City Council Meeting   4/6/2009

P.S.

and John F. Kennedy

and David Brown.

I'd like to call this meeting to order.

Thank you very much.

I have a couple of announcements to get us started for tonight.

First of all, I'm very pleased to announce, as those of you who are downtown on Saturday know, that the City Market is now open once again for the season and it actually this year is extending into November.

So every Saturday

from 7 a.m. until 12 p.m.

Please do come downtown and partake in the city market.

Also, just as a FYI, as a heads up, our May 4th City Council meeting has been cancelled because a couple of... actually... just put a hole in that announcement.

We may yet have that meeting now.

Other announcements.

I have an announcement, just a couple of things I would like to bring attention to.

The announcement is about the community job fair which will be on Monday, April 27th from 10am to 3pm at the Omni Charlottesville Hotel.

This is your opportunity to reach over 70 employers seeking qualified job candidates.

We do still have employers in the area that are looking for qualified candidates.

Despite the economic downturn, there are still opportunities.

So keep that in mind for Monday, April 27th.

Also, since we had our last meeting, the third quarter report cards came out.

And I'm going to again share them.

And a couple of people are asking me how do my daughters feel about me sharing their report cards.

They know that it's not about them.

It's about me trying to send a message to parents about the importance of being involved and paying attention and being proud of your children when they do well and providing the appropriate limits and the guidelines when things aren't going well and being involved.

being a resource for your children and then putting things in place if you do need the resources within the school system and within our community.

They did very well.

But also keep in mind that there was an

Tom, if they weren't doing well, I would expect the community to be a part of that.

It takes a whole village to raise a child.

And I would expect the community to say, you know, I want you to continue to do well.

And it's important that we do that for them.

Because they're all our children.

And we all need to be reminded of that.

Also, in the March 13th nighttime review,

and it's the publication by Charlottesville High School.

Emma Payne, I'm going to do a shout out for Emma Payne.

She did an article about the Meadow Creek Parkway, Drake's Ground.

This is one of the better articles that I've seen written about the parkway because it had a lot of just really good balanced information.

Other announcements?

Mr. Mayor, I have an announcement that's actually more of a award recognition.

I'd just like to commend the mayor for the second year in a row to have completed the Charlottesville Ten-Miler.

I just have one thing I wanted to comment on because when Councilor Edwards was talking about the job fair, she and I have been meeting with Dr. Friedman at Piedmont Virginia Community College and also Tim Halbert with the Chamber to really talk about workforce development and

We think we have some good news coming before long and one thing we're looking at is some type of downtown satellite center and one thing that Council Edwards has been an advocate of is really trying to target certain populations particularly in the public housing area to try to assess applicants and really try to help with

identify job opportunities and we've also talked about having a workshop for employers to try to get their input and hopefully eventually we'll be able to host a roundtable with the chamber which would be hosted by Piedmont Virginia Community College but I just wanted to pass that along to council so they'd be aware of it.

I think that was a good summary but the idea is to have a

Other announcements?

I have a couple of proclamations to present tonight, and I'm quite excited about both of them.

First of all is a proclamation regarding historic preservation in our community.

I'm going to read the proclamation.

Whereas our historic buildings and historic places are defining elements of our community character, our well-being, and our future development, and whereas the preservation of historic resources and sustainability go hand in hand as complementary concepts,

and whereas, preservation and sustainability, pieces of the same puzzle, is the theme for Preservation Week 2009 in our community, sponsored by the Piedmont Area Preservation Alliance, or PAPA, and organized this year by Preservation Piedmont.

Now therefore, be it resolved that the City Council of the City of Charlottesville proclaims April 3rd to 11th, 2009 as Preservation Week 2009,

Mr. Mayor and Council, I'm a lousy substitute for Mary Joy to pick this up, but on her behalf and the folks at Preservation Piedmont, I just want to say that this is a full week of activities.

Preservationweek.com on the web has a list of those.

There are a lot of brown bag lunches and activities, and they would encourage everybody to take advantage of those.

They apologize for not being here tonight, but they're at one of those activities.

Thank you Mr. Tolbert and I want to commend Mary Joy and the staff and the others involved for putting together a pretty impressive week of activities.

This is obviously a hard time in our national economy and our local economy as well and so it's no better time than this for the city to step up its efforts to support local businesses.

And so to that end I'm very happy to read this proclamation and make another announcement related to it.

whereas the overall quality of life in the Charlottesville community is directly and substantially related to the continued vitality of our local economy and whereas dollars spent in Charlottesville also help to support Charlottesville businesses that in turn employ people who then spend their wages in our community thereby creating a strong ripple effect that sustains our economy

and whereas local businesses create jobs for our neighbors, a variety of which are an important component of a healthy community and whereas a portion of all taxable sales go directly to support the city budget accounting for over 10 million dollars annually that is reinvested in our community

and whereas the City Council, in collaboration with citizens, has developed and adopted a strategic vision for the future that strives for economic sustainability.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Dave Norris, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, Virginia, do hereby proclaim the month of April as Charlottesville Month and encourage others to shop local and support our city businesses and your city government.

In conjunction with this, I'm very pleased to announce that the city just recently, just this week, unveiled a new website called Shop Charlottesville, which can be found at www.shopcharlottesville.org, which is a wonderful resource relating to businesses in our community.

and I hope and encourage, hope that citizens of this community will patronize local businesses and encourage them to do so.

Thank you Mr. Mayor, Member of Council.

Thank you for your support in this effort.

I'd also like to thank members of the business community that are here in support of this effort.

Just a few are here tonight.

There are many others that have been supportive.

In fact, this idea was initiated by members of our community in this particular economic downturn as a way to bolster the local economy.

Community, specifically the economic vitality of our community.

So thank you very much for that support.

I would encourage folks at home and here tonight to visit the website and learn about how you can connect with local retailers to make purchases locally or your dollars will then be reused within our community.

ShopCharlottesville.org is the site.

You'll be hearing and seeing more about this in the upcoming weeks.

When you go there, in addition, you can also find coupons for local stores and you can also register for drawings for gift cards and certificates for local stores.

So please check it out.

All right.

In 2009, that could add up to over $10 million every 30 counts.

So please, spend it right here.

Thanks for shopping, Charlottesville.

Alright, thank you very much.

We are now going to open the meeting to matters by the public.

We have a number of people signed up to speak.

And as always, when you come forward, please limit your comments to three minutes and state your name and address.

Good evening.

I'm Carolyn Berry.

I live at 118 Parkway in the Fassburg area.

I'm here to

Thank you for your support of the audible pedestrian signals that have been installed and those that are going to be installed.

They've worked fine.

We went out and visited them.

Hopefully we've got a compromise so the complaints will stop so that everyone can hear them as they're being used.

It should help those of us who are blind to be able to safely cross the streets

and have time enough to do it.

All we have to watch out for is the colors turning light and red.

Hi, I'm Darth Vaderlinda and I live at 711 Peloton Avenue and I'm here to speak out about public opinion I recently received my utility bill in the mail and in it is the city notes for March and I'm invited to propose city budget meeting for March 25th, Wednesday, March 25th

The bill is post dated March 26th.

I'm hoping to get April's information sometime in April.

Preferably the beginning of April.

And you should have even sent the paperwork if you're not inviting me to the party.

The other thing I just wanted to state, I wasn't going to say anything else about it, but Shop Smart, Shop Charlottesville.

Maybe City Council will think about that when they hire contractors to build the transportation, the new terminal that's being built by Jordan, a company from Newport News.

$15 million is leaving the county of grant money.

The developer will be removing $15 million from the cities.

Thank you.

Good evening, I'm Barbara Lundgren with First Night Virginia and on behalf of our board, we wish to thank the city of Charlottesville for your continued support over the years.

Your sales to us for our event includes parking, traffic support, police support, venues and fire and rescue.

and these are tremendous help in putting our event together for the community.

We're most grateful to be considered once again for your contribution to the upcoming event for 2010 celebration.

Though you presented one of the best first nights ever for 2009, the rubber did play a large factor in our bottom line.

We came up short of our meeting our budget.

We are all struggling in these times of the recession, but no one wants to lose this rich part of Charlottesville's history, now running for 28 years.

This contribution will make a great difference in keeping First Night a part of our historic downtown and the entire region.

And we thank you again for your consideration, because we really could not do it without you.

Thank you, Ms. Lundgren.

Good evening, I'm Downey Smith, I live at 810 Wilkes Avenue, and I'm afraid Dr. Brown's still sending my file.

I'm all standing down on Lexington Avenue and building him out of Hinkley's front yard.

As Mayor Marsh and 2,500 other people ran by, I just want to say you are all winners.

You raised a bunch of money for a very worthy cause, and I think we also need to thank hundreds of volunteers, our local police, and a lot of local businesses.

But the reason I did come down is I wanted to talk about trash.

And I don't know if y'all thought I read this article in the hook.

When I read it, I was stunned.

I just didn't really know where to start, but I hope, if you haven't read the article, please do read it, and after you've read it, take whatever action you think is appropriate to pursue.

Looking into Mr. Vanderlyn's trash sorting machine, it looks like we can save the city money, we can make it a lot easier on those of us who try to recycle, and we can keep a lot of garbage out of the various landfills.

Thank you, Mr. Smith.

I just wanted to speak on the resolution of rescinding the Grove Street closing.

Things I think are probably in order in the letter from y'all.

What we first intended there was never completely sent out so we don't have actual closing.

You know the city doesn't have a complete title to the street.

My name is Betty Mooney and I reside in the city.

Recently there was an article in the Washington Post titled, A Plan to Save Our Free Press by Benjamin Cardin, who's a senator.

He says our country depends on

Our country depends on a free press to monitor what happens in our communities so that Americans can make sound judgments about their lives and their leaders.

Thomas Jefferson, a man who was frequently vilified by newspapers, summed it up best when he said, if I had to choose between government without newspapers and newspapers without government, I wouldn't hesitate to choose the latter.

Like Jefferson, I believe that a well-informed public is the core of our democracy.

And what I'd like to say tonight is I'd like all of us to thank our local weekly paper, The Hook, who recently won the top state award for journalistic integrity and community service for this series of articles that they have done for over a year now, 12 months, about our water supply plan.

in which they have uncovered information that has allowed our community to take a new look at this plan.

They have not only uncovered information but they have published countless articles about meetings held about the plan with detailed documents.

The website, the archive is called the Hook Water Archive and it's at ReadTheHook.com for any community member.

that wants to know everything there is to know that we have done in this past year to bring forward new information that will, I believe, make for a water plan that will cost millions of dollars less and tonight we're going to take, I think, a historic step

and hopefully either approve a dredging RFP or get close to approving a dredging RFP, they will once and for all confirm what has been published for a year.

The dredging cost much less than we were initially told.

And also, the hook is now investigating along with community members the amount of water that we need for the next 50 years, which we also feel has been highly inflated by the consultants

and it needs to be reinvestigated and re-looked at with new conservation numbers.

I handed out to you tonight and to the press an article in The Hook which shows that we have been using less water than our consultants said for the last 10 years.

There's a trend.

and the city is handing out packets to all of its citizens who can get one, if you can get down to get one, to use less water.

So if we think of 50 years from now, the technology we're going to have to save water could be amazing.

I said this before, we didn't have computers 50 years ago.

We didn't have color televisions, so when you think about that, you understand that this 50 year water plan needs to be re-looked at, and this is the Hook's next quest and our next quest.

Clyde Hall, 101 Robinson Lane, President of NDIA Board and Neighborhood Association for North downtown.

I normally don't pass things out as very unusual, but I would like the counselors to follow some of the things I'm going to say.

I have a letter written by the Starr Hill Neighborhood Association dated September 27, 1979, 30 years ago, written by Theresa Walker, president of the Starr Hill Neighborhood Association, and Helen Tonsler, chairman.

It is in response to the Vinegar Hill impact committee report.

It was addressed to then Mayor Lawrence Borton?

Borton?

Borton?

Borton, excuse me.

Apparently the Vinegar Hill businesses and homes had been raised and the city had plans and that development they were considering at that site.

The Starr Hill neighborhood was invited to comment.

Quote, historically remember Vinegar Hill as housing many minority businesses and black families.

We remember a vague promise that those people would have an opportunity to relocate to this area.

End quote.

We know now that that did not happen.

I showed this letter to Counsel Taliaferro last week, and he agreed I ought to share it with the entire council.

There are many, many interesting points, though I wish to remark on number three, Traffic, which is found on page two.

Quote, we have previously written that McIntire Road should not be extended through the park.

However, if some project like this must, we may capitalize the word must, be undertaken for the good of the community, then we could support a local traffic route designed so it would not not become a north-south throughway.

We feel the larger design would cause many people to bypass West Main Street as well as downtown.

End quote.

If Mrs. Walker and Councilor were standing here right now as another neighborhood president, I can say people are still concerned that Meadow Creek Parkway, of which McIntyre extended, will only be a section are equally concerned.

Even though the mall is a success, the Chamber of Commerce has stated that if the Meadow Creek Parkway is not built, downtown Charlottesville will suffer.

We disagree.

The mall is a destination.

People flock to the pavilion, the Paramount, Wild Hearts, the Skate Park, the Discovery Museum, Fridays After Five, First Night, the Dogger Parade, Municipal Band Concert,

Historic sites and fine restaurants.

We do not need the Meadow Creek Park where we bring people downtown.

We do not need to build a road through our central park.

Thank you, Ms. Hall.

Before I begin, I would like to remind Mayor Norris that I provided you with that list of streets that felt were sort of dangerous and I never did hear back from you and I also provided the list to the Neighborhood Development Office.

Councillors and staff, my name is John Gaines and I reside at 214 9th Street, Northwest.

As a resident of the city and county for approximately 7 or 2 years, I am concerned about the numerous issues that face our community.

issues such as future water supplies, the high cost of living in the city, so-called affordable housing, safe neighborhoods, and yes, McIntyre Waving Pool.

I'm here tonight to share a grave concern that faces our community.

Recently, the news media highlighted a graduation report from the Virginia Department of Education.

According to the report titled, Virginia On-Time Graduation, over 13% of Charlottesville high school students, there were ninth graders during the 2004-2005 school term.

failed to graduate as 12th graders in 2007-2008.

This is a very disturbing and shameful statistic for a school division located in the shadow of what we frequently call the university.

As counselors, I'm sure you're asking the following questions.

Why is he sharing school concerns with us?

Why doesn't he share them with the elected school board?

This concern is being shared with you because council provides major financial support to our school system.

Why shouldn't you highlight this on a council agenda?

Just as you plan to highlight the McIntyre Waving Pool, can't you establish written student expectations to the school board?

Why not encourage the board to seek assistance from the University of Virginia?

Thank you, Mr. Greens.

Hi, I'm Federico Venegas, and I reside at 114 Monte Vista Avenue.

Mr. Brown, Miss Edwards, Mr. Huja, Mr. Taliaferro, and Mr. Norris, you are the majority.

You make choices and decisions for your constituents.

But you must be questioned by the public.

Therefore, words reduce congestion.

A simple, universally accepted social philosophy.

Simple,

and logically, supply and demand rule that this must work.

However, as modern cities demand a reprieve from traffic, it simply makes sense to build more roads.

But in what cases is this philosophy untrue?

Certain cities were able to reduce traffic and congestion by simplifying signs or simplifying their road layout and however, Charlottesville is a European-esque city in its layout.

We can't simply raise Charlottesville.

We can't overhaul Charlottesville and our roads move with the land, not through it.

The biggest, the largest example of this philosophy, though, cutting through the land was in the Eisenhower doctrines, of cutting through the land and national holidays.

However, this created a homogenous culture.

But, Charlottesville isn't homogenous.

Charlottesville is very unique in the way that it has the University of Virginia, and it's a very beautiful city.

I like it.

And so,

The great works crushed the public transit system, especially the trains.

After that, the train system started falling off and Ms. Norris, I know you especially work closely with the bus system and public transit system.

I've been to McIntyre several times when I was small and I've been there now and I play golf there.

It's not really amazing, it's not really organized, but it's beautiful, I mean it's nice, I mean parkland, so it's good.

But you will benefit from the copious amounts of development that will be built at the bottom of the parkway, near Melbourne Road, near where I go to school, CHS.

and what cost is this going to take?

Not the money.

It's money, but that's not going to be the overall effects.

Now, Paris, New York, and Tokyo.

These are shipping, trade, and cultural centers and metropolises.

However, each of these great cities has wonderful parks.

They're gems in a sea of concrete and glass.

Keep McIntire and make it a cultural exchange center.

If you take time to appreciate what we have, McIntire will be amazing.

Ueno, Central and Bouchamal are great cultural achievements.

And the county knows that with the parkway, it will allow them to access Charlottesville and instead of reducing the congestion, the county will flood us with unnecessary commuters and traffic.

How will you be able to abate such a flood?

Certainly not with public transportation.

The developers look out for themselves.

They're not bad or malicious toward the environment, but they are businesses to be rightly questioned.

Oh, sorry.

Well, alright.

If you allow them to build this parkway, the contractors will run rampant.

Land loss is land loss forever.

You are not getting this park back.

Charlottesville is already overrun with terrible architecture.

Even the landmark hotel is a fiasco.

Obviously, we don't deserve Thomas Jefferson's architectural expertise if we squabble about a strip of asphalt for 40 years.

Building this road will boost the economy shortly, but the effects will grip this world-class city for decades to come.

We must have a balance in this city between infrastructure and parkland.

Jefferson built the... come on.

Thank you, Mr. Bernavius.

Well, I have a few things to add to that.

I think you have some competition Mr. Salinas.

Yeah, maybe so.

This is a new newspaper to our community called Brave New Word.

There's copies of that all over the mall at Christian's Pizza and at the Tea House and at the Mud House and such.

I wrote an article in there called Evading the Law for the Murray Creek Parkway, believe it or not.

And I think we should take this opportunity here in the very center, the very heart of Preservation Week to make a commitment

Hopefully you all will join your fellow counselors, Dave Norris and Holly Edwards in preserving our Central Park instead of putting that ugly looking yellow spider thing there all over our best park.

And I think there are three levels.

One is looking at our general ideals and the proposed reasons for this parkway.

It's said that, again, someone mentioned that we need it to enhance the downtown mall.

This was an idea in a long time ago that the mall would die without it.

Of course, that has not come true.

The thing that makes the mall attractive is that it is a pedestrian mall.

More traffic there is not a good thing.

It makes it less attractive.

What it would do is bypass where we do want more cars, potentially.

In our main retail area,

Barracks Road and Seminole Square.

It would actually take shoppers past those areas and make them county shoppers instead.

So that reason just doesn't hold up.

In addition, we'd be giving up our Central Park for land that's further away from downtown but is not a comparable quality and would also have a road going through it, as would our remaining parkland.

Also, when they wanted to build a 29 bypass,

near a school.

That wasn't okay for the county, but apparently the Meadow Creek Parkway going just, I think, within a few hundred feet at the most of the Charlottesville High School football stadium is apparently fine.

So the reasons do not add up.

Also, in terms of our conditions, they have not been met.

I've voted for Mr. Taliaferro and Mr. Brown because both of you said that you would not support the parkway if the conditions were not met.

And please correct me if I'm not being accurate here, but those conditions have not been met.

The parkland was partially fudged by city staff who actually allowed VDOT to count some land that the city already owned

as replacement parkland.

And of course, an eastern connector is nowhere in sight, as is Nowhere 29 bypass.

Finally, as I wrote in this article, there are serious legal questions.

Whether or not it's against the law, whether or not we'll win in court, that might be, you know, time will tell.

The judge for the first hearing for the CHS land said it may go all the way to the Supreme Court.

And in terms of the federal issues, it's clear that there's evasion going on.

If you look at the website, the 250 bypass website, it states that the Meadow Creek Parkway would be built.

The plan was without the interchange.

That's clearly not true.

Thank you very much, and I hope people will vote May 9th and pay attention.

Thank you, Steve.

Jackson, the man.

Good evening.

I'm Shawnee West.

I live 1204 East Jefferson and I want to support everybody who is against building this parkway through McIntire.

I think it's a beautiful park.

I think the trees and the grass are a lot more important right now and less cars and we don't need more cars downtown.

I would rather see

Extensive bike pathways through the town and a safer place for people to ride bikes and for that to be more encouraged.

I've lived and traveled on bikes through Boulder, Colorado, if anyone has been there.

You can ride your bike all through the city there without even having to cross streets in some places.

So that's an example I would really love to see and would love to encourage that rather than more cars.

So even the other idea that I think would work well here is to have like a trolley that keeps stopping.

Some place where people can actually shop and some place people can leave their cars and go shop.

Some place where a trolley can keep circulating.

You know, like the university trolley.

So, that's all.

Thank you very much, Ms. West.

Good evening Councilors, I'm Stephen Bach.

I live at 1208 N. Weather Street.

I have heard that the communication to you from the Planning Commission regarding its action on the CIP failed to include the fact that

the Planning Commission voted to omit from the CIP matching funds for the Middle Creek Parkway and I don't know what the reason for this omission was and I can only speculate but it could have been an oversight, just an oversight or maybe it was a Freudian slip

and somebody's part, but I think the city staff is pretty sharp.

So, I don't think it was an oversight, and I think it's unlikely that it was a Freudian trap for the same reason.

So, I can only speculate, I won't say any more, but I think that we the public depend upon the integrity of these internal city memoranda and processes.

to carry through with what we see as going on in public.

We depend on these things to be accurately transmitted from one city body to another.

And I don't know what the procedure really means, but I would like an explanation of why this omission took place.

And I think the public deserves one.

Thank you, Mr. Bock.

We are now at the end of our public matters by the public period, and we need to move on, but we'll open it up to responses from counselors to matters by the public.

Dr. Brown?

Only that, I mean, I agree that the recommendations from this plank mission should have been included to city council.

and I can't explain why it wasn't.

I know that we kind of agreed to make sure we instituted some policies to make sure there's always that written conveyance of all recommendations to them.

But I will point out that the city councilors attend that meeting of the planning commission.

We all heard their discussion.

We all were aware of what they had recommended.

But on the other hand, I think you make a good point, there may be members of the public who weren't aware of that.

I'd also like to thank Ms. Hall for bringing the letter.

I'm a former president of the Starr Hill Neighborhood Association.

In the early 80s, I worked closely with both Teresa Walker, now Teresa Price.

and Helen Tonselman, so I really appreciate you bringing this letter forward today.

Mr. Mayor and members of council,

afford the procurement of construction services such as required for the new transit building.

The city is obligated to solicit bids for that work from construction companies and is further obligated by state law to accept the lowest responsive and responsible bidder.

On this particular project, I don't know whether

There were any local companies that bid or not.

There may well have been.

But if they were not the low bidder, legally we can't accept them as the low bidder.

Thank you.

Yes, maybe the city manager can explain the situation of the utility building.

I guess it's got something to do with the cycles, is that correct?

That sometimes

They go out with the utility bills over a four-week period.

So we're always in the storm of do we go ahead and send it out now and then we'll get to three-fourths of the utility customers or do we send nothing out at all.

It's not as timely as we'd like, but we get all kinds of advertising.

We had a special budget form.

Lots of other information that's going on about the budget to try to alert people to what the different issues are.

And we also had a summary of the budget that went out of the last round of the utility bills.

They gave people the highlights that were in it, which I think at that time, if I remember right, actually had some of the public meetings listed there as well.

I also wanted to respond to Mr. Gaines particularly in relationship to the failure to graduate students within the school system and I think it is a sad commentary that we can't do better and I think that city council has to share some of that responsibility I think the community as a whole needs to share some of that responsibility and somehow

I think we've got to figure it out, but it's got to be a community-wide effort.

I don't think it's a matter of resources because we're putting a significant amount of money into the educational system, but I think all of us on council are looking, and I don't want to speak for my colleagues, but I think I'm cracking this, we're looking for answers to which is a dilemma in the community.

It's really a waste of our most precious resources, our children.

I just want to thank everyone that came forward to speak.

A special thanks to Carolyn Barry for her feedback about the pedestrian signals because she was intentional about letting us know that that's greatly appreciated.

Collette, thank you for the Vinegar Hill Impact Committee report dated September 27, 1979.

I hear a lot of stories about how decisions were made and meetings that were maintained and it's really good to have an actual document that shows that some of the decisions that were made that were always in the best interest of the whole community

I just really appreciate this and the comment that Mr. Gaines made about our school system.

I wonder what our community would be like if we spent as much time talking about our children and our schools as we have about a road that hasn't been built.

I think that it does take the entire community to take responsibility for our school system.

And there's enough blame to go around at this point.

And I also believe that the entire city is no better than...

The health of our school system is also an indicator of the health of our entire city.

And that is why I have spent time counseling and talking about

and I've mentioned the City Council School Board lunches because I think that lunch meeting is an opportunity for us to really get in depth about some of the concerns to really turn those lunch gatherings into work sessions.

And the next lunch, do you remember when the next lunch meeting is scheduled to be?

It's the third Friday.

It's usually the third Friday of every month, which is the date is the 17th, and it's at noon.

And those meetings are always in the City Council City Hall.

They're usually there.

For the most part, they're at City Hall in the citizen conference room.

It's important for

the public to know about those meetings because those meetings are open to the public and a lot of people don't even know that we do have those meetings but those meetings are just one way to ask a lot of the accountability questions that Mr. Gaines is raising.

It's also an opportunity for parents to get involved because I'm learning more and more that it doesn't matter how much money you throw at a problem if there isn't really a comprehensive action plan

and ways to look for accountability not from this council but the school board.

Most certainly our teachers, our parents, the choices that our children make, the resources we have.

We're all in this together and we can't hear about it often enough.

Thank you.

I too just wanted to acknowledge the comments that Mr. Gaines made about the importance of discussing the dropout rate and the personal and academic success of our youth.

We expect too much of our schools, we expect the schools to solve all the problems and the reality is that kids, by the time they get to school, already in many cases have too much baggage and it's unfair to expect our schools to, on their own,

to turn every child around.

It is a community effort as Mr. Taliaferro and others have said.

And so it's incumbent upon us as a community to reinforce what the schools are doing in terms of what can we do as a community to support mentoring for our youth, tutoring for our youth.

I encourage fathers to take responsibility for our youth, provide after school enrichment opportunities for our youth, positive things they can do after school versus the negative influences that they see on the streets.

So thank you Mr. Gaines for bringing that to our attention.

Mr. Smith, I agree that the issue of

Recycling and specifically in the new facility is something that merits further investigation.

In fact, I had already scheduled a visit out to that facility last week before that article came out and had a very good visit and it was very eye-opening to see the work that's being done out there and I hope we can find an opportunity to partner on that effort.

I also want to make one comment about Mr Gay's concern.

Just to point out that last January the city council and school board, we did bring up that question of dropout and we are going to have a discussion on that issue in the future.

I just want to make another comment because in our last budget work session we talked about having a work session about an agency budget review process and how we fund similar non-profits and I think it's also an opportunity we're doing to explore how we can start

Channeling some resources or looking at how some of the agencies that provide services to our children, to look at the relationship between some of the services the agencies provide and how does that impact a child's success rate in the school?

Do we really move people out of poverty?

I think by the economic downturn

the graduation rate we're still working with.

We're looking at how we're not looking at spending more money but how we can be better at spending the money we have to really getting at the root of the issues that we do have.

I agree.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to move that City Council make the following appointments to the Charlottesville Albemarle Airport Commission, James Van Loo.

to the Charlottesville Albemarle Commission on Children and Families, Brian Hemmert to the Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Transportation Plan Advisory Committee, Bruce O'Dell and Margaret Westfall to the Charlottesville Economic Development Authority, Tara Roland Boyd, Robert Stroh and Brian Wright to the Community Development Block Grant Task Force, Paul Martin and Jennifer McKeever

To the Housing Advisory Committee, Sasha Farmer and Richard Sposum To the Jefferson Area Board for Aging Board of Directors, Elizabeth Staples Barber and Satyendra Huja To the Ravenna Solid Race Advisory Committee, Tim O'Brien

and to the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority as a council representative, David Brown, and to the Rivanna Water and Sioux Authority as a council representative, Holly Edwards.

Thank you.

Is there a second?

Second.

Any discussion?

Please indicate your vote.

Thank you very much.

Congratulations to all the appointees.

On our consent agenda tonight, we have quite a few items.

Item A is the minutes of March 5th, 16th, 20th, 24th and 25th.

Item D is an appropriation of $73,483, a law enforcement grant, second of two readings.

Item C is an appropriation of $11,500, reimbursement from Piedmont Housing Line, second of two readings.

Item D is an appropriation of $39,070, domestic violence coordinator grant, second of two readings.

Item E is an appropriation of $80,000, summer lunch program grant, first of two readings.

Item F of appropriation, $5,712.28, reimbursement for sheriff's extradition, first of two readings.

Item G in appropriation, $641,289.20, community development block rent for FY 2010, first of two readings.

Item H in appropriation of $155,322 home funds for FY 2010, first of two readings.

Item I is a resolution reprogramming CDBG funds from FY 2009 to 2010, first of one meeting.

Item J, a resolution $12,500 donation to First Street day shelter from previously appropriated funds, first of one meeting.

Item K is a resolution rescinding street closing a portion of Broad Road extended, located off Valley Road extended, first of one meeting.

Item L is an ordinance re-adopting zoning map, second of two meetings.

Item M is an ordinance

Zoning Ordinance Amendments, first of two meetings, and this is, there is a revised ordinance that is in front of us on item M. Item N has been removed from our agenda.

This is an ordinance amending requirements for acceptance of streets that has been removed for further work.

Item O is an ordinance revision to fee schedule for building permits reduction in the first of two meetings, and again, there is a revised ordinance in front of us tonight.

Are there any comments or items to be, other items to be removed from the agenda?

Second.

Second.

Any further discussion?

Please indicate your vote.

Thank you very much.

We have before us tonight a discussion and a public hearing relating to the waiting pool at McIntire Park.

There had been some discussion primarily among staff and at one of our city council work sessions about the disposition of the waiting pool at McIntire Park.

Given the public's interest in the fate of the waiting pool, we felt it was

Good evening Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, thank you.

To be brief, I just want to take a few moments to outline kind of the background that led staff to recommend the closure of the waiting pool and to lay out sort of sequentially how we arrived at that decision.

Last December, new federal legislation went into effect.

It was the Virginia Graham Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act.

to ensure that swimming pools and spas contain anti-entrapment devices and or drain covers, systems that would ensure that a small child or an individual could not be stuck against a drain via the suction of the pool pump.

The legislation went into effect in December of last year.

It required all pools that are seasonal in nature, meaning opening only during a portion of the year, to be compliant with that legislation prior to opening.

We knew that the legislation was coming.

We, in the fall, were able to install a compliant drain cover at Crow Indoor Pool and the new facilities at Honesty Family Aquatic Center and the new Smith Aquatic Center, we were able to deal with the requirements in the design phase.

So we were comfortable and confident that that will not be an issue at those places.

We investigated the methods of compliance of how we would need to come into compliance at McIntire Wading Pool.

The pool falls under a certain scope of the legislation that is a pool with one main drain.

Pools with one main drain require two or more methods of compliance.

A simple drain cover is not sufficient.

We've went through all of the filtration room and all of the pumping

equipment, et cetera, and determine that the main drain valve would need to be replaced, the valves in the filter room would need to be replaced, the main drain cover would have to be installed and one that is compliant.

There are not off-the-shelf covers for the size of the drain at this waiting pool, so we'll probably have to have one fabricated.

As well as a vacuum release system, which senses that the suction of the water, the pressure has gone up, that somebody could be entrapped against that and cuts the system off.

as well as we would need to replace our chemical controller that serves the sanitation for the facility.

We estimated conservatively between $15,000 and $20,000 to complete all of this work via contract.

We believe that is conservative.

It is entirely possible that the potential cost to do all of the work would come in under that number.

One of the other things that factored into our recommendation is the strategic facility, aquatic facility decisions that the city has made over the last two years.

The demolition of the old pool at Meade Park and the construction of the new family aquatic center, the Honesty Family Aquatic Center.

which is under construction now and will be opening in the summer with numerous play features, slides, a lazy river, diving board, zero depth entry area, and it was designed specifically with those amenities for kids age 12 and under.

The other decisions were to demolish the old Smith Pool and to build a new Smith Aquatic Center which will have a six-lane competitive pool as well as a separate body of water for more recreational fun and slides.

We also illuminated two old shower heads that were at Greenleaf Park that were operated via a big metal key to a valve in the ground.

Those showers wouldn't be on constantly or off constantly.

There was no controls to them.

We replaced that with a spray ground at Greenleaf Park that's a closed loop recirculation system that saves a tremendous amount of water.

As well as the potential renovations to Forest Hills Park, which is out on the street right now, bids are due April 14th.

We are hopeful that that project will come in under available funding and that we will be able to move forward with renovations to Forest Hills for the large spray ground, almost 6,500 square feet, new shelters, restrooms, trails and some environmental improvements.

The other factor that we considered is the proximity of the wading pool and its bathhouse at McIntyre to the proposed Route 52 by-and-by interchange.

This, that is up on the wall, is the concept G1, the preferred alternative that council voted on last year.

Its proximity to the bathhouse of the pool is very, very close.

The corner of the bathhouse, the southernmost corner, is approximately 17 feet from the edge of the road.

Its location right here, the way that this rendering is drawn, is essentially at the point where vehicles merge.

Yes, thank you, Gary.

Given all of these factors and a static budget environment, we felt that it was not the best use of our resources to bring McIntyre waiting pool into compliance.

Showed at the conclusion of the public hearing tonight, council choose to continue to operate the pool.

Thank you, Mr. Daly.

Yeah, I have a question.

The fee for using this wedding pool is currently what, one dollar for city residents?

That's correct, it's one dollar.

One and two.

One dollar for city residents, two for non-residents.

There are a variety of fees.

There's a daily admission fee.

There's also season passes that will be available.

We're going to offer a city student annual pass rate, but the daily admission for individuals 48 inches and above, because the experiences at the New Honesty facility have to be 48 inches or above.

The daily admission rate for city residents, 48 inches and above will be $5.00.

The daily admission for 48 and below is 3.

Under 3 years old are free.

So currently our two wading pools are at Forest Hills and we're planning to close that one?

That's correct, if the renovations move forward that would be correct.

In meetings I've been in and attended and conversations that I've been a part of, it has always been sort of up in the air, not knowing until just last year what the proposed alternative to the interchange would be, potentially where a construction contractor would want to have a lay down area or staging area.

We never got any guidance from VDOT on whether that parking lot is going to be acceptable.

It is.

It is difficult to get in and out of there.

In fact, last year, it may have been 18 months ago,

Eastbound access to turn left into that parking lot was closed.

So it can only be accessed going westbound on the bypass.

It's a tough intersection to get in and out of.

There's no question.

But I don't recall any conversations from VDOT or anyone saying that we would need it to be a lay down area or it would need to be open or need to be closed.

It is, and then in that particular spot it is where the lanes are merging, so it is not a full additional lane, it's where the acceleration lane going westbound merges with the second lane, so I think it is between, you know, it could be 5-10, it could be 12 feet.

Closer to the pool.

Well, in 2007, we did that by closing the facility due to drought restrictions.

In 2008, the number went down.

From 2006, I believe some of that may have had to do with weather.

We had a little more rain.

We didn't have as much evaporation, a variety of factors, and some minor repairs.

Without naming any names, but I understand that some citizens have come forward and offered to pay for the repairs that would be needed to keep people under compliance with regulations.

I have heard that, yes.

And I know of one offer that came via email.

OK. All right.

Well, thank you very much, Mr. Daley, and I'm going to open up the public hearing on this matter.

And the first part, and then please keep your comments to three minutes and give your name and address when you come up to speak.

Good evening again, Dan Smith, 810 Lokes Avenue.

I'd like to thank you all for giving the public an opportunity to speak and I'm afraid I have to criticize the Department of Parks and Rec for trying to do this without any public input.

Number one, I had no idea that that intersection was so big and would impact

the swimming pool, I knew it was going to take out the memorial if it's going to impact the pool it's too big and they need to come up with a different design as far as the $20,000 goes with all the money that we've been spending I think we ought to be able to come up with $20,000 I know there's another $20,000 for lifeguards and other costs you know those lifeguards are probably high school students and college students I think that's a pretty good use of our money

And the final thing is, it's a unique place, at least in our area.

It's not just the swimming pool, it's also the swings.

I mean, it's Kid City there.

And if you ride by, you can see people having picnics and birthday parties at the picnic tables.

And the pool and the picnic tables and the swings, they all work together.

And, you know, it's just something I don't think we should lose.

Thank you, Mr. Smith.

Uh, okay.

Good evening, I'm Peter Klayman.

I live at 407 Head Street in the city.

And following the comment of Council Edwards, this is one of those great opportunities to talk about the Meadow Creek Parkway and children at the same time, rather than as substitutions for each other.

and in this case we have an interchange that was selected as the primary choice by council among a set of, I think it was five, and maybe some variations of those, some of which did not extend this far down 250 Bypass that would not have had the same influence on that structure as I believe some of them are much more compact in this east-west direction.

So in fact we're having a sequential decision-making problem where an interchange was selected that has impacts on the pool and we're not thinking about going back and saying, well, perhaps that was the wrong decision.

If the pool is an essential element of this decision, it should have been considered earlier and maybe it's not too late to consider it now.

Some of the other alternatives may eliminate this problem of taking that

that bathhouse or having the road any closer to that facility.

So my personal feeling is that a redesign is a possibility.

Maybe even with this, it might take a little bit of redesigning of the way the ramps and the roadway come together.

But I don't believe that that's an insurmountable problem.

And the idea that this is a final design is a bit out of step as well.

This is a preliminary design.

And I have never heard a discussion among the designers at any of the interchange meetings

about consideration of this as being it has to be here and we have no choice but to lose this facility.

So I think what happens is there is a limited amount of information before you tonight about this decision, and I think before you make a decision on too limited a set of information, perhaps an additional information about other choices that could preserve, we are in Preservation Week, and perhaps enhance the way that people access that facility could be put as part of the design.

Good evening friends.

I'm Virginia Giannino and I live above the new intersection that's going to glamorize our town.

This is an old war horse coming to listen, to talk and to listen.

And I know that you all are practically exhausted from hearing about the Meadow Creek Monster Way.

And I've been there for a long, long time, 28 years of the 41 I've lived here.

It occurs to me, it occurred to me when I saw this story about the disappearance of the little waiting pool that just about everything that's simple and ordinary is doomed.

The little golf course, the tiny waiting pool, the outdoor wall thing, the little picnics that families take there.

But this is just rather the straw that breaks the camel's back.

And I'm wondering if maybe, maybe, just maybe,

We shouldn't have any outdoor recreation in this park anymore because the air pollution and the noise pollution and the aesthetic pollution, the whole thing is so bizarre, so ugly, so misguided that it has almost destroyed much of the joy and hope I felt in living in this city.

And I find that very sad.

For the record, I think in the 41 years I've lived here and loved this place, this decision

The whole decision is the worst that any city council in memory has ever participated in.

And for that I'm very sad.

Thank you Mr. Mayor.

My name is Richard Collins.

I live at 108 Wilson Street in the city.

I'm kind of the waiting pool kind of roundabout.

I'm a recent member of a over 60 softball team called the Charlottesville Retreads, appropriately named.

And we, the Charlottesville Retreads, rose to Richmond Saturday and Sunday to play softball in a tournament that would benefit Down syndrome children.

We won our category.

and I'm a relatively new player.

I didn't know all these softball players.

I want to let you know I got both the Charlie Horse, but I hit over 600, so that's alright for a guy my age, right?

But the point down here is that in between those three days, I did a little politicking.

I joined the softball players in part to help the Coalition to Save McIntyre Park.

and what struck me was how many of those guys came to the park as a softball player, pretty much, often from church leagues and so few of them had participated in the anti-pow-quay movement.

They said, you know, we've heard of you, we've seen your picture of something and we know what you're up to, but I don't get really involved in that.

but the thing that struck me was how politicized they've become, how vehement they've become about McIntyre Park in general about who gave it to us, what's it been for, what has traditionally been used and of course they feel threatened by the process as well as the loss of softball fields from the lie but I talked with them at some length and it began to strike me on the way back as we were driving, you know, we were carpooling that the waiting pool people, the tea first people

the golfers, the softball players and those of us who see the future of what this park could be the imagination of how great this traditional piece can be if we look at it as a park rather than a surplus land suitable and right for one thing or another

rather than the feelings that surround it by people who lived here a long time.

Like me, five of my children use that pool.

I didn't have any particular emotional attachment to it.

But I think what I'm seeing is a real sea change in the attitudes of people about that park.

It's not just all that parkway now.

It's preserved McIntyre Park.

And I think this evening's opportunity to open this issue up for the kind of special treatment, not just a normal bureaucratic, well, we found this the best way to do it, is indicative of how we ought to be treating all of these issues from now on.

And we ought to start with the greatest insult and the greatest threat to that park, which is the Meadow Creek Parkway.

Thank you, Mr. Collins.

Cynthia Schroeder.

Good evening.

My name is Pat Napoli and my address is 700 Lyons Avenue.

The McIntyre Wading Pool holds some great memories for me.

I swam there in the early 50s and my husband recalls swimming there in the late 40s.

I've always heard that 50 years signals an antique.

The area of the pool with the unique bath house resting beneath the gorgeous canopy of trees does matter.

The timing of the proposed closure and the original disregard for public feeling was unfortunate and looks bad.

It almost seems as if McIntaw Park is being chiseled away one step at a time.

Maybe there are those who feel it would be easier to build the objectionable road if the infrastructure of the park is taken away first.

and people who use the pool were told to leave.

A hasty decision to close the pool was having a very negative psychological impact upon the citizenry.

Thank you for allowing us to speak this evening.

Thank you for keeping an open mind and that we really do not know for sure what is in the future.

I certainly don't want to see the area destroyed needlessly.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

I'm Jim Moore.

I live on Hazel Street.

As a former lifeguard and pool manager, I'm extremely excited about the plans Parks and Rec has for the new pool facilities, especially Honesty Water Park.

I'm looking forward to using it and I'll be exposing this wonderful physique, I'm sure.

But I feel that the McIntyre Wading Pool is a different experience and a unique experience.

a fellow I've been speaking to from Charlottesville Aquatics put it, he said, you know, one is a quiet stroll in the park dedicated to toddlers and the other is a trip to King's Dominion.

So these are in different locations, they have different parking access type issues and we think they're, again, unique.

In terms of bringing it up to code, I've spoken with some people that have experience in the poor areas and we think that there are options, less expensive options to installing the water shut off system.

And, you know, with all due respect to our representatives up in Washington, they've really taken their time to warn us of this urgent, dire danger we're now putting our children in, in this 80 year old facility.

But being that the water is only roughly 16 inches deep, rather than installing a special cover and a shut-off system, you do have the option of simply, one option which would be less expensive but still cost something would be to install a second drain and tap that into the same pipe as the main drain.

This would reduce the need to do the more expensive items.

And of course, even another option, which would probably cost certainly under $1,000, would simply be install a

This is a nylon coated grate that's maybe two feet tall that covers the entire drain, so you actually no longer have a drain on the bottom of the pool.

and you can't approach it and you could put a little dungo fountain or something on top of this and have it spray water if you wanted to.

But it simply would restrict access to the dangerous portion of the drain.

Then finally, I'm aware or been told that you've received two offers from people simply to pay the $20,000.

I've also provided an offer or asked you that if you do decide

that it's not in our best interest to keep this facility open.

I ask that you please consider allowing outside agencies the opportunity to make proposals to run the facility for the city if that will solve the issues that you're concerned about.

Thank you, Mr. Moore.

Here's the last person to sign up to speak.

Is there anybody else from the public who would like to speak on this topic?

Mayor Norris, Members of Council, I did not plan to speak on this, but my son works for the Consumer Protection Agency in Washington.

and he said to me, I'm the one that's been reading the ER reports about what has happened to children, particularly young girls, in these pools where the drains are not done right.

And so I would urge you, if you do do any of the suggestions tonight, that you do the best you can for that.

That's what John Edwards made all that money on.

That's what several local attorneys have made incredible, incredible

settlements for their people.

And we just can't expose our children to that kind of a damage.

If you need more information, I urge you to go to the Container Protection, I can't remember, it's CPSA, and I'll send my, send all you, but that's something that is so horrific, he said, you don't want to need them, mom.

So I just, don't, don't scrimp on that if you keep the pool.

Thank you, Mr. Marion.

Anybody else like to speak?

All right, we will now close the public hearing and open it up to council comments.

No further questions.

Well, you know, I really kind of agree with Mr. Moore's comments that the experience of a wading pool is pretty different than the experience of a spray pool.

And actually, you know, my kids were too old to have been kids I took to a spray pool.

But I do think a wading pool, you know, parents can sit on the edge with their feet in the water.

Wearing shorts that can walk along the pool, I mean there's something nice about that and I know the intent of my question earlier, I think maybe we do need to keep a wading pool somewhere in our repertoire of pools.

I also appreciated Mr. Kleeman's thoughts on, you know, can we just tweak the design a little bit to make sure there is enough room for the pool where it is.

In any event, if we have private money that's willing to come forward, you know, I think this becomes a pretty easy decision if we don't hate, you know, I mean, you could look at a decision if we

If we're not sure it's going to be there for more than another year, should we spend $20,000?

But someone's going to put that forward, and I'm really grateful that they are.

Well, I should just note for the record, at least one of those donors did say that they would be much more inclined to make the donation if they knew the pool was going to be in place for years to come, not just for one year.

Mr. Mayor, as Mr. Mayor described, there are two different experiences.

The waiting pool is very quiet, and very safe, mostly in spite of the outlets which have been repaired.

And the local driver in the McIntyre Park Interchange, my recollection is this.

The most footprint we have

So he's going to talk a little bit about his team and got his ideas as to who footprints to go with and that.

This is his latest footprint is for them to move.

And that still goes there as a pool house.

I think it is still in your eyes that you use the pool rather than tell it that you saved the pool.

And I also have been approached by some people about the possibility of proud donations.

I don't know if they're a citizen of it or if they're at least a common one.

Well, all I can add is I'd like to see it preserved.

I think it's basically a Charlottesville tradition that's been there a long time.

I think it does provide a different experience, as someone pointed out to me,

When you go to the other pool, you have to contend with teenagers when you have your children there.

I agree with the comments that have been made, especially about using other people's money.

I like that.

But also, I do want to make a comment about how this has evolved in the process

and my hopes that the park master planning process that we're going to unfold will create the opportunity for public input and participation at the beginning of an idea instead of at the very end.

We already seem to find ourselves doing this.

It's starting to feel like being in the middle of a movie.

Again, I'm always at the same spot with being put on the spot with public comment.

So I'm happy that we've provided this opportunity, but I'm sad that we've had to provide it in this way.

Think of all the public comments.

Everything that is simple and ordinary is doomed.

It's really a telling statement.

As we make decisions that are based on money, sometimes we just need to get back to what our values are and make our money worth our values.

So I, too, echo the need to have a place for toddlers because if you ever spend any time around anyone that's four years old and younger, you know they live in a different world.

and they need their own space and their own place to be active and a place where they can meet their own peers because the three and four year olds of today are our future Charlottesville high school graduates.

Everybody go to Meadow Creek Parkway about this.

Can I talk about the graduation rate too?

I agree with the sentiments that have been expressed about the importance of keeping the pool open as long as possible.

I'm certainly hopeful that we can find a way for the pool and the interchange to coexist.

Although I think we have to be honest with ourselves that even if we can make it work,

to where they can coexist, the experience is going to be lessened for having this major road and interchange immediately adjacent to the waiting pool.

And I want to just piggyback on the comments that Mr. Nino made, which I think were very thoughtful and well said, which is I do think that we in this community are in denial

deep denial perhaps about how the Meadow Creek Parkway project as a whole is going to negatively impact if not completely destroy things that we value in this community and the waiting pool is just one example.

The Nine Hill Golf Course is an example.

Safe Egress from the Burwood neighborhood is an example.

The Skate Park is an example.

The Veterans Memorial is an example.

Dozens of acres of pastoral parkland and green space.

is an example.

We are the most scenic sites on the YMCA trail is an example.

And the quality and safe pedestrian experience downtown.

Mr. Mayor, I'm sorry, can you kind of reply to that?

Please do.

I don't think...

I mean this, it's kind of amazing to me that this could turn into a big speech about the Meadow Creek Parkway.

I mean I don't think that's what it was billed as.

I don't think it's what it should be.

But what bothers me, I mean I don't think the Meadow Creek Parkway is an easy decision for anyone and it's never been for me.

I have opinions that the good outweighs the bad of it.

What bothers me is the idea that this council is solely responsible for the Meadow Creek Parkway.

and an absolute impression that Mr. Mena, for example, gave, you know, that this council is making this decision.

This decision has been supported by councils for a long time, like very thoughtful city councilors, Kay Slaughter, David Toscano, Blake Caravati, Kendra Hamilton, Virginia Dougherty, Kevin Lynch, Meredith Richards.

So I guess I'd just like to have a little sense that it's, you know, you have a strong feeling for this and I understand that.

And I don't agree with some of those things, but I don't know that I'm right.

I also, you know, I could spend some time here talking about

Why I think there's some good that comes out of this.

And since the last couple of meetings, I've been through a lot of people who are looking forward to the parkway.

They're concerned about the effect of traffic on 29 choking out a lot of access into the city.

That's why it's become a gridlock and Park Street is inadequate.

But in any event,

I just felt like if you want to schedule a big debate on Brecken Parkway, if you want to try to persuade the city council to change its mind, then we should do that.

I mean, there's five of us here, but I think that to take this situation is kind of

Let's have that discussion.

If that's what you'd like, you should schedule it.

You're the mayor.

Having said that and gotten that off my chest, I actually had another comment I was going to make that I felt bad I didn't make earlier.

And that is I really appreciated Nancy O'Brien coming forward and putting some context

into this issue.

Because a lot of what I heard was sort of disparaging remarks about the intrusiveness of federal regulations, you know, requiring us to go to such lengths over a pool.

And I think to have someone come forward and remind us that these regulations don't arrive

I was going to say in a vacuum, but out of nowhere, but they arise for good reason.

Tragic reasons.

And I think that it's good to make that point so we don't have people leaving with the impression that we're having to go into a lot of work that we really shouldn't have to do.

I'd be happy to read your motion if you'd like.

Sure.

I would recommend that we skip William Poole and make the entire park open and we make all the necessary safety improvements

Please indicate your vote.

Thank you very much.

You have another poll.

Well, I appreciate your comments, Dr. Baum.

The reason I'm...

The reason I made a lot of fun in the direction that I did was because I think a lot of people hadn't considered the impacts of the parkway project on this waiting pool in particular.

Anyhow, we're going to move forward on to public hearing and an ordinance on the proposed federal fiscal year 2010 budget.

We have had a number of conversations now and presentations about our FY 2010 budget, so we're not going to do one more overview of the budget.

Is it possible to ask some questions?

We'll be getting to those after the public hearing, yes.

Good evening Mr. Mayor and Councillors, Collette Hall, 111 Roberts Lane.

The Coalition to Preserve McIntyre Park requests the City to remove from the 2010 budget the $450,000 under the budget designation, non-bondable projects, transportation and access from McIntyre Extended City Match.

That's a quote.

And to defer the decision until after the United States Army Corps of Engineers has completed the permit processing for that section of Meadow Creek Park where McIntyre extended as well as permitting the 250 interchange.

These funds can be held in reserve for the 2010-2011 budget if necessary.

If you approve this budget with these funds as now indicated, it is surely a vote to approve a ride through McIntyre Park.

I just want to mention something.

I know I'm kind of stepping out of boundaries, Mr. Mayor, but Ms. Edwards, I had a discussion with Eugene Williams.

We met at State, that's by total accident, and we had a long discussion about the dropout rate.

I don't feel free to

I didn't have that discussion here because I didn't have his approval to talk about it.

We talked our part with it.

I also thought, we had some serious discussion about it, and I also thought, you know, Councilor Edwards and I were talking about place relations have to do with building one-on-one relationships.

And here I was talking to Mr. Williams, who just about everybody in the city knows, I think.

I mean, you have to be almost deaf.

Good evening, Council.

I'm Peter Kleeman.

I live at 407 Head Street in the city.

Earlier, a speaker spoke about the issue of the Planning Commission's decision to

not fund in the capital improvement budget the $450,000 for the matching funds for the Med Creek Parkway and it's sort of been really just kind of left hanging and I think this is a great opportunity for council to actually tie together a loose end of apparently there's this implicit consideration of ignoring that

that decision by the Planning Commission and not addressing it straight up and it appears to me that is the tradition of the council if not a requirement of the council if they overturn a decision by the Planning Commission to actually take a vote on it at least that's my understanding I don't know what the exact city code is on that but I would recommend

that the ideas put forward by the Planning Commission, a body appointed by council, and their recommendation to reallocate that $450,000 local match for sidewalk construction and acquisition of green space, and in conjunction with some of the other discussions we've had about need for green space and sidewalk construction in recent meetings, I think it would be a great opportunity for that to be considered as part of this deliberations tonight to actually

to decide whether you support the recommendation of the Planning Commission and wish to reprogram those funds or if you are planning on not reprogramming those funds and then to actually actively consider what Council's decision should be on that by vote of Council I think would be appropriate.

Good evening, I'm Jenny Mead, I live at 805 Bowling Avenue here in the city and I'm not here to talk about the parkway.

I'm here to support the SPCA in its request to the city to increase the amount that it is paid per capita for the animals that are brought in by the city.

The SPCA as you all know is the parent for the city and you all have had a great working relationship with the SPCA for over 50 years I know because that's about how long I've been around and my mother was very involved with the SPCA so I know about the history and it's been a good one and I think that you all are probably quite proud of the SPCA particularly what it's done in the last

for four years becoming a no-kill facility, raising the money to move into its incredible new facility and then doing the almost unheard of task of becoming truly no-kill while remaining the parent for the city and the county.

And so for all your help and support, I really appreciate it.

I do want to tell you just a little bit about the history because I know a lot about the history.

Back in the first part of the 1900s, the pound, the city's pound was I believe in the stockyards here in Charlottesville and I believe city employees took care of the dogs that were brought in and took care of them meaning put food out, put water out and when there were too many dogs, dispatched them via pistol.

and then starting about midway through the century you had a lot of local concerned citizens who began taking the dogs in, taking the animals in and then with the $10,000 request back in the early 1950s, a personal request

A chicken coop became the local SPCA.

About eight years later you all contracted to have us be your parent and that's been great but I have to tell you all that the city has gotten an incredible deal over the years and it is now time to really pay the SPCA which you

We need to pay them to continue to be the pound.

So, I appreciate your considering that to build your own pound, as you all well know, would be astronomically expensive.

So, thank you for your support of the SPCA.

I'm going to drop this off to Mayor Norris.

If you haven't read that article from about four years ago about the SPCA and its beginnings, there's a very good article there and it's on my magazine.

I'm Mr. Mayor of City Council.

I'm John False.

I live at 1503 Rugby Road.

The tax burden, that's the taxes per capita that the city is spending places on its residents is one of the highest in the state, and much higher than any of our peer cities.

As we face, for the first time, some real economic uncertainty, it would be appropriate to think of the effect of your budget that will have on us, the residents, and not just the city administration.

I have two suggestions.

First, eliminate the unnecessary position of efficiency recommendation performance management analyst.

Just this fall you contracted two very highly trained ex-city managers to perform an independent efficiency study.

I believe you were disappointed with their rather mediocre report.

If two outside independent individuals could not create a credible management analysis, why do you think an in-house person subordinate to the city manager could do better?

The $120,000 allocated for this position could be spent in many ways that would give far more benefit to us all.

SPCA, for example.

Second, why are we setting aside $2.8 million for a rainy day economic downturn fund?

We already have $4.2 million from last year's surplus set aside in an economic development fund.

I have not heard of any economic development initiatives.

Whoops.

I just have.

The Sharp Charlottesville, which sounds like it came out of the economic development fund, and it sounds like a good idea.

Must have been $50,000.

But anyway, not much.

So those millions could be treated as a rainy day fund.

It appears that the council is simply creating special funds to soak up the recurring annual surpluses so it's less evident that you're over taxing us, the citizens.

If you added only $1.8 million to the $4.2 million economic development fund, you would still have a sizable $6 million rainy day fund.

The other one million dollars could support a two cent reduction in the real estate tax.

You can make it clear that this is only a one year temporary reduction.

Yet for many of us, especially those in Belmont and Fifeville, who are facing higher tax bills because of higher assessments, it would signal that the council is aware of the economic hardship that many residents are now facing.

would be a wonderful gesture to the city, the people of this city.

With your excuse, can I make a follow up on something that Mr. Ballon said that I think is very important and I won't take long.

He pointed out the Meadow Creek Parkway has been going on forever.

Okay.

I'm not going to take sides on it and I'm not going to preach to you guys.

I'm really preaching to you all.

I'm on a chart.

I'm the city representative.

We're building a road schedule for 2035.

I pointed out that I'm going to be 100 when it comes to fruition.

That's how long these things take.

In the Long Range Plan, as some could point out, there are no projects that will help the city reduce its traffic load.

County has been on and on.

We're planning people getting rid of anything that would impact the county.

but nothing that will help the city.

Please get active.

I'm sorry.

Thank you very much.

Hi, I'm Steven Bart.

I work 12.8 in River Street.

I just want to say I hope you will sustain the decision

of the Planet Commission to remove the matching funds from the CIP fund for the Meadow Creek Parkway and let's put our money into either air forms of transportation or other resources that need it and save our heart.

Thank you, Mr. Bhat.

Good evening, Mayor and members of City Council.

I'm Nancy O'Brien.

I live at Fiebel on 9th Street, Southwest.

And I came just to mention three things.

They're not specific, but they're very general about the budget.

One, in the interest of transparency, I think it would be helpful if all special funds were listed, the criteria for using them were listed, and a chain of command for decisions about the use of the funds were made public.

I think that would

take care of a great deal of transparency in the budget.

Another issue for me is accountability.

And this may sound strange to you as I go on because I've fought for housing in this community for about 35 years.

But the last time I heard you all discuss housing, no one, staff nor council, seemed to know what was happening and what we were getting for the money.

I think we need to have accountability for the large amounts of money that are spent that go out of the city coffers.

That's not as a criticism of housing, which I will continue to support, but I would like to know what's happening with the money, and I hadn't seen where you'd been deported back to.

The other has to do with an idea that surfaced in the paper this morning, and that was the ACE program.

I like the ACE program, but I don't want one dime of city money going into an ACE program in the county until every blade of grass and every tree for which you are the stewards are safe and no people in the city are having to leave their homes because the taxation is driving them out of it.

Those two criteria would certainly go a long way, and it will take you a little while before you fund the ACE.

If city residents are interested in funding the ACE program, donations to Albemarle County are tax deductible, and I'm sure that they would accept them.

Good evening, my name is John Kripchank.

I live at 700 Spring Lake Drive in Earliesville and I am speaking as a representative of the Piedmont group of the Sierra Club, which actually has about 800 members in Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

The Piedmont group has been opposed to the Meadow Creek Parkway or the McIntire Road extended for about 20 years.

And at this time I'm going to ask you to please remove that $450,000 from the budget that was allocated for the McIntire Road extended.

This is something we feel very strongly about.

We're not alone in our opposition to a road through Charlottesville Central Park.

The Planning Commission voted to remove the funds from the budget.

588 people have signed our petition to preserve McIntyre Park.

and during the four years that I've been attending these city council meetings, I have heard very few people speaking in favor of Lumeta Creek Parkway.

I have heard many, many people speaking against building this parkway and I think that has been pretty much the record all along.

McIntire Park is a people's park and clearly the people want it saved from road construction.

I don't believe that you should be overly concerned about disappointing Albemarle County and VDOT by withdrawing your support for the McIntyre Road extended.

Clearly, they have not lived up to all of their commitments.

And I have a copy of a letter that's dated January 18th, 2006, and it is written by May Brown,

to VDOT and to the Albemarle Board of Supervisors and it talks about the conditions for support for the Meadow Creek Parkway.

The conditions below are enumerated as essential conditions that will allow council to support the project.

At least we don't have time to read the whole letter.

But two of the things that are mentioned here are that City Council is now desirous that the County and VDOT demonstrate a firm commitment to the Eastern Connector.

The City also expects to see a funding commitment for the Southern Parkway by VDOT and Barilla County by 2008 before construction begins on the parkway.

Well, to my knowledge, those things have not happened and probably are not going to happen because the funding has not come through for those projects.

So I don't think you would need to feel bad.

I'll give you a dispensation on this one as a county resident.

If you choose to remove funds from the McIntyre Road extended, you will be forgiven, not only forgiven, but you will be celebrated.

Use the city money to improve pedestrian access and bike access to the park.

Use it to improve sidewalks, crosswalks, to acquire more green space in the city.

If it was possible somehow to put it into education, I would certainly recommend putting it into enlarging your book studies program in the city.

Good evening, Mayor Norris and Members of Council.

My name is Kristin Smith-Bain of 4539 Stony Point Road and I'm the President of the Board of Directors of the Charlottesville Albemarle SPCA.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Charlottesville Albemarle SPCA, I'd like to thank you for your support

Goodwill and positive progress in connection with our contract with the city of Charlottesville to provide pound services.

As you know, the board of directors of the Charlottesville Albemarle SPCA believes that the pound services provided by the SPCA to the city far exceed the amounts paid to the SPCA for such services by the city.

In other words, it's our belief that if the city would operate its own pound, the cost to the city would far exceed the current payments to the SPCA.

There is no doubt that this paradigm only serves to exacerbate the financial struggles of the SPCA in this challenging economic environment.

If our contract with the city to provide pound services cannot be renegotiated to provide to the SPCA a more reasonable compensation, which we believe to be $5 per capita, in a reasonable period of time, we will not be able to continue to provide such services as it will jeopardize our financial sustainability.

The termination of our long-standing relationship with the City of Charlottesville is not an action the SPCA would take lightly.

We remain optimistic that the SPCA and the City can resolve this matter in an equitable manner and continue a positive working partnership into the future to help our communities lost, abandoned and neglected animals.

Thank you Ms. Gill.

Hello, my name is Pat Napoleon.

My address is 700 Lyons Avenue.

I do request that the 450,000 transportation piece be removed from the budget.

There are too many holes in the plan and also too many unknowns as far as the parkway goes.

It is time for all of our councilors to realize the fact that too many oppose this plan in the first place.

As I attend these meetings, it appears to me that more don't want the project than do want it.

I want to publicly thank Councilor Julian Taliaferro for keeping an open mind.

I also thank those of you who have voted to protect the park in the past.

I think Mr. Taliaferro is demonstrating wise judgment as a leader.

Folks, we can't live to coddle Albemarle County and VDOT to our own detriment.

I'm sorry we are forced to speak of the parkway so much.

I know sometimes I'm sure you guys are worn out.

But county citizens should speak to defend this land.

Finally, things change.

And Mr. Brown, in reference to your statement, I think it's clear that other boards have pushed for this road in the past, but as you all are now in charge, I believe it is time to re-evaluate and to listen, carefully listen, just as Mr. Taliaferro and many of you others are doing.

Please be open to change as leaders.

Yes, my name is Fred Haar.

I'm a city resident, 1833 Findel Avenue.

I've raised two children in the city and I grew up myself on Reaky Road.

I'm a board member and treasurer of the Shaw-Frodd Mall SPCA.

Any time an everyone's budgets have to be tightened, it has made it even more evident to our board

The difference between our city county funding and basic costs for providing the legally mandated pound services of our community.

Percent increases can sound large.

The amount of money derived from the city and the county was $240,000 last year.

Compared to national studies and our own analysis, this would not be enough to run a standalone pound operation in this community.

Our estimate, as well as the national averages from 18 years ago, would be in the 600,000 range.

The Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA's fundraising efforts continue as aggressively as always.

It is those funds which, with your support, can allow us to be an award-winning community for our animals.

I do appreciate and recognize

Good evening.

Jim Moore, 1213 Hazel Street.

I'm not speaking for or against the creation of the $2.8 million economic downfall fund, but I do wish to ask that you consider developing specific policies for the use of both this fund and also for the $6 million AAA bank rating fund.

In terms of the economic fund, I think, and again sort of in the interest of transparency, that some intent should be clear in the budget as to what would happen to this fund if it's not, well first off, what triggers the use of this fund, at least a general idea.

And second off, if the fund is not needed to be used in this year's budget, what the initial intent would be for the use of that fund.

Not intending to tie your hands that way, that I mean it could be changed, but that it's not simply then sort of

rather than to whatever because it appears to be sort of free money.

In terms of the $16 million fund, this is a considerable amount of money for our community and I would not want to see us repeat if catastrophic economic issues were to occur, events were to occur as they really have occurred at a national level.

I'd like to see our city actually be prepared with a catastrophic plan so that we can respond maybe better than we have been able to on a national level.

and then one other comment about the budget in terms of transparency.

It became clear at the public hearing that the capital improvements project apparently no longer really represents a five-year outlook for what the capital investments will be.

It was noted several times by staff

that really the budget only reflects one year and that's somewhat understandable, again, because of unforeseen economic future.

However, if we're changing our policy on the long-term planning and the capital improvements plan, that should really be clearly noted in the document.

Thank you, Mr. Moore.

My name is Richard Will, I live at 1813 Motorbrook Heights Road, and it's been a long night and I'm here to talk again about McIntyre Road, but I'll be very brief because once again all of the sort of arguments that I would line up against it have already been broached.

So I'll just point out something that seems to be to be the trump card tonight, which is simply that

In all of the discourse that we've heard, I know that public money cannot sort of be pushed around from project to project willy-nilly, and from one part of the budget to the other.

But a council can set priorities, and it seems to me that with all that this road has going against it, that schools and housing and public transit and SPCA

and probably social services of various kinds should be higher priorities than this.

Thank you, Mr. Will.

That was the last person to sign up to speak.

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

Okay, we'll now close the public hearing and I thank all of you who came tonight to speak.

I guess we'll open up to any initial responses.

We are going to have a fuller discussion in a moment about after we consider the annual tax levy.

Actually, can we do these in different order?

Do we have to do them in this order?

Okay.

Well, so let's have some brief responses, then you have to vote on an ordinance for setting an annual tax levy before we actually vote on the appropriation, the budget appropriation itself.

I had a question as to, the question was that at work session we would have stopped officials here in this position.

Is that the case?

I'll just make one comment.

I kind of agree with Nancy O'Brien, but I think we could do a better job both for ourselves and equally important for the public in making sure we have some straightforward accountability for how we're spending the amount of money we're spending on affordable housing.

And at the same time,

And I've said this before, I'd like to see us move towards a system where affordable housing is treated like the rest of the programs we fund, which is that we fund specific proposals as opposed to putting a large pot of money out there and asking people to help us figure out how to spend it.

I know we've had to do it that way to jumpstart the spending on affordable housing, but everything else, people come in and say, we have a program, it's important, and this is what it is.

and hopefully we can get movement with affordable housing where we're considering funding specific programs as opposed to putting money out there and then having people to help us figure out how to spend it.

We're going forward with the capital improvements program just like we have in the 28 years that I've been here.

We do a five-year planning document with the first year being what council is taking up with the budget, which is the official allocation of money, the rest of it is for

a plan, we submit that to the writing agencies, we'll use that in the budget process, it goes through the planning commission process and discussion, but it is a planning document, so projects can change over the next two to five year period.

One thing we know that we've done with this budget is we've begun to plan the regular operating budget, which we've always done on a annual basis.

We've begun to look at what our revenue is and what are some of our expenditure estimates at at least three years.

We showed council some charts in the public when we were doing the initial budget presentation, and we think it's prudent to start thinking not just one year out, but two, three years at least.

And from a capital planning standpoint, we look out at least five years.

It's been suggested that we remove the $450,000.

I'm not prepared to do that now and I want to say why.

One issue that has still not been resolved is

How much do we have to pay back to the state if we do not build Parkway?

And that's various, I'm told, millions of dollars.

I don't know how much, but I want to find out what that is.

I'm told it could be as much as three to five million dollars we would have to pay.

Now whether that's true or not, I don't know.

Another issue is

that the section in the county I guess can be connected to Melbourne Road and that poses another issue.

I guess you can change the flow of traffic, do something to address that.

But those two issues concern me.

They haven't been totally resolved.

and I'm not prepared to remove the $450,000.

I probably shouldn't tell you, that's my wife's against the parkway.

But in any event, I'm trying to take a look at the whole situation.

I just wanted to echo the comments that were made about Nancy O'Brien's observations and I think that level of transparency is important, especially regarding our special funds.

And also, in terms of accountability and the kind of accountability that we like to see in our school system, I'm going to bring up the high school dropout rate since everybody keeps bringing up the parkway.

but also I wonder if in our effort to become more accountable if the performance management analyst is one way of getting there or if we'd be creating another position that we

I want to create another position to see if that's being accountable to what it's doing.

But I know that if we continue to do what we've always done, we'll get what we always got.

So I'd be willing to take a risk on that performance management analyst to see if it could get us closer to really answering the specific questions that we have, even without asking about the accountability for affordable housing.

Did we ever get a report?

Okay.

And just another comment that Mr. Fox talked about the same concern at the budget work session.

You know in the hook, when you're in the hot seat, the 21st century creep out question that they ask everybody?

My 21st century creep out is, what are John Fox's rights?

But maybe when you do need to think about the two-seat reduction in real estate tax, I don't know.

But this isn't the first time that he's brought it out, but I just want you to know that we are listening.

And the SPCA comments

Members of council, Ms. Edwards is correct, state law is pretty specific.

Each governing body in Virginia, both counties and cities, is required to have a pound.

There are various options for you to fulfill that obligation.

You can operate a pound yourself, you can

have an agreement with another locality that operates a pound or you can contract with a private organization as we have done here with the SPCA.

There is currently an agreement between the City of Charlottesville, Albemarle County, and the SPCA that I would describe as an operational agreement wherein the SPCA agrees to operate a panel for the city and the county.

For your comments?

I've already gone.

If we can talk about the efficiency employee, I can.

I wasn't really in favor of moving forward with adding that position at this time.

I just didn't really have strong evidence that made me think that was a good move to do in this budget time.

So I think maybe I'm echoing where Mr. Huja was.

I did feel like we left it without any clear decision.

So I guess the default is it stayed in the budget.

But I personally would just as soon see it taken out.

As far as the SPCA goes, I support putting the

funding their additional request, but I would like to see us continue to try to have a joint agreement that includes Albemarle County.

I think it just makes sense for this larger community to work together on this and I hope that's where we can move forward is to figure out what the county

about how to best move forward.

I just had a couple of my own comments.

Just for the record, I do support upholding the Planning Commission recommendation, but that clearly does not have majority support on Council.

But I want to address, first of all, part of Ms. O'Brien's comments, which were reflected by Mr. Moore, which is, I think it is important that we have clear and transparent policies for how our various funds are utilized

and I know we've been making some progress on that.

There's certainly more that needs to be made.

However, I think it's very frustrating to me that we have to continue to sort down this myth that has arisen because of an error in a news report.

that there was a lack of accountability in how we utilized our affordable housing funds.

We, as was reported the following day when the error was corrected, the city was

There was never any question about whether or not the city could account for those funds.

We accounted for every single penny of those funds.

It was a mistake by the reporter, and I'm not going to try to, you know, people make mistakes, but I want the public to know, because this is the second or third time I've had to say this publicly, that there was

Zero truth to this idea that the city could not account for our affordable housing funds.

Now, there may be differences of opinion.

I think Dr. Brown makes a good point about, you know, maybe we need to allocate the funds differently, but there's no truth to this idea that we could not account for those funds.

Every single penny was accounted for.

And that's it.

So, we're now going to move on to an ordinance setting our annual tax levy.

This is the first of two readings.

Well, we're going to get to that in a moment.

As you know, we propose when we put the budget together based on the council guideline that we will keep the real estate and personal property tax rate the same, which means what this ordinance is saying is 95 cents for

real estate property tax and four dollars and three cents for the personal property tax.

Another piece that is in there based on City Council approval is an incentive for people to make their homes and buildings energy efficient and is actually based on state law and their proposal that we would discount that 50% so the tax rate on energy efficient buildings that qualify would be

47 and a half cents, which is one half of the real estate tax.

I'd be glad to answer any questions.

We had a public hearing on this earlier.

It's in front of the city council for the first reading of the ordinances.

It's been moved and seconded.

We will carry that forward to the next meeting.

And now we have the appropriation, annual budget appropriation for fiscal year 2010, first of two meetings.

There are two documents that you have in front of you.

One is the proposed budget that came to City Council.

as part of the city manager's recommendation, which we've outlined in the resolution that's in the book.

And secondly, we have passed out tonight amendments that the city council has talked about as we've gone through the budget process.

I don't want to belabor this point, but there are 29 changes that that can provide, so there are quite a few.

I particularly want to talk about similar changes because I think it gets to similar comments that

and we heard from the public through the hearings as well as tonight.

First of all, there's some changes in increased revenues mainly because of state funding that we got a clearer picture once the budget was adopted.

Do I need to read all these, Craig?

No, you don't.

Let me just read my record.

The ones I particularly wanted to talk about were the decreased revenues.

Since we proposed the budget March 2nd,

Based on the last quarter of 2008 and what we're beginning to see in the first quarter of 2009, we're seeing reductions in personal property taxes, lodging taxes, mules tax, and sales tax, based upon those trends of $615,000.

That's the reason that we're proposing an economic downturn fund.

In my 28 years with the city, I've never seen that.

That's the first.

And everyone knows what's going on nationally,

happening within the city and the city budget so we're trying to anticipate and be prepared for that and have a plan.

So that is the proposed revenue estimates for all the general fund that's a little over 142 and a half million dollars.

The number of expenditure changes that the city council wanted to consider.

One that we proposed to council was an administrative change

for $37,800 for the Partnership for Children, that's one of the CYFS programs.

The main changes or adjustments that you wanted, including the budget and capital improvements program, one was for urban tree planting to have $50,000, the second was for parkland acquisition funds of $100,000, and the third was for bike infrastructure, pedestrian, $25,000.

Icicle Infrastructure Outside agencies out of the work session that you had last week we were recommending and the discussion followed with funding to be held in reserve with additional information for two programs, one was for the SPCA to consider $39,350 which basically

comes very close to doubling the city's contribution.

And also you ask us to reserve with additional work QCC firms of $15,000.

You ask me in clarity in the proposed amendments to the budget the Real Dads program in which the Children, Youth, Family Services firms of $22,000 and funding for the Moore Center which is part of Region 2 made in 2016 under the $61.

We were asked to reserve what demand you would assume from your discussions earlier tonight.

You want to improve this funding for operations and staffing for McIntyre, waiting pool for this summer, $23,000.

One of our earlier work sessions and prior work sessions that City Council had, the indoor workforce initiatives that you'll notice to bring back into the budget, one's a training program, an access program for Charlottesville Redevelopment Housing Authority, $50,000.

I've seen the workforce program at Buford and Charlottesville High School worth $35,000.

The Royal Work Academy program at Walker and Buford, $15,000.

Transportation for work experiences for CATEC, $9,600.

And the Medical Sciences Club at Charlottesville High School, $2,500.

So that totals the workforce initiatives that you wanted to see included.

In addition, there were reductions.

One was the contribution to PBCC for loan payments of $22,000.

The contribution to the original jails, we got further into the budget, reduces by almost $60,000.

Contribution to Joe Sneary and Chip, $37,800.

And the contribution to the city's cost, which is a result of 40% of the reduction in personal property tax revenue.

and that's the target formula that we have, that's $81,600.

The capital program, an adjustment for the non-bondable contingency of $175,000 which feeds a number of capital improvements that I talked about earlier.

And finally, the council priority initiatives, we reduced that amount and leave $5,800 which combined with

What's in your current reserve?

You'd have $46,884 that's unallocated reserve for the council for unanticipated needs during the budget year.

If you've set aside a reserve at your request, if you approve this, $11,354 for Teensite and FOCUS, based upon a stream of knowledge,

and the different services that are needed to do pregnancy.

So that's the extent of the adjustments and amendments that you're considering.

We have the public hearing tonight.

This is the, in essence, the annual budget approval.

The first reading, the second reading will be taken on April the 14th.

I had a special meeting with City Council prior to the Planning Commission meeting.

Before I conclude, I just wanted to say a couple words of thanks.

It's always important to recognize the people involved with the budget, but I think particularly this year, with the level of work that's been required, Leslie Beauregard has been outstanding, as has Ryan Davidson.

They should be thanked.

They spent an immense amount of hours putting this budget together.

I think as Council members,

This is one of the few budgets in the country that doesn't have a tax credit increase or reduction in services.

That's an effort, I think, on the staff's part, but particularly the budget office, of watching things over the last couple of years and putting together a very good budget.

Also, we had a thing called rewards, it was in the back, in Bernard Ray and their staffs for a tremendous amount of work as well in trying to get everything together.

And then within the budget document, there's a long list of people that work on the budgets to submit them as well as monitoring the age and during the year.

It's a team effort.

As you well know, it involves lots and lots of people within city government.

So we have in front of you a proposed budget with the movements that City Council has proposed.

If you have any questions, we'll be glad to answer them, or if you'd like to take it up and refresh Rudy.

Yeah, let me address that.

And I hesitate to speak against it because I'm certainly an advocate of performance measurements.

When I hear the city manager talk about declining revenues, I know we have an economic downturn fund, but I would guess that if we have a further drop of say 5% of real estate property, revenue in the city would probably exceed that economic downturn fund.

I think another issue that

Well the concern that I had is that and I honor

that decision, but it does make me concerned about where the gap will be if we don't have that position.

Well, I think at the moment, I mean, you know four or five of the agencies, we're not even here tonight with the SPCA, but you're aware of the others.

Because of that political danger, there's going to be lots of work that is put upon the staff.

I think as far as sort of the whole performance review, but also the agency review process that City Council's talked about, it's going to make it very difficult for us to do that in any depth.

And if that's where you want to be,

We can appreciate and understand that, but if you want to get into it in depth, which is what this proposal is, both within city departments but also agencies, and I think you're aware of some of the agency issues that are out there.

It takes a lot of work.

The other thing that's going on, I just so have no words, from a staff standpoint, the academic stimulus money and being able to keep track of that is becoming a bigger and bigger project.

for city government, both in terms of applying for grants but also the accountability.

So we're going to see a lot of pressures on the staff and that was the point of putting the position forward.

We've aggressively talked about performance measurement over a couple of years.

We've tried a variety of different ways by not having anybody on staff.

I think we've been dissatisfied from a staff standpoint and council's been dissatisfied to some extent.

with how well that's gone, and so that was the whole point of the proposal.

Half of it comes out of the general fund, and half comes out of the utilities, was the proposal.

I have to say, when the proposal was initially floated, I did not support it for the same reasons that Mr. Taliaferro outlined.

I didn't feel like the needs in-house merited creation of a full-time position.

I've been more inclined lately, given what we as a council have been asking staff to do in terms of delving into the finances and the operations of a number of the major agencies that we fund to figure out how our dollars can be better spent and how these agencies can stay afloat.

I don't know who on city staff is going to be able to do that in addition to all the work that they're doing now.

And that's news to me.

I don't recall that being mentioned during the work session.

It was mentioned in the work session that this position would conduct strategic planning for each of our departments, setting goals and objectives so we could measure our progress, so that we could do internally what we expect outside agencies to do.

That was what was described to me, and it wasn't persuasive.

I think what I'm hearing now is different.

It's a need for someone else on staff arising from other issues.

It's kind of late in the game to be presenting new reasons why you need an additional staff person, but I'm happy to consider what I'd probably like since we have time between now and the next meeting.

is to have that fleshed out in memos that can go to council and we can discuss it at the last meeting because it's the first I've heard of the idea that we need an additional staff person to help with stimulus funds and my mind would be would it be okay to hire someone for a year or two years for that position and not something that's an ongoing and I don't know if that's reasonable or not and then secondly the idea that

I guess when we talked about it at the work session, my impression was that it was to do

internal audits in the way that we hadn't been able to address in the past.

And part of my thinking also was that if we are going to ask our outside agencies to undergo that same kind of scrutiny, then we should

be able to undergo that same kind of scrutiny as well.

Also, I thought it was a good time to start looking at some of the recommendations that, such as it is, our efficiency review study, an opportunity to also look at the recommendations from the efficiency review study from the school.

And the county has done one as well that we just had a good time to

to look at change.

And also, we know that money's not going to be the way it has been over the next couple of years, so this is a good time to start planning.

And simply saying, if we do what we always done, we get what we always got, and this position may be an opportunity to really explore as to how we can be better stewards of our money.

I think Dr. Brown has made a good suggestion between now and our next meeting if we can get more information from staff on exactly how you see this position serving these goals and we'll be able to make a more informed decision at that time.

And I don't know, I just wanted also to say that I did support the Planning Commission's decision and I had hoped that the finished 50,000 local match for the parkway would go for sidewalk construction or green space acquisition.

I just want to also correct the record.

Mr. Feltz mentioned, or said that we have a $4.2 million surplus from last year, but it set aside an economic development fund.

That economic development fund actually has been built up over a number of years, and actually out of that $4.2 million, about $3.5 million is already sort of out, or

preliminarily allocated for economic development initiatives leaving approximately $700,000.

Is there a second?

I'll second it.

All right, so it's been moved and seconded.

Carries forward to our next meeting.

Thank you very much.

And I second the commendations that the city manager offered to the staff, Ms. Bogard, Mr. Davison, and others that have been working hard on this process.

The next item on our agenda is a report on the Belmont Bridge design and I believe Mr. Tolbert?

Mr. Mayor, we held a very brief PowerPoint.

If it gets turned on.

If you have an honor, I'll see you back.

Joe, we're gonna go without it.

Okay.

That's fine.

Oh, we have it.

Have you kicked it yet?

Rick, make sure it's not on the hard drive.

Don't play it.

But there's no soundtrack.

Let's not be there.

This is it, right?

It's still, it's right.

It's still right in here, right there.

He's being sort of short.

Alright.

Three minutes remaining.

Ain't that been able to see everybody here?

Just kill it.

Okay, we'll go ahead and do it without the PowerPoint.

Mr. Weisberg is here.

Sorry about that Counselor.

We wanted to come to you tonight.

We're getting ready to get started work on the Belmont Bridge project, the Reap building the Belmont Bridge and felt like it was good to come and let you know that first and also to find out what, if any, concerns or issues you had.

We've been through an RFP process, we identified several firms, we interviewed

and we have selected and negotiated, we haven't finalized contractual details, but we're getting close to an MMM design that you may know from working with us in the downtown mall.

When we got started with this project, we looked at it as, from an engineering standpoint, essentially any engineers could design a bridge.

We were just talking about the bridge structure itself.

Because of this bridge, because of where it's located, the proximity to downtown, the historic areas, the aesthetic pieces of this and the functionality are really the important things.

Again, the structural aspect, anybody can do.

We were trying to look for sensitivity to design issues and how it worked for pedestrians and bicycles as well as cars.

We've selected M&M, Joe Shedstock,

the lead person that's going to be working with us on it and basically tonight we wanted to tell you that and we had some pictures of the bridge layout and that sort of thing but it's a nine million dollar project funds are anticipated to be completely available around 2014 we've got about a two year design process to go through all these things we have to do

So by the time we get finished, we'll be close to having all the money.

This bridge is federally funded.

We've also submitted it for any potential stimulus activity, but not sure if we'll get that, but we wanted to be ready.

That's one reason we went ahead with the engineering of it.

And the engineering will be good even if the money's not quite ready.

And given the fact that we've got issues to work through, it may take longer than the two years we anticipate to design it.

all the money is in the eye accounts for the design effort so that's again it's all federal money but we would like to have a process for the community we feel like the build out community in particular the business community and then the neighborhoods on the north side that are affected that want to be involved in it we think that things like lighting, rails

Just the abutments, the materials of the bridge, again, are going to be terribly important.

Hello, I have one or two comments.

In the interest of downtown Charleston, there must be various structures.

There must be more quality design.

The example touched on one of those, Bay Street Bridge, the example here, Good Bridge, well designed bridge, and infrastructure bridge also.

Well, I think we have more informed people, the BAR, talented people in the neighborhoods, I think that, and it goes without saying, we need to have a process that people most affected have input as to

ways in which this can enhance pedestrian access across the tracks and

Absolutely.

We learned some lessons during the process of developing the construction documents for the mall in terms of maintaining transparency and public involvement.

We also see some opportunities to soften the project as well with some landscape architecture on the approaches given the fact that the existing bridge had provisions for a ramp that has since been abandoned.

We also see potential opportunity for a small pocket park at the entrance down onto the pavilion from the existing bridge.

I agree with the comments made but I'd like to have at least one breakfast meeting at Spudnut.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thanks for coming back.

We're still working on the schedule.

There will be several, we'll get that out to Council very shortly.

There will be about a three to four month period of actually gathering information surveys and so forth.

They'll launch the schematic designs and that's when the stakeholder conversations will begin.

You'll see us again at that point.

Right now we're just gathering information.

I want to introduce this and then let the people that came up with the idea answer any questions you have.

Katija Durbinan and Suja Eka who are engineers in our staff came to me several weeks ago with an idea that they wanted to bring forth and we thought it was one or the other.

Sheriff counsel, both for the opportunity to let people begin to hear about it but also to make sure that you were okay with it and had your blessings.

And I wanted to show them off because I think it's a great idea.

The U.S. Green Building Council has developed the LEED for Neighborhoods program and it's a way for neighborhood designs to get LEED certification through

Things such as improved environmental quality, improved transportation access, healthy living, protection of species, reduction of sprawl, and just overall quality environmental design.

Virginia received her LEED certification several months ago.

I called him by his nickname around the office, I apologize.

They both have gotten certification and what they proposed is a program that we would offer to the development community that in the process of our site plan review, they would take a checklist, the very complicated LEED checklist

modified it for the Charlottesville area and they provided free of charge to the developers of the power program a review to show them how close they already were to LEED and then encourage them and show them ways that they could gain LEED certification so whether they wanted to actually go for it or not they could do a much more sustainable development if they wanted to apply for the LEED certification a lot of the field work would be done so

What we would really do is start offering this to the development community.

I agree and I want to commend you both for your vision and your willingness to take this on.

Sounds good to me.

Do you know of any other small cities that are doing this?

Yeah, we're looking.

Well, the lead for neighborhood development isn't even live yet.

If they finish their pilot year, they're in their second comment phase.

They have used the concepts in other communities but to think that we would help them through it, they were just kind of blown away by that, that it would be something the city would offer.

and these folks ought to be commended for, I think, developing these ideas.

Absolutely.

Thank you all.

So, last item on our regular agenda has to do with a request for proposals for dredging of the South Fork-Rivanna Reservoir, or at least an analysis of dredging.

And who's going to talk to this, Mr. O'Connell?

I'd like to, in fact, present the details of it.

As you know, at the March 3rd Joint Board Meeting, which included, if you want to come on down in time, by the time you get it, I'll be through, which is Civil Community Service Authority in Rivanna.

There was a discussion about putting together an RFP to look at dredging the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir for water supply.

Rivanna staff has put together a draft RFP

which we sent out to council in advance of this meeting so you could take a look at it.

I know some interested people in the community have looked at it as well.

To our knowledge, this is a pretty comprehensive approach.

I think all the technical analysis that we've discussed before is included in this with an outcome of a cost opinion as well.

So it's okay with you to have time to walk you through the scope of the project and just talk to me about what each one of those pieces means.

and then see what comments that you might have.

Okay, as Mr. O'Connell said, this is a draft.

It is intended for the purpose of soliciting feedback, comments.

It's not necessarily to be issued in the form that exists today.

So there could be definitely some modifications made if that's what's desired.

It is an attempt to be comprehensive in scope.

It is our best attempt to try to address what came out of the March 3rd board meeting and it is mentioned in the memorandum while five of the six bullets that were discussed from the task force there was agreement of the four boards

There was one regarding the scope of the dredging study that was, there never really was a consensus of all four boards.

So we're doing the very best we can, although it's probably not going to please everybody to try to reflect what came out of that meeting.

We also attempted in this draft to be as flexible as we can, flexible to what comments folks may have now, what comments folks may have later.

It's even mentioned that

Selective options could be adopted even after a firm is selected and that's totally dependent on how this community wants to go and how many alternatives you want to look at.

The focus is based on an approach that restores as much of the initial water supply pool that was a part of the original reservoir as is practical to accomplish.

There are several steps that do need to be incorporated in the scope of services that we've outlined, and we think it's a structured approach that gets to the comprehensive answer.

It includes bathymetric surveying, which is determining the current contours of the sediment through the reservoir, a pre-dredge survey, which is both above the water and below the water, looking for obstacles, a low bridge that could be an impediment to a dredge machine,

is one form of impediment.

Stumps at the bottom of the reservoir, which was talked about by the task force, could be another form, and there may be different methods of surveying that individuals could propose.

It also includes a volume analysis, how much volume is expected to be recovered through a dredging operation for water supply purposes, sediment sampling,

That could determine the number of things.

Once you know the volume of the material that needs to be removed and where it's located, a good sampling plan that is representative of all the different areas of sediment in the reservoir would need to be developed through the expertise the consultant offers.

And that could determine, number one, are there hazardous materials anywhere in there that would require special handling.

It also is a very good clue as to what the marketability might be, which could be helpful to some of the options.

It also will entail processing of the settlement after it's removed from the reservoir and disposal.

Both of those are heavily dependent upon the choice of the land site and this RFP requires the consultant to look at at least four different options.

My guess is they would start with a tabletop analysis but then they would need to

talked to the owners of the likely sites and we expect that that's probably the most important piece in the entire study is detailing the disposal site.

As you know, that's something that's not been done in the past and perhaps more so than anything else could affect the cost of dredging as to how good or how weak the options might be for that.

The dredging operations itself, how is it removed from the reservoirs?

Is it hydraulic operations?

Are there other alternatives?

This has been looked at before but would be looked at again.

And the last thing that's on here, I don't know if this is where the four birds want to go or not, but it certainly was discussed a lot by the

the South Fork Rivanna Task Force and that is some sort of Fur Bay analysis.

Is there some feasibility to put some Fur Bay in at the head of the reservoir that makes removal of sediment in the future easier?

And that would be addressed as well.

And so with that, that's kind of a summary of the items that are in there.

Well, I just have a couple questions on the second page, I guess, in which Fry's background, there's some references there in terms of

talking about why the South Rivanna Reservoir was considered a water supply alternative but not selected as a preferred alternative for purposes of the community water supply plan, excuse me and also talk about the feasibility of dredging the South Fork Reservoir be evaluated

and it's referenced here, it all goes on about the information of the preferred alternative of the community water supply plan and I guess, and there's some other things in there that I read through, it's kind of like, I just wonder why some of that is in there.

If you've seen other proposals that have been sent out on other topics by the Rivanna Authority in the past,

Putting a background section in that explains the historical backdrop to the need for the study is very typical.

It's done on most all of our proposals.

And it's done to help people who would be submitting proposals understand the background.

It's not giving them direction how to pursue the study.

That's in the scope of services.

Well, I understand it's helpful.

I guess it kind of bothers me.

I just don't want to see something put together that tries to guide somebody one way or the other.

I'm not saying this does that, but it makes me wonder a little bit about it, I guess.

Let me point you to, because I think you can look at the sort of context issue one way or the other.

At some point an engineering firm is going to want to know that, but if you look further down towards the bottom, I think it's

Maybe two, three sentences from the very bottom of page two, which is giving the introduction.

It says, this RFP requires qualified firms to conduct a feasibility study for restoring as much of your original water supply pool or the reservoir as practical and to address the extent of further steps that should be taken near if continued dredging is desired in the future as further settlement nears the reservoir or a four bay area.

To me that's the essence of what this is all about.

That's pretty clear.

The rest of it may or may not muddy it, I don't know, but if anything we should highlight that piece because that's what I think I've been hearing city council say, is that's what you want this study to be.

Now the steps that Tim was talking about are the way to get there, but it's really what's it going to take

to restore the full water supply that's in that reservoir and take out all the sediment.

Well, I think that's what we have to do.

The whole section was to be on Page 6.

I think that is the third part of the study.

I think that's the fourth part of the study.

Thank you.

I have a series of questions and comments.

I want to reinforce where Mr. Taliaferro was going.

Given the fact that everybody who receives this RFP will have access to a wide variety of reference materials as cited on the top of page 3 including documents about the community water supply plan and alternatives and reports from the stewardship task force.

There will be plenty of information available on the background and I would just assume take out

the paragraphs in here which may or may not come across as somewhat leading but just really stick to the facts which as Mr. O'Connell the fact is that last section starting with this RFP request qualified firms to conduct a feasibility study that's in essence what we need to get and I'm not sure that we need to include some of this other

Verbiage, starting with the paragraph that starts water demand within the early service area.

On page two, I would suggest that someone take out that paragraph, the next one, and everything in the following paragraph, all the way up to this RFP request qualified firms.

I guess, I've read through this prior but I want to read through it again so we can take a few minutes.

The reason that's a problem is you think that most firms that would want to bid on this would be firms that would be wanting to actually do the work for the water supply and so they wouldn't want to bid if they didn't think that an actual dredging project could emerge?

Is that the problem?

This is a complicated process we've been through.

I don't think anyone would disagree with that.

And I certainly want to make sure whatever we put in here is accurate.

You know, my reading, I'm going to actually take a minute if you don't mind and read through it again, but if you could point out to me some specific language you think is either inaccurate or prejudicial, I'd like maybe be directed to it, because I think it actually shows a complicated situation, but where the boards in charge have decided we want to take a close look at drug use, and so we'd like for you to bid.

And I guess what they're

I guess in some ways I'd have more of a problem with the opposite, which is companies feeling like the reason they're coming here to bid is because they expect to get the work.

I mean, the reason they could come do the studies, they expect the work.

I think that's in some ways, that's a criticism of some people.

Janet Fleming is that they were too close to the end product.

So I'm not really sure what the problem, I mean, we can pay them for their time through one of objective analysis.

For instance, this RFP is being pursued in response to these discussions to understand the feasibility of dredging and expected costs sufficient to make public decisions if dredging is in the public interest, and if so, how to pursue budgeting, finance, design and implementation.

I guess I think it's easy to, I don't know, maybe I'm just looking at it too conspiratorially.

Where is that?

I mean, I didn't...

I really don't want to belabor this point because I think ultimately what's more important is the scope of work itself.

Let me just start with my overarching

recommendation or suggestion or concern, the hungry one, which is, I feel like we're trying to do a lot with this RFP and the women firms, there's a very few number of firms that are going to be able to do all of this work and I'm guessing that none of them are local and

My question for you, Mr. Frederick, is there any reason why we couldn't separate out the scope of work and have one track, one RFP focus on the survey work that needs to be done that we're, as I understand, obligated to do anyway in advance of moving forward in our Canadian water supply plan?

So, for instance, under the scope of services,

the first one, two, three, four, five items, technical support for labeling of wetlands, bathymetric survey, pre-drug survey, volume analysis, sediment analysis.

I think those are all important, but I wonder if you could comment on the pros and cons of separating these two lines of investigation out and having a separate RFP that actually focuses on the very simple question, which I think

We all need to know, which is, is there a site that's going to work for the scale of dredging that we're talking about?

Which is a fairly straightforward question, and we know there's very few sites.

We know anecdotally, and just from preliminary research, there's very few sites that could work.

This whole enterprise hinges on that question.

Because if there isn't a site that's going to work, it's going to meet all these criteria that you started out here, then I don't see how it makes sense to proceed with any further exploration dreading.

So I wonder if you could comment on

First of all, the first thing I would say is that this document

does not prohibit in any way a firm that specializes in dredging subcontracting portions of the work related to surveys to a different firm, if that's how they choose to approach the project.

It does require one firm who has the expertise in dredging to be the overall coordinator of what are all the detail things

that gets surveyed, where are all the detailed steps in following up to make sure that all important details to their overall investigation get addressed.

The biggest risk I see in trying to break that out, and the first thing I would admit is the Rivanna staff are not expert dredgers ourself.

We're looking for this expertise because we don't have the expertise internally.

If we separate the two and manage on this, in effect, two separate contracts,

Inevitably with something this complex, we'll run into it probably multiple times, is you send somebody out to do, for example, a bathymetric survey and they collect this data.

Then you have the dredging company coming in to try to evaluate this data and starts asking questions.

Well, did you look at this?

Did you look at that?

Did you look at that?

There may be answers to a couple of them, there may be not answers to a couple of them simply because it was being done separate.

They didn't know they were supposed to answer that question and you run into these kinds of coordination issues and you probably end up spending a lot more of it than the staff's time and probably more money trying to go back and chase these things.

A corollary to that, I think we all know in this community that there's a lot of citizen activism and that in many ways is a positive thing.

People like to ask their own questions, like to test scenarios, like to think of even more and more ideas and without that effective coordination it makes it possible that we're less likely to be able to answer those types of questions.

because we're trying to guess in managing two separate contracts what all that coordination is going to be ahead of time.