City Council   7/16/2018

Good evening.

So I call the meeting to order.

Dr. Bellamy?

Present.

Ms. Hill?

Here.

Ms. Walker?

Present.

Mr. Signer?

Ms. Galvin?

Thank you, Mayor Walker.

We have a proclamation for the Boys and Girls Club Celebration of Service Day.

Is there a representative from the Boys and Girls Club here today?

Mr. Pierce, anyone?

Whereas all young people regardless of their circumstances deserve a high quality education, a sense of physical and emotional well-being, and opportunities that guide them toward great futures,

and whereas many young people struggle with challenges that are beyond their control including poverty, bullying, racism, bigotry and terrorism and whereas Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Virginia offer essential youth development services to young people ages 6 to 18 that foster confidence, resilience and a sense of belonging through character and leadership development, health and life skills programs, education and career development,

of Central Virginia.

with priority outcomes focusing on academic success, healthy lifestyles, and developing citizenship through leadership and service.

And whereas the Boys and Girls Club of Central Virginia's 2,500 members have successfully met a goal of completing 3,800 hours of service since October 2017.

and whereas Boys and Girls Club of Central Virginia is committed to promoting inclusivity and civic engagement by providing its members with continuing opportunities to serve their clubs and communities.

Now, therefore, the City Council and our illustrious Mayor, Nikuyah Walker, do hereby proclaim August 1st as Boys and Girls Club Celebration of Service Day and call on all citizens

to join with us in recognizing and commending the Boys and Girls Club of Central Virginia for its commitment to building great futures for young people who need us most and guiding them as they become tomorrow's leaders.

Let's give them a round of applause, please.

Outstanding work and salute to the local director, Mr. James Pierce, as well as all involved with the Boys and Girls Club.

Thank you.

Mayor Walker, I'm sorry.

I got a, may I, I have a note about two more announcements.

I apologize, may I?

So one being, forgive me for forgetting this initially, I want to make sure that everyone knows that everyone is looking forward to seeing all of you for the annual Back to School Bash, which will take place on Saturday, August 18th at the Pavilion at 1030.

For those who would like to volunteer, please join us Monday, August 13th at Mount Zion at 6 PM.

Also, West Haven Community Day is Saturday, August 4th in West Haven, as well as the Chehumba African American Fest is Saturday, July 28th at Washington Park.

And Mr. Alexander's having his annual youth event on Thursday.

July 19th.

So just really quickly, Thursday, July 19th for Mr. Alexander's youth event, Chehumba and African American Festival will be Saturday, July 28th.

So, Mayor Walker, members of council, members of the audience.

I want to start by recognizing that after my comments, we do have a team from our local area here, all of our partners in this planning process for the weekend of August 10th, 11th, and 12th.

And many folks have been involved in this, but our Emergency Management Coordinator, Allyson Feroli, is here.

Gloria Graham, who's the Associate VP of Safety and Security at UVA.

Chief Andrew Baxter for the City of Charlottesville, our Chief of Police, Dr. Rochelle Brackney, Captain Craig Borsham with the Virginia State Police, and Deputy Chief Greg Jenkins.

And we're starting this evening's meeting

with this opportunity for council and the public to hear directly from and ask questions of representatives of the unified team planning our regional preparations for the August 11th and 12th anniversary weekend.

This opportunity for the council to ask questions is in addition to many public meetings, some of which council has already attended or may in the future with different groups, neighborhood groups at neighborhood churches, business leaders, etc.

As Council knows, no permit has been approved for any event in Emancipation Park.

However, our planning assumes there will be a large gathering of people in media and the plan is not dependent upon any particular permit or court ruling.

We understand that the upcoming anniversary weekend will evoke painful memories for a community that is in stages of hurt and healing, not just from last summer's events, but as a reminder of our own city's history of racism, and we expect as a community that Charlottesville will continue to stand up against hate and violence.

To ensure the public's safety, we want the community to know we have learned many lessons from last year, and we intend to earn the trust and confidence of our community.

We do have one unified plan this year.

We have integrated our communication systems with the Virginia State Police, and we will take a new approach to security around any permitted event in the park.

We have previously outlined for you the preparations which began immediately after the events of last summer, but to summarize, they fall into four categories.

The event permitting processes and ordinances, some of which you will revisit this evening.

training and planning of our staff and law enforcement and legislative initiatives which were unsuccessful with respect to restricting guns and our continued investment in the city council's priorities.

For the public, we'd like to draw your attention to our city website, where if you click on the Resilient Seaville image on our homepage, you can find the following resources.

A summary of our preparations, a list of frequently asked questions, which will be updated every week,

a community events calendar of activities taking place to unite and heal our community, the video of last week's community briefing at Mount Zion, and contact information for Mr. Wheeler, our communications director, allowing people to provide further feedback or to ask additional questions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor and Councillors for allowing us to speak and at least give you an opportunity to ask more questions.

We also want to think that the community continues to come out

and ask those tough questions of each and every one of us.

That is our responsibility to be able to answer those and if we don't have the answers to build into our plans those answers and to make sure that we fill all gaps.

As we said here, we have a great many partners that are currently here as represented by those currently at the forefront as the head of their agencies, but we also have partners that are doing a lot of the background and groundwork to make sure that everything that we put into place is successful.

and that we have a safety and security protocol, as you hear me say, that will balance access and convenience and the abilities to express one's First Amendment rights with the obligation to keep the community safe.

So to that the information that we're going to give each and every time is so that each person as an individual and as an organization as well as the city officials can make an informed decision about how they want to participate during the week of August 10th through the weekend of August 10th through the 12th that day.

As part of that informed decision we will slowly unroll the street closures and part of those street closures that we will be announcing

will take us through a larger perimeter and move inward so we're not building concentrically outward.

We're actually going to go and then compress into a space.

And what we're looking at is restrictions will be in the areas between High and Water Street and then we'll also have them between

9th and McIntire Ridge in terms of vehicular traffic being able to move outside of that perimeter with very little inside of there.

We will be restricting parking on the streets more robustly than we have before.

And the purpose of restricting parking as well as vehicular traffic is we understand the tragedies that can occur when you co-mingle vehicular and pedestrian traffic.

Inside of those areas we will be attempting to build out a plan that restricts the prohibited items that are part of the ordinances as well and as we start to unveil more of that we'll get that to you.

We are working on what does closures within the city look like and so that we can support

a very strong and tight safety and security plan and again those will slowly get rolled out to you but not so slow that you're not making a decision and we hope to have those relatively soon as well.

So part of our planning as we look at it is what are those businesses and those persons and residents who may be disrupted by the events of August 10th and 12th.

So we are taking into consideration

the persons and businesses that live in and around Emancipation Park as well as Heather Highway and the pedestrian mall and taking into account what might their convenience look like as they're attempting to enjoy the amenities of the city during that time.

We'll be able to answer a bit more of your questions, more detailed questions as you have them, but I want to make sure that we have an opportunity to introduce our partners and what roles they're playing in assisting the city of Charlottesville.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen of the City Council.

I really thank you for having us here this evening.

I'm Greg Jenkins, Deputy Chief with the Albemarle County Police Department and the goal of the Albemarle County Police Department is to continue to work with our EOC partners and our law enforcement partners to ensure the safety of our residents, to ensure the safety of any visitors that come into Albemarle County and to ensure the safety of those that might be traveling through Albemarle County.

As a result of that goal, our strategy and what we've done so far is our staffing levels have been increased to ensure that we have the ability to respond rapidly to any situation that might occur in Albemarle County that jeopardizes the safety of our residents and anyone that may be visiting or traveling through Albemarle County.

Our officers have been advised that they'll be working 12 hour shifts throughout this deployment process.

Our officers have been given additional field force training, civil unrest training, and they've also been given additional constitutional law training as well.

I have a couple of questions.

I think we have a question.

OK, so a couple of questions.

that come to mind initially.

I've just got a response from, there's someone here.

So there's some concern about metal detectors and folks that may potentially be inebriated or people who just may be triggered by a variety of different things.

We know we saw last year there was a great deal of public sentiment about them there being fighting, law enforcement not interjecting and stopping the fighting.

So will it be possible for you all to speak to that?

Kind of what will our role be?

I'll just make a few comments and then we'll get to that generally.

The Virginia State Police, I am Captain Craig Warsh, I'm with the Virginia State Police.

And I would just like to say that the Virginia State Police is humbled to be a part of this community engagement process.

Thank you for having us here.

The Virginia State Police has been an active participant in the ongoing incident command meetings, planning and preparations, and training as well relative to the upcoming August 10th through 12th weekend.

We will be present in Charlottesville in order to support local and regional law enforcement during the weekend mentioned.

We are fully committed to providing the necessary resources to fulfill the Unified Operations Plan expectations and public safety needs.

Again, we are part of the Unified Command concept and happy to do that.

We are taking care in our planning to ensure that we have the correct staffing and those in key locations as identified in our planning sessions.

With respect to your question, Dr. Bellamy, the use of metal detectors, I'm not prepared to answer that question, but I will tell you that throughout our planning and our concept for that plan, we do plan to have an integrated, unified

proactive type approach to policing this event.

So the police, all law enforcement officers, the Charlottesville police officers, the Virginia State Troopers, they're going to have a combined approach and they will be actively engaging those that are participating and taking all the necessary precautions they can to

keep the two groups opposing parties separated and in the event that there is some sort of violent action the officers down to the lowest level understand that they can take action and make arrests and we plan to do that in a very unified sort of way and as the major said we've had ongoing training we're going to continue to train

We're going to bring officers and troopers together earlier in this process just prior to that week of to make sure that they're fully engaged and they understand all the concepts and to provide additional training to include those legal updates to make sure that they understand what laws are enforceable and how we expect them to conduct themselves.

Good evening.

My name is Gloria Graham.

I'm the Associate Vice President for Safety and Security at the University of Virginia.

And aside from reiterating everything that my colleagues have said, I thought that I would dig in just a little bit deeper on two things.

One is our commitment to being good partners and being good neighbors of the city of Charlottesville throughout these days and really every day.

And we have been heavily engaged in all of the planning that's gone on with these events.

and continue to be committed fully with the planning that goes on moving forward.

A couple of things that we've done that are very tangible is that, as you probably know, in 1994 there was a memorandum of understanding that was reached between the city and the county and the university to have a joint regional emergency operations center.

And Allison is going to speak more to that operation here in a moment, but I will just touch on the facility itself.

So since from August of last year to now we have put hundreds of thousands of dollars into that emergency operations center to make sure that it is equipped with the state of the art technology so that we can throughout the building communicate very rapidly and very quickly with colleagues in various rooms if you've ever been in that building so that we have the ability to video conference in so that we have the ability to quickly send out emergency messaging from that space

It's on a standalone network now, which it wasn't before.

It was on a shared network.

So we have done significant upgrades to that space to make it much more conducive to running a large-scale critical incident from that space.

When we talk about training, I know that some of the feedback that we've gotten from the community is that we continue to talk about training, but I think that

it is very emphatic and we have to talk about it because what we've done over the last year and specifically over the last six months is every officer I would argue almost every officer there may be an anomaly out there and knowing my luck that would be the one but I would argue that every single one of our officers at UVA and a large a large percentage I can't speak for my colleagues but I want to say that it's probably the same in their shops

we have all trained together.

So it's not that UVA officers are going through how do we manage a demonstration, how do we quickly manage a crowd, how do we quickly manage a crisis that's happening.

It's that we have formed these teams together.

And so it is significant and it is important that we talk about the training that we've done because it's different and because it's definitely contemporary standards and it's definitely what's best for the city of Charlottesville.

I will just again echo that we are committed to doing what we need to do to make sure that we get through these days.

Good evening.

I'm Allison Feroli.

I am the Emergency Management Coordinator for the City of Charlottesville UB in Albemarle County.

And throughout the last year when I have been working very much with the city and the county and university partners here as the Emergency Management Coordinator to one, bring on lots of different training

together so that we can improve our Emergency Operations Center or our EOC effectiveness.

As the Emergency Management Coordinator for the City of the County and the University, it is my job to be the EOC Manager during any incident.

And so with that role, we've brought on multiple rounds of training to help ensure that everyone knows what their roles and responsibilities are in the EOC.

and to also making sure that again the facility working with UVA and understanding the upgrades that the facility has made so that we can be able to perform that duty as an active EOC more efficiently.

In addition to that, working very closely to make sure that we have a strong staffed EOC over the weekend of August 10th through the 12th.

Good evening, Mayor Walker, Members of Council.

Just reiterate what my colleagues have said, and I just want to take us back to February, which is when we first met with the Virginia Department of Emergency Management incident management team representatives, understanding the scope and the scale of what we were planning for.

We knew we wanted to tap into their expertise, planning for large and complex events early in the process.

So we've been meeting biweekly with our regional partners since March, and our operational concept

is really quite simple.

We are planning for worst case scenarios.

I don't say that to frighten people.

I say that to make sure that our community understands that that's our job.

That's what we do every day and what we're planning for this summer is really an extension of what we do every day.

It is a reality now in our community and across much of the country that civil disturbance is something that a community needs to be prepared for.

in the public safety world and otherwise.

Our goal for Monday, August the 13th, and I said this the other night at Mount Zion, is for someone to tell me on Monday morning the 13th that you guys were too prepared.

I'll be happy with that and I think I speak for all my colleagues and they would probably agree with me.

As has been mentioned, we will be operating under a single incident action plan, or IAP, utilizing unified command structure, which is a principle that's

has a foundation in the National Incident Management System and the Incident Command System.

A question was asked the other night about who is ultimately responsible and the reality is that ultimately the City Manager is ultimately responsible for public safety in the City of Charlottesville.

And I'm responsible for the Fire Department and Chief Brackney is responsible for the Police Department.

We've talked a lot about regional coordination.

One of the practical reasons that that's so important is that we recognize that a lot of the resources that we're going to have here in the city may be needed on grounds at the university and or in Albemarle County.

We want to make sure that we can respond as a region very, very effectively.

Our community can expect to see significant mutual aid resources here that weekend.

In addition to law enforcement,

Fire Resources, Emergency Medical Services Resources, Hazardous Materials Teams, additional fire marshals from the state.

One other coordination item that hasn't been mentioned yet is making sure that we're coordinated with the UVA Health System, with Sentara Martha Jefferson, and with the Thomas Jefferson Health District.

Our goal is to cover any anniversary related events here in the city, maintain our ability to provide service to the rest of the city, and be able to respond regionally if necessary.

In regards to the support that we'll have for the community on the ground in terms of those who may need some mental health assistance or anything like that or

The Community Mental Health Coalition has done a lot of tremendous work.

Some of those resources are available on the Charlottesville website right now and we'll be pushing out additional information about where people can go, not only to seek help

I know we've had different community meetings and whatnot and some were well attended, some weren't and then there's also a lot of people who don't have access to the internet or they don't even know where the websites are.

get the word out?

Yes, sir.

So we do have a plan to meet with all of the neighborhood association presidents with the business community, some of our other some of our at risk communities as well.

And I was at both meetings last week, but I have expressed it more than one of you.

I do think, kind of building off Dr. Bellamy's point, that it's important that we do identify a liaison for some of these neighborhoods, namely our public housing residents and some of our other vulnerable populations, so that they have a point.

You're absolutely correct.

As a matter of fact, we've identified

groups that we also believe are additionally vulnerable populations that could be targeted.

And we're working with Charlene Green around those to make sure that there weren't even groups that we missed.

Because you tend to look at some groups because they're more obvious and they're out there all the time.

But where are those populations that feel vulnerable and are typically targeted by those persons who would come in here with extreme views?

Yes, and in addition to that, you're exactly right.

We are pushing that flyers go out, pamphlets go out, that we identify a liaison officer within CPD who has relationships with each of those different populations so that they can have those conversations, those one-on-ones, and ask questions.

We're pushing for as many avenues of access and communication that we can because not everyone has internet, is comfortable with the internet, or even is comfortable having conversations through text.

It depends on what communities.

There are officers, and they just gave me his name today, who's really popular in the mall.

And he walks the mall almost daily.

So he has that ability to do that.

Lieutenant Mooney is coordinating with Captain Mitchell

as that lead liaison for reaching out since Captain Mitchell's in charge of operations, which means they are in every aspect of the community.

So yes, there are direct contacts at a higher level, but also all the way down for two-foot patrols.

And if there's anyone who has a relationship that they would prefer to have with a particular officer, because not everyone

wants to engage, get those to us by whatever means.

Chief, have you all had the opportunity to have any meetings or work with, I see Mr. Foley here,

and like the Legal Aid Justice Center or working with some of our other active groups like maybe our local Black Lives Matter or SURGE or DSA or APOC, whomever.

Right.

So I've not met personally with them, but have spoken with a person who would have the ability to help me make entree into that community.

If they want to have that conversation with me, I am more than willing and more than open to have the private conversations.

But it also has to come from a person that they trust doing that introduction.

So me just showing up at the door tends not to be as well received.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Mayor Walker, may I say something?

So thank you, everybody, this entire team, because I think, and Councilor Bellamy and Assistant Manager Murphy and everyone else here,

will recall that we did not have this display of unity before July 8, which was when the Klan came as well as August 12.

So this alone is extremely reassuring.

There's already a detailed plan of operations.

And the fact that you are you're clearly communicating with each other, you know about each other's departments and operations is obvious.

So I just want to say that that alone is a is a good indicator to me that you are

You're actually doing what you say you're doing and it was not this case.

It was not the way it happened last year.

And I just want to echo that with thanking Mr. Wheeler for the leadership he's taken in the communications piece because a year ago I wasn't in this seat but I was a neighborhood leader in the area and felt like we've got very little responsiveness from the city and I just think this has been in stark contrast.

So the way that you've coordinated these different community meetings and stakeholder meetings as well as the continued communication, I welcome everyone to go to the website and sign up and you can continue to get more and more information as you want leading up to the event.

I just texted both of you.

But thank you.

I have a card.

It was the intent of this briefing that this be an opportunity for the council.

All right, so we'll start with public comment, community matters.

Good evening.

My name is Heather Walker.

I live at 603 Shamrock Road.

I am here to talk about the election process that has been going on in the city of Charlottesville in the past.

The City Council first raised the idea of creating a Charlottesville Elections Study Task Force in April of 2004.

that was 14 years ago, to address public concerns about citizens feeling unrepresentative by the current system.

In this report, we outline primary concerns articulated by the citizens at the public hearings, as well as those identified by the members of the task force and City Council.

We also discuss possible solutions.

And that's what I'm here today is to review with you those solutions that we came up with 14 years ago and that are still

causing great concerns in different parts of the city.

I'm just going to hit the highlights.

The task force was charged by the city council as follows.

One, to explore the concept of directly electing the mayor.

Two, to explore the concept of restructuring the council election by wards or a combination of wards and at large.

Three, explore the concept of enlarging the number of city council members.

And four, explore other best practices related to the representation of citizens, including but not limited to remuneration and term limitation.

As you can see on page three, the task force was a very diverse collection of people.

You had

a member of the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the NAACP, Chamber of Commerce, the Quality Community Council, and one representative of each of the four wards.

We asked the reader to use this information to move beyond identifying problems to generating and advocating solutions.

And why?

Are we doing this?

This was city council speaking to the task forces.

Why is this task force created and why are we doing it?

City government is not responsive to the needs and inquiries of its citizens.

City, the Charlottesville, I'm sorry, all of the city councilors come from one part of the city.

City government, a poor job communicating with the citizens.

City participation, whoa,

All right, well you've got it all and you've got all of the reasons why we think that it needs to be addressed, the solutions that we mentioned 14 years ago, a larger city council, a directly elected mayor, a mixture of both at large and board representation of the city council.

Thank you.

Questions?

May I respond for a quick second, since we have two minutes within, I lost.

No, they were, I wouldn't call them results, they were the suggestions that came up.

And what were they again?

That's okay.

They were, if you want,

It was to keep the current system or continue all the counselors were coming from one part of the city so we looked at the ward system which would

I saw on here, it's talking about the low amount of African-American representation, not only at the meetings, but also on the council.

But then as we all know now, this doesn't mean that it's fixed, but first I remember we've had two black people on the city council.

It seemed as if we come from different parts of the city.

In 2004, I was in the 11th grade.

So I mean, I appreciate the work.

It seems like we've made some strides since then, but we still need that.

I mean, one of the reasons why I wanted this on the agenda is we hear very often from a lot of people about they want to be able to elect their own mayor.

And that's one of it.

And when I was going through this, Madam Mayor did, I mean, she's an independent.

And one of the big concerns was that the Democratic Party had a lock.

My name is Sharon Britt.

I'm the administrator at Mountainside Senior Living in downtown Crozet.

I'm here to give you an update on the memory care unit at Mountainside that we had asked for some funding for, for the renovations to provide memory care.

Let me begin with a summary of the resident population in Mountainside.

13% of the residents are from Charlottesville.

23% of our what we call AG residents are from Charlottesville.

AG residents are defined as receiving money from Medicaid for housing.

And the AG rate for the state of Virginia is one third of the monies needed to care for the residents.

Mountainside is the largest provider of AG beds west of Richmond with an average daily census of 32 beds going to AG clients.

The memory care unit that we just opened in February is known as the Blue Ridge neighborhood.

It's on the third floor of the building.

Currently there are 14 residents, the capacity for that unit is 20.

And the pricing for memory care is at 80% of the market rate, so it's 80%.

Prior to coming to Mountainside, these residents were school teachers, a retired diplomat's wife, farmers, a school cafeteria worker, a nurse, a carpenter.

What we're seeing at Mountainside is, Mountainside used to have a lot of indigent people and what we're seeing now is a very big swing in middle class members who cannot afford the regular assisted livings that are in the Charlottesville area.

These were members of the Charlottesville community who had raised families and participated in the activities of the community.

I want to talk about Mr. M for a few minutes.

Mr. M was a wonderful person, was very well known in this community.

He has a large family, lives on a big farm with his wife of 60 years.

When he became more and more forgetful, his family took him to the doctor for testing.

He was found to have a type of dementia and for a while he did well at home.

As time went on, he became more and more aggressive towards his family.

He began to wander away from the house, and his family was fearful that he would get lost in the woods.

When his disease had progressed to the point where he was striking out at his wife, his family knew in their hearts that he had to be with the people who knew how to care for him.

It was just getting to be too much.

He slept very little, couldn't understand family members when they tried to communicate with him.

They brought him to Mountainside.

He's become a member of the Blue Ridge community.

He has activities that help keep his reign working as well as it can and caring people to look after him.

Using the techniques we have taught the staff, we have been able to use diversion versus medications to control his outburst.

He has settled in well and become very comfortable in his new setting.

It's gifts like the one we hope you will consider giving to us that help us deliver quality care to members of our community.

Thank you.

Hello.

Hello to all people I know here, and nice to meet you.

I have come here tonight to bring democracy to Charlottesville, or hope to at least start the process.

When I retired after teaching American democracy for 35 years,

I moved to Charlottesville.

Imagine my dismay when I found that Charlottesville did not have a democratic government.

As we all know, government by the people requires the people to vote for their government.

And the government includes a chief executive and a legislator.

We have here in Charlottesville an all-powerful, non-elected chief executive.

He is insulated from the public and need not to respond to the public and not be responsive.

I know many instances where citizen task forces and ordinary citizens have been met with indifference and inaction by the city manager.

Furthermore,

It is some, if something goes wrong, the public, who is the public going to blame?

The current mayor has no power and cannot be held responsible.

But they are, as Mr. Signer knows.

Appointments to top positions are made by the city manager alone without advice and consent from the council.

Most organizations have candidates that had the top positions are vetted by a number of people, not just one.

Another thing is that when the council approves a building plan, they have no power to oversight to see that the plan is carried out.

An example is the lofts, the lovely lofts on West Main.

It's turned out differently than the plan the council approved.

A full-time mayor could have kept track of that.

I could go on, but I just want to emphasize that we should have a mayor-council system.

Designing it would

be very complex and difficult and take time.

I have many ideas about how it could be done.

By the way, I served on that task force that was talked about earlier.

I would be happy to serve in any task force that is set up.

Thank you, sir.

Mayor, council, hi.

letting me come up here.

I live with my 11-year-old at 1004 Druid Avenue, and I wanted to thank you for the quick action you all took to pass the blasting ordinance.

It's really a huge relief to me, and I'm hoping that you will waive the second reading of the amendments that are coming to you tonight.

Thank you.

My name is James Kelly.

Good evening.

Members of City Council, Mayor Walker.

I've spoken with you before, so there's no need to go through the credentials and qualifications for the things that my special interest group in Belmont have put forward over the past week.

Recently,

You passed an ordinance against the blasting or to help control the blasting in our community, but also in a bigger picture, the city of Charlottesville.

So addressing it as such, not necessarily just Belmont itself, which, of course, we all have a great interest in in the special interest group that I have, and I think the mayor as well.

But addressing it as a city ordinance for a moment, we want to express our appreciation for the great amount of work that has gone into

passing that ordinance, a great amount of work that Ms. Robertson and her team have put together to put that process in order and to get it in front of you so you could pass it.

We very much appreciate that.

In front of you now are some amendments.

Over the past few weeks, our group has put together some suggestions and recommendations that are now in front of you as part of an amendment to that initial ordinance.

We would like to encourage you to pass that as big a step as the first ordinance was in protecting the city against the blasting and the damage that might result from blasting by contractors who are less concerned than the residents are.

Passing the amendment in one setting without the need to read it a second time would go a great deal further in further protecting the community and the city and the residents

who have no voice against developers and contractors.

The only voice they have is through you.

So as a member of the city, a member of Belmont, we would very much appreciate your passing those amendments at this point.

Thank you, Mayor Walker, City Council.

I'm here tonight to appeal to your roles as stewards of the health of this city.

I'm really grateful for Ms. Galvin for showing up time and again at our neighborhood meetings and helping us to connect the dots to this ever increasingly complex and possibly disastrous evolution of Charlottesville.

My concerns about the health of this community are threefold.

The Belmont neighborhood has been under incredible stress and pressure to keep visual at the eroding safety and diversity of our streets.

And we are told that we are powerless to stop Mr. Capshaw's Riverbend suburban complex, which your traffic engineers said would bring 948 car trips per day in front of Moss and the Belmont market.

948 car trips per day.

So the second concern is the council's approval of the first reading of the highway corridor which in your words is intense commercial development.

And to justify that the increase of fast food restaurants is a way to increase food accessibility to seniors.

I feel as a real disregard to our elders and also to say that increased fast food increases food accessibility to low income.

I just find that really insulting.

I have a medical practice that is half low income and they are working tirelessly to avoid the sugar-laden french fries, the rancid oils, and the hormone-drenched meat.

So I think when we bring these restaurants, if you call them restaurants and make it more accessible, it's just really confusing.

So I can't imagine that the pressures that you all must be under to make such decisions.

To abandon a community vision that calls for affordable housing within the context of mixed income and healthy neighborhoods like you had that, or you still have, maybe you'll be able to stop the

Passage of this highway corridor, but you know you spend all that time bringing up a great vision of a seminal the hydraulic road project and then you know you don't follow through with that and so you were voted or we're looking at democracy and maybe not but people really trust you and trust your vision so I'd really ask that going forward we really think about the health of

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Council and staff.

I'm Kay Slaughter, 1503 Short 18th Street, a Charlottesville resident.

Tonight, you will hear a report on changing Charlottesville's government from appointed city manager to elected mayor as the chief executive officer, which would be a major shift for our town.

Several points should be considered in addition to those raised by Ms. Walker and Mr. Resfis.

Instead of people running for office as part of their civic responsibility, a mayor CEO would be devoting his or her professional life to the position of a mayor.

In essence, a professional politician.

Not necessarily a bad thing, but entailing a different set of skills than the variety we now see in counselors making policy.

As former counselor

Dee Dee Smith has pointed out, Charlottesville, much smaller than other cities with mayor CEOs, may not have a pool of qualified and interested persons with a broad scope of managerial, financial planning, and human resource skills of professional city managers.

As Richmond, the only Virginia city with a mayor CEO is found, there may be difficulty in recruiting and retaining

professional staff in a politicized system.

Electing a mayor as a chief executive officer would likely increase the cost of running for office.

For council, the cost has skyrocketed since the late 80s, early 90s, when $7,000 was enough to publicize a three-person slate.

Last fall, the Democratic candidates each spent over $40,000 each.

and the winning independent candidate, $26,000.

Do we want big money spent on local mayoral races?

The call for mayor, CEO, seems like an overreaction to conflicts that occurred between the past mayor, current council and the most recent city manager.

Council could further educate by commissioning the Weldon Cooper Center to report on potential

positive and negative aspects of various forms of government, and meeting with the three former Charlottesville city managers who still live in town, Cole Hendricks, Gary O'Connell, and Bern Ewart, who was also a city manager of Roanoke.

Some have also spoken about a ward system whereby councilors would be elected representing specific geographic

districts as Ms. Walker explained earlier.

But with or without a ward system, the mayor could be elected at large while keeping her duties as they are now, similar to the Norfolk and Alexandria models of elected mayors.

If you, however, decide to pursue a mayor CEO, a charter change should not be based on a single public hearing.

I do have a couple of comments.

about the, you brought up the point of the cost of the last election and we know that that was the most money spent, but that was the Democratic Party attempt to win the election to beat me, right?

So that we need to talk about like that in terms of who has maintained control over the election.

The conversations that I'm hearing around this and I haven't even really provided much input into this conversation because I had a Facebook live last night where I asked people to go and look at the picture.

of former mayors of Charlottesville, Virginia.

So while I look very different from who has been mayor before, now opening up this conversation, I don't think would change who would normally be sitting in the seat.

So we have to change a lot of things in Charlottesville outside of just having this conversation to talk about what kind of community we really want because I don't really think whether we have a strong mayor or a city manager that if we don't change how we do business that it's going to change the outcome.

of the politics and the policies and how they affect citizens in Charlottesville.

So there is always, for the last few elections, and I'm sure even $7,000 at the time that you were talking about was big money, and so people have been paying

to make sure that the people that they wanted in positions of power were in those positions of power.

And I have been in my six months being, I did receive 26,000, a little bit over that in donations, and won large donations, but it is very clear from my votes that no one purchased me.

And so I just wanna make those,

comments very clear that none of my donations came through individuals, me making any promises to anyone other than to show up authentically as who I am and vote the way that I see fit based on the information.

So I just, from the conversations that I'm hearing, I just want to make those

comments because I think either system we have major problems with the representation of voters and even getting voters out in Charlottesville to participate in the process and believe in it.

I was able to do that, but that is not generally what happens in Charlottesville to get a very diverse group of people out.

And I was in every segment of the city from Park Street to Friendship Court.

Hardy Drive to Rugby.

And so a lot of people knocking on doors and making sure my focus was primarily low-income neighborhoods to let them know why I was willing to take this time out of my life.

And so when you all think about policies, changes like this,

you need to make sure that in any way you're not being bamboozled to believe that it's a change that would be beneficial.

Jim Shea, city resident.

If you all wondered whether you had done the right thing when you created the Civilian Review Board and appointed to it a group of citizens whose backgrounds blend so well into a formidable force for reform, listen to the clamor arising from groups like the Southern States Police Benevolence Association

who are asking you to limit the scope of the board and particularly to keep the board from interfering in the internal operations of the police department.

Well, if you have any doubt as to where these folks stand on questions of ethics and law enforcement, just consider who they have chosen to carry their banner into the public arena.

none other than former Albemarle County Commonwealth Attorney, Lise Lunsford, whose flagrant abuse of her office prosecutorial power got the voters to turn her out of office.

Well, here she shows up in Charlottesville as the champion of those elements of the police who are determined to maintain the status quo.

What that means is virtually no police accountability to the public

and absolutely no public reforms of the police department.

What they really want is no scrutiny at all.

Now, our local history teaches us that as the controversy on these issues heats up, some of these people are gonna be stooping lower and lower to look for weapons to defeat the board.

This will include harassment,

intimidation, threats and maybe worse of individual board members, maybe their families.

And they will of course target the people they think are the most likely to be vulnerable to these tactics.

Shame on us if we let them get away with this.

We mustn't ever lose sight of the fact that those who oppose

Accountability and Reform in these matters are shielding misconduct by the police department.

They're protecting racist cops who day after day, week after week, year after year, intimidate, harass, disrespect, physically assault members of the black community of Charlottesville, causing not only pain to those people,

but to their families and to their communities.

Now these thugs are dug in and their mouth pieced with them for a tooth and nail fight against reform.

We have to be absolutely sure that the Civilian Review Board is ready and equipped to meet this challenge with both hands.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is David Katz.

I live at 1012 B. Druid Avenue here in the city of Charlottesville.

I'm here to talk about the blasting ordinance and the amendments that are on the consent agenda for this evening.

Thank you to the City Council and the Mayor for passing the blasting ordinance at the July 2nd meeting and waiving the second reading at that time so that the health and welfare of the citizens of the entire city of Charlottesville could be protected.

I support the proposed amendments that are on the consent agenda

and I urge you to pass them tonight again waving the second reading so that the amendments can be put into effect as quickly as possible, again to protect the health, welfare and safety of all the citizens of Charlottesville.

As a reminder, the issue first came up in regard to the Belmont neighborhood, but the ordinance covers the entire city of Charlottesville.

Blasting could occur anywhere such as in Locust Grove with the sewer and water line.

There's extensive rock throughout the entire city of Charlottesville.

So this ordinance just does not affect only the Belmont neighborhood but the entire city.

And I urge you strongly

to pass the proposed amendments that are on the consent agenda and waive the second reading of the amendment.

Mayor Walker, Council, my name is Lewis Schultz.

I live at 1809 East Market Street.

I'm concerned both that this Council still hasn't learned from past mistakes and that it still considers itself to be above the law, some of its members at least.

At the December 18th, 2017 City Council meeting, a proposed meeting schedule for this year was presented to Council by City Manager Maurice Jones.

It falsely claimed that the law allows Council to establish a meeting schedule for the upcoming year by passing a resolution.

Since January of 2015, that same lie had been told and each time a slightly different version of the fictitious law was cited.

For three years it was said that it could happen in January.

Last year, the nonexistent law magically changed to allow a vote in December by the outgoing council to establish a schedule for this year.

The reason for that resolution was to slip in a vacation break for council in early August when the law doesn't allow one.

The reality is that section 35 of the city's charter, an act of the general assembly which council has no authority to change and cannot legally disobey, says very clearly that the council shall fix by ordinance the time for holding their stated meetings.

Council has done that and the ordinance in question is section 241 of city code which says, and I will quote in its entirety,

The City Council shall hold its regular meetings at the Council Chamber of the City Hall or at such other place in the City as may be designated by the Mayor or the Council beginning at 6.30 p.m. on the first and third Mondays of each month, unless such day is a legal holiday in which event such meeting shall be held on the day following.

I want to remind everyone that this Council on March 5, 2018 passed an ordinance to establish that schedule.

that came after discussions at three public meetings and two public hearings.

Since that ordinance was already the law back in December, with the only difference being a slightly different start time, the resolution voted on had no legal effect since council can't amend an ordinance with a resolution, which the city manager, every councilor and the city attorney damn well ought to know.

Even if that resolution had been legal and it wasn't, this council overrode that resolution with its later vote on March 5th.

Council was free to amend the ordinance by adding an August break, but elected not to, rejecting the previous council's illegal decision and the idea behind it.

Monday, August 6th is the first Monday of that month and it's not a holiday.

By the law established with this council's own ordinance, it must meet on that day, but that seems to somehow have been forgotten.

The published meeting schedule omits that meeting and there are two items on tonight's agenda that refer to this as the last meeting before August 12th.

Considering the gravity of the situation leading up to the anniversary of last year's violent rally, the responsible thing for council to do, even if it could legally take vacation time, would be to forego that and focus on serving the city in its time of urgent need as you were elected to do.

The chief of police will have been on the job for less than a month on August 12th.

There will only be an acting city manager midway through his first month, and there are major decisions to be made by the courts that may need an immediate response from this body.

The law is clear and council is not above it.

I thank you for this opportunity to speak with you again.

I want to thank each of you for your responsiveness to what seems like an otherworldly kind of a barrier and to applaud you really for your commitment to public service which seems like an anachronism in this era of self-service and

You responded to, I know that it just seems like a private developer, but in essence it's a very unequal power equation.

and 700 homes are presently asked to put their property, their person at risk so that seven lots and a little piece of road can be completed in a way that is, it's simply not necessary to have rows and rows of three story

single family homes in a community that so desperately needs affordable housing.

And it would be possible to take those lots and do other things with it, but when there is only a threat, a constant threat of blast, blast, blast, it's not even possible to have a dialogue.

And so I want to thank you again for the great job that you've done, and Ms. Robertson, your staff particularly,

and I applaud all of you for taking on this responsibility to work on our behalf and you have actually, you know, when we got off, we were not here on July 2nd, we got off the plane on July 9th, we saw a mural at the top of the escalator at the Charlottesville Albemarle Airport and it says, in pursuit of the greater good and I thought, wow,

That's really what we're here for.

And I think that you have demonstrated that you're here for that as well.

Good afternoon.

I ain't gonna talk too much.

One, I'm still gonna bring back, I'm gonna take it up with you,

Since this new building has come over the top of West Haven up on Main Street, I'm still concerned about the safety, why we still cannot get across that street.

And why can't we, you have a pedestrian walkway, but it's only a green sign that don't light up where people can actually see that.

And people still do not respect that.

And I'm still waiting for this gentleman to call me from what, a month and a half ago?

That I brought to Marvies and I've spoke with Wes and it still hasn't taken place.

and also I would like to know what's going on with this gray charger that is now in a police car that I've seen and it seemed like it didn't come out until after Phil's trial so that seems like that's triggering to a lot of us you know so I don't know if y'all can change that color or what y'all can do but it seems like

This car was refixed.

It might not be, but it looked like it had been refixed and now it got to police.

I understand that we had this meeting and it's always been taking place with Reverend Edwards.

Reverend Edwards do not speak for the community because there are a lot of things that Mr. Edwards do not know because Mr. Edwards do not communicate with us and he's not in attendance with a lot of meetings with us activists.

We have trained and we have done a lot of things, so I feel that you need to speak with the real community.

and that means there's a lot more of us and not just him.

So I advise you to, the ones that have not seen it in media or on the TV, I feel that they need to be forewarned because it's only a few short weeks away.

And like I said, last year, our black communities was very much in trouble.

Hey, hey.

I'm John Conover.

Mayor Walker, may I just say one thing?

Mr. Murphy, this is an urgent matter, and this is something that many of us have been raising, the crosswalks on West Main Street, the dangerous conditions for pedestrians on West Main Street because of all the construction.

We had a presentation a month or so ago

but we need some interim measures right away.

So could you please address Ms. Parker's concerns sooner versus later and then inform the council.

Hi, Mayor Walker, Members of the Council.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Dr. Bellamy.

My name is John Conover.

I came from New Jersey to Charlottesville and UVA in 1963.

As a pretty ignorant 17 year old, I stayed.

I've lived now in my home for 45 years with my wife.

I can see the statue of Robert E. Lee out of my bedroom window.

I always thought it was weird, but I tolerated it as being that I was living in a different culture.

And I accepted it at bottom because my side, we won the war.

Lincoln was and remains my hero.

Lee Park, the name Lee Park became embarrassing.

The Lance Council tried to hit a home run by renaming it Emancipation Park.

Miss Carrie, however, was right.

That was just a long foul ball.

It's not a name that we want.

Market Street Park is bland.

It is illogical.

inconsequential and misleading.

There was no market and there never was.

You're currently investing now in the farmer's market on Water Street.

That's great, but what you seem to do is then create a confusion by putting a fake Market Street Park two blocks away from the real Market Park.

The option for Market Street Park is an inoffensive safe choice.

I got one third of the votes, not a vast majority, one third, because it was safe.

So call it safe part.

But, you see, after last year's action in that part, it would be beyond ironic to call it safe part.

That would just be dumb.

The Supreme Court struck the first heavy blow against Jim Crow in 1954.

Those heroes, those justices, were not the heroes.

The real heroes was a team of brilliant and dedicated lawyers who developed a strategy over the previous 15 years to end segregation.

OK.

I mean, that's fine.

I've got three minutes, Jeff.

And that strategy, that strategy, the road to Brown, ran right through the middle of the city of Charlottesville in 1950.

Oliver Hale spots with Robinson, Thurgood Marshall argued in the federal court, now our library, for a real man, Gregory Swanson, to defy segregation at the University of Virginia.

They won after leaving the court.

They celebrated with a photo in Lee Park.

I put it on your desk.

The local NAACP says the park should have an authentic and substantial connection to significant historical events that occur in Charlottesville.

I ask you, do something meaningful and real.

Name the park for Gregory Swanson.

Marceau Zoe from Albemarle and I live in the county but spend a lot of time in the city.

This morning I awoke from a nightmare.

I was in a downtown store and suddenly found myself surrounded by Nazis.

They had weapons and seemed to be closing in on me at all turns.

There was a small group of white people huddled together I thought might not be affiliated, but when I asked if they were white supremacists, they said yes.

I saw a cop and hoped he'd protect me, but I discovered he also was a Nazi.

There was no one in that store that was an ally.

I was alone in downtown Charlottesville and Nazis were invading.

I'm not the only one having nightmares.

I know many feel far more traumatized, vulnerable and threatened than I do.

Just when we may have figured out our coping mechanisms for the trauma, the wounds are being ripped open once again, not only by the threat of Nazis, but by the threat of a city that protects Nazis over citizens.

I ask you to please avoid discouraging people from coming downtown on the weekend of August 11th and 12th.

If we discourage our own community members from coming downtown, the Nazis have won.

If businesses close and lose revenue, the Nazis have won.

If police don't protect our counter protesters, the Nazis have won.

If police don't defend people of color, the Nazis have won.

You as council are in a unique position to influence not only the course of this anniversary weekend, but the course of racism that is rooted in the very foundation of Charlottesville.

Why not seize this opportunity?

Why not be the citizens council?

Why not be the city council that stands up against white supremacy and stands behind your community?

This should be a time where local citizens take over the streets, own their downtown and show up in numbers, whether counter protesting or patronizing the businesses.

The farmer's market should be open, businesses should be open, have sidewalk sales and give a percentage of the income to the Charlottesville Community Resilience Fund.

Consider offering space for racial justice workshops in stores and theaters and restaurants and cafes.

We should be asking grassroots organizations how they would like to use this opportunity to educate and or be supported on our downtown mall.

Permits should be denied to Nazis and community members should be encouraged to fill our public parks.

Make this a day of people's action for racial justice.

Write a new narrative on August 11 and 12, 2018, or try to.

The world is watching.

Let's show it what Charlottesville can become.

Good evening.

I'm Peter Krebs, Piedmont Environmental Council and Charlottesville resident.

You guys have a really full agenda.

In fact, just the consent agenda looks like what a city council agenda used to might look like.

So thanks for the awesome and abundant work you're doing.

On that consent agenda, you've got some good things.

Safe routes to school funding, yes.

We also like the parking exception.

That's a bold move and a good move that you're making.

We don't love so much the drive-through and the highway corridor piece of it.

It's not great for walkability and can have unintended consequences in other highway commercial corridors.

The main thing I want to talk about is all the way at the end of the agenda, which is the resolution about alleyways, paper streets, et cetera.

We would urge you to support that resolution because alleys are a tremendous opportunity

in Charlottesville.

Not very well understood, needs to be better understood, and we need a better policy so they can do the things that alleys can do.

For example, provide access to housing, get parking off the street, give safe places for kids to play if we have a policy with them.

alternate ways for people to get around and improve connectivity within the city.

Thank you.

Good evening Mayor Walker.

And I may say it twice because I,

last time I spoke

the commission that was done in 2004 regarding districting.

Representative districts have been on the table in this area for a long time.

Dr. Bellamy brought up the fact that things may have changed, but Mayor Walker, something you said later on pointed out how little it's changed and Dr. Bellamy may have forgotten his first attempt to run for city council where

He struggled to get anywhere near the top of the vote list in the Democratic primary.

And it is very difficult to break through.

And one of the things that your election, Ms. Hill's election, are indicative of in this city is that there is a feeling that the citizens are not being listened to.

They don't feel like they, for all the time they get to speak, are being heard.

and that a ward or district representative district system would provide that opportunity because when you're closer to your representative, if they misrepresent, kicking them out and finding somebody who will is much easier.

I have a couple of documents from the Department of Justice regarding Yakima, Washington, East Point, Michigan, and Columbia, Missouri, all who have city manager forms of government and at-large city councils.

In each case, the Department of Justice found that they were all in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

I know you have to petition the General Assembly for it.

In my service to this community, I've spoken to David Toscano numerous times.

One of his favorite pieces of code is the Voting Rights Act.

And I certainly don't think David Toscano would want his hometown to continue to violate the Voting Rights Act and disenfranchise under an at-large form of government.

I've heard the number four mentioned, I think, for the diversity of the city, six

Representative districts and an elected mayor would be a marvelous way to move forward.

I even scribbled out some, if you want, because you could talk to Dr. Squalacci and the folks at the self-sufficiency agenda, Ridge Schuyler at Piedmont Virginia Community College.

This second map is an economic breakdown of how the city is.

in terms of take home pay and you can look at the disparities in certain neighborhoods and you can see that they would certainly do well to have their own representatives on city council.

So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Ms. Thomas, I have a quick question.

Never is.

It's true.

So I know we'll get into discussion more in depth later, but one of the things that

I've heard in terms of concern and I'm also concerned with if we move to a ward system is that if you have certain counselors who live in other districts or who live in other parts of the city they will believe that they don't have to deal with the issues that may be in other parts of the city which we to a certain extent see or we have seen traditionally now and do you feel that may be exasperated or even intensified if we go to a ward system because if someone lives on and I'm just throwing this neighborhood out like if you live on

Let's just say Locust Avenue, for example.

Because, as I've always seen it, the competition for coalition

is what drives a representative republic is you need her and her to support something or at least you need her to second something to bring it up to a vote.

So just disregarding anyone else's precinct doesn't help you represent yours.

And because so much is done out in the open, it has been my experience anyway that that is the case where that

intense feeling that you need to represent your neighborhood and you bring their feelings and their problems, you can better address it amongst each other so that when you debate an ordinance, it's not the matter of, and I know we have some fun with this, a pizza party to find out what's going on in your neighborhood.

I know, Kathy, you grew up in a city with wards.

I grew up in a city with boroughs and precincts as well.

It's the best way to get your voice heard and I think that that really is what we saw last November here in Charlottesville as a community saying, hold it, we are tired.

Don spoke eloquently about how few members of the black community took part in the Democratic Party Caucus this past couple of months ago.

And I think that is a symptom of people saying, hey, we're done with not being listened to.

Thank you.

Did you leave that paper?

I left them.

They're just hand drawings.

There's no demographics in it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Good evening.

Mary Harris, city resident.

I'm in a time warp tonight.

I mean, Miss Heather Walker, I was on the QCC in 2004 on that board.

I know exactly what you're talking about, sweetie.

And Charlottesville is like, I don't know.

I've been here since 1946.

So they give me some priorities, what you think?

But see, it seems like now it doesn't matter how long you've been here.

It's what special interest group you are in that gets priority around here.

Because I'm telling you, y'all need to do away with that lottery because special interest groups are being considered to speak.

and a lot of people in Charlottesville have a lot to say and they call in and send out emails in and end up on the wait list.

Then, when you get up here, you can't say everything you want to say because everybody already said it.

People don't say what I want to say tonight.

and I can just ditto it.

That's all.

I like what Joe said.

I like what Jim said.

I love what Heather said.

I love what Ms.

Slaughter said.

I don't like very much what our carnival said because I feel like Marcus Street Park is fine.

It's on Marcus Street.

It has nothing to do with the city market.

Swanson came from Danville.

He went to University of Virginia.

He served University of Virginia.

He did not serve Charlottesville.

If you want some names of some people from Charlottesville, Alicia Lugo, Rebecca McGinnis, Holly Edwards,

Grace Tinsley.

You want some names?

I'll give you some names.

You don't get no names when nobody's never been here.

You're from New Jersey.

You ain't got no right to come down here and tell nobody what to do.

I don't care if you've been here since 1913.

You don't come up in here and tell nobody that they need to do something.

We were born, raised, and also bread crumbed here.

And if you don't like what I say, you know what you can do.

But I'm going to tell you right now, I'm so sick of y'all going around here, taking stuff for granted.

And talking about special interest groups, y'all got to cut that lottery out.

This is crazy.

You got everybody from Belmont coming over here.

I feel sorry for them people.

But I lived in Guard Square.

I moved down there in 1978 and I moved out in 2003.

Belmont did not give us one inch of support.

But y'all got all the money.

And what do you do with it?

You kept on building flower pots and two lane streets.

Now you're over there busting and arguing about things.

People on 6th Street and God Square and South First Street, Crescent Halls, Hardy Drive, they need help too.

But they don't come in here talking about it.

Y'all got money over there in their hearts.

Call some of that out of your drawers and do your own work.

OK, so we're going to take a break.

The End

Yay!

The End

I'm

Thanks for watching

I'm

you

Ciao!

Music

Okay.

All right.

You're welcome.

See?

Madam Mayor, my apologies for being late.

I was stuck on the tarmac for a long time and everyone, but I'm glad to be here.

Sure.

Item A, minutes for July 2nd, 2018.

Item B, appropriation 2018-19 safe routes to school non-infrastructure grant, $77,000, first of two readings.

Item C, an appropriation Virginia Department of Social Services, employment for temporary aid to needy families, participants grant, first renewal, $66,667, first of two readings.

Item D, a resolution review of discretionary funding process for nonprofits, first of one reading.

Item E, a resolution authorizing the city attorney to retain legal counsel, first of one reading.

Item F, a resolution delegating of contracting authority to director of emergency management, first of one reading.

Item G, an ordinance parking modified zone amendment, second of two readings.

Item H, an ordinance restaurants drive through windows and highway corridor zoning text amendment, second of two readings.

Item I, an ordinance mixed use development standard zoning text amendment, second of two readings.

OK. And so if we want to, at which point, if we want to pull something from it, do we do that?

And Mayor Walker, I could actually, because I simply don't think I have the votes, but I cannot vote for item H. So I would like to pull that item so that I can vote on the rest of the items on the consent agenda as amended.

And I would like to be able to make a comment on that.

But I, unless there's been a change of heart on this council, I don't suspect that there would be a change of vote.

and I don't want to prolong the evening.

It's already a long agenda.

If there is a council that wants to discuss it further, that'd be wonderful, but I would like to be able to vote for the consent agenda, but I have to pull it.

And the other three we will discuss, I guess.

The only comment on something, is that the right time to say a comment?

I'm not pulling it.

But I do know that we've heard from a lot of residents around the parking modified zone amendment.

tried to respond and just explain that this is just a preliminary part of the process and it's not trying to reemphasize it.

It's not saying that anyone is going to park any less than what's really required for the needs of those properties.

And there will be a lot of opportunity as we go through the site plans for each of those properties for the public to weigh in and to ensure that we're providing enough parking for all the needs, residential and mixed use for any of those parcels that are in that.

So Mayor Walker if I may I will just make a comment about H but don't need to pull it for another discussion later on the evening.

So

I cannot vote for the drive-thru restaurant SUP for the highway corridor zoning district.

And in my view, it doesn't meet the standards of review, which number one, fundamentally, it needs to be in compliance with our comprehensive plan.

which is my reading with regards to the hydraulic small area plan.

It is not, nor is it in keeping with what some of the preliminary items that the planning commission has put forth before us with regards to future land use map, which has indicated that the other highway corridors are out potentially mixed use gateways to the city.

This is going backwards, not forwards in terms of that sort of a land use development pattern.

Another standard of review is that it's also supposed to be meeting the health and welfare of the community.

I think Ms. Meyer eloquently stated that fast food is not something that's a hallmark of good food.

It's high in fat, high in sodium, and it's high in sugar.

which does relate to obesity.

And there's been a correlation between the growth of fast food restaurants and obesity in America since 1970.

Both have doubled.

It's already well known that that car orientation is a contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, which is a major contributor to global warming.

Another standard of review item is that it's supposed to not have an impact on the other surrounding areas.

and the case of this particular site near Hillsdale Drive, which has the hydraulic small area plan.

As other developers and owners move forward to implement the goals of the hydraulic plan, which is much more oriented towards the pedestrian and the bike, it will be in direct conflict with the auto-centric orientation of a drive-through.

So it will have an impact on the surrounding area.

So on those counts, I just don't see how it meets our standards of review.

So did the motion for that one item have to go first, Lisa?

Sorry.

Yes.

So I'll just make a motion that we

We do not, sorry, this is for the second reading.

We bypass the second reading.

Then you waive the second reading for item J, the amended ordinance regulating the use of explosives for excavation and demolition activities.

Councilor Galvin, I'll support your motion to pull it so that you have the opportunity to vote against it.

if we need a second.

Oh, we're talking about two different things.

On the H, yeah, we're mixing H and J, but give you that opportunity.

Sure, thank you.

So for now we're gonna vote on that, the waiving of the second reading.

Yes.

For J.

Okay.

If, Mayor Walker, if I may, if that's, I can certainly do that too.

It doesn't, just note that I am not voting for that.

For the record, that is perfectly acceptable as well.

So we'll be voting on everything with exception to D, E and F.

with Councilor Galvin not voting for it.

Right.

OK.

All right.

Yes.

So, um, Council Galvin on that item, I want, um, Ms. Jenny Keller, who's emailed us several times and is a really eminent member of the planning community here and does a lot of public services, chair of the planning board, um, has been, uh, and she had grave misgivings about, about this, about allowing drive throughs in this area.

I want you to know that your concerns are heard also, um,

I think it's a tough call.

Also, the Planning Commission voted against this five to two.

The rationales that I offered last meeting for me still stand, that there's enough protections within the system that will exist after this for it not to be a

a pass-through harm that there's still checks, council still has to vote to approve or can stop a drive-through.

I think we are in the midst of a very deep discussion about how auto-centric that area is going to be and I think that this discussion can move that forward a lot.

I believe that there are enough protections in here and that it's odd enough that this one area wouldn't have drive-throughs but they would be allowed elsewhere.

That it's okay and the same concerns that actually in a lot of discussion have come up were more about parents with young kids than about senior citizens.

And we all bring our experiences and biases.

That was the experience that we talked about a lot at the last meeting and

I still bring those to the table in this discussion.

I think it's a tough balancing act, but I just wanted to say that the concerns about this, that I had read them very carefully and had pondered them.

And I think we should be deeply thinking about these questions going forward, especially with the comprehensive plan.

Is it possible for us to further discuss this, maybe not tonight, but postponed it to a

because it seems as if there's a lot of, there's still just some things that we may need to discuss.

I would support that, Mr. Bellamy.

Not for you.

So one of the things that I would be interested in, addition to the table and Ms. Galvin and now Mr. Signer if you'll open it as well as the other members of council, being that we don't have a meeting the first Monday in August, if that could give us more time to gather information, talk to different people, and then we vote at that August 21st?

20th.

20th meeting?

Would you all be amicable to that for this one?

I would like to have more discussion with some of the Planning Commission members.

While I still think I slightly favor the project, I do think we need to pay attention when they vote 5-2.

That means a great deal.

You know, it's been a significant amount of time to hear from Planning Commission, hear from the public and make the decision.

I would personally just like some more time.

So now we're, so we need to pull this.

So we're gonna, we're moving to table this, so it's moved until August 20th.

Is that what I'm hearing, Mr. That's what I would like to request.

And I guess, so we need to vote on that, to pull it off.

OK. All right, vote.

OK.

Thank you.

So we have our first public hearing release of a storm water management agreement across 550 Water Street.

Maintenance Agreement that was recorded in 2009.

When a developer submits a site plan and proposes new construction, they have to comply with certain stormwater regulations required by the state and by local ordinance.

And when they construct a stormwater management facility,

our ordinance requires them to record a maintenance agreement that obligates them to maintain that facility going forward.

And if they don't, that stormwater maintenance agreement gives the city the right to enter the property and do an inspection and to determine how best to take action to get the required maintenance approved.

But after the original site plan was approved,

The property was sold and a new landowner came in and submitted a different site plan for approval.

And the storm water management facilities that they are actually constructing are in a different location.

And so now what the landowner is asking you to do is to release the original stormwater maintenance agreement because it burdens the property in the location where it was originally, where the original stormwater management facilities were going to be.

and we have consulted with the NDS engineering department and they have verified that the current site plan which was approved in 2016 and is the plan for the development that's currently under construction does not show any proposed stormwater management facilities in any of the areas that would have been covered by the 2009 stormwater maintenance agreement.

There already has been one, and that's also recorded in the land records.

So they are just asking for the city to release the previous one.

All right, so I open the public hearing.

Is there anyone that wishes to speak?

All right.

Mayor Walker, I move that we adopt an ordinance releasing the 2009 stormwater management BMP facilities agreement across property at 550 Walsh Street.

Second.

All right.

Let's just start cranking them.

Alright, so another public hearing closing a portion of Coleman Street right away.

Madam Mayor,

This is an application seeking a street closing or more accurately a closing of an area that is an unaccepted street, sometimes what we call a paper street.

The adjacent property is owned by Habitat for Humanity and the request is presented

in connection with a plan that Habitat has for the development of adjacent properties.

And Madam Mayor, if it's okay with you, I think I know there are a lot of questions about the nature of the development and why this is brought forward.

I think probably your time is better spent listening to the applicant make the presentation for the application than me.

Good evening, Mayor Walker, members of city council.

I'm also joined by Dan Rosenzweig, who's our executive director, in case you have any questions for either of us afterwards.

I'd like to thank the city attorney's office for their staff report and both the city attorney and NDS staff for their support for Habitat street closure request that's before you tonight.

I also wanted to thank council for placing this on tonight's agenda, particularly in light of your plans to revisit the city's street closure policy later this evening.

As a planner, I applaud your desire to preserve the city's street and alley network in order to promote interconnectivity within neighborhoods.

I can assure you that in the case of this section of Coleman Street, had there been a feasible way to construct homes along an interconnecting city street,

Habitat would have happily done so.

However, with a fall in elevation that amounts to a 30% grade, coupled with the fact that the interconnecting portion of Coleman Street was vacated by city council in 1988, we were forced to look at other alternatives.

As affordable housing developers in a city that so badly needs more affordable housing, Habitat, of course, wants to maximize the number of homes we can build on this site.

The staff report correctly points out that the current R2 zoning allows for the development of six units by right.

What is slightly misleading is that it says we chose to limit development to two units because we wanted to limit traffic impacts on the neighborhood.

Practically speaking, the difference in traffic between six and two homes would be negligible, so I wanted to spend a little bit of time explaining our rationale for dropping from six to two units.

And I have an exhibit,

you wouldn't mind.

I only have six copies so I'm going to pass one to Ms. Roberts and then the rest of the council members.

I apologize for not bringing them up.

So the issue unfortunately comes down to cost.

much of which is driven by the city's development standards outlined in the zoning ordinance and the standards and design manual.

And I'll give you a few examples that are specific to this site.

So to orient you to the top page, on the left side of the page is the Coleman right of way, which runs up and down and habitats lots as they're currently plotted are perpendicular to this right of way.

and this development concept essentially rotates them 90 degrees to build three duplexes.

So this is the first Bi-Rite development concept that we looked at and have been looking at extensively over the past year for six single family attached units that get their required 50 feet of street frontage from a spur road that intersects with Coleman Street and Coleman Court.

The first problem we encountered was the 10 foot required side yard setbacks

that pushes the homes eastward into steep slopes and necessitates a road that's over 150 feet long which triggers a requirement to either design a turnaround or to seek a waiver from the fire department.

It's worth mentioning that the five foot set yard, five foot side yard requirements permitted for single family detached homes would actually have enabled us to keep the road length under 150 feet.

The second issue we encountered was the minimum 30-foot right-of-way width mandated by the Standards and Design Manual, coupled with the required 25-foot front yard setbacks, which effectively pushed the homes to the north well into steep slopes, resulting in the need for a retaining wall that's shown as the gray line on that first page.

So if you turn to page two, that is what's called a section diagram that basically shows like a slice through the building and shows how the foundation sits on that slope.

The dashed line is the existing slope.

So it shows you the challenge in tying the house into the existing grade and how steeply it drops the further you move back into the site.

So if you think about the effect of 30 feet of right of way plus 25 feet of a front yard setback, you're basically pushing the houses more into that steep slope.

And this condition could be much improved if we could site the homes closer to the street, but we can't.

Not only did this approach lack environmental sensitivity, but the site development cost was over $70,000 per unit.

before engineering or permit fees, which Habitat can't spend and still make homes affordable to families earning 25 to 60% of area median income.

Unfortunately, this site slips through the cracks in the parts of the city ordinance that allow for flexibility because it's under two acres and therefore doesn't qualify for a PUD and it's also located outside of the city's infill special use permit area.

These are exactly the types of sites that are left in the city to be developed and exactly why flexible standards are so important.

So we've reluctantly arrived at the development concept that's on page three and that's what was reflected on the plat that we submitted in conjunction with our street closure request.

And it is the two single family attached unit scenario.

This concept relies on the Coleman right-of-way vacation both to achieve the required amount of street frontage and to site the house more contextually with the surrounding homes rather than being pushed back 25 feet from the current edge of the right-of-way.

The setbacks in topography still present a challenge but the impact to steep slopes is significantly reduced and the estimated site development cost is far less at $25,000 a unit as compared to $70,000 which was the

the first development concept.

So I offer these comments both for your consideration as to the necessity of our street closure request and also as an illustrative example as you contemplate future updates to the standards and design manual and zoning regulations that promote context sensitive, environmentally sensitive and affordable approaches to infill development.

First of all, thank you for this illustration of what is not working in our current standards in zoning.

Your first plan would have given us more units and would have been much more compatible with the context.

and you can't do it.

And I was raising the questions because I couldn't understand, I didn't see the topo, and now I do.

I believe them.

I'm just saying there's nothing that we as a body can do to help get us there.

I'm just asking, I'm trying to understand what.

We've got to get the zoning ordinance updated.

Could you introduce yourself?

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

Yeah, there are a couple of, as Mandy said, but it may not have

sort of rung a bell that there are two ordinances in our code that allow for flexibility in design.

There's the PUD ordinance, which is frankly kind of under attack, and the infill SUP.

The infill SUP, to my knowledge, has actually never been used.

We created it in 2002, roughly.

It's never been used largely because it's a tight circle around the core of Charlottesville.

And so one thing that could happen pretty quickly, I think, is a zoning text amendment that simply enlarges the infill SUP area.

The other is the limiting factor of the PUD is that it has to be two acres.

So you could choose as a council to reduce that as well.

I think long term what you probably want to do is look at changes to the zoning code and much of this may not yet be enabled but actually advantages affordable housing so changes to design or extra allowances in design for the provision of affordable housing not only would allow for context sensitive, environmentally sensitive design like what wants to sit on this?

This probably wants to be cottages around a green frankly is really what it wants to be.

Mayor Walker, if I may say something just quickly and I'll be brief.

The one thing else I'll just say though the PUD and the SUP do add extra review time because they are rezoning and that is also what we've learned in the partnership for economic solutions

as cost, especially when you're looking for affordable housing.

I think the best ultimate solution is to adjust the front setbacks, the side setbacks, so that you're not having to have such long streets and that you're able to not slip into the depth of the site so that you're dealing with incredible complex

grades.

So I think I don't want to just jump into saying that we've got to keep our PUDs and keep our SEPs because that is what's draining us all, period.

No, it was originally an administrative review.

We applied for this, or we started the process in January when it was an administrative review.

And if you recall, I think it was last month, you voted to change your review process to make this be a council review.

And so it came straight to you.

If the process were to sync with building, we like the idea of being able to build, we have dozens and dozens of families that are waiting for housing.

If we saw forward momentum and an update to the zoning codes and the design manual, then we certainly could put this one later in the queue because it feels like a

a jolly waste to build two homes on this site, especially homes not sited where they really want to be to continue the pattern of both of those streets.

So we would love to do something better on there.

This, voting for this, it would be necessary in either case.

So we do urge you to vote in favor of the staff recommendation and we'll see what transpires in terms of whether we can find other things to build

In the process, we're just running out of places to build.

And what does

It's a very complicated question.

We've essentially run out of places to build, largely because it's taken us a long time to get things entitled, largely because the market is so hot right now that there just aren't, there are no opportunities there.

And we do have a backlog of families that are waiting to get in.

And so we have to sit back and kind of observe and sort of see what happens.

The zoning amendment looks like it's going to be three years, well they're probably going to build this.

If it looks like it's going to be six months, I'm certain that we would hold off and do the right thing on this site.

If it's somewhere in between, we'll just have to kind of make that decision.

We're happy to make it.

One of the reasons why we were happy to come forward tonight is to put in front of you an object lesson in real black and white terms about the kinds of things that I think we've been saying in the abstract for a while is that it's really hard to build the right thing in the right place in Charlottesville and it's really, really hard to do affordable housing.

I think some of the changes to the zoning code that would make something like this possible going down the line and really begin to make an appreciable difference may require additional enabling legislation but I really think that there's a nexus between an update to the zoning code and allowances like the density bonus that could advantage affordable housing so that a lot like this could be frankly buildable for somebody building affordable homes and not for someone else.

with the lack of land in the city, that's the direction you probably want to go.

Councilor Bellamy was going to say something?

So, Mayor Walker, on August 30th, we're going to have a work session on the affordable housing production strategy.

On August 23rd, we're going to have a conversation about

the Conference of Plan, an NDS efficiency study, and also getting the zoning rewrite.

So at that point, we could, as a council, with our planning commission, make a decision to expedite this process, get the added resources we need.

I came across a December 7, 2017 email from Ms. Robertson that said we need additional resources

to complete the comprehensive plan and to move into changing our zoning.

That was December 7, 2017.

So I think August 23rd we're going to have a major discussion about how we can get our zoning integrated with an affordable housing strategy and our comp plan to be moving more efficiently together.

I mean, I would say that I think that changes to the comp plan zoning code really need to be, the housing strategy in particular is something that's really important because I don't think you can make across the board changes to the zoning code without understanding the community.

What is our shared vision for affordable housing?

What are our goals?

What are our targets?

I just can't help myself but just jump in as a former planner with Albemarle County Community Development.

They did a rewrite of just their setback regulations.

a couple years ago now, but it was a zoning ordinance amendment specific to setbacks.

They had sort of old suburban setbacks, and they have the neighborhood model district, which allowed for a more urban type of development, and they modeled the Bi-Rite setbacks on the neighborhood model.

OK.

So I'm going to open the public hearing.

Is there anyone who would like to speak?

OK.

So I'm going to close the public hearing.

And there's no vote.

All right.

All right.

As noted in your agenda materials, in 2017 and 2018, the General Assembly enacted new legislation essentially mandating local governments to offer special procedures and special treatment to

communications providers that want to install small cell facilities within public rights of way.

Specifically, these types of facilities fit well on utility poles.

The attached ordinance, the ordinance attached to your agenda materials is in large part non-optional.

So the state laws that were amended in 2017 and 2018

don't allow a locality, in large part, the ability to deny a request for placement of these types of facilities on existing utility poles or other features within the public right of way.

I included, just so you believe me that this is mandatory and not something that's optional, I included copies of the legislation from both of those General Assembly sessions and some of you may have remembered seeing emails that I sent out during the legislative sessions encouraging people to write to your local legislators and we were certainly speaking with VML and VACO

regarding the loss of control over what happens in public rights of way.

But that being said, it's now the law.

The ordinance I believe is, although long, I believe it's all required in order to properly implement the requirements of the new law.

And I would recommend that you approve it because you don't really have an alternative.

I will tell you that once you approve this ordinance there will be some applications coming in front of you.

Essentially what you are allowed to do is review some of these placements for approval of agreements kind of in the nature of a franchise agreement.

And so I expect that there will be an application

coming forward in the near future to allow a provider to place some of these facilities on the poll.

Any questions?

I'll open the public hearing.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Councillors.

My name is Laurie Schweller.

I'm an attorney with LeClaire Ryan here in Charlottesville, and I'm prepared to make

So this is a first of two readings.

If you'd like to review the slides, Ms. Schweller could send them and you could look at them before the second reading if you'd like to.

She's been waiting.

I prefer that we wait.

I prefer we just get it electronically because of it.

Well, I agree with the mayor, though.

I think it's a good point.

So as Ms. Robertson explained, the reason for the ordinance, the immediate reason is because of legislation adopted by the General Assembly in 2017 and this General Assembly session 2018.

And the reasons why those statutes were adopted is to encourage wireless infrastructure, to encourage investment by the wireless community.

And small cells are a very efficient way to do it.

particularly if you locate small cells in the right of way on existing utility poles.

So what is a small cell?

This is a picture of an actual Verizon wireless facility showing you a small cell antenna, which is about two feet tall, on the top of the pole, an existing utility pole, an equipment box on the side.

And there's a definition within the ordinance.

And so why do we need small cells at all?

As you all know, we have cell towers, we have large installations on buildings, but there's extreme amount of data demand from people using their smartphones, their laptops, their wireless devices of all sorts.

And so additional capacity is needed to provide the broadband that you all need for

for this wireless service.

And of course in the future with connected cities and self-driving cars, this will be even more important.

So we're trying to get ahead of that with these small cells.

This is just an illustration of what I just described, which is macro sites, which are cell towers like the Norfolk Southern Tower in the center of the city.

Those are macro sites, the one on top of the condominiums nearby.

And then you need small cells to provide additional capacity.

There are more wireless devices than there are people in the US, so this is about feeding that need for additional data service.

50% of us don't even have landlines anymore, and we need our smartphones for making emergency calls for business, for education, for downloading the agenda for meetings like tonight's.

It's also important for robust home purchasers.

This is one of the things that they're most looking for when purchasing a home.

And in the city of Charlottesville, obviously, it's extremely important.

So the city would benefit because wireless providers would construct this infrastructure, of course, at their own expense, but it would prepare the city for the future technology.

So how do we make it happen?

As we mentioned, Senate Bill 1282 was adopted in 2017 and what that did was provide administrative zoning process for small cells and also provide a process for installing small cells on city rights of way.

The legislation that was just adopted this past General Assembly session is to permit installation of short polls where they're needed in rights of way

where there's not an existing poll.

To dig a little bit deeper into the details, you can see here that basically as Charlottesville has already adopted, small cells would not require special use permits.

They could be approved on an administrative process that would have a short timeline.

There would also be limited reasons for denial.

One of those would be that it conflicts with a historic or architectural review

area.

Then in 2018, the new legislation added the concept of installing new structures in the rights of way and co-locating on existing structures outside of rights of way.

The other side of the legislation is what Ms. Robertson referred to as agreements between wireless providers and the controllers of the rights of way, namely the city

and so anyone who wants to do that such as Verizon Wireless would need to apply to the city for permission to locate in the right of way.

And of course that would be subject to the requirements of the constitution and would also require relocation whenever it was necessary for projects that the city may have to do.

For example, if the city wanted to underground a stretch of

Utilities along West Main, Dominion Power would have to remove their poles and consequently Verizon would have to remove the small cells from those poles.

So, quick summary.

What this legislation does for you is a very streamlined process to put these small cells on existing new and replacement poles in the right of way.

Very streamlined process and to provide a way to

allow wireless providers to enter into agreements with the city to install those facilities.

That's my presentation.

Thank you so much for allowing me to give that.

And if you have questions, I'll take them.

I know some more than I knew.

Mayor Walker, I have one.

So, um, so in the event of a situation like West Main Street, where we are undergrounding our utilities and the poles are going to go away.

If there is a plan, if the city has a plan to underground its utilities, then, and that plan is in place, then it prevents an application from coming before you.

All right, thanks.

I just have a couple comments about that ordinance in the presentation.

And what's your name?

Rolf Braun, 1120 East High Street.

First, this is in the context of cell companies wanting to serve small areas.

Basically, it's competing with Wi-Fi.

They want to use infrastructure that's kind of in common, and it's four companies, looks like soon to become three, that want to monopolize a lot of this infrastructure.

So just to give the context, the states required this, but I would ask if council has reviewed if this reserves all the rights that are still available to the city under state law.

And one thing in particular I noticed is there are four reasons for denial that you can deny a permit listed in the state law.

There's in the case of public of on publicly owned property, there's another reason listed that I didn't see in the ordinance.

And just in general, if the city still reserves all the rights to manage,

Kay Slaughter, city resident.

Just briefly, I had heard about this.

I believe the county had already passed their ordinance.

And I just want to say, it sounds like, oh, yes, you have to do it.

You have to do it.

but you will hear complaints.

You're gonna hear from people.

I've already heard in the county where there were some real complaints.

These were historic properties and there were view shed issues but you just should be aware some of the questions you were asking about, you know, guidelines we have on different streets and just to look over the ordinance carefully to make sure that to the extent possible

We are including all of the safeguards of our historic districts, any plans that we have in place.

Because I think when citizens hear about this, an ordinance is being passed tonight.

It's one of two readings.

So maybe more people will hear by next time.

Yeah.

Hey, I'm Rory Stolzenberg, 107 Westwater, number 12.

I'd like to encourage you guys to pass this ordinance and to not view it as a bad thing to reduce the barriers to improving wireless infrastructure in the city.

It's very important, obviously, that we have strong wireless connectivity everywhere, at least for people who rely on wireless as their primary access to the internet.

And so usually people will give

aesthetic reasons or often sort of pseudo-scientific, you know, scary reasons about radiation to oppose wireless infrastructure.

Thank you.

It's just one comment.

OK.

So we're going to close the public hearing.

Is there a motion?

We'll jump in a bit.

Yes.

All right.

Any more?

And it's no vote tonight.

Moving on.

Good evening.

Brian Wheeler, Director of Communications.

Just want to give you a brief update on the second parks renaming survey that we did that engaged the community to get their preferences on the naming of the parks.

During May and June, staff collected public input through a parks renaming survey.

It was available online on paper ballots in the city manager's office via telephone, voicemail, and through paper ballots that were inserted in utility bills

during June.

The online survey restricted participation to one submission per device and there was a screening question for location of residents.

So in total we had about 4,300 participants overall.

If you take out the non-city residents, we're at about 3,000 participants in the survey.

So it's not a scientifically valid sample of public opinion, but we think it surfaced some valuable information about the community's preferences.

So the results for Emancipation Park, the top vote getter was Market Street Park with 961 votes, or about 33% of the total.

and for Justice Park the top vote getter was Court Square Park with 1,646 votes or about 58% of the total.

I don't have any other questions.

I think that if we were going to go through this process, I would have liked for us to have names that were representative of the community and people who had struggled in the community.

I know I asked Dr. Holly Edwards' family if they would want her name associated, and they said absolutely not.

and I left that alone as a result, but I think that if we were gonna go through this process, it should have been something more meaningful in terms of names, but I think we heard loud and clear from the community members who were speaking that there was a desire to just have a kind of neutral name, and so that's where we are.

No, I concur with your sentiment.

I definitely, Mr. Conover, while I may not have agreed with necessarily naming it Legacy Park, I do think there was some validity in what Mr. Conover was saying as well as a lot of people who

just for whatever reason chose not to participate in the process.

But I think that when we choose neutral names or just easy names, it allows us to not truly deal with some of the issues that we've had.

And essentially, we have seen that there's been a reluctance from a wide variety of people in our community who want to deal with things head on.

So we like to choose what's easy.

Market Street Park or Court Square Park is easy.

It doesn't make us really have to think critically about what's going on, but that's the will of the people.

So be it.

And I mean I think that tells the story like you know not one it's so much negativity surrounding especially Emancipation Park and not wanting

Dr. Edwards' name associated with a park that currently had the statue in it.

So there was a lot of, you know, the family gave those two reasons.

Her husband and four kids is why they wouldn't want.

Madam Mayor, I would add that

You know, it was one of the many charges that was given the Blue Ribbon Commission that didn't kind of get as much attention, but we wanted them to advise us on other naming opportunities that could exist around the city.

I mean, a lot of different communities named bridges and government buildings.

There's a lot of opportunities to include these areas in history.

And I think that we could take this feedback and even this discussion here about Dr. Edwards and about

Mr. Swanson, I mean those are two ideas that have come up very recently and there's a lot of others and I would also say with the West Main Street streetscape there is a whole piece of that that's going to be about narrative history of this community and one of the things they've really tried to be very thoughtful to given that it connects and goes through so much of the city's history

is ways to really highlight the city's history.

And I think there's funds allocated to that.

And there's going to be a lot of signs and visual markers and history that will be laid into the street.

OK. Mayor Walker, may I say something?

I hear you, Councilor Bellamy, and I also have heard the public several times as well.

And I do think that because the statues are still there without any context and they have not been moved, what I've been hearing is that there was a feeling that it was a contradiction.

hypocritical.

So perhaps over time, there's no reason why the names can't change again when people feel that the parks really warranted.

But right now, those statues are are a big issue in those parks.

They're they're not we can't add the context to them yet because we can't begin the park design process until the courts set free the whole our ability to even add context.

So I I think the will of the public is

is there is some wisdom in it.

I don't know how.

OK, so any other?

So we're moving to rename the parks.

Vote.

No more depressions.

All right.

That's me again.

So city council asked

the city attorney's office and staff to pull together some materials to provide some basic information about what is a mayor-council form of government and what is a council manager form of government.

and sort of what's the basic difference between the two of them so that you all can begin to look at those options in a way that's informed by some preliminary information and also some information about what

We have given

ask any questions about the materials.

The report was written by our assistant city attorney, Sebastian Waisman, and he is here.

So I'm just reading Facebook comments talking about it.

There's been discussion in here.

There's been talk throughout the city.

Talk here.

One of the things that I would like for us to explore is looking at

A situation in which, even if we don't go strong, full, completely strong mayor, in which we elect the mayor and that person has a great deal of power, I don't know if I would want us to go that far, but I do think they're, I mean, based on the climate, not only that we're in now, but just moving along with the times, this weak mayor form of government that was founded in Stan, Virginia in 1908, in my opinion, is rather outdated.

and I do think that the people deserve the right to be able to elect their own mayor.

So it could still be a form of, I don't even like using the term weak mayor, as Ms.

Slaughter told me earlier, stop calling it that.

But having an elected mayor that still works with the city manager, I think will bode well for us.

And I'm open to hearing more about the ward ideas, but what I would like is

for the General Assembly, for us to move forward with advising delegates as well as Senator Deeds with petitioning the General Assembly to allow us to change our charter.

And furthermore, I think that's something that the city should be able to decide.

And if that means us opening it up for a vote, or if that means us doing another survey of some sorts.

Allowing community input more than just one town hall would also bode well for us.

But that would be, again, my preference as having a mayor in which is elected, still keeping a city manager, but having a mayor that has more power.

So what that means, being able to appoint different positions or being able to just have different power per se, but still working with the council.

I think the people will want that as well.

And I think in general I'm interested in understanding what we can do to look at more broadly our charter because I think there's more than one area that could maybe stand a more refreshed look and I'm not sure because given this process is pretty involved to take any changes forward I would like us to look at it holistically and not just in one section.

I guess I certainly can share your thoughts.

My piece on whether we have a really strong mayor or a city manager, I still think

A, we're limited by Dylan's role in our state and local government, and B, we're still limited by can that person really fulfill

with the needs of that role.

I know, obviously, when we're looking for a new city manager, we're going to be doing a pretty broad search.

And by saying that we're going to have a strong mayor that's elected and having the similar responsibilities, we're limited to our residential footprint.

And that's just a pretty limited pool of people to find these skill sets every so many years.

And I think I was most interested when I got to the end of this packet and I saw

How Richmond has responded and how difficult it has been honestly for them was just really telling because obviously we keep talking about them as like

the poster child for how this is done but it's been quite a struggle and they still haven't found they've gotten to the vision of what they thought they could accomplish with that form of government and so I do think that there's a hybrid approach that can be taken where you know I understand like giving an elected mayor and that that's coming from the public versus just this council of five but I do think I really am interested in understanding more about the

Well the Norfolk model seems to work for them and obviously we're a lot different from Norfolk.

I mean some will say that Mayor Stoney is doing a good job.

I know of some who liked Mayor Jones.

I know of others who didn't like Mayor Jones.

That also can be said amongst the five of us.

I noted that Newport News just seemed like it was very similar to us, but the only difference with the mayor is determined by an open election, not by city council.

But the roles of the mayor really were very similar, very ceremonial in leading our meetings.

But Mayor Price has a little bit more leeway than we do here.

That's some Newport News?

I don't know.

Good evening, I worked with Lisa Robertson on this report.

I was just saying, I read that I felt like the Newport News was very, it seemed to me it was very similar to Charlottesville's model, but the main difference was just that that mayor is elected versus the council choosing that mayor.

But what was the scope of that mayor's, you know, responsibilities?

So I think with respect to Newport News, I think that's right.

But I mean, in the sense that it's very similar to Charlottesville, it's more of a ceremonial role.

There's not really any

executive or administrative power that comes with that.

It is still kind of the ceremonial role that Charlottesville has.

But I would emphasize that there's sort of generalities having mayor council, council manager, but it really depends on the specific distribution of powers and responsibilities that you choose to put into the charter.

and so that can vary.

And so you could have somebody who, and there is a city like this, I don't remember exactly which one, it may be Norfolk, maybe Alexandria, but you could have a mayor, for example, mostly ceremonial, still within the council manager system, but who may have veto power, for example, or who may play some role in the development of the budget or something along those lines.

It's not an all or nothing type of thing.

There's a lot of sort of nuances and it's kind of up to you how you want to draft that charter amendment and how you want to set up.

Mayor Alexander is essentially ceremonial but he's elected by the people.

That's not what, I would prefer that we would

that our mayor have a little bit, I don't think it should be just a ceremonial title.

I'm not saying that whoever the mayor is should have complete veto power and they're some kind of dictator and it's not a strong mayor per se, but having a different level of influence in terms of, I think it also helps with accountability, but, and I'm open for us having that discussion, but I think even

So I would say that the General Assembly is not likely to simply give you broad permission to write it at the local level.

What we have to do is work out exactly what you want and prepare an updated and proposed amended charter and have either an election

to discuss that specific draft or a public hearing.

There's two procedures.

And then once that's done, you present that as a bill to the General Assembly.

So, Ms. Representative, if we were to say, just hypothetically speaking, that we would want to update our charter and in October, just literally throwing it out, have something presented to the public for them to have either two or three different town halls or public hearings on to provide input, would that give us enough time to get it to delegate to Scott Knoll before December for him to take to the General Assembly for January?

It's very tight but what I'll tell you is I would suggest that you sort of narrow down a bit more exactly what you're thinking of doing and that you actually meet with Delegate Toscano and Senator Deeds and tell them what you're thinking about doing and ask them that question because they are the ones who have to

help you carry a bill and they may or may not suggest that you have sort of lobbying assistance or other assistance in doing that.

But they would need to give you information also about what they might expect the public engagement process to look like.

I know that even on regular bills these days it's become very important to

both legislators the first question they ask when you send them your legislative agenda in October, November, December the first thing they want to know when you're proposing new legislation is have you at the local level vetted it with businesses or other people that may be affected and we have had a couple occasions

Some of the solutions to this would be just hiring

a city manager who is, you know, more open to the things that we desire, I guess.

I mean, the communication that I know some of the concerns that I've had, I think, with

Yeah, I don't even know what I can say.

But anyway, I just think that maybe some of the concerns would be addressed if there was a person in the city manager position that was

But again, I don't.

Yeah, I don't know the qualification piece and I have some comments about that that I'll

maybe share but I'm thinking of the right way to share because I think most of the people who've been talking about qualifications have been directing those comments directly at me.

I don't think that if Mike was sitting in this chair that there would be as many

conversation surrounding qualifications.

And I was not referring to that in the least.

And so from the comments that I've heard since, what is it, the GEO, whatever that group, Lawrence, is a part of, that's been a very different conversation than I think we would have heard based on who was up here before.

And I mean, I heard a lot of no's, but you can say that.

But it's no way, because I'm the one sitting here.

But that's neither here nor there.

I still think that moving forward, if this is something that we desire to move forward with, I'm still very

I still have to think about this process a little bit more because I think with the issues that we have in this city, I don't think that even having a strong mayor would necessarily fix that.

It may make it better, and that just really depends on who that person is.

and that's all I was getting at.

Madam Mayor, I just wanted to give a couple thoughts about just trying to think about how to approach this.

Madam Mayor, I totally agree.

We're operating within a context and this, everybody should know, I mean this is playing out around the whole country.

There's thousands of cities.

As I understand it, close to 50% of them have

the city manager form of government in some way.

So that means you're going to have a lot of variation with different city managers and different mayors.

And I'm going to watch the public comments that I missed when I was not here, but I'm eager to see what the other people have served and the body have said.

So there have been city managers that we had in the past who were both extremely strong to the public.

As I understand it, I believe that Cole Hendricks used to run meetings.

That's at least what I was told by another mayor, but that wasn't true.

Well, with hanging out with a lot of other mayors at these different things, there are some city managers who, to the public, are very strong.

It's very clear that they're the CEO of the government.

cities around the country where the city manager is elected.

Like in Maryland, the county executive is elected.

And they've gone even in that direction.

So I just want to think about that because obviously then the mayor is going to bring very different personalities too and how proactive they are.

much they try to expand the position.

It was extremely difficult and frustrating to navigate during a crisis last year and for me.

And I'm sure that there's lots of blame that I can share in part because the public gets very confused about what the role of the office is.

And so I want to talk just a little bit about that.

I see three facets as we have this discussion.

The first one is the actual duties of the mayor.

The second one is the constructive duties, which is what can they create from the powers that they're given.

And the third one is what's the public comprehension of them.

So the actual duties are running the meetings, it's being the chair of the council, which does have the capacity to set policy.

So the mayor is the chair, but that's not a chairmanship that comes with

much else other than the power that you bring, some chairs of bodies are stronger, some are weaker, some are more leaders, some kind of more coordinators, so there's a lot of flex in there.

And then the third one is the budgeting.

Budgeting is really important, but the budgeting process right now is really led from the city manager.

Then there's the constructive duties.

I would say to Mayor Walker, there's a lot of,

You're actually creating, I think, in this mayorship, a fair amount of constructive power with the mayorship and with the bully pulpit, with alliances.

Different mayors have different relationships to the public.

And I think that in this mayorship, we're witnessing, I think, a very robust example of constructing a lot of authority around the mayorship and the relation to the public, which I think is really good and really healthy.

So that's up to the mayor, what you kind of construct.

And the third one is the public comprehension.

This is really important.

I just had a conversation with a long time activist in the city.

She said I've been doing this for, who everybody here knows really well, I'm just not considering, she said I've been doing this forever.

And I did not know up until recently how little power the mayor had and how much power the city manager has.

I just didn't know.

and I look at some of these other cities where they really they labor to explain over and over again on the website it's very clear what the powers of the city manager are versus the mayor versus the council and it just is kind of you know people don't think about government a lot of time until they need it so they're not going to know a lot of the time what the actual roles are so I would say whatever we do we should have a very strong public explanation of it so there are three

There are just two areas of reform that I think that we should think about, and I agree with Dr. Melmy.

I think that we could do

Town meetings where we would look through, we'd have like six or seven specific changes that we would think about individually and each of them we could have some research on.

The first one is directly selected by the public.

I think this could be a great idea for the city.

You do have it all around Virginia.

To the extent that people want a mayor who can construct more authority if he or she wants to do that and has the skills to do that,

That is aided by a directly elected mayor because the people see the mayor and they made a choice for that mayor as opposed to the mayor being selected by the city council and the mayor campaigns to the public so they have an opportunity to talk to the public, here's why I want to be mayor, here's why I want to be the chair of this body, here's the powers I'd like to construct even though it's still fairly limited and Virginia is a Dylans rule state.

So direct elected mayor would do that and there's lots of precedent around Virginia.

In looking at this report that we were just given, I think it's really illuminating that 14 years ago when they did this, one of the things that they looked at was giving council more staff.

And we have just done that.

That is a huge change that the community really should, I hope, understand over the last year.

And it's the result of a lot of work that happened with the last council in thinking through this form of government.

So now we're going to have a real staff.

We've got a chief of staff.

I believe three staff will be under, is that right?

And it really will enable us to create a parallel government to the city manager and that's really important because we're the political and policy making arm of the government and you need staff.

These jobs are extremely hard when you're getting paid $15,000 a year and especially if you have a second or a day job and it really helps to have somebody who wakes up in the morning and goes to sleep at night thinking about what city council is doing and helping you.

So that's already in the works, and I think it's going to change what Council and the Mayor can do.

And the Mayor has a much more direct relationship to the staff that we have.

That's just how it works, because the demand that the Mayor is under as compared to the rest of Council is probably a factor of 25.

The amount of requests that you get, the amount of people coming to you, and the staff is the ones who are going to help.

with that.

I think that the veto power is something we really should think about.

That would be a very direct way that the mayor could have more power within the form of government we have.

It would be a power of a negative rather than a positive power, like I can just spend this budget or hire or fire this person.

But I think that I would like to have a discussion with the public about a veto that the mayor could have, and that would be overcome by a vote of four on council.

just a couple other two other things.

We just have learned in the process of hiring a city attorney that we have a very unusual system in Charlottesville where the city attorney has two equal masters in our form of government, the city manager and the city council.

as we learn most other cities and counties in Virginia, that's not the case.

The city attorney reports directly to city council and does not report to city manager.

That explains a lot of what has happened in the last couple of years, in my view.

And I think we should, in Albemarle County, the county attorney

reports directly to county board and not to the executive.

They are parallel.

And that is a change that I think we should initiate directly, and it would apparently be authorized within Dylan's rule.

And I think that would give council a lot more latitude to follow its mission, which is policy and political and community engagement.

And it would be a change that would make it relatively stronger and be good for all the concerns that have come up recently.

and I also think that we should think about whether this would be a big change, whether council and the mayor could draft their own budget.

because we're going to have staff, there will be a four member staff and we would have the ability to draft a budget.

That's really where the action is and that's a highly, it could be a much more political rather than professional process.

I would like to have these discussions with the public.

I think we are looking, in my view, I would favor a stronger mayor but not a strong mayor.

I think that Vice Mayor Hill's concerns are well stated.