City Council Meeting   9/10/2024

Carla Tuesday, September 10th, 2024 City Council meeting to order.

Mayor Reed, President.

City Attorney Brown.

Here.

Vice Mayor Dent.

Here.

Council Member Robinson.

Here.

Deputy Chief Pollard.

Here.

May our community be well.

May we be at peace.

May our nation be well.

May we be at peace.

May each of us by our own conscience or faith be guided to make the best decisions for our community.

May we live together in harmony and thrive as a city.

We have no special recognitions.

We'll go straight to our consent agenda.

Any item placed on the consent agenda shall be removed and taken up as a separate matter, if so requested by any member of council.

Otherwise, all items will be voted on with one motion.

Any discussion?

Council Member Robinson.

Aye.

Aye.

We are now going to our public hearings.

6A Larry.

Wake up Larry.

We're rolling today.

Mayor Reed, City Council Larry Prof Finance Director.

What you have before you is a supplemental appropriation request for the amount of $31.2 million.

And this is our normal annual supplemental request for encumbrance carryovers from the previous year.

and in some cases from previous years and our grant carryovers.

The dollar amount is getting to be significant with all the equipment, fire trucks and transit buses that we have ordered and haven't taken possession yet.

So that's what this appropriation request is.

I'm guessing a lot of this is the result of ARPA funding.

Yes, there's a couple million dollars worth of ARPA funding that we're carrying over.

And now, based on that, it's already allocated, right?

So we've made that deadline.

Well, so there's two pieces, the capital project pieces, Fire Station, Homeless Navigation Center.

And there you go.

Those types of things that are capital project fund.

and other capital projects and those automatically carry over.

This amount is the grants that Luke Morgan is working with as far as the mental health funds and the childcare, that type of thing.

And I believe the vice mayor's question was about the ARPA

Which of those might be part of their ESSER funds?

I don't believe, as far as I know, any of it is ESSER funds.

I do know probably around three and a half to four million dollars of that is, if you recall last year, they received, I think what they call all-in funding from the state.

And it was for a three-year period.

Obviously they, and I think they received about four million dollars.

So we're gonna have that for the next couple years until all the money is spent.

So that was probably about half of what's in there.

Any other questions?

Thank you Larry.

Well open this item up for public hearing if anyone wishes to speak please state your name and address.

Seeing none in person.

One moment please.

Thank you.

Public hearing is closed.

We'll make the motion to approve the carryover and reappropriation of the unexpended prior year grants, now standing prior year encumbrances in the amount of $31.2 million.

Second.

Any more discussion?

Council Member Robinson.

Aye.

Council Member Jones.

Thank you Mayor Reed.

Council Members Adam Fletcher, Director of Community Development.

Item I have before you here is a special use permit located at 1561 Gilmer Circle and it is to allow for a major family day home.

I always like to take the opportunity to remind folks the difference between a minor and a major family day home.

Minor family day home is a use that is permitted by right and it is a child care operation that allows for folks that reside in a dwelling to care for children.

from one to four number of children all under the age of 13.

That's a minor family day home permitted by right.

A special use permit is required when you want to go above the four.

So if you want to care for the number of children of five to 12, you have to apply for a special use permit, which requires public hearings, which is what the applicant has done and what brings this before you this evening.

So the property in question here is it located at the end of a cul-de-sac at 1561 Gilmour Circle.

It is Zoned R1 and long-term plans for this area of the city changing the map here won't see too much of a difference it will remain the same color here the yellow representing that it is planned for low density residential

The property that is to Page Left, that is all purple, that was at one time owned by James Madison University Foundation, which is why it shows up in that purple color as a quasi-governmental entity.

It is no longer owned by the JME Foundation, so when we do our updates of the comp plan, that very large piece of property will have a different designation associated with it, so that's why you saw that change in color on the Page Left there.

and then aerial photograph of this property and the neighborhood, an established neighborhood, R1 single family, all single family detached homes and against located at the end of a cul-de-sac here at Gilmour Circle.

And the property in question.

Note that we had advised the applicant to make sure that they're working with the Virginia Department of Education for licensure requirements.

The VDOE does regulate licensing standards for family day homes.

and ensures that the facility and the operation of the Major Family Day Home are favorable to the welfare of the children in care.

So the question that's written before you this evening is about land use.

Should this use be permitted at this site?

And approval and licensing from the VDOE does require them to maintain compliance with local ordinances like zoning, which is what we're talking about this evening and other laws.

What I don't have a picture of is the rear part of this building.

So I know that there was some information shared with you from

a nearby resident about an unusual situation with a door that is about probably 12 feet off the ground which is kind of perplexing to us because this home was built and completed in 2001

So unfortunately, the folks that are in the building inspections that are the building official inspectors and the plans reviewers weren't around during that time period.

Nonetheless, pointed out that yes, if this home was being constructed today, that would not be permitted.

And in fact, we're still sort of, we had a robust conversation about whether or not the building code has authority for us to require the applicant to do something with regard to that specific situation.

Unrelated to the Major Family Day Home, but really just what we see as a potential violation with regard to there being no deck or stairway up to those doors.

So we're trying to figure out whether or not there is any authority in the building code, seeing that it's been well outside of the two-year window for us to go back and look at old permits to bring them into compliance.

Nonetheless, I do hope that we'll continue to

discuss the situation with the applicant.

I'd be surprised if the Virginia Department of Education did not bring this to their attention about questioning about the safety and welfare of the children, but we will continue to work with them to ensure that if we are requiring them to bring something into compliance, that we'll see that through.

That situation really kind of spiraled into a much larger conversation, which

brought some even more conversation among staff about requirements for major family day homes and their application towards the building code.

Because for years and years and years there has been an exemption associated with the building code for major family day homes that additional renovations to the home are not required.

There was a change in the language in 2020.

It appears it might have been around the same time that the Virginia Department of Education took over the licensure requirements from the Virginia Department of Social Services.

The change in the language has really, again, caused quite a bit of debate among our building inspections staff about whether or not that exemption still exists, which is quite surprising.

Nonetheless, we have only had two major family day homes that have been approved since 2020.

One is on Jefferson Street, one is on College Avenue, one of which I don't think actually went into operation.

As we continue down this path of researching whether or not there is any kind of requirements for the change in use for just a standard single family home to a major family day home, we will communicate with those two if both of them are operating and we'll also continue to work with the applicants because

up to this point we've been working towards this there are no additional requirements associated from a building code perspective but we will dig into that a bit more and I just didn't want that to be a surprise really to you all as we continue down the path of promoting more childcare facilities throughout the city but also for the applicant because it can be a rather significant investment if they have to make additional changes to the property.

but from a zoning perspective, from a use perspective, we did not have concerns with the operation of the major family day home at this location.

We did not think it would have significant impact and believe it would really have little impact to the surrounding neighborhood and we offered our Fable recommendation to Planning Commission who in turn offered a Fable recommendation to you all as well unanimously.

I can imagine when VDOE Department of Education took this over and their requirements are more stringent, I believe, than social services had tended to be.

And that's kind of one of the results of that.

That this just might have been something that they hadn't accounted for at that time.

I imagine they applied more than a few things that hadn't weren't accounted for when they did the changeover and was responsible for this.

So we might even see more of these.

I'm guessing this is

We're not the first place this has come up as an issue.

Like around the state, there are probably many more of these.

And yes, sir.

And we've already reached out to a contact with the Department of Housing and Community Development at the state to find out some information from them.

I don't know what their requirements are.

All I know is that when they took over, it seemed like there was at least some good communication because there are now requirements that the applicant has to sign a form that then is signed by our zoning administrator that they are

in compliance with zoning, and that wasn't something that happened previously.

I was just wondering how that affects our

It doesn't impact it at all, no ma'am.

Okay.

This is step one in the process and step two would then be their application to DOE.

And if that door is an issue, I mean we are not the ones to say that it is for the day care itself.

They would then tell

the owners, what they needed to do to make the process happen.

What I like about this is that before much money is put into something like that, the first step is doing the supplemental use permit and then going to to DOA for the next step.

Oh, my apologies.

Planning Commission did add one condition, which is the standard condition you often hear, which is that if the use becomes a nuisance, that it can be recalled by you all.

The staff did not have that original recommendation.

Thank you.

All right.

This item is now open for public hearing.

If anyone wishes to speak, please state your name and address.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen.

My name is Isan Seth and I live on Dakar Drive, the first house in that stone spring development.

That's the only way in and out to that the whole development.

I have a five years old grand kid, seven years old granddaughter and nine years old granddaughter.

and across the street they have 5 years and 2 years old.

So my concern is only the traffic.

When you authorize somebody, you know, right now the people live there, they know children play here.

So everybody is careful because all the streets are dead end streets.

So only people who live there, they come over there.

And when you are trying someone to use for other purpose, the unknown people will become also.

That's my concern.

And that's why I'm here to inform you because children are more concerned than anything else.

Thank you very much.

Hello, my name is Barbara Keppel.

I live at 1510 Gilmour Circle and I am here because I am concerned about the traffic in and out of our little neighborhood.

There are only five to six depending on what you consider in that little circle where this daycare is to be housed and there's very little room in that neighborhood

to turn around and to be able to drop up to 12 children off every day.

So that is my concern.

The traffic have no problem against daycare, but the number does scare me a lot.

Thank you.

My name is Pauline Makungu and I'm the applicant for 1561 for user permit for daycare.

So I want to just explain for my neighbor who they're trying to complain about the traffic.

If I request about 10 to 8 daycare, it does not mean we're going to need all those numbers.

We just request the numbers, maybe in case.

We can need more kids.

We don't need to come back here.

But our plan is to have four kids or three kids.

I don't want just my wife to work.

And all the neighbors, all these neighbors that complain, we don't even leave a closet.

They live too far away from us.

All neighbors, they live close to us.

We talk to them and they agree with the idea.

Even before they come in, they ask me, when the decade is going to open, my neighbor will

The two neighbors can't complain.

We don't even live close to, we're like two or three hundred feet away.

The people live close to me, we talk to them and say, hey, we have an idea.

We want to open the day care.

My wife, she want to open the business.

She want, we need to do this, this, this, this, this.

All the close neighbors, they agree with that.

They say it's okay.

Go ahead, do it.

So, I don't, I want to explain to the neighbors, they complain.

Is it them right?

They can complain whatever they want to.

But we're not going to open a decade like 12 kids.

It's going to be maybe four or three or maybe two.

So I want just to be, to let them know maybe they care about like a 12.

We request a 12, maybe on the future, we can move over there.

Maybe we can go somewhere else, but we have the permits already.

Mayor Panayoti Sionikurus, city resident.

I did not come planning to speak on this issue, but I am kind of in city council institutional memory, I'm afraid.

And I'd like to reassure some of the people who have spoken on this item that one of the great achievements of the previous city council was that we established that Harrisonburg, in principle, wanted to be a welcoming place.

That meant that anyone could live in any neighborhood.

And what you will find when you have that spirit, which for a long time we were celebrating and building,

is that people who are unknown become known and they know where the kids are that are playing and that doesn't become an issue.

I think that I would just like to remind us of that welcoming spirit that we once had and to reassure that that same welcoming that you will make to the change in your life to make life a little better for your neighbors

We'll come back to you and you will find yourself benefiting as well.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Well, I'd like to reiterate some of the discussion, at least one of the comments I made in Planning Commission about some of the neighbors' concerns about the crowding and the traffic.

I see that as a minor inconvenience for a few people compared to a major need for a lot of people given how much we need child care and especially in this in-neighborhood model because that means the surrounding neighborhood kids have a place to go that is convenient to them so I'd like to see more of these dispersed throughout the city so I really appreciate the applicant and the creativity of working this out with staff especially with the

building concerns.

So this is something that Council has supported, right?

Being able to support childcare for aspiring childcare, entrepreneurs and existing.

So I appreciate the fact that you did go and talk to your

neighbors that were near your home, because we would have asked you that anyway, right?

To see, did you talk to your neighbors?

How do they feel about it?

I understand the request, right?

I mean, it's just so it's a it's a buffer for you.

Just in case you want to go up to 12, you might not necessarily make sense.

And vice mayor, you're exactly right.

I mean, you know, we have

a crisis here in Harrisonburg.

For me, I'm not going to stop anyone who wants to have their own business.

We need child care.

This is a first step.

It went through planning, so I'm very supportive.

You know, this level of childcare, so the five to twelve child operation is, we don't have a lot of those in Harrisonburg, and actually this family, by choosing that, is adding an extra level of scrutiny over their operations.

So if they were to just have four, they could do that by right there.

They could have that.

So I think just one thing for the neighbors is to recognize that, you know, this family is actually inviting a higher level of oversight over what they're putting into that facility there.

So I commend you guys for doing that.

That's commendable.

I think we, I think I saw in the Planet Commission minutes that we had about 10 of these five to 12 unit home daycares, major home, major family daycares in Harrisonburg.

which isn't very many.

Adam, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there have been complaints with the other daycares related to traffic, people moving in and out.

And I understand kind of the concern of traffic and the perception of that.

I think the reality is things don't happen all at once.

People don't tend to load and unload exactly at the same time.

Things tend to go in cycles there.

And of course, if you don't have 12 kids, if you have six or eight kids, it's a different level of traffic coming through there.

As a special use permit, if there are problems that arise from that, and I don't doubt that folks will pay attention to that, imagine that folks are opening this up, recognize that.

There are ways to then bring that to people's attention to see if there's a way to remedy that.

So that seems like a pretty good way to move forward on this.

It's a dire need in Harrisonburg.

I did daycare for social services.

Department of Social Services here in Harrisonburg and very seldom ever did anyone drop the children off all at the same time unless they work at the same place.

And generally, when you get up to five kids, I had sibling sets.

And people really appreciated that I had some flexibility in getting children on and off of the bus.

But I was concerned with traffic because of the area that I live in.

It's kind of not a busy street, but we don't do a lot of on-street parking.

We usually, you know, use our driveways.

But I didn't have a problem.

at all with the parking.

I did what you did.

I spoke with the neighbors.

And if there was a problem, I would have handled it.

So the neighbors would have come to me first and said, you know, so-and-so is blocking my driveway when they're dropping off their child.

Can you take care of that?

That's what you do when you're good neighbors.

So a lot of those concerns probably could be handled.

And if folks have children, the thing that they look out for when they're driving are other children.

That's what we see.

We see our children and your children when they're playing, when they're crossing the streets.

It's all you see when you're a parent.

So I trust that the neighborhood will stay as it is.

And I welcome the entrepreneurship aspect that's adding to our economy in the city.

But it's also does so much.

You know, you're right there at Stone Spring Elementary and you're allowed to stay home.

If you have children to nurture those children,

and be a nurturing, you know, substitute parent for others.

Madam Mayor, did, nobody made a motion, right?

No.

Okay, I'm gonna make a motion that I can talk.

Madam Mayor, I move to consider a request, um, no, I'm sorry, what am I saying?

Madam Mayor, I move to approve the request from Paula and Mupinda, Bakumba,

and Benny Injana Timnway.

For a special use permit to allow a major family day home at 1561 Gilmore Circle.

So really quick story.

So this is one of the reasons why I'm on the city council is because my mother, when she had a salon in downtown Danville, she moved it to our home so that I could be at home.

So literally what he said is what happened in 1979 or 1983, I think, or 84.

And so she had to come to this literally what just happened.

And neighbors that didn't live close to our house complained because they were worried because we lived in a circle and they were worried that

The traffic will build up throughout the circle, so it makes sense.

Obviously that wasn't a problem, it stayed there for many, many, it still exists.

So that's not a problem.

So that was an extremely touching moment for me to have that actually come full circle.

So I can really appreciate where he's coming from and I can say that that model works, which is why I've been an advocate for all of those things.

I didn't think I would sit here long enough to actually see them all come together where we could see entrepreneurship where we could see folks that weren't born here excited to be here and are thriving to be here and want to thrive and do so in a way that will nurture his family as well as other families which also adds to our workforce because a lot of times you hear people talking about the economy but you don't talk about what

Tools are needed to support the workforce.

And the biggest tool that's needed is not just equal pay for women, which I'm a huge advocate for, but you need childcare.

You got to have a place for your kids to be.

You got to have a place for them to be safe.

And so people that can take care of your kids in the morning when you're leaving to go to work.

And then the evening is extremely important.

I think all my colleagues here, they work, well, several of them work with children.

And Councilman Fleming brought a great point.

and that they're not going to drop off at the same time.

And Councilwoman Robinson's point of multiple sets of children is most likely how you'll make your money.

I would imagine because one mom will tell another mom or another dad will tell another dad and you'll get multiple sets of families that way.

But we have built resources around what you're doing.

And so I hope that you can engage with Pearson, Brian and our economic development team.

We have literally every resource you could probably think of to help your daycare.

So I really hope you take advantage of those.

But yeah, this is extremely exciting.

And we should be excited that we can be self-sustaining.

We don't have to lean on the state to produce these things.

We can produce them with entrepreneurs and good programming.

And to Councilman Fleming's point, which I was going to bring up, if there's a nuisance,

which we have not had any nuisance complaints since I've been here with any of our daycares and it's interesting because usually conversations have been about traffic and parking so we haven't had any folks come back because what happens is you get used to that rhythm once you see it actually happening but even greater than that

it's smart for him to ask for the capacity because as their business grows eventually they'll outgrow that space and you may even lose that neighbor because his business grows and grows and grows and he'll have a bigger home or another home and maybe another facility so but he'll need that capacity even in those transition points so it's smart for you to ask for the 12 even though again because when he adds if he added the 12 then he'd have to add more staff and you know who the staff is already so let's

Let's think about this holistically as a community when we're looking at these models.

We want to look at them and judge them against the standard of a traditional operating day care, but we know that the capacity is going to be more intimate that's going to produce great children.

I just wanted to make sure I commended that.

It's kind of awesome to see that all the good things of Harrisonburg come together in one house.

All right, let's go to the question.

Oh, you got your name on it.

Mayor Reed.

Come on, Adam.

Come on.

What, what, what, what are the emotions?

Whether the motion included the condition recommended by Planning Commission.

Just for sure it does that.

Sure.

I know that's what the minutes are going to say when it's over.

And actually it may just inherently being

Roll call please ma'am.

Council Member Robinson.

Aye.

Vice Mayor Dent.

Aye.

Aye.

All right, speaking of special use permits, I have for you a zoning ordinance amendment which is associated with the validity period for which for how long special use permits are given approval for.

So for the folks that are here with us evening and listening home, just know

With most zoning districts, you have two different use categories.

You have a uses permitted by right and you have a uses permitted by special use permit.

If you want to take advantage of one of those uses that is listed in the uses permitted by special use permit category, you go through a special use permit process, public hearings, and planning commission city council.

And part of the authority granted by city council is that you have the ability to grant conditions as well as the period in which it is valid for.

The default time period based upon our current code is 12 months.

There is 12 months given to an approved special use permit to begin making action toward bringing it to fruition.

In probably the past several years, maybe five, six, maybe even seven years, you've heard me from time to time recommend to you all to grant permissions to go beyond that 12 years, 24 months, 36 months, even 48 months, whether it's by recommendation by staff or by the applicant.

What the General Assembly did in the most recent legislation with House Bill 650 is that they made it law that any special use permit that is associated with the residential development or with photovoltaic solar arrays shall be given an approval period of validity for at least three years.

The minimum is now three years and we want to bring our code up to date to comply with that standard.

The current ordinance, as I just very briefly described, says that unless you all give a longer period of time, the default is 12 months.

We want to make a simple amendment that says that the validity period is 36 months from the approval date for residential projects and then has to be then within 12 months the standard for all other projects.

What you don't see is language associated with solar arrays, and that is because our code does not require special use permits for any solar facilities.

So we did not see the need to make any of those amendments.

So I offer you our favorable recommendation to comply with state legislation here.

Seems like there's not a lot of options.

I'll open this item up for public hearing if anyone wishes to speak.

Please state your name and address you'll have.

Five minutes.

Did you have some?

I'll close this public hearing.

Second.

I have another zoning ordinance amendment here for you this evening.

Code Section Amendments to Allow for the Keeping of Urban Honeybees.

I will speak to you very high level here about what the specifications are, what the regulations are.

I have with me some support this evening, Mr. Mike Hot from the Department of Public Works, who can speak to any of the technical questions that are associated with keeping of honeybees.

And if you have other questions that you want to get into more detail about the actual Texas stuff, we will try teamwork here and try to answer some of those questions for you.

What we're doing here this evening is defining new language here for beehive, colony, flyway, swarm.

We are establishing the new regulations for the actual keeping, the regulations for the keeping of honeybees.

and then we have to, because of this, we have to modify a section associated with a use that is known as a business garden as it had previously prevented the keeping of honeybees and this would then permit it to do so.

So we're just keeping an in line with that.

Following some requests to the city manager's office from community members in 2023, city staff had initiated and entered departmental working group to discuss the keeping

of Honey Bees in the city, an initial included multiple staff members from multiple departments, city manager's office, city attorney's office, our office in community development, public works in the police department.

There was quite a bit of discussion about, you know, the best way to administer and enforce the regulations, which code sections they should be part of, which department should be responsible for the enforcement.

And ultimately it was decided to place the regulations within the zoning ordinance and to be enforced by community development.

There was quite a bit of conversation, research, looking at other localities, what do other localities do?

What are some of the best practices?

Just a handful of other localities, which is included in your staff report, but a handful of other localities that have urban honey bee regulations that allow them.

Bristol City, Chesapeake City, Fairfax City, Roanoke, Manassas City, Petersburg, Salem, and the list goes on.

So we are not alone in this endeavor.

Just getting into a very high level again, not going to talk about all of it, but just the text here on the screen are the definitions for these new terms for beehive, colony, flyway, and swarm.

There's also additional information in your packet with some graphics, which I'll show here on the screen here in a moment.

When we get into some of the specifics of the code itself, the use would be considered an accessory use.

So it would be permitted then only in really two different categories here.

for properties that contain a single family detached dwelling and as well as properties and we do have a handful of these across the city that are considered non-conforming agricultural uses.

There are just a few and you can see them throughout the city might have properties that continue to have cattle or horses throughout the city and those would be some of those non-conforming agricultural operations.

Then we get into the number of beehives that would be permitted on certain sizes of properties.

So you could have up to two if you have property that's 10,000 square feet or less.

And then you can see the continuation there on the screen of when you have larger properties, how many you can have, and even greater than 90,000 square feet, there would be then no restriction.

Additional requirements.

All of this text here is associated with the location and maintenance of the beehives themselves.

When you're positioning them on property no closer than 10 feet from property lines, it would be 30 feet whenever it's not a single family home, if it's just a non-conforming agricultural operation that doesn't contain a single family home.

And we put it at 30 feet being that there's really so many different varieties of these across the city that it just seemed to be uniformed to keep it at the 30 foot, which is a typical principal building setback.

They would only be permitted in the rear yard, a flyway barrier.

I have a graphic to describe what and to show what a flyway barrier is regulations talking about making sure that there's a water source on site as well.

And then there would be permit requirements annual permit requirements so

They would submit application to our department community development with a $25 application fee and it would be renewed because it would be only valid for one year so that we can continue to keep track of the numbers that we have and to assist the public.

The graphics on the screen before you are just representations here and an example there at the bottom of what a flyway barrier is.

and I'll probably make Mr. Hot chuckle a little bit with my description, but if you can imagine, the flyway barrier is the distance essentially that requires the bee to kind of fly up, right?

So the flyway barrier is where they exit or enter the beehive itself.

It requires the bee to fly up away from, I guess, really people and from properties instead of just flying straight out of the beehive.

and going into adjacent properties, which if they choose to do so, they could, of course, but it just requires them to fly up.

Did I capture that okay, Mr. Hot?

Fantastic.

He's back there if we need him.

Moving into that code requirement associated with business garden amendments here, a very simple change of text because we currently were prohibiting apoculture and other animal husbandry

And we will continue to prohibit animal husbandry, but then we would allow for the keeping of honey bees if we had anyone interested in operating in business garden.

There was public engagement, of course.

We reached out to the Shendo Valley Beekeepers Association.

We presented some information and were available for questions at the pollinators in your yard event.

Of course we went through the typical advertisements in the newspaper for public notice and Planning Commission held their public hearing on June 12th at which there were some public comments that were offered that forced Planning Commission to really say, hey staff, let's table this for at least another month.

Let you talk about some of the ideas that were offered at the Planning Commission meeting.

And we did so.

Mr. Hot and members of staff were able to meet with the individual that spoke that evening.

and there was at least one amendment that was made based upon some of the feedback that was provided that evening.

So then it was held a planning commission then last month in August where staff offered its favorable recommendation for approval and planning commission did the same unanimously, six to zero.

Not so much a question, but

More explanation of the amendment.

I was not there at the first planning commission meeting.

I think that was when I was in California for the NLC thing.

Yeah, this came from, I believe, best practice from, may have been from state agencies, and Mr. Hawke can correct me if I'm wrong, but we captured this language from other regulations that allows for the flexibility in what you're speaking to.

Okay, that's all.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

This is a public hearing, yes.

Alright, I'll open this item up for public hearing.

If anyone wishes to speak, please state your name and address.

You'll have five minutes.

and a Mayor Parallioti Sionakudos, City Resident.

I submitted public comment, extensive public comment, which was deleted from the packet that was given to Planning Commission the first time.

Along with that, public comment was an extensive petition

My comment and the petition were not addressed the first time in Planning Commission.

I raised this issue, made Council aware of it.

The second hearing before Planning Commission, the packet of public comment remained the same and the contributions remained unaddressed.

The contributions included items that addressed questions that were pointedly asked from Planning Commission.

that would have been more knowledgeable on had they had access to the full public comment.

I became aware of this issue when I heard a rumor, saw a rumor on social media that city council was getting ready to restrict or to ban beekeeping and people were very concerned.

Shortly thereafter, I became aware of a petition

this petition that you see before you that asked city council to permit the keeping of bees.

The petition did not ask to permit and regulate or restrict the keeping of bees.

And we have at least two sets of participants in that petition.

I, as the secretary of the Harrisonburg Martin Luther King, Junior Way Coalition, picked up that petition because it was squarely on the mission of the coalition.

and it was circulated at the aforementioned pollinators in your backyard event.

It was circulated at the First Immigrant and Refugee Summit and it was circulated at Blacks Run Cleanup and I can assure you that the sentiment of the people signing those petitions that I oversaw were interested in the keeping of bees.

Now, I will read to you from some legislation that was presented in May in Pennsylvania

that pertains to

or prohibit the keeping of honeybees or other managed pollinators without notifying the department in writing of their intent to adopt regulation.

A departmental apiary program representative or a designee may be given an opportunity to provide comment at a public meeting prior to a vote on the ordinance.

Why is this?

This is a complex and rapidly changing field and Pennsylvania is grappling with how to deal with this.

We, in the heart of a billion dollar a year agricultural region, I think need to move carefully on this.

And in particular, I've made a suggestion that what we should do for right now is permit the keeping of bees in all districts and hand over to knowledgeable people.

Now in planning commission, community development

Planning Commission and City Attorney's Office all lined up and said, we know nothing about this.

We are unable to contribute meaningfully.

So, given what I said about Pennsylvania, putting this in the hands of community development is not the right thing.

We do, however, have expertise.

Public works.

If we put a voluntary advisory role in public works, instead of an enforcement role in community development,

Then we will be prepared for what may come from upstream when Virginia follows Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania statute, by the way, was brought to my attention as something that is anti-B, that it was overreaching and interfering.

And even that restricted not permitting them, but prohibiting them.

A final thing, when you put something in community development, any fine language that you add is going to be ignored.

The role of community development is that when some of the nastiest people in our community call, people who have harmed children, and that staff member has to make a decision, they're being threatened, they're being bullied by the person at the other end of the call, and they've got an innocent person at the other end.

They look through their Rolodex and figure, what can we, what can we cite this person with to get that person off the phone?

Okay, that's not where we want.

This is me keeping because that will chill participation by people who already feel marginalized.

Anyone else?

One moment please.

Thank you.

This public hearing is now closed.

I have to admit reading this, I got lost in the weeds there.

It's kind of hard to follow.

I thought I need to open my old science books to kind of figure this out.

So it was very hard for me to follow along.

If you're not familiar with the terminology that was being used in

Madam Mayor, I move that we approve the zoning ordinance amendments to allow and regulate urban honeybees.

Second that.

Any discussion?

Well, now as for the and regulate, I see that as the flyway restrictions and the amount of time to allow for a new hive to form and the property size and the number of beehives allowed.

That all makes a reasonable amount of sense to me.

I mean, if we were just to allow them with no regulations, we could get some major pushback from neighbors.

And that's what the flyway thing, for instance, is.

is trying to alleviate, I suppose, not having it fly right into people's yards.

I agree with that.

I think it's true.

You know, we are in the middle of a major agricultural area in Virginia, the biggest agricultural area in Virginia.

And we have a lot of orchards up and down the valley here, a lot of apple orchards, peach orchards.

I know many of those orchards

truck in their hives when they need them to pollinate those areas.

So it's bees are vital to that industry, to our community, to the valley here.

And so I think growing that industry here, growing that those high populations here, you know, can be critical and important.

I don't know if

I do know often that hives are driven across country to be put down in fields here and I don't know if that means that if we have hives here that can be transportable to area orchards or not but I don't know if that's the case but I do think that I'm allowing beekeeping in the city

It makes a lot of sense.

The lines between agricultural and urban areas has been changing, you know, well, over the last many, many, many years.

We're no longer completely separate.

We're a city, but we have lots of agricultural use in that.

I'd like to just follow up with that, the idea of trucking bees around.

That's what one of the bee experts came to say at the second planning commission that it's much better if we keep the bees local, so to speak.

So instead of trucking a new hive in, you allow the swarm, which is a sort of overpopulated hive, to form a new queen and create a new hive so that the genes and the population stay local.

Interesting.

Roll call, please, Pam.

Council Member Robinson.

Aye.

Council Member Jones.

Aye.

Vice Mayor Dent.

Aye.

Mayor Reed.

Aye.

Good evening, Mayor, Council and staff.

My name is Kristen McComb.

I'm the Community Development Block Grant Program Manager for the City.

I'm here tonight for a public hearing to receive comments on the Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report for the Community Development Block Grant, year that ended on 6.30.24.

This annual requirement for the grant allows us to report on and hear input in regards to our accomplishments and progress towards the CDBG's five-year Consolidated Plan goals.

Since the end of the program year over the summer, several projects have been completed.

Those that remain are all underway and are currently shovel-ready and expected to be completed by the spring.

These projects have as a whole met each of the goals that the city identified in our five-year CDBG plan.

They're working towards improving the access to and quality of housing, improving public infrastructure, strengthening fair housing, and planning and administration.

There's a required 15-day public comment period before this report can be submitted to HUD.

If anyone would like to provide comments, they can do so at tonight's public hearing or by contacting me at the information on the screen by the morning of September 26.

Any questions?

Thank you.

This item is now open up for public hearing.

If anyone wishes to speak, please state your name and address.

You'll have five minutes.

Seeing none in person.

One minute.

Thank you.

This item is now closed.

Council.

All right, we're moving on.

Regular items.

Mark.

Good evening.

Mark Fink's Director of Elections, General Red Star for the City of Harrisonburg.

Thank you for allowing me to present to you tonight a little bit about what my office is doing to prepare for the November election, what we've done this year, and just a little bit of an educational component for the public about my department and what we do for the city.

First off, just going over what we have on the November ballot.

So for November 5th, it is a general and a special election at the same time.

Obviously, we all know we have President and Vice President on the ballot.

There will be, as of last approval from the state, six different nominees for President on the ballot.

U.S.

Senate, there are two candidates and then member House of Representatives, six district, three candidates.

City Council, which we have, of course, three seats up with four candidates on the ballot.

and City Council also with three seats and four seats as well on the ballot.

And just to let everyone know, we have not received sample ballots for those that have requested those.

We are still waiting those from our development team at PrintElect.

But the ballot will be double-sided for the selection.

As you can see, we do have a stacked ballot.

And there will be a constitutional question for Article 10 of the

Virginia Constitution Taxation and Finance.

This is a question that was on the ballot, I believe, in 2020.

So every constitutional question has to be voted on twice.

So this is updating Section 6A, adding who died in the line of duty for those who'd be exempt for property tax for veterans and their surviving spouses and surviving spouses of soldiers.

So that is what would make this a special election with the General Election 810.

We have a constitutional question.

It is considered a special election.

Some important dates for this year's election.

Early voting starting next Friday here in City Hall.

We will be in the atrium, of course, with signage to direct the public to where that room will be in the building.

Tuesday, October 15th is the last day of voter registration, so that's normal registration.

Of course, if individuals have not met that deadline, there is still the ability to do same-day registration during early voting and at the polls on election day.

Friday, October 25th is the last day to request a ballot by mail or absentee ballot.

Saturday, November 2nd will be the last day of early voting.

and then, of course, Tuesday, November 5th is Election Day.

The deadline to receive the mail ballots, they must be postmarked by Election Day, will be Friday, November 8th.

This is just giving you some history on our registration numbers in the city of Harrisonburg from past federal elections.

This is a federal election year.

That's what I'm comparing us to here.

The numbers for 2024 are as of the end of July.

So at the end of July, we're at 25,418 registered voters in the city of Harrisonburg.

and as you can see there are high water markers in 2016 with 28,596.

I imagine we'll get quite a few more registered voters before the deadline in October for this election.

This is just kind of some education for those watching home of the department structure of my office.

There is the appointed electoral board and of course myself that are in charge of various duties in the office of elections.

My chief deputy, my two part-time deputies that are in charge of poll books and

We have our many officers of election that help us conduct election day prepop, processing of mail ballots and then the officers that help us here at City Hall for early voting.

This is the structure of the work that we do.

As you can see, a large portion of the work we do in the

voter registrar office is absentee voting which makes up early voting, mail ballots, pre-processing, and of course drop-offs.

Of course another important section is voter registration and then of course separately running election day.

So those are the three main components that we're focusing on throughout the year.

Every independent city and county in the state of Virginia has a general registrar position.

My position is responsible for overseeing elections.

Maintaining the voter rolls, providing training for staff and the public.

Overseeing early voting at office and any satellite locations, we mail out the ballots and other election related materials.

We manage our election budget for the locality.

Of course, we also work with state and local officials to make sure that the city and localities are following state election laws.

We oversee local candidate processing for ballot access and as well as campaign finance and many other duties.

My position is appointed to a four-year term by the local electoral board.

I was just reappointed last year, so I'm not quite in my first year of the new term.

The rest of my staff, we have two full-time staff members, including me and three part-time staff members.

Our hours in the office have been extended each year as election laws continue to change.

Leading up to election day, myself and my deputy will likely be working 50 to 60 hours a week.

make sure we're ready for the big day.

My part-time deputies and clerk also work extended hours during our early voting, the 45 days of early voting.

Our office will be staffed on Election Day from 4.30 a.m.

to likely 11 p.m.

to carry out all the duties that are required.

We believe that we have our electoral board here present with me and I appreciate their support in the audience.

Our new member Ramona Sanders, Secretary, Bill Kahl, Chair, and Jane Burner, Vice Chair.

They are appointed by a local circuit court judge from recommendations made by the party for a term of three years and the political makeup of the board is determined by the party of the sitting governor.

While they are nonpartisan in their duties, they are nominated through their individual parties.

They are responsible for appointing my office, overseeing election day, and then of course conducting the campus.

And then we have our many officers of election.

We have about 46 for this upcoming election that will help us carry out

early voting four officers per shift with two shifts per day.

120 officers or between 120 to 130 were at the work in progress.

When I made this PowerPoint, we were at 120.

We're currently at 130 officers with about 14 officers per precinct working a 14 to 17 hour day.

Our three electoral board members that'll be putting in countless hours on election day in canvas.

and then of course all of our officers are required to attend training, a one to two hour training, depending on what position they are doing on election day by my staff and myself and we'll likely have five to eight training sessions this fall to be prepared.

This is just giving me a little bit of background of some of the work we're doing when we're not conducting the election.

Reminder, we did have two primaries this year so we did all this work as well as carrying out 45 days for two different primaries.

So most of the work that we've done this year, 2,424

Information Updates.

That's just people that are updating their already registered voters in the state of Virginia and they're updating their address.

They've moved somewhere.

We had 836 new applications so far as of July.

We've processed 820 absentee applications.

Again, that's people that are requesting to have ballots mailed to them.

We've canceled 269 voters for the three reasons that we do in the state.

We've had 161 duplicate registrations.

106 pre-registrations.

So pre-registrations is a new thing since 2022.

Individuals between the ages of 16 and 18 can pre-register to vote.

They're not eligible to actually vote, but they basically process a registration office for them, and then when they are old enough to vote, we send them their registration materials to the address on the file.

We've denied 167 registrations this year for total transactions of 4,783 that requires each of my staff members to put some amount of work.

Sometimes these take a minute.

Sometimes they can take multiple days to process, depending on individual issues.

Some other numbers, we've had 1,181 residents that have transferred out within the state of Virginia that were Harrisonburg residents and now live somewhere else within this calendar year within the state.

Yes, this is all within this calendar year.

This is all of July 2024.

So that number will likely increase by the time we get to close of books in October 15th.

So these are some of the numbers that we work with to forecast what we'll need for materials and staffing for each election.

Of course, a lot of this is guesswork because we don't know how many people will decide to show up on election day, how many will decide to vote by mail,

How many will decide to vote early?

So this has given you an idea of our numbers from the 2020 election.

We projected absentee, which anytime you see absentee in this case, we are referring to early voting and by mail.

So that's combined early voting and by mail.

Anytime voting is happening any other time other than election day, it's considered absentee.

There's just two states of it by mail and early.

We projected about 9,000.

We ended up having 11,238.

Election day, we projected 7,000.

We had 5,781.

So for a total of 17,019 for total turnout.

So of course, for 2024, we don't know the actual obviously yet.

So these are the projected numbers we're working with for election day in absentee.

And as you can see, the absentee numbers currently

are lower primarily because the numbers that we projected in 2020, a lot of that had to do with the pandemic and a lot of voters felt that they should vote earlier, vote by mail to avoid possible contamination.

So we imagine without having to deal with the pandemic during this presidential election that our absentee numbers will likely be lower.

Of that absentee number currently we have

Nasser, and

and Dr.

next Friday.

That's going to end on November 2nd.

Our hours are 8.30 a.m.

to 4.30 p.m.

Monday through Friday, and then we have two Saturday dates on October 26th and November 2nd, and we're open from 9 a.m.

till 5 p.m.

those days.

Early voting will be closed on October 14th for the holiday.

Of course, state law requires that all counties in Penn Cities have 45 days of early voting.

That's been the case since

July of 2020.

And it must happen in the same building that the voter registrar's office is contained in.

Vote by mail.

Again, vote by mail has been expanded, well, was expanded in 2020 to allow any Virginia voter to request a ballot by mail.

They have to request the ballot so we do not mail out ballots unless an absentee application has been filled out and approved by a voter.

So ballots are not mailed until those applications are filled out and approved by my office.

but any Virginia registered voter can request a ballot to be mailed to them.

In the past, you used to have a reason, you do not have to have a reason to vote by mail.

They can either fill out an absentee application from my office, either we can mail it to them or they can do it in person or they can request online at the Department of Elections website if they have a Virginia driver's license.

Those ballots must be returned by the deadline that we talked about either they can either come in by mail or they can be dropped off in person They can either drop them off at my office during our normal hours or they can come to any Virginia polling location or Harrisonburg polling location And drop off their ballot so they don't have to go to their normal Election day polling location to drop off their mail ballot.

They could go to any Harrisonburg polling location with a Harrisonburg ballot

Of course, we all know about Election Day.

November 5th, polls will be open 6 a.m.

till 7 p.m.

We have eight precincts in Harrisonburg.

Like I said, we're about 130 officers of election that will be helping us that day.

Most of these workers will likely work a 16 to 17-hour day.

And while we do give them a stipend, it is nowhere near enough to make up for the amount of time and dedication they put in to make sure voters, Harrisonburg citizens can vote.

Same-day voter registration did require the creation of a new position.

So in some of our precincts we will have multiple new officers to help process these same-day voter registrations, primarily in locations that might have heavy college students, because we have found that college students are typically the demographic that are using the same-day registration method.

Like we talked about before, the Canvas, which is the process of reviewing, confirming, and recording the official local results and sending on statewide results to the state board of each election.

We call that the Canvas.

Our electoral board will convene the Canvas the day after the election.

Typically that happens by noon in this room.

The Canvas typically lasts 45 days, but we have 10 days from election day before we are required by code to finish and submit our results to the state.

This is just giving you an example of what that looks like.

This is called an abstract of votes.

So for every office that's on the ballot, we will have to complete abstract of votes that have to be signed by the electoral board with their seal.

So we will review each precinct statement of results.

The statement of results is the document that our chiefs and officers of election creed on election night that tells the tale of what the results were.

And it also has the results tape from the tabulators.

So they are going to check the results that we reported to the state on election night against the actual tapes and the results that were presented on the statement of results.

They'll conduct the provisional ballot hearing so everyone that voted either provisionally or same-day registration, which is a provisional process, they are given a document, given an opportunity to present a case if they would like to.

The provisional ballot hearing will likely happen at noon the day after the election and we like said will send notice to everyone that votes provisionally when they do so.

Anyone can present information, but it is not required to present for their provisional ballot to be considered.

If we have write-ins, if write-ins account for more than or over 10% of the vote total for any office, then we have to verify each write-in from the tape.

That's every Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and anything else under the sun.

Voting to accept or deny provisional ballots.

So after the provisional ballot hearing has happened,

My office will review all those provisional envelopes and give a recommendation based on the information we could gather We will give them a recommendation and then the electoral board will then vote to accept or deny based on the merits of each provisional ballot

then they will open the envelopes and tabulate the ballots from that point to get results for that provisional meeting which acts as another precinct.

So that's why on election night when you see that we are not 100% reporting that's because we are waiting A for the ballots that still have until Friday to be received in our office which we call post-election ballots and also B for the provisional votes that still have to be adjudicated by the electoral board before the end of the canvas.

So you won't see 100% reporting on the State Board of Elections website until we have uploaded our results for the provisional hearing and we have counted all the post-election ballots.

Also, the local electoral board is responsible for declaring local winners.

So that will be for the two local offices, City Council and School Board.

So the term election integrity is used a lot to talk about elections in Virginia and nationwide.

There are a variety of challenges in conducting national elections, as I'm sure you are aware.

Here are just some of the methods that we use in Virginia and Harrisonburg to help keep elections safe and secure.

Per state code, every locality is required to have a written security plan, and that is to be updated annually by the electoral board and general registrar, so that is something that we do the beginning of every year.

We review our last year's security plan and see if there are

any changes that need to be made or updates based on any code changes by the state or locality issues that we have arisen that's going to deal with things like what sort of equipment we have, how we handle that equipment, how we test it, where we store things.

We also have equipment management, so we are required by code to keep detailed logs of each piece of equipment that we use in elections where we log

When it's been used where it's being stored what precincts it's going to and when it's we do annual maintenance or any sort of testing Obviously we have general physical security so all of our election materials including our equipment voter registrations are kept in secure locations We have the two person rule so that means every single election document that's created in a precinct on election day has to be reviewed and signed by two officers of election

so no officer is allowed to finish any complete any document on their own without at least another officer signing off on it.

Of course we do machine testing so all of the equipment that we use for every election must be tested by state code before it can be used in every election.

We have tamper evidence seals that we use after machines have been tested to make sure that the machines have not been touched or altered.

Chain of custody, every time we receive

A ballot, either through absentee or election day, we have documentation on when we received it, where we received it, where it's being stored, when it's been taken to the clerk of court's office.

So there's detailed chain of custody for every ballot and document that we receive.

Of course, we don't have an individual document for every single ballot.

It's more bulk.

So on election day, there'd be one chain of custody for each precinct.

Obviously, we have secret ballot.

We log that when people vote, you get checked into the poll book.

But of course, once you get checked into the poll book,

Your ballot is divorced from the fact that you've been checked in and that's a secret ballot that's put into the machine that has no connection to your name or your voter registration.

And then in Virginia, we do something called risk limiting audits.

In the state of Virginia this year, the state board of elections voted this month to conduct two separate types of risk limiting audits.

Those will be done in November, likely on November 21st and 22nd.

Every locality will be required

to conduct a risk-limited audit for the U.S.

Senate, the statewide races, and then one congressional district will be picked to do a batch comparison.

And that's basically you are either taking one whole precinct and hand counting all the ballots, or you're statistically taking a smaller number of ballots from multiple precincts and counting that math against the tapes.

So this is a check to make sure

at the tapes were working accurately on election day.

So that is a process that Virginia has done since 2021.

Like we talked about, machine testing or what's referred to under code logic and accuracy testing is required for all tabulators, poll books, and ADA compliant voting devices before every election.

The testing is conducted by what we call a machine custodian.

They act as an officer of election.

It could also be a vendor.

It has to be in the presence of an electoral board member or the general registrar to sign off on.

We do allow observers for local political parties that have candidates on the ballot or independent candidates that are on the ballot as well can attend the process, but it is not open to the public.

After a successful test of the machines, they are sealed with numbers and sealed until Election Day.

Some challenges that my department are looking at for the 2024 election, like we talked about before, same-day registration.

which are we refer to as SDR that started in 2022.

We've seen a dramatic increase in provisional applications on election day.

All of these must be processed by my office in a short window before certifications.

Like we said, we have to give a recommendation to the electoral board on whether these individuals that voted in this method were eligible to vote on that date.

And then we must present that recommendation in time for them to vote, tabulate,

and process the results.

State deadline to process the SDRs for my office will be six days.

So we will have six days from election day before we are required by the state, which is November 12th, to process all of these.

On average, my office can process around 35 applications an hour.

That's because one application might only take two minutes.

One could take 30 to 40 minutes, depending on what sort of issues we have to look and investigate.

We estimate that for this election we could receive anywhere from 700 to 1200 SDR applications this fall based on what we've received since 2022.

This could require an additional 20 to 35 hours of work on top of what else we have to do to conduct the canvas to meet the state deadline.

Our staff will likely be here through the holiday on the weekend to make sure we meet that state required deadline.

Some other challenges that I'm sure most people are aware is the increased security concerns around elections in the United States.

After attending training with the Department of Elections, EISAC, and DHS, we are broadening our office and election day procedures to anticipate potential digital and physical security threats from domestic or foreign agents while I'm not aware

of any threats to Harrisonburg or Virginia at large.

We are preparing for anything so that we are aware of what things are out there.

We have done tabletop events with state officials and members from DHS involving things like AI and deep fakes so we can be prepared or at least know what we're looking for on election day for those sort of security concerns.

For staffing and our officers of election,

with a presidential election the hours are long.

There's a lot of stress and my office is keenly aware of the potential threat of burnout for our office staff and officers of election.

We've been working with colleagues around the state about instituting things like mandatory breaks and other strategies that we can use to make sure that our staff is able to get through the day

We're also looking at providing strategies to relieve stress to our officers of election and conflict management training, which we've been giving our officers for the last few years.

Some updates to equipment that we will be using for this 2024 election.

Just a quick background, our poll book system that we've been using for the last five to six years, that vendor ran into support issues in the state and was no longer going to be able to support

provide support for this fall election.

And the Harrisonburg electoral board felt that that was not a good time period to go into an election without any sort of vendor support for a presidential election.

So because of that, we had to go looking for a new poll book vendor.

So poll books are what we use, electronic poll books to check people in to make sure that they are A, registered to vote, eligible to vote,

and what sort of ballot that we may need to issue to them.

So because of that issue, we've purchased 36 new pull pad systems from Noe Technologies.

They're a national election equipment vendor.

They provide a more secure and user-friendly interface, which I was showing to Mr. Banks this afternoon before our presentation.

It does have a new feature that'll allow us to scan Virginia driver's license to quickly pull up people's registrations, which will hopefully

expedite the check-in process.

So these will be deployed during early voting and on election day.

We've also secured security cages from our ballot vendor, PrintElect.

So we've received two so far and we are waiting six more to be delivered, I believe sometime next week.

This is going to help secure our critical election equipment and delivery as well as storage on election day.

That is all I have for you all.

There's my information for the public.

Just to reiterate what I think I heard you say, and I learned recently, that the regular registration deadline is October 15th.

So it's sort of just as a plea to people please register by then because what you've described is after that they could do the same day registration but that requires a whole lot of work at the very end of the process for your team, right?

It can lead to more work.

It can, yes.

So that's just a couple of please request to the to the public.

Register on time, check your registration and second

Ideally vote early Senator Kane was just talking about this among the reasons to is for insurance because I remember Within the past couple of years some people were redistricted Given to a new precinct they used to vote in Keester now they voted Harrison But if they get there at 6 59 on election night at the wrong precinct they're out of luck So if you vote early here at City Hall

You've gotten it taken care of and you don't need to worry about whether you've got the right place.

From my general registrar, we don't really advocate for one method of voting for other.

We leave it up to the general public to decide which method is the best one for them to utilize.

So if someone feels early voting would be the best method, we are here to provide all the state mandated methods for them to use.

So you have to be neutral.

Thank you, Mark.

Thank you for your hard work.

I'll just say thank you to our electoral board for selecting and continuing our excellent registrar in Harrisonburg.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, that's good.

That's what I was trying to do.

Good evening Mayor Reed, members of council, city staff, I'm Brian Scholl, economic development director.

I'm joined this evening by Deputy Director Pierce McGill and we're here to share with you the Harrisonburg Entrepreneurship Development Initiative.

There it is.

Okay.

First of all, thank you for your commitment to entrepreneurship and small business development for some comments tonight.

I certainly appreciate that.

Councilman Jones, you mentioned Toolbox.

I had that in my comments here.

I'm very proud of our Toolbox that we have for small businesses with training resources, small business resources, training programs that are available.

I think we have some of the most robust in the entire Shenandoah Valley, but we're always looking for more, right?

So that's why we have tonight one more new one to bring to you.

During your budget discussions back in the spring, you allocated $100,000 for small business assistance.

So Pierce and I have drafted a program that we believe will help the city better serve our entrepreneurs and maybe help us find the next rising stars here in our community.

So before we jump into those details, I want to walk through, quickly walk through some of our existing training programs.

Just to give you the picture of what we have in and you'll see where this new one will fit in even better.

Launch Harrisonburg.

We've had this since 2019.

This is our 10-week boot camp for people who have a great idea and you want to find out what's it going to take to take it to the next step to make it a business.

So they work in a cohort of 10 to 12 people.

They're working each week together as a cohort.

Our facilitators are local entrepreneurs who have been trained in the co-starters method that's a national model.

They're trained in that, and they work with this cohort over that 10-week period.

And they learn all the different basics they need to start a business.

And on the last night, they're actually making a pitch of their business idea.

So we've had seven cohorts since 2019, and we've had 69 different companies graduate.

Just a couple I'll mention, one right across the street here, Dart Clothing.

They were one that ran through here.

Sweet McGee, Desert Shop.

They went through a launch here at Harrisonburg.

So it's been a great, great program.

We've partnered with the SBDC for 20 years.

They have had business counselors that work with our local entrepreneurs on their business plans.

You have to have a business plan in writing if you're going to go get financing, right?

So they help our entrepreneurs do that.

Alison Dugan is the director there.

She's working with several of our different programs.

She's been very involved.

That picture there is taken of a program with our BQ participants.

They've been very involved with helping them get those business plans in writing.

Almost all of the businesses that come to the city for a loan

have gone through the SBDC for a business plan first.

I want to touch on two additional programs that we have for small businesses.

One is our Harrisonburg Business Loan Program.

Under this program, we can land up to $25,000 to small businesses.

So this program has been instrumental in helping businesses from a wide variety of stages.

Some are start-up, some are already well established and just need this money to grow.

But folks in this stage have been able to demonstrate the ability to repay the debt.

So they either have a likelihood of repaying through their own personal history or their business through revenue has demonstrated an ability to repay.

Since inception, we have done 23 loans through this program and lent over $483,000 to small businesses in Harrisonburg.

You'll hopefully recognize some of the brands here that you see that have received small business loans, Maschita, Branches Ice Cream, Restless Moons Brewery, and Coffee Hound.

Our food businesses really take advantage of the business loan program, as you can tell.

The next program we have for small businesses is B-Cubed.

That's the acronym we use for Black and Brown owned business growth program.

This program started in April 2021, but before that it was really birthed through a vision to Councilman Jones to get this going and Councilman Jones and Brian actually approached Miller Coors and they seeded the program with $15,000.

So from that $15,000

We've been able to receive grants and other donations to continue this program going.

To the point now, on September 1st, we had our 14th cohort of BQ.

BQ represents all stages of business, from start-up to well-established.

As we say, you don't complete an application, you complete a participation form.

So everyone is welcomed.

We just base it in cohorts to spread out the service that we're able to give to businesses.

We've had 82 businesses total enroll in that program.

Now, not all those folks are active.

Some will register and we don't hear from them for a variety of reasons.

But the ones that are active, we have seen great growth from those businesses.

We've been able to disperse $103,000 in mini grants, and those have varied from $2,000 to $5,000.

And we do monthly workshops, sometimes more than once a month.

We've done some specialized sales training, all told the program has put out $135,000 in technical assistance.

Pierce, how much was in from the community navigator?

That was $100,000.

So that brings us to our proposal tonight.

The technical assistance is key.

So we want to make sure we find the next group of rising stars and get that technical assistance for them.

In this case, we're thinking it's going to be one-on-one advising on a specific area that they might need.

So you see here, identify local small businesses that have started gaining some traction and are generating revenue.

So they have to be making revenue, and Pierce will go through the details in a minute, but

We want to identify that group, pair them up with a mentor, an advisor who can help them take that next step.

Maybe this group needs marketing assistance.

Maybe this company needs detailed financial analysis.

Maybe they're not really strong in that area.

Maybe government contracting is something they need a little assistance with.

We want to be able to find that advisor who can help them get that help they need, come up with a work plan for them.

and help achieve that.

So that's our game plan.

Find those subject matter experts and here's how we're going to do that.

So we're going to go out and find the right consultant with the best team of advisors out there.

The beauty is these can be virtual.

So this team doesn't have to be somebody right here in Harrisonburg because the advisor might be in Richmond.

They might be in another state.

We don't know, but we want to find that consultant.

So we're going to issue an RFP, find that consultant who has a

a deep bench of consultants on their team that we can then match those up with our local entrepreneurs.

Alright, we're envisioning that each advisor who's paired up with a business owner would meet with that group for three times.

They'd have an onboarding session, they'd come up with a work plan, performance metrics, and then a scorecard.

So we would be getting details on all that back from the consultant.

Yes, this company is working out these issues.

Here's what they need to do.

Here's where they are at this point.

If they're successful in that, at the end, we want to award them an acceleration grant, $2,500.

Is the ballpark worth thinking about that?

To help them then accomplish something on their work plan.

Maybe it's buy a piece of equipment.

Maybe it's to enact a marketing plan that they have that they need to do.

We don't know exactly what that's going to be, right?

But it's going to be something on their work plan.

So we're picturing using the money that you've set aside for small businesses to help us pilot this for 30 businesses in our community.

And we think we can make that happen here in the next nine months timeline.

Yes, so again, we really wanted to target that

Beyond startup, but not well established stage of a business.

We think that this program can meet that gap for Harrisonburg.

and that's how we came up with these parameters.

So you must be for profit business.

This is for businesses only.

You must be located within the city of Harrisonburg.

Home-based businesses are eligible.

Again, that's another lesson learned from B-Cubed and some of our other different programs.

A lot of these early-stage companies are home-based and it just makes financial sense to still be home-based as they grow.

So we are allowing Hope and Base Businesses to be eligible in this program.

You must have a city business license and then this third bullet is really the key and what determines early stage comes down to revenue.

So what we're looking at as a business must have at least $5,000 but no more than $100,000 in annual revenue.

or they can demonstrate their on pace this year to create that kind of revenue.

Those are the businesses that we've worked with that have really engaged in the programs we've had.

They've been able to take their business to the next level and of course the business must be locally owned and locally operated in Virginia.

One final piece on the revenue number when we analyze the BQ businesses as part of our participation form we request their annual revenue numbers.

and those who did complete that, 71% of those businesses fall within these parameters of $5,000 to $100,000.

So that's why we thought that would be the sweet spot to help these early stage companies.

So with that, our ask is to utilize the $100,000 to create this pilot program for the city of Harrisonburg.

We seek to serve 30 businesses with this initiative and we will be able to execute this with a nine month time frame.

You know I don't have questions.

I'll make mine quick.

You guys know how I feel about this.

Oh you said you want to go first?

Shall I just ask a question?

of Dany Fleming

Yeah I don't know what that ultimate number would be the sample size from BQ I believe was 51 businesses that's how we determined 71% of those 51 fell within those parameters but citywide for our small businesses I don't know the answer to that let's see if we can track that

The very first thing we started doing was making a list of small black and brown businesses back then.

It was a Google Doc that's still running to this day and so I don't only put God and Google know how many businesses are on there and we can keep adding them as people send them to us.

that slowed down because of BQ and things have gotten a lot more organized.

But the fact of the matter is, one of the reasons why I had a vision for a BQ is because there is almost limitless amounts of those businesses because it's what's now in the lexicon known as the side hustle, right?

Because even, you know, well-established millionaires have other side hustles, right?

They start birthing because entrepreneurs solve problems just like the daycare that was here earlier.

They solve problems, right?

And so there are people solving little mini problems that maybe don't make tons of money all around the city all the time, whether it's a seamstress or a mechanic or various other types of businesses.

And so just to give you an example of one of the reasons why I'm very excited about this program, one of the... I'm not even telling the whole story.

We took an entrepreneur to Best Buy to buy them a laptop because it was overwhelming for them to buy the laptop.

Now, they were already performing the task of their actual business, but just some of the sheer administrative work was just too daunting for them.

And that's just one little small micro example.

But then there are other business owners who are making tons and tons of money, and what I would consider tons of money.

maybe are less than confident about finding retail, real estate, right?

Now these are people with homes, right?

They go to work every day, they go to brick and mortar buildings every day, but maybe that's challenging for them.

So things on various scales have we found to be challenging for our smaller businesses.

And so I think this addresses a lot of those needs and helps them kind of get over those, you know, insecurities that we all have as people.

but more so, especially as entrepreneurs because they're working to solve someone else's problem in a greater way, but no one's usually there to help them solve their problem.

And so I think that's what Ryan and Pierce and along with the help of Andrea Dono and, oh gosh.

Alison Dugan.

They let me participate a little bit.

So, but that's what we've been working on.

And so I think that's a great question.

So I would love for us to start cataloging this stuff if we could.

That's a long answer back to what you originally asked.

It'd be great to do that.

So I hope that more people register their business with us.

And again, take advantage of these resources because it was the biggest lie ever told that it's too hard to do business in the city of Harrisonburg.

Well, we have completely dismantled that myth.

That is far from true.

And so yeah, come register your business.

I would say one quick and easy number is how many registered businesses do we have?

And then the next step would be how many would we want to encourage to register if they've been through the launch cohort or some such or they're just starting on their own.

This could be the saving grace for a business that's struggling, has the potential to survive, but it's just lacking one particular skill.

A lot of times that will be into marketing.

You have the product, you have the perfect product, but how do you get the information out there to folks so they'll know where to come get the product or lack the right piece of equipment that would help accelerate the business.

So this to me is an opportunity for us to see

fewer businesses in the city fail because you know it's all in the past year or two it's been about getting a business starting you know city of Harrisonburg helps you with that you know helps you get situated but now this is for folks who are out there who know they've got the right thing they fit into that little niche but they just need some help and so I think it's just very commendable to be thinking about improving

the business sense for all businesses in Harrisonburg, whether you're in your basement, whether you're, you know, you're driving your truck and doing a pop-up event or if you're in a brick and mortar.

So this to me really makes a statement to all folks out there who are struggling at some point in this whole startup getting to really be out there in their business that Harrisonburg does care and we do have avenues.

We have a toolbox.

for everybody, wherever you are in your business plan.

So, oh, I think this is wonderful.

I do want to say one little small thing because they're never here together.

But Adam, over the years, I don't know how many years it's been, but you know, I talk about this dispelling the myth of how hard it is to do business here.

But he and I actually, and Adam and Andy, Lord Adam and Andy How long have we been doing those meetings?

Six years?

At least five, right?

developers, I guess, construction companies, architects, folks that are in the development field, again to answer their questions and overcome their hurdles from the development side.

So we've been countering this on both fronts.

I don't sit here and tell you we have a meeting about complaints and problems, but we've been doing it.

And we've been doing it, I think, quarterly or about a monthly or

If we get mad, maybe we'll wait four months, but ultimately we're meeting multiple times a year with that part of our community as well.

And so some of the stuff I've been working on with our staff, it's not public front facing stuff, but I wanted to make sure you guys were publicly commended for that type of work because that's true economic development, the stuff that no one sees that keeps the

the web tied together so then everything on the front facing side that you see on quote unquote main street or what you see on the web or what you see in advertising all looks nice and pretty but it takes these these gentlemen and those individual entrepreneurs that they're working with and our staff working hard together behind the scenes and so I just appreciate how community development and academic development go hand in hand and they can go hand in hand to help the

The wealthy, large business owner or the small, you know, newcomer business owner.

It doesn't matter who you are.

We want to help absolutely everybody.

So I can be super, super clear.

I'm excited to help the older white gentleman as much as I am the young black or brown person.

It doesn't matter who it is because all of us come together from a tax standpoint to take care of our children when it comes to school, public safety, our water and all the things we need to function.

I just really appreciate it, but I never get all three of y'all together.

So probably won't ever happen again.

So anyway, I appreciate you.

One of the things I'd like to say is that until I started working in this particular position as a city council member, I never really understood how important it was to be involved in your chamber.

I didn't realize the amount of work that the chamber did.

I just recently read about the

work you're going to do in the childcare area for the city of Harrisonburg.

But if you have a business, if you're a non-profit, you've got to look to your chamber to see what resources are there that will help elevate your business, your non-profit.

There's training that's going on constantly, and I never truly appreciated the work of a chamber in a town.

It was like, oh, that's the Chamber of Commerce.

Okay, there they are.

Hey, you know, I kind of looked at it as a welcoming center.

If you're new to town, you want to find out what's there, I kind of thought that's where you went.

But it never really truly looked at all the opportunities for business people, for regular citizens to find out what there is in the city and really get involved and make some good connections that can really promote your business as well.

So the work of a chamber is very important and I don't think people realize

Realize that.

They're a part of the BQ.

Everyone that goes through BQ gets a membership in time on the Chamber of Commerce.

So they've been a wonderful partner.

It's from the very beginning.

Big shout out to Frank Tamarino down in Florida.

He's still checking.

Yeah, I was going to say, he actually watches and still sends in information from down in Florida.

with that said, Madam Mayor, may I make a motion?

Second.

Any more discussion?

Roll call, please.

Council Member Robinson.

Aye.

Council Member Jones.

Okay, Luke.

Good evening, Mayor Reed, members of the City Council.

I'm Luke Morgan, Grants and Programs Analyst for the City.

I'm here this evening to present to you about the Railroad Crossing Elimination Program or RCE program.

I've been assisting the Department of Public Works with this grant opportunity and putting together an application for it.

And the Public Works Director, Mr. Tom Hartman, could not be here tonight, so I'm here to share this information with you.

So this program provides funding for highway rail or pathway rail grade crossing improvement projects that focus on improving the safety and mobility of people and goods.

The program is administered by the Federal Department of Transportation's Federal Railroad Administration.

Grants can be used to pay for capital and planning projects, and the federal share of funding cannot exceed 80% of the total project cost, meaning a 20% match is required.

Applications are due no later than September 23, 2024.

As mentioned, the grant program is intended to fund highway rail or pathway rail grade crossing improvement projects that focus on improving safety and mobility.

The grant guidelines outline six specific eligible uses, which include grade separation or closure, track relocation, improvement or installation measures that improve safety for separation or relocation projects, other safety improvement projects at highway rail grade crossings, a group of those projects described in the first four points that could collectively improve the mobility of people or goods,

and then six is the planning environments review and design of an eligible project described in any of those first five points.

So the RCE application has three separate tracks which are based on project lifecycle stages.

Track 1 is for project planning, Track 2 for project development, and Track 3 for final design and construction projects.

Which application track we apply through is based on how we describe our project consistent with the FRA's Capital Projects Guidance which details the project lifecycle stages.

There are six stages of a project lifecycle.

One is systems planning, two project planning, then project development, final design, construction, and operation.

We can request funding for multiple of these lifecycle stages with this grant application, but we must first identify project components and costs for each one of the preceding lifecycle stages.

So if we apply for construction funding, we'll have to

Hairsburg has a brief history of looking at eliminating railroad crossings in the city.

In 2005-2006, the city completed a feasibility study to determine the feasibility of eliminating crossings and the study confirmed that this was feasible and it came up with a project idea.

The study demonstrated that the railroad could be moved out of the city limits to be rerouted around the northeast portion of the city.

This rerouting project was estimated to cost anywhere from $71 million to $92 million in 2015.

You know, prices have gone up since then so it would be more than now but we don't have detailed estimates for that.

However, the application we're submitting would not be for that amount, it's based on planning, not that construction dollar figure you see there.

So this will only reassess the results of the 2005 planning study and the proposed rerouting plans which are now nearly 20 years old.

So the study would focus on the relocation of the existing railroad to an area northeast of the city.

I know there's a lot going on here in this map so I'll try to explain a little bit of what's here on the screen.

So the yellow and red lines are the rail lines right now.

The yellow line is one that the 2005 study showed could not be removed and the red line is the rail line that it showed could be rerouted to the northeast portion of the city.

and those circles and triangles on the red line are crossings, either road crossings or pathway crossings that could be eliminated by moving that rail line out of the city.

The blue shaded area at the northeast portion of the city, that's the proposed area the new railway route could go through and that pink shaded area is the county's innovation village development.

So moving the railroad to the blue quarter could open rail opportunities to the northern city and Rockham County's commercial sites.

It would also

Eliminate nine at-grade crossings and seven pathway crossings within the city and JMU's campus.

The 2005 study proposed redeveloping the abandoned railbed as a shared use path, which would increase connections to downtown.

The city doesn't have many paths or pedestrian infrastructure going east to west.

We have more going north to south, but the east to west connection in the city is a little more difficult.

So this would open up that corridor.

And again, just to reiterate, this application will not request the funding to actually implement this project.

We're just doing the planning.

We're not building a shared use path with this application.

We're just doing the planning with the funds that we would get.

So as I mentioned several times, we're pursuing a planning project grant opportunity.

We're going to be requesting $240,000 for the $300,000 project cost.

So that means we would be matching $60,000.

Rockingham County and James Madison University have agreed to pitch in and help us with that match so they'd each be contributing $20,000.

and the city would put up 20,000 towards the match.

Other potential stakeholders are the Department of Rail and Public Transit, Harrisonburg, Rockham, Metropolitan Planning Organization, and the Norfolk Southern Railroad.

Because the applications do September 23rd, we're currently working very fast to get that put together.

And it's our goal to have that done before the deadline.

Any questions?

I have a question.

In the area that you're talking about rerouting the railroad I saw,

Mr. Banks and I met when you mentioned the northeast area of the city.

I can't really determine how far outside.

Is this right outside the city limits?

It would go through the county outside the city limits.

So it wouldn't go through anywhere within the city limits in that northeast portion.

Okay.

So you can see on the screen where the red line connects to that blue shaded area at the far right.

The city line?

Yeah.

And of course, I guess for this any, oh, I'm sorry.

Oh, go ahead.

Any project that moves Norfolk's challenge railroad

They still own domain of that railroad, whether it gets moved, wherever it is, right?

So if you move it someplace else and get the funding for that, they also still have complete domain over that railroad.

It doesn't change anything about ownership of that railroad.

I was curious about the bottom part, that dark blue highlighting.

Is that the range of where you're trying to

where we could potentially reroute this southern... That's Jamie's campus, that shaded portion, purple or blue at the bottom, yes.

Yeah, so as Mr. Morgan said, going back to 2005, 2006, and I have some history with this, I was a little baby congressional staffer back then when this conversation happened 20 years ago.

And so to your question, the Vice Mayor, the red line toward the bottom of the map is the section of existing rail line that would be proposed to be relocated east of the city limits and then northwest around the city.

So that red line indicates the rail line that would go away.

Those circles and yellow triangles are the at-grade crossings that would be eliminated.

And as Mr. Morgan said,

So that's the, and I'm horrible with colors, the teal, the teal kind of arc that goes through the pink Rockium County industrial park.

Oh, I see.

It would just connect with the yellow is the okay line.

That's the existing.

It would just reconnect with that.

Okay, now I think I have a grasp of the geography of it, sort of.

Right, so let's just do a study for that.

And also just where these proposals are may change as well based on the study and the participants.

No idea.

Rabbit hole, rabbit hole, rabbit hole.

Check some for kids.

All right.

Make a motion.

So I'll move to approve the railroad crossing omination grant resolution as presented.

Any more discussion?

I. Council Member Fleming.

I. Council Member Jones.

I. Mayor Dent.

Vice Mayor Dent.

Next is something Council does every year, approves the resolution, setting the percentage of personal property tax relief for that particular tax year.

And as you know, this is leftover from Governor Gilmour's administration.

and now each year the city receives money from the state to allocate towards the personal property tax of automobiles and the city must spread that out over qualifying vehicles which are basically any passenger car, motorcycle, pickup, or panel truck have any registered gross weight of less than 10,000 pounds and used for non-business purposes and the Commissioner of the Revenue and Director of Finance get together

and figure out how that money should be allocated and under our ordinance any vehicle with a value of less than $1,000 as far as the assessed value is identified and the tax owed on that vehicle is paid from the funds and the remaining funds are again prorata spread out over the remaining qualifying vehicles and this year the

Rate will be, let's see, 18.6%.

Richard would say this is Gilmore's Revenge.

All right, can I have a motion, please?

Madam Mayor, I move that we approve the resolution setting

the percentage of personal property tax relief to tax year 2024 as presented by Attorney Brown.

Council Member Robinson?

Aye.

Council Member Fleming?

Aye.

Council Member Jones?

Aye.

Vice Mayor Dent?

Aye.

Mayor Reed?

Aye.

Aye.

Good evening Mayor Reed, Council Members, I'm Liz Webb, Housing Coordinator.

I'm here and Adam is sticking around to help give you an update on the residential pipeline.

Here we go.

And so if you have questions, that's why Adam is here.

But before we get into the numbers,

For the pipeline, I just want to start with some other information that gives it some context Here's some figures from the housing study in terms of estimated housing needs by 2025 which is now fast approaching showing a range of 455 to 616 rental units needed and 558 for sale units

These are projections based on a whole number of factors, including the pipeline, but not only the pipeline, but also things like anticipated growth, vacancy rate, and goals.

I also have some numbers just on our housing inventory based on most recent census data available, showing that we have 18,599 housing units.

There's a breakdown of occupancy, which the color isn't showing so clearly, but it's about 35% owner occupied, 8% vacant, 57% renter occupied based on those numbers right there.

And then in terms of unit type, what we have is also broken down here.

about 36% of our housing is detached single family dwellings.

Attached are 23% and then the multifamily from small to large about 40% and then about 1% or less is manufactured mobile homes.

So that's what we have.

And then just a few notes on what the pipeline report is and how we're limiting it in terms of what's in it here.

We are including everything that's been use approved by you since the housing study, so since 2021.

Now those numbers reflect the maximum based on the zoning request.

That's not always what what gets built.

The pipeline report doesn't reflect anything that was by right or

through that point, whether it was rezoned prior to the housing study or it is just the zoning that existed in the area.

So anything that could get built is not going to be on the pipeline report unless it was approval after the housing study.

And it includes a lot of different status variables.

It's got things that have been completed.

It's got things that have dirt moving.

It's got things that submitted a rezoning request.

And there may or may not be files moving back and forth.

And sometimes what we know is just based on the last date of something being touched.

Sometimes what we know is more seeing a for sale sign go up.

So there's a lot of that in these numbers.

just to get into those numbers here.

And you have the full memo with a breakdown based on the address and specifics for each project in the memo in front of you.

In terms of non-student use approved, there are just under 3,000 units, but that does include several that have been completed.

and a handful that are under construction.

Most are still in the planning phase, including the bulk of which as multi-family.

I'm just going to pause right here.

So planning is everything before... well...

It's basically all the site.

It can be engineered in comprehensive site plan review.

So it's in the hands of the engineer, designer.

It could be in the hands of the architect.

It could be a lot of different things.

And it also, in these cases, can be anything that's been rezoned that isn't yet.

under construction.

So it could be just something that's gotten zoning approval and they maybe haven't started turning in anything yet, too.

So that's, you know, and so there's within that planning, it's a big bucket and it's everything from moving forward pretty quickly to we haven't heard from them and we think somebody sold it.

And those are, you can look, if you look at the memo,

Adam put in the dates of the last recent, like, contact.

And you can see through those some of those, some of the dates are, you know, from, you know, if the dates from 2023, 2022, it's different.

And then there's some that, you know, there's sometimes more information.

But, you know, it is a range.

It's a range.

And it's not easy data to make broader projections.

It's really case by case based on what's going on in any

in a particular location.

These don't include any by-right things that are going on.

Right.

Right.

So I'm trying to think of some that are... Right.

So that's the one, what's that?

That South Main Street?

Yeah.

So anything that's by-right or that got its rezoning like prior to

Council doing this after the housing study.

This is from rezoning since the beginning of 2021.

The 8% vacancy rate?

Yeah.

Our housing study that's significantly higher than our housing study came out with.

You know, what would anticipate that number actually has gone down since our housing study?

So it's really, that number, I mean, that's, I don't want to, I mean, I could really get into the weeds of that number, but I won't right now.

From what I do have, let me see.

That number since the housing study where it's pulled from actually hasn't changed all that much, but I think that's a question of, you know, how do we actually measure vacancy and is the census definition the one that applies to our needs?

I mean, there's a difference between it's empty and like it's empty and available.

So I think one of the things that we're going to, you know,

We're going to try to make use of some other data to hone in.

Some of the stuff that they did in the study was like really, really micro level, pulling in a bunch of different sources to get more nuanced numbers than I've got for you tonight.

But yeah, no, that's something to look at.

So I do want to add, let's see, we've got a separate table that Adam put together for student use approved housing.

And that's all multifamily.

None of those have been completed or under construction right now.

And then also in the memo, there are ones that are proposed, and those are things that are either tabled or upcoming.

And so there's a mix of units here too, totaling 984.

So if we add these together, I have to say this won't match what's on your screen because if you're looking at your screen, the numbers don't add up.

I did some math and checked it right beforehand and it didn't add up.

So this is what the totals are for the whole pipeline summary with those three separate categories.

And including everything, it is over 4,000 units.

So this could be, there's some by right number, potentially this little bit lower than this.

So this could be, we would approve some additive number.

Usually you're changing from like a, like a, an R1 to an R5 or an R1, you know, or an R2 to an R8.

So, you know, it's, it's tough to know exactly what could have been built by right before the rezoning, you know, with exact numbers.

So with this, and knowing that this is since the beginning of 2021, we pulled some certificates of occupancy just to see what has been getting built.

And this is what's actually been built since 2021 through August of this year.

And these numbers are pretty low.

It's hard to

Look at the pipeline without the context of this.

Excuse me.

Is this occupancy certificates would include by right built?

This is everything that's been built.

We tried to manually take out like, you know, if somebody converted a shed into like a, you know, a space for, you know, I think we this is all just residential uses.

And I will say that

More than half of this is rental.

A number of those attached units, although they're subdivided, they're rentals.

They've been built to be rented out, and so they're all owned by a couple.

I think some are at VMRC, and then some of them are at Millwood.

Those townhouses are rentals, so there's probably

Of course, these are units not people, so we don't actually know how this has impacted us in the city and where these folks come from, I think.

And Andy, in the Weldon Cooper Center, in those populations, in those projections, I believe they were anticipating the last report we got.

was that every year we had about 200 new units that were being built.

That was there, I believe that's the number they used as a kind of a baseline in doing their projections.

So this would actually show that we're actually below that projection, even if that is the number, I don't remember, but I think that was the number about 200.

I know that that's true for what the housing study like the numbers that it anticipated we needed were based on ones in the pipeline getting built and these don't really reflect you know for the you know those getting built so yeah and then they're not getting built they are not getting built right

and there's again there's any number of reasons a lot of it is people are waiting for interest rates to go down and then sometimes you know what what pencils out in one circumstance does in another but it's really you know each project is unique and you know we have some of the information but some is just you know we're waiting to hear some I think

Yeah, there's just a bunch and then we can look at the memo to look for details and if there's any questions, you know, about specific ones and whether they're moving.

We can always address those later if you have specific questions.

And then I just have here, including what's in the pipeline.

You know what I should say?

I'm sorry, I should go back to this.

In terms of what's been completed, you'd be interested to know that those 25 units are

11 multifamily Foley Road that are affordable and the 14 duplexes are Souter Street.

So the ones that have been completed, which is low number, are affordable.

And then these are including that.

These are the affordable units that are part of that pipeline report.

And so that Souter Street, Foley Road efficiencies, Commerce Village Annex, Bluestone Town Center,

They're all affordable, right?

They all have slightly different income.

Thank you.

That's what we wanted.

Because that helps you.

That's what I kept saying, right?

It helps God's our decision making.

You know, when we, I mean, we know that we have a housing crisis, right?

But we have to be strategic in what we're doing and how we're approving development.

The private streets within townhouse developments by right because that's a large part of what causes every single townhouse development to come to planning commission and council.

So if the basic structure that's typical of a townhouse development could be built by right, we wouldn't be having to approve them all the time.

So that kind of artificially loads the number that we've seen and approved.

It's not that every townhome development has to be approved by you.

Of course, there are, yeah, there are townhomes in communities across the city, Vine Street, Meadowlark, others that are on public streets.

But oftentimes, to achieve a higher density, they want to do the variance because they can front on a private street.

All right.

But yes, we were trying to figure out ways.

OK, good.

Thank you.

Very helpful information.

Presentation only.

Thank you.

Thanks.

OK, now we're ready for other matters.

I'm going to do five minutes on matters not on the regular agenda.

You wish to speak.

Please state your name and address.

Good evening, Mayor, Council.

My name is Ernie Ditto, and I'm here tonight along with a number of other city residents and friends to help encourage you, the City Council, to make the friendly city even friendlier.

You could say friendlier by nature.

And two easy steps.

My way of understanding how, let me explain my recent journey that began a year and two months ago at the Pickleball Courts of Morrison Park.

Pickleball, indeed.

continues to be

and found myself immediately sucked into the easy access the sport provides for people who have never played and before you knew it, I was playing with people of all kinds every day for a couple of hours a day and like a young kid, I didn't want to come home for dinner.

It's important to note that I was playing with all people of all kinds.

At first, Ernie, me, a French American, primarily played with an Italian American, two Mexican Americans and an El Salvador American who were half my age.

Age, ethnicity, and gender boundaries are shattered every day on the pickleball courts at Morrison.

Pickleball makes people friendlier.

When a pro-Ukrainian and a pro-Russian Russian can learn to play side by side against the Palestinian activist and MAGA member, something great is happening.

The vibe of the sport, and particularly at Morrison Park, is that even when it is insanely crowded, you learn to pair up with others so you can smash that yellow wiffle ball on the other side.

I mean, we're all tired of the polarization, right?

So pickleball is better than any race or a sensitivity train that I have ever experienced, and it is glorious.

In addition to being the great socializer, pickleball is a tax generator friendly activity for Harrisonburg.

I've played against travelers who specifically stopped in Harrisonburg to play at the court on their journey from Kentucky to New Jersey.

Hotel and restaurants are getting their money in tax dollars.

Finally, pickleball is friendly on the body,

and everyone realizes that, helping people get into shape.

And that's what we want, right?

Get out from behind the TV, video games and computer and become a friendly community.

But there's trouble in pickleball paradise.

What happens when the days get shorter?

Well, for people who work 9 to 5, we have a narrow window to play and the amount of people showing up in the daylight hours gets compressed even more.

Playing at indoor facilities, the city has provided, which are not permanent courts,

is not really an option, except Saturday, because the playing times are during working hours.

But the most significant problem is the courts are overcrowded.

Last night, I waited 15 minutes to play 10 minutes worth of pickleball.

Tonight, 32 players in the court, same story.

And then just when you think it couldn't get more crowded, the JMU or EMU students descend.

You see, EMU doesn't even have pickleball courts, and JMU has four indoor rag tag courts that no one likes to play on,

Head rumor has it they have others, but they're often closed as what happened a month ago on the courts.

15 students from JMU showed up, complete with boom box and a desire to take over the court indefinitely.

They arrived in the court, the house rules were explained to them, that there was rotational playing, but they didn't want to have anything to do with it, and this is a common occurrence.

Happened again last Saturday morning.

So what do you do to make this a friendlier city?

Here are two solid solutions, one of which you are halfway there to solving.

Put in lights at Morrison Park.

Lights have been budgeted, but apparently for at least the past two years, we haven't been able to get over the finish line and install them.

We have been told that it just needs to be moved up on the priority list.

So, we tonight, the people here who represent the many who crowd the courts every week,

every week night and from a 310 member mailing list for pickleballers voting block, our wanting to be squeaky wheels and we were asking you tonight to make it a priority.

Give us Morrison Park Lights.

How many pickleballers do we have here tonight?

There's a whole lot more that wanted to come but they couldn't wait until the very end.

Just yesterday

I had the good fortune and run into, this is the great news though, I ran into the leader of the Rotary Club.

I told him of our dilemma after thanking him for Rotary Club's most recent repaving of the courts.

They look beautiful now by the way, and he told me that if the city is truly willing to install lights and showed some real movement towards that, that they, Rotary, might, he told me these exact words, quote, might seriously consider a matching grant to make it happen.

That, my friends, is a solution.

Number two, to make Harrisonburg an even friendlier city is to simply create more pickleball courts.

What does Broadway, Virginia, Owensboro, Kentucky, Williamsburg, Virginia, Auburn, Alabama, Madison, and Athens, Georgia, and Cranberry, Township, PA have in common with Harrisonburg?

They're all small, mid-sized towns, ranging in population from 500 to maybe 120, I think, in Athens, 120,000.

What does Harrisonburg not have in common with them?

We have six permanent pickleball courts for a town of 51,000 with 25,000 students plus and none of them have lights.

I won't go down the list and tell you how many courts each town has apart from two.

Owensboro, Kentucky has 14 permanent public courts and they're in the process of adding 16 to City Park in the next two years.

Their population, 60,000.

Our smaller brother up the road, Broadway, has finished installing lights on their three courts.

Here is the low hanging fruit in how to make more courts happen in the city.

Work with EMU in converting at least one set of their tennis courts, meaning two tennis courts, into four pickleball courts.

The courts would even already be lit.

See what I did there?

M-H-E-F.

Make Harrisonburg even friendlier.

I'm going to tell you, the pickleball community

When I first started on the Parks and Rec Commission, the first meeting I had was a turf war between pickleball and tennis community.

I'd never seen anything like it in my life.

That was eight years ago.

Alright, who's next?

That's exciting now.

My plumber, I had to pay him.

He said, meet me on the court.

And I was like, what are you talking about?

It was a pickleball court.

I was like, hey, they are serious.

And a Yachtis Yonokuro, city resident.

Before the pickleballers leave, I'll yield to my friend here.

But I'll be a pickleballer in spirit.

I want to follow that comment.

And I'll add one.

I'll see them and add one.

If you want to make the city a friendly city, a friendly city,

Let us have pollinators in our backyards.

That's another thing that people delight in here in this city.

Let us have pollinators in all of our backyards.

Now, you know, I approached you with a petition from many people to have NoMome.

Unfortunately, this council will not be able to deliberate that.

but this council can do some things structurally to make this a better friendlier city.

So I'm speaking in particular to the three of you who have actively fought for, actively argued for people who are traditionally excluded.

And if I've missed any of the others, I'm sorry, please correct me if I'm wrong.

I do know sometimes off mic

Council Member Fleming has done some things I've admired.

For example, on a hot mic when Michael Snell Fikema had yelled at our mayor, Mr. Fleming corrected him, and I thought that was admirable.

Another time when the speed camera vendor insulted our Council Member Jones, Mr. Fleming cast a glance at the cameras, didn't catch them, that was outrageous.

So I'm welcome and I'm open to, but I'm looking for the people who have

made motions and advocated for it, not the service providers who case management supervise, not the developers or financiers who build for, but the people themselves.

What you can do is you can, and I think it's going to be maybe not more than four years before we see this again, you have the ability to make a motion and a second and have a third vote to pass structural change.

and I hope that you will do so.

You all know that the structural problem we have is in a legacy of redlining and residential segregation which is departments of community development.

You can extract some of the enforcement power for exclusionary practices.

the best example of which being tall grass and weed ordinances you can move to do that while you still have these three seats I hope you will consider this seriously and I will bring more data next time to show you some of the harms that I have been confirmed in my experience that I knew from the very beginning based on the history and based on the context harms that were being done to the community

without ill intent from staff members that I've now have many, many, many, many examples that should make the patterns clear.

Thank you.

All right, so five minutes.

Alright, so I'm here, I'm a major city biker, and, what's your name?

Oh, I'm sorry, I'm David Rudman, and I'm a major city biker, and I'm here to complain about the normally excellent Public Works Department.

So, for seven years, I've asked, urged, met, emailed, pleaded with them to put in a sidewalk on the famous motor mile, Route 11 South Main Street.

It never happens.

Time and again, they assure me that it's on the agenda somewhere.

Now they tell me it'll be three or four years more.

That means that every Rocktown High School student there now won't ever be able to walk home, won't ever be able to bike home.

This, in my opinion, is operational failure.

They assured me multiple times that sidewalks would come with this new high school.

Well, the high schools here, the sidewalks aren't.

Friday before last I biked down that road at 3pm as school was getting out.

What should have taken me 5 minutes at my sedate pace took 15 because 10 minutes were spent just standing on the side waiting for the four lanes of packed traffic to clear lest I get killed on primary roads bereft of escapable shoulders.

Why can't they?

I mean you can see telephone poles are set back 7 to 10 feet on both sides.

So no infrastructure is really in the way.

Well, they give three reasons.

We would have to get easements.

That would take a long time.

Dang it, you had seven years.

Reason number two.

Well, two lanes instead of, oh, I'm sorry.

This is about another issue I'm going to bring up in a second.

But, um, okay, I'll just skip that.

Um, yeah, okay, I'll skip that for now.

So now we're stuck.

It's too late.

Any work now will cause major backups now.

But 3pm traffic is utterly untroversable.

It's impossible to regularly bike and walk, as I said.

But even worse, the entire South Exit neighborhood, the Grace Covenant neighborhood, is cut off from the rest of the bike network in the city.

So this is discrimination, obviously.

And I'm just kind of upset with public works on a bigger scale too than just this great issue, but just in general by what I'm seeing in the prioritization.

I'm seeing a lot of what I consider prioritization failure.

They splurge on experimental green bike lanes to nowhere.

If you use this bike lane here, you are heading straight out into the county.

So they splurge on a roundabout that was never needed in the first place.

They're at Port Road, Maryland Avenue, and Willow Dogwood.

They next want to do an even further insane behind the mall sacrificial plant to have, cut in half, the number of car lanes in order to quadruple the number of my bike lanes.

Just, I mean, what's going on here?

so they basically want to do what they did on Garber's Church Road where they decreased the car lanes from four down to two in order to increase the bike lanes up to five and effectively seven if you count the yellow setbacks there so this is insanity and you're hearing it from me, the mouth of a biker it's now gotten to the point where kids are literally walking

Oh, back to South Main.

Right past the Public Works' own offices on railroad tracks, because it's safer to walk illegally on railroad tracks than to walk down the literal main street of Harrisonburg.

So, I asked the council to do three solutions.

Number one,

Change priorities with a resolution.

Pass a resolution that cars and car freedom take priority, not me the biker.

That bikes have a right only to access.

That's all we need.

One lane is as good as five.

I can pass another biker, another pedestrian.

It's fine.

But secondly, deny funding for this insane project behind the mall on University Boulevard and Evelyn Bird Avenue.

If that goes in, they tell me, oh, the traffic load can handle it.

We've run the numbers.

But someday, it won't be able to handle it, and you'll have to unbuild what you're building now.

Third, they say, oh, but it'll make drivers safer.

No, it won't.

Gridlack, look at DC, makes people take chances and accelerate suddenly.

So those are my, I didn't get to my third thing, but I'm out of time.

So see you next time.

I'm pretty sure that Grace Coving is a county neighborhood.

It shouldn't have city access that whole neighborhood so I'm pretty sure.

Mayor Reed, there are no calls.

Thank you.

Public comment is now closed.

Okay, council.

Yeah, I don't have really much to add.

There hasn't been a lot of activity in the committees and boards over the last couple of weeks.

It's the Habitat for Humanity banquet dinner with Vice Mayor Dent.

on Thursday, a fantastic event.

I think they were looking to raise about $107,000.

I think they got that.

First, I wanted to say to David, reminding me of Michael standing up there who I miss dearly, my classmate.

So nice to see you.

Oh, thank you.

Yes, I really miss your brother.

I wanted to remind folks at the African-American Festival

is this coming up September the 14th, Saturday, September the 14th, this Saturday from 12 to 6 at the Lucy Sims Field there on the side of the baseball field and that the Harrisonburg International Festival which we are planning for constantly will be coming up September the 28th from 12 to 6 downtown Court Square and that's all mayor.

Oh I missed that right in the middle.

Pride in the middle.

So I want to make sure we schedule an EMU meeting.

Well, whether we talk about pickleball scores or not, I think we need to schedule that meeting.

But it would be good to have more conversation with JMU about what Brian and Pierce are working on as well.

Since JMU participated in the McGinnon State as a BQ, they may want to participate with this entrepreneurial program we've got going on here.

Maybe they can lend some technical support or some assistance and things of that nature.

So let's put those two

I'm pretty sure the African-American festival is actually up the hill this year I think it's I'm pretty sure it's follow the music folks not gonna miss it but I just didn't want

That's better.

They get us for everything.

So I just wanted, I didn't want people to park down there and then not look.

So before you get out of the car, look, but I'm pretty sure you can park up at the top of the hill in their transportation.

So it's actually three parking lots you can park in.

So please attend that on Saturday afternoon.

That's going to be great.

And yeah, you know what?

I'm just going to stop talking.

Okay, just a couple things I've been to in the last couple of weeks.

First, the presentation at Lucy Sims on the Navigation Center.

That was well received and good interactions.

I went to a webinar on the SoulSmart Zoning Training, mostly about how to update your zoning for solar, which is very timely since I'm on the Zoning Update Committee.

So I'll be talking more with the NLC rep for SoulSmart about that.

And then lastly the North and Greenway presentation about options for connecting the Greenway to downtown so that could become a whole north to south connection.

Several options for it from dedicated shared use paths to bike lanes to a hybrid system as well as the habitat dinner that Councilman Fleming mentioned.

I really don't have anything.

Everything was mentioned.

I will say, besides the African-American Festival on the 14th, the farmers market is celebrating their 45th anniversary.

So I will be there at 11 o'clock on the 14th.

You're having a little celebration.

So that's right before the African American Festival.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Just one thing.

Tomorrow, of course, we remember in Mark 9-11,

when 3,000 people died on that horrible day.

Chief Toby and I were talking about that commemoration today.

We marked it on Sunday with the stair climb in conjunction with James Madison University where we climbed the stairs that those first responders climbed on that day.

And Chief Toby has shared a staggering statistic with me that more first responders have died now since.

because of health impacts and cancer and other ailments associated with their response then died on the day of 9-11.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you, Council.