City Council Regular Business Meeting - April 12, 2021
do do do so everyone i'm by lyles and i serve as charlotte's mayor and tonight i'd like to call to order the april 12th city council business meeting tonight's meeting is being held as a virtual meeting in accordance with the electronic meeting statutes the requirements of notice access and minutes are being met through electronic means i hope that you're watching us we really appreciate the viewers on a government channel the city's facebook page and the city's youtube page before we move any further i'd like to first introduce on the members of the city council who are on virtual as well as those that are present in physically in the at the government center followed by the city staff so if we begin as i said i am by laos and i serve as mayor good evening everyone i'm julie eisel mayor pro tem and serving at large happy monday and happy birthday to my husband who probably isn't watching right now that's probably right tom happy birthday from all of us from braxton winston at large renee johnson district four all right the council members that are virtual if you would introduce yourselves starting with our at-large members hello everyone empalasmira serving you as an acknowledge greg phipps at large arkan eggleston district one malcolm graham district 2. victoria wattlington district 3. good evening matt newton district 5. i don't believe mr bakari has joined us yet emily drake's district 7. all right thank you very much um the city begins or the city council begins our meeting with the invocation of an expression of inspiration followed by our pledge of allegiance the invocation is meant to solemnize our responsibilities as we make decisions for this great community and we will do that tonight with council member phipps who will give us an invocation and our pledge of allegiance will be recited by council member ashmira council member phipps ava we come before you this evening as elected and appointed leaders and a community of residents to thank you for the many blessings that you have bestowed upon you're covering over our city and many leaders at the federal state and local levels who collectively provide influence over our governance grant us the wisdom and patience dear god to govern in a manner that is honorable in your sight as we deliberate on the business of this city we all love we ask you a special blessing for our men and women in uniforms all over this nation and abroad who make it possible for us to serve in a free and open democracy heavenly father we also ask for your anointing and protection over the service and sacrifice by our law enforcement officers firefighters and emergency management technicians who respond to citizens call for service each day to keep our neighborhoods and communities safe from harm's way and finally dear god we ask that you bind and cast out violence in our city by those who seek to inflict harm on others transform hearts towards more love decency and brotherhood for all in your name we pray amen amen all right we for those of us that would please stand for our pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you and now we'll start with the staff introduce introductions of those that are here to join with us to make sure that our meetings run appropriately miss our city clerk city attorney marcus jones city manager donated jackson office of constituent services kay cunningham mayor's office thank you everyone the first part of our meeting is what we call an action review where the city manager presents to us presentations that may be coming forward as well as any other information as we prepare for not just this meeting but the meetings to come so mr jones thank you mayor and members of council as the mayor stated that tonight we have two items that will be on the agenda two weeks from now for a council vote the first one is the housing trust fund recommendations and the second is the cats battery electric buses pilot program before ms weidman comes in i'll talk a little bit about the housing trust fund recommendations each year we come to you typically at this time of the year to talk about some of the nine percent credits that are before you that would count against a housing trust fund as well as some potential four percent credits and it's an opportunity for you to see where we are in terms of the housing trust fund uh the current allocation as well as the 2018 allocation and in terms of the cats battery electric bus pilot program john lewis did talk a little bit about this last week but it's a great opportunity for us as we start to think about our cf program and electrifying the fleet as a tremendous step forward so mayor those are the two items that we have for the action briefing tonight all right are we going to hear from ms wyland first that's great we have miss whiteman and i believe she's coming into the room good evening mayor council and council members great to see you all today mr jones thank you for um that setup you as always have made my job easy so i will just jump right into it i think um my slides are being controlled for me so again i'm pamela weidman director of your housing neighborhood services department we're not asking you tonight to make any decisions but simply we want to preview with you our housing support funding request as in previous years you will receive a detailed booklet that will be in your packet this week if you want to take a deeper dive into anything that we're going to discuss tonight and just one more reminder before i jump in just to remind us that that's this is just a portion of the housing work that we do this does not incorporate anything that we do to create home ownership or preservation or the work that you all recently did around ending and preventing homeless this is around our trust fund particularly and increasing the the rental um housing stock and so if you will go to the next slide for me i'll cover the briefing objectives that you see up there just as a reminder from for most of you all this is gap financing to both non-profit and for-profit developers it includes a mixture of development so there are some nine percent there are some four percent development and then there is just some developments that don't that are not either nine percent or four percent and so we're trying to attack this from multiple angles um to increase our um quality affordable housing stock again we have um stuck to the framework at least 20 percent of each development the units must be must contain units for 30 households and below and then we always get a long-term deed restriction and this is to ensure that the units remain on the ground over time in a well-managed and high quality way and so if you go to the next slide for me please this is just a snapshot to show you your your trust fund over the years and so since 20 2002 you can see that we have over 210 million through the various bond allocations if you'll go to the next slide for me please so where we started we had a carryover of about 1.3 million that we've netted out the 3 million that you all set aside last year for brooke hill and then 2020 we started with a new 50 million dollar allocation and so we started with a balance of 51.3
if you'll go to the next slide for me please mayor you i believe you asked me this question when we were before you when i was before you early this year about kind of where we are with things knowing that we'd had covet um and that um we we'd approve things with some things that slow so we have 11 developments um since 2018 was let me start over 24 developments are in the pipeline 11 of those are pending closing so that that means that they're they're still getting their financing 13 of those developments are under construction and are anticipated to be delivered by the end of this year so that's a little over 14 1400 units and so we have a total in process as i said of 24 and that includes the 194 shelter beds that you've heard about before so if you'll go to the next slide for me please we in our in our housing task force last summer i believe it was um we talked about a number of things one of the things we did was we reviewed our framework our housing framework and so um a couple of things that that enhancements that were made are we doing well we're doing a little bit differently and one of the major things is um the opportunity to use trust fund dollars for home ownership this is new and so we did not get any developers coming forward in this round um for homeownership i will remind you back to what you all did i think it was maybe three weeks ago around the vantage point in phoenix rising on beatty's fort road where we're using some city on land to get home ownership there but i just wanted to acknowledge that this is new we didn't have any takers in this round but we're going to continue marketing that that's one of the things we said we need to do more of with hopes of having some in future rounds the other significant thing that came out of that that we discussed in the in the cova task force was um the federal government's ability to to fix the four percent tax credit and without going into too much detail there that is a victory that has been done and so that um that should help us continue to control our costs with four percent we know that you typically put more money in there but that should help us to control our costs at a local level as we also acknowledge that things like lumber costs and and other costs are rising that we might not be able to control but the point is to acknowledge um that we incorporated some of the suggestions we got through the covet task force if you'll go to the next slide for me please we're here before you tonight um the purpose of this is just to remind you that this is a long process we start in january we're here tonight as the manager alluded to will be before you in two weeks asking for your approval and we will know which developments will be awarded by the finance agency in august and we will keep you posted as we move through through this process if you go to the next slide for me please in terms of community participation i won't spend a lot of time here other than to say that each development is required to host community meetings one of the things that we acknowledge and we had some conversations with councilmember watlington and who had a very good idea and we're incorporating that is in addition to just sending out um the regular the regular notifications that we send we're going to capitalize on the use of next door we know that as we move into more of a digital environment people are less likely to look at their mail but people do sign up and they go on to next door and so to let people know through that mechanism and so we hope to increase the participation at these community meetings through through enhancing our process by using that tool as well if you go to the next slide for me please this is the process that we agreed to several several rounds ago in partnership with lisk what i do hope is that you all saw the the memo that was sent to you a couple of weeks ago and the one pager that had all of the it was a snapshot that had all of the developments listed there again we're here from tonight lisk will be notifying their investment advisory committee um tonight as well about the same information that we're presenting to you they have a meeting in the coming weeks and so we'll be back to you on the 26th again for for your final approval if you go to the next slide for me please again this is just to remind you that this is a lengthy process it is a four four phase process um tonight well we're leading up to phase two and then it goes all the way through construction and monitoring if you go to the next slide for me please you've seen this slide a number of times this just tells you the evaluation criteria um for each of the developments here if you'll go to we look at policy the strength of the development the developer experience the financial strength look at the market study it's an independent market study um community engagement and then we look at the site scores on the four percent developments if in the not in the non-nine percent development if you'll go to the next slide for me please we've also been listening as we talk about the sea app right about kind of what our goals are and so just wanted to point out to you here that um as we're doing new development that we're cognizant of that and you can see here that developments they must incorporate green building techniques such as using energy efficient appliances the sustainable site planning water quality and water efficiency environmental friendly materials and then adherence to all of the epa guidelines and regulations if you go to the next slide for me please our locational guidelines again we look at proximity that's proximity of the site to transit options and other amenities we look at income diversity we look at access to jobs we look at change the level of displacement risk and i know we've been having a lot of conversations you all about anti-displacement what are those measures how do we mitigate it oftentimes income diversity and change um sometimes they go together sometimes they conflict we're learning as we continue to grow through this we look at our again our locational guidelines and then to just to remind you of the exemptions there if you'll go to the next slide for me please and so just a reminder about our review team this is a combination of your city staff and the the staff at lisk again this is a joint process joint review go to the next slide for me please also in terms of our guiding principles and how we approach this um i just it's it's a joint um it's a joint um piece of work meaning housing staff and list staff we look at um we look at data there and then um some of the other things we want to leverage all of our available resources so our trust fund the the the cho cho uh public and private land low-cost debt when we can our project-based housing choice vouchers and then our state and our federal resources if you'll go to the next slide for me please so here i want all of these will be in your package and we'll touch on them tonight but i'm not going to spend a ton of time because i know i have a presentation behind me but to sum it up we have seven nine percent developments um that have been put in front of us i would remind us all is these are very very competitive right we compete across the state if we are lucky we will get um three to four of these that would be that would equate to our fair share and so in previous years what we've done is we said we would send them all up for consideration to to maximize the opportunity to get these units knowing that we will not get all of these we will not be asked to fund all of these we'll only get our fair share which again is about three or four if you'll go to the next slide for me please the four percent um we have five that that are before us and so now i want to point out here particularly for chophas what you see here is that they have committed to bart they will be sending up to their advisory committee for barton seniors and for the river district so that's a total of six million dollars um they hoped to fund when they started this work they only they had a five million dollar balance and so i know that three and three is six and so what what they are telling me is that they are in the process of raising additional dollars and so with that their intent is to fund these these two developments or pull from other sources that they might have and so the the last thing i would say about about this slide is you notice two are non-li-tech one is easter homes that is a supportive housing community it's small and i'll go through that but that's good news meaning that technically with these with with without having to go through the low-income housing tax product credit process they can go faster these units can come to the market um quicker than the the ones that are going through the tax credit price process if you'll go to the next slide for me please and so this is pretty much a summary of what i what i just said here is you've you've got proposals you've got a 1422 um but you've got requ housing trust run request of about 25.8 if you look at our investment per unit that's about 8.1 and then the chose request again i want to acknowledge that we will only get three or four of the nine percent and so um just just keep that in mind um as as we're talking through these if you go to the next slide for me please again this is just another way to look at it 25 of the units are 30 percent and you can see how the the remainder breaks down there go to the next slide for me please so i'm not going to spend a ton of time i'm going through each one of these um again you'll you all will get a book in your packet we can send it electronically as well where you'll have all of all of this and you we can dig into any of the detail so i'll just briefly touch on this one is evoke living at morrisville it's district three it's a four percent family development you've got a leverage ratio here of one to eight and you can see the unit breakdown there a total of 132 units if you go to the next slide for me please fairhaven glenn district three you can see the request there leverage ratio is one to two 140 units go to the next slide for me please grounds for change this one i want to acknowledge is in partnership with the ywca it's in district 1. you can see the leverage ratio there and the total of 104 units if you'll keep going for me sugar creek apartments district four it's a four percent uh total of 188 units leverage ratio of one to um 13. keep going for me there barton seniors um this is uh what i would point out here is this is old pineville road i think some of you received a letter of support i think the council did receive a letter of support um for this one it's near the light rail station there 174 units you can see that this does have both an htf and a chop request there if you'll go to the next slide for me evoke living at eastland i think you all know all about this one this is a 9 development 82 units leverage ratio of one to nine if you go to the next slide for me first workplace this is this is a rehab we're all very familiar this used to be the old earl village um and so this is this is about a rehabilitation here 109 units leverage ratio of 1 to 10 there if you go to the next one for me fordham place district 3 you can see the htf request here 1.6 total of 70 units 1.8 leverage ratio
if you go to the next slide for me please galloway crossing in district 5 9 1.5 million dollar request from the trust fund leverage ratio of 1 to 8 a total of 78 units if you'll go garden guardian angel villa that's in district 3 as well 1.7 million dollar request total of 93 units there i didn't hit on it but all of these have at least a 30-year affordability period marvin road district one 1.7 million
dollar request total of 70 units one to eight leverage ratio there if you go to the next one this is ovada at reedy creek it's in district 4. and you can see here what i want to point out it's a very small request and you might ask well why is this such a small request and one of the things that this developer because they've partnered with someone who also does market rate they're available to realize greater economies of scale and things like property management and other things so that the request the trust fund request is significantly lower which is an anomaly from some of the other smaller organizations that we're working with if you go to the next slide for me please uh this was i think you all are familiar this is the caldwell presbyterian property we this is conversation has been going on for a while in the community and so we're really pleased to see it come forward it's 21 units it's small it's a small development um but it's it's it's supportive housing really excited about this their request is relatively small as well 630 000 this is a non-li-tech so it's not dependent on the tax credit process at all and that means it can come to market faster than some of the other ones will come to to the market and then if you go to the next slide for me i believe this is the last one this is the river district i know some of you talked about this a lot when it was going through the rezoning process in 2016. this is a partnership with crescent between crescent and laurel street residential so you all approve the rezoning you talked a lot about it they as part of the rezoning i remind us it was at least 85 units of affordable housing crescent and laurel street they're providing 146 of that required affordable housing in phase one and so um they're they're exceeding that by 39 units um so um i think that that's something um that that is worth noting um and that they the the the conversation at that point was how do you do this how do you really create mixed income communities and it was you do it on the front end right where you're while you are creating the community um you you think about affordable it's not an afterthought so i would just point that out a total of 124 units there you can see the 1.9 leverage ratio if you go to the next slide i did i told you wrong that's not the last one we've got evoke living at nevin park um what i would point out about this one is that there is no city request in this this is just chill i'm so three million in chose and again as i said um they started with five they've committed um so this makes nine million they are in the process of raising more money they're going to present all three to their advisory committee for funding and so the developers understand this as we go through the process if you go to the next slide for me please this is just a visual that shows you what i just talked about in terms of where these are throughout our community so we always like to have have that in there for you and if you go to the next slide for me please so just again in summary we started with 51.3 we've taken um we've taken um what i would point to is that we did an estimated nine percent balance right and so when i say estimated we said if we were awarded the highest three um requests that we have in the nine percent round you would have a balance left if you decided to to fund all of these of 29.2 for future rounds any any nine percent that don't get funded that money goes back into your trust fund for future consideration and again the um the finance agency typically makes their awards in august um of the year if you go to the next slide for me please so again um this just shows you um your your council approval would be on the 26th should you desire and then the phases that we go through to get the units delivered and so just to remind you that your approval is really the the an early step in the process to unit delivery next slide for me please i think that's i think that's that's that's all the slides i know i said a lot but i wanted to be respectful of of what you have coming behind me and so you'll get some more information in your packet this week and um i think you all know how to find me if you have questions so with that thank you and i'll answer any questions that you all might have thank you miss wibin um as always um we're doing good work here in in our housing area and and we're grateful for the people in this community that vote for the bonds we're grateful for the developers that um help construct and we're really grateful to make an impact i am glad to see that we're looking at energy efficiency in our units now because that's you may have a adequate rent payment but we've seen during this pandemic what can happen when you get into a crisis around utilities heating and air conditioning and then i also just wanted to recognize that we are still getting the number of competitive opportunities here so it's it's it's really good work and i have two council members though so far mr graham will and then followed by mr winston thank you madam mayor um um and thank you miss whiteman for for the presentation um uh i i'm really excited about what i see before me in terms of the opportunity to add to the uh the affordable housing mix throughout our housing trust fund and um the the number of requests that we have pending um and the variety of requests uh makes me really excited but i do have a couple of questions one um you mentioned brooke hill and i know we've made a commitment to try to get that over the finish line with a three million dollar set aside can you give us a quick update in terms of any communications and or direction um with that from the developer uh so mr grant we have not had any additional communication with the developer since you all um set aside the 3 million in your last round we've not touched the 3 million it is still there so when they come back with a a plan that money is still there to my knowledge they've not had any subsequent conversations with lisk either i will tell you though that we did do what we said we would do in terms of working with united way to begin working with the residents who are there um to to assess their situation um their individual situation to the extent um that they want to get connected to other resources in the community and particularly other housing resources so no additional conversation with the developer okay well i guess at some point the council the mayor the manager would have to decide what's the drop dead date or i i would love to do that project um for a wide variety of reasons um but again i'm not sure we can just have three million dollars sitting out there waiting for the developer to um dot eyes and cross tees without any meaningful updates from them so that's that's more a comment for the mayor and the manager from my perspective secondly um i i did a quick survey as you were talking and and noticed that the the bulk of the applications were um were in district 3 and district one um and obviously um i mean six and seven at nine and so i mean again just an observation to the council that we we gotta find a way to to the diversified our housing throughout the community uh understanding that land costs and land value are higher uh on certain parts of the city um that again six in district three three and four in district one um um i'm almost certain that uh residents will take note of that and i think we should as well um and my last movement is the the 30 of of ami 50 percent lower on 30 percent i'll i'll study that a lot more closer as well i think that's where uh we're really hurting um in the community in terms of uh 50 and lower and so i'm glad that there's a diagram in your presentation that divides um where those units are and the quantity that that we have uh and then lastly um relating to the balance one of the things that we talked about uh at our housing trust fund meeting i mean not housing trust fund that the uh the covet 19 task force was really being creative and innovative and doing things differently uh with our dollars for the housing trust fund and hopefully as we pass these um projects within the next couple of weeks that we really can um think really hard mr manager uh about how we would be creative and think out of the box without balance um to stay true to the to the mission of the housing trust fund but to really kind of see what we can do from a city perspective to really begin to address again that 50 percent of ami and lower with a number of developers and stakeholders throughout the community thank you very much so so mr graham i don't think i don't think you asked for a response but what i would just remind the council you made a great point and it reminded me um we anticipate valentine the the affordable component of that being in your next round and so um that will be coming forward and then to your point about the mix of units the 50 and below um what we what what it's it's it's it's just dollars and cents and so for every lower development that means a greater ass from the trust fund or some other source of financing and so that's why you see the various mixes in the developments but recognizing being true to the framework 20 of each development having at least 30 percent um envelope households so thank you thank you very much good work thank you mr winston just a note to mr graham's point we will never see the development of affordable housing or diverse diverse price point housing in district six um and district seven um if city council continues to covet single family exclusionary zoning it's just a fact of the matter that's a fact of the matter you mentioned next door and using utilizing next door and that does bring up some considerable equity issues for me while it is a fact that many people use next door there are considerable amount of barriers to entry to that app i do have so i have real concerns um that we can really concentrate the power of information where we have done considerable work over the years um to better our outcomes there to really especially when these decisions are being made around the housing trust fund again when we look back to how the things that we thought about and changed when we went from 15 million to 50 million i have concerns that relying heavily on next door will erode on some of that so how are we controlling for equity when we gather our portfolio of outreach methods around um our our housing trust on dollars yeah and mr winston i'd love to have a deeper conversation with you to understand kind of more of some of your concerns but what but but my point was and maybe i said this poorly is we're we're not going to stop sending males and we're okay we're not going to get away from kind of the distance that you all agreed to in terms of who is affected but what we were trying to do is enhance the process recognizing that um people may not check their mail and they therefore they may not um know it so we were just trying to offer another avenue by which they could know so that was the intent but again i'd love to know more yeah and i i definitely understand i'm not saying that we necessarily shouldn't but even when you're enhancing um the volume right the the sometimes you can add something and the marginal effect on the overall outcome can be detrimental sure if you're not controlling and you are not understanding how certain audiences and certain constituent constituencies within our city um interact with those outreach methods and i have very very strong concerns uh about who next door is reaching and who it's not and the type of again power that that could be giving to certain groups and taking away from other groups yeah no i totally get your i totally get your your concern mr winston and so we would just need to think through it i don't have a perfect answer for you tonight but some of the things that quickly come to mind is making sure we stick to the property owners who are affected right so we don't bring out the unnecessary nimby making sure that we perhaps through housing neighborhood services and our community engagement really help um kind of under utilize or marginalize communities to the extent that they can and want to sign up for next door so that they can have equal access and then i think we'll rely on you all too right to based on the information that we give you all to make the tough decisions in the face of of not in my backyard based on what you all know our need is for affordable housing in our city so i think it will be a multi-pronged approach where we will all have to to help each other in this thank you miss watlington you're recognized thank you madam mayor um a couple of things just real quick um i did want to actually say thank you pam and also tyler i know his staff worked diligently on coming up with uh adding communication channels along the lines next door so many of my residents particularly in my corridors asked specifically to increase communication channels so let's be very very clear about me um it's not so much that people are not checking their email or checking their mail it's that most people along these four doors don't live within our lodge distance so there are projects that impact their local area but because of the way the corridors are situated they are not actually on the list to receive mailers in the first place so as we begin to develop solutions we want to make sure that we keep the community's desire and need in front of us so that we're developing solutions that actually match what they've asked for so i appreciate you all leaning in on the community engagement i know that's very important that's something that i've talked both of you specifically about pam and towel and so i'm excited to continue to see how we're going to continue to reach out to our communities in the ways that they have requested um i wanted to piggyback on the brookville question from councilmember graham i also would like for us as a council to think about how long we wait for the particular project um new brook hill before we think about how we can utilize those dollars to still deliver um housing affordability in the local proximity i'd like to see us think about that and think about what the other opportunities are for us to take the lead on creating solutions there i know we had talked about what we could do to house current residents of brookhill should that project go forward and so i would just like to to revisit that conversation and think about what we can do not in response to displacement but proactively uh to create some opportunities in that local area um i believe but i just want to confirm that i understood after should we approve all of the projects that are recommended we would have about 30 million dollars left for this bond cycle is that correct ma'am and i can tell you that exact number um that's okay no that's close enough um on slide seven i just wanted to go back to that you mentioned something about the federal uh the federal guidelines changing on the four percent i was in a conversation with the land trust and a developer uh and community organization discussing one of these projects last week and they mentioned that they had discovered that there was some opportunity for li-tech dollars to be used for home ownership can you speak to that at all had you heard that as well no no what i was speaking of miss wadlington is fixing the four percent tax credit rate um from from a from a rental perspective right and so what that does is that's more um less that it allows the developer um to strengthen their performa and they know exactly how much money they're gonna they can be expecting i was not referencing home ownership i can i can check into if there is a an additional tax credit for homeownership that has either been approved or that is working through any in any of the legislation that is coming down absolutely um i would love to hear back on that because i think that is the more we understand how those tools have changed and what's new that can enable home ownership the better off we can be to your point in um in advertising or or working with the developers to understand how to put together projects that work so to that and i'm just curious and you don't have to answer tonight but i'd be interested to know if we understand what the current barriers are for developers as it relates to putting together projects for home ownership because i just want to make sure if there's anything there that we could be lobbying for through our legislative we include it does that make sense yes ma'am yes ma'am okay um so i also had a quick question about the uh locational policy and the scores just can you refresh me will we be seen receiving the score rubric with uh our pamphlet you will so it's in your booklet that you will receive and so just as a reminder um it doesn't apply the the not in the in the location the approved locational guidelines it doesn't apply to the nine percent but it applies to the four percent development um and any other the not the non-latex so you will receive it in your packet thank you and then also councilmember graham i appreciate the lifting up of the concentration of the of these projects in district three i think i might have counted nine including river district some of them don't have local ass but um definitely we see that there is a concentration of these in district three some of which the community has supported and some of which they've got concerns about and so i look forward to speaking to some of my colleagues regarding that in the next couple weeks because i want to make sure that as we're considering and i'm sure pamela this is this is uh your position as well that as we're considering housing trust fund projects we want to make sure that we're thinking about race type and and the comp 2040 plan equity and our existing playbooks and community plans and how we grow in a way that's going to be sustainable for all of our areas as a city as a whole but also as we look at each of our each of our districts so i want to continue that conversation and then finally just wanted to know can we use these housing trust fund dollars for the land acquisition because i would love to see and i know that we have talked about several times um taking a more proactive leadership approach to these development projects as the city and so i just wanted to understand that housing trust fund dollars could be used to that end so so ms watlington um let me go back and read the bond language i don't want to misspeak um and um the attorney is here but but let me let let me go back and read the bond language what we typically i know the bond language says it is for the capital construction of um low and moderately priced um units but let me let me look at that again before i give because i want to give you a right answer correct answer on the on the land acquisition okay thank you all right i want to recognize massage mirror followed by miss johnson mrs mira yes thank you madam mayor miss weidman great work i only appreciate the energy efficiency as air had afforded to earlier because it does factor when we are talking about the cost of living um if we have energy equipment it's going to reduce the cost of living when it comes to qualities especially electricity so that's great certainly a effort in helping us also meet our cf goals uh i'm trying to understand um as we are looking at multiple applications that are coming in for housing on is there a range or a range in number we are looking at when it comes to city investment dollars per unit or leverage ratio and cost per unit sure so ms esmere that's a great question um and um no two rounds are exactly the same right because um the market fluctuates cost fluctuates right um so we don't set a hard goal to say we won't put in x amount more than x amount what you recall that when we first started with lisk um the thought was they put in 2 million for 4 percent we put in 2 million for 4 as we as we go along um like right now just read an article the other day about the cost of lumber is increasing right and so that could drive costs but also it balances it out when i say i just said the four percent the federal government has fixed the four percent tax rate i think the the we so we look at it each round it fluctuates um right now i i am pleased just based on my professional opinion and knowledge that we aren't putting more than i think our lev our our average per investment is about 18 000 and so i think that and you can look at the leverage ratio for each um each development years and years ago we said we would try to achieve a one to ten leverage ratio for each development but that that has since changed and so it's it's really a case by case and a round by round so we've not set a hard and fast we won't put more um we also look at where we're putting in dollars and lisc is not putting in any dollars and really trying to make the best decisions and leverage the money as best we can with what we have and throughout all the projects so that's not a direct answer but um i know it's pretty that was a long answer no that is helpful on this white man uh it's it's good that we are providing flexibility uh when it comes to city investment when it comes to cost per unit because it could go up with number cost going up uh as well as with the leverage ratio but biggest challenge we have when it comes to affordable housing is the cost of land so and i know that mr graham and miss watkington alluded to this earlier about having diversity when it comes to location so having affordable housing availability in district six and seven and and i think that's something council got a review that let's say if there is a lot land cost that is going to be contributing to higher city investment are we okay with that and i think if if if the answer is yes then yes we can certainly encourage more affordable housing development in district 6 and district seven but unless and until we provide that direction it's going to be difficult um to see more diversity in terms of location um so i i really hope housing committee will take a deeper dive um in terms of um cost per unit how much comfortable we are with increasing land cost in district 6 and 7 that we are willing to contribute to from our city investment dollars uh last our slide number 37 the balance that we have left you you want that slide back on the screen ms zashmir or was there a question about it yes ma'am bring up that slide yes right there yes okay so miss weidman when we are looking at non-life developments are these what kind of requests are these um i know you had mentioned one was from supporting housing communities what developments will fit in that category so the other one is the river district so you've got the river district and you've got the easter homes which is the caldwell that earlier last year we had we had worked with the developer in valentine the project is called valentine's day imagine where they're barbarini asked i don't know i'm trying to remember if there was any ass from the city when it came to affordable housing so so ms ashmir will have that is the one i alluded to that it will be in the that you will see in your next round and so we will have the details you will see the details of of how that development um performs out in your next round so that one will be coming forward so there will be an ask that's what i'm hearing yes yes ma'am okay i do believe the rezoning um let's go to slide number four piece slide number four yes ma'am okay yes ma'am that one yes i just wanted to see our city's investment very good thank you so much thank you all right um i have miss johnson miss johnson you recognized thank you mayor um thank you miss whiteman for the presentation i just wanted clarification on the homeownership at the beginning of the presentation you mentioned i thought that you mentioned we didn't have any applications for the home ownership so can you um elaborate more on on what we will be seeking from developers for the home ownership and what we can do as council members to to help get that information communicated thank you new product right and so i think what what you all can do as council members is as you're talking to people is help us market that right help us let developers know that um there is a trust fund that that now through the trust fund that they can apply for home ownership um and so when like for example uh when we had our um um when we had our developer roundtable if you will at the beginning of when we released the rfp we invited folks to to come in and ask questions about it we talked about it a lot there um and so people are still getting their head around it i mean i think what it what it what it will probably we we need to developers need to continue to get comfortable with is as a result of trust fund right there's going to be an affordability period on it right so so that will follow with the land and so i think it's just of introducing something new into the market we want to continue to learn and that's one of the things that we'll be doing leading up to this next develop this next round is working with some of those smaller developers that we know of and saying hey you didn't come forward this last time but tell us help us shape this so that it works for you we don't have all of the answers so we want to hear um from some of those developers who are interested in using this tool what what would it need what they would need to help help it work for them thank you mr fitz you're recognized thank you um that question here our housing trust dollars required to be used exclusively for constructing affordable units or confirms also be used for infrastructure like sidewalks or streets and so um mr phipps the easiest way to answer that is the housing trust fund dollars are used for the construction of affordable units right and so to the extent that there is infrastructure within the development yes that is a part of the package um so so that's how they are used you'll recall that we also have our neighborhood improvement bonds which voters approve which is a totally separate use of infrastructure mr phipps do you have any any any further questions no that was it thank you okay mr newton thank you madam mayor i was on our housing committee uh which uh now is uh the the greater or great neighborhoods committee uh when we amended the housing vocational policy uh and it was always my understanding that the housing locational policy truly is a manifestation of quality of life metrics and the uh the development projects uh and uh uh our so our supplementing of affordable housing projects uh within our city i just wanted to ask a quick question to to clarify a point on that policy um uh ms weidman you mentioned before that that the locational policy does not apply to nine percent deals that's my understanding too i i recall that being part of the conversation back when we were discussing those amendments to the housing vocational policy uh but although it doesn't lie and nothing in that regard says that we as a council are required to take into consideration like we would be we would be with a four percent deal i just wanted to clarify the point by asking we can still uh consider it though can't we um nothing prevents us from looking at that and our consideration percent deals though right so so mr newton um so i want to be fair to the policy or to the guidelines and i want to be fair to our partners who do this work for us and so we specifically said that those developments as you stated are exempt um so we we we don't score those um also we don't do that is because we know a couple of reasons that that is the most money i'm kind of like free money that we're going to get from the federal government and the state to help us expand our our supply of affordable and so we don't want to minimize our chances we want to send up as many as possible um to to to compete if you will across the state so we don't it's important that we do not send mixed messages our current guidelines that you that the council approved um state that the nine percent are exempt the four percent is our opportunity because typically you're putting more money into those and so that's our opportunity to really direct um where where we're making our larger investments in the in the community i i understand that that you're saying that we do not score these but if there was a request for a score that is something that could be taken into consideration though right by a council member or the council as a whole and whether or not it decides to approve the nine percent that's not that's not something that's prevented though right currently mr newton it is i mean you would be setting a precedent which would which would be which would be leading to um you're deviating from your approved policy one of the things that we hear from developers is we want to know what the rules are and one of the reasons i say that is you know developers this is a long game right they they look at a property they take it through rezoning um or if it has to be rezoned um but they are they start this work and so to get to the to start this work based on a set of rules and then the rules get changed um halfway through it um i don't think that that's the type of precedences we want to be setting as we do this work and i guess i guess what i'm saying is is that it is my clear understanding of recollection that there is a purpose for our locational policy and is to guarantee the quality of life for residents who will be living in these new developments to the extent that that's important i i i i i think it's still important in a nine percent deal just like it would be a four percent deal and gosh i think i recall was actually looking at that uh after but after the the policy was amended uh in regards to nine percent deals over the past say say two years uh but um but talk more about that offline i'm not to take any more of the time of the council uh but but that is my recollection uh i think that that to the extent that anyone does want to know uh those numbers i think it should be available to council members well the last thing i would just i would simply say mr newton we don't score the nine percent based on the council's approved policy so so that we we don't score those but but if if there was a request i would hope that you would be forthcoming with that information thank you thank you thank you all right thank you i think that is the last of that pam it's always an interesting topic and people um i'm looking forward to the april 26th approval and adoption so that we can continue this strong program that you've had so much um to contribute to thank you very much and please thank your entire team please yes ma'am thank you all right thank you team okay we're going to go right into our second presentation mr lewis is going to talk to us about cats battery electric buses pallet program it's a mouthful mr lewis how about just some battery operated buses how about electric buses sounds good to me try saying that four times quickly madam mayor members of council mr manager it's a pleasure being here with you this evening to discuss an important and exciting uh program that cats and other city departments have been working on for the past year i want to give you an overview of the program uh that i we will bring to council for action at the april 26 meeting there's no action required this evening but just wanted to give you an update of where we're going uh what the purpose of the program is and prepare you for the action on the 26th a little over a year ago we cats received an unsolicited proposal from e-trans energy which is a subsidiary of duke energy to create a public-private partnership that would provide options for cats to transition its fleet from diesel vehicles to battery electric buses this proposal was comprehensive in nature and included the ability to procure acquire buses also included the charging infrastructure associated with moving to an all-electric fleet and also and very importantly uh the system uh and energy optimization uh expertise that will help us not only leverage leverage this transition but make sure we maximize that investment into the future and get the most efficient and effective uh output from this transition as possible next slide and so cats and e trans first joint uh developed the joint partnership in submitting a low no grant proposal to the federal government this low no emissions program and the grant that we received from the fta gave us funding for six battery electric buses also funded uh the infrastructure and training associated with moving to an electric fleet during our discussions uh with e-trans energy over the last year number one we determined that a six bus pilot program wouldn't give us the kind of information and analytics we needed to make an informed decision about the path forward to transitioning our fleet we decided to expand that to 18 buses we will provide uh bring in vehicles from each of the three uh known manufacturers here in the north america so we'll be getting uh between uh four and six buses from each of those manufacturers we're also going to leave a little bit of room in case a new local manufacturer is able to move forward with that into the future but our program we would like to bring in and pilot uh the uh operations of all of those uh battery electric buses in the market right now so we're working with e-trans to procure those vehicles e-trans in this pilot will also install the charging infrastructure necessary to operate this uh pilot at both our south tryon and north davidson bus facility what is very important about this pilot is it will give us the ability to not only evaluate the uh performance of each of the vehicles enable us to make an informed decision on which manufacturer or several manufacturers we may want to move forward with as we transition the entire fleet but also give us the necessary analytics that will enable us to make an informed decision about the depth and breadth of our capital program moving forward what is the operational characteristics of battery electric buses in our environment and enable us to come back and inform the final negotiations with e-trans on how we may want to move forward in the future next slide as i mentioned earlier this will this 12 to 18 month pilot will enable us to evaluate the results uh in real life of each one of these manufacturers and inform the second phase of our negotiations with e-trans and determining what is the best path forward they will enable cats to transition the rest of the fleet to electric bus technology and meet the goals established in the strategic energy action plan and so uh with your action hopefully on the 26th that will allow us to move forward procurement of those 18 vehicles uh six of which will be funded by the low no grants the next 12 will be funded out of cat's capital program we expect to begin if we're able to move forward in april we expect to begin receiving those by the end of this calendar year and we'll start the operational pilot beginning next year we will then uh continue our discussions with duke with the uh analytics that we get uh from the performance of this pilot and we'll continue to keep council informed on the performance of the pilot but also uh in determining our path forward for uh transitioning the entire cats fleet to electric technology uh with that that include concludes my presentation if there are any questions i'll be happy to address those mayor pro tem followed by miss mira thank you mayor and thank you john for the presentation it's really exciting to see us moving forward with the electrification of our uh bus fleet a couple questions for you when you say 18 will that um give you the ability to to try it on short routes long run you know the different because i know in the past you've been concerned about the longer routes and the battery optimization to be able to to get them to run all day is that has that changed over the past year are you seeing um a difference in battery life that kind of thing in the technology um great question uh mayor pro tem that is one of the reasons why we decided to move from six vehicles to 18 vehicles we wanted to get uh the best information on the performance of this technology throughout our entire system and utilizing only six vehicles probably would not have given us the type of data we needed to make a good evaluation of the technology and how we wanted to move forward so by expanding this program to 18 we'll be able to test uh get really good data on all of our routes and and how these vehicles perform and so to your second question technology changes so fast um that the things that that we are experiencing now could be very different a year from now but that's that is why we wanted to test all of the manufacturers on and to get real information on how they perform in our environment things like uh operating environment how many hills you have the temperature average temperature in the winter in the summer could have an impact on the performance of of these vehicles so we wanted to test that in real life uh scenarios here in charlotte and then be able to make that determination how we move forward afterwards okay thank you and second question is um the difference now versus when we were talking about this a year or two ago to your point is this this uh partnership with duke which is fantastic are they are they covering the cost of the rapid charging stations because that's kind of a game changer isn't it being able to have that versus well what we would like in the poly we want to evaluate the full day charge and so the the most optimal use of of this deployment of this would be able would be for cats to charge all of its vehicles at night and hopefully have those vehicles go out like our diesel vehicles do today and be able to operate all day in the environment and come back and get charged at night that may or may not determine depending on the routes we put it on again the time of the year uh other environmental aspects of that so we want to evaluate that capacity uh so we will be evaluating not just the charging at the station but also evaluating based on the day-to-day mileage of those vehicles whether or not we may need to also add quick charge facilities throughout the community that will allow us to extend the operations of those vehicles during the day will we be getting any of those quick charge stations though i know that separately duke is working on deploying i think 15 of them across the state the quick charge will any of those be coming to this area um we are we are not moving forward with the quick charge in this pilot we want to see because we there's a lot of data over how much you may need to how long you need to charge a vehicle midday or in route what we want to see is how long those vehicles can last on a single charge knowing that we have the quick charge capability that we could fall back on okay and then one last question if that's okay assuming that this works really well and we know that the technology is going to continue to improve how do you feel about sort of the budgetary planning process i mean you know we we talk a lot about investing in our bus system to be able to offer um shorter trips um shrinking that the the headway the frequencies the frequencies so that we could get you know cut our average 90-minute trip down to 45 minutes but that involves a multi-million dollar tens of millions of dollars of investment but so does converting to electric buses so have you have you really thought about maybe a 10-year plan or on how or even great to have a five-year plan on how we're going to do that do you have a preference for one or the other um electrification versus cutting our bus travel times down so um difficult question in that i think the um the pilot will help us inform how we can move forward it may be that if these vehicles can only go 80 percent of the day-to-day mileage that our current buses can do that means we may have to acquire more vehicles and so a 320 bus fleet may have to turn into a 350 or 370 bus fleet so that has a capital impact cost impact associated with that then there's the actual cost of the vehicles themselves um the currently uh the battery electric buses are uh more expensive than our diesel vehicles and so the individual cost of the of the buses has is will have to be factored in also the operating performance so we know what our fleet size will be moving forward now technology changes uh pretty quickly but when we use federal funding to acquire uh vehicles we are required to keep them for either 500 000 miles or 12 years which ever comes first in our experience that both we tend to reach that 500 000 mile around year 12 anyway and so we currently plan to um to replace our vehicles every uh on it when it reaches its 13th year uh and so we still want to keep that on a 12-year program because we wouldn't want to you know have let's say we purchased a hundred buses next week next year and a hundred buses two years after that you know 12 years from now they're going to be a lot of expiring vehicles in the fleet and that will have an in an ongoing financial impact to future councils and future cats staff and so we probably still want to stay on that 12-year horizon but what we need to know is how many vehicles in the individual costs of those and that will inform help us to plan the uh our budget on our 10-year excuse me our 12-year program okay thank you very exciting thanks john thank you all right massage meera thank you mayor bear mr lewis thank you for cats investments in testing to understand the performance performance of these electric vehicles i'm trying to understand uh have we considered or looked at partnership with the arrival i'm sorry do you repeat that massage mirror yes he consider doing any sort of partnership with arrival arrival the bus they're making the vans and the buses yes yes that company i know they're working on manufacturing electric shuttles for ups and i was just wondering if he had any conversations with them yes ms ashmir as i mentioned earlier on this 18 bus pilot we want to have to test the performance of all of the north american manufacturers there are three that have passed fta scrutiny but we're leaving a room if arrival passes what is called the altoona testing requirement which is the federal required safety testing that all manufacturers must pass in order to be eligible for federal funding programs so in order for us to buy from a new manufacturer that manufacturer has to pass federal safety guidelines in order for us to utilize federal funding to acquire those vehicles we know they are in that process but
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