City Council - Regular Meeting

Good morning. My name is Esther Mannheimer. I'm mayor of the city of Asheville, and I'd like to welcome you to the September 3rd, 2026 agenda briefing work session. All council members and staff are participating virtually. This meeting is intended for discussion purposes only. No formal actions or votes will be taken. In addition, no public comment is taken during this meeting. The live meeting will be streamed on the city's YouTube channel, accessible through the YouTube icon on the city's website or via the live stream. You also have the option to listen to the meeting live via phone by calling 855-925-2801 and entering meeting code 10332. Council and staff, when I call your name, please say a quick hello. Vice Mayor Antoinette Mosley. Good morning. Council Member Maggie Ullman.

Hey, everybody.

Council Member Shanika Smith. Good morning.

Good morning.

Council member Kim Roney. Good morning. Council member Sage Turner. Good morning. And I can't see yet. Has Bo joined us? And council member Bo Hess.

Hey everyone. Good morning.

Okay. Thank y'all. And also our city staff, our city manager, DK Wesley. Good morning. Assistant city manager, Ben Woody.

Good morning.

Assistant City Manager, Jay Dundas.

Good morning.

Assistant, I'm sorry, City Attorney, Brad Branham.

Good morning.

And City Clerk, Maggie Burleson. Good morning. All right, now I'll turn it over to the City Manager, D.K. Westley.

Good morning and thank you, Mayor. We are back into the rhythm of two meetings per month, so hopefully council and staff got the opportunity to take a break. On today, we're going to review our agenda for the September 8th regular meeting. I'm going to go ahead and pass it over to Assistant City Manager Ben Woody, who is going to facilitate this discussion.

Thank you, Manager Wesley, and good morning, Mayor, members of council, I'M GOING TO PROVIDE THE AGENDA REVIEW TODAY, SO I'M GOING TO JUMP RIGHT IN. YOUR NEXT MEETING IS SEPTEMBER, NEXT TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8th, AND YOU DON'T HAVE ANY WORK SESSIONS, SO WE'LL JUST HAVE A REGULAR MEETING. NO PROCLAMATIONS, AND I'LL JUMP RIGHT INTO THE CONSENT, AND OF COURSE STOP ME IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS OR IF YOU WANT ME TO COVER SOMETHING I DON'T. I'M GOING TO START WITH ITEM B REAL QUICKLY. ITEM B IS AN EXCITING Item for the city, it's the contract for the comp plan update in the UDO rewrite. I'm actually, we're going to have Chris Collins and his team here later today, and they'll provide a more update, more detailed update on this item as part of the other issues section. So I'll move to item D. D is a budget amendment. It's pretty large in scope, $4.2 million. But what this does, it provides cash flow. to support Helene-related projects such as the Gaseous Creek Bridge, replacement of parks and rec content and grants management. Of course, all that is reimbursable through FEMA, so this just cash flows that work initially. And then it also includes a budget amendment that transfers a donation the city received to support the temporary skating rink project. Item E is the contract to develop a master plan for deep review And I'll come back to you in a second, Maggie. HED staff will be here today to provide an update on that item later in the agenda review. So we'll go back to probably item D, Maggie, or Councilwoman Ullman.

Can you remind me who the donation was from?

The donation was from Dogwood Health Trust. And I don't think I'm incorrect about that. I hope somebody will tell me if I am. Yes. So the donation was from Dogwood. AND IT WAS, I THINK, $105,000 TO SUPPORT THAT PROJECT. OKAY. I'M GOING TO KEEP GOING. AGAIN, ITEM E IS D-REVIEW MASTER PLAN CONTRACT AND WE'LL TALK MORE ABOUT THAT LATER TODAY. REAL QUICKLY, ITEM F IS JUST KIND OF OUR CONTINUATION OF FUNDING THE KAYLA PROGRAM. AS I THINK COUNCIL KNOWS, KAYLA HAS BEEN A HUGELY SUCCESSFUL PROGRAM. WE'VE PARTNERED WITH THE COUNTY AND THE Asheville City Schools and City Schools Foundation. So this is just a continuation of that really strategic and important relationship. Just want to raise that up. Item G is a ratification. So this is a ratification for a federal grant the city received. And this grant allows to purchase barricades and a specialized trailer to move those barricades. And this is actually for our public works department. So this will let public works be a little more efficient and strategic when they have to deploy their team to close streets for special events and sometimes nuisance flooding and things like this. So this is a good, great grant and a good addition to their kind of toolbox that they have in public works. I'm going to move down to item, the last item I'm going to cover today on consent. We have a relatively short consent as items H&I, they're both, H&I are both related to transit. So let's start with item H. H is a little over $1.1 million non-competitive annual grant. So we receive this, and this is just acceptance of a grant to support just kind of typical maintenance activities for the ART transit system. Again, this is non-competitive, something we get annually. And then item I, authorizes an application for a competitive fta grant and this is an fta grant requesting 48 million dollars so a large grant the city's already budgeted to match part of this for us and this would support the ultimate relocation of the art operations and maintenance facility to 224 louisiana i'll pause there and go to manager wesley

Thank you, Ben. Just a quick clarification on Council Member Ullman's question about the grant. That was from HCA. Ben, I think a later item is related to Dogwood.

Thank you for that. I appreciate you looking, Manager Wesley. Yeah, important distinction. We want to give credit where it goes. So thank you for that. Go ahead, Madam Mayor.

On the agenda, the way item D is worded, It looks like we're spending $4.2 million on a temporary skating rink, which we're not, because if you look at the staff report, it's talking about the bridge funding for, I think it's for Temporary Bridge at Gaseous Creek and some other park. item. So I don't know if we want to reword that, just so it doesn't get caught in a viral moment of us being misinterpreted there.

Great. Yeah, I see the city clerk nodding her head on that. So we'll take a look at the wording on that. Anything else on the consent? Again, we're going to cover two of these items later. Okay. Moving on, and then We have a city manager's report and we have our quarterly update from Walter Ear, director of capital management. And he's going to provide some key project updates that are part of his just routine and regular quarterly capital project update to council. So always looking forward to hear from Walter about all the things that are happening and projects that are moving forward. Then the last item on our agenda for next week is the Tuesday new business item, and that is item A, which is a request from the Asheville Tenants Union for City Council to amend the housing code to make it unlawful to collect rent if a dwelling unit contains an unsafe life safety condition. And again, this is a request directly from the Asheville Tenants Union. Any questions or comments on your regular business agenda? Okay. I'm going to keep moving then. Eight-week agenda, a couple of things I want to flag for you moving forward. At your September 22nd meeting, you're gonna actually approve a resolution that allows the water department to accept the CDBG funding you allocated for the lead and copper program. So this will actually let us begin drawing down that funding and working with our community members to make sure that if they do have a service line that could be vulnerable to lead or copper, getting those replaced. So really important program, part of the federal mandate we have to follow. You have on September 22nd, a public hearing on, I want to just make sure I want to go through this because there's a lot of acronyms and a lot of different funding that's coming in. So this is a home ARP substantial amendment. So what this amendment does, and to go back in time a little bit, the home allocation, which is a federal allocation that is managed by our regional consortium. So Asheville kind of, we manage and staff that, but that's a body that distributes federal home funds across the four county area. So it's got a number of county and municipality participants. This 4.7 million was actually allocated through the ARPA program, if you remember that. So this is kind of an allocation from that time period. The full 4.7 million is available to any consortium members. So it's not just the city of Asheville. And what the amendment does, it targets those funds towards homelessness issues in the region, specifically coordinated entry initiatives and programs. So again, this is our funding that's getting targeted towards homelessness response in our consortium region. And then the last thing I wanted to cover on the eight week, this is gonna be a really technical presentation, but very important and timely. On October 13th, we're gonna have an update from Public Works on their stormwater asset inventory and assessment project. That's a mouthful, but what it basically does is they're beginning to look at watersheds. So you do a kind of watershed by watershed, do an analysis. Then based on that, we can target and better program capital improvements for that watershed. So the ultimate goal is to try to improve our stormwater systems and water quality by watershed. So they're really technical, but a really great presentation and project. Council Member Hess.

I just want to take a step back on that last item about the homelessness. So who is getting that money, the grant money? Is that a city thing? And then we're going to decide how that's spent or is that coming to the city and then we're going to give it to local partners or kind of tell me a little bit about that.

Good question. And James Shelton's on the call, fortunately. So James, if you don't mind taking that and providing the detail Council Member Hess asked for.

Happy to. Thanks for your question, Councilmember Hess. So the $4.7 million is split into two major programs. One is about $3 million for affordable rental construction, and the other million is for supportive services for homeless. What this amendment does is it sets a priority for us to target these investments for populations experiencing homelessness, particularly those who experience homelessness for the first time following Tropical Storm Helene. So this is in direct response to the point in time counts that we've seen the last couple of years that have evidenced the dramatic increase in the number of both sheltered and unsheltered homelessness in our area, not just in Asheville, but this is a consortium-wide four-county area program. Right now, we have no preference set for a particular population. HUD does require that this program target at least one of four qualifying populations. So it's those experiencing homelessness, those at risk of homelessness, those who are fleeing domestic violence or stalking or sexual assault, those who are fleeing or attempting to flee those types of situations, and other low-income populations at risk of homelessness too. So what we're doing is setting a priority that allows us to leverage our coordinated entry systems in both Asheville-Buncombe County COC, but also our balance of state COC-coordinated entry system. So it sets that target for those experiencing homelessness in Tulane and allows us to use the waitlist and systems of the COC's coordinated entry.

okay um i love that that's awesome i like the first part especially if you i just respectfully asked if you guys can keep council abreast i mean i feel like there's a lot of money coming in a lot of things happening and we've talked about this as a council at our last pfi meeting there was a lot of good suggestions from my colleagues And I would like to see some of these things done. One of these things is having a coordinated entry back into the workforce with some of our day labor programs. Maybe they come to the city and work for Public Works and we have a program for that. Maybe we can help folks pay down payments or places to get treatment for alcohol use or mental health stuff. so i've just i would really like to be kept uh aware of all that and on that note i'd like safe shelter to also come back in front of council um and you know from what we talked about last time if they made any progress with uh reaching out and making connects with people okay thank you council member hess and james thank you for jumping in on that so that concludes our

agenda for the business meeting i'm going to move on to council committees so starting with hcd we have three items on the hcd council committee meeting which is scheduled for september 15th the first item is kind of a cdbg and home program performance update so this is just kind of an annual update that the hed department provides to hcd and we give kind of review of some of the things we've accomplished with our CDBG funding. And again, this is steady state funding. Programmatic updates and any issues related to monitoring and spend down the funds. So HED will give a thorough update on our FY26 CDBG program. The next item is a discussion on single family zoning. We'll have Chris Collins and his team from Planning and Urban Design there to talk about our single family zoning districts in Asheville. And we're going to have some maps and be able to show geographic locations of those districts and just a little bit of review of what that looks like across the city. So more of an informational sharing presentation. And then the third item is Eagle Market Street loan modifications. Recently, Mountain Housing and Eagle Market Street Development Corporation made some modifications to their loan structure. As part of that, the city and county both have lean positions in that development and And so we work with them on the loan restructuring and we'll have Jeffrey Barton and Stephanie Swipson Twitty at the meeting to kind of review why they did the loan modification and what the outcome of that is. Any questions on HCD? Okay. Moving over to planning and economic development environment, we only have one item for this meeting. I want to note to the public that we are moving this meeting from its normal date to September 28th. So PEDE will meet later this month on the 28th. And our item is an update from HED on the small business support program. So as council knows, you allocated over $15 million to some of our partner agencies to begin distributing that money to the business community in the form of grants. So that process is underway and we'll have an update on that. And that is changing every day of the week. They make progress. So I actually believe that by moving this meeting back in September, we'll probably have a more robust update that we can share with PD and council member rolling.

Yeah, can you remind me when we're going to talk about the mobile pay app with transit? I feel like somehow that's got jammed up and we're looking for revenue and people want to get on the bus, but they can't pay because they don't have a dollar, but they could pay with their phone.

Yep, I can. Transportation Department is working on an update for that, Councilman Maroney. They're actually going to share some written information. later this month. And then if we need to have that or want to have that as a formal presentation item at PED, we can do that at the October meeting. But we'll have some information out to the council in a few weeks.

I'll say if it can skip committee and go to council, I would support that because I think anything that we do that's tying that up is a waste of time.

Okay. Yeah, we'll be in a position to share some information in a couple of weeks. So thank you for that. Any other questions on council committees? Okay. With that, I think I've gotten through this in 20 minutes. I may have just beaten Jade Dundas' record. I'm not sure. I think I did. And I'm going to turn it over to Manager Wesley for our other items and updates section of the agenda.

Thank you, Ben. On today, we have three updates for council and for the community. One being on our Asheville business inclusion program. So we'll have Marcus Kirkman from housing and economic development department. We'll have then have an update on the deep review master planning partner contract update. That is an item on your consent agenda for September 8th. James Shelton will provide that update with support from Nikki Reed. And then finally, we will have an update presentation on a comprehensive plan and UDO update process. That is also an item on your consent agenda for this Tuesday. So I will go ahead and turn it over to Marcus Kirkman.

Thank you very much. Good morning, Council. Thank you, Manager Wesley, Marcus Kirkman, Business Inclusion Manager here with the City of Asheville and Housing Economic Development. I am going to be walking through our ABI program update and next steps. Next slide, please. There have been recent changes to the historically underutilized business program and office in North Carolina. And I'll be walking through highlighting where we are in our approach to those changes. Also sharing our peer cities and their small business and across considerations. Take a look at our 2023 disparity study findings around small business enterprise recommendations. a SBE program development for city of Asheville, building on our small business ecosystem that we have here in Asheville and Western North Carolina and highlighting next steps around an SBE program initiative timeline. Next slide, please. The recent state-level legislative changes repealed the North Carolina Hub Office provisions, which did dissolve the Hub Office completely, and it ended the state's Hub certification program. And these changes create operational and legal uncertainty surrounding the city's current ABI policies. In response, the city intends to pause a race and gender conscious goal setting, really in order to minimize legal risk while allowing our critical procurement to continue uninterrupted. And this pause also provides the necessary runway to develop a policy proposal around an SBE framework. A framework that was highlighted with recommendations for my most recent 2023 disparity study. Next slide, please. This slide highlights for us our peer cities. I've been in direct communication, conversation, meeting with them, and also tracking what's happening across the state and the region around SBE considerations. We have here the city of Charlotte, city of Greensboro, city of Raleigh and Durham. all have transitioned to a race, gender-neutral programming and policy that different frameworks within the city. Charlotte, within the jurisdiction, Charlotte has transitioned to a small business enterprise certification with race-neutral goals based on business size and personal net worth that caps at $750,000. It also focuses on a local Charlotte CSA presence. City of Greensboro leverages their Office of Business Opportunity, and it's created an SB market, sheltered market, where the firms compete directly against personal businesses. Wally is performing their work out of what's called their BEOP, Business Engagement and Opportunities Program, where they focus really on technical assistance workshops and decreasing those barriers to entry within the marketplace. And Durham, transition to procurement strategies towards small, local, and emerging businesses. Next slide, please. Our most recent disparity study in 2023 really provided some key points for us around what's possible with SBE programming. And one of the recommendations was establishing a highly structured SBE program which would build the capacity of local and micro businesses. What we discovered and some of the key points from that disparity study is that over 92% of our local minority women owned businesses actually operate with under 20 employees and $500,000 in annual revenue. meaning that the vast majority of these vendors would remain fully eligible under an SBE framework. To build this program, staff will explore programmatic opportunities, such as establishing a local SBE certification program, also exploring the legal opportunities and constraints of what a sheltered market program could look like, really focusing on our local ask for businesses, and exploring the expansion of our current MSA metropolitan statistical area for industry specific procurement and contracting to increase local access to procurement opportunities. Next slide, please. With regards to program development, this pause really does allow me as an ABI manager to conduct the research and program requirements, best practices, to integrate changes with relevant information and recommendations from our disparity study. This is not a complete list, but it certainly highlights some of the main things during this pause is to gain a deeper understanding of the legislative impacts and really clarify the legal framework in this timeframe and period that we're operating in. This includes the active monitoring and evaluation of the landscape from our legal team, which has been exceptional, along with constant engagement with the North Carolina School of Government. Developing program objective considerations such as program effectiveness, utilization rates, the program reach who is impacting the program costs, developing budget options, including an approach to achieve cost savings and program support through reallocation of future disparity study costs, and creating a triage approach to update our policies, procedures, and workflows to accommodate an SBE program. Next slide, please. We're really fortunate here, both from the information we're able to glean from our disparity study, but the commitment of community partners that we already have a solid relationship with and connection here around the small business enterprise ecosystem. This is a list of some of those key partners, certainly not an exhaustive list, but key partners that we're really looking forward to continue to build out expansive relationship around a potential SBA program. Next slide, please. Next steps and SBE initiative timeline temporarily have paused race and gender conscious MWBE goal setting effective August 21st through December 31st as we evaluate the legal considerations and develop policy proposal to transition to a size and income-based SBE model. The staff will develop a robust policy proposal to build out an SBE program for council's consideration that promote small business resiliency, which is really key, equips businesses to successfully compete in the marketplace, providing matchmaking opportunities to continue to do that work within the city's procurement of goods and services. And for the January, 2027 managers report, staff will return to council at the conclusion of the polls to present final policy recommendations and a long-term roadmap, long-term roadmap. And I welcome any questions that we may have. Yes, Councilwoman Roman.

Thank you, Marcus. I'm really glad that I had the conversation with some of our previous small business owners who have worked with the city in this program this week to help me understand some of these questions. So these are elevated community concerns. There was a concern that there's focus on technical support, but there's already technical support available through other partners where there seemed to be a need for more focus for small businesses, especially you named businesses that maybe have smaller operating budgets or smaller staff. um the size of the contracts always comes up when they're really big contracts they just don't have the staffing capacity and so then we end up outsourcing to out of town organizations and companies and then they hire out of town folks or see a lot of workers coming in from south carolina from georgia from florida um so the size of contract what what is it within our ability to provide some sort of deposit when we're when we're signing the contract, because what I'm hearing is if the city were paid part of its bill up front, then I could buy the piece of equipment to do the job. But because I can't, because I don't rent the piece of equipment, then I can't put it up front. And then it's all going to be reimbursement. And that takes a long time. So I'm excluded just based on that barrier. Are we limited there?

I really appreciate that question. I'm going to take a step back where it really becomes an incredible opportunity or when those small businesses, when they reach out to me and share those concerns and say, hey, Mr. Kirkman, this is an opportunity that I'm looking at and I'm pursuing. These are some of my challenges. And do you know anyone that I can partner with and I can build relationship with? to either we can go in as a partnership with this, or if I may have an additional need. When those businesses actually reach out on the front end of the projects, the success rate is tremendous. One of the things that I'm here describing is after the fact, we may hear what's happening after the fact, and we missed the opportunity on the front end to engage with those business owners. Now, I will offer this. During this pause, one of the things that I'm going to, I'm already starting to take a look at, and I've reached out to the Small Business Administration in Charlotte. A major barrier, you didn't name this, but it's part of what you're speaking to, is the bonding. issue. Bonding can be a main issue for small businesses, especially MWBE firms. So what I'm exploring is how can we take a look at our bonding requirements or the adjustments that we can make around that that would reduce those barriers and create opportunities.

Okay. And then one of the things that's coming up is small businesses locally will see a contract go to the lowest bidder And it's like, the only way they can do that project is they come back and ask for more money later. And then they do. So the question was, what does accountability look like to sort of check receipts so that lowest bidders aren't knowingly going to like have a history of coming back and saying, I'm over budget, I'm over budget. Or let's say they get a contract to do a project at a city park. And then all of a sudden all the money is spent, but the project isn't finished. And it's like, well, of course, because you underbid.

So doing a process with our current ABI policy is that when it's, we're talking about a bid, not RFPs, RFPs, solely with the bid, what's the lowest responsive, responsible bidder. as long as the paperwork is squared away, you can show you can do the job and it's the lowest bid. What happens in that process is that once all the bids are submitted to that project manager and they go through that and they identify whose paperwork is squared away and who was the lowest bidder and they identify that particular firm who's the lowest bidder. What I have encouraged and I continue to encourage are for those firms to follow up with that project manager to find out where was I in that number space? How off was I in that number space? I also encourage them to reach out to me to share with me how was that experience? What I'm really speaking to is when some of it is scalability, some of it is competing in the marketplace. If there's a really, really established business, It can be a challenge there, but there are ways to engage with those opportunities. When the phones reach out to me, we have a win-win situation. And it takes us working together in a partnership throughout the process.

There's a lot more questions about scoring metrics and stuff, and I won't get into the weeds on that because we do keep seeing that pop up. And I know the community has questions, but thank you for letting me dig in a little bit here today.

You're certainly welcome. I appreciate your questions.

Any more questions for Marcus council? I did send you all this a heads up on this a couple of weeks ago. So I know you've had some time to digest it, but if you have any additional questions after this, don't hesitate to follow up.

All right.

Thank you, Marcus.

Thank you all.

James is up next.

Thank you, City Manager Wesley. Good morning, council members. Again, I'm James Shelton, the Community Development Division Manager for the City of Asheville, and I'm here to present to you guys kind of some background, where we are now, and next steps in terms of our D-Review master planning project, specifically to talk about the selection of our master planning partner, City Collective. Next slide, please. So we are engaged in a joint planning process right now with the Housing Authority of the City of Asheville and the Asheville Peak Academy for approximately 60 acres in the Deaverview community. The partners, HACA, Peak, and the City have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding that defines our partnership principles and identifies the shared objectives of our joint visioning process. To clarify, this MOU does not bind the city to any land exchanges or funding commitments. All future property transactions, developer agreements for construction, and other capital or programmatic investments remain subject to future city council approval. For now, the council has approved the allocation of $475,500 from the CDBG-DR planning program to support the development of a master plan for this 60-acre site. The Community Development Division has undertaken a competitive request for proposals process to identify a master planning partner and has selected City Collective LLC. Next slide. Just to remind y'all of what are the properties we're talking about. Next slide, please. The city owns a couple of parcels in West Asheville, and the housing authority owns the Deaverview Apartments in West Asheville. This is along Deaverview Road, bound to the east by Bear Creek Road, and to the west by Pisgahview Road. All of these add up to about 58 acres, most of which are undeveloped. They're on the west side that are the city owns what we call the Cedar Hill property is 16 acres and the 65 Ford Street, which is 21 acres. And then 20 acres consist of the current D review apartments. They're owned by the housing authority on the east side. And yes, they are not entirely contiguous. There is one road that runs right there through the middle. that is not owned by either entity, but we are going to plan around that. Next slide. Just some background. There has been prior action on these parcels in the past. City Council authorized the purchase of the 65 Ford Street property back in 2020 using our entitlement CDBG funds with the intent of building a mixed income housing with a focus on affordable housing development to include also a cradle to college pipeline, which could have been anything like a potential child care center or a high performing school. as well as community wellness in partnership with the Housing Authority. In January 2021, City Council had a affordable housing work session and discussed the D-Review purpose-built model in the pipeline of future projects for this property. In spring of 2022, the City Council approved projects and funding for HACA property. This was a conditional zoning to approve infill apartments at D-Review, which would include 82 units and three buildings. Council also approved zoning and funding requests for this project, which included $1.4 million in city bond funds. However, in October 2024, Council reallocated those bond funds following Tropical Storm Helene. That project had not moved forward at pace. And so at that time, we repurposed those funds for storm-related home repairs in October of 2024. More recently, the city was awarded $225 million in CDBG-DR funds following Tropical Storm Helene, of which $3.7 million was set aside for planning purposes, and the D-Review planning activity was specifically listed as a potential activity that we might undertake with that planning bucket from the DR program. Next slide. After Helene, we also partnered with Buncombe County and other municipalities in our area to help to draft the Buncombe County Helene recovery plan. The city submitted 65 Ford Street master planning. Again, that is one of our properties there that we own in this neighborhood that we are within scope of this project. as a recovery project to that plan. The purpose of that project is to undertake a comprehensive planning process to lay the groundwork for the development of affordable housing, specifically on that particular site. So this is an alignment, again, just reminding folks of where we've come from, that this is in our DR action plan. We've submitted this as a project to the overall Buncombe County Helene Recovery Plan. With that in mind, the city, in partnership with HACA and Peak Academy, have executed that memorandum of understanding to engage as planning partners for this collective site of city-owned properties and housing authority properties. That collaboration is defined by shared goals of affordable housing, educational facilities, community recreation, and green space amenities. The master plan will include other elements that result from a community engagement process that aligned with the stated values and vision of this MOU. Next slide, please. So what is our objectives of this planning process? So the first is to build on the community and stakeholder engagement that has happened in the past. There have been previous efforts, previous engagement efforts with the neighborhood as particularly with the residents of Deaverview Apartments. We want to make sure that we've heard that feedback from the past. We're acknowledging that prior engagement and bringing that into this process. Now we want to hear again and confirm what we heard in the past. In partnership with the Housing Authority, we want to expand affordable housing and mixed-income housing options to include a minimum of 340 high-quality homes with the potential for both rental and homeownership options. Just a reminder, the current unit count at D-Review Apartments is 160, so this goal would more than double the total number of housing units, both inclusive on the D-Review Apartments site And our city owned sites as well. So the planning process may dictate where that those units wind up. But that is our goal is to more than double the units, not necessarily all affordable, but we definitely want to see both rental and homeownership options there, potentially market rate to depending on how our planning process goes. We would also create a permanent four-acre modern educational campus for Asheville Peak Academy to serve the students and families that will serve as a key institutional anchor for the community. We would integrate new public parks, green spaces, and recreational options for the entire community, and that would be developed and maintained by Asheville Parks and Recreation Department, as well as improve infrastructure with multimodal transportation options, streetscapes, and utility improvements on site. Next slide. Our intended outcomes of this master plan will be to deliver on these few key things. One is to outline the physical development characteristics of the collective site and to illustrate the proposed buildings, landscape improvements, and other features that represent the development objectives. Again, this project that we're undertaking right now is to plan, not to build. Right now, we are looking to see what is the best use of the site? What are the best opportunities that this site presents? What are the constraints and how does the community envision what they would like to see on this site as well? This plan will outline the public benefits gained by developing the site, as well as outline the financial feasibility and needs for constructing and maintaining the site, especially public spaces. Part of our engagement with and our seeking of a master planning partner included making sure that whatever we plan for is implementable and we have a clear financial roadmap of how to get there. We would identify conceptual streetscapes, multimodal transportation, and utility improvements required. This would all provide the partners with a basis for the development of resources, including funding, partnerships outside of this immediate group of stakeholders that we have now, as well as any potential land exchanges required for next steps. This plan will also guide the development process for construction drawings too. So the final plan will be presented for acceptance and endorsement from Asheville City Council, the HACA Board of Directors, and the Peak Academy Board of Directors. Next slide, please. So what have we done to seek out a master planning partner? So we followed a competitive internal project selection process first to actually allocate these funds from the DR program to this particular project. Council approved MOA recently to allocate this funding to the Community Development Division. it's an internal award so it's kind of awarding it to ourselves but this does give us the formal blessing that we need to be able to use these funds according to this project and according to federal requirements we issued a competitive request for proposals back in june that closed on july 16th and we received a total of 10 proposals during that time following a scoring process of the proposals that we got and then an interview um of the highest scoring firms afterwards, City Collective LLC was selected as the most qualified firm to help us develop the D-Review master plan. Once a contract is executed, we expect that that planning process will be undertaken in phases over the next 18 months, including meeting with stakeholders and community members early in the process, as well as throughout the entire planning process. The contract will be funded with a portion of the $475,500 awarded for this activity. next slide so just a note on city collective and we do have two members from city collective here with us today in case council has any questions particular to their organization but they have assembled a multi-disciplinary team of leaders in urban design architecture landscape architecture housing strategy cost estimating that will provide us with whole lot of confidence that every aspect of this project will be considered thoughtfully moving forward so you can see that they've brought on folks from hrna advisors for helping us understand housing strategy cdc civil design concepts for helping with civil engineering geotechnical support as well as community engagement community engagement support as well next slide please So with Council's approval of the selection of City Collective, staff will work to finalize and execute a contract. The planning process will then be undertaken in phases over the next 18 months. And as I mentioned, we do expect and will be engaging with community members and stakeholders early on in that process, as well as throughout the entire planning process. We also want Council to have the opportunity. We'll be back to engage with you guys throughout the process too. We want you to be helping us review and inform the process and the master plan, as well as this last stage of optioneering. So what we do expect is to come back to council in about a year or so after we've, you know, probably engaged with you before that too, but with a slate of options that we can kind of pick and choose, how do we want to option out what the final master plan looks like? So we will be back to engage with you guys and hear your input over the next 18 months too. Next slide. So yeah, just kind of our proposed tentative timeline is that in phase one over the next few months, we would be kind of establishing our baseline. How are we going to operate this project? Establishing the planning framework, the community engagement strategy, the governance structure of our operation for this project. And then we really kick off the analysis portion of this in November into January of this year. where we really establish those existing conditions, market realities, community priorities, and infrastructure opportunities, really getting a full understanding of what are the opportunities and constraints of this project. And then moving into the next slide, we would start to envision what this plan for this project will look like, translating community priorities and technical analysis into a shared vision for deep review that establishes the neighborhood's character, organization, and long-term identity. And then that's that optioneering portion there at the end where we would develop and evaluate multiple master plan options through integrated design, engineering, financial analysis, cost estimating, and community feedback, as well as council feedback too.

Next slide.

So again, this is an effort that we've undertaken with the Housing Authority and Peak Academy under a joint memorandum of understanding that governs our visioning process and how we operate as partners. The MOU does not bind the city to any land exchanges or other funding commitments other than this planning activity right now. We are focused on the 60-acre site in D-Review, and we appreciate any questions or comments that council has today. Thank you. Councilwoman Ullman.

I have a question about the educational partner. How were they selected to get federally funded technical assistance? And were others able to compete for that?

They were engaged early on in this process. Last year, staff were put in touch with Peak Academy by the former city manager. And so we've been engaged with them to undertake this memorandum of understanding. And just to clarify, they're not receiving any direct financial assistance or technical assistance. everything is flowing through the city of Asheville.

But would they basically get site plan development for a future campus for them through this federal funding?

They would get kind of broad strokes set aside, like planning that we would say that they might potentially be able to have a space there and how that site might lay out. They would still be responsible for procuring and funding any type of final design, construction, actual... Absolutely. What this would do would be to allow them to have space within this plan for the collective site.

And so that decision was made by staff, like was there a competitive process?

No.

Hmm.

If I could add on to that, there wasn't a competitive process. The partnership has started in 2025. And when I came on, I did review the vision for this plan. The foundation of it was a purpose-built community. And so I spent some time evaluating the demographics of the school institution that was selected. the performance metrics for the students and really the vision around the school. And based on that analysis, it was in alignment with the overall plan for the site. And so I felt comfortable with moving forward with that previous decision. So the memorandum of understanding was signed by me at the administrative level.

Yeah, I just, I guess we've talked about this partner before and I've expressed concerns about us supporting private charter schools or that are NGOs since education is not typically in our lane. And so I just, I'm a little confused or surprised to see, I mean, us partnering on housing is clearly part of all of our comp plan goals and council goals, but yeah, this just kind of catches me off guard.

I think council member Turner.

I appreciate that comment, Maggie. I hadn't really thought about that. Not what I was going to discuss. So jumping topics a little. I just wanted to express some really excitement. Yeah. reflecting on like all of the projects i've seen come to the city that involve housing partnerships this might be one of the more interesting impactful and exciting ones i've seen so i'm really thrilled to see a large group of people involved all types of skill sets really solid groundwork to get it going um Yeah, more of an appreciation statement, really. I hope this is a new, better way to redevelop some of these properties. I know Maple Crest was kind of our first foray. I wasn't on council when that was going through, but we were on it as it was finishing. And I think we learned some things, you know, particularly about this building new to relocate before, you know, unhousing people. And I'm just really excited, I guess, is what I want to share. So thank you to everybody that has kind of created the energy and momentum it takes to get something of this to this place where it can hit start so kudos I look forward to learning more about it and Maggie I'm happy to talk to you about schools I hadn't really thought about the charter versus public school I'd love to hear more of your thoughts but we can talk about that online or offline thanks I think Councilmember Maroney trying to keep track of the hands

Thank you. I just wanted to echo the appreciation for partnership and enthusiasm for supporting whole neighborhoods. What I'm hearing from our neighbors is the things that would make their neighborhoods more resilient is having things like access to groceries, access to jobs, access to child care and education opportunities, being able to have access to transportation options. So a neighborhood. And well-resourced neighborhoods are often the safest. And so what I hear some enthusiasm for from residents and folks in close proximity is this sounds like a well-resourced neighborhood and it's time. So I'm excited about supporting it.

All right, thank y'all for your feedback. Any additional questions? All right. Seeing none, thank you, James. All right. Our final presentation today is Will Palmquist and Chris Collins will provide an update on the comp plan and development regulations update.

All right. Thank you, City Manager Wesley. Hello, Mayor, Council, I'm Chris Collins, the Planning and Urban Design Department. and I are here to take you through the Comprehensive Plan and Development Regulations Update, an overview of the procurement process, contract, and scope. And I'm just going to take a high level for two slides, and then Will's going to take over and really take you through the details of our procurement process and a little more of the details of what the scope of this project is looking like now. So that's the next slide, please. This project is initially and wholly funded by CDBGDR funds and Stormwater Enterprise funds. application award as well that could supplement and reduce the amount of CDBGDR funds that are used for the project. And at a high level, this is a light update to the comprehensive plan, working off of things such as trends, demographics, and usability enhancements, leading up to a full rewrite of our unified development ordinance, which would include a full analysis of our 50 plus zoning districts in the city. Next slide, please. It would also include a full rewrite of the city's standard specifications and details manual, the SSDM, you'll hear it called a lot. And those are details of how things get built as far as infrastructure goes, primarily infrastructure, stormwater, roads, all that stuff. This would be a rewrite to support the UDO work and create resilient infrastructure. The primary focus of the project, of course, is sustainability and resiliency within these codes and promotion of the updated comprehensive plan goals. At a very high level, the new zoning and codes should be ready for Council adoption consideration by the end of 2028 with those SSDM, the standard specifications and details manual updates ready by the end of February of 2029. So that's a high level right now. I'm going to pass it off to Will to kind of dig into the procurement process we went through and a little more detail on that scope.

Thank you, Chris. Good morning, everyone. Mayor, members of council, Will Pompous with Planning and Urban Design. I'm excited to be working as the project manager on this incredibly important and impactful project for the city of Asheville. As Chris said, I'll be walking you all through a little more detail about the procurement process, introducing the development of a team that we have selected to contract with on this project, get a little more detail about the scope and timeline and then talk about immediate next steps. We have some time to answer questions, I believe, but if you need to interrupt on anything, please raise your hand. I'm glad to answer questions as we go as well. So this timeline just kind of shows really all the work that's been happening in the background. So we've been working on this for almost a year already to develop the project scope internally. We issued the request for proposals for responses for the project in March of this year. We received a total of eight qualified responses and went through a very robust evaluation process that included an interdisciplinary team of city staff. We had two rounds of interviews with the top scoring firms and did a thorough reference checks of all the projects they cited as relevant to this project. We ultimately selected the top firm where we've been negotiating and refining the scope and contract of the projects. And at the September 8th City Council meeting, we'll be requesting authorization to enter a contract with that team to complete this project. Next slide, please. So we're excited to announce that the team that we have selected is being led by Optikos Design Incorporated. They are a zoning and planning firm with expertise in those areas. Their team also includes three sub consultants, tool design, they are a civil engineering landscape planning, and transportation planning firm that will support the work of the comprehensive plan and the SSDM rewrite. Pascadia Partners, they are a planning firm as well with strong expertise in market and data analysis. And their role in the project is to ensure that the recommendations of the and then the new development regulations are grounded in market realities specific to Asheville. And then finally, the public engagement firm altogether will be leading the robust public engagement efforts throughout the entire process of this project. Next slide, please. So just some notes on these firms. So you may have, these names may be familiar to you. OptiCoast Design Incorporated delivered the missing metal housing study that was completed a couple of years ago. Cascade Partners helped on that study as well and led the anti-displacement analysis that we've been kind of referencing, referring to in some of our work recently. So they are familiar with Asheville. We're familiar with them. We're very excited to work with them again on this project. In regards to engagement and usability, one aspect of many that set this team apart was the inclusion of Altogether as the public engagement firm. They offer a unique approach to easy to understand engagement materials around the very complicated aspects and topics of zoning. So we're very excited to have them on the team as well. Next slide, please. So next couple slides are just kind of showing the overall timeline for the completion of the various components of the projects. So the targeted update to the Living Asheville Comprehensive Plan will take about a year. It includes things such as updating policies as needed, looking at our future land use map for appropriate designation of those categories, integrating post-saline recovery data with new development trends, and building out some tools to make the document more usable for developers, residents of the city, and even city staff to be able to administer and use this comp plan more effectively. The UDO and code rewrite will take about two years. This will implement the updated comprehensive plan with the housing and resiliency focus. It will replace all the outdated development regulations and provide some major updates to the existing zoning district structure that's currently in the UDO. Yes, Councilwoman Turman. Or I'm sorry, is that Councilwoman Ullman?

Yeah, I guess we'd seen previous timeline estimates and these continue to get longer and longer every time you show us new ones. Can you talk through what I recall is the comp plan update was really a light tune up. How has that turned into a 12 month process? And can you also explain community engagement expectations during this?

Yes, I'd be willing to do that. We have a slide on public engagement efforts, so maybe we can get to that and then I can follow up on that question as needed. The next slide will have a timeline as well, so let me maybe get through that and then give a little more clarity about this process. So finally, on this slide, resilience and technical modules. These are resilience-based updates to the standard construction details that are embedded in the SSDM. So construction details for roads, sidewalks, stormwater infrastructure, and the like. Prior to completion of early 2029. Next slide, please. So this shows the overall timeline for the three main deliverables that this project is seeking to complete. You'll see the main task of community engagement at the top will run for the duration of the project. um and you know the the comprehensive plan about 12 months the udo upper date about two years and the ssdm the total about 16 months um so this has been refined in conjunction with the consultant team working through their scope thinking about community engagement and how that interfaces And it's a pretty aggressive timeline overall, given the complexities of the different products and the amount of public engagement that's going to be happening around them. You can see a lot of overlap. So it's not waiting for one product to be finished before beginning the next. We are going to be working on at least two items simultaneously at any given time in this project. So I guess specifically your question, Councilman Ullman, that timeline for the comprehensive plan has gotten longer based on kind of the scope, the engagement process, the more built out scope work that we've done with our consultant team, whereas some of the preliminary estimates were you know there were kind of guesstimates to be absolutely honest we did not have a consultant um selected we're not working on the detail scope so we do think that that 12-month uh time frame is is accurate for deliver delivering a quality update and uh future land use map update for the comprehensive plan uh councilman is this is the consultant being paid by the project or the time it takes for the project to be completed Sure, that's a good question. So the payment is based on the overall scope and then the subsections therein. We have a draft budget line that kind of breaks it down by consultant. So it itemizes basically every task and then subtask within each of these main items. So it is not a matter, we're not really paying by the hour, but we essentially are when you look at the time it takes to complete each of these tasks. So it is really by scope item, not hourly rate.

Well, I guess, so let's say instead of 12 months, it was 10 months. Would that have lowered the price?

It could if it needed less work than what they considered, because there is billing cycles and time allocations that happen on a more regular basis. So if it found that portions of the project ended up taking less time, then there would be less billable time for that particular item. And I think Chris wants to chime in too.

Yeah, thanks, Will. Just adding to this conversation and this question, This timeline and the way we designed it was meant to show that while a little more time is being anticipated on the comp plan update, we've added more overlap between the code rewrite and the comp plan. So that was an effort to not push anything further back. I do think from our talks with our selected consultant for this, that if anything, the amount of overlap we have actually makes the project cost a little more. uh because they have more sub consultants and staff members working on different projects at different times um but so i mean really what we're looking at here is two projects that is a light comprehensive plan update but there's a lot of data to process a lot of events to process a lot of uh education and engagement to go along with it. And normally you would see these two things pushed out. So let's finish the comp plan first and then let's move into the rewrite. But in this case, we're not doing that. So we do feel this is about as fast as we can move on the full rewrite. And the SSDM updates are going to come start before the UDO is over, but not at the expense of the UDO. It will be adoptable and ready on its own independently from those SSDM updates, which will continue for a little while after that point. So really, when we're talking UDO new zoning, we're talking by the end of 2028 independent of these other factors.

Okay. Yeah. Thank you guys for that clarification. So, I mean, essentially you're saying I hear you and we're actually kind of making this as fast as we can based on your feedback.

Yes. Great. Thanks, Chris. Any other questions on the timeline?

Me again. So when would the community and council conversation be for approving changes to the UDO?

As far as like interim review or the final consideration you're asking about?

Yeah, I guess where I'm getting at is we have a housing crisis. We also just experienced Hurricane Helene. I understand it takes a lot of time to do this well and a lot of community engagement to assess what potential changes we would make. But the goal to me is to change the laws, right? Is to change the plan, not to do the planning process. The goal is so that we can reshape our development rules so that we start getting the develop we need for a climate safe community and a community that has better housing solutions. So what I'm trying to understand is there's a long planning process. I understand that takes time. When will we actually be making changes so that our community is benefiting from the updates?

Sure. So as proposed, the final adoption of new UDO is slated for the final quarter of 2028. So we're not proposing at this time like modules of adoption. You know, we've seen some communities do that and maybe there's pros and cons of that approach. But in this approach, based on the scope we've been developing, it would be a complete rewrite and then a complete adoption of that entirely new UDO because we are throwing kind of the old UDO. We're keeping aspects of it, but it's an entirely new regulatory framework that relies on the interplay of all the different components.

Yeah, and if I can add to that, Will, we do anticipate significant changes to our actual zoning districts throughout the city. And that is something that, thinking about how this works, right, the districts establish the location where regulations come into play, and then the text establishes those regulations within those districts. A complete rewrite like this makes a modular implementation or a step-by-step implementation very impractical to impossible when you're rewriting the whole scheme and structure of things because everything depends on everything else right so it would be difficult to do that it doesn't mean we can't have update points obviously there's going to be a lot of information flowing to the public our appointed boards are and you all in City Council throughout this process to or what and what's going to end up on the final table for adoption but with a full change like this it would be very difficult to do any phased implementation thank you hey councilman sir weigh in just um a couple of concerns i share with the

I have a concern about what feels like a moratorium on any kind of housing policy until the end of 2028 or early 2029. I think that some things might come up. And so I just want to kind of raise my hand and say, hey, I think things might come up and we might need to tackle them as they happen. But I can get behind staff's effort to do this in as much of a chunk and full way as possible. But I do think things will come up. I don't think we should treat this like a moratorium. um additionally i want to highlight a concern that i've experienced in this kind of timeline and process and that is we will get informed this is happening there is funding involved it's all very exciting and the next thing we will see is a community-facing document of all of the findings And then there will be these things that council wishes were in there or thought was going to be considered but isn't. And then we get a little kerfuffle on is stuff missing and will it take longer? So to me, these processes will go better if council is part of the discovery of what needs. not just a responsive reading of what staff and the consultant finds, if that makes sense. So earlier in the adventure, council needs to give some parameters, in my opinion, or we will end up prolonging a process based on this just advice from other parties. That's really my only concern. And again, I think things will come up. So I'm not willing to commit to not bringing any housing policy forward during that time.

Thank you, Councilman Hess.

And maybe I misunderstood. So we're not saying that we're not going to make any amendments up until then, correct? Because there are things that I think we could do. Or is that what you were saying?

I think the process that has been defined here with staff and the consultant does indicate that we would have a whole lot of engagement conversations. And I definitely hear council member Turner. about making sure council is aware, involved in the things that are coming forward. But the concern about bringing isolated amendments forward during this process is a real concern. What we don't want to happen is we find that we've asked PNZ, we find that council has made changes and then a subsequent change that needs to happen impacts that change. And then we have to go back and do it all over again. So we want to do it well. I hear you, we hear you all that you all want to make sure that we can act as swiftly as possible on these changes. But from a process standpoint, to do it well and without a high level of confusion and follow up and go back, we would need to do it in a comprehensive manner. Ben, you came up, I don't know if you want to share anything additional. No, we're taking your feedback today as well.

Go ahead. I don't have anything. That's I was. That's great manager Wesleyan. I agree with your comments.

Great, thank you. Anything else on the timeline? We have few more slides talking about the scope and some more details of the project. Maybe it maybe it kind of informs a little more of what we're looking to do. If I go to the next slide. Great, so this is just a little more detail on the minor update to the Living in Asheville Comprehensive Plan. So that was adopted in 2018. Some of that data was from 2017 and 2016, even earlier. So an important portion of that project's component will be to update the baseline growth projections since 2018, incorporating impactful events in the meantime, and then significant development and demographic trends that have happened really in the past 10 years. we'll also be examining the future land use map so this is the kind of land use policy that the comprehensive plan sets that the zoning districts respond to specifically looking at flooded corridors and realign some of those designations to support housing capacity commercial stability without encroaching onto the sensitive environmental areas there thereby Finally, as mentioned earlier, making the comprehensive plan more usable, user friendly, including opportunities for more compatibility with other city plans. So a better understanding of how the comprehensive plan works in conjunction with other city plans so that our entire policy framework for the city is a little more, I guess, rationalized and easier to understand from both staff, policymakers and the general public.

Next slide, please.

So regarding the Unified Development Ordinance update, we will be replacing wholesale the current UDO, which is 30 years old and has 300 cumulative amendments to make a unified, user-friendly regulatory system for the city. Regarding housing supply, we're going to incorporate clear objective regulations for missing middle housing. So really building on some of the recent successes and expanding housing choice while maintaining neighborhood character. right sizing and rationalizing the zoning districts so as chris mentioned we have over 50 zoning districts in the city some of them are very basic zoning districts some are very intensive form districts that may or may not be overly complicated and throughout this process we have the opportunity to evaluate our entire zoning scheme throughout the city right size the number of districts the complexity of those districts so that the goals in the comprehensive plan can be achieved finally regarding the technical standards as mentioned earlier the update to the standard specifications and details manual with a focus on resiliency and the incorporation of green stormwater infrastructure

Next slide.

So this slide breaks down the overall community engagements. We will be working on refining this and adding more detail to it as we finalize the scope and contracts. But essentially there will be three main waves of community engagement where the consultant team will be coming to town, engaging with the community and stakeholders and policymakers at the city. Those three stages are breaking down into the discovery and visioning phase, vision and land use, and finally the code and zoning kind of nuts and bolts creation and review process. So that is all going to happen in an accessible approach in a way that is designed to address the barriers to participation that currently exist. These include things such as language translation, and efforts to reach historically underserved populations by meeting people where they are. And a means of achieving that would be to utilize the city's community ambassadors program. So this would extend the outreach into those hard to reach populations through peer to peer connections. We are planning to convene a number of focus groups on different subject areas or populations in the city. This includes the renter population, non-English speaking residents, people with disabilities, service industry workers, and low to moderate income households. Finally, we will utilize a digital hub to centralize information, and that's being presented to the public using our publicinput.com platform that the CDRA utilizes for most of its boards and commissions and project outreach. These will include things like interactive maps, educational explaining materials, surveys, project tracking, and the like. So we'll be utilizing that digital hub as a one-stop shop for folks to engage and kind of a jumping off point for engagement for this project. Any questions on engagement before I move on to the next slide? Thank you. So this slide breaks down the funding for the project. So the total base contract amount is $1,403,000. As mentioned earlier, this includes $1.2 million from the CDPGTR award funds that are allocated, and then a supplemental $203,000 from the city's stormwater enterprise funds. There are some items, such as the rewriting of the downtown riverfront design guidelines that are classified as future future additional tasks that would be completed with additional funding so that portion of the project is not currently in the base contract amount, but it's anticipated to be. to be completed with the opportunity for additional funding, which could include hazard mitigation grant program funding that is not awarded yet at this time. Next slide, please. So next immediate steps include the, oh yeah, Councilwoman Turner.

you may be on mute yep sorry about that so uh you just mentioned the downtown and riverfront guidelines i was under the impression we had already funded that update maybe something that was really a concerted effort for many years maybe it fell by the wayside in planning because it was around covet or maline time but we had already acted on that and council

voted on updating those things it was a thing so what happened to that um so there have been uh maybe discussions of efforts update the downtown design guidelines um maybe a couple years ago before Helene there there was discussion of that but my understanding um there's never any um any funding allocated towards that effort nor dedicated staff time to work on that that has been working on and off kind of over the years and fits and starts to be honest to update those guideline documents we have a lot of um a lot of work that we can incorporate and move into this effort but there was there has not been recently a dedicated project or funding source to complete that work which is why we've rolled it into this project

And just adding to Will's answer, we did at one time have some money set aside for not the full amount it would take to redo the design guidelines, set aside for work on that sometime pre-Haleen that was there. I would have to actually to get you an exact answer on that be going through and looking at the budgets and tracking the base budgets. But I believe through the budget reductions and that money is not is i don't believe it is still there and earmarked for that purpose but we can follow up on that for sure

please do because it wasn't for nothing that we prioritize that. Council may not fully recall, but you know, we've got this amazing downtown and we've got some very old design guidelines. And quite frankly, the guidelines themselves still have pages that say insert picture here. So there's just a glaring unfinished document guiding our downtown and riverfront areas. Like it's, it's a, You broke up towards the end there.

We might have lost her sound.

I think council member Hess

I have nothing more to add. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Council Member Turner, are you back?

She is driving, so I may go out, but I'm completely on hand to go down, but it is malfunctioning, so I'm good.

All right. Will?

Great. Thank you. Yeah, so anyway, just to conclude, the next steps being the request for the contract authorization on September 8th. We'll then be working on a couple internal items, including the final project charters and communications and engagement plan. Also finalizing, of course, the scope of work and final contract with the selected consultant team. We are planning to have the initial kind of visit by the consultant team or portions thereof in mid-October. Those details are still pending, but that is kind of the plan for now. And then the initial wave one engagement is not specified at this point, but I believe it would be sometime later in the fall before the holidays. So those are details that we're going to be working out over the next really couple weeks or so to nail down and finalize throughout the final contract portion of this project. I believe that's it for the slides. Any last questions? Be glad to answer.

Thank you, Will. Chris, any more questions? We have a couple follow-up on this one, but any more questions from council? All right. Seeing none, that is all we have for the briefing today. Is the mayor still here? I'm here. I'm just in shock. No, I'm just kidding.

Okay. All right. So that's it. We'll see everyone Tuesday night. We do have a manager's report, a consent agenda, and then just the one item regarding tenants. So kind of a short agenda for Tuesday night. So see you all then. Thank you.

Thank you.