City Council Meeting   10/5/2009

Ooh, ooh, ooh

Piazza,

P.S.

P.S.

And you as well?

Ms. Kochis, can you call the roll please?

Thank you.

We're going to start with a couple of announcements.

Holidays are coming.

and one of the upcoming holidays that is a big favorite of my children and many children is Halloween and once again this year we have the 2009 Downtown Safe Halloween presented by Charlottesville Parks and Recreation.

Saturday, October 31st from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Charlottesville Pavilion, it's free and open to the public with games, slides, bounces, pumpkin and face painting, costume contests, prizes and safe trick-or-treating on the downtown mall.

So come on down and enjoy the festivities.

Also, once again this year, we are gearing up for our annual holiday, the shahas of tradition in the downtown mall and searching for the perfect tree.

The city is asking for the generous donation of an appropriately large tree from the community at large.

This tree should be in Evergreen, under 25 feet tall, and have easy access for removal.

The citizen who donates the tree will be recognized that the tree lighting and the removal will be handled completely by city staff at no charge to them.

Interested citizen should call Rick Berwick at 970-3129 and I'm sure he'll be happy to hear from you.

In terms of other business for tonight's agenda, I do have one item that I'm going to bring up at the end of the meeting relating to a letter, a proposed letter to our Senators Webb and Warner regarding climate change legislation.

I have a couple of announcements.

The Charlottesville Municipal Band, under direction of Steve Layman, will present a free-fall concert of band music from the British Isles on Sunday, October 18th at the Martin Luther King Center in Charlottesville High School.

The Albemarle Pipes and Drums will greet concertgoers with an outdoor performance beginning at 3 o'clock.

The City of Charlottesville and the Thomas Jefferson Health District is having the second annual Health Summit, Continuing Efforts to Reduce Infant Mortality.

This will be on Wednesday, October 21st from 8.15 to 3.30pm.

Now this is our continuing effort to address the African American infant mortality in the city.

Registration can take place online at www.sharlasville.org slash recreation.

Just click on register online.

You can also go to the parking lot annex and just pick up an application and also register for the summit there as well.

We had our government services day on Friday and within the

Panthers of Information that was witnessed here.

Please do not toss this.

And it was about foster parenting in Charlottesville.

And it says, let's keep Charlottesville kids here in Charlottesville.

Please consider foster parenting one of the 180 children and youth in the custody of the Charlottesville Social Services.

We urgently need more foster parents who live in Charlottesville so these kids don't have to lose their community on top of their other losses.

If you would like more information, please call Amy Nash at 970-3329.

Any other announcements or other business?

Okay, we're going to move on to awards and recognitions.

We have a very special resolution tonight.

You've been hearing about it both at our last city council meeting and in the media, I hope, relating to an effort by the city to address a historic wrong that was committed 50 years ago here in our community in the era of massive resistance.

Before we vote on this resolution, I'd like to read the resolution aloud.

It has been slightly amended from the version that was considered by counsel in first reading, or when it was first introduced at our last city council meeting.

A resolution of the city council of Charlottesville, Virginia.

Whereas on May 17th, 1954, the United States Supreme Court ruled against segregated schools in the United States with a landmark Brown versus 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 on July 26, 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, U.S. District Court Judge John Paul ruled an 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 5th, 1959 Judge Paul ordered the immediate transfer of 12 African American students 3 to Lane High School and 9 to Venable Elementary and whereas on September 8th, 1959 those 12 students bravely integrated the Charlottesville school system

and whereas the struggle for equality in the Charlottesville public school system and our city forever affected those involved.

Now therefore be it resolved that we, the undersigned members of the Charlottesville City Council, praise the courage displayed by the 12 students and their families, the work of the NAACP and others 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 one 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 together we strive to create a more just community.

Now assuming this resolution is approved by City Council tonight, we are going to send copies of the signed resolution to every one of the students who integrated Lane and Venable and I'd like to read the names of those students to you tonight.

I know at least one of them is here with us tonight.

The nine at Venable Elementary School were Charles E. Alexander, Raymond Dixon, Regina Dixon, Maurice Henry,

Marvin Townsend, William Townsend, Sandra Wicks, William T. Woodfolk, and Ronald E. Woodfolk and the three students who integrated Lane High School were Donald Martin, John Martin, and French Jackson

And so in approving this resolution tonight, we not only acknowledge those students and their family members, but the community at large who suffered through this injustice.

We certainly want to acknowledge the work of the NAACP, as I mentioned earlier, and specifically the work of their then president, Eugene Williams,

I want to ask if any of the students that I just named or their family members are in the audience if you would please stand and so that we can acknowledge your presence here tonight.

That's Mr. Donald Martin here.

I'd like to make two comments.

This forum is long overdue.

I ought to say that I think it's

a time for us to step forward and really try to atone for what happened many years ago and at the same time to you Mr. Martin and all of your colleagues who entered school at that time I just want to say that it took a great deal of courage to do that and I appreciate you all stepping forward and having the courage to do that because it was really I think well

I guess I would view it as an act of bravery to do it.

There were only a handful of school systems in Virginia where schools were closed and we were one of them.

So I think it's very appropriate that we, you know, there's a lot of things I like about this resolution.

but one of the things I like is it honors the families and the students who did that integration and I grew up in rural Virginia and the school system I was in until I was in fourth grade was all white and there's a lot of kids from my fourth grade class who I no longer remember but I certainly remember specifically Reverend Anthony Ruffin, Louise Foreman,

and Anthony and Alvin Davis who did integrate that class.

It's a strong memory for me.

I can just echo what's been said, that it is long overdue.

And I don't want to

underestimate the pain that the entire community experienced.

The African-American families and students as well as the white families, everyone suffered.

And also it is because of the bravery of the parents and the families in the community.

But I especially think, I just wonder what, number one, to be the parent

and to be brave enough to see your child and also to be that child to step into the classroom.

And I don't also underestimate the value of what happened then allows me to do what I do now.

And if it weren't for your bravery, I wouldn't have the bravery that I have every time I enter this room.

So I greatly appreciate it and I'm glad to be a part of council at this point in our history.

It also means that we have to begin to let go and begin to make some meaningful changes and take meaningful action so we can make sure that several years from now

Thank you very much.

Very well said by all.

I'm going to ask, instead of having an electronic vote, do we ask our clerk to call for a voice vote on the resolution, if you would, please.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Resolution passes.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Huja.

Well, I guess I would be remiss if I didn't say something, but actually I didn't come prepared to make remarks, but certainly 50 years after all of this occurred,

I really appreciate you taking the time, making the effort, and recognizing the need and importance of such a resolution.

It will, I'm sure, go a long way in your efforts to deal with this issue of race, and I understand that you are embarking on a discussion at some time in the near future.

I'd like each of the counselors to sign the resolution.

As I said, we'll get copies out to each of the individuals that we mentioned.

So thanks again to counselors, to Assistant City Manager Maurice Jones for spearheading this effort, and once again to the community and the students and the families who helped us through that unfortunate episode in our community's history.

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

And as always, when you come forward, please limit your remarks to three minutes and give us your name and address.

Good evening.

I'm Ann Carter.

I live at 715 Orange Dale Avenue.

I'm continuing in the vein of the resolution.

I'm here to thank

the Council and the City of Charlottesville for our successful

anniversary of the beginning of the end of legally separating students in public schools by race in Charlottesville, Virginia.

We had a very successful program, September 26th, at Venable School, encouraged by the principal of Venable School, James Mathison.

July 13th I was at the Capitol and I was asked to do that by Donald Martin to be on the committee for the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Commission and the Brown vs. Board of Education Scholarship Committee members.

Also on that committee

of the non-commissioned committee members, Dr. Rosa Atkins and the honorable Dave Norris and Ann Carter, co-founder and president of Our Legacy Incorporated.

At that time, I explained to the commission what we intended to do here in Charlottesville, Virginia to commemorate

And as I said before, on September 26th, at Venable, we had a very successful program.

We had the mayor there.

and again I want to thank you for your input and of course my use was related in with the dialogue on this.

All of this has come together.

Thank you Ms. Carter.

And I want to publicly thank you as well and our legacy for your efforts in that endeavor.

I live at 901 East Jefferson Street.

Welcome to the dredge report.

I'd first like to say that there is a citizen group, Citizens for a Sustainable Water Plan, without which this community wouldn't be having this conversation on dredging and damming.

Their work is to be applauded and given the attention it deserves.

Several weeks ago I performed a basic dredging demonstration to show that dredging is not rocket science.

It is a basic application of heavy equipment.

When I did that I got a close look at what was clogging that particular development lake.

So I went to the river on the reservoir, the level of the water was pretty low, and I was surprised at what I found.

I found gold.

Not the shiny kind, not the black kind of petroleum, but green gold.

And that's what I have in this container here.

Most of us call this muck.

The reservoir is choked with this muck.

And it's worth a fortune.

When it's dried or dewatered, as the expensive consultants say, it looks like this.

This is the same as this, but this has been dried out.

and as any farmer can tell you, there is nothing better to turn into farmland or into a garden.

There are tens of millions of cubic feet of this muck in that reservoir.

This is decomposing biomass.

Drive and bag this stuff will sell for eight dollars a cubic foot or more.

depending on how it's packaged and marketed and what you mix with it.

But it's very possible that we're looking at a way not only to dredge the Rivanna Reservoir for free, but to have a substantial revenue stream for many years to come.

and this muck, this topsoil is on top of the sand and gravel which everybody has been talking about.

Those are two commercial commodities in and of themselves.

There is an industry waiting to happen out there.

There are jobs waiting to be created.

Green jobs.

and in the middle of this national recession, this is an opportunity we cannot afford to pass up.

Oops, are you okay?

My name is Betty Mooney, I live in the city of Charlottesville.

We have a handout before you if you want to follow along.

It's the second page of the handout, what you need to know.

And the bill for this handout will come to you soon.

We worked very hard on this and I hope we put together something that's understandable for all of you and will be useful.

It's what you need to know before making a solid decision on behalf of the citizens of Charlottesville about your dams, the new dam at Ragged Mountain Reservoir, the cost of a new 112-foot dam.

There's been $1,400,000 allocated for that study.

the existing dam at Ragged Mountain Reservoir.

There has been no money allocated to know the cost of repairing that dam or the cost of raising that dam 13 feet.

The dam at the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir, there has been no money allocated to find out the environmental impact of allowing sediment to continue over the life of the dam or the risk of allowing sedimentation to continue over the life of the dam and its impact on city of Charlottesville residents if the dam should fail.

also the cause to eliminate this risk.

There's also been no money allocated for the I-64 embankment that is needed if the dam is to be razed, the new dam to its full height.

A study to determine the feasibility, the stability of the embankment, moving the culvert, the hazardous spill prevention and VDOT approval.

Pipelines.

The cost of building a new South Fork-Rivanna pipeline has been $25,000 allocated.

What is the route?

The easements, the land acquisition costs, the cost of pretreatment facility to remove silk before pumping, energy costs to pump water up there, $9.5 million over 50 years.

The cost to maintain pumps and the pipeline over 50 years.

B, the Sugar Hollow Pipeline, there's no money allocated.

The cost of repairing and replacing Sugar Hollow Pipeline, these main questions, are they still legal?

The cost to acquire if needed.

Dredging the South Boca Revana River to be announced.

The restorative cost to return South Boca Revana to its original capacity in a short period of time.

Cost to maintain the capacity with periodic dredging and sedimentation prevention.

Gradual and continual cost to maintain capacity to meet current site heat over other short

other infrastructure, no money allocated observatory water treatment plant cost to rehabilitate versus upgrade soft water water treatment plant cost to upgrade new pre-treatment facility at South Fork to remove sediment before pumping to Ragged Mountain a new demand analysis, no money allocated factoring changes during the last decade and project out every 20 years as is required by the state in 2011, that's almost here

Factoring new conservation information required by 2011.

An environmental impact study that has never been done.

No money allocated.

The cost and benefit of comparative approaches to different scenarios.

The consideration of loss of forest cover, wildlife habitat and air quality, energy costs should be included with streams and wetlands.

Cost share allocation, and I'll end with this.

How much of the cost of each component implemented should city residents be obligated to pay?

The county will defuse this debt with increased population.

How will the city defuse its debt to the cost of its citizens if we are now increasing population?

Thank you.

Good evening, DeeDee Smith, 2652 Jefferson Park Circle, and I would like to speak to one of those issues that's on that list, and that's the demand analysis.

I've come before you before to cite that this year we are 25% below water use as projected by our community water supply plan.

I was criticized for using one year, so those graphs in front of you?

I'd like to illustrate that this is not one year.

This has been happening for ten years.

For the last decade, our water use has come down.

What's really interesting is it's really started to come down.

It's actually the past eight years because it started to come down just as the century turned.

Just as the 21st century came in, which I find very symbolic, because this is the way the 21st century water use will play out.

Our water use will continue to decrease.

And if you look at those graphs, they're the same graphs, actually the same data is used, and that data

is in fact on the very last page.

I cited both my sources and I've given you the information.

They both come from the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority website.

And what you see on the top graph is the blue line is the projection upon which the community water supply is planned.

That's again Fleming's numbers.

The red line is the actual use.

As you can see, starting in actually 2000,

The numbers started to come down and they have continued to come down.

That arrow is the last point that Gannett Fleming considered in projecting future water use.

It did not consider this decline in the last decade.

The second graph just shows you the percent below projections, below the point at which this community-wide supply is planned.

And that's important because you often hear this or that, particularly dredging, will not satisfy our future need as projected.

Well, our projected need is now 25% below.

So it's an irrelevant number.

My appeal to you is that in what you need to know, that you

Thank you Ms. Smith.

Good evening Mr. Mayor and Councillors.

Colette Hall, 101 Robertson Lane.

Item 3 on the agenda, McIntyre Way Interchange Design.

The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation has accepted FHWA, which is Federal Highway Administration's, invitation to participate in the Section 106 Historic Preservation Process.

End quote.

This is no true statement.

Federal Highways was quite reluctant to hold any more Section 106 National Historic Preservation meetings.

It was the ACHP who determined the meeting must be held and Federal Highways at first refused to attend.

And I even have the letter to prove those very words.

Councilor Brown wanted, he didn't like people to just make random statements and throw out facts and figures and so I should try to verify that and say something.

As a taxpayer voter, Section 106 Consulting Party, and North downtown resident, the neighborhood which will be the most damaged by the Meadow Creek Parkway and the 250 interchange, I publicly invite and urge you to attend the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation meeting on Friday, October 9, 830 to 1130 in city space.

City Council is the only individual group not invited.

Yes, I realize that staff is representing the city, but you as councilors will need to agree and sign the official memorandum of agreement on mitigation.

You will be asked to condemn and or buy property in the 250 right away.

You will need to allocate additional money to build the 250 interchange.

As this will be the last City Council meeting before the October 29th, 7pm, final public hearing on the 250 Interchange design, I urge all Charlottesville residents to attend this public hearing and if unable to attend, to send written remarks to www.250interchange.org and find me on another topic

The Rivanna Solid Waste Authority needs to leave the solid waste business to private enterprise.

Mayor Norris and members of the State Council, my name is Paul Long.

I live at 1410 Grady Avenue.

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

I've come here tonight to make a few brief remarks about economic development.

Charlottesville is fortunate to have the University of Virginia located here with their outstanding record of educating and training young minds as well as students who are older in their undergraduate programs as well as in their graduate and professional programs.

The University of Virginia is making a unique contribution to this area and to our country.

The University of Virginia is one of our many, one of our greatest assets.

The city of Charlottesville stands at the crossroads in its ability to grow economically.

at the Martha Jefferson Hospital, moving its campus to Pantops, with the city campus getting ready to become vacant, with the Memo Hotel standing near like a white elephant on the downtown mall, and with the Water Street parking lot being a prime downtown location, the city of Charlottesville has a unique opportunity to begin promoting itself as a desirable location for major businesses to relocate here.

We have the trained workforce, we have the prime locations to offer these businesses.

If we do this in an assertive manner, we can create the kinds of professional jobs so that our young people in the area who have the ambition to pursue their education at a college level will not have to leave their homes

to obtain jobs in the areas in which they were trained.

It will also add to our tax base so that individual homeowners can get some relief in their yearly real estate taxes.

Thank you, Mr. Long.

Good evening.

My name is Jay Ferguson.

I live at 721 Cargill Lane.

I'm currently the chairman of the Fairmount Theater, and I wanted to read you the following letter from our organization.

The Paramount Theater of Charlottesville sincerely endorses the city of Charlottesville's resolution praising the courage of those who supported the integration of Charlottesville's school system.

Acknowledging the wrong of massive resistance and mourning and apologizing for the pain and wounds suffered in the struggle for school integration.

The adoption of this resolution should encourage all in our community of all ages and backgrounds to reflect on our history.

The Paramount Theater of today remembers the sorrow that the brave school children who integrated Charlottesville schools in 1959 were still compelled in that era to sit only in the Paramount Theater's segregated balcony.

The very idea that many citizens of this community could have been forced to buy their tickets at a separate window, enter by a separate door, and sit separately from other citizens in a legally and governmentally sanctioned system seems so inherently un-American that one wonders how it could ever have been so.

But it was.

and it was something that Paramount had to confront during the revitalization of the theater as a place where all our community members are welcome no matter race, ethnicity, age, or social preferences.

When a group of citizens gathered nearly 20 years ago to save the Paramount, the theater's ugly history of segregation had to be confronted.

An important question was whether the Paramount, once restored, could be embraced by all of our community citizens as their own theater, as a place that belongs to all, where all are welcome on equal terms.

To confront history, one must preserve its record.

During the Paramount's restoration campaign, many members of our community volunteered their time to document the African American experience at the theater, assembling, archiving, and interpreting oral and written histories and photographs of its workers and movie patrons.

When the theater's restoration was complete, the Paramount's third-story entrance was dedicated in a solemn ceremony as a place to remember the past, yet look forward with hope to the future.

The Paramount today grieves for the pain and indignities suffered by the theater's African-American patrons and workers during the era of segregation and celebrates the courage of all those who fought for civil rights.

In the nearly five years since the reopening of the theater, nearly 40,000 school children have poured through its doors for over 50 educational performances.

like the programs they experience, including How Do You Spell Hope, a story of the Underground Railroad, and Wings of Courage, a historical biographical performance about an African American pilot during World War I.

These children are a rainbow that represents our region's great diversity.

One of our most satisfying opportunities this year for the Paramount was to be able to open our doors to the people of Charlottesville for a broadcast inauguration of President Barack Obama.

For our community's African-American heroes of the civil rights struggles of the 50s, 60s and beyond came to the Paramount and finally, finally got a chance to choose for themselves where they wanted to sit.

As Paramount Board Member Colonel Martin Burke said from the stage, not all memories of the Paramount are good ones, but today is a great day.

We have made progress, but there is a lot more to do.

The city's resolution of acknowledgement, sorrow, and apology is an important step forward.

Thank you Mr. Thompson Paul Roseburg Mayor Norris and Council

I'm Paul Whisberg.

I live at 1159 Kensington Avenue in town.

I'm here representing Alt Energy.

We're a local company, solar energy company at 1132 East Market Street.

And I wanted to, first of all, let you know how much we encourage you to end your legislative request to the state legislature relation about the energy

I wanted to give you an idea of another issue that I was hoping may or may not be included in this upcoming suggestion, but that would have to do with

identifying opportunities to improve our energy culture which is something that we work on on a daily basis and one of the things that you suggested in strengthening local building codes I think is a really essential way for us to make a real large mainstream type of impact as opposed to individual projects which tend to have a

a more difficult time gaining traction.

And so another area that's gotten considerable attention I think on both state and federal level and considerable funding would be the issue of jobs training.

And I think there is an opportunity for us to maybe reconsider some of the best ways to go about providing a trained workforce for a lot of the new technologies that are going to be

I'd like to suggest that the state actually authorized funds to build renewable energy projects in municipal structures.

So that twofold.

First of all, we're a small company, but I have no lack of candidates that are extremely qualified and intelligent.

As a previous gentleman stated that Charlottesville has an exceptional workforce, a well-educated workforce in addition to an exceptional

We have a depth of knowledge in a lot of areas that we can use in our energy industry and one of the ways that if we could get the state to suggest funding some actual projects that has a really an outstanding benefit and that is that real projects mean that I can hire people.

and actually give them a job, which I will do.

And also what it does is if they're all municipal buildings that they are a perfect match and that they benefit everyone because we all support the utility and energy infrastructure of all our municipal buildings.

So I think it's a win-win situation and I was hopeful that you might suggest to the state that something as simple as a per capita

Um, distribution for actual projects in addition to providing a consulting team that would find practical applications that are cost effective for these, uh, systems might actually give projects for companies like mine to bid on and it's the projects that I need to hire workers, not, uh, job training in, in, uh, schools.

Thank you, Mr.

Whisper.

Good evening, I'm Stratton Solitis.

I live at 704 Graves Street.

Thank you all for your resolution acknowledging those heroic individuals who integrated our school system 50 years ago.

As you all know, this was not a battle which Charlottesville was the only participant.

This was a national struggle to integrate the school system.

And after the success of that, I think institutional racism perhaps changed its face.

and here in Charlottesville I think we are in denial of that fact.

When people talk about the Meadow Creek Parkway being a 40 year old road, a lot of them don't realize that it actually dates to a plan from 1959 and the portion of the road going through the park and the portion of the road going through Vinegar Hill were both in that plan and just a short while after that plan

The reasons for which were slum removal, traffic congestion, and to increase parking.

Vinegar Hill was destroyed and Ridge McIntyre, the first part of that plan to run traffic through the center of the city in order to increase suburban growth and put the burden on inner city residents, both financial burden and the traffic burden,

was played out here in Charlottesville.

And now, this is the final part of that plan, this interchange and McIntyre Road extended.

And you might think, well, the damage has been done.

Vinegar Hill has already been destroyed.

But this still represents a theft from the inner city residents of Charlottesville, taking what could be transit money and instead using it to increase traffic through inner city

neighborhoods.

And furthermore, this is not being done in an honest fashion.

VDOT has submitted plans to the Corps of Engineers, which they do not intend to build, plans without an interchange.

Jim Tolbert, in June, I believe, was talking about that plan, the 17 lane at-grade

at grade intersection plan and he said specifically without an interchange this intersection would be terribly congested meaning 250 in the parkway.

The city never agreed to that and the process is going on right now as if the city had agreed to an at grade intersection and I hope that you all will direct the staff to clear this up and to really make sure that you are following federal laws if you plan on doing this.

Thank you Mr. Salinas.

Good evening.

My name is Mark Briggs.

I live at 2006 Stadium Road on September 25th.

I was accused of stealing $7 from a merchant store and I was borrowed from her store.

and I've been a vendor, a street vendor on the downtown mall for over 20 years and I would never take anything from anyone and I have copies of the trespassing violation that the officer had wrote up on me and

And I think it was a little harsh with her accusing me of taking seven dollars when I can sell two products and get seven dollars.

So basically that's why I'm here tonight to correct the office.

and I was a little embarrassed about the situation and I tried you know talking things out with her but there was there was nothing basically you know we could come to an agreement with and Mark, explain the exchange that you have with the people

Also, I had witnesses that came and vouched for me and told the officer that I've been a regular on the mall for years and I was very upset about the matter.

but she told me to stay out of her store and I never said anything inappropriately to her in any way and just like I said I think it's very you know I think it's a little unfair that she accused me of taking seven dollars

But the event happened on September 25th, which was a Friday.

And like I said, I can sell two products and get $7.

Thank you, Mr. Briggs.

Appreciate you coming forward.

Good evening Mr. Mayor, City Councilors.

At the last City Council candidates forum, which was last week, the mayor was there.

You'll recall that there was a question from the audience about the last third of the meeting.

Someone asked, how is it that so many decisions, so many bad decisions get made with inadequate information?

Tough, tough question and I don't think anyone had a really good answer for that.

You all seem to be reading this letter.

Maybe I should let you finish.

But reading the council packet over the weekend, reading the background material for the packet, I think there's some clues in there.

First of all, we've got an agenda tonight that's packed with some pretty important decisions that you all will be making.

And I notice that there's not a single public hearing on any of these decisions, not on the interchange design,

Water issues, dredging, the project at the intersection of Cherry and Ridge, and so I wonder if that might be part of what's driving these

decisions that are getting less than optimal results, but also looking at the background material for these individual items that are up there.

I don't see where there's basis for you to make a decision.

Let's take, for example, the next thing coming up, conveying the easement to Rivanna for Shanks Branch.

Now, the background material says that the existing

Pike is in a location that is close to the creek and it's going to be moved to a less environmentally sensitive location.

Maybe that's true.

In that case, wouldn't it be appropriate to have a map of the new location and the old location so that you as the body showing judgment could say, yes, this in fact is a better location?

Or are you just going to trust the staff report and say, well, it says in here it's a better location, so it must be a better location?

and vote on it.

And maybe it is a better location, maybe it's not, but you're the ones that we elect to actually make these decisions.

Well, I'm glad you have them, it wasn't in the background material.

This map up here on the back wall right there, that's for the McIntyre Parkway 250 interchange.

And if you go to the 250 interchange design hearing,

That's the only image on it.

That's it.

There's no elevation.

It definitely gives you a sense of what exactly are we getting here, other than a planned view of an intersection there.

How high is it going to be?

What sort of designs is it going to be?

It's supposed to be a $30 million project.

and the public hearing is in less than a month.

Now, I personally am not in favor of the parkway, but I strongly believe if you're going to do the parkway, if you all are not going to vote against the parkway, which I think you should do, vote against the parkway.

If you're not going to do that, do it right.

Don't just slouch towards a half-assed solution, which is what this is right here.

I mean, either stop it or do a good job.

Don't do a bad job because you haven't really figured out what you want to do.

If we look at the water issues update, there's not even a report on the water issue update, are there not?

I suppose that the Rivanna, where I'm sure it's always going to pop up here with a report, maybe you've seen it, certainly the public hasn't seen it.

So it strikes me that it would be difficult to give substantive input on a report that doesn't seem to have been presented to the public yet.

Dredging Study Alternatives, that one I can go into a little bit more detail and I hope that you will consider that in more detail.

Well, I'm going to have to get back to the dredging RFP, but I'll just say in brief, there's 10 things that the RFP said had to be done.

You really only need to do one of them now.

Actually, you need to do one beyond what Rivanna is going to do.

Rivanna has to do the bathymetric.

And then you need to figure out what the sediment composition is.

Everything else follows that.

So do things one at a time.

Don't commit yourself to spending a bunch of money.

Do things logically, and when you get results for the first phase, move for the next.

Thank you, sir.

That concludes matters by the public.

Thank you all for coming tonight.

I will now open it up to council member responses to matters by the public.

Dr. Brown?

On the issues of public hearings, I mean, you brought up the Cherry and Ridge project.

There have been at least two public hearings on that at the Planning Commission, the councilors were at.

There's certainly been public hearings on the interchange previously but I think it's good comment to talk about the need to make sure we've adequate information on that.

Not only is there a map of these but I know I met personally with staff so they could go over the map and show me exactly where the

the easement would be, where the new shoreline would be, where the road is, what the topography is, and I'm assuming some of the other counselors did that as well, I'm not sure.

Anybody else?

I just wanted to make a couple of comments.

Ann Carter started our management in public and she said she was happy.

And I'm glad that she was happy.

Starr to Bob Finwick for having the most provocative presentation during the public comment.

To Paul Long, it's always good to hear from you and the issues that you have regarding economic development we all share, especially in terms of developing our workforce.

Jay Ferguson, the Paramount, but I'd like to know if we could have a copy of that letter to be a part of the official meeting minutes for this council meeting.

And also, I'd like to hear more about what the Paramount is doing, so I appreciate

the board taking the initiative to do that.

And the comments by Mr. Salinas said we're in the beginnings of the redevelopment process for our public housing sites.

and we're getting more stories of what happened during the era that you describe and we're getting to actually get our youth involved with that.

So I think you're correct in making the connection between the culture of the city at the time when decisions were made and just connecting it all together.

and also for Mr. Briggs.

I know that I think that when people come forth with concerns as you did, it means that people are really hurting.

and I appreciate the way you came forward and you never mentioned the business so that I appreciate the grace and dignity that you display in sharing your concern and I would like a follow up on that and also you mentioned that you try to talk things out but maybe this requires

I think the intervention of the restorative justice part of our community is that Davidson is a part of that and maybe this would be a good opportunity for that to happen in terms of restorative justice.

My only comment I'll make is I'd like to get some more information on this trespassing bar notice in general, not only in Mr. Briggs' case, but in terms of what the process is and how all this works.

Just for a second, Dr. Brown's comments about information.

Just a couple comments.

I wish we could judge the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir for free or even make money on it.

There are certainly, everybody has acknowledged that from day one that there are parts of the river and the reservoir that can be dredged for maintenance purposes or opportunistic dredging where we can, where there is a market for the fill.

but if we're talking about dredging for water capacity at a bare minimum we know it's going to be tens of millions of dollars and I don't want anybody to go away from this meeting thinking that we can get it done for free.

Secondly, I appreciate Dee coming forward and talking about demand projections because that's a strong concern I have as well.

I firmly believe we need to revisit the projections that our current plan is premised upon and so I thank you for continuing to challenge us on that.

I too appreciate Mr. Ferguson coming forward in the Paramount.

I think that was a powerful statement that you made and I appreciate you coming forward tonight.

I agree with Stratton Salutis that we need to clarify this point, this sort of very basic important point that the city

has said very clearly that we will not support an at-grade intersection and for VDOT or anybody to imply otherwise I think needs to be corrected.

So we'll get to that later.

One of the reasons why, Mr. Lynch, that we didn't have a public hearing on the interchange tonight is because we're not taking any action on the interchange tonight.

It's simply a status report on where we are with that.

But we are going to talk about the process and what may need to be clarified in that regard.

And then, Mr. Risberg, thank you very much for coming forward, and I will certainly bring your suggestion up when we talk about our legislative agenda later on in tonight's meeting.

We do have a lengthy meeting tonight.

We have a lot of important items in the meeting and part of the reason is we are actually combining two meetings into one.

I neglected to mention at the outset we will not be having a city council meeting on October 19th because three of our members will be attending, or at least three of our members will be attending the annual conference of the Virginia Municipal League.

So just a heads up, no city council meeting on October 19th.

So, unless there's any other comments, we will move forward with our regular business agenda.

We have a number of items on the consent agenda.

Item A, approving minutes of August 17th, 21st, and September 21st.

Item B is an appropriation of $157,143, a victim witness program grant, second to two readings.

I.M.C.

is in appropriation of $58,007 at Safe Schools, CDSS grant, second of two readings.

I.M.D.

is in appropriation of $5,000 at Albemarle Schools contribution for first T program, second of two readings.

I.M.D.

is in appropriation of $55,942 Justice Assistance grant, first of two readings.

Item F is an ordinance to quit clean gas easement in Albemarle County to VDOT, second in two readings.

And item G, an ordinance petition process for enhanced speeding fines, second in two readings.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any further discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

Thank you very much, consent agenda is approved.

I need to get them to move.

I have some

Pictures, maps, video that should assist with the discussion regarding the relocation of the sewer line for Shanks Branch.

Basically, Rivanna's Shanks Branch line was initially constructed in 1954 and it's actually located right here in the green.

This line is 21 inch terracotta pipe and it's undersized to handle present operations and additional flow during rain events and additional capacity that's required by the city for development.

This actually shows in the

This area here, the service area that the Shanks Branch sewer line serves.

It serves the corner, West Haven, Preston Avenue, Rose Hill area, McIntire Road area, and a portion beyond the 250 bypass.

I'm going to orient you a little bit with this map.

This is Melbourne Road here.

This line here is the actual temporary easement that was granted by council to VDOT for McIntyre Road extended.

This is the roadway here.

this shows in green the current sewer line that you saw in the service area map and then this red line starting here is the relocation of the sewer line and you'll notice that this is the trail and unfortunately it's not in a terribly different color but that's the trail way and in most places it is very close to the sewer easement except when it

It goes closer to the roadway and in a place where it can cross, it approaches Melbourne Road, so that will be a walkway for pedestrians later on.

As you can see, most of the, or all of the sewer easement of the new red line is within the VDOT easement that's already been approved by council.

I might also add that this relocation involves 1,100 feet of sewer line along Shanks Branch.

Albemarle, as part of the Meadow Creek sewer line project, will relocate the portion that goes from this point down to the Meadow Creek sewer line.

You'll see that later as part of the Meadow Creek sewer line project.

The current easement in the green is 20 feet wide and the proposed easement is 40 feet wide.

Albemarle has agreed to do a landscaping plan for the Shanks Branch Interceptor similar to what is proposed for the Meadow Creek Interceptor where it's basically 40 feet wide but the outer 10 feet will be planted with the interior 20 feet being low ground cover.

This will allow them to still be able to maintain the sewer line and will have the appearance of what it looks like now where they're maintaining the existing

I might also add that the proposed easement deed has been modified accordingly at your request and it includes the language associated with the landscaping plan as well as preserving trees wherever possible within the easement.

This is just a short video clip we took and we're actually standing just south of the southernmost manhole and I want to point out here, at this point, we're facing south so this is the direction of the 250 bypass and we're about 1750 feet away from the 250 bypass or almost a third of the mile at this point.

and I'd like to point out, if I can stop it, whoops.

The pier we just passed is where the roadway will actually be constructed, somewhat on top of that hill.

And we're standing at a much less elevation where the sewer lines are proposed.

And I know there have been comments about moving the sewer line within the roadway, but unfortunately at this point, at the existing elevation that the proposed sewer line, it's pretty deep.

It's about 15 to 20 feet deep at this point, according to the plans.

and if it was moved within the road right away, it would be an additional 15 to 20 feet deep for a depth of about 30 to 40 feet deep.

So you've got, with that additional depth, you've got increased cost to construction, more difficult construction during the time, and it would also, it would be more difficult for Albemarle to maintain that roadway for the long term.

These are just some photos that were taken and this shows the point where the photo was taken and they're all facing south and notice we've got a cleared right of way.

This is a point just above that and there is a cleared right of way through the wood area.

and then up a little further.

They were going to take some photos at sea but unfortunately there was a bee's nest at that manhole so they weren't able to take any photos.

But this shows the northernmost manhole facing north towards Melbourne Road.

I want to talk a little bit about sewer to sewer overflows.

This has been a problem along the Shanks Branch interceptor.

We have numerous manholes that overflow after rain events.

And unfortunately with overflows, because the sewer line is very close by Shanks Branch, overflows can contaminate the waterways where we have raw sewage going into the waterways.

And when mammals overflow, our community is exposed to the diseases and pollutants that are occurring in wastewater.

In addition, I'd also like to add that it's also a violation of the Clean Water Act as implemented.

and many by the Environmental Protection Agency.

And just last week, Hampton Roads Sanitation District, our largest wastewater treatment provider in the Commonwealth of Virginia, civil penalty was bought by the Commonwealth of Virginia and EPA of $900,000 for excessive overflows that they have allowed to get into the waterways around the Chesapeake Bay.

And these particular overflows that were allowed

on the waterways around the Chesapeake Bay.

I want to talk a little bit about maintenance by Albemarle.

As you can see, since 2005, they cleared the right-of-way through McIntire Park, clearing their 20-foot easement, and then they have continued to know it on an annual basis.

They've also completed a CO2 sewer line evaluation on Shanks Branch which indicated that they had numerous deficiencies in the sewer line.

This is just an illustration where when you've got smoke that's coming out of a sewer line that's laid beyond this rock area, it's probably not a good thing and you've got some cracks or joint problems within the sewer line and it'll need some attention either through maintenance or replacement.

They also have, because I mentioned before the new line is going to be much deeper and one thing we'll be able to avoid then are aerial crossings throughout the Shanks Branch area and these are aerial crossings that are currently in the Shanks Branch area and what happens unfortunately they can get damaged through just

you know, storms, you've got trimmelings that can impact the pipeline and if the line's put in deeper we can get rid of these aerial crossings which would be a very good thing.

Also when you've got aerial crossings of sewer lines there's increased maintenance, ongoing maintenance by Rivanna because they have to be looked at on a regular basis to make sure they're not being compromised.

This is actually an issue that we had in the Shanks Branch area in 2008 on the sewer line.

As you can see, this little green pipeline is exposed.

It's coming out of the bank.

It's where the banks of Shanks Branch have a railway way and it's exposing the pipeline which can ultimately compromise the integrity of the pipe and you can have actual sewers getting into the waterways.

This is what they had to do to go back to restore the bank and make sure that pipeline would stay in the bank.

I mentioned that Albemarle has also done sanitary seal evaluations.

They've teed the sheik's branch line.

It shows multiple defects through kind of, you've got pipe that's not really a circle in diameter, so it's got cracks, needs some sort of attention, numerous cracks here.

But also the root problem, terracotta pipe is inherent because it's got a lot of joints in terracotta pipe.

and roots from where trees can get into the line.

So you can see roots can impact the capacity of a sewer line if they're not handled and you can get rid of them.

Unfortunately you can cut the roots out, you can ride the roots out, but usually if they're left too long they can leave cracks in the joints where the pipe eventually needs to be replaced.

and those are just some other group pictures.

I might also add that VDOT is contributing to this project for the relocation and replacement.

They're contributing $558,000 of the estimated cost.

available in the city slash the city will be responsible for the betterment, in other words to enlarge the pipe and make it deeper and those estimates are about $815,000 of which 50% of that cost is due to the increased rock excavation due to the increased depth of the pipe and if Rivanna does not coordinate with VDOT on this project then the city will have to bear this full cost for rehabilitation or replacement later on

It is listed as a second priority after the Meadow Creek sewer and project for Albemarle in their capital program.

The city also has it as a second priority in their five year capital program to handle, to reduce infiltration inflow that gets in the line.

And the city is actually proceeding with the contractor and they will be underway in the next few months to do rehabilitation and replacement of the collection lines within the Shanks Branch Basin.

And with that, I open up to questions.

Thank you, Ms. Hildebrandt.

Other questions?

I was just wondering what if, what would the game plan be?

What would be another option for the line in the route?

It would probably be in, you know, right now they've got it where it's scooted out from Shanks Branch a little bit, which is a good thing because they've had erosion problems in the past on their existing line and yet you kind of strike that balance of

1954, this was state-of-the-art technology for sewer lines for 1954.

Absolutely.

And so what we're doing now is state-of-the-art sewer lines and any other technology that we could be using for

Well typically you want to get your lines deeper nowadays.

Back then they didn't have a lot of the bigger equipment that they do now to get lines deeper because you want to try to avoid aerial crossings.

There is other more high-tech technology systems boring a line, but usually that's only done, that can be very expensive.

Can you just reiterate one more time?

I think there's been a little bit of confusion among the public.

Okay.

And I want to go back to Ms. Everett's question.

So I think she was sort of asking a hypothetical here, and I'm going to take that hypothetical one step further, which is assuming there was no Meadow Creek Parkway, would you

Well, currently they've only got 20 feet cut.

Since they're going deeper, it's going to require additional width to be cleared in order to get the line installed, which is 40 feet.

It's proposed in the easement.

So, I would say no.

You're going to need to use pretty big equipment to install this line at the increased steps and you're also increasing the size of the line from 21 to 30 so it takes a little bit bigger equipment and there will be larger manholes that have to be installed and those will be carried in.

Unfortunately when you're installing sewer lines they do have an impact.

The question is could you physically move it out of McIntyre Park and it's because of the

The Gravity, which follows the creek, which is where the sewer lines are designed.

Yeah, your larger interceptors are always along creeks and waterways.

And then your collection lines, you've got a little more leeway because they can be in the streets.

And some of them have pretty big dots.

I mean, we've got some sewer lines that are at 14, 15 feet deep in the streets.

and I've got some that are probably 25 feet deep in the streets, but that's pretty rare.

But you don't have as much flexibility for locations of large sewer lines as you do a smaller collection line that can go in a street.

People, unfortunately, you can put them anywhere but it's just going to cost you a lot of money and could potentially be more destructive.

It's really difficult to install a large sewer line deep.

I've been involved in one where it was 60 inches, most for five and a half miles through a pretty rural area and at certain points we were 45 feet deep.

The fact is that this is the center of citizens in the city along with some of the churches right there in the city.

Yes.

I guess the concern that I have is just what another option would be.

And also the other concern I have is how long has this been a number two priority?

Anytime may be able to help with that question.

We started about five years ago.

Shortly after I came to Charlottesville and we identified at that time the authority did not have any comprehensive plans on how to address and renew and rehabilitate interceptors.

We initiated a comprehensive sewer study which involved looking at every interceptor in our system.

The idea was to identify problems

identified potential solutions and identified priorities.

It just happens that the two oldest lines in our system are the Shanks Branch Interceptor and the Meadow Creek Interceptor and not as too much of a surprise they came in as the top two priorities for rehabilitation and renewal.

As Ms. Hildebrand said, the city's been doing some extensive work as well looking at their sewer systems in terms of what kind of renewals need to be done

what can be done to reduce rainwater flow in pipelines.

There's a certain amount of work that can be done cost effectively.

They determined and assessed to us that a combination of an extensive amount of funds that the city will pay to renew sewers in this basin

Well, the short answer to that is we try to do all of our planning and scheduling, looking not just at what our needs are, but looking at what the whole community's needs are.

And as we were making plans to advance schedules to address the Shanks Branch Line, we became aware that the city had some other plans.

And this is part of my concern, this initial one being wondering if there's some other form of technology we could be using in tune since there's still a lot of unanswered questions regarding the parkway and the road.

Rivanna is installing as part of the Meadow Creek sewer line the downstream portion of Shanks Branch so it would be appropriate at this point to coordinate with VDOT because then you get another stretch of 1100 feet.

They're doing, as part of the Meadow Creek sewer line project, the 640 feet between the two.

Can you explain why tonight we're not considering the whole length of the Shanks Branch pipe?

We're only tonight considering

that will be Rivanna's next priority when they look at it.

But does that involve engineering for the interchange?

Is that, I think that's what he's trying to ask?

It makes it easier for me.

From my point of view, the next phase of the work on the Shanks Branch Interceptor could be justified, should begin right away.

But again, we're trying to perform the work that we need to do in conjunction with all the city's plans.

And the location, the configuration, the design of your interchange has a great deal to do with where's the right place to locate the sewer.

So we're willing to work and coordinate with you rather than get ahead of you and do something that

We end up having to redo.

All of it is within the

So they're going to clear that entire stretch of land anyway.

Whether the line was built or not, that would occur.

I think somebody mentioned to me that our best guess is that it will require additional

I don't think we know that information.

So if you move the interchange,

One other thing that Lauren hit on, but just to make sure, too, is when she showed the area, the service area for this line, I think that that map, and I saw it last week, really hit home the importance of the replacement of the line.

It affects our downtown redevelopment.

Any West Main, any Preston includes the West Haven, the Madison, several of our public housing sites that we're talking about.

Redevelopment and density in this line capacity is a negative as we look forward to that down the road.

So this will enable us to have the sewer capacity we need to serve that entire area for the future.

Just make a couple comments to kind of address that.

One comment is that, you know, even the last time we talked about this, I think one issue was the degree to which we really needed this line.

Were we trying to upgrade something just because it was convenient or were we upgrading it because it was necessary?

And I think Ms. Hildebrand has done a really good job of thoroughly explaining the need for this upgrade, and I really appreciate that.

I think the second issue was, did it make sense to try to have, as was suggested by several people, the route for the pipe to be adjacent to the road?

And again, I think that it's been pretty well explained to me that because of the topography, the road's just up on a hill and on a ridge and this is down next to the creek and there's some real

I guess I'm still with some concerns since we don't have the final design for the interchange, we really don't have the design for the sewer line.

And I would feel more comfortable just deferring that until we have more answers to the unknowns.

This is what I was trying to understand what your concern was.

I'm not underestimating the importance of the health and safety impacts for the sewer line.

I'm not underestimating the importance of the city residents who will benefit from this.

You know, I'd like to comment.

I think a lot of thought has gone into making this as low impact as possible.

I think one thing that hasn't been emphasized that's important is that the route for the sewer line for half of it is underneath the trail.

So we have however wide the trail is, 10 feet or whatever, is not going to be

Do we need to amend the previous motion?

I don't think so.

The ordinance has been changed.

If you would like to vote on the change in the language of the ordinance, that's fine.

This is for the amendment itself.

Any further discussion on the amendment?

Not on the actual easement, just on the amendment.

I agree, it was a good amendment.

So I'll call for a vote on the amendment itself.

Before we call for a vote, I just wanted to go on record.

This actually is not, even though I'm I guess well known as an opponent of the Medical Parkway, this is not a slam dunk vote for me because I think

issues have been raised, very legitimate issues have been raised about the health of this pipeline, the condition of this pipeline.

I'm quite convinced that it's going to need to be replaced.

The fiscal watchdog in me says, yes, let's go ahead and do it now and save the taxpayers of Charlottesville some money while we have the opportunity to do so.

But when it comes down to it,

For me at least, there's still the basic acknowledgement that this project is being designed to accommodate an infrastructure project, a new road and an interchange that I cannot support and so I would not be voting in favor of this easement.

But I do appreciate all the work that went into improving it and will now, unless there's any other comments, call for a vote.

Coon.

We'll call for a vote on the amended easement.

And the easement passes.

Thank you very much.

Next we have a report, McIntyre Road Interchange Design.

Good evening.

We'd like to provide council with an update on the Route 250 bypass interchange project.

It is only an update and I hope to answer all of your questions this evening.

The design public hearing is scheduled for Thursday, October 29th at City Space.

We'll hold the public information meeting from 5 until 7 p.m. and a formal podium-style public hearing from 7 to 9 p.m. or until comments are heard.

At this public hearing, we present material that addresses the direction received from council, such as reducing the bridge height and width, moving the bike ped trail to the west side of McIntire Road, and moving the ramps closer to the 250 bypass.

All of those features make for a smaller footprint and less impact to the environment.

In addition, we've met with the Birdwood Hillcrest neighborhood to discuss their concerns related to this project.

Last year, they voiced concern about closing one of their two access points.

We're proposing that both Birdwood and Hillcrest remain open.

Birdwood as a right in only and Hillcrest as a right in right out only.

You can see the details on the smaller handout and the larger picture behind you.

In addition to the two access points, we're providing bike and pedestrian connections to and from the neighborhood, the park and McIntire Road, and we believe the neighborhood seems agreeable to these changes.

A summary of the hearing and public comments received through the November 9th deadline will be submitted to you, Council, at your November 16th meeting for approval.

And this approval by way of a Council resolution is a required step in order to obtain the Federal Highway Authorization to proceed to the right-of-way phase for the interchange project.

We're designing the interchange to minimize impacts to the surrounding historic properties.

Some right-of-way may need to be acquired and some property may be acquired through fair market offers and negotiations.

Other property acquisition may require condemnation.

Conservative right of way impacts will be shown at the design public hearing and will continue to refine the design to minimize right of way needs.

We've notified all 14 of the impacted owners and have already met with the only potential full displacement property owner.

Condemnation proceedings would likely occur in mid-2010.

We do have plans, a full set of

rather detailed plans available for public view in our office at the main library branch and the local VDOT office and the district VDOT office.

We do have profiles of the roadway, the cross sections, the bridge.

We also anticipate construction of the interchange if it proceeds, according to schedule, to occur in early 2011.

Can you address the concern that Mr. Salinas raised earlier about VDOT apparently saying that

VDOT has clarified their project limits in a request by the Army Corps of Engineers issuance of the permit necessary for beginning that project.

The project

was discussed as being truncated basically where it would touch the interchange project.

And when the Army Corps asked for a full and complete project, BDOT then submitted the rest of those project plans, which are for an at-grade intersection.

Now the agreement that the city and VDOT and the county have is that that at-grade intersection will not be built, that the temporary construction easement was not conveyed for the building of that at-grade intersection, and the interchange is being proposed by the city.

So only at such time, and the Corps understands this, but only at such time

Would the interchange not move forward?

How are we allowing them to submit something, maybe I'm just not getting it, but how are we allowing them to submit something that's reflecting something that we've said we don't approve?

Well, all of the parties involved in coordinating these projects understand the coordination point of being 775 feet north of the 250 bypass, so we're clear and we, meaning city staff,

That's not the real purpose though, I mean the real purpose

Well, I'm aware of that argument, however, with respect to the interchange project, and I'm not really fully versed in answering for McIntire Road extended project, but with respect to the interchange project, we have full purpose and need

involving safety, enhanced pedestrian and bicycle and transportation amenities and a purpose in need independent of the McIntire Road extended project for which a, well for all intents and purposes it would be a T intersection but grade separated

I fully agree, we've just never shown that.

Any of the designs that we... We could show a line to the...

It would involve everything that you now see minus the roadway immediately to the north of the ramps on the northwest side, which would still be necessary to accommodate all the turning movements.

And the reason that we include McIntyre Road extended in our interchange project is that it is in the...

Thank you.

Comments?

I was already coming in with a couple questions.

I did have the opportunity to attend the Bellwood meeting, and I would certainly agree that

Most people there were receptive and appreciated the work that you all have done to answer some of their concerns and it appeared to me that in general most people were supportive of this improved design.

In way of a question

and also reading a little bit with the Dogwood, Whitnaw Memorial.

Did that one have to be relocated?

Other questions, comments?

I'm still not convinced I got the clarity I was looking for in terms of the issue of the at-grade intersection versus the grade-separated interchange.

I'm not exactly sure the best way to proceed in that regard other than

I just think we need to correct the record, that's all.

I mean, we need to make it clear to all the parties officially that the city, and reiterate the city's well-established position, which is that this is a project that requires a great, separate interchange.

I'm kind of asking you.

Well, I think we were trying to make a plan that somebody has said they were willing to change.

That's true.

But if that does not happen, they're willing to do without going to change.

Well VDOT, it's probably not wise to speak for VDOT but I feel that those involved in both projects are clear on the task at hand.

We're also clear that the temporary construction easement that was granted for building of McIntyre Road extended explicitly says that it is not to be used for an at-grade intersection.

So if council chooses not to move forward with an interchange, then we or someone would be back before council looking for what

Permissions are necessary to grant easements or permissions to complete that connection to the bypass.

So that does put it back before council if the interchange is not built.

I know all of these permissions end up in varying letters and resolutions and they all interconnect and I'm happy to

try and create that paper trail and highlight for some assurance.

Yes, I think creating a document or compiling a paper trail which makes it explicit to VDOT and other key parties here that the city still stands by its position in

One option is, assuming we don't build the interchange, one option is to build an at-grade intersection, the other option is not to do the project.

That's sort of the no-build scenario.

Okay, we should have all of those pieces.

Thank you.

I respectfully urge you all to attend our public hearing and on Sunday October 29th it begins at 5 p.m. and 5 until 7 p.m. we have an informational meeting at city space and from 7 until 9 p.m. we have podium style comments taken from the public

Thank you, Ms. Tucker.

Thank you Mr. Mayor and Council.

The staff of the city approached me just a few weeks ago and suggested it would be a good idea for you to have the opportunity for me to appear before you on a periodic basis.

It was suggested maybe quarterly but it could be some other arrangement and just provide for you an update on some of the things of interest or that I think might be of interest to you.

pertaining to what the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority is doing and accomplishing.

We're quite busy in accomplishing a great many things at the present time.

I made some notes to start the discussion, sticking pretty much to the script that, or the ideas that the city staff passed on to me that focus on the water studies.

But if you have questions on other topics of interest, or if you have ideas and suggestions as to how we can use this time in the future,

I'm very open.

This really is your time and your opportunity to catch up on some things that you'd like to know from us.

So I want to extend that invitation to you.

There were six things that I've identified.

that from meetings that you had with three other boards last November and a follow-up meeting in March where there was some interest in doing some additional studies and getting some answers to a few more questions of interest to you pertaining to water supply.

This fell into six categories, and I'm prepared to update you on each of those six tonight, just a status report of where they are, not focusing on a particular decision necessarily tonight.

The first one relates to the dam, and as you're aware, we had some issues with the consultant that we previously hired, which led up to a decision that it was best for us to go separate paths.

We have now hired a new designer.

That firm is Snobel Engineering.

They have national exposure and reputation in dam building and they're quite good at that feat.

But what's interesting is they are a Virginia based company and they have an office right here in Charlottesville so those are some extra pluses.

We've completed negotiating the contracts and those contracts were actually signed today.

and we're moving forward now.

The focus of the work is doing additional geotechnical work, geophysical work to improve the information that we have about the geology, what's underground that we can't see and it's hidden from us because that's what's most important to deciding what's a cost effective foundation and just how far can we go to

build something that reduces costs and yet is very effective and very safe.

Looking at geology, boring holes in the ground can be quite expensive so you have to be very selective about what you're asking and selective about what information you want because in this type of business, wanting to know everything about every possibility can get extremely, extremely expensive.

They have to be very strategic.

Our consultant, we asked them some questions when we were negotiating.

One of the questions we asked them is if you do these additional investigations for a foundation that's to be located about the same place where, just below the lower dam, similar in concept to what Janet Fleming came up with in terms of

the location of the dam, but you do a good job of defining what the foundation needs to be, defining if technologies like grouting can be done instead of deep, deep excavations of rock and save some money.

If you do that work and then you come up with a preliminary design cost estimate which is a better cost estimate for what the dam would cost given the new foundation conditions could you then also if we told you okay one time dredging would provide

X amount of storage, can you take these curves that we already have and define what would be the new height of the dam that took into account an option like that and could you give us at least a ballpark idea of cost for a lower height dam and they said yes ballpark but if you want same level of detail

as the preliminary design estimate is going to take a little bit of work and a little bit more money.

But ballpark, yes, they could do that.

So they answered that affirmatively.

The next question we ask them is what do you think of the idea of including the existing dam or raising the existing dam?

There was a pause.

There was a little bit of consideration as to how to answer the question.

And what they told us is that without doing geotechnical work on the old dam itself and understanding the structure, they would be reluctant to try to offer

without a significant study offered the reuse of the existing dam because they had some concerns raised in their mind as to what the integrity of that structure would be particularly without the earthen embankment behind it.

They also pointed to the idea that doing any work to that existing dam means getting to the concrete to build up upon it.

which means taking the earth away, at least temporarily and even excavating at the base, backside of the dam down to the foundation levels and they were very uncomfortable with that based on what they now know about that dam unless the reservoir were completely drained and we've got some other concerns that it would be, it would require some effort to identify

what kind of, if any, restrictions might be needed on demand during a period of time when the reservoir completely drained in the event that the drought, similar to 2002, were to happen to occur at the time that a dam were completely drained.

Needless to say, Schnabel feels like it would probably cost more money to try to build upon the existing dam than it would cost to build a new dam.

That's their judgment.

That's not based on a lot of detailed investigations, but I think if you really wanted the answer to a question like that, we could go back to them and they could give us a fee for what they think it would cost to answer that question.

I don't think it would be non-substantial.

Can you give us your best guess as to why Gannett Fleming said that it would cost a fraction, why they said it would cost a fraction

of what it would cost to build a new dam simply to repair the existing dam.

Actually, what's interesting, a study was done, I'm not that familiar with the details of the study because it occurred before I was here.

It was in the 2002, 2003 timeframe.

There was a study of the Wagon Mountain Dam.

Of course, labor and materials and things were a lot cheaper in 2003 than they are now.

even with the recession.

But they did a study at a time when the community was not looking at Ragged Mountain Dam as a future source of water but was looking more toward the four foot crest at South Fork and some other things.

And they came up with a construction only estimate for several alternatives.

There's one that's been quoted in the community that was their lowest cost alternative was $2.9 million in construction only costs, not total project costs, which in itself is not an apples to apples comparison.

After I came on board and learned about the study, I had some questions.

In fact, I had some questions again at Fleming even as late as 2008 timeframe when they were still working for us at that time.

And I asked, could that work be done that they identified as an alternative under that $2.9 million?

Could that be done without draining the reservoir, by keeping the reservoir full?

And they said, we don't know.

They said, we'd be scared of that without doing some additional investigations.

And frankly, I got into a pre-canon conversation with the person who wrote that report because I was not happy at all that a company would publish a report that the public would rely upon and then five years later tell me that they really couldn't determine without additional investigations if that alternative was feasible without draining the reservoir.

I won't go into the details of that conversation.

I was pretty upset with that comment.

because that's basically very different from the 2003 report.

Well, it doesn't actually address my question.

My question is really more the cost.

I mean, I understand your concern and I appreciate your concern about the feasibility.

That's sort of, in my mind, a separate question, but I'm really looking at the cost of simply repairing the existing dam, which has been quoted in the

you know several million dollar range maybe let's say 10-15 million dollar range at its highest versus the projected cost of building a new dam which originally we thought was going to be I forget what the original number is but it's since been inflated and it's tens of millions of dollars why is it their estimate of the cost right why is it that their estimate showed that the one was substantially cheaper than the other and now Chernobyl is coming back and saying the one might actually be more expensive than the other

How is that discrepancy?

They're both experts in their field.

I just have a question, but I want to make sure I'm following the same question.

Well, we're getting there.

But not repairing it.

Your question was just to repair it since there's discussion that it needs to be fixed if nothing else happens.

Is that part of the answer?

No, it's a very good question, and I think I want to make sure we are comparing apples to apples here.

You're right, because the original gannet, do you recall if the original, I believe gannet, I know, in fact I know for a fact that gannet farming did give an estimate on what it would take to enlarge it 13 feet.

Well, I want us to be careful about what we say we know because we're basing our, what we say we know on somebody else's estimate.

Right, right.

And I'm just asking that as extensively question the estimates that Gail Fleming came up with.

Sure.

I don't have a full and complete answer.

The best thing to do would be to get, if you could get the firm to come up here and explain their own answers because it is their own expert conclusions.

I was troubled by some of the differences I heard in the personnel at Gannon.

I was talking to them in 2008 about the report they wrote in 2003.

Some of that troubled me.

They did update an estimate just to fix the dam in, I'm not sure if it was 2007 or 2008 dollars, but more current dollars.

and took into account their best guess on what efforts might be necessary in order to keep the reservoir in service and they came up with a figure that, I'm doing this off the top of my head, was in the $9 to $10 range for the same work that they had earlier quoted for $2.9 million in construction costs.

Now the later figure I'm talking about was total project cost because we've asked all of our consultants, let's don't confuse people, let's be consistent how we report things.

In the past that wasn't always true.

Anyway, the idea of raising the existing dam can be studied if you want to, we'd have to go back to the consultant

Snobel is going to ask for additional geotechnical investigations if you want to do that.

When you say fairly substantial, in your head, what are you thinking ballpark range?

I'd say less than a half a million dollars, but probably more than 50.

Along that line, if there are other questions or alternatives or options, and as we have continued, this process has been going on for quite some time and people have opportunities to think of more and more questions that perhaps weren't asked in earlier public meetings.

One of the things, sometimes questions can be asked that we can very easily answer.

Sometimes questions are asked that cost a great deal of money to answer.

Especially the ones that cost a great deal of money to answer.

It's very important.

if we're going to move toward decisions in future action that we try to identify what those questions are up front like now as Schnabel is beginning their work rather than to expose, bring those questions to our attention for the first time say next spring when a new cost estimate is presented because one of the things we're trying to do is ask ourselves what are the right questions to ask not what are all the possible questions to ask because we're trying to look after our money as well as

as well as getting an effective job done.

Does anybody have any questions about the Raggie Mountain Dam preliminary design and cost estimate at this point?

If you do, later we can come back.

I'll move on.

One of the other items that the floorboards asked us to look at was the relationship between the size of the South Fork to Ragged Mountain proposed pipeline and the storage required in all of the reservoirs.

That was modeled by Hydrologics and they did a very simple report that was a cost-effective study.

What they concluded was that the pipe size could to a great extent impact the amount of time it takes to refill

And to a large extent, that's because when we were doing the studies for the water supply,

We were bound by, as you know, the condition of least environmentally damaging practical alternative.

And one of many things that are on the list of things you do to determine that was to find what's the right operating sequence to minimize the amount of storage.

And the sequence that was derived was

Early in a drought, maximize the use of the North Fork River and the South Fork Reservoir and preserve Ragged Mountain until last because it has the smallest watershed area to recover.

So if you're preserving Ragged Mountain until last, then it's going to remain full early in a drought.

And then as a drought gets in greater intensity and all dams stop spilling, at that point your storage is fixed.

So moving water around more effectively between reservoirs is not increasing your storage.

It's just getting it from one place to another quicker.

And it's the total storage that is the determining factor as to whether you'll get through the drought or not, along with your water conservation and restrictions.

Can I just ask a question?

Sure.

As you noted, it's based on the projections of conservation in terms of what we need to manage a drought.

Actually, hydrologic, she's a little bit different method.

Again, it's funny because the regulations of the Commonwealth of Virginia talk about defining safe yield and we were defining safe yield in a way the regulators understood because we were submitting a permit application and were playing by their rules.

And safe yield was defined as the

Volume of water that you could consistently withdraw on a day-to-day basis on an average while enduring the drought record.

So Gannett Fleming defined it that way in the demand, they defined in the demand projections 5% overall and they admitted they were being on the conservative side but if you're going to err, better to err on having a little bit more than enough than not having enough and inducing a public health crisis which they saw as the other alternative Hydrologics has a model that is used for a different purpose and we actually used it to develop our drought

Drought Response and Contingency Plan, which is a separate document that we have completed that allows you to target under restricted mandatory provisions what kind of conservation that you could get at various stages of a drought and invoking.

It also helps you determine when to invoke the certain triggers.

And the criteria used in that modeling was based on

So under the voluntary or the first stage, the assumption was that there would be very limited conservation.

Hopefully there actually would be some conservation, but that was the consumption made.

Under the next phase, which was the drought warning, 5% and under the drought emergency, 20%.

And they actually did model the 0, 5 and 20.

in their calculations, because that's their model set up to do that.

Gannett Fleming's model was set to define the state rules for safe yield, not to develop a drought response program.

20% less than... 20% less than whatever is determined to be the average, projected to be the average flow.

Average flow in any one year when you're doing a 50-year program can be very tricky.

It's kind of like, say, someone in their early 20s planning for retirement, sitting down with a financial advisor and saying exactly what's the return on the stock market going to be 10 years from now.

No one honestly can answer that question with the exact certainty.

You can only draw upon historic experience and statisticians will tell you if you're trying to make a long-term projection you want to use long-term historic records, not short-term trends.

I don't mean to keep harping on this point, but I agree that you don't want to be pollyannish about our ability to reduce water consumption.

You don't want to be naive, but I think we can realistically, I believe we can realistically say and plan for lower water consumption than is currently envisioned in the current plan.

And if that's the case,

and I hope we're testing that.

I'm not the expert here, but this is why we're doing the conservation study and looking at these technologies.

And if that's the case, then certainly that would impact the projected average flow, is that correct?

If my assumption is correct, and I'm not here to say it is correct, but if my assumption proves to be, or strong indications are that it's correct that we can realistically reduce consumption more than we envisioned in the plan, then that will reduce the average flow.

If the assumptions hold,

Maybe another question related to that is you were here I think and heard the public comment about how our actual water use is well below

I think the best way to answer the question is to put it into appropriate context.

I would be hesitant and reluctant to be critical of the demand projections again if Lenny did.

They did them in 2003 right after a drought.

I've managed in other organizations other droughts and seen a two or three year lag period after a severe drought where demand stays down and then seeing demand climb again.

It has stayed down here longer and more persistent than my experience in the other community.

It's clear that there was a decline between 2001 and 2003 that was fairly sharp.

During that time, Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority, I think, was one of the examples.

In 2001, all of the processed water for the wastewater treatment plant was coming from drinking water.

In 2002 during the drought the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority had the foresight to make a change and started using treated

wastewater effluent for process makeup water saved a significant volume of water per day.

Perhaps other businesses, industry, offices in the community saw the same opportunity to make one-time changes and made those reductions and maybe that contributed to that.

And if that's true, then the effect could, there could be a lingering effect that's permanent.

The thing I'd be careful about and I think could be dangerous is another comment that I heard in that earlier discussion was that demand will continue to go down.

I'd be very cautious about making such a statement.

If that's not true and we don't plan for our future, we may end up with a public health crisis on our hands and that's a potential consequence of that.

Okay, another of the third of the studies was a water conservation study and it was agreed that the retail agencies, the city public utilities and the Albemarle County Service Authority were in the best position to do that since they control retail policies for their customers and that of course has been completed and I think a presentation has been made to you on that subject.

Excuse me.

We did get a report out, but we also asked a number of questions.

I thought we were going to get a follow-up.

I wouldn't say it's completed yet.

The fourth item was a conceptual review of the assumptions behind the conceptual design of the South Fork to Ragged Mountain Pipeline.

The four boards interestingly put a restriction on that, that it be limited to $25,000 and we have accomplished that.

We have a contract with Wiley Wilson out of Lynchburg to conduct that review.

The actual figure of the contract was $24,000 and some change, so we saved a few more dollars there.

That study is expected to be finished in December.

As was suggested by the four boards, it will be a review of the conceptual design.

It will not be a routing study or some of the other details that I've heard that really could not be accomplished for $25,000.

But it will be a good review, but it will also, as the four boards indicated, it will remain along the

lines of the approved water plan, and I think it's what we were asked to do.

Can you clarify, I mean, because one of the conceptual issues was the proposed routing, and I understand we didn't ask them to come up with a whole new alignment necessarily, but the idea was we want to test the feasibility of the proposed route based on

what we now know about the Western Bypass based on potential alternatives and again we know with $25,000 we're not going to get a whole lot of detail but at least to test the basic concept.

They will go out in the field and they will look at the routes that were mapped during the water supply study.

and they will make some comments on those.

For $25,000 you can't engage into a lot of detail.

When I say not a routing study, it's not a study to make the final decision on the exact location of the pipeline.

But they will review the information that GANET funding provided regarding potential routes.

I do like to continue to emphasize just so people understand where Rivanna is in this process.

We obtained a permit from the agencies that does allow us to make adjustments to the route that Gannett Fleming looked at on a preliminary basis on the purpose of determining stream and wetland impacts.

The caveats are that we don't create more wetland or stream impacts, which is fairly simple to do when you can adjust a pipeline under pressure.

and also if we adjust the route into areas where there has not been a cultural and historic resources study that we would extend the study to make sure we're not damaging cultural and historic resources by making alterations.

But it did allow for alterations.

As you know, a part of that route was

premised on the idea that if VDOT plans to blow a road in the right of way that they've acquired, it would be very, very low level of impact on adjacent properties to have a pipeline adjacent to the road buried.

It's done frequently and all the time.

But we have been careful to say if VDOT makes the decision to sell the right of way back and not build any roadway in the corridor that they've got now,

It really does not make sense at all to try to stick hard-headedly to that same alignment and say the pipeline's got to be built exactly here.

In fact, it is incumbent upon us in that case to make adjustments.

And those adjustments we think can be made without being significant.

Pipelines are built all over the world underground in terrain much more difficult than ours.

It's important to understand in the end, in terms of cost, how much rock has impacted.

And those require geotechnical investigations, which is beyond this $25,000 study.

But some reasonable assumptions can be made and rock is not as

significant risk with a water pipeline that can be buried only three feet below ground as opposed to, say, a sewer pipeline that has to be 15, 20 feet in the ground.

Will they also evaluate the projected costs of land acquisition?

There's been some...

Okay.

Yes.

I expect some adjustments there because Gannett Fleming assumed low cost in a VDOT corridor and we're now asking the consultant that's reviewing that not to make that assumption.

So I actually expect those costs will go up.

But everything's based on the assumptions you provide.

Number five, these are in no particular order.

The dredging feasibility study is the next item on your agenda tonight, so I won't spend time talking about that at the moment.

The sixth item was just a statement of the pros and cons of three pipelines, those three being one is the South Fork to Ragged Mountain, one is Sugar Hollow to Ragged Mountain, and the third one was the James River pipeline to Ragged Mountain.

We will do that as a staff.

We'll do it through a brainstorming exercise.

We may involve city and the service authority staff as well just to be sure we get enough ideas from multiple people.

But our thinking is it's best to go ahead and finish the conceptual review of the pipeline and take into account the recommendations or results of that study.

In doing the pros and cons, so I expect that will be something we'll complete very early in 2010.

And I think it would be very helpful as we're looking at the pros and cons also to compare our best estimate on costs.

And I know about a year ago I raised the issue with you and Mr. O'Connell about trying to get a better estimate of what it would cost if we were to replace the Sugar Hollow Pipeline,

I personally am not convinced that we need to do or want to do, but I think it's fair to the public to give a best estimate on what it would cost to replace that line, both the construction costs and the easement costs, just the ballpark estimate versus the costs and the pros and cons of the other pipeline.

What we can do very easily

that I think will give people a brass ballpark idea in comparison is identify what the lengths of each of those three pipelines are and you can compare lengths.

to get into some sort of an opinion of, engineering opinion of what each would cost.

You really need to study each pipeline and that's not something that I think is consistent with the staff just doing pros and cons without spending consulting resources.

I continue to believe that it...

Not only is it something we probably should, but frankly for those of us who support the new pipeline, I think it will actually help our case, help us to make a case for the new pipeline by giving, trying to get as accurate a cost as we can on the various alternatives.

And so I realize I'm not asking for a $500,000 engineering study, but I've got to believe there are some, you know, there's got to be some way to get a ballpark estimate of what it would cost

And the other issue is the easements.

We've been told that we would have to go back and get, renew all those easements, a hundred plus easements for the sugar hider pipeline.

And there's some question about whether or not Virginia law would allow us to simply renew them administratively.

I don't know what the procedure would be.

I think that we need some clarity on that point as well.

You know, having heard people accuse Mr. Frederick very wrongly in my opinion of misrepresentation, accuse Mr. O'Connell of misrepresenting things, I can imagine there might be some reluctance to offer ballpark, kind of, seat of the pants estimates.

I think that if we want information on

on a good estimate of what it would cost to replace it.

I think we probably need to expect that Rivanna will do some significant work to give us a solid explanation or else I think it would be a piece of information that will just be criticized and not carry a whole lot of weight.

So having said that, I think I'd be interested, I agree with your point.

that, you know, if we're going to compare, if one of the issues is we say, well, you know, we're going to have to replace that line.

If we don't build this pipeline, that line needs to be replaced after having some factual estimate.

So I guess I would ask, what would it take to get, you know, what degree of accuracy could you get?

What would be the steps to get there and how much kind of would it cost?

If you're interested in a fairly low level of expenditure, and all that's relative, I'm talking about maybe like a five figure type number, less than $100,000, you could engage your consultant to do a conceptual design and cost estimate for the update.

and there's already been some work done but it was done in 2004.

Data doesn't really work well in today's construction market but take that data and review it and update it to current costs.

But we need to hire a consultant to do that and that's a little bit beyond the original idea of staff just doing pros and cons without engaging a consultant.

I'd like to have you get back to some point with some ideas on how much could we spend and what would we get for spending it.

Because I do agree with you, but resources, and you're doing that whether it's internally done or whether it's done through a consultant.

I agree it could be very useful information both for people who think the South Fork pipeline is a good idea and for people who think it's a bad idea.

We'll look into that.

That completes my summary of the six items.

Can you address the issue, the I-64 amendment was separated out essentially.

What is the process or the timeline for

A request for proposals is on the street now with a new date of October 15th.

Just for the embankment.

For firms to submit proposals.

And then we'll begin our deliberate process toward making a selection of a consultant.

Right now we have, we keep a

calendar several months ahead what we anticipate board actions might need to be.

Right now we have that tentatively scheduled for November board action, which will be around Thanksgiving.

Coming up with a cost estimate for that particular piece is going to probably be more challenging than any of the other work that we're doing from a scheduling standpoint because part of what the expert panel suggested to us

is that probably a bigger piece of the I-64 work is going to be to come up with pragmatic solutions and then over time be able to convince the officials at the Virginia Department of Transportation to think more out of the box.

That could take some time.

And we kind of anticipate that initially in those discussions with VDOT they're going to want to fall back on their books and their standards

Sometimes the standards, I think as they're done with all with best intentions, but sometimes standards can lead to higher costs than are necessary.

And that may be a slower and deliberate process and may be more difficult to try to get to a, like a spring deadline, because that's just going to depend on negotiations.

I don't want to create any false expectations on that.

Well, I appreciate the complexities of the

the issues you're dealing with there but I think it's one of those pieces of this project that's sort of been a big question mark and I'm not sure that we're going to be able to make a truly informed choice when at the time all these studies are completed and we're ready to move forward with a plan if that's still a question mark and I realize you're dealing with VDOT and they don't always

And I have one last question.

Until we know what the costs are?

I'm just saying the formula.

There have been discussions between the two staffs about some models for cost allocation, but until we get what the costs are and the different pieces of it,

and know how much of it is maintenance and how much of it is for new supply.

We can't really give any solid numbers.

But that's one of the items that's on the list.

I actually got a draft here of all the different things Tom talked about.

That's another one.

There's also the issue of what role for city council and all the different boards and the approval process and we're trying to figure out all those pieces of it.

And could you elaborate on, I guess, I don't want to do the percentages, but the effect of the maintenance, et cetera, on it or not?

Yeah, Julian, you mean the percentages?

Because I don't have them on the top of my head.

From a conceptual standpoint, we had to look at each project individually.

And for the portion of that project, be it 100 percent or less than 100 percent, that was maintenance, that would be split based on the split that we used for water.

You know, actual water consumption.

The current consumption.

And that changes every year.

For those that were totally or at least partially for new supply, at that point the city makes its decision how much of the new supply do we want to buy.

and that would be factored into it.

And then, I mean, do we have a choice later on of upping that or reducing it or

We have to buy into it.

That's why when I originally talked to you in closed session, I threw out a potential number.

And that's maybe what you were thinking of.

But again, until we know what we're building and the sequence in which we're building, it's very difficult for us to bring that to you.

But I think once those decisions are made, that we can bring the percentages to you fairly quickly.

And I forgot, I have one other question, Mr. Frederick.

Costs related to treatment plants vary from upgrades that were scheduled in about 10 years to even upgrades that were scheduled 40 years out.

It was a very good attempt to try to identify 50-year needs related to water supply and identify a variety of different projects that were needed.

So they're conceptual ballpark estimates.

They're not detailed design estimates.

And generally in this business for financial planning purposes, you try to project certain things well ahead of time, but you recognize that you're not going to design them until you get close to the time when they're going to be improved.

To design a treatment plant today that's going to be built 20 years from now, the technology will be obsolete.

By the time you've got to build it, you'll be throwing away your money.

So I don't suggest we spend effort trying to get detailed estimates.

But they're at the conceptual level.

They know better than that.

Any other questions for Mr. Froot?

We have a 10 minute intermission.

P.A.C.E.

I walk the blazing old grass But everywhere I turn to It becomes a new beginning It never finds a finish I walk to the horizon And there I find another It all seems so surprising And then I find that I know

You go there, you'll go forever You go there, and it's probably the same You won't do it anywhere And the word up on the ocean is sweat and fan emotion You will not ever know it The reason for it's blowing in portion on the ocean The wind still keeps on moving The waves still keep on waving And I still keep on going

I wonder in the starsight what life has to be like And do they let the night shine and they want me to follow?

I look up to their bed as the night is quiet on purpose on the constellation

The shells upon the warm sun take you from your own mind The echo of your story, the role I hear in those suns The spell of words are weaving, and when the waves are leaving But you have been leaving, and I am only dreaming

You go there, you go there, I go there, I whisper, let me stay, you go there, you go anywhere To leave the trail all tight, I let it make a door light, with hopes that I could still find the way back to the moment I took the turn and turned to begin and you've been giving, still looking for the answer I can't

Sabra Venturio Deo

background music playing

Don't need help any to you.

It's so great Oh, oh Oh, oh great It is It is We reach in the same space

All right, we're going to call the meeting back to order.

The next item on our agenda is the report on Dredging Study Alternatives.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, Members of Council,

UND Albemarle County Service Authority directed Viviana to engage an engineering firm to conduct a dredging feasibility study.

Viviana did use a broad-based selection committee and the form of HDR was selected.

By then I did some preliminary, they asked them for a fee schedule and did some preliminary negotiations on that schedule.

HDR came back with some potential options and while all of them are contained in this report, one of them, the performance-based dredging option, HDR did not recommend that we pursue, so I did not put that in the report.

selection choices also.

They also believe, and the Rivanna staff does concur, that a four-day analysis, while certainly good information that the community may want to have here, is not necessary to determine dredging feasibility.

So you will notice in the options that we have dropped that.

Option one provides all of the services that were originally requested in the scope of services, which you all approved prior to it going out.

Option two provides completion of those services, typical of most dredging feasibility studies.

And it eliminates some of those tests not typically performed.

and then option three is kind of between one and two and it addresses all of the requested tasks in the religion and scope of services but reduces the level of analysis and the subsequent detail.

So really your decision tonight is to indicate to us are there one of these three options that you believe will give you the information that you need

and if so, I've done two things, I've given you this sheet with the little X's on it that tells you what's in, which of the tasks are in each of the

options and also this time we do have the real costs for you and these are broken out based on those services which the Albemarle County Services Authority desired to pay for and we broke those out again based on our current water use which is 54% city and 46% Albemarle County Service Authority.

the only one and then there are some that are 100% city.

The summary report, each one of those was different because it was based on how many elements were actually in the report.

As you look through this, some of the things which some of the lower cost alternatives did do, there's some question about the number of public meetings

that are in there and also the number of sites that would actually be evaluated for disposal of the dredging material.

With that said, I'm here to answer specific questions that you may have.

The original scope has all of the phases and all of the tests.

This is the chart that the X's have there.

The original scope has everything that you asked for.

The next line, original scope, next full day, the only thing it eliminates is task 10, which is the full day evaluation.

the standard feasibility assessment.

And if you read through the HDR report, what they felt this was, there's been a lot of talk in the community about, you know, a dredging feasibility study would be this.

And they said, normally, if someone were to come to us and ask for a dredging feasibility study, these are the types of elements that would be included.

And here they have eliminated task five,

which I said again, a public meeting and there's fewer alternatives in task seven.

Again, less detail than what was in the original scope and again, a four-day analysis.

No detailed, beneficial use study, less detailed, more conceptual land site analysis and more, we keep using this word tonight, ballpark cost estimates.

The modified scope puts the public reservoir characterization public meeting back in and puts the limits the alternative analysis to two sites instead of four.

and then the reservoir characterization we're not recommending.

I think the trade-off, and if you look at the memorandum that Mr. Frederick wrote to the Rivanna board, probably characterizes it the best that

What we really need to know is what's your comfort level going to be?

If we do everything in the original scope, you'll have lots of detail and lots of information.

In the other scopes, options two and three,

They're relying more on the experience judgment of the consultants and less on the more expensive hard data analysis.

And, you know, experience judgment can be very effective if you're comfortable with that.

Yes sir, you'll see it's the city share cost.

The consultant would use its experience, would use contacts with people in the community who are in the business of, for example, sand and gravel business or people who are in agricultural business.

I tend to agree.

I'm not convinced that we need to pay somebody $25,000 to tell us what our local market is.

I think once we have the information on what's in the settlement, we can get a request.

I actually agree with Mr. Fenwick here that we can make it work for us then at that point we don't need to pay to find out what the market is we can have the market come to us and so I would actually eliminate that piece of it and also I'm not convinced we need I mean this is a technical study here we're asking them to come and give us information I'm not I never envisioned this as a process that would involve

a lot of public meetings that we're paying a lot of money for.

We want technical information and we're going to have our own public meetings to review all this information.

I don't know that we need to pay them to have their own public meetings.

So I would remove my preference would be to go with the standard feasibility assessment, remove the beneficial reuse alternatives evaluation and remove the dredging analysis public meeting, which would save us, if I'm reading this correctly,

The standard feasibility for task five is out.

No, I'm talking about removing task 8.

Oh, and you're going to take 9 out too.

Sorry.

It's $42,000.

$42,000.

Well, it's a little more than that.

The timing would be an issue.

Certainly you can, if you're not happy with the results, you can go back

I think the thing is that it's been my experience in my career generally that when you have an issue that is heavily contested by public interest groups, interest groups on various camps, I'm not picking either one,

but they're going to like what they hear if it supports their conclusions and they're going to criticize judgments when it doesn't fit their conclusions.

When you step back and take a lower level study and rely more on judgment and less analysis, the risk you need to be aware of is that that can, particularly if you're going to eliminate public meetings because

Frankly, we can hold a public meeting without the consultant, but what's going to happen is people are going to ask a lot of technical questions that the consultant should have been there to answer, and we're not going to know the answer unless they want to get back to you, and then we'll have to negotiate additional scope and fee and services from the consultant to get the answers to the questions.

It's going to take a lot more staff's time.

It's going to be a lot.

It's going to take more time total.

I certainly don't think anybody in this room wants to eliminate public comment and just say we won't have any.

I mean, if all you're there to, if what you don't, you don't want a presentation from the consultant.

You don't want them to present their information, their findings upon which people can comment on it.

You just want to come in and just say, okay, we're just here to listen to people.

We're not here to answer questions.

We're just here to listen.

Yeah, you can do it for the cost of soda and chips.

But if you want to share information with the public, share the findings of the consultant, it's often done in a PowerPoint presentation.

People like visuals.

That takes time and preparation.

Well, I just think we just need to make sure that whatever report they present, I mean, we're paying for a summary, we're paying $7,000 for a summary report, and we just hope that whatever report they present is in an easy to understand form that we can make widely available and we'll hopefully answer any, you know,

Certainly it doesn't need to be written in highly technical language but it's a pretty comprehensive report of findings so there's going to be a lot of technical data and there will be an executive summary but I've been in this community now long enough to know people are going to ask a lot of questions, people are going to be very irritated if they can't get answers and all factors concerned when you're looking at everybody's time and effort and energy

The most reliable way to get that information is to involve the consultants in your public meeting and involve them in preparing information ahead of time and it's not.

Can I just offer a comment or question?

I don't know which one it is, but you know, I sort of was the least enthusiastic counselor about us doing this study for the reason that if dredging doesn't give you enough water,

it doesn't matter how much it costs.

And so a lot of the cost issues which are involved a lot are cost related issues.

So probably based on that the question I'm most interested in knowing is how much volume can be obtained by dredging that reservoir.

and it's probably, I would assume it's unlikely that it can be completely restored in a pristine fashion towards the original contours and shape.

So it's probably some percentage, some high percentage, I would guess, of its original.

So a part of me thinks, before we answer anything else, can't we just answer how much is there and how much can you get from it and how does that fit into contributing in a big way to the

to the water supply plant, because if it turns out that a fair amount of it is difficult to dredge,

That's interesting because I've made a similar kind of argument about another piece of this which is why are we looking at all these other pieces if we don't know that we have a

disposal site that would work for the volume of fill.

So I think you can probably, you could go different directions and come to the same conclusion.

So I think most of this is looking at, I mean I think we can probably roughly ascertain how much fill we could get out but then we still don't know how much that's going to cost to get it out and more importantly how much it's going to cost to dispose it.

I think we've been asked to get some better information on all of it and I think I'm confident that this study will get us where we need to go.

I want to go back to this public meeting piece because one of the things that we talked about when we started this whole process was we had some citizen members that we appointed to the interview committee and we asked that they continue to be involved

throughout this study and Mr. O'Connor assured us that you all could find a way.

To me, that's one way to make sure that those questions are being asked along the way because they're very capable and smart people and they're plugged into the groups that you're talking about and they're likely to ask a lot of questions at the end.

I sort of agree with Mr. Fredrick, I would like to say something, that the most sense for this community to be able to answer questions on the same way I went to meet him is by myself, that as a consultant sometimes it is hard to get across a question and raise more questions, make more people unhappy,

I'm happy.

So, even though I say very well, I'm strengthened to be in the universe for 15,000 dollars to do some incarceration.

Well, let me ask for other counselors.

First of all, do you agree in general that this standard feasibility assessment is the path we want to take?

And if so, are you comfortable with, or how do you feel about dropping either the dredging analysis public meeting and or the beneficial reuse alternatives to evaluations?

I'm okay with dropping number 8.

Oh, I'm sorry.

So what about number 9?

I kind of agree.

I kind of agree with the mayor on this.

I think that if they find there's a fair amount of gravel that's capturable, I think gravel companies will tell us whether they actually need more and whether this is the type they would use.

And I started asking questions about gravel.

Remember this movie?

You want to keep the public meeting, are you okay dropping the Mr. Taliaferro?

I'm really not in favor of keeping the public meeting.

You are?

I'm not.

You know, once again,

and I think Dr. Brown probably said it, you know, what additional water do we get with the studies, what I'd like to know, and then what is the ongoing cost of maintaining that over the next 50 years or so.

But anyway.

All artificial could be that if you were close to an artificial level, all of it is there to put it in the way, whereas all of it is.

The original scope talked about two public meetings.

I'm just going to read the first one.

It goes last week.

That's what's in there.

This one's easy, but we can have them serve the ships and sell them.

All right, so it sounds like there's support for the standard feasibility assessment minus task eight.

The standard feasibility assessment has one public meeting factored in.

So we'll keep one public meeting on judging analysis, but at least that will bring the city's cost down to about $300,000 if I'm reading that correctly.

Which is a little more than we expected, but it's certainly a lot less than we were told it might cost us.

Thank you very much.

Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, you have before you for your review and approval this evening the draft 2010 regional legislative program.

It probably looks very familiar to you in terms of content as well as its format.

It contains a list, a short list of high priority action items.

as well as a section of ongoing policy statements and ongoing concerns.

The action items are very broad and general statements.

They've been established priorities for the region for a number of years and this year relies only slightly.

I think that it's going to be a largely defensive session for local governments.

It seems like they're always on the defensive but perhaps more so heading into the 2010 session.

Just very briefly, the priority items, action items that you have before you, local and state funding, obviously at the top of the list, and some statements there requesting the state to honor its funding obligations to localities, and I think particularly in light of the budget challenges that both the state and the localities face,

that the state resists cost shifting, that they provide flexibility for localities to meet requirements or ease back on requirements again in the tight budget times.

Public education funding, I think there's going to be a lot of attention focused on that this coming session.

This is the re-benchmarking year, the updating of public education costs, standards of quality costs for the state and localities, and we certainly want to see them fully fund their share of those costs without making any policy changes to the funding formula.

Land use and growth management is the next priority.

This position has been very consistent over the years in requesting that the state not preempt or circumvent the existing authorities that we already have in this area while also asking for some additional land use tools.

Transportation funding, we certainly are aware of the dire strait of our six-year program and the need to have some dedicated revenues for all transportation modes infused into that.

and then finally the Comprehensive Services Act, another long time position.

The statements there really trying to urge a better partnership and balance of responsibilities between the state and localities in the CSA area.

Again, after the action items, there's the areas of ongoing concern.

language in there that is proposed to be added as underlined, language proposed to be deleted as stricken.

And that's what I have for you this evening, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Mr. Brown.

I have a question.

Yes, sir.

Yes, I included

Other questions or comments from Mr. Blunt?

Thank you very much.

Good work.

And I guess we need to bring this to a vote.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Is there a motion to approve this TJPEC legislative program?

I'll so move.

Second.

Any further discussion?

Please indicate your vote.

Mr.

Bond, thank you as usual.

Thank you.

Good job.

While we're talking about legislative program, we will now have, I believe, Mr. Harris come forward, Mr. Rich Harris from our city attorney's office to discuss the city's 2010 legislative program.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Councillors, Mr. McConnell, Mr. Brown.

I have a few more handouts to give out here.

There have been some additions to the item since it was prepared.

I'll try to be as brief as Mr. Blunt was.

Before you now we have the proposed 2010 legislative program for the city of Charlottesville.

What's before you is four requests, two policy positions, and I will be adding in two, perhaps three more requests that have come in since you got this package.

The first one

is followed upon a council resolution.

They recently adopted a resolution at the urging of Equality Virginia, which is an organization promoting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.

This resolution is identical to the one that was adopted by other localities throughout Virginia seeking legislation guaranteeing freedom from discrimination for all public employees.

The resolution that you passed back in September is what would be forwarded to Richmond should you approve that.

That's included in your packet.

The second item

this is one item in three different parts this relates to environmental concerns

Last year, as you know, the legislature passed a bill allowing localities to provide loans to encourage people to invest in, let's say, big ticket environmental items, solar panels, things of that nature.

There are many angles that can be taken as far as encouraging environmentally friendly building measures.

This year, Mayor Norris asked our environmental administrator, Crystal Rittervold, to come up with some suggestions for ideas that could be brought to the legislature for possible action.

It boils down to three that are before you now.

One is regarding the Uniform Statewide Building Code.

Right now, by state code, we have to follow that to the letter.

It cannot go any further than it.

This letter will suggest that we ask the legislature to give localities additional power beyond the USBC as regarding energy efficiency standards.

Her thought behind this is that localities know the concerns better than the state does.

Being Charlottesville, we are very environmentally friendly and conscious.

If I can preempt you, because apart from Mr. Rittervall's suggestion, I was also approached by a couple of folks.

I ran into a coffee shop last week who informed me that

There's an effort to create a green building code for the Commonwealth of Virginia which addresses not just energy efficiency standards but also water conservation, indoor air quality, environmental impact, etc.

and this is actually an industry build.

The building industry is working on this build which I'm very pleased to see and I know in fact some of our builders here I'm guessing will probably be among the first to take advantage of that code.

They do good work in that regard anyway.

Can you comment on, is there... Actually, I was going to get to that at the end as one of the additions, but I'll skip to it.

Each of you have a copy of that bill before you now.

What I was going to suggest is to take that language of the idea that it put in as a possible, in the alternative, two crystals first point here.

That's more of a broad-based idea to try to get more local power as far as environmental concerns.

before I was just talking about getting additional local power for the USBC as it concerns environmental concerns, this would go further.

Yeah, I would just as soon swap them out.

I don't think we need both.

Okay, I can make that change.

Okay, thank you.

The second point that was in there already, the first ones gone out were changed.

The second one is following on that first one.

Crystal's idea was to require energy audits of buildings when they are sold or even rented.

This would be to make buyers and sellers, if nothing else, at least to motivate them to make this a consideration when transferring land.

Right now there are a few cities that have three or four throughout the country where an environmental audit is necessary to figure out what an energy store reading of a building is.

That's something she's thinking could be of some use, at least just to get it on the table for people to think about.

There might be some pushback from builders, sellers, buyers, and real estate agents, but the environmental idea is what is driving us here.

Do we not have that authority now?

There's no explicit enabling legislation for that.

That's why we're looking to make that explicit.

I wanted to follow up on this.

I know Paul Westbrook spoke earlier today from Old Energy.

And that's something we can add in later on if you want to.

I know it just came up tonight.

Moving on from Ms. Rittervall's suggestions, I have more suggestions.

Mayor Norris has also recognized an issue with state elections law.

The timing structure for campaign seasons is not particularly well suited for local elections.

Candidates for council and other constitutional officers in May elections have a two-month campaign season, whereas those running in November have a five-month campaign season.

I totally agree with that idea.

and some, the language that would be necessary has been appended to this which would go forward to Richmond if you want to go ahead with that.

Finally, the last request in is one that we've had in the past few years has not been acted upon at Richmond and that's a request to amend the state code in order to allow the restoration of voter rights to non-violent felons as to the completion of their sentences.

Has not been acted on, I add in again at the request of the mayor, you can act on those as you wish of course.

Moving on to the policy positions, there are two of them.

The first is supporting what we just heard from David Blunt.

That's already done.

Second, well, in addition to that, there will be support for the legislative program for the Virginia Municipal League.

With your packet, I've given you the 2009 one because the 2010 draft program is not available.

I was able to get it today.

That's what I passed out to you today.

I also hand you those two additions, which I think we've gone over already.

The second policy position is one that's been advanced by our Commission of Revenue, Lee Richards.

This is a response to the results of a study conducted pursuant to a legislative direction last year, where their form of taxation looked into additional incentives or punishments that could be implemented with regards to businesses reporting retail, sales, and used taxes.

Mr. Richards' understanding of this, and he believes that the

That's what we have in the package before you.

The additions, we've already spoken about.

The Green Building Code, so you've got that on there and you can put that into it.

The other one comes from Jason Pearson, the chairman of our city's planning commission.

There are some material, he put together a proposal, pretty comprehensive, somewhat comprehensive proposal.

That's in front of you now.

The issue that he references is that when trees are designated to be saved on any site plans that come before the planning commission and essentially before council, the zone administrator can issue a site plan violation if a tree is destroyed in extreme circumstances, he could issue a stop work order.

What that would do to a developer is cost them money because it takes time out of the project.

The other situations, if a tree is supposed to be preserved in order to stay within the tree canopy, then all it could do is ask for a site plan amendment.

There is no punitive measures available.

What Mr. Pearson suggested is seeking the authority to create a tree fund, the purpose of which would be to require payment into it in the event that it develops or damages or destroys trees.

We've got the proposal before you.

What I want to say is that there's a suggestion for evaluation model.

It's a relatively interesting concept to how it would be valued about the value of the tree and the service that it provides.

I'd recommend that if you want to go ahead with this, just seek the authority to establish the fund and maybe enforce some mechanisms and give evaluation up for debate at this point.

Those are all the M's I've got for you right now.

You've got the new ones added on as well.

If you want to adopt what's before you and either two or three of the newer ones, you can make the resolution.

Would it have a site plan?

Yes.

I think that's, in my opinion, that's something that should be left voluntary and certainly I think any savvy home builder

is going to be doing those kinds of audits to show how efficient their homes are.

I could actually think the opposite, which is looking at the success we've had with affordable housing, it's all been based on being able to work with the parties who might oppose the bill and come to an agreement that everybody can get behind.

and I think in order for this one to be successful, we need to do the same kind of thing.

We need to sit down with the home builders and say, look, all we want is something so that if a tree is inadvertently hurt, there's some compensation.

We don't want it to be onerous.

We want it to be meaningful so we could keep someone from intentionally taking down a tree but in onerous on someone.

And I think we could do that, but I think we need to have some specifics

because I think the home builders are very unlikely to support a bill that's vague in terms of exactly what would the consequences be and so I'd like to see if we can move forward with this and I actually think it's a very good idea I'd like to see if we could move forward model and how we've successfully done some affordable housing initiatives where we actually have something where when we take the builders committee we don't have

Mr. Pearson has put together a proposal.

Is that something you would be thinking about putting together?

You know, the mayor and Mr. Pearson and myself are some combinations.