City Council Meeting   10/15/2007

Well, that's good, I think, David.

Hi.

Here it is.

Okay, I'd like to welcome everyone to tonight's city council meeting and the first thing is the Pledge of Allegiance.

of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Dr. Brown.

Here.

Ms. Hamilton.

Here.

Mr. Lynch.

Here.

Mr. Norris.

Here.

Mr. Taliaferro.

I just wanted to make an announcement about boards and commissions that we are currently seeking citizens to step forward for.

The first is the Board of Architectural Review.

We're looking for one owner of a business or commercial property in an architectural design control district, one resident or owner of residential property in such a district, and two historians or persons with a substantial background in history or preservation.

Plus the Charlottesville Albemarle Commission on Children and Families, the Airport Commission,

the CDBG Grant Task Force, Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority, Jefferson Board for Aging, Parks and Rec Advisory Board, Regional Disability Services Board, Rivanna Solid Waste Advisory Committee, and Social Services Advisory Board.

So as you can see, we need lots of citizens to step forward and throw their names in the hat.

I want to announce, I'm very pleased to announce that our community will be hosting an event on October 27th, a statewide conference on climate change and climate action at Clark Hall, University of Virginia.

and I've been involved with a group that's been pulling this event together and we're going to see a lot of people come around from around the state to Charlottesville to hear what they can do to push climate protection strategies in their communities.

So, please do come.

vaclimateaction.org is the conference website.

Secondly, at our last city council meeting

We passed an easement for the Meadow Creek Parkway contingent upon one of the contingencies was that Albemarle County would come through with a statement of support for increased transit, etc., etc.

And I'd like to read at the end of the meeting, read into the record the resolution that they promptly passed following up on our

conditions that we passed and I want to share my appreciation to them for their follow through.

Any councilors have any objection to changing the agenda?

Other announcements?

I'll announce a call to people's attention that at the beginning of next month but before we have our next council meeting is the Virginia Film Festival.

It's one of my favorite events.

It's November 1st to 4th.

John Sayles, a great director, is going to be here.

There's stuff on their website now and there's brochures around town and people should be sure to attend.

And finally I'm going to announce that the city received a great new award recently.

We received an award from the Virginia Chapter of the American Planning Association, the Innovation Award.

It's a new award they gave to us recognizing our neighborhood plans that came out of the 2005 design day.

and I'm sure many of you participated during that day when on a Saturday all over the city in 18 different neighborhoods we got together in groups and talked about the needs of the neighborhood and worked on plans.

It had a lot to do with the way our comprehensive plan turned out and I'm really pleased we were recognized.

I'd like to thank Jim Tolbert and the rest of the Neighborhood Development Services for their hard work and thank the Community Design Center for helping us with that.

Excuse me.

I was going to add about a public meeting as well, but we're often proud of what the neighborhood development services staff have done.

I think what we've seen is they've involved the community in some pretty creative ways that not many cities around the country are doing, so we're a leader in that standpoint.

I thought I would mention too while I'm talking

This Saturday, October 20th, we have a capital improvements program and budget form at Buford School from 10 in the morning until noon.

It follows a similar format to the budget forms we've done before, but this would be at the beginning of the budget process.

Next is matters by the public in which people have up to three minutes to comment on anything they'd like as long as we don't have a public hearing scheduled or have not already held a public hearing.

Hello.

Two weeks ago, misrepresentation appealed to city council to address the historical inaccuracy of the Lewis and Clark statue.

which depicts Sacagawea cowering behind a triumphant Lewis and Clark.

Along with my partner's misogyny and misinformed and many beautiful non-beauty queens, we hit the streets getting signatures for our petition which seeks to situate the statue where more reflection can occur with contextualizing signs that give more information about Sacagawea and the Lewis and Clark expedition and address the controversy of the statue.

The wording of the petition is, we the undersigned citizens of the city of Charlottesville petition the city to relocate Charles Keck's 1919 Lewis and Clark and Suhagawea statue that stands at the intersection of Water, West Main, and Ridge McIntyre to a history museum or park where it can be given proper context.

We find the statue to be historically inaccurate and offensive in its depiction of Sacagawea cowering behind Lewis and Clark and in its characterization of the western part of the continent as an unknown empire.

470 people agreed that it is important for us to reexamine our portrayal of history and have signed our petition.

It would have been an even 500, but my two-year-old daughter signed a whole page that I discovered just a few minutes ago.

Over the past two weeks, I've been all over the city, including time on the UVA grounds, and have spoken with folks in a broad spectrum of ages, genders, ethnicities.

races and socio-economic groups that make up our community and the vast majority express solidarity with my position that we have to get our history right.

We must reevaluate the stories that we're passing down, correct and update our textbooks and add visual representation of our local heroes, question whom we've glorified in the past.

Renowned journalist Thomas Friedman recently wrote about how in his tour of southern universities nothing reminded him of our need to speak out and take action in the face of injustice in the statue of James Meredith at Ole Miss.

For those in the minority who think what I do is silly, I must again assert my stand.

Public monuments matter.

They are lasting symbols of what society deems important.

As I submit this petition, I implore you to consider adding context to all of our local monuments.

offensive to large portions of our community in some way.

Charlottesville deemed it important enough to beautify the city 90 years ago with these behemoths and I'm not sure that the majority of us agree that they're beautiful anymore.

Please consider what we could do to visually represent the local women and minority heroes who are missing.

Tourists will get a less whitewashed and more accurate rendition of our local history and those of us who live here will feel that we are working towards telling the truth of where we came from so we can better determine where we want to go.

I stand here tonight to give my support to the representatives here as well as the citizens who have expressed their support for a petition in denouncing the historical inaccuracy and offensive depiction of Sacajawea and more broadly Native Americans.

I believe that there is no argument that can be formulated that sufficiently counters the objections that we have made.

Some critics ground their argument in a perversion of fact by supposing that Sacagawea is somehow reacting to having finally arrived at the Pacific Ocean, but I think the supposition is implausible.

This fundamental truth manifests itself through depictions of Native Americans elsewhere in public statues in Charlottesville.

The George Rogers Clark statue on West Main Street conveys a violent confrontation between Europeans and the indigenous people of North America.

To sum up that scene, the Native Americans are being shot at and trampled as they try to resist foreign invasion.

Perhaps if people took the opportunity to look at the back of the statue

which features a European American about to ambush and indeed kill unarmed Native Americans, then the message of that statue and the Lewis and Clark statue would be realized.

Just as the George Rogers Clark statue symbolizes the conquering of a land and the conquering of a people, so does Sacagawea, cowering at the feet of Lewis and Clark, mean to symbolize the beginning of the end for the Native American civilization.

For these reasons, I support the hundreds of citizens who would like for this statue to be corrected through means that give dignity to the Native American peoples and truth to American history.

If I may leave you with this, what if every Native American in these statues was replaced by an African American?

What if, instead of Sacagawea, that statue depicted York, a black enslaved person who also went on that expedition

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm Peggy Brown-Pavier.

I'm a resident of the city of Charlottesville, but I also work at the Thomas Jefferson Health District.

I'm here to tell you about a new community campaign called Local Motion.

Now, if you've gone along McIntire Road North, you may have seen a banner with this

Little Emblen, Local Motion, and it is a symbol of a new city and county collaboration to promote physical activity for people of all backgrounds, ages, and abilities, especially in our beautiful public spaces.

We know that physical activity helps people feel better, look better, and relieve the stress of everyday life.

So we're encouraging everybody to look at our website.

It's www.localmotionhome.info.

I've also given to each of the counselors

a page to become a Locomotion friend.

These are people who support Locomotion either by becoming physically active or actually wanting to put a decal in a window.

And I've left a decal for each of you as a reminder for what you need to do every day and for all our citizens.

We're hoping that when people see this logo, they're going to be thinking about how to get physical activity in their day.

And I'm leaving some of these same Become a Friend slips for people in the back if you'd like to become a friend.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Councillors.

Colette Hall, 101 Robertson Lane.

Tonight I speak not only to you, the City Council of Charlottesville, but also to the electorate of the city.

Other than I, the consent agenda is rarely commented on by the public.

The public, you the voters and property owners of Charlottesville.

What a shame.

Thomas Paine once said, it is the duty of every patriot to protect his country from government.

candidate Haskins did not ask me to speak on this topic.

I have spoken on the consent agenda for years in hoping counselors and citizens will awaken to the reality of careful and cautious spending of the people's money.

One, I do realize that the consent agenda often reflects items from the city budget.

Two, I do realize that money must be provided for mandated programs by the federal and state governments, too often mandated but not financially supplied.

Three, I do realize that matching grants usually do not mean a dollar for dollar match, but luckily a percentage of the match.

4.

I do realize that some people are of the opinion that a matching grant is money the city may otherwise not have had available.

The four ideas I do recognize still do not silence me to say, with the slowing housing market and no significant increase in city population,

and the immense costs looming ahead like aging infrastructure replacement, stormwater runoff solutions, and ways to assure potable water in the future, all of which will cost multi-millions of dollars to solve.

The council simply must start saying no to money requests.

Requests that may indeed be worthy and wanted by a few but not necessarily needed.

It takes courage and wisdom to say no.

Please start saying no.

Thank you.

Hello, good afternoon to everybody.

My name is Belinda Carter and I am here on behalf of the Payday Loan.

I don't know, I would like to tell you that something has to be done where we do not have to be paying all that interest, I mean I paid, my husband and I got into two years of payday loans and he's deceased now, but payday loans have gotten away with

charging you so much interest that it took us two years to get out of the mess that we got into, unfortunately.

And I just want to ask this afternoon if y'all will consider working on either banning them, if you can't ban them, to make the interest that they're charging to come down to a reasonable, because it's really ridiculous how much money that you can end up paying.

basically that's all I want to say.

Hi I'm Thomasine Wilson.

and I'm going to speak about the payday loan because I got into it about three or four years ago and it took me just about two years to get out of it and it seemed like when you go get a loan it's just a small amount and you pay so much back for a short period of time but if you expand it over a 12 month period you'll find it's an extremely high amount of interest rate and I found for me once I went in I think maybe 2004

It took from that time until maybe 2007 to get totally clear.

And then to get back on track, I had to actually start telling other people not to go to these people.

If you can get a loan from Payday and pay it back, you should be able to get a loan from the institution that you're dealing with, credit union, bank.

If I can get $500 from Payday and pay this excess money, why can't I get money from an institution I already deal with?

But I really would love to have them just close down, not to even be in business, or even better, have a cap where they cannot go beyond a certain amount on the interest.

And also, in Stanton, they are really, I'm going to read this for Stanton, it says, Resolution of the Council of the City of Stanton

to request that the General Assembly and the government of Virginia take action to prevent expo- expoitive payday lending practices in the Commonwealth.

And they also, for Stanton, they passed a resolution that their cap should not be even affected in Stanton.

That they don't have to even be regarded.

and it's not just for really low class people, I find a lot of elderly, fixed incomes, those that are maybe getting paid under government once a month and you need a little something to tide you over but you keep going over and over and over until it's to the point that you can't pay it back.

I'm Brenda Lambert.

I'm retired.

I live with my partner Jim Shea on Monivis Avenue.

I want to talk about payday loans also.

When I was a young woman, I worked for a loan company and I was really struck by how much more people had to pay in interest for the money they borrowed from the loan company than if they had borrowed it from the bank.

Most of the borrowers were people who were

and who were in single family homes.

They were just a little worse off than my parents who had a mortgage and who both worked.

They paid twice as much interest as people who borrowed money from the bank.

I thought this was really unfair.

Now these payday lenders make that loan company look like a charitable organization.

I want to point out that it's not just low wage workers who are affected by the payday lenders.

Seniors on fixed income often are turning to these loans to bridge the gap between their social security checks and their monthly expenses.

Not all the seniors in Charlottesville are well off people who've moved here because they want to live in the best city in the country.

Some of us have lived here a long time and it's getting more and more expensive to live here.

The AARP in Virginia has estimated that since 2001, when these loans were made possible, more than 45,000 seniors have been caught up in the payday loan trap.

I want to ask you to petition the General Assembly to remove the special exemption that allows the payday lenders to charge up to 390% annual percentage rate.

They should be held to the same cap of 36% that all other lenders are held to.

And I also would like you to use the city's zoning ordinances in any way you can to stop the proliferation of these

payday lenders in our community.

Thank you.

I'm Brandon Collins.

I'm a resident of Charlottesville, have been all my life.

When I was a young boy and first saw the Lewis and Clark statue, I was kind of puzzled at how this woman, Sacajawea, was represented on that monument.

It didn't seem to fit things I had learned in history books about her role in the expedition that

that they went on.

Having lived here all my life, I occasionally run into other people who comment on the statue.

It's always the same kind of puzzlement with all that.

They seem to be embarrassed.

I've never run into anybody who's ever said, oh, it's such a great thing that this Native American woman is in this subservient position to these European males.

and again, to me it's embarrassing, I think for most of the city it's kind of embarrassing and it's something that I think is important to represent history truthfully in a city like this that's

are generally fairly progressive.

It may seem like it's not the biggest issue that may be facing you guys these days, but representing our history accurately is important.

It kind of goes beyond just political correctness when you're dealing with actual facts and how things were.

I don't think the city wants to have monuments where Native Americans are being slaughtered

and Sacagawea is not being represented in her role that she served.

By all accounts of the Lewis and Clark expedition she was in a pretty strong position and at times there are quotes by both of them considering her almost an equal of everybody else.

You know, it's tough to see that and it's important because there are other things in the history of Charlottesville that just get swept aside and this is a good starting point to kind of think about that, particularly the slave trade that you don't

You can't see anywhere in any plaques or monuments anywhere here that that happened in Charlottesville a lot and the slave labor that went into building the university in Monticello and things like that.

All these are really important things and it helps us better as a city to understand where we've been and we can treat each other a whole lot better having figured that out.

So just thanks for listening to me.

I hope you guys give that some consideration.

I'm John False, 1503 Rugby Road.

Two weeks ago you debated the merits of imposing a storm water fee.

As one of the three independent candidates vying for the two seats on the Soil and Water Conservation Board this November, this is a very important issue to me.

I want to go on record in support of such a fee.

Last month, Karen Rittervold presented the proposal to the board where it met with universal approval.

I say I endorse the proposal, but with provisions, very big provisions.

First, these fees must be put into a completely separate stormwater fund, or as Brian Wheeler called it, a lockbox.

In the current 2007 fiscal year budget, $359,282 is allocated for stormwater, is bundled into a general public utilities account with streets, sidewalks, and the like.

It's too easy to collect money for one purpose and then divert it to another, as is the case with the million dollar yearly rental cost for the CityLink system, which is paid for from utility fees.

Second, the city government, which probably has the much largest footprint in the city, must calculate its fair share and contribute from the general fund.

I know this eventually comes from our taxpayer pockets, but it's still the right thing to do.

Finally, I would ask, since the city has only budgeted $360,000 this fiscal year, just what new proposals are proposed, projects are proposed?

Are we just proposing these fees to provide another revenue source for the city, or are we really committed to providing our environment?

I say I support the proposal, but only if we're serious about really preserving the streams in our region.

Mr. Mayor, Councillors and staff, my name is John Gaines and I reside at 214 9th Street, Northwest.

Some of the residents that signed the petition I presented to you last spring shared the following comments with me.

Number one,

Maybe you could get council to act on our concerns if you had more political influence.

Number two, maybe you're too old and black to be heard by councilors.

Number three, maybe council has no interest in your neighborhood concerns.

Maybe the above perceptions have some merit, maybe not.

I'm here this evening to ask you to push for some closure on the 8th and Main Street visibility issue.

That issue was brought to you back in April.

One of the counselors said that the business people had not had an opportunity to comment on the particular issue, which is not true because it was posted in front of their businesses, so I as a walker saw the announcement and I'm sure they had an opportunity to view it.

and it was not brought earlier to our neighborhood meetings as a concern.

I would also like to ask you to support more police presence in the 10th and Page Street area.

Please use some of the block grant and weed and seed funds to help address

this rock-like issue that's taking place in that area.

What has happened to the community police and officers that were assigned to our area?

Thank you.

Thank you for allowing me to speak tonight.

I'm struggling a little with my visual disability tonight, so I may need a few extra seconds.

I had my own financial crisis when I broke my prescription reading glasses on the way here, and who would have thought it would cost $30 to get reading glasses on the drugstore downtown mall.

I am here to refute the myth that of those people, oh, one page, it's in bold type.

Okay, here we go, sorry.

I'm here to dispel a myth that is rampant in Virginia.

The myth is about those people who get into financial difficulty due to predatory lending.

All too often, I hear that those people are irresponsible.

I also hear the myth that some people are innocent victims of predatory lending and others deserve what they get.

Innocent victims, for example, might be disabled veterans returning from the war who need financial assistance.

I don't believe the myths that I have mentioned because I am a victim of predatory lending.

I am a traumatic brain injury survivor and my injury occurred on the job while I was working for the Virginia Department of Rehabilitative Services.

I find it ironic that I was working for a department that was supposed to help people with disabilities, yet I had to fight the system for nine months before my TBI was recognized by the state's insurance carrier.

Nonetheless, I still did not fall into the trap of predatory lending, though I easily could have, thinking that next week or the next or the next month, who would have thought nine months, I surely thought it would have taken less than that for my workers' comp to come through.

In order to pay for my medical bills and basic needs, I resorted to cashing in all of my private retirement investments at a 20% penalty.

A chunk of money in penalties, but much better than the 300% interest.

So when did I fall under the trap of payday loans?

It was when my workers comp check, unbeknownst to me, was sent to a man in another county along with his check.

I called the workers comp office inquiring about my missing check and they said it would take at least a month before they could issue another check.

Ironically, when I was awarded workers' comp, I asked for and suggested to both the state and their insurance carrier that they provide direct deposit services as it would save them money and guard against lost checks.

It didn't happen.

As a taxpayer, I think that this was a fiscally responsible thing to do, which lends itself to the question, is government always fiscally responsible?

Do they ever have difficulty estimating revenues and expenses and balancing their budget?

I wonder how many people living paycheck to paycheck reviewing their budget on a day-to-day basis to manage unexpected expenses.

I wonder how many of these people would use payday loans and card titles if they had access to a rainy day fund.

Back to my story.

Since I was living from check to check, I was overwhelmed when I didn't receive my check on time.

Without this stress, which exacerbated my TBI symptoms, I would have realized that I could take

Cash advance on my credit card for 25% interest, still a high level of interest.

However, this still would have been difficult for me to do because one of my TBI coping strategies was that I didn't establish a credit card PIN number so that I wouldn't inadvertently use a credit card when I meant to use a debit card for cash.

I built in this self-check when I couldn't find the services I needed.

During rehab, I asked to have a representative payee help me manage my finances, but I was told that I didn't qualify for this service through a community agency, workers' comp wouldn't pay for it, I was too high functioning, and I couldn't afford to pay a private lawyer to handle my affairs.

I will.

So I eventually got out of the trap.

It took two months.

What I would say is I believe we are all victims of predatory lending.

As a person of faith, I believe we have a moral obligation to stop it.

As a taxpayer, I believe we have a fiscal responsibility to end it.

As someone who works in nonprofit and private sector, as well as faith communities, I see the victims of predatory lending being forced to increasingly turn

Thank you.

Hi.

Good evening.

And I'm also here to talk about predatory lending.

I have a dear friend.

I live in the city.

I have a dear friend who lives in the city and works for Albemarle County Public Schools.

She gets paid once a month.

She's single parenting two children.

She had some unforeseen expenses come up where she went to a car title lender and borrowed a thousand dollars.

She came to pay the bill in full.

after she got the money, after she got paid, her first paycheck, they told her she had to pay $1,250.

It increased 25% every month.

After a year it would be over 300%.

She saw that she wasn't going to be able to afford this and she also lost the title to her car because they had the title to her car so she had to turn to family and friends to get emergency loans so she could get rid of this payday lender.

You know, we all know that the county didn't support a living wage last year and she's having to look to other ways to support her family and I'm asking you to draft a resolution, send to the General Assembly to put a cap on the payday lenders at 36% and also to deny them access to people's bank accounts and their motor vehicles so they can get access to their titles, that that also be stopped.

Thank you.

Mr. Norris.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

I'd like to thank all of the citizens who came and spoke about the predatory lending issue.

I wholeheartedly agree with the comments that were made this evening about the need to crack down on some of these practices that prey on people.

And to that end, I'd certainly endorse counsel passing a resolution very similar to the one

We've been presented, which I understand has been passed already by city councils in Stanton, Harrisonburg, Waynesboro, Hampton, Shenandoah, and many other localities are currently doing.

I'd also like to ask that we include that in our legislative agenda.

And failing state action this year that we consider a local ordinance next spring, similar to the one that Norfolk has adopted.

And then with regard to historic misrepresentation,

I agree that we need to tell our history more accurately and tell the full story of our history and I understand that we have a standing committee in the Historic Resources Task Force in the city which sort of has responsibility for historic markers and whatnot and I'd like to ask that that committee

Look at incorporating some signage as a short term measure, incorporating some signage working with citizens in the community concerned about this issue to tell a more accurate story.

The removing of the statue I think is a longer term solution that we're going to have to re-engineer that intersection at some point anyway.

It's very likely that statue is going to be removed anyway, but I think in the short term

I have no objection to try and incorporate some signage to tell a more accurate story.

I'd just like to comment on the payday lending and I just want to agree with Mr. Norris and I would hope that we could craft a resolution and either that or address it maybe through the zoning, which I think has Norfolk done it through zoning, I think that's correct.

in response to Mr. Gaines and maybe the city manager can tell us a little bit where we are on the 8th Street.

That has been going on a long time.

Also in terms of the community policing efforts, the other weeks someone was telling me that they didn't seem like there was a police presence up there a whole lot anymore.

And I think the other comment I had was when this first started that

there were some police officers came through the neighborhood and introduced themselves to people, etc.

and then that kind of just they don't see anyone they say and it was kind of like a I guess for lack of a better term disappointing or they were kind of they were the issue trying to think what I'm trying to say essentially they felt like

They were misrepresenting what they were doing because people didn't follow through on it, I guess.

And I would ask, maybe we could take a look at that.

I want to thank the people looking forward to talk about payday loans.

I do support the notion of a resolution.

Also, we are going to be looking at our legislative package tonight.

That is something that we could discuss, you know, whether it's too late to add something like that to our legislative package.

To the woman who came from Local Motion, there's also a local program called QCC Walks and I hope that you have incorporated them into your coalition.

because that is concentrated in the areas that are served by QCC, which is largely the low-income community.

And so that would be great if QCC Walks could become a part of this larger regional effort that you're talking about.

Mr. Foltz, I certainly agree with the lockbox concept.

We had long, hard arguments over what was going to get the funding.

this year and I was arguing for sewers and other people were you know all over sidewalks and sidewalks won and I think things that are visible are always going to win over things that are invisible nobody can see the sewers they don't think about them so I'd certainly agree with that concept and under the plan that we were presented the city would be contributing because the city it is recognized that the city you know is a major source of parking lots and all that other sorts of thing um

On the issue of the Lewis and Clark Monument,

You know, I certainly agree that public monuments do matter.

I come from Charleston, South Carolina, which is the home of embarrassing public monuments.

But I will.

John C. Keller, Confederate flag, anybody?

You who?

But, you know, there is no argument that the Lewis and Clark statue is personally offensive to me.

But I think that as a matter of historical context, it's important to remember

that these monuments were put in place by private efforts, private individuals who raised the funds to have these monuments cast so they take the shape of, you know, that were paid for by these private citizens who then petitioned government to put them in place and government said sure because back then government was no more interested in funding public art than it is today, except maybe in places like Charlottesville.

So I think that considering the costs of moving monuments, contextualizing monuments is one thing, but considering the costs of moving monuments and the historical fashion in which those monuments came to be there, it would be a responsible thing on the part of advocates of contextualizing and removing these monuments to also have a private fundraising campaign to contribute to these costs.

That may not be popular, but I think that's the right thing to do.

and as for those who are concerned about police presence in 10th and Page, I think that it would help me to understand what times of day are the times of concern because I have, you know, I of course walk between the downtown mall and Rose Hill and between friends' houses on Anderson and my house on Booker Street

and at times I feel that the police presence is overwhelming and oppressive.

So I would like to know what are the times of day and what are the problem areas at a time when the public is allowed to respond.

Nothing from Mr. Lynch.

Well, this is an interesting day.

I'd like to say I think Ms. Hamilton just made some great remarks, summing up some of the bigger picture issues about monuments.

I do think that there's a way to make sure people understand the full story of history, and the full story is different than what people were looking at and thinking about in the early 1900s.

and so I'm pleased to see us move forward on that.

My only comment is I was going to say I'm pleased to see Mr. Fultz, a prominent Republican, former Republican candidate for council, come forward to endorse this fee system for stormwater.

because I think that it is a very important thing for us to do is create a dedicated fund in order to deal with this important issue which you know isn't often we have a chance to speak publicly in a room full of people about storm water so anyway any other comments if not we'll move on to the consent agenda

The consent agenda tonight consists of item A, an appropriation of $166,819, the victim witness program grant, it's a second reading.

Item B, an appropriation of $30,515, a grant for school anti-bullying programs, it's a second reading.

Item C, an appropriation of $11,100 Virginia Community Core Grant, it's the second reading.

Item D, an appropriation of $54,326, the Justice Assistance Grant, it's the first reading.

Item E, a resolution sponsoring the Virginia Climate Action Conference, it's the first and only reading.

Item F, an ordinance rezoning the property on Rialto Street from R1S to PUD, it's the second reading.

and item G, an ordinance closing portion of 3rd Street off Douglas Avenue and it's a second reading.

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

I'll move for the consent agenda, Mr. Mayor.

Okay.

Councilor Norris is one of the organizers, I think, of the Virginia Climate Action Conference, which he told us about earlier.

So, no other comments, I'll call for the vote.

Okay, thank you.

Next is a report on Smithville.

Counselors, thank you very much.

First of all, I want to kind of give you the lay of the land as to how we want to make this presentation.

I will give you a very brief overview in the audience, a very brief overview as to what got us to this point.

I will have Will Scribner from SMB Architecture come up and walk us through

one of Kendra's favorite things, PowerPoint presentation of just some typical slides, floor plans, site plans of conceptual new facility.

Come back, give a very quick overview and then

ask for your comments and suggestions and questions in moving forward, talk timeline and cost at that point.

Just very quickly before we move to the PowerPoint though, over the last couple of years we've been before council a number of times to discuss the future of our facilities and in particular some of these hinge on the future of our two indoor pools.

which are 32 years old at this point.

On July 9th, council asked us to bring back to you all a feasibility study and an operational overview that included a site plan, a floor plan, and a program plan.

for potentially a new aquatic facility that also had a youth and senior fitness component to it.

We collaborated with the Boys and Girls Club at your request with SMB Architecture as well as W.G.

Clark and his architecture team to create what we will present tonight.

Just a real quick overview.

Why are we here and why are we considering the Buford space?

As you know, the two facilities have numerous infrastructure issues that need to be addressed.

There is a huge difference between repair and renovation.

Some of what we have on the website addresses Band-Aids and repairs, issues that can help right now and then and there.

but certainly don't consider the long term benefits of any type of facility.

The renovations, not including pool infrastructure in plumbing for the two facilities, to give them another life of maybe 20 to 30 years, combined infrastructure would be $6 million to repair those.

That said, we also conducted a needs assessment.

A needs assessment allowed people an opportunity to weigh in on what they would like to see in new facilities if we were to build them.

We did give them a menu of choices of which to draw on.

And some of the amenities such as warm water and recreational amenities that you would find at a Washington park pool are some of what they had requested.

Lapelanes for exercise also was another component.

Other reasons why we're here, operational dollars.

One real big issue is simply the fact that the utility costs at our two indoor pools are upwards of $320,000 annually.

That is $320,000 for less than 40,000 square foot of space.

Modern facilities by comparison for every 50,000 square feet will have anywhere between $100,000 to $125,000 in annual utility bills.

So you can see we're probably about three times what a modern facility would cost in terms of utilities.

Wyatt Buford School.

Buford School is on a main artery unlike Crowpool at this point which is at the end of Rose Hill Drive and in the middle of a neighborhood.

Buford is a main artery.

It has an opportunity for us to build

a facility in the same general location in which we already have one such as the Smith Center and Pool and also allows us an opportunity to create some amazing synergy between a new Boys and Girls Club facility and obviously Buford School on that same site.

Regarding the future of Crow Pool and Center, at this point nothing of that has been decided.

We have at this point been asked to bring forward a feasibility study to consider a new facility on the campus of Buford that would engage an indoor pool.

Crow could have a number of reuses including as a neighborhood center that would potentially provide other recreational opportunities that we currently don't provide in the system.

not just necessarily a pool.

Couple of community engagement opportunities we have undertaken over the last couple of weeks.

We have met with the assistant superintendent Jim Henderson who is in attendance and the principal at Buford School.

both very much support the project at this point but obviously the devil is always in the details when it comes to parking and logistics but at this point they can see the huge advantages to such a facility in conjunction with Buford and the Boys and Girls Club

We held a public meeting here in council chambers at the request of the community and councilors.

Over 100 people attended.

We spent about 90 minutes really discussing this issue in length.

Some of the outcomes simply were

Possible redevelopment of Crow as a neighborhood facility.

Some folks would like to see Crow remain as a pool, and other folks are really, really concerned about the number of lap lengths that may be in a new facility.

A possible solution to that might be to add what you see tonight, maybe add two to four lap lengths, but I'll allow you to weigh in on that later.

We also had a Greenleaf Terrace Neighborhood Association meeting on October 10th and discussed that as part of that meeting as well and had much of the same feedback that we had received on October 3rd.

And depending upon where the decision goes with City Council tonight, we also would like to make a presentation to the school board sometime in November.

At this point I would like to kind of turn the show over to Will Scribner.

Will will kind of walk you through what council had requested.

Some slides detailing the overall site plan, some slides that detail the floor plan, its relationship to Buford and the Boys and Girls Club.

So at this time we're going to do the PowerPoint, go through that, and I'll come back and do a real quick operational overview.

Thank you, Mayor Brown and Members of Council.

My name is Will Scribner.

I'm a principal with SMBW Architects in Richmond and we're delighted to have this opportunity to present this study to you tonight.

This has been performed in conjunction with three firms, our Richmond firm, W.G.

Clark's Charlottesville architectural firm, and Councilman Hunsacker,

One of the premier aquatic facilities design firms in the country.

They're located in St. Louis.

So we've teamed together for this kind of quick blush study and as has been pointed out earlier, this is located on the Buford School site, the existing school.

complex here with the gymnasium in that location.

This is the existing Smith pool here.

The Boys and Girls Club is to be positioned along this edge and a new aquatic center positioned to the east of it.

North is to the top of the slide.

This shows a planned graphic of how the site would be developed.

Again, here's Buford School at the top with its gym building, Cherry Avenue moving along the bottom.

In this case, north is to the bottom.

the existing soccer field and track here.

The proposal is to position the Boys and Girls Club along the western edge here and the pool along what is currently an unused hillside in this area.

There's an existing upper level parking lot here.

The grade drops approximately 20 feet from there to there and the lower level parking and surface area occurs down here.

Bus Drive loop through for school buses is in this area here.

This shared courtyard at the center will be an activity space along the Boys and Girls Club side.

A teen center will look out onto this space.

a gymnasium will face onto the track area and there will be an activity area up here with drama, dance, study and art classes in that area.

We've rearranged our program a little bit here to try to give you kind of a three dimensional representation of this scheme.

This is looking from the west to the east, again north is in this direction.

This is the Buford School Gym and Buford School proper going back in this direction Boys and Girls Club in the foreground with the gymnasium along this side and the track and soccer field here and then the proposed swim facility set to the eastern side of the site and pressed up against the existing upper level parking lot here

There's a, as you'll see when we get to the plans, it's essentially divided into two halves.

The southern half here is the pool volume itself, the so-called wet half of the building where issues of humidity and climate control and

chemically treated water evaporating into the air are significant and need to be contained and managed.

And then on the northern end, a three-story volume that includes changing areas and locker rooms and pool equipment spaces at the first level, at an intermediate level, a fitness center, and at the top level, some office space for Parks and Recreation.

And then in this zone right here is an occupiable roof terrace.

Next slide, please.

This is looking from the southwest toward the northeast, again the courtyard opening this way to the neighborhood.

We're leaving intact, we're proposing to leave intact the tree cover and slope and drainage way that is there to keep maximum buffer between this facility and the adjoining neighbors.

This again is the pool volume proper here and then the support spaces are here.

Next please.

This is looking from the northwest to the southeast, seeing into the courtyard.

You can see how these active spaces with the pool here, teen center, excuse me, along this side, and the activity spaces in here all opening onto this shared area.

These terraces sloping down to the soccer field will serve as seating areas, amphitheaters, and occupiable, usable outdoor spaces.

And then a comparable view from the northeast.

and from the east again then this is the school bus drive entering this way looping through the front of the school and coming back.

This is the occupiable roof garden here and then the Parks and Recreation kind of office space sticking out and serving as a main entry to get down into this pool volume here.

This represents a biofiltration center on site.

You were talking about storm water management earlier.

We're trying to manage storm water on site here.

Boys and Girls Club has an objective of building a LEEDS certified building and we would expect that those same kinds of green and sustainable design issues would transfer over into the pool facility itself.

And that I think is probably the final view.

Now we'll go back and look at the plan images.

Thank you.

I have a capable assistant here.

I could not have done that.

This is sort of the dividing line here.

Again, this is north, so the school gym is here and Buford School is back over this way.

Parking area above is here.

This marks the division between the so-called wet side of the facility and the dry side.

You see a number of kind of state of the art and new thought sort of facilities for recreational aquatics facilities here.

There is an area of lap lanes here for recreation, kind of focused recreation by people there to get their aerobic exercise in.

But then there are other more kind of passive play facilities like a vortex which is a spinning

There's a pool of water, there's a slide facility and we have photographs that will show you the character of some of these types of facilities.

But this is kind of a slide facility that you climb up to the top of and you spiral down and splash into the pool here.

There's a current channel which is sort of like a

allows you to kind of float along a stream of moving water, a more or less kind of wet equivalent of a jungle gym in this area here and then kind of open water space for free play in here.

On the dry side over here we have fundamental equipment spaces like laundry and pool mechanical and so on.

Then the main locker complex, men and women shower and toilet and locker and changing

Family locker rooms that allow mixed gender family groups to go and change as a group and go into the pool.

And then we have a wet classroom and party room and lifeguard, aquatic manager spaces, that sort of thing, filling out the complimented spaces on this level.

This goes up one level, so here you're looking down into the pool volume a story below.

The fitness center is located in this area.

The main heating and air conditioning for the building is located here.

Along the rim of this space is a seating area that will allow parents and family members to come and look down as children or adults, I guess, who are taking swimming lessons down below.

and finally the top level.

This then shows what would be the parking lot level at this side.

This is the occupiable roof terrace with programmable spaces for gatherings, play, drama, etc.

And then this is the park and recreation office outpost up here with the main entry here into a control zone and then stair and elevator taking you down into the building proper.

and then here are three cross sections through the building and the site.

This is at the pool volume, so this is at the southern end of the complex.

Here's the courtyard in between the two, Boys and Girls Club transitioning part of the slope here onto the soccer field level.

the swim facility itself.

This depicts the nine foot deep portion of the lap lane pool that will be what is used for scuba training, lifeguard training, water safety training, that sort of thing.

And then here is the kind of shallow end of the pool.

There is a zero entry, meaning essentially a walk-in level of the pool for families with small children, and then the pool apron around it.

And here you're looking at that kind of

balcony level seating area that allow parents to oversee the site.

The middle section shows, is cut through the fitness center and the administrative offices and then this would be essentially the locker room zone down in here.

And at the bottom is a transverse section taken looking through the length of the building, looking toward the hillside.

So here's that landscaped hillside.

again with Buford School at this end and then here you see the lap lanes with the deep end of the pool here, the stair that connects level to level together with the elevator, offices, fitness, locker and changing space.

and I think, is there anything else?

Here are some representative images of pool facilities with comparable kinds of features done by Councilman Hunsacker.

There's nothing remarkable about these except their kind of visual energy.

This is no particular pool, but this shows the slide feature, the kinds of play equipment.

This is a water cascade.

Here's that kind of a facility in combination with lap swimming.

Next please.

Here's that sort of jungle gym type structure where this slide might be for older children, preteens and teens, capable of ascending up a couple of levels and sliding down.

This might be more for younger children, sort of the post-toddler 5 to 7 age perhaps.

and then this shows the nature of a kind of a current channel and a vortex in this area so you can see you're sort of moving down through here probably five or six miles an hour with the water current as it moves down and then other kind of comparable here's a vortex I think you can actually pick up the swirl of the water in that circle there and here's a current channel down this way these current channels are also useful for water aerobics in that you walk against that current

and get a pretty good aerobic and cardiac workout in those kinds of facilities.

And there's your generic lap lane, again with a slide and play structure off to the side.

I believe that's it.

Now mine is primarily the nuts and bolts presentation on the design and I'd be happy to respond to any questions.

I went through that kind of

summary fashion in respect of your schedule.

And then just very quickly to wrap up, at the request of council we also want to provide you an operational overview and in your packets you have such things as the amenities of the facilities that you just saw images of.

You have an aquatic center draft schedule of what it might look like based on the pools that we have right now.

We've gone so far as to try and do a budget.

to go and take a look at what the financial operations of a new facility would be given our two existing outdoor pools that we will still have at that point and then also compare that to if we left everything the same regarding indoors.

We've provided you an update of how the programs could be reprogrammed in such a way that we could extend neighborhood hours, public housing site hours, we could expand programming in areas identified in the needs assessment that we're currently not tapping, such as environmental education, some youth fitness and wellness to deal with childhood obesity,

Outdoor Adventure Recreation, one of the most successful programs we had this past summer was to do a float trip, a canoe trip, a rafting trip with members from public housing sites that went over really, really well and kids have asked for more of that.

And we've provided an idea of what some of the programs could be offered in these facilities.

Some of the components that we offer now in aquatics, but also areas that we currently don't offer in health, fitness and wellness.

to deal with childhood obesity.

And lastly, and certainly not least, we obviously have a wonderful opportunity to partner with the Boys and Girls Club in Buford School.

And we've given you an overview of what the Boys and Girls Club facility would have.

And I think it's very important to note that there's not any duplication in the type of amenities that the Boys and Girls Club facility is looking to build and operate as opposed to what the city is looking to build and operate.

They are very complementary facilities and additionally there's a great possibility as written in the city's ground release with the Boys and Girls Club for the city and Buford School to take advantage of the times in which the Boys and Girls Club would not be open and also there's wonderful opportunities for us to partner with Buford School and the Boys and Girls Club to utilize a new facility on site.

Overall, we think this is a really, really good step in the right direction to solving some of our indoor pool problems, providing better opportunities for more people of all ages, all abilities and interests in the area of indoor aquatics while addressing some of the childhood obesity issues in partnership with a really strong nonprofit in town.

who really target inner city kids.

What we are looking for out of council tonight is feedback, comment, and importantly direction.

We would like for council to give us a direction to go ahead and procure A&E services.

Do keep in mind that the Boys and Girls Club is on a timeline per their lease with you.

They are looking to break ground in October of 2008, which is about one to two months behind where they were at when we first discussed this issue in July.

They've kind of slowed their process down to give us a little bit of time to catch up, but overall

Questions?

A couple questions.

First of all, you did a survey of usage of Smithpool last school year.

One of the issues, and I will qualify this, one of the issues with our pool usage is we have a tremendous number of swim teams that utilize them and so they do make up a great percentage of our indoor facility use and obviously then the amount of time utilized by our indoor pools.

Basically, the number serves me correctly, we had about 28% usage by residents.

And that was for both Smith and Crowe?

That was for both Smith and Crowe.

So the question is, do you feel like one of the motivations here is to create a facility that will attract more city residents to use it?

Yes.

Thank you.

And then I raised the option when they had a work session of consolidating the two buildings to try to save some money to have one joint facility between the city aquatic indoor aquatic center and the Boys and Girls Club.

And based on your presentation tonight, I'm gathering that was rejected.

I will turn that one over to the experts.

In reviewing the use of the site and particularly the demands that the school makes up on the site, we felt it appropriate to leave that open space between the two buildings available for outdoor uses by both the school's gymnasium

pedestrian and vehicular and service traffic moving from that lower parking lot along the north-south axis to get to the gym and to feed both of the two buildings.

We wanted the main activity spaces both in the Aquatics Center and in the Boys and Girls Club to be along an exterior wall so that the life of the two buildings, the activities, would be visible from the outside.

One of the things that characterizes the

Smith Pool, which currently houses both the Aquatic Program and the Boys and Girls Club, is that it is largely opaque.

It is closed from view to the outside and a child or a family approaching those facilities has no

no inkling of what's going on inside and no way to kind of ease themselves into an experience inside the building other than walking through a door into a space that they can't see or perceive from the outside.

Those are several of the kind of perceptual and, I don't know, ethos of the program kind of reasons that we saw.

There also is a kind of an operational identity

issue, I think, on the part of the Boys and Girls Club.

I'm really not qualified to speak to that part of it, but it was clear that theirs is a distinct and separate program with its own population base, their member base, I suppose, as it were, and they wanted to kind of shelter that identity a little bit.

In the end, we felt that building two buildings side by side

if it could be done concurrently would result in sizable construction cost savings and construction operations savings and we were not entirely convinced that the building operations savings because of their different schedules, their different uses and their different user groups would materialize as envisioned.

Other questions?

One of the things I'm concerned about is if you build this, they will come.

I think that they will come from far and wide.

I'm concerned about the competition that is going to be offered to

City residents by people who are clamoring to get into this facility, clamoring to get into programs.

Have you figured out, I know that this is not a construction issue, but have you figured out ways that you want to

Sure, there are a couple of operational opportunities.

One, and very much huge kudos to the recreation division staff, something that we're actually going to start this December, and this is from a program registration standpoint, is to create a registration priority period for residents in which at the time our program guides come out

what we are in turn going to do is for a certain amount of time prior from the time that that program guide comes out and we start taking registration maybe a week, maybe two weeks we're still working through the logistics of that that residents would only be permitted to register at that time for those programs

to give them a great opportunity.

And the second thing, and one of the issues that I really didn't address in the operational overview, simply because we haven't vetted this process yet, is the price differentials between city residents and county residents.

There are a number of different ways in which you can go about addressing those, and it could be that county residents pay two times, three times, four times, five times as much as a city resident,

One thing that we currently don't have in place is any cost recovery goals.

We currently only recover through user fees 20% of our operating costs in the aquatics core business.

So that's another opportunity.

There's a bunch of different ways in which we can do that as well.

resident only days, resident only swim times, resident only months, resident only facility.

Thank you, Mike.

Another question that I had in looking at the different ways that the

The Pool is sort of organized.

So much of this seems to be for children, recreation, and families.

And I'm concerned about elderly people, the needs of the aging population, and also our lap swimmers who have been very vocal about the need for more lanes.

I'm wondering if you can balance that out more.

Yeah, I think there's plenty of opportunity, as was stated very loudly in the October 3rd meeting, to add a couple of lap lengths.

and if that's the wish of city council we'd be more than happy to do so keep in mind that there always is an effect on the bottom line when it comes to adding amenities but one thing to address and I think it's very difficult for people to gather

Looking at a floor plan that's on an 11 by 17 piece of paper is capacity levels.

And the capacity level projected for this type of facility is anywhere from 225 people per hour upwards of maybe 300 people per hour.

In other words, it more than...

is 50 to 60 percent more than the combined capacities of Crow and Smith.

The combined capacities of Crow and Smith, if we just had Open Swim, are 80 people per facility.

So we would be able to serve that many more people on any given hour.

The amount of space associated with that open play area

where there's no vortex, where there's no slide, where there's no play feature is quite extensive and that is in the neighborhood of three and a half to four feet in depth and it would accommodate such things as water walking, water aerobics classes, therapeutic classes and one of the appealing things about its location as

in comparison to the rest of the pool is the ability to actually get in the pool.

You have a zero depth entry area similar to what you have at Washington Park whereas currently folks either have to walk down steps which are somewhat difficult at times or be lowered into a pool by a hydraulic lift.

Right, and we would love to make sure that we dedicated a bunch of lap lanes all the time for lap swimming, but as demand goes, if we've identified through the operations of any facility,

If there's an opportunity for us to reprogram space that's not being used at all and we've got a track record on it, we'd be more than happy to open up other space for those type of areas.

Okay.

One last question.

Well, I assure you it's purely a diagram.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, I have two questions.

First, you mentioned cost recovery.

Sure.

We actually started that a little bit when we had some of this discussion a year ago.

Okay.

It would be interesting to look at that.

I don't know how practical that is as a solution, but I'd certainly like to see it.

The other thing, are they a benchmark that other municipalities use on cost recovery?

National figure is typically 50% across the board for all recreation divisions.

And aquatics is usually a little bit higher than 50% simply because it appeals to so many people of so many ages, abilities and interests.

I understand that, but then the question they would raise to me is why are we maybe 30%?

I think the volume that this facility can generate, the operational savings it could save on the expense side, I would go out on a limb to say that if you kept everything the same, just because you can serve 50% more people on any given hour, that our cost recovery goals would

Our cost recovery percentage would go up without changing anything.

Oh absolutely.

Actually, they are $10.5 million of estimated construction costs with $6 million worth of contingencies.

It's really difficult to nail down an actual construction cost on something that is only conceptually designed.

It does not include demolition.

And I know you've heard from me and from some other counselors about the importance of say at least six lanes for lap.

I think based on the meeting that we heard October 3rd and the comments we've received by city council, I will pretty much say that we kind of considered that to be a foregone conclusion that we would take the lap lanes from four to at least six.

My recommendation at that time would be to have a second body of water that was a little bit colder.

That creates just a little bit more flexibility in terms of lap swimming

Correct, I think that's the one thing that this type of facility really offers.

When we do aerobics classes or we do swim classes or some of the other things that take

that use the pools now, they basically take away lap swimming opportunities.

Open swim, for example, you could bring a family in and somebody could lap swim while the kids are playing and we have very little of that opportunity right now just because of the inflexibility of what can go on simultaneously at any given minute.

And I have another question about the cost, but I think I have it more for the architect than for you, which is, you know,

16 and a half million dollars, even if it's full of contingencies, which is probably a good idea, is still a lot of money.

Well, yes, I would have to say so.

We have more confidence in the $10.5 million number than in the larger number.

In particular, right now, we are showing a fair amount of glazing in the aquatic center that we think could be reduced to affect some considerable savings in the pool volume.

We think there is glazing that could be reduced to considerably bring down the cost of the facility.

We are working at a very conceptual level here.

I guess my question kind of is though, as you work in the conceptual level, are there conceptual decisions you're making that are, you know, kind of pricey conceptual decisions to make as opposed to something that's... as opposed to something that would be more of a basic box that would not necessarily...

Well, I think I can give some for instances.

I probably can't provide a complete answer to that question, but we are trying to make use of a challenging site where there is a relatively limited area to build upon.

And in doing that, we are suggesting the possibility of making use of a currently unused, perhaps even unusable hillside and benching the building into that hillside.

That gives us

some earth work operations that we have to afford and it gives us a retaining wall along the edge of that parking lot that divides the pool volume from the upper level parking lot.

But that is part of the issue of making use of an existing city owned site and trying to make optimal use of that site.

at the moment we are considering that an acceptable trade-off.

And looking at the site, are there areas that are unexplored that could lead to cost?

I mean, I guess what I'm thinking about, if you had to dig out for an underground parking lot, you might worry that there's actually a layer of rock that you're going to get to that's going to make this much more expensive than the estimate you had going in.

Well I think one of the first investigations that whoever the architect is that does the building would undertake going forward

would be to do soil borings along the edge of the parking lot around the area of this site that's being envisioned for the building pad to determine that there are no underground rock cropings, no underground springs where expensive, extensive dewatering operations are required.

And maybe this is a question for you.

Have you explored opportunities to do something with the environmental impact?

I'm not sure what's involved with pools.

You know, since you've got these vast quantities of water that are being used on a daily basis, and we're also talking about displacing a lot of water with what we're creating.

Are we going to create with this rooftop garden, perhaps, forest pavers so that we're capturing some of that water?

I don't think at this point at the conceptual stage we have that's more an opportunity for us to deal with that in the detailed design phase and when you really, really start looking at what type of environmental opportunities you have with a facility like this.

I know we're supposed to be talking about Smith pool, but it's a little disingenuous not to talk about Crow just because this is a facility that will replace both Smith and Crow.

And I'm wondering if it's conceivable that if the 70, 75% of residents who are not, people who are not city residents were successful in lobbying say Albemarle County to get into the pool business, is it conceivable that we could

I think we would entertain any option that you would like us to entertain.

I do, however, think that there are some opportunities.

One of the factors I did not figure into how we use money or how we spend money is the money that we have allocated for the actual center portion of CRO.

When we developed the mock budget, I left the center portion of CRO with the CRO operations simply if city council wanted to move in the direction of

a neighborhood center there that didn't include a pool.

You have some operational funding that you can already work with.

But, you know, if we wanted to look at the opportunity to sell that or lease that or rent that to Albemarle County, if that was Council's wishes, we'd be more than happy to entertain it.

Okay, question?

Sorry Kevin, we're going to get to it in just a second.

You had in the original, I mean in the floor plan that we've seen, 6200 square feet allocated for a fitness centered child care

You know, I think that's one of those that we really would like to work closely with.

It could be ACAC, it could be the YMCA, and in particular the Boys and Girls Club and the neighborhoods to develop that.

A vision, a general vision would be, and you can see there was no break up of the space.

There would be opportunities for classroom space, studio space, space that you could run what have become very popular for us, hip hop dance classes.

in other type of fun activities that engage kids in active activity.

There's also a tremendous boom on lines of fitness equipment that appeal to specifically seniors and kids.

Lines that don't

worry about how much weight you're using, it's more about resistance, they're fit perfectly for kids and seniors and also there's a bunch of interactive fitness equipment coming online that, you know, if a kid wants to play a video game that's attached to a bike, he actually has to ride the bike to do so.

It's amazing the amount of things that you can do

But it's funny, you should ask that.

One of the most active areas we've created within our system is a new teen area, KidZone, at Carver.

We've put in one Wii game, and it has by far been extremely popular.

Wii is a video game in which, if you're going to bowl, you actually have to do the motions of bowling.

If you're going to play tennis on it,

You have to do the motions associated with tennis.

Exactly.

Just want to be clear.

My first comment sort of leads into the mayor's question, which is I think we need to get cost out of this.

A $16 million project I think is just beyond what this community, what this city can afford.

We operate six pools in the city, two indoor, two outdoor, and two waiting pools, and I think that's a lot.

It's more than any other locality.

In fact, I'll ask you a question.

Well, in our area.

But in our area, absolutely not.

I know there's other localities in Virginia.

I figured that it would make sense to consolidate our two indoor pools, but when I look at a cost of $16 million, it seems to me that really, it appears to me that repairing the two pools that we have starts to look a lot more cost effective.

and obviously that's where the public is, that's really not where

I am or where I hope we'd be ending up.

It seems intuitive that we ought to be able to combine these two aging facilities into one without this level of expense.

I think we need to set some targets on council as to what we can afford.

I think it's less than half of what we're talking about here.

Washington Park, rebuilt Washington Park for a million and a half bucks.

Now I realize that was almost ten years ago.

Now we've got Mead Pool, which last year we had Sticker Shock, I had Sticker Shock anyway, when it came in at four million dollars.

But this is four times that.

So I think we need to get a little bit of a reality check and I'm not sure that we really have 16 million dollars to spend.

I was prepared, I was ready to have sticker shock for a 7 or 8 million dollar project.

considerably more than what I expected.

One thing that you might want to consider, maybe you already have, is on that site, on the south side of the gym, there's a fairly large open space that really isn't being used much for anything.

I don't know if the consultants looked at this.

It would be less physically contiguous with the Boys and Girls Club.

It would still be accommodated on the site.

You know what I'm talking about?

If you go to the gym and instead of walking towards direction or you walk the other way, then you've got a big open

Basically, it's sort of an auxiliary parking lot kind of space there.

But it's just grass, really.

Grass, dirt, overflow parking.

It seems to me that that might be a little less expensive than trying to chip into the side of a hill if we're going to do something there.

It doesn't have quite the close proximity to the Boys and Girls Club because now you've got the gym in between you.

I do wonder how old that gymnasium is because that's what's sort of breaking up this whole site and if that's something we might want to look at and I'm on the school CIP meeting so I can ask that we get a sense of how long we think that building's going to last because it would be crazy to sort of limit ourselves to that piece I think that's in pretty good shape but it does break up the site

So I do think we've got to get some costs down.

I'm also struck by just how energy intensive this program seems.

I mean, you're talking about channels in the water that would have, you'd have water moving in these channels.

A slide will have some water or some water features are going to require pumps.

This thing looks like it's going to require a lot of pumps to

to keep it all going.

And I wonder if we might have something that's maybe a little less energy intensive in the final go around.

And I'm surprised that there was no mention of any kind of solar for the hot water heater.

Public pools are about the only, I wouldn't say the only, but they are the most

the fastest payback or return of investment for solar hot water because you're not raising the water to that high a temperature.

You've got a lot of water that you're heating and you're heating it a lot.

So if we're going to do a hot water pool, warm water pool, which I assume you are, it would seem that you'd have solar on there just because it's cost effective as well as having some environmental benefit of not having to burn gas or

I can't imagine you'd run electric for something like that.

So I guess number one, we've got to cut the cost in half.

I'd like to see the energy usage get cut in half.

Other comments?

I'll offer a comment.

One of the things I like about this is I think that

If you look at the level of use at Washington Park in the summertime with kids playing in sort of the amenity portion of the pool, out of bed, I mean kids go to Smith and they go to Crowpool for birthday parties or on Saturdays, but the level of use is so much higher in the summertime and I think one of the things we struggle with as a city is finding after school and weekend

active recreation for our children and I think Smithpool is a convenient location and I like the idea of having something that offers more than simply a body of water that's three feet deep that you can splash around in.

I mean raised kids, I mean kids love stuff with slides and moving water and stuff like that and so I like the idea of creating some of those amenities because I think it gets at a big issue for us which is have active activities for lots of our children.

I share with Kevin a concern about the cost although I'm probably not thinking it needs to be half as much but I do think we need to kind of get clear on what our range of choices are in terms of preliminary design and size and for me it's

It's absolutely necessary that we have something that has six lanes to swim laps in.

I want to commend the group for this proposal and I too agree with Mr. Lynch that it makes a lot of sense to look at consolidating the pools.

If there's a way for another entity to take over management of Crow Pool, go for it.

I think one way that I would suggest reducing costs, because I share the concern, is I'm not convinced yet that we need as much what we call dry space, the fitness center, the offices, etc.

And I don't know what kind of cost savings we could realize by reducing or eliminating some of those uses, but I'd suggest that as one avenue.

I too am not convinced that it necessarily needs to be half the cost, given the fact that we're talking about a facility that we want to be

A real gem and something that a lot of the people in the community will be using will last us many decades.

But I haven't been convinced yet that all the extras on the dry side are necessary.

But I like where you're going with the pool.

I like the idea of adding extra lap lanes.

This to me is something that will easily accommodate the needs of our city residents and more.

Any other comments?

I think we'd like to see something that doesn't cost quite so much.

I think it's important for us to sort of figure out what we're doing with the other next thing on the agenda, because that's part of the package, is are we creating another facility with

swimming facility or partnering with the Y or not.

Just to follow up on your statement, I think it's worth noting that the whole aquatics package part of this is less than $2 million, which is why I'm confident that this thing can be built for less than half the cost.

I really think it can be built for a quarter of the cost.

Basically, you've got a $2 million pool and you put a $2 million shell around it.

What we're talking about here is we've got a $2 million pool

and we put an eight million dollar shell around it.

Then we put six million dollars worth of contingencies and design fees on top of that.

I do agree that there is a relationship though between the amount of dry facility that we decide that we need and whether or not we decide that we are working with the Y.

So

Thank you.

Next on the agenda is a public hearing on an ordinance accepting bids for the lease of land at McIntyre Park for recreational facilities, also known as the Y proposal.

We received information on the one bid we've received from the YMCA came in today and so it isn't something that council has yet had a thorough time to review so it's my intention and I think council's in agreement on this that what we'll do is we will sort of get some information on where we stand on this.

We'll go ahead and receive public comment but we won't close the public hearing which means that

The next agenda where we put this item for further consideration, we will also still have opportunity for public comment.

Yes, sir.

Mr. Mayor, members of council, as the mayor announced, this is a proposed lease of a portion of McIntyre Park for a community fitness and recreation center.

As you know, over the past several months, there have been a number of discussions between the city and the Piedmont family YMCA regarding the construction of a new recreation center.

in the western portion of McIntire Park.

It's been evident from the beginning of those discussions that the YMCA would need a long-term lease of the property, which is estimated to be about three to five acres.

It's a little bit of an unusual procedure due to state law.

State law provides that a city can lease its property for a term of up to 40 years

but if the lease is to be more than five years, there must be a competitive bidding process whereby a draft lease is advertised and the city accepts any bids by anyone wishing to use the lease premises for the desired purpose.

I'll remind you that this is the process that the city followed

both for the Boys and Girls Club Lease at Buford School and for the Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center at Cow Park.

As the mayor mentioned, there was one proposal received, not surprisingly, from the YMCA this afternoon.

I will just very briefly summarize what that proposal is.

It is for a 40-year lease at $1 a year.

The YMCA proposes to provide the following what they call core components in the facility.

A fitness center, a gymnasium, including indoor track, multipurpose space, including meeting space, locker rooms, child watch space, and a family aquatic center.

In their proposal, the YMCA does state that in order for them to contractually commit

to a minimum of 10 swimming lanes and a one meter diving board, it would need capital contributions from both the city and Albemarle County, estimated to be at $1.25 million each.

The Y is also proposing to provide a licensed child care component within the facility, but only if they raise sufficient funds.

The YMCA's proposal includes a provision that the city and Albemarle County would have the right to appoint two members to the YMCA's board of directors.

They have responded to the city's request about information regarding the financial aid that they would make available for residents of the city and council had also requested a response to

how the Charlottesville high school swimming and diving team would be given priority for use of the facility.

The Y's proposal is scheduled use of the family aquatic center by the city and county public high school swim teams and the Y and city swim teams as reasonably as possible, taking into account times for the beginning and ending of classes at each school, the proximity of the school to the facility,

and the needs of lessees, other members with the lessee being the YMCA.

That is a very brief overview of their proposal.

There are a number of outstanding issues, I should say other minor issues that I think would require some further negotiation between the two sides.

Under the state code, Mr. Mayor is the presiding officer.

The next step is to ask if there's anyone else who would wish to bid on this lease and if we correctly anticipate that there is not, then the bidding will be closed.

You are free at that point to conduct a public hearing.

There is a draft ordinance in your agenda materials and it will be up to council to decide whether to conduct a first reading on that tonight.

I will say that

Typically first readings do not occur until after the public hearing is completed and as you have indicated, that will not take place tonight.

Anyone else like to make a bid?

Okay, so it's closed, bids are closed.

What I'd like to do is ask Kurt Krueger, who's the President and Chief Volunteer Officer of the Y, to come forward, spend a little time both telling us and telling the public, sort of taking the outline that Mr. Brown has given us and maybe just kind of fleshing it out a little bit

Thank you, Mayor Brown, Members of Council.

We as the Y are very pleased to submit a response to the RFP for ground lease at McIntyre Park and we coupled it with the use agreement for you.

I think it's important to note and I would like if the bid is put out to

the public to view that the memorandum that we sent with that bid also accompany it because I think frankly the memorandum really tried to identify the more substantive as opposed to maybe the legal issues that Craig and I, Mr. Brown and I would work out and an explanation for why we did it the way we did it and reasoning behind why we did it.

I think perhaps the

Obviously this public hearing is not the place for us to negotiate a lease and that will have to take place because we do have terms that are not identical to the terms that you have asked for in your draft Brown lease and use agreement and typically I think, and Mr. Brown can correct me if I'm wrong, but in the bidding process

If you would find our bid was responsive, then you could appoint a group of people, whomever that might be, to sit down with the bidder and actually negotiate those terms and then come back to council and present it for approval.

I think perhaps one of the primary issues and maybe the hardest issue to deal with is the fact that the ground lease that was proposed in the city's RFP required us to build

10 competitive swim lanes and a one meter springboard with a diving well.

And we have, as you know, we did a needs study, you all did a needs study, and the county did a needs study, and in fact, Mr. Svets alluded to that needs study tonight, and in the, if you ranked the uses of what your citizens and the county citizens would like to see,

Lane swimming is a lower priority than warm water therapy, recreational swimming.

Now, I say that as the president of an organization that has a swimming team, and they're probably all sitting behind me right now.

I recognize each of the high schools has a swimming team, but in order for us, we have to face the stark reality that we do not raise taxes.

We are

relying solely on the generosity of citizens to give us donations.

And if we are unable to raise the total amount of funds necessary to build the facility with a 10-lane separate competition swimming pool and dive well, the question is, would the city at that point say, no, go away, we don't want a recreational facility for our citizens at all.

or would they settle for something less?

And that's the part we're going to have to negotiate through.

We hope it doesn't come to that frankly.

We hope to raise all the money.

We would also be willing to commit to that entire 10 lanes and one meter springboard if we had a commitment from the county, and we believe we do, for the $1.25 million in its 2012 CIP budget

and $1.25 million from the city.

At that point we would have our $7 million that we've got now plus $2.5 million at the top end and we'd just be raising the money in between those two, $14 to $15 minus those two numbers.

And we would be willing to commit and risk a default so that you all could terminate the ground lease if we had those funds available.

Now, there are a number of other provisions, but I'm not so sure it really makes a whole lot of sense to try to run through them all.

I mean, that's going to be part of the negotiation process.

I would like to address, I think, one more thing, which is, and Mr. Brown alluded to it, which was, you all had asked us to give some indication of what we would do in terms of priority for CHS swimming team.

and given the fact that we're not sure how many lanes of swimming we will have and that that provision in the lease is in flux it was difficult for us to promise any priority to any particular entity especially knowing that the county if it gives us the 1.25 million in its 2012 CIP budget is going to be looking me in the eye and saying what we want

We want priority.

I have my own YMCA swimming team that would like to say we have priority.

My members will say I paid, we want priority, and we're going to have to come to some reasonable accommodation.

I think, frankly, the fact that the CHS swim team is going to be a hop, skip, and a jump across the creek from us, and if their classes end first, it's very logical that we would schedule them right after classes in the early afternoon.

That's not a peak time for pool use for us.

Keep it in mind the idea of negotiating some terms.

I had a question.

Your total building, you're looking at something around 70,000 square feet, right?

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Did you just mention you were thinking about somewhere in the price range $15 million?

Is that your target?

Yes, 225 a square foot.

There's a couple of reasons for that besides our unbridled enthusiasm and optimism.

One is that we don't have to go through the competitive bidding process that a municipality does and that tends to lower the costs somewhat.

The second thing is a 501C3 charitable organization

We are probably going to be able to get some materials and some site work and building things done in kind.

Any other questions?

One of the concerns that we hear somewhat often is that we are entering into business with a private religious organization.

And I hear that a lot, the religious organization.

And I'm wondering

If you can put to rest some of the concerns that are raised and, for instance, can you commit tonight that there will be no religious test regarding usage of the facility, there will be no discrimination based on religious background for users of the facility.

I can put all those things to rest.

Maybe our name is unfortunate, although the YMCA is very proud of its name, but it was started by Christian men who wanted to form an organization to help the morals and the physical attributes of men, primarily.

Over the years, the YMCA has become all inclusive.

It partners with Jewish community associations.

It's partnered with a number of other religious organizations.

There are no religious tests and anyone can come to the Y of any race, creed, belief, nationality, whatever.

Thank you.

Secondly, I want to commend you in your bid because while I haven't had a chance to read the whole bid yet, I noticed that you have included a stipulation that says that anybody living in the city of Charlottesville that lives below the poverty level will be able to participate in the YMCA free of charge.

And I want to commend you for making that commitment.

and it's very important I think for citizens to know that this isn't going to be an exclusive private club such as some of the other private clubs in town where you have to fork out a lot of money to join and I want to ask or suggest that as we move forward with the negotiations or if we move forward with the negotiations that you consider

Some other ways of addressing this issue of affordability and accessibility.

We have a lot of seniors right now that use our pool facilities, that use the little 25 punch pass, who don't necessarily want to join a membership club, but I'd love to see if there's a way to allow them to be able to use the Y when it's opened and be able to use that little 25 punch pass.

As an example,

We'll be very open to that.

In fact, you all will be appointing, if you move forward with us, you'll be appointing two members to our board.

The county will be appointing two members to our board.

We're willing to look at the financial models for any Y or other organization in the state of Virginia to come up with a way that's fair and equitable.

The reason we want to be in the city is to serve the underprivileged because we could go to PVCC where it would be harder to do that, but we have delayed our process by 10 months now because we are serious about helping the underprivileged in this community.

That's why we want to be here.

So we'll look at all those models and we just need to recognize that we are also, and one of the things that's important for the city to understand is not only is the Y willing to give the city a $14 million building, but the Y is also willing to pick up the future operating costs of that facility over the next 40 years, which makes that $14 million frankly dwarf by comparison.

As Mr. Sweets will tell you, building it is one thing,

operating it and staffing it is another.

I just had a comment.

I just thought that I would agree with Counselor Norris that the response is I think a pretty positive one.

I only had about 15 minutes to read it right before this meeting and hopefully more of the public will get a chance to read it.

I think there are a couple of issues that I would

I want to see ironed out.

It made also reference to families, I think, above median household income not being eligible for assistance.

But those are the kind of risks that you alluded to need to be worked out.

Just to clarify, it's individual median income.

And then for families, we would propose to add $4,500 for each family member.

So if you're an individual at the median income, we would not normally have you be eligible for financial aid.

If you are a family of four, you would add, if my math serves me correctly, $3,500 for each family member.

But you've made a good point because we are sort of overwhelmed with students here.

I do think that there's also the consideration that there's a high level of poverty in Charlottesville.

The median family income is around $15,000 lower than it is in the county.

Which is frankly why we use the city's number and not the county's number.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Quirter.

Thank you.

I'm actually going to stay in total.

You said you were going to bring this board back, I guess, and I'd like to see the bids and stuff first.

Also, I commend you for

For bringing in the local populists as less encouraged, that was one of my main concerns.

Downing Smith, 810 Lucas Avenue.

I'm a little bit better prepared than when I showed up last time when I thought I could speak and couldn't.

From what I've just heard about the pool at Smith and from the comments from Mr. Krueger,

It blows some of my recommendations out of the water, but there are a lot of points I think that are still legitimate.

I'll go ahead and make them now.

First of all, technically it may be a lease, but basically it's a gift to the YMCA of three to five acres.

I'm not going to be alive in 40 years, I doubt.

And if the city doesn't renew the lease, according to Mr. Brown's

Summary, the city would have to buy the building at 90% of its fair market value.

There's no Exhibit A that was attached to the lease showing exactly where the thing's going to be.

And actually it says, some down in Page 7, that Exhibit A will be replaced with the exact boundaries after the thing's constructed.

And that sort of bothers me.

There is no Exhibit B about the use of the thing.

I know when I was here last time, y'all spent a lot of time talking about the usage of the thing.

It was anticipated that the use of the agreement would include Albemarle County.

I'm afraid I'm very cynical about Albemarle County.

This thing is complicated enough with just two parties, YMCA and the city, and getting the county involved, it would be really messy.

Also, as pointed out, the construction requires to commence in five years, substantial completion in two.

We may not get any swimming pools for seven years.

So there are really two issues here, and before I forget, I agree with Ms. Hamilton that the Smith Pool and the YMCA are inextricably intertwined, and you can't address one issue without addressing the other.

But there are really two issues here.

One, do you want to partner with the YMCA?

and two, you want to build a facility in McIntyre Park.

First with the YMCA, they're a good charitable organization, they do a lot of fine work in the community, but I don't think the city wants to lose control of this project, I don't think they want to lose control of their land.

Once you sign a lease, you lose control and you have no leverage regardless of how good a job you do with writing a lease.

In business, you don't want to be a minority stockholder or a closely held corporation.

You don't want to be a limited partner, but that's essentially what the city will become.

There's been a lot of, so I've already covered that.

If the city owns and controls the facility, you don't have to worry about the terms being correct, and you don't have to worry about covering all the bases in advance and lease.

And this particular concerns me based on Mr. Krueger's comments about all the things that you wanted, the 10 lanes, the diving well, the CHS priority.

He's already talking about, well, maybe we can't do that.

I question the ability of YMCA to take on this project.

I question their financial viability.

They're a small organization.

You can get essentially the tax return.

for a non-profit organization that's called the 990 and you can get this online from something called Godstar.org.

The most recent one they had posted was for the year ending 2005 and at that point the YMCA had program revenues of a little over $700,000 and program expenses of over $800,000.

So they're losing money as it is.

It's basically gifts that's keeping them going.

As far as their net assets goes, their largest net asset is something called pledges receivable of 1.7 and a half million dollars out of almost 2 million dollars of assets.

Basically, pledges receivable is not money in the bank.

I work for, well, I'm the controller of a non-profit corporation and

Yeah, it's not cash.

So, I have some real financial concerns.

In the latest it talks about the YMCA giving financial reports.

Financial reports are worthless.

You need audited financial statements.

The nine nine is prepared by Hanson and Wiebel, a very reliable local company.

And before you go forward with this, I think you need three years.

of audited financial statements from the YMCA to see what their assets are, how they're spending their money, and that sort of thing.

The YMCA does not have the staff or the experience to oversee a construction project of this size, and they don't have the staff or the experience to run a facility like this.

You've addressed what happens if the YMCA can't raise the money to operate the facility, or even raise the money to get the facility, and you cover this in paragraph 29 and 33, but basically what it means is if they default, then it drops back in your lap, anyhow.

and Mr. Morris' question about this being a private religious organization.

Well, Mr. Krueger, I'm sure, was sincere and would not try to do this, but if you look in there now, Nattie, their stated purpose is the mission of the Piedmont Family Facility and it is to put Christian principles into practice through programs that bid healthy spirit, mind and body for all.

And so it's right there in the filing with the IRS and it just makes me kind of nervous.

Okay, well, just to summarize, I want you to vote against this proposal, at least when I know you're not going to do it tonight, especially after listening to the presentation on the

The Smith Pool and listening to the comments from the YMCA.

There are just so many questions that are unanswered.

The $16.5 million number you came up with just blew a whole bunch of my recommendations out of the water.

I was going to come in here and tell you that I was totally opposed to building something in McIntire Park, but my God, if we're going to spend $16.5 million to build a swimming pool at Buford,

Maybe we ought to spend $14 million and build our own facility at McIntyre Park.

Thank you.

with all that's being said tonight about cool space and that seems to be a lot of the focus both in the city and with the Y and

I am a county resident and my child swims for the YMCA in the winter but got his start in the JSL program which services all children in this entire city, county, surrounding area.

What I would like to

present to the City Council, which I'm sure you would love to hear some good that's going on in this wonderful city, is an event that's happening Friday night, the 19th, from 7 to 9.

It's an amazing collaboration between not only the YMCA, which is where I went immediately, because I wanted this to be a community event,

It also involves the City Parks and Recreation, Mike Svetz, Bob Manners, both totally on board for this event to take place.

Thirdly, Boys and Girls Club.

This event is taking place at Smith Pool, which is a city facility.

Thank you Mr. Mayor.

I went to the public meeting that the Y and the Rec department had at Carver Rec and a lot of people, at least a hundred,

I remember that part of the discussion was the city would allow the Y to build this facility in the park, McIntyre Park, and that was the city's part of this, that was the city's gift, that was the city's piece.

And now tonight I hear they're also asking for the city to give 1.25 million dollars.

We're giving something that's, you know, once you give it you can't take it back, park land.

I don't remember hearing at all at that meeting at Carver Rec Center about we would also have to contribute money as well as land and I have to echo the gentleman who spoke before

If we're going to have a $16 million pool at Smith, do we really need the Y pool?

I really question that because living in the North downtown area and we're losing a chunk of our park to the Meadow Creek Parkway, we're going to lose another chunk of our park to the Y pool or the Y facility.

I have nothing personal against the YMCA.

So this is nothing about them as an entity.

private, you know, non-private, non-profit or anything like that.

It's just I can't see why we need to duplicate the services, why we need to contribute money.

And something else that I hadn't heard before, I heard spoken in this chamber that one of the things that if we built this in our city park,

The Charlottesville High School kids will get the first use.

Tonight I'm hearing it has to be balanced with the county and with their own team.

So I'm hearing things I never heard before.

Thank you.

Beth Elliott, 1640, Rye Hill Drive.

I support the Y and I hope that this project moves forward.

One suggestion for any facility that is built, including the Y, is that you put in a very, very, very small

Good evening.

I'm Peter Kleeman.

I live at 407 Head Street in the city.

There seem to be many different proposals that have been floated about pools.

I guess floated is maybe not the right word.

And it's very difficult to discern what the benefits are among this group, especially when many of the discussions have centered around the capital costs of

providing these facilities and we know that these are long-term investments and different benefit streams would be a good way of looking at these projects.

How much are we paying and what are the benefit streams that we're getting?

Maybe streams is not the right word either.

but the idea is that we should have some sort of a time value approach to evaluating these competing alternatives that if we have some pools where we spend less money but we get less access the question is that superior to pool choices where we have more money expended but we get more access and it's hard to tell what the benefits would be over the 40 year life or I'm not sure what the life expectancy is for the

Renovations of the current pools, but it would just seem to me some balancing of what those comparative costs, capital, annualized costs to maintain them, to run them and in terms of how many user

Okay, thank you.

about the why.

Mr. Smith is exactly right that our 990 is on GuideStar and it shows that we are a modest organization with small assets.

It would be imprudent for such an organization as what we have now to be fully staffed to run a 70,000 square foot facility, which is why we don't have that kind of staff.

but YMCA's, there are about 2,600 of them in the nation, do a marvelous job of running such large facilities.

He also misquoted the 990, it says to put Christian principles into practice, it's Judeo-Christian principles and those Judeo-Christian principles are ones that we all subscribe to such as love one another, love thy neighbor, turn the other cheek.

It is not a, we are not a religious

I think one way or another the point's been made

That's what it says on our 2005.

That's not what our philosophy statement says or our charter says.

Okay.

Anyone else like to make a comment today?

There will be a chance probably at the next meeting, but certainly at the next meeting where we consider this.

Hi, I'll just be very brief.

Just again to clarify the Judeo-Christian principles.

When I found my way to the Y 20 plus years ago, I questioned that too.

I questioned whether I wanted to be part as a volunteer of an organization whose letters were young male Christian.

because at that point I knew I wasn't two of those three and I wasn't sure I was the third.

I do know now that our organization, why the USA and the international movement is all inclusive and does follow what some of us have learned is the golden rule, treat others as you wish to be treated.

Hence the reason for us being inclusive.

We would be glad to provide three years or more of audits that are back at our offices in Westfield Road.

And lastly, I am a staff person.

I do volunteer in the evenings with one of my programs.

But I want to just tip my hat briefly to Kurt, to Suzanne Jessup Brooks, who along with her husband Rob Brooks are the campaign co-chairs, and many other people whose names you see on there.

in our proposal who have been volunteers for the Y for many years as well as our campaign leaders.

At the risk of displeasing some paying members of Y programs, they have stayed the course over these long 10 months of seeing if we can't work this out and serve our whole service area better.

serve the city residents better by being at McIntire Park versus going to PVCC.

There are some constituents, and I hear from them as the development director, who feel the time is running out.

So I ask you to look at the big picture and to do that in a very timely manner.

Okay, thank you.

Anyone else like to make a comment?

If not, we'll continue this public hearing.

I didn't speak on the first round, but I do want to say a few things now that I've heard from the public.

I can't really speak to the Y proposal because we just received it.

I glanced at it briefly, and some of the things in it make perfect sense to me.

I mean, you're just trying to rewrite the terms so that they're more financially advantageous to you, which is only prudent in terms of your organization.

I do believe that we were pretty clear way back in the summer in terms of some of the financial things that we were stipulating, such as land and not funding.

And also, I always believed that we were discussing

a competition pool, maybe not to the degree that two weeks ago, you know, that we stipulated the number of lanes, et cetera.

But, you know, now there is the sort of pushback, or not pushback, but, you know, this is a conversation that we certainly

We're trying to have back in the summer about, you know, what exactly our expectations were and your expectations were and, you know, we're getting to a place where we see that we're close together on some and we're not close together on others.

The Smith presentation as we received it today actually presents itself as being, to my mind, somewhat in competition with the Y and in terms of what

the Y proposes to do.

And I'm wondering if Smith might not even potentially undermine the viability of the Y's proposal.

And so I think that that is something that needs to be balanced.

I'm hearing loud and clear from the citizens of Charlottesville that they're more interested in controlling the future of parks and recreation.

They have a lot of concerns about what they consider as privatizing

the pool operations and privatizing parks operations.

I don't have any particular heartburn about whether or not you relocate to the county.

I think it would be a good thing if the county had more pool facilities so that the city was not bearing the burden of providing pool services for the entire regional area.

So, and that might

So those are some of the things that I'm going to be weighing as we continue this discussion.

So no objection.

We'll move on to the next item in the agenda, which is with the change in the agenda is item eight, an ordinance changing the hours of certain parks.

It's a second reading.

Regarding this specific issue, in September we brought to you a park hour change.

Beginning of this month you had some concerns regarding changing park hours.

in particular, Lee Park and Jackson Park.

So at this time what we have done is just brought back a version of the ordinance that adds Jackson Park, aligns those hours with Lee Park, which are for them to be closed between the hours of 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., and also have added Bailey Park and Starr Hill Park, which were originally omitted in the last version of the ordinance.

This is second reading.

Okay.

I move that we amend our ordinance that we

Second.

Any discussion on amending the motion?

And so now we're at the second reading.

Is there discussion?

Hearing none, I'll call for the vote on the second reading.

Okay.

Good evening.

This is the money that's in the transportation bill every year that's 10% as earmarked for what are called enhancement funds.

In your packet I put the memo that talked about what they can be used for.

Basically there are 12 designated activities.

What we're suggesting is that we apply for funding this year for trail completion that would allow us to tie the trail associated with the McIntire Road interchange

into the park trail that is going to be built that will connect up to hydraulic to 29.

A bridge over the railroad tracks in the park would be part of this if we're funded.

We've gotten $250,000 earmarked for the construction of the trail from the park to hydraulic.

That could serve as our match.

There's a 20% match required.

There's only a million dollars available in the district but we feel like we ought to be aggressive and go for a lot of that and then if we get less we'll figure out what we can do with it.

Again, these are dollars.

The application is due the 1st of November.

We believe this is a good use of these monies and will help supplement some of the monies that might have to come from the interchange projects.

Well I noted that it doesn't really show where the eastern, I think it's a good idea, where it ties into the interchange I recognize is difficult to show because we haven't worked out the interchange.

But really the map that we have could go a little bit further to the east.

It's intended to be vague at this point when we submit it.

We'll do it more with text because we don't know that and then if we get funny when we come back with design we'll

I'm thinking you could probably be a little, you could still be vague and there is something of a nucleus of a trail system that you could sort of tie to.

It might make a more compelling presentation.

Although I'm not sure that was a question.

Mr. Culberton.

If not, I'll go ahead and open the public hearing.

My name is John Hayden and I live on Westwood Road.

I'm sorry to interrupt you but that's not the, we're at another specific public hearing at the moment and I should have made that clear, I'm sure I didn't.

So we have a couple more items before we have comments by the public and I don't mean to disappoint you but that's the way the rules are.

Stephen Bach, 1208 Meriwether Street.

Bicycle Commuter, as a member of the bicycling representative on the Chart Committee, as a board member of the Alliance for Community Choice and Transportation, and as a member of the Climate Change Subcommittee of the city's Sustainability Task Force, I have an intense interest in improving

trail facilities on what I consider major corridors such as what we're talking about here.

And so I certainly hope that you will go forward with this and approve this.

And we need to do more of this, so please, let's do it.

Any other public comments?

Okay.

It's been moved and seconded.

Further discussion?

I'll call for the vote.

Okay.

And before I get to the next item on the agenda, I will remind the gentleman in the audience that we have matters by public at the end, and I think that the issue you wish to speak on is certainly an important issue, so I hope you'll be able to stick around and offer your comments then.

Good evening Mr. Mayor and Members of Council.

We have before you tonight the draft legislative program for the Thomas Jefferson Planning District for 2008 and it contains five action priority items as well as a number of ongoing policy concerns.

You may recall that when I appeared before you in August that I mentioned that the Mayor and Chairs group which has been

A meeting for the past year or so had recommended the Comprehensive Services Act as the top priority for the 2008 session for this legislative program and that is reflected in the program and it specifically endorses some legislative proposals which were presented to our legislators late last week specifically to address the low level of state funding for CSA administrative costs

as well as to address the increase in cost of providing residential services.

There were a couple of budget amendments, one for a specific dollar amount, another some budget language that were developed and proposed and also a resolution related to reviewing and tracking vendor cost and rates as well and we'll be working with the region's legislators in the coming weeks to get those drafted and introduced in Richmond.

The remaining priorities, public education, specific focus on the upcoming re-benchmarking of state education costs, particularly urging the state to fully recognize the re-benchmarking cost and to fully pay the state's share of those costs.

Under land use, really a three-pronged effort here, we always have endorsed

the state keeping their hands off of the existing authority that we have in this arena as well as asking them to provide additional tools in the land use and growth management area.

Really heard from a lot of the, I think all of the counties in the region this year about the impact fee legislation that was approved this past year as part of the transportation package.

and a desire that that legislation be amended to make it more usable, more efficient, more effective for local governments as well as to expand it beyond being able to be used just for roads.

Transportation is the next priority, really positioned much the same as we've seen the past several years, asking the state for that

Stable and consistent revenue stream for transportation directed at all modes of transportation.

And then finally, state and local revenues.

Again, a three-pronged approach here asking that the state preserve its general fund revenues for those core government services, keep its hands off of local revenues and local revenue authority.

and really which I think is a position that resonates across the region and probably across the state that they resist unfunded mandates on localities.

You'll note in this section at the very end there is a specific statement that endorses the Homestead exemption which you have in your local program that's before you tonight.

on a local option basis.

I'd also like to point out in the ongoing concerns section, again these are areas, public safety, housing, health and human services that contain ongoing policy statements as well as specific requests that have come in from the localities.

But on page 10 under local government, another item that you have included in your local program.

requesting additional authority from the state to regulate smoking in public places.

So Mr. Mayor, that in a nutshell is the regional program.

I would like to point out one thing on the Comprehensive Service Act and I think it's good we take a look at that.

If my memory is correct, I think our local cost has gone from about

1.7 to 2.7 million dollars, about a million dollar increase in the last five years.

And also I think this was a service that was privatized initially to try to save money.

Actually I think back in the early 90's it was designed to bring a number of state revenue streams together that utilized some private providers and that type of thing.

I did have just a quick question on Page 4 in the area that's about the land use and growth management, the impact fees.

and this is authority for local ordinances for determining whether public facilities are adequate, adequate public facility or APF ordinances.

Depending on how that type of legislation would be written, I think any public infrastructure, whether you're talking about roads, water, sewer,

Yes, and a requirement that certain things would be in place prior to having new development approved.

Before we go on, I was surprised that there wasn't a stronger position on transportation funding in this year's package.

It's a bit similar to what we've done in previous years, and I wonder if you could speak to that, particularly after the transportation package last year really addressed most of the state other than central Virginia.

There's a few other places that didn't get much, but we really didn't get much other than a bill last year.

So I would think that at some point we're going to have to start acting as a region and say, look, if you can't fix this, we need some taxation authority.

We need to do something.

And the position of the planning district has always been the state should solve this problem.

but the state had their crack at it and they basically said, well, we can solve the problem for Richmond Tidewater and Northern Virginia and the rest of you guys are on your own.

I guess I'd have two responses.

One, again, the mayor and chairs group in meeting in April and shortly after everything had transpired in the last session, you know, what had happened in transportation and what didn't happen in transportation in other areas is still fresh on everyone's mind and, you know, I think those discussions, you know,

turning the attention to a different issue, that being the Comprehensive Services Act.

You're absolutely right.

The need is still there.

It's still great.

But I think the political realities that I think we're facing in the 08 session is that there's not going to be a lot of serious attention and a lot of serious money devoted to transportation this coming session like there has been in 2007 and even stretching back to 2004 when a lot of the discussions began.

Another comment would sort of feed in with what we heard from the public earlier about payday lending.

I think that's something we can take up as our own legislative priority, but it's not something that's just as specific to Charlottesville and I think the loan

Just the cost of loans in general.

It's been pointed out to us previously about the racial disparity in the cost of loans and that's just not the city of Charlottesville, it's the Charlottesville metropolitan area.

There's a lot of rural poor that's included in those people who are getting ripped off by lenders.

We could certainly put a statement in the program, in the regional program tonight and if you would, it's similar to some language that's in the Stanton Resolution.

You heard the comments that were made earlier.

It's not something that had bubbled up from any of the localities when this program was being drafted.

In fact, I think I just got my first email on it from one of the other localities within the past week or so.

Hearing none, I'll call for the vote.

Thank you, Mr. Bluntin.

I actually think, just to respond to Mr. Lynch, I think the best hope for more money from the state is a legislature that looks a little different than it currently does now.

26 days, 25 days for this election.

As several of you are aware.

Mr. Mayor, members of council, before you tonight is the proposed or draft legislative program for the city of Charlottesville.

It's not extremely lengthy this year.

There are six items listed that can certainly be amended or added to tonight or any time before we submit this to our legislators.

I'll very briefly summarize.

Number one is a statement in support of Governor Kaine's proposed constitutional amendment which would allow by local option a homestead exemption from the real property tax.

Number two requests that the General Assembly grant expanded authority to local governments to regulate smoking in public places.

including specifically the authority to prohibit smoking in restaurants.

Number three is an affordable housing initiative.

As you may recall, there was some success in the General Assembly last year in terms of amendments to the statute that governs granting increased density to a developer in return for the developer's provision of affordable dwelling units.

Probably the single biggest disappointment in those changes last year was the failure to get authority to accept cash contributions in that situation in lieu of affordable units.

The fourth initiative was proposed by the mayor, and it was proposed by the governor

It doesn't ask for any specific state legislation but request a state study of the agricultural, dairy, meat and poultry laws and regulations as applied to small scale local producers such that you may find at a local farmer's market.

The purpose of that study is to determine whether those laws and regulations

are necessary and appropriate for and supportive of small scale local farms and producers of those products.

The fifth item was brought to our attention by the Department of Public Works.

I think you're probably familiar somewhat with how the misutility law operates.

If someone has a proposed excavation, they contact a misutility operator who notifies

utilities with underground facilities in that area.

The utilities are then required to go out and locate and mark their lines so they are not disturbed during the excavation.

This latest proposal would require municipalities and public entities not only to mark their own lines, but to mark the private

sanitary, sewer, and water laterals between our mains and the individual houses.

That has caused a great deal of concern in our public works department, primarily because we have no records at all where those lines are located.

The sixth and final point in this draft proposal is an expression of support just for the Plain District's legislative program, which you've just voted on.

and the Virginia Municipal League's preliminary 2008 legislative program, which was included in your package.

Questions or discussion?

I second.

I have a few other ideas I'd like to float before council.

One, I agree with the predatory lending issue.

Two, our Department of Social Services Advisory Board recently joined a statewide group called the Working Families Child Care Coalition, which is lobbying the General Assembly

to expand state funding for childcare subsidies for the working poor.

And I'd like to suggest that we include some language in here just endorsing those efforts.

Three, last year our legislative agenda included some text about supporting restoration of voting rights for felons who completed their sentences and that was eliminated this year.

I'd like to keep that in there if there's sentiment to do so.

And then two other quick items.

This may not be seen as a high enough priority just yet, but I'd like to see if there's sentiment on council for supporting the idea of having the Commonwealth establish a mandatory renewable portfolio standard for renewable energy in Virginia, something that was proposed last year in the General Assembly but did not succeed.

And then a question to staff is, is it premature at this point to seek any kind of enabling legislation regarding establishment of a regional transit authority?

I would agree with Councilor Norris on both the reinstatement of voting rights for felons.

I think we're now one of two states that doesn't automatically do that.

It's a bit embarrassing and I also agree with you on the Renewable Portfolio Standards.

That looked like it had a chance of passing last year.

There was a bill passed, Senate Bill 1275 by Senator Mary Margaret Whipple last year which would have required that a percentage of electricity sold in Virginia be generated by renewable sources.

That's primarily we're talking about wind and solar and geothermal and setting an energy efficiency standard.

Instead what was passed was a voluntary

I'm more interested in that.

I was just wondering.

I mean, I don't necessarily feel like we have to strike it.

I do know that one of the reasons that, I mean I'm actually pleased that our legislative package is briefer than it normally is because one of the discussions that we've had over the years was that maybe we were loading too much stuff in.

And so I think that one of the things that we've done that's a good thing is to separate requests for specific legislation from important policy positions.

And so it may well be that some of the things that you brought up tonight, Dave, might be better served under policy positions.

or as well served under policy positions.

I do want to say that I am very pleased to see item number four because we do have a very active city market and there are some provisions of the state that affect certain members of that community or farmers differently.

If you're just doing produce

Then, you know, most of the state provisions don't really affect you.

But if you're doing cheese, meat, you know, any of those other types of things, so I'm very happy that there's going to be, that we're asking for a study to be performed so that we have some

Another point, I sympathize the idea of keeping it short and simple.

And actually I would suggest eliminating one of these.

The first item on the agenda, which is sponsorship of legislation to allow real property tax local home state exemption, partly because I think it's very likely to pass anyway.

It's already passed once in the General Assembly.

I'm not sure we want to use our political capital to push it.

Secondly, I just don't agree with it.

I think I would much rather prefer a homestead exemption based on a dollar amount than a percentage amount.

Well getting to sort of both of your points, the legislation to allow property tax

We're not really requesting specific legislation for that.

That bill's already passed.

And so, to clean things up, that might be better off moved to the policy positions.

I actually do agree with the Homestead Exemption.

I would have changed it a little bit.

Yeah, under the policy.

I'm not sure if anyone in the state legislature is planning to do anything about voter restoration rights.

They should.

That could be a policy if it isn't already

But we should be trying to... Well, I think whether or not it's taken seriously by the legislature, I think somebody needs to stand up for that principle.

I remember.

What was your name?

Worked on it.

That's a good question and actually that would be more of a policy issue because I think their first preference is to get it into the governor's budget before

So it seems to me that maybe what I'm hearing is we would like to add, we would like to move

Item number one into the policy section.

We would like to add to the policy section a statement on our asking for a bill involving predatory lending.

Policy or was that specific legislation?

I'm sorry?

Specific legislation.

Got it, okay.

That would go into the specific request for specific legislation and that

Well, somebody worked on specific language for that last year.

That's Ms. Kelly.

That's right, that's right, Lisa Kelly.

Is that okay?

With regard to the predatory lending and payday lending, is there a specific proposal from council?

That's probably the one issue I think you may have heard

Congress is working on a bill that's capped at 36%.

I know there was a bill last year to that effect, but it failed.

Barely.

Barely?

Okay.

So let's ask them to put it in.

So that could go in the policy piece.

I guess there's as much attention and discussion as this issue has had over the past two years, really.

Yes.

Okay.

Is there a motion to adopt this legislative agenda as

Would you like me to read through it without being appropriate or do you have a sense of it?

Number one, regarding the homestead exemption would be moved from the specific legislation to the policy position section.

Number two and number three and number four would remain as is.

An additional provision under the specific legislation would be the restoration of voting rights.

Important policy positions, number one would be support of additional legislation addressing predatory lending and payday loans, specifically putting a cap on interest rates and the remaining two would remain the same and there would be two additional, or numbers five and six would remain

Okay, it's moved down to policy.

Oh right, you said that first, sorry.

Okay.

Discussion?

Call for the vote.

Thank you.

Next is a report on the six-year VDOT road plan.

Every year in the fall, VDOT asks us for a letter stating our priorities as they develop their six-year road plan.

I say every year, we're not sure we sent one last year.

We can't find evidence of last year.

So we may have not been asked last year, but in any regard, it's time to do that again.

We do it every fall.

And a couple of highlights in the letter.

There's a draft letter here, a couple of highlights.

I've left it with the priorities we've had before.

The Belmont Bridge being the number one priority, MediCreek Parkway, an interchange, and then the way you left it last was the MediCreek Parkway from Melbourne to Rile, making sure even though it wasn't one of our dollars, that that was still a priority for the state, one of our dollar projects.

Hillsdale, Eastern Connector, increased allocation for transit, Southern Parkway,

ITS, Bikebed Route from Downtown to the River, Fontaine Avenue Improvements, Hydraulic 29-250, Millmont Connector, Rile Road, Twin Park Lane and Sunset Fontaine since none of those have been funded.

I left them in the same order of priority to bring to you.

Also suggesting we include a paragraph that reminds the state that it looks like the interchange project has a shortfall of between three to five million dollars and that we need them to close that gap.

as a priority.

Also something we found out this year, and one error that I made, but it is important, is that it appears that we did not get our urban allocation, our flex allocation this year from VDOT for transit.

You had budgeted 240, I misunderstood and put 400, but you had budgeted 240.

We need to ask them to put that back in there, restore what we lost, and again make sure that they

They give us an increase to 240.

We've been getting 200.

You budgeted 240.

And it looks like we're getting zero on that this year.

So we need to ask that they correct that oversight.

And so we would change that request to 240.

But again, this is a letter that we would need to deliver to the CTB and ask them to create their six-year plan around our desires.

So, I'd be glad to answer any questions.

Question about intelligent transportation system.

I thought that we had done most of that or we had completed that process.

We've done most of it.

We're still a couple hundred thousand dollars to three hundred thousand dollars short of finishing what we originally intended.

And what is the Millmont connector?

That's one that will never be built probably, but it's one that Council wanted to leave in there before.