City Council Meeting   12/7/2009

Ooh, ooh, ooh

I've been waiting for you

and David Brown.

James Bond

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm David Brown.

Ms. Kochis, if you would call the roll, please.

Yes.

Here.

Okay.

The Charlottesville High School PTO invites everyone in the Charlottesville High School community to a principal chat tomorrow, December 8th from 6.30 to 7.30 in the Charlottesville High School Media Center.

This is an important forum.

Dr. Taylor will be discussing proposed course changes for next year and suggestions are welcome.

He will be providing an update on the recent de-leveling of classes at Charlottesville High School and addressing any other concerns that may come up.

The Charlottesville High School PTO Executive Board meeting will be from 6 to 6.30 and will precede the Chadd.

I want all the parents to pay attention to this meeting because this is the time you need to start looking at the grades because these grades were determined

Graduation, this is the time we need to start looking at it.

And also, this is the time we start looking at the grades.

So you can start making your list and checking it twice because Christmas is coming.

So just be mindful that by this time you should have gotten the first semester grades, the final grades are in.

So before you go Christmas shopping or holiday shopping, whatever you prefer, before you buy anything for anybody, check their grades.

Also, we're in the midst of the redevelopment of the city's public housing sites and some of the plans have been completed

They can be seen at CCDC, the City Design Center.

That's the old Social Security office that was downtown near the garage.

Come take a look, see what high school students have done to add to the designs.

There were some students that were involved in the course that actually submitted their ideas.

And as part of the strategic plan, HUD would like to hear from you so you can actually log on to the HUD website

by going to www.seavilleqcc.com and there's a link to the HUD website to make it more simplistic.

This is the time for the entire community to get involved with the redevelopment of public housing sites because it's not just about the low-income neighborhoods, but it's an opportunity to revitalize the entire city.

And lastly,

Stop the Silence, Cease the Violence, QCC Walks Against Gun Violence will be this Friday, December 11th at 8.30 at QCC and QCC is located behind the West Main Restaurant.

Thank you Ms. Edwards.

Mr Chairman, I will now be here at the next meeting, so I wanted to just recognize that it will be my last meeting, from the very least, with the Julian Taliaferro and the city council, and that I will recognize that it will be used by our vice-president and council member for over 40 years of public service.

It has been very thoughtful and a very great help to me at least.

I appreciate your service.

Thank you.

I have a series of announcements as well.

First of all, I want to once again publicly thank our Assistant City Manager Maurice Jones and Councillor Edwards and other city staff and steering committee members who helped kick off our community dialogue on race with a very successful inaugural event on Saturday.

We had a nice turnout even though it was not so nice weather.

But there's still plenty of time for members of the community to sign up to participate.

The actual dialogue and race kicks off in January.

If you would like to register or at least to find out more information, you can either go to our city website, Charlottesville.org slash dialogue

You can find out the information there or you can always call City Hall at 970-3101.

Also, many of you are aware we had a very unfortunate fatal fire in the city in October.

took the life of a local beloved musician in this community and reminded us all that we need to be more fire safe and also we are now stepping up our efforts to distribute our free smoke detectors in the community.

If you would like a free smoke detector from the city, please call 970-3245.

and now for some lighter announcements.

Share the Love, Shop Local, we have our holiday market going on now every Saturday from November 28th through December 19th, 8am to 2pm at the Water Street lot.

There's also a fourth annual SPCA Blanket Drive.

If you have blankets to give to SPCA to use in dog pens, you can drop those off here at the City Hall lobby.

Also our fourth annual food bank, non-perishable food drive also can drop off food in the City Hall lobby.

And finally, our holiday blood drive, Monday, December 21st, 12 to 5 p.m. here in the basement conference room of City Hall.

Any other announcements?

If not, we're going to move on to awards and recognitions.

We have two awards tonight.

One is, they're both related to downtown Charlottesville.

They're both awards from the Virginia Downtown Development Association.

The first is an award of excellence from the

Commercial Revitalization Plans and Streetscapes Competition, 2009.

This is an award of excellence recognizing the outstanding quality of the mall refurbishment, its commitment to the historic integrity of the original design, and the inclusive involvement of the business community in the redevelopment process.

This award also recognized the coordination of all downtown businesses during construction.

A prestigious award.

Is that for Mr. Genco?

and secondly, also from the Virginia Downtown Development Association, this is an award for our Shop Charlottesville campaign, an award of excellence in the category of business development, promotion and marketing.

The Shop Charlottesville effort was launched by the Office of Economic Development in partnership with local merchants in December of 2008 to educate and encourage citizens to consider making more of their purchases locally.

and the Shops Charlottesville World website was launched in April 2009 as the focal point of the campaign.

This site to date has received over 75,000 visits.

Shops Charlottesville this holiday season and please join me in thanking Chris Engle for his efforts.

I do have one item we are going to add to the end of our agenda, a very brief discussion about Census 2010, which will take no more than two minutes at the very end of tonight's agenda.

We'll now open the meeting up to matters by the public, and as is customary, when you come forward, please state your name and address, and keep your comments to three minutes.

I'm Melissa Oliver and I live in the city on Pinetop Road and I'm here as co-chairperson for VSA Arts in Charlottesville.

VSA Arts, formerly Virginia's Special Arts of Charlottesville Albemarle, was formed in

and is an affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts dedicated to promoting the creative power in people with disabilities.

The Charlottesville Albemarle VSA Arts sponsors an annual art exhibit, an annual poetry book, and we've given all of you a copy of that book tonight.

Certainly.

an annual music recital, VSA artist led workshops, Therapeutic Virginia Festival of Book Activities and there's a tote bag you've been given also with the Sprout Film Festival advertisement.

You'll hear more about that in March and other special events.

During the budget year 2008 and 2009

Over 2500 participants and over 1400 audience members, volunteers and leaders were served.

The local volunteer VSA committee consists of agencies and schools serving individuals with disabilities, parents, local VSA artists and other community volunteers.

The program is administered by Charlottesville Parks and Recreation Therapeutic Program

and funded by both Charlottesville and Albemarle Parks and Recreation departments along with community donations.

And we just want to thank the City Council for its support and continued funding of this vibrant arts program in our community.

And in the books,

There are over 70 authors ranging in ages from teens to seniors and every physical disability is represented as well as cognitive disability who have contributed in this book.

So we hope you'll enjoy it.

Next person to sign up to speak is James Shisler Good evening, members of city council, city manager, Mr. O'Connell, Mayor Norris, city staff

I'm James D. Schisler, Jim Schisler.

I'm a lifelong resident of the city of Charlottesville.

My home is 901 Rugby Road.

I'm here tonight in support of McIntyre Road extended, Meadow Creek Parkway, and the grade separated interchange at the 250 bypass.

In my 76 years as a resident of the city of Charlottesville, I have witnessed most of the enormous growth in Charlottesville and Amherst County.

Tonight, we're concerned with the growth in traffic along Park Street, Royal Road, known in my youth as a part of Nine Mile Circle, and we're concerned with the growth in Northern Albemarle County.

This traffic has grown from village and country road to a volume which hardly allows access from the streets and private driveways.

The only way to gain relief is an alternate route.

that ultimate drop must be McIntyre Road extended Meadow Creek Parkway.

Meadow Creek Parkway and McIntyre Road was a necessity when it was conceived in the 1960s.

It was a necessity when Charlottesville High School was in its growth.

It's a necessity today and it's a necessity for Charlottesville's future.

Understandably, with all change there is opposition.

These oppositions and concerns have been carefully addressed by the city staff, by DDOT and the design team in a caring manner.

The result is a project which serves its purpose with minimum impact.

Good evening, Councillors.

My name is Pat Napoleon.

I live at 700 Lyons Avenue.

As I have been following correspondence from the city and attending related public meetings, I am concerned that a severely flawed plan has arrived for a vote.

The county-driven Albemarle Thruway has come about in order to channel traffic brought on by ill-planned county sprawl and thus an accompanying interchange project lacking in taste and detrimental to the environment, historical resources, and quality of life for downtown neighborhoods.

This project is to be called on the carpet by many respected legal authorities and I must question my tax dollars paying city attorneys to challenge reasonable citizen opposition here and at the same time defend destruction of our Central Park owned by all citizens of Charlottesville.

The whole issue is dividing the populace and frankly should have come up for a vote allowing all city residents to vote for or against.

Citizen morale is declining in regard to this project.

Mitigation has not been accomplished as far as pedestrian access or the environment is concerned.

Excuses by some such as, oh we must finish the dirty deed because former politicians began the charade are ridiculous.

Such reasoning demonstrates a lack of accountability in protecting the will of the people who have asked you to lead on your own accord and meet today's current standards.

Moving forward tonight based on the information in hand will be foolish, reckless and irresponsible.

Thank you, Mr. Brown.

David Steinberg, Albemarle County.

I'm here tonight to advocate the civic, an ideal that features commerce, exchanging ideas, and the rich mingling of the peoples that make up our community.

Here I share ground with Thruway advocates, the desire to augment downtown's vitality,

But in the public discourse, I also hear a repeated refrain that denies the civic.

Build it ASAP.

This is the cry of haste and impatience, inconsistent with not only the value of civic deliberation, but also with what I take to be the principles of Counselor Brown, who said that the best advice he ever got was measure twice, cut once.

I don't think our discussion has taken the full measure of the issue, partly because circumstances have changed over the course of the decades of planning to which Mr. Sisler has just drawn attention.

I mention two.

One, imminent buildings south of town that can easily be accommodated to a vision of a downtown hub.

Two, and this more controversial, recognition of a need to decrease private auto use.

This is not only a so-called green issue, it's a social class issue.

To everyone who respects our community enough to look a generation ahead, I suggest that the three-way plan verges on being archaic.

Is the plan an exercise in nostalgia for people who grew up in gasoline flowed freely?

Need we recall that that was leaded gasoline we were born in the most heady days of our youth?

That the 20th century is a history of addicting ourselves to seductive technologies, which turned into crises, which demanded unlearning and rethinking?

Of course, what's at stake is not only whether to cut, but if so, how to cut.

Here, it's significant that many planned details are fuzzy.

The pedestrian walkway moves around again and again is getting more of a workout than any pedestrian.

What hasn't changed are the needs to continue to promote downtown vibrancy, to augment access to our common places.

McIntyre Park is just a store from the downtown mall, but few make it.

We will announce the possibility that the park is perfectly positioned to be a great public park if we insist on proceeding as we had intended just years ago, back when the road through the park seemed like a great idea.

Thank you, Mr. Dunbar.

My name is Randy Salzman.

I live at 320 Northwest 11th Street in Charlottesville, and I'd also like to address the 250 McIntyre Interchange, certainly from the perspective of a person who has spent the last five years studying what induces people to drive

and what induces people to try alternative transportation.

And I have been all over the world basically from Australia to where we are today in Copenhagen where the climate summit is going on right now to all across the American West and to some places in Virginia to try to find out what it is that causes us to make that decision to put the key in the mission.

And basically, across the world, the data shows that it is a default position, i.e.

it's habitual.

And changing habit is one of the most difficult things to do, as anyone who has ever heard of AA or any of the other groups.

recognize.

So what we have to do is we have to make it as easy as possible.

We have to induce and entice people to try alternative means of transportation as they have done successfully in many places of the world.

Primarily what that boils down to is that as we build the 250

McIntyre Interchange, we have an opportunity that we cannot pass up and hope that it will be taken care of later and that is to build completely grade separated, i.e.

no walker, no bicyclist will have to cross traffic in any way, shape or form because fear is the primary reason around the world and especially in America that people don't try

that muscle powered transportation.

And only when we remove the fear will people like my wife, who would love to be a bicyclist, will she be able to do it.

Now, Councilor Brown and I and a few other people in this room, we're willing to bicycle almost anywhere.

We're willing to walk almost anywhere.

But that is not the way it is for the vast majority of the citizens of Charlottesville and the residents of Albemarle County.

They need to be enticed.

So please, counselors, please make sure that the 250 McIntire Interchange has completely grade separated transportation opportunities for bicyclists and pedestrians.

Thank you, Mr. Salzman.

Members of the Charlottesville City Council and staff, my name is Peter Vanderlinde.

I live at 2820 Hydraulic Road.

I've distributed a memorandum to council relevant to RSWA's lawsuit against Vanderlinde Recycling.

This memorandum darkens if RSWA were to win their lawsuit, RSWA owes

Van der Linde Recycling, and many other haulers, money, not the other way around.

Again, the purpose of this memorandum is that it documents if RSWA wins their lawsuit, RSWA owes Van der Linde Recycling and many other haulers, money, not the other way around.

This information affords council an advanced opportunity to assess the likelihood

of an award for, not against, Vanderlinden Recycling.

Such an award would pave the way for many other similarly affected haulers to file a class action suit against RSWA with complete confidence.

I'm always available to answer questions if it is not clear exactly what this memorandum communicates.

Additionally,

This evening I'd like to read a very brief proposal submitted to the Charlottesville Public Works Department recently.

As per a telephone conversation last week, I understand that Charlottesville is in the earliest stages of a five-year trash hauling contract with waste management requiring all city garbage to go to a landfill via the BFI transfer station.

A proposal that may be well received by all parties is as follows.

Waste management redirects city garbage to Vanderlinde Recycling for the same $66 per ton currently charged by BFI slash RSWA.

RSWA would receive the $16 per ton service contribution fee applicable to city trash

and whatever isn't recycled still goes to waste management's landfill.

Under this proposal, waste management continues to haul city trash as per their contract.

RSWA continues to receive their service contribution for income.

City residents receive garbage recycling at no extra cost.

The only loser in this proposal is the landfill.

I'd just like to add that anyone, anytime, interested in visiting Vanderlinden Recycling may do so with five minutes advance notice.

Thank you.

Thank you Mr. Vanderlinden.

Good evening Councillors.

I will direct your attention to a handout, which is in front of you.

It looks like this.

And I think if you can grab it, it will be a little bit easier for you to follow what it is that I'm going to say.

I was here in front of you at the last council meeting to

I want to clarify some words by Tom Frederick about a month or two ago when he told you, erroneously, that dam consultant Schnabel had raised issues about the Ragon Mountain Dam, the current condition of the Ragon Mountain Dam.

And as I explained to you last week, or last meeting, that information was wrong.

Schnabel has not done any analysis of the dam in the last

analysis of the dam which was done by Garrett Filming concluded that the dam was sound.

Nevertheless, there was an article, if you flip to the last couple of pages, I apologize, this is somewhat out of order, but if you flip to the second or last, or third of last pages, you'll see a copy of an article beginning with daily progress, this one written by Sean Tubbs and Brian Wheeler,

and talking about the conditional permit that the state gave Rivanna to operate the dam.

and an interesting paragraph, down second to last, on the second page there, you'll see where it says Dan Johnson, Vice President of GEI Consultants in Boulder, was a member of the panel, assembled by Rivanna, the ITRT, earlier this year, to review engineering data in a 1913 safety report for Lower Dan.

He confirmed

in an August interview, but the independent panel expressed what Frederick has described as significant concerns about any construction on the 1908 dam.

That quote in The Daily Progress is patently false, and I'll flip you back to the second page of this letter.

And what you'll see is a letter, an email from Don Johnson,

to Chuck Kent basically saying, hey, I've been contacted by Brian Reeder.

He wants to know about this quote of Tom's about the condition of the dam.

What's he talking about?

I'm not aware of any concerns about this.

Perhaps there was another expert panel that he was referring to.

And you'll see Tom Frederick's email response back to him saying, we'll contact you.

So in August, keep in mind,

Put this together here.

The consultant gets a call from the reporter saying, is this statement by Tom Frederick true?

The consultant emails Tom Frederick saying, what's he talking about?

And Tom Frederick says, go to bed, I'll call you.

and then the consultant comes back to the reporter and says, oh yeah, yeah, we did talk about that.

I do remember now.

Even though he didn't remember minutes before when he emailed Tom to say what's he talking about.

Now the reason I bring all this up is that you've been looking into Rivanna's back and forth communication, as you know, and time after time we find counsel and the public being misled.

This is a clear, documented

proof of their deliberate misleading of the public.

My question to you, that you own the stamp.

You own the stamp.

It's a C asset.

I should say we own the stamp.

For how long are you going to let individuals who now are clearly and repeatedly misleading you and

citizens of Charlottesville.

How long does this continue?

How long do you keep letting people who are misleading us about what's going on continue to call the shots?

It's a city asset.

It needs to be protected by the city.

Good evening, I'm Downing Smith, I live at 810 Lake's Avenue, and I was originally going to talk to you about the transit authority, but I have another topic I think is more important, I'll just say two things about transit.

I support public transit, I think the transit authority is good in theory, I think it would be a total disaster in practice, and I certainly hope that we have a public hearing on the matter before you all move forward on anything.

But what really got my attention is

My old friend's the hook, this wonderful article about trash.

And I started reading this article and I said, oh boy, I'm not going to have to separate my recyclables anymore.

Gosh, 40 tons on one weekend, didn't go into the landfill.

We're going to save the city money.

Man, I'm just going around here.

And then I get to page 25.

And it says, what's more, if the city of Charlottesville collects your trash and recycling, none of it would be making it to Vanderlyn's facility.

That's because the city recently signed a five-year contract with Race Management to collect household waste, which I'm going to agree with RSWA, must be taken to RSWA-sponsored stations.

That really upset me.

Whoever was responsible for getting this contract signed should be fired.

It's that simple.

We're supposed to be a green city, and we commit ourselves to five years to putting more stuff in the landfill.

We have a budget deficit of three million dollars, and we're committing ourselves for five years to a contract that's probably going to cost us more money.

And Dr. Brown says in the Daily Progress,

in regard to the budget, I think it's going to be a really hard time so the more things we can avoid committing to the better.

And we commit to a five year contract.

I don't understand how this contract can be justified.

I don't understand why we signed it.

I don't understand the timing of it.

The timing to me is very suspicious.

I got to thinking about, with last summer I was going to buy a computer.

and all the computers were being shipped with Vista.

And I knew in a couple of months that computers were going to be shipped with Windows 7.

So am I going to buy a computer in the summertime with Vista and then a couple of months later have to pay for an upgrade to Windows 7 and then start the upgrade myself?

No, I'm going to wait.

And if you know that a potentially better system is coming for handling trash, why don't you go and lock yourself in for five years?

I mean, at least with Vista you can pay for the upgrade and upgrade yourself.

The city's locked in for five years.

And there should have been a public hearing on this.

I mean, this was a resolution that a lot of people had interest in.

I'd like for you all to have the city attorney take a look at this contract and see if we can overturn it.

It's things like this that make people cynical about government.

It's things like this that make people not want to vote.

And apparently, if I had my facts right, on June 30th, you'll need to reauthorize your support of the Solid Waste Authority.

And if you weren't locked into a five-year deal, I think that'd make a big difference.

So personally, I'm not buying any more trash stickers from the city.

I don't know, I've read lots of things, possibly I could get a public column to take care of it.

Okay, and let me help.

I did have one thing, even though my time is up.

Mr. Huja, stowed my file on this one.

I, however, would like to express my appreciation to Mr. Taliaferro.

He's an honest, ethical individual.

He served not only our city, but he served our country.

I would miss his

Logical, down-to-earth, thoughtful review of the issues.

Thank you, Mr. Smith.

John Wheeler.

I had to twist my arm, you know.

Debbie Smith, 2652 Jefferson Park Circle.

And I'm here tonight to share also something with you that was, our group got about the water supply plan from a Freedom of Information request, as well as another document, and I do have copies for you, which I'll pass out later.

It's not a follow-along.

But as you know, after Granite Flaming was fired by the Vanna Water and Sewer Authority, they put out a request for proposals for a new dam designer, and

We did an extensive search, but only two companies actually responded.

But what we found was a really interesting email from another company who didn't choose to send in a proposal, and I'd just like to share that with you.

It's a Black & Veatch corporation, a very well-known and very respected engineering firm.

and they were very nice in their email.

They just wanted to write to say that they had decided not to pursue the project and they really appreciated the time that Rivanna had given to them in consideration of this.

They go on to say, but I would like to pass on a few thoughts on the project that you can consider or throw out and they go on to mention four and I'm only going to read you two because I'm going to give this to you and you can read the other two.

The first one is I maintain that the consultant should step back and reexamine water supply alternatives and as well as dam type configurations.

In order to reaffirm that an RCC dam with a 45 foot rise in the normal pool is the most cost effective way forward.

This could be done quickly with a quick start team.

I don't happen to know what a quick start team is, but I assume Rivanna does.

Secondly, they go on to say, regarding alternative dam configurations, in order to stay within Rivanna's budget, I suggest considering designing a dam that is capable of being raised in the future.

That sounds like an idea we've heard before.

Basically, design and construct a dam now that provides enough storage for the next 20 years rather than 50 years.

These are all things that we were told that we can't do.

This is a very well-known

Company, who clearly knows something about this project.

Rivanna spent time with them.

The other interesting thing is these are the same kinds of ideas that Gannett Fleming put forward after the price rose from $37 million to $99 million and before they got fired.

And that was on the second page.

And you have Kevin's actually, the first page, and you don't have the second page because I'm going to give it to you.

So you'll have two of the same at the front page.

but Gannett Fleming in their report on the dam after the fractured rock was found had actually the same, and I have it highlighted for you, gave options that are very similar.

These are two companies who know a lot about the project who came to the same conclusions and I would hope that you will consider those as well.

Thank you Ms. Smith.

Dave and Mr. Vance, City Council.

The Pride of Virginia Masonic Lodge number 122 is on the agenda for tonight but we wanted to just to read something before it came up.

We stand before you tonight as lifetime and longtime residents of Charlottesville.

At hand is not our homes or jobs at this point but our Masonic Lodge.

Truth is a divine attribute.

Justice enables us to render every man his just due.

What we're seeking is that justice.

For years we were told that we must pay real estate tax on our lodge hall.

Our members tried repeatedly to get this overturned, but to Morville we still paid the tax as requested.

Sometimes we weighed difficulty, but still we paid it.

This presented us at times from completing some of our planned benevolent projects.

Now that we have found the women that has been in effect for over 100 years, the season states that we were right and they were indeed wrong in taxing us.

Let me also state that all Masonic temples and rural lodges don't pay real estate taxes.

It is not enough for you to give us this small amount of money for actually you aren't really giving us anything but money that was already obtained that belongs to us.

What we are requesting is that you return all of the money that was paid in taxes.

Justices Brown are supposedly so.

and we cannot believe that you would hide behind a law that lets the city operate with half-truths.

All we ask is that what is ours would be returned.

Even though remoteness was wrong, we stood up and did what was asked of us.

Now we ask of you, who is willing to stand up and make this wrong that was done right?

and we know that this is coming up on the agenda sometime tonight and we'd just like for you to give me your thoughts and do what we think is the right thing.

Thank you Mr. Anthony.

We always have the luck to follow the hardest note.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Councillors.

Colorado 101 Muppets and Lane.

I have a couple of different items I want to discuss.

Actually, a couple of them come down to the bottom line, which is money and a budget.

First, I ask that you defer item 6 about the SRO tonight.

As of 2.14 p.m. when I spoke to Gene Cox,

our Clerk of Counsel, information had not been provided to her on that item and therefore the public did not have appropriate time to read and therefore to comment on this issue.

I definitely would have commented on this issue either amount of time.

Second, I was at the November 24, 2009 design meeting representing the North Downtown neighborhood to discuss more revisions to the 250 interchange design based on letters to the city from the Southern Environmental Law Center, CARS, Covenant School, and Deacon Cargill, a senior transportation planner.

One item that Ms. Kogler brought up was decreasing the amount of train lanes that feed into the 250 interchange ramp system and go into the Nutter Creek Parkway and then out to McIntyre.

She said the more lanes that pedestrian cyclists need to cross, the more dangerous it becomes.

However, Jim Calvert's memo from that meeting discusses the southbound lane in the park.

The drawing that Anne Perry from Arkan Kay had on the screen for our consideration of her question was as a both by means leading to the east ramp and to the park.

and Mrs. Jim Tobit.

I'm quoting from his memo.

Can a southbound lane train left to the westbound 250 be eliminated?

We believe the train line can be moved and will be from this phase of the project if possible.

All gradient and drainage work will be done as if the lane will be built, so when it is leaving in the future, it will be much less intensive and costly.

End of quote.

The only reason I'm quoting Mr. Talbert here is because he doesn't say anything about the North Lane, he doesn't say anything in his memo about what we actually discussed in that meeting.

And then the third item I bring up, which kind of comes to budgeting again,

The numbers for landscaping and trees does not add up.

The question was asked at the meeting designed by Peggy Vermeeris, what means is allotted for trees, landscape and hardscape, especially trees?

She said many trees will be lost.

End of quote.

The answer, quote, six to seven percent of the budget for landscape and hardscape, this comes to around a million dollars.

End of quote.

And that was by Owen Perry from RK&K.

Mr. Perry also wanted to say, VDOT will not allow more than three percent of its funds to be used for landscaping and hardscaping.

If you do the math, this comes out that the project will cost around 50 million dollars.

However, the project will come closer to $33 million.

So landscaping and trees is being short-changed by at least a million dollars.

I can give you the math follow that I used.

I don't think you care about that much, but I did check it with my husband as a PhD in math.

He said I did the math correctly.

And this doesn't even factor in for the historic property mitigation.

Good evening, Daniel Bluston, 501 Park Hill.

I want to talk about budgeting and it strikes me as a really good principle for a council like this to know going into a project what a project is going to cost and to have a clear understanding

how that might change as you go along.

And as an example of that, I'm concerned that we've consistently been involved in the process that the cost of the interchange at 250 McIntire Road has escalated.

And as David Brown has noted, we're heading for tough budget times.

And I think in the situation in which you're headed for tough budget times,

The mitigation and the bicycle and pedestrian access issues shouldn't be on the chopping block.

We ought to design an interchange that can fit the budget that we have, and we're not doing that.

There has to be a memorandum of agreement about the mitigation for this project, and nobody knows what the mitigation is actually going to cost.

And if they tell you they do now, they're not telling you the truth.

and I think that as a just fundamental public process issue, we all know what budgets are going to cost.

We have now paid $2.7 million in design and engineering fees, mostly going to RMPOs.

from RK&K Engineering and I find it shocking that they haven't been able to come up with the number because they don't believe in mitigation and they are just kicking the can down the road.

I also find it unbelievable that apparently one of the things that came up in the November 24th meeting was that we found out that yes indeed the things that people who have been concerned about the interchange have been saying

which is that it's designed in a way that's dangerous with crisscrossing patterns in relationship to the Park Street ramps that VDOT and FHWA are probably not likely to accept this design and we've paid 2.7 million dollars in design and engineering fees and we end up with a design that apparently

is not going to be accepted even by the highway officials, never mind by the people of Charlottesville.

This just boggles the mind.

When you have all these people standing up here during this public comment talking about honesty and truth and openness in government and veracity and transparency, I think you're beginning to hear that there are problems and I think there are big problems with this.

There have been problems in the way in which the staff has represented this or misrepresented this, and there are problems with the way in which RK&K has consistently escalated this project, making it more and more expensive while they do less and less mitigation.

That's all the time we have for public comment tonight.

We'll now open it up to council member responses to matters by the public.

Who would like to start?

I have a question about, Bob, answering, I think, about the lodge, and I have a memo in my file that I understand.

Do you want to talk about that today?

I think we should remove it from the consent agenda and have a discussion.

I have a question about the Masonic Lodge also, and I guess it,

I wonder why they were treated differently from the other lodge all these years.

Yeah, I think we'll save those questions and we'll get to that.

That's a very good question.

I have a few things.

First, I'd like to talk a little bit about

Recycling option that Mr. Van der Linde is now offering.

And I'd like to ask a question to the city manager to start with.

And could you talk a little bit about, you know, we extended our agreement for trash hauling.

Can you talk a little bit about the degree to which we're committed to that and how that could or could not change in the fact?

Is that ironclad?

We put out proposals.

We actually had some discussions with council about the possibility of some pilot programs to look at doing recycling differently.

But basically we're trying to find a vendor that could pick up trash and recycling, one or both, as part of providing a good service.

The issue becomes there are very few vendors that are willing to invest the amount of money they have to invest in trucks and equipment for a one year kind of agreement.

and what we've found and I think what a lot of communities find is you have to look at multi-year agreements.

With that being said, the city has in any agreement that we have what's called an annual appropriation clause, which means that if it is not funded, that agreement could be changed or shifted or whatever.

The other agreement that's relevant in this whole discussion is the city currently has an agreement with the Rivanna Authority whether anyone likes it or not as to where we would take it and a service contribution fee be

come part of it that the city has to honor as well.

So there's several little agreements.

The agreement with Rivanna ends in June?

In June, yes sir.

Unless it's renewed or changed or something in a different way.

and Mr. Bandolini has what I want to understand to be

I guess we call the Dirty Murph, a recycling facility which is able to extract recyclables from actual trash, which is a good thing.

But my reading about this, and I'm not an expert, but trying to read about this is that it's less efficient, it's more efficient to separate your recyclables first, the system we have now, than it is to try to get them out of the trash because there's a fair degree

of contamination of paper and other things that occur in the trash.

According to Wikipedia, one of my sources, it says that you can extract from trash about 5 to 40 percent

depending on how the operation is designed and run can be extracted as recyclables of the trash itself.

Now having said that, it seems to me an ideal scenario for the city, and it sounded to me like what Mr. Vandalendi is proposing, is to have a system where we still have an incentive for households

to separate the recyclables into a commingled bin so we maximize at the source how much recycling people are putting out there that's kind of clean and easy to separate.

And then we have trash that can be taken to also be separated for recycling.

So for people who choose not to participate or for places such as apartment complexes that are difficult to

to recycle in bins, we can increase the recycling.

So I'm very interested in the system that would allow us to participate.

I'm hesitant, although I'm not that knowledgeable, about a system which would fully commit us to only collecting trash and then seeing what recyclables can be taken out of the trash.

My reading of it is that's not the preferred system.

The preferred system is to have people separate in a commingled fashion their recyclables.

I think an ideal system might be a community where you can actually do both.

You can make one pass for commingled and one pass with the trash.

And for that reason I'm interested in seeing both

for the current, where we are now, if there's a way of looking into that, but certainly when next summer comes, I think we may have the agreement that binds us on where we deliver our trash will be ending, so I would think that would provide us with an opportunity.

The real thing I'll comment is that

Dan Bluestone was reporting on a meeting that he did not attend and I don't recall, and I might just have missed it, but I don't recall it being stated that the design that we were coming up with was not acceptable to the Federal Highways.

I don't know if you recall hearing that Mr. Norris?

Thank you Dr. Brown.

I wanted to use my time by

sharing one of the poems in the On Our Way book.

Sometimes when we have so many heavy issues in council, we don't get a chance to talk about some of the cool things.

And I really appreciate the canvas bag.

But the poem that I'm going to share is by Dorothy Jordan.

She attends Jack Jewett School.

At school, she helps out by staffing all the chairs in the cafeteria every day.

She loves horses, horseback riding, volleyball, and dancing.

and she wrote a poem called, Dad.

Dad, I love going to work with you.

You are so smart.

You make me happy when I go to the barn.

Where friends will watch the basketball game.

You smile when UVA girls win.

You got a lot of heart.

You work so hard.

That is why you are in my heart.

And that's by Dorothy Jordan.

Thank you.

Mr. Taliaferro, did you have anything else you wanted to add?

I just wanted to essentially second what Dr. Brown said.

I, too, look forward to the opportunity to revisit and hold our solid waste management system as we move towards the June deadline for renewing our

agreement with Rivanna and I certainly hope that if we decide to move in a different direction that we can find a way to get out of this five-year agreement.

So I'm all for innovation and if there's a better system out there then we should certainly pursue that.

We now will move forward to our, and thank you all for coming tonight and speaking, we will now move forward to our consent agenda.

I may as a proven minister of November 2nd and 16th.

Item B is an appropriation of $195,300 energy efficiency grant, second of two readings Item C is an appropriation fiscal year 2009 year-end appropriation, second of two readings Item D is an appropriation of $32,447.38 reimbursement for health department building improvements, first of two readings

Item A is an appropriation of $7500 Center for Watershed Protection grant first of two readings.

Item F is an appropriation of $106,035 Intelligent Transportation Systems grant first of two readings.

Item G is an appropriation of $73,984 Rivanna River Basin Commission grant first of two readings.

I've got a mistake on my agenda here.

Oh, sorry, okay.

So this is item G, part 2, resolution approval of memorandum of understanding, first of one meeting.

Item H, resolution refunding taxes erroneously assessed prior to Virginia Lodge, first of one meeting.

Item I, resolution lease purchase of police vehicles, first of one meeting.

Item J, resolution accepting donation of six acres from Locust Meadows Land Trust, first of one meeting.

Item K, resolution donation of 18-acre parcel behind Seminole Square from Jay Zana LLC, first of one meeting.

Item L, resolution, certification of comprehensive plan compliance for UDA grant, first of one reading.

Item M, a resolution allocating Charlottesville housing funds, $26,000 for Elliott Avenue water line, first of one meeting.

Item N, a resolution, support for legislation to promote pedestrian safety, first of one meeting.

Item O, an ordinance changing stormwater requirements and water protection ordinance, second of two meetings.

And finally, item P, an ordinance granting easements to a groundwater and sewer authority from Meadow Creek Interceptor Project, second of two meetings.

Is there a motion to approve?

I just wanted to make a comment.

I don't want to remove any of them.

The ordinance P. Granny easements to our van.

Thank you.

We'll move item H for further discussion.

I just had a comment.

I'm very excited about items J and K, which is a substantial addition to our city parkland.

24 acres in total of new parkland for the city of Charlottesville, which is wonderful to see and we appreciate the donors for making that happen.

Is there a motion to approve the remaining items on the consent agenda?

I'll so move.

Is there a second?

Second.

Any further discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

Ms. Koch, our board's not working tonight.

Try it again.

Whoops.

Alright.

Got it.

Thank you very much.

And I think it's customary to put consent agenda items at the end of the meeting.

Is that required or is that just custom?

I'd like to request that we go ahead and take that item up now because I think there's at least one member of the Miss Santa Clara still with us tonight.

Are there any staff people here that can talk to this matter?

Mr. Harris?

Oh, sure.

No, that's fine.

That's fine.

We're not going to make you wait two hours.

We'll go ahead and take it up now.

Mr. Harris.

You can give us in the public a little background on this matter.

I outlined this issue as best as I possibly could and memorized the council along with a memo that came from Roosevelt Barber, our city assessor.

This was a request that came in from the Pride of Virginia earlier this year asking for a refund of taxes that have been paid on their property.

They've been paying taxes here in the city on this property since 1996 when they were first granted an SUP to operate their property.

their lodge in the spot where they are right now.

As it is right now, once this application does come in, the way the state code is set out, there are a few different ways that it can be handled.

One of which is for the city itself to having to previously adopt a city code section allowing for refund of taxes.

That section is based on state code section 58.1-3990.

That section explicitly says that any time someone asks for a reassessment of a property, the city council will, shall give back any ones that assess taxes, but in no case shall they go back further than three years.

This application came in earlier this year.

It went back 2008, 2007 and 2006.

Plus we are required to give back 10% interest.

That was also added on to this.

I explained this to one of the members of the Pride of Virginia, as best I possibly could.

In fact, they gave me the code section as well.

So are you saying that there is no way for us to pay them back the taxes they have paid to us?

Correct.

City Council can give back three years.

It seems to me to be a matter of fairness.

I question why one lodge is not charged with taxes all this time, and this lodge was charged with taxes.

This is going back to 1996.

I understand that.

An exemption request was made at that point to Glenn

and that was denied back then.

What happened at this point is they came, Pride of Virginia came to Rosie Barber and said would you please take a look at us and see if you can recess us.

It just seems to be like in 1996 we dropped the ball.

I wouldn't admit to that.

I've gone through the memories of that.

What I have done my research is try to see what is different now from then.

In 1996, this was not a fully operational lodge.

There were building permits for us issued in 2000, CFO issued in 2001.

So as of today, as of Rosie Barber's inspection, this is fully operational.

I do not know what it was a year or two years ago or five years ago, but as of now, it is operational.

It meets the code requirements.

In 1996 we had the special use permit and we began construction.

The place that we originally had picked for the lodge was condensed.

and we brought the structure back from being condemned to a fully functioning lodge and at this point I think Councilman Edwards has been in their lodge and Mr. Jones and I think at that point the property was valued at $28,000.

1997.

When in 1996 we purchased the property, I think it was November, and within six months the property almost doubled.

And when I came to receive the first tax bill, I came to the city and asked them, I said, well, we're functioning our lives, our charter was granted in 1934.

and we've been functioning in Charlottesville ever since.

And I asked him, I said, well, why do we have to pay taxes when no one else is?

And he told me at that time, he said, well, you have to pay taxes until you actually take possession of the property and start to whatever.

I said, well, we're already holding meetings.

And I told the members at that point, I said, if we don't have meetings in this building, then we're going to continue to have to pay taxes.

We started meeting in the building in 1997 with everything that was going on there because we're non-profit.

We don't have a lot of money.

All of the money that we make for the most part aside from dues and whatever comes from working basketball and football games at UVA.

We've done that for 20 years.

So the money that we make

It goes to fund our projects and also to pay the bills for the lodge.

But I repeatedly came down here and every single time I was denied.

No, no, no.

And we kept paying, paying, paying.

And then if it hadn't been for Brother Banks, who's our chairman of trustees, who located the law that said that we don't, and I had it in writing and brought it to the city.

and showed it to Mr. Barber.

And I sent a package to Mr. O'Connor's office.

From that point, and I think that was last May, he finally came to the lodge and looked and said, okay, well, yeah, it's a lodge.

And we went from there.

So that's where we are right now.

Well, we're not required to, but I assume we could voluntarily.

I thought you said we couldn't.

That's the same thing.

I don't know what happened in 1996 or 97.

I don't know.

It's possible there was some confusion as a result of the special use permit because their classification

under the special use permit which allowed them to develop this facility was as a private, non-commercial, recreational facility.

And my recollection is that is something different than a private club.

And Mr. Harris has looked at this more recently than I have, but I think if they had been a

If they had been classified as a private club, could they have gotten a special use permit?

No.

I don't know if these issues got confused or not.

The only other point I will make is

This is not the first one of these cases that we've had and I suspect it will not be the last.

There is certainly a chance that whatever you do here could be taken as a precedent for other cases in terms of going back more than three years.

I have one.

trying to negotiate now where the request goes back approximately 21 years.

To follow up on the issue Mr. Brown brought up briefly,

There was an SCP granted back in 1996.

This is in your memorandum.

It was an SCP for a private non-commercial recreational facility, which is different from a lodge.

There were two different classifications.

A lodge could not have operated in this location.

A private non-commercial recreational facility can.

Therefore, when this SCP was not granted for a lodge, which could be the reason why this was not classified as a lodge by the assessor back then,

Now, as I said before, Mr. Barber has gone out and taken a look at the property and decided that today it is fully functional, operational at the lodge.

Before that, clarifies the discrepancy.

I can't say but you can wait.

Perfect.

So at least you're to the left.

The only thing that I can say at this point is we submitted site plans, we submitted architectural

site plans that were done again and again before it was accepted.

On every site plan it stated what it was, what it was for.

It's always been Pride Virginia.

There never was anything done to make it seem that it was anything but the Pride Virginia.

and Mayor Kochis.

His wife is the person that did all of the drawings for us because we couldn't afford another architect to do it.

So there never was anything done by us to make it appear as if it was anything else.

So at this point I can't understand

and when I came to the real estate department about the taxes and spoke to him about this, I was told the same thing then.

So, you know, there's never been anything by us to make it appear as anything other than what it truly is.

So that's why I find it hard to believe that when we repeatedly got taxed and taxed and taxed that no one ever did anything.

I came to the treasurer's office, I had all of those forms and I turned them into Mr. O'Connell's office

I thought you said they could.

Anyone can sue the city.

You said before.

The state law.

The state law.

The state law.

The law of the state law authorized the circuit court action has the very same language as.

Oh, so it wouldn't be accessible.

So it's the same terms.

Meaning it's the same terms.

That's right.

I don't know if you can tell in history right now, at least it was $5,520.46, which is the last three years.

I hope as a, we have in other cases worked out arrangements with non-profit organizations for, I don't know what you call it, not payment in lieu of taxes necessarily, but I know a couple in particular where we make annual budgetary allocations to them.

and I would certainly entertain a proposal in our coming year's budget as a budgetary allocation.

Sounds good to me.

and I agree it's an issue of fairness and equity and I agree with that plan and as a daughter of a past forceful master I apologize on behalf of the city for the mistake that was made but I do believe that the

What we've come to right now is just a reasonable way of working through this.

And I just really appreciate the way you brought it forward.

So we have a motion on the floor.

It's been seconded.

Any further discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

Thank you.

It could just be a regular appropriation.

That's fine.

I'll leave that up to you all.

We've got a difference if you're trying to make it.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Okay, next item on our agenda is a public hearing and resolution supporting bill to amend the city charter regarding residency requirement for clerk of council.

It's our first of one meeting.

Is this Mr. Brown?

This is a public hearing to consider whether U.S. City Council would like to make a request to the state legislature to amend the city charter section that pertains to the residency requirements of officers and clerks that are appointed by council.

Currently, council can hire a person from inside or outside of the city limits.

and that includes the clerk of council.

They believe the catch now is that if someone lives outside of the city, say in the county or further out, in order to take office, to assume the office, that person would have to relocate to within the city limits.

What this does is create a potential financial and possibly personal burden on the applicants and in realistic terms it limits the applicant pool.

Some people just will not apply because of this added burden.

Given the importance of the Clerk of Council, we know she runs everything here, this is an opportunity to make sure the city does not miss out on possibly the ideal candidate just because he or she didn't bother to apply.

What this would do is it would be beneficial to give you the widest net to search for, to identify, and in the end to hire the best person in the job regardless of whether or not he or she can afford to locate themselves in the city itself.

in order for this amendment to be made or the state legislature can do this.

Thank you, Mr. Harris.

Any questions for Mr. Harris?

We'll now open the public hearing.

There's nobody signed up to speak.

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

There being none, we'll close the public hearing.

Is there a motion to approve this ordinance, the revolution?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded for the conversation.

If not, please indicate your vote.

Passes unanimously.

Thank you, Mr. Harris.

Thank you.

Next item is a resolution, Route 250 Bypass Interchange in Magnify Road, major design feature that was presented at the October 29, 2009 public hearing, first of one meeting.

And we do have a PowerPoint.

You can go to the next one.

Thank you Mayor and Council.

We wanted to briefly go through and sort of update where we were since the last meeting.

As you know, the design public hearing was held on October 29th and then at your November 16th meeting, staff came back to you with the findings from that hearing and the plan as it was presented at that time.

What you see on the screen today is the plan as it went to the design public hearing.

A couple of features just to remind you, at that time the pedestrian bike access was on the west side of the road crossing at grade across the two ramps going under the bridge and into the park and then at grade crossing over back to the east side to the area along Sheik's Branch going north up towards Melbourne.

At that meeting,

We also showed you the design, as you see here, the number of lanes, the number in each direction, the ramps, the trail going up to the Veterans Memorial, but the project as it left the design public hearing.

Go ahead.

That plan reflected several changes since you saw it previously in June of 2008.

One is the trail had been moved from the east to the west side of McIntire Road.

By doing that and making other changes, the overall size of the interchange had been reduced.

The bridge length had been reduced by over 100 feet.

The bridge height had been reduced by approximately 5 feet over McIntyre Road.

And the pedestrian bridge had been removed from the project.

The pedestrian bridge over McIntyre north of the bypass.

At that meeting on the 16th there were some additional questions that came up primarily in three areas.

One being the trail connection to the Greenway and how that could best be done.

That would be the phasing of the turn lane construction.

And thirdly, consideration to see if it made sense to put the pedestrian bridge back in.

First of those we looked at was the trail connection.

You would ask that we move the trail back to the east side, and we've taken a look and believe that that can be done.

The trail would come closer to the creek, through the area of the skate park, and then come back down across that grade.

on the way up go under the bridge and again cross that grade connecting up and going on north on up eventually to Royal Road.

Couple of issues as was previously discussed, we had a meeting on the 24th

We met with some folks particularly from RTF and others who were very interested in the trail and how the connections could be made and we looked at doing several things.

One of them was keeping the connection on the east side so that those folks that live

on this side of McIntire and those that might be on the western side of the park could get back and forth into the park without having to cross at either point to get on the east side and then cross back.

We left that meeting thinking that we might do a five foot sidewalk connection but as I outlined in my memo to you our staff has looked and felt that because of the volumes that we would probably get that would want to use this side coming from downtown getting into the park itself not going any further but just getting into McIntire Park that we would propose to you that we actually leave a

There was a concern about the width of pavement.

We could make it a little narrower, both of them if we wanted to, but we feel like with the landscaping we can mitigate the impacts of those and greatly enhance the bike-impaired connections by having it on both sides so someone could make a choice either in downtown

about which side they wanted to go to.

They could be on the west side if they were going into the park, the east side if they're going on continuing north, or if they're coming from the west, they can get down.

The other is that in all the conversations with the residents of this community, we talked about a good multi-connection to allow them to get down and access both downtown and the park.

And this honors that commitment and conversations that were had through that process with the Birdwood neighborhood about being able to come down, again follow this path and get through.

One of the things we were asked to look at in this area also was is there any way to take a tunnel underneath and go underneath both the bypass and the reps?

And quite honestly, after we had that conversation, even the advocates for it said they felt like that was not a good solution because of the length of the tunnel, because of the amount of walls that would have to be built, and because of just the dark

tunnel conditions that you would get and the unsafe conditions going that far.

We also coming out of that meeting got a request from one of the participants to see if maybe we could come here and bring the path up and cross over the ramp and then back down and then go under and then come back up and go either over or under the ramp and back down.

And we've taken a look at that and again feel that

That is very difficult to accomplish without greatly increasing the size of the project again.

If we were to do that, we would have significantly high walls that would have to be built on both sides of these ramps and so as you were coming out from the tunnel and going under the ramp to go back down

In this area, for instance, to get under the bridge before you went back up and then as you went back up, you'd be walking in an area with potentially 25 foot high retaining walls on either side of you in an area that may be 10 or 12 feet wide and it would be a very imposing situation.

So, we believe that the best solution at this time

is to move the trail and keep the trail on the east side and the west side and then you've got the two route crossings are the only conflict with vehicles that you have on the system from leaving Harris Road coming all the way up to Melbourne.

Those would be

bike that activated signals so they could be activated and we believe that again they're not grade separated but that is a vast improvement to crossing and crossing back over the McIntire as was in the plan you saw two weeks ago.

When we get to Harris Street, there are going to be some difficulties with design.

That intersection has not been designed yet.

This is one very preliminary fault.

But at a minimum, what we want you to understand is we're going to have to do something here and realize that to minimize the amount of asphalt in the crossings, no matter whether it trails on east or west, we need to do something to improve that intersection.

And as we go forward, we'll be working with the property owners there to get the best possible design.

That has not been designed at this point, but it is one that we are aware of.

The other question that was raised was what can we do about phasing turn lanes or eliminating turn lanes.

And the area that we focused on was this southbound movement and particularly these lanes here.

And one of the questions that was raised and the meeting we had was why do we need two free lanes when we're only coming to one through lane here?

Well, the explanation for that is with the volumes of traffic southbound that are going east, this in effect is a

an extension of the turn lane and it's not a through lane so traffic that is turning here if we didn't have this opportunity we would have all sorts of blockages of this intersection and causing significant traffic backup so this lane is necessary as a continuation really of this left turn lane although you don't want to show it as a left turn here because you really don't want them turning up the ramp in the wrong direction so

It's continuous until it gets to here and then it's turned.

What we did find though is that there's a very good chance that we could eliminate this right turn lane southbound going to westbound 250.

We've still got to run some more numbers and check that, but we believe that it could possibly be eliminated and that would eliminate a partial 11 feet of asphalt there, reducing any crossing that might have to be made here, although we think by putting the

the trail on both sides we've eliminated a great deal of need for that but we don't feel like that's something that can be eliminated in the long term it's probably going to be needed dictated by traffic at some point in the future so that's why as I said in the memo we would want to leave this grassy if we're able to do it but get the drainage in place and grading in place so it was a simple construction matter to come back and add it in the future not a significant amount of construction or major project to have to do that

We feel like again that it could be removed as was requested.

And then the final question that we addressed was the pedestrian bridge and why had it been removed from the plan that you saw on the 16th that was presented on the 29th.

Pedestrian bridge in question is the one here that crosses the McIntyre Road extended north of the bypass.

There's several reasons for removing that if you can go on to the next slide.

In general, those kind of facilities are generally awarded all the locations where there are high pedestrian traffic volumes crossing high vehicular volumes.

There are high vehicular volumes here, not necessarily high, significantly high pedestrian volumes.

Usually where you build these things, you build them exactly where they're needed and they will be used, crossing water, railroad tracks or interstates.

There's been a lot of studies and our consultants went back and did the research.

The public chooses a path of least resistance.

The public will not choose those things simply because they improve safety.

A lot of these pedestrian crossings that are in places that you see would sit there, it doesn't make sense why people don't use them, they don't because of other reasons.

Great Separated Crossings work only if the normal path of pedestrian movement has the least amount of vertical change.

If they have to climb, they're much less likely to use them.

This one would definitely have a great deal of climb.

And there was an Institute of Transportation Engineers study that found that if the travel time on the bridge equals the travel time on the ground level, 70% of pedestrians will use that bridge.

If the travel time on the bridge is 50% longer than travel time on the ground level,

less than 10% of the pedestrians used the bridge.

RK and K force went out and did some analysis of this particular bike path location.

What they found was that travel distances increase approximately 300 to 900 feet depending on travel direction and the travel time increases between a minute 20 and 3 minutes 40 seconds.

At a civilized crossing it's a much less least resistant area and it was much more likely that there is going to be the use of the bridge because of the crossing because it is such a much more extensive time to get across the bridge Additionally, and Angela can you go back to the drawing?

To use

to put this pedestrian bridge in place to get to the grades and meet ADA requirements.

There was going to be a significant amount of grading and trail to come get to the rubber to get up to cross this bridge and then trail coming down the other side.

So for instance if you were coming

from the west wanting to get across and use this, you would have to go up, across, loop around, and get down and come back to get to it.

So there's, we believe, and the folks from RTF and others that met with us believe that a pedestrian bridge at this location is not warranted at this time and is not a wise investment.

What we did say though is that

As we do the master plan for McIntyre Park and look to where the trail systems might go there, there may very well be a good location to cross the parkway that McIntyre Road extended where we might want to put a pedestrian bridge at that time.

Just now, at this location, we don't feel as appropriate and timely.

So tonight in front of you, you've got a resolution that provides for a great separate interchange with McIntyre Road passing under Route 250 bypass, the Straight Grover Bridge.

It shows a connected trail network and in-road bike lanes along both sides of McIntyre Road.

And that trail network would be on both sides of McIntyre, east and west, going under the bridge.

Phase construction, if we can do it, we believe we can, of the southbound right turn lane on McIntyre Road extended that extends to the westbound 250 bypass and the memorandum of agreement for mitigation of historic resources in accord with the federal law.

So that resolution is on your agenda that would approve the design with those conditions and the MOA.

I may not have told you the truth.

I'll be glad to try to answer questions.

So the resolution does not have to deal with Harris Road issue just now?

I'm sorry?

The resolution does not have to deal with Harris Road issue?

No, it does not deal.

The hair show is yet to be designed.

But the resolution references the October design hearing.

I think the whole idea of the trade on both sides is a great help.

It worked well.

And I think it would be convenient for a pedestrian

Any questions?

When we met on the 24th, one idea we didn't talk about was an idea which arose later, I think at the Rivanna Trail meeting, of trying to, as you described it, kind of fit in a tunnel or go near the bridge for the short length of time through a ramp, basically.

And I understand that I was quite convinced by the data presented that

that a windy road up to the bridge inside the park might not be used because of how much longer it would take.

But this doesn't seem like it would be very far.

And so I think the issues really revolve around some of the scale issues you're talking about.

And I was wondering if you could, do you have more detail on things like how far away from the road will the

To look at that alternative suggested, we, Mr. Perry has taken a brief look, this is the drawing that was furnished us and

This shows that as you come under that you would have to go well below 100 feet to get to an elevation, go up and come down that same distance, go under, go back up and go around.

So again, you're adding the 300 or 400 feet minimum to your trip.

But what really convinced me was when Owen showed me that the space between here

would be like walking, when you came out of the tunnel it would be like almost a little higher than the walls we have here in a space where that other wall would be right here or closer and so you would be coming down in a completely blind area between the bypass and the ramp because to go up and get the height and come back down to the road level I think you have to envision it in that

You know, not in a flat situation.

It's near where the lamp attaches in other ways.

Right.

Well, it sounds good, but the practice that he's describing, most people feel unsafe because

And to open it up so it's not like that, we're talking about having to go back out almost to the same size footprint that we were looking at before with a 100 foot long bridge and higher to get there.

And maybe even having to raise the ramps when you do that.

We did take as good a look as you could take it in two or three days, but we believe that.

I think we came to the conclusion that you could probably tunnel it but that's not safe and the RTO folks agreed that we tunneled that distance and it's a balance, it's a trade off.

Oh, that's hard to follow.

Let's see here.

I had a few questions.

I don't know what specifics or details you'd like for me to run through but the MOA

The status of the emulator right now is in final draft.

And by saying it's in final draft, it's as the ACHP out of Washington DC has concurred and made recommendations.

VEHR has a letter on record that says they already

it more or less says they're ready to sign it because they concur with the ECHP's recommendations that letter came in in early November I believe I have a copy of it here with me and those have been forwarded to you before and so while you have not seen a complete copy of the MOA with all these things rewritten in the MOA itself the details in the MOA as amended by ECHP and as agreed to by VDHR

is ready to be circulated for signatures and to come to the city for your signature concurrent with those organizations.

So to say it's, no, it's not signed right now, but all of the oversight agencies that need to weigh in on the MRA, including every item of mitigation that's in it, the amount of dollars for various mitigation items, all of that is

And so are you saying that all those costs that are envisioned in the MOA, the mitigation costs, have been factored into the budget for this project?

Yes.

Okay.

Another question relates to CARS, the rescue squad.

Dr. Bryan and I met with the officials from CARS last week and there's still some concern on their part about, I think they're willing to give this a try, but I think what they requested was that as we design the interchange that we leave open the possibility, correct me if I'm misstating, leave open the possibility that if this

Yes, sir.

To remind you, basically you're being asked tonight to look at the major design features of this project.

As we stated when we met with CARS, CARS is going to be there.

If you approve this, this interchange is going to be there.

We have to coexist and the car's response time is number one concern to us and we do want to get in the final design stage and roll up our sleeves and work with those people for the best access possible.

We did discuss a couple things when we were there that night.

They do have a lot of people that come and go there for training.

Maybe all of that traffic doesn't have to come right out into the interchange, but if we don't reach a viable conclusion,

with override systems and that kind of thing.

Maybe emergency only vehicles would come out right into the interchange, but all the training people, suppliers, people bringing oxygen tanks, whatever comes in and out there today may come in and out of maybe a said driveway like we're showing on the plan.

I think, a good answer, I think Kars, when they met with the mayor and myself were very willing to give the idea of them having some control over the light and ability to move Kars to the intersection

I wanted to get to Ms. Hall's question, which I think she was dead on, which has to do with Ms. Kogel's request relating to elimination of turn lanes and essentially streamlining the whole

Road north and south of the interchange.

What's the rationale?

I appreciate the fact that you were willing to revisit the turn lane coming south.

Part of our purpose and need that's in the federal document for this project is mobility for peds and vehicles and vehicle safety and sort of all of these different transportation modes have to coexist together.

So to spend money and not have a certain level of efficiency is not where we started and is not part of the purpose and need of the project.

That being said,

the Federal Highway Administration has even asked us we need to go back and look at all the traffic on this project and take it to a new design year since a couple years have slipped they want us to go to like 2032 or 2033 in our design year so we're going to relook at all the traffic for their purposes anyway and what I've proposed to Mr. Talbert is as we do that

Maybe there is some opportunity for phasing of the southbound lane.

We'll look at the northbound lane as well, the right turn there.

I would offer that if you needed to see that again or through Mr. Toba, we can bring that data back to you.

If things start to get

break down rather rapidly after we see the interchange being built maybe there's some decisions to be made about maybe we don't delay building that lane because A, you pay for all of it later and you don't pay a certain fraction now because of the federal money that's in this project so it is going to be more expensive to you to add it just depends on the longevity I would say and how much infrastructure you need to build later and we can certainly look at some sort of a

Phasing of implementation of all the lanes on the ground for you.

I will say, as Councilor Brown brought up the other day, with the added crossing back at Harris, and if we can make that a little more tight as well, pedestrians and bicyclists do have an opportunity to cross Nagata Road where they're

are the least amount of lanes in this stretch of roadway, and the interchange ramps are only one or two lanes each, and they're being dictated by the traffic on 250.

That is correct.

That was an issue front and center on cars of mine when we met with them was worries about having ambulances speeding out into an intersection where there's pedestrians crossing.

So I think it's more important that we try to streamline the road north of the interchange where we do have a pedestrian crossing to make that safer.

I would just, I mean, no offense to you or staff, but I think that's a decision ultimately the council should make when it comes to the final design and the number of lanes.

You say you're going to revisit it, but I think ultimately that should be a council decision.

I think there's two issues.

I think yes, ultimately it's your decision.

Let's see here.

You originally, the first memo indicated that on the west side of the road it was going to be a sidewalk and then I think you revisited that and said actually you prefer, you think it's preferable to have a dedicated bike ped trail on the west side as well, is that right?

That is correct, yes sir.

And so the proposal before us tonight envisions not a sidewalk but a trail.

That's correct.

I fully agree.

I think it's important that Ms. Kogel also stressed this point and I fully agree and I don't know where the rest of the council is that if

that the Harris Street intersection improvements should be considered as part of this whole package here because it's integral to the pedestrian bicycle safety components of this.

Our intent is that they will be designed as part of the project and we fully intend to bring you a design back but we're not to that point now but we feel very comfortable in bringing you

I just don't want to see it lost in the eye.

That is critically important to this and we believe that.

Could we, were we to approve this tonight, could we still get very specific information because there's a lot of interest in saying there's some creative way that we can go through the ramp as opposed to going at grade.

Is there some way we can get specific information about what that would look like?

How far up the ramp would you have to go?

What would the height of the opening need to be?

And on the other side of the ramp, how wide could a corridor be?

How high would the retaining wall be at that point?

Because right now, you very well and very likely may be right

but you're speaking in generalities and it'd be nice to be able to have everyone be able to look specifically at

I think there's no problem.

As you go through final design, we can give you

I think it would be important to make sure there's not some creative way of utilizing that space that actually would work, you know, maybe slant the tunnel a little bit rather than going straight through, maybe make it a little longer and you slant it and it comes out in a little wider area

I'm not sure, but it'd be nice to make sure we don't miss the opportunity.

I think that this one doesn't involve a hill, which I think was one of the defining characteristics of the choices pedestrians don't make.

I think we understand Council's concern and we'll make every effort to do that.

Is there a second?

Further discussion, Dr. Brown?

We open both sides.

So no turn away initially coming southbound?

Yes.

And you may be right, I'm not going to say that.

Of course this is a recent idea.

We've been around for at least two years.

Mr. Mayor and members of council, it perhaps would be a good idea to have those items that were just ticked off, specified in the resolution itself since

The resolution says that council is approving the major design features as presented at the public hearing and these are all modifications of what was presented in.

Right now, we'd like to try to keep it at 10 and then again.

And we'd rather not get into those details in the resolution because then you're held to them by the phase.

Right, and the phasing of the turn lane, Dr. Brown, if we can all have an understanding that that's where we're going with it, but if we put that in the resolution and the traffic study comes out differently, then we're back to square one again.

If we know when you state that publicly that that's what you want and we're doing that, then we're better off than including specifics in the radiation.

It's been moved and seconded.

In further discussion, I would just like to publicly, even though it's no surprise that I'm not in favor of this project and not in favor of this interchange and my vote will reflect that, but I do want to note for the record that I appreciate your efforts, Dr. Brown, to make it a better interchange than it was a month ago.

and it will be, even as it is now, it's a much safer access for pedestrians and bicyclists to McIntyre Park than we have today.

So I do appreciate your efforts and those of the members of the public who helped in that process.

And I'll call for a vote.

Motion carries.

Thank you very much.

This summit has been in design and discussion for over 40 years.

So I think we have had a fair lot of discussion.

We have had a good idea, but I think the need has been identified.

We are going to make a

A change in our agenda, I know there's a number of people here for consideration of item 7, I believe.

Is that right, Ms. Kochis?

Item 7, an ordinance conveyance of city land off Elm Street and Cherry Avenue, first of two readings.

We're going to go ahead and take that up now.

So that you all don't have to wade through the rest of this agenda with us.

And that was probably a little uncertain of staff, but I'm not sure of who among staff.

Is that you, Mr. Brown?

Yes, sir, I can speak to this.

Mr. and members of council may recall we had an advertised public hearing about the conveyance of this city and property back in August and this is a piece of landlocked

land that was initially owned by the Virginia Department of Transportation.

At that time, there was one landowner who was interested in purchasing this parcel and for ease of reference, there's a

a plat in your notebook that now identifies this instead of this one parcel, this parcels A, B, and C. At that prior council meeting, it came out that there were two other adjoining property owners who were interested in purchasing a portion of the property in addition to the adjoining landowner that had made the initial request

So we're back to now, at the prior meeting council deferred any action, did not have a first reading of the ordinance.

So we are back now with an ordinance that we're recommending that would

have this parcel divided into three parts with a part conveyed to each of the three adjoining landowners and each of the three have proposed a payment of $3,000 to the city.

Given that this is a small parcel of land that the city has no use for and that

There's no public access in and of itself.

I think that's very fair compensation.

And should counsel so desire, you can move the ordinance, which in your notebook is exhibit B.

That is the one that involves the three different property owners.

It can appear on a future council consent agenda if you're comfortable moving forward.

Any questions for Mr. Brown?

Are there any of the affected parties here that would like to speak?

You're welcome to share your thoughts, otherwise we'll move forward with our discussion.

So motion to approve exhibit B.

Is there a second?

Second.

So that ordinance will carry forward to our next meeting for a second reading.

Thank you for coming on.

Do you all understand which one that was?

Exhibit B was the one where we're selling each of the three parcels separately.

Mr. Mayor, I would like to thank all three joining properties owners.

They've been very easy to work with and we appreciate their cooperation and hopefully bringing this to a conclusion soon.

Okay.

Next item on our agenda is a report on water conservation.

Mr. Mayor, members of council,

During the water and sewer rate hearings last year, we presented council some recommendations on water conservation and a joint report that we did with the Albemarle County Service Authority.

At that time, you requested that we ask the League of Women

voters in the Sierra Club to look at the report and give us some comments.

We did not hear back from the Sierra Club, but we did hear back from the legal women voters this fall.

What we've done is given you their letter and marked on there is how we responded to each of their comments, most of which we were able to incorporate into the

into the report.

The report is obviously a part of the city council agenda.

It is up on the city's website and then hopefully after tonight we'll put it up on the website.

our weather conservation section.

There are a couple of things that may have caused you question.

Number six was we looked at the AWWA best practices and there was the question of why we weren't able to put an X in the leadership box.

That's because in order to put an X there you have to require that municipal buildings and schools do something and we did it voluntarily.

but they're very funny about, you know, you have to do it, you have to make it mandatory and we did it on a voluntary basis.

I'd also like to call to your attention near the end of the report where we have the City and Service Authority recommended implementation plans

We are continuing with the toilet rebate program and the conservation kit distribution.

This time frame just means that's the money we'll use between now and then, not that there's any end to that.

We continue to expand the rainwater harvesting in our

in our city projects.

The next three are proposed ordinances that we plan to work on and bring to you when we have this spring's utility rate study.

Those are some things that we found some other communities doing that we will propose to

been forward to you at that time.

The conservation cost efficiency studies, we also hope to bring this to you in the late spring and what this is, is this is a comprehensive look of running all the data we have through a model that we have found.

that would tell us, given our usage and our community attributes, how some other things that we might propose could have an impact on our water usage.

And I know that was something to look for, and we think now we've found a model that we're pretty comfortable with.

And we'll have that ready for you either at the rate study or right after that time.

Just a comment.

I think this is a worthy effort on our part.

I hope we continue to do that.

Yes, sir.

I wrote a conservation.

Ms. Patterson is in the back.

sitting next to Ms. Hildebrand.

She has been very active in continuing both of the programs that we have and continuously looking out for some other innovative things that other communities are doing.

We do the marketing for the toilet rebate program through newspaper ads.

We also put radio ads to promote it, public service announcements, and then there's

No, but we can do that.

That's what we do.

Yeah, definitely.

We also have pamphlets that are available at utility billing.

There's a pamphlet that's been

Other questions?

Related to that, do we have any sense of, we must know how many households have taken advantage of the low flow toilet rebate.

Well I know we average about 300 a year so far and at the beginning it was not as much as that and it's increased to 300.

We'd like to get it up to 500 a year.

to really get the wet, but we've got a long way to go as far as people looking at the opportunity to replace their toilets.

We've actually done that estimate.

I don't know off the top of my head.

Yeah, there are plenty out there, definitely.

And we'd like to get, we see a dramatic increase since we've started our public awareness program because it used to be very little people took, very few people took advantage and now we're up to 300 a year and we really want to get it to 500 a year pretty quickly.

Could you, for benefit of public, state what the rebate is?

It's $100 for a toilet.

Who they can call?

They're welcome to call.

I also want to remind you that the water conservation program will be a part of the LEAP efforts for energy efficiency.

It's not just heating and air conditioning.

Maybe we need to combine it with the

We could certainly have them give out their shores.

I have a question that's essentially the same question I asked last time up here, and again, very impressive work on this report.

A lot of creative thinking went into it, a lot of good ideas out there.

We are about to undertake a, what do you call it, community, 2011, what is that plan called, regional water supply plan, which requires, as I understand, decade by decade breakdowns on projected water use, projected conservation rates,

Your report says this report will be incorporated in that plan.

I assume at some point you're going to have to make projections of water use based on these measures, based on how broadly we implement these measures.

I'm assuming so.

Well, the Conservation Cost Efficiency Study, I think, will start to give us a new tool that we've not had before.

The Alliance for Water Efficiency came out with this program this summer, they released it to members and what it will do is when I put in the city's data and our locality's data,

homes, age of homes, population different logistics for our area and we start putting in say we really put a lot of money into toilet rebates and we change that what would that do for us water conservation wise for the money if we do ordinances if we do more conservation kits so it would really give us a better number to say if we do this how much will we save is it worth the money that will cost us so I think it allows us to really focus our efforts more than just

I believe rainwater harvesting is one of the sets of options we can work with.

Other communities have done rain barrel research

Rain bales themselves generally aren't a huge water savings.

They're a good teaching tool.

When it comes to a giant rainwater harvesting, say at Charlottesville High School, you know, 40,000 gallons that can irrigate the fields, that is a definite impact.

By the spring, okay.

Will it identify opportunity?

I mean, just to follow that line of thought, you know, Charlottesville High School's an opportunity.

Well, it's a model, so it's gonna be dead in, dead out.

If we think to put it in there and say, what if we do this at a building whose usage is this?

What can we expect to be out of it based on what that program usually does?

for Water Savings.

So it won't create ideas.

We'll have to put in the initiative.

And our facilities people, this is really on their radar screen.

So we're looking at all of our major buildings.

Does that study also take into account current

The data I'm putting in is based on the last five years for population and water usage.

We can play that a little bit.

It's built for that type of time frame.

And there is still a new program, so they are going to come up with updates to it.

Thank you very much for your efforts.

We look forward to hearing more from you all.

Next item is a report and update on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

I guess I'm here to present a spreadsheet giving you an update in regards to the city's efforts providing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act commonly known as stimulus funding.

Aubrey Watts gave you a good overview earlier in the year and this is an update as to where the city currently stands.

We have essentially received six million dollars directly.

In part, almost a million has gone towards improving low-income housing

Habitat for Humanity efforts, etc.

So that's been excellent.

Transit has received 1.3 million to make capital purchases and one over half of that has gone towards the school system to help plug the funding of the cuts that we've received from the state.

We've also worked with partners and have through them and with cooperation with them received some funding regarding weatherization, work investment act, and individuals with disability education act that will be handled.

We also have a few outstanding or pending items, a TIGER grant for Hillsdale, $14.2 million that we should be hearing back in February, and a retrofit ramp up program that was recently announced and we're working on the application for that.

I have a question.

I don't know if you know the sheet numbers on this.

Oh, I'm sorry.

2.9 million?

2.9 million.

Is this creating any local job opportunities?

Are there many job opportunities?

And that's actually my question, but specifically, the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority received money.

Yes.

Section 3 requires that public housing residents benefit.

Okay.

Will there be some indication of how many people are being benefited in our locality from these programs?

No, we don't quite have those figures.

Certainly with job creation there would be a way to do that, however, for knowing the three points on land that our city schools have received.

I mean, it benefits the whole school system.

Especially just the energy uses.

How many farms have, how many families have taken advantage of that?

And all these are amounts that have been awarded?

I think we're required to monitor, is that safe to say?

I just had a couple of minor corrections actually on your chart.

And the same on the

The next page, City of Charlottesville through partnership pending, that retrofit ramp up program I believe is also LEAP rather than CECP.

I just want to make sure we're categorizing it correctly.

Great, thank you.

Questions, I have one more question.

As I was looking through this afternoon these different grants,

I think that's the nature of the stimulus package.

Either accept it with the conditions of how you use it or you don't accept it at all.

There's a lot of little silos.

I mean, we've heard, originally, lots of infrastructure money.

It's all gone to state agencies and

You know, virtually no one has gotten to.

There's some in education that's meant for infrastructure, but it's not an application process.

I mean, you pretty much tell you how to spend it.

Other questions or comments?

I should mention, I think you all have

I've been around the Congressman in the last few days.

I mean, there's an active discussion going on in Washington about a new jobs program from the TARF, the bank money.

So there may be some more jobs funding that's going to become available.

So we've got to keep our eyes on that.

And that may be more open to some local projects that we would like to see done.

I think the problem is we're a victim of our own success in some ways.

You know, so much of the stimulus dollars are going to communities that have much higher unemployment rates.

And they really need it more than we do, so I don't begrudge them.

Thank you very much, Ms. Janicek.

Let's see here.

So if you're in our resolution in the memo, Ms. Kochis has passed out to you and you received an email earlier this afternoon.

And I apologize, we had told you we would try to have this out through Friday and we found a glitch in the numbers and we wanted to make sure that when we got it to you, it acted on it, it was absolutely to the letter correct.

So our finance department has been helping with that.

The issue we have is that the SRO project is looking at the Region 10 facility on 4th Street and are interested in moving ahead with the project there.

But because of other interests, there's a need to lock that property up if we want to see and work with Virginia Supportive Housing to have an SRO facility there.

The price is $1,550,000

That's the price that they've agreed to sell to VHSH and we would step in if you agreed to do that and take it at that price.

The funding situation you've got before you is 1.6 million.

That will allow us 50,000 to do due diligence.

if you agree to enter into a contract to make sure that there's no title issues, no environmental issues before we close on the property.

At your work session last Thursday, we presented a scenario to you to fund the project and the question was raised if we really had that amount of money in the housing fund and we went back and researched and realized we did not have all those dollars you had previously allocated.

and all I can say is it's a matter of age I think and trying to remember those and not getting it right and apologize for that but the proposal before you today what we did is try to minimize any amount taken out of the reserve so there is a million and seventy thousand that's available in the Charlottesville Housing Fund and that is what you've already appropriated

and what's left.

So it comes to $1,070,000.

We have found $330,000 in various accounts that we can move to this out of the current adopted CIP and then $200,000 out of the reserve to make the $1,600,000 total.

We were trying to minimize the amount that we would suggest to you come out of surplus and so we looked to try to find the other sources for that.

I'm sorry?

$800,000 would be left as part of that, yes sir.

And what we propose to you with your approval is that we would, the city would buy the land, we would negotiate, get a contract, do a due diligence and then

We would lease the property to Virginia Supportive Housing at a point after they had a project that was ready to go.

We would agree to lease it to them so they could file their tax credits.

When all that was approved and in place, we would then lease the property to them at an agreed lease that we would bring back to you after we negotiated for whatever price.

This is very similar to what was done

That's correct, that's correct.

And we feel like the value, the assessment of the property is right at 1.8 million dollars, so we feel like, and we know already there's other interest in the property, so we feel pretty confident that

If we chose to sell it, we'd be able to sell it.

If you chose to maintain it for other uses that you might decide at that time, you could make that decision.

Is there a second?

And then we'll have some discussion.

Yeah, I'll second.

We had several that we've, where we finished our projects or since we finished, there is

30,000 in a historic preservation loan account that we haven't made a loan out of in a number of years.

We wouldn't zero it out, but we felt like we could take 30,000 from that.

And how much could be left in that loan?

About 30,000.

There's the 30,000 in what we refer to as the mother account for all of our neighborhood projects where we finished all those that we have done but one and there's 30,000 that we feel like we could pull out of there.

It would leave about 110,000 which is going towards the sidewalk but we have no more projects left to do out of that.

And then 100,000 each out of the mall and the corner project we were able to finish the corner.

a lot less than we thought 30,000 out of a home match we actually have a little more than we need for the next year and then 30,000 out of an account that was a housing carrying cost that was set aside back about six or seven years ago that we paid it out of

the Housing Initiatives account which preceded the Charlottesville Housing Fund and it's just been sitting there and as we went back to the other team we realized that we'd already paid that out of the wrong account so that money was sitting there.

We would come back to you for the Cooner one in particular, but both of them would ask you to reallocate it for something.

So basically, this $300,000 is money we're pretty much taking away from next year's CIP or what would be rolled over to the CIP.

They would not roll over, that's correct.

But the projects it was intended for are not using it.

I mean, most likely that's how you would...

I mean, you're correct in what you said.

Yeah.

Okay.

You know, I mean, this price tag is bigger coming out of... You know, the most likely area we're going to look to cut money

If we have a budget issue next time, it's going to be the CIP.

So this means starting off, we're cutting up a couple hundred thousand dollars out of next year's CIP for practical intents and purposes.

And, you know, what I'd like to see us do, since we know there's a pot of money available for affordable housing next year, I'd like to see us pass this resolution with the intent, the intent can always be modified, but with the intent that the next year's budget repay

at least that $200,000.

The other ones are other kinds, but actually I would perversely pay the entire $300,000 from next year's affordable housing account as next year's budget emerges.

I think I agree with what you were saying.

So I'd rather see us agree at this time that we will allocate the money, I outlined this memo, but the $300,000, $330,000 that's being taken from various CIP accounts will be repaid by the 2011 housing thing.

If not please indicate your vote.

Thank you very much.

Other business, we have a proclamation before us that we thought initially was simply symbolic, but apparently it requires a vote.

I didn't realize that.

Well, that's what I was told by my boss down here.

So I'm going to read this proclamation.

I'm going to ask council to unanimously endorse it.

Therefore, we resolve that the Charlottesville City Council, on behalf of all the residents of the City of Charlottesville, does hereby endorse the formation of a regional complete county committee in partnership with the County of Albemarle in charge of working with community and business organizations, the faith community, and organizations serving our diverse ethnic, racial, and cultural population to encourage full participation in the 2010 Census.

All in favor please indicate a vote.

Could you answer me side shadow one question since she came back from her house to... Oh, please do.

Really?

I won't read it and I won't sing it.

I just wanted to let you know a little few things, some of the things that were going on.

A few weeks ago we had a community leaders luncheon where we had over 30 businesses or 30 organizations in the city and the county represented.

that are on board willing to be involved in the Complete Count Committee for the city and for the county.

The city and the county are working very closely together very collaboratively and very well.

We open the Census Office tomorrow at 10.30 and Councilor Edwards will be there to welcome everybody.

And in January I'm excited to say that we actually will have the National Census Bus that will start in Washington with the President.

It is bypassing Richmond to come to Charlottesville.

I'm very excited about that.

We're going to have a lot of outreach and a lot of things going on for that.

You're going to hear a lot about the census after the first of the year and we have promised that we are going to meet Senator Winner's challenge and we're going to get an 85% mail response rate and we're going to count everyone that needs to be counted.

Yes I did.

I was actually appointed to the Governor's Complete Count Committee based on the things that happened in 2000 and I'm very honored for that and again very pleased for the support of the city and we're going to do our best to count everybody.

Sure.

Any other business that could bring up something?

A couple of weeks ago there was a preservation meeting in Charlottesville and at that meeting Dan Bluestone presented a

a sort of walking tour guidebook to downtown Charlottesville that a class of his has developed and what I intended was that I would remind Ms. Kochis to hand this out so everybody could look at it.

What I'd like to do actually is I think it's one of these things that deserves more than a couple minutes glance at a council meeting.

He has two copies and we have one of them now and I'd like to encourage between now and the next meeting

I think this is a really valuable work that will be very useful.

I think people will buy it.

I think people will buy it and walk around and learn about the history of downtown Charlottesville.

I mean, I learned tremendous amount just reading it.

They need a sponsor to help pay for printing it, and I think about $2,500 is what's needed, and I think it's a very good investment.

So I'd like, maybe if everyone could take a look at this between now and the next meeting, we'll bring it to the next meeting and have it under Other Business at that time.

Anything else?

We'll now open it up to matters by the public.

Is there anybody from the public?

Good evening, I'm Peter Kleeman, I live at 4007 Head Street in the city, and I recognize that this is a time of optimism, and I like to be very optimistic myself.

That thing that you've approved, the letter that was included in your packet, which I think was delivered to you on Friday, I picked it up from the attorney's office today.

So it indicates the advisory council on historic preservation's requests for significant modifications and inclusions to make this a document that they could approve.

I think it's a bit on the overly optimistic side to say that they're ready to sign this.

And I don't know that there's an equivalent letter

that says the Department of Historic Preservation, SHPO, the State Historic Preservation Officer, is ready to sign it since they probably have not seen the draft to date either.

So that's still something in the works.

Also, I looked at some of the material that came out just, I guess, Friday.

There's been several addendum submittals to the material posted on the internet.

And it was interesting and I wrote you an email pointing out that I didn't think this project was adequately funded according to what's officially on the VDOT website.

It says today, I checked, it still says that this project is 999,000 underfunded, approximately 1 million dollars underfunded.

and I read on the Charlottesville Tomorrow site that Jarmins Gap Road is underfunded by less than that and it is not going to be going forward and there's a crisis because it's underfunded.

Yet this project is underfunded and somehow or other from two weeks ago to this week

There was an additional $1 million both added to the expected cost of that project by VDOT, but there was somehow an extra million dollars in revenues.

And I'm not sure how that happened.

There's been no votes by the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

There's been no funding distributed by the state.

And I don't think there's any money distributed by the city.

So somehow the available funding increased by $1 million to meet the increase in expected costs of $1 million.

Maybe that's possible.

I like to be optimistic that maybe those funds are there.

But I am not sure that they are.

And I would actually like to see what the funding is that is designated in each of those modified figures to say, is this project really funded?

Are the numbers that have been mentioned by O.M.

Period as saying that all of the mitigation funds are available in the current budget?

Well, I'm not sure of that either because I haven't seen what the mitigation strategy is and I'm on that committee that's supposed to be reviewing those and making comments on it.

So it appears to me that the material that's been presented to you is a bit rosy in saying that these, all of these loose ends have been tied together and it's time to move this project forward.

I look at the documents and I look at the information online and I say, I don't see where all these things that are being claimed to be ready and available are ready and available.

So I would encourage you to think long and hard about your level of optimism in this and perhaps make some recommendations.

Could you put in front of us as counsel what the actual status of this memorandum of agreement is before we actually sign something?

and I'm sure you don't want to sign a document that's not been written yet.

So I hope that you will consider those things and recognize that this project is getting more and more expensive and the funds that are going to pay for it are coming out of the city's dollars.

Thank you, Mr. Kleeman.

Thank you.

Me again, Dee Dee Smith, 2652 Jefferson Park Circle, and I stuck around for the water conservation study.

I actually didn't see it on your agenda before and I'm sorry I didn't get another chance to look at it, but I would like to compliment you on your pursuing this and keeping up with it and for your very smart questions and suggestions and comments.

and I really, I certainly appreciate it.

I did wonder after Miss Ayaschetta got up whether we could put on the census whether people have low flow toilets.

Anyway, it is a hard thing to know.

It was actually a joke.

Anyway, just a couple of comments.

In terms of incentives, the low flow toilet thing is very good, the rebates, but how about front loading washing machines?

They are actually shown to be amazingly efficient and a very high percentage of residential usage is in washing machines.

and front loaders save 40% more water and also a lot of energy because your clothes come out much drier.

An engineer was just explaining this to me, he just got his own and it's very actually encouraging.

So I would encourage you to think about incentives for front loading washing machines.

as part of your rebate program.

Also, it was the discussion of rainwater harvesting.

I absolutely agree that it's the large users.

It's the large users, not the rain barrels.

That would be another area for incentive.

I know the state laws really haven't caught up yet.

We're doing this for businesses, but the large water users, when they really buy into that and the technology

The cost-efficiency study

I would hope they factor in the, in terms of the cost benefits, new infrastructure because that's what the Water Sense Program with EPA that you all signed on to earlier this year is all about conserving water in order to delay or even offset new infrastructure.

And it's a, EPA has fantastic information.

and which brings me just to my last point which is I hope that the cost efficiency study will involve a lot of people, a broad range of people, not just city staff.

There's a lot of people out there, a lot of pros out there who know a lot about this and I hope it involves UVA because UVA has done tremendous amount of water conservation research and they've got very, and they actually have done better than anybody else in terms of water efficiency, in terms of city or county.

UVA is a leader in this and they have staff that only do that.

In fact, my husband was just talking to one recently.

So thank you.

Fannie Mooney, City of Charlottesville.

I hope, I know you all just got the emails that Mr. Lynch handed out, I handed out this evening, but I hope you will look at them carefully.

I think this is one of the most serious things that we have presented to you yet.

I think either of the emails will clearly show that Mr. Frederick has not only misled you this time, but he has misled the reporters from the Daily Progress, Sean Tubbs and Brian Wheeler, who then went on to report a misleading report in the Daily Progress which misled the public.

I need to know.

We need accurate information.

I need to know when

Will we be disciplining Mr. Frederick?

What is going to happen?

The public can't trust him.

How can you trust him?

He has hundreds of thousands of dollars that we have given him to do studies.

By the next council meeting, I ask you please to report back to us, the public, about what you intend to do about him.

We have presented you with these documents.

I ask that you study them.

On a second point,

I would like you to investigate the harassment against Mr. Vanderlin's recycling facility.

If you read the hook, there is a quote from Mr. Zimmerman who is, he has said, Mr. Zimmerman has said, quote, they are running the cleanest facility in our region, says Valley Department of Environmental Quality Base Manager Graham Zimmerman.

who is in charge of issuing Vanderlinden's DEQ permits.

So far, says Zimmerman, it's been the cleanest of all our permitted nerves.

If you go on and read this article, there are numerous quotes where Mr. Zimmerman pretty much comes right out and says that this harassment, he calls it harassment, and he says it's not just harassment of Mr. Vanderlinden now, it's harassment of the DEQ for two years now.

So many anonymous calls.

And he says, in this article, he pretty much writes out and comes out and names Rivanna.

So read the article.

I ask you now to undertake an investigation, to contact Mr. Zimmerman yourselves.

You may find that you will know who these anonymous calls are coming from.

You may get more information.

We need to know.

We also need to know why this five-year contract happened.

This is full control.

This is mandating that all waste go to one facility for five years.

And I heard you tonight, I was very heartened by that, that you're upset about this too.

And I don't think you, the council, again I feel staff went off on its own, this council wants a green solution for all waste.

You've said it.

You've talked about recycling.

This isn't it.

Mr. Vanderlyn will accept

Recycling that is separated, Mr. Brown, for $24 a ton.

So if it's already separated, you don't pay the $66.

Only 10% of our population is separating.

will capture 90% of the people who are, you see it all over town, UVA particularly, throw all their trash in the bag.

They're not separating.

This is a wonderful solution for our community to really recycle, to capture all that trash that's now going into the landfill.

We need to investigate this.

Please, I appreciate it, but please come back to us about Mr. Frederick.

This has just gone too far.

Thank you, Ms. Murning.

Is there anybody else who would like to speak?

Hello, I'm Sonja Ingram, field representative from Preservation Virginia.

I'm Virginia's statewide historic preservation organization.

I had planned to speak earlier, but all the slots were filled.

I also assume that you've probably heard this before, echoing a lot of what Mr. Kleeman has already said.

Each year, Preservation Virginia has a most endangered list.

This year, the intent of which is to raise awareness about historic sites and properties that are in danger

of damage or destruction.

This year, McIntire Park was on this list due to the proposed 250 bypass.

Roads and highway development projects, as you know, are some of the most destructive to historic resources.

Oftentimes, federal historic preservation laws come into play, which is the case with this project.

So it is imperative that transportation planning projects work closely with the local preservationists and with DHR, Department of Historic Resources, to acquire the best, the very best mitigation efforts for the historic resources.

And in this case, many in the preservation community think that the historic resources have not been seriously considered and that the proper collaboration with local preservationists and

has not been completed and as you know the MOA has not been signed.

Thank you very much.

Anybody else like to speak?

Please.

And I'd like to reply to that one.

I agree completely that front-loading washers are a great place for people to save a lot of money, a lot of energy.

The problem with them in terms of a rebate is people can two years later take the front-loading washing machine and move to Richmond or move to Idaho where they're not likely to take the toilet with them.

We were led to believe very clearly by our consultant just now that all the parties are ready to sign.

It's just a matter of, you know, signing on the bottom line.

And now I'm hearing that some of the key parties are having seen the draft yet.

And that to me is very troubling.

That's a very troubling disconnect.

And so I'd like to ask staff to follow up on that and give us a report on...

I certainly got the impression from him that it was just a matter of, I mean we can replay the tape, but I was asking specifically about the letter from one of the key parties which is the Coalition to Preserve McIntyre Park.

Anyhow, I'd just like to get some follow up on that and also just to

Okay, well, okay, so I just like to get some follow-up from staff on that and then also the question of the funding.

Mr. Klayman says there's a $1 million gap.

I know a reporter from The Progress asked me this very question today and I didn't have the information in front of me when she called me, but if we can also get some clarity on that issue as well.

Other items for our consideration?

The meeting is adjourned.