City Council Meeting   1/16/2007

Ms. Kochis.

Are there any announcements of either community events or of items to be considered at the end of the agenda under other business?

Thank you.

Tomorrow afternoon, four o'clock at the Visitor Center at the New Market Street parking garage.

We are kicking off our new Citizens Committee on Environmental Sustainability and it is a public meeting.

Our keynote speaker is Professor Peter Newman who is just completing a Fulbright Scholarship in Residence here at the University of Virginia and is the

Any other announcements?

Mr. Mayor, again, I'd like to talk a little bit about gas rates.

Okay.

Okay, any other announcements?

Okay.

Words and recognitions.

I would like to point out that late in 2006, the City of Charlottesville was voted by the leaders of the Daily Progress as the favorite place to work in our region.

And so Gary, you should be proud of that.

We have

We employ 876 people who work for the city and 18 departments.

Next is matters by the public.

Every night, every council meeting, we start off by having a chance for people to come and speak on up to three minutes on anything they'd like to speak on.

And as long as we haven't had a public hearing or not planning a public hearing on that matter.

And since I do notice that a lot of these comments are going to be on the same issue if

In the interest of time, if you want to just say you agree with someone or agree with the point they made without having to make the whole point again, that'd be fine, although you can probably say whatever you'd like.

Good evening.

Council.

Hi.

Mr. O'Connell.

Ms. Cox.

I'm Jeanne Chase and I live at 223 Old Lynchburg Road.

and I'm Secretary of the Fry's Spring Neighborhood Association.

I am here to present a neighborhood petition requesting that Old Lynchburg Road be closed to all motor vehicle traffic at Azalea Park.

This petition has been signed by more than 95 percent

of the current residents of Old Lynchburg Road.

In addition, 72 residents of adjacent streets have signed the petition.

Why is it necessary to close Old Lynchburg Road now?

The heavy traffic traveling at speeds considerably above the posted 25 mile per hour limit has been documented many times over

and over on Old Lynchburg Road.

Members of the Fry Springs community have regularly requested that traffic be controlled on this singularly residential street.

We are mindful of all the developments around us.

Traffic from Biscuit Run will add immeasurably to our already overrun street.

We have heard only silence so far from those in charge.

in Charlottesville.

Here and now the people are speaking loud and clear.

We have one voice.

We want Old Lynchburg Road closed at Azalea Park to all motor vehicular traffic, period.

We want the comprehensive drainage and sidewalk plan for Old Lynchburg Road implemented.

Can you hear us?

What will our legacy be?

Why are we being asked to be the canary in the coal mine?

Thank you.

Yeah, I come tonight as J.E.

Hall

of Albemarle County 3027 Colonial Drive.

I'd like to show my conception of what I call a rescue shelter, an American rescue shelter.

This is something in response to the 9-11 events five years ago.

It started out as that.

It's actually a bomb shelter.

It goes back to the Kennedy administration and the use of

that kind of thought in order to protect people.

It has since grown into something much more beautiful in my opinion.

I'd like to kind of broaden my statements to honor the person we were thinking about yesterday, M. Elke, who was interested in racial justice and also lifting people out of poverty.

these shelters not only being something to protect people in the event of a disaster or an emergency could also be used for the homeless and that would be starting out as a church sponsored activity but it could also be people in the community as well and a lot of these people are kind of down and out maybe they don't have the education that

they somehow lack and they didn't graduate from high school or even middle school in some cases maybe they don't speak our language you know we have a lot of 300 million people in this country and they're of all various beliefs and backgrounds and if we had shelters like this we could have night school you know and with night school we could broaden our

comment, maybe have voluntary teachers, people that are retired, be able to realize Martin Luther King's dream.

And what do I mean by that?

You provide, you diffuse knowledge to people.

That's in the words of Thomas Jefferson, diffusing knowledge to people is the greatest safeguard of liberty.

And these shelters could be a good vehicle for that.

The final part of what these shelters could do is be something that could be provided for a lot of different buildings and a lot of different schools.

You know, you have bomb threats in schools like Albemarle High School.

Students could be rushed into the shelter and they wouldn't have to go outside, things like that.

I think that's all I have to say.

Hello, I'm Brooks Payton, I live at 2401 Jefferson Park Avenue and I'm here on behalf of the proposal of the petition because I went through there.

My wife and I live at 2401 JPA, I'm out of the family, as you all said.

We've got our neighborhood, we'd love to have our

Child, and our future children throughout the neighborhood.

And what I'd like to say is that this petition, where and where it goes is to preserve the family character of the Fry's Springs neighborhood.

In other words, I'm enormous pressure from the increasing traffic, which is ruining the quality of life.

This ends up leading to turnover of owner-occupied houses, which are then picked up due to proximity to UVA and turned into railroads.

And so I feel like we're really at a tipping point in our neighborhood, especially with the pressure from new county development and Biscuit Run, the Grainger property, and the increased number of student housing alternatives that are showing up on the city line, but in the county area.

I walk to work at UVA, I'm an professor of chemistry at the University of Virginia.

I see the traffic patterns first hand every day.

There's traffic coming in from Old Benchfield Road, going down JPA, and then

about half and half heading back out Fontaine to get to the bypass or continuing on into University of Virginia.

We also have a special problem that there's a rapid development of student housing targeted to students at UVA that exist in the county where students must use the JPA to old Lynchburg roof to get to their goals.

This leads to excessive traffic in the 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. time frame, especially on weekends.

often with radios that literally rattled windows in our bedroom.

All of our bedrooms have to run sound suitors on a fairly high volume, just so we can sleep, including in my son's room.

I can't sleep without it.

And there's reckless driving associated with it.

I live on a 75-foot-wide city route on a straight road in Moscow.

There were two late-night accidents, one that took out the mailbox, the federal mailbox on JBA, and another one that took three police cruisers to subdue

and a motorcycle accident that happened at about 4 a.m. We'd like you to help protect our neighborhood and I'm sure this is what we're finding you here.

Traffic, encouragement from UVA, taking over established historic neighborhoods in the city.

What's different in our case is there's actually a solution to a life part of the problem.

And that is something that I think that we would really have to emphasize that the plan exists that makes everyone happy and in potential there's a mechanism to implement the plan right now.

The plan would be to adopt the urban area B recommendations to build the front end sunset connector alternative floor, included with that the stadium road extension to provide direct access from the county into UVA, and to build the old metropolitan road sunset connector, recommendation six of that report, that would improve traffic flow from Biscuit Road into the front end connector, which would allow all the traffic to be built into the county to reach its desired goal without having to pass through our neighborhood, a solution that would

to suit everyone's needs.

In addition, this proposal, the petition from my neighborhood, would like to see Old Lynchburg Road closed to City Line and Rosalia Park in part to enforce traffic flow into Sunset and Fontaine Connector, but also provide leverage for the city to help get the connector roads built in the county to take care of county development needs.

We really hope that this can be put in place.

It's a situation where there's a problem that has a solution that has had a plan behind it for the last few years

area of the report having been released in 2004.

These changes would satisfy the transportation needs of the county developers, enhance UVA's growth opportunities associated with the Fontaine Research Park, provide better access to commercial development and the grandeur property, and protect our historic neighborhood in the city.

Good evening, I'm John Santoski, I live at 2421 Sunset Road, and I'm the president of the Fry's Spring Neighborhood Association.

For the past three years, the Fry's Spring Neighborhood Association has been increasingly concerned about the impact of development on the neighborhood.

Through a series of events, the Neighborhood Association has become acutely aware that the best and perhaps only watchdog to preserve the Fry's Spring Neighborhood are the residents of the neighborhood itself.

It's inexcusable to have had development occurring without thoughtful planning, such as not adding sidewalks and improving the traffic flow on Stripling Avenue for the Huntley property development, forcing all the traffic from the Cherry Hill development down to Cherry Avenue and the neighboring streets of Highland and Robertson, not adequately protecting the natural resources such as our trees and streams in the development process, and proposing a bridge at JPA and Fontaine wide enough to land an airplane.

The Cherry-Cleveland-Willard intersection stands alone

as an example of poor planning and communication still awaits the final solution.

The neighborhood trusted that the city would work to seamlessly add the new development into the neighborhood fabric while at the same time improving the infrastructure to support the hundreds of new residents that would share the uniqueness of the Fry's Springs neighborhood.

We were wrong to be so trusting.

We are now faced not only with the development within the neighborhood, but with rapid development just outside the Fry's Springs boundaries in Albemarle County.

Biscuit Road and Range will potentially bring hundreds if not thousands of additional cars through our neighborhood, not even counting the traffic from the existing new development, and all this traffic will travel primarily on Old Lynchburg Road, a road that has been ignored for many, many, many years, a road that lacks sidewalks and proper drainage, and it's a road that leads into our primary but also growthfully underutilized neighborhood park, Azalea Park.

The Area B study calls for the building of the southern parkway, the Fontaine Connector,

to move traffic around the new county developments and to funnel traffic onto roads that are meant to handle additional volumes of traffic.

The Fry's Springs Neighborhood Association has attended many meetings and has heard the anguished statements that VDOT does not have the money to build the roads, that Albemarle County does not have the money to build the roads, and that Charlottesville is at the mercy of the county and is helpless to impact the additional traffic south of the city.

The Fry's Springs Neighborhood is fondly saying enough is enough.

It's time to take a firm and proactive stand

with Albemarle County rather than watch helplessly as traffic grows on an unsafe Old Lynchburg Road and throughout the Fry Springs neighborhood.

I'm speaking on behalf of the Fry Springs Neighborhood Association and in support of the 120 neighbors of Old Lynchburg Road who have signed the closure petition.

I ask you to close Old Lynchburg Road and Azalea Park.

We are also painfully aware that closing Olvensburg Road may only shift traffic onto other streets in our neighborhood.

We really don't want to shift traffic from one part of the neighborhood to another and put neighbor against neighbor.

But we know that if as a neighborhood we don't take a stand now, we cannot trust that others, including our city officials, will look out for us.

The Fry's Springs neighborhood does not wish to call a halt to development as others might.

Rather, we desire thoughtful, planned and neighborhood-friendly development

that adds to the unique character and livability of Fry's Springs.

Good evening.

My name is Peter Hedlund.

I live at 204 Todd Avenue and I'm the Vice President of the Fry's Spring Neighborhood Association.

I'll be very brief.

In addition to echoing the previous speaker's sentiments regarding Old Lynchburg Road,

I would like to make sure that an important distinction is made between the traffic issues and the drainage issues that the households along Old Lynchburg Road have been dealing with for years.

I'm Peggy King and I'm here tonight to present a statement on behalf of my husband, James F. King Jr., who's out of town.

And his statement says, I've been a resident of the city of Charlottesville since 1973 and I've lived on Jefferson Park Circle since 1986.

As you're no doubt aware, from the intersection of Harris Road

and Jefferson Park Avenue extended to north of JPA's intersection with Old Lynchburg Road.

There's a sidewalk that does not meet city standards.

You may not be aware, however, that construction of that non-standard sidewalk was approved by the city council and the then city manager after about three years of study, discussion, negotiations and planning.

with the Fry's Springs Neighborhood Association.

I was president of the association for one of those three years and a member of the executive committee during all of those three years.

The basis of the approval of the sidewalk was commitments made by the city to protect the Fry's Spring neighborhood and other residential areas of the city and to limit access to the university

and Sykes in the city from parts of the county south and west of the city to Fifth Street and Fontaine Avenue.

The association was assured by the council and the city manager that Old Lynchburg Road,

and JPA Extended were to be excluded as major access routes as Sunset Avenue had already been through its closure at Morris Creek.

I ask now that you provide the relief our neighbors on Old Lynchburg Road are requesting tonight.

I also ask that you help us persuade VITA to reduce the size of the replacement bridge on JPA

now planned to be even wider than the new West Main Street bridge which would result in a constant temptation and pressure for county residents to come through our neighborhood.

I also ask that you work to persuade the county to include plans for roads in the county that would carry county residents particularly prospective residents of such a large development as Biscuit Run

and those seeking access to whatever may be approved in the Ranger Track Project by a major access routes that do not include any of the residential streets in the Fry's Spring neighborhood.

Finally, I ask that city councilors and staff support the drainage, sewer and sidewalk improvements on Old Lynchburg Road that have been planned as requested by city residents and to provide safe access to Azalea Park.

City residents rely on you to keep the promises made

Thank you.

Thank you.

Could you leave an address just to start off with?

My name is Jack Gwynn.

I live on 2503 Brunswick Road, Charlottesville, Virginia.

And I guess you heard me thank the city council for closing Sunset Avenue.

I've lived there since I think 1957.

which maybe before somebody were born, I'm not sure.

Citizens should strive to work with politicians and public servants for the common good of all the people.

This may be a little naive, but politicians and public servants should strive to provide for the common good of all their constituents.

or the society or people.

Society is made up of a diversity of people with various needs, the basic needs of most people.

Cultures are pretty much the same.

A need for clean air and clean water, electricity and recreation, the need for work and honest wages for honest labor.

A need for safe neighborhoods for one's family.

That's provided by

Police and Firemen and Bobcatchers.

A need for quiet neighborhoods for their families to hear birds sing, squirrels to eat your bird food.

Babbits and cats for dogs to chase, yards for gardens and playing and mowing, etc.

And the question, I title this Questions and Answers.

Questions, can you blame people

who were purchased and cared for a house in a quiet neighborhood to be, you fill in the blank, perturbed or upset.

When the county and city, you fill in the blank, I'm going to use the word planners, seem to come up with a solution where these people end up living next to a dangerous and noisy highway and also a little

carbon monoxide in the process.

Thank you.

My name is Anne Getty.

I live at 2202 Hill Street in the Fry's Spring neighborhood.

And most of the points that I would have made have been made.

But I would just indulge in a little nostalgia that my first

Public testimony dealing with the county and the city and the county, you know, what they're going to do with their roads occurred 25 years ago.

And I remember losing a lot of sleep because somebody representing the developer kept telling me about all the housing he was going to build for poor people and all of those things.

He didn't lose any sleep.

He was working for Child's Hurt and he sold all that land to the University of Virginia.

So I'm just saying that I'm here with confidence that since that period, I've learned that protecting the neighborhoods of Fry's Spring is very good for housing in Charlottesville.

And all those things he was going to build never happened.

It's still a wetlands.

And we have everything that we have come and asked for over these years that I've been involved in has been extremely good for the city.

as a whole and has provided good housing and safe streets.

And so I think closing old Lynchburg Road is part of the duty of this city council to protect the neighborhoods and keep the traffic, keep the pressure on the county, do the Plan B or Area B study and things.

But we have to we have to stand up for our neighborhoods.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Jeanne Wiggins, I'm with 2400 Jefferson Park Avenue.

We've been there, homeowners, since 1979, so we're sort of old timers, except some people.

I'd like to say that the city needs to take the leadership in protecting the integrity and the safety of our neighborhoods.

We had hoped that when the 5th Street

The street was being put in that it would take care of all the extra traffic and it has worked.

Things have just gotten a whole lot worse.

One of the council needs to make sure that the county is responsible for building the connector roads to handle the traffic that the county has and in the meantime the city must close old Lynchburg Road

Thank you.

Tim Williams.

Okay, great.

I'm Dudley Rochester.

I live at 250 Pentox Mountain Road in Charlottesville.

I've been resident in the area for approximately 30 years.

I'm a retired physician with a specialty in pulmonary lung diseases.

I'm here tonight at the request of Kevin Lynch to advocate

that Charlottesville purchase energy from wind farms.

And my reasons for that are basically the negative effect of outdoor air pollution on human health.

The pollutants of concern are mainly ozone and particulate matter.

They come ultimately from combustion of fossil fuel in factories, power plants, on-road vehicles, and multiple off-road sources.

The handout I gave you is mainly for background material.

These pollutants cause lung disease in children and adults.

They also cause heart attack and stroke.

They increase adult and infant mortality.

Overall, outdoor air pollution causes about 40% of the number of deaths attributable to tobacco use and more deaths than from

alcohol car crashes and guns combined.

So it's a large problem.

When air pollution is reduced, respiratory illnesses fall to the same extent.

That is to say that there's a 25% reduction in pollution.

There's an approximately 25% reduction in respiratory illness.

And the death rate from all non-traumatic causes also falls significantly.

The health costs of outdoor air pollution

are approximately $800 per adult per year.

In Virginia, that comes to almost $5 billion.

One-third reduction in pollution would reduce illness, deaths, and health costs significantly.

Air pollution is also bad for agriculture, forests, and zone birds.

Measures that ameliorate outdoor air pollution also help reduce the emission of greenhouse gases

responsible for global warming.

Adding wind generated energy to the power grid tends to reduce the amount of pollution especially from the older highly polluting coal fired power plants.

Every little bit counts.

Thank you.

Jack Wilson for the 317 Monte Vista Avenue.

I'm here to lend my voice to support the closing of Lynchburg Road at Azalea Park, the city line.

The first time I was here advocating that was back when Tom Vanderveer was mayor.

So this is an issue that's been addressed.

But I'd like to stop and thank council or an earlier council for what they've done for Azalea Park, the Creek Bank stabilization that Mr. O'Connell has worked with us on.

Others have gone the long way to help Azalea Park.

We were at risk of losing Azalea Park to the erosion.

Large chunks of the park were falling in Moore's Creek.

And the creek stabilization under the city has gone one way to stop that.

I think our neighborhood suffers the same kind of risk with the increased traffic on Lynchburg Road.

and perhaps it's our own fault in that no one from Fry Springs neighborhood has been elected to council since I've lived in the neighborhood.

But I don't think this is an easy issue and maybe it's been on the agenda for 20 years because if you close Old Roosburg Road, there's more traffic somewhere else.

I've been here for the debate on 5th Street, for the debate on Fontaine Avenue.

I think there's some good alternatives.

I don't think any road is less suitable than Old Lynchburg Road and I would ask each of you some evening, any evening to drive down Old Lynchburg Road after the sun has gone down and see the pedestrian versus vehicle situation on that stretch from JPA down to Azalea Park because

If I was on council, I would feel some degree of personal responsibility when that inevitable accident happens, and it probably already has, but this is a striking situation there.

I do think other routes should be looked at, as I mentioned, and I don't think this is necessarily a solution that's going to make every neighborhood happy, but I think

It's a situation that hasn't been addressed for a long time.

There's going to be increased traffic.

And I would ask council to identify what are the commuter arteries?

Do we say that these are?

Because if we don't, then every neighborhood gets sacrificed, just like Old Lynchburg Road.

I've got 30 seconds.

And two nights ago, there was gunfire down at Azalea Park.

We called.

Police came.

but it happens repeatedly.

It happens multiple times a week in the summer.

Thank you.

I'm Julian Taliaferro on Sunset Avenue and I'm on the board of the Fry Springs Neighborhood Association.

I support the motion or petition to close Old Lynchburg Road with some regret but I think that there really is no choice.

I have two specific suggestions.

One would be to emphasize the importance of the area B study, the university

the county and the city have put a lot of money and a lot of planning into this over the years and it seems as though what the developers are doing south of Charlottesville is ignoring that and planning on funneling traffic through old Lynchburg Road and I see no way to avoid that happening other than by the city taking what we call a proactive stand and closing it.

The second thing that

I would like to see in addition to the emphasis on the Area B study would be you're considering what may seem like a somewhat drastic change.

That would be changing the name of Neighborhood Development Services to the Department of Neighborhood Preservation Services.

I think we learned that naming things is an extremely important act.

I think we've had enough neighborhood development and I think it's time to go to neighborhood preservation.

Thank you.

How you doing?

My name is Ray Mason and I live at 939 Charlton Avenue and I'm here for L. Ives Homes who lives at 937 Charlton Avenue.

Earlier this week, Mr. O'Connor sent a letter to Ms. Holmes stating that the warranty for the AHIP work had expired.

And at the time and fashion, I guess, you know, everybody was done.

Well, I want to present this to Mr. O'Connor so he can clearly see that they were notified and signed to the before that date.

Here's the actual work if you pass through Mr. O'Connor, if you look under it says the 28th of April.

It's the deadline for the warranty and just notify him anytime before.

If you look here, this is where a hand delivered letter was signed by the receptionist on the 27th of that month.

And I'm not aware if you were aware of that the other day when he talked, but clearly it was, they knew beforehand that the problem existed.

Also, there was a matter of $7,000 that was spent, added on.

Ms. Holmes never knew anything about it that was added on without her consent.

And

The wall that I showed you, the front wall, they said that they repaired.

You saw what the wall looked like, but here's the change-on to repair the wall completely.

Right here, let's see.

Yeah.

Number one right there.

That's to repair the wall completely, and they never did that.

They just threw some blocks up there.

So that's it.

The letter that you sent was all fine, but you didn't have the whole truth.

And Amy Kim, she was the one that

The items there, the 50 items, so that she's the one to walk around with me in both those items.

So, I mean, as far as I'm concerned, as far as Ms. Holmes is concerned, the warrant is still valid and those people didn't prepare, didn't do the work.

They have sent someone to prepare the roof and in this letter here, they said that they want to repair the roof and they sent this young fella right here by to repair the second letter on this page, if you look at it.

and he came back and noticed some things that were bad, but he did not repair them and it was left undone, as well as the back door.

And, you know, when I came down here and made the comment on April 3rd, the father, the father, you know, the father of me, you know, we had a big thing with Andrew Kim, you seen this memo out,

Let's see, who sent it out?

From Amy Campbell.

She sent a memo out saying how you can better the relationship with the public and AHIP and everything suits the city council and the city, but nothing suits Ms. Holmes.

I mean, there's nothing in this thing to say whether this is what we can do for the homeowners.

They mentioned that it was an isolated incident.

Whether it was isolated or not, it was 60 plus thousand dollars and, you know, she really feels that she's taking a beating and, you know,

Like I said, your letter was written.

You appreciate your time, but you couldn't have had all the information.

Did you have that information?

I don't think so.

No one shows you that.

And if you did, you wouldn't have written the letter that you wrote, I don't think.

But, you know.

I just don't feel that a person, you know, should have to look like a second-class citizen.

You know, it says clearly that, you know, things are done with HUD standards, but it says the city of Charlottesville being the number one city in America can, you know, set the standards up.

It doesn't have to be HUD standards.

I mean, she didn't buy that house, you know, through HUD.

You know, with that, I'm not mistaken, but anyway.

She shouldn't have to live like that.

I mean, you know.

Times up.

How much time do I have?

It's like, well, let's just say you.

You've been in business for, since you're denying this, and you don't run your business like any of them runs their business.

So, you know, make sure they do right.

I mean, they're responsible to you.

I mean, they answer to you clearly.

You know, you stopped with money the last time I was here with this.

You stopped with money.

I mean, see what's going on.

Do something about it.

We appreciate it.

My name is Dan Tsai and I'm here to talk about closing of Old Lynchburg Road.

Reverend King said we were called to speak for the voices.

You, City Council, were called to speak for your constituents.

Our neighborhoods and our citizens elected you as our voice.

Now hear the voice of discontent from our neighborhood in Fry Springs.

Our traffic along Old Leashburg Road has become an issue which has worsened each year since when I moved here in 1990.

It is not safe to walk along Old Leashburg Road at any time of the day.

I have done it right along with the Charlottesville Police Department and have seen all those careening along the road at well past midnight.

These buildings are in excess of the post speed limit of 20 miles to 25 miles per hour.

Old Leashburg Road was a great bicycle route at one time.

That was 20 years ago.

and forgotten by many except those who remember when it was a safe place to bike.

Now is a place to risk getting killed.

The road leads sidewalks, a lower speed limit, and closing at the county line.

This has never been more important than the pressure made with the burgeoning growth from the development of the county.

Old Richmond Road is dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists.

County residents and those using the road for a cut-through can travel through Ridge Street or use other venues like Harris Street to reach their destination.

The preservation of a well-cherished neighborhood is tantamount to the quality of our life, of our city, which has been respected and nurtured since Thomas Jefferson.

Closing Old Richmond Road should not be considered as a partnership to use when negotiating with the county for, quote unquote, road improvements or other projects.

Our citizens and neighborhoods and neighbors deserve an act of a policy to maintain safety.

First and foremost, safety is a mandate, not a voluntary option.

U City Council can only make us voices if you do not hear our fear for our children's safety.

Thank you.

Anyone else like to make a comment tonight?

Okay.

Tatiana Patton, 2209 Jefferson Park Avenue.

I'm here tonight on

on behalf of the Viviana Conservation Society to invite you and the public to join us for our new series.

It's Brown Bag Lunch on every third Thursday.

It's going to feature watershed issues and solutions.

And our first one will be this coming Thursday, January the 18th from 12 to 1 p.m. in the Madison Room of the Jefferson Madison Regional Library.

My name is Mitch King and I live at 2530 Wingate Road, Charlottesville, Virginia, which is in Albemarle County.

My family and I moved to Charlottesville in 1984 and have owned residential real estate in the city continuously since then, although we moved a short distance into the county two years ago to accommodate changing family circumstances.

I am president of Old Mill Power Company, an Albemarle County based mom and pop electricity products trading business.

Our company was formed in 1996 and buys and sells electricity and related financial instruments that are produced by generators using various kinds of environmentally friendly renewable energy sources such as energy from the sun, the wind, moving water, landfill gas, and municipal solid waste.

Old most primary customers are utilities and competitive electricity suppliers in mid-Atlantic states that are seeking to include specified percentages of renewable electricity in their product mixes in order to meet regulatory requirements and self-imposed renewable energy targets.

It's my pleasure to speak to you tonight in support of a suggestion that the city make a commitment to purchase electricity generated by wind turbines.

Wind turbines produce significant amounts of useful electricity with far less adverse environmental impact than one can expect from any other energy source except the sun.

Wind generated electricity is cost competitive, creates no air pollution.

can protect consumers against price hikes when fossil fuel prices go up and air pollution regulations change and can help create new businesses and jobs in local domestic economies.

On the other hand, wind turbines are big machines and like all big machines must be sited carefully in order to minimize any potentially adverse environmental impacts.

It's my impression that Mr. Mayor and the Council have already heard from some citizens regarding the potentially adverse impacts if wind turbines are not carefully sited.

For a balanced view of all the pros and cons associated with wind generated electricity, I suggest that interested parties explore the website of the National Wind Collaborating Collaborative at www.nationalwind.org

NWCC consists of representatives from electric utilities, environmental organizations, the wind industry, power marketers, state utility regulators, state legislatures, consumer advocate offices, tribal agricultural

and economic development organizations and state and federal agencies.

The NWCC website contains many wind energy related issue papers that are the result of a consensus process facilitated by Resolve, a nonprofit dispute resolution organization.

I will distribute one of those issue papers to you before I leave as an example for your review.

I feel confident that the NWCC's consensus based website

will serve the city's decision-making much better than reliance on any one-sided point of view.

OK, I want to thank everyone who came to make comments tonight.

We'll have another time at the end of the regular meeting to hear additional comments.

I have a response.

This is something that has been I've been thinking about for some time in general.

Ms. Hamilton.

What I was going to say was that when I first heard the notion of closing Old Lynchburg Road, it seemed quite radical and not necessarily anything that I could possibly, ever possibly support.

But as events, someone saying they can't hear, is the mic on?

No?

Yes?

Okay, sorry.

As events have transpired and we just haven't gotten any communication from the county on

how they plan to proceed with the area B recommendations.

Okay, other comments?

I would certainly agree to Ms. Hamilton's request.

I'm not willing at this point to say yea or nay on closing Old Lynchburg Road and probably just because I don't know, I don't have enough data yet on what the impacts would be on the traffic flow and if there's other parts of the city that are going to just suffer the same fate that Old Lynchburg residents are currently suffering, I'm not sure that answers the question.

What does answer the question, or at least go a long way towards answering the question,

what Mr. Payton and Mr. Murray brought up and this payment is alluded to which has to do with we need to implement the area B study and the recommendations from the area B study and we have to see that that Fontaine connector gets built, we have to see that the cut through traffic is routed around the city rather than through the city and that has to be

from my perspective, the metric by which we measure and evaluate anywhere the proposal comes before council.

Is this going to double or cut through traffic from county commuters through our residential neighborhoods?

And, you know, I just, I, my very first home in Charlottesville was, I was running a basement apartment about 10 years ago on McElroy Drive, on McElroy Drive.

of Old Lynchburg Road.

I used to take my son, my infant son, on a very perilous journey in the baby carriage up Old Lynchburg as Elliot Park almost every day.

And it is a very, and even then it was dangerous and it's gotten much more dangerous in this biscuit run, etc.

Yeah, I'd like to start by changing the subject just a little bit and thank Mitch King and Dudley Rochester for speaking on behalf of Wind Power, not just for Charlottesville, but also for the state of Virginia.

I think that that's something that we should be taking a serious look at.

The technology is finally at a point where it can be delivered at a comparable price point to coal.

And as the city of Virginia, we are, I'm sorry, the city of Charlottesville and the state of Virginia, we're fairly significant

purchaser of electricity already.

The City of Charlottesville last year purchased about 2.3 million dollars worth of electricity.

That's about 30,000 megawatts, a substantial amount of electricity.

Off the top of my head, and Mitch you can correct me if I'm wrong, I believe a megawatt of electricity takes about a half a ton of coal to generate and we are

That's my recollection.

I said, man, I won't go on record as that because it's buried back in a sheet of paper somewhere.

But basically, it takes a lot of coal to generate 30,000 megawatts of power.

And it's in Virginia, we really only have two options right now for generating power.

That's coal and nuclear power.

We do I think have some options that will be coming on in the future and discuss with Charles, with the council how we might best move forward in that direction.

But to speak to the issue with, see everybody sitting in the audience tonight is concerned about and that is Old Lynchburg Road.

I do believe that closing Old Minchburg Road would be a detriment to the city and to even the neighborhood.

I think that would be a last case step that we would want to take.

But I'm also completely aware that doing nothing

and allowing the situation to continue on the south side of town in the county would be even a greater detriment and even more problematic than closing the street.

I'm willing to keep that as an option on the table, although I really think that we can get out in front of this and come up with a better solution than closing the road.

I don't agree that closing the road would be proactive.

I think that would be reactive.

I think the proactive move is to insist on getting parts of the AOB study done as soon as possible, specifically connecting from Fontaine through the new property that's going to be developed through the Granger property.

I'm not sure it's fair to say that we haven't heard anything from the county on that subject, but the response from the county has been that a development is going to be coming in the range of property and behind the research park and that the profits from that development will pay for the new road that's required.

I just don't think that that's a good answer, but I wouldn't say that we haven't been answered.

I think that we've got an opportunity with

the Biscuit Run property to ask for percentage of those proffers be used to build the Area B study and that's not on the table right now and I think that needs to be on the table.

Right now the developer is talking about using some of those proffers for city neighborhoods but it's not about sidewalks and drainage it's about improving the capacity of intersections and adding more capacity in city neighborhoods and that's

That's a non-starter for me.

I want to be really clear about that.

But they are willing to put money on the table in a way that they think is helping the city.

It's just that what they plan to do is not going to help the city.

It's simply going to put more traffic through the city.

So I would propose that we be very clear that, yes, we're interested in the proffers that the developer is offering for Biscuit Run.

No, we're not particularly interested in doing in city intersections.

We're interested in getting started.

I'm interested in getting started with Area B. I also don't accept VDOT's assertion that there's no foreign struggle out.

I'm trying to be brief.

You've made some testimony earlier that GDOT doesn't have the funds.

The state has the funds.

The state ran a surplus of about a billion dollars there.

They haven't figured out how to spend it.

Some people don't want to spend it at all.

But we certainly have funds.

I think we can we can make a claim on those funds.

The residents of Charlottesville spend

$13 million a year in transportation taxes.

We only get back a fraction of that.

We've got to be more insistent about getting back our share.

It's not that there's no money there.

I will be brief.

My heart tells me that we probably ought to close old Lynchburg Road in all honesty because my frustration

with the lack of solutions on the part of the county in building connector roads continues to grow and I share you all's frustrations because I know if you ride, I get my hair cut out there and I travel that road frequently and I see the volume of traffic and I know it's a major issue and somehow we've got to figure out a solution and I would certainly support

with Hamilton's suggestion that we have the city manager do an impact study first so we can see what the impact is on other city neighborhoods.

That does concern me somewhat.

However, you know, if we can't arrive at some solution, you know, sometimes you have to take bold steps and maybe we have to do that.

I hope we don't.

But on the other hand, you know, I think that we're responsible

Okay.

Well, I guess I'll get to make a few comments.

I would have found just a bunch of different things that were brought up because a lot of good points were made.

I think the

You know, it is an issue to have student housing being built out of Sunset and out of Lynchburg Road.

I mean, that adds to the traffic, but it is a reason why we've created a high density zone near the university with the idea that we can create more housing where students can walk to class.

I agree completely with Mr.

Page and with the other speakers here that the Area B study offers a solution.

It doesn't offer an easy solution because the road that needs to be built will require a bridge

over a stream and a bridge or an underpass over the railroad.

So it's not an inexpensive solution, but I think it's obviously a necessary one.

I'm not sure myself of whether the connection can be made between Biscuit Run and that road in terms of proffers or whether more contiguous property would be the opportunity, but I think one way or another that road just has to be built.

I'm not, well, a couple of things.

I think drainage and sidewalk issues on Old Lynchburg Road are independent of the road being closed or open, and I think we all feel that way, and just to set the record straight, I'll speak with Mr. Taliaferro, and he feels that way too, you know, so I don't think, I hope no one misread, you know, or is concerned about there being some quid pro quo regarding that.

The bridge,

On JPA, you know, I'd like to thank some people in the Fry Springs and JPA neighborhood for some thoughtful ideas on how this bridge could be made narrower.

And I've written a letter to VDOT asking them and they've agreed to put some work into seeing whether that could be done.

We should hear back from them hopefully before too long.

And so we tend to push to try to make that happen.

I think it could be something beneficial for everyone.

The analogy for me of looking at

of the Main Street Bridge.

Main Street Bridge doesn't have turn lanes and so I think that to some degree that's a little misleading to compare it to that bridge.

Finally, you know, I'm blurry of closing the road and I'll just say that directly because the traffic is going to go somewhere.

The people who live at Orangeburg Road who, you know, who are going to live at

at the new developments, who live at the existing developments, you know, they're going to get to the university one way or another and to me the idea that they're going to get to the university by driving by perhaps an elementary school and through other residential neighborhoods, you know, I don't like, to me that's a proactive solution that doesn't necessarily get us anywhere that just kind of moves the problem from one group to another and I'd rather see us figure out a way to build the area B road.

and those are my comments.

So, thank you all for coming and offering your comments on this tonight.

Next on the agenda is the consent agenda.

The consent agenda tonight consists of item A, the approval of the minutes of December 14th, 18th and January 2nd.

at the first reading.

In item C, an appointment to the Thomas Jefferson Soil and Water Conservation District.

In item D, an ordinance which is an amendment on the open storage of vehicles at the first reading.

Mr. Mayor, I had a couple of minor changes to the minutes and

I emailed them to council and unfortunately it seems on a printed and I only printed one of them and that was on the Page 7.

I don't know if Jeanne had a chance to print them out so I will note the one of them that was on Page 7 of the first meeting where we discussed CRHA.

At the bottom of that, I said we should get specific proposals from CRHA.

I believe I said we should get specific development proposals before authorizing the new funding.

Yeah, I agree with all of his changes in it.

Okay, so there are amendments which have been submitted by email to the minutes.

Any other amendments or any other items to be removed?

So moved Mr. Mayor.

Okay, as amended.

I'll call for a vote on the agenda.

Okay, thank you.

Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, I'd like to say that what I'm bringing you tonight is a customer service issue.

During the past 12 months, if I had to tell you the one customer service issue in public works that I've gotten the most complaints about,

and I'm sorry, Ms. Chase left, is trash not getting picked up, trash not getting picked up on the right day, recycling not getting picked up, streets being missed.

We have worked very hard with our two contractors and I won't go into their answers and their labor issues and their management.

issues.

One of our contractors, we've actually gone through four area managers in the last 12 months and that's extremely difficult for my refuse supervisor to try to create a working relationship and try to get the service.

So it has been my top priority in the last six months

to try to find a way to improve this service without improving the cost.

We have worked with both of our contractors and come up with what we believe to be a reasonable compromise.

And that's to go from our current four day a week system, which is Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday pickup to a five day a week system.

Mondays and Thursdays are our heaviest days.

and so what we have done is we've sat down city staff and the two contractors and tried to change some of the routes so that we will have a five day a week pickup.

The impact on our customers will be there are certain days during the year, New Year's, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas that the landfill is not open.

On those that specific days,

everyone's day will change if it falls on a Monday.

Monday pick up will be Tuesday, Tuesday will be Wednesday, Wednesday will be Thursday, Thursday will be Friday.

I like to think that and obviously Thanksgiving is never going to be on a

on a Monday.

So for the ones that move, that for four times a year for people to have to have a change in pickup day, it's worth it for you to know when you put your trash out there at seven o'clock in the morning, that when you come home in the afternoon, it's going to be picked up.

So that is the reason for that change.

And I will say recently, we've had great cooperation

from the media, you probably noticed this weekend, but they've now started to list trash and, city trash and recycling when they talk about holiday closings and that's a big help for us.

The second thing that I've been working on for so many years, a quick counting, is to try to increase the products that we're able to pick up curbside for our customers.

and I'm very pleased to say that we have worked with our current contractor and at this point for what I believe to be a very minor increase in our costs that we are going to be able to add

number one and number two plastics and cardboard to our curbside pickup.

I mentioned in my cover memo, I think this will be a tremendous boon to the downtown mall.

If you've seen the amount of cardboard that comes out of there, the ability to have this recycled, I think will be really very good.

So what I'm proposing is obviously the changes

There are going to be about 2,000, a little over 2,000 of our 12,000 customers who will be impacted by this.

We have worked very closely with Rick Berrick and hopefully with your approval this evening, we're going to start a kickoff tomorrow morning.

I didn't want to start it, especially with the extra products curbside too early in fear folks will get so enthusiastic that they have about their next week.

But we are going to we have a

quite a massive public relations campaign.

We will be starting with, there will be leaflets in all of the recycled bins.

We are also, we will do newspaper ads, but we are going to do door hangers for all of those 2,000 people who are the most impacted by their change of day.

And obviously, we work very closely.

February 5th is the date we hope to begin this.

And we'll work very closely

with folks who kind of missed the day for the first couple weeks until they can get acclimated if they've been out of town or missed the word.

But we're going to try very hard from public relations standpoint to get that word out.

Any questions?

First question.

And I'm kind of hoping that what we'll do is, you know, this is a little this is a little new for us and this will give us a little

over a year's experience so when we go to write those bids, when we go to write the RFP next year we'll have about nine months experience of picking up these products and hopefully we'll learn from that and we'll do a better job of putting them at the bid next year.

I know you still want brown paper and white paper so do I and I did everything I could but they just are not interested at this point but it's not off my list.

You know, at this point, if you recycle everything you can for site as a city resident, the only two things that I think you would be taking to McIntire would be your white paper and your brown paper.

And obviously, you know, some of us who that's just become a part of our life will will continue to do it.

But, you know,

Other questions?

I just want to say thank you in community for taking this step.

Well, thank you.

You've told me very clearly that that was one of your priorities.

And I'm very pleased.

I apologize.

It's taken so long.

Yes, everything will change February 5th and we'll have

I want to thank you also.

I think this is a great step forward.

I would like to see the day when we can put everything out there, the file stock as well.

But I think being able to pick up cardboard and plastic will be a big help for a lot of people in Charlottesville who do recycle.

and also for the people that don't recycle, at the Recycling Center, it's a way of having less volume in their trash cans, spending less money on trash stickers, so I think it's, you know, it's really a win for everybody, and I'd also like to thank you.

We're tag teaming.

Mr. Mayor, council members, tonight we would like you to consider a proposal from the electoral board and the voter registrar's office to reconfigure the voting precincts in the city of Charlottesville.

Charlottesville right now currently has eight physical precincts and one central absentee.

Those precincts and

The way we look at it is the eight precincts.

We have four large precincts and four small precincts.

The four large ones being Recreation, Walker, Jefferson Park, and Venable.

The four small precincts being Clark School, Carver Recreation Center, Tonsil Park, and Alumni Hall.

The current precincts are not optimally configured.

We right now have just over 23,000 registered voters in the city of Charlottesville, which I'm proud to say, because I'm going to say when I started as a registrar, we had just over 18,000.

And I agree, now that you said that I can agree.

Of the 23,000

divvied up between the 8 precincts.

The larger precincts are running between 3,400 and 3,000 registered voters.

The smaller precincts are running 1,300 to 2,000 registered voters.

So you can see that they're really, really unbalanced and it's causing a problem.

The code of Virginia really puts this purview in the electoral board's hands.

So that's why I'm tag teaming and Rick as the secretary of the board

We'll try to keep this quick.

I know you've got a discussion document in your agenda packet, and I don't want to repeat too much of what's in there.

But basically, some of our precincts are underutilized, like Alumni Hall, which has a great facility but very low voter turnout, largely because it's where students live, and they tend to vote only in presidential election years.

On the other hand,

A precinct like Tontsler Park is overutilized.

Even though it's got a small number of registered voters, because of the small size, the small physical size of the polling place, it can get very crowded.

In other precincts we have serious parking problems in Venable, Clark, and Tontsler Park for instance.

We get literally dozens of complaints each election about people being unable to park

near enough to vote with efficiency.

One of the things that's happened in the past few years is that voting patterns have changed.

Now, I know when you hear the term voting patterns, your political scientists are thinking about red states and blue states.

When election officials get together and talk about voting patterns, it's who shows up at 8 o'clock in the morning to vote and who shows up at noon and who shows up at 5 o'clock in the afternoon.

And that has changed completely in just the past few years.

You used to be able to count on a high voter turnout from about 7 o'clock in the morning until about 9 and then a lull from the middle of the day and then picking up again around 5 o'clock in the evening.

That doesn't happen anymore.

We don't know why it is, but people are voting in spurts or there will be long lines at 11 o'clock in the morning for no apparent reason.

And this causes problems in terms of efficiency in customer service when we consider the voters to be our customers.

So what we are proposing is that we look into either redrawing the boundaries of our present precincts, finding different or additional polling places, or a combination of the two so that we can better serve the voters and obviously candidates and political parties in the future.

Our aim is to have this implemented by the February 2008 presidential primary election.

because that election is going to be a big primary with lots of candidates from both parties.

We're expecting voter turnout on that election to be close to what it would be in a November presidential election.

And we want to be able to implement any changes by that time.

As you know, any changes of this sort require approval by the Department of Justice under the Voting Rights Act.

And so we have a very specific timetable

that we need to put in place so that we can actually finish this up in time for that election in February next year.

What I was going to say was, we're a small office, and so what we're asking is that council appoint an advisory committee to kind of help us.

In the document that you have that kind of spells it out, we'd like obviously one from each representative party, someone from the disability community,

and making sure that the committee doesn't get obviously too big.

Let me comment too on the map that we've provided for you.

There are a lot of public buildings in Charlottesville that at one time may have been good polling places.

The problem is that sometimes you've got a building that has a great big open room like a library or a cafeteria, but it has very little parking.

Or it might have both good parking and a great room, but because of the Americans with Disabilities Act, it lacks the accessibility we need for disabled voters.

And that could be something as simple as having a pathway that's too long between the door of the building and the place where people vote.

So we have to survey these buildings very carefully.

so that we can make sure that all the criteria that we need to meet are actually met.

We've done a lot of this in the past and there have been some wonderful buildings we've looked at and there's just one aspect that makes it unusable and so we need to do a very thorough survey.

And we also want to include private facilities as well.

If there's a restaurant owner somewhere in Charlottesville who's willing to let his restaurant be used for a day every November and whenever we have a primary election as a matter of civic duty,

Questions?

One question I had reading this was, I wondered if you could give us more specific data on what problems are happening and where.

For example, you mentioned the lines, and my experience has been, well, I voted rec, usually in the morning,

that the lines really haven't been that bad there but parking is a problem there.

You had mentioned to me last year that the lines in Tonsil were a problem and we were able to ask the director of Parks and Rec to move a pool table and to free up more space for another machine.

So I guess the first thing I would ask is for a list of what the most egregious problems are and then if there's a way that we can solve them short of

doing boundary changes, I'd prefer to look at that first.

In other words, if we can say, well, maybe what we need to do is not have city employees park in this lot so that we can free it up, or whatever it is, or put better signage on the streets and start there.

Or if there's a building that we can free up.

And then, then look at, OK, once we've looked at everything that we can do internally,

figure out where the worst problems are and start with that rather before we go and say let's deploy a committee to potentially adjust these boundaries.

Okay.

Would that be reasonable?

So far?

But there are some of the pre-sinks I guess for lack of a better term that are underutilized and compared to others and

It does not because we're not large voting.

area and Mr. Brown can talk more

Well, that's not precisely correct.

What it says is that if 5,000 people vote in the last presidential election, you must split your precinct.

Other questions?

I'm just curious, just a question.

If you were to undertake the boundary change, would it be with a view toward equalizing the size of districts?

Actually, it is being driven by new development in the city.

We were given a study by Neighborhood Development Services about the number of housing units going in each precinct.

and Tomsler precincts exploding.

And so this is what really prompted us to look at what we needed to do prior to 2008 because it's going to be really tough.

So you're proposing to come back to council with recommendations for a committee here.

And I have no problem appointing a committee.

and I agree, maybe what we can do is we can come back next time with a specific proposal on that line of the committee but I like the idea of tasking it first to see do we really need to invest time and money into changing something or can each of the problems be solved.

by parking changes and things.

I think the other thing I'd like to ask me to look at both for existing precincts and certainly if it moves forward is to make sure that we don't lose the neighborhood focus of our precincts in the neighborhoods where it's important.

In other words, where we're trying to encourage people who don't vote is often the lower income

community who may have pedestrian access may be very important.

So for example, consular moving, unless there's something that's, you know, I'd hate to see it move to the, you know, way out at the end, you know, next to Willoughby.

and so they feel like you're disenfranchised you know just from a practical point of view in terms of being able to get there conveniently on your way home from work as you take the bus or walk you know that's very important to me and I think that's something could be looked at both at the current situation are they well located in terms of accessibility are they not well located

I would ask if even before appointing the committee that we get the list of what you see as being the major problems, because some of them we may be able to just tick off

It would be good if we could.

Okay, any other discussion?

So we'll try to bring this back at the next meeting.

Great, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Okay, that concludes our regular agenda.

This is pretty incredible.

Now it's time to public.

Anyone else?

Anyone who would like to make any comments?

Okay.

If not, we'll move on to other business.

And I know that I see Katie Swenson sitting out here.

I made copies, I don't know if you remember that we sent out just as a reminder in some of the issues.

As you recall, we had a discussion with council about the redevelopment of the water street lots.

One part is owned by the transfer parking

suddenly there's another private living lot and then there's the city lot on which section our block building sits as well as the meter lot.

So you have two or three property owners, almost two blocks of lots, probably the most significant piece of land in downtown Charlottesville from a development standpoint.

We've had discussions in the community and we've had discussions with council about using a design competition which has been done in some other projects in the community and around the country.

to try to look at a unique way to look at what is the potential for that rate of development, come up with some specific plans, look at possible solutions for the city market, and involve the community by the planning commission, the BAR, interested developers in the community and the community at large.

So we went out with an RFP, which I think you've received a copy of.

We got costs for this.

Some of it involves the administrative expenses of running a design competition.

The other is some of the fees that are brought with the jury that you bring in an outside group that actually evaluates the proposals and then they make some prize money.

So there's several separate pieces that are there.

We see to the memo with the desire to try to move forward on it.

There were several questions that I think came up.

and emails or questions that I got that I thought we ought to just stop and talk about it tonight.

The opportunity was there.

I invited Katie to come since it's sort of up that's making the proposal that there's some specific questions of her.

As a staff we think this is a good idea.

We think it will involve the community in a way that at some point if a developer comes in we're going to have to do anyway.

It's more proactive.

It may get us to the point of saying this is really the kind of development that we want to have, we want to see.

It could involve something creative about a solution for the city market which you know we struggle with a lot.

I think from an economic development standpoint we're convinced that it will open up the interest from the development community far from those that have shown an interest in it so far and get us ready for something that's economically viable.

We've done similar kinds of things before and I think that was one of the concerns.

It's been a number of years.

I don't think it involved the community to the extent that we're talking about.

And this brings in a lot of different creative ideas and energy.

It's not just one group that's coming in with a proposal or a solution.

So I think we'll get a variety of solutions.

So I'll stop there, see what questions you have.

Our desire is to try to move this forward if there's some concerns or constraints, if they understand what they are.

If it's okay, I'd like to maybe add just a little more background on it.

It just kind of started when a petition was passed around in the city market and it resulted in a letter to me talking about wanting to have more thoughtful development occurring certainly in the city of the property

and hopefully in both properties.

So out of that I met with a number of different people and talked with a couple others including our former architect mayor.

It got me kind of excited with the idea that

You know, it concerned me that the idea that especially, you know, half of a big piece of property could just move forward, you know, in whatever, without any real clear guidelines.

I mean, there's things that were done a number of years ago, but I think if the deals had gone through for the

parking lot, the CPC lot, it just would have been a private deal.

We would have really no influence on what it looked like, how tall it was, how it fit into the neighborhoods, how much parking it provided, and things like that.

And so I like the idea of at least looking into trying to get some thoughtful design.

And the competition seemed like a really interesting way of trying to

Not just hire a person to come up with an idea for us but get a lot of different ideas out there so that we could come up with some ideas and perhaps try to market it to people who are developers both in terms of our property and hopefully do something that might provide a, develop the property and provide a home for the

City Market.

I think there's a couple of things.

I don't think that the kind of planning that's been done previously on this is really the nature of the competition.

I think it's more of the nature of just having a consultant come up with some ideas and some sketches.

And I think that's a little dated in terms of what the rest of the area looks like at the moment.

The second part, addressing one question, is the issue of

Why would we offer significant prize money?

Why wouldn't there just, you know, whoever won the competition could do the project?

And the reason is because we wouldn't really have control of that.

We'd be waiting for a developer to come along who wanted to do the project, perhaps take advantage of one of these ideas and developers, but perhaps not.

And so

So I like something where, you know, I mean, some competitions are done in such a way that that's what the deal is, that the person who wins will be hired.

Well, we're not that far along, so it's more of an idea kind of competition.

And I hope that we might be able to find some way of getting some cash award to come from some other local type people.

So anyway, I just want to give a little background in terms of my point of view on this.

I think that it's a really smart idea to hold a design competition.

It does leverage the kinds of attention and the kinds of design expertise and innovative ideas in a sort of massive sort of way as opposed to just going with one consultant to give you their look at what a project might be.

the results of Habitat for Humanity's design competition where the sunrise trailer court were quite amazing and impressive and a site such as this that offers you know very different kind of potential I can really see people going to town

on something like this.

So I think that whoever's idea it was, it was a private idea.

I really love it.

But I do want to say that there are a couple of considerations that we should be very careful about.

And the first is, you know, who's going to be on the jury?

In terms of the national expertise, I'm sure that we will get lots of advice on that.

but in terms of who locally serves on the jury I think that that's an important question and one that we should spend some time thinking about and also I think that we should spend some time very carefully setting the parameters for the project if there are certain kinds of environmental

things that we want to see in the project.

I mean, not just the number of parking spaces and, you know, the height, that kind of stuff.

But in terms of the type of sustainable design, the type of, you know, how the design integrates with the historical fabric, how it integrates with the neighborhoods, I think that that's stuff that's very important for us to articulate as a council.

And that's my two cents.

I think before... Could you give some details?

Sure.

The city, two times in the past, the city has decided that it would be advantageous to develop this water and Market Street parcel.

and we have put together or had consultants, architects who have put together development schemes, in fact, a variety of development schemes, multiple options of development schemes done over two distinct time periods, one of which I was on council and one before I was on council, showing what could happen at Water Street.

and I think before we start a new project, it would behoove us to at least review what we've already gotten paid for twice.

That would be my first concern.

My second concern is that we actually will have designed review

on whatever gets built in this location because it's going to be in downtown quarter and so it will have to come before the DAR, it will have to meet our zoning requirements and so there already will be control over it and I believe it's also important to note that we've looked at options for the market

and we have options.

None of them are quite as big a location as where they are right now but we're not going to get any new options that we haven't studied already.

So to put this project out there to say this is the only way we can get design control and the only way that we can solve the market problem I think is really sort of creating a bit of a strangle and those two problems can already be solved.

My third objection might be the most substantial in that

We would be doing a design competition for a project which right now has no buyer.

There is no developer.

I agree that the CCDC did a great job on the Sunrise Trailer Park project.

And if we were going to have anybody do a project like this, I would like to see them do the work.

I think they do good work.

They're great on getting community input and coming up with a final

product.

However, keep in mind that when they did the design for the Sunrise Trailer Court, there was a developer there who wanted that work to be done, who bought into the process and wanted to see something happen.

What we're trying to do here is spend $150,000 hoping that that will draw some developer

Once we've done it, we will then buy into our end product.

I think we would be much more likely to...

achieve our aims if we were to say clearly we want to sell this piece of land and not only do we want to sell this but if there is an interested buyer we as a city are committed and we commit to spending a certain amount of money helping the developer do an upfront community participative process to get a good design so that

we would be adding a service to a prospective buyer not speculating on what a prospective buyer may or may not want to do.

I guess I'd like to just get some further clarification on the distinction between what's been, what's going on before maybe Ms. Winston or Mr. O'Connell can, I haven't seen those schemes that came up before so I can't, in my mind's eye, I can't visualize what we already have in house and how that differs from what we would get from a design competition so if someone could shed some light on that, that would be very helpful for me.

I like the idea of doing a design competition.

I think this is a critical piece of real estate for the future of our downtown and to have an open and innovative and creative community.

oriented design process and I think I agree with Ms. Hamilton.

It's a great idea.

My concern had to do with the cost of this endeavor and particularly with regard to the cash prize that we would be offering.

I spent three or four hours and two or three hours online

a couple days ago, I believe, looking at other municipal design competitions just to get a sense of what cash prizes were being offered in other localities.

And I couldn't find one with one exception that were the cash prize on a project like this was over $10,000.

Most of them were in the $2,000 to $5,000 range.

The one exception I found was in New Orleans, a design competition chaired by Brad Pitt.

Actually, they offer a $25,000 reward award.

We don't have Brad Pitt sharing our competition, so I don't know.

But to me, to offer a $50,000 award is just, I think, I don't know that we need to be putting that much money into this, and I think more, I'm thinking more of a $5,000 award.

Well, she's coming up, I will note that a lot of the work that was done previously is on display or was recently on display in the conference room of Economic Development Office.

All the pictures around that was from the last time that we paid to do this.

Which was?

2002, maybe?

I'd have to go back and check on that.

Is that right?

I want to say 1999.

That might have been the first time, but it was done.

There were two pieces of work.

One was

It's part of the city's corridor study where we looked at all the economic corridors in the city and this downtown area was part of that.

So it was part of an overall Preston Avenue, High Street, downtown.

There was some focus on this property, but it was in this context of the overall downtown development.

Then there was a study, and I don't know the year, this was the McDonough work that was done, I want to say 10 years ago, soon after I was city manager, so that's 12 years ago, 10 or 12 years ago, that looked specifically at this site in a couple of different aspects.

But it was pretty much, my memory was it ended up with one recommendation.

that obviously has not been acted on.

That never played out.

That was more specific with a model.

It was specific to this site.

There were some discussions with adjacent property owners.

The more recent study was not as specific and more in the context of

Overall economic development activity.

Have you seen both of those?

The most recent one, less specific to the site, we looked at whether we keep the street going through or not, whether we break it up as two paths, how to do the parking.

There were, but they were all kind of variations on a theme.

Yeah, I guess you could say that.

Can we ask a quick question?

Thank you.

No.

12, 75, and 5.

12, 5.

I think it's interesting, you know, a lot of it depends on really what would our goals be for doing this kind of competition.

This project came originally through a group of concerned citizens who wanted essentially a more transparent process and community-wide conversation about what were the highest and best uses for our last sort of precious lots downtown.

So in many ways I think that the genesis for the conversation had to do very specifically with those two precious lots in particular but also really with a larger desire to make sure that we were really trying to across the board achieve sort of our highest and best goals broadly.

and part of that is define what those are and then testing those and testing the implications.

So I do think that you know this came from a place of wanting to explore sort of best possibilities and have a large transparent community conversation as to what that is.

And seen in that light I see that

There are all kinds of opportunities to really use this competition as a vehicle for.

Mr. Norris is starting a new sustainability committee.

Mr. Tolbert is working with a group to explore what's the difference between a five-story building, a seven-story building and a nine-story building.

having sat on the BAR for three years and experienced what happens when projects come to you to be reviewed according to criteria and you are responding to a given situation within a certain set of guidelines I think it's an incredibly important tool, very important tool for the city but it's a very different strategy than a more proactive

envisioning goal of looking at what are the best possibilities for the site not only to look at issues of architectural excellence which frankly have in some ways fallen by the wayside as developers want to use their sort of maximum zoning envelope and buy right biggest development issues of

Architectural excellence are not necessarily things that the BAR can insist upon, unfortunately.

Issues of sustainability and what does it really mean to build and infill our sort of urban core with using our resources wisely, essentially.

That's from both the programming as well as an environmental point of view.

I think this is a programming exercise as well as it is an architectural exercise.

So the question to me is what are the larger opportunities here?

And I think that Charlottesville is at a very sort of ripe and creative time and also at a time where development is happening so quickly and we're finding ourselves sort of being constantly responsive

to things.

So there are a lot of good ideas on the one hand and then a sort of responsive nature on the other hand.

I have a question.

going back to Mr. Norris' research for which I thank him for taking the time to do that.

And I guess I would ask, what is the rationale on the amount of the cash prize?

Are there reasons why there's so much I don't know?

Well I guess there are different kinds of prizes and competitions and some have to do with a sort of immediate financial gain and others have to do with the ability to carry on a project going forward.

So I think that the $25,000 to $50,000 range which we suggested in our proposal is erring on the side obviously of this is not a there's not a contract that's going to attract

an architect at the end of this process.

It's an ideas competition.

There may be relationships that develop and these things happen for sure.

At Sunrise, Sunrise was an ideas competition also.

There was no guarantee that the developer and the architect would meet up and in fact the number one and number two place prize winners in that case have in fact been awarded the contract to continue on the work.

But that's

a happy coincidence, as it were.

So we're erring on the side of attracting the best possible talent.

And I would say that our partner in this project, the Central Virginia Association for Architecture, pushed this as a way of understanding what is involved in architects continuing entry in a competition.

and suggesting that the larger cash prize would attract not only a higher caliber of submissions, well primarily would attract a higher caliber of submissions.

I mean that's the bottom line is that at some point I think there is a decision that if we do this at all we want to do it right and

So, you know, there is a check and balance.

So on the one hand, you know, you don't want to kind of cut off your nose to spit your face.

You need a couple of things.

Kendra mentioned the jury.

The jury is critical.

I'll say for Brad Pitt's beauty and fame, they attracted less entries than we did for the Urban Habitat's design competition.

We had not only a stunning jury but a great presentation and we allowed the time and did the outreach to let the project go and that's part of I think why Gary's suggesting that we move on this is that one of the critical components is that we want to allow the time for these teams to gear up to be able to participate.

So Urban Habitat's got more entries than Brad Pitt's design competition.

Yeah, I just wanted to add because I did serve on the Urban Habitats jury, one of the conversations was that among the jury, the experts was that the size of the prize money meant that we got a lot of student work.

And that's just what it is.

I mean, it was good student work, but the top firms, because of the amount of time and effort that has to be put into putting these presentations together, the amount of staff time that ties up times money for a large firm, for an important firm.

That was one of the subjects for Lament.

I was very satisfied with what we got at the end.

But it was interesting when you looked at it.

I'm going to make a couple of responses.

First of all, your

Your idea of a transparent process is one that I think I applaud and it's one that really we could do something tonight just to address because one thing that I've heard about this particular project is that it's already a done deal.

People read about the contract that was put out I guess about a year ago for the CPC lot and assumed that the whole thing was done, sewn up

and no one need apply and that's not the case.

There's a developer out there who's interested in this lot.

Maybe they're watching TV.

Come talk to us.

We're interested in doing something on that lot.

It hasn't been spoken for by anybody and I think that we could do ourselves a favor as a council just by being clear that this lot hasn't been spoken for by anybody.

It's very much on the table.

but I also want to get back to the idea of having a project for which there really is no developer because I think that the reason that you got good talent in the Sunrise Trailer Court Competition and the reason that others are successful is because there really was a developer.

There was a real project.

The person that won that development

contest or the architectural contest that meant something.

I know as a professional if someone wanted to have a contest to design anything that had to do with electronics there's a big difference between we're having a contest and then we're going to put it on a shelf versus we're going to have a contest and then there's going to be a million dollar follow up contract.

I mean they're just not comparable.

So the idea that

We would do this contest strictly speculatively.

I just don't see the value add to the city there.

I'm afraid that we would have one more project to put on the shelf.

I think it's interesting that of all the folks on the city council, I'm the only one apparently who knew that we had done this already twice.

We haven't done exactly this.

I should also add that there was a speculative nature to the Urban Habitats competition.

Well, they were going to build something, but there was no guarantee that anything that came straight from the Congress process was going to be built.

And it took a lengthy process for them to decide to actually build using the people who won the competition.

It was at least a year.

There was a project there and that's the difference here.

There really isn't a project here.

Sooner or later there will be a project.

Something will be built.

I think there's something to be said for

having a process that articulates the values that we want the eventual developer to bring to the table.

Because the fact that I can't even remember the elevations that we saw, the thing that I mostly remember from the project that we saw several years back was the amount of parking that was being discussed.

There was nothing particularly memorable about that.

And I think that for these, I think that

Well, I would say that in design competitions, there is certainly always this kind of dual thread of the theoretical and the practical.

and that is sort of woven into a part of the competitions even on the urban habitats competition as Sunrise Park continues to get developed we are also working on a publication with the National Endowment for the Arts on the competition entries that the competition entries themselves have a whole wealth of merit and instruction

and then there's the actual development of the project.

So in every competition, whether it's the World Trade Center or

Sunrise trailer court.

There's always kind of that dual sort of look at both a more theoretical nature and then a more practical nature.

Also I think that the thing that we really experienced at Sunrise was there are a couple of really critical moments in the competition.

The first will be

making the program and Kendra referred to who's going to be on the jury but critical to this first step is who's going to help make the program, how is that process going to happen

and how is that first programming because it's essentially us as a community putting out to the architectural community what our highest and best ambitions are.

So that's sort of the critical first step and that's going to, if this goes forward that will have to happen in very short order.

and will have to be a well-choreographed process.

Then there's the moment when the entries come in and that larger sort of excitement and jury discussion over some of the particulars.

And that's sort of, of course, the next sort of major critical moment.

But I think one of the things that we learned from urban habitats, the jury in that case were three national architectural

experts who had a lot of experience, especially in affordable housing and community development.

and they drew the attraction of a larger sort of national and international.

We ended up receiving entries from 37 countries for urban habitats.

So that choosing those jurors is very important.

Then we had a conserving development team.

So we had two members from the local habitat board as well as a member from Habitat International.

because like to your point about is this a real project or is it not?

You want to get the sort of stakeholders at the table during that whole process and getting that kind of buy-in at the core is essential.

And then we had a resident of Sunrise, a Belmont neighborhood association rep and a city councilor.

And again that kind of connectedness and you know various degrees of representation created I think some

Pretty magical moments in the Sunrise Competition where now as you see the development continuing forward, it's really moving, it's moving slowly.

It's a non-profit project, an affordable housing project.

These things do take time.

But it's moving with an incredible degree of sort of community support.

and consensus, especially from the local residents, which is ultimately, was ultimately our goal at Sunrise.

So articulating, if we decide to go ahead, if you decide to go ahead with this, you know, articulating what are our highest and best goals for this competition?

What do we most want to get out of it?

That needs to happen in a loud and clear way.

And there are very sort of specific things we need to do to really achieve that.

Any other questions or discussion?

Thank you very much for coming.

So I think I know where Kevin is.

I think I know where Kendra is.

I'd like to move forward.

I understand.

I think all along on this idea was that we might be able to approach some local foundations for assistance with the prize money.

So I know in my initial conversations that was, that idea was thrown out in a serious way.

So I would hope that that could happen.

Anyway, Kevin, I'll recognize your objections and hopefully the third time will be the charm and we will actually get something out of this.

Who are the best?

I have one issue that I'd like to bring before council.

We heard from a couple folks earlier today on the subject of renewable energy.

It's been a topic that we've talked about on city council before.

More specifically, we talked about it in September when I told council that I would be speaking in front of a few bodies and wish to represent the position of the city as being number one.

Environmentally conscious and interested in reducing its footprint.

Number two, being very much interested in being able to get renewable or being able to get energy which we could purchase that's produced from renewable sources.

And then three, being interested in wind power specifically.

I brought that up to you in September.

You all agreed that you were comfortable with me representing the city as such.

And subsequently, I've spoken at both the Virginia Municipal League

and the SEC hearing representing the city's position as such.

As you know, members of the community have taken exception to my characterization of the unbeneficial aspects of power and have written a letter to the SEC stating that in fact I did not represent the city's position.

But I spoke and said that we were interested in renewable energy and wind energy.

So I'd like to get that clarified simply as a matter of record.

I've put together a resolution that would be one way of doing it, that would be my preferable way of doing it, simply writing out nothing new in here, but just simply going through a history of what we've talked about and where I believe Council is right now.

I certainly hope we can move beyond that in future months, weeks, years, but I believe where we are right now and I'll just

to run down what I put in the resolution is to say that number one, in 2003, we adopted an environmental sustainability policy and started looking at ways to improve how we do business in the city.

We are in the process of developing an environmental management system.

In fact, we're well on the way of implementing that, that works on a number of levels to reduce our environmental footprint.

On July 17th, we passed by unanimous vote a resolution endorsing the U.S. Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement and under the terms of that agreement, we agree that we'll strive to meet or exceed Kyoto protocol targets and we'll take action including increasing the use of clean alternative energy and advocating for the development of renewable energy sources.

The resolution notes that we currently spend $2.3 million a year.

That's a substantial amount just on our electric bill.

And as a large purchaser, I think we have the financial power to really start looking to make some of these cleaner energy projects happen.

And then it says specifically, therefore, resolve that the city of Charlottesville endorses the development of renewable energy sources, including wind resources,

I put the city of Virginia, not just the state of Virginia.

Someone clarified that for me.

Thank you.

Which we've done before.

and be it further resolved that the city of Charlottesville will strive to incorporate the use of clean alternative energy in its own municipal operations as soon as such energy becomes available and economically viable in the state of Virginia.

I think it's a very well articulated resolution, Kevin.

Okay.

I just have one.

I've made it.

There was a law that I put in here that it said during the fiscal year we use for municipal purposes an estimated

34 million kilowatt hours of electricity at an estimated rate of 6.9 cents per kilowatt hour.

Okay.

All right, any further discussion?

Okay, call for the vote.

Okay, thank you.

Other business?

I was more,

talk a little bit about natural gas rates and I, you know, we've had a, I guess, a rather warm winter.

And I've had a few people talk about the fact that their utility bill, particularly a natural gas bill, seemed to be very high.

And I guess that's kind of prompted me to

see if we could maybe take a look I'd like to take a look at what we're paying for natural gas rates I'd like to compare what some other municipalities are doing I know some systems are municipally operated there's some private systems in some cities within the state of Virginia and I would just like to see those figures what we're buying gas for, what we're selling it for and I'm sure there's some variables there that maybe affect

I think the two things we can do, we've probably gotten most of that information from last spring when we did the utility rate report.

But at least at that point in time we look at how we compare to other municipalities, other localities, etc.

and then when we do the utility working report, which will be presented to council in May, all that would be updated.

Yeah, I would like to get a better handle on it and I'm sure that would be helpful.

And then do we hire someone to negotiate the rate for us?

Is that how it works or not?

We actually have, we buy a fixed amount of gas that we purchase in the summer.

Okay.

And then we go in the market throughout the year, particularly in the winter.

Right.

And we're pricing it almost every day depending on what's happening with the weather and so on and so forth and buying gas all over the country.

And I think the report talks a little bit about the process of how we do that.

If it doesn't, I'll get that information too.

Can I ask you a quick question, Mr. O'Connell?

We buy base amounts of gas in the summer when the prices are the least.

So we make estimates on how, what's the minimum that we're going to sell?

You know, some years, like last year, it was a lot colder than a year like this year, although tonight it's going to change that pretty quickly.

And then we go to what they call the spot market as we get into the winter heating season.

and see what the weather's doing and we actually, I mean we've got somebody that pretty much buys gas almost every day, but they're on the roads.

It's an interesting business to be in, I mean it's, we used to have fixed rate contracts that we put out to good and we basically bought the gas from one supplier at a fixed rate and that tended to be fairly high and we went through a pretty big evolution to go into being on the market, on a market basis.

If I could follow up on that a little bit, I think that's pretty accurate just so people understand.

that the price of gas actually goes up in the wintertime just as the price of electricity goes up in the summertime and that has something to do with the increase in gas prices.

My understanding is that we actually buy physical storage in the summertime and that we're limited by the amount of physical storage that we can actually get.

We don't buy forward contracts on natural gas.

We may want to consider that.

I suspect we probably would have overpaid if we brought forward contracts on natural gas this year because the winter was warmer than usual when it went down.

But the gas prices do go up in the wintertime.

We may want to consider increasing the amount of storage that we have, which does allow us to purchase more in the summer when it's cheaper.

I got a couple quick ones if I can.

I've got a memo here.

I won't go through this in any detail, but I wanted to put in front of you kind of where we are with the budget.

We've probably got another month's worth of work.

We're finishing up department and agency budget reviews.

We're trying to finalize revenue estimates.

I've listed here some of the big issues that we're trying to get detailed information on.

Maybe I'll just read these so the public can hear them as well.

We're looking at emergency medical service for the city fire department and a budget proposal for that.

Funding the housing fund that council talked about at the last meeting and a phasing approach.

We're doing a detailed analysis on the budget proposal on stormwater utilities, which we talked about in the fall.

of the financing package for the capital improvements program, paying benefit issues that are coming forward with information that we've gotten.

Score funding, this is one I might stop and talk about for a minute.

It looks as though with the budget that the superintendent is putting together with the scoreboard that there's going to be a gap from our 40% contribution formula

versus what they see their need is.

And I've had a one-day time meeting with a superintendent and a budget manager already.

We'll probably have another one.

We're losing what I understand is as much as a half a million dollars.

in state funds from what we would expect because of environment changes and the way the state funding formula works.

So they got two issues going on, one trying to address programs and specific issues to get at the achievement gap and then secondly the reduction in state money.

So that leaves them with a gap.

and I'll be back with some more information, but I think this may be one of the most measuring ones out there.

We're looking at expanding the tax relief program to increase in income, house values.

It's been suggested we look at a staggered income level, but where the lower the income, the larger the tax relief, so we're trying to get some analysis done on that.

We sent you some information over the last few days about credit card fees, but there's a proposal

that we're looking at, agency reviews, you know the solid waste issues and the costs that are coming from that from environmental cleanup.

There are a couple issues about major equipment funding, infrastructure that we're looking at.

I just talked about the utilities.

The piece that we didn't talk about a minute ago is we focused on the gas system.

We've got a major rebuilding need for water and waste water, both in terms of sewer and capacity and just the age of the pipes.

So as our community grows and this development occurs and with the aging condition of our system, we're in the midst of trying to put together a monthly year program.

So I think you'll get some initial information about that with the utility rates in May.

And then the last two things, the council vision, we're trying to follow

the work sessions and the vision discussion that you have to be sure that we're following through from a budgetary standpoint.

And then the final issues, what level of council reserve.

We call it a whole other host of issues, but these are the bigger ones that came out of, we're sort of doing the budget synopsis today over all the issues and what work do we need to get done between now and mid-February.

And so this is how this list came about.

Mr. O'Connor, what is the best mechanism?

You mentioned the council vision process and the work sessions that we've been having along those lines.

What is the best mechanism?

For instance, we spent a good amount of time in one of those sessions talking about workforce development and what more we'd like to see happen in terms of workforce development.

I guess it goes two ways.

I've got, actually sitting on my desk that I got today, the update to the economic, I can't remember the title, but to the economic piece that I wrote for development and it was specific proposals that were either implemented in the current budget year or would get implemented in the next budget year.

And that both the budgets within the Department of Economic Development would cover those.

The role that will be in next year's budget is a program for the summer youth marrying program that we talked about that would be no funding.

That was just one example.

I guess what I saw was trying to get the report back to you and say here's what we see from an implementation standpoint.

in the forming standpoint and then get a reaction from council.

And we could bring that back formally or just get it to you to see is there something that's being missed.

And I suspect when we get through with all the council vision sections, which is what we're going to talk about next, we're bringing about a summary section of, okay, where are we with the whole thing and how does it apply to the budget or not.

I'm getting concerned that we're

that's going slower than the budget process is going and it's going to be hard to get them to meet up but that's the effort and the idea.

I'd like to make a comment on EMS.

I've mentioned this before but I think it's really important for us to get all of the EMS players around the table in one room to hash some of these issues out and by that I mean cars, the city,

Fire Department, the county professional and volunteer departments because we do have a number of issues.

I think I agree that our response times need improvement and yet I've talked to all those groups individually.

Everybody has different ideas on what needs to be done and

concerns about what the other players are trying to do.

I just don't see any way to resolve that other than to get everybody in the same room and just hash this out until we get an agreement.

But I'm a little concerned about

I don't have any problem doing that.

but I think we've got to move forward on this because to me we have a situation that's really not acceptable in a lot of respects and basically the county has already recognized that they have a gap in their system they have to fill in and we're facing the same situation and I've had some people take a look at it from outside and

you know a lot of the times are not good and we've got to figure out a way to address that.

One of the things that I've noted in looking at it is the fact that there's really no way you can serve the city from one location to have a really effective response time.

One other is the fact that the volume of calls is increased so you have resources are not always available and we all know the traffic situation in the city has really changed drastically and

But I think if we want to get people together, that's fine.

I agree with Julian.

I think it's clear that we're having problems trying to service the whole area from one location.

I think that's clear.

Now the question is, what do we do about that?

I don't disagree with you.

There are discussions going on with CARS, there are discussions going on with Albemarle County and hopefully by budget time those will have begun to come together to make some sense about what we are doing as a community and a system regardless of who's delivering the service that makes connections and links together.

There's another critical piece in all this and that's the way

the communications center handles the calls because that's the common point of contact for any citizen.

They call there and then it's grabbed and then there's assignments made as to who's going to handle the call or not.

And we're having that discussion as well to look at those procedures and how they work and how many calls are coming through and all those because it's that dispatcher that's making that decision.

And I appreciate that and I think it would be helpful for us as policy makers before we spend any money to hear from all those groups in the same room.

And you're right, dispatch is an important part of it.

Whenever I talk to any of them individually, it always seems like it's the other guy's problem.

I think there's a timing issue.

If people are too far apart, you bring them the same room, it doesn't necessarily bring them together.

I think to some degree, what I've been trying to do, you know, I met

last week or week before last with both the private department and also with CARS and I've been spending some energy trying to figure out where exactly are, you know, where are the commonly agreed upon issues, where are the issues, where there's some disagreement about what the issues are.

And, you know, I'm hoping this week to go and really spend some time at the dispatch center so I can understand any issues there and hopefully try to do and at that point be in a position to do as you suggest,

which is to bring people together with the idea that there can be more areas of just agreement based on facts and therefore areas of where we can figure out how to move together.

So, I can't tell you a time frame, but it is certainly something I've been putting energy into lately.

Just a minute, two more really quick things.

First of all, thank you Mr. O'Connell for figuring out a way to make the housing fun.

You didn't figure it out yet.

Well, I left you ahead of me.

Second of all, I just wanted to see if there's a way to get at least a

A sense of the majority on council for asking staff to explore the issue of moving up ADA improvements in our schools.

I was very moved by the young man and his mother that spoke about the difficulties that our disabled students have in navigating those schools.

I don't have any objection to certainly evaluating that and see what we can bring up.

My concern is that there's two aspects of ADA, the things that we're required to do by law and I think all of those are getting done and when there's a wider group of things which would be nice to have for the convenience of people who use the facilities.

But it's part of the issue, it sounded to me the other night, hearing the comments, that part of the issue was not just

The fact that we've agreed to fix what needs to be fixed according to the ADA, but the timing of when it would happen, you know, whether it's going to be happening this year or whether it's going to be happening in two or three years.

Certainly the stuff that we have to do.

No question about that.

I don't have a problem with moving that up earlier.

But I think there's a lot of stuff in the out years that would be good to have, as opposed to have to have.

And there, I think we just need to balance that with everything else in the budget.

We've done that.

I guess what we probably need to do is go back and go one more step of more specifically what's going to be done, what's required versus what would be desirable and the timing of that.

There's also an issue of just being able to manage all the different projects and if you're working in a building, you go ahead and do a lot of improvements there while you're there, which may delay being something being done in another school building, that kind of thing.

We'll try to get you a report that looks at it.

Give us something else.

Mr. Conaway, have you finished your list?

No, sir.

I didn't think so.

I'm just stumped off an advantage.

This is just a reminder.

Two council work sessions on Vision.

January 30th is Connected Community and a Grand City.

I'm also passing out the Vision statement just to say we've done the first three and we have the remainder to go through.

And then on February 8th, Charles Philarx and Culture America's Happiest City Smart Citizen Focused Government.

If it's still okay with you, we'll try to use the same format we did with the others.

We'll get a report out to you hopefully a week in advance.

We'll try to walk through each one of the items at the work session to try to get some clarity from you as to where you want to go and what things that we want to try to do.

And then my suggestion would be somewhere in here we talk about a concluding work session that goes back and looks at everything.

Could do that as part of the budget.

Just preliminary reaction, I think that jamming three items onto the final work session, I'm not sure if I think that that's well advised, at least not these three things.

America's Healthiest City is probably the item that had, as I recall from our discussions back when we had our retreat, was probably the most unfocused of the items.

And a smart citizen focused government, I think that there will probably a lot of discussion that comes out of that.

I mean, just vis-a-vis the discussion that we had online about convenience fees, for example,

that people pay for online payments.

The healthiest cities probably the one that I think is the least focused.

I agree with you there.

On the other hand, there's the most potential for some of the other things for the budget.

The smart citizen focused government, the community group brought up a lot of issues that are regional kinds of things that I think would generate

a lot of discussion from you too.

You take your pick.

My suggestion was going to be that since we are, I think on Green City, we're well ahead of the game in terms of what we're already doing on Green City.

So it seems like

We might actually be able to have extra time on that agenda.

So maybe we could put arts and culture with connected community in Green City.

If we're all flocking, I'd like to have the opportunity to go back and talk to the staff that's working on these cases.

Of course, I understand.

It's a couple weeks from now.

And if not, we'll just go forward.

Here's another idea.

We're looking at two items for 30th, Connected Community, Green City.

What if we did citizen-focused government in a separate work session, which would have to be in March, but I think the, once we've gone through these other issues and the fact that we're teeing up

the budget at the same time, I really think we could devote a whole two hours just to simply to focus citizen responsive government.

That's a topic we could easily spend

Two hours on it.

If we can do it in a time frame before we get the actual budget and before we're actually responding to the budget, but maybe teaming up some things that could inform the budget, that would mean late February, early March.

You and I can discuss, you can talk to staff.

And some of this just gets down to practically trying to schedule another session.

And we get into March, you're going to be full on with budget sessions.

I sent you an email.

This is probably an issue you're getting delayed, but it's about the Sister City Committee.

You have a series of applications.

I think there's kind of an issue of energy and overall charge and interest.

Poggio's, I can run his 30th anniversary of being a Sister City to Charlotte Fellows this year.

There's a group that meets tomorrow to start that discussion.

So I think that's probably for sure a focus that we want to pay attention to.

So I wanted to mention that to you.

I think at the next meeting we'll get the applications for

the committee.

I think we've, there's generally I feel like there's, there may be the need to do some more recording to try to get a bigger group.

This thing needs some energy to, I think, get it another step along the way.

I don't know what we got.

Well, I'm just curious, at what point do we have a chance to talk a little bit more about the charge for the committee?

Do you have more focus?

I think that's what, from my perspective, I see if Jenny agrees with this, you want to have the applicants that you could consider or less look at.

Because this thing needs some energy for it to work.

And the Peugeot thing is going to be at you pretty soon.

I think there's a group because of the history of that one.

And also we had this discussion with the last council.

Like brought it up.

I think having this discussion with this committee with this council would be a good idea.

It makes sense.

The last one I just want to mention.

I put in the packets the council tracking list.

We spent a lot of time over the holidays trying to get these up to date.

So I'd appreciate it if you do have a chance to look at it and see if it raises any questions or if we said something's closed and you're not sure that it did or what have you.

But there's several hundred items that are floating out there that we're involved in trying to make sure get done.

If you want to talk about that tonight, yes.

I'm glad to bring it up at the next meeting if you'd like to do it that way.

Okay.

Okay.

Harry Numb will adjourn and I understand we have a closed session?

No?

Yes sir.

I don't know what you're talking about.

I don't know.

you

John F. Kennedy,

I've never seen anything like this.