City Council Meeting   7/20/2020

All right.

Thank you, Mr. Wilwa.

Yes, ma'am.

Ms.

Thomas, will you take roll, please?

Ms.

Walker?

Yes.

Ms.

Magill?

Yes.

Ms.

All right, thank you.

All right, now I call this meeting to order.

And we'll start with a moment of silence.

All right, Ms.

Ms.

Walker?

Present.

Ms.

Magill?

Here.

Ms.

Here.

All right.

All right.

Ms.

Ms.

Walker?

Yes.

Ms.

Magill?

Yes.

Ms.

Yes.

Next, we have announcements.

I have an announcement separate from those that I know the city manager will be doing later.

The Planning Commission and the PCRB each have one vacancy.

The deadline to apply is July 25th.

The CRB candidates must either be a resident of public housing at the time of their appointment or come from a historically disadvantaged community that has traditionally experienced disparate placing.

You may also want to make sure that

for the public that we will reconsider previous applications.

So I just want to make sure that we clarify that if people have applied before and they're still interested and they fall in those categories that they certainly are encouraged to apply again.

We also want to, across our vacancies for boards and commissions for the third quarter, they have been posted on the city website and those application deadlines for the general applications are September 11th.

So in the short term, we're looking for someone to fill a planning commission and PCRB role.

All right.

And just to remember that both of those positions require interviews.

And could I also add that we had said that we were particularly interested in

I have an announcement, Mayor.

I just wanted to make sure the community knows that we are currently there's a rent and mortgage relief program going on through the Thomas Jefferson planning district.

Every county except for Nelson should be calling their local United Way.

For Charlottesville and Albemarle that's

434-326-0950 is the community resource line.

And this is for people who have lost income due to COVID, who are potentially behind on rent or mortgage starting in April.

It does exclude if you are either on a Section 8 or if you are in public housing, as those can be re-modified based on your income.

You can ask for an emergency recertification.

And also, other places for support are the Alliance for Interfaith Ministry, which manages the Virginia

Okay, are there any other announcements?

I have two quick

Well, one quick and one maybe not so quick.

Dr. Bonds is going to join us just after this announcement for a COVID-19 update.

And a quick reminder that Alexander's 12th annual summer event, Imagination, Creativity, and Possibilities Think Shop,

will occur virtually this year and there will be a virtual video that will be released Thursday, June 23rd on Comcast Channel 14 at 7 p.m.

and YouTube.

So please look out for the Imagination, Creativity, and Possibilities Think Shop.

And there's a flyer and hopefully you will tune in to honor our community members who are doing some excellent, excellent work.

Thank you all and thank you Mayor Walker for having me here tonight to give you an update on the COVID cases here in the Charlottesville area.

I'm going to run through a few numbers and let you know where we are with regards to testing and contact tracing and then I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Overall in the district we've had 1414 cases, 116 of those individuals have been hospitalized and we have had an unfortunate 29 fatalities.

In the Charlottesville area there are 361 cases with 19 hospitalizations and 7 fatalities.

As I reported earlier and in other venues, we continue to see an overrepresentation of cases in communities of color.

17% of our cases are amongst African Americans, 30% in the Hispanic Latino community.

We see similar statistics in the hospitalizations and actually a higher percentage of our hospitalizations are African American, 47%, 16% of our hospitalizations are amongst the Hispanic Latino community.

28% of our fatalities have been African American.

We do continue to have outbreaks in long-term care facilities.

There is currently one that is ongoing right now in the city of Charlottesville with 46 cases.

So that continues to be an issue for our community and actually across the state.

We do have testing available.

To date, there have been nearly 28,000 PCR tests done in our district.

Our current seven-day average of tests is just about 500 tests every seven days.

Our positivity rate varies between seven and eight percent across the district.

Charlottesville is actually a little bit higher, closer to ten percent right now.

The district is very fortunate to have its own testing team that was courtesy of an anonymous donation.

They're out two to three days per week testing about 250 individuals each week.

Additionally, Sentara, Martha Jefferson, and UVA have both graciously provided community testing.

Sintera Martha Jefferson is now doing testing every Thursday evening at Washington Park.

And last Thursday, they ramped up their test numbers to 250 individuals.

All tests were taken, is my understanding.

UVA has completed a number of ad hoc events across the area and will begin regular testing.

My understanding is four days a week in the Charlottesville and urban ring of Albemarle.

Starting I think next week, they did do a testing event at Buford last Saturday where they did just over 200 tests and they will be doing a testing event at Friendship Court this Saturday with the Health Department and we anticipate doing a couple of hundred tests there.

The district has staffed up our case investigators and contact tracers and we are now meeting the metrics set by the state to interview our cases within 24 hours and reach out to greater than 90% of the contacts within 24 hours.

In fact, we were just asked to submit an article so that other districts can use some of the techniques that we've used to both hire and train our case investigators in their efforts.

So kudos to our team.

They've been great and really setting an example.

The state has recently rolled out a new dashboard that's behind the firewall, so it's not a public dashboard, but it does look at a couple of different aspects that I would like to share with the city, and then I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Charlottesville City is considered to have a higher burden of community transmission than many of the cities and localities across the state right now.

The seven-day moving average of cases is 21 per 100,000 individuals, and for the last 14 days, Charlottesville has seen an increasing number of cases in its jurisdiction.

The percent of positivity, as I mentioned earlier, is closer to 10%, and it has been increasing over the last nine days.

We do not see very many cases in healthcare workers, but that's likely due to the relatively small number of healthcare workers that actually live in Charlottesville.

But we do see outbreaks in the community.

We are also just under the state average for our emergency room and urgent care monitoring, looking at symptoms of COVID.

In our district, in the emergency room, about 4% of cases that hit the ED have a COVID-like illness and about 16% in the urgent care.

That's compared to 7% of ED visits in the state and 25% of urgent care visits in the state.

So a lot of numbers.

I think overall there is some concern for the increasing burden that's happening in Charlottesville.

I know that we have seen a number of large community gatherings that are likely contributing to the high rate of transmission in the community.

We need people to remember that it's still safer to stay at home.

It is imperative that when people go out that they stay that six feet of distance apart.

There's more and more evidence to support that this disease is transmitted via aerosols and so wearing your cloth face covering, staying six feet apart and of course good hand hygiene are going to be really critical to keeping the burden down in our community.

I think as we move into the fall and consider what to do with schools and daycares, it is critical that we get that burden down.

Schools are really facing a terrible dilemma right now.

Children need to be in school.

I think we all recognize that, but there's risk associated with kids being in the school at this point in time, and there's certainly risk to the teachers.

I will just say in regards to school we are working closely with all of the school districts in our region to help them with their plans and answer any questions and we will continue to do that through the summer and into the fall.

Dr. Bonds, I had a couple of questions.

First of all, I'm going to ask you to perhaps dispel some rumors that have been floating past my Facebook page.

The first is that despite whatever reports there may be that somehow or another at both UVA and Martha Jefferson that the ICUs are nearing capacity and that we're about to have a big problem.

Well, actually I'm not sure that those are rumors.

The last meeting that I had with UVA and to some degree with Sentara did show that they are having some issues.

I think there's a couple of things at play here.

We are seeing increasing numbers over where we were a month to perhaps six weeks ago.

As people get out, we're going to see more people become positive.

I think the other thing that's playing into this is that we have to be able to discharge people to some location.

And I have got anecdotal evidence that sometimes it's difficult to get people who were in long-term care facilities back to long-term care facilities because they're very worried about bringing disease back into the facility.

And I certainly understand that concern.

So there is a regional task force that meets that has representatives from UVA and Sentara on it on a regular basis and I believe a representative from the city emergency management team.

They have a scorecard.

It does report what the current hospitalization rates are.

I don't think we're at New York City or Arizona at this point in time.

And overall across the state, you can go on the VDH website and there is plenty of access to hospitals statewide.

But what we have seen recently was a huge outbreak in the Tidewater region.

So that's going to fill up all of their hospitals and there is likely going to be some overflow beginning to move towards our area, which will have a knock-on effect in our area.

We do have contact tracers and we have case investigators.

So there are two different entities.

Case investigators talk with the individual who is infected.

And I'm sorry, I don't have the numbers right at my hand.

I will say that we have an adequate number that every case is spoken to or greater than 90% of the cases are reached by phone within 24 hours of us being notified.

Now that may not be within 24 hours of their test.

We are seeing a huge, huge problem across the state with testing right now.

All of the commercial labs have become really backed up.

It's taking on the average of 10, sometimes 14 days to get a test result back.

And that's because those commercial labs like LabCorp and Quest and some of the smaller ones serve other states besides Virginia.

And so they're being flooded with tests from Florida, Texas, Arizona, Southern California, all of those southern states.

And so that has really put a huge stop in how quickly we're getting the results back.

We are very fortunate.

UVA runs a number of our tests in our community because they have high throughput.

But even they've seen some difficulty accessing some supplies for testing.

So we're beginning to see shortages again in some of the reagents and swabs.

And that's going to limit testing.

We're sending all of the tests that we draw out to our state lab.

The turnaround time there is a few days.

So we get to them within 24 hours of being notified, but the actual test might have been done two or three days before that, and sometimes as much as 10 days before that.

And thank you, Dr. Bonds.

I was attempting to say something as soon as you stopped your presentation, but my phone was muted.

But I appreciate you coming on and you sharing the information with the public, and thank you for being available to the community and the requests that we've had over the past few months related to this.

If you could speak more just so the counselors could hear that there may possibly be a need in the future in terms of testing capacity for the health department.

Sure.

So our testing team, um,

does community testing across the district.

So we have to cover all of the areas.

We pre-register everybody that comes through our testing events and we can do up to 72 tests if we do three testing events a week.

And I will say that in the Charlottesville Albemarle area, those often fill up within an hour of opening registration.

So there is a huge need out there to get testing done.

When we work with UVA to go to targeted sites, the test capacity is filled right away.

I didn't hear from Jackie Martin at Sentara how quickly last.

Thursday's event at Washington Park filled up, but in the past they have been at capacity within an hour to an hour and a half and had to turn people away.

There is testing, free testing at CVS in our area.

But I will tell you from personal experience that it takes 10 days to get a test back from the area.

And that's pretty pointless.

If it's taking 10 days to get a test result back, if you haven't been staying home that whole time, you've been out potentially infecting lots of people.

And it's really difficult for us to do any contact tracing 10 days out.

There is a huge need.

I have been told by the state that there is funds available for all health districts to be able to hire a testing team, and for us that would be a second testing team.

Those funds have not been released to us yet, and I don't know when they will be released.

It's a little unclear at this point in time.

Even when those funds are released, it will take us two to three weeks to get a team hired and trained and on board to go.

So really, the soonest that we at the health department could advance testing beyond our three testing events a week will probably be September, realistically, given the delay in getting those funds from the state.

I think Sentara, I have not heard whether or not they'll be able to do testing beyond July.

But they have been just amazing to work with to getting testing in the community for us through July.

And a large number of people have taken advantage of that.

And UVA will now be coming on board, as I said, with their testing sites four days a week.

Well, thank you, counselors.

Are there any other questions?

No?

Okay.

Thank you, Dr. Bonds.

We appreciate your efforts during this time and your concern and care for the community.

Thanks for having me.

All right, next up we have a recognition, the Government Finance Officers Association Certificate of Excellence and Reporting.

Yes, so it is basically the city received the Government Finance Officers Association Award for the fiscal year that ended in 2019.

And basically this award says that we met the requirements to be awarded a GFO certificate of achievement for excellence in finance and financial reporting.

Okay, thank you.

And thank you to the finance team.

So Ms.

Shelton, Ms.

Hammel, Mr. Davison, really appreciate, and Mr. Cullinan.

So really appreciate your hard work and dedication and especially the work that you all have done through the

throughout this pandemic and trying to get us on track for this fiscal year.

So really, again, appreciate your efforts.

Next, we have the Minority Mental Health Awareness Month Proclamation.

And this proclamation was requested by Myra Anderson.

and it reads as follows.

Whereas July has been designated as the National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month in honor of Bebe Moore Campbell, an African American author, journalist who sought to eliminate mental health stigma in the black community.

And whereas historically African Americans have been and continue to be negatively affected by racism, prejudice, bias, discrimination in the public healthcare system.

and whereas it is essential to eliminate racial disparities in mental health by ensuring equity, access to quality care, culturally competent providers and services and supports that respect cultural experiences.

Whereas Black Lives Matter and Black Mental Health Matters too

The effects of racism and racial trauma on mental health is valid and should not be disregarded.

Racism undermines mental health and we must continue the work towards addressing individual, structural and systemic racism in our communities, in our community as it relates to mental health.

whereas organizations such as Brave Souls on Fire and the Central Virginia Clinicians of Color remain fully committed to support and mental health advocacy for African Americans, including recent collaborative efforts to establish a black mental health center.

Now therefore, be it resolved, I, Nikuyah Walker, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville and the Charlottesville City Council, do hereby proclaim July as Minority Mental Health Awareness Month in Charlottesville, Virginia, thereby encouraging citizens to help spread the word through awareness, education, support, advocacy, and commitment to equity.

and we'll make sure that the first, thank you, Myra and the Central Virginia Clinicians of Color for the work that you all are doing and we'll make sure that you all get a copy of the proclamation and appreciate

the service that you all are providing to the community.

One thing I will point out is the second whereas affected by racism, prejudice, bias, and discrimination in the public health care system.

And I think it's just a good point to highlight when you recall the numbers Dr. Bonds just discussed with Black and Hispanic leading

individuals leading the numbers in this community.

And this is not a time for us to think that racism and bias and prejudice and discrimination has been removed from the healthcare system.

So you want to do your very best in ensuring that you don't end up in a space.

I put a post, responded to a post on Facebook last week

with the UVA students having a party.

And my comment was that if it's them or you, buy in for the ventilator.

And I just want to express that.

So the best things that we can do, as usual, to protect ourselves is to make sure that we are taking care of ourselves.

And so, again,

This is the probably most important time of any of our lifetimes to make sure that we are taking the very best care of ourselves so that we don't end up in systems and competing for care in systems that don't necessarily know or have a history of being able to take care of us.

So again, thank you, Myra, for submitting the proclamation.

Next, we have the consent agenda.

Ms.

Minutes.

June 1 closed and regular meetings.

I do want to note there is a scrivener's error on page 22.

I will insert the 5-0 vote for the real estate tax relief ordinance, as well as the following page, remove a colon for the adjournment time.

June 8 closed meeting, June 11 closed meeting, June 15 closed and regular meetings, June 18 special and closed meetings,

June 23rd, closed meeting.

June 25th, closed meeting.

June 30th, work session.

Appropriation, maintenance vehicle insurance reimbursement, $40,706.32, second reading.

Appropriation, 2020 energy and water management program fund, $1,429.47, second reading.

Appropriation, grant award from Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, $242,770.

Second reading.

Appropriation, Bureau of Justice Assistance Coronavirus Emergency Supplemental Funding Program, Fiscal Year 2020.

$80,781, second reading.

Appropriation, Virginia Housing Solutions Program Supplemental COVID-19 Grant Award, $243,276, first of two readings.

Appropriation,

Emergency Food and Shelter Programs, CARES Act Funding, $7,099, first of two readings.

Appropriation, Open Society Foundation, Emma Lazarus Campaign on Cities Grant, $250,000, first of two readings.

Resolution,

tax payment refund to Silver Chair Science and Communications Incorporated, $90,342.49, one reading.

Resolution, establishing the city council policy on military style training and weapon acquisition for the Charlottesville Police Department, one reading.

Resolution, supporting legislation to declare racism a public health crisis in Virginia, one reading.

Okay, thank you, Ms.

Thomas.

If you'd like to comment on the consent agenda and you're in the Zoom webinar, you can click the raise hand icon to get in line.

If you're on via telephone, you can press star nine.

Each person will have three minutes to address council.

And we would like you to please give your place of residence as you start your remarks.

Mayor Walker, first up is Sarah Honing.

Sarah, you're on with city council.

My last name is Hoeing, just to clarify, but I'm speaking specifically with questions about the item with the resolution opposing military-style training.

I know someone else sent an email to counsel pointing out a loophole in the

The resolution that clarifies that it doesn't, while it prohibits military-style training, it leaves the door open for acquisition of military equipment, and the email also requested

sort of a review of that information.

And I don't know if the email has been reviewed or considered by the council, but it is something that outlines that information.

And I wanted to bring it to attention so that it could be addressed with regards to this specific item.

Oh, and also I live in Earliesville, Virginia.

Yes, Mayor Walker.

Next up is Meredith Polson.

Meredith, you're on with council.

Hi, my name is Meredith Polson.

I live in Star Hill.

I think proclaiming July Minority Mental Health Awareness Month is great, but if we don't take on the item proposed by the Seyfield Defund Police Group, then it's just a proclamation.

We're not actually doing anything.

I think that we need to actually take on and seriously consider creating a first responder group to address

the crisis intervention problem that we have in Charlottesville as highlighted by the July 8th event.

And I think we should make this more than just words and actually take some action to help minorities and people who are marginalized in our community.

Thank you.

Mayor Walker, next up is Kate Fraley.

Kate, you're on with city council.

You've got three minutes.

Let me hit the right button.

How about now, Kate?

Yes.

We can.

Oh, good.

So I'm going to speak now instead of in community matters because I support the idea of taking the two resolutions that have to do with the police department out of the consent agenda.

The first one, number 12, about military weapons and military training.

So military weapons come from other places, not just the federal government.

And I believe the police department already owns military-style weapons.

So I would like the resolution to not just say federal, but any purchase of military weapons.

And in addition to that, the current

General Order police policies say in Section 440, Selection and Hiring.

Number 4B procedures, number 5 states, the criteria used to distinguish favorable candidates will include any combination of the following.

And item B is any military service with an honorable discharge.

So that means to me that, so even though the police department does not do military type training, they hire preferentially

people who have already had military training.

So I would like that policy changed so it's not in there or that the resolution says that that should be included.

The resolution as it is is too specific to the federal government.

The second resolution about supporting the legislative black

Black Caucus priorities only mentions one of the priorities.

And I would like it if it also mentioned the priority that the Black Caucus has to

let localities create CRBs with subpoena power and ending qualified immunity and making changes to sovereign immunity.

So I think those two resolutions are a beginning, but they're certainly not enough.

And I think it would be nice if they were rewritten or amended or whatever to give them more

And it would also show how much you all support the Legislative Black Caucus priorities because there are lots of them.

Thank you.

Mayor Walker, we've got three additional hands up.

If you want to speak to council about the consent agenda, you can click the raise hand icon in the Zoom webinar or press star nine on the telephone.

Again, this is for the consent agenda.

Next up is David Swanson.

David, you're on the city council.

Hi, thanks for having me on.

I don't think I need three minutes.

I do think banning military training by anyone for local police is a very good step that should be passed immediately.

I do think banning the acquisition of military weaponry from the US military.

is a

Thank you so much.

pursued and there are many who would be more than willing to help with defining what is a military weapon and those weapons ought to be banned.

I also think getting rid of the hiring preference for those with military training is another

Good step that ought to be taken and I don't think requires any particular research or scholarship.

But I am very encouraged and very grateful and applaud the city council for bringing up this item and taking it on.

And Mr. Wheeler, before you go to the next person, I think it would be good for me to say something about why things end up on the agenda before we have had time to flush them out is because we can't even think

based on the number of requests we get.

So you have people rushing to do this very surface level to appease people.

And clearly, based on some of the comments that we have today, it doesn't work.

And so conversations that we've been having, I thought, since 2017, there is a new push and pull, as if those conversations just started.

And they didn't, one.

And then once someone has an idea, there's no time.

to flush those thoughts and ideas out or to figure out a session, what we have learned is that our mental health doesn't matter to the citizens of Charlottesville a lot of the times because we don't get time to take a break to deal with crisis on a personal level that may affect us.

Maybe just for the next set of speakers who may come and say that these ideas are just surface level ideas, I'm going to say that I agree with you.

There are things that shouldn't be here yet, but there's a

I think for effective work to happen

and that we actually give time to flush out and be very thoughtful about what kind of community we are trying to create.

And that's not happening on every topic.

I think Mr. Blair will speak to the CRB.

But we were really targeting, not that we don't support any of the other items that the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus put in, but there have been requests that we were concerned about related to subpoena power and disciplinary

Um, power with the CRB.

And that is where I'm sure, but he can speak to this, why we didn't list their entire agenda.

And just to clarify, because it came up earlier, there's a separate agenda item specifically in support of the Legislative Black Caucus's legislation around civilian police review boards, including subpoena power.

and just very briefly to Councillor Payne's point that there is a separate agenda item and in terms of that item that's that's not on the consent agenda but to Mayor Walker your point I think there were a couple of councillors who did express based on some emails and other communications about specifically having a resolution about that specific

This is a plank of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus's priorities and that's why it is separated out.

May I speak for one second?

I'm one of the people who brought forward about Mr. Swanson's petition and the ordinance that is currently number 12, the resolution number 12 on the military-style training and weapons acquisition.

This is intended to be a beginning.

It's not.

And this was looking at something that we could make sure we handled now.

But you didn't have anything removed from that petition that you

asked us to place on the agenda, right?

This is exactly what the petition was asking for a month ago.

Yeah.

And this is what I'm just letting people know.

It's like, this is what this is based on.

And we did, we made sure that everything was okay, that we could do that.

We want to take more time and look at more things.

And to what you're trying to explain, it doesn't make any sense because you did what someone requested of you.

And if there needs to be a deeper dive, then that should be the comment, hey, there are some things even I left off person who submitted it and not as if we are trying to not do a full scope.

And that would help us all actually get something done, which is after that comment, because that's the way that I was remembering it, that I wanted to point out that we are not trying to half-ass anything, that there is an attempt here to figure out how

Excuse my, I just realized what happened.

So we're not attempting to do that.

We would like, but this will take time, and part of this I think is exactly what just happened, is a citizen submitted something, there was a counselor who said, okay, I see this, not their area of expertise, this is something that we can get on,

and trying to figure out what that looks like would take much longer than the demands that we are getting that get something on an agenda before any of us, even people who are thinking about it from a community level have time to flush it out.

Next up is Don Gathers.

Don, you're on with city council.

Good evening, and thank you.

I'm hoping everyone's well.

And again, I can't see our rise.

I raised my hand in support of the former speakers.

We've seen the play where we had military weaponry and equipment rolling through our streets, and I don't think that we need to pay for an encore of that.

We certainly don't need the tanks and the armored vehicles.

We certainly don't need the military-style weapons.

And we certainly don't need police or other officers that are militarily trained.

We've seen other communities around the country that have rejected the entrance of the National Guard when that dude in DC wanted to deploy them.

I just don't think that it's a step that we need to be taking here locally, especially considering our past

what for so many of us is a recent past.

Mayor Walker, we have two additional hands at this point.

Next up is Rory Stolzenberger.

Rory, you're on the city council.

Hey, thanks, Brian, and thanks, council.

First of all, let's say I totally hear you guys, and I maybe want to apologize for the aggressive wording in my email there.

I can see how it was not deliberately worded to be toothless.

But at the same time, I think you can make some small steps if you pull this from the consent agenda today to make it slightly more powerful and strong of a resolution.

where the specific things I'm asking are for you guys to instruct the police department to do a review of the weapons and accessories and munitions in its arsenal and to give you council a written justification of why it needs those and for what tech

I totally hear you that this is a surface level thing that's just meant to be a very start to the conversation.

But I think those small changes would make it a much more effective means of starting to create real change.

And I think you guys are all doing a great job.

And I look forward to the upcoming sessions to talk about a more systemic change.

Mayor Walker, next up is Sarah Burke.

Sarah, you're on with city council.

Hi.

I just want to thank you for explaining that, Mayor Walker, sort of the predicament that you all find yourselves in in terms of wanting to address things quickly and using even the same wording that are on petitions that a lot of people are signing to create these resolutions.

And I'm just wondering if there's a way that the public can better understand

through how these resolutions come to play and how they can get some public input prior to the first reading where they're initially passed, just because I think

It sounds like there's just a few concerns that people have, and I share those concerns.

And I recognize that everybody isn't an expert in every single field.

I certainly understand that, and I think everybody's trying to just do the best with limited time and bandwidth.

But I'm wondering if there's a way that the city council could consider

involving the public somehow in resolutions that are this critical so that it doesn't sort of come off as an attack from the public that you all aren't doing it right.

Because I think at least what I'm seeing is you all are trying to respond quickly to a matter that's of pressing concern right now, but that the people also have issues with some of the wording of it and should be able to get those perspectives heard

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

I'll move to approve the consent agenda as presented.

Yes, the consent agenda.

I'll second, and I'm also going to say that

Just because it's not poll tonight doesn't mean we're not going to be working on this and working on stronger.

And we've got a community input coming up on this.

This is just a very, very, very beginning, at least from my perspective.

Well, and I would add basically the same thing.

The resolution number 12 that was given to us was drafted basically word for word from what David Swanston had gotten hundreds of signatures for.

And the question of going to a broader, not a loophole as has been characterized, expression of it is a broader discussion that I think we need to have with, among others, the chief of police.

and I don't think we've done that yet.

Ms.

Mr. Snook?

Ms.

Yes, and one more comment that I did forget.

Resolution item number 11

that it was really interesting for me to find out that even if it's no fault of the cities that we then have to pay interest if a business discovers an error and that they've overpaid us.

And I did ask if there was anything we could do to make sure that in the future that we wouldn't have to pay interest on a business error.

this tax payment refund to Silver Chair Science and Communication.

So I did ask that question and I just think that I was told that there, because of city code and state code, there wasn't anything that we could do there.

There are a lot of nonprofit organizations that are in severe need right now, so maybe that dollars could be donated.

I'm not recommending anything, I'm just saying, you know, making a statement.

Ms.

Magill?

I also vote yes, and I inquired about the same thing.

Not just time around, but another, yeah.

Ms.

Hill?

Mayor Walker, before we move on could I just touch on one thing related to the point you were just making.

I noted with some chagrin that our code provides for 8% interest and I wonder if we were to modify the code for example to say 6% interest which is the judgment rate and is the rate that is used for most other purposes in the state code whether that would be a a better way to proceed and I just throw that out there for Mr. Blair and

Can you guys hear me okay?

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah, that was hilarious, Mayor Walker.

I got a kick out of that.

We actually asked the taxpayer if they would be willing to forego the interest.

to see if they would and they would not.

I just thought I would make you guys aware of that.

And we are happy.

I doubt that.

I doubt that.

I think you're going to have to be consistent.

And it also has to do with the interest rate that we charge people as well.

Okay.

Mr. Blair, it would have to be consistent across the board.

We couldn't have a lower rate for if it was our

Well, I was going to suggest there are a couple of things.

Number one, I'll be happy to look at the interest rate question, both the percentage as well as the consistency of the rate.

As to the

Interest payments on a taxpayer error, that is part of what is called the Uniform Beephole Act.

I believe it's 58.1-3703.1.

I think that's right.

Yeah and that that is a state law that requires this but Mayor Walker to your point that could be added as something to the legislative package to ask our legislative delegation to see if the you know if there could be some ability for localities to

Okay.

Well, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Divers.

All right.

We approve the consent agenda.

Yes.

Thank you Madam Mayor, members of the council, the public.

I have a few items to discuss tonight.

One going back just about a meeting ago we had Mr. Jo Jo Robertson.

We talked essentially about kinship placement and what I was planning to do is have Diane Cucanillo, Director of Social Services give a presentation

on family and children services as a whole, which will encompass the kinship placements.

Also, too, we had at the last meeting Ms.

Carpenter, Nancy Carpenter, talk about policing alternatives.

And as we discussed previously through councilwoman, Vice Mayor Magill, pertaining to a listening session which will take place on August 4th from 4 to 7.

We'll have that listening session will be about policing

and we're going to be listening to the public about their concerns and suggestions as it relates to our police department.

Moving on, and I just wanted to give the public an update.

Beginning this week today, the Commissioner of the Revenues Office and the City Treasurer's Office has reopened on a limited basis for in-person transactions by appointment only.

This is due to social distancing requirements, which limit the number of staff who can be in the building at any given time.

And this is the first step in a phased reopening of City Hall.

and these are by appointments, I mean, I'm sorry, appointments are available by phone and online, www.scholesfield.gov, as I said, .gov and not com anymore.

We've moved to our new web address.

and the phone number I'll give shortly because I'll give both the services for the Commissioner of Revenues as well as the services for the Treasurer's Office and the contact number for each.

I'll get those in a minute, but I just also wanted to share with the public some of the services that the Commissioner of Revenues provides and that is business tax inquiries, relief

trash decals zone parking applications and they can be reached at 434-970-3146 and appointments are available from 9 to 4 Monday through Friday and also too I just wanted to mention the rental relief program for the elderly and disabled the Commissioner of Revenue will also

allow applicants who qualify for the program in 2019 to re-qualify in 2020 without having to go through the customary in-person application process.

If you would like for your application to roll over into 2020 using the same income and rents pay figures and you still live at the same address that you did in 2019,

Please use the same number that gave you a few minutes ago.

I'll just repeat it, 434-970-3160.

And then, I'm almost done.

And then lastly, the Charlottesville Police Department lobby also reopened today.

And numerous services, I'd just like to say, are available online that do not require in-person visits, which includes crime reporting,

records requests and accident reports.

You can also email recordsteam at shawlsflow.gov to request crash reports and records.

And this is important too because I know a gentleman has emailed us and has raised his hand to ask questions as well as make comments is that the taxicab registration will once again be conducted

will once again be conducted in person beginning tomorrow.

The schedule for in-person tax cap registrations is Tuesday through Thursday, and the times is from 7.30 a.m.

to 1.30 p.m.

Thanks, Dr. Richardson.

I just have one comment about reopening that hopefully the public, you all are being patient with staff and understanding that we are in a pandemic that we still don't have all the answers to, and that the top priority is safety of citizens and our staff members.

And so at any point, if we have to change course,

or if your needs are not met immediately, that you understand that staff is doing the best that they can.

I just wanted to make sure that we're not asking staff to sacrifice safety to meet needs, right?

All right, next up we have community matters.

So seven signed up because we have one that's withdrawn.

Yup, and Mayor Walker will compare notes as we go through here to make sure I don't miss somebody.

I did want to point out, to follow up on Dr. Richardson's comment, the August 4th listening session is not yet on the city calendar, but we'll get that up this week and share the information that we've got so the public can start signing up for that virtual meeting.

I just wanted to let you know it's not currently out there on the calendar.

It's trying to be proactive.

Excellent.

Okay.

And if you'd like to speak during Community Matters and you're on the webinar, you can click the raise hand icon to get in line for the available slots.

If you're on via telephone,

You can press star nine to raise your hand.

And if you're watching via a streaming channel and you want to get on the webinar, you can go to Charlottesville.gov slash zoom to register for the event.

Mayor Walker, I heard when Kate Fraley spoke during the consent agenda, she was speaker number one.

I heard her say she was pulling her name off from that list.

Elizabeth, you're on with City Council.

Great.

You've got three minutes.

Sure.

Thank you.

Hello, Councilors.

My name is Elizabeth Stark, and I live on Fairway Avenue in the city.

I'm with Charlottesville DSA and the People's Coalition.

I want to say I have a few things to talk about.

There's a lot going on, as you all know.

But I appreciate the conversation that you started tonight about policing.

And thank you for adding the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus priorities.

to tonight's agenda.

As you know, the priorities include proposed legislation that will let localities create civilian review boards and give those boards subpoena power and the power for final disciplinary authority over cops.

I'd like to see your support of this legislation, and if you as a whole stand behind the VLBC priorities, please write a letter in support of them.

Events on July 9th on the downtown mall where a cop made a subjective choice to arrest an unhoused man in need of medical attention demonstrates the need for police oversight and reform.

as well as the need to invest in our community instead of policing.

When this arrest went awry, the cop used a potentially lethal chokehold on the man who was extremely intoxicated.

This is absolutely unacceptable.

The cop never told the man he was under arrest or exactly what he'd done wrong.

And then the cop's body cam fell off during the height of the interaction.

Incidents like this are why we need an empowered PCRB.

Council can't approve the original ordinance and bylaws right now, and I don't understand the point of waiting to see what happens in the special legislative session.

As we gear up for budget season, I hope you will find ways to move funds from policing to community support.

I understand that some institutions like Region 10 and social services do not have the community's trust.

We need to fix these institutions and fix the police too.

Being unhoused, having alcohol use or alcohol

or Substance Use Disorder, surviving domestic and sexual abuse and having mental health crises are not reasons to interact with cops.

Cops shouldn't have military training or military weapons.

The community asks that you, our elected representatives, take bold action and envision a community beyond policing.

I'd also like to talk quickly about housing in the city.

Last week's general district court docket had 21 eviction cases.

Tomorrow, there are seven eviction cases.

I ask that you do all in your power to prevent both these and future evictions, like perhaps enacting an eviction moratorium, which I think is allowed under CARES legislation.

We need to increase funding and rent relief.

We cannot stand by why folks lose their homes in the middle of a pandemic.

Finally, I know we all understand the need for more housing.

The Flint Hill development is not perfect, but it offers affordable housing that can be built.

It offers more affordable housing than what can be built by right.

So please approve it and continue to prioritize affordable housing.

Thank you for your work.

Mayor Walker, next up is Garrett Trent.

City Council.

My name is Garrett Trent.

I live in the city of Charlottesville.

OK.

Stand by.

Chris Meyer, you're on the city council.

Go ahead.

Good evening, mayor, councilors, and city staff.

I'm a resident at 124 Oaklawn Court in the Frye Springs neighborhood and board member of the Frye Springs Neighborhood Association, and I'm speaking tonight as an individual.

Thank you for the opportunity to address you, and I'd like to start with the development that is being proposed just down the street from me.

I enthusiastically support the proposed Flint Hill development.

It will bring needed housing units and importantly, low-income units to the neighborhood and the city of Charlottesville.

I've participated in the developers community meetings and found them very open to feedback.

I also think it is only fair that other members of the community should have the same opportunity I did to buy their own affordable, newly built house like I did again, sorry, only a couple of years ago in this neighborhood.

I would also like to comment on the need for enforcement of COVID-19 mitigation measures, especially around bars and student parties in order to reduce the chance of an additional rise in the cases of in our community.

I'm particularly concerned about caseloads being high when our city schools need to open.

I'd hate to see the $58 million of city support to the schools, which includes my tax money, be wasted because UVA students feel the need to party like they did only a couple of days ago that we saw.

and Mayor mentioned on, or tweeted about.

Additionally, or a comment in the news, sorry.

Additionally, using the mayor's previous observation on who gets the ventilator, it seems we're gonna have the same challenge with who gets to attend school in person, a UVA student or a child of the city?

Finally, I asked Dr. Richardson at a meeting near future or maybe even today to update the community and council on when we can expect the announcement of a contract to reconfigure the school's, city's middle schools.

The proposal review process was supposed to be finished at the end of March, and I'd hope a contract could have been announced by now.

Our children have already seen their education potential damaged by the COVID-19 classroom absences.

I hate to see this necessary school reconfiguration delayed unnecessarily.

We can answer one of those questions.

In terms of the reconfiguration, there has been agreement between the city and school leadership to wait until September to make the announcement about moving forward.

once we have a better understanding of what our financial outlook looks like based on the effects from the pandemic could have on it.

So that's when we will have another update about the school's reconfiguration.

Everyone is committed to it.

I'm one of the people that's on that CIP committee for the schools with Counselor Hill.

and two of the school board members, I'm trying to remember, but Jennifer McKeever and Lisa Torres, they are also members on that board along with staff from both CCS and the city.

Mayor Walker, I believe our next speaker who signed up in advance has withdrawn.

So I will go to Keisha Washington.

Great.

Good evening City Council.

My name is Keisha Washington.

I live on Smith Street.

I'm a little nervous but I wanted to speak from the heart.

I recently became a graduate of the Habitat program and now I am working on becoming a first-time homeowner.

and I just want to express that as a single mom one of my greatest fears was not being able to provide a place that I can say is mine and for my child to always be able to come back to.

And the year I've spent working with Habitat I've been able to you know learn so much from them but also have my hope restored

with that being a possibility and now becoming a reality.

And so I really hope and pray that you all will consider whatever is needed for the Flint Hill project so that other people can have this experience that I've had.

I'm truly humbled and blessed to be able to give this to my child and

I'm just glad that she's not nowhere near graduating from high school.

So she'll be able to say that she remembered decorating her room a certain way or writing on her wall, her growth chart or something like that, things that we've been reluctant to do as renters.

And so that's all I had to say.

Mayor Walker, next up was Myra Anderson, but I do not see her on the webinar at this moment.

Next up is Jeanette Abenedar,

Jeanette, you're on the city council.

Hello, go ahead.

Okay, thank you.

My name is Jeanette Abenator.

I live on Brandywine, and I'm the executive director of Cultivate Charlottesville.

I'm here with Chantelle Bingham, the program director for the Food Justice Network, to share with you our mid-year report for the second year of our joint food equity initiative with the city council.

And Jeanette, Chantelle will be able to speak if you wanna speak because she's on the wait list and we've had two people drop out.

She's not there, all right.

Yes, I'm sorry about that.

So really quickly, we just wanted to report on the food equity initiative in the same fashion that we did last year.

Jeanette and I have already sent you guys the report and you'll notice already that it's twice as long as it was last year.

And that's mostly because of us being able to just pivot and respond to COVID for our community.

We have been initially outlining the food equity initiatives proposal, so we just wanted to be able to also demonstrate that, hey, we're trying to keep up as best we can with what we've outlayed with the city in that proposal and then also show you all what we're doing to meet our community's needs.

So a lot of this advancing equitable outcomes during that emergency response period, it has really been a challenge.

Our community was able to meet through the foundational support of the Food Equity Initiative and the city partnerships and funding.

And we are so grateful for you all for, you know, entrusting us with this initiative and continuing to support your city departments as they engage with a lot of the nonprofit partners in our

In spite of the disruptions of our environment, our work environment due to COVID, even though we weren't able to gather as community members in person, we just wanted to share some highlights from that food equity initiative.

Some of the first ones, and this doesn't encompass everything that we've done, but what we've been able to do is leverage some solid partnerships between local food system nonprofits

The city department's community members and donors who respond and rapidly pivot efforts to address emergency food and community needs due to COVID.

and fill significant gaps.

Dr. Vines was on earlier.

Some of this has specifically looked like the City Department of Human Services, Office of Economic Development, Office of Human Rights, Thomas Jefferson Health District and Charlottesville safety schools supporting this collaborative effort around emergency food security.

We've also been able to strengthen the local government's ability to respond and support low-income communities of color during the pandemic.

by creating systems and processes that support vulnerable community members' ability to safely shelter in place and recover from COVID.

And just a quick example of this, Mayor Walker early on had pulled together a community testing initiative that started off at Crescent Halls in partnership with Santerra Martha Jefferson.

and really having the idea to not only do COVID testing, but then also saying, what if folks do come up with COVID positive?

How are we gonna help them to really recover and be able to shelter in place?

And so being able to tap into that and giving support for the Food Justice Network to start a COVID wraparound services, which we've now been able to expand to the other community testing events

that Dr. Bonds has talked about.

And we are now looking at supporting the Department of Human Services and Thomas Jefferson Health District and rolling that over.

So that's been one really clear thing.

A couple other things that I don't want to waste too much time on, because this is public comment, so we apologize.

But we've been able to heighten the conversation and also ensure that resident voice is represented in the city comprehensive plan process, which is still going on.

It's been really hard to engage community members, specifically low wealth communities of color in the comprehensive plan process.

Cultivate Charlottesville,

through our program has actually supported the consultant team with administering surveys in that community survey they wanted to do.

We've done that through UACC's Market Days, for example.

And then we've also been able to develop a community advocates program in partnership with the World Central Kitchen efforts and all those restaurant, great meal feeding efforts that are going on in the community

to ensure that resident voices are really directing where that food is going.

So that's just a high level overview and I hope that you guys are able to go through that eight page report for this year.

We'll always be able to keep in contact with us and send us any questions if you have any.

And then we'll be back hopefully on the agenda to do an official report towards the end of the year or if you guys are wanting

you know, more of an official report out before then.

We're happy to do that as well.

So thank you so much for your work.

Thank you.

Mayor Walker, I've got Myra Anderson back.

Myra, can you hear us?

Yes.

Great.

We can.

You're on the city council.

I'm coming before you this evening representing Brave Souls on Fire and I'm here to speak about mental health and specifically black mental health.

And I'm speaking on this because as a black mental health community we have been plagued by trauma.

We've been traumatized and traumatized and re-traumatized and we are tired of it.

We've been traumatized by people sworn to serve and protect.

We've been traumatized by leadership.

We've been traumatized by those we seek help from who end up doing more harm than good.

We've been traumatized on all corners.

Yet we have no place, no safe place to unpack this trauma.

We are the only group that has to battle a diagnosis while simultaneously battling a structural

and

Now, when we talk about defunding the police and reallocating those dollars to mental health, I'm here for it.

But as a black mental health advocate, I want you to know it also scares me.

And what scares me the most is the notion of transferring dollars to the public mental health system, that would be Region 10, that has just as much systemic bias issues as law enforcement.

Now, I could elaborate on that, but I only have three minutes.

So let me say this, redirecting any funding to a mobile crime

Regent Hinn is a rotten idea, and it's rotten to the core.

And I say that as someone who was a member of the Regent Hinn Board of Directors for two years.

I say that as someone who was employed at Regent Hinn for two years.

I say that as someone who chaired the Peer Advocacy Council at Regent Hinn.

and I say that as someone who's received services from region 10 and personally felt the pain of being discriminated and retaliated against in that system.

These findings were upheld by a state human rights committee in 2017.

And lastly, I say that as someone in all of those capacities aforementioned witnessed many, many, many times when a person's behavior was exaggerated, misinterpreted, or misrepresented based on their black skin.

So as you consider defunding the police, my message to you is to fund diversity and crisis responders.

Fund racial awareness.

Fund cultural competency.

Fund compassion.

Fund empathy.

Fund dignity.

And please make sure that any conversation you have about looking at a different model, you reserve a few seats at the table for those who have been most affected.

and I was going to move on to the next speaker.

Okay.

Next up is Jeanette Murphy.

Jeanette, you're on the city council.

Hi.

Yes.

Jeanette Murphy, 109 Robinson Woods.

All right.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Louisa Candelario.

I live in the city.

I'm 1406 Sunrise Park Lane.

I live at, I'm just speaking today, that's a little nerve-wracking.

I'm speaking to you guys today just to tell you to say yes to Flint Hill.

The Flint Hill development has partnered with Habitat and agreed to

16 homes for Habitat homeowners.

In 2012, I became a Habitat homeowner at the Sunrise Park community.

There's just so many positive things that I can say about being a homeowner.

My children have been able to feel secure as they've been growing up in my home.

I've been able to have a sense of

I'm sorry, I'm nervous.

So I've been able to get myself together with bettering my credit score, having better security for myself so that I can pursue better employment for myself.

Having a home that I can pass down to my children is just something that I just can't even describe in words.

My parents came to the United States in the 60s as immigrants from the Dominican Republic.

And just having them visit me in my home is just

Prime example of the American dream that they came here and sought coming here for.

So I just say for you guys to think about considering saying yes to Flint Hill because there will be 16 homes that will be dedicated to Habitat homeowners.

I just feel like Habitat is the best thing that has ever happened to us.

I just want others to experience it and see how it feels to be able to claim something as your own and to be able to grow and to not have to depend on having like a landlord or something like that to be able to have just pride in having something to pass down to your children and having something that you can value for yourself and that you can take part in establishing and building.

In the three years that I was with Habitat,

I helped partner with doing volunteer work at the Patton Street Homes, at the Sunrise Homes,

I can't remember the other one, but just putting in a lot of work and being able to lift up a hammer and know that I can do something that I never thought I'd be able to do is just something that I wish that other families could have.

So please consider saying yes to those 16 homes at Flint Hill.

Thank you so much.

And sorry for all the stuttering.

We are fine.

Mayor Walker, that was our sixth speaker.

We have eight hands raised right now, including one of the people that was on the waiting list.

Yes, I can.

Good evening, Mayor Walker, Council and citizens.

Again, my name is Michelle Nelson and I am not a current resident

of Charlottesville and actually live in the Fairfax Northern Virginia area.

I was raised in the West Haven Hardy Drive community in the late 70s and 80s before leaving for college.

I spent the last 30 years working in government at the local, state, and federal levels, including at the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development, the City of Richmond Department of Economic Development, and the U.S.

Department of Treasury, all of those organizations working in community economic development programs.

I have extensive professional experience in managing government programs, processes, regulations, etc.

and have a very high level of respect for public input processes and inclusive public stakeholder engagement.

The specific issue I decided to raise to council this evening is related to the current and planned future use of the city-owned property at 708 Page Street in the 10th and Page community.

The property is currently occupied by a nonprofit organization that provides academic support and gateway social services to the West Haven and 10th and Page communities.

The organization also received city funding support to offset staff salaries as well as no-cost use of the city-owned building during its service to the community.

In late 2019, I was asked to serve on the board and have spent the past several months trying to understand the organization's actual service level to the community and benefits.

The organization's director proposed a personal opinion to the board that continued use of the city-owned property

would be better suited for one low to moderate income family, therefore eliminating the community's use of public building for academic and social support.

After board approval, an inquiry was made to the City Department Human Services exploring a potential city building donation to the nonprofit organization.

I opposed and advised against this motion on several occasions due to the lack of

a fully functioning, publicly owned community facility for the children in the service area to walk to, as well as a major omission of public need and input.

I also do not believe it is appropriate for a nonprofit organization to propose a major reduction in community access to a city-funded facility.

If the council also is not specifically aware, the nearby West Haven Recreation Community Center is not fully functional nor a safe place for regular

I see this non-profit organization's full proposal as an example of there not being a respectful consideration of the community's current and long-term needs and allowing community residents to be the voice and leaders in any major

My closing comment for council, the council directly represents a 10th page community and or executive department administration as there needs to be.

More oversight of partner organizations to serve the West Haven community to ensure that city funded program services and facilities remain dedicated to serving the community's needs and ensure that there's no reduction in facility access unless an extensive city managed needs assessment of every single resident is performed.

Reduction of services need to be initiated either by the community as a whole or through a carefully managed and very public input process.

Thank you.

Ms.

Thomas, could you just make sure that we have Ms.

Nelson's contact information?

I would like to just talk to her more about her concerns.

So I'm not aware of anything at this moment, so I just would like to know more of

Okay.

So we'll call on folks in the order in which you raised your hands.

And first up is Tanisha Hudson.

Tanisha, you're on the City Council.

So, I mean, just while we in the market of calling stuff out tonight, like I said months ago, I think y'all taking stuff way too personal downtown.

You kind of proved it a little bit tonight.

So while we're in the market or calling people out, I'm just going to call out this little situation that happened to me on May 19 on how I wasn't able to speak.

at a public meeting.

And not only was my First Amendment right violated at the 360 meeting, but y'all still nobody down there.

This go for all of y'all.

So don't point fingers at who responsible for who based on who control who.

Because one minute y'all want to be the boss, then the next minute y'all want to put the problem on somebody else.

So one, the video is still online.

John Blair, we had a meeting.

Meet you, the insurance person, and Mr. Milner.

We had a meeting.

The video's still online.

That one little part.

Y'all said y'all was gonna take it down.

I said I didn't want your apology, but the video's still there.

While we're saying that people are doing stuff right because they listen to other people in the community, y'all all do stuff.

for who you want to do it for.

And it's showing.

It's starting to show.

So two months ago, the whole damn world thought I was crazy calling out this stuff, right?

Now y'all really starting to show everything that I'm calling out.

It's all personal.

Y'all do what y'all want to do for who y'all want to do it for.

You push whatever agendas you want to push.

You pay whoever they favor back whenever you want to pay them that favor back.

Y'all either going to be straight,

with the work y'all doing or y'all not going to be straight with the work y'all doing.

And while we talk about defunding the police and all of this extra stuff, I agree with Myra, until you have a real plan in place, y'all shouldn't even be pushing those agendas because you're not even talking to the people that's most affected by the police.

Number one, most of the people that's pushing these agendas and narratives, they don't come from the environment where they had to deal with any type of police trauma to begin with.

And while we having discussions about 2017 and what happened after the KKK rally or August the 12th Unite the Right rally, let's talk about how y'all white people still taking up for one another.

Let's talk about that.

Let's talk about the racist stuff that Brown, Will, and Heather Hill did that day on the 360 show.

Let's point that out.

Let's let the world hear that.

And since you want to do a public apology, won't you publicly roll that tape back and let the world know what he said to me that day?

and let the world know how y'all plan to deal with that.

Because y'all really playing with me at the end of the day.

I don't know why y'all keep taking this thing for a joke.

Like, it's not that serious.

It's definitely that serious that you violated a black lady's rights in the middle of a damn race war.

And y'all thinking that it's okay, and I'm not done, and I know my time.

I've been letting Chantel talk for a long time.

Everything is personal with y'all down there.

Everything.

Everything is personal.

You don't want to answer the phone when somebody calls you about real shit that's happening in the neighborhood.

You don't return phone calls back.

You barely want an email.

You only going to email back when somebody else is tagged in the email because you don't want to look stupid like you're not responding back.

Like, yo, this shit way too personal.

And I ain't never took—I mean, I don't understand.

Like, I don't care if y'all don't like me.

I don't gotta like y'all either.

But at the end of the day, if your goal is the same to make this community better, if we're all on the same page to make Charlottesville better, then put your personal feelings to the side and do your job.

Thank you.

Because y'all won't be there much longer if you don't do your job.

Thank you.

You didn't touch Chantelle off.

Have a good evening.

Did you touch Chantelle off?

Thank you, Mayor Walker.

Next up is Robin Hoffman.

Robin, can you hear us?

Robin Hoffman?

All right, we'll come back to her.

How about Josh Karp?

Josh, can you hear us?

Yes, go ahead.

Well, thanks for the time.

Good evening, Mayor Walker, Vice Mayor Magill, and Council.

I wanted to apologize in advance.

I want to talk to you about housing and racism, and I, you can't see, I'm a white guy, so I'm not the most qualified, but I've been doing some reading, and I want to give it a shot.

I'm talking about Flint Hill.

So the events of the last few months have forced many of us to struggle with the legacy of racism that many of us have ignored for a long time.

There's a recent article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch by Delegate Ibrahim Samira, and he struggles with the issue there as well.

And I wanted to bring some of this conclusion to your attention because I think they're relevant to us as well.

Delegate Samira asks, what can I do to be an effective anti-racist?

This is a complicated question about undoing centuries of damage, but one of the answers to the question is to recognize exclusionary zoning as one of the weapons in the arsenal of white supremacy.

Racial covenants and redlining have been illegal for decades now, but neighborhoods have still been able to keep families of color and low-income families out through exclusionary zoning.

when neighborhoods ban multifamily dwellings in small lots and set high parking requirements that keep housing prices high.

And since, as of 2016, the typical white family had almost ten times the wealth of the typical black family in this country, expensive housing keeps neighborhoods white.

These policies hurt families of color the most, but they also contribute to an affordable housing crisis that impacts low income and increasingly middle income white families as well.

So tonight you have an opportunity to undo a small part of this damage.

You can allow smaller and more affordable homes to get built in a neighborhood that normally only allows expensive single-family homes.

I think new homes around Flint Hill go for upwards of half a million dollars these days.

At least 15% of these homes, I think I heard 30 units will be affordable to families making as low as a quarter of the AMI, which is way better than most products that we see.

The families who would live in these homes would otherwise have a hard time paying the rent here as it gets higher every year.

And under this proposal, these families would actually be able to own a home in a nice neighborhood, people with incomes who ordinarily wouldn't even be able to consider buying a home.

I think, I've lived here about eight years now, and I think Charlottesville is a welcoming community.

And I think that most people who live here would support this if they had the time to be at tonight's meeting.

But I know you've gotten comments against it.

I know you'll hear from residents who don't want their property values to decrease, who don't want to wait in traffic.

Those concerns don't appear to be true.

There's research from UVA professors that shows that Habitat projects actually increase property values in homes near their projects.

But even if it were true, for generations now, we've privileged the property values of wealthy, mostly white families over everyone else's right to affordable housing.

So tonight, I hope you'll take a small step in the right direction.

I hope you acknowledge that families of color and low-income families have a right to live in our community that's more important than property values or traffic.

So please support the Flint Hill PUD and more products like it in the future.

Thank you.

And I know we're going to have a lot of comment about

Flint Hill, but I just want to say, since it keeps coming up, you know, I'm going to wait.

Mayor Walker, I'm going to try Robin Hoffman again.

Robin, I see you have two sessions on the webinar.

I'll try this one first.

Can you hear us?

Looks like you just unmuted your microphone.

Go ahead, Robin.

Okay, I'm going to try her other session.

Oh, thank you so much.

First of all, I want to say you guys are amazing.

Collectively, the communication, 360, and I've been bragging about all of you, the city having this unbelievable

Way of communicating.

You can get on every single planning meeting.

You can talk to everybody.

It's wonderful.

I've been volunteering for testing.

I can't actually, even though I'm a registered nurse, and I'm a certified school nurse, I can't really test anybody because I'm 64.

And anyway, never mind.

But what I want to say is I've been on a lot of webinars trying to figure out what I can do.

So I've been on the National Education

Union, which is really cool because this is a right-to-work state.

What I want to say quickly is they need really leadership from the health department.

They're still confused.

Everybody's confused.

And the Trump supporters are not wearing masks because Trump – that sort of signals

that they are Trump supporters.

It's so messed up how foolish this is.

But I think we need the health departments from every district in Virginia to go to the educators and say that, you know,

The schools are not ready for kids and this virus, you'd have to have a sterile environment, you'd have to have a clinic, you'd have to have a hypobaric chamber because it's just horrible.

and so I just wanted to know if we could do that leadership type of thing with either signage I mean there's plenty of places people are now getting together they think this is still stage three or this is now stage three instead of stage two I mean they're very confused so I'm thinking like signage and I'm thinking that we can start saying you know you cannot have so many people in the park or you cannot have so many people

on the trail at a certain distance and you must wear a mask, period.

And then I thought I didn't want policing because police aren't really prepared to be like social workers.

But people are very traumatized, they're very scared.

And so I just thought if we could sort of

You know, like those street directionals, when they're going to close a street or something, maybe have like a neon thing going on that says, look, we are in stage two, and you need to wear your mask all the time.

It's the only way we're going to be safe, and things like that.

I hope I made sense.

OK, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Mayor Walker, next up is Peter Krebs.

Peter, you're on the City Council.

Good evening, Councilor.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Great.

Thank you.

I'll be quick.

I just wanted to talk about SmartScale just a little bit.

I enthusiastically support three of the SmartScale projects, the Ridge Street, the West Main, and the Emmett Street projects are great.

They interface with work that's already

being done and build on earlier efforts.

They're the result of lots and lots of community conversations, and they're part of a story that's been going on in a positive direction for a while.

I'm not so enthusiastic about the Preston Grady project, and I would recommend that you pull that one and allow the other three to go forward.

The intersection at Preston Grady is one I hear about all the time.

No doubt there are problems with that intersection.

But the problems are larger than just the intersection.

Preston itself has real issues, and those issues go back decades and decades.

And it's going to take some time to unpack those.

And while I urge that

to at some point be attention paid to this Preston Grady intersection.

Now's not the time for it.

Let's take a step back, take a more holistic look at Preston and the neighborhood and do this project later when it's more ready.

Mayor Walker, next up is Katrina Cooper.

Yes, sir.

Go ahead.

All right.

My name is Katrina Cooper.

I am a public housing resident.

I live over on Riverside.

calling in today to see if something can be done.

Over the weekend, I believe it was Saturday, it was a couple shootings in the public housing, one of the public housing neighborhoods over at South First Street.

And it was less, it was two less than 24 hours.

And the lead,

both of them came close to bullets entering people's apartments.

And I know both of them, one child almost got hit and one, another teenager almost got hit and another one.

And my concern is that I was out there and I was talking to police officers and they was telling me that they was told that

They don't need to be in the community.

They're all police or whatever would not understand that.

But at this time, I ask for you all help to bring the police more into these communities because we do have Millennium and I think they're on top of their job.

But I come to you all

and asked if something can be done because bullets don't have no names on it.

And I think that we do need police patrolling the areas more because things like this shouldn't be happening because we should feel safe in where we live at.

And that's my main concern.

And I just hope y'all could help with that.

I couldn't press unmute.

And Miss Cooper, thank you for coming on and sharing.

I think I just want to say two things, and this is a conversation that we are having.

I'll say that that's not one of the two things that I wanted to say, so I guess I have three.

I think it's unfortunate that if you were told by an officer that

of them not being wanted in the community.

I think there's definitely conversations that are happening.

This is so, so tricky.

I don't even know how to get my thoughts out.

What else to share what I have said.

What I have hoped that we would be able to do since I've been on council is that the public housing areas, low income neighborhoods, like individuals who live in those neighborhoods would not be policed any differently than someone who lives in Park Street.

the Fries Springs neighborhood as people were just talking about.

So those have been my comments.

Not that the police stay out, but that this over-policing that has been happening forever,

Any story that I've ever heard and anything that I can recall from being a citizen of this community, that's been my ask.

And I hope that it's something, as we have, it's sort of, and I think what I'll leave this with is the conversation that I had at the beginning, where there have been a lot of different requests coming in from individuals.

that we start having these conversations in the community and by people who are affected.

As Ms.

Hudson just pointed out, there are people who are living in this day to day and what are their thoughts.

I think there can be a world in our near future where we are able to

monitor our own behaviors and that we're not asking for outside intervention.

And every conversation that I'm having, it's that.

And how does the city respond to the oppressive conditions that have been created by the government, by some of the other players with power in this community?

And I hope that it just doesn't result back into the conversation around that ends up with us over-policing neighborhoods, but yet ensuring that people are safe and their needs are met, and mental health issues, that we have spaces for people to go to get their needs met.

That their crisis isn't played out in some of the ways that we may be seeing and there are a lot more

You know, there's just so much to this issue and so much that we've been discussing over months.

But kids deserve to live in spaces and not have to deal with shootings.

And I think all of us would agree on that.

It's how do we respond and how do we assist community members at every level so that we are having different outcomes and that we're not

I would just echo that and echo the mayor's remarks in terms of thank you for coming forward and this is a major concern for myself and I think all of council and to echo what Mayor Walker said I mean this should be as much of a concern for us as a council and communities if we had this kind of shooting in north downtown or any other area in terms of the safety of children and in the fact that this

could have been a significant tragedy if inches had been a little bit different.

And I think it highlights for myself and I hope for the community the complexity and the depth and the nuance of these conversations and that there are not simplistic answers.

And I think it's critical that we continue to grapple with it.

And when you're talking about how do you create healthy communities and what does the city, the federal and state government, what part do they play in how people express their pain, right?

And I don't want to conflate the issues to where we start having this, oh, we had an incident or a couple of incidents and then this whatever from defund, abolish to reform.

conversation starts being, the foundation of that conversation starts out with what is occurring in the community.

And that's one of my fears, is that that could happen.

It could become, oh, this incident occurred, so now it means that we don't need to work on changing the system, and that is not what this, that's not what it should mean, and it's not what it means.

and I just hope it doesn't become that.

We have work to do and we have known that and as I explained to Dr. Richardson, often we don't really have time.

When we are saying that we can be slow about, and not that anybody has said,

be slow about it, but there's a sense of urgency that requires funding and it requires proper funding.

And we have to be so clear about what that means.

I worked on a case with a very close friend of mine with this, you know, also a DSS, where there was a five-year period that this person worked on

trying to get our kid back.

Like, if you talk about defunding police and sending money to that individual as a part of that conversation, she's going to talk to you about her pain, about being mistreated, about being discriminated against, about the racism of the system.

And so we have to look

Be very clear about what we're asking for and what are actual solutions to the problem.

And we also have to make sure because if you study history, this has happened a lot where an incident happens and then whatever is supposed to be the common goal is not worked on any longer because of an incident happening.

Mayor Walker, our next speaker is Rosea Parker.

She'll be speaker number 13.

Yes, we can hear you.

Go ahead.

Good afternoon.

I'm just having a couple of questions.

I still would like to know what is the chief's definition of decoupling and triangulation

that also goes with the de-escalation training.

What is it that she would like to see with her police officers?

If we as a community and if we had an involved chief that was involved in the community,

It would be better conversation and we could have a better outcome as into what it is that we as a low income people would like to see the police do as far as police in our community, as well as policing our own community.

Also, I would like to know what is the MOU with the police and housing?

because also not only with the situation as Ms.

Cooper's asking for more policing, where we really don't need more policing, we need housing to do a better job.

in the process of how we're dealing with millennium and the police and the rights of the respective of the residents.

I feel if we all was on one accord that it could properly be done better.

because last week it was two incidents that took place.

One was we had some white officers over here.

It was two white officers and a black officer.

One black officer was dealing with the residents.

The other white officers were dealing with something else at the other end of the

Westhaven, where a lady had asked the officers, do you see this gentleman?

It was a white man that was riding up through the middle of where we live at in the house, not on the roadway, but in the grass.

He came directly off of Run Street, directly up into the apartment space.

And the police never said anything to him, but told him to move off the grass.

They said that this gentleman

A lot of residents felt threatened because they didn't know who this white man was.

He was laughing like it was a joke.

And we've been having different folks come over here with this racism situation that we have.

We still have these people that are still out for blood when it comes to us low-income black folks.

also I would like to say about disbarment the only reason things are being done with disbarment is because of what's going on on South First Street but housing needs to have

a

Company comes, you're supposed to be with your people.

Say, for instance, your people might have went to the trash can.

You're standing there with the baby.

All of a sudden, the police walks up on you.

They don't see the person that lives there because they went to the trash can.

All of a sudden, you're barred.

I feel that's dead wrong.

But like I said, if housing was to actually take responsibilities for their actions, where they're not properly doing the things that they need to do as far as housing, as far as making sure that we are protected and that we are safe,

It's not all about the police doing what they need to do.

It's about housing taking responsibility.

And the city are pushing for them to be responsible for their actions because y'all are providing money to them for redevelopment.

Thank you, Ms.

Parker.

Okay.

yes and so I have some notes and I know that time was a little bit off but I couldn't get my phone to press the to get to the 30 seconds so I know she probably went a little bit over I just want to acknowledge acknowledge that the

In terms of the disbarments, we just started having that conversation, too.

That is also, I'm sure, one of the points that Ms.

Hudson was making when she was speaking earlier.

And I did speak with a couple of people last week who were concerned about

being barred off the property.

And it is a conversation, and I'm just saying this more as a housing commissioner versus a counselor, it is a discussion that we know that we need to have and that I've sent a request for us to have soon.

Because again, it's one of those

areas where I want to make sure that we are serving people the best that we can and that we are, I say it all the time, but that we're giving people grace and ensuring that they, you know, that it's not a, you made a mistake and you can't come here forever or whatever that looks like.

Mayor Walker, our next speaker joins us via telephone.

When you join the call, please tell us your name and give us your place of residence.

You've got three minutes.

Can you hear us?

All right.

I'm going to lower their hand and they can raise it again if they change their mind.

Next up is Don Gathers.

Don, you're on the city council.

You've got three minutes.

Good evening again, councillors.

I won't belabor the point of the military equipment or the defund the police.

That's a conversation that will be ongoing.

I do need the question, as a community, we'll begin the discussion about the statues and the monuments.

And also, I know that you don't have any real direction or directive over the schools, but I posted something a while back that I find it extremely ironic that we are having discussions about opening schools

via Zoom meetings because it's not safe for people to come together to do that in person.

But we are talking about opening schools to bring our students and our children back into those same buildings that we don't feel it's safe enough to go in and host a meeting.

Just something that needs to be thought about.

And as we move forward, I hope that we will continue to watch the numbers very closely.

The fear is, at least my fear is that

The numbers will spike again, so before we move into any other phases going forward, I want us to take a serious and real look at the numbers as to where we are as a community.

We really understand the drastic economic impact, but we really can't place money over mortality.

Mayor Walker, the telephone participant is trying again.

My name is Vazina Howard and I'm a resident of Charlottesville, Anderson Street.

I'm also the president of Neighborhood Association for 10th and Page.

Go ahead.

Yes.

Yes, Ms.

And I come to you tonight virtually to publicly state my opposition to the proposed plans and ideas for changing the flow of traffic at the Preston Avenue intersection.

I believe that rerouting the traffic to Grady Avenue is an era with which a high volume of traffic will create additional congestion issues for residents on the adjacent side of the street.

Along with other residents in the neighborhood have circulated a petition which we had almost 300 signatures with everyone was opposing the change.

We would have had more signatures if we had more time, but we were trying to get it done within a week's period of time for your meeting, the meeting they had on the 30th of June.

And I believe it's important, and more than ever, those who are in positions of power should be listening to

residents who have long lived in this neighborhood.

We already deal with a lot of things that's going on, but this change is too drastic to really happen right now.

Maybe it's something they can consider later on down the road, but not at this point.

I urge you to hear our concerns and encourage the Planning Commission to do the same.

We believe that the intersection would be safe for bikers and pedestrians, but we do not want the particular change to happen.

And also, if you would take the consideration of the neighborhood and more community input on this situation, a better proposal for the plan would be necessary.

And I hope you all take this in consideration.

Thank you, Ms.

Mayor Walker, our 16th speaker is Joy Johnson.

Joy, you're on the City Council.

Um, so my name is Joy Johnson, resided able to a hard drive.

And I was just calling in to support what Ms.

Katrina Cooper brought up.

I just want to clarify one thing is that the South First Street neighborhood have been complaining all year about weekend shooting.

So this wasn't just an isolated issue.

It's just an escalating issue.

that has just happened to the point where the shootings now is going through children's bedrooms or whatever.

On the call of South First Street, there was some residents, if you could just hear how some of the mothers were explaining

how they had to retrieve their kids from the bedroom and stuff like that.

It was very heart wrenching.

So I do hope that, and I know that there is, you know, I hear what Mary Nakai Walker is saying, and I do agree.

It's not always, you know, police cannot solve people's behavior, but this behavior has been going on

through the winter, and now it's just escalated.

You have one lady explaining how the bullet came through her son's bedroom, and it was just God that saved that little boy from not getting shot.

And so I just want to say it's not an isolated issue.

This is something that that particular community has been saying.

for ever since before Christmas, that there is shooting and gambling going on in that neighborhood, and they would like something to be done about it.

So I'm just here supporting Ms.

Cooper, but just want to make it

clear to the community who is listening and to you all that this wasn't just a weekend isolated incident.

This is random shooting that has been going on.

It just has escalated.

Thank you.

Ms.

Johnson?

All right, so that's the last, first community matters.

Just briefly, it came up in the, I think some in the community matters and certainly in the community matters on the consent agenda.

I just want to reiterate what others have said in terms of

The issue of warrior training as well as military equipment for the police department.

In some ways, I would have wanted to pull it out to discuss further, but then I also recognize we have 27 agenda items, and I don't know if that conversation would have been constructive and actually got us anywhere different tonight.

But I just want to reiterate that all of us on council are committed to continuing that conversation at our listening session in August, and that the work we are doing as a council to

Strengthen that and take it further and just reiterate that what was passed tonight in the consent agenda is not, oh, we did that, now we're done with it.

Because I know we've just got so much feedback on it.

Any other comments?

All right.

So we're going to break, and we'll be backing up.

Um, try to be mindful.

Um, I will.

And then there's speakers that are coming.

Um, nevermind.

We packed this agenda.

call on you as we get to your agenda items.

Thank you for being with us tonight and for your patience.

And we've got one participant who's raised their hand and they've also sent me an email.

So I'm going to respond to you via email.

And I'm going to lower all the hands right now.

We had a member in the audience who was asking about the next opportunity to provide feedback from the public on general matters.

That'll be at the end of the meeting.

Mayor Walker on this first item just to give you an update we're gonna call on Jack Dawson okay

So I call this meeting back to order.

Next up, we have the SmartScale grant application approval for the West Main Street streetscape phase three, the Red Street multimodal improvements, the Preston Avenue and Grady Avenue intersection improvements, and the Emmett Street multimodal phase two.

Hello, my name is Jack Dawson.

I'm the City Engineer in the Public Works Engineering Division.

I am presenting the SmartScale Resolution of Support.

We're asking for a resolution for the SmartScale Round 4 transportation grant funding application.

This includes a total of four projects that are being submitted for this grant.

All the projects here are competing for VDOT's district grants program against projects from all other localities within the Culpeper district for a total pool of approximately 20 million dollars.

Some projects may also qualify under the high priority projects program which allows these projects to compete for another pool of funds if they provide capacity on a corridor statewide significance of regional network.

However, this is unlikely that our projects would be competitive for that.

The application for this is due August of 2020, which is why we're here asking for your resolution now.

And the funding would be awarded starting in June 2021 and would not be available till 2025 to use on these projects.

A little bit about the history of how these transportation projects are funded.

It used to be that each jurisdiction was given an urban allocation, which is a percentage share of guaranteed funding based on population and geographic size, which was distributed annually.

and while it was guaranteed it took many years to accumulate necessary funds to design and construct a project.

So as funds accumulated, design could progress only once the funding was secured, which allowed for a much more prolonged design phase that included public participation in that phase.

Since 2016, the SmartScale program, all the funds are identified and awarded when the project's inception.

Projects compete for limited dollars that are scored against each other, and this is based on a benefit to the general public versus the cost.

No federal or state funding can be used for design or public participation until the project is awarded through this process.

To qualify for projects for VDOT's SmartScale program, the projects meet a need on the long-range transportation plan for the state that's called V-Trans 2040, and those include corridors of statewide significance, regional networks, located in an urban development area, or address the transportation need that's identified in the V-Trans 2040 survey.

Once it's scored, the project is divided by its budget to create a final ranking against the other projects.

If the cost is too high, it will receive a low ranking and projects can be enhanced by including a local commitment on those funds.

The city can submit four applications, and this application requires a resolution of support from the City Council, which is why we're here.

Just a little bit about how we selected these projects.

We started from a list of projects that had originated

In our department, from the various long range transportation planning documents, most of those projects have been previously scored by VDOT, so we had a good feeling for their likelihood to receive funding this time.

And then to rank that list,

We prioritized these further using priority scores from the streets that work and the bike and pedestrian master plan.

We input those into a ranking system, which also took into account the VDOT VTRAN score at a much less lesser influence than the internal city documents.

And then we generated a priority list based on what we called an overall safety improvement factor, which was essentially

from those three plans, how many different routes or intersections the project would touch.

And there's various weighting on that to generate the list, which if you look at the list in the resolution, that is the same priority that we generate from safety rankings.

So that's the general program that we're applying for.

And Jack, I've got your slides available if you needed to go through those.

Yeah, if you want to put those up, I can show an overview very quickly.

Again, this is West Main.

This is the number one priority, or at least list came out number one on our safety rankings.

This obviously continues the phase to West Main, which are currently under development.

And this is probably the most well designed or most well along in the design process of the project since it has sort of follows from West Main one and two.

Next please.

This is Preston Avenue, Grady Avenue intersection improvements.

This was worked up previously with a consultant as a concept.

And I guess some of the other project managers, I'm sure there'll be questions about this, but this is just a concept for this intersection.

The state would like to move as they've advanced this program to be more forward-looking and get funding up front with a better mapped out process for how it's going to be done.

They would like all the localities to do more developed plans at the application phase, but this is very early on in that process.

And so most of the other localities have similar preparations to ours.

Again, this is for what the intersection improvement may look like.

Next slide, please.

So this is the Emmett Street multi-modal phase two.

This is between Arlington and Perks Road on Emmett.

And again, this is very conceptual as well.

You can see what sort of a typical section may look like.

Next slide, please.

This is the Ridge Street multi-modal improvements.

So this is from Fifth Street, where it turns into Ridge.

And that would include pedestrian and intersection improvements and multi-modal along the corridor.

Next slide, please.

This is a little bit from the system that we use to rank these projects.

You can see the streets that work, the bike and ped, and the VDOT, VTRANS, and the various colors that spit out the overall safety evaluation.

And I have a,

I think just where we should go is that there we've been getting a lot of feedback about the Preston Grady and through the notes here when there has been questions about how much time, public input, traffic that you all have said that there are

things that will be firm, but there's a lot in this concept stage that you will be able to modify based on that input and then collaboration with city staff.

Sure, I'll just speak a little bit basically about the process and then if Brandon Duncan, the traffic engineer is on, he is more familiar with the traffic routes and the history of this project.

But that being said, I was not personally very familiar with this project.

and in putting these together it did become very obvious that this is a safety related need at this location and so I do want to make it clear that that was where our division came from in suggesting these projects and ranking these projects and that

It is state funds that we're using and these state funds are for transportation.

And so if we get these funds, we won't be able to use these funds at least till 2025 without a special deal with the state about how we're going to use them and what have you.

So if this intersection

to improve this intersection in transportation in the future, which is six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years out.

Now is the time to act on that.

And the way that this works, again, is what we've given to VDOT in this application is a description, is more of a narrative description of what we'd like to do to the intersection in regard to safety improvements, multimodal and pedestrian crossings, all of that.

So it isn't,

As we go through that funding process, there's a certain point where we lock in what's called Appendix A with VDOT, which states what it is exactly we're going to achieve and how much it's going to cost.

And then we need to stick exact to that budget.

We can still change the project through that whole process as long as we don't control with the budget.

And so that's generally how these work.

Yeah, so Brendan Duncan, traffic engineer.

There's been a lot of concern.

We heard it at the public meeting that we held on June 30th about, you know, trying to funnel traffic onto Grady Avenue by the concept realignment.

Honestly, I don't know where that's coming from.

Traffic kind of moves if you look at it like a magnet.

Each individual spot, whether it's the university, the hospital, kind of acts as a magnet and draws traffic to it.

It wants to go to what the destination

points are.

So just realigning the roadway, if people want to currently head down towards Barracks Road, they're just going to turn right.

There's no reason for them to continue straight.

There are other concerns about

Realigning this would mess with how many people are turning.

Right now there's approximately 30 percent of people that are of all of the cars that enter the intersection that move straight through on Preston to Barracks either east-west or west-east.

So that means that 70 percent of the vehicles are already making turning movements depending on where they're trying to go.

So you know

As Jack stated, we're really trying to do this for a couple of reasons.

Safety, it's very convoluted for vehicles, especially for people from out of town.

With the university, we have a lot of new people that come in every year.

We have parents that come in to visit.

Having the intersection in the way that it's designed currently,

is confusing in that way.

It's also inefficient having two signals that are that close together.

With the new Dairy Central project that's almost done being constructed, that's gonna add 15% to the intersection.

If we have other developments like that on Preston Avenue, the traffic's only gonna go up and be even more congested at this intersection, so reducing this to a single

Signal will help with that.

And lastly, pedestrians.

Again, all of those lanes that are there right now make it extremely difficult for pedestrians to navigate this intersection.

We know that the history of it, we know that when Preston happened, it did separate the

historically African American community of like 10th and Page from Washington Park, you know, reducing this back down to one intersection, one light where we can kind of control pedestrian crossings I think is a huge benefit for, you know, trying to reconnect that community, you know, to the park that was historically theirs to, you know, you basically have one

crosswalk that you have to cross at a signalized intersection.

It's safer.

Yeah, I don't have any other questions.

I do have one question.

I have a number of questions.

First one, this has been referred to a number of times thus far as a placeholder application.

And the implication being that we can sometime in the future finalize the design.

My first question is, assuming the project were approved,

By when would we have to finalize the design to be able to take advantage of the funding?

Again, the funding would be allocated in 2021 but not actually available until 2025.

So usually on all of our other projects that we have, we have about a year or two.

Basically, when we get to the 30% design phase, we have to submit a finalized scope of work to VDOT for their approval.

So it would give us an opportunity to go through public comment or public engagement process, just like we've done on

all of our other smart scale projects.

Yes, I mean, again, what's presented is merely a concept.

We have a narrative of certain elements that have to be in the application with pedestrian improvements, transit improvements, bicycle improvements.

Safety, signal upgrades, all those kinds of stuff.

Once we put that in the application, we can't not do any of those, but the physical orientation of how those can be changed.

We do have to kind of set a perimeter boundary for the project in the application.

So we can't go outside of that.

There's really three things that can't change.

The narrative that we put in there, the budget, and the project boundary.

So let me back up to the question I asked before.

You gave a more general answer.

I was hoping for a more specific answer.

So if we go ahead with this and we pass it on, the money would be awarded or the decision would be made that yes, we're approving the funding, roughly when?

Right okay so in sometime in 2021 we would be told hopefully yes you're going to get the funding

When do we do the final plan?

I think you told me in an email conversation that we had that the scheme of smart scale envisions public engagement happening after the

Yeah, we don't have to do it that way, we just do it that way so that the SmartScale grant funds it.

So anything that we do before we get the funding cannot be reimbursed and the city pays for 100%.

Once we are given permission, 2026, when VDOT says, all right, here's your funding, then we can kind of start the clock and start our design process and our public engagement process.

Okay, so in 2021, let's say we're told, yes, you're gonna get the money in 2026.

When is the time, are we to 2022, 2023?

So if they give us the money, if they say in 2021 that the money will be available at some point in the future,

Yes, and I mean we would do new traffic counts, you know all of those, we are making assumptions.

We're trying to project into the future.

That's just kind of the nature of this VDOT program.

Things could change and we may have different technology that we could implement.

So if we decide now that we are basically that we like the perimeter that we are saying, we want all the change to take place within this space.

And we've got a budget of X number of dollars, whatever it is.

And we know generally that it's going to deal with bikes and pedestrians and the narrative that you've described.

And I take the narrative is extremely vague and broad as well.

If we do any between now and when we would get the funding the city would be on the hook for it but yes we can do as much public engagement between now and then as we want.

If council decides that they want to do a full Preston Avenue small area plan

so that it's contiguous and takes the whole area into account.

Again, we can do that.

It's on our dime, not on the state's dime.

But that would give us a better design as we approach getting the funding and the public input as we get there.

Right.

So when you say that when the funding is available and that at that point the public engagement that follows thereafter they would pay for, is that, just to be clear about the times, the time that it would be available, are you saying, is that the 2021 date or is that the 25 date or the 27 date or what?

So any public engagement we would do between now and say 2025 or so is our expense.

Correct.

Okay.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

I want to follow up on that too and

the total of budget that we get.

So even if we don't spend those dollars on the engagement portion, they would then still be usable for other portions of the project.

If we decided we wanted to take on paying for a more robust engagement process sooner versus later, is the total amount awarded up to us?

It's just how we want to spend those dollars.

We do factor in inflation and stuff so you know we kind of figure out an estimate for what the project would cost today and try and you know inflate that you know with the inflation factor over a five or six well usually even more because construction although we get the money for design five years out we then have another five years to spend it so we're really

My earlier question though, sorry, was about, um, what was the other thing I just asked?

It was off the Lloyd's.

The first thing I asked it was, Oh, it was around, um, within that budget, we could say, use like a small area plan or other dollars that we'd allocate for the vetting process, like the engagement and like looking at that whole thing holistically.

No, we have that built into the project budget right now so if we were to kind of do that on our own dime beforehand we would just have that much more money to do the construction when it came up.

Yes, just a moment.

So just so I can see it, and if you could speak to it, just the concern that the traffic is being diverted

and it's not being distributed evenly and it's being diverted to Grady.

Those concerns, they are even with just this concept plan.

Yeah so you know again you know the majority there's about 30 percent of the traffic that makes that straight through movement today from Preston to Barracks.

So in the peak hour you know that's about 400

to, well, 400 in each direction, so about 800 vehicles doing that versus more than 2,000 vehicles that are coming from every direction.

So it is a major movement, but it's not the only movement.

And everyone else is making turns.

If you're trying to get to Barracks Road,

It really does not make sense to continue on to Grady.

You would go down, you've got to go through two other signals and then make a right onto

I forget, Rugby, to get back over to Barracks Road.

It's longer.

You've got more signals that you've got to deal with.

I mean, traffic is kind of like water.

They want the path of least resistance and the quickest, and Grady just doesn't offer that.

I don't know how many

intersections in the city where the major movement is a right hand turn.

You know, if you look at Avon and Monticello, if you look at Rugby and Rose Hill, if you look at West Main where it goes to JPA and University, like, you know, most of those vehicles are turning at that because they don't want to go straight.

And just if I could add to that, as not a traffic engineer myself, I'd heard all this about traffic being funneled to Grady.

And in seeing this, when I re-saw this concept again, I saw why people thought that.

But it's important to point out that this is a picture, obviously, two-dimensional picture, and signals are gonna be involved in this and the signal timing and all these things.

Not to say that the concept or the

The ultimate product will look anything like this.

But you have to take into consideration that there's a lot of other things that go into the timing and signalization of the intersection, other than the geometry that's going to make this.

If you really wanted to, you can make that red light so painfully long that people just made right turns.

You can sort of do those things.

And that's well into the future.

And just to make one more point about

About spending money on public engagement ahead of time, you just have to keep in mind that we have to deliver a product that improves safety for VDOT.

So it can't be, you know,

It has to, you can't get too far ahead with the public engagement without making sure Vietnam's on board.

Okay.

So, all right.

I think that's,

I'm trying to figure out what my next question is on the screen.

I had to find the picture.

So the project boundary is approximately 100 feet in each direction from those intersections.

So it allows us to tie pavement back in, drainage, that kind of stuff.

But that's kind of the project boundary is that area around the intersection.

Yes.

So with that, whatever happens within this project boundary, like the traffic pattern, that pattern can be modified if there's community input and the safety measures are in place.

That's not something that's permanent based on our vote today.

No, we can always change the signal timing.

As Jack pointed out, you can adjust, give a longer green time to certain cycles.

We can give a longer queuing, stacking distance for vehicles.

but if something in the proposal wanted to go past, this looks like we're going right past where Stix is, then that's not allowed but changing anything within that space before Stix, the public would be able to weigh in on.

Correct.

And up to, it looks like where the park begins and where the Legal Aid building

is that right?

Yes.

Okay.

And up to the turn where, who lives there?

I'm trying to see.

But you extend it to the east, so as to get the full area where the things start diverging.

Yes, the project limits go at least to Derry Central.

I know it was in the presentation that we did on the 30th that I sent you all this afternoon.

I mean, the streets that work

book, really 200-page book, not only lists this as the most important or the highest priority intersection, but also lists both 10th Street and Preston Avenue as being important corridors among the top five corridors

I think it's fair to say that if I'm to look in a crystal ball and I'm looking 10 years down the road because that's when these improvements would be made, if Dairy Central serves its probably expected function of being something of a spark for development, it's highly possible that some of those lots that are to the east there would become also developable

which may again promote the need for a small area plan that would look further down the road.

But it seems to me whatever we end up deciding to do, either way if we say we're not going to do anything right now, we're going to do something later,

It's because we're going to do a small area plan right now before we do anything further with this proposal.

Either we do that or we say we're going to send this along because we know in five years or seven years from now we're going to have a need to get this important project on the road.

We've got at least three or four years in which to do the small area plan, to do whatever other planning we may need to do in this area.

to see what other development may be projected along that area.

So that's got to happen whether we approve the project tonight or not.

Yeah, it's really at least two years just because the smart scale grants are on a two year cycle.

And I'll just point out that if council wants to pull this item, has been requested by the public and in favor of doing the public engagement, we basically need that funding tomorrow.

from council to start that process in order to have it done in two years for the next available application.

So if we don't meet that time frame, now you're pushing it back four years and not just two.

So just the time it takes to procure a consultant to do the public engagement, to do a 30% design and everything else, to get all of that done in the next two years,

The long lead time just causes me to think of the quote often ascribed to Wayne Gretzky that he doesn't shoot, that he skates to the point where the puck will be when he gets there.

And we have to be that kind of foresighted about it to try to look ahead to where things are going to be and try to be there when the

when the puck gets there.

Mayor Walker, do we want to go ahead and do the public hearing?

I'm sorry.

I would like to know what elements of the current design

are that you've shown us are not movable.

Because when I took part in the June 30th information session, I was in the oppression.

There was a number of elements that were not movable and not changeable.

yeah it really is those you know I believe in the application we have that there must be transit improvements there has to be pedestrian improvements there has to be bicycle improvements we do have in there that it will be a single signal intersection so again you know that would be something that couldn't change further out but

other than that you know the orientation how many late traffic lanes there are you know we don't have to have and I know if you can go back to the sketch Brian currently it shows kind of continuing the the wide median all the way up to the intersection but again if in the future if if the

Small area plan kind of shows Preston getting what we call a road diet and you bring everything in, you get rid of the median.

We don't have to have that large median in there.

We can bring the two opposing lanes closer together and get rid of that and kind of, again, shrink the intersection down.

Again, the things that have to stay there would be a singular intersection, and then bicycle improvements, transit improvements, sidewalk improvements, pedestrian, all those kind of standardized intersection improvements.

We do have in there kind of the safety

Access Management, which I know some of the businesses were worried about.

But what is shown there today with that kind of singular drive is probably the biggest concept that could change of all of them.

That was just kind of a placeholder to show how you might be able to maintain access to those businesses.

But to go back to one of our original points,

We're trying to improve the safety of this intersection and a lot of the accidents that are happening are happening because of all of those curb cuts and the different conflicting left turns across two or three lanes of traffic and everything else.

Ultimately, it may end up that some of the businesses there are going to be right in, right out and you would have to go down Preston and make a U-turn or we could install an R-cut or a separate U-turn spot further down or something but that's really kind of the impetus for doing access management there is to remove the

Okay, all right, thank you.

Counselor, are there any other questions before the public hearing?

Great, if you'd like to speak to counsel, click the raise hand icon in the Zoom webinar.

If you're on via telephone, you can press star nine

to raise your hand.

I'll call on people in the order in which their hands are raised.

First to talk is Chris Henry.

Chris, you're on with city council.

Good evening, councilors.

My name is Chris Henry and I live at 109 East Jefferson Street in the city of Charlottesville.

I'm also here representing Dairy Central, the property owner with the longest fronting property on the proposed

Preston and Grady Intersection Improvement Project.

First of all, I want to thank staff for their efforts to tackle a convoluted intersection and improve public safety.

However, the current VDOT-centric approach misses the forest for the trees, leaving many other factors of placemaking, urbanism, economic development, sustainability, and equity out of the equation.

Comprehensive plans in 2003 and 2013 have called for small area planning on the Preston Avenue corridor.

The Streets That Work plan calls for a holistic upgrade to Preston Avenue from Grady Avenue to McIntyre Road, in addition to improvements at Preston, 10th, and Grady intersection.

None of these guiding documents call for a smart scale application now.

This application for smart scale funding for the Preston Grady intersection is being pushed through despite robust grassroots opposition from adjacent neighborhoods, property owners, and environmental advocates.

There is a better process that will yield a better outcome and there may even be better money.

We don't know because the right questions have not been asked.

Why are we not starting with a small area plan?

Why are we not aspiring to meet the goals of the Streets at Work plan, namely that Charlottesville streets will be high quality public spaces, vibrant places of commerce, safe and accessible, healthy, green, and sustainable, connected and convenient, collaborative, and policy driven?

If funding for planning a design is the foremost priority, why are we not exploring other funding mechanisms like state revenue sharing, public-private partnership, tax increment financing, local initiative support corporation, et cetera, et cetera?

As a private developer in the city of Charlottesville, I am always held to a higher standard of public outreach and planning than has been demonstrated with the application before you tonight.

I urge council to make a motion to amend the resolution removing Preston and Grady from the list of smart scale applications and to direct staff to initiate the small area planning process that is long past due.

Mayor Walker, next up is Robin Hoffman.

Robin, you're on the city council.

You've got three minutes.

Robin, can you hear us?

Let me just check and see if she has another session.

Can you hear us?

Yes.

Sorry.

I've been in the webinars for the city planning.

I just want to say that this COVID thing has really brought for the idea that we, first of all, are

subject to being at home.

There's a lot of board people.

They're still on unemployment.

I think the, I want to say shit hasn't hit the fan yet because people are sort of just chillaxing, drinking as usual.

So city planning for me is about changing the way we do things in this city.

I mean, as an individual who likes to go out and socialize, I find if I don't drink, there aren't any places to go.

There are people that are probably shooting or whatever they're doing because they don't have a community place that, first of all, they can afford.

I mean, if you wanted to go to a bar or something like that, you know, it's like $12 a drink.

And usually the people that go there aren't really sociable.

What I want to say is that I think we could redesign the city and give it back to the people who have lived here all their lives and develop roads and things where people can access recreational healthy choices.

And one of the things, for instance, football is out.

So there's all these other sports that you can, they're now coming up with.

where people can recreate and socially distance.

So those are the ideas that I'm thinking about when the city planners say they're doing these roads and this and that.

It's really because of these big companies coming here and people spending money drinking.

I think if we can just rethink some of the areas where people have families,

near Grady, for instance, and develop resources for them to be able to just hang out.

I'm very optimistic that this is a change that we can look forward to if we think about the future in the light of what people really could enjoy about Charlottesville.

When I first came here in 2006,

I thought this was really a wonderful sort of place for people to go to each other's homes and just walk around and to be able to just socialize and play outside or whatever.

But now it's becoming, I think, much more commercialized.

And I just wanted you to think about that.

All right, so I'll close the public hearing.

I guess my comment would be first of all thank you city staff for the information you provided tonight as well as the communications via email.

It's been a lot of very detailed and thoughtful information as was outlined in you know some of the emails from city staff.

This is a corridor with a fraught history obviously in terms of this being a road that was constructed as part of

in urban renewal effort that split the 10th and Page neighborhood from Rose Hill, a wealthy neighborhood, was able to block it from continuing there and splitting that neighborhood.

And so we're left with this sort of odd corridor.

And I absolutely agree with the importance of