City Council Meeting   7/2/2007

Here Here Here Here Here Are there any announcements by councilors of upcoming community events or of any items to be brought up at the end of the meeting under other business?

I would like to have a brief discussion about the proposal for changing the way we do our home rehabilitation program.

Monday from 5 to 7.

And now I'd like to come down so we can re-sign our agreement.

Read this.

It says, the city of Poggio-Vicano and the city of Charlottesville, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of their sister city relationship, remember the struggle for liberty and independence fought by the American patriots, share the ideals and values that illuminated the work of Thomas Jefferson and his friend, Filippo Mezei, and renew their friendship with the aim of achieving deeper mutual understanding and promoting social and cultural relations between our two communities.

Sorry, but I don't speak very well English.

I need the help of another person who doesn't speak very well English.

We are here after five years in your beautiful town to renew a sister relationship that was born 30 years ago.

A lot of us probably are asking why a town in Virginia has a sister town of a little, little town in Tuscany.

Our President, Jefferson, and our President, Filippo Mazzie, who wants to thank us and who has worked in the same way to help us create the constitution of the American population.

They together worked here to give the American people a constitution.

When Philipo Mazzie was in Virginia, invited by Jefferson and Adams to talk about many things from Tuscana to Poggiacaiano, many things from agriculture, from the industry, from the Arctic, but also many things from our culture.

When Mazzelli arrived in Virginia, invited by Jefferson and Adams, he carried here a lot of stuff, typical stuff of Europe and Italy as food, as tools and so on, but he carried also important aspects of Italian culture.

Among the many, many things that Maciej cared here, I want to remember just two.

An important book wrote in that period in which they say that it's important that humanity abolish the death penalty.

When we know that the Council, as Charles Ville, made a document regarding the death of Martin, we know that we are going to have a lot of vision and a lot of strength in this value.

Our friendship is founded about these common values and when some years ago we had read a declaration of your city council about the necessity of abolish the death penalty, we had understand that our friendship is really founded in the same values.

We have a good view of what we know and what we can do to make sure that there is securely a motive to find new and new culture for us.

I say your good work to the Council and I wish for you the best happiness like is written in your constitution.

Thank you.

Grazia.

Do you have a comment you'd like to make?

The lifestyle in Italy is so much about family, is so much about togetherness and unity in a really warm and wonderful way and so I hope that everyone gets the opportunity to visit.

Okay, next on our agenda, or next on the awards section, is Heather Kellams is here to introduce to us the members of the summer internship program.

Ciao.

Everybody's on a performance-based system this summer, which means that they have to do what to get their stipend?

Slert, all your shifts.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you, and thank all of you.

Mike would like to come up and accept this proclamation.

So thank you very much.

And the first person is Jean Chase.

Mayor Brown.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Colette Hall.

Thank you.

Richard Berman.

Thank you.

Bradford Lamb.

and I think it's up to city council to ensure that the terms are such that the Y lives up to the commitments that they have made in terms of serving everyone in the community and that those communities are well represented and well served.

Tim Sinatra.

Thank you for your service and dedication to the community.

Randy O'Neill.

Morgan Butler.

Please give it the time and consideration it deserves.

Thank you.

Thank you for your attention.

Leroy Morris.

Thank you.

Kathy Marshall.

Thank you so much for your time.

So now we'll have council responses to matters by the public.

She doesn't get a lot of credit for the work she does.

Are there any items to be removed from the consent agenda to be considered at the end of the regular agenda?

I don't know if we need to remove this item.

Is there a discussion?

So I think it's something that I just wanted to lay out for people to think about.

And if there's something I've left out of that summary or didn't quite say right, please feel free to either elaborate or correct me.

Actually, I'm probably just going to say now Owen can get up and do his part.

For that portion, I'm going to turn it over to Owen Perry with RK&K, who is going to go through the PowerPoint and talk to you about the preferred alternatives.

It's also to develop a context sensitive design.

With that, that concludes the, I guess, the organized portion of our presentation.

Jim, I'll turn this back to you.

Thank you, Mr. Diaz.

We might as well stay up there, there may be some questions.

Mr. Norris?

I did want to follow up on a concern that was raised by Mr. Kleeman regarding this issue of the white paper that your team put out stating that two park avoidance alternatives will be developed and included in the set of design alternatives and I'm wondering if that happened and if not, why not?

Bill, can you help me clarify this for them?

You have to come up here.

This is Bill Hellman from our team as well, and he's a little more knowledgeable on the NEPA process than myself.

Those documents will be made available to the public about 30 days before the actual public hearing.

Just out of curiosity, so what we're seeing tonight doesn't include any of the avoidance alternatives and I'm wondering why those weren't included in this range of options.

It's normally the case that there is a recommended preferred alternative or alternatives at this point, again, to focus the public, but you're not required to do so.

Yes, sir.

And second, how do you determine what potential noise may be by changing configurations of intersections?

It's very strict guidelines on how you'll go about that analysis and we will analyze the impacts of the alternatives on any sensitive receptors such as communities, schools,

So basically you can do a radius and look at affected neighborhoods?

The traffic, the mix of the traffic, the speed of the traffic, all those factors will affect the noise analysis and again the results will be contained in the environmental

And we've already made, we've already done the ambient or the current readings out there, so we have particular locators out there and what we'll do is analyze what the change in the interchange, the height of the bridge, the different traffic that we're going to have in the future, how that impacts those receptors, say at the local school or out on the park or wherever they may be.

And again, the federal government has guidelines on exactly what constitutes an impact.

How extensive is that?

Thank you.

That's right.

But again, they're very strict federal requirements in doing that analysis.

Could you sort of address that issue, please?

We have a slide, if you'd be interested in taking, we have a bar chart of the different ones that we, if you're not interested, I won't show it, but we have that ready to go if you'd like to see it right now.

I think the public would be interested.

Actually, we looked at more than we were asked to look at, but we were sort of interested in this as well.

Other questions?

I mean, I'm trying to, can you interpret that for me?

If you all were to concur to make a recommendation for a preferred alternative tonight or a preliminary recommendation for preferred alternatives tonight, we're looking at C1 and G1 almost equally.

That was my question.

So G1 sort of is more ordinary than C1.

G1 has a signal and it seems to me if you have a signal and you want if you have it on a bike or on foot and you want to go from east to west and there's a stoplight it'd be easy and it's hard for me to imagine if it wasn't a signal there and you were on a bike or by foot and you wanted to go east to west at that point that it would be particularly safe or easy and I was just wondering if you could comment on that part of it.

So we think it's important to give a safe area for that to happen as well, even if a pedestrian bridge ends up being built in the project.

And I assume that there's some sophisticated ways of either with real models or with computer models that would allow a person from various angles to really get a feel for the intersection as you develop these two alternatives.

It's a little premature at this stage because we're still really moving things around and doing concept things and that level of detail isn't...

But can you tell us now in what format we'll be able to see... A video.

I'm not sure if we'll be able to stop and look any direction you want, but we're working on that.

October or November whenever there's a presentation and people feel like they really still don't have enough information.

Okay.

Just checking.

Other comments or...

Let's make the pedestrian space work a little bit more.

Because they're actually not as much larger than I thought they were.

So there were a number of reasons that caused these two to come to the forefront.

So I welcome comments from councilors or questions of Mr. Tolbert if we have any questions regarding that subject.

And if you have any insight to share, I'd appreciate it.

So I apologize, that's not terribly helpful, but it is a statute which is not perhaps the most artfully worded and there's not a lot of precedent about how you make the determination.

Will we really do that when it comes to this $30 million project?

by making that wider on the east, how much would it cost both in terms of money but also in terms of would it require retaining walls, what would it result in that or would it, you know, would we lose trees, would we lose, just so we have a clear way, but I'm not dismissing your idea that it may be a much more pleasant and therefore more widely used pedestrian access if we invested more, but I'd want to kind of have that laid out for us a little bit.

Because I think that would be helpful.

but I'd welcome to see what other people think but I think one way or the other I'd like to see us have a motion on that aspect for more discussion if people would like.

This is part of a regional plan and we need to see their piece of the regional plan pretty soon though.

So moved.

I'll second.

Further discussion on this issue?

I do think that the motion should specify that we're talking approximate location, approximate character, approximate extent, not to be in.

I accept that as a friendly amendment.

Any further discussion or guidance to the consultant or the committee on the alternatives?

But I do think for reasons of expediency and expense, it might make some sense to say that we have a preferred alternative, we have a backup alternative, and to look at it in that way.

So I think it makes sense to bring those two forward together, especially since that's the recommendation of the steering committee.

Other two?

But I am in favor of narrowing down to the five.

I think it's just going to increase through traffic in our community, and we've just got to keep pushing the county and our regional partners and VDOT to make this a better road network.

Oh, my comment, sir.

Can I suggest you put the word recommended in front of preferred alternatives?

Recommended preferred alternatives?

I also would like to get a little bit more information from the police department or whoever about the safety issues regarding the underpasses, the pedestrian underpasses and how we make sure that those are safe tunnels and not potential attractors to crimes.

Okay, thank you very much.

I mean, on the... Do you prefer a vote?

Mr. Ocala.

Otherwise, we need a resolution of support.

Is that what you mean?

Why don't you come forward, Charlie?

I'm just wondering if it makes any sense to say procedurally at least 426,000, etc.

There's nothing that precludes them from paying it.

You want to add anything to that?

Hopeful that they can even come up with more money initially but no more than $108,000 to be financed over two years.

Okay, other questions?

So we certainly have the capacity there, and I think getting a few more regional partners is a good thing that will help keep our costs down.

Any further discussion?

Thank you.

Mr. Tolbert again.

I think Jim's going to do a quick presentation including a sign so you can see what this is all about.

And the intent is that it be a six-month trial period and the traffic engineer bring back a report at the end of that period and let you know how it's working.

I know we also have our Chief Longo's here, I think, if there's any questions that he could help answer.

I will again.

Old Lynchburg Road, Avon, and Alta Vista.

So why don't we get an answer to that and then go on to the next one.

That's my response, Mr. Mayor.

Why is it that our average number of tickets a day is only five?

But I also think it's an insult to the men and women who work in this department to even suggest for a moment that they're not performing at a manner that's satisfactory to protect the interests of this community.

Are you done?

less speeding and there would be more people paying tickets.

to write tickets.

Those sanctions are over and above any fines or court costs that would be imposed here by our district court judge.

Maybe Mr. Tolbert can help me out with one of those.

Yes, sir.

It's just another tool, and I think at this point we need to leverage all the tools we can get our hands on.

Other questions for Chief Longo?

Don't go anywhere.

Now you have questions for Mr. Talbert?

So could you please explain to me what is going on with that, Mr. Tolbert?

Mr. Baric was handling that and I'm the only one the chief has, but I'm not the right one to answer that.

It's only a specific class of code violations in which that sanction might apply.

If you're speeding, we're going to do our best to make sure you get caught.

I don't see how you get a visual joke across in a radio ad, but we can talk about that a little bit more.

That's the kind of timeline I'm interested in, Mr. Barrett.

Thank you.

I'm not sure we can double them, but I'll do my very best.

And for that reason, I will support this.

And so I hope we can make it a certainty that if you speed on Old Lynchburg Road or Avon Street you're going to get caught.

So just having a draconian, simply having a crushing penalty.

We are going to miss you on council Kevin.

If we come back at the end of six months and what if we're not able to produce any data that shows that there's been a change in behavior, what is going to be the next step?

I mean, what are we going to measure it against?

And I would assume if we're enacting an ordinance, if we decide it's not really working, we have to change that ordinance that's been enacted.

You would have the option to repeal or amend the ordinance.

I'm sorry.

That's what I recall.

The recommendation was six months.

What I'm thinking is I don't have what we measured against, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

We will, at the end of six months or during the period, be monitoring the speeds there to see if there is a reduction, and we'll be monitoring the number of tickets issued in that area.

Do you use that way, the smart machine?

You'll never know when it's out there.

This is a street and the other streets with children playing, with bicyclists, and I think we need to take this measure.

I think we would also measure those streets that you pulled out and get a comparison so we see what the, if there's any change in those.

Who would like to, would anyone like to offer comments?

Somebody come forward please.

Thank you.

The audio level was so low.

Is this a change this time or is this generally true?

Okay.

Someone else like to speak?

Thank you.

Mr. Norris.

And if we decide in two months that it does make sense to bring it in-house, then we can do it then.

Can you discuss the information that you received, Mr. Norris?

they could do an even better job with the program and I don't want to eliminate that possibility and I'd like to just take a couple months and look at it.

I'd probably like an opportunity to maybe bring this up again under other business at the next meeting and have an opportunity for us to get some further information, perhaps share that information with staff so we can get some staff perspective on this before we change direction.

maybe made it a sliding scale, so instead of just 3%... What are you talking about, Kevin?

$10,000, not through AHIP.

I don't remember, was it an email that we got or that you got?

Well actually it was a letter back on March 27th.

okay okay well it's probably in a pile of budget stuff right now okay all right well uh we'll bring some more information make sure all the concerts are up to speed and we'll uh take it from there is that okay okay other business i'm sorry do you want to comment yeah is that okay yes if i could rather than

Again, I'm not sure we could have any answers for you in a couple of weeks, but a couple of months would not hurt us in the ability to put something together that would be meaningful for the council.

Other business?

Because I don't know how many people have gotten that, but that is the key change.

Another area is vagrants on the mall.

He's out pretty regularly meeting with people trying to get things corrected, but if you hear of something, if you can let us know.

It just seems like a lot of them, I don't know.

They left my trash can in the street again.

I don't know if there's anything we can do about it, but it kind of distracts.

And we're trying to stay on top of that one every day.

I know they've been working on it, but

I mean, someone was describing to me that there's a new generation of hobos hopping trains and traveling around, and it is a change over the last several years, not just here, but lots of places.

some of our long-time regulars do and we're certainly willing to try to be part of the solution it's a little bit of a tough nut to crack but that does help I have encountered some of those kids on the mall and I was like why aren't you in school you know so because they look very young

And so I think if we could do something to help that, that would be

Well yes, if you've got good sense you don't speak because there might have been something that escaped from the...

Right, might have been a goat or a chicken or something like that.

But I guess a lot of people don't know about that or a lot of people are not deterred by that, so we do need to look into that.

It's very difficult to see and I wonder if maybe we could put one of the yellow signs there that we have on Water Street on Locust Avenue and some similar places just so that people know there's a crosswalk here.

Good Samaritan.

And so I think if there is something we could do to improve that driver awareness of that being a crosswalk, it would be a good idea.

Other business?

I got two quick ones.

Monday May 9th, a week from now, we've got the Parks and Rec facilities meeting at Key Recreation Center.

Of Key, okay.

Okay.

Probably a little bit past time, but we'll be handling it in another week.

I think it's right here.

No, it's right here.

Okay.

Then we're adjourned.

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