City Council Meeting   4/21/2008

I'd like to call this meeting to order.

Ms. Koch, if you could call the roll.

Here.

We're going to start with some announcements, and I have several announcements to make tonight.

First of all, I want to commend our city staff.

We had over the weekend, some of you may have heard, a major water incident that ended up flooding some of our city offices, and thanks to the quick response of our city staff who came in over the weekend, was able to salvage much of the equipment and paperwork, et cetera, that would otherwise have been destroyed, and I want to commend the city staff for their quick response.

I know they're still working through a lot of the after effects of this incident.

Secondly, I wanted to highlight a couple of initiatives that have come to the fore in the last couple of weeks.

First of all, I see Charlottesville Community Design Center in the audience.

This is a new initiative by the Charlottesville Community Design Center called SPARK, which can be accessed with more information on www.spark-change.org.

and this is a new initiative to promote energy efficiency primarily in the residential sector.

So I encourage more people to find out about SPARC and what we can be doing to reduce our energy consumption.

Secondly, I'm very pleased to announce that the City of Charlottesville is now a member and a proud supporter of the National No Child Left Inside Coalition.

which is an organization that promotes environmental education, public health and outdoor recreation.

On April 22nd, Earth Day, the coalition will be meeting with the subcommittee of the House Education and Labor Committee about the federal No Child Left Inside Act of 2007 which would provide major new funding for these kinds of initiatives.

We wish them the best and I want to thank our Parks and Recreation Department for their efforts on that initiative.

A couple of other things.

On Monday, April, a week from today, April 28th, at the Omni Hotel from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., we are having a major community jobs fair.

Employers from all parts of the community, hospitality, tourism, education, retail, and more, will be offering employment information.

Anybody who's looking for work or knows folks that are looking for work, please do attend.

I want everybody to pay attention to this picture right here.

I know it's going to be up on the screen momentarily.

This is a 12-year-old girl that we are looking for.

She's been missing since April 15th.

Her name is Lorena Sanchez Toledo.

If anybody at home or in the audience happens to know of Lorena's whereabouts, her family is very worried for her well-being, as is the whole community.

Please call the Charlottesville Police Department at 970-3280.

And that's all the announcements that I had.

Yes, I have one announcement.

I want to announce that there's a regional summit from May 10th, Saturday, May 10th, from 8.30 to 12.

If you're interested in transportation, because I hear a lot about transportation, this is your chance to come and talk about transportation issues and how we can deal with them.

There are still appointments available for the Women's Health Day at the West Haven Clinic.

It's on May 29th.

It's a Thursday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

It's for all women aged 45 and over that don't have health insurance.

Okay, thank you all.

Yes, I want to present this to Mayor Norris.

I had the opportunity to represent him down in Lexington, I guess a couple weeks ago, and just to attest to more evidence that Charlottesville is truly going green, our staff really took

There's really two awards.

The first award was the Governor's Environmental Excellence Award and this is the Gold Award which was the top award which everybody can see which is really neat and the staff deserves a lot of credit for what they've done on that and in addition to that we also got the Flag Award and the Flag Award is presented

when you go above and beyond.

I too want to commend the staff for their leadership in this arena.

And you'll note, if you've looked on the agenda for tonight, there's quite a number of items on tonight's agenda that have to do with this general topic of environmental stewardship.

In fact, at my best count, there's eight significant items on tonight's agenda.

Clearly, this is an issue of great concern to this council and this community, and so I'm proud to receive these awards on behalf of the city.

We will now open the meeting up to matters by the public.

We ask members of the public to keep their comments to three minutes.

And I have a large number of people that have signed up to speak.

We're going to allow everybody that's signed up to speak, and then we'll have another opportunity at the end of the meeting for other matters by the public, in addition to the public hearings that we have already scheduled for tonight.

My name is Michael Masters.

I live on Heshin Road.

I'm elected representative of the Meadowbrook Hills Neighborhood Association.

On behalf of the Neighborhood Association, I would present this petition to city council for their consideration.

I can read it to you.

It's titled, petition to amend zoning ordinance for the urban corridor URB district.

The following undersigned residents of the Meadowbrook Hills Neighborhood Association respectfully petition the city of Charlottesville to amend the current zoning ordinance

for the urban corridor URB district on the east side of Emmett Street from the intersection of Barracks Road north to Morton Drive in the following manner.

Number one, prohibit commercial properties from having vehicular and pedestrian access to the residential neighborhood at the rear of the properties that border Meadowbrook Road, a residential street.

Any existing vehicular and pedestrian access into this residential neighborhood is to be abandoned when new development of a property is undertaken.

Number two,

prohibit rear-facing public areas such as outside terraces, balconies or patios from the rear of any commercial building, prohibiting them from creating public areas that would face directly into the adjoining neighborhood.

A suitable sound and noise barrier shall be erected behind all new development to protect residential area from noise generated by commercial development.

This is signed by about 85% of the residents.

It has 100% support of the neighborhood association.

Some people were on vacation or could not be reached.

Should I pass it to you or give it to the clerk?

Thank you, Mr. Masters.

It's nice to see no Republican up there now.

My comments are on the homeless shelters being considered in the neighborhoods, especially my neighborhood.

I watched Channel 29 the other day and a citizen was scared to identify herself because of possible backlash to talk about her home, the safety.

This was moved out of Market, Ridge, Fontaine, all commercial or all non-residential and above zonings.

You put it in now in an African-American neighborhood.

I'm mixed blood.

It comes from three.

Mr. Bear himself, he has a church which is zoned commercial office.

Very interesting.

I'm wondering if they have a certificate of occupancy for where they're at now because if they have a fire, we'll say, oh, it's a tragedy.

No one knew.

Do you have weapons inspections and nightly patrols going on there to prevent rapes, fights which occur in confined spaces?

We'll say, oh, it's so sad that she was stabbed.

No one knew.

Could we provide police persons two per night to patrol there right now because I think with them being in a space that probably frees up maybe one or two from the problems of having homeless on the street.

Mr. Bear, the preacher, he says that if he moves it into his church, he'll miss grants, the other churches won't help him, they'll just back out because it's on his property.

I think it's time for the city, what's the group, PACE, you're familiar, and the non-African American citizens to stand up.

I'll be more than willing to pay any increase in taxes when we need

to buy or to buy and build or to put it back in one of these places that are already usable.

They're there, they've been proven that they're usable, there's their own commercial, etc.

And the frustrating thing is that if this was in a school auditorium which has a kitchen,

Mothers would be outside.

All the homeless, they'll have drugs, they'll have weapons near my children.

It'd be a big problem in New York.

If you picked a lot, say on Blue Ridge Road, the white doctors live there.

You think that that would be considered for 45 minutes?

Okay.

So there are a lot of other things in here about how many people they're keeping there at night.

Thank you, Mr. Martin.

Mr. Mayor and members of council, my name is Francis Fife and I live at 501 9th Street SW in the city.

I speak not as an expert, even though I was once a member of council and chairman of the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority.

I come to you because I am deeply troubled about the dollar

and environmental costs of the plan for the future water supply of the Charlottesville-Albemarle area should the current planned course be followed.

In the interest of brevity, I ask that you request the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority to postpone any action connected with raising the height of the dam at the Ragged Mountain Reservoir.

work on the present dam to increase its safety needs to be done, of course.

Let me ask you to look again at dredging the reservoir at the South Fork of the Rivanna River.

First, we were told that dredging could cost approximately 140 million dollars.

More recently, we've been told it was 225 million.

No substantiation of these estimates has been provided, though documentation has been requested.

I have now been led to believe that these estimates are highly excessive.

I believe that the Rivanna Authority previously received proposals for the work from professional dredgers with extensive experience at a fraction of the cost above.

Such a huge discrepancy, frankly, demands a thorough re-examination of the possibility of dredging at an enormous savings to everyone.

Were I in your seat, I would immediately call for the Rivanna Authority to look into the dredging alternative before proceeding with any other work.

Time doesn't permit me to go into the environmental costs

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Fife.

Good evening, council members and mayor.

I want to thank Mr. Huja for doing the pull in to my announcement.

We are going to pass you out these and hope that you can pass them to folks on the street.

Just to highlight the upcoming regional summit

May 10th, United Jefferson Area Mobility Plan.

It's an update of the five county and city regional plan.

We're not focusing on a lot of new projects.

What we really want to do is come together and frankly add in some of the green initiatives that you're talking about.

We have an outside speaker who is one of the country's foremost experts on climate change.

We're asking him to talk about a new growing cooler report looking at how the land use and transportation issues are a potential solution to climate change issues.

Again, we want to encourage you to telephonics.com.

I think Rick will be posting this info on the city TV loop.

But most importantly, you can just go to unjam.org, U-N-J-A-M.org, get all the details.

May 9th, 830 to noon.

We're going to have some refreshments, a really good outside speaker.

But mostly, our tagline is your place, your community, your choices.

And we think it's time for the regent to speak to Richmond together.

I'm sorry, I said May 10th.

Thank you very much.

You can read, Mr. Huja, that was a test.

Thank you for your service to our community.

We wish you the best in the next event.

Good evening, I'm Chad Freckman, 104 Northwood Circle in the city.

I'm here to talk to you briefly about transportation in the city.

I've been discussing with the CTS director some issues regarding transportation in youth in our community and I'm happy to say that it's been very receptive and I'm looking forward to seeing some changes and I understand that there is a potential for a bus line to go up by the high school.

With the cost of fuel rising, in particular barrel oil today was $117, I think we're all aware of what's happening with transportation.

At the same time in our community, we're having a design process for YMCA facility that's going to serve our community, in particular serve a lot of the kids who attend CHS because the facility is going to be placed in McIntire Park.

Cooperation I guess with the bus service, it's going to provide a lot of kids the opportunity to get around, not only get to school but potentially to use this new facility.

So I'd like to encourage the city to look very closely and quickly at the idea of extending the free summer bus ride program at CTS and making that all year round.

I think there's some administrative issues that need to be worked out, what kind of ID they're gonna be using, et cetera.

We're coming to the end of the school year right now and it's something that I think over the course of the summer could be worked out and so that when school starts again in the fall,

This program potentially could be put in place.

My understanding of the way CTS operates and is funded is that by extending a free bus pass, we're not necessarily increasing the budget.

To do that, the buses are already running, and as far as the federal funding goes, as long as buses are not being used as a substitute for school transportation, but they are open to the general public, there is no problem with using the federal funds that we currently use.

So please, let's put that on the agenda and get it done.

Thank you, Mr. Fred.

Please know it's already been done, but we'll get to that in a moment.

That's fast, right?

Good evening.

I'm Shelley Murphy, I'm with Piedmont Housing Alliance and I'm just here to share some information distributing a mid-year report for you for July 1 to December 2007 and to encourage you to encourage the city residents to take advantage of the programs that we have such as financial literacy, home buying, education classes,

default foreclosure counseling, reverse mortgage counseling, and again the basic financial literacy classes.

All of our programs are free.

There's no charge.

We just would like some more participation.

And there's your report.

Thank you, Ms. Martin.

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

Mr. Mayor, at the last City Council meeting, you announced a meeting on May 6 discussing the future water plan.

I just learned that it will be a work session so that the public will not be able to speak.

I therefore ask you to hold a public hearing or a forum or a charrette before the Council votes a water rate increase.

We absolutely will, thank you.

Richard Berman, Second Street Northwest, Mr. Mayor, Council.

Saturday we had the Charlottesville Marathon, which I think was a wonderful success and a great thing to have.

My wife and I live in an apartment three blocks from where the finish line was.

with the windows closed and the heat pump on to give us cooling.

They set the PA system up for the couple of hundred people around the finish line.

And at six o'clock in the morning, they woke us up out of a sound sleep because the PA system was so loud.

I called the police department about it and they said, well, the noise ordinance is only good till 6 a.m.

If it's noise pollution before 6 a.m., it's noise pollution after 6 a.m. And I would ask you to extend the ordinance to be 24-7.

My name is Raymond Mason.

I live at 717 Cynthia Avenue, Charlottesville, Virginia.

The reason I'm here is about a complaint that I filled with the Charlottesville Police Department back in early February.

I received a letter from the department, a standard letter on February 26th, stating that someone would be in touch with me and let me know what the standing was.

Until today, until I actually went to see Sergeant Davis, I hadn't heard anything.

No one has contacted me or anything.

The seriousness of this complaint, to me, demands immediate response.

I was arrested on 7-14-07, taken to the Charlottesville Almonte Regional Jail, where they immediately called the registry squad to take me to the UVA emergency room.

The person who brought me to the jail told the people at the jail that I was intoxicated.

The medical reports

that I will provide you a copy of tomorrow clearly showed that there was no alcohol in my system for that to be the true statement.

With that being said, I need to know, do the police have a protocol if they pull up on the scene and someone's unconscious because one of the officers told my mother after she came to the house and said that his eyes had rolled back into his head and he just was out of it.

Did he have seizures, use drugs, or drink alcohol?

With that being said, you would think the officer would have enough sense to, you know, immediately call the rescue squad and have them come take me to the hospital.

Well, that didn't happen, and my life was in great danger.

I stayed at the hospital for over eight hours, and I was in touch and go for quite a bit of that time.

Something to me has to be done.

As a matter of fact, I demanded it be done.

I mean, I should not have been treated like a second-class citizen, and with that being said, please help me out.

Here's copies of the police report for you.

I'm Phyllis Cox-Sherris.

I live on Cedar Bluff Road on the Rivanna Reservoir.

and I am here today and I will also plan to talk before the Board of Supervisors about the issue of dredging.

I'm here to tell you that people in my subdivision and others that I've spoken to who live on the reservoir

are all very much in favor of dredging and have been for quite a while.

And I'm here because we have heard rumors that it has been said that we are very much against that and everyone

that I have spoken to is very much in favor of that because when we look out our windows or we go out onto the reservoir we already see how much the silt is building up and how much it's changing our abilities to get down the reservoir I think as Kevin Sauer has spoken about on the rower as well and so I'm intimately involved with those changes.

So we are very concerned.

We don't want to be living on a swamp.

We don't want that for everyone to be able to enjoy the reservoir and certainly for the property values in our county, which would, I think, eventually affect the city revenues as well.

So we are concerned that if we do not do the dredging now, that

It may not ever happen, so we are here to ask that it be put in as part of the water supply plan.

And like the Sierra Club, we ask that at least there be a second opinion about the issue as is.

And to just end by quoting John Brown, who's a professor of engineering at UVA, recently wrote a letter that was published in the paper.

Our water plan should start with maintaining the supply we have.

We should dredge the South Fork Reservoir before we go off and create a huge dam at Ragged Mountain, lose 130 acres of parkland there, and build an expensive pipeline.

Thank you.

I am Richard Collins.

I live at 108 Wilson Court here in the city.

I had breakfast with Francis Fife the other day, a former mayor, former chairman of the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority, and like he, I couldn't explain the discrepancy between the monetary figures proposed for the dredging as presented by the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority and those that we've been getting from other qualified sources.

So I followed him here this evening because we agreed that we would ask you, first of all, to have the public

I want to thank the members of council for doing that.

It's interesting that the city had to do it rather than the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority.

But also, a number of us have talked to the consultants who have expertise in the area

and in dredging management and they're going to come the day before the work session and we have reserved a room in the design center starting at 7 o'clock and going till 930 for people who want to learn more about this dredging project which is not just a technical issue as you all are aware.

The consequences of going one way or another on this issue are immense.

And so I just wanted you all to know that we have taken advantage of your leadership, Mr. Mayor.

I'm confident that without your leadership we would not be having this meeting coming up and with the support of your fellow council members.

One final thing I would like to say is that this meeting will be held before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will give you the one permit you must have before you can do anything at all at the dam.

and they are listening and they're going to be watching these meetings.

We have already sent an invitation to them to come and join and learn because much of their decision on going for the dam, if they go for it, was based on assumptions about the cost of the reservoir being so extraordinary that it wasn't practicable.

Again, thank you.

And to our citizens, I'd like to say that you can find more about this dredging issue perhaps on the following website.

It's Seaville

Thank you Mr. Collins.

Mr. Mayor, Councillors, in 2002, in November 2002, City Council approved a community water supply plan for this region.

It was actually the only time since that Council has voted on something that could be called a plan as opposed to a permit application that we voted on in June 5th of 2006.

And I'd like to ask all of you as city councilors and as stewards of our environment and leaders of our community to go back and read that plan because there's a lot of good information and good ideas in that plan that I believe in the rush to build, in the rush to get something done has been overlooked.

The cornerstone of that plan was to take a watershed approach,

to take a stewardship approach of our resources.

And of course dredging was a big component of that plan.

Somehow the elected officials got talked out of that dredging idea.

Shortly after we raised the rates by almost 70% to pay for our plan, we got a memo from Rivanna saying dredging is going to cost too much.

$42 million is too much.

It will blow the budget.

less than a year later when Rivanna decided that perhaps the James River was a more desirable alternative but it was going to cost 120 million bucks all of a sudden dredging became 135 million dollars less than a year and most recently as we've heard as a new plan which I would contest it's not really a plan

that's simply a goal for a subset of the interest in Charlottesville.

Now that that plan looks like it will cost 142 million dollars, dredging is going to cost 225 million dollars.

I believe that you all need to go to the source on this.

City Council is elected by the citizens of Charlottesville to do what's right for the citizens of Charlottesville.

You don't work for staff.

Staff works for you.

The consultants work for you.

We don't have an obligation to carry the consultants through the next recession.

They can find other work.

We need to do the right thing for our environment.

We need to do the right thing for this community that falls on your shoulders.

Thank you so much.

Downing Smith Good evening, I'm Downing Smith.

I live at 810 Lucas Avenue.

I have a lot of concerns about this water supply plan too.

Many have already been addressed by other people.

I hope to do more research and to pull my considerations together and share them with you, possibly in an email.

But I have one thing I would like to talk to you about tonight.

I've talked to a lot of people about this plan and one thing that's come up is several people have expressed to me that there's something corrupt going on in this process.

I don't believe it.

I've been called naive for not believing it, but there's no evidence that anything improper or illegal has gone on.

However, something has gone on.

There is the clear appearance, not that anything's been done wrong, the appearance of impriority.

And as you all know, appearances can be very important.

And I think the appearances of what's been going wrong is why some people believe there really is something going on, even though I don't believe there is.

There may be some incompetence, irresponsibility, maybe even some ego involved in this but I don't think there's anything illegal.

I've been the chief financial officer or controller of several organizations and in those positions I've had a fiduciary responsibility to the stakeholders in those organizations to make sure I safeguard those assets.

And some of the actions or lack of actions

that I have seen or read about are not doing the fiduciary duty that should be done.

And to me, the main thing is the relationship between the Robin and Warren Sewer Authority and the consultant.

I've been told that the consulting contract started off at about $800,000 and somehow morphed into paying them over $3 million.

To my knowledge, there has been no competitive bidding.

And even if there has been competitive bidding, if a consultant writes the RFP, then they put themselves at an advantage against other competition.

At the University of Virginia, if you want to do an RFP

This is for $50,000.

I guess it's over $50,000.

You need to get six bids.

And if you want to try and do a sole source justification, which there are certainly reasons to do that, if it's unique scientific equipment or something like that, over $10,000, you have to provide written justification for that.

And then the procurement department has to do a market survey to prove that your written justification is accurate.

This may be overkill for what we're talking about here, but I don't, as working in finance, I don't ever want to be put in a position where I have to explain to somebody why my actions aren't illegal.

Thank you Mr. Smith.

Good evening, counselors and staff.

My name is John Gaines and I reside at 214 9th Street, Northwest.

Traveling down here, I thought I said, I was thinking to myself and I said, I guess Pastor Bear and the Hope House staff should be commended for

solving some of the problems as it relates to the homeless and especially sheltering of the homeless.

However, as a matter of courtesy, should the residents of the 11th Street area have received, should they not receive answers to their many unanswered questions?

Number one,

Why has the city allowed this shelter to operate as a code violator?

Number two, what effect will the shelter have on children attending activities at Hope House?

Number three, what effect will the shelter have on property value?

And fourthly, why didn't Pastor Bear house the shelter at his church on Rile Road?

Number five, why didn't the city contact the Venable and WCEH Neighborhood Association regarding this issue?

Number six, what type of criminal background checks, if any,

will be made before individuals can reside at the shelter.

And number seven, does the city plan to provide financial assistance to the shelter?

Yes, counselors, we all should reach out to help the homeless.

This certainly is a community issue that should be addressed

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Gaines.

Hi, I'm Mandy Burbage and I'm a resident of 742 Graves Street and an employee of the Charlottesville Community Design Center.

I just want to thank all of you city councilors and the city as a whole for being proactive in educating yourselves about a lot of environmental issues that we see relevant today and for always finding ways to lead by example in many ways we're going to hear about later tonight.

It seems to me that at the forefront of most environmental discussions today is the issue of energy, whether it's the rising cost of oil, climate change, or pressure to build new coal-fired power plants in Virginia.

And I wanted, on behalf of Charlottesville Community Design Center, to introduce a new initiative that we're calling SPARC that Dave mentioned earlier, which is an energy efficiency initiative targeting households in the greater Charlottesville area.

Our goal with this program is to be a resource for helping Charlottesville understand its energy use and reduce its carbon footprint.

And I wanted to just mention a couple of things since we are launching this program during Earth Week.

I wanted to reiterate that we have a website that is meant to be a resource for Charlottesville residents whether they are homeowners or renters or landlords or seeking to build a home.

and that website is www.spark-change.org and that website is a resource with some really practical tools for residents who are looking to reduce their energy use at home.

And I wanted to also mention a couple of events that are happening at the design center this week.

Tomorrow night we're going to have a panel on the topic of energy efficiency at 7 o'clock.

We'll have five panelists addressing the social, environmental and political importance of energy efficiency and what can be done at the individual and local government level to address it.

And we're also having a workshop on Wednesday evening at six o'clock also at the design center with Russ Edwards of Seville Enviro who's going to talk about what's involved in a residential energy audit.

how to identify where you're losing money and energy at your house.

And finally I just wanted to offer CCDC as a resource to the city as it finds more ways to reduce its footprint and also to help reach residents with the incentives that you are obviously developing right now.

We'd like to help you get the word out about those.

One on the transit for use and I think Siri is proceeding to do that, what you asked.

I think you will get more information on that.

It is a very exciting opportunity for youth to learn to use the transit system and I think it will save the energy issues also as well as many other ways.

Secondly, the water plan.

I want you to know that I get a lot of calls from that plan and I get a lot of emails and I have talked to quite a few people and I have been talking every day almost and I have been told that I have only made up my mind about it.

I didn't know that but I was informed that.

So I was wondering why would you want to make up your mind without having all the information.

So I would think, I think city council is

Thank you Mr. Huja.

A couple of comments regarding the

Border Supply plan, again, to reiterate the fact that I'm glad that we are having a work session.

If you've ever been to one of our work sessions, they're kind of odd the way they're set up because we're kind of like in this fishbowl environment, then there are people behind us kind of watching, but you really can't participate.

So I really want people to come to that work session though because it's important that you hear the dialogue that's taking place and there may not be an opportunity there for dialogue between the public.

There will be another one for public comment.

So come in and just take notes and

and pay close attention to what's happening and if you have questions, there will be an opportunity to present them to Mr. Mason.

I'm glad that you're feeling better and I just appreciate how you're being an advocate for health equity in that arena and that is something that we can explore more and look more toward to make sure that that does happen.

And regarding the homeless issue,

There are so many layers of issues regarding that and because we, I don't think we as a community have talked about the homeless in a way that's been comprehensive.

It's the reason why we are where we are right now.

It's not just homelessness, it's also about job opportunities, housing opportunities, supportive services, poor choices, burning bridges, addictions,

A combination of what the city can do, what the county can do, what the university can do, and what we all can do better.

But I'm glad that we are talking about it and getting all of the issues out front because no one should feel intimidated about bringing their concerns forward.

And the more input we get,

the better we're able to problem-solve and the better we're going to be able to get at a point where we can really resolve the issues in a way that's going to be helpful for everyone.

I'll make a couple of comments.

One of the things that I think is important

You know, I was glad to see Mr. Gaines and Mr. Varney come forward to talk about their concerns in their neighborhood regarding homeless shelter.

I had concerns when Mr. Baer came and told us about running the shelter because I was pretty sure that the zoning probably didn't allow it.

And I think, you know, I think for too long certain neighborhoods or African-American neighborhoods have borne the brunt of having business

activity and other things occurring that wouldn't happen in other residential neighborhoods.

I think it's important that all those concerns be looked at and addressed.

And I think we need a full discussion on where we want homeless shelters and not just have one pop up here or pop up there and be alive some places and not others.

But I do agree it's certainly a big issue.

People sure are interested in the water supply.

I'm glad that the mayor has scheduled a work session.

It's my understanding the work session will be an opportunity for a bunch of different points of view to be presented.

Maybe he can elaborate on that.

I think there's information, but there's information that's not quite accurate.

For example, someone tonight said, well, they don't want to see us to have to build an expensive new pipeline.

Well, as I understand it, and someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but

The pipeline that currently fills Ragged Mountain, the existing reservoir, is 85 years old and it needs to be replaced.

And so there will be a need for an expensive new pipeline no matter what we do.

The choice isn't either or.

So I think these issues are very complicated.

Another aspect of that that I've yet to be persuaded is that if we completely dredge the reservoir, does it

I think having a full discussion on it at the work session would be a good idea.

And finally, one thing that just occurs to me, and I'd love to find out more information on this since there's a lot of activists in the audience, maybe you can help me,

You know, the sustainability of dredging.

It seems to me dredging is something we're doing because we've built a reservoir that's silted continually.

So it's not a process you do when you're done with and you've built it, but it's something you have to continue to do year after year after year, or at least until land use practices and upstream of the South Fork Reservoir change to prevent silting.

and I don't know if that's likely to happen anytime soon.

I also wonder about the energy cost involved in dredging.

I assume it's a fairly energy-intensive process, so it's not, so to me, to frame it as the issue is, you know, taking down trees is environmentally bad, which actually is, I agree, but that somehow dredging the reservoir is environmentally good, I don't think any of this is exactly environmentally good, and I think we need to have a full discussion on all those aspects.

Thank you, Dr. Brown.

I will just, for the record, state that I haven't made my mind up on the water plan.

Some people think I have made me, but I haven't, and I'm certainly open to listening to some of the concerns, and some of them have been expressed tonight, and I think there's been some valid points made on some of these things, and I think it

who behooves us as members of city council to certainly listen to that and look at it.

I'll just say to Mr. Mason, I think someone's going to meet with you, is that correct?

And thank you for bringing that forward.

And I do agree somewhat with what Mr. Gaines has said is I think they kind of feel like this was kind of dumped in the neighborhood and I guess that

I am a little interested in if they didn't have a certificate.

I can see how they were operating there.

Hopefully we can get a little more information on that, Mr. O'Connell.

If possible, please.

Okay, okay.

approval of minutes.

Are we doing that?

Not yet.

I just had a couple comments.

First of all, I did want to respond, Mr. Frechtman, thanks to you.

We actually have agreed to do a pilot test, at least for a one-year pilot test, where Charlottesville high school students will be able to ride CTS for free.

Thank you for bringing that suggestion to us.

I won't repeat the comments on the water supply plan, but please do, as Ms. Edwards said, please do come out on May 6th to hear, hopefully, a very thorough discussion of all the options and alternatives and facts.

I have a retroactive response to matters by the public.

At our last City Council meeting, Mr. John Falz came forward and questioned the legitimacy of our assessment process based in part on

House in his neighborhood that he claimed was sold for $300,000 less than the assessed value.

And I just want to correct the record.

Our staff went back and actually looked into that sale.

The assessed value was $1.15 million.

The house sold for $1.05 million.

So it was sold for slightly under assessed value, but not nearly the amount that was alleged.

So I just wanted to correct that record.

and we will now move on to appointments to boards and commissions.

Okay, I'd like to move the following appointments to the Building Code Board of Appeals, Margaret DeMalley, Charles Lewis, Keith Woodard, James Haffaday and Peter Weems, to the Charlottesville Economic Development Authority,

Kristen Lindgren and Joseph Saunders, to the Community Development Block Grant Task Force, Patricia Eldridge and Natasha Sinitski, to the Jefferson Area Board for Aging Advisory Council on Aging, Frederick Schmidt, to the Jefferson Area Board for Aging Board of Directors, Richard Brewer Jr. and Sue Lewis, and to the Monticello Area Community Action Agency, Briette Lawrence.

Second.

Any motions been seconded?

If not, please indicate your vote.

Thank you very much.

Motion carries.

We'll now move forward to the consent agenda.

We have a number of items on our consent agenda tonight, and I will up front announce that item K, which was an ordinance closing a portion of Palatine Avenue, has been removed from tonight's consent agenda.

Item K has been removed.

So on the agenda are A, minutes of April 7th.

B is an appropriation of $600,116 community development block grant, FY 2009, second of two readings.

Item C is an appropriation of $160,279 housing opportunities made equal or home, FY 2009, second of two readings.

Item D, an appropriation of $2,500 for energy audit incentive grant, first of two readings.

Item E, an appropriation of $1,450, insurance reimbursement for golf course, first of two readings.

Item F, an appropriation of $130,000 for a school construction grant, first of two readings.

Item G, resolution energy efficiency requirements in city-funded housing, first of one reading.

Item H, an ordinance, reenactment of subdivision ordinance, second of two readings.

Item I is an ordinance amending the floodplain ordinance, the second of two readings.

And item J, an ordinance conveyance of a portion of city property in the corner of Lee Street and Jefferson Park Avenue to the University of Virginia, second of two readings.

Second.

Any further discussion?

Indicate your vote, please.

Thank you very much.

We have before us tonight a proposal regarding the design of the Route 250 Bypass McIntire Road Interchange.

And this is the first of one reading.

And we have a couple of staff people who have been involved with this process from the beginning who are going to introduce the proposal.

And then we will bring it up to a public hearing.

I know there's a lot of people in the audience who would like to speak.

And anybody who would like to speak will have the opportunity to do so.

Good evening.

We're here to present information that we hope provides council sufficient information to give us direction on which preferred alternative to move forward with completing the design for the route 250 bypass interchange at McIntire Road.

I'd like to point out that we've had substantial public process over the two years we've been working on this project.

We've had four public meetings, three citizen information meetings and one public hearing, not including tonight's public hearing, four city council presentations, and that is including tonight's council presentation, 12 steering committee meetings, one presentation to our planning commission,

One presentation to our Board of Architectural Review and one presentation to our Planning District Commission.

With that we have a very elaborate project website as well that contains all of the information that we've worked through these two years to get to the point in our process where we really, I like to think, get to the meat of matters.

and moving forward with design.

So with that, we'd like to turn to a PowerPoint to share some details with you.

Good evening, I'm Owen Perry with RK&K Engineers and with me tonight also is Eric Almquist.

We're going to go through a fairly brief PowerPoint, sort of just bringing you up to speed on what we've done since we were last here in November in front of city council.

We're going to review with you the concept development, what we've done to date, some of what we heard from the public at our November 1st public hearing, which we briefed you on in November.

We're also going to review the Section 106 process and some of the summary items from that.

that we've been involved in over the, that began over the winter months and is continuing and we're going to discuss the preferred alternatives and the steering committee's recommendation to city council tonight.

First we want to go through the concept development.

One of the first things the steering committee and our team did was develop the goals of the project as well as the purpose of need.

And the purpose of need has a specific function within the environmental process.

It outlines what specifically the purpose of the project is and is very important to the goals and the design direction that we're headed towards.

In addition to operations for vehicular traffic, the thing we've heard time and time again is increased access to and from the park and developing something as sensitive as we can be to the park and the surrounding resources and area while we're improving operations and mobility for the community.

Where we begin, and this is a charge from city council in your first direction to us.

Our direction was to stay fairly close to the three concept alternatives that were recommended from an earlier study that was done in the year 2000 and those were partial cloverleaf interchange,

a diamond interchange with two roundabouts and a double bridge roundabout or a single roundabout design that would be underneath 250.

Angela briefly gave a synopsis of the meetings we've been through, but the public meetings we've held, the first one we presented four concepts, three of them were very similar to the 2000 study, plus a no-build concept, which is one of our alternatives that we've discussed in our environmental alternatives.

After hearing the comments from the public on March 2006,

We went back with the steering committee and we developed 14 alternatives that stayed fairly close to the original concepts presented in the 2000 study.

We presented those in June of 2006 to the public and received public comment on those alternatives as well.

From that, we met back with the Steering Committee and from what we had heard, we went through all the comments with them, from what we heard, we felt like, and the Steering Committee was comfortable with finding the 14 down to 5 alternatives.

And on July 27, 2006,

before going to a public hearing on the project and as we were beginning to prepare our environmental document, the steering committee, after a lot of work by our project team, reached a consensus and concurred with the project team's recommendations

that we recommend to city council and prepare our environmental assessment on two of the five alternatives and those are the two that are in question tonight.

Alternative C1 and G1.

To show you where we began,

and how we dropped or retained alternatives as we went through the process we started the far left column is the three alternatives partial cloverleaf, alternative three diamond with the dual roundabouts, diamond with the single route

and a diamond with intersections we added and that is a signalized intersection because all the other alternatives had roundabouts and the steering committee felt strongly that with the traffic being what it was in case the roundabouts didn't work we should be looking at a signalized interchange.

All of these are fairly similar in style and function to the original 2000 alternatives.

As you can see, the number went to 14 and you can see the number that we worked our way through.

The numbers that were dropped and the ones in the far right column are the ones that we retained for our environmental document purposes.

They were alternative B, alternative E2, alternative C1, and alternative G1.

And that's a larger concept, larger picture.

Alternative A is the no build.

B is the partial clover leaf.

C is a partial clover leaf, but a slightly different, I'm sorry, E2 is a partial clover leaf, but a slightly different design.

Alternative C1 is the single roundabout, and that drawing from a year and a half ago, it looks more like a peanut shape than the oval we're looking at today.

And there's reasons that has evolved.

And alternative G1 is the diamond with signals.

As part of our concept development, one of the things including the twelve steering committee meetings we've had, one of them was a two day session or day and a half session where we brought in three people that are experienced with parkway design, contextual sensitive design from out of town

with knowledge of this type of design and went through this project as an independent review with the steering committee.

I'm not going to read everything on this slide, but you can see that work session I think was very beneficial to both give an additional insight to how our design was evolving as well as provide some backdrop to the steering committee.

Preferred alternatives on the steering committee on June 7, 2004 recommended alternative C1 and G1 to city council.

That came before council and council endorsed those two recommendations.

We prepared our draft environmental assessment in September 2007.

and Steering Committee met again on March 19th and recommends alternative C1 as a recommended preferred alternative to City Council.

We'll go into that a little bit more in a couple minutes.

Go ahead.

Yep, go ahead.

To bring you up to speed on the November 2007 public hearing that we had on this project covering the NEPA draft environmental assessment as well as the alternatives, the five alternatives and the two preferred alternatives at that time.

Fifty-five people attended the meeting.

We received comments.

and you have been provided a transcript of those comments in the preliminary package we provided to city council approximately a week ago through staff.

Some of the comments we received, most notably we believe, of course there were comments against the project as a whole.

Some people wanted the no build.

Some people thought the project was too costly.

Those that provided comments on the various concepts are still coming to the forefront, minimizing impacts to the neighborhoods, providing pedestrian and bicycle connectivity to the park

and the surrounding area, much of which is not there today, is pretty unsafe to cross or walk along the 250 bypass.

And support transit and alternative modes of transportation, which are also part of our goals and our purpose and need.

We did ask some direct questions about the alternatives that night at the public hearing.

I think there were two questions that were similar.

Do you prefer any alternatives?

And then of the two recommended alternatives, which of those you prefer, we sort of got the same numbers out of both of those questions.

Of those that respond to the questionnaire in this manner, we have a preference for C1 over G1, which is the same alternative that the steering committee is recommending to city council, and I don't know whether it's in the

the realm of error or whatever but a lot of people didn't respond directly to these questions but those who did 15 or 4, some type of interchange design and 9 were against and we did receive other comments where there was no opinion on these questions at all.

Good evening everyone.

Just to start off, some of you may or may not be familiar with the Section 106 process.

As you're aware though, this is a federally funded project and as such it's required to comply with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act.

which basically says that federal agencies and in this case the Federal Highway Administration must consider effects to historic resources that result from their projects and so as Owen mentioned over the winter we've been diving into the section 106 process in detail I'll talk about how this process started back in January 2006 but just to give you a summary here of some of the things that we've

have been doing over the last couple of years.

This is sort of an outline of the Section 106 process in general which begins with initiation of review of the undertaking by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources and then establishing where the project may affect historic resources and then going through and identifying historic resources that are in the project area and this could include

resources that are either on the National Register of Historic Places or are eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

And then after that we identify the potential effects of properties, explore alternatives that might avoid those effects.

And then following those steps, and I should point out that the yellow steps that are here on the screen have been initiated already by the project team and have been completed for the most part, we would complete a finding of effect

and then we would also reach an agreement on how best to treat those effects.

And these are all set steps in the Section 106 process.

Okay, so to go into detail on what the project team has done so far, as I mentioned before, we initiated the process in January 2006 by starting coordination with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

In February 2007, we did some more detailed review by sending a comprehensive report to VDHR for review and our initial recommendations on the project and the potential effects.

In September 2007, we discussed, as I mentioned earlier, those potential effects in the environmental assessment.

In October, VDHR recommended that we initiate the more detailed consultation process with other consulting parties that are interested in the project and have a stake in the project.

And these are five people here on your screen, Daniel Bluestone, Rich Collins, Colette Hall, Mary Howard, and Peter Kleeman, who have been nominated by the Federal Highway Administration as consulting parties for this project.

So they play a very important role in our process, both to date and as we move forward.

Then we've had three meetings with the consulting parties so far in November 2007, January 2008 and February 2008 and so far what we've looked at are more or less establishing where the effects may occur and also looking at what the historic properties are in the project area

And then in March 2008 at that steering committee meeting that was just mentioned, we had a report from the consulting parties where they described to the steering committee the historic context of the area and the relationship and the important relationship of the design of the interchange to historic properties.

So here they are.

Here are the historic properties that are in the project area.

The ones that are in white were identified by the project team prior to the consulting parties process.

And then the two that are there in yellow, the Veterans Memorial and Rock Hill Academy, were identified through the consulting parties process by input through the citizens that are engaged in our, in conversation with us.

I should point out, I'm sorry.

I should point out that the Veterans Memorial is one specific resource that was raised.

It's always been a question of the project team whether or not this is indeed the first Veterans Memorial in the nation for the Vietnam War.

We don't know for sure if it is, but we have a lot of evidence that shows that it very well may be.

and we're going to be working very closely with a number of people to identify that in later stages of the process but nevertheless the project team really considers this an important resource and we're going to do everything that we can to ensure that it's treated with respect and properly.

Here's a map that shows the historic resources.

As you can see, the largest purple area there on the map is McIntyre Park.

More or less everything to the east of the railroad tracks is considered eligible for the National Register and Dustin Historic Resource.

And then the other properties there are highlighted in purple, including McIntyre Covenant School, Rock Hill Academy, which is now the Macca property, and a number of residences, 502, 501 Park Hill, and 807 Park Street.

As part of the consulting parties process, one of the things we did was we looked at potential alternatives that would avoid or minimize impact to the resources that we had identified.

And so these were, some of these alternatives that are here on the screen were brought forward by the project team and some of them were brought forward by the consulting parties.

The first three were actually identified in the environmental assessment.

Grove Road, improvements to Grove Road to avoid impact to the park.

creating an intersection, a 24 lane intersection at 250 and McIntyre Road and then the Park Street interchange, improvements to the Park Street interchange, those three were looked at in the environmental assessment.

Then these remaining six were also reviewed as part of the consulting parties process and they all bring certain elements of better ways to avoid or minimize the direct impacts to the resources.

and I won't go into them in detail although they were included in the packet that was distributed to Council earlier.

Okay, so some of the key themes that we've learned from the Section 106 coordination.

Well, of course, the first theme is that historic resources are very important, and that's something that we take very seriously as part of this project and something that we will be continuing to look at as we move forward with the project.

VDHR has concurred so far with the materials that have been presented to them, including where the project's effects will be as well as what historic properties may be affected.

As I mentioned before in the previous slide, the alternative review has been extensive.

However, so far we have not identified any alternatives that are reasonable.

In other words, they meet the project purpose and need or they meet the goals and objectives of the project and would completely avoid the resources.

However, this does not mean that minimization effects, minimization would still not be under review.

Consulting parties have really been an extremely valuable part of this process and I think that it's important for everyone to understand that we take their input very seriously and we'd like to thank them for their hard work and effort that they put into the process so far.

They've spent three meetings working very hard to offer very valuable suggestions to the process and we feel that that input has really helped this project become much better.

and two important points here at the bottom.

Federal Highway and Virginia Department of Historic Resources have both stated to the project team as well as to the consulting parties that we are following the process correctly and Federal Highway Administration, who has overall control of the Section 106 process, feels that the project team may move forward with identification of a preferred alternative.

So what are the next steps for Section 106?

Well, first, following the City Council recommendation of the single preferred alternative, then Federal Highway and VBHR would move forward, believes that we may move forward with the effects determination and then also mitigation.

And in fact, they prefer that they have a preferred alternative before they move forward with these steps.

So as of the last Steering Committee meeting, we were looking primarily at two alternatives and this goes back to the previous council meeting.

You all concurred that these would be your two preferred alternatives and for us to do a little more work on this and we carried these to the public hearing.

I'm going to briefly show you these once again and refresh your memory.

They are in your packages we've previously given to you.

This is alternative C1, the single roundabout.

and as you can see the brown is our trails that go through all quadrants.

We've got grade separation.

This is part of the access.

We're now right currently showing at grade crossing and a potential bridge crossing both across McIntyre Road extended and we have trails on all quadrants.

increasing the connectivity to the park and both east and west along the bypass and north and south through the McIntyre Road corridor or tying to the trails to the south.

Go ahead to the next slide.

I guess I didn't need to do that, they were highlighted.

Those are the trails.

This is the aerial rendering which you've seen before of alternative C1.

Alternative G1 is the signalized diamond.

The trails are very similar on this one.

The difference being this interchange is not a roundabout.

It will have signals.

at the base of the interchange ramps where they intersect with McIntyre Road and you can see the trails extend from Park Street and north-south.

The aerial rendering of this is shown and you've seen this before as well.

We've not changed this for a while.

In conclusion, we would just like to remind City Council, and this was in your package, that we met on March 19th.

The consulting parties came and discussed the project with the Steering Committee.

At the conclusion of that, the Steering Committee did forward a motion and it was seconded and there was a vote.

There were seven Steering Committee members present.

and to get the pulse of all the steering committee.

One of the rules we set up early in our steering committee was that steering committee members can vote absentee or by writing in their votes.

So we proffered this motion to all the steering committee members.

I'm not going to read it for you again.

But the vote was approval 8, 4 and 2 against and 2 abstained.

Go ahead.

Next Steps, we would like to offer the Steering Committee's recommendation to City Council tonight for discussion and potentially a selection of a recommended preferred alternative that we would do further evaluation on.

We're going to continue our consulting parties' coordination into the further refinement of either of these interchanges, develop our six and 106 research mitigation plans or processes, as Eric pointed out,

Eventually we will prepare a final environmental assessment document, a final Section 4F evaluation and our intent is of course to update City Council when you request or when we feel it's appropriate throughout the design process.

Angela, should I turn it back over to you?

Are we done?

Do any counselors have any factual questions before we open up to the public hearing?

I had one.

Budget is always a good question.

This budget

First is conceptual as is the design, so everything gets refined together as we move forward and we're currently looking at between 31 and 35.5 million.

Which leads the gap, I'm not a math major, but I'm looking at 4 million to 8.5 million.

Well, initial estimates are always conservatively high.

I can't say they're conservatively high by the tune of 5 million.

But with direction from council, we can

Well we can be directed to stay within the earmarked budget or we've not taken that approach necessarily and we've actually worked with cost estimates on either extreme and tossed out the very low and the very high and kept in the middle range just for purposes of moving forward.

And that's where we're at now.

Yeah, I have a question.

It could mean a number of things.

It could mean that we, well, a significant budgetary item is the bridge itself.

It may leave us

Minimal options on bridge design.

It could mean that we layer certain amenities, which we have some very strong feelings that the amenities are the project and the actual vehicular standards that we're dealing with is our second hand.

So that's, I mean, the bike ped amenities are

Thank you.

timely decisions with regards to transportation funding because the inflationary costs of holding projects back even months when we're on the accelerated schedule that council asked us to undertake this particular project that we are on right now can make the difference of four or five million dollars just from one fiscal year to the next.

Yes, as a follow-up on that, you talked, I think you mentioned it could have effect on the design of the bridge.

Well, it would take us back and I don't know whether we have access this evening to the slides that were presented to our steering committee.

Once again, they're very conceptual, but we've looked very briefly at a range of bridge concepts.

It could.

I don't think we've ever envisioned a bridge like your normal bridge that you'd maybe pass under like on I-64 when you're traveling just outside the city here or something like that and I think you know your lower cost bridges are going to turn into a very economical design that's repeated over and over and this being one of our early charges I think in the initial RFP to us

Any other questions before we open the public hearing?

Thank you.

We'll now have public comment.

Again, we'll try to limit comments to three minutes.

And if somebody has already said something substantially similar to what you were going to say, feel free to say ditto.

And when you come forward, please identify yourself and give us your address.

Good evening, I'm G. Edward White, a resident of 621 Park Street.

I want to begin by making, I have a prepared statement and I'm going to read portions of it, but I want to begin by making a couple of comments on the presentation that we just saw.

The presentation emphasized that it was a context-sensitive design, and it emphasized there would be particular concern for environmental and historic

Destroyed Properties and Environmental Concerns.

I want to suggest that the design as now formulated is not necessarily congruous with those goals.

You saw the design on your screen.

It is a very large interchange.

It is potentially 30 to 40 feet high.

It extends the approximate length of the downtown mall.

and it is juxtaposed in the midst of a 250 bypass which the city has made significant effort to beautify and also on a structure McIntyre Road that the city has made an effort to beautify.

The city talks about being environmentally sensitive and developing alternative modes of transportation and this is a structure that's reminiscent of a time

in which the automobile was dominant and it's a structure that I will suggest is designed to further automobile traffic throughout the downtown area.

Now, the first point I want to make has to do with the procedural posture of consideration of this particular feature of the Meadow Creek Parkway McIntire Road 250 interchange.

Why is this interchange coming forward at this point when the Meadow Creek Parkway has not been built, construction has not even begun?

Is it anticipated that the interchange will exist before the parkway is built?

What will it be an interchange to?

What is driving the urgency in considering this interchange?

Well, the question was answered in the presentation.

There is a federal earmark for $27 million that has a time limit.

It's within a fiscal year period.

So the city is going to save a considerable amount of money if it builds this interchange within the earmarked period.

If it does not, it will have to go back to the process of trying to get an additional earmark.

So I suggest that's one reason that's fueling the urgency of this matter.

but it is an awkward posture is it not because the federal requirements for building a road require environmental and historic property studies that the project team has been scrambling around to meet the deadline.

They in fact have not come up with any definitive findings on environmental or historic impact.

What they have suggested are assumptions

Okay.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate the round of applause.

Don't feel obligated to applaud after every speaker though.

Good evening.

My name is John Cookshank.

I live at 700 Spring Lake Drive in Earliesville, Virginia.

And I'm speaking this evening as a representative of the Piedmont Group of the Sierra Club.

In honor of Earth Week, we decided to initiate a new petition drive.

And while we only began on Saturday at the Eco Fair, we were already able to collect 77 signatures, I believe.

and I'd like to read the petition to you and I'll update you on how many signatures we've collected in the future.

This is a petition to the Charlottesville City Council and the Albemarle Board of Supervisors, requesting them to abandon plans for the Meadow Creek Parkway and to preserve McIntire Park.

Really undersigned, living in Albemarle County in the city of Charlottesville,

urge our governing bodies to abandon current plans to construct the Meadow Creek Parkway from Rile Road to McIntire Road through the McIntire Park.

We ask that any funds allocated for this purpose be used instead to facilitate pedestrian and bicycle access to and through McIntire Park, to improve safety and traffic flow at the Route 250 McIntire Road interchange, and to expand public transit in the Charlottesville-Albemarle area.

I hope you'll consider our thoughts, and I guess what I'm asking for is the no-build option.

We do feel that it's important that pedestrians and people riding their bicycles be able to get to the park from the city, and that would be where I would like the funds to be put, also into public transit.

Good evening.

Again, I'm Chad Frackman of 104 Northwood Circle.

I do take an interest in transportation issues and do a lot of work in alternative transportation and things.

And I'd just like to point out, I'm sure everybody here in the room is well aware of energy costs that are rising.

In particular, of course, petroleum.

We use 66% of the petroleum in this country as transportation fuel.

and I guess the question I would have is what purpose does this interchange serve if McIntire Road extended which is the portion that we built through or proposed to be built through McIntire Park and the Meadow Creek Parkway which is the portion to be built between Melbourne Road and Royal Road do not carry traffic in the future that is currently projected and doesn't carry that traffic because precisely of rising costs of energy and in particular rising costs of fuel.

I don't think that's something that we have looked at in planning for the future.

You know, for certain patterns of transportation are changing, and if indeed 10 years out gasoline prices have gone to $5 or $6 a gallon or more, we might not have 20,000 vehicles a day on that road.

There might be 5,000, and we might be thinking,

What better could we have spent our money on?

I was at Fridays After Five on Friday night.

It was a beautiful night.

I looked up and down the mall and was impressed by the number of people there.

I was thinking to myself, I don't know that a Meadow Creek parkway would really bring anybody else down here because they're all coming anyway.

A standalone interchange which was the presentation tonight of course makes a no-build scenario unacceptable because the scenario of course is there's a McIntire Road extended that's going to dump traffic into 250 so if you don't do anything to ameliorate that situation we're going to have traffic on neighborhood roads.

whereas if the entire project were presented together, all three pieces, it might give a better opportunity for a no-build option to see the day of light.

I would ask that you just consider, Mayor Norris, you asked about the cost.

There is an earmark, but it appears that it's going to be more expensive than the earmark will cover, and then taxpayers are going to have to, city taxpayers will have to

reach into their pockets.

If the road is so important and has to be built, I would suggest it's important for the county and let's, if we're going to do it, let's have the county come up with extra money.

Thank you, Mr. Fleck.

What's up, guys?

I am Hayden Ardry and I go to the Living Education Center for Ecology and the Arts.

I live on 1621 Sagewood Drive.

Thank you counselors for allowing us to have such a gathering.

In a lot of countries we wouldn't be able to have this and thank you everybody else for coming out because it seems like as time takes it's harder and harder to have your voice heard at one of these hearings.

On the biscuit one thing I came and we couldn't speak because the hearing went until like two o'clock in the morning and on the hearing that we were supposed to talk about this issue all our comments were heard by a stenographer instead of it being a public hearing so thanks for letting us have an actual public hearing where the public can hear our thoughts

It seems like the younger we are, the simpler things are in one's mind and the older you get, the easier it is to hide behind how complicated things are.

We were all taught in school that there are better ways to use energy to move around, ride a bike, not a car.

We all know that gas prices are rising, yet we all push for a new, huge road.

What would benefit us years down the line using these millions of dollars to inject energy back into the community or put a road so that people can drive around easier?

It's only going to be more expensive for us, citizens of Charlottesville, to drive around.

I can't even drive.

I don't want this road.

I don't know, man.

Pick a different alternative.

This is a hard act to follow.

Hello, my name is Pat Napoleon and I'm a resident of 700 Lyons Avenue.

I was born in Charlottesville and I feel compelled to speak tonight because I sense something is amiss.

There is certainly an uneasiness and a state of alarm with regard to the proposed highway through our city's parkland.

I attended local schools and exactly a half century ago this year,

I was a student at McIntire Elementary School, now Covenant.

I well remember our school principal, Mr. Tom Hurlburt, telling us of the fine contributions and gifts of Paul Goodlow McIntire for our city.

The large gift we heard about as children

with McIntyre's gift of parcels for McIntyre Park.

Our principal modeled for students respect and gratitude for this generous and irreplaceable gift.

I trusted as a child that future officials of our city would also protect, defend, and advocate for this pristine green space.

Instead, I now hear the city fathers have caved into the demands by the county, state, and our Chamber of Commerce to sanction the chiseling away of McIntyre's irreplaceable gift of green for our city.

Where are our advocates for the people and for the best for our city?

It is time for our collective leadership to model preservation and protection for a very vulnerable space in the center of the city.

Please listen and carry forward with the will of the people.

Please model respect for Mr. McIntyre's gift to us all, and especially for our children.

Will this intrusive highway system truly be best for Charlottesville?

No, it will not.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Suzanne Michaels.

I live at 600 Northwood Avenue, right near where the interchange will be, and I essentially say ditto to what I've already heard.

I have a few more sentences.

I'm in favor of no building, primarily because I don't want a Meadow Creek Parkway to begin with, and once that's built, there's not much park to have access to because two small parks are not going to be very usable.

In addition, I think the effect on our neighborhood, which is one of the more charming ones in the neighborhood, is going to be pretty dramatic with the way that things are designed.

It'll become more of a cut-through neighborhood than it already is.

To me, it seems like this is a plan that was set in motion 40 or 30 years ago, and things have so dramatically changed that it's no longer really reasonable, given the energy issues in our country, and I'm hoping that our direction can be changed.

Good evening, I'm John Hossack, 617 Davis Avenue.

I'm a neighbourhood representative on the committee and I'm here just to speak for myself.

The problems on this part of the city are well known but I'm not really sure that everybody really appreciates just how bad they are.

They're approximately

30,000 cars a day on Park Street, that's about 1 maybe 2 seconds.

It's basically a freeway level of traffic and it's roughly equivalent to I-64 volumes.

The road is gridlocked frequently at peak hour and it also frequently backs up in stationary traffic onto 250.

In other words, it's an accident nightmare.

As Park Street becomes saturated, many neighbourhoods are likely to endure progressively similar fate.

It's already beginning to happen.

and I challenge you to find, I know there are many problems with traffic in the city but I challenge you to find any which come within 30% of Park Street is really in a class of its own and I also think that it is a very bad reflection on the city but when you have newcomers coming and look at our town they always make comments on our traffic.

Now I know there are a lot of issues with Meadow Creek Parkway and I don't see it as a traffic solution, far from it.

However I want to emphasise the reality.

The county will build the roads

It will terminate onto Melbourne and my position is that we either engage in the process and control it or we lose control and we have a situation where that traffic pours onto Park Street and into Greenbrier and destroys both of those neighbourhoods and at that point you will not have control.

I haven't seen a situation like this happen before when you have a boldly crossing jurisdiction and one party builds a road and the other party has their arm twisted and that's just the reality of dealing with our county.

So I'm encouraging you to engage in the process and to control it.

I also want to emphasise that if you take a no-build approach, don't consider that to be a conservative, small-ce approach with no impact.

That decision will have an immense impact on my neighbourhood.

We will be asked to basically eat it up, more traffic, destroying our neighbourhoods 24-7 and that is not acceptable and I want to find somebody

Thank you.

Thank you Mr. Haasek.

Good evening council, I'm Stratton Salidas.

I live on 704 Graves Street and I'm very much against the parkway.

First of all, it would increase traffic in Charlottesville.

Nobody I've ever heard say anything differently.

People talk about decreasing traffic in the Charlottesville area.

And I guess this means basically everywhere near Charlottesville that's not Charlottesville.

It makes a shortcut out of Charlottesville.

People in the north are going to take the Meadow Creek Parkway right through 5th Street and right through town and from the south to get north.

And now, especially with the county developing the south,

More with Biscuit Run and Avon Street, it's going to greatly increase traffic in Charlottesville.

In fact, there was a study done a few years ago by Dan Painter, a city traffic engineer, that showed it would increase traffic in seven out of thirteen street sections he studied.

That report was buried properly, and now there haven't been any since then to show actually what it would do in Charlottesville, although plenty has been studied around Charlottesville.

Some of the traffic studies also show the 29 bypass being built along with the Meadow Creek Parkway, as was one of the conditions early on.

The county has decided not to build the 29 bypass, so that's pretty deceptive there.

The Meadow Creek Parkway would bypass city business area on 29.

It's a device for turning city shoppers into county shoppers.

People get on that parkway and it takes them out to the county, past Seminole Square and Barracks Road.

What do we get for the parkway?

As I mentioned, the 29 bypass isn't going to be built.

Eastern Connector, which is another condition of the city's,

That is nowhere near being built.

Mr. Brown called it somewhat feasible recently, Dr. Brown, pardon me.

The parkland that we're getting in exchange, it's not in the city.

Since when do we get exchange?

You know, that's like someone borrowing money from me and then paying back their brother or something like that.

It doesn't account for the interchange land and now we get a strip of parkland with a road through it.

This is a terribly tenuous legal situation here in terms of the segmentation between the interchange and the parkway.

The city's official stance is that these are two separate projects but the parkway would not be built without the interchange and if this is so, then that interchange money comes with laws that apply to the parkway and if we try to pretend that's not so, we're probably just going to get sued.

When the county talks about start dates and moving the utilities and things like this, this is bullying.

The county cannot build this road to Melbourne.

It would not do anything.

VDOT would not pay for such a road.

Ernest Reed, 610 Ferrisch in Charlottesville.

Thank you for City Council for scheduling this follow up to the VDOT public hearing which probably would more accurately be defined as a dog and pony show than an actual public hearing.

But that was VDOT and this is you and I honor that, thank you.

How we design our infrastructure determines our community's future.

My comments at that VDOT hearing have to do with the insufficient of the environmental impact statement dealing with the relocation and impacts to Shanks Branch.

which I'm very involved with as the Director of the Living Education Center are on record and I'm not going to take up your time now looking at those because they are pretty egregious.

You can't have an environmental impact statement without engineering and without engineering we don't know what we're doing so I would like to see that done much better.

Just for some history, 12 years ago I joined an organization called Alliance for a Paving Moratorium.

12 years ago that seemed like a really radical idea and I kind of like the people involved with it so I became part of that organization.

Now those ideas are both respected and considered reasonable.

All you have to do is go to the gas pump and watch the ticker go up to $50 or $60 every other week.

And it may finally click in your head that automobiles contribute more to the social, political, economic and environmental instability that we are all aware of on a daily basis.

Or rather, we contribute through our cars.

and the infrastructure decisions that we make determine how we're going to be making our energy decisions.

We all pay clear attention to where our tax dollars go and you all do a very astute job of doing that, but if you want to follow where the gas dollars go, they go to fund some of the most wretched and despicable aspects of human nature.

which have created a world that for my high school students is almost unbearable to look forward to the future in a positive kind of way.

So knowing that increase in automobile infrastructure will doom the city's residents here to increase credit card debt and default and foreclosures and we would all be accessories in approving more automobile infrastructure to this.

So I would say that people need leadership, not when there are no decisions to be made, but while we still have the ability to do it.

People have said people won't use transit.

Well, people are using transit.

They say people won't abandon their cars.

Well, as we speak, many people are abandoning their cars.

Thank you Mr. Reed.

The next speaker is, looks like Bernie Davis, Bernice Davis.

Good evening, thank you.

I'm Bernie Davis.

I live at 2340 Wine Street.

I just say ditto to all the folks that speak for the no-bill option.

I think you guys are real wise to ask questions about the cost because it seems to me, from what we heard tonight, we don't have the money to pay for the whole project.

That means scaling back to some of the good things about it like the bridges and pedestrian access or building a tacky I-64 kind of bridge that would not benefit the city.

Well specifically I'd like to urge you not to allow the project to close the West Park Street ramps that go between 250 and Park Street.

That would create a chaos of cut through in our neighborhood because he would get off

250 on McIntyre, Wine Street, Northridge and so on, Northwood to get up to Park Street and I think that would be very detrimental to a lot of communities.

Thank you sir.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of council.

My name is Bob Hodes.

I live at 1309 Lester Drive and I'm also on the steering committee.

My guess is I won't get nearly as much applause as some other people because I'm here to encourage you to go ahead with the recommendation of the steering committee.

I'm not going to talk about Meadow Creek Parkway, but I would like to point out one thing.

It might be good for you to look at the study that was recently released by Chamber of Commerce with respect to in-migration and out-migration for jobs in the city of Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

Approximately 44% of the jobs, I believe it is in the city of Charlottesville, are in fact filled by people coming into Charlottesville from Albemarle County, so we're not necessarily looking at a cut-through.

And there were 30% of the people who seek jobs from the city of Charlottesville that go into Albemarle County, so what is done to get back and forth between the county is in fact positive for the citizens of Charlottesville and its economic vitality.

With respect to the interchange itself, there's some misinformation I think that's out there.

The idea that this is going to be 30 to 40 feet high, we won't know until there's engineering.

It could be as low as 22 to 24 feet high.

You're talking about possibly 15 feet to make the clearance to get under it.

So to get to 30 feet, we'd have to have just one heck of a bridge if you allow 13 foot clearance.

Shanks Branch is said to be subject to degradation.

In fact, the effort is going to be made to improve it.

It has been said that both the rescue squad and the Vietnam Memorial will have to be moved if this is done.

In fact, the effort is being made to be able to retain the rescue squad and also to improve and to retain the location of the Vietnam Memorial.

From the point of view of some of the concerns about how this will be built, whether it will be context sensitive, and whether it will be something of which we can be proud, if you look at the motion that was passed by the steering committee in its meeting,

The steering committee committed to staying involved in this process so that in fact the things about which we are concerned, pedestrian access and bicycle access will be maintained.

Safety will be maintained as well as traffic flow will be maintained.

It will be context sensitive and we'll be worried about the environment and the landscape so that it's well used.

I would say that the people who have been consulting parties have provided a great benefit

I say that from the point of view of the steering committee itself.

Some of the information that has come from them has been extremely helpful with respect to use of some of the areas around it.

In particular, I'd like to note what Daniel Bluestone brought forward with respect to Rock Hill.

I think that will be extremely useful with respect to the pedestrian and bicycle access rights.

I would also point out one final thing.

You mentioned cost and your concern about cost.

One of the reasons we have to narrow this down to one choice.

is because the cost of trying to design and understand what actually can be done if you have more than one choice would be extremely prohibitive and something that would keep us from ever being able to stay within the budget.

So accepting the preferred alternative so that we can go ahead is essential in order to be able to do this well and I think it's something we should go forward with.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hodes.

Mark Cavett, 400 Altamont Street.

I have some concerns concerning the proposed interchange.

When you go to the website, you see a very nice, attractive looking interchange and I kind of like what I see, but I seriously doubt that's what we're going to end up having.

Instead, what we may end up having is a very tacky looking interchange.

I also want to comment concerning something else and that is the proposed possibility of closing the west ramps off of Park Street and the resulting cut through traffic that will cause.

But my biggest concern is probably is going to be who's going to pay for the shortfall of cost overruns that we're more than likely going to be experiencing.

And just keep that in mind.

I'm Lee Middleditch.

I'm a resident of the county and I work in the Court Square area downtown.

And I'm a member of the Steering Committee representing the Citizens Committee for City-County Cooperation known as 5C's.

I've been educated in the 50 years that I've practiced law in this community that the vitality of a downtown area

particularly our downtown area is dependent upon two major factors.

The first is parking and the other is access.

I think the city has done a good job in improving parking in that 50-year period.

But with respect to access, it would be materially enhanced by the Meadow Creek Parkway and McIntire Road.

These road systems were contemplated 41 years ago and have been discussed ever since then.

And tonight, the steering committee is recommending alternative C1.

As you'll recall, that alternative is a federal interchange independent and of separate utility to the Meadow Creek Parkway and McIntire Road.

Alternative C1 has been recommended for a variety of reasons, particularly the safety of traffic 25 years after completion.

The interstate, the interchange will enhance both the city and the county's road projects and will improve access to downtown.

I'd also like to personally commend the consultants, RK&K,

Thank you, Mr. Mildich.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor.

and Councillors.

My name is Sherry Lewis.

I'm a member of the Steering Committee and a member of your Planning Commission.

I asked to be appointed to the Steering Committee two and a half years ago because I'm a resident of North Downtown.

I live on Second Street about a quarter of a mile from this intersection.

and I truly wanted to be part of the process of planning an interchange that could alleviate traffic in the north downtown neighborhood.

I know some of my neighbors differ on how that can be accomplished, but I think all of us would like to reduce cut through our neighborhood and have

and have traffic put on roads that are designed to bear the traffic volumes that come in and out of downtown.

My secondary reason for wanting to be appointed to this commission and still run my goals is so that we could improve pedestrian access and the use of this beautiful park.

This is an underutilized park.

It's a gem in our city.

One thing you haven't heard comments about this evening is comments on people who currently enjoy the park because there aren't many of them.

Unfortunately, if you live in my neighborhood or if you live in Locust Grove or Meadows, you cannot get to the park.

To go from my side to the other side of 250, you take your life into your hands.

I've only done it once on my bike and it was pretty horrifying.

going through the current intersection.

So we don't have an easy answer to a lot of the larger questions that you're asking and that the public needs to ask, but I would urge you to support the work of the committee.

I brought these two volumes to show you the work that we've done for two and a half years.

It's been thorough.

There has been a lot of opportunity for public input.

There have been some comments tonight about favoring a no-build option and I'm not certain if the people who have mentioned that acknowledge that a no-build option means a 17-lane intersection.

at this interchange.

For my neighborhood, I think that's unacceptable.

That's traffic failure.

That's smog.

That's people queued up.

That's unhappy people.

That's more cut through than we currently have.

The committee itself has not discussed a no-build in probably a year and a quarter, if not a year and a half.

The C1 option is really the one that's been favored for almost a year now.

I think it's the option that will keep, because it's not a signalized interchange, it'll keep

the traffic moving around and enable people to come and go from all four quadrants, all four directions in the city.

Last, I just wanted to, there's a question about what bridge designs, and I fetched it out of this, so you make my load lighter going home.

If you take these pieces of paper, I'll just pass it down.

We looked at a number of bridge designs.

These start out with the more mundane ones that we currently have along the 250 bypass, and they show some other really

Beautiful designs.

I've always thought that this interchange should look like parts of Rock Creek Parkway in the District of Columbia.

There's beautiful architecture there, but there's lushness, there's greenness of the park, there's stables there, there's biking, there are people running, there are people walking and enjoying the environment and allowing people to move through in a number of different modes.

Thank you, Ms. Lewis.

Good evening, thanks for having us.

I'm here as a homeowner.

I live at 612 Weinsteller Circle in downtown, north downtown.

I also walk to work along Park Street and sit at the intersection of Park, looking at the intersection of Park Street and High Street.

So, when you're stalled out in your cars and dancing to music, I see you there.

I wanted to come because of that proximity.

I wanted to speak for my wife and child who's 20 months old.

We're users of all of the roads of downtown as pedestrians and so I wanted to speak specifically to the issue of the closing of the west ramps or the proposed looking into that.

It's very unclear and I've been watching this a little bit from a distance going to some of the meetings.

and have noticed that hasn't really been part of the discussion.

It's alarming to me that I just found out yesterday that it was now back on the table as part of the discussion of the historic structures and that this has all come up since the last public meeting and I hope it's clear what a huge impact that would have on the project and it is barely given any mention in the presentation here tonight.

and on behalf of my child, I'm glad that the project team is looking out for the safety of traffic for 25 years, but I've been nominated to look out for my child for at least the next 25 years.

And the prospect of cut-through traffic coming through to get up to Park Street on all of those north-downstown streets is really daunting.

It took me half an hour of sifting through the website to even find out if this was

actually being proposed or not.

Thank you, sir.

That's the last person I'd sign up to speak.

Is there anybody else that would like to speak?

Richard Berman, Second Street Northwest.

I'm on the steering committee also.

I just want to make the point that

What the steering committee has recommended to the city council is a concept.

There is no design yet.

With no design, there is no amount of money spent yet.

That is a variable.

Until they come up with a design and a fixed amount of money, there's been a lot of scare propaganda against the interchange because of how much it's going to cost.

Nobody knows how much it's going to cost because there is no design yet.

Mr. Collins?

Again, I'm Richard Carr.

I didn't sign up.

I thought it was double time on you guys.

I've been very much interested in this project and one thing I'd like to do is tell Mr. Quickshank that I have another 50 signatures here that I gathered at the farmer's market on Saturday and I haven't had a chance to see you, John.

But the more important thing, I'd like to address my remarks really to Mr. Taliaferro because I think he's saying, well, what are we going to do?

You got more money than we can spend.

What can I practically do here?

And I'm going to suggest, Mr. Taliaferro, there's two things that might be done immediately.

There's three initials that appeared in this

Presentation, TSM, and then there was one that was not mentioned I think, but TDM.

They sound tedious.

Transportation System Management, Transportation Demand Management is the words, are the terms that they use for finding ways to get people around, to get access to park, to walk, to bicycle, and to actually perhaps get off on a bus in the middle of the park and continue on.

The Civil Development Law Center has been a very vigorous prosecutor of those alternatives at the interchange.

I would say that someone should go to the school board meeting on May 1st and talk to the chairman, or even before that, Mr. Mickey.

and say you all have concern because you were not consulted earlier, you were told there was going to be a road and stay out of it.

Now we have to consider their points of view.

I would suggest that someone say to them, what can we do to make sure that we don't give up pedestrian access, we don't give up access for most citizens to the park, that we improve personal mobility, that we save the aesthetics of the parkland, these are not amenities as if luxuries, these are as critical as the interchange and even more so.

and asked them, how could we open the window, and these consultants have certainly gone down that road to a certain extent, these are not mitigations, these are alternatives that are still on the table, but you didn't really, I think, get it from the presentation tonight.

So Mr. Taliaferro, I'd say that's what I would suggest to the consultant.

I want those answers, and I'd like to have something like that available by May 1st.

Good evening.

I'm Peter Kleeman.

I live at 407 Head Street in the city.

I've been interested in this project since its inception and the

the other associated road projects for over 10 years and I'd like to just look at this in a more systematic way than is being allowed for the steering committee and the consultants.

What we're really talking about today is a request for a design of a node in a system.

It's just this intersection or this interchange.

divorced from the rest of the system.

It's being billed as a way building this interchange is going to facilitate taking thousands of vehicles off of 29 North and off of Park Street, and it's going to solve some congestion issues in downtown.

But we're really just looking at the node.

We know that to the east, to the west, and to the south of this node

There's already congested traffic and this project is going to do nothing to really solve those congestion problems.

All we're going to do is allow people to get through this node more quickly and then queue up where they queue up now, perhaps seconds earlier.

So my concern is that the charge to the committee and to the design consultants is overly limiting.

I was at the school board meeting last week where the school board is discussing whether it's appropriate to give up their resources for this road and their concern is safety at Melbourne Road.

If we provide a safe intersection at the

250 Bypass and McIntire Road, and we produce fast moving vehicles through that intersection, we basically degrade the safety issue at Melbourne Road.

So these are not independent decisions.

So my feeling is a recommendation I'd like to make that I've made in the past is that it's essential to combine the road and the interchange into a single project so that it can be viewed

as one entity that the idea of having an artificial no-build alternative for the interchange which is building a bad road

It doesn't make the task of the consultants or the steering committee something that I would want to be involved with as a designer or a planner.

Basically saying, you have a bad solution to start with, now try to make a good solution out of it.

So my request is that you combine these, look at a systematic view of the transportation problems on the parkway, Medical Creek Parkway in the county, the Melbourne, what is it,

McIntyre Road extended, Meadow Creek Parkway and the interchange as a single combined issue and without that there are really no good solutions to this problem.

Thank you, Mr. Kleeman.

Ms.

Good evening.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Kaye Slaughter representing the Southern Environmental Law Center, 201 West Main Street.

And tonight I'm addressing issues that I believe would need to be considered with either of the billed alternatives.

If you look at the McIntire 250 intersection, you see the violet-covered glen right now, the dogwood and redwood on the Sloping Hills, spring greenery hugging Shanks Branch, a threatened landscape that could be incorporated into a design for an interchange.

The interchange in conjunction with the Meadow Creek Parkway is the most important physical project in Charlottesville since the mall was built.

Yet there are problems with the build alternatives.

The scope and scale of the interchange overwhelms the surrounding historic and natural area, including Shanks Branch and the natural growth protecting it and the Rivanna from storm water.

No model has been developed to show how the project will look.

from the ground, from drivers and pedestrians, even though it will affect not only nearby residents but everyone who travels through the downtown area.

The size, design, and materials of the bridge whose funding is now in question must be appropriate to the gateway location of this site.

The pedestrian and bicycle paths, including the bridges, are essential to the project.

Traffic transportation management methods, including pedestrian and bike lights, one weighing of automobiles during rush hour and or potential of bus lanes are needed to make the area function for all users, not just automobiles.

The amount of pavement and impervious surface should be reduced to avoid runoff to Shanks Branch and the Rivanna.

As you move forward, instead of approving an alternative with sort of boilerplate language related to mitigation, pedestrian, bike access, etc., please put instead specific directives.

One, to develop for the public an appropriate simulation of the appearance of the interchange with the bridge.

Two, downscale the overall bridge design, paying attention to materials.

3.

Fit the project into the landscape rather than the other way around.

4.

Avoid removal of existing trees and create other stormwater mitigation through natural plannings.

Five, use transportation management including signalized crosswalk for pedestrians and bicyclists and weekend closure of the parkway to all but walkers and bikers.

And six, incorporate the Rock Hill Gardens into the park design.

Unless you act, the interchange, I'm almost through, threatens to follow the Route 29 super-sized style which would disgrace our historic downtown.

But with your direction, the interchange could be a visual and transportation asset like the Colonial Parkway in Williamsburg, the entrance bridge to Annapolis, or as Ms. Lewis indicated, Rock Creek Parkway.

The choice of direction is up to council.

Thank you, Ms. Lutter.

Hi, my name is Tammy Laundrie and I live at 813 Locust Avenue, Apartment C. The reason I've come forward is I think we need to ask Albemarle for money.

It seems that we avoid that, but how are we going to pay for the situation?

I'm not for or against, but Albemarle needs to give some money.

and then the second thing that I want, I just found out tonight about the Rock Hill Garden and I think that if we don't do anything we should go into the garden and reclaim it and make it beautiful because it seems to be wasted.

I heard from Kevin Lynch at a meeting last year when he had mentioned it and so that's all I've heard.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Matthew Trowbridge.

I live at 702 Northwood Avenue.

I think it's worth repeating a general theme to some of the comments here tonight are the idea of your responsibility is to take this project and put it back into full context.

Envy, the job that has been handed to the consultants.

But they really, if you look at the renderings on 250interchange.org

There's a beautiful rendering which follows their purview.

But just outside of it, it turns back into real life.

And there are some fundamental problems, even to get very specific, with some of the pathways that are being... Because I'm mostly interested in this project as a pedestrian and as a biker.

I'm new to Charlottesville.

And I have to say, I bought my house looking at Google Maps, seeing this enormous green space of McIntire Park.

I cannot access it.

And when I do, it's all chain-link fences.

There's actually a playground that my daughter always asks about that you can literally, it is chain-link fenced all around it except for a driving entrance off of 250.

It's unusable.

But the more specific things about just outside of the green rendering of the 250interchange.org pictures are specific.

Along McIntyre, there's now a beautiful new greenway that has been funded and built.

It is on, I guess that's the north side of McIntyre.

It is actually, I've seen people playing bocce ball on this greenway.

It is desperately needed.

It's a dry sponge for this type of thing.

However, if you really look at where the pathway is that they are referring, it's on the other side of McIntyre.

That very tricky intersection at Harris Street and McIntyre at Seaville Coffee is a dreadful, dangerous intersection.

There's no way to get across it safely.

I don't understand how this greenway that has been put on one side of McIntyre connects up with the pathway system, which is actually on the other side of the street, inside of the rendering.

Those are the types of things some of the north downtown residents I think can tell you.

I also have a four year old daughter and it's not safe currently due to cut through traffic coming up Northwood Avenue up to Park Street.

Another very specific suggestion that I would really like to be considered beyond just the entrances onto 250 off of Park Street is if you were going to get buy-in from the north downtown residents who are going to be very much affected by which way you guys go,

I would urge you to consider as part of expanding the rendered beautiful green part of the 250 interchange picture to include the entrances into the north downtown area at Nelson and Perry.

They are currently shaped in two Y's coming off of McIntyre.

To allow, and I think this has actually been confirmed from talking to my neighbors, that when addressed, could this be turned into a T intersection to slow, to make you come to a stop and turn slowly into those streets.

Instead, to emphasize traffic flow on McIntyre, they create, both of those rows are shaped in a way to

allow maximum speed up into the north downtown neighborhood.

Cars are routinely going 50 miles an hour and 25 mile an hour speed limit.

Thank you, Mr. Trubridge.

Thank you.

Did I step in front of somebody?

I apologize.

My name is John Conover.

I live at 104 West High Street.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Members of Council.

I find myself in agreement with everything that Ms.

Slaughter said, which has not historically been true, but she is very articulate.

I am also a member of the McIntire Steering Committee.

McIntyre Interchange Steering Committee.

The committee is working under objectives which were given to you and city council in August 2006 and also which really reflects the compromise that city council made when it decided to build this road in 1999 and 2000 articulated in a letter to the county.

In the goals and objectives,

So develop a context of sensitive design, functional and cost effective, provide safe and attractive pedestrian access to McIntyre Park and the city's trail network, minimize impacts to McIntyre Park.

I think we're mostly familiar with that.

It's a difficult project.

We want to move cars through the city of Charlottesville.

We want to move cars to the downtown.

We want to move them on that dog lake from Pantops to 29 North and get them off Park Street.

We also want to bring McIntire Park, the 13, 17, whatever acres, into reality to people that live here, from the south side and from the east side.

My opinion, unfortunately, after serving on this committee that neither C1 or G1 do that.

They do not reflect the full compromise necessary to make a project that this community can be proud of.

I understand we can't get hung up on nuance, but compromise is essential to politics and tough decisions.

C1 is attractive because it's a roundabout.

There's a certain cachet to that.

We don't have traffic lights.

But by definition, if we don't have traffic lights, people can't get across the road.

Red lights are not

It's something that's easy to make fun of, but it does have the essence of compromise in it.

You go, then I go.

We take our turns.

G1 in the project, I only saw it tonight, has a little zebra stripe north of the North Diamond.

That is still a lot of lanes to get across.

There's no detail in that.

The committee voted for C1.

I think that was wrong.

I don't want to be here and saying G1 necessarily would work.

The bridge that you see in the yellow stripes there is kind of wacky.

It involves a long, long way that people really wouldn't go to get across, partly because of the topography, which is extreme there, and meeting ADA requirements.

No build is really not necessarily not building a road.

Hello, good evening, Colette Blount, 144 West Peck Drive.

I heard in NPR this morning about a new initiative in architecture and that's building on water to alleviate some of the things that are going on with the rising flood waters anticipated over the next few centuries and also that our green space is disappearing.

One of the projects that I did with some of my students was looking at the redwoods in California and there was one redwood that was over a thousand years old.

A woman climbed up and lived in there for two years so it would not be cut down.

She eventually climbed down when the loggers agreed to stop that.

They went ahead and whoever did cut in about a foot around the growth ring to go ahead and destroy this tree.

I tell my students, I've told them before, it took a thousand years to grow that tree.

It maybe took one day or maybe three days to cut it down.

Land that is lost is replaced.

You can't replace it.

Okay, that's why we're moving to the oceans now to try and build there.

Traveling up through Pantops, there was traffic backed up for about an hour, all the way almost to 64 down to the bridge there.

That traffic will not be alleviated by our parkway.

The county still has issues that it has to contend with, and it cannot do that on our backs.

And so we need to be aware of that.

This will only be a band-aid to bigger issues that the county has to grapple with.

I had students who did research at the Historical Society, and one of them researched Paul McIntyre, a fourth grader, at one of my schools.

It's hard to know what Mr. McIntyre really thought when he donated this land.

I doubt, though, that he would have wanted a road through it in the context that it is being placed now or offered up, that he, if he had wanted that, he would have placed it himself.

He built us the library and other things here that we benefit from.

I agree that there needs to be access into this park to benefit for the greater community to benefit to enjoy the use of the park.

It does not have to be done in the proposed way that we can do it ourselves as a city.

We don't necessarily need the county in order to do that, in order to gain access to our own park.

We don't necessarily need their permission.

So I think we need to look for how to maximize the park, to keep it green, to keep it there for the next hundred years, the next thousand years.

Once it is gone, it is gone.

Thank you.

Daniel Bluestone.

I live on Park Hill in Charlottesville.

There are a few things I want to say.

The memo that you got today with this big packet from the steering committee and consultants

says for the purpose and needs, number one, the first thing mentioned, provides safe and attractive pedestrian and bicycle access to McIntire Park.

Who are we kidding that that's the number one issue here?

This is the lipstick on a pig and you can take the lipstick off a pig and you still have a pig.

The interchange is the pig here.

that the design, who wants to scuttle into McIntire Park like a rat through a culvert to use another animal expression.

The C1 alternative that you guys I'm sure are going to vote on today and approve has pedestrians and bicyclists going underneath seven lanes of traffic.

Who are you kidding?

Who are you kidding?

And that's an integral element of the C1 design that you're going to send people under and find Bob, it'll be 25 feet rather than 30.

The lower you can get it, the more comfortable those pedestrians and bicyclists will be going under seven lanes of traffic.

to get into their beautiful park.

Obviously, if you'd considered the historic resources seriously before the design process started, Rock Hill Garden, where there's actually a residential community, would have been the place for pedestrian and bicycle access.

But the lipstick was important.

We want to show we're building an interchange and you can also get pedestrians and bicycles right through there.

I would love to take you all on a tour of the Rockhill Gardens.

It's the most complex garden landscape in Charlottesville.

It is growing over to forest now and should be reclaimed for bicycle and pedestrian access that will not have people go under seven lanes of traffic in order to get into what ought to be the gem of our city.

North of Charlottesville High School, we reversed Frederick Law Olmsted's precedent.

Frederick Law Olmsted, designing Central Park, put the busy traffic roads below the level of the park.

You can't tell they're there.

What we did north of Charlottesville High with Meadow Creek Parkway is we put the road up on a berm and then the replacement parkland is down there below.

You'll never be out of the visual or the sound effect of that road.

And we should have picked up Rock Hill Academy Gardens as the replacement parkland.

That would have been in our city.

So the question is,

Are you going to approve something that has, when people say, this is the most important thing we're doing here, and it's so poorly designed, so flawed in its fundamental conception, that you really have to think about that.

Then, the next thing I hope you'll think about is, I spent 28, 50 hours of pro bono time working with the steering committee, you can give me another 30 seconds.

Okay, here you go.

Why are we lifting 250 up instead of bringing this road straight into downtown?

And I know that those of you who voted for this and are going to vote for it tonight think that getting people downtown is important.

Here you go.

Simple solution.

That road that you're going to let be built through our parkland should go over 250.

No ramps, no connections to 250.

You want people from the county to come downtown, put them on a thin little Calatrava design bridge straight over 250.

and have an elegant and graceful entryway.

No ramps, no connections to 250 East or West.

Let the county build an Eastern connector if they want people to go to Pantops.

If they want to come downtown, bring it up and I'll tell you what, you can do it for half the price that the consultants are telling you it's going to cost to raise all the lanes of 250 and put that silly little mixer bowl underneath.

Thank you very much.

We've all done a lot of pro bono, sir.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Councillors.

Colette Hall, 101 Robertson Lane, President of the Board of North Downtown Residence Association, the Neighborhood Association of North Downtown.

For meeting the requirements imposed by accepting federal funding, the project presented to you tonight requires you to choose an alternative.

Unfortunately, the presentation of only C1 and G1 is insufficient as required by federal law.

and the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, NEPA.

You must also be presented with alternative A.

Alternative A or no build is an at-grade signalized intersection favored by most north downtown residents who live here and to whom I have spoken.

My second point, closing the west ramps to and from Park Street.

Quoting from the resolution before you, two of the minimization alternatives presented by the consulting parties closing the Western Park Street ramps and transportation systems managements will be investigated further in the design of a single preferred alternative.

I am a consulting party member.

The suggestion to close the West ramps came from one only one member.

It was not the consensus of the consulting parties committee nor did we vote on it.

However, the engineering consultants tasked with designing this interchange would love to see you agree to close the West Park Street ramps.

Why?

It would make their job easier.

Are we paying for an easier design or for the best design?

Once the final design meets approval, they can go home to Richmond and Baltimore.

If not designed correctly, we who live in North Downtown will suffer the consequences.

We who live here must live with the nightmare of increased cut-through traffic, entering a highly used pedestrian area, narrow, winding and historic streets

and a high population density.

We must live with the nightmare of a lack of egress to our homes if one way streets are created caused by west ramp closure.

Residents between McIntyre and Park Street you thought cut through traffic was bad now, you have not seen or experienced anything yet.

Yes, Councillor Edwards, you have once again entered into the middle of a bad movie.

The 250 interchange is the single largest entity, the length of the entire downtown mall, and by the way, I measured both.

which affects North Downtown since the building of the mall.

It is also an impervious structure which will exist for generations.

Once East McIntire Park is destroyed, can it be restored?

Hello, my name is Sage Jalofsky.

I live at 413 Fairway Avenue and I'm with the Living Education Center.

I would just like to say

I am for the no build and I think it personally I don't think there needs to be more people you know trying to come downtown there was so many people down there on Friday it felt congested and you know it's nice but having the people I don't want a big road going through the park I don't think we need it

My name is Ted Jones.

I live at 201 Hillcrest Road, and I represent one of 50 households in the Covenant School neighborhood, which is adjacent to the proposed McIntire and 250 intersection.

From studying the plans, each intersection design, C1 and G1, proposed closing Hillcrest Road, leaving a single way in and out of our neighborhood.

From a site and neighborhood planning perspective, is it responsible, or for that matter, is it legal to have a neighborhood of this size anchored by a large school accessed by a single point of entry from one direction only?

That is eastbound on 250.

It is one way in and one way out of our neighborhood with a large school anchoring this neighborhood.

In the case of emergency at that school, say a fire, and that single point of entry is blocked by an accident or by construction, how do fire trucks and emergency vehicles access our neighborhood or respond to that emergency?

Also, please consider the strain you are placing on that single entry point.

With over 200 cars dropping off at Covenant in the morning, how are we residents like myself expected to exit our own neighborhood to go to work?

So if it's one point of entry, one way in, one way out, you're lining up behind 100 or so cars in the morning to get out on 250 just to get to the office.

I just don't see how it's responsible to close off a road in that neighborhood.

You have to have some means of accessing 250 and getting out.

Council must not overlook this neighborhood as this project goes forward.

There has to be a design solution that maintains Hillcrest Road's access to 250 or to its northeast ramp onto McIntire.

Finally, so as not to further isolate our neighborhood as we will be surrounded by a network of roads, I ask that Council mandate some form of pedestrian access to McIntire Park to the north, linking the proposed path along McIntire, as has been mentioned, to an actual place of destination, that is McIntire Park, not simply dead-ending the path at the proposed interchange.

I ask Council to please look at the broader implications of this proposal and how it impacts this vital neighborhood.

and I would say that I've entered this dialogue a little late in the game and it's my own fault being a neighbor right there at the interchange essentially and I've learned a lot this evening about the process and I would also encourage council to take the interchange design and the McIntire Road extended design together as one

My name is Linda Goldstein.

I live on 712 Nelson Drive, which is directly off of McIntyre.

I'm the first house on the street when you turn off of McIntyre.

And I agree with all the comments that have been made so far.

I wasn't going to speak.

But after Colette talked about the gridlock that could occur, when the Park Street glitch was closed for the period when it was repaired after the accident with the truck,

There were periods when I literally could not back out of my driveway and there were periods, there were many times when I was almost hit crossing the street with my dog just going out to walk the dog in the evening because there was so much traffic coming through and it was going very fast.

Thank you.

My name is Betty Mooney and I live at 201 Sunset Avenue and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak.

I was a member of the Planning Commission in the 1980s when Mr. Huja was on the staff of the city and we were discussing this.

And at that time we were talking about three roads.

It was never envisioned that the Meadow Creek Parkway would be the only road being built.

and I attended the last meeting at which you discussed the Eastern Connector.

And what I understood at that meeting was there is no design for the Eastern Connector.

There is no plan at this point to build the Eastern Connector.

In fact, the designs that came forward would have heavily negatively impacted the city.

The county seems unwilling to offer a design that would do otherwise.

We had a three-party agreement back then.

It was the western bypass, an eastern connector, and the Meadow Creek Parkway.

Never was this envisioned to be the first road built and the only road built without an agreement with the county that there would be an eastern connector and a western bypass.

So I say to all the citizens here tonight, I think, and those watching at home, it is so important who we elect to the city council.

You have an awesome responsibility to the city of Charlottesville.

We depend on you.

We live here.

I've lived here a long time.

These are huge changes that are happening.

Much bigger changes right now than all the years since 1972 that I have lived here.

And I beg you not to vote tonight.

Not to vote until you get an agreement with Albemarle County.

for an agreement to build that eastern connector, an agreement to do something about what's happening now at Hillsdale Drive, I guess is the new western bypass, I don't know.

But you cannot just build this road.

This is a mistake.

We elected you to represent the city.

and we are going to have to be very careful who we elect from now on because I can see huge changes coming in the future.

So I beg you not to vote on this tonight and to go back to the county and to get an agreement on the Eastern Connector before you agree to do anything more on this road.

Good evening.

My name is Will Grimm.

I live at 111 Perry Drive.

I'm the long-time listener, first-time caller.

I urge the city council to be very critical of the plan.

I believe that there's a better plan out there and with better ideas than the plan exemplifies.

Regarding children, pedestrian safety, especially under the bypass, that's very critical.

My five-year-old and I go to McIntire for T-ball.

For softball and to play, and we'd like to see a nice, safe pedestrian route, nice, bright, especially at night.

I hope there's a better plan out there for that.

Better pedestrian connectivity to all the neighborhoods throughout.

A better plan that looks at environmental impacts, impacts of habitat, habitat corridors, storm water, and the streams.

Also the impacts of our neighborhoods.

I encourage the City Council to look at the impacts of any type of modification of traffic and what it does to our neighborhoods.

Two concerns that weren't addressed.

I noticed there's an emergency response team on site and I hope that a plan will be out there that provides the emergency response to respond quickly.

Right now there's a long drive for them and I hope that the response time, at least the plan doesn't impede them.

One more point, proximity to, of the on-ramp onto 250 from McIntire to Park Street, I encourage the committee to look at the proximity, the distance of on-ramp and off-ramp.

That's it.

Good evening.

And again, thank you for letting us speak our opinion.

My name is Diane Wilson.

I live at 236 Wine Street, and I'm on the North downtown Mayford board.

One thing

I say ditto to everything that many people said tonight, the majority of people.

But one thing I'd like to mention is that I took brochures to 22 homes.

Tonight, I'd like you to take into consideration that 15 people, 15

Houses out of 22 houses were represented here tonight.

Some of them left, but I think when you see that kind of representation, it's something worth noting, that it's an important issue to the people on Wine Cellar Circle, Wine Street, and the adjacent houses on Park Street.

So thank you very much, and I know it's a hard decision, but someone's gotta do it.

Anybody else like to speak?

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, I am Chuck Rotkin.

I am an Albemarle County resident.

I live in the urban area of Albemarle County, but we do own a few properties in the Charlottesville area.

I make it a habit at this stage of my career to try to avoid these kind of meetings at all costs.

and also try to not be in a position where I have to speak publicly.

And I want to say that I have been very impressed tonight with just about all the comments that have been made that have been very thoughtful and of course having followed this issue for so many years, I'm amazed that there continues to be the tenacity that these folks that have been opposed to the Meadow Creek Parkway that they've exhibited.

At our organization, together with our long-term partner, Eric Heiner, and at the urging of Mr. Huja some 30-some years ago who had a dream about downtown, we're among the first and the most substantive investors in the downtown Charlottesville area and we remain such.

We recognized then in the mid-1970s that in order for the downtown mall to have a chance to be successful and then to flourish,

It was going to be absolutely essential that there be parking, as Lee Middleditch has indicated earlier, and that there be appropriate access to allow people to get in and out of the downtown area.

As Lee did indicate, the city has done a wonderful job on the parking issue, and I think we've gotten to a point where downtown works.

There are some challenges with it, but it works.

For the last 30 plus years, since we began investing very heavily in downtown,

We have been supporters of the Metacreek Parkway concept, which has been the Chamber of Commerce's number one road construction project in the area, as you know.

When Council, a couple of years, several years ago, made it a condition precedent to the Metacreek Parkway to construct a grade-separated interchange at McIntyre and Route 250, we joined with others in the business community and a bipartisan group of very thoughtful city and county officials

to secure the funding for the interchange.

I have some knowledge about pending competition that the retail and the restaurant businesses on the downtown mall are going to face in the future.

Not the least of which will be Albemarle Place and the redevelopment that's going to occur in the Route 29 North Hydraulic Road corridor in accordance with the study that Harrison Roo's group put together a couple of years ago.

This is going to be very, very significant competition.

They're going to be restaurants, they're going to be movie theaters, they're going to be similar business enterprises to what we have in downtown Charlottesville.

In order for the downtown mall to flourish, I've been drawing on 40 years of experience in this community and being involved in many, many business ventures.

I can tell you that there is no way that enough residential units can be built in the downtown area and in the main street corridor to allow the downtown mall to flourish.

I urge council tonight to accept the recommendation of Angela Tucker and her group to go forward with this study.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Good evening.

I'm Bill Lucy.

I live at 410 Second Street Northeast.

I have to consult my notes here.

One of the scary projections I remember from the early stages of the

predictions about how the traffic would be structured if McIntyre or the military parkway was built was this notion there would have to be a very large number of lanes at the bypass, 250 bypass, if it was an at-grade intersection.

I think maybe the 17 lanes that was mentioned tonight is the number that's been used over the years.

I don't really recall, but that could be.

but I think that that figure assumes that Charlottesville High School will be closed or moved because Melbourne will be at grade and students who will be going to work, going to their work at school during that time between 8 and 9

and it is a fairly long time spread actually with which they are doing that because some of them don't get there on time.

There'll have to be a light that will let them get across the parkway and so that light itself is going to regulate the traffic and you only will need two lanes for turning at the bypass in my opinion.

Moreover, if you only do have two lanes, then that will itself regulate traffic to some extent because if they're held up and if they're stacked, then they won't in fact use it.

And although at least one member of the council thinks that this road will essentially be a substitute for an Eastern Bypass, which actually is correct, I believe, because the Eastern Bypass or Eastern Connector will never be built,

but if you build a limited number of turn lanes then you will permit access to Pan Tops but not make it a central function of the road which is what G1 and C1 do.

They make that the central function of the road is to get people from north of the city to Pan Tops.

The ability to make projections is also on my mind.

We all know that what's happening to the price of gas these days and the

I don't know if a barrel of oil hit $117 a barrel today or not but I'm working on a book as some of you know and in doing that I've been doing a lot of research by energy and transportation recently and looking at projections and one of the projections I just looked at I think was made about three years ago by the US Energy Information Administration was a look at the price of a barrel of oil in the year 2025 and guess what it was going to be?

$25 a barrel.

So we have that to look forward to.

Hi, I'm Arianna Williams.

I live at 703 Lyons Avenue.

And if I pass out from my public speaking, just push me back up.

And like that new caller, I've come into this

understanding of what the 250 interchange might mean kind of late in the game and kind of used tonight to try to get a better understanding of what the different concerns are.

And what I see is that you all have a lot of different things that you have to meld together in front of yourselves.

The business interests, environmental concerns, concerns that pedestrians have, which actually strikes me as if pedestrian concerns are of such importance that should just be separate from

the 250 interchange, those two things don't need to be put together but that's kind of a separate aside.

But what I wanted to say is that I can't help but think about how the era coordination put the philosophy of the next seven generations of making a decision in regard to how they felt it would impact the next seven generations and thinking about how Paul McIntyre probably thought that as well when he gave the land to the city of Charlottesville

and I'm not really putting forward what I think y'all should do except to say that I hope that you take more time and don't make a decision tonight because I haven't really heard anything that convinces me that one plan melds all of everyone's concerns, that gives the best compromise to everyone's concerns, especially concerns being that Mr. Conover, who is a member of the steering committee and knows a heck of a lot more than I do, was not convinced that any of the plans did that.

and that Ms.

Slaughter from the Sub-Environmental Law Center could put forth such a comprehensive plan detailing what she hoped that you would keep in mind and therefore probably didn't feel had been kept in mind, such as putting the plan

into the environmental context, not the environmental context, into the plan.

So I guess what I'm asking is that I hope that you take more time and don't make a decision tonight and think a little bit further on options and perhaps consider some new options.

And I'm sorry to all those people who have worked on the steering committee, like Sherry Lewis, who would like to see things move forward tonight.

But I do hope that more time is considered.

Thank you, Ms. Williams.

Anybody else?

Speak now and hold your peace.

I want to thank everybody who came and spoke tonight.

The original plan was not necessarily to have a public hearing, but the VDOT public hearing was the public hearing, and we felt, because of the concerns that had been raised about the format of that public hearing, we wanted to have an actual public hearing.

Appreciate everybody who took advantage of that and came and shared their views with us tonight.

I want to open it up now before we get into general conversation by counsel if there's any follow-up questions any counselors have for the team about some of the factual issues or concerns that were raised by the public.

I have a few.

One question that wasn't raised by the public, in fact, and I'd like to thank Chris for having this public hearing, you know, it's a much better way of conveying information to us, not just among yourselves and for the public, but this is much more useful than anything that came out of the VDOT public hearing.

The bike lanes are accommodated in the street

and they also share, that would be the commuter bicyclist.

Five foot bike lanes are in the actual road, but they are also to share the 10 foot multi-use path.

I guess it's hard for me to imagine that it's

as safe for bicyclists to be in a roundabout with cars than it is with a stoplight where the bikes can just cross straight across.

Could you address that?

Sure, the commuting rider or the more advanced rider will stay in traffic and that rider is already commuting in the travel lane.

The standard practice for a roundabout design at this point in time is the bike lanes that are currently planned for McIntire Road extended and Meadow Creek Parkway that are in the roadway when they get to the roundabout will have an exit lane for them and they will use the pedestrian path.

We generally send bikers, recreational bikers,

that are in the street around a roundabout and not through a roundabout.

I personally would probably not ride through a roundabout and would take the pedestrian path.

Is that on this drawing?

Yes.

We have not striped that drawing.

It's on some of our renderings.

and we have just highlighted the off-road paths which there is, we're trying to provide also a means to get all the way through this interchange outside of traffic and not even have to be on the, within the travelway, within the automobile's travelway.

And that's connecting up the greenway that was discussed earlier as well as the pathway that's planned adjacent to McIntire Road extended to the north and the greenway to the south.

Maybe not right now.

How tall is this gonna be?

Right now, it depends on the length of the bridge and the spans.

We're choosing a couple of alternatives here.

When we last looked at bridges, we had five alternatives in play and we're now reduced to the no build and the two alternatives.

And we think we're in the 30 foot range neighborhood of where the bridge is above to below.

The ramps on the west side of Park Street are something that was brought up by one of the members of the consultant parties and it's something that we've been wrestling with since we did the traffic analysis back in 2006 and 2007 with VDOT.

We expressed to

Ms. Hall and the other people in the downtown neighborhood, we've been, and the reason our plans currently show the ramps remaining is we are very concerned about the potential of cut-through traffic.

The same thing you heard here tonight, if you were to shut those ramps, there's no way for us to predict the intricate neighborhood weaving and going back and forth to and from your

So your recommendation is not to close those ramps?

I don't think it'd be best.

One of the comments made

Somewhere along here I've forgotten by who was that the C1 alternative keeps traffic moving along.

And it seems to me that the issue here has always been, at least from my understanding, my point of view, was that the advantage of a gray-separated interchange was to try to keep the traffic moving along on the bypass, but not necessarily to facilitate the traffic moving along on the Meadow Creek Parkway.

Both the signalized interchange and the roundabout have sufficient operation for the volumes of traffic that we're designing for.

I think the use of the term keep traffic moving in a roundabout is essentially that you won't have the stopping starting you would at a signal.

We are dealing with a 25 mile per hour design speed in the roundabout.

I guess my final question for now is the last time we had a discussion on this, I know that I asked that we have, as was mentioned by Ms.

Slaughter here today, a rendering that would show not only what the bridge and road would look like from a pedestrian point of view or from a ground level point of view, but also the topography that would be affected by grading

Okay, because it's a rendering that allows both the vehicular passage

I've seen that.

I'm not exactly thinking that's what I was looking for, looking for more something that would just, I mean you have a nice view here.

of the aerial rendering.

I guess I would leave it for something that was more at a ground level.

Maybe we've showed those.

Maybe you weren't here before, but we have shown those.

And we could show those again tonight if you want to see them.

We showed those at the November 1 public hearing.

They are to perspective, too.

I mean, they take into consideration the background, the height of vehicles that are passing on to them.

I've seen everything.

Everything you've shown at a meeting, I've been here for.

I've missed any meetings.

And what I recall was leaving feeling like I didn't have a good sense of how much earth was going to be moved, how steep the hills were going to be.

We have a winding path here with a little contour map

And I guess that's what I'm looking for.

I think as a part of, you know, without busting our budget on renderings when we don't even know which interchange we're going to be charged with taking further, I understand.

I believe your question, some of the perspectives, we've only got the one straight-on shot.

and we've tried to minimize cost and at least give you a relationship of what this is going to look like.

We've got comments from the BAR and the Planning Commission about a style of bridge that we haven't even encroached yet and all that would sort of change grading and perspective like you're talking about and we'd love to wear our sleeves up and get into those details a little more on a preferred recommendation from you all so we can

I actually have one more question.

Looking at the maps that say the potential recreational trail system, could you comment for a second on

What you envision with the Shanks Branch Trail we currently have, how and where people would cross the street in order to gain access to the trail side of the parkway.

Well, one thing inherent in our sort of piece of the project we have in the interchange area

is the fact that north of us the trail is to the east side of McIntyre Road and south of it is to the west.

So somewhere in the vicinity of our interchange it makes a nice place to cross over.

So I think we can never get around the crossing over of McIntyre Road.

For off street users, the peds and the bicyclists that are using the trail, right now we've sort of eyeballed a crossing, an enhanced crossing down at Harris Street

with improvements to that intersection and that light.

We haven't gone into detail about that, but that's what our pictures depict at this point in time.

And then if you were following that trail, you actually leave the roadside and meander more down by the creek, maybe having a little bit better experience going through the interchange area than if you were up just right off the edge of our roadway, plus giving enough distance to get pedestrians and bicyclists

Mr. Mayor, I have a number of comments about this rule.

I guess I would like to start first with the last citizen who commented, this lady I think on the right-hand side, Ms. Williams.

Given the number of topics and issues that have been raised, and concerns that have been raised, I think it would behoove us to have a work session and discuss this in more detail, and that's what we're trying to decide today, but I don't think we have a place to decide.

Another thing which I wanted to mention to you was, as most of you know that I do support Butter Creek Parkway, that my mind hasn't changed so far.

But I had also said in my comments earlier, which I won't say anybody noticed,

I would like to explore some possibility with the council to see if there is a way to find a design which will be more fitting to our location.

I realize that

and I think we might come up with something better and I don't want to be impolite to the committee or the consultants but I think they have done the best they could in the constraints they have.

I would, I most agree with Mrs.

Slaughter's comments, even though I don't say I have agreed with her very often, but I think in this case I do agree with her.

Most of her comments she has made probably align a few more to that, and I would like to explore those possibilities with them.

I personally wouldn't, it may sound very bad, but it would not bother me at all if he did not have interchange, but in just Hammer Creek Parkway, it would be a great interchange,

In my mind, you come into city short so we can slow down and enjoy the damn time.

It won't bother me that much.

But if you do have time to change according to traffic needs and you need one, I would say we could do a better job than what we have done so far in terms of filling it into our context.

And I could read you all the six points in this slaughter.

Downscaled bridge, landscape, dealing with landscape.

So I think we need to work with it a little bit more in a

context of work session instead of trying to decide today and I would not, I would be willing to explore alternatives of a tight interchange of like diamond interchange which was proposed in G1, so in some tight format.

I really can't support this the way it's laid out.

I realize we're talking about a concept versus design.

I guess the funding gap bothers me what will happen if we don't have the money.

How are we going to come up with the money?

What's going to suffer if we don't have the money to do it?

I personally think the design is, I think it's just too big.

It's out of character for the intersection.

I don't think it's going to look that nice, frankly.

As the gentleman alluded to about the accessibility to the Hillcrest Road area neighborhood, I don't think that's a very good thing.

I guess that could be addressed.

And frankly, for me to support, it's going to have to be a much smaller design.

Parts will have to be an at-grade intersection.

And I'm not against the parkway.

But I certainly can't support the C-1 design, I guess is what I'm saying.

I know I haven't been asked to comment, but I would like to interject to offer some information regarding the footprint that you're mentioning.

We have spent a great deal of time discussing just that particular subject, once again dealing at the conceptual stage of putting together an interchange design.

What you see here distributed just a moment ago is one, an extremely lengthy agenda.

This is actually printed from our website to show you all the material available

on the website regarding this and other information discussed during a two-day meeting.

I've also drawn three arrows that point to the information that follows in your packet.

One is an interchange footprint comparison summary.

Do you have this?

We can put this chart.

We do have a PowerPoint slide if you'd like to share that with the public.

and essentially what we have here are the yellow, you have this also in color before you but you see our alternatives in yellow that are in keeping of 8 acres, 7.3 acres, 8.8 acres, 5.9 acres and then 6 interchanges already existing in the city

2.9 acres up to 12.5 acres, 9.6 acres.

And then we compare those to other known parkway interchanges that have been designed with context sensitivity in mind that are very much in keeping with the parkways and skyline drives and Blue Ridge Parkways and Route 53 Monticello entrances that they're built in very sensitive surroundings.

Thank you.

Just some comments.

I just want to again acknowledge all the hard work that the committee did and the work that staff has done in putting all this information together.

I admire that it's been done in the way that it's been done.

I think that one of the issues of bringing different things to council to different councils, information evolves and we learn more.

The culture of council changes and the culture of the city changes and we learn so much more.

And there have been so many things that we've learned regarding the

energy issues and environmental issues and even my own learning curve about the watershed and how a lot of everything that we do really impacts our environment.

And even a couple of years ago, I don't think we're having as many discussions as we are now about the impact of the environment.

I can't imagine what 30 some years ago when they decided that Meadow Creek Park was important, that

It would never be an Earth Day.

That would be important either.

So the culture has really changed about what we do value.

And I don't feel comfortable with the concept in the design of C1.

And even though I don't feel comfortable with that, it doesn't mean that we don't have a possibility of moving forward, but perhaps moving forward in a different direction in terms of

bikes, pedestrians, safety, and the design for the road.

I think that even in terms of my own image of coming in the middle of a movie, sometimes when you do come in the middle of a story, you have a chance to change the plot.

So maybe this is just an opportunity for us to re-evaluate the design or re-evaluate the concept.

I don't want to in any way take away all the hard work that's been done because a lot of work has been done with this.

And I think of all the things that I've heard this evening has been the most compelling has been are we making the decision now for the next seven generations?

I think this is not directly related to the interchange, but I think the comments on Nelson and Perry Drive and the way they're designed to encourage cars to enter quickly at its speed is something just, regardless of what we do, that should be addressed to be looked at.

It kind of bothers me that we can't figure a way to make this whole thing smaller and I think making it smaller becomes a way of making it less expensive.

Like Mr. Huja, I do support the parkway.

I understand and I share the concerns about

you know people deciding to go straight through town and for that reason of what's before us today I'm kind of attracted to the G1 solution which at least stops people at a stoplight and makes it less easy to just drive straight north side through town it also seems to me it makes it easier for bicyclists to be

You know, on McIntyre Road and not have to get off onto a little path and then get back on if you want to actually be a serious cyclist and you're in a hurry to get somewhere.

And I think serious cyclists aren't going to want to get off and get back on.

They're going to want to

and so I think having something with stoplights is a better idea.

I think we shouldn't overlook the comments from Mr. Hosick, a part of what got us here in the first place.

It's the fact that the no-build alternative kind of means that Park Street north of the bypass is just a dreadful street.

People do have a lot of trouble getting in and out of their roads and I think

You know, and I share the concern of the competition from 29 and the congestion that's going to rise on 29.

I think it would be good for the city to have the parkway, but I think it's important we don't have an overwhelming

Interchange, and that we definitely not have an interchange that's designed simply to facilitate cars going north, south, or east, west, but that we have an interchange that maximizes the ability of people to access the park, bicycles, and on foot.

Of the two, and I guess I support going to a work session because I don't easily want to overturn the recommendations of a committee.

But at the same time, for me, it kind of seems like the other suggestion seems to have some real advantages to me.

And I'd like to perhaps hear more from staff about, you know, are there ways of just making this smaller?

We'll have an opportunity for some refinement as we get further into design.

What you see now I would say is a conservative footprint concept.

I don't think that we're talking about going from 12-foot lanes to 9-foot lanes, which is unacceptable and we wouldn't likely even get a design exception for use of

of the funding that we have to spend on this.

So I do think there's room for some refinement to the interchange, and we are aware of that footprint needing to be sensitive.

I would, and I'll let Owen speak to that just a moment more, but I don't want to miss an opportunity to point out just two things that I feel might be more important in the overall picture of things.

The November 1st public hearing that was conducted last fall was not a VDOT public hearing.

This is the city's project.

The city took on the responsibility to see through its own urban construction program for roadway projects.

VDOT only assures that we cross our I's and dot our T's in order to remain eligible for using state and federal funding.

So they do so on behalf of both state funding and federal funding.

It's our projects.

and we staff do what we do not because we want a project one way or the other but we do so at the direction that council gives us so you know we have to go with the bumps and whatever that happened as we pass from one council to the next and that's probably added a lot of challenges along these 40 years I'm sure so I just wanted to let you know that

That's not a VDOT hearing.

This is the city project, lock, stock, and barrel.

And I think that should be kept in mind when we make our decisions.

Before he adds more information, I'm not sure it will serve as a great deal of purpose to try to redesign it tonight.

because it may take some effort and thinking in the study.

Maybe we ought to set some time for ourselves to get together again sometime in the near future, I hope.

I appreciate the suggestion.

We'll get back to that in a moment when we talk about next steps.

There is the potential for cul-de-sac-ing Hillcrest and leaving Birdwood as the one access into the neighborhood.

Well, what occurred to me when this point was brought up, well I do understand the concern one would have in living in a neighborhood where all the traffic were pushed in and out of one access point.

I do pass that intersection through the AM and PM peak hours and it occurs to me that the large majority, if not

the greatest percentage already uses birdwood solely for access during those peak hours.

Well, I think

Right now that that is being asked to be looked at as an enhancement to the project.

Our role with our project would be to make sure that we mitigate impacts to that property with whatever roadway and other pedestrian features would be involved.

So part of our mitigation may be to weave our pedestrian or multi-use such that it

We've known Rock Hill Gardens is there.

Mr. Bluestone was happy enough to educate us even more and take us out there on a site visit.

It's a beautiful place.

Our trail has purposely, on the sketches we showed you earlier, sort of left this

following right alongside 250 and right now we show it sort of meandering down that hill of course we have ADA requirements and those kind of things we have to meet when we're designing a trail but I think it's always been thought of that there'd be some kind of at least the ability to

to connect later the ability to get back and forth into that area.

Thank you.

If I can try and summarize what I'm hearing from my fellow councilors about how to proceed.

I gather there's no support for passing a resolution tonight in favor of either alternative.

I think that's safe to say.

I'm not convinced that a city council work session is the logical next step because I don't think we're qualified to redesign this

I think my preference would be to send it back to the steering committee with the clear sense that there are certain principles that we'd like to see addressed or certain issues we'd like to see addressed, a number of which were enumerated by Ms.

Slaughter.

and also the issue of cost I think is a major issue and how do we bring this intersection, at least conceptual intersection, in line with the actual amount of money we have available to spend on this intersection.

You may be right, except that we don't want to do again the same thing as we did now.

You know, the issue for me is, I don't feel like we have time tonight, and I think that staff has heard some of our concerns raised, but I think it's, you know, what our task is, is to pick a design alternative.

And I think we, you know, the committee studied it.

I don't think, you know, I don't really see something specific and big we're asking them to change.

I'm just trying to clarify from my own mind what the agenda would be or what the task would be for that work session because I could easily see us saying at the end of that work session kicking it back to the steering committee.

For example, we have had at least 20 new ideas, 20 different ideas raised today.

We could comment in our discussions

as to which ones to pursue or not pursue because that will be helpful to the committee I think in the long run.

There are the two alternatives that we have in front of us, C1 and G1, we may be able to find out that one of them does work better for those values which we are highlighting right now.

I think another variable is that the first opportunity for the public to provide an opinion about this was a private public meeting.

So it really wasn't the public meeting that provides an opportunity for people to really speak up in this fashion.

So I kind of wonder if that had happened.

back in November if we would be in a different place.

Well, and to the committee's credit, the former city council did give its stamp of approval to at least one of these designs, or both these designs, as the preferred.

So they weren't acting in bad faith, I think.