City Council Meeting   1/5/2022

Good evening.

We're waiting for our deputy city managers to join.

Kina, while we're waiting, at some point, I seem to have lost the link to the boards and commissions spreadsheet.

Could you send that to me again?

If you open, yeah.

I'm having trouble getting on in Teams.

It keeps wanting to put me into my business Teams account.

So anyway, I've done it.

I've accessed it before.

I don't know how I did it before, but

Hello, everybody.

The deputies are having some difficulty signing on.

I don't know that they received the link to the main meeting, so I would see if I can help them sign on.

I also just want to remind everybody that the correct closed meeting link came for me on my city account at 510 and all it has is a link in it because something has happened to my Zoom account and I can't figure out how to invite people anymore.

So it's just a bare bones link.

All right, looks like we're all here now.

Ms.

Robertson, do I call this to order or does Mr. Sanders or Ms.

Ms.

So good evening, everyone.

The January 5, 2022 council meeting will come to order.

At the direction of City Council, this meeting was postponed and continued from January 3 due to inclement weather and the many effects of widespread power outages and other damage.

The continuance of the meeting to tonight was publicized with a press release, updates to the city calendar and website, and notices sent to Zoom webinar registrants.

This meeting is divided into several sections, including one, a closed meeting,

two, an organizational meeting where council will select its mayor and vice mayor, and three, the regular city council business meeting where the newly elected mayor will preside.

Ms.

Thomas, would you call the roll, please?

Councilor McGill.

Yes, I'm here.

Councillor Pinkston?

Here.

At this time, City Council has business for a closed session.

Aye.

move pursuant to section 2.2-3712 of the Virginia code, I hereby move that the city council close this open meeting and convene within a closed session as authorized by Virginia code section 2.2-3711A7

for consultation with legal counsel regarding implementation of the awarded contract with the Robert Bob Group for services and for consultation with legal counsel regarding the pending litigation filed in Charlottesville Circuit Court, case number CL21-617 and in the U.S.

District Court, Western District of Virginia, case number 321-CV-00045.

because such consultation would adversely affect the negotiation or litigation posture of the city.

Second was heard first by Council Member Snook.

Ms.

Councillor McGill?

Yes.

Missed.

Hello, everybody.

Excellent.

I just wanted to make sure we've got.

I move that the city council members certified by a recorded vote that to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempt from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting.

Having a second been spoken, Ms.

Could we clarify who that second was from?

I heard Councillor Snook second, but I'm not sure who the first person was.

That was Councillor Wade.

Okay.

Now for the vote.

Councillor McGill?

Yes.

Thank you, Ms.

Thomas.

Motion passes five to zero.

At this time, we will go ahead and move forward into the regular meeting.

Is that appropriate, Ms.

Thomas?

We have established that a quorum is present, and it appears that all counselors are present, so we can, I'm so sorry, Ms.

Actually, you were doing just fine.

So our next order of business is the election of mayor and vice mayor for two year terms.

Both positions are elected by the city council as a body.

The person elected to serve as mayor will preside over city council meetings and may call special meetings, make some appointments to advisory boards, and serves as the head of government for ceremonial purposes and official functions.

The vice mayor substitutes whenever the mayor is not available.

Tonight, the members of city council will be given an opportunity to nominate an individual councilor to serve as the council's presiding officer and mayor and may make brief remarks in support of that nomination.

That'll be roughly two minutes, councilors.

Following a nomination, I will then call a second.

Once the nomination has been seconded, the nominee will be given the opportunity to accept or decline that nomination.

I will call for any additional nominations and if any nomination fails to receive a second, that nomination fails and will not be voted on.

Once all nominations are completed, the Clerk of Council will conduct a roll call vote and each member will be asked to identify the one specific nominee for whom the member is casting his or her vote.

And then we will repeat that process for Vice Mayor.

I am going to ask our official parliamentarian, who is our city attorney, Ms.

Roberts, to double check me, but I do not believe you can nominate yourself and second yourself.

That is fine.

That would be fine.

And just to be clear, a second just allows a nomination to move forward for consideration.

Okay.

I nominate Lloyd Snow.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded for Lloyd Snook to be nominated as the position of mayor.

Yeah, well, I've worked with Lloyd for many years and outside of council, of course, and I think that he has the knowledge of governors to handle this position.

I think he understands the great importance

importance of this position that the eyes of not only the city, but a much broader audience will be looking upon him.

And I think that he understands the importance and knows what it takes to hear everyone's voice.

And I think that he has the time to take on his responsibility.

Thank you so much.

I would accept it.

And as presiding officer, I think you said I could make a brief statement of my own.

Yes, sir.

So over the last couple of years, we've learned that to be effective leaders of change, we need two things.

We need a vision and we need the ability to build a team to realize that vision.

Our comprehensive plan sets out a compelling vision for the city that I think all five of us endorse.

A city of equity and opportunity where all people can thrive.

A city with a rich and diverse culture where all people are welcomed and valued and respected.

A well-planned city of neighborhoods with a variety of affordable housing choices.

A city that demonstrates environmental and climate leadership.

A government where all of our employees are respected and where decisions are made with an eye on racial equity.

We have the vision piece, but we haven't been able to build a team to realize that vision.

I'd like to be the next mayor because I want to lead the recruitment of a good city manager who can lead Charlottesville for a decade or more.

A city manager who shares our vision of an equitable and inclusive, high quality, high functioning government.

A city manager who has the training and experience to help us bring that vision to reality.

In the meantime, though, we can get started on why we were all elected.

The Comp Plan articulated 308 different strategies over seven substantive areas of concern, but what it does not do is to say how we will mold that laundry list into a program of action.

Last year, the Housing Advisory Committee and two different task forces on criminal justice reform

made some real progress on important issues by involving our residents.

We have a lot of smart people in Charlottesville.

I'd like to set up similar committees to advise Council and the Planning Commission in addition to the Criminal Justice and Marcus Alert Task Forces and the Housing Advisory Committee

a climate change advisory committee, a group to work on transit and transportation policy, a group to develop a plan for historic Charlottesville embracing the statues and parks and Court Square and all that.

We need to get started right away, though, with the recruitment effort for our next city manager.

We have two excellent deputy city managers.

They, with an interim city manager, need to keep filling the vacant management positions.

Then, as we launch those committees and city manager applicants start looking at Charlottesville

They will not see a government paralyzed.

They'll see a government that's moving forward.

They'll see a train they'll want to jump onto.

We have a good vision.

We need to build our team.

Thank you.

Yes, I feel that Councilor Payne is very good at bringing people together across many different places.

Thank you.

All right.

Sure.

I'll try to speak briefly.

But I think, you know, in my

Two years on council, you know, I've seen even more firsthand that we, you know, we are a divided community and divided along race, class, ideology, education level and

This has been at a time of unprecedented crisis in a lot of ways.

You know, certainly a global pandemic that has removed in-person community in a way that has frayed our social fabric in a way that I think we will take years to fully understand the full impact that that's had.

And I've seen how these divisions have had an impact on council, on staff, or community.

And most importantly, I think our ability to do public policy work, specific issues like implementing our affordable housing strategy, creating the land bank, creating our climate strategy and implementing it, as well as small things we see every day, like recent calls from the community to take actions about Fifth Street.

I mean, that's a perfect example of a well-functioning city government is critical to being able to

respond to that effectively in a timely manner.

I'll also say in my two years on council, I've seen us have critical, difficult conversations that we haven't had in years.

I've also seen us make real policy progress in many ways and unprecedented ways on things like our future land use map and unprecedented resident-led redevelopment of public housing and Friendship Court, one of the highest per capita affordable housing expenditures in the entire country.

And I think it's vital for us going forward.

If we're going to create stability, I think it will require us to have stability, not only for stability sake, but stability with a mission and goal in mind of continuing that work and executing that work and building the team on council and on staff to execute it.

And the final thing I would say is I think it will also require us to engage with the public, explain the decisions we're making, explain what it takes to turn a policy idea from a demand into reality and the difficulties of it, explain the setbacks we've had on being able to implement policies like collective bargaining, implementing our affordable housing strategy, figuring out how we're going to fund it.

implementing pay equity across our organization and countless other issues.

And so whatever decision we make tonight as a council, whatever decision council makes, I think it is critical that we will not achieve stability unless it is stability with a mission in mind, specific achievable policy goals, and we show our commitment through our policy actions.

as well as engaging in the community and acknowledging that a lot of trust has been lost.

There's a lot of bridges we have to build, a lot of bridges we have to repair, a lot of difficult conversations we have to have.

and I hope that I can play a role in doing that.

I won't pretend that I could ever do that alone or that if you look at the entire community that I'm the person who would be the best able to do it.

I do think I have something to offer and we're gonna have to be committed to that and acknowledge the failings we've had collectively as council.

There's a lot of reasons for it but we haven't been where we need to be.

And again, I'll just underline until we have a mission in mind for stability and we're engaging with the public and having difficult conversations and confronting our own failings as council and the reasons both historical and recent that we've lost trust with many segments of the community, we will not achieve stability.

And with that, I've talked long enough and that's it.

Thank you.

The floor remains open.

Should there be any further nominations?

Counselors, would you like to nominate any additional individuals?

Hearing none and seeing no individuals unmute, the nominations for the position of mayor are now closed.

Ms.

Thomas.

The selections are Councillor Snook and Councillor Payne.

My vote is for Councilor Snook, please.

I'm voting for Lloyd Snook.

By a vote of three to two, council has selected Lloyd Snook as mayor of the city of Charlottesville for the 2022-2023 term.

I will now open the floor for nominations for the position of vice mayor.

Absolutely.

Juan Diego Wade has been a fixture in this community for decades.

He served at all levels.

He has so much to contribute.

He has a courageousness, but also a humility that is instructive for me and I'm grateful for his leadership in the city.

Thank you.

Yes, I have kind of fancied myself a type of person that works behind the scenes to help get things done and look at the fruition of

the efforts of myself and others, and I hope to be able to use my many, you know, Brian said decades, that makes me sound old, but I get what you mean, but many years of, you know, developing relationships in the community through all parts of the community to bring people together, as Michael said, as Sena has said, that I hope to be able to do that kind of in a behind the scenes

Thank you, Councilor Wade.

Hearing none and seeing no motion towards unmuting, the nominations for the position of vice mayor are now closed.

Ms.

Councilor McGill.

Juan Diego Wade.

Councillor Pinkston, Juan Diego Wade, Councillor Snook, Juan Diego Wade, Councillor Wade, Me.

By a vote of five to zero, the council has selected Juan Diego Wade as vice mayor of the city of Charlottesville for the 2022-2023 term.

Congratulations, Vice Mayor Wade.

Yes, I did.

710 would give us 14 minutes.

Sounds wonderful.

Thank you.

Okay, looks like we've got everybody back, is that right?

Okay.

Likewise.

Okay.

Yes.

All right.

So I called January 5, 2022 city council meeting back to order.

Apparently there was a momentary glitch in some of the video feed and some people may have missed the fact that Juan Diego Wade was elected vice mayor.

And so we'll announce that again to the rest of the world.

So the first item on the agenda here is for approval of the agenda itself.

And I would like to make one suggestion, and that is that we move the consideration of boards and commissions for council seats from a position up front to basically the end of the agenda

The reason is that we were originally, last time we did this, two years ago, we had that discussion in closed session.

We simply came out and read off the list of who was going to go where.

We've since been advised by the city attorney that we're really not supposed to do that in closed session, so we haven't done it in closed session, so we're going to have to have that discussion in open session.

No problem with that, except that I'm not sure that the rest of the

who is accumulating for listening to other things really wants to hear us hash through all of that.

So I would like to suggest that we move the boards and commissions consideration to the, I guess it would be item 10 on the agenda, if that suits everybody.

It's fine with me.

Okay.

I would first like to verify with both the clerk of counsel and our attorney that there's nothing wrong with that.

Second.

So we have a motion and a second.

Ms.

Councilor McGill.

Yes.

Councillor Payne?

Yes.

Councillor Payne?

Mayor Snook?

Mayor Snook?

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Thank you for your patience.

I want to make sure everyone knows Mr. Alex Zanz, Dr. Martin Luther King community celebration, continuing his dream and works, Charlottesville, Virginia, in commemoration of civil and human rights pioneer, Dr. Martin Luther King, the ninth annual event will be telecast on Comcast Channel 14

on Monday, January 17, 2022 at 7 p.m.

and at alex-zan.com and YouTube.

The event is created and coordinated by Arthur Award and Trailblazer, Mr. Alex Zan.

Highlights include seventh Alice B. Lugo Award Speaker, Minister Jaquan Chisholm, and I do apologize if I have mispronounced your name,

Musician Vocalist, Michael Terrell Jr.

Drummer extraordinaire, Alexis Noel, Alexan's Ex-Treasures and the Lifesavers and more.

Mistress of Ceremonies, Miss Dominga Murray, NBC 29.

Any other announcements?

Okay, seeing no other announcements to be made.

Next item would be to hear from Dr. Bonds.

I am.

Thank you so much.

Absolutely.

Good evening, everyone.

I'm going to share my screen here.

It should be head of communications.

All right, so you should be seeing my first slide.

Can someone give me a thumbs up for that?

Yes, perfect.

So tonight I'm going to update you on COVID.

But I want to first start, because of the winter storm we've had this week, remind everybody about winter storm safety.

Many who are not listening to this because they're out of power are still struggling with the quite unexpected storm that we had this week.

And so I just want to remind those people who are listening that can share with family and friends

that individuals should be sure and stay off the road during the storm and avoid the tree limbs, particularly if there's any power lines associated with that, and there were a lot this time.

When we do have the really bitter cold, it's important to limit your time outside, particularly if you have underlying health conditions.

Critical right now for all of us and including myself that's still struggling with power loss is to watch the carbon monoxide.

If you're using a generator to keep lights on or your refrigerator running in your house, make sure that the generator is far enough away from your house so that you're not getting seepage of carbon monoxide.

And you should have a carbon monoxide detector and be sure and check its batteries because it's running on battery power right now if you don't have electricity.

Avoid overexertion when you're shoveling the snow.

That's pretty key, particularly

Watch for signs of frostbite and hypothermia, again, particularly for those people who don't have heating going on in their house, and be a great neighbor and go and check in your neighbors, make sure they're doing well, make sure that if they don't have electricity that they've got access to someplace warm to go and plenty of water and food to eat.

So just some key safety tips, particularly be in light of another storm coming tomorrow night.

So now let's move on to COVID, which is also taking us by a storm right now, as it were.

We are having really one of the highest outbreaks that we've had right now.

As you can see, there were 200 plus cases identified across the health district today, and there were over 300 for the whole health district yesterday.

We have

seeing a very large increase in our numbers recently, and that is because of the Omicron variant.

We do do variant typing on a number of individuals in the Commonwealth and here locally as well.

And you can see that Delta, which is this dark blue color, has really been the predominant variant being seen across the state and also here locally.

Up until recently, it still is the predominant variant, but we are beginning to see Omicron in our health district and across the state.

We expect the proportions of Omicron to increase, but it is important for the public to remember that Delta variant is still present.

in the community.

The Omicron variant is troublesome because it has many more mutations and deletions, as you can see from the cartoon in the right-hand side of the screen.

The little blue dots represent mutations and the red dots represent substitutions or deletions in the virus.

And that's made it more easily transmissible from person to person.

It does appear that the symptoms are somewhat milder than we see with the Delta variant, but very similar symptoms.

The vaccines are perhaps a little less effective at preventing symptomatic non-hospitalized disease.

So if you are infected with Omicron, you probably will have some symptoms.

although not everybody.

The risk of hospitalization does appear to be lower especially if you have received your vaccine plus your booster at this point in time.

I do want to put a big caveat around all of this though and that is the data from Omicron is being gathered primarily in Europe and in Africa and the vaccine rates and the previous infection rates are different in those countries and so

While this information will probably hold true, I think we still need to gather more data from here in the United States before we consider all of this to be absolutely true.

So what can you do at this point in time?

Well, the first thing, and I know this, I say this every time I'm here, but is get vaccinated.

Vaccines are safe and effective.

It is really important that if you're now greater than five months, and that's a change,

Since your second mRNA shot, that is whether you got Pfizer or Moderna, you should go get a booster at this point in time.

If you got J&J as your first vaccine, you should also go and get a booster if it's been more than two months since your first shot.

At this point, you may want to consider upgrading your mask.

A surgical mask probably provides slightly better protection than the cloth mask, although cloth masks are very effective, and particularly if they're multi-layer.

The N95 and the KN95 do provide better protection.

They are somewhat more difficult to find and some individuals find it harder to breathe through those masks, but they do have slightly better blockage of viral particles.

It's really key that when you wear your mask that it covers both your nose and your mouth completely.

Masks are only as effective as how well we wear them

and I do see a lot of people that have them only covering their mouths or have them hanging down at their chins and they're not going to do you any good nor are they going to do your neighbors or loved ones any good if you're not wearing them effective.

Remember to keep your distance, six feet is best.

Outdoors is better than indoors and so when the days are nice and you want to meet with friends, I encourage people to do that in an outdoor setting.

If you are going to visit a crowded indoor location, please wear a well-fitting mask that covers your nose and mouth.

And then finally, it's always important to wash your hands, particularly this time of year when we have so many other viral diseases circulating.

So with regard to vaccination, how are we doing?

Well, just over 34,000 individuals in Charlottesville.

So this is Charlottesville only data right now.

have received at least one dose of the COVID, of a approved COVID vaccine.

That works out to be about 73% of all population or 77% of our adults.

We do have 30,000 individuals who are fully vaccinated and by fully vaccinated here, I mean two shots of an mRNA vaccine or one shot of J&J.

That works out to be 64% of our population or 69% of adults.

With regard to individuals who have gotten boosters or a third dose, for the entire population that's 34% and for adults it's 40%.

We do continue to see

particular groups that are lacking in our vaccination efforts.

Again, this is Charlottesville only data that I'm showing you right now.

We do have a really great response in the five to 11 year olds.

59% of eligible children in that age group have gotten at least one dose of their vaccine.

and since they've only recently become eligible for vaccine we think that's a pretty good success rate and we'll continue to target that group in the coming year.

Where we're not seeing such great uptick of our vaccines is the 18 to 24 year olds where only 50% of the population have gotten at least one dose and we will continue to work on getting this age group vaccinated as we move forward.

With regard to vaccination by race and ethnicity, we can see that we have very good uptake amongst Asians, Latinos, and the Native Americans.

We have reasonable uptake amongst our white population.

We are still struggling a little bit in the black population at 56%.

And again, we will continue to do special outreach in the coming year to try and improve that vaccination rate.

I do want to talk a minute about the new guidance from the CDC.

So this just came out recently, and it's a pretty significant change from what they were recommending before.

So if you are infected with COVID, either through a laboratory test done by your doctor or at one of the vaccine testing sites across the area, you should isolate.

and the CDC has now changed the recommendations to five days of isolation from either the start of your symptoms or if you are asymptomatic from when you have a positive test.

You should do a longer isolation, that is the full 10 days if your symptoms are more than mild, that is if you have moderate to severe symptoms, you should stay home for the full 10 days.

If you have a continued fever at five days, continue to isolate.

Or if you've had mild symptoms, but there's not been any improvement in them, then you should also continue to isolate.

Now, on day six to 10, you can leave isolation if you are improving and your symptoms were mild to begin with, and you can wear a well-fitting mask over your nose and mouth consistently when you are around any other individuals.

So you can go to work, you can go about your daily business, but you must wear a mask because some percentage of the population will remain infectious on day six through 10.

And the only way to cut down on that infectiousness is to wear that well-fitting mask.

You should consider obtaining an antigen test at the end of five days.

That is when you're leaving your isolation from your home.

Get an antigen test.

That's a rapid test.

And if it's positive, you should consider staying in isolation because you're probably still infectious at that point in time.

If you're exposed but you haven't come down with COVID or you have tested and haven't been tested, you should quarantine

If you're here, it varies considerably on whether you're fully vaccinated or not.

You don't have to quarantine, although you do have to wear a mask when you are around others if you are over the age of 18, fully vaccinated, and you have a booster.

Or if you have had a confirmed case of COVID in the past 90 days.

I'm going to talk about school-age kids on the next slide.

So no quarantine, just wear a mask for 10 days if you're fully vaccinated with a booster or you've had confirmed COVID in the past 90 days, COVID providing you with the immunity that fully vaccination and booster would.

You should quarantine at home for five days post exposure and then wear a well-fitting mask on day six through 10 if you're not vaccinated or if you

Your mRNA vaccine series is greater than five months old or your J and J is greater than two months ago and you have not received your booster.

And then finally, you should get tested five days after exposure to see if you've become infected or if you develop any symptoms.

So this is a change.

We will post this information on our website and we will there it's posted on the VDH and the CDC website as well.

So a couple of exceptions to that.

Those who have moderate to severe illness, then the CDC is recommending isolation at home for the full 10 days.

If you are a healthcare worker, there is separate CDC guidance that I'm not going to go through tonight because it varies on how the healthcare staffing situation is.

If you are in a congregate living situation, the CDC recommends quarantine for the full 10 days.

If you are immunocompromised, there is very specific CDC guidance and you should really look at their guidance document.

And finally, very young children or those who cannot wear a mask that is they're disabled or they have other issues that would prevent them from wearing that mask should quarantine at home for the full 10 days.

Let's talk about school age kids.

The Health District is recommending to schools that they continue their full 10-day isolation and quarantine.

And we're doing this because our goal is to keep children in school and to keep schools open.

We know that our vaccination levels are lower, particularly in younger children since they've just become eligible for the vaccine.

And we do know that the ability to wear a mask all day long, although pretty good for kids,

can be a challenge, particularly around mealtimes and the outdoor setting when children are playing.

And we believe that this is going to lead to higher infection rates if the schools adopt the five and six through 10 rule that the CDC is giving.

We are in frequent contact with schools.

We meet with school officials every week.

We will continue to look at options.

The state is considering a test to stay option.

that many of our schools in the area would like to adopt if that becomes available to them.

So the first is please try and seek testing outside of the emergency room.

That's really not the best place to get testing and it results in emergency rooms being filled up with individuals who can be more appropriately

Diagnosed and treated in other settings.

Here in the Charlottesville area, we're very fortunate we have testing every day of the week, Monday through Friday.

There's a list here, I won't read it, but there's also a list on our website that you can go to.

You can scan the QR code to find where our testing is.

I will say that Next Molecular, which is a contract company that works with us for testing in the Fashion Square Mall at the JCPenney end of the mall,

has moving to a no registration walk-in only situation.

So you don't have to register, you just show up and you can get tested.

There are other testing options outside of the free testing on the previous slide.

And I just want to mention them because there is some confusion about where you get your test results.

So there is a testing company called Test here that's in the Seminole Square shopping center that will offer a whole variety of testing.

It's near where the vaccination center is.

There is another testing company called Personic at the north end of Fashion Square Mall that is down where the old Sears used to be.

and you need to ask them how to obtain your test results.

We get people calling us and we just don't have access to those test results.

Many local pharmacies and you can use the VDH testing locator will offer COVID testing and then you can purchase rapid antigen tests at pharmacies or through the mail.

The FDA website lists those antigen tests that have received emergency authorization.

so those you can use at home some require access to the internet because they're proctored but most do not and then finally I want to just remind people of the vaccination locations we are at every health department in the health district every week we are at the downtown mall still on Monday in Moby our mobile band vaccinations bright teal right down at the

government office into the mall.

And then the community vaccination center that is affiliated with us in Seminole Square operates Monday through Saturday 8 a.m.

to 6 p.m.

You can register to get your vaccine, including your booster, or you can walk in.

They're very efficient and really we've heard great reviews about them.

Finally, our hotline does continue to operate and you can call for questions.

and finally vaccines.gov will provide you other locations where you can get vaccines, including many pharmacies in our area.

Yes, I have a couple of questions or comments.

Nice to see you again, Dr. Bonds.

I kind of have a different hat on this time.

I really appreciate your informative updates.

A couple of questions.

Yeah, absolutely.

So masks prevent viral particles on two sides.

One, they prevent you if you're infected and you don't know it from spreading those viral particles.

And then they do provide some protection for you as the wearer against viral particles that may be floating in the air.

Double masking adds additional layers of protection.

And so one strategy that many people have adopted, and I think it's a really good one, is to put a cloth mask on top of your surgical mask to provide that extra protection.

I think that's a very valid way of keeping yourself safe and to helping protect your loved ones, friends and family.

Again, I want to emphasize that the most important thing with any mask is that it must cover both your nose and your mouth.

So thank you very much.

Another question that I have is about the effectiveness or the decreased effectiveness of boosters after, you know, I'm hearing different things after 10 weeks, after eight weeks.

Yeah, so that's a great question.

We don't know how long boosters are going to be effective.

You know, there's so much we still don't understand about COVID-19.

And it's a very clever, if I can use an adjective, virus, and then it mutates really frequently.

And so we know that the vaccines still do their job at keeping you out of the hospital.

and for the most part, keeping you from having severe disease.

But we don't know how they're going to act for the next variant.

And we do know that there's another variant down the road, likely, because we've seen that in the past.

So at this point in time, there's no recommendation beyond that initial booster.

And the two initial shots plus the booster

seems to be doing a very good job at keeping people, as I said, out of the hospital and from having severe infection, which is really the two most critical outcomes at this point in time.

What the future brings, it's really hard to know at this point in time.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Just one question.

I didn't see this data.

I was reading the New York Times the other day and Dr. Fauci was quoted as saying that given mass vaccination, the number to really watch now is the hospitalizations and deaths and that in areas with significant vaccination, those rates are being decoupled from the case count like they weren't before mass vaccination.

And just are we seeing evidence of that here locally that

Yeah, and those are great comments.

I think it is really important to note that right now what we want to do is keep our hospital from being overly burdened, and that's really what the vaccinations are going to do.

It's challenging to know how that is playing out locally because the hospital that posts their data regarding COVID hospitalizations is UVA, and they are a tertiary care center for a very large catchment area.

and I have been watching their hospitalizations and you can go on UVA COVID tracker and see it.

There's a delay of a couple of days, but they're posted on a regular basis and you'll see they're going up.

They have pretty significant numbers in the hospital right now and they are admitting a large number of people every day, often double digits, which has been a pretty significant increase.

What I don't know is where those patients are coming from.

They don't post if the locality of where they're at.

And since we know that people are often transferred to UVA when they need specialty care, and we know that when other hospitals are burdened, they often send to our area.

So, yes, we're seeing an increase.

Certainly, that's, again, another great reason to go and get your vaccination if you haven't because we want those hospitals to have beds available if you have a heart attack or some other condition that requires it.

So I think Dr. Fauci's statement is right on.

I think we don't have as great a tracking system for hospitalizations.

Any other counselor questions?

I don't see anybody else who is not muted.

So I guess that's it.

We always learn a lot from you.

I appreciate your coming on a monthly basis.

Okay, so next item on the agenda is recognitions or proclamations.

Do we have any?

So that moves us on because we're skipping boards and commissions and putting that at the end.

We're moving on to the consent agenda.

Ms.

Consent Agenda, one, minutes, November 15, closed and regular meetings, December 6, work session, closed meeting and regular meeting, two, resolution, appropriating funds for COVID homelessness emergency response program, community development block grant, $680,263, second reading,

Thank you.

So we will now take public comment regarding items on the consent agenda as just read by the clerk.

If anyone is interested in speaking, you will have three minutes.

In the Zoom webinar, you select the raise hand option to be placed in the speaker queue.

If you have joined by phone and wish to speak on the consent agenda, you may press star nine and be aware that this is not the time to comment on things like the Park Street projects and that time will come later.

This is only on the two, either the minutes or the COVID homelessness grant.

Are there any speakers?

I can't see any list.

All right.

Oh, my apologies.

I see one hand raised.

All right.

Ms.

You have three minutes.

Hi, sorry.

I accidentally clicked that.

OK.

All right.

Thank you.

Second.

Moved and seconded.

Any further questions or comments from council?

Ms.

Councillor McGill?

Yes.

Councillor Pinkston?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, sir.

I have a couple of significant reports to review with you just in light of our current weather events and the most recent accident, traffic accident on Fifth Street.

Just wanted to kind of give council an update as to progress that we're making in both areas.

In regards to the storm, it's been a significantly historic weather event, as we all know.

I want to just advise that our staff members are working well in this particular situation with some of the key staff leading this particular response with only having been on the job for less than seven working days.

Our snow operations manual update for 2022 must at this moment be well tested.

We've worked through a number of significant challenges with staffing along with battling COVID as Dr. Bonds just reported.

Kind of go through a few of the department area reports.

Both CPD and CFD have reported normal operations have resumed fully.

Utilities continues to support public works with day and night shift staff support and has resumed meter reading as a part of their ongoing efforts to regain control of basic operations.

Commissioner of Revenue and Treasurer's Office have maintained service, observing delayed openings as dictated by ongoing weather conditions.

CAT has maintained service with multiple service interruptions.

But a lot of that is beyond just weather challenges, but also staff shortages as a COVID impact has really taken root in the transportation area.

We do also continue to monitor progress towards restoring power.

The latest report is that 1,600 households in the city remain without power in comparison to over 22,000 in the county.

The county has announced the opening of three warming centers, so we'll continue to

monitor our situation as we also understand that some folks have lost power again and we think, of course, that's the result of dropping temperatures and, you know, trees and lines continuing to give way.

In regards significantly to parks and recreation, we've had a very difficult time in maintaining key staff because COVID has also ravaged our team.

We were only able to activate critical areas only.

as a part of our operations plan to begin focusing on just those critical routes.

We finished up those routes today and will expand the cleaning of park debris tomorrow.

We only have one or two people on the downtown mall as an example of how COVID has impacted our staffing ability at this time.

We are moving staff around the backfill holes and various team members are being deployed across the system.

We've not even taken a look at the golf course, so not that that is a priority, but we know that it will be closed through next week, so we'll be getting out there as soon as we can.

In regards to public works, roads are good.

We're finishing up dead-end streets today, still working some down trees.

There are 10 that have been reported, in addition to 26 utility lines still down.

That has led to some detours, and we hope to continue to work through that process.

We do have a night team activated, looking at

servicing equipment with supportive fleet personnel.

And of course, with the reports of additional snow coming Thursday night into Friday morning, we're very concerned about the additional weight on trees and power lines and potentially resuming disruptions of power.

So we'll continue to do what we can to prepare ourselves and govern ourselves accordingly.

We do expect a quick clearing on Friday because we're just all praying that, of course, we don't see a significant accumulation.

Also want to just share that we know that there were some concerns with the delayed declaration of the end of the snow event and triggering that 24 hour period to clear sidewalks because the extent of the storm was so significant and significantly sustained power outages for many of our households is why we considered that extension.

Both myself and DC and Marshall observed during our own windshield survey that many sidewalks were already cleared and we also witnessed the difficulties some of our older residents were having with managing that task.

We are working to revive the connection of volunteers to those residents as it is in

I think it's important that we prioritize that kind of support over issuing citations.

Just wanted to just share that we are doing what we can to push and get things back to normal as quickly as we possibly can.

Moving on to just wanted to also acknowledge the serious situation on Fifth Street with the loss of life and a traffic accident.

We very much remain concerned about the serious safety concern along that corridor and definitely offer our condolences to the family.

accident.

Our traffic engineer has been working to affect improvements with a few updates I can share with you that we are pursuing a speed limit reduction.

We have been working on that and you will have that matter before you at your next meeting.

In addition, we have flashing signal ahead signs that have been ordered.

They've been on order for weeks now.

The supply and issue has really been the reason why those have not been received and installed.

We intended to have that done by the end of the year and we just have to wait until we get them.

There are some intersection warning signs that were installed.

We feel as though they weren't big enough, so we're in the process of expediting their swap out.

And then we are looking at additional improvements at the traffic light at the Cherry and Elliott intersection and looking for a more midterm change to removing the light that has the green ball in place and offering a yellow flashing light instead.

We recognize that these are really temporary small fixes.

They're not necessarily significant enough to prevent the various tragedies that have occurred.

But we do know at this point that breaking up the street is the most effective improvement, and that is the most expensive one, of course.

So we'll continue to pursue that and explore what those improvements could be.

An example of that would be the installation of a roundabout midway.

on the corridor, but that too, of course, is going to be very difficult for us to figure out.

But we're committed to doing that, and we want you to know that we're not moving away from this as a high priority.

I personally just want to add with you that I have visited with two of the families who have lost loved ones over the years.

and I've heard their pleas for intervention and I've been working on this since I got here.

Those meetings were in regards to memorializing their loved ones with markers and that to me is the motivation that we need to continue to focus on getting the kinds of improvements along this corridor as soon as possible.

In addition to that, a couple of announcements.

Albemarle County and the city of Charlottesville are sponsoring a waiver of fees for the disposal of vegetative debris for Albemarle and Charlottesville residents at the Ivy Material Utilization Center beginning tomorrow.

residents, and through January 17th, the Ravana Solid Waste Authority will accept storm-related vegetative debris from county and city residents.

That debris will be collected and ground into mulch and available later at the IVMUC.

Debris will be accepted during normal business hours at the IVMUC 4576 Digwoods Road.

Residents will be expected to show proof of residency and must state that the debris is storm-related.

We are considering, for the city response as well,

So, curbside debris pickup, we're not yet ready to commit to being able to do that, as we still have to get through this current event, and we still have leaf collection that is scheduled for the 22nd, and we're going to need to try to fit this in between that in a way, but we know that we're going to need to rent additional equipment, and we have a procurement conversation happening tomorrow to make that possible as well.

And then the last report item I'll share is that we were initially working to bring some additional staff back to full operations and because of the increased positive cases with COVID, we have decided to push that off.

We will continue to work through our hybrid approach to manage operations and we'll revisit how we make any changes to staffing in the coming weeks.

That is the report, Mayor Snook.

Thank you, Deputy City Manager Sanders.

Yes, Mr. May, I have a couple of comments, particularly about the

Cherry Avenue, Fifth Street.

You mentioned something about the intersection of Cherry and Elliott intersection.

Yeah, there's the signals at that site.

There's some high visibility black back plates that need to be installed there.

I see.

I see.

And I just have one other comment.

You know, I did this transportation planning for many years and

and we would get safety grants.

And I'll assure you that this intersection with the number of accidents and fatalities that this will likely qualify for it.

And so that may help as we're planning for the more long-term, more expensive improvements to that intersection.

And I understand that supply and demand has been delaying a lot of the

equipment and things that you want to install.

So hopefully, you know, that'll be in the next, you know, several weeks.

Absolutely.

We appreciate that.

And we are definitely looking at all options.

Grants are my language.

That's what I've done many years.

So we'll be looking for those opportunities.

And we think there are some other mitigating installations that we might be able to do.

One of the things that's a little bit odd about the situation is that although there are a lot of accidents in this corridor, most of them are of the fender bender type.

Most of them are congestion related.

They're up around Cherry Avenue and Fifth Street or Elliott.

But those, of course, are not the ones that are causing the deaths.

Those are typically folks who are going way, way, way too fast.

down that 45 mile an hour divided four lane highway and treating it as a highway and not treating it as a road or as a street.

And so we have two disconnected problems, one of them eligible for funding in a particular way, the other fewer numbers of cases, but they're much more horrendous results.

and we've been looking at it a couple of different ways over the last few years through MPO, through various other ways of getting money in.

All of them seem to be three, four years down the road in terms of how how any money is going to get allocated.

Sure.

And I can offer to you that that reference to

And if anybody wants to go back and look

We discussed this issue at some length in the meeting of November 16, 2020.

You can go onto the city website.

You can find the minutes, which are rather cursory, but there's also a more detailed report from Brennan Duncan, the city traffic engineer, that was the basis of that discussion.

So if folks are interested in what has happened, this was a report from a little over a year ago, and it's probably time to have updated in any event, and so I'll be glad to hear more.

and I'll see you in the next few weeks.

Thank you.

So I guess that's the end of the city manager's report.

Excuse me.

Yeah, I just wanted to thank the DCM Sanders and Ms.

Marshall as well for y'all's work this week.

I would add, I saw a lot of folks out there driving snow plows up until I think one guy said, hey, I've been at it 12 hours.

I've got to quit at 630 or they'll fire me.

Yes, we'll definitely express that to all involved.

Thank you.

I just wanted to bring up very quickly.

I know a number of people have been very concerned about warming shelters.

I know that our DSS team as well as our Deputy Director Sanders and Marshall have been working very closely also with the regional EOC teams to determine both the need here in the city and how we can also be working with

the county to provide the need for people.

There has been very little, from my understanding, there's been very little need expressed through this committee, I mean, to people at this point.

While there is great concern in the community for people and their neighbors, there haven't been a lot of people reaching out, expressing a need for a warming shelter in the city.

We started looking into this on Monday.

We started keeping track of things and historically, when warming shelters have been opened, they have not been utilized.

And also considering COVID safety, we've been very cautious and trying to evaluate the entire situation.

Thank you, Ms.

McGill.

One thing I would note about the nature of the damage, it's almost entirely tree falling, trees breaking, and

it's almost entirely in this particular instance most of the most of the people who have lost power are not in the in the poorer neighborhoods they are in because of course there's less tree cover in the poorer neighborhoods in Charlottesville and that that may be contributing to why there are relatively few people expressing a need but it's certainly something we need to keep monitoring and that may all change 24 hours from now so

Okay, time to move on to matters, community matters.

We have eight pre-registered speakers.

There are eight additional speaker slots.

Each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak.

There will be an additional speaking period at the end of the meeting for those who did not have a chance to speak during this first community matters portion.

So we'll now open the floor to the preregistered speakers.

Others wishing to speak may select the raise hand option in the Zoom webinar to be placed in the speaker queue.

If you've joined by phone and wish to speak during community matters, you may press star nine.

Is our first speaker available?

And Paul, you have three minutes to speak with city council.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Good evening.

My name is Paul Mack.

I live in Mill Creek, and I'm here tonight to speak to long-standing concerns of a group of Charlottesville citizens that is a community group, the Slave Block Citizens Group.

I'm speaking to City Council members since it is my understanding that decision-making authority on city issues resides with you.

This authority was affirmed to Mr. Richard Allen by Mary Jo Scalia in 2014, and more recently by Commonwealth Attorney Platania

and Ms.

Ashley Marshall, Deputy City Manager for Racial Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.

I understand the Historic Resources Committee is working to develop a comprehensive walking tour of historic sites in the city, so my request below fits with HRC's Council approved mandate.

Since the early 1960s, many historical signs have been affixed to buildings in and around Court Square, identifying significant events and sites

One of those, a gray sign with white lettering attached to a wall at zero Park Street Court Square stated, quote, site of slave black, unquote.

It looked like the replica seen behind me.

I don't know if I'm on video or not, but there's a black sign with white lettering.

While most of those important historical signs remain, the slave black sign was removed, allegedly sometime between 1985 and 2002, apparently at the behest of city councilors.

who have sole decision-making authority.

This important sign has been missing for 30 or more years, effectively erasing our city's history of enslavement and is a loss that wrongs every Charlottesville citizen as well as visitors to our city.

I respectfully ask that you act to change this glaring deficit of our acknowledged history in response to many years of neglect of the true and complete history of Charlottesville.

I furthermore respectfully request that this subject be a topic of discussion positive decision at tonight's or future future meeting, resulting in an announcement of approval at the next city council meeting on January 17th.

I respectfully request your authorization to install the sign securely bolted to the parking sign behind the zero park street building or on its own freestanding pole.

When city council authorizes public works office to install the sign, I'd be glad to deliver this replica sign.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you, Mr. Mack.

Next speaker is Mark Cavett.

Can you hear me now?

Yes.

Okay.

First, I want to point out a technical issue.

I noticed that on my computer, there's about a 20-second delay on what I see versus my phone.

Also, I could not get the flag to raise or anything to come up on the computer.

So I'm talking to you right now using my phone.

So I just want to let you know about that.

I want to welcome the new council members.

And then on concerning

Actually, I'm going to come back to this because, Maka, you said it was going to be discussed a little bit later.

Let me jump here for a second.

Let me mention something concerning Nassau.

On Nassau, a group of us would like to meet with council members two at a time at Nassau Street.

you should be receiving, you should visually see the property.

An email invitation will go out and I'll also be sending out an email that I received from Frank Pohl, Albemarle County engineer.

In the past I have given some advice to new council members and I want to remind some of the old council members the same advice.

Know that some people that come before you, especially developers, will sometimes mislead you, dodge the question, and just lie in diplomatic fashion.

Be aware of the comments such as, we at 10.

Intentions are not enforceable.

When dealing with real estate, if it's not in writing, it does not exist.

Be careful with zoning that may be granted.

You may get the project that you

were led to believe would be you may not get the project that you were led to believe would be done.

This has happened many times in the past.

Thank you.

And then I'll speak later on.

Thank you, Mr. Cavett.

Next speaker is Lewis Myers.

Yes.

Can you hear me?

Hi, yes, I'm Lewis Myers, a current Albemarle and longtime Charlottesville resident.

This message is for the returning council members, Councilors Wade and Pinkston.

I hope you will be concerned with more of the population than the others have been.

I respect all of you for your service to the city, but I was distressed by the unannounced midnight vote to donate the lease statute to the Jefferson School for the express purpose of melting it down.

This was in violation of the new state law allowing removal but not substantial alteration or destruction of the state and national historic monuments.

Also a state procurement law requiring reason to gift an item of value when there are clear and substantial monetary bids for such to the detriment of city taxpayers.

Finally, it violated the requirement to provide several days notice to the public when such a vote is to be taken.

I feel this is the most negative

action the city could have taken for public unity and the resentment won't go away.

You may not really care, but many long-time residents say they no longer have any desire to go into the city, much less spend money there.

I'm confident the great majority of the public disagrees with your decision, but you refuse to consult them, only pandering to the small extremist minority that dominates council meetings.

Lloyd, I'm wondering why, if you expressed concern about the legality of this vote, you went ahead and voted for it, knowing that the statute would be transferred to a foundry for destruction before that legality could be determined in court, and why you would express concern about giving the Lewis and Clark statute to a local entity to display because it had a significant monetary value, but disregard the substantial offers for the Lee statute.

Thank you, Mr. Myers.

Mr. Day.

I represent the congregation of the Park Street

Christian Church and would encourage you to approve the rezoning to allow us to accomplish our mission to support seniors with affordable housing and support the city's goal of creating affordable housing.

We want to offer seniors the opportunity to be involved in intergenerational programming with our on the same site

affordable preschool now serving Charlottesville for over 22 years.

The project for affordable senior housing has had tremendous support from Impact Charlottesville and the enthusiastic and unanimous approval of the planning as well.

To be a vibrant city, we need affordable housing.

We are ready to help you make this possible.

Thank you, Mr. Day.

Yes, I am.

Thank you.

I don't need to introduce myself since you just said my name.

I am the pastor of Park Street Christian Church and Brian just summed us up quite clearly about our intention and our hopes and hope for your support.

What many of you may not know about Park Street is that the original intent of the founding forefathers and mothers of

was set way back in the early 60s, and it was to build several generationally focused buildings on our property to serve not only the members of the church, but the local community.

In my seminary training, we call this type of vision kingdom building versus fortress building, the latter being those churches more interested in securing and fortifying their churches and worship centers for members only.

Park Street is not a wealthy church.

However, we do sit on a valuable asset and that is our land.

We could, of course, sell this land to the highest bidder to secure our congregational future, but that would be fortress building and that is not who we are.

Instead, we hope to fulfill the legacy of our founders by releasing a portion of our land to care for our community from senior adult housing to the formal development of a trail system to connect the Rivanna Trail.

In short,

a space that could offer both intergenerational and inter-economic community access.

Thank you.

Next up, Kimber Hawkey.

Kimber.

Thank you.

Is this the right time to talk about the Martha Project?

Very, very, very faintly.

Let me just check my settings.

I'm sorry.

Is that better?

Okay.

Sorry, Michael.

It has the settings.

Okay.

Okay, great.

So I'm just asking that the council takes a step back and waits to

do any kind of approval on this until there's more study on traffic impact, as well as the affordability.

It looks like a promising project, but given the traffic and public safety implication, it seems inappropriate in size for the location.

Also, the levels of affordability are not clear.

There was a lot of promises of 30% AMI in the discussions, but I don't see any of that in the paperwork.

I see 80% AMI for the renters and some 60% for homeowners, which

80% is not really affordable.

So where's the 30%?

Is it in writing?

And if so, where?

The traffic is already dangerous on too many streets.

We already know this from the fifth street discussion.

Why are you looking to create a traffic issue here?

Most of this is really done from the size of this project.

There are backups already in this area.

And the fact that there doesn't appear to be room for left turn lanes will only make this worse.

The traffic study appears faulty

It was done during COVID and during the summer when the schools are out.

There seems to be contradictions in the city traffic estimates versus what is shown on Google Maps.

The city seems to be accepting bare minimums for traffic safety regarding stopping distance and sight distance.

There are already accidents here.

So why are you looking to create a potential for more?

I also didn't see any projected number of additional car trips in and out of that one

Ingress egress and that lack of two points of ingress and egress is very serious.

The residents fought against this pro developer generated code change a few years back.

And we were promised that every case would be analyzed by the traffic engineer and the fire chief.

I didn't see an analysis from the fire chief about only having one point of ingress egress allowed here.

And it just seems that profits and developer interests are being put

above public safety once again.

I really want to see where that deep affordability is in writing.

I see it mentioned sometimes, but I don't see it in the final papers.

It just appears that the proffers to be 80% and then 60% for the homes.

The other question is about what happened to the daycare.

That was kind of the selling point, an additional selling point, and it doesn't seem to exist anymore.

The city promised that there would be a block by block, street by street concern with specificities of each site and residence during the comp plan process, but that doesn't seem to be happening here.

So I really would just ask that you put the brakes on this and get more clarity and things in writing before taking any action.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next up, Tanisha Hudson.

Ms.

So first and foremost, I would say welcome to Juan and Brian, but it seems you two are already doing a very good job fitting into the system.

And, you know, joining the Mean Girls and Mean Boys Club of Charlottesville government.

Lloyd, you spoke about why you would be an effective leader and what you could do to build a team to focus on equity, affordable housing, and the slew of other city issues.

But you had a great team.

So let's talk about your ineffectiveness as a leader and how you ruined the squad that you had failing to be a leader and failing to speak up.

along with other members of council and people inside city hall, you all contributed to three black leaders being racially targeted, four if we really want to be exact, because I'll include the mayor inside of that.

Charlottesville is the only place that elevate folks for wrongdoings instead of the people that's actually doing the good work, good hard work.

As far as Fifth Street, Mr. Sanders, the study should include the full stretch of Fifth Street from Elliott all the way down.

Actually, we should actually start from Ridge Street, but all the way down to Fifth Street Station because there's been a slew of accidents that I feel people focus more on Elliott up to

to where Willoughby starts instead of all the way down to Fifth Street Station.

First off, the left turning lane turning into Fifth Street Station when you're coming from Elliott Avenue, it's not long enough and people are flying.

So when that left green arrow turns

Yellow, and you can't no longer go when it's just a yield green light, people are flying down there.

So even if you think you have the opportunity to go, somebody can T-bone you.

That's a very dangerous stretch right there.

You know, it just, it never cease to amaze me that all of you contribute.

Every year, we're gonna have four more years of BS.

because you all are so juvenile that instead of acting like adults and somebody stepping up and being an effective leader that we need, you contribute to the BS.

You're grown and all of y'all are grown with children.

The way that you act,

is just uncalled for.

And then you call yourself being effective leaders to represent people.

You can't even represent adulthood right, because you don't even want to do the right thing.

This is a system of bullying, and it's going to continue, except this time we have five counselors who will roll with it, and nobody with a backbone to step up.

and it's unfortunate for every citizen that pays taxes in this city.

It's sad.

Thank you, Ms.

Hudson.

Next is John Hasek.

Good evening.

I would like to call for you to reject or at least defer the decision on MACA and the Park Street Christian Church.

I spoke to some neighbours today and I'm speaking on behalf of at least some of them and I've been told that specifically.

The traffic impact analysis was done on the 24th of June, middle of COVID, middle of the summer, out of school, university time.

A 20% COVID correction was applied.

This was listed as being in Table 2.2 and Table 2.2 doesn't show this.

Was the factor actually used?

Where did the 20% come from?

It rather seems like it was pulled out of thin air.

The future analysis assumes a 1% growth factor, which most certainly does not apply to this road.

Even the VDOT numbers show that.

The traffic analysis projects levels of service D for some of the junctions in PM peak.

Actually, given the failings I note above, the likely level of service will be E or F.

The TIA also claims level of service on Park Street at A at all times.

This is demonstrably wrong to anybody familiar with the street.

The traffic analysis calls out the need for left turn lanes in Park Street, but this is brushed aside by the engineer preparing the analysis who is paid by the developer.

The traffic analysis makes reference to VDOT estimates.

The estimates are demonstrably incompatible with what Google traffic says.

Specifically, more traffic uses Park Street than Warner, whereas the estimates show the opposite.

The traffic engineers decided to pursue the barest legal minimum, a stopping distance-based design.

A more conservative approach would be junction site distance of about 280 feet, which cannot be met at this junction because of the crest in Park Street.

This very week we face controversy over safety on 5th Street extended.

So why are we pursuing a new road configuration?

This is not some modification.

This is a new road installation and design by design.

The traffic analysis quotes a 60% injury rate amongst Park Street accidents.

Isn't that rather high as a starting point?

Isn't it time to sort this mess out?

Please be clear that my analysis above shows that the traffic analysis is flawed and wrong and the conclusions are wrong.

We need to see a rebuttal and that needs to be a public document subject to public scrutiny and not some internal verbal brush off before a very serious vote.

The proposed market development involves 100 units total.

It's a single entrance exit facing into a busy street.

This street will not support its level of development.

And until our city code changed in 2019, they would have required two entrances to the size of development.

How is this wise?

Has the fire chief signed off on it?

Imagine a queue of traffic trying to get out onto Park Street.

Of course, people are going to take risks.

And that's where you'll end up with accidents.

perhaps scale is back to half and 2017 a similar size development went down on the same basis of scale the one that's offered today the city analysis the city staff analysis makes reference to the 2021 comp plan and flum it's not that that does not the current zoning we don't we object to this because we warned when this comp plan and flum went through that it would create facts on the ground and that's exactly what it's done the facts on the ground have been used in part of the staff analysis

There's no way.

Thank you, Mr. Hasek.

You're about out of time.

Okay.

Please be aware we got a very extensive couple of emails from you all and I know we've read them.

So I appreciate the thoughts.

So that takes us through the eight who have previously signed up.

Are there other speakers on the

Yes, thank you, Mayor Snook.

The next member of the public to speak is Josh Karp.

Josh, you have three minutes.

Hey, can you all hear me?

Yes.

Great.

Well, congratulations to the new council members, the new mayor and vice mayor, and thank you, Councillor McGill, for your service as vice mayor the past couple of years.

I think I can be very brief because I was very happy to hear Deputy City Manager Sanders basically say much of what I wanted to hear from you all tonight.

So thank you so much, Deputy City Manager and Traffic Engineer for taking Fifth Street seriously.

I just want to use this time to emphasize that these recommendations for short-term changes came to the previous council in November of 2020, as Mayor Snook has said.

They were described as immediate, and I know you all have a full plate and everything is hard to do, but to me, immediate would ideally mean, you know, not over a year.

And so I encourage you all to

continue the work you've been doing and make these changes go through.

It sounds like you're all committed to it, and I just urge you to stay committed.

And when the measure to lower the speed limit comes before you all, I hope you all support it.

And just to say that Fifth Street has had a lot of high profile deaths in the past couple of years, but it's not unique, right?

Other streets in town, other roads in town,

see accidents, people driving too fast, and are just designed to encourage driving that's at an unsafe speed.

So I'm very encouraged with the work you all are doing so far.

Thank you, Josh.

The next person who had their hand raised was Nancy Carpenter, but she has lowered her hand.

Thank you.

I don't know how I lowered my hand.

I got to watch where I put my mouse on this computer screen.

I'm sorry.

Well, thank you for the new counselors that are here, but I do have a

some question about, you know, I appreciate Councillor McGill speaking to warming centers and, you know, trying to catch up to what other organizations are doing.

You talk about, you know, COVID protocols and things like that, but I have seen private organizations and you've probably seen them as they've put out posts about having time for people who are without electricity to come in and get warm, charge their

communication devices and so on and so forth, and I'm sure that they have had those similar conversations among their admin staff in reference to opening these buildings.

I've also seen mutual aid offered for folks that are without electricity, their own homes, as a matter of fact, and I'm sure many of you have seen

those posts over the past few days.

So I don't think it's not that we can't do it.

I'm just wondering if it's just, you know, some other impact that's creating, you know, some type of juggernaut that we can't get through.

This won't be the last cold spell that we will have.

And like you said, Thursday night, we'll have a very quick moving storm

We'll dump some more inches of snow, but it doesn't sound like it'll be as heavy and as wet as what we just went through.

But we do have to have these plans in place.

We do see what an ongoing pandemic does for creating these mutual aid

You know, opportunities and options.

I did want to highlight that I appreciate Councillor McGill on my last comment a couple of weeks ago regarding unhoused people that she jumped right in and made some calls.

I'm sorry, I don't know what the result of those calls were, but I do know that you did that.

And listening to Dr. Bonds and all the other virologists and epidemiologists and internists and ICU folks that I've been following over the past two weeks, we are in for a rough bit.

I mean, I'm listening to Deputy City Manager Sanders talking about the impact of COVID with COVID.

You know, you know, vital critical staff, whether it comes in the form of snow plows or trash removal or getting out there and taking, you know, branches down and away.

So I can't stress enough that I support the call for getting your vaccine, getting your booster, social distancing.

I would like to say could the city explore the possibility of getting a supply of KN95 masks to hand them out to our lower income neighborhoods because we did that before with just regular cloth masks and simple surgical masks.

But I think the transmissibility of this particular virus would warrant a conversation, I think, with leadership there in the city about getting some KN95 masks out to the adults and out to the kids because a lot of those adults in those neighborhoods are the ones that are doing the jobs that Deputy City Manager Sanders was talking about.

Thank you, Ms.

Next.

Next person to speak is Andrew Shelton.

You have three minutes.

Well, hi, thank you.

I was not planning to speak this evening.

But since that one fellow had to call in about the statues, I figured I'd chime in and say that I was very grateful for the way that they were disposed.

I'm glad that that issue is resolved and that the care was taken to make sure it was done in such a legally defensible fashion that that lawsuit is clearly going to get thrown out, I would assume.

and also wanted to plug the Indiegogo campaign for the swords into plowshares project.

They've raised over $30,000 to help continue the process of transforming that statue into something that we can be proud to display in town.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Matthew Gillihan.

Matthew, you have three minutes.

Good evening, counselors.

I wanted to welcome Mr. Wade and Mr. Pinkston on the council.

I look forward to sending you some short emails and hearing your responses in the future.

I know I've talked with both of you a lot about my hopes and dreams for this city, and I look forward to you all helping our city carry out the things that it said it wants to do in terms of equity and housing and

Transportation.

I want to speak in support of the MACA and Park Street PUDs.

I'm a little discouraged to hear people speaking out against them.

These are wonderful projects that will greatly benefit our city and help us achieve our affordable housing goals.

I hope that you all will prioritize people over traffic concerns, and I think these developments will be a great opportunity to improve our transit service in that area.

In terms of Fifth Street, I'm very happy to hear Mr. Sanders looking to take quick action.

I've talked to him about this previously when we very first met.

This is the first thing I brought up to him was making Fifth Street safer.

I hope that the city will not just implement the immediate actions that Brennan Duncan has recommended, but also look to make more significant changes to the design of the road, which is going to require financial investment from the city.

We need to do things that are going to happen quickly, though.

We are not going to be able to wait for smart scale money to fix this problem.

That's a decade long to fix that.

We're going to have to spend some money sooner than later.

I look forward to council and the city moving forward with making that road safer.

Thank you, Matthew.

Next person to speak is Harold Foley.

Harold, you have three minutes.

Good afternoon.

Congratulations to Vaughn and you, Lloyd.

I got two issues.

First, no one is talking about the jail and the outbreaks that's happening in the jail.

It's unfortunate because, you know, folks are in there suffering from COVID.

If it's not an outbreak, why haven't anyone report on the status of what's going on in the jail?

Secondly, in lieu of the texts and emails that was sent out, that was FOIA'd, I would suggest, I ask that try to reconstitute the PCRB.

Looking at the emails and the texts, it was horrible.

And to have those folks be on that PCRB, it is not right.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, go to the People's Coalition Facebook page,

look at the text that was going amongst the members and you too, Lloyd, it was also you involved.

And so I asked that you reconstitute the board, have a new way of appointing the board because no one knew that a board member was reinstated

and we was going through this motion about what this board member did.

So my suggestion is we constitute the board because the board did pass a meaningful and how do I want to say?

They passed something that was very meaningful and very on target as far as police oversight.

But knowing what has happened in between those emails and those texts, I would say reconstitute the board.

Thank you.

Night.

Thank you, Mr. Foley.

The next person to speak is Katrina Turner.

Katrina, you have three minutes.

Good evening.

tonight, one I want to speak to you, Mr. Snook, the comment you made last city council about what Nicole said about the activists and the activists being on the CRB, PCOB, whatever it's called right now, I just need you to know that every last

single person that wrote the ordinances and bylaws that were praised by Sally Hudson, by the Senate, by so many people.

Every last one of us were activists, Lloyd.

Every last one of us who wrote the bylaws and ordinance who you say NACO feels that I guess they feel we were too stupid as activists to be able to write those bylaws.

Honey, we did it.

We did it and we got praised for it.

Okay.

And I need for you to know that and check up on that.

So please don't go against activists, because if you fight for anything out there, then you're an activist.

So are you talking against yourself also, Mr. Snook?

I'm going again with Mr. Foley.

What Bellamy Brown said, and I'm going to tell you to call Black people flying monkeys.

Do you all hear me?

Flying fucking monkeys, I'm sorry, I didn't, something needs to happen, understand, these emails got out, every last one of you need to go to the People's Coalition and see just what emails are out there, okay, and an email saying the flying monkeys won't like what was passed in the bylaws and the ordinances,

and that we will pitch a fit, but Lloyd thinks council will approve.

Okay, see, this is a problem.

We have been complaining about these men for how long?

And now for us to see these emails come out, you all need to disband this CRB.

PCOB, whatever it is, because this is not what we fought so hard to make sure that it was done right.

You all need to do something with that PCOB, the chair member.

Something needs to happen.

This isn't the last you will hear from me.

Thank you, Ms.

Turner.

Next person to speak is Elizabeth Stark.

Elizabeth, you are on with city council.

Hi there.

I just want to say welcome to Mr. Pinkston and Mr. Wade.

And congratulations to Mr. Snook and Mr. Wade on being mayor and vice mayor.

I do want to second a lot of what Harold Foley and Ms.

Turner just said about concerns about the PCRB.

The trove of FOIAed texts and emails that came out are extremely concerning.

I don't think there's a way that our city can have trust in these people.

We've seen what they've said behind it.

the scenes, the way they talk about members of the community.

And I agree with what Ms.

Turner said.

I think the use of the term flying monkeys is concerning at best and offensive at worst.

And so I just want to say, I think it is time for you to reconstitute the PCRB.

I think the current leadership of that board is not up to the job.

And I think that's

Patently clear.

So we need that adjusted because there's no way that that board can succeed in its mission with the current members.

I also want to second what Mr Foley said about being extremely concerned about what's happening at the ACRJ right now.

We know there is a COVID spike in our community.

The Blue Ridge Health District COVID dashboard, I checked it recently.

It hasn't been updated since October.

I know there's been a COVID spike in the interim.

I'm not sure why it's not being updated, but I really count on you all to make sure that that's getting done.

and bring that information to light.

Folks do not deserve to, you know, I don't think folks deserve to be incarcerated, but they certainly don't deserve to be subject to the Omicron variant while they're in there.

So please, you know, see if you can bring that information to light.

And our 16th and final speaker for Community Matters is Anj Khan.

Anj, you're on with city council.

Hi, thank you.

I'm calling in tonight to express concern with the PCOB, their text exchange, email exchanges amongst themselves and council and as well as other folks, I'm sure.

that board needs to be dismantled immediately with the conversations that are taking place you know it's just it's not I don't know actually I don't agree with PCRBs at all but if the community at large feels that there needs to be one

There needs to be some changes made into the current board.

There will be no trust with that board functioning as it is now.

I also wanted to, you know, highlight what Harold and

I believe that was Elizabeth before me, but yes, we need those numbers out of ACRJ immediately.

The folks in there are a very vulnerable population in such small area.

We need to really think about how we're treating our community members.

Also on the note of the warming stations, we're on day three or night three of having no warming stations in Charlottesville.

By looking at my timeline, there were many of folks without electricity, freezing cold, looking for shelter.

So hopefully better planning before Thursday and Friday.

Thank you.

Oh, I do actually have something.

The practice has been to allow folks to speak at the end, although frankly, that was not the original intent, but we haven't changed that practice yet.

Okay.

So that's our 16 speakers.

And anybody want to make any brief comments?

Our bylaws, our rules call for brief comments in response.

Well, I'll just make a couple of comments.

First of all, I don't know about any of the rest of you all.

I was not aware that there had been any particular outbreak of COVID at the jail.

If that is something that's going on, the reason why you haven't heard about it from us is we don't know.

I'd certainly like to have more information about that.

Similarly, comments about the FOIA emails from the PCRB members.

Please be aware that we don't get copies of FOIA responses.

You all know more than we do about these things.

And if there are specific emails that have been FOIAed that you want to call to our attention, please do so.

But don't assume that we know whatever it is that everybody else in the government knows, because we just don't know that.

The only other comment I wanted to make was in response to Ms.

Turner.

The specific thing that I said about activists on the PCRB was not directed to the question of whether activists ought to be involved in setting up the procedure.

It was whether activists are necessarily the best people to be functioning in a judge or jury-like capacity.

And one of the comments that was made in one of the NACOL training items

was that as people as the role of the agency changes to become more of an adjudicatory body,

then that's the time when perhaps the kind of skill sets and interests that activists bring is less appropriate.

Nicole does not say activists shouldn't have anything to do with the process.

They absolutely say that activists should be involved.

The reservation was simply when they take on an adjudicative role.

Those are my only comments at this point.

Just real briefly to the point you raised, Lloyd.

I know that Harold referenced this public comment as well.

The People's Coalition did post them a couple of days ago on their Facebook page.

And I'll just send that around to council just so we're all on the same page of knowing what the FOIA texts and emails are.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mike.

I was going to ask for that information.

I do intend to get to know more information about the CRB and because that is, you know, an issue that came up a lot during the campaign and, you know, so I'm glad to get input and, you know, listen to or read the emails.

Anybody else?

So the next item would be to move on to the action items which would get us into the Park Street Christian Church project and eventually on into the MACA PUD.

This might be a good time to take a brief break and we've been going for I don't know what an hour and a half or so.

because I don't think there'll be a convenient stopping point for a couple of other hours from now.

So folks feel the need to take a break for five or 10 minutes?

Five minutes?

It looks like we're all back.

Actually, I guess.

Just about all back.

Sorry about that.

OK, so back to order and on to the action items.

Item number four.

consists of two parts which we'll move together.

Consideration of the Park Street Christian Church Plan Unit development requests.

And Dan O'Connell City Planner will introduce the items.

Good evening.

Thank you.

So the following public hearing item is a rezoning request combined with a critical slope waiver for 1200 Park Street, tax map parcel 47-212.

This is for Piedmont Housing Alliance who in partnership with Park Street Christian Church have applied pursuant to city code section 34-490 seeking a zoning map amendment to change the zoning district classifications of their subject property from R1 single family residential to PUD planned unit development subject to a development plan and proper development conditions.

The property is currently developed with a religious use that is Park Street Christian Church and an associated preschool use which is permitted by special use permit.

The proposed PUD development plan calls for 50 multifamily units and about 54 parking spaces to be constructed to the rear of the existing church site accessed via a new private driveway off of Cutler Lane.

In their review, staff finds that the proposed development as presented in the application materials could contribute to many goals within the city's comprehensive plan.

The uses presented in the proposed development are consisted with the adopted 2021 future land use map.

As presented in the application, staff finds the PUD to be desirable as preserving tree cover and increasing housing diversity and affordability.

Staff had some concerns in their review about sidewalk construction and the granting of a sidewalk waiver for the site

but otherwise recommends approval of this rezoning with the included proffers.

The planning commission did consider this at their December 14th, 2021 regular meeting and recommended approval by a vote of five to zero.

The proposed improvements associated with the rezoning will impact critical slopes on site as defined by the city code and therefore our request for a critical slope waiver has been submitted simultaneously with the rezoning.

Improvements specific to areas where critical slopes would be impacted include portions of the northmost multifamily building, graded areas surrounding the northern portion of the building, electrical, telecommunications, and storm sewer placement.

Existing critical slopes on the property are about 2.8 acres or around 38% of the site, and the proposed area of critical slope disturbance is 0.1 acres or around 1.5% of the total site area.

Based on their review of the submitted materials, city engineering staff could not recommend approval under either finding one or two as described in the critical slope ordinance.

However, several recommended conditions were included if city council does decide to approve the resolution.

And this waiver was also recommended for approval by a vote of five to zero by the planning commission.

If the applicant would like to make a presentation, we'd be happy to have it.

I am Mayor Snook.

This is Kurt Keysacker with BRW Architects.

And I think, Mr. O'Connell, will somebody be sharing our visual materials or should I share my screen?

Thank you, Mr. Rice.

Okay.

Thank you.

We'll just go to the next page.

This is an application for Park Street Christian property and our project team.

consists of Piedmont Housing Alliance, BRW Architects, Timmins, and our primary partner, Park Street Christian Church, who you heard from a couple of folks earlier, Pastor Colleen and Brian Day.

My name is Kirk Heesacker.

I'm a principal at BRW Architects, and I'm joined by Mandy Burbage, Andy Miller, and Sunshine Mathon from Piedmont Housing Alliance, and Jonathan Showalter and Thomas Ruff from Timmins Group.

and my partner and firm principal, Bruce Wardell from BRW Architects.

And we'll be happy to present this information to you this evening for the counselors who were in the Planning Commission meeting on the 14th of December.

All these materials should look familiar, but I'm happy and honored to present them to our new counselors, Vice Mayor Wade and Councillor Pinkston.

Next slide, please.

So this property is located on Park Street, north of the 250 bypass, close to Meadow Creek, and it finds itself on the edge of the Locust Grove neighborhood and has a unique position in the community in that it's a large site with a large stand of trees and some open space.

So it's a unique property within the general urban ring of Charlottesville, close to downtown and close to

a lot of connections and trails and non-vehicle paths that come close to this property that we hope to tie it into and kind of reduce some of those vehicle trips.

Next slide, please.

We are lucky to have a large piece of property and I think the characteristics of this project that are most easily identified are that the church

Park Street Christian Church occupies a small portion of a large piece of land.

And so they really had a broad view of our entire community for this large land from this small church community.

And they've done a great job of articulating their vision for how to serve some of the needs that our community has expressed through the comprehensive plan.

As one looks at the site,

Access will be from Cutler Lane to the kind of bottom of this map, and you can see that the site slopes away from the neighborhood with critical slopes to the north, large wooded area kind of to the north and west, and an open lawn adjacent to Cutler Lane.

All of these different characteristics of the property make it unique in that it kind of provides a lot of experiences that one can enjoy

if you live there or if you're in the neighborhood and we've heard from the neighbors that they have enjoyed being able to visit the lawn and take advantage of the trail that leads to the woods down to the creek, although it's an informal trail at this point, which we hope to improve.

Next slide please.

Diagrammatically, this is maybe a little, you know,

nerdy planning talk, but the property sits on the edge of the built neighborhood and properties that are kind of natural and wooded to the northwest.

It has the unique advantage of having slopes that are sometimes critical, but then also some non-critical slopes on the property and that's shown in the middle slide.

And it represents a location that distinguishes the small-scale footprint of the neighborhood from larger buildings kind of to the left side of the diagram.

with a church and some larger multifamily projects across Park Street.

So it sits on this edge condition that makes it enjoyable to try to develop in a sensitive way.

Next slide, please.

So our proposal is for 50 apartment homes for seniors, 100% affordable with 54 parking spaces.

And we have tried to locate these new homes

down the slope of the hill near the church to create a campus feel at the top of the hill with the church at the top and the housing units a little bit lower.

This position helps us preserve the open lawn that's near Cutler Lane and can continue to be enjoyed by the neighborhood, as well as some of the amenity areas that the church has developed over time with their courtyards and some gardens for contemplation immediately around the church property itself.

Next slide please.

This is a artist rendering of the new housing development nestled into the edge of the woods and to the left you can see kind of a glimpse of Park Street and the new housing sits below the church buildings that exist on the bottom right of the image with the new parking for the dwelling units located down the hill from the church as well separating the two.

Next slide, please.

So this process has been ongoing for a number of months.

We started in the summer with informal neighborhood meetings soon after we had some initial design ideas that we could share and show.

We got a lot of comments and a lot of concerns from the neighbors.

And so we've tried to adjust our development plans through the teamwork to accommodate some of those concerns or try to address those concerns.

What we heard primarily were concerns related to the scale of the project, the massing of the new building in relation to the neighborhood, impacts to the streams and stormwater.

We also heard concerns about traffic in the neighborhood, particularly cut through traffic from the new development onto Wilder Drive, which is a little bit further around the corner from Cutler Lane.

We heard concerns about pedestrian connections from the site to

broader amenities in the community, and then the concern about tree preservation.

So the next few slides will try to show you some of our responses to those concerns.

I'll say that we always take an approach to our projects where we listen to the community concerns and try to begin a dialogue and do our best to accommodate responses to those concerns.

and they continued with our informal meetings with the planning commission and then a lot of dialogue with city staff during the review period to try to improve our development plans.

Next slide, please.

So the first concern related to massing, I think I mentioned it earlier, we just took advantage of the natural slope of the property, put the new building down the hill from the existing church buildings, which are shown in gray on this diagram.

and the new housing is in blue and you can see Park Street on the left and even though we're proposing a three-story building with a walkout basement, so essentially four stories facing Park Street, the massing of the building because it's down the slope won't overwhelm the church buildings that exist and by extension hopefully will not overwhelm the views from the neighborhood which are small single-family homes.

Next slide please.

At this time, I'll introduce Jonathan Showalter from Timmins to walk us through a couple of slides related to more technical matters.

Hello, yes.

Excellent.

Awesome.

Well, thank you all for having us here today.

Basically, this slide here, I wanted to speak to the existing environmental features.

As Kurt was noted, this project sits midway up the slopes on the site below the existing church, and there are a number of critical slopes on the site.

So as part of this project, we've made a great effort to minimize the disturbance of those critical slopes to the bare minimum needed.

We've also been

coordinating with city staff ahead of time during this PED process, looking ahead towards the site plan.

And the sites at the top of those critical slopes, they're wooded with large existing trees.

There's also the Meadow Creek Creek at the bottom that feeds into the Rivanna and the James River.

So we're very interested in protecting all of those critical environmental resources and community assets.

So we've done a fair amount of initial coordination with city staff looking ahead to that site plan process and making sure we have a strategy with this design to address stormwater management to protect the downstream systems and also erosion sediment control to protect those slopes and protect those trees on them.

So those are some upfront steps we've taken and just making sure we have a path to work out the details at the site plan phase.

So we can go on to the next slide here.

Also as part of the PUD process, the requirement is a traffic study.

So we've been working with the city traffic engineer with our traffic department.

Thomas Ruff is also on this call.

pull them in to answer any more detailed questions.

But the main overview of that is we scoped a traffic study with a city traffic engineer.

We performed traffic counts.

We requested intersections to study for this project were Cutler Lane and Park Street intersection and also North Avenue and Park Street intersection as the main two intersections impacted by this project.

And based on those studies,

those operation the operation of those intersections in the current condition are acceptable and within standards there were no existing safety concerns noted and the impact of this proposed development would be fairly minimal given the traffic on Park Street in those as Kurt mentioned we had two

and also planning commission meetings and heard a number of concerns in those meetings from the existing neighbors out there.

So based on those, we spent some additional time in the neighborhood gathering some more data, watching the operations of those intersections, and we added in a couple of additional solutions and fixes to this project that will hopefully help improve the existing conditions and also mitigate some of the added traffic from this development.

So some of those are, and I don't know if we can flip back to slide eight.

I hate to make us change slides here, but this has a couple of better illustrations on it.

One of the improvements we're looking at is from the driveway of the project, we're going to have a right turnout only island.

So what that'll do is make sure any traffic

about additional traffic from going to Wilder Drive, which was one of the concerns of the neighbors.

And then another concern is the safety of the Cutler Lane and the Park Street intersection.

Currently, if that intersection is noted by number four, kind of a lighter yellow hatch, that sight distance is obstructed.

So for a vehicle trying to exit Cutler on the Park Street looking right, it's hard to see.

So what this project would do, since that is property owned by the church, they would allow for a site distance easement that would allow the brush to be cleared through there, that would improve the safety for the proposed traffic and also the existing neighbors, just improving the intersection.

So I think we can skip ahead here, again, about three, yep, this slide.

So this slide also illustrates the

the connectivity of this project and also the existing neighborhood.

Currently, the neighbors on Cutler Lane and Wilder Drive don't have connectivity of a larger city sidewalk network.

Currently, there's no sidewalk crosswalks across Park Street.

So pedestrians on Cutler have no striped way to cross Park Street to the sidewalk that's on the left side of Park Street.

and so part of this project that was added in subsequent submissions was a new crosswalk across Park Street and that'll allow both the existing residents but also the new residents to use the sidewalks on either side of Cutler Lane and then access the sidewalk on Park Street and that sidewalk connects all the way to downtown.

It also connects to Melbourne and the existing bus stop that can be seen here on this map.

So that'll be a great asset to the community.

Another item Kurt mentioned earlier is the trails that currently exist as part of this project, a permanent trail easement has been proffered and that'll allow a permanent home for those trails.

Thanks, Jonathan.

Our last concern that we heard was related to the impact on the tree canopy, and while we realized that our location for the building has to impact some trees, we found that we've preserved the majority of the trees on the site, and particularly the character of the trees on the site, not only through the critical slope areas that we're not going to disturb, but that edged wooded kind of edge to the property along Park Street will be preserved.

And so our building, while it does impact some of the existing trees down the hill from the church, we hope that we've preserved the character and nature of the site by not only letting the canopy kind of grow back together after we've done our work, but we've planted some new trees along the parking to kind of be landscape trees and create outdoor spaces that folks can gather

Particularly one of the concerns we heard from the neighborhood were some specimen trees that exist in the open lawn area and kind of the front yard of the church itself.

And so we did a number of different versions of the driveway to kind of, it has that weird shape so we could weave through the specimen trees, not disturb their root ball and help them continue to live long and happy lives on the property, which is kind of a character defining portion of the site that we wanted to preserve.

The next slide, please.

So the big picture for us is that this project we present to you this evening represents an effort to provide affordable housing in an underserved neighborhood location in the city.

There's a lot of affordable housing in this part of Charlottesville.

We believe our process and design point toward a welcoming and shared future to be experienced by both the immediate neighborhood

and the broader Charlottesville community, as well as the residents of these homes in the future.

Young and old alike, the vision that the church has of the intergenerational community centered around some of the church functions, the preschool and their congregation, as well as senior housing seems to fit well into that model.

And simply put, we believe this is an endeavor that was initiated by optimism.

The church undertook this vision

with all the best intentions in place.

They found good and willing partners to help them achieve their vision, and we've been sustained in this work by the long-term vision that the city has expressed in the comprehensive plan.

So we hope you'll agree and find it favorable.

Thank you.

Yeah, I have a couple of, I had the opportunity just several years ago just to worship at this church for a couple of times and it doesn't surprise me at all that they would propose something like this.

It was a very wonderful experience.

couple of comments about the slides.

I thought that the massing slide that you showed was very effective.

So thank you for doing that.

It really kind of showed how

it will, the project would lay within the slopes of the hills so that it would not be, you know, massive towards the street.

I think that as you are developing it, it's kind of, you know, maybe getting into weeds a little bit.

You just want to make sure that the canopy and things like that is large enough so that jaunt veins or the buses and things like that is able to come under it.

I've seen plenty of times when

that little things missed out.

I think the top of addressing the listing, the residents' concerns, but I just wanted to know, did you go back to them and say, how did we do?

Well, we had all of our meetings with the community before we had our formal meetings with the Planning Commission.

And so I think some of the formal responses from the neighborhood that we received during the Planning Commission meeting kind of spoke to our effectiveness.

And so I think it's fair to say that we addressed the concerns of some neighbors and we didn't

addressed the concerns well enough of other neighbors.

We've had a variety of folks speak in support of the project at our planning commission meetings, and so we know that we put our best foot forward and tried to do our best, and I know that the church leadership has continued to reach out to their Locust Grove neighbors, who they know very well and more intimately than we do as consultants, and that dialogue is continuing, so

I think that we've done our best and that we've got positive responses during our Planning Commission meeting.

Excuse me.

Yeah, I have a couple of questions and I apologize.

I was not present at the Planning Commission meetings and I'm also a newbie, so please be patient with me.

So 50 units, 80% AMI affordability, is that what I saw?

Can I jump?

Yeah, let me jump in here.

Councillor Pinkston, so thanks for bringing up that question.

So the proffer is stating 80% AMI and below, and that follows the general text that's in there for most affordable housing projects that the city approves in one way or another.

We don't have specificity in there around the exact depth of affordability, in part because

You can only finalize that when you've finalized all the costs and all the subsidies, so you know how deeply affordable you can go.

And right now, that's still a work in progress.

So, for example, we don't have a commitment from the city yet for the funding from the city.

We don't have a commitment from a couple of other sources.

We're still in negotiation on the final price of the land.

So there are multiple moving parts which will ultimately affect the affordability profile.

But what I can say is

is that we are going to aim to that a minimum of 10% of the units are going to be 30% AMI and below, and that the majority of the remainder of the units ideally will be 50% AMI and below, and that for all of the units, we will accept housing choice vouchers and SRAP vouchers.

And why that's particularly important is we recently did an internal survey of the properties and apartments that Piedmont Housing Alliance owns within and operates within the city limits.

And of those communities, a little over 70% of those homes are either 30% AMI and below households or have vouchers.

and we know that the voucher waitlist is enormous because people who have vouchers can't find places to use them within the city because people won't accept them.

That's very good to hear.

Thank you.

So again, 30 years is the typical sort of state mandated, federal mandated minimum term length of affordability, because that's tied to the low income housing tax credits.

That's the minimum length of affordability there.

But it is our intention as a nonprofit never to sell or to liquidate or change any property that we own and operate.

So in effect, it will be affordable in perpetuity.

That is our mission as a nonprofit.

That is our goal.

That is what we do.

Okay, thank you.

And then the other question was to the engineer.

So

That's correct, yeah, just knowing this is a site on the side of these slopes, we're above critical slopes and we have that stream we've done, so

That's correct.

Okay, thank you.

That's all I had.

I have a couple quick questions.

One that was already brought up, I appreciate the presentation and the work you've already done in terms of the parking and traffic concerns, as well as the building footprint.

I assume this is the case, but just want to confirm, you know, on city staff side that

Sure, so this is definitely something that will be addressed going forward into the site plan phase.

PHA and their applicants have already gone through these kind of preliminary plans that have kind of sketched out what they want the property to look like generally.

But all of the elements of stormwater and erosion and sediment control and parking and all these things will be addressed much more in detail in the site plan phase.

Thank you.

Just two quick questions for the applicant, one just out of curiosity.

I know you said the goal is to keep it affordability and perpetuity, which is great to hear.

We know that's been a problem.

Historically in affordable housing projects, just out of curiosity, what's sort of the model to ensure affordability and perpetuity?

So in this particular case, the land is going to be most likely, although we have not finalized this, it's going to be most likely continue to be owned by the church itself and then leased to the property.

And then

The final question is just my understanding is in order for this project to be successful, it would normally require us approving this rezoning, but at some point also getting some kind of subsidy from the city.

Thank you for bringing that up, Councilor Payne.

Yeah, there are two reasons why funding from the city is critically important.

The first is because there is going to be there is a gap

in the capital stack that allows this project to move forward.

And although I would rather rely on state or federal sources to close that gap, inevitably city sources have to be part of that capital stack in the current day and age.

And I say that for a couple of reasons.

One is that the federal LIHTC program has

reduced its effectiveness over the last few years because of the reduction of the corporate tax credit, which the value of the tax credits is tied to.

So the amount of subsidy that comes from those tax credits has reduced over the last four years.

So it has left the state and the states and local communities across the country to have to fill that gap.

The second piece is that winning low income housing tax credits is a competitive process.

and one of the most important places we can get points to win to be competitive and win in any given year is with committed subsidy and that is usually from a city or a county if we're in the county and that's worth up to 40 points depending on the level of subsidy where we are likely to see in this coming cycle of competition to see projects winning on the scale of you know one to two points

Thank you.

And just one final comment, you know, just say, I think this is a great project.

I think this kind of community nonprofit partnership for affordability and perpetuity, you know, getting it down to lower AMI levels is

the exact thing that we need in getting affordability throughout the city.

And we just highlight, you know, but we haven't identified, you know, funding streams nor have we identified funding streams to fund our affordable housing strategy at the level recommended.

So I just encourage the community to really get involved with us, this budget process and budget cycle and helping us square that circle to ensure that we are able to help projects like this come to fruition.

That's it for me.

So I just want to add on to that.

So, you know, I can ask some of these questions, at least for the first few meetings.

That's correct, Vice Mayor Wade.

So the work, the process of developing affordable housing is inevitably a series of hurdles in chicken and egg scenarios where

You have to piece together one piece of the funding puzzle to then unlock the next piece of the funding puzzle to then unlock the next piece of the funding puzzle.

In a typical affordable housing project and a rental project, I'm going to speak around our model, it's a little bit different than say Habitat model.

In a typical affordable housing project, it's likely to see anywhere from 10 to 15 different subsidy sources coming to bear into a single project.

But the majority of those sources don't become unlocked until two things happen.

One is the low income housing tax credits have to be awarded first and then other subsidy sources come in.

But the critical step in the sequence is that the low income housing tax credits aren't unlocked unless you have that subsidy commitment from the city or the county in the outset.

Once those are unlocked, then you get all the other pieces falling into place.

Do we have an idea of the ballpark?

Maybe this is for Ashley or Sam.

Are we talking $5 or $500,000?

I forget exactly when that was was now a month or two ago for approximately $30,000 a unit so in the case of 50 units that's 1.8 million or 1.5 million sorry that that is when you look at the historical amount of subsidy that the city has put into other projects that's in the ballpark and frankly that's that's a little low compared to what I think we ultimately need but it is what it is because I think that's that's

So I just have a couple things.

I mean, sir.

Thanks.

I'm sorry.

I did want to ask just if staff is comfortable with the critical slope issues and the mitigations if they are followed through the recommendations.

I just know that's a very on the other side.

Just wanted to clarify that.

I don't think the city engineers live on the call right now, but I can kind of channel what he said to me.

I know he's talked with the applicants and actually been out to the site, I think, and met with them to discuss the issues.

The reason why he did not provide a more substantive recommendation that the critical slope reservation be approved is basically because the applicants haven't put in the work to do a site plan yet.

So based on his strict reading in the ordinance, and he didn't want to go overboard with approving something that really hasn't been fully designed yet by professional engineers.

Thank you.

Yes, that's correct, and just to echo that, in our coordination with the city engineer, he's had a number of those additional requests, and those are all things we're definitely willing to look into and implement in site plan, but just based on the process, the way it works is first the PD approval, and then we'll have to work with him to get site plan approval as the next step.

The questions I was curious about, first of all, you recite in here, should any units be for sale units, affordability period would be 40 years.

I have two questions.

Frankly, under no circumstances.

Okay.

This project, I think that is effectively stock language from Sydney ordinance, as I understand it, just the way that the language comes over.

Okay.

Can I make, sorry, Mayor Snow, can I make one other clarifying point to my previous response to Vice Mayor Wade with regards to the amount of funding asked for

When we originally were conceiving of both this project and the MACA project, the intention was to ideally apply for low-income housing tax credits in this coming 2022 cycle.

When we submitted our request for funding for both projects, it was with that understanding.

Soon thereafter, however, we did a strategic breakdown of both the MACA project and the Park Street Christian Church project

and for a number of strategic factors have decided to push the Park Street Christian Church LITECH application to 2023 cycle.

Yeah, thank you.

So I guess the

The two overall questions.

One is assuming that for whatever reason, the whole project does not, in fact, happen.

Either you don't get the LIHTC or you don't get enough other subsidies, you don't cover your gaps.

If we have approved this, and this is a question we were talking about earlier today among some of the counselors, if this project doesn't go through, but we've already given you the PUD, what protections are there to say that somebody else isn't going to come along and say, hey, you've got this nice PUD rezoning.

Let's go ahead and do something completely different with it.

My sense is that the PUD with the proffers and all the proffers set forth in this document, that that would be a sufficient protection.

But I'm curious, either from the planning staff or from Ms.

Robertson or anybody from the city's side, if anybody has any trepidation about that at all.

My understanding is that the rezoning application, the development plan and the proffers would run with the property basically in perpetuity.

So if this were to be passed to another owner, they would have to essentially design and build the same thing that PHA is proposing right now for this site.

Now, in many cases, I think the way that the statute or the ordinance was intended to deal to address this, you would come up with a PUD with a site plan that's a fairly detailed site plan as opposed to sort of a skeletal site plan.

And I understand the reason why one does the not full site plan.

You don't want to spend all that money and time on engineering when you don't even know whether you're going to get the initial approval.

I guess I'm just, I'm a little concerned because there's an awful lot of goodwill and trust, if you will, with PHA and with Habitat and with the participants in all of this process.

And I'm not sure I would necessarily have the same sense of goodwill and trust

for a number of other people who could end up buying the project for some reason.

I think that overall a PUD approval, when you're talking purely about sort of the layout of the development and the public facilities and the uses, those things are usually fairly specifically set out in the PUD application.

So every PUD has its own use matrix.

So essentially

the the PUD plan, the PUD development plan sets out the zoning district parameters for that PUD.

The more difficult question is when an applicant is promising that that PUD is only going to be used for specific affordable housing purposes.

Quite frankly,

Proffers are rarely adequate, at least as we have been doing them in the city for years, to set out all of the details that could be enforced by a zoning administrator as to how the promised affordable dwelling unit program as represented in the application materials could actually be implemented.

and so if you're looking two, three, four, you know, landowners down the road.

So usually someone who's bringing forth a PUD is going to either sell off the property or transfer certain development rights for construction of these units to another LLC or somebody else.

The city's ability

to have trust in or to even know who they're dealing with at that point is going to be based on the level of details in a set of proffers.

And proffers rarely have all those minutiae in them that some people have in their policies for an affordable dwelling unit program, which we don't yet have in our zoning ordinance or within other provisions.

So if

If there's any level of uncertainty, it's in whether the affordability requirements can be adequately insured.

The other sort of general comment I would make about what some folks have criticized as being the vagueness or the uncertainty about the affordability mix is that I was on the board of PHA for a number of years and saw a lot of the applications go in and get processed and finally come to fruition.

And it was just amazing how many different organizations had to join hands

and Jump at the same time.

you know, as Mr. Maython said, maybe 15 organizations all with this sense of trust that everybody else there is going to do what they have said they're going to do and everybody has to be willing to join hands and in some case hold on for six months or a year while all the rest of the pieces get get put together and ultimately none of these projects work unless

unless folks like us are willing to have a certain amount of faith in the people who are putting the project together.

And I hear the concerns of some of the people who have expressed concerns about both this and the MACA project of how do you know they're going to do this?

Well, nothing is ever certain, but I think we have to at some point

have to we have to decide whether it's a risk that we're willing to take knowing who we're joining hands with.

And so to me, the fact that we would be joining hands with PHA and with Habitat and with church and so on gives me a fair amount of confidence in the whole in the whole thing.

So, um,

We have, at this point, it's only a first reading.

Do we have an agreement to move the item forward to the next meeting?

Are we comfortable with the way things stand at the moment, counselors?

Okay.

Next question is, do we want to move it forward to the January?

And this should also apply to the critical slopes waiver as well, both to the PUD and to the critical slope.

I think that for me it can be consent

Agenda, I don't think we have to, like Michael said, have a larger discussion on how we're going to find a reliable, sustainable funding route for affordable housing because we have other projects like the schools and things that we have a lot of great projects that will be competing for a small amount of money.

Okay.

Is that a consensus then?

So we'll move it forward to the consent agenda.

At least as to the Park Street Christian Church project, there may be considerably more discussion about the MACA project, which as it happens is the next item on the agenda.

Who wants to talk about it?

just introduce and then the applicants can come in.

All right, so this public hearing item is a rezoning request for 1021, 1023, and 1025 Park Street.

That is tax maps 47-800, 47-11, and 47-71 respectively.

Piedmont Housing Alliance in partnership with the Monticello Area Community Action Agency or MACA

and 1023 Park Street LLC has applied pursuant to city code seeking a zoning map amendment to change the zoning district, the subject property from R1, single family residential, to PUD, planned unit development, subject to a development plan and proffered development conditions.

1021 and 1023 Park Street are currently developed with single family homes.

1025 Park Street is currently developed with the MACA school site.

The proposed PUD development plan calls for preservation of the two existing single family homes, 28 new townhome or duplex units, 65 multifamily units in two buildings, and a maximum of 7,500 square feet of commercial childcare space.

The existing private NACA drive will be upgraded to a public street along with a connected road C as illustrated in the development plan.

The remaining roads depicted on the plan will be private.

Staff finds in their review that the proposed rezoning is consistent with the city's 2021 future land use map or density use and housing type.

The development may contribute to other goals within the land use, housing, and transportation chapters of the 2021 comprehensive plan.

Staff also finds the type of use residential plus daycare facilities would be consistent with the existing development patterns for this area.

As presented in the application, staff finds the PUD to be desirable as to preserving open space, increasing housing diversity, and improving intersection design and pedestrian connectivity along Park Street.

Staff has some concerns about adequate accessibility of pedestrian infrastructure along the southern slope of the property and turnaround access to the proposed public road, but otherwise recommends approval of this rezoning with the included proffers.

Planning Commission considered this at the December 14, 2021 regular meeting and recommended approval by a vote of four to zero.

Thank you, Dannon.