, what trade-off jumped out, equals what, equals your opportunity.

Okay.

All right, next.

in five years there's going to be something newer and that's going to now become more affordable because there's a newer kid on the block and that's how housing works so yeah allowing more supply at all levels will generate housing access at all levels.

Habitat and the Housing Authority and whoever else is out there doing it, but to supercharge them because they know we don't really build any housing as a city, but that's not important.

But the answer I have, and maybe it's not the best one, is let some building happen and then see what happens and adjust if necessary, which I think has been around plenty of all too long.

I want to be air on the side of it.

So how do we

I think we just struggle to do that, especially since the pandemic.

So how do we engage with nuance and humility about accomplishing the genuine need for more market supply while acknowledging we have the power to upend people's lives with our renters and they own the land and there's going to be no option for them, at least for decades within Charlottesville regarding filtering.

There are neighborhoods, the city has a history of planners thought they knew best with urban renewal and upended those communities.

And is there a way to do that that is not blocking your supply?

Talk out loud with us.

increased housing, let's see what we can do with what we've got, and still being mindful of how we continue to support those who are on low incomes and who have maybe already been marginalized in this way.

I want to know, you tell me, Tonya, which of you is the most helpful with us getting through this top portion of it?

I think since this is being recorded for the public consumption later, they should be read aloud.

Uh, would be that when you go to put your opportunity up, what tension jumped out, what trade-off jumped out, here's how I got to my opportunity.

So we just ate up our- Correct, correct.

Financial operations?

Constrained CIP capacity will require prioritization, a finite amount of money for either capital investment or staff salaries, school staff levels and salaries versus physical buildings, and increased costs with delayed construction.

So, tension jumped out, trade-off jumped out, here's how I got my opportunity.

Opportunity, I really think all this is only possible with general assembly legislation for school building funding, and I think there's a huge opportunity to get a significant amount of money from the general assembly.

Lloyd, after you, what tension jumped out, trade-off, and how you got on the opportunity?

Thank you, sir.

Katrina and Amy and David Blount to advocate that the state meet their obligation.

Budget, first of all, a constraint.

It's about whatever, however you want to work with that.

I think the tension is basically

We can't slow down buildings going downhill and we can't.

All right, moving you all to facility development and construction.

We're going to read that one.

I'm going to read you through, consider your attention, trade-off.

Older schools versus newer, more modern schools, prioritization of projects, and the trade-off between large school year disruptions versus not addressing our bigger facility needs.

What trade-off jumped out?

So tension is, I mean, everything is mine, right?

Trade-off.

We can only execute this plan once we hit these external nozzles.

A lot of those buildings ask what would be possible, but some of them have the tax and buy-out.

Got it, thank you.

Last in that area, this particular column, which is facilities,

facilities maintenance.

Now we'll get to go for opportunities.

Michael Kochis,

Sure.

There's a lot of uncertainty there, but certainly we have a tradition agreement on, you know, do we massively expand possible capacity when there's no indication when that's going to increase?

Lloyd, you ready?

Let's get the solar panels on there.

Tension jumped out, trade-off that jumped out, and that's how you got to that point.

What I would just suggest, and maybe this has already happened with our staff, go ahead and invest in doing detailed analysis and building your engine models for our facilities to give us real data about those decisions versus just sort of handling them.

When I was, and that was, that's when the city was done before, when I was in kindergarten, they renovated for the brand, and we went to school for Jefferson School, so I didn't even know that construction was going on, and I went back, and so I was like, again, I think the big question is what age does that affect the most to, you know, and I didn't care.

Asher, what are you seeing, what are you hearing?

But there is that long term thought that if I had a separate one, I may put it over here thinking about that swing school.

All right, so this is the transit section.

This is a reliable service assessment, which is what we have prioritized, but not yet fully funded for transit enhancements to reach that optimal performance, so that's what this is really aimed at in optimization.

Trade-off, we know we have to make using the bus more convenient and faster than driving a car.

If we can't do that on every route all at once, how do we prioritize where we start?

It just takes 30 minutes everywhere.

If we can't do that all at once, how can we find lower cost ways of making the system more functionally usable and increase ridership?

Are there things like identifying an area for identifying a bus fee?

Is there any way to have that not taking over the year?

Lloyd, how you doing?

Alright, let's take it.

So then, Sir?

And what I would like to see is an experiment or trial of the frequency on the highest groups to, well, every 10 minutes. 10.

which I know our staff is already working on so shout out to them for that and some of the plans moving forward are to have routes be bi-directional, which is also going to help but if we can prioritize what kind of routes then that gives us the opportunity to spread that along those channels.

Can you share that with us?

Okay, all right, then talk it off.

We call this, so we have enough to size up schools, and yeah, something like that will be a, trying something assembled to do some of the work.

Thanks.

Yep, what are we saying?

and then themes in terms of group size, working with our neighboring counties, sort of like leaders, and what are those ties and groups, the data, and then I think the two major things that come out are experimentation and looking at system design.

I'm going to move you over to climate impact reduction.

Click, when you spend.

Tensions.

The emissions is also the solution coming from diesel buses and how it impacts that pollution.

The opportunity, I don't know if we need to say we're just going to kill the zero emissions plus plan.

And can we reduce the scale of the plan for right now, but target basic initial infrastructure?

Yeah, so again, the tension from these, not only for me, it's the high cost of climate,

They like the technology but not necessarily use it.

Thank you for having me.

and then can we change strings basically and I don't know the answer and I would like to know the answer, so that's what's possible.

James?

Regional System Creation?

I appreciate that.

Beautiful.

Trade-off opportunity.

Thanks for watching!

Attention, I mean it requires a lot of regional partnerships and partnership with the General Assembly, so it's very easy for things to just get lost and hit with studies, but that's the situation.

A study that we've already done to identify fundamentalism.

I've done a little more studies to make a decision between city staff and county staff to work together with what the officials would do.

And my, this opportunity for the city to take a lead on this regional part in, you know,

I just think we need to get a funding formula for CARTA, the UEA, and other counties until we get something like that.

And then the other thing is simply the three notch trail that will connect us to Rainsboro by rosé so that people don't have to get here on the streets.

It'll be in one of the topics.

This is how it worked out for Google in 2015.

Some of the conversation that kind of went on, one of the individuals affected said, what kind of sample and its data was collected here?

What jumps out?

The experts were wrong.

Sort of reaction to something versus potential problem analysis on the front end.

Google fixes racist algorithm by removing gorillas from its imaging.

The solution.

How do they get so lost?

Who's in the room?

Sure.

That's it.

Like, that's historical programming errors that were not taking diversity into context.

Trying to innovate, trying to think of something new, but... A continuation of that tradition.

Even if you're building on all the algorithms, who established those in the first place, and what did they take into consideration?

Yeah, lack of testing, yeah.

But I would need, what?

Well, the problem hasn't been solved either, through the last couple of weeks, when AI being blamed for several sorts of hilarious messages being put out.

As people, as humans, as decision makers, as leaders, why did we stop being so curious?

Biases?

Fearful what-if questions keep me stagnant.

Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, no thanks, no thanks.

But of course, do you think we have the ability to manage our thoughts?

Yep.

What about this?

1982.

That's pretty amazing.

Yeah.

Potentially reimagine some things.

We have created a situation that justifies the experiment.

I have something for you.

We're just making, yeah, change management and making room for people to understand why things might be different.

So in the education space and it came up in some of the comments that you all made that it sounded like we were repeating some of the various things.

Not about the maintenance being separate from the development and construction.

It's the building and the money for the people and the things.

On the housing side, we're going to stay homelessness for the obvious reason of the question of where do we go, how far do we go, and then just to focus on inventory, not specializing in inventory by low-income, mid-income, missing middle, or higher.

And then for transit, we're going to pull the CARTA conversation out.

and just focus on reliable service and climate because you've made very very committed focused decisions in those two areas and there's still a bit of nebulousness to the whole party thing and we'll of course get back to that.