City Council Meeting   11/19/2007

What's that?

Michael Kochis,

Okay, I'd like to call tonight's city council meeting to order and we'll start off with the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag 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.

Ms. Cox.

Mr. Lynch, Mr. Norris, Mr. Taliaferro

of Public Interest or items to be considered at the end of the meeting under Other Business.

believe those are at 7 p.m. and would encourage all of you who are interested to be there.

Other announcements?

Anybody who's interested in our solid waste and recycling efforts is encouraged to come.

Other announcements.

And thank you for your hard work on this.

Thank you, sir.

And the first person is Cheryl Leach.

Thank you.

I wouldn't feel as rich or not.

Laura Knox.

Thank you Mr. Mayor and Councillors.

Thank you.

Rick Knox?

Tripp Copeland

and without law and order, without our citizens being able to walk around and feeling safe, government can't exist in it, can't do its goals and so I just came here tonight to suggest perhaps more of an acknowledgement and if you have already, that's wonderful, but more of an acknowledgement and awareness of the public safety issue in the city.

John Foltz.

Danny Smith.

I think that says an awful lot about our police department.

Mary Robinson.

in Michigan that I know of has a pool and teaches swimming on a regular basis.

and to not make them as accessible to our children and the public and help build another country club, YMCA Country Club, would be a real loss to the community and a misuse of our wonderful resources which are two beautiful pools that need a little bit of maintenance.

If not, we'll move on.

Thank you very much.

Responses?

I want to thank everybody for speaking today.

Other responses?

I've been I guess a proponent of neighborhood policing since before I got on council and we've since 2000 have added nine positions to the force for that purpose and although we cut it back two so we're at a net seven total from that period of time.

I think we ought to look at that and go forward but if we add that to the department I really want to see how those positions are being used and not just put a couple more officers in a car driving around or behind a desk because this council or previous councils have paid for at least seven positions of people walking the beat and I think right now there's only two.

Other comments?

I would really like for us to take a look at that as part of the budget process this year.

Tom Frederick is the head of the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority.

But I did want to make sure that that comment was mentioned because I know some of the concern on people's minds right now is cost.

Okay, are there questions for Mr. Frederick before we have a public hearing, some clarifying questions?

key and how we phase that cost in is key so that existing residents, people in this room, don't in effect pay for some new covers infrastructure.

We're facing a lot of challenges right now, but I do want you to understand that that price tag is not solely devoted to growth.

So my question is since you're talking about aging infrastructure and we're not paying for growth, we're paying for aging infrastructure, what aging infrastructure has been replaced in the last five years as we've watched our bills nearly double?

And that's the reason that you haven't seen a lot of construction yet, but you will be in the next two to three years.

Other questions?

Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

Okay.

Certainly there has to be some capacity left or else we've just lost a big investment there.

where the reservoir wouldn't diminish any further, but it would be a smaller reservoir than what we have today.

It doesn't go to zero, which I think is what the plan anticipates.

and it will take years for that equilibrium to be achieved but that's the ultimate solution.

Michael Kochis, Kevin Lynch,

I think would probably be necessary to get a pretty precise answer to your question.

If it's going to have no volume, the city owns the land, we might as well just drain it and sell the land, right?

We should account for it in our plan.

Before we get into the comment section, let's reserve this for questions if we can.

again and again that the cost of dredging is prohibitive but in searching back through my records and in my memory I've never heard a number or seen any documentation of that so just for purposes of comparison can you please, you know, clarify.

That doesn't have to be done all at once, it can be done over a period of years, but that compared to a $37 million dam that would actually provide greater storage capacity, that's an enormous cost.

Could you please discuss that a bit?

So that's another issue that would discourage putting the water supply in that area.

Mr. Norris?

and what can you talk a little bit about what that process is going to look like?

that council may want to reconsider when that might be the appropriate schedule and I think the city staff and the Rivanna staff would be open to whatever interpretation you have as to when that should be completed.

Any other questions?

I'll open the public hearing, and Colette Hall is the first person to speak.

Why then when the

I was born in a small town in New York City.

If water usage is regional, then water restrictions must be regional.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Rich Collins.

Smith and the Moonies in those discussions then, we would have a much better plan than we have tonight.

Speaking of the Moonies, John Rooney.

I'm sorry I disappoint you.

What I would like to just say is...

I'd like to see him hold it up the whole time you're speaking, actually, if you don't mind.

And I believe that a creative plan from a creative dredging company could eliminate that cost completely.

Betty Mooney.

We'll need another public hearing.

Thank you.

Rich Schuyler.

Thank you.

but I just urge you all to be thoughtful and my biggest fear is that we continue to see building permits and approvals in the city and the county and the longer we just continue to fight over this and not implement this plan, we're going to hit another drought in a few years and we're going to have to, Tom's going to come out and say you guys need to conserve 40-50% because you've approved so much development but you still haven't figured out whether to let us move forward with this water supply plan or not so keep that in mind and thank you.

Is there anyone else who would like to speak?

Anyone else like to make a comment?

Okay, then I'll close the public hearing and open it to Councilor either questions or comments.

I can keep going, but with respect to that, I know you could.

Other comments?

And then, well I'll just leave it there.

You know, we looked at this a lot.

Anyway, I made my comment.

But I want to thank everybody, the staff and the different

I think we're moving in a good direction, but we could be moving in a better direction.

I mean, it's just the idea of doing that versus 140 million bucks.

It must have been 10 million.

What's that?

You said 10,000 bucks.

I think it shows that we need to think about this moving forward, but it doesn't show the kind of emergency that we need to go and spend 140 million bucks without thinking, what is it that we're really getting for this?

And the next item on the agenda is accepting bids and amending the lease for Buford School.

Mike Spence Certainly there was times when we could have done cheaper dredging, opportunities.

I think if we

You just have to be there, ready to go.

You had your chance.

Ken, thanks for coming

Everybody thinks they have a better idea, but that's what sometimes they do.

Mr. Stets, the podium is yours.

Allison Davies is here to lead you through that process.

So at this point you would open up the process.

Could you give me something?

Are there any other bids?

Okay.

Hearing none, shall we now proceed to the public hearing?

Okay.

I would make a recommendation that City Council accept the proposed proposal of the Boys and Girls Club of Charlottesville Albemarle as they did back in August of 2003.

So now I'll open the public hearing and Downing Smith has signed up.

Thank you.

Does anyone else like to offer comment?

I'd be happy to answer any questions and we're happy to have this opportunity.

Okay, then I'll close the public hearing and you can come back up and Kevin will ask you a question.

So could you speak to that a little bit?

So I don't think there's a big motivation, I don't think you'd save a lot of money, and the site doesn't really lend itself to it.

We obviously will work as much as we possibly can through procurement and city attorney's office if we are to move forward with both of those projects to work very, very closely to achieve any type of economies of scale we can on the construction side.

So the site work will be happening at similar times?

So obviously legally there are some things that we would have to go through, but that is definitely something that we would like to pursue in conjunction with the Boys and Girls Club.

Other questions or comments from counsel?

I mean, I seem to remember some negative comment among counselors about that and I think that was one of the reasons, one of the contributing factors in that decision also.

And it is a project that I think has broad community support, and for that reason I'm strongly in favor of it.

So I will turn that over to my colleagues on the dais to see what they have to say.

Yes sir, I'll move.

Director of Finance, Bernard Ray.

If you have any questions, I'll try to answer them for you.

Questions for Mr. Ray, or I suppose Mr. O'Connell, anyone else associated with the budget?

You mentioned that the residential assessments are projected about 2 to 4 percent, but commercial assessments, are we still on track at 15 to 17 percent?

because half of the O8 is going to be into the O9 budget and half of the O9 budget.

I'll come back with that.

Mr. Ray?

Are you, uh, staff asking council tonight for a decision on how to use the, uh, how to allocate the $6.7 million access?

Well, the $6.7 by existing ordinance will go to the CIP unless council diverts it elsewhere.

Right, it could be reprogrammed.

And if council has any guidance on how that would be used, we've laid out two recommendations, so some reaction to that could be useful or it all could just go to the CIP and that becomes a budget decision.

the surplus but it's also the year end adjustments which is taking the money which has not been spent that was budgeted in the prior year and either rolling it over or doing something else with it.

And that is an action that we need to close the books out.

Do you have a figure on that?

I was looking for that and maybe it was, oh I just missed it.

I think it's in the listed by groups.

I'm not sure if there's a total.

also should staff maybe want to say that the audit is not complete yet so there could be some amount of change decided.

I'll open the public hearing and Collette Hall has signed up.

Thank you.

Anyone else like to comment on the year-end adjustments?

I can't remember what the third one is, but it would be a real good use of your money and I'd rather you take my $70 and apply it to free public transportation than giving it back to me.

We do have action which is the adjustments.

I have a question about the adjustments.

The amount that's carried over, are the individual budgets going to be reduced next year by these amounts or are these going to buy new?

I think.

There's a fire truck.

There's a custodial contract I think there are one or two others I'm really more interested in the individual departmental requests as opposed to these things that are clearly, you know, like drug seizures and that kind of stuff, you know For example, IT, we've got three quarters of a million dollars being carried over there Well, the

that's money that if we don't use this we've got to come up with it out of the current budget, etc.

But aren't some of these areas where a department had money in the budget and then because they had a vacancy in their department or because you know they just expenses weren't as high as were expected that there's money left over for that

The council reserve would be one.

And I'd like to see if you couldn't identify $100,000 or $200,000 out of these continuing appropriations that we could put into the CIP in addressing other needs.

to really save money and I think we've pointed out that sometimes in the next budget year there's certain needs that we can do and maybe we need a little better explanation on that but I know in some cities what happens, everybody tries to spend everything in the last two or three months and I don't think we have that happening in the city because we have good oversight and I think people are committed to trying to keep the cost of their operations down and I just make that as a general comment.

A UPS is not an expensive piece of equipment and I just fail to understand how these things can be so expensive.

That has been bid, gone through the process and that's what it cost.

How much?

I mean it's a contracted item.

What is it?

There's some physical changes that happen to any diesel.

Would it be...

We'll address this.

It's some changes that have to be made, but I think they'll be in a position to give you more information.

And as Councilor Taliaferro was saying, there wasn't a rush to spend it so we could meet some deadline to get it spent by June 30th.

Well, I think, you know, some of these are self-explanatory, and I guess... And there may be others where you need more information on it.

I mean, if there's a fire truck that we've been looking for, and we haven't bought it yet, but we're going to buy it, I mean, well, obviously, we need to continue that.

That gets you up to $1.3 million very quickly.

I just wanted to have a broader conversation about what some of these things are and I'm sure that

the capital funds but you know I just I do appreciate all the counselors weighing in and everybody you know getting into this discussion because I think that these these things come at the end of the year they come every year but you know we need to I think we should look at them more closely than just you know just kind of like rubber stamp it and keep it moving along that's all

Mr. Norris?

But generally speaking, I'm inclined to support this plan, at least that part of it.

Maybe you need to have the rates high enough just to, because of a supply and demand issue, but do you want to address that?

Then the slot fees, which we haven't changed, have remained 6%, have a tendency to gain a little bit more revenue.

How are those two funds different?

If that doesn't happen, we wouldn't spend it and be available to be used for something else.

Where did this come from?

This comes from the overall unexpended budgets that are a combination of all the different departments.

Is that right?

Yes.

I think the risk that we're going to see higher fuel costs is pretty real in this next year and probably is prudent.

We almost have to go through them individually to some extent.

I think that would be, we don't have to work through them tonight, I guess is my point.

If there are any others of those where we could spell it out in some detail, if you could just mention that.

Well, that's what it says.

But we can get you some more detail on that one because it is a big expense.

Would it be, can we go ahead and move them