Charlottesville City Council - Albemarle Board of Supervisors Joint Work Session   10/6/2026

I call the Charlottesville special joint meeting to order.

Councilor Fleisher?

Here.

Next request from Vice Mayor Oschrin to join electronically.

Here.

Vice Mayor Oschrin has requested to participate via Zoom.

We can hear you.

Yes, I am in Charlottesville and I am sick.

Thank you.

We all appreciate that.

Council, is there a motion to approve electronic participation by Vice Mayor Oschrin?

Yes.

All opposed, please say no.

The motion is approved.

Chair Galloway.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

I'd like to call to order the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors for our joint meeting with the Charlottesville City Council Tuesday, October 6th, 2026, 6 p.m. here at City Space, 150th Street, Northeast Charlottesville, Virginia 22902.

Please.

Alex?

Yes.

Mr. Missell?

Yes.

Mr. Pruitt?

I want to welcome everyone to this meeting.

It looks like with this room is anyone back home to keep the lights on, but it's good that we have so many people here.

This is something that we've been doing scheduling and hosting every other year.

And the city is proud to host it this time from our friends from the county.

And we welcome our friends from UVA, who are also represented this evening, where we have several reports from executives.

Yes, sir.

Mayor, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak this evening.

The first thing that the city manager checked in on me and asked, will you be at five minutes or less?

And Mr. City Manager, I will be, and I appreciate you reminding me to stay on time.

And in fact, I will be much less than five minutes because really I just want to make a couple of observations.

First of all, I'm in my ninth year as county executive for Atmar County government.

I've been to a number of these.

And I can honestly say in nine years that I've never been more excited to be a part of a joint meeting with the city, the county and the university at any point in time.

And I want to say a couple of things about why I'm so excited.

Just over a week ago, Albemarle, Charlottesville, the university, the chamber and key community leaders, we had an opportunity to host 82 guests traveling from the greater Chapel Hill, Carrboro Chamber on an action packed two day visit to our community.

where they were focused on benchmarking and learning in the areas of affordable housing, downtown vitality, economic development, university and community partnerships, workforce development and strategic planning.

And that's not all that they came to look at.

Hosting this visit pushed our respective organizations and our community almost like cramming for a comprehensive final exam to prepare for shared learning opportunities with the greater Chapel Hill-Carvera Chamber.

I need to mention that in May, 35 of us went down to visit the Chapel Hill, Greater Chapel Hill Chamber in the communities down there.

And they did a wonderful job of hosting us for two days.

We learned at that time that for the last 25 years, Chapel Hill takes these visits to university communities, town-gown communities every two years.

So they've worked that muscle and they have that framework in place.

We were a little intimidated at the county because we wanted to make sure that we met their expectations.

After the two-day event, the city manager and I received the following text from the Chapel Hill Chamber president.

In all my 25 years of organizing these trips, your community has set the high watermark.

It was followed by a big thank you.

He was referring not to us having best practices in every area that I described, but I think he was pointing to our energy, our attitude, our collaboration, our partnerships, our openness,

are welcoming and how we share with a sister community that has an uncanny resemblance to us.

And we talked openly for two days about a lot of our opportunities and a lot of our problems.

I think this is the beginning of a really nice relationship moving forward.

One of the things that we discovered while we were in the middle of this two day visit was that the city is gonna embark upon its strategic planning work over the next year.

The university is in the process of updating its 10 year strategic plan

and the county is in the process in the next year of updating its five-year plan.

And we've talked openly about, is there an opportunity for these three respective organizations to put something in each of the strategic plans that recognizes this partnership work that is occurring every day in many of the areas that I outlined.

I'm excited about what the next 12 months holds.

I'm excited about our discussions tonight and our staff stand ready to take direction from our board

and we continue to really appreciate the good partnership work from the university and from the city.

Good evening City Councilors, Board of Supervisors, UVA guests and members of the public.

I take this opportunity to brief you on a couple of critical matters.

In the packet for this meeting, there is the revenue sharing report for FY26.

And per the 1982 agreement, the city has reported on the $20,175,533 received from the county.

A little more than $11.5 million was allocated to the operating portion of the city budget, and the remaining $8.6 million was allocated to the capital improvement program.

The City continues to prioritize the deployment of these funds in ways that demonstrate a direct and mutual benefit to the taxpayers of Albemarle County while also investing in the priorities needed to ensure a stable and strong City continues to churn in the center of the much larger county and university that surrounds it.

The report highlights how that is done in the areas of parks and recreation, transportation, court services and regional public safety, housing, employment and workforce programming, landfill and recycling services.

The city further invests $18.4 million within its operating budget that carries a direct benefit to Albemarle County and our five-year CIP funds are just under $18 million in regional projects.

Also in the packet is the partnerships report.

We want to just highlight just a few substantive items in that report.

The projects indicate our shared priorities and underpin a foundation of mutual pursuit that is for a high quality of life for all residents in the city and county.

In reviewing the report, I've chosen to highlight three specific areas of collaboration, arts, culture, and recreation, critical infrastructure, and transportation, planning, coordination, and cooperation.

arts and culture arts culture and recreation it is clear that the city's downtown is the centerpiece to the region that boasts a strong environment community our teams have come together to support great cultural events provide critical adaptive services and provide and protect our natural areas we're appreciating while appreciating them just the same

Luke Deville is an example of an opportunity to locals and visitors to experience the city, county, and university on one continuous walk, run, or ride, and most don't appreciate the power of such an opportunity.

We can and should continue to look for ways that we continue to promote the connections that blur our boundary lines if for only the opportunity to dream up the next opportunity to make our region stand out as an invitation to those who come and leave their money with us.

As critical infrastructure, our budget, IT, economic development, and public safety teams model the best of collaboration between us.

Their regular contact has made it possible to delve into deeper mutual challenges, to surface coordinated opportunities to strategically invest, accurately project, and specifically protect our community.

Our most impressive regional coordination is in the area of emergency management, an area vitally important to the protection of people, property, and the wellbeing of a community.

For transportation coordination and collaboration, as we will hear more shortly, transportation is a high priority for all of us.

Our planning is critical, our coordination is vital, and our collaboration is an opportunity worth exploring.

CAT continues to push toward reclaiming its pre-COVID service levels on which to build an even broader ridership in our area.

MicroCAT is still exceeding all expectations, and the county remains committed to serving the transportation needs with fixed route and on-demand service.

John has celebrated his 50th year of service to this community with people, service, and connection at the forefront of that journey.

and the University Transit Service is shaping the system it needs to move students, healthcare workers and a broader university community.

Tonight exemplifies regionalism for the greater Charlottesville area.

By having the city, county and university at this table, we are doing what we know is important for regionalism and that is being curious about what can happen if we work on it together.

A strong region is important to each of us and no matter how hard anyone might try to identify over the other, we just go together.

The county is so tightly wrapped around the city and extends far beyond.

The university is an engine in the center that elevates the collective profiles while impacting the local fabric just the same.

And the city is small and unafraid to fill up more than its space with an opportunity to serve all who come.

Each of us today is actively working on our strategic plans.

As Jeff mentioned, the city will release its three-year plan in July with the start of our next fiscal year.

Our strategy team is hard at work building our internal muscles so that we can get back to tracking, measuring, and reporting.

This will be the first strategic plan for the city since 2018.

We will both include county and university priorities in our plan because we have to.

And the county and university are also in the strategic planning mode as we speak.

I will end with a thank you to our respective teams for their continued collaboration and professionalism.

And I'll turn it over to JJ Davis.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Wade and Chair Galloway.

It's an honor and privilege to be with you and the other executives, Jeff Richardson and Sam Saunders, who I work with all the time.

So it's really a privilege.

With me tonight, just want to do quick introductions as well as Stanley, our SVP, Kevin McDonald, our Vice President and Megan Lowe, our Chief of Staff.

As you know, we're only as good as the team and I'm fortunate to work with these three stellar individuals day in and day out.

So I'm going to do

brief updates, and then we'll stay on schedule.

So we also wanted to express our deep gratitude to the joining the Chambers visit to Chapel Hill, which many of my team joined, and then also for the most recent event.

I'm also going on my ninth year.

So Jeff and I are like, you know, not popping any gray hairs yet, but we've been working together for a long time.

And it's really amazing to see some of the initiatives that we've been able to do together.

And I'll talk about several of those accomplishments and some work underway.

As both the county exec and the city manager mentioned, we are also in the midst of a strategic plan.

We love the idea of collaborating across areas of mutual interest.

We have a 10th president, Scott Beardsley.

Many of you have already met him and worked with him regularly.

He is knee deep into that gathering facts and information about what's important to the university stakeholders of which you are critically important.

We've already gotten 13,000 responses to questions about what would you like to see in the next decade, so I would encourage anyone that's interested to please participate in that.

In addition to that, we're working on areas of partnership and alignment.

Obviously we talked about some of the regional opportunities, but key issues for us continue to be things like transit mobility, affordable housing, lots of new student housing going up by private sector and how will that impact the university.

So lots of key issues for us.

Some successful initiatives include pipelines and pathways where we've just celebrated 500 local residents who are seeking UVA employment are gainfully employed now at UVA and that's just been such a huge accomplishment and a partnership with the city in particular on those initiatives.

Other things, obviously, we really care about sort of how UVA sits in the broader ecosystem as well, and I'm really happy to report Princeton just announced we're the number one school for financial aid.

As you know, we're the only public institution left in the country that meets 100% of demonstrated need.

We're basically need-blind for admissions, both in-state and out-of-state undergraduate students.

obviously underpinning with lots of resources from donors and alums but we're so grateful to be able to have that and to be able to be incredibly affordable and accessible to our students.

In addition to that obviously our graduation rate still leads the best in the nation for public universities and Forbes just last week announced UVA Health among best employers for women so particularly excited about that.

Might be a biased gender therefore.

That was a joke.

Okay.

A couple of other things, obviously transit, critically important to us.

So taking a collaborative approach to that.

You all have worked with Lois and Scott on our team.

And so we're very interested in finding ways to share data, partner, whatever makes sense moving forward.

Next, a couple of other things.

We are in the midst of a new Charlottesville Child Care Center.

Again, underpinning a huge gift from the La Crosse family, a $43 million gift to be exact, will allow local partners to be able to have access to affordable childcare right in the city of Charlottesville.

And then other things, obviously, in addition to pipelines and pathways, we're really focused on two critical areas.

One is affectionately biotech.

and the biotech industry.

As you've seen with all of your partnership, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Merck, all coming into the region, we are in the midst of about a $380 million capital construction project for the state-of-the-art Biotech Manning Institute.

That will open Q2 of 2028 with lots of incredible researchers.

Obviously, the focus there is molecules

to bedside, which is basically trying to find science and ways to save lives.

So very excited about that.

Lois and team are spending a lot of time on that.

And the other big thing is the state of Virginia, the Commonwealth just approved $205 million for the Center for the Arts.

So we're very excited.

This will obviously be a big regional impact for the city, the county, and I would say the larger central Virginia region.

that again also has about $130 million gift from the Ader family behind that.

That is under lots of planning and design underway.

Bear with us on traffic on the Emmett Ivey Quarter.

It will be a little challenging, but very, very excited about a world-class performing arts center, but we'll also include the museums and we'll have a connection in with education for drama and performing arts.

With that again, just a debt of gratitude to the city and the county leadership and obviously the elected officials here this evening.

We do really feel part of the collaboration and I think we've made tremendous progress in the last couple of years.

So really looking forward as we build the next strategic plan and finding ways to continue to get the best of each other.

As I said, our employees live and work in the city and county disproportionately.

Thank you.

I think we, next we will have a presentation by Garland.

Just double checking, you're gonna advance the slides, correct?

Alright, thank you.

Mayor Wade, Chair Galloway, Executive Jeff Richardson, and City Manager Sanders, thank you and the University for coming here tonight.

I want to give you an opportunity to, I want to highlight the fact that

Charlesburg Area Training has been in operation since 1975 continuously through a number of iterations of changing names and structure, but it's running operations for everyone to make sure this is a regional system that benefits everyone.

So if we advance to the first slide, we're going to update you tonight about how we look, and we're going to go through the first year of a four-year plan that the city council has basically laid out for CATEC.

The first slide basically highlights that we have $16,774,292 dedicated to transit.

And if you look at the bottom of the slide, it outlines where those funding sources come from.

The amount of funding that comes from the city, the county, the university, federal, state, and our advertising budget.

This is truly a regional partnership that touches the city, the county, and the university.

if you advance to the next slide.

So I wanna highlight the fact that there is a four-year plan we're gonna really focus in on the first year of the plan.

Each year of the four-year plan, we have 10 more operators that we're going to potentially add to the system to highlight the fact that we wanna increase reliability and frequency if you advance to the next slide.

So in the first year of the expansion, there are seven items here.

that we've listed as priorities for the first year of operations and the ones that are highlighted in yellow are the ones that we are anticipating being able to complete this year.

All of them are being phased in over time and if you look at the ones that are on October 26, 20 days from now,

The Route 7 itself will advance its frequency from a 30-minute model during a peak period of time to a 15-minute model.

That is one of the things that was highlighted as a priority from City Council with the 5 and the 7.

If you look at other opportunities that we have when we're looking at the 5, which is also one of our

hire anticipated routes of passengers.

That will be, hopefully, if we can get bus stops in and we can get some other things changed and some people hired, we will advance the frequency on the five in February.

And a number of our routes, we are also going to extend a little bit of service at night.

Having every one of our routes

have their last trip basically begin at 10.30.

So that one final trip will probably end around 11, 11.15 or 11.30 at the latest.

The next slide please.

So what does that look like in real terms?

So the seven and the five, those are two key components that the region has said that they really want more service on.

The five and the seven

the seventh itself there's major advancements that we want to do on that it's one of our highest it's actually the highest route in our system today the alignment of itself you want to extend it to Walmart extending it to Walmart longer along the alignment and making sure that Stonefield is a major connection point on the five itself you want to also de-emphasize Fashion Square

Moll, which is basically going through a re-engineering.

And then we will hopefully at some point in time at peak service and then extend service back on the weekends.

We do not have any service right now on Sundays.

That was one of the things that we had to modify during the pandemic.

And we have not been able to extend service back on Sundays.

because we just do not have the number of drivers required to do so.

When we have the number of drivers, we will extend service as soon as we thought we can.

If you extend the next slide, please.

So this is how I explained to city council many times about how service is being used and how it's run.

The color combinations today, you see the yellow and the green.

Yellow means you would see your bus every 60 minutes.

The green means you see your bus every 30 minutes no matter where you're standing on the line.

The eventual goal is to have service that looks blue, which means you would have service every 15 minutes.

And like James often says to me, blue and green are cat colors, and that's really what we want to see on these charts.

So today, this is what it looks like, and if you'll advance to the next slide.

The first year of our four-year plan, like I said, we're rolling out October 26.

You will see the five and the seven and the six.

We're all trying to make 15 minute service happen.

All of those during the peak period of time.

And then if you look at where we're also trying to make extended service during the middle of the day, that connection between the university and downtown on the trolley.

On Saturdays, the university connection between the university and trolley on the trolley is still, the university and downtown on the trolley is still there.

but we're not able to extend any service beyond 30 minutes anywhere else.

If you go to the next slide.

That's year one, that's 76 operators.

Year two, if we add 10 more operators, there's a priority for us to potentially look at doing more service and bringing back Sunday service.

That's the key component here if you look at

to Matt.

So there's really not a whole lot more that we're going to be able to do other than revive Sunday service, which is a major component here.

People need to be able to still get to work, hospitals, connections, shopping on a Sunday.

And that's a real emphasis in the second year of if we get additional resources.

Year three, if we go up to 96 operators and advance to the next slide,

We start to add more frequent service on a 15-minute service during the day on the 7th.

Basically, a 12-hour service from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., you'll have a 15-minute peak service, highest line.

We do know there's a direct correlation between frequency and ridership, so we're hoping to play that up.

And we will extend the frequency on Saturday and Sunday on the trolley to also increase that frequency between the university and downtown.

In the fourth year, when we go to 106, we start to see a lot of the yellow has disappeared on the weekday.

That's where our highest ridership is.

And we were trying to make sure we emphasize getting away from all of the tan, getting away from 60-minute service.

If we really want to build a ridership, we build that at the baseline at 30-minute service.

So the more 30-minute service we have, the major connections we can make, the easier it is for folks to use our service to get around.

The regional connectivity happens there.

If you go to the next slide for me.

So one of the things that we've been talking about since we've come back, a lot of us made an opportunity, made a trip to Champaign-Urbana and we started the system there, the MTD system there.

What we noticed there is they take advantage of what's called state funding.

We want to talk a little bit about what state funding means and how we can potentially at this region, take advantage of state funding here.

So if you'll go to the next slide.

And one more, I'm sorry.

So how does STIC funding work?

So one of the things I wanted to highlight in fact is STIC funding stands for small transit intensive city funding.

It's a federal dollars associated with smaller transit systems that operate at a higher capacity, similar to what large transit agencies do.

If you're a golfer, that basically is like handicap.

It allows us to basically compete with larger transit systems and where we are doing just as well as them, we get rewarded for being a small transit system that's doing as well as a large transit system.

And we want to probably take advantage of that.

That money basically is allowing us to do major things.

If you will advance to the next slide.

So that federal funding is a source called 5307.

It doesn't mean a lot to a lot of people.

It means a lot to transit agencies of my size.

That's the lifeblood of where we get our federal dollars from.

That allows us to do operating, allows us to do capital.

But for us, we specifically use 15007 for our operating powers.

We, as a small transit agency, we have a population between 50 and 199,000.

That means we're in that sweet spot, which will allow us to take advantage of the STIC funding.

The state funding itself can be used for operating keys for capital and is specifically just for small transit agencies.

This is not a funding source that can be used by larger transit agencies like GRTC, 85 miles down the road.

If you go to the next slide.

Today, Charlottesville Area Transit participates in three of the six categories.

If you look at the bottom, there are six categories that are outlined that transit agencies

can do reporting.

And that reporting allows in some point in time, if we exceed the number, it basically equates to about $500,000 a year for each category that we meet the marks or exceed the mark.

And what we're trying to do today is look at an opportunity where we can potentially add to those buckets.

Right now, we're only reporting in the three areas that have the stars.

So three, four, and six, but

Eventually, if we have an opportunity and partner with the university, you may be able to do one and two.

So it means potentially at least one of the categories for passenger miles traveled.

But if we can get up, because passenger miles traveled is really important.

And I think this is the point I want to highlight.

Even if the university can help in this situation, because even as a small transit agency, we don't have enough miles that we generate on our own.

to eclipse the category.

So by partnering, getting the data that the university already collects and having them potentially volunteer reporting that basically comes into the area, the money that comes into the area that can be used for operating services that will touch the university, the county and the city.

If you go to the next slide.

So what does that look like for us today?

Over the last five year cycles, federal cycles, you can see the number of performance categories that we basically exceeded.

And it goes from three, three, three, two, and three.

That one year where we had a blip, where we had two, you can see we fell out where it was in vehicle revenue miles per capita.

That was a little issue that we had on reporting.

We've corrected that situation and we're getting that $500,000 that comes back to us.

And that number right now for us is over 500.

It's $512,000 that basically comes basically by exceeding that category.

If you go to the next one for us.

So what does a potential partnership in the university look like?

Well, if we are allowed to partner or the university itself, voluntary reporting, it will help us to exceed the categories in the passenger miles traveled.

As a small transit agency partnering

Pairing the two together, our number of passenger miles traveled will eclipse or at least get to the categories of the larger transit systems.

That's where the money potentially comes in for us.

If we, and this was an example, we hired RK&K to do a model for us.

And they looked at just one line from the university, just using the gold line as an example.

It was not the only one that was chosen, but it was just one of the examples that was used

Basically build out this mile for us.

If we were to use those numbers, you can see that we would basically eclipse where the 59 and the 50 and the passenger miles travel, which means that we would be in the category for getting $500,000 to this region by pairing those two numbers together.

CAT itself right now does not report in this category.

There are things as we are building out our system we're allowed to do so.

One of the major things that we have to do is get our numbers up to at least 30 vehicles at peak period of time.

We are very close to being able to do that and we are able to get additional operators hired.

where we strongly believe in February of 27, we'll have 31 vehicles at peak period, which basically starts our process of being able to report for other categories.

If you go to the next slide for me.

So what does that look like for the funding implications?

Voluntary funding is a potential way that a university can help.

They can report through us, they can report on their own.

If they report through us, there are potentially some

some issues that we will have to work out some agreements.

But if you report on your own, you don't have any of the federal obligations that you have to work particularly worried about.

There are other transit systems that function for other major universities that do this.

And in the end of this month, the National Transit Database will actually update their database system and show us which university systems report on a voluntary basis, but do not take federal funding.

So they use the report for the region and that will be an important marker for allowing universities to see how they can help the region get more money.

If you wanna go to the next slide, I just wanna highlight the fact that becoming a voluntary partner does not trigger any of the FDA rules.

That was one of the things we really wanted to make sure that we

guarded against and putting their university in jeopardy and having them report on a federal basis.

But voluntary reporting itself is probably the easiest way to make this thing happen.

And I know we looked at potentially an NYU reporting through us, but it's probably easier if the university reported on itself.

If you want to go to the next slide, I'll open it up for questions.

Any questions from anyone around the table?

Thank you.

One of the issues which has been a concern for many years has been the shift change at Martha Jefferson in the evening.

And so do you work with the hospital staff to, because I think it used to be 11 o'clock when they got out and then there's no way home.

And it's terrible on the weekends, and Sunday is a disaster.

We have not contacted the hospital itself.

But if you want, I shouldn't say it.

Let me back up.

Two years ago, we had a conversation with the hospital about patisserie adding service.

We do not have enough operators to extend the service model at this point in time.

But as we continue to build out our model, we will be able to do so.

The ultimate goal for transit is to extend our service to midnight.

That would solve the issue of being able to shift change for the hospital.

But as you can see, when we have the charts, as we build out more, we'll be able to revisit extending service later and later.

Thank you.

And in your other homework, have you done any kind of origin destination study amongst your potential riders?

to say where do you want to go that you can't get to now?

We do a little bit of that during our, we do what is a transit strategic plan.

So we do surveys about where people want to go.

It's three, four years old now.

We need to potentially update that number.

Yes, ma'am?

Garland, if you could speak a little bit about the ability to hire those vicious goal that we have of hiring drivers, 10 drivers over the next four years.

And because a few years ago, we all had problems hiring school bus drivers, and you take care of that for the city as well.

Absolutely.

Great question, sir.

I'm happy to stand before you right now and say,

Before we had 66 all-drive operators, today I have 69 drivers.

We just made offers to seven more drivers.

We're hopeful that all will accept.

And if that's the case, then we'll be a couple short.

And we have a wait list of potential that have been calling us asking if we have available

Our vice chair has a question.

Quick question.

As you look at costs and you think about fuel prices, for example, how do you adapt to those?

A little joke.

So we do build a little bit of cushion when we build out our fleet budget.

We've had these conversations.

I've reached out to Krisy.

I'm a little concerned now.

Normally when the inflections happen for us on fuel, it's usually a couple of cycles, maybe a month.

But we've seen a sustained higher.

So we were getting diesel at $2.35 our last

The shipment two days, three days ago was $5.85.

That's unsustainable for us, but we're managing because we did build in like a 5% increase on our fuel budget.

Luckily we did, but we will have to potentially revisit that.

And we're using part of our salary savings right now if necessary to bid the whole.

And just one quick follow up on that.

EV buses are a great transition and a thing that we have to do.

The goal from the council is to have us zero emissions by 2050.

So we've set out on a path to do so.

And I invite all of you at some point in time to come by and look at what the tax dollars in this region have already come to fruition on our property.

We have two battery electric transit buses, charging stations.

The whole gamut is there.

We have two more that are on the way.

It should be here by March.

We're building out.

So to answer your question about operations, the bus is not really going to have a major impact on our costs yet, because we're still building out the infrastructure.

As we build out the infrastructure though, it will come down over time.

Yeah, Michael?

Three questions.

I'm not sure I can answer that question, other than the first year of the four-year plan is baked in because we have those 10 drivers.

Right.

The other 10 is an assumption that it would be in the 28th budget.

Yeah, the intention would be that the four-year plan was identified by staff on the city side specifically that bringing forward the budget each year would be four bites at that apple.

The question is what makes up each one of those requests.

and the coordination that we have, we've actually invited the county into our budget process earlier.

I think they have more than one touch now to be able to get more information in advance of even the presentation that Mr. Williams makes to the Board of Supervisors each year.

The second question on the UTS voluntary reporting, which I think is a fantastic and incredibly important idea.

Beyond, you'd referenced the memorandum of agreement.

That's not necessary.

It could be voluntary.

So the university, we're having robust conversations with the university right now.

So my counterpart, Scott Sildorf and I have had a couple of conversations.

We actually brought our consultant in, we've talked through some of the logistics of how we potentially start down that path.

I know the university has sent some of their staff to some of the trainings.

So I believe the university is doing everything it can to get educated on this process and then potentially become a partner with us.

So I am really hopeful and I think, you know, I can't remember Ben's last name with the university.

We've had a couple of meetings with him talking about statistics of how we're recording.

So I think the university is moving down the path, getting the education it needs and research done to make an informed decision.

But I think we're

And then final question also on the revenue front.

At this point, are there any planned next steps for moving to try to secure a state funding source for mutual transit authority?

That's a conversation that's happening with CARTA.

The idea of CARTA serving essentially as a collector of revenue that can then be turned over to serve the transit system.

Thank you.

Do we?

The, do we have a timeline for the trolley service for year one getting to 15 minutes?

No.

We were hopeful, I didn't want to put it on there, we're hoping that May of 27th would be a time when we have all of the operators hired, trained, and will be able to extend the service.

But I didn't want to put that on there because it's so far out.

The two ones that we are targeting right now are the October, which is 26, and then the February timeframe.

And then after that, we will look at potentially moving forward to nailing down a time limit, Charlie, ultimately.

Okay.

And the two

That's a great question.

So yes, I believe the last time we talked, our on-time performance was like 60.

Today, it's like 67%.

And I think when we talk about on-time performance, I need people to understand

On top of the purpose of measuring the two ways, outbound and inbound.

If you look at our dashboard, if you look at individual routes, you can see we're performing really well going outbound, meaning going out to the end of the line.

Coming back downtown, we have a number of our routes that are running hot, which means they're running ahead of schedule.

We do that adjustments in the schedule twice a year.

Unfortunately, when we put the new schedule in in the 26th, then we will start to see whether the adjustments we made will start to improve that on-time performance on the inbound portion.

And then we make those, and then if it doesn't, then we continue to do analysis, make changes to each one of the routes.

and do it again in the next time we do another booking, which is when we update the schedules.

So unfortunately, when you build the schedule, it's hard for us to change the runtime because everybody has the schedule and that's what the public sees.

So we have twice a year to make those adjustments.

And I believe we're getting better at analyzing which part of the route we need to make the adjustments on.

But we don't have a prediction for what this might, if everything would,

The goal would be high 80%.

That's where I'm aiming.

That's what the team is.

We're organizing our systems around.

High performance systems are in the 90 to 93% on the topic.

See if Councilor Oschrin has any questions.

Hey, I'll just keep it to one, because we get a chance to ask these in CARTA as well.

But for the STIC funding, can you talk a little bit more about that funding source?

Where does the state collect the money?

How limited is that pool or expansive is that pool?

So great question.

So the STIC funding in this case is all federal dollars.

It has zero state money in it.

We are competing with other systems across the country.

So it's not just a Commonwealth of Virginia thing, which is why it's important that we try to maximize all of our reporting structures to get at that dollar.

There's money that's basically sitting in this pot at FTA that are designed for small transit agencies.

We are just not tapping into it.

So we would not be taken away from anybody else.

We would be dipping it into a pot that right now is not 100% allocated.

And I think that is one of the things that we want to try to maximize.

But there are state additional funds that would also potentially come three to four years later

if we can get our ridership up, which is also a part of a byproduct of this.

Jen, you wanna get one more in?

Okay.

The route five evenings, would that change?

The weekday evenings and Saturday mornings drop to 60 minutes.

How will riders on the stretches that route seven doesn't cover be served in that route five drop?

So year two, we go, if you look at the five and the schedulers pulled it up, we go 15 minutes service, peak periods of time, middle of the day from nine to three, 30 minutes, and then 60 minutes after 6 p.m. We are doing that because we're trying to preserve resources and apply them to where we know the bulk of our ridership is.

but also allowing us to extend service beyond our 10-30 timeframe.

What CAT is trying to do is basically maximize the hours where the bulk of our riders are but also maintain a coverage component after the bulk of people have gone home from work.

So extending service would mean we'd have to get our ridership, I mean our operator numbers higher than the 10th and right now what we are prioritizing is the reliability during the 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. time frame and then getting more frequency in that time frame and then restoring Sunday service in the second year.

So those are the three major functions that we're trying to do.

Any additional resources beyond that we cannot

One question, too, unless we've got a couple minutes.

When you think about four years out, when you think about what this community is going to look like in four years, there's a good chance AstraZeneca will be here moving forward.

Manning Institute will be coming online.

The bio boom that you were talking about, JJ.

There's a lot of change that's going to happen.

That happens during our budget session.

So we're developing conversation.

We're in that budget development phase right now.

So we know, for example, AstraZeneca is coming two years from now, and they've reached out and said that they wanted a connection.

We can build that into the mod for two years out, because there's also resources of putting bus stops in.

That process, unfortunately, takes a long time.

It's probably a two-year window for us to be able to get it in.

So knowing two years in advance when we wanted to do something, so it's that planning phase of seeing a couple of years out, at least two, maybe three years out,

Organizing our steps to be able to make adjustments, because it's easy to say we're going to just add service to AstraZeneca, but are we moving something?

Are we taking something away?

Or are we adding service without making any adjustments?

So those are conversations that we would have with staff, and then we would figure out how, if you want it, to pay for it and move forward and make the service happen.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Lots of good information.

Good evening again, everyone.

I'm going to stand down here because when I stand up, I don't have much clearance up there.

I have been assured that everyone can hear me online just by standing here.

So I'm going to introduce myself and then obviously run my hand up to introduce themselves and move on with the presentation.

We're going to talk about homelessness intervention for the next 15 minutes.

So again, I am Sam Roman.

Most people call me Roman because there's only one Sam.

It's very good to be with you tonight.

I want to talk a little bit, next slide please, as I introduce myself about my portfolio.

I am a little bit biased because I believe that I have the best portfolio that one could ever have.

Mr. Sanders has been very intentional about community safety.

And so in my portfolio, I have emergency management, I have police, I have fire, I have human services, and I have social services.

What better portfolio to have?

So I'm pretty excited about that.

And I think that as we think about community safety, and we talk about homelessness or homelessness and homelessness intervention, this portfolio is really poised

to address that, the collaboration between all of the departments that I just mentioned.

So it really postures us to really integrate, as it says, a coordinated and really a holistic approach to community safety, wellbeing, and responsiveness.

So in terms of homelessness intervention, obviously, as everyone in the room know, that we have been able to accomplish bringing on an additional asset

to merge into the ecosystem of homelessness intervention.

And that is a 27 square foot, 27,000 square foot space over on Holiday Drive.

And so as we begin to address homelessness, we know that homelessness and its intervention is not just based in the city of Charlottesville.

It knows no boundaries.

So it would only make sense for us to approach this from a collaborative posture.

And so

That's what we think that we are doing.

I'm going to introduce Misty here pretty soon to talk a little bit about our efforts.

Good evening, everyone.

I'm the director of the Department of Human Services for the city of Charlottesville.

And one of my roles, next slide, was to

serve as a leader with other leadership members to transition the encampment at the two encampments that were at the riverfront and work on a transition plan to stand up holiday drive in an emergency posture so we'll share some of the key points and highlights and takeaways of that endeavor highlighting collaboration and then

turned towards opportunities for next steps in the future and what else is in the pipeline for resolving homelessness.

So what we did was we decided to utilize the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness to look at their best practice models for closing encampments.

And one of those things talked about really working with the encampment members to identify needs currently and then what their needs were for the future.

And so one of the things that we heard was that they wanted and the community

We were able to do that and be able to collect trash on a more frequent basis than we had

been able to do before.

And so we were able to leverage the voices of the folks that were living in the encampment and then turn that into practical action.

We also utilized a regional approach to deploy navigation teams, as you will, care navigators.

This included folks from the UVA School of Nursing, the UVA Medical Center clinical staff.

We had folks from PACHAM and other members and volunteers to basically pair up, at least in pairs, sometimes more.

and have kiosks down there, not only for the encampment members to receive information and updates from the city about the next phase of holiday drive and the encampment closing expectations, but also to get some real practical needs met.

So filling out SNAP applications, making sure folks were enrolling in Medicaid if they were eligible, some folks needed identification and so that they can obtain employment in the next step on the ladder.

So we were able to actually practically meet some of those needs right there in the field.

We didn't have to wait for the shelter to open to do that.

We could leverage volunteer efforts right now.

And so next slide.

We also alongside engagement in the encampment, we also engaged our businesses and the community pieces.

So we were able to

Do some walkarounds and some town halls with the business owners, again, trying to source their needs and how we might come up with practical solutions to resolve those needs, making sure that we are being transparent with plans as they move forward.

We were also members of the public spaces working group, which also involved folks that were in the Rivanna Trail Foundation and other community groups, including members from the encampment to keep that touch point going.

from a planning level and on the on ground level.

And we also created the public engagement connect C-bill to make sure that the community members were updated as well.

Next slide.

Just a couple snapshot on the holiday drive endeavor.

So we did a informational kind of walkthrough tour of holiday drive.

If you haven't seen it or you haven't

Ben to the property, you can sort of see inside and see some of the philosophy of how CAS, the Central Arizona Sheltering Services, put this trauma-informed lens onto what the holiday drive build-out looks like on this.

It right now operates on just the first floor of the operations.

This is just for the temporary status to meet the immediate need, while phase two of the build-out will include all three floors.

So you can kind of take a look at that if you go onto YouTube and just search them.

2000 Holiday Drive, that should come up for you.

It is a 24 hour, seven day a week shelter.

So folks can remain on site should they need to.

They can also receive outreach support.

Their case management support will be coming along shortly.

We've also had some success early on in this.

We know that there are on average about 70 guests staying there at night,

indicates the high level of theme right off the bat.

It did not take long for the shelter to get up to that 70 level benchmark.

And so we know that this has definitely been well received so far in our community.

We've also had some positive exits.

So folks are already, again, moving through that pipeline because shelter isn't the end.

Shelter is just one stop on the way to a more self-sufficient and successful

Transition.

So we've had a couple of folks take advantage of treatment and accepting treatment opportunities.

Some folks have been transitioning to permanent housing, which you'll hear more about that next.

We have been, I think even tomorrow, there'll be another touch point with the business community, just with public safety officials to make sure that there's no increase or spikes in calls for service to that area.

Next slide.

Department of Human Services will be bringing online three new members to the department to focus on homelessness outreach services.

And so that will include one supervisor and two outreach specialists.

These will be in the field.

So going around to possible pop up encampments that happen to make sure that they have a touch point with those individuals to make sure that with integrity,

We can say that each person has been engaged in services to be able to say that for sure, that has been offered, that we want to make sure that there's somebody out there checking on safety and well-being and making sure that they're aware of the other shelter services and giving resources on how to get their employment benefits, all that will continue.

We'll also

be joining to staff from SupportWorks Housing to be able to do this regionally, not just in the city.

And so this will be a regional effort.

And we just want to continue to offer a human centered approach to whatever we're faced with when it comes to resolving homelessness.

And so one of those solutions is public supportive housing.

Good evening, Kaki Demick, Chief Human Services Officer for Albemarle County.

I'm pleased to, if you go to the next slide please, talk to you this evening about permanent supportive housing.

Permanent supportive housing is a best practice solution to folks who have extended relief of housing instability.

What's identified by the federal definition of chronic homelessness, which means somebody who's been experiencing

homelessness for over a year and also has a documented disability.

And so that disability can be a behavioral health concern.

It could also be a physical concern.

This is a process that's about providing housing and supportive services on site without an expectation or a requirement to people engage in those supportive services.

This is also parallel to a low barrier approach called housing first, which is that you

may receive the housing simply because you need the definition of chronic homelessness and eligibility requirements and do not have to achieve any degree of sobriety or compliance with any kind of medical or behavioral health concern.

It's important that you know that permanent supportive housing has been well tested in the country as a best practice.

Average length of stay is six years for permanent supportive housing.

And there's

pretty substantial evidence that people who receive supportive have permanent supportive housing services have a dramatic reduction in the use of both the criminal justice and emergency room services that yield additional deep end cost savings for systems of care.

In this community, it's fortuitous that the timing for Holiday Drive parallels the timing of an opening of a permanent supportive housing project called Vista 29, which is no shock on 29, and it includes 80 units of permanent supportive housing, 77 of which will be studio apartments, three of which will be one bedrooms,

12 of those 80 units will be fully accessible, which is really important for this particular population.

And 67 of which have been specifically reserved for people who meet this definition of chronic homelessness.

So if you think about what it might be for somebody who has substantial needs, who's going to a shelter, for many people that brief period of stability with supportive services helps to sort of launch them into some more permanent housing situation for others they need

more substantial support.

And this resource will provide that immediately to the population, probably a substantial population, but probably not everyone who's currently using Holiday Drive, which is really good timing for people to sort of move through that system.

A really amazing whole system of care is not a net, it's a trampoline.

So a system of care that catches you and then has the momentum to push you back

into a more self-sufficient and agency-specific approach to your community as opposed to being deeply reliant on systems of care.

I will say that around permanent supportive housing, I think it's important to note that Vista 29 was a collaborative approach.

It's a $26 million project that is funded by state, city, county, and community foundation sources to get it up and running.

These are not,

These are not one-time supportive projects.

In addition to the additional dollars required to build the project, I think the 67 beds are parallel to 67 project-based vouchers provided by Albemarle County in order to provide ongoing subsidy.

I think the city and the county and the community foundation have all been asked for additional dollars in the next month or so to support ongoing supportive services

which are the hardest part for Virginia.

What used to be called Virginia Supportive Housing is now called Support Works is to pay for those ongoing supportive services.

And yet they're a critical component of what permanent supportive housing provides.

In addition, this community has two other permanent supportive housing projects.

One is called The Crossings at 4th and Preston which was built by the same company that built FESTA 29.

We know they have experience and also some commitment to our community

And Region 10, probably very few people know this, has 27 beds of permanent supportive housing that it has maintained with HUD funding for over 20 years in this community.

Both the city and the county recently pooled together resources to support the cost of that permanent supportive housing because of some wobbles in the HUD funding.

I anticipate additional wobbles in the HUD funding for a variety of reasons and so it's likely that

that the City and County Community Foundation and other practice philanthropists will be called to support ongoing maintaining those ongoing 27 vets.

And with that being said, obviously this is just a glimpse

of Homelessness Intervention Space.

City Manager Sam Sanders talks about the shelter as being the first rung on a ladder, a ladder in the steps towards permanent housing.

So with that being said, we are more than happy to answer any questions you may have.

I have seen where you have the housing on Monticello Road.

And then I was here when you had all that.

And I didn't know how many families were living there, but you have done so much to help so many people.

And there's so many buildings.

I'm just wondering what is the, if you know the population before and then the population that will be.

I have two, because that's the one that I was told I could.

I remember when the Holiday Drive project was first kind of forming, there was a discussion of it being a sort of joint venture with Brack Potchman Haven.

It feels like now it's going to be the city continuing as an owner operator of the shelter.

Can you help me just understand a little bit more of the long term

Just organizational structure.

Great question.

So here, obviously we have our continuum of care.

We want that to continue.

However, the goal here is building the capacity within the continuum to ensure that we can transition operations at the appropriate time.

And so it's important to remember that this is an emergency posture.

as we dealt with the encampment that we had along the trail.

It is not lost on me that you're building the plane while you're flying.

And rest assured, I get questions about this project from my constituents a lot.

The consistent statement I've said over the past

and something that could be modeled elsewhere.

Similarly, on the kind of topic of dealing with the emergency first, but there are other problems that need to be addressed later.

It's not lost on me that VISTA 29 has county project-based vouchers,

and I also, I don't believe the city exercises a placement radius without porting for vouchers in the city, correct me if I'm wrong, as in I don't think you place vouchers in the county without first entering into an arrangement with the county in which we port over the billing responsibility.

I might be mistaken on that.

I mention this because

I don't think there's a strong regional strategy around segregation because we're putting out the fire of affordability and maybe that's not the first thing on my mind but I do worry the city as a statistically poorer and blacker locality than Albemarle County that a non-regional approach especially on

I might entertain that a strategy that could be used would be project-facing vouchers in county-based properties or evaluating jurisdictional radiuses for

That was a statement and not a question, I apologize.

So, thank you.

I'm thinking I saw Sam taking it, yes.

So, this is a big topic.

Yes.

That's one question.

So when you add up the numbers, you've got Holiday Drive, you've got the three, basically the three areas that are permanent supportive housing, correct?

That are available.

What is the trajectory for occupancy?

Are we thinking we're going to plateau?

Are we planning for growth in the future and additional units?

Is that part of phase two in Holiday Drive?

How do we handle that?

We've talked a lot about like a housing and homelessness continuum that the sort of best practice solutions for specific populations at many stages along the continuum and a really healthy continuum has sufficient resources in each one of those buckets.

It's not surprising we don't have that in our community.

We have some resources in each one of those buckets.

So we don't have the kind of movements that an ideal system of care would have where you have

The next best thing for your circumstance after this one available to you at the right time.

Exactly.

And so if you, we have these wonderful, these 80 units at Mr. 29, they're going to open, they're going to lease up in December, January.

Perfect timing for the holiday drive folks.

If the average tenure is six years, then that's a fast turnover and then it gets slow again.

So the need to sort of identify additional resources and to target the resources we have for the folks who most need it.

So permanent supportive housing is a housing first approach, low barrier approach for folks who meet very specific conditions and are likely to be the most vulnerable and designated as the sort of folks who are most likely to die in homelessness

Thank you.

Thank you all so much.

We appreciate it.

I just wanted to add one comment to what Mr. Pruitt said.

In five weeks.

So we now are at

Again, I'm Jeffrey Dumars, Director of Facilities and Environmental Services with Albemarle County.

And I have the fortune of being the 2026 chair of the Lupek group.

LUPEC is the Land Use and Environmental Planning Committee.

And this is the biannual report covering LUPEC's activities from January to June.

Next slide.

So the committee is, Land Use and Environmental Planning Committee was established to share and coordinate land use and development plans and projects, consider environmental and infrastructure issues facing our community.

and from time to time we advance ideas and solutions that support broader regional mutual advantage.

It serves as an advisory committee to the city, the county, as well as the UVA and the Rivanna authorities.

So the committee meets regularly, typically monthly, online, quarterly, in person, and we discuss timely issues

from each entity and share information with the public and each entity's senior leadership with biannual updates such as this evening.

Through its work, the committee further seeks to ensure that the actions, policies, and processes of the committee are reflective of an ongoing commitment by the entities to support broader equity and inclusion principles.

from 1986 and that agreement though updated remains in effect today and focuses on land use planning between the city, county, and UVA.

Next slide.

So the committee membership is a staff open committee from Albemarle County.

It includes the community development director, myself, the facilities and environmental services director, and a representative from the Albemarle planning commission.

from the city includes currently the deputy city manager, the director of public works, director of utilities, and a city planning commissioner representative from the university.

The committee includes the university architect, the building official, as well as the director of real estate and leasing services.

From the university foundation, we currently have the senior real estate project manager,

and the director of real estate and asset management.

And the group also includes the executive director of the Rebiont Authority.

Also, quarterly, there's participatory members from VDOT, including the Culpeper District Engineer.

And VDOT typically brings out our staff as well, at least quarterly.

And then others are invited from a staff level

I'm typically the director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, attends quarterly.

And there's other members from UVA, including the associate planner and the director of energy and utilities.

Next slide.

So this is a staff level meeting really choreographed on theme-based conversations, working one to build relationships, but then also increase communication and solve problems at the staff level.

Some of the themes that we talked about this year, including the capital construction program broadly in the region, infrastructure transportation and affordable housing planning, comprehensive planning generally for all of the entities, stakeholder engagement, climate action and adaptation.

Next slide.

Some of the agenda topics we've had earlier this year,

including February we talked about regional infrastructure coordination.

And this was a really interesting thing that has come out of the group planning.

So it was VDOT initiated and we really looked to coordinate regional capital construction program efforts.

There's just a large amount of construction in our region with UVA, VDOT, Rivanna, the city and the capital city and county capital construction programs.

There's just a lot of construction for a market of our size, a huge amount.

And the leads in the committee saw that there was a real need for coordination.

But this is not a LUPEC level coordination that needed to do this work.

LUPEC is somewhat long range, planning focused.

So LUPEC help coordinate and convene the different entities, capital construction, design and construction leads.

And

that regional coordination is not in that staff person's typical wheelhouse.

But the effort was put forward and the entities were able to do this and spin a separate group off to do this coordination simply because these leaders are gathering and coordinating regularly.

Other topics that were addressed in March

We presented on affordable housing to the group.

There was an update on the Rivanna Futures Project and the Northern County Services and Utility Coordination.

And then in May, there was a discussion on broader transportation issues, including coordination with the Charlottesville Airport, the UVA Health System presented their transportation plan,

and then there was a county update on the three notch trail.

Other successes come out of the group that were agenda-based if you will.

There was ad hoc coordination on the Fontaine Avenue corridor.

So from Highway 29 through Fontaine up to JPA, there's just a ton of construction projects going on, right?

A lot of work at the Fontaine Research Park by UVA.

VITA and the city have significant roadway projects.

And there's just ad hoc coordination needed for common right-of-way impacts and to confirm vital connections are completed and coordinated between construction projects.

And this happened on an ad hoc basis, just making sure we're bringing sidewalks together.

It's an exciting group.

We'll be back at the end of the year and offer presentations then.

On deck, if you will, for the rest of the year this month, we will be looking at sustainability, climate action, and the Resilient Together work that all the entities are working on.

Then in November, we'll be looking at the Ivy Corridor Center for the Arts that UVA is doing.

with the City of Utah.

Then in December, we'll be coordinating parks projects, including the University's Avenue and Clark Park update.

Really, the county, city, and UVAs, excuse me, Rivanna's work at Sugar Hollow to coordinate that, and then also the county's recent Monacan Nation Tribute Park.

Then in January, it resets each of the entities

Rotate the chair so the university will take over being the chair next year and new members will start up.

Questions?

Yes, Mike.

Has there been any thought or discussion about

Thank you for the question.

What was discussed by any individual or what if any decisions happened?

The semiannual reports are about 700 words.

And again, don't have any summaries of discussions.

It's just a topic speaker and then a summary of what the committee itself is.

Obviously, there's a lot of big topics for collaboration issues.

The amount of taxes and property approaching $25 million now, that could be tackled in a lot of different ways.

but again for me as a decision maker it does feel like there's not a good entry point for the community and elected officials to be part of collaborative thinking about solutions and I would just end by saying I think to me that's really important because I don't think it needs to be zero sum and I think there's a lot of community members who want to get involved on crafting solutions not just criticism and ultimately you know when Charlottesville has

The largest achievement gap in the state and very little economic mobility and life-gapped expectancies of 10 years in our poorest and richest neighborhoods.

That impacts UVA.

It impacts all of us.

So I do think there's a lot of non-zero-sum opportunities.

So it is my understanding that it was a different format previously with an open format and a public format and it has transitioned to a private staff level meeting and it has been highly valuable for staff of the different entities to be able to have private frank conversations and coordinate in that manner.

If I might build on that a little bit, it may be that

and if we're truly going to recognize a potential synergy of everybody doing their planning efforts in the next 12 to 18 months together, and the key word being together as opposed to simply simultaneously, we may get to something along the lines of what the LUPAC committee was actually intended to do 45 years ago when it started, 40 years ago.

One of the things that has been distressing to me, and I partly blame our own city government, but partly everybody else involved in it as well, just to echo what Michael was saying, I have no idea what you guys do.

I have no idea what kind of joint planning efforts may be going on.

I often ask about them.

Sometimes people in the city government will tell me, well, we talked a little bit about that loopback.

Most often the answer is, well, we don't really do any of that.

And maybe y'all do, but it doesn't, those of us who are supposed to be doing the planning never learn about it.

And it's no good if the rest of us don't learn about it.

and can't learn.

I guess just one suggestion to think about going forward and having been part of the old system for about 10 years.

While there wasn't any active debate and votes and things like that, there was a lot of discussion

going on and sometimes issues were thorny and scary and probably people wished it weren't in public but that's life and so in some ways you build a lot of confidence when you're struggling with things and get things talked about.

So perhaps a public meeting once a year or something where there could be a better discussion or open here's what we've done, here's what we're looking at, sort of a bigger version of this meeting.

with people invited from the community.

I wanted to touch on one other thing as well, as we talked about the fact that there's going to be at least simultaneous planning going on in the next year or so.

Most of the interesting

and difficult issues that we have as a community on transit, on housing.

They are clearly regional problems and they are clearly going to have regional solutions.

We are never going to be able to address or we're going to have a hard time addressing the kind of transit planning that some questions we're getting at earlier today.

without a lot of discussion of here's what we're going to be doing in the county or at the university for the next couple of years.

And that has often been very different, that kind of joint, I mean, occasionally we have casual conversations that allow us to know what's going on, and maybe staff level has something going on, but at least at the council level,

I don't think we ever get anything that's really very organized to have that kind of planning.

I would love to be able to say that I know where the county is going to be emphasizing significant population growth or where the university is going to be putting another thousand students.

And then we will have CAT put a bus out there.

We don't work that way.

and partly because we don't have the information, partly also because as I understand from Mr. Williams, CAT is not supposed to be planning, it's not supposed to be as Wayne Gretzky would say, hitting the puck, going to where the puck is going to be.

CAT's supposed to look at where the puck is right now and that's not allowing any of us to plan really three years, five years down the road.

It's been a source of frustration to me that I don't know what y'all are actually planning.

Well, some thoughts on that, I suppose.

I don't think we, as a board, do anything in secret.

We have a growth area that's well-defined and any decisions we make are there.

I guess I've always thought of BluePEC as something that once some of those decisions are made, it's the coordination effort to get it executed.

Not that I'm disagreeing or counterpointing you all, but I feel like the planning process and the discussion process that led to get those things on the way down the path happened

And now the people we rely on to execute that are coordinating with one another to make sure they pull it off in an appropriate way.

Frankly, to politicize that means that I would probably rather have a different format that we could come up with to maybe address some of those concerns than necessarily put the lightning rod and let the electricity strike that.

The things that they are dealing with received a public process before decisions were made by whichever body did it.

And I also think that staff communicates well.

I think Sam and Jeff have a good relationship.

And I think they have that with JJ to be able to discuss that.

You know, I rely on where do I get the information?

What do I know what the city's up to, to turn it back around?

Well, I rely on a lot of roundtable discussions at the Regional Housing Partnership.

You know, there are remarks about the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, but at the end of that, at that round table, that's a serious time where we get to hear what other people have to say.

And frankly, we hear illuminating things like Louisa County's two months ago discussion about homelessness and encampment and understanding that some of the residents were there and actually did it in a sincere and genuine way that spoke to a regional collaboration that went beyond Charlottesville and Albemarle.

So, you know, that's where I learned about it.

And that's all public, that's all open.

Now, we shared that information back with the rest of our board in our committee reports that we do.

So, you know, there's some ways to share information that don't require a lot of extra meetings that we all are broken out and go to.

For me, the challenge is, from my perspective, I feel like when it comes to Albemarle County,

I feel like all that information is available.

There's those opportunities that you've discussed.

I never feel any friction in terms of knowing what Albemarle County is doing and knowing that there are avenues for us as the city to work with Albemarle where I see the friction point where there's

I was going I think I caught that from your initial statement and I've been sitting here noodling on it because

We're all three governments or government agencies.

And we all also have business-like characteristics.

I think it is fair to say that UVA has a greater degree of business-like characteristics in its organization, in its relationship between staff and its board.

And with that, I don't think it is unfair to say

of tiered hierarchy and consolidation of decision making and less availability of people who I would say are fundamental decision makers.

I interface a lot with UVA staff.

I sit on card and work with Scott Silsdorf.

Scott is fundamentally not someone who's able to make the kind of grand strategic planning decisions that I think we are talking about not having that level of transparency on.

And I might agree that I don't

Lou Peck is a place for people who have been given a charge by their respective boards to coordinate.

None of us talk to the president of UVA or we do it sensitively.

I get to talk with the people who get to lay down the budget and

Thank you so much for having me.

Just kind of talk as counselors and supervisors about some regional type of things and I just want to quickly chime in as someone who worked for the county for 35 years and did transportation planning for 20 and every year as someone who worked on the county's comprehensive plans would work with the CAT person at that time about the expansions in the county based on our transportation

based on the comprehensive plan where we saw development.

So, Lord, that is taking place.

I can tell you, and then someone who worked for social services for the county for 15 years, is that it's an amazing amount of work, collaboration that goes on at the staff level.

I mean, every day that's unsung, that happens, and university.

My wife works for UVA, so that happens.

It's at this level that it's new.

that maybe the public may not know about.

And just quickly, I want to add that at the leadership level for the mayor, vice mayor, and chair and vice chair, is that probably for the last five years, we meet with a few exceptions monthly.

Now it's Ned and Fred and Natalie and I for lunch.

It used to be Lloyd and Diana and

and Donna, you know, to meet and just talk.

Sometimes we commensurate with each other, but it's good that we get together.

Those things are taking place now and, you know, maybe some people definitely see us, but we do that, that collaboration, that communication is there.

What we want to do now is continue this type of talk.

We may not be able to give you responses to staff because this is,

things that is not on the agenda to talk about some things that the three of these entities can do more together or to issues that we want to address.

So I'm sorry, Mike, you can continue.

Natalie, did you want to say something?

What's Mike's thought?

I didn't have more on this point.

I think I communicated what I was trying to in response to Michael's original concern.

Yeah, so I guess I think it's important to understand the organizational structure, right?

So a $7 billion operating entity with 17

appointed Board of Visitors.

They meet four to six times a year.

We do have Jeff and Sam and I meeting regularly with the President.

So there is active communication and ongoing dialogue.

I think the second thing to understand is we are always willing to meet and we talk constantly.

So I guess

Perhaps not to the council directly or to the supervisors, but we will always afford opportunity if there are questions or comments or concerns.

But again, we are very large.

Our workforce is almost 40,000 people now, and we're a $7 billion operating entity.

So we are big and we're complex, and we're also highly decentralized.

So it is...

but it's not impossible to access us as leaders.

In fact, I would say Lois and myself and Kevin readily make ourselves available because we understand the interconnected nature and our success is interdependent upon one another.

Whether that's public safety or affordable housing, whatever the issue is, our ability to be effective as leaders requires collaboration and coordination across the three avenues.

I appreciate that our structures are different, but that doesn't make us unavailable, inaccessible.

And if there's need for more information, I would just say, ask it and we'll do our best to respond.

I would just say, I think there's opportunity areas to maybe look at other

College towns and areas defined by colleges that have done town and gown committees and processes in a way that I think could be constructive because I just think obviously the reality is UVA's budget and staff makes Charlottesville's look small.

It really is the driver of economic development and the announcements of Manning Institute and the biomedical facilities are obviously

Yeah, and I don't disagree with that.

I guess what I would simply say is I think we've come a long way from the nine years I've been here.

And I really want to applaud Sam and the team and Jeff as well, because I think, you know, whether it be public safety issues or affordable housing issues or fill in the blank, the ability to pick up the phone now at any point and talk through issues is happening

at least every week, if not sometimes once a day with not just me, but Lois and other members of our team, Kevin.

But we're always interested in a continuous improvement model.

Like again, our employees live and work disproportionately in the city and the county.

I'll just make an observation too.

So I've been in this community for 40 years and I've seen a lot of change in terms of just the approach to communication between the city and county and the university.

And I've been a part of a lot of it.

So I was on loopback for four years, I think, and then I shifted off of that.

I was on PACTEC before, and there was PACTEC, you guys remember that?

and that all was based I think on a three-party agreement, right?

Which is probably the date you were referring to back in 86.

And that was an effort to get everybody talking, right?

And get everybody pulling together.

So just from an experience standpoint, and I'll speak to the land use sort of related pieces because that's kind of my wheelhouse and it's what Blue Pack is about.

I had never witnessed until being part of Blue Pack

as much open communication about city, county, and university projects and the impacts that they would have on transportation, education, schools, et cetera, et cetera.

That's where the work happens.

I get what you're saying because you're maybe not aware that that's happening, right?

But having been a part of it, I can tell you that it is.

So the thing that sort of comes to mind is maybe there's a need for just a chance to step back again and look at the communication matrix.

How are we talking as a community, right, amongst the three big, but also, you know, the folks that are doing development in this area, other people that are actually influencing the hardware of the community and thinking about how we're all communicating in at these different levels.

Jeff mentioned two things.

He said one is the group Lupac is advisory and I know we're beyond Lupac now but just using that as an example.

It is advisory.

My question is how is that advice being shared, right?

I mean I know it's shared amongst that group and I'm working with Alice Rauscher.

I know she's back there but she's been really open and honest about the sort of

looking forward that the university has, the master plan that the university has, and the county and VDOT and all that has actually worked out really well.

But I think maybe looking about how that advice is shared is worth doing.

And then the second thing is the problem solving at the staff level and the level of collaboration at the staff level is, in my opinion, really excellent, right?

I mean, we've talked about different levels of staff and how they're engaged and working together.

But again, how is that information maybe communicated, I hate to say up, but to maybe elected officials?

Just to add one thing to what Fred just said.

There are concerns in the community, which I don't know how to answer.

when they say, who's making the decision?

Are people going into this room and making all the decisions?

Are the electric bodies making decisions?

And I'm going, well, I think the electric bodies are still making decisions because we do a lot of that.

But that's part of the back draft of not having more information shared.

Because people can always imagine something that's a whole lot worse than the truth.

on a kind of new business for discussion.

Getting UVA out of the hot seat, sorry.

This is kind of a perennial issue in the county, but I would say over the past calendar year, it's something we've had renewed focus on, which is

There's a report in here that discusses it, which I always appreciate every year.

We had this year, I would say, a renewed and pretty strongly pitched push to each of us to see what we can do about it.

There are members, we all have constituents who want us to sue you over the revenue sharing agreement, which for a variety of reasons, I don't think it's a good idea and it's not something I personally want to do.

but it's coming from I think a kind of earnest place just to be very candid I think we have a compared to the city I think we have a higher revenue growth potential in the near future just based on raw land and frankly like blighted and semi blighted land that's in our inventory we will just develop more than you all will over the next several years and I think

that will reach I think somewhat absurd levels over time which I'm sure is beneficial to the city and I know you are not in a position to want to say no to that but I would suggest it is getting to the point where I think it hurts some of our ability to really deliver on certain shared priorities.

I'm specifically thinking how

I don't think this has time for consideration in upcoming budget cycle.

I would wonder if the city in the future would be willing to entertain a voluntary hard cap, not a percent-based cap, but a hard cap of a certain level after which new investments would be left without Marl County on a matter of shared concern.

I'm thinking specifically

I would be interested to see if there's any kind of appetite for discussing that moving forward, not talking about clawing it down to a hard cap that's below anything y'all have ever received, but setting a future maximum limit.

Well, I mean, I can tell you that someone who's been an elected official for 24 years,

several times when I was on the school board this matter came up and Ned, you know he kind of took it under and did a lot of research and of course this was voted on by the constituent by the regional and I think that the city was considering annexing probably up to the airport and it was an analysis done that if that was in the city now

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I mean, I'm just, I can't speak for, I know it's not anything that we have talked about considering that and as we are entering into budget discussion,

Of course, I would just again suggest as we talk about moving, I think in the last decade and even during the short time I've been on the board, I've seen greater and greater alignment on priorities.

I've seen our governing bodies resemble each other more.

I've seen us talk

talk with similar voices on similar issues.

This is a continued challenge to our ability to meet the city in a lot of the goals that we share.

We are going to have challenge meeting kind of shared expectations

And I would say, you know, we will have that, we as a city have that same challenge as well.

I think that the

The state knew that cities needed the opportunity or option to grow or to annex to meet its needs.

And we as a community decided.

I was still in high school.

I was at Norfolk State when it was decided that this is what they understand what you're saying.

I'll let someone else chime in if they want to.

Well, I would say a question I have, I don't want to sidebar that question, but we're not going to resolve that in the next nine minutes.

You know, to me, and I think everyone agrees with this, we're all one community.

For the people who live here, they don't care if they're technically not more Charlottesville, it's one community to them.

And I think we have a lot of shared goals and priorities.

We, I think just speaking strictly for the city, I think in the past, you know, since 2018, 2019, the city has become a lot less zero sum in our thinking and has stopped being as antagonistic as maybe you could say we historically at times had been with Albemarle.

I think the Vista 29 project

that we heard about earlier today is a model for regional collaboration working well.

So that bigger question, you know, I don't know, I just have a question, a baby step before the bigger things.

Are there things that you all as a board are seeing that are opportunity areas for city county collaboration that could be improved?

Just because it's recent, there was the Rivanna River Basin Conference and discussion of phase three of that plan and potential better coordination on the Rivanna River corridor.

That's just because it's recent, something in mind.

which has sort of been back 2010 to 12.

There was a tremendous effort on all the jurisdictions around here to try to help with food insecurity and the connections between the agricultural producers in our community and consumers.

And it has really dwindled.

I mean, Albemarle for a while had 15 farmer's markets.

And now they're, at least half of them have gone belly up.

I think that the people, they're often personality driven and raised when that person either

moves on to something else or moves away or whatever, then sometimes there is a leadership to take it on again.

I'll throw out something that I don't have a solution for or a thought, but it's more an invitation to

both UVA and to Charlottesville and I think CARTA is focusing on it but we struggled at our last board meeting with the idea of being presented with a transit plan

but not being in a position to do anything about it other than offer our feedback on the plan.

And it's a plan that you continually see and update it and it's great, there's good work behind it but it's hard as somebody that in the current situation, we're basically a customer paying a vendor, right?

And now how it was reported, I wasn't exactly thrilled about not really, well, maybe I am tagging some of you.

but the idea is that it wasn't that that's a frustration that we put on you all or on CAT or on UVA but it is something where it's like we're part of this partnership but we don't really have any authority in it other than the dollars that we're putting in and the requests we could make with those dollars.

So it's wonderful to see what the vision is and the plan is.

but we have to just accept that, right?

And then how do you do your own planning when you've got the limitation of no authority and not disassociated from Mr. Pruitt's point about the limiting dollars because that's what when county folks are always revamped up, they're wanting to see why it was supposed to be a sharing agreement, what are we seeing delivered back for that?

And can see it in the way of going, well, okay,

to get in some of those new services to get some of that more money than we'd have to do to execute our revenue triggers that we have.

So it's just something to say that I honestly have no clue how to figure that out.

I think CARTA was always the best idea because it was gonna maybe put authority into a regional body where it wasn't just one relying on another but everybody had a say and that that understanding could be worked out.

to get at state dollars and bring in some other good ideas and the partnership with STIC and what UVA has.

I think the really illustrative like very like two-sentence illustration of this problem that Chair Galloway is getting at

In my own neighborhood that I live in, for which I am the sole elected official of, the most important thing that is going to change my neighborhood is the 2A2B split and service improvement.

I sit on CARTA.

I'm the sole representative from my district.

And if y'all chose to, and you wouldn't because we are good partners, but if y'all chose to, you could scram the entire improvement tomorrow.

and it would not happen and I would not have anything to do with it and I would not have any recourse.

And certainly our role in shared planning on that is diminished and I'm not taking issue with the quality of the service that we get.

I would see a lot of value in transit being something that we can get

I would say that could be a solution.

I would say that's my preferred solution.

That was the solution from 2005.

I would say, speaking individually, I share that vision.

I bumped into Maria Zimmerman at the celebration last week and she said, how's the governance discussion coming?

I said, I don't know yet.

So we have a couple more minutes if anyone had any burning things they want to say.

I think we have some good things to continue to talk about.

Sure, I just kind of wanted to not

Incorporate a lot of what the recent comments have touched on which is Charlottesville is a destination for

a lot of local jobs, right?

I mean, you know, JJ said they employ about 40,000 people.

We know that by the end of spring when the next, or I guess it's probably sooner than that, when the parking garage opens up, there'll be 21,000 parking spaces provided on UVA grounds alone, let alone all the other parking spots.

something that I frequently say is that Charlottesville it's our responsibility as Charlottesville representatives to not let Charlottesville be a parking lot for the surrounding counties not just for Albemarle but for the surrounding counties in general and so that's where transit comes in but that's also where housing comes in Charlottesville

is on a path to build more housing after 35 years of very limited housing and so I just want to encourage the county to think about that as well.

I know you are but even bigger and broader because I think

We recently learned that the only city in the entire country with a larger daytime to nighttime differential is Boulder, Colorado.

So we are second to that, which means the amount of people who are here overnight vastly dwarfs the amount of people who come in here for the day and then leave, which means traffic, which means congestion, which means people are spending time away from their families because they're commuting instead.

and so I think about opportunities in the urban ring especially, sorry I sound not amazing, I look across the river at Pantops which is parking lots and car dealerships and traffic in the morning and traffic in the afternoon

and think what if that was all housing?

What if that was dense housing?

That would help support a better transit network because transit is fundamentally unscalable past a certain amount of density and a lot of the county is not that dense beyond the urban ring and so

If we are going to think more regionally about transit and transit access, we also need to improve density where we can so that folks have shorter travel distances and can make more use of the transit services that we provide, which is a self-sustaining system like we learned about earlier.

The more ridership we have, the more funding we can get to then make the system even better.

So

Thank you, thank you.

So we're past eight.

Two quick things just because I'm reading Jeff's mind right now so I see how well I do that.

I just want to share with both bodies that we have initiated a conversation on the executive level to talk about CARTA because we do send

Thank you for having me.

Stuckness and maybe get something moving in that regard.

And the second thing was one of the things that we had previously talked about in preparation for the meeting was a question of would you all like to resume this meeting on an annual basis and therefore seek a date for next year because that was the schedule before we got off and went out of time without meeting.

And I think one of the issues that you've identified is that maybe you need to talk more often.

Yes, I think yes.

Then we get to ask you the question that Michael asked us.

We never got to your response to us.

Just getting Scottsville back on a one-year joint meeting schedule.

Now they're going to be jealous.

I was able to tell them next week that, oh, you're actually beating the city.

Well, I know we're over time.

I'll just be very brief.

And it may just be because it's recent, because the conference just happened.

But I'm excited about opportunities along the Rivanna River in phase three of the Urban Rivanna River Quarter Project.

I know you've already made some

Big policy changes and investments.

And also share just a level of excitement with a revitalized employee giving campaign at the University of Virginia, Give Where You Live.

So a CDC campaign at its height and impact was about $19 million to support local nonprofits.

So we're excited to be partnering with United Way.

And we've already had a really strong start

We have about a $250,000 goal.

That's great.

Is there a motion for council to adjourn?

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor say yes.