Board of Supervisors Public Meeting on Courts Expansion Project   10/24/2016

Ms. Miranda?

Mr. Sheffield?

Yes.

Yes.

Okay, so we're calling this portion of the meeting to order.

Welcome everybody, thank you very much for coming.

We very much appreciate you joining us for our special meeting to hear about our court options.

Before we start, I wanna make a couple of quick introductions.

We have our officer here today, Corporal McKeel.

Carrico.

I was struggling with his name.

I'm bad with names.

But anyway, thank you very, very much, Officer, for being here.

We very much appreciate it.

On the dais with the Board of Supervisors, we have our County Attorney, Greg Kamptner.

We also have our County Executive, Tom Foley.

And to give the presentation, we have Bill Latire, our Deputy County Executive, and Trevor Henry, our Director of Facilities and Environmental Services.

and the way this meeting is going to go tonight is that we're going to get a overview of the options from Trevor Henry and probably Bill Eteri and probably Tom Foley.

and after that, we'll have clarifying questions from the board, maybe a little bit of discussion and then we'll open it up for public comment.

Because we do have a lot of people here this evening, we are gonna go to two minutes instead of three, that's to make sure that everybody gets heard because sometimes when we do the three minutes, we have lots of people that wanna speak, people end up leaving because they get really tired.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'll be making some opening comments and some closing comments, and Trevor Henry will be covering the options and the specifics.

Can you all hear me okay?

I'm not sure if I can.

Maybe they can better.

Is that better?

Madam Chair, after approximately five years of study by staff and our architects, board review and consideration, and discussion with the city of Charlottesville and downtown stakeholders on the county court system expansion, our purpose tonight is to provide a comprehensive review with the broader public.

of the five distinct options currently under consideration for the future needs of county courts and obviously to receive some public comments.

While much of the review over this period of time has focused on the downtown option almost exclusively and addressing such things as parking challenges,

More recent considerations have taken a more comprehensive look at meeting court needs with more of a strategic lens, which has led to some broader options for consideration.

So for context, I think it's important to discuss for just a minute why the county is even looking at multiple options rather than simply solving the parking issue with the city.

And so the slide that you see before you has some of those reasons.

First of all, expansion of the county courts represents the single largest investment of taxpayer dollars in over 20 years.

And I would venture to say we actually looked back to the early 1970s with Western Albemarle High School as probably the only project that came close to this in terms of equal dollars.

So it has probably been since the 70s that we've ever even considered a project as significant as this in terms of cost of between $27 million and $40 million and requires careful consideration or view of other options that may save money for county taxpayers while still meeting the needs of the court.

So that's the first reason that I think a broader set of options was being looked at.

Secondly, over the past six to ten months,

The county's strategic plan has established urban development, redevelopment, and revitalization as the highest priority and sees investment of these tax dollars or a portion of these dollars in the county's urban areas as a possible opportunity to help achieve this goal while also meeting the needs of the courts.

And it's important to point out we spent the last 10 years working on our comprehensive plan, envisioning new urban places that would address the needs of the future, more dense population to protect our urban areas and infrastructure and amenities in those areas were pretty critical.

So a lot of the vision that we have thought about in the past is tied to this strategic goal that the board has established over the last six to ten months for urban places.

So carefully considering opportunities to leverage this type of investment as other communities have done has become pretty essential to trying to implement the comp plan.

Another of the big reasons for looking at broader options.

And finally, the county has established economic development as one of the highest priorities and sees this investment in the county as a possible opportunity to serve as a catalyst to spur economic development and growth in the county tax base through a public-private partnership.

again while still addressing the needs of the courts.

And I'll talk towards the end about this concept of a public-private partnership some more and how that might lead to some economic development to help deal with some of our financial struggles.

We have spent the last five years talking pretty extensively after the recession about how we will get out of our financial condition and some of the challenges we have budget-wise.

Thinking strategically and taking advantage of opportunities to leverage our investment for economic development will be critical if we're going to be successful in growing our tax base rather than simply increasing taxes year after year.

So this becomes a potentially important economic development project to avoid that.

So consideration of other options in addition to the downtown option is not about a disagreement with the city of Charlottesville over parking.

In fact, the city has been a good partner over the last six to ten months in trying to negotiate a solution to parking.

and in fact while final terms have not been worked out or had not been worked out they did offer 100 parking spaces with some various terms that again we just discontinued because of the focus on some broader issues.

Instead this consideration of additional options is more about possible opportunities to leverage an already planned and very significant expenditure and about a strategic focus on the county's future.

Thank you, Mr. Foley, Madam Chair, members of the board.

It's an honor to be here tonight to discuss courts.

It's been a very busy summer looking at some of these options and some of the requests that the board has been discussing over the past several years.

My goal tonight is to walk through a little bit of the background as to why are we talking about this project.

A little bit of the timeline to provide context and then we will go through or I will go through the five options.

Information is on the website.

We have the studies that are the basis of the information that will be provided tonight.

My goal is to provide hopefully the right level of information for the board and those in attendance so that I can answer questions that you might have already.

So why are we talking about a court expansion project?

Back in 2011, the Board of Supervisors directed staff to go out with a RFP to evaluate our courts, to evaluate our current conditions, to evaluate our caseload forecast based on

growth trends based on that information come back with a program plan with options for three different futures for the courts and as well provide an order of magnitude cost.

What that analysis found kind of at a summary level is

Right now, we need to do a court expansion.

We have one general district court.

We have one circuit court.

At times, those courts are exceeding the capacity of one courtroom, and we've made some modifications over the past five, ten years to accommodate that.

But our data basically says right now we have a problem that we need to address.

What the graphic that is in front of you is a

A projection of court cases, we've had two different architects actually study that and do statistical analysis and both were in agreement that we need two courtrooms now for both circuit court and general district court and at some time downrange, 20 years, 15 plus, 20 years, there may be a third court set for general district.

There's obviously a little bit of ambiguity to that as you get further in time.

but I think part of the findings was a strong case for needing two courts now both for circuit court and general district.

JNDR was studied and the belief is JNDR is in a pretty stable place for now plus 15, 20 years.

The other piece of it was an assessment of our existing conditions.

The last major renovation that occurred up at the Court Square location for General District and Circuit Court was in 1986.

We have done some maintenance, some improvements, some building, some systems upgrades over that period of time, but we're really getting to the end of the life of a lot of those systems.

So we have some pent up maintenance that we need to do there.

An example is we have to replace the elevator shaft.

That's about a half million dollar project.

And that's coming up in a year or so.

So the timing of making a decision is pressing so that we know whether we're investing money the way we should.

So there's certainly a maintenance and facility side of it.

But the study really hit home on the need to modernize and improve our security of the facility.

Right now, we secure the courtroom and then we secure the judge when the judge transitions through the hallways.

There is a lot of detail in the study.

I won't go into all the depth, but what the study recommends is a complete modernization, be it at the downtown option or others.

that we basically have a separation of circulation that we keep judges separate from regular pedestrians, if you will, from prisoners.

That's an important point.

Also, and I want to get this right, I will talk later when we get into the discussion of courts about court sets.

What we have now at our facilities are we have courts

Court sets are a courtroom that has all of the appropriate adjacencies, waiting area, sound lock vestibule, victim witness waiting area, attorney conference rooms, all that are adjacent to the courts.

The courtroom itself, of course,

jury deliberation where it is appropriate for the circuit court, things like restrooms adjacent with the jury room, chambers that are adjacent for the judges, holding cells that are adjacent, and all the proper security to get into that.

So as I talk about court sets, it's really not just the courtroom, it's the court plus all of those important adjacencies.

We have been talking courts actually long before I've worked at the county.

Going back to 2001, there's folks probably in the audience that served on that committee.

I know Mr. Lotteri to my right served on that committee where they did, the city and the county funded a very large study about courts and locations and options.

and it was a Mosley study back in 2001.

That process led us to deciding to acquire the city and the county the levy property which consists of the levy building, the levy parking lot, the adjacent Jessup House and then 7th and Market Parking.

That acquisition also allowed a later Juvenile Domestic Relations Court construction project that was co-funded and managed by the city, co-funded by the county.

The Levy, actually, Levy Opera House was used as swing space to allow that construction to happen.

I raise this as saying that courts have been on the discussion docket for a long time.

Fast forward to 2010, the city and the county did another small study on Levy, and really wanting to drill down, okay, can Levy support our future growth for courts, specifically general district court?

Again, Mesley was hired for that study.

A series of options were looked at.

And if you recall on that first graph that showed the caseloads, I didn't really go through the different trend lines, but the first trend line was for the city, which showed it was pretty flat.

and the conclusion that the city made at the time of that study was we're good with one court set and they felt like their current accommodations for general district court was satisfactory and so they informed the county that they were not interested in pursuing a joint project.

That's what really led us to this latest round of effort the past five years, which was the January 2011 study.

I mentioned that when I first started.

We put an RFP out, we ended up hiring PSA Dewberry that did the analysis for us.

It took, I guess not surprisingly, a couple years to really get through that process.

interviews with stakeholders, with judges, with commonwealth attorney, with folks that use the court itself, with staff, as well as their caseload analysis and then finally their condition assessment.

That resulted in a report that was delivered in draft form at the end of 2012

Staff reviewed it with the board in 2013.

Board accepted the report and then directed staff to go back and have a formal meeting with the stakeholders, court stakeholders.

And I'm defining court stakeholders as the judges, commonwealth attorney, clerks, sheriff's office, bar representatives, those folks that are living in that court day to day.

We met with that group in 2013

I should mention that Jody Lewis from Community Engagement put a timeline together and we tagged in the timeline the board agenda items as well as any of the podcasts.

So that information is out there for the board and for the public.

Great job, Jody.

We went back to, staff presented back in May, basically the results of the stakeholder meeting and the direction really was to focus on the downtown option at that point.

The board directed staff to proceed with appraisals, to work with the city on that, and then to start teeing up the disposition of the property and items like parking.

That led us through summer into the fall of 2013.

We continued that effort.

We got our appraisals done and then briefed the board in end of 2013.

Fast forward to 2014, we had a significant changeover of board members.

So we briefed the board in March of that year on the background of the studies, the progress of the negotiations, where things stood.

That board asked for another meeting with court stakeholders, which was actually a joint meeting with our board, with the stakeholders.

We had city representation there.

And again, it was kind of a review of all the options and getting real-time feedback from stakeholders in that meeting.

That followed up with direction for staff to

really continue in parallel focusing on the downtown option, but also keeping others, I guess, on the back burner.

July of that year, and I'm almost through this timeline, I apologize.

July of that year really is what I termed as kind of a game changer.

There was a joint meeting of the city and the board.

At that meeting, the city indicated that they were interested to taking a look at Levy again as a potential co-location, which really was the change of assumption from back in 2010.

The city council and the board assigned two board members, two city council members, executive staff to form a subcommittee or steering committee and really to go back and look at our options.

Additionally, we co-founded Moseley again to look at Levy to come up with concepts that might work for both jurisdictions.

That took us the balance of the year.

Summer 2015, we presented an option using the downtown historic court building, court square and Levy that was accepted by the committee and that's actually what is the current basis of our CIP.

both for the city and for the county, which is a co-located general district court.

I'll get into a little more detail about that here in a minute.

Fast-forwarding to this year, a new board, April 2016, we had another meeting to update status of this project, to familiarize the new board members with the options.

The board

directed staff in the May timeframe to reconsider COB, County Office Building, as an option.

And in a way that was different than how the Dewberry study looked at it, which was actually looking at the facility from either a renovation or a renovation addition perspective as a way that maybe might also meet our needs.

And so really through the summertime, staff worked with several options that we'll discuss here tonight.

and then in parallel with that was a pretty intensive strategic planning effort that was going on with the board that has developed the priorities that Mr. Foley mentioned just a few minutes ago and so here it is a combination of really five years of work going back to the Dewberry study with the iterations that occurred over the summer and then overlaying that with the recent strategic planning efforts.

So that's just the timeline.

Let's move on to the actual options under consideration.

So these options, again, tied to the information that is out online, option one through five,

This is just at a broad brush level.

I'll go into a little bit of detail on each of them.

I apologize, I'm going to have to read from my notes from time to time here.

Option one is the downtown levee option.

This is the option that is the current basis of our CIP.

It involves a renovation of the existing court square for circuit court and then a renovation addition project of the co-owned levee opera house and the addition.

This project would again co-locate city's general district court and the county's for now and for future growth for the county.

This is the option that the city is supportive of.

There was a press release endorsing it again today.

And from all our meetings and interviews with stakeholders, it is the overwhelming favorite from their perspective.

That's option one.

Option two through option four all involve an addition here at the county office building to house either a general district court alone, a potential general district court co-located with the city, or an option four, basically all our courts here.

And so there's some nuances on these options that will probably be better as I go through them one at a time.

but basically it's a variation of a general district court use or all of our courts down here with an addition concept.

Only options one and two currently would involve city participation for the co-location of the general district court.

And then finally, option five was based from one of the original study options, which was a full relocation of all our courts.

And when I say all, for the scope of this presentation, circuit court and the general district court functions

with the ability to future phase JNDR or other court sets as needed.

But option five would be a full relocation into the county.

The assumption is there would be a partnership, private, public partnership.

In this option, there is no land acquisition in the cost.

It's assumed that that's part of that process.

And again, I'll go into that in greater detail.

There are a couple of nuances with the option two through four, which I think will make more sense if I go through them as I get to those slides.

But as a broad brush, options one and two involve partnership with city and co-location of general district court.

Options three through four are various options for just accounting.

All right, option one, the downtown levy option.

I'm going to provide a little bit of scope background on it.

And then one of the things that we tried to do is we tried to overlay the same set of evaluation criteria across all of them.

So we were consistent in those bullets or those attributes.

But let me talk a little bit about the scope of that.

I think I will be through, I'm going to give myself 10 minutes and I should be through all of the options, so I will effort to stay on that pace.

This downtown option involves primarily, the most complex part of the project would be the work over at the Levy Building.

There is a historic Levy Opera House of about 9,000 square feet, and then there is what is referred to in our study as an 80s addition.

for that is currently there.

The concept in both the Dewberry study and the Mosley studies is to remove that addition and basically to build a new addition attaching it to the Levy Opera House.

The concept that is based on our current CIP is that we would build a lower level for

A small amount of secured parking, about 10 spaces.

The location for the sheriff holding cells and the location for the sheriff to bring the prisoners in for court.

Second floor, which would be the ground floor, would be where our clerks for the city and the county both would reside.

The second level would be a mirrored image court set.

One court set for the city, one court set for the county.

Those court sets would have

as I mentioned earlier would have the court itself, it would have the judge's chambers, hearing rooms, all the appropriate adjacencies, and all the appropriate separation of function.

And then the top floor, the third floor would be

basically the mirror image of the second it would be a second court set for the county and then a third court set which would be for future growth of the county and again based on our projections that's 15-20 years out that the likelihood of needing that court set would occur.

I want to pause for a minute.

We did make a change to our cost numbers on Friday.

We put information out on Monday.

As I was scrubbing the information and working with the executive office, I realized that in our original estimate, we had included the finish out of that third court set.

Whereas in option four, which I'll talk about in a minute, we had basically finished that to a rough-in level.

So we wanted to do apples-to-apples comparison.

The reality is we'd want to build this court set when we do our main construction because we're really limited on the site and the phasing.

So you've got to build it all at once.

It's not going to be needed for 15, 20 years, but what's in our number now assumes that you're going to build it to at least a white box plus level that it would be office space that could be used for other functions until the time that you would need it for a court.

Additionally, we thought it was important to construct it to the level that when you do want to convert it to a court, you're not doing a lot of heavy construction that would disrupt.

We wouldn't be able to do it during court hours, so we'd have to do it at night, adds to the cost.

So I just wanted to take a note that we did make two minor cost changes in what we put out on Monday.

It was to actually lower the cost by $370,000 in option one, and we raised it by 450 on option four.

And again, it all centered around that third court set.

So our levy project would house four courts, two clerks, and it would be the location of our Commonwealth attorney.

We would go back and we would renovate the court square facility, modernize that, add security, improve our storage for the clerk, and basically do a complete renovation of that for two courts that's for the circuit court.

So I'm going to move on to the next one.

There were some questions about costs on this one.

This is a higher cost as compared to some of the others.

There is a premium certainly for construction because of the location and the nature of it.

Construction companies build it in urban areas all the time.

It's not unmanageable, it's just that you're paying a little higher premium because of where it is, what it's adjacent to.

Just as a manager of this kind of projects, the lack of storage, the lack of lay down area will create some concerns.

Again, can be done, and we've done it before, but I think that's driving some of the cost, and then the other piece of it is you're building it out to that

you know that future where some of the other options are just to the two courts and so you have both a square footage change and the type of construction.

Alright, our option two, this is, and I should mention on option one, it requires legislative action in order to locate the general district court there.

Our option two,

I'm getting ahead of myself, sorry guys.

Let me read down through the attributes real quick on option one before I move on.

We feel that this maintains our courts in a central historic downtown location.

The final parking accommodations are being negotiated but not yet fully negotiated as Mr. Foley mentioned.

We don't feel that this adds economic development value to the county.

Certainly the most convenient option for the stakeholders that work in the courts.

It is definitely going to improve the operational efficiency between the general district courts,

to work together in a way that would add efficiencies.

There is some opportunity with the future phasing, as I mentioned for that third court set, but really not much beyond that.

It does not support the recent strategic redevelopment placemaking priorities the board has adopted, and as I mentioned, it would require legislative approval.

All right.

Now moving on to option two, resetting.

This option keeps the same concept of circuit court at Court Square.

So I won't go back to that discussion other than that it has that assumption built into it.

We looked at using our county office building as a way to house a general district court.

We looked at a bunch of different scenarios.

Could we just do a renovation?

We found that given the layout of the facility, the fact that it was an old school, really the most effective way to accommodate this scope was to build a small three-story addition which would be in the courtyard.

It's just to the south of the board auditorium.

the idea is that you can you could build the addition it would be an infill addition tied into the rest of the building it would allow you to do some things with with separation of your judges from prisoners with the public and so that that really enables that that piece of it the concept in option two is

and what was proposed to the city is to co-locate the county's general district courts here as well as the city's court and a clerk.

And so what the concept would be is three-story addition.

The county would have our court sets on the first two additions.

The city would be on the third.

Our county general district clerk's office would be in a renovated space that's currently on the first floor that's adjacent.

The second floor would be renovated space for the Commonwealth Attorney and then the third floor would be renovated space for the city clerk.

This option obviously would require the displacement of staff and as part of this option we estimated approximately 35,000 square foot facility would need to be built or we would need space acquired of that size somewhere in the county to accommodate the display staff.

and that's reflective in the cost numbers.

Looking at the attributes on this option, we felt that although not as close as the Levy building, that it would still maintain our general district courts in the downtown location.

Just on an aside, my office was moved up to the Jessup House this past winter.

It was moved while we did some renovations interior for the second and fourth floor.

and we would often time ourselves on how quickly we could get to Jessup House and back walking.

And I think Frank Pohl holds a record of around six minutes.

But my point in, and that was downhill.

Uphill?

That was downhill.

But my point in stating that is that it is walkable.

Our staff would frequently walk.

Now, middle of winter, maybe not, but 10 minutes uphill, call it seven minutes downhill on average is what it was for us.

So certainly it was a walkable situation and that was from the Jessup House.

So we believe it does maintain the courts in the downtown location.

Parking challenges we feel go away, at least for general district court, between some modifications to our parking lot area as well as the relocation of functions from the county would free up additional space.

So we think that that challenge goes away.

This provides economic development value by the county investing upwards of $10.5 million somewhere in the county for a construction project.

Again, it assumes a development partner.

We believe it is relatively convenient option for the downtown stakeholders.

Again, not quite as convenient as option one.

We still have those efficiencies with co-location of general district courts that have been discussed.

provides for future phasing, although that future phasing would require displacement of either staff or function.

So there still would be cost of that at both locations.

This does provide opportunity to support the new county strategic redevelopment placemaking plan and would require legislative approval.

So again, this option was reviewed.

It was actually discussed in negotiations with the city.

The city still favored the option number one as the primary option for courts.

So when we went through that iteration, we were asked as staff, well could we, using that model, is there a way to locate just the county's general district courts to the county office building without having to display staff and build a 35,000 square foot building in the county.

We took another turn on our study, worked with the architect, and we found that if we could expand that addition, so same concept, addition to the south of the auditorium, the infill in the courtyard, basically if you double that addition, we could locate the clerk's office and two general district courts

Generally, within that addition, we still would displace a little bit of IT and a little bit of the common area.

But really, we would minimize the impacts on overall staff and function.

This option would require us to do a little more to the parking lot.

Since we're not relocating staff and function, we would have to address that a little more aggressively.

So that's built into the cost.

But this option then assumes two court sets, clerk, all generally contained in the addition.

Not a full relocation of the Commonwealth Attorney, but we would have offices for the Commonwealth Attorney here to house out for day operations.

Looking at our criteria, we feel that again, this maintains our courts in a downtown location.

We say no parking challenges, although there's a little more work to do on the parking lot to accommodate economic development value is only really if the board would then take the savings, if you will, in this project as it compares to option one and reinvest it out in the urban ring.

again, relatively convenient for downtown stakeholders as a previous option.

We lose the operational efficiency by the co-location of general district courts with the city, so that option or that efficiency goes away.

Again, provides for future phasing, although in this case, certainly that future phasing would require some displacement of county function, and again, requires legislative approval.

This is of the five options the least costly option.

A lot of that also is because it's one of the smaller square footage options and because we're using a lot of the existing structure for entrance, for access, things like that.

Our fourth option and the last county office building option, again, basically takes the option two concept, which was the co-location with the city.

It takes that exact square footage, but only uses it for county functions.

Same square footage, same concept, three story addition.

That addition will be two court sets and in this case we're proposing the third court set which would be the third floor get built to a white box finish for future use.

We have to displace and renovate three of the wings of the building.

The difference in this one compared to option two is that we're suggesting using this facility, our auditorium, that we basically could convert to two court sets.

We would do it horizontally.

It would be a pretty expansive construction project, but the size and the space of this facility actually would allow us to build two court sets here, which would be for the general district court, excuse me, for the circuit court.

So at the end of the day we would basically take by the addition of infill construction project and the conversion of the auditorium and the renovation be able to locate our court needs in this building

This does require a little larger building in the county.

Again, either built or obtained.

We estimate about 40,000 square feet.

The option two estimated 35,000 square feet.

The difference really is relating to this auditorium space and enabling that at a future county site.

but it would house our needs for now and what we think would be the next 20 plus years here at the county office building.

There would obviously be a lot of details that would have to get worked out and any of the options that involve staff relocation as far as which functions go, what makes most sense, where do they go, all that would need to be sorted out but we feel that we have the right square footages and costs in here to do that.

We believe this option

would again maintain the courts in our downtown location.

We would relieve the parking challenges between some renovations to the parking lot and the displaced staff and those functions that would go into the county.

This is a high economic development value to the county because of the 40,000 square foot building.

Again, it seems to be a partnership as part of that.

We think that it'll be, again, relatively convenient.

for overall users of the court stakeholders.

It does not provide any operational efficiency for the general district courts, although I do believe there probably would be some gained efficiencies between the circuit and the general district court for the county to be located here.

Sheriff's office would be here, Commonwealth Attorney would be here as well.

It does provide opportunity for future phasing with the third court set for general district court.

It is supportive of our redevelopment strategic planning goals.

And finally, this one would require a referendum because we would be moving the county seat.

The final option is a full relocation of the courts to somewhere in the county.

The assumption again is that it would be with a develop partnership, developer partnership.

A little bit on the programming of this.

One of the studies that's online is a PSA Dewberry study.

That study included programming information.

One of the options was called a Greenfield site.

That Greenfield site program was for circuit court, for general district court, all the support functions, and JNDR court.

The square footage in that study was estimated at 95,000 square feet for all of that function.

Staff basically drew down from that study, we pulled out the JNDR component of that.

That could be a future phase.

and then we also, in the study itself, it lists four general district courts were in that assumption.

We reduced that to two.

So the difference between the study and the number that we're using for this estimate is about 10,000 square feet, but it pulled that scope out and we think it is apples to apples with all the other options.

So this would be two circuit courts, two general district courts, all of the associated functions, sheriff's office, commonwealth attorney, court services unit, all the maintenance support services, all that part of the facility that's needed.

We also adjusted our cost numbers based on recent cost data from Hanover County.

Hanover is completing, should be substantially complete, maybe even this week,

of 115,000 square foot court complex that is housing their general district, their circuit court, and their J&DR court.

One of my colleagues and I went down a couple weeks ago to tour it.

It was a pretty impressive facility.

It's situated on seven acres, and it has a lot of the attributes that I discussed from kind of that modernization and court construction kind of best practices.

We revised our cost estimate based on that program.

Their all-in cost number for that project was just under $350 a square foot.

Hard cost was around $250.

They had another $100 that were soft costs.

So their number was around just under 350.

We've estimated at 400 to account for timing and then a little smaller footprint means a cost per square foot or a little higher.

So we think we've adjusted that properly.

The attributes on this

would be that we would be moving courts to a site in Almar County.

Again, land acquisition is not part of any of these options to move court or county function into the county.

Parking challenges would be met through the new location.

We feel this is the highest economic development value to the county.

Again, it's dependent on the partnership.

Least convenient option for downtown stakeholders.

So those stakeholders that,

serve in the work on the city courts or JNDR.

As stated in previous meetings back in April of 2014, this provides kind of that separation that will be less convenient for certain for the stakeholders and have some operational issues potentially with that.

This does not provide any operational efficiency for the general district courts as conceived in options one or two.

This would provide for future phasing for JNDR and other court needs.

And it does support the strategic redevelopment goals for the board.

And then finally, this would require a voter referendum because again, it would move the court and the county seat into the county.

So I have covered a lot of materials.

I'm not sure, Rick, if I made my 10 minutes there.

I don't know if you're keeping an eye on me on that.

That's obviously a lot to go through but real important information.

We started off talking about why the board was even considering anything other than downtown and these options help to explain some of that.

The one thing I wanted to emphasize

However, was the first point that we raised about why we were looking at it was the savings involved in taxpayer dollars.

The savings in project cost, though maybe wasn't as crystal clear from the slides, ranges from $2 million to just under $13 million on total project costs.

As you look at the impact

of borrowing less money for those projects and what the annual cost in debt service is.

The savings actually in debt service before you have to get to a second phase of construction, 15 to 20 years out, ranges from $5.4 million in savings to about $14.8 million in savings over the 15 years prior to when you have to do a second phase.

Just wanted to point those out.

Those are on the spreadsheet.

They're highlighted.

But putting all that in perspective is sort of the reason for the board wanting to at least look carefully at how we spend some 40 million dollars.

And that kind of sums up the savings.

The other two things I talked about was

the strategic plan priority for redevelopment and revitalization of our urban areas and this concept of economic development benefit through a public-private partnership.

So one of the big questions that we've had is how does moving county courts or office facilities into the county generate economic development?

and what is envisioned with this public-private partnership?

Very legitimate questions and not things that we've spent a lot of time on here in the county in the past.

I want to spend a couple minutes on that.

Three of the five options specifically rely on a public-private partnership

to help make this a viable project going forward under these options.

So first of all, I mentioned that a majority of these options do call for a public-private partnership of some type to accommodate either the court system or county offices due to moving the county facilities into this county office building.

So we will displace folks if the courts move down here.

The savings realized under these options, which I've just mentioned, when compared with the cost of constructing courts downtown, is proposed to be reinvested in the county to serve as a catalyst to spur mixed use development through a partnership with a private developer.

So if we have to build a county office building out in the county by moving courts into this facility, because of the savings generated from the comparison downtown, we've got some money to invest out in the county that stays within the original budget established for the downtown option.

So it's important to say that first of all we're reinvesting those savings to help generate economic development to serve as a catalyst.

This concept is not simply about moving county facilities with the idea that it will automatically create economic development in some type of a if you build it they will come scenario.

but only proposed as a part of a partnership with the private sector to create development or redevelopment that would include office, retail, commercial, and other uses in a town center kind of concept.

If you could imagine a downtown Albemarle with streets and an attractive urban place where people work and go to restaurants and actually where there's retail and so forth.

That's the type of concept that we're talking about in mixed use development.

The type of mixed use development and vision called for in our comprehensive plan, in fact.

Simply moving county facilities from the city to the county without a partnership to spur economic development is not seen as an investment that would give much of a return.

So again, we're not talking about economic development just because we move a county facility into the county.

We're talking about that investment being a catalyst for things to develop around it for office space and for other uses that we have a need for in the county right now.

The bigger issue is the use of an already planned and significant investment as a catalyst in a partnership with development or business interest to incent development and redevelopment that will increase capital investment and the county's tax base.

We envision what other localities have already done across the country and in Virginia by using a public investment in partnership with the private sector to create an attractive urban place in the county which moves us towards the vision in our comprehensive plan of a walkable mixed-use development.

that not only provides for county court or office uses, but also creates the opportunity to address other needs.

As an example, to provide for other unmet office and light and dust uses to create space for startup companies that have outgrown their current locations in the community.

We do have small tech firms.

The city has been very successful down on the downtown mall of attracting startup tech firms.

When they get big enough to need more space, there's really nowhere for them to go.

And we've had this conversation in the community for quite some time.

We envision that this investment in the county with county facilities through a partnership would then lead to additional space being built to accommodate some of those economic development needs.

So this is something again that other localities have done.

that we envisioned through this reinvestment of the savings that we'd realize in the court facilities.

To some, this may seem like a far-fetched idea, but other localities have done the same, establishing attractive urban environments that create a sense of place and expand the tax base.

Not only have others done it, we have had preliminary discussions with developers both in the community and outside of it who have looked at this concept and provided positive feedback about their interest in being involved in such a partnership.

Should one of the options be selected, these three to five,

It would require that the county begin the process of inviting interested partners to come forward with their ideas on how public and private investment could be combined to address the county's vision of mixed-use walkable urban places that also attract the private sector in terms of their bottom line but generate the tax revenues that the county needs to help meet its future needs.

So I thought it was good to spend a few minutes about that concept.

The slide that you see before you

is examples across the country where this concept has actually worked and generated revenues as well as providing for public facilities.

The pictures at the top are from Swanee, Georgia, top right, Burlington, Vermont, and also Greenville, South Carolina.

Even in our own comprehensive plan, work that we've done over the last 10 years, we worked on a master plan for the Northern 29 areas called Places 29.

And as we talked about this concept of mixed use and redevelopment,

We actually use some local examples to try to create the idea of how this might work.

The slides that you see before you on the next slide, if you imagine yourself standing at Fresh Market at Albemarle Square, this is an image that we have used in the past in our presentations.

If you imagine looking down from Fresh Market,

down to the ACAC and you see a sea of parking if you will to the left.

I think everybody's familiar with the shopping center.

If you imagine that through a redevelopment scenario and the location of county facilities we could spark the redevelopment of the shopping center, you see the next picture which shows another storefront multi-story buildings actually being built on the parking lot

Primarily this is done when you put in structured parking that allows that parking area to become more valuable for redevelopment.

And then as you look over time, this begins to evolve into this kind of urban place that people want to spend time in that's walkable,

where they can work and play and go to restaurants and so forth.

This kind of redevelopment is happening around the country and there's examples in Virginia.

The issue is county taking the savings from reducing its court costs by looking at other options to reinvest back in these urban areas to create the economic engine and the kind of place that we envision in our comp plan.

Another example that we've used here locally on the next slide is on a Berkmar Drive as you come from Rio Road and drive towards the mall.

Off in the distance there you can see another image of how this could be transformed with the kind of investments we're talking about in our urban areas.

As you look at the next slide you can see how that can be created as more of a pedestrian friendly area with mixed use and then over time that being completely transformed

again into the kind of urban environment with mixed use that is envisioned in our comp plan that we've been talking about frankly for the last 10 years but have not had a catalyst to help create.

These things don't happen because the county just goes out and spends a lot of money.

It happens in a public-private partnership where we bring something to the table and they bring something to the table that has a long-term benefit to us that does more than just deliver a court system.

So I wanted to at least cover the reasons that we're thinking about this.

We can stop and just think about downtown, but the board has spent particularly over the last six to ten months of this year thinking very heavily about our budget situation, the challenges that we had, as well as this real desire to address our aging urban infrastructure and aging urban areas and start to transform this community into something that we envision.

So that's the reason these options are on the table tonight.

This is a big decision.

Obviously the board can go any way that they want to here, but they wanted at least for you all to understand some of the reasons why other options are being considered.

And we tried to do that tonight along with covering the options the best we could.

We have provided lots of information to you that's been available for a past week I think to give you some of the details and over time we'll be glad to answer questions

also.

At this point, Madam Chair, I turn it back over to the board with maybe any clarifying questions.

We have put the chart up of the five options in a more summary form.

Thank you very, very much.

Do we have any questions for our staff for clarifying questions?

Not right now, I don't.

Well, it's almost like there's too many questions trying to sort it down to one or two.

I want to commend staff for the work they put in on this.

I think it's excellent.

And it is a summary of each one of these options that spells out very clearly the benefits, the risks that are there, and some of the consequences.

So I appreciate that.

I think a key thing is just this whole mixture of economic development and the court system and the investment in

Public money and public-private partnerships, that's such a multifaceted kind of thing.

I know there's been good and bad public-private partnerships, good and bad times when government buildings have helped economic development, a lot of times when they don't or they minimize it.

I think there's not necessarily an intuitive connection between having a court system and why that would

make an area more vibrant.

People going to court aren't necessarily in a shopping mood or going to a movie kind of mood.

So I think that should be explored a little bit more of whether that's the right kind of, it's one thing if it's a motor vehicle bureau, that's a lot of people coming through that are on their way and doing other errands and doing shopping and that kind of thing.

I don't think a court complex has that same pizazz or same activity level.

but I'm not trying to pick on it so much as just that I think that should be carefully explored I know in Williamsburg they did have a successful development that included courts but there was also a sense that it was right next to Williamsburg and it would have grown anyway so it's a little hard to see a cause and effect necessarily and I think that's often the case with doing economic analysis that you're not sure what caused the failure or success of it

I hear about the, so again, one more example, I've written a few things down, but it won't take up too much time, but the startups from the city, so many of those people, the entrepreneurs that are growing businesses, they wanna be near the downtown mall, and I think that's kind of a chicken and egg kind of thing.

Are we gonna be able to create a downtown mall kind of environment?

I think that's gonna be pretty hard to do in the county.

There's lots of rental space, I know, on Pantops.

If you just need office space, there's plenty of places to go that's not that far from downtown, but people want to be on the mall.

World Strides left Pantops to go to the downtown mall because of that.

That's just where they want to be.

So I think having a clearer idea of our unique way of

enhancing economic development it's to some extent it may need to happen organically to some extent we can plan it but I'm a little feeling muddled about this combination of saving money from the court

being downtown to put into economic development there's not kind of a direct cause and effect there so I feel like we have a lot more exploration and study to do and you know I'm excited about the economic development aspects and we're talking about changing zoning codes and expanding the number of things using that same

Albemarle Square, to have that be more residential, to have it more accessible, to do some of the kind of things that were in those visuals look great.

That putting our effort into those kind of things might be more of a focused economic development than trying to get the court squeezed in there too.

I just think the other side of that is that the court system, our legal system, is just so important to have it be respected, to be honored, to be

important.

That's why the judges wear robes and we solemnly swear and we have sheriffs that have spic and span beautiful uniforms on.

There's a sense of respect and awe and 272 years of being on Court Square that we want to respect and to be able to

have that, if we go out to the county, we have to have that same ambiance, that same reverence for our legal system.

And I don't think we want it just in a shopping center to, you know, the buildings there, the history, the Madison, Monroe, and of course Jefferson being in those buildings.

That adds so much to

He mentioned James City County, Williamsburg.

That's actually a great example of where a court facility has a part of a greenfield development in that case, but just outside of Williamsburg, drove the development of commercial and office space and a number of other things.

So we do have more information about that.

Hanover is kind of a straight up court facility.

We just use it as the latest cost per square foot.

But it wasn't done in this kind of a scenario.

However, there are examples in Virginia Beach, in James City County, in Fairfax, and some other places, in certain communities there where they've done this.

So yeah, we have more information we can share on this.

As I mentioned, even a developer has looked

come out to Albemarle and specifically driven around and looked at the market and done some research to try to look at what the potential is here and is interested in talking with us further if a board decision is to pursue that.

I would say too that keep in mind the courts being the facility is only one of the three options that

is on the table that would involve this public-private partnership.

I just have a few things that I want to make sure I understand.

On the option number five, you said, Trevor, that the JDR court is not included in this 85,000 square foot estimate.

That's correct.

if that's going to remain for some time downtown, there is a level of inefficiency with that situation.

I would like you to comment on that.

My other concern with this is that it probably will take longer to develop where we're going to go, how we're going to work that out, going to referendum, et cetera.

so we would probably have to do more interim shoring up of the existing courts in the meantime if it did take longer.

There has been some recent work that was done for the Commonwealth Attorney's Office to allow for some expansion there.

We adjusted the security a little bit so we've done a little bit there.

Thanks, Diantha.

I think depending on which option the board directs, if it is option five, we would want to put a pretty strong project plan together to really come up with the answer on how long will it take.

I think we've made an assumption that we would push fast towards a referendum in 2017.

and if we can maintain that schedule, then I think we wouldn't be in a scenario of having to do a lot of interim type things.

I think if we get into a situation where it takes us a couple of years to kind of get a location sorted out and a referendum, then maybe there is more of an interim work that we'd have to do.

and we certainly could provide that analysis.

And we have looked at using Levy as kind of swing space or some overflow space in the interim.

So we have put some thought to that.

There'd be a lot of work though because that facility is mothballed from a systems perspective.

You also mentioned that the public-private partnership number five option doesn't include a land cost assuming that we're going to get that somehow from the public-private partnership but then depending upon that situation we would either be paying rent or

Options 2, 4, and 5 would all rely upon the partnership bringing some property to the table, and there has been some interest expressed in that, but that is definitely true.

There's no land cost in there.

However, the other thing is that we have talked about the county owns the Mill Creek property in the southern development area, which is also a possibility if you did in partnership that we could put our facility there and work with the private side of this to redevelop the rest of the property.

So those are the things that would be a part of moving forward with the public-private partnership that we would have to figure some of that out.

Again, this has been done in other places.

Speaking from the board's policies and the comp plan, we would think that the ideal thing would be to do it in the center of the population, which is the Rio area where there are some larger landowners and some possibilities and it fits the redevelopment scenario.

Okay, go ahead.

There was just a couple things.

I don't want to take too much time doing this, so I'm trying to be fast to get to the public comment, but there was one statement that we don't believe that there is economic value to the county keeping the courts downtown in option one.

and I would say that I'm kind of concerned about that because I think we are a tourism area and I think that as Norman mentioned about the historic value of those courts that people do come here and instead of just stopping off at Monticello and going on down to Williamsburg they can come into Charlottesville and into our whole area and stay in Albemarle County or

Do all sorts of things so the tourism issue I think is a

is a big one here, and I think it does add benefit.

Yeah, and it's certainly a fair comment.

I think that the idea that the courts, because there's only one scenario where the courts would move out of downtown, that if the courts did move out under that one scenario, the historic courthouse wouldn't move.

It would still be there as an attraction.

I think there are lots of possibilities that could make it even more attractive I would think for tourism, my personal opinion.

Since we are asking questions, some of the emails that we've been receiving from folks are very concerned about actual residents who use the courts.

needing bus lines and ways to get to the courts.

And I wouldn't mind at all if you all would respond to that, but it would seem like to me that many of our county residents right now are having to drive to our courts to get to them.

I would envision that if we did something different, certainly going out into the county, that might be an opportunity to have a second transit hub.

I mean, we're not going to leave folks stranded, unable to get to the courts.

The comp plan envisions that any urban place that you create needs to be served by transit.

So I think that that would be an essential part of moving in this direction.

Not really any question about that so that folks would have that in.

Again, many of these options we're looking at are in our urban areas now that are served by transit.

Absolutely.

Okay, any other questions before we open it up to public comment?

Okay, we'll do that and I just wanted to say I didn't say in the beginning that we very well may be making a decision tonight, at least narrowing possibilities or possibly picking something to move forward with.

And I'm sure you all are anxious to get to this period.

You've been very patient and for that we thank you.

I am going to

attempt to call five names at a time, ask folks to come up and have a seat in the front row just to keep things moving.

Everybody will have two minutes.

Please make sure that when you get to the mic, you adjust the mic for your height so we can hear you clearly.

And we would very much appreciate your name, the magisterial district in which you live, or if you live in the city or the county, just for the record, that would be great.

We use a lighting system so that when you begin speaking, the green light will go on.

and the yellow light will tell you that you have 30 seconds to wrap up and the red light will go on when you need to finish up.

I am going to take privilege here and I see that we have some of our city council members that have been waiting and we really appreciate you coming in the spirit of cooperation.

Two of you have signed up.

Mayor Signer and Kathy Galvin, you all have signed up.

If it's all right, I'm going to ask that you guys come on up and go first.

Bob, I didn't see your name on a list, so you've not signed up, but we want to recognize that you're here.

Well that's what I was going to say so what I'm doing is we have online sign ups and sign ups that are here in person.

Our process always has been I'll call five names from one list and five names from the other just trying to be fair about it.

So with that we have Mike and Kathy and then going to the next group, Bruce Williamson, David Thomas, and Paige Williams.

Thanks so much, Madam Chair, Madam Vice Chair,

colleagues.

It's great to see you all.

A lot of billable hours in the room tonight.

A lot of people accustomed to public speaking, so it's nice to be on this side of the podium for once.

I want to thank you for having us here.

Before starting, I want to say that as the mayor of the city of Charlottesville,

We fully recognize that you're a sovereign body and that this is an unusual, perhaps extraordinary step to appear before you on a decision that you're making.

For reasons I'll explain, we did feel it was important to appear, but I don't expect to be here very often.

in this sort of role.

The last time I appeared here before you was to celebrate the four memorandums of understanding that our two bodies executed earlier this year.

We agreed to work together on areas including the environment, education, transportation, and redevelopment and housing.

We may even formally deem this a one community initiative.

We are very excited about these steps toward true regionalism and believe they build on the inarguable fact that our communities depend on one another.

We work together, play together, even marry each other, and we are stronger for it.

The negotiations that led to the co-location vision were based on that shared set of values.

Specifically regarding parking, we have taken the county's concerns very seriously, as Mr. Foley acknowledged in his statement.

This year, the city council and staff have spent many dozens of hours accommodating county concerns about parking for court customers near the co-located courts.

We firmly committed to creating 100 new spaces and also have $7 million allocated in our capital budget for our share of the co-located court.

It was therefore with some confusion that we read in the public materials released by the county in advance of this session the following description of the factors that might lead to an abandonment of colocation.

Quote, limited uncertain parking conditions and ultimate cost to meet long term needs.

Now this has been clarified somewhat by Mr. Foley's remarks and we appreciate those comments, but the public is gaining information in a wide variety of ways, including from the written materials.

And we just want to be crystal clear.

to the public that the city council has met the county board on their requests and then some.

We have worked closely with the county to identify and meet your needs and we have done so out of the belief that we are in fact one community.

We understand that you have a difficult decision to make.

We hope that as you reason through the options before you, you keep in mind that just as we are committed to doing what it takes to keep the historic court system unified, we are with you as colleagues and partners.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mike.

Again, thank you very much for the warm welcome.

I am Kathy Galvin, a city councilor.

I live on Lyons Avenue in Charlottesville City.

Good evening, Chairwoman Palmer, Vice Chairwoman McKeel, Board of Supervisors, and Mr. Foley, Mr. Lotteri, all your esteemed staff and legal counsel.

So thank you very, very much for the opportunity to come before you tonight.

As one of the City Council's two appointed negotiators, I wish to state for the public record that we and the City of Charlottesville have done our part to ensure that our courts stay unified in the historic court square.

And thank you again, Mr. Foley, for acknowledging that fact.

If the Omaha County Board chooses another path, which is certainly the Board's prerogative, the Board will be departing from a proposed colocation plan that has been the product of years of negotiations, mutual planning, community engagement, and investment since 2013.

Since 2013, and again it bears repeating, the city has put forth considerable effort and offered close to $10 million worth of capital investment to keep the county's general district court in court square.

That effort includes, one, a commitment valued at $1.5 to $2.5 million to create 100 parking spaces for county usage within walking distance of the walkable court square.

2.

The establishment of a city parking division, an enterprise fund, and a parking manager position to build and manage the city's parking resources citywide to bolster that commitment.

3.

A commitment to spend $7 million on a co-located court for a court set that the city will not need for the foreseeable future.

And 4.

and expressed willingness to jointly invest in the services of a professional mediator to help finalize the terms of an agreement on parking as was done successfully for another successful regional system, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority capital projects.

So please know that the city stands ready and willing to resume negotiations with the county at any time that a mutually beneficial agreement can be finalized, one that keeps all of the city and county courts co-located within the historic court square of Charlottesville.

Evening ladies and gentlemen, my name is Bruce Williamson.

I'm an attorney downtown.

I live in the city of Charlottesville.

I'm speaking quickly.

I'm trying not to speak too quickly, but a little bit to cover.

There's been talk in the materials and there was talk by staff about downtown stakeholders.

That seems to imply city stakeholders.

The institutional stakeholders who have been identified through many discussions, you all know who they are, many of them are here to speak to the fact that only the court square location for co-located courts really meets their needs.

A chief among them, I think, is the Commonwealth Attorneys, Albemarle County Commonwealth Attorney.

They're within steps of all three courts they deal with.

Going four-tenths of a mile away makes it more difficult for them.

I think that someone will speak to that later on.

But what we've not heard about in discussion all these options is not the institutional stakeholders but the people.

There was a little bit of discussion about the people in general when Ms. McKeel referenced transportation.

All of the bus routes that serve our entire community meet in the city of Charlottesville within walkable distance from the existing courts and from court square.

That would have to be significantly disrupted or transportation will be disrupted.

Others will speak to that too, particular institutional stakeholders.

The notion of a place that's far away from Court Square, creating an urban district, I think is rather speculative.

and it gets away from the notion of one community.

If there is a location that's north or south of the city, it hurts the people that are south or north of the city in terms of getting there.

But more importantly, both jurisdictions have exercised great leadership in

working toward one community and continuing that notion in getting this close to a complete agreement.

Parking is the only issue that wasn't agreed upon in full.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Williamson.

Good evening, David Thomas.

I live in the Samuel Miller district in Redfields, actually.

Over the course of this evening, you're going to hear any number of compelling reasons not to move the courthouse from its downtown location, and not just because it makes rich lawyers have to drive a little further.

You're going to hear the effect it has on the least fortunate among us, those who go to the wrong court and can walk to a new court.

the fact that the numbers you're being shown don't represent the true cost of operations going forward and the omission of any mention of the time or costs of the referendum for option five in particular, particularly when faced with an organized opposition and the chances of success for that referendum.

But as a lawyer in this community, I take seriously my role as an officer of the court, and that's what the capitals see.

I want to make sure we don't forget about the most intangible quality, one we can't put a figure on but one which matters, the impact a relocation will have on the public's respect for the court itself.

The Albemarle County Courthouse was built in 1762, and it's been in continuous operation for nearly 250 years.

Jefferson, Madison, and Rowe, as Mr. Dill mentioned, walked its halls, and the laws of the county and the Commonwealth have been enforced there longer than there's been a United States to enforce them.

When members of the public come to Court Square, they're confronted by the visions of what a courthouse ought to look like, of what justice ought to be.

It almost goes without saying that there's a difference between a true courthouse and a place where you can have a hearing, a smoothie, and a Cinnabon all without moving your car.

I'm aware that Mr. Foley and the county staff have been pushing hard on option number five, and I appreciate the irony that I, a long time Republican, am addressing six Democrats to say please don't put economic development interests over the interests of the public at large, the community, and the institutions we depend on for the consent of the governed.

Thank you, Mr. Thomas.

Good evening.

I'm Paige Williams.

I'm a county resident in the Jack Jouett district.

Liz McKeel is my supervisor.

We have some differences on this issue, which we've discussed many times.

I'm a lifelong resident of Albemarle County in Charlottesville.

I've practiced law here since 1976.

I was on the bar, I was the bar member of the committee, the joint committee in 2014 and 2015 along with Ms. Malek, Jane Ditmar from the county, Mr. Huja, and Mr. Fenwick from the city.

We came up with that idea that the colocation would work best in 2015.

I think that's still the idea, the best idea.

I thought when we walked out of that meeting in the summer of 2015, it was settled.

We were talking about parking.

I know the parking piece took longer to resolve in the city than anybody thought, but it's there now and I think that that's the way we ought to go.

Co-location of the courts will allow all of the courts to be in a central area and any other option will adversely affect many of the areas of court service.

Commonwealth's attorney, public defender, court appointed counsel, offender aid and restoration, both legal aid offices, region 10, court interpreters, sheriff's offices, exchanges of judges to do conflicts, illnesses, and so forth.

In this way, it will likely increase the cost of legal services for members of the public.

Thank you, Mr. Williams.

So I believe I'm ready to call another five names.

The first speaker will be Diane Easley, and then Cheryl Higgins, Bob Downer, and Mark Perez.

Peretz, I'm sorry.

That's only four.

Ed Lowery.

I have to get my numbers correct.

Good evening.

I'm Diane Easley.

I live south of Cozeville in the Samuel Miller district.

and I came to speak this evening because I'm just an ordinary citizen and what I learned about it was on the news last spring and the big problem that came up at that time was parking.

And it dawned on me, why not put a parking garage on that south section next to the ball field?

That would solve your parking problem.

Now, granted Albemarle County has grown in the last 30,

30 years since I moved here in 89.

At that point, north 29 was getting expanded from I think it had been a two lane.

I don't know, all I was doing was driving through the red barrels.

We all know what traffic has done and I'm sure the census will show we've gone from 80,000 to 100 and now projected to 140,000.

The users of the court system obviously should have grown with those demographics.

So yes, you do need to expand into more space.

but you don't need to throw the baby out with the bath water doing it.

And the city brings so much to the county that if you do option five, you are draining the city.

Yes, you will get a development.

You will redevelop Albemarle Square.

but all of the people that went to the restaurants on the downtown mall are now going to the restaurants at Albemarle Square.

You are cutting the economy of Charlottesville City in the process.

Thank you, Ms. Easley.

Members of the Board of Supervisors, County Executive Staff, and Legal Counsel, I am Cheryl Higgins and I am the resident judge of the Albemarle Circuit Court and I live in Albemarle County.

In my job as judge, I am constantly striving to hear cases in an efficient, thorough, and timely manner.

It bears repeating a huge part of what makes this possible is the proximity of the Albemarle Circuit Court to the other city and county courtrooms, including the juvenile court.

There are numerous governmental personnel that are regularly moving between the courts, such as caseworkers from OAR and probation officers from District 9, attorneys from the public defender's office,

public defenders, officers from the Juvenile Court Service Unit, and interpreters.

Since the courts are within such close distance to each other, people can easily appear in one court and then proceed to the next court by a very short walk.

It results in a very smooth docketing process for everyone.

The reason this is so important is because there are numerous cases on the docket.

This Thursday morning I have a 930 docket call and there are approximately 29 cases to be set for trial.

Then at 10 o'clock I have 10 criminal cases scheduled and at 1030 four more criminal type cases are scheduled.

At 1130 we'll hear a series of cases involving the rectors and visitors of UVA

In the afternoon starting at 2 there are five cases for licensed restorations.

A gun restoration at 3 and then motions on a domestic case.

This day is just one example of the many matters that are scheduled on the court docket every day.

We need everyone available and flexible in order to maintain such a court schedule.

having a court system downtown presents challenges and there is no such thing as a perfect location but what it does offer the downtown location is a way to provide good service to the citizens of Albemarle County and I hope that ability will be a priority.

Thank you Judge Higgins.

Bob Downer, I'm the Judge of the General District Court of the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

I've spent four days in the city and one day in the county as we presently are constituted.

Bill Eteri knows that I've been dealing with court studies since 2001.

And I just want to make two basic remarks now that I'm a judge, I'm limited on what I'm going to be able to say.

also need to disclose that I have an interest in an office building downtown, so you need to know that as well.

But basically, I'm interested in the running of the courts and access to justice, that's all.

I've fought for a long time to have the general district courts co-located, and that is because that enables us to limp through until we get another judge

which is going to be funded by the state to deal with the enormous dockets that we have to deal with.

If Judge Barkley, if we were co-located, if Judge Barkley has a particularly difficult docket, I could come up and help him now where I walk up there.

It would sure be a lot better if we were all in the same building because it's difficult to move defendants from one place to the other.

We might lose a few as they come down to be heard depending on what their case is like.

but we're in the business of trying to get as many citizens heard and to get them back to their lives that they're going to live, that they're here to enjoy and work in this community.

If you attenuate the courts, you're going to affect their accessibility to the courts because not everybody knows which court they need to be in when they come down to have their cases filed

or Heard.

Not everybody's represented by council to give them that advice.

And if you separate them out, you're adversely affecting many members of the community that use our courts for a host of different purposes.

Thank you, Judge Downer.

Mark Peretz.

I'm sorry, but I guess I'm mispronouncing your name.

I am Mark Parrish.

I'm a county resident in the Samuel Miller district.

I'm also a practicing attorney.

We heard in the comments from staff that option one, colocation at Court Square is the overwhelming choice of the stakeholders, and there's a reason for that.

We've also heard that moving the courts will require legislative approval or a referendum in the case of options four and five.

And there's a reason for that.

Our judicial system is the height of who we are as a people.

And to move the courts would require that extra step of taking that option directly to the people so that we don't do it without careful consideration of exactly what we're doing.

because of the effect it will have on all of the citizens of this county.

Given that option one is the overwhelming choice of all of the stakeholders, we need to understand, yes, we appreciate the budgetary challenges that this county has, but the judicial system of this county is not simply a catalyst for economic development.

It is, again, the height of who we are as a people.

It is the way that we as citizens resolve our disputes in a fair, orderly, equal way.

The citizens of this county can come and resolve those judicial disputes in a solemn, historic setting that commands respect, or they can do it in a shopping mall.

And the choice we make will say who we are as a people.

Thank You mr. parents ed Lowry mr. Lowry could you make sure you pull the mic to you so that we get the full recording certainly thank you members of the board appreciate this opportunity to address you I confess I'm a city resident I practice in Charlottesville I had the great pleasure of coming here first in 1964 as an undergraduate

stayed for law school and never left.

It's been the glory of my life to no longer be a Northern Virginian but to be in this wonderful area.

I just want to focus on a couple of things.

One, it has to do largely with the historical aspect of the court systems where they are now.

As you've already heard, there's been a courthouse on that site since 1752, the current courthouse somewhat later.

My office is right across the street from the Albemarle County Courthouse and I have a window that looks on that courthouse.

I'm not pleading for my visual pleasure but I'm telling you that I for 45 years have had the pleasure of bringing clients in and explaining to them that that's the one courthouse in the country frequented by three presidents of the United States

Two of whom, Madison and Jefferson, practiced law there.

Monroe wasn't a lawyer, but he was there often for civic events when it was called the Common Temple.

And they actually had church services there part of the time.

People are filled with the awe of that place when they look at it.

They feel when they go in there to try a case that they are part of living history.

and that is something that I just don't feel should be taken away from them lightly.

History is something that we do live and we learn by and we become immersed in.

There are some 300 lawyers downtown who practice there.

They can get in their cars and go somewhere else.

But for them and their clients and all of the court facilities officers to move from court to court to court spread out where right now within one block you have every court except the federal court and it's just at the end of the mall.

All right, I think I'm ready to call another five names.

So the first person is Louis Martin III, John Zug, Elizabeth Murtagh, James Barkley, and Scott Goodman.

Thank you, Madam Chairman and members of the board.

I'm a resident of the city of Charlottesville, but I've been here since Harry Truman was president.

And during that time, I've lived sometimes in Albemarle County and most of the time in the city of Charlottesville.

Over the course of those 64 years, I've developed a perspective about city-county relationships and what's really impressed me is that your constituents and the citizens of Charlottesville benefit the most when the city and county cooperate, collaborate, and combine on projects.

And I think that the best example of that is the city and the juvenile domestic relations district court and the county juvenile domestic relations district court.

Those courts are in the same building.

They have one clerk that runs the clerk's office for both clerks.

and they have a set of four judges that are interchangeable and they can move from one court to another in the same building.

Nothing is more efficient than that.

And it was interesting to me to hear that if you went with option five that at some point down the line,

that would be severed and the county J&DR court would be moved out to the strip mall with the other courts.

And to me, it just boggles my mind that you would even consider losing that efficiency.

Thank you, Mr. Martin.

Members of the boards of supervisors, county executive staff, and citizens of our community, I'm John Zug.

I'm a resident of the Rio Magisterial District, but I'm also your circuit court clerk.

Thank you for the brief opportunity to speak, and I wish to express the clerk's office position and my personal support for what is option number one, what was concluded by study in 2012.

The fact is that the County of Albemarle and the City of Charlottesville spent a lot of time, effort, and frankly cooperation that was kind of surprising to formulate that original plan.

The fact that agreement was reached on so much was really remarkable.

I wish to briefly let you know that a move away from the court square is an abandonment of our history that is so important to both our county and our judicial system.

We are one of only a handful of courts in this entire country that is still hearing court and having hearings regularly in the same building that was established in the mid 18th century.

If you want to find out what happens when you leave that facility, look at Fluvanna.

That circuit court has withered on the vine and has not become unfortunately the spot where we thought a lot would happen.

While the downtown certainly presents the challenges to the best judicial services to be offered in our community, it is my opinion that option number one addresses those challenges and continues to provide a more efficient and unified approach.

While the clerk's offices and the court staff don't always share resources all the time, what we do share are customers.

and I will tell you that I get calls on a daily basis and they do have to talk to the clerk as opposed to one of my deputies to talk about their case which unfortunately is in the city of Charlottesville or in the general district court.

It's amazing to me what ends up happening is the frustration when I tell them that I can't help them

but what mitigates that frustration is my ability to send them downstairs or walk to the window in my office and point across the street and say that's where you need to go and that's why option number one is the best choice.

Thank you, Mr. Zag.

Good evening.

I'm Liz Murtaugh.

I'm the new public defender for Albemarle County in the city of Charlottesville.

So this is my first time coming to address you.

My biggest concern really is dealing with the clients that our office represents.

We represent most of the indigent people who are charged with criminal offenses in Albemarle County as well as in the city.

In this past fiscal year, we had an 18% increase in the number of cases that our office had from physical year 15 to physical year 16.

and at this moment, as of today, my office has 785 open files.

Now that includes 53% of the cases that we did in physical year 16 where Albemarle County cases and 47% were from the city.

So you see, as everybody has said, we moved seamlessly, the attorneys in my office, going back and forth from one court to the other, from the city to the county.

I cannot cover all of these cases, all of these cases, but all of these different courts without the ability of being able to do that, to go from one jurisdiction to the next.

I have attorneys that end up having several different court appearances.

As Judge Higgins pointed out, they may be in circuit court in the morning, they may be in general district court in the afternoon, or they may be in both courts in the morning.

So being able to go back and forth is very important.

and it's very, for me personally right now, it's difficult because I am short two attorneys in my office, but I am still able to provide excellent service to the people that we represent because we are able to move back and forth quickly and not waste time and be efficient.

So I'd ask you to consider option one and stay downtown.

Thank you, Ms. Murtaugh.

Good evening.

I'm James Barkley.

I'm in Ms. McKeel's district.

I live out in the county.

I've been here since 1993, and like many of the lawyers, I had prepared remarks, but I also thought I was going to have three minutes, so I'm going to cut through some of that, and I know some of you.

What struck me the most out of sitting here tonight was looking at the closer look at partnership slide, and I congratulate Mr. Foley and Mr. Murphy.

It's a lot of work that you all are doing, and I suspect it's a completely thankless job often.

But the word that's not up there in that slide, as beautiful as it is, is justice.

And the picture that's not up there is the young single mother who finds herself in the court system who's dependent upon a public servant like Ms. Murtaugh

who doesn't have the wherewithal to hire a private lawyer like me or like Mr. Lowry or some of the others that have gotten up here.

Those are the people who, let's be honest, are unlikely to come to a public forum like this and speak to you.

Those are the people who rely upon the public servants who are already stretched too thin.

Think about the unprecedented

group of speakers you've had tonight, city representatives, a sitting circuit court judge for heaven sakes, Bob Downer, general district court judge, the clerk of the circuit court.

Not one person is saying move out of the county and certainly not because it's an opportunity to create an economic development opportunity.

Now I was raised down in North Carolina, and my late grandfather used to say lots of things.

I don't remember a lot of them, but one thing he always talked about was don't ever confuse the economic value with the worth of a human being.

And what's being missed here tonight

is an opportunity to stand up and say we are worth more than an economic opportunity.

You cannot put a price tag on justice.

And please, please, please, if you have any doubt, talk to the public servants who are here tonight.

Thank you, Mr. Barkley.

Good evening, thank you for allowing us to be here.

I'm Scott Goodman and I live in the Jack Jouett district.

Another person, another Jack Jouett constituent who disagrees with Ms. McKeel like the other Jack Jouett constituent.

But we, I'm an attorney, I've been an attorney here for 38 years here in Albemarle County, not as long as some of the people that have spoken here, but 38 years hopefully is worth something.

I'm down there every single day.

I've been down there every single day for 38 years and I just want to tell you that

I don't believe any of these things save money.

I believe each one of these options wastes money.

Because I can just tell you from what I see myself, we're nowhere close to a space crisis down in the courts.

We're not close to one yet.

All you have to do is go down and look and you'll see the courts.

We have four mornings where the Albemarle General District Court meets.

It only meets 30 minutes on a Wednesday morning.

So you have the capacity there, an extra morning of court where the courtroom's not even being used.

The county just reconfigured another room across the hall from there.

We have two general district courts, and that new little one across the hall, which is a spare one, I've never seen it used.

Never one time have I ever seen that courtroom used.

And even if you have a second courtroom, which this proposal seeks to build, we only have one judge.

The bar hasn't even asked for a second judge.

You can build all the courtrooms you want.

You can have two courtrooms, but if you only have one judge, only one courtroom's going to be used.

And if we ever do get to a space crisis, you could use something as simple as just adding an extra half hour to the court docket.

The court starts here at 9 o'clock.

Started at 8.30.

Started at 8.30, like Nelson, Fluvanna, Orange, Louisa, they all start at 8.30.

We start at 9.

If you open the court at 8.30, that adds another 15% capacity to what the court uses now as a 9 to 11 o'clock window for using court in the morning.

We have enough space.

We have enough space.

At some point, we'll need more space.

But if it ever gets to that point, I hope we don't go any further than across the street at the Levy Opera House, where we just spent $5 million renovating that.

To be able to have that as capacity, which worked fine when the juvenile court was being renovated.

Look for option six, please.

Option six, which is to stay where we are for a while.

So I'm going to call the next five.

Timothy Hulbert, Vaden Warren, Lisa, I think this is James or Jones, Madison Spencer, and Thatcher Stone.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Honorable Members of the Board of Supervisors.

My name is Tim Holbert, and I work for the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce.

I think you've heard of that.

You're a member, and thank you for your membership and continued support.

And thank you for this opportunity tonight.

First off, Bill and

Trevor need to be saluted for this piece of work of analysis.

I would like to see that kind of analysis on a whole host of things, perhaps maybe the next brewery or something that comes down the pike.

And you all know we did an analysis when you went through this.

We said, what's the value of the economic value of the current footprint of

Legal Enterprise where it is located.

And it is a little more than the back of the envelope, but it's a $34 million annual impact where it is now.

And so yes, you can move that or some portion of that.

We have said all along, and many of these folks who have spoken are members of the Chamber of Commerce and our attorney, many are not.

But they make a strong point for, as we said, a collaborative, collaborative co-location of the courts.

Collaborative means the city invests and the county invests, which means you could continue your negotiation.

I know you've been working on it for years.

Five years ago you had one option, a few little bit later the county narrowed it to two options, now you've narrowed it to five options.

We have seen this for a week.

The county executive is going to meet with our board of directors tomorrow.

We will consider all the options, certainly the economic development component.

Opportunity is valuable.

It could be valuable for a county municipal campus without the courts and we'd like to see something like that.

Thank you, Mr. Holberg.

Good evening.

My name is Vaden Warren.

I'm an attorney here in Charlottesville, but I live out in the county in the Florida neighborhood.

While I do have my office here, my practice takes me all across Virginia.

And in traveling across the Commonwealth, I've been to many of the new complexes that have been built.

I've been to many of the old gorgeous courthouses that are there.

And I will tell you that Albemarle County has something that's absolutely unique.

Not unique, having an old courthouse, but having a courthouse with that kind of history.

And you can move the courthouse out of Court Square and you can build a new facility there that's going to have a Chipotle across the street and a Domino's across the street.

And it's going to look like every other county and city in Virginia.

and I ask you to please consider the uniqueness of this courthouse.

There have been many other lawyers who have gotten up to speak.

I'm not going to repeat what they have to say, but part of the reason many people come to Charlottesville and Albemarle is the history and the uniqueness that we have.

and moving this courthouse out into what's going to be, I'm sure, could be a very nice facility.

It's going to be sterile and very much the same as you can find in many other places in the Commonwealth.

I ask you not to do that.

Leave the courthouse in Court Square.

Thank you, Mr. Warren.

Lisa, and I wasn't sure if it was Jones or James.

Thank you.

My name is Lisa Jones, for those of you I haven't met.

And I am a city resident, but actually a taxpayer in the county as a developer of Peter Jefferson Place.

And first of all, I just want to thank the staff for all the effort.

I just can't imagine how many hours have gone into this, and I know it's a lot of work.

And I appreciate all the work that's gone into this.

I would like to argue the most important stakeholder that the county should consider

is the county taxpayer.

And being one, I feel like that should override everything that you all decide.

And I'd like to encourage you to find the most economic solution that meets the needs of the county, not necessarily the city and the county, but the county.

and I'd also like you to consider one other option kind of this option number six as well which would be to move the courts here if you need to keep some downtown and then to lease office space as needed out in the county we have a lot of office space there's a lot of other office space existing at a great value far less than what the county projects it could build space for that way you could also lease space as needed you won't need to build way ahead for the next 20 years you can lease space for the shorter term and take more space as needed

There's also options to buy existing county office buildings in the county and put the offices in the county where you own the facility.

I mean, I think that really kind of is a win-win scenario.

You keep everybody happy with the courts downtown.

The county offices are actually then in the county.

We have bus service out at Peter Jefferson Place.

I know most of the other developments have bus service as well.

That could meet everybody's needs.

And one last thing, I'd just like to say the best way to spur economic development, I don't think, is to tax the county taxpayers.

and then spend their money on a new project but to not tax the county taxpayers and let them spend the money how they choose to spur economic development.

Thank you, Ms. Jones.

I'm a county resident, was a long time city resident, and I'm very appreciative obviously of all the effort that's gone into it.

I'm well aware of the amount of time that the bar has devoted to this topic over the past several years.

It's of particular interest to me the history of courthouses and the extent to which they are the ultimate anchor from both a community and societal governmental standpoint in the state of Virginia.

There's not a town square that's been developed within this Commonwealth that didn't specify within that central grid the location of the courthouse which would serve as the anchor within the community and as a governmental focus.

I think imagining that you are putting yourselves in the position of making a decision of this import based upon an incomplete data set, speculating upon the extent to which development interests

might collaborate with governmental obligations and in order to solve a particular problem is patently false.

And I don't think it's an avenue you should consider pursuing at all.

The courts deserve to be an independent entity and at the core of our community, not beholden to private interests that want to rescue a development project gone awry.

there's no doubt in my mind that there are developers keen to associate with you for this project but I assure you it would be a grave mistake and flies in the face of everything the founding fathers put before us in terms of the courts serving as our guiding light and that's why they deserve to be within the heart of the community

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Spencer.

Good evening, Madam Chairman, members of the board, staff.

My name is Thatcher Stone.

I live in the county in Cobham.

I was raised in this state.

I came to Charlottesville to get educated.

Now I teach at the law school and I returned after 35 years in New York.

I spent 35 years on Wall Street helping people plan, finance, and build all kinds of projects including toll roads to Dulles,

Toll Roads in Argentina, aircraft newly delivered from Airbus and Boeing, and financial elements of construction projects and construction takeouts.

I have one opinion which I can share, and then I'm going to stick to the facts.

You can argue with me about my opinion, but you can't argue with me about the facts.

My opinion is I do not want to drive up 29 North either to have a hamburger or to go to the same place to go to court.

Now, I'm not yet admitted in Virginia.

My practice is nationwide and relates to aviation, injury, and claims against the airlines.

But I practice with a lawyer here in Charlottesville, and our office is right across the street from the federal courthouse in the Lewis and Clark building.

And we walk to the courthouse when we need to.

and I think it's very important to point out that if this project were subject to an environmental impact statement or an economic impact statement, there are critical facts that are missing.

Based on the value of the rental for the federal courthouse across the street from my building, I project there's $14 million missing from what's known as option five and every option that includes

Private Public Partnership.

Nobody gives you land for free, as the Supervisor McKeel noted earlier, and there will be a charge for it.

So that's the first element that's missing.

The second element that's missing is, as we know from the studies done to determine what we would do about the bypass or the improvements to 29, I work closely with your former Chairman Dittmar.

and it was clear from the study most of the traffic is local as you all learned and we saved a lot of money by just enhancing our local roads for the local traffic instead of ruining some would argue the western part of the county.

If you make people drive up and down 29 you have failed to analyze the green effect or brown effect.

The last point I'd like to make about the facts is you've talked a lot about the development benefits somewhere in the county but what's going to happen to the city?

Nowhere in your study do you identify what's going to happen to the city when the 300 lawyers who practice downtown over the next five or six years have to move out, and that's a major missing element.

Okay, there's one more point that needs to be clarified.

The Hanover County Courthouse is right next door to the old courthouse.

and the old courthouse is still used every day for trials and special observances.

So to hold Hanover out as an example is an error.

Mr. Stone, I think it's really interesting quite frankly, but I've got to give other folks a chance to talk.

So I believe I'm on to now another group of five folks.

The first person is Mildred Hoy.

Seth Ragosta, Palma Pestilnik, Lee Livingston.

Looks like a couple folks may have already left.

No.

All right, so the first person was Mildred Hoy.

She's left, okay.

Thank you, and I'm sorry about that.

So then we're on to Seth Ragosta.

Hello, my name's Seth Ragosta.

I'm an attorney in town.

Recently moved back after seven years here at school.

Went away to Boston and then came back and I've been here for about three years.

I practice family law and commercial litigation.

Hey, first one.

I sent an email to you and received several responses and I thank you for that, the consideration you gave me, the consideration that the staff has put into it.

It clearly has been an issue of great importance to everyone.

I wanted to add my voice to what's already been said with an anecdote.

You've heard about the people, the people that are going to be impacted, the little people who don't have lawyers.

I'm not one of the rich lawyers that I keep hearing about, but I'm a lawyer and I can tell people where to go in the right courthouse.

Every day people go to the wrong place and this is not a small impact and I don't mean to suggest anyone was being cavalier but the distance traveled when you're under the stress that people can be under when they go to the court whether it's a traffic ticket or about losing your children or about being evicted from your home can be incredible.

One day this spring I came up to the courthouse I was going in on a commercial matter construction case and I saw a woman coming out of the Albemarle General District Court and she was bewildered and I knew exactly what had happened she'd gone to the wrong courthouse I see the look all the time

But she kept on repeating, I tried, I tried, I tried.

I tried to go to the right place.

And she was devastated because she was going to get kicked out of her house.

And she said, isn't this the court?

This is the court.

I was able to tell her to go down the street to Charlottesville.

And she got there.

And I saw she got there.

She got to her appointment because it was right there.

But she came to the courthouse.

And that's so important because that's where she thought she was going to get justice.

And that's where she thought justice was done.

Good evening.

I'm Paloma Pistilnik.

I'm a former president of the bar.

I met many of you in that capacity.

I also happen to be a legal aid lawyer, so I can speak very clearly to the needs of the people who don't usually have a voice.

Legal aid lawyers don't get paid by the client.

Our clients don't pay us anything at all.

They can't.

We tend to make about the same as you guys pay your teachers.

Legal Aid has very limited resources.

We only have two attorneys in our Legal Aid office for our entire service area of Albemarle, Charlottesville, Fluvanna, Green, Louisa, and Nelson.

I represent almost exclusively survivors of domestic and sexual violence.

These people are in desperate, desperate straits.

My colleague primarily works with housing law.

She's dealing with families facing evictions.

Our funding will not change unlike some of the other stakeholders based on increased strain on our resources and that's something that hasn't been taken into account.

While there may not be specifically a local tax impact on your taxpayers,

Based on this movement, if there's an increased strain on some of the stakeholders, there will be an increase on your taxpayer's state tax bill or federal tax bill.

There's no constitutional guarantee of our services, no matter how dangerous the emergency is.

With all the Charlottesville and Albemarle courts located in and around Court Square,

because we have a judicial circuit, all of our judges are assigned to the circuit so they are supposed to be able to move back and forth.

That's the way this system was designed.

So if the JDR court, as many people have told you, is the perfect example of this, I can represent people in four hearings in four places at the same time because I can run up and down the stairs and across the street.

If you start moving people out 10 miles or even four-tenths of a mile, those are people in danger who don't get help.

I know my time is up.

I apologize, but I also have to point out that in your materials, you say that option number one, which is the only real and reasonable and appropriate option, is the least convenient for county residents.

That is simply not true.

It is a central location.

and county residents are able to come there because of the transportation hub and because they also have to come to other courts.

County residents have to come to city courts because that's where a lot of the doctors sue for medical debt.

While the hospital sues city residents in county courts, the doctors often sue county residents in city courts.

So you all have to keep that in mind.

Please, please, please, option number one.

Thank you, Ms. Steltnik.

Hi, I'm Lee Livingston.

I live off of Carsbrook Drive in Supervisor Sheffield's district.

I have a statewide practice in professional liability law.

I'm also a member of the Virginia State Bar Council, so I represent.

a group among the eight counties in this area and the city of Charlottesville with respect to the state bar.

The constituents you represent, the county citizens like me, will do much better to leave the courts where they are.

You've heard many reasons for that.

I just want to highlight a couple.

Judge Higgins gave you some of the facts, but there isn't sufficient time to tell you how much

Justice delayed is justice denied.

And if you move the courts out, there will be more delay, there will be much more cost for county residents.

There's not time to get into all the details of that, but I encourage you to consider that.

That is a mantra on the frame of the Eastern District Court in Alexandria, justice delayed is justice denied, and a decision to move the courts out.

into a separate location will result in that.

The courts are already underfunded as it is, and it will just add to the citizen's delays in cost.

While I very much appreciate the thoroughness of the report, I have to point out that if the primary goals are as they are stated here about economic development on the front of your report,

You leave yourself with only that economic development option.

And I've taught evidence and advocacy at the law school for 14 years.

This is the most blatant example of question begging I think I've ever seen because I think what should be on the report at the front, the main goal is to provide for the most clear and efficient administration of justice in the courts for the citizens.

The comparisons to the other places also need to be studied very carefully.

I don't know of any other court system where changes have been made.

I'm very familiar with Williamsburg having tried cases there and with Augusta and what's going on there.

There are many, many differences between those moves.

Thank you, Mr. Livingston.

The first person is Donald Morin and then Patricia Cook.

Andre Hakes, Denise Lunsford, and Richard Brewer.

Thank you very much for listening to us all tonight.

My name is Don Morin.

I'm a former president of the Charlottesville Albemarle Bar Association.

I think this evening you're going to hear from the six of us, if not more.

I am a city resident, I have to confess that, but my offices have been downtown as a private lawyer since I came to Charlottesville in 1991.

I just want to reiterate and emphasize some of the things that I've heard consistently through the evening from the comments from the public.

First of all, the stakeholders have all, since the beginning of this consideration, had the same view, and that is to co-locate the courthouses on Court Square.

That has not changed.

And you've heard from representatives of Legal Aid and the court system, the court clerk, about why that is so important to promote the efficiency of the court system and to deliver justice to all.

And that was another comment about access to justice.

My partner James Barkley pointed that out.

The clients and the customers of the courts are people that you're not going to see here tonight, mostly.

There are people who can't, many of them can't afford attorneys, but they're not in court except for their particular cases.

And we hope they don't have to come back more than once in a lifetime, but they often have to come more than that.

to provide them with a place where they can go to have justice delivered to them in a way that's efficient is most effective.

And their voices aren't heard here tonight except for from the bar who is presenting this option, number one is the best way to go.

Finally, I want to provide you with a quote.

I don't often get to quote Supreme Court justices to the Board of Supervisors, but I will tonight.

This was provided to me.

Justice Lewis Powell from the great state of Commonwealth of Virginia.

Public buildings often accurately reflect the beliefs, priorities, and aspirations of a people.

For much of our history, the courthouse has served not just as a local center of the law and government, but as a meeting ground, cultural hub, and social gathering place.

And our court square with all the county and city courthouses together provides that.

and it's not there for economic development.

It's for the delivery of justice for everyone and for the delivery of the rule of law which we all have to provide by.

So I strongly request and suggest that the board support option one.

It's the only true option.

Thank you, Mr. Morin.

Patricia Cook.

You're going to have to pull that down to you.

Ladies and gentlemen, Board of Supervisors, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you this evening.

Some of my remarks will be a little different from the attorney's, but nevertheless, I think they will all come together.

Our community serves best when the city and county work together.

We benefit the most from the combined work.

The county system is a prime example.

The courts are housed in one building.

They share one clerk.

One of four judges.

Obviously, I have been talking to some of the lawyers.

Who better than the attorneys, the clerks, the judges, the sheriff's staff that must transport criminals from holding cells to the county chambers?

Who better, who knows better the importance of a five minute walk among the buildings as opposed to a three mile trek separating the systems.

Many of these people must appear in court two to three times in one day.

To travel three miles is never effective, efficient, or cost effective.

Attorneys fees at best are expensive.

Time is money and our citizens will be forced to absorb the additional transportation costs.

It is the responsibility of the elected officials to be sensitive to the impact of this relocation on the citizens, many of whom are from an indigent income.

In reviewing the county court options, I was hard-pressed to justify a real need to locate the circuit court.

Instead, it smacked of an unjustified want list.

It is understandable that the

that the board spends, excuse me, it is unbelievable that the board would spend valuable time on an unnecessary project when there are so many needs to be addressed.

The want list calls for no, for one complete renovation of the county office building.

There are thousands of citizens here who see this as Lane High School special and historical

and I had to get that in because I am a native of 85 years and was educated in this building and I love it.

The current renovation and preservation of Lane Auditorium and the lobby have done much to preserve the integrity of a much revered landmark.

Please don't destroy this just for the sake of change.

On May the 19th, the Charlottesville Bar Association put forth a reasonable and practical resolution regarding the Almonte County District Court.

Its 400 members are solely interested in the administration of justice in our community.

I refer you to paragraph six of the resolution as a complete list of supports.

Ladies and gentlemen, the present system is not broken.

The Bar Association presents a plan to accommodate many of the needs of this court and expansion for the next 50 years.

Please don't try to fix something that's not broken.

and I will have to say in closing that standing on this side of the roster here is very different from sitting on that side.

You found it.

There you go.

Hi.

I'm Andree Hakes.

I live in the Samuel Miller district.

I'm an attorney.

I've been practicing regularly in the city and county for about 20 years.

I'm a relatively newcomer.

My office is on Rio Road West.

It's over there in the vicinity of that fresh market and I am coming before you to tell you please do not bring the courthouse to me.

I do not want it.

I like coming downtown to the courthouse.

I should be thrilled with that idea, and I am so not thrilled with that idea.

I'm not thrilled with that idea because when I hear words like public-private partnership, what I think I really hear is some real estate developer is going to make a lot of money and the public is going to get their teeth kicked down their throat again.

I really do not like that idea.

The other thing is the county wraps around the city, right?

I mean, just geographically, that's what you got.

The city's right in the middle of your county.

And if you hurt the city, if you take away the things that make that city a vibrant and thriving place, you will hurt yourselves.

The county will wither as the city is harmed, which is, I think, what will happen if you take the courts away.

I take a look over at Stonefield, which they just built.

It's got one of my favorite restaurants in it.

I love rock salt.

And I love their food.

I love those oysters.

They have this wonderful flourless chocolate cake.

It's massive.

And I don't want to go there nearly as much as I would if it was on the downtown mall.

Why is that?

Well, it's because Stonefield is plastic.

That's why.

It's just plastic.

It's really, it's nice, but it's plastic.

I think it might have been Mr. Foley who made the statement about attractive urban environments that create a sense of place.

We have an attractive urban environment that creates a sense of place.

It's right down here, downtown, and I think that's where the court should stay.

Good evening.

I'm Denise Lunsford.

I'm an attorney now in private practice in the Albemarle, Charlottesville area.

I was formerly the Commonwealth's attorney in Albemarle County.

I'm a resident of Albemarle County and I live in the Rio district.

A lot of what I was going to say has been said by other people and I don't want to belabor that.

One of the things that I do want to touch on is I think the office that is probably most affected by a proposed move, whether it's all or a portion of the courts,

would be the Albemarle County Commonwealth's Attorney's Office.

And a mere six minute walk, as someone indicated earlier, I think it was Trevor, indicated coming down the hill, downhill, not uphill, it is actually going to take a little longer when you're carrying files and trying to run between one courthouse and the other, or you're trying to park and get to court on time and then get back to your car and get to the other court on time.

It's something that

That has to happen on a daily basis.

The attorneys in that office go back and forth between the courts, not just of the county, but also over to the city.

In private practice, I can just tell someone who has a case in a county court that is now located five or ten or even four tenths of a mile away from me, I'm not going to handle your case anymore.

Or I'm going to handle your case, but it's going to cost you twice as much as if that case happened downtown.

That's what most of these lawyers can do.

And those aren't the people that we're speaking about.

We're speaking about the people who can't afford a lawyer, who have public defenders, who need access to legal justice that Palmette provides.

One other thing I want to say, and this is on the back of what Norman said and what Dave Thomas said so eloquently, and that is that the courts deserve a sense of respect and a sense of all they are, history.

They're where I have gone to represent people whose lives were literally in the court's hands, whose lives were in the jury's hands.

And that's something to honor and to treasure.

Thank you, Ms. Lunsford.

Hi, I'm Richard Brewer.

I grew up in Albemarle County, currently live in the courts or the Rio district.

I am not a lawyer.

As a teenager I spent lots of time in the court system though and became familiar with it.

I moved away and when I came back I ended up living in the city of Charlottesville and

In the interest of doing my part, I volunteered with the city of Charlottesville when I went through the neighborhood leadership program and ended on the city capital improvement committee.

I've been looking at the courts so long, Bill was at the city when we approved building a joint courts complex 20 years ago.

The other thing I got into was the Meadow Creek Parkway.

So I'm used to hearing about issues that affect our community over and over and over.

And I appreciate what each of you all do sitting up as public servants and making difficult decisions.

This is not a difficult decision.

Moving one of five courts away from downtown is silly.

When we have one of the most historic buildings in our nation that is in use today, abandoning that is ridiculous.

I know the politics of this county fairly well.

A referendum will never pass to move the courthouse out of where it is today.

Keeping the courthouse where it's located, where everyone I've heard from today is in favor of it remaining makes sense.

Thank you, Mr. Burr.

Next five group of people.

Oh.

Oh, is she back?

I'm sorry, dear, I didn't realize you came back.

Mildred Hoy, I actually do not live in the county or the city.

I live in Waynesboro.

But I work here.

I work as a Spanish interpreter in the courts.

when actually Augusta County is going through the same thing trying to decide on a side for the court and in both cases it affects not just me but also the people that I serve.

Part of the comments that I've heard

are going to be very similar to what I want to say right now.

Having to deal with different jurisdictions, in my case, working with the Hispanic community, as it is, is very intimidating to go to court to anybody that speaks English as a native language.

Having somebody that doesn't speak the language and doesn't even understand much of the culture, it's even more intimidating to show up to court and

Not even know if you're in the right court.

Many times I've had to almost take people by the hand and take them to the right courts if time allows it.

And if time allows it, I stay with them and interpret for them if I can.

So having that separation, needless to say, would be really hard.

In fact, that's one of the reasons why I had to leave and come back.

I had to do a home visit in the county, but I thought, I'll be doing this a lot more if the courts are separated.

I do JNDR, and that's the part that would affect me even more, because both courts are in the same building right now.

Actually, if they remain the same, that's great, but having the other separation would affect me, but also the people that come to court.

They have transportation issues a lot of times, so there's a lot of other things.

In closing, I do want to say I am a forever tourist because I'm a foreigner, and I love the downtown.

I love Court Square.

I love going there, and when I have people visiting me,

I always bring them here and I'm proud to say this is where I work.

Thank you, Miss Hoy.

All right.

The next five names Harvey Wilcox, Jean Hyatt, Lloyd Snook, Tom Olivier and Ned Slaughter.

Good evening.

Harvey Wilcox, long retired attorney.

I want to second all of the historical reasons for sticking with option one.

Thank you.

But I want to point out and focus on just one that Scott Goodwin raised, which is the underlying factors that are raised by Dewberry and Mosley are out of date.

The statistics they used were court filings.

They based on projection of cases filed.

Indeed, we are litigious.

Every new resident generates more litigation, but those cases never go to trial.

We have more cases filed and fewer cases that ever become trials.

We do not need courthouses.

Courthouses, oddly enough, are vanishing in a litigious society, and that is a hard fact.

I can give you a lot of law review studies on that very topic.

It's scary, but it is true and it ought to be a part of your consideration in deciding to stick with option one.

We've got plenty of room at the Levy Opera House to make the necessary changes.

We need parking that can be done, worked out with the city.

We need more office space for the Commonwealth's Attorney.

for the clerk's office.

We need more office space, conference room space, file room space, but that isn't very glamorous.

But it can be done right now.

You've got the wherewithal to do it, and I hope you'll reconsider this frantic move of economic development.

Forget about it and stick with the place we've got, Courthouse Square.

And I'm just going to ask folks as they come up to make sure they give their name in either the Magisterial District or the City or the County, just for the record.

Madam Chair, members of the Board of Supervisors, good evening.

I'm Jean Hyatt, President of Preservation Piedmont and I live in Charlottesville.

Our group of 501C3 organization is committed to promoting and supporting

supporting historic preservation in central Virginia.

Our goal is not only historic preservation of structures, but also the preservation of the fabric of our communities.

We are in support of keeping the Albemarle General District Clerk's office in the Court Square area.

Our historic Court Square has a unique status

of having been a place known and used by three U.S. presidents who are significant to our region and to the legal history of our nation.

We are proud of this heritage and the continuity with our past that provides for Court Square today.

In addition to our obvious desire to see the historic levy

Opera House continue to serve the courts and judicial processes.

We also are in agreement with the Charlottesville Albemarle Bar Association, Commonwealth Attorney, Clerk of Court, Sheriff Harding, and our new public defender that the court should remain downtown for practical reasons.

Our historic Court Square area is walkable for the legal community and others whose work involves travel between the several courts and related support services in the court of a normal work day.

Our board members have also discussed concern for the people who must attend court and for those who depend on public transportation to get there.

Charlottesville is not only the beating heart of the area,

is a transportation hub.

We believe that the future parking and other associated court needs can continue to be accommodated in this area because of the variety of service parking lots and other parcels where redevelopment and structured parking could occur without major effects to significant historic resources.

Thank you, Ms. Hyatt.

I'm Lloyd Snook of Charlottesville, a virtually lifelong resident of Charlottesville and of Albemarle County, also a 1970 graduate of Lane High School.

30 years ago I was on the city planning commission and we met frequently with representatives of the county on joint planning efforts.

I was struck and have been struck over the years by how many times and on how many issues both city and county representatives would talk about the virtues of working together, about the economies of consolidating services, about the benefits of sharing overhead costs.

And then when it came right down to it, there's always something that got in the way.

There's always something that made it difficult to say yes.

Another issue, another cost, another obstacle.

It sounds like the latest obstacle to yes is a desire to create an urban center someplace else.

The purpose of renovating the courts is and has to be to improve the courts.

If it doesn't improve the courts, you shouldn't be improving the courts.

Simple.

Period.

If your solution is less efficient, if your solution is less convenient, if your solution is more expensive to operate, it should be rejected.

Now, let's be clear about one thing.

A move to McIntire Road or 29 North or wherever is going to be a step backward for everyone who uses the courts.

It would be less convenient, less efficient, more expensive than a co-location on Court Square.

There will always be a money reason that you can give as to why you should do something that is short-sighted.

In the short term, the upfront construction costs of a new facility will always be less than the cost of renovation.

That's not news.

What you should think about, though, when you look at those numbers on that great chart, it shows the debt service.

That debt service, it turns out, I did a little calculating, is almost, in most cases, almost exactly the cost, the additional costs that the governmental players alone will incur.

Pat Smith was supposed to speak.

She had to leave.

She left me copies of a letter.

Please give it to the clerk, please.

It'd be great.

And I will mark her off.

Thank you, Lloyd.

Good evening, I'm Tom Olivier.

I live in the Samuel Miller district and I'm speaking as an individual this evening.

I've lived in Albemarle County for over 30 years and I think like many if not most residents, I see Albemarle and the city of Charlottesville as one community.

I recognize that having separate governments representing the city and the county means that the two governments often get to cross purposes as Mr. Stook just noticed.

but nonetheless I think that our community is quite a bit stronger because we have this symbiosis and I think part of the symbiosis we have is that we've shared this long-term downtown and I think if you were to move the court system somewhere out on 29 you would disrupt this kind of sense of place this downtown that we have and I think it would be to the worst for not only the city but also for the county and I hope you won't do that whatever you do do.

More broadly, I think that the costs of relocating the course that have been presented tonight, they're yet another example of what the costs of growth are to our community, these ongoing costs of growth.

In the coming months, when you go through the budget cycle as you do every year, I'm sure you're going to hear more about how population growth is driving rising costs for our school system, rising costs for our police force, and so on and so on and so on.

So I'd like to raise what might be option seven here.

I want to say that the real cure is not public-private partnership.

The real cure, in fact, for our community would be to reduce the rate of growth of our population.

And I know at many times in the past people have said we should pursue this sort of thing.

What I want to suggest is option seven as you go through the decision making here and think about all these costs or as you go through the budget development in coming months.

Why don't you think about, in fact the county has often considered the counties very active in trying to channel population growth to certain places as a kind of a change from the past.

Why don't you consider policies aimed at reducing the rate of growth of the population?

Madam Chair, members of the board, my name is Edward R. Slaughter, Jr., almost universally known as Ned, a nickname my mother gave me.

I've lived in Charlottesville, at least part-time, for almost 85 years, and I have been a member of the Bar and practicing most of that time for 57 years, like Heinz varieties.

But I have been signed up for close to the end because I wanted to have a sense of what may not have been said.

And there are two things which I'll try to mention briefly.

First, the court square and the courthouse are not just the epicenters or the focal points of the city but of the whole area.

And to denude court square of the court system is simply going to take away from Albemarle County every bit as much as it would the city of Charlottesville.

You mentioned two places that I know quite well where the court system has been taken out from the center.

One is Williamsburg where the old courthouse, which was never noticed, was sandwiched in between the Powderhorn and the Williamsburg Inn.

Now the reason that is important

is that the focal point in Williamsburg is Colonial Williamsburg, not the Circuit Court of James City County.

If we take the court system out of the downtown and put the city back into the situation it was 20, 30, or 40 years ago where it was a shell, Albemarle County is going to suffer economically far more than it's going to gain from going to the county.

Slaughter.

And I think I'm down to two names right now.

I hope I haven't.

I hope I've caught everybody.

Um, Roger Schickendance and I believe this is David Summit Schmidt.

I'm sorry.

Boy, that blew that one.

Excuse me.

Hi supervisors, Madam Chair.

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak.

My name is Roger Shickadance.

I live in the Scottsville district.

I work a block from Court Square and I live at the opposite end of Avon on 20 South and so I've got perspectives from both ends of this discussion.

I very much support option one and the opinions of those that feel strongly about the symbolic and historic and civic value of Court Square.

I'd like to add architectural value to that.

You didn't show the levy site tonight, but it shows a gracious lawn and entrance from the courthouse into the new complex.

which I think would enhance and reinforce the fabric of the Court Square area.

It takes an underutilized site.

The levee site is filled much with parking and would help increase the density of that site.

I think there's a point to be made that when the strategic plan is talking about placemaking, we shouldn't degrade places in the city in favor of creating new places out of greenfield sites in the county.

There's a real opportunity here to strengthen the infrastructure that we have in the city and to

make use of transit which now converges on Charlottesville rather than having to change buses in Charlottesville to go out to the county.

In terms of developing a new site at Mill Creek, I think the residents in that neighborhood are still getting used to the idea of 5th Street Station coming on board.

I don't know that we're ready for all the transit that's going to be created by that and by the way there's a new parking lot with the Wegmans development that is is huge and it seems like there was an opportunity there that was missed to how to create the kind of neighborhood development that the county's trying to foster with the

comprehensive plan and I would say let's look at dense sites that we have already rather than taking greenfield sites and trying to redevelop them.

Good evening, I'm David Schmidt, resident of the Rio Magisterial District.

While I'm here as a private citizen, I do happen to be the Chief Deputy Clerk for the City of Charlottesville Circuit Court.

So I'm no stranger to the court system, and in reference to that, there's a court study from 1990 in the city for renovations and improvement to the circuit court for the City of Charlottesville, and I'm happy to let you know what you may already be aware of.

The city is finally giving us money to renovate our courtroom to add a secure sally port and a separate hearing space for other hearings.

So those wheels move much slowly and I applaud the county staff for thinking ahead and trying to do this.

I'd like to echo the impact on the public.

It is nice to be able to send people to the courthouse's footsteps away.

It's very convenient, while parking may be inconvenient.

The inconvenience of an arrest for a failure to appear in court is a lot more difficult to deal with.

Number two, the duplicitousness when you move services around, as Ms. Murtagh said, and some of the other agencies, I don't think the numbers have taken that into account.

Number three, the General Assembly is short on

Allocating, we've been waiting for another circuit court judge and just because you bill these general district courts doesn't mean the general assembly of the state is going to adequately staff it.

Last but not least, I propose another option which is the infill and redevelopment of the 400 block of East Market Street, of East High Street.

Joint City Property County, it's already there, and I don't know why it hasn't been looked at.

Yes, there's a 1924 house at the corner, but that's not part of the historic downtown Court Square.

And I think there would be willingness to develop that area.

It could be done a lot cheaper for, it would be new construction mostly.

You could sell the Leevia Opera House and you would keep everything downtown.

Thank you, Mr. Schmitz.

So I do think that that is all that I have as far as people that have signed up.

Is there anybody here that would like to speak who has not spoken to this yet?

Good evening, I'm Steven Meeks, Scottsville Magisterial District, also president of the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society, the leading steward of our county's history since 1940.

I think Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Goodman, and a few others have made a few good points that maybe it's time to look at a couple other options.

And the reason I say that, I guess I got into maybe the weeds more than anybody else here has tonight in reading in detail or looking at the schematics for some of the options such as option one as to what will happen to the historic

1803, Albemarle County Courthouse, everybody keeps making reference to.

And frankly, what is being planned to keep, to repurpose, to renovate that building would basically destroy the historic nature of that courthouse.

The drawings that have been circulated, I don't know if it was Dewberry or Mosley who did the drawings, but

basically it's calling for additions on the two unaltered sides of that courthouse which would basically destroy the historic character of the building and potentially could lead to its removal or delisting as a historic landmark which it most definitely is so again I would possibly ask that you look at another option looking at the site Mr. Schmidt talked about

look at doing something different with the Levy Opera House doing a new circuit court courtroom over there as well as a general district courtroom and by all means let's try to preserve our historic courthouse which is a highlight for us as we do hold court in the courthouse courtesy of Judge Higgins twice a year as part of our annual spirit walk and first night so

It is an honor to do that.

It is an honor to take people on tour of the historic downtown and people are really impressed with our courthouse.

So let's try to preserve it.

Thank you, Mr. Meeks.

Is there anyone else here that would like to speak who hasn't spoken yet?

Seeing no one, we're going to close this public comment period.

And if you could bear with us, we need to stand up for a few minutes.

So we're going to take a 10 minute recess and then come back and have our discussion.

Thank you.

Okay, we're going to start back up again if we can have everybody take a seat.

Thank you very much.

We have all our board members.

Okay, to open up the discussion, do we have any questions, comments?

What would folks like to discuss at this point?

I'll throw an idea out there and that is that I do know that there's more work that needs to be done before I for one am ready to make a choice because I think there are more details about what our different options are.

Several people have said today that there perhaps are more costs to some of our options than we have

carefully than we have identified and that we need to make sure that we have time to think about those.

So I would hope that we will discuss the kinds of assignments we would give to our staff to bring back to us through the winter.

On a particular option?

Yes, on the options where we have more

The other thing that I noticed from Trevor's presentation on the sheet that you gave us, you didn't include the square footage in each of them.

I agree and I think that having some more information and staff being able to bring back some work on, well I guess we'd have to figure out exactly what options we'd want them to be, want staff to look at.

Might be one, might be two, might be three.

But I do think that certainly we would need some more information on option five going forward.

And I guess, Tom, how, what would that, you all would be able to do that before we made a decision.

Well, I would ask you maybe what specific things you might need more information on, but if it's about whether or not a public-private partnership is viable and whether or not we could get a partner.

That would be something we could clearly start a process on if you wanted to pursue that further under five.

I'd like to make some comments because I just listened to some of the most incredible comments that I've ever heard being in here since I was on the board for the last three years.

For the many years that I spent in the audience coming to different board meetings beforehand, this has been some of the most eloquent statements I've ever heard.

And the whole idea of this

Of our court system being part of an economic development project to me is just wrong.

Justice delayed, is justice denied, access to justice, how important that is, what the courts really mean to our society, what they mean to us.

This is an incredibly important decision, and if we're going to do economic development, I think that's great, but I don't think we should use the courts to do it.

I think what we need to do is listen to the people who have spoken tonight.

I think they're very representative of the community.

I think there are other ways to do economic development.

If we want to put money, we've had lots of talk recently about form-based code and doing small area plans and incentivizing businesses

to come into these areas to increase our revenues.

Right now, if we put it out in our most valuable commercial land, we're not going to be collecting the revenues or we're going to be paying rent or something else.

There is nothing for free.

But even if there was something for free, I don't think that that should be part of our decision.

I think the courts are just too important to our society.

And I strongly believe and hope that this board will consider the people that this affects, the everyday people that are affected by our decision.

I'm very impressed at how our legal community works together to help our community.

I was told in the audience just now that literally for legal aid that more people, I think it was legal aid,

More people would actually end up not being able to do bond hearings on time.

There would be less bond hearings, so more people would actually stay in jail longer.

I mean, this has serious, serious consequences.

I just got that from our new public defender.

Madam Chair, just on clarification and maybe as process of figuring out direction the board may want to take.

Well, even if it is a small possibility, I think we should look into what we're now calling, it seems, option six of just looking at capacity issues, hours issues, using space better, trying to be as frugal as we possibly can.

It sounds to me, from the people that were talking, they're willing to suffer with

hustling a little bit more or you know having to work a little bit on our hours whatever if it means maintaining the culture of cooperation and creativity they have that kind of biosphere

making things work and I think we ought to respect that and if they can help us find ways to you know different ways to find storage for records or someone was just telling me about how Levy could be used a little bit differently you know whether there's other buildings you know the second floor of the McIntire Library used to be a federal court and it's largely unused and I'm not saying that's a good idea I'm just saying we should

We're talking about $42 million.

We should spend some time seeing if we can put off doing that for 10 or 15 years.

I'll be dead, so that'll be good.

It's an interesting, some interesting comments that came tonight about that.

We have been before I think probably five or six different boards over the years with the study and analysis just with changing membership and I think the questions come up before and I think we've met with court users and I think the needs were identified but

Well, also the updated technology too that I heard online today, you know, someone giving a story about the guy that had to be driven in from the prison to plead guilty or not guilty and, you know, he says not guilty and then they take him back to prison and it could have been done on a videotape or that's how they do it now at this particular course.

This is in our course.

you know there's there's so many advances and the gentleman who talked about how there's actually fewer actual trials even though there's more people involved in the court system all those things should be examined it seems like to me

Anything we can do to not spend $42 million if we can also meet our long-term needs is something worth looking at, but I don't know if we've studied it before because I think the question has been raised in the past and we did some reanalysis, but do you have any particular comments on that?

I certainly wouldn't want to start from scratch.

In 2013, the Dewberry Architects hired a nationally renowned organization that does statistical analysis on court cases, population growth.

They produced basically the prediction on what our courts would need.

We revisited that in 2015 with the Mosley update.

I think that we have spent the time and we have spent the money with the, you know, I'll say the experts to look at that.

I know the question has been asked, well, what if we did the minimal amount?

Could we use levee in a way where we're just trying to buy, say, 10 years of time?

Staff has done a little bit of analysis of that and that's something that we could, you know, do a little deeper study on.

It wouldn't be, you know,

the big project that we've talked about it would be basically trying to take the facility at the Opera House that has been mothballed and try to potentially restore that in a way that maybe could give us some short-term capacity but that's what it really will be is short-term and I'll stress the other piece of this that it comes out in all the reports is

What I think worries me is security issues and security concerns.

And it's not a problem until it's a problem.

So I think that's something that we will need to address no matter what we do.

And we have a design that can accomplish that certainly in option one.

Maybe there's a way to do something a little less than that in option six or option seven, whatever.

One of the advantages of some of the options that have been developed over the last

six months to a year were that they created the opportunity to phase construction so you just built what we feel like we really need in the immediate future before building anything else with the idea that it would create some opportunity to let technology and other things maybe eliminate that need.

The downtown option was the one that we felt like we had to build it up front because once you start a construction project in a tight space you really

I can't find that out later and then put another floor on.

So the phasing was one of the positive things about some of the other options.

I think our first question would probably be to the stakeholders.

Do you think that we don't need to do this?

And I'm not sure that the majority would feel that way, but we certainly can do whatever the board thinks makes sense.

Again, this has been a project about meeting the long-term needs of the court, and we've been working at it for about six years or something like that.

I also think that there's a tremendous amount of costs in efficiencies and needing more personnel that are not taken into consideration with these other options that we won't have if we keep the courts down where we are and we pick option one.

Those really aren't developed.

It's hard to develop those.

And we understand that it's very hard to put a price tag on those.

Well it seemed like to me that using the county office building in some way, shape, or form was a great compromise.

and for me personally, I'm disappointed that we haven't been able to come together on, this is not about just parking, it certainly is not.

But it did seem like to me that for the entire community, some give and take and compromise is important.

We're the ones that are charged with the financial picture in Albemarle County.

And we've had, what, three years now of raising taxes.

And while I appreciate that this shouldn't be about money,

The reality is that we have options that are viable for our courts that would allow us to save money.

And I know that that will be taken as I'm trading justice for money, but that I really don't believe

that justice shouldn't depend on the building it's in if it's two blocks away or three blocks away?

Are we really saying that our citizens won't get justice?

I would love to have a magic bullet that would say that the attorneys and the legal community and the judges and the citizens that we could all come together and figure out how to have a compromise on this.

We've really tried hard, but I'm really, really sad to hear that our historic building would go away if we left it.

Why would that happen?

We're in this building because we really treasure in this community historic buildings.

We could make the courthouse, the historic courthouse, remain a historic building and use it for other things.

Just moving down here or moving out into the county doesn't mean it has to go away.

And I know, I see you shaking your head and I'm so sorry.

Well, we listened really carefully.

I really listened carefully to everything y'all had to say.

And I didn't disagree with a lot of it.

I just don't see for the

I want to weigh in, actually some of these points I also echo, Diantha, that you brought up

The argument of judicial efficiency, we offered to the city through option two to work together and provide the additional court space because of our concern that we were not going to have a parking issue resolved in a timely manner.

So with people putting the onus on us that we are introducing judicial efficiency,

Inefficiency into the system when we initially tried to make that offer and we were rejected in option two.

I do want to really attack vigorously the argument that justice delayed is justice denied.

You can argue that in 1761

the people of the town of Scottsville where the circuit court was when it was moved to Charlottesville they faced a huge challenge to move up come up here for court issues they had a delay and who represented them in 1761 to argue that they unfortunately were going to have delayed justice because they weren't going to be able to get to Charlottesville let's be clear

Justice delayed is justice denied.

It doesn't talk about time.

It's referring to postponing hearing dates, testimony not being accepted.

It's where steps are taken to really interfere with the judicial process.

That's not what's on the table here tonight.

We're not talking about altering a judicial process.

Yes, there are going to be some inconveniences created.

There are plenty of other

cases where there are courthouses separated between a town and a county and lawyers do have to make a trip as a result of that.

But to say that justice delayed is going to be justice denied, I think that's a little exaggerated.

The historic courthouse is going to stay.

No one's talking about tearing it down.

It's going to, and Steve Meeks makes a really strong argument that I heard, Ann and I heard when we both served, and you still do, on Historic Preservation Committee.

Real questions about the initial plans would affect the architectural historical dimension of the courthouse.

So we can do the courthouse a long-term favor by not trying to alter it in any way.

It will remain a historic draw.

It is a creative opportunity for Albemarle County to utilize it if the city says we don't want to buy it.

If the city does want to buy it, it becomes a unique historical opportunity for them.

I could well picture where you would be able to come to the historic courthouse and during the day certain hours run into a Thomas Jefferson being there and James Madison.

You can have your pictures taken with both of them.

Talk about a tourist opportunity, that would be a huge one.

The last thing I want to say, and I've been in communities and I spent 24 years in Connecticut, and the land of steady habits as Connecticut is commonly referred to,

Change is always a challenge, and it's difficult to perceive what change is going to result in, what the implications are going to be, but this community is at a point now with the courts where we have an opportunity to make a change that's in the best long-term interests of our residents.

in terms of accessing courts, either here in the county office building or out in another location in the county.

And I think we're missing historic opportunity if we as a board don't face that challenge squarely in the face and say, what's in the best interest of our taxpayers, longest term, knowing that we will be committed to ensuring that the courthouse

Others?

Norman, would you like to say anything?

Well, in some ways, another way to look at it is option one is to continue negotiating with the city.

That's, you know, we can't just do option one.

We still have to finish talking about parking.

We have to finish, you know, timing issues and so on.

So, I mean, I'd say, you know, some combination of, you know, let's continue talking with them and see if we can work out

If the issue is money, then what's it worth?

Can we figure out a way to save that much money?

That's maybe the next negotiation.

If it's five million dollars, at some point we would stay down there because we'd save enough money.

Let's talk to them and see if we can work something out.

And as Diantha's saying, try to find a compromise.

Neal, I think you should definitely tweet that for longevity of Diantha giving you a compliment.

There you go.

Oh, stop.

That's not true.

Neal and I get along fine.

Well, that's a suggestion.

The other suggestion would be that while that option one is taking place, because I do know that certainly this community has a history of taking 30 and 40 years to do anything.

Maybe what I would really like is I'd like for staff to take a look at one of the other options, maybe option three or option five.

and look at bringing back some more information for us on those options as well.

Just throwing that out there.

I'm not ready to give up on a compromise, nor am I ready to say that I am not willing to try my very best to save the taxpayers of Albemarle County a great deal of money while preserving

Justice for all in making sure that people can get to the courts.

I mean we can get, we're smart people, we can get all these challenges worked out.

Is that workable?

I think the short-term option, I mean 10 years to me is a pretty long term if we can do something to save a lot of money and accomplish that and make do for the next 10 years and five years from now we can be thinking of the next 10 years something like that you know that timing issue I think is it is a tricky one and I you know everybody wants to think long-term but

I don't think that's the way society is going today is to think of a 40-year time horizon for how many court cases there's going to be.

I guess, and I don't want to keep taking everybody's time up, but the time that up until now that we've really spent on this project

really has made me realize that we have some opportunities that we really could take advantage of.

And I see Albemarle County has to be with the way we're urbanizing in our urban ring.

We have to be more than just providing bedrooms or we just can't make it.

We have got, we have to figure out a way to produce some revenues through economic development.

Are the counties just, I mean we just can't be a bedroom suburb.

and this could be transformative and it could be exciting.

I don't want to give up on option five is what I'm saying.

I'm not really ready to give up on option five.

Now having said that,

Norman has a point, we can see what happens with option one.

That's to some degree maybe not up to us so much as it is to the city.

And then if we wanted to look at maybe one of the other options in between, say option three as well, spend some time.

I would recommend that we vote on each option beginning with option one moving through option five then.

Let's see if we can winnow the field down from five to three to two.

That would be my recommendation.

I mean we can sit here continuing to bat this back and around like we're playing tennis on a

I would say that I am very concerned about that because I would hope that we would not take option one off the table.

You make a point that we could vote on each one of them, but I think that there's a lot that we can do to look at that.

I think Norman's point is well taken that we should be talking with the city.

If money is the issue, then we should be looking at that harder before we do that to our community.

Options four and five both require referendum and in many ways I think they require the same amount of new information, new process background from our county attorney and from others so I think they almost from a research point of view go together.

The letter, as if I understand the letter from the city correctly, they've decided option two is not something they're interested in, so that in a way, even though it's very important to have for the comparison of the dollars, and I'm very glad it's here today, they've pretty well taken that off the table.

I always thought the win-win that we were going to have in this building was pretty exciting for the amount of time that it was alive.

I really very much want to hear the staff prepare the next phase of information that I know we've all been talking about if we get to some agreement tonight about what to go forward with to get more information.

But also, I think the point today that was made

about the radical changes to the historic courthouse and that's the solution that needs to be addressed for option one to continue in my mind to

Dismember the building to the point that it comes off the National Register is to me not preserving our history or doing that correctly and so I would like to have more information come back about that as well.

I'm also interested in the other option of the building on East, the lots on East High Street to find out what that's all about because I didn't know anything about it.

and I guess my request to members of the community is several have made comments about extra costs or extra personnel that would be required if operations were changed.

I would like those of you who have that information to share it.

It doesn't have to be in this kind of a setting.

It needs to be coming to the board or to staff for circulation so that we have a better chance

to understand these issues.

Well, I think Ann mentioned that the city's pretty much taken option two off.

So option two, which, you know, a lot of us, or at least some of us, were pretty excited, as Ann said, about working together with the city and collaboratively and having some

a sort of a compromise but I think when once they took option two off the table we could probably take that off the table as well I think so and if we do the other options down here we will have to include the looking at that intersection which was that may be a cost that would be their responsibility I would think in my personal opinion because

This is about compromise in my opinion.

This project has to be about compromise.