City Council Meeting   3/15/2010

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We're gonna start with the Pledge of Allegiance.

Ms. Kochis, can you call the roll please?

Here?

Here.

Yes.

Thank you all.

We have one recognition this evening, a proclamation I'd like to go ahead and read.

Whereas last year the Blue Ridge Poison Center responded to more than 34,000 human exposures to poisons in its 54 county service region, including 1,684 in the Charlottesville-Albemarle area, and whereas poisoning is the second leading cause of injury hospitalization and the second leading cause of injury death in Virginia,

and whereas poison prevention education including the use of child resistant packaging, safe placement of poisons in the home, reading and understanding prescription labels, keeping the poison control number available is an important mission of the Blue Ridge Poison Center.

and whereas the Blue Ridge Poison Center has been instrumental in alerting individuals of all ages to the need for poison prevention and providing individuals with treatment and information and advice in a poisoning emergency and whereas it is fitting to recognize the 49th annual observance of National Poison Prevention Week in order to highlight this preventable health hazard and help educate all Virginians to better understand how to avoid the dangers of accidental poisoning

Now therefore I, Dave Norris, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, do hereby recognize March 14th, 2010 as Poison Prevention Week in the City of Charlottesville and call this observance to the attention of all of our citizens.

Is there somebody here?

Thank you Mayor Norris and City Council for this great opportunity to remind you about the Blue Ridge Poison Center.

We're a place you can call 24 hours around the clock every single day of the year if you think you or someone may have been poisoned or if you just have a question.

Believe me, there is nothing too small and insignificant or too bizarre at the Poison Center.

We have heard it all.

So please call, we want you to call.

Our center is staffed by nurses and doctors and 30% of the time we're able to tell you what you need to know to take care of your poisoning at home, thus avoiding a very expensive trip to the doctor.

It's hard to remember the number when you're upset, so we like people to take these home and put them on their refrigerator so you have the number right there when you need it.

It's also in your phone book.

We have a few announcements to make tonight.

First of all, I want to announce that the city market is starting again in the Water Street lots on April 3rd, 7 a.m. to 12 p.m.

So please come downtown and participate and enjoy the city market.

The annual Easter egg hunt will also happen on Saturday, April 3rd at the traditional site at Charlottesville High School.

The hunt begins promptly at 11 a.m.

It's usually done by 1101.

The Fix a Leak Week is March 15th, 21st, 2010.

Again, we announced this last time.

This is an opportunity to educate the public about leaky pipes, leaky water systems.

The average household wastes more than 10,000 gallons of water from leaks each year.

So on Saturday, March 20th, a local Ms. Fix-It will be demonstrating how quick and easy it is to repair a faulty toilet flapper

in front of City Hall here at one o'clock and in addition we'll be handing out free indoor water conservation kits between 12 and 2 p.m. Saturday, March 20th.

We are very excited to announce that in conjunction with the downtown business association of Charlottesville from Saturday, March 20th through Saturday, March 27th we are going to have an old-fashioned antique carousel at Central Place on the downtown mall

This will be the first motor-powered carousel to be placed downtown, and it contains original mirrors, lights, music, as well as animals, including elephants, giraffes, horses, and zebras.

There is no size or age restriction, so Mr. Huja, you can ride on the carousel all day long.

So please come down and enjoy the very special edition, temporary edition, to the downtown mall, March 20th through March 27th.

I have an announcement.

I wanted to just talk a minute about what it's like to be left out.

Do you remember when you were growing up and I never got picked first for games?

Or, you know how you feel when you find out your friends have gone out to lunch but they didn't invite you?

How many people like to feel, you know, left out?

Let me see a show of hands.

They just don't like that feeling.

That's what's going to happen if you don't participate in the census.

I want everybody to feel included and for everybody to be a part and to make sure that you're not left out.

When the census form comes in, fill it out.

This is what's going to be going home in backpack mail.

So pretty soon our children are going to be reminding us to fill it out.

And it's actually just a maze where the children go around and count the number of people in each household.

Well said Ms. Edwards, thank you.

Indeed.

We are now going to open the meeting to matters by the public and as always when you come forward please keep your comments to three minutes and state your name and address.

The first person who has signed up to speak tonight is John Cruikshank.

We're encouraging citizens to speak.

Good evening, my name is John Cruikshank.

I live at 700 Spring Lake Drive in Earliesville and I'm representing the Piedmont Group of the Sierra Club, which has about 800 members living in the greater Charlottesville area.

Tonight I ask council to act in the best interest of the people of Charlottesville by passing a resolution to protect McIntire Park from premature and unnecessary disturbance.

Please take action to delay any groundbreaking activity in the park until after the Federal Highway Administration has made final determination on the proposed interchange and until there has been a reasonable opportunity for judicial review of this project.

Now many people in our community believe that the McIntire Road extended

and the interchange together are a violation of Section 4F of the 1966 Department of Transportation Act which prohibits federally funded highways through parks.

They also believe that it is a violation of the National Environmental Policy Act which prohibits segmenting a large project to avoid disclosing impacts.

We need to know, are they correct or not?

There's no good reason for allowing bulldozers into McIntire Park many months before the interchange receives approval.

If the two projects come online together, we can have an honest determination of these legal issues.

I don't think any of us feel good about the destruction of parkland.

The people of Charlottesville have a right to know with certainty that the loss of a large section of McIntire Park for this road is being done in full compliance with our federal and state laws.

I'm going to ask people in the audience, if you agree that the council should pass this resolution, please stand up.

Now I think these people are also in agreement with the over 1,500 people in our area who have signed the Sierra Club petition for the preservation of McIntire Park.

Thank you Mr. Cruikshank.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Councilman.

As you know and are aware, March has been designated as Women's History Month.

And on behalf of the Eta Phi Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated, we would like to take this opportunity to salute and honor an Alpha Kappa Alpha woman, the Vice Mayor of the City of Charlottesville City Council, Councilman Holly Edwards.

If I say anything now, stop crying.

Thank you very much.

Hello.

Brandon Collins.

Live at 536 Meade Avenue.

I'm here today to talk about March 19th, this Friday.

It is the anniversary of the Iraq War.

Heading into our eighth year of war in Iraq.

and to commemorate this event, one of the people who made this war possible is visiting Charlottesville, John Yoo.

This man is a war criminal and I think the city council should be alerted to that, that a war criminal will be visiting Charlottesville on the anniversary of the Iraq war.

A war that is illegal and aggressive war.

Illegal because it is aggressive war.

Under the UN charter, aggressive war is illegal.

and under our Constitution we have to abide by those treaties such as the UN Charter.

This war has left over a million people dead as a result in Iraq and over 4,000 soldiers in Iraq that are U.S. soldiers.

John Yoo, the war criminal visiting us, was very much involved in making this possible by writing memos in secret that told the administration, the Department of Defense, that the president had the right to do this.

It's been treated as law.

It's not law, it's illegal.

He has been investigated for professional misconduct, intentional professional misconduct.

Along with those memos saying that these aggressive wars are legal, he has also legalized torture, warrantless wiretapping, and indefinite detention.

including of US citizens.

All that stuff is illegal.

There's no question about it.

There's some things about John Yoo you might want to know.

The worst part about it is there's a million people dead in Iraq.

illegally.

And we've done that.

We've all done that.

But some of the other things John Hughes is known for is claiming that the President has the right to order people to crush a child's testicles in order to gain information from that child's parent.

I mean, it's also said that we have the right to wiretap whoever we want without a warrant.

He said that we can massacre villages, the President can say that's fine, or drop nuclear weapons on any city the President wishes.

Those are not legal things, the President doesn't have the right to make those decisions.

But it's treated as legal because of these memos and some of the other lawyers working with him on that, as well as Dick Cheney and George Bush.

So why am I telling you guys about this?

Well, I think you should know there's a war criminal coming into town.

But I would also like you to join us in protest on March 19th at UVA 3 o'clock in front of Minor Hall.

I think as a city of peace,

I would hope that council would remember your city of peace and join us for that.

The Department of Justice has been ordered by our current president not to investigate these crimes and mainly because these crimes are still going on and I would urge the council to encourage

our commonwealth's attorney to open investigation of this man.

Thank you Mr. Collins.

Good evening.

I'm Peter Loach from 1620 Rose Hill Drive.

This evening I'm here on behalf of the Board of Piedmont Housing Alliance and the staff of Piedmont Housing Alliance.

We just wanted to take a minute to thank the City of Charlottesville for the support that you've provided over the years and to mention a few of the impacts that we've been able to achieve with your support this past year.

First of all, I think it's important to know that the City of Charlottesville receives over $300,000 a year in property taxes from properties that PHA has developed and owns or has assisted.

So you get a lot of bang for your buck there.

We just finished Monticello Vista Apartments, which is 50 living apartments in Belmont.

for predominantly disabled persons, very low income.

This was a $2.4 million renovation that created about 60 local jobs.

In the region now we have 319 rental apartments for low income and 234 of those are in the city of Charlottesville.

In terms of home buying and counseling, last year we were able to help 11 household families in Charlottesville buy their first home

with a loan from the city and PHA.

That leveraged about a million and a half dollars of mortgage money that came into the city and we were able to match dollar for dollar the city's down payment assistance with a grant from the U.S. Treasury Department.

In terms of housing counseling, we are currently

Counseling about 255 Charlottesville residents.

92 Charlottesville residents came into our offices last year for housing counseling.

Those are just new clients and we continue to work with many who came in the previous year.

In terms of foreclosures, which unfortunately has been a statistic that's growing in our region, we were able to help 12 Charlottesville families avoid foreclosure of their home.

Those homes were valued at over $3 million.

53 other Charlottesville homeowners got counseled in assistance for default and foreclosure as well.

In terms of rental assistance, 42 Charlottesville families

receive approximately $246,000 a year through our program for people with disabilities.

In terms of fair housing, which has only gotten worse in recent years, we have been able to help 33 city residents with a fair housing case and educated over 150 Charlottesville residents at different education sessions that we hold.

Finally, in terms of our outreach to the Latino community that the city supports, we were able to train 270 service agency staff this past year.

There are over 3,000 visitors every month to our website.

Region-wide, PHA helped about 1,500 people last year, almost all of whom were lower income.

Thank you, Mr. Loach.

Good evening.

I'm a little late because I came last month but I couldn't talk because the paper was full.

But my concern was about the snow removal this year and I know the city really wasn't equipped, you know, to fall to snow.

But I'm a disabled person and some elderly people live on my street and I know a lot of elderly people in other places.

It was like when they did get around to my, because I live at 1116 Page Street, I forgot to tell you where I live.

But when they did get around to it, after I had gotten somebody to help me dig out, it's like they piled the snow back up.

So now I had to go out there, because I had problems with my shoulders back and I had a knee replacement, to dig myself out.

And I know I don't understand why they would do that and not push the snow further up.

And the thing about it, my street is really narrow.

And I've been down here before, complaining about nowhere to turn around when people come on my street.

I had a fence put around my house, you know, around my yard and that fence has been knocked down about 10 times and I brought pictures to Mrs. Alexander.

She knows all about my problem.

And they put a sign in my yard to discourage people from backing up into my fence and tearing it down.

And all this would happen when I'm not home.

They're using my parking space, you know, to turn around.

But they would knock me on the fence, so they put a sign in the yard to help discourage the people from doing that, but

Believe it or not, when the snow came, somebody came, went over top of the fence, took and bend the sign that the city put there.

So I called and kind of removed the sign out of my yard, so they did.

But my thing, the question is, is there any way y'all could consider putting a throughway on Page?

You know, I live at the dead end.

And there's a fence up there, but when people come in, they knock, they turn, not just my property, but the neighbors' property.

They turn around in our grass, and this guy, the fellow down on the other end, the far end of me, they told me that his fence a couple years ago.

People turn around, they can't get out.

Thank you very much Ms.

Beard.

My name is Wes Bellamy.

I live at 2334 Payton Drive.

I guess I should introduce myself first.

Like I said, my name is Wes Bellamy.

I'm a member of the NAACP, volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club.

I'm in two dialogue on race groups.

I orchestrated a tutoring program over at South First Street.

I coach AAU basketball, the Charlottesville Cavaliers, and we're in the process of coordinating three community days or spring flings within the inner city communities.

I wanted to come and speak today about a few of the issues going on that I see daily, so to speak, within the African American communities or the predominantly African American communities here in Charlottesville.

Now, I just noticed when the issue of the McIntire Park

was brought up.

There was a great deal of you who stood up, which is great, but also with the water issues that were going on in past weeks in the noise ordinances, what I actually want to bring about is there's also a huge achievement gap within Caucasian students and African American students here in our city schools and our county schools and the like.

There's also issues going on within many of the local housing authorities, such as South First Street, South Sixth Street, Garrett Square,

West Haven, I'm there daily if not weekly, I'm sorry, weekly if not daily and I see many issues going on from trash cleanup, from playgrounds being broken, issues of that nature.

Now, my question to you all is, how is it that issues such a, I'm sorry, not just you all, my question to everyone in the city and county so to speak, how is it that issues such as McIntire Park

Water issues and things of that nature can be addressed.

However, we have these same very other issues going on dealing with human beings going on within our communities.

In my opinion, it's somewhat displaced.

There's somewhat of a disconnect going on that I've been learning since I've been in the dialogue on race groups going on between the two communities, which is mind boggling to me because Charlottesville is only 10 and a half square miles.

So how is it that people who live right next to each other are not aware of the same issues that are going on with people who live right next to them?

Now with that being said, some of you may ask, well what are we going to do to change those things?

I would like to invite you all, because I see some of you in the community, I would like to invite you all, like I said, to the spring fling that we're having at West Haven on April 10th from 3 to 8 p.m.

who will have free food, free haircuts for your children, free hairdos for the little girls.

Hopefully 92.7 will be out there and hopefully we can get some of the local media outlets who oftentimes we see portray some of our African Americans in the on hardy drive, the neighborhoods of the like and negative facets.

Hopefully we can get you guys to come out and show some of the people who live there in a positive view.

That's my hope and hopefully we can all come together because I know there's a lot of non-for-profit organizations here within Charlottesville and there also seems to be with that many non-for-profit organizations not a lot of work being done so let's actually get hand in hand

and come together and not just talk about things but actually be about things and make a coercive effort to get some things done.

Good evening.

I'm Downing Smith.

I live at 810 Locust Avenue here in the city.

And I have in front of me a copy of the agreement that created the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority.

And I'd like to read a couple sentences.

Section 2.1, initial term.

This agreement shall be in full force and effect from the date of its execution until June 30, 2012.

And then Section 2.2, continuation of agreement.

This agreement shall continue in effect beyond June 30, 2012.

or such later days provided until terminated by the city, etc.

I'm here tonight to ask you all to instruct the city attorney to prepare the proper notices to terminate this agreement on 2012 when it can be terminated.

Now, I'm not saying that we want to get rid of the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority, but

It's a good business practice to exercise your options and it will give us flexibility and it will increase our negotiating position with the county.

I don't know what the best outcome will be.

If we want to do an agreement we can always do an agreement later but if we don't exercise our option now then we're going to put it off even further in the future.

We can renegotiate this thing.

This agreement was signed in 1973

It's just a good idea to get the notice of termination now.

We can always change our mind later.

Every day I've learned something new about this last week when they said they want to build a big earthen dam.

Whereas the last city council meeting a lady stood up in front of y'all and said the earthen dam is dangerous.

You know, it just doesn't jive.

So anyhow, I would like for y'all to counsel it.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Daniel Bluestone, 501 Park Hill.

I endorse what John Cruickshank said very eloquently at the start of the meeting.

Segmentation that strikes me is something that highway builders should engage in.

They probably shouldn't, but I can understand that they do.

And that is, if they weren't building highways that have nothing to do,

and so they're going to get their highways built whether it's done legally or above board or not.

People representing the public, elected officials, have a higher responsibility than simply building roads.

They have a responsibility to make sure that due process is fulfilled.

And so I endorse that resolution and I hope that you'll pass it.

Just to be able to make sure that the park is not getting destroyed

in a way that's irreversible when it then comes around to a court calling out the segmentation issue when it's litigated.

I'd like to speak briefly to Mr. Bellamy's point and that is McIntire Park has a lot to do with the resources in our community.

This project is costing tens of millions of dollars

and our city has limited resources.

We have to decide how to spend them and our feeling is that holding on to McIntire Park would be one way of doing that.

There are a number of issues recently that are playing out between the city and the county about resource distribution including taking millions of dollars away from the city schools to give out to the county.

there are also issues about the water plan where we're getting saddled with higher cost in order to do a plan that accommodates growth out in the county.

I was very struck last week to go to the county, or two weeks ago, to go to the county board where residents were demanding that their taxes be raised and facing a board where you realize that half of the supervisors ran on a promise never to raise taxes.

and to watch the paradigm shift.

of them struggling for how to deal with that.

And I'm now gonna, I thought I noticed them trying to channel their inner John Faults.

And that is that Lindsey Duryer has decided we're gonna save the Scottsville Library.

How are we gonna do that?

Not by raising taxes.

We're gonna try to get Buckingham County and Fluvanna County who use that library to pay the taxes.

I have a great idea.

Even if this Meadow Creek Parkway goes ahead, let's just build it simply to service our needs to get people to our downtown and let the county pay for the ramps that are getting people from North Albemarle County out to hand tops.

Let them put the money because we're way beyond the earmark to pay for this interchange and it's coming out of our schools

and we ought to be able to figure out a way to make sure that they pay for their share.

They're not doing that.

Richard Berman, 205 Second Street Northwest.

I just have a very short question.

I've been reading in the paper and hearing on television how short we are on the city budget for months.

Whose brilliant idea was it to give away $625,000 in bonuses, Christmas bonuses, to 900 city employees?

We'll be happy to answer that.

Good evening, Stratton, Salida, 704 Graves.

Well I'd like to echo some of what Mr. Bluestone just said in terms of the revenue withholding disagreement that I think that this shows that the county is looking out for the county.

And when I say the county I guess I mean the county supervisors that are there now, not the county people in general.

But I think the city needs to think really carefully about how it deals with the county and

I'll just say that for now and maybe we'll get back to that.

And also when Mr. Crichank was saying that the community deserves to see if this process, the Meadow Creek Parkway interchange process has been done legally, I will agree that yeah, that's a legal question.

But what

is not questionable is that there's been a great deal of deception that has made this project get to where it is right now.

And I'll just give you a little bit of recent history here that you're all aware of but just to see if we disagree on anything.

The first thing in this latest episode is that VDOT sent a plan to the Corps of Engineers for the road that they are planning on building which ends in the middle of the park.

without the federally funded interchange.

They could have just shown the whole thing and said, hey, it ends in this interchange, but they didn't.

Now this is conjecture, this is where the questioning starts.

In my opinion, they didn't want to show that it required the federal money to complete, because that means the whole project has to meet the higher federal standards.

So that's the first thing that happened.

Then the Corps of Engineers wrote VDOT back and said, hey, your road ends in a field,

give it a logical terminus and then we'll continue your application.

So then VDOT said, oh well, here's the road we're really going to build.

It directly connects to the 250 interchange.

There is no, I mean not interchange, 250 bypass, there is no interchange anymore, even though of course at the same time they're actually consolidating plans with the city and other agencies to build an interchange.

and also the city had not agreed to that at-grade intersection and also VDOT originally thought it was a terrible idea that same intersection they're now planning because it doubles the weight on 250 on opening day it would immediately congest 250 so then the fourth thing that happened is a city staff member after an October 7th meeting promising Mr. Norris that okay I'll get to the bottom of this thing

sends a letter to VDOT that says if the interchange isn't built, then council will approve an accurate intersection, which directly contradicted what council said it would do.

So then council, and thank you very much for this, corrected that with a letter June 4th that said no, we did not agree to an accurate intersection.

So now the latest thing is that VDOT sends a letter to our mayor

as saying, oh, we want to get this road going soon, we got a little bit.

And here's a letter for you to send to the Corps of Engineers as if you wrote it that says, oh, an accurate intersection is acceptable to us, the city.

Okay, thank you very much.

That ends the story.

And thanks for the brownies here.

Thank you, Mr. Slaheese.

Good evening Mr. Mayor and Councillors, Colette Hall, 101, Robertson Lane.

I'd like to echo what Mr. Cruikshank said and ask you to pass that resolution.

I'd also like to echo what Dr. Bluestone said in the fact that you may not be aware of it now, but the interchange project itself is already over budget.

Thank you, Ms. Hall.

I'm John Faults, 1503 Rugby Road, City Council and Mr. O'Connell.

I think we're going to miss you.

That's not why I came here.

Thank you, John.

But I do appreciate you.

Back in November, actually it was December, Margaret and I went downtown

to do some shopping, go to the movies, kind of a jerry thing day.

And there were a lot of street vendors, a couple of homeless, but not many other people.

And the overall feeling that we got was the downtown mall is a seedy place.

And we didn't really think we wanted to come back there too much to shop.

And this has been bothering me because the downtown mall is a really important part of this community.

The street vendors you have control over.

The homeless are somewhat of a different problem.

I do know something about them because a number of years ago Margaret and I took a homeless person under our wing.

Mary was very intelligent, she's very well-spoken, a genuinely nice person.

She took yoga with Margaret, but she was a street person living in a stairwell.

We provided a room for her

in our church next to the sanctuary with an outdoor and that was fairly good except after a few months there was a distinct unpleasant smell.

She was bringing cats in, stray cats and they were urinating.

She didn't have litter boxes and cat urine isn't very nice.

We told her to stop.

Mary couldn't stop.

She had a big heart and finally we had to close the doors and lock her out.

That was not a good thing, but we had to save the church.

We still see Mary from time to time.

The homeless are a real problem, but you've got to also think about how do they affect our downtown mall and whether it's a classic mall or a seedy mall.

I hope you give that some thought.

Thank you.

Oh, one last thing.

on the tree pickup.

That's a wonderful thing that you're doing for our citizens.

Thank you very much, Mr. Foltz.

That concludes matters by the public.

We will now open it up, as is our custom, to council member responses to matters by the public.

First of all, I'd just like to mention to Mr. Collins about the event at UVA.

This has been declared a peace community, and I can't say I'll be representing the city, but I will be there at that protest, so thanks for bringing it to everyone's attention.

Mr. Bellamy, thank you for being here.

I don't know, this is something that I ask a lot, how we can keep our eye on the ball of student achievement,

the experience that our kids have growing up in this city so that every child who's born and grows up in Charlottesville has an opportunity to achieve their potential.

And that's something we're not doing as well as we should be.

So I'm glad you plan to continue coming and I hope that you continue to find us responsive, more responsive perhaps than we've been in the past.

So thanks.

Let's see, there was one other thing.

Oh, I think Daniel Blusone, you mentioned that the thing that was at the state legislature about the possible two million dollars that was coming out of our school budget, that has been defeated so that won't be happening this year.

Thank you, Ms. Tsakos.

Dr. Brown?

You know, tonight was sort of an example of how

you know, we get to know the people of the city partly through matters by the public and it's sort of exemplified by Donnie Smith sort of referring to Francis Fife sitting here and Dan Bluestone referring to John Phelps

But at the same time, I think it's really important that people who haven't been to city council before and have something on their mind feel comfortable coming here.

So I'd like to thank Ms. Moore, Ms.

Beard, and Mr. Bellamy for all taking the time.

Those were the people I didn't know who came here tonight and for taking the time to come and bring some things to our attention.

I'll briefly correct or an impression that Dan Bluestone may have left.

Just a couple of comments.

Another thank you to the women, my source of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority in bit of history.

Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority is the first Greek letters sorority founded among black college women on the campus of Howard University in 1908.

In terms of some of the comments that were made regarding the Christmas bonuses for employees, I guess there's enough blame to go around and I do take some responsibility in that because it would be our hope that we'd be able to give everybody a raise for the hard work that they do, but that's not going to happen this year.

It's probably not going to happen the next year, so at the very least we were able

to provide that and that's kind of my segue into

How hard people work and quality of life and what it's like to have nothing in Charlottesville and to be homeless.

And the homelessness issue is an ongoing process and it's something that's not easily solved overnight but thank you for always bringing that to our attention because I'm amazed at how invisible

Our homeless population can be, but it's important for, I felt it was important to at least provide the bonus because it provided even our lowest paying employees to have not only some extra money but some recognition of how hard they do work.

Just my last comments in regards to the parkway.

Pedestrians, bikes, transit.

Mr. Mayor, I wanted to just thank Mr. Bellamy for coming and bringing up the issues in front of us.

Excites me that you're here today.

I don't see very often black African American young people coming to City Council meetings.

Thank you, Mr. Huja.

Mr. Bellamy, to answer your question about why all these other issues get so much attention, it is because people come week in, week out, in numbers talking about the water supply, Meadow Creek Parkway, etc.

And so it's vital that you're here bringing attention to the...

I'm glad to hear you're coming back and I hope you bring friends with you because we need to shed more light on the very issues that you talked about tonight.

Thank you for coming and getting that dialogue started.

Let's see here.

Mr. Berman, there was an interesting

provision written into the state budget that was just passed yesterday, I believe, by the state House of Delegates and the state Senate and approved by, or soon to be approved by Governor McDonald.

And essentially it says that state employees are not going to receive any pay increase this coming year.

However, if revenues allow, they will be awarded a 3% bonus.

which is substantially higher than the bonus that we gave last year to our employees under the same exact kind of provision.

As revenues allowed, we couldn't give a salary increase, but as revenues allowed, we did award a small bonus that averaged out to I think maybe 1 or 2%.

So we did nothing different than what the state of Virginia is planning to do and what many businesses are doing, which is if revenues allow, they try to do something for their employees that work hard and are not getting any kind of increase.

Under the same circumstances, I would vote to approve them again.

I didn't have any hesitation approving them the first time and I just want to go on the record saying that.

And then with the Meadow Creek Parkway, we have received an abundance of emails, phone calls, etc.

about the idea of allowing the

the critics of the parkway to have their day in court before we do a lot of damage to our park and before we find out in the end that it was all for naught because it may have been illegal.

And so I think there is a, I know I can't speak for all my fellow counselors, but I think there is a sense among counselors that I've spoken to that we'd like to find a way to allow you your day in court

before construction begins, before ground is broken.

And it's just trying to figure out the chain of events, sort of the timeline for making all this happen.

And at what point

Does the suit get filed?

At what point does the Federal Highways issue their permit?

At what point does the Corps of Engineers issue their permit?

And how can we stack all these things in a way that allows that judicial determination on an injunction to be awarded or determined before we tear up the park?

And so our city attorney, we met with him because this involves a potential legal issue.

We met with our city attorney in closed session before the meeting tonight to ask him, how does this all play out on a timeline?

and he would like, our city attorney is very interested in trying to figure out if there's a way where we can allow you your day in court given the fact that it seems like there's at least a majority on council that shares your desire to have your day in court before we break ground.

So we've asked our city attorney to meet with representatives from the coalition to try to figure out this timeline.

and come back to council with a proposal.

Before we approve any construction agreement with VDOT, before we move forward on the parkway, we'd like to see if we can find agreement on a path forward.

So he'll be contacting, I guess, Mr. Cruikshank to set up that meeting and see if we can figure this all out.

Does that accurately reflect?

So thank you.

and of course if it were up to me I'd just kill the thing altogether.

But we know there's a lot involved in this project and we want to make sure we're doing this the right way.

I think I noticed that there are some people who look younger than the average attendee.

Are there some high school students here?

Do you all want to stand up for just a second?

You're our future.

Thank you for coming.

Alright, we're going to move on now with our meeting.

Our next item on our agenda is the consent agenda.

On the consent agenda tonight we have

Thank you.

We have minutes of February 16th and 26th.

We have an appropriation of $100,000, school's contribution to the Small Capital Improvements Program, second of two readings.

Item C is an appropriation of $370,900, Safe Routes to School Grant, second of two readings.

Item D is an appropriation of $50,000, Roy's Place Subdivision Improvement, second of two readings.

Item E is an appropriation of $45,730, Domestic Violence Coordinator Grant, first of two readings.

Item F is a resolution authorizing application for state grant funds for park and greenbelt trail purposes, first to one reading.

Item G is a resolution supporting and funding application for Buckingham Branch Railroad Company to VDRPT, first to one reading.

Item H, an ordinance granting underground utility easement to UVA across University Avenue to serve Madison Hall, second of two readings.

Item I is an ordinance closing portion of Oak Street, second of two readings.

Item J is an ordinance quick clean gas easement in Montgomery Ridge subdivision Albemarle County to VDOT, first of two readings.

Item K, an ordinance reducing speed limit to 15 miles per hour in certain school zones, first of two readings.

This is one of about 10 or 11 subdivisions

developments around the community that are in various stages of completion.

You may recall back in December you passed an ordinance on street acceptance.

That along with our snows in December and January led us to undertake a program to try to get all of them finished.

We've been working with all the developers to

to make sure that happens.

Roy's Place unfortunately is one that we sent letters to the developer asking him to address problems.

We sent them innocently to a wrong address and we got no response, therefore we took advantage of the bond that he had posted.

I would like to report to you though that he is working with us.

We've had several really good meetings and we're

probably going to use a very small portion of the bond.

He's going to work with us to finish the work.

But we need to get it appropriated so we can even write him his bank of check and give back a portion of it.

But all those are, the new ordinance is really helping us.

We're getting almost every development that we've had that's been out there a while completed now.

It's kind of forcing the issue.

The developers are getting it done.

So we don't go through this problem if we have another snow next year.

Thank you, Mr. Tolbert.

Any other items, questions, comments to be removed?

Otherwise, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda?

It's been moved and seconded.

Any further discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

Motion carries.

Thank you very much.

Yes sir, we have two public hearings tonight, both relate to the city budget, so I'll start with the first one.

It's fairly straightforward.

The budget proposal that you have in front of you, that we'll go through in a few minutes in a little more detail, includes a proposal for the real estate tax rate to remain the same at 95 cents per hundred.

As you know from the assessments in the community, over 90% of our residents will see either no increase or less, almost half receive less in terms of the real taxes that they pay because of the assessments.

So I always think that's really good news for our community.

The second part of the tax rate is a proposal for the personal property tax rate to again remain the same at $4.20.

So the proposed budget shows no change in either of the tax rates, both real property as well as personal property.

Be glad to answer any questions and then you can open it for the public hearing.

We'll now open the public hearing.

We have a few people who signed up to speak.

And when you come forward again, please give your name and address and keep your comments to three minutes.

I'm Charlie Kebash.

I live at 308 East Market Street in Charlottesville, Virginia.

We are owners of properties on and around the mall.

plus we own a commercial real estate company called KVASH, Fox & Gentry Commercial Properties and although many residents are having their tax rates the assessments lowered the commercial properties that I and all my clients own are staying the same and that's following a tax increase in 2009 of approximately an assessment increase of 9.4% across the board which I never quite understood

What logic was used to increase commercial property assessments in a period that had already been going downhill.

Now we are professional landlords.

We are working hard with many of our tenants and reducing rents, recasting leases, foregoing rents, because it's not good out there.

It's a tough economy.

and if it's an economy that's tough on people, it's also tough on retail, office and residential tenants that we have.

Now we're being asked to cooperate with them and we're doing it readily and I assume most landlords are also, but we are.

We are working with our tenants in order to try and make them successful in a tough period and prevent vacancies.

However, although our tax assessment is saying the same this year, while residential rates are going down, assessments, we did get almost a 10% increase in 2009 for no reason.

The economy was already in decline.

We have more vacancies than in the past.

Our vacancies stay on the market longer than in the past.

And we're doing everything we can to keep up with it.

And we're doing everything we can as landlords to prevent vacancies.

So if in fact the residential rates and assessments are going down, why are commercial buildings stepchild and staying the same this year and gone up 9.4% in 2009?

It doesn't seem right we have residents in our buildings

and their rents are going down and we're making arrangements to keep them in place, yet our taxes go up and our assessments go up.

So it seems that it's an unfair balance of power.

I mean, I understand commercial buildings don't vote.

and the people who own them do.

But there's no reason, if there is a general decrease that's necessary, why my buildings all stay the same or go up.

And I don't know what you're going to do about it.

I would suggest that before there's, I mean, we can get together all the residential landlords and all the commercial landlords.

and petition the assessment board to do something, but that's a lot of work for you guys.

A lot of work, and a lot of work for us.

We have to get our CPAs together with our lawyers, and we'd like to avoid that, but we'd also like some relief in a tough period.

We're very generous, we're charitable in the community, and we think that probably you should address that.

and I will take one of your brownies except they're not brown.

Richard Berman, 205 Second Street NW.

I have to take exception to what that gentleman just said because I've been hearing for weeks about how residential assessments are going down.

Mine just went up $50,000 which means I'm going to be paying $500 a year more in taxes this year.

They went up last year over 10%.

They've gone up over $250,000 in the last eight years.

I've been retired for 23 years.

My income has been going down.

I've sent in a protest about the increase in assessment.

I haven't heard a word back yet, and I know I'm going to end up with the equalization board, but assessments haven't gone down throughout the city.

In some places they've gone up, and it's not fair.

Thank you, Mr. Berman.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Councillors.

Colette Hall, 101 Robertson Lane.

Most taxpayers do not understand or care enough to be here to speak about the tax rate.

What a sad state of citizen apathy.

Idle or lost must be on the television tonight.

Mr. O'Connell, the city manager, told the neighborhood reps in his October quarter of a meeting that the tax rate of 95 cents per $100 of assessed real estate would remain the same.

Then the issue of revenue sharing and the composite index came forward.

Yes, I am aware that Delegate Bell's amendment was not included in the proposed state budget, but ultimately, since the county's school population is growing,

and the cities is declining, a solution will need to be forthcoming.

However, low and middle income earners are struggling to pay mortgages and bills.

Residents are asking, should we pay the electric bill this month or the car payment?

Not only is it not time to raise the tax rate, but it would be welcome to lower it.

Thank you, Ms. Hall.

Is there anybody else who would like to speak on the tax rate?

Hello, everyone.

My name is Kevin Hurst.

I live at 307 18th Street, Northeast.

I'd like to say that I definitely feel people's pains in a tough time.

However, you have to realize that your property taxes are going to fund public education, and I definitely feel very strongly

that people who are still employed and still in their homes and are still able to pay should feel grateful that they are giving towards public education, towards other city employees who I have to say that I feel sympathetic to those city employees who

depend on bonuses to help buy Christmas presents for their families and other kinds of things.

And I want to emphasize that we are in a community and that we pull together in tough times.

And lowering tax rates is not a responsible thing to do in

in times like these because basically what ends up happening is that everyone saves maybe $100 and $200, but we all definitely end up coming up short as a community.

That's all I have to say.

Thank you, Mr. Hurst.

Anybody else like to speak on the tax rate?

We will now close this public hearing.

I get set at your April meeting.

Tonight is just the public hearing for you to consider as we go forward with the budget.

So this is information for you to take into account.

If you have any questions, either we can answer them now or

or later.

The one thing I wanted to add, the commercial assessments overall were down 5%, actually significantly more than the residential assessments.

It's a reflection of the market and their individual properties that we'll check the ones that were mentioned tonight.

the biggest number have gone down I think across the community.

The other thing about assessments is there's a lag time.

It lags in terms of it's almost a two-year period when you factor into what's going on in the real estate market and this past year in 2009 and the same thing will happen a year later or a year after that.

If we were considering a tax rate increase, would we have to be considering it now?

Yes, sir.

I can't remember, Craig.

If you propose to increase the tax rate, there is notification requirements, publication requirements that you have to go through and I believe it is 30 days.

We didn't do that this year because the proposed rate is to stay the same.

It will come back to you as it does each year.

in the form of an ordinance for your action.

So there's, yes.

Unless you propose to enter a single general.

Nobody's proposing to increase the tax rate.

So I guess the point is that we still have some more time if other citizens would like to contact council with their own opinions about the tax rate.

Of course, I know it's not always the easiest process, but we do have an appeal process in place if you feel like your property was assessed too high or too low for that matter.

And we thank you all for coming to speak tonight at our public hearing.

Next we have another public hearing on the city manager's proposed FY 2011 budget.

I was looking at your list.

I'd like to run through a quick PowerPoint presentation.

The primary emphasis is going to be on some changes that we've received in the state budget, but just in case people that are here either tonight or

While watching on TV they can get a quick overview of what's happening with the city budget proposal.

Dave, do you want to scoot over this way so you're not in the middle of it?

Just a couple comments while this is warming up.

In general there are a number of kind of major themes in this proposed budget and those of you that watch budget processes know this is the city manager's proposed budget that goes to city council.

From here on the city council will start considering changes that they want to make and there's a series of meetings which I'll show in a slide in a few minutes.

There are no tax or fee increases that are being proposed as we mentioned about the real estate and personal property taxes, but that's true for the rest of city programs.

There are no reductions in direct services that are provided to our citizens.

It fully supports the city school budget.

There are no pay raises for city employees included.

There are no impacts in terms of layoffs or furloughs for city employees and that's how we're able to maintain the current level of services.

And I'll go through a few of these slides to try to give you a sense of the city budget.

We started with this slide for three years and I think as we go into next year and the year after that the storm is going to get bigger and stronger but as everybody knows there are all kinds of economic

downturns that are going on in our regional economy and within the Charlottesville economy.

In a lot of ways, the economy within Charlottesville may be stronger than most any other city in the state, but we still have our issues.

This is a negative budget.

You'll see in a minute that we actually have a decline.

One of the biggest issues that we face when we're preparing this budget is what's going to happen with the state budget.

The budget that was presented to the City Council was based on the budget that Governor Kean proposed that went to the General Assembly.

And as many people know, over the weekend the House and Senate met.

They've come up with a joint budget proposal that will make its way to the Governor and we've spent today trying to figure out what are the impacts on Charlottesville out of the budgets that have left the General Assembly.

and it's kind of an interesting weekend.

I think everybody was anticipating major reductions for city government and schools.

The bottom line is our revenues changed by $53,000 for the city.

So there's a total of, we proposed $890,000 from the governor's budget and now we're proposing reductions of $942,000 so that's that $50,000

a difference that comes out of the General Assembly budget.

And the remarkable one is the school budget headed in to this weekend with $2.1 million in state reductions.

There were amended revenues of $1.3 million.

So now the state budget reductions are $800,000.

So that's a 1.25 million swing to the good over the weekend.

I think pretty amazing, pretty surprising.

I've given council a sheet here that goes through these reductions as best as we know them, and this is every day we learn more, but this was

Our best information today, we have a work session with council on Wednesday and we probably will have a little bit more specific information.

But for example, State Aid for Police Protection, the state actually amended it to add back $211,000.

They also added back $359,000 for constitutional officers like Commissioner of Revenue, Treasurer, Commonwealth Attorney, the Circuit Court, and the City Sheriff as a group.

and then they turned around and did what they called flex cuts which I think was at the end of the state budget process.

They needed an amount of money to cut and they just cut local governments across the state.

It was 50 million dollars, or excuse me, 60 million dollars in these flexible cuts and for Charlottesville that represents 624,000 dollars.

So all of that said, the city lost 53,000 dollars this past weekend.

The rest we had factored into the city budget.

This is what we were talking about a couple minutes ago.

And the city budget is less for next year, a little bit less than 1%, yet no cuts in services.

If you read the headlines around the state of Virginia, you're not going to find another city that can say that.

This is what's happened in our budget over a 10-year period.

It's just to summarize, we obviously went through a period in early 2000 up until three years ago of real estate market increasing fairly dramatically.

Most of those increases were put into capital projects.

and one of the things that we've done is we've prepared this budget and the budget of the last two years has begun to slow down capital projects.

So as you see this big line dipping and actually becoming negative, one of the biggest places that we made reductions are capital projects.

From my perspective,

That was a plan that we had when the economy was good that we were spending on capital projects and as the economy turned, which it always seems to do, it's turned more radically than I think anybody imagined, we've slowed down capital projects in a fairly major way.

This is just a quick chart about staffing to remind people that these are the general fund, the tax supported positions within city government that over 10 years have actually declined.

This is one of our strategies that we put in the budget that in this particular year we've used 2.3 million out of the 2.8 million that's in our economic downturn fund because of revenue reductions.

I'm not going to show you all the slides of all those different reductions, but property taxes, sales tax, utilities tax, meals tax, all our local taxes are down from over a year ago.

They're hard to predict.

As the economy begins to change we thought it was important that we reflect that in the budget so we can adjust and deal to it without having in the middle of the year to cut services.

So we're proposing again for this economic downturn fund.

We had thought with the way the state budget was in flux that we might have to dip into this in a major way but with at least the adoption of the General Assembly budget with what we know at this moment we will not have to dip into that very much.

and for the schools it was interestingly enough 1.3 million dollars in good news which I think surprised everybody.

We can't anticipate more economic, call it storms, but downturns.

I think you heard a couple comments tonight about the local real estate economy.

I think we're going to continue to see difficulties with the real estate economy, which means assessments are down, which ultimately means the taxes that the city collects will be down.

And we tried to plan for that.

We mentioned the total city contribution is $40.8 million.

It's about a third of the city's budget.

It fully funds the school board request to the City Council for the operation of the schools for next year.

And it takes into consideration the reductions that were proposed in Governor Cain's budget.

And with the amended budget that came back from the governor, I suspect that will create a discussion between the council and the school board about those funds.

There's one, one and three quarters million dollars in school capital improvements.

One of the priorities of city council and this discussion came up a couple months ago was could we make improvements to our transit system.

We have a couple proposals for three routes to try to increase the arrival times, which cost $110,000.

You can see there the proposals.

I think there's interest on Council's part to look at some other possibilities of ways to improve the transit system, and I suspect we'll be discussing that over the next couple of weeks.

There's funding in this budget for the new Smith Aquatic Center and if you look at our budget, you'll see revenues of almost $400,000 is an increase for aquatics primarily due to the Smith Center and the new Meade Pool.

And those expenses, it's a larger facility, it's a major indoor facility, but part of our proposal when we presented this to council was we're going to have much greater usage and we're going to look at

that usage in attracting people to the aquatic center to actually offset any of the cost increases.

And that's the proposal that's in the budget.

We're also, as it's been planned for a couple years, to close Crow Pool.

And there's several groups that are interested in Crow Pool, but the budget proposal would actually have it closing.

Also keeps the McIntyre waiting pool open.

We just highlighted that because that was a big issue last year.

There's almost 34 million dollars in capital projects.

The biggest part of those are the state and federal funds that are involved with the interchange project which the city is managing so those have to be reflected in our capital improvements budget.

This quickly shows a couple of the other items and I wanted to point out council priority areas that in the fall when council was giving us guidance about the city budget, they asked us to look at a couple priorities.

So this budget reflects additional money for stormwater, affordable housing, parkland acquisition and new sidewalks.

We have a work session Wednesday night to go through the capital improvements program and I'm sure this will get a lot more discussion.

So part of what we're trying to say is as we look to this year's budget, we need to look to fiscal year 12, which would be the budget sitting here a year later.

We've got a picture of the recent snow there because one of the things that affected us this year, we had a million dollars in additional costs due to the snow.

above the budget.

Plus, we believe there's at least $1 million in street repairs that have to be made.

So in the middle of this budget process, we have $2 million that we're going to have to spend or that we've already spent.

But if anybody's ridden the streets, you know they're getting in bad shape and those repairs need to be made.

But that's part of the planning and part of our long term planning is to be sure we've got money set aside for any of those kind of emergencies.

So I think I've covered most of these.

It's our belief, what we would call fiscal year 12, which would be the budget that council would be considering next year.

This budget that we're working on right now is fiscal year 11.

2010-2011, but the budget a year from now, we're expecting that to be much more difficult, both in terms of local economy, the city county revenue sharing funds drop, we know that, and we're expecting the state budget to probably drop one more time.

So we think we're going to be sitting here next year with some of the same kinds of issues, if not worse.

We've had a discussion with council, and we just wanted to highlight this,

One of the things that's significant about the city, we're one of the few small cities in the country that has a AAA bond rating.

We learned the other night that the City of Roanoke actually had their bond rating drop because of the use of reserves to help balance their budget.

So this is just, I think we're in a position to where we can meet Council's priorities without dipping into any kind of reserves, but we just think it's important to keep that in front of all of us.

These are tax assessment trends over the last 10 years.

That line that's going down we think is going to drop one more time.

Who knows how much.

One of the things we wanted to emphasize, even though our tax rate is at 95 cents, we've got one of the lowest tax rates of any city, and when you look at a full-service city with the demographics and the programs that we provide in Charlottesville, it's pretty remarkable that we're able to do that.

To our peers, the average is $1.08, and we're at 95 cents.

That's 13 cents less.

That's $6.5 million that

have been given back to Charlottesville taxpayers as the tax rate's been reduced over the last 10 years.

This is our website.

Everything that we give council about the city budget is on our website.

All the budget proposals, any updates that we give council, any of the work session questions, all those kinds of things.

So if you have an interest, go to our website and you can quickly find anything you want.

And this is the calendar that the mayor had mentioned.

Tonight is the

We had a work session last week.

Tonight is the first public hearing.

We have a work session Wednesday night primarily on the capital budget.

On March 24th, we have a citizen budget forum.

For anybody that's here or listening in, I think people have appreciated these in the past.

It's a chance for the public to spend a lot of time with individual counsel and counsel as a group talking about budget issues.

It's not a three-minute opportunity like there is at this meetings, and we're going to continue

that forum.

They'll be a quick overview, but most of the night is going to be the one-on-one discussions with city council.

And we have another work session on the 31st, and then the second public hearing on April 5th, which is the proposal that council would be making in terms of the budget for next year and any changes that they want to make.

If I can get this to work.

There's possibly a work session on April 7th that there's still issues and then the budget would be approved on April the 12th.

We're legally required to have the budget approved by April 15th.

So we think this budget continues to reflect what good budgeting is all about, follows the budget guidelines that the City Council has given us.

We try to be conservative and I think that has played out.

I think the fact that we're able to sit here with a budget that proposes to stay within the current tax rate and does not cut services says we have been pretty conservative in how we put budgets together.

It continues to focus beyond this year into the future.

We think that's important.

My belief is that it continues to meet our community needs.

In fact, it's expanding in a few areas that council has a priority in.

Continuous quality services, we're not cutting or reducing anything.

It reflects council's priorities and education is one of the council's higher priorities and no increase in tax or fees.

And finally, this is a cover off of an economic magazine.

It's talking about the world economy, but I think that little bridge across through there is how a lot of us are feeling, whether it's locally in Charlottesville or within our region or nationally.

But there is a new economy that we're facing.

I think part of the challenge for the city in the future is what's the right mix of services?

How do we provide those services?

Are there ways that we can do that more efficiently?

And I think the latest question is are there ways that we can do that with Albemarle County and save money for both of us?

So we thank you for your patience.

I hope that gives a quick overview as to where we are.

The new information for council was where we are with the state budget.

And I'll be glad to answer any questions or we can go into the public hearing.

I have a question.

It's not so much about the state stuff, but just kind of a general question that I didn't bring up in our previous meeting.

I know that there's a requirement in our budget and the guidelines to review for a living wage.

There's a living wage amount that is set based on the, I don't have to look at the policy, but the average starting salary for city employees and with the proposal that that won't change for next year, the living wage will remain the same.

But that's a condition that we put in city contracts.

You mentioned that in the new budget from the state, schools will get $1.3 million more.

To be honest I'm not sure because here's our understanding as of this afternoon and I was surprised at this.

They're talking about 1.3 million dollars for next year but the year after that they're talking about 500,000 so it's a declining number then it moves to zero.

So to some extent you need to think about it in terms of it's only going to be there for one year and I know the schools are talking today but I don't know their conclusions

It would seem like those are the kinds of funds that you would use for some kind of capital project or some kind of project or a program that you know would be one year only.

I don't think it's the kind of thing that CATEC would say, okay they're getting more money from the state so we're going to reduce the city contribution because then next year you have to make that up.

There's also some money and this shows on the list of $300,000 for technology funding.

that I think has to be dedicated to technology so there's some conditions that are in that as well.

But I think it's one we're going to need to talk with the school some more and you may want to talk to the school board about as we get more information.

Other questions?

We're going to open the public hearing.

Again, please give your name and address and keep your comments to three minutes.

My name is Elizabeth Breeden and I'm on the board of PACEM.

Our mission statement is to provide shelter, compassionate support and access to services for people who are homeless.

This was created when members of the faith community realized we had community members freezing to death in the winter.

In the ABRT funding, you listed our mission as of moderate priority.

Five years ago, we started this program and now we have grown up.

This year we went from an average 47 people to 55 people each night in our shelter.

This year we had two major snowstorms which affirmed our work.

We've been so crowded that we created overflow plans with the second weekly host church so that they could take in the extra 10 men.

We understand now that a well-trained staff enforces our low-barrier program.

Our shelters are safe.

Our shelters are warm.

Our congregations are more streetwise, but they are more compassionate.

We and they have become solution-driven.

We have birthed the Day Haven, Charlottesville Health Access, the SRO effort, and Impact because of the interaction of the folks in their home churches with the citizens who find themselves homeless.

If you want to earn your world-class city banner, you too must look at the full arc bending towards justice in our community, bringing people together to work to solve the problems of homelessness.

You cannot leave this work to the private sector alone, but pull in tandem with us and support the existence of PACHAM.

We made a 20% request for a budgeted income of 50, we asked for $50,000 in a budget of $252,000 program.

Thank you, Ms. Breeden.

Colleen Keller and I live at 675 Black Cat Road.

I'm also here representing Potsham.

As Elizabeth mentioned, we did apply for the first year.

It's our sixth year to the ABRT and we were rated a moderate priority or some need for our program.

TJAC just completed their survey and on January 26 there were 139 adults sheltered, 60 of them were at Pacham.

So out of our full system of the Salvation Army, she, the Moore Center and a few other places, Pacham was 60 people.

In the ABRT funding, there's some really, I think, inspirational statements.

One of them is, does the program have a broad public good?

This year, compared to last year, for instance in December, we will have provided an additional 300 nights of shelter.

That's person times night.

It was an enormous increase over last year.

It was significant.

And this year we have as many people in the shelters from eviction and job loss as we do for mental health and substance abuse.

That is not normal.

But it's also an indication, I think, of whether or not we're a broad public good.

There was another statement about a significant public good or the vitality of your local economy.

I think the thought is if you can't stay with us, we're last resort, where do you stay?

The jail?

The emergency room?

Those are the two most common choices.

Aside from I think our feelings about sort of humanitarianism, those are not cost effective alternatives to housing.

And the final alternative would be the downtown mall.

And I think that doesn't seem like a viable strategy for a vital downtown mall to any of us.

I just wanted to sort of return to our review, also very severely criticize both our capacity and our sustainability.

For five years, and I mean I feel good saying this because I come into this built, this has not been built by me, five years Pachman's provided 27,000 nights of shelter.

I don't think that that demonstrates a lack of capacity of an organization to provide services.

And as far as sustainability, we came to you for help.

This is a first application.

As Elizabeth said, it was a 20% of our budget asked.

That may have been pretty high on my part.

We know it's a tough year, but we are asking for some financial support.

This is a $250,000 budget.

It is not a big program, and I feel like we provide a lot of service, but we are in dire need of sustainable, repetitive funding streams.

We're raising the budget every year from ground zero, so it's a big challenge.

So thank you for the opportunity, but we hope we'll reconsider

Thank you, Ms. Keller.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

I'm Dick Gibson, 1431 Grove Road, and I'm here tonight in my capacity as Chairman of Java.

First of all, I'd just like to say Java appreciates the support that the city has provided to us over the years.

I think it's a great symbiotic relationship, and I think Java has proven that it's a good steward of the funds that you all do provide to us.

We appreciate that support and we have actually asked for an increase of slightly over $6,000 and the reason for that is in last year's budget or for the current year's budget we were able to get $6,000 of stimulus money and that funding is no longer available next year and without that coupled with pressures that we're having for reductions from other funding sources including contributions all because of the economy

We will have to make some changes in the services that we provide to the citizens of the city.

Some of the things that we are looking at and would be a combination of some of these would be the low-income meal participants would bring their own lunches to the Mary Williams Senior Center and we would have that program run one day a week by a volunteer to eliminate the staff cost.

We are also looking at having additional closures of the Mary Williams Center during the year and for fiscal reasons we already have to close it for four weeks and the people that go to that center depend on it as a vital part of their daily activities.

We also are looking at reducing the hours of nursing services at Mary Williams and or the public housing where we provide nursing service currently.

We provide 20 hours a week at Crescent Hall and with CACF funding we are providing four hours a week at West Haven.

That's down from eight hours and we would like to seek the additional funds to be able to restore that back to eight hours because that's a very vital service that we do provide to the community.

and also I guess the news is better from the state budget but with the anticipated cuts and funding there we're going to have problems at Mountainside where we provide auxiliary grant beds for 24 of the city residents and just to illustrate how good a deal that is for the city and we appreciate your support there

The current auxiliary grant rate is $1,112.

It cost us $1,869 a month to provide food and shelter for the auxiliary grant person.

So that's a subsidy of $757 a month or just over $9,000 a year.

So you multiply that times 24 and that's over $200,000 essentially of

subsidy that we do provide for those people that we take care of at Mountainside.

So, you know, I say that because I think it illustrates the point that your investment in Mountainside has returned many fold by virtue of our being able to underwrite the cost of maintaining those people and providing them with a good, safe, and healthy place to live.

So, again, thank you for your support, and we are

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Council.

Collette Hall 101, Robertson Lake.

The introducer said, and this is a paraphrase, nursing itself is a ministry that requires compassion and caring.

I have been a registered nurse for 40 years.

I have worked in the military, public health, nursing homes, hospice, to name only a few positions.

I have worked with low income, the unemployed, the homeless, unwed pregnant teenagers, the elderly, and the dying.

I do not claim to have the compassion of the vice mayor.

but I have hands-on experience of caring.

This is not the time to lock the city into millions of dollars payable in future budgets.

For example, building an SRO, a building that the city will end up building and running

It is not because I dislike or disregard the homeless, the low income or the elderly.

I have been near apartments and tents.

I have seen the empty cupboards.

I have seen the elderly hoard their medications due to a lack of money.

Or how about this example, spending funds on the non-need to repaint a new logo on the buses.

This is just not the time to commit to new projects.

Look at the consent agenda tonight.

Funding for school small capital improvements, domestic violence coordinator, Parks and Greenbelt Trail, Buckingham Railroad.

Taken individually, they are commendable projects.

Which one is the priority?

Where is the need versus the want?

Where does it end?

We had a time in our nation's history where all levels of government are in distress, federal, state, and local.

Charlottesville is fortunate, probably due to Mr. O'Connell, Mrs. Beauregard, Mr. Watts, and others' advice and experience to be able to present a balanced budget for FY 2011.

This will not last.

Our day of reckoning is coming.

And not because of the pictures on the PowerPoint.

What you fund in this budget, you may not be able to fund in 2012.

Hard, hard choices are coming.

This year, we missed going over the cliff, but we are on the edge.

I want to say a lot more.

I know my time is up.

I hope to be able to say it at the Community Budget Forum.

Thank you very much, Ms. Hall.

Good evening.

My name is Matt Trowbridge and I am a physician and also a public health researcher at University of Virginia.

But I also, what I studied there is actually how the built environment impacts public health overall and understanding that and studying that more has led me to donate a lot of, donate my time to be on the board of the Charlottesville Community Design Center and that's what I'm here tonight representing.

So I think

Basically, the discourse tonight I think demonstrates why the Charlottesville Community Design Center is a really important resource.

These are really complicated decisions we're making.

There's only X amount of resources and we have to put them in the right places as best we can.

Many times that literally means shaping our city going forward.

We can't do it all, so we've got to try to make the best decisions we can.

It's an exciting time to be part of the CCDC.

Our mission is to engage all of the citizens in the process of visualizing and shaping the future of Charlottesville.

And as we heard, we really do believe that the design of the city, design matters to the health and the equity and to making the city a more beautiful place to live.

And we really think it's incredibly important to engage the citizens, as I mentioned.

And part of being engaged in a process is understanding it.

And I think one of the really amazing resources that Charlottesville has is this incredible creative community.

If we engage this creative community, we can actually use it to literally visualize the options that are being put in front of Charlottesville as a community to decide on.

And once you visualize something, it's a lot easier to engage, it's a lot easier to understand.

And so, that's kind of at the core of what we're trying to do at the CCDC.

And the three things, the three kind of categories of services that we feel that we provide are we provide a place for open and informed dialogue for important community issues.

And we do this literally in a physical space, which obviously we invite everyone to come to.

Second story, the Market Street parking garage.

where we manage the city space and we also provide open and free exhibits including our current where we lay out the proposed ideas for water management and we're also going to be doing a livable, livable Charlottesville for healthy aging and coming in the fall where we'll be doing a design charette

to discuss how do we make our city that much more accessible to people of all ages.

We also help citizens to have a voice in shaping the future of communities.

One of the really exciting new projects that we're doing is we have actually a Charlottesville High School urban design course, which is really remarkable.

I really recommend it.

If you guys can stop in at the CCDC, we'd be happy to show you what we're doing.

but these are Charlottesville high school students.

The reality is that the majority of them actually live in public housing, they're public housing residents and last semester we looked at the history of Integral Hill and got them to understand it and then with that history more well understood, got these young students to actually draw and visualize new opportunities in the Charlottesville.

And then finally we enhance the capacity of other non-profits through things like our annual design marathon where we've provided over $60,000 of pro bono design services to a lot of the non-profits.

So in short, we really do rely on the city for support.

We're asking for the $27,560 that are earmarked to be continued.

It's essential to our ongoing work, particularly because we really do try to provide all these things in an open and absolutely free manner.

and there's really no other way to do it.

Thank you, Mr. Trowbridge.

That's all to sign up to speak.

Is there anybody else who would like to speak?

Good evening.

I'm Peter Klayman.

I live at 407 Head Street in the city.

I'm not exactly sure of the time sequence in the

the setting of the tax rate and the budget but in the past there's been the equalization budget that said if we don't change the tax rate

or if we don't change the amount of taxes that are being collected, what would that tax rate be?

And I think that's called the equalization tax rate.

And I haven't seen that.

I'm not sure whether that's due yet.

But my question is, if in fact we are maintaining the tax rate, is that in effect a tax cut that's being provided to the community as a whole?

And if that is the case, I would certainly like to have consideration of whether

Cutting taxes at this time is an appropriate action and I personally would be happy to pay that small difference in tax rate to have the equivalent tax as we paid last year based on all the changes in assessments.

And then when you, I don't know what amount of money that might be, but some of that money that would be available through just having that level tax could pay for some of these relatively small requests are being made and it could be

funding for the $20,000 and $50,000.

Also, Councilor Brown mentioned that the Meadow Creek Parkway was not in tens of millions of dollars, but it's not zero either out of the city budget.

And I think it's many hundreds of thousands of dollars that are appearing, or hundreds of thousands of dollars that appear in the budget for that project that's running through McIntire

Park as sharing funds or some of these other revenue sharing funds, matching funds from VDOT that are $500,000 from the city to match $500,000 from the state.

So it's not Trump change we're talking about in there.

It's not tens of millions, but it might be millions.

So I think there are funds that are being allocated to that controversial project.

and again in light of what the situation is and the amount of money that's necessary to meet the social service needs of our community, I would certainly support a level tax and possibly postponing some of those very large capital expenditures on controversial transportation projects to bridge us to a time when we have better income.

Thank you.

Anybody else like to speak on the city manager's proposed FY 2011 budget?

All right, we will close the public hearing.

Any immediate responses from either Mr. Connell or council members?

Mr. Kleeman was correct.

I mean simply put because the budget and the assessments are going down there's not a publication like there has been in the past that requires as the assessments go up an equivalent tax rate is produced I quite honestly don't know because of it going down what the equivalent would be the other way it's 96 cents I'm not sure we'd have to do the calculation but what's in front of you is a 95 cent tax rate

We'll be glad to provide that.

Was there a decision now to fund any new applications overall?

The team was instructed not to recommend any previously unallocated funds for new programs in their considerations.

And Miss Adjoint City County, we knew going into the budget that funding was going to be tight and we're trying to put priorities to where they were.

We will provide you any requests that were made.

Other comments or questions?

Okay, well thank you very much, so we will continue this conversation in the weeks to come.

Just out of curiosity, you know how many were at Albemarle last time?

Sorry, six.

The next item on our agenda is a public hearing and ordinance regarding temporary relocation of Jefferson Precinct to 1119 5th Street extended Municipal Arts Building, first of two readings.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Council members.

Last fall, we received notice from the Carter Family Life Center, which is our Jefferson Park precinct polling place, that the November election would be our final election at that site.

And over the years, we've actually had some issues with that particular site.

And if you permit me, I'd like to give you just a very brief history of this precinct.

I've been a registrar here 11 years.

and so in 2001 we were using the Jefferson Park Baptist Church and we received a bunch of complaints, numerous complaints about actually using a building associated with the religious institution as a polling place.

So the electoral board who received these complaints actually

made a policy as best as they could that we would try to stay out of a religious institution using a polling place.

In February of 2001, the board started looking for a new precinct and so we entered into an agreement with the Fry's Spring Beach Club for a rental fee of $500 as per election.

The Department of Justice approved that site and we had our first election there in November of 2001.

We entered 2004 when the Department of Rehabilitative Services came by and looked at all of our precincts and we got glowing reports on all of them except for the Jefferson Park precinct.

The deficiencies at Fry's Springs were so extensive it was going to require major structural renovation and obviously that wasn't something we were going to do.

Fry's Springs would have loved us if we did it, but we were not going to go into that.

So February 1 of 2005, the board agreed to recommend that the polling place be moved to the freestanding gymnasium at the Carter Family Life Center.

The difference is that yes, it is attached with the Cherry Avenue Christian Church, but it was a freestanding gymnasium and it didn't have the religious

connotations, for lack of a better term, that it did going actually into a church.

So we've been there and it's been really, it's been a nice precinct.

In 2009, the board and Mayor Norris received notice from the Carter Family Life Center that we would not be able to use that.

So here we are now looking for a new location.

In the packet that you have, there's a sheet in there that showed you over the years all of the different sites that we have been looking at.

I mean, we've scoured them.

And we looked at the Municipal Arts Center, the current spot that we're looking at temporarily right now, and at that time, they weren't willing to talk about moving their Tuesday evening rehearsal.

They said we could use it, but we would need to be out by six o'clock, which obviously isn't suitable, so that's why we didn't look at them again.

We went back and talked with them this year and asked them if we could please temporarily move there for the 2010 election cycle which is going to include two elections.

It's the Republican primary for the 5th Disc

Fifth District Congressional, yes sir.

Behind you on the wall I placed precinct maps.

You'll see right now the Jefferson Park precinct.

All three of them are the same.

The Jefferson Park precinct is the dark blue, yes.

It is the dark blue.

Shaded precinct.

The X to the lower, yes, sir, Mr. Mayor, that's the X, that's the Municipal Arts building that we're looking to go to currently.

The triangle in the upper northern part of the precinct is where we are intending to relocate after the 2010 election cycle.

I've been talking with Mr. Pierce, who is the executive director of the Boys and Girls Club.

He was actually the principal at Clark, and Clark is one of our precincts, so he's very familiar with us.

He said he would love to sit down and talk with us about that.

Obviously, the construction is not done yet, but we're fully comfortable that the staff has told me that that would be done for 2011.

Obviously, it's not a done deal right now because we still have to talk with them about the requirements, but that's our intention and our hope at this point.

So right now we just need to get through 2010.

And so I hope that you all will support us in that.

One thing, and maybe people will speak to this, but one thing that I know some residents were concerned about is that it wouldn't be as central

to the majority of residents because a lot of people walk to it.

That was one of the reasons I put the map up there.

It is.

And it is nice to have that.

And I hope that we can get back to that.

and the other thing is you know the the law election law allows us to go one mile outside the boundaries so you can go one mile outside the boundaries within the city or one mile outside the boundaries into the county and we're just trying to stay away from that for confusion in the marketplace the other the other thing the election law allows you to do is it allows you to have two precincts and one polling site so we could actually if we had a really nice large building you know you could actually have two precincts

in one site.

I mean, I have an issue with the fact that we provide a lot of funding to the band relative to Albemarle County and the band is a majority.

Most of the members in the band are Albemarle County residents.

Now it does play downtown in a number of concerts.

Well, in their defense, we actually only asked them for two elections, knowing that we could conceivably go someplace else.

We really didn't entertain a long-term relationship with them.

I have a question, Mr. Mayor.

Oh I'm sure they're going to show up.

JPA is a great voting precinct.

But by law what I'm required to do is I'm required to issue a new voter card to every resident in that precinct.

Actually it's wonderful because it cleans up our rolls a lot.

But we are going to, we're required by law 15 days prior to the election to issue voter cards.

You have to back that up because once you all make the decision we have to actually have this on one more agenda and then Mr. Brown gets to write a letter to the Department of Justice of which they have 60 days

to not interpose an objection to our request.

And we're getting right down to a few weeks before the election.

Other questions?

Thank you, Ms. Aichette.

We are now open the public hearing on this matter.

Nobody has signed up to speak.

Is there anybody who would like to speak on this issue?

Hearing none, we will close the public hearing.

I second it.

It's been moved and seconded.

It will carry forward to our next meeting.

Thank you very much.

Sure.

Mr. Mayor, Member of Council, I'm going to give you a quick update on the Google Fiber for Communities effort.

Many of you are aware of this.

In mid-February, Google announced plans to build and test a high-speed broadband network in one or more of trial locations throughout the country.

The proposed network would deliver internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today.

a little over one gigabit per second speeds through fiber to the home connections Google has asked that interested municipalities provide information about their communities through a request for information process that will be used to help determine where these networks will be built The city and the county and the university have agreed to cooperate on a single response

with the idea that a joint response will present a more compelling case for consideration.

We are currently working on information for that response.

It is due on March 26.

Now a little bit about what we've learned going through this.

There are many unknowns and I believe that some of this was intentional on Google's part when they sent this out to gender responses.

We have a few clarifications and I'll go through a few of those.

This is an ultra high speed fiber to the home network.

It's not wireless.

It would be an actual fiber optic connection to every home, institution, business, educational institutions, anchor institutions, things like that in the community.

It's experimental by Google's own admission.

They don't know how people will react to it.

They don't know who will use it and how they'll use it.

The thought is that they're looking forward 4, 5, 10 years as to what the internet will become and how people will do business using it.

They want to experiment and see how consumers, everyday folks, would use it as well as producers, which would be businesses or researchers and folks like that.

From an economic development perspective, we would expect it could potentially spur innovation, attract entrepreneurs to locate a business here, to take advantage of the high-speed connection that would be available.

A number of studies have suggested that there is a positive relationship between broadband expansion and economic growth.

We could expect to potentially see some benefits in the job sector from that.

There's also speculation that this is simply an elaborate PR effort on Google's behalf, to be quite frank with you, to put pressure on the FCC to therefore put pressure on the existing telecommunications providers to in fact improve their existing infrastructure.

We have to take Google at their word.

We're formulating an accurate response in the hope that we are selected, but there's a fair number of folks that believe that

They'll follow through and they'll pick a community, perhaps two, but their initial and real intent is simply to put a little pressure.

My understanding is that they have frustration with the telecoms in that Google makes money by

getting people to use the internet more and faster and better but Google doesn't control that infrastructure so there's a bit of attention there and I think that's partly at play here.

A couple other clarifications about what this is not.

This is not free internet access for everybody in the community.

I don't believe anybody has suggested that but just to be clear that's not what it is.

Google would enter the market just like any other provider.

They would provide, they would have to compete with the existing providers that are here and the only phrase they've suggested is that they would provide competitive pricing.

We don't really know exactly what that means, but certainly there would be a fee associated with this if it were to come to pass here.

On the flip side of that, they have not indicated any desire to seek a funding partner from a local jurisdiction to help pay for the infrastructure.

They have indicated they would pay for the infrastructure entirely on their own.

They would hire a contractor, put the infrastructure in place, and operate the system.

Another thing that this is not is, despite the fact that we're very attractive for a number of reasons, it's quite frankly, it's not a sure thing.

This is going to be a very competitive process.

Many of you have probably heard what other communities are doing, including changing their name for a period of 30 days to attract the attention of Google, Kansas.

If any of you are interested in visiting, it's also known as Topeka.

Anyway, this is stage one.

There will be a subsequent stage which will be much more in depth and probably involve a significant amount of time to respond to.

Anything that's in this application that we submit to them is non-binding on our part.

It's simply an effort to gather additional information.

So the focus of the RFI is on existing infrastructure, poles, conduits, existing fiber, things of that nature.

And they're also focusing pretty heavily on community need or desire.

And they've indicated that they're looking to hear from the community about this.

In addition to requesting local governments to respond, they have a way for citizens to respond directly and provide information about their current service and how happy they are with it, how they use it, things of that nature.

They've also indicated that they would like to implement the network quickly and efficiently.

And I think those are some of the buzz words that they're going to be using when they rank us.

And you can read into that whatever you want.

I will say that

Initially, I think communities that own their own electric utility may stand a leg up to communities like ours that don't.

But there's also a line of thinking that says they're looking for a place where it's potentially a little easier to do, and then on the other hand, one where it may be more challenging.

And they have suggested they would pick one or more, so there's possible that they'll pick several.

Now, there are a few ways that folks can be part of the process, both as a resident and as a business owner.

We have created a survey, in addition to Google's survey, which can be accessed at our home page, Charlottesville.org or Albemarle.org.

There's links at the bottom of both of those pages, effective last Thursday afternoon, that link you to a survey for community folks.

It takes about two minutes.

And it also will link you to the Google response that will go directly to Google.

The survey that we've put up will be kind of tabulated and we'll take some of those responses and place into our formal application.

I'm pleased to say that we have, since Thursday afternoon, over 400 responses.

So people are interested in this.

I know you all have been receiving emails and inquiries about this, and our office has as well, beginning back in the middle of February when this first came out.

So please feel free to refer folks to Charlottesville.org or Albemarle.org.

Click on the link and let them fill out the application, fill out the survey as they like.

Yeah, they suggested by the end of this year they will pick.

And then in terms of implementation, they're fairly vague about that, but it's several years, two to four years would probably be quick.

Yes, yes, no, there's a group of us we've met once already, we're meeting again on Friday, the university has

Right.

And we're gathering that type of information to insert as well.

There's significant interest amongst the medical community at UVA with respect to telemedicine and imaging across the internet, things of that nature as well.

So we are incorporating that.

I have two questions.

One is that, I know it's an initial thing, they do it and then

That's it.

But do they continue to maintain the infrastructure at their cost?

It's unknown.

Some people have asked the question whether it's a five-year trial and then it goes away or not.

They've indicated they intend to continue it, whether that means they sell it to somebody who has that as their primary business or whether Google decides to continually maintain it as their own.

They don't see themselves getting into this business per se.

I think they really do want to do the experiment.

As far as it being a PR thing, I think that if they need to have a community to work on to make a good PR move, I'd rather be that community than have somebody else.

And the other question I had is, several people have sent me these Facebook links and things, like we can get 10 million people to say they want Google to come to Charlottesville.

Is that helpful as a way for people to do it, or would it be more helpful?

It's hard to say.

I know that a number of Facebook pages have been started specifically about this effort.

We're going to mention some of those and connect links to those in the application.

Google has not indicated any willingness to...

And have you talked to the folks at the public schools about how they could make use of this?

We have and they're interested in obviously connecting the schools would be a primary benefit to them initially and this effort would do that.

So we are.

Do you need some action from the council?

It wasn't requested.

Is there anything in the application that the council formally acting to support this would be useful?

No, you're right.

No, they've not requested any letters of support, but they do request YouTube links and things of that nature.

I mean, this is all electronic.

I have paper forms, but our submittal will be electronic, and they'll take it from there.

So they're not allowing us to sign any letters or send anything in at this point.

Thank you very much for your efforts.

If there's anything else you need from us, please let us know.

The last item on our regular business agenda tonight is a report on the city manager executive search process.

Galloway Beck, our director of human resources.

This is an update on the procurement process for the, I'm sorry,

This is an update on the procurement process for the search firm that you're considering to use for the city manager search.

It's a follow up on the item that was on the March 1st agenda.

And you received in your packet an update and I'll go through that briefly.

Basically at the last meeting you advised that you have two options in terms of contracting with the firm.

is to use a cooperative procurement process which basically says that you can use an existing contract with another public body that has that in place and you can negotiate or establish a contract using that.

The second way is to go through a standard RFP process and the direction we received last week was that you wanted some additional information.

One, you wanted to know if we had any additional cooperative agreements in place that might be usable.

There was one that was identified last time.

and that was with Springstead.

We did not find that there are any others in place.

There are other firms that have done city manager searches and they have contracts with public bodies but there wasn't specific language included in the contracts that would allow us to utilize them.

I was asked to do some research in terms of reference checks about Springstead and I did do that and shared the information and feedback and I think as a general summary the overall information I got back is that they performed well and my contacts were with staff you may have had some contact with the elected bodies in those areas but certainly they have produced.

There was concern about capacity and the number of searches that they have in place right now and whether they would be able to

Basically take on another client and do the work that you might expect them to do.

Mr. Anzalino, who would be the principal in the contract if he were to do that, has assured us

said sure does, assured the city that he would be able to do that and that could be something that if you were concerned about it could be a part of what you would establish in a contract itself.

So, and I know that in terms of discussion about that essentially where you are right now is that's an option that's available to you and this item was put on for action tonight in terms of giving direction about how you'd like to proceed whether with the cooperative process or with the RFP.

The RFP is ready to go if you were to do that.

If you want to establish a contract

Director of the

as in, well there are a couple different contracts you can use but basically specifying what you would want in that service and then that would become a part of the RFP and the contract with Springstead if you choose to go that route.

Yes sir, you would have to get the contract in place and you could probably have it in place at that point.

Most likely, I mean the shortest time, once the RFP is ready to go, but once you released it, realistically you would need to have it

out for responses.

Minimally 15 days, probably somewhere between, about that at the shortest period of time.

Did touch bases with a couple of firms and they thought that that could be done, but then you'd have to go back and go through the evaluation process as well and depending upon if you were doing it as a group or as a subcommittee.

Comments?

Mr. Mayor, this is probably one of the most important decisions of the council we will make in the next term, as in the budget, because we don't hire city managers very often.

It's a good thing, I think.

In my tenure here, there have been at least two, only two.

I'll just add that that was one of the things about this particular company that I found reassuring is their

commitment to respecting our need for public involvement and that they've done that before and are comfortable with that.

Yeah, I also agree.

You know, I said last meeting that I had experience with Springstead in the search for director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.

I thought it was a very positive experience.

So I come in with a high opinion of this firm and I thought the interview we had with Springstead confirmed, you know, pretty much my beliefs.

And I also feel like, you know, having said that, you know, time does matter.

You know, I mean, I think getting, you know, if we have a good choice in front of us

We need to move ahead.

Do we need a motion?

Sure.

Is there a second?

Second.

Any further discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

The motion carries.

Thank you very much.

I'm sorry?

You've got 10 minutes.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Thank you for your work tonight, Mr. Beck.

Is there any other business before council tonight?

If not, we will now reopen to matters by the public.

Does anybody from the public like to speak?

Hearing none, meeting's adjourned.