City Council Meeting   2/17/2009

What if we keep the consistency?

What if we keep the consistency?

Here.

Here.

Thank you.

You will notice the absence of our colleague, Julian Taliaferro, who unfortunately is very sick tonight.

We wish him speedy recovery.

I know he's with us in spirit.

In terms of announcements, I have a few announcements, and I know Ms. Edwards has at least one.

First of all, as many of you know, in November we have a number of

offices on the ballot.

We have two city council seats, three school board seats, the sheriff, treasurer, commissioner of revenue, and the commonwealth's attorney.

Our commissioner, our registrar of voters, Sherry Iachata, has announced plans for two candidate training forums.

So anybody in the public who would like to learn about how to run for any of those offices, there are going to be two forums coming up, one on Tuesday, February 24th,

at 7pm and one on Wednesday, March 25th at 2pm, both in this very room to learn about the mechanics of running for office campaign finance rules, petitions, signature gathering, rules for party nominees, timelines, deadlines, etc., etc.

Those are free and open to the public.

Secondly, I'm very pleased to announce that we have relaunched our Charlottesville Adopt a Street program to engage neighborhood residents in street cleanup activities in their own neighborhood.

We have a whole variety of streets that we're looking for neighborhood residents to volunteer for cleanup duties.

It involves four cleanups a year.

and with a minimum commitment of two years.

If you would like to get involved in an adopt-a-street program in your neighborhood, please call 970-3830 or you can go to our city website at charlottesville.org slash adopt-a-street, A-D-O-P-T-A-S-T-R-E-E-T.

speaking of our city website or local websites mydowntownmall.com is a great way to learn about the downtown mall revitalization initiative and very exciting news this weekend this Friday, kicking off this Friday is the first block party

to inaugurate the first section of the mall that will be completed here on the 400 East block.

The theme of the 400 East block party is Chicago, my kind of town Chicago is.

So a whole series of events this weekend starting with a flapper ball at the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar on Thursday evening.

Again, for more information, mydowntownmall.com.

And lastly, as a recent Facebook

a addict.

I am pleased to announce that Charlottesville, the city of Charlottesville, is now on Facebook.

You all will be very pleased to know.

And we now, it's one more way to get information out to residents about the things that are going on in the city of Charlottesville.

If you are on Facebook and would like to become a friend of the city of Charlottesville, just type in city of Charlottesville on the home page.

We currently have over 86 friends.

Thank you.

I just have two announcements.

QCC walks this Saturday, the 21st, 9 a.m. meet at the old, it's the entrance to the old hospital and if you've been around for a while you know that's also the entrance of what used to be the emergency room.

There will also be a heart healthy breakfast served and it's a really cool

Almost two mile loop through the hospital.

You get a chance to see, probably see areas of the hospital, otherwise you wouldn't have the opportunity to do so.

So participate in QCC Walks.

And my second announcement is that pre-school registration for children who will be three or four years old by September 30th is now open.

Applications are due March 31st.

Call 245-2813.

So all the three and four year olds of the Washington City Council

Thank you, Ms. Edwards.

Mr.

Chair, Mr. Mayor, I'd like to request the addition of a resolution for drug court, support for drug court on the agenda.

We'll take that up under other business.

Thank you very much.

Okay, we're now going to open up our meeting to matters by the public.

We have a number of members of the public who have signed up to speak again.

As always, please keep your comments to three minutes.

When you come forward, give your name and address.

Good evening, my name is Pat Napoleon, I live at 700 Lyons Avenue.

We have been making a request to save the People's Park McIntyre Park for months now, and our reasons are sound and well supported.

The Meadow Creek Parkway is primarily a county driven initiative, as you are aware, but the county has reigned successful here in convincing a majority vote of this board.

During recent hours we have heard the news reports indicating the movement afloat to renege on a gentleman's agreement, the revenue sharing agreement.

The county is attempting to once again snatch what is ours and what is yours to protect for the citizenry.

Several observe a direct connect with this movement and the parkway piece.

Albemarle has successfully manipulated and convincing some that the county must have a parkway.

No, the county doesn't want to build roads through Ivy and Stony Point, but they sure don't mind moving to trash the city's green space and parkland.

The county appears desperate as they have poorly planned, overdeveloped, and now they continually seek the city's salvation and sympathy.

As I look around, we as a city have many positives to celebrate.

Your shopping venues are more tasteful and vibrant than those of the county.

The Ecks Road Shopping Center is well maintained and fun.

The mall has unique and interesting restaurants rather than six of the same chains as is often found in the strip malls of Albemarle.

The county should take lessons from you.

You're doing something right.

Folks, it's time to stop feeling sorry for the county.

They have made their own bed in neglecting long-term planning.

The county must assume more responsibility for their own decisions.

This is not to say there shouldn't be a spirit of cooperation between local government.

At this point, it is obvious the county is abusing and taking advantage of the city interests as far as the parkway is concerned.

I am told the law is being broken in the segmentation piece.

stand up for the law and refuse to participate in illegal moves to destroy the park.

Think out of the box and work to avoid future legal wranglings associated with the parkway.

Please don't sell off the soul of the city or valuable green space.

Join in the effort to preserve and protect as opposed to overlooking the dire consequences and grave ramifications for a parkway through Charlottesville.

Thank you, Mr. Boyan.

Good evening, I'm Downing Smith with 810 Locust Avenue.

I'm here to speak in support of the Historic Conservation District, which I believe is the last item on your consent agenda.

Disclosure first, my property will not be affected by this particular conservation district.

But the rest of my neighborhood probably is going to be.

And it's a very nice neighborhood.

I've lived there almost my entire life.

There have been two major changes since the neighborhood since I've been living there.

One is the 250 bypass.

I don't remember a whole lot about that.

I was in the early 50s and I was really young at that point.

But the second change was the widening of Locust Avenue, turning one of the most beautiful streets in the city of Charlottesville into a high-speed thoroughfare.

And I was almost killed on Locust Avenue by somebody doing 65 miles an hour.

So I think that was, in my opinion, a really bad change.

But there have been good changes, too, in Charlottesville, notably the downtown mall.

So change isn't necessarily good or bad, but it's

You know, it needs to be managed and I think that having this historic district will help manage the change to make sure that we don't make bad decisions like widening Locust Avenue, bulldozing vinegar hill, things like that and make good decisions like the downtown mall.

I think it's particularly important because most citizens don't really know what's going on until after it's happened.

I recently read a letter in the Daily Progress about someone who's opposed to closing down the Smith pool and they sure missed the bait on that one.

So, I'd just like you to support this district.

Thank you, Mr. Smith.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Councilors.

Collette Hall, 101 Robertson Lane.

and the consent agenda item K, County Historic Conservation overlay district designation to zoning ordinance.

While there are several neighborhoods where a conservation district may be appropriate, adopting this ordinance does not mean it will apply to any specific area or neighborhood at this time.

It merely creates a tool that may be applied to specific areas in the future.

Applying the ordinance to a specific area would require a zoning map ordinance with its own public hearing and notification process.

The North Downtown neighborhood area is almost covered with historic designation or ADC districts.

As restricted homeowners, our experience is first-hand.

We know that it is important for residents of non-designated areas to have a true choice.

Therefore, I would hope a future public hearing and notification process is hearty, excessive, and inclusive.

and then item five, report on the River Basin Commission Report and request for authorization to apply for grant.

I want to be clear that I am not against the commission and in fact, I am an avid stormwater harvester.

Quote, this grant will provide for approximately 72K toward the proposed demonstration, stormwater retrofits, and then in parenthesis biofiltering and rainwater harvesting, and parenthesis of the Charlottesville High School Performing Arts Center.

End quote.

Since the city will provide a matching fund if the grant is secured, please explain or have the presenter explain the project in more detail that will cost at least $144,000.

In this time of economic stress, every project must be scrutinized for its merits.

Is this project worthy of $144,000?

It may be, but I do not think the taxpayers know enough about the proposed project.

Even though I may no longer be in the council chambers to hear the answer after this word is given, I will be watching on live streaming.

Thank you, Ms. Hall.

Good evening.

I'm John Cruickshank, 700 Spring Lake Drive, Charlottesville, Virginia.

I usually speak for the Sierra Club or the Coalition to Preserve McIntire Park.

and I recently sent you some information about legal issues regarding segmentation.

Tonight I would like to speak for my grandchildren.

Now I know you're going to say, well he doesn't look old enough to have grandchildren.

And you're right, I don't have any grandchildren, but I'm confident that I will have some in a few years and I'm also confident they'll probably live right here in downtown Charlottesville.

So I want those children, my grandchildren and your children and grandchildren, to have natural areas for playing, exploring, and for learning.

Natural areas are necessary for healthy child development.

There is a new surge of research into the impact of nature on human physical and emotional health.

I recently read a book, I actually have to admit my wife bought the book and I took it

I finished it.

It's a really good book entitled Lost Child in the Woods, Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder.

It's by Richard Louv, and it's the recipient of the 2008 Audubon Medal.

It's a really good book, particularly for educators.

And in this book, he cites studies that suggest that nature may be useful as a therapy for ADHD.

that fosters creativity and self-reliance in our children.

And on page 63

One quote in particular I wanted to read to you.

Urban children and many suburban children have long been isolated from the natural world because of a lack of neighborhood parks, a lack of opportunity, a lack of time and money for parents who might otherwise take them out of the city.

I don't think the parents should have to take their children out of the city to get to nature.

I think it should be right in their neighborhoods.

McIntire Park is right in the middle of the city.

It's surrounded by neighborhoods.

People should be able to walk to the park.

The kids should be able to go there and enjoy it and just play and learn and have some fun.

We need to save McIntyre Park for our children and our grandchildren.

Thank you, Mayor.

Carla Manor through 24 Seven and a Half Street, Southwest and Fifeville.

I'm here tonight to speak about a promised traffic study of our neighborhood and I think I've spoken about it a number of times.

It's been since October 2005 that this has been promised and we've been asking for it since before the 9th 10th Street connector went in.

It became imperative around that time and that's when Angela Tucker had promised it in a neighborhood meeting, very well attended.

This is not in dispute.

But I have been through two malarial cycles where, and those folks are still up there tonight, where I've sat down and spoken about this in terms of prioritizing other things that you guys have wanted to do.

Overload districts, spending $16,000 in a matching grant for a historic designation study that other neighborhoods wanted and we didn't, etc.

This traffic study has still not occurred.

I want to thank Maurice Jones for contacting me recently.

about the traffic study, and I don't want this to be a disincentive for that kind of communication with citizens, but unfortunately I'm afraid that this is only connected to the proffer from the developer for Ridge and Cherry, that we're suddenly now gonna have the money and the incentive to do this because it was a proffer in the Ridge-Cherry sale, which the neighborhood also opposed.

So I'm concerned on a number of levels, and the main one being that if you guys observe an oversight that

You mentioned at City Council a number of times has not occurred through staff and then if it's not your job to talk to staff over those three and a half years, whose is it?

Because I'm really tired of coming down and waiting for a developer to buy property we didn't want to lose to get a traffic study.

Thank you Ms. Mano.

Good evening Mayor and City Council members.

My name is Martha Levering and I live at 712 Grove Avenue in Charlottesville.

I know that you all already have this in email, but I would like to say it out loud for the viewing audience.

I have been a resident of the city for many years and have been involved with the current water supply plan since its inception.

I fully support the plan as it stands and hope that you will give it your full support.

Creating the shorter pipe from South Fork to Ragga Mountain makes perfect sense.

The South Fork is a much larger body of water.

Drawing water from there will not put as much stress on our rivers and will provide adequate drinking water for our citizens.

It is a very good plan, good sustainability.

I have also always been a fan of water conservation and certainly support this effort for the entire region.

I also want to emphasize our pressing need to replace our urgent infrastructure.

As you know, we are plagued with many leaking pipes.

Old leaking and corroding pipes can harbor bacteria, which can affect water quality and our health.

Please support not only the current water supply plan as it stands, but also the funds needed to replace our failing infrastructure.

Good evening members of council.

I live 704 Grave Street.

I'd like to thank Dave Norris and Holly Edwards for their support of our park and I would like to ask the remaining councilors, Mr. Taliaferro as well if you're watching at home, to please join them in protecting our greatest natural treasure.

to pick up on some things that Ms. Napoleon said I think that this is largely about the county pushing this on the city and an example of that is we saw in the paper that the county had started construction on this road a year ago in March which was really just a bit of disinformation that was put out to the papers because at that time the city hadn't even given up its CHS land

and I would say the city still hasn't given up its CHS land because it was not voted, that resolution was not passed with a supermajority and that's what the Virginia Constitution requires.

But at that point, the county had just started doing a little work on its own.

That was not the VDOT project.

The order to proceed had not been signed.

So that was just an example of the kind of manipulation that has

Also, in terms of the county fulfilling its commitments for this road, commitments that Mr. Brown and Mr. Taliaferro said that they would not build the parkway if these commitments were not met, such as the eastern connector.

and also the parkland.

Apparently, the 49.1 acres, well, they didn't quite get that much parkland, so VDOT asked city staff, hey, could we just take this existing city land and just reclassify it as parkland and count that as some of the replacement parkland.

So basically they're taking some land that the city already owns and counting that as parkland, as replacement parkland for this road.

And then there's also the legal objections other than the state constitution.

We sent you a letter, we had an attorney, the Coalition to Preserve McIntyre Park, and she wrote a letter outlining how the city has attempted to evade federal, park, historic, and

Park, Historic,

Well, federal law, anyway.

And NEPA, I guess, which is environmental laws.

And you all have not yet asked your city attorney, are we operating legally here with this interchange project?

And I hope at the very least you'll have him review this letter that's been written by an attorney before you take any further action.

Thank you, Mr. Saliz.

Good evening, Mayor and Councillors.

I'm Maria Chapell.

I live at 1029 Hazel Street in Charlottesville, and I'm here speaking on behalf of Martha Jefferson Area Neighborhood Association, and I've

I sent a little reminder, we sent a letter on January 9th and then I sent an update to Jeannie yesterday that I know you weren't there so I hope you had a chance to read it today.

I just want to once again reaffirm the support for the Historic Conservation Overlay District of the Martha Jefferson Neighborhood Board.

I think we have wonderful neighborhoods worth preserving and treasuring and not individual structures but the character of these neighborhoods and they have a lot of history in them and we are under a lot of threat from development from all over and so we just hope that you will listen to what the Planning Commission voted 100% and we hope you'll pass it on the consent agenda.

D.D.

Smith, 2652 Jefferson Park Circle.

Good evening.

I am here tonight about the task force report.

I understand that you've received the report from the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir Stewardship Task Force, which I was the representative for the Citizens for a Sustainable Water Plan.

We very much appreciated Ms. Edwards' participation as a representative for the city.

I'm here tonight to submit to you a minority opinion on a recommendation, a minority report, which is coming from my group, the Citizens for a Sustainable Water Plan.

and basically it's not that terribly much different than the recommendation that you received from the task force except in its extent.

We are recommending a comprehensive study of dredging.

I think the task I know, the task force report was a very limited study.

We do not feel that, I do not feel, we never did feel that the charge given the task force precluded us from recommending a comprehensive study, although I think there was some

So certainly some people in the task force who argued with me about that.

So basically we're recommending to get a baseline condition with physical and geophysical determinations, bathymetric measurements, side scans, geotechnical samples.

A lot of these actually very much similar to.

their limited study recommendations, identify potential sites for not only dewatering but disposal, identify commercial uses for the sediment, analysis of the sandbar issue in the reservoir, identification of methods to prevent future sedimentation, cost estimates for a menu of options and I think that's what's really important and it's what you really need is to know from

No judging to full judging what your options are.

And of course, permitting.

And basically the rationale for these recommendations are to get a good cost estimate that you can use to make responsible fiscal decisions when it comes to talking about the future of not only the reservoir, but of our water supply.

It also establishes a baseline.

No matter what you do, if you don't have a baseline, you're not going to have proper information to assess the progress of whatever decisions you make.

And of course it was, and this is I think very powerful, there was really strong public support for a study as well as strong public support for dredging.

We saw it in all sorts of different ways, including in the survey that the task force took and the public comment the task force took.

But you've seen it from your neighborhood associations, from organizations like the Piedmont Chapter, the Seattle Club, and the Thomas Jefferson Soil and Water Conservation District.

You've heard it over and over again.

And there are lots of other reasons, including just our future.

Our future water supply, this reservoir is basically irreplaceable if we lose it.

Thank you, Ms. Smith.

Good evening.

I'm Peter Klayman.

I live at 407 Hedge Street in the city.

I'm here today to follow up on comments on my last council meeting where there was an item on the agenda about granting funds from VDOT for urban construction into the capital improvement program, actually into the 2005 to 2008 capital improvement program, which I thought has closed, but I'm not certain about that.

The issue is that there's 8 million of these funds being put toward the McIntire Road interchange, or the Route 250 bypass interchange of McIntire Road.

And I asked council, or challenge council, to have a discussion among themselves and perhaps with the community in interest of good quality service that you can hear some more about I guess later.

But providing good information and good rationale for expending quantities of money like $8 million would be a worthwhile activity.

In the last few months, I've heard counsel discussing whether this $35,000 was being appropriately spent and wouldn't $20,000 be enough, yet when it's $8 million, we don't have any discussion about what the purpose of those funds are, what the value we're getting in return for those funds are.

and I think that would be a worthwhile activity.

Also the part of that, I believe two plus million dollars has been removed by the Commonwealth Transportation Board for the one section that runs, what is the project called, the one that runs through Back's Road Shopping Center, escapes me at the moment.

Hillsdale Drive extended.

I think that has been removed from the state funding profile.

I don't know whether that makes any difference, but I don't think those two point something million dollars are available for you to actually allocate.

So my concern is that having this as an appropriation and having the first meeting last time and once the item is moved and seconded, it's closed until this meeting and there's no discussion because there's not a vote going to be taken place.

But at this meeting where the vote is going to be taking place, unless this is pulled off of the agenda and a discussion occurs, there'll be no discussion at either of these readings of this $8 million or $10 million investment.

So I think one of the flaws in having a two-reading process is it gives a great opportunity for time to pass between when the project is discussed originally or presented and when it's voted on, but it doesn't provide an opportunity for the public to really understand what the issues are, what the choices that are being made, and what the value is of this investment.

I would encourage council to pull that item E off of your consent agenda, have a discussion about what the value of that money is, and in light of a recent decision by the planning commission not to put money for that particular project into the capital improvement program, it seems to be exactly the opposite of what's being proposed being voted on tonight.

Thank you, Mr. Kleeman.

Mr. Hill, I'd like to talk about two different topics.

First of all, I fully support conservation district as a direct tool for local preservation, subject to the nervous loading and not wanting it, so as then to decide whether we want to have a conservation district.

It's not going to be imposed for anybody.

Thank you, Mr. Huja.

I would also like to have, to echo the desire to have a follow-up about the traffic study.

I don't have eloquent words as in last child in the woods, but I do believe that every child, in addition to having to have a certain allotment of oatmeal every day, every child should be allowed to just play in the dirt every day and just have fun running and playing.

Thanks to Pat, your last name, Lions Avenue,

Thank you for the kind words, greatly appreciated.

And to Ms. Smith, I appreciate the time that you have put into the whole water supply journey, but I also hope that in the same way that you provided us with the Minority Report that you have an opportunity to do that with the other boards as well.

I'll just make a couple comments.

I also agree that the conservation district is a good idea and I really support it.

I do feel it's important that only go forward with neighborhoods who are in support of it.

And so I think we've heard from several neighborhoods who are anxiously awaiting it.

I think the conservation district can be a great tool and in particular it can be a great tool to prevent

buildings being torn down.

And I think a lot of neighborhoods are really concerned about that.

The Fifeville neighborhood in particular, I think both in terms of getting a robust discussion, if at some point Fifeville would like to consider a conservation district, and also for issues such as the traffic study, you know, hopefully can kind of coalesce and form what I think the Martha Jefferson neighborhood has done, the Willem Mills neighborhood has done, the North downtown, and create

a widely participated in neighborhood association.

And so I'm looking forward to that happening.

Thank you.

I echo the comments that were made about the Conservation District proposal and about Fifeville traffic study.

And just so you know, the phone call that you received from staff was actually not in response to the proffer.

It was in direct response to a counselor

initiated process or request.

The developer proper really is only limited to looking at traffic improvements around the intersection, around that proposal, and what I think we would like to see is what you've been asking for, which is a broader traffic study, and we look forward to seeing that move forward.

I wanted to reassure, I can't remember if it was Mr. Cruikshank or Mr. Salidas who asked, I think it was Mr. Salidas who said make sure that our city attorney reviews the letter that we received and reviews the legal arguments to make sure we're proceeding in a legal fashion.

We have indeed done that and our city attorney is in the process of reviewing that letter line by line and I assume we'll be preparing a response for our consideration.

Thank you, Ms. Smith, for coming forward with your minority report.

I look forward to reading that.

And we are in the process of scheduling a four boards meeting to consider the task force report.

And I look forward to having your minority report considered as well.

I'm sorry, say that again?

Well, let me read it first.

And then we'll be happy to entertain a motion to approve.

That's quite alright.

So our consent agenda tonight.

Item A, minutes of January 23rd and February 2nd.

Item B is an appropriation of $21,203 reimbursement from UVA for traffic light at Jefferson Park Avenue, Valley Road, second in two readings.

Item C is an appropriation of $40,819.41.

Reimbursement from Albemarle County for ADA improvements at 407 East High Street, second of two readings.

IMDs and appropriation, $16,667.00.

Marketing leverage program reimbursement, second of two readings.

Item E is an appropriation, $10,353,701 grant funds from VDOT for urban construction allocated in FY 2005 to FY 2008, second of two readings.

Item F is a resolution authorizing application for state transit grant funds, first of one reading.

Item G is a resolution initiating a zoning text amendment to require off-street parking in parking-exempt zoning districts, first of one reading.

Item H is a resolution approving settlement of Litigation RE, Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court renovation project, first to one meeting.

Item I is a resolution authorizing $250 from council reserved for Preservation Pima Historic Preservation Week activities, first to one meeting.

Item J is an ordinance zoning amendment requirement for affordable housing and development seeking special use permit or rezoning, first to two readings.

and finally item K is an ordinance adding historic conservation overlay district designation to the zoning ordinance, the first two readings.

I am going to remove item E, not for discussion tonight, however I think the public deserves to know a little bit more about that

The purpose of those funds, because we haven't had a chance to explain that yet, however, I think it would be good to have that while our full council is present.

So we'll bring that up at our next meeting for a very brief discussion about the purpose of those funds.

the consent agenda regarding K, the ordinance, adding historic conservation overlay district designation to zoning ordinance, that I don't support that I am the voice of some folks that have lived here for quite some time that have a history of it's been trialed before, we've talked about it, and there's still a lot of concerns

and concerns being a desire to have more studies to really understand what the impact will be, understand what the intent is but what the real impact would be.

And there's still a lot of concern about the loss of property value or the increase of property value where people won't be able to afford to live in their homes and also some concern about the freedom in being able to change and rehab their homes.

So just to clarify, you will be voting against item K. That is correct.

That's supporting the rest of the consent agenda.

Yes, that's correct.

Okay, thank you.

So if anybody could please indicate your vote.

Thank you very much.

And you got that for the record, Ms. Kochis.

Thank you.

Thank you Mr. Mayor

This is an item that first came before you for discussion a little over a year ago when we brought 608 Ridge Street to you as a property that we were having drug blight issues with and we asked that you allow us to purchase that and attempt to resell it and we did that.

We then realized that we could subdivide that lot into two lots and as part of the negotiations with Habitat for Humanity about

2210 North Berkshire, we came to you and said we'd like to give 2210 North Berkshire to Habitat and we'd like to give the rear portion of 608 Ridge Street when the time comes in lieu of our payment as cash as a sponsor for the house on 2210 and you didn't vote on it, you nodded agreement at that time so we've gotten to the point now where we're ready to deed this property to Habitat

It's actually 102 Elliot Avenue now because you changed the name of Cherry to Elliot in the last meeting in this stretch.

This is a lot that Habitat is wanting to put an eco house on.

There's been some publicity on it.

It's been in the paper and they actually at the BAR as we speak getting approval of design but basically a house that will use little to no energy going in this location.

That's exciting.

I think this is Habitat's first attempt at that.

There's been another couple, but they're partnering with the university and they're excited about it and itching to get started on the construction.

So the action for you tonight is to convey 102 Elliot Avenue to Habitat for Humanity.

There was another piece of this that we pulled off at Meijer, but just for informational purposes, that 608 Ridge Street, we've not been able to sell it on the market, not been able to sell it to any teachers or anybody of that nature.

Police officers, we've offered it.

We've offered it to the fire department.

I think it's a little bit daunting of a task when they look at it about the fear of what would be involved.

So what we want to do, if we can get your blessing of it, we don't need any formal action, but we'd like to take around $100,000 of the housing fund money and we have it ourselves.

We've gotten three quotes from contractors to go in and actually bring it up above code to make it a nicer house.

and then attempt to sell it at a amount that will pay back our investment plus the land cost to first market it to a teacher's fire department or police officers and then if we don't have any takers in, put it on the general market.

We believe that we'll have a very good house with a very good price on it when we do that but we try to get everybody to take it and it's the fear of the unknown I think about getting into an old house and rehabbing it in this market.

I have two problems I'd like to make.

First of all, the item which is on the agenda will give you a lot to have it as I thought it was a good idea, a good institution, we'll have a good affordable house, plus it will be environmentally sensitive, I think it will be a good example of our investments.

The second item, I don't know if you'd have learned the other word of about it at this stage, it is a good investment, a good amount of investment in this day and age.

We'd like to move ahead with it unless you say don't, basically.

It doesn't require any action.

The money is already in a fund that can spend it, but we're concerned the House has been sitting vacant and it's deteriorating a little bit.

Any other questions before we open the public hearing, then we'll get back to discussion here.

Thank you, Mr. Tolbert.

We'll now open the public hearing on this matter.

Nobody's signed up to speak, but is there anybody that would like to speak?

Okay, we'll close the public hearing.

Mr. Tolbert?

I mean, I think the words before us I think is a great one and I support it and I'm prepared to go ahead and move it.

In terms of the House, I mean, I think it sounds like a good plan.

I'd be very comfortable with, you know, Mr. Huja and perhaps the mayor sitting down reviewing kind of the issues at hand and then with the idea to bring it back before us if it seems like something we really need to talk through and otherwise allow the

It's okay with you two to move it ahead if that's a way to proceed on that.

It's the first two readings.

We'll take it up again next time.

Thank you, Mr. Coleman.

Next we have a report, Quality Service and Efficiency Study by the UVA Weldon Cooper Center.

Just a brief introduction.

We have a copy in front of you of the report and there's others that are available on our website.

Tonight is the presentation of the report.

The antennas, this just starts the discussion.

As you recall in last July, we got authorization from the city council to contract with the Welland Cooper Center of the University of Virginia.

The Welland Cooper Center has a

statewide and I would add national reputation for work with local government and it's also part of the Virginia Institute of Government.

Dr. Bob Matson, who council knows from having worked with city council on some of your retreats in the past is going to do an introduction of the team that was involved with this project and then they'll be presenting their report on quality of service and efficiency and I'll remind you

Part of the scope and discussion that we had with council that we thought was important to keep quality and the level of service that the city provides to our residents is a part of the scope, not just looking at efficiencies because it would be awfully easy to come in and lock off a whole lot of services that people in this community find very valuable and important and are willing to pay for with their taxes.

So we were trying to take a look and the scope looked at

The services that we had, how can we perform those most efficiently?

There's a whole series of recommendations that will be presented to you.

Thank you.

It's the first time I've been in this position after all those years of working with councils on retreats since Gary was a deputy city manager, not the manager, so.

And consequently, I want to take just this moment to thank you formally, you and all your predecessors, for making Charlottesville.

what it has become over those many years, the many struggles that you face.

You're the first citizens of Charlottesville and everyone knows that and appreciates it.

That's why so many people come to Charlottesville to look at how you do business and that's why you've done this study of quality services.

And my job here is to present

I want to introduce three gentlemen, one of whom will make the presentation.

I do want to thank you from the University of Virginia and the Cooper Center for engaging us.

We've been great partners over the years and I hope that will continue.

With that, Bob Taylor, if you want to hold up your hand, is a retired manager from Colonial Heights.

and Doug Walker, recently the manager of Williamsboro and the gentleman who will be making the presentation is Mr. Brad Hammer, recently retired as the deputy manager of Chesterfield County.

I can attest to the fact that those were exceptionally well run cities by these individuals and that

that the ideas I've looked through briefly, I think you're going to appreciate the fact that they have taken what is already good in the city and sharpened it up for you.

I think it's Council's protocol, Mr. Mayor and the Honorable Members of Council to come down and watch the presentation.

I just have to figure out how this works.

I want to say that the process that we followed involved reading a lot of documents that the city had provided.

When I say a lot of documents, thousands of pages.

When I first got engaged and the team first got engaged with Charlottesville, we had a long conference call and I read this huge list of things that I sort of expected Charlottesville city to have.

and was only guessing and it was a list that went on single spaced for two pages and I'm pleased to say that about 90% of everything I asked the city already had which to me was astonishing because it represented a level of management and review and scrutiny that you usually do not see in local governments

in Virginia and in a lot of states across this country.

Charlottesville has done many things already.

There's been many paths already crossed that the city staff has already done and looked at and considered.

So for the study team, I think in terms of the unanimity of all of us,

We were very quite impressed with how much there really was done already in terms of analytical review and a lot of diligence on the city staff, both the planning staff, the budget staff, and the manager staff of having things really already looked at before we even got there that we didn't really expect to see.

So that was a very good sign for us.

The other thing we did is that we interviewed every department head.

and the city government and some of the community leaders, some of the community citizens and they offered a lot of good input and then we encouraged them to email to us and give us other ideas.

We did some real brief interviews with the city council themselves.

These were just brief interviews to explain what we were doing and get any kind of insights from them.

We were really looking to see really in terms of

from the council just whether they thought the big ship that's called Charlottesville was heading in the right direction.

I'm pleased to say that most of them generally felt that it is.

The Robin Cooper Center located at UVA has been a long time consultant with the city of Charlottesville particularly on retreat like

situations and in looking at strategic planning and performance management.

And Bob Matson is the guru of the Weldon Cooper Center.

So it's a very surprise for me to have him here this evening.

He's taking the place of a gentleman named John Thomas who's also with the Weldon Cooper Center.

John's wife passed away last week and could not be here this evening.

We were contracted to take both a qualitative and efficiency review and look at the city's strategic direction in terms of what the present practices are across the country.

Is Charlottesville really counting the right things?

Is it measuring the right things?

Does it really have goals?

Does it really have strategies?

And how these really work in terms of the governance of the city and how citizens have a chance to talk and participate in city government and how the overall system works.

Now, the first part of the report, which is in a PDF format, you can download it to paper or just read it on the screen, gets into a chronology and history of what's happened in this country in terms of how local governments across the country manage themselves, how they count.

their productivity, how they consider, whether they consider themselves efficient and what's the history of these kind of efficiency measures and how did Charlottesville measure up to a lot of these things.

I'm pleased to say that when you look at Charlottesville and you look at what it's doing

and compare that to other cities in Virginia, Charlottesville ends up being one of the leaders.

That's no surprise.

In fact, when I first talked to Charlottesville, I mentioned about 10 leading cities of Charlottesville's size in the United States and asked Gary and Maurice and Leslie and Aubrey Watts, have you ever had contact with these jurisdictions?

Have you ever talked to them?

And they just sort of smiled at me in sort of a sly way and basically said, yeah, we actually have gone to some of these places, talked to some of these people.

In fact, we've got notebooks of documenting conversations of their procedures and practices and policies.

And lo and behold, about 60% of the jurisdictions I mentioned, they had already gone to, either talked to or even had documentation on in terms of what they were doing.

Well, that's a very good sign.

Now, one of the things that I've had a lot of experience in Virginia is I've always tried to work in localities that I felt were localities that went beyond the norm in terms of how they treated their citizens.

especially citizens who really needed help who didn't really have either the income, the education, or the health circumstances to succeed and so I worked in Alexandria and Newport News and in Fairfax County and in Chesterfield and all those

have a lot of things in common with Charlottesville, but Charlottesville for one reason or another actually goes beyond the norm in terms of the program array in human services and in the courts

and in education that distinguishes it above other local governments in Virginia.

I think the closest local government I told the mayor this that I thought you were similar to would be Alexandria.

Alexandria is a very compassionate city just like you all.

Now, we went through

and took the 2007 Auditor of Public Accounts Comparative Per Capital Reports.

These are expenditure reports that annually each local government has their fiscal people or their financial or accounting people send very detailed accounting and manning table information to the Auditor of Public Accounts in Richmond and they in turn load this into a computer system that

creates comparative reports across the state to create per capita expenditure information, per capita information that deals with the breadth of your services and what you're doing.

And then I compared that data and ranked Charlottesville comparing it to the 39 other local cities in Virginia and I found that basically Charlottesville was always in the top half to the top two-thirds in most of your departments.

Okay, and then I found two departments or sets of programs that were higher than normal.

Okay, so the two higher than normal programs were in police and in your welfare and social services area.

Two easily explainable areas of the reason for this.

Your demographics and your crime statistics and your socioeconomic data show that you do have a challenged population of folks who are struggling.

Some of these folks do not graduate from high school.

Some of these folks get involved in the criminal justice system and they do not succeed and become engaged with the criminal justice system.

and this creates a need for a higher level of policing which you have.

You have drug task forces and you have community policing and you have what I call bicycle police and if you looked at the per capita data for police and said well how many police should Charlottesville actually have?

Well Charlottesville should actually have 17 fewer than you have.

if you looked at the national average of 2.4 per thousand.

But if you look at the actual marrying strength of the police department, it's 17 more than that.

Well, if you look at where the 17 people are all parked, they're in community policing, neighborhood policing, and these drug task force operations.

So a very, very clean and logical answer.

Now in terms of welfare services, you do have high rates of foster care,

and of TANF, which is temporary services for needy families.

And that caseload in itself and the 20% plus people that are living close to or below the poverty line create that situation in social services.

So, now, that's a challenge to Charlottesville, but Charlottesville is already doing a lot of things to respond to that.

You have excellent...

programs started and underway for affordable housing for at-risk children.

You offer an outstanding public transit system.

A public transit system that's probably unparalleled other than the one that's in Alexandria.

Yours is more affordable than the one in Alexandria.

Yours offers more flexibility than the one in Alexandria.

And yours is an outstanding one.

And with the combination of jaunt, it's even better.

I'll talk about jaunt later.

The other thing that I found was that there wasn't too much of a critical need to do a lot of fine tuning on financial management.

You're a triple A credit.

When you're a triple A credit, your duration of bonds, that's the length of your general obligation bonds are short, less than 10 years, yours are less than 10 years.

You have a low value in terms of debt to your assessed values.

and you spend money responsibly.

Found all of those things.

I called some people in New York just to double check to make sure there wasn't anything else funny about Charlottesville and talked to some people I know in the radio services and financial advisors and they all told me that Charlottesville was viewed as one of the most outstanding credits in the United States as well as in Virginia.

So a lot of products to the staff and the finest people here that run the city.

Outsiders nationally or in this country view Charlottesville as one of the highest quality of life places to live in the United States in terms of small cities.

There's lots to do here.

I don't have to tell you that you live here.

You've done an outstanding job with resurrecting and reinventing your downtown.

Anytime you have an economic situation like we have right now, you're going to expect to see some vacant storefronts when you get to boutique shops and shops that are having to hang on in such a perilous economy that we're going through now.

But quality of life in Charlottesville has been recognized by many different groups.

AARP regards you as one of the best places to retire in the United States.

You've had business magazines rate you as an outstanding business location.

You've had tourism people rate you in terms of being one of the outstanding places the United States could visit.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal said that Charlottesville was the 31st best place in the United States to be a tourist.

Well, when you think 31, is that really good?

Well, yeah, it's outstanding when you think about how many places there are to go to in the United States.

So yes, you're world class.

There's no doubt about it.

Some people say that I'm world class and they're not world class.

Well, you're world class.

And I'm not saying that because I'm a consultant being paid by the city.

I'm telling you the truth.

I have a little story that the staff is tired of hearing about, but I'll tell you about it.

It's in the report.

And that is that when I was hiking the Appalachian Trail up in Pennsylvania and Maryland, I ran across some people from Indiana.

and usually newcomers will want to say well how long does it take to get from this shelter to this shelter because we're going that way and you came that way.

The very first thing they asked me was how do I get to Charlottesville.

Their big concern was two days later they were getting off the Appalachian Trail and they wanted to see Charlottesville.

They've always wanted to see Charlottesville and they were asking me directions on how to get there.

So Charlottesville is known by a lot of people.

Okay, you're community focused.

1.6 million in your operating budget goes to arts, history and cultural programs.

A huge investment compared to other localities in Virginia.

3.4 million goes to aged, youth, criminal justice prevention and community programs.

2.8 million goes to public transit, 1.6 million to affordable housing and that affordable housing member may not be capturing all the capital investment after listening tonight to what's going on here.

So the thing I wanted to say about this is a lot of people complain, geez, my tax rate is higher than Albemarle County.

Why can't the city get the tax rate down?

Well, and this is not a recommendation to make any changes here, but I can tell you that if you added up all those numbers, it equals 19 cents on your tax rate.

So having a compassionate, world class, outstanding, high quality of place to live comes with a price.

It comes with a price because the city council and councils before them and so on have made those policy decisions, those hard decisions, to spend money in a worthwhile way.

Sharing services with schools.

Currently, you maintain the city, maintains facilities, grounds, people transportation, and helps with bond placement.

One of the things and opportunities that you have over the next 5, 10, 15 years that could even be shorter than that is to think about consolidating more services in the city government

and providing those services back to the school district.

This will save money.

It saves money on computers, it saves money on personnel, it saves money in terms of maintenance and in capital budgeting.

So when you look at what you could be doing, we could think strategically

with the school board.

Maybe we should be doing information technology.

We've made a huge investment in SAP and why wouldn't you want to take advantage of SAP just like the city does?

We have an excellent accounting department.

It's already gotten all of the awards for financial accounting.

It's always given a certificate of conformance from GFRA.

It is viewed as one of the best finance departments in the state.

Why wouldn't the city consider doing payroll and financial accounting with the confidentiality rules that any board needs to operate on so that you're providing them the services if they're your client?

The same way would apply to purchasing and risk management.

For those not familiar with city government risk management must be your insurance functions, your workers' compensation functions.

And then the whole new area that Leslie Beauregard and the lead team and the P3 team are working on which is performance management.

They're getting into performance management.

Why wouldn't we use performance management at the school level?

Why don't we look at our goals and how well we're doing there and have a similar system.

Now, shared services for Albemarle County.

You're very lucky.

When I looked at the per capita reports on mental health, mental retardation and substance abuse, you are, out of 39 localities, you are number one as far as having to pay the least amount of per capita cost for these services compared to the other 39 cities in Virginia.

The reason being is you're a regional mental health operation and you're getting

Your service is at a fair price and a lot of your citizens are accessing Medicaid to get those services.

So that's why those services are expensive.

You already are cooperating in the landfill jail, juvenile detention, the communication systems, health department, the county health department, your health department.

I'll talk later about CSA, youth and senior programs, rescue squads, certain recreational venues.

What are the potentials in the future to expand with Albemarle?

Well, you could look at special education, particularly those services that deal with autism, very expensive programs, why wouldn't we have it regionalized instead of just for each locality?

Parks and recreation, you've already got a good track record there, you could expand those programs in cooperation with the county.

But the city should always look at Parks and Recreation as an asset.

And what I mean by that is, you've got two pools under construction, you've got outstanding parks, so you don't want to lose too much control from a managerial context

in a leadership context of those facilities.

So whatever you do with Parks and Recreation, think about whether the city's losing anything or gaining anything.

It's sort of like a plus and minus ledger when you look at some of these.

Road maintenance is something we should look at.

Sheriff's services, this is kind of an interesting one because you have a very small sheriff's department in Albemarle, I mean in Charlottesville.

It could be that there's more cooperative opportunities to combine sheriff services between you and Albemarle and in courthouse facilities.

I mean, the two facilities are located right next to each other.

That doesn't mean we should do it.

The one thing I did find out about talking with the sheriff

about this topic was the big difference between the Albemarle Sheriff's Department and Charlottesville is that Charlottesville makes a very special effort to help people with evictions, to help people, single mothers with either bad boyfriends or custody issues

and they provide a huge amount of personal service to some of your sheriff's shut-ins.

So if you change those services or combine those services in the future, you've got to weigh that against the compassionate services that your present sheriff's department is providing to its citizens, especially those who are very needy.

When you looked at the

The many things that we covered, we did detailed reviews with the departments.

And I have to say that 99% of what I'm telling you this evening is not covering what is in the report.

So you have to go to the PDF.

on the computer on CityLink and pick it up there and look at the recommendations.

The recommendations are very detailed.

They cover two or three or four issues in every department that we thought should be looked at.

In some cases, you can save a lot of money.

In some cases, better protecting city assets or records.

In some cases, improving automation to make people more productive.

In some cases, actually adding people where we think there's too much stress.

It's in the report, in the recommendations, so I would encourage people to do it that way.

If I'd started talking about it tonight, we'd be here till the morning, so I didn't

really want to get into that level of detail this evening but I will get into the detail for the council people when I ask the questions.

City departments are very progressive and I wanted to say that one of the things we did find out from our citizens

was, what about this huge investment the city made in the computer system, the new software systems that were put in.

Is the city really getting its investment back?

Any time you put in a complex ERP system like the city did, and the city's vendor is SAP, it takes

at least 5 to 10 years really to get something going with it.

I'll draw a parallel up, in and around the same time the county of Albemarle did the same thing.

The county Albemarle, to my knowledge, the only thing they have up and working is fixed assets.

What the city has up and working is most of what they originally promised through the vendor SAP.

Now, for the city to do that, it had to expect a lot of change.

Any time you automate a lot of things that were previously manual, you have to look at every process, procedure, and step within departments

and changed those steps and procedures to start using the computer effectively.

The city had to first do that, then install the equipment and get it going.

It did what is known as a cold turkey flip over in terms of payroll.

It went one week from the old and the next payroll the new.

A lot of people were in parallel for a year.

the city just did it in one step.

So I have a lot of admiration because I did this in two other jurisdictions myself.

The city did it quickly, the city did it effectively.

Now if you're asking me has the city gotten anything it can out of SAP software?

No, because it still needs to buy these little modules and pieces spread across the city governance and it will take time to do that and you only have so many resources to do that.

But the city has been very successful

with its implementation of SAP.

Economic development.

The city's population has not changed.

It's been relatively the same for 10 years or more, 40,000 people.

You've got plus or minus

8,000 students coming in and out every year out of UVA.

And your population characteristics when you look at the census data only shows that you have a very pretty even distribution of age cohorts going across the city.

So the city is still growing internally.

People are still having families.

But you're not going to be unlike anybody else in the United States.

You're going to see more people like me.

baby boomers who are retired who want to move into the city.

Part of your future will be the baby boomer population coming to the city wanting to live in mixed use developments that Jim Talbert and Aubrey Watts and others here have been talking about for years.

And the other pushers of your economy are UVA and tourism.

OK.

So UVA is big because UVA is coming in with two major health facilities here.

It will bring more professionals here.

They will need housing.

They will be spending money.

They will have an effect on West Main Street.

Tourism, you've got a five star hotel being built downtown.

There's still probably a need for more hotel capacity located on the south and the western ends of the city.

So the sky's the limit in terms of what you can do with tourism with your reputation.

I looked at Preston Street and I really think it's

an outstanding location to look very much like parts of Arlington County.

The two parts, if you're up to Arlington County, the two areas in Arlington County that we sort of think that Preston will eventually look like would either be Boston or Clarendon.

These are two areas that have high density, semi-high rise buildings, lots of mixed use and retail, lots of diversity in the population.

and lots of office.

And you need that because you want the UVA graduates to stay, you want the health related professions to stay, and you want the baby boomers to move into the condos that these mixed use developments will have.

Those will create the capital

the actual capital to allow you to prosper your affordable housing programs.

You would be able to use inclusionary zoning or set asides to get these developers to create affordable housing within these mixed use developments.

Hopefully, over time, you'll be able to reduce the total amount of concentrated public housing that you have by moving people into newer homes that allow them to be closer to the jobs, the service jobs and the other jobs that are created by this change in the city.

All these things will occur over time.

You've already seen them happen with Martha Jefferson Hospital.

I know that they're still looking at various plans for that.

A similar facility in Williamsburg, Virginia was converted to a state-of-the-art assisted living and elderly housing complex.

Think about all the sinks you have in the hospital and what you could do with them.

Instead of tearing them out, make them rooms.

Okay, and then we talked about redevelopment of housing.

I did find a lot of people who really want to know more about economic development marketing.

The city really does produce a newsletter that puts information on the web, but probably a more coherent vision for everybody in the city, the citizens, the council, and the rest of the city staff would be good so that people understand that.

We've talked about becoming an employment center for UDA grads.

And that's the other thing I really wanted to talk a little bit about.

One of my big concerns when I looked at your school population and what was happening there is we really need to think about creating jobs for people who do not necessarily graduate from college, for people who maybe just graduate from high school and people who don't graduate from high school.

So I'm a big pusher of community colleges and what they can do.

I think there needs to be a lot more discussions with the school district and with Albemarle about vocational education being removed in this area in terms of creating more

capacity for people to learn trade jobs, skilled trade jobs like electricians, plumbers and the like.

One of the problems that the Commonwealth Attorney talked to me about was there just simply isn't enough jobs for young adults who have no skills to find work other than fast food.

It just is not working and these people really want to stay in Charlottesville.

He, from his standpoint, he wants fewer customers.

because some of these people conclude that it's better to be in the drug trade than in an acceptable license trade.

So it's something we really need to think about.

Human services funding is excellent.

and I want to talk a little bit about Comprehensive Services Act, that's what CSA is.

A lot of the at-risk kids who have severe problems, they're either foster care kids, kids that have gone through the court system, kids who are special ed kids coming from the school system get services from CSA.

You have a regional CSA that's run by a community organization.

I'm suggesting after looking at the numbers

looking at where the state is going with its regulations and thinking about the city in the future in terms of what you need to be more like.

I would like the city to run its own CSA and be more like a place called Hampton, Virginia, which has the lowest CSA costs in the state primarily because it avoids sending kids away to costly residential facilities.

Buzz, Kochs,

is in 100% agreement with that and thinks that would be the better approach.

I want you to think about all of your criminal justice programs, including your adult drug court, your screening programs that keep people out of jail.

All those programs are sets of programs that should be run in the future by a traffic cop.

Well, I mean, not a policeman, but somebody who has overall responsibility for evaluating and coordinating these programs in the future.

So, in the report, it basically designates who would have that kind of responsibility both for juvenile and adult programs, and it actually references some people who are known experts in the United States who come in periodically and evaluate your programs to determine whether they are running with the very best practices.

Now, good news is that on a lot of the human service functions you have here, they already are doing what is known as outcome measurement.

They're looking at are they successful, are they effective, are they efficient, and do they actually reach and help people.

So, what we're, as consultants to you, recommending is that we have a third party come in,

and look at their data and recommend whether there's a best practice someplace else in the United States to change some of those programs to make them as effective as they can be.

Because you're making $3.4 million worth of investments in those programs.

Parks and Recreation, it's basically maxed out because you may have so much park space and I heard one of the citizens talk about needing more park space for kids so you really have to use your NDS people to figure out how to expand local park space in a city that's already built up as much as Charlottesville is but it's an important thing for everybody to have more open space and we are doing that

Even the most beloved, I shouldn't say it this way but probably will, McIntyre Parkway for example has bike trails that make Gary built into it.

You're actually building capacity through an urban road project of more bike trails and trails to allow your citizens to either get exercise or get outside, so that's a good thing.

It doesn't all have to be negative in terms of widening roads.

The need to market your programs to families and connect strongly with the community attention department is that one thing I was talking about with having a traffic cop for juvenile services and another one for adult services.

I think your community attention department is set up ideally to do this.

There is some money already in your budget, criminal justice planning services for juvenile services that can be used to set up this evaluation function.

So it's already there, you don't have to create the money.

This comment is meant more for council than it is the staff.

You've got an excellent public affordable housing program going.

You've put a lot of capital into it.

Now we need to put our thinking hat on and basically say, okay, what kind of goals do we want to set over the next 10 or 20 years and by what income categories?

and what program tools will we use in Charlottesville to carry this out.

In the appendix of the report, there's 20 or 30 items there that

that you'll see, and you'll recognize a lot of the ones you're already doing already.

But I would really like you to see, over the next few years, I'd like to see that you set some goals in terms of number of units for low income, for low moderate income, and for moderate income affordable housing to be built here in Charlottesville.

And those goals should be flexible enough to give Jim Tolbert and his staff

the latitude and albeit the latitude to come in with some of these mixed-use developments and work with affordable housing and work with Habitat for Humanity which we saw here this evening and continuing what you're doing.

Public Works One of the most contentious things that always happens in a lot of localities is that citizens tend to not understand work crew assignments.

And so when they see a lot of people on the street working on a puddle, they can't understand, why does it take six people to fix a puddle?

Why does it take seven people to fix a puddle?

They must have far too many people in Public Works to justify this.

We really looked at

I looked at that and I didn't really, you know, because you have a dense city you have to have two people assigned to traffic control on either side of the pothole.

You got to have somebody driving a truck, you have to have somebody working the backhoe or the roller, and you have to have a couple laborers.

It all adds up to six people with a supervisor.

That's what you're doing, six people.

I didn't think there was anything unusual about it.

The APA reports show Charlottesville is slightly below the average in terms of staffing and I'll have to say that the department head in public works generally feels that she's pretty pressed in terms of scheduling people to fix things and that she could actually use more people

But I don't think saying that public works has far too many people or utilities has far too many people is really a responsible conclusion on my part.

Everything we looked at, everything we scrutinized, it just wasn't there.

They're manned at about the right level and they have very good processes.

One of the things the citizens ought to realize is that the state gives you your road maintenance budget.

but falls short every year at least a million dollars of providing us fair share of remittances back to Charlottesville to pay for the maintenance program here in Charlottesville.

So if you have a General Assembly member, call in and say I want more road maintenance budget for the city of Charlottesville.

I looked at CTS and JAWS.

CTS is probably one of the most studied public transit systems in the United States.

There's a huge report that just finished last year.

Its conclusion basically said, well, you need to run, make more runs and have more times for pickup if you want to improve ridership.

Ridership has been level at about 87,000.

And the middle job program

does about 20% of what CTS does John is an urban rural paratransit program run by Mrs. Shaughnessy down there in the valley near 64 and she does an excellent job and she's leveraging all kinds of money for the city of Charlottesville Now, if you want to go to free fare

for CTS.

If you wanted a free fare system, you would lose about a half a million plus in fare box revenue, and you'd have to pay all the fare box revenue the joint requires.

So it would cost you about a million bucks if you went to free fare in terms of CTS, if that's what the city wanted to do in the future.

Schools.

Your challenge is middle school.

There's no doubt about it.

When a lot of families are diverting kids, they do a great job at elementary school.

If you look at all of the testing scores, which I did, superintendent of public instruction testing scores and some of the third party testing scores, it shows that your elementary school system is doing an outstanding job with the kids.

But by the time

the kids get in middle school for one reason or another there's a pretty good drop off of people who are into private school and then there's even a more consequential drop off of kids who really don't go too far past middle school in terms of success

and to tell you that roughly one-third don't make it to high school once they get to middle school is about basically where you are.

This is a very big challenge to the city.

That's why I made the comments about vocational education.

That's why I think we need to have a trade curriculum for kids as early as middle school here in Charlottesville.

That's why I'd like you to be very careful with your

Human Services and Criminal Justice program and services at the juvenile level and community attention because this is where we need to spend all our effort because the first successful middle school.

and keep kids from either dropping out or having severe truancy will have success at high school.

Your high school is an outstanding high school.

People come back to go to high school after middle school.

And it has outstanding programs.

So middle school is your ballerina.

It's a ballerina in a lot of urban districts.

It's not just Charlottesville.

But you really need to look at that middle school population.

And that is the end of the presentation.

Just before starting, I just want to thank the many department heads who were gracious enough to put up with us for an hour or two hours or three hours.

I reacquainted myself with some people and found out about some people I haven't heard about in many years and the staff were just particularly gracious and I especially enjoyed talking with David.

It's been a long time since I met him.

I have a classmate of his that I go skiing with every winter

I think for the folks watching in the audience and at home, this tonight is really just the start of this conversation about how to be more efficient and improve the quality of service.

Staff is going to be going through this report with a fine-toothed comb and to prepare line-by-line recommendation by recommendation responses.

As you heard, there are many recommendations in this report that

were not touched upon in the presentation here tonight.

And then Council, once staff has had a chance to prepare responses, we're going to have a work session to go into the key recommendations in more depth.

So, again, tonight is really just the first step.

I do have some questions, and I thank you for your time on this.

Reading through the report, one of the questions I have you sort of answered, which was I was wondering why in the report you didn't talk about the staffing levels of public works, since that's probably the department where people, as you mentioned, have most concerns about how many people work there.

Could you point that back to me?

19, right.

When we looked at Public Works, Mr. Brown, we just

The more we asked questions, the more we looked at the vocabulary groups, the more we just could not find an exception where you were overstaffed in terms of what you were doing.

I guess what I noticed is that in a number of the other sections, you actually tell how a particular department compares to its peers nationally or around the state, you know, what the average for the police department number of officers is, but there weren't anything, there weren't any facts to, actually there wouldn't, I don't find any assertion that it's either appropriate or inappropriate, but there weren't any assertions to back it up, and so I appreciate your comment, but I think

One of the things I noticed, and I thought was interesting, again on page 19, and I'm asking these questions because I think there's some questions that when we have a work session, you know, it'll be hard to say what was the intent of you writing this, but if we look at the second paragraph there, you say, you comment on

A review of absenteeism and use of sick leave revealed its practice as a department to allow up to 80 hours of sick leave utilization per employee per year without formal documentation.

It's not clear to me if there's a recommendation that comes out of that.

Is that a problem?

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

I don't know whether it's different, but from our own professional standpoint, we hadn't seen a policy like that before.

Well, we asked the director about it, as I recall, and she felt like this policy was working better than the one we had suggested.

Documentation after the second, after the absence of the second day, doctor documentation, third day.

It's there that we found that it would be better for the city to have comprehensive policy

I'd like to strongly support that recommendation.

As a chiropractor, I'm really aware that

You know, there's wide agreement in research that if a person is injured on the job, the single most important determinant of them returning to full work and getting over the injury is early return to work.

And early return to work is only facilitated if a light duty option is available.

So I would like to ask that that be something that we look at as soon as possible because, you know, if circumstances, you know, there's not a light duty option, the longer a person doesn't go back to work, the less likely it is they'll ever go back to work.

I agree.

Another comment I have, and it's kind of interesting, is that both this study and the study in Almonte County, which I just briefly looked at, actually points out that it would be more efficient to have more people working in certain departments

which I think a lot of times the point of efficiency studies is to recommend, you know, can you do it with less people.

Councilman Brown, I think it's very true in departments where people may be overworked and then stress comes in and they're not as healthy as they should be or as productive as they should be.

The other thing is, I didn't really understand what Appendix 4 is, the internal performance and financial audit plan for Chesterfield, Virginia.

In the narrative under financial section, there's a paragraph that says financial performance manager.

Okay, and what I want you to think about is having a staff person who's not in the department

who, once you ramp up with your performance-related criteria, would check your performance management criteria and data, would check your financial information and data, and not have any ox to grind or not be invested in any department or department head who's totally independent, who would always be cross-checking, checking, and looking at information using the computer system in any other way possible.

In the jurisdictions I've worked with we've always had a person like that and they usually had three or four person staff in fact and what I've given you is Chesterfield County's

annual program that's risk-rated to look at all of the various venues that this performance and financial manager would look at.

And over time, what we found was the position paid for itself because they found savings.

They saw having a person like me

I guess what I'll ask is that for us and for the public, is that some explanation be applied to this appendix so that when it says the risk is 175 or 75 or 275, there's some sense of what that is.

I can get the meaning of those headers for you.

Let's have a couple more and then I'll be done here.

On page 17 of the report, you recommend that the city charge non-residents for access and use of city facilities and fields.

I don't think completely so.

I don't know if every Albemarle County resident that uses a city parks facility is doing that or whether everybody's paying the same fee or it's a differentiated fee.

There are systems in Virginia where non-residents actually have a card.

or some kind of barcode kind of thing that authenticates them having either paid services or paid an annual fee.

Okay, those are the questions I have.

Thank you, Dr. Brown.

I'm just kind of surprised you didn't say anything specifically about our agency budget review process.

You talked about our investment in programs and services, but again,

I'm just daunted by the city's rate of foster care placements five times the state average.

Clearly, there's a lot we need to be doing regarding prevention in all areas.

Councilman Edwards, the way I would respond to that is that you are making outstanding investments in the programs that are meant to address those issues but the very best thing you can do right now beyond what you're doing is invest in some help either free or given to you through grants or

or sometimes you have to pay for them of getting third party experts to come in and say, are you doing the best practices in these programs?

Now, in terms of foster care, a lot of what's being pushed here is the judicial intervention that you have here that is a little bit more aggressive than other jurisdictions that deals with truancy.

Your judges will

put kids in foster care because of truancy issues.

A lot of jurisdictions don't do that.

And I'm saying that's good.

I'm saying they're addressing some issues that need to be addressed.

Yes, it's referenced in the report and Buzz Cox I believe has made, his wife may know this, he's already done two field visits to Hampton.

I think where you are right here in Charlottesville is execution.

Any other comments, Ms. Edwards?

Questions?

Okay.

I had a couple of comments slash questions sort of piggybacking on Ms. Edwards' comment.

You said many times in your presentation that we are a compassionate community based on the amount of funding that we dedicate to programs for the disadvantaged, and I would

suggest that a more accurate measure of compassion is not how much money we're spending, but how successful we are at moving people out of poverty.

And what we see is that we have a lot of people that are trapped in poverty.

I think we need to move towards a new paradigm.

Not only is it the right thing to do, but maintaining people in poverty is very expensive for all of us.

I'd be very interested to hear some more specifics about how other communities, not just how much they've spent on programs for the poor, but how successful have they been at actually reducing poverty?

So that's just a general observation, comment.

I'm very interested to hear more about, you go into some detail in the study, but I'd like to see some follow-up discussion, not necessarily tonight, but at some point about health benefits for retirees, because as you say in the report, the path that we're on now is a fairly perilous path, fiscally speaking, in that we need to change our ways if we want to

keep the city solvent when it comes to the benefits for retirees.

Not to scale back the benefits of people who have already retired, we're not talking about that, but for future retirees.

I fully agree and appreciate your comment about bringing more

strategic focus to our affordable housing efforts and in fact I would like to see us move forward on that recommendation post haste because as of April or May we're going to be making allocation decisions on our

fiscal year 09, Charles the Housing Fund dollars, and I'd like to see us do those in the context of a little bit more strategic focus in terms of the kind of goals that Boulder has set forth.

So maybe you can help our staff or at least give them some more information about what Boulder's done and how we might replicate that.

as we move forward with those allocations and then lastly, you had a very different tone tonight when you were talking about our transit system than you did in the one-on-one meeting that we had where I think in our meeting you

indicated that the system could be more efficient.

And I think a lot of us have been thinking that if we were able to get more funding through a regional transit or regional transportation funding mechanism that we could invest more dollars in the system, have a system that's more efficient, that goes more places, that serves more people, that's more user-friendly, more effective system.

Well, that isn't going to happen.

That proposal got shot down in Richmond.

So we really need some help.

Okay.

Well, just to add to your comments in those last two topics of housing, specific objectives, because you spend a lot of money and I'm not sure we've gotten some

I wouldn't describe it as perilous, I would just say it's a necessary time to do it now rather than later.

I think your employees can be compensated or given relatively the same benefit in a different way that doesn't increase the city's liability the way it is right now.

And the report has two or three references of things that can tweak the retirement system itself that would help it.

I just want to say that every defined

Benefit plan in the United States has lost 30 to 40% of its assets over the last four or five months.

Now, you have done an excellent job keeping up with your pension liabilities, and you're going to weather it better because you've already started doing it.

But there will be increasing more pressure in the future to even address the pension plan.

But in my review of the pension plan and looking at it, it looks very good.

Thank you.

Any other thoughts?

So staff has taken upon themselves within the next 90 days to come back with detailed responses and we'll take it from there.

Why is it going to take 90 days?

It seems like you have a budget cycle coming up.

Do you want to address that Mr. Palm?

I think if you look at the recommendations, almost every item takes some additional level of study.

We tried to look at having discussions with the study teams that were talking to departments if they had ideas to look for efficiencies and ways for cost savings within the budget that's submitted.

As you go through the budget, we identified $600,000 in savings.

and the budget out of Department of Savings and we've reduced 14 positions within city government so we've started trying to use some of those.

But my quick look at their final set of recommendations are things that are not going to be implemented overnight.

For example, all the ones about schools consolidation and different things is a multi-year approach.

But we've taken some of those concepts, for example.

The superintendent and I have talked with our human resource director about bidding health care programs for the city and the schools together.

That would be a first.

So I think we'll see opportunities that come along.

And we've had a report and there may be issues that come up as we go through the budget, but we just need some time to digest it and I think to respond back.

The issue that

Ms. Edwards was talking about the Hampton model.

We've been down here three or four times.

It means totally redoing the agency review process, rethinking how we provide services, moving CSA out of the regional program into the city.

That's not going to happen overnight.

And so a lot of the recommendations are those kind of things that I think we'll do well to get download 90 days to be able to give you things specific enough of what we think might be able to be done.

There may be some in here that we need to pull out and do something more quickly than that, but that was our thinking when we saw the scope and the magnitude of some of the recommendations.

Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, there's a couple things that will be happening in the area.

I mean, there's a strong likeliness that Albemarle may reconsider revenue recovery, which is a euphemism that means charging for ambulance services.

Now, when we did this in Chesterfield County,

Five years ago, we thought the walls of the council chambers would collapse with people complaining of a population of 320,000 people and huge ambulance transfer population.

Three complaints.

What you do is you get a 70% collection rate because you're

Billing third party insurance companies for the service.

The revenue comes into the fire department and offsets their EMS costs.

You can decide whether you want to take that money and help the rescue squads or somebody else if you want to, but it's a good program.

I think Albemarle is close to looking at that.

And if they do it, you should do it.

There's some revenue adjustments in the back of the book that have numbers on them that you can look at that conform you to Albemarle rates, make it everybody understands what the minimum rate is that would be easy to implement and I talked about dog tag fees and parking fees.

So the question is, are you going to have an opportunity to, in terms of the recommendations you made here, to give us feedback on which of these you see as implementable in the short run, i.e.

Sure.

And I think part of the whole process was to try to help do that.

I mean, the discussions at, I don't know how many different meetings the team had with different departments,

immediate suggestions of things I think departments took to heart and have been trying to implement things.

So what you've got is really a listing of some things that are harder to do.

And some of them we've done down the path and weren't successful with it.

Okay, thank you all very much.

I appreciate your efforts and look forward to continuing conversation on this topic.

The next item on our agenda is a report from the Piedmont Council of the Arts

Good evening city councillors.

I appreciate this opportunity to share with you the recent work of Piedmont Council of the Arts, the designated local arts agency of Charlottesville and Albemarle.

I've served as PCA's executive director since July 2007, and with me here this evening are four members of PCA's board of directors.

We're supported in our work by PCA's communications manager, Kate Godwell, and over 20 committed community volunteers.

For 30 years, PCA has worked to sustain the arts as an essential part of the high quality of life in our area.

In the last year, we've expanded and enhanced our programs for artists and arts organizations, educators and young people, and the community at large.

This has been possible with much needed additional financial support from the city of Charlottesville, as well as ongoing support from Albemarle County, project grants from private foundations, new corporate sponsors of our website, charlottesvillearts.org,

and increased individual and organizational memberships in PCA.

We also recently moved into McGuffey Arts Center, which has reduced our operational costs and increased our visibility in the community.

I'm here this evening to thank you for your continued financial support of PCA, to share our newly articulated vision and goals, and to provide information on the ways in which we've enhanced our relationship with the city in the last year through new initiatives and programs.

PCA's vision is to be the nexus for all things arts-related in our community.

This involves working with and for the many area organizations, artists, educators, and audiences that seek cultural information, resources, or support.

It also involves serving as a liaison and a connector between arts community members and the city and county.

We work to realize our vision today through the pursuit of six core goals which are outlined in the materials in the packet.

Some highlights from our ongoing programs and services that respond to these goals include our web-based promotional efforts, such as the Arts in an Inbox email campaign and charlottesvillearts.org, which support local artists and organizations, expand and diversify arts audiences, and promote cultural tourism in central Virginia.

Our practical resources for arts educators and local artists, including free workshops and training sessions, publications, and advisories.

Our community arts program, programming for young people, citizens with disabilities, and multicultural groups through long-standing partnerships with the Virginia Festival of the Book, Charlottesville Festival of Cultures, and VOSR Arts of Charlottesville Albemarle.

I'd like to draw special attention to additional new programs that we've launched in 2008.

In the materials in your packet, there's a document outlining our new initiatives with city entities, including Charlottesville City Schools, Parks and Recreation, the Office of Economic Development, and the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau.

I'll now describe four of the key programs related to these entities that PCA has launched in the last year.

The Creative Conversation Series is a forum for arts-related idea exchange and collaboration.

The goal of this new program is to bring organizations, artists, educators, and community leaders together in person to develop strategies for strengthening the arts in our community.

The 2008 MIND series covers three topics, arts education in our community, marketing Charlottesville as a creative community, and creating community-wide access to the arts.

Two of the three conversations have already taken place, drawing over 60 community members together to share ideas and problem solve.

The Community Arts Education Handbook is a new annual publication that PCA created in

PCA will update and distribute the publication annually to all city school principals and teachers.

This effort is coupled with an arts education advocacy presentation that PCA now makes each year to city school principals, encouraging them to prioritize the arts in their schools.

The new Rising Star Award Celebration was also launched in 2008 to provide a free opportunity for community members to celebrate the achievements of high school students chosen by their teachers to receive PCA's Rising Star Youth and Center Award.

In addition to offering them the only recognition opportunities for high school art students, this new event showcases their talents on a community stage, joining the students with established local artists from Charlottesville.

Finally, the Fun Bus Project was a new collaboration between PCA and Charlottesville Parks and Recreation that took place in summer 2008.

PCA got local artists Sandra Oresku and artist volunteers from the Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative together to implement hands-on arts workshops for over 100 young people in Parks and Recreation summer camp.

The project resulted in a professionally painted fun bus used by Parks and Recreation.

It was designed based on the campus artwork and also a public exhibition of the work that went into designing and painting the school bus.

PCA is also planning a new program for 2009 called the Arts Access Project, which will join artists and arts organizations with community groups to offer cultural activities for citizens with limited means.

I encourage you to read more about this initiative on page 3 of the About PCA document provided in your packet.

I'd like to close by reiterating how vital the City's financial support is to PCA's long-term viability.

With just two part-time staff members, we're working hard to offer programs and services in a consistent, accessible, and effective manner.

While we have nearly doubled our financial support from individuals, fellow arts organizations, and local businesses, the ongoing annual funding from the city remains critical of PCA's success.

City of Charlottesville is one of our most important partners and service recipients.

I welcome your ideas, feedback, and concerns as we continue to work together to strengthen and support the arts in Charlottesville.

On behalf of Piedmont Council of the Arts, I'm honored to work for such a committed community, home to one of the most vibrant arts and culture scenes in the state of Virginia.

Thank you, Ms. Guglielmo.

I'd like to thank you.

I think you've really brought a lot of energy and enthusiasm to the position.

And I like the way you describe the PCA to be the nexus for arts-related activities.

I think there's a lot of very positive things going on in our community with arts.

One of the great things that I went to in the past year was the prison art show at McGuffey.

I agree, I echo everything that's been said.

I had the great opportunity to participate in a workshop in Harrisonburg talking about arts and economic development.

I don't think a lot of people

I appreciate the fact that investment in arts and a vibrant arts scene actually can be a real economic generator.

So beyond art for art's sake, there's real benefits for the whole community.

Good evening.

I'm Leslie Middleton and I'm coming before you tonight as staff to the Rivanna River Basin Commission in an interim position.

So I appreciate the opportunity to give you a very short report.

And I really just want to say that we are

Very fortunate to have Mr. Huja and Holly Edwards on our commission and the work that we're doing now is really aligned with the mission of the River Basin Commission, which is to provide guidance for the stewardship and enhancement of the water and natural resources of the Rivanna River Basin.

Tonight I'd like to ask for your support in the form of a letter to a funder that we are seeking money for, for a fairly large grant that will further the work of the Commission and also help this locality specifically.

As you probably know, we have a technical advisory committee that includes members of your staff, Missy Creasey and Crystal Littelvold, along with staff from the other member localities, Green County, Fluvanna County, and Albemarle County, along with local and regional experts in water quality management and storm water management.

You probably also know and are highly sensitized to the fact that what we've determined after a fairly extensive and methodological, methodical scientific process, we've really zeroed in on the major threat

to our area waterways, and that is excess sedimentation.

We certainly see it in our reservoirs, we see it in our rivers every time it rains, and the cause for this excess sedimentation has its origins in the historical land use, the deforestation of our watershed over a couple of hundred years.

These days, the result of that is that high energy events, storm events, are sending a lot of excess water into our streams.

That energy is tearing apart further the already inside stream banks, putting more of a load of sediment into the rivers and carrying it on down.

We don't actually believe that the greater component has to do with overland flow, although there's a sediment

although there is a component of that as well.

In January we sent you a set of recommendations.

I believe that they're in your packet.

They include encouraging the localities to adopt best management practices.

I think we have the stoplight format there for you.

I guess you didn't end up with color.

different ways of looking at whether, not particularly innovative, but they aren't necessarily mandated by code yet in the state of Virginia to handle the excess volumes and to improve water quality coming through stormwater management tools.

We've also encouraged our member localities such as the City of Charlottesville to look at ways to implement these, to look at ways to incentivize this in public and private development.

And we're really happy to see that Charlottesville is quite ahead of the curve in this regard already.

We applied a couple of months ago to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation's Grant Opportunity Program.

It's under the Chesapeake Bay Stewardship Fund.

It's called the Innovative Nutrient and Sediment Reduction Program.

And our proposal was selected, I think there were about 100 applicants, was winnowed down to 30.

We've been asked to go for a final proposal that's due this Friday.

And our particular grant program combines actually all the components that are described in the letter of recommendation that you received a couple of months, or in January, January 15th.

In particular, this grant program asks the funder for money that would in turn be used on the local level to help implement these BMPs.

So each locality, we've worked with staff to identify a site that is a candidate, what we call demonstration site, for a particular kind of best management practice for slowing down or

almost eliminating the excess stormwater going off the site.

In Charlottesville, the site that was selected was at the Charlottesville High School.

There's two practices there that are going to be implemented this summer.

I believe they're in the design phase.

That is a rooftop rainwater collection system that is going to be turned into irrigation for the athletic fields.

And the second component is a fairly large bioswale that sits between the parking lot and the receiving stream.

The way the grant is funded or is structured is a portion of the cost that Charlottesville has already committed to for that.

Those two practices would come back to locality that then could be used for

for their investments in these types of practices.

Other components that are part of this grant have to do with monitoring of best management practices, the state of the art of monitoring stormwater, the outflow from stormwater features or management features is

really in its infancy and we have a very, very strong team of people that includes StreamWatch and some of the other folks from UVA that are looking at ways that we can contribute to the state of the science and really know if widespread adoption of these types of practices will truly make a difference in our watershed.

So those are the components of the proposal and one other I forgot to say is to actually work with your staff to look specifically at incentive programs for private development.

In the process we hope to have a series of what we're calling developer roundtables in which we continue to open the conversation between local staff, the regulators such as DCR and DEQ, and the people who are building the houses or doing the retrofit or redevelopment so that we can find out what the impediments are for

We're not even waiting for the grant opportunity.

We have one set up for the city.

We're working on a date in early April right now.

So my request to the council is to formally support this grant application.

It's the kind of thing that's strengthened by an acknowledgement of the partnership.

I have a draft letter that I could give to you tonight or work with your staff.

And it doesn't, you know, the common question is, is this going to require any more funds from the city?

No, in fact, just the opposite.

Thank you very much, Ms. Minnis.

I'd like to share with you two comments.

First of all, this has served on many commissions and groups.

This is the most recognized and well managed commission in the world, and there is an excellent technical committee and very useful information every time I go out and learn something new.

So, besides that, I think the studies they are proposing will be beneficial to the economy, but also to the city.

I would like to make a motion that we have a level of support

Second.

Any discussion?

Please indicate your vote.

Motion carries.

I think we all appreciate the work that you're doing.

It sounds like an exciting project and we hope we get the grant.

Yeah.

So if you want to work with Ms. Kochis and she can get, okay, great.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Good evening, Councillors.

This is a Zoning Text Zone amendment regarding bed and breakfast establishment, recommended to you by the Planning Commission.

The initial purpose of this amendment was to provide a room limitation for these type of establishments and residential zones.

It was initiated by the Planning Commission in September after we received an application last summer for 27 bed and breakfast in an R3 zone.

This year in September, had a public hearing in October, staff recommended an 8-day limitation on the definition and the planning commission at that meeting and in subsequent months decided to go for it with an extended definition which is here for you today.

Those proposed changes include definitions for three types of bed and breakfast establishments.

That would be a homestay, a B&B, and an end.

Changes to the city's use matrix to include these three categories, allowing bed and breakfast establishments and low-disc meet residential zones, and that would be R1 and R2 zones, and creating additional regulations for bed and breakfast establishments.

At the public hearing in January of 2009, the Commission discussed additional changes to those ordinance definitions and text notes they had previously discussed in meetings and those included additions to the regulations and largely of whether to allow ends by special use permit in R2 zones.

The commission discussed removing this, but decided against it.

More recently, you all, I believe, received a letter from the Jefferson Park Avenue Neighborhood Association opposing B&Bs, which allows up to eight bedrooms, and Ns, which allows up to 15 bedrooms, and R1 and R2 zones, mostly stating that allowing that number of bedrooms in those zones, even by special use from it, does not adhere to the spirit

of those particular districts which are primarily residential in nature.

And tonight you can decide to approve the ordinance changes as proposed by the Commission and recommended by the Commission before you, approve the changes with modifications, or deny the ordinance changes in front of you.

Questions, comments?

I have a couple of questions.

We do have a definition of building breakfast, which is not very clear, so I think this definition is important in what we have so far.

But I would like to suggest a chain from a primary commission.

If you look on page 3 of your package, or in this last page, in the first chart in that page, my suggestion would be that you do not allow

In that way, it will keep rotating the character of the neighborhoods, plus you still allow up to 8 or 15 R3 or above zones, which is the case right now.

I think what we are doing is keeping the character.

We want to know the 5% of the R2 zone, the semi-federal houses, the little cell complexes, and we have, I think, a bit of a distraction in terms of traffic and in terms of the character of the neighborhood.

Yes.

R3, UMD and UHC.

Yes.

But not in R1 or any of the variations of R1 or R2.

Any other comments or questions or thoughts about Mr. Huja's proposal?

Well, actually, before we get there, I had another question.

I will explain where that originated from.

I'm not sure I can explain the rationale behind that.

These are very similar.

In discussion with the Planning Commission, they wanted some regulation of bed and breakfast establishments.

There was regulations for home occupancies, home occupations.

And so, those regulations said two square feet.

And so, they wanted something a little bit smaller than the two square feet.

It's equivalent to, if you saw law offices or something like that, to one of those little plaques, two square feet would be on your door or something of that sort.

So it's not really a huge sign at all.

Suppose they wanted to make that even smaller for breakfast establishments.

Okay.

I have a four bedroom, three bath house.

Let's say I throw everybody out of my house one weekend in this UVA home game.

So can I get like a

You would have to get a business license according to the criteria in here.

You would have to set up as a business.

Right.

You can, like, don't have breakfast anywhere you can have it.

Up to two people, I think, right now.

So you're saying I can start kicking them out.

Don't get excited.

I don't want to hurt people.

I'd like to know that we leave this circle two square feet and that we develop now better breakfast areas in our larger zones.

Is there a concurrent texture somewhere in each other and we're not caught up with that being created in there?

So that's what I want.

I second that.

Any further discussion?

It carries over, right?

Oh, I'm sorry, you're right.

I just want to be clear, sir.

So, the way the B&Bs would be allowed by special use permit in R1 and R2 zones and by right in all other zones, that's what you want?

Only in one state.

Only in one state.

Only in one state.

Only in one state.

Okay.

Thank you very much, Ms. Albemarle.

That's the end of our regular business agenda.

Mr. Albemarle, Mr. Carson, there's a rule that this level is going through different funding cuts, but those are good ones to do in the drug court.

and we have one in Charleston, we're fortunate to have, and as you may already know, that it costs four or five times less to take care of the person who gets through to going to jail.

So there's a much cheaper and more effective way to deal with these problems.

So I would like to request that you see the council pass a resolution supporting the filming of her drug court, so stay with that.

Can we just tonight say that we will work with the staff to prepare a, it could just be a letter on behalf of the city council going on record as opposing the proposed cuts for drug court.

All in favor?

Thank you very much for the suggestion, Mr. Huja.

I think it's an excellent industry for us to take.

Any other business?

Just quickly, I wanted to make the public aware that we announced the city's proposed budget.

We asked to make a formal presentation to city council on March 2nd.

The public hearing is scheduled for March 16th and

April 6th, and we have a budget for you, which is an interesting time to discuss with City Council about the budget on March 25th.

If anybody has an interesting budget, we do have it up when you're in at our website, www.trailsville.org, and if you do a slash budget, it will take you, direct all the budget information, and as we update City Council with information in the future, it will be on our website as well.

So we look forward to having our budget discussions in a couple weeks.

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

Sending both from the public who would like to speak.

A.K.A.

I don't know how many of you know the history of Arbor Day but I draw some inspiration from it.

It was created by a group of pioneers who moved out west and didn't like the barren landscape that they found and in response they basically challenged each other to plant trees and completely changed that landscape to a beautiful wooded landscape.

I'm inspired by that.

City Parks and Recreation department needs to spend about 30 million dollars in the coming years to repair, renovate and upgrade its offerings to the public.

We have gotten together and formed this Friends of the Charlottesville area of Parks and Recreation to be a vehicle in providing funding to Parks and Recreation projects as well as to create new and improved facilities.

Citizens Group is coming together to help save Charlottesville's parks.

The Parks and Recreation Department needs additional funding that there just aren't tax dollars for.

A non-profit organization can accept public donations.

The next time you enter a public building, take a good look around.

To be fire safe, you need to check it out.

Make sure all exits are clearly marked and well lit.

Some exits may be in front and some in back of you.

Check to make sure your exit door is not blocked or obstructed by chairs or furniture.

It's the greatest gathering of its citizens the Republic has ever seen.

300,000 come to march on Washington.

The theme is integration.

When we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every finish and every hamlet, from every state and every city,

We will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, free at last, free at last.

Most of the demonstrators are black.

Most of them come from the South.

and back home in Mississippi, the air is filled with hate.

Sunday morning, September 15th.

In a Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, the Sunday School lesson is from Matthew.

I say unto you, love your enemies.

Bless them that curse you.

Do good to them that hate you.

Then a bomb blows up under the church steps.

Four children die in the church bombing, two more are shot in the riot which follows.

There have been demonstrations all summer.

Bull Connor sends out his cops with clubs, dogs, and fire hoses.

I'm happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a third American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

This momentous decree came as the dead beacon light of hope for millions of Negro slaves

who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice, the same as the joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free.

The life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.

One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.

One hundred years later,

who is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.

So we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense, we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check, and the architects of our

wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

They were signing a promissory note with Edward American whilst the fall airs.

This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty,