City Council Meeting   1/7/2008

you

P.S.

Mmm, about five years.

We call this meeting to order.

Welcome and Happy New Year to everybody to the first meeting of City Council in 2008.

I'm Gary O'Connell, the City Manager, and for a few moments I have the pleasure to chair this meeting every two years as the Council organizes.

Here.

Mr. Huja.

Here.

Mr. Norris.

Here.

Here.

Every two years following a council election, the city council holds an organizational meeting

and elects one member as mayor and one member as vice mayor for two year terms.

That organizational meeting is tonight.

The first item that we will consider is the nomination for the office of mayor.

It is my pleasure to nominate Mr. David Norris for the office of mayor.

Are there any other nominations?

Seeing none, I will close the nominations.

Any opposed?

Congratulations, Mr. Norris.

Our second item of business is the election of the vice mayor.

Are there any other nominations?

Seeing none, I'll close the nominations.

Any opposed?

Thank you, Mr. O'Connell.

It's my distinct privilege and honor to sit in this chair and I hope to serve the citizens ably over the next couple of years.

I want to start by taking a moment to extend our appreciation for the job that my immediate predecessor did in this chair, Dr. David Brown.

We have a proclamation that I would like to read honoring Dr. Brown, David, for his contributions.

Whereas Dr. David Brown was elected to the Charlottesville City Council in May of 2004, and whereas immediately upon assuming office in July of 2004, Dr. Brown was elected as mayor by his fellow councilors, and whereas Dr. Brown brought an ability for fairly presiding over meetings, a diligence for ensuring all sides of an issue were heard, and a talent for maintaining an air of civility and fairness at all council proceedings,

and whereas Dr. Brown was re-elected as mayor in July of 2006 reflecting the confidence counselors had with his leadership skills and whereas Dr. Brown signed the mayor's climate protection agreement and was instrumental in Charlottesville becoming a tree city USA and a leader in environmental advocacy

and whereas Dr. Brown has been a strong advocate for youth activities in sports, environmental stewardship, public access to government and historic and neighborhood preservation and whereas Dr. Brown has encouraged greater cooperation and collaboration between the city, the county and the university on a range of issues

and whereas Dr. Brown led the effort to achieve an effective solid waste agreement and a community water supply plan and whereas the City of Charlottesville is fortunate that Dr. Brown will continue to serve on City Council for four more years.

Now, therefore, we, the Charlottesville City Council, thank Dr. Brown for his three and a half years of service as Mayor and as the leader of the Council and the City of Charlottesville.

Dr. Brown.

It's customary to say on an occasion like this I have big shoes to fill and it is true in this case.

I really respect the work that you've done and I look forward, I'm sure I'll be calling you many times for advice on how to handle different situations.

I do want to share a couple of remarks just about what I intend to do and hopefully that we as a council will be doing in the next couple of years in my tenure as the mayor of this body.

You know, Charlottesville is a community that, one of the things I really appreciate about Charlottesville is a community that really values the commons, the idea of the commons.

We have wonderful public spaces here in Charlottesville, the downtown mall and the lawn at UVA and parks and trails.

We have world-class arts and entertainment venues.

We have

high-end boutiques and shopping areas and restaurants.

We have, again, world-class athletic facilities, recreational amenities, festivals and events.

And I think the question that we have to ask ourselves and the question that I'm going to be asking myself in the next two years is how expansive is our vision and our understanding of the commons?

and how can we broaden our definition of the commons, whose interests aren't being served today, whose voices aren't being heard today, whose cries for help aren't being heeded today.

And I think our challenge is really to render visible that and they who are currently invisible in our public discourse.

and I include in that many people who don't get discussed enough, whose struggles don't get discussed nearly enough in the work of this body and the work of this community.

I think of all the young people who drop out of high school before crossing the stage on graduation day.

The middle class families that can't afford to live here and live anywhere near here anymore.

Children who grew up without enough positive role models to help them make good decisions in their lives.

Moms who are working two or three jobs to keep up with the rent and stay one step ahead of the collection agent.

Our elderly and our disabled who are struggling to get by on fixed incomes.

And I think we also have to continue to expand our vision of the commons to include

the air and the water around us and the trees and the wildlife and the other natural amenities that we are surrounded by.

We have, as a city, adopted a pretty expansive vision statement.

I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I do want to read the first

Paragraph because I think it's vitally important that everybody understand the roadmap that we have set forth for ourselves, which is we do intend and have every hope of becoming a great place to live for all of our citizens, a leader in innovation, environmental sustainability, and social and economic justice.

Flexible and progressive and anticipating and responding to the needs of our citizens and the cultural and creative capital of Central Virginia.

And I look forward to working with each of you on the city council over the next two years to help us move forward to realize this vision.

So thank you all for bearing with me there.

Now it's time for announcements by council members of events of import that are upcoming.

Mr. Norris, I have some appointments to make, a motion to make of appointments to boards and commissions, if that's appropriate.

I'd like to move the following city councilors to these boards, to the Affordable Housing Task Force, Mr. Norris.

to the Albemarle, Charlottesville Regional Jail Authority, Mr. Taliaferro, to the Audit Committee, Mr. Norris, Mr. Taliaferro, to the Charlottesville Redevelopment Housing Authority, Mr. Norris, to the Chief Local Elected Officials Workforce Investment Board, Ms. Edwards,

to the City-County Housing Task Force, Mr. Huja, to the Environmental Sustainability Committee, Dr. Brown, to the Health Department's MAP, Mobilizing Action Due Planning and Partnership, Dr. Brown, to the Metropolitan Planning Organization, Mr. Taliaferro, Mr. Huja, to the Planning and Coordinating Council, Mr. Norris and Mr. Taliaferro, to the Retirement Commission, Dr. Brown, to the Rivanna River Basin Commission, Ms. Edwards and Mr. Huja,

Thank you.

Is there a second to that motion?

Any discussion?

If not, all in favor indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Thank you, Dr. Brown.

I also did want to announce that on Thursday of this week we are having a stormwater work session, I believe, in the basement conference room here at City Hall from 5 to 7 p.m. this Thursday.

Any other announcements?

Okay.

It is now my distinct pleasure to make an award.

We have two awards that we'd like to give tonight.

This is regarding some leadership that the city of Charlottesville has shown on issue of environmental sustainability.

You're going to hear a lot tonight about environmental sustainability.

In keeping with that theme,

I'm pleased to announce that the City of Charlottesville has been awarded by the Chesapeake Bay Program's Businesses for the Bay Initiative has been awarded two different awards for our efforts in reducing nutrient and chemical pollution in the Bay and its tributaries.

These are awards that were only given to ten entities and then one individual throughout the Commonwealth.

actually throughout this region, not just in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

The city of Charlottesville itself was awarded a Business for the Bay Environmental Excellence Award for our pollution prevention projects.

And I'm particularly pleased to note that the sole winner of the individual award for the entire region is one of our city staff people whose leadership on issues of environmental

Management and Environmental Sustainability has been top notch.

And I'd like to invite up to receive her individual award, which is the Mentor of the Year Award, Ms.

Crystal Riddevald.

Congratulations.

Thank you so much for your efforts.

This is for the whole city right here.

We've got another one for the whole city.

Now we'll move on to matters by the public and this is our opportunity to hear from citizens of issues of concern.

We do ask that you abide by our three minute time limit and if somebody has already spoken on an issue don't feel obligated to reiterate everything they've said.

We do have some people that have signed up to speak and then we'll have a little bit of time to take additional comments.

My name is John Hayden.

I live on Westwood Road.

Either myself or one of my family could be dead today due partially to the inaction of city council and the police chief.

Three months ago, I came before you asking for a bigger police presence in the Hardy Drive neighborhood after two shootings there.

You and the police chief have seen

have done nothing.

Since then, there have been two more shootings.

I didn't realize it would hit so close to home.

Shots rang out on December 23rd while I was visiting my grandchildren.

Based on the trajectory, had the shooter been an inch over one of these kids or I would not be here today?

I went outside where I met the neighbor next door where he discovered a bullet hole in his window.

He had just laid one of his children down on the couch a moment earlier, less than 12 inches from the path of the bullet.

The bullet traveled through the window, through the living room and kitchen, and out through the back door.

Realizing what a close call it was while clutching his child, I saw tears of anguish on this man's face.

Whose child will have to die before you and the police chief do something to protect the residents of this neighborhood?

Since writing that, we now have the answer to that question.

There's plenty blame to go around.

First and foremost, it's the idiots with guns running around causing the havoc.

And frankly, some of the residents who have this snitches get stitches attitude.

Not cooperating with the police to help rid the neighborhood of these thugs has got to end.

I think it's ludicrous that as a knee-jerk reaction several months ago to some simple assaults near downtown

You are now contemplating spending $300,000 on cameras for them all, which I guarantee will not work, will not reduce crime, yet when I ask you for increased patrols for the area,

You and the police chief did absolutely nothing.

I assert it has to do with the makeup of the neighborhood.

If these cameras are such a great crime-fighting tool, would you be willing to spend $300,000 for cameras for Hardy Drive?

I would like you and the police chief to address publicly what actions were taken after my first request for help, and more importantly, what you intend to do now.

I would leave you with a question for you and the police chief.

If bullets were shot through your windows, would you expect to get more protection in your neighborhood from the police?

Thank you Mr. Hayden.

Good evening.

Shelley Murphy, Piedmont Housing Alliance, 127 Turtle Creek Drive.

I'm the Director of Program Services and I'm just here to update you and provide you with a follow-up based on the resolution that was passed in support of the 36% cap on the payday lending.

There's two rallies coming up with the lobby days with the General Assembly.

One on January the 15th, Virginia Pearl and Virginia Interface Center.

is sponsoring and it's going to be at St. Paul Episcopal Church in Richmond in January 31 by Virginia Housing Coalition, Habitat and Home, Housing Opportunities Made Equal.

That's also in Richmond.

Also AARP

put out a toll-free number for citizens who cannot go to Richmond to help on the lobby days.

And if anyone wants any information for the citizens or the council, they can call Piedmont Housing Alliance.

Okay?

I want to welcome the new counselors, Ms. Edwards and Mr. Huja.

I'd like to congratulate the new mayor and vice mayor, and I'd like to thank Dr. Brown for all his work as mayor in the past four years.

And tonight on your agenda, you're slated to consider certain historic preservation goals.

I'm delighted that this is on the top of your first agenda.

It's important work.

In the proposed budget,

There's a request for a new planning technician that, among other duties, would provide assistance to the preservation and design planner.

The only thing I'm thinking is maybe you want to make that two new assistants.

I hope that you'll fully fund this request.

Mary Joy is a hardworking, wonderful employee with more on her plate than any one human being should ever be asked to attend to.

Please give Ms. Scala

everything she needs.

Regarding history, I'd like to close by reading the first paragraph from the 1976 historic landmark study.

I believe Mr. Huja, then head of the Department of Community Development, was the author of these words.

All cities contain areas, sites, or structures of architectural and or historical interests or significance.

Such structures and areas contribute to the particular uniqueness of each city.

and form an important part of that city's physical and cultural heritage which, if lost, cannot be replaced.

The loss of its heritage deprives the city of its individuality and less means can be found to retain important structures in areas in urban areas our communities face a future of historical and architectural sterility.

Wonderful words, Mr. Huja.

I wish we could add them to the vision statement.

Thank you, Mr. Emery.

Good evening.

Daniel Bluestone, 501 Park Hill.

Welcome new councilors.

Congratulations, mayor and vice mayor.

I came to talk about 27 December 2007, which I hope that you all will remember for a long time to come.

It was a day of vandalism in our commons.

It was a day that the Jefferson Scholars and VMDO demolished the Eugene Bradbury's Compton House.

They did that with subsidy from the city.

Public funds to float their bonds were deeply involved in that.

The argument that we've made is that your employees who work on sustainability issues, preservation is the keystone of sustainability.

We never said that the Jefferson Scholar should not use that site.

We simply said that they should incorporate the 4600 square feet of existing very solid building into their new project.

We looked for a way and tried to advocate that.

I know that you people got on board with that.

You should go look at the pile of rubble there.

There's not a rotten board in the pile.

The walls were substantial.

They were terracotta concrete bricks with stucco over the top of them.

That was one solid important house.

When they pulled out a backhoe on the 27th of December to knock it down, they didn't call the Habitat store and say, do you guys want window frames?

Do you want doors?

Do you want the roof tile?

Do you want the boards, the rafters?

Do you want to reuse any of this?

They didn't.

clearly in a hurry to get it down real fast.

They went side to side to side and knocked down the walls of that house.

It's disgusting, and it is a day of vandalism, and we need to start addressing that.

When people come and ask for $18 million in tax-free bonds, we ought to ask what's going on on the site.

When we look around the city, we ought to start figuring out a strategy to actually hold on to the heritage of this city.

I think Bill Emery's comment by Huja couldn't be better put.

We need to come up with a system to prevent this from going on in the future.

What they did is really disgusting, and we were all parties to it.

first by not recognizing and acknowledging established landmarks in our city and then not refusing to push forward with the landmark designation when we had a chance and not being able to be persuasive enough.

And I think there's a lot of organization to do to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future.

To keep you from having to go to the Habitat store, I'd like to give each of you a paperweight, which is that extraordinary red tile roof that was on top of the Compton House.

Very unusual, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of roofing material that simply got smashed.

Thank you Mr. Blistow.

Dr. Bluestone, a hard act to follow.

Colette Hall, 101 Robertson Lane.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor.

Returning counselors and new counselors.

Tonight's report from the Environmental Sustainability Committee may discuss glass recycling.

I was stunned to read from the agenda with background and I printed this off from the agenda with background.

It says,

Because there are no glass cutlet processors, 100% of Charlottesville, Albemarle, and UVA recycled glass is dumped in three different landfills.

It is apparently legal to report on recycling rate forms to DEQ the glass is recycled when it is actually dumped into a landfill.

The public will be outraged if they knew glass was being dumped.

Second, soon we will be discussing the budget.

In my opinion the most important item city council discusses all year.

Why?

Most decisions on city activities are predicated by the budget, that is available monies.

Also in the report on environmental sustainability it goes on to say,

The committee recommends who will do all of this.

They have many suggestions.

And they finally recommend to hire a part-time recycling coordinator.

When I hear the words hire, I cringe.

I believe that the number of city employees has tripled in the past 10 years.

Other than necessary police, to hire more personnel is to enlarge the budget and all the ramifications of bigger government.

and lastly, I ask you not to lift the water warning ban.

Sunday a neighbor had already started watering lawns, bushes, sidewalks and streets.

You hadn't even voted to lift the ban yet.

It literally hasn't sunk in that the city and county residents need to make permanent lifestyle changes conserving water.

Thank you, Ms. Hall.

Mark Cabot, 400 Altamont Street.

There is something I'd just like to bring to the city's attention.

In talking about Charlottesville being a green city, there's one thing I haven't really heard the discussion about, and that's hydrogen fuel cells.

And if you talk to most knowledgeable scientists, they will tell you that hydrogen is probably going to be the fuel of the future.

And currently, we're basically an oil-based society.

to move forward on this, one of the things that needs to be done is we need to have support

cities, government in the movement forward with hydrogen.

Currently we don't have any hydrogen gas stations or ways of fueling easily for hydrogen.

So a lot of this has to be done on a very local level.

California has taken a lead on a lot of this.

There's schools that have actually in Connecticut and other places that are actually being run on hydrogen and it costs less than being on the power grid.

Factories are being done.

Pectors Farm actually has a factory.

New York State actually has done a power program where they have 50 hydrogen cells that are on the outside of buildings providing the power for homes.

Auto buses have been developed that went on hydrogen.

The difficulty is that you can't really go too far other than from a central area where you can fuel the vehicles.

So I've prepared a little something just to make people more aware and I'd like to pass it out to you all.

And I know you don't have a lot of free time, but if you have a moment, take a look at some of this.

Thank you, Mr. Cabot.

Good evening.

First of all, congratulations to our new mayor and vice mayor and to our new city councilors and for the re-election of other councilors.

Happy New Year as well.

and good evening Mr. Brown and Mr. O'Connell.

I'm here, Peter Roach from Piedmont Housing Alliance, 1620 Rose Hill Drive.

I just simply wanted to, on behalf of PHA's board members and staff, as well as the many hundreds of people who benefit from our programs, I want to thank

First of all, the CDBG task force and city council for approving in December $200,000 investment in affordable housing that will come through PHA, in particular for the preserving of 50 affordable rental apartments now occupied by some of our community's most vulnerable residents.

Speaking of the Monticello Vista Apartments in Belmont,

78% of the residents there have incomes below 30% of the area median income and the remaining residents all have incomes below 60% of the area median income.

Indeed, 80% of these households have persons with disabilities, with most being served

by Region 10 programs.

The average annual income of current residents at Monticello Vista is $12,736, which is an AMI of 25%, is indeed a community very much in need.

And this project, I think, is a very important example as you go forward this year of what our community must urgently support in affordable housing.

According to the MacArthur Foundation, nationally, 8 out of every 10 low-income renters are paying too much for housing.

In communities across America, existing affordable housing is being rented to higher-income households or being converted to condos or being demolished for new developments.

The U.S. stock of low-cost rental housing

fell by 1.2 million units over the last 10 years.

Charlottesville is facing the same crisis.

According to the State of Housing report that Virginia Tech produced for the planning district, over 3,000 low-income families in Charlottesville spend well above 30% of their income on rental housing.

We must continue as a community to preserve the affordable rental housing we have and seek ways to add new units.

Thank you, Mr. Loach.

Thank you.

Tonight I'm representing Case Lauder representing Southern Environmental Law Center, 201 West Main Street.

And I'm really pleased to be here at your first meeting with the new council and new elected officials to present you with copies of our latest report, SELC's latest report, New Directions, Land Use, Transportation,

and Climate Change in Virginia, and it's very appropriate given our later discussion this evening from the sustainability group.

Because Charlottesville is seeking to reduce its carbon footprint, you may find the material in this report useful in developing land use and transportation policies.

Transportation in Virginia is the largest and fastest growing source of carbon dioxide.

Statewide transportation accounts for 43% of energy consumed in Virginia and for over two-fifths of the carbon dioxide that is put out.

This report shows the necessity for reexamining our total energy economy, including the close linkage between land use, transportation, and energy use, as well as the need for a comprehensive climate change policy.

And it examines the interrelationship between the demographic trends, economic and transportation, and energy trends in the state, as well as the climate changes.

and how these different trends are interacting to get us to where we are now with global warming.

So many local officials like yourselves have taken some steps at the local level to begin the process of change.

And the good news is because these issues are interrelated, even modest, small steps can have a real impact on the overall issue.

So we commend you and your attention to climate change and the other sustainability issues and we give you this report hoping that it will be useful to you and to your staff members.

It outlines some of the promising areas for policy reform both at the local and the state level including revitalizing communities such as Charlottesville

as well as developing a transportation system that relies on more than the solo automobile.

And I think your transportation district beginnings tonight is part of that dialogue as well.

So thank you very much.

Thank you, Ms. Loder.

Good evening.

I'm Peter Kleeman.

I live 407 Hedge Street in the city.

I welcome the counselors to the task ahead, and I know I have discussed many of the issues that will be facing you over the past six months as I made an attempt to be sitting at that same table.

So congratulations to you all.

And I would like to follow up a little on some of the transportation and sustainability issues that are on your agenda as we move forward with a more aggressive regional transportation authority and think in terms of regional sustainability.

The issue of pedestrianism is a major component of that.

The more people we have on transit, the more people will be walking and traveling short, medium-length distances by foot.

I would like to suggest that there are great opportunities for the future, but there are some pedestrian issues that can be addressed immediately.

At First Night Virginia, just a few short days ago, I was on the mall and I was surprised to note that the vehicle crossing on the mall was open during that event.

and that is the time when there are more pedestrians, I believe, than at any other time during the year on the downtown mall.

It's also the time when we probably have the least competent field of motorists in the community and it seems like you put many people in a highly attractive spot and then you have other people who are cruising through there looking for their friends and I think that's a setup for a disaster in the future.

I chatted with the city traffic engineer about that and said, I was curious if there's a policy about closing that pedestrian mall.

I know it's closed for Fridays After 5 for pavilion events.

And I was told that it doesn't get closed unless an event sponsor specifically requests that that mall crossing be closed.

seems to put a burden of safety and community interest in the hands of an event organizer who's really not interested in that as their major goal.

They're interested in organizing an event and not worrying about community safety.

So I, after looking through this rather cumbersome application for a permit, and this doesn't even cover the transportation request for

for closing the mall, you have to go get a separate permit at a separate fee.

So I would like to suggest that council consider something that you could do right away is look at a good policy for if that mall is going to be open on a reasonably regular basis, also a policy for when it should be closed.

in the interest of safety and community policy and to even maybe change the form that suggests if you are going to be doing an event, perhaps you need to sign off that it's not going to have an impact on that crossing, it's not going to cause a safety factor rather than have it default that everything should be open all the time.

Thank you very much.

Thank you Mr. Klayman.

Good evening.

Happy New Year.

My name is Aaron Wunsch.

I'm a resident at 338 Monticello Road in Belmont.

And I'd like to just briefly echo what Professor Daniel Bluestone had said about the demise of the Compton House at 124 Maury Avenue.

I recognize and applaud Council's efforts to impose some preservation review on this project, sort of at the last minute.

At the same time, I deeply regret that hard questions were not asked about funding the Jefferson Scholars Project early on.

I regret that no action was taken on the landmark nomination that was submitted for this building.

Today we see the results in the form of a large pile of rubble.

The remains of the building was solid as a rock.

Finally, I'd like to echo Bill Emory's support for Mary Joyce Scala's office.

It needs more staff, more funding, and the chance to develop a more comprehensive survey of our city's historic resources.

Thank you, Mr.

Bunch.

and sitting in this audience also, and this is the most interesting part of the meeting usually, because there are so many new ideas, so I want to make only brief comments, because I told the Mayor I would be not talking too much, and I want to keep my word.

I want to look at the idea of Peter Cleaver's comment about pedestrianism.

Every transportation trip begins with the pedestrian, because what mode are you riding?

So I think we need to look at that, especially when we need to have policy for crossings.

I also have one comment I want to make about historic preservation.

I want to say a couple of comments.

First, I'd like to agree with pretty much everything that Daniel Bluestone said, and I will say that I certainly deeply regret that we didn't take a closer look when they originally came to us.

I think as Kevin Lynch said, sitting here, you know, we really didn't have any reason to think that a foundation associated with the University of Virginia, which puts a lot of money into preservation, which has the name Jefferson in it, would do anything other than utilize this historic building.

I'd also like to thank Dan Bluestone for all the work he's put into this, bringing it to our attention and giving us a chance to try to push and have a different outcome even though we weren't successful.

I like to, I agree with Ms. Hall, I mean I agree with her concern about the glass recycling, but I especially agree with her concern, whereas I think it's probably appropriate to lift the restrictions, the mandatory restrictions on water.

I think we should regularly remind people that we're really not out of the drought.

I mean there's been some rain, the reservoirs are a little higher, but it's nothing approaching normal, and I think we should regularly remind people the importance of conserving.

and finally at the last meeting we talked about pedestrian issues during the public comment section and we kind of, I think, ended up in a place where we want to see some type of comprehensive look at pedestrian safety and pedestrian issues in the city and I think we need to think about how we want to do that.

For example, not just the signage at different crossings,

but issues such as the mall crossings, issues such as neighborhoods where people really don't stop for pedestrians and crosswalks at all, what can we do to make every neighborhood safer for pedestrians and finally I think we have to cooperate with the county because it's a lot of places that are spectacularly unsafe

Thank you, Dr. Brown.

I'd just like to add to what Dr. Brown said on the pedestrian safety issue and

I really think particularly across walks where we have controls, we have a lot of different systems and I think we really need to look at a standardized system.

I also think something that's really helpful is to have the

the indicator that tells you how many seconds you have to clear the intersection when you're walking across the intersection because I think that prevents people from going out there at the last minute and it gives people some idea of being able to safely navigate the intersection and I wish we could as we look at this as Dr. Brown suggested maybe we could take a look at that particular issue.

I just wanted to thank everyone for the comments that's always been one of my favorite part of

the City Council meetings and still feels a little bit surreal being on this end of the microphone.

And I'd also like to acknowledge the CHS students who I know had things to say, but maybe next time you'll sign up for the public comment section.

I would like to kind of echo the words of the gentleman that talked about the need for war.

police presence and begin by saying that I extend condolences to the families that have experienced loss in 2007.

It was a tough year and we acknowledge that.

And with that acknowledgement, there's also need to acknowledge the fact that more can be done and that we need to look more at our community policing, how we can support our

police officers, how the residents and all the citizens in the city can be safe because you can't talk about pedestrian issues without talking about safety.

Thank you, Ms. Edwards.

Thank you.

For anybody who doesn't know, Holly Edwards is the mother of not one but two sets of twins, which I think is remarkable.

She has a good helper too.

I'll just throw in a couple comments of my own.

I agree with everything Dr. Brown said in relation to everything Dan Bluestone said and Erin Munch said about the Compton House and I think we do need to be asking harder questions in the future.

I agree with Mr. Kleeman that the default position on the mall crossing should be an opt-out versus an opt-in.

In other words, that should be kept closed in major events when there are going to be a lot of pedestrians.

I did want to ask Mr. O'Connell if you could share with us a little bit about, I know you have a working group that you're pulling together to look at pedestrian safety.

We have a staff group that our traffic engineer is leading up including the police department and other city staff and we're going to invite people in the community.

We're trying to get a report together that we can give to council and interested people in the community that will look at

the broad pedestrian safety issues that have gotten raised here in the last two meetings, crosswalks, sort of comprehensively try to look at it.

I think there's a citizen education piece to that as well.

Thank you, Mr. O'Connell.

We are now going to move on into the... Mr. Moore?

Please, please.

I want to follow up on what

Thank you, good question.

We're now going to move on to the regular agenda and the first item on our regular agenda is the consent agenda.

We have a number of items.

Item A on the consent agenda is minutes of December 11th and 17th.

Item B is an appropriation, $761,200.

This is technologies.

Technology for schools from the FY07 surplus, it's the second of two readings.

Item C is an appropriation, $105,705, a fire department grant, first of two readings.

Item D, appropriation, $2,379.43, donations to the police department, first of second readings.

First of two readings, item E is a resolution special permit at 600 Preston Avenue to allow expansion of grocery stores, the first of one reading.

Item F, a resolution of $14,492 carry over funds for the drug courts, the first of one reading.

Item G, an ordinance granting easement to UVA for 11th Street Utilities, the second of two readings.

Item H, an ordinance quick claim gas easement in Copperfield subdivision to VDOT, first of two readings.

and item I, an ordinance rezoning property at the corner of Summit Street and Fontaine Avenue from R2 to B2, the first of two readings.

So noted.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

Okay.

Any further discussion?

If not, all in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed, no?

Motion carries.

Thank you.

We are now going to have a public hearing prefaced by a report on historic district survey project, and I'd like to ask Mary Joy Scala to come forward and introduce us.

I'd like to report on the status of current efforts of our department to implement certain historic preservation goals in the current comprehensive plan.

There are three goals that I want to talk about.

The first is the one to do with historic survey that is systematically inventorying and evaluating historic resources specifically in seven neighborhoods mentioned in the comprehensive plan.

The second goal seeks to devise a conservation district as an alternative to the existing architectural design control type of local district and the intent of that would be to protect the skill and character of some of the older, perhaps more modest neighborhoods, sort of an architectural design control district light, some people have dubbed it.

The third goal is to talk about designation of additional historic districts and individually protected properties.

To give you some background, last May the city council held a joint work session with the planning commission and the BAR to discuss the proposed conservation district ordinance.

At that time the reaction was fairly positive.

I was directed to meet with at least one neighborhood and vet the proposed conservation district guidelines to see how they would react to them, which was subsequently done.

And then at the end of May, I contacted all the neighborhood presidents, the presidents of the neighborhoods that had historic value and that were mentioned in the comprehensive plan to determine interest

in having possibly a historic survey and or local district or national registry district designated in those neighborhoods.

We also asked for volunteers to work on the conservation district guidelines.

I did contact all those neighborhoods and I listed in your staff report what the

upshot of those discussions and meetings were.

They're not finished.

We're still conducting them, but I did give you a summary of each one.

We did meet with a group of interested neighborhood residents September 5th at the Community Design Center to discuss the proposed conservation district guidelines, and I gave you the notes from that meeting.

The main conclusion of that meeting was they wanted us to move forward and adopt

A district sooner rather than later.

They liked the idea.

They wanted it to focus on review of demolitions and new construction rather than so much on rehabilitation of your house.

And right now the BAR reviews all those things.

They review demolitions.

New additions and new construction and rehabilitations.

And the status of that is that it's currently under review by the city attorney's office and is on schedule for a spring public hearing.

So I just wanted to summarize what our current status

is of the three goals that I mentioned.

The first one, survey of historic resources.

We would like to conduct a survey next in Fry's Springs neighborhood.

They overwhelmingly voted that they wanted that to occur, although they're not sure if they want actual districts designated, but they were happy to have the neighborhood surveyed.

So we're hoping to move forward with that, with your endorsement.

and then hopefully that will be followed by surveys in other neighborhoods but we're waiting on the neighborhoods to actually say that they want that to happen and those would be possibly Starr Hill, 10th and Page, and North Belmont.

And then regarding the second goal, conservation districts as I said it's, the ordinance has been written and it's under review by the city attorney's office, it's scheduled for consideration and that would go back to the BAR

and then to a joint public hearing, planning commission and city council in the springtime.

So there would be a lot of public scrutiny of that.

And the result, if it gets passed, is that it would put the conservation district ordinance on the books.

It would be useful as a tool, but we wouldn't specifically at that time designate any particular neighborhood.

But it would be available as a tool in case a neighborhood came forward at a later date and said they wanted to be designated as a conservation district.

and then regarding the third goal, designating additional districts and individually protected properties.

As you know, there are two types of historic districts.

One is the national and state type, which does not involve regulations but does give recognition and allow tax credits.

As you know, you voted in December to allow Fifeville National Register nomination to move forward, so that's going to the state review board in March.

And then we would really like to get started on getting Oakhurst Circle, the nomination written for National Register.

The neighborhood has requested that.

They are already designated as a local district, but they don't have the advantage of the tax credits, which they would like to have in case someone wants to use them when they rehabilitate their home.

So we'd like to do Oakhurst's nomination next for National Register.

And then Woulin Mills has also asked for assistance.

They started that effort as a volunteer project and now they are finding that they need some help.

we have located some city funds to help them complete that project and then regarding local additional districts Martha Jefferson is probably the next one that we'll tackle although we're still in conversation with them about exactly what type of local district they want

and then I think the higher priority at this point is probably the individually protected properties.

We need direction from you all on how to proceed with that and I just wanted to say one or two more things about that and then I'll ask for questions.

Regarding the individually protected properties, you did receive two lists.

One is age-based.

It lists 100-year-old properties as of last December.

That information was taken from surveys which were conducted by Ms. Eugenia Bibbs.

She did a lot of survey work for the city in past years and she has done an excellent job.

We have a wonderful collection of historic surveys as a result.

So we can determine, based on her surveys, which houses are actually 100 years old.

It's fairly accurate.

and then the other list I gave you, in 2005 the BAR tried to go about systematically figuring out which properties should be designated as individually designated properties.

So we sent out letters of request to various people in the community, anyone we could think of that was involved in historic preservation and we got their responses and those show up on your list

and the idea of this was to do a systematic survey and try to get an idea.

We thought that five people from the community all mentioned the same resource.

then it must have importance to the community.

So it was kind of that idea to get a sense of what the community considered to be important.

So there's two ways to look at this, I think.

And then regarding that second list, I did want to mention that not all the properties on that list are 100 years old.

Some are

architecture of the recent past, and some of them, like three of them I could mention, are from the 1930s.

They're not even 75 years old, but I think they're of great significance to the community, such as the Coca-Cola bottling plant on Preston Avenue, Monticello Dairy.

Fry's Spring Service Station.

None of those are protected from demolition.

They're not 100 years old and yet, you know, those are some examples of buildings in town that I think people value that maybe we should consider protection for.

I did, and then there are some examples of very recent architecture, maybe from the 60s.

There's a bank building at the corner of Arlington Boulevard in 29.

which I think is a perfect example of modern architecture that fits into this area.

So that's just one example, that's kind of a personal favorite.

I did rank these, I gave them a one, two or a three and I just wanted to explain that.

The number ones I think are the most threatened.

and that's based largely on zoning.

You could look at a lot of houses in that list that are in, say, Rugby Road area.

I don't think there is threat in their zone low density.

I don't think anybody would be planning to take those down.

in the near future.

I gave more importance to what the property was zoned.

If it's mixed use or commercial zoning, I think there's more of a temptation to remove a building.

They're not listed.

The first one isn't the most important, but I did rank them one, two, or three, just to give you a general idea.

More work obviously needs to be done on this, and we have to come back with specific requests.

If you did designate properties individually, it's a rezoning.

It's like putting a historic district overlay into place and it would require public hearings and it's also important to note that you have to, when you rezone properties, you have to treat similar properties equally.

So you'd have to consider that when you're nominating buildings.

You know, you can't just pick one.

You have to kind of go through a process and do it systematically.

Let's see.

So I would suggest on the individually protected properties, there's two main criteria.

We do have a list of criteria when we want to designate a new district or property.

We have that in the zoning order.

So it's not like we're starting from scratch on that.

We can refer to that.

But I think the two main probably considerations here would be number one, you might want to

set a cutoff date and then anything that's newer than that, it would have to be very significant.

That's how they do on the national register.

They'll set 50 year old buildings considered historic, but then they say if it's very significant and newer than that, we would also consider that for national register.

So it's that kind of an idea of how to choose buildings to designate.

So I think that's it.

I went through that fairly quickly, but there are three main goals we're implementing.

I think we have a good plan in place to do that and we would value your suggestions or input.

Thank you.

Just a couple of clarifying comments.

That's been raised in the past by previous BAR chair and the current one.

I think that there have been conversations recently with the Planning Commission talking about maybe transferring their responsibility for entrance corridor review to the BAR.

Their meetings are pretty intense.

They're pretty long right now.

They meet once a month with additional work sessions.

It's been raised by members of the BAR.

Workload continues to increase.

No, I think the idea.

I think what I mostly want you to say is that we should look into this and come back with a list.

Okay.

I just had a question about another neighborhood.

It actually would be included in that.

I think absolutely it could be considered, yes.

What I found on my research, the first properties were designated individually in I think the late 70s.

It wasn't done again until 1993 and at that time I think 18 properties were listed all at once and they all happened to be properties that were on the National Register but were not

yet individually protected.

So that was kind of the criteria.

I don't know if they were all 100 years old.

I suspect they were.

But nothing's been done individually since 93, except there's been one or two individuals that requested the Legal Aid Justice Center and a house on Lyons Avenue requested individual designation.

I had one question.

Mr. Huja, any questions?

OK.

Thank you, Miska.

I'm going to open the public hearing now.

We have three people signed up.

Well, let's hold on and let all the students leave first.

We have three people sign up and then you can come up.

Good evening, and I'll keep my comments brief.

I would like to support the expansion of the list of individually protected properties by combining both of Mary Joy's proposed lists.

This measure is crucial to keeping Charlottesville a visually interesting and historically rooted place.

It's crucial to keeping our landfills from overflowing with rubble of the sort with which you have just been presented.

And it is crucial to, indeed, the foundation of

Thank you, Mr.

I'm still Daniel Bluestone, 501 Park Hill.

Although, who knows, maybe it's been torn down since I came up here.

I want to talk about two things here.

The relationship between heritage and sustainability.

Sustainability is a kind of amorphous concept, but at the core of it is this notion that the present generation should use resources in such a way that there's stuff left for the generations that are coming after.

There's actually this concept of taking things from the past, using it in the present, and leaving enough for the future.

Same definition of heritage conservation.

People before us built this city.

We are using the city that they built.

People after us will also want to use elements of that city.

One of the things that we do as a society is try to forge the connections between the past, through us, and into the future.

It's a fairly simple concept.

I think that that's what we're really aiming at when we look at preservation.

and I want to be very clear that what we're not aiming at, and this is again unfortunately why the Compton is important, is that we're not aiming to say, look, you cannot tear that down, it must be preserved exactly as it is.

What we were looking at in the case of the Compton House and many other developments, 14th Street, which is a great example of this, we argued for holding on to the 1900s, 1910s, 1920s fabric of 14th Street

in putting new density for student housing at the back of the property lines.

We were talking about using backyards and alleys to build density.

So finding ways in which we can actually continue to work with what we have.

In terms of the Westhaven comment, Ms. Edwards,

National Trust this year gave one of its national preservation awards to a preservation project on the Henry Hilgier Homes in Chicago, Illinois, where the Chicago Housing Authority and a private developer teamed up to keep that public housing in use using historic preservation tax credits.

You know there might be ways of again having resources flow into the renovation of West Haven to continue it being used for affordable housing.

I think what we're hoping to do is not to come up with a set of regulations that say you must not do anything with your property.

We're quite flexible in what we can do after declaring a preservation designation.

What we want desperately is a process that will at least give us the chance to slow down and consider in a way that lets us acknowledge that we are bound up in what has come before and part of our responsibility is to transmit that to the future.

And I think that the thing that might be really helpful and useful to look at, again, is the Nimmo House, which you've heard about.

The Nimmo House came this close to being demolished after the family got some, the carriers got some really bad advice about how this house can't be fixed, this house can't be fixed.

We'll go over to Hartmans Mill Road and see what a fairly modest house that had been vacant for 20 years.

and contractor after contractor said, can't be fixed.

It's now an award winning project in our community for preservation and the Carys who wanted to fix it up, wanted to build a house next door to them for their daughter, fixed up this house instead of demolishing it with the help of the council and the BAR who said don't tear it down.

and then it's now been restored.

And guess what?

The Carries are actually going to move into the old house and give their daughter the newer house that they lived in historically.

So I think there's plenty of opportunity for us to try to get the kind of information to people that they need.

I think that probably the best strategy is we ought to do what we did early on in the designation process for landmarks in the city.

We ought to say 75 years.

that every property that's 75 years or older will be subject to design review and to demolition controls.

And that doesn't mean that every house that's 75 years old will stand in our city forever.

The BAR and the City Council have the right to approve demolitions and by streamlining the process, you can get that done real quickly.

But it will give us a chance to have a public discourse about what we want from the past, our stake in the heritage of the past.

And I think that that's a pretty straightforward way.

75 years would get you to the 1930s.

and then there's a big gap, not a lot of building in the 30s, not a lot of building in the 40s when there are wartime restrictions and I think that we could say comfortably that houses that are 75 years old are nominally historic and we would be happy to have those buildings individually designated.

We did batch designations early on.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bluestone.

Would anybody else like to speak in this public hearing?

Comments?

I think we should proceed to do the gilder sleeve designation for the National Register nomination.

So I had a question

Individuals there have told me they want a district and I guess

There's still debate.

They're kind of waiting to see what the conservation district looks like.

I think they would actually qualify for an ADC district given the type of resources in that neighborhood.

both of those neighborhoods have historic fabric which could be, should be protected if possible.

The third question I had was, I totally support the idea of individual designations and I would do as, at that time I was planning directly when that process was started, we had a clause that everything which is 100 year old automatically became designated from the ADC but everyone was told to us that

you can't do that, you have to do it individually.

So the process could be that we can identify the buildings with 100 years old under one category, or things like that, and then every year we can build a new list as they mature and age.

That way we can meet the legal requirements that I am sure Mr. Brown will have.

some suggestions and guidance on that.

So I would like to see that happen.

I also very much support the conservation district language that is a new layer of conservation, historic preservation of buildings which need to be protected.

As to the way of their reimbursement, I know they work very hard.

I think they should be paid some expenses like parking and things like that, but I think

how the other localities do in that area before we jump into establishing a new president.

I don't know how the planning commission is paid.

It used to be paid 100 hours before, but I don't know.

It has changed by now probably.

Thank you, Mr. Huja.

I'd like to agree with Mr. Huja.

I applaud the recommendations from staff on this and while I do think it's important that

that neighborhoods, that this is not be something that the city impose on neighborhoods but neighborhoods come forward and understand and say yes this is what we want.

The neighborhoods we've heard the most from opposing historic districts has been Fifeville.

And I think we should work to try to make sure there's a full and thorough discussion on this issue because what concerns me in this report is

this list of demolition requests in Fifeville and according to this list

In 2007, there were eight requests for demolition of houses in Fifeville, all but one of which was built in 1900 or earlier.

If we don't want to see our neighborhood look a lot different, we need to have some tool to be able to protect it.

I know there's concern among members of the neighborhood, but I think they need to realize what this tool can bring.

But I applaud this.

I'd like to see some discussion, some staff response to the concept of having 75 years be a marker for this.

I think that makes sense to me.

Thank you, Dr. Brown.

Any other questions or comments?

Well, what I hear then is consensus to move forward with the staff recommendations with two sort of adjustments on item five, some research into whether or not the dividing line should be 75 years versus 100 years, so maybe a little bit more information about that and staff perspective on that.

And then item seven, consider a compensation for BIR members, but we want to first look and see what other localities are doing in that regard.

but otherwise I heard unanimous support for these recommendations.

Is that fair to say?

One more comment.

Would you say 75 years?

Thank you.

Okay, we're going to move on to the next item on our agenda, which is a report from our Environmental Sustainability Committee, and I'd like to, I guess, invite up myself.

I'd like to invite up myself.

I currently am the chair of that committee, although Dr. Brown will be taking my seat on that committee here shortly.

We, this committee, as many of you know, was chartered about a year ago now to consider proposals for moving the city forward, both on implementation of the mayor's climate change, climate protection agreement, and also broader sustainability issues.

And this committee meets quarterly.

It has four very active subcommittees working on issues of urban ecology, green building, clean energy, climate protection,

and materials.

And tonight we have the latest round of proposals from some of these committees for city council to consider.

And what I'd like to do is just invite up members or the chairs of each of these committees that have proposals before us tonight to briefly outline the proposal that your committee is offering for our consideration.

Okay, thank you.

My name is John Semelak.

I'm on the green building subcommittee.

The first proposal within this report is for an energy efficiency property tax incentive.

This is based on enabling legislation that was adopted in March of 2007 by the Virginia General Assembly that declares energy efficient buildings to be a separate class of real property and allows local municipalities

to enact an ordinance to create a lower property tax rate for energy efficient buildings.

And this lower tax rate would only apply to the building portion and the state defines an energy efficient building as any building that exceeds the energy efficiency standards prescribed in the Virginia Building Code by 30%.

The Citizens Committee on Environmental Sustainability recommends a one time, one year property tax rate reduction of 50% for energy efficient buildings as defined by the state code.

We have a process outlined for that.

It's a pretty simple process that involves third party certification of that energy efficient status and a simple form to be completed by the building owner

I have a question.

Any other questions for Mr. Similac?

We're going to hold off on discussing all of these at once, but if you have any clarifying questions, feel free to ask as the presenters come forward.

Thank you very much.

Hi, I'm Jason Halbert, 803 Stonehenge Avenue in the city.

We undertook the task of trying to address the issue of solid waste management and recycling.

It's not a small task as Council well knows in its dealings with Rivanna Solid Waste Authority.

There were a lot of issues brought up and a lot of ideas brought up, but we wanted to focus on one that we think the city residents and city council can get behind wholeheartedly.

And the proposal is to set a goal and maintain that goal until we reach it of a citywide recycling rate of 50%.

There are some issues related to benchmarking our current rate, which we can resolve.

We will get those resolved through work on creating a formula of what our actual rate is.

and I don't know if Ms. Hall is still here but I wanted to say into her comments that I think that the more we recycle the more we save so adding a part-time staff person who's going to increase our recycling rate has the potential to pay for itself.

We are paying upwards of $32 a ton I believe for solid waste and tipping fees that doesn't count our contracts on those fees so every

Every ton of recycling we pull out of the solid waste stream is saving us money, not to mention the energy costs and the other items that can be saved down the road.

And as we go forward with environmental issues and carbon taxes and carbon economy, this will become more and more important.

Well, that's the issue with the formula.

Roughly, if you count just the red bins, we say we're in the 22 to 25 percent range, but we're going to pin that number down and we can have our own thermometer or however you want to do it to try and get to that goal.

It's not a punitive goal.

It's not that we're going to try to reach this by the end of this year or next year.

We're going to try to reach it and attain it, hopefully in the near future.

And we're going to do that through education.

And there isn't a program coordinator position in the current draft budget that I think is focused on climate change, but I think that person would also be able to work a little bit on recycling, which is very important.

And I will add that I think there are a number of, shall I say, financial opportunities in the city of people who are willing to help partner with the city

Not really a question.

I have one comment.

The curbside recycling has really become a lot more popular and people are really starting to recycle cardboard.

I think people really appreciate that and this may not be entirely related to what you're doing,

I'm just wondering if there's some way we can figure out how to give people an additional recycling bin or a bigger bin or something, because right around I see stuff falling out of all the containers because we're doing better, which is good.

The Director of Public Works, Judy Mueller, is behind a lot of our efforts, most of them on recycling.

She's done a great job at expanding what can be taken in those bins.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Halbert.

Thank you.

Appreciate your efforts.

Thank you, members of the council.

I'm Len Shapa from 1439 Westwood Road.

We have three proposals that are before you today.

But I wanted to start by just making some general comments about the major challenge we face in trying to achieve the goals that the city is already committed to in bringing our emissions down to the levels that are spelled out in the Kyoto Agreement and that the city has agreed to try to aim for.

Even achieving those goals,

really require serious changes in our use of automobiles and in our use of electricity, the two major sources of carbon emissions in the state.

And what we're proposing today are really kind of the low-hanging fruit.

At least two of our proposals deal with relatively low-hanging fruit, relative easy steps that we hope we can take.

But we hope you'll understand that down the road we have some really challenging things that we need to tackle in our committee.

in future meetings is going to be looking at additional proposals to bring to you.

So the first proposal is in the area of idling.

So it seems like at a minimum if we're going to cut down our carbon emissions from automobiles, we should not be running them while they're sitting still.

So already the city has a policy on anti-idling for city-owned vehicles.

and we want to make sure the public is aware of this and the city employees are aware of this by putting up some signs in places such as schools where the school buses are now instructed not to run while they're waiting to pick up and drop off students.

The second proposal related to that is that the next step in reducing idling is to make sure that private owners of vehicles don't idle their vehicles, especially things like tour buses that sometimes sit outside the Paramount

Theater, or in other areas where tourists come to town.

So we would like to ask the city to talk with our elected representatives to get the state to authorize us to pass an anti-idling ordinance that would apply to private vehicles.

So that is several steps before we can actually work towards an ordinance like that at the local level, but the first step is to work with our state representatives.

Our next proposal is for an energy efficiency public campaign.

We already have some well-known technologies for improving the efficiency of homes.

Among these are the use of compact fluorescent light bulbs.

These are already being used in growing numbers and down the road more and more of our light bulbs will be compact fluorescence, but we want to accelerate the adoption of this technology by publicizing it and doing a giveaway event.

So what we're proposing is an event at which we would hand out free compact fluorescence to people who attend and also raffle off an energy audit.

An energy audit is a major way in which local residents who own a home can learn the most cost effective ways they can make their homes efficient.

and these cost about $250 each and we can publicize that opportunity by giving away at least two free audits.

We've already secured the donation of 500 CFLs to give away from the state.

So the $5,000 we are asking you to authorize

spending is to purchase additional CFLs and to cover the costs of the audits.

It's not for the city staff time or for any of the organizing time.

This is all going to be done out of existing resources and volunteer efforts from the community.

The final proposal we have is not a low-hanging fruit.

It's a much more far-reaching enterprise, and that is to try to find alternative ways of generating electricity besides the dominant one in the community, which is coal.

And right here in our community we have many rooftops, many parking lots, where we have solar resources that are going untapped.

and there are starting to be put into place incentives for the Dominion Power Company and the federal government tax code to

make it feasible to actually tap these solar resources.

Dominion has been giving incentives to increase their reliance on alternative energy sources such as solar, and the tax code is providing generous incentives as well.

If you can combine these two things, we believe that there are opportunities to put solar panels on top of city buildings, to put solar panels on top of the CHS parking lot and other such places, and

What we're proposing here is not for the city to immediately commit to do this, but that you commission, you ask the staff to look into exactly what kind of resources are available locally and the exact mechanism for

Thank you.

Let me just sort of clarify, you're specifically asking us on idling as for signage to promote the city's own anti-idling

Policy asking for us to ask our state legislature for authority to to adopt a policy for private vehicles to go ahead and launch a public and allocate five hundred five thousand dollars for an energy efficiency public campaign and then to ask staff to study the implications and logistics of solar power generation.

That's right.

Okay.

I want to applaud you for the CFL light bulb idea.

I just wish that we could somehow expand that, and I don't know if the staff should take that up or what.

I guess that I talked to Mr. Huja about this today.

The 500 is a nice number, but we need a lot more out there, and I'm here.

That sounds better.

I'm just afraid a lot of people that would really help to have those are not going to come to some of these events, and I'm just trying to figure out a way that we can increase the number.

I know it costs money, but I know there's the opportunity to make some big reductions in energy use if you could get two or three of those in every household in the city.

Well, you're right that if we rely just on people showing up to our event, we're probably not going to reach a lot of the people who would benefit from adopting these technologies.

It'd be nice if there's someone watching on TV who's with the local Boy Scouts or something who might want to make this a project to go and take some CFLs that they receive at the event and put them into people's homes where they could really benefit from the financial savings as well as energy savings.

Thank you.

May I add to Mr. Turner's comments?

I would suggest that we aim for 5,000 bulbs, and so I'll think of ways to, creative ways to distribute them to people who really need them, along with the dual description as to why it's so important to have.

and I think $5,000 maybe carbon cost, I don't know how much they cost nowadays, maybe $5,000.

So we do have some money in the sustainability account as I understand.

Second comment which I would like to sort of challenge a little more

is that along with the city doing that, I was talking to Ms. Edwards while we were having a meeting earlier, that our housing authority should also take steps to, as they replace their bulbs in their projects, to do that so that we can sell a low electric bill and benefits to that.

That could be more additional suggestion.

I would like to make along with your suggestions.

Third item which interests me here today is two audits which cost $500 is a nice thing to have but I would say maybe you want to start with a bigger number like say for example 20 just to start you off and make sure that they go to a variety of people

and I don't have a suggestion as to how it could be done but there are ways you could explore to do that.

The name of that car I understand is $5,000.

So the fourth item which I was talking to Julian Taliaferro, I still want to keep calling him chief but he is the chief and I am the Indian so there is a difference.

He suggested also that maybe

somebody in our city staff like billing inspector or gas inspector, gas firm employee, we provide some training, maybe two people could be trained, get a special training and then they could do a regular, not the part of, not as a regular assignment but maybe one or two inspections a week, that way if you had two people doing that, one or two inspections a week, there's 200 more inspections.

and I think it could be incentive to, I would like to encourage that exploration also.

So those four ideas I would like to sort of, for you to think more.

Because I think what we need, all the things that you suggested are really good.

Thank you Mr. Huja.

The comment that I wanted to make was when

We have an opportunity for the giveaway.

Not only should we be providing information about how cost-efficient it is, but also information about the safety issues as well.

I know the mercury is minimal, but I was one of the kids that broke the thermometer and I was playing marbles with mercury.

So I think it's important to make sure that that information

becomes paramount with the giveaways and beginning of education.

Well, let's keep it to that.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Shaw.

So yeah, if there's any questions now about any of these proposals, we'll go ahead and jump into general discussion.

I know I've been hearing how recycling has increased, but there are certain neighborhoods within the city that still don't recycle as much as others, so I'd like to know if it would be possible to do some outreach in some of the neighborhood associations.

to see if there's an increase in the number of red bins, if we could just find out from people who's recycling but don't necessarily have the red bin.

And I'd like to see more of those efforts before we move toward hiring someone for that, but if we move toward that, it would be nice to be able to

Thank you Ms. Edwards.

I think this is some great ideas brought forward.

I think there's a lot of talent in the community, and I'm really glad to see us taking advantage of it.

I really like the idea of setting a bold goal for recycling, and I think that identifying where we're strong in recycling and where we're not is a great idea.

The thing I thought through a lot of these is that is involving the schools and in particular I certainly know for with my kids a lot there's occasions where my behavior was changed because of things that my kids learned in school and came home and scolded me on so I think having our kids involved whether it's in recycling or in idling you know I mean think that's a great great thing for them to sort of notice maybe tell their parents how come how come the cars riding you know

But I think this is a great start.

I know there's a lot to come and I do know that the harder stuff is to come.

But I think it's a great start.

Sure.

This is not a resolution per se, but we could certainly- I think it's a selection on the side.

I mean, we do need some direction, so- Okay, so we'll make a motion.

We accept the proposal 1, as submitted.

We accept the proposal 2, as submitted.

We accept the proposal 3, as submitted.

And I think somebody mentioned in that proposal, one of the concept people, that we had to approach private sector.

I don't know if that was competent or not.

and I recommend that we accept the proposal with four modifications.

First, we have at least 5,000 bulbs.

Second, the House has already been encouraged to use the same bulbs.

Third, that we have at least 20 energy inspections.

Fourth, let's retrain two of its current employees to do a few

And just a friendly amendment, I think on, when you say 5,000 bulbs, I think originally you phrased it as we're going to aim for 5,000.

Yes.

Okay.

Any comments on Mr. Huja's?

I have a couple questions for clarification to be clear on what we're doing.

Number one is training our inspectors and asking them to now do two energy audits per week.

My only concern is does that mean they inspect a lot fewer houses per year?

I have no idea what the workload of an inspector is.

I'd like some feedback from staff about exactly what would the implication be.

Would that mean that we would actually, by doing that, we would inspect

But would that translate into a lot fewer homes being inspected for safety?

I'd have some concern about it.

I'd just like to hear some feedback from staff.

So I wouldn't want that to be formally in that motion.

I also mentioned that it could be two sources.

It could be public works, gas department.

Oil inspection, either one.

And the same thing, I think that the

you know 500 fluorescent bulbs is $1500, 5000 fluorescent bulbs is $15,000 probably.

I don't know what the bulk cost of these things are but it's not a cheap one so I'd like that.

I think it's a great goal but I'd like the idea of A4 being the language.

So we'll aim for 5,000 volumes, and we'll explore the ideas of training staff in doing the energy audit.

And then I would also add another friendly amendment on proposal two, just to reflect Ms. Edwards' comments about as we proceed with public education and recycling, approaching it from the neighborhood basis and involving schools as well.

So we have a motion, it's been seconded, it's been amended, friendly enough and any further discussion?

All in favor please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Motion carries.

Thank you very much and thank you so much to the members of the committee for your work and we'll see you again in a few months.

The next item on our agenda

has to do with water and wastewater update.

Just a couple quick comments as we're setting up.

This continues, I think, the discussion of environmental resources, impacts on our environment sustainability.

We got a lot of focus recently on the community's water supply and we thought it was important for both council and the community to talk about really, I think, what's hiding underneath the ground in terms of

our water utilities and our wastewater utilities.

These we need to separate from other discussions and sometimes people get confused about this but we're talking about utilities that the utility rate, the water rate that charged city customers supports.

These kind of issues have been

It's been happening for a long time and so what we're in front of you doing is trying to approach it from a long-term perspective.

Probably a phased perspective is what's being proposed and the staff work that's been happening so far.

This starts a discussion.

We're not after direction so much tonight as to give you and the community a sense for the issues that are out there, the staff work that's going on.

both within city government as well as what Rivanna is doing and this will come back to you through the budget process that leads to the utility rate discussions in May.

This is sort of her lead and her project.

This is a PowerPoint presentation that we're going to run in just a few minutes.

Good evening.

Good evening members of council.

I'd like to talk to you a little bit tonight about the City of Charlottesville's infrastructure improvements as it relates to water and wastewater.

The agenda for tonight's presentation, I'm going to go over a background from a national, state, and local perspective.

Also talk about water and wastewater infrastructure as it relates to the city and the capital improvements program that's proposed.

We've heard a lot about Rivanna's water supply plan in recent months and I'm going to talk a little bit about Rivanna's wastewater improvements and touch on funding and summarize.

A little bit about a background from a national perspective.

There are legal requirements that are in place.

The Safe Drinking Water Act that was enacted in 1972 and then amended in 1996, and this includes protection of our water supply and our drinking water, establishes standards.

It even protects the sources of our supplies that include rivers and streams and lakes in more recent years.

and EPA and the states and the water supply systems all work together to make sure that standards are met as established by the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The Clean Water Act was originally established in 1948 and it was completely revised in 1972 and it establishes that all municipal and wastewater discharges must be treated before they're discharged into a river or stream.

It also includes, enables the federal government to include enforcement in more recent years and it also gives the state day-to-day implementation.

As far as sustainable infrastructure, EPA wants to promote practices that encourage utilities and their customers to address existing needs so that future generations will not be left to address the needs of our aging infrastructure.

And there are four pillars that are established by EPA to address sustainable infrastructure, and these include better management,

of water and wastewater utilities and this includes asset management as well as environmental management systems.

It also talks about full cost pricing and this is where they want rates to be set that encompass the operations of water and wastewater systems.

And it also includes efficient water use and this is very critical when it comes to a time of water shortages.

and also watershed approaches and this is where coordination or many agencies may be needed to coordinate efforts when it comes to watershed approaches and I think the city of Charlottesville does a pretty good job with this.

I can always remember when I was visiting a wastewater treatment plant in Atlanta and it was owned and maintained by the city of Atlanta

and I was standing there at their discharge point that was into the Chattahoochee River and I looked across the waterway and there was a huge, another big wastewater treatment plant that was actually maintained by Cobb County and unfortunately in the city of Atlanta, political boundaries are more in line than really a watershed approach, at least they were at that time when I visited this wastewater treatment plant.

Also from a national perspective, EPA has come out with a new report in 2002, which basically puts emphasis on infrastructure gap.

And this is basically where if investments in water and wastewater infrastructure doesn't increase to address the anticipated needs, there's going to be a funding gap over the next 20 years.

And this funding gap's been estimated to be

from a capital cost standpoint, and this is from wastewater utilities all across the country, about $224 billion.

And from an operation and maintenance estimate, the funding gap will be about $309 billion unless we start increasing our funding to address our water and wastewater needs.

I mentioned earlier that the federal government really has delegated review and delegated that authority down to the states to implement standards when it comes to reviewing local governments.

And Virginia law mandates that the localities provide safe and adequate drinking water and sewer services to communities.

Also, design capacities, they set certain standards for design capacities in that it cannot exceed the design of the system.

They also look at protection of public health which is very critical to the system I might add here that in recent years there have been consent decrees really on the sewer system side that have been posed across the commonwealth and some of the local municipalities that have certain consent decrees currently are Lynchburg, Orange, Waynesburg, Roanoke

and recently it's been very high profile where EPA and the Commonwealth has come in and actually imposed a consent decree on the Hampton Roads area which encompasses all the sewer facilities that treat sewer and have the distribution system that include the Suffolk area and areas like Hampton and Newport News in recent years and this is really because

it's because they view that municipalities really aren't doing adequately to maintain their systems.

So it's always in the background that the state or EPA can come in on systems like they have across the country from Miami, Atlanta, Greenville, South Carolina was another one where I'm from where they came in and consent decrees were implemented and then you're made to improve your systems based on their timeframe and not necessarily your timeframe.

From a local perspective, the city has aging infrastructure and really needs to look at maintaining their systems.

And I would suggest carrying out an ongoing process of oversight, evaluation, maintenance and replacement as needed.

We also have, it's got to be noted, we also have increased capacity needs.

within the city.

Even though a lot of it is inflow fill, it's been estimated that we've had over a thousand dwellings that have been permitted in the last three years within the city.

Now these dwellings don't include the numbers specifically.

A dwelling will be an apartment building, so it doesn't necessarily include all the residences.

I also want to point out that from a local perspective that agencies are coordinating efforts together.

and the City of Charlottesville, as you know, has the water and wastewater distribution systems within the city limits.

Albemarle County Service Authority has the water and wastewater distribution systems within the county.

And then Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority treats the water, has the distribution lines to our systems, Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville, and then they have some lines that then feed into their wastewater treatment plants within the area.

But I might note that some of the coordinating efforts, we've got a major modeling effort going on right now where the three agencies are coordinating computer modeling and it'll denote where we've got capacity deficiencies within the system.

And it also needs to be noted that all lines within these three agencies are somewhat interconnected, so it really needs to be treated as one system when we work together.

As you know, we worked very well together when it came to communicating information on the drought and noting that to our customers and that went very well.

And also, the three agencies are working on issues related to the sewer system right now where we want to pinpoint rehabilitation efforts and where it's important to all three agencies to come together and figure out what our needs are.

Now I move into the water infrastructure for the city.

These are all the lines, most of the lines within the city from a water standpoint are in the streets.

We've got 180 miles of water main lines and they range in size from 2 inch to 24 inches in diameter.

The importance of a properly maintained water system is if the water system's not maintained, it can pose a health risk.

As you know, if water's not properly disinfected, it can pose a health risk.

And so your water systems really have to be revisited and looked at quite a bit in order to minimize those health risks.

Fire protection is also a necessary aspect of a well-maintained water system.

Fire protection has to be on demand and the capacity has to be there and the access to the hydrants have to be there immediately.

And ultimately you can, you see the impact to your recreation, your tourism and your property taxes if you don't have a well maintained water system.

A little bit about the improvements that have been compiled and suggested to occur over the next five years.

We've taken somewhat of a phased approach and studies have been completed over the last couple of years to figure out what needs to be done to rehabilitate the water system.

We've got about 24 miles of 2 inch galvanized water lines within the city limits that need to be replaced.

Galvanized lines, when they leak, they tend to split right down the middle and they're difficult to maintain and they're usually very troublesome.

We're also proposing to install new water lines to loop the system and increase the pressure and provide redundancy to the customers.

And we're also proposing to replace the galvanized service lines within the city.

These are the lines from the main sewer main to the meters.

And most of them are galvanized in the older areas and all of those need to be replaced.

We actually have a program going on.

It's going very slowly right now where we are replacing some of the main service laterals.

and it's also proposed to upgrade the Lambeth pump station.

This is the only booster pump station within the city limits.

It serves the northwest area of Rugby Avenue, so it's a pretty big area it serves and it requires some backup power and some attention to make sure those pumps are efficient and keep running in the future.

For the FY 2009 to 2013 totaling costs for these projects, it's about $18.8 million.

This is just an illustration of where the two-inch lines are located within the city.

As you can see, they're not really concentrated in any one area.

They're kind of all over.

And I might also note the Lambeth pump station is the

The star here, that's the location.

So putting these projects together will be a challenge since they're kind of not concentrated in any one central area.

Moving into wastewater infrastructure, the city has 163 miles of sewer lines ranging in size from 6 inch to 30 inches in diameter.

Most of these lines do run in the streets.

Some of the smaller lines do run in people's backyards that are along creek and riverbeds.

A little bit about the wastewater infrastructure and I want to go over what infiltration and inflow is specifically.

Infiltration inflow occurs when extraneous water gets into the sewer system and it can be troublesome to the sewer system because when it rains it takes up the dry weather capacity within the sewer system.

This kind of illustrates inflow is actually when you have a direct connection into the sewer system.

Notice this is the sewer main that runs down the street and this is the storm drain system.

This is the storm drain sewer pipe.

and notice there's a direct connection.

It's just a cross connection.

So when it rains, rain water is going to go right into the sewer line where it doesn't need to be.

Another example of inflow is when roof drains are directly connected into the system.

I might also add here, this is a lateral line that comes out from the household.

The city does not own these lines.

The property owner owns these lines that then come into the main.

Infiltration is when you have leaking sewers and water may get in through groundwater or cracks within the sewer line.

An example of infiltration is like root intrusion into a lateral.

We've got roots and groundwater's up, it's raining and you've got rainwater getting into the pipe.

Another example of infiltration is where you may have a deteriorated manhole and a crack in the manhole and as groundwater table gets up you get rainwater into the sewer line.

And why is it bad?

Infiltration and inflow can

when mixed with sewage takes up necessary capacity at the wastewater treatment plant and you think, well, what's that?

So what's that a big deal?

But what happens is when a wastewater treatment plant is inundated with water, it struggles to meet the limits.

It's overloaded and it really can't work biologically as well as it normally will without just water.

Also, excess infiltration inflow takes up the carrying capacity of sewer lines and it can surcharge manholes or fill manholes up and eventually potentially cause overflows which can get into our streams and rivers.

One solution people have had, and this has been many years ago, which is really not an acceptable solution as far as infiltration and inflow, is just to build bigger lines and bigger wastewater treatment plants.

But that's not really a good way to spend our resources.

We really need to get in and look at the systems and rehabilitate the systems where we're getting excessive water into it.

A little bit about the wastewater infrastructure improvements.

We are currently under construction with the first phase of the Stadium Road collection sewer and where we are replacing a 15-inch pipe with a 30-inch pipe and these two additional phases to be completed.

This is a system that is under dry weather capacity really doesn't have

enough capacity at this point and during wet weather capacity it's in dire need of being replaced.

It's not in very good shape and we are actually under designed to complete the next two phases of the Stadium Road sewer line.

And on the next slide I'll show you the locations of those.

Consequently, we are also in need of replacing the Valley Road, Rock Creek Collection sewer lines.

They are in the same similar situation as the stadium.

We are under dry weather capacity.

They really don't have enough capacity in wet weather.

It's even not acceptable even more.

We're also looking at rehabilitation of many areas.

We've done studies on what we call the Shanks Branch area and certain areas have been pinpointed for rehabilitation and we know where they are and just money needs to be set aside for those as well as we know in some of the other basins within the cities where we need to do rehab.

Pricing has been estimated for these projects that we know about and over the next five years it would be proposed to be a planned approach and they total $26.7 million.

Just might point out on the map some of the projects that are outlined.

This is actually the Stadium Road sewer line.

First phase has been completed down to here and the second phase would take it from Fifth Street

down into the plant, near the plant.

This is the Valley Road, Rock Creek Road sewer line.

All of those lines in yellow are the Shanks Branch rehabilitation project and those in blue in this line here are some of the multi-basin rehabilitation projects that we're proposing.

I also need to mention when it comes to rehabilitation of your systems is that it's more of an ongoing project.

I mentioned that our ongoing process is that I'm proposing the projects that we really know about, but as we work through these projects, we will evaluate the rest of the systems and there will probably be some additional projects in latter years that need attention.

I'm just moving into the Nevada Water and Sewer Authority's wastewater improvements.

Heard a lot about the water supply plan in recent months.

and wanted to just draw your attention to some of the wastewater improvements they have outlined at the plant.

In recent years, there is an initiative set up by the state, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, to minimize nutrients that are getting into the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

It causes havoc.

These nutrients cause havoc within the watershed.

Algal blooms develop.

It limits the oxygen in the watershed.

plant life and sea life don't do as well as they could.

So there's a major initiative to limit the nitrogen and phosphorous coming out of the wastewater treatment plants within this watershed.

And there are about 90 wastewater treatment plants that need to meet more stringent limits at this point.

Basically, when you look at nitrogen

The Rivanna's looking at removing nitrogen and phosphorus removal.

This is kind of, I'm not going to necessarily go over the processes for you.

It was more of an indication that all those processes in blue are new processes they will be adding in the next upgrade.

Those in orange are actually processes that will be modified, so a lot of their existing processes have to be modified

in order to meet the more stringent nitrogen and phosphorus removal.

I will point out a lot of the processes take place in the aeration tanks.

and they're going to move into a much more complicated process which is a five-stage nutrient removal process and these basins will have to be modified while keeping them in, some of them will be modified I assume while keeping some of them in action to treat wastewater.

and then they also are adding an additional tank in order to meet the more stringent limits.

They're also going to add tertiary filters which will add some additional reliability.

This is the highest level of treatment that Rivanna can add to the end of their plant.

A little bit more about summarizing their plant modifications.

It adds no new capacity.

This project, currently they're rated at 15 million gallons per day.

Eventually, over time, they are going to go to 20 million gallons per day, but that's over the next 20 years.

This project will take the existing processes and make sure that whatever modifications they're doing, it'll accommodate

what they need to do when they modify it to 20 million gallons per day so they don't miss spend funds.

But obviously they're mandated by the state to meet these more stringent limits of nitrogen and phosphorus.

Preliminary cost estimate, this is after the engineers have completed their preliminary engineering report, are 35.9 million dollars.

And as they work through their design like they are doing now, this number could be modified.

The state is

set aside some funds to fund these wastewater treatment plants and a commitment is made to Rivanna in an agreement for $15.6 million.

So 15.6 of the 35.9 is currently funded, committed to be funded by the state.

But as you know from recent newspaper articles and discussions, this could be modified by the state legislature at any time because they're seeing a much greater need than they anticipated.

A little bit about the odor control plan.

This is a neighborhood concern in Woolen Mills about how odor gets beyond the Moore's Creek plant boundaries and people can smell it down in that neighborhood.

Rivanna is hired and engineered to look at this situation and figure out what processes are the most odorous by doing sampling and then

This project though will not obviously add any additional capacity and first blush it could be quite a bit of money in order to handle the odor control, add additional odor control.

The plan is that it will be presented at the next board meeting.

Another project they have underway is the Meadow Creek Interceptor Project.

The Meadow Creek Interceptor is actually on the north side of the city limits.

This is it in teal or teal green.

and they are looking to replace this line.

It is in very poor shape.

As indicated, they've had some structural breaks on the line in recent years and they've done some investigation and determined that the line needs to be replaced and as they're replacing the line, they will upgrade the size to handle some additional capacity.

Currently, the line has minimal capacity at this point.

Their plan is to upsize the line from 27 inches to 42 inches in diameter.

Preliminary cost estimates are about $25.4 million.

A little bit about funding and what our schedule is for funding.

A rate study incorporating these

The proposed numbers, if accepted, will be completed in the spring of 2008.

It will also include the operations side of the house as well.

And the rates will come back to be presented to city council in May 2008.

And then if adopted, the new rates would go into place for water and wastewater customers effective July 1st.

I might point out that capital projects, when it's related to utilities, are funded through the utility rates.

They aren't funded through the general fund of the city.

It's a special enterprise fund that's established.

And just to summarize, existing water and wastewater infrastructure is aging and is in need of attention and evaluation and upgrades.

Improved infrastructure and increased capacity are needed to maintain the desired quality of life for the citizens of Charlottesville.

And the city's capital improvements program funding needed over a five year period for water is about 18.8 million dollars and for waste water is 26.7 million totaling 45.5 million dollars.

Rivanna's estimated cost for wastewater improvements totals $61.3 million.

Now this doesn't take into account the special funding from the state.

It doesn't include the odor control plan.

It also doesn't include their water supply plan, which they propose over the next five years to be about a little over $70 million.

Thank you, Mr. Hildebrandt.

I have one question.

The two inch water lines, what will be the minimum size they'll be increased to?

Six Inch.

The main reason I bring that up is we've got I guess 20 some miles of two inch line which is totally inadequate for fire protection purposes even in low fire flow demand residential areas and it's pretty critical that we take care of that issue.

Thank you.

A question about capital investment.

You said about $45 million for war on sewer improvements.

You also mentioned that they are covered by war on sewer rates.

They are funded by war on sewer rates.

It's run through the utility funds.

I just had a question about the older control.

Are there any health issues or ramifications as a result of that or any other complaints from the neighbors we should be concerned about?

I have one other question I was having to think about too.

You talked about you're going to be looping some lines, additional looping of lines.

What areas are they in?

It provides additional pressure, redundancy in the system.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Thank you so much.

I don't have a question.

More comments may be more appropriate for Mr. O'Connell, but we've been talking a lot recently about infrastructure needs in our community on a whole wide range of issues from water, supply, sewer, transportation, solid waste, parks, schools, you name it, and it seems to me it would be quite helpful and appropriate if we could have

A presentation, just a one page presentation which lists all the major infrastructure projects that we are considering.

The estimated cost, which of these are sort of must haves versus nice to haves because I think when you start talking 45 million here, 70 million there, 10 million here, 20 million there, you're starting to talk about some real money.

And it adds up, and I think our taxpayers are going to be overwhelmed when they see the amount of money we're talking about.

And I think we don't want to surprise anybody.

We need to be very upfront about the scope of the problem and how we can best go about proceeding without overloading the taxpayers.

I'd just like to offer a comment.

I'd like to thank Ms. Hildebrand.

I think it was a clear presentation on a complicated issue.

It also seems to me we talk about water supply and conserving water.

Good point.

All right, there's no action needed on this.

This is more of an informational report.

Let me thank you again.

Welcome.

Thank you.

All right.

Since my foot's still in the cast, I think I will sit down.

I wanted to welcome all the new members and the new chair.

I also wanted to say thank you to the outgoing council members as well.

Sam Elton served on the MPO, particularly Mr. Lynch, who's been really active in transit, so many of his ideas are embodied in this discussion.

You're getting exactly the same presentation that we're giving to council on Wednesday.

and I think three out of the five of you attended a session November a year ago where we went through some of this stuff.

You authorized the dollars, $50,000 to put towards this study and we hired a consultant and kicked it off.

We're at the midway point of that and we need some more feedback from you on where we're going with that.

So gonna go through the goals, review the RTA goals just for a minute and mostly review the project activities.

You all received these three reports plus a fourth addendum

and really at the end just get some guidance from you on next steps with the Joint Council on DOS Workshop.

What we need from you at the end of this session, about 10-15 minutes here, is really tell us where you want to go next in terms of management and governance and preferred service strategies.

The policy board members have already opined on that a little bit and we want to check that with the rest of the council members and then really discuss what we need to do for that joint workshop and what kind of additional homework we need to do before we're ready to talk with the county.

The vision and working methods, you've already all seen this, for the new members.

I suggest you take a look at this document which is embodied in what we sent you.

It's really based on about, these half a dozen bullets are really based on our review of every single planning exercise that mentioned transit in both city and county in the region in the last about 10 or 15 years.

So it really boiled it down.

You approved this along with the county.

about a year and a half ago.

So that's really kind of the constitution we've been working under.

In each of the beginning of each of the three memos you got, there's a list like this, and this is, with the next slide, this is the entire scope of the consultant study.

What's highlighted in yellow is really what is done to date that is in the reports.

So as you can see, we're going to get to the ones that are not covered in the current reports.

and pretty much our next steps after we sit you down with the County Board of Supervisors for another three or four hour session in a few weeks or a month is really to tell us how to move ahead with items number three and four, the meat of how we move forward.

Of the three reports, the first one is really identifying transit potential.

If you remember what we showed you, the work that we did as staff about a year and a half ago, we really looked at these destinations, the employment and activity centers, and did a bunch of work.

We fed that into the consultant study.

and they took it much farther and looked at these eight items, residential, employment density, congestion, parking availability, connectivity, transit-friendly area plans and policies, and then where UVA employees live because we were able to get that from the university, not with people's names, but they know where everybody is.

Our major employer told us a lot about commuting patterns.

I want to thank the university for sharing that data.

The composite map, there's really a series again of about eight maps for each one of those items, but the composite map is really not too surprising.

The most likely area where we're going to get really high transit use is in the downtown and university area.

The darker it is, the more transit potential, but there's a significant amount of transit potential in the outlying areas in the county as well.

The service strategies report really looked at what we're going to call four options.

At first they might look like they're sort of a phasing option, but it's not really like that.

It's more of a level of investment.

I will kind of cut to the chase on these four options and really the

MPO policy board members really thought that we ought to just focus on number three and four, which are the most significant expansion into the county area.

And again, it's not a deciding point, but they directed us to really think about focusing on a significant expansion.

They also, I'll show you a map in a minute, they also directed us to add a few things into what we just termed 4A.

We're not at a point of making decisions about any of this, but we really need to just feed this into your decisions about how you would manage and govern an authority.

If you're going to go with the baseline or option one, you really probably don't need a new governance structure, for instance.

So these two things feed together.

On the option 4A service, the policy board members really wanted us to really kind of hammer home the idea of connecting the county activity areas, whether it's direct line or a loop that serves these areas, you know, directly between Pantops and 29 North and the Rio.

area that wouldn't necessarily have to go through the city.

And also they wanted us to show the existing CTS routes on that map as well as map the UTS routes in blue there.

So when you're looking at that, that's a composite map of the system.

That item 4A report also, let me go back to that just one, also included

the suggestion to really increase city service.

So if you look at that 4A addendum there's actually increases in city service that are costed out as well, frequency and some new routes.

We've used words like bus rapid transit.

I just wanted to show one or two pictures of the kind of potential vehicle when you think of a word like bus rapid transit or BRT that is one of the serious options.

We're also considering looking at Trolley as well as an active group on that, but this is not the point to choose technology.

This is the point to just be aware of what the options are but really focus on service and governance.

One of the real issues in looking at the baseline, which is forecast on the 08, not current, but the 08 fall start of service.

The baseline really has about 79% investment by city, 21% by county.

Almost all of the other options have significant increase.

in how much the county is putting in, up to roughly about half.

So again, that's just an example based on cost of service.

Big numbers, I'm pleased to say at the moment that some of these options are less than we're going to have to spend on water and sewer duty.

and some of them are a lot more.

So that's one of the things to think about is putting our money where our mouth is.

But these are just to give you a feel operating costs between six and ten and a half million among those strategies and then capital costs that could range anywhere from zero to over a hundred million dollars if you went for the full Cadillac version of a BRT.

Most of that is actually in the work on the streets and things like that, the hard escaping.

Moving to management and governance, these are goals and interviews.

I'm not going to read every one of these, it's in the report.

These are goals and interviews that we heard

We've got an independent person to come in and talk with all the policy makers and lots of activists in the community.

And there's a lot of consensus about many of these things.

Common themes on RTA composition, at least the city and county, include option of UVA and John.

We've also been noting that the foundation ought to be a potential partner as well.

that we want to have local control, we want to have cost sharing that's equitable, that gives us the opportunity to develop additional financing.

Areas of differing views, mostly on board composition, size of the board, representation from the parties, whether we should have people other than elected policy makers on the board.

And that's one of the things that I think that we really want to get you guys to talk about at the joint session.

If you've all seen the report, this is the most I think significant piece of work because our consultant was able to summarize the entire management and governance sheet and all the options on it on one sheet of paper.

color coding.

Along the top, I think I have a slide that sort of lists these.

Along the top, these are the organization possibilities, the Regional Transit Authority and six other options.

I'm not going to bother reading to you.

Major features and pros and cons of each of those seven options along the lines of governance, powers, creation, taxing and revenue.

If you look at that summary table, we would love you all to read the entire report in great detail, but we also have a two-page executive summary up front that really cuts to the chase.

What kind of cut to the chase, I think, of what the policy members on the committee said, because if you look at these, the legislatively enabled Regional Transit Authority is the only one that delivers on two key things.

There's more detail on each of these other options, but again, looking at the two key items, if we want to look at the potential for including UVA, Jaunt, the Marcello-Thompson Foundation, and other potential partners if we wanted to add another county in future, the legislatively enabled RTA is the only one that delivers on all those.

When we look at the revenue enhancing possibilities,

Again, there's one over on the right that does have some potential, I forget which one it is, but the only one that also allows for adding additional sources of income other than current property taxes, the one all the way on the far right, again is the legislatively enabled Regional Transit or Transportation Authority.

So that's sort of the cut to the chase version.

One of the sort of questions that we have for you here today, again to reiterate what the policy board, both the city and county members said, is that they want to focus on significant investment and expansion of the system.

They want to have an RTA governance structure that would allow for future inclusion of those other three entities and would also maximize existing revenues and include potential mechanisms for generating new revenues that you're not allowed to right now.

Both of those really require us to go to the General Assembly

to get permission for setting up a regional transit authority.

If you read the newspaper recently, Richmond is doing the same thing.

We've been working also with the Fredericksburg area, their MPO, and they are actually hired the same governance consultants, so we have the same people working on ours as working on Fredericksburg.

So we think that we'll probably end up going in together with at least one or two other

municipalities on some legislation next year if you guys do decide to go ahead and pursue this opportunity.

And I should mention of course that while we want to go through the whole enchilada at some point this doesn't keep us from continuing to do a great and better job that Judy and Bill and folks in the county and John have been doing too and UTS as well to greatly improve our services right now.

So it's not a chicken or egg situation you can ask for

incremental improvements while we're waiting for permission for moving ahead with an RTA.

This is what I really wanted to ask you about tonight.

We've talked about doing another joint workshop.

We included a draft agenda in your packet.

We want you to tell us tonight, if you're so willing, is the Policy Board

Do we need to go back and review in detail, at some level I don't want you to answer these questions for us until you have had a chance to review the entire report in detail.

So do we need to spend the time of the joint workshop reviewing the other management and governance options or do we want to really focus more on directing the consultant on moving ahead with the RTA specifics.

And then should we spend more workshop time reviewing sort of options one and two of the incremental service options, or do we want to focus on beefing up what option three and four in 4A would be?

And are there any other questions to be addressed in the workshop?

Mr. Mayor, I would suggest that you come back where people can tell us what you think.

I should also just mention for benefit of folks looking online that all these reports are

Okay, thank you.

Thank you for your presentation.

Are there any questions, first of all, for Mr. Brouw?

Any clarifying questions?

And frankly, if you haven't had a chance among all the water and other reports, if you haven't had a chance to read the report yet, we hope that you're inspired to do so.

and prepare for the joint session.

I hope you all think, I think three of you were, Julian you remember you were, I think you were in the last one.

I'll offer a couple of comments.

I think, well, thank you for your presentation.

I'd like to thank MPO for the work they've done on this.

I think we should have a work session with the county on this.

I think that in particular, I want to make sure that we have a commitment from the county board to really boost funding for transit.

To me, in essence, what the city will be doing is giving up sole planning responsibility for CPS, sharing the planning

will also be sharing our federal funding.

But I think it's a good deal for us to do that, but only if the county is serious about making a real commitment to transit.

And I think that a way to find that out is in a work session and really make sure they're clear.

I think we should move ahead and I think we should move ahead with

you know with the last item on your list which is most ambitious and I think that's where we need to go I mean you know I think our community expects it of us you know we're looking we're heading towards four dollar gas and I think it's going to keep going up and so and the final thing this is independent of this topic exactly but I'd also like to see council have a either time on the council agenda

or a work session on where we are currently with city service.

Because I think we certainly have a lot of neighborhoods who've expressed concern about changes that have occurred in the last year.

When we talk about the Y proposal that came up about would we have bus service.

I agree, thank you.

I want to concur with Mr. Brown's comments that I think we need to hold and move forward.

So I think you are getting a green light to move forward and one comment that I will offer which I made at the MPO level as well which is I think it is important as we are looking at

taking our transit system to a whole new level that we not assume that it has to function the same way the routes have to function the same way they do today.

I've become swayed over the past year by Mr. Lynch that we should look very hard at

re-oining the way that the transit system functions and move towards a trunk and feeder system.

And I hope that that continues to be part of this discussion about how the RTA will function and not just assume we're just going to overlay it on the existing framework.

I should mention just two things.

I think that we could probably fit a short discussion of that into the agenda of the joint work session.

I should also mention that we're working actively with your staff.

We have a joint transit tech team and both Bill and Judy are on that along with university and county folks.

So we'll discuss those things with your staff specifically.

I would recommend probably that we maybe have that city council discussion about the

You know, routing things possibly before the joint session, but Gary will talk about timing of things.

I do want to mention that Melissa Barhoe, our new director of transportation programs is here.

I agree with you that we need to look at new

I agree, I agree.

Thank you.

Okay, that concludes the regular portion of our

Our agenda tonight and before we wrap up with some other business, we are going to have one last chance for members of the public to come forward and offer remarks and again try to keep it to three minutes each.

Is there anybody from the public that would like to speak?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Collette Hall, 101 Robertson Lane.

President of the North Downtown Neighborhood Association, and that's the Downtown Residence Association, that's the Neighborhood Association of North Downtown.

In November, I came before city council and informed council that the public hearing on November 1, 2007 held on the 250 Interchange Project was a format that stifled public intercourse and public exchange of ideas.

On December 6th at the NDRA board in the North Downtown Neighborhood meeting where Vice Mayor Taliaferro was a guest, Ernie Reed, a board director, who came before you on December 17th, and I shared with the board and the neighborhood the objectionable format.

The board unanimously voted to send a letter to VDOT requesting a new hearing.

A letter was sent to Brent Sprinkle, VDO Culpepper District Office and to the Office of Civil Rights, VDOT Culpepper District Office.

Ms. Allen from the Office of Civil Rights called me on January 2, 2008 and informed me that Mr. Sprinkle had decided, after talking to people at City Hall, he was not at the hearing,

that there was no need to schedule another public hearing and also that a letter was sent from his office to me dated December 28th of which I still have not received.

However, Ms. Allen did tell me that since this is a city managed project, the City Council of Charlottesville could authorize a new public hearing.

North Downtown is asking for another public hearing on the 250 Interchange McIntyre Extended Project based on the format that is used at city council and the planning commission meetings.

I will also add that the city manager, Gary O'Connell, was respectful enough and I was delighted to hear from him today that he is going to make a comment this evening about rescheduling a hearing.

Thank you, Ms. Hall.

Good evening.

I'm Joe Sikes with the Virginia Organizing Project 703 Concord Avenue.

As you know, some months back, there was a national report issued that showed that Charlottesville had the greatest racial disparity in mortgage lending in the whole country, not something we are real proud of.

I want to draw your attention to the fact that SunTrust Bank, my understanding, holds the city's money.

And so several of us from the Virginia Organizing Project went over to the branch over here on Park Street and High Street on the corner and went in and asked them if we could see their Community Reinvestment Act.

And when we spoke with the branch manager, her response was, what's the Community Reinvestment Act?

So we took her outside of her office and showed her on the wall that it says that the Community Reinvestment Act plan by this bank is supposed to be available during normal business hours and it took quite a few phone calls to their Richmond office until someone got on the speakerphone and at least acknowledged that such a plan existed.

Well as we pursued it, we find out a big problem.

When any bank responds to the Community Reinvestment Act, they can do it with aggregate data, so they say, this is what our bank's doing across the country.

It doesn't really isolate down to, here's what we're doing in Charlottesville.

Now, we're real proponents of the broadest definition of community that you can find, but I don't think anybody here tonight

will say that Charlottesville is a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, where SunTrust's headquarters are, but that's where they keep pointing us, and they say, well, we have to talk to corporate headquarters to find out about this.

Well, I come before you tonight with a pretty simple request.

If they're not treating us well, why do we have our money, our public money in Charlottesville in SunTrust Bank?

Why aren't we looking somewhere else to deposit that money, knowing full well

that the board of the bank and the branch manager and everybody else is going to pay attention to Charlottesville because it really is sad that in the year 2008 we win the prize in the entire nation of having the greatest racial disparity in mortgage lending.

There's something real simple we can do and that's take the money out of their bank if they're not willing to do something right here in Charlottesville.

I hope that you all will investigate that

Thanks very much.

I'm here tonight to offer you some information, access to information, at the November 19th public hearing on the water supply

several or at least a couple city councilors asked Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority to provide some simpler, more citizen-friendly information about the water supply and as far as I can tell that hasn't happened.

I checked the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority website often and did it today too and there still isn't anything.

Well, I took it upon myself to do just that and I created a website.

It's called SeavilleWater.info.

all one word, SEVA water, case insensitive, dot, I-N-F-O for information.

I have a handout here I'll give to Ms. Kochis with the address on it.

It has on it information not only about the water supply plan but about our current water supply.

What do we have now?

What are they talking about giving us?

And of course, since I made it, it has information about the concerns that were expressed on November 19th and as well as lots of other information.

But I really strove to make it easy, make it easy to understand, easy to navigate.

It also addresses many of the common myths that revolve around the water supply, which is I think why it's been accepted so readily.

I was, as I say, meant to give these comments earlier in the evening, but I'm actually glad that I was here to hear the conversation about environmental sustainability.

about preservation, about the impact on all of these things on our citizens of lesser means, how actually thinking about sustainability actually saves us money and saves individuals money, as well as, of course, about the infrastructure costs.

I would ask you, just on another note, to, as you're talking about the infrastructure

Existing infrastructure and rehabilitating it, replacing it, ask a lot of questions about the rate hikes that we've already had.

This came up on November 19th.

Our rates have apparently doubled in not that many years based on replacing infrastructure.

Yet, when asked what infrastructure had been replaced, the director of Rivanna Water actually couldn't tell us.

So I think a really important question for our taxpayer.

are water rate payers.

Seabillwater.info.

I hope you'll take a look at it.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Thank you, Ms. Smith.

My name is Bill Emery.

I live at 1684 East Market.

I think I forgot to say that the first time.

I really enjoyed Ms. Hildebrand's presentation about infrastructure.

I just wanted to correct the record a little bit.

The odor issue isn't just an issue in the Willam Mills neighborhood.

The East Belmont Carlton neighborhood, which historically is a very much underrepresented neighborhood in the city of Charlottesville, takes the brunt of this.

The people on Reeves Street, Nassau, Franklin, and Broadway.

and land use, I think they have an acronym, Locally Unwanted Land Use and although I know it's probably difficult to, you know, gin up the political will to address odor, if there would be some way that we could equally distribute this odor to the customers who are going to be moving into the wonderful homes, Oden Biscuit Run, who will be sending their byproducts to the southeast quadrant of Charlottesville, maybe if they shared the odor they would also be willing to

share the bill to try to make the quality of life for people in that area better.

I think it's a very valid concern.

And I'm not really entirely sure that there aren't health concerns.

If you're sitting somewhere that's stinky all the time, what's it do to you?

I think it's a tough one.

Thank you, Mr. Emery.

Good evening.

Congratulations, Mayor Norris and Vice Mayor Taliaferro, and welcome, Ms. Edwards and everybody else back to City Council.

My name is Joy Johnson, and I reside at 823-D, Hardy Drive, and I am here for a request on asking to look at community policing.

I know that the media have been pounding us trying to get an interview about what's going on in West Haven.

And one of the things that I said to the reporter, which I strongly stand on, is that the shootings that has erupted in Harder Drive is not only happening in Harder Drive.

It is happening on 10th and Page.

It is happening over at South First Street.

It is happening, I was, Christmas Eve, I was at my daughter's house who reside at Ryder Hill and there were gunshots over there too.

So the gunshots in the city is up.

And so when we talk about harder draft, it's not just an isolated incident in harder draft, it's around the city.

And so what I would like to know, in addition to the gentleman who was here,

is to see how we can talk about what we can do about all of the easy access to guns in our community and to kind of look again at the community police and to see do we need to improve it, you know, what is it we need to do, do more money needs to go into it so that we can up, you know, when we hear a report of police officers who have to do overtime

Frankly after eight hours, you know, to have somebody to come out and do extra job may not be what they want to do but it's about the money and I think we have to really stop looking at about the money but about how we make

the community safe.

So pretty much what I wanted to do is to make sure that the media get the message also that the violence that is in Hardee Drive is not just in Hardee Drive, it is all around this whole city and I think that we have a commitment to look at it and that's just Hardee Drive but South 4th Street and everywhere else.

And then the other question I had was, you all are talking about these lights that are supposed to save energy, are you all using them in City Hall?

and is there a plan to also put them in City Hall?

Thank you.

Yes, we are putting them in City Hall.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

My name is John Martin.

I live in Free Union.

I'm a county resident.

I didn't come here to speak tonight.

I just wanted to see what was going to happen about the drought restrictions.

But I decided I would like to say something about

Water Supply.

I was here in November at the public meeting, and citizens disagree sometimes, and that's fine.

That's great that citizens disagree.

I disagree with some of the things that have been said in November and tonight.

I just felt I don't need to yield the podium.

I've been involved as a citizen of the water supply project for the better part of 10 years at every stage, went to every public meeting.

And our water supply plan for this community is outstanding.

It is an outstanding plant.

Millions of dollars were spent on it, a lot of man hours, woman hours were spent on it, a lot of citizen hours were spent on it, and it's an outstanding product.

DEQ will soon be, I have one problem with it involving in-stream flow in the Mormons River.

during an interim period while they're filling the Ragged Mountain Reservoir.

And I have already submitted some comments to DEQ and they'll be resolved.

But other than that one limited concern, which is important to me, it is a splendid, it's a model for other communities.

Thank you, Mr. Martin.

Any other comments from the public?

Mr. Mayor, congratulations.

Thank you.

And welcome back and welcome to you to Mr. Huja.

And thanks for coming to our association meeting and talking to the retirees.

I'm not prepared, I wasn't really prepared to speak tonight, but in reading letters to the editor,

I cut this out tonight and I hope that each one of the members of council, when you're working on the budget, will read this and take it into consideration.

I'm going to miss Kevin because he took a lot of time and energy in the things that the citizens have brought before you all.

As I said, that night we had butted heads too, but I really appreciated his vote on the rescue squad, not the rescue squad, but the fire department's proposal and I'm still against that and I hope that you all will take that into consideration because homes are not going up and people are not getting the money that their homes are assessed at and

I don't think that we have the money to add six additional people to the fire department and I think that the city council should consider donating money to the rescue squad just like the Albemarle County does.

Albemarle County gave $165,000 to the rescue squad.

Charlottesville, Albemarle, Rescue Squad, in addition to whatever they give to the other volunteer services.

They gave $165,000 last year's budget, and this past year's budget, they gave $205,000.

That is actual figures that I have obtained from the county of Albemarle, administrator's office.

So instead of adding these six people,

to the fire department for that purpose, for the ambulance service.

I suggest that you work toward giving more to the volunteer rescue squad.

Thank you, Ms. Roberts.

Anyone else?

Okay, thank you.

Any comments real quick?

I would like to follow up real quick on Mr. Sakus' comments about SunTrust.

I think it's before we even consider the idea of pulling our money out of SunTrust, I think we should at least do some due diligence and

Also in regards to that when I know there was a public presentation about the results of the study from that was there ever a breakdown of the actual

banks that were involved in that.

We did not.

Okay, we're going to move on now to other business and the first item on other business, we do have a resolution about the drought warning and I'm going to read this real quick.

A resolution declaring that drought warning stage restrictions are no longer in effect, whereas on August 16, 2007, the city council imposed mandatory restrictions on the use of water from the city public water supply pursuant to city code section 31-125.

and whereas rainfall in the second half of December 2007 measurably improved the water levels in the urban reservoirs that supply water to the city and whereas on January 2, 2008 the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority announced that as a result of the increase in water supply the Authority's drought warning was lifted but that a drought watch remained in effect

and whereas City Code Section 31-125 provides that drought warning stage restrictions shall remain in effect until City Council determines that a water emergency in the City of Charlottesville no longer exists.

Now therefore be it resolved by the Council for the City of Charlottesville that a water supply emergency within the City of Charlottesville no longer exists and the mandatory restrictions imposed on August 16, 2007 are no longer in effect.

That's a very good question.

Simply put, you'd be allowed to wash your car, to water your yard, to use water in that manner.

Given the warm weather, we might see some of that.

I saw some today.

But those are the major areas.

I think it's important to note though that the drought watch is still in effect and people can do lots of things to continue to conserve water and to be really careful.

Even if they, I mean we were encouraging people to use three gallon containers to water their yard.

If people see fit to water their yards that's an option that they can take.

But those are the major ones.

I'll move the resolution.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

Any further discussion?

I'd like to comment.

I'd like to see us have a periodic, a monthly report on the status of not just the levels of the reservoir, but stream flows, rainfall to date, until we have a regular sense of re-entering the year

in a difficult state and so we can maintain public awareness of that and be prepared to move back into mandatory restrictions as necessary.

So I'd like to ask that that be something we report on at least monthly.

Okay, the resolution has been moved and seconded.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Motion carries.

Thank you very much.

Any other business anybody would like to bring up?

Thursday of this week, 5 to 7 p.m. in the basement conference room.

I just wanted to mention, it's come up in the last two council meetings about the hearing process on the 250 interchange project.

There's a design review that interested parties are being invited to attend in the next week.

Our belief is that there may be a series of those meetings.

But our suggestion to council, and I've seen this in a couple emails from you, is we go to a traditional public hearing process when the recommendations are coming to council.

You'll be presented with two alternatives.

This council will have to decide on those.

and at that point we would recommend that there be the traditional public hearing that's held in this council chambers.

It could be as early as February 19th.

It could move into March depending on these meetings that are held over the next two weeks.

So when that gets scheduled we would suggest that it be here.

We could have a pre-meeting with interested citizens that want to get more information and also have the information on our website.

Thank you, Mr. O'Connell.

If there's no other business, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting.

Second.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Motion carries.

P.E.P.

P.S.

Bird flu, pandemic, avian influenza.

So, how worried should I be?

What can I do to be prepared?

Those are all good questions, and having the right answers can help us all be better prepared in case there is a flu outbreak.

The Virginia Department of Health has developed this video to help you understand the pandemic issue and to help you prepare for any possibility should it arise.

Right now there's no need to panic.

Virginia's public health officials are keeping a close eye on the situation and will keep you informed of any developments.

We're all working diligently to assure the health and safety of all the citizens of the Commonwealth.

But government alone cannot protect you from a pandemic.

Every Virginian needs to be prepared.

That's why we've made this video, so you can learn important information about keeping yourself, your family, and your community safe.

H5N1.

That's the strain of a flu virus that's commonly called bird flu or avian influenza.

By the end of 2005, the bird flu had sickened and killed birds in Asia and Europe and had also affected over 130 people in Asia.

Fortunately, it is not easy to spread from person to person.

But if that changes, it could set off a worldwide outbreak or pandemic.

A pandemic could have widespread social and economic impacts.

So what can you do?

The simple answer is to educate yourself and your family and stay informed.

Flu and influenza are the same thing.

It's just that flu is a short little nickname that we've given to the disease that's called influenza.

Influenza comes around every year.

Here in Virginia, we expect to see it anytime between November and March.

Influenza is a serious disease.

It makes you feel really sick and it's a disease that makes you feel like you just can't get out of bed.

The symptoms are a fever and with the fever you'll have a cough, a sore throat, body aches, muscle aches and really feel tired.

And some people can develop a more severe form of the disease and have to go to the hospital for pneumonia.

So tell me, how do you catch it?

You catch the flu by breathing in droplets that come out when someone with the disease coughs or sneezes.

There are different strains of the flu virus and once you've caught a particular strain, you can't get sick from that strain again, but you can get sick from a new strain.

What's meant by new strains?

The flu virus changes forms from year to year.

It can change a little bit or it can change a lot.

When it changes a lot, it means there's a new strain out there that's never been seen before and no one's immune and that can lead to a pandemic.

What exactly do you mean by pandemic?

A pandemic is a worldwide epidemic.

That brings us to the bird flu, also known as avian influenza.

In late 2003, Asian countries started seeing large numbers of chickens and other birds dying of a severe flu-like illness.

More recently, new cases have been reported in many parts of Asia and parts of Europe.

At first, this new strain of flu was only seen in birds.

Then a few humans living and working in close contact with these birds caught it.

So far, half of those people who have contracted the bird flu have died from it.

This has caused scientists to be concerned about its potential impact if it does develop into a pandemic.

The good news is that it doesn't spread easily from person to person, which would be required for a pandemic to begin.

Yes, definitely.

We're concerned about the current situation because it meets two of the three criteria that are necessary for a pandemic to occur.

One is that we have a new strain of the flu virus that's never been seen before, and two is that this strain of the virus is causing severe illness and death.

We're fortunate that the third criterion is missing.

and that is that this strain of the flu virus is not easy to spread from person to person.

It's important to remember there is no certainty that this bird flu will become a pandemic.

Even if a pandemic does not develop from this strain, scientists believe that it is not a question of if we will have a pandemic, but when.

There were three pandemics in the 20th century.

The last truly devastating pandemic was in 1918.

Between 20 and 40 million people around the world died.

If a pandemic occurred, it would have a great impact on our society.

No one could say for sure how many people would get sick and die, but any pandemic could cause severe damage to our country.

In Virginia, the predictions are just as serious.

This year's vaccine does not protect against the avian flu.

Each year scientists develop a vaccine based on the influenza strains expected to be circulating during the upcoming flu season.

It takes an extremely long time, at least several months, to produce a vaccine.

So actually we're not going to be able to rely on a vaccine to protect us from a pandemic during the early months.

What about medicines like Tamiflu?

Tamiflu will not cure influenza.

It will, if taken early enough in the infection, reduce symptoms up to as long as one day.

But quite frankly, there won't be enough Tamiflu for everyone during a pandemic.

So, should I go get some Tamiflu for my family?

VDH agrees with the CDC.

Individuals should not stockpile Tamiflu.

The supply is very limited.

Deciding who will receive the limited supply of vaccine or medications is one of the most difficult decisions to be made.

The Virginia Department of Health will follow federal recommendations.

These focus on protecting health care workers who provide direct patient care as well as people at highest risk of complications and death.

I'm pretty healthy and I'm relatively young so I'm probably pretty far down that list.

There are a few easy steps that can help keep a virus from spreading.

Wash your hands regularly and carry hand sanitizers to use when soap and water are not available.

Cover your mouth when coughing or sneezing.

Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth, and stay at home when you are sick.

Also, keep sick children home from school and daycare.

Personal protective equipment is used by health care professionals in the direct care of sick individuals.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Virginia Department of Health don't recommend the use of masks in the general community.

Schools, businesses, offices and communities should instruct students and employees to stay home if they are sick.

Businesses could be forced to shut temporarily because too many workers are out sick.

Business will also feel the effect of fewer people out shopping or doing their usual activities.

During a pandemic, public health officials will look at ways to slow the spread of infection.

For example, limiting large gatherings such as concerts and sporting events, encouraging telecommuting, closures or snow days put into effect, or possibly closing schools.

Could people actually be quarantined?

Isolation and quarantine might be used during early stages to try to control the spread of infection.

Keep in mind that isolation means separating people who are ill from those who are not, and this is a good idea in any case.

Quarantine, however, means separating people who are not yet ill but have been exposed to the virus.

What has the government been doing to prepare?

In 2005 the United States Department of Health and Human Services and President George W. Bush

We issued a federal plan to prepare for and respond to pandemic influenza.

The nationwide strategies will be woven into our local, regional and state response efforts.

This will help assure that government, public and private responders will have consistent guidance in dealing with a pandemic.

Keep in mind we don't know for sure when a pandemic may strike.

Although public concerns about pandemic flu came to light in 2005, public health officials have been planning for pandemic flu for many years.

In early 2005, the Virginia Department of Health created the Pandemic Flu Advisory Committee.

This group includes representatives from public health, the health care and mental health community, state and local government, law enforcement, first responders, legal advisors, ethics experts, faith-based programs, community leaders, university experts, utilities, schools and businesses.