City Council Meeting   12/17/2007

Who is?

What do you think I should do?

So I'd like to call

I'd like to call tonight's City Council meeting to order, please.

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.

The next is announcements and I'm going to start by pointing out what we're very aware of but maybe some of you aren't aware of is that tonight is the last city council meeting for Kendra Hamilton and Kevin Lynch and so I'd like to say a few words about each of them and then we have a little something for them.

I really enjoyed the opportunity.

I ran for my first term on council.

I ran with the two of them.

I became good friends with both of them.

Kendra was a lot of help the first couple years I was on council.

I think I got some credit for helping kind of smooth that council and create a better working environment, but Kendra really deserved a lot of the credit for that.

Kendra's a consensus builder.

She really knows how to bring people together and get people to work well together.

She's a writer by trade, and it shows in her performance on city councils.

insightful, she understands the gist of something, the point of it and equally importantly she's able to articulate what she's understood and help everyone else understand what the real point of the things we're considering is and one of my rules of thumb has been never to speak after Kendra

because I'm not going to sound so good then.

Kevin has been on City Council for two terms.

I'm proud to say that I encouraged Kevin to run when he was considering running for City Council initially, and I've always been glad I did.

Kevin works hard.

I don't think anyone really works harder on City Council, could work harder than Kevin does.

I made the mistake of when we campaigned together of challenging him to see who could knock on more doors, and I wished I'd never said that.

Kevin's also remarkably creative.

I mean, I think anyone who's been here, Kevin comes up with ideas, not all of them good ideas, I will point out, but ideas on a regular basis, and some of them are great ideas.

And unlike Kendra, where I frequently feel like I don't want to speak after her, I almost always have to speak after Kevin, but it's often to tell him it's time for someone else to get to talk.

And one of the really great things about Kevin is Kevin takes nothing personally, so it's made my job as mayor very easy.

And I'm really going to miss both of these people.

Just for each of you, from me and the staff, we have a book that's a remembrance of Charlottesville, so each time you look at it and see it, you'll remember your time on city council.

Okay, so now we'll get to some real business I suppose.

Other announcements, either of items of community interest or matters to be taken up under other business tonight.

I'll bring up one.

In the new runner's world, which just came out, the Charlottesville Marathon is listed as one of the ten up and coming marathons in the United States and recommended to runners and so anyone out here who's a runner and really likes a Tilly course should try the Charlottesville Marathon.

Any other announcements?

Okay.

Next is Matters by the Public.

And we have a lot of people signed up.

So the way we can make sure we get through this entire list, we usually try to limit it to just the page with numbers, is to have people not necessarily use their entire three minutes.

Good evening.

My name is Rose Williams and I live at 305 Nied Avenue.

On behalf of Charlottesville Albemarle, the S.A.R.C., in which I co-chair with Mary Barber, Mary Lilliput, I would like to present to each one of you an important book project and calendar

which is in front of me.

And we would like to thank you for adding your funding to help us promote artistic value in individuals with disabilities.

This past year, our local chapter had over 1,300 participants

and more than 800 volunteers, audiences and leaders in our own projects such as High Portrait Work, an art calendar, art exhibits, art and art salon workshops,

and the first board of book activities and other special events.

It is a growing program with lots of excitement.

Other partners with us include People Care for Other Arts, Charleville, Loyola Parks and Rec, Workforce in the Process, Post High Program,

a community-based instructional program for Region 10 and Independence Resource Center.

We would like to invite all of you to attend the 8th annual Arts exhibit opening at the Martin Luther King Jr.

Performing Arts Center on January 11

and Burns, six days, your APL.

Thank you, Ms. Weil.

Hi, I'm Tom Twomey.

I'm speaking this evening on behalf of IMPACT.

Last year, the city put out a proposal for a five-year plan for the amount of funds to spend on affordable housing.

We are very concerned that the recommendation is to reduce revenue for affordable housing from $2.1 million for last year to $900,000 this year.

With so much need for affordable housing, this is a step in the wrong direction.

The state of the housing report spells out in detail the severity of the housing crisis for the lowest paid workers.

There is a deficit of nearly 4,000 units in our community for families earning less than 30% of area median income.

From the stats laid out in this report, it is clear that increased funding for several years will be needed

to even begin to address the housing crisis for workers earning $20,000 or less.

As a member of our Housing Research Committee, I have met with each of you and am familiar with your compassion for people in Charlottesville.

In this holiday season, my hope is to engage your compassion and to open your hearts wide to the daily struggles our poorest workers are facing.

You are aware that a stable and adequate home is critical to the mental health of human beings.

So please take a moment to imagine the damage to parents and their children, the damage to their sense of worth, self-worth, when they lose or are in fear of losing their safe, decent home.

How much more devastating it must be for parents knowing their children share in these fears.

Imagine looking into the eyes of your own child.

In a recent report, Poverty in Albemarle County, A Closer Look, it is pointed out that poverty is the single best predictor of child abuse and neglect.

Children who live in families with incomes below $15,000 a year are 22 times more likely to be subject to abuse than those with annual incomes of $30,000 or more.

In the year 2005-2006 school year, 127 children in Charlottesville schools became homeless.

In 2006-2007 year, that had jumped to 240.

These families are faced with situations such as living in a shelter like the Salvation Army, a motel, or structures with no electricity or plumbing like a car or a camper

and often their family is split up.

I am asking you during this holiday season to open your hearts to the devastation caused by the housing crisis.

The impact is asking you to open your hearts to the devastation of this housing crisis.

You are leaders and this is a crisis that cries out for a commitment of decisive action

Colette Hall, 101 Robertson Lane, Mr. Mayor and Councillors.

Charlottesville, a green city, a tree city, a proposed clean energy resolution, renewable resources, storm water management, fuel efficient cars, green rooftops, bike lanes, hiking trails, I could go on and on.

Locating a building in McIntire Park, a green and tree space located in the heart of Charlottesville makes all the designations, titles, and rhetoric nonplus and hypothetical.

Okay, thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Bill Murray and I'm with Dominion, the parent company of Virginia Power.

I'd like to comment on the council's proposed energy resolution.

Dominion is very supportive of efforts to encourage conservation of renewable energy.

Dominion is working aggressively to encourage conservation, including offering discounts on 2.3 million compact fluorescent light bulbs.

We're requesting permission from the State Corporation Commission to launch pilot programs on energy audits, direct load control and smart metering.

With regard to renewable energy, we're building a large-scale wind farm at our Mount Storm power station, have issued a request for proposals to acquire renewable energy generation projects, and are committed to meeting renewable energy goals in both Virginia and North Carolina.

To me, it is concerned, however, that a moratorium on new base load generation

would compromise our ability to meet our customers' energy needs.

Eight of the hundred fastest growing counties in the United States are located in Virginia Power Service Territory.

We would respectfully ask the council to consider delaying action on the last part of item six on the resolve clause in this resolution and allow the company to make its project teams for the Wise County and North Anna projects available to brief the council on these projects before council takes a position against them.

Even the most optimistic projections of conservation of the governor's

such as those in the Governor's Energy Plan recognize the need for these projects.

For example, one quote from the Virginia Energy Plan is that Virginia will need a broad mix of energy sources over the next 10 years.

New technologies should expand the state's energy portfolio, including prudent investments in projects such as the Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center's fluidized bed coal power plant project.

These are also fluid projects.

For example, last week there was a media report about concerns about the Wise County project by the U.S. Forest Service.

Today we received a letter from the Forest Service thanking us for working with them to resolve these concerns.

I believe copies of this letter have been passed out to Council members.

In short, these are complex projects that require years of planning and are important to the energy security of the Commonwealth as recognized by the Governor's Virginia Energy Plan.

Thank you.

My name is Kevin Kochis.

I live at 311 Fairway Avenue in the Mead Park neighborhood.

And I'm here tonight because of the two recent terrible accidents that have happened in Charlottesville involving, that's two, two, involving pedestrians in wheelchairs who were struck while they were attempting to cross the street in a crosswalk and then ticketed for failing to obey a pedestrian crossing signal while the drivers who struck them were not ticketed.

I walk a lot, I walk to work regularly two and a half miles and I do a bizarre ballet break dance as I pirouette and prance through traffic because I face such chaotic confusion at the crosswalks and crossings in this city and it is confusing.

For example, if you look at 10th and Market

There's walk signals there.

There's walk lights there.

There's buttons there.

But you don't have to push the buttons.

But if you do push the buttons, something happens sometimes.

Then we move up to 9th and Market at Guadalajara Restaurant.

There's walk signals there.

This is a very busy intersection, by the way.

Walk signals there.

No buttons.

Works great.

don't have to be, buttons.

Then go up to, let's see, Ridge, West Main, Ridge, McIntire, Water, South Street.

What a chaotic mess that is with all kinds of problems at every crossing.

Some of the crossings have buttons, one of them has no walk lights, no buttons, some of them you have to push, some of them it doesn't really matter.

So I know that there's a lot of different

problems that I face at these crossings.

And I have to get to work on time and alive, so I do what it takes to get me to work.

That means that sometimes I follow the rules scrupulously, sometimes I bend them a little, and sometimes I smash them.

And I break those rules.

And I do it every day.

I regularly jaywalk.

I quite frequently cross at the crosswalk when the don't walk light is red.

and I do this in front of police officers and sometimes

They smile and wave at me because they know me.

They have never ticketed me.

That has never happened, not once.

And so I asked the police, how often are people issued tickets for failing to obey a pedestrian crossing signal?

In 2007, it was four.

That might be six now.

It might be five.

I'm not sure.

But it was an itty bitty number.

So I want to know why those two pedestrians were ticketed.

One of them was struck by an Albemarle County police officer, who clearly was not paying attention.

Was this, and he wasn't charged, was this done to protect Albemarle County from a lawsuit?

And if it was, why?

Who made this decision?

I think we as pedestrians and citizens of Charlottesville have a right to know who made that decision.

Was it the officer who signed the ticket, ship commander, the police chief?

Who was it?

Now, the second accident was a week ago this past Friday.

Again, a woman in a wheelchair was struck by a dump truck while she was crossing the street.

She was charged, the dump truck driver wasn't.

This happened at the intersection on JPA between the old hospital and the new hospital.

This is a very busy intersection that sees a lot of disabled people.

All I want to say is Gary, I hope you fix that intersection.

Good evening everybody.

My name is John Peterson.

I reside at 624 North Avenue here in Charlottesville.

I've been there since about 2000.

I've been in Charlottesville for about 15 years and absolutely love it.

I'm very happy to see the direction that you've set forth in the comprehensive plan of 2007 with outlining wonderful things such as the designation of a tree city, protection for our watersheds, listing the importance of our parks and our current deficit of such.

I'm also very happy to see that in the face of problem developments that you've responded by passing additional measures to protect us, the citizens, such as the critical slope requirement that is now in place.

The thing I like about the comprehensive plan also is that it was written to promote the health, safety, morals, order, convenience, prosperity, and general welfare of its citizens.

The reason I'm here this evening is that my morale is pretty low at the moment.

Currently, next to my property is a little gem of the city.

It's 6.18 acres.

On this, this attaches to Northeast Park, which is a wonderful little pocket park in our neighborhood.

It has tall stands and mature trees, abundant wildlife.

a year-round stream that connects eventually to Meadow Creek stream system in the Rivanna and also has soccer fields that are accessed by Davis Avenue up at this kind of a west end.

Currently we've been shocked to find out that there is a plan to sell this property and to provide 19 home sites and they were projected to sell at a half million dollars each.

This would basically encompass both the natural tree areas that go down to Northeast Park and also extend and remove the soccer fields that people have been enjoying for many years.

We realize those were private, but still they've been enjoying it.

This area is really the heart and soul of our neighborhood and is why most of us decided to buy an older 50's ranch home in this area because of the beautiful natural area while you still live in the city.

It's really amazing and the trees are so very tall that our houses are very small in comparison and the impact of them is felt far beyond just our street, the other side of the street and up the side streets.

We feel that this proposed development is in conflict with your comprehensive plan in that currently our tree canopy is 32% and we need to get it to 40.

We're going to lose a number of acres of those trees.

Also, the stream that is on the property is identified in the plan on the map as set for potential 100 foot stream buffer and I would like to see protection for that when you're considering

Also, one acre of this land has slopes that are defined as critical slopes and should fall under the critical slope protection act that you've done and I'd like to say that ownership should not

guarantee the suitability for development and that any development should adhere to the current city codes and should not be done at the detriment to all the surrounding neighbors.

There's 29 of us that touch this property but many beyond that would also be affected.

Mr. Mayor, Councillors, Mr. O'Connell, thank you for allowing me the time to come today.

I'm Larry Clayton, I'm president of the Charlottesville Albemarle Rescue Squad and I'm here on their behalf.

Our volunteer professionals have done an outstanding job.

We've provided services to communities since 1960 and by all records and accounts we feel we're doing a fantastic job.

First, I'm here to say that

The recommendation that's going forward about the EMS proposal, we feel that you're trying to solve a problem that does not exist.

We are not an advocate of the oversight committee's recommendation.

And last year, money was set aside to work with the EMS system based on figures that were pushed out about our response times being inadequate and we disagreed with it then and we still disagree with it today.

The final report by the oversight committee that you put together, Mr. Mayor, on page 5 it points out that the rescue squad's time exceed the recommended target of 9 minutes for 90% of the time or more.

It indicates that we respond 92.24% of the time we're within the bound guidelines presented by the committee.

Second, if there is a perceived future problem, we feel like that all avenues have not been addressed and looked at.

We will continue to strive for a coordinated systems approach of putting together EMS service in this community and we will move forward with you and ask you to move forward with us.

In conclusion, the oversight committee report clearly shows we do not have a problem with our response times.

We've heard many, many citizens speak up on behalf of the Charlottesville Rescue Squad.

They feel like we're doing a tremendous job.

We've not had a single person come to us with a complaint about our service and we feel that

that this recommendation by the oversight committee falls more into a category of a want versus a need.

So in conclusion, we're not an advocate of the oversight committee's recommendation.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Jennifer Connor.

I live at 1116 Little High Street.

I'm a teacher at the Living Education Center, a school right downtown.

and I work with community bikes as well.

First of all, I want to address the pedestrian issues brought up earlier.

In talking about the news this week, my students were horrified to hear about this injustice of the man in the wheelchair who was struck.

Traffic and pedestrian and bicycle issues continue to be a major issue on Charlottesville's table.

As we look at projects in the coming year and years, Meadow Creek Parkway, many other projects as we keep funneling cars into town,

I just ask that you keep remembering the needs of people who walk and bike, myself, my students, and many other people in this town.

But I also am here to thank you for considering tonight the energy resolution.

I'm very much in favor of this and I know there are many people here tonight, many more than can speak, and I would like to ask that anyone

who is present in favor of the energy resolution to please stand up.

So, and there are many more people who are also not here, but thank you for everyone who is here to express your support for that.

I appreciate that it's a linked set of approaches.

Energy is a linked set of conditions that we can't make gains here by throwing away issues over here.

And for that reason, I am very happy that it includes opposition to the Wise County coal plant and opposition to the proposed North Anna reactors.

I am not here as a paid lobbyist.

Almost no one who is speaking tonight is here as a paid lobbyist, although perhaps some, I'm not sure.

I think the words prudent investments were mentioned earlier by someone else who spoke.

Perhaps Dominion's job is to look at

Hello, my name is Beth Elliott.

I reside at 1640 Ryle Hill Drive.

I appreciate this opportunity to speak and I will try to not point my finger at anyone tonight.

First of all, I'm a strong supporter of the YMCA and also increase safety for pedestrians, but I'm primarily here to speak about affordable housing.

I saw a quote at my church yesterday and I think it's apropos to the housing resolution in front of you and I also believe it's related to many people's hopes this time of year.

The quote was, Jesus was a low-wage worker.

And from my college studies where I minored in theology, I believe so were Buddha, Abraham, Moses and Mohammed.

This got me to thinking, what if one of those wise men came to live and work in Charlottesville today?

Would they find an affordable place to stay?

What if they wash people's feet as our CNAs do, or fed people fish and bread like our restaurant workers and merchants do?

Perhaps they may comfort those who hear voices or aid those who are blind or deaf, serving as our counselors, nurses, and social workers.

Unafraid they may protect us from harm like our fire and police officers, or maybe they would be our teachers.

Unfortunately, when I look at our current community, I am afraid that these wise men might choose not to come here, or if they did come, they might find it difficult to stay and support themselves and their families.

While I focus my comments thus far on the plight of low to mid-wage workers in our community, I would also like to discuss how a lack of affordable housing affects those with higher incomes when they fall on hard times.

Studies show that regardless of income, many people live paycheck to paycheck.

Furthermore, in today's uncertain economic climate, people are experiencing layoffs or not receiving cost of living raises at a time when basic necessities such as gas, food, and medical care continue to cost more.

As someone who has worked as a counselor and workforce development specialist during times of boom and bust, I've seen the tragic effects that often occur when a person is not able to meet their basic needs.

Regardless of one's socioeconomic status or educational and work experience, incidents of harm to persons, families, and communities rise when people cannot meet their needs.

Studies have repeatedly shown that during hard economic times, rates of crime, domestic violence, mental and physical health problems, and alcohol and drug abuse all rise.

Lastly, I would like to comment on a specific proposal that addresses the needs of those with whom I work.

I urge you to fund the supportive housing program for those with mental illness and substance addiction.

As a retired psychologist and someone who currently works with those who are homeless and often experiencing mental health and or addiction issues, I know that stable, supportive, and hopefully transitional housing is the first step towards engaging people to participate in treatment.

Housing plus supportive services often decreases a person's symptoms and increases their productive participation in the community.

For some, their condition stabilizes, and this usually leads to greater independence and enables many to return to school and work.

I see the approval of this resolution as not only a moral imperative, but a cost-effective, fiscally responsible thing to do.

A lack of supportive housing, for example, results in increased emergency room visits, repeated hospitalization, and higher rates of incarceration all to the extreme detriment of the individual in our community.

After reading the proposed budget, reviewing the plans and studying the regional housing reports, I urge you to adopt this resolution.

Hello, my name is Vanti Nguyen and I live at 1116 Little High Street I'd like to thank Dave Norris personally for drawing up this resolution and especially for including on it a moratorium to coal-fired and new nuclear plants Albert Camus says that in order to say yes to a green city, you have to be able to say no

So I hope that tonight, and I encourage you to resist pressure from Dominion and any temptations they may offer you by voting unanimously to pass this resolution.

Good evening.

I'm Peter Kleeman.

I live at 407 Head Street in north downtown.

I'm here to address some issues about pedestrianism as well and sort of links to the comprehensive plan.

There was a very interesting discussion at the most recent Planning Commission meeting about the distinction

made by Michael Ferruggio, one of the commissioners about the difference between being pedestrian oriented and being pedestrian friendly in activities in the city.

And clearly, pedestrian orientation is what is written in the comprehensive plan and I would encourage you all as council members to consider pedestrian issues and consider being pedestrian oriented in solving some of the issues, some of which have been addressed here today.

Also, I'm a pedestrian and I walk through downtown quite often, every day, in fact, that I'm in town.

And the construction along 4th Street Northeast has resulted in putting in two new crosswalks next to the ones that were blocked by this green barricade for several weeks.

And now both of those, the barricades are down most of the time and now there's four crosswalks there.

and it's typical that none of them are available to use because there's construction vehicles that are blocking them.

In fact, today there was a city vehicle that was blocking one of the crosswalks and there are these now somewhat substandard, I think, I don't know what the standard is, but they have these macadam ramps that run down and they're not marked and people routinely park across them because it goes right through a marked parking space.

So I would suggest that the solution at that intersection and other intersections that I won't enumerate in the city that

These solutions are neither pedestrian oriented nor pedestrian friendly and in fact they're serious hazards and today when I was walking to the library from downtown I did not have the opportunity to walk in a crosswalk and when I see people being ticketed for crossing in a crosswalk I feel like I'm at jeopardy for being ticketed for walking across the street just because there is no crosswalk.

or at least no usable crosswalks.

So I would hope that the city would make a better effort or an immediate effort to at least mark and make sure that they're clearly identified as no parking areas, that these are for pedestrian crossings, and that it can be a whole lot safer.

That is a heavily traveled pedestrian area, one of the more heavily traveled pedestrian areas in the city, I am sure.

in the vicinity of downtown and I think that it would be a great benefit and provide much greater safety to everyone in the community.

Thank you.

I want to thank the council for allowing me to speak.

I'm Jerry Mitchell.

I was in a, none of us are

immune to unexpected catastrophic events and for me coming home from the grocery store I get run over by the police here and it's unfortunate because I felt that their main concern was trying to avoid a lawsuit as opposed to worrying about the injuries that I have.

and unfortunately have experience having.

I now have to have a permanent housekeeper, someone to help me bathe and make my meals and clean my bottom because I'm not able to do that alone, which is something that all of you are able to take care of.

That is a right that's been taken away from me by the police officers and their lack of consideration for me as a decent human being.

I think that with our taxpayer money that we pay, I sincerely hope that all of you realize that this can happen to you or your family or your loved ones.

And it's an awful experience to go through.

The physical pain that I'm experiencing right now is beyond belief.

but I came here to say that I'm not against the police.

I've always supported and loved this community however I think I was treated horribly and I sincerely hope that this community will do something about this because we do now have a problem with the police not respecting the rights of the citizens and it can happen to you or one of your loved ones easily

I certainly hadn't expected to be here at City Council talking about being run over, hit from the back by these police officers.

I didn't even have the luxury of getting out of the way because I couldn't see them coming because they hit me from the back.

So I'm very disappointed in the police.

Charlottesville and Albemarle County and the cover-up.

There are three tickets that have been issued and they've been thrown out, but I'm still having to face another ticket for failing to press the button across the street.

I wasn't aware that that was a law in Virginia, and since I was obeying the law and waiting for the life to change, one of the few times I'm obeying the law, I get creamed.

So I think if any of you here believe in justice and fairness, then please stand.

Mark Cabot, 400 Altamont Street.

I'm in the business of providing mobility equipment.

When I hear someone in a power chair crossing a traffic control intersection, it's struck by an auto that concerns me.

The past few years, the city has been working to make motorists aware that pedestrians have the right of way.

The intersection that Mr. Mitchell was struck in is well known for pedestrians and power chairs.

I don't know many that know that it's a legal requirement to push the button when you want to cross the street.

I always thought it was an option just to make the light change faster.

I echo what was said earlier and wonder who made the decision to tickle Mr. Mitchell, and it sounds like somebody else, and ask why.

It's my understanding that it's the murderer's responsibility to look out for pedestrians, people in power chairs, and so on.

Barbara Cruikshank.

My name is Barbara Cruikshank and I live in Albemarle County and I work in Charlottesville at UVA Hospital.

I'm a community health nurse.

I wanted to ask the city council to pass the energy resolution

and ask the Commonwealth of Virginia to place a moratorium on new coal-fired plants.

the new coal fire plant that's proposed as well as the nuclear power plant that's proposed in Louisa County.

I'd like to specifically talk about the children of Virginia who are much more susceptible than adults to air and ground pollution.

They're more active, their metabolisms are fast, they are low to the ground, their immune systems are developing, and they are just much more susceptible.

Coal-fired plants emit many toxic substances, 67 to be exact according to the EPA.

I have a report here, Children at Risk, How Air Pollution from Power Plants Threatens the Health of American's Children.

This is done by a consortium clean air task force as well as physicians for social responsibility.

Of those 67 toxins, 55 of them are known to cause neurologic problems to children and have effects on the development of children's brains.

So there are greater than a million children who are living in Virginia within 30 miles of a coal-fired plant.

and these children, the exposure to these toxins increases lung disease, cancer rates, neurologic disorders, many other problems.

Children in Virginia are also at great risk to low level releases of radiation from nuclear plants and in fact the entire population is at very great risk due to the storage of high radioactive waste materials on site at North Anna.

We know that the radioactive materials cause cancer, immune deficiency, system dysfunctions, bleeding disorders, it goes on and on.

We can do better and I'm asking the City Council to please pass this resolution and ask the Commonwealth for a moratorium on these plants.

Good evening, my name is John Cruikshank and I reside at 700 Spring Lake Drive in Earliesville and I am speaking as a representative of the Piedmont Group of the Sierra Club in support of the resolution on clean energy alternatives.

I recently heard about a bumper sticker on a large luxury RV that said, we are enjoying our grandchildren's inheritance.

Our current American energy policies are going much farther.

We are creating a huge debt that will have to be paid by future generations.

Our consumption of natural resources and destruction of the environment will leave a horrible burden for those who follow us.

The resolution before you tonight is a bold step towards sustainability.

It advocates energy conservation and increased efficiency.

It calls for the use of renewable energy such as solar, wind, water power, geothermal, and energy from waste.

It asks citizens to act responsibly in their use of energy and to become good stewards of our planet.

The Sierra Club is particularly pleased that this resolution calls for a moratorium on new coal and nuclear power plants in Virginia.

Coal power pollutes our air, endangers our health, causes the destruction of our mountains, and contributes to global warming.

Nuclear power is neither clean nor green.

It creates dangerous radioactive waste, squanders precious water resources, and creates a huge security risk.

Dominion's plans to build a new coal plant in Wise County and a new nuclear plant 30 miles from here in Louisa County are not in the best interests of our community.

I urge members of the Council and all residents to read the Virginia Sierra Club's Citizens Energy Plan that can be downloaded from our website.

It describes the specific course of action that will enable Virginia to meet its energy needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs and live in a healthy environment.

Thank you for listening to my comments.

Mr. Mayor and Council, Carlamano through 24-7 and a half street.

I want to first just present this symbolic petition for recycling on the downtown mall.

It came to my attention that a lot of people are concerned about this.

I know that behind the scenes you may have been working on it and just want to encourage you that we as citizens are willing to help in whatever way to get this working and in fact to get it as soon as possible.

If we are going to sign the Clean Cities Agreement, I think even if we lose money and recycling on the mall, we should at least symbolically get it going as soon as possible.

150 signatures in an hour on the downtown mall and then I just went home so to let you know we really do have a lot of support.

I also do want to thank Kendra Hamilton and Kevin Lynch for their service to the city.

You know I've come down here a couple times and not always been happy but usually been willing to thank people when they've done excellent service and looking forward

Kendra do you come into this side of the podium and continuing to work for positive change in the city and you know Mr. Brown was not kidding when he said that Kevin Lynch works really hard those of us I've known Kevin for 18 years and I gotta tell you we don't agree on everything if he tells me once more teachers make too much money I'm gonna have to give him a job at the city schools but I have to say

that there is not one issue that Kevin isn't willing to research, research extensively, travel to research even further and find the people if he doesn't know.

It's the experts in that field to ask them what they think.

He's also changed his mind on issues once he's found

found out that in fact he did not have the research to support a previous opinion.

And I just think that that kind of services city is incredible.

I think we'll have a hard time replacing him with someone in the coming years who is actually as gifted, intelligent, and willing to do that kind of work without further political interest.

I just think it's really commendable.

And this isn't to eclipse, Kendra, your work, because I'm just saying, Kevin, eight years of that.

Thank you.

I too wish you the best Kevin and Kendra.

I miss you.

We're buttheads.

My name is Naomi Roberts, 1140 St. Clair Avenue.

Kevin and I have buttheads a couple of times, but I like you.

I'm speaking about the EMS tonight.

CARS was formed 40 plus years ago on donations from the public.

The city was generous in missing the land for the building and facility for which we citizens are very thankful, but has not contributed one penny toward its operational expenses in the past 40 plus years that I'm aware of.

The county budgets an allotment to all county volunteer rescue and fire departments including cars.

Seems the main concern for council is supposedly response time.

I have used cars on many occasions due to my daughter's low blood sugar and now my deceased father's transporting.

They've always been punctual and I can't ever complain about their assistance to my daughter and my father.

Why weren't a good thing

that has never been broken and will cost citizens more tax money as well as a fee through partial insurance coverage with the balanced out-of-pocket expenses from us citizens.

Those without insurance and many citizens just a tip over the poverty line who can least afford to will have to pay.

While, as I mentioned here before, a few weeks ago, a live-in boyfriend across my street beats his girlfriend up who's on assistance.

and she will get free service.

It's evident that there will be a charge but it is indicated in the report that you all are presenting tonight.

I know the citizens of both the city and county residents contribute toward cars.

If the shelter fire department goes into the in-line service, you can forget citizen donations.

So city taxpayers will pay the difference.

Also, there will not be an efficient operation where fire personnel get paid and volunteers do not.

People are not going to give of their time because paid personnel will be telling the volunteers how to run things.

Gone will be the medical students and the nurses who receive experience by volunteering.

So when the volunteers are gone and the city takes over, what happens to the equipment that was purchased with citizens' donated monies for cars operations?

The city will take it, and how can the city take what belongs to the public through their donations?

And doesn't part of that belong to the county who has allocated money each year?

How can you take something that doesn't belong to you, but I suppose anything donated the city can take and do what they want to as an example of McIntyre Park and YMCA?

I'm glad the city wants to increase city government.

We all need new taxes.

This means more tax dollars spent for another facility, more personnel, more salaries, and rumor has it that the finding that will sign up to become medical techs will get an additional $8,000 in salary.

Is that true?

Again, while doing something that has worked these past 40 plus years for us taxpayers, I am dead set against the city getting into the ambulance service and prefer that you leave it entirely up to the Charlottesville Albemarle Rescue Squad.

Good evening.

Jennifer McKeever, 1140 Locust.

I agree that reasonable people can differ and I am grateful for the report of the oversight committee created by the mayor on the EMS and fire service.

However, the recommendations are confusing since it suggests adding a new city funded ambulance service despite the performance standards being

Debatable.

The interpretation of the performance standards are debatable.

The Tri-Data, I read the report, Tri-Data suggests that three and a half ambulances are needed to meet performance objectives.

CARS is meeting their performance objectives despite only having three ambulances during the day.

The issues brought up by the report are more easily resolved with items already in the

the Fontaine Avenue Firehouse in a more innovative and less expensive way, including the decentralization of cars upon the building of the Meadow Creek Interchange.

The greater issue is how are these recommendations going to change the serious concern mentioned in the report of the response times for first responders.

I've just spent many hours whittling down $2.3 million worth of requests for proposals to $850,000 for affordable housing.

Good evening, I'm John Hossack, 61 Davis Avenue.

I'm wishing to reiterate what John Peterson said earlier and add weight to that.

The development that's been proposed would be very negative to the neighbours and cause a disruption to the property values and our ability to sell.

We want council to communicate and work with the planning commission that in considering the waivers that are very likely to be requested that they properly apply what very few protections exist for the welfare of neighbors in the face of threatened by right development.

Specifically we would like you to be very careful with respect to critical slope protection, tree protection and how extensive tree removal would be entirely inconsistent with both current code and expectations.

with respect to Tree City USA that the city acquired this year and the fact that the city has signed on to the mayor's climate change plan.

We'd also like you to take account of stream protection considerations.

We will also very vigorously oppose any rezoning efforts.

And we were successful in doing that before so we've moved through that test once.

On a different topic and one that I mentioned before,

The lack of a dedicated bicycle path in the city is a major weakness in what is otherwise a very strong city in terms of quality of life.

The city is way behind a lot of other cities such as bigger cities such as Portland and Seattle.

Shared bicycle paths don't work.

I don't have any scars to show you today but I could have been killed, well I've nearly been killed several times during the five years that I bicycled to work.

I don't bicycle to work anymore.

Thank you.

How you doing Mr. Brown?

Mr. Jones.

I'm here for the Fry's Spring Association.

It seems like, you know, we've talked about this before about building 3,100 units out in the town out here.

Well, you know, we have this one problem with traffic now.

But I've also received that right there at the Interstate 64, they're getting ready to build 280 more units right there.

right across from Azalea Park.

Now, they built 280 units in there, but the traffic that we're already going to have coming into that area, I'd like to know what are we going to do about this.

I mean, we're talking about it, and I live there and I see it, and I would like to know what we're going to do about it.

I just don't want to see blank faces every time I turn around.

I want to know what we're going to do.

It's the same question I asked you last time.

Now, I'm asking you again, what are we going to do about this?

You know, I'd like to have some answers on it because this does seem like me that the county is beginning to take over parts of the, at the end of the city and run it the way that they want to run it.

And I want something done.

I'd like somebody to say, no, we're not going to do this.

This is not fair to this end of town to be blitzkagged by the way it's going.

It's just not fair.

It's just not right.

They're taking over that end of town.

They've got 4,000 dealing with cars in 24 hours that come through there now.

and that's not even the busiest part of town.

The whole town is blocked up when the football games start.

You can't get emergency vehicles in, you can't get them out, you can't do anything.

What are you going to do?

What are we going to do?

We sit there within one hour and 104 cars ran through the stop signs.

We put a sign up that says, we're going to fine you $200.

Well that's great when you catch them, but nobody's catching them.

Nobody is.

The loud muffles, the loud noises, the trash that's being thrown out.

I see it all.

I've been there for almost 10 years.

And I don't see anything done.

My road's falling to pieces.

My drain pipes.

I look like I got an ocean coming down the road where I live at.

And it's true.

It's ridiculous.

What are you going to do about it?

That's what I want to know.

I don't like coming to these meetings.

First one I've been to.

But I can tell you this, until my partner goes to six, this is not going to be the last one I'm coming to.

Okay?

Thank you.

I'm looking forward to talking to you again.

Hi, my name is Jim McKinley-Oaks, I live downtown, and I'm here to briefly address how the police mistreatment of Jerry Mitchell affects the safety and comfort of everybody in Charlottesville.

As Jerry said, everyone could be subject to a potentially traumatic event, and many of us have been.

I come to this as a social worker who's done a lot to educate myself about how people are affected and how they heal from trauma.

And I know that when someone experiences an event that may be traumatizing, what determines whether it is traumatizing is how they're treated after the event.

If they're treated with comfort, respect, compassion, empathy, and protection, they usually go through it relatively unscathed, maybe even enhanced because of what they received.

But if they're treated like an object, like someone who's a threat, if they're blamed for what happened to them, if they're treated with disrespect,

Then there's a very good chance that they're going to develop serious psychological, somatic and emotional problems.

People feel very vulnerable in their homes and outside their homes and that's why we have police.

to intervene in a way

I spoke with Chief Longo today on the telephone and he told me, and I'm sure he was being honest, he told me, well unfortunately there were no witnesses to Mr. Mitchell's accident except for Mr. Mitchell and the police officer who struck him.

Well, as anyone who's read the hook knows, there's several eyewitnesses who are prepared to come forward, but Chief Longo apparently was told by his police force that there were no eyewitnesses.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, there's a lot to respond to.

I think some of these things will be coming up on our regular agenda item, the EMS, the Y, the energy resolution.

I do want to speak to this pedestrian issue though because that's something that's not on our agenda and I really think it takes some additional discussion to resolve this.

I do feel that it was a mistake for the vehicle, the driver of the vehicle that hit the gentleman that was here not to have been charged.

Even though that person may have been a police officer, police officers just like

Everybody else in this room, including myself, make mistakes sometimes.

And when you make a mistake, you have to be called for it and held accountable for it.

I think it was another mistake of the investigating officer not to issue a ticket in that instance.

Mr. Mitchell was in the crosswalk.

He was traveling with a green light.

One can make an argument that maybe he should have pushed the pedestrian button and that not doing that gives him some small amount of contributory negligence, but what about the contributory negligence of the person driving the car that hit him?

To me, that's where the real negligence happens.

Again, I feel like

While we want to be supportive of our police department, they're human like everybody else and when they make mistakes, they need to acknowledge that mistakes were made and move on.

I want to thank Mr. Oates for his comments.

Those were really, really, I thought, struck the perfect note and it was absolutely true that when terrible things happen, it really is about how you're treated that allows you to move on with your life.

And so a number of people came forward today and they talked about the condition of our streets and yes, we do have streets that are difficult to navigate.

We don't have sidewalks everywhere.

We don't have crosswalks everywhere.

Some of the crosswalks can be very confusing.

But it seems the principle that if one rear ends a car,

one is always at fault and yet somehow in this situation a car rear ends a pedestrian in a wheelchair and the pedestrian is found at fault that does seem to violate common sense I think that we have really an excellent police force and in general you know while they do occasionally make mistakes they're fine people and they're fine to work with and they really care a lot about the community but in this case

Yes, I will just add to that.

I don't want to be a Monday morning quarterback, and I don't exactly know what happened or didn't happen, except from what I've read and I've heard.

And I do.

have some issues understanding exactly what took place.

However, I do have a lot of confidence in the police department and I have a lot of confidence in the chief of police.

And I really feel like that we'll reach a resolution on this issue.

Sir.

I guess the only thing I'll add to what's been said already about that particular issue is a comment was made that the police can't be expected to police themselves.

And I actually somewhat disagree.

I think if you have a police chief in a police department that you trust, as I trust our police chief in our police department, that they can do an effective job.

However, there are many communities in the country

that supplement existing police review procedures by integrating citizen review in incidents like this.

And I know it's something that Chief Mongo is looking at doing here, and I think that would be a nice direction for us to move in.

In Albemarle County, they have an active citizen advisory board, if you will, for their police department.

It seems like that's something we should pursue here as well to instill more trust and confidence on the part of the public in the police.

Secondly, it's abundantly clear that we have a lot of work to do in our community to improve pedestrian and bicycle safety and improve accessibility for pedestrians and bicyclists and I look forward to a vigorous discussion in the months ahead about how we do that and not just pay it lip service but actually do it.

Orangeburg Road.

J.J. and General Lynchburg Road to prove bicycle and pedestrian safety on Old Lynchburg Road and to calm traffic on Old Lynchburg Road.

Now this isn't going to necessarily reduce the quantity, which is your concern I think, is what are we going to do to stop the county from allowing this development to move forward.

Now that's something where we really need the citizens to mobilize

It's in Albemarle County that this development is going to happen and certainly the city can be partners with the neighborhood in that but that's something that we're going to have to work with the county on given that it's on county land.

And the last thing I will say is with regard to recycling on the downtown mall, a big thumbs up to recycling on the downtown mall and I'm pleased to report, I don't want to jump the gun, but you are going to see recycling on the downtown mall.

Is Mr. Spets here?

I'm going to put him on the spot.

Within the next, what year maybe?

March 1st.

I'm going to offer a couple comments.

First of all, I'm going to remind people of what was mentioned at the very beginning of the meeting about the visual arts show on January 11th by a special artist.

I think it's a great show.

It's one I've enjoyed going to.

It's on January 11th at the Performing Arts Center.

I want to offer a couple comments on the pedestrian issues.

I agree completely with some of the comments that were made by Kevin Kochs that we need to both make sure that our signs are consistent and that they work and that they're all

They all work in the citizen's interest.

We need to make sure that we have crosswalks where we need them.

We need to identify areas of town where people really don't stop very often.

There are some parts of town where people just never stop for pedestrians.

There's other places where people kind of learn, but it's a little dangerous because they kind of learned.

We need to try to create strategies to make it safe in all parts of town for pedestrians.

And I don't think anyone, you know,

I've read the papers just like most of the rest of you have, but that's reading the papers.

I know from past experience and some other stories in the papers, sometimes there's only one side that really gets presented because our police departments have the policy of not commenting on cases that have yet to go to court and that have yet to come out.

So, and I know from some of those that months later another side of the story comes out.

I'm not at all saying that that's the case in this case, but I wasn't there.

I can't, for example, say that the driver was clearly not paying attention.

How do we know that?

I mean, he could have been paying attention and just, you know, something happened.

Accidents happen sometimes, and I do agree that it's hard to imagine that a ticket was appropriate for Mr. Mitchell in this case.

But as a bicyclist, my bicycle regularly, you know, I think it's important, I mean, I feel like bicyclists have a responsibility, and I see that responsibility flaunted all the time.

I stop, probably because I'm a mayor, and it would be really embarrassing if I ever got caught, but I stop for all red lights, you know, and I sit there and wait, and frequently another bicyclist just flies by me through the red light.

You know, and that's not appropriate.

There's a responsibility there.

We should have pedestrian signals in such a way that people use their crosswalks and only crosswalks and we should, if there's lights, they should work and people should be expected to follow those lights.

If it says walk, walk.

If it says don't walk, don't walk.

And so I think there's a lot we can do and I'd be open to suggestions on how

you know whether it's a committee or task force or assigning staff of how we can work to really make this city a pedestrian and bicycle friendly city.

Mr. Mayor, I do want to respond to one thing you said that we haven't heard the other side of this because I don't think that's correct.

Mr. Taliaferro said that as well.

We did get a three page memo from the chief explaining what the other side of this was.

I did not find that a compelling explanation.

So I don't want us to present this idea that we don't know the other side.

We know the other side.

We either accept it or not.

Moving on, the consent agenda.

The consent agenda tonight consists of item A, the minutes of November 19th and December 3rd.

Item B, an appropriation of $9,403, a grant for the regional jail.

It's a second reading.

And item C, an appropriation of $1,343, a carryover for the Health Department, it's a second reading.

Item D, and a resolution, which is a work-length compensation settlement, it's the first of one reading.

And then item E, a resolution authorizing a Brownfields grant application, it's the first of one reading.

I move the consent agenda.

for cleaning up a hazardous waste site for economic development purposes.

Now, the catch is with this particular loan is that it's designed for projects that benefit low and moderate income housing, slump prevention, or urgent community issues, and it requires leverage of our community development block grant.

Okay, any further discussion?

If not, I'll call for the vote.

On behalf of the Charlottesville City Schools, we are requesting $761,200 for overstructure improvements in the area of technology.

$561,200 will be earmarked for the purchase of projectors and interactive whiteboards.

This will allow us to equip all of our classrooms with tools to teach our students 21st century skills.

Tools that will effectively help teachers and students build knowledge to construct new learning.

200,000 will go to upgrading the voice and data networks at all of our schools.

The funds will be used to improve access to the wired network and support the deployment of the projectors and interactive whiteboards.

It is meaningless to ask the question, is technology a good thing?

Mitchell Resnick of MIT Media Laboratory points out, there are two concurrent revolutions happening today.

A digital revolution

and a learning revolution.

The digital revolution necessitates a learning revolution because it makes things change so fast.

At the same time, it makes possible a learning revolution, one that emphasizes learning as a lifelong endeavor in which the individual takes charge.

These funds will provide the best possible learning environment for our students.

We want our classrooms to be engines for high level thinking.

We want our learners not only to be consumers of information, but to be producers of information.

These funds will get us in the right direction.

Yes, I have one question.

What I want to ask is, by doing these improvements,

What would that place us in comparison to other school divisions, say in the area and in the Commonwealth?

I think it will do two things.

I think one, it will get us to where we need to be regardless of where other school systems are.

We are now approaching a need to get our students

meeting the needs of the 21st century skills.

We know that many schools across the Commonwealth have interactive whiteboards in their classrooms and all of their classrooms and I think it will improve not only student learning but improve teacher effectiveness through using means to meet learners that we're receiving and they're digital learners.

I think that's the answer I wanted to hear.

We're all pleased with what you all have done with accreditation and I think you need a big thank you for doing that and getting us to that point.

We think we're the best now and I think this will continue to keep us in that direction.

I do have one question.

We all know that technology is important, that technology is all about getting us where we need to be, but technology is also a real moving target.

Schools that have already invested monies to place interactive whiteboards in their classrooms, many of them have had them from seven to ten years.

What changes is the software that you add to continue to enhance learning.

And so once this hardware, this infrastructure is put in place, we will continue to be flexible through various software and through meeting the needs of our learners.

I think right now is that our infrastructure is not in place

Okay, other questions?

Okay, thank you Mr. Henderson.

Hello, 101 Robertson Lane.

I read tonight's agenda with background and I was still unable to discern in this piece the technology for schools from fiscal year 07 surplus.

I understand from Mr. Henderson's explanation and discussion in other meetings about the white boards.

I still don't understand this piece about what he just said, voice and data.

Are we talking about wireless?

And this is why I want to use this example.

My husband telecommutes from home on certain days and he writes code for his company.

That code is a secret.

I mean it is and they don't want other companies to know that so on our computer at home we have firewalls and all sorts of devices like that and he tells me sometimes oh there's people in the neighborhood who are fishing to see if they can find somebody's computer to use

I don't even know the right terminology because I'm not trained in this, but they won't get into my computer because I have all these firewalls.

So what are we going to do with these improvements?

I'm really worried about students who have laptops, and so many of them do, who sit in your cars near the school building, in particular high school, are they going to have somehow access to this where they can get into websites that they shouldn't?

Thank you.

Anyone else like to make a comment?

I can mention in reply to Mrs. Hall's issues and concerns is that there are security measures that can stop that from happening.

University of Virginia has a very elaborate security system that allows only their approved people to get access to certain types of things.

If you don't have a security certificate, you can't get into any of their databases or any of the stuff that they want to keep secure.

So there are, you know, firewalls and ways of managing that sort of thing and I would certainly imagine that the schools would be well aware of, you know, the potential for mischief involving students, laptops and, you know, open access to wireless, so.

Other comments?

Well, I think there's a couple things here.

First of all, we're not being asked right now to pay for the wireless access in the schools.

That was something that I have some similar concerns and express those at our last meeting.

And I think that's something that, you know, if the administrators want to address, I think that would be helpful because my comment at the time, and it's still something that I continue to believe, is that while

Internet access is a real important tool.

Your husband uses it, I use it.

It's also a potential distraction and I think there's probably, as a class of individuals, high school kids are pretty high on the easily distracted meter.

So I think the access and how that access is controlled and when they're able to use it, it's great when they need to use it to research a

whatever history lesson or geography lesson and I think hopefully the administrators can put in place a policy that will make sure that there is a

There is some oversight over what sites are accessed while students are in school and if they're only looking at educational content I would assume that that's already been discussed and with the nodding heads I think it's safe to say that there will be policies in place to make sure that

that the content that's being accessed will be educational content.

I do appreciate all of the additional information that you gave us about these interactive whiteboards because I was skeptical about those as well.

I think you've made a pretty good case for why they're useful.

Essentially, for the public's perspective, it allows

a video presentation board, a screen, to really be used as a virtual mouse, in other words so that you can

We move, navigate the computer from the front of the classroom, which if you think about it as a teacher, that makes a lot of sense.

If you're doing a presentation in a class, it's good to be able to do that right in front of the screen, in front of the kids, rather than have to go back to your desk to manipulate the computer.

If you watch our own city employees trying to give presentations from here sometimes, it's not always the most effective because the presentation's up there, they're down here,

They're trying to make it work, sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

I think there is some value to having it be interactive from the teacher's perspective and that also allows the students to be able to come up and effectively use the screen as they would a blackboard.

I respect the judgment of our technology team.

They've made some really good calls in the past and I think I'm going to trust them on this one as well.

I look forward to seeing them in practice, but I think it will be a good tool for our teachers.

as to what it does for our scores and whether kids will continue to make the game that they had in the last couple of years.

Okay, it's moved and seconded.

It's a two reading item, so it'll come back to us next time.

Good evening Mr. Mayor and Council.

The item before you tonight involves the lease of a city-owned property at 207 South First Street.

This is formerly known as the H&R Block building.

H&R Block occupied the building until May of this year.

It's been vacant since that time.

The developer of the downtown hotel at 200 Main Street has requested use of this building as a construction office for a period of 18 months.

The lease before you tonight indicates an 18 month lease with a clause that if there are overruns or the city decides they need the building for any reason we do have the ability to get out of the lease with a 60 day notice.

I'll move approval, please.

I think this is a public hearing.

Hold that thought.

No one signed up for this.

Does anyone like to come speak to this matter?

Okay, then I'll close the public hearing.

Second.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded.

This is a resolution, so it only takes one reading.

Is there discussion of this item?

Next on the agenda is a public hearing on an ordinance granting an easement to the University of Virginia for 11th Street Utilities.

Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, the fourth item on your agenda is the first reading of an ordinance that grants utility easements for utilities placed under 11th Street.

This is the stretch of 11th Street that is south of West Main Street.

I'm sorry.

These utilities are in place.

They serve development of the University of Virginia Foundation.

It's not the University of Virginia that would be the grantee of these easements.

It's the University of Virginia Foundation.

And your package is the standard easement that we use.

Okay.

Okay.

No questions, then I'll open the public hearing.

Hearing none, I'll close the public hearing and open it to Council discussion or a motion.

Next on the agenda is an ordinance which is leasing part of McIntyre Park to the YMCA.

It's a second reading.

Thank you, Councilors.

Good evening.

I will present to you the nuts and bolts regarding the ground lease and most recently negotiated use agreement.

Kurt Krueger is here from the YMCA to answer any questions and City Attorney Craig Brown will answer anything.

addressing specific legal issues about the ground lease and or use agreement.

As you know for the better part of a year, first starting out informally and most recently formally, the city has discussed the possibility of constructing a YMCA here in Charlottesville.

A public meeting was held at Carver Recreation Center on May 30th.

A work session with city council was held on July 9th at the Key Center and finally most recently the city offered through a legally advertised process a ground lease in McIntire Park for the construction and operation of a community recreation center.

On October 15th, the YMCA was the only bidder at the time and City Council has held two public hearings, one on October 15th and a second one on November 5th.

As a result of discussions regarding the November 5th public hearing, City Council did move the ordinance as part of a first reading and asked that a use agreement be negotiated further.

Since then, on a couple of different occasions, the YMCA, City Parks and Recreation, as well as two city councilors, Councilors Norris and Lynch, met with the YMCA, as well as the County of Albemarle, and finally the Charlottesville City Schools, including Assistant Superintendent Jim Henderson, High School Principal Kenny Leatherwood, and

Athletic Director Rick Lilly.

As a result, we have brought forward to you a ground lease, a final ground lease and a final use agreement for your consideration.

The nuts and bolts of the ground lease are such that the YMCA is to be located on three to five acres on the west side of McIntyre Park is City Council does approve a ground lease.

The exact location of that YMCA

will be a result of a master planning process that the City of Charlottesville Parks and Recreation Department will go through and it will be a community driven process very similar to the other master planning processes that we have gone through for Meade Park, McGuffey Park, Forest Hills Park and most recently Reeves Park.

It is expected that if City Council does approve a ground lease that we will bring that exact location back to you in May and for final approval by May 20th.

It is a lease of 40-year term.

and it can be renewed.

The rent is very nominal and it is $1 per year.

The more important part and I think what has been discussed most recently in the negotiations is the use agreement that is associated with the ground lease.

I will go through a couple of the major portions associated with the use agreement that has been negotiated for your consideration.

First of all, the use agreement does spell out that the County of Albemarle

is agreeing to commit a capital contribution of $2.03 million to the YMCA.

That is regardless of whether or not the YMCA is located in McIntyre Park or somewhere else.

The facility components would include a fitness center, gymnasium, indoor walking track, multipurpose space, locker rooms, child watch space, family aquatic center, and if sufficient funds are raised, a licensed childcare center.

Public access, the facility will be accessible to all city residents, county residents and non-residents associated with the YMCA service area.

The management of the facility will be underneath the board of directors of the YMCA and they will hire an executive director to oversee the YMCA.

As part of the use agreement,

The city and the county will each have the right to appoint two board members to the YMCA.

That would be four in total between both local government jurisdictions.

Financial assistance.

The YMCA is committed to providing a scholarship-based access

with a sliding scale to families and children who cannot afford regular memberships.

Any family who is at or below federal poverty guidelines will be admitted free of charge through the use agreement negotiations with the school system.

These are the exact same guidelines that the schools determine to whether or not somebody receives free or reduced lunch to cut down on some of the paperwork as well as to share

Information with the YMCA.

The schools and the YMCA are committed to trying to work together to share that information so that the eligibility for free access to the YMCA is a simple, simple process.

And additional provisions related to capital funding.

If the city decides that

on or before May 20th to commit to a future capital contribution of $1.25 million towards the YMCA.

The YMCA will agree to construct six competitive lap lanes that can be used for practices and swim meets by area high school teams, including CHS, Kayak, as well as other competitive swim teams.

This will also include a one meter diving board and a diving well and a Charlottesville high school swim team will receive priority access to those six lanes for practices up to two hours immediately after school classes end during the high school winter swim season.

Those are the major points of the use agreement that have been negotiated and have been presented to you in your packets and Mr. Krueger here

We'll be here to answer any questions.

As a result of that meeting, and I will be upfront, I was ill on that day and not in attendance, but as it was reported back to me that the high school is very willing to work with the YMCA, very excited to work with the YMCA for intermural programs after school as well as any type of physical education programs that can be developed during the school hours that might meet any PE requirements associated with high school.

Other questions?

In fact part of the use agreement contemplates that between now and May 20th that we will get together not only with the city but with the county and determine whether it is interested in putting an additional 1.25 million in in order to see if we can either expand the number of lanes or reconfigure the lanes to actually build

a separate cool water competition pool.

So there will be some meetings and hopefully we'll be able to come up with an even better facility.

Kurt, before you sit down, not so much a question but as we discussed, the baseline scenario would be for six competition lanes which would be 25 yards and I think that part didn't get translated to the use agreement and so I think we might want to adjust that.

We didn't put 25 yards down, but we're happy to.

Other questions?

Discussion about this item?

Mr. Mayor, this is a second reading.

There have been some revisions to the ground lease and the use agreement, as you know, since it was presented on first reading.

I would advise Council, I think the next step is to vote to amend the ordinance as it was presented on first reading to incorporate the newest version of the ground lease and the use agreement

In response to Mr. Lynch's suggestion, I don't think it would be any problem in paragraph 12 of the use agreement to say that the lessee agrees to include at least six lanes.

of a minimum 25 yards in length.

Let me ask a question first because in the amended version we've got quite a few changes.

You don't have to, you can if you would like to.

I don't have a problem with them.

They mostly have to do with the phasing of the facility and discussing what the minimum level of support that the city swim team receives and discussion of possible enhancement as we move forward with the project.

I guess we'd probably summarize these changes and I'm happy to

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, so it's been moved and seconded to amend the motion that we started last time.

Is there any further discussion on those amendments?

Hearing none, I'll call for a vote on the amendments.

Okay.

The amendments pass and so now we have a motion before us.

Well, this is probably one of the issues this year that we've heard the most comment on, pro and con.

And I will start out by saying that I was initially pretty skeptical about this, as Kurt will tell you and this board will tell you.

I really like the PVCC site.

I think there's a lot of good things about the PVC site still.

But I was willing to entertain this site because of the potential that it has as a cooperative project with the Charlottesville High School, because I could see some potential benefit with Charlottesville High School.

And I believe that in the past several months of negotiations that the why has really shown

Good faith to be a real partner not just with the Charlottesville community generally but with Charlottesville High School specifically and I think that that's that's important to me I think that should be important to the rest of us because we're working on right now a sort of a sister project to this over at Buford Middle School which hopefully will give the middle school kids in our system not just an opportunity to learn how to swim and to

to do some swimming as well as basketball, rec, etc.

But to have something positive to do after school and I think it's important that we transition that into the high school experience as well.

And so I think it's important to talk about just what this use agreement provides for because there's a lot of misinformation that's out there.

in the community.

As has been said, there was some question about the Charlottesville swim team and how much space they would have.

They will have six lanes that they'll have available to them really within walking distance right after school, priority usage.

So from the swim team's perspective, this project is a big step forward.

from what we have.

create some opportunities for intermural for kids that can go over that maybe aren't on the varsity basketball team or track team but can still shoot hoops or use the weight room and take advantage of that and I think that will be an attractive place to go

for those individuals.

The school is committed to this to the point where they agreed that they would provide an extra activities bus as a help to any kid who wants to stay late, just as if they were staying late to be on the math team or one of the sports, one of the varsity sports that we have, if they want to go to the Y and spend a couple hours there.

they would be able to get picked up and taken to their neighborhood.

So we're really working to try to make this as accessible to our high school kids as possible.

And I think the Y has done a good job in putting together a package of financial aid for those kids.

And we'll make that as easy as possible so that those kids who are already applying for financial aid through the schools to get on their reduced lunch

We'll just have to fill up the paperwork once.

If their parent's okay, it could even be the same paperwork and we just give a copy of it to the Y.

So we're trying to make the

barrier to entry into the Y as easy as possible for our high school kids.

And I think a lot of them will take advantage of that.

The Y has agreed to have a couple of city council appointees on their board as well as our parks and recs

Director will serve in a non-voting capacity, but a participating capacity when we do programming.

And there's a lot of potential to do some sort of cross-programming between the Y, the park, the high school.

So while I think there's been some concern out there, because a lot of people heard about the non-voting

Executive Director being on the board, that's not all it is.

There's also two City Council appointees, so we'll have some ongoing interest and participation in this project as it develops.

Another thing that I think is worth talking about, because we'll be hearing about maybe a couple things in the next couple months, the lease anticipates the starting almost immediately of a redesign process for McIntire Park.

and the schools have a few things that they would like to see in McIntire Park, particularly rectangular fields, if we can figure out a way to get another rectangular practice field in there.

But it's really, you know, the community has needs too and so people who are concerned about McIntire Park, we will be having a lot of discussion about that during this coming spring as to what, not just the Y facility, but the whole

One of the things that the Y has wanted to do in the beginning, and I think there's some interest in all swim teams, and Kurt alluded to it, is have not just a warm water competition pool, which all the kids now are swimming in warm water.

But I think there's some interest in all the swim teams about a real cold water competition pool.

I think it goes even beyond the swim teams.

I think there's a real need in this community to have that kind of regional class facility.

And we battered that around for a while and tried to see if we could make the numbers work.

And from the city's perspective, we just can't afford to carry that facility ourselves.

And I think neither can the Y.

But I'm hopeful that it's something that

is not just a city need and not just a Y need but something that others in the community will see the value of.

It would be great to have a standalone cold water facility.

Hopefully there's people out there that are former swimmers and have the means to support the Y in their capital campaign.

I'm hopeful that in the upcoming six months or so as we talk about what happens to McIntire Park that we could also talk about

The package that we have right now, which I think is a good package, we have some potential to take that to another level.

I don't think the Y can do that on their own, but I do think that there's people out there in our community that appreciate having

Good sports opportunities that appreciate swimming and hopefully the Y will get the support that it needs to take that swimming facility to the next level.

I think that would be a great thing for a high school, it would be a great thing for their swim team, for the county swim team as well.

So that's something that will hopefully unfold over the next six months or so.

You're not going to maybe cut you off on your last meeting.

Yeah, I have a few things that I want to say.

I first of all want to say that I really greatly appreciate the efforts of the city staff, the Y, the schools, parks and recs, the community, all the people who have weighed in over time to push us, to get us to hammer out this agreement into the forum in which it now exists, which is, in my opinion, the best forum that it's been in since we first started talking about that.

talking about this agreement, but I cannot yet say that getting it into this forum makes me want to support it.

I think that we are looking at a short-term problem, a 10-year problem perhaps.

We have specific programming needs within the high school.

We have specific needs for pools right now.

But we're committing to a 40-year program.

And once we alter that park, we're not just altering it for 40 years.

We're altering it for all time.

And that is something that I'm really concerned about.

Because I don't think that we are really thinking big enough.

Because we have done, you know, our staff has done their due diligence, they have presented us with a number of plans and programs, and we can't figure out a way to make this work, this type of pool facility, work on our own dime.

So we have greeted the Y as a savior.

But I think that

If we looked in terms of creating a larger regional facility for a 40-year period, we should be looking at talking directly with the county and talking directly with the university, not going through the intermediary of the Y.

The Y has specific needs and specific things that they want to accomplish.

They are focused on those goals.

It is appropriate for them

to be focused on those goals.

For us as the city council, I think it's really appropriate for us to be looking bigger, to be looking not just at a facility that might meet the needs that we have for the next 10 years, but what if that changes?

What if really in working together with the county and the UVA, we came up with a plan

and we're able to create a large regional facility that was able to attract big needs, the US nationals, ACC needs.

Those would be actual money makers for the community and instead of creating something as a public trust,

that is going to require infusions of cash, not as much as if we were doing them all on our own, but certainly from time to time we're going to have to dip into capital and we're going to have to come up with money to support the Y.

Things don't work out exactly the way it's planned.

These things happen.

You're going to have to do something to

to make the plan work.

And that's going to include money.

So I think that we're rushing into this.

Even as much time as we have taken over this and as much feedback as we have gotten and as much work that we have put into getting it into as good a form as it can possibly get right now, I think we're still rushing into it.

And I also think that there are certain

We have always held that standard on things that involve the park.

We don't proceed with things unless there is a 5-0.

For the history that I've been on council with Meadow Creek Parkway issues, we have been able to achieve that consensus.

We have not gotten that consensus either in the community or on council with this particular issue.

So my reputation as a consensus builder is officially shot.

Other comments?

I want to thank the staff and the Y and the city schools for putting together what I consider to be a very exciting plan for our community and working with the county as well.

I think this is in many ways a regional facility and it's a regional solution that doesn't end up sacking our city taxpayers with the huge cost of running a facility and building a facility like this on our own.

And the fact that we're going to get all the wonderful benefits that we're going to get

Yes, I'll just add to what Ms. Hamilton said.

I appreciate all the work and concessions that have been made in regards to this agreement and I certainly applaud the efforts.

I still think there are a lot of questions that are unanswered and that bothers me.

I'm somewhat troubled by putting it in the middle of the city park.

Okay, I'll make a couple comments.

This proposal, and I'm kind of like Kevin, I started off kind of skeptical of this and I've warmed up to it.

and I feel like it addresses two things that I think are very important.

We talk a lot about finding activities for our adolescents, especially the ones who aren't currently participating in organized sports and staying after school and I think this directly addresses that need.

I mean it really gives a convenient location and I think obviously a partnership with the schools is emerging.

I think that's exactly the kind of thing we're looking for.

Secondly,

You know, I'm a big supporter of youth sports and high school sports, and I think one of the more important sports locally is competitive swimming.

And I think this proposal also certainly will support it and hopefully will support it in a really meaningful way.

And I think, you know, it's true we're dealing with the park, but we're also dealing with the part of the park that already has softball fields.

You know, so this is not cutting down a bunch of trees in the park.

It's basically reprogramming existing field use.

It does mean we need to put our heads together and figure out good places for people to play softball, since that's also a sport I enjoy.

In any event, I support this, and if there's, are there any other comments?

I'd like to respond to Councillor Hamilton's points, because I think you made a couple of really good points.

One of them being the vote for having a 4-1 or a 5-0 vote for the disposition of parkland.

I think legally we could put a lease on parkland with a 3-2 vote, but you make a good point on the precedent that was set by the parkway.

proposal was made for the parkway and I thought that was pretty easy to do that from the parkway and so I think for consistency's sake I have to respect your opinion that it would be good to get a 4-1 but in fact I'd really want to see this pass with a 4-1 so that I guess begs the question what would need to change in order to get the support of either yourself or Councilor Taliaferro here because I think you make a good point this should, given that it's a park

It really should pass with a 4-1.

The other point that I think you made that was a good one, which I think we somewhat alluded to, is that in some ways this program could be a little bit more ambitious in terms of the regional need, in terms of the type of facility.

I think the Y would like to do a more ambitious.

project.

I think the city swim team would like to see a more ambitious project.

The only problem there is the city's ability to pay for a more ambitious project and I think the wise as well.

So I think if we can get the university interested in this or a university alumni, I mean maybe Mr. Krueger can speak to that.

I don't think that they would turn away participation by any group that wants to

participate in making this a better facility.

And hopefully we'll be able to do that.

What would it, how would we have- Well, what would be required to do a regional competition pool that would be capable of doing

Well, there is a diving well, it's just a meter diving well, and I think you're talking about a three meter diving well, right?

They don't.

The one thing this proposal does do is actually give the Charlottesville community an opportunity to think about it regionally, as you have said, because what it does is keep the city and the county and the Y all together meeting over the next four or five months until May 20th to figure out if there is a way to do it on a regional basis.

That's exactly what we want to do.

In fact, although we haven't used the word regional because in some sense when you're presenting to a city council and you get some feedback about oh there's too many county people using it, there seems to be a fear of outsiders using it, in our minds we've always kind of viewed it as a way to try to bring the community together and we've said from the beginning we've always viewed this

as a Charlottesville Albemarle Y.

We're not a Charlottesville Y, we're not an Albemarle Y, but we would like to do a facility and by having the city and the county at the table at the same time, there is a reasonable opportunity here to actually do a facility exactly like you're talking about.

It's just a question of the capital, covering the capital,

fees to build it and the operating costs to run it.

But yes, in the dream world, a 10 lane facility with bleachers that could host regional swim meets that you're talking about is exactly what we'd like to do.

Could you take an estimate on what additional, I know operating, we were talking about another $250,000 to run that level facility.

to get to

from freezing and keep it chlorinated and the pumps running is somewhere between $10 and $12 a square foot, so that's $100,000 a year.

To actually operate it fully loaded where you have lifeguards and supervision and all that is more in the $25 range.

Mike will tell me that both of those figures are too low, but that's a quarter of a million dollars if it's $25 a square foot.

So you're looking at some fairly large operating costs that will have to be covered either by rental fees or meat fees or however we can raise the money.

To build it is probably at least a $3.5 million exercise.

I'd like to respond.

I guess one of the things that troubles me a little bit about this is the fact that, and I realize there's a lot of negotiating going on, but there's so many loose ends with this thing and then we're going ahead and sign them at least for 40 years and then we give them it all up and we do that and that just bothers me.

Okay.

Well, I guess I'll respond to that because we, while you could call it a loose end, I think what we've agreed with or agreed on is that we'll have a minimum configuration which will be no less than six competitive lanes.

that will be used by the high school swim team on a priority basis.

So this is our starting point.

I think if we can expand that and we'll have to reach out to the community and find out can we raise another three million dollars.

One of the difficult things that we are as a city in a position is that we have traditionally been

the only provider of swimming facilities.

We've got six pools.

We can't afford to be the only provider of public facilities.

We're only a fifth of the regional population, so I welcome the Y coming in here and saying we'll build another pool and it'll be a regional pool because the region uses our pools.

All right.

The loose ends really come down to is 25 meters or 25 yards written down as a number, that kind of stuff.

I don't think it's that much that's substantial.

If I could interject, I also think that, I mean, Kevin's point, I think

not making the fundamental underlying decision that we want to move forward gets in the way of the bigger discussion and bringing a lot more people in.

Well, I would say to that it's kind of like we really don't know what the footprint is going to be.

We don't know exactly where it's going to be located in the park.

We don't know how much land it's going to take.

We talked three to five acres.

While I am excited by the willingness to consider this idea of a bigger, more ambitious kind of plan, the bottom line is it's still in the park.

And if we do put a larger, more ambitious facility in the park, then that means it won't be three to five acres.

It will be five to seven.

More than likely.

And we're talking about a concomitant increase in traffic.

and usage of the parks.

So, I mean, it raises a number of issues.

If I was still going to be on council, then I might be willing to vote yes because then I would be clear that I would be at the table and I would be working to iron out the things that were important to me.

And I might be willing to see it go forward under those conditions.

But since I'm not going to be at the table, I can't guarantee

You know, what's going to happen?

I can't be a part of that decision-making process and a part of that working out of the gory details process.

Thank you for trying.

I just want to reiterate the point that was made that what we're talking about tonight is a basic commitment to move forward we're not talking about figuring out all the programmatic details and frankly some of them are going to change from year to year as we negotiate uses of the facility in the years ahead and I think we've come up with a really solid plan here that we can work from

and to give the Y the green light and give our Parks and Rec department the green light and the schools the green light to move forward on this.

I have to say, even though I like the idea of getting consensus whenever possible, I don't think we should hold this up because we don't have consensus on it and I would just reiterate my interest in seeing us move forward and I'd love to have the continued involvement of

Mr. Lynch and Ms. Hamilton as we move forward in this process because I think they raise a lot of questions.

Okay.

Any other discussion?

I am.

I just want to make clear that when we made some changes, we voted already to

Okay, we've got that one done.

Now moving on to something much less controversial, let's talk about emergency medical services.

I go first, you go second.

George goes third.

I.M.

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Piazzolla,

I've been waiting for you

I love you.

I love you.

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I don't know.

Mr. City Manager, my name is Mary Wustavenny and I'm the business representative on the EMS committee.

Chairman of this committee was Delegate David Toscano who could not be with us this evening, so he's asked three of us to make the presentation which includes myself, Martin Burks, and Dr. George

Lindbeck.

At the end we'll ask Chief Warner to answer any of the technical questions.

I want to take you back to August when this committee was formed and the mission of the committee was to objectively and comprehensively review all aspects of EMS delivery within the city and provide support, coordination in a way that promotes the best care possible and to make recommendations to city council on how to proceed with the EMS delivery for the citizens of our community.

That was done by the Mayor appointing members to this committee and I'd like to recognize those members.

The Chairman was the Honorable David Toscano, the Citizen Representative was Martin Burks, Business Representative Mary Lou Staveni from the University of Virginia, Leonard Sandridge, City Council was David Norris, former City Councilor was John Conover,

Emergency Communications Center Representative was Tom Hanson Operating Medical Director for CARS and Charlottesville Fire Department was Dr. George Winbeck Albemarle County Representative was David Wyant Charlottesville Albemarle Rescue Squad Representative was Larry Clayton, the President Charlottesville Albemarle Rescue Squad Representative, Dayton Hall, the Chief Albemarle County Fire Rescue Representative, Dan Eggleston, who was the Fire Chief

his fire chief, Charlottesville Professional Firefighters Association, Robert Bragg, who's here this evening, and Charlottesville Fire Department, Charles Werner, the chief.

We looked at these objectives and as we began to ask a lot of questions as citizen members and other members, what we realized is that it would probably be best if what we called the three chiefs were actually four, if Chief Eggleston, Chief Werner,

operating chief for CARS which was Dayton Hall and the president of the Charlottesville Albemarle Rescue Squad if the four of them would get together and talk about issues that we had brought up which were response times, issues of technology, rolling stock.

I learned an awful lot about things I didn't know about until I read an awful lot about EMS and delivery and that type of thing.

So we had a subcommittee that actually met and those were the four chiefs

and they came back to the full committee with three unanimous recommendations and I don't want that to be overlooked because I think that's something that will stand for many years that we aren't looking at in the community and the three unanimous recommendations that they had were to adopt EMS response time performance measures as outlined in the report and you have that report in front of you which talks about turnout

Time Arrival, Response Time, Response Time Arrival, Ambulance Arrival.

Those four times were all approved unanimously by those four chiefs.

Secondly, to aggressively pursue and implement technology identified in the report that can help to improve EMS response times.

Again, unanimously approved.

and the third was that a peak stacked ambulance would be beneficial.

So when those four got together and came up with those three recommendations, that was brought forward to the full committee.

The full committee reviewed those and the full committee unanimously approved those.

So those three recommendations we bring to you with no one objecting to anything, a full unanimous not only of those subcommittees, but of the full committee.

The committee saw it further to go forward with a recommendation of not just a peak ambulance being beneficial, but also that a 24 hour ambulance be staffed by the Charlottesville Fire Department seven days a week with the goal to achieve a medic on every engine company as soon as possible.

Also to strategically locate the ambulances in the southwest area of the city as soon as facilities are available.

The reason, one of the overwhelming reasons for choosing 24-7 over the peak was the cost factor.

What was presented to us, excuse me, I'm sorry.

What was presented to us is that 500,000 would be the amount for a peak system.

When we looked at, when we asked what would 24-7

Ambulance Service to the Citizens Bee, it was said that that would be $600,000.

It seemed to most members on that committee that paying $100,000 more for 24-7 ambulance service made more sense.

And that was the vote that came out.

And that was the vote that was final and you see that in your

in your packet.

That vote was not unanimous but it was a majority vote.

an issue that maybe we needed to reach some consensus as you all discussed this evening about on this 24-7.

So Chief Warner presented by email a consensus document that said, okay, we'll do peak and just put medics on every engine.

That was not, that did not come back satisfactory to the members of the committee where the meeting was already over.

There was also a

a proposal that came from the, that was asked from the University of Virginia to propose ambulance service.

That went to the committee also by email.

We did not meet.

And that came back that, no, we didn't want, that the committee did not want to discuss

that issue that we wanted to go with the recommendation that you have before you.

So I wanted to kind of give you that.

I also wanted to let you know that those weren't just the recommendations that were looked at.

We looked at contract recommendations.

Would the county be able to put more medics at certain places?

Could we use more medics there?

There were an awful lot of different solutions and creative thought process that flew back and forth on that committee.

But these were the recommendations that were brought forward to you.

What I'd like to do, if you don't mind, is kind of tell you what I thought of the committee.

And when I got out of it, I've never run on an ambulance before and I've never been on a fire truck.

I called the ambulance one time when I broke my back in the seventh grade and I don't remember anything except seeing the top of the gym when they took me out on a backboard.

But they were there when I called.

So this was all really new to me.

But I did do as much research as I could.

I went over to Piedmont Virginia Community College to find out what does it take to be a medic?

How long does it take to be a medic?

What does it mean about putting a medic?

What is a paramedic?

What is an EMT?

All of those types of things I tried to learn.

and then we went to the Emergency Communications Center and that was probably the biggest eye-opener that I had.

And what I learned there is that this EMS system is really seamless.

When you dial 911 and you say, somebody has fallen on the downtown mall, you don't know who's coming.

But what you do know is you know someone's coming.

and you know that the Charlottesville Fire Department's going to be there and you know that some type of ambulance is going to come and it may be cars or it might be Scottsville who happen to be in the area or it might be Western Albemarle or it might be Medic Five and you don't know and you really shouldn't care.

What you do know is that somebody's going to be there because the Emergency Communications Center makes it possible to make that seamless and it happens in the county and it happens towards the University of Virginia.

And when I started looking at the response times, I'm not sure this is an issue of response times.

What I see is it's an issue of capacity.

When we were at the ECC that morning,

We got there about 8 o'clock and by 9.15 we've run out of ambulances and what does that mean?

That means that all of the ambulances at cars had been used up for calls and that Medic 5, which is the one at the University of Virginia, had been called out.

Now my thought was what happened if that was one of my customers, because I am the business representative, what if that was a customer of mine, the next call would have been downtown, who would have come for that person?

I don't know.

What I do know is that the Emergency Communication Center does a great job of moving those resources around so that people are taken care of when they need to be.

The other thing that I learned when I was out there is that we have a tiered system, and I didn't know what that means, and maybe you do, but what that means is if I call and say, I've fallen and I hit my head, that means that that person on that phone when they dial 911 is going to say, are you bleeding?

Can you see?

They're going to go through a protocol that says, are you basic life support?

And we're just going to send basic life support out to you.

Are you advanced life support?

And that means we're going to send a medic.

And a lot of our thinking was, if you had a medic, you don't tier anything.

You just send them.

They just go.

Now, maybe that's unrealistic, but I don't understand maybe the EMS system, and maybe that's an unrealistic expectation.

As I looked at that as a system, when we looked at having a peak ambulance, what that said to me is that we need another ambulance in the whole system.

It's not that we need to supplement the Charlottesville Albemarle Rescue Squad because they are the best thing we have.

We can't do without them in this area, but we do need something to supplement this system.

Boy, Mary, outstanding job is not very much I can say.

Mr. Mayor, Council, I'm Martin Burks and I was a citizen rep and I was, you know, at first a little surprised that they asked the funeral director to work on the EMS, but you know, I quickly decided that, wow, you know, I have to change heads and do what's right.

I do want to reiterate four points, however.

First of all, everyone who was there, every member, agreed that there needed more medics in the system, number one.

2.

They agreed that they needed to have more medics at each one of the fire department stations as well as strategically located around the city.

3.

More medics

cut the dispatch time for EMS calls because you have to worry about asking those extra questions to determine what do you need, what level of medical care do you need to have out there.

And fourthly, the 24-7 staffing approach provided that extra medic ambulance as well as a medic on every engine, something that the third party proposal didn't do.

And as we looked at it, we realized that medics really do save lives.

Medics save lives.

Thank you.

My name is George Lindbeck.

I've been the medical director for CARS and the Charlottesville Fire for, I guess, 18 years.

It'll be 19 years next summer.

I really do have to

One of the issues that's been addressed by people is this idea that by augmenting one part of the system, we're going to kind of wreck another part of the system.

I really don't think that that needs to be the case.

I think that by augmenting the system,

implementing the plan that the committee recommended, we're going to augment the entire system.

And there's a lot of opportunities here for both agencies to benefit as well as the public to benefit from the system.

I think we need to think about where we're going to be in five years and ten years and twenty years at this point in time and come up with a plan that addresses future needs as well as short-term needs.

Cross-training medics are going to be an augmentation not only to the fire department.

I think this is an investment in the fire department as well as the system.

It can also provide some resources for cars.

As an example, one of the chronic problems we have is having people available to do field training of newly trained medics, what we call Preception.

That's a limited resource.

By having more medics in the field, we're going to be able to move more people through that process.

and I heard somebody talk earlier about the people who come through CARS that are interested in careers in medicine and EMS and fire and again this is an opportunity for them to be exposed to more people with expertise in fire and rescue.

So I think it's going to benefit those people as well.

Mr. Mayor, I want to thank you for the opportunity to work with such distinguished people.

It was a learning experience for me as well, and I think what I'd just like to reiterate is what I see in this process is this is like a patchwork quilt in the sense of a family working together to make a quilt that's going to provide protection, coverage, and warmth.

And I'd like you to look at it as a way that we're not looking at taking that quilt apart.

We're looking at making that quilt stronger and making it a little bit bigger.

And I think that what we've seen is this is not anything negative about CARS.

And I want to reiterate that CARS is an exceptional organization.

They have been, they are, and they will continue to be.

And earlier, President Clay had mentioned that we went into this looking at response times and we did.

But we learned as a group, in that report that came out from the chiefs, we identified to us that that was a symptom of a bigger problem.

That that symptom was we need capacity of ambulances in the system.

And that's what it comes down to.

So it's just a matter of as we've had growth, population increases, traffic,

It has changed.

So I just tell you that I give my reassurances that I will do my best to work with CARS to implement whatever we do in a way that it continues to support them, to sustain them both in ways of operations, but also to explore ways financially that whatever we can do to make it better for them in whatever directions we take.

I'll be working at the national level on a tax incentive program that protects any income that they may get through whatever sources so that it won't be taxed.

as an income and I will do everything operationally to make this smooth and I give you my word that I will work my hardest to make that happen.

Okay, when you look at statistics, what we learned is that through the report that came in from our consultants first, who identified this very system issue, was that .4 is kind of a utilization rate that says you're starting to get into situations that may affect your service delivery.

the availability of ambulances and ultimately somewhere down the line transportation or response times of an ambulance.

We were at .42 which put us over that .4 measurement stick that said you're at a point that you need to move on to providing more resources and while we can't quantitatively give you the number because we don't track this in our current EMS system there are times when we run out of ambulances and it may be covered as Mayor Stavini had mentioned earlier by

CARS, it may be Western, it may be UVA, it could be any combination of things.

Before asking a question, I do want to say that I appreciate mainly the fact that you were all able to agree on response times and how we define them because going into this I think there was a lot of

discrepancy is how the different departments define response times.

And I appreciate the fact that we need more resources.

I think CARS came to us a year ago saying we need to have more ALS on our ambulances.

I see this not a problem so much as ambulances.

CARS has I think six and then two larger units, but it's a problem with ambulance crews.

and so how do we get trained ambulance crews that can go on there?

How do we get more ALS people in the system?

Well, the primary reason is that by cars doing it, you still cluster your resources in the location, so you don't gain response coverage issues with your ALS medics from one central location.

You need to have them in just like fire stations.

The reason we have three fire stations is to meet response times, to get there the quickest we can.

That I don't disagree with, but we're building a new facility on Fontaine Avenue.

Well, the bay for cars doesn't solve the staffing issue.

And the other point to answer your question is, the other value of having a medical fire engine is that

Fire-based EMS is the widest and most recognized best practice standard because the medics are also firefighter trained.

It means that there are certain environments that you may be encountering where medics need to go into and they need to be fully trained and able to go into suits and rescue people as well as provide care.

So you get the advantage that Dr. Lumbek referenced.

The other thing I'd like to say is this overall process and recommendations that have come, I have to rely a great deal on the operating medical director who recommends that we do this and think strategically because we work under his practice.

And I think to do anything other than what he recommends would be a disservice and, quite frankly, an insult to him.

That's just my personal thoughts.

I wonder if the medical director could elaborate on that because I still feel that we've had cars operating in this community for years now and I think they've done a pretty good job.

I think they would admit they are short staffed and would like to have more resources.

I would like to see them operating out of more than one location.

I thought Fontaine Avenue would be a good location for them.

I see some advantage of having ALS trained people on fire

I've said that before as well back when we were going through a budget cycle.

Well, one point to make is it isn't a new business really for the fire department.

They've been supplementing the EMS system in ways that I don't think were very easily seen for a long time and that includes providing care, providing drivers for ambulances.

So they've been there supplementing the system.

There are a lot of people at Charlottesville Fire right now who are great EMS providers, have years of experience, don't necessarily have a way to carry that on into the fire service.

And when I talk about mentorship opportunities, precepting opportunities, there are people at Charlottesville Fire now that would be great in those roles, and we don't really have a way to use them for that.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean.

Cars may have a cap in terms of the number of volunteer ALS providers that they're going to be able to have and maintain.

It's a fairly high turnover organization just given the virtue of the community.

That's a strength and it's also a limitation.

It's strength because you get a lot of young people coming in, you get University of Virginia students, we have people from the community, nursing staff at UVA, all kinds of things, faculty at UVA.

You're probably not going to find many other rescue squads that have doctors in computer science running rescue squad calls and things like that.

But on the other hand, it means that as people move up through the ranks, and volunteer systems tend to function this way, particularly in Virginia,

You start out as an EMT, you take bridge courses, you move on to an enhanced level provider, an intermediate level provider, and then those people frequently move on out of the system, so there's a constant turnover there.

I'm not sure how we can necessarily build cars to provide higher numbers of the top level providers and sustain them over a long period of time, if that makes sense.

If you're talking about hiring people into cars, then I'm not exactly sure what model we're talking about.

CARS is currently being supplemented by Albemarle County Fire and Rescue.

I think they're up to about 60 hours a week and that's actually one of the daytime units that we're already talking about.

I'm not sure that that's a resource that's always going to be there.

I think that as Albemarle County's needs increase, as they start to put ambulances in the fire stations that they're building, I think they're probably going to need those providers at some point out there.

Does that answer your question?

Somewhat.

Let me ask you another question that sort of ties into that.

Given that we see a need to have another ambulance unit, and again I'm not convinced that we need more ambulances, but certainly more medics, and I think you all agreed we need one more unit to put out there when things get tight.

First of all, the recommendation is not for PEAK.

It's for 24.

Basically, to accomplish the PEAK or the 24 comes out to about the same because of the way we do the staffing.

We would have six medics on a 24-hour shift, which we can do and take advantage of, which most of the places can't because of federal labor laws.

So, six AMTs?

No, six medics.

So which are ALS?

They're all ALS medics.

These are the advanced level.

No, that's 24 or peak.

The cost is going to be the same because of the hour.

Because of the hours.

If you drop down to a 40 hour week, you're going to have to add more positions to cover.

You've got a peak time that you have a problem.

How long does that peak last?

It's 12 hours a day.

You're going to have to have 6 medics to maintain a 42 hour week versus a 56 which puts them on 24 and we can rotate our people.

We're able to use our existing people to do rotations to fill the gaps.

When I divide 84 by 40, I get a little over 2.

You keep saying that it works out the same, but there is a difference.

We were talking about this during the budget, and the number that I think a lot of people have hung on to has been like, you know, that the city's proposing to spend almost a million dollars to start its own ambulance.

How does this number, which is half a million dollars, equate to that number?

I don't think I'm talking about that.

Let me rephrase.

Last fall during the budget session, we talked about

We approved putting about almost a million dollars in to do this.

And now what we're talking about is spending about half a million.

Well, no, that's not exactly right.

The number is a little bit higher than that because operationally there are operational costs that were not included in the comparison of

What was provided?

It has two less people.

and the budget included money last spring to buy ambulances.

And somewhere along the way they have to be bought.

That money is there and available that would not need to be there in the future.

And we can, I mean one of the choices is we can lease purchase them and spread the cost out or we can pay for the ambulances all up front with money you've already approved.

But the essential difference between what was presented last spring

Okay, that's the main cost.

That's the budgetary difference.

Okay, and so

I mean, looking at your summary, your original idea that came to the committee was to be $600,000 to do 24-7, and that would be plus the cost of ambulances.

That's correct.

Yeah, that was if we didn't buy the ambulances and we had the surplus of that, but the idea being is that one of the problems that we have for cars specifically is that a lot of times because of the transient nature, they don't necessarily have the technology that helps guide them to the calls.

So if you're a new person in town, it's not the easiest place to learn as far as street networks, so the idea would be to put mobile data computers into those ambulances

and the fire trucks that will do two things.

One, help guide them to the incident so they have quick directions as to how to get there and second, it captures the response times immediately that we have some problem with now because we can't do an analysis because it doesn't capture everything.

Because of the radio traffic, you may or may not be able to sign on and off as effectively as you should to get the real defined response times and it would also eliminate a lot of radio traffic that we have.

The other part is we've done the Opticom where the traffic controlled by cars is now available for them to use as well.

I want to address the topic of billing.

Well, I will say that, first of all, the whole billing discussion is not something that was started by the city.

So let me make that clear.

And the county has a revenue recovery committee that has a recommendation to their board that will come forward.

And I don't want to say that I'm recommending it.

This is more of

City Manager, but I think what will happen is revenue recovery as it goes forward will be something that we all do, and it's something that's being done by almost every locality in the Commonwealth at this time to deal with this.

I'd like to clear up a couple things that were said earlier that people don't understand.

When it comes to annuals billing,

Insurance will pay what it will pay for, and what it doesn't, we recommend a compassionate billing policy that says if you don't have it, it covers that.

We waive it, and that means that also anybody who doesn't have any insurance would also go under compassionate billing, that they would not be billed for the service.

It means that service would be provided to everyone.

There would be no issue of money.

And again, my prediction is that whatever is done will be done regionally by all the agencies that are involved.

Well, I would agree process-wise that, and I just want to make it clear that from my perspective tonight is not a discussion about or a decision about billing.

That's a decision that we're going to come to at some point in the near future, it sounds like.

But I want to clarify for the public's sake, this is not a green light for billing.

I think where it becomes a decision is when you consider it in the budget for the future.

Because essentially what tonight will be all about is setting direction and authorization for us to look towards procuring the ambulances.

And then staffing-wise, we're probably six months out at least to be in a position to

go full speed ahead.

That's correct.

But these numbers are just, this is what the cost would be.

Yes.

Okay.

And one issue to consider is whether to lease ambulances, whether to just go ahead and pay from up front with capital funds, which have actually been appropriated

Okay.

I've got a follow-up question, maybe more for the committee, but you did recognize that there was a need for this peak service and Charlottesville Fire Department was able to propose covering with six employees and that need was

No?

I have a question of Dr. Lindbeck.

In talking about the current system, particularly in the area of the medics, in talking about the tiered response system, is one of the reasons that we have the tiered response system because we do not have an adequate number of medics available?

That's definitely a contributing factor, that in general, and this is not just confined to Charlottesville, this is going on in Virginia in general, but there are municipalities, for example, if you go to Richmond, it's a single level system.

If there's a call put out, you get a medic level response, that's all you get.

And there are some economies in time with that.

As Mary was pointing out, the dispatcher just pushes the button and dispatches an ambulance,

on receipt of the call, they don't have to go through a list of questions to determine what level of service to provide.

This would go a good piece towards getting us there.

Yes, exactly how we integrate that into our dispatch protocols is something we'll have to work with Tom Hanson on and work towards that.

Well, one of the concerns that I have, you know, sometimes I've called and you have to go through the questions and I guess from being in the fire department I was always taught not to take the citizen's evaluation of what's going on at the scene and I kind of feel like that same thing applies when somebody calls

for a medical type call because in a lot of cases somebody says they have back pain, they may be having cardiac arrest or whatever, I guess.

Is that a fair statement?

I understand that, okay.

Thank you.

I need to move into comments, if that's okay.

Well, I just want to say how much I appreciate the participation of people like Henry Ustavini and Martin Burks and Dr. Lindbeck.

You know, there's been a lot of hysteria around this EMS proposal, and I really appreciate the thoughtful way that the community took this task on of analyzing

this you know what was going on here I feel like having read this report

having listened to you speaking about this report, having to listen to my colleagues' questions.

I have a much better understanding of what exactly is going on in our system, the strengths of that system, and also the unique kinds of stresses that our system is dealing with.

I really want to commend the mayor for convening this group.

I mean, the people who are on this group are absolutely amazing.

and you know the people who have been with us today.

Leonard Sandridge served on this committee.

It's really, and it sounds like it wasn't just a, you know, an exercise where they phoned it in.

It sounds like people really dug in and they really worked hard and they really looked at a number of different options and made some recommendations that they consider to be

You know, important for this community.

So the fact that, you know, that there was basically a 10-2 vote supporting the proposal that came before us finally, I understand that there was some back and forth and some people voted by email.

Thank you so much.

to get some additional ALS folks into the system.

I'm not convinced that having the Charlottesville Fire Department take on essentially a new role is the most efficient way to do it.

I think one of the challenges of being on city council is that any successful organization

wants to grow and the city's been very successful and most of our departments want to grow.

The fire department in particular has been very successful.

But that doesn't mean that growth, especially in a situation where the number of taxpayers is finite, is always a good thing.

And I'm concerned that in order to provide

essentially 4,000 hours a year of peak service, which would be, in my book, is two full-time positions where we're talking about hiring six people full-time.

That doesn't seem to me to be the most efficient way of solving what is admittedly a serious problem.

I think that it's great for the people who want to be career

Medics.

I just want to say I too appreciate all the work that went into this committee and Dr. Lindbeck, your letter actually swayed me in the end.

I had originally abstained from voting and expressing my support because I knew it was coming to council, but when I read your letter and heard you sort of dissect and saw you dissect the problem and offer your support for this proposal,

and took it a step further which we really haven't gotten into much here which is to say not only is this a good proposal but this is a launching pad for system wide improvements that are going to benefit both cars and the fire department and most importantly the community as a whole and we have to proceed in the spirit of cooperation and move beyond some of the head to head stuff that we've been seeing.

So I appreciate that.

Okay, I'll make a few comments.

I also would like to thank all of the committee.

I'm glad to hear people think it was a good group of people after reading some of the emails that traveled around the committee.

Obviously some passions got raised.

You know, I think this is a good plan.

I think I've known all along that our fire department is full of good people.

What I learned from this is, you know, what I hadn't really spent time thinking about is the importance of having medics on each engine company and how that alone can make a big difference in terms of the quality of service delivery.

I appreciate the fact that Chief Warner has continued to

to work to try to make sure that we have as efficient a proposal as possible and that the numbers have gone down.

and I intend to support this.

But I have a big concern, and that big concern is to have the president of CARS come here and not really like this proposal.

And I think that we have fences to mend, and I think it's incumbent on everyone in the community, on me, on the members of the committee, of the committee,

of our City Fire Department to reach out because CARS is a tremendous resource to this community and what does happen in other communities is once the community moves into paid service, they lose volunteers and we really can't afford to let that happen.

We have a great asset here.

So what can we do to keep that from happening?

It's easy to talk about it, but the reality is if the two organizations have been just working smoothly and efficiently together, other than professionally together, I think they always have done that, but we wouldn't have had this.

Two organizations will put their hands together and figure out what to do, what's the best way to address any issues we have.

So I think we need to work hard on figuring out what we can do.

I sat up here tonight and I thought, well, you know, I think a big worry for CARS is if this community moves towards billing, how is that going to affect people's interest in donating?

Is that going to really start, and I think Chief Warner was absolutely correct,

We're not starting this conversation on billing.

It's already out there.

It's already been started, and the county has started it, and it's moving along, and it's gathering momentum.

But it's a serious concern.

So, one idea I thought I had was, well, maybe, you know, the same way that I think the city often throws its resources towards helping organizations, blood drives, for example, or other types of charitable things.

Maybe we need to make sure we do what we can to make sure that cars effectively fundraises.

You know, maybe that's something that the city can think, can strategize on how can we

They've never asked us for money.

They don't get money from us.

They're one of the few community partners that provides a service that would normally be associated with local government.

that doesn't get by.

When you look at some of the Boys and Girls Clubs or the Y or MACM or Region 10, there's all kinds of groups out there that provide basic sort of local level service and we help them with that.

Well, it seems to, first of all, I want to say that I think that David, you mentioned the exact, I mean, I'm very happy that you mentioned that and I think that you're absolutely right.

You know, it's very interesting that if a 12-member committee

The two members who were affiliated with CARS thought that there was no problem and were happy to come here and tell the public that there was no problem.

But the 10 other members of the committee felt that there was enough of a problem that a new plan needed to be developed.

And so somehow that

that may involve fence mending, it may involve reality checking.

I'm not exactly sure what it does, but it does indicate that there's some work to do there.

But I think that we have also heard testimony as to the reasons why simply giving cars money is not necessarily going to fix the capacity problem, because it appears to be just

part and parcel of the structure of the type of volunteer organization that it is in the type of community that we are, which is a college town with very high turnover in terms of people staying in town, the length of time that they're in town.

and, you know, they may be wonderful and committed while they're here, but they're likely not going to stay once they get their degrees and their training is done.

So, when it comes, the other thing that we are looking at is this community is not standing still.

This community is growing.

We've got people coming in these chambers every week complaining about some new development in the county that's going to destroy their quality of life.

It's not realistic, in my opinion, Kevin, to think that we're going to be able to address the growth in our community, the growth in traffic, the overutilization of our roads and the fact that our ambulance vehicles and

So Mr. Connell, we're probably at the point in time where we're ready to make a motion.

I just thank everyone for the work they did.

I wish I would be remiss if I didn't do that.

I think what we're looking for are a couple things.

One is approval of developing a budget that builds on what was proposed last year based on six positions.

Last year's budget had eight, and the associated operating costs.

And the second one is, and this is the more immediate one, of moving forward to acquire an ambulance, whether it's lease purchase,

or pay for it with cash.

We'd like to do some investigation of that to be sure that the use of the money that we now have available, you approving the budget, we can stretch it as far as possible.

Those are really the two actions.

The annulus one's an immediate one.

The formal staffing and the formal budget will fall into the next fiscal year, which will be presented to council in March when you get that budget.

Let me just make sure I understand what that was.

You're looking for authorization to further develop costs for the proposal in this current form that we've been presented with in the memo for inclusion in next year's budget.

So is there a motion that we direct the city manager to move forward with the proposal to either lease or purchase an ambulance that we could consider at an upcoming meeting specifically?

Ask Kim.

Here, you want to give your staff guidance here.

I'm also interested in...

I mean...

Okay.

But, you know, you're not really saving any money with a lease.

Basically, we're saying if we don't pay for the ambulance now,

We can pay for other stuff now and pay for the ambulance later, right?

You can show us what the choices really mean.

But don't be under any assumption that you save money by leaving.

No, that we could pursue other options.

You could always spend more money.

I think there are two issues.

One is a vote on direction about

hiring six people that would be included in next year's budget.

Okay.

Can we have a motion to that effect, please?

For 24-7.

Yes.

I will make that motion.

Mr. Mayor.

I'll second it.

Okay.

So further discussion on that concept?

Okay.

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

Okay.

Second issue is buying an ambulance.

Two ambulances.

There are two options.

One is to use the money that was previously appropriated in last year's budget and buy it, which probably means that technology things will not be there.

The second is a lease purchase that spreads the cost over a period of time, which is how we buy a lot of big equipment.

We buy fire trucks that way now.

I can tell you that we already know that finance has done a number that said it will cost $53,000 a year for 10 years to lease the two ambulances.

That's the number we have with the interest rate.

And as you mentioned, that will cost more money because you're going to add interest to the purchase.

So you're spreading it over time, and it's going to cost more money.

The purchase price is $460,000.

Resources, enhancing response times because of technology.

Okay, so we move in second.

Okay, any further discussion?

Call for the vote on that.

Alright, thank you.

Next is a resolution allocating $850,000 of KHEP funds and approval of KHEP administrative position.

Good evening.

Hopefully this will be a lot.

That makes my presentation look a lot simpler.

I'm very excited about that.

Before I get to the recommendations from the task force, just wanted to give a quick update on where we're at with KHIP spending to date.

Council set aside $1.75 million in KHIP for FY07-08 and to date we've spent $900,000 of that money in two previous appropriations.

So $850,000 went to the competitive application process with two guiding priorities from council.

The first was that a portion of that money would be spent to support home ownership programs for families at or below 60% of AMI.

And the other portion of the funding would be used to support programs for people with special needs earning at or below 30% AMI.

The city received 14 applications totaling just over 2.3 million dollars in applications, as was mentioned earlier by Ms. McKeever.

and the task force spent many, many hours and many, many meetings deliberating that down to the $850,000 and their recommendations are as follows.