City Council Meeting   2/5/2007

I've been here for a long time.

Thank you

... ... ... ...

It's in this.

I just want to know, what else do you want to watch?

I'm

Thank you.

I don't know

Thank you.

Thank you

How was the time?

Peter, how are you, sir?

Thank you very much.

.

Well, they took a few things off, right?

I got a copy of that that I didn't strike with.

We're taking off eight and nine.

Eight and nine?

Okay, we're gonna do it on the 20th.

Okay.

And we'll do the health thing.

I can't get anybody for more than a look at it.

Thanks.

Well done.

Standing room crowd, I think.

Ms. Hamilton.

Here.

Mr. Norris.

Here.

Are there any announcements by counselors of either upcoming events or of items to be considered under other business tonight?

Okay.

The next thing I'd like to do is an award.

Parks and Rec Department is receiving an award tonight from the Department of Environmental Quality, their Environmental Excellence Program, and I'd like to ask the Chief Deputy of the Department of Environmental Quality, Mr. Rick Weeks, to come forward and along with Mike Spex, our Parks and Rec Director.

Thank you, Mayor, Members of Council, Mr. Powell.

It's a privilege to be here tonight.

We really are part of a very elite group.

We have an environmental excellence program to encourage the use of environmental management systems designed to help facilities and business and industry and local governments go beyond just regulatory compliance.

And many of these facilities are seeing some very significant savings on the road to these environmental improvements.

So it really is

results in some significant environmental improvement.

We have 440 members in the environmental excellence program, but you're among a dozen that have reached the E4 level, so it really is a very, very impressive accomplishment.

If I could just take a minute to introduce a couple of folks from DEQ staff.

Mike Murphy is our program manager.

Simmons is the Deputy Regional Director for this area, actually does all the work for the Environmental Excellence Program and he's busy taking pictures.

I'd like to recognize all the work that Mike and Brian and Crystal and Dan have done for the program and I particularly urge you to continue to support them.

Crystal is in a real leadership position in the state.

helping us encourage the program and there's an association now of the debate members and she's been helping to organize that so we do really appreciate all the work that she's done and hope that you'll support her in continuing in that role although she probably got volunteered into it but if we just take a second and have folks come up and present we've got a plaque and a nice flag for

Just a couple of words.

We've been working at this for well over three years and trying to get to this level and a few people including John Mann.

He is the environmental management system coordinator for our department.

He deserves a huge round of applause.

Thank you.

Before we go any further, I realize that it's cold enough out and people have enough coats.

There's some chairs that are pretty much filled up with coats.

But otherwise, if there's a seat next to you that's pretty much vacant, if you could raise your hand so that people standing around the back can take a second and come find a seat if they would like to.

Just keep your hand up if you have a seat next to you so we can, and I'd encourage people to go ahead and find a seat because more people may be coming in who would actually like to stand where you are.

OK, everybody got a seat for the next one at the moment?

OK, thank you.

The next item is matters by the public.

And I just want to point out for a second that we have

We have Matters by the Public tonight with a bunch of people who have come forward to offer us comment, which is great.

And we also have a couple of public hearings tonight, which is also

Great.

But I will tell you that the public hearings, the stuff on the traffic stuff, the neighborhood traffic stuff, we're not planning to take any actions tonight.

So people can feel like they don't have to say every single word that they feel about a subject because they have time to contact us at other times and let us know.

So I just want to make sure people are aware of that.

The other thing I'd like to say is our agenda, we've shortened it, realized that we had a lot of things that people wanted to comment on.

We have shortened our agenda slightly from the original printed agenda.

And we're putting off till the next meeting

The report on the voting precinct boundary changes and we're also putting back the report on a sister city sculpture.

So those two items will be considered at our second meeting this month on the 20th.

Okay, with that said, we'll start the matters by the public.

People are given three minutes, up to three minutes.

The amount of comment we have, if anyone wants to speak less than three minutes, that's fine with me.

Okay, yes ma'am.

And she brings up a good thing, which is we also have another time at the end of the meeting where people can also make comments.

Collette Hall, 101 Robertson Lane.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Councillors.

As a neighborhood association president, I received in the mail this memorandum from the city manager, subject city arboreal strategies and best management practices.

On page two under tree replacement reads, in the historic districts within the city, replacements are mandated.

This is the third time I've come before this body to ask why the trees at 419 and 421 Park Street

which were removed have not been replaced.

This is private property and so the replacement is the mandated responsibility with the property owners.

These buildings are in the historic district and were in the historic district when the trees were removed.

I have spoken and emailed Neighborhood Development Services numerous occasions and spoke to Mike Svets, Director of Parks and Rec to clarify that these trees are on private property.

At the last, and that's what I want to say about trees, my second topic.

At the last city council meeting on January 16, 2007, the four last die-hard audience members heard the mayor and the councilors discuss a $50,000 contest prize for a building design.

This possible building to be located on the Water Street surface parking lot and the city's Water Street meter parking lot sites.

$50,000.

This may not seem like a lot of money compared to the millions the upcoming budget will demand, but every dollar is precious.

At the last neighborhood association president's quarterly meeting with the city manager on January 25, 2007, Mr. O'Connell was talking about the millions of dollars that are going to have to be spent on aging infrastructure.

For example,

just to maintain the existing waste water treatment capacity will be between 30 to 35 million dollars and that does not include any increase in capacity.

As a resident, taxpayer and voter in Charlottesville, I say waste water treatment is more important than a building design contest.

To be fair, the mayor did state that the money could possibly be raised by private donations or grants from private foundations.

If that happens, fine.

If not, the citizens of Charlottesville should be outraged at such an expenditure.

Thank you.

Alina Day.

Thank you very much.

My name is Donald Day.

I'm from the county, but tonight there's a group of us who are addressing an issue that knows no boundaries and I would like to, if you don't mind, I'd like to give the

sort of an agenda.

This would be Karen's night and also on February 20th.

And then I have a couple other pieces of literature.

As you can see, what you're going to be hearing about is the issue of nuclear power because there's a permit process that's ongoing right now to build an additional nuclear power plant in Louisa County.

at the site of the existing plants.

And so what you'll be hearing about tonight and on February 20th are some of the issues surrounding these plants.

What I wanted to talk about and

is what I just handed out to you as sort of the physics of nuclear power.

Let me just say that I have six minutes, so many of the Mayors stop me after ten and let me know I'll go home.

No, I've got to get done.

Basically, I don't expect you to read this and I'm not going to present it all tonight, but basically what is in here is sort of ABCs of nuclear power.

Essentially what goes on in nuclear power plant is that we boil water in an attempt to make electricity.

Fundamentally, it's exactly the same thing that goes out of a gas-fired plant or a coal-fired plant.

And one of the issues that are associated that are the same is that to produce one unit of electricity at a nuclear plant or a gas-fired or a coal-fired plant, you dump two units of energy into the environment.

It's a highly inefficient process.

And the use of electricity for uses

for which it wasn't intended as quite a useful, wasteful process because of the fact that to create this highly rich form of energy, we dumped too much energy into the environment at the power plant just to bring money to our home.

And the other issues that of course have become increasingly important is the issue of carbon dioxide and the environment which leads to global warming.

And this is the argument that the power companies are using as an attempt to promote and advance nuclear power.

And, of course, it is an important issue, but one of the other documents that I have today will address this as well.

This document that I gave you just goes with the physics, but one of the things I want to draw your attention to, and I mentioned that this is an issue without boundaries, has to do with the radioactive inventory.

Nuclear power plants, as you know, produce vast volumes of nuclear waste that must be isolated from the community.

And lately, in this document, I have a listing of the radioactive inventory of nuclear power plants

after refueling time, and it consists of something like 5.3 billion curies.

Many of these have very short half-lives, which means that they decay

quickly and can be considered sort of ordinary race after a very short amount of time.

But as you know, many of these must be isolated for hundreds of thousands of years, a solution to which has not yet been advanced in our society.

Now, many people argue that the reason that is is because we lack the political role.

I feel that it's a question of technology as well as politics.

And I think, fortunately, with democracy like ourselves, politics does play a role.

The other thing I'd like to point out to you is this diagram of energy flow in the energy sector.

I'm not sure if everybody's aware that 25% of the energy, the electricity that is produced at a power plant, independent of what kind it is, is lost in the process of delivering it to your home.

So the concentration of electrical production capacity in large plants is a lossful process because you're delivering it to great distances.

As you may know, the Dominion Power is trying to build a power plant

North Virginia, which is getting a whole lot of resistance.

So what I'd also like to point out is that Virginia Dominion has not yet indicated or proven that this is actually the best way to go.

And my last little handout here is, it's almost trivial to think about.

What it is, is if we're interested in saving energy, if we're interested in reducing CO2 emissions, and we're interested in keeping costs down,

Why don't we do the simple thing, and that is to replace light bulbs.

What I've got here is a little sheet, two-sided sheet, and it compares the cost savings associated with replacing a 100 watt incandescent bulb with a compact fluorescent fixture.

And a 100 watt incandescent bulb that burns five hours a day, 365 days a year, will consume 182 kilowatt hours, and produce

pounds of carbon dioxide, let's say a coal-fired plant, and cost $14.50 to run.

If you were to replace that with a 25 watt compact fluorescent, it would burn 47 kilowatt hours, produce 67 pounds of carbon dioxide, a savings of almost 200 pounds, and have an operating expense of $3.76.

A considerable cost savings for the consumer in society as well.

On the other side, it actually indicates that there's a tremendous cost saving

in the production.

If I could buy a compact fluorescent fixture for $10 that saves 75 watts, it's the same as I'm producing those watts.

But right now, the meat, which we're power plants, we're talking about bearing the cost about $2 a watt in productive, to produce $2 for every watt in production.

I can buy, for $10, a 75 watt lock bulb, a bulb that will save 75 watts, which replaces 75 watts.

That means that it's cost 13 cents per watt.

So we only have to ask ourselves, why isn't Dominion Power going around handing out compact fluorescent bulbs?

If their interests were aligned with those of the environment and the way parents of Virginia, this is in fact what they would be doing.

Thank you very much.

You know, I allowed Dr. Day to use someone else's minutes, but that's generally not been something we've done here.

I mean, it's basically, you know, we could end up with 12 people signing up saying, well, we have one person to speak to for the next half hour.

And I don't think that's fair to the other people who signed up.

You know, having planned this, I'd be glad to give you

you know since there's several other people but I know you're planning to come to the next meeting as well and I just want to make it clear that it's really not the way the rules are designed to work to allow several people to not intend to speak but to sign up and then say well I want this person to get to speak for much longer than the rules allow.

If you'd like to make a comment, you can wait your turn.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, other people signed up ahead of you.

I shall be quick, and we'll take that.

I'm going to speak also on several issues, and since you could certainly come back next meeting if you don't get done tonight, okay?

I'm going to talk just for trying to keep them in that three minutes on economics and alternatives.

You've got this information here.

Nuclear power is one of the most expensive.

First of all, I'd like to say...

I'm sorry, I don't know this speaking.

Yes, okay.

My name is Jerry Rosenthal.

I live in Louisa County.

I live exactly halfway between downtown Charlottesville and the North Carolina nuclear plant.

I've been

actively involved in the issue of nuclear power in Louisa for almost 30 years.

I'm a fifth generation Virginian.

My family has owned property in downtown Charlottesville since 1934.

And so I've been active here in Charlottesville as well as living in Louisa.

Talk about economics and alternatives.

Nuclear power is one of the most expensive ways of generating electricity.

Here you can see some of the cost of various things, wind, hydro, natural gas, coal, oil, solar, nuclear is one of the most expensive out of there.

The final way, the best way, is the negarot, which Donald has talked about, which is reducing our, reducing the use, and that cost is far and away the cheapest

way for us to do this.

Alternatives out there are simple, conservation efficiency, regulatory reform, right down the line.

Nuclear power and nuclear weapons connection.

The direct and continuing connection between nuclear power and weapons is uncontested.

We're hearing about this every day.

We hear North Korea.

We hear Iran.

All of these were nuclear power plants for electricity production and yet what is the answer?

The answer is that the waste that comes out of these can be turned into dirty bombs and is the base for making weapons.

North Anna, currently there's two reactors at North Anna

Each reactor makes 20 metric tons of nuclear waste, high level nuclear waste a year.

There's no place for that waste to go.

It sits right here.

When it's time for it to go out, it's going through Charlottesville.

It's going to come on 64 and go right through here.

New nuclear plants is going to need more waste and more stuff coming out.

Nuclear, the co-nuclear people are making arguments, no greenhouse gases.

Well, while the plants themselves are low emitters of CO2,

A great deal of CO2 is emitted during construction, mining, and especially in the enrichment of the uranium.

And uranium enrichment is also the largest continuing source of CSCs in the United States.

Because it takes so long for the plants to be built, and the plants are so large, it would take more than five years after operating the plant, which is 15 years from now, before we would see any savings, quote, from building a nuclear plant.

Energy independence.

Our energy dependence is on imported oil used primarily in transportation.

Less than 4% of US electricity generation is oil.

Dominion has an even smaller part of its output in imported oil.

And more than 85% of the uranium currently used in US commercial plants comes from outside the United States.

Last time, last thing, low cost.

Any time the industry tries to say,

Nuclear is a low-cost producer.

They've conveniently forgotten one or more of several costs.

The research and development, the insurance, the waste disposal, security, special appropriations for Congress.

If one were just to factor in the cost of taking care of the high and low-level waste, it would add tremendously to the true cost.

that you know the accident alone has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and these costs must be included in a fair analysis of any new plan.

Hello, my name is Barbara Cruikshank and I'm talking as a registered nurse

I work at UVA Medical Center and I'm a registered nurse and I'd like to talk for a few minutes on the effects of radiation exposure on children and let me start out by saying the toxicity of radioactive substances has been well documented

Going back to Marie Curie and her husband and daughter and the many other hundreds of individuals that began by studying these substances, many of those people wound up dying of leukemias and cancers that were radiation exposure induced.

We know that children are more vulnerable to the effects of radiation exposure as compared to adults.

of course children are our future and they entrust their care to the adults around them.

that children are more vulnerable.

Going back to 1945, Hiroshima and Nagasaki data was collected on children, the many hundreds of thousands of children that were exposed to radioactivity.

Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979, there were low dose exposures to children.

Chernobyl in 86, again large numbers of children exposed and again in 1987 in Brazil.

So

Why are children more vulnerable to the effects of radiation?

Children have higher rates of metabolism.

Their heart rates are faster.

Their respiratory rates are faster.

Their cellular reproduction is just much, it's a much faster process than in adults.

Children have developing immune systems.

Again, that makes them more vulnerable to these exposures.

Fallout, when there is an exposure, usually comes quickly to the ground.

Children live closer to the exposure area than in the air they breathe and the soil they come in contact with.

We know that children have a 10 to 20 times greater susceptibility to developing cancers from radiation exposure.

Let me just quickly review what are the effects of radiation exposure in children.

High dose whole body exposures are devastating.

This doesn't sound pretty.

Seizures, hemorrhaging, total organ failure, death, usually in a high dose exposure.

These are things that occur very quickly.

Children who have a moderate dose exposure suffer from genetic mutations, sterility, mental retardation, total body hair loss, leukemias, cancers of the breast, brain and thyroid are

Thank you.

Good evening, my name is John Cripshank, I live in Earliesville, Virginia, and I'm here this evening speaking as a representative of the Piedmont Group of the Sierra Club.

Last September, the National Sierra Club developed an energy resources policy.

And this policy states that nuclear power is not safe, affordable, or clean with the currently available technology.

That all current plant designs are complex and prone to accidents.

And that the problems with transportation, storage, and the disposal of nuclear waste remain unsolved.

In my remaining time, I want to discuss some of the problems with nuclear waste at North Anna.

Each of the two reactors at North Anna produces about 20 metric tons of spent fuel a year.

This waste contains plutonium and strontium-90 and is dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.

However, the best containment technology is only expected to last for decades.

All of the spent fuel at North Anna is stored on site 30 miles from here.

After the used fuel is removed from the reactor, it is placed in an above ground spent fuel pool for about seven years.

The pool at North Anna has been reconfigured four times to hold more fuel rods.

If water was drained from this pool as a result of an accident,

sabotage or terrorism, the ensuing radioactive fire would likely release a radioactive cloud and endanger thousands of people in our area.

After seven years, the spent fuel is then moved from that pool to concrete casks where it is now stored indefinitely.

There are currently 14 of these casks at North Vanna

and scientists have shown that these casts can be penetrated by a shoulder mounted grenade launcher.

All of this radioactive waste just 30 miles from Charlottesville is going nowhere.

Yucca Mountain in Nevada is an unlikely repository and the federal government has found no acceptable alternative.

Proponents of nuclear energy talk about the possibility of reprocessing the waste, but reprocessing is extremely expensive, poses security threats, and can lead to environmental contamination.

This radioactive waste, just 30 miles from Charlottesville, is increasing every year.

Thank you.

I just want to take this opportunity.

This is an action alert.

If you all want to speak out regarding the nuclear power plant at North Anna, this gives you that information.

We already had your chance, I'm afraid, and you gave it to somebody else.

Okay.

Carla Mano, 324 Seven and a Half Street.

We do have some groundwater problems in Fifeville, but I'm not here to speak about nuclear issues.

The city has been approaching us on issues of historic preservation.

I've lived in the neighborhood since 1989.

As a vice president of the Neighborhood Association during the case water era, we were approached on this issue when we had

Fairly unanimous opposition.

Suddenly we discover that we're being researched for state and federal historic designation.

I would like to know a little bit more from the city and perhaps neighborhood services as to why this process was not more transparent not sure what the impetus for this was and I definitely want to if we do go ahead with this at a state and federal level for the city to use this as an opportunity at best to consider not imposing a local designation we have an opportunity to look at other neighborhoods what has happened when that's occurred

This is a chance perhaps to access the tax credits they're offering us but what's happening at this point is that they're selling it to the neighborhood as a purely beneficial, no local control and then adding in the local later on.

No assurance that we're not going to have the BAR.

looking at us for a local designation.

So I'd like the process to be more transparent, I'd like more public notification of meetings, and I'd like the historic opposition to historic designation to be acknowledged.

Thank you.

John Pauls.

Mr. Mayor, I'm going to speak on traffic.

Perhaps I signed up on the wrong sheet.

Why not?

Thank you.

Hi Mr. Mayor, Council Members.

Is it, can you still hear me okay?

On Friday, February 9th, from 2pm to 7pm, Igor Blanding Apartments and the Virginia Blood Services will be hosting a blood drive.

This is very important.

I understand that everyone here probably has a very busy schedule.

So what I'm asking you for is one hour at a time and in that one hour, 100 of us can say three adult lives or eight infant lives.

Does anyone from the grass family people actually do?

So if you've had an hour of your time available on Friday, February 9th, please call the phone number or go to www.vagoner.com.

So, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's A.K.

Beter, Ms. Beter.

That's me.

It's me.

You're you.

And I know you've gotten this already.

This is our letter from the Frost Springs Neighborhood Association about the intersection.

I'm sorry, for the public you didn't introduce yourself Ms. Reeder?

I'm Andrea K. Reeder and I live on Highland Avenue, which is not far from this intersection, which cannot be crossed.

without imperiling your life.

It took us a year to get rid of the thumb.

We're so glad that the thumb is gone, but we still need the intersection to be properly noted.

It has to have two additional stop signs.

We need four, a four way stop there.

We need the crosswalks to be redrawn so that pedestrians can cross with safety.

And we need signage repaired and reinstalled

that will tell people that there's a place to cross and that cars know to stop.

Pedestrians are in peril.

We need your help.

We know no other place where elected officials can now step in and do the right thing for the children and for the neighborhood of Fry Springs.

The intersection is Willard, Cleveland and Cherry.

I stand ready to speak to you on this matter anytime you wish.

and we are in partnership not only with the Frost Springs Neighborhood Association on this and all of the neighbors in the neighborhood but also with the Cherry Avenue Christian Church.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm Anne Carter.

I live at 715 Ironsdale Avenue.

I am here on behalf of my mother.

This is Janet Watson-Wicks.

She lives at 324 6th Street Southwest.

It is about her property that is there in the proposed Fifeville Historic District and we want the city council and the mayor and the city manager to know that we don't want it.

And not only that, we have not been asked if we wanted it.

procedures have gone on to get the historic designation with Mariah Calivan and Susie Peters and not very time have we been asked at the four different meetings that we have attended if we want to proceed with this.

It is our property and for my mother, we are coming first or third in the city of Charlottesville.

In 1938,

when the addition was placed onto Jefferson School on Commerce Street.

What followed was that those people who signed the 1926 petition and lived on 4th Street and Preston Avenue, their homes were taken to Bell Lane High School, the school for blank youth that is now the Albemarle County

Office Building, and since then, it seems to me that every time we make some strides with rather some school, our 1958 addition, the same people who signed the petition in 1926 and lived on Fifth Street, their homes had to go.

1959, Hart Houses on Brown Street and 5th Street Northwest, including the home of our beloved Miss Eudora Louris.

And our African American hero, Roosevelt Brown, of whom the 19th Street connector is named, was demolished to build George Washington Carver Recreation Center, addressed to her third, 4th Street Northwest.

September 13th, or maybe it was the 16th, when Greenbrier and Lane High Schools desegregated by former Jefferson Elementary students and Jackson Peabody High School students, what followed was that Rose Jefferson Elementary School that it has the First Street Recreation Center

The first Carver Recreation Center was demolished because the city and the school board decided not to put any more funding in it.

It came down.

August 1, 2006, we found the architectural footprint of Old Jefferson Elementary School.

1960s, as we all know, we're about to have another Vinegar Hill with this Whitefield District, historic district.

The businesses on Vinegar Hill, West Main Street, and the homes and businesses northwest of Vinegar Hill were demolished after Lane High School and Venable Schools were integrated.

I could go on and on and on.

The point is we do not want this historic designation and on my head I am still convinced that it is connected somehow with Jefferson School at December the 7th.

We were in Richmond to get the historic designation outside and on the heels of that December 21st we received this letter

Tatiana Patton, 2209 Jefferson Park Ave.

I'm here to speak on behalf of the Compass Special Use Permit, which is coming up later in the agenda.

I have to excuse you, but we've had a public hearing on that.

Oh, that's changed.

The second thing on my personal agenda was I wanted to alert you and any politically concerned citizen in Charlottesville Albemarle within broadcast range.

Tomorrow two bills are hitting the House of Delegates and Senate floors, then others are HB 3113 or

alternatively SV1403.

These bills merge the state air pollution, water control and waste management boards into one 11 member board called the Virginia Environmental Quality Board and this board would only be allowed to adopt regulations.

All authority for permitting and licensing by these citizen review boards would be given to the DEQ.

This takes all public response, all citizen input, out of permitting and licensing for these three very important environmental quality areas.

I urge everybody to get online, look up these bills, contact your delegates, contact your senators.

Thank you.

Peter Clemon?

And I'll also again invite people who have empty seats, if people are looking for a seat, please.

Good evening.

My name is Peter Kleeman.

I live at 407 Head Street in the city.

I've been recently in communication with the Virginia Department of Transportation and the city staff regarding

the terminus of the Meadow Creek Parkway at Melbourne Road and was curious as to when we would have some determination as to what the impacts of traffic on that particular facility would be.

The city's portion of the Meadow Creek Parkway runs between 250 Bypass where there's a very involved study of an interchange and there's no information about what happens at the other end of that particular facility.

the project manager at VDOT suggested that there would be no study because the city had decided they would like that to be a very low impact interchange, a small design and thus there was no decision about what the interchange would look like.

And when I spoke with the city staff and said well wouldn't it be nice to know what the level of service and operation characteristics of that would be

and what impacts it might have on neighboring communities and access to the high school, etcetera.

And I was told that there's no plan to investigate what the traffic circumstances would be at that particular location.

I see that there's two items on the agenda today addressing other neighborhood traffic issues where the city has apparently prepared reports on what the traffic situation might be, what some of the choices are,

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

My name is Brandon Smith and I've lived in Charlottesville for about a dozen years and currently I don't have a fixed address.

I'm one of the homeless population.

My concern is the resolution that as I understand it is being passed on the shelter on the day since tonight and the scientists say there has not been a public discussion, public hearing in front of council and a lot of us, some of us are in the, if there's such a thing as a homeless community,

Mr. Mayor, given the fact that we disallowed comment by Ms. Patton in favor of this.

That's true.

I'm sorry, I wasn't, I wasn't at the top of my game, but we have had a public hearing.

At the city council?

That's not the same thing, that's my thought, that's what brought me down here.

And I want to make, if I don't say anything else, I want

Mr. Morris to recuse himself from voting on this issue, I would hope so.

And I want to point out that a lot of the agendas and everybody here can relate to it.

The agendas for the meetings in this city and the meetings themselves are attended for either people paid to go to those meetings or self serving types to designate themselves neighborhood leaders.

and some of them can be self-serving and still do good work, I'll grant you that.

But having lived in Richmond for 25 years before I came here, I have an understanding of what city politics are and I'm suggesting that we haven't had a fair hearing on this thing.

The idea has some merit

but the problem is it needs to be something.

I came down here so it was exactly to point out that I didn't think there was a legitimate public hearing because people simply can't in their lives get down here.

We live, there are several cultures in Charlottesville and there's the official culture that can process this stuff and has help getting there and does internet stuff and other people too busy with their lives to deal with it.

So, and I would refer you, if anybody is intellectually unchallenged, I'd refer you to the historian John Lukacs, who talks about hard minorities that control the agenda, particularly in the polls meetings, voting meetings.

And if I sound like I've got an attitude, I do, and some of you don't.

But I simply, all I'm asking you is have a public hearing and look at some of the problems and

and in my three years recently I would say that there's some severe problems within all the shelters that I know of now, abuse of staff, by staff, of clientele, etc.

Just for a second, I know I'm going to run into you on the mall any day.

You've got to be willing to change the agenda, which is any intelligent person's options.

Okay.

Thank everyone for coming and making comment.

We do have time at the end of our regular scheduled agenda tonight to have more public comment.

But the next item actually is council responses to matters by the public.

There's plenty to choose from here, guys.

Well, I think that does raise a question.

Does a public hearing that was held by the Planning Commission count on our rule for not speaking on a...

Personally, I would not be against hearing from the public at this body.

I would not personally suggest that we count a Planning Commission public hearing against our rule of

And that was the issue of the Fifeville Historic District.

I got several phone calls

this past week about the latest, I'm sorry, y'all can't hear?

Is that better?

Sorry.

I was speaking on the Fifeville Historic District.

I received several phone calls after the latest meeting that was held.

There is historic opposition to historic designations in historically African-American neighborhoods.

I, you know, myself live in Rose Hill and my neighbors are against

Historic designation.

Most of these, when we do these considerations, they usually come at the request of neighborhoods.

So I would certainly hope that in moving forward, staff will be very sensitive to neighborhood concerns and also what the neighborhood wants.

So I just wanted to state that.

I have had some conversations with Mr. Tolbert and I will be talking with Mary Joy Scala for those of you in Fifeville who are listening.

I'd like to make two comments.

One comment regarding the intersection with the thumb.

It's my understanding, you know, we do have a recently hired new traffic engineer and I think that her backlog of work is considerable and I think, but I do believe it's my understanding that that's on her agenda and I'm hoping to have a good resolution for that coming up.

That historic properties, it's much more difficult to tear down this property in a historic neighborhood than it is

In a non-historic neighborhood, an owner of property must tear it down.

In a historic neighborhood, if it's a historic property, they have to go through a city process and get special permission to do that.

But I do believe, but I completely agree with Ms. Hamilton that designating historic neighborhoods should be something that is done with, hopefully, the enthusiastic participation of the neighborhood and certainly not overriding the concerns of the neighborhood.

I'll add to what you said, Mr. Mayor.

I guess that one of the things that I've watched over the years is that, and I don't know what the motive has been for some of these things, but I think sometimes the perception is, you know, greater than reality.

And in a lot of cases, I think a lot of people in the African American neighborhoods feel like their property has just been taken away over time for various things.

Any other comments?

Okay.

Next on the agenda is the consent agenda.

The consent agenda tonight consists of item E, the minutes of January 16th and 19th, item B, appropriation of $200,000, the school's contribution to the small capital improvement program, it's a second reading.

Item C, appropriation of $120,000, the Greenbelt Trail grant, it's the first reading, and appropriation of $97,262, the Fire Disbursement Fund grant, it's the first reading.

an appropriation of the Parks and Recreation gift guide account donation, it's the first reading, an appropriation of $15,000, which is the first T operating grant, it's the first reading, and an ordinance on an amendment regarding the open storage of vehicles, and this is a second reading.

Are there any items to be removed from the consent agenda and considered at the end by regular meeting, or are there any amendments to the minutes?

I'll move the agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Any discussion on the consent agenda?

I'll call for the vote.

Next on the agenda is what at least half the people in the audience I think have been waiting for, which is the public hearing and the report on neighborhood traffic issues.

issues on our agenda tonight.

I wanted to make a couple quick comments and then I'll turn it over to some of the staff from Labor Development Services.

We're getting a chronology.

There's been a series almost on every one of these issues.

A series of neighborhood meetings with discussions with the residents.

There are five sets of recommendations.

Our suggestion is when we get to the end that we actually consider each one for any follow up discussion or questions or issues or policy direction.

that you'd like to give us as we move forward.

We have staff recommendations.

You're going to hear a twist or two on one tonight where we've gotten some recorded information.

And then there's a public hearing scheduled really to give the residents and the community an opportunity to hear the recommendations and then to have a discussion about them.

Craig, we need to get the screen down just to show the maps of the neighborhoods.

We thought it was important that everybody in the meeting, the people at home, see the locations and what they're adjacent to in the community.

So as we go through these different improvements to different neighborhood traffic situations, we're going to put up here a quick map.

There are a couple of points in the beginning we'll make and then we'll move from there.

I don't know, I think most of these maps are in Council's package so probably no need for y'all to...

So this is more for the benefit of the audience?

For the audience and people on CV, right.

Just to make sure we're all in the same place here.

I'm going to start this off just talking just a second and then turn part of it over to Angela to talk some and we're going to tag team a little bit so you don't get bored listening to the same person all the time.

But as Gary said, we're here to talk first about five neighborhood traffic issues and then run over them over Lynchburg Road

after we had the hearing on this item.

These are issues or traffic problems that our staff has been working on for a number of years.

Some of them we've been working with the neighborhoods for as many as three years, 30 years to look at solutions and opportunities and I dare say that they are some of the most difficult that we've faced as we go through this and some of the most complex and there's been a lot of

a lot of time to try to figure out what to do with it.

I think this, the fact that they're here tonight points out the fact that the need for us to take a comprehensive look at Charlottesville traffic.

We started that with the Planning Commission and City Council joint work session a couple of weeks ago.

We'll have a follow-up meeting on the 15th of that where we'll bring some more information.

But I think just the fact that we have these has turned out the need for

a comprehensive look at our city and regional transportation issues.

Many of these problems we have tonight are because the men and arteries in collector roads don't function adequately and traffic is trying to find an alternative route and it's going through neighborhoods.

Every one of these is a result of that.

The COP plan will give us an opportunity to take a more comprehensive look at each of these and other areas as we

Hopefully you can try to look towards ways to avoid these situations where they become so acute in neighborhoods that they're here before you.

I'm going to talk just briefly about the meadows and the traffic devoter to give you an update and then again Angela's going to talk about Sediment High Street, Calhoun Street, Franklin Street, and Birdwood at Hillcrest.

And then we'll be ready for the public hearing.

The traffic devoter at Cedar Hill and

North Berkshire, was put in as a temporary, as you know, about a year and a half ago.

The concern with that, with the neighborhood traffic, as you can see the arrows here, is traffic that cuts through from Barracks Road and Wicke Road over to Angus, down Angus, Cedar Hill, to a buried 29-inch mess out here.

Of course, there's also cut through that was occurring to come Angus Road back this way.

The debater was put in after a great deal of talk

to the neighborhood is being really the only true traffic measure that would solve the cut-through problem.

Any other thing will allow traffic to come one other way, but not cut it out completely.

If you recall, about a year ago, we had a conversation with the county residents, particularly those that lived in the neighborhood, the Meadows neighborhood, in the area to the west of the city part of the neighborhood,

had a great deal of concern, expressed concern, as did some of our city residents about the Devoter.

We had a public meeting.

Our ballot team when we did this, before we put it in, was overwhelmingly in support of the Devoter.

And so Council made the decision at that point to leave the temporary Devoter in place and to work with the county.

The county promised that there would be a pork chop inserted at Hydraulic and the Albemarle Place entrance.

This is the main entrance into Albemarle Place.

Thank you.

A pork chop is a concrete thing that's put into the road to channel traffic in one direction or the other.

The idea being that if we could divert traffic coming out of Albemarle Place and not allow it to come through this intersection, then we could solve a lot of the problems.

So the city council at that time asked us not to proceed with the permanent devoter, leave it temporarily in place and work with the county.

We had not heard anything from the county at all in over a year and there had not been any movement on that.

The site plan for Albemarle Place has never shown the diverse, so we had to search up to any concern that there wasn't anything happening.

Since this is coming on the agenda, however, the county staff has shown us correspondence that they've written to the neighborhoods and work they've done with PDOT and assured us that when the final site plan comes in for Albemarle Place, it will in fact have

the pork chop in place and they will require it to be built before the Albemarle place is open.

That being the case, what we'd like to do is use this time to report to you the status of it and recommend that we stay the course at your own, leave everything the same, not take any more action, but take the county if they're worried that they're going to build the pork chop as required.

But we're still looking at the extension of the median here

to Brock Turner's in and out of Swanson to help that and that we go forward as we have been for some time on this one.

We considered recommending and talked earlier today about recommending we take the temporary out.

It is ugly.

It does cost something to keep up.

But in talking to our staff, we're not getting many complaints.

And in fact, we've gotten quite a few letters of calls of support.

and concerns from the city residents wanting to know when we're going to make it permanent.

So unless there's an overwhelming desire to take it out, it seems to be functioning that we fixed it to the point that Merci Davis could get in, get through it.

And the traffic devoter doesn't seem to be causing a lot of trouble now.

And the county staff in their written documents acknowledges that we're going to leave it up until they finish their work.

So it corresponds to the Board of Supervisors.

I think we've got a better, I think that this has allowed us to get a better understanding of the situation by having the fact this was advertised, unfortunately.

I call some angst, but I think it did clarify a number of matters with it.

That's the status of Mel Pertshire.

Good evening.

I'd like to share with you a few of the considerations that we've used as we've gone over the five separate neighborhood traffic issues.

We have successfully implemented over 15 traffic calming projects over the past six years per the city's traffic calming guidelines.

In addition, balloting is used to document the support of what we're sharing with you this evening.

City Council approval is required when directional street changes or closures are sought.

Otherwise, these 15 or so traffic calming projects that have already been implemented have generally gone on without needing to come before City Council.

So the purpose we're here tonight is because we need your approval for directional changes or closures.

Numerous neighborhood meetings have been conducted to discuss various options

We also know in meeting with neighborhoods time and again to discuss traffic issues that no one solution satisfies everyone with respect to any fix that we might use.

The recommendations that we've offered are consistent with formal participation process as well as the CIP requests that we've been working on with each of our 18 neighborhoods over the last three years.

As a matter of fact, we've been

In addition to our newly hired traffic engineer, there were two previous traffic engineers in the three-year period that have worked on these.

And so, as we wrap up this piece of our three-year capital improvement process, CIP process, we hope to resolve these issues.

In addition, as with any traffic calming project or otherwise, a trial period can be used to review the impacts.

And we do strongly suggest that if a trial period

is considered later when and if council takes action that they do agree with a year trial period.

The Fifeville proposal

is a recommendation to one-way 7.5 Street northbound from Cheley Avenue to 7th Street, Dice Street intersection.

We began talking about this proposal during our CIP conversations with the neighborhoods.

In April 2005, we conducted various traffic studies on Knoll Street and surrounding streets, again in April 2006, to verify data.

We've met with the Fifeville neighborhood on numerous occasions.

May 2006, we proposed one way, Seven and a Half Street, to address

a safety problem that we viewed while we monitored traffic in the field and we noted that some cars actually drove over the sidewalk as they were passing one another and we realized that we're dealing with not only vehicular safety but pedestrian safety.

So

In keeping with our recommendation, we'd like to point out that 7 and a half street is the same width as other streets that are now one way in this neighborhood.

It's a 20 foot wide street.

The one way designation would allow parking on one side.

We have balloted to get a general feel for whether the neighborhood does support this.

I'd suggest you keep going.

We'll finish and then we'll have questions if there's anything to clarify for the public.

Locust Grove neighborhood, once again.

on the basis of having met with the neighborhood numerous times.

This happens to be one of their capital improvement project priorities to have traffic calming in their neighborhood.

Primarily, we focused on Calhoun Street.

We conducted a formal origin destination study to assess how much of the traffic is from outside the neighborhood.

the origin destination study took license plates on Park Street as they entered North Avenue and River Road as they exited Bellevue Avenue and points in between and there was determined in a computer program the timing that license tag was monitored through the neighborhood determined whether it had a stopping point so it could be through traffic

or it was local traffic.

It belonged in the neighborhood.

And what we found through that study was that 25 to 27 percent of the traffic in this neighborhood was from points beyond Park Street and beyond River Road.

We're assuming that would otherwise use the Park Street to the Route 250 bypass.

While working with this neighborhood, we have made changes to the signal timing at

The 250 bypass High Street and River Road to allow for more through time eastbound in the PM peak hour, hoping that the queuing does not back up beyond Locust Avenue and Park Street.

We hope that would provide some relief.

But in addition, what we also find is that there's a peak hour cut through problem in the mornings.

westbound and in the evenings eastbound.

And once again, through many discussions with residents, we've been asked to look into road closures, cul-de-sacking, speed humps, various other traffic calming ideas.

But the one way remedy

does have the full support of Calhoun Street residents and when we conducted a meeting last fall we mailed out invitations to about 1100 folks, 60 of which attended half were in favor of one way Calhoun and a little more than half, 29 votes were in favor of no change

but this recommendation to one-way Calhoun Street between Locust Avenue and St. Clair Avenue in the westbound direction is consistent with the CIP request.

The Willam Mills neighborhood, we've had a couple presentations before city council last fall where we discussed

meeting with stakeholders, reviewing through truck traffic restriction and then potentially one-waying Franklin Street.

And we've subsequent had several meetings with neighborhood residents to review what the traffic on Franklin Street is doing.

We had an informal

Ocean destination traffic study conducted on Franklin Street, which told us about 25% of the traffic on Franklin Street belongs to either Willam Mills or Belmont neighborhoods, Broadway Street, Market Street areas.

And then 75% is from out of the area.

And with that information,

evolved the idea that Franklin Street might more successfully serve the neighborhoods with concerns about difficult turns at Franklin and East Market as well as dangerous volumes through the railroad underpass by one weighing Franklin Street southbound from Market Street to the self-storage business.

From the self-storage business to Carlton Avenue,

it would be two way.

And what we've also done based on consensus from our neighborhood meetings was to provide pavement markings to support pedestrian usage along Franklin Street.

This is a schematic, but it's already in place in the field and where the sidewalk in front of the self-storage place leads off

We've transitioned a four foot wide pavement area to allow pedestrian crossing underneath the railroad tracks and we've installed stop, proceed when clear signs on both sides of the railroad crossing as well as the pedestrian crosswalk on Carlton Avenue.

So our recommendation after meeting with our neighbors

and businesses is to southbound Franklin Street to the self storage from East Market.

And the last traffic issue in the north downtown neighborhood involves the closure of Birdwood Road and Hillcrest Road medians on the Route 250 bypass.

Almost 20 years ago, this same topic was brought before city council for approval of median closures at that time due to accident frequency.

And what was decided at that time was to implement left turning movement restrictions, which you now see in place today from 7 to 9 a.m. and from 3 to 6 p.m. And it restricts left turning movements

out of Birdwood and Hillcrest and into Birdwood and Hillcrest during those hours.

I'd like to give you a quick review of the accident frequency.

The results of our accident summary indicate that 65%, 11 of the 17 crashes at the Birdwood Road median and 40%, 2 of the 5 at Hillcrest Drive median openings would be prevented by closure of the medians.

We also have mailed letters to all of the Birdwood residents earlier this summer advising them of this pending

proposal and of the 62 letters that we sent to neighborhood residents as well as the school, we received 11 responses.

Two were totally opposed and interested in other options including a traffic signal at Birdwood.

Two were in favor of the change.

Two understood the reason for the change but are concerned with the inconvenience that would be posed on them.

Four would like other options considered, three for a traffic signal, one for a roundabout at McIntire Road, and one is concerned with the suggested rerouting of traffic.

Our suggested rerouting, if the medians become closed, obviously it would be right in, right out, only at both Birdwood and Hillcrest, but would be to take rights out to McIntire Road, rights on McIntire Road, and rights

at Harris Street onto Allied Street.

That would allow for two left turns to be made back to the bypass with the safety of making those left turns at a signalized intersection.

Many of the people that we spoke to that said they already avoid making lefts into and out of the site said that they conduct their travels elsewhere through city streets and it would not be a problem.

But for those that did need to use the bypass or had points north or west

and would be inconvenienced by approximately 1.7 additional miles traveled.

I think if you have just a moment for the benefit of the public, I'd like to go over our considerations of the suggested remedies, i.e.

a traffic signal at Birdwood and a traffic signal on the Park Street ramps with the bypass.

Right now traffic signal at Birdwood and the 250 bypass.

The 250 bypass carries approximately 36,000 cars per day and it is significantly much more traffic than just carried by the sudden probably less than a thousand trips generated out of the Birdwood neighborhood.

In addition to that, we do not have the benefit of left turn lanes in either direction, but that would render it really infeasible for a traffic signal to be installed.

That, in addition to the close proximity to the McIntire Road intersection is problematic.

The likelihood of a traffic signal at the Park Street ramps is something that

We continue to wrestle with, we're looking at that as we review the Route 250 interchange at McIntire Road project but with or without that project moving forward the compromise to safety of backing up traffic onto the bypass should the ramps on Park Street be signalized

Which direction should we go in?

I did have a couple, I had one question about the traffic developer at Cedar Hill and North Berkshire.

I just wanted to clarify something, Mr. Tolbert.

We did get

a letter from Dennis Rooker, the Board of Supervisors which showed us a letter that had been sent or an exchange of letters that was dated around 2005 with VDOT and the things that were mentioned were this pork chop thing at the entrance to Albemarle Square but he also mentioned

making not allowing any southbound traffic at all on Cedar Hill into the city and making it right turns out for northbound traffic.

So I'm wondering if

with those, does that mean that we are then going to take the diverter out and rely on this new traffic pattern that they're creating?

Will the diverters stay along with all of these things that we're doing?

The agreement last year that we had was that if they, if they give the diverter at Albemarle Place and we made the improvement at Swanson, whether it's another pork chop, excuse me, the pork chop at Albemarle Place and either extended the median or we put a pork chop at Swanson,

that the devoter would come out.

I just want to clarify that.

It also sounds like they're going beyond just putting the pork chop in, that they're at least this was like written down in black and white in this letter.

Of course, the key is that they don't have control over it.

It's a beat up.

Any other questions?

I have a question on the one-way of Franklin Street.

That is correct.

And the thought is that that allowance for two-way traffic be to serve the self-storage business primarily.

There is the concern that that becomes a de facto turnaround.

Well, it's not anything that the city would promote and we would work hard that that be avoided.

It's a follow-up question that back in the fall when we put the first level of changes to Franklin Street, the stop signs,

We do.

I did want to add that we were getting monthly reports about the voluntary restrictions on truck traffic particularly from HT Farron and that has eliminated monthly approximately 600 plus truck trips on Franklin Street and apparently except for five trips that they needed to make, five or so trips,

because of a plant breakdown and needing to get somewhere quickly during a train stopping.

They can all but avoid the train that's used Carlton Avenue, but that they've not used that.

And so this restriction, I'm sure that they may speak for themselves tonight, but we've talked with them and they've done quite nicely without Franklin Street for these last three, four months.

Overall,

The truck reduction, the two axle truck reduction, we've generally not seen much of a reduction.

And even the cities through truck restriction does not limit two axle trucks and panel trucks.

And we have had an additional two incidents with tractor trailers getting hung up at Franklin Street and East Market.

But because of the business at the end of East Market, that's still

requires tractor trailer access.

We're going to have to work on and we're doing so with the neighborhood right now about signing that alerts these truck drivers that Franklin Street is just not an option as we've done elsewhere where we try and keep them from turning down Riverside or some of Riverview, some of these other cross streets.

I have a question about your balloting procedure because I notice on the Calhoun Street issue it shows that you balloted the neighborhood in November of 2006 and the response was generally, numerically at least, opposed to making Calhoun Street one way.

However, I noticed that some of the streets that are going to be most directly impacted by the change weren't balloted.

For instance, Bellevue and North, which will have substantial impact.

In our traffic calming guidelines, are those surrounding streets that have no choice but to

I think the way it's worded is if a street and adjacent streets have no choice but to avoid a traffic calming measure, whether it be a speed hump or a directional change, they are included in the ballot area.

Those that do have choices, maybe going an additional block around or have other options, we can include at our discretion.

And I mentioned discretion because we did use discretion to include Smith Street,

and some of St. Clair because there is that fear that rather than sending the traffic on the collector portion of Locust Avenue back to the bypass that they may turn on the residential portion of Locust Avenue and use Smith Street even though that's a further distance.

Our traffic calming guidelines also indicate that when you do a follow-up review if you've impacted

Traffic volumes by more than 10%, that's an unacceptable threshold for fixing one problem and moving it to another.

So we plan to use that threshold when we do a follow-up study to make sure that implementation of the change was successful.

We did actually take a vote when we mailed the 11,000 notices to all of Locust Grove neighborhood and 60 some showed up to this meeting.

It was a very good turnout actually.

We ended the meeting by taking a vote as to whether folks were interested in one way Calhoun Street or do nothing and half supported

One Way, Calhoun Street, it was 25% and slightly more than half 29, 25 votes rather, and 29 were against or for no change.

It was not surprising to us because throughout the meeting we heard concern that they would not be impacted by a shift in traffic.

And so obviously we weren't able to allay those fears so much as we were able to assure them that we had a means of checking on that later.

Just a point of clarification.

I had a question about Seven and a Half Street.

You, I was looking at the traffic pattern that you're imposing and so it's going to end up by making it northbound one way, you're going to end up with two northbound streets and then a southbound street beyond that.

It's not sort of like an intuitive or logical traffic pattern, so I was just wondering,

if you said the neighborhoods were in general in favor of one way in the street.

But did they have any preference?

But in general, and that was... Was that something that people talked about?

Yes, at some length.

And...

Right.

Just one last question.

And that is about Birdwood.

Yeah, that's a tough position that the residents of Birdwood and Hillcrest are on with no other outlets to that neighborhood.

You mentioned something that's not on any transportation plan that I know of, and that is making a connection to Allied.

And so I just wanted to find out if that is something that is even possible given, I mean, what I remember of that topography is that it's, it's, it's got a pretty severe slope.

The topography is challenging as well as their homes at the end of the street.

Any other questions?

OK, thank you.

If not, we're going to

Looking to the public hearing, I wanted to make a couple of comments before the public hearing.

One comment I wanted to just say again that the idea is that we're not going to make any decisions on these things tonight.

What we'll do, I think, as a council is if there's items that we, that one or more councils feel like we would like to consider acting on, then we'll bring it back, we'll ask to bring it back to another agenda.

If there's items that we don't want to take action on, we just don't take any action.

So there will be other times that either for either comment or just being able to express your email us or call us.

The second thing I wanted to comment was, and this kind of falls out of the comments earlier about public hearings and planning commission public hearings and public hearings here, is to me, this topic tonight of this public hearing is the neighborhood traffic report.

and so comments offered tonight on a neighborhood traffic issue I don't think will be considered, I would not consider to be having been a public hearing simply on that sole issue so it doesn't preclude a person from coming back at a later meeting and offer us their comments

on a certain issue.

On the other hand, we haven't had public hearings on a couple of issues that are before us.

On Franklin Street, for example, we had a public hearing.

And we could still hear as we get closer to that on what the council wants to do if that's an issue.

But I just want to make it clear that people have a chance if we decide to consider these things at a later time, your comments tonight aren't the only chance you'll have to make a public comment on most of these issues.

So with that said, Naomi Roberts,

is the first person listed.

And I'll remind everyone, I'll open the public hearing, and I'll remind everyone that you have three minutes to speak.

You can state your name and address.

If you'd like to speak for less than three minutes, it's allowed.

Yes, ma'am.

My name is Naomi Robinson, I live in Evansville, St. Clair Avenue, and regarding Calhoun Street,

Changing it to one round from NEST from St. Clair to Opus and against it it puts a hardship in on those that's living in St. Clair trying to get to better homes and also when they want to go to CBS and

I've attended neighborhood association meetings and only half a dozen or less people are there.

It's apparent that they are catering to only a few in the neighborhood, which in this case is counting residents' requests on the east side of North Stanley.

So when, if that's approved, what's next?

Is that going to, are they going to look at the other half, the other part of St. Clair that goes to Park Street?

and it's also going to throw people on Smith Street coming down to get to their homes which is going to cost money, gasoline, more time and then it's also going to throw people on River Road which is one block up from where I live because you already have the businesses coming up River Road and down River Road in the evening and in the morning.

That's going to put a hardship on the residents on the road.

They own about 11 or 12 houses on Calhoun Street.

And for such a short street, I just can't see the point in having that one way.

and they already have a speed bump on the street and every intersection except Pear Tree Lane in that area has three and four way stop signs.

I can't get out of my block without a stop sign on one end and a stop sign on the other end and then another stop sign.

So I'm surrounded by stop signs already and I just don't see a report in making, in making, um, um, Calvin Street one way.

We all pay our taxes for our city streets and I think that we are putting us all at this advantage in making so many one-way streets, particularly in the area that I live.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Andrew King.

I'm a long-term resident of Charlottesville.

I've been here since 1990.

I was out at 1036 St. Clair Avenue, general manager of our Mass Superwash and Land, so I'm familiar with a lot of

of the neighborhoods in the area of both Albemarle and the City of Charlottesville.

I didn't write a letter in my speech specifically addressing the council here.

I said wrote it to some of my immediate neighbors concerning the Locust Grove neighborhood motion to try to turn Calhoun into a lonely street.

I'm just basically going to read or paraphrase some of the letter.

This letter is of the utmost importance to any of you who are affected by traffic or if you use Calhoun Street in any of your travels.

This letter is also very important to people living in the general vicinity of Calvin Street because of traffic spillover issues.

The Lotus Grove Neighborhood Association, in a letter recently delivered to many of us in our neighborhood, is trying to mislead you concerning the issue of the severity of cut-through traffic in our neighborhood.

Why is this?

Because many of the regular Lotus Grove Neighborhood Association members are people who are looking out for their own interests and have their own agendas.

The Locust Grove Neighborhood Association claims that making Calhoun a runway street will solve the cut-through problem.

This is the plan of only a few people to make their situation good while inconveniencing you, meaning the other neighbors.

Here's why.

The plan to make Calhoun Street a runway street is the plan concocted by the Calhoun Street residents designed to keep traffic off their street.

They use the guise that the 7,556 vehicles traveling down their street daily is cut-through traffic.

This is not the case.

For the city's own research, with Ms. Tucker, I guess it is, Andrew Tucker, you can verify the numbers on the city's webpage under the details section of the February 5th council agenda page in the background.

Only approximately 27% of this traffic, 2,040 vehicles, is cut through while the remainder

5,667 are people in our own neighborhood using our own streets.

People like you and me using our streets to get where we need to go.

Should we let the 12 or so houses on the portion of Calhoun Street in question make our travels difficult and allow spillover traffic onto otherwise quiet streets, especially since it will not solve the cut-through problem?

I say no, and you should too if you ever use Calhoun Streets in your travels and don't want to be lost around by the 12 or so residents

on Calhoun Street, who are the initiators and doctors of this selfish, ineffective plan, not to mention the dollars, tax dollars wasted on their agenda.

For your information, the city classifies Calhoun Street as a connector street, a street meant to facilitate traffic in our own neighborhood for us to use.

This is obviously the case since 5,667 trips are made by us daily on our own streets.

A few Calhoun residents want to essentially make their own private road for their own benefit.

If they get their way, you'll be denied the use of your public road and easy commute while at the same time spilling traffic onto otherwise quiet surrounding streets without not solving the problem of true cut-through traffic.

If you could wrap up your comments.

Okay.

Basically, you know, I did a...

a poll on some of the neighbors and I handed out about 500 flyers.

I think the wording on some of the city wants, makes it sound as though the city's going to do it, whether it'll be better than that.

But I basically handed out about 500 flyers on various streets and I got about 40 responses against it.

So that's pretty high return.

Thank you for your comments.

I'm Jim Hunter Chang.

I live at 1612 Vicki Road.

I'm the co-president of the Meadows Neighborhood Association and I'm here to talk to you about the diagram of the voter at the bottom of Cedar Hill in North Berkshire.

I just want to give you a broader picture of what's going on here.

This is not just initial events that need to stop cut through traffic.

This is a map of Albemarle Place, and I can tell you a little bit about Albemarle Place.

In the gallery of progress recently, a couple of, this past week, they said

Construction crews have begun preparing portions of the 64.7-acre site that will eventually feature 800 apartments and townhouses, a hotel, restaurants, retail shops, and a movie theater.

It's going to be a 16-screen movie theater.

When it was completed, Albemarle Place would boast a mixed use total of 1.3 million square feet of residential space, 893,000 square feet of retail and office space, including stores like Tiffany.

And so there's going to be a lot of traffic.

In fact, what we heard is that the developers are asking to a museum to allow 15-story tall residential buildings on this site.

I understand this is going to be two times the size of the downtown mall.

This is what we're facing, OK?

Unfortunately, it doesn't get a lot of press for whatever reason.

Anyway, this is Albemarle Place.

This is 29 right here.

To the south is our neighborhood.

They're putting their main entrance to Albemarle Place right across the street from the main road going into our neighborhood.

That's not so bad, maybe, you might think, because there are only going to be 45,000 vehicle trips per day generated by this development.

But what's worse is we've got the 250 bypass on direct service, which runs

perpendicular to 29th.

Okay, so Barrick Road is down here.

Guess what's on Barrick Road?

It happens to be a 250 bypass on and off ramps.

It's only about 100 to 200 feet away from the other main entrance on the south side of our neighborhood, which is Mickey Road.

So we're going to be in between Albemarle Place, two times the size of the entire mall, and on and off ramp to

to the 250 bypass.

Okay, maybe you think that's not so bad, okay.

Well, what else is going to happen is, have you heard about Places 29?

Places 29, what they're talking about is parallel roads to 29 on the west side of, sorry, on the west side of 29 and on the east side of 29, okay.

The one parallel road did happen about, the plan is to have it go all the way from the airport, okay, the regional airport

It's going to connect up to Hire Me Town Center, it's going to connect up to Brookmar Drive, and somehow it's going to connect up to the Conbar site, which is going to connect up to this place, Albemarle Place.

And guess where all that traffic ends up?

Well, it ends up at the top of our neighborhood, which is only about two streets to get from here down to 250 Bypass.

So if you were regional, if you were say, oh, in Louisa, you don't want to go to Shorthalt Monday, you want to go here instead, everybody is going to be going through potentially our neighborhood.

You might say, yeah, I believe he's 29, but it's just so happy that the intersection of 29

and the other side is Georgetown Road, which is very, very congested also.

So what are people going to do?

You think they might say, oh, we don't want to go throughout this neighborhood.

There's small houses here.

I mean, we've got to care about people.

I mean, quite frankly, I think unless we do something about this, there's not going to be a neighborhood for us to live in anymore.

And you may think that I'm just saying the sky is falling, but let me read you something.

If I may hope it was an interview with Frank, Frank Cox of the Cox Company, who was the planner designer.

This is an October 9, 2003 article.

Like the Hillsdale Drive extension on the east side of Seminary Drive, Albemarle Place is cut through road on the west side of US 29, is designed to drive traffic off of 29.

Here's what he's talking about.

This is the post office, okay?

This is Albemarle Place.

They're going to have a road going through here.

come down to the top of our neighborhood.

He must be drive traffic at the top of 29.

Well, where's it going to go?

Okay, I'm sorry.

I've cut Mr. Chang a little slack.

Please call me today.

He should call everyone in this neighborhood and tell them to come and speak or whether he could have maybe an extra minute or two.

So he's using his extra minute or two.

I promise.

I wish there was too much air for that stuff.

Designing a commercial road is our idea of terms, Koch's.

VVAD and the county have recognized the road is very important.

It's a relief bag for traffic north and west of the city because it doesn't have to go through the hydraulic road intersection.

So we're the relief bag basically, okay.

Koch's project by itself will not make it parallel.

Road sets bans, but it will take cooperation from compound to create a functional parallel road between hydraulic and Greenbrier.

There's a possibility of expansion north of Greenbrier and the Albemarle Coast Project is laying the foundation for a future parallel to 2019.

I heard, 15 more seconds.

I heard that they made an agreement possibly with Ben and Coach.

I just asked you, I don't know if this is going to be the right thing, but can you please just make sure that we don't get in the middle of the traffic.

And thank you so much for everything we've done so far.

Thank you.

You know, I'm going to say, you know, I know, for example, on this issue, there's good people in the audience who disagree with Mr. Chang in terms of the pork chop.

I mean, and so I think it's just to be fair to one another if we could refrain from applauding or at least from applauding anyone but me.

But it's OK.

Thanks.

My name is Bryn Potter.

I live at 1208 Bland Circle in the Locust Grove neighborhood.

I'm also the president of the Locust Grove Neighborhood Association, hopefully not a self-serving neighborhood leader, but hopefully doing my best to have a thick skin, recognize that traffic is definitely an emotional issue for everybody and that we're all just doing the best we can to come up with some solutions.

I do want to just say though in the interest of disclosure that I do not live on a cut through and I will not be affected in any way by this cut through and that the initiative for following up on this particular project was me being handed the baton two years ago as the neighborhood president saying what's on the shelf, what needs to happen and approaching the city and saying there's a capital improvement project that needs to get done and we have a deadline and we'd like to move forward on it

and even though that Capital Improvement Project had been one wing of Calhoun, we said, can we start over?

Can we bring everybody together again?

Two years have gone by, we've got new faces, I need the history and can we talk about what would be the best solution, number one, for our money that's designated for our neighborhood and number two, for what are the biggest concerns in our neighborhood?

and so we advertised a meeting, we invited the city to come to participate, to present to us some of their history of what had already happened and we did a great brainstorming session where we heard all kinds of ideas and concerns from our neighbors

and these weren't just members of the neighborhood association, these were just everybody who could come to that meeting, there were probably about 30, 35 people and we came up with about 20 different things that were just incredibly creative solutions to things that we could do, not all traffic, but primarily traffic.

After that, the city kind of came back to us and said we looked at all of your ideas and we can tell you that all the ideas that you presented to us, one ring of Calhoun looks to be one of the solutions that makes the most sense.

in terms of cost, in terms of impact, and in terms of actually having a benefit and the least amount of negative impact on other streets.

And so we encouraged them to follow up on their study and they did an origin and destination study in August and came back to us after that and said, yeah, you do have a cut through problem and yes, this looks like the best idea.

None of us, and I can definitely say I hope I make positive contributions to our community but one of them is that is not being a traffic expert and our neighborhood association made the decision to ask the city to ask NDS to tell us what the best solution would be and that we would support that solution

And so in all fairness, I don't think anybody knows what the best solution is.

And without sort of doing something about Park Street or doing something about some of the larger community traffic issues, we're not going to come to something that is just going to be a miracle cure.

But we feel confident in supporting this proposal because it's taking an action on something that's been sitting on the shelf for a long time and has had a lot of process, a lot of meetings.

I myself have attended at least five just on this topic with lots of different people.

Carla Manna, 324 Seven and a Half Street, Southwest.

This is the issue that Kendra had asked about the northbound, southbound.

I want to first say thank you to Angela Tucker who brought some sanity to the process and I in fact want to speak tonight not about my street but about procedural issues.

It was a two-year process from the inception of asking how do we look at our neighborhood for a comprehensive traffic study

that turned into basically destruction of the social fabric of our neighborhood and part of the reason for that is that nobody knew the answer to this question.

We didn't have a traffic engineer at the time so I understand but that was a challenge.

The itinerant traffic engineer did first look at the map and said you don't have a safety issue.

I invited him for drinks on a friend's porch and he saw

Numerous cars driving on the sidewalk.

Our sidewalks are depleted on our street for this reason.

It's a true safety issue.

The city has now taken two years to address it.

We're still waiting.

We went to a ballot process, which I had a question about because in fact, why ballot a safety issue?

When Angela wasn't able to show the numbers in the interest of time, but in fact, Seven and a Half Street bears 1300 cars per day in a two-way street, which is the same width as the one-way streets that are adjacent and perpendicular.

Those streets bear 300 cars a day.

So what ended up happening in the ballot process that we had neighbors on the

The Northbound issue is connected to a lot of other, again I'll say neighborhood neglect issues.

When Rocker Square went in, we were promised a traffic stop sign and a no right turn sign.

But still, and we all know how long Rocker Square has been upright on Main Street, we still don't have that sign.

When you come out of there's a part of Walker Square where you're not supposed to come out but this was part of the site plan approval and those the people that can come out that way are if they come out are to take a left and not a right through the neighborhood.

Okay, so point A is Walker Square.

Point B is that in fact there's a traffic light on 7th Street to allow for northbound traffic to funnel through.

There is no traffic light on Cherry Avenue at 7 and a half street.

So Angela was, you know, wise to say in fact we do not want to put a traffic light in there.

I pointed out that we would have to if we did a southbound.

All that's to say the real problem is Fifeville, which again not to connect it to historic designation, but we have been a neglected neighborhood for quite some time and suddenly we're told in a meeting about historic designation that our street, our neighborhood is a model because people have front porches and can use the street and we are not

architectural renderings with no arms and a head going like this.

We can't be on our street.

I think that the neighborhood has been looked at on a map without really being closely addressed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm Carl Matthews from 1619 Inglewood Drive in the county just on the other side of the Meadows neighborhood in the Hessian Hills neighborhood.

I think those of us in our neighborhood association were upset when we saw the agenda item as prepared for a number of reasons.

It ended with the recommendation the permanent diverter be installed and that same page begins with the January 17th City Council meeting where I spoke also.

I'm sorry.

The January 17th City Council meeting that I came to because of the recommendation that the permanent divider be installed then.

The motion that Mr. Lynch made and that the Council carried was a strong compromise.

It was a strong step back from the recommendation that the permanent diverter be installed.

We took it as a reasonable compromise and an action of good faith.

to the agenda item this year and read that during the 18 month more or less period that the diverters been in place public comments have been relatively few.

I should point out that those comments were so few because in January of 2006 you all said well we'll keep it temporary until we see what the situation is and we will then plan to remove it.

We felt that this was an ambush, that this agenda item was not prepared in good faith.

and it upset us thoroughly.

We're pleased to hear that you intend to say no action, although I would go back to say that the comparison of the preparation for this diverter with the work done on Calhoun Street where there was an effort to determine the amount of cut through traffic.

There's never been a traffic count done on Cedar Hill Road.

Many of my association members who are parts of that neighborhood are inconvenienced thoroughly by this diverter.

They'd like to see it gone.

It's ugly.

It's going to be ugly.

Let's get rid of it.

There's no point continuing on a path that's not going anyplace.

If you really need to stop traffic coming down from Hydraulic Road, make Cedar Hill one way from North Berkshire to Hydraulic Road.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, council people.

My name is Jeff Monroe.

I'm from 1608 Inglewood Drive, just outside of the city limits.

I am the president of the Hessian Hills Neighborhood Association.

And in part, I guess I should thank you all because the diverter and also Albemarle Place have been great for our membership.

We've had 134 dues paying members since we started on May 15th of last year.

We also live between Burke's Road and Albemarle Place, the future Albemarle Place.

We're not as concerned as Mr. Cheng about the effects on our neighborhood because we think that the county is going to do right by us.

That's not the right way to go, but I've been in contact with Mr. Rooker quite a bit.

I feel that he is definitely looking into the situation and he's going to make sure that it's okay.

One of the things that Mr. Cheng brought up was that there's potential multi-story buildings in Albemarle Place.

That's a concern that we have as well.

I'm the one who told Mr. Cheng about it.

I've been talking to Mr. Rooker about it.

According to Mr. Rucker, there's only current permits for three stories.

If it has to go more, it's going to have to go through the process in Albemarle County.

And we're not going to let it happen because we're going to get 134 dues paying members out to every single meeting to say no.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, sir.

Is it Nick or Mike Reed?

Mike.

My name is Mike Reed.

I live on Calhoun Street.

I just wanted to say thank you also to Angela Tucker and thank you Mr. Mayor, Councilors for listening.

I am in favor of one way in Calhoun.

I've lived on Calhoun Street for more than 10 years and traffic is, it's almost disastrous daily.

There's more traffic than that street can handle or should have to handle.

I'm also very much in favor of putting sidewalks on that street on that stretch of Calhoun.

We have recently added sidewalks on the Locust Street or Locust Avenue and I would like to also add them to Calhoun Street and I am through.

It's okay.

It's a finish name, it's a tough one.

Okay.

Okay.

I'm here about Calhoun myself.

For the last six months, I've had to walk.

I have not been able to drive.

So I walk on Calhoun and I can't tell you how many times it's been close to death.

because there's two-way traffic, there's still not much room and there's no sidewalks.

So as I'm walking, sometimes cars don't care that I'm walking.

I have to actually jump off the road so they can go by.

I would love to see it one way.

That's another piece that hasn't been talked about, pedestrians, because I think it's really important.

Never mind all the folks who walk in our neighborhood.

I mean, everyone's walking with the baby strollers and things like that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colin Koller?

Hi, I'm Laura Koller, a long-term resident of Charlottesville and homeowner on St. Clair Avenue 1029.

It seems some of my neighbors are here tonight.

First off, I'd like to express my gratitude to the city for doing such thoughtful and

creative work trying to find a solution to the problem difficulties on Calhoun.

I am not a resident of Calhoun but they are my neighbors and

I think neighbors should look out for each other even if we don't know each other by first name we wave at each other as we drive by and I think they have definitely shouldered the lion's share of the traffic in the neighborhood and I think it is only good neighborly to stand up in support of trying to do some solution that will make traffic a little more livable for them and maybe make their lives a little more sane so I just wanted to

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Nancy Meilich and I live on Bellevue Avenue, which is a street that's really affected by the one weighing of Calhoun.

Let's see.

I think I moved in in 1990.

and a neighbor, Mrs. Moody, had Tom Van Der Reer, who was mayor at that time, sitting at the end of her driveway the day I moved in to count the traffic going up Bellevue.

This is a long-term problem and it has actually... That's a good mayor, by the way.

It was a long time ago, right?

She was such a... Mrs. Moody was probably 86 at the time.

She's still alive.

She's in, you know...

Like many of our neighborhoods we have really mixed ages of people, very active people I think live in Charlottesville and it is a neighborhood where there are a lot of pedestrians, a lot of children, there are bicycles, life is full, life is happy in this neighborhood and people do look out for each other

Safety is repeated over and over again.

Sidewalks are repeated over and over again.

And I know it takes money, but a lot of wise people have looked into these proposals and I think you should respect the people that have looked into them and done their counts and done their homework, as well as all the numerous volunteers in their neighborhood associations, I think.

Thank you.

W.C. Gentry.

Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, I want to take issue with Mr. Calvert first of all.

Sorry to make this personal.

But you have in the colored packets that I've left before you,

copies of a resolution passed by the county on August 3, 2005.

And that letter, a VDOT letter dated September 30, 2005.

So his statement that stuff from the county just wasn't forthcoming is not accurate.

Now, if you choose not to trust those documents, which I have provided courtesy Mr. Rooker,

who was chairman at the time of the County Board of Supervisors.

Mr. Chang has a very fertile imagination.

If you notice everything he talked to you about concerned a future possibility.

For some reason, the city bought into that and attempted to solve a problem that doesn't exist yet.

I don't know whether it will ever exist or not.

If it does,

then you need a solution, yes.

Right now you're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

There are no facts or figures, no traffic survey, no survey of any kind has been made concerning the traffic in the area.

Now there's a very good reason for that.

How would you do a survey on an imaginary problem created by something that's two or three years in the future?

and have anything that meant anything.

Somehow I can understand that.

And there are other issues here too.

By the way, you'll notice my address is in the county, but I have two properties on North Berkshire.

So I have, we've owned since my wife and I, since 1972.

And we have paid a considerable amount

to the city over the years which should allow me to appear here tonight.

The thing I don't understand is the thing I had stressed before you before and that is that there is no problem.

One of your members and the minutes are in your packet stated that I'm convinced there's a problem.

and you know somebody's doing a heck of a sales job.

You'll also find in your packet pictures of a city school bus discharging pupils at the diverter and I've also provided a photograph of them walking up the street.

One of the people in the planning department or community development department said to me, well they can walk on the sidewalk.

They could if there was one there.

The first hundred and

20 or 25 feet or so of the 2300 block of North Berkshire, west of Cedar Hill, has no sidewalk on either side.

And that picture will clearly show you the photo that the kids are walking up the middle of the street.

What prompted me to take the photograph, I was coming over to do some work at one of our apartments and it was a car in front of me after these kids had been discharged loose

charged around the corner, and here are these kids in the middle of the street.

He couldn't see them.

He was coming in on Cedar Hill, the only way you can get into North Berkshire.

And so I consider that a very real problem.

Fire and rescue, I understand, over the years.

And you would know better than I, Ms. Julian, whether or not that's been a real problem or not.

looking at the diverter, I would say it is.

And having two properties there, if I have a problem with one of them, I don't want the fire and rescue to even have to pause at Cedar Hill.

And the other thing that Peter, if you could wrap up your comment, Mr. Gentry.

I'm winding up.

The other thing that's very clear to me is that should a problem exist

in the future when Albemarle Place is in place.

Within two or three hours, a half a day, you could reinstall what you have now.

The problem would be more easily solved by making Cedar Hill one way from North Berkshire to Hydraulic if pork chops don't occur.

Thank you, sir.

Okay, thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Kent Dardier.

I live at 123 Goodman Street in Belmont.

This is in reference to the Franklin Street one way.

I'm one of the owners of the four lots on the east side of Franklin Street directly across from the self storage facility.

Just want to real quickly make a couple of points.

We feel that the new signage and the voluntary efforts of H.G.

Farren are working very well and we simply ask that you give them more time.

It seems a little premature.

to make another major change so recently after those changes have been made.

I think the city's data confirms that those are, have been very effective.

We're planning on building four single-family homes on that property across from a self-storage facility and I would ask the council just wait until those four families have been able to take occupancy and can weigh in themselves on this issue.

If in a year's time they agree that change needs to be made, so be it.

But I think I'd like to hear what they have to say.

I do think it's significant that the only two people who actually own property fronting on Franklin Street in this section are against this change.

And finally, I frankly, I feel the motives behind restricting access from that part of my neighborhood, that part of Belmont are suspect.

Okay.

Good evening, Jennifer McKeever, 1140 Locust.

I'm here tonight to talk about the Calhoun one way.

I don't live on Calhoun.

I am supportive of the process that we went through for the past two years.

I've also been on the board for two years on the neighborhood association and

I really would like to see some end to this process, whatever it is.

Just a decision to be made so that we can kind of move forward as a neighborhood association and focus on picnics and other more neighborhood uniting things.

And just in addition to that

I just want to say thank you to Angela and Neighborhood Development Services for all their work.

Okay, thank you.

Dale Shattrick, and Ron Inglewood-Cort in the county.

And we'll just have a little bit more time to send you an email back before I had my stroke and we'll talk with you some about the things that you haven't thrown out.

I have two issues.

And we've heard an interesting thing.

We have the folks working very hard now and Mr. Brown was early on stroking the rules.

If you look back to the minutes about the manual that they're supposed to be working with, the people who vote, if we had the thing up there I could point out to you, the people who vote are supposed to block one block from the diverter.

That's what it says in the manual.

One block.

So it would be from the Deverner to the County Edge, it would be County, County up to wherever it goes, Agus, it would be from there, one block up the street, I don't know what that street is, and then Hopper would go up to the trench at the top.

Those were the people who were eligible to vote for that.

Number one.

Number two.

That was calling the Hopper with a bunch of

to travel bumps in the yard.

They put them all in the lump package, said, oh, do you want this package?

If you look at the package about the folks, it's the same problem.

The world, and we heard it today, the only people who impact an area to vote to vote for the lump bumps in the state are those who have to go over one to get out of their neighborhood.

and ever, if you lived downtown by the divert, you'd go out to the city.

If you down further down, you'd go the highway.

If you down the other way, you can go out.

There are cul-de-sacs up on the north that you don't have to go out.

You can go down the street up there.

Then, other people are white viders for this.

Never would, but they were counted.

So now, in the last, they have a meeting at the church and said, oh, we're going to meet

and we vote and see who's going to vote for the out counters in the in cities.

You don't have two apples with a bite.

It's one time.

I guess that's all I'll say.

You've done it wrong.

Now I won't.

I will say what I'd like.

If you go all the way back to the original seat story that they did, the committee that had the

that got together.

Their complaints were, there are people who are walking through our neighborhood, walking through our neighborhood because they get off on 29 on a bus and they live over on the edge of the county.

The only way they can get there is walk across the streets down through there.

They don't like those people.

They're brown and they're black and they're Russian and God knows what else they were.

They didn't like them.

and besides that, some of the people down there in those houses drift their car through the L.O.A.

party and they make noise and the people didn't like that.

So what you do is put a trigger there and what you do is kill the neighborhood.

You go back there and what those, these, what do you call them?

These two houses, the value is down.

The men with the handicapped kid had to move out because he was getting there.

The people that lived there got the shaft right in there and it's because they put the thing there.

Thank you.

I'm Terry Montgomery.

I live at 102 Inglewood Court.

I was going to come down here and say I'm very much against the deferral, and I'll still say it, but I thank you for reconsidering and saying that, well, then I can do it permanently.

And the only thing I have to contribute that hasn't already been said of people that are on the same side of the fence as me is that living on Inglewood Court, it's a dead-end street.

and I live by myself so I look out the window perhaps more than some people and I don't look at television so I look out the window more than some people.

I also look at the cars that go up and down my street because I'm curious.

Are they neighbors or are they not?

In the past month there have been at least 10 cars and you can see the question mark over the cars that goes up.

Where the hell am I?

I don't want to be here and it goes up and it goes around the court and it comes back.

Now it has been pointed out to you there has been no official survey and I'm not official.

But I contend that one of the points on the email that I got was that people have adjusted, there's nobody coming through anymore that doesn't belong there.

That's not true.

On a two-way street or a street with two accesses, I shouldn't have said two-way, two accesses, you can get out either way, it's impossible for the neighbors to tell who belongs there.

They don't know the cause of people two streets away.

But on a dead end, it's very easy to tell.

and so I submit that perhaps the idea of a count as was done in Locust Grove which I think is an excellent idea that would encompass a larger area than just the city or perhaps as the guidelines were mentioned just one block might be in order before any further decision is made.

The only other point I'll make is that instead of making it one way I have great faith in traffic lights, I have great faith in do not analyst

I have great faith in no right, no left turns, whatever, and I have great faith in median strips.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Hi, my name is Victoria Dunham.

I live at 2000 Marchist Street.

I'm on the board of the Willam Mills Neighborhood Association.

There were many of us tonight from the neighborhood because the agenda was busy and we wanted to be very brief.

And at any rate, I'm pretty sure you all know where most people in the world will stand on the issue of one wing Franklin Street through our council appearances and through the letters we sent.

Last September, many residents of the world knows neighborhood came before you to request relief from the cut through traffic that was using Franklin Street to enter and exit our neighborhood on their way to other places.

This involved not just trucks over two axes, but smaller trucks and passenger vehicles as well.

From last October, you challenged us to come up with a solution that would benefit the greatest number of people.

In the meantime, Tommy Atkins of HT Fern agreed to voluntarily have the cement trucks stay on the more commercial routes instead of using the primarily residential streets of the word mills.

We're extremely grateful to him for his efforts.

And unfortunately, not having his trucks in the wilderness really hasn't caused any diminution of the traffic.

The traffic still, the numbers are still what they were.

Over the intervening four months since we were last before you, we've had a wonderful opportunity to work directly with the city's traffic engineers crafting what we hope you will think is a win-win solution to our traffic problem and that of our adjoining Carlton neighbors.

In meeting with the Carlton residents, we found that cut-through traffic is a primary concern for them as well.

With one exception, the people we spoke with approved of having the city one-way Franklin.

In talking with the many businesses around the Carlton Franklin Linden commercial corridor, we were glad to discover that most have no strong feelings, either pro or con, about making Franklin one-way.

The words I heard over and over again were habit, convenience, or I sometimes go that way to go to lunch.

Not rest if any business owners say that they felt Franklin should be kept two-way due to necessity.

Our plan allows Preston Corner's tractor trailers and customers complete access to his mini-storage business.

It was very important that we get an opinion from Tommy Atkins of HT Fern because he had been so wonderfully cooperative in keeping his trucks along the route they're originating from.

He stated that rerouting his trucks had created no hardship.

He trusted the plan that we had come up with and was willing to give it a try.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank him publicly for his efforts.

He's a man of his word.

So here we are now with four months of hard work behind us and hopefully four months wiser.

We ask that you take a look at the city engineer's proposal and at some point, hopefully soon, vote to make Franklin Street one road for a one year trial period.

Thank you.

You're the man.

Good evening.

I'm John Hosack from Davis Avenue in the Lotus Road neighborhood.

I am speaking tonight in strong support of the runway sign which I call home.

There are no easy solutions to cut through traffic in our neighborhood and this sign, which is proposed to be temporary and as a trial basis I want to emphasize, is one of the better solutions proposed.

As a former co-president of the neighborhood association,

I'd like to say that the negative portrayal earlier shown from this podium is false and I would like to follow up and make clear the actuality.

I'd also like to point, although I have high respect for those who conducted the survey, I consider the survey fundamentally flawed.

The way the survey works, if I am correct, is that it does a match between cars entering and exiting

It assumes the cars enter from one point and exit through another point.

It does not account for cars entering and exiting through the multiple other points.

Furthermore, logically, it makes no sense whatsoever.

Let's assume that the traffic in the maneuver hood has gone up by a factor that doesn't really matter.

If you say that 75% of that traffic is internal to the city, you're saying that my neighborhood have all of a sudden decided to drive their cars around three or four times more than they used to.

So it's totally illogical and I think it has to be revisited.

Now, I like to consider Parrott Street because I think it has to be placed in context within all the other traffic considerations in this city.

The last counts I was able to find and they are dated, I must admit, 1997.

There are about 20,000 cars a day.

That's within about 20% of the traffic at that time on Interstate 64.

I estimate today that there is about as much traffic or probably more on Park Street than there is on Interstate 64.

That is about one car every two seconds during 16 hours, assuming there's no traffic at night.

Ah, the people in Park Street were never asked whether they wanted basically a freeway at their door.

So Park Street is a light off.

That's unfortunate, but it's true.

It's history as a livable street.

So what's next?

I like to use an analogy.

Imagine a steady drip coming from a leak and each drip from that leak goes into a bucket.

That's fine.

Once that bucket is full, however, every drip goes in the floor.

And if you imagine Park Street as that bucket,

Once that bucket is full I park street every additional trip effectively goes on to neighboring streets such as my own.

We are at that point, I would strongly urge any of you who have not seen this situation to go out there and take a look at it for yourself.

Something has to be done and done very soon.

The neighborhood will soon be an unlivable zone devoid of families and children.

There are no easy solutions and we're going to have to make some difficult decisions involving closings and traffic restrictions.

I'd like to offer some very brief, at least some long term, same solutions.

Firstly, to encourage bicycling.

As at least some of you know, I used to bicycle to work every day for about five years after many very dangerous incidents and it's just completely insane for me to continue driving it.

And this was actually kept with a dangerous encounter with a very rude bus driver.

a city bus driver actually.

You're going to have to find separate routes for bicycles.

Bicycles and cars cannot share busy narrow streets.

I also want to look at 29, 29's industries to this community.

If you could wrap up your comments.

I would like to make a point that 29, if you were to take it, replace it with a four lane

Limited Access Road, and Fix 250, there would be no need logically for traffic to use Park Row.

Okay, thank you.

My name is Jim Garnett.

I live on Calhoun Street between St. Clair and Locust Avenue.

I'd like to thank you, Mayor and members of the Council for giving me an opportunity.

I want to say that I appreciate living in a country that both supports and facilitates this kind of civil discourse of things that we need to think about.

Over the last 16 years that I've lived on Calhoun Street, the amount of traffic has increased each and every year.

due to, largely due to population density in the overall area going up.

More and more growth going out east and people still required to go to the shopping and businesses on the 29 North area.

So the neighborhood of Locust Grove has indeed experienced a significant surge in traffic for people trying to avoid

the problems with access via 250 and Park Street, Rile Road as we all know.

And so over those years more and more folks in the Locust Grove neighborhood

have been concerned with the inability to park safely on the street.

My wife and I have had two cars wrecked on our street and numbers of mirrors destroyed.

Each year it takes us a little longer to get out of our driveway.

Each year I have to walk more and more in someone's yard as I walk my dog.

Each year I ride my bicycle a little less.

to avoid the stream of increasing stream of traffic.

So contrary to some of the accusations that have been made this evening and from where I sit being at sort of the epicenter of the decisions that were the suggestions that are coming forth in terms of how to deal with this.

I would just like to say that we were working and very much appreciate the efforts of Angela Tucker and her associates

but we would like to see something happen and the suggestion that our little section of Calhoun Street be made one way was a suggestion that came from the traffic engineers in the city and it's certainly not a selfish agenda of the folks who reside on that piece of Calhoun or North, Bellevue, Holmes, Agnes or any of the other streets that are directly impacted by cut-through

it's our feeling and I know I share this view with a lot of other folks in our neighborhood association that we just want what everybody else wants which is to live normal, reasonable lives in our own homes and be able to enjoy egress, ingress without a tremendous amount of traffic coming and going that don't originate within our neighborhood so we understand that with the overall traffic in Charlottesville growing

and the inability of 215 Park Street to accommodate the tremendous amount of growth that we're just trying to set up a situation resolving our neighborhood association to redirect that traffic to where the roads can better handle it or maybe we need to improve those roads in the long run.

But we certainly have no interest in pushing our problems off onto our neighbors ever and that's why I'm so encouraged by

the thoughts that have been expressed here tonight in that if by making Calhoun Street one way which would be a very low cost to the city simply by putting in marginal signing at the ends of our street if that doesn't work those streets, those signs could be removed and we could think of some other possibilities.

Thank you very much.

Anyone else like to offer a comment?

You've already spoken.

I'd like to speak now, if I may.

My name is John False.

I live at 1503 Rugby Road.

This is going to be an eye-opener.

I prepared a talk.

I'll give some of it, but I'm going to divert a lot because you've heard a lot.

You can see what I might have said.

Fascinating.

I had a mini meeting three weeks ago of just some neighborhood leaders trying to assess myself what traffic is like.

And what you've heard now, I mean, this was what I saw.

We put up dots where there was traffic.

I was going to bring a great visual aid and I left it at home.

Pretty dumb of me.

But you're getting the same feeling here.

All areas reported greatly increased traffic.

And since the city population has been static or decreasing, that increase is not city traffic.

As you know, that city, that traffic is cut through county traffic.

I was primarily concerned with the continual development south of I-64.

And you'll be talking about that when you look at Old Lynchburg Road, but it's part of it.

Our traffic is intolerable the way it is.

and we don't have the power to solve it.

Only the county has the power to solve it.

They have not built a road for the last 30 years, as you know, except two, Monticello Avenue, or Monticello, past Monticello High School and Burkemar.

And they won't.

Why should they?

They have wonderful neighborhoods.

They could have a short road at the end of Redfields.

that would take an awful lot of traffic off Old Lynchburg Road.

It's a wonderful cul-de-sac division.

They looked at it in the Area B study and when they found it was tractable, they took it out of the Area B study with approval of the city staff.

Come on, you gotta protect our neighborhoods the way the county protects theirs.

You've got to go before Board of Supervisors and say, look, we're not going to put up with this.

Show backbone.

Back up.

We heard about North Avenue.

Would you close Park Street?

Then all the people in River Run would have a real cul-de-sac.

That's a little extreme, isn't it?

But it may come to that.

go before the Board of Supervisors and say, you've got to do something because you all have to protect our neighborhoods.

Not too long ago, we were talking about possibly award elections.

Do all of you, none of you are, I think, are on these impacted streets.

None of you are in JPA.

None of you are in Old Lynchburg.

Can you represent truly the entire city?

It's worthwhile to try and find out, isn't it?

Thank you.

Anyone else like to speak here and then up there?

Well, I guess here.

I'm sorry.

No, I'm sorry.

I didn't see anybody else.

I'm Laura Covert.

I skipped you on the list is what I meant.

We're back here.

You've seen us before.

We're talking again about Wen Wang Franklin.

And in contrast to what Carla found in her neighborhood, we sort of found the opposite in that

Going back to our neighborhoods, to the neighborhoods nearby, to the business owners, it was more of a community building event rather than a community disintegrating event for us.

And there's been, when we were here last, there's a piece of refresh your memory.

We had concerns about safety on Franklin.

We had concerns about the volume of the cut-through traffic in trucks.

We've had great success with the HT fairing trucks in the

voluntary, voluntarily not using Franklin.

But it hasn't really affected any of the other things that we had concerns about at that time.

And since we last talked, we've got this new piece of information which says that 74% of the vehicles that use Franklin Street are registered neither in the Willam Mills nor in the Belmont neighborhood.

So that tells us that there is a little bit of a cut through issue here, which we didn't really have documentation of before.

So I'm here on behalf of the neighborhood to support this and just give you a couple of bullet points.

What does the one way for Franklin Street do for us does provide some level of inconvenience for residents in both Willmills and Carlton.

The ones that I've spoken to, with the exception of the gentleman who spoke earlier, are willing to accept that for the most part in order to help with the overall traffic issues, both the cut through volume, speed, that kind of thing.

It will improve pedestrian safety.

One of the things that NDS did, which has been helpful, is to stripe, not put in sidewalks, but to stripe an area from the self storage to the Carlton.

But what happens there is that from the self storage to Market Street, there's nothing.

So you have this lovely little striped inviting area that leads to a sidewalk, which then funnels you down into an area where there is a wall on one side and a fence on the other and two lanes of traffic, which is not pedestrian friendly.

By one-waying there would be some opportunity, I think, to put in a sidewalk that would be both protect the wall that's part of our neighborhood aesthetic and also provide some pedestrian safety for the people who come to ride the bus there at the corner of Market.

There's a bus stop there and the children that go to the Meade Park in the summer.

It does also reduce overall traffic.

One-waying Franklin does not get rid of all of our cut-through traffic.

It still provides

people going one way, the ability to cut through and shave that time.

It does not satisfy everyone, though, again, most of the people that I've talked to in this are in favor or are at least neutral about the process.

but most importantly it does not offer a piecemeal solution to the problems that we've had.

This is not a band-aid.

It's something that provides a well thought out and more of a bird's-eye view look at the problems that are in this neighborhood that have been in the neighborhood for 18 or 20 years that we've been coming to council about for that long and the other thing that it is is it's temporary.

and if we are in a situation where this is going to produce results that we don't know about, can't fathom, whatever, we still have the option later of coming back and saying, no, this doesn't work, come talk to us about it, that sort of thing.

So I encourage you in this instance to go forward with the Franklin One Way.

I think it's a good solution for both the Carleton and

I live at 1714 Solomon Road.

My name is Al Wooten.

I'm sorry.

Lived there for about 25 years.

I don't think anybody's spoken from there, but it's part of the Hessian Hills neighborhood.

I knew the city was somewhere down a few hundred feet in the general direction of Berkshire Road, but it never bothered me very much until about a year and a half ago.

Suddenly the Great Wall of Charlottesville grew up at the intersection of Berkshire.

and bifurcated the neighborhood and complicated my access to the neighbors and to businesses along Angus Road that I used.

So I would like to support the pork shop construction or some other common device along Cedar Hill.

I'm worried about Albemarle Place too, but it isn't there yet.

I'd like to see the diverter removed in a timely manner.

Local traffic now is forced to take Solomon Road in front of me, which is naturally

Thank you.

Let's see.

Back here.

Good evening.

from 1610 East Market Street.

And I'm back to add one comment to the many that you've heard about Franklin Street.

My property does face East Market Street, but I exit on Franklin as well.

And I would like to say that having lived there for four years, I would plead with you that you please consider what you've heard from our neighborhood manager tonight and not make us wait another year for what would be great traffic calming measures.

I think that changing it to one way would enhance Kent's property.

I live there.

I know how many times the police look around the corner now.

It's constant.

And I think it would be an asset to his property if people moving in there knew they did not have to deal with horns at all times of the night, police running back and forth.

It will do a lot for the neighborhood.

And I think it would improve the street for his hopefully new residents as well.

OK.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Eric Pugh and I'm at 310 Monovis Avenue.

Tonight was my first time coming to one of these, so it's been absolutely fascinating.

One thing that really resonated for me was the comment about Seven and a Half Street being a cut-through.

I am one of those people who cuts through it.

It's a great shortcut.

And every time I've ever gone down that street, I've always been surprised it was a two-way street.

I think it's a very, very narrow street.

There are a lot of families on there.

Thank you.

Yes, my name is Linda Ortenze and I reside at 1102 A Calhoun Street and I just wanted to echo the sentiments of my neighbors, Mr. Reed and Mr. Garnett.

I've lived on that street for almost 17 years, have watched the progression.

in the volume of traffic and it's become increasingly dangerous.

So I just wanted to say that I support the recommendation for making Calhoun one way for the safety of the residents on the street as well as all the pedestrians in that great neighborhood.

Thank you.

My name is Josh Levy and I live at 1203 Bellevue.

I'm neighbors with a number of the folks in here from Calhoun and that neighborhood in Locust Grove.

Two brief points.

One is that the consequences which are feared by the opponents of the Calhoun one-way proposal are not likely to occur.

They fear that traffic will be directed

far off down Locust and down some other streets and all the way back and it's just a little unlikely for me to believe that human beings as I know them are going to take such an inefficient route to get somewhere.

They'll stick to 250 or some other route that they find.

Second, my own idea for what to do in the neighborhood was a little bit more complicated.

It involved making Bellevue one way as well.

So I was a bit disappointed to see this proposal.

That's all to say that this is a moderate proposal.

It's a small step.

And some of us would like to see even more done.

But we'd be quite happy to see even this little bit done because we think it could bring large and very good consequences.

All right.

I'm not going to ask again.

Okay, I'm closing the public hearing.

And before I open it to council comment, I'd like to offer just a couple of comments among, because I think a couple of things were said here that I really can't let stand without just a little response.

First of all, I think the city benefits greatly from people who are willing to take the time and put energy into running a neighborhood association.

You know, certainly I'm very familiar with the effort Bryn Potter has put into her association that John Hosick has put into his and I think it's just not fair to imply that people get into doing the neighborhood association.

I'm sorry, I don't mean to leave other people alive.

There are a lot more than I can count in here.

but people don't get into that, I think, for self-serving reasons.

There's probably lots of other easier ways to be self-serving than to be president of a neighborhood association.

So, the second thing I want to say is Mr. Gentry made some really forceful comments that I also feel were not particularly, that I felt like I couldn't let stand.

He referred to

a resolution from the County Board of Supervisors supporting pork chops.

There's no such resolution.

What he provided in his packet was a resolution urging us to take out the diverter.

So for him to imply that there was this clear and unequivocal evidence that

that our director of planning should have known about.

It's just, again, that's just flat wrong.

I think it's some, you know, that there's, and even the emails of support from the county for the pork chops are, it's not like they've ever voted on it.

It's not clear and convincing.

I believe it's in good faith.

I mean, don't get me wrong.

I think Mr. Tolbert does too.

He also asserted

that this is only a problem we're dealing with in the future.

There's really no reason to put this diverter up now.

And that's also, in my opinion, false.

The fact of the matter is that it's a failing intersection at the intersection of hydraulic and 29 and people cut through.

They cut through now.

And there was no better evidence than when we had this previous discussion a year and a half ago when people from county neighborhoods

came and their complaint was that putting the diverter in because it eliminated to cut through traffic in the city portion meant that people were now going way out of their way to cut through and they were now cutting through Solomon Road and some county neighbors.

So, you know, and I always say that to not, because I felt like to somehow leave it stand that we were, this is all about a future problem was just an inaccurate, in my opinion, so.

Can we just talk about process for a moment?

Please.

In fact, I'm glad you brought that up, but my intention after having kind of heard this was perhaps we could just, because there's no reason to talk about these in some detail now and more detail later.

and I think if we could just make some comments that would indicate which ones, and it might be all of them, it might be some of them, that we want to bring back soon or relatively soon to be able to take action on would be the way I would proceed.

So I think if people wanted to make a comment or two regarding each issue,

What I'd like to have occur on each one we want to bring back, if there's any other information we would like to have, if there's anything else we want staff to do or any other considerations we'd like to bring forward, I think that would be appropriate to ask for.

And for example, one thing that I don't think is in here, and I would defer to Julian for his sort of input on this, but I'd like to make sure on any of these issues, if we want to consider making a street one way, that we take into account any public safety issues that might arise by virtue of a street being made one way, or would the pie trucks have access regardless?

Well, I can assure you that

because I talked to the fire marshal about some of these and he has talked with their good development services and discussed them and some of them would probably, well I know one of them would probably be advantage to us would be the one way is Seven and a Half Street because particularly if we have snow or ice over there it's pretty tough getting through there sometimes, it's tough getting through there now but

Let me just say also that I think, and I hope everybody understands this, that as we continue to do more and more traffic calming and speed bumps, etc., it does affect emergency responses within the city.

And over the years, we have seen our response times go up and

Two of those factors, of course, one of them obviously is that there's the traffic restrictions and the other is from increased traffic, which I know everyone understands that.

But so I think we just got to find a balance, you know, how we can do that, try to help the neighborhoods.

And I guess also I'd like to point out that and I don't want to speak for everybody on council, but

Okay, well, perhaps, you know, we can go through these.

I'll just go through these one at a time.

I'd like to make a couple of sort of global comments.

First of all, I think we could probably always use a little bit more backbone when it comes to getting some of these larger regional roads built.

When we look at

All of the problems, not all of the problems that are in front of us right now, but most of them are driven by the dynamic which Mr. Foltz talked about, which is the fact that we are a fairly small city of 40,000 in the middle of this rapidly growing county.

And that over the past 30 years or so, our population hasn't grown.

Actually, our cars have grown somewhat, not

nearly as much as the overall counts on the roads have gone up, but they have gone up some because the dynamic of people living here has been more towards fewer kids, more adults, more cars.

But the real issue is

that we need to have more connections between outlying areas in the county so that county residents can get from one point to another in the county without having to drive through the city.

And that's particularly clear in some areas like Calhoun, for example, or the issue in Berkshire where

These are city streets that are being used as cut-throughs.

Seven and a half, I think, is a little different.

Certainly, Franklin Street is that.

and we've got them all over the city.

We're going to be hearing later about Old Minchburg Road.

So I think that is one place to start is that we've got to have a network of roads.

We're pushing right now forward with the Eastern Connector.

We had our first meeting on starting an alignment for that, which would go from Pan Tops to 29 North.

I think that will help the residents of the whole sort of northeast quadrant of the city tremendously.

and we're in discussions about getting a connection from Sunset to Fontaine which will help some of the southern area neighborhoods but we still have quite a lot of progress to make on those.

I'm a little concerned as we look at these

different projects.

First of all, I want to also thank staff for bringing these all together.

I think it's in some ways more helpful to look at all of these city problems at the same time, all these traffic problems, than do them over the course of

of a few meetings.

Hopefully it will mean that we're consistent about these at least.

There were a couple others that were on this list and it would be interesting to hear exactly where the thumb is because I think that was one that was discussed and if maybe staff could report us to, is it in the end basket?

Has there been anything that's moving on that?

And then on these specific

for specific projects.

I think there are really a couple of different types of roads here.

Calhoun and Franklin, in my opinion, are collectors.

Well, I think in the city street classification vernacular, they are a different type of street than, say, Seven and a Half Street or Berkshire, in that they are intended to move cars from one region of the city to another.

And I think we need to be careful what we do with those streets because of that.

Mr. Faulks mentioned that we don't live on any of the impacted streets and that's true.

I do live on Locust Avenue which has about 11,000 cars a day on it and the mayor lives on Rokey Avenue which has almost the same or if not a comparable number of cars.

There are probably two dozen streets at least in the city that have over 10,000 cars a day on them and I think we all wish that we could

close them, make them one way, tell residents that they'll live on the streets, that they can't drive on them, etc.

But that's simply not feasible in my mind.

I think there is a need to have some grid within the city.

That said, we need to also make sure that there is a comparable grid in the county so that the city grid doesn't become abused from overuse.

The 7th Street issue to me I think sort of is its own classification and that really is a safety issue.

It's, as was noted, 20 feet wide and it has parking on one side, so at least 12 feet.

That just doesn't make sense to do two lanes or two ways in 12 feet, but it's not unlike the Berkshire Drive and Cedar Hill

issue and that what you have there is a neighborhood, a small sliver of a neighborhood that is sandwiched in between two commercial districts.

And so I would treat those two projects very different than I would Calhoun and Franklin Street.

where they're essentially roads that connect two different neighborhoods and you actually have residents that need to move around between those neighborhoods.

Okay.

If it's okay, I'd like to just kind of go through these and perhaps suggest a path.

My feeling is that we sort of maintain the status quo on the diverter and that perhaps we don't need to bring that one back.

Is there anyone who disagrees with that?

I'd like to emphasize when I say that is that the status quo for me on the diverter at the corner of Cedar Hill in North Berkshire, in my mind when we discussed it before, it was kind of that we would keep

a temporary type diverter there until something more permanent was done in terms of pork chops.

I would like to just ask the question, Mr. Mayor.

The statement was made several times.

that no traffic counts have ever been made in that area with origin, destination, whatever.

I want to know if that's true.

If we don't have data, then I think we should collect data.

I'm not sure of the answer to that.

I think that one thing that may have happened is in swapping files we just don't take fine data because I'm not sure that he would have proposed this without getting some data and especially since the policy said that.

But I think what she's saying is that

I would expect that we would have some counts, some historical counts.

I think that Mr. Lynch has done a good job of combining things in a way that makes sense.

I would suggest that we consider the 7 and a half street and, you know, maybe we have an agenda coming up where we have time to consider all of them, but we consider the 7 and a half street and the Birdwood Road issues at the same time, kind of safety related.

we consider the Calhoun Street and Franklin Street assuming people want to do something other than status quo on those to consider doing something other than status quo that we consider them separately.

I have no problem with what you've just suggested.

I do have two questions I'd like some more information on.

One is, I'm not convinced that the turnaround on Franklin at the storage unit is a viable solution and I'd like to explore that further.