Charlottesville City Council began preparing the budget for the 2024 fiscal year during Monday’s meeting. During this session, Council gave general feedback on aspects of the budget, including the public hearing schedule and Vibrant Community Fund considerations.
According to Interim City Manager Michael Rogers, this meeting is part of an effort to get City Council involved in the budget process earlier on.
As a new step in this year’s planning, a City Manager Community Budget Forum will be held Jan. 10, when community members will be able to discuss matters related to the budget before it is presented to the council. The proposed 2024 budget will be formally presented to Council March 6, with public hearings March 20 and April 3. The final budget will be approved April 11.
Looking ahead at the new budget, Krisy Hammill, director of budget and performance measurement, expects 2024 to see a growth in revenue of about $4 million to $8 million.
Members also discussed the Vibrant Community Fund, a panel that reviews funding requests from community programs. In the 2023 fiscal year, $2.5 million was allocated to VCF, and requests totaled $4.3 million.
Vice-Mayor Juandiego Wade stressed the importance of the programs funded by VCF to the Charlottesville community.
“These programs are something that really impacts the community because of the people that work there, the people they serve,” Wade said.
Hammil then talked about funding for the Pathways Fund, which supports the community resource hotline to provide residents with rent, mortgage and utility bill assistance. Although $84,516 is currently allocated for Pathways, for 2023, the projected funding totals $1.2 million. Payne and other members of Council said they hope allocated funding for the program will increase.
“I probably have about one or two people a week who reach out to me who are facing eviction and this is currently the only resource that exists at a local, state or federal level to provide them any assistance,” Payne said. “We’re obviously still dealing with the rise of evictions, post the pandemic protections and state and federal financial assistance programs having ended, so it’ll just be very critical to fund, otherwise we’re gonna be looking at people who become homeless as a result.”
Hammill also discussed projected expenditure drivers in 2024. These include inflation increases in construction costs this year and the implementation of collective bargaining.
Following this presentation, Council members discussed priorities for the budget and early considerations about the possibility of raising taxes. Any proposed tax increase would have to be advertised by Feb. 15, per Council regulation. When advertising a tax increase, Council can later decide on a less significant increase but cannot decide to raise taxes more than the advertised amount.
City Councilor Brian Pinkston’s focus will be on staffing and filling vacant positions. According to Mayor Lloyd Snook, there are currently 70 vacant positions in City staff that have been advertised. A compensation study set to be completed in December will provide information on how to make salaries more competitive.
Payne said he thinks it is important to him to continue investing in affordable housing projects and making sure that City staff positions have competitive salaries.
“I think the investments in staff capacity are going to be a big priority that I’m thinking about, particularly when it comes to climate and some of the infrastructure projects we’ve already invested in that we know we don’t really have the staff capacity to implement,” Payne said.
During the City Manager’s report during the following 6:30 p.m. business meeting, Rogers discussed the City’s plans to open free public restrooms in the Downtown Mall starting Nov. 1. The restrooms will be located in York Place on the downtown mall.
Some small amendments to the City Code passed unanimously and with little discussion, including one to update the City’s cigarette tax ordinance to reflect the City’s involvement with the Blue Ridge Cigarette Tax Board.
On the consent agenda for the next meeting is a motion to appropriate $20,000 to provide reusable bags to individuals who receive benefits from Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or Women and Infant Children. The City previously adopted a plastic bag tax effective Jan. 1, 2023. In order to ensure that the new tax does not disproportionately impact low-income households, the legislation will distribute bags made of high recycled content to these individuals.
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