City Council   2/21/2017

Good evening.

Good evening.

Welcome to Charlottesville City Council.

Ms. Szakos?

Here.

Ms. Galvin?

Okay, we begin with our awards and recognitions and announcements.

We have a number this evening, so if we could start with Mr. Fenwick.

Yeah, I just have announcements.

You want to go straight?

February 21st, 2017.

Registration is open now for Fix-A-Leak Family 5K March 26th, 2017.

The City of Charlottesville is encouraging residents to find and fix leaks at home by holding the annual Fix-a-Leak Family 5K at 10 a.m. on March 26th at Penn Park.

This annual event is being held as part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ongoing We're for Water and Fix-a-Leak Week campaigns.

The Fix-a-Leak Family 5K is a family-friendly event.

and participants will chase a running toilet.

Who gave me this?

Through the Penn Park Natural Trail and along the Rivanna River.

During and after the race, there will be music, family activities, snacks, awards, as well as water conservation tips for all in attendance.

Registration is open now.

It is just $10 for city residents and $15 for non-city residents.

Everyone who registers will receive a Fix a Leak 5K race t-shirt.

And I could give you three websites.

I know everybody's going to be clearing their throat if I don't do it once.

But if you want information about registering and all that, email JordanE at Charlottesville.org.

That's the clerk's office.

Upcoming council meetings, a joint council Charlottesville Redevelopment Housing Authority work session, Tuesday, March 2nd at 4 p.m. in the basement conference room.

And city council meeting Monday, March 6th at 7 p.m. at City Hall and Council Chambers.

And one last note, City Market is going to start the 1st of April.

We are looking for members of the board.

for the City Market.

So good evening, everyone.

All right, we're not even going to do it today.

So a couple announcements for everyone.

First one tomorrow at 6.30 PM at Carver Rec Center, the Charlottesville Alliance for Black Male Achievement.

We will have our regular meeting for the Circle of Brotherhood.

Again, this is for African American males between the ages of 17 and 29.

Tomorrow we will be discussing several different items and this is open for anyone.

So if you need help with finding a job, if you need help with paying legal fees and or court fines, if you need assistance with getting into college, if you need assistance with whatever it is that you are trying to do, please join us tomorrow at Carver Rec.

6.30 p.m.

It's from 6.30 to 8.30.

We will have two trains kind of going simultaneously.

We will have a representative from side tent come and teach the young men how to do coding, computer coding and web design.

And we will also have a skilled trades track for everyone who attends.

So we need you to be there tomorrow.

Again, Carver Rec Center tomorrow at 6.30 p.m.

The Charlottesville Alliance for Black Male Achievement Circle of Brotherhood.

Also, we are officially celebrating Liberation and Freedom Day in the city of Charlottesville on March 3rd.

This is the official day in which Union soldiers marched through Charlottesville and declared that the Civil War was over and all slaves were free.

Please join us to celebrate this historic event.

The town and gown are to commemorate Liberation and Freedom Day once again on March 3rd.

Liberation and Freedom Day commemorates the ending of slavery in the city of Charlottesville in Albemarle County, Virginia.

will be celebrated on March 3rd with observances at the University of Virginia Chapel and the Jefferson School Community Center.

Events will begin at 4 p.m. at the University of Virginia Chapel with a service led by university chaplains featuring remarks by officials of the university.

A procession will follow from the UVA Chapel to the Jefferson School Community Center at 233 4th Street Northwest, where participants will join assembled civic and religious leaders and members of the community in further festivities from 6 to 8 p.m. As with other institutions and locales across the nation in recent years, the University of Virginia and the City of Charlottesville each have striven to recognize the role of slavery in their history.

In 2013,

UVA President Teresa Sullivan formed the President's Commission on Slavery and the University, which hosted the symposium, Universities Confronting the Legacy of Slavery, the following year.

In 2016, the UVA Board of Visitors selected the Boston Architectural Forum to design a memorial for enslaved laborers at UVA.

The memorial will be installed before 2019, when the University is slated to celebrate its 200th anniversary.

In 2016, this Charlottesville City Council assembled the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Monuments, and Public Spaces, also known as the BRC, and tasked the BRC with changing the narrative on race in the city.

The BRC drew attention to the little-known historical fact, at the time of the Civil War, an outright majority of local residents

14,000 of the 26,000 of Charlottesville and Albemarle County were enslaved.

The Charlottesville City Council subsequently proclaimed March 3rd to be Liberation and Freedom Day to commemorate March 3rd, 1865 when 52% of the local population, some 14,000 enslaved individuals, began to be freed.

Now, the committee to celebrate Liberation and Freedom Day is comprised of university and civic leaders.

And once again, this event will take place next Friday, March 3, with a 4 PM bell ringing and liberation service at UVA Chapel, a 5 PM Freedom March from UVA Chapel to the Jefferson School, and from 6 to 8 PM, a celebration at the Jefferson School for this day.

OK, I have three welcomes and a goodbye.

So the first welcome is a particularly joyful one.

You may notice that our regular clerk is not here.

She had a baby about 10 days ago, nine days ago, named Jessica Evelyn Rice.

And her parents are Page Rice, our clerk, and Joe Rice, who is our communications coordinator.

Yes, hopefully they're just watching their baby.

The second is Ella Jordan, who is filling in as well as, I'm sorry, Sarah Brasfield, who's been our assistant clerk.

Ella Jordan, who is the retired clerk from the county, is also helping us.

We need lots of help.

So if you call the clerk's office and JordanE at Charlottesville.org is her address, you will get Ella Jordan who is very wonderful as a replacement.

We also have today, and I'd like to call him up, Paul Oberdorfer who is our new Director of Public Works.

I understand he's here.

Well, maybe he's not here.

So if you see him on the street, welcome him.

And so our sad goodbye, although we are, oh, there he is.

Hi.

Are you Paul?

Come.

Let us greet you.

Well, I can tell you I feel very fortunate to be in the company of you all and be selected to fill such large shoes as Mrs. Mueller.

And it's an honor to be here.

Thank you.

Welcome.

And that brings us to the bittersweet moment of your predecessor's retirement.

And I get to read the proclamation honoring Judy Mueller on the event of her retirement.

And Judy, can you come up so that you can be on the spot the entire time I'm reading?

And I will say before I read this that I am a

I'm a particular fan of Ms. Mueller.

Judy was one of the first and maybe, I don't know how many there have been, women public works directors in the United States.

She's been honored all over the country for the work that she's done in Charlottesville.

But I appreciate her willingness to try new things.

I know when I came to Charlottesville,

or to the city council, I said, we need to have curbside composting.

And she said, no, it can't be done.

And then she came back to me and said, well, you know, I've been thinking about it.

And here's some possible ways that we might start to work toward that.

And over the years, we have been doing exactly that.

And so I really appreciate her willingness to work with our crazy ideas and still get all the basics of what makes the city run, the sewage.

the storm water, the gas, all the sexy stuff, the roads, the paving, the street signs, all the things, everything you see that makes up the city, she's had some hand in making it happen.

So first, before I even read the proclamation, let's just thank Judy Mueller for being here.

And so now the more formal part, recognition of Judy Mueller's retirement.

Whereas Judy Mueller has served as the city's director of public works for 31 years, overseeing the divisions of facilities development, facilities maintenance, fleet, environmental administration, Charlottesville area transit, public service and public utilities.

And whereas prior to becoming director of public works in Charlottesville, she worked for the city of Virginia Beach,

in the Department of Public Utilities and Public Works and whereas under Ms. Mueller's direction, the city has become known as a municipal leader in environmental protection and whereas Ms. Mueller has contributed greatly to regional cooperation through her service as a member of the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority and the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority and whereas Ms. Mueller is a past president of the American Public Works Association, a 28,500 member association serving the needs of public works professionals in North America.

and whereas in 2014 the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the APWA honored Ms. Mueller for her outstanding service by naming its local government service award the Judith M. Mueller Local Government Service Award and whereas the city's Public Works Department is nationally recognized for its deep commitment to providing high quality customer service to its residents and whereas Ms. Mueller has left an indelible legacy of public service in our organizations and in our community

Now, therefore, be it resolved on this day, February 21st, 2017, that the Charlottesville City Council acknowledges the long, impressive career of Miss Judy Mueller and thanks her for over three decades of dedicated service to our community.

Thank you.

This means a lot to me and I think one of the things I've said over the years that really hasn't changed is I've worked in several communities in Virginia.

Even on its worst day, Charlottesville was the best place I ever worked and I feel very confident leaving a strong management team.

I feel very confident in

the person you have selected to be your next director.

And so I walk away from here feeling good.

But you'll still see me.

I'll walk the mall and I'll do things.

But thank you for 31 really great years and a terrific professional career.

Thank you.

If I just might make just a short personal note of thanks as well to Ms. Mueller because I was able to spend the last five years on the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority Board and I am an architect so I learned how to do plumbing for buildings.

Ms. Mueller helped me learn how to do plumbing for a city in a region and the scale differences was vast and she had the patience to really walk me through a lot of very complicated technical terms, technical processes, and she made it easy.

to understand.

So I will miss you as a teacher, and I will miss your very, very wise insights as to how to solve some pretty gnarly problems.

Because Ms. Szakos is right.

Providing clean water and getting the bad water out are fundamentals of local government.

And so thank you for making us stay focused on the fundamentals.

Now, I guess it's my turn, and thank you, Ms. Akos, because I misplaced my little notice, my paper notice, and she found it for me on her phone.

So I have the pleasure of acknowledging that last Tuesday, the Planning Commission made the annual planning awards, and Ridge Street

was named Neighborhood of the Year.

So congratulations to one of Charlottesville's fastest growing, most vibrant places.

And I see Mr. Ameda right here.

And hats off to all the winners that included the Preservers of the Daughters of Zion and the Rose Hill neighborhood.

Pastor Goheiner.

The Eldon Fields Wood Design Professional of the Year went to Paul Josie, Landscape Architect.

Is Paul here?

Yay Paul!

Paul's also on the Place Design Task Force and the Tree Commission.

The Citizen Planner of the Year went to the Preservers of the Daughters of Zion.

Edwina St. Rose, Bernadette Whitsett-Hammond, congratulations.

Outstanding neighborhood effort, Rose Hill neighborhood, Pastor George Johanna.

Thank you very much.

Already mentioned neighborhood of the year, Ridge Street Neighborhood Association.

Again, kudos to Pete Armetta.

You know, Kathy, I'm sorry, as we announce these names, you want to bring them up?

And I will say, the common house was just starting when we had a huge snow last year that took out the top part of their building, so they've really risen to some major challenges.

I mean, that was, they could have just said forget it, and they didn't.

So that's Ben Finsgraf and team.

Outstanding plan of development and Herman Key Jr. access to the disabled ward.

Streets that work!

Yay!

Heather Niemeyer and Amanda Ponce.

I bet they're at the Belmont Bridge engagement.

If all the awardees would mind coming up and I think what we could do is everybody could come up and if you could say two to three sentences, if you have anything you want to say.

Your moment.

I'm Dave Ackerman with Wolf Ackerman.

We're the design firm for Common House.

And so the developers aren't here, but we're here and they should be thanked for really sticking to their guns because it was pretty bleak for a while there.

Pete Armetto, Ridge Street Neighborhood Association Past President, this is Anne Marie Holmberger, 2017 Ridge Street Neighborhood President.

Thanks very much.

It's not hard.

We do have one of the fastest growing vibrant neighborhoods and appreciate the recognition.

Thank you.

Edwina St. Rose and I, Bernard Edwards at Hammond, we thank the City of Charlottesville, the Planning Commission, for the recognition.

We are so thrilled that the work on the Daughters of Zion Cemetery is just progressing wonderfully.

And we really do value the opportunity to tell the stories of those African Americans long forgotten who are interred there.

Hi, I'm Paul Josie and thank you very much for this award and I want to say thank you to council for supporting trees and their funding and also for the Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards as well as staff members like Chris Genzic and especially the Tree Commission for all their work along Bessie Waters and many others and thank you for continuing the support of trees in Charlottesville.

I'm Pastor Gohanna, former president of the Rose Hill Neighborhood Association.

Thank you, city government, for your support as we endeavor to improve our community.

Thank you so much.

I want to say thank you.

I have learned an awful lot about the history of Charlottesville by living in the Rose Hill community and also participating in this great public engagement outreach where

We brought together so many past and present citizens who lived in Rose Hill and there are great big stories and there are more stories to come.

So thank you very much for this honor.

Thank you all very much.

Ms. Galvin, do you have any further?

Okay, and I have one more.

This is a proclamation about the Big Read.

Heather Penac, would you mind coming up to receive this?

I'll read it to you.

Proclamation, the Big Read, 2017, Silver Sparrow by Tyari Jones.

whereas the Big Read is designed to restore reading to the center of American culture and provides our citizens with the opportunity to read and discuss a single book within our community and whereas the Jefferson Madison Regional Library invites all book lovers to participate in the Big Read that will be held throughout March 2017, so next month.

The library's goal is to encourage all residents of Central Virginia to read and discuss Silver Sparrow by Tyari Jones and whereas the novel takes place in 1980s Atlanta and examines

the lives of two teenage girls and their families connected by their father who is married to each of their mothers and whereas the Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest and is supported by the Art and Jane Hess Fund of the Library Endowment.

Now therefore be it resolved that I, Mike Signer, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, proclaim the Big Read during March 2017 and encourage all residents

Thank you, Council, for having me and letting me speak for a moment about the 11th annual Big Read.

We're very excited this year.

I just wanted to mention a few of the programs that we have coming up.

The first is the kickoff this Saturday at the Louisa County Library at 2 o'clock.

And the other is a program where you can meet the author, Tayari Jones is coming to Charlottesville and will be at the Northside Library on Friday, March 17th at 6 p.m.

The NEA Big Read has programs and book groups for all ages.

I'm going to give you some copies of the program brochure.

and some copies of the book and you can find a digital copy of the program online through our website jmrl.org slash big read.

And if people should want to check out a copy from the library, will there be enough?

Yes, there are free copies circulating around the community.

Check your free library if you have one of the little free libraries in your neighborhood.

There are several copies added to the library every year for the Big Read, including book kits that you can check out with 10 books at a time.

Thank you.

Are we bringing an author back?

No, author.

Oh, oh.

Author.

Yeah.

Okay, we now go to city manager response to matters by the public.

We've been doing this for about a little bit over a year now under our new procedures.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

At the last meeting, Mr. Derek Bond, who's the owner of the melting pot, discussed his concerns over construction on Water Street.

He was concerned about a couple of issues.

One was a sign that was blocking the sidewalk on the north side of water that had actually been removed prior to him coming to speak to us that night.

He was also concerned about the one way traffic on Water Street.

And we mentioned that night that the staff was already

at work on a plan to reopen Water Street to two-way traffic.

That did take place.

Water was reopened for two-way traffic on February 10th.

So just want to provide you with an update on that.

And also an update for the Council and the public on the Belmont Bridge pedestrian sidewalk.

Staff will be closing the sidewalk on the west side of the bridge because of deterioration there.

They will be doing that within the next couple of weeks.

The deck of the bridge is in good shape.

That's not a concern.

Mr. Mayor, I had one more.

Is it possible for me to say it now?

I see this gentleman's wife.

We are very privileged here in the city of Charlottesville to have several different workers and people volunteer on different boards and commissions.

One of which is Mr. Corey Claiborne, who serves on the Planning Commission as well as is an architect.

in the area.

Corey, Mr. Claiborne, again, serves on the Planning Commission.

He was awarded a national award for being the Young Architect of the Year.

And he was also just featured in a national AIA Architect magazine for his outstanding service and his leadership.

And I see his lovely wife with their new baby girl in the back.

And we want to make sure that Corey, while he's not here, he knows that while he dedicates a lot of time to the city and even traveling and commuting back and forth to Charlottesville

I think he may be one of the first individuals who we've had receive this award.

We are very proud of him, and if we can, let's give him a round of applause, please.

And I actually have a quick question in response to the response to the matters by the public.

One of the members of the public at the last meeting, Michael Payne, I believe,

brought up the suggestion of exploring the idea of a municipal identification card that people who don't have other forms of identification could get to just verify that they have an address in the city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I would ask that too.

I'll read the provision of our rules that govern these, which I do in our meetings, and here are our books for the big read.

Section 9 of our rules is to improper comments and disorderly conduct are not permitted.

Persons appearing before the council will not be allowed to A, campaign for public office, B, promote private business ventures, C, use profanity,

vulgar language or gestures, D, threaten violence toward council, city staff or members of the public, E, engage in behavior that intimidates others, F, interrupt other speakers or engage in behavior that disrupts the meeting.

Any speaker who violates the rules will be called to order by the mayor.

If the remarks or conduct persists, the mayor shall order the speaker to cease speaking and be seated.

If the order is not heeded, the mayor shall direct the sergeant at arms to escort the individual from the meeting room.

and I also wanted to just take a moment because we're going to be addressing this in the next meeting.

For many years, Charlottesville City Council had a first come, first served process where only 12 slots were available to speak in this first Matters by the Public.

Last year, we switched to a process where folks signed up for these slots early by the morning of the meeting and if there are more requests than slots, a so-called lottery came into effect for all the requests.

We have a very active citizenry in Charlottesville with a lot of interest in our meetings.

Five, six, seven meetings we've had double those 12 spots of people who are interested.

This evening we have 25 people who wanted to speak.

It's always a challenge to figure out how to hear everybody while also getting the business at hand.

Tonight if we heard from everybody we would probably not get started on regular business until about nine o'clock because we usually have about half an hour before we get.

So it's just a balancing act and it's a question of what's the right answer for us in addressing matters of the public.

Cities around Virginia, counties do it in many different ways.

We are going to be addressing this question in our next meeting.

We have staff right now analyzing data going back six years, so we have five years before the new procedures.

We're looking at six questions, number of speakers and first matters by the public, number of speakers and the second matters by the public.

After the implementation of the new procedures, the number of people on the wait list for the first matters by the public, number of comments in each matters by the public that are about formal agenda items that folks are showing up to speak about items that night, number of public hearings in the agenda, whether those have gone up or down, and number of speakers

In the public hearings that are in the meeting.

We have one public hearing tonight that is on the cable television franchise agreement and that's required by it because it's an ordinance.

Anyway, so that's coming up.

We'd love to hear from you.

We'll be having this data beforehand.

Opinions that you have about matters by the public.

We would like to hear them because we have been

you know trying to get this right for a year.

We've had a change and we're revisiting it now that we've had a year under the new procedures.

Okay with all that said we have I will go to our

Our speakers and each speaker has three minutes to speak.

Please give your name and address before beginning your remarks.

We have a timer right here, three minutes.

When it goes, when you have 15 seconds left, the yellow light comes on and when there's red, you're out of time.

We finished promptly at three minutes that we can get on to the next speakers.

It goes across all speakers.

And with that, Judith Sia is the first speaker.

Welcome.

C, okay.

Okay.

Let's try this.

Can you hear me?

We can.

Okay, it's Judith C. 1206 Mowbray Place.

Okay.

Most of us have heard that the large elevator at Crescent Hall

didn't work when EMTs needed to take an elderly woman on a gurney to the hospital.

The auditorium in one of our schools, the bottom of the seat is missing in almost 20 of the seats.

Two of our schools have all of their lunches subsidized.

In the rest of the elementary schools, there are three kinds of lunches.

Totally subsidized, partially subsidized, and the parents take care of the lunches.

With the partially subsidized, some of the parents can't afford it.

Some of the parents just don't do it.

So when the children get up to the payment, they're asked for the money.

Some of the children don't have it, and the parents get angry, call the school, you singled out my child.

And the cafeteria people end up getting yelled at.

If we have surplus money,

to take care of all of these other things, why can't we subsidize all of the school lunches?

We seem to be subsidizing the special interests of a few of our city councilors.

By that I mean, Lee Park and the Robert E. Lee statue.

Aren't the needs of our elderly in Crescent Hall and nutritious lunches for our school students more important than the special interests of one or two of our city councilors?

What was the hurry?

Why didn't we do a voter's referendum on these issues and let all of the voters in Charlottesville decide whether to spend all of this money moving the statue and changing the park?

The buzzword in politics lately seems to be alternative facts.

I think city council has a problem

with alternative facts.

One city councilor said that the KKK was at the dedication of the Robert E. Lee statue.

This is not true.

On one picture, there is a white street.

However, on two other views of the same thing, these are plumes from a regiment from Washington and Lee School.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, everybody.

My name is Isaac Smith.

I live out in the county, but after what happened a little over a week ago with Theresa Lamb being assaulted, with Jason getting his phone stolen, and I myself was stalked around the downtown mall by a gang of protesters who wanted the statue removed, I don't feel comfortable giving out my home address because these people are nuts.

I mean, the city council, I'm sure, is feeling very accomplished right now.

I mean, after all, you are the capital of the resistance.

Congratulations.

And you have voted three to two, solid majority, 60% majority, to move the Robert E. Lee statue, to remove a symbol of oppression.

Well, let me tell you something.

If you walk out the main door of City Hall, and you go down those stairs by the visitor center, and you turn left and walk under the bridge,

You look up, you will see iron bars under that bridge to keep the homeless from sleeping there.

Now that is the real symbol of oppression.

It bothers me that Charlottesville has people who go to bed cold, hungry, can't make rent, can't find a job, social services are overburdened, the Salvation Army doesn't have enough beds, the haven I hear is under threat of closure.

and yet these people, the people who live in Charlottesville, that you have a duty to, that are your citizens, are pushed to the back of the line in favor of Syrian refugees that you take in despite Donald Trump.

You are going to cost the city its state funding and its federal funding in this vanity project.

and really the only reason I can think that you would do that.

When we have so many poor, I can't walk from one end of the mall to the other without four or five beggars coming up to me.

Please, I'm hungry.

Please, I don't have a place to stay.

Please, anything helps.

Just some loose change.

I hear that every day.

I know people that don't go to the mall because of that.

And those people go to the back of the line because we're the capital of the resistance.

and I guess that's important.

Fenwick, I actually want to single you out on this issue because you gave a speech at the last city council meeting and you talked about removing the statue and you talked about civil rights and you talked about a determined and steady minority getting their way and it is a minority.

The latest poll I checked from NBC 29 said 87% of Charlottesville residents wanted the statue to stay without alteration

and you talked about civil rights and you talked about how proud you were and how courageous you were.

You sold that vote.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Thank you for your service here.

My name is Sarah Claiborne.

I'm 1013 Lyndon Avenue in Charlottesville.

I'm the co-director of the Charlottesville Ballet.

I am here speaking on behalf of not only the Charlottesville Ballet, but several colleagues from the community and arts organizations.

And if I may ask them to just raise their hand or stand.

So these are some of them.

Some had to leave.

Thank you.

You can remain or sit.

There are 23 of us, approximately 23 of us that met at the Paramount Theater to discuss the proposed art director position here by council.

We have come to a consensus and I will try my best to relay the message of the group.

We believe that that position of art director is important.

The line item that has been proposed is very important to the progress of the arts here in our community.

We do have concern about the details of that position.

We feel that it would be important for us, the 23 of us, as well as several others, from the scope of large executive directors of huge nonprofits here that are arts organizations to very small independent artists

be a part of the conversation of what that position would mean, what it would mean to the progress of the arts for all of us.

We would love to be a part of either a city council work session or be a part of a committee that could have a voice in establishing that position and the details of it.

We feel that it is imperative that the city and the county collaborate to make this position a possible one that is going to help us progress.

We also feel that it is important, it's very important for us to work together as a team, both individual artists and as non-profit or for-profit arts organizations to make sure that funding is delivered in a way that is going to sustain

We, as many of you know, when surveyed, tourists say that the arts are one of the top three reasons that they visit our community.

We feel that it is a huge impact, not only on the economic growth of this city, but also on enhancing and uplifting the culture of our city.

All that with no notes and 30 seconds under time.

Good evening.

I'm Tim Bingler, 720 Shamrock Road.

I'm here to comment on the Blue Ribbon Commission and the Lee statue.

Beginning in June 2006 and lasting until November 2016, there were 19 Blue Ribbon Committee meetings over a six month period.

Hundreds of people, including myself, of different races and persuasions came to multiple public forums.

The people of Charlottesville spoke and voted, and the Blue Ribbon Commission listened and counted the votes.

In one of the forums at the end of September, the vote to leave the statue as it was, there were 111 votes.

The number of votes to remove it was 47.

How I know this is I took a picture of the data

at the end of the meeting.

At the end of this long data gathering process, the Blue Ribbon Commission voted on November 2nd, a vote of six to three for no change, but more textual content added for clarity.

A theme I personally noticed in most of the meetings that I went to.

On Charlottesville Newsplex, though, the next day it was written that Don Gathers, the chairman of the Blue Ribbon Commission, expressed disappointment.

I truly thought that we had enough support to move it to McIntyre.

Is this the comment expected from a neutral committee chairman?

On November 11th,

The Cavalier Daily reported that Mr. Mason, who was also on the Blue Ribbon Commission, describing the 63 vote that the commission made on November 1st, we voted to retain the statues on the condition that their meaning is transformed and the history is retold.

The commission recommended keeping statues of both Lee Jackson in Lee Park and Jackson's Park, respectively, if historic context and interpretation

can be added to the monuments.

Is city council listening to the results of 18 meetings over a period of six months from many, many, many people

meetings that gathered statistical measurable data concerning the wishes of Charlottesville.

Thank you.

Michael Weber, 1855 Westview Road.

So I'm here to compliment the city council on the decision to move forward with trying to recontextualize the monuments of slavery, irrespective of what happens with Lee.

So I guess saying nice things to you guys is a little bit unusual these days.

And I was very touched by the first couple of talks because I think that they have a lot of validity to them and that as this development goes forward,

I hope that the development of a liberty and slavery trail, or whatever you want to call it, is actually part of an economic development program.

And that there are few things that I could think of that would be more moving than to have someone who is the descendant of an enslaved person or the descendant of Robert E. Lee taking tourists through a set of monuments like the ones we've seen.

I think that part of the problem, part of the motivation for wanting to move the statue actually grows out of the word contextualization because it's such a weak word.

It doesn't sound like you're actually doing anything other than putting up a plaque.

So I could understand why someone would want to just get rid of the statue and just take it out of your sight.

And so I propose that we think about this as confronting these symbols and confronting both the evils and the good parts of our history.

and by confronting, let me give you an example, maybe it's an extreme one and some of the people will be offended by it, but I think about taking the Robert Lee statue and then building another set of statues right in front of it, same scale, same quality of art, but it would be statues of a family of slaves at the auction block being separated by being sold.

And I think anybody who came into the park and saw that would know that regardless of the brilliance

and courtliness of Robert E. Lee that his skills were put in the service of an institution that was vile.

It honors the good and it recognizes the bad.

That actually is the easy part.

I think the hard part is what came after the Civil War because it's Jim Crow, massive resistance, poll tax, those are the things now which are permeating our society and are affecting our everyday life now.

and it's very hard to communicate.

I think everybody knows about the Civil War.

Of course, they think that Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, end of story.

But it's what happened afterwards that I think really rolled things back.

I'll give you an example of Lane High School.

It's a white high school.

I have a friend, an African American woman, who wouldn't come downtown because she was crying whenever she came downtown.

And she suddenly realized that it was because she was going past Lane.

And it brought back all of those repressed memories of being taught she was in the first class, it was integrated.

All of the repressed memories are being taunted not just by students but by teachers.

Thank you.

Joanne Robertson.

I don't care if they are Muslim, Mexican, or Martians.

This is about economics, not ethnicity.

Mr. Signer, I was at the rally where you had all the faithful minions whipped up into a frenzy.

You call for a sanctuary city and everybody claps like trained seals, but what you don't tell them is that in the last 10 years our taxes have doubled

and based on the 30% increase, they will double again within three years in order to pay for all these refugees you are flooding in here.

You threaten our federal funding being cut off in order to shelter illegal aliens and again, who do you think will have to make up the difference?

The taxpayers.

You cannot bring hundreds of families here who have nothing

that we the taxpayers have to support 100%.

I'm sure it's a great feeling to be so generous when you're paying the bill with someone else's credit card.

Along with expecting us to foot the bill for your social experiment, we have a racist wish list by Mr. Bellamy meant only to help one race to the exclusion of others, yet you think that is legal, let alone ethical.

Then we have to deal with the propagated lies by Kristina Szakos about the KKK being at the statue dedication, which has been proven to be false.

Just another lie about white history.

For all your talk about affordable housing, all these massive tax increases do is force low-income people out of the rental market and force those longtime residents

out of their homes because they can no longer afford the high assessments on those houses they've lived in for decades.

Mr. Fenwick, I have to say you played your hand perfectly.

You got them to agree to your spending priorities in exchange for what is a worthless vote to remove the statues.

The only problem is, like Mr. Bellamy, you expect us to pay the bill.

Let's see, did I leave anyone out?

You stupid taxpayers better wake up before one day we're dealing with large deficits instead of surpluses.

Ask yourself, with multi-million dollar surpluses every year, what do you think they're planning to spend this 30% increase on?

It ain't you.

Black voters, think about this.

With a six million dollar surplus, if these people cared so much about you,

Why did you have to sweat for six months at Crescent Hall?

With a show of hands from all you counselors and your social justice warriors in the audience, I'd like to know how many of you would be willing to bring a family of refugees into your home.

I didn't think so.

Thank you.

Louise Lawson.

Louise Lawson.

I've had a family of refugees in my home.

Louise Lawson, Katrina Turner.

Okay, so this means we're going to go three deep into our waiting list because we don't have three who are on the nine pre-reserve slots.

So Carol Thorpe is number one on our waiting list.

Is she here?

That's in the first come first serve.

Carol Thorpe.

I'm just going to go down the wait list.

Timothy Porter.

All these folks were notified they were on the wait list.

So Timothy Porter.

Good evening, everyone.

I'll be quick.

I'm here.

My office is at 206 East Jefferson Street around the corner in the city.

I'm here on behalf of my position of chair of the Virginia State Tourism Corporation to talk about the possibility of increasing funding for the arts.

As much as the arts enhance our quality of life, I'm here tonight to talk about the economic value of tourism in the arts.

In the state of Virginia, tourism is the third largest employer in the state.

and supporting 225,000 jobs.

Visitors spend $61 million every day generating $22.5 billion in tourism revenue.

The industry thrives and grows because tourism is increasing by 6% per year and is an instant revenue generator.

bringing in $1.5 billion in state taxes.

For every dollar that is spent in tourism, $5 is instantly returned to the localities.

In Charlottesville and Albemarle, the tourism industry supports 5,400 jobs and generates more than $40 million in state and local taxes.

On average, travelers spend $1.5 million per day in Charlottesville.

Charlottesville and Albemarle generate $550 million per year in revenue.

The opportunity to generate even more lies in investing in cultural attractions and arts marketing.

When people are surveyed about why they visit Charlottesville, history, culture, and the arts are the top attractions.

Investing in and marketing the arts, assets of the area, will generate more tax revenue to offset your investment.

This has been proven time and time again throughout Virginia.

Dollars that can be used for new police officers, salaries for school teachers, affordable housing, or enhanced economic development.

I'm here tonight to ask that you consider increasing funding for the arts in Charlottesville.

Good evening, council members.

I'm John Peede.

I am the president of the Piedmont Council of the Arts Board.

And relevant to this, I was at the NEA, I was director of the Big Read, so I'm delighted to see that award.

Something I'll leave with you is one of our fiscal sponsorships.

You've probably seen this book all around town, but this is something we do at PCA that you probably don't even know about.

this Richard Crosha book.

So I have a statement from our board, I will read it to be precise, it's regarding the item matter for later.

And I'll say that on behalf of all the board members we deeply respect what you do, we respect the city government employees that we work with, certainly those that adjudicate the arts panels and other funding panels.

So even as we critique some decisions

It's not about the dedication.

It's certainly not about the service of any of these individuals.

PCA welcomes any discussion about increasing the city's funding of and support for the local arts sector.

PCA believes that creating a city cultural officer position could be a positive step, but under no circumstances should the position be funded through an offset of direct grants and contracts to local arts organizations.

And unless the city significantly increases the overall cultural funding and replaces the ABRT review process for funding cultural organizations, then the cultural officer really probably will not have a significant impact on our community.

The Piedmont Council for the Arts is the federally recognized local arts agency for our community and has been such since 1979, four decades.

Just about every leader you can think in this community has passed through our doors or been touched by our activities.

We welcome a dialogue about how we can best serve our community.

We welcome nominations from the city for our new executive director position.

We are willing to set aside up the four board positions for city government or county government or organization appointments.

PCA does not, however, support the proposal to create a competing city arts board, especially in the waning months of a city council.

rather we recommend the city refocus those resources of time and money on the cultural plan.

Thank you.

And we have one more spot from the waitlist.

And Ms. Benes, you're next but you have a spot on one of the three so it's probably better to wait for that because

I really didn't expect to say anything until later, but my name is Nancy Carpenter and as noted I live in the Rose Hill neighborhood of the city of Charlottesville.

One of the things I'm here to talk about was briefly touched on by Mr. Smith a little earlier.

I'm here to talk about funding for permanent supportive housing beds for those members of our chronically homeless community that are the most vulnerable medically

to being on the street.

It seems like funding for about 75 to 80 slots might have such a direct impact on the chronically homeless in our city that we can see even more measurable improvements.

I know recently the council had provided some funding to the Moore Center for something similar, permanent supportive housing, for those individuals coming out of

that treatment program and to provide what's most important which is supportive services that's what a lot of the individuals need because right now what they're in is just a continuous cycle of crisis services and then homelessness which you all have noted many times is extremely expensive to this community where people are inappropriately using all types of resources they are vulnerable to being

in a cycle of the criminal justice system in and out, in and out with all the attendant costs there.

So in looking at our recent point in time count, which the data is still being tallied and evaluated, it seems like being able to provide the funding for about 80 spaces would

really go a long way for the city to resolve its homelessness issues.

We know that in 2020 there's the Ending Youth Homelessness Initiative, you know, nationally as well as, you know, family homelessness.

And sometimes some of these individuals, you know, that are chronically homeless with

Severe mental health issues as well as substance abuse issues may be part of that.

They're also part of families and they also may be part of youth that are aging out of foster care.

I myself have seen an uptick in youth coming out of foster care that do not have supportive family at all.

Either those bridges were burned a long time ago or that network never existed and so we're seeing them come out and

really needing that housing.

I never thought I would see this the years that I've been talking about homelessness is that UVA Medical Center is now invested in having at least conversations where they weren't having conversations a few years ago about how can a medical center be a part of ending homelessness in a community.

So hopefully that using different types of strategies whether it's

income tax credits or different types of programs that we can collaborate and find that funding to help those individuals.

Thank you.

Paul Long.

Mayor Signer and members of the City Council, my name is Paul Long.

I live at 1410 Grady Avenue.

and here in the city.

And I've been living in Charlottesville for 19 years.

And I'm originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which is the first capital of the United States.

And as I was coming to attend this meeting, I was talking to a lot of nice people with their Confederate flags expressing their viewpoints.

I noticed that everybody that got up today to speak about the holy statue issue were residents of the city.

But at the previous city council meeting, a lot of the people got to speak.

were from out of town.

One nice lady who boarded her English Bulldog was from Florida.

And Mr. Signer, unlike Mr. Brown and yourself, I don't have a law degree, I don't practice law, but there is a concept known as standing, you know, a legal concept.

In Philadelphia, when I moved out to suburban county and attempted to address city council on the public transit authority,

I was told that since I was not a resident of the city, I had no standing to address the city council on issues and I would like to recommend that city council take a look at that issue, particularly in the last couple of meetings

Residents of the city did not have the opportunity to sign up to speak because so many out of towners and people from out of state were here to voice their opinions.

What that means is there's a lot of other issues that need to be discussed and I know that emotions are heavy on both sides of this issue.

One of the issues is the fact that the homeless, and I'm just going to say in passing I'm against giving the Landmark Hotel any tax incentives.

I run the press as $300,000 a year.

That might be wrong.

I'm not going to say that.

That's right.

But whatever tax breaks are considered giving to the Landmark Hotel should be given to programs that help the homeless.

Thanks.

Well first, like I said, I disagree with him, because y'all know this is my hometown, but I don't currently live here.

My name is Teresa Kate Lamb, I live in Elkton.

I first want to say City Council has missed an opportunity to educate our future generations by voting to move the Robert E. Lee monument.

Charlottesville will be erasing history and losing an educational opportunity that could be creating, that y'all could be creating

By adding additional monuments and signs, an opportunity that Monticello sees value in by restoring Sally Heming's bedroom, I implore city council to reconsider their vote.

Once history is lost, it's lost forever, and we are doomed to repeat it.

Before I close, I have visited these monuments for years.

They have become memorials for my ancestors who have no markers.

My third great grandfather, William Nicholas Thompson,

was killed at Cold Harbor.

James Austin Garrison is buried in Shenandoah National Park.

Moving the statue is the same as desecrating a grave to me.

Please reconsider the vote.

Hello, my name is Kate Benes, and I live in Charlottesville in East Jefferson.

I'm the president of the Little High Neighborhood Association.

And I sent a letter last week.

Does everyone have a copy of it?

It has a chance to read it.

OK, so I've got copies here.

So I'm just going to read it.

This is for City Council Planning Commission, the Board of Architectural Review, Neighborhood Development Services, Mr. Maurice Jones.

from the newly formed and I should say loosely formed Charlottesville Neighborhood Alliance.

And it is the neighborhood leaders concern over current building development approval process.

So we write to express our concern over the current process for building development approval and to ask that you exercise close attention and stewardship to project approvals that may adversely affect our neighborhoods, our city and our skyline for decades to come.

In the current system, we the citizens are only officially engaged in the process when we are confronted with a zoning change or an SUP, i.e.

citizens changes to the written and assumed guidelines in our neighborhoods.

This immediately puts the residents on the defensive.

We see those guidelines as a promise, a safeguard for the future of the neighborhoods.

Please refer to our letter of 2014, which noted the lack of community engagement puts neighborhoods in a reactive position to public projects and redevelopment

creating an adversarial relationship with NDS and sometimes with the development community.

We appreciate the increased transparency that has resulted from the city's requirements for community meetings before the special use permit.

Applications can be processed.

And moving forward, the neighborhoods need to be intimately involved with the formulation of the form-based code, the regulatory framework review, and the updating of the 2018 comprehensive plan and the planning process more generally.

We echo the request of the PHAR in their letter of 2016 asking for a process that is transparent, inclusive, and understandable to the community members.

Importantly, the new code will take time to implement.

This delay serves as an incentive for developers to get zoning and SUPs approved before the new code comes into effect.

Our neighborhoods are therefore vulnerable to hurried expansion and development.

We urge you to work hard as stewards entrusted by voters to maintain the residential neighborhoods, livability, and charm that have made Charlottesville such an attractive place to reside.

Quickly and clearly define the terms transitional area, mixed use, harmonious, and apply them in decision making.

Locate new developments in areas for which they are appropriate and in conformity with surrounding buildings.

Engage the residents of Charlottesville in the decision making process early on.

and improve communication between the city and communities so that we can work together.

Most importantly, we request residents are given the tools needed to understand the implementation of the form-based code, contribute to the update of the 2018 comprehensive plan, and meet with Mr. Jones and Mr. Ikafuna to discuss specific plans for community engagement in these processes.

Our highest hope is that, is that it?

Oh, okay, you got it.

Thank you.

Okay, I want to thank everybody for taking the time.

It takes courage to come up here and share your views on TV and in front of everybody.

We just, again, just to put a point on this, we had 25 folks who were interested tonight.

This was about a typical range for our matters of the public.

It takes about 40 minutes before we get to the business of the meeting.

trying to figure out the right approach here.

There were nine pre-signed up slots, three in person, 12 spots.

So we would love your opinions about how this works.

So is there anybody, and city manager will address staff responses to matters raised for staff in the next meeting.

I have one response to Mrs. C. Mrs. C is gone.

Well,

Excuse me, I'm sorry.

Sure.

One of the issues that we've heard a great deal about is that she raised her concerns in regards to Crescent Hall, schools and their equipment, lunches at school, and the use of surplus money to take care of subsidizing school lunches.

Literally right before we came to, right before we started our closed session for the city council meeting, I was in Crescent Hall.

In regards to affordable housing, we have essentially agreed in principle to provide $2.5 million for redevelopment of public housing.

So we are looking to address that issue specifically.

in regards to schools and their equipment in addition to lunches at schools, we have agreed to provide in our upcoming budget or the capital improvement plan over nearly a million dollars in additional funding, correct Mr. Jones?

A million dollars per year to the schools for projects that they deem important.

Correct.

So when individuals who I have the utmost respect for when we say we should use the money for X, Y, and Z, the fact of the matter remains is that we are

We can actually do both.

We're not tied to either doing either or.

We can put in the effort and make an effort to address several of the needs within our community.

And I also would like to respond to something that was actually called about me in particular.

So just I'd like to kind of, I don't know, clear my name is really the word because I don't really need to.

But there was also a letter to the editor that repeated the same thing.

And so I just wanted to clarify.

Several years ago, city mayor Dave Norris showed me a postcard that he had.

He's a collector of postcards that showed the dedication of the Robert E. Lee statue.

And if you'll notice at the statue itself today, the picture below it on the plaque is actually from the Jackson statue dedication.

So it's a different picture.

And so he showed me this picture.

And in the picture, which was about this big, there was this white stripe that went all the way from the Haven to the Historical Society to the Methodist Church.

And he said these were, as far as he could tell, Klan's members at the event.

And I looked at it and looked like Klan's members to me too.

So I thought, well, that's really interesting.

He eventually sold his postcard collection.

I had been looking for that postcard ever since because I didn't want to spread the word that there were clans members there unless I actually had the picture.

So I recently got a hold of the picture itself and posted it on Facebook and said these clansmen were in full regalia at the event.

And I fully believe that at the time.

Then someone posted on it and I made it public so that everybody could see it.

Somebody posted that a different angle of that same picture that did call into question who those people were.

They may well have been

this other organization that had big plumes on their heads that were white and you know in masks like that in a grainy old picture from a distance could easily have been that.

So I will concede that those may not have been Klan's members and I actually did put a clarification on my Facebook post to that effect so I have not continued to say that they are.

That said, those people who wrote that never got to see my clarification because there were so many vile and hateful things posted on that open

Post that I had to close it.

I was deleting things every day because they were so full of curse words and nasty things.

So I closed the post.

And so I apologize to the people who never got to see my clarification.

Some of your, not the people who've spoken, but some of the people who shared their views were a little less civil about the way that they put them.

So I had to close the post.

I have one quick clarification too.

There was a misstatement about sanctuary city issues.

I have not called and did not in my speech at this press conference that we call for sanctuary city status at all.

I didn't use those words.

I said that we want a review of legal options for us in the city regarding immigration, particularly considering escalations of

Mayor Signer, one more comment, please.

I would like to also just thank the members of the public that came and spoke pretty clearly and well about the power of confronting an existing monument that comes from a very distasteful past with a new monument.

And I would like to remind everyone that Council has voted to do that approach, which the Blue Ribbon Commission called the transform and place approach,

for the Jackson Park.

So there will be a monument to the enslaved population of Charlottesville in a posture that confronts the Jackson statue.

It does not remove the Jackson statue, but it does create that other debate, that other discussion that so many people tonight have actually advocated for.

Thank you.

OK, all right, moving on to the consent agenda.

Item A, minutes for February 6th.

Item B, appropriation, additional funding for social services benefits programs, $14,519, second of two readings.

Item C, appropriation, crisis intervention team grant, Department of Criminal Justice Services, $20,000, second of two readings.

Item D, appropriation, check and connect student engagement continuation grant, $147,000, second of two readings.

Item E, appropriation, donations for community risk reduction initiatives, $3,246, second of two readings.

Item F, resolution, donations of surplus city police cars to Piedmont Virginia Community College, first of two reading.

G, ordinance conditional release of bike slash pedestrian access easement on Meadowbrook Road to accommodate retail development at 1200 Emmett Street, second of two readings.

Item H, ordinance grant of easement for Electric Duck Bank under Emmett Street, Stadium Road, Jefferson Park Avenue and Monroe Lane to the University of Virginia, second of two readings.

Item I, Ordinance, Century, Link, Communications, Telecommunications, Franchise, Renewal, second of two readings.

Mr. Mayor, I would like to take just a moment to highlight the one new item on our consent agenda, not because I want to call it out for different consideration, but because I think people should know about it.

It is item F,

the donation of four surplus city police cars to Piedmont Virginia Community College.

And if I may just read a couple of paragraphs that PVCC, the community college, wrote to us for this memo, which is the Piedmont Virginia Community College recently created a division of community self-sufficiency programs in partnership with the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce.

It is an outgrowth of the Chamber's Orange Dot Project and Charlottesville Works Initiative.

We use a peer network to identify low income families being left behind in our economy

and provide them with the training and supports they need to get quality jobs in Charlottesville and the surrounding region.

During our work over the last two years, we are constantly confronted with the barrier of transportation.

As a response to this need, here at Community Self-Sufficiency, we are creating a car loan program that will temporarily provide our students vehicles while they are completing their training in education.

Once they have successfully completed their training and obtained employment in these skilled positions,

They will then have the financial capacity to purchase a vehicle of their own and return the loaner back to the program, allowing us to lend it to the next student in need of a vehicle.

We have already figured out the thorny issues of insurance and storing the fleet when the car is not in use.

What we need now are the vehicles.

and so we have four cars, police cars that are being decommissioned so no longer of use to the city and we are donating those four vehicles to this program.

I'm assuming that if people have vehicles in very good condition that they are interested in donating that they should call PVCC, the Community Self-Sufficiency Program and offer them as well.

So I just wanted to give a shout out to our staff and our police department for making this connection and donating these cars.

Is there a second?

Second.

Any discussion, questions?

All in favor?

Okay, consent agenda varies five to zero.

We now move on to the regular items in our agenda.

Let me just say under our rules, the first meeting of each month is a

Business Meeting.

The second meeting is a working meeting.

We have moved our work sessions, which were previously held off camera at City Space the first Thursday of the month, into our regular meeting so that the public can watch us deliberate a work session under

The way that we treat it here is not formally run under Robert's Rules of Order so you can have more open discussion.

There doesn't need to be a motion on the floor to, you know, which is all that you're allowed to discuss after.

So it's meant to have more open discussion.

We have three items tonight like that.

This one, though, that's coming up, item number two, is more traditional because we needed to do it in the

and the suitcase of things.

So we have a little bit of flexibility with the items that we put into the two different meeting types.

This is a public hearing and ordinance, cable television franchise agreement with Comcast.

This is the first of two readings, so we just need a motion and a second.

We have 20 minutes.

We'll probably go a little bit over this.

We have 20 minutes allocated on the agenda.

Right now, currently we only have one person signed up, so if you have feelings of any sort about cable in Charlottesville, this is the time to sign up to speak about it.

We have a public hearing.

Good evening City Councilors, Mayor Signer, Mr. Jones.

What Council has before it is a cable franchise agreement which we have been negotiating at this point for three years.

The cable franchise that we have with Comcast started in 2006.

It expired in December of 2013.

We have had two extensions to that expiration so that we could take our time and negotiate

a cable franchise that is in the interest of the citizens of Charlottesville.

During this cable negotiation period, I think one of the primary themes that certainly our Director of Communications and the city has been focused on is focusing on customer service and those standards and how we best serve the citizens of Charlottesville.

To that end, I'd like to call your attention to a few of the specific provisions which I think are relevant to that goal.

This is a 10-year cable franchise, and it's a non-exclusive franchise.

So that means that any other company that wants to come in and provide cable services to the city of Charlottesville is welcome to do so.

I think that's important to understand.

Why is it important to go ahead and approve a cable franchise?

That's because we do need to establish a floor, a floor under which any other company that might express interest would be able to come in and start at that base.

Some of the things I think that are important to emphasize are that this agreement requires Comcast to continue to provide cable services to all of the houses that are already served.

It requires Comcast to

make sure that they are providing cable service to new developments that are being developed and also to anywhere in the city where there's a build up within a square mileage footage.

The other important issue that I think benefits citizens of Charlottesville is that this franchise agreement will continue to provide our public access channels.

For any of you who are watching TV, you're watching that because of our cable access channels.

And so this agreement will continue that service for the citizens and help perpetuate the community engagement that we all work so hard to achieve within the city.

Importantly, too, this franchise agreement will continue our PEG access fees.

Those are fees that Comcast collects for us, and those fees are remitted to the city so that we can continue to provide for capital improvements, continue to provide all of the community access services that we have.

And I think it's important to emphasize that with this agreement we will be

maintaining all of the community access channels that we've enjoyed in the City of Charlottesville for quite a long time.

In addition to that Comcast has agreed to a one-time grant of $15,000 so we'll have additional money to work towards further enhancing our technological capacities within the city and I think that's an exciting opportunity for the city in this case.

For the citizens themselves, I think it's important to highlight a few things.

The first is that Comcast is required to provide you 30 days prior notice before they make changes to your service, to your bills.

And I think information is very important.

That way you will not be surprised.

And Comcast is required under our agreement to do that.

They're also required to maintain a local customer service center.

That was something that I think was very important to the city and to the citizens that we have heard from.

That customer service center is required to be in the Charlottesville Albemarle area, but at a convenient location for easy access.

Another thing I think that is important is that Comcast is going to continue to provide free cable services to several of our municipal buildings, to our schools, to our libraries, to our parks and recreation centers.

This allows many different citizens within our community to enjoy the benefits that having cable access for educational purposes or other purposes affords.

And finally, I would submit that I think that we have tried to focus on some unique, smaller issues that were discrete to the city.

We've required them to follow our tree conservation ordinance,

When we started this negotiation, that was something that was very important to some of the city councilors.

And we hope that city council will approve this ordinance.

Thank you.

And I should say we have two gentlemen from Comcast with us.

Are there any questions for

And within the actual cable franchise agreement, there's a list of all of the different centers that will be receiving free cable services.

Those include the K-12 public schools, several locations within City Hall, which is very helpful for City Hall being able to conduct their business, Tonsler Park Community Center, Carver Recreation Center, Key Recreation Center, Smith Aquatics and Fitness Center,

the Jefferson Madison Regional Library, the main branch, the Jefferson Madison Regional Library at Gordon Avenue, and the Meadow Creek Golf Course and Clubhouse.

I do have a question.

And thank you for the very thorough overview, Ms. Davies.

I will say, though, over the last five years I've been on council, I have heard many constituents have complained to me about kind of the irregular quality of customer service from Comcast.

And I do appreciate the Section 6.11

the cable system, office hours, and telephone availability.

It's page 17 of the 39 pages.

And I'm looking specifically under section B where it does outline very specifically that customers won't wait more than 30 minutes, that transfer time shouldn't exceed 30 seconds, and that it was going to be measured on a quarterly basis.

My concern is that I don't see any

statement whereby the city is actually monitoring that.

Well, the agreement as a whole contemplates that Comcast will produce any request for reports that we want.

Upon request and we talked about this quite a bit I think in the first year of the negotiations about the usefulness of having Comcast send a bunch of reports to the city that may not actually address the issue that the city is concerned about.

And so the approach we've taken is to establish that right to ask for the agreement.

The idea being, though certainly we could entertain another option, is that that would afford us the ability to be responsive to an issue if it comes up, as opposed to establishing some kind of regular reporting schedule, which is historically how cable franchise agreements have been done.

I mean, I think that

Comcast is in the process of negotiating a franchise with us.

And they are reporting to us, and they're here tonight, that they've put a lot of effort into improving customer service.

I think that we spent three years communicating very clearly to them that there have been complaints about customer service.

I would submit to you that this is the most, in my opinion, efficient way to address those concerns, to be able to ask for any report upon request.

May I ask a follow up question about that specific piece?

If Comcast is producing these reports quarterly anyway, would it make sense to have them put on some sort of, maybe even through our communications office, be put on some sort of intranet

I understand, but that way they don't have to do extra work, they just pop it up on the web and then if staff needs it they can have access to it at all times and so

We'll have you guys up to answer any questions and introduce yourselves.

Let's do any other questions.

Again, it was related to monitoring the agreement, so to speak, because I know in the past there have been times when the

the center was closed, no one was notified about it and people would, there was no way for them to know about it.

Absolutely not.

Or a city councilor.

Or a city councilor.

Right.

We all could take notes from anything that comes up for the Comcast.

David, two questions.

Follow up on Ms. Galvin's question, I actually don't, just to correct this, this says 30 seconds, not 30 minutes, but I actually don't, I'm an attorney and I don't understand what this means.

It says, and I've called Comcast, I've spent

Under normal operating conditions, telephone answer time by customer representative, including wait time, shall not exceed 30 seconds when the connection is made.

What does that mean?

A lot turns on when the connection is made.

That's what that means?

It does say including wait time.

So the minute, it's going to be 30 seconds after a person makes a call, they're supposed to be responded to.

I would like when we have our representatives, I want a cold, clear answer to this.

And I think this probably might be improved.

I also have a second question.

This $15,000, that's the one time grant.

When did that

That goes back to last year.

OK. Yeah.

So one thing that I want to ask you and then I want to ask the representatives is, I've heard from many constituents, we actually just got an email to all of us recently, is that the quality of the, you know, if you're watching this either on Channel 4 or 5 or whatever it is at home or on your TV,

it's very blurry and smeary and in the we have equipment that we bought a long time ago it's capital expense so we don't have HD cameras but we also don't have a channel that's an HD channel from Comcast that would that could even carry HD even if we had that camera equipment so one of the things I was planning on asking these gentlemen was what about that could that be part of an understanding or you know could it be formally part of this agreement could it be

We don't want a holdup agreement.

A ton of work has gone into this and we respect and appreciate all the negotiating on behalf of the city that predates some of us.

So a lot goes into these negotiations.

But we'd like to be, you know, up with the times and for, you know, when somebody sent us a photo, you couldn't even read our names on a still from the voting board.

So we want to get that fixed.

And could that amount, 15,000, could it be higher

which would enable us to buy new HD camera equipment.

Is that something that they might be open to if we have this one-time grant in here and then we could just solve this and then they would, I know there's an issue with getting an HD channel that might take a couple of years but at least we would have solved that problem online short term and then when we get a channel then we could deal with it long term.

So you're raising a lot of technical issues that I might have to defer to our

Director of Communications and or Comcast.

It is my understanding that Comcast has expressed a willingness and interest in providing us with an HD channel.

It is also my understanding that

While we have been operating in this limbo, for lack of a better word, without a franchise agreement, the Department of Communications has been very wary to invest in new equipment.

And I think that that was a wise choice because there by no means is a guarantee that we're going to have these PEG fees.

Good evening, Council.

Miriam Dickler, Director of Communications.

A couple of points of clarification about HD and also just how we broadcast.

First of all, what's going through the Internet is not the same as what's going through the broadcast cable system.

So it's important to note that whatever changes we make to one don't necessarily translate to the other one.

And we have not spoken to our vendor for our online system to assess what capabilities, if any, they have to accommodate HD.

I also want to clarify that while cameras would be great, it's not simply our cameras.

We are broadcasting analog.

We aren't broadcasting a digital signal.

So we're talking about a major overhaul of this entire space, this whole system.

So all the cameras in this room, but also the stuff we have in the studio that handles our actual broadcast.

So it is a fairly significant capital expense.

And while we do have a robust balance, because I'm frugal, so I might say stingy,

We do have ongoing expenses for our current operations.

I did want to mention, you said Channel 4 or 5, we broadcast on TV 10, Comcast, Channel 10, or charlottesville.org slash streaming.

You can find us all day long.

So there are some major considerations there.

We have not had our contract engineer look at this space in a while to really assess what that cost would be all told.

So while

It would be nice to have.

We don't know how that operates in the real world and we need to have some real

Right.

And so if the screenshot you were sent was from online and it was blurry from online, that may not get resolved even if Comcast can provide us with an HD channel and we revamp this entire system.

Good evening, Council.

My name is Kevin Brothurst, and I am the Vice President of Government Affairs for the Beltway region, which includes Charlottesville, Virginia, and I'm here with my colleague.

Hi, I'm Nathan Daugherty.

I'm a Government Affairs Manager.

My service area is Charlottesville.

My office is on Main Street right by Feast.

No longer a Charlottesville resident, but I've lived in North Downtown, the University area, Fifeville, Roland Mills.

All over the city.

Excuse me?

So there were a couple questions here for you all.

There was this question about the language, about customer service response times, what it means actually, what the actual commitment is.

I think we'd like to know that.

I think we'd love to know

So how about I address the HD question first.

So we had met recently and you had mentioned your desire for HD.

I think that we can talk about that in the next few years as far as how do we implement that.

That's something we can agree to.

What's the closest?

I would say three to five years maybe.

I mean that could be something that we would look at.

So three years would be the earliest you think is practicable?

And then there was the question of whether or not it would be

Yeah, so there are certainly mechanisms where you can monitor the quality control.

We don't generate those reports just by default.

They would have to be something we would do manually, and we can do that.

It's just that we always ask for them to be upon request in franchise agreements, because oftentimes we do the reports and they're not needed, or people aren't paying attention to them, or it's just cut down on work, basically, but we're still required to

If we're asked to do those reports, we certainly can produce them.

Is there someone within Comcast who's reviewing those reports?

But this report would be, we're looking at it as a regional-wide or a statewide basis or a system-wide basis.

So your report would have to be localized to Charlottesville.

So that's where that does take an extra step to kind of break out that information by Charlottesville.

No, I don't think so.

We are doing an open data policy.

OK, so I just want to clarify this.

Under normal operating conditions, telephone answer time by customer representative, including wait time, shall not exceed 30 seconds when the connection is made.

So is this FCC, this is federal regulation dictated?

So this is not.

Is this something that we have the ability to negotiate or that you guys could bend on?

This to me says that you just can't have dead time once you've gotten through waiting and the wait time is not what you said.

I agree with your interpretation.

I think the operative word is upon connection being made.

We basically, and again without, I don't recall that particular line from the FCC regulations, but we did pretty much lift

the customer service requirements from the FCC regulations.

So I would, I'm happy to go back and look specifically for that.

Yeah, and so what we wanted to do was memorialize the customer service standards now before there's any changes made to them.

And so we went ahead and expressly

incorporated all of them into the agreement.

But as to your specific question, I just, I would need to go back.

Is it possible to, between the first and second reading, how does, can we ask you to come back to us?

Sure.

And it could be amended at the second reading, if it was possible to do that, to make it more, I mean, I think that my interest, if my colleagues were interested, would be to have

The most customer friendly language in here that was permissible under the FCC and that you guys would agree to.

This right now is meaningless.

I think there's a strong interest that there would be

And I will say that we recognize the shortcomings we've had in customer service issues

and that the company is very much committed to improving their customer service.

We've recently hired 5,000 customer service agents and technicians onshore.

These are American employees now based in the United States to help improve the customer service.

We've reduced our window of time where people have to wait.

They used to wait for four hours.

They now can wait.

Oh, it still says four in our thing.

That's our requirement of the franchise.

And Allison is very persistent in that.

We've reduced that in two hours.

We don't want to be compelled by a franchise, but we are working to improve that service.

We've actually just launched, as part of our app, our My Account app,

The company is absolutely committed to improving that.

and we've made drastic investments not only in the customer service but also into the network itself by deploying fiber deeper and deeper by opening up the new Xfinity store that you may have heard of.

I'm sorry, what is the name of the shopping center?

Stonefield.

In Stonefield, sorry.

So that is a big improvement over where we were before.

But I just want to say that I think it's a very important follow-up that we monitor the improvements in customer service as a result of the clarity of knowing that when somebody calls, a customer representative will be

responding to that person within 30 minutes.

Some clarity just like that and that we need to have the quarterly reports just given to us so that we can see trend data.

so that we can see improvement based on this franchise agreement.

Is there interest in having it just be automatic?

So this, upon request, we just would make it automatic.

Sure.

I would say that my office, I don't have any objection to requesting that quarterly, to contacting Nathan and saying that we request it.

We would actually prefer it be by request as well because there are a number of different reports that get generated

and frankly frequently those are reports that people are not using.

In my former position I was receiving reports and frankly people did not care about them or care to look at them so they sort of were just wasted energy.

But members of the public might want to and then you'd have them.

I can safely say that in my career I have not ever had someone ask for the data set.

I've had people call and say Comcast is really annoying me.

Comcast isn't doing the thing we've asked for.

I've never asked them to help them quantify that.

I'm not saying they wouldn't be happy with it.

And I think that the other thing to consider is even with the open data policy, we need to ask how they're providing us that data, how it would then be put

into any sort of open data system we have because that's a lot of things and that would let us better communicate with them our needs.

If Comcast is comfortable generating a quarterly report, that's fine with us.

Thank you.

Thank you for your flexibility.

Thank you.

Okay, I think we're in good shape.

And do you guys want to say just one minute about the program you have that extends access to, after getting some tough questions here.

Well, thank you for bringing that up.

We have launched in 2011 something called the Internet Essentials Program.

It's a broadband adoption program intended to bridge the digital divide, and that's the problem where low-income families are adopting broadband at a much lower rate than people from more affluent families.

So what we do with the program is offer

Internet service, high speed internet service for $9.95 a month.

We also sell laptop and netbook computers for $149 to families that have children in the free or reduced school lunch program or that attend schools that have populations of more than 40% free or reduced school lunch.

We've also expanded this program recently to include HUD residents, so people that get housing assistance, housing vouchers, can now get internet service for $9.95 a month and buy laptop computers for $149 as part of our Internet Essentials program.

Now this is something we've done as a public service.

We've been doing it for, I'm sorry, since 2011 now.

We've continued to expand the program.

We've now connected over 750,000 homes, families, to the internet, many of whom for the very first time.

So we're always working with

elected officials with school districts with community organizations to promote the program to make sure that families that may be eligible for the program are aware of it.

Thank you.

This is definitely something that we can look into specifically when we look at our partnerships with the Charlottesville Housing and Redevelopment

Okay, now opening any further?

We have a public hearing on this matter, required it's an ordinance, so we have one person signed up.

Anybody else who would like to sign up?

Can Elizabeth Breeden sign up?

She left?

Okay, anyone else like to speak about

franchise agreement.

None of all these arts people want to speak about cable.

All right.

OK, going once.

You all cut the cord a long time ago.

OK, going once, going twice.

OK, closing the public hearing.

I would like to make a motion that we adopt this franchise agreement pending the first and a second today.

And I'll second.

Okay.

Thank you all.

All right.

I think we should, the next item will take some time, so let's take our traditional 9 o'clock break five minutes early.

If everyone can be back in here at 9 o'clock sharp, it'll probably be 9.05, but let's try and get back here as soon as we can.

I don't know what to say.

you you

The End

Thank you.

Okay.

We now move on to item three on the agenda.

This is a report and discussion on the Landmark Hotel.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of Council.

I'm here to give you an update on recent conversations, negotiations with the owner of the property formerly

Commonly known as the Landmark Hotel, 201 East Main Street, the heart of the downtown area.

This project probably needs a little background for most.

If you've been in Charlottesville for any or all of the last eight years as a visitor, resident, or business owner, you are probably aware of the story on some level of this

Infamous Hotel.

in the city and part of what we're here to talk about tonight is a potential path forward to help alleviate that.

In any case, we have an unfinished building now going on eight years.

It's been an eyesore for almost all safety concern for many, a serious safety concern at one time or the other more recently.

So the kind of continuing question that I've gotten, I know all of you have gotten and others in the city have gotten is what can we do about it?

We've tried a couple

of efforts including a letter last year from a legal perspective about improving the property and potentially moving towards a condemnation scenario.

We've tried kind of waiting it out.

It's been eight years.

It's been two owners now.

We're starting to see some movement.

Three if you count the bank.

That's true.

So what we're here to focus on tonight is really kind of that carrot approach where if you dangle a carrot a little bit of an incentive to encourage the activity to happen a little faster that that might be more fruitful with respect to overall benefit to the city and to the community.

Early last year conversations were initiated between

City staff and the current owner of the property, Dewberry Capital is the owner, John Dewberry is the principal of that organization.

There's been numerous conversations that many of you have been involved in as well as the City Attorney's Office, myself and others on the city side have been having, I would say, fruitful discussions about moving the project forward.

I think everybody in the room on all those conversations wants to see it finished.

wants to see it become a functioning, contributing piece of the downtown and everybody believes that it ultimately can be.

There are some challenges to get there.

Anyway, I'm going to walk you through what is a basic framework of an agreement that at this point the developer and the city both have pieces in and we're currently here to seek your direction on this, whether to continue to move forward and actually formalize this in agreements that would come to you for adoption by resolution or whether to take a different approach.

So at the end we'll be seeking that type of direction from you.

One of the key items and one of the items that the city has proffered here that's important to the hotel is parking.

The original concept for the Landmark Hotel is on a quarter acre property, has no parking associated with it, and that was an original challenge that was going to be met through an arrangement with the Water Street Parking Garage.

Same challenge for this owner.

So one of the items that we have proposed is a lease for 75 spaces in the Water Street parking garage at a rate that is equal to 25% of the value that they generate from those spaces.

This parking, excuse me, the hotel will operate on a valet service so they will be charging their customers to park.

We would propose sharing 25% of that revenue as

our lease payment as opposed to charging them a flat rate.

However, we would also request and put in a minimum in year one, in year two, and then year three through 10 as well.

So there would be a minimum payment that the city would expect to receive.

Those amounts are detailed in the agreement.

First year is a minimum of $40,000, second year $60,000.

and years 3 through 10, $80,000 payment for those spaces.

At the 80,000 per year minimum, that's about a 30% discount.

So in year one and two, you would be offering a bit more of a discount, but in the bulk years of the agreement, it'd be approximately a 30% discount.

That's in contrast to an original request that asked for free parking for a long period of time, I think upwards of 50 years.

So we've negotiated to that point on the parking item.

The second piece that the city would offer is a performance agreement.

This is essentially a grant that the city and the Economic Development Authority would create an agreement on and then the Economic Development Authority would then be

having a similar agreement with the actual developer.

It doesn't provide any money up front.

It's a reimbursement after the fact.

If they meet basic criteria, which I'll outline in a minute, they would be eligible to receive 50% of the real estate increment created by the project.

So only the real estate tax associated with the project that they actually create.

The project's currently assessed at a little over, the parcel's currently assessed a little over $6 million.

They're currently paying $60,000 and taxes on that.

They would continue to pay that.

They would invest $20 to $30 million additional to finish the project, and they would receive 50% of that incremental value in return annually in the form of a grant through the EDA.

As we sit today, that is estimated to be about $110,000 annually.

The agreement is intended to run for 10 years, so roughly $1 million total assistance over the course of a 10-year agreement period.

In order to qualify for that, they would need to invest a minimum of $20 million in capital investment in the facility over and above what's there now.

In addition to that, they would need to generate a minimum level of transient occupancy or lodging tax on an annual basis.

And that's also a graduated scale starting in year one of a minimum of $150,000, year two $225,000, and year three $300,000.

If those thresholds are not met, they wouldn't be eligible for the grant in that particular year, in addition to the $20 million capital investment which we discussed.

So those are the two key components of the city

the city side of the deal, if you will.

The developer at Dewberry Capital would agree to several other components.

They would agree to immediately have the building assessed by a professional consultant to confirm its structural integrity.

It would also make a reasonable good faith effort to improve the outside appearance of the plywood and the trash and the things associated with the building that have been concerned to people during this kind of interim period.

They would provide the city with an official pro forma showing sources of funds, construction costs, and anticipated operating costs.

They would agree to pursue all necessary city approvals expeditiously.

They would agree, and this is a key one, to a completion date, a mutually agreed upon completion date that would be put into the contract that if they do not meet that completion date, the grant amount would be reduced on a monthly basis.

That's the total amount over the period of the 10 years?

Yes, 1% per month.

Just one more question, right on that number 4, so that it's 1% per month, that's 12% per year?

OK, so those are the basic requirements that they would agree to that we've talked about.

I do want to give you a little bit of context about performance agreements.

We have done a couple in the city in the last eight years, two specifically.

They have been what I would call successful.

Both are in the repayment period.

The criteria were met by both development groups.

Collectively, they've resulted in $80 million being added to the tax roll that wasn't there previously.

and a thousand jobs have been added to the city that weren't here previously.

So they've been successful and I will also tell you that we have created a threshold for entertaining, excuse me, performance agreements and that has been 20 million dollars capital investment which we talked about in the hotel would comply with that.

We've also talked about 200 jobs and when we talk about jobs we talk about average or above wage for the prevailing wage for the area.

This hotel project would not meet that 200 threshold.

They anticipate about 100 jobs.

Many of those, well, some of those are part time, many of those are full time.

The average over the 100 are not above the prevailing wage.

Some are.

They have some higher management level that would be certainly above the median wage for the area, but most would not.

For that reason, we've suggested adding in the criteria related to the lodging tax and making that one of the key criteria for them to be eligible for the actual grant.

To my knowledge, the city has not, with the exception, with one notable exception, provided assistance or any type of incentive to hotels in the past.

and that exception is the Omni slash Radisson project, which the housing authority and the city were party to in the early 80s.

That resulted in basically a $10 million loan being written off to allow that project to continue.

It's much before my time, so my details on it are a little fuzzy.

But those are the basics of that.

And you can argue that that's critical to the success of the downtown mall.

today, but other than that I'm not aware of any specific projects that the city has assisted on of this type.

So certainly you will hear from folks that are for this because of the issue that it presents with respect to blight and safety and certainly there's an argument on the other side that suggests that we ought not be incentivizing or encouraging these type of activities because we do have a robust hospitality market as we sit here today.

This is a unique circumstance, no doubt.

And Mural's direction will be to kind of find the right balance, if you will, in terms of what's in the best interest of the city and the community with respect to the potential cost to the city in any type of assistance.

If it wasn't clear on how the performance agreement works,

It's money that's generated by the project.

It does not impact the general fund.

We're not going into the general fund to make a budget allocation to pay somebody either now or in the future.

If the revenue materializes, it's 50% of whatever they cost.

to be put in place because of the project.

If that amount goes up beyond $20 million, then they get 50% of that.

But it's money that the city does not have currently at its disposal.

So I want to be clear, it doesn't impact the general fund in any significant way.

The project is estimated.

Our estimates, which I factored in, that this is a bit of a unique project.

estimate $800,000 to $950,000 annually, and that's all inclusive of all taxes.

That's real estate taxes, transit occupancy taxes, which are the two most prominent, but it also includes meals, sales, utility, and BPOL taxes as well.

So we expect the project, when and if operable, to generate significant tax revenue for the city.

And I think with that, that covers the basics of the agreement on both sides.

The $20 million capital investment, I assume that would be borrowed money that he would do.

I think it's actually a mix.

Would you know by the pro forma that they would give the city?

Yes.

Does the CPA sign off on that?

I don't know for certain, but I'm imagining that his financing folks as well as insurance folks would want to have some surety that the money's in good shape.

So he would likely need to do one.

And basically, what kind of timeline are we looking at here?

I hate to speak for the developer.

They have indicated, I will say that Mr. Dewberry and Dewberry Capital came into ownership in 2012 and that's several years ago as you can imagine now but they did indicate at the time that they would begin moving forward with this project once they finished one in Charleston and they have

So far been true to that.

They've engaged the city most recently last year when that project opened and started focusing their attention.

It's hard to say exactly when they would start.

I think one benefit of putting something like this in place would be that agreed upon completion date.

They would say, okay, here it is.

If you can make it, you're eligible.

If not, then you're not.

Okay.

Yes, Mr. Angola, this is mainly about the kind of the status of the hotel market in Charlottesville and I asked you some questions earlier but I just want to make sure I understand.

I guess what I'm saying, what I want to make sure I understand then is so, then I asked how many readily occupiable rooms we have now, and you said about 3,600.

So the 1,200 is part of the 3,600?

Yes.

Got it.

And the 1,200 is included in that 3,600.

OK, good.

Yes.

It's a good question.

I think we're going to be testing the limits a little bit.

We've seen quite a bit of activity in the hospitality market.

You know, there are smarter people than I that are making these decisions and putting money on the line.

They've gotten the financing.

Yes.

So I think we'll see.

I think one thing that you are seeing and we have seen a little bit of and will see more of is that older product will

will close and renovate and remodel.

So as new product comes online it forces the older product to rejuvenate itself or it will lose market share.

So we've seen some of that already in the city.

I think we'll see a little bit more of that.

It's been a pretty phenomenal last couple of years of growth with respect to the city and county, but much of that growth is focused right in the downtown area.

Questions?

Right now it expires July 1 of this year.

Right.

I'll need to check the status.

There was a bill in the General Assembly that would extend site plan approvals again.

I think they're certainly aware of that.

I think the legal issue is more complicated than simply the site plan approval.

I think whether or not the landowner would continue to have a right to pursue the development will in part relate to the money that's already been spent along the way to get the building to where it is now.

So I don't want to leave the public to believe that if the site plan expires,

Alright, thanks.

So, I noticed that this year a lot of our, especially close to downtown commercial property values really

jumped.

Would we do another assessment before that?

No, that's the 2017 assessment.

OK.

So the other is the 75 parking spots.

So the spaces envisioned would be on the roof, the fourth floor, and the city does own spaces on the roof.

Those are part of the general pool, public pool of parking currently.

It's hard to answer that specifically because they're a mix of transient and monthly.

Okay.

And if the second year we'd lose, you know, a little less than a half, and the third year we'd lose two-thirds, or a third, okay.

Another question is that a percentage of all new tax revenue currently goes into funding formula for the schools.

I believe they're calculated on the original amount.

Yeah, 40% of new revenue.

So 40% of the new revenue of this would be, we'd only be getting half of that revenue.

So would we be paying the 40% on the full amount?

Yeah, that's a good question.

Well, we would pay on the full amount.

Exactly.

And that's the way we've done it in the past.

Oh, I know.

But I'm just thinking of that calculation, how we would calculate it for purposes.

And the other is, and this is really my last question, I think.

There's a 12% per year docking of the total for missing the deadline of completion of the project.

1% a month, 12% a year.

Potentially, yeah.

When we put this into an agreement form, we would clarify how that would work.

I'm just trying to kind of get a sense of what all the costs are that we're asked to put in, because it's not just the lost revenue.

It's several other bits.

Sure.

So my question is in regards to some of the things that we've heard from some other business owners, not only in the downtown mall, but others throughout the city specifically, some fellow hotel owners.

I'm somewhat concerned about the precedent that we may be setting in regards to disagreement of sorts.

That's a legitimate concern.

I, too, share that.

You know, incentivizing hospitality and hotel projects is not a typical activity of economic development.

Typically, economic development focuses on the economic base of the community, so that jobs that actually create something that is sold outside of the area, bring revenue into the area, is a more typical focus.

Those jobs tend to typically pay more above the prevailing wage that I mentioned earlier as well.

It's a concern.

Right, because I am indeed concerned that even when we look at the package of sorts, the amount of jobs essentially that they're anticipating creating is roughly a hundred.

Correct.

So when we, so for other business owners, when they see this package being put together, this incentivized package being put together,

And again, once they do their homework as we've all done, just reading it and then looking at some of the comments in which people have sent to us.

Some could very well ask the question, well, what makes this Dewberry individual or this particular project more important than mine?

And someone could say, well, this project is bringing in 75 low-wage jobs.

I'm going to bring in 150 living-wage jobs.

And will I get the same package?

Is this gentleman being essentially able to kind of get this, in my opinion, great incentive package

because he decided to wait on this property for a few years.

Like, are we rewarding this individual for potentially creating what some would deem as an eyesore in the community?

So again, that sets the precedent of people who come and buy properties in our city and then they say, well, I know what to do.

I'll just wait.

I'll let some stuff eventually kind of fall down and swing by.

I'll get a lot of outrage and then the city will have to kind of fall into my demands.

Is that the precedent that we're setting?

I don't want to kind of make it seem as if I'm not in favor of that.

I don't think that, you know, there are special circumstances.

I just want that to be, I want that to be not only in the public, but I want us to take that into consideration when we make this decision because this is indeed a special circumstance.

I think Mr. Vice Mayor I think precedent was it was an issue that the staff raised with the City Council a year ago when we took on this subject

We do certainly have concerns about that.

It is not, the performance agreement that we're talking about is not unprecedented in the city.

We have two other performance agreements as Mr. Engle mentioned.

I think the council made clear to the staff that this was kind of an unusual situation with the hotel and that our approach to this was if we were to work out an agreement, which is still yet to be determined,

But if we were to work out an agreement, this would be specifically for this situation and not now a new policy for the city, as we did with both the agreements on Water Street and then also with the old Martha Jefferson Hospital property as well.

We said these are special circumstances to bring in high-paying jobs into downtown.

One was to replace a hospital in which we saw significant movement of employees out of the downtown and we saw an infusion of new employees coming in.

And I think that response is the one in which many members of the public needed to hear.

So specifically for individuals who hear this, this is not out of the norm to a certain extent because we have performance agreements

We have two kind of on the books already in that this is not setting a new precedent.

Well, and I believe, I mean, and we have the same discussion with both CFA and World Strides six years ago or seven years ago, and we were concerned about precedent and we have not done another agreement like that since then.

So I think once again, I think council made clear to us,

Can I make a motion for five more minutes?

I think we should move to discussion now.

No.

No.

Okay, I would like to move then to some discussions.

Mr. Engle is right here.

I would like to

Don't we have to have a motion on the floor to do that?

No, because it's a work session.

This is a work session.

The whole thing is a work session.

As I explained at the beginning.

So I just want to set the context here a little bit more broadly.

And I've been extremely involved personally in this.

I've had several meetings with Mr. DuBarry and his team over the last year.

This is a major issue that came up.

You know, in the course of running for city council, I hear about the landmark probably.

Like, if I'm out in public, I will hear about this frustration, anger, rage, taxi drivers, people walking into downtown Mall, people of every religion, race, neighborhood.

It comes up, maybe it comes up to me a lot, but I feel like a lot of people hear about it.

Dealing with developers at the city level is a negotiation in almost every case.

if there is anything that they need or want from the city.

There's negotiations at the zoning level, there's negotiations at many different components if there's anything unusual about the project where they need some kind of like a special use permit like we've heard about.

Sometimes the negotiation starts very early, sometimes it starts late and it depends on what they need and what you're willing to give as the governing body in the interest of the city.

I want to say right here that I have enjoyed getting to know Mr. DuBarry and his team.

What happened was we all did a fair amount of work on this and this was handed over for negotiations to Mr. Jones, Mr. Engle, Ms. Robertson.

The criteria that I have in this are several.

We want action sooner rather than later.

We want less rather than more.

We want it to be conservative.

We want it to be within existing precedent frameworks.

We want there to be a benefit.

Taxpayers benefit for our culture.

Charlottesville benefit for workers.

We want the rationale finally to be defensible, which means that it's narrowly tailored.

We want whatever we do here to be something that we can stand by.

We don't want to give away the farm.

We don't want to do anything reckless.

We don't want to not be able to defend what we're doing.

We don't want to be pushed around, basically.

We don't want to

So this is the discussion we're having tonight.

I favor the approach that's laid out in this framework because to me it meets all these criteria.

The question is why help the landmark when we don't help other hotels?

For me there are three main reasons that we come to there.

I have consulted through this whole year and a lot went into this five part, this kind of complicated

you know machine that was built here.

I've consulted with real estate development professionals very experienced in Charlottesville, in San Francisco, in Atlanta, in South Carolina who have vetted and looked at this for me trying to make my decision and they have agreed that the framework as it is maybe with some tweaks I think we're going to hear about that or

The alternative if we don't do anything is that nothing happens here and that's on us.

This body gets to own the status quo to this public.

Here are some unusual criteria about this.

The original building was built poorly for a high-end boutique hotel because the ceilings are too low.

So if you're going to rent rooms for 280 bucks, 300 bucks, the standard in hotels is that if the ceilings aren't high and they're this low height, you have to equip them with more luxury.

That's just what banks, a lot of this is about financing.

I've learned more about financing of hotels in this year than I ever thought I would know.

For him to get financing in partnership with the municipality, he has to be able to say, I'm putting this amount of money into these rooms, because otherwise the ceilings are too low, people won't pay it, and this whole project won't work as a business.

We want the project to work as a business, so it brings in tax revenue, hires people.

There's also a bunch of other things that didn't come up in the presentation.

There's two retail, there's a restaurant, there's a spa, there's a bunch of different profit centers operating in this thing, as it's envisioned.

So that's been the rationale that's convinced me in these meetings is that for the project to get hotel financing on the pro forma, it needs a lot of stuff put in the rooms.

Otherwise, the building has to come down and can't be used for its purpose, or we're just stuck at the status quo and it has to come down in 10 years after a whole bunch of other, you know,

crap has happened, and that's not a good outcome.

Number two, because of its design, the hotel will not only be a hotel, it's going to have, I think, it could be a site for weddings in the downtown mall.

That is something we sorely need.

That could bring a lot of dynamism, a lot of dollars, a lot of people spending money in our restaurants, in our retail, in our cultural establishments down there, and also conferences, because of the way that it's going to be designed.

And finally, the building is blighted right now.

There's a bunch of reasons that we went into that.

Again, each of these is a negotiation.

I don't think, I think the major standard is we don't want somebody, we don't want to give away the farm.

We don't want to be taken advantage of.

We want this to be conservative.

We want to ask tough questions.

But it is where it is and if we don't act, the law in Virginia is extremely unfavorable.

People put up something about, oh tear it down, tear it down.

That will take years and years and years and put us into expensive litigation that's possibly possible, but if we're going to change the status quo, if we're not going to have this blighted, falling apart building on our downtown mall, if we're going to deal with the guy who bought it, and if we're going to come to a good negotiation with him based on our interests, then we're going to arrive at a package roughly like we have here, possibly with some tweaks.

It's not a great situation.

We're probably not going to have a perfect outcome, but we're talking right now about a negotiation and our interest for our taxpayers to change the status quo with we're dancing with a guy who we brought himself to the dance.

And that's what we're trying to come to right now.

So I do think that he's in good faith.