City Council Meeting   5/3/2021

at charlottesville.gov slash agenda.

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We're all here.

Yeah, I see Michael now.

I didn't see him down in the corner.

All right.

Counselor Hill, would you read us out of closed session, please?

Is council certified by recorded vote to the best of each council member's knowledge?

Is there a second?

Mayor Walker?

Yes.

Vice Mayor McGill?

Yes.

Councilor Hill?

Yes.

We'll have a moment of silence.

Ms.

Thomas, would you do roll call, please?

Mayor Walker?

Vice Mayor McGill?

Present.

Councilor Hill?

I'm here.

All right, thank you.

Is there a second?

Got it.

Mayor Walker.

Yes.

Vice Mayor McGill.

Yes, ma'am.

Councilor Hill.

Yes.

All right.

Councilors.

Are there any announcements?

All right, Mr. Willard, okay, Dr. Bonds, I see you.

Good evening.

Thank you for having me here tonight.

I'm going to share my screen.

And if someone could just let me know that they can see that.

Yep.

All right, so I'm here today to update you on where we are at with COVID-19.

I'm going to spend much less time talking about current COVID infections, although we are still having them in our community.

and much more talking about the vaccine effort that's been going on.

So as you look at the statistics, you see that we have seen an increase in both the district and in the city of Charlottesville since I last spoke to you a month ago.

That increase has also been seen in hospitalizations, some increase in fatalities, unfortunately, for the district, no new fatalities for the city of Charlottesville.

So that's good news.

The top here I'm showing the cases by date of onset and you can see the two spikes that we had earlier this year, the pretty dramatic drop off level and now really beginning to fall.

We're having cases that are in the teens typically for the whole district each day.

So that's really great news overall.

And then when you look at Charlottesville, again, you see pretty small numbers now as we get more and more people vaccinated.

So good news on that front.

I'm going to show you some race data in a slightly different format.

This is some work that was done by the state of Virginia, and this represents the entire state.

I don't have the data for just our health district.

What they have done is compare the rates of a variety of factors by race and ethnicity to the rate seen in the white population.

So just to orient you, we have Asian and Pacific Islander at the top.

Black is this middle group and Hispanic is the bottom.

And again, the reference group is white.

When you see bars that are below this reference line of one, that means that that group is doing slightly better.

or having slightly less vaccination in the case of vaccination.

When you see the bars above this reference line, that means that they have worse outcomes.

So looking here at the middle for the Black population, and again, this is for the entire state of Virginia, what we see is that their death rate ratios

and this is adjusted for age are nearly twice what we see in the white population.

Their cases are somewhat increased and their hospitalization rate is again nearly twice.

Unfortunately, what we see in both the Asian and Pacific Islander and the black population is that the vaccination rate is lower than in the white population.

So if you do the math out for every three individuals who self-declare white, only two individuals of Asian and Pacific Islander or two individuals who are black get vaccinated.

Hispanics do have worst outcomes when you look at death and case rate ratios and hospitalization.

But the vaccination rate for Hispanics across the state is now equivalent to white.

And this data was good as of April 20th, I believe.

So they also again, this is all state level data.

I don't unfortunately have this at the district or the locality level.

They've also mapped out over time.

And here we've only had three months

that they've mapped out the hospitalization rate ratios.

And you can see that for the Asian Pacific Islanders, it's somewhat below white and fairly steady for black and slight decrease and now holding pretty steady.

And for the Hispanic, there's been a gradual decline in the hospitalization rate ratios.

When you look at the age adjusted death rate ratios, and this is a really

pretty close to when the pandemic began back in May 2020.

You can see it was significantly elevated for the Hispanic and twice as elevated, twice as high for the Asian and Black when you compare to the white.

There has been a gradual decline up until April of this year.

in the Hispanics, the black population had a spike and then declined and really has remained very steady across the state with regard to the death rate.

And there has been a decline of the Asian and Pacific Islander population.

So some interesting data, I think some sobering data in that we still see a fairly large discrepancy

in outcomes for individuals who are Black and Hispanic.

Testing our PCR positivity rate continues to be quite low.

I've talked about this before, but I've given you now the testing encounter by health districts since the beginning of the pandemic.

And Blue Ridge is the second highest in the state, second only to Fairfax.

and that's absolute number of PCR tests rather than adjusted for the population of the district.

So this is really because UVA has chosen a strategy to conduct a large amount of saliva based PCR tests on a daily basis of their students and their positivity rate is very low and that large number of tests drives our positivity overall low.

So lots of testing done in our community.

So let's talk about the vaccine and where we are at.

So some really great news.

Overall in the state, over 6 million people have over 6 million doses, I'm sorry, have been

given to individuals with 45% of the state's population receiving at least one dose, so having at least some immunity to the COVID virus.

Here we are, this little blip here, and you'll see that it's quite a dark blue.

Darker blue means a higher percentage of the population with one dose.

And again, when you look at the absolute numbers, Charlottesville's 53% of the population has received at least one dose and 37% of our population is fully vaccinated.

It's actually probably a little bit higher than this because we have about half a million people that we can't map for some reason.

Some of this is probably they didn't give an address or an address wasn't obtained or they got a dose through some method that we weren't responsible for.

For example, the federal government does a fair number of individuals in our state.

So a pretty big chunk of our population, I think really good news overall.

And I just want to thank all of the people of Charlottesville for

really getting on the vaccine bus and getting their vaccination.

So some more successes, Charlottesville, when you look, is number five in the state for the percentage of population with at least one vaccine.

So that's really great news.

And you're actually surrounded by Albemarle County, who's number one in the state for percent of population.

So certainly accounts for some of the low rates that we're seeing in COVID.

Some of the things that the health district has been doing to improve our vaccination rates in partnership with UVA and the Charlottesville Fire Department.

We've been seeking out homebound citizens to do vaccination rates and get their smoke detectors inspected at the same time.

And so far, 50 plus residents in Charlottesville have gotten vaccinated that way.

It's a really great partnership.

And we're just so happy that we've been able to work with both of these great organizations.

Thanks to the CDBG COVID fund.

Apologies for the typo there.

We were able to hire Talithia Howard as a community health worker outreach.

And she has done outreach to register and assist at vaccination events in target neighborhoods.

Another spelling.

My apologies.

So far, she's been able to reach 650 individuals and distributed 2000 masks and she's really only been on board since the beginning of March.

So that's quite a significant achievement.

The health department in conjunction with all of the community partners that you see there, including city staff, UVA, West Haven, Your Life Matters, Seville, Sentara, Martha Jefferson, the African American Pastors Council, the Piedmont Housing Alliance, and lots of individual community volunteers and advocates.

have done place-based vaccination at a variety of in places across the city.

So I'm not going to go through and read them all, but you can see we've really tried to meet people where they're at to get them vaccinated and to make sure that they were safe from COVID.

So all of that was good news.

Now comes the less good news.

We still have a long way to go to get to our vaccination goal of 75%.

The state has done some modeling and mapping of vaccination by age group and by ethnicity.

And to reach that 75% goal, we really need to start focusing on this younger age group, this 20

to 50 year old age group that the green bar is the group that needs to be vaccinated.

Blue is vaccinated with at least one dose and red are individuals that we're pretty sure just won't get vaccinated at all.

So our focus is really going to turn to these groups.

We will, of course, continue to reach out to people who are over the age of 50 to make sure that they are protected from the COVID.

But a lot of our outreach efforts will be now in this younger age group to help them get vaccinated.

They've also done some mapping looking at the population that needs to be vaccinated by race and ethnicity.

And again, looking at the green bar, that's the group that we need to target to get vaccinated.

We can see that the largest group is really in the Black population.

And I'm going to tell you about some outreach efforts that we have going on there.

So right now in this health district, we're vaccinating with Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson.

Johnson is back and available as well if that's your preferred vaccine.

The JCPenney site serves all of the Charlottesville and Albemarle area.

We have evening hours tonight every Monday night from 4.30 to 7.30 p.m.

It's on a walk in basis, although you can call our hotline and make a reservation for your shot.

You don't have to register, though.

You can do it when you arrive.

And we have Spanish speaking staff there.

So if you if Spanish is your first language, your primary language, we have staff that can assist you with both registration and vaccination.

We're there Tuesday to Thursday from 9 until about 4.

It's primarily by appointment.

We do take walk-ins between 1030 and 1130 and between 1230 and 230 in the afternoon.

The goal is that we will begin to expand our walk-ins.

But if you want to be sure of having a spot when you go over there, the best thing to do is to make an appointment.

And I'll show you how you can do that in just a second.

And then Friday, same hours by appointment, but we do a much larger number of walk-ins on Friday.

Same time frame, 10.30 to 11.30 and 12.30 to 2 p.m.

I know there are some individuals who are saying, why don't you just do only walk-ins?

And that's because of vaccine management.

It's really challenging to keep the vaccine at the right temperature and not have at least some understanding of the individuals that will number of individuals coming to an appointment.

And although we have a lot more vaccine available, it's still we don't want to waste any.

And so we don't defrost it out of the ultra cold until we know roughly how many people will be arriving to target some of our key populations.

We have

assisted the Charlottesville Albemarle NAACP and the Latino Health Initiative.

who have developed a public service announcement with funding by the Move to Health Equity Coalition.

We're paying for airtime for that PSA over the next few weeks.

This public service announcement has community members who are really addressing a whole variety of topics around vaccine hesitancy.

And you'll see that on print, radio, TV, and social media over the next few weeks.

So if you are ready to get your vaccine, the easiest way to do that now is to go to vaccines.gov and you just click on the find COVID-19 vaccines and it will bring you to the screen where you can put your zip code in and how far you're willing to go to get your vaccine.

Click on the search for vaccine and it will bring you to a list of where all of the vaccines and a map are in relationship to the zip code that you put in.

So right now I believe there's over 25 locations within 25 miles of the 22902 zip code that you can go and get a vaccine.

There are many, many pharmacies in our community that are offering vaccines to the general public and that's a great way to get your vaccine if that's your preferred.

You can click on any of the CDS's and it'll take you to their registration screen.

We're a little further up, but if you click on the Charlottesville, Albemarle Health Department one, it will take you to an area.

And if you click on the dot, I don't think I have a screen, it'll show you where you can go to register, which is our VAM system.

So that's the easiest way to find where there is COVID vaccine available for you in the state of Virginia, actually anywhere in the country is vaccines.gov.

We do continue to provide testing for COVID-19.

I want to make sure everyone's aware UVA is doing it on Mondays and Tuesdays, Monday at the Church of Incarnation and Tuesday at Mount Zion First African Baptist Church.

The Health Department does it at Beaufort Middle School every Friday, and we will do all ages, as will UVA.

And there's a one at Mountain View Elementary on May the 10th that's also hosted by UVA.

There are other testing events that are in the surrounding localities if these don't work for you.

You can just go to our website and click on COVID testing and it'll bring all of them up.

And just as a reminder, these are all free.

There's no charge for any of these tests.

Our hotline number is here 9726261.

I just want to do a big shout out to our hotline staff who have really worked very, very hard over the last year.

And you can see that the Blue Ridge Health District since December has had the highest per capita call volume across the state, really.

We actually beat out Virginia's hotline as well.

So I'm delighted that people feel comfortable calling the health department, that we're able to help so many individuals get their COVID questions answered.

And I just want to give a big shout out and thanks to our hotline staff who really, really work hard.

So kudos to them.

And then finally, I'll end on our usual slide.

Although the case numbers have diminished, it is still important that we maintain, particularly inside in areas where there might be a crowd of people, to continue to wear your mask indoors, to continue to try and keep that six foot distance indoors.

If you haven't downloaded COVID-wise, you can still do that.

It's still available.

Thank you.

That's a lot.

It's just very overwhelming.

Definitely on the everyone please get vaccinated.

Dr. Bombs, do we have any new data?

Yeah, the study for the 12 to 16 year old or 12 to 15 year old has been done.

And so really what we're waiting on is the manufacturers to submit for their emergency use authorization.

We think it'll be by early summer and we are already planning on how to vaccinate those adolescents so that they can be fully immunized before school starts again next year.

We are working with pediatricians and we are encouraging parents to come.

We will vaccinate 16 and 17 year olds at any of our vaccination events.

We just need the parents to sign the consent form and we need some parent like figure to bring that adolescent

to the vaccination event.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

So I have probably just one question and then a comment.

For individuals who have been positive, I just wanted you to cover that.

Yeah, individuals who have had COVID should get vaccinated.

The last CDC recommendation that I saw was that they only needed to get one of the Pfizer and Moderna, and they don't need to get it immediately.

They have some immunity because they had COVID-19.

Okay and

I guess my combination statement question just thinking about the racial disparities that were presented and as we're opening back up, what does that outreach

and what is, I guess, the conversations around safety measures, because there has to be a level of acceptance for medical professionals, so the scientists, doctors and the government of understanding why that hesitancy is there.

So I'm not, for what, the way those numbers look, I don't, I'm not hearing radio, TV, those type of things, you know, like how do we still make sure that we protect people who may, I'm thinking about undocumented, they are less likely, like what are we doing to make sure that they can get a test and not give their, you know, confidential information, you

and as a member of the black community I am very aware of all of the concerns about whether vaccine is safe whether they're giving you the right thing those type of things and you know kind of weighing your chances and this is not the only time this has happened we've just never been in a pandemic before and so there's lots of concern about how to keep those numbers

from spiking again, but, you know, ultimately lowering.

Ibram Kendi wrote a great piece over the weekend in the Atlantic talking about, you know, not enough targeted efforts in 2020 for these, you know, across the country and what that has led to.

Yeah, so across the state of Virginia, there are a number of efforts that are ongoing.

The state has hired two different consulting groups that are working on lots of outreach.

They will bring in individuals or hire individuals in the community to assist in outreach.

And they've focused on larger population areas to start with, but

But they they do move across the state and are able to come in to any community here locally.

In addition to the community health worker outreach that I mentioned earlier,

We're in the process of trying to hire three additional community health workers that will be focused on outreach to both the Black and the Latinx community to really try and help overcome that vaccine hesitancy.

And then we have a great partnership with UVA and there are lots of UVA physicians who are Black or Latino who are reaching out to communities to help

overcome some of that hesitancy.

We know from a variety of research and focus groups that the public really trusts their own position.

And so really trying to get the physicians on board and reaching out to their patient population and using trusted physicians in the community to relay those messages can be very powerful.

And so we're using that as an outreach strategy.

And then Sentara, Martha Jefferson, UVA, the African American Pastors Association, Pastors Council are still continuing to do vaccination events that are really focused on communities of color, areas where people can get all of their questions answered, can get vaccinated in an environment that is safe and supportive for them.

So there are other efforts besides the public service announcement ongoing right now.

It is challenging and we will begin to use other methods as we move forward into the summer.

We are in the process of

having a mobile unit donated to the health department through the assistance of some foundation donors in our area and the help of Albemarle County in purchasing the unit and donating it to us.

when that arrives that will allow us to go out and focus on census tracts that have low vaccination areas their low vaccination rates it will also allow us to go to places like churches and be available for vaccination after a Sunday sermon if that can be arranged with the religious leaders of those organizations so we have other

strategies that we are beginning to develop.

Thank you.

Are there any other questions, comments?

All right.

Well, thank you for joining us.

Have a good evening.

So I'll start with the first one.

So the first one is for bike month.

Whereas bicycling is a healthy, clean, efficient and affordable mode of transportation and recreation used by thousands of citizens and residents of all ages throughout our great commonwealth and city.

And whereas commuting by bicycle helps alleviate traffic congestion and reduce pollution associated with vehicular travel and other significant mental and physical health benefits to bicyclists themselves.

And whereas our commonwealth is the host to many bicycling events,

including competitive races, sightseeing tours, charitable fundraisers and recreational rides which in total create a very real economic impact and whereas Charlottesville has been named the Silver Level Bicycle Friendly Community by the League of American Bicyclists and in an effort to improve upon this designation will continue to recognize the importance of bicycling and urban and community planning and development.

and whereas bike month allows bicyclists to increase awareness of their mode emphasizing proper safety precaution for bicyclists and motorists while sharing our roadways and to promote the benefits of bicycling through organized activities such as bike to school day and bike to work day.

Now and therefore be it resolved that I, Nikuyah Walker, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville on behalf of the City Council do hereby recognize the month of May 2021 as National Bike Month and encourage all of those to support bicycling to participate in events planned and urge all road users to share the road safely.

Was there anybody here to speak about Bike Month?

or comment?

No?

Next up, we have the Community Action Month.

Whereas Community Action connects individuals and families to approaches that help them succeed and promotes community-wide solutions to challenges throughout our cities, suburbs, and rural areas.

And whereas Community Action builds and promotes economic stability as an essential aspect of enabling and enhancing stronger communities, which in turn promotes

self-sufficiency, ensuring that all Americans can live in dignity.

And whereas community action connects millions of children and families to greater opportunities, transforming their lives and making our communities and making our communities and our nation stronger.

And whereas community action serves 99% of America's counties in rural suburban and urban communities,

offering life-changing services that create pathways to prosperity by connecting families to job training, affordable housing, utility assistance for seniors, promoting community-wide solutions and sharing expertise.

And whereas community actions will continue

to implement innovative programs that create a greater chance of success for everyone.

We'll continue to focus on a broader range of community challenges and ignite economic growth to ensure all families can benefit and will continue to be a voice for the disenfranchised.

Now, therefore, be a result that I, Nikuyah Walker, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, on behalf of the City Council, do hereby proclaim Community Action Month in recognition of the hard work

and dedication of all Charlottesville community action agencies.

Michael, can you hear us?

Yes, can you hear me?

Oh, we can.

I just want to say thank you so much for allowing our proclamation to be passed.

All right.

Next up, we have the 52nd Annual Professional Municipal Clerks Week, which is May 2nd through May 8th, 2021.

Whereas the office of professional municipal clerk, a time honored and vital part of local government exists throughout the world.

And whereas the office of the professional municipal clerk is the oldest among public servants.

And whereas the office of professional municipal clerks provide a professional link between citizens, the local governing body and agencies of government at other levels.

and whereas professional municipal clerks have pledged to be mindful of their neutrality and impartiality, rendering equal service to all, whereas the professional municipal clerk serves as an information center on functions of local government and community, whereas professional municipal clerks continually strive to improve the administration of the affairs of the Office of Professional Municipal Clerks through the participation

and education program seminar, workshops and annual meetings of their state provincial counties and international organizations, whereas it is the most appropriate that we recognize the accomplishment of the Office of the Professional Municipal Clerk, whereas Clerk Keena Thomas served as president of the Virginia Municipal Clerk Association from April 23rd, 2020 through April 22nd, 2021

and currently serves as immediate past president.

Now, therefore, I, Nikuyah Walker, mayor of the city of Charlottesville on behalf of the city council, do hereby recognize the week of May 2nd through May 8th, 2021,

I guess that's me.

I'll just say thank you.

I think the proclamation pretty much summed it up.

It was an incredibly tough year to be a president for a statewide association.

that we're used to being able to see each other at least twice a year and do our professional training and recognition.

So I want to thank my clerks statewide and I want to thank council, thank our city staff, my office staff, Maxelia Robinson and April Rayburg.

We are usually behind the scenes on everything.

So we don't ask for recognition, but it's nice to get it.

Thank you.

Oh, go ahead.

Yeah, let me just echo all that as well and say thank you.

It really is the behind the scenes work that makes all of this possible and functional for us on council in the community.

I think a lot of folks may not realize just how many emails you get from us, how many emails you send to us every day.

It's really great to have that support.

Yeah, and again, thanks.

Yeah, you know, it's been a different year with us not being and, you know, being able to meet in person.

And so I know that helped a little bit for you all, but probably not much because you just picked it up on other ends.

But

You know, during a traditional year, everything from, you know, keeping getting us ready for meetings to all of the data that you all have to keep into the many things that we require just to be kept on track.

and just to be in the know for what we need to be able to do our work well.

So clearly we would not function as well without the way you run the office.

So really appreciate your and always being

you know there to answer questions when we have them so it's definitely a work that I have you know wonder all the time how everything gets done and I know you spend a lot of nights and weekends and extra time you know doing the work and April has been

you know very attentive since she's been there and Max of course has been very helpful the you know doing her entire tenure and so I really appreciate that the work that you all do.

Thank you.

All right.

I miss that when we are in council chambers and I can hand these out and just say the end.

All right, the next up is the National Emergency Medical Services Week, which will be May 16th through the 22nd, 2021.

Whereas May has been designated as Emergency Medical Services EMS Week, Emergency Medical Services is a vital public service and the health, safety and wellbeing of the citizens of the city of Charlottesville is essential to the happiness and wellbeing of our city.

and whereas the members of the Charlottesville Fire Department are ready to provide professional life savings care and compassion to those in need 24 hours a day, seven days a week and whereas EMS providers are prepared to respond to any crisis

with pre-hospital assessments, trauma and medical care.

They do this with their specialized knowledge, experience and leadership to reduce the severity of injuries and save lives.

And whereas EMS providers respond faithfully to all types of crises under incredible pressure that can take an emotional and physical toll, they need to

they put the needs of their fellow citizens and community first and whereas EMS providers whether career or volunteer engage in thousands of hours of specialized training and continuing education to enhance their life-saving skills and whereas it is appropriate to recognize the value and accomplishments of the emergency medical services providers by designating emergency medical services week

Now, therefore, be a resolve that I, Nikiah Walker, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, on behalf of the Council of the City of Charlottesville, in recognition of this event, do hereby proclaim the week of May 16th through 22nd, 2021, as Emergency Medical Services EMS Week in Charlottesville, Virginia, thereby encouraging the community to observe this week with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.

Is there anybody here to want to make some comments on this one?

I would just like to say thank you to any of our emergency services personnel who are listening either now or maybe later.

I know my mother was an emergency room nurse for many years and occasionally had to ride in the ambulance transporting from Waynesboro to Charlottesville and

I myself has had make use of our EMS services at one point when I was in a bad car accident when I was younger and you don't realize how much we need you until we need you.

And so we are grateful for all you do.

I do know that it can take a toll on people.

All right.

Next up, we have a proclamation honoring Joy Johnson upon receiving the 2021 Cushing Doebear Lifetime Service Award by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Whereas Joy Amirlis Johnson is a longtime resident of Charlottesville and a dedicated advocate for public and low income housing residents.

And whereas Joy co-founded the Public Housing Association

residents far in 1998 and currently serves as chair of the far board of directors.

And whereas joy's leadership far has become a nationally recognized model for resident advocacy and engagement with a significant track record

of accomplishments and influencing policy outcomes by educating residents about their rights and involving residents in the decisions that affect their lives.

And whereas far successful efforts to re engage residents in the revitalization of public housing communities in Charlottesville through the resident directed positive vision for redevelopment has resulted in an unprecedented level of resident participation

and influence in the transformation of South First Street, Crescent Halls and conversations about future redevelopment projects.

And whereas Joy also served for many years in a critical community outreach role with the West Haven Nursing Clinic, ensuring access to essential healthcare services for low income households and organizing

the annual West Haven Community Day and other neighborhood programs and activities.

And whereas Joy has served on numerous local and national boards and commissions consistently bringing an unparalleled vision of passion and social justice and racial equity to her work.

And whereas Joy is a proud mother, grandmother and a beloved friend to many,

and whereas Joy is an inspiration to many community members who are embarking on their journey of activism to improve the lives of others and whereas Joy through her unwavering perseverance to housing justice over the past 20 years is an example of the value that self-sacrifice brings to the lives of others and whereas for all her tremendous achievements

As a community leader and housing advocate, Joy was honored with the prestigious Cushing Doebear Lifetime Service Award by the National Low Income Housing Coalition on April 28, 2021.

Now be it resolved that I, Nikuyah Walker, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, on behalf of the Charlottesville City Council, hereby commend Joy Johnson upon receiving the well-deserved Cushing Dober Lifetime Service Award and thank Joy for her many years of leadership and advocacy.

be it further resolved that in honor of her many contributions and accomplishments, the City of Charlottesville City Council hereby declares May 3rd, 2021 to be Joy Johnson Day in the City of Charlottesville.

Go ahead.

You want me to say something?

Turn it over to you.

Well, I just want to, I just want to, I mean, like, I can't believe it.

It is just like the clerk said, organizing around affordable housing and organizing for low-income residents can be a thankless job.

And so just to have just to be able to say thank you, you know, again, like I said, is like a million dollars.

But anyway, there is a lot of people that showed us our ride on.

And there's a lot of people who helped.

and there's a lot of people, lots of people, some of them is alive, some of them is still here, some of them pass through, some of them may come back, I don't know, but it's the one thing that, and I have gotten on so many of y'all City Council's nerve, thank you for allowing me to get on your nerve, love you all, that is what organizers is about, but anyway, there is...

I just want to say thank you because a lot of times your work go without people are dead when they're celebrating them.

And I'm just glad that my celebration is coming while I'm alive.

Yes.

Are there any other comments?

I just want to say thank you, Ms.

Johnson.

You've been an inspiration to me.

watching you over the years, bringing a voice forward that desperately needed to be heard and never stopping.

I mean, we're having change now.

And not only that, it's resident-led.

And people are going to have a voice in where they live.

It's not going to be dictated to them.

And it's not going to be 15 pipes over your head in your bedroom.

and you have a big part in that and I am grateful for all you have done to make our city a better place.

I'll just add Joy even when you're getting on my nerves I learned something from you.

Just echo what others have said and say thank you and keep the pressure up on us.

And as you already know very well, I think the work you've done has changed the city.

And there are people not just from across Virginia, but across the entire country.

who are looking at the work that you and FAR have done as a model for how can we start to do that in our community, too.

And we've already seen how much change there is, and I don't think it's over yet.

You're welcome.

And echoing the things, I just want to just acknowledge, like, just congratulations for this national recognition.

It's just such a great honor, and I'm really, really proud of you for that.

And just

appreciate the work that you've done to our community.

Thank you, Heather.

And I just want to say that it's a case, Sheila Crowley said that what we're doing in Charlottesville is now a case study.

Yeah.

And I'm so happy that you can, you know, that you're here to experience being celebrated, especially at a national level where you served

for almost a decade.

And so they know the value that you bring to the table.

But I was sitting here thinking, West Haven, early 90s, you know, once Gwen moved over there, that's when I started spending the most significant time with you.

And I was there quite a bit when I was 15 and, you know, confused and crazy.

and all of that.

And watching you fight over the years and not give up no matter what came your way.

And when people try to discourage you from doing this work, when they try to just throw your name out there and

As if you were benefiting in some way that you weren't.

And no matter what, you kept fighting for not only you, but for the broader community.

Because, you know, I know you could have left this a long time ago, been in a much better personal position, but you never...

you know kind of took any of those offers and you stayed consistent and kept fighting for the community and watching the way you love your family and that no matter what they go through or what they do and even when

You may not be happy about their choices.

You still stay by them and love them.

And so it's just been, you know, just amazing to just watch you over a long time, right?

And so I appreciate you so much.

Yeah, I'm crying.

So yeah, so you keep doing, I know you will, but yeah.

You know, you're an inspiration to all of us.

And I'm glad that everyone else was able to see that on a larger platform.

Thank you.

All right, let's see.

All right, next up we have the Consent Agenda.

Ms.

Consent Agenda 1.

Minutes.

March 15, Work Session.

March 17, Community Budget Forum.

March 23, Special Meeting.

March 23, Work Session.

Two, Appropriation, Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, Coronavirus Emergency Supplement Funding, Fiscal Year 2021, $50,000.

Second reading.

Three, Appropriation, Firehouse Subs Public Safety Grant, $26,971.10.

Second reading.

Four, Appropriation, House Bill 5005, Item

408, number 1C, Public Safety and Homeland Security, Department of Criminal Justice Services, Local Police Department funding, $67,913, second reading, five, appropriation, supplemental appropriation of state operational funding for Charlottesville area transit, $265,025, first of two readings, six, appropriation,

Virginia Department of Education, Special Nutrition Program, Child and Adult Care Food Program, $25,000, first of two readings.

Seven, Appropriation, CARES Act, Round 2 Funding for Utility Customer Bill Arrearage Assistance, $15,766.58, first of two readings.

Eight, Resolution, Budget Amendment for FY 2021-2022, Community Development Block Grant and Home Program Allocations, one reading Nine, Resolution, Safe Routes to Schools, Non-Infrastructure Grant Application, one reading

10, resolution authorizing publication of notice of City Council's intention to remove, relocate, contextualize, or cover statues of Confederate Generals Lee and Jackson currently located within city parks and to hold a public hearing thereon.

One reading.

11, ordinance approving city space as central absentee precinct for the June 8th, 2021 primary election, one reading.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Walker.

If you'd like to address counsel on one of those items, just click the raise hand icon in the zoom webinar.

Each person will have up to three minutes.

Please introduce yourself and tell us where you live.

Thank you.

Some folks did sign up in advance to talk about statues and Mayor Walker, they may be wanting to do that at this juncture.

Okay.

First up is Kristen Zakas.

Kristen, you're on with council.

Thank you.

The recent state Supreme Court ruling allowing Charlottesville to remove its statues of Confederate generals was of course a welcome and long anticipated judgment and I believe gives the city the right to remove the statues immediately.

However, I understand that you plan to follow the process called for in the 2020 legislation allowing all Virginia localities to move such monuments.

So I'm speaking, I must say that I have not read your announcement of the public hearing, and I want to make sure that you work at all due speed.

So I'm urging you to announce that the public hearing tonight for 30 days from now, June 2nd, and that at the end of the public hearing on that day that you immediately vote to remove the statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson from our public spaces.

and begin the 30-day waiting period required by that legislation.

I urge you to plan the actual physical removal of both statues on the 30th day after the decision to remove them, so no later than July 3rd.

Speed is of the essence.

This community has waited for four years to remove these statues and has seen the harm that they continue to bring to our community with their message of white supremacy.

They should not be allowed to convey that message on our behalf one minute longer than necessary.

If this timeline is held to the statues can be out of our town well before the fourth anniversary of the August 2017 violence that centered around them.

You may hear a lot of ideas about what to do with the statues and some of those ideas may take time to implement.

I urge you to remove them whether or not their final disposition has yet been determined.

They can be put in storage for as long as the city needs to find an appropriate place for them Please be aware that allowing them to be transported for public display in another community is not an appropriate place Our moral toxic waste cannot be exported to do its damage elsewhere even if such an arrangement would save our city money

The recent state Supreme Court ruling in the city's favor returned $365,000 to the city and its first use should be to ensure proper disposition of these monuments.

As you begin to think about positive ways to dispose of these statues over the coming months, I would urge you to think outside the box.

What about melting down the bronze into ingots and making them available to artists to create works of racial healing and justice?

What about an internment to lay to rest the pernicious mythology of the lost cause of the Confederacy?

I'm sure you'll hear many good ideas and I hope you'll be open to considering them.

The 2020 legislation expressly says that final disposition of the statues rests in the hands of city council alone, regardless of what others may want you to do.

I urge you to be brave and steadfast and remove them from our city as quickly as possible.

Mayor Walker, next up is Larisha Hawkins.

Larisha, you're on with council.

Thank you.

I wanted to talk also about statue removal today.

And as a political science professor at the University of Virginia and one who also teaches religion, I wanted to talk a little bit about politics and symbols.

All politics is local, but we might say that all Virginia politics are national.

As the 1619 Project indicates, it's not an overstatement to locate Virginia as the node, the spoke, and the spark from which the republic was wrought.

In a real sense, all who reside in this country are Virginians by proxy.

This is the primordial soup from which we slog, yes, slog, towards rights, recognition, and the like.

My very own story begins here.

on Basie Mountain, some of you know it as Bryce Mountain Resort, where my enslaved ancestors lived as chattel, three-fifths of persons under law, yet fully human.

I am because they were.

And some 400 years after they survived the wake of several oceans because they came from Madagascar, here I am teaching at Massa Jethersons University.

The political may be local and national, but it's always personal.

And this place is packed with memories and histories, some of which have been covered over, whitewashed, suppressed, stifled, and in some cases, erected as statues and symbols to lost causes.

One of the histories that has been rewritten is very much that history of the Lost Cause and the Civil War and the symbols of

of the Lost Cause that these statues represent, represent in my mind something akin to Superfund sites that one of the reasons that the City Council needs to act with force and with rapidity, as my colleague Kristen just mentioned, is that this is really a scar on not only Virginia society, but to the extent that we represent

so much about the genesis of so-called liberty, that an abatement has to occur in the same way Superfund sites are cleared and abated.

Some of the slog of American history here needs to be remediated immediately, including these statues.

They're an errant framing of history, one that I have to teach against in all of my classes, again, at one of the top and most elite public universities in the country.

One that venerates a white supremacist narrative of history, one of secessionist terrorist traitors, one that we know about, but fail to comprehend the harm.

And I would commend, as Kristen Zaykos just did, it's in your purview to choose city council.

not to allow these statues to be whisked away to the last capital of the Confederacy Danville down the road and re-erected but to dispense with the statues in a way that allows for restorative reparative justice allowing us to utilize these icons to the wrong kinds of things

to actually make justice come to light in Charlottesville, where the chickens came home to roost in 2016.

Thank you, Dr. Hawkins.

And we have an obligation to reset the button.

Thank you.

Next up is Callie Gaston.

Callie, you're on with Council.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for hearing me this evening.

I want to start with a paraphrase of a quote from Joseph Campbell.

He says that the first law is actually that we are all one.

And there is nothing I can think of in Charlottesville that communicates that less than these statues.

It is actually great damage that has been done to our community by holding space for messengers who say that we are not all one, that in fact half the population doesn't really count.

And that is something that has to be changed.

I'm speaking this evening

in part as a business owner and property owner in north downtown about two blocks from the statue and I am speaking with permission also for my partners in the ownership of this property Jessica Yor and Robin Bernhardt

And our position as business owners two blocks from the statue is it's not good for Charlottesville on any level.

We're asking that the statue be removed as soon as is allowable by law.

It appears that could be as early as July, and we're optimistic, but as a body, you, the council, will see the wisdom of acting with alacrity.

Not only are we eager for this monument to be gone from our neighborhood, we are hopeful that council will understand that it will be a poisonous piece of propaganda if moved to any other location.

There are so many possibilities to consider, and even if the final disposition is not decided by the time the two 30-day waiting periods are over, we advocate for removing it to storage while the plan is finalized.

Lastly, we are envisioning something transformational as the next purpose for the bronze, something that will reflect our entire community, that will expand the history told by and about Charlottesville and that will promote healing.

Next up is Don Gathers.

Don, go ahead.

Good evening, counsel.

Some five years ago now, the counseling panel, the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race Memorial Public Spaces to do a job.

And through the diligence and hard work and determination of the non-members of that board, we've done our job.

And now we call on council to say it's time for you to do yours.

It's time for those statues to go with all expedient speed.

And if they cannot be gone expeditiously, then they do need to be covered.

They need to be put in storage.

For 100 years, some 100 years now, those statues have served their purpose.

They exemplified slavery, oppression, and the furtherance of Jim Crow.

It's time that we hide these things now.

And they are more than just symbols.

We've seen that they serve as motivations for hate.

And please make no mistake about it, they do possess some eerie mythical power that inspires hatred and evil among a warped brainwashed segment of our society.

The cost of continuing to keep these bastions of hate far outweighs the cost of properly

getting them permanently out of the public's view.

Please do not allow them to be placed on open display in another community and cause similar damage and devastation as they have caused here.

I urge you, I implore you, I beg of you, let us do something with these things as quickly and as purposely minded as possible.

They need to be removed and until such time that they can be, they need to be taken out of the public's view.

Mayor Walker, we have another two hands raised.

First up is Lena Saville, who will be followed by Adrienne Dent.

Hello, Council.

I'm also here to talk to you about the Confederate statues.

We all know why they were erected and what their original purpose was.

Now we have to decide what to do with them.

and we have the responsibility to dispose of them properly.

We can't allow that message to be exported to other communities.

They shouldn't be allowed to continue to serve that same terrible purpose in some other community, which is already happening with some other statues that have been removed in other locations.

These monuments to the Confederacy should not be shifted around We need a permanent solution that doesn't dump our toxic waste on another community Once out of our control, anything could happen with them It is our responsibility that we dispose of them in such a way that they don't continue to cause harm This is our chance to make visible change We need to melt them down

While the raw materials have value, what they've been turned into are symbols that represent some of the worst in humanity.

They need to be returned to raw materials and transformed into something else, something symbolizing people caring for each other, taking care of each other, of the possibility of what we can be.

They need to be melted down and transformed as our culture needs to transform.

They should be removed from public view as soon as possible and they should be disposed of when there's a plan to melt them down.

Next up is Adrian Dent.

Adrian, you're on with the council.

First, I wanted to say happy Joy Johnson Day to everyone.

and I'll be echoing similar themes in what I'm going to share which is a follow-up to an email sent to each of you.

I ask you to take action tonight by issuing notice of a public hearing to initiate the final 30-day countdown preceding the removal of Lee and Jackson from our parks.

Thank you in advance for your commitment towards stewarding this process begun by council in 2017, a process whose harm further compounded and deepened the inherent disturbance of these statues in our community.

Let us honor the fourth anniversary of August 2017 in the absence of these offending symbols with concrete movement toward healing the landscape of this city.

The removal of the statues must be expeditious.

Do not allow the disposal of this abhorrent white supremacist propaganda to perpetuate the lost cause narrative.

Commit only to the conscientious disposal of monuments.

As custodians of these monuments erected by this city, you have a moral obligation to ensure that any transfer does not inadvertently dump the toxic charge of white supremacist propaganda elsewhere.

Instead, you must harness this opportunity to remove them from public view or to contextualize them and effectively, actively begin repair through the advancement of inclusive narratives or through a new visionary chapter.

Concerning the Lee Statute,

which possesses negligible artistic value, ask, how might its transformation be imaginatively driven from within this community?

Consider the possibility to literally and figuratively remold the legacy of this monument from problem to opportunity.

Many communities have addressed symbols of oppression by turning them into agents of repair and expressions of reclamation.

As you reconsider the financial aspects of next steps,

do not ignore or diminish the unmeasurable benefits of a community overseeing its own healing, its own transformation from monument casting shadows of pain and affliction to the ownership and authorship of a powerful and true story.

Let this community through the local government use its full agency in the disposition of these monuments

direct energy and focus toward the goals of prompt removal with moral integrity, constructive contextualization for active repair, and engage collective re-imagining and reclamation.

Mayor Walker, next up is Katrina Turner.

Katrina, you're on with council.

You've got three minutes.

Go ahead, Katrina.

Can you hear us?

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Okay.

Thank you, Katrina.

Sorry about that.

Okay, thank you.

So just before the next question, I just, if we could do number eight separately, I agree with the changes, but this was something that I didn't vote on, vote in favor for in the beginning.

So if we could just pull that out and do two separate.

Ms.

Thomas?

Mayor Walker?

Yes.

Vice Mayor McGill?

I'm sorry, I said yes and I had my finger on the little space bar and it didn't work.

Okay.

Yes.

And is there a motion for this?

No.

Vice Mayor McGill?

Yes.

Next up, we have the city manager's response to community matters.

Thank you, Mayor.

And while it wasn't mentioned earlier, just to say, and thank you for passing the consent agenda that included the Lee and Jackson statue movement.

Just a couple of notes.

There weren't any citizen requests at the last meeting, but just some informational items.

We did receive notice today from the American Rescue Plan from the Housing and Urban Development Funds of the Home Funds.

that the city of Charlottesville will be receiving $270,000 that we'll be able to spend on affordable housing programs within the city.

This is part of a regional grant of, I think, approximately $2.7 million.

I'm sorry, $2.4 million, of which our share is $272,000.

So we will be moving forward on that as we get the particulars of how we can spend that money and then issuing an RFP most likely for partners to help us to put these funds into affordable housing.

Along the lines of the American Rescue Funds, we are still waiting to get the total dollar amount that we will be receiving as well as the regulations.

We were hoping we would get some information today.

As a reminder,

The Congressional Act requires the first payment to be made on May 12th.

So there can't be very many more days where we're without the guidance from US Treasury on those funds.

Staff continues to work on the special events permits.

That's been a question for many of our citizens and especially when we're looking at public demonstrations and protest events.

Carefully monitoring the rights and abilities to do that, along with the safety while we, as Dr. Bonds was speaking earlier, still in COVID-type conditions.

But we're working on that as we begin to work ourselves out of the COVID conditions.

A reminder, staff is working on scheduling a work session for the CHAP and progressive tax discussions coming up in the fairly near future as well.

I am very happy to say that the Police Civilian Review Board, the position we advertised for Executive Director closed last Friday.

We had 64 applicants for that position from across the country and we'll spend the next two weeks working with the Civilian Review Board as well as staff members in the hiring process for that position.

Finally, just to let you know that on April 15th we did resume the quarterly City Managers Neighborhood Association meetings and those will be ongoing every quarter with the next meeting scheduled for July 15th.

Councilors, any questions, comments?

Thank you, Mayor Walker.

Sorry, my computer's being a little slow.

Okay.

If you'd like to get in line to address Council, please click the raise hand icon in the Zoom webinar.

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

We do have a number of people who signed up in advance.

The first eight people, some of which we've already heard from.

If you wanna speak about another issue, you can certainly raise your hand again.

Our first speaker tonight is Leonard Shopa.

Thank you.

My name is Len Schapa from 1439 Westwood Road.

I signed up to speak today about the draft land use plan that is informing the comprehensive planning process for the city.

This issue hasn't reached council yet, but I want to alert you council candidates and the public that the plan that is emerging from the process is asking a few neighborhoods to take on a disproportionate burden in adding residential density to the city.

I want to start by saying that I support undoing the legacy of exclusionary zoning.

I like the way the plan that is emerging asks all R1 areas to be open to adding accessory dwelling units.

This will result in building a large number of affordable apartments scattered throughout the city.

I also think it makes sense to upsell in some areas that now have large lots and setbacks and ranch homes so that when these homes are sold, a builder can build multiple

Vertical homes on smaller lots, townhouses, or a building with two to three apartments or condos.

On the map, this is called medium intensity residential and heights are limited to two and a half stories.

If anything, more parts of the city, including my own area, could be upzoned in this way.

Where I think the consultants seem to be going too far is in proposing and upzoning

of a few areas that are now R1 abruptly to the level of neighborhood mixed-use corridor.

I live in one of those areas, a couple of blocks of Rugby Avenue and a long block of Westwood Road, a couple blocks of Rose Hill near the stoplight, if you're familiar with the area.

These blocks are currently all single family homes.

There are about 50 homes in our neighborhood.

Many of them are modest homes valued at around $300,000 to $400,000, which is about as affordable as single family homes get in Charlottesville.

Some of us are renters, approximately one-third, but two-thirds are homeowners of modest means.

Among my neighbors are six nurses, several school teachers, a teacher's aide, a musician, librarian, and many retired people on fixed incomes.

One person recently bought a home who is a youth minister.

So these are not people with high salaries purchasing expensive homes.

They are the missing middle, and they are living in my neighborhood.

I'm concerned that if we up zone this area abruptly to allow four story buildings,

combining multiple lots to have big multi-unit complexes that are four stories hall, it will displace all of the people that I've been describing, and you will be losing the missing middle housing rather than creating more of it, which I know is the intention of our affordable housing strategy.

So I urge you to take a close look at these emerging plans and especially at this category.

And could someone, I was not, I did not have the clock going on my own.

Okay.

Mayor Walker, the next three speakers spoke during the consent agenda, but I'll just read their names for the record.

LaRisha Hawkins, Callie Gaston and Adrian Dent.

Our next speaker is Maddie Green.

Hi there.

Great.

My name is Maddie Green.

I'm a member of CRHA Board of Commissioners, and tonight I would like to highlight a report written by the Charlottesville Low Income Housing Coalition called Why Building More Market Rate Housing Will Not Solve Charlottesville's Housing Crisis.

First, CLICK would quickly like to congratulate Joy Johnson on this day and express so much appreciation for her dedication to our community.

and affordable housing.

In this report, one of our key findings was that in a market like Charlottesville's, when you increase the supply of higher priced units, it does not affect the entire market.

It only affects the prices of those particular types of units.

This means that constructing high income housing doesn't open up the market to low and moderate households.

Prices across the housing stock do not depreciate when the supply of market rate or luxury units increases.

This information is from the American Economic Review.

We have also cited many other research articles, historical documents, and other data at the end of our report.

Researchers have also been finding that increasing the housing supply changes neighborhoods permanently by two mechanisms.

First, the construction of new buildings actually increases demand.

And secondly, in more affordable neighborhoods, which are currently majority black in Charlottesville,

The land values and rents rise as the neighborhood becomes more desirable.

And these increases are long term effects.

We know this from living here.

Displacement of primarily low income

Black families is not news to Charlottesville.

Charlottesville has already shown a commitment to deep affordable housing.

However, we ask that this commitment must go further by ensuring a truly effective land use map and zoning overhaul, one that prioritizes racial equity.

We need strong protections to stop displacement in Black neighborhoods.

We also need an aggressive and mandatory inclusive zoning policy.

The consultants, which will speak after me, have proposed upzoning to allow larger developments in traditionally exclusive neighborhoods.

We asked them to go further and mandate including deeply affordable housing in future developments in these areas.

New development must prioritize deeply affordable housing.

Otherwise, it's going to be pouring gasoline on a fire of displacement, which has already worsened our city's racial inequality and is changing the culture of our community.

Modest solutions such as ADUs, as previously mentioned, and depending on the market to increase the supply are simply not strong enough.

They won't protect renters' rights.

They won't provide housing that is affordable to the residents who currently pay the highest costs for housing, and they won't prevent displacement of long-time residents.

We have sent the entire report to all of the counselors and have also posted it on the CLIC website.

Our next speaker will be Emily Dreyfus, who will be followed by Jennifer Koch.

Emily, you're on with council.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thanks, Brian.

Good evening, members of council and city manager.

I wanted to talk a little bit tonight about something the mayor mentioned a while back in one of her Facebook posts, which I thought was really, really important.

And it asked the question, what would a racially equitable Charlottesville look like?

and I think from my point of view it would look like those statues gone and not passed on somewhere else publicly.

It would look like a strong a very strong civilian review board and most importantly it would include a housing policy and

a commitment to deeply affordable housing that we haven't seen yet.

I do want to give a shout out to Joy Johnson.

I guess the short version of my talk today could be just listen to Joy and do what she tells you to do.

That would be the short version or what she asks you to do.

But I'd like to I'd like to focus in on how your policies can focus more on the legacy of racism and housing and housing and how that requires an aggressive aggressive remedies.

I think the council has been doing a really good job with affordable housing.

So I want to commend you.

I think it's one of the things that has been going really well in our post 2017 response.

But I want us to think about deeply affordable.

So it's not enough to allow accessory dwelling units and duplexes or triplexes.

We need to prioritize ambitious, inclusive zoning to build deeply affordable housing in historically exclusionary neighborhoods.

We need Yimbyism, yes, in my backyard from amongst our citizens to include exclusive neighborhoods, excuse me, to integrate exclusive neighborhoods and preservation of majority black neighborhoods to stop the injustice of displacement.

I would like to see Charlottesville in which the percentage of African American and Latinx folks in town increases.

from our current levels.

And to do that, it will require us to be engaged in deeply affordable housing.

For instance, when UVA promises 1,500 units, make sure that it's at the 50% AMI below.

Start thinking about a strike fund so that we can have affordable housing ownership plans and opportunities available for folks who want to move out of public housing and into ownership models.

So if you'll just think a little bit more deeply about affordable housing, I'd appreciate it.

Thank you.

And our fourth speaker will be Jennifer Koch.

Jennifer, you're on with counsel.

Jennifer L. Thanks, Brian.

Jennifer L. Thanks, everyone.

Well, I'm here to talk about something you've already heard a bit about tonight.

Jennifer L. But I'm Jenny Koch and I'm a consultant with RHI representing the Seville Plans Together consultant team.

Seville Plans Together team is working with the city's Department of Neighborhood Development Services on a process to update the city's comprehensive plan this will be followed by zoning rewrite it also included the affordable housing plan which as you likely recall was endorsed by the council in March of this year and includes many recommendations and strategies focused on

making sure that Charlottesville has a framework for affordable housing very soon we're going to be kicking off a community review process for updates to the comprehensive plan that includes

updates to the seven topic specific chapters as well as the draft future land use map we'll have a lot of conversations about the map you for you know we've heard tonight what some of those thoughts and concerns might be and I expect we'll talk more about those but there will be there are seven chapters of the plan and they'll be available they include you know housing land use transportation environment and other topics and

the goals and strategies described in those chapters supports the vision statements that we worked with the community to refine in the fall last fall 2020 and again they also support and include the recommendations from the affordable housing plan and it's important to know the land use map does not stand on its own it's a land use vision that needs to be tied to policies and priorities in terms of funding and requirements to make them really effective

So, as I noted, we're going to be kicking off this process.

There'll be many ways people can learn about and share their feedback through May.

If you go to seavillplantstogether.com, the Stay Involved page, you can register for upcoming webinars.

There are two of them, May 10th and 25th.

We also have several pop-up events.

We're glad we can do some in-person events with folks in a COVID safe way, including one on this coming Saturday and several the following weekend.

On the website, you can find out more information about those.

And we will be posting very soon the current iteration of the draft land use map and those chapters for review.

So we look forward to speaking with the community and with all of you about that.

And for council's benefit, all the events that she just described will be outlined in a press release going out tomorrow morning.

So we'll share that with the community.

Our next speaker who signed up in advance, Lena Saville, spoke during the consent agenda and is not on the webinar now.

So Mayor Walker, I'm going to go to the waiting list.

And the first person on that list is Stacy Miller.

Hi, thank you for your time and all your energy on these important issues.

I wanted to start by echoing the comments that Ms.

Green, Ms.

Dreyfus, and Mr. Heineke just stated.

I was not expecting to hear their reports and their point of views tonight, but they bear significantly on the action item that I'm referring to in particular this evening.

and that is the second to last action item that the council will be reviewing.

It's regarding a critical slope waiver for 915 6th Street Southeast.

I've lived three doors down from that property for the last 10 years.

The street is mostly occupied by lower income renters.

We're one of the few homeowners

in this little stretch of 6th Street.

And I've been concerned and speaking out about this proposal for this project since 2017.

And the critical slope waiver, of course, from an ecological standpoint, raises a lot of concerns for me, as I've noted in the letter that I forwarded to council earlier today.

And I will

I won't go in depth on the affordable housing issue because I think the former previous speakers really hit the nail on the head with that.

This this development is the I'm sorry, the lot on which this development is proposed is on a very steep slope.

Some people call it not a slope, but more of a cliff.

It's adjacent to the X property.

And

there are a lot of issues with with erosion as it is presently right there and the proposed 21 unit development that would be constructed according to the engineer was not intended to be affordable even with the the the generous definition currently used for quote unquote affordable and

I find this problematic for a number of reasons but I'll let that go given the comments that were previously made.

My main concern is simply the pedestrian access and safety and I included a couple photos of this point on 6th Street in the letter that I forwarded to you.

This was a letter back from November to the city planner and

There needs to be an investment in this part of what is considered the strategic investment area, which has seen no strategic anything on behalf of the city in the time that I've lived here.

And there are many families, children, people using this street as a way to get downtown.

and they're simply not safe doing so.

Walking, biking, there's a big gap in sidewalks.

I just urge council if you approve of this development to please prioritize pedestrian safety and make an investment on this part of Sixth Street in this investment area.

Mayor Walker, the next speaker who signed up in advance, Charles Feaster, I do not see on the webinar.

and then Kristin Zekas spoke previously and is no longer on the webinar.

So that's, we've had our first five speakers.

We have four hands raised right now.

If you're watching via Facebook or BoxCast, you can join the webinar by going to charlottesville.gov slash zoom and registering.

The first speaker will be Kate Fraley will be followed by Peter Krebs.

Kate, you're on with council.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak.

I'm Kate Fraley, and tonight I'm speaking for the People's Coalition.

Charlottesville is in a position to create a strong police civilian review board.

With all of the hard work done in the previous two years to build on, the ordinance for you to consider will soon be before you.

The timing is good.

Councillor McGill, Councillor Payne, and Councillor Snook, you all committed to supporting a strong CRB when you ran for council.

You didn't know at the time, however, how strong it could be.

The General Assembly created and passed a bill which the governor supported to allow localities to create broad oversight of police departments.

These broad powers include independent investigations, subpoena power,

disciplinary power and auditing power.

You have voted for a good sized budget for the CRB so that it can be staffed well to support the work of volunteers.

Thank you for that.

The civilians of Charlottesville deserve transparency and accountability in the CRB and in the CPD in the civilian review board and in the Charlottesville Police Department.

The Civilian Review Board will ensure the voices of Charlottesville civilians are listened to and acted upon.

Tonight, Councillor Miguel, Councillor Payne and Councillor Snook, I ask you on behalf of the People's Coalition to live up to your commitment to support a strong CRB knowing that it will be stronger and better than you have ever anticipated.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Peter Krebs.

He'll be followed by Rosia Parker.

Peter, you're on with Council.

Good evening, Council.

Can you hear me okay?

We can.

Yes.

Great.

Thank you, Nikiyah, for the proclamation about Bike Month.

Everything you said is right on the nose.

And my name is Peter Krebs.

I'm a Charlottesville resident, and I work for the Piedmont Environmental Council.

My organization is kicking off bike month with an event this Friday, a virtual event, this Friday at 5 p.m.

with Ralph Buehler and John Puker who are talking about their new book, Cycling for Sustainable Cities.

You can find out more information and sign up for that event at pecva.org slash events.

Cycling for Sustainable Cities this Friday.

It's also timely that you guys approved a grant application for the Safe Routes to School program.

Charlottesville has a lot of work to do in all three major areas, infrastructure, policy, and culture, but we do pretty well on the culture side, and that's largely attributable to the efforts of the staff.

Kyle does amazing work.

You probably are all familiar with it about helping families find their way to school without driving or even taking the bus, getting kids into fitness, and it goes on and on.

So love it and look forward to that grant hopefully being funded.

Lastly, I wanted to circle back to the other proclamation, which was about Ms.

Joy.

She so deserves it.

She's such an inspiration to everybody.

Lots of people talk about Ms.

Joy as a fighter, which is true.

But there's also this incredible sweetness about her that I think is so important.

And one of the ways she really leads is in the way she treats people.

And

It's all about respecting each other and at an individual level and then translating that up to policy.

So thank you, Ms.

Joy for everything.

And thank you, council.

Our next speaker is Rosia Parker, who will be followed by Tanisha Hudson.

Rosia, you're on with council.

Good afternoon, counsel.

I want to come to you this evening about the gang violence.

As a mother and a grandmother,

I've seen such tragedy to our youth for so long.

And I've been out here in these streets of Charlottesville not being from here for 16 years straight working with our youth.

It's very stagnant here, especially for our Black youth.

There's nothing here to be offered to them.

And as being an activist and a community leader, I have come

to Council and I've tried to come to different people in a community to be disregarded and pushed back of being an outsider not knowingly being from field.

I am a former gang leader myself.

and being out here in these streets, I had to put myself back 25 years and put myself in harm's way to really understand the new generation of the gang leadership.

And I've warned counsel and I've warned the police department and I've even been trying to be transparent

to the situations of what was to come to Charlottesville.

And by me being pushed away with the things that have become apparent in the governmental system because I fought for what was right.

And now that we're in a position that we have no safety,

The children are stagnant.

The children are being in harm's way.

We're being in school to prison pipeline.

The judicial system is running over top of these children.

What are we going to do about what's going on?

The children don't have nothing to do.

The children have, you know, they're going through so much.

They're traumatized.

They're going through so much traumatization of mentalness, abuse, and the governmental system, the social service system, the school system.

their parents are struggling.

The COVID is here.

What are we going to do?

That's why the kids are fighting in a manner that we're giving opportunities to people that are doing things to harm our children by putting these guns and allowing our children to

violate people's livelihood.

Do y'all know the first thing to initiation to a gang is killing someone?

That's a body.

Do you know we're about to have more and more bodies if y'all don't get yourself together and have a true understanding what this gang violence is?

And if it didn't prove to y'all over this weekend what is to come in West Haven, I do not know what to tell you.

But I'm trying to be more and more transparent.

So I wish somebody would reach out and really sit down and talk with me and have a true understanding so I can really tell y'all what's really going on.

I've been talking to the chief assistant chiefs and different people and they seem not to understand.

So somebody needs to do something because it's people's lives that are in state and being threatened in West Haven.

We have one more hand raised at the moment.

Next up is Tanisha Hudson.

Okay, so Tanisha Hudson, and I want to follow up on a few things.

I also want to follow up on what Ms.

Rosia just brought up, which is the gang violence here in Charlottesville.

As you all know, the security company that was once hired

is no longer monitoring West Haven, First Street and other communities that are housed under Charlottesville Redevelopment Housing Authority.

I have nothing against people doing the work in the street and community people in the community, police in the community.

But we're dealing with shootings that are happening all the time.

I get emails from people who live in these neighborhoods.

They don't want, they don't let their kids go outside.

They hate to even come home from work.

I mean, it's getting ridiculous at this point.

The police saying, police officers saying we want to do more, but we told we can't do more.

And I'm not saying I'm necessarily for police because I'm really not, but what else are you going to use to stop shootings at this point?

Well, how many more bodies do we have to, you know, how many bodies got to drop before somebody wakes up and realize that the police going to have to police, right?

And I think it's a way that we can do it where the police are involved, security agencies are involved, and then community policing is involved.

But people got to be willing to sit down at the table to talk together and work collectively together.

The last thing I want to touch on, because I don't have but a minute left.

Walt brought up something

earlier about racism and how this city has done Black people.

I need y'all to really work on how Black leaders are done in this city because it's starting to be a tad bit ridiculous at the level of racism that occurs on that level.

And then we expect you to treat community members different.

You don't even respect the people that you work beside.

I'm talking to the four counselors, Lloyd, Sena, Michael, and Heather.

Y'all don't respect people of color and opposition, period.

And this ain't just about the mayor.

So she don't get no cool points either.

But what I am saying is that when black people are doing something to better other black people and y'all four white people gang up on those individuals that want to do better, you have a problem that you need to work on.

Y'all have a little bit more racism inside your bloodline than you willing to admit to.

And black folks will never get anywhere with leaders like that.

So y'all need to learn to really listen to people who are bringing these issues to you.

And don't just listen, try to respond and put action towards the things that you ran your campaign on.

Okay.

I just wanted to come on the first topic that Ms.

Hudson was speaking to and I'd actually reached out to Mr. Boyles before the meeting just because I too am just struggling with, you know, how do we really kind of bridge the different resources and from PD to the community resources that we have

to really address this because many of the sentiments that she just stated I have heard from constituents from, you know, those communities and neighboring communities that are just very afraid and they don't let their children outside and there aren't a lot of options for other places to live obviously in these cases and so I'm not sure

what format we should kind of engage in this kind of conversation.

But I'm very interested because the sentiment has been that there's kind of because of the lack of trust between the community and the police department,

there, maybe we haven't been able to deliver the best service.

And I'm not saying it's anyone's fault, but there's just such a, just a divide right there.

I just, I agree with her that we need to figure out a way to bring these different stakeholder groups to the table, because it's not going to be something that CPD is going to solve on its own and not something that, you know, the very engaged grassroots groups are going to solve on their own, but it is certainly escalating.

I know some of you predicted that it would with this change in season and, um,

Well, I'll just add at the end, but anyone else?

So in terms of that, I know that Chief Brackney met with Mr. Sales today.

Again, we met maybe, I think, two weeks ago.

And they met again today.

And it sounded like things went well.

I was in the meeting two weeks ago, but I wasn't in the meeting today.

Rightfully so at this, you know, we've been having this conversation about what policing in this community looks like.

And now there's a call and there has been since, you know, last year, the call for increased policing

one of the first incidents I think the officers responded to last year there was a big community uproar about that and that was in the West Haven community but I think everyone is on the same page that none of and we've been there you know before that none of that matters it's how do you resolve it but that also looks a little different for everybody but they are trying to

work on a healthy approach to address some of the community needs.

And there's also the safety committee meeting.

I think the next one is on Tuesday.

for CRHA and that's a good and those discussions have been ongoing and Laura Goldblatt have been running those meetings every one of the board the commissioners every two weeks but still trying to find the just right balance

is what's been most challenging.

So Ms.

Parker, I sent you a text, I mean an email just saying what time you're available tomorrow.

So I will try to fit into a timeframe where you are available and give you a call to discuss it.

There's a lot going on.

I think everyone's fearful about where we are in this situation.

space and particularly for the youth who are growing up and witnessing this and they should neither have to witness increased gun violence in their community or the being fearful of officers who may not know how to protect them.

So it's again, like we were talking about with Dr. Bonds, it's just that double edged sword.

and it's just, you know, the whole setting is very unfortunate, but I think we don't look at the deeper, there's the surface level of what we need to do to kind of quell the violence that's happening right now and that, you know, we experienced last summer and it may, you know, it appears that it may be worse this year, hopefully not, I could speak that into existence, but I know that's what

some of the conversations have been.

But what people ask for a lot of times that we don't do a good job addressing is that what is here for our youth.

And that is something that is

Early on in the Imagining Just Ego groups, all of the members of the community who had experienced negative experience with the criminal justice system, that is what their focus has been.

And part of the shifting is for, you know, individuals to be able to have other positive experiences, and we don't do a good job pouring

into those avenues and building them up.

So we're essentially asking people to move through life when they feel very stagnant and that any sense of progress is stalled and that at some point we're going to get to this conversation about what does their

potential extracurriculum activities look like.

And it's been brought up in the past, even if you look at the investment the city made in the skate park, there hasn't been a similar structure invested in that serves the Black community.

And so it's just important to acknowledge that and part of us fixing this is going to be

able to give people outlets that are healthy, but also this is what poverty produces.

And so when we talk about 22% of our population living in poverty, needing the deeply affordable housing,

lack resources and don't necessarily haven't for generations been able to figure to see a vision that leads them out of this community.

I agree and I would just echo that

I remember when I was on the campaign trail, like just having alternative activities for our youth was a huge theme that I heard throughout the community.

And I'm certainly committed to doing my part to try to work with others to try to figure out how do we focus on that issue?

Because I think it is certainly a long game, but it's such an important component to all of this.

Just about the issue of the housing plan and land use that was brought up, it just called to mind

A few days ago, JR Fleming did an event at UVA that I saw his presentation and it called to mind some of the things that I think came up there of like looking at density as being necessary but not sufficient and that being a really important part of our land use map and our housing strategies.

You know, we're going to need density, particularly in wealthier neighborhoods with those legacies of redlining.

But as others said, that's clear, you know, that's necessary, but it's not going to get zero to 30 percent AMI.

It's not going to get those other levels.

And so anyway, at the event, you know, part of what was talked about is

what would it look like and what are the actual policies and powers that can get our plan to that area and the potential of the community land trust model and looking at really the fundamentals of land use and what our strategy is and in any case I think I think that's going to be a very important conversation for us over the next several months and I think you know

conversation will develop, but we may even need to look in our comprehensive plan or other things that really thinking about, like, what is a community wealth building strategy that incorporates co-ops, community development corporations, community land trusts, and expand that as a model of development and also opening up wealth building opportunities to people as well.

Because I certainly agree that if we just increase density and that's it, or we're not doing it in conjunction with other policies,

Any other?

And I think the statues, I hope just the, I didn't know if Mr. Bowles or Ms.

Robertson, if you all wanted to just let people

No, you know, just while we're following this path versus just removing them based on, you know, winning, you know, at the Supreme Court level.

So I didn't know if you all won because I think that's that's what I've been hearing the most.

If none of these.

You know, laws apply to you all in the first place.

Why do you all, why are you following them?

Since Ms.

Thank you.

I think that one thing that's important to remember is that while the Supreme Court's opinion very clearly stated that the law does not apply to Charlottesville statues, what people may not realize is that while that case was pending, the General Assembly

made some very drastic changes to the state enabling legislation and to the point where it while it continues to share some significant wording with the prior statute, it's a very different piece of legislation than the one that was the basis of the injunction that the Charlottesville Circuit Court entered.

And while

While the Supreme Court's opinion contains some favorable language, they made it clear at the beginning of their opinion that their opinion was based on the wording of the old statute.

So what we very much want to do is help city council put this thing on the quickest path forward under the timeline, but we have been

advising City Council that the quickest path forward is to follow the procedure that's outlined in the new law, and that will hopefully ensure that you don't get held up by any additional legal challenges.

So one thing that you will note is in the materials for the resolution and you'll also see it in the advertisement for the public hearing in June is that this same timeline is required for removal, relocation, contextualization or covering.

So no matter what which of those options you may wish to do

Thank you.

I just wanted to make sure I've been getting a lot of those questions and I know we've released information too, but just want to make sure that people were still clear on why maybe a process that they consider is just extending it two months too long.

Thank you.

I understand.

Counselors, any other comments?

No.

Okay.

So we'll come back at 850.

So we'll

take a 15 minute break.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of City Council.

Not here to talk about the budget tonight.

Instead, I'm here to talk about the bond resolution, which as Mayor Walker mentions, is requesting that you authorize an amount up to $18 million of new debt and up to $8 million in refunding debt.

As we've talked about before, this bond issue represents part of a funding plan that council previously approved and adopted as part of the capital improvement plan in both FY21 and prior years.

The table on page one of the memo in front of you provides a summary of the project categories and more detailed project descriptions can be found on page three.

Currently, in addition, the market is also very favorable to the possibility of refunding the remaining 2009 Build America or Babs bonds.

If the rates hold, we are expecting to be able to refund those and we anticipate an average net present value savings of about $864,000.

This would equate to approximately $90,000 debt service savings a year from FY22 to FY30.

We're going to be meeting with the rating agencies tomorrow.

We don't anticipate any issues or concerns that will impact our AAA bond rating.

As you may recall, there are only four cities in Virginia with AAA bond ratings.

Those are Charlottesville, Alexandria, Fairfax, and Virginia Beach.

If you include cities, there are only 12 cities and or counties in Virginia that are rated AAA.

So we are at the top of the stack for sure.

The sale is scheduled for the end of May, and closing is anticipated early June.

Interest rates, we keep saying this, but it is true, they are historically low.

And along with our AAA, we believe this to be a very good time to go to market.

Councilors, are there any questions?

Okay.

Thank you, Mayor Walker.

If you'd like to address counsel about the bond issue, please click the raise hand icon in the Zoom webinar.

On via telephone, you can press star nine.

All right, thank you.

We'll close the public hearing.

I have it, if you want.

I move the resolution authorizing the issuance of general obligation public improvement bonds to the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, and an aggregate principal amount not to exceed

I'll second it.

I do have one question.

So the refunding bonds were BABs, which were the taxable bonds.

And the deal with those were that the federal government gave a rebate on those to sort of make selling taxable bonds a little bit more attractive.

So at the time, I believe they're a little over 5%.

And with the rebate that we got back, they were about 3.6%.

So effectively cutting the interest rate in half, we hope.

Yeah, thanks.

Ms.

Vice Mayor McGill?

Yes.

Councillor Hill?

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you all.

That carries 5-0.

Tonight, I'm seeking approval of the Fiscal Year 2122 Community Development Block Grant and Home Investment Partnerships Program Funding Annual Action Plan

Hereafter referred to as CDBG and home.

This is the fourth annual action plan as part of the five year consolidated plan that was approved by Council in May 2018.

So as a quick overview, each year City of Charlottesville and the Regional Home Consortium assesses local housing and community development needs in the region and adopts a strategic plan to meet those needs.

Localities are then required to submit an annual action plan that details goals and specific activities to be carried out in the upcoming program year.

This fourth annual action plan ties back to the fifth five-year consolidated plan and it begins from July 1, 2021 and goes all the way to June 30, 2022.

So no funds can be spent until the start of the program year on July 1.

This document also serves as the city's application to CDBG funds and the TJPDC application for home funding, since they do administer and manage the home funds.

The annual action plan is due in its final form to HUD on May 15, 2021.

The draft action plan tonight that you have before you is a working document, so all comments that are received tonight from the public hearing

or data that Council recommends to include or comments that are received from TJPDC's public hearing on May 6 will all be incorporated into the annual action plan for Hudson Middle.

For the 2021 action plan, the projects listed were reviewed by the CDBG Home Task Force and the Strategic Action Team Subcommittee.

A funding recommendation was brought forth by Planning Commission approval in December 2020, followed by City Council approval on January 19, 2021.

The action plan also went through a 30-day public comment period from March 30th to April 30th, 2021.

And it was advertised in the newspaper, emailed out to city's community partners, neighborhood association leaders, and TJPDC housing directors and TJPDC community partners.

And again, all comments we received from them were incorporated into the annual action plan, as well as all questions were addressed that we received through that 30-day public comment period.

Again, in addition to the virtual public hearing that is held today, we'll have the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission public hearing on May 6.

That is also virtual.

All comments received tonight and on the 6th will be incorporated into the final version of the annual action plan.

This doesn't have any major budgetary impacts.

The home funds do have a mandatory grant required 25% city match, which comes from the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund.

and that comes out to be $21,144.22.

Thank you.

Any questions from Council?

All right.

Thank you, Mayor Walker.

If you'd like to address Council,

and you're in the Zoom webinar, click the raise hand icon to get in line to speak to the CDBG annual action plan item.

Okay.

So we'll close the public hearing.

I had a real quick question.

Are we comfortable with the capacity ability?

Yes, we do.

And I am happy to report that we did pass the HUD timeliness test the other day.

So we are good on that front.

The budget correction we did make today also does meet the organizational capacity issues.

Excellent.

Okay.

All right.

Ms.

Thomas?

Councillor Hill?

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

All right, next up, we have a resolution, special use permit for Lyndall Hall's 64 University Way Landowner Neighborhood Investment LLC.

Good evening, Carrie Rainey with Neighborhood Development Services.

Chris Henningsen of Henningsen-Kestner Architects, acting as agent of Neighborhood Investments, LLC, requests a special use permit at 64 University Way to increase residential density to 48 dwelling units per acre and to modify side setback requirements of Section 34.535A and parking standards of Section 34.972B6.

The existing historic building currently houses nine multifamily residentially dwelling units.

Approval of this request would allow 16 multifamily dwelling units.

The applicant has proposed eight one-bedroom units and eight two-bedroom units, which would result in 24 bedrooms in total.

The Planning Commission considered this application at their meeting on April 13th, 2021.

The discussion centered on

the side yard setback requirements of section 34 353 a the historic existing historic structure is non conforming due to the side yard setback requirement that at least one foot for every four feet in building height is provided for development of this density with a minimum 10 foot setback required.

The applicant has requested the setback the altered to be solely the 10 foot minimum as required to eliminate the non conformity of the existing structure.

The parking standards of Section 34 972 B6 were also discussed.

The proposed off-street parking area does not meet the required three-foot offset required for side and rear property lines.

Applicant has requested the setback to no minimum as allowed by Section 34 162 to permit the installation of the additional parking.

Additionally, the Planning Commission discussed the parking requirements of Section 34

984 and potential reduction allowances of Section 34985.

The Planning Commission discussed desiring to minimize parking on site.

The Commission discussed permitting a reduction in the required number of parking spaces due in part to the proximity of the University Transit Service bus stop nearby.

The Commission also discussed proposed bicycle parking spaces.

The applicant has proposed eight indoor bicycle parking spaces currently located within the basement and eight outdoor bicycle parking spaces to be provided on bicycle racks in front of the building.

The Planning Commission discussed the potential use of those proposed spaces and potential reductions allowed in off-site, excuse me, off-street vehicular parking

as allowed with lockable spaces.

The Commission also discussed the outdoor patio space.

The applicant has proposed a 500-square-foot patio to the south of the building.

The Commission discussed whether memorializing the patio space in the special use permit conditions was necessary.

Discussion also included this discussion on the location of the patio between two residential buildings with student housing and the importance of providing on-site gathering spaces for residents.

The Planning Commission held a joint public hearing with City Council at that April 13th meeting.

Two members of the public spoke at that time.

Concerns that were raised included the change to traffic due to the increase of students living on the street.

It was noted students sometimes drive the wrong way down University Way, which is a one-way street.

The community member also expressed concern that new residents would impact on-street parking availability.

The other community member noted concerns regarding student behavior

and indicated they had previously engaged with the University of Virginia on that behavior.

It was also noted that the property owner who is the applicant has a focus on student housing and there was concern that bicycle spaces may not be used by students.

The Planning Commission voted five to zero to recommend the application to be approved with modified conditions.

The conditions proposed by the Planning Commission are included in the resolution in the packet.

The applicant is in attendance and has prepared a presentation.

All right.

Thank you.

Any questions before the presentation?

All right.

Oh, great.

All right.

My name is Chris Henningsen.

I'm with Henningsen Kessner Architects, and we're representing Neighborhood Properties, who's the property owner.

If we could get the first slide up.

Oh, and I guess the second slide.

So Lindhall Apartments was built in 1915.

as a student apartment building at a time when most students lived in boarding houses where meals were provided.

So this building was kind of conceived as a hybrid boarding house.

It had 12 student apartments on the top three floors and then a actual commercial kitchen and dining room in the basement, which you can see on the next slide.

is a historic photo of that dining room.

At some point in the 30s, the building was converted to eliminate the dining room and provide kitchens in the units above.

So this dining room was converted into two more apartments and the apartments above were combined into three bedroom

plus 10 apartments.

So on the next slide, you can see the hallways still have the original four entrance doors to what would have been the original apartments.

And as you can see from the other photo, the building does need some TLC.

And this renovation is

going to be it's currently approved by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

And so everything is going to be done as a sensitive restoration to the building.

If we could get the next slide.

This is kind of the historic layout of the building.

On the upper left, you can see the basement, which had the commercial kitchen

and dining room.

And then you can see that the four or the three floors above had four units each.

The next slide shows the current configuration of the building.

The basement levels totally chopped up and has two apartments, storage area, and then the kitchen is still kind of intact, but is used just as storage.

The upper levels were combined and the top level has three apartments and the other levels have two apartments each.

So it's nine units in the current building.

The next slide shows our proposed layout and we're kind of

we'd like to return the building to its original four unit per floor arrangement which is gonna allow us to preserve as many of the interior walls and features as we possibly can while managing to get kitchens and bathrooms and all the units.

The basement we would just like to duplicate

the layout that we have on the upper floors so that we can stack plumbing and structural elements.

So the next slide is the current front of the building which it's very difficult to see the front of the building because there is those large cedar trees in front which we're planning on keeping.

The next slide is the proposed improvements, which is really just a complete restoration of the front of the building to get it as close to its 1915 condition as we can possibly get it.

The next slide shows the back of the building, which has these kind of ugly fire escapes.

And you can see from the picture that

The backyard is already mostly a paved parking lot, which we are, as part of the specially used permit, we're hoping to just expand and improve that a little bit so that we can get a couple more parking spaces in there.

The next slide shows what we're proposing for the rear of the building, which is replacing the fire escapes with

residents can use.

The next slide is the existing site plan, which shows the driveway and parking location.

And then our final slide is the proposed site plan, which shows a slight widening of the driveway, a little bit

more parking in the rear and then the proposed patio to the side of the building.

We're gonna be adding a complete sprinkler system to the building.

Okay.

I say nothing to do with the issue here.

So proposed is 24 bedrooms.

Currently I don't have the number of existing bedrooms on my fingertips so I'm trying to do the math in my head.

I thought it was a bigger number.

PC smoke coming out of my ear.

So 28 is, um, by right, you could get four, um, I mean, by right, you could get seven four-bedroom units into the building.

Okay, that's what it was.

So, yeah, so that's kind of the alternate, um, I, I hope

you approve the SUP but I think if it doesn't get approved it'll end up being a seven unit four bedroom which would be 28 bedrooms in the building which we're hoping not to do that I think the intent is that the four bedroom units are more attractive to undergrads

which is a little bit kind of a rowdier group.

Yeah, unfortunately, and that's that's why we don't really want to do that.

Getting it back to four units per floor allows us to keep pretty close to the original arrangement on the floor.

And I think to make a four bedroom unit work, you're going to have to take out more of the original fabric and

which is why we'd rather not do that.

I think it would probably, the configuration that we're proposing has been approved by the National Park Service and Department of Historic Resources.

I mean, I went around the building and I can tell you got your work cut out for you.

Yeah, thankfully, I don't actually have to like do the work.

If we're ready, I'm happy to make a motion.

Thought you were about to ask questions, Mayor.

Oh.

None for me.

I mean, I was at the Planning Commission meeting, and I know this SUP didn't trigger affordable housing requirements and other things in that vein.

All right.

Any other questions, comments?

I move the adoption of the resolution included in our agenda materials granting the special use permit within SP21-0003.

Second the motion.

Councillor Hill.

Yes.

All right.

Thank you.

That carries 5-0.

Good evening.

Carrie Rennie with Neighborhood Development Services again.

Justin Chimp of SHIP Engineering on behalf of RANX LLC is requesting a waiver from the Critical Slope Ordinance of the City Code to allow for construction of a development with 21 multifamily residential units in a three-story building fronting on 6th Street Southeast.

Improvements specific to areas where Critical Slopes would be impacted should the waiver be approved are shown on the Critical Slopes exhibit and include portions of the building, parking lot access via Rayon Street,

sidewalks, retaining walls, and the bicycle parking area.

The planning commission considered this application at their meeting on April 13th, 2021.

The discussion centered on the differences in this application and the previous critical slope waiver application denied by city council in 2019.

Their current application proposes disturbance to 32.5% of the onsite critical slopes, while the previous application proposed disturbance to 84% of the onsite critical slopes.

The previous application included a second building adjacent to the frontage on 2nd Street Southeast, the majority of which includes critical slopes.

The Planning Commission also discussed vehicular access to the property and required off-street parking.

The Commission discussed potential reductions to parking space requirements, shared parking opportunities, reduced buffers, and sidewalk removal to provide a potential reduction to the impacts to the critical slopes.

Planning Commission also discussed the possibility to utilize the adjacent alley connecting 6th Street Southeast to Rayon Street to provide vehicular access to the site.

The Planning Commission discussed the applicant's description of the western slope as the natural slope and the northern slope as man-made.

The Commission asked staff for clarification on whether modifications to the northern slope as requested would impact the western slope.

Staff clarified modifications to the northern slope would not impact the western slope

However, drainage from the project area could impact those slopes.

The conditions proposed by staff serve to provide additional production for both slopes.

The current applications lack of clarity regarding construction sequencing and erosion and sediment control measures was also discussed.

The Planning Commission discussed the conditions proposed by staff to minimize impacts of construction on the critical slopes.

The Commission also discussed the potential to save mature trees within the limits of disturbance.

The applicant

discussed the difficulty in maintaining mature tree health when nearby land is disturbed by construction.

The conditions originally proposed by staff required replanting of trees removed from the critical slope area at a ratio of three to one with locally native trees to provide habitat rehabilitation.

One member of the public spoke on the application at the April 13th meeting.

The community member asked for clarification on proposed on-site parking.

which is proposed to be a surface parking lot.

The community member also noted concern with the proposed parking lots location on a hill and the difficulty of parking cars on a hill.

Two community members provided comments to the Planning Commission and City Council via email.

Noted concerns included the impacts to neighborhood traffic and parking patterns, the existing pedestrian network, affordability, proposed residential density, and potential alley use by residents of the proposed development.

The Planning Commission voted five to zero to recommend the application be approved, which conditions as proposed by staff.

These conditions are included in the resolution included in the packet.

The applicant is in attendance and has prepared a presentation.

Thank you.

All right.

Good evening, Mayor Walker, members of Council, Justin Shim.

Just make sure you can hear me okay before I proceed further.

We can.

I don't know how long presentation to give.

For those of you who listened to the Planning Commission or looked at their minutes, we had a pretty lengthy and thorough conversation about the project.

The things I would point out that are, to me, the critical considerations here are that, one, the slopes that we're talking about disturbing were already disturbed previously.

for the construction of a parking lot that sits empty or half empty most of the time.

So those are the things that we're considering.

And then also that the conditions were posed by staff, the city engineer, I don't know if he's on the line to talk about this or not, but felt that those effectively mitigated the potential for erosion and sediment.

which is the main concern with these slope waivers so this project is drastically scaled back from the one that was submitted originally a number of years ago now it was denied and is essentially disturbing only the critical slopes that were man-made as a result of the prior construction and leaves the end of the site that's more the native natural occurring slopes undisturbed so the Planning Commission viewed all those things and recommended unanimously in favor of it

All right.

Thank you.

I just before anyone comments, I do think it would be helpful to do, even if it's a shortened version, because not everyone attends the planning commission meetings, so just in the future.

Even just sort of at a high level, I mean, what are the differences

between this application, the previous one that caused the Planning Commission to change their mind.

I mean, I know there's not the business component to it.

Well, can we get the map put up, Carrie or Brian, the slope map?

So, this is the proposed project.

And there's a quick slope.

along this side, this orange bit is what we're disturbing.

And previously, we were essentially disturbing the entire thing.

And I think the main concern was that this far into the site in these critical slopes, that was a previously undisturbed slope.

And there are some nice trees down there.

There was also, I think, more concern about construction in that area that would end up

with potential erosion down into the storm sewer which dumps directly into the creek under second street so I think there was just the scale of disturbance the slopes was the primary thing I have to admit I was actually not at the original planning commission meeting I'm talking to folks who were looking at the notes I think that was the primary issues and it did come up at the planning commission meeting this time that many of the trees that are in the disturbed slope area are ones that have

grown up after the slope was disturbed and are not necessarily prime specimen trees, if you will.

And so there was really a difference in value of the trees at the Second Street Inn versus the parking lot side, purely because of the length of time they've been there.

I can show you, I don't know if we have access to the topographic maps that I had submitted, Kerry.

There was a series of historical topographic maps that just lay that out a little bit.

Gary, do I have those?

They should.

Okay.

While Brian's pulling it up, Mr. Schimp, can you just comment?

So obviously there's been a request for you to replace

Three trees for every, I guess, every one that's, I guess, there's a certain size of tree, I guess, that we're talking about.

Can you just express to me, and I looked at that last image, and I thought of that, I actually went over there today and looked at it for a second time.

Where would those trees be placed?

Like, how would you create that buffer and the replacement?

Right.

There's probably the map, you know, maybe makes it seem smaller than there is.

There's a strip of land between this retaining wall and the property lawn.

I think the intent is to revegetate that.

And I think it's similar.

Many of you have all seen what the city did on the slope where the McIntyre interchange was rebuilt.

There's a very steep slope next to that ramp.

And if you look when that was done, it was heavily planted with a mix of kind of native understory trees and hardwoods.

that are popping up over time and essentially revegetating that slope as a forest.

And that's essentially the ratio here.

We would not be removing, maybe the number is if it's eight or ten trees, we're talking about 30 trees, which sounds like a lot, but if you plant them five, eight feet apart, you essentially reforest that slope area with those native species.

I think that was the staff's intent with that condition.

It seemed reasonable to me, given what

The landscaping would be there.

So that's, I think that was the intent.

Correct.

And it would wrap around the end a little ways as well, too.

Yeah.

So it would be heavily vegetative, but I think that's perfectly...

I also emailed you the file, Brian.

Great.

That makes it much easier.

Might be the next page of this attachment.

Ah, there we go.

So, it's hard to see.

I don't know how your screen shows up, but effectively, you can look back and see from the 1960s, 1978.

I'm afraid you can't see it very well in 2018, but effectively, it shows how over time

the area at the corner was regraded.

Okay, so the area just to the right or the north of our red square, this is our site, was at one time more of a natural swale.

That's what the map shows.

That was effectively graded out, cut down, made steeper for the construction of that parking lot.

So this map predates, you'll notice that little dark line,

to the left of the red square it says 916 6th Street that that is the creek that is now piped underneath the building but there's discussions of basically opening up over time so 1960 none of the disturbance that created these sort of the slopes that we're

looking at impacting existed, essentially, that was predating that.

No, it would not.

The previous project might have made it more challenging.

It may not have.

There's still room.

I assume the new trees you would plant would be they wouldn't be replacing it wouldn't be mature cheese replacing mature trees it would be just because I mean you know the loss of canopy will obviously be pretty significant the impact they're not just in terms of green space but that is sort of a

Buffer and barrier between those neighborhoods and icks.

I guess a question for staff that I just don't know is like in that kind of requirement, how enforceable

Is it?

So currently there's a condition proposed within your resolution in the packet that covers this topic.

Let me pull it up so I can make sure I'm reading it.

Currently we have a statement, trees removed from the area of critical slope shall be replaced

within those areas at a three to one ratio habitat replacement trees shall be locally native tree species appropriate for site conditions.

No trees planted in any area that contains buildings, parking lots, sidewalks, or other build improvement shall be counted as a habitat replacement tree.

The specific number and species of the habitat replacement trees will be determined by the applicant in the city based on available space and site conditions.

and the size, location, and species of all habitat replacement trees shall be specified within the landscaping plan required by sections 34861 of the Charlottesville City Code as amended.

No, all that makes sense.

There was concern about the lack of clarity regarding the construction sequencing and the erosion and sediment control measures.

Yes.

Sorry, Gary.

I can speak to that.

This is Jack Dawson, city engineer, and we have this session at Planning Commission.

The conditions that are in there are sort of to address that and the

I think that actually when I did this review, I didn't see that there was detailed plans in there.

But again, in discussions planning commission, while there was some more detailed plans provided, there's some sort of minor standard sequencing issues that are dictated through the conditions regarding building outfalls first that are specifically intended to protect the slope.

So while it's not a cure all, it certainly was my intent to make it

rigorous enough that it can be done and not being a huge project or overly complex outside of being built on top of the slopes.

Oh, okay.

I mean, I do get concerned about erosion issues down the road that, you know, we just, we can't anticipate until we see what disturbance happens and then

Yes so um the road to sediment control regulations and process is probably one of our more rigorous processes that we have inspections for and means of enforcement it of course um

Once the damage is done, you know, it's done to a certain extent, but we do inspect all the sites that have active disturbance throughout the city and both before storms, the

after rain events to make sure that everything's intact.

And we have, there's a whole system of tools we have to contact the development and contractors to make sure they're doing the things they need to do.

The real, sort of what, as what Kerry was describing with the trees, the real meat is in the plan review process where the engineer designs a plan that

is in accordance with the recommendations that we've provided.

Thank you.

No problem.

Broadly speaking, Ms.

Rainey, what other approvals aside from the critical slope does this project have to get in order to pursue what we see here?

So the only other approval would be our final site plan approval and then the VSMP plan approval.

So there's no subdivision included with this application.

There's no more discretionary review pieces required.

The

They use the building size and footprint.

All those items are by right allowed in our code at this point.

It's just about the applicants placing part of them on the critical slope that requires this review.

I have a question that's not directly related to the critical slope waiver, but it was raised by some of the folks in the neighborhood and dealing with sidewalks.

On Sixth Street, it's a pretty narrow street.

It gets a fair amount of traffic for a street that is that small.

Some people are using it as something of a through street when it really shouldn't be through street.

And there have been calls for additional sidewalks along there.

So, the final site plan was submitted for this property as well and has gone through one round of staff review.

In that review, our traffic engineer and reviewer noted that the sidewalk on 6th Street would need to be in front of the subject property would need to be brought up to standards.

And there's also some comments from our pedestrian and bicycle coordinator regarding

on sidewalk connection within the property.

But the problem is more than just in front of that parcel.

Yes, I'm sorry, Carrie.

I can tell you that from the sidewalk funding perspective, most of our available CIP for sidewalks is tied up in matching grant funds for revenue sharing through state highway or through VDOT.

And those are yet to hit.

And that goes off of our pre developed priority list from the various guidance documents.

And that this sidewalk is not on that list.

I know that some of the groups in NDS are looking at various transit and other sidewalk opportunities in neighborhoods.

I'm not terribly familiar with that program.

And I noticed that Alex has just joined us.

Yeah, good evening, Councilor Snooks.

Yes.

Certainly we can use SIA CIP funds, you know, to address the sidewalk issues in that area.

You know, there is something that we have to look into as part of the overall improvement of SIA.

In the case of that block, it's definitely like one or two specific properties where it's just disrupted in that, but it looks like it would be, it's a challenging sidewalk installation just because of the actual sloping of the front of some of those properties.

But I think the other issue is just all the feeding streets into there in that Belmont area don't have sidewalks on either side.

And so I definitely think that's, that's just in general, a pedestrian access is going to become only more heightened as, you know, additional density is in this area.

Are there any other questions or comments?

I don't love this project but I will make a motion for this waiver.

I move the adoption of the resolution including our agenda materials granting this critical slope where they're within P210013 based on a finding that due to unusual physical conditions or the existing development of the property compliance of the city's critical slope regulations would prohibit or unreasonably restrict the use of the development of this property for section 34-1120 B6DII.

Ms.

Can I abstain?

No, I have to say yes or no.

Yes.

Okay, that carries three to two.

Thank you.

Mayor Walker and Council.

The City Code in Section 2-211 allows the City Manager to appoint the City Attorney after the advice and consent of the City Council.

Last week after a national search, the City Council interviewed three candidates for City Attorney and provided advice to me as City Manager of those interviews.

based upon that advice and my interviews and research with the candidates, I would like to recommend acting city attorney, Lisa Robertson for the position of city attorney for the city of Charlottesville and tonight request your consent for that appointment.

I would just like to say that anybody who has seen Lisa in action over the last couple of years in particular on all of the statute litigation cannot help but be impressed and cannot help but recognize that we have someone already here, already known to us, who is an excellent city attorney and will be an excellent permanent city attorney.

And that's part of why I'm

Winning a Supreme Court case is no easy thing.

And I've known other lawyers who've taken cases to the Supreme Court, and

Okay.

I'll make the motion then formally, Madam Mayor, to give our consent to the appointment of Lisa Robertson as city attorney.

Okay, and just for the discussion piece, I probably thought about this more this weekend than I wanted to think about it.

I thought it would have been an easy decision, but

for me, based on the past two issues that came up with Lisa.

But I decided to reflect a little bit deeper, went back to the first city attorney interviews, where ultimately, of course, everyone knows that Mr. Blair

was chosen during those interviews, but that Lisa was a very close second during that time.

And just before this vote, Lisa, I haven't talked to you.

I wish things had happened differently over the past couple months with both the credit card issue and the city manager search.

I do really believe that those could have been handled differently if we move those issues out of the way, which is where my reflection point sat all weekend.

How did I feel about where we ended up?

And it would have been very easy for me to say no.

And I was actually hoping that I could sit there, but it's just not who I am.

And

But I did have to make this statement that I just hope in the future that just definitely based on our personal history with each other where, you know, I've always popped in your office and said, hi, I've negotiated your acting contract twice, never had any negative

Situations, and I have said this before, that I am aware of, and I'm very honest, and I state those things when they happen with people.

And so I just hope in the future that there can be open communication and that it can just be, you know, full of integrity.

But

When there was the first round of interviews a few years back, I would have supported your appointment at that time and outside of these, you know, really two issues.

Those are my concerns and since they are so personal and I try not to let personal things get in the way, but I did want to state them.

All right, Ms.