CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Charlottesville City Council will vote on allocating $3 million of a $7 million state budget appropriation for transitional housing and workforce development services to the Salvation Army for its Center of Hope project.

This funding would come as the Salvation Army announced Aug. 10 it needed to raise $6.3 million in a 21-day period. Director of Development Aimee Andrews said the Ridge St. facilities are in desperate need of renovation.

“This year, I put in budget requests for both the Salvation Army and the city, to provide the Salvation Army Center of Hope shelter, but also to provide the low-barrier shelter for the city,” Deeds said last week. “What we came up with the conference was $7 million to the city to decide how it’s going to be spent, to be divvied up between the low-barrier shelter and the Center of Hope.

“Candidly, that’s more money than I thought we could get, I asked for more money,” Deeds said. “I worked really hard to get it because it’s an issue that I think will not go away until we put some real dollars behind it and I applaud the leadership of both the city and Salvation Army for trying to address the very real issue.”

According to the Council policy brief, “The new Center for Hope will be a four-story, approximately 47,000 square feet building which is an increase in capacity of 15,000 square feet. This will increase bed capacity from 55 to 114 beds and an additional 7 two-bedroom suites will be included. It will also increase the Salvation Army’s feeding capacity from 60 to 120 seats.”

If the Salvation Army is successful, Andrews said the hope is to break ground on the new facility in 2027. It’s expected to take 18 months to complete, with a total cost of $28.2 million, $22 of which is for the building.

“There is no direct financial impact to the City as the funds are a state appropriation,” according to the brief. “Funding will only be released to the Salvation Army upon the city receiving the funds from the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

The item is the second in a short agenda of action items at the City Council regular meeting.

The first is a public hearing on the city closing of a 162-foot section of Castalia St. to create a private alleyway in a 13-unit residential development 0f 221 and 303 Palatine in the Belmont neighborhood.

That development, however, has not yet been approved by the city at this time.

The afternoon meeting session are reports on a 2026 Regional Solid Waste Management Plan for the Thomas Jefferson Solid Waste Management Unit.

“The Plan documents existing facilities and programs, summarizes reported recycling and disposal data, identifies known data limitations, evaluates future needs, and establishes a structure for coordinated regional action,” according to the policy brief.

The plan goes through 2046 and must be updated every five years.

The second report is title “Tech and City Government” and includes a work session on various aspect of tech use in Charlottesville government, including AI policy development in city functions and on the city website as well as cybersecurity.

Among notable items on the consent agenda is a $2 million release of contingency funds the city was holding for the schools until the state budget was finished, appropriation of $750,000 received from the Jefferson Scholars Foundation to the CIP paid to the city for Clarke Court that the Foundation purchased for its own private use, and an additional $204,017 toward the jail renovation.

According to the policy brief on that allocation, “The City’s FY 2027 budget allocates $5,011,040 for the City’s share of ACRJ costs, but the final required amount is $5,215,057.”

“The City’s FY 2027 budget included a figure for ACRJ that was derived from an initial estimate that had previously been shared with the ACRJ board, not from ACRJ’s final approved budget,” according to the brief. “This discrepancy became apparent when the City received an invoice from ACRJ in July.”