City Council Meeting   10/6/2008

P.S.

P.S.

and David Brown.

D.C.

Here.

Here.

Here.

I'm going to start with some announcements and I have actually five separate announcements.

First of all, I don't normally do this, but I want to take the opportunity to wish a very happy 97th birthday to Ms. Gladys Gatlin, who lives in William Mills and was the very last employee of the William Mills and is celebrating her 97th birthday today and we're very happy.

I believe she watches these meetings and we're very happy to have her here with us in Charlottesville after 97 years.

Secondly, I wanted to announce the city is now taking applications for the Neighborhood Leadership Institute.

This is a wonderful program where citizens can learn about all aspects of our city government and local issues.

We are taking applications through October 29th and you can contact Neighborhood Development Services at 970-333-1 for application.

Also on Saturday, October 25th from 2 to 5 pm is our annual downtown safe Halloween festival.

Lots of fun for families and kids, including a dog parade, dog parade, which I'm one of the judges for.

I'm very excited.

Dogs in Costumes.

Just as a heads up, the City Council will not be having a meeting.

Our regularly scheduled meeting on October 20th has been canceled because three councilors are out at the Virginia Municipal League Conference, so our next regular meeting will be the first Monday in November.

Lastly, in terms of an announcement, I wanted to extend a public word of acknowledgement and appreciation to our Registrar of Voters, Sherry Iacetta and her staff.

Today was the deadline for registering to vote.

I hope all of you in this room in Washington are registered to vote.

and Sherry and her staff have done a yeoman's job registering many, many, I believe thousands of new applicants, voters and we're very excited to see the level of interest and enthusiasm in participating in the democratic process and now comes the flip side of that which is we want all the folks that have registered to vote to actually come out and vote on November 4th and do your patriotic duty

I want to issue a public challenge to the citizens of Charlottesville.

I want us to have the highest turnout rate of any city in the commonwealth of Virginia, do everything we can to get voters out to the polls on November 4th.

To that end, we are going to make a full court press on the part of the city to encourage people and enable people to get out and vote.

For instance, please do announce that bus service that entire day will be free of charge.

And we do have bus access to

Every single one of our polling places within two blocks of every single one of our polling places except Alumni Hall, unfortunately.

We're working on getting a transfer to UTS for that polling site.

We will be devoting city resources to ensuring a smooth flow of access at the polls so we don't have long lines and loud jams there.

So, let's all do our duty and get on vote November 4th.

Yes, I have two announcements.

As some of you may know, the Quality Community Council has been sponsoring some walks for peace, basically trying to bring attention to the problems we've had with gun violence in the city.

They did one last Friday and they want to invite everyone this Friday night from 9 to 10 to join for a march of peace led by the Reverend Dr. Alvin Edwards Sr. and Ms. Ethel Magruder starting from Mount Zion First African Baptist Church at 105 Langford Avenue.

Also, this week is fire prevention week and the fire department is doing some activities and they're going to do a tip of the day and of course their tip for today is to encourage everyone to install a smoke detector in their home and if you are a city resident and you contact the fire department they will come out and install a detector in your residence and they recommend doing that.

They have about 11 year record of only one fire fatality and

They certainly want to continue that because it's a remarkable record.

Thank you, Mr. Taliaferro.

I'd like to announce the fuel energy assistance program.

The State of Virginia Energy Assistance Program helps eligible households with the cost of heating their homes regardless of the fuel type that is used.

Applications are available beginning Tuesday, October 14th.

An application deadline is Friday, November 14th.

You can call 970-3400 and also the Gas Assistance Program.

This program is administered by the City's Utility Billing Division.

Charlottesville Gas Utility customers who are in need of assistance or are interested in donating can call 970-3222.

I wanted to bring a couple of things to your attention.

This announcement is for parents.

A couple of things have come in the mail.

First thing is the SOL scores are being mailed out.

And if you get your child's SOL score, and this kind of can be complicated to understand.

There's mostly a lot of numbers.

Feel free to call your child's school to get an explanation of exactly what these numbers mean.

The second thing that came in the mail is

This came from Buford Middle School, the interim report.

This is what the envelope looks like, so if you haven't seen it, look for this envelope.

It says to the parents or guardian of, and it has my child's name on it, and sometimes she'll see it and say, oh, that mail must be for me, but it is not.

It is so that when the parents start looking for this,

This is what it looks like.

Right now my daughters are at home probably shocked and appalled.

But this is a good time to take a look at where your child is academically because now you can make a difference.

But this is an important time period because you really can get in and find out where the gaps are, where they're doing well, but you really can make a difference.

And they do schedule times for you to go in and have parent-teacher conferences, but if those times aren't convenient for you, make sure that you let the teachers know because they will work with your work schedule.

I would encourage employers that know that they have employees that have

children in school, encourage them to get involved, allow flexibility and schedule so they can get involved.

But this is a key time to do this.

Thank you, Ms. Edwards.

October 9th, we're having a work session on affordable housing policy and funding priorities from 5 to 7 p.m.

I believe in the city space.

No?

In the basement conference room in the city hall on October 13th, we're having a work session on poverty in Charlottesville.

We're still trying to work out the time on that one, but it will be that evening, early evening at some point.

Stay tuned for more information.

Other announcements?

Okay.

We're now going to open up our meeting to matters by the public.

We have a lot of people that have signed up.

First of all, I'm pleased to issue a proclamation tonight.

This is in honor of the Department of Chaplaincy Services and the pastoral education work that goes on at the University of Virginia Health System.

Whereas the City of Charlottesville is pleased to join the Department of Chaplaincy Services and Pastoral Education of the University of Virginia Health System as it celebrates Pastoral Care Week, October 20-26, 2008.

And whereas the Department of Chaplaincy Services and Pastoral Education of the University of Virginia Health System is staffed by professionals and students with caring hearts and giving spirits who are united in their ministry to bring peace to all men and women, whether they are patients, families, caregivers, or staff.

Now, therefore, I, Dave Norris, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, and on behalf of the citizens of Charlottesville hereby proclaim October 20-26, 2008 as Pastoral Care Week in our city.

On behalf of the chaplains at the University of Virginia Health System, but also the chaplains throughout Charlottesville, at Hospice of the Piedmont, with the police and fire departments, and with the various geriatric facilities, I accept this Pastoral Care Week as one of the ways we acknowledge that chaplains are involved in the care of people in most settings so that we make sure that we're dealing with the mind, body, and spirit in healthcare.

Thank you.

Thank you for the work that you do.

We're doing a very special presentation on behalf of our Special Education Advisory Committee.

And I don't know if Emily Dreyfus will be presenting.

Emily Dreyfus is here on behalf of the Special Education Advisory Committee to offer some awards and acknowledgements for accessibility improvements.

Thank you very much.

And thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight.

I'm joined with other members of the Special Education Advisory Committee.

including Lizelle Duggar who can come down who is our school board liaison and any other members who are here or who have worked on the accessibility project.

We are the Special Education Advisory Committee for the City Schools and the Charlottesville School Board last year established October as Disability Awareness Month in response to a public comment from Daniel Milner who is now a CHS graduate and a wonderful advocate.

This year, the members of the Special Education Advisory Committee, the SEAC, would like to observe the great progress that's been made in improving accessibility in the city schools.

Over two years ago, Joe Sink, as Vice Chair of the SEAC, began working with Tom Vandiver, Director of the Independence Resource Center.

to look at what improvements were needed in the city schools and they found that there were many barriers, barriers which not only affected the safety of the children and staff and visitors with disabilities but also which impacted the day-to-day independence of students.

The School Capital Improvements Committee and the City Council were very responsive to the needs that we identified and the city

The department moved further and elaborated on those needs with a study.

Funding was secured and long story short, we now have many school improvements that have been completed including accessible emergency exits and restrooms, an updated elevator at Jackson Via, new bleachers with flexible wheelchair seating at CHS, and buzzer systems so that visitors with disabilities can access schools where the front doors are not on ground level and much more.

The members of the SEAC would like to honor and recognize the people who have worked hard toward ABA accessibility in the city schools.

We are grateful to the efforts of a very large and dedicated group of city and school staff as well as members of the community who have contributed to achieve significant results in a short time.

By creating access for all, we've opened the doors to success for all and a safe, inclusive environment where students can maximize their independence and family members are able to attend performances and visit their children's classrooms goes a long way.

I'd like to call to the front the key people who've been involved.

And I'd like to start with a CEAC member, Kanae Hoffman, who is the mother of Daniel Milner and who has seen this process through from start to finish.

And there are three staff members from the Piedmont Regional Education Program, and I'd like to make them to come down.

They have taken their day-to-day experience with the children and helped translate that into what accessibility improvements need to be done and how they can best be done to serve the students.

Helene Carlisle, Deanna Noll, and Mary-Jane Pateratski.

Tim Breitenbach has been the cornerstone of this work.

He's a member of the city staff and has walked through every step of the way on the large improvements.

Is he able to be here tonight?

Jim Henderson, who at the time that the improvement started was principal of Walker, one of the schools that needed a vast amount of work and had to suffer quite a bit of inconvenience and is now in charge of facilitating this through the administration office.

And Jim Herndon and Mike Malika, who are members of the city staff who have been through many steps of the way.

and Lance Stewart, who is also a member of the City Facilities Department and walked through the small caps program at the beginning, creating many of the changes that were needed.

And Tom Vandiver, who is the director of the Independence Resource Center and helped us start this project.

and I'm off alpha order now, but Jay Taylor who is with the Martin Luther King Jr.

Performing Arts Center and helped design some specific access to the stage and had students help implement that.

And last but not least, Mayor Norris and thank you very much for helping facilitate this through council and we appreciate all of your support.

Thank you very much, Ms. Dreyfuss, and thank you to all who are involved in this very important project to open the doors of our schools to folks with disabilities.

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

We do have a lot of people that have signed up to speak, and so not everybody is going to have a chance to speak at the opening, at the start of the meeting, but we do have another session, matters by the public, at the end of the meeting if you'd like to stick around.

When you come forward, we ask you to give your name and keep your comments to three minutes and give your addresses.

Good evening, members of the council.

My name is Joyce Murray.

I live at 1637 Milton Road, Charlottesville, Virginia.

On behalf of the Ashland Opera Festival, I'm here to tell you about the collaborations between Charlottesville City Schools and Ashland Opera with regards to the production of Moore's Flood, a renowned classical opera written by the noted composer Benjamin Brinton.

But before I continue to talk about Moore's Flood, I would briefly like to give you some background information

that is a bridge to this production.

For years, Ashland Opera Festival has been dedicated and committed to providing educational programs such as Kids Fest for Children who do not have the opportunity to come to Ashland to see, learn, and enjoy opera and other musical productions and opera connects for educators in this area.

About seven years ago, Judy Walker, the General Director of Ashland Opera, initiated the idea of giving underserved students the opportunity to learn and experience all aspects of musical theater at Ashland in hopes that this engagement would foster an appreciation and understanding of opera and other art forms.

which in turn would enrich their lives.

As a result of Charlottesville City Schools being so supportive and generous in providing transportation for the students to go to Ashland and several members of the community coming together and working with Judy on this project, Kids Fest became a reality.

At Kids Fest, students enjoy a meal before attending dress rehearsals of two musical performances.

They participate in various related activities and discussions in which the attainment of many of the SOLs are realized and life skills concerning the storyline are evaluated.

Each year, the number of students attending Kids Fest increases.

Judy Walker has now stepped up to the plate once again, raising the bar to a new level by engaging students to have a hands-on approach to producing the opera, Noah's Fly.

Through the efforts of the festivals, Charlottesville City Schools and their teachers, Charlottesville Albemarle organizations, volunteers and the funding from the Prana Grant, we are now able to produce Norris Flood, a high caliber opera in which underserved students and others in the community have the opportunity to be a part of this production.

Working alongside professionals, about 100 students ranging in age from 8 to 21,

will showcase their creativity, abilities and talent as musicians, artists, actors, dancers, craftsmen, technicians and stagehands.

The enormity of this production has been challenging.

but with so many people in the community helping we know it would be a successful rewarding experience for our children.

Noah's Flood tells the story of Noah and the flood.

Originally, it was an English medieval play that was performed during the 15th and 16th century.

Today, however, Noah's Flood would be set in the 1950s.

Whitten wrote this piece in 1958.

He intended the opera to be an event that involved the whole community.

Thus bringing people together to celebrate the arts in a performance that is rich culturally and historically.

Now I would like for you to meet a few of the students who will be a part of this production.

Hello, my name is Dominic Durham.

I play the violin at Charlottesville High School and I've been playing for six years.

When Mrs. Thomas asked me to be the concertmaster for the student orchestra of Noah's Flood, I was excited and surprised, but more so excited because I realized that we would be playing with professional musicians and I also realized that I'd be part of a huge project that lots of people helped put together and make this great thing happen in Charlottesville.

Hi, I'm John Anderson.

I'm a 12th grader at Charlottesville High School and I am playing the part of Jaffet, one of Noah's sons and Mr. Will Cook, the core teacher at Charlottesville High School is working with me and the five other high school musicians or high school singers and all of coordinating with all of the

Music teachers at the other schools to get all the singers ready.

We're working with two professional opera singers, Alex Tall and Kate Mangiamelli, which is an incredible opportunity for any high school kid.

I'm Diana Thomas from Greenbrier Elementary School and I will be one of the 60 animals in Noah's Flood.

I am participating in the Ashland Production

Benjamin Brinton Snow's Flight.

I am one of the gossips.

The gossips were chosen from Walker Upper Elementary and Beaufort Middle Schools.

We are studying with our teachers Melody Day and Virginia Hill to learn our parts for the opera.

The show will be set in the 1950s, so we will wear 50s outfits.

Hi, I'm Judy Walker, and of course no one wanted to wear this one.

Believe it or not, we have 62 of these that the Charlottesville High School students made last spring.

This has been a huge undertaking for us.

We've had the money for two years.

We tried to do it last March.

We just couldn't get our act together.

So we, in the spring, went to see Mrs. Adkins.

and we told our story and in this sweet soft way she looked at us and said we can make this work and she sure has made this work.

It's a lot of fun.

I must tell you I was told before we started that we've never pulled this off but thanks to everybody in the city schools we have.

One other thing because I know you've got a packet, you've got tickets,

for the dress rehearsal and Friday is for the school kids and then Saturday is open to the public.

Please come by minutes.

These kids have worked so hard, and you can tell by their schedule.

I gave you that so you can see how many hours they're putting into this protection.

And also this, which will go to the teachers.

It's a teacher's guide for the children that will bring from the city schools so they know what they're going to see.

But I ask you to look at this because you'll see all the people involved.

It's unbelievable and very exciting.

I promise no more, but I do have one thank you to make.

Twelve years ago, I came to see Gary O'Connell and said, Gary, you know, we should have a little city money.

He looked at me and he said, gee, what is it that you want more than anything?

And I said, I want to get these kids from Charlottesville and Albemarle to Ashlawn.

And he said, well,

We've got buses here and Nappy Gang Kids Fest.

We also have another method to our madness.

We really bribe these kids to come.

We give them t-shirts every year and we have one for you and we feed them pizza.

Popsicles and intermission.

Dates are...

The Thursday performance is at 7pm on the 23rd and Friday is at 1230 and that's for the Charlottesville Public School kids.

First Presbyterian Church.

Believe it or not, we have a student organ person, a ball choir.

Come see us.

That's a tough act to follow.

Carla Mano, 324, Seven and a Half Street.

Had I known I was flying the opera, I would have worked up a soprano RAF for this.

But it does, what I'm about to say relates I think to the access for all, success for all issue that came up earlier.

I have increasing concern about information coming to citizens in terms of when public meetings are going to occur.

If you're very active, you know when that's happening.

If you have access to the internet, you may know that it's happening.

In fact, agendas, I believe, for your meetings come up Thursdays before the actual meeting.

So let's say you're interested in the water issue or land use issues or something.

I would like to suggest, and would be happy to help, establishing some other way for people to access this information.

We have the public

the Jefferson Free Speech Society wall out there, why don't we have something that actually says these are the upcoming public meetings so that people that are walking on the Mall and see City Hall don't have to figure out who to ask, where to go, and can actually plan to be here at events like this, to plan their child care, to plan their

It's a suggestion that I think I've been willing to make for quite some time and again I'd be happy to help.

I'd also like an update if you can in your public comments and again I'm sorry if I've missed this in something that has come out.

In terms of the additional staff member that I think we were going to get in terms of community

And on the heels of that, and this is super radical, but sometimes an issue like, and I won't get into it because it's a public hearing for tonight and I realize this isn't the time for those comments.

But sometimes we have an issue where to come to a neighborhood and not a city wide information gathering.

I think that some public hearings like the ones being held tonight about the sale of public land are really, we're a small enough city I think that everyone could hear about that kind of information.

Thank you.

My name is Sean Dockery.

I'm a project manager for Octagon Partrows, which is located in the old Gleason's Hardware Store building, south of railroad tracks.

You all should be familiar with that area.

Five years ago, ten years ago, it was a sleepy neighborhood adjacent to Garrett Square and the hardware store was still active, but in general there was not a lot going on there.

The parking lot neighborhood is unrestricted, which means you can park there all day.

If you go to the commensurate or opposite position of the mall, north of the mall, you find a completely different condition.

And our concern has been for quite a while that these spaces don't turn over, but in the past five years we've added about 20 small businesses, whether it's office or retail or restaurants, you've got them all there.

And so in March of 2008, we approached the city about changing the parking.

We were told that

because we've got parking study and we should get involved and even though we really felt the change was overdue we got involved in that process and we're told at the time that that would be done by the end of summer of this year and what we came to find out is that that process has been delayed and there's a number of reasons for that but while the process is being delayed the opportunity to go ahead and amend parking has been suspended by staff and we totally understand that that's a reasonable thing to do when you've got a parking study underway however

When you don't meet the schedule, after a while you have to sort of consider maybe going back and adjusting areas that were already well overdue before your public study began.

What further concerns us is that we've got a number of small businesses in the neighborhood who are already sort of identifying issues with the economy and those sorts of things, and it appears the staff have been met with

You know they'll get done when it gets done and there were delays and I totally understand that but you can't suspend the ability to come to staff and try to amend parking in the meantime if you can't hold the schedule.

The second thing that concerns us is staff has said that any changes to parking will occur not until after the mall renovation is done.

whenever the study gets completed it's still up in the air or at least when it gets approved by council it's still up in the air and then that timeline will be protracted even further by the mall reconstruction if we really are waiting for the mall to be redone before making any changes anywhere downtown this notion is really hard for us to understand because we're not adjacent to the mall in fact we're about two and a half blocks away in a cross railroad track so

My appeal to you is to hopefully get behind the parking study, get it on the agenda, and have it for you all to consider next time.

If you understand how long we've waited, I hope you can understand that we really can't wait any longer.

is this notion that everything should wait until the mall is done.

I just don't think a city can really do that.

I don't think you can say we're not going to take care of this part of the neighborhood until this other part is done, especially if it's not contiguous.

And the changes have been so dramatic in that neighborhood that I really think something a little more creative than what we're finding right now has to occur.

So I'll end it at that.

The bottom line is that we've waited, we've gone through the process, we've been told that we should, you know, not expect this to be done when it was totally done and now we're being told that it will take longer than that because everything will be suspended and so the mall renovation is done and like I said, we're not adjacent to the mall and the change is overdue so I never expect to hear back from you all this evening but I hope that we can work

through this in some way or at least make sure that we can affirm that the part of the study does need to get completed or else the ordinance just needs to be followed.

Thank you.

I'm the voice of Laurie Delahanty.

My name is Chip Tucker and Laurie will be helping me to distribute some papers to you folks.

The Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice, the CCPJ, opposed the war in Iraq since before its inception.

And the city council, as you will know, passed a resolution against a US preemptive attack on Iraq in early 2003.

The CCPJ, along with many hundreds of peace and justice groups across the country,

and thousands of individuals do not want another misguided war to occur in Iran and we oppose any form of military intervention in Iran.

We urge the United States to employ every diplomatic approach possible.

As you know, the war in Iraq has taken the lives of over 4,000 US soldiers.

has named and traumatized nearly 40,000 more and it's killed over a million Iraqi civilians.

President George W. Bush misled Congress and the American people about the reasons for attacking and occupying Iraq and we fear he is misleading us now about the reasons for military aggression against Iran next door.

All cities in this country have been impacted financially by the war in Iraq.

It has cost Charlottesville, on conservative estimate, $64 million in the last five years.

That's Charlottesville.

In human terms, of course, the cost of the war is evident in the suffering of local families who have lost family members in the war and who must care now and in time to come for their

returning wounded and traumatized vets.

We don't want this to happen again because of Iran.

Now in the course of a few days on the downtown mall, the CCPJ collected 1,632 signatures on a petition which Laurie has urging the city council to pass an Iran resolution of which we will make the text known to you

in a minute.

We continue to gather signatures and can present you with more.

We urge the City Council of Charlottesville to join other cities around the country which have already passed resolutions opposing any military intervention in Iran.

And we respectfully request that you put this Iran resolution on your agenda for your first November meeting.

There are economic reasons, there are moral and political reasons in favor of this action.

I will conclude my time now by simply reading to you from the Code of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Title 15.2 governing counties, cities, and towns, should there be any question in your minds as to the appropriateness of this national and global issue as a matter for a municipality like ours.

I quote from Section 15.2, Clause 1103.

We'll get to our point later on.

Thank you very much.

David Swanson, I live on Gillespie Avenue in Charlottesville.

We will have another speaker, I think, in a second who will read the resolution for you, but you have it.

And you also have from me a statement that won't fit in three minutes that you can also find at CharlottesvillePeace.org.

But let me just say a little bit, in February of 03, this city council was wise and good enough to pass a resolution opposing the invasion of Iraq and there were only 60 some cities at that point that had done so.

Now hundreds of city councils have passed resolutions opposing the invasion and or the occupation.

And while that occupation continues,

The efforts of those cities have educated the public and have helped to build a movement, the movement that has thus far prevented a resolution effectively urging a blockade of Iran from being brought up for a vote in Congress, a resolution that has co-sponsors sufficient to pass it in both houses.

And passing these resolutions is the work of minutes and costs no public expense.

But that expense of $64 million, if you look at the calculations of Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bellmas in their book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, a very conservative calculation when you put in the interest, the cost of veterans care, the cost of the increased price of oil, we're looking at at least $640 million from Charlottesville's residents.

Now we haven't seen our taxes go up that much.

A lot of this is debt.

Our children will pay this with interest.

and a lot of this has been found through cutbacks in useful programs.

And I'm sure you know what I'm referring to.

Now, $640 million could put up quite a few public signs announcing when public hearings are coming, could conduct quite a few parking studies,

$640 million could do a great deal of work.

If a federal action has a significant negative impact on a city, then it is entirely appropriate for that city to defend itself, its budget, and the lives.

of local members of the military and the National Guard.

The National Guard, which in fact should be guarding our city and surrounding areas in case of natural disasters, not invading and occupying foreign lands.

Now, it is true that we are supposed to be directly represented in Congress, but our representative in Congress represents over 650,000 people and was not elected by a majority of the people of this city.

He is further removed from us than our local elected officials and he must represent more people than any human being can possibly reasonably represent.

He must also deal with enormous influences of money, of party, and of media.

Cities and towns routinely send petitions to Congress for all kinds of requests.

This is allowed under Clause 3 Rule 12 Section 819 of the Rules of the House of Representatives

This clause is routinely used to accept petitions from cities and memorials from states across America.

The same is established in the Jefferson Manual, the rulebook for the House, originally written by Thomas Jefferson for the Senate.

In 1798, the Virginia State Legislature passed a resolution using the words of Thomas Jefferson

condemning federal policies penalizing France.

And there is a rich tradition of local actions on national and international issues from that date to this.

And I want to thank our mayor for having taken a position in the conference of mayors in support of a similar resolution and for having urged turnout in a national election.

Whereas the President and members of his administration have alleged that Iran poses an imminent threat to the United States, U.S. troops in the Middle East and U.S. allies and whereas allegations are similar to the leave up to the Iraq war and U.S. occupation with the selective use of information and unsubstantiated accusations about Iran's nuclear program

and its supply of weapons to Iraqi forces as a centerpiece of a case

to the American people for aggression against Iran and whereas Iran has not threatened to attack the United States and no compelling evidence has been presented to document that Iran poses a real and imminent threat to the security and safety of the United States that would justify an unprovoked, unilateral, preemptive military attack

and whereas we support the people of Iran who are struggling for freedom and democracy and nothing herein should be misconstrued as support for the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran that should be understood that a unilateral preemptive U.S. military attack on Iran would well prove counterproductive to the cause of promoting freedom and democracy there.

and whereas a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate

representing the consensus view of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Iran froze its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and then earlier NIE concluded that Iran's involvement in Iraq is not likely to be a major driver of violence there and whereas an attack on Iran is likely

to cause untold thousands of American and Iranian casualties lead to major economic dislocations and threaten even greater destabilization in the Middle East and whereas a preemptive US military attack on Iran would violate international law and our commitments under the UN Charter and further isolate the US from the rest of the world

and whereas an attack on Iran is likely to inflame hatred for the U.S. in the Middle East and elsewhere, inspire terrorism and lessen the security of Americans and whereas the Iraq war and occupation has already cost the lives of over 4,000 American soldiers, the naming and wounding of over 38,000 American soldiers, the death and maiming of over 1 million Iraqi civilians,

and whereas the Iraq war and occupation has crushed Charlottesville taxpayers more than $61 million before aiding the cost of interest payments, care for veterans, or the increased price of oil, thus depriving us of much needed funds for services and infrastructure.

and realize except at our peril we cannot ignore the history of U.S. government misinformation used to inspire U.S. aggression in Vietnam and again in Iraq as embodied in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

and more recently in the false claims of weapons of mass destruction and whereas any conflict with Iran is likely to incur greater cost and divert more precious national resources away from critical human needs, now therefore be it resolved that the city of Charlottesville, Virginia hereby urges the Bush administration to pursue diplomatic engagement

with Iran on nuclear issues and ending the violence in Iraq and be it further resolved that the city of Charlottesville

Virginia urges Congress to prohibit the use of funds to carry out any military action against Iran without explicit congressional authorization and be it further resolved that suitable copies of this resolution will be forwarded to President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Senator John Warner, Senator James Webb, and Congressman Virgil Hirsch.

Thank you very much.

Good evening, Councillors.

My name is Kevin Lynch, 609 Locust Avenue.

You will recall that two weeks ago today, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority held a press conference in which they announced that the price of the dam at Ragon Mountain had risen from $37 million to $70 million.

At that press conference, they also passed out a memo which contained reports from a couple of engineering firms.

and they told us at that press conference or actually shortly thereafter that they had briefed all of council about the contents of these memos and so I thought it might be interesting to go into the contents of these memos because as I'm sure you've read them now and we sent them to you last week just to make sure that you had seen them, looking at the contents of the memo it's clear that

The number that the consultants have said the dam will increase by is not $70 million or $72 million was the number that was in the memo.

That's just for the construction of the dam.

And as Rivanna likes to talk about comparing apples to apples, I think it's important to know just what the apples are here.

$37 million was for construction of the dam and for engineering fees of the dam.

For mitigation, the environmental mitigation for the dam,

and for the work that is to be done on the 64 embedments.

If you add those numbers in, as is clearly shown in the memos that were background to this press conference, the minimum increase for this new price tag is $85 million.

Not $75 million, $85 million minimum.

And if you look at some of the more conservative numbers, could easily go over $100 million.

Some of the other interesting things that were in the memo were that the Rivanna's consultant for quite a long time, Gannett Fleming, now appears to be having second thoughts about the efficacy of their plan because they are recommending that if the dam goes forward they recommend doing a study of the cost of the pipeline as well and they offered four other options instead of

building a dam that might be considered.

Among those, building a smaller dam and possibly dredging to make up the shortfalls.

We were surprised going to the Rivanna board meeting to hear that the board didn't discuss any of the contents of the memo or any of the options presented by the consultant at all.

That's why we asked to make sure that you had read the memo.

Some of the cost-saving ideas that were presented by another engineering firm were not discussed.

Some of those we feel are rather controversial, such as finding a source of aggregate at the dam site.

opening up a new quarry for gravel because you can look around that site and you're not going to find a giant pile of gravel lying somewhere.

If you get a source of gravel, if you get a source of aggregate, you're going to have to get that out of the hillside somewhere.

Not building coffer dams and dewatering for the foundation and lowering

Wagon Mountain Dam instead to absorb a potential 25 year flood.

All of these were very disconcerting things to read, which is why I'm asking you all, have you all read this memo?

And if so, how can you justify letting staff tell the public that this is going to be a 70 million dollar cost when the memo says it's going to be a middle of 85?

How can you justify

I've been talking to a lot of people in the public and they don't understand why now we're going to be spending money on a panel of dam experts when we don't know if the pipeline can be built.

Because people have read enough now to understand that the pipeline has to be built for the 50 year water supply plan or the dam doesn't work for 50 years.

I mean, we can build a smaller dam, but then you gotta supply that water somewhere else.

So, I guess the question is, to the council, I feel like

What's happening from what I'm observing going to the Rivanna board meetings is that we have a Rivanna board that is very busy.

Mr. O'Connor is very busy, Mr. Tucker is very busy, Mr. Miller.

And they can't pay attention to this.

So there are no discussions that go on with the information they get.

And I feel we have a vacuum of leadership.

and ultimately you are the accountable party here.

You have to be accountable for all this money that's being spent on the consultants and that is yet to be spent to give us any more water.

And so I am asking you to really look into this and I know Mayor Norris is thinking about this.

I don't think the thing to do is to put an elected official on this board.

Let me tell you, I've had so many thousands of pages.

You all have enough to do.

You need people on that board that are either elected by the public because they're seen as being incredibly competent in this area and dedicated and will spend a lot of their life as I am now looking into this.

Or you need to appoint people like Kevin Lynch.

who is an engineer who understands these things.

I guarantee you if you had Kevin Lynch on that board now, none of this would be happening.

Or Donnie Smith who understands finances and I guarantee you if you had Donnie Smith on that board, none of this would be happening.

Because Mr. O'Connor and Mr. Tucker are so busy, they have basically given over all the decision-making to the Rivanna staff.

They have an unlimited amount of money, they have a blank check to spend our money, and we ask, and I think you know, Mayor Norris, that we need to look at the pipeline.

We can't not look at the pipeline.

Even Janet Fleming says that and he wanted to do that.

But at the bird meeting when we weren't there, nobody said we'd look at the pipeline.

They put it off and they said nope.

And then the bird, the only questions they asked was how fast can we have these dam experts?

We know that it's our money.

Our rates were doubled.

We need to get the dredging survey so we can compare a cost alternative that some of us feel is much less expensive.

We need to get that pipeline looked at.

Or we're throwing away money again on the dam study, another dam study.

because we can't, excuse me, we cannot build it without the pipeline.

So I ask you, you're in charge.

You don't have to.

Mr. O'Connor will do what you tell him.

He wasn't at the meeting.

But if you tell him that you want that dam to be studied before the money is spent on the dam consultants, then he'll do it because he works for us and he works for you.

Thank you, Ms. May.

My name is Colin and I'm a student at UVA.

I am here tonight to present a recommendation on behalf of Student Council at the University of Virginia.

I represent a body that has deemed this proposal beneficial to the entire student body through Resolution FR-08-04.

For years, the quality of student life at the University of Virginia has continued to suffer as a result of the early leasing signing dates on housing both on and off grounds.

Even with nearly 45% increase of off-ground housing units in the last three years, the lease signing date grows closer and closer to the onset of the academic year.

This issue paired with the fact that on-ground housing signed up so early, starting at August 26th, which is the first day of classes,

It creates significant stress for members of the student body at an inappropriate time and thus is detrimental to the entire student body.

First is a first-year student last year who had already signed a lease for the next year within the first couple of weeks of school.

He signed this lease in an off-ground area that was poorly lit.

He regrets the decision.

His remakes knew him for two weeks, but he thought he had to sign a lease because of the fear of apartment availability by both landlords and other upper-class students in advertising.

When in truth, there are hundreds of beds available in the spring.

for multiple students.

The second is about a second year student who had to re-sign her lease two weeks ago in an off grounds apartment.

She signed this lease for the next year knowing that she would forego her ability to transfer, study abroad in order to have a place to stay in her same apartment.

Student Council will for the first time empower the student body to pursue a solution to this problem.

Student Council will educate students about the early leasing signing dates

while we're asking city council to pass an ordinance and find a permanent solution.

Although education is the necessary step, we think it is time for city council to help us address this issue that lays off grounds.

What you could do to address the problem, pass an ordinance that would allow landlords to show or present the apartments to prospective tenants until a period of time after the current leasing situation has passed.

This has been done before at the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

It's something that we've looked into and it's inspired us to come to you all and share it with you.

It's something we really care about.

This is still a lot of attention to the student body.

We have a tired campaign spent on those educating students.

A lot of press within our student newspaper and within our student groups.

We're fighting a culture of misunderstanding.

This would not at any point change the demand or the stress level of finding an apartment.

However, it would postpone the stress to a later point in the year.

I have included many documents in a packet.

I hope you all have received those.

I emailed those out.

I have packets with me if you all need those.

We're not asking the council to do something that has not been done before.

I provide a transcript of and are there ordinance within your packets.

I understand by entering the jail assembly for three years and I understand there's lots of steps involved in this process.

I'm not afraid of those steps and as the student body ends, the student council asks me to share with you all.

We're willing to do whatever's necessary to conquer and tackle this obstacle that students face coming into the university.

The university has moved up earlier.

On grounds housing, you do have to sign up by the end of October, I believe, the date.

I'm not sure exactly of that date on hand.

I have that in my notes.

But the problem is you can't sign so early, and you're encouraged to.

Strongly encouraged by lots of different sources, advertising other class students who feel that this is something you have to do or you won't have an apartment.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ed.

Good evening, my name is Cheryl Smith and I'm a student at the university and I come before you members of the Charlottesville City Council as a member not only of the student council and the University of Virginia student body but also a member of the Charlottesville community as a whole to discuss the details of the proposed ordinance and specifically the educational part that student council has begun.

As a member of the student body, it gives me great distress to see my fellow students go through the stress of having to deal with the choice of where to learn before they should have to.

It is evident that in the past year, the sign up for off-ground housing has increased as well as for on-ground housing.

As a result, we the student body have both proposed an illness and created the Go Sign Up campaign, which empowers members of the student body to take charge.

In a way to properly educate our student body on how important this issue is, we have set up forums, panels, dorm talks to inform them of how signing a lease too early may not always be the right choice and that they do have a voice in the matter.

It is very important for us to educate our student body, especially the first year and transfer students, who may not be aware of the ability that they do have to invoke change within the community.

Every first year a student will be educated through dormitory talks about signing an off-ground lease and the proper time to do so.

We understand that while we ask you to pass an ordinance, it is also our responsibility to educate the students and the students' responsibility to make good decisions.

The student body also recognizes the importance of business and the role that landlords play in the transaction of this business.

We understand that they are concerned with losing business, but what we would like them to understand is that by pushing back the deadline to sign leases, they will not lose business.

Students will have more time to make adequate decisions, and the landlords will get better tenants in business.

The University of Virginia and Charlottesville communities are very important to us.

In actuality, we are all one community, and we must help each other grow and prosper.

It is my hope that this initiative is a stepping stone in the right direction to ban the tires of both communities.

Help us to make the principles of the Don't Sign a Campaign a success.

Help us to take charge in our community.

Thank you, Ms. Smith.

Colette Harawanna, Lynn Robertson-Lane.

Because I have several questions tonight for the Council, I'm going to do something unusual and hand out the questions so that we'll have a reference after I'm finished.

My first thing is on the consent agenda item O about the ordering buses.

It says B.

Each violation of this section shall be subject to a several penalty of $50.

I think that penalty is too low.

I don't think that penalty is going to prevent a lot of people from not ordering their buses.

Agenda item number four, the city legislative package.

Number two under that says, quote, request for an amendment to the Virginia Code section 15.2, which authorizes the imposition of taxes or assessments for certain local improvements on abutting property owners.

The proposed amendment would allow the cost of undergrounding utilities and sidewalks and so forth and so forth to be assessed against the property owner either through an agreement with the property owner or by two-thirds vote of the city council.

I'm not sure what this means.

It concerns me.

I can't understand why a budding property owner should be responsible to pay for something that they're not asking for or want.

Agenda item number six, directing a planning commission to initiate zoning text.

It seems to me that this gives more power to staff and frankly that is something I would rather not see.

I do agree though that streamlining planning commission meetings is important.

This paragraph especially troubles me.

Most of the citizen input received on any stereotype of approvals occurs at the Site Plan Conference, now at Planning Commission meetings where a degree of citizens are come to discuss site plan issues at a Planning Commission meeting.

My response, the public is not informed of a staff planning conference unless the site is property abutting or in some way directly affecting us.

So how can we give input if it's not at a planning commission meeting?

The second one that concerns me greatly, quote, instead they come within the public to object to a project when the objection is not in order.

We believe that there will be an adequate level of public notice and discussion on these projects and that it will be at least the level that we achieve today.

In our responses, instead of worrying about us coming and objecting to projects, what does that mean?

Public input is essential in a democratic republic.

Where and how can we discuss what comes before the Planning Commission if we don't and are not allowed to speak at Planning Commission meetings?

My second item, my next item, and I did not discuss this with Benamune, obviously, the ISWA board, in the opinion of many, many, needs oversight.

I personally think there needs to be an elected official, a city councilor, and a supervisor on the board, and at least two other public citizens that are not part of other agency or organizations.

For example, are not part of the Nature Conservancy or the River Basin Commission.

Now I want to say personally, because I've been in front of many, many city councils, you guys, you folks, are so busy.

You go to so many meetings, but water is essential for life.

And I would ask you if you can find other people to attend some of these other boards you're on, but this board, the RSWA board, is essential.

Recently, there was an important RSWA vote that four members had to abstain due to possible conflict of interest.

The vote was left to one person, one person to decide the fate of the city and county water sewer users and rate payers, and this person is a non-elected official, a non-elected person.

That scares me.

This is unfair to the electorate.

My final and last item, a question for you.

Building the Meadow Creek Parkway, it's just a question.

Is building the Meadow Creek Parkway contingent upon building the Eastern Connector?

What was it one of the contingencies?

It appears that a lack of funds are perhaps because the recommended route is through another one of our city parks that the interconnector will probably not be built.

I'm sorry, I don't remember what those contingencies were.

Thank you, Ms. Hahn.

My name is Joe Mooney.

I live at 201 Sunset Avenue, and I would like to address you and Mayor Norris and Council, particularly in regard to fiscal responsibility.

I think that's been referred to, and I'm particularly concerned that at a time when you turn on the radio, as I did this afternoon, and you hear the economic news,

when we read what the governor is predicting about the financial status of the state and when two weeks ago where I work a notice was put out that there was a hiring freeze on.

I think that we need to be forewarned that we're heading for trouble.

I think there is little disagreement that we're headed for a recession

The only disagreement is whether we're going to pull out of it in two years or whether it's going to take ten years.

In the face of that, I think that attention needs to be given to the dam and the pipeline.

I will say at this point, the pipeline is a fantasy.

The pipeline is literally a pipe dream.

There is no design plan for the pipeline and yet RWSA has been giving us figures of estimates

How much?

57 million, something like that.

I think that's what we've been going on for several years now, but impressed by Freedom of Information requests.

Mr. Fivik has finally admitted that there is no plan.

If you have no plan, how can you have a fiscal estimate of how the cost is going to be?

If you don't have a pipeline, how are you going to fill the dam?

I really congratulate Mr. Rucker, who recently asked, what are we going to do if we build this dam, which is what RWSA is recommending, and we need to find, later on in stage two, that the pipeline cost twice as much as we thought it was going to.

I think you all need to ask those kinds of questions and again I think following Mr. Wickard's footsteps I think he's opened the door to a public discussion that really needs to be attended to quickly.

Thank you very much.

I'll be very brief.

I'm just here in support of the marketing expenses for the restoration of the downtown mall.

The wise judgment of this council allowing us to have the refurbishment of the mall is outstanding.

Those of us that have businesses or those of us that are bringing events here to the downtown mall definitely need to have the marketing assistance in order to keep our businesses strong.

Good evening, I'm Dowling Smith, 810 Locust Avenue.

I had some prepared remarks, but I'm just going to give them to Ms. Koch.

Y'all don't want to be here all night.

You've already heard from the movies and Kevin.

I think this water supply plan is a terrible mess.

I think the people at Gannett Fleming and the Robert A. Warner sewer authority are either dishonest or incompetent, and I think that this water supply plan

and Charlottesville's Bridge to Nowhere.

Thank you, Ms. Smith.

Good evening.

I too will be fairly brief.

We've been here a long time.

I'm here in support of the marketing for the mall renovation and I would just like to remind you all that time is of the essence in this.

It's a very important step for all of us.

We're writing off a big chunk here but we also know that survival is important too.

We feel like you have tremendous resources down here with the business people and their experience, their abilities to know what's going to work and what's going to be most effective as far as marketing to downtown.

So we're asking for help in doing that and I think that you all understand how much that's needed.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm Rick Jones.

I'm a local property owner and manager.

I sent you all an email just to comment on the presentation that the student council members gave tonight.

I think that both of them repeated the efforts that they've made to educate students and essentially

My point and all of the property owners that I've spoken to agree with them that education is really the most appropriate way to handle this.

It's like getting out credit cards to brand new kids too.

They can abuse them, they can get in lots of trouble and nobody outlaws the ability to get credit.

It's kind of the same.

We have not moved up our leasing season.

It's been the same for years and years and years.

As I said in my email today, I looked in the Kevlar Daily on Friday, which was the last one I could get my hands on.

There is one property owner who is advertising that he's renting apartments for next year.

So I think maybe the students are having the desired effect.

I applaud their efforts, but I think legislating what people do in the free market is just not appropriate.

Thank you, Mr. Jones.

Thank you to everybody who spoke this evening.

Are there any responses by members of City Council?

Mr. Mayor, I would like staff to follow up on parking study and parking needs in the south of the tracks.

Just so you're aware, I mean we're planning on bringing the parking study to the November meetings and it looks at the issue that was talked about tonight.

This is, this ordinance was in response to a request from Dr. Brown in light of

recent enabling legislation and that state code provision provides that violators of such ordinance shall be subject to a civil penalty not to exceed $50.

Okay, thank you.

Anybody else?

I'd like to thank Carla Mann for her comments.

I mean I think anything we can do to think of different ways of publicizing our meetings.

I've always thought the idea of some visual way downtown and maybe other places, Barracks Road or something, some display that could be changed on a weekly basis of upcoming meetings would be a good idea.

I do think the parking thing has a couple of aspects and I think we need to be careful about it.

I think that south of the railroad tracks I think is an area that's expected to provide parking as opposed to be an area where we provide parking.

And secondly, an awful lot of people depend on free parking.

for their work situation and their employers sort of have a structure that's based on that.

And I think we just need to be careful.

We need to think about all aspects of the need for regulated parking, but the impacts it would have on other employers and other people in the area.

But I do think we should try to proceed in a timely fashion so we can deal with this in the best way we can.

And I'm also concerned about the cost of the dam.

I think it's a real shock.

I'd like to know more about exactly what the cost of increase of the dam are.

Obviously one of the things, which wasn't mentioned tonight,

also amazingly wasn't mentioned in a very in-depth Hook article is that a big cost of the dam being increased is unexpected findings of a fault fracture in the bedrock.

Now obviously that begs the question of are we looking far enough and deep enough

at the issues when we're having these preliminary estimates.

And I certainly want to make sure as we look at the cost of a pipeline, which I think it's very good points made, we need to make sure that enough work goes into looking at the cost of a pipeline that we don't find ourselves in the position that Dennis Rooker is mentioning.

So I think we do need to get more information.

on what those costs are, specifically what I'd like to know with the cost of the dam, are there costs overruns or is this more due to the unexpected findings involving the fracture of rock and should that have been known ahead of time?

I think this whole issue does bring, even though I sort of felt like the economics of making the dam taller

you know it was so much cheaper just to make it taller that it sort of precluded dredging being part of the solution and I think that the increased cost here you know bring into question whether dredging could be a partial solution.

I think we all know that dredging can't be a total solution but I think it brings into you know is you know would the cost of the dam be a lot less given the new information if we only had to raise it a small amount instead of the entire amount.

I wanted to make a comment about the presentation by the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice.

I personally acknowledge that the mayor did take a stand on that and I admire that you did that.

And I feel that personally, I don't want a war in Iraq, I don't want a war in Iran, but as an elected body,

I don't think it's appropriate for us to be involved in a national issue when locally we have wars in our own neighborhood.

I don't want to send President Bush a message that I can't even get across two blocks from where I live.

There's been a series of murders over the summer and there was just one recently.

The funeral hasn't even been planned yet.

So I like to think that since just last week we had a March for Peace and the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice is here and it's kind of ironic that most of the members of the Quality Community Council, not all, but mostly are African Americans, and it seems that most of the members, but not all, of the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice are mostly white.

That maybe by having the recent peace marches and having

This presentation tonight is really an opportunity to create a bridge between two communities locally.

I think there's just so much that we can do together right here at home.

It's just hard for me to think about what's going on overseas, even though that's important as well.

There were four or five speakers today about talking about a water plan and things have changed and I think we need to review those concerns, try to follow the, I think what Dr. Brown said.

We need to look further at this matter than we have now.

I just want to add that with the ever-changing price tag of the water plan, it does tend to, I guess for lack of a better term, shake your confidence in what's taking place with the Rivanna Sur and Water Authority, at least in my opinion.

I had a few comments from my owner.

First of all, Ms. Mano, you asked who the new community relations liaison person that would be Maurice Jones, who's our assistant city manager.

I'm sure I'd be happy to talk to you, follow up on that.

Secondly, I'd like to ask our city attorney if you could address the issue that was raised by our student guests tonight relating to an ordinance, whether or not city council even has the authority under Virginia law to pass such an ordinance.

I haven't received a copy of the ordinance, but given the description of it that I've heard, in my opinion, I believe the city would have to get some additional enabling legislation from the state either to do that individually or to empower localities across the state.

There's a pretty comprehensive

set of statutes that have been adopted by the General Assembly that are referred to as the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act.

Thank you.

In answer to Ms. Hall's question about whether or not the Meadow Creek Parkway is contingent upon building the Eastern Connector, the specific language in the easement that we granted for the city land was that the county would complete the study of alignment and funding scenarios for the Eastern Connector.

It was not specified in the most recent easement agreement that

They would build the Eastern Connector.

We've now completed that study and it showed essentially that the only viable and useful alignment for the Eastern Connector would be a new road through Penn Park.

And I don't sense that there's much political will right now to build another road through another park.

So that's, I just wanted to address that issue.

Plus the funding is just simply not available at any time in the near future or distant future.

With regard to the water supply, I think what's become clear is that we need better information and better numbers on all the components of the water supply, both the adopted plan and also the alternative plan.

And my belief and hope is that

This process of bringing in outside, neutral, third-party experts to review the dam estimates can be broadened to be a comprehensive assessment of all components of the proposed and alternative water supply scenarios and help us determine what the best

plan the best strategy for meeting our goals and the most cost effective and environmentally friendly manner would be.

And lastly with Iran, I made the poll of the city councilors to see if there's support for bringing, I'm not sensing there's a lot of support for bringing a resolution before council, I would poll the councilors.

My own feeling is

While I appreciate the sentiments expressed by Ms. Edwards, I do think these goals are not mutually exclusive and that it is entirely not only conceivable but maybe even self-reinforcing to have the city take bolder action on violence in our neighborhoods while we speak out against violence in our global neighborhood.

We'll all get a sense after tonight's meeting if there's support for bringing a resolution to council.

And that's all my comments.

Thank you all for coming and speaking tonight.

The next portion of our journey tonight

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to move the following appointments to our boards and commissions to the Charles L. Albemarle Commission on Children and Families, Sean McCord and Everett Maurice Walker and as a youth representative Haja Abdul-Sattar.

to the Charlottesville Police Advisory Panel, Leman Bates, George Harry Benford, Gene Chase, Mark Gruber, Ida Lewis, John Racine, Glen Russ, David Edward Simmons Jr., Quentin Harrell, and as a Council Representative, Julian Taliaferro,

Dr. Brown, is there a second on those appointments?

Second.

Any discussion?

Please indicate your vote.

Motion carries.

Congratulations.

We'll now move on to the consent agenda for tonight's meeting.

I have a number of items on the consent agenda.

Item A is approving minutes of September 2nd, 5th and 6th and 15th.

Item B is an appropriation of $46,765 at Justice Assistance Grant, second of two readings.

Item C is an appropriation of $10,000 Police Department Foundation contribution, second of two readings.

Item D is an appropriation of $294,000 Lighted Crosswalks Grant, second of two readings.

Item E is a resolution allocating funds to Charlottesville Economic Development Authority for Jefferson School Managing Partners, first of one reading.

Item F is a resolution designating Route 20 of the Virginia Scenic Byway, first of one reading.

Item G, a resolution designating $100,000 from the Capital Improvement Program for Downtown Mall Restoration Marketing Expenses, first of one meeting.

Item H is a resolution authorizing application for T-Grant, Transportation Enhancement Act Grant for McIntire Park Bridge, first of one meeting.

Item I is a resolution transfer of funds for Workforce Development Grant, first of one meeting.

Item J, an ordinance designating 134 10th Street Northwest, the Coca-Cola battling works as an individually protected historic property, second of two readings.

Item K, an ordinance designating 722 Preston Avenue, 1937 Portion evening, a Coca-Cola battling company as an individually protected historic property, second of two readings.

Item L is an ordinance designating a portion of 911 Emmett Street, Wachovia Bank, as an individually protected historic property, second of two readings.

Item M is an ordinance designating a portion of 946 Grady Avenue, former Monticello Dairy Building, as an individually protected historic property, second of two readings.

Item N is an ordinance designating 212 Rosser Avenue, holding Temple Church as an individually protected store property, first of two readings.

And item O is an ordinance prohibiting extended idling, 15 minutes by private buses, first of two readings.

Are there any items that councils would like removed for further discussion?

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to remove item G.

Item G is a resolution designating $100,000 in capital improvement program for downtown mall and restoration marketing expenses.

So we'll take that up at the end of tonight's agenda.

Second?

Second.

Any discussion?

Please indicate your vote.

Motion carries.

Thank you.

The first item on our regular business is a public hearing and ordinance to sail a city land at 521 and 529 Ridge Street and join right-of-way on Ridge Street, second of two readings.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Members of Council.

Here we are again.

I'll quickly, please bear with me, I'll review the process for those who weren't with us last time as to where we are to date on this particular project.

And I'll once again reference the graphics that are on the wall behind you if you need to reference those.

This particular project involves two non-contiguous city-owned parcels on Reed Street that are 521 and 529 Reed Street.

The two undeveloped parcels total approximately one third of an acre.

They are vacant and unimproved and have been under city ownership since 1976.

In recent years, the city began to receive interest regarding the potential sale of the parcels.

In particular, one local company, Southern Development, expressed an interest given they own surrounding parcels in this area.

Southern began developing concept plans and seeking input from neighborhood groups over the past several years.

Earlier this year, council indicated their desire to move forward with a formal RFP process to see if there are others with interest in these two particular parcels.

An RFP was issued and a single response was received from Southern Development in May of this year.

Southern Development has indicated their desire to combine the two city-owned parcels with five surrounding parcels that are currently under their ownership into a single master plan development.

Currently, to understand this correctly, Southern Development has by-right development rights on their existing five parcels.

It's estimated that these development rights allow them to develop up to 64 units under the current zoning, which is both R2 and R3.

What SEDM has proposed with the addition of the two city parcels would be to rezone all seven parcels to a planned unit development.

PUD development offers more creative designs that can encourage preservation of open space as well as a variety of housing types and even mixed-use development.

SEDM development has proposed 40,000 square feet of office space and 40 residential units as part of its current plan.

The PUD type zoning allows more dense development and allows the development to be pulled closer to the street and the preservation of green space to be possible behind the parcels.

Key benefits to the city of a planned unit development would include the opportunity to create a gateway building on this entrance corridor to the city.

This could also potentially jumpstart development along Cherry Avenue, which is considered one of our commercial cores.

Commercial corridors, excuse me.

It would also add office space to the city, which would allow existing businesses to expand and provide job opportunities in our city.

The planned unit development would also, as I mentioned, allow the opportunity to preserve green space and additional tree canopy that would otherwise not be possible given a bow right type development.

It would allow the city to achieve infill development, which is consistent with the comprehensive plan.

would add two currently non-tax parcels to the tax rolls and upon completion of the development of this nature we estimate approximately $325,000 in annual tax revenue to be generated.

So given the two options, once again the buy right option that Southern currently has on their five parcels versus the planned unit development option which would include the two city parcels, I think most objective analysis would agree that

In terms of overall benefit to the city, the planned unit development would provide considerably more.

The land purchase and sale agreement that has been negotiated between the city and Southern at this point, which is in your packet, includes the following key.

items, a $253,000 cash contribution currently intended for a Fifeville affordable housing fund, a commitment by the purchaser to diligently pursue the necessary approvals, commitment by the purchaser to substantial conformity to the plans which they have shared to date, which are the ones behind you in the graphics, a commitment to pursue LEED certification and have them certified by an architect,

An option for the city to have a Charlottesville transit stop as part of the project An option for the city to lease space in the commercial area for the purpose of a police substation if it were so desired by the city at the time of completion And public access to the open space area which would be preserved behind the parcels in an open space, green space

So, to be clear, the item before you tonight involves the execution of a sales agreement.

If approved, the developer would proceed with the normal review process and approval process, during which the public would have considerable additional opportunity to comment on the details of this project.

This review would include, at a minimum, staff, the Board of Architectural Review, and because it would require a rezoning, Planning Commission and City Council as well.

It's estimated that this agreement, that this process would take an additional two to two and a half years The agreement at this point would be final in ownership of transfer at the time of final site plan approval I think this is a unique opportunity for the city to participate in a proactive manner in a development project that could potentially greatly enhance this particular part of the city

At the end of the last public hearing, there was a couple of questions about notification.

I just want to go over those real quickly.

In addition to notice in the paper, city policy requires land sales to notify adjoining property owners.

We took a broad view of that and included basically everyone within sight of these properties, not only adjoining physically but within sight.

This included 45 nearby property owners.

These owners were mailed a notice prior to the September 15th meeting.

Prior to tonight's meeting, we re-sent the notice with an additional note requesting them to be present if they would like to comment on the item.

In addition, we also notified the two neighborhood associations, Ridge and Fifeville,

with the same notifications.

I'm happy to answer any questions you have at this point.

Thank you, Mr.

Angle.

We will now open the public hearing, and please limit your comments to three minutes, and when you come forward, give your name and address.

Carla Mena, 324 Seven and a Half Street Southwest, a non-adjacent property owner, apparently.

I live a couple of streets away.

I'm here tonight more as a citizen of the city rather than a Fifeville neighborhood association member.

We've been calling this an entrance corridor, a lovely entrance building to the city, however

We don't open it to the city to decide this.

Is it that Fifeville neighborhood, we're so good with our design construct understanding that we should decide what an entrance corridor should look like?

I don't think so.

I think that this should be held until the city can talk about it.

We talk as a city about

information say with the Boys and Girls Club and all of the issues in terms of the swimming pools and we'll talk as a city and get this place packed but when you delegate the information to just one neighborhood or two and then you actually burn them out in terms of meetings.

We at our last meeting as a neighborhood were fully against this project and the person who was at that time and I don't remember her name,

The person from Neighborhood Development Services said that the city, the neighborhood was against it and needed a lot more information.

At that point, Kevin Lynch requested of council a public hearing which was scheduled in December.

We were ready to come and talk to you then.

We were ready in fact to make it a city wide issue.

Perhaps someone found that out.

and the meeting was canceled.

So then between that last meeting and December's schedule, we did not come down here because a public meeting was scheduled.

So knowing that we couldn't speak at public comment.

So what looks like neighborhood apathy is in fact not that.

Now we all understand why you might not want to have a lot of citizens down here.

I'm not opposed to growth.

I'm not opposed to development.

Plan it well.

We have city lots that we could use well and not just talking about saving green space throughout the city and let's come up with a comprehensive plan.

What is the rush?

I hear that there will be office space allowed.

You know, I see the K-Bash sign, K-Bash team sign enough around town that I'm ready to vote for them for president.

Do we really need more office space?

I don't think so.

We had a surplus of $300,000 coming from this project, obviously this developer, nothing personal against this developer, I don't know them, but I see their other projects, we were told they need to do this, they need to do it now, and otherwise this will never be developed.

I don't think so.

Do we really need this?

Let's encourage, let's use what we do have to encourage the private market to develop where it looks very blighted.

We've got green space here.

We've got a sale of IGA.

There's a sign that's been up in the IGA parking lot which looks very blighted.

I don't think anyone would refute.

Why not encourage the wealthy developers who could afford to pay

to develop where we actually have visible light.

And I see that my time is up.

I have a lot more to say, but I will sit down in deference to others.

Thank you, Ms. Mano.

I was very glad to see the masks earlier, so I didn't feel quite as awkward.

My own artwork.

Edward Thomas, 339 6th Street, Southwest Road, the very top

left corner of that map.

I'll start with this.

This is what the site looks like right now.

I'm a painter in Charlottesville, as well as a practicing architect and landscape architect with a degree from the VA.

I believe many of you guys up here last year received a print of this, or some of you did.

I also have a petition that I circulated yesterday around the neighborhood and got 60 signatures.

It states, we citizens of Fifeville and Charlottesville oppose the destruction of the woods at Cherry and Ridge Street by the city and southern development and the construction on the site of luxury condos and high rise offices.

If I had known about this hearing earlier, I could have gotten a lot more, but I never received either of the two mailings that this gentleman claims we got.

There's the signatures.

Several quick points.

I'd like to point out that the man that has been driving behind this development for 15 years is Charlie Hurt.

hiding underneath Southern Development.

As most of you probably know, he is one of the most reckless and daring developers and has ruined numerous places dear to Charlottesville.

He went as far as building his own concrete bridge across the Rivanna and the remnants of that rubble are still in the river.

I don't think many people know that these days.

Several other issues, we've taught ourselves as a green city.

Green is the new buzzword.

I'm sure these are going to be certified LEED and have bamboo floors and all that.

Meanwhile, there's a beautiful bamboo forest, beautiful trees there.

There's nothing green about tearing them down.

Affordable housing, that's another platform in the city right now that you hear a lot about.

If they care about affordable housing, why not build one affordable house on each of those sites?

The $250,000 that is going to be proffered towards affordable housing fund that would maybe one day build Brown House.

Right now the city is trying to shove down all our throats, the neighborhood of Fifeville, our historic designation.

I find it very, very strange that while they're trying to do that, one corner of this neighborhood, Fifeville, is they want to

develop, kind of strange.

One other significant thing that hasn't been in the press at all is there is evidence of the Hawkins family graveyard in these woods.

I've seen maps from the UVA archives showing that and the headstones aren't there because Dr. Hurt, when he first purchased the land, I believe in 1991, went in with a bulldozer

and clear any evidence and knock down the hardwood trees before the city slapped him with one of his many, many stop work orders.

That's about all I have to say.

Thank you, Mr. Thomas.

Wanda Conrad.

Matthew Simon at 599 Dice Street.

I moved to Charlottesville in 1977, right around the time the city acquired the land and grew up in Willoughby.

Picturing now like back then thinking that I would live on Dice Street is kind of a shocker thing to do and since I saw the house I knew I would live there.

And also thank you all for that extra opportunity for having us come speak.

I found out about it from the front page of the daily newspaper showing that there was an extra opportunity server in my calendar.

Seaville just wrote an article about the buildings we hate in Charlottesville and I'm afraid that this might be one of those buildings.

Right around the street from me is the Purple People Eater that was put up and that took a field away from our neighborhood.

Walker Square wasn't mentioned in the article, but it's another one that they tore down a lot of land and there are vacant rooms, apartments, in both of those complexes.

Carl Awesome mentioned the K-Dash signs everywhere.

There are places for lease on Main Street.

I don't understand why we need more office space in a place where there are places for sale and for lease right around the corner.

The building is being done in the area now as well.

A lot of vacant homes are being restored, additions being put on houses, vacant lots waiting for people to buy them and put houses on them as well.

Seems like there's so much opportunity for what we've already got to kind of develop the area.

And I just don't understand what's wrong with all the conservation right now.

I understand it's been a long process, but

Why not keep a little bit for us, for the city?

With the market being warm, heck, you might even get more money for it later down the road as that area develops and becomes more of a greater opportunity for the city and for people in the surrounding areas.

It's also tough to gauge people feeling in our neighborhood because they're not all owners of the land.

A lot of people rent in the area, so it's hard as a neighbor and a resident of Fifeville to kind of actually get what other people's feelings are, and I understand that there are meetings, but I'm not always able to attend those meetings.

The people that I do talk to, the people that grew up there, who rented there their whole lives, don't seem to be too thrilled by it.

They're not here today, but I'd like to know that I speak with them.

Part of the community of Fifeville is that you can sit outside and push your baby down the street with a stroller.

get to know everyone and how they feel about certain issues and we definitely have that in Fifeville.

I don't know if an office mixed-use building is going to enhance what we already have there, which is such a great little town, a great little neighborhood where we speak well and scratch each other's backs.

Just lastly, traffic keeps coming up in Charlottesville and I don't really feel that Charlottesville has an incredible traffic problem, but in adding another office building right there to an already really funky, not pedestrian friendly crosswalk, I just think it's a bad idea.

I see my time is up and I just want to say, you know, let's hold off this time.

I appreciate it.

Thank you, Mr. Simon.

Is there anybody else here that would like to speak to this issue?

I just want to reiterate what the last gentleman said.

That intersection is not a good intersection right now.

I remember last week, I saw council members saying that a traffic study would have to be done first.

and that's good.

But I understood that VDOT at one point had made that name turnable so we could turn down share revenue and now that there's no development is that going to understand what might take away that name?

The other thing is I need some clarity on the fact is the man who owns this property or the development company who owns this property can buy, write, develop it.

What you are going to do, what you can do, what you might do is give him the parcels owned by the city so that you think it will be a better development.

Sorry, I don't particularly agree with that, but by what this corporation can build this, you can't stop them, so to speak.

Okay.

Thank you, Ms. Hall.

Emily Worrall, 402 Oak Street.

I've been trying to figure out from looking at the map exactly what my house is, but if you look at the back of the deck, I'm looking at the bamboo forest, which is

getting closer and closer and the guy bought a strip of land, he knows it.

So I thought that was the end of my problems because the bend before us wouldn't end up on my lap, so to speak.

But now we're talking about this development again, we've always wondered, my mother and father lived two houses away from me and my other neighbor, she owns a house, one other house away from me on Oak Street.

And where this driveway's going to come through, you know, if it's going to sound like

You know, 400 cars passed out.

The back of our house every day on Oak Street is a one-way street.

So we don't have too much traffic.

Our worst problem is people speeding, which is a lot of baby carriages and people walking their dogs on Oak Street these days.

Also, all the land goes down into a big water pit.

That's why the bamboo does so well.

It's just like a sea of green all year long, you know, sort of like being underwater and watching the seaweed or something.

and as we wonder where this drive is going to be supposed to be coming through, that would be really annoying if it was, you know, cars coming from behind us and in front of us, you know, essentially overload.

We're not used to that.

So, basically, I'd be real happy if it didn't happen and it was made into a park instead of a, let's say, paid paradise and put up a parking lot, although I don't walk through paradise, although I know other people do.

It's part of the neighborhood people hang out there in there.

I've never heard anything bad about it.

So I'd like it not to happen.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Someone brought up traffic.

We've been promised for three years as a neighborhood that we would have a comprehensive traffic study.

It has not happened.

I don't know when it's going to happen.

So if it takes a development to do that, I'm really troubled.

I also have an issue with

The fact that the neighbors, this issue of the December cancellation of the meeting, and if we go ahead today and vote on this, I feel as if the promise of a public meeting that was outside of council that would occur at Buford or another place never happened.

And that really did kill a lot of the fuel that was going on in terms of, and I'm saying that in deference to the folks that aren't here tonight, that maybe would like to.

I hate to speak for them.

and again, I'm not opposed to development.

This is just not the right way.

Thank you, Ms.

Manner.

Anybody else like to speak?

We'll close the public hearing and open it up to comments or questions from counselors.

The question is, is it going to be right behind Oak Street or will it be further down the block?

You can walk right up.

Yeah, this is Ridge Street and this is Cherry.

You would enter here and come around.

The buildings would be right here.

So the entire stretch of greenery directly behind Oak Street would be preserved as a green space?

Yes.

Well, I'll start if you like.

I thought that Ms. Hall kind of hit the nail on the head.

The issue isn't do we want to see a development there or do we prefer to keep it green because that's really not the choice before us.

The choice is, you know,

by selling the city land, does this become a better project?

And I appreciate that we scheduled this as another public hearing.

It also seemed that by doing so, it brought out a number of emails from people, at least a couple of which were people who were pretty thoughtful in thinking that this was a better project.

I mean, that is the question, is whether using city land

can do a couple things.

In particular, can it allow the development to avoid building on the greenest, steepest part of this development, and it's my impression that that is exactly what it does.

I think that if we did have the authority to say, can we just keep it green, I think that's where I would go.

I don't believe we have that authority, so I think this does make it a better project, and I intend to support the sale.

I've heard divided views about the project and the stand I'm going to take is for the view of the neighborhood that doesn't want the property sold.

I do have a couple of questions.

You were referring to the survey that was sent in your packet.

About 12.

It was held at the Community Design Center and it was led by the architect for the developer in showing the plans.

and the neighborhood, as I understand, I was not present at that meeting.

The neighborhood was invited and at least 12 people spoke up.

Well, it's my understanding that the developer has done a fair amount of research into that already and it's been determined by several archaeologists that have looked at it that they can't tell until they get under there but there's no evidence that there's any grave site on the property by looking at it now.

Developers certainly wouldn't want to get into any situation where they would discover later it's going to cause them

to stop work and waste money.

Another question.

This is kind of, I guess a theoretical one, but I'm not sure in the time frame when they notice this for sale sign going up in the ITO market.

Is it any way possible?

that development could take place with that IGA market in that lot which is already concrete instead of developing the land where there's a natural area there.

Is there any possible room to negotiate that that parcel of land could be part of a deal where the buildings take place there and the land where the trees are could be

and some kind of conservation easement where we're going to have to cut down any more trees since I think the best way to be a green city is to not have to cut down the trees in the first place.

That's right, that's very recent.

I don't want to speak for the developer in this particular case.

but there certainly is opportunity for the IGA property to be reused adaptively or reused in its current use or redeveloped so I think that's certainly a possibility whether it could happen in conjunction with this development.

I understand the ramifications of the developer being able to do a by right development.

I understand that

The selling of the parcels is perceived to be a better way of making that happen.

But I also think that there's been just enough discord within the whole process to reevaluate the whole decision.

And I really appreciated the comment that the gentleman about Fifeville

neighbors not being all owners of the land.

But there are more ways to have ownership of your community than just to be a land owner.

And the amount of discord that we've heard in this whole process is a good indication of just how people really like Fifeville and Ridge Street and Cherry Avenue, such as it is.

And as we keep in mind that we are talking about people's homes,

Thank you, Ms. Emers.

Well, you know, I'm torn on this but

That's where I am.

This choice is not between doing it and not doing it, but doing it by right or by doing it by planning and development.

By right you could have 64 units on the site and it would totally demolish the site.

And I think by PUD you could save the most environmentally sensitive part of the site and I think it could have been a development in my mind because it would be a review by Board of Article Review

there could be an attractive entrance and more neighborhood friendly in many ways so I think given the choices we are I think better off selling the land and getting a better development than 64 barite on this site because there is no way you can miss 64 barite without demolishing the whole site and I know something about site planning so I would be supportive of this

I tend to agree with your comments.

I also have, you know, I share Mr. Taliaferro's concern that this is not a slam dunk by any means, but I do believe that this makes it a better project.

Some of the issues that I think have been raised are legitimate issues.

The issue with the

Family Cemetery.

The developer has agreed to go back and do an archeological assessment after they've had a chance to clear off the topsoil and do a review to make sure there are no grave sites on the property.

As a requirement of this deal,

Before the land is transferred, the ownership is transferred, there will need to be a traffic study.

I agree with Ms. Manno that we promised this neighborhood a comprehensive traffic study two years ago, three years ago.

That needs to be addressed.

That promise needs to be kept.

There have been many public meetings on this issue going back years.

The neighborhood does not speak with one voice, certainly.

There's many people in the neighborhood who don't want to see it built on at all.

There's others who are okay with some reasonable development here.

We've gotten emails on all sides and we've heard a lot of public input in the last number of years on this issue.

Nobody likes to see trees taken down.

But I do think, as others have said, that this makes it a better development.

It's not a perfect development, but it's a better development.

I did have a question for Council regarding use of the proceeds from the sale.

The initial thought was that we create a fund to allow homeowners in Fifeville to rehab, particularly homeowners on fixed incomes, to rehab their homes.

And there's been some suggestion made

that we use at least the proceeds from the sale for a more overtly public use such as improvements to Tonsilor Park and go back to the developer later on in the process when we're negotiating the terms of the planning and development and seek a profit for affordable housing at that time.

I think there's a strong sense by many in the neighborhood that Tonsler Park needs to be fixed up.

One of the other requests had to do with the police substation issue.

I personally don't believe this is a good site for a police substation.

Even though it's something that the developer has agreed to considering the agreement, I don't think we should take them up on that offer.

and I've talked to Chief Longo about it and about the idea of opening up a police substation at Tonsler Park and he is quite amenable to that idea.

There's two Fifeville community policing positions that are going to be filled in the spring.

and Chief Lando has agreed to look at having them stationed at Tonsil Park rather than at Walker Square or in this new development, which makes much more sense to me than having a substation here.

Mr. Mayor, I would like to speak to your question.

I have been thinking about the same issue and I also agree with you that this is not a best place for

Police Station, Tesla, probably will be better in many ways because we were visible to many children who need help.

My thinking at this time is that it was before my times when we decided that this money should go to Fifeville.

I think the last castle decided that.

I would like to see that for putting a housing, offering a housing fund,

I'll just say I agree.

I don't think it's a good place for a police substation.

I would like to see those funds really go

Well, I of course would be happy to see the funds designated for affordable housing, but to me it's sort of six and one half dozen and another.

If we are able, as we often do in the process of negotiating proffers with developers, if we're able to secure a commitment for affordable housing at that point,

To me, I have no problem designating these, the sale proceeds to, my preference would be, if we're going to do this, would be to have them designated to improvements of the neighborhood park, which is right across the street and needs improving.

And given the timeline for

Tonsler is on the list of master planning projects, park planning projects.

The timing would actually work very well when this check would be cut to the city.

It would be right around the same time that we would be looking to do some significant improvements at Tonsler anyways.

First of all, let me say I'm not lobbying one way or the other.

I'm just being asked a question.

A couple of concerns at Tonsler.

One is the playground.

It's an old wooden playground built probably within the last 12 to 15 years.

And at some point, those really begin to deteriorate.

There's only so much you can do to upkeep that.

And so a major replacement of a playground there would be beneficial.

One of the things, and I think this is an ugly word in Charlottesville, but parking.

We have a wonderful ball diamond back there but unfortunately there's not enough parking and what ends up happening in that specific park is people end up migrating up into the neighborhoods and what they end up doing is taking people's parking spots in front of their houses because they don't have

off-street parking available to them.

And that creates user conflict and therefore then the park really ends up being underutilized.

And there's also improvements that desperately need to be made to the basketball courts at some point.

But again, they're out on our list of improvements to be done to the park.

I would like to see money going to the park itself, to park improvements.

It seems to me like this is a big decision to make all at once and I was wondering if perhaps

We could add language here in the purchase agreement to the effect that the purchase price will be paid by the purchaser by a cash contribution to a five-field neighborhood affordable housing fund, comma, other affordable housing fund designated by the city, comma, or improvements to Tonsil Park at the discretion of the city.

and that would allow more time to sort of figure out what would be the best use of those contributions.

Do you have any issues with that?

Not at all.

I'll just remind you that

The closing on the property is quite a distance off in the future and that's the time the purchase price will be paid and it's always within the discretion of council to appropriate that money for a specific purpose.

Okay.

Could we insert City Council just so it's clear in the two and a half years or whenever that it comes back to the Council at that point in time?

Is that amendment acceptable to?

Yes.

Okay.

And I would also go ahead and remove the language regarding a police substation on the property.

It's not even granting us the right to use, it's the right to lease.

Mr. Mayor, that language is at the top of Page 5, paragraph 11F, so if it's the consensus of council, we can delete that from the agreement.

Any other suggested amendments?

There will be extensive neighborhood involvement.

This, as Mr. Engle mentioned, this project is in its infancy.

There will be at least two years of public hearings, of meetings, of planning commission meetings, city council review.

There will be many opportunities for public involvement, and I know the developer is committed to that.

Any other thoughts?

This as a sale of City Land, it does require four votes to pass.

Is there a motion to approve?

There were two changes and I was taking that as with the consensus of all of council.

Okay, so I will call for a vote on the resolution on the ordinance as amended.

Please indicate your vote.

Okay, motion carries, 4-1.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Engle.

Take you from here.

Thank you Mr. Mayor, Members of Council.

You have before you tonight for your review and approval the draft legislative program for the Climate Protection Planning District for 2009.

If I could just spend a few minutes to summarize the five priority items that are in the first section of that program.

First obviously is having to do with local and state funding obligations.

and urging the state in the face of continuing revenue and budget woes to honor its funding obligations to localities, to not cost shift to localities and to not give us more unfunded mandates.

And I think very important in this particular time is to consider relaxing state requirements for giving localities flexibility in meeting state requirements when there are reductions in funding.

Second priority is land use and growth management.

This is a position that the localities in the region have had for a number of years, basically saying don't take away those land use tools that we currently have, and yes, we'd like to have more tools in the toolbox.

There is specifically focus in this position on Senate Bill 768, which is the bill from this past General Assembly session that we spent an awful lot of time on, dealing with impact fees and proffers.

Transportation funding is next, urging the state to establish a dedicated and consistent revenue stream for transportation.

Of course this would be unfinished business from the past several general assembly sessions and most recently this past summer.

It does note the 44% reduction in construction cost that the Commonwealth Transportation Board had approved this past summer and certainly we can expect some additional reduction in the program.

I do need to tell you one specific change as I was presenting the program to the Albemarle Board of Supervisors last week in the transportation funding position.

One change that was requested and it's in the first bullet there related to the transit authority.

And really just I think some clarification so that the position statement would now read legislative support for enabling authority to establish governance and funding mechanisms for

a regional transit authority for Charlottesville Albemarle.

The fourth priority is the Comprehensive Services Act.

Here we're trying to really stress a better partnership between the state and localities as it relates to CSA and also addressing

The weight of responsibilities for this program, we've tried to excite several examples where we think the weight has been shifted to localities, namely what the governments bear 90% of the administrative cost of implementing CSA and also the match rates changes that were approved by the General Assembly this past session and that are being phased in over the course of the first six months of this fiscal year.

Highly public education funding, a long standing position urging the state to pay its share of the standards of quality and again to not shift costs for public education to localities.

We saw a number of proposals this past session.

to do that and the position also addresses teacher salaries as well as school construction and renovation needs.

The rest of the program has those areas of continuing concern, economic development, housing, environment, public safety and others that have the ongoing issues that have remained in the program for a number of years and also specific requests from localities and here you'll see any new items underlined in this section.

I have talked with your staff about the legislative proposals that you have before you in your next item, and certainly we'll continue to talk with them and work with them as well as the General Assembly members through the legislative process in January.

Thank you, Mr. Long.

Yes, there was just some general language I think that was probably broad enough to take that into- So those two things would have to be in place for this to happen basically, right?

Well, I think it's consistent with the discussions that have been taking place with the joint working group that's been meeting on this and specifically looking at a piece of enabling legislation to deal with the structure of an RTA and then a separate piece that would address the funding mechanisms.

So I think that they wanted some clarification and emphasis

to the fact that we're having those discussions that are talking about two separate pieces of legislation as it relates to the RTA.

Okay.

Well, I think that what's not addressed there is the fact that the funding mechanism that's under discussion would not fund just the Regional Transit Authority but would

I guess I was trying to keep this, this is before we've been talking about a name and specifically how the funds might be used, but trying to garner what we've talked about at least broadly in terms of a regional transit authority.

I can certainly go back and look at

adding another clause in there to address that concern.

And I'll do that and then we'll come back through you all to...

I personally don't have any heartburn over the way you described it because I think we are asking

I like the idea of having two senses to reflect the two separate pieces of legislation.

Any further discussion?

Please indicate your vote.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr.

Bond.

Thank you.

Next item we're in agenda is also relating to general assembly legislation.

This has to do with our city's legislative package.

Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, this year the city's legislative package has five specific requests and I will outline those briefly.

The first is a request for the General Assembly to designate that portion of the Rivanna River

between the base of the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir Dam to the site of the former Willing Mills Dam as a state scenic river and city council previously adopted a resolution in support of that request in September.

The second item is a request for an amendment to the state statute which governs the imposition of taxes or assessments for certain local improvements.

This is a funding mechanism that has been used at certain times in the past by the city of Charlottesville.

I think it reflects a legislative determination that certain public improvements and

When I say public improvements, they're items such as sidewalks, utility improvements, curbs and gutters, drainage retaining walls,

that sometimes those improvements should not have the cost spread citywide but benefit a particular group of properties and that those properties should contribute toward the cost of implementing those.

The state law as it currently exists only gives a couple of localities the ability to impose that type of assessment for the cost of undergrounding utilities.

Alright, you want to continue and then we'll debate it.

The third one relates to Mr. Blunt's presentation and that is a request for the General Assembly to enact enabling legislation for the creation of a regional

Transit Authority.

There is a draft of that legislation that's been done.

It will be taken up by the RTA working group this coming Friday.

Our intent is to bring that specific language back to you in November for your review and approval, hopefully after we've gotten the consensus of the working group and the various stakeholders.

The second part of that is the funding mechanism and

I have described that as the imposition of an additional 1% sales tax for the purpose of funding local and regional transit and transportation improvements.

And the 1% increase or 1% sales tax was what was endorsed by council I think at their last meeting in September as the preferred option for additional funding.

I think that was one cent.

David has pointed out to me that one cent is more frequently being discussed by the RTA working group.

If you look back in your minutes, though, it is expressed as one percent, so we can certainly make that change if you desire to be one cent rather than one percent.

The fourth request is for a naming legislation that would allow the city

to make loans to homeowners to finance the initial acquisition and installation costs of certain types of clean energy improvements.

This would be modeled after a program that some localities in California have adopted.

This financing would not be in the form of a grant, but rather a loan.

which would be repaid by installments added to the homeowners real property tax bill and because it is part of the tax bill the repayment could be passed on to subsequent owners should the property be sold before the loan has been repaid.

We do not currently have the authority to engage in this type of program but this request would get us that authority.

The fifth request is for the General Assembly to either adopt smoke-free indoor air legislation that will restrict smoking in all public indoor environments or workplaces or to enact legislation that would give the city that authority.

This is consistent with some bills that have been introduced in the General Assembly in the past and I would anticipate that they very well may be again this year.

A couple of other points, as we have done in the past, we have included an endorsement of the Plain District's legislative program, which you just voted to support, and also the preliminary legislative program of DML, the Virginia Municipal League.

One other item, for the past several years, the city has included a request for legislation that would allow for the restoration of voting rights

to a greater number of persons who have been disqualified due to a felony conviction.

We didn't get a specific request for that, but it has been included in the city's package in the past, and we can certainly add that in if that's Council's desire this year.

If it is, and at the appropriate time when you're ready to remove the resolution, you can simply remove the resolution with that addition.

I have a question, not necessarily of Mr. Brown, but of whoever the appropriate staff person might be.

Okay.

We still have the ability to do it.

I'm assuming we didn't do it with respect to the cost of undergrounding utilities before.

The purpose of this is to allow the cost of undergrounding utilities

to be assessed against the abutting property owner.

That's authority we don't have right now.

And what is the authority we do have now?

We can impose assessments for various types of local improvements and they're studied fairly broadly in terms of sidewalks, gutter, curves and gutters, utility lines.

The problem is, I don't think you can argue that we have the undergrounding authority

I didn't quite gather that, so that answers my question.

I guess as long as I have the mic, I would like to see us add in the

the restoration of voting rights.

I think it's genuinely an embarrassment that the Commonwealth of Virginia is one of the only states in the nation that does not allow people who've served their time and have finished their parole to get their rights back.

It's appalling that we feel like we need to continue to punish people.

and so for that reason I'd like to see us put it in there.

There are two comments I have.

The first question is related to item number three.

The funding as we are discussing is relevant, as you mentioned, once in sales tax but also

other combination of taxes if that is not possible.

So there are two options we are considering right now.

If you look in the actual legislative package itself, the last paragraph under number three after referencing the

what is 1% but will be changed to 1 cent sales tax.

I think that's what Mr. Huja is referring to.

Why we cannot have also grants besides loans?

For example, as we talked about Sridhar Samani for loans and grants for energy conservation

if we can't do it ourselves right now, because of the lack of legislation, but we can do through third party.

I think we currently have the ability to give grants.

We decided as a council we wanted to give a grant.

What this does is it allows us specifically to make a loan that is secured by the real estate tax.

So in fact, and I think we currently have the ability to make a loan.

I believe our current authority is restricted to programs that address, quote unquote, affordable housing, low income, moderate income, whereas this one,

would not necessarily be restricted to families under a certain percentage of our immunity.

Where are we on the, my memory was that we talked about assent.

Is that?

Yeah.

I'm not sure about number two, but I'll be willing to support at least giving us the

enabling legislation to do number two.

Although I'm not totally sure I would vote for it if we did get the legislation.

One of the opportunities that number two provides is in concert with the property owners.

There's an assessment basis to finance it over a period of time that enables it to actually happen, which we don't now have and that's what we're trying to

I guess my concern is if the city were to agree to underground some utilities,

without the consent of adjacent property owners, then it seems, and that's a very expensive proposition, to hit them with a bill without consent, even though there are benefits to them.

It just seems, it gives me pause, but I'm willing to support the legislation.

Okay.

Is there a second?

Second.

Any further discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

Motion carries.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Brown.

You want to clap forward and take a short break?

Clap forward.

All right.

We're going to plow forward.

Next item on our agenda is a resolution regarding reallocation of parks and recreation in the fiscal year 2009 capital improvement program funds, first of one meeting.

I'm sure you don't want to take a break.

A PowerPoint.

Testa.

Testa.

Testa, can you hear me?

All right.

Thank you very much.

A couple of things I want to make sure you're very much aware of.

This presentation has changed a little bit in terms of what was presented in the agenda.

And it's basically trying to reflect the financial realities that we are facing.

So I'll kind of walk through some of those changes initially.

One thing I do want to make sure of is, I know this says capital improvement.

That just sounds so hardcore.

It's really a community improvement program.

We have really gone to painstakingly long processes to really make sure the community has been engaged in each one of these projects.

And I think the projects you're going to see are very, very successful.

Though we will show some of them being pushed off a little bit, we want to make sure that the projects we're bringing forward are the best possible projects that we can make, best possible projects we can create because they're going to be around for a good 40, 50, 60 years.

Roll the tape.

Just very quickly, we're trying to make sure we get two projects completed by the fall of 2010.

One is the Mead Pool Project and the other one is the Smith Pool Project.

All we're asking is to realign our capital improvement project budget to make these two projects happen and happen well.

Again, we are not asking for any new money.

It's a reallocation of FY09 and FY2010 funds.

Just a real executive summary of what we're going to go through.

The Meade Park Honesty Pool, there's no changes.

It's just an update.

The New Smith Pool, we're going to request of you to approve in concept a $700,000 increase for improvements through the reallocation of the program CIP for FY10.

Bruce Park, we're going to look to delay the implementation of that plan.

Not postpone or cancel, just delay it.

Forest Hills Park, this is kind of where the change comes in.

I think the original resolution you had tonight would be to appropriate existing funding in the FY09 budget to make this happen this year in light of the state's issues and

pending financial, maybe not so good news that's coming up in the middle of October.

We're going to defer a decision on when we're going to move forward with this project.

But that said, we have a very strong community engagement process with this, but we also want to make sure we understand the financial realities.

We are in the process of completing construction documents, and we were expecting to bid this project in November for it to be completed by next summer.

If financial realities allow us to move forward, we will have construction documents completed and be able to bid the project to move forward.

If not, we will have it ready to go when you all say so.

And then Azaria Park, we're going to delay the implementation of the master plan, but in essence, we have committed to completing a master plan for that project during the calendar year 2009.

Just very quickly, this is what the old mead pool looked like.

It was a very well used pool at certain times.

However, financial realities, water leakage, utilities, environmental concerns led us to replacing, looking to replace this pool and it was something that city council asked us to take on back in February of 2006.

Just very quickly, we completed a master plan in 2006.

Council has approved funding for the project just on Thursday, September 25th, the day before my birthday.

Really nice birthday present, successful bid for the project within the approved budget.

We had a very successful community informational meeting last Wednesday the 1st, and a pending final approval of this project.

contracts being signed.

We anticipate construction beginning the week of October 13th, which would be next week.

So very quickly, a couple of photos of Honesty Pool.

One thing we had always anticipated with this project is the fact that we had a spring, a natural spring sitting in the corner of the pool that actually helped feed the pool at certain times of the year.

As we went through demo, we continually had to pump six or seven feet out of the pool.

in order to complete demolition.

And so that water now will be returned to Mead Creek, which will create a much nicer environmental situation for us in that park.

As we know, we've gone through master planning process and master planning process and public meeting with this project.

Some of the highlights, we just moved it from the back to the front.

We've created connectivity with new trails.

New recreational space in the neighborhood is in the back of the park.

We've improved the parking and we will commit to continuing to host the Farmers in the Park project that are held on Wednesdays.

and we anticipate opening this new family aquatic center June of 2009.

Smith pool, this is the old Smith pool as it was being used and this is renditions of what the new Smith facility would look like.

This is a view from the Buford School main front entrance.

and then also an overview from the Boys and Girls Club front entrance in their location where the City Council approved the ground lease back in 2007 in November.

Some real quick changes and these are where the improvements come in.

We had originally

All right, now it's not going to work for me.

We had originally talked about having one body of water, and one body of water just is not going to cut it with this facility.

It's something that's going to last 40 or 50 years.

So what we've tried to do is come up with a design that will separate those bodies of water into two different.

One that's a traditional six-lane, 25-yard, rock-lane potential competitive pool, and the other one, the recreational therapy pool.

which is a pretty major component to us making sure we include as many people in our indoor aquatics as possible.

and then the upper level improvements because we potentially are going to have a six lane pool that could host swim meets, things that could allow middle school swim teams to develop, a city parks and recreation swim team throughout the year.

We've added a balcony, basically a spectator viewing area that would allow people to see what was going on.

This also just helps us, generally speaking,

simply because we want to give parents who have their kids and learn to swim lessons or just a place to be dry and watch the lessons from without interfering with the lessons, it does that as well.

We've also removed our offices.

They will stay downtown at the City Hall Annex and it's allowed us to expand the health and fitness area.

In a nutshell, these are the project milestones and anticipated schedule.

We've gone through design processes.

Come August we've decided to make two significant changes.

I went through the floor plan change.

The other one is really tied to utility savings and we're trying to make this as financially viable a situation as possible.

We are going to have the entire facility on geothermal well system.

City Manager required this of us and it is something that will definitely go a long way.

The city currently has one geothermal weld facility in the transit center.

It's gold LEED certified and it also has a CTS operations building that is also going to be on geothermal and that is in design right now.

Here's our desired action.

What we'd like for you to approve, what we'd like for you to, what we're going to try and improve.

We're going to add the geothermal.

We are going to create two separate bodies of water in the facility for the pools and add a spectator viewing area.

The change, as I said before, that we're requesting is a reallocation in concept of $700,000 of the FI 2010 program CIP funds for the Smith Aquatic and Wellness Center for these projects.

Next we'll try and get you an understanding as to why.

Why do we want to separate out the pools?

Differentiation of water temperature.

We originally had a design of 83 to 84 degrees.

The desire for a recreational therapy pool is a little bit warmer, 86 to 88 degrees, and it's also a desire for a lap swimming pool for it to be a little bit cooler.

This actually will save us utility costs in the long run.

The most volume of water

in this facility would be in the lap swimming pool and therefore we will be heating that water less.

It will more than compensate for heating the lower volume of water in the rec therapy pool a little bit warmer.

This will go a long way to improving the quality of our programs and uses.

General open lap swimmers will be happy.

Water fitness and therapy in the rec pool will be very happy.

The ability for us to expand school-based swimming programs, including Buford Middle School, which this facility will be on the campus of.

It will go a long way to helping our therapeutic recreation program which is very strong in this community and it will provide us competitive swimming opportunities for our youth, the city of Charlottesville's resident youth.

I think it's an area that we have a great opportunity to expand that type of programming and of course the creation of the Spectator Viewing Area.

The geothermal well is very important to understand.

The return on the investment based on energy rates a couple of years ago was six to nine years.

We expect that number to come down.

By going geothermal, we will save $45,000 to $60,000 a year in utility costs.

It will pay for itself within six to nine years.

The life expectancy of a geothermal system, the facility expectancy is 50 plus years.

The expected life of a conventional HVAC system in which you are trying to generate energy to control the air temperature

and instead of using the Earth as only 20 years.

So you would see over the course of this facility, we would replace an HVAC system, a very conventional one, at least once, possibly twice.

And ironically enough, an expected life of a geothermal well system is exactly the life of the facility.

We are definitely following the lead of other city projects, as I said earlier.

Lewis Park, go ahead.

We had a couple of project milestones.

We completed a community driven master plan in 2007 and in turn council appropriated some money.

Basically the number one priority was adding restrooms.

We really just tried to reconfigure this park.

I know it's tough to see.

Moving the playground around, creating more open space, adding some trails, creating some better entrances, and of course adding a restroom.

Those were the highlights of the master plan that came out of the community engage process.

We'd like to delay this implementation simply because, and you can go for a bind, simply because the improvements are not necessarily going to create a cost benefit to the city.

The park is very functional.

It very much can continue to be used without minimal change.

And finally, we don't have some major infrastructure issues within the park.

we feel that this is a park that we have a great master plan for and at the right time, at the right time in the financial situations best we can go for with implementation Forest Hills Park

Project milestones.

Back in February of 06, City Council kind of re-approved the reallocation of some existing funds at that time for this project.

We went through a very strong community master plan process in a target neighborhood in the community.

And we've also had some money again.

approved in the 09 budget and again programmed in FY10.

We went through and revised the master plan.

We originally were going to do this in two phases.

The major change is that we wanted to make sure that we did the restrooms at the same time that we did the rest of the park.

And then finally, the City Planning Commission has approved the parking way before this park, but at this point, as I said earlier, we're going to put this project on hold.

Forest Hills Park, one thing to really note, why we took on this project is the waiting pool has a capacity of 40,000 gallons.

It used in FY 2008, so that was July 1st of 07 through June 30th of 2008, almost 1.3 gallons of water, 1.3 million gallons of water.

That's a significant amount of use.

In comparison, Washington Park, a much bigger facility, much more use, utilized 500,000 gallons or less.

Major highlights of the park, we converted the waiting pool to a spray ground.

We've removed the building to open view sheds for the police department into the park.

I know Harvey's pretty happy about that.

much of it is very much in has some issues in terms of beating up to code and we do need to replace that at some point we've improved the trail system we have improved some environmental impacts by daylighting some streams down towards the trail that connects to Johnson Village and this master plan is projected to decrease the annual water consumption by 900,000 gallons a year

At this point we're again looking to defer the implementation of the master plan just because of financial realities.

Azaria Park, as I said earlier, this park is one of the parks that we have slated to do a master plan.

We will do that again.

We will commit to doing the master plan in 09 and we will then look to defer the implementation of the plan again when finances are available.

We had originally had a $300,000 program for FY 2010 for this project and we would like to move that to the Smith Wellness, Smith Aquatic and Wellness Center.

Couple of things to note, we're definitely swamped with the projects that we have going on and so we're going to have very limited staff capacity, let alone financial capacity to implement this, any type of master plan for this project anytime soon.

But also a couple of notes, and I let the neighborhood know this over the weekend.

The park did have a major park improvement in the last eight years with the stream restoration of Forest Creek.

It's greatly improved the overall use of that park.

And then also we have added an off-leash dog area in that park as well.

In summary, me pool is ready to go.

We'll increase the capacity of the facility from 150 to 300 people and it will definitely appeal to all ages and abilities.

We feel like we've got a very dynamic facility ready to go.

Smith Aquatic, we're looking to improve the facility by adding it

creating energy efficiency by adding the geothermal wells and of course improving the aquatic center by separating out the bodies of water and creating the specular viewing area.

We will delay the implementation of the master plan.

We will defer decision on the master plan, implementation of the master plan for Forest Hills.

Once that park is completed, we will definitely increase community use and reduce water consumption.

and Azalea Park again will commit to doing the master plan in 09 and defer the implementation until financial situation is good for us to move forward with it.

This is how the money moves.

Very important to note the very totals on the bottom.

We had adopted an FY09 budget of $8.5 million for FY09 and we had projected a budget of $5.8 million for FY10.

Very simply stated, as we move forward to our proposed

The numbers stay the same on the bottom.

What we have chosen to do again is keep the $8.5 million in FY09 and reallocate the projected funding in FY10 to basically get the Smith Aquatic Center where it needs to be so that it is the best facility, most energy efficient facility for the next 50 years for residents.

And again, what this means, and if you'd flip, Brian.

Council's decision point tonight is very simple.

Does City Council approve of the concept of reallocating the Parks and Recreation FY 2010 projected funds for the recommended improvements to Smith Pool?

Again, it would mean that Honesty Pool would move forward.

The Smith Aquatic and Wellness Center would move forward with the improvements.

We would delay the implementation of reefs.

We would delay the implementation of a master plan for azalea.

We in turn will spend a little bit of money on the design aspect of the McIntyre Park Master Plan which you adopted back in May and we will defer the project of Forest Hills until such a time as we kind of know where we're at.

That's where we're at.

Yes.

I'm trying to reconcile the proposal that was in the memo we received versus the one that you've spelled out here tonight.

And it looks like

the major change from between the memo and what you have up here tonight has to do with the Forest Hills Park.

Correct.

And so you're taking the suggestion was to take the memo suggested front loading those funds

and having $500,000 in this year's CIP budget to complete those renovations.

Well, I think what we've done is just decided not to change anything in the existing CIP because we're not sure if we'll have that half a million dollars available to us.

And when I say half a million, it's the 250 that was originally for Reeves.

and the 250 for Forest Hills.

The original presentation was going to move the money from Reeves to Forest Hills to get that project done, given the utility issues within that park.

But in light of the fact that we are not going to move forward with either one of those,

and in particular Forest Hills, that money is not going to move tonight.

Again, I think if we came back and said that that is a park that you wanted us to come back and do and we had the money available, then we would come back and ask you to move the money that's sitting in the Reeves Fund to Forest Hills so that we could move forward with that project.

The simple way, if you're on the budget, I think the simple way to look at it is on the budget page which is, you've got to open Mr. Mayor, I don't know if other councilors.

It's the last page in the middle before the resolution.

What we're suggesting is the meeting that is sitting there for Forest Hills Park, that we defer a decision on that until we get a chance to look at

all of our capital improvements needs and also what's going to happen from the state.

From 09, it's just going to stay at 250 and we'll leave the money in Reeves at 250 for now.

But you don't have any active plans right now to use the 250 in Reeves?

No.

So in other words, that gives you some flexibility if there's

I understand that one of the criteria, and I applaud the city manager for taking a harder look across the board at all of our capital expenditures.

I think it's necessary in light of the economic conditions that we find ourselves in, but I understand that one of the overarching criteria that you're using in that process is determining which projects do have a return on investment, particularly when it comes to energy savings and utility savings.

And just to add to the discussion, you saw the new design and the new pool.

We're building a state-of-the-art swimming pool that's hardly a block away from Forest Hills.

So I think one of the challenges for us in the future is what is that park going to be and how does the pool part of it relate to the new Smith Center and what do we do within Forest Hills Park.

If you run it the way we're saying and we don't make any difference, you're right.

I'd like to make two comments.

One is I've always thought we'd have a better project if we had a separate competitive pool.

It just makes sense.

And I also feel strongly if we're trying to encourage

people to use an indoor pool in a way they haven't used it before.

In other words, to have features that attract kids and provide an activity.

It seems to me we have to provide a way for parents to be able to come in and watch and feel comfortable with this new pool.

knowing exactly what it is and I think so having the viewing area I think is a big improvement.

The one note I do want to make mention I did not earlier about the spectator viewing area.

There were a couple of ways that we could have done that and the most expensive way would have been to increase the footprint of the building and therefore create better on deck space.

Two comments.

First of all, I support the new changes you have suggested.

I think the split pool will be a lot better and more usable pool.

It has a lot more flexibility for future use of the pool than what you had designed before.

I know it costs a little bit more money, but I think it has got more options.

Thank you.

There are all three changes that you said were there because of the same measures you are proposing.

I have a question for you.

I think it's more health fitness space and public fitness spaces I think is very important policy decision for our community.

Many communities have fitness centers where people can go and enjoy physical fitness and you don't have to be a joint private club and this provides public access to many people.

I think it will really focus on preteens and seniors and therapeutics.

I think that's where we're going to get the most bang for our buck, given its location and also its adjacency to Beaufort Middle School.

Alright, so we need a resolution to approve the reallocation of funds for Smith Pool.

I'll move the resolution as it was amended tonight.

Second.

Any further discussion?

Please indicate your vote.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Stutz.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Okay, next we have a resolution directing the Planning Commission to initiate zoning text amendment regarding development review process.

Good evening.

This is the first time we've been to you to ask that you consider one of these

zoning text initiation, so just to explain real quick what we're asking before we get into the meat of it, is that to initiate a change to the zoning ordinance, it can be requested by a person owning property that is impacted by it.

It can be initiated by the Planning Commission or it can be initiated by City Council.

This is something in order to try to get this moving forward in the way the meetings fail, it was more simple to bring it to you

and raise it and let you start the process.

If you pass the resolution tonight, it gives the Planning Commission 100 days to study and get back to you with a recommendation on the things that you've asked them to study.

The timing of this we think is good because it was one of the items that you mentioned at your recent retreat is willing to streamline and improve the Planning Commission process.

It's also to streamline the review process but at the same time retain adequate oversight.

and then hopefully it will provide incentives for affordable housing.

We also needed to do this, if you recall, when we asked for the legislation last year that gave us the ability to get affordable housing monies from special use permits, we made a promise to the development community for their support that we would streamline our process.

Again, the intent of this is that the Planning Commission can spend more of their time on more important type of issues than they do now.

Also to, instead of reviewing plans, making sure the code is consistent with what they want and what we said we wanted to accomplish in the comprehensive plan.

And that then they review only the most difficult or complex things and let the staff do its job and review other projects.

The process that we're recommending would be that we would only take site plans to the Planning Commission that are associated with a special use permit or a rezoning to a PUD Currently, the Planning Commission has, over time, evolved to where every, essentially every site plan

for New Development goes to the Planning Commission.

Those are ministerial reviews, meaning that if they meet the code requirements, then the Planning Commission is pretty much bound to approve them.

I had a lot of discussion with the Chairman of the Planning Commission about this and asked him to think about, in the course of his tenure, any site planning to come to them, were there any effective or substantive change to that site plan.

And as we couldn't find, he couldn't find either.

Again, because of the ministerial reviews and we've gone over all the requirements before it gets to the Planning Commission,

We're not making major changes to them and we found over the course of my tenure that it's really frustrating to the citizens because they come sometimes wanting to stop or kill a project that's about by right use and so they're too late in the process to really have any real input because planning commission cannot change

the fact that the plan is there and that they can do it.

Whereas if we got the citizens engaged as we used to on the front end at the side plane conference better where they can talk back and forth with us and the applicants, a lot of times we can make changes and make it a better project.

We also want to change the code so that each site plan that's brought forward would be a true preliminary site plan.

Right now, the way we webbed the code in 2003 is that our preliminary site plans are almost the same as the final.

Essentially the difference is you redo it and provide a bond and you've got final once you get preliminary approval.

To really have an impact on the planning commission needs to be able to look at them before there's been hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars spent on engineering

when it's just basic information and they can say we'd rather you move your driveway here, we'd rather you move the building back and forward and then before there's too much investment.

We would like to develop guidelines so that when they are presented they're better and better visuals that you can make a decision on so that there's something three dimensional rather than just a plan drawing submitted.

Another major change that we think will help is to assign our entrance card review to the staff rather than the Planning Commission.

Pre-2003, staff did all entrance card reviews.

And here, the review is simply to determine if you're meeting the design criteria.

We had an entrance card review done by staff pre-2003 when we didn't even have decent design criteria.

Now we have good design criteria.

The planning commission would be free to make some changes in those criteria if they want, but then let staff work to determine if the drawings truly meet those criteria.

The one thing we know we would need to do

and as we indicated with the chair and meetings with the mayor we would like to have better training for my staff in helping them to review them by some of our local architects who we've talked to about the BAR chair and some others about providing that training and then Mayor Joscala who does a great job of reviewing all of these would also train the three of the planners.

We also would intend to come back to council as part of this resolution

that would guarantee a three-week turnaround on site plan review for any affordable housing, any project containing affordable housing.

That's something working with the development community.

They say that they would be a great help, where now we have 45 days to cut it to three weeks each time there's a submittal, and we can deal with that and meet that.

Again, we want to focus the Planning Commission.

We want to focus the staff on doing what are truly the ministerial reviews,

One of the ways it takes that time, and we think we can better utilize all of our time, is that if we have to bring something to the Planning Commission for review, the staff spends several hours in writing a staff report, which could be much better used meeting with an applicant and working through issues than just simply writing a report for the Planning Commission to read.

We've just now, you've just adopted several months ago a new development standards manual where there's a lot less gray area about what's required whether it's sidewalk entry four feet or five feet, now it's in the manual We finally have a design standards manual As I said earlier, the interest card review used to be performed by staff We think it was done well then and don't know why it can't be now And we believe that this will help

get important things before the Planning Commission.

Let them look at issues that they ought to be spending time on and advising you on and moving projects through.

We don't want to do anything to reduce the amount of public scrutiny of a project where the public has needs to have input and can and should have input on rezoning special use permits.

We wouldn't change that at all.

We would suggest that we probably expand our notification area

on the site plans.

Right now, every site plan conference, we notify everybody within 500 feet plus adjacent neighborhood associations.

We feel like we can expand that to a greater area.

But that's the time, very front end of a project where we can have a lot of dialogue and get a good discussion going.

So we think these are very positive changes and would ask you to initiate them.

Again, the process is you initiate this tonight and the Planning Commission takes 100 days

So just to clarify, the resolution doesn't speak to any specific changes?

No.

In concept, it's these types of things that would be studied.

In other words, we'll have another bite at the apple.

You're just saying you're interested in this

The reason I bring that up is that the preliminary response from the planning commission has been very positive to these ideas with the sole exception among a number of commissioners relating to the entrance corridor and I don't want to necessarily tonight say this is the direction the council wants to go on the entrance corridor but I'd like to allow them to hash it out

Absolutely, that's the intent.

They would have, you know, they would be able to, it's up to us to sell them that we can do it and if they choose to recommend differently, then you decide whether or not you want to go along with that or not.

Go ahead.

Mr. Miller, I'd like to make a few comments.

All the suggestions that have been made, the North Carolina directory used to do that.

And it's worked fairly well, I think.

So, what happened right now is that

and all the very issues they should be dealing with, don't get tired of dealing with those issues.

And the downstairs are good for a few times but not for the whole evening.

So I think these are important improvements, these could be very helpful including interest code or improvements, I think all three changes are appropriate in my mind.

that they look at it, there ought to be some kind of appeal process in there so that citizen or the applicant or the private commission can call to themself if there is a question.