City Council Meeting   5/3/2010

I'd like to call this meeting to order.

Ms. Barfield, if you could call the roll, please.

Here.

Here.

Thank you.

We have a plethora of proclamations tonight, and I'm going to jump right in.

We have quite a number of groups and events that we would like to honor this evening.

First of all, we're going to start

with Children's Mental Health Awareness Day.

Whereas addressing the complex mental health needs of children, youth and families today is fundamental to the future of Albemarle and Charlottesville.

And whereas the need for comprehensive coordinated mental health services for children, youth and families places upon our community a critical responsibility

Whereas it is appropriate that a day should be set apart each year for the direction of our thoughts towards our children's mental health and well-being.

Whereas Safe Schools Healthy Students Albemarle Charlottesville Project through its unique approach to serving children and adolescents is effectively caring for the mental health needs of children, youth and families in our community.

Now, therefore, we, the City of Charlottesville, do hereby proclaim May 6, 2010 to be Albemarle, Charlottesville National Children's Mental Health Awareness Day and urge our citizens and all agencies and organizations interested in meeting every child's mental health needs to unite on that day in the observance of such exercises as will acquaint the people of our community with the fundamental necessity of a year-round program for children and youth with mental health needs and their families.

Is there somebody here to receive this proclamation?

Okay, well, next we will move on to

National Foster Care Awareness Month and I believe this was already presented, is that right?

Yes.

Okay.

But I do want to, this was presented at a very special event and I believe Ms. Szakos participated today.

We want to make sure that everybody knows that this is May 1st through 31st is National Foster Care Awareness Month in the city of Charlottesville and we call upon the community to support those who are providing foster care and we acknowledge the awareness and the need and the value of foster care

and there's so many families that give tremendous amount of time and love to children who need that care.

I just want to thank all of you for this proclamation and also, you know, our social workers work with these families every day, but really I also want to recognize the foster parents that stepped forward to bring children into their home and provide a loving environment for their health and well-being and their growth.

And now we have a proclamation for National Tourism Week.

Whereas the travel and tourism industry in the city of Charlottesville continues to be vital to our economic stability and growth, as it contributes significantly to our city's cultural and social climate, and whereas the travel and tourism industry supports the vital interests of the Charlottesville community, contributing to our employment, economic prosperity, international travel and relations, peace, understanding and goodwill,

and whereas in 2008 the Virginia Tourism Corporation reported 173.7 million dollars in tourism revenues were attributed to

I don't think this is correct.

Anyhow, we're attributed to county businesses and approximately 2,049 people in the City of Charlottesville work in fields directly related to the tourism and hospitality industry.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Dave Norris, Mayor for the City of Charlottesville, do hereby proclaim the week of May 8th through May 16th, 2010 as National Tourism Week in the City of Charlottesville and I call upon all citizens to recognize the value of the tourism industry in our community and to observe this week with appropriate ceremonies and activities.

Thank you and good evening Mayor Norris and honorable councilors.

My name is Kurt Burkhardt and I'm the executive director of the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau, the official destination marketing organization for both the city of Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

I want to thank the city of Charlottesville tonight for issuing this proclamation that declares National Tourism Week from May 8th through the 16th of 2010.

Speaking on behalf of more than 2,000 employees who work in fields directly related to the travel and tourism industry in the city of Charlottesville,

Your recognition of their importance to our local economy is very much appreciated.

However, before I get ahead of myself, I'd like to take a moment and recognize a few members of my board of directors who were kind enough to join me this evening.

I have Chris Engle, raise your hand.

Chris, Kevin Linden, George Benford and Lee Catlin representing the county of Albemarle County.

The first full week of May is annually recognized as National Tourism Week, a tradition first celebrated in 1984.

It was established when the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution in 1983 designating the week to be celebrated in May.

Annually, localities throughout our country pause to recognize and applaud those who provide service to an important and very integral part of our national economy.

Locally, we've witnessed firsthand the economic importance of tourism to our economy in good times

and what happens when external pressures such as a souring economy, incidents of terror, threats of a pandemic and weather can adversely impact decisions on the part of the traveling public both at home and abroad.

Taking advantage of opportunities ahead, we've already begun planning on ways to increase summer travel to our area.

You'll soon hear about the Backyard Vacations Campaign that is currently in development with the CDB in cooperation with its partners both from the city and Albemarle County.

I would like to recognize Lee Catlin, Community Relations Director for Albemarle County along with Rick Berrick from the city.

Both have contributed their time and talents working with Allie Bear on my staff in a collaborative partnership

effort to create a fresh new innovative campaign to entice summer travel to our area.

We believe this campaign will have a direct and very positive economic impact to our area.

The CVB would like to come back to council after the roll out of backyard vacations to provide you with an update.

In Charlottesville, the Convention of Visitors Bureau relies on a portion of the overnight bed tax that visitors pay when they stay in a city hotel.

This generates the money needed for Charlottesville to promote and compete with other destinations that also want some of the same business.

In short, our visitors come in, open their wallets, support a local economy through lodging, meals, retail shopping, golf, entertainment, gasoline, fill-ups and so on, and then return home.

The story is multiplied thousands of times throughout the year and the city becomes the beneficiary of this out-of-town money.

Lastly, as we gear up for the National Tourism Week, you will see the following half-page ad, which I've presented to you tonight.

beginning Sunday May 9th in the Daily Progress that illustrates what I've just mentioned.

You may also see folks around town wearing the red buttons which have also provided you.

It says hospitality and tourism works for Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

In closing, please accept my heartfelt appreciation for this opportunity tonight in which you have recognized the travel and tourism industry which is a very appropriate way of saying thank you to the many thousands who provide so much to our local economy.

Thank you, Mr. Burkhart.

Next, we'd like to announce Building Safety Month in the City of Charlottesville.

Whereas through our continuing efforts to address critical safety issues in the built environment that affect our citizens, regardless of age or occupation, both in everyday life and in times of natural disaster, we are confident that our structures are safe and sound.

And whereas vigilant guardians, building safety and fire prevention officials, architects, engineers, builders, and others in the construction industry work year round to ensure the safe construction of buildings.

and whereas Building Safety Month sponsored by the International Code Council and International Code Council Foundations reminds the public about the critical role of our community's largely unknown guardians of public safety, our local code officials who help prevent countless deaths and injuries from fires and accidents.

Thank you, Council and Mayor Norris for this proclamation that you've given me, you know, and you give me each year.

One thing we've done for the last couple of years is offered a free deck inspection, wood deck inspection that's going on right now.

So, you know, citizens in Charlottesville, just call our office, Neighborhood Development Services, 970-3182, and we'll be happy to come out and check out their deck.

Thank you very much.

Okay, we have two more.

Whereas the City of Charlottesville hereby declares May 2010 as Civility Awareness Month to celebrate the spirit of civility among all peoples regardless of race, creed, color, or station in life.

Let us celebrate civility by treating each other in our schools, communities, businesses, families, and places of worship with respect, restraint, and responsibility.

The three R principles of civility as defined by Dr. PM Forney, co-founder of the Johns Hopkins University Civility Project.

and internationally renowned civility expert and whereas acts of incivility have become prevalent in today's complex competitive society and affect the quality of life for all who live and work in and visit our city whereas the Association of Image Consultants International has been inspired by Dr. Forney to increase public awareness about civility by launching the Civility Counts Project globally and the city of Charlottesville is proud to be included in this initiative

Therefore, during the month of May in our city, let every man, woman, and child practice to embrace civility by being attentive, considerate, kind, giving, polite, and thoughtful in following the three R principles of respect, restraint, and responsibility and all their interactions with each other.

Now, therefore, the city of Charlottesville proclaims the month of May 2010 as Civility Awareness Month.

All citizens of and visitors to Charlottesville are encouraged to embrace civility and practice it in their daily lives today and every day.

in recognition of the Global AICI Civility Counts Project.

Mr. Mayor and honorable City Council members of the City of Charlottesville, my name is Bonnie Sundquist Rogers and I am a member and ambassador for the Association of Image Consultants International.

On behalf of AICI, I want to sincerely thank you for your support in our Civility Counts project in proclaiming May 2010 International Civility Awareness Month.

The Civility Cast project is a multifaceted long-term initiative aimed at gaining international support for embracing civility and motivating people from all walks of life to make this an important part of everyday lives.

The primary goal of the AICI Civility Project is to help the world embrace the Civility Code of Conduct which

Mayor North stated, is based on treating other people with respect, responsibility, and restraint.

AICI's vision is to create a world in which people in all countries from all walks of life embrace and practice thoughtfulness, generosity, kindness, consideration, thoughtfulness, nurturing,

and yes, our three R's, respect, restraint and responsibility.

This wonderful proclamation will be presented at our international convention in Vancouver, British Columbia on May 20th of this month.

I personally consider it an honor to have the city of Charlottesville, the home of America's founding fathers,

to be amongst the first cities internationally to join us in this most important endeavor.

By proclaiming May 2010, International Civility Awareness Month, your decision will bring an important, valuable message from the citizens of Charlottesville to the world.

I believe that this message will help to improve and strengthen our businesses, our schools,

our communities and our families and this in turn will continue to support Charlottesville's reputation and 2004 ranking as the number one best city to live in the United States and Canada.

Thank you, Ms. Rogers.

Last and certainly not least

one of my favorite local organizations.

We're here to honor them on the occasion of their 20th birthday.

Whereas since May 1, 1990, the Virginia Discovery Museum has continuously promoted a mission of encouraging all young children and their families to explore the world around them through interactive learning, and whereas the Charlottesville-based Virginia Discovery Museum has welcomed all young children and their families to come together to engage their minds and excite their imaginations,

whereas the Virginia Discovery Museum in a fiscally responsible way has for over 20 extraordinary years greatly enhanced the educational, social, and economic quality of life in the greater Charlottesville community.

Now therefore I, Dave Norris, mayor of the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, do hereby proclaim May 1st to 31st, 2010 as the most magnificent month of May celebration of the Virginia Discovery Museum in recognition of the museum's 20th anniversary in Charlottesville's downtown mall.

And on behalf of the Charlottesville City Council, I join others in our community in expressing our deep appreciation to the Virginia Discovery Museum, to its staff, volunteers, board members and donors for the enrichment and education that has been added to the lives of hundreds of thousands of children and their families from Charlottesville and far beyond, including my own.

I'm Pepe Linden, I'm the Executive Director at the Virginia Discovery Museum.

Thank you very much for this recognition and we appreciate that the mayor was with us this Saturday on Proclamation Day when we re-cut the ribbon, re-entered our doors.

Since moving to the downtown mall, which is our second location, on May 1st of 1990, we've welcomed over 885,000 visitors.

But as our model for the year is, we've had 20 years of discovery, but we have so much more to explore.

And continuing during the magnificent month of May, 20 marvelous years on the downtown mall, May 15th is the opening of It's Easy to Be Green about the environment, an original exhibit in our back gallery.

And on May 29th is the Discovery Dash, the only community-wide children's race in Charlottesville.

It'll be year number 20.

Thank you, Ms. Ladd.

We are now going to move on to announcements or items to be added to the agenda.

Anybody have any announcements?

First of all, I'd like everybody who's a high school student here to raise their hand.

Wow.

Welcome.

Thank you for coming.

I know you have to, but still, thank you for coming.

I'd also like to, on behalf of my fellow counselors, just extend a real thank you and congratulations to the folks, all the hundreds of volunteers who put together the Dogwood Festival this year.

Really from the excitement of the parade and the carnival to the kind of somber reflections of the Vietnam Memorial

Rededication and all the pageants and the picnics.

It was just an amazing event and a lot of people participated.

And this is actually their 60th year.

They started in 1950 as the Apple Harvest Festival.

In 1958, a year before I was born, they became the Dogwood Festival and they've been going strong ever since.

Thank you.

Well said.

Any other announcements?

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

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the board.

My name is Pat Napoleon.

I live at 700 Lyons Avenue.

Interested citizens request that the city open McIntyre Park to the general public once again on first Sundays during the remainder of spring through fall.

There are those who propose to organize activities that will encourage citizens and families to appreciate and enjoy our beautiful parkland.

We're happy to meet with the Director of Parks and Recreation in order to facilitate a plan and I shall leave my phone number, contact number with Ms. Barfield.

Thank you, Mr. Boling.

Next we have Teens Taking Action.

Hi, I'm Morgan.

Hi, I'm Kayla.

Teen pregnancy is a very important topic to me.

My mom married at 15 after she found out she was pregnant.

She dropped out of high school and was never able to gain that back.

It was hard for us eight kids growing up with just my mom's support and my family was one of the recipients of the canned food drives.

Teen pregnancy is important to me because my mother had me at the age of 20, though she was not 18 and made her incapable of finishing her education.

This made it difficult for her to get the career of her choice.

Thank you.

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

I live at 1410 Grady Avenue here in Charlottesville.

At some point in time, the current economic recession will come to an end.

With the current Martha Jefferson Hospital campus soon to become vacant and available for development, with a number of storefront locations on the downtown wall now standing vacant,

With the Water Street parking lot being a prime location for development, I urge the City Council to begin marketing the City of Charlottesville as a prime site for Fortune 500 companies, venture capitalist firms, and research and development companies to locate here in the city.

We need to expand our tax base to give local homeowners tax relief, and we need to expand and diversify our job base.

Thank you, Mr. Long.

Brandon Collins, 536 Meade Avenue, lived in Charlottesville all my life, worked in Charlottesville for most of my life.

I'm here to talk about the Living Wage Ordinance.

I'm really happy to see you guys considering that.

Since it's on your consent agenda, I'm assuming it'll pass.

I want to make sure that happens and I just encourage you guys to keep up the good fight with that.

These students have worked really, really hard on this.

I think the message from council will, UVA will get that message that these students mean business and they're taking the right steps to make this happen.

I think it says a lot for these students when they just got a 10% tuition increase that they're still keeping up the pressure for a living wage for the workers there and they see the connection there.

and that's really important.

I think that says a lot about the moral character of these folks.

Living wage, UVA is Charlottesville's biggest employer and the people that work there, it's a lot of folks there that are struggling to pay bills.

If they don't make a living wage, they're not paying their bills.

Just as you guys pass the living wage here, citywide,

It helps all workers.

I think the same thing with UVA.

Thank you, Mr. Collins.

I have Ms. Rogers signed up, but I think you've already covered it.

Good evening Mr. Mayor and Councillors.

Collette Hall, 101 Robertson Lane.

When I was a child growing up in the 1950s, I learned recycling at my mother's knee.

For months, she collected and bundled our daily newspapers.

When she had enough, we loaded the old station wagon and went to the newspaper recycle center.

I attended the recent council work session on solid waste.

I thought I heard Mrs. Mueller, the Director of Public Works, say, and this is a paraphrase, the contractor who picks up the recycle items from the green and red recycle bins takes this material to Zion Crossroads, our SWA station, but the city actually isn't sure where it eventually goes or how much gets recycled.

To my mind, the material I carefully save all week, sort from number one and two plastic from other numbers, clean out and curb, may actually not be recycled.

At that meeting, Mr. Leadford, chief of operations at Vanderlin Recycle Center, said, and this is another paraphrase, that if the newspaper becomes wet, then it is corrupted and cannot be recycled.

Therefore, even though I cover my bins, if it rains, my neighbors do not, and so the entire truckload cannot be recycled and may likely be discarded in the landfill.

This is unacceptable to me.

As past speakers have also stated, I'm going to inquire into using a collection contractor that uses Vanderlands and know that what I recycle is recycled.

I asked the city to do this as well, since the city can direct the collection contractor where to take the recyclables.

Thank you, Ms. Paul.

Good evening.

I'm Peter Kleeman.

I live at 407 Head Street in the city.

Several weeks I came before council and asked about the fountains on the mall, and I have learned today from what I consider to be a reliable source that the fountains are now working on the mall, although I have not had the opportunity to visit them, and I wanted to come up and personally thank council.

particularly Maurice Jones who took this on as a task and I think accepted that challenge with enthusiasm and in a few short weeks had some success in getting those fountains working again.

I'm also delighted that this is happening because tomorrow at about 6.30pm there will be a group of visitors from England on the downtown mall who are

the bows and bells Northwest Morris dancing team touring the United States or part of the United States and they have chosen to come visit us in Charlottesville.

So we do have a bit of an international reputation for music and dance and I encourage people to come down see that the fountains are working and visit the dancing on the downtown mall around the central place at 6.30 Tuesday.

Thank you Mr. Kleiner.

Good evening, members.

Members of City Council, my name is Greg Casar and I live at 808 Cabell Avenue.

And I'm here today on behalf of so many students, professors, staff, and workers at the University of Virginia.

I'm also here today on behalf of so many members of the city of Charlottesville.

People who believe that the University of Virginia, an institution that declares a commitment to diversity,

to Justice, to Democracy and to Fairness, the largest employer in the area, that the University of Virginia should promote a decent standard of living in the city of Charlottesville.

We firmly believe that everyone has a right to provide for their family, but we have found that many people who are employed

Full time at our institution struggle to make ends meet based on their low wages.

Wages that are paid in the name of economic efficiency but actually hurt our community.

We came last meeting and we're very excited to hear that you're going to take a stand on this critical issue tonight.

We eagerly anticipate your vote.

and we are so pleased to hear that you are going to stand up on this issue that affects each and every person in this room every single day.

We also greatly appreciate how many students, college and high school students, have arrived here tonight.

For the university students, it's in the midst of finals week, so it's a very tough time for people to be coming out, but there are so many of us here tonight.

And there's also so many people here tonight that have been working full-time jobs who aren't necessarily students of the University of Virginia, but have a lot of busy things to do, and we really appreciate them coming here to support us on this really, really critical issue.

So now I would like to humbly ask

Thank you, Mr. Kazar.

That's the last person who signed up to speak.

We have a couple more minutes.

Is there anybody else tonight that would like to speak?

Okay, we will now close Matters by the Public and open the meeting up to council member responses to Matters by the Public.

Who would like to start?

I'll go.

Let's see.

I'd like to reply to Ms. Hall regarding the recycling.

The recycling that's picked up at Curbside, which I think is what you're referring to, is taken to Tidewater Fibers, which is near Richmond.

So it's not taken to Zion Crossroads, it's taken out of town by contract.

If there's any evidence it's not being recycled, I'd like to know it.

I do think that there's an issue.

I'd like to know what the facts are on paper that's been

that's gotten wet, but I also wonder about, for that matter, with single source recycling, how about paper that has egg shells on it or orange juice or, you know, meat scraps or other things that are put into just a trash bin and then recycled.

And I don't know the answer to those questions, but I think as a community we need to find that out.

I'd like to say I agree with Pat Napoleon.

I'd love to see us open our park on First Sundays or whatever Sundays.

I think that's a great idea.

We did it a few years ago, and I think it was very popular and successful, and I'd encourage us to do it again.

Okay, just a couple of comments.

I would like to echo the idea to hand MacIntyre Park over for First Sundays.

But also to, if that's going to be possible, maybe coordinate that with teens taking action so we can see how we can involve more of our youth in that Sunday program or involve our youth with some engagement in some part of that process.

Paul Long?

Always on point, always a pleasure to hear from you.

The idea to expand in a diversified job base is consistent with our workforce development efforts.

And Mr. Kleeman, Bernice and Jean discovered the water fountains.

I too was very impressed with our teens taking action and I think that you all show I think in your own stories that birth is not kind of a sentence that you can become wonderful, you know, fulfilled people but it is true that the statistics are against kids who are born to teenagers and I think you're very wise in trying to help your peers understand that and help the community understand that so thanks.

Also I would just like to echo Brandon Collins and his

his confidence in the sort of moral fiber of our students at UVA and I really appreciate the fact that you all are caring about an issue that doesn't affect you personally and that you see every day and that you're a part of the community in a way that I just really appreciate, so thank you so much.

I agree, we did that, I believe last year we did that, and I see Mr. Daley nodding his head and is that still in the works for this coming year?

Yes, okay, so we are going to be doing it again, you'll be hearing more about that.

I was so impressed, you know, we have youth leading the way tonight, we have teens taking action, we have university students speaking out, I think it's great to see young people getting involved in promoting

positive social change and social action so thank all of you for coming and speaking and standing and I want to encourage other teens, you know so many times high school students come to our meetings because they're required to for class and yet so few ever actually summon the courage to stand up and speak and I want to make sure everybody knows you're always welcome just because this may seem a little scary but we'd love to hear from more young people and follow their lead

and let us know what's on your minds.

I thank Mr. Kleeman for his comments about the fountains, but the credit doesn't go to me, it goes to the staff who worked on that to make it happen.

Yes, thank you all.

We will now move on to our consent agenda.

On the consent agenda tonight, we have item A is the minutes of April 12th and 19th.

Item B is an appropriation of $85,000 summer lunch program grant, second of two readings.

Item C is an appropriation of $1,900 fire programs grant, second of two readings.

Item D is an appropriation of $250,395 foster family stipend, second of two readings.

Item E is an appropriation of $14,806.66, the extradition cost reimbursement, second of two readings.

Item F, an appropriation of $5,100, donations to dialogue and race, first of two readings.

Item G, an appropriation of $34,150, police overtime for special events, first of two readings.

Item H, an appropriation of $500,000 Washington Park pool repairs, first of two readings.

Item I, resolution approval of annual CDBG home action plan, first of one reading.

Item J, resolution special use permit for Petco at 1615 Emmett Street, first of one reading.

Item K, resolution appointing Aubrey Watts to the airport authority, first of one reading.

Item L, a resolution granting easement to Virginia Dominion Power for Smith Aquatic and Fitness Center and Boys and Girls Club, first in one reading.

Item M, a resolution authorizing purchase of 110 Summit Street for the Fontaine Fire Station, first in one reading.

Item N, a resolution regarding a living wage, first in one reading.

And item O, an ordinance rezoning Timberlake Place to PUD, first in two readings.

I don't have an item to remove, but I just wanted to, on item H, the Washington Park pool repairs, I think we need to do it.

It's something that I'm not opposed to, but I do want to just sort of recognize that it's a large capital expenditure that we're making outside of the general process that we use for capital expenditures.

Any further discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

Typically, our practice is when items are removed from the consent agenda, we take them up at the end of the business meeting.

But since there are so many people here tonight to hear us discuss item N, the resolution on the living wage, I'm going to use my prerogative as mayor to go ahead and put that first on the agenda.

So, thank you.

Ms. Szakos, you have sort of taken the lead on drafting a resolution for our consideration.

Mr. Mayor?

Yes.

I believe it's the custom that since I asked for it to be removed that I would be clear.

I was going to have her introduce the issue, but if you'd like to, please.

If that's okay?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think I'm proud that the city of Charlottesville has a living wage ordinance.

I think the University of Virginia should have a living wage policy.

So you may wonder why I asked to have this pulled rather than just going ahead and voting it through on the consent agenda.

and the reason is that, and I actually think it's a well-crafted resolution.

It does a good job of fairly pointing out the ways in which the University of Virginia has been a thoughtful partner with the city of Charlottesville.

It's not complete.

The University of Virginia, even for its employees at the lower wages, provides a very generous benefit package.

It provides supplemental training.

It does a lot of things, I think, that we should be cognizant of.

But the reason I pulled this, and I feel fairly strongly that a resolution is not the right way for us to express our opinion, is that typically we use resolutions when we're dealing with a party that we don't communicate with and work with on a daily and regular basis.

So we pass resolutions urging the General Assembly to take action, we pass resolutions ordering, urging Washington to take action.

But

And a resolution in my mind anyway, maybe everyone doesn't agree, but I think a resolution is a little impersonal as a way of trying to get a partner, someone we work regularly with, to affect their behavior.

I'd be opposed to us passing a resolution on any issue that involved Albemarle County, because I feel like there's better ways for us to work, to try to work together and achieve the aims we want to achieve.

I would be opposed to us signaling out any single business in Charlottesville with a resolution because I think there's more effective ways to work with the private sector and the same thing I think really applies with this.

Whereas I'd like to thank the students for being here and I'd like to thank them for taking such an interest in the well-being of our lowest income residents.

I'd prefer to see us take action and support the students in other ways, in creative ways.

And so with that in mind I'll make a motion, we'll see if there's other interest in council, I'd like to move that we table this resolution and that rather than having a resolution that we ask the mayor to welcome the new president of the University of Virginia and by doing so to point out the issues that are important to him and in particular

It's been moved and seconded.

I'd like to make a couple of comments.

I believe that a resolution is one way of affecting change, but I also believe that this resolution

should be tabled until there's a new president in place.

And we're also waiting for a new city manager in place.

I think there's going to be other opportunities to, I think there will be other opportunities to support students.

I want the students to know that I do support their efforts.

This is also a difficult day to be talking about our UVA family when I must recognize there's been another loss with the UVA community as well.

So there are a lot of reasons to

Yeah, I actually have a hard time with the idea of a kind of a mayoral letter or declaration because I think that it's not really the role of the city council to try to

to change another body.

I don't think that it's our place to say to the University of Virginia, you should do this.

And you might think that's kind of funny because I'm the person who's really promoting this resolution.

I don't see a resolution at all as a confrontive tool to talk to somebody we don't talk with.

I think it's one of the tools that we have in our toolbox for making kind of a statement of either policy or philosophy or kind of stance.

and I think that the city has been very clear in its stance for a living wage.

We've had a living wage ordinance in place for 10 years.

When we initially passed that living wage ordinance, we specifically included, or passed another, we, I say I wasn't here, but there was also a resolution, in fact, asking other employers in the region to join us in that living wage.

And indeed the city schools have done that, Albemarle County has done that.

and at this point, the way that, and maybe I can read this resolution out loud, one of the things that I think that this resolution does that that sort of letter wouldn't do is to say, you know, this is where we stand on this issue and we invite the University of Virginia, not because it's evil or because we hate it or because we're trying to be mean, but because the University of Virginia is

A key player in our local economy, is our largest employer, and is a public body.

And so, like ourselves.

And that we are encouraging them to join us in this stand.

And so I really don't think that it's that we're trying to make them do anything.

In fact, quite the opposite.

I think that it's the students who are trying to make them do something.

And I think that the students have every right to try to make them do something because they are

Mr. Mayor, I agree with Kristin that this resolution is a very thoughtful resolution and it expresses our views.

It does not force anybody to do anything.

It does convey our values and we hope that you will follow some of these suggestions.

This is sort of a tricky place to be in because I think any effort, any action on the part of this governing body is going to have a lot more moral authority if it's supported by a unanimous city council versus a 3 to 2 vote or a 2 to 3 vote.

I'm wondering if there would be unanimous support on council for us simply reaffirming the resolution we already adopted 10 years ago

Do you have a copy of that with you?

We had it last month but I didn't bring mine with me.

One of my thoughts in this whole thing was that I'd be very comfortable with the resolution urging all local employers to consider to adopt a living wage.

Right and I think what the, well this is a new city council versus the one that was in place back then so this city council has not taken that stand.

If it says including the University of Virginia, not implied, but actually naming it, because it is our largest employer.

If it was Nissan or something, it's not, you know, I think whoever our largest employer is, but even more than Nissan, I think that the university

Let me make that motion with making sure that the University of Virginia referred to it indirectly.

One thing that I wanted to ask is that I know that we worked very carefully in the crafting of this resolution to say

Just as a possible amendment, which would be

I think that's essentially what we're

trying to get out here.

Yes.

I have, having the mayor showing his wisdom here as we discuss this, but I think the mayor has a long history being able to really take the sense of a meeting and craft it, and I have confidence that he'll come up with something that

It fits the bill of what he described initially, which is to have something reaffirming our previous commitment and urging all employers.

And we can certainly spell out what we currently pay to our employees, which is full-time employees, the city make $11.44 an hour, which is significantly higher than what UVA pays its lowest paid employees and significantly higher than what its contractors pay their employees.

Actually, and that's one piece of this which

We're not even touching contract employees.

Okay, so I'll withdraw my motion.

We can get Mr. Brown to share that with us.

So we're reaffirming the existing city council resolution and we'll convey that with and we'll add, you know, we'll make sure that it specifies the University of Virginia and we will convey that with a letter that includes appropriate text and references the issues of contracted employees as well.

All right, so there's a motion and a second.

Any further discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

Thank you very much.

It passes unanimously.

Thank you all again for coming tonight.

Okay, next item on our agenda tonight is a public hearing and ordinance relating to sanitary sewer easement through Greenbrier Park to serve Tarleton Road property.

Yes, sir.

This is a request from the Galatas, the property owners at 2110 Tarleton Drive.

That property abuts Greenbrier Park and is in proximity to the

proposed Meadow Creek sewer interceptor line that the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority will be replacing and upgrading.

The request for an easement for the galattas to tie their sewer lateral into an existing manhole arises from something that I think was discovered when the property records were examined for

The subdivision plat for this section of Greenbrier shows an 8-inch collector line running through the back of the Gladys property and that their lateral would tie into that collector line, which would then tie into the interceptor.

Well, that collector line was never installed.

and that was discovered recently.

So they have prepared a plat and submitted a letter to the city asking for an easement about 160 feet into the park to tie in their sewer lateral and this is a situation that has existed since the 1950s when this house was built.

Any questions for Mr. Brown before we open the public hearing?

Okay, I will now open the public hearing.

Thank you, Alex Gulotta, 2110 Tarleton Drive, and I think Mr. Brown covered it.

The situation has existed since the house was built in the 50s, so the lateral line actually runs through the park.

The line across the back was never built.

It was actually discovered

It was discovered like in the late 90s.

It's just that the intervention of the new sewer was what caused me to come forward and to see whether there was something that could be done first to install the lateral and then when it seemed that that was cost prohibitive to figure out if there was a way to work out at least having the right to be able to.

service the lateral line and I guess I think it serves two functions.

Thank you Mr. Brown.

Anybody else like to speak?

We'll now close the public hearing.

Is there any discussion or a motion to approve the ordinance?

Move the ordinance.

It's been moved, simultaneously moved.

So we'll have a motion by Mr. Huja and a second by Dr. Brown.

So this will carry forward to our next agenda.

Thank you very much.

Next we have a report on City Council town hall meetings.

Thank you Mr. Mayor, Members of Council.

I'm very happy to be here to talk about something that I'm passionate about and that other members here on the dais are passionate about as well.

About six months ago, Councillor Szakos came to us with an idea to broaden our approach to neighborhood engagement and among a few other suggestions, one was to take City Council meetings on the road and the idea was to better reach out to some of the neighborhoods that you don't regularly see here at City Council.

We talked several times with some Councillors to get a sense for what would work, but not with all of you all.

I wanted to mention that although it would be ideal to have city council meetings on the road there are some challenges that we would need to consider.

One is that we can no longer broadcast live the meetings and that we feel would be a step back in some ways as well as for most folks City Hall is centrally located and to move it into neighborhoods might be an impediment to some.

With our current

capabilities, we could tape meetings outside of City Hall and rebroadcast them.

We just couldn't do them live.

So we did some research in other communities across the country.

We couldn't find another community that actually took City Council meetings on the road, but we did find some examples of how communities have broadened their effort and branded a community-wide town hall style of meetings that goes to different neighborhoods for different occasions.

and essentially it was a listening session.

This idea of having more of a listening session rather than specific topics and an agenda is meant to reduce any intimidation some folks might feel when they come to city council.

City council meetings are broadcast obviously there's usually a good number of people in the audience and the dais here can sometimes be intimidating to some.

We wanted to recognize these barriers and wanted to try to remove them as best that we can going forward as we look at these town hall style meetings.

Outside of the public speaking fear factor, a couple things that we came up with were access to child care, the fact that most times

of the evening that we have meetings are between five and seven and that's dinner time and people might not be encouraged to be out at a meeting when they need to feed their children or take care of their family.

So we would hope that we could work for an arrangement if we decide to do this to

work in possible healthy meals so that people aren't not coming to the meetings because the dinner would not be served or they'd be having to take care of their family.

The other, one other barrier that we found was simply notification.

Not all neighborhoods or citizens received information

in the same way and we want to look behind the normal bounds that we have to cast a wider net and get the information out to a larger audience.

We want to walk away from the meetings with more of a propagation of lists, more ways for us to get back with people and more of a sense for how they like to be communicated to because not all people like to be communicated in the same way, particularly some of the neighborhoods that we feel are the least serviced.

In your discussion tonight I hope that this gives you a framework for this concept of meetings and there are obviously some decisions in front of you tonight that you need to consider and first and foremost is do you want to have these town hall style meetings?

Is it valuable?

Is it something that you would like to consider?

Another would be how many counselors would be

How do we segment the city

The discussions across neighborhoods are really the important ones that we need to have.

We have 18 neighborhoods in the city.

We obviously can't have 18 different meetings, but there are ways that we can parallel neighborhoods with similar concerns so that you all could listen to what is really being asked for in those communities and what needs to be done from the city's perspective.

We are suggesting that beginning with the first couple of meetings that we try to identify what are the hardest reached neighborhoods and how can we create some synergy later in the process to reach the remaining neighborhoods.

Having these meetings in the summer and fall where outdoor activities for the kids might be a possibility.

Perhaps a good goal is six meetings, four during the summer and two during the fall.

simply an idea, a suggestion.

Another idea that has resurfaced to increase council

participation with neighborhoods as well as hearing what they are talking about is to reinstitute the monthly counselor for a day or open office hours, I think is what we call it.

We did this several years ago, had mixed results.

I think there was mixed participation.

But there's something that we might want to consider.

My weatherman's coming out in.

We'll continue to look for new ways to communicate.

We're in the communications office always looking for a broader net to cast.

This is one way that we can do it, but it obviously takes your commitment and it takes something that you feel would be a valuable use of your time.

And I'd also like to add that we also see this as an opportunity to reinvigorate some of our neighborhood associations that have become somewhat dormant.

We see this as an opportunity to reach out to them, bring them back into the discussion here in the city.

And the idea of Meet Your City Councilor, it was another form that it's taken over the years, I think is another idea that Mr. Varick put forward.

There are different ways that we can do that as well and we'd like to see how open the council is to that.

It has taken on different forms.

It actually began with Meet Your Mayor about 10 years ago and has taken on different forms since then.

Thank you Mr. Burke.

I just want to thank you for doing that.

I know that, I mean, people know that I've been kind of pushing for something like this for a long time, and I really didn't come at it, you know, during

The last, you know, the first few months in my campaign I really was pushing for, you know, the council on the road but I think, I mean I would hate to lose the live streaming of video so, you know, I think for me personally what's important is that people get a chance to interact with council whether it's five members or two members and really the details of what it looks like is much less important to me and I want to make sure that, you know, everybody feels comfortable with rather than coming up with an agenda of my own and I really feel that it's the

And I also really like the idea of the office hours and I was wondering if there might be a way that we could pull that into if we were having one of these to have office hours in a community like at a community center or someplace out rather than here that might work better.

I don't know.

Well, I think this whole thing is a really good idea.

I like the idea of trying to have a few meetings with all five of us.

I think it's, you know, I know we've had, you know, I met in West Haven in the fall, maybe,

with Ms. Edwards and it was a really important meeting.

I thought it really gave people a chance in a small group.

And I think we should probably keep the small group idea.

In fact, maybe we should try to just have staff work with us to regularly schedule that and to have a pair of us meet in different pairs, different times, in different parts of community, neighborhood associations as a way of

in a more casual way of making sure people feel like they have direct access.

But I think there would be something important about all five of us taking the time to come to a part of the time that maybe particularly feels like it's often not paid much attention to.

And so I'd like to encourage us to try to find some, I don't think we can do that too often, just in terms of schedules and it working for people, but I think you should aim big that way.

We did a weekly meeting with the council where four of us, Rob Schilling actually refused to participate in it, but four of us would have an open door and people would come and meet with us.

It started off pretty good.

but it's kind of like I think to some degree a lot of people exhausted the issue they had at hand and they didn't need to come back and then it became a lot of regular people you know Peter Kleeman and I got to know each other really well and you know we see Peter here too so I think we have to work to try to figure out a way that office hours really is a way of getting people who may not be comfortable coming to a city council meeting to be able to meet with us one-on-one

I would be open to the consistent office hours for city council, whether it was at City Hall or another location in terms of dividing up the city.

The police has already done that with their sectors and it may be an interesting concept to keep in mind as we figure out how to do it.

It may not be any point in reinventing the wheel and it may also provide a way for

I wrote down eight, but don't quote me.

Does our police representative back there know?

Do you know how many police sectors there are?

Those districts are based on not only the population but the workload, I think, to a great degree.

and I wonder if there is the right format to choose.

I want to make a few comments.

I think the idea of going to citizens is a healthy one.

There ought to be some way to inform them that this is happening and how to do that, I'm concerned about that as people get to know as to these meetings that are going to be happening.

I do worry to some degree that sometimes

People don't come to meetings just for meetings sake because they come for some special reason.

I was telling Maurice one day, the other day, that we had a meeting in which street neighborhood one time two people showed up.

Next time I had a survey, flags on the sidewalks, and everybody showed up next meeting.

There has to be somehow some reason to show up.

I was just wondering if you'll have, how much attendance you have.

As for the mechanics of the things,

I think summer is not a good time to have neighborhood meetings.

I think it would be good to have one, maybe one quarterly.

Each quarter have one, so you can spread it out.

And we go northeast one quarter, and you know, another quarter.

Summertime is really, especially July and August are just worthless.

I too want to thank the staff for following up on this issue and looking at best practices and thank you Ms. Szakos for championing it.

I see Mr. Bellamy in the back of the room.

This is an issue that he's also been championing and I'd like to ask staff to work with him as we flesh out how these town hall meetings will work.

I don't think we need to decide right now exactly

how many and exactly where and how the lines will be drawn but I think you're getting the sense from council that we definitely want to move forward on this.

I fully agree with Dr. Brown that a mixture of a combination of approaches continue to do some of the smaller group meetings but I think there is something powerful when that happens when all five city councilors come into a neighborhood

and then have a session.

I think that just by having all five of us there may drive turnout because it's a little bit of an unusual situation.

I'm not, I personally am not at all excited about the idea of regular office hours.

I think all of us are pretty approachable and willing to meet with people one-on-one as we're asked to do so.

I'm not so, the idea of getting people to come to City Hall to meet with us, I'd much rather be out in the community meeting with people.

So, whether that's through these town hall meetings or just one-on-one meetings that

many of us have all week anyway.

So that idea doesn't really do much for me.

I encourage you.

I don't know if I would be that interested in individual meetings.

Every week, I have at least one or two people come to my home to talk to me and come up to you with me.

I think Mr. Huja brought up a really good point that we talked about a little bit about that it really only works if people know it's happening and how we commit to reaching people to make sure that they know about it and also know why it might be a good idea to come.

I think for me, you know, food and childcare is an obvious thing that not only takes away barriers but also makes a little more festive event and a little more fun to come to.

But I think that

One of the things that we've talked about is the fact that we still have a digital divide in our community, both generational and by income, of who uses email and who doesn't.

But I think that the more

Every year that goes by more and more people do have email and so to really try to build that list so that we can at least do a broad scatter of people who do have email and then to make sure we find out people who want to hear about things and make sure we either give them a call or send them a letter or go door to door in certain neighborhoods to make sure that people hear about it.

I know that sometimes we have volunteers and interns who

For the dialogue on race, we had people going door to door to let them know stuff.

Councilor, I agree.

I think what we should do is put together a marketing plan for getting information out that would be kind of macro, a larger scale use of public service announcements, media press releases, that type of thing.

But then also more retail efforts, whether it's delivering flyers, working with neighborhood associations, that type of thing as well.

All right.

You feel like you got the guidance you were looking for?

Great.

Thank you very much.

Next item on our agenda is a report status update on the dialogue on race.

Yes, indeed.

Really quickly, I've been before the Council on a couple of occasions over the last

six or seven months to a year actually to talk to you about the dialogue on race.

We are entering into a very exciting phase of this initiative now.

We had over 600 people who signed up to be a part of the study circle process for the dialogues.

We had 47 groups that were formed that were led by two trained volunteer facilitators.

And the groups averaged eight to 10 people.

The folks came together.

One of the lessons that I've learned about starting an initiative like this is to not do it during the worst winter in the history of our city because it caused some delays.

And we were supposed to get started the last week in January.

We really started in February.

and we had a series of snowstorms that extended the sessions, but by all accounts the sessions went exceptionally well.

Folks were energized by the discussion that started this, the opportunity for folks in these study circles to get to know each other, to learn about each other, to learn about each other's perceptions or realities, and then to move from there to what are the issues that affect us here in Charlottesville today when it comes to race relations.

And that's when

Things probably got a little more uncomfortable in those sessions, but it's the type of discussion that needed to happen, and we knew that going in.

And that's why we tried to prepare our facilitators for those uncomfortable moments that they were going to experience.

And most of the groups got through them pretty well.

And so then they turned their focus in sections five and six.

There were six two-hour sessions altogether.

They turned their sessions and their attention

to what are some ideas that we can put forward as a community to address issues of race here in Charlottesville.

And that's where we are right now.

We are receiving the action ideas from our study circles.

We're collecting those actually tomorrow.

Members of the

Steering Committee will be getting together to prioritize all of those ideas, address the redundancy in some of those ideas, and begin to prepare those ideas for the action forum that we'll be holding on May 15th from 10 a.m. to noon at the King Performing Arts Center at Charlottesville High School.

and so from there, from the action forum, we'll be forming action teams that will be charged with helping to implement the ideas.

Many of the ideas are short-term ideas, issues that are pretty easy, low-hanging fruit to address and others, of course, are long-term issues that will take some time and community attention and resources to have implemented.

So we'll have those action teams that will be formed

We are very excited about the direction of the initiative and we certainly look forward to the action forum on the 15th.

We invite everyone to be a part of that.

Sure.

It's Saturday, May 15th from 10 a.m. to noon at the King Performing Arts Center at Charlottesville High School.

Describe to people what the process will be if they can't make it on Saturday.

We'll have available on our website a registration form that people can fill out or if they need a hard copy form they can call us here at City Hall.

We can send them a form or they can pick up a form here in the city manager's office.

So they would need to register as folks registered for the study circle process.

Other comments or questions?

I want to commend you Mr. Jones and your staff for doing an excellent job in continuing this vital community discussion.

I think all of us participated in one of the circles and I found it to be a really rewarding opportunity and look forward to the action

What's it called?

Action...

I understand that we're close to having a new staff person for the Dialogue on Race, is that right?

Thank you very much.

Next is a report from our Social Services Board and Ms. Kangen.

Please come forward, Stephanie.

Kangen.

It's okay.

Greetings.

I am Stephanie Kangen.

I am the chair of the Social Services Advisory Board and our

The main goal is to provide a report to council, which I believe everybody's been provided a copy with.

Doing more with less, as is everybody.

The Child Protective Services are showing an uptick.

I'm sure when Mr. Brown stepped out, he was going to try and figure out how to get Ms. Davies from his office cloned because her workload is going up with that.

We've seen, as you can see on page two, the referrals for assessments and investigations and the number of families at risk for abuse and neglect.

has gone up significantly, anecdotally that that is economically driven.

There's no hard numbers on that.

The good news is that the number of children in foster care in Charlottesville has sort of been known for having the highest number of kids in foster care per capita in the entire commonwealth.

That has now dropped.

We are seeing good results for foster care prevention.

The number of kids who are being served as families serve with foster care prevention, keeping the kids out of foster care, putting the services into place while the kids remain in the home.

So the number of children served is dropped.

We, like I said, no longer have the highest per capita rate in the state.

We now have department social worker for Johnson Elementary School and now for Clark Elementary School.

This is something that's been based on a successful program in the county.

They have social workers assigned, actual DSS employees who are assigned to the different

schools.

They usually, several of them are responsible for more than one school, but that is something, 57 Johnson school children and their families were served by the social worker.

The youth internship program, which I think a lot of city council members are familiar with,

I don't think anybody at the kickoff luncheon will forget Ms. Edwards talking about her Geno's experience.

But that was a great success last year, continuing to expand hopefully this year.

But we had 83 kids last year and the program has been just basically, they're doing a great job of finding community partners

both within the city government, within the university and within the business community in general to find placements for these kids and anecdotally it's been a raging success.

So... Ms. King, a quick question about that.

Last year, in addition to our 80-some-odd kids, we got federal funding to add an additional 55, I believe, to the summer youth employment program.

I'm going to have to ask Ms. Kignan.

The other focus in addition to child welfare, looking at the public assistance benefits program, as the court can see, I'm sorry, council can see

We're seeing an uptick continue in what is now called SNAP, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, what everybody knows as food stamps even though they haven't been stamps for like decades now.

But the number of cases

continues to grow and that's usually the first place we're going to see for public assistance.

That's, food stamps is the first place you're going to see it before you see it in temporary assistance to needy families or in Medicaid.

The temporary assistance to needy families, the last paragraph, or the last sentence of the paragraph, we're seeing a growth

and the number of families receiving assistance.

The bar graph on Page 5 shows a decline.

Cases equals families served.

But what we're also seeing based on the cases per month is that people are staying on TANF longer.

So it's not as much of an on for a short period of time

Find something, get off.

And we see that in the view numbers on the top of page six.

That people are basically having to rely on the state and the city for a longer period of time.

Also seeing a slow growth trend as far as that goes in fiscal year 2010.

Medicaid numbers, they

What looks like from that bar graph that they bounce, this does not, number one, this does not include famous, and I forget what that's an acronym for, but that's basically the state children's health insurance, the SCHIP program.

But the number of cases per month has been pretty steady, as you can see on the bottom of page six.

Page seven has the real kick in the teeth, because that talks about the state budget cuts.

We're still not sure how much the state funds for local social services will be cut.

Anything from 1% to 2.4%.

Companion services for the elderly and disabled have been cut.

The adult programs for general relief have been cut, and I have more information on that.

That is a non-mandated program.

that gets both state and local funding.

So in some ways by the state cutting their side of it, the city doesn't have to match so there will be less expenditures.

The only thing that remains for general relief is something called unattached children and that is for children who are

in a home that is not a family member home, not a relative placement.

So basically if a kid has been taken in by a friend's family, a family friend, etc., they would still be eligible for that.

And these are all very, very small amounts that people get.

What did get cut

something called interim assistance, which is for people who are medically disabled and waiting for approval from the Social Security Administration for either Social Security disability or SSI payment, supplemental, thank you, supplemental, substance income, is that what?

Security income, okay, so we were half right.

Unemployable general relief for people who are unable to find work because of some sort of temporary disability.

A medical assistance program, which is basically assistance with prescriptions and burials, which are obviously up one time.

In terms of how many

Citizens have been served by the city DSS.

The unattached children, we have two people receiving benefits for that in March 2010.

There were 39 people on interim assistance, which is the waiting for Social Security.

26 who are considered unemployable.

27 for prescriptions and year to date for the first three months of 2010 we had 19 people receiving the assistance for the burials.

None of these, I believe that none of these grants were over $150 a month.

130.

Okay, so that is something that, like I said, is being cut, but as I said, it's a non-mandated program.

Big question mark is how much is going to be cut, whether we're looking at a 1% cut or a 2.4% cut.

The Community Resources, the Workforce Center is up and running under new management since July of 2009.

There is no

Satellite Center downtown which is one of the issues that the Workforce Center is out on Hydraulic Road.

The Haven for the homeless and apparently is going to have space and the department is providing a staff person one day a week to take applications for benefits there.

So that would be the

Report of the Advisory Board.

We spent the last year talking with the frontline workers based on their different job areas.

We've talked with people in benefits, child protective services, adult protective services.

Foster care, independent living, jobs, child care view.

We still have, and we spoke with Mr. Kochs about what he does on a day to day basis before he left because we thought that was pretty important especially if we were going to be asked for input.

once the new city manager comes on board and hires the new social services director.

I have a question.

Sure.

Total number between all the different benefit programs, like how many there's overlap?

It's surprising how much overlap, so we don't have a non-duplicated case count or individual count.

Well, our caseload, the trend is actually going up.

Again, anecdotally, we believe it's due to economic reasons.

The really trying part of this is that there are people that are staying on benefits longer than they were on them in the past.

People that have never received benefits before are receiving what was formerly food stamps and now is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP.

and you saw in fiscal year 2009 the high increase we had in child protective services calls to our agency.

That has continued to climb.

One month this spring we had 90 new calls.

Now, not all of those require full investigations, but every one of those has to be answered with some kind of investigation.

But that has kind of been unheard of to have that many in one month of new.

cases that need some kind of attention with CPS.

So at this point, I would say that our caseloads are up, the number of people that are being served.

And again, we can only hope that when the economy turns around, but I think we've seen in our own community that actually our unemployment rate has climbed recently.

So again, I think that is

Sometimes we lag behind other communities in the state and in the country, but we're definitely feeling the effects of it in social services.

I was wondering at the City County School Board Board of Supervisors Council meeting that we had recently that David Toscano put together, one point that was raised, Mr. Huja raised it, but it was also talked about from the school's point of view is how difficult it is with children

families moving back and forth between the county and the city.

And it was pointed out, which I'd never really thought about, of how that means changing caseworkers and changing from one system to the other.

Again, it's anecdotal.

I mean, but they do, they flow.

They flow back and forth, especially if

They're having housing issues.

They may move from the county to the city to live with somebody that'll take them in for a few weeks or a month or they'll move back to the county.

I'd like to ask that the

And I think that we see it among, it goes city to county but it also goes broader and my daytime job

involves basically, I represent children as a guardian of light up and I see it with the surrounding, you know, back and forth to Fluvanna, to Green, I've got people where there's, they were in contact with Danville Social Services before they wound up being a city social services case.

So I think that city to county, you know, Albemarle County, Charlottesville City is going to be the highest percentage, but I think we're going to also see that with the other surrounding localities.

It is a statewide thing.

I mean, certainly Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond, they all see this and it happens all the time.

Again, it's because so many of the programs, they have local matches to them and it's depending upon where the person's living.

Who's going to be paying that local match?

But for other reasons, for federal programs, it's the locality that has to put the claim into the state.

And so again, they will be switching workers when they switch localities.

It's a problem.

The one thing that the state did institute a few years ago was with foster care children.

So foster care children if they're in a new placement and it's reasonable for them to continue in their old schools then they get they don't have to switch schools and now of course if a kid is going from a placement in Charlottesville and then to residential enrichment or something that is not the case but if they are switching from a home in Charlottesville to home in Albemarle or home in Green

They are allowed, the schools can no longer, for foster care children, can no longer require that they switch schools.

So that's been a real benefit for that very difficult, traumatized population before we talk about school issues.

But that's been a plus.

The question that we're going to ask ourselves is would it make it less traumatic and less burdensome for the clients that we serve through DSS given the amount of transience you see between city and county particularly, would it make a more seamless and accessible

There are more than one and a couple things that I'll speak to on that and the studies that have been done on those

For efficiency purposes, it doesn't save money, so that's not the issue.

But for quality of services, it can actually harm quality of services at times because of accessibility.

I'll just give you an example.

Waynesboro, Stanton and Augusta County had combined services and Waynesboro's office no longer exists.

Those clients have to find ways to get to the other offices so you

I'm not saying that it's not a good thing to combine, but you have to be very careful how you would do that and make it so that it was actually improving quality of services and not hindering people getting the services they need.

I just want to make a couple of comments.

I was in between two of you.

One of the things we had talked about that first year

and the county counterpart of their advisory board.

I just wanted to know if that's coming up in my mind.

Currently our foster care finding families and training of families is being done by community attention for both Albemarle and Charlottesville.

So that is a combined program where the families are serving both communities.

Well thank you very much.

Next item on our business tonight, next item of business tonight is the report on a sanitary sewer infrastructure update, Ms. Hildebrand.

Good evening Mayor Norris and Councillors.

I'd like tonight to give you a brief update on our sanitary sewer infrastructure programs that the city and the other agencies in this area have going on currently.

A little bit about the agenda for tonight.

I'll go over a brief background on why we have Sanitary Sewer Infrastructure Program and also I'll go over the Capital Improvement Program that the city has planned for the next five to seven years.

and a little bit about our in-house operations and maintenance program that the city also has underway and a little bit about multi-agency coordination that we have going on.

As some of you know, there are two other agencies in this area that also maintain the sanitary sewer infrastructures.

Service Authority maintains the collection lines in the county and Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority has the treatment of our wastewater as well as some of the major lines that flow along creeks and riverbeds.

A little bit about background, we in the city have some aging infrastructure that needs to be maintained and this is not unusual across the country.

A lot of emphasis in recent years by federal and state agencies, regulatory agencies have emphasized to various governmental agencies that they need to demonstrate that they have programs in place to maintain their sewers for the long term.

As some of you may know, we've had increased capacity demands even though we've had downturns in the economy in recent years, right before that we had some increased capacity demands with increased density housing that's being built to accommodate UVA

as well as University of Virginia also has a pretty big program where they're building additional infrastructure at a denser rate and that puts a burden on the sewers that has to be accommodated.

And I briefly mentioned the other agencies that we coordinate with and I'll give you a little more detail on that at the end of the presentation.

A little bit about the wastewater infrastructure the city maintains.

We have 163 miles of sanitary sewers within the city.

Most of those are in the streets.

Some are along creek and river beds.

They range in size from 6 inches in diameter to 30 inches in diameter.

And we have about 5,400 manholes that we maintain, which is all the dots on the map.

A little bit about why you have to maintain your infrastructure.

A common, kind of a common thought about infiltration and inflow, a lot of people hear that as a kind of a, it's not really a buzzword, it's what we try to keep out of the sewers.

It's rainwater and groundwater that enters into the sewers that shouldn't be there.

Really, we don't have what's called combined sewer systems like the city of Atlanta, Miami,

Richmond, Lynchburg even has combined sewers.

We have separate sewers.

So the rainwater and groundwater are not supposed to get into the system.

A little bit about inflow.

Inflow is where there are direct connections to the sewer.

So you may have a roof drain off a house that's connected to the sewer that shouldn't be there.

You might have a storm drain that's connected to the sewer that shouldn't be happening.

Infiltration is when there are cracks within the sewer system like where you've got roots that grow into somebody's lateral line from a house and it allows groundwater and rainwater to get into the sewers and you may have cracks in a manhole that allow groundwater or rainwater to seep into sewers that aren't supposed to happen.

Infiltration inflow, why is it bad?

It takes up the carrying capacity of sewers.

So you can see during really excessive rain events, we may have the sewers be full and they could overflow, which is not a good thing because then once they overflow, it can get into adjacent creeks and riverbeds and expose people to potentially disease.

Also, when infiltration inflow gets into sewers, it also impacts the treatment plant downstream.

And that's not a good thing.

The treatment plant can only carry a certain amount of peak flow, and they may have basins that can accommodate this excess flow, but at a certain point, you can only build the basins so big.

So really, we need to maintain our sewer systems up in the system,

and it needs to be really a balance between what we carry to the treatment plant as well as how we maintain our system.

A little bit about some of the projects the city has going on as well as what we are proposing in the next several years.

We've got some replacement projects that we've got proposed.

Replacement projects are where we look at sewer lines that

can't carry the capacity currently so we've got to replace them with bigger lines.

And three of the projects we're concentrating on right now is the Stadium Road Collector Project, the Valley Road Collector Project, 14th, 15th Street, and I'll show you a little bit more detail in some following slides about where these sewers are located as well as a little detail on how

You know, what phase we're in.

We also have multiple basin upgrades.

This is where we've got rehabilitation projects.

So in other words, we are maintaining our existing sewers in the streets.

Some may be cracked, and I'll go over that process as well about what we've got underway.

And I might mention that in the next 2009, fiscal year 2009 through fiscal year 2013, we have a total of $26.7 million worth of projects planned.

In 2014 and 2015, which is a little longer range, we've got an additional, over top of this amount, about $8 million planned.

A little bit about the Stadium Road Collector sewer.

This serves the southern part of the city, and it collects a significant amount of flow from the University of Virginia.

A lot of these projects get named because it's the originating street where it originates, and this one happens to originate at the Stadium Road upstream.

The project, we are very pleased to say that the project is out for bid right now.

We anticipate opening bids in May.

This is 8,600 linear feet, so it's a little bit over a mile long.

The existing sewer is 15 to 24 inches, and we're upgrading this sewer to 30 inches in diameter.

And I have a map that'll be in the next, not the next slide, but the slide after this, because it includes both of these.

Valley Road is actually a sub-basin of the stadium and we are currently, it's estimated there will be about 7,000 linear feet and we're actually just looking at the design of this and we're in preliminary engineering and we're in discussions about what the size should be.

A little bit about where these two sewer projects are.

This is the stadium project.

It serves the southern part of the county.

Most of it is along Moore's Creek.

And this is the Valley Road project.

The city in the last five years actually constructed the upper-most stream of the stadium project down to Fifth Street.

And our project is from Fifth Street downstream to Rivanna's line.

A little bit about another collector project we've got planned is the 14th, 15th Street Collector Project.

This takes a lot of the dense housing that was built behind the corner and it's proposed to be about 5,000 linear feet and we're in preliminary engineering on this.

A little detail on this is kind of the location here.

of this project.

And then this also connects into the uppermost Shanks Branch-Rivanna line that goes along here.

I might point out on this map, too, this is when I, the next slide I'm going to talk, or next, in the next couple slides I'm going to talk about a priority area we call Shanks Branch, and it's illustrated with this area here, from McIntire, Rose Hill, over to Rugby.

A little bit about basin rehabilitation.

We went, in the last several years, we went into areas across the city and we actually put flow monitors in the sewer system so we could tell where our push points are when it rains.

We hope it rains when you put flow meters in.

And we can set priority areas about where we need to concentrate on our rehabilitation efforts, which is repair of lines or slip lining these lines.

Initial priority areas include that Shanks Branch area I just mentioned, and we're looking also at the Valley Road Basin, and we've got another basin that's what we call Basin 3, which is really the lower Rivanna sections.

It's kind of the lower Woolen Mills area that we'll be concentrating on as well.

We were successful last year, we went out for a term contract within the city and hired a contractor to do, it's kind of a comprehensive rehabilitation.

He'll repair manholes, he'll put new frame and covers on, he can dig, line up,

make repairs to lines that we see fit.

And he also does lining, slip lining of lines, which is non-intrusive way of rehabilitating lines.

And I've actually got a picture coming up on this next slide.

This is where you actually put, it's kind of like a sock that you put in a line and it has some structural integrity that's heated up

under extreme temperatures and you take care of all the cracks and you don't have to dig up roads or dig up somebody's yard to put this lining in.

We've actually lined about 140,000 linear feet in the city in the last couple of several years and we've got 10,000 linear feet of sewer that's proposed to be lined in the next couple months.

But I mentioned Shanks Branch because this is our major source of ini when you, or infiltration and inflow.

When you look at where we set the priorities, we have really excessive high peaks in this area.

When I talk about high peaks, when it rains, the sewers get overloaded and so we've got to pay attention and do something to repair them.

You actually, this area we've gone in and smoke tested the lines so you can tell where they need to be repaired.

and we've done some pre-flow monitoring which is we go in and we'll flow monitor the lines initially before we repair them so then after we repair them we'll do post-flow monitoring and we can tell whether we're successful and whether our money's well spent in making the repairs for our rehabilitation projects.

We've got point repairs currently scheduled under that contract I mentioned and I also mentioned we've got lining underway.

I might mention that a contract that we put out is kind of unique because we've got the opportunity versus the other agencies.

We own our own storm drainage system and it also has a storm drainage piece to it.

So our public service group, if they've got issues that they need to address, they can

use this contract to make repairs to our storm drainage system within the city limits.

Along with this, we're also kind of unique because a lot of times when we go out and we smoke test lines or we'll televise lines, we'll notice we've got storm drains hooked up.

I mentioned that.

That's a source of inflow.

And we can go ahead because we at the city own both of them and make repairs to both of them.

So where we've got proposed where we're televising lines, we're going to televise the adjacent storm drainage lines and repair both at the same time so the citizens only have to deal with one repair in one spot in one street at one time.

So we've got that advantage that we own both utilities.

A little bit about our operations and maintenance program.

I've got to brag about some of the in-house staff.

This is actually a picture of our in-house WayStarter crews.

They were on a very large repair.

It was very deep.

It was greater than 15 feet.

It was not in a roadway.

It was in one of our adjacent parks that needed to be repaired.

And not all cities and government agencies have this capability where they've got the equipment and the people and the know-how to make these kind of repairs.

and we in the city have this capability which is not that all cities have this capability but we're unique in that we do it very well.

I want to highlight a few of our programs we've got going on.

We've got the fats, oils and grease program, sanitary sewer evaluation surveys, and we've also got some additional in-house maintenance programs.

A little bit about our fats, oils and grease program.

I mentioned earlier that

State and federal agencies are going to look to make sure you've got certain programs in place and this is one of them.

Because what can happen is if you don't have something that will prevent vats, oils and greases going into the sewer, you'll get something like this.

They'll clog the line and it hardens and it's not a good thing.

And then people have to go out and do emergency repairs on it.

We actually last year started this program.

We have hired a regulatory compliance person that concentrates on this as well as backflow prevention in our water side of the house.

And he has visited over 250 food service establishments probably in the last

Six months.

And we explain to people why it's important because there's two pieces to this.

Not only do people, food service establishments have to have grease traps that prevent grease getting into the sewer, they also have to demonstrate that they maintain their grease traps.

So there's two pieces to the program.

So far, we've gotten vast cooperation throughout the city.

People ask good questions.

They want to do the right thing.

And if they don't have a grease trap, they've got 90 days to install one.

And people have been very cooperative in working with us.

A little bit about sanitary sewer evaluation surveys.

We actually do some of these in-house and we also outsource some of this.

But basically you go in and you figure out the integrity of your lines and you document what situation your lines are in.

And there are multiple ways to do this.

I mentioned flow monitoring.

We also smoke test lines to find out where the holes are.

This is kind of a

This is an illustration of smoke testing.

This is not a good thing.

When you smoke testing, you've got smoke coming out of the ground somewhere.

That means you've got holes in your sewer line or your storm drain system.

And you've got to figure out how to fix that.

This is an illustration of roots that can get into lines that we televised.

This is kind of an illustration of infiltration where you've got cracks in the line and if you don't line it during rain events, rainwater can get in.

We also dye test lines.

This is so you know where all the laterals within the city are tied in.

Laterals are those lines from households that are tied into our line.

We also have in-house the capability to do televising and we have crews out every day to get more information on our sewer systems.

We televise about 1,500 feet a day.

I mentioned the point repairs the city staff has the capability to do.

We also have equipment to control routes and we will mechanically remove them.

Some agencies will use chemicals that they throw in the sewers.

We do not do that.

We actually have equipment that will mechanically remove routes and there are crews that concentrate on that within the city.

We also have easement clearing.

We have to, even though most of our sewers, probably 80 to 90 percent of the sewers are in the streets, you still have to maintain your easements to keep trees off of them or else you'll have more roots to deal with within the sewer lines, which isn't a good thing.

and we also are trying to get people more aware because sewers are always kind of out of sight, out of mind.

You know, people, you know, they don't know really the whole gamut of what happens when it gets treated at the treatment plant, where it goes, where the piping is.

So we're trying to do some community education.

In our current annual water report, we've got a little section on just educating people about their lateral lines and why they should maintain them.

and I mentioned about the multi-agency coordination.

This is something that Rivanna and Albemarle County Service Authority and the city have been coordinating efforts probably for the last three to five years.

And Rivanna started a comprehensive sanitary sewer interceptor plan about three or four years ago, which set priorities.

They meshed very nicely with what priorities the city has established and where they'll hit rehabilitate and replace sewers first.

but now we are coordinating and we're talking and because unfortunately our sewers are all interconnected and so we have to talk and coordinate our efforts because when we do something in the city it could impact what Rivanna has downstream.

Some of the projects that other agencies have, Albemarle County Service Authority, I mentioned that our concentration's in the Shanks Branch area.

Similarly, Albemarle County Service Authority is concentrating on rehabilitating in that same vicinity a little further upstream, because that's one of our highest priority areas.

And then another priority area for them is the Crozet area.

They currently have, similarly, contracts in place that they'll work real hard to rehabilitate their sewer lines.

Rivanna similarly has other projects.

They've got upgrades to the treatment facilities that have to be made to accommodate treatment as well as wet weather flows.

They've also got increased capacity in lines.

Currently they're getting ready to start construction on their Meadow Creek sewer line which is north of the city and I think most of you are familiar with that.

It goes through the Greenbrier area.

Michie Drive, it starts upstream near the Dominion on hydraulic and then goes ultimately through Penn Park on the lower end.

But that's some of the efforts that Rivanna's got going on.

In addition, they have to also increase two pump stations which are located within the city that they own and maintain.

One's in Riverdale Park, you'll probably hear more about because they're just in the infancy of that project.

as well as Moore's Creek, which is actually on their plant site.

Moore's Creek pump station is their second pump station that actually collects flows from the southern part of the city, collects flows from Crozet as well as the city's Stadium Road project.

I might also add that with all this said, all this agency coordination, currently the three agencies are working very closely with the Department of Environmental Quality to formalize our plans in agreement.

And we just started those conversations.

It'll be a good thing for us because everybody will understand what the long-range plan is.

It'll have schedules that we've got to meet.

as well as it makes the three agencies know that what we've got planned is recognized by the state agency as a good plan.

And I think they've been most impressed by all the programs that we have underway as well as the agency's conversations and coordination efforts in the last several years.

And just in summary, we've got sanitary sewer infrastructure that is aged and needs to be upgraded.

Capacity, we need to increase the capacities on some.

Rehabilitation's appropriate on other sewer lines.

I mentioned a lot about the multi-agency coordination between the three agencies.

and it's important to recognize that based on federal and state regulations right now that are in place, we really don't have an option.

We have to maintain our sewer lines and they're going to look to us that we are doing the right thing and have the appropriate funding in place to move forward with our capital improvement plan as well as our in-house maintenance programs.

I just have a purely kind of technical curiosity question.

When you were talking about the CIPP lining, which looks really cool, the kind of internal sock thing, but it made me wonder how long that lasts.

Once you put it in, it kind of seals to the pipe.

I assume it's hard to get out later.

Does it last forever?

Does it last the lifetime of the pipe?

It has structural integrity.

And we're utilizing it mostly on terracotta pipe that's aged and cracked.

I mentioned we have point repairs where we've got to go in and replace.

Sometimes you've got some things that can't be lined because they've collapsed.

And so we'll go in and do a

a repair on that sewer line and then eventually go in and line it because then it'll have more structural integrity.

You'll find the lining is not very thick, so you maintain your capacity.

It can be relined, that's correct.

And actually we've got, where you've got to be careful with the lining is when people go and put new houses, put new labels to it.

So we've got certain standards in place that they have to do certain things.

I had a question about the

To the prospect of enlarging the little pump station at Riverview Park, I know the neighborhood is very concerned about

the impacts of that potential expansion.

Is it fair for that one neighborhood to bear the brunt of, you know, a lot of the increase on that particular line, as I understand it, is from sewer inflow from Albemarle County and I think some city residents there are wondering is that fair or are there measures that we can take to more aggressively

remediate the impacts, particularly odor and just the aesthetic impacts of that potential expansion.

Well, they're looking at a number of alternatives and once they go through their initial evaluation about what makes sense and what doesn't make sense, whether to relocate it.

I know one of the alternatives they've been looking at is whether it should be relocated in such a manner that's in close proximity

because you've still got to maintain your gravity system in sewer lines, but yet a more friendly location.

And the engineer they've hired is working through that analysis and then they're going to get the input from the neighborhoods at a certain point.

And I think some of those conversations have already started initially, but until they go through the alternatives, it's really not fair to get

to see what's feasible and not mislead people.

The last report on our agenda tonight is an update on the city manager search process and I believe Mr. Beck is going to present on

Who's presenting?

Mr. Beck?

The last item that she said is an update on the city manager's search process.

I'm Mr. John D. Lavino, whom you've met before.

It's here to provide you a status report.

You received information in your council packet this weekend that included the executed contract.

a brief memo from Mr. Anzivino outlining the status of the program and so he's here tonight to walk you through that and also to discuss scheduling and next steps and how you want to proceed.

Thank you.

Nice to see you again, Mayor.

Absolutely.

Come to the City Council.

It's nice to see you.

Kind of brings back old memories of sitting through a City Council meeting and listening to all the good things that are happening.

I'd like to introduce Doug Walker, who is also on the project team, and Doug is also a former city manager here in the Commonwealth and will be working on the search process.

We actually initiated the process today.

We had the opportunity to sit down, spend a little bit over an hour with

and interview her as her part of the process in developing the position profile.

As we've noted in our memorandum, your request for proposal laid out pretty well what the parameters are for your next city manager as far as education and experience.

But beyond that, there are other things that we like to get to the heart of.

And we like to spend about an hour with each elected official and really sit down, get to know you,

to find out what your issues are in regard to the city manager's search process, what your concerns are, also to find out what your perceptions are in regard to issues that the next city manager will be facing and what priorities they may be addressing.

So we'd like to schedule those meetings with you as quickly as possible through the clerk or through Mr. Beck.

We'll probably not be looking at next week, but probably the following week, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and we would hope that each of you could set aside an hour to meet with us.

So are you going to schedule those meetings through our clerk?

And we'll work with you.

If you have conflicts during the day, we'll be available in the evening or early in the morning as well.

We want to meet your schedules.

We'll also, while we're here, be meeting with your executive leadership team individually and finding out, because when a city manager

decides to leave a community for whatever reason, in this case retirement, and that person has been in the position for a good long time and they've had a great deal of success and gained the respect of the staff and everybody has attained a comfort level.

There's often a lot of angst.

out there among the staff as to what the next person is going to be like and what they may be looking at.

As we told you, it's our intention to work very hard to find the city manager and candidates for the city council to consider that are folks that are going to be looking at the organization but certainly not taking a successful organization and turning it upside down on its head because you have a successful organization here.

Doug and I were talking about your previous presentation about

Nice communication style your director had and how often that's not the case with public utilities directors.

But it was a very nice and even presentation.

So we know that you have a quality organization.

We want to find a city manager who matches that and can help you polish the organization and take your organization to the next level.

So we'll be meeting with your executive leadership team.

The next point I want to address is

Community participation and that's important to you.

We know from the standpoint of the city of Charlottesville you have a very involved public.

It was evident here tonight by the number of folks that came to the meeting and we know certainly beyond budget time that the community is invested in the decision making process.

but we also need to involve the community in the decision making process or at least in the participation process of giving us some information as to what they believe the city needs in their next city manager.

We have proposed in our original proposal that we conduct two community meetings and interview up to 10 community leaders identified by the council.

To be honest with you, we find, and it may be different in Charlottesville,

But we find that two community meetings is a little bit of an overkill.

Getting folks out for one meeting is hard enough.

And so in our memorandum, we've noted that we would like to conduct one well advertised community meeting and then increase the number of community leaders that you've identified from 10 to 20 and go out and interview those folks.

That's very similar to a process that we used in James City County, where we

I worked with the College of William and Mary with the Williamsburg Foundation and a number of other organizations within the area so we'd like you to consider that.

We would also like you to consider letting us know as soon as possible because we need to work with your staff to get that scheduled and really get it well advertised.

During the course of that meeting we will conduct a brief presentation.

We will really work

with the citizens to, and Doug and I will not be doing that meeting.

We'll be bringing in one of our specialists for that meeting, somebody who communicates with the public probably much better than we do.

But what we'll be doing is we'll be providing information on what the role of the city manager is, how it relates to the council, what some of the issues are, those types of things.

And then we'll open the floor for discussion and we'll

actually facilitate discussion among the public to bring in the points that we need to find for the development of the profile.

We have mentioned to you and I did note in the memorandum that we had begun to work on a survey but we haven't really begun to work on it.

We've begun to give it some thought.

We know that the city has access to Survey Monkey.

We have used surveys in the past.

If the council would like to use the survey process

And what we have done in the past is we've developed a survey tailored to the community with questions that relate to the community.

We have posted that online on the city's website or on the county's website, allowed two to three weeks for citizens to respond and really identify if they are a citizen or non-citizen because you can't keep non-citizens off your website.

We then compile the results and we present those to the council or the board before the interviews take place so that you have a sense of what your citizens are thinking about, what their thoughts are in regard to the issues, in regard to what the qualities are that they would like to see in the next city manager.

We also compile it into a nice book for you folks so that you have it to refer to and that your new manager will have that as well so that they can access that.

and that kind of gives them a jumpstart in knowing what the community is thinking in regard to the issues in the community as well as how the city manager should be involved in the community in dealing with issues.

So that's an issue that we'll need to resolve.

We don't need to resolve that right away.

Our major concern right now is if you'd like to have two public meetings or one,

and if you'd like us to interview 10 folks or 20 folks here in the community that you've identified.

And we would like to begin getting our meetings together with you, the 17th, 18th, and 19th, and we'll be fitting in the other interviews with your executive leadership team in between.

The little flow chart that we've given you here

It's kind of a summary of the process and looking on the left hand side of the page, we're right at the beginning of the process.

We're developing the position analysis and city profile.

Position analysis is the expanded description of what the manager is all about, what the education requirements are, what the qualities are, what the personal

Skills are that may be required for the position.

The community profile, as we've noted to you, is a sales document.

I hate to say sales, but it really sells the candidates on what the community is all about.

It tells the story of the city of Charlottesville and the quality of life that you have here.

And we will have that developed about a week to two weeks after we conclude our meetings with the council and with the staff because we want to keep moving the process along.

We will bring that back to you for your approval because that really is the measuring stick that we utilize to evaluate the candidates and whether or not they meet the criteria that the council has collectively approved.

After we have that approved by the council, we begin the recruitment process.

I've already talked to some folks.

There are some folks that are very interested in the city of Charlottesville, as you would expect.

Quality place to work, stable government,

obviously from your discussion tonight, an enlightened government that deals with bigger issues beyond just the budget and planning and zoning and those types of things, reaching out into the social aspects of the community, which is commendable.

So we'll begin that recruitment process.

That'll be about a 30-day process.

It'll take us a couple of weeks to sort through the resumes and get our recommended 10 candidates ready for your consideration.

We'll provide you a full report in regard to the candidates, why they're recommended for your consideration.

And then you'll need about a week to sort through that because we know that governing bodies don't act quickly on these matters.

But we'll come back and meet with you about a week after we've presented the report, if that's to your satisfaction, and help you narrow the pool down to five to seven for five to seven in number for interviews.

And then we'll schedule the interviews for you, which will fall about two weeks later.

And then as we get into that process, and we'll be talking to you about this individually, we can make some decisions on this a little bit later on.

The citizen involvement process is part of the interview process.

Again, this is an engaged community.

And in Virginia we have the luxury of having a process which can be a closed process from the beginning to the end.

It's pretty clear.

A lot of our local governments that we work with in Virginia say,

We're the governing body.

We feel that it's our responsibility.

We're elected by the citizens.

We'll make the decisions and we won't involve the public.

We know that's not the case here in the city of Charlottesville.

And so at the interview stage, we've had some thoughts about how to involve the citizens.

And at the first stage of interviews, the larger group, there is the potential to develop, I think, a fairly diverse group of seven to nine citizens, maybe a couple of staff members,

and integrate them into the process to meet with the candidate in a very private manner and have them form an opinion of what the strengths and weaknesses of that candidate are and provide that information to the governing body.

Certainly they don't have a role in the decision making process.

You folks are elected by the citizens to make those decisions, but they can provide you very valuable input.

So we would, you know, we're thinking about that and how that would work and we'd like you to think about it as well.

At the final stage, after you've narrowed the pool of five to seven down to two to three, maybe one to two, then we probably would suggest the process be opened up and that at the end of the process we develop a manner of involving the public overall and meeting the two candidates, the three candidates

and investing some time in getting to know them and forming some opinions of how they may fit with the city.

But again, it's the council's final decision.

But we'll be fleshing that out with you when we meet with you individually and bringing that process back to you because prior to approval of the profile, we will need to know the answers to those questions at what time the candidate's names become public because that may have an impact on the candidate pool and the size of the candidate pool.

We will also, at the profile stage, we know compensation is always an issue, particularly in today's harsh economic times.

And so what we will be bringing you is a compensation analysis of other managers here in the Commonwealth so you can get an idea of what the range is in salary and also in benefits because there are more ways to provide compensation than just through straight salary, a number of different ways to skin the cat, so to speak.

So we'll be bringing all of those to you at that profile meeting for your consideration.

And with that, I've probably spoken enough, and we'll be happy to answer any questions.

Other comments or questions?

And we found that

The real active community leaders, they're not going to come out to a public meeting, but they will respond to us contacting them and sitting down and talking to them.

So I understand you would like to use the survey vehicle then as well?

Yes.

Okay.

Great.

And so if you had to give a rough approximation,

What point do we get to the end of this, roughly?

About 120 days.

Yes.

We're right on schedule to start based upon the award of the agreement.

It's going to be about 120 days.

Now, that doesn't mean that you'll have a new city manager sitting in the chair.

That means that you'll not be seeing us any longer.

We'll have our end of the arrangement concluded, and it will probably be 30, 45, 60 days, depending upon

Thank you all very much.

That's the last item on our regular business agenda.

Is there any other business before council?

Hearing none, we'll reopen it to matters by the public.

Anybody from the public like to speak?

Hearing none, meeting's adjourned.

Dr. Michael F.