City Council Meeting   9/21/2009

I'd like to learn a lot.

This is just a trap.

Thank you.

All right, let's count them.

Okay, I'm going to call the regular council meeting of 21 September 2009 to order and first of all we have to pledge allegiance to the flag.

Everyone please stand.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Dr. Brown?

Ms. Edwards?

Here.

Mr. Taliaferro?

Thank you.

Okay, I have a few announcements and some others may have some announcements too, but let me start out here with reminding everyone that the Government Service Day will be Friday, October the 2nd from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the downtown mall.

and there will be some special presentations, giveaways, etc.

and hopefully some people will be able to attend and see what some of the things that the city is doing.

Also, Public Lands Day invitation which is kind of a call for volunteers on Saturday, September the 26th between 10 and 1 which will be held at Penn Park and if you want more information on that you can

Check, you can call 970-3656.

There's some announcements and activities going on in the community.

Tickets are still available for the NAACP Freedom Fund banquet this Friday, September 25th at the Double Tree Hotel.

If you would like to purchase a ticket, contact Lynn Boyd,

at 9750661 during the day and 806-9449 in the evening.

The tickets are $50.

The Charlottesville Alumni Chapter Delta Sigma Theta Sorority is sponsoring two programs for young ladies in the city of Charlottesville and our outlying counties.

They're specifically for girls between the ages of 11 to 14 and 14 to 18.

The programs are designed to enhance their education, self-esteem, and assist in goal setting and leadership development.

If you'd like more information,

404-964-5762 is the number you can call, or email dadgchair at SeavilleDST.org.

The race dialogue steering committee will have a meeting this Thursday, September 24th at 5.30, and the meeting will be held at the South First Street Community Center, located at 1000 South First Street.

And this community center is actually very close to Mount Zion First African Baptist Church.

Our legacy is an authorization that has created an opportunity to walk the 50th year since Charlottesville experienced the beginning of the end of legal separation of students and public schools based on race, massive resistance, and to commemorate this historic event

September 26 from 2 to 5 at Venable Elementary School.

You know Venable is located at 406 14th Street Northwest.

The director of Our Legacy Incorporated is Donald Martin and the president is Ann Carter.

And if you'd like more information, Ann Carter can be reached at 295-0084.

and just looking ahead, the City of Charlottesville and the Thomas Jefferson Health District will be having the second annual health summit and we will continue our efforts to reduce infant mortality and this conference will take place on October 21st from 8 to 3.30pm and it will take place in the Community Design Center.

It's a great lineup of presenters, and we're going to be talking about a Charlottesville Safe Sleep Program.

In any case, I've been answering that a couple of times, but if you'd like to register online, go to recservices at charlesford.org, or you can call 970-3260.

Anyone else have any announcements?

I agree.

I didn't have enough information.

to making a serious decision.

So I really appreciate the opportunity to get all the facts and data together.

Okay, thank you.

So we'll move, we'll defer that really until the next meeting.

Okay, under awards and recognitions tonight, I have a proclamation.

I'd like to read and present to Connie English, who's here representing the Shelter for Health and Emergency.

Whereas violence against women, children and men continue to become more prevalent as a social problem in our society and whereas the problems of domestic violence are not confined to any group or groups of people but cross all economic, racial and societal barriers and are supported by societal indifference and whereas the crime of domestic violence

violates an individual's privacy, dignity, security and humanity due to the systematic use of physical, emotional, sexual, psychological and economical control and or abuse with the impact of this crime being wide ranging.

and whereas in our quest to impose sanctions on those who break the law by perpetuating violence we must also meet the needs of victims of domestic violence who often suffer grave physical, psychological and financial losses and whereas it is victims of domestic violence themselves who have been in the forefront of efforts to bring peace and equality to the whole

and whereas no one person, organization, agency or community can eliminate domestic violence on their own, we must work together to educate our entire population about what can be done to prevent such violence, support victims, survivors and their families

and increased support for agencies providing services to those community members.

And whereas the shelter for health and emergency has led the way in the city of Charlottesville in addressing domestic violence by providing 24-hour hotline services to victims, survivors,

and their families offering support and information and empowering survivors to chart their own course for healing and whereas the shelter for health and emergency commemorates its 30th year of providing unparalleled services to women, children and men who have been victimized by domestic violence.

Now therefore be it resolved in recognition of the important work being done by the Shelter for Health and Emergency that I, Julian Taliaferro, Vice Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, do hereby proclaim the month of October 2009 as Domestic Violence Awareness Month and urge all citizens to actively participate in the scheduled activities and programs sponsored by the Shelter for Health and Emergency

and to work toward the elimination of personal and institutional violence against women, children and men.

Signed and sealed this 21st day of September 2009.

Ms. English, would you come forward?

Okay, now we have matters by the public and public comment will be permitted until 7.35 and

We allow three minutes.

Councilman Taliaferro and members of the council.

My name is Paul Long and I live at 1410 Grady Avenue here in Charlottesville.

And I've come here tonight to make a few briefing remarks about the proposal of Southern Development to build the William Taylor Plaza on Ridge Street.

I am categorically opposed to city council approving this project.

There is a housing crisis for moderate and low income persons in Charlottesville.

and in turn developers are willing to devote larger percentages of their projects for low and moderate income residents of the city.

I feel that all set proposals should be rejected by this council.

If the City of Charlottesville doesn't have the statutory authority to mandate the percentage of units that must be priced at moderate levels for lower income residents, then I feel that City Council should reject all applications for zoning variations for new housing developments, sending a message to developers that they must offer a higher percentage of affordable units voluntarily

Thank you, Mr. Long.

Thank you.

I'm Jack Wilson.

I live at 317 Manavista Avenue in Charlottesville.

First, I'd like to thank an earlier council for the Creek Stabilization Project for the Zalia Park.

That vote and that expenditure showed great foresight, it's working well, and it saved the park from a certain death from erosion.

Unfortunately tonight, I'm here to ask Council's help on two problems with Azalea Park.

You have some pictures of the problems.

First, Azalea Park is not being locked.

And the second problem is Azalea Park is being locked.

While I serve two terms on Charlottesville Park's advisory board and two terms on the Fast Springs Neighborhood Association, I'm here tonight just speaking for myself.

If you look at the first pictures, you'll see the entrance to our park and it's not locked.

It's not locked 24 hours a day.

There's a sign there that says the park is closed from 9 to 6.

But it's not locked, as it's supposed to be.

You'll see a picture of a toilet, round about 50 feet into the bushes, and a new replacement toilet.

This happened last month when the park was not locked.

On Vice Springs Neighborhood Association, first met with Chief Longo in 2003, his second week of work.

We addressed the problem of locking the park.

On the second page, you'll see a list of calls

The last two months.

The only time our park that we can find is getting locked is when we call 911 and ask for a police officer to come lock the park.

It seems to be recorded as extra patrols.

There were eight of those in August and one trespassing, which I agreed to be.

They found somebody trespassing.

It was non-occurrences in one month.

This month, there were 11 extra patrols, they found two people trespassing, and there was a criminal activity, specifically the destruction of the porta toilet.

The problem with Azalea Park being locked is on your third page, and we'll see a picture there of the Albemarle Athletic Association baseball league, Azalea Park.

Now, this is new.

They began their season this spring and haven't used the park since then.

But our park has been locked.

Our neighborhood ball field has been locked all summer.

You'll see pictures of trains and rocks completely barring Charlottesville citizens, neighborhood citizens, from enjoy a loud ball park.

We've asked the Albemarle Athletic Association why and they said they paid $1,000 for park maintenance to improve it.

They're protecting their investment.

That's about the price of the political, I think.

So if we could lock the park and unlock the park.

More problems should be resolved.

On the better three minutes, the last page, you'll see some maintenance issues.

Our basketball field was one of the most popular.

It brought in a lot of neighbors.

It's unusable now you'll see pictures.

We have half a picnic table that is part of the most popular dog spot in Charlottesville.

You'll see that we have erosion problems that prevent pedestrian access by the neighbors to the park.

So I'd like to ask councilors to see that our park is locked at night.

We've tried everything we can from the neighborhood association to calling 911.

We'd like you to unwrap our park.

This is a Charlottesville park we're happy to share.

We love having activities down there, but don't bolt our neighborhood park.

The order is removed for the master plan tonight on the consent agenda for the cellular plant.

I would hope that we can put a priority on taking care of what we already have before we start spending for more.

And finally, big picture suggestion.

And I've mentioned this before and you've heard this from others beside me.

I would suggest renaming the neighborhood development services to the neighborhood conservation services.

Those of us that live in Charlottesville would like to conserve our neighborhoods.

We're happy to welcome others.

But the development is overriding taking care of what we have.

Elizabeth Breeden My name is Elizabeth Breeden.

I live at 981 Lynchburg Road.

I am the president and administrator of artinplace.org.

This is our eighth year having Art in Place in Charlottesville along the streets and highways.

Our mission is to make art accessible to the public.

In 2001 we put up six sculptures all by local artists and we basically have a sculpture lending program.

Artists bring us the sculpture and they leave it up for one year and we take it down.

At the beginning, not many people liked our program by public comment, but after we've been here five years we find we are one of the favorite programs in Charlottesville.

and I think that's because people don't think we shove art down their throats.

They know that we take it away again after it gets put up so they can have opinions about it and they don't have to live with those opinions.

We also have had people tell us they've moved to Charlottesville because they saw the art on the streets and realized that we value art as an important resource in our community.

At the beginning of this program we had a lot of conversations about what neighborhoods the art would go in and we assumed that perhaps there was a socio-economic decisions about art and discovered and said instead that vandalism really is more about anger management and alcohol than it is about what neighborhood it's in but it spans all socio-economic

neighborhoods and everyone seems to enjoy it.

We had quite a comment about the bird and the snake and about whether it made comments about aggression.

The lady that called said that perhaps it was just like the lion and the lion and that would never happen.

And we said, well, too bad.

We think it might happen.

We have a program where we decided that we would really like a nationally recognized art so we have raised our stipend to $1500.

That means that we are getting over 20 states where sculptors send in their submissions and they deliver their art and that $1500 covers their transportation fees and we are truly getting

Art of the National Caliber now on our street, so we feel like that that was a good investment in art money.

S.L.

Williamson has been installing the art for us and we are entirely run by volunteer labor, so we feel that you're getting a great result from your money in this program.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm Stratton Salutis.

I live at 704 Graves Avenue.

and I would guess that many of you were probably disappointed with the presidency of Bush and Cheney and I would guess that it wasn't just their policies but the way that they misled the public in pursuit of those policies and I think citizens here in Charlottesville who are looking at the process of the Meadow Creek Parkway and I would also add the dam project

are seeing a similar kind of deception, although fortunately at the local level we don't have water boards or yellow cake uranium.

And I'm just going to sum up this latest fiasco with VDOT maintaining two sets of plans.

One, the actual plan that they're intending to build, and then the other, one that they have no intention of building but have submitted to the Corps of Engineers.

So why this discrepancy of plans?

Why is it that the city is allowing VDOT to claim that they are planning on building a road without an interchange when the city expressively said they were not going to do that?

Well, they're probably confused because the city also, council, not this council, but the one before, embedded in the directive to the Interchange Steering Committee a lie when they said, well, I mean, in effect, we, you know, the city has made the interchange a condition, actually, the parkway, but we want you to pretend like we agreed to do the parkway without an interchange.

or what's known as the 17 Lane Accurate Intersection.

So since the city is claiming, even though it's a revision of history, that they had agreed to do the 17 Lane Accurate Intersection, VROT is now considering that to be a constructed project.

So we consider the Meadow Creek Parkway all ready to be there.

And when they did the no-build analysis for the interchange, they actually looked at the problem that this imaginary at-grade intersection with 250 was causing

and used that as the justification for the interchange.

So I hope that you all will correct this and also there's going to be a celebration in McIntire Park on Sunday, September 27th and I hope you all will come out and enjoy that in support of a conservation easement through the park.

Good evening Mr. Vice Mayor and Councillors.

I have come before city councils at almost every council meeting for the past five years.

Usually I come prepared.

Tonight I have no carefully written and factual statement.

Tonight I come as a citizen, a taxpayer, and a productive resident of Charlottesville to say I am discouraged.

I don't want to fight with City Hall.

I want to work with City Hall.

Unfortunately, again and again, I see and hear City Hall does not want to work with me or with more astute individuals or with neighborhoods.

Coming before this dais is an honor, a privilege, a right, and a civic responsibility.

Thank you.

Dede Smith, 2652 Jefferson Park Circle.

Good evening everyone.

I'm here tonight to talk about Go Figure of Water.

I'm here because I'm very concerned about an agenda item that is on the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority agenda tomorrow.

is of great concern to me, and I'm asking you as representatives of the people of Charlottesville to direct your representatives, your staff, and I have spoken with Ms. Edwards about this, to just say no to the Urbana Water and Sewer Authority.

Tom Frederick, Executive Director of Urbana Water and Sewer Authority, will ask the board tomorrow to allocate more than $2.1 million

to proceed with the dam work.

I believe this, 1.5 million of that is for design.

I believe this directly violates what you have very strongly expressed that you would like all of the information about such things as dredging, about the pipeline, all the comparative information before they begin construction of the dam.

and design is very much beginning construction of the dam.

Furthermore, I'm very concerned because there appears to be no plans to look at the situation with I-64.

The independent dam expert team, the ITRT,

It's expressly recommended that a separate study be done to look at that.

They don't know if they can saturate that dam.

They don't know if they have to move the culvert for that dam.

They are saying there's only preliminary conversations with VDOT before we know whether you can

can actually involve I-64, they should not be putting $1.5 million into designing the dam.

So I am asking you to direct your staff and your representatives to not allocate the money for design of the dam.

Thank you.

Good evening, Councilors.

My name is Tom Olivier.

I live at 4632 Green Creek Road in the Skyler area of Albemarle County, and I'm speaking to you now in my role as the Conservation Chair of the Piedmont Group of the Seattle Club.

The Piedmont Group believes that our long-term water plan needs to be revisited as part of a re-examination.

We believe we need better information on the ability of capacity distilling dredging of the Rivanna Reservoir to provide us with the water that our community needs.

The Sierra Club shares many of the concerns expressed by Diddy Smith and other members of citizens for a sustainable water supply.

I believe that no steps should be taken to implement the adaptive water plan, certainly until additional information or until the study of the ability of capacity restoring dredging to provide water is available to our community.

Thank you.

Counselors, Vice Mayor.

and the Bluestone 501 Park Hill.

I want to talk briefly about the importance of coordinated planning in Charlottesville.

This came up at the last meeting when the Seaman came and talked about stream restoration in the sewer line.

It was clearly also an issue with the planning of the item that I'm glad you've deferred from the agenda this evening because I think we should have more discussion of the sewer easement through McIntire Park.

Part of the issues we've heard that there's a health and welfare issue and the importance of going from a 21 to a 30 inch sewer line and yet on the map and in the easement you're being asked to give, the sewer easement magically stops midway through the park and I can't figure out or know why that is since I assume that the entire

Sewer will be replaced, and so it would be great to actually understand the entire easement and its connection to the road.

If health and welfare is an issue, then it ought to be an issue that we can approach all at one time.

In a situation like this, and indeed in Greenbrier,

I think that there should certainly be a census of trees and a census of the landscape in order to be able to make sure that we're locating these projects in a way that minimizes their damage to the landscape, to the park landscape.

and I was encouraged that some of the language of the stories has been cleaned up and that they've realized after last meeting insisting that there had to be a 40 foot, no tree, no shrub zone and it's shrunk down to about 20 feet.

But I think that, I hope the council can push a little harder and really ask the tough question of why the sewer isn't going right adjacent to the road and let the road provide fully one half of the no tree, no shrub zone.

It just makes sense to try to get that work together.

And I know that based on this money's newspaper that

Mr. Huja is very enthusiastic about the possibilities for planting up the easement in a different way.

And there's a beautiful picture attached to the council's ordinance on this that shows a great section.

The section doesn't have the road.

It's impossible to actually do a section through the sewer easement.

and not include the road.

I just think we need to look carefully at the road, at the issues of providing sewer to the community and find a way to pull those elements together.

There's one additional item that

staff pointed out and that is that it might be more expensive to move the sewer easement away from the creek and yet there's almost no elevation change.

This is going through a very flat part of the park and I think that we really, the council, should really ask and insist

that this be done in the least destructive way possible and it's clear that the least destructive way possible would be to put the series right next to the road and let the road provide the no tree, no shrub zone.

Thank you.

That is all the people we have signed up.

My name is Patty Mooney and I live in the city of Charlottesville.

I would like to also add a little bit to what Ms. Smith said about the decision Rivanna is being asked to make tomorrow at the board.

I implore you not to let the city representatives vote in favor of this.

I think this is a terrible mistake.

We've already paid almost $5 million for information that now is no good to our community.

I'm going to say that again.

Almost $5 million.

They are now asking for 1.6 million more dollars to design a dam that may not work.

Why would you do this without first doing the geotechnical work?

To even know why would you design a dam gave a funny name to the same problem.

They spent 1.7 million designing something and then found out they couldn't build it

without tripling the price because of the rock.

Why would we do this again?

We've made this mistake once.

We also know that all the other information is wrong.

We know that gannet filming, the amount of water we need is wrong.

We know the pipeline that they have to build doesn't have a route.

It has no route.

It has no cost.

How can we go forward designing the dam so we know if they can have a pipeline, which they say they have to have?

I mean, this is really putting the cart before the horse, and depending on you, employing you as our city representatives, please, maybe you didn't know about this last time around, and you got

Don Boozled, and $5 million went down the drain, but you don't have to do it again.

We've given her time and time and time again.

We've emailed you.

We've given her petitions.

We've had neighborhoods come.

Please, please listen to us this time.

Please.

My name is Richard Lloyd, I reside at 1825 Loca Chate, Corbin, and the County.

And I came to talk once about why does Charlottesville need this water?

We have this four-party agreement, and the four-party agreement says that the people who need the water

where the increasing demand curve are so reliable for the cost of the impoundment that's required to supply that water.

Charlottesville has a decreasing demand curve.

Why do you want to build a dam to have more water when you don't need more water?

Who in Charlottesville wants to raise the water rates when you don't need it?

All this pain is that you come down here week after week and people keep coming forward and saying don't build this dam, don't build this dam, save our park, save our park.

and if you just look at it and say well the city does own the reservoir and the reservoir hasn't been maintained and there's some kind of fiduciary responsibility I would think for the city to maintain their assets.

and start taking care of the assets that you already own and stop trying to build assets for the county that you don't need.

I just don't get it.

It just seems so simple.

There was some talk when I was here before about there was a need for maintenance of the Raggie Mountain, the current Raggie Mountain Dam.

And I went back and I found a report that outlined the condition of the dam and then I found a quotation that was given by Janet Fleming.

and in their quotation they gave four options and they said if you pick option B they'll cost you four and a half million dollars and it will give you at least another hundred years of service life out of this dam for four and a half million dollars we've spent 1.7 million I think just on the design of a dam that will never be built if that is the sole responsibility of the party that needs it why doesn't the county reimburse Rivanna for the money that's been spent long before

They even consider asking for more money.

So I guess I look forward to saying all this discomfort in the community would be relieved if city council would stand between the bills and the people.

If city council would take the assets that they control and maintain them and preserve them versus flooding them and letting them silt in.

So I look to you and say you can stop this discomfort of just standing up and saying this is what we need and this is our plan and if somebody needs additional water, which we don't need, let them take their problems and deal with them as the four party agreement says they should.

Thank you very much, appreciate your time.

I've had my time and I only take 10 seconds but I think most if not all of the comments tonight by the public address

issues that would be furthered by renaming the Department of Neighborhood Development Services to Neighborhood Conservation Services.

Good evening, I'm Peter Clingman.

I live at 407 Head Street in the city and I'd like to address an issue of water as well, but not the dam.

I'd like to address the issue of the fountains on the downtown wall.

I came before you probably three months ago and was told that the fountains would be operating probably within a week and perhaps several times in the intervening months I've been told that the

Fountains would be operating within the week.

And then there was an article in the Daily Progress by Rishona Dixit that stated she inquired about the future of the Fountains and was told that the Fountains would be operating probably within the week.

And so I'm curious as to when this week will be coming to an end.

And I walk on the Mall quite frequently and

Actually a fair number of people watch this show on TV 10 and people stop me on the mall and say, well when are you going to go up to council and tell them you need to get those fountains written again and I become a poster child I guess for fountain use and so I am here partly at the request of those folks

But there has been very little activity on the Mall and the fountains.

There's been no work in the base of the fountains.

They're still just excavated and the only time there's water in them is after we have a rainfall.

This has been many weeks since the completion on time and under budget of the MAW project of which the fountains were a component.

So I question and question at the time whether the idea of on time under budget really means something in regard to that project.

I don't know what the funds being expended on the fountains are, but I would encourage council to take whatever action it can to either get the contractors or the

City or whoever is taking care of those fountain improvements to make the necessary improvements.

It would be quite a shame if the entire season goes by and no water comes from any of the four downtown fountains.

If not, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing.

I have one of those questions.

I'd like to comment about Mr. Wilson's issues with the airport.

He has four issues.

I think I hear about four of them.

I don't know why it's that long of a night, and why the ball field is just not very good.

It could be used by citizens.

That it?

Anyone else?

I agree.

I'd like to get information on Azalea Park.

I'd like to hear from the police department about issues involved with locking.

I'm not familiar with whether we lock any of our other parks.

There might be some manpower issues about doing that, but I'd like to learn more about that.

And I agree.

I mean, I don't see any reason why a public field should be locked.

I am intrigued by Dan Bluestone's idea, it was last time he came, of putting the easement for the sewer line adjacent to the road, that seems to make intuitive sense to me, and I communicated that previously to the staff, and I'd like to make sure we get some information on, hopefully, that that's a good idea, and if the issues with it are on VDOT's end, I would think we can get VDOT to do it the way we want.

There may be some other issues, I'm certainly not an engineer,

I guess to address the dam issue, you know, while I

I still remain skeptical that dredging provides enough water for the future needs of our community and I think we'd make a big mistake if we did nothing and turned that to be wrong.

But at the same time I think that I guess I would like to ask that our city representatives defer from meeting this issue so we can get some information from city staff on two aspects.

One is what are the implications

for moving forward with this type of engineering.

How does it fit into the study that hopefully we're going to be doing on dredging?

And third, I'd like to maybe hear a little more information on are there serious issues involving Interstate 64 or exactly where has that been addressed?

I just want to make a couple of comments to Mr. Long.

I do agree that it is important to develop the Cherry Avenue neighborhood.

I was in support of the William Taylor Plaza location because I wanted to preserve the trees and the natural space that we have there.

and if there was going to be a development, I wanted to look more at the parking lot and the IGA market that's already there as a possibility.

As far as the neighborhood conservation services, I'm intrigued by that name, but I don't think we need to have a new name to look at our mission, but I'm intrigued by that.

Also for Colette Hall, I see that she's left.

It is hard to be a servant leader, and she does work hard.

And she is one of my favorite city noise makers.

So I want you to know that as hard as she works, her work does not go unnoticed.

Because can you imagine how we would feel if she didn't show up for council meeting and she's not here.

We wonder where she is and if she's okay.

It's not just us.

But she has her own Collette Hall fan club.

So the Collette will be where I just sent you a hug.

And for the issue regarding the sewer line, I'm glad that we've taken the time to look at that and to get all the information so we can make

and a similar decision because it will be a difficult decision to make.

And if you've ever visited a country or lived in an area where there wasn't a similar line, you know that this is really a health issue and it's important.

It's really a luxury.

It's something that I don't think we should take for granted.

Move forward with this process.

I think it's important to remember that design does matter with everything that we do.

And design does matter with coordinating all of the projects that we have.

The plans to look at I-64 as it relates to the water supply, I think that would best be served at the Rivanna meeting.

I'm glad you brought it up here.

And I'll try to echo it again tomorrow so we can get more information about that

Ms. Edwards asked me to take a look at some of the minutes from previous council meetings and I believe at the December 15th meeting last year, the council voted unanimously to allow studies

on the projects with the water system to move forward.

However, that no construction on the dam would occur or be authorized until such time as all of those studies were appropriately finished.

I believe it was further discussion that Craig Brown brought up to me earlier this evening about the discussions that occurred between some of the other representatives on the Rivanna board.

It was clear from some action that they took that the studies were to move ahead.

However, the construction would not take place until such time as the studies were completed.

One time I understood we were trying to get parts and we had some problems or something, but I can assure Mr. Kleeman and the council that nobody wants those fountains fixed any quicker than we do and we look forward to Mr. Kleeman coming forward and saying that they're completed.

We are having substantial numbers of problems getting the

correct parts and fittings in and I think it's part of that is just the idea of trying to convert the older fountains to the new.

I also will comment on the park issue.

I guess it disturbs me that if a portion of the park is locked and city residents can't enjoy it.

I would hope we could check on that and see what the situation is because that doesn't seem to make much sense to me.

Ms. Breeden talked about the art in place, which I think is a great addition to the city.

and I know she mentioned some people like it, I think is what she said, paraphrasing, some don't, but in all honesty I really hear a lot more people say they like it than don't.

Every now and then you'll hear a couple negative comments about it, but I think it's a real nice addition to the city and I hear great comments from people that live in the city and visitors that come here for different events, they talk about it, so we thank you for what you do.

Mr. Bluestone, we'll try to get you some answers on the questions that you brought up on the easement.

And I guess that's all I have.

Okay, the consent agenda.

Does anybody have anything they want to remove?

Is everybody alright?

Okay.

Item A, $18,000, highway safety grant, second of two readings.

Item D, appropriation, $1500, Charlottesville Police Foundation contribution, second of two readings.

Item C, appropriation, $157,143, victim wellness program grant, first or second reading.

IMD, $58,007, Safe School, CDSS Grant, First or Second Readings, Appropriation, $5,000, Albemarle Schools Contribution for First Tea Program,

First of second reading.

Resolution, authorize transit application for state funds.

First of one reading.

Resolution, authorize the Azalea park master planning process.

First of one reading.

Item H, resolution, reprogram the CDBG and home funds.

First of one reading.

Resolution, lease the city land to Arden Place.

I have a motion.

Vote.

Okay, the next item is a public hearing.

lease of the Tal Park Tenant House.

Members of Councils, very briefly, this is a proposed lease of the Tenant House at Darden Tal Park, which is owned jointly by the City and the County.

The County Board of Supervisors approved this lease at its September 9th meeting.

The lease does provide for a reduced rate of rent in exchange for tenants performing approximately 50 hours of maintenance and security tasks each month.

I don't know the actual practice at this part but I will note, and this is on the second page of the lease,

that one of the duties the tenant performs is assure that the park entrance gates, greenbelt gate and restrooms are open and closed at posted times and upon special request.

So I just point that out in light of the discussion we just had about Azalea Park.

This is the standard lease that we use for the tenant house.

It is a one-year lease which is subject to automatic renewals for up to four one-year terms unless it's terminated.

There is a proposed resolution in your notebook and this can be approved by one reading resolution.

Council, have any questions before I open the public hearing?

Okay, I'll open the public hearing on the lease of the Tal Park Tenant House.

Anyone care to speak?

Hearing no one, I will close the public hearing.

Vote.

Okay.

Good evening City Council and Vice Mayor.

My name is Heather Combs and I am the program supervisor for Community Attention's Community Based Services and serve as the director for the City Internship Program.

First, I'd like to thank the city for the funding that allowed 83 city youth to learn about work, feel good about all the skills that they learned, and feel good about being productive, and have healthy things to do from 16 to 18 hours a week in the summer.

I'd also like to thank the city for the funding that allowed 54 agencies, businesses, schools to benefit from the youth's work and creative energy and also to reap the benefits that they felt from mentoring a youth.

I am trusting that you received the outcome report in your packet which was pretty thorough and I know that we have some time constraints tonight so what I'd like to do is to go over some key points about outcomes and certainly welcome any questions or any feedback that you all have about the program and I definitely want to save time.

We're really excited to be able to show you a video which we weren't able to do last year when I made my presentation.

I'm excited to let you know that as far as outcomes, we started a six-week program on June 22nd.

We ended on July 31st.

The youth did work 16 to 18 hours a week at various businesses, schools and nonprofits and government agencies.

They also received a weekly workplace readiness group where they learned about all kinds of work skills and banking and money management.

We had 130 youth that were referred to the program from our various partners that referred but also parents and teachers and other people ended up applying as well.

We had about 93 interviews and out of those 93 interviews, 83 were selected to be involved in the program.

We had 54 sites involved and site supervisors and there's additional 13 sites this summer from last summer 2008 that joined in and some really great new sites which we're really excited about.

So we're really happy about our outcomes this year.

78 out of those 83 interns were successful and that's basically about a 93.97 percentage and we define success as 78 of those youth

started the program and made it to the very end of the program within six weeks.

We did lose five youth, but we replaced two about week two.

So overall, we lost five, but we ended the summer on July 31st with 78 still working, still being successful.

We had 37 of those interns lived in public housing, which was 44.58%.

And overall, our site feedback was very positive.

We had 69 site evaluations turned in at the summary report.

I have an additional five more that were also fairly favorable, mostly yeses, and overall pretty impressed with the program and felt like they would continue to work with us and adopt and mentor our youth.

I think overall we still have a couple of youth working in the community.

We had a few youth still volunteering at the different sites.

We had a huge celebration at the end of the summer where many of the supervisors came and many of the parents spoke.

One parent spoke about how the program really, really helped change his son that had a lot of disabilities and really struggled with keeping a job and actually

learned a lot of confidence and a lot of skills through this program.

We were very pleased with some of the support letters that came, especially from Public Works, from Chad Thorne, with his intern, developed a really strong relationship, and very pleased with some of the parent testimonies and the intern testimonies, their site supervisors, and overall, on behalf of community attention,

Our 54 agencies and 83 interns, we felt pretty proud when we closed the program on July 31st and felt like the youth, most of the youth overall gave us testimony in our weekly meetings with them and our individual counseling sessions with them and with their parents that they did enjoy the program, they enjoyed their work, they learned job skills and they will continue to grow and develop.

We are looking into right now the school year internship program.

As you know, council and city decided to fund slots for 70 kids.

We were able to serve more because we've had 11 businesses provide the stipend.

And then council approved slots for 10 youth.

to work for 10 weeks in the school year program roughly six hours a week.

We're also looking into tapping into business partnerships.

Our hope is that we can find more businesses that will provide youth the stipend and we can kind of grow also a school year program in addition to looking at sustainability when we enter into next year and next summer.

But I'd like to thank you very much again.

I'm open for welcome questions, comments,

We're gathering a lot of feedback from site supervisors, which we will put in motion for next year.

And again, this being the fourth year that Community Attention has overseen the internship program, we're looking to strengthen and grow and improve and make the program better and better and better so that we can provide these youth with valuable opportunities and get them off the streets and teach them skills and help them feel really good about themselves.

Well thank you, and looking through the information we received, I was impressed with your instruction you were giving, work ethics and job skills, particularly fines if you don't comply at certain times.

You're late, etc., etc.

And also the letters which you mentioned of support and letters from parents too.

I think it's a testament to the success of the program.

Thank you.

I'd just like to add to your comments.

It was excellent, and I hope we'll continue in the next year in all its terms, at least.

I'd like to say it's the only council that was here when we started this program.

You know, you've taken this from a good idea and made it a great idea.

I think it's really, it certainly way exceeded my expectations of what we could do with this program.

And I'm really excited to see local businesses investing in it because it's really a way of investing in the community.

Just one question.

I'm happy for the 78, but I'm sad for the 5.

that weren't as successful.

Well, we, I mean, the five that did not make it, most of them didn't make it for their own, none of us were terminated.

Those just decided they didn't want to do the program anymore.

And we, our interventions included meetings with parents,

meetings with their partners, going to the home, going to the downtown mall to look for them, encouraging them to make the best decision.

Prince William is there, an opportunity to follow up with the youth that we have contact with over the summer to see how they're doing during the school years and the other.

I think that's a fantastic idea and we'll certainly look into that.

Right now there's no formal intervention with those kids other than, you know, informally they're continuing to come by and call.

But I think that's a great idea and I do know of a lot of the other interns, the second year interns last year that weren't able to work because they captivated two years.

We're checking in with them also, but I think that's a fantastic idea.

The only thing I wasn't, I don't want to go over in time, but we tried a lot more this year to, we had SunTrust Bank make a big presentation about money management at the second day orientation, and SunTrust Bank, and I really, you know,

I'm totally thankful to Sheila Johnson, the SunTrust branch.

We set up two first sessions at the bank for youth to get checking accounts and put a lot of time and energy into it.

And it's going to start small, but we had six out of those 70, 80, 80 kids actually open bank accounts, which seemed a little low to me, but I'm hoping that as we partner with banks and look at financial sustainability

These kids and families that maybe we can do some other things to kind of entice them.

Well, since the school year program is going to be smaller, we're hoping to do some more active intervention with those 10 kids and their families.

I don't know if we can require them to get a check-in obviously with the city, but we're going to be doing some other things to look at how we can increase and grow that whole concept of money management.

Well, you could, for example, sell your deposits, paychecks, directly to the accounts.

So, you'll be paying them for your internship.

The check could go to the account.

The man on the line talked to finance.

I'll tell him you said that.

Because finance was very happy when they had to finish processing 83 paychecks for the internship.

I would agree with Mr. Huja in following up on that because I think that in concert with workforce development, asset management, especially at this age, is so important because so many people in our community are not linked to the traditional financial

systems for the reason why we have too many payday lending, check cashing places and car loan, car title loan places.

So if we really start planting the seed of asset management is going to be important.

Also my hope is that over time as you move to the next level with the programs clearly you have that the asset management can include businesses and generous people to provide some

Excellent, yes.

It was the world of money that had to have a code.

The what?

It was the world of money that had to have a code.

Yeah, I think that that's true, but just to be fair, I think a lot of kids probably heard from their parents about how, well, I have an account and I have these charges.

You know, I got overdrawn.

It cost me a lot of money.

Don't do that.

And so I think that there's an educational component here, but I certainly think that there's probably some hard lessons learned by other members of families about how, you know,

A checking account is great, but the way the system currently works, you can get in a lot of trouble if you don't manage your checking account carefully.

That's one of the growth points that I wanted to express to council, that that is something that we'd like to strengthen a little bit and get more people on board.

But I guess I was told by Rick and Joe that I'm supposed to ask you all to come

You told me some things you learned about work this summer.

It was really fun and a good job that I'm working with.

What do you like most about working at EVHR?

Listen as your day unfurls Challenge what the future holds Try and keep your head up to the sky Never stay, may close your tears Go ahead, release your fears Stand up and be counted Don't be ashamed to cry You gotta be, you gotta be bad You gotta be bored

You gotta be cool, you gotta be cool, you gotta say

You gotta be there, cause you gotta be bold, you gotta be wiser

And the future holds, tryna keep your head up to the sky

You gotta be fair, you gotta be bold, you gotta be wiser You gotta be hard, you gotta be tough, you gotta be smarter You gotta be cool, you gotta be strong, you gotta stay together All I know, all I know, never say goodbye You gotta be fair, you gotta be strong, you gotta be wiser

We've got a big crowd and they've got a state to go

You gotta be bold, you gotta be bold You gotta be wiser, you gotta be smarter

and

You're full of life It's amazing what you just like Talk about hurting all the time

Thank you for the video.

Really neat.

Okay, next we have a presentation on sustainable population.

I hope your presentation was much fun.

I won't be there as much fun.

Good evening.

I'm Jack Marshall, a CATI resident, but speaking to you tonight as President of Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population.

Only two years ago, ASAP formally asked you to contribute to research to help define optimal sustainable population size or range for the Charlottesville-Albemarle community.

We noted that the research would be a logical follow-up

to the city's endorsement of the 1998 Sustainability Accords, one of the fundamental principles of which was that, and I'm quoting here, in a sustainable community, the members understand that there are limits to growth.

And one of the objectives of those accords was, again I'm quoting, to maintain a human population size that does not reduce the sustainability of a region.

In August 2007, you voted to set aside $11,000 toward ASAP's initiative and released the funds after the city's Citizens Committee on Environmental Sustainability reviewed the scope of work we prepared.

You stipulated that the city's support was to be used only for the research on the biological caring capacity studies.

Thanks to the initial support of you city councilors,

and that of the Albemarle County Supervisors, ASAP was able to raise a hurdle of $112,000 for what we believe is the first systematic research effort in the United States to help estimate a community's optimal sustainable population size.

You'll hear a quick summary of one of those studies tonight.

Reports on the other four research investigations on our local biological caring capacity are expected in the next few weeks.

It is with great gratitude to the city for your early support and with pride in the research that your support has produced that I tonight introduce Clara Jantz.

Dr. Jantz,

is the principal investigator of the first study to emerge from ASAP's Optimal Sustainable Population Size Project.

The co-author, with her graduate student, James Munro, of the report, Estimating Impacts of Population Growth on Ecosystem Services for the Community of Albemarle County and Charlottesville.

She teaches in the Department of Geography and Earth Science at Shippensburg University and is a fellow in her university's Center for Land Use.

Dr. Janz is a specialist in land use change modeling and has produced numerous research papers and articles on development pressures in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Thank you Jack and thank you all for carving out a few minutes in your agenda for us to be able to present the results of our study.

I'm on the monitor, but not up there.

I guess we're on the TV monitors, but here we go.

Just to give a real brief definition of what ecosystem services are, these are services that ecosystems provide to humans.

In this region, a lot of those services are provided by the open spaces and the forests in Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

They provide services such as cleaning the air, cleaning the water, providing for erosion control and things like that.

I'm sure you guys have a pretty good understanding of that.

With this study, and we do have a report that's available on the ASAP website, so this gives a very broad overview of a much more in-depth project, but generally we had four objectives that we're meeting in this study.

First, to identify a set of ecosystem services that could be quantified and analyzed.

Secondly, to come up with different population growth projections and the associated land use changes.

to look at the impacts of those changes on ecosystem services and then based on those results to try to identify a range of population sizes that would limit impacts on ecosystem services.

We looked at 14 different indicators for ecosystem services, so we did a pretty broad brush approach for this region.

I'm obviously not going to go over all of these tonight, but I will highlight just a couple to show you guys the trends of the research that we found.

We also didn't do the whole study area as a unit.

So what we did was we broke down the study area into eight different sub-study areas.

And you can see we have the Charlottesville area as its own unit.

That includes the city of Charlottesville plus some of the adjacent neighborhoods that are closely associated with Charlottesville.

And then the rural areas, Rose Hill, Rivanna and Route 29.

So we have a balance of rural and developing study areas.

and each study area based on its current land use patterns grew in different ways.

So in this graph this shows population increases along the horizontal axis and the percent increase in population along the vertical axis.

The dotted lines are the trends in the rural areas and the solid lines are the trends in the developing areas and Charlottesville

is this line along the bottom.

And what this tells us is that based on our estimates that Charlottesville can accommodate about a 50% population increase before you run out of developable land.

Now that might, well we can talk about that later.

That's based on what we found.

So what's unique about Charlottesville and this study is that first of all, Charlottesville, this shows percent developed land in each one of our study areas.

And Charlottesville starts out in the year 2000, which was our base year for analysis, as being the most highly developed study region in the area.

And it also ends as being the most highly developed.

I think out of our study regions, Charlottesville has the highest density of population and of development.

and so faces different challenges and opportunities than some of the other sub-study areas.

For example, one of the indicators that we looked at was the amount of impervious surface within each sub-study area.

So this again along the horizontal axis has the population increased scenarios and along the vertical axis shows the amount of impervious surface area within each sub-study area.

So that's basically the amount of pavement.

And according to a pretty large body of research, we found that after about

And in year 2000, Charlottesville is already more highly developed than the 10% threshold.

to up to a 200% population increase for the entire study area, Charlottesville maintains the highest level of development and so what that means is that the associated ecosystem impacts with development really are being dealt with in Charlottesville more so than they are in some of the other areas.

When we look at just one ecosystem indicator, this is carbon storage for each of our areas.

and there's the line for Charlottesville.

And what we see happening in Charlottesville just with this one indicator, carbon storage, we saw similar patterns across many of the other ecosystem indicators that we looked at.

And what we see here is that first of all, Charlottesville, because it's already so highly developed, has the lowest capacity for carbon storage because there's fewer, there's less tree canopy in Charlottesville than there are in some of the other sub-study areas.

experiences the least amount of decline, but overall, after about a 50% population increase, Charlottesville's levels of carbon storage kind of decrease to a very low level and then stay there.

And in fact, even as the other study areas develop, none of those study areas reach the same level as Charlottesville does.

Again, I think that's an indication of the level of development that Charlottesville has already sustained and moving into the future that puts Charlottesville in kind of a unique situation.

We also produced, in addition to all these types of graphs similar to the one I just showed you, we also produced maps and so this is a spatial view of what carbon storage looks like across the study area.

So you can see in some of the rural areas where we have a lot of existing forests, those have higher rates of carbon storage and in the more developed areas we have lower rates of carbon storage.

So when we look at kind of the take home messages from the report that we found, first of all because the development patterns in the study area in Albemarle and Charlottesville are heterogeneous, that means that there's differences in impacts

between developing areas versus the rural areas.

And by that I mean Charlottesville, Crozet, Route 29, and Rivanna all received by greatest impacts from development than the rural areas do.

For Charlottesville, since Charlottesville is already so heavily developed, that might place Charlottesville in a position of mitigation in terms of

of retrofitting rather than mitigating the impacts of new development.

But one of the keys that we found in terms of the regional role of Charlottesville within Charlottesville and Albemarle County is that when Charlottesville runs out of developable land, the pressure that that places on the adjacent communities really has a big impact.

So once Charlottesville reaches build out, then the adjacent communities are left to deal with the spillover.

So what

The decisions that Charlottesville makes in terms of land use, in terms of zoning, in terms of density, in terms of open space protection, all of those things will have kind of effects on the surrounding area and that can be translated into opportunities and leadership opportunities for Charlottesville, which you guys have already taken after reviewing all the plans that we've reviewed.

For the region, we came up with two population thresholds.

First of all, the 50% population increase for the study area as a whole, that brings the whole region up to a population of almost 200,000.

It's at that threshold that ecosystem services in the developing areas, in Charlottesville and Route 29 and Rivanna and Crozet, when those ecosystem services start to drop off pretty steadily.

Once we get to 125% population increase, that brings us almost up to 300,000 people within the study area.

That's when the rural areas start to see an impact from development.

I really appreciate the opportunity to have worked on this study.

It's been really interesting and I think pretty groundbreaking from a scientific perspective.

And if you want a lot more information, we do have it posted up on the ASOP website and I'd be happy to take questions now or later as you guys would prefer.

Would anyone have questions?

I don't know if that's what I would say.

What I would say is that from the research that we did, and we assumed that development patterns stay the same given all of this theoretical new population that would come in.

And what we found is that when Charlottesville reached build-out, that was kind of the beginning of this development pressure on the adjacent communities.

And once those communities reached build-out, then that put all the pressure onto the rural areas.

So that's why this is more of a

a regional issue of what each of the land use decisions that are made in each area across the study area.

The other thing that we found too is that the impacts of development or the negative impacts on ecosystems are felt disproportionately within the developing regions including Charlottesville.

So if we look at the whole area

kind of as a unit and ecosystem services look pretty good even up to 125-150% increase but if we look at it at the sub study area then the developing regions are the ones that really bear the brunt of the impacts of that so it's

Anyone else?

I mean this is because this is the first time we've had an opportunity to hear the information and inform just the ordinary person that finds this all very abstract and exceedingly creepy.

What are the opportunities for ordinary people to get this information to understand it so we can all be excited

Well, that's actually a really good question and I think that there's actually going to be some outreach that will be coordinated through ASAP to kind of distill a lot of this information down so that it can be digestible to kind of the average person because an average person downloading a report is

It's like 88 pages long or something, so you wouldn't want to read that.

I'm going to explain greatly, Michael's got a good question.

What does it mean?

So what does it say to you?

Well, I mean I guess sitting here tonight and listening to a lot of the concerns about some of the open spaces within Charlottesville, you know I heard about erosion issues in a park, I heard about concern about open spaces being developed and I mean those are real issues that you know from a quality of life perspective have an important component but also from an ecosystem services

For cities like Charlottesville

I think we could make a link maybe from the city's website to your website.

Tomorrow at noon the League of Women Voters is sponsoring an hour long community dialogue at which Dr. Jones will present the research in much more detail.

And the community outreach project that she mentioned will occur over the next year, and what we'll be doing with each of the studies is going into the community, and in simple terms, I hope, your photos have all taken,

and say, this is what research is finding about the impacts of growth.

What do you, community, think the public policy implications are?

What should we as a community do about it?

And the traditional strategy is smart growth.

But some of this research, I think, says smart growth works up to a point.

You can stuff growing populations into areas

but there will be impacts and at some point it starts to spill over into contiguous areas.

And then what do you do?

Okay, well thank you all for your presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, the next item on the agenda is a presentation and a discussion about massive resistance and kind of to set the stage for this, I think all of you have within your council packet a proposed resolution and I'm going to read this and then Mr. Maurice Jones, Assistant City Manager, will have a few comments once I conclude reading this and then we can have a little discussion on it.

This is a proposed resolution that would be proposed if we take action on it at the first meeting in October, which would be October 5th.

Whereas, on May 17th, 1954, the United States Supreme Court ruled against segregated schools in the United States with the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision and

Whereas the Commonwealth of Virginia implemented a strategy of massive resistance to public school integration between 1954 and 1959.

And whereas in 1955 the parents of African American students in Charlottesville petitioned the school system to transfer their children to white schools and were denied.

And whereas on August 6, 1956

United States District Court Judge John Paul ruled in Allen v. School Board of the City of Charlottesville that the school system must integrate Lane High School and Venable Elementary School.

And whereas on September 19, 1958, in an effort to prevent the desegregation of the Charlottesville school system,

the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia ordered the closing of Lane and Venable and whereas Lane and Venable were shut down for the period of five months and the Charlottesville school system remained segregated for the remainder of that year

And whereas on September 5, 1959, Judge Wall ordered immediate transfer of 12 African American students, 3 to Lane High School and 9 to Venable Elementary School.

And whereas those 12 students bravely integrated the Charlottesville School System on September 8, 1959.

And whereas the struggle for equality in the Charlottesville Public School System

and our city forever affected, dozed and bogged.

Now, therefore be it resolved that we, the undersigned members of the Charlottesville City Council, praise the courage displayed by the families of the 12 students and those who supported the integration of our school system, believe that the closing of Lane and Venable in our city from 1958 to 1959 was a disgraceful act

and mourn for the pain that was caused before, during and after the integration of our schools.

And for all the wounds, known and unknown, we do hereby apologize and sincerely hope that all of us can learn from the injustices of the past as we move forward together.

Mr. Vice Mayor and members of council, thank you for this opportunity to speak with you this evening.

Back in August, the city council expressed an interest in acknowledging the 50th anniversary of the integration of the Charlottesville school system.

Staff was then asked to consider the possibility of creating a resolution that would in effect offer up a formal apology for the closing of the two city schools, Lane High School and Venable Elementary School, which were closed as part of the massive resistance movement here in Virginia.

As you know, those two schools were closed from 1958 to 1959 by the Governor of Virginia and were formally integrated in September of 1959.

We spent some time researching some of the steps that other communities have taken to either apologize or express regret for their involvement in massive resistance.

That included the Commonwealth of Virginia and Prince Edward County, where the schools were closed for five years.

Governor Kean has also apologized for the efforts of the Commonwealth of Virginia

and also the mayor of Norfolk has formally apologized for their involvement with massive resistance.

Tonight we're presenting the draft resolution for the council to consider.

It includes some of the history associated with the steps taken to integrate our schools and acknowledgement of the long-term effect of massive resistance and of course the apology for the actions taken during that time of our history.

We are open to any suggestions that you may have on the wording of the resolution

and its general message.

Thank you.

I have a couple comments.

I was prompted by this to do some online reading.

Wikipedia has quite a bit on it.

The Foundation for the Humanities has sponsored some good information, historical information on this.

I don't know that there are that many school systems in Virginia that actually close your schools.

I think it's a small number and we're one of that many.

I think that, you know, one of the things is, you know, city council apologizing.

And one of the quotes that, you know, cities do think, you know, what was city council's role in this?

The schools were closed by the governor, but according to a timeline in the VirginiaHistory.org,

The Charlottesville City Council called on the city to defend segregation.

So the city council didn't sit on their hands.

They weren't just a bystander.

Yes, so I think it's very appropriate.

I think that an apology would be issued because I think that city council was involved in this in a somewhat direct way.

and I would encourage people to check out the resources online.

I'll also say I think it's important we do this to commemorate it because it's important we recognize our history and I think this draws people's attention to this history and I encourage people to take a look online and read more about it because it's a sad part of our history but it's an important part that we remember it.

Okay, any other questions?

I just want to make a comment on that because it's something I've learned reading this.

The school board was in a real bind because on the one hand, they were being sued.

On the other hand, if they were to have allowed integration, they would be in violation of state law and be subject to penalties.

So, you know, the state had pretty much tied the hand to the localities in a very firm fashion.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you very much.

We look forward to acting on it the next week.

Alright, thank you.

Council, this is seeking the council's approval for us moving ahead with an application for some grant funds.

Jeanette is here to answer questions you might have.

In order to apply for the funds, we need a resolution from council.

I'd just like to start off with a little discussion about the revenue sharing grant program in general.

It's a little different than our normal grants that we do normally apply for where we create a grant package and then FHWA or VDOT or whoever's awarding the grant funding then chooses which projects to fund based on its merit.

The revenue sharing grant application was created by VDOT as a way to stimulate the localities in administering and creating projects that they felt was important for the transportation network in their community and in so much, there's a limit of a million dollars but if the city is willing to put forth a million then it gets matched dollar for dollar for an additional million from the state.

There is a four tier system for analyzing these grants and the first tier is if the city will locally administer the project, will run the first tier and will guarantee funding for

That's the grant.

If the project amount of the applications that are submitted throughout the state exceeds the limit, which currently it's 50 million, and that may change, if it exceeds it, then proportionally all of the grants will get funded at 80%, 90%, whatever the limit would allow.

So we're looking for this grant application to move forward, your priority list.

Projects are already funded in the six year program to a point.

Does anyone have any questions?

That was one of the corporation's resolution for that.

Any further discussion?

Vote?

Thank you.

Thank you, Council.

This item ordinarily would have been on your consent agenda at the last meeting, but after you passed it on first reading, Mr. Brown realized we had a few things that needed clarification.

If you recall, this is the ordinance that the planning commission has recommended that we would take our current parking zone zone, which is the downtown West Main Street, the corner area, and modify it to create an urban core parking zone, which is the downtown, which would not require parking except for

increased density with special use permits, the same thing at the corner and then everything else that's in the current parking zone zone would be modified to require parking at a reduced level for what the other parking requirements are.

After first reading, again there were some issues that needed clarification and there are four changes that were made, nothing of substance but again just clarity, one that

The provision of parking in the urban parking zone and corner parking zones would be limited to developments requiring special use permits regardless of whether a site plan is necessary.

The wording said if a site plan is necessary, this would just say it becomes necessary

Any council has the option to waive it instead of having to require it on the front end.

All those developers know what they have to do and then you can waive it if they request or if there are special circumstances.

Number two is any affordable housing units created in the parking modified zone would be exempt from the provision of parking as it was drafted on first reading.

This simply adds a clarification that that runs as long as the unit remains affordable.

So it's just a clarification there.

Number three, the monetary contribution alternative to providing required parking is simply changed to state that that amount per parking space would be set by council.

That was our intent all along, but after there was a recommendation made, council would set that.

This clarifies it and spells it out that council would set that amount.

and then there's a requirement that required bicycle storage facilities.

It's a good definition of what that is and it refers to the other sections of the ordinance that deal with required bicycle storage facilities.

Again, modern changes but they needed to be clarified.

City Attorney's Office worked with us to get those changes in and I believe, Mr. Brown, they would need to move to amend and then

One, if the amendments are acceptable you can vote to amend the ordinance as it was moved and seconded on first reading and you can have a final second reading vote.

Motion?

I move to amend this ordinance as outlined in the

Okay, moved and seconded.

Vote.

Okay, can we have a motion?

You can proceed to the no.

It's like you've already had a motion.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other business?

Hearing none, matters by the public.

Does anyone have anything they'd like to say?

Not hearing any, we will adjourn.

Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?