City Council Meeting   8/5/2024

Are we ready?

Yes.

Oh, heck, this is screwing up again.

Trying to.

I call the August 5th, 2024 City Charlottesville City Council meeting to order.

Ms.

Councillor Oschrin.

Here.

Vice Mayor Pinkston.

Here.

Here.

Thank you very much.

Second Can you please cast your vote?

Thank you.

The motion passes.

The meeting will be divided into three sections.

The first is a work session to hear and discuss presentations that do not require a council vote.

and Paul Rudicill.

You did, sir.

Hopefully we have a little PowerPoint that should have been emailed.

But I'm sorry, our contractor wasn't able to be here today.

So I'm here to bring you the update news, which is, we're doing pretty good.

So, as you know, we're doing an ADA self-evaluation transition plan, update our one we did many years ago.

So the purpose of it, under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, is to go through and look at barriers.

So barriers in all of our programs and services, our policies and procedures, our right-of-ways, and our buildings, and even the buildings that we rent, where we'll rent out to others.

So we go through it, we look at it, and our contractor does all this for us.

So the main purpose is we're trying to find barriers so people with disabilities have equal access with everybody else.

And so it's one of the most important things.

It's a federal requirement.

If you have 50 more employees, you have to do it.

We're civil rights violation.

So currently where we're at,

Through the program, we've evaluated all the public right away.

I believe it's over 120 miles.

Going through 120 miles without the actual numbers up right now, I think we're at over 40,000.

in the

So one of the good things about our transition plan compared to other cities, even cities that are bigger in size, is we've captured everything.

Most cities will just go follow the federal requirement that you have to be close to public buildings, or your transit stations, and they just look for barriers then, and then they'll do math, and they'll say, this is how many barriers you have.

What we've done with PIM is we went through all of our inner structure, and we've looked and found these barriers.

Yes.

So our contractor is going to prioritize form.

So it's normally what you prioritize.

So if you have barriers by city hall, so you want to get those barriers fixed because you want your public to have access to their city services.

If you have barriers by your transit station, you want to get those barriers fixed.

And so they're prioritized.

And we've also we've looked at equity.

So it's one thing a lot of transition plans are now going to.

So people that are lower income, possibly, or people that are disabled, they can get transit and they can get access quicker than people who don't use it as much.

It looks like your PowerPoint.

I don't know if you need to go through that.

So I do have a question that so what is the position that if we get a complaint that may not be part of that 40,000 things that you have captured and it's been identified by the public, what is our obligation?

Maybe this is for Sam or someone else or Ashley to identify the

If we get a complaint, we verify the complaint.

So, if it's a valid complaint and it's about access, are you in a program?

then we fix it and we add it to our transition plan.

And so depending on what it is, so if we get a complaint, I'll use an example that City Council doesn't provide sign language translators.

That's an immediate thing that we need to prioritize and have sign language translators here for City Council.

So you would just move it up the prioritization level.

So if it's a complaint about

something that is out of the way and nobody uses.

So we have an old city, a lot to sidewalk.

What if a sidewalk was done, I don't know, 20, 30 years ago before the guidelines were in place and it just doesn't meet the guidelines.

What if someone brings it to our attention?

It's based on priorities, but it has to be done.

There's a lot of people who like to say it's an older system and it gets cities in trouble.

that if you have something, it can be grandfathered in.

But there is no grandfather clause under Title II of Americans with Disabilities Act.

So if it's old but it's still being used as public right away or a public building, it has to be fixed so it can be compliant and people with disabilities have equal access.

because if you say, well, it's grandfather, it's grandfather, no one's, we don't have to fix it, you're limited access.

So you can even look at something like Monticello.

You're not allowed up on the second floor, even Monticello is a historic building.

It still has to have access.

And so no matter what the age, you have to provide equal access to people with disabilities.

Other questions or comments?

Did you have a whole PowerPoint for me?

I had a PowerPoint, but I can't find it.

Oh, it's probably in the other.

Yeah, the interest didn't seem like you had.

But I covered this.

What is an ADA?

It's a civil rights law.

And it's civil rights law that we have to follow.

And it's all civil rights.

This is something that needs to be followed.

We go over five different titles.

Title one is employment.

So we're doing a review of our policies and procedures under employment.

So make sure there's nothing in our employment policies that discriminate with people with disabilities and give them the opportunity to be hired by the City of Charlottesville.

Title two is public service.

Everything involved with government is Title two.

Title III is pretty much your private organization, your companies.

Title IV is telecommunications, FCC governs that, and Title V is your miscellaneous code section provisions.

And this just goes over what Title II is.

It was clarified in Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act in 1973.

George Bush passed the First Americans with Disabilities Act.

and after a weird Supreme Court ruling, President Obama passed a more comprehensive, more broader ADADA, which made disability not less defined, but it made it broad.

So under the old section was you have to have this disability or this type of disability.

When President Obama passed the law, he made it broad.

So anything like bending, standing, kneeling, hearing, vision, breathing, anything that affects somebody's personal life fell into it under the ADADA.

and in Title II, which just goes over the administrative process, requires the requirement of a self-evaluation transition plan, making modifications of regional policies and procedures and practices to avoid architectural barriers as needed.

And this is all enforced by the Department of Justice.

What is a self-evaluation?

What we just went over.

It evaluates and identifies and we can correct barriers so people have equal access.

The transition plan, 50 more employees were required to have one.

And it's a living document, even though we will get a transition plan done.

It's good to continue and evaluate and always look for barriers.

Laws change, buildings change, and our structure breaks.

And it's good to continue to keep updating our transition plan.

Our schedule right now, we've got our pro-reg assessment.

Public right away.

So it's federal law governing, like sidewalks, how wide they have to be, how long, the runs, the sloping, inside of buildings, different areas have to be, how big tables, how high tables can be.

Public engagement, we completed that in the winter of 2024.

We did over 219 transit assessment buildings.

Our park assessment is complete.

We've completed 72 buildings right now in our facility assessment.

Programs and services and the website.

The website begins in 2024.

Well, August of this month, excuse me, of this year.

And we're doing our programs continuously.

And then we'll have a draft and we'll follow with completion.

Our public engagement.

We had a meeting in January, and then we did a meeting with the Human Rights Commission, and we did a team up there so we could get people engaged with the disability community and just other people as well.

Can I ask you something about the website?

You said it's going to be

I think we updated our website, sir.

We're doing an assessment of our website.

is going to tell us

That's our right-of-way assessment.

We've found 4,800 barriers in the right-of-way.

That can be sidewalk less than four feet.

Pedestrian signals, there was over 225 barriers there, crosswalks 436.

We had 551 missing curb ramps.

So how many violations in this category?

total 4822.

We had an early estimate from our contractor.

typically you try to, it depends on your city size.

We'll use fall cares, an example when they had a settlement agreement with the Department of Justice.

They were given five years on the town of Warrington, excuse me.

So

It depends what the city council wants to do.

I know the city of Los Angeles, they try to, they had over a billion and a half dollars of right away violations and they try to spread it out over a hundred years.

The federal government got involved and said, no, you have to do it in 20.

Yes, unless they're helping to pay for it.

But you don't want them to say, hey,

So it's up to city council and it's up to us to decide, hey, how long can we get this done?

Did you say $115 million?

$150 million, sir.

In the right-of-way assessment findings you have listed here, you have 53 compliant.

Is that 53, like, intersections and crosswalks that were correct and good?

Yes.

We had 1142 total discrepancies in our park system.

184 out of 219 of our transit stations had some kind of deficiency.

Our parks are done, and that is one good thing, but we do have a lot of barriers.

And that's my PowerPoint.

What's going to be, I mean, obviously the next step I'm assuming is going to be some sense of how are we going to move forward?

How are we going to address which areas first?

At the end of this month, we should have a right-of-way report.

So it will show every single barrier and it will be prioritized.

So we'll know at the top what we need to do all the way to the bottom.

So I can show that at the end of the month and then we'll know how much money there.

We should have a total report.

I'm hoping by the end of October.

So that will show every barrier the city has, our prioritization, what we should work on first all the way to the end.

I'm curious about one thing.

There was a transition plan done in 2013, if I remember correctly, and one might hope in the best of all worlds that there would not have been new creations, new problems created since 2013.

My suspicion is that that is not the case and that we've had continuing

creating new problems without even realizing it sort of situations.

Is that fair to say?

That's fair to say.

Yeah, the new transition plan will cover that and we'll have access and it'll be interactive.

So as we do steps in the city to correct barriers, we can remove them and it can show.

And because we're going to make a living transition document where we can continue to add to it, we can add new problems as they come.

because the old one in 2013 never addressed and never showed where the problems were.

It would just give numbers if you look at it.

It said we had 200 and I'm just going off.

It would say 212 curb ramps that need to be done, but it never showed where the 212 curb ramps were.

to be

No, I don't think there's anything that needs to be done like that.

Because I think to that point, a lot of our plans are evaluated.

So when drawings are being reviewed, your office takes a look at those?

I think that's the main thing is that at this point when development proposals come through, just like, you know, the fire department, the zoning, everyone kind of check off and review it, your office needs to review it as well to make sure that, okay, is the sidewalk big enough or wide enough or whatever, you know, type of thing.

I know that the feedback process from folks in the community, the feedback we get on our compliance or lack thereof with ADA is

I'll use the phrase energetic.

We get a lot of feedback.

How do you track that?

Do you keep a log of when a person complains and what the response is?

Yes, sir.

Good.

Thank you.

I'm glad to hear that.

And then the other piece I had was we have this transition plan that was being finished.

You mentioned that it would be a living document.

with our contractor, we get three years of continuing to update.

Then after three years, then we can continue to pay for the service to update or we can just have a glorified spreadsheet, as you said.

Okay.

Yeah, I'm assuming that I'm just trying to remember the CIP process.

Yes, we do.

This CIP budget has already worked diligently to start to set up a different code so that when we look at our new budget and when we're able to put in funding specifically for transition plan repairs that that will be in a separate bucket.

So individuals, you all and individuals from the community will be able to see that there is the existing

and the

I think that's probably how it would work.

Do y'all anticipate?

I know that Mr. Chambers has done a lot of work with the new sidewalk priorities list.

Yes.

One other question I had.

We do quarterly the ADA committee.

And we normally team up with the Independent Resource Center.

Okay.

Great.

You're welcome.

I've got a couple questions.

So since this is a

Charlottesville is an old city in a lot of ways and a lot of our infrastructure does predate the ADA which is a federal statute.

Okay, is there, like, so of that $150 million potentially that we would need if we were to do it all at once today, we would put $75 up front and the feds would match that?

The federal government for this normally is they have a pool and so it's just other jurisdictions.

Okay.

Do you have do you know how much we have?

Okay.

We're gonna try for this next budget.

And I know that there's, you said, initial report end of this month, October full report.

But I'm sure some of the, I mean, we know the list already because you've presented us with the numbers.

Well, we're capturing some easy changes as we go.

A lot of trees and barriers that just grow into the sidewalk, which is technically a barrier, which needs to be removed.

We're catching them better.

So a lot of them, and that's an easy one we can remove.

We're improving curb ramps to cities currently doing that, public works is.

We've been working on our signal integration.

I was talking to Vernon Duncan, our traffic engineer, and we have new signals there for crosswalks.

So we've got concurrent improvements while the study is being collected.

What is the best way for the public to get in touch if they notice something?

My Seville, they can email the ADA coordinator.

We have our email.

It's ADA.gov, Charlottesville.gov.

So the email would be ADA at Charlottesville.gov or you can log into the My Seville app and pinpoint exactly where the issue is.

Yes.

Great.

Thank you.

And Council Member, I also just would like to remind the public that there is information on ADA's website that's available online, including the required ADA grievance process that's all laid out on the website as well as updates as we go on for the self-evaluation and the transition plan.

It has its own page.

So we're trying to make sure that as much information as possible, if someone wakes up at 3 a.m.

Yes.

Great.

I don't have any questions.

Okay.

Lloyd at you.

So before we close, I would like to add a few comments.

Remy, could you pull up the presentation again and go to the finding slide?

And this is for the benefit of the public because council knows this has been an issue that I've been talking about well beyond the past year of serving as city manager, but

I just want to be able to express a little more for public appreciation and for council as a reminder that ADA is a priority.

It is something that I will say that we could have done better in the past, committed to doing better going forward.

We have made a series of changes since my time here, myself and Deputy Marshall have been working on this as something that we could demonstrate that we can do better and then actually deliver on doing better.

Paul being in her office of social equity is a sign of that to elevate the concern around the deficiencies in the space.

We are aware that there is a lot.

This slide proves that no one is making it up when we say that we have a lot of work to do.

We have a lot of work to do.

And when you look at that slide, there's a lot of money that needs to be spent to get those things done.

So I state that, acknowledging that this is going to take a while for us to fix.

No Community has simply fixed it by discovering that they have a problem and then spend the money to do it.

We have to work on this.

It's going to be a multi-year process and it has already been a multi-year process.

I've spent a great deal of time myself studying what it is that we have done in the past.

How do we do it in the past?

What can we do differently?

We have started doing things differently and we continue to make changes to how we do those things.

As Paul has identified, we are really, really anxiously awaiting the production of this ADA transition plan as an updated document, but one that we view as more complete.

Because as he pointed out, the one before didn't really have all the components to it.

This is a full assessment.

This is what the intention is for us to have.

We have a lot of balancing our priorities.

This one you won't get away from hearing from us on.

This is your equity priority.

If you had to identify what all falls in that space, you can put ADA first.

This is what we're going to continue to bring to you.

as an opportunity for you to look at how we can prioritize additional funding to begin to address these various things.

What you also see in looking at this list is this is not one department.

This is across the entire city government.

We all have things that we could be doing in this space, and we've got to figure out how to reach a level of compliance.

If I go with what my predecessor has done with this whole bring back boring government thing, he also said that we should have a culture of compliance around ADA.

and that's something that I have taken to heart when I heard him say that and why we have spent the time.

Paul has talked to me probably way more than he really wanted to and way more than he ever thought he would, but that's because it's that important for us to figure out how to get this right.

There's a lot more that we're going to have to continue to work on.

We will break this down over time.

We will bring items to you over the course of each fiscal year.

I would imagine that we're going to be prioritizing some consideration of an annual allocation in this space because there's just so much on that list and there's no other way to do it.

But I also want to go back to what you heard him say in regards to when the federal government arrives.

which we don't want them to arrive.

But when they arrive, usually what happens when they leave is they leave you with a big old debt and that's in the form of a settlement that you have to agree to get certain things done in a period of time.

It's my desire to avoid that by demonstrating our best effort and best effort for me is a commitment to doing things, changing things and showing that things are actually improving.

So that's the work that I have committed to and what we're working on

and we're continuing to chip away at that.

So I just want to say that out loud for everyone to appreciate it coming out of my mouth.

I said it.

We own this problem.

We're not hiding from it.

No one is pretending that it doesn't exist.

You can't walk out on the sidewalk and question, why is that here in the middle of a sidewalk?

We have a lot of moments like that that should not be the case.

And we now have to prioritize getting those things done.

We have team members in place who get it, who understand it, who are ready to prioritize it, not to say that everybody before didn't.

But some of it are decisions that have to be made at a higher level that weren't being brought up to be made.

Thank you.

So just we often get emails individually and sometimes as a group where you know someone has identified an issue, an improvement, whether it's for a bus stop or sidewalk or something.

that needs to be addressed.

If we should get something like that, do we usually refer them to staff?

But is that something that goes on that list that we have, or some of it seems a little bit more pressing?

When we receive a complaint, because normally I get attached to the same complaint you get.

But if we get a complaint, we verify there is a complaint.

And once we verify this complaint, then it gets added to the transition plan if it hasn't been captured.

And then we'll get it fixed as soon as we can get it fixed.

A lot of times there's maintenance in the right way.

They're working on a sidewalk and it's a lot of barrier issues.

We get them fixed immediately.

We have less than a 24 hour turnaround time when a lot of our complaints.

There's some complaints, there's sidewalks that are not wide enough or a curb ramp wasn't built.

We capture it and we look to get it fixed as soon as possible and we put it on our list.

We don't push back.

We try it to be proactive.

Most have been captured.

So a lot of these things are already known about.

It's kind of the more immediate or short term things that might not be like there's a truck in the way or something that's less fixed.

Yeah.

Okay.

And I'll add that we don't have a concrete crew within the city so that when we get word of there's a broken section of sidewalk, please come and repair it.

We don't have anybody that does that.

That is not within our Public Works team.

It's a conversation that we're having today.

We had, I think we've had that before.

We've talked about it considering reorganizing to maybe make that possible so that we could go and address certain things more immediate in that regard.

But anything that then requires actual construction work becomes a part of a long, massive list.

That's why that sheet looks that way.

Very similar to the concept of what we just went through with sidewalks.

There's way more work than we have the capacity to do.

The goal is to develop a better process for us to follow on identifying what are the top emergencies, what are the hot priority things, what are the repeat things that keep coming up.

Put them on a priority list, make them a part of work plans.

Paul will have a work plan just like everybody else and the goal will be that we'll identify what things we can do in the course of a year.

You have funded that and then we can work towards

Thanks.

Thank you so much, Paul.

We appreciate it.

I know you're busy.

You got a lot of things on your plate with the ADA.

It's a busy town, so.

It's a pleasure.

Engaged town.

Thank you.

Have a go.

Thank you.

Nothing else for the four o'clock.

You do have a closed session.

Mr. Pinkston, did you receive that?

I have a motion for a City Council closed session pursuant to Section 2.2-3712 of the Virginia Code.

I move that the City Council close this open meeting and convene in a closed session as authorized by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act as possible as follows.

1 under Virginia Code Section 2.2-3711A1 for discussion and consideration of assignment, appointment, performance, demotion, salary, discipline, and a resignation of a specific main employee of the public body.

Second.

Okay.

Any discussion?

If not, can we vote?

Okay.

The motion passes.

We are now in closed session.

We'll be back at 6.30.

And for those who are viewing online, there's a separate link for that.

So thank you.

Second.

All right.

Can we vote on that please?

Kate, the motion passes 5-0.

We'll begin the meeting with a moment of silence.

Thank you.

Are there any announcements that we sometimes begin?

Certainly.

Proclamation Farmers Market Week in Charlottesville, August 4th through 10th, 2024.

Whereas Market Central was established in 2003 as a non-profit that educated the public about farmers markets and supported customer food access by providing a transaction point for low-income customers to use their snap dollars to buy from the market.

Whereas Market Central, originally hosted by the Charlottesville City Market in April to November,

Market Central branched out in 2018 to develop a winter market from January to March at the Ix Art Park to provide a site for farm sales and local food access.

And, whereas when COVID-19 shut down many businesses, the farmers market at Ix obtained permission as an essential business to continue functioning throughout the year.

and, whereas the market's success led to the establishment of a year-round market where customers can access local foods and socialize, entrepreneurs can test their products, and farms can earn a fair price for their foods.

Now, therefore, the Charlottesville City Council proclaims August 4th through 10th, 2024 as Farmers Market Week in the City of Charlottesville, signed and sealed this fifth day of August 2024,

So farmers market decades and per city market?

Because there are both the farmers markets and Charlottesville and its national farmers market with everybody.

Yes.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

For part of the activities, it's the 25th National Farmers' Market we put on by the Farmers' Market Coalition.

The Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack also made the proclamation.

Our governor did, and mayors and governors all around the country have done this, done so, so we appreciate that you have done it too.

and to celebrate we're having a farmers market forum at the library public forum open to the public tomorrow night or actually at four o'clock so not really that late and everybody's welcome to come and find out the history of the markets how we got where we are and where we're going and city market will also be participating and then we'll have special activities at the market on Saturday.

Thank you.

I look forward to visiting your stand on Saturdays when I'm getting my blueberries and eggs.

So, it's my pleasure also now to give a proclamation for the Soul of Seville Festival, August 16th and 17th, 2024, where the Soul of Seville is a celebration that honors the rich cultural heritage

Vibrant arts and community spirit that make Charlottesville unique and whereas the Soul of Seville serves as a platform for fostering unity, promoting diversity, and supporting local businesses.

The 2024 theme being black excellence and whereas the free family friendly Soul of Seville festivals returns to X Park, I mean X Park, Art Park

August 16th and 17th uniting residents and visitors from all backgrounds and walks of life to enjoy a diverse array of performances, food, award recognition, scholarship giveaways.

and activities that showcase the soul of our city and where the Soto City Seville is a collaborative effort with the art park with various black-owned businesses that seek to amplify the voices of local artists, musicians, entrepreneurs, and engaged community members.

Now, therefore, the city of Charlottesville City Council endorses the values of inclusivity

and cultural appreciation, encouraging community members to participate in the wide range of Soul of Seavill Festival activities on August 16th and 17th.

Good evening, everyone.

I am Kalyla Jones.

And on behalf of the Soul of Seville Organizing Committee, 101 Gems, Beyond Fitness with Sabrina, Ix Art Park, and Chic and Classy Image Consulting, as well as a part of my creative team here tonight, I want to extend our heartfelt

Gratitude to the City of Charlottesville and Charlottesville City Council for recognizing the Soul of Seville Festival once again for 2024.

Friday, August 16th, we are thrilled to kick off the Soul of Seville with the Best in Black Seville Award Ceremony, celebrating this year's incredible winners.

Following that on Saturday, August 17th, we'll continue the festivities with live performances, a fashion show, 50 black vendors and organizations that center black individuals, families, and communities.

Thank you for your continued support and recognition.

Thank you so much for all that you do.

We're now at Community Matters.

There are eight pre-registered speakers leaving slots for eight additional speakers on Community Matters.

Each speaker will have up to three minutes.

We will now open the floor to the pre-registered speakers.

And the first person is Ashley Ferguson.

Good evening, Councillors.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak tonight.

Tonight, the last items on your agenda constitute one of the biggest financial expenditures in city history.

A 20-year lease agreement totaling over $70 million, as well as an option to either spend $95 million to buy out the garage in 2044, or to abandon the city stake for near nothing.

The leases alone will cost more than the purchases of Guadalajara and Lucky 7, more than Zero East High, more than all our affordable housing investments ever put together.

We know the deal is a financial loser.

The city will lose money.

But as I stand before you tonight, I don't think any of you can tell me a projection of how much of a loser it is.

Is it worth it for what we gain?

Seems hard to say without knowing what we'll lose.

I get it.

You were dealt a bad hand.

by previous councils who were too trusting, then too antagonistic towards the city's counterparties.

Maybe it's worth 70 million dollars to put that behind us and get back to boring government.

But I don't think boring government means rushing into that call without understanding what's at stake.

I urge you to delay giving these agreements your final approval until accurate projections of the ramifications can be produced and you've had an opportunity to properly and thoroughly weigh the cost and benefits.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.

I'm here to talk about the downtown mall.

A deteriorating environment, lost cause, dangerous.

These are the few ways the downtown mall has been described in recent public discourse.

The mall to me occupies a unique position in our community.

It's obviously a critical commercial corridor for the city.

It's a public street that I use daily to move from two sides of the city in a way that avoids traffic almost altogether.

It's a place for families to meet up, hang out, and for people to sit and read.

It's also for many people experiencing homelessness, one of the few safe, public, well-lit, and service-adjacent places in the city.

While the downtown mall may resemble some other outdoor shopping areas like Stonefield or Short Pump in Richmond, it is first and foremost a public space.

Any solutions around the mall must serve all of those that access it, not just those who own property on the mall or otherwise have financial interest in it.

Some of the language being used by organizations like Friends of the Downtown Mall like Cleanliness, Safety, and Charm are thinly veiled euphemisms.

Their goal seemingly is for people in desperate situations with few alternatives to be removed.

The organization's recent petition, ensure a clean and safe downtown Charlottesville, now includes initiatives that I agree with, like a free public health clinic downtown, a low barrier homeless shelter, and increased lighting and seating options.

As representatives from the organization stated at the last council meeting during a public comment, quote, investing in a thriving economy is the only expenditure that will bring additional funding for other priorities that the city has.

This is not an either or conversation, end quote.

I disagree.

There are many other areas, like housing, where public investment can yield not only additional funding, but also contribute to a more secure, fair, and accessible Charlottesville.

It is up to the City to choose to fund new projects for everyone, including those living outside on the Mall, like new affordable housing initiatives, developing new and fortifying existing supportive services, and constructing new public amenities.

The mall is for everyone.

Thank you.

Good evening, my name is Carrie Rock and I live in 941 Henry, Charlottesville City.

A month ago, I spoke in these halls about the issues the Rose Hill neighborhood is facing.

Myself, Anthony Casey, and other members of the community told you of the issues with gun violence, drug dealing, prostitution, and drug use in our neighborhood.

Not four hours after I spoke here were shots fired in front of Mr. Casey's house.

In the past month, I've had brief conversations via Facebook and email with a few of the members in attendance.

Initially, it seemed as though progress was about to be made.

On the issues plaguing the Rose Hill neighborhood, Vice Mayor Pinkston wrote, Mr. Rock, this will be an issue I continue to raise with my staff, and the situation is unacceptable.

For Mayor Wade, I have directed staff to work with the community to address the safety concerns.

Thank you for all that you do in the community.

And Council Member Lloyd Snook, Council supports you.

Just realize that the council is not the chain of command for the police department.

We can ask questions and make sure that City Manager, who is in the chain of command, is asking questions.

But what will happen there won't be our decision.

I turn to our City Manager.

Last month you told us to call 9-1-1 after it was revealed that we as a community stopped calling due to the ineffectiveness of it.

Sir, we have called over 30 times over the past month as Chief Cocos' numbers will reflect.

One specifically from myself identifying a drug deal that happened directly in front of my house.

I provided everything that would be needed to arrest the person on charges of distribution.

I'd love to tell you that that activity has now stopped and the dealer has been caught, but I can't.

That same dealer returned yesterday and dealt again.

This evening as I came here,

I saw the same dealers we spoke about last month still dealing openly on Charlton Ave.

Washington Park is still a hotspot for drug use and families still do not feel safe.

I'm simply at a loss.

Whereas a citizen, a husband, and a father, am I to go next to solve this problem?

What will it take for you all to take action?

You are the elected officials, our leaders, the community protectors,

We used our votes to say, lead this community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

and even it, sir.

I have questions.

It is completely unfathomable to me that you all would sit with the possibility of discussing a pay raise tonight.

Not just any pay raise.

A pay raise is somewhere 88, 89 percent over where you currently are.

The only ones in America who do that are the abusive CEOs of corporations.

You're actually going to sit and vote on this subject when just outside your door there are homeless people that need to be addressed.

You have to step on them, step over them, and step around them to get into these halls.

But we're talking about a pay raise for city council.

And when did we become compliant with

Governor Glenn, Trump Latke and his wishes and his desires.

When did that happen?

Because I missed that memo as well.

Just because it filters down from the governor's office don't mean that we have to embrace it.

Address the problems that your citizens face before you ever consider those of your own.

You're talking about $37,000 for what is supposedly and purportedly supposed to be a part-time job.

You have city employees who aren't making $37,000.

But you want to vote this in for yourselves.

Maybe I've got too many windows open.

I just can't wrap my head around this.

And we want to do things like this when citizens can't even get a simple return phone call from some of you all.

It's completely ludicrous.

I realize I have time left, but I'll stop.

takes me a minute to get unraveled.

When my husband and I moved here 10 years ago, we were thrilled.

We moved from the Atlanta metro area, which was pretty much crime ridden.

Traffic was awful.

We had great jobs, but it was time for us to move here.

My family lived here and still lives here, some of them.

So it was a pleasure to be here.

And we were thrilled to be able to live in the mall area.

I just live a block and a half away.

and it's wonderful because I can walk to the mall for just about everything I need.

The only time I don't is when I need heavy duty grocery shopping.

But there's one thing that is a problem with the mall and I've talked with my friends and neighbors and they have the same problem.

It may sound insignificant to some people, but it's a big problem for me and them, especially if you're handicapped like I am.

There's no place to sit on the mall unless you want to buy something.

There are days when I am so tired from carrying this machine.

It's heavy.

And I often have my dog.

So I have a purse, the machine, and the dog.

And it's an effort.

And I've had to go home to sit down because there's no place for me to rest.

I've had to ask restaurateurs if I could sit in one of their chairs.

They're always very kind.

I've had to go into the CVS store and sit in the chair by the pharmacy just to rest for a minute.

And it's not right.

I've heard there are stories about why there are no chairs.

The last time I checked, there were six chairs for me to sit in between the Nook Restaurant and the Omni.

Now, it could be eight or 10 now, but that's certainly absurd.

Not only the handicap, but regular people need to be able to sit down.

and I'm asking somebody to make sure that happens.

I started pursuing this before COVID.

The response I got from a male council member whose name I don't recall was, well, go sit up by the pavilion.

If you've ever sat in the pavilion area in a 90 degree heat, you'll never do it again.

If I'm going to do that, if I'm down, say, where the Bebedero is, I might as well go home and sit down, as to go up to Ting and sit down.

That's where all the chairs are.

And it's just incomprehensible.

So I'm asking to please do something about this.

Give us a spot where we don't have to spend money in order to sit down and just enjoy

the mall, just sit there and relax for a few minutes and then go about our business.

That's all I have to say.

Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Liz Quarty.

Liz Quarty.

Those were all of the preregistered speaker.

We did have a list of others, but we have slots for 10 people if I did my math correctly.

Anyone else would like to speak?

I'm not going to thank you for being here because I don't want to be here.

The deal is I got 10 pages.

Yeah, they sent from downtown, three of them up.

I don't know how much y'all cost per page to figure it all out.

Tell me to cut bushes down on your wall on Harris Road.

The wall belongs to the city.

Ms.

Mueller told the judge when I sued them years ago that they owned the wall and they maintain the wall.

I am sick and tired of these letters.

I don't intend to pay it.

If you cut it, I don't intend to pay it.

Thank you.

Who else would like to speak?

I'm sorry.

Sir, would you want to get your name so we can have someone follow up with you?

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Greer Ockenbach.

I'm Executive Director of Friends of Seville Downtown.

It seems there's been some miscommunication regarding the intentions of Friends of Seville Downtown, and I want to clarify that Friends of Seville is advocating for a clean and safe downtown for the entire community, residents, visitors, locals, and tourists alike.

We are interested in solutions to get to the root of complicated problems and are eager to partner with city leadership to implement those solutions and to provide philanthropic support where we are able.

We are in favor of an ambassador program like Block by Block to take over some cleanliness and maintenance responsibilities from the over-extended Parks and Rec staff.

We're in favor of shelter beds as quickly as we can make them available with connections to social services, perhaps via the anchor team, designated campsites with toilets and showers available for the unsheltered who want to remain outside and ultimately for permanent supportive affordable housing.

Friends of Seville is not anti-homeless, lacking in compassion or naive to the realities faced by the most vulnerable in our community.

We simply want to help the downtown mall reach its highest potential and believe that every human being should have an option better than sleeping on the sidewalk.

There are real people affected by these issues on all sides and their lives hang in the balance.

Hi, I'm Anna.

Hello.

Just first off the cuff, I wanted to say whoever is in charge of making sure that 4th Street is blocked off on August 12, please remember to do that because I don't know if it was last year or the year before, the people who were observing that day and holding like a safe space had to call Public Works to get the trucks out there and when you're trying to like

remember a special or not a special moment, a bad moment, but a moment that we all remember.

It's really hard to like juxtapose that with having to call somebody be like block off this room.

And I also wanted to say that last year I talked to probably like 11 different survivors and I said to them like why, you know, if

If there's a reason why you don't come to this space often, why is it?

And of course, several of them were like, well, it's traumatic.

I don't want to be here.

But there are several other people who were like, well, the space is just inhospitable, quite frankly.

When you're out here in August, it's so hot.

There's no shade.

There's no seating.

There's not even a plaque or anything that's in remembrance.

And so one thing that we had talked about that I'm going to set is my goal to bring to this council by

the 10-year anniversary is to make that a green space.

Because that wouldn't just benefit survivors, it would benefit, I think, everybody.

So I want to talk a little bit about houses since the last time I have left.

The first thing I want to say is I support habitat buying the Carlton mobile home.

The larger narrative in this country, oh, and by the way, I've said this all to you, I'm going to say it again, it's important.

The larger narrative in this country has been to blame houses people for seemingly every issue we have.

but more people being houseless are a result of increased poverty and economic stability and not because those people make that choice.

No one makes a choice to be houseless.

They're failed by a variety of people and institutions that are supposed to protect them but don't.

The dehumanizing nature and the language around people, these people are just dog whistles.

Comparing people to litter, like they should be picked up and thrown away,

is

because someone is pressuring you, but to actually address the root cause of these issues, which is that we need more homes.

And we need homes for people of the lowest socioeconomic class.

So not just million dollar mansions on rugby, we need homes for people who are the working class, people who are poor.

So please think about those people.

They should be at the forefront of this conversation.

And very different from what we hear from a lot of other

petition that Friends of Downtown has posted.

And I have to say I agree with the previous speakers with Anna and with Ian Baxter and others who have talked about the unhoused here in Charlottesville.

I was horrified to read the language in the first version of the petition.

I don't know if you've seen it.

It has since changed dramatically, as Mr. Baxter pointed out.

It's hard to believe that the language that was first presented was anything other than not very subtle dog whistles about making sure the unsightly unhoused people were not

to be seen on the downtown mall.

I'd like to play the old man card for a little bit.

I've lived in Charlottesville a long time.

I know there are people in the room who've lived here longer than I have, but I've been here 35 years.

I used to live on North First Street, and I walked down North First Street across the mall and up West Main to UVA and back every day for work, starting in 1989.

And let me tell you, the mall

was not a place she wanted to be in 1989, largely because there were lots of empty storefronts and those businesses that were there closed up tight at five o'clock.

It was dark.

It was dirty.

And honestly, even though I was only 30 years old, there were times I was very uncomfortable there.

And I just want to say I've heard a lot of this language over and over and over and over again about the mall is dirty and it's dangerous.

Honestly, the mall is the crown jewel of downtown Charlottesville, and we all know that.

And if you look at it, it's not really very dirty for an urban space.

It doesn't seem dangerous particularly.

I've been out here very late at night and felt fine walking down the mall, walking up to the top of the Market Street garage to find my car.

I can't see these anything except dog whistles.

And so I would like you to bear all of that in mind that we keep hearing these things over and over frequently from the same people every six months, every year.

So thank you very much.

Hello.

My name is Josie.

I'm a member of the DSA who canvassed with legal aid in the Carlton mobile home park after the residents received a notice of a potential sale.

The mobile home park is one of few places in Charlottesville that offers deeply affordable housing.

Obviously, this is a timely topic.

The potential sale of the park in combination with the rezoning of that area suggests that the change of ownership would eliminate the affordable housing that exists on that land.

This would displace about 200 people or 80 families.

These folks represent members of our community and the essential workforce in Charlottesville.

Folks who work in warehouses in the summer heat who staff the CVS and more.

Anything that replaces the park is likely not to offer the type of housing that workers of this variety could afford to live in.

Charlottesville cannot function without a diverse population and needs to preserve deeply affordable housing.

I am speaking in support of Council teaming up with Habitat for Humanity to finance a project to not only prevent these families and workers from being displaced, but to preserve deeply affordable housing in Charlottesville on a long term basis.

The residents have already come to an agreement with Habitat and I believe it's in the city's best interest and in alignment with past council actions to ensure that the agreement comes to fruition.

Hi, I'm Andrew Shelton, live on Old Lynchburg Road, lifelong resident.

I'm here to speak about homelessness and particularly about the petition that we've already heard about so much tonight.

I was

Gravely disappointed in the language in the first draft of it, particularly when a number of members of that organization, including at least one board member, were speaking before you all at your last meeting and using language along lines of

wanting to enforce the panhandling ordinance, which is particularly relevant given the recent Supreme Court decision that is immoral but would allow you all to clear folks off the streets.

I don't have the impression that any of you are particularly inclined towards that, which I am grateful for.

But after that push last week, I think it was necessary for a bunch of us to come out here and vocally present a different opinion.

I'm grateful for the changes that have been made in the petition.

And I think that we can all support the idea of a health clinic on the downtown mall, more seating, et cetera.

I think that's wonderful, genuinely.

I do think it is, you know, we can see what happened there.

There was pushback and folks that, you know, own a large amount of property on the downtown mall, including at least four or five of the largest local landlords decided that they didn't want to deal with that blowback.

So they changed what they were pushing for.

and I think it's important for us to be out here and make the point that that blowback will continue and maybe instead of you know having folks come in here and talk about arresting people for existing we can focus on the positive ideas that are now out there and work together on making that happen because criminalizing homelessness is simply unjust we all know that housing in this town is incredibly unaffordable

And you just, you can't ask people to go off in the woods and hide out and just disappear from society.

This is where the services are.

This is where people feel safe because they're not alone in the woods.

We need to approach this in a better way going forward.

And I very much appreciate that y'all seem to be on the same page with that.

Thank you, sir.

Someone else here from the middle, want to speak?

Hello, my name is Natasha Scott.

I've been homeless going on three years now.

I came to speak for the homeless people outside.

We don't have any privileges

We're not animals.

We don't deserve to be pushed to the side.

I'm a taxpayer.

I've paid my taxes here.

I've lived in Charlottesville almost all of my life.

I don't deserve to be outside.

I've paid a lot of people, I try to help people and I've done nothing but, you know, try to help everyone.

I'm being threatened every day on a daily basis.

I need a place to stay.

I've worked for housing, I've worked for UVA, I've worked for all of these places and I don't see anybody out here really trying to help us.

Today Ms.

Shirley's things were removed from the property.

Um, that doesn't seem fair to me.

So I think as a taxpayer, we need to make some changes.

We're not talking about raises for you guys.

I paid my taxes.

I want to live in my own place.

Thank you so much.

We have time slots for three more right now.

Anyone else want to speak?

Mike Parisi, Rose Hill Neighborhood

Neighbor Association Vice President, also as a member of the Housing Advisor Committee, I'm just speaking as myself tonight.

First, I want to say thank you for all of your efforts around the Carlton Mobile Home Park.

This is a huge and complex undertaking, and I want to thank you for your part, your work contributing city funds to this project.

It's hard enough to get new affordable housing built, preserving affordable housing when we can is important, so thank you.

To go from there, I was thinking that sometimes acute problems are a little more

easy to think about or act on than diffuse problems.

I think there's 200 or so people in the Carlton mobile home park.

I'm pretty sure there's more homeless individuals in that in Charlottesville.

But we haven't acted with the same urgency around that issue to create new housing for the unhoused.

Providing housing for the homeless is a cost-effective solution.

It's going to be in the long run less financial strain on our city to have people housed.

People can deal with issues in their life much more easily when they're housed, expecting people to deal with substance use or trying to find jobs, raising children without a house.

Yeah, I just don't know how folks do it.

And the city and the surrounding area spends a lot of money to help folks with that.

Also, I want to just briefly acknowledge a couple other points.

Please listen to Rory.

He understands this parking issue a lot better than I do.

This is another one.

I'm not sure in the long run.

Yeah, if that's going to be a prudent decision to spend that much money on parking.

This is just one one guy's guess.

I think the way we use cars and get around and store cars is going to look a lot different in two decades.

So I would just

say, take your time making that decision, please.

And maybe lastly, salary increase.

This is something I've argued for to folks.

I want you all to have more time and more resources to do your job, to understand the issues, and to serve our community.

That's that.

I understand some of the pushback.

My own personal pushback would be, please consider paying people who serve on boards and commissions.

We have a lot of slots set aside for folks from disadvantaged communities, low income, affordable housing beneficiaries.

To have those slots and not support them and pay them and beyond is not reasonable.

Thank you.

We have slots for three more.

Hi, my name is Jocelyn and I live in Pantops.

I'm going to read a letter that I didn't write myself, but the sentiments of which I agree with.

I'm here today to remind you that community means all our residents and neighbors and that all of us deserve a safe and healthy place to live with dignity, autonomy, and a sense of belonging.

Recent calls from downtown business owners and others that have suggested that some of our most vulnerable residents do not deserve these basic human needs are morally abhorrent and do not align with the stated goals of our City Council to serve our community While many of these original calls for forcible displacement and criminalization of our unhoused community members may have been softened, the threat to our most vulnerable neighbors is ongoing

The recent petition promoted an association with funds of Charlottesville proposes community resources that are greatly needed.

However, even if all of these resources were to be fully funded and implemented, they would not be a comprehensive or permanent solution to the increasing economic, housing, and related health crises faced by our community.

These resources also do not resolve the forcible displacement, harassment, and criminalization of our unhoused community members.

Community resources are only resources if they are voluntary and work in collaboration with the people they serve and should never imply social or legal punishment for non-participation.

In addition, we can expect the number of individuals and families living without stable long-term housing to rapidly expand as neighbors are being increasingly priced out and forcibly pushed out of their neighborhoods by commercial interests.

City Council must move proactively to protect the rights of the currently unhoused as well as those at risk of becoming unhoused.

The current City Council statement of housing reads, Charlottesville defines access to livable housing as a human right and works to ensure housing choices and mobility

are provided for all who seek it through implementation of the affordable housing plan.

To the first point, access to livable housing as a human right means providing livable, accessible and affordable housing to all community members.

This includes creating housing shelters as well as permanent housing for those currently without it.

This also means improving current affordable housing with greater access to resources and healthier indoor and outdoor living spaces for all.

To the second part, housing choices and mobility means preventing displacement and criminalization of unhoused community members and protecting at-risk neighborhoods.

This includes approving Habitat for Humanities bid to preserve the Colleton Mobile Home Park community

and preventing further destruction of our low income neighborhoods.

This also means putting a moratorium on displacing residents or removing encampments in and around Charlottesville of currently unhoused community members.

I sincerely hope that Council acts with the courage to move closer to realizing the ideals of its mission statement on housing.

But most importantly, I hope you move meanly to protect the human rights of our most vulnerable community members.

Who are we as a community if we are not for all of us to live with dignity?

Thank you.

A couple more people want to speak right now.

I wanted to make sure everybody else had a chance.

I'm here to talk about a food drive that my office is putting on, the commissioner in Cairns.

Food drive is going to be taking place throughout August.

The commissioners and Cairns food, I'm Todd Divers, I'm the commissioner of the revenue.

I should introduce myself.

The commissioners and Cairns food and fund drive is an annual partnership

between the commissioners of the Revenue Association of Virginia and Virginia Federation of Food Banks.

It spans statewide once again through the month of August.

We'll take on the fight against food insecurity.

We've done this now.

In our sixth year, the commissioners in Cairns Food and Fund Drive is a month-long competition for commissioners of the revenue offices to join together to raise funds and food for their local food banks throughout the Commonwealth.

It's a competition among my colleagues around the state.

We've got bins around the city hall.

I encourage folks to drop stuff off.

There's a bin outside my office.

There's a bin in the treasure's lobby.

And we've actually got a bin up here right out in the hall.

So folks coming to the next city council meeting are encouraged to bring donations if they'd like to.

You can also donate online.

Visit Charlottesville.gov slash core and follow the link.

And that's actually a bigger bang for your buck because one dollar will help contribute to four meals.

Thank you.

Was someone else?

Good evening.

My name is Emily Dreyfus.

And I wanted to thank you all as others have for the work that you've done to make the Carlton Mobile Home Park effort hopefully successful.

It all rests in the hands of the current owner.

And we really hope that he will be receptive to that offer from Habitat and Piedmont Housing Alliance.

It's very exciting that this happened so quickly.

I think you all have a lot to be proud of and a lot of gratitude to show to city staff because

A lot of

sweat into doing the outreach with me and with other folks.

I'm really, really happy that we have come this far, this quickly.

And I also just wanted to comment on affordable housing in general, because when I first heard about what the threat is for the residents of the Carlton Mobile Home Park, I just knew that they would not be able to find options because of what I hear every week from folks who are

out of options and I do want to also thank Ms.

Scott for taking her time and being here and telling her story and talking about what it's like to be actually experiencing homelessness.

And there was an article recently in the Washington Post that talked about how have rents changed over time and the Charlottesville area is the worst in Virginia.

It said that over the past five years, rents have gone up almost 34%.

So I wanted to connect that also to rent assistance.

Yes, we absolutely need more housing.

We need more deeply affordable housing.

But we also need emergency rent assistance to be low barrier and sufficient to help people stay in their homes.

So thank you very much.

And I'll keep my fingers crossed that we're going to have success with the Garland Mobile Home Park.

Yes, thank you so much.

Yes, I'm hopeful with that as well.

That was the last slide for public comments.

At this time, we will have another opportunity.

Consent agenda number two minutes, April 15th, regular meeting, May 6th, regular meeting.

Resolution to Appropriate Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services Victims of Crime Act Grant Award, FY24, $123,614, Second Reading.

Four, Ordinance, Amending and Re-enacting City Ordinances, Enabling the Emergency Medical Services Agreement with the Charlottesville Abel Morrill Rescue Squad, Second Reading.

5.

Ordinance Authorizing a Grant of Public Funding to Subsidize the 6th Street Redevelopment Project of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority 2nd Reading 6.

Ordinance to Authorize a Forgivable Loan to Virginia Supportive Housing for Premier Circle, PSH $750,000 for redeveloping 405 Premier Circle

into 80 permanent affordable units, second reading, seven resolution to appropriate EPA clean school bus program rebates, $420,000, one of two readings, eight resolution appropriating $7,120,650 from the United States Department of Transportation,

Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration Natural Gas Distribution Infrastructure and Safety Modernization Grant Program.

Is there a motion to adopt the consent agenda?

Second.

I'll just highlight quickly the exciting to have that funding to acquire two electric school buses, which I know people look forward to as well as that $750,000 to create 80 permanent supportive housing units to move people out of homelessness.

And Premier Circle is one of the major projects that's moving forward.

Agreed.

Further discussion?

If not, let's vote.

Good evening, Councilor, members of the public.

Just a few quick items, because we do have a very full agenda, and I thought I would shorten it.

But I just want to say congratulations to all the planners of West Haven days.

I was able to make it over on Saturday, had a good time, and ordered good weather, and I think it came.

I tried to dock the chief, but I was unable to be successful.

But I would like to also remind everyone that National Night Out is tomorrow night at X Park 530 to 730 free food dunk tank and more and he tells me I'll get another shot So if you want to come and dunk the Chief, please join me

Lastly, City Hall Lobby has reopened for business.

The City Treasury, Commissioner of Revenue and Utility Building Office are all back in their homes ready to serve your needs.

They are working on DMV Select.

It's not quite back, but we hope to be able to bring that back very shortly.

So the Treasury will let you know where things stand.

And I think I will end there and allow us to move on into other items.

Can I ask a question?

Yes.

Mr. City Manager, relative to the Charlton Avenue comments that were made earlier, I know I've seen some email traffic that you all are, our CPD staff is having regular and more frequent patrols and interventions there.

That's what I would have told you.

We're doing that.

We are working with our partners in law enforcement that goes beyond just CPD.

Sensitive matters, of course, but ideally the goal is just to remind that we are doing our level best to try to figure out what details we need to be able to address certain situations.

There is a continued focus.

That is a hotspot.

Thank you.

And Brian, I just want to add that I'm in a weekly, sometimes not daily conversation with the President of the Neighborhood Association.

and Natalie and I, we've put out to meet with the residents on the 22nd of this month, so we're just waiting to hear back.

Yeah.

It's an ordinance to vacate the gas and water line easements on Garden Street, which was the former Walnut Street.

Yeah.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Counselors.

I'm Lauren Hildebrand, the Director of Utilities.

The City of Charlottesville Department of Utilities received a request to vacate easements

for Natural Gas and Waterline under Garden Street and the city's right away formerly known as Walnut Street.

These streets are in close proximity to Carlton Road.

The city street was vacated in 2011 and the gas and waterline easements were recorded as a result.

The owner of Belmont and Carlton Holdings LLC is requesting the easements be vacated to develop the land.

The natural gas and waterline mains and service connections have been abandoned.

and the ordinance proposes to vacate the existing natural gas and water line easements in order to remove an incumbrance for the owner.

In accordance with Virginia Code section 15.2-1800, a public hearing is required to give the public an opportunity to comment on the proposed conveyance of a property interest.

Notice of the public hearing was advertised in the local newspaper at least seven days in advance of the public hearing.

Staff recommends the approval

of the Ordinance and the Dita Vacation.

And we're asking that Council consider waiving second reading of the Ordinance.

Okay, before I open up the public hearing, are there any clarifying questions on this from Council?

If not, I'll now open up the public hearing for this vacation of the gas and water line easements.

Anyone would like to speak on that?

Four fifths vote.

So if there's no other discussion, if it's more than four, then we can waive the second hearing.

Can you please vote?

Okay.

The next item is the ordinance to increase the salaries of city councilors, members pursuant to section 15.2-14, 14-6 of the Virginia Code.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council.

My name is Eden Ratliff, I'm the Deputy City Manager for Administration.

This issue has come up a little bit here tonight, but in the legislative agenda of the Commonwealth in 2024, they passed a statute that allows City Councils of Independent Cities to amend the salaries, which hasn't been done for a long time for the Mayor and the City Council.

So the ordinance in front of you, which is on its first reading, allows for the salary for council members to go up from $18,000 to $34,000 and for a mayor from $20,000 to $37,000 per year.

If this takes effect, it can't, if the council chooses to adopt this ordinance, it can't take effect until July 1 after the next general election.

So we're talking about July 1st of 2026, nearly two years from now.

Okay, this is the first of two hearings.

I'll start with you, Lloyd.

Well, the first thought I had is that

The proposed increase amounts to about for the last eight years anyway roughly triple the rate of inflation.

If we were to take the rate of inflation and apply that to the amount that was

Authorized by the last change, which is in 2017, take effect in 2018, I think it was, $18,000 would go up to $22,500, $20,000 for the mayor would go up to $25,000.

if we go back to, and to a certain extent the ordinance is a little bit, I don't want to overstate, it's a little bit misleading in the sense that in paragraph two the draft says the statutory limits placed on city councilor salaries by the General Assembly have not been adjusted for inflation since 1996.

It is accurate to say

that the limit had not been raised since 1996.

I don't know that there was ever an intention to say that it was going to be adjusted for inflation and that the new maximum salaries reflect the impact of inflation between the years of 1997 and 2024.

I went back and

and looked at some numbers on that and basically if we were to raise the interest, if we were to raise the salaries from what they were just before the change in 1996, in other words to embrace the 1996 change, that and the national data shows a rate of inflation during that time period of roughly 2.43 percent a year

or 96% increase over time.

Mind you, that was from what was at that point $10,000, not $18,000, all of which I put together to say that I think at a time when we are raising taxes, basically every tax we could raise this past year, it is not

It's certainly not good politics and probably not wise more broadly for us to take the most full advantage of what the General Assembly has done, and if we want to be really sort of honest with ourselves what we're looking to do, if we're looking to keep pace with inflation.

would be to raise it to $22,500 for counselors and $25,000 for the mayor.

The increase that is proposed, first of all, it's an 89% increase from

President year to what it would be in 2026, as Mr. Gathers pointed out.

It also works out over the last eight years, let's say since the last change to about 8.7% annually.

And I don't know of very many investments that are going up at the rate of 8.7% annually.

So I'm not in favor of this particular ordinance.

I can't provide that level of mathematical justification, but I want to thank Delegate Coulson, who I think is in the audience tonight.

for bringing this to the General Assembly.

With all due respect to my colleague and in some ways a mentor, I disagree with the fundamental proposition that the original salary when it was set way back in the dark ages was anywhere close to what it should have been.

So I very much support this.

I think it's overdue.

No one would ever should.

People have to decide for themselves why they would want to go into this line of work.

For me, I would never do it for the money.

That would make no sense.

On the other hand, it is

is a lot of work.

It's good work, it's work that I love, but it is work.

And it's not just the hours of council as all the boards and commissions are on, all of these other things, it's times away from our family.

Also, if you have a professional sort of, it's opportunity cost, whatever you want to call it.

But this is only just beginning to sort of make things a little more fair and reasonable.

The thing about this role and the reason I love it is that you're always carrying the city sort of around with you in your heart and in your mind and that may sound a little overdramatic, but that's how I feel about it.

and so you know to go from something which I think is really a piddance to something that's a little more respectable I will wholeheartedly and enthusiastically vote for this without any shame whatsoever and I hope that this sets a precedent for

future when folks who aren't in as good a financial position as I happen to be and see an opportunity like this to say, you know what, this is a reachable thing for me with this extra salary and so I will be willing, I can make a contribution and contribute to my city because the incremental amount of money and my hope is that we would actually set into place some sort of

Marker to where this goes up by inflation every year.

Sure, I mean, I would concur with Brian's points.

I mean, to me, city council salaries were set in, I think, 1998, weren't adjusted.

I just plugged it in again.

If you adjusted for inflation in today's dollars from 1998, it would be about $35,000.

And it's particularly strange because the state law has no restrictions on the salary of county governments.

They only did it for city councils.

So a county government can set their salary to whatever they want.

I believe in Loudoun County.

some northern Virginia localities the salaries are over a hundred thousand dollars so it was always been a very bizarre legal framework that city council ended up in and as was mentioned it's still certainly not a lot of money in terms of the time of this position in the past I think very similar to the General Assembly there's an idea that could be a fully part-time volunteer legislature but with the complexity of

and

That was a factor for them that financially it wouldn't be able to be feasible for them.

So does this completely solve that issue of making office completely more accessible to people who aren't independently coming from wealth or self-employed or retired?

No, but it's one meaningful step in that direction.

And I know this is a bill that was brought by Delegate Coulson.

It passed with bipartisan support.

I give credit to Mayor Walker.

This is a goal repeatedly.

The General Assembly just wasn't able to get it done.

Now it has.

And I would just note that I believe Richmond, Danville, Roanoke, Virginia Beach have all already taken action on this issue, raising it to that maximum level.

So certainly not alone in it.

I echo Councillor Pinkston's really eloquent thoughts about how you don't get into this for the money.

It is a lot of effort, but also expanding on Councillor Payne's thoughts that more people should be able to do this.

and have the money help make it more accessible to more folks.

By voting for this increase, it's not that it hits our bank accounts tomorrow, like the presentation says, it doesn't happen until after the next election.

So we're not voting necessarily on our own salaries, we're voting on the salaries of the next incoming councillors and then the rest of us would be at par.

So it is a forward thinking adjustment based on the fact that it hasn't been adjusted since 1998.

So that limits who can participate, which is of course something we don't want to do.

Inclusive participation is

Most of this job, whether it's public hearings or public comment or meeting with constituents and answering emails So the more inclusive we can be the better.

It's not an arbitrary number pulled out of thin air Thank you, and you know in the web a lot on gender I just want to concur that I

support this increase.

It is needed.

I think it's one of the most significant things that I can do as an individual counselor to increase the diversity on this board in addition to my mentoring of the individuals to run for office, to get involved with the community.

I think this is something that we can do.

It takes a lot of time.

I have flexibility because I've been at

My job for 30-something years and I have a lot of leave, but other people don't have that flexibility and opportunity.

I think this is something that we can do to get more people to run for counsel.

So I'm going to support this when it comes back up for vote in two weeks.

I know we have the opportunity to have this

not on a consent agenda, but I like to, you know, leave it on a regular agenda because of the nature of it.

It's okay with that.

I would agree.

Any other questions or actions on this at this time?

Thank you.

Do you want another public hearing or are you just, you just want it on the action agenda?

We haven't done the public hearing yet.

Oh, did I miss that?

So we're up on the gun a bit.

I'm sorry.

Thank you.

I'm back.

I also wanted to speak on this.

I understand the reservations that some folks might have about y'all raising your salaries, but I want to say that I genuinely believe that this is one of the single most important things that you guys can do to help us become a more equitable city going forward.

If people can't afford to live in this town, they can't serve on council.

It's that simple.

We've all heard a number of things about affordable housing issues and y'all are affected by those just the same as we are.

And I would like as broad a spectrum of people from our population to be able to afford to serve and right now

They simply can't.

You know, not to get into counsel in particular, but there's a long history of the idea of the citizen legislature in this state that really just serves to disenfranchise people that aren't independently wealthy.

There's a reason why our General Assembly is largely composed of doctors and lawyers.

And no disrespect to them, but I don't feel that that is a proportional representation of the people in our Commonwealth.

Thank you.

I still have questions.

Where else in this country can employees set their own salary?

And I said in as much as the citizens of this city elected you, which means you work for us.

So as our employer, as we being the employer, you're coming to us asking for a raise.

And my question back to you is what exactly have you done in order to deserve it?

I would much rather see that 81,000 shifted or at least the greatest portion of it shifted so that as a previous speaker said, we can actually start paying your employer

Those folks who sit on boards and commissions for that time that you asked us to volunteer for on boards and commissions.

We have one commission or one board that the members are actually paid on, one.

That makes absolutely no sense to me, especially when we're talking about raising the salary of the employees.

Please make it balance off, make it make sense.

You all work for us, yet still you feel empowered to set your own salaries.

I just don't see the rationale in that.

I'd love to walk into a job and tell folks after I've been sitting there for a year or two years what exactly my salary is going to be.

That's not how it works.

and I ask that you all will consider that along with all the other issues that I raised before.

We're going to actually look at putting monies out.

Let's put it towards something viable.

Numbers have been bantered around about very eloquently about adjustments for inflation.

Did we ever consider adjusting for inflation?

What the city employees rate of pay was from 1996 until now?

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Maria, and I'm in support of y'all voting yes on this pay raise.

I have no problem with

the city councilors being paid more so that we can have more access to a more diverse group of council members.

That's not my concern.

I think my concern is just that the pay raise for city councilors is only one half of a barrier to more diverse city councilors.

And so I'm in full support of this vote.

But I think if city council would like to take seriously the barriers to becoming a city council member, I would like to hear more about campaign financing.

Our mayor and vice mayor spent nearly $200,000 on their campaigns in a campaign, in a season where a black woman was also running for city council.

Thank you.

Anyone else like to speak on?

I just would like to say that I don't think we need electric school buses.

That's already proven that Tesla is not a good thing.

So I would like to have school bus drivers and getting your

Pay Raid to go up.

I would just like to see us have more housing and not concentrate on the students because we are the people that pay taxes and I don't think we need electric school buses.

I'm sorry.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Does anyone else want to speak on the council pay raise?

Good evening.

Thanks for hearing this item again.

This is a second reading.

I'm just up here if you have any questions.

We went over it.

No, I mean I had the chance to read through it again and I think as I indicated at last meeting some of the changes I had a little bit of heartburn about but I feel okay and that should council want to give a direction to the Human Rights Commission we can always do that and it's really

in our hands to bring issues to study or for them to research on us.

And I obviously think all the changes in order to finally be able to enter in an FHAP and do fair housing investigations has been a goal for years and is obviously extremely positive to see get done and hopefully will scare abusive landlords that it's going to be harder for them to get away with discrimination because there is another body to investigate discrimination.

No further questions.

I'm good.

Lloyd.

Nothing for me.

There's no other questions.

Second.

Second.

Can we vote?

The next item on the agenda is the ordinance approving financial assistance to support residential rental housing at Calton Mobile Home Park for persons of low and moderate income and authorizing the city manager to execute and deliver a support agreement in connection with the same.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council.

My name is Eden Ratliff.

I'm the Deputy City Manager for Administration, and I'm joined by Chrissy Hamill, our Budget Director, Extraordinaire.

Also here are Sunshine Methan with Piedmont Housing Alliance and Dan Rosencheg with Habitat for Humanity.

Welcome to you both to the Council.

This is an exciting presentation.

It's exciting, and a lot of good things can happen here for a few reasons.

One, this City Council cares a lot about affordable housing, and that's sort of why we're here.

The Carlton Mobile Home Park, which we're going to talk about in this presentation, is, as we all know, up to be sold.

And so there is a partnership opportunity between the City of Charlottesville, PHA, and Habitat for that property to be purchased and redeveloped into affordable housing.

something that we, of course, know that PHA and Habitat are as dedicated to as the City Council.

So, to remedy to the next slide, a little bit about Carlton and a few other reasons why this is exciting.

So, for those who don't know, the property is at 1500 Carlton Avenue.

It's 6.67 acres in its own RX-3 with 67

trailer pads.

So on the next slide, so why are we here?

So the property has, as we know, an offer for it to be purchased.

And in accordance with Commonwealth law, there has to be a waiting period before that can be closed on for there to be other opportunities for offers to be submitted to the property.

And that is the desire that we're looking for here today.

So the city has an opportunity to engage in a partnership with Peep on Housing and Habitat for Humanity for them to be able to provide an offer to purchase the park tomorrow.

We understand that the current offer on the property is about $7 million, so we are proposing about $7.25 million for that property to be redeveloped.

The crux of that partnership from the city proposal is for there to be a financial support from the city if the property is acquired by PHA and Habitat to pay for the debt service, which includes interest and principal.

We would not, and Chrissy is going to talk about the financial end of this arrangement, so I'm not going to go too far into it, but it's important to note that the city would not own this asset.

The city is not going to own this.

If it becomes owned by PHA and Habitat through their efforts tomorrow and over the next month or so where they gain ownership, the city can enter into a relationship through the support agreement that we have here tonight to be able to say, hey, the city of Charlottesville is going to fund that operation from an interest and principal standpoint so the deal can go through and that they can engage in redevelopment efforts.

importantly the current residents and the property can stay on the current site for three years and we'll also have an opportunity to enter into affordable housing after it's been redeveloped if they so choose.

The other reason that I said when I started off this presentation as to why this is exciting, this has all happened very quickly.

Government is not designed to move very quickly.

It's a bureaucratic machine.

We often see how long it takes for us to get things through, all the hurdles that they have to overcome.

But there's a lot of dedicated professionals that are here, including our partnerships with PHA and Habitat that have allowed for this to happen very quickly.

and if the council votes successfully tonight, they'll be in offer extended tomorrow.

This has happened over the last three weeks, four weeks, if that, you know, in no small part to many people that are here and those that are not.

So we're certainly appreciative of their efforts.

Importantly, if the property is successfully redeveloped by PHA and Habitat, they're looking at approximately 180 units.

Of course, that'll get flushed out further in an agreement over the next month and then of course to the redevelopment process.

So the next question is, well, how does the city pay for it?

So real quickly, why are we doing this with cash and not bonds?

Generally, when we sell bonds, we are acquiring a capital asset.

As Eden noted earlier, the city is not acquiring anything.

We are joining in a partnership with PHA and Habitat for their purchase of this property and the future redevelopment.

In addition, one might ask, have we used bonds for other affordable housing projects?

And we certainly have.

But notable, the Virginia Code gives us Express Authority to do that through the Housing Authority, which is why, in this case, we are not getting an asset.

Neither of these organizations are the Housing Authority or a governmental entity.

And so that, therefore, that is why this must be a cash-funded

So what does that look like?

This is a anticipated schedule.

The terms of the loans and things are not final yet, so this is our best guess based on what we know right now.

it would look like in this current fiscal year we would be looking to fund about 700, just over $706,000 and then in each year after that depending on how the rates land anywhere from $1.1 million to the final year in which there is a large lump sum payment of $3 million.

So, right, we're not acquiring any assets in this transaction.

Has the city used bonds to fund a new one?

So those are the projects that have been sponsored by the Housing Authority are the ones that we have bought.

No worries.

So as we're looking at the 1.1 million or the 700 for this year, we would need to amend the budget and then anywhere from 1.1 to 3 million in the future years.

We would, how would we do that?

And so here are a couple suggestions that we offer for your consideration.

This council, for this current year, we would have to amend the budget.

And so the recommendation is that we would look to the funds that were previously budgeted for the land bank.

That's $500,000.

And then we would get the additional $200,000 from the CIP contingency.

Again, these are just suggestions.

We're open to anything that you all would like to consider otherwise.

In the future years, this would come to you for annual consideration for the council, the city manager, through the support agreement would be directed to include that in the budget.

The way that could be funded would either be through an additional transfer from the general fund,

You could look to use some or all of the CAF funding if you wanted to do that, or you could look to year-end surpluses to provide some of this funding.

Any questions there?

So the good thing about when Chrissy comes to present is that it seems easy.

You know, she is really good at making it seem that way.

She solves the problems and gives the proposals for short.

But the challenge is this is not easy.

If you look at year five as a three million dollar cash expense on behalf of the city, that's significant.

Certainly after the council to determine whether or not, you know, it's worth it.

I suspect, you know, when we consider the priority that's been placed on increasing affordable housing and maintaining affordable housing in the city,

that that's a hefty consideration.

But this is going to require a lot of financial planning.

And when we get into the spring and the city manager makes the budget presentation and we have the million dollar principal payment next year, we'll have to remember kind of these moments.

You know, position on that is that we're going to have to look at potentially reallocating appropriations that we are planning for from a cash perspective in future years as well as looking at potentially increasing revenue or likely both.

You know, this is challenging, you know, while the presentation kind of buttons it up nicely, which is what it needs to do tonight, you know, we need to understand and kind of fully comprehend the out year financial considerations here.

and

This does not include any funds from the city towards redevelopment.

This is just getting it started.

It allows PHA and Habitat on behalf of the owners that have signed on with them, of which there are at least 25% to make an offer.

If it gets accepted, that's great.

They own the property and then in some respects, the real work starts in that redevelopment perspective.

That was explained to us a little bit about money up front instead of money at the end.

Usually when there's a dedicated affordable housing process at some point the project comes to the city and they say okay it's you know forty to fifty thousand dollars per unit can the city contribute towards that.

So in this case it's being framed as that gets paid up front used to buy the land and then instead of

Payne per unit later, that kind of is the contribution.

Yeah, I think that's fair.

It's probably best for others to understand and speak to that specifically.

I have not spent a lot of time kind of hammering that out.

We've been trying to figure out the logistics around putting them in a position to be able to make an offer to acquire the property, which has been the crucial first step.

If their offer is successful, we'll spend a little bit more than a month, probably by the middle of September.

So just one clarification on that.

There's a support agreement that would, which you have the draft of in front of you that supports the finances of it.

Good evening, Mayor, City Councilors.

I'm Sunshine Maython, Executive Director of Piedmont Housing Alliance.

Councillor Oschrin, how you describe it is how we anticipate it playing out, but meaning that the contribution that City would be providing now for the acquisition is, hopefully, is intended to be the contribution towards redevelopment in the future.

But that has to be caveated by the fact that this is all moving so rapidly in a process where we don't have the full build-out already planned.

So we don't 100% know exactly what it's going to look like yet.

Under the ideal circumstances, we would have had the time to go through that process and to be more exacting in the response.

Great.

So on the next slide, kind of outlines the proposed action for you tonight.

Yeah, I first of all want to commend everyone that's been involved in this, pulling this together as quickly as possible.

You know, Sam, I think it says worlds about you and your team and then also with the partners we have just the great work that

You know, when people of good will and good intent decide to do something, what they can pull off, this is a lot of money.

And I plan to vote for it because I feel like, you know, it's, it's, it's

fundamental human rights issue for the people in that neighborhood.

And also, I think that this really does set us up to, it ends up being a good opportunity.

Not only is there a specific need now, but I think we're going to be able to do something really amazing in the future.

I guess my question is, and I'm going to ask my colleague, Councillor Payne, how do you anticipate this sort of falling into our overall 10 to 12 million dollar a year

Commitment

So I'm just putting that out there.

I'm not trying to put you on the spot.

No, I would say the way I have looked at this is the nature of affordable housing opportunities is, you know, we have an ideal process for that 10 million a year where all of it is receive applications, judge them.

But the nature of this world is there are opportunities that come in off cycle, that if it's going to happen, have to come together creatively and quickly.

And to me, this is

That 10 million a year commitment, this is basically

for the next several years earmarking part of that $10 million ahead of time we know is for this project.

And that's the way I look at it.

And certainly with the intention to have this be our contribution to the redevelopment, if you were to look at that on a cost per unit basis, it's also very competitive with other affordable housing investments we've made.

So hopefully that answers your question.

Because we will get pressed when we have other things come up.

We were responsive to the Dogwood portfolio, which I'm proud of that and glad we were.

And as you say, this is an opportunity, or if you want to call it that, it's a situation that's arisen that we need to address.

But it could possibly foreclose other possibilities in the future.

I have also been impressed talking with the several of the people managing this, how quickly this has come together and how agile everyone is being.

I also want to remind everybody that this is an offer and our fingers are crossed and hopefully it works out.

It's kind of not in our hands after today with what the current owners want to do.

Hope for the best.

And we'd love to see that this gets preserved for the next three years, redeveloped into dedicated affordable housing after that with the folks who are living there now getting the chance to move in.

That's all great.

Part of why I am so supportive of this is that it will be getting redeveloped and it is not being purchased to freeze in amber.

It will become more housing for more people, which is obviously what we need.

Supply is the greatest factor in broader affordability across the board.

So, you know, the number of units is going to do wonders for helping more people have somewhere to live.

Lloyd, do you have anything you want to answer?

Do I recall hearing that the ultimate plan may end up being a redevelopment into like 160 units?

And I know that obviously part of that means that the folks who are there in mobile homes right now by five years, 10 years down the road will not be in mobile homes anymore.

And I know that I understand that

I was giving some folks heartburn.

I think the people who are handling the redevelopment, and this is partly why I was excited that it would be, are sensitive to that.

Good evening, Mayor Wade, members of the City Council.

I'm Dan Rosenzweig.

I'm the President, CEO of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville.

That's a great question, and it was the question that was foremost in the minds of the residents of the mobile home park when we met with them now twice.

And the first question was, can we keep it a mobile home park?

And the answer at $7 million is no, and nobody could.

when you do the math, $7 million for us or another purchaser that would require raising rents to about $1,200 just for pad rentals without any investment in deferred maintenance or anything else that it takes to do a trailer park.

And that created anxiety and we had a hard meeting.

We had a four hour meeting with residents and we made it really, really clear

that that isn't an ultimate outcome that it maintains as a trailer park.

But if they didn't want us to get involved knowing that, we were perfectly happy to walk away.

And so we had really good give and take.

Ultimately, the residents asked us if we could pledge to keep it as a mobile home park for at least three years.

and not raise rents so they could get to know us a little bit, view southward and sunrise and see sort of what's possible, what they might be paying afterwards, give everybody a little breathing space and we agreed to that.

So we have pledged to the residents and we've actually included in our purchase contract a deed restriction that requires it to stay that way for three years.

And I think, you know, obviously, you know, the proof is in the pudding.

I mean, with Southwood, the numbers about 80% of residents have chosen to stay, correct?

85%.

I mean, I think that is the ultimate testament.

Right.

And 80% of them have stayed as homeowners.

So, so yeah.

Thank you.

So I just want to tag on that.

I really appreciate Emily.

I know that you and your staff, you worked a lot to do on the door knocking, to really ask the residents what they wanted.

And so Sunshine and Dan, I know that we're thanking you, but really thanking your boards, because I know that they had to have a lot to say in your reaching out to support the city and the residents on things like this.

The real estate market in Charlottesville is moving very quickly.

This is something what three weeks ago I don't think was on our radar, but things are moving quickly and I'm glad that because we're so well managed that we can adjust like this, but I know the runway is getting shorter with zero high street that we've done, dogwood housing, you know.

Delivia site is, you know, we're able to do this, but I think Brian mentioned is at some point we're going to be able to say, you know, because one of the reasons we can do this is because our credit rating is good, our bond rating is good, and we're able to borrow money at a very low rate and be able to do these projects.

I'm very confident in our staff that we'll be able to maintain that and be able to be ready to serve the community when things like this come up.

I'll just say very briefly what others have said.

I'm sure staff have probably needed some nexium for the heartburn.

This has probably caused you all, but I appreciate how difficult putting this all together on such a tight timeline is, and same to our non-profit partners.

I know this I'm sure has not been an easy or fun time, but it really is incredible.

I think when this began I thought maybe there's like a

at best 1% chance something could even be put together to make an offer and to see it happen I think has really been incredible and as Natalie said now it's in the hands of the current owners if we do pass this I certainly hope they take this opportunity because I think as complex and difficult as this has been and I think if this does move forward I think it'll be a real legacy project both for the family and the owners as well as

The Distinction

Yeah, there are two separate things there There's the support agreement in the ordinance.

Looks like it's just the ordinance that references the support agreement.

That's fine.

And then, Mayor, one more question.

Yes, yes.

I don't see it as being a two reading thing.

Whether or not it's one or two, I think we can all agree to make it one.

Second.

Okay, can we please vote?

The motion passes 5-0.

So thank you all so much.

Thank you everyone that had a hand in this.

The next item on the agenda is a resolution to confirm the selection of a preferred alternative design for access control at Cedar Hill Drive.

Good evening, Council.

Ben Chambers, Transportation Planning Manager.

There should be a couple slides going up here in a second.

So before we get started, let you know what we're doing here.

VDOT is looking for you to select a preferred alternative for the Hydraulic Road District Avenue roundabout.

The alternatives are based around the spoke on that roundabout that leads to Cedar Hill Drive.

There's two different alternatives we're gonna be looking at before I dive into them.

I'm gonna give you just a little bit of context about where we're talking about and the different projects that are associated with this.

So this is the larger project context.

This is part of a package of three larger projects.

The first is the one that's going on right now at Hillstale Drive.

That will be open tomorrow.

It is ahead of schedule.

You'll be able to drive on it tomorrow.

I managed to go out there this weekend on my bike and was blown away by how quickly it got done.

The second part of this package is a pedestrian bridge.

My slide got a little messed up there, but is a pedestrian bridge over 29 around Zan Road.

They are starting the early construction activities for that, but the main construction work will not happen until next year on that one.

And then the third part of the package is what we are talking about today, which is the District Avenue roundabout.

That's at the entrance to Stonefield.

It's also on the city side called Cedar Hill Drive.

So we are looking at two different alternatives for this roundabout.

One that allows access into Cedar Hill Drive from this roundabout and one that only allows it out of Cedar Hill Drive at that roundabout.

So the one that looks like only out

is what we're calling alternative A. And this is the drawing here.

You'll see at the bottom of that roundabout that there is only an access out from Cedar Hill going northbound into the traffic circle.

Today, that is the only movement that you can do out of Cedar Hill.

You cannot make a left out of there.

You also can't make a left from hydraulic onto Cedar Hill today.

that entrance is controlled.

It's actually one of the strangest intersections I think we have in the city.

Anecdotally, I've heard that.

Our other option is option B, or alternative B, which allows free flow traffic in and out of Cedar Hill Drive.

Both of these alternatives were taken to a public citizen information meeting, I think is what VDOT calls them, that was held at the Holiday Inn in June.

They got about 40 people that showed up at this meeting.

The vast majority of them were from the Meadows neighborhood right here in this area.

The vast majority of them said

Alternative A was the option they were most interested in because they were concerned mostly with cut through traffic through the neighborhood.

With that, the selection is up to you.

Yeah, with all due respect to those folks, some of whom I've spoken to, I strongly support alternative B. If we're thinking about the meadows and wanting it to be not sort of this orphan on the upper northwest corner of the city and have it as integrated as possible.

Then we need to have all the movements that are there.

Not only that, if you went with alternative A, it would take away a movement that you have now, which is to go, you can go south from hydraulic.

So I strongly support alternative B. One of the things, if you go back to your very first slide, I think it's important, even greater context,

When I was first talking about this with a friend of mine, the whole concept of the bypass back in the day, I guess, the Western bypass.

And I said, well, that reminds me of someone talking about Bigfoot.

All of those sorts of plans in the past.

And then they went with, I guess, the Places 29, since the bypass didn't work out.

and my understanding at one point was just like up at the intersection at Rio and Emmett, a Rio in 29 where they've got the drive under now.

There was some notion of having the same thing there at Hydraulic and that went away because it'd be too onerous.

And so the idea was to have all these other little things kind of around.

And it's not just here.

You've got Burke-Mart Drive.

And so I say all that to say that.

I feel like in the larger context,

having full mobility around this roundabout is going to really not only be the best thing for the Meadows, but also really do help us interconnect the whole region.

So I'm on the MPO as is Councillor Oschrin.

Can I ask why, actually a couple questions.

So there was the one meeting and then VDOT reached out specifically to the neighborhood leaders in that neighborhood to say, hey, we didn't see you at the meeting.

Do you have anything to add to this?

Okay, and why we got a little background on this about why some of the residents might not be interested in B as much as A, but why would V dot or they just reflecting the residents?

Okay, they don't have an engineering or model reason why one might be better than the other.

And I'll just say I concur with Brian.

I think option B is going to be the much smarter long-term decision for the city.

I don't think it's right to cut off access that currently exists, albeit illegally.

But people, I mean, some of the residents who were supportive of option B openly said they have to make that illegal turn to get into their house.

They want that access.

I'm also thinking long term, the best buy site is on NX8.

Hopefully at some point that's redeveloped to mixed use.

You could have eight plus stories of housing.

That access point will be really important to residents who live there.

The meadows, you know, may continue to grow over time.

Obviously,

Stonefield has apartments about to come online, Seminole Square has apartments planned.

Yeah, this has already been said sort of separately, but one of the things that I really hope we can, you know, have to be able to do multiple things at the same time, but I

I would really like us to, you know, if we don't have funding for a small area plan for the Meadows to acquire funding in the next budget, I think that whatever we, I saw your email, Mr. Chambers, about some of the things you were suggesting.

I'm delighted tonight we're going to be voting on a pocket park for the Meadows.

I just would like us to do everything we can

to integrate that part of our community into the rest of the community.

One of the things that has been raised to me a number of times was the fact that kids, for example, when they're trying to get to school over at Greenbrier, it's almost impossible to walk.

So we have identified sidewalk priorities in that neighborhood, one of them being the section of Cedar Hill from hydraulic to north Berkshire.

It's a tier two sidewalk project, so we know it's going to take a little bit of design to figure out exactly how it gets placed and what buffers look like and things like that.

But yes, we are looking at implementing that in the next five years and we would look to line that up with whenever they are looking to do their construction and design for this project as well.

Even on just a smaller scale, I'm thinking about living in the neighborhood south of hydraulic there and just wanting to, like, go over to see a movie or a movie by Trader Joe's and the ability to get across that and back is something that doesn't exist in option A. By car, yes.

And so,

I mean obviously you know bikes and pets first but yes by car for those folks and so yeah I'm also in supportive option B one thing I just always think about whenever I look at the 29 corridor from a map or you know sometimes you fly in and can see it during the day is just this you can see it in this photo just the absolute sheer amount of asphalt

and space that we reserve for private car storage.

I mean, a lot of that is in the county, of course, and that's, you know, they're planning decisions, but it starts in the city as well and, you know, seeing the redevelopment of Seminole and, you know, what potentially could happen at Best Buy.

Yep.

I just want to add that, you know, when I was doing planning for the county, I don't know, 20 years or so, we're looking at the street map for Stonefield, what it would look like.

And this always was a question how it was going to impact that street.

So do we need to have a motion to amend the resolution and then vote on the resolution because the resolution states alternative A.

Sam, what do you do?

So the resolution specifically references alternative A.

Can we just say alternative B?

You can substitute that.

Second.

Further discussion?

If not, can we cast a vote?

open space conservation easement of such park land.

Do you have slides, Chris?

Yes.

Grab the pointer over there.

The controller.

Leaving Mayor Wade and members of council.

Yes, we are here tonight with three proper parkland acquisitions in front of you for approval.

This one is Zero Grove Road.

It's a triangular piece of land that's owned by the house numbered 1612.

They actually own this piece of triangle land was not acquired when McIntyre Park was created, but it is a piece of land that we are looking to purchase to complete the 250 bypass trail system.

Currently it stops at that West End of McIntyre Park where there's a wooden bridge.

If you've been back there, then it ends with this old, weird patio.

The

Funding for this acquisition comes $50,000 from the Virginia Outdoors Fund.

And also, we are adding $5,000 of local money to it.

That grant, the Virginia Outdoors Fund grant, the way they get their funding for all the state acquisitions they do is they take a $3 transactional fee from every real estate deed that's recorded in localities.

And we are one of a small handful of Virginia localities that are currently in this program.

There's two parts to this.

One is approving the purchase of that half acre piece of land and the other is putting this easement on that piece of land and a portion of McIntyre Park that then triggers the Virginia Outdoors Foundations.

D-transfer funds that go to the state for that purpose.

Here's a map showing the location of it, including the area of McIntyre Park that is already a separate parcel.

The parcels were never merged, so we found it pretty easy to add that extra portion of West McIntyre Park, which in the McIntyre Park master plan is listed as a

Natural area to be preserved as mostly natural area so that would not affect plans for either the fire station which we talked to or anything we currently have on the books for Western Macintyre Park.

Here's the view from Google Earth.

You're approaching the Derry Road Bridge there.

And then we always refer to that intersection there is where the Whale Tail used to be.

That's Medibroke Heights.

So this is a critical piece of our trail network as it would connect everything we've built from the Derry Road Bridge west towards hydraulic, including what's being built now and the pedestrian bridge benches mentioned to get over to the Meadows, back to the YMCA, Skate Park, and everything that's downtown.

We need this piece here to complete that multi-use paved AD accessible trail.

This piece, it's already in the packet, but this will trigger the fee transfer that we've mentioned.

The circuit court, LaZella circuit court has approved this.

She said she is constantly writing refunds to people for $3 because they assume that we're already doing this and we're not.

So she's totally fine with that.

Yeah, so I support this.

The only piece that is strange to me is why we're having to give them an easement on five acres that aren't connected to this at all.

This has been a ten-year process and if I recall a half acre was

A little less than what Virginia Outdoors Foundation would deem a reasonable amount of land to put in their protection.

They usually acquire large farms.

Because this is an urban area, they were like, half acre, could you add any more?

No, that's in the wooded preserve.

That's not a legal thing, but that's what we did when we did the park plan.

The firehouse is further down on them.

Probably 15 because the current owner was about to sell us the land and got foreclosed on in whatever 2008 when the world went crazy.

So most of my career, it's all my dry erase board.

No.

The Green piece, yes.

And then you can see everything that's already built and this is the piece.

We're also working to build the connection from the YMCA down.

Just out of curiosity, do you think future opportunities for collaboration with the Outdoors Foundation are likely to be more frequent or feasible?

I think they would be.

In my tenure here, I'm getting close to the end of lands that we would need to purchase for the Greenbelt system, but they'll do it with parks, you know, if we need more parkland and things.

But yeah, opposite sleeve, a successful grant.

I just so folks will know I had asked Lizelle Dugger how much money we're talking about.

She said they typically average between 3,500 and 5,000 documents annually, which means that we would be contributing

this deed tax revenue to the Virginia Outdoors Foundation to the tune of $10,000 to $15,000 a year.

I assume that will go on indefinitely?

Forever, as I understand it.

Unless the General Assembly changes something.

How do, if we want it, we will have access to that fund to the tune of $50,000.

How will we, let's say five, ten years from now, decide it's time that we got some more money out of that and here's another project?

I would assume that would be the process, correct?

That this is what it's going to, that's the game forever.

And that's how we got this 50 was come other localities have been putting this money into the pot.

I do not recall.

I think the grant rounds come in and you can get up to 300 grand per year if you have a big enough property.

Thank you.

Can I get a motion to?

If I could just make sure I know what we're voting on.

So I see a resolution approving the acquisition of land that's on page 243.

Does that include all three components of this?

Okay, so this is on page 243.

Yes.