City Council Monthly Work Session - Special Meeting   6/10/2026

I call this June 10th Charlottesville City Council Special Meeting to order.

The purpose of this meeting is to receive a presentation from the Charlottesville Early Learning Center Work Group outlining a proposed vision for the Early Learning Center.

I heard that.

Councilor Fleisher?

Here.

Vice Mayor Ostrum?

Here.

Before I turn over the meeting to our deputy city manager, I would like to take a brief moment of silence to recognize the fact that we did have a member of our community pass away over this week down in one of the encampment areas by the river.

So we know that our police team, our

Still doing research and finding out what's going on down there.

We'll keep the community updated as we find out more.

But just a little brief moment of silence for that before we get started, please.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Vice Mayor, Members of Council.

I will keep it brief.

I'm just going to note that the last time you all talked about the Early Childhood Learning Center was actually in a joint meeting.

with the school board back in August of last summer.

And at that time, we were presenting a design that allowed us to preserve the existing gymnasium building on the Walker Campus site and incorporated a proposed new building into the slope that's kind of there between the fields and the parking area.

In this instance, we're going to be sharing with you three different designs, including a new one that

Well, meets many of our needs and potentially offers us a lower cost.

Good evening members of council.

Mike Goddard, Deputy Director of Public Works.

As Mr.

Freeze told you, I'm here to give you a little bit of an update on our early learning center designs.

So in giving you this update, I'm going to go through a little bit of the background, a little bit of history on kind of how we got to a decision point that we're at right now.

So we can go ahead to the next slide.

Thank you.

These are the existing conditions out on the Walker site.

So those have been following along for a while.

We'll remember that this project was part of the reconfiguration project that we initiated when we decided to move the sixth grade up into the middle school.

So we've already built our new middle school that will open this summer.

So this was kind of packaged up with that.

Part of that reconfiguration process meant that the pre-K students needed a place to go.

So that was kind of the phase two of the project.

And we designed the two buildings up to a very early schematic design phase in concert.

And that was back in, I think, 2022.

A lot of this was happening during COVID.

A lot of these meetings and the scoping meetings that we had with the community were happening during that time.

So that gives a little bit of context for some of the decision making at the time.

So this is the Walker site, currently the administrative building on the north side of the site.

Building A, which is kind of the main school building.

Building B, which is the auditorium building.

And building C, which is the gymnasium.

And then Crow there is the Crow pool.

which we've talked about decommissioning several times over the years but is still functioning at the present.

Next slide.

OK, so in the early iterations of this project, this was the scheme that we first came up with.

It's important to note that when we were talking about the project at this point in time, there was really no perceived need to retain any of the existing buildings for any purpose.

We were planning to building a new early learning center.

but we really didn't know what a building A would be used for.

We figured maybe administrative uses or something, we figure it out.

Building B likewise and building C certainly, you know, you don't need a gym if you don't have a school.

Things have changed since but as part of that, we came up with a scheme that involved demolishing the gymnasium building and building on that site

and incorporating building B, which is the auditorium building, kind of renovating it.

Not too different of a project from what we've done at the middle school, actually, a reuse and new construction on the same site.

So you'll see here the front door for that project would have been down in the lower part of the site on Rose Hill Drive.

You see a loop on the south side there.

Building A, as I said, stays where it is.

Building B incorporated into the new project and building C is demolished.

And we have no net loss of parking with this project or with this approach.

And we believe, we still believe, I think that it's about a $42.5 million project.

I think there are some significant problems with that as I'll explain.

A few things happened immediately after we started working through that, one of which was the FEI situation.

So to refresh everyone's memory, we all thought that we might get FEI from the federal government, the Federal Executive Institute.

We started putting together plans for what we might do with that site if we got it.

Though it was ultimately unsuccessful, a lot of things were brought to light through that process.

Needs that the schools had that we hadn't really been aware of or things that had changed a little bit in the years since we'd started this design process.

One of those was a need for a more significant construction program for the school's facilities writ large.

It quickly became pretty apparent that the idea of removing all of those buildings from use would potentially limit our capability to make moves in the future.

The one that I'm most concerned with is the elementary schools.

The problem that we continually have with elementary schools is if we're trying to renovate an elementary school, it really can't be done in the summer, right?

So you need a place to put students,

and we started to see that this was a pretty good place to do that.

So once building A was vacant, we could put students there as a swing space for any future projects we decided to do.

The problem there though is that if we got rid of building C, the gym building, then you got a school with no gym.

And we started to think, well, you know, that doesn't make a lot of sense.

We probably should retain that building.

So we talked to our consultants via the architects.

They came up with a great scheme.

The one you see here, the one we I think most recently talked about with you all, which is the terrorist approach.

What this does is it moves our building up onto Gentry Lane.

So your front door is now up on on Gentry Lane.

It leaves A, B and C and incidentally, pro untouched.

for future use.

So in the background, you know, we've been doing a lot of planning work and came up with some, I think pretty strong ideas for a program moving forward that might renovate a lot of our schools.

I won't go too deeply into all of that, but we've got some results from that.

We've come up with an approach that I think

involves the renovation of our high school followed by a series of elementary projects.

We now have potentially a path forward for funding that using a one cent sales tax.

You know, this is all stuff that's happening in the background.

And we've put together a working group to work through what that process might look like to put a scope and scale to what those projects would be.

And so the more that we look at that, we see, yes, we probably do want all of these buildings to be intact or something like them.

And so this looks like a pretty good approach.

The challenge, of course, is that if you know the site very well, you'll see that our terrace design really builds into a pretty steep hill.

So we're doing a lot of retaining work there.

It's not the cheapest way to build a building.

The terrace approach also gives us some nice access to outdoor space from all the classrooms.

But that outdoor space is kind of on rooftops, which is a really intriguing architectural design.

I became really enamored with it, I have to say.

But it does come with some challenges.

Not the least, which is cost for construction and some challenges when it comes to maintainability.

So we were challenged by that, but it wasn't something that I considered a showstopper.

And we sort of moved forward to where we got to the point of getting some cost numbers on that.

When we saw the costs for that project, as you saw on the slide, which seems to have magically disappeared.

It's not booted.

We'll zoom.

It's OK.

The cost for that project is something like $60 million, which I think is more than we all anticipated.

Not being a decision maker, but having some sense of where this is all headed.

You know, refer back to the concept of us going through the school projects in series and having quite a robust plan.

You know, James and I presented a concept of that to you all.

When was that?

OK, so last summer, you know, we presented that concept.

We've moved that forward in our working group for the schools.

And, you know, as we put more shape to that, we start to see what the costs might be associated.

$60 million all of a sudden seems like kind of a lot to put into this one building, if there are other options.

Perfect timing.

So to go through some of the pluses and minuses on this approach, the B approach, the $60 million approach, the front door is up top.

Buildings B and C are left as is.

Building C needs some waterproofing.

So to my mind, why tear down a good building to build another building?

Yeah, but this building is not perfect.

It certainly has some maintenance requirements.

Water comes in.

We would have to do a significant waterproofing project if we're going to continue to use it.

And those costs hadn't really been factored into this approach.

And then Gentry Lane would be closed through traffic, so we would need to close that off.

Now that that lane belongs to the school.

It's not a street per se, so we would be within our rights to do that.

but you know for better or for worse that would have to happen.

The definite negative to that though is that we would have to build a pretty large retaining wall to widen that space so that buses could turn around there.

So the costs start to sort of build up.

We recently got some information from our geotechnical firm that

wasn't super favorable, a lot of unsuitable soils in that location, a lot of rock.

Anybody who's been paying close attention to our middle school project will know that the biggest cost driver for overages on that project was rock removal.

So we... Duke, sorry, earlier you referenced

Do you mean for the new building or the gym?

I think it was in reference to the new building.

Probably was.

So the way that building is designed is with roof terraces for the kids to play on.

So the kids are in an outside environment, but that's on the roof that's kind of stacked in a terrace plan down the hill, right?

The challenge there

is that all of those roofs have to be waterproofed really well.

There's plants growing on a roof.

You have to maintain the plants.

You have to maintain the roof.

Every time you need to replace the roof membranes, you have to take all that off.

So it's just not the easiest thing to maintain.

It's not impossible.

People do it all the time.

There's a big new building, the code building down at the end of the mall that has giant trees growing on the roof.

So it can be done, but it comes at a cost.

Just as we're starting to feel a little bit uneasy about these numbers, our architects came to us with an unsolicited but welcome plan, which is Scheme C.

So this is a much simpler plan.

It does involve removing the existing gym.

So we would, it goes back to being a little bit more like the first iteration plan A.

We take out the existing gym, we replace it with a new volume.

And then that little, this little section here is a new gym.

So we're taking down a gym and replacing it with a gym, which to me,

At first blush felt a little bit challenging, but we were told by our architects that actually the savings from not doing all the complicated stuff on the other end of the site more than offset the cost of that additional new space in the building.

So we believe, and it's still very early days, of course, but we believe this is about a $51 million project.

So around $10 million cheaper than the Plan B.

Front door once again moves down to the south part of the site.

We're working with the terrace scheme.

Now we don't have much of a drawing on this.

This plan is three weeks old at this point, something like that.

So this is very fresh information.

But we did want to get in front of you all as soon as we could so that we could sort of develop a plan forward and not spend a lot of time going down paths that aren't going to end up being the final path.

So in this scheme, buildings A and B are left as is.

They're still available to us to be used as swing space in the future.

And then Building C is demolished, but a new gym is built on the site.

Crow is still available for whatever purpose we want to use it for or not at all.

That's up to the city going forward.

And there's no net loss of parking.

So parking is another challenge with Scheme B.

We don't know how to account for quite all of the parking, though none of us really want to consider that a decision point.

It is when teachers have to get to work.

So this to me, I mean, I'll be perfectly honest.

I was really fond of Scheme B.

It hurt me to look at this and think that maybe it made more sense, but I think logical is logical and I can't stand in the way of that logic.

So to me, I think this is a better approach.

So there's some elements of the plan that are interesting.

And one thing that really caught me is it's not easy to see on this plan, but the kids on both levels have direct access to outdoor space outside of their classroom in the same way that they did in Scheme B.

So this is the existing condition again, just a little bit larger.

This is the scheme A.

As I mentioned, this kind of takes over the old auditorium building and build a new volume onto it.

and then B.

So here we are with the terrace scheme.

And you can see a little better in this view how the students would walk straight out onto their terrace play spaces.

And then we've got a more formal play space down below.

And then we've got scheme C, which as you can see, all of these students are able to sort of access green space just out the door of their classrooms.

And one additional nicety of this approach is that we can keep all those big trees that are right up against the back of the existing A building.

If you're familiar with the site, there's some really great old trees that have been important to the site for many, many years, probably definitely longer than the school's been there.

So it would be nice to save those.

So to my mind, this is a rational approach.

I think this is the way we should go forward.

And that would be our recommendation.

But we wanted to present it to Council to get any thoughts you all might have, answer any questions you might have.

We have architects from VMDO here.

If you have any technical questions, as I'm sure you know, I didn't draw any of this.

So I don't know everything about it.

But we have the experts who did.

and I have Stuart Harding and Bruce White from the project management team.

Stuart has been managing the CMS project very successfully and will manage this one as well, is managing it right now as well.

Great, thanks.

I could just note

One of our themes, always tensions and trade-offs, right?

And the clear and present one is around cost.

You can see one of the things that took us away from exploration of that second option was both its escalating upfront cost and concern around escalating operating costs.

So that's a factor in this discussion.

The other element of this is both making efficient use of our existing school space and recognizing flexibility.

Mr. Goddard a couple times referenced this idea that we are looking at the entire portfolio of school buildings and thinking about how those may need to be

upgraded, rehabilitated, renovated over time, given their age, given conditions, given changing expectations in a modern school building.

And so the working group he referenced, which is made up of both city staff and school staff has been working now since, I want to say December, is that right?

December timeframe.

Looking ahead,

Looking at the potential of additional revenue coming in if the state completes their budget process.

So these are all factors as we're thinking about, but that flexibility at this site opens up the opportunity to completely shut down a school, do a full rehabilitation or maybe even a complete replacement, and then reopen the school, which is a more efficient way of being able to move forward with a robust school revitalization program.

So those are the things we're thinking about as we think about this site.

Great.

Thank you very much.

I guess high level, definitely agree the swing space is kind of non-negotiable.

And likewise,

the whole system at rebuilding needed either pretty fundamental rehabilitation or rebuilding.

So definitely agree that thinking about cost in the context of being able to take care of the whole systems, building portfolio is also critical.

A few questions that jump to mind.

With Scheme B and the parking trade-off, this is a question of just true ignorance on my part.

I would not say a hundred percent, but I would say not too far from that.

Yeah.

I think, I think most during most of the day, most of the parking, almost all of the parking will be taken.

Yeah.

Also, Scheme B is kind of beyond the expected maintenance costs over time.

Is the expectation that that $60.8 million number is likely to escalate?

I would say that it's important to point out that we're in schematic design right now.

So there's a lot we don't know.

We don't know about the time value of money between now and whenever.

You've heard this 100 times from us and others.

But I would say that the risk value of that proposition is higher because there's a much more complicated construction type and a lot more.

We talk a little bit about how the gym has trouble keeping water out right now.

We would be building into a similar kind of condition where we're really retaining quite a lot of earth.

So I think our architects are much more comfortable.

Our engineers are much more comfortable with schemes A or C just because it's less of a

Engineering feet to get it done.

A couple things.

One is, yeah, we're really building deeply into a hillside.

So that's basically a three store building, all of which is retaining.

We're going to notch out that entire building basically into that hillside and have to hold all that earth back.

Then we're also going to have to notch out the hillside for the bus turnaround and hold all that earth back.

And then we're building outdoor play spaces on roofs.

So a roof is a challenging enough thing.

You know, what's the worst thing you hear about buildings all the time?

The roof always leaks, right?

That's always going to be a challenge.

Now we're putting a bunch of kids on the roof and a bunch of plants and a bunch of play stuff and

and that's a challenge.

And then I know in the past, there's been discussions around this phase of school reconfiguration could have some substantial amount of private investment that's maybe open or willing to be a part of the kind of capital stack.

I am unaware of any private money that has been offered for this project or any of our major projects for that matter.

Yeah, I just know it's come up in community conversations.

I don't know if it was a soft or hard commitment or what.

The only other question is there may not be an answer tonight.

You know, this could intersect with the one cent sales tax referendum, which could still be in the budget, the state budget.

I'm not saying this would or should be our approach, but just to maintain flexibility, if we were to do that in, you know, this upcoming election cycle to hold the referendum,

And that in any way kind of impacted the timing of any of this.

Is there any way for us to, before the state budget passes, kind of hold the necessary public hearings so that it could still be in the upcoming election?

The referendum may not be an answer tonight.

I just at least won.

We've gotten emails about that idea.

Right.

That's not a question for you.

I mean, what time is it really?

Because the answer might change.

Right now, as you know, the state law has an 81 day.

kind of waiting period before we do one of these referendums.

State budget would earliest be going into effect on July 1st, which I think is right on that 81 day line.

So I'm not certain, we wouldn't be able to hold this hearing because we don't have the authority to do those sorts of things prior to that July 1st time.

So I'm afraid we might be a little bit constrained there absent some legislative action to correct that, okay.

That is the answer I've got right now sitting here.

I haven't done the deepest of dives, but that is my current understanding of it.

So, fair.

So maybe opportunity for legislative advocacy on our part, reaching out to our delegate and state senator.

And do we think that's about where we'll be when this is finished?

Yeah, so I should, and thank you James for kind of touching on this, I should probably flesh that out a little bit, the concept of this building plan that we have.

So, when we met as a working group to determine the facility needs for the schools,

One thing that was pretty clear is that all of our elementary schools need significant work.

And I kind of touched on this, but then moved on about how any significant project in a school can't be done in a summer.

And so we're really, our hands are tied.

What that means to us then is that we either have to build some kind of a temporary school village of trailers on the site or on another site, or we have to find some other place for the students to be.

This would give us the opportunity to do a series of swing space moves.

So the sequence is still, I think, somewhat up for debate, but I think schools is very interested in doing the high school first because of the sort of feeling that one gets from going to our beautiful new middle school that's just about to open into a high school that hasn't been significantly renovated since 1974, right?

So they would like to do a couple years of that kind of work.

Now what that looks like, we're not sure yet.

Is there swing space at the high school?

You know, we don't know.

But the important, the more pressing part is the elementary move, right?

So if we go through our elementary schools one right after the other and hit each one with whatever it is that we determine they need, whether it's a major renovation, which they certainly all need, or tear down and rebuild, which a few probably

The temporary situations are very costly.

You know, it will cost us millions of dollars to buy trailers, basically, to house a school in.

So the kind of flash of brilliance and you know Sam was one of the early kind of thinkers on this was you know why not just use this school that we already have it'll be sitting empty we have a whole school right with all the things you need for a school and then some really because it's been a pretty big school so to answer the question yes when it's not being used for that we don't really have a plan for it

But if you look at kind of the graph of our plan, which I didn't include because this isn't really about that, but I'm sure you'll be seeing it soon.

When you see the graph of the plan, it's like a 16 year building program.

So yeah, 16 years from now, I don't know what we'll do with these buildings, but

You know, I've only been here 10 years and the whole, you know, concept of what we use schools for has changed in that time.

Yeah, no, that's okay.

I just didn't know if, are they even big enough to handle that capacity?

They absolutely can.

And then some, because it's been one of our kind of feeder schools, you know, it's as the upper elementary school, you know, they take two grades.

for that use.

And if we have a gym still on the site, then they'll have a gymnasium to play in and all the conveniences.

Yeah, sure.

Perfect.

Thank you.

My other question is, so you're saying that the new La Crosse grant

Lacrosse Family Grant for UVA, the 43 million early learning center has nothing to do with our early learning zone.

Is that right?

I'm not aware.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

No.

It is not related.

No, they are looking to open their own early meeting center.

That's it.

I guess, you know, out of all of the uncertainties, the first uncertainty we would have to resolve is the financial question of how we would pay for it.

Shovel, I think, would go into the ground sometime September 2027 if we don't delay.

So basically a year and a half of construction time.

That's right.

Okay.

That is not a question that I can answer from my position.

I mean, one of the wrinkles is if we begin the process with local funds and then we get the authority to impose the tax, it's gonna be up to the General Assembly as to whether that's a permissible use to take over the funding of the rest of the project.

Well, that's one of the things that in theory the budget

If there's something in the budget that deals with it, there might be a provision in that provision itself that answers that question.

I would say that part of

You know, we've been working to that end indirectly ever since the first talks of, you know, that's kind of what spurred us to have the working group was this conversation I think that you started actually about, we need to know what we're going to spend this money on.

We have to have a concept for what we're telling people we're going to tax them for.

And that's what we've been working on.

The benefit of that is we do have a product of that working group at this point.

We have a scheme, we have a series of projects laid out.

So, you know, if this project

for whatever reason can't be funded through those funds or they won't do the takeover of the project funding for whatever reason.

Well, lots of uncertainties and hopefully by the end of June, at least some of the uncertainties will get answered whether we have a budget, General Assembly or not.

Thanks.

I have some questions as well.

I know the programming is not the responsibility of the design, but the program will certainly be reflected by the design.

Can you talk a little bit about the layout differences between A and C and how the space, the like longer L shape in C differs from the

kind of smaller, clumpier B replacement building in A.

I'm going to phone a friend and call in an expert.

Thanks.

This is Maria Beninski from B&B Architects.

She's, I think it's fair to say, drawn a lot of this, both A and C and B for that matter.

So she's been involved from the very beginning.

If not, I'll just make something up.

That's a great question.

So that's the whole goal, right?

The experience for children in this building.

So I think one of the main thing is that that clubier version has three stories.

So it doesn't look so spread out on the site because we're stacking up the square footage.

So, you know, the quarters are shorter, but there's more stairs.

And so I think one significant difference from our conversations with the schools between A and C is where we're putting our large movement spaces, or sorry, B and C. So that the terrorist scheme has the movement space for children on that field level, which is the lowest level of the scheme.

Which is, that's a nice combination.

But another kind of key combination is your big movement space paired with your drop-off loops.

That's an advantageous combination that we do not have in Scheme B, the terrorist scheme.

Children would be two flights of stairs away from their bus loop in the movement space.

And that's really about sort of beginning and ending the day.

It can be useful to have a large space like that.

near your queuing space.

Scheme C does have that advantage where our drop-off loops are at the same level and very close to our large movement with a gym space and an additional pre-k specific movement space that's going to be in that scheme.

So I think in terms of sort of flow beginning and end of the day, that's an important consideration.

Between those two schemes, the way the classroom experience is, it would not be too different were we able to, with certainty, know that we can maintain adequately the rooftop terraces with plantings and things like that.

So that terrace scheme really relies on commitment to spend the money into the future to maintain the plantings and the quality of those roof terraces, which

You know, that's a level of maintenance that is not currently in the portfolio of the school.

So that was part of sort of the reach of that design that was already added to.

Great.

Thank you so much.

Sure, it's three-year-olds and four-year-olds, and they'll turn five, many of them during the preschool year.

Right now, the four-year-old program is larger than the three-year-old program.

There's a desire over time to increase capacity so that they could offer every child a two-year experience, which is shown to have beneficial outcomes

And so that's been part of our charge to make sure wherever we're siting the building on the site to ensure that there is a way to expand the ELC in the future and not build ourselves into a corner.

And then

Something that we've mentioned before, definitely brought it up last year a couple of times when talking about this space and the potential we have for it, is whether or not we can include housing as part of this project.

And I'm, you know, you mentioned parking being considered a decision point when teachers have to get to work.

And what if there's an opportunity for folks to be

and you know we've also heard from the community about why aren't you only advocating for apartments in certain areas and not others and I have been talking about this area before and I know there's some people on school board who are also interested in it so what kind of coordination or like next steps would be required to have that kind of seriously evaluated considered and included in a potential design I know there's more than just the design of the

I don't know the actual answer to that question.

I do know that it would be challenging.

Doesn't mean it's impossible.

It just means it would be challenging.

What I would, my initial response would be that I do think we're looking at a site that has a lot of future potential.

Like I said, 16 years from now or whenever we finish the building program, I think there's going to be some space, a building that is tired.

And I think we'll be looking at something at that point in time.

To me, that seems like the most logical time to do that.

I think it would be awfully challenging to incorporate housing into our designs in their existing placements just because parking would be a huge, huge challenge on the site.

I just think we would probably be trying to push too much into too small of a space.

So the idea is like building A still needs to be used as part of the swing school situation, but once the swing school usage is over, it doesn't really have a usage and could be replaced with something else.

We don't know what the schools might need to do with this space.

I mean, there's also the question of ownership.

I believe the site is owned by city schools in this case, which was not the case.

Yeah, I think that City Schools actually owns this site.

It's deeded to the school board.

Unlike Buford, which was deeded to the city, we have a weird kind of split ownership scenario with all of our school sites.

So, you know, I think that would be a challenge to work through.

There would be the back end of all of that.

I'm not the expert on all of that, I'll be honest with you.

But yeah, I think

Down the road, I think we are going to find ourselves in a position where, you know, we've got a good pre-K center here.

You know, I know there's been some conversation about Luca McGinnis, the alternative high school program, and does that expand?

So, you know, that's also something we could consider.

But yeah, I think, I think that would be the kind of moment to say, do we want to redevelop part of this site in some other way?

Or do we want to, or do we have educational needs, you know,

A lot of our planning has been driven over the years by the size of our classes, our cohort sizes.

So when I first started with the city, we had this emergency.

That was when I first met Maria professionally.

We kind of went to school together but you know professionally I met her because she was doing a capacity study for us right because we were in an emergency because all the schools were about to be bursting at the seams and we needed to figure that out so

That has trended down to where now that's not a problem really anymore.

Some schools still have a little bit of a capacity issue, but not all.

Where will we be 16 years from now?

I have absolutely no idea.

Maybe we're bursting at the seams again.

Maybe we've shrunk.

Our cohort sizes have gone down and now we're kind of figuring out what to do with these sites.

From a broader perspective of looking at that, one of the conversations that is an ongoing conversation, I think we've scheduled it for, or looking at it as part of a upcoming meeting would be a conversation around housing development opportunities on existing city-owned sites, right?

In the past, the city has done, has looked at housing development on the Water Street parking lots,

We've had conversations about school sites, this school site in particular.

There've been other conversations about other sites.

And I think there needs to be kind of a broader conversation first about which of these sites would we want to prioritize and try and tackle first.

And then if that decision was to go after a school site, I think, or maybe part of that conversation, Rob, picking where to prioritize and where to go first, would need to be a conversation first about what are the

the pros and cons on a school site.

What are the opportunity costs associated with looking at a school site?

What are the issues so that we can understand those fully?

And then ultimately we would be, if we were moving forward, if we were to move forward with a school site, I would expect that there would need to be an endorsement from both the council and the school board of that idea.

And then it kind of moves into a more traditional public-private partnership development process.

So I think first is kind of looking big picture.

Where do we want to focus our attention in terms of making publicly owned property available for housing development?

And within that second, looking at this, what are the particular challenges and opportunities that arise on school sites in particular?

And then we go from there.

Great.

I have some more questions.

So what is the plan with Crow Pool?

Barring any other input, that's the running plan, yeah.

There might be temporary shutdowns, obviously, directly adjacent to a construction site.

I can imagine that there might be moments, maybe long moments, where we have to

Take over their parking lot or something like that in order to move materials in or have lay down space.

But we haven't gotten into those logistics quite yet.

Do we have a go, no go for Crow?

Do we have a benchmark for Crow?

Like if it starts costing us X amount of dollars, we're going to let it go.

Not as far as I'm aware.

I mean, it's kind of a Parks question.

Thank you.

It is not considered part of, I mean, we've had some conversations about how CRO might play into future programming, but that's kind of way out there, kind of, you know, if we had a pool available, great.

There used to be a walker school swimming class that took place in Crow many, many years ago.

Could that sort of thing be reborn?

Not sure.

Yeah, we have not, you know, we've talked about using CRO as part of some schemes.

If you've been watching for a while, you'll remember that our expansion scheme for version A back during COVID when we were first talking about it involved taking down CRO and building an addition on that site, but that would have been a phase two to whatever we're doing at this point.

And that would be needed if we decided to expand the pre-K program to some of

So this is basically a one for one.

We're taking the exact same number and student type and they will inherit this new school.

What happens to Oaklawn now?

We're still in the process with Oaklawn.

The latest Oaklawn thing I can tell you is that I have transmitted a draft of evidence regarding the historic structures on the property that I hope can meet our needs and meet the Department of Historic Resources needs as well.

I'm waiting for a response back from whether UVA and DHR finds that acceptable.

I think the site's challenging for a lot of different reasons and I think we we started to see the delays as just kind of taking over our program and you know that the students are already going to spend a little more time in the temporary condition so all of these pre-k students right now are moving into the old Walker upper elementary school right so the upper elementary students have just vacated right now schools are working along with

you know Stewart and some folks from our team some of the maintenance staff to kind of gussy it up and make it nice so that they can use it as a pre-k center but it was never meant to be that temporary condition for longer than a couple of years so we started to feel the tension of you know how long are we going to wait for this oak lawn situation to play out before we just say you know what let's go back to what we were originally talking about we control that we own it and we can move this project forward without

The city and schools are still interested in obtaining the Oak Lawn site.

It makes it a little bit more difficult.

Are you looking for direction tonight from City Council and then to, if we don't utilize the sales tax referendum for this or can't, it sounds like at a minimum, there would be $15 million additional dollars that we would need to include in our budget?

Yeah, that's assuming that we go with option C, which is what we recommend at this point.

Yeah, I think that's there will be an additional budget request that will go along with that.

I think at this point we've come to what we consider and you know, Council doesn't have to vote on what direction we take, but we do want you fully aware and to have a chance to sort of give us feedback.

It is costly, obviously, to continue to go down three different paths at the same time and then to take stacks of drawings and just throw them aside and go down the path.

So the sooner we can make the decision, I would recommend we do it now and go ahead and move down the Path C route.

Well, we can't literally do it now because it's not an action item for tonight, but we can

Take the information that you're telling us, get it on a future agenda, consider it, ask me follow-up questions before that.

And you can give informal guidance as to the council's thinking without having to take a formal vote.

You really don't typically vote on this is the design we're going for in this project.

It's just that we want to be aligned with council when we do things.

So I think they are looking for.

Or are we okay with abandoning the B?

And just to confirm, what are the other benefits of C over A?

Yeah, which I think was huge for me personally.

I think that we would be

Yeah, I mean, I'll be honest, schools was very agreeable and they said, you know, we can live without it.

I said, yeah, but this is 16 years potentially of students who won't have a gym at all during their time here.

So it's one year at a time, of course.

But, you know.

And what is the official engagement with the school board look like on this project?

What input do they have?

What presentations are they getting?

I presented all of what I presented to you last week to school board.

They, I think, are willing to tell you that they like option C as well.

I'm seeing some head nodding from some school board members who are willing.

So I think they've received the same information you've received at this point as part of our CIP presentation last week.

And they will continue to be kept appraised.

We do our yearly or bi-yearly meetings with them where we present all of the entire CIP packet to them.

Yes.

Yes, there were.

They've been heavily engaged.

Well, likewise, I would be comfortable with you all pursuing Scheme C. I would be interested at an upcoming 221 or council work session

Yeah, I agree that a how are we paying for this conversation is worthwhile, but knowing that it's going to be one of these three,

Excellent.

Grossie.

Thanks.

We have one more.

We do.

Alright, nose goes for who starts.

I didn't understand the concept.

We can incorporate that in a rules procedure.

and the updates that you're working on.

Well, sure.

One board I serve on is the jail board.

The main item of business there recently, of course, has been moving forward with the construction and renovations.

I'm told that things are going along well, but you know, it's still fairly early in the process, but things appear to be on schedule.

No

No terrible problems being manifested themselves and being manifested along the way.

Also serve on the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority Board.

The issue there primarily has been discussing how prepared are we for drought conditions and the answer is we're in pretty good shape.

Unlike places like Gordon'sville, for example, that have recently had to

at least threatened.

I'm not sure they actually did have to go on any kind of water rationing, but they were basically one rainstorm away from having to do so.

We know Green County has been having a lot of problems with water supply and they may have more problems this year.

Charlottesville and Albemarle will not have that problem.

reservoirs even before the rains that came a week or two ago were in the 95% full range.

The community water supply plan that calls for raising the level of the Ragged Mountain reservoir and allowing for the possibility of moving water via pipeline

from Sugar Hollow and South Rivanna, moving a pipeline up to help fill up the Ragged Mountain Reservoir.

That work continues.

It won't be completed for another few years.

That's separate from the central water line issue that we've been hearing a lot about, which is work actually in the city, which that work is also moving forward

One of the things that I wanted to talk a little bit about was the fact that we have a community water supply plan going out about the next 40 years.

There's an interesting graph that has had to be updated recently that shows on the one hand the steady rise of demand for water and on the other hand a more jagged kind of step ladder sort of a situation showing what our capacity is now is expected to be in the future.

A few years ago it was decided that we would go ahead

We wanted to implement the full plan now rather than implementing it say 10 years from now in part because we wanted to make absolutely sure because there's a point in the old graph that showed at about 2040 the two lines begin to get perilously close to one another where suddenly it looks like the supply is not

is not increasing until we did certain other work.

Meanwhile, the demand was continuing.

So by doing that work ahead of time, we keep well ahead of the curve and I think we'll be in good shape for the future.

One of the other interesting data points I asked in one of the meetings whether the counties adding the AstraZeneca project was going to make a significant difference in water demand

and they said yes they thought it could add up to about a million gallons a day in water demand to the roughly 10 to 11 million gallons that we're dealing with now and presumably every additional if they were to get another AstraZeneca plant to come that could add another million gallons and so one of the other pieces

of doing the whole water supply plan now is to keep ahead not only of the current uses, but also the uses that might be incurred by adding additional industry to the county.

The county says they would like to add additional industry to the county.

It's nice to know that there is at least some room within the system to allow that to happen without being an adverse situation for the rest of us.

Also on the Rivanna sewer, Solid Waste Authority Board.

The main interesting point there I thought was that the recycling centers were now adding an ability to dispose of lithium batteries safely.

that have been something that was important.

I think it's only out at the Ivy Landfill Collection Center, but I'm not 100% positive of that.

And the other board that I serve on that's been meeting recently is the Historic Resources Committee, where an interesting issue has arisen

You may be aware that we have a replica of the Liberty Bill at the fire department and the fire department wants to move the replica of the Liberty Bill

because it's in the way of certain expansion programs that they've got.

The question is where do they move it to?

I think what they're really saying is move it off of our property, not just move it to a different corner of our property.

And so we've had to do a little research and it turns out that the Liberty Bell replica was given to the city in 1950.

And it was one replica was given to each state

and the Virginia version of the Liberty Bell was given to Monticello.

Why was it given to Monticello?

Who knows?

It has no logical connection, but there it goes.

And so at some point Monticello said, you know, we really don't have a reason for it to be here.

And so they gave it, again, nobody's entirely sure of how it came to be given to the volunteer fire company that was serving Charlottesville at that point.

And then when the professional firefighters took over,

They took over the Liberty Bell also, but they don't really have anything to do with it.

And so the question is, is there some other place it might go where it might get some, some historic resource treatment?

And that's all, it's all something we're trying to figure out.

But along the way, we discovered that we don't actually know who owns the Bell.

Right.

It is the bell that is sitting right now outside the Ridge Street Fire Station.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

I mean, is that something we can deal with in time for the summer?

No.

Cool.

Any questions?

We could use it at Loop Deville as the finishing gong.

LEAP.

They've been in a bit of a challenging state for a while because they had a lot of plans that relied on bipartisan infrastructure law, funding sources that the Trump administration's cut.

but they continue to do their kind of core mission of energy efficiency work but have been looking for how can they kind of find new areas of expansion in light of those cuts.

Our request for them to be funded in the state budget as part of the Energy Resource Hub did make it into the draft state budget.

Hopefully that ultimately passes.

Our recent decision on carbon offsets could also be an opportunity for them to take on that local energy efficiency work

and it may not be LEAP, but it does it, but also opportunities at the airport for community solar as they do their expansion, whether that be rooftop solar or solar in their parking lot area or solar in unused spaces.

Housing Advisory Committee, they've looked at the

Report that was done about the city's staffing levels in our housing department that recommended several new staff positions.

And they have endorsed those recommendations and have been exploring.

They want to make an ask of city council to, at a work session, just walk through those recommendations and hear feedback from city council about the need for those new housing staffing positions in order to implement all of our housing goals in their work plan.

They're also looking to prioritize

work around new policies related to tenant rights and anti displacement.

The housing authority also dealing with kind of challenges around federal funding being reduced.

And beyond that, one of their biggest challenges is just the amount of non-payment of rent, which has significantly impacted the financial sustainability of properties.

And they've implemented a new anti-eviction policy to try to really intensively work with residents who are behind on rent to get them on payment plans, figure out what is the source of non-payment of rent.

But that work session tomorrow is going to get further discussion.

but again we'll just highlight that non-payment of rent is becoming an increasingly large issue as it has also been for Piedmont Housing Alliance.

Regional Housing Partnership, they had a recent presentation around funding beyond LIHTC for funding affordable housing.

I think one of the interesting things they looked at was revolving loan funds either for

affordable housing to buy down LIHTC affordability, or if that could help for kind of missing middle workforce housing for things like duplexes, triplexes that maybe the market is not building because they can't get affordable enough capital.

And they looked at other localities which have done it and looked at maybe for our region, maybe a 10 million dollar seed money could be sufficient for a revolving loan fund in Charlottesville that would be effective.

They're also working on their new regional housing needs assessment, which they hope will be

sustainable in terms of staff at all the surrounding localities would be able to kind of plug in new data as it comes in and rely on it so it's not just like a one-time report.

Kindlewood Advisory Committee, they've just begun planning for phase four of Kindlewood, very early stages of the community design process, but it's their tightest location in terms of sites and there's easement challenges.

challenges with the mature trees that are there, but they're diving into how do they want to design that and get the required number of units on site.

They're also discussing, they know for a fact they want community land trust home ownership opportunities there, but are also exploring will one of the buildings be for elderly residents specifically.

Rivanna River Basin Commission, they're planning for their annual conference, which will probably be in September in the fall.

but that's always a very interesting conference that's very public policy focused if anyone is interested and they're also looking at what would it look like for implementation of the Rivanna River Corridor Plan and really looking at Albemarle County's free bridge promenade potentially being a catalyst project that maybe could spur the city to think about really making that something like a river arts district or something that's more activated and also kind of highlighting a lot of the really interesting indigenous and black history that is along the Rivanna River Corridor

Finance Committee discussed participatory budgeting, which we had a recent work session.

Very kind of high level conversations around starting in July will have the authority to a land value tax.

So is that something the city would ever want to explore?

and then at our most recent finance committee meeting we kind of just very high level started to brainstorm what could potential uses of the one-time affordable housing payments that will be coming into the city from the VRV and 2117 Ivy Road projects be and that'll be a little bit more than 10 million dollars total that probably sometime next year will come to the city as one-time funds and Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission

We, they're working on a, this is far away away, but they're working on a regional land bank study that was evaluating could it be done whether if it's just Charlottesville and Albemarle together or maybe other localities beyond Charlottesville and Albemarle who'd want to join one and is there a potential for that there.

But that's probably at least a year away until they complete that initial study.

Did you say the solar at CHO is being led by, the Discovery's been led by LEAP or that's at

In the past, they've just brainstormed, is there an opportunity at CHO?

And they've just kind of explored, maybe even LEAP is not the right partner.

Maybe it's community solar through a different mechanism.

But they've just looked at that because CHO is going to be going through an expansion soon.

And then with CRHA, is there a sense or does it ever discuss in those meetings about like how much NOAA, how many properties they have to, that are nationally occurring that are becoming, that are coming online or that are in the process of that?

Is there any kind of like inventory or audit of that?

So to my knowledge, they don't have like a systemized list of naturally occurring affordable housing in the city that they're targeting to buy.

I think they're still kind of opportunistic about looking at properties that go up for sale.

And they're definitely still interested in purchasing properties on the market.

But their biggest focus is with the Dogwood housing portfolio, which has a lot of deferred maintenance needs that they know they're going to need to do some rooftop replacements and renovations of some of those units.

Yeah, that's helpful.

Thank you.

I didn't know if they had a chunk in the portfolio already that they were sitting on and they couldn't move on or if there were

Most of the properties they purchase, they're using in some way.

OK, that makes sense.

Thanks.

In case of them, it's me.

So the only two that I sit on that I don't sit on with you all and other some other form or fashion are the Jefferson Area Community Criminal Justice Board, which I'm on the most active

piece of that board is I'm on a subcommittee that's called research and prioritize.

So we're looking right now on evidence-based practices to kind of bridge the gap between what they call sequential intercepts that prevent recidivism or improve the quality of life for incarcerated folks

before and after and during.

and so we are looking at that regionally and starting to kind of craft a plan to figure out what other, what gaps are most prevalent amongst the region itself.

There are some where all of our, we have some high gap percentages and some of those like 77 to 100% of all of the municipalities in our footprint have that gap.

So we're gonna try and prioritize those

become kind of the trusted broker of information about best practices to tackle those gaps and frame those recommendations constructively and customize them for each municipality so that they can maybe achieve and close that gap.

So that work is going on and pretty exciting.

and then the other one is the Social Services Advisory Board which is really more of a kind of report out board but we've been hearing from folks who are taking care of foster families and foster care systems and the impacts of the current administration and funding on basically the entire ecosystem of social services and we have a lot of needs there and some really skilled staff

working with the resources they have to work all of these, the entire spectrum of foster care from prevention into placement and then exiting foster care.

But it's a really heavy load.

And so there's still a lot of work to be done.

And they're looking at different ways to kind of staff and prioritize their work in other areas as well.

All the different arms of social services, so I'm learning about those as we go.

Yeah, if you miss anything, please let them know.

Okay.

So backing up a little bit, I'm also going to talk about some of the field trips that I went on, starting with NACTO needs a nutrient.

Transportation official conference in Minneapolis.

I went to along with our city engineer and our transit planner.

And that was a multi-day conference where we learned a lot about basically anything cool about roads, transit, transportation.

The city of Minneapolis, I've said it before in various meetings, I'll reiterate it in 2015, they made a goal that by 20

30, 60% of trips would be not by car.

And this is a city that has to deal with pretty significant winters.

So they've done, they've invested a lot in bikeways, greenways, and their transit network.

So it was really great to explore that.

The conference travels every year, so each city that it goes to is highlighting a different feature.

So it was really great to see that.

And then there were

professionals from all over the world that were there to present on projects and strategies for funding for design and to kind of share knowledge as well as an opportunity for us to participate in some public works projects and also see at the trade show portion a variety of different options for like protecting bike lanes or doing raised crosswalks or bus floating bus platforms that sort of thing so

That was an excellent experience.

Um, really thankful that I got to go to that and just to the city of Minneapolis for hosting such a great, um, experience.

Um, then, uh, we did an e-bike demo with the county at the county office building as part of bike month and had 29 people, uh, at least sign the waiver to take a bike out, which is great.

It was just a little after work thing, trying to catch people as they were leaving the county office building, the bike shops were here.

and some city reps were there as well.

That was great.

And then our planning and development work group.

We met two times so far.

The first one set at the agenda, some future scoping topics, talking about inclusionary zoning and then the opportunity sites that Mr.

Freeze mentioned throughout the city where there could be

We talked about working on coming up with a plan to identify those.

Then in the next meeting, we talked about Stribbling Avenue, the sidewalk and the traffic calming opportunities there that led to another conversation about maybe picking a street in town to do a woo-nerve demonstration project, which is a Dutch word that is a street that all modes can travel down, but it doesn't prioritize.

motor cars as the primary vehicle.

So it's meant to be safe and feel safe for bikers, pedestrians, kids to play, that sort of thing.

And we talked about long and short term CAT climate goals based on the federal funding challenges that you've already mentioned and how we can think smart about how to spend our money there.

Then I went to Chapel Hill with several members of our city staff and the mayor to meet with, this was facilitated by the Chamber of Commerce.

We met with a bunch of counterparts down there, similarly sharing their strategies for things for homelessness, relationships with the university.

and got to explore their development projects.

We went to their Habitat site.

That's their version of Southwood, essentially.

They're going to come visit us in September.

So it was great to start building those relationships.

They've done a couple of those trips, but we were the first ones to go to them.

Yeah, first time for us, at least, who are up here now.

So we're looking forward to hosting them in September.

And then we had a CARTA meeting while I was down there talking about a prioritization study for transit, basically the balance between intensity and footprint, meaning do you spend your money on frequency or expansion and how we want to move forward.

Interestingly, in this study, the

The Connect service to Buckingham scored very high as something to work on expanding.

So we talked a lot about why that would be and whether or not the ridership metrics are accurately reflecting the lived experience for folks.

So we're going to keep delving into that.

And then there were some questions about the accuracy of the plans for the route adjustments noted in the presentation, whether or not they were confirmed or in the right place.

And so we'll also pay attention to that as we move forward.

Councilor Fleisher and I attended the Roseville Neighborhood Association meeting where we had a great discussion, really great discussion with the

the neighbors there about what development looks like and how it affects cities and neighborhoods and both in terms of look and feel but also bottom line.

So I thought that was a really, really great experience.

Then there was the Bike and Pedestrian Advisory Committee where Jim Keller from the Utilities Senior Project Manager presented on the West Main Street Gas and Water Replacement Project

City engineer Brennan Duncan presented on the Starr study for the West Main and Ridge Street intersection.

And also speaking of Rose Hill, our transit planner Zoe also noted that there was significant community feedback on the Rose Hill restriping, repaving, reconfiguring project.

She's led a walking group there and is really

collecting a lot of great input from the community.

So it's not just something the city is doing, but the neighborhood is involved in that.

And Connect Seaville is updating that as feedback is received and decisions are made.

So that's a great resource for anyone who wants to know what's up with that.

Then we had another CARTA meeting, a special meeting because we weren't able to fit everything in to the first one.

where we welcomed representatives from CBTA and DRPT, the Central Virginia Transportation Authority and the Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

Both of those have the word transportation as their T where our CARTA is just transit.

So CBTA is their transportation authority that covers not just buses but also

the roads and greenways and everything for the Richmond and surrounding area regions.

We're looking to them to, on CARTA, we're looking to them and other transit and transportation authorities in the state to kind of figure out what's the best way for us to model our governance, our funding, and that sort of thing.

But if we get CARTA funded, we have to appeal to the General Assembly for that, of course.

It will be the first transit, regional transit agency that's funded in the Commonwealth.

So we're trying to learn from those around us, but also kind of breaking the mold a little bit.

Then the presentation from DRPT,

was a little bit educational.

DRPT split from VDOT in the early 90s.

We are one of the only states where our transit department is different from the Department of Transportation.

They provide state and federal funding, capital and operating grants, and studies, plans, and technical assistance for localities who are trying to do things with their transit transportation networks.

And they have a new leader, Maria Zimmerman, who was at our meeting, which was great.

She came to visit us and answer questions and also told us that she said a really heartening thing, which was that transit only works as good as the land use around it, which is an important thing to remember.

Transit is at a certain point, unscalable.

Car use at a certain point is unscalable.

We only have so much

Land and Space, and there's an expense needed when you have to extend it further and further.

And so the land you surround it is better housing decisions.

And so the DRPT group is going to do a transit-oriented housing development study, which is a little out of their usual purview because it's about housing and not how to get people around.

But proximity is the answer to both of those things.

They relate so closely that it is kind of in their realm.

So that's going to be really exciting to hear more about as it happens later this year.

Then last weekend, there was another e-bike demo with the Belmont-Carlton Neighborhood Association, which was also really fun.

was a little warm, but it was nice to be on a bike.

And then yesterday, the Charlottesville Scholarship Board, I was not able to make the meeting, unfortunately, but in the notes, they were talking about the fundraising strategy, the 90 day review of the new program manager position and all the meetings I've been with them.

That's been

working out well.

And if anyone would like to donate to the Charlottesville scholarship program, please head to the website.

It offers scholarships to not just city school students, but also certain adults looking to get additional credentialing or go back to school.

So it's a good, it's a good resource for the community.

And we want to make sure that it's successful and does not go through the endowment.

Any questions about any of that?

No, thank you.

Okay, that's great.

It was a busy month.

No, I don't think so.

Do we have a second?

All in favor?

Aye.