City Council Meeting   11/18/2024

Ms.

Councilor Oschrin here.

Councillor Payne?

Here Vice Mayor Pinkston?

Here We have a request from Councillor Snook to participate electronically Mayor Wade?

Here Having established a physical quorum, council will consider a request from Councillor Snook made earlier today

to participate electronically pursuant to Council's adopted procedures in compliance with the Virginia Freedom of Information Statute for meeting participation through electronic communication means.

Are participants in the room able to hear Councillor Snook?

Yes.

All right.

Councillor Snook, you noted in your request that you need to participate remotely because of a temporary medical condition.

Thank you.

Move for approval of Councillor Snook participating in our meeting remotely.

Okay.

Okay.

Do we vote on this?

Yes, go ahead.

Can we vote?

Okay, Lloyd, you, you, you got to approve 4-0.

Thank you.

Is there a motion to approve or amend the agenda?

So moved.

Okay, second.

The motion passes five to zero.

This meeting will be divided into three sections.

The first one is a work section to hear and discuss presentations that do not require a council vote followed by a closed session.

Then city council business meeting will begin at 6.30.

Today we will be hearing a budget briefing on organizational excellence and equity.

Here we go.

Good evening, Councillors and members of the public.

This is the first of a three-part series that I'm referring to as budget briefs.

I basically want to help bring a little transparency and bring Councillors into the budget making process just a little bit differently than we have in the past.

accepting fully that my responsibility is to bring before you and to propose to you a balanced budget in early March, which is by code my number one obligation.

I will be doing that and it will be balanced as hard as it may be and feel right now.

The goal is just to make sure that we give some consideration of what the various things are that are contributing to what makes it difficult and or not so difficult.

But basically I just want to highlight for you all that a budget brief is to share the trends that impact the budget.

We want to highlight some of the fiscal demands that we may be facing as an organization, how we're wrestling with those.

We always look for what are the fiscal drivers and we try to highlight those.

So in the message that I write as a part of the budget presentation and as a part of my presenting it, I'll always speak to what the drivers are.

the things that are causing things to be different and then to confirm priorities are captured in the budget presentation.

For me, these are moments where I get to hear back from you.

I'm looking for more than a head nod.

Sometimes I'm looking for a question.

I'm looking for confirmation that yes, those things make sense to me because my goal is to make sure that the budget that I bring to you is reflective of your priorities.

So again, as I said, it's a three-part series this first session tonight.

This evening is on organizational excellence and equity, taking two of your strategic outcome areas and framing them for this section.

We will talk about housing and infrastructure in the next meeting and public safety and transportation at the second meeting in December.

And then just wanted to break down a little bit of the process.

The first column there, budget submissions and meetings, that's where we are right now.

All budget requests are in, so we have received budgets from all departments and offices.

And budget meetings have begun, so we're in the process of meeting with each team.

to allow each of them an opportunity to share with us what are the mechanics of their budget, the makeup of their budget and the way of changes, what variances they may be experiencing.

They talk to us about their current vacancies, any new requests that they may have.

and then the goal is for us as a budget team to interact with them to make sure that we are questioning some of the choices and decisions that they might be making in a positive way really making sure that they have looked as closely as they can in their budgets and made sure that they are as streamlined as possible because of course as we are one of those places that wants to continue to punch above its weight class I need money to do that so I may have to find that in other ways

and

we should be able to demonstrate for you in the budget how we are associating the expenditures of the local government in those areas.

We'll be presenting the CIP to the Planning Commission on November 26th and then the public hearing will be December 10th.

That's going to be an opportunity for anyone that is interested in understanding how we are producing our capital planning efforts

It'll be here in council chambers It's the planning commission meeting.

It's their meeting and that'll be on their agenda

at 530.

Yes.

And then a budget preview is a special meeting that's been added through conversation between myself and the superintendent.

We added December 19th as a joint session of council and the school board.

This is a conversation for schools to help us understand what their particular drivers may be early.

This gives us a peek into what their ask is ultimately going to be, and then it gives us a chance

as a budget team to begin assembling around that notion along with all the other things that we have learned over the course of the budget meetings.

And then we'll also be working to confirm revenue projections all along that time period as well to see what we can afford to pay for.

The next column is making the decisions.

Those are things that we will desperately move into.

I will quickly move into in the first part of the year, desperately trying to get through all those things ahead of producing that proposed budget for you all that is balanced.

So we'll be finalizing the CIP.

We'll review any remaining new requests and make some decisions on whether or not we can make those fit.

Evaluating Vacancies

or we may not necessarily be able to just add money for the sake of adding it, but we'll also be looking for funding gaps as well.

So I will be having the City Manager's Community Budget Forum on the 12th of December.

That'll be a chance for the public to come and talk to me and the team about things that they would like to see discussed and or consider for the budget.

that is December 12th at Carver and I believe it's at 6 p.m.

We'll confirm that as we get closer and then I'll be proposing the balance budget on March 4th.

So I'm going to break this down into categories.

So under organizational excellence, there are these two areas.

Collective bargaining is one of the big areas and then operational systems increases.

I'm going to go into a little bit more detail on each one of those, but just pointing out to you that we're looking at a $5 million increase plus or minus that amount for integrating collective bargaining, and that is existing contracts, which there are three, and the new contract that we'll be adding.

The three existing contracts being police, fire, and transit.

And the new contract is made up of a combination of parks and rec, public works and utilities.

And there are a couple of similarly situated positions in police and fire that make up that team, all represented by the teamsters.

So we'll be working, we're already negotiating with Teamsters and our goal will be to bring, for them to bring forward to me a contract that can be signed, making their being establishing a fourth union in the city government.

When we look at cost increases, I'm sharing this information for you because these are the costs of doing business.

These are things that we really don't have a lot of space to play with what we can and cannot do, but we always take a good, hard look.

Health insurance costs are going up.

We are a self-insured program, so we have to look at what the management of those costs are and make sure that we are funding appropriately for what those things could end up being based on who's our employee work group and how they're using healthcare.

Risk management, so workman's compensation and legal defense are areas that are also increasing in this new budget cycle.

As we've met with our risk manager recently, he indicated that there were some additional cost projections that are just being issued across the board.

So those are service increases that we're going to have to absorb.

And then the management of collective bargaining.

We did not, I think we added one, maybe two positions initially.

We're beginning to see additional needs.

Having just met with our HR team earlier today to confirm that I was reading it correctly.

We are needing to integrate the labor relations administrator and legal representative, which are

Funded categories that we have already taken care of in this past year and current year through a one-time allocation that was set aside by council.

This is now recognizing these as ongoing expenditures that we are not going to be able to not be able to fit, not make fit into the budget.

So these are additional expenses that will become a part of the annual budget.

Mr. Sanders, could I ask you to go back one page in your presentation?

Yes.

When we talk about collective bargaining, actually maybe another page as well, when we talk about collective bargaining as being potentially as much as a five million dollar increase, I think it is really important to emphasize that what we are doing here is

We would need to do a large portion of this regardless of whether there was a union involved.

In other words, that this is involving getting to competitive ranges all of our salaries, which we had not done in decades, literally.

And this is stage two of what we had started last year.

But the idea is that we will get our people being paid what is a competitive wage to keep them from going someplace else.

The important thing is we're investing in our people.

We're not investing in a union.

That is correct.

I think that's a very good point that you make there and just to say that again slightly different is that we would be incurring an increase in compensation on an annual basis pretty much as a given because we're always looking at cost of living adjustments although there have been occasions where we may find ourselves on hard times and say that we can't afford to do that and we just keep compensation flat.

But for the most part we're always going to be considering an increase

and in this moment these are negotiated changes that's the difference is that we would if we did not have collective bargaining there would still be a number there that wouldn't be labeled collective bargaining and it would probably be labeled compensation increase where I would be projecting to you how we would adjust the base compensation for all employees at the at the start of the new fiscal year and it would probably be pretty close to the same amount probably safe to say and some instances maybe

But yeah, we would imagine that we would be looking at roughly the same numbers or close to in that we've got to keep up with the market and that is part of our challenge.

We have to stay up with what's happening around us and then what goes on and what it costs to live here as well.

So, additional under contracted services, there's some additional increases to some of the contracts that we currently have in place, but also wanting to point out to you a series of new service contracts that are getting at a lot of the things that you all have been talking about that we as staff have brought forward as consideration and in other larger conversations that have been occurring in the region.

We're looking at establishing a contract for short-term rental management of information.

This is something that's been kind of batted around a bit.

but our Commissioner of Revenue and NDS Director and Zoning Administrator have been working on this for the past few months and have agreed that now is the right time for us to bring a software program in and I think it's important for us and I've talked to Deputy Freeze about it as well.

It makes sense for us to do as an interim step, get this system in place and help us track what we have in the way of activity, see what this software can do to help us in the management of that

and then as we come back to you at some point in the future as a part of the work plan for NDS, work to addressing what might be a policy concern or changes to our existing program.

I don't know that it combs the internet.

What I'm going to say from the conversation that I have with the commissioner is that this is a chance for us to feed information.

So I'm not exactly sure how he would feed it.

It could be through who's applying and we plug that information in and then we can track it in a better way than we're probably doing it today.

But it also has an interface to allow us to communicate and possibly even collect payments is what he described.

It's probably possible.

I don't know that we know that for sure, but I think the goal would be that we would want to make sure that we can find information for people who haven't even applied as well.

I think the goal is, from a policy standpoint, we've got to be able to get our arms around that too.

that the people aren't just doing it and not telling us about it.

If we can figure that out, we find that information, we would be able to add it into the system just the same.

So this again, this is a step into that direction of figuring out what the policy fix could ultimately be down the road.

This is something we've talked about a little bit and we agree that we're going to try to see if we can't make a fit into the budget.

Community Development and Housing Programs.

There's a program called Neighborly.

We've spent some time evaluating it.

It is now going live within our Office of Community Solutions.

It will be a repository for all of our housing grants and various relationships that we have.

It gives us a better reporting and tracking mechanism, and we hope to then be able to generate reporting from that.

Housing Analysis is a request that's also been made for us to be able to look at how we can work with developers who are expressing various concerns about the zoning ordinance and needing to figure out what is feasible, what is not.

It gives us a chance to analyze

What is the right investment for us to make into a project that is being brought to us?

I think what we would hope to do is to look at what is What's needed to help us augment what the staff is not skilled at doing because they just don't have that background But we have the ability to bring in that service through a vendor relationship to help us figure some things out and

In the regional category, there's been conversations that we've had with the county about a need for a homelessness assessment for the region.

That's something that we could split the cost on.

The continuum of care, which is led by BRAC, the Blue Ridge area.

I almost went back to my old place of living.

The Blue Ridge area coalition on homelessness has a need for strategic planning so they can figure out what more needs to be done in the way of an update in that space.

You all in your joint meeting with the county had conversation about a regional community visioning effort using the Virginia Tech model that we could potentially have the city, county and university at the table.

working together.

That work is still going on by myself and my counterpart, Jeff Richardson, so we hope to be able to push that conversation forward some more.

And then CARTA is our regional transportation planning conversation that we've also had with those same parties and others, including TJPDC.

So what I would hope to be able to do is to figure out a way to afford all of the things that are under this new service contract area because this is the work.

This is what you all have prioritized in your strategic outcomes.

Yes.

Over here.

Sorry, I can follow up.

Yes, go ahead.

Just following up on the question that Councilor Oschrin asked.

I assume that Todd specifically wanted to be able to do that, but I did not want to commit if it was not so.

But he did talk about there are additional features in the system that we should be able to turn on, but we weren't going global just yet.

So that's great.

Alright, and then under the equity category, just pointing out for you all, homeless services, referencing plus or minus a million dollars, and that goes back to the previous conversation that I had with you all on October 21st that I labeled community intervention, so I'll remind you of that momentarily.

The social equity category is mostly of our human needs and services, so I'll point out some of those things, and then our compliance with ADA.

So for homeless services, you all recall that I share with you that the recommendation that I was making was that we replace revenue to the Salvation Army for them taking the Cherry Avenue Thrift Store offline from being a thrift store that generates revenue to the organization and that the city offer a replacement of that for the next five years within our CIP at $200,000 a year.

also recommended to you all that we consider increasing the operating capacity for BRAC by committing $250,000 in our fundamental category.

So that would be an annual grant that would be made to them and it is outside of the competitive nature.

of some of our grant work and then also a commitment of half a million dollars for a low barrier shelter to support its operations that too outside of the competitive process and making it a part of our fundamental structure and the goal would be to identify still who would be the recipient of those funds and that is still being discussed.

Is that low barrier shelter amount intended as a

These amounts are the recurring amounts.

The one-time amounts that I also referenced in that particular conversation are tied to ARP and or year-end surplus requests that you'll be getting in the coming weeks, but these are all recurring.

Okay.

So I thought we were going to be working with some community partners to see, you know, if we can find some space along some, you know, temporarily abandoned or empty, I shouldn't say abandoned storefronts.

for what purpose were you thinking?

The store.

At one point, you might be referencing something where we were just having the conversation about needing a low barrier shelter.

The search for a place to do that really was taken off the table when the Salvation Army pitched the idea of using the Cherry Avenue site.

It has actually become the best location.

Or if they start the store up again.

So I would say that that part of the conversation is still up for discussion.

We have not revisited that to shorten that or anything like that.

But I think that's something that we could continue to talk to them about.

Next up was Social Equity.

In this space again, this is taking a look at our human services area specifically because this is the touching of human beings, human needs being met.

The Pathways Fund is our

our annual operating fund of providing direct support to individuals that are having some sort of difficulty in maintaining their household finances.

We're able to put money into this at this moment, you all had allocated a million dollars to go into this space to be distributed as individuals call for assistance.

We have identified $215,000 that we can shift over as a part of ARP and that would come to you as a

as the future request that is coming by the end of this year.

But I'm pointing out to you that in this moment, one of the things that stood out to us in the conversation that we had with the Human Services team is that that million dollar allocation, about a third of that is being absorbed by staff.

That's what it takes to provide this resource to the public.

And what we have found is that we have been unable to meet the schedule that we, the pre-set schedule, we're actually having to advance funds earlier.

We're still seeing people in need of resources to help them.

So we're sending payment two earlier than we had scheduled, and payment three is now being processed to be sent earlier than it was scheduled, which is the basis for shifting this $215,000 over from ART to be able to get through the end of the year.

The main point that I'm making to you is that in this moment,

I am looking for you to indicate to me that you want to continue to support the Pathways Fund for as much as we possibly can up at that million dollar level so that we get the note to prioritize that as we're making a decision on what can and cannot fit.

But I'm just pointing out that that's one of the discoveries that we're seeing right now is that people are still struggling to be able to make ends meet.

We also had a conversation with them about adding $60,000 to their budget for emergency hotel for families.

These are individuals experiencing homelessness or very close to.

So they may be in jeopardy of becoming homeless.

So this would be an intervention that try to get them stabilized quickly.

Also, there's a need for a new vehicle to support the foster care program in support of their moving young people around even for

Fun excursions and things like that.

We probably have them driving a vehicle today that we should not have them driving so I made that a priority to put on the list and then there's a need for additional funding and staff for the KIP program because again in response to the community request and council's request that we find more opportunities for young people in the summer we're expanding the number of kids that we can serve in KIP and with that comes a need for the money to pay them of course and then a need for an additional staff person to support the increased activities

That's the number that they have budgeted, I think, on more than one occasion, more than one year, and they target a certain number of hotel nights and then try to associate that with the volume of activity that they've experienced as a trend over the prior years.

And who's the they?

Curiosity, you said about a third of pathways funding is going to staffing.

Yeah, it's to directly work with those individuals, right?

So a third of that is a part of the cost allocation is going towards staffing.

So that's part of I didn't know that I don't think I realized that early on, but I wasn't a part of that conversation that deeply.

We preset on a quarterly basis when we're going to cut a check.

So we're finding that they're running out of money before that period has ended.

So we're just saying, all right, we'll give you payment too earlier.

So that is showing that we're going to be out of money before the year is up.

I can.

One of the reasons why we're finding that we are increasing that is, as the city manager said, because of the need.

What we don't want to do with your direct human services team is to tell anybody, I'm so sorry, we're out of money for this quarter.

Good luck.

What we've found is that in our community, both the Pathways Fund and the emergency hotel stays for families for the City of Charlottesville are unduplicated.

So we are not stepping on the toes of any of our nonprofit partners, but that also means we don't have a nonprofit partner that could pick up to help a family or to help an individual who's finding themselves housing insecure if we don't have that money.

So that's one of the reasons why this is the second time this year we've asked to

front the money earlier so that we are not leaving a community member in a gap.

But what that does mean is that more of our community members are in need.

That is even with us putting some limitations on the funding to allow it to stretch as far as it can.

and so I really appreciate the city manager bringing that up because again we're going to do everything we can to provide that assistance but both hotels and leasing agencies like to be compensated and so we are really finding that to be a bit of a struggle but with that staffing as well the individuals in human services don't just take a call and cut a check

They're making those hot and warm handoffs to help stabilize that person or that family as well as sometimes if we're thinking the emergency hotel stays for families helping with that housing navigation to help them find a permanent place as well.

Thank you.

And I would say that that last note that Ashley's made there would indicate that and we're looking for certain individuals with certain skill sets to be able to handle what can get complicated even at times.

Alright, next is then our compliance with the ADA.

Continuing what I have personally been working on for the entire time that I've been here is making sure that we become more compliant as it relates to our honor and in respecting that the ADA is law and that we don't have a choice.

So what we're looking to do is to work towards implementation of our new ADA transition plan which we are expecting at the end of the year.

We received some preliminary recommendations from our consultant who's been working feverishly to get this done.

I've listed for you what that initial recommendation is and we pulled out the specific dollar amounts that they have identified for us as they have prioritized the comprehensive list that they've been able to build in the right-of-way space.

There are still additional areas of analysis that we will get information on that are not going to be funded by these allocations that we may have to consider.

but I'm just pointing out to you that this is the beginning of the work and what we did to appreciate that is I have asked our budget director to add a two million dollar line item in the CIP for each of the next five years.

to demonstrate our commitment to a culture of compliance around ADA.

I would hope that that means that people would see that we are really prioritizing this matter because we have not done this before.

There is some monies in the CIP, three small accounts that have been able to accumulate funds.

This is in addition to.

This is demonstrating that this is the money for work to get done and we'll continue to prioritize and get this done and the goal again is to continue to demonstrate best effort.

We know that this is an old city.

That's a good thing in many ways and it's a complicated challenging thing in other ways.

And that means some of our infrastructure, as it's been built and has been in existence, is not really conducive to a number of conditions that people face when they're trying to move around.

And we have to continue to work on that.

And the ADA is why we have to.

So we'll continue to work in this space.

But I just wanted to point out to you that this is not just one single entry.

This is over the next five years.

Yes.

Thank you.

So this is the example that they showed in the park space is when the sidewalk, when one panel of a sidewalk raises over time like a tree might push it up and then the other one is lower.

It's a trip hazard and it's a fall hazard in the other direction.

So that's a lot of what these are is removing barriers if there is a mailbox that is in the sidewalk in the right of way, which we have allowed those to happen.

Yeah, I know that one specifically.

Okay, thanks.

And just to clarify,

Per year for the next five years.

Okay, thank you.

That was to demonstrate that.

We know that the ADA transition plan is going to have a very huge price tag attached to it.

And again, as I have pushed and stated clearly to staff that I am operating over the mindset, demonstrate best effort.

That means that the city should be able to show that we're doing the best that we possibly can.

I know this is like a 35 year old law but is there any grant

Yeah, I wouldn't say that they are grant specifically for ADA because part of what the government did was they told us they wanted us to do better and they've given us time all communities to do better and now they're saying time is up.

So what they have been doing is

is they have been going into communities and the DOJ is who comes and they go through a process and you end with a settlement and then there's a forced plan that they put on the community.

So what could happen if this were not the approach that we're taking and I am guarding against the worst case scenario that if we did nothing and just continued kind of what we were doing and said, well, it's all that we could afford, the result could be that the DOJ could come

and they can tell us that we have to put more than $2 million a year in our CIP and commit to getting it done in a shorter period than what is probably going to be 15, 20 years for the list that we're going to receive.

That's what they have done in other communities and make it even harder for you to do it.

So I'm not aware of any specific grants in that space except our smart scale opportunities, our VDOT opportunities have ADA components within them

So that's probably one way that we should always think about if we can keep our VDOT portfolio working well, which is another project that I've been committed to and others are working on.

So you're going to have Budget Brief 2, which is Housing and Infrastructure December 2nd.

This is going to be a lot of different things, a lot of the housing stuff.

One of the key things I'll highlight for you, what we hope to do, is just to be able to clearly visualize, help you visualize

What we've been doing and what our commitment is in the current, the new CIP that we're proposing, how we're hitting our affordable housing goal and exceeding that goal and to what degree we're anticipating that so that you can see that along with other infrastructure priorities that we have.

So all of this is framed by the idea that I'm here with this staff to implement your vision to be a place where everyone thrives.

So that is the brief as I presented it for you.

Based on your presentation and what you know, what's going to keep you up at night between now and March?

It is my desire that I can bring to you a balanced budget that does not rely on a tax increase.

That's what I'd like to be able to do.

I am not confident that I'll be able to do that.

But I would like to make sure that this team and the team has indicated in their budget meetings they've heard from me repeatedly that we are looking at everything.

So we are looking at their individual budgets and questioning and asking different questions than we have in the past.

Not because we don't trust and believe in their abilities to do what they need to do, but just making sure that we are as solid and as sound and as streamlined as we can be.

and where we can find dollars to put here to take care of this versus allowing it to sit.

I would like to have a lower surplus and I would like to have a budget that I can bring to you that does not require a tax increase.

I believe our public

has made it clear that it is becoming more and more difficult for them if that is how we continue.

So I'd like to at least deliver a chance for me to say this is what I think we can do checking as many of the boxes as you all have laid out for me in the form of your strategic outcome areas and then leave it to you of course to make a decision that would include it if you were to go that route.

So the reason I stay up tonight trying to figure it out is how do we get this math to work?

So if my understanding is that the five million dollars for collective bargaining includes the three that were approved last year and the three that's currently being.

The one that's under consideration now.

The one, okay.

So three plus one.

Yeah.

Where do we stand with the schools?

So that is another thing that I did not highlight.

It's a good question for you to bring that up because we anticipate that the schools increase while it was challenged for this year's budget is going to still be challenged for next year's budget because they didn't get everything they asked for and I think most of us agree that what they were asking for a lot of it was clear.

like no question that it made sense of why they might be asking for it now this year they're going to add collective bargaining on top of that so they're going to be looking for the local government to be able to help offset some of that impact and at this moment we're not a hundred percent sure what to anticipate which is part of the reason for me having the conversation with the superintendent about adding that special session next month so that they can share with us what are they thinking

I appreciate it.

Can I ask one question, Mr. Sanders?

Yes.

Do we know what the school systems calendar is for their own negotiations?

We can find that out for sure.

We don't know if they will have settled by the time of that meeting.

If I'm remembering correctly though, I do think that the superintendent was indicating to me that they have to know by the end of December because he has to make his initial budget presentation to the school board at the end of January.

or at some point near towards the end of January because they do their series of conversations before they present to you directly.

So I would imagine from a timeline perspective of what it's going to take, he'd have to know by the end of the year some number to plug into the budget.

Okay, thank you.

Hopefully we can get it by the 19th.

One of the challenges we had last year was trying to get from them.

I mean, they came at us originally with saying, hey, we need $9 million more.

And then we said, well, we can't do nine.

How about let's talk about a smaller number.

And then they came back and said five.

And all of this was still subject to their own negotiations of some things.

It got to be really kind of difficult for us to try to figure out what our real target was.

And of course they want more information from us so that they know how to set their own targets.

Yeah, I agree.

I mean, that is that's really what that conversation was about.

So I think that December meeting should be helpful to you as well as to the budget team because we we should hear it'll be more than collective bargaining.

I'm sure they will.

They'll be ready to talk to us about whatever did not make it on the budget list for this year that is still a hot burning issue.

They'll be able to highlight that for us.

And I think that is what I'm looking for, being able to appreciate what some of that may be so that we can start to determine

what kind of pool of funds might be available there.

And of course it's all based on what the revenues come back at.

Small thing.

The budget or what you presented to us shows the vehicle for CAF programming was $60,000.

A van.

It would be a family.

No, their preference is to move to actually a smaller band that's a little more maneuverable, but it is to ensure that some of our teens who don't have appropriate transportation can get to and from.

So probably a smaller, bigger than a family van, but maybe like a 10 passenger van or something like that.

Okay, I was wondering if it had like special like

We're hoping, we're even looking to see if there is an internal opportunity to supply them with the van if we can.

But if not, then that was the ask that they were making.

I guess in terms of feedback,

It's not like you were asking for feedback from Council.

They're now at our later date on specifically the Pathways Fund.

I would definitely say for me, I think that continues to be an important priority to keep funded.

I've definitely heard from people who work in eviction diversion that our pathways fund is higher in absolute dollars than any of our surrounding localities.

I'm saying a per capita basis, even higher than that.

And what they've found is that Charlottesville's eviction rates as well as the amount of evictions leading to homelessness are substantially larger in all our surrounding localities than in Charlottesville.

Anything else?

Any other comments?

As usual, it's going to be a very challenging budget process, but that's why they elected us and paying us the big bucks.

Oh, yes, sir.

Thank you.

Okay.

Are you presenting anything, Kristi?

I have a motion here for that pursuant to section 2.2-3712 of the Virginia Code.

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

1 under Virginia Code Section 2.2-3711A1 for discussion and consideration of the appointment, performance, and salary of a specific named appointee of the public body.

And 2 under Virginia Code Section 2.2-3711A1 for discussion and consideration of prospective candidates to be appointed to the following boards and or committees.

The Affordable Housing Fund Committee, the Board of Architectural Review,

The Building Code Board of Appeals, Community Development Task Force, Convention and Visitors Bureau Board, Criminal Justice Board, Charlottesville Albemort Airport Commission

Second.

Okay, we're in closed session now.

We'll return at 6.30.

And there'll be, we'll have a separate link for that.

Yes.

Thank you.

We'll be back in about an hour and a half.

Remy, do you see Councillor Snook?

Keena, you let me know when you're ready.

He may join us later.

Lloyd?

I'm here.

So we're going to read

established virtual panelist connection, Lloyd Snook.

He indicated earlier that he is here in Charlottesville.

He's at home, but can join us due to health mending, but he will be with us in person again soon.

Sure.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

Is there a motion to appoint members to boards and commission?

I just have the names of who's being appointed.

I don't have all the fun language.

Thank you.

Yes.

Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund Committee.

We'd like to appoint Thomas King for the Community Development Block Grant Task Force.

Thomas King and Greg Self for the Charlottesville Albemarle Airport Commission.

Ben Chambers for the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau Board.

Daniel Shea.

What was the second one you said?

Is there a second?

Can we vote please?

Lots of opportunity to serve the community in different ways.

I do.

I've got two.

The first is I had the pleasure to be in the audience for the Charlottesville High School 50th year anniversary concert this past Saturday.

And I just want to recognize the tremendous job that everyone who showed up to play and direct did that day from the band, the orchestra and the choir teams.

But also I want to just commend the fact that

Over the past five decades, we've created a really strong fine arts program at our city schools and it was really Exciting to be a part of that when I was in city schools and to come back and see such a strong turnout there were over like 250 people who came to to perform that day alums and current students and It's really cool.

So it was a concert, it was like Saturday?

So that was excellent.

And then my announcement for Future Things, the Neighborhood Walk series, the next one is coming up on December 8th at 2 p.m.

in the Lewis Mountain neighborhood, so the group is going to meet at the Foods of All Nations on Ivy Road.

It's an easy walk through a neighborhood, you get a chat with

New friends who live in and around the area.

You don't have to live in that neighborhood to join.

It's just a way to get out and get some steps and explore a new part of town or explore your own part of town with new people.

So again, that's December 8th at 2 p.m.

It's led by our city bike head coordinator.

So it all happens monthly on the second Sunday.

Excuse me, I wanted to mention that I was able to go to the firefighters graduation on Friday night at the MLK Center at CHS.

There were 14 graduates, I believe.

Yeah, and it was very impressive, very well done, and I was

grateful to see that that force was continuing to grow.

Another thing I wanted to point out is that magic on the mall is happening this Thursday on the mall at 8 p.m.

Yeah.

And that is just not going to, that's going to be the kickoff.

It's going to be all season long, just magical lights on them all.

It's amazing what's going to be happening down there with all of the pictures and places you can come to, you know, talk about your great city of Charlottesville.

Speaking of which, I just left a conference in Tampa where there were

City managers and mayors and things from all over the country and just got a lot of good ideas and I met with Sam before the meeting today to disseminate all of the different ideas.

I'm sure Taylor will probably be getting some as well, you know, some of the ideas.

So anyways, a lot of good things going on around the country and I was able to get some ideas from that.

Great.

Let's see.

There are no recognitions this month.

We have five people who have privileges to speak and so we have opportunity for, Marty can start coming on now.

You're number one and so we have opportunities for 11 people that to more to speak and after the

The first five I will identify people in the audience that like to speak.

So the first one is Martin Keane with Java.

Thank you all.

It's nice to be here tonight.

I wanted to give you just an update on one particular client from Charlottesville and give you an idea and give your citizens an idea of the kinds of things.

So our registered dietitian

meets with every new home-delivered meal client.

And when she did, she found out that this particular resident of Charlottesville had a goal to eat healthier by increasing her intake of fruits and vegetables.

And so, but her concern was she couldn't afford the fresh produce on the limited income and the SNAP benefits.

And we've been able to be a part of the Virginia Farm Market Fresh Program.

and so our aging service coordinator worked with her to get her food vouchers to use at the local farmers market and now she is so excited to have more access to fresh and healthy food.

So I think that's an important program and it's one that just became available last spring and so we hope to continue to do that.

We also had someone who was in her JREC, our adult care and

the family felt they needed to go to a memory care and after three weeks they made sure that the person came back home again and when we said you know what what could we do to help you they said really just having the constant care of things like showers was really difficult so the second day the person was back we gave them a shower and the daughter was so happy to be able to keep her loved one at home and again this is a Charlottesville resident

Her quote was, you have no idea what this means to me.

I felt so guilty placing my mom at a center, but I just couldn't do it all the care myself.

This is a huge weight taken off my shoulders, and I cannot thank the staff enough.

So just to keep in mind the kinds of things that job is able to do from those people still at home wanting to eat healthy, to those people that we are keeping in the community and not having to go to an institution quite so quickly.

and I just want to use my remaining time to thank all of you so much for your support of Java and your support of me over the last 12 years.

I have loved being at Java and I've enjoyed coming before you pretty much every quarter and in January we will have a new CEO start and I'll be, I'm sure, bringing that person to introduce her to all of you and then hopefully setting up meetings individually.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm the council rep on your board and it was hard to replace you.

We were looking for that person that could walk on water.

This person we hired, I think, can almost do it but not like you.

Thank you so much.

Come on down tomorrow.

Thank you.

The next speaker is William Thompson.

It's William Thompson here.

So we have room for another speaker actually.

Alright, you can hear me okay?

Yes.

So it's a sell out crowd if you want to make sure.

Alright, well my name is Nathan Wilson.

I live in Belmont.

I spent a ton of time on the mall and I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to talk about the mall a little bit tonight.

The mall is a lot of things to Charlottesville.

Certainly the cultural epicenter of the city and one of the biggest draws to the city.

I visit several times a week to eat, run, and most notably to play music.

Speaking as a lifelong musician, playing on the street is a unique opportunity to connect with the community and meet like-minded people.

If you read Google reviews of the mall, the majority mentioned the vibrancy of street performers.

Personally, I've met some wonderful people connected with fellow performers and hopefully inspired some young people to pursue music and arts themselves.

Playing an unusual instrument like the didgeridoo, every session includes at least one cultural lesson about Australia where my mom grew up.

The beauty of the mall is that there's something for everyone.

It's inclusive.

One can experience brass bands and polka to singer-songwriters on acoustic guitar and everything in between.

And on the best days, a walk down the mall is like a visit to a different part of the world on every block with the rich diversity of the performers.

These days, however, on the weekends, the experience has turned into an arms race of who has the loudest amp.

I've noticed a few performers who play almost every night out of the week on very loud speakers to a very loud backing track which betrays the spirit of the mall.

On a recent walk, I heard a solitary performer with speakers so loud you could hear them for five blocks, which is almost the entirety of them all.

As you know, fellow performers are frustrated, frequent visitors are frustrated, I'm frustrated, local businesses are frustrated.

I've heard diners at the outdoor dining areas complain to their servers about how loud the music is.

and they have no recourse about the blaring sound.

I've even noticed a few restaurants and businesses that have started cranking their own outdoor speakers way up when that same lady on the cello sets up for the fifth night in a row.

I would speculate that it's an effort to deter them from blasting the same recorded songs over and over.

The final straw that inspired me to speak today was last Saturday, two days ago.

I played for fewer than five minutes before a performer set up at the music box block, I think about four blocks down from here, with an amp that completely drowned me out for more than two blocks away.

What frustrated me the most was this person wasn't even playing.

He was a scam artist, fake playing the violin and displacing at least three of us who were out there first playing acoustically.

Those scams, if you know anything about those, you can look online.

They're actually fairly sophisticated and ubiquitous.

To be clear, I know that musical tastes are different for everyone.

I'm not trying to single out other performers for what they play, as long as they're actually playing it, of course.

If that cello lady wants to play all day every day, she has that right.

However, she shouldn't have the right to monopolize the space with her volume.

Among those of us who play out there regularly, it's a matter of fairness.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello city manager, mayor, counselors.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak.

My name is Kate Fraley and I live on Yorktown Drive.

I've sent you all an email regarding my concern about how money won't be flowing from the federal government or the state in the future for programs for low wealth individuals and families in our community.

It's going to be really hard to cover the cost of those and the city needs to

address your budget to cut some things that aren't high priorities on the long-range plan so that you can cover these programs.

Tonight, the Department of Social Services, I think some people are here.

Advisory Board will deliver its annual report to the city.

On page 40 of your packet, the report includes costs of programs, including a very large nutritional program, primarily federally funded.

It is the SNAP program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

And in a year, it's about $13,600,000.

Any cut in SNAP or other programs that support low wealth individuals in our community will hurt us all.

Mr. Sanders, I want to thank you for answering my email and providing reassurance that you will make sure Charlottesville will be a place where everyone thought thrives.

Maybe we'll be able to stop some of the project 2025 budget cuts, but I wouldn't count on it.

Today at the earlier meeting, Mr. Sanders said he hoped that taxes in Charlottesville wouldn't have to be raised.

I don't know if that will be possible unless you cut other programs.

We have to prepare for reality.

My name is Greer Akinbake, I represent the Friends of Charlottesville Downtown Organization.

I am just here to express our concerns over the proposed BAR revisions to the cafe spaces.

Not that we are against them.

We just find them to be a little bit overly restrictive.

We heard a very eloquent speaker about the mall a few minutes ago, and one of the things we most value about the mall is its diversity.

It's an arts, culture, and entertainment district, and there's some things in these proposed revisions that would potentially limit some of our beautification efforts downtown.

So that's all I wanted to say.

Thank you all again for your support of Magic on the Mall.

We hope that everyone comes downtown to shop, dine, and enjoy the season with us.

I feel kind of like a jerk standing up here.

Last year, they saved people over a million and a half dollars in prescription drug plans.

Amazing.

However, my name is Gavin Smith.

I live at 810 Locust Avenue.

And compared to a lot of things you work about, this is not important.

But sometimes things get under my skin.

And I read in Sean Tubbs' article that you are looking at an RFP to allow deer hunting in the parks to renew what you've been doing for the last couple of years.

And what really disturbed me is there's a possibility they may use guns.

And I pulled some stuff off the internet.

and high-powered rifle bullets can go a long way and kill people.

Nine millimeter handguns, which are kind of a gun of choice in the city of Charleston, I'm afraid, have a range of about 15 to 50 yards.

A 40-pound bow, which I believe is about the biggest bow you can get and is what's been used in the past, has an effective range of 50 to 60 yards, maximum range of 280 to 350 yards.

12-gauge double-lock buck shotgun has a effective range of about 100 yards, 12-gauge with a slug 200 yards.

The range with a high-powered rifle, depending on the ammunition and the weapon, has a possible range of 1600 yards, and that's close and then on the mile.

If you go ahead with this thing, please don't let them use guns.

I don't think a professional hunter is going to kill anybody, but there's still a possibility, and if the possibility is greater than zero, it's too high for me.

But seeing how I have a little bit of time left, I don't think you really need the program.

I don't know how many deer get killed on an annual basis.

I'm not a bleeding heart.

I believe in deer hunting.

I've killed a deer.

It was delicious.

The reasons, numerous complaints, how many?

Sustained complaints, what does this mean?

Lime disease, killing a few deer in the park isn't really going to reduce the amount of lime disease.

Use bug spray, I do.

There are other types of ticks and there are also mosquitoes that can give you disease.

Reducing the deer population, that's not really a job for the city of Charlottesville, that's the job for the department of what they call it now, managing wildlife resources or whatever.

and finally, traffic accidents.

I don't know how many traffic accidents are caused by deer.

I don't have a number.

Maybe you'll have that in your little notebooks up there.

But the deer are going to come in from Albemarle County anyhow.

And how much does this program cost?

I didn't get that information either.

So another time, two things.

One, Mr. Pinkston, you were quoted, I think, on saying that you'd like to see all the speed limits and shall still reduce to 25 miles an hour.

The problem isn't the speed limits of the enforcement.

Thank you.

It's not our police department.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Who else would like to speak?

Hello, my name is Mo Fanta Sampol, 608 Cabell Avenue.

I sent all of you an email before this thinking I wouldn't be able to make it, but I was able to rush over in time after class ended, so I was able to make it.

Very happy because I really wanted to speak about these cafe requirements.

I find them

completely ludicrous and actually almost bordering on offensive.

The idea that the city government can do a better job than the businesses of Charlottesville of deciding what Charlottesville citizens like to see and think is beautiful is completely ludicrous.

I was looking through the particular like table that was laid out and I found

almost every single thing on their objectionable.

But to isolate just one thing in particular, it seems that the BAR has just like a deep antipathy towards color.

And I really find this quite horrifying almost on like a philosophical level.

Like there's something deeply conservative about banning color from public spaces and instead mandating that everything be black and silver.

I hope you kind of see the

Aesthetic vibe that that gives off.

It's very dystopian.

And again, yeah, I really don't even think that the city should have much of a say in this.

Other than very base level, you're not allowed to create massive sound externalities.

You shouldn't be able to have blaring lights.

The idea that the government should be able to say what color of parasol the nook has outside is completely ludicrous.

As an economist that to some degree thinks that the free market will make good outcomes I think it's just completely beyond the pale I frankly think that you should not renew these things in the first place much less make them more restrictive As you are being asked to do today.

Thank you Who else would like to speak?

I'm here for another reason, but I just wanted to mention that I'm also a commissioner on the Sister Cities Commission of Charlottesville, and this past Saturday we held our Virginia meeting here in Charlottesville at the beautiful diversity equity space that UVA has on West Main Street.

and we had a large group from Richmond and Fred Blanton who lives in Stanton is the coordinator for the entire state of Virginia and we had a representative from the Sister Cities Commission International who came in from Washington DC for the evening so I made sure to give lots of recommendations for places to eat and visit but I just wanted to say that as a new commissioner I was very excited

We also had some virtual guests from around the state and to learn just what's happening around the state and it made me hopeful and that we can do more exciting things and teach our community about our sister cities and maybe even adopt another sister city.

20 years with Besançon, our sister city in France.

So that was very exciting.

Thank you so much.

Who else would like to speak?

Okay, thank you.

Consent Agenda, number two, minutes, November 4th regular meeting, number three, an ordinance, the Virginia Department of Social Services Temporary Aid to Needy Families grants $69,312.67 second reading.

4.

Resolution to Appropriate Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services Victims of Crime Act Grant Award FY24 123,000 Second Reading 5.

Resolution to Appropriate $20,000 for the Virginia Department of Education Special Nutrition Program Child and Adult Care Food Program Second Reading 6.

Resolution authorizing Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority

I think there was a request to remove that.

Yeah, I'll, I guess I'll finish reading and then you all can discuss it.

Number seven, resolution to appropriate funds.

from the Supreme Court of Virginia Recovery Court Docket Grant in the amount of $240,000 for the Charlottesville Albemarle Recovery Court, one of two readings.

Eight, a resolution to appropriate $408,437 from the Opioid Abatement Authority Collaborative Partnership Grant, one of two readings.

Yes, yes.

Lloyd, did you, you okay with that?

I'm okay with that.

I did have one question and that deals with the $123,000 for the Victims of Crime Grant Award.

The memo says that this is a new award, that we've received similar awards since 2019 and I guess my question was in the next paragraph it talks about funds will be used to hire one school-based interventionist

and so on.

Do I understand that that person is not presently hired or is that where we've hired using similar awards since 2019?

I'm just curious which one that is.

Are we hiring somebody new or not?

I apologize, I should have asked the question before the meeting so we don't have to pick up time right now.

Yeah, that doesn't come.

I'm not sure.

I know that I participated in an audit of the program to make sure that we are meeting our compliance responsibilities, but I do not know if this is a new position or existing.

Well, it's it's in any event being funded through the schools.

But I assume unless the unless Department of Human Services is hiring the person to be in the schools.

Yeah, I'm not sure.

Yeah, so I think they're going to have to get back to you on that, Lloyd.

No, I'm fine with it either way.

I just, I think the memo is a little confusing in that respect, and I was just hoping to get some clarity.

Okay, so Sam, if you can get those two.

I can get the clarity for you.

And so we're going to defer number six and number

Which nine?

Well, I guess I would approve of the consent agenda deferring item six and nine.

Okay, can we vote?

Thank you.

Yeah, so I have no comments of my own because I'm going to let our social services team take it.

But to give you the answer because we were working on getting you the answer as you were asking that, it is an existing position.

So that's not a new position that's funded.

It's an existing position.

Those are funds to support that work.

This is for Lloyd's.

For Lloyd's question.

Okay.

Yes.

Cherry, are you presenting?

All right.

Hello again and thank you to Mr. Sanders and Mayor Wade and Vice Mayor Pinkston and the rest of the City Council.

Thanks for having us.

I hope that all of you were able to take a look at our summary of our yearly report that Ms.

Coming soon, yay.

So you can feel free to ask any questions about the report, but I just want to focus on a couple of areas that we would like to highlight this year.

And the first one is that we have seen that Child Protective Services Division has seen a 33% increase in foster care cases this year.

and there are currently 78 children in foster care and some of the reasons for that are increased substance abuse issues and concerns, housing issues and mental health issues and usually it's a combination of one, two, at least two of those but not always.

Another challenge

If you didn't already know, is that the child care subsidy program has, the state has limited the number of children that they're allowing, that they're subsidizing to go into centers.

In the past, we could ask for more money and that and have a waiting list and we are not able to have a, we're not able to ask for more money now.

So as of July 1st, because of funding availability,

We have wait lists and Charlottesville currently and we also had, you know, MACA closed and there are some other places have closed.

So we need more childcare subsidies in Charlottesville to help parents put their children in childcare while they work and there aren't

openings right now, and we're partnering with the City Schools Preschool Program and the United Way to help income eligible families request and apply for things, but we need help.

There are 13 children on the waitlist for Charlottesville currently.

The other thing I wanted to point out is that

Starting the beginning of this month, November 1, 2024, the SNAP program reinstated program interviews for initial applications and renewals.

There was a waiver during COVID and so there were extensions and people didn't have to reapply.

So now the Department of Social Services will have increased administrative work for the benefit specialists because of scheduling interviews and conducting them and they have to do reeducation of clients to remind them

to keep their interview appointments and to maintain their staff benefits.

They have to keep everything up to date.

So if you know anyone who fits into that and needs to reapply, please make sure that you have your address updated with the Department of Social Services so that we're able to get in touch with you.

And I think those are the main things that we wanted to point out.

No questions.

I think one of the things that stood out was just the new position as a request as well as 10% of the workforce eligible to retire in 2025, including a majority of the benefit program supervisors and I'm sure

Just a quick point to clarify, I think I heard wrong.

Well, so I may not have explained that well.

They allocate funding to each locality based on the population size and the previous level of enrollments.

We just can't apply for more funding.

From state.

Got it.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks.

Yeah, because Mr. Sanders said he was going to owe me something.

That's what you said last year, Mr. Sanders.

Wait a minute.

Lloyd, do you have any?

I got nothing.

Sounds good to me.

And excuse us.

Thank you so much.

We appreciate you all.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

The next item on the agenda, oh, did you have any other?

That is the report.

Eden, you're doing this?

This is the

Good evening, Mayor, Council, Ms.

Thomas, Mr. Sanders.

I think tonight we are here for the second reading of the proposed changes from the city staff written by our city attorney's office for the PCOB, again, specifically relating to kind of an opportunity for the council to consider different recruitment options.

I report to you the PCOV is still working on this.

You know they are really looking at this as an opportunity and I don't want to speak for them but just my observation is that this is an opportunity for them to kind of go through that entire ordinance to figure out what other changes might be necessary that they want to bring to the council for your consideration.

They are taking the time to do that.

They're concerned about a piecemeal approach, which I completely understand from their perspective.

So at this point, not to put any sort of pressure on the council.

I think you are facing kind of a fork in the road.

You can allow the PCOB to kind of do their work and bring a holistic set of recommendations relating to a number of things and pause the current initiative in front of you.

Or you can enact the current changes, which address specifically kind of eligibility to serve on the board.

up for council to decide.

I emailed earlier today at their Thursday meeting.

I think they voted on a few changes that were

for us.

Looking at them now, their recommendation was retaining current requirements for demographic diversity, retaining requirements for residency in Charlottesville except for the social justice representatives and law enforcement officer representatives and then to have a

larger role in our application process and interview process for deciding them.

So I guess to distill it, I think our choice is what's in front of us now is we give first preference to anyone who's a Charlottesville resident.

We retain the requirements for members of disadvantaged communities as well as social justice war reps, but if we receive no qualifying applicants that are city residents, Albemarle residents could be considered, whereas theirs does that for all the positions except

My understanding is correct.

I mean, we could entertain changes at any point as well.

Let me also offer part of my participation in the conversation was that when this came up in October that the PCOB was requesting that you all not move without them having a chance to consider, I reached out to the board informing them of my desire for us to work towards a review of the ordinance, one that they as a board would be able to execute and one that I would perform separately.

and that would be the staff recommendation.

So that would be myself, Deputy Marshall, working with our executive director and identifying whatever are the things that we to identify our issues that need to be addressed and where they can come together.

We could bring that to you together as a joint recommendation and where there was any departure we would show those two different opinions and allow you

The Committee

I am going to continue to move forward in conducting what I consider to be my responsibility since the prior council that established the PCOB used the term city manager throughout that document as the person who's supposed to make sure it all works.

So regardless of what action you take today, you can change it later.

Yeah my view is we should go ahead and approve what's here because what we've been struggling with for

Six months, I mean for a long time is to actually have enough people on the board to do the work and the rules are strict enough in terms of criteria to make that a challenge.

I just feel like with this board it's, I've been on, well I don't want to be negative so I'm going to stop, but I feel like

I have a question.

So I can't speak for them and I don't know what they were thinking in terms of process.

I attended that meeting virtually and they voted on that and they said they would send it to the city attorney.

So I don't know if they were waiting on... I did receive it because they emailed it to me as well because I was at that meeting and I sent that information along to you all as well.

Thank you for doing that.

Yeah, I mean without again being

Yeah, the seven voting members of the board shall be residents of or shall be employed in the city of Charlottesville or Albemarle County with priority given to city residents and those with significant demonstrable ties to the city.

That's right, it does not.

And that could be a recommendation to revisit this as well.

My concern is that what we're not able to do right now is to appoint people of either minority members or people or public housing residents or people who come from communities typically over police or whatever the language has been and so when people complain that

What we're proposing to do is somehow going to result in sort of dispossessing or displacing people who are public housing residents and minority members.

We're trying to get to the point where we can replace those people right now

We've got two vacant community representative positions and we've got basically of the people who are full-time appointments, regular appointments, whereas we're supposed to have three in that minority category, we only have one.

And we've just not gotten the applicants in necessary

have qualified people to do it, and so I think we need to do it in large part so that we can get the board populated enough so that it can move on and do some of what it is supposed to be doing.

One of the other concerns, and I will say this publicly as I've said it a couple times before, one of my concerns about the PCOB has been

that we on Council and the PCOB have spent the last four years, five years really, dickering over the terms of how they are going to be set up and what I liken to arguing over the shape of the table to go back to the 1970s when we were trying to get a peace treaty in Vietnam and everybody spent three years arguing about the shape of the table.

So far the PCOB hasn't reviewed a single actual controversy and it's been in existence for four years and we've allocated more than a million dollars to it over this time and I wish we would stop arguing about the shape of the table

let's get the PCOB fully populated, let's get them to do whatever tasks come before them.

If they run into roadblocks because there's something in the ordinance that they can't do, at least we will have identified that as an actual problem and not a theoretical problem, then we can fix it.

I would like to make one more point, which we're also, this discussion is in the context of kind of a review of boards in general, and we're also looking at other ways of being able to expand board access.

I know we've got limitations on compensation, but other avenues of, you know, potentially childcare, dinner, those sorts of things that would also make it more appealing for folks to join.

That's all conversations backstage.

Michael, could I ask a question, sir?

Michael, is it, Councilor Payne, is it your sense that making this change will make things better?

I would say

I mean, I would say probably yes.

I mean, I know we've had candidates who were members of both social justice representative organizations and members of disadvantaged communities who applied who couldn't be appointed, including

You know, individuals who had vouchers who had to move to the county because they wanted more bedrooms and couldn't find that in the city.

People who live literally like a five minute walk from the city border who wanted to serve and had deep Charlottesville ties.

And again, we're still giving preference to Charlottesville residents first, if any, who are Charlottesville residents apply.

So I would say yes.

And again,

I think to me the most important goal is that we gave the PCOB the opportunity to provide feedback to us.

It's our decision how we incorporate it.

They have given us feedback and we have actually changed what our amendments were based on their initial feedback.

It's ultimately our decision to make.

I'm comfortable with what's in the packet tonight and again representing, recognizing that it's that tiered approach that they brought up in one of their meetings and this is an iterative process in terms of figuring out how to make the board as strong as possible.

But I agree with others in that I think, you know, success will require a full board that is able to be out in the community, holding events, holding listening sessions, holding town halls, and really having a huge presence in neighborhoods and being proactive about reaching out on a neighborhood to neighborhood level.

I just wanted to chime in that you know that you know I know I personally have asked a lot of people current residents and I know others have as well and and a lot of people that have the capacity had just been tapped out we've asked them to do a lot and and you know they just can't join this and I know that there are people with deep ties to the community

Yeah, I would be happy to move the ordinance in the packet.

Can I get a second, please?

Second.

Okay, can we vote?

And put me down for a yes.

Okay, the motion passes 5-0.

The next item on agenda is the ordinance amending the city code for parking of buses, trucks, etc.

between midnight and 6 a.m.

Mayor and City Council Members.

I'm the City Engineer here for the City of Charlottesville.

I'm doing this almost in my previous capacity as the City Traffic Engineer though.

This has been an issue that

This has been kind of struggling with for a while on some of this, but really the new zoning code is really what kind of brought this to light.

So I just want to start with kind of the overall goal that we have with rewriting this section.

And I think it's important to keep in mind as we walk through, you know, some of the different aspects of this, you know, with the changes to the new zoning code and potential for large influx of vehicles needing to utilize street parking.

It's a staff's goal to remove uses on the street that are essentially being used as storage personal storage We want that street parking to be used for the active turnover of vehicles

So there are several different additions to this.

First one I want to focus on is tarped vehicles.

This is one we've been probably struggling with the longest.

We have a part of the ordinance that speaks to disabled vehicles, vehicles that have expired tags and that kind of stuff.

But what we found is it's actually a Fourth Amendment search and seizure issue with the city's attorney's office that the police officers can't

lift up a tarp that's covering a vehicle to determine whether or not it actually is a disabled vehicle type of thing.

So really this part of the ordinance is focused on that, just allowing us to enforce our current regulations.

So it's not necessarily saying that they can't have a tarp, you can't have a tarp that prohibits the visual inspection of that.

So if you wanted to do a clear tarp, if you wanted to have some kind of clear

part over just that part of your your cars that they can see the license plate they can see the inspection sticker all that would still be be allowed but it's really for that enforcement of that

The other one is service repairs.

We have several places in town where we've gotten complaints over the years where, you know, vehicle service stations don't have enough space on their own lot.

So they just continually park, you know, vehicles that are waiting to be serviced on on the city street.

Again, that's not really the purpose of on street parking.

It's it's

intended for active turnover of vehicles and not storage of vehicles that are waiting there, so that's included.

Several of the things are just existing in the current ordinance, so semi trucks, buses, vans, vehicles were more than two axles, so that hasn't changed.

We left that as is.

Farm use tags, hopefully that's self-explanatory.

We don't have too many farms in the city of Charlottesville, so just putting that in there so that, you know, people have abused some of these in the past, and so it just gives our enforcement a way to, you know,

and of course that antique plates antique plates are something that actually the state code speaks to there as the the state code reads and it's 46.2730 if you're interested

that license plates for antique motor vehicles and antique trailers shall not be used for general transportation purposes, including but not limited to daily travel to and from owner's place of employment.

The city code or the, sorry, the state code for this is pretty explicit that this is intended, you know, antique plates are intended for show vehicles, you know, stuff that, you know, it's

your old grandpa's truck or whatever that you know it's sentimental you may take it to shows or show it off you know can every so often not an everyday commuter vehicle we also have a lot of antique plates that have been called out that they have antique plates on them and the car never moves and never you know it just again it's more of a storage

Storidge thing than anything.

And with those, you know, you don't have to get inspections, you don't have to do any of that.

So again, getting back to the disabled vehicle standard, it makes it very difficult for enforcement of that statute based on if they have an antique vehicle tag that's

just sitting in the road again.

We're not prohibiting any of these on your driveway or anything like that, it's just parking them on the city street.

The last few are more, you know, resident storage items, so boats, RVs, and trailers, again, for trying to, you know, reintroduce active parking.

Turnover, those are uses that are more personal storage.

We wouldn't allow somebody just to park a shed in the roadway and use it for that purpose.

So, you know, it's kind of the same thing.

Yeah, so I'll actually get to that in a second.

So that was kind of all of, I just wanted to run through kind of the individual use cases.

Remy, if you can go on to the next, or do I have the, maybe?

I don't know.

It's not working.

It won't let me advance.

If you can advance it.

So this is the existing code.

Again, it's pretty minimal.

It just speaks to the 12 passenger vehicles, trucks, vans, trailer, semi-trailer, recreational vehicle with two or more wheels, or two more wheels per axle.

So really that's like a dually type trailer and that can be like larger vehicles.

So could I just clarity there?

So when it says no truck, it's no truck with more than two wheels per axle.

Yeah, not no trucks.

It's all one sentence there.

So it's no trucks with more than two wheels per axle.

So a person like on my street,

who has a really small little RV out sort of, you know, adjacent to their place on the road.

Correct.

Yeah.

So yeah, the next line here, if you can go to the next slide around me.

So this gets into the new code and what we're doing.

The highlighted in red section there that I'm showing, that we actually added in after it got into your code because we, kind of to your point Natalie, there's a few uses, whether that's, you know, buses or

semi-trucks for pavilion events and that kind of stuff that utilize the city street.

They get temporary parking permits, the same with the pods, they get temporary permits for those.

So really, we will ask that we add this section to the code if you all are to accept it, basically just saying with the exception of instances whereby a temporary parking permit has been obtained.

So again, you could get that for any number of these uses if you had a special circumstance, if you had

Family coming to town and you really, that was the only place that they could park and you wanted to get a parking permit for them for the week or something like that, you could do that.

It's really, again, trying to keep the storage of these vehicles and stuff off of the city streets.

But yeah, it covers the semi trucks, the buses, the vans, antique plates, farm use plates, boats, recreational vehicles, trailers, vehicles with more than two axles,

Next slide, Remy.

And then it gets into the tarp covers as number two.

And number three is the working or storage of vehicles for repair shops on the city street.

that's all I have actually I've got a couple slides more slides sorry so these are I just have a couple examples on the city street we've got several places where you know they're just lined up with RVs the next slide is probably the most egregious place that I know of in town where we've got

to tarped vehicles that have been there as long as I've been at the city for 10 years, as well as the truck behind it, which has a trailer, which is another tarped vehicle that has been there for going on 10 years.

So these are the types of instances that we're trying to address across the city.

Correct.

Yeah, I'm struggling with this one when I was reading it.

I mean, Councilor Oschrin is

beginning to help me

I know we're hoping and we met the other day with Mr. Freeze and Mr. Sanders about all these things you guys are going to be working on.

I remembered later on one thing that I didn't see on the list was parking initiative, like, you know, permit parking throughout the city, where the mayor and I live, there are people that have

you know pop up campers you know on the road and in a small little RV and I mean there's plenty of space for people to be and I think two of small businesses I know one of the things that we want to do with at some point commercial uses in residential spaces this seems like it could cut against cut against that when I look at

One of the things I worry about is when we use the most egregious offense, if you could go to the next slide, I guess, the one with all the tarps.

I mean, that's clearly egregious.

I mean, the tarping piece I totally get.

I'm with that 100%.

But this is more like something that's just been abandoned as opposed to a person who's got a small boat or whatever that's on the road.

In some places, I guess in Belmont, for example, there's just not enough room for where we live.

The streets are a little bigger.

So I don't know, I'm torn on this.

and I actually share a lot of those concerns.

I think there's a lot of

positive things to move in this direction.

I also agree, we all know there's egregious examples of basically abandoned vehicles that have been somewhere for years.

But I do worry, one, there's areas of the city where off-street parking is tight, and there's areas where it's not an issue at all, as Brian mentioned, where people do have RVs or various things.

And I guess I'm just worried this completely blanket universal approach, you're just going to

Hassle people who have a small business vehicle potentially like a food truck or something that they're using during the day and they find an area where it's not an issue to park it or quite frankly working class people who have a car that needs an inspection repair and it failed and they don't have the money at the moment and they put a tarp over it not for 10 years but maybe for a month or so until they get the money for the repair because they don't want the police to be ticking them constantly for having an out-of-date inspection or

places where people have an RV or something that is not an issue and I'm just worried whether it is a valuable or wise use of anyone's time for the police to be going around ticketing everybody for expired inspections or vehicles that aren't an issue.

hassling working class people with more and more fines and tickets for expired registrations or expired vehicle inspections, which... Yeah, yeah, I mean I don't think the police would do it if it wasn't complaints and people complained to us and we, you know, contact staff and say what can you do and they say well we need to

Amin Nordinates

It almost fits, but I just think exacerbated is probably what that was supposed to be.

So just wanted to point that out first.

Secondarily, I am of the belief that

Private stuff storage on a public right of way is a privilege anyway.

It's not something we guarantee In fact, there's cities that Lovely cities that don't allow any on-street parking whatsoever And those are really nice places to be so I am generally not inclined to support things that make it easier for

Yes, this kind of mess that we see in this particular image.

But I am sympathetic to, for your example, a food truck that has to be parked somewhere overnight that maybe doesn't fit in a home garage.

And they don't have an open driveway or something like that.

So I would be interested in maybe seeing some kind of permit system for that sort of thing.

That's more than just the temporary permit, like for the pod.

But

Yeah, a couple of them.

No, I was trying to do it.

My phone was ringing at the same time.

My thoughts are, first of all, purely a technical thing.

In paragraph two of the revised 15-144, you need an apostrophe on vehicles.

And I don't know whether you intend vehicles to be plural and possessive or singular and possessive, but either way, it needs an apostrophe.

Whether it's apostrophe S or apostrophe.

The second thing I would note, I see a lot of cars driving around with antique plates.

I don't think it's true that people who have antique plates on their car aren't driving them, aren't using them regularly.

And if you're assuming that to be the case as one of the reasons behind this change, I think that that's probably wrong.

As far as food trucks and so on, as I interpret the statute, a food truck would not be

and

One of the things that struck me as I was listening to all this discussion is that we in the zoning ordinance adopted a number of rules and regulations that basically were intended to prevent people from parking in their front yards.

and so if we have made it impossible for them to park in their front yards or to limit the number of vehicles that can be parked in a yard and we're also saying, and you can't put them on the street either, I wonder what we're doing there.

It seems to me that we're being a little, you know, we're just being very restrictive.

Maybe the intent is to be just that restrictive, but it's an odd

kind of juxtaposition.

I'm just curious where the real push for this has come from.

Is it specifically from the police department?

Yeah, I mean, the tarped vehicles is really that one has been requested from the police department.

The rest of them are planning and traffic staff, again, looking at the zoning code and complaints that we've gotten over the years, whether it be for RVs that

are parked in front of people's houses that they don't even live there and they just park them to trailers just being left and there's no parking available on tight streets.

Same thing with boats.

And kind of to Natalie's point, a fundamental question of should the city right of way be used

for storage of personal effects.

So again, this is more, we put all the different uses we could possibly think of on there.

I mean, you all are the decision makers.

You can take none of them.

You can take all of them.

You can cherry pick which ones.

We can change wording if you'd like to allow certain uses for whatever.

But as the zoning code

sees itself forth over the next several years.

There will become an issue with parking in different neighborhoods.

You're 100% correct.

Some neighborhoods you can drive down and there's one car parked on the street and 50 parking spaces available.

I 100% agree that that is a fact.

There are also areas in the city where they have permit parking now and

I quickly, I had a memory of the no parking in the front yard clause that Councillor Snook mentioned and my memory was that that was stricken and I actually just had confirmation that the front yard is up to two units and the Arizona can park in the front yard in a driveway.

So that has been allowed.

That's no longer a

Correct.

Well, I definitely support not, definitely support not letting cars be tarped and abandoned.

If we need a resolution to say you can't cover your vehicles, you know, identification tags or whatever,

that certainly support that.

Abandoned vehicles, it seems like there's something to be said about that.

Yeah, we've been definitely been talking about that between myself and Ben Chambers.

We're still trying to finalize, you know, it's gonna probably be a larger, pricier study to really figure out

Yeah, it sounds like maybe it should be moved for the second reading on the regular agenda.

At the moment, I'm probably still inclined not to support it again from the perspective of just empowering more people to get hit with fines and tickets that I think is, I'm not seeing the

I'd be interested in exploring the idea of maybe a permit system for some of those potentially larger like food trucks.

I don't know how often that scenario comes up, but just in case.

and

It's very explicit in the state code that it is intended as a recreational show vehicle type tag.

use and driving it every day so that was kind of why that wasn't that I'm not as concerned about that but perhaps we could strike some kind of balance with the scenario that Councillor Payne is envisioning where if someone does get a fine for a inspection delinquency and They are able to come back within 45 days and say no look I got it inspected There's an ability for them to waive that fine so that

Yeah, and I don't want to speak for the police but I think the the intent of this is not for them to drive around looking for for these this is really more if they're getting complaints about certain vehicles on certain streets you know over a period of time that hey you know this this car hasn't moved in six months and it's gotten you know that that's really the intent of this it's not you know

Hey, my neighbor, you know, I don't like him and, you know, you need to come give him a ticket or even just, you know, searching out vehicles on a daily basis.

One, we don't have the staff for that in the police department to go out and make rounds of every street in the city and like we do on the downtown, you know, parking around the downtown.

Lloyd, where are you?

undecided lukewarm not sure beyond that okay okay so we're going to bring it back in two weeks okay and um that's fine yeah

The next item on the agenda is a resolution for revisions to the ARO to architect your design control district design guidelines.

I'm all right, I guess.

Jeff, just check and make sure it's turned on.

It's flashing.

All right, so quickly.

Good evening.

I'm Jeff Warner.

I'm the

City's Preservation and Design Planner.

And as you all know, I wear three primary hats.

I'm staff of the Planning Commission in their role as the entrance corridor review board.

I'm staff of the Historic Resources Committee.

And then my main role is I'm staff with the Board of Architectural Review, the BAR, which is the hat I'm wearing tonight.

And with me tonight, I have James Seamer, the current chair of the BAR, and in the back, Kate Richardson, who is the Assistant Preservation and Design Planner.

I told her she could go home tonight, but she really wanted to stick around and see this.

Slide two.

The requested action by Council tonight is to formally adopt revisions to Chapter 5, Section E of the ADC District Design Guidelines, which address outdoor cafes.

The reason for updating these guidelines is to better align them with how the cafe spaces have evolved over time.

and, in fact, the guidelines currently using haven't changed much since 1995 and allow time for you all to review the revisions and adopt them ahead of March 1st, 2025.

That's when the cafe spaces will next be renewed.

Per City Code, the BAR is required to review design guidelines and to recommend to you all

for formal adoption and any changes.

And before I go further, I want to make sure everyone understands that the design guidelines and in and of themselves are not regulations.

They do not prohibit or regulate anything.

They are intended to protect what the city has identified as valuable historic resources.

Council adopts the guidelines.

Council appoints the BAR to apply them, and all BAR actions are appealable to council.

Second, the guidelines for cafe spaces are

intended to allow for administrative review by staff and except for the grandfather elements which we'll discuss anything that is not recommended or not permitted or possibly not addressed by the guidelines simply means that I can't approve it administratively so for example if someone wants oversized multicolored umbrellas or bright red furniture they would have to review that with the BAR and not me and of course if denied by the BAR

Appealable to City Council.

As I mentioned, the revisions as drafted will allow the continued use of existing ADA compliant metal railings and the overwhelming majority of the existing tables, chairs and furniture, and I think if not all of them.

And finally, there are elements in some of the cafe spaces that violate zoning, and these are not under BAR's purview.

For example, the code prohibits umbrellas from extending outside face spaces.

It regulates the signage that's allowed inside a space and it requires zoning approval, not BAR approval, to use propane heaters.

So just to be clear, those zoning requirements will be reinforced regardless of any changes to the design guidelines.

So very quickly, the Brick Bay Mall sidewalk at the corner are city-owned public spaces, both within city-designated ADC districts.

The mall is listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register, and it is also within a larger historic district that is also listed.

The corner is listed on the state and national register as well as part of the Rugby Road University Corner Historic District.

The mall was designed in 1974 by Lawrence Halpern and Associates with a focus on it being an open space, a public space and a place that people could see through without visual clutter.

And the goal was to create a sequence of interconnected spaces where people could walk and gather and

View the trees, see the amenities like the fountains.

In the early 1980s, the city approved three requests for leased spaces on the mall, and that has grown since.

In 1993, there were 12 spaces.

2004, 21, and in 2020, there were 39.

Per the city code, the cafe spaces are allowed in these spaces within the public right-of-way.

These require an annual permit that is issued by zoning and also per the code for spaces within an ADC district that elements within the space are subject to design review by the BAR and those elements such as furniture, planters and railings.

So on the mall and corner, we currently have 44 restaurants operating at least cafes.

They range from 80 square feet to 1300 square feet, and currently approximately 20% of the downtown mall is used for cafe spaces.

The design guidelines for the ADC districts were first adopted by council in 1995, including a section for outdoor cafes.

The general guidelines were updated in 2004 and most recently 2012.

However, there were no significant changes to the outdoor cafe guidelines since 95.

So, recently and on September 17th, October 1st and October 15th, the BAR held advertised work sessions regarding the guidelines for the outdoor cafes.

The BAR first established a list of broad guiding principles to guide their discussions and the overarching principle is that elements within least cafe spaces should be subordinate to the experience and treatment of the surrounding public space.

And ahead of the October 15th meeting when the BAR

voted on the guidelines.

We hand a letter to each of the operators of the least cafe spaces notifying them of the meeting and we delivered a similar letter notifying them of tonight's meeting.

Let's see.

So the BAR's evaluations encompass five primary themes, materiality, color palette design, prioritization of public space and the visual elements.

So materiality came down, you know, similar to what's always been in there.

Elements should be quality, durable material.

It means that they'll stand up over time and not

start to look like they've been outside for a year things not be permanently installed and that they are easily moved and that's mainly because this is a public space and if we have to city has to go out and fix something or address something or maintain something they don't need to be lifting up a thousand pound of dirt in a planter and again preference for metal not plastic

For the color palette, for example, furniture and rails, black or silver tone are preferred.

And this has been in the guidelines for over 20 years.

Another example, umbrellas.

And I want to say there's absolutely nothing in this draft that bans colorful umbrellas.

I don't know where that came from.

I'm a little frustrating to hear that.

that's what happens and I would read that narrative got out there it got out there and this is right from the draft prefer solid colors variation requires BAR approval relative to design and this is sort of overall within each space the elements should be compatible and then

for all of the spaces together.

The idea is that we have something cohesive, that there's some visual continuity on the mall.

Again, the mall is a public space.

As far as prioritizing the public space, the

Cafe elements should be within the lease space.

Now that's required by the code, but we're also emphasizing that in the BAR guidelines.

And the elements, the placement of them, the size of them should reduce visual clutter and not obstruct views.

Again, this is prioritizing the pedestrian experience over patrons in these spaces.

and Bayard also wants to encourage full access to the fountains.

The visual elements, again, the mall is a public space and so the elements within the cafes

We understand to enhance the patron experience, but they shouldn't serve as advertisements or distractions to pedestrians.

I mean, there's a lot of times that these spaces are not being operated.

And at those moments, this space should be public and not looking through plants and advertisements and signs.

And then, so finally, again, on October 15th, the BAR voted 8-0 to recommend that

You all counsel approve the revisions being presented tonight and I I think also want to clarify that there are some Some circumstances in there that we pointed out for example the items that are grandfathered while we they aren't Listed in the guidelines because we want those be the guidelines moving forward

the points made by the BAR and relative to existing elements just want to make sure that you all understood that in capturing that in the resolution.

So sorry that was awfully fast.

I know there are some questions.

Yeah, Mr. Zemerman, if you want to come up and join us, I want to thank you and the BAR and Jeff and all the work that you guys have done on this and on so many other things.

Sure, I think Jeff covered a lot of it pretty well.

I think one thing folks should understand is we did work really hard over three different work sessions that the public was invited to.

The BAR is made up of a group of people that are volunteers and a number of us are what you might call subject matter experts.

We've got architects and historians, that type of thing.

We also have folks on the BAR who are simply residents in a historic district or business owners in a historic district.

So what I think is great about that is that they, that gives balance to our decision making.

And it drives us to make compromises and make consensus decisions.

And that's really what drove

the recommendations in this revision.

There were some things that I didn't like.

There were some things someone else didn't like and we had to kind of meet in the middle and kind of drive what was for the best for the public good for the downtown mall.

You know, let's see.

I think, as Jeff said, yes, the umbrellas, the current guidelines actually say that they should be solid neutral colors

I eat beige or black or white.

We are actually dialing that back and saying that we would allow color, any color.

It just needs to be a solid color.

And I think Jeff pointed out correctly that if someone wants to kind of deviate from the guidelines, there's a path forward with that.

And it is our process.

It's the COA, Certificate of Appropriateness Process, right?

and

I think, as Jeff pointed out, I just want to reinforce this is a public space.

It is a national historic landmark.

I think the longest lasting pedestrian mall, certainly in the state of Virginia, that has been successful.

So I think that in itself is a testament to the downtown mall and to the investment that the City of Charlottesville made in the downtown mall.

the citizens back in 1976 decided to take on this experiment and you know they took a risk in doing so so I think it's our duty to champion it and make sure that it lasts for future generations in in quality environment for the citizens of Charlottesville.

As Jeff pointed out kind of our overarching themes were

respecting the original design intents, minimizing visual clutter with the cross and up and down the mall.

We talked about the fact that there's a change in elevation as you walk up and down the mall.

So when you're a little bit lower down, your eye level may be distracted by things that are further up the mall.

Those were kind of the main things that were our overarching guidelines.

Thank you.

Thank you, James.

Thank you again for serving on the committee.

Let me go to Lloyd.

Yeah, my first thought is that I wanted to give a shout out to Natalie for her very thoughtful email today.

with sort of a different view of things and, you know, yes on some things and not so fast on some other things.

That's nice to hear.

Is that it, Lloyd?

Okay, go ahead.

Sure.

I mean, I guess I could just provide the comments.

I mean, I guess my thoughts were, I guess, stepping back.

I think people have sometimes beat up on the BAR.

I've done it myself sometimes.

But I think, in part was mentioned, the downtown mall is many things.

One of them is it has a sense of unique place in history.

And I think

anywhere in the country or world that maintains a unique sense of place in history, does so with intentionality and planning.

I appreciate a more libertarian perspective and there's trade-offs of that, but you will have a change in the uniqueness of place or at least the history of it as well.

When it comes to these specifically, I guess my perspective is I think the BAR has always had a

A tiered approach in terms of layering that historic preservation in terms of there's guidelines.

It's not an outright ban.

If somebody thinks there's a strong case to adjust it, they can appeal it to the BAR and the BAR can either approve it or deny it.

And even if the BAR denies it,

they can still appeal it to city council and I think that provides a lot of flexibility if someone has a good idea that falls outside of guidelines for two passes at it to see if it works while still striking that balance of ensuring you don't have a chain like five guys or sweet green come in who have been on the mall in the past who maybe have standardized corporate materials that they may decide to use instead and we've also seen that in the corner as well

Michael Payne

the approach the BAR has put forward to me makes sense again in the context of it can always be appealed both to the BAR and then city council because I do think it's important to have a balance where there are some protections particularly on the downtown mall and I think there's a balance between

Hey, okay.

Thanks.

So I sent a list of questions this morning.

I know that isn't a ton of time for everyone to review, but I'll just kind of run through them quickly with the preamble that I included in my note that I very much appreciate the effort that staff in the BAR have put into reviewing and discussing them all in these updates.

I went back and watched the October 17th meeting and I've reviewed the notes from the work session.

But it was good to hear the discussion that you all had on the 17th.

and to read the notes.

Some of that discussion wasn't captured in the notes, so some of my questions are just how did we reach the conclusion that was noted.

But I also want to provide a little color that I have been a server and a manager in these cafe spaces, which I know the BAR has unique perspectives from historical preservation and

and architectural backgrounds, but I don't know if anyone was ever actually a staff member on the mall in that capacity.

So I've actually been the person to set up and break down some of these spaces in my time.

So with all that noted, I do have some questions and just comments that I'll run through.

One, I agreed with the discussion that you all had on the 17th to remove any regulations on tablecloths and cushions.

We did use tablecloths when I worked there.

So, yeah, use it or not, whatever, I think that's a smart move that we don't have to worry about that.

There was a discussed rationale for limiting the width of planters, and that was that they needed to be manually movable and larger planters would be too heavy, which, yes, dirt is heavy quickly.

But is there anything preventing the use of casters on larger planters to allow them to be moved easily if necessary?

You want us to talk to each one of these?

Yeah, I'll wait.

And this is a good primer for you all about, so we've got much more to tackle with the design guidelines overall.

So Jeff, as you go forward, she has about 20, so I want you to like bam, bam.

But the thing with the BAR is what they're charged with, and right from the code, their focus is on that historic,

character, that National Register District.

That is what they're instructed to create design guidelines for.

So quickly, yeah, the BAR was asking why there was ever anything in there about tablecloths and cushions.

So good to go there.

The width and size of the planners, a lot of that has to do with, as I said, when something has to be moved or relocated, it takes up a lot of space.

We've got those metal planners.

We don't know

What damage they might be doing underneath them to the mall.

Fury has a cafe space that is on casters.

And I don't think any of us have a problem with things being movable.

There's things out there.

So if someone wants to put something on casters, the primary thing is that it's that height in that mass.

Whether they're movable or not, that's not a problem.

In terms of the hedge, we're again trying to minimize visual obstructions.

We're trying to prevent

People creating walls that you can't see through.

Yeah, essentially the guidelines has written if someone came in and said, I want to build a six-foot trellis around here and start a hedge going on it, there's nothing in the current guidelines where I would say you can't do that.

So that's some of what we've done here.

Oh, you like, okay.

Yeah.

It really is.

If someone now, the big metal troughs are just

outside of the character, and that's where we came down on, or the BAR came down on, but if they're movable and someone wants to put things on casters, that's fine.

Thank you.

So the next question I had was some of the language seems hard to definitively measure, like high quality and compatible.

So there are, you're referring to things were in the guideline or the

the principles that the BAR adopted to help make some decisions.

Now, some of this is certainly subjective.

What does the wood bench outside of Rapture look like it's in bad shape?

To me, yes, it needs to be cleaned up and re-varnished.

Now, someone might say, oh, it looks old and rustic.

There are, yes, there's a certain amount of judgment that comes in here.

If something looks like, there are pots, and I had some photos we could show, but there are plants in pots on them all that are dead.

There are pots that are broken.

To me, that is, you know, not being well maintained, not well kept.

And we can say those need to be removed.

So it is some judgment here, but there's still a process by which someone can say, I disagree with you.

I'm going to ask the BAR.

So we're not,

and the police.

And I live in a house that's subject to BAR review.

We have four members of the BAR that live in houses and buildings or work buildings subject to BAR review.

So we understand that.

I don't know if that answered it, but that's... Well, in the prolonged period, what is that?

3 days, is it a month?

I mean, this is a system and what I work with the zoning officials on and manage, we have discussions about things.

issues I get the BAR involved with necessarily.

So I think I have to talk to Craig and Reed and give you a finite answer on that.

But I don't know, it's just one of the principles that the BAR adopted of, hey, we really want if these spaces aren't being used, you know, that idea that it's a public space, but there's nothing

There's nothing enforceable in here.

Each space has to get a certificate of appropriateness.

So by March 1st, we will have those for each space.

So if something's going on in there that's not what we discussed and not what we approved, then I can say to them, hey, this doesn't match what your COA was.

Okay, cool.

Thank you.

And then included in the documents we got, and in the October 17th meeting you said you added this, calling the downtown mall, Charlottesville's living room, which objectively is a phrase that I like, but it seems like within this particular document it's

it's either missing broader context or it doesn't seem like we're actually doing enough to make it so.

You know, there's room for the public to disagree with the statement because we don't provide much public seating and we removed some of that.

There's no bathrooms, there's no play areas, there's no interactive displays, all of that.

So I think for the purposes of this particular document we either should

I can't recall the exact citation, but I believe it was a former mayor at the time when the mall was coming to be and that statement was made.

Yeah, I like that.

And I think what we use that in the context of to express the importance, the design intent of this is a public space.

Now, to the things that you're talking about, there's no doubt been a lot of discussion about the privatization of the mall and the loss of the space.

I mean, I moved here in 96.

I remember when things were gone, even in winter, the cafe spaces were gone.

So there's been a shift in that.

But I would say if you all are uncomfortable, the only place this appears is in the guiding principles and even a note.

So it's not a... Yeah, it's not a major thing.

And you all can strike it if you wish.

I think Jeff's right.

The intent was to just reinforce the fact that this is a public space and that they're probably these spaces and that

This went to our discussion of things inside the space and that, you know, the mall is, we have lights on the mall, we have plants on the mall, we have what the city maintains on the mall.

People can, the cafe spaces can add catenary lighting, they can put lighting on the table, but when we started to have things

that could not be removed when these spaces are not open.

And that sort of became that visual clutter that we've been talking about.

So that was the thinking of, you know, there's enough lighting for this.

They don't need to add these things.

Now, if somebody wants to add lights on their railing, they can come and ask the BAR.

But for my review of COA, that's a no.

When?

That was sort of the, so the cafe spaces are used, surprisingly how infrequent the spaces are used.

So you've got stuff being stored there, wrapped on the railings there, you've got stuff

in our public space, the city's public space.

And so that's what was driving some of this was, is that necessary for that to be there 24-7?

I think there's also, you know, with the catenary lights and with the overall design of the downtown mall with the light fixtures and the planters from the Lawrence Halperin design.

Like that gives continuity across the length of the mall all the way up and down.

Well, I mean, there's already those that's already there.

So this is other stuff that gets a divine personality for each cafe.

Yeah, but I think that's the overwhelming feeling when you're there.

I mean, I know one thing that we're looking at is having lights up more year round.

I think I'll just offer that just from the concern of what is possible without parameters.

You can have flashing lights every third, fifth, and seventh location.

So I think that's that's part of it.

So it's what is the true desire?

And I'm speaking to what kinds of things I remembered hearing coming up while we were doing the downtown mall committee work.

There's always going to be a counter-opinion, but what kind of standard are we wanting to set?

To clarify again, process.

All for correct in that these are guidelines and I guess the philosophy is that you have guidelines that lean kind of heavier on preventing like a worst outcome.

And if someone thinks that's a little too strict, I think this is a good idea.

They can come to you for an appeal.

And then even if you say no, it can come to us for the final decision.

So there's two, there's only two places that have

light ropes, LED ropes on railings and there's one that has some solar lamps on the railings.

I will say lighting is one of the things we've had to deal a lot with at the BAR and with LED technology and you're right, the blinking, you know, so it's simply easier to say when I review it, no, we don't have it there.

Now you cannot, you can't use city power

to illuminate you.

So you can do it with solar and battery.

But again, it's up to you all.

These are recommendations, and I think we've expressed why, but I don't want it.

Sure, that's fine.

If we get a chance to revise this, I would move to strike that particular regulation.

The next question is, what was the discussion about wine barrels?

See ya!

He's been in guidelines for a long time.

There was agreement on this.

Unfinished wood is not allowed.

And these barrels tend to be unpainted, unfinished wood.

But again, you all can make a decision on that.

But that's the recommendation, just that they tend to be unsightly.

I live in the winemaker's house down on White Street.

So believe me, I get it about the history of wine in this town.

And if they were wine barrels, I guess I would view them differently.

But the BAR's position is they were unpainted wood, unfinished wood, and they tended to be a little bit unsightly.

We did have a lot of back and forth on that.

There are some folks who thought we should have them.

Well I think you could say no unfinished wood and then if the wine barrel is finished

The reason why I brought that up was because we market ourselves at the center of Virginia wine country.

So wine barrels are cute little cocktail tables.

I think they're very large and therefore difficult to move.

And I think they're just out of character.

They're made for agricultural use.

They're not meant to be a planter.

Okay, so yeah, again, if they're on wheels, I don't really see a problem with that for moveability.

They're an economical way to get plants and plants are lively.

Same reason, it's a large, heavy thing that has to be moved and the

We debated a lot about, like, sizes and things, but the idea is that these, again, that these are not permanent spaces.

These are not owned.

This is a public space that the city allows them to use, not move into.

And I think that idea of that mobility of these things, you've got a lot of stuff in there, you can go out there and move.

in an hour, there are places where you'd need a forklift to get things out of the way.

Yeah, and I think that's something that a restaurant should be able to decide on their own.

I don't think we need to regulate that.

And then what is the ban on temporary decorations?

What does that mean?

There is no ban on temporary decoration.

I mean, it says temporary decorations, but not permanent.

Like, you don't put up your Halloween stuff and it stays the whole year.

There are places on the Mall where some things have gone up and they're just, it's like, what's their

tenets and flags and balloons and banner things or whatever, pom-pom things.

It's like, all right, this is, again, this is a public space.

But this is what the BAR's recommendation is.

This does not have to be council's recommendation.

You all can view them all differently.

You all can change this.

So I guess what I'm saying is I could, that's the answer if you want to, I don't think I'm going to convince you.

Well, yeah, it says elements inconsistent with the guidelines and currently in place within a lease space must be removed temporary decorations unless for current holiday or special event.

No, that's a temporary thing.

Now, two months from now, the balloons are there and they've popped and fallen over.

Then I'm going to go and say, you know, you really should pick those up.

But in the resolution, it was about it's not prohibited.

It's just simply that temporary seasonal

decorations are fine, they should not become permanent.

And again, that's just a judgment call.

There's a lot of things we have to make judgments on relative to design issues.

And so yes, if something's up, hey, it's been up, this is Halloween, it's been up there, it's May.

Brian Pinkston, Juandiego Wade, Lloyd Snook, Michael Payne

They don't go back in, they become, again, they end up being stored on the mall.

So things like the counters, the host stand, we're saying keep those, we didn't say black, we say muted color, so that when that space is not in operation, that the mall, it's not

interfering with that experience of the mall.

Well, just again, you're telling you what the BAR discussed and determined.

I don't know if you want to get into the debate with me about it.

So now, the point is the mall is a historic landmark, and the BAR's charge was to look these guidelines through the lens of preserving that historic space.

and that's the best answer I can give you.

I think to answer your question a little bit, some of it was we were going based on what the current guidelines are, right, which is to encourage those types of muted colors.

And so where we felt the guideline was sufficient and

was working well.

I guess you all felt like your charge was to take that as sort of a starting point and iterate based on that.

Possibly so.

I think they're also, you know, Brian and I spoke earlier when COVID hit and there is a much greater need for people to be outside for public safety's sake.

Some of the guidelines were relaxed, you know, and I think we're trying to rein that in.

I think that

The message to rain it in, actually you mentioned the downtown mall committee.

We've heard from that committee that they wanted things to get rained in and that the downtown mall to kind of get cleaned up.

Okay.

The restaurant gets to decide what their feature is.

I can assume the answers to a couple of the next ones, but no signage on umbrellas, even if it's the logo of the restaurant.

Again, it's part of that visual clutter.

We would prefer that not have, I mean, the sign regs that allow are very limited.

So the restaurant, the business could determine where they want to use their signage.

Okay, and that, I wasn't necessarily fighting for.

I was just curious about where that came from.

But solid colors are all matching.

That also feels a little precious to me.

And then what does pole-mounted heater mean?

We didn't know what we find.

You know, you say, all right, well, what's the right word for this?

We debated whether to call them wine casks or barrel casks or wood barrels.

So it's a propane heater.

Those heaters are all regulated by the fire department.

And they have to be approved by zoning.

Right, and I saw that those were not allowed, so this is just a question about the heaters.

That singularly is about

If something's hanging on the railing, it's got to be inside the space.

So there are some places on them all now where people have like the planters you hang on your front porch.

If it's within the public space.

We can clarify that.

I think that's where we're going to clarify.

You try not to write this thing so prescriptive that it's what I'm trying to undo.

Follow our images when we format the guidelines.

And then the catenary lights, which are the hanging lights for people who needed to look that word up, like I did.

It says no covers on the bulbs and on round poles and no holiday lights without permission.

So why do the poles have to be round?

Why no lanterns like the cute little pictures that I included?

Brian Pinkston, Juandiego Wade, Lloyd Snook, Michael Payne, Natalie Oschrin

wrapped on there with duct tape.

So it's more of an appearance.

I don't think it matters which way round it seemed to be what we defaulted to, but that's a very good point.

As far as things on the lights, these are to illuminate the space.

Once people start hanging, you know, butterflies and lanterns and things on them, that's changing that space.

Again, these are spaces that when they're being used, that's fine, but the

You know, 18 hours a day that they aren't, these things that are being essentially stored on the mall.

So it goes to that point of that visual clutter of, you know, if you want to put lights on the tables, great.

If you want to have catenary lights, that's great.

When you say a cover, you mean like a decorative feature?

Yeah, that's really where we came down with that simple bulb lamp.

That's OK.

I think the tricky part there is that there are all sorts of different holidays all throughout the year and so it's really tough to define exact period of time for whatever holiday someone wants to honor.

Sam, I just had a quick question.

I'm trying to figure out how we're going to do because, I mean, I don't agree and disagree with some of the things I don't want.

It seemed like you all agree.

I mean, you all are coming to a consensus.

Okay.

I promise there's just a couple more.

I think that one deserved.

Yeah, okay, great.

I just wanted to make sure that that was just a typo.