City Council   6/18/2018

And whereas the International Rescue Committee's mission is to help people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and gain control of their future, and whereas the International Rescue Committee is entering its 20th year of resettling refugees in Charlottesville,

enable those fleeing persecution to resume productive lives in our community and whereas over the past 20 years the International Rescue Committee has resettled nearly 4,000 refugees from over 35 countries into the Charlottesville community and whereas International Rescue Committee offers a wide range of programs to help refugees and other immigrants throughout the first years of their resettlement

to integrate into the local community and achieve economic and social self-sufficiency.

And whereas Charlottesville has been enriched by having refugees join our community, increasing the diversity of our citizenry, helping employers find qualified, reliable workers.

and founding local businesses.

Now therefore be it resolved that we, the City Council of the City of Charlottesville, Virginia do hereby proclaim Wednesday, June 20th, 2018 as World Refugee Day in Charlottesville and call upon all citizens to acknowledge the contributions of refugees to our community as well as the good works of the International Rescue Committee in Charlottesville and worldwide in promoting human dignity and helping refugees rebuild their lives in safety and freedom.

signed and sealed the 18th day of June 2018 by our mayor, Nikuyah Walker.

Thank you.

I just wanted to thank you for this and ask that we take this day to recognize the more than 23 million people around the world who have fled their homes and their home countries due to war, violence, and persecution, and think of them in their circumstances right now.

And we'd also like to acknowledge the wonderful

I have a couple announcements, Mayor Walker.

The first, just to let everyone know that registration is now open for the 2018 Charlottesville Back to School Bash.

So for anyone who's interested in receiving a free book bag if you live in the city or in the county for that matter, you can please go and visit the site on Facebook.

Look them up, Charlottesville Back to School Bash, as well as you can send an email to cvillebacktoschoolbashatgmail.com.

Again, just for everyone to know, the pickup is on Saturday, August 18th at 1030 AM at the Sprint Pavilion on the downtown mall.

We're still looking for volunteers as well as individuals to post a table if you're interested.

So the back to school bash will take place Saturday, August 18th at 1030 AM at the pavilion.

and if you need a book bag and or school supplies, please feel free to sign up.

All information can be found on Facebook at Seville Back to School Bash or by email sevillebacktoschoolbash.gmail.com.

If you need further information, you can contact Mr. Pete Arnetta.

Secondly, tomorrow, due to a rain cancellation at the last summer barbecue, we're having our summer barbecue tomorrow.

So Grace, the gang reduction through active community engagement task force and local NFL champion Rashad Davis is having a community cookout.

So this will take place again tomorrow.

at 5 p.m. at Tonsil Park.

It'll be from 5 to 9.

There'll be free food, a kickball tournament, a moon bounce for the kids.

There'll be live music, as well as basketball games from the Base Collage, BCBA Men's League.

Also feel free to come out and see that on Sundays.

But cookout tomorrow, June 19th at Tonsil Park starting at 5 o'clock.

Everything is free and it's open to the public.

All right, so we all have our city manager response to community matters.

Today we have one of our assistant city managers, Ms. Leslie Beauregard, here to

So thank you for being here with us.

Thank you.

So I just have two items to share that Mr. Jones asked me to communicate out.

One is on a waterline project near the Albemarle High School.

The question came up at the last meeting regarding this proposed waterline.

This is a Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority waterline.

And Bill Moyer, who's the executive director of RWSA, gave a presentation on this recently that included a routing map with it.

And several routes are being considered.

There are three to four options around the high school.

One along hydraulic to Georgetown, another hydraulic to Lambs Road, and then cross country to Barracks.

and another hydraulic to one side of Albemarle High School, then cross country to Barracks and another hydraulic to one side of Albemarle, then to another point on Barracks.

That's very confusing.

But the bottom line is this, there is a community meeting tomorrow evening that RWSA is hosting at the Albemarle High School cafeteria.

That community meeting is from 5.30 to 6.30 and everyone is invited to attend and I'm sure they'll have lots of maps there and information about this project.

The second item is there was a discussion or a comment made about the downtown mall traffic crossing.

And typically, the question was, how frequently do we close this crossing?

We typically do close Fourth Street for special activities and events on the mall, including Fridays After Five, all ticketed events at the Pavilion, the Downtown Safe Halloween event, and a series of other special events.

that require it as part of the permit.

Second Street's not normally closed because, again, that's a free trolley route, but sometimes it is closed and has been for events.

We do recognize that more needs to be done, and at the May 21st meeting, staff presented and council approved funding to start phase one of a three-phase approach to making the mall safer for pedestrians.

This threat and risk assessment will include a threat profile and a review of both existing and planned security measures for the downtown mall that will then lead to design and construction of any physical modifications that are then called for.

So I wanted to let you all have some information.

A lot of people have been contacting staff members and each of you over the particularly the past week or so regarding a pending application seeking permission to do some blasting in connection with the development of property.

And just want to let everyone know, first and foremost, while there is an application that's been filed,

We're not on some sort of deadline or arbitrary deadline.

The most important thing in that application process is the development of a thorough record and enough information on which to base decisions under the fire code.

What this process has emphasized is the importance of making sure that people who are concerned about very serious things that may affect their property and their families is that

A lot of people have been calling for a public hearing process.

That's not something that's typically undertaken within the Fire Code process, but one thing that we on staff can do if City Council would like us to is draft an ordinance that sets out some standards in addition to the concerns that are addressed in the Fire Code, above and beyond those concerns,

We can put together an ordinance that could make provisions for a public hearing and that could also provide some helpful direction in terms of what types of information may be useful in allowing everyone to make a decision that is in the best interest of the public safety, make sure that there's no larger public

I would certainly be very interested in that ordinance I would as well

All right.

Boards in commission.

Yes.

This evening, the city council appointed the following for the CRHA board.

Betsy Rodker and Carolyn Slaughter.

and I don't know if we have one more, I'm sorry.

That's it.

So moved.

All right.

OK.

It carries 5-0.

All right, so now it's our community matters.

We'll get started with that.

Katrina Turner, Charlottesville.

Dear City Council, we are the members of the Civilian Review Board.

We are honored to begin our hard work providing much needed public oversight over the Charlottesville Police Department.

To that end, we greatly appreciate the efforts of City Council and the development of the board and the selection of its members.

However, we remain deeply troubled

by aspects of the process by which the City Council made its selections.

We are upset that the City Council chose to override the public's overwhelming support for Rosia Parker and Jeff Fogle, excluding them from the board.

We wonder why the City Council emphasizes written comments over the popular wheel, prioritizing the input of certain stakeholders, some of whom we believe live outside

the City of Charlottesville over the opinions of local communities that are more deeply affected.

We are also aware that Denise Lunsford, a stated representative of the Southern States Police Benevolent Association, sent a letter to city council prior to council's determination about the makeup of the CRB.

We are specifically concerned that the letter was intended to sway council

towards crafting a less powerful and forceful board.

And finally, although the Civilian Review Board includes many fine and dedicated individuals, with the diversity of views and experiences, we are concerned that the board's current composition fails

to directly represent Charlottesville's most economically disadvantaged neighborhoods.

On this last point, we are all the more distressed to learn that city council members made certain assumptions particularly to two of our board members, Gloria Beard and Katrina Turner, representing lower income communities.

We realize that there was nothing intentional to these misguided assumptions, but the fact of these assumptions only underscores

why this board needs to be more inclusive and representative.

We cannot help but to feel that our work has been compromised before it has even begun.

It is critical that the public see the Civilian Review Board as legitimate, but the manner of the selection has made that difficult.

We fear that there is a perception that City Council has betrayed its promise of an open selection.

It is hard for the board

to be transparent when its formation fell short of that value.

Moreover, we think it is especially unfortunate that the City Council votes split the way it did with Nikuyah Walker and Wes Bellamy staking out the minority position.

We believe that this kind of divide

may have undermined public confidence all the more.

With transparency in mind, we also want to report that all members of the CRB received a phone call or other communication from Councillor Hill

after the board

Resigning because of the selection process, we decided with the encouragement of Rosea Parker and Jeff Fogel to forge forward.

The board members are ready to engage with the challenges to come.

We are confident that we are a group.

that can and will work well and productively together.

But before we start drafting bylaws, we need information from the City Council.

We need to know whether the City Council has a set sense of the scope of this board's mission and its independence.

Over the next year, the board members intend to volunteer substantial amounts of their personal time towards this effort.

and we need to know when and whether our efforts will be second guessed or rejected outright.

Simply put, we want more feedback about the perimeters of our work and we expect that within those perimeters we will be granted a substantial measure of autonomy and authority.

With that, we feel we can fulfill our mission by ensuring accountability and promoting respectful and unbiased treatment.

We would like a response from City Council at the next City Council meeting on Monday, July 2nd.

Thank you.

Mayor Walker, I just want to say thank you to the CRB.

I think that is much appreciated to get that clear directive from you.

I'm very interested in responding and I will work with my colleagues to do that and make sure that we have a real ongoing communication so that we are not

misunderstanding or misconstruing anything.

So I really appreciate the fact that you came before us today and that you gave us this in writing.

Thank you.

Mayor Walker, the only thing that I can imagine is that we'd have to ask every member who's been appointed for their income level, and then we measure it against the federal party levels.

Because that is the only way to get a definitive answer.

So you're saying housing?

It did say low income.

It did not say public housing or any kind of low income housing.

That's how the resolution works.

When this was presented, we stated that we needed somebody from low income housing from the projects or whatever.

So I think that that is definitely something that we could that we could have an answer

too by the second.

The other part of your question about the answer by the second, I don't think that it's our job to kind of bring a set of parameters for the board to work within.

So I would have

I don't think that's what we should do.

I think that we should trust the work that you all are going to do over the next year and when you bring it to us that we should be ready to accept what you all are presenting versus coming back.

And I understand why you're asking for us to make sure that we are not

putting you all in the same position as we did last council meeting, but I really don't think that you all should ask us that question because it's not, we shouldn't be doing that.

We should be listening to the work that you all are going to be doing over the next year.

honoring your commitment and research and what you are seeing the needs of the city are.

So that's what I would bring back on July 2nd, so I think I can just share that now.

I would be interested, Mayor Walker and my colleagues, if the CRB would be interested in if, well have we determined when your first meeting is?

Has that been determined yet?

Has staff reached out?

Okay, so the first thing that I would recommend is A, or excuse me, one, us finding out when their meeting is scheduled to be, their first meeting is scheduled to be.

and if during their initial meeting if they would like, because you all are responsible for drafting the bylaws for this upcoming board.

So if you all were to decide to draft a different set of bylaws in regards to specifics for what you want on this board or the upcoming board.

and bringing it back to us in the interim.

I would be interested in entertaining that to ensure that we address all of the needs.

And that could be addressed either by us, so why don't you last second, or after you all meet again, you all bring it back to us within maybe 15 to 30 days.

I'm literally just throwing out times.

And then we can amend it from that perspective, or we can wait until the next year.

But I think that may give us a path to getting

where so many, not only of the individuals on the board want us to go, but a lot of people in the community want us to go.

Yeah.

Is there any, is there any reason why at this point that we couldn't consider?

In terms of increasing the number of people on the board?

I'm asking.

Albemarle, Walker, I think Mr.

So we're saying that if they came back next time and wanted to add a member or two to their list, then they are within.

It's a category.

They don't, the bylaws would be a category of representation.

No, I understand, but they could add any category.

Exactly.

For the future board.

yeah that my suggestion would be for because it's their board if they're saying so if this board is saying that well we can't do the work we need to add members to it or we need to look at it in a different way because it's their board

So we still do the appointments as to any board, right?

And the two biggest things coming up, I mean, this very, I thought it was excellent comment that you read gets at the heart of the matter, which is the biggest question ahead is what authorities does this body actually have?

And that's gonna,

that's going to be a discussion that begins with the draft of the bylaws.

If you look at the other CRBs around Virginia, this has been, like Fairfax County has one with more authority than you might think.

There are different ones.

So this, what's going to happen here is, I think we would be criticized if we constrained in any way what the authorities could be before getting them from the duly appointed members of the CRB.

So we're now going to wait for the proposal of the bylaws from the members on there and then we have a discussion and we have to

We'll look at everything we can in this board with our attorneys and we'll figure out how to give you the best authority that makes sense.

And then we will do that.

And then there's this whole other piece about what are the future members of this board like.

So this is the beginning of a process.

I think we are just about to get to the most important part, which is what are the authorities?

What does the board actually do?

And I guess, Mayor Walker, I think the question for the council as I read it is do we, the CRB has specifically said that they want a response from city council at the next meeting on Monday, July 2nd, and whether we need to put that response together in writing and in a statement.

But the other question about the member and particularly

I don't feel like we're prepared to deal with that on the fly because it's going to, first of all, get us to an even number of votes, which usually with boards we try to have an odd number.

All right.

Dang, Brendan.

I've got great comrades.

What can I say?

Brendan Hassler, county resident.

On June 8th, the justice system doled out yet another serving of prejudiced inequity by sentencing Corey Long to prison when his only crime was defending the city against the white supremacist menace that many of you allowed to engulf us.

That night, the community's real defenders, the people who aim to protect the marginalized members of the community instead of exploiting them,

took to the streets to protest this travesty.

Needless to say, our dearly beloved police force descended, not unlike a biblical plague upon this community's offenders who demanded the equitable change in the legal and justice system.

The cops, perhaps seized by the aggressive spirit of Aries himself, proceeded to arrest eight members of the community for alleged traffic violations, including some members who were victims of the terrorism of last summer's events.

I'm unaware if you've seen the videos from that night, but some of the most distressing moments include the community activists being dragged across the street by police and other members of the community, as well as their lawyers being denied access to the jail in which they were held.

The event, at least in my view, serves as an appropriate case study on why we resist the CPD and the long, sightless arm of the law that continues to smother Charlottesville's most vulnerable residents from merely trying to survive.

It highlights the double standard with which the CPD treats us as activists.

When white nationalists show up with an army, police send a smattering of officers.

When a smattering of community activists show up for justice, police send an army of officers.

The charges, flimsy as they are, also highlight exactly how the CPD continues to pursue activists for demanding the change they need to live in peace.

The message the CPD sent that night was clear.

Demand justice, and we will find any method we can to silence you.

It also highlights how the police, the jails, the courts, work in tandem to protect each other.

All the expense of queer people, poor people, and people of color.

My demand to you, counselors, is simple.

For once in your lives, take a stand against the police targeting of activists who have materially done nothing wrong.

Do not passively sit in your offices while the defenders are out on the streets going toe to toe with the systems that have failed us time and again.

Do not consider any new city staff or managers or board members who would not match or exceed the conviction with which the activists of the community have stood up to the demonstrably racist CPD.

Because the white nationalist terror that plagued our city last summer was due to your negligence,

as elected officials, and we're sick of being the ones to handle the fallout.

Thank you.

I want to make a response to that.

Just as a point of, listen, this is really important because there's a lot of misunderstanding about this.

City Councilors have no operational role at all in policing decisions like that.

We didn't even know about anything having to do with this until the next day, or I didn't.

That's just a point of fact.

So it's important to understand the form of government we have, it's Council Manager,

the entire police system reports up to the police chief or reports to the city manager.

So it's important to voice this, this is a really important public forum for you to communicate with the public and with the government the issues, but people have to understand that.

So fortunately our new police chief is here, our deputy city manager is here, but the point of your

argument that goes to city councilors, it is not how the government is designed that we have.

What's that?

Yeah, receiving an award.

All right.

But don't we have the ability to review like the next city manager coming up?

Don't we have the ability to view and say, OK, are you going to pursue police injustice with an aggressive force?

If not, why bother making that higher?

That sounds right.

I think what you just said was a different point and I took the second point.

Well, I think if I can share for a second, I think that

What is very important to our future regarding this matter, I wasn't there and I didn't know about it until people were in the arresting state.

I was on the phone with a couple of people and was checking to make sure that individuals were released.

and that people were safe, that Starr wasn't re-injured.

So I understand where you all are coming from.

I am there with you.

I think what moving forward that you said was most important is that we set the tone, which is what you're asking, for how we move forward and what will happen from this day forward.

Hopefully,

with the hiring decisions that we make in the future and that the one that we've made with our new police chief, that we will have some consistency in response and we will have response where community members don't feel like they are battling with the police force that is supposed to protect and serve.

So I understand what you're saying and moving forward, that is the hope.

So again, it didn't happen, a lot of people feel last week,

I think while we have a couple of other seconds remaining, this, when we talk about accountability and hearing from different members of the community, right, I asked during the last meeting if we could get an update in regards to hearing specifically from Delegate Discano as well as the General Assembly in regards to what we need to do about the strong mayor.

So again, when we talk on, as we continuously hear about just accountability, people want someone to talk to,

Good evening.

I'd like to, first of all, piggyback the previous speaker and Chief Brackney, I'm glad that you're here.

It needs to be pointed out that, and it wasn't said, but those eight arrests amounted to

they were charged with what amounts to jaywalking.

So when in the history of mankind has a paddy wagon been called for?

Members thrown in the paddy wagon and hauled before a magistrate to jail for jaywalking.

And there was the one activist in the wheelchair who I imagine was arrested for jayrolling who they actually called an ambulance for to haul her to jail.

because they didn't know exactly what to do with the wheelchair.

I understand that it doesn't fall directly under your purview, but the community needs some response to that.

And we need to know why it happens.

And we need to know that it would never happen again.

Just a few other things for your listening notification.

Please

I'm going to ask you tonight to begin the process to enact some sort of legislation that would bar the carrying of handguns in this chamber.

The members of the city have been traumatized and terrorized enough and they don't need to come to these public meetings and have people openly carrying, especially when they're of an ilk that people here don't trust necessarily anyway.

So if you would please see what process that, and I'm glad that we have a stand in for Mr. Jones, I'm glad that Ms. Robertson is here, but please see what the process may be to enact whatever legislation that we can so that we can deny and bar that ever happening again in the future.

I also ask you to please consider voting down the Monticello Dairy Project.

20 affordable units for 10 years doesn't even begin to come close to the needs of the city or citizens or the affordable housing needs.

Nor does it help setting the affordable mark being at 80% AMI.

Seemingly, the elections and appointments for the CRB were hijacked and influenced by outside forces, such as the Southern States Police Benevolent Association, an organization that, to my understanding, has no members in the city of Charlottesville whatsoever.

Sounds a lot like Russia in the U.S. presidential election to me.

I would urge you to add or allow us to add two more members to the CRB.

We need free reign for the CRB.

We need it free from council oversight.

And please make no attempts to compromise or control the work of the CRB.

We also need to know what plans, if any, that the city has laid forth and it has in place for August 11th and 12th this coming year.

We're some a month and a half away from the potential of having Nazis march through our street terrorizing their citizens again.

We need to know what plans are already in place, if any,

and if not, what groundwork will be laid ahead.

Please.

Mr. Gathers, if you may, so help me understand in regards to legislation about

Gun permit or people being allowed to carry here in chambers.

So we went to the state to talk about that and it was like the legislation that we proposed didn't even get out of the committee.

Both myself and Ms. Galvin testified.

So I mean, what else would you, and I'm not being combative, I'm trying to find other solutions.

Well, when was that done?

Because I'm not aware of it.

Well, we actually went there in January, but we submitted our legislative request to the General Assembly, and we do that every November.

And did that specifically include carrying weapons in the council chambers?

Yes.

Okay, public spaces, that's a broad change.

This is the council chamber.

Council Chambers specifically is what I'm speaking of.

We drafted it in a way that would have allowed us to deal with things in council chambers and it's my understanding that this year was the first year that these

subcommittee meetings were video recorded.

If I can find the recording, I'm happy to share it with you.

It was quite embarrassing.

the treatment that we received for these requests.

I count him as a friend of mine, but what's even more embarrassing is that Delegate Toscano did not even assemble the folks of Charlottesville to go to Richmond to stand in protest of these blatantly racist laws that we have in place.

And the fact that

We couldn't even get them to get it out of subcommittee about carrying weapons in the same parts that children go and play in.

We needed a show of force there at the General Assembly.

So maybe the NRA and, excuse me, the Republicans had their people in place.

Well, we did.

People didn't come.

We can do a better job.

Excuse me.

I think this year going forward we can say when we are going that we can make sure we make that announcement so that people who want to travel with us can travel.

And I, Mayor Walker, if I may, and I do believe we just got an email from Page Rice about that there will be community meetings around town to discuss the plans for August 11th and 12th.

Can you give any update on that?

Gatt, I'm sorry.

I'm from New England.

It still comes out every so often.

Yep, it is.

Brian Wheeler, Director of Communications.

Maurice Jones has asked me to help start scheduling those meetings.

We've scheduled one.

We've had a briefing with Congregation Beth Israel, and we sent counsel an update.

on that.

That took place last week.

We've got other meetings in the works with the business community.

We're doing a large employer briefing and we're going to do a larger public briefing of any downtown business owners that want to participate.

And then we'll also be scheduling ones for citizens to participate in.

What we will share is a lot of the information that

Maurice Jones provided council and the public on May 21st in his presentation, and then we'll update folks on where we are with the planning.

So a lot of that information has been, at this point, in front of council in your meetings and updates, and then we're ready to start moving that out to the community.

We do have a website that's available.

Alright.

Thank you Mayor Walker and members of the council.

My name is David Katz and I live at 1012 B. Druid Avenue in Belmont, immediately next to and above the Belmont Point construction site.

Thank you particularly to Councilor Galvin and members of the Neighborhood Development Services staff for your attention to our concerns about the plan to blast rock at the Belmont Point construction site.

Thank you too to those residents now standing and owners near the construction site who have taken their time to be here tonight.

I am here to request that the City Council direct the Fire Marshall to delay the review of the blasting permit application and to not issue a permit before public hearings can be held about this plan and before a thorough analysis of the alternatives can be performed.

Let's pause and talk about this outrageous plan before it's too late, and there are several reasons why I think that it's crucial.

First, we believe that the permit applicant has not complied with the Virginia Administrative Code Section 4VAC 25-130-816.62 Use of Explosives Pre-Blasting Survey.

This applicant did not notify residents or owners within half a mile of the permit area as required by the Virginia Administrative Code.

We talked to residents within 500 feet of the permit area on Druid Avenue, Meridian Street, Stonehenge Avenue, Rockland Avenue and Quarry Road and Palatine Road and most had not received notification.

Several of them signed a petition asking that this permit review and issuance be delayed.

Residents and owners who have had the pre-blast survey were told that they could not receive a copy of the survey report for their own property, again in violation of this section of the VAC.

We have been told that the permittee will not make the blast records available for public inspection in violation of Section 816.68, Use of Explosives, Records of Blasting Operations.

Affected parties include not only property owners and residents, but also those who use Quarry Park, including the Charlottesville, Albemarle, Little League, and the Rivanna Trail Foundation.

This builder is asking the nearby property owners and residents to assume the risk of damage to their homes, their health, and their safety without any part of the benefits of the development.

There is a high probability of damage to our property and property values all in the name of extra profit for the builder.

Why should the existing homeowners and residents be forced to assume the risk of damage to their property if the builder failed to perform proper due diligence before beginning this construction?

This drastic revision to the PUD, as granted, should reopen it for reevaluation and require public hearings on the revisions and review and approval by City Council.

No public meetings have been scheduled or mentioned by the fire marshal.

If the builder claims that they did not know about the subterranean rock, what would one expect to find on a street called Quarry Road?

Let's pause and talk about this plan in public to reach a reasonable solution for all residents and others who live, work, and play in this area.

There are several possible alternatives to blasting, only one of which was discussed

I hear by the Fire Marshal.

Let's pause and talk about other alternatives to blasting.

For example, why not construct smaller homes on the bedrock and as affordable housing in this otherwise market-rate development?

In conclusion, we request that the City Council direct the Fire Marshal to not issue a permit for this blasting until public hearings can be held to discuss the alternatives.

Thank you.

Before you leave, sir, I know several of us have had conversations, and I spoke with the fire marshal about this today.

I don't know if it would be appropriate for him to touch on it now.

Would we call the fire marshal up now?

and to offer some remarks.

I know that the city has put out a statement, but I mean, he's here.

Right.

But I mean, being that this was I mean, this portion of the meeting was for response and he's here and there's a lot of people who want to hear about this specific issue.

So, I guess the first thing I need to start off with, I do have a permit in hand for the blasting.

There's a lot of research that needs to be done in order for that permit to be approved, and I have as many questions as you guys do.

There's a process to go through to approve that permit and there's a lot of research that we need to do.

Some of your questions I can't answer as to whether we can put houses on bedrock and that's something that would be outside of my purview but those are all great questions and I think they need to be addressed but how we go about it I think is kind of where we are right now.

What do we do about that and how do we move that process forward?

Some of you have said

that this is unprecedented, the size of blasting that this rock is, which I totally agree with.

So it is necessary for us to pay attention to what we're doing and the impact it's going to have on that area and everybody around that area.

So I'm sorry at this point.

It's just a permit.

It's just a piece of paper.

What we're hoping is that we don't have a repetition of what happened up at the airport in 2013 and before that at the 250 bypass.

You know, people who don't learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them.

Say that again, Mr. Gathers.

We need a permit.

I've been told that we have to continue on, so thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Patricia Spicer Napoleon.

I live at 700 Lyons Avenue in Charlottesville and I'm a retired school teacher.

I was born in Charlottesville and my family has deep roots in this community.

Tonight I speak to you as a leader of Rise Charlottesville, a nonpartisan grassroots community effort

intent on restoring a good name and good governance to Charlottesville.

RISE stands for Restoration, Integrity, Sustainability and Equality.

RISE was founded in response to the tragic events of last August 12th that brought more damage to Charlottesville than at any time in our city's history.

On August 12th, three people died, including two Virginia State Troopers who fell to their deaths while protecting the health and safety of Charlottesville.

Many others were hurt.

Three of you sitting here were a big part of those tragic events.

that were preventable.

Michael Signer, Kathy Galvin, and Wes Bellamy, every one of you failed those you were elected to serve, and you have brought shame to our once well-respected city of Charlottesville, Virginia.

Your own personal baggage is a drain on the governmental body of city council itself, while your baggage is also a drain on productivity and healing.

It is time for you to leave City Council and rise as collecting signatures to recall you from office.

So far we have collected over 1,500 signatures.

Those who have signed are a cross-section of folks who are fed up with what you have done to our city.

Damage to Charlottesville's reputation, negative financial impact, ongoing lack of fairness and transparency, a declining quality of life,

The outcome of your time on council has been chaos, disorder and death.

Last week we learned of Judge Moore's decision containing the very same Code of Virginia which we first referenced in Rise.

Charlottesville deserves far better than your severely skewed priorities and bad decisions.

That is why RISE Charlottesville along with many others call for your resignations or if you will not step down, your removal.

On a positive note, there is always hope.

There are many good people in Charlottesville.

Yet in order to heal, three counselors must be held accountable for acknowledging personal responsibility, for ongoing failure with accompanying damage,

The insincere, non-transparent game playing with knee-jerk governance must end.

Lastly, there is a position of leadership you must yourselves follow the law.

Then and only then can the community once and again rise together.

is extremely, and you come back, because I want you to hear this, if you don't mind, do you mind coming back?

Yes.

Well, we've been having responses to the public, and I think you deserve a response.

So, you made several points, right, and one of the ones in which I feel is absolutely repulsive

is the fact that you believe that an event like August 12th, which was indeed very sad, traumatizing to our community, and you say that it's the worst thing to ever happen here in Charlottesville, when you think about the fact that there were people who were literally sold here, ripped apart from their families as slaves, you think about the fact, and I'm talking,

You think about the fact that there was, as we're commemorating, a person who was lynched, and multiple people for that matter, who was, no, no, may I finish?

May I finish?

Thank you.

There was an individual who was literally lynched here in the city, right, in the area, if that's how you want to consider it.

And then third, when you think about the economic inequities that have taken place for such a very long period, the educational inequities that have taken place for an extremely long period, the criminal acts that have literally taken place at the hands of not only people who represent these systems, but those who have also perpetuated these same systems that have kept a large amount of people who are from here just like you, who have roots here just like you, behind, you place those individuals

and you essentially when you come and make assertions that these are assertions rather that this is all our fault and not the long history that has taken place here that essentially everything that happened was a byproduct of our decisions and not the byproduct of no no I'm talking well no no I'm talking so what you need to do is listen I gave you two years so you already spoke you already spoke

So furthermore, when you make assertions like that, it's very disrespectful and you take away all of your potential credibility because you take aside, you set aside everything that's transpired before.

I'm talking about August 12th.

I have to tell you that I'm repulsed by your accusation.

Thank you.

Wait, wait, wait.

I was trying to tell them.

Excuse me.

And she wants to blame the three of you all who sit there.

And maybe there does need to be some level of blame.

But she placed no blame whatsoever on the Nazis who came here.

One battle.

Okay.

If you don't acknowledge the guilt of the people that came into this city, then you're as much of a problem as what you say you want to get rid of.

No, no, no.

There's no one about it.

There's no other side.

If you're going to condemn them, you need to condemn the other.

So William Atwood.

William Atwood.

Thank you.

So we're starting.

All right.

All right.

My name is William Atwood.

As I did two years ago, I rose to speak about working people in Charlottesville.

Now it has not gotten much better, but there are still many people, many people in the city that get up every morning with their ears ringing because they can't make the nut, they can't make the living, they have two jobs, they have three through the university, many of them have two, and that situation has got to change.

One way I think we could actually assist these people now is take a hard look at the last bastion of Jim Crow, zoning.

Zoning does not work.

belongs on an airline ticket, not people's lives.

Housing is not a zoning category.

It's an absolute goal.

There's nowhere in this town that you can say that housing doesn't really belong.

I mean, we've built housing around on the railroad tracks.

We build them everywhere.

And essentially, people

that can afford those housing generally are workforce housing.

I would never mention, if you won't hear it out of my mouth, luxury condominiums.

But if you start as a base of workforce housing, you can easily ingest into the concept affordable housing.

And we've done it.

We did it on Little Fifth Street.

And essentially, people will work and live together.

The problem is this.

The scapegoat of land costing too much is an old, old joke.

Land in this city is used in such an adverse way that there's not enough space to provide various housing.

Zoning's out of date.

The next big design issue in architecture and urban planning is to rethink zoning.

On Little 5th Street, they wanted a 24

Drive foot driveway on my property onto a 15 foot street.

That's crazy.

So we've got to take our city, inventory our city, take a look at where people want to live, and see if it can work.

And no more affordable housing funds.

People need to be in every project everywhere.

We're not that big.

And you know something?

We are that smart.

We can do better.

Good evening, Donna Teigen, Albemarle County.

The extreme lack of leadership and accountability with respect to the events of last summer, July 8th and August 11th, 12th, and the unmistakable recognition that this country and this city are at a unique point in history, grappling with its past and present arc of injustice, helped to catapult Nikuyah Walker to place first in the 2017 election.

It also helped this council see the writing on the wall that Nikuyah was the only person capable of leading the city out of the rubble by unmasking the illusion that everything's fine and that this city is working.

People have talked about this need

This needed change using different words But they all amount to sediments expressed by council itself on the night that you chose her as mayor when you selected her and said the city needs to heal and move forward in a positive direction The city needs to fundamentally change the way it does business The city wants to forge a new identity the city wants to turn the page and

But as we saw in the civilian review board vote, this council manager, i.e.

this weak mayor system of government, cannot get us where we want to go.

The council manager structure reduces Nikuyah's vision down to one voice in five, and the system itself fractures her authority, slows decision making, and skirts broader needs for accountability and ownership.

It's been tossed around for years, but it is critical at this juncture that a strong mayor, these are the terms they use, but you know, meaning a mayor and council ballot initiative be brought to the vote of the people through a special election.

It is critical for accountability and change management that we have an elected chief executive who is empowered to make decisions and handle implementation of policies set forth by council.

Without going into great detail, I'd like to propose that Charlottesville do what other cities its size have consistently been moving towards.

They're moving away from council manager, i.e.

weak mayors, and into a mayor council form of government that does away with the city manager and replaces it with the mayor that can concentrate on policy development and political leadership.

This is increasingly being accomplished by the addition of a new professional position called Chief Administrative Officer housed under the mayor reporting directly to the mayor.

This position of Chief Administrative Officer assists the mayor with administrative and policy-related responsibilities

Generally things such as budget preparation, personnel administration and daily supervision of overall city business and frees her in this case from the minutia of administrative details.

My name is Sharon Sinclair, and I'm a resident of Charlottesville City and a proud homeowner.

I read an article in the Daily Progress this morning about the city's housing need assessment, which you will hear a review about from the city staff later tonight.

First, I want to thank you for supporting this important study.

The report confirms what we've always known.

There isn't enough affordable housing in the city, not even close.

and that there are thousands of hardworking, low-wealth families that are struggling to make ends meet because they are putting way too much of their hard-earned income into keeping a roof over their heads.

But before you hear the city's review, I want to take a moment to describe to you the feelings and impact that home ownership has had on me personally.

I am a single mother of two beautiful children whom I would move heaven and earth for.

I also have the honor of having my twin sister who has special needs living with me.

I work very hard and have always kept employment.

My inability to go to a bank and get a traditional loan to purchase a home for my family has nothing to do with me not trying hard enough or working hard enough.

I just don't make the amount of money or have the sparkling credit that would be necessary for a traditional bank to give me a house loan.

The article in the Daily Progress quoted the city's housing coordinator as saying that the city needs to shift funding away from home ownership and towards rentals.

And she said the following, and I quote, there's nothing wrong with home ownership, but it can take a while for families at 30% or 40% IMA to reach a level where they can become homeowners.

In the meantime, they need somewhere where they can afford to live so they can put away money for a modest down payment.

Well, that would be true if Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville didn't exist.

Those families between 30 and 40 percent AMI who are not ready for home ownership, she's talking about me and the dozens of other hardworking, low-wealth families that Habitat helps each year.

When I was approved for home ownership, my income was at 35 percent AMI.

I'm in the group of people that the housing report shows needs the most help with housing.

And let me remind you that the new affordable rentals available for people at 50% to 60% AMI would forever be out of my reach.

Well, that would be, oh, I'm sorry.

Habitat was the only way that I was ever going to give my family the stability and security of a permanent home.

a home that I own, a home that allows my family to gain equity and that helps us build a better future.

We need more rentals in the city, no doubt about that.

But turning the city's attention solely to building affordable rentals and pulling away from home ownership programs like Habitat for Humanity would be a huge mistake.

Living in a rental doesn't build equity.

It doesn't build security.

It doesn't build pride in your home or in your community.

My children know that the house that we live in is their home.

We know that we won't be surprised by a 30-day eviction with no notice, which has happened.

My children know that we will be able to stay in our neighborhood schools until they graduate.

We know that our housing costs aren't going to suddenly hike because there's others willing to and who can pay more.

We know that our house can't be bulldozed and turned into a shopping mall in our apartment building without me allowing it.

I own it.

I pay the mortgage.

My name is on the deed.

Yes, like anything worthwhile, the Habitat program does take time.

It also takes a lot of hard work and dedication on the part of the home buyer going through the program.

It took about a year and a half for me to be able to move into my home.

I was required to give 300 hours of sweat equity

towards the building of my house and the homes of fellow partner families.

I believe so strongly in what I was doing and the opportunity it was given to me through Habitat for Humanity that I gave 1,000 hours while working full time and being a small parent.

I have the pride of knowing that I helped put up the walls.

I helped build my home.

That's the legacy of pride that I pass to my children.

My hard work in the Habitat program made this happen.

I could spend my whole life paying rent, but I wouldn't feel the same sense of pride that I do now.

I would have nothing really to show for it, just receipts that I paid a landlord.

I would be forever under the fear that I could be evicted, and that's so much scarier when all you want for your children is a safe and secure place.

There is a need for the families in Charlottesville to have a place to call home.

We need to invest in affordable housing in the city, but please don't close the door on affordable home ownership.

We all know the old adage, give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.

Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

In closing, give a man an affordable rental, he'll have a roof over his head.

Walk a man through home ownership and they'll forever have a place to call home.

Ben Doherty, Charlottesville.

Mayor Walker and city councilors, last week revealed yet another wrong-headed preliminary decision against the city by Judge Moore in the Confederate statues litigation.

I want to emphasize that these negative decisions by Judge Moore are despite the best efforts of city attorney Lisa Robertson, who has made very strong arguments both demonstrating why Virginia's War Memorial's law does not apply to Charlottesville's Confederate statues, and also in favor of the immunity of individual city councilors in voting to remove those statues.

Demonstrating his own implicit bias, Judge Moore has ignored her arguments, deciding against the city in both instances despite little legal support for his decisions.

While the case moves to trial in October, Judge Moore has already signaled his predisposition that the city will lose, and this case will ultimately land before the Virginia Supreme Court.

At that point, the case will not only have statewide, but also national implications for cities around the country that also want to be able to remove racist monuments from their mists and to find their own public spaces.

It is important then that the city be ready for what will be an important decision from the Virginia Supreme Court and begin setting themselves up now for a victory on appeal.

On May 9th, City Council passed a resolution empowering the city attorney to hire a pro bono counsel for just this type of litigation.

If you've not done so already, you should start doing that now.

Start bringing in a major law firm that can help the city up now to succeed before the Virginia Supreme Court in the statute's case.

Ms. Robertson has done an excellent job in her arguments before Judge Moore.

And considering the national attention and importance this case will have, there are no doubt several law firms that would want to assist her on a pro bono basis in setting things up for appeal.

This should include developing the record at trial and presenting expert witnesses to contrast with the witnesses already being used by the Monument Fund to bolster their own case.

The firm of Zunke, Milner & Carter,

which is currently assisting Ms. Robertson in the case is insufficient.

They're an insurance defense firm who have little expertise with the issues in the case and a little actual interest in winning.

The primary focus is keeping down costs for the insurance company that hired them.

They're staffed by a group of mostly conservative right wing attorneys who personally would probably just as soon see the racist statues stay in place.

Instead, the city should take advantage of the May 9 resolution from city council and hire a pro bono law firm

Good evening, Mayor Walker, everybody.

I'd like to thank you for this opportunity to speak.

My name is Peter Lovegrove.

I'm a resident of Belmont on Palatine Avenue, and I'd like to express my concerns and add to the conversation around the blasting at Belmont Point.

I'm actually going to read a statement from James Kelly who lives over the road from me and he couldn't be here today.

James is obviously a resident of Belmont and both he and I are within 500 feet of the blast zone of influence.

He has concerns about the blasting that's being planned and I'd like to go through some of the specifics of his concerns and he has some suggestions about ameliorating some of the long-term consequences.

So as most of you may know, most Belmont homes are up to 70 years old and a large number, if not most, of the foundation of these homes were built using old-style cinder blocks, not concrete blocks, but cinder blocks.

and these are porous, susceptible to moisture over time and at this point could be very fragile.

So ground vibrations could cause these foundations, these cinder blocks to crack.

In addition to the above ground structure issues,

Belmont were sewered extensively using terracotta clay pipes which are now 80 plus years old.

At this point in their lifespan these terracotta clay pipe are likely fragile and again very susceptible to ground vibrations.

If vibrations from blasting causes old clay pipes to break or crack the resulting consequences of a pipe collapse at a later date may not be seen or even found for many years.

In James' experience in the construction industry, there are almost always reasonable alternatives to blasting, and as somebody else has always mentioned.

Blasting is usually the cheaper and faster way of dealing with subsurface rock, but it's also the riskiest.

And we, as residents, being asked to take on that risk without having been consulted, I wasn't notified of this blasting.

The first thing I heard about it was on an online community forum.

The short and incomplete notice to the public call, all of us, or many of us by surprise, with no opportunity to ask reasonable questions.

We request, and it sounds like movement is being made in this direction, that the blasting be put on hold, hopefully, until this is a sufficient time for public meeting for us to ask our questions.

If the contractor is ultimately allowed to perform this level of blasting in this susceptible and diverse community, it sounds like it will be to a large extent and for a long, long period of time.

The city should require extensive interior and exterior photographs and video of adjacent and potentially affected homes and structures.

The documentation should be made available to the city and the homeowners for their protection rather than exclusively for the protection of the development.

Hello, my name is Annie Stupp.

I am a resident of the city.

So thank you, first of all, council, for commissioning this housing needs assessment, which just came out.

This is definitely a step in the right direction to address the affordable housing shortage.

But please keep in mind as you review it, I find that this report largely leaves out affordable home ownership, as Sharon has just described, as a tool for wealth building and economic mobility for historically marginalized communities.

And as Sharron explained so beautifully, we need more home ownership across the income spectrum, but especially for low income families.

We need to financially empower families like Charron's.

We need to push back against gentrification, displacement, and racist lending practices.

So I find it troubling that in this report, while it's a very good starting point and contains a lot of fantastic research, it might lead the city to focus on developing rentals, such as through tax credits, which have only 15-year affordability periods.

This is really short-sighted and it perpetuates the racial wealth gap that exists here in Charlottesville.

and throughout the country, but especially here.

And so of course we need housing solutions that meet all needs.

We need deeply affordable rentals, home ownership preservation and repair, badly needed rehab of public housing units, transitional housing for the homeless, and of course affordable home ownership.

And with that I'm going to cede my time to Dan Rosenzweig.

Dan Rosenzweig, 740 Lexington Avenue, and I'm not going to say too much other than to point out something else that the study left out.

I do find it was a very robust study, especially insofar as it does a market survey, market analysis of low-income housing tax credits, which is one tool in the toolbox, but I think opposite of what seemed to be implied in the newspaper this morning, it's not the only tool.

And here's why.

Our patterns of racial and economic segregation in this town are not de facto.

That is, they're not naturally occurring.

A hundred years ago, our neighborhoods were more or less integrated because people lived near where they worked and they walked to work.

It was only after the federal government in the 1930s created public housing that they decided to segregate our housing.

They created black public housing and white public housing.

Following on behind that, the FHA was created to lend money basically to backstop loans to big developers like Levitt and others who built large suburban subdivisions to build housing, home ownership housing.

Well, guess what?

It was all deed restricted.

The FHA would not backstop a single loan to a builder who didn't have a racial deed restriction.

Look in this community, go to the courthouse, pull deeds.

Much of the city is covered by racial deed restrictions.

It is no, it's not a coincidence that we have patterns of segregation.

Now here's some stats that the assessment left out.

African Americans in this country earn 60% relative to all other groups.

But here's the even more shocking stat.

African Americans hold 10% of their wealth relative to everybody else.

Why?

because of federal housing policy that eliminated African Americans from home ownership for more than 70 years in this country.

That is why we need to continue to invest in affordable home ownership.

It's not just a roof.

It's about equity and a future and stability and allowing people to get into the game and become part of the American middle class or even above that.

So I would ask you please look at this study carefully.

Pay attention to what's in it.

especially as it regards the geography of segregation and affordable housing in this town.

And please, please continue to prioritize affordable home ownership.

Good evening, my name is Emily Dreyfus and I'm here on behalf of the Charlottesville Low Income Housing Coalition, CLIC.

The April 4th housing report that's coming up on your agenda tonight shows a lot of need, as you've just heard.

We unsuccessfully attempted to work with neighborhood development to help expand the scope of the needs assessment because one of the most critical issues associated with the housing shortage is the impact of race.

The racist policies enacted by prior city councils, the federal policies that you just heard referenced, and the continuing impact of anti-black zoning in our city must be remedied.

The report looked at the cost of housing and found a minimum wage worker would need to work 147 hours per week in order to afford to live here.

That leaves a paltry three hours a day for the rest of life.

CLIC is finishing a report about the impacts of local racism on affordable housing and the human suffering caused by this issue.

And the report will be on our website, hopefully within the next couple of weeks.

Our website is www.affordablehousingcville.org.

Over half of the numbers of units that this report found are needed are specifically needed for people under 30% of the AMI, the area median income.

We need a comprehensive strategy to stop displacement and create more housing, both home ownership and rental.

And we need that housing strategy before the comp plan is adopted.

We're confident that the recommendations that we will share will provide tools, and we need those tools to be enacted quickly.

The involvement of the people who are most affected is critical to that process.

Laura Horn Hi, I'm Laura Horn, 202 Douglas Avenue.

I'm here tonight because Riverbend Development has filed a plan to build in downtown Belmont four four-story buildings, 138 residents, 27,000 square feet of office and retail space generating an estimated 918 additional daily car trips.

So if you've been to our neighborhood, you know that our charming Belmont has narrow streets.

Some are functionally one lane because a lot of our homeowners and businesses use on-street parking, so we sort of take turns.

Our sidewalks are narrow.

There aren't a lot of crosswalks.

There aren't a lot of bike lanes.

Our sewer capacity is limited and stressed, partly because of our great restaurants.

But we're served by Clark Elementary School whose capacity isn't easily expanded.

Our bus is number three and it runs every half hour.

So this isn't the development that many of us would have chosen for our neighborhood.

and if it is to be built by right in spite of its size and scale, then we'll certainly be back here to talk with you about getting the city's help in accommodating it with our modest infrastructure.

But that is not the expected case.

The developer filed a by right plan as a placeholder very sensibly anticipating that a new comp plan would permit lower density in Belmont.

and the stated plan is to request special use permits and a land swap with the city both to increase the density of the project.

So we know there'll be a process to discuss special use permits and we'll certainly take advantage of that but a land swap can be done by city council.

you know the city owns the land you can sell it or trade it so we're here to and that can be done without a public process is our understanding so we're here tonight to ask you very respectfully to assure us that you won't approve a land swap with Riverbend for the Belmont apartments to increase that density and we thank you for

your consideration, and also thank you to council and city staff who have been so informative and helpful and professional.

Thank you.

I just had a question.

Oh, okay.

And if I may, Mayor Walker, when this came up about two years ago, or the summer before last, I believe I had a meeting with several staff, as I recall, and we could possibly make a condition of any kind of land swap be conditioned upon engagement with the community.

in the form of a charrette so that the community can be participating in the design and planning of the area.

But that was something that, as I understood, could be a condition.

So any time you transfer land that you own, you can negotiate what the terms of that transfer are.

Hi, I'm Luis Oyola, Charlottesville.

So last year, around this exact time,

Council was presented with evidence about plans for violence on August 12th, as investigated by Charlottesville residents like Emily Gorchinski.

Very little, if at all, was done with that information by the city, leaving residents to figure out ways to defend themselves.

Some of these residents are now facing state persecution or jail time for making this inevitable choice to defend our city.

Tonight, you get more evidence of more violence planned for Kessler's quote-unquote anniversary rally on August 12, 2018, the permit for which will soon be on trial on federal court, as I hope y'all are aware.

The document shows a public Facebook poll started by so-called Ludovici Alibi, an obviously fake name, who is friends with Kessler and polls publicly as such.

The poll asks, should Adam Waffen Division do private security for Unite the Right rally on August 12th?

65% voted yes.

For those unaware, Adam Waffen Division is an underground armed group in the U.S. who has as its explicit stated purpose of manufacturing nuclear weaponry and carry out clandestine attacks with the goal of literal ethnic cleansing.

They have many convictions under their belt of murder and manufacturing explosives, yet the vast majority of the group remains at large.

The poll could be taken as a quote-unquote joke, much like the jokes about running over people leading up to August 12 last year.

but if you go through the comments, a lot of people are taking it seriously and you only need one individual to take jokes like these seriously for people to end up dead again.

Whether it's because of city negligence or other reasons or the acts of white supremacists themselves.

On August 12th this year, if you allow the court to file the injunction to have the rally happen, we have a very, very severe risk of this happening again.

There are highlighted comments and notes throughout the document.

The one I want to call out publicly is on page 13.

There is a comment from a Dave Shine where he claims to be in on the rally plans for August 12th and mentions, quote unquote, private security.

If I'm not mistaken, Kessler or this Dave guy are making these plans over what is still a revoked permit without consulting the city, right?

Does that sound right?

They haven't consulted about private security?

Okay, they don't have a permit, right.

So the last two pages go into the possible identity of Dave through publicly available documents.

They might give you a sneak peek of who your police contact will be if you lose the injunction hearing.

Might as well prepare now.

So I'll just say, Mr. Lewis, thank you for the information.

One thing I think it's important for us to do, as we've heard over and over, is not do what we did last year.

So with our new police chief, we'd love if we could hand this information over.

Would you like a copy of Chief Brackney with her being here?

Do you have extra copies?

Or is this just for?

Did you only have enough for us?

Yes, sir.

I want to say thank you also.

You're absolutely right.

There was a lot of stuff given us in sessions like this last year.

As I've talked about, it was extremely frustrating trying to figure out what met the constitutional standards that then existed.

It's my belief that these constitutional standards are evolving now as the courts are starting to understand what

how to balance public safety against the so-called freedom of speech and what qualifies as a so-called credible threat is something that was very frustrating here because general threats don't

often times, as I learned talking to the FBI, qualify.

However, what you've put here, listen, what you've put here, this is really useful, this Damien Dark saying, I say arm everyone with guns and march together openly.

When the left shows up, just form ranks and aim, don't have any bullets in the gun, use it for intimidation factor.

That violates Virginia Code 18.2282, which is pointing, holding, or brandishing firearms.

So it looks to me like that's a clear description of a planned criminal act, which

was more difficult to have last time.

So I would please give us everything we can.

We'll do everything we can to get it to the right people.

Thank you for the research.

It's appreciated.

That's all.

Mayor Walker, may I ask Miss Beauregard a question?

We'll make sure to get this and track this.

Jeff Snyder, city resident.

I'm here to oppose the blasting along Quarry Road and to second the remarks of the young man that was right over there who read the letter of a very experienced person who brought

Many important points to see your attention.

Thank you very much.

I commend the council for giving us the time to bring this issue together in July.

I would ask that you ask the city utilities experts that you have for sewer, water, gas and to be here for those meetings so they can add what they know.

Also have your

somebody from the Assessor's Office that would address the issues involved with tax revenue decreases and problems associated with the degradation of properties within a who knows how far from the blasting site and I would ask that you contact the Virginia Department of Transportation to be present as well because Route 20 as it snakes down the road they are towards the

I-64 is a problematic piece of road and sits on that same vein of rock.

And you don't need more problems on that curve.

And I think they're probably within the distance criteria for concern.

So thank you all for your comments.

Do you have a comment?

OK. To the woman who made the comment about the mayor system that we have, I just wanted to add, for the sake of the public discussion about it, there's another proposal that was made by a resident in town named David Repass, who's a retired political science professor.

And he wrote a Daily Progress editorial where he said,

there's a spectrum of possibilities here and he said we could tweak the system so that the mayor would be elected directly which a lot of Virginia cities do do that have not gone as far as Richmond and had a strong mayor system with all the administrative and budgetary powers which is certainly something we can talk about as well and they said that council and the mayor could have more power over staff so they would have right now the only direct power that council has is the is consulting in the hiring of the police chief

and oversight over the city attorney and the staff that immediately reports to council.

So you could expand that.

You could have council and the mayor have more power within the staff relationships, but you could still have the council manager, former government.

It's just another option to have on the table as we mull this over.

What Delegate Toscano has said is this deserves a very serious community discussion.

Councilor Bellamy is imparting some urgency to it and some focus, which is due.

Okay.

So break.

Thank you all.

The End

Music playing

you

I don't know what to say.

you

you

you

Thanks for watching

Call the meeting to order.

Item A, minutes for June 4th, 2018.

Item B, appropriation, Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund, assistance for the Piedmont Housing Alliance, down payment assistance program, $186,125, second of two readings.

Item C, an appropriation, supplemental funding from Charlottesville City Schools for the Charlottesville High School Field House renovation project.

$121,775, second of two readings.

Item D, an appropriation grant for construction of Rugby Avenue Trail, $396,450, second of two readings.

Item E, an appropriation of fire equipment overpayment reimbursement, $18,712.50, second of two readings.

Item F, an appropriation, Charlottesville affordable housing fund for repayment of substantial rehab loan, $24,000, second of two readings.

Item G, an appropriation, Charlottesville affordable housing fund for repayment of substantial rehab loan, $30,113.28, first of two readings.

Item H, an appropriation, Albemarle County funds to the city's workforce investment fund for non-city resident workforce development training, Go Driver, $4,432.50, first of two readings.

Item I, an appropriation, 2018-19 Community Development Block Grant, $409,708.49, first of two readings.

Item J, an appropriation, 2018-19 Home Funds, $125,966.49, first of two readings.

Item K, an appropriation, Virginia Department of Education Special Nutrition Program Summer Food Service Program, $90,000, first of two readings.

Item L, an appropriation human services fund balance for FY 2018 expenses, $500,000, first of two readings.

Item M, a resolution LEAP program support agreement, first of one reading.

Item N, a resolution identifying authorized official for Medicare applications related to EMS billing, first of one reading.

Item O, a resolution for RSWA Albemarle County City Local Government support agreement for recycling programs, first of one reading.

Item P, an ordinance, closed portion of the alley off Dice Street, second of two readings.

Mayor Walker, may I make a comment just on item P, which is the closing of the portion of the alley off Dice Street.

Thank you very much.

And Mayor Walker and colleagues, ever since we had the discussion about closing that particular alley, I have had more conversations

The whole idea of the closing of the alleys is a very important policy matter.

and what it became very clear to me that however we've had a long-standing policy where it was almost by default they were closed.

And there are many applicants that are kind of getting caught in what I'm calling like a policy gear shift.

And when I reviewed Reverend Ward's application, and yes, there were no objections from those properties adjacent to the alley.

And in light of the fact that we're going to have

A discussion on July 2 where we have an interim measure where we remove the administrative approval of our alley closures.

as a default position but they would always come before council and that on July 16 we will be reviewing the resolution that I had put forth back in May about revisiting our policy about alley and local and Paper Street closures.

I want to just say now that I feel like this would be unfair at this particular point given that he's done such diligent work to get

his neighbors on board, and I spoke with Reverend Ward tonight.

So I will be voting for this measure tonight.

And just to be fair and consistent, Ms. Robertson, I think

you were saying the same thing with the Douglas Avenue.

Yes.

Absolutely.

Okay.

And a comment that I have about, and that's something on here that I would like to staff to look at, and full disclosure, I have been a beneficiary of the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund, and the conditions are,

different based on my application.

I still think that we need to make sure that when we're using funds to increase home ownership in the community, the length of time that the individual homeowners have had these loans and that they're paying the full amount back, I want to make sure that we look at that policy and make sure that

that homeowners are able to benefit from the equity that they build when they decide to sell and that the terms are fair and consistent moving forward.

Second.

All right, so it carries 5-0.

Thank you.

So we have a public hearing.

There's the easement to CenturyLink at Sugar Hollow Reservoir.

And there's Brian.

Hi.

Good evening, Mayor, members of City Council.

The item before you this evening is a public hearing and the first reading on ordinance granting an easement to CenturyLink at the Sugar Hollow Reservoir.

The fiber optic line will provide enhanced connectivity to the dam, providing increased communication speeds for monitoring the operations of the water supply facilities there.

Parks and Recreation staff and the staff of the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority have reviewed this request and do not have any objections to the granting of the easement.

The installation of the aerial fiber optic line will not impede

user access to Sugar Hollow nor will it impede any maintenance activity needed by the Super Authority.

All right, so I open the public hearing.

Are there any comments?

No?

All right.

Gonna close public hearing.

All right, any discussion?

All right, so there's no vote on the measure tonight.

All right, that's done.

All right, so our next public hearing is the LEAP lease renewal at 608 Ridge Street.

Good evening.

Stacey Pethia, housing program coordinator.

LEAP has been the tenant at 608 Ridge Street.

also known as the Eco Remod House.

They have been renting the property since 2011.

Their current lease, which was approved last June, is expiring at the end of this month.

And they have asked for another 12 month renewal of that lease.

I've been in discussion with LEAP about future use of the property, whether or not the city, we basically need to have it assessed so they know that once the city

contracts with a property assessor for the city as a whole.

They'll sort of be on call for us, then I will schedule that assessment.

LEAP themselves have also been looking at alternative locations to move their offices.

They're still looking, they're not quite ready to move yet, so that's why they have asked to extend this lease for another 12 months.

And I am going to recommend that we actually extend this lease for 12 more months, understanding that we all are going to look into having the property assessed, the feasibility of selling it to recoup a good portion of the money that the city invested into that property.

But for now, I think we should let them stay.

They've also agreed to a $50 per month increase in rent.

They're not certain yet, so I don't have a good answer for that.

So we invested a lot of money into renovating the property and making it extremely energy efficient.

We don't have a goal at the moment.

That's why we want to have it assessed to see what the asking price could be if we chose to sell it.

It does have an apartment in the lower level that could, so it really could be reverted to a single family home with an accessory dwelling unit if we choose to do that.

So that's why we're going to have it assessed and go from there.

I don't know if this is déjà vu, but I remember this has happened before and before, that they can never seem to find a place.

And I agree totally that this is a very valuable program.

Is there anything—well, I guess once we get the assessment, that might be a trigger to really make

Yes.

Yes.

I mean, I think once we know what the property is worth, what the feasibility of is selling that or finding a different tenant, then we can have begin to have more earnest talks with them to see when they'll be ready to move out.

So they know that can happen at any time.

Okay, so I'm going to open the public hearing.

Are there any comments?

Would anybody like to speak?

I'm going to close the public hearing.

Mayor Walker, I move that we adopt a resolution to authorize the lease of city-owned land at 608 Ridge Street to local energy alliance program LEAP.

All right, vote.

Thank you.

and you're up next.

I can ask Anita to talk really fast, but I don't know how fast she can talk.

So earlier this year, in February and March, the neighborhood development services

requested that, I totally forgot, Partners for Economic Solutions complete two studies for us.

Results from this study will help inform

One, numerical targets that are accurate for affordable housing development within the city and also into creating an affordable housing strategy citywide.

That process is in the beginning planning stages and we'll be moving forward hopefully within the next month or so.

The bonus height financial analysis was done at the request of a number of community groups.

The results from this study are going to be used to help inform development of a form-based code and a comprehensive plan and the proposed land use map changes that the planning commission has been going through.

The results from that study were done to determine the feasibility of using bonus height densities

to see if

bonus height densities to developers without any other financial assistance from the city if that would help meet the affordable housing need within the city.

Good evening.

So starting with the housing needs assessment, what we were asked to do was to look at the housing market and supply conditions to define and quantify housing needs, to illustrate the disparities by city sub-areas, in this case census tracts,

identify the barriers to fair and affordable housing and then provide input to the housing strategy and the comprehensive plan that are under development now.

So just to put some framework, when we talk about housing needs, we always talk in terms of income groups that are defined as a share of area median income.

The Charlottesville area, as of 2017,

had an average family income of $76,600.

And so we pivot off of that number.

That assumes a family of four.

The numbers are lower when you have fewer people in the household.

So 30% of AMI would be extremely low-income households.

With two people, that means you have less than $18,000 a year.

At four, it's less than $25,000.

and then we bracket that 30 to 50 percent is generally described as very low income and that you can see the ratios there and then 80 percent is the edge of between low and moderate income and for a single mother with a child that would be an income of $49,000.

So just to go through sort of what the city's residents look like, if we exclude the households that are student dominated and focus just on non-student households, 9% of the city's households are at the extremely low rate, below 30% of AMI, another 13%, between 30 and 50%,

and another 19% between 50 and 80% of AMI.

So fairly substantial number that relates below 30%, that's 1,400 households.

We have another 1,900 between 30 and 50% of AMI and 2,800 between 50 and 80% of AMI.

So it's a large share of the population.

When we look at what is affordable for these households, we talk typically about 30% of their income going for rent, including utilities.

So the rents that they can afford are quite low.

At 30% of AMI for a two-person household, it's $460 a month, including utilities.

At 80%, clearly it's much higher at $1,225 for a two-person household.

So what we found in looking at 13 larger complexes in and near the city explicitly excluding those that are designed for students and rented by the bed, what we found was the rents were substantially higher than those affordable rents.

The lowest was a one bedroom at $855 a month.

The average is $1,350 a month.

So none of these units really are affordable to our low wealth population.

The occupancy level was almost 100% in 2016, which is an extremely tight market.

It means you don't have any time between tenants to clean and paint and all the rest.

And when you're a tenant looking for an apartment, that means there's hardly any available at the time you're looking.

In 2017, we had an additional almost 400 new units added to the inventory and that got us to a 95% occupancy, which is about where you'd like to be for a healthy market.

Though there's no guarantee that that occupancy will stay at that lower level because there were still, that new project was in the midst of its lease up.

The rent levels have been, oh, so,

As I mentioned, it was $1,384 average.

As noted earlier, that means that a family, hopefully this would have two income earners, would have to work 147 hours a week to afford that rent at 30% of their income.

There were no available units that we could find affordable to households at or below 60% of AMI, and looking at

both these large apartment complexes and then Craigslist and Zillow and looking at private rentals, there were only 11 units available for rent at less than $900 a month.

So when you compare that to the thousands of people we have at the lower income levels, it's a serious gap.

Rents have been increasing very rapidly.

Average rent went up 18% over the last five years.

Last year it went up 9% in one year.

So clearly that's outstripping the growth in household income and the ability of local families to afford rents.

Same is happening in home sale prices.

Prices went up 18% over the last four years.

Townhouse prices went up 10%, so they were a little more moderated.

The average single-family home, and this is both existing and newly constructed houses, was $296,000 last year.

Townhouses at $247,000 and condo at $222,000.

There are many fewer of those, of course.

The city does have assisted units specifically designed and financed to meet the needs of low-income households.

The CRHA has an inventory of 376 units, but I would note that 289 of those were built before 1980.

So 62% of the residents have incomes below $10,000.

That's less than 20% of AMI.

So these are really the lowest wealth and lowest income households in the region is HUD policy to focus on that segment of the population.

There are just over 1,650 households on the waiting list.

That list has been closed for quite a while and essentially represents an eight-year wait before you would be able to access either public housing or housing vouchers.

So the federal government's support of low-income housing is now focused mostly on low-income housing tax credits, which provides a tax credit to investors who are part of a new development that provides affordable housing, sometimes within the context of a mixed income

Development most often though now it tends to be developments that are 100% affordable.

Typically focused on households that's 50 to 60% of AMI due to the way the program is structured.

On the waiting list, 68 to 70% of those households live or work in the city.

And more than half of them are single persons.

So that's somewhat surprising when our typical

Expectation is it's more families who are in need of housing on the waiting lists.

So the housing choice vouchers are the other major source of subsidy.

The city has 700 vouchers, 51 of which are committed to units at friendship courts.

They are focused on families that make less than 30% of AMI, also seniors and the disabled.

So the, what we found though is that HUD sets fair market rents and says the vouchers can be used for units at no higher rent than the fair market rent.

Those rents are based on existing units in the region, not just within the city, and so the city's rents typically are higher than the fair market rents, and so

people are taking the vouchers, having a hard time finding places to live in the city.

If they do find someplace that tends to be one of the low-income housing tax credit buildings where the rent is written down to 60% of AMI and then they use their voucher to go between the 60 and what they can actually afford at 30% of their income.

So many of the vouchers though are taken outside of the city because of the lack of

of Supply that can meet the needs of folks with vouchers.

So trying to quantify the rental housing needs, our focus is primarily on cost burdened households and that's defined as the people who are spending more than 30% of their income on rent, so their rent is not affordable.

We put a particular emphasis on severely cost burdened, the people who are spending more than half of their income on rent.

and that's a really substantial number currently.

Among households with incomes of below 30% of AMI, there are 1,000 households that are paying more than half of their income for rental housing.

At the 50% level, it's 700 households, another 230.

at 80% of AMI.

So it's clearly very focused in the lowest income levels.

The cost burdens then between 30 and 50% tend to be more of the higher, still not high income, but low income and moderate income households that are showing up in that category.

In terms of total mental housing needs, we think you also have to consider not just the cost-burdened households, but the fact that the CRAHA properties, the Section 8 properties at Friendship Court, are in serious obsolescence and need to be replaced in the near term.

As I mentioned, they were dated from the 70s and early 80s.

So that is a separate category that needs to be added into the number of cost burdened households.

And then the homeless statistics show 115 individuals in emergency shelter, another 123 without shelter.

So there's a definite need associated with this 189 households that

are currently homeless.

So under today's conditions, the need we've estimated at 3,300 units, given the growth expected in the city over the next 23 years, we would expect that need to grow to 4,000 units, including the current need.

We aren't able to project what homelessness will be like at that point

where you will be relative to your inventory of public housing or section eight housing that would need to be replaced, but there will be a growing need over time.

So in particular, the housing for households at 40 to 50% of AMI, most of these households are not eligible for public housing and vouchers unless they're disabled or seniors.

They're unable to afford market rate housing.

The gap is still very large between the rents they can afford and rents available in the market.

And what that's doing is it's keeping people in public housing longer than they need to be.

There are several families within CRHA housing that could afford, well that no longer are below 30% of AMI and would move out if they had an opportunity, but there is not

that next level of housing open for them to move out so their units don't become available to people at even lower incomes.

So that's a serious need.

The low-income housing tax credits typically focus on 60 percent of AMI households.

and some at 50%, almost none of them get down to 40% because the gaps are just too big between what households can pay and what the developer can afford to rent the units at and still make the payments even after my tech payments.

We're also seeing particularly needed for seniors

There are about 330 senior households that are renting currently and need assistance.

There are another 690 disabled households that are in rental housing.

Small households, as I mentioned, half of the people on the waiting list are single persons.

Some are elderly, but most are not.

So it would be the disabled and other income

limited persons.

So that would be a particular need that we think you should be looking at.

And then finally housing with supportive services to meet the needs of the homeless, particularly the persistent homeless who have been homeless for more than a year in part due to mental health or drug addiction or other kinds of

on behavioral health issues where they need support in order to be successful in new housing.

So another 30 units would help a great deal in terms of meeting the needs of those homeless individuals and households.

So as we look at first time home buyers,

What we're finding is that there are only 72 units of any size or type that sold for less than $150,000 last year, some of which were not in good condition, at least judging from the pictures.

Essentially, for the least expensive units on the market, you need more than 80% of AMI to be able to afford those units.

That's just an income

to income qualify to afford those units.

That doesn't count the challenges involved in trying to accrue a down payment and to cover closing costs when you buy.

And a lot of households now in particular are faced with student loan debt that makes it even more difficult to meet the income qualifications for new mortgages.

We estimate that there are at least 400 renter households that would buy homes if they were available at $200,000 or less.

That's not the low wealth households.

That's typically people in the 60% AMI level.

And then the low wealth community would need even more units with assistance that's more than

that's not currently being met by anyone except Habitat.

So the barriers as we see them in looking at affordable housing, clearly the market supply and demand imbalance is the biggest issue.

The fact that your housing, rental housing had gotten to a 99% occupancy rate is a major red flag in terms of imbalance within the market.

You've had growing population and the housing supply has not kept up with that.

In part, it's the city's supply of developable sites, particularly greenfield sites is very limited.

There may be some additional redevelopment sites, but those tend to be more, to go through a much more lengthy process in becoming available for development.

and many of them have existing development, existing buildings on them that are too valuable to tear down and then replace with affordable housing in particular.

We're seeing the decline in federal financial support across the board for affordable housing and that has been generally recognized as a federal responsibility which is becoming less and less met.

as the budget tightens.

The tight market and the tight supply of land is being reflected in high land costs.

We also have high development costs just by virtue of a lot of external forces that have influenced the cost of materials and other factors influencing development costs.

and then accessory dwelling units are one opportunity to expand the supply of smaller single family units or apartments within existing units.

Those have been difficult to finance for households that don't have enough equity and income to do it from a home equity loan.

And so that's often, those are often financed from

friends and family, but they may also not have enough financial resources to finance construction of an additional accessory dwelling unit.

So that's constrained that opportunity.

Zoning issues are always a concern as we look at affordable housing.

City zoning in particular that focuses on units per acre discourages developing small units.

So if you can only do 21 units an acre, you're going to make them as big as as you can sell in order to maximize your profit.

So you had a shockingly low number of efficiency apartments in the inventory.

within the city.

It's much below what we've seen in other locations, particularly in a community with a number of students and younger people seeking housing.

And then the constraints on developing an established neighborhoods are a concern as so much of the city is tied up in those established neighborhoods.

So the accessory dwelling unit ordinance does encourage or allow development in those neighborhoods.

but we've seen a lot of neighborhood pushback on introduction of multifamily housing in particular into some of these neighborhoods.

Talking with stakeholders, particularly from the development community, the approval process came up time and again in terms of a barrier and a major cost factor in developing new housing in the city.

the time and the expense it requires to go through the process to get an SUP or just anything that requires coming to Council.

What developers crave most is predictability.

They need to know that if they invest in the planning and the architecture and the design, follow all the rules and come to Council, that they will in fact be approved.

So that, roll the dice and see what happens when you get here is a major concern in the development community and it provides an incentive to pursue buy right housing that doesn't, buy right development that does not require council approval.

In that situation the city loses because there's no affordable housing generated under a buy right development.

And then

Finally, discrimination.

We heard very good comments earlier this evening about the historic redlining, but we also see more subtle discrimination in terms of applicants coming and trying to rent housing and being turned down because of their credit history and arrest record, the fact that they bring vouchers as their source of payment.

or that they have children in their households.

And then we're also seeing language and cultural barriers for some households trying to seek rental housing in this tight market.

And then all of this comes back to the capacity of the households to earn income and pay market rents.

And that comes back to a whole issue of the barriers to,

moving ahead in your career and getting into a career path job, education and training, transportation to your job, from your home to your job, childcare while you're working, and then getting access to career ladder opportunities.

So with that, I will just move to the question of

And we can have access to these PowerPoints?

All right.

So I think Stacy shared with you one of the questions that came up with the foreign-based code for the strategic investment area was the issue of using high bonuses to try to support affordable housing and to use the foreign-based code to leverage more affordable housing in the area.

So the way that these bonuses work is that the

They're expressed in terms of height in this case because of the particular provisions in the Commonwealth law related to density bonuses.

So using height bonuses moves you outside of some of those constraints.

And what they do is essentially create value for the developers by allowing them to build more units on their site.

In exchange then, the developer commits that a share of those additional units would be made available at affordable rents for a specified length of time, typically 30 or 40 years.

And then the success of that incentive is dependent on demonstrating that the value created is equal to the value provided through the affordable units, that the affordability level

does not undermine the financial feasibility of the entire development.

So we test that using a financial pro forma and that essentially compares the cost of developing new units to the net rental revenue generated to cover those costs.

And then we measure, the threshold measure we use is the return on investment to the developer and the investors.

In this case, there are a number of ways to calculate that, both direct return on costs, which is what we've used, but also internal rate of return and other measures that you may hear people talk about when they discuss their projects.

In this case, we used a simpler approach, which is to take the net revenues from operations

the year once the project is leased up and divide that by the total development costs.

And essentially, today, if that is less than 7%, if that provides you a return of less than 7% on your total costs, you're likely to go elsewhere to build something else, somewhere else at higher rents,

The investors may take their money and go to the stock market or any other number of investments.

And so the issue is it's not just that they're saying this is what we deserve.

It's basically they have choices and the ability to make other investments or not to build at the time.

And that's really the decision that we see in the real estate market every day.

So we had a steering committee that worked with us on this process with representatives from the public and private and nonprofit sectors, developers, private developers, nonprofit developers, the CRHA, and then members of the city staff.

And the committee helped us define what the alternatives were that we considered.

and the policy options that we tested against these financial models.

So, as Stacy mentioned, we focused on three locations, downtown, in the SIA, and then the US 29 North corridor at 250, and that was in order to provide some support

Guidance about what the implications are in areas with different rent levels and different land costs so that you can get some sense of what the range of options might be.

We also tested a number of site sizes at typically one acre, but also a half acre parcel in downtown because of the limited supply of larger

and then a three acre parcel in SIA where land is more available.

Then we tested it at different building heights from three stories to 11 stories and different parking formats and that was because we see different pricing associated with each of those.

And then ultimately at the different levels of affordability from 20% of AMI to 80%

to demonstrate the issues of how much the subsidy changes depending on the AMI level.

So we focused on height, one because that was the way we have of providing additional density for the development, but also because of the really significant changes in the cost of construction that happen when you go from four stories, which is essentially wood frame construction,

that $130 a square foot.

When you go to the fifth story, you typically on the first level have to build a concrete podium and then you build four stories of wood construction above that.

That's somewhat more expensive at $138 a square foot.

And then once you get to six stories or more that you're into concrete and that's much more expensive at $158 a square foot.

So as we added floors in each of the models, we had to recognize that the costs increased and the nature of the construction changed as we moved to new heights.

The other major factor that affected the model was the assumptions about parking.

Surface parking can be provided at about $5,000 a space, but once you go into an above-ground garage, that's $20,000 a space, so you're adding 10% or more to the cost of your unit if you're acquiring one parking space per unit.

And if you go below ground, which we obviously have a preference for aesthetically, the cost is even much

much higher at $32,000 a space or more depending on whether you have water on the side or you hit rock that affects the construction.

So what we found in running all these variety of models is that typically the rents available in the market when you compare it with land and building costs do not support mid-rise housing.

So the concrete construction costs coupled with structured parking is just too much for the rents typically available within Charlottesville.

So that's why you're seeing a very limited number of taller apartment buildings and those with structured parking.

Most of the sites we looked at could support only wood frame construction at three or four stories with surface parking.

and it was only the higher rents available downtown that could support even five stories with structured parking.

So some of the scenarios that have been presented or considered by the Planning Commission that say we're going to provide a bonus to let you go from five stories to six stories if you provide affordable housing really has no value to the developer.

When you move from a five-story building to a six-story building, you move into an infeasible building, and it's not something you're going to build, so it's not an incentive to the developer to build at six stories.

You typically, in order to justify the higher costs of concrete, you tend to be at

9, 10 stories so that you get enough new units to offset the cost, the higher cost of construction.

But even there we didn't find opportunities in Charlottesville to make that work.

There are a few exceptions.

Student housing near the university that's set up to rent by the bed has been able to justify

the higher construction costs because of the higher rents charged to students and the occasional luxury rental development at the high end of the market with rents significantly above what we're seeing among most of the rental stock could afford the higher construction costs and also condominiums where the prices are significantly higher.

So just to keep that in mind that what we're talking is the more typical kinds of construction that you would see in the general market and would represent the bulk of what could be developed here.

So in running the models, essentially our conclusion was that the biggest opportunity was to require affordable units against the incremental units made possible by the height bonus.

and 15% of those incremental units be affordable at 60% of AMI or 10% of the units could be afforded at 50% of AMI.

But we didn't have any that worked even at 10% at lower AMI levels.

So that's testing the feasibility where density is your only incentive.

And so what it suggests is that that's not enough by itself.

our hopes that we could be requiring 20% of new development to be affordable really can't come through that tool alone.

It has to be combined with many other incentives.

So this is just one example looking at a one-acre downtown site.

At three stories by right, you'd build 26 market rate units.

What happens when you go to four stories but you still have surface parking is you only get three more units.

So of those, you could get two of those affordable at 60% or one affordable at 50%.

When you go to five stories, you got many more new units.

You got 24 new units, but only two of those could be affordable even at 80% of AMI and still have a feasible development.

So,

That's the range.

So we looked at a variety of incentives.

One of those that's been discussed is that the city provide the parking for these apartment buildings.

As I mentioned, the parking costs are so significant, particularly in a structured situation, that if the city were to do a parking garage, you could bring down the cost of the development and make it

More feasible to support affordable housing within the project But this turns out to be a very expensive option because essentially you're building parking for the market rate units as well as for the affordable units and so as we looked at even 80% of AMI and

affordability, the city's cost would be about $138,000 a unit, so well in excess of the $30,000 a unit you typically invest in an affordable unit through the affordable housing fund.

If you were to try to move that down to a 40% of AMI rent level, the subsidy would be $415,000 for one unit.

So it's a really inefficient

option for providing incentives for affordable housing.

Tax abatement can help.

The city has the ability to abate property taxes for the affordable units.

So what it could do is move the affordability to 10% of incremental units at 60% of AMI.

So it gives you a little

a little increment, but again, still not very substantial.

Direct contributions from the city in addition to the bonus densities, you would not require additional capital in order to make the unit available at 80% of AMI.

At 60%, it would cost $25,000.

at 20% of AMI would be $140,000 and that's because the rents paid by those households are so much lower than those at 80% of AMI.

The other possibility is to look at your policy

We have certainly with inclusionary zoning we've tried to we've attempted to focus the new units or the affordable units within buildings the newly built buildings so that we have a good mix of Affordable and market rate units in the same same development one of the options is to use a

the capital contribution or a payment from the for-profit developer to fund off-site affordable housing.

So the advantages relate to the lower costs that a non-profit developer can achieve in building a totally affordable development

You'd have fewer luxury amenities and potentially less parking because fewer of your residents have cars.

But more important is that the nonprofit developers and a totally affordable development would be eligible for low-income housing tax credits, which brings a significant amount of capital subsidy to the project.

So those are not

resources that a for-profit developer could tap, particularly for two or five units at a time.

So the downside is if the off-site affordable housing gets shunted to a location that is no longer accessible or is not as well located as the private market housing that is leveraging that new affordable housing.

So there are certainly requirements that you can impose that say that your contribution would be used within a defined area that had to be accessible by transit or it had to be within so many blocks of the for-profit development.

So that's just an option as you pursue the development of the affordable housing strategy.

What that means, just one example, when we looked at a one acre site in the SIA, the developer could afford to contribute $130,000.

That would support four affordable units at 60% of AMI if developed offsite as opposed to three units onsite.

So just to give you a sense of scale.

You do have a contribution policy currently if the projects come before you for a rezoning or a special use permit.

In this situation, if they needed a special use permit to develop, they'd be required to contribute $125,000 to the Affordable Housing Fund, so a little bit less than what they could afford to provide.

But if the choice instead is to develop by right, then you have no contributions at all from the development.

and there's no affordable housing required to be developed.

I don't have any questions at this moment, but I have a couple.

This is bad, right?

I do have some comments.

I think as

You know, a native of Charlottesville and seeing this happen, if we're in the room and there's any conversation that sounds familiar to conversations that you've been a part of in the past and we're going along with it, then we are only continuing to contribute to the problem.

I didn't see one solution, one avenue out of what has been created.

I think once we see CLIC's report, then it'll be clear that this was intentional and that we have a lot to do to undo it.

I don't even know where to begin in the comments.

I mean, I was sitting over there thinking, um, Jay-Z has a song.

I don't want to see them coming down my eyes, so I gotta make the song cry.

You know, I'm just, like, it's, yeah, it's really, I think when you're talking about

especially since we're coming to terms with the historical legacy of what has happened in our community and we know the racial makeup of this community at its foundation and that the people who the community, black people who

the community has been built off the backs of and then we arrive at today.

And I mean, I never look at anything in isolation which gets me in a little bit of trouble in meetings, but I'm always comparing and looking at the bigger picture and seeing how if we let's take utility rates.

You know, if UVA is paying utility rates that they should have been paying long term over a three year period, how that is not freeing up funds that could help.

It's not the whole, but that could help.

If we don't start requiring, when we're talking about everything in this city, understanding that we have to undo what we have done, then we are never going to fix this.

That's what I was just sitting over there thinking about.

I mean, we need to make sure any money that we're putting in, any nonprofit, any, because in reality, the conversation surrounding that is whether we continue to fund at the levels we've been funding anything at.

If we continue at this rate,

you're only going to have a bunch of upper middle class people living in Charlottesville who will not use the funding, use the services of those non-profits we're funding anyway.

I mean, we have to have some serious conversations about what we're doing as a whole.

Based on things that... One,

Thank you for the report, grim as it may be.

I thought it was indeed very detailed and thorough.

So when we look at even what we kind of heard today from Mr. Rosenzweig and some of the members of the public about home ownership and whatnot possibly being a path because the housing need is so great.

I don't know the housing authority, we're working on some things in terms of trying to alleviate and bring about more housing.

But what do you all think about micro units?

So would that be a possible solution?

Obviously it's not going to solve everything, but a tangible solution in terms of addressing some of the needs.

in the immediate and even if we looked at it from a home ownership perspective, I was just talking to these fine gentlemen right here and one suggestion, yeah, y'all too.

One suggestion that came up was not only about density, which we thought about and changing the zoning, but micro units.

I think Oliver Kuttner, right?

Yeah, he had an idea for micro units before and it didn't go get through for whatever reason.

But I mean, seeing where we are,

if we were to use some of the land that we have because we are land strapped, would that be a possible solution?

It would certainly have to be one of many.

It would address the need at a particular segment of the population, and certainly the fact that you don't even have efficiencies much in the market is a major constraint, so I think that

So that's one possible solution we could think about, micro units.

And we have, you know, historically single room occupancy units, you know, in the dormitory kind of style, individual units, sharing bathrooms.

So you were talking about 50% of the people on the waiting list would go into.

But part of the bigger discussion is if you are only being willing to house a few people at a time at the lower income levels, then it won't matter what you build.

If we don't start figuring out how to

Well, Ms. Galvin, I don't want to steal her thunder, but I know Ms. Galvin, she talks a great deal often about the density.

And I mean, I think there's, in order for us to be able to get out of this issue, when I think about micro units, and I'm not the expert here, I know a little about housing, but

The way, to me, one path, and we have to have several, was if we were to increase the height to put in more units.

And they could be smaller units, and they could even potentially be units that people own.

I mean, I think about Mr. Kefuna, myself, Mr. Duffield, Ms. Demchick, and people from the National Housing Trust.

We were having meetings last year.

No, but she addressed some of that in there.

It still wasn't, so the conversations are starting in Charlottesville.

Well, I understand that, but I'm just saying that's the problem.

So we've created it, so we have to figure out a way to undo it.

We can't do inclusionary zoning.

No.

I mean, Dylan's Rule is a word I'd rather not say.

But I think on the micro units, the more units you can provide for the private market that maybe are affordable at 80% of AMI will loosen or lessen some of the pressure on the affordable,

You see that's one of the things though that really I struggle with.

And I'm not saying you're wrong, it's just really tough to take in because it essentially says even if you make more money that you should be able, we need to build more housing for you who have the ability to pay a little bit more so that you can get into those newer units and that would somehow have a trickle down effect when we've seen repeatedly

Yeah, okay.

I think it's a little different from trickle-down economics, which is, you know, you give them the money and eventually they spend it and it comes down to you.

Sifting through the market is a conventional, I mean that's the traditional way that we've had affordable housing, private market affordable housing.

is that as new construction attracts the people with most resources, then they free up houses that then become available.

We would have to do both.

So, Mayor Walker and Council Bellamy, if I may.

It seems to me that there's, the way to frame this is that there's two different sources of housing and there is what the private development market provides and then there's what the non-profit housing development provider provides.

So what you've given us is a really good picture about the constraints on the private development

you can still get them to build affordable units, but the magnitude, the number of units is going to be limited.

But there are other tools that we must do at the same time.

So I'm seeing this as like, okay, so we know that we want to try to get some units built on site by the private development field.

The height bonus at least gives us more value and it does get more units in the mix.

But then you need to also be aggressive about acquiring property, be it through the land bank or

assisting when the Housing Authority gets its legs back, I'm not sure.

And we've had this conversation already about all the Grayfield and Brownfield sites.

Those are the areas that we still have left in the city that do need to be repurposed.

So I'm thinking that then that is what we need to be getting and acquiring and then

It won't work.

What you're saying, it will keep the ratios as they are now.

It's not going, you may have more, a few more people housed, but if you're talking about looking at where we have been in the past historically, we're not at a point where our neighborhoods will ever look like they have looked in the past.

And we have said as a community,

that some people don't belong or can't be.

And we have to really challenge those questions, even saying that we can figure out a relationship with the county or surrounding areas to build there.

That is still saying that if you can't afford to live in the city limits, we may have some affordable options.

They may not be within the city limits.

That should be unacceptable to us.

It's unacceptable to me.

No, I'm not saying what you're saying, I'm saying what is clear from the actions.

At some point, I think we all need to be, I see a list of things that we could be doing.

I'll give everybody else a chance to speak, but I just wanted to say that there's two different ways of producing the housing.

One's market and one's gonna be nonprofit, and we gotta do both.

I'd like to add a couple things here.

I think the analysis was incredibly helpful to have this level of fact and just

I just want to say thank you to all of you for being here today.

it creates, it's a very unique situation.

Somebody likened it to me to what's happening and some of these Europeans, like Paris has a destination inner city and a lot of the development happens on the outskirts.

And because you have this trend that's happened where a lot of people go back to these college towns, this back to the city movement, you're seeing that happen here.

You're seeing it happen around the country.

when you couple that with the fact that you have independent cities and counties, it creates a really strange problem.

So, I just, I think that practically speaking, we're in the middle of this, there's a ton of debate happening right now about what's the degree of integration we should have with the county.

That's a big deal on transportation, on schools, on economic development, and this

like the seriousness and the realness of this issue and how it's hobbling everybody.

I think we have to put cooperation with the county into, it must be part of the changed conversation that we're talking about here today, because that is what's happening.

I mean, a lot of the affordable housing that you have in the Charlottesville area, if you're gonna work in the city, is in the county.

That just is what's happening, but it's not strategic.

And there's certainly not sharing of

regulatory strategies, funding, whatever, and you've illustrated.

I wanna make one other, two other quick points, which is the politics of this are really tough.

Everybody here, there's a lot of vocal opinions here about a lot of things.

Whether I'm on the right side of it or not, it's good, it's good democracy, but I'll tell you, last year we had one very challenging decision, which was the approval of the housing project at 10th and Jefferson.

Okay, that was a 3-2 vote on council, good reasons on both sides, but it was about putting more market rate rental housing two blocks from the downtown mall and the discussion was

exactly what you all are talking about.

It was within the downtown mall, it required special use permit and an exception from the zoning.

There's people I know who don't talk to me anymore because of my vote for that project, and it was really tough.

And the reason I supported it was because it was going to attack a key problem in the housing shortage that we had, and it should have lowered.

and others.

about the power of language and the way we're talking about these things.

And that's really important, but it is different from the economics that private sector developers use when they just decide to build a project or not.

And I understand that.

But that's why, so for me, we make different choices when we are approving projects like West 2nd.

which is city's own land.

Well certainly when you're doing development on city-owned land you have a lot more opportunities and flexibility.

and we're seeing a lot of nonprofits in these high-cost areas working with churches, particularly where the congregation may be aging out and the sanctuary is larger than they need and the parking lot in particular is much larger than they need.

Those congregations may see affordable housing as part of their mission and there are arrangements that are being made to use some of that land.

as a way to enhance the supply of affordable housing.

I just had a couple.

The costs that you were putting per square foot, that was all based on the local cost drivers that you had.

So we were fortunate that there was a particular Census Bureau special study that looked at what the impact was on the

And I just know again and again that these accessory dwelling units have been coming up in conversations as a real opportunity.

So some of it is simplifying the approvals.

In Washington now, the Coalition for Smarter Growth and other advocates are working particularly to, because the District of Columbia just changed its accessory dwelling unit legislation, they're working to try to build the capacity among

property owners, homeowners.

Most of us have never built a house and never really wanted to build a house.

So it's like helping them understand the process, helping them make contacts with other people who have done it or with architects.

If you can put together a series of prototype buildings with designs or plans that

would be possible to use in other locations.

You can bring down those costs some, but I think ultimately it ends up that a financing question and so it might be something where you'd want to pursue a revolving loan fund or something to help people get it up and operating in exchange for some commitment to an affordability level.

Or you might see

So when we talk about housing just needs, right, in the immediate, because in order to bring about the solutions that many of us want to see, it's a long term kind of thing, right?

So what is the suggestion from staff right now when we're speaking with developers, obviously trying to get as many units as we possibly can,

I think there is certainly an advantage in expanding the supply.

Because for me, when I see, what was the number, 3,000, 3,300?

3,300, yeah.

Oh, I'm sorry, on the waiting list there was 16, a need of 3,300 units.

The need of 3,300, excuse me.

Eight years for the waiting list.

but when I see 3300 units, my mind immediately, and I'm looking for direction because maybe I'm thinking about this from a flawed perspective, but my mind immediately goes to if we can get 20 units here, let's get 20 units.

If we can get 40 units here, let's get 40 units because there's also 20 families that we get off the street now.

And while that may not be the 100 that we wanna get five years from now,

If it's 20 within a year, that's 20 people or 20 families we get to help ASAP.

Well part of the flaw in that thinking is if you then build 100 units for upper middle class people and there are no low income units in that development.

Well, let me clarify that 20 low income units.

But part of the bigger conversation is when you are allowing development to continue as usual, what does that do to the economy of the area as a whole and who can afford to live in it long term?

The individuals coming into the area, the values of the existing property, tax rates, all of that.

You have to look at, I think we look at things often as, you know, in silos and they're not.

Agreed.

One of the findings in your report, though, is that the prolonged review process inflates the cost of the project period.

So there's all these other layers of reform that we need to do.

And I do find that the idea of a financial assistance to homeowners so that they can actually build ADUs, accessory dwelling units, that's a really good policy idea.

I also see, in response to my questions earlier this week, you mentioned that Minneapolis is currently considering a zoning change to authorize fourplexes in their single-family neighborhoods.

They don't go over two and a half stories, they fit within the context, but you're inserting more residential density.

I know we're going back and forth about this repurposing of our Grayfield sites,

but we do have 12 areas of the city, one of which is the SIA that was determined to be underdeveloped.

And so we've had these small area plans on the books for over five years and they've been very slowly, slowly making their way through but they are a community envisioned process that allows the conversations to be had in those neighborhoods about affordable housing, about the needs of the city and then it sounds like

and some of your other responses that if you get to the point where you have a plan, you've changed your zoning, and then you make buy right the easiest thing to do, you reduce the cost of development and you get more units.

So I mean, it is a whole, and then the other thing you mentioned in a response was that if the developer is building the units at 80% AMI,

and in this case it was interesting, I never knew that there was a difference in the fair market rate that CRHA was using.

They were at 70% AMI, so we couldn't use their housing vouchers if we had gotten an 80% AMI bill, because the idea is that I'm seeing is that you get it built at a certain level of affordability, but then you go back with vouchers to get the deeper

But that's it, the bigger point was

We're in striking distance if you get the development, just in this model of a private developer to bill them at 70%, you can go in and suddenly the housing choice vouchers, for example, can be used.

Because that's what I've been hearing from folks dealing with the homeless population.

They can't even use their rapid rehousing vouchers.

because there is no rent level in the city that they can apply them to.

It would, yeah.

No, not to put you on the spot, but that would be extremely useful information to have, because there's a lot out there about very big cities.

As we talk about a lot in here, there is just a difference in the governments that you have in a city of a million people, 500,000 and 50,000.

And it would be really helpful to have examples if there are five or ten cities around the country, particularly any in Virginia, that have moved the needle, given the national pressures you're talking about, about income, that are not

The one other thing that I thought was also revealing was that your discussion about the construction methodology was really telling that you don't get an affordable apartment building by going tall.

and the parking strategies are an issue too.

I think we're at a stage where the market is changing and more households are able to use ride sharing or bicycles or, you know, walking and not own a car.

And so to the extent that your zoning requires more parking than is really needed, that's a cost that then gets impacts the rents across the board.

And so,

We're not at the stage yet where we have autonomous vehicles and we don't need any parking, but to the extent that you can leave that to the market.

Well, thank you.

So when is our work session?

Well, hopefully we'll start talking about that under other business, because we have to figure out when that work session can be.

But I guess, Mayor Walker and colleagues,

Should we be pulling together what we see as policy prescriptions that can fall out of this data and then just send it to staff for inclusion in the work session?

Because this wasn't a policy document.

This just gave us information.

But I think we were starting to have a policy discussion up here, but if we have

We start gleaning policy ideas from this research.

Do we just give it to Leslie?

And I'll also remind council that on June 28, we have kind of a capital budget infrastructure work session that's going to kind of kick off the next cycle of the CIP.

And so that's more about the funding.

It's not just about affordable housing, but that's certainly an aspect to this because a lot of what I saw was money.

So I'm going to look at this, and we've already started that presentation, but it looks like we need to incorporate a few things.

But I know you're talking about a separate work session on affordable housing, and I know you can forward that to me.

And we'll kind of see what happens on the 28th, and then we'll take it from there.

There's a lot more priorities than housing, although this is a big one, understandably.

So, if you want to feed it to me, that's fine, and I can get it to the appropriate folks, and I think we're still looking for a date with that right page for that work session.

Thank you.

Have a good evening.

Alright, our next report is the SPCA Annual Report.

I think we sit it in, just... And this will be brief.

Thank you.

Can we use another laptop?

Hi, my name is Angie Gunter.

Are we ready?

I'm the executive director of the Charlottesville Albemarle SPCA.

Thank you all for having me here this evening.

Heather Sullivan's also here.

She's the operations director.

He's been there for 13 years.

Tonight, I'm just going to talk about the 2017 statistics, both animal statistics and financial statistics as it relates to the pound services that we provide for the city of Charlottesville.

So most of you know the Charlottesville Albemarle SPCA is a nonprofit open admission animal shelter.

We were founded in 1914 and the main purpose is finding permanent adoptive homes for our animals.

We also serve, perform an important function in serving as the pound for both the city of Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

So we are responsible for all the stray, homeless, abandoned, unwanted animals in this community.

I'm very proud of this organization.

We are a no-kill community, and we've been recognized by esteemed National Animal Welfare Group, Best Friends Animal Society, as the most substantial community to achieve no-kill following San Francisco.

So it's a really big accomplishment for this community.

So our 2017 animal statistics, we had a 95% live release rate, over 3,300 animals we took in, over 2,500 pets adopted,

and another big statistic there is over 5,300 pets were spayed or neutered and that's obviously to reduce pet overpopulation.

So the breakdown of the shelter stats, so of all of the animals we take in, over 50% come from Albemarle County or 50%, rather 40% are us that just the public shelter and then the Charlottesville public shelter takes in 10% or 10% of the intake comes from Charlottesville.

If we break down the Charlottesville numbers, 43% of the animals coming in are canine, followed by 52% of feline, 3% wildlife, as you can see, 2% small animals.

And the source they come from with canines, 41% is public strays, animal control brings in 37%, and the remainder is owner-surrenders at 22%.

For felons, 56% is public strays.

Animal control brings in 8% and then 36% are owner surrenders.

The length of stay for canons, and I'm just measuring Charlottesville here compared to what the median is.

For canons, it's 19 days compared to 22.

For felons, it's 59 days.

And then small animals for Charlottesville is 18 days compared to 44.

So the final disposition of all incoming animals originating from Charlottesville in 2017, of the 556 total animals coming in, 69% were adopted, 24% were returned to owner, 4% euthanized, 1% was transferred out, and 2% was lost in care.

And that means they died.

So in accordance with their contract, we provide to the city residents for caring for all, as I mentioned earlier, stray, homeless, abandoned or unwanted animals and provide the necessary emergency veterinary care to prevent suffering.

We also provide a safe place for dogs running at large.

We provide a rabies control program for all dogs and cats at four months or older.

And we require sterilization of all dogs and cats prior to being adopted from the organization.

which saves time also with animal control having to follow up and make sure these animals have been spayed or neutered after six months of being adopted.

We house and care for animals being held for court cases and we have quite a few of those lately.

And we also keep animals on 10-day bite confinements as regulated by the Virginia Department of Health.

We also provide veterinary services to animal control officers in assessing the condition of neglected animals for evidence in court cases.

And we also transport

Wildlife to the Wildlife Center or euthanize if necessary.

Additionally, we sell dog licenses on behalf of the city of Charlottesville and require all dogs belonging to the city residents purchase one prior to leaving the facility.

The things that we provide that are not funded, and this is just because of who we are as an organization, our mission is we provide subsidized spay neuter services to help reduce the growing pet overpopulation.

and that affected 200, we spayed or neutered more than 200 privately owned pets in 2017.

We also provide, we're gonna reinstate free spay neuter services for all pit bulls and hounds for city of Charlottesville residents in Albemarle County.

And that's because that's the majority of the intake we see is pits and hounds.

And pits nationwide are one of the most euthanized breeds.

So we're just doing everything we can to reduce that overpopulation.

and that's going to be funded from private donors.

We also provide free trap noodle return program and vaccination services for free roaming cats and offer microchip and rabies clinics.

We offer pet retention programs, programs such as the pet pantry, which offers free food to clients who can't afford to have food for their animals and dog obedience classes.