City Council Meeting   5/17/2010

I know.

I guess that means we need to call the meeting to order.

We'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance.

We are going to start with some awards and recognitions and I have a few proclamations to read tonight.

First, I'm very happy to announce National Public Works Week.

Whereas public works services provided in our community are an essential part of our citizens' everyday lives, and whereas the support of an understanding and informed citizenry is vital to the efficient operation of public works systems and programs such as water, wastewater, gas, streets and highways, school and public building maintenance, transit, environmental awareness and solid waste collection, and whereas the safety, health and comfort of this community greatly relies on these facilities and services.

Whereas the quality and effectiveness of these facilities as well as their planning, design and construction is vitally dependent upon the efforts and skills of our public works employees.

Now therefore I, Dave Norris, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, Virginia, do hereby proclaim the week of May 16th through 22nd, 2010 as National Public Works Week in the City of Charlottesville.

and call upon all citizens and civic organizations to acquaint themselves with the efforts involved in providing our public works and to recognize the contributions which public works employees make every day to maintain and improve our world-class quality of life.

Let's give a round of applause to our public works staff and here to receive this is Judy Mueller, Director of Public Works.

Okay, next Business Appreciation Week.

Whereas the overall quality of life in the Charlottesville community is directly and substantially related to the continued vitality and success of private enterprises,

and whereas the number of businesses in the city of Charlottesville today numbers approximately 3,600 together employing nearly 36,000 representing an estimated total payroll of more than 1.2 billion dollars a year and whereas well beyond these direct employment payrolls these Charlottesville businesses generate even more economic benefits such as allied business purchasing and contracting, local tax revenues, charitable contributions, educational enhancements,

from which the entire citizenry of our Charlottesville community benefits.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Dave Norris, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, Virginia, do hereby proclaim May 16th to 22nd, 2010 as Business Appreciation Week and join others in recognizing and expressing our deep appreciation to our city businesses and acknowledge their efforts towards achieving economic success.

On behalf of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce and our more than 1,000 members, thank you very much and we appreciate your continued support of business in our community.

Thank you, Mr. O'Brien.

Next, we have a proclamation regarding a Bike Week and Bike Month here in our community.

Whereas bicycling is a relatively safe, clean and affordable mode of transportation and recreation used by thousands of citizens and residents of all ages throughout our great Commonwealth,

and whereas bicycling provides unique vantage points for tourists and sightseers to explore Virginia's many natural and man-made attractions including our Commonwealth's award-winning state parks, historic battlefields, urban architecture and college and university campuses and whereas our Commonwealth is host to many bicycling events including competitive races, sightseeing tours, charitable fundraisers and other recreational rides and whereas bicycling is an important part of urban and community planning and development

and it is important that children and adults exercise care while cycling and are regularly reminded about proper bicycle safety and whereas the education of cyclists and motorists as to the proper and safe operation of bicycles is important to ensure the safety and comfort of all users

and whereas Bike Month allows cycling enthusiasts to increase awareness of their sport and to promote the benefits of bicycling through organized activities such as Bike to Work Day and Bike Rodeos for Children, now therefore I, Dave Norris, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, Virginia, do hereby recognize May 2010 as Bike Month and this week as Bike Week and call this observance to the attention of all of our citizens.

And I don't know if Vince Caristo is here.

Oh, Vince Caristo is here from Alliance for Community Choice and Transportation.

Well thanks Dave for a great proclamation.

Springtime is here and it's a great time to try biking especially if the weather gets a little sunny here this week.

We've got a whole series of events to generate enthusiasm and spread awareness about bicycling as a valuable form of transportation in the area.

and one of them that hopefully we'll see some of you at is this Saturday, the Bike Summit, 5 to 7 at City Space, where bicyclists and community members are going to gather around the question, what can we do to make our city safer and easier for bicycling?

Right, so on Wednesday, Wednesday evening at 7 o'clock, starting at Charlottesville High School, there's a Ride of Silence.

It's an international event where bicyclists will be escorted down through town to honor all those, including Matt King, who've been killed or injured on a bicycle.

Thank you, Mr. Kristin.

We also want to wish a happy 150th birthday to Paul Goodlow McIntyre.

We have a proclamation, I won't read the whole proclamation, but we do want to wish Mr. McIntyre a very happy birthday.

Also, I wanted to give some results from our 2010 Charlottesville Community Spring Job Fair and to thank and acknowledge some members of the Job Fair Planning Committee who are in our audience.

This Spring Job Fair was held on April 21st at the John Paul Jones Arena.

We had 73 employers and 30 community resource organizations who participated in the event, making it one of the most successful job fairs in the region.

There are more than 1,000 positions available.

Approximately 2,000 job seekers attended the job fair.

Many people had on-site interviews or scheduled them for a later date.

We had resources on-site for job seekers.

We had workshops.

All kinds of services offered to citizens of this community who were looking for employment.

It's a collaborative effort sponsored by the City of Charlottesville with other agencies including Albemarle County, the Adult Learning Center, the Department of Rehabilitative Services and many more, Piedmont Workforce Network, many others.

I want to thank by name the committee members who put a lot of time and energy into organizing this very successful event.

And as I state your name, if you are here in the audience, please stand up and then we will acknowledge you at the end.

Kelly Logan from the Department of Social Services.

Mary Grant from Department of Social Services, Holly Lee from our Office of Economic Development, Susan Erno from the Adult Learning Center, Shirley Paoletti from Albemarle County Department of Social Services, Juan Wade from Albemarle County, Kay Monroe from the Department of Rehabilitative Services, Jason Ness from Offender Aid and Restoration, Fonzo Taylor from Virginia Employment Commission, Jan Tobias from International Rescue Committee,

Anne Brown from the National College, Donnell Smith from PVCC, and Bonnie Rogers from the Image Investment Institute.

And let's give them a round of applause.

Thank you very much on behalf of our community.

Real quick, I want to announce Charlottesville received a Growth Award from Tree City USA from the Arbor Day Foundation, and so this is an acknowledgement of our planning efforts to increase tree preservation and stewardship in our community, so thank you to our Parks and Recreation staff and others in the city who helped us achieve this Tree City Growth Award this year.

I have a couple announcements.

The Charlottesville and Albemarle Pregnancy and Parenting Resource Guide has just been published and it's filled with programs, agencies, and services for pregnant women and families with young children.

It's also available online at www.albemarle.org.

CCFINFO.org or you can call 972-6232.

And I just wanted to also give a shout out to the Charlottesville High School orchestras.

I went to the Spring concert last night and it was phenomenal.

And I'd also like to acknowledge the

30 seniors that were recognized and if there are any seniors here this evening that were part of that orchestra performance, can you please stand?

Anybody here?

And speaking of CHS, the interim grades did come out a few days ago.

Thank you, Ms. Edwards.

Other announcements?

A couple other quick things.

This Wednesday, May 19th, from 7 to 9 p.m. here in the City Council Chambers.

We're having a public forum.

We invite members of the community to come and share your thoughts about what you believe we should be looking for in our next city manager, in our permanent city manager.

So again, Wednesday, May 19th, 7 to 9 p.m.

Here in City Council Chambers you can either come in person or you can view live on channel 10 and actually you'll be able to call in questions and comments.

So it'll be a very interactive session with the search firm that's leading our city manager search process.

And as a reminder, City Hall will be closed Memorial Day, Monday, May 31st.

There will be normal trash and recycling but no CTS service Sunday or Monday.

We are now going to

Open up our meeting, unless there's any other announcements, we'll open up our meeting to matters by the public.

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

Ma'am, ma'am, gentlemen.

I'm Bob Fenwick.

I live at 901 East Jefferson Street in the city.

The city of Charlottesville will be making the decision soon about what direction the city will be taking on dredging and damming.

To make a reasoned, prudent decision, you need to have the facts.

You need to have the truth to decide this matter.

I don't believe you are getting the truth from some of the people on the damn proponent side.

In a manner of speaking on the community water plan, you're going to have to wade through some of the discussion that is muddying the waters.

One of the arguments the dam people repeat is we have to move quickly to build a new dam or we will lose our permit to construct a dam.

What is it about our community that special conditions always seem to attach themselves to us that attach to no other city in Virginia?

Why would Charlottesville lose a permit to construct the dam when Newport News took 22 years to figure out what they wanted to do with the King William Reservoir?

That community discussion cost the city of Newport News over 51 million dollars.

51 million wasted dollars and untold staff time.

And was finally settled when a federal judge ruled that the water demand figures were arbitrary.

and that's sort of what the discussion that we're going to have on this damn dredging discussion is heading as well.

As a businessman who has gotten many construction permits over the years, I will say that Charlottesville is in no danger of losing any permit, of permanently losing any permit if we make a good faith effort to decide this issue.

If I'm wrong, surely there's a letter from the state of Virginia that will prove me wrong.

There is no such letter.

There is no Virginia statute that I am aware of that says a sovereign city can only apply for one permit.

A lady stood in front of you several weeks ago and said we should build another dam at Ragged Mountain just in case we have a flood of biblical proportions.

Well, if that's what we are to plan for, why don't we build another city hall or another wastewater treatment center?

because a flood of biblical proportions surely would take them out as well.

Recently we heard a community leader say we should hurry up and build a dam because in this economic climate the cost of building a dam would never be lower.

I'm in construction and building costs which include heavy equipment costs are down and they will remain down for years.

but it's curious that this low building cost theory is never mentioned in connection with dredging I say hurry up and dredge because the cost of dredging will never be lower and sooner or later we'll have to do it anyway unless the dam proponents have figured out a way to build a dam and a reservoir that doesn't need dredging if not we will have two reservoirs that need dredging and we'll just keep kicking the can down the road

You should be able to depend on staff and authority directors to help you make your decision.

After all, they should also be working to achieve the common good.

They should be a help, not a hindrance.

Thank you, Mr. Fenwick.

Good evening Mayor Norris, Councilors.

Ms. Edwards, I agree with you.

The Charlottesville High School Orchestra and band are just incredible.

I'm here to talk about two things.

First is the notice of termination of the agreement with the Rivanna, Will and Sue Authority.

I've spoken to you all about that before.

I think it's important.

It's a good business practice.

This agreement is almost 40 years old.

A lot has changed in the last 40 years.

Even if you don't want to terminate the agreement, you need to give notice so you can renegotiate it to bring it up to what's happening now.

The second thing I want to talk about is debt.

A couple of things got me going on this.

I figure roughly to do the new dam pipeline thing might cost $236 million.

Then there was an article in the Daily Progress that had some rather large numbers in it.

The Progress said it will be $26.7 million over five years to update the sewer system.

I went to the Charlottesville website and currently it looks like we have about $43.6 million in borrowing.

in our budget, but I really didn't see anything in the budget about the sewer system.

The same article said that Ms. Hildebrand said there was $18 million for fixing up our water pipes.

We're losing 20% of our water.

I didn't see anything in the budget either for

You know, maybe I misread it, the thing's like 36 pages or something, but I just didn't see the money there.

And we already have 86 million dollars in long-term debt.

The same article said that the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority had a 150 million dollar capital budget.

I went and looked at it online, it only has 59 million dollars for the water plan.

Who knows what the water plan is really going to cost?

The Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority already has 48 million dollars.

The word million just keeps coming up and up again.

Municipal bonds used to be a piece of cake.

No more.

Vallejo in California went bankrupt.

Jefferson County, where Birmingham, Alabama is, is considering bankruptcy.

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the state capital.

is considering bankruptcy.

They had a bad thing with an incinerator.

The state of California has $19.1 billion deficit.

So if I were a rating agency, I'd be a bit spooked about lending money to the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority, especially seeing how the city can pull the plug with two years notice.

So they're probably going to require the city to guarantee it.

And I beseech you not to guarantee any debt for anything other than city-issued bonds.

There's just so much money here and I think that's just, there's going to be even more.

I think there might be hundreds of millions of dollars that we're going to have to put out for capital improvements over the next couple of years and I really have a hard time seeing how we're going to finance it all.

Thank you, Mr. Smith.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Councillors.

Collette Hall, 101 Robertson Lane.

I request the council authorize the use of the parking stamp for planning commission meetings.

These meetings can easily run six hours long and that is a substantial amount of parking fee for a citizen to pay while waiting for a public hearing or an agenda item to come forward.

This is a public meeting with invited public input and often joint Planning Commission and City Council public hearings.

It will be appropriate for the City to provide safe and convenient parking.

And my second point, because it was raining all day, I thought of

I would like to ask if Councillor Brown has found the information that precipitation corrupts and therefore makes useless paper waiting for curbside recycle pickup.

Thank you Ms. Hall.

Betty Mooney from the City of Charlottesville.

First I'd like to thank very much Mayor Norris for his very reasoned approach to the last Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority meeting and I hope all the counselors could go online and listen to that meeting because it was a very, very important meeting.

I mean I think the operative question right here now in the community is in today's Daily Progress you heard Bernard Ray say the city is buying less water and your rates are going up and if you look at where the rates are going this year and then as you look at what Mr. Smith said that the costs for this water plan have not even begun to be estimated in that debt

that we're seeing the amounts of money that are being put forward are probably hundreds of millions of dollars below what we're going to have to spend.

So I think what Mayor Norris did and what I hope the council will support him now from now on is we have got to relook at how much water the community needs.

It's changed drastically, it keeps changing, and we can't even keep up with our costs now.

We can't pay our costs.

So to take on all this debt for all this new infrastructure, yes, we should repair what we have.

We've got to.

But then to, on top of that, take hundreds of millions of dollars, we may face bankruptcy.

We absolutely just don't have the money.

So we need to have the council support Mayor Norris in this, and I really do feel you did an excellent job in laying out

Why we need to look at how much water we need now because of the dramatic changes we've seen in 10 years.

I'd also like to ask where we stand with the solid waste plan and maybe you could address this.

We've had two and a half years of strategic planning

and there was a work session recently and no new information came forward but I understood Ms. Muller to say that a request for bids would be put out within two weeks and yet I haven't seen any evidence of that happening.

I'd like to know where that stands.

I'd like to know what's happening.

We're coming up on a deadline.

and I think the city needs to make a decision.

We need to go forward with better recycling for our citizens and we need to look at costs and I really would like an update on that.

Thank you Ms. Mooney.

Hello, Stratton Salita, 704 Grave Street.

I agree with what the previous speakers have said about the water issue.

I think that the city is in an exciting transitional period.

where council is taking more responsibility for some of these critical long-term decisions and reevaluating these decisions that have been made on what is essentially false information.

Particularly I'm talking about the demand study with the water.

which is way overblown and something that Betty just hinted at but didn't say outright is you know if they don't sell as much water as projected in order to meet their long range financing goals because

the demand isn't there then the price is going to skyrocket because that'll be the only way and that will hurt everybody but especially people with lower incomes and also I feel like council has recently begun to address the falsehoods that have underlined the parkway process

as well.

And they've taken some heat recently from the Chamber of Commerce, they, you I suppose.

And there's a few things I wanted to say about our local Chamber of Commerce.

One thing is that there is the regional word in there, which is really important.

They're not concerned solely with Charlottesville

and not even just Charlottesville and Albemarle, but also the surrounding counties as well.

And I think one reflection of that is when we talk about bringing more cars downtown and increasing business, they don't seem particularly concerned that the Parkway would bypass Charlottesville's main retail areas, which are Barracks Road and Seminole Square at the same time.

And I think instead of thinking about bringing cars downtown,

I think we should be thinking about bringing people downtown and I think one excellent way to do that would be to utilize express bus service on 250 between 29 North and those shopping centers that I just mentioned and the downtown area and then we could even potentially use some of this interchange money to make it easier for buses to get through that intersection from McIntyre

to 250.

And I hope that you all will look at this in a more global context as well in terms of climate change, in terms of this oil disaster that's happening, and also in terms of the war and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and to

finish up here.

I'll also mention that on Wednesday there is going to be a demonstration at Congressperson Perriello's office hoping that he will not vote to reauthorize, to escalate the war in Afghanistan for $33 billion.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Salinas.

Councilman Norris and to all the council my name is Ralph Brown and I live at 706 12th Street Northwest.

I signed up to talk on two issues and I thought I'd get to talk about them separately but we'll combine them together.

The first of which is the dialogue on race.

There were three specific comments I wanted to make.

First I wanted to commend the council for taking the approach to actually enter into that dialogue simply because

that discussion has been a long time coming.

The second thing I want to say about it is that I would urge you to move with caution because many of the folk who lived during the period of time of Vinegar Hill will not come to the discussion.

I was in elementary school at that time and walking to school from up on 12th Street down to Jefferson School, you look around and one by one all the buildings are gone.

Design Union Church is gone.

So you have buildings gone, people gone, and then a whole way of life is gone.

I think in terms of a rapist who has done something very bad to somebody, you bring the victim in to talk to the rapist.

When you look at the discussion, think about the fact that

When I look back, it's akin to Hiroshima.

You just look and you're very young and everything is just a wasteland from the top of the hill all the way down to McDonald's and all the way across to the mall.

So that's a difficult discussion for anybody over 50 years old in Charlottesville.

It'll be different for those who have come to visit, newcomers, but those folk who were here will have a difficult time talking about that.

Secondly, I was in the last graduating class for Burleigh High School, and the one thing that I've discovered is that we got a real good education.

The folk that graduated Burleigh that I know about seem to be doing very well, so

When we think about the value and the good of integration, I often have to think back as to how well we are doing and what the dropout rate is now.

And I would simply say

that make sure that you dig deep to identify those folk who really want to be a part of this substantive discussion.

My final point is that action is the optimum word and that brings me to the second discussion I signed up for and that was concerning the appropriation for the Sister City Commission.

I think that's one opportunity that you have to do something very positive for the African American community here in Charlottesville.

I think those folks are going to participate in the African American festival that brings real life and a real connection to our brothers and sisters across the water.

And I think that that is something that you should act very decisively and positively on.

The commission is asking that we be able to take a look at.

I sit on that commission.

But regardless to how much discussion we have, I caution you not to do what Charlottesville has always done.

That is talk and talk and talk some more.

And the fact of the matter is you have an opportunity for action and I pray that you will take it.

God bless you.

Thank you, Reverend Brown.

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

Is there anybody else in the audience who would like to share some thoughts with us?

You don't have to have anything prepared.

I will personally write a letter to your teacher urging extra credit for any high school student who stands up.

All right.

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

Who would like to get us started?

I probably have the shortest comment.

I'd just like to comment to Chef and Reverend Brown.

Okay.

Well, I'll reply since I was singled out by name to give a couple answers, but I'll also reply first to Reverend Brown by saying, it reminds me of the saying, when all is said and done, more is said than done.

Diane Smith talked about the bonds and where that was.

It's in the utility budget and so we'll be talking about that later tonight, the bonds for repairing the water supply.

Colette Hall asked about, well she brought the subject of parking stamp for people attending the Planning Commission.

Did you mean the long-term parking stamp because there's always a two-hour stamp that's

that wasn't there.

Okay.

And she also asked, she and I had a sidebar conversation following up on concern that our people are leaving their newspapers out on recycling days and they get wet and then are they then recyclable?

And at this point I just have my own research on it which is I don't think they are recyclable but I don't think they contaminate the whole truck full I think but wet newspapers, I don't think they can be treated chemically to become

new recycled paper.

So I think people should not leave their newspapers out in the rain, but I've asked Judy Mueller if she could prepare something for city council on both issues with recycling and really to follow up to see, you know, we have our curbside recycling taken to Tidewater Fibers in Chester, Virginia to make sure that there's not issues with the quality of what's being picked up here.

I think we need to

Follow up on that before we have any further discussions on where we go with solid waste.

which moves me into Betty Mooney's question which is where are we going with solid waste and that's a really good question and the answer is right now people don't know.

The Rivanna Solid Waste Authority looked into privatizing the IV transfer station but there weren't any really viable bids to do that and so at this point it remains to be seen where we're going to go.

I think the next Rivanna Solid Waste Authority meeting will be pretty instructive.

Keeping ivy open is an issue that's way more important to the county than the city.

I don't think a lot of city residents take, they don't have a reason to take trash or large items or whatever to ivy.

Currently about 30% of the use at McIntire Recycling Center by customer is city residents and so we have an issue on the value of the McIntire Recycling Center.

We certainly have to have a vehicle for continuing to remediate the Ivy landfill, make sure there's avenues available for citizens to dispose of hazardous waste.

Mr. Mayor, I wanted to make one comment as to Reverend Brown's issue and dialogue on race this weekend.

We had a very good crowd of people who took part in that

I think we are now going to move into the action phase.

I just want to echo the concerns that Ms. Hall had about the parking stamp and I think that if you come to the public hearings for the Planning Commission, you deserve a parking stamp and a gold star.

So that's at the very least what we can provide.

and to Reverend Ralph Brown, thank you for the words of wisdom.

And the people that have lived here, born here, worked here, and will die here, those are the individuals whose shoulders we stand on in order to have initiatives like the Dialogue on Race.

And I don't

I don't ever want the members of our community to underestimate the value of their presence even when they're not present because there's a way to get involved and there's a way to be able to provide feedback and give ideas without always being present even though for me that would be

The action part is going to be the work of the dialogue and the action part will, my hope is that we will see an increase in civic engagement.

We will see some changes in the five areas that we designated from our school system from education to economic.

This is an opportunity that I hope the entire community really rallies around.

So I really appreciate your words and your presence.

and all the others that spoke.

I'm just glad you all are here this evening.

I agree with the comments that were just made and I too want to thank Reverend Brown for speaking up and also for making the linkage between the dialogue and race and our efforts to address race relations in our community and our efforts to build linkages with Africa and with Ghana in particular.

So thank you for pointing out the connection.

It's a very powerful connection actually.

And I want to thank Mr. Salidas once again for speaking up.

I am a big fan of, you mentioned express buses.

We're going to have a transit summit this summer and I hope that we, in the process of taking a big picture look at our transit system, we look very closely at what some of the other communities in this country are doing with regard to express buses, bus rapid transit.

It's a model I think that would work really well for our community so thank you for bringing that up and we will now move on.

On our consent agenda tonight, we have quite a few items.

Item A is the minutes of May 3rd.

Item B is an appropriation of $5,100, donations to the dialogue on race, second of two readings.

Item C is an appropriation of $34,150, police overtime for special events, second of two readings.

Item D is an appropriation of $52,031, new transit facility, rainwater harvest grant, first of two readings.

Item E is a resolution 2009-2010 Snowstorm Cost, first to one reading.

Item F, a resolution accepting Roy's Place into the city street system, first to one reading.

Item G, a resolution accepting Carter's View into the city street system, first to one reading.

Item H, a resolution amending Commission on Children and Families Operational Agreement, first to one reading.

Item I, a resolution Belmont Bridge Revenue Sharing, first to one reading.

Item J is a resolution CTS replacement operation center grant of easement to Albemarle County Service Authority, first of one reading.

Item K is a resolution allocation of funds to assist with costs associated with the Sister City, Winnebagoana delegation visit, $15,000, first of one reading.

Item L is a resolution for city to serve as fiscal agent for the Virginia Juvenile Community Crime Control Act, first of one reading.

Item M is an ordinance, changes to the validity of special permits and site plans, first of two readings.

Item N is an ordinance, quick claim gas easement, Innovation Drive near Airport Road in Albemarle County to VDOT, first of two readings.

Item O is an ordinance amending the city code section 15-210C1 to increase parking permits for 510 Valley Road, first of two readings.

and item P is an ordinance sanitary sewer easement through Greenbrier Park to serve Charlton Road property, second of two readings.

Item K is a resolution and allocation of funds to assist with the costs associated with the assistive city of Winnebago on a delegation visit $15,000 first to one reading.

I also would like to pull item I for a brief discussion regarding Belmont Bridge revenue sharing.

So we will add both of those items.

Any other items to be removed for further discussion?

We'll add both item I and item K for discussion at the end of our meeting tonight.

Second.

Any further discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

Passes unanimously.

Thank you very much.

The first item on our regular business agenda tonight is a public hearing and ordinance rezoning of Timberlake Place to plan unit development, the second of two readings.

Mr Mayor, I wanted to make a comment that I have someone jab at my board visiting the city.

I don't have any conflict of interest in my mind.

I don't get paid for it.

I can't end up paying them.

Thank you, Mr Huja.

Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, this is an ordinance rezoning property commonly known as the Timberlake PUD.

The reason this item is before you is because the proffer statement that was originally approved by the Planning Commission that they voted on has been modified for an additional clarity on the first proffer.

This was the proffer about BAR review.

The applicant stated in front of the Planning Commission that this was not intended to be a perpetual review of any external changes once the building was constructed.

They have since modified that proffer to make it so that it is any future changes to the building after construction would still go in front of the BAR.

That's the only modification from the Planning Commission item that was presented in front of you at your joint public hearing.

I don't have a map, but I can mention the address of the property is 1512 East Market Street.

Not yet.

Just questions, then we'll have a public hearing, then we'll have comments.

Other questions?

Thank you, Mr. Lusko.

We'll now open the public hearing.

There's nobody signed up to speak.

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

We'll now... Oh, yes.

My name is Pete Zimm.

I live at 1600 East Market Street and our property abuts the parcel that Java wants to PUD for.

In the 24 years that we've lived there, my wife and I have seen a number of proposals for this property come and go and all of them we thought were detrimental to us as adjoining property owners and probably detrimental to the neighborhood as well.

So when this proposal came up from Java, we were not in favor.

and we told Java we were not in favor of it for the same reason.

We figured more density, more traffic, the loss of the last open green space of any significance in the neighborhood.

But Java initiated a process with us as the adjoining landowners and also with the neighborhood president and over a period of months worked out really a plan that was unique in the quarter of a century I've been watching this property.

in that they listened to what the neighbors concerns were, they went back, tried to craft their proposal to meet what was an issue to us, came back to us, this back and forth went on for months.

And they really came up with a plan which I hope will meet their needs and has done, I think, about as best as you can do to protect for the adjoining property owners and the neighbors what we think is important.

Just to put it in perspective, I think I mentioned to you guys in an email I sent you, this is not our first choice for this property.

Our first choice would be nothing, ever.

That it stays undeveloped and that it stays filled with trees that it is now.

Or if that didn't work, return it to a working farm, which is what it was when we moved in.

But neither one of those are really very realistic.

And of all the things that have happened so far,

This is the best use that we've seen for this property.

Trava has been an excellent person to work with.

We look forward to doing it again.

And I just wanted to come tonight and urge you to approve the PUD.

Thank you very much.

Anybody else like to speak?

All right, we will close the public hearing.

I would just really like to commend both the neighborhood and Java on this whole process.

I know that when it first started, it didn't look like it was going to happen.

I think that there was a lot of years of distrust and years of kind of worry about various things in the neighborhood and people weren't prepared to want this project.

And I think that Java's patience and respect for the process and really hearing people

shows what can happen when people listen to each other and I was just really impressed with that whole process.

Other comments?

I agree.

I so move.

Excuse me, I'm sorry Mr. Mayor.

Procedurally you have moved and seconded the ordinance with the original proffer statement on first reading

I move that we approve the amended proffer statement as presented to us.

Any further discussion on the amendment and the amended proffer statement?

If not, please indicate your vote.

And that passes unanimously.

Now we need a motion to approve the ordinance as amended.

So we need a vote on the ordinance as amended.

Unanimously.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Murray, for all your work on this.

And Ms. Dunham, if you're watching at home, we appreciate your efforts as well and everybody else who's involved in this project.

Next item on our agenda is a public hearing and ordinance regarding new utility rates and service fees.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of Council.

I want to present to you the 2011 water, sewer and gas recommendations from the city.

The rate study was completed with the assistance of Draper Aiden and Southeastern Gas Engineering.

Mr. Tom Cox of Draper Aiden is here and also Lauren Hildebrand, the Director of Utilities are here to answer any questions.

This is Tom, I think everyone knows Lauren.

We'll talk about first the water rates.

The average residential single-family household that uses 516 CFs or 3860 gallons of water is proposed to increase from $25.94 to $26.48 which is a 54 cent per month increase or 2.08 percent.

I actually happened to get my water bill today and my last two months were 3823 and 3688.

So I'm pretty close to the average.

I thought that was pretty interesting.

We spent a lot of time this year in anticipation of looking at tiered rates next year, trying to determine single family household, multifamily household.

And in the past, it just didn't matter because we had one rate.

So we'll be working diligently through the summer and

I hope we have a work session with council next year with some recommendations as to possibly having a tiered rate system.

Albemarle does that now.

Water conservation.

The average retail customer, which is basically everyone else, using 724 CFs will increase 76 cents per month from $34.78 to $35.54, which is 2.19%.

The chart on page 14 of the rate report actually details the factors that are actually causing the rate increase.

The current rate on 1000 CF, and I use 1000 CF because that's the way the ordinance is actually structured,

but the decrease in the wholesale rate from Rivanna this year of nine tenths of one percent will cause the rate to go down 24 cents from the current rate.

The use of rate stabilization funds, we're using $200,000 of rate stabilization funds.

If you all recall in 2009 we increased our facility fees and we said we would use those facility fees to pay down debt due to our large capital projects that we have in the utility budgets.

The increased operating expenses, which is primarily increased debt service, increases the rate by $1.52 to 43.16.

And a decrease in sales volume of 2.8% causes an increase in the rate of 40 cents to 43.56, which is a recommended rate at 1,000 CF.

We talked about the wastewater rates.

The average residential wastewater rate for a single family household will rise 98 cents from $24.77 to $25.75, or 3.96%.

The average monthly bill for other customers using 724 CFs, the other average, will increase $1.38 per month, or 4.16%.

The chart on page 26, which is similar to the chart for the water rate increase, actually shows why it's going from $40.25, which is what it currently is, per 1,000 CF.

The rate increase from Rivanna was 3.38% for wholesale water purchases, and that increases the rate by 76 cents.

The increase in operating expenses, there again primarily by increase in debt service, resulted in an increase of $2.80

and the rate stabilization decreased the rate by $1.27.

We're recommending using $300,000 of rate stabilization funds.

The volume changes to new customer usage decreases the rate by 38 cents to $42.16.

When we're looking at the water and waste water due to the very large capital improvement plan that we have over the next five years, which for water from 2009 to 2015 is $23.5 million,

and for wastewater is 34.5 million we always in the past have done a five-year forecast and what's happened is you can if you look at your I'm not sure you can look at tonight but the rates if it had not had been for the rate stabilization fees would have shown much more dramatic increases when we're looking into out years than they do now for an example if we did not have the rate stabilization fees to work with

The water rates would average over the next five years 9.6%.

With the rate stabilization fees, we're looking at an average of about 5.7%.

For wastewater, the rates without the stabilization funds would have increased around 13% a year.

as opposed to about 9% a year with the use of stabilization funds.

Can I ask sort of the obvious question that I think is on a lot of people's minds, which is I know a lot of the

I think you're exactly right.

I think Rivanna has to be making assumptions because they don't have the final numbers yet.

Basically what they have is an adopted 2008 capital improvement plan and based on my understanding they are looking to have that updated hopefully this summer sometimes.

But until some of these decisions are made they're pretty much assumptions at this stage.

Talk about the gas utility.

The average household rate is proposed to go from $110 to $117 or 6%.

which is an increase of $6.87 per month for the average household.

If you recall last year we came to city council with a recommendation that the rates decrease by 1.13% or $1.21 a month.

That was primarily because UVA had a dramatic increase over what was anticipated in gas sales.

That's not happening.

Now this year we're anticipating that UVA will use the same in 11 as they use in this year.

So we didn't have that to help us reduce the rates last year.

If you look at the reasons why the gas is going up, the operating cost creates an increase of $1.07 per month, gas capacity cost creates an increase of $2.41 per month, and volume sales, which decrease an average of 4%, causes an increase of $3.39

Most of that 4% was on the commercial side.

If you look at the history of gas, if you redo what's called a purchase gas adjustment, what cost us, what we pay for gas we pass on dollar for dollar to the consumer.

And if you look at the history back in June of 2008, for 8,000 cubic feet of gas you would have paid $177.

Gas has gone down over the last couple of years, thank goodness, especially with this economy.

and if you look at May of 2009, you would have paid $100.

There's a chart in here that shows it would be $110 this year.

Right now it's March 1st, which would go to 117 with the rate increase.

Gas went down in April, I mean March, and it went up a little bit in May.

So you're paying probably right now about $110, which is a lot better than it was.

Now what's happening with BP?

Who knows what's gonna happen in the future.

So that's basically the presentation.

I think everyone has the right report.

We've got a couple of people here if you have any questions.

We'll try to answer them.

I wonder if you could explain something.

A couple of folks approached us, I think, about looking at the reports of the increases and thinking that

if you added the 2% and the 3% and the 5% together that you end up with a very large percent of your bill that's higher.

And it's really not that way.

Yeah.

There's a chart in the right study.

I'm using your expertise.

If I can find it.

For a single family residential, the total increase will be $1.52 per month or 3% when you add water and sewer together.

For the average retail customer, the monthly increase will be $2.14 a month.

Oh, yeah, in total because the

Highest is $687, which is $6.24.

The others are less than that.

Just think it's good to get that out there.

And the other is that in the gas bill, I notice there's a $10 charge that is a stable piece of the monthly gas bill.

Right.

So the actual raise of your bill is actually going to be lower than 6.2%.

It's only a raise on the part that's the gas, right?

Right.

Same thing with water and sewer.

Okay.

Unless there's any other questions we will now, thank you Mr. Wright, we will now open the public hearing and again when you come forward please state your name and address and keep your comments to three minutes.

The first person who has signed up to speak

Don't take it personally Mr. Smith.

Mr.

Good evening again, and for Ms. Szakos, real simple example, $100 gas bill, $100 water bill, $100 sewer bill.

Each one goes up 10% or $10.

Your total for all three is $300.

Your total increase is $30.

Thank you.

And to Dr. Brown, I couldn't find that utility budget.

Since I moved back to Charlottesville 25 years ago,

I've been continually frustrated trying to come up with numbers.

I don't have a whole lot of time to do this.

I went out to some websites, found the information I could and hopefully you can show me where that is later.

Just one thing that people talked about a lot tonight is your bills go up when your usage goes down and I got to talking about this with some other people and we already have some of the highest rates in the area and I have documentation for that.

Apparently we used to have some of the lowest rates in the area.

I don't have documentation for that.

But with the fixed cost, I understand why the rates have to go up if the usage goes down.

But then the rates have got to go up again because the usage goes down when the rates go up again.

Well, when the rates go up again, then it starts to become economical to do all these wonderful water-saving things like buying these new washers that use 60% less

Low Flesh Toilets, all that sort of good stuff.

Well, that's going to make usage go down and rates go up again.

And I see a death spiral that somewhere along the line, this can't continue to happen.

Thank you, Mr. Smith.

Colette Hall, 101 Robertson Lane.

This increased utility rates is really a tax.

Since we had the drought in 2002 in that time frame, I used less water and therefore I have less sewage.

And I'm also very, very careful and cautious about my use of natural gas.

So the increased utility rates for my family is a tax because I am not using more of these substances, I'm using less so therefore it comes out to mean a tax for me and I don't, I kind of don't like the word fee.

And I am taking it on her word that Ms. Dixit, when she wrote this article that's in today's paper, you probably all saw, she quotes Mr. Ray

and the quote is, the primary reason they're going up, and it means the utility rates, is because of the debt service we're having to pay on the capital projects.

Now, Mr. Wray just gave us an explanation of why the utility rates are going up.

Maybe I didn't hear him, maybe he did say it, but I didn't hear him say, talk about the debt service.

And I know that in the next public hearing we're actually going to be talking about debt service, at least indirectly.

So, I'd like a little bit of explanation about that.

Thank you, Ms. Hall.

We'll be happy to provide it.

Good evening, DeeDee Smith, 2652 Jefferson Park Circle.

And I'm going to sound a little bit like echoing others, but well, first of all, actually, I would really like some more explanation about the rate stabilization funds, where they come from.

Sounds like a subsidy to me.

I'd like to know whose pocket those are coming out of.

So if you could do that in your discussion, that'd be great.

But it seems to me that we are in a bit of a quandary because we do profess ourselves to be a green city and we show it, we prove it.

We have a great environmental sustainability policy.

You all have been very proactive in water conservation models.

not only rebates but you've got some fantastic rain harvesting systems out there now and in the works.

You had one tonight on your consent agenda and you've got the fire station coming up.

The fire chief tells me there's fantastic water conservation measures there, and Smith Aquatic Center is going to show it.

So you all are walking the walk, and it's working.

Our demand is going down.

And while I can't prove that it is those things, it seems pretty obvious it is.

But then, of course, as our demand is going down, that's why our rates are going up again, what everybody's telling you.

And I'm just wondering, is there a plan

Is there a long-term plan to address this?

Because it's not going to work, particularly as our capital projects are requiring so much and some are really absolutely necessary.

Fixing those leaks is really important.

But that's going to bring our demand down again.

And are the rates going to go up?

It seems to me we do need a long-term plan for reducing spending, for not taking on

Thank you, Ms. Smith.

Betty Mooney, the City of Charlottesville.

Well, I am convinced now that my water rate and sewer rate is going up that I'm going to buy low flush toilets.

I mean, I think that's what many people in the city are going to do.

As you raise the rates, we're going to be convinced that it's economical for us to use less water.

and I echo everyone else.

There's got to be a plan here.

I know you're all very serious about this, but I still don't see a plan for how we're going to address this.

I also want to reiterate that the 2008 CIP from Urbana is based on totally inaccurate

Financial information now.

It's all the old numbers.

That is the dam when it was 37 million.

We now know that's totally wrong.

That's the pipeline with the wrong cost.

Those are all the wrong costs.

They have not updated that CIP.

Even though we bring this up all the time, it has not been updated.

It's 2008, but it's based on old information from 2004.

So this is critical that you all get involved in this because this is a huge, huge freight train coming toward us in expense in this city.

And the more you raise your rates, as everyone has said, the less water we're all going to use.

I'm putting in rain barrels this year when I do a new roof.

I mean, on and on and on.

We haven't begun in this city to start to save water.

You've seen some of the information from your own people.

We've only on the tip of the iceberg in this community of using water-saving devices.

Businesses haven't even begun, and once their rates go up, they'll be the leaders.

So I need to see a plan from the council on how you're going to address this, and I hope it'll come soon, because it can't come late.

Thank you, Ms. Mooney.

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

Is there anybody else who would like to speak on this matter?

Well, I was going to ask Mr. Ray or someone else to address the issue of stabilizing the water rates because I was concerned about that last year when that subject came up.

Basically, when you're looking at the capital improvement budget, you're looking at maybe three to five million dollars a year depending on the utility.

That means that your debt service cost, and I think that was maybe the confusion

I've talked about debt service and I've talked about capital.

Debt service is basically paying back the bond that you issue for the capital project.

So if you have a $5 million project, you pay it back over 20 years or maybe $3,000 or $400,000 a year, that's the debt service portion of it.

The stabilization, when it's collected from developers and it's based on the size of the meter, which determines the fee, is basically for new development to buy into an existing system that already exists

So it's basically paying the customers in Charlottesville that are already here.

All of that money is put into a stabilization fund.

And as the rates go up during the years, you use stabilization for two methods.

One is to, so you don't see spikes, you know, 10% this year, 2% this year.

You try to stabilize until you get to the point where you reach the base if you issued all your CIP and so you get $3 million a year debt service.

But it's starting at one and going to three over here, say, five or six years.

We're using $200,000 in the water utility and $300,000 in the wastewater utility.

Well, the key is that over that period of time, once you exhaust what you've done to your infrastructure improvements, that debt service payment, which is a large component of your rates, is going to be flat for a while and theoretically start going down at some point in time.

And isn't it true, I mean we've heard people say well our rates are going up and therefore the bills are going up but the reality is if usage declines then your bill isn't necessarily going up.

Right, if your usage declines, your bill's going to go down.

It's not a real simple concept to grasp because you think you should save

But somebody is going to pay.

The people who are conserving are going to end up paying, or you not paying basically is what it comes down to.

I don't know who to ask this question, you or Lauren.

On the first page, there's an increase of operating expenses by $57,747.

I'd like to understand why is that operating expense going up?

Is it to include personnel or does it include some other expenses?

What's driving the increase in operating costs is what he's asking.

Let's see, the total operating cost for water utility went up from $9,085 to $9,143, which is about $50,000.

Yeah, debt service funding alone went up over $200,000, just debt service costs.

This is on the water side of the house.

I think it says operating and maintenance increasing 50,922 if you get into the detail of that.

We've got some additional fees from Department of Health that we have to pay this year.

That's about 32,000.

And then we have other

Contractual fixed fees that have increased of about 18,000.

So that pretty much makes up that 50,000 on the water side.

On the wastewater side, it's a little less in that it's 34,233.

Of that, about $10,000 is due to retirement cost in that line item.

And we've also seen an increase that we haven't really

taken into account before we decided to do it this year.

Other questions or comments?

Thank you.

I just want to thank the speakers who pointed out once again

the need to figure out a cost effective long term solution to our water supply plan because that's ultimately going to be the biggest driver for utility rates in the city and in our region.

So it's just one more reminder of the need to try to come up with the most cost effective long term water supply plan.

Unfortunately, the other big driver, of course, is sewer costs.

Our sewer system is in desperate need of an upgrade

We know there's at least $20 million of expenses that we just can't ignore.

That's not as optional as a brand new dam that we may not have to build depending on how the data shakes out.

But I think you're absolutely right in terms of we need to continue to remind ourselves to come up with a smart long-term water supply strategy so that we don't end up seeing rates go through the roof.

I'll move.

All right, it's been moved and seconded to carry forward to our next meeting on second reading.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Wray, Ms. Hildebrand, everybody who's involved.

And we are now going to move on to

Another public hearing and resolution regarding our latest bond issue, $16 million.

It's the first of one reading.

And I have here, Chrissy Hamel.

Is this?

Session planning training.

Okay.

You've been anointed, apparently.

I've been anointed.

Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor, Members of Council, the resolution before you authorizes the city to sell general obligation bonds up to $16 million.

The bonds are part of an adopted capital improvement program for the 2009 and 2010 fiscal year.

You'll find a summary of the projects listed on page one of your memo and a more detailed description on page three.

We met with the rating agencies a couple weeks ago and we are confident that we will be maintaining our AAA rating but we are expecting the final and official report on that later this week.

The current sale is scheduled for early June with the closing anticipated mid-June and being a AAA rated community we expect excellent rates.

And none of these, these are all projects that have already been approved by council, they've already been adopted in our budget.

That's correct.

And one question that I actually asked during a work session and got the answer to, but I'm going to ask it publicly just so other people can hear the answer.

Oh, I'm sorry.

You're right.

My fault.

We do have a public hearing.

Nobody has signed up.

Oh, actually, no.

We do have Miss Hall.

Sorry, Miss Hall.

We do have one speaker and Colette Hall.

This is where the rubber meets the road, Collette Hall 101, Robertson Lane.

You know, I miss the former city manager, Mr. O'Connell, because one thing he was adamant about and consistent with was maintaining our AAA bond rating and having a

and trying to maintain a workable debt service.

Now, we're talking about a bond issue of $16 million.

That's a lot of money.

I read in the extended agenda what each one of the projects are for.

I have no issue with each one of the projects individually.

But if you add these $16 million worth of bonds, I would like the answer to is,

How many bonds do we have out there right now that we're paying debt service on and that we're going to add the 16 million to because in the issue just before us about utility rates, Mr. Ray was quoted in the newspaper saying the main rate

The reason our utility rates are going up is because of our debt service.

So where the rubber meets the road is, are we going to be able to maintain a triple A bond rating if we keep borrowing massive amounts of money?

Now I also agree with you Mr. Mayor that regarding sewer, we need to fix the sewers.

Thank you, Mr. Hall.

Is there anybody else who would like to speak?

I don't think I would give my address the first couple of times I was up here, 810 Lucas Avenue.

In answer to Ms. Hall, according to the audited financial statements as of June 30th, 2009, there are $82 million worth of bonds outstanding.

and just a question, is there an easy way for the citizens of Charlottesville to purchase part of this bond issue without having to go through some sort of broker dealer?

Interesting question.

Anybody else like to speak?

We will close the public hearing.

Mr. Ray, do you have any immediate comment or Ms. Hammel, sorry, immediate comment or response to either of the comments?

I do want to reassure the public that the city is in excellent financial health.

All of the bond items before us tonight were approved in Mr. O'Connell's tenure.

And as you heard before, our AAA rating is not in any jeopardy.

We are one of the best fiscally managed small cities in the country thanks to some of the same people that are standing before us right now.

I just wanted to add that as of March 31st, our total general obligation debt outstanding is $85.8 million.

With the addition of this bond issue, we will be just over $100 million.

Right, I think it's important to note that that may sound, it is a lot of money, but compared to what other cities, we're actually very low in terms of indebtedness.

Are we retailing this?

Alright, any other

Comments, questions?

Well, that was a comment.

It was approved by the city council.

I'll move the resolution.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any further discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

Your motion carries unanimously.

Thank you very much, Ms. Himmel, Mr. Ryan.

Then we have several reports before us tonight.

We have three reports, first on neighborhood advocacy, then we will be hearing a report on the 250th anniversary of the city of Charlottesville, and then finally a report on Jefferson School Project.

Thank you, mayor and council.

Mr. Jones and I are going to tag team this one a little bit.

I'm going to start it and then Mr. Jones is going to jump in.

But at your February 16th meeting, we came before you with an outline of

a proposal or some suggestions to you based on some items that had come up from city council discussions and outlined a way we thought that a position of neighborhood advocate or a neighborhood advocacy might work if it were created.

And just to hit a few of the highlights of that, we explored three alternatives, one of them

that didn't get much traction even with us was to take the city clerk's position and revamp it as you went through that process and include that with it.

Of course you chose to go a different direction so that one's completely off the table I guess.

The other was to create the neighborhood advocate position and then one of two alternative locations either in the city manager's office or maybe in NDS and then restructure NDS.

The discussion of that night seemed to lean towards if you did it you would be

interested in it being in the city manager's office and that was actually where we felt that it ought to be if it were created.

Several things that we felt that this position could do, although like many positions that are new, it will grow and find its own way as it exists.

Coordination of all city activities with neighborhoods, publishing newsletter, development of websites and social networking with our citizens, maintaining consistent and accurate neighborhood contacts, and then attending a large number of neighborhood meetings and being there as again the city person for them to go to.

recruiting and encouraging volunteers to organize and serve neighborhoods and actually either being an organizer or recruiting organizers to help get more volunteers and more citizens engaged and then possibly managing the Neighborhood Leadership Institute.

We also looked at several other communities.

This is not a new idea.

It's one that's used

across the country and in Virginia in particular to provide better access for our citizens.

But a couple of places that we looked at in particular were Portland, Oregon and then James City County and their goals of such a program are very similar and we see this being the same but really the goal of doing this would be to increase the number and diversity of people who are involved in volunteering the community and neighborhoods, excuse me, strengthening neighborhood and community capacity to build identity skills

Relationships and Partnerships, increased community and neighborhood impact on public decisions, provide tools and resources to improve neighborhood and community livability and safety, and providing accurate information to the community.

Also to empower citizens through training, information sharing, and use of resources, facilitate direct linkages, and involving all community assets in building and expanding safe and healthy neighborhoods.

So we felt like there were

Examples from around the country, there were benefits to such a position if you chose to create it.

I would also remind you that we have saved a position in the budget so you would not have to create a position or budget if you chose to go this route.

We would just transfer the funds and that position to the appropriate place.

and you could move from there.

At the meeting on February 16th, you asked us to take about three months and engage the community some more to hear what citizens and neighborhood groups had to say.

Thank you Jim.

communicated with all the neighborhood representatives and neighborhood presidents and met on two occasions with the neighborhoods.

One a special meeting specifically on this issue and then another meeting which was our regularly scheduled city manager slash city neighborhood representatives meetings and the reaction was mixed.

We also encouraged folks to send us emails and communicate in various different ways to provide us with information on their thoughts and opinions.

I provided this information for you in the notebook on March 18th that is.

We had representatives from Belmont, Fry's Spring, Meadowbrook Hills slash Rugby, North Downtown and Willa Mills who attended that meeting.

Belmont was in favor of the neighborhood advocate's position.

They felt that it could be proactive in preventing maybe some of the issues that have

that have arisen in Belmont over the last few months or so.

Specifically the debate over noise could have been headed off a little bit earlier in their opinion.

Fry's Spring,

Very interesting, there were a number of residents in attendance from that neighborhood and they were uniformly against the position.

Some of their concerns, they felt that the position would not have the independence that they would need to be effective.

They felt that each city department and the city councilors should be the advocates and not necessarily one representative.

They felt that neighborhood development services should be renamed and remissioned to focus more on neighborhoods and less on development.

Some felt that the money for the position could be better used elsewhere.

And although there was a strong support, and this was kind of across the board, for improving communications with the neighborhoods, but they felt that we could do that with current staffing that we have now and we didn't have to rely on a new position.

Meadowbrook Hills felt they were also opposed to the position.

They felt the city manager's office was already doing a sufficient job in responding to their needs.

And they brought up an issue that was echoed by a couple of different folks in the meeting that they felt that the city manager, that a new permanent city manager should be in place before a decision would be made concerning this position and how they would interact in the city manager's office and with the rest of City Hall.

North downtown opposed the position as well for some of the same reasons that I just mentioned including waiting for a new city manager and the Willam Mills neighborhood was very supportive of the position.

They felt that the NDS planners could not

be true advocates for the neighborhoods while they conducted their other duties, working with developers and that type of thing as they're going through site planning processes.

And there was concern about the plight of smaller, less active neighborhood associations.

They felt that there was a need to have someone in City Hall working with them and trying to help increase their numbers, but then also to help revive dormant neighborhood associations as well.

So those were largely the responses from the first meeting.

The second meeting that we had on April 15th, the Martha Jefferson neighborhood attended that meeting.

They felt that once again we should wait until a permanent city manager was in place.

There was some support for including the management of city volunteerism with this role as neighborhood advocate if in fact the council moves forward with the position.

Johnson Village was in favor of the position because they felt it could help develop strategies for neighborhood associations to increase their numbers and activity within the neighborhood associations.

Okay.

I would like to make a few comments.

I think that

This position is just really not doing much good in my mind at least.

I think it is just adding one more position.

It will, what needs to be strengthened is that all of us should be neighborhood advocates, including the staffs of the planning department as well as other departments.

So I think it is a, what will happen will be, this experience has been tried a few times before in this organization.

At least in my recollection, we had one neighborhood

an organizer, an advocate, about 20 years back, who worked at the City of Marriott's office, it was a colossal failure.

I still see a reason for creating one more position, one more.

If you want to help neighborhoods, you need to help neighborhoods' decisions to get stronger, and not supplant them.

I agree that we do need to improve communication with the neighborhoods and that there has to be a better way to have our hands on the pulse of what's going on in each part of the city, but I agree with

Council Huja in that I don't think adding another position is a way of getting there but having more accountability with the resources that we do have.

I believe if we have this discussion it should be under the guidance of our new city manager at least and maybe the new city manager might have other ideas that we haven't

I actually like, you know, I'm definitely an advocate for this sort of idea, but I have no problem with waiting until we have a city manager in place to implement something like this.

I think that it's important that the city manager be part of shaping that.

But I will say that I'm

sort of fascinated with the dynamics of the responses.

And I don't think that any of them are, you know, I think that people are being really honest and bringing good information forward, and I really appreciate the fact that so many people participated in giving their views.

I do see, looking at this, that it's the more affluent neighborhoods that don't feel a need for this, and I think that that's what I see a lot in the city.

is that the more affluent neighborhoods are getting pretty much what they need and don't see a need for something to improve things.

I see that the more kind of less affluent and working class neighborhoods are the ones who seem to feel a need for this.

and I see it too and I think the people who weren't even represented here in any of these neighborhoods are Tonsler wasn't here, Locust Grove wasn't here, Starr Hill, there are neighborhoods that didn't even come to the table and to me that shows even more a need for such a position.

So I think that these are

I basically agree with Mr. Huja and Ms. Edwards and I think that

You know, I think the discussion we've been having on how city council can reach out to the community, as was pointed out, kind of does help solve some of the problems.

And so, for example, I think in addition to trying to have a city council town hall type meeting in different neighborhoods, I think really trying to schedule

Councilors to attend Neighborhood Association meetings on a regular basis would be a good idea, you know, so that as a way of making sure that there aren't neighborhoods with concerns that are overlooked.

And just to be clear, this isn't really adding a position.

It's a position that was held while we considered this.

I think Ms. Szakos hit the nail on the head in terms of the dynamic and the response and the reality is I can count on one hand the number of well-functioning, well-informed, well-engaged neighborhood associations that we have in the city where we have at least how many defined neighborhoods do we have?

18, so 23 neighborhoods in this city and there's less than five that I can honestly say have thoroughly well functioning neighborhood associations.

Would you agree with that characterization Mr. Tolbert?

And so, and I think for those neighborhood associations like Ms. Hall's and others that are well run, that are well representative, that keep themselves well informed, they don't see a need for it.

But I think for many other neighborhoods, I think we can do more.

I've never been wedded to the idea that necessarily has to be a staff position in this office or in that office.

I've been open to ideas and I'm glad that you all went out and got ideas about what it could look like and looked at best practices from other communities.

I don't want to put the idea on the shelf.

But I'm happy to wait until the new city manager comes into office and let him or her take a look at it and come back with a recommendation.

Just to add one, I sympathize with the general concern we have and Ms. Szakos mentioned that there are in lower neighborhoods, there are not good well organized neighborhood associations.

But I think that should happen.

We should encourage them.

That's why we should, our current staff can help them out.

But they have to organize somehow themselves.

I guess that's what I'd like to see, that we may table this for now, but this is also an opportunity for us to explore how we can provide another approach to how we communicate with our neighborhood associations.

Because I don't want to characterize the neighborhoods that don't have an up and running association as not being a good neighborhood.

Because there are active people in every neighborhood, but they may not necessarily show their activism through an association.

and maybe it's the culture of the association that keeps people from having the desire to participate in the first place.

And he said they weren't at the table, so maybe we need to go to their table.

For example, it would be helpful if we knew when they meet, where the time and dates are, things like that.

But again my point was that the vast majority of them don't meet on any kind of regular basis.

And so that was one of the beauties of this idea is that to have some mechanism, whatever it ends up looking like, to help neighborhoods get mobilized.

Right, because trust me, when something's not going right, they're meeting somewhere.

They're just not inviting us to the meeting.

I think one thing that we need to remember though, as city council,

that when we talk about we need to take responsibility for something one way that we do take responsibility for something is by I mean the staff is there to kind of you know put forth the policies that the council enacts ultimately and so I think that if we want to get serious about addressing these things one way we do it I mean we can all be sort of big brother and go to meetings but I think we can also have

enacted through staff support so people can do it themselves.

No, it's just one way of getting the advocacy versus accountability is what I said the first time it came up, and that hasn't changed.

Whose responsibility is it within their job description to do outreach?

Who's responsible for that and what does that look like?

What does that outreach look like now?

How are people in the airfields that they're being, not only communication, but the response to the communication?

One of the things which I know in previous years, CDBG staff has taken effort to help organize in those six neighborhoods which happen to be in poor neighborhoods in our community.

It's also an opportunity to maybe take a holistic approach as we explore this because if this is indigenous to our poor neighborhoods then what do we need to do with our neighborhoods to make them middle class?

point well made.

Is that fair to say?

There you go.

Thank you very much.

I'm going to switch around the agenda because the next item was to be a report on the 250th anniversary.

I know there's a number of people who are here for the following report.

So in the interest of not making you wait around any longer than necessary, we're going to next do the report on the Jefferson School update.

And here to present is the Chairman of the Jefferson Partners, Mr. Martin Burks.

Great.

Craig, we have a PowerPoint.

Take down the history thing.

I'm sorry.

Ah.

Ladies and General Counsel, it's an exciting time to come before you again to talk about Jefferson School.

Just take a moment and imagine in the fall of 2011, that's the way Jefferson School is going to look.

Just wonderful.

Next slide.

On the 29th of April, we held a community update.

First of all, it was very well attended and, but most importantly, what we presented was very well received.

Next slide.

A quick overview.

In 2002, there was a task force that y'all formed to determine the feasibility of Jefferson School.

In 2007, the partners was formed

to determine the financial feasibility of refurbishing Jefferson School.

I came back with a briefing to tell you that we could do it.

The city in 2007 set aside $5.8 million for this project.

There were some absolutes.

We wanted to explore the federal and state tax credits,

that Jefferson School would have a Heritage Cultural Center and that Carver Rec would continue its relationship with Jefferson School.

Next slide.

This is the mission of the partners as well as the mission of the foundation and I will cover that foundation and partners a little bit in the next slide.

Take a moment and read that please.

and let's read together the first sentence.

Dedicated to preserving and sustaining the Jefferson School as a vibrant and meaningful community resource, providing cultural, educational and recreational opportunities.

That's powerful.

That's what Jefferson School did in the past.

That's what Jefferson School will do in the future.

Next slide.

Project status.

where we hired a project manager and design team to execute the planning phase.

We established an organization structure which is the foundation to do the long-term sustainability of Jefferson School.

Our construction should be complete in fall of 2011 and we've identified approximately six nonprofit organizations to occupy and lease within Jefferson School.

Next slide.

The financials, it's a 17.3 million dollar project, big money.

We have 5.8 from the city and we're pursuing a loan of 11.5 million of which 6.7 is a permanent loan, 4.8 will be back ended through federal and tax credits.

We've also secured

thus far and hope to secure much more a $3 million private support toward the August project.

Next slide.

The partners responsible for the refurbishing of Jefferson School and the first five years of operation.

That's important because we have to go through the period of time where the tax credits will be recaptured.

After the first five years, the foundation will take over the responsibility of running the school.

However, the foundation from day one is responsible for fundraising, bringing money into the organization.

And then the other piece is the Heritage Cultural Center.

And you can read their responsibility there.

Next slide.

The schedule.

The key things here in this busy slide is the start date.

We hope to start August the 20th.

That's the first red bullet on the left.

We have a couple little small hurdles and one of them is the city maintenance move out and that's dependent upon how quickly the Avon project is done.

We have lots of things to get done.

but most importantly, tenant occupancy, September the 20th, I mean, September of 2011.

Okay, next slide.

Again, here's a little site plan.

The lower is the First Street, the left is Commerce, Fifth Street, the lower right is the parking area, the parking deck, the entry in the middle and the park to the left.

just right off of where the original site.

And of course, Covid Wreck to the right, Heritage Cultural Center on the top on the left.

And I can say that the little shaded area there is what we're looking for to be Java because in the papers you've already seen where Java is trying, really wants to have a cafe in that area, okay?

Back up, back up.

You see where the entranceway, right above the entranceway where you see the little trees there, that's where we want to have the CAFE.

And we have a little site rendering that will show a little bit more on that.

This is the exterior rendering.

As you can see we can only

Spruce up a bit on the outside, but we can do quite a bit in terms of the plants and that sort of thing, the landscaping.

Next slide.

A little hallway rendering.

As you can see, we can have pictures that will depict more of the history of Jefferson School as well as the community.

and the next slide will show a little bit about the cafeteria.

We hope to open that particular area up a bit.

You can see we have a door there and have a cafe right on the edge of this particular rendering.

Hope that answers your question a little bit.

Next slide, please.

Okay.

It's down to business.

We're ready.

We have approximately five banks that have expressed an interest in doing the loan.

So we need to get on about the business of transferring the property and transferring the money.

Next slide.

I'm really pleased that they have come this far and we look forward to the opening ceremony.

I'm more than pleased.

I think this is a great accomplishment by the members of the Jefferson partners.

Please stand.

And I really appreciate the fact that with all of the possible options of what might have happened to this property that this is going to be one that's, you know, we talk about the work that you've done and it's amazing, but I think the real work is going to be what's going to come out of this in the future and just kind of going on into the future.

I think that's terrific.

Mr. Mayor, we still have some details that need to be worked out before we can get to the point where we convey the property.

I think there's also some site planning issues that we're working on with neighborhood development services at this point.

finalizing the funding for the project as well.

They're getting very close as Mr. Burks mentioned.

Well, I'll echo the comments that other counselors have made.

Thank you for your work in getting this project to this point.

It's very exciting to see it coming together, and I really appreciate all your efforts to bring it to fruition.

Thank you very much.

The last item on our regular business tonight is a report on the 250th anniversary celebration.

A lot of people may not know that in two years, the year 2012, the city of Charlottesville celebrates our 250th anniversary.

And we want to have a big party.

We want to do something.

I am open to all suggestions.

Good evening Mr. Mayor, Ms. Vice Mayor and Members of Council.

Congratulations, you're about to turn 250 years old.

As the Mayor mentioned in 1762, which was on the seal in back of you, which is now covered up, that was our first charter and it was a formal charter.

done in 1762, so in 2012 we will hit that milestone.

We were founded, if you didn't know, along a trade route, which was called Three Notch Road, and there's now a historic marker outside of City Hall that notes that.

As we are in the very early stages of getting ready for a possible celebration and community event, City Council did put aside $50,000 in 2009 for the planning and the implementation of a birthday celebration.

To date, and we are in the early stages, we've met with several city councilors and want to thank Vice Mayor Edwards as well as Councilor Brown and Councilor Huja for their comments so far.

We want to involve everyone and certainly wanted to bring in the community as much as we can over the next couple of months and certainly in the next couple of years.

We've also met with several partners in the community that might be pivotal to making this a very successful event.

and we've used some intern support from the Youth Internship Program in the summer to do some research on what other cities have done across the country so that we might emulate what they've done and maybe learn from some of their mistakes going forward.

I've included a lot of those results in the background material that I gave you so I encourage you to read through that but I did want to go through just a few ones that were familiar themes and that staff noticed.

Number one, this event, whatever it turns out to be, should be a community driven event and one that is not staff driven more as a direction by the community as opposed to staff dictating what should be done.

This event should represent a broad range of historic views of all backgrounds and cultures in our city and should look at both topics we are proud of and topics that we are not proud of.

events should be educational in positive ways, events that will pull people together and should involve things of interest to and involving as much of the entire community as possible.

Partnering with supportive agencies, most importantly the Albemarle Historical Society as well as the Historic Resources Committee.

Other partners might include the Boys and Girls Club, Big Brothers Big Sisters, other community groups that appeal to our youth.

So to get things started there was a universal theme pretty much with everything we researched and everything that we've heard and that is to get a planning committee together, one that's mixed with staff, council and most importantly community.

Another idea was brought up to perhaps commission a local author or a series of appropriate citizen authors to publish a complete history of Charlottesville and perhaps this could be sold as a commemorative to raise money for a local charity that might be appropriate for

involving children and students at all levels and finding some sponsorships so the city can share in the funding of the celebration.

Perhaps a video project, church involvement should be encouraged, Chamber of Commerce involvement should be encouraged.

and

guiding leadership of interested

We thought it was an appropriate time to start this process now and get your opinions so that we can get started and have a very successful 2012.

We've talked to some agencies, the Festival of the Book, we've talked to some individual historic

Folks that are very involved in the history of Charlottesville, don't want to put their names out there in case they don't want their names quite associated yet.

I really think this is a great opportunity to highlight our community and

and in the 250th year, it doesn't happen very often.

I'll be very happy to take part in it.

Anyway, I can help out.

I think you're moving in the right direction.

Having just come out of the dialogue on race this weekend, talking at the action forum and the small group, which was not very small, that I was in was the education group and one of the

Big things a lot of the groups really had come out urging us to do was to tell the whole history of Charlottesville and teach it to our kids and I think this is a great opportunity to start building that as a big community event coming out of that.

The other piece that I

I think that's a great point.

It is a decision point to make.

Do you want to have this a community event or broaden it to be more of an international or national event?

And I think both have great value.

And we could have events all through the year.

There's no other community in America where the three American presidents walked around and interacted with communities.

And very few that have been founded in 250 years.

One thing I would add though is that if we do want to expand the scope of our reach, there's a cost that's associated with that.

And there could be some opportunities for public-private partnerships as well.

So that's something that we have to keep in mind.

Let's just echo the comments that Council Szakos made in that I want us to be real clear

and honest about the role that slaves played in building the city, the role of York in helping Lewis and Clark and just that we're not proud of our past but we're not afraid to acknowledge it also and there may be a way to tie in some of the action comments that did come from the dialogue was to have a commemorative

a marker or a pipe for the Charlottesville 12 that integrated the schools.

But to be able to tie in tourism with the African American community as well in a way that we haven't done in the past is maybe an opportunity just to put the entire timeline together.

What I added to the list was the idea of having a time capsule.

I think another aspect is I don't think we do the best job of teaching our own children about the history of this community instead of developing a local history curriculum for our schools that tells the good and the bad.

That tells the honest story about our history.

My one concern, which I know you're aware of as well, is just making sure that we're not sort of

stumbling over each other's feet in the planning of this.

Because I know the historic society has already started planning something for the 250th.

We have a historic resources committee that has some amazing talent on it.

I just want to make sure this is all very well coordinated so that we can maximize the resources we do have.

So I know you're aware of that.

Absolutely.

But thank you for getting this conversation started.

I'd like to maybe sit down with Mr. Meeks and who's the current chair?

Are you the chair?

Who's the current chair of our Historic Resources Committee right now?

Do you know Jenny?

Helena, that's right.

Right.

Maybe we'll get a small group together in the next couple weeks and figure out, because if they've already got a group that's meeting and planning, I don't see the need to create a separate group, but I just want to make sure it's all coordinated.

Thank you very much.

Okay, we have two items from our consent agenda that were pulled for further discussion.

Mr. Mayor, first of all I want to say that I really, totally, wholeheartedly support the sister city effort which we have worked on.

I'm especially pleased to see Africa represented.

I'm hoping in Duke what will be Asia will be represented also one of these days.

So I support the idea very much so.

I support the expenses as suggested here except for one item.

I think when you have guests coming to visit you, we want to be a good host and expenses relating to welcoming our guests here will be appropriate.

One thing which I object to is plane tickets for people who are coming to visit us.

I think that should be their own responsibility.

If we had to pay for any plane tickets, I would think we would all pay for the people who are leaving from here.

We need to go from here to there.

And there may be people in this community who can't afford to join a delegation like that.

But there's one thing I would object to.

Do we know the relative average income of someone in Winneba as opposed to Charlottesville?

I don't have the number off the top of my head, but that is the major issue.

Certainly any government officials coming from Winneba will have access to funds for plane tickets.

And they might not know other people that they could fundraise from like we might be able to if we wanted to come from here.

And I should note that this allocation is meant to be matched at least a dollar for dollar, I think it's even mentioned in this memo, at least a dollar for dollar match from private sector sources and or in-kind sources.

There's a lot of expenses that go into hosting a delegation of this, an organizing delegation of this nature.

No, I have an objection to return the favor.

My only objection is using public funds to buy tickets for the citizens from our side.

I'm actually, we have a commission that has a budget out of which this would come, I assume.

And one category of visitor that I would particularly welcome would be someone associated with their schools as a way of kind of helping open the door to exchanges or school children type visits.

And that's certainly one of the categories.

Actually, both of those categories have been discussed.

Okay well I think Mr. Huja I appreciate you noting your concern and I get the sense that I think the majority of council is okay with the proposal as is and we appreciate your support certainly for the allocation as a whole and for the Sister City program.

Second.

Second.

Any further discussion?

Please indicate your vote.

It passes unanimously.

Thank you very much.

And then lastly, I had asked the item related to Belmont Bridge.

We have an opportunity here for what we call a revenue sharing, a participation and revenue sharing program to help generate some funds for repair, if not replacement of the Belmont Bridge.

So we have to find a million dollars out of our next year's capital improvement budget to reallocate for the Belmont Bridge project.

Is that correct?

Well the remaining four point some million dollars left to reach the full project estimate to take us through construction.

Is that correct?

I know we've asked for some revenue sharing.

I don't know if we've asked for the full amount, but

Out of 9.2, about 2.7 would be local dollars that we're not currently planning to spend towards this project.

Okay, so we would have to reallocate some odd million dollars from other capital projects for a project that we were hoping the state would pay for out of their funds.

That's correct.

The reason I bring it up obviously is because we've got a long laundry list of other capital projects like Old Lynchburg Road being one example.

We've got a number of capital projects that

Keep in mind that we do reallocate every year.

Every year we do CIP and also the major safety concern in terms of infrastructure wise

The question is how likely is it to get done in the foreseeable future if we don't put money into it ourselves.

I think there's nothing that indicates money is going to come loose.

I think it's 2018 now?

If we were successful, as Angela laid out, with this year's revenue sharing next year and the next year, we could conceivably do it in fiscal year 2014 under that scenario.

Or that the bridge will last that long.

I'm sorry?

Right.

We'll be careful saying that.

I don't think the bridge is in danger of collapse, but there are issues with it, significant safety issues, especially with the sidewalk on the east side that is in really bad shape.

And we're looking at incurring substantial repair dollars out of local budget in the next few years just to keep it going.

We've never had a formal process.

In our conversations with VDOT, what's fundable and what we need, we tend to bring them to you and ask if it's okay for an application for those.

We were not eligible until three years ago, I think, for revenue sharing.

I want to make one more comment.

What we do, I hope that we'll think very carefully about the design of the bridge.

We've done some good bridges in the city.

I'm glad you said that when we went through the RFP process to select the engineering firm my engineers on staff didn't appreciate it when I said anybody can design a bridge but in that setting we need more of the appearance of the bridge than how it functions as a bridge and so while we've got to have engineers what I meant was exactly what you're saying and

Because it's a federal project you never know I mean there might be some money that would come in that's not dependent upon the state's allocation

Alright, let me go back to my earlier question.

Again, what elevated this project versus, for instance, we've got Hillsdale Drive, which is also another project that's out there that we're waiting on state funding for.

We've got a number of other transportation related projects.

Two things.

One is that when council last voted on priorities, this was your highest priority.

Any other, did you have something you wanted to add?

I'm sorry, I cut you off.

No.

Okay.

I'd just like to offer one more thing.

I think to me the most compelling answer that you gave is it was a council priority.

Because I would like, now that we know that we are eligible for these, to have some sort of process

Well and I think the reason

Yes.

The previous funding went to, for instance, to enhance the Meadow Creek Parkway-MacIntyre Road interchange to help make sure we had adequate

or better than adequate bike ped facilities there.

I just want to clarify one more time for the public's knowledge that this application does indeed mean that we are going to have to reallocate a million dollars from other capital projects next year if we're successful to meet an obligation that currently we were hoping, perhaps naively, that the state would fund.

It's a little frustrating because that's other projects that we're going to have to put off to pick up a share of the state's burden.

Am I unfairly characterizing it?

It's been moved.

Has it been seconded?

Any further discussion if this is on first reading, first to one reading?

If not, please indicate your vote.

Passes unanimously.

Thank you very much, Mr. Tolbert.

Thank you for sticking around, Ms. Tucker.

Any other business before council?

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

Good evening, I'm Peter Klayman.

I live at 407 Head Street in the city.

There are several items where you talked about capital budget expenditures on the agenda tonight.

and I got a very responsive note back from the budget office on a comment I made a few council meetings ago questioning what the dedication of or the relationship between capital expenditures, particularly on highway projects, and what the commitment to maintenance expenditures were in each succeeding year.

and in fact I brought it before council and it turned out that the numbers that were in the budget at that time were lower than the actual expenditures and was all clarified indicating that for the

the average roadway lane mile that the city was having to meet the requirement for maintenance per lane mile was about $19,000 per year of which the city actually paid $7,000 of that $19,000.

The rest was covered by VDOT.

But as we talk about all of these other capital projects, I think it's also important to recognize that there is a

a relationship between the capital dollars that are expended on a project and what the commitment and maintenance is that you're making.

So as we talk about projects where we need to find in the budget x millions of dollars to meet the capital need, we also need to consider the fact that we're going to have to meet a maintenance need in every succeeding year once those projects are built.

Bridges are more expensive to maintain than roads.

much more complex structures, they undergo a lot more weathering and other issues.

So I hope that as you consider some of the discussions about finding money

Also add on the fact you need to find earmarks of some sort or other to pay the maintenance.

Now I know there's many unmet maintenance needs in the city right now, especially as a result of the snow and the plowing and lots of damage done to infrastructure.

So as we add to that, I think we need to really be careful

We don't get ahead in terms of city investment in projects that we will not be able to maintain and we will pay dearly later on.

So I hope you'll consider that.

Thank you, Mr. Kleeman.

That's a point very well taken.

Anybody else like to speak?

Mr. Smith?

I was here in 1962 when we had our 200th anniversary.

Meeting is adjourned.

Music by David Bowie