Charlottesville City Council held the second budget work session for the $251.53 million budget for fiscal year 2024 on March 14, 2024 and most of their time was spent discussing funding for outside and nonprofit agencies. But first, they had some follow-ups from the March 7, 2024 work session. (read that story) (view the presentation)
One of the questions was whether Charlottesville could receive a greater portion of funding raised by the transient lodging tax by amending the memorandum of agreement with the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau.
“That agreement will be forwarded to Council and the City Manager is working to schedule with the [CACVB] executive director,” said Krisy Hammill, Charlottesville’s budget director.
Another question was whether the city might increase solid waste fees paid by city residents and property owners to cover increases costs the Public Works department pays for refuse collection.
“Overall we are experiencing changes and price increases on both the processing side which are the tipping fees as well as the collection side,” Hammill said.
Hammill said is seeking a new contract and any fee increases will wait until new prices are known.
After learning that the current fees are subsidized by the city, Pinkston said he would like the fees to be increased.
“I just don’t think that we should be subsidizing people’s trash,” Pinkston said. “Maybe there’s some level at which we do that. I think we should have the conversation about it.”
Another question wanted to know how much it would cost to hire the additional bus drivers to fully implement Charlottesville Area Transit’s “system optimization plan.” that Council approved in the summer of 2021. That involves hiring or more drivers and buying more buses to allow for more frequent and reliable service.
An intermediary step to bring the number of drivers to 70 and full implementation would be to bring that number up to 82. The annual cost to add 11 drivers would be $835,758 and it would cost $1,975,427 to add 26 new operators.
CAT Director Garland Williams it would take about four to six months to train new drivers.
“If you give us the positions in July, that means we’re really up and running January of the following year,” Williams said.
Councilor Michael Payne supported moving forward with the first step as soon as possible. CAT has been running on reduced service for the past four years.
“I am supportive of figuring out whatever it takes to try and fund that intermediary step on the quickest timeline that we can because as much as we talk about transit, this is the absolute bare minimum necessity and we aren’t there yet,” Payne said.
More vehicles would also be needed. Williams said the hiring of a new assistant director of maintenance is helping keep vehicles on the road.
Another question dealt with anticipated changes in a separate pool of money known as the “Enterprise Parking Fund.” The city is proposing raising the monthly parking rates at the two city-operated parking structures by $5. The city owns the Market Street Parking Garage outright, but pays a ground lease to the Charlottesville Parking Center for the Water Street lot and this year the terms of the lease will reset to market rate.
“We’re anticipating—we don’t know the number yet—but it’s going to go up, and it’s going to go up considerably,” said Chris Engel, the city’s director of economic development.
At one point, the Charlottesville Parking Center and the City of Charlottesville were in a legal battle related to operations at the Water Street Parking Garage. For a glimpse into that story, go back and read this April 2015 article in C-Ville Weekly.
There’s a lot more coverage of the FY25 budget to come. I still will be writing up the Vibrant Community Fund discussion from March 14, 2024, the tax rate public hearings, and the first public hearing from March 21, 2024. There’s also a work session on the Capital Improvement Program. More details on that in tomorrow’s edition of the Week Ahead newsletter on the Charlottesville Community Engagement Substack feed.
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