City Council Meeting   10/18/2010

Hey!

We're going to begin with a couple of recognitions and we have some guests here tonight from

the First Tee program and supporters from the First Tee program and I have a couple of people and a couple of organizations we want to acknowledge who are here with us from First Tee.

In July of 2010, Tony Lu, an Eagle level and five year participant in the First Tee of Charlottesville, was selected to participate in the Home Care and Hospice First Tee Open.

Tony, who's a junior at Albemarle High School, was one of 78 First Tee participants selected from across the United States.

In its seventh year, the tournament is a unique tour event that pairs juniors with PGA Champions Tour professionals and they play as a team.

The tournament took place September 3rd through 5th at both the famed Pebble Beach Golf Links and Del Monte Golf Course in California.

The event is a partnership with the PGA Champions Tour Monterey Peninsula Foundation and the First Tee to promote and reward participants

of the First Tee Life Skills curriculum.

This character development experience gives youth an opportunity to develop life-enhancing values such as confidence, perseverance, and judgment through participation in golf.

And here with us tonight, we are proud to recognize and congratulate Tony Liu for being the First Tee chapter participant in the Home Care and Hospice First Tee Open at Pebble Beach.

Represented our community very well.

Well, first I just want to thank the First Heat program for not only what all they've given to me, but to the entire community as well.

And Philip and his staff have done an amazing job with this community.

It's grown a whole lot.

I've been with this program since the very beginning, and it's amazing how much growth we've gone through.

And yeah, the experience was amazing.

It was mind-blowing.

the best golf experience I've ever been through.

And getting there in your own Pebble Beach, Pebble Beach Golf Links, host of this year's U.S. Open, just so surreal.

And I mean, just everything.

I played a practice run with Ben Crenshaw and I just got to sit down and eat breakfast with Tom Watson.

So it was just, it was an amazing experience.

I learned a lot.

I had a lot of fun.

Great.

Congratulations.

Thank you very much.

We also want to publicly recognize one of the strong supporters of the First Tee program.

In June of 2006, Farmington Country Club became the first recognized chapter affiliate for the First Tee of Charlottesville.

Farmington has generously provided use of their facilities for teaching the First Tee life skills youth development curriculum and golf instruction.

In July 2007, the First Tee Invitational Golf Tournament was established to raise funds to augment chapter services for its participants.

The tournament has been a tremendous success and is strongly supported by the region's business community.

To date, through tournament proceeds, member donations of equipment, facility use, staff time and other services, Farmington Country Club has donated over $115,000 to the Charlottesville chapter.

It is with much appreciation and gratitude that the City of Charlottesville recognizes and extends a thank you to the Farmington Board of Directors and the club's members, especially Michael Millen and Mev Gilmer, who also serve on the First Tee Advisory Board, for use of their facilities.

We also extend a special thanks to Wayne Hall, Farmington Assistant General Manager, and Rob McNamara, Farmington Golf Professional, for their support of First Tee of Charlottesville and promoting positive youth development in the greater Charlottesville area.

Mr. Mayor and Council Members, on behalf of Farmington's Board of Directors and the members, we thank you for the recognition and Farmington is happy to participate in this program.

Five years ago or six years ago now, I don't remember which, when we first got involved,

We were convinced it was a great program.

We thank the city for having it as part of your Parks and Rec department.

Brian Dailey and Phillip C. especially has done a fantastic job and we thank you and we plan on continuing to help and see what we can do to keep it going forever.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

We also have some special guests with us tonight from our adult education program in the city and we have a proclamation we'd like to read.

Whereas a well-educated, highly skilled workforce is essential to the economic growth of the Charlottesville community, and whereas more than 5,000 adults in Charlottesville lack a high school diploma or GED certificate, drastically reducing their chance to earn a living wage and support their families,

and whereas the emerging 21st century economy will be driven by jobs that will require lifelong learning from employees and require a higher skill set and whereas the GED certificate is a nationally recognized high school equivalency credential and is accepted by most colleges, universities and employers as evidence that the holder of the credential possesses knowledge and skills necessary for further career education and training.

and is the passport into the 21st century workplace.

And whereas the Virginia Workforce Network has encouraged local WIB, Workforce Investment Boards, to partner with the various training, education and employment programs in Charlottesville, and whereas Governor McDonald has identified the awareness of and access to GED programs as a key strategy to prepare Virginians for high school career tracks.

and whereas local workforce investment boards, one-stop comprehensive workforce centers, the Virginia Department of Education and the Virginia Workforce Network's other program partners throughout the Commonwealth have joined efforts to increase GED certification.

Now, therefore, I, Dave Norris, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, do hereby recognize October 18th to 23rd, 2010 as GED and Career Pathways Week in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Thank you, Mayor Norris and members of the City Council.

and I'm here representing the Adult Learning Center, our teachers, our volunteers, and our adult learners.

We have a very robust program in Charlottesville.

Last year, about 800 adults went through our doors.

Now, they're not all GED students.

We also have English language and other kinds of programs, but probably close to half had a goal to get their GED.

We've seen a great increase in 18 to 24 year olds entering the program.

I think if we, as the proclamation states, look at education as economic development, you can see that education at this level is probably the best investment in economic development.

Before I left the office this afternoon, I answered the phone and there was a professional

who wanted information about the GED for some of her clients.

She told me that she actually was a GED graduate and she was about to start her master's program and now she really wanted to help other people to get their GED and that really is the promise of the GED program.

It helps people move forward and it opens doors and I want to especially thank you for your support of the program over the years because it takes a community to run a GED program.

Thank you, Ms. Erno.

Recently, I believe three of our, three of my fellow counselors were, I think, didn't you go too?

Okay, well, three of us were down at the Virginia Municipal League conference or some associated programs with Virginia Municipal League and while there received an award

in recognition of our environmental policies here in Charlottesville.

The Green Government Challenge, which is a friendly competition designed to encourage implementation of specific environmental policies and practical actions that reduce the carbon emissions generated by both the local government and the broader community.

Cities, towns and counties can become a certified green government.

Many of these actions can save local governments money and save our taxpayers money.

The Virginia Municipal League's Go Green Virginia initiative recognizes that communities need to take innovative steps to reduce energy usage and promote sustainability.

This is, I believe, the second or third year in a row where we've been honored for our green community efforts and I wanted to share this certification.

We have a gold certification for the city of Charlottesville and it's presented, I believe, Ms. Szakos accepted this on behalf of the city.

Actually, Mayor, this award is appropriately for the entire city council for your leadership

Our role in this was to try to get the appropriate paperwork done, but this award really goes to this body for your leadership and really moving us in this direction and helping us sustain the effort.

Mr. Mayor, I wish I may add one item, a challenge for Mr. Watts.

and I neglected to note Maurice Jones, our acting city manager, is actually at a conference this week and David Brown is out of town on business but I know they both miss being here tonight.

We now have some announcements to make.

Wednesday night is going to be one of those nights when I think all of us wish that we could try locate.

There are several different things going on and a couple of the other counselors are going to tell you about some of them.

But one that I just wanted to call particular attention to is there's going to be a vigil at UVA on the rotunda steps on Wednesday evening at 7 o'clock.

It's to commemorate the young people who have taken their lives as a result of harassment and bullying about their sexual orientation.

And this is something that is a national issue.

It's something that's probably a global issue.

Right now it's a city issue.

We need to look at it as a city and make sure that we are a community where people feel valued and welcome.

And so I will be at this event.

It's sponsored by a group called ACCEPT, which stands for All Charlottesville Caring for Every Person Together.

And its mission is to express Charlottesville's commitment to prevent bullying and to promote acceptance in our community and in our schools.

Could you tell them the time?

Thank you, Ms. Szakos.

There are two other events happening Wednesday night at 7 o'clock as well.

One of which, the City of Charlottesville, City Council, is co-hosting an event with Bike Charlottesville at City Space on the downtown mall, which is a presentation by a group from the Shenandoah Valley Bicycling Coalition, which recently took a fact-finding trip to Davis, California, which is widely considered one of the most, if not the most, bicycle-friendly communities in the country to learn how Davis

received a platinum ranking in the Bicycle Friendly Community Competition and they are going to share their lessons learned with us and let us know what Davis has done to earn that ranking and hopefully we can learn from their examples.

So 7 o'clock this Wednesday, the day after next at City Space in the Market Street parking garage on the mall side.

Also at 7 o'clock on Wednesday, the Legal Aid Justice Center has a very important presentation on school dropout, the school dropout issue.

And they're going to be airing a documentary made about the dropout rate.

and to have a panel discussion afterwards.

It's a program emceed by John Grisham at 7 o'clock at the Paramount downtown.

So another very important event and as Ms. Szakos said, I wish we could clone ourselves so we could be all three of those.

On Thursday, October 21st, this Thursday, at 4 o'clock at McIntire Park, we have a very special ceremony to honor one of the heroes, the living heroes here in our community, Mr. Chubby Prophet.

We are going to be officially renamed, we've already officially renamed it, we're going to be unveiling the signs that make it official, the new Chubby Prophet softball complex at McIntire Park, 4 o'clock Thursday of this week.

That is open to the public.

This Friday at 12 o'clock noon we have the ribbon cutting ceremony for the new Smith Aquatic and Fitness Center which is a beautiful, beautiful facility paid for by your tax dollars and I hope many of you get a chance to enjoy this new facility.

The grand opening again this Friday

12 o'clock noon.

Of course, Smith Aquatic and Fitness Center is located next to Buford Middle School on Cherry Avenue.

There will be a casual reception to follow.

This Saturday, October 23rd, from 2 to 5 p.m. is the annual Downtown Safe Halloween Festival with games and slides and bounces, pumpkin and face painting, costume contests, prizes, and safe trick-or-treating on the downtown mall.

It's always a big hit.

and so I see some kids with bright faces in the back who are very excited about Safe Halloween.

Are you guys going to come dressed up on Saturday?

Yes.

Good.

Okay.

It's always a great time.

So please join us for that.

Let's see.

Oh, one last note.

Absentee voting has begun for the general and special election happening November 2nd, 2010.

The last date to request your absentee ballot by mail is October 26th.

And the last date to absentee vote, oh wait, sorry.

This is confusing.

Okay.

The deadline for sending it in, it doesn't say?

No.

Alright, but the last day you can request it to send the name by mail is October 26th, or you can absolutely go in person up until October 30th.

And the City of Charlottesville General Registrar's Office is located across the street in the City Hall Annex, open Monday through Friday, 8.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m.

I did have one announcement.

Yes, Ms. Edwards.

In our continuing effort to address the infant mortality rate in the city, the city of Charlottesville and the Thomas Jefferson Health District will present the next 2010 health summit on substance abuse in pregnancy, recognizing the problem, seeking solutions.

It will take place on Thursday, October 28th in city space at the Community Design Center.

There are a couple of ways that you can register.

You can actually walk into the Park and Recreation Department in the City Hall Annex building and register.

Or you can go online and register at recservices at charlesville.org and that's R-E-C services.

at Charlottesville.org or you can call 970-3260 and there will be free parking in the Market Street and West Street garages for the Health Summit participants.

Thank you, Ms. Edwards.

Any other announcements?

I did want to note that there will be a brief closed session at the end of tonight's City Council meeting.

Mr. Brown, I don't know if you have language you want us to read now, or do you want us to read that at the end of the meeting when you're prepared to go into closed session.

So this will be a closed session to discuss process for conducting City Council meetings.

City Manager interviews.

And we will also, within the next 15 days, be conducting said interviews at a confidential time and location.

So we will now open the meeting up to matters by the public.

As is our practice, when you come forward, please state your name and address and keep your comments to three minutes.

I'm Jim Nix, I live in the city at 2402 Cary Lane.

Mayor Norris, City Councilors, I recognize that you're struggling to find a compromised water supply plan that meets the needs of our water users, satisfies state and federal regulators, and while also taking steps to preserve the utility of the Rivanna Reservoir.

I believe that such a compromise is achievable if based on a proposal that Councilor Szakos made at your initial discussion on this topic a month ago.

That proposal calls for building the Ragged Mountain Dam to full height, but filling it only far enough to provide the water we are projected to need for the next 15 years or so.

Now, construction of the complete dam is essential to satisfy our county partners, and they have offered to pay the difference in cost for a full rather than a partial bill.

Meanwhile, city and county would jointly pursue dredging of the reservoir to restore as much as possible of the area lost to siltation

and preserve it as an open lake.

In addition, dredging to restore lost volume would also be undertaken whenever the opportunity exists to do so economically.

Planning for the new pipeline essential for any version of the water plan would continue with a target for completion within the current permit, which I believe ends in 2023.

And both jurisdictions would of course continue to stress the need for water conservation.

The beauty of this plan is that it provides a path around two huge stumbling blocks that have greatly frustrated opponents of the current plan.

Number one is the demand projection.

Many feel it to be excessive, but it would prove difficult to modify without running afoul of the regulators.

With Councilor Szakos' proposal, the ultimate size of the reservoir in Ragged Mountain would not be determined by projected demand, but rather by the actual demand that develops as county population grows and conservation measures take effect.

If the increase in consumption by the added users is fully or even partially offset by the conservation measures, the resulting demand will be lower than projected and the size of the lake can remain significantly smaller than it would be under the current plan.

The second obstacle, which has frustrated those who favor dredging, is that the regulators may not consider temporary storage in projecting the volume of water available for community water supply and for maintenance of adequate flows in the rivers.

Volume that will be lost to silt is considered temporary storage.

However, with the Szakos proposal, future decisions concerning reservoir volume will be based on actual experience, not projections.

So as long as the complete infrastructure is in place, decisions on the size of the Ragged Mountain Reservoir

would be made on the basis of actual demand and storage volume to include the volume restored by any dredging already completed or under contract.

and by treating dredging as a multi-purpose activity separate from the water plan, a significant portion of its cost could potentially be spread to all county taxpayers and not just to county water customers.

To be honest, I would much prefer to see full implementation of the original plan, but I recognize that compromise is necessary to address the concerns of all with a stake in the outcome.

It is important to find that compromise quickly in order to take advantage of the current contracting environment that could save millions of dollars for our water users.

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

Agenda item number three, report resolution, quote policy for use of neighborhood CIP funds, end quote, first of one reading.

I request that you remove item 3 from the agenda until the city manager has his meeting for neighborhood reps on October 21st and in fact until neighborhood associations and neighborhoods in general have had a chance to review and comment on this resolution, perhaps by a special NDS meeting for city neighborhoods.

In the recent past we had a CIP neighborhood project program that was a fiasco.

It required the neighborhood associations and neighborhoods to secure three contractor quotes for projects they selected.

Eventually NDS realized that this was beyond neighborhood association and neighborhoods and they changed this requirement.

The only reason North Downtown was able to complete the application was because we were able to piggyback on an ongoing project.

By asking the city to re-include an important piece removed from the project, our neighborhood was awarded the funding.

I was the board president at the time and so I was very involved in the process.

Most neighborhoods did not know about that funding or how to successfully complete the paperwork.

I feel confident to say that neighborhoods do not know about this current resolution.

And by the way, I emailed this to 24 neighborhoods today and I got a reply from four presidents who said, what?

As counselors have often commented, some neighborhoods are more organized and equipped to handle a resolution like this.

Others, unfortunately, are not.

If you want to help neighborhoods, the city needs to carefully include the neighborhoods at the beginning of the process and not at the end.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Hall.

Hi, my name is Liz Palmer, 2958 Meacham Banks Drive.

At the last council meeting, during comments from the public, a citizen referred to a comment that HDR consultant made during a public meeting at City Space last summer on dredging.

When asked if HDR looked at small bites dredging, the consultant said that it was not part of their scope of study.

This answer was unfortunate because it was interpreted by a lot of citizens to mean that RWSA asked them not to look at small bite stretching.

But in actuality, it was not part of their scope of study because they were asked

to try to decide what was the most economical way to dredge and to pick out what they thought was the most economical way and because of limited funding they were supposed to limit their scope to that what they thought was best.

And so if there is any doubt on counsel's mind that that was not the case and that RWSA asked them not to look at that, I'd like to suggest that since you paid for the study that you write a letter to HDR

and ask them to clarify that and you might get some information that's helpful.

I think I mentioned last time that Gannett Fleming in 2004 did a small bite study where they removed, planned to remove 100,000 cubic yards once a year for 50 years.

for a total of 5 million cubic yards.

And their per cubic yard cost was very, very close to HDRs.

So the two studies together can give you a pretty good indication of what it costs.

And also, Mayor Norris asked the HDR consultant what he thought about incremental dredging.

and if it was more economical.

And he said in this chamber that he did not believe so.

So I'd like to encourage you, if you have questions about that, to contact HDR.

Thank you, Ms. Palmer.

Rebecca Quinn, 104 4th Street, here in the city.

Good evening.

There are old facts and there are new facts.

Throughout history there have been facts that people have known as absolutes that were subsequently replaced with new facts.

Other than some physical constants like the speed of light and the gravity constant, there are very few facts that should be characterized as immutable and unchanging.

Of course I'm speaking to the evolution of information about various aspects of the 2006 community water plan.

The supporters of the earth and dam would have Charlottesville, I mean the citizens of Albemarle County believe that only the facts that were known in 2004 are the relevant facts.

They are suggesting that everyone ignore new information as it becomes available, specifically information that this council has requested.

But one of the facts they rely on is among what I consider the squishiest, and though that is not an engineering term, but the squishiest of all informations, and that is the projected water needs.

Another very squishy fact was the hyperinflated cost of dredging, which led to a summary dismissal of dredging as an alternative.

But I'll leave that one for another day.

The entire plan revolves around a single number.

that 50-year projected water use of 18.7 million gallons per day.

Despite abundant caution about uncertainties and analytical methods based on population projection and past water use, the dam supporters treat that number as a constant.

Interestingly, a recent fact that doesn't seem to rise to the same level is the one-time step down of 1.8 million gallons per day, which was the opinion of Rivanna's most recent consultant.

Not that I agree with that study.

In fact, I think it has many of its own flaws.

But shouldn't that new fact alone drive the plan back to the drawing board for some sort of adjustment?

Months ago, Rivanna stated that the updated demand analysis would be prepared to meet the state's 2011 deadline to produce a comprehensive plan.

More recently, Rivanna suggested that a report of the current system and proposed project would satisfy state requirements.

I submit that that interpretation is definitely not

supported by a plain reading of the regulations.

Council's September regulation resolution called for 10-year evaluation of actual use and population growth.

Now that we have nearly 10 more years of data, I think it's time to take the lead and redo the demand analysis.

Shouldn't we now get better information based on new methods?

And I have a shiny new copy of the manual, which I would be glad to lend.

There's another reason to press for this analysis.

If we don't need an 18.7 million gallon per day solution, then we don't need to build what I've heard called a steak and lobster water plan.

paid for, of course, by rate payers.

Bob Finley.

Ma'am.

Ma'am.

I'm Bob Feller, Atlanta 1 East Jefferson Street.

Once again we have heard from a community leader and from a pamphlet that has been distributed to county residents that we can build a new dam and all that goes with it, the pipeline, the pumping stations, the easements, the condemnation proceedings and the inevitable lawsuits that will follow those condemnation proceedings.

All that and more without raising rates.

The clear implication is that the water ratepayers will bear none of this cost.

Who then will bear this enormous cost?

The people who say this want citizens to believe all the dam and pipeline work will be done without our water bills increasing.

How in the world are they going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a major public works project and not increase our water bills?

Will they just call the increase a different name?

Maybe a consumption investment or something like that?

This is my water bill from 2002, February, at a rate of 2.3 cents per gallon.

This is my water bill from 2010, September, at a rate of 5.7 cents per gallon.

That's a 250% increase

and that's without a new dam and a new pipeline and all the rest of it.

The concept that you can build a public works project of this magnitude and not raise water bills is absurd and disrespectful to the community.

But maybe I'm being too harsh.

Maybe they have found a way to fulfill their promise to their constituents to hold the line on public expenditures.

Maybe zero-based budgeting actually does work.

Or in this case, it is hundreds of millions of dollars for an unneeded dam and zero for everything else.

That's their zero-based budget.

The city has the right idea, phasing.

It has already saved us from serious blunders that would have thrown good money after bad.

Conservation, repair the spillway at Ragged Mountain,

and Dredging first.

Then take stock and see if we need further measures.

The citizens for a sustainable water supply plan have never said we will never need a new dam.

But first things first.

Thank you, Mr. Fenneman.

Richard Statman, 116 Olinda Drive, Charlottesville, Virginia, Mr. Mayor, Councillors, Mr. Watts, Mr. Brown, thank you for the opportunity to speak to Council.

I want to take this time to thank you for your patience and hard work to help develop a water plan with our partner Albemarle County.

Much effort has gone into this.

Your unanimous approval of an amended plan which spoke to our community's desire for maintenance dredging and a phased approach to the Ragon Mountain Dam height

for conservation and for respect for the natural environment is very measured and thoughtful.

Our mayor has spoken to all these matters in a public blog available for all of us to see and to comment on.

Since that evening, our partner in this process, the county, may be taking a different course.

Approximately two weeks ago, a county supervisor on a local radio show promised a fact sheet on this most important issue.

Staff was working on it now, he claimed.

In a troubling note, this supervisor went on to say that the feeling was that the county does not want the city to be determining their water needs.

This brings us to the insert I now have in my hand, made available to the public by a local news outlet.

I can only say that if this is a document representing our partner's view of the process, I am concerned.

City residents should be concerned.

100,000 people in the county should be concerned.

An insert that belies any sense of cooperation, of mediation, of partnership, or of trust.

An insert that references nothing and annotates nothing.

An insert that doesn't really rise to the level of being a document.

An insert that in my opinion at best is a ferrago of misinformation and selective editing of what purports to be facts.

Imagine someone in Crozet or Hollymead opening their tax bill and viewing this insert.

What would their reaction be?

One might give pause to who their elected officials and appointed officials are and exactly what they're doing.

How does this insert act in their best interest?

Whose interest does this insert really serve?

Imagine you're a realtor, showing homes to a couple desiring to move into our area.

What does this area have to offer, you're asked.

And you think about this document.

Imagine you're our city's largest local bank, providing mortgages and loans into our community.

Imagine your dismay viewing this.

How can this possibly be helpful?

Imagine you work at UVA Development or help manage UVA's real estate holdings.

What would this insert possibly advance except doubt and division?

The insert is an egregious example of part of the community that's unwilling or unable to work to a common goal.

disappointing doesn't cover my feelings.

As city councilors, I urge you to ask for an apology and retraction of this insert.

As I stated in a previous appearance, councilors have a legal and fiduciary obligation to the citizens.

This is not a small matter.

I ask city and county residents, local bankers and developers to look at this insert and say what I say to all those who put it together.

Have you no shame.

Thank you, Mr. Stavran.

I came tonight with some prepared remarks and then I heard Mr. Nix at the beginning state some things that had me rather confused.

But I'm going to head and read

A good part of what I was going to say and then ask some questions.

A few weeks ago, on September 20th, I saw your council meeting where you came up with the water supply plan.

This was a beautiful example of what the legislative process should look like.

First, you had listened to the people, to citizens interested in the water supply problem.

You had gathered new information from engineering experts.

Each of you spent time pondering all this input and arrived at a possible solution.

You were willing to change your minds.

Very rare thing these days.

On September 20th, you discussed your various ideas in a very common civil manner.

You compromised among yourselves.

And you came together.

You came together

on a plan that you should all be very proud of.

Your plan solves the water supply problem in the most cost effective and environmentally sound way possible.

And when I say cost effective, I'm saying saving $25 million up front.

And I can give you the data to show that.

It does not rely on guesstimates of water usage decades from now, but rather it can be adjusted depending on actual usage.

And as a bonus, it restores the beautiful reservoir that can continue to be used for boating and fishing.

Now, I don't know if Mr. Nix's comments tonight about one of the counselors

coming up with the alternative plan is true.

But if it is, it is quite shocking to me that here you have the whole council coming together.

And then one of the councilors goes off instead of acting as a team.

And I don't know if the rest of the council is consulted about any of these things or not.

that Commissioner Szakos has been talking about.

But I would assume that after all the effort you put in to bring yourselves together, that you would continue to work together and not be seen at least as going off on your own, making your own deals.

That's all I have to say.

But anyway, I really

Thank you, Mr. Repas.

Good evening.

I'm not going to talk about water.

Do you believe it?

I'm actually here tonight to talk about trees.

Although I'd first like to say if you ever want just an amazing experience, go to a GED graduation.

When I was on the school board, it was one of my very favorite things to do.

They're so inspiring and just so moving.

It's always great to hear about that program.

But anyway, I'm here to support your discussion of a tree commission.

I think it's a really great idea.

I read your background material and I understand why there might be some hesitation.

We have a wonderful Parks and Recs Department.

We have a great service in the Planning Commission and Neighborhood Development.

All of those things I know have roles in our tree protection.

But I think a tree commission could really serve a very

Not different purpose as much as a really auxiliary purpose and one that would very be supportive of a lot of the efforts of the Parks and Rec and Planning Commission and Neighborhood Development.

It can be formed any way you want it to.

You don't necessarily have to give it lots of power if that's what the fear is.

But, you know, we just have really such amazing trees in this city.

and there's a lot of people who know a lot about trees who can really contribute a lot.

And what I would really like to see a role in the Tree Commission would be as a liaison with some of the independent groups, the non-profits or the community groups who are doing things particularly with education with trees.

And I think it would serve a really important role in that function.

You can kind of even start slowly and see where it goes and how it could help.

Thank you, Ms. Smith.

My name is Bill Emery.

I live at 1604 East Market Street.

I mentioned I was going to bring you a copy of the 1975 Street Tree guidelines on CD.

I think maybe Francis Fife would remember whether it was Mr. German or somebody who put this plan together back at that time.

But I wanted to speak in support of your

discussion about a tree commission.

And also I want to thank, I can't recall the names, but I guess it would be Parks and Rec, the Department of Neighborhood Services, or no, NDS, excuse me, the Department of Public Works, the IT Department, the Department of Forestry and Virginia Tech for the excellent work in putting together our urban forestry management plan, which I think you guys approved

in June of 09 or something like that.

But the 1975 street tree guidelines sort of is a cautionary tale for the urban forestry management plan.

These plans are, and I don't want to insult horses, but they're horses without a rider.

And we need someone who is willing to invest the time and the energy to follow up

You know, just to discuss the 80 tactical actions that are listed in the back of the Urban Forestry Management Plan.

In summary, the Urban Forestry Management Plan said that this plan, like our forests, should be treated as a living entity, which is in need of a regular checkup, the occasional adjustment, and a healthy environment in which to grow.

Well, in 1975, the Street Tree guys suggested

having essentially what their term was for tree commission.

I think it was a beautification commission.

I really think we need that sort of public buy-in and public participation.

And without it, I think this plan will go the way of the 1975 plan.

It will accomplish very little.

Thank you, Mr. Emory.

Good evening, I'm Jay Willer with the Blue Ridge Home Builders Association.

Later this evening, perhaps much later this evening, you're going to hear from Jack Marshall about the ASAP plan that you have helped fund.

I commend you first for

asking them to come and speak to you.

You've put some money into it.

It's very extensive research, very carefully done.

And it's the right thing for you to do.

When you do that, however, I'd ask that you listen very carefully and that you listen critically.

And I don't mean critical in the sense of being negative.

I mean thinking carefully about what's being presented, reaching your own conclusions rather than the conclusions you're being offered.

It's a classic approach to standard debate of creating some image or some standard that you create and you hold your opponent or the other side to.

I've read most of the ASOP reports, they're extensive, I just have two of them here in front of me.

but throughout the reports and perhaps throughout Mr. Marshall's presentation you'll hear a phrase about biological capacity.

That's the point where I ask you to be very careful and thoughtful as you listen.

As I understand their definition it says we should somehow limit our impact on the environment to the capacity of the physical geography inside Albemarle County

perhaps inside the city of Charlottesville.

I'd suggest to you that that's a kind of an artificial standard.

I did some research that suggests that even the Monacan Indians with a much smaller population did not live solely on this piece of land.

They traded outside.

So I'm just suggesting that you think carefully about that standard and about what you hear.

It's a very important topic that needs careful consideration.

Thank you, Mr. Wheeler.

That's the last person to sign up to speak.

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

My name is Kevin Lynch, 609 Locust Avenue.

I'm here to speak on the subject of this insert that was floated last week by the County Service Board and the Board of Supervisors.

It's a troubling document.

It contains quite a lot of misinformation, much of which you've heard about this evening already.

I want to ask you about a piece of information here.

I'm not sure it's misinformation or not, but I hope that you will tell me that it is.

There's a statement in here that says,

More than 70% of the $140 million dollar cost of the plan goes to repair or replacement aging infrastructure and it's agreed upon by all four boards that this is needed regardless of which plan for acquiring additional water capacity.

is implemented.

I find that statement very troubling as it seems to me that this water plan is not about replacing or repairing existing infrastructure.

There's clearly nothing in there about repairing the Ragged Mountain Dam which is

in pretty good shape except for the spillway.

There's certainly nothing about maintaining the South Fork Reservoir.

What there is are a lot of projects that are being billed as replacement projects but are essentially

large expansions.

For example, we have a Mormon's River pipeline that's currently delivering 4 million gallons a day, which the county would like to replace with a pipeline that can deliver 25 million gallons a day.

I would put to you that I think you've done a great service to the city by checking these numbers with respect to Ragged Mountain Dam.

And what we found with Ragged Mountain Dam is while the county was saying, oh no, the dam's falling down, the dam's in terrible shape, in fact, it's in very good shape.

and I believe if you scratch the surface very much of that Mormons River Pipeline you'll find the same thing.

I think that's essential that the city does this before agreeing to any cost share.

We're told that the Mormons River Pipeline is old and therefore it needs to be replaced.

I've seen the pipeline, I've been along the

at least the part that's exposed.

There doesn't seem to be anything obviously wrong with it.

Certainly it's old, it's cast iron, it's built to the same material as the Eiffel Tower and it's several decades newer.

I urge you don't take that as face value and get an estimate yourself.

The estimate that is

The official estimate that's on our books that was done by Ganna Fleming back in 2006, I believe, was $13 million to replace that pipeline.

A $13 million replacement is not equivalent to a $62 million new pipeline.

Now, I've heard, you know, maybe we can't

Go with the Gannett Fleming numbers, it might not be $13 million.

It might not be.

It might be $20 million.

It might be $30 million.

But I guarantee you it's not $60 million.

And I strongly suspect that if someone looked at that pipeline with an unbiased view and not trying to push one outcome or the other,

You might find that that pipeline is not in need of repair, but in fact can serve this community for decades to come.

Just as our South Fork Reservoir can serve this community for decades to come, and just as the Ragon Mountain Reservoir and dam can serve this service for decades to come.

So this is a lot of misinformation.

I hope that you all haven't bought in on this.

Thank you, Mr. Lynch.

Anybody else like to speak?

We will now close Matters by the Public and open it up to Councilmember responses to Matters by the Public.

I'd like to make comments on two of the issues.

First comment by Colette Hahn about neighborhood CIP and its new version of it.

I agree with her that we should postpone it, and if neighborhood hasn't had the opportunity to discuss it, I think it would be ridiculous for us to adopt one.

And I have personally some comments about it.

Second, for the tree column commission, I was pleased to see from the land reason 1975, which I had something to do with,

So this is the third reincarnation we have now and I'm hoping to support it and I'm sure the council will be supportive also.

Thank you Mr. Huja.

I'd like to just specifically answer Mr. Repasse's question, which is that I had come into that meeting with an idea of what I thought we could come to as a compromise and that was what Mr. Nix was talking about and I think he said that in his comments that that was something I came here with.

I, in the course of our civilized discussion, heard what the other counselors were saying and I think that what we came up with was the thing that we could all compromise on and I stand by that at this point.

So nobody is sneaking around behind anybody's back.

But I think that that really shows the importance, one of the things that I really value on this council

is when we can find a unified position and depending on what the DEQ comes up with, I think we have more compromise to do at some point possibly, maybe not, but I believe that we do.

But I think that our unity is particularly important in the face of something like this proposed flyer that Mr. Staton and Mr. Lynch mentioned.

I think that by the county saying

and I don't know that they've said it yet.

It's proposed and I don't know at what point that has come out.

But I do worry that

Well, maybe I shouldn't even say I worry.

I hope that all parties will come into this process with us and the Board of Supervisors and the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority and the Albemarle County, you know, everybody who's supposed to be there.

I hope that we can all come in with open minds because we all need to work together.

Just quickly, I agree with Collette Hall.

Alright, we will pull item three from tonight's agenda and ask Mr. Watts to follow up with staff on pulling a meeting together as Ms. Hall suggests.

I want to thank all those who spoke about the water supply issue.

I too was troubled by some of the misinformation in that county letter.

Some of it is fairly blatant.

While I don't necessarily agree with everything that Mr. Linsch said, I do think they made some very good points about

the letter that went out or that's going out and I hope that Ms. Szakos is right is that we can all at least if nothing else agree on the basic facts because that would be a big first step and provide us opportunity to come to a good resolution.

So we will now move forward on tonight's agenda.

Let's see, I wanted to

I actually haven't discussed this with council yet, so I'm going to take a little bit of a risk here, but we have been asked to go ahead tonight and re-nominate Jason Pearson to the Planning Commission.

He has agreed to serve, continue his service on the Planning Commission, and I think they would like to have that made official right now.

He's serving sort of in limbo, and they'd like to see that made official, assuming councilors are okay with

Any discussion on that item?

If not, please indicate your vote.

So Mr. Pearson, you're up for another term.

Thank you very much.

And we did conduct Planning Commission interviews earlier this evening.

Item B is an appropriation of $247,036, appropriation of CACVB, Charlottesville Commission, Visitor's Bureau, Fund, Balance, second to readings.

Item C is an appropriation of $500,000, 2010 fast-charging electric vehicle research and development project.

Second of two readings.

Item B is an appropriation of $182,500.

Charlottesville Albemarle Adult Drug Treatment Court Grant Award, second of two readings.

Item E is an appropriation of $2,992.94.

Insurance reimbursement repair of damaged city vehicle, first of two readings.

Item F is an appropriation of $19,953 State Criminal Alien Assistance Program Grant for 2010, first of two readings.

Item G is an appropriation of $376.73 State Assistance for Spay and Neuter Program at SPCA, first of one reading.

Item H is a resolution acceptance of streets and public improvements in Cherry Hill PUD, first of one reading.

Item I is an ordinance text amendments for definitions and penalties related to the Historic Conservation District, second of two readings.

Item J is an ordinance Martha Jefferson, Historic Conservation District, second of two readings.

Item K is an ordinance electrical permit for electric plug-in vehicular charger, first of two readings.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any further discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

It carries unanimously.

Thank you very much.

The first item on the regular business tonight is a report and resolution regarding the Jefferson School letter of intent as before tonight, first of one reading.

Mayor and members of council, the Jefferson School partnership is continuing to move ahead with their effort in developing that project.

One of the things that remains to be done is to receive a letter of credit, a letter of intent, excuse me, from the city that we will move forward with a lease for the Carver Recreation Center.

I would caution the council this is not a detailed list that would require further, a lease that would require further action by the city council at a later date.

It does, however, help them complete the package

in order to get the necessary commercial loan.

This would provide for the city to lease approximately 33,000 square feet of space in a 15-year lease, which would be subject to the council's annual appropriation.

That would amount to an annual rent of approximately $390,000

a portion of that we would begin to include in the FY12 budget when you deliberate that later this year.

There is an escalation clause of 3% or the CPI which is ever lesser and the city would become responsible for grounds maintenance and the custodial maintenance of the parking deck

We would also be responsible for the maintenance of the city space which we are leasing which would include the utilities and insurance.

There are approximately 63 spaces in the parking deck that would be available for the programs at Carver.

We would be allowed to display signage which is approved by the BAR and the landlord will build out the property to meet the basic needs

of the recreation program and then we would provide the final equipment.

There's a provision that we could extend the lease an additional five years.

The city will not provide any personal or corporate guarantee for this project.

We will share

our financial reports and condition with the bank or lender.

And the purpose of this is to allow them to complete the package for the commercial loan and as I say this is not a lease, a formal lease will come back to the council at a later date.

Thank you, Mr. Watson.

Well, I just did the last motion.

So I make the motion to move forward.

Any further discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

Thank you very much and thank you to all the Jefferson School partners and supporters for keeping this project moving forward.

Next item is the Report Tree Commission and I believe, who's presenting?

Oh, are you doing the Tree Commission?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

The item on the agenda tonight is a report about the tree commission and this has come about because there's been some discussion lately among counselors and others about the need for a tree commission so we were asked to do a little research into what basically a tree commission might do and give you that information and then when we get through tonight if you feel that you would like to see us pursue a tree commission then we'll put together that information as a future agenda item and the necessary things to adopt it.

As some of your speakers have said earlier, a lot of the work that a tree commission might do has been ongoing and been done in the community with the urban forestry management plan, the tree packet and the BMPs for tree preservation.

That doesn't mean that that's everything, though, and as they've said, there's a lot of other things that could be done by a tree commission.

If you are to consider a tree commission, we would suggest that there are several things that we've seen from across the country in best practices that tree commissions do.

They are advisory primarily to councils, planning commissions, and a city arborist as they administer the land use rules and any tree protection or tree regulations or tree planning that we might have.

They could develop and recommend to council policies for tree ordinances or any policies for planning, care, and protection of trees.

They could act as an advisory capacity to all city departments regarding any projects we had and any tree protection and maintenance that was part of that.

They could develop and recommend a master list of street trees.

They could provide a great role in education and promotion

of public knowledge and understanding the benefits of appropriate trees.

There's a lot of things that you see they could do.

We also suggest that we need to be careful in crafting a charge because we want to make sure that we don't set them up to do things that are not allowed by state law.

But that's a minor part of it, but we just need to be cognizant of that as we go through it.

If you desire to put together a tree commission, we would bring you back.

and agenda item that would talk about numbers of commission members, the type of experience, length of terms and then their duties in some detail that you could react to.

And then just some other information related to this that we did have a draft ordinance on tree conservation of specimen trees that was presented in 2005 that included a beautification committee and that went to the planning commission first but didn't get any traction so that didn't go forward but I think that this would be a much broader

I did find an interesting quote in a publication about tree commissions from Penn State University that I thought summed up why we might want to consider one.

It said, tree commissions can have a great impact on a community's appearance and image as well as its public safety and comfort.

Commissions help champion and coordinate a comprehensive and expert program to manage and sustain public trees.

They provide long-term, stable management for a valuable, long-lived resource.

By forming a tree commission in your community, you can help improve the attractiveness of your community and its quality of life and environment.

I'd be glad to answer any questions.

I have one, on this you just say, budgetary impact not known at this time.

I think that that's another thing that we probably would want to know, just kind of

I have two or three comments I wanted to add.

I obviously support re-commission very much and I've been trying to do this for the last 15 years, but I'm glad it's again come back.

I would like to see that the criteria, 10 items which were listed, be included, but also besides that, the specimen tree issue should also be addressed in addition to these 10 items.

11th item I would suggest that even the urban forestry management plan has been completed but this commission ought to be mentoring it or supervising if you want to call it, following up on those issues, those recommendations so that they can be, even the staff will be doing it but somebody ought to be following on these concerns.

Right.

So that I would include as a part of the responsibilities.

I would not pay any compensation for them.

I believe it was Ms. Smith who made the comment about having the treaty commission serve as a liaison with other independent groups and nonprofits that are working in the field and I think that was an excellent suggestion.

If there's no other questions or comments, I would entertain a, I guess, are you looking for an actual vote from us tonight or just general direction?

Educational part is also very important for a commission like this.

Importance of trees, why trees are important.

And as you know, it takes about 30 minutes to cut down and 30 years to grow one.

Next we have a report from our friends with the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

For the last year and a half, almost two years now, the Housing Authority has been engaged in a very critically important conversation about the future of public housing in Charlottesville.

Worked with a consulting firm to develop a master plan for the redevelopment and revitalization of public housing in Charlottesville.

I'm very pleased to note that the Housing Authority Board recently unanimously approved that plan.

And here to present an update on the Housing Authority and the Redevelopment Plan and all the other good things they're doing is our friend Randy Bickers, Executive Director.

Take it away, Mr. Bickers.

Thanks for having us.

Is that my countdown?

It's counting down to blast off.

What we're going to be talking about here tonight is what we've been through so far with the master planning process, sort of where we started, what we've done, and where we are now, as well as future steps and then hopefully answer any questions that you have.

Starting off, sort of what we have right now existing, we cover 40 acres of land in the city, 11 sites, 7 neighborhoods, 5 school districts, 376 units of public housing,

I'd like to share just a few statistics to show who we're serving.

Average income of a public housing resident as of September 30th was $10,666 a year.

The average rent that they pay to the housing authority as landlord is $247 a month, and right now the minimum rent is $25 a month.

83% of our residents are below 30% of median income.

So 83% are in the extremely low income category.

We have an aging stock of housing, 30 to 45 years old.

Currently we have one bedroom to five bedroom units.

Concentration of one bedroom units at our elderly disabled building.

Crescent Halls, a few five bedroom units, not a whole lot of those, but a lot in the two bedroom, three bedroom, and then four bedroom range.

Currently, four of our sites have community centers.

Sort of as we started on this process, which was back in May of 2009, we had some sort of guiding principles that the Housing Authority had adopted to provide green, sustainable redevelopment as much as possible, to mix incomes where we could, also provide mixed-use opportunities at our sites if possible, some business opportunities, hopefully some resident-owned businesses coming out of that if possible.

We certainly wanted to help the economics of the housing authority sort of in the climate of shrinking federal subsidy.

We wanted to look at what we could do in the redevelopment process to help our economic situation as well as just basically improving that aging stock and replacing it where we needed to.

We also adopted a resident bill of rights as sort of the guiding document.

Amongst other things, which really focuses on resident involvement, including youth involvement, we guaranteed one for one replacement, so 376 units of public housing as we start.

We're guaranteeing that we return 376 units of public housing at the end of this process as well as giving residents who are currently living with us as we start this process the right to return and actually not just the right to return but the right to return to their site if at all possible and hopefully limit their relocation time to 12 months or less if we can.

So that's sort of what we used to start the process.

The process was divided into four phases, sort of an inventory analysis of what we have, a phase two, which is sort of a visioning stage.

What do we want?

What do we sort of best-case scenario, dream big?

What would we like to see at our sites?

Then the consultants brought back some options, some various things that we could weigh and decide on, and then phase four, the final plan,

which is their final recommendations of what we'd like to see and how do we make it happen.

As part of this process, we relied heavily on a redevelopment committee.

We had school board members, members of Legal Aid, FAR, the Public Housing Association of Residents, city councilors, development community, some of our community partners, PHA and MACA, amongst others, that sat on this redevelopment committee and helped

bring different issues to light, helped further discussion of what we'd like to see.

Obviously stressed a lot of the things that we talked about as we began the process, always keeping in mind the Resident Bill of Rights.

And as the process got on and further along, a lot of the discussion turned to the issue of density.

What's an appropriate density for our sites?

How do we truly change the income levels and mix incomes in a substantial way to hopefully change some of the social aspects of our sites?

How many additional units do you have to bring in in order to bring about a real change?

And as when Amy gets to her part of the presentation, you will see what that brought us to was that although we've adopted a master plan, we see it as a living document.

Final issues such as density, how many public housing versus tax credit versus market rate units, that will all still be decided as we enter the actual design phase and final plans for a given site.

So we learned a lot as we went through this process and sort of expanded our scope beyond just what can we do with our housing stock and what can we do just for the housing authority to a broader sort of discussion of what can we do for the surrounding neighborhoods and for the city as a whole.

So I think that you will see there's some variations that are in the final master plan that hopefully gives us some flexibility in accomplishing some of our goals.

Next slide just shows, I'm certainly not going to read through all these different partners and different people that we talked to during our master planning process.

We tried to keep this as open and transparent as possible and talk to as many of the different players as we could possibly bring to the table and we could think of.

that might have feedback, suggestions, ideas of what they wanted to see in a final plan and from our sites going forward.

So those are a list of some of our community participants.

We had probably, it was over 100 public meetings between our board meetings, redevelopment committee meetings, and then

We met a lot, probably meeting people out during this process, but got a lot of great feedback as well.

Next slide.

Another thing that we wanted to really keep in mind as we went through the master planning process is we're not just talking about physical changes to buildings and sites, but we're talking about hopefully changing lives in this process.

So we never wanted to forget about our residents and resident services.

And we really want to use this process to help sort of redevelop our resident services as well.

We've got some great feedback from a class, Suzanne Morse's class at UVA, did a great job last semester on providing some recommendations.

Holly Hatcher continues to lead our subcommittee for resident services as we go through this redevelopment process.

We're actually currently applying to several different foundations for a resident services coordinator to bring that staff position in-house under the Housing Authority's umbrella so that we can, as we begin to go down this road of redevelopment, keep the resident service piece in the forefront and start addressing these issues as we begin at the very start of the redevelopment process.

Thank you, Randy, and good evening, everyone.

My apologies for having my back to the audience.

I feel like this is a bit of an awkward way to do this, but as Randy said, my job is to talk a little bit about tonight the scenarios that are in the master plan.

We received the final copy of it on Friday, and we'll have electronic copies posted on our website within about a week or so.

so please be patient with us and we'll get copies available to the public as soon as we can.

Before we get into the individual scenarios I did want to make a couple quick comments that when we first started this process we asked all of our neighborhoods to consider changes to them and we began the conversation with residents by saying if we're going to become more dense we'd like all of our neighborhoods to consider adding more families to their neighborhood.

Some of our neighborhoods are very

We didn't want to target density in any one particular neighborhood but wanted to make sure that all of our families knew that everybody was being asked the same thing, that we weren't trying to add families.

and not Ed Families and other places.

The scenarios that you're going to see in the final plan are, many of them are the originals that were in the draft plan from December plus three new higher density options.

The drawings that you're going to see are the favorites of the residents and of the community members based solely on the scenarios that we've seen thus far from our consultant team.

So if you've been to any of our meetings, you've probably voiced comments that you liked or didn't like certain aspects of those drawings.

and that's perfectly fine.

We've taken all of that feedback into consideration.

We also know that these drawings are not set in stone, that there's plenty of room for revision and tweaking as we move forward, but that they were added to the plan because they received the highest amount of support thus far.

Two other quick things.

Comments are still being welcomed, so for anybody that's new to our process and would like to get involved,

Take a look at the information that's on our website and in the master plan and you can either call us or email us.

Our contact information will be at the end.

And lastly, several of the scenarios that you're going to see tonight involve land adjacent to housing authority land that is not ours and that we do not own.

The drawings at this point are just concepts.

We have not broached any of the adjacent property owners to speak with them about their land at this point.

So this is sort of a best case if we could have whatever we wanted.

and I'll point those out as we go along.

That being said, Levy Avenue is the first site that we want to talk about tonight.

To give folks a little bit of context, if I have a laser pointer here, which I guess I do not.

Okay.

On the left side of your screen is Friendship Court, a neighborhood in the corner of Garrett and Sixth Street.

To the right-hand side of this yellow, almost rectangular shape is Spud Nuts.

Hopefully everybody knows where the

Spudnut Donut Shop is one of my favorite places in Charlottesville.

And then the downtown mall will be to the north on your screen.

and the Pavilion and the Belmont Bridges on the right hand side.

So Levy Avenue we thought would be a simple place to start because we wouldn't have to demolish anything, we wouldn't have to relocate anyone, we'd be building new construction before we had to talk about moving anybody and then we realized as we got further and further into it that this is one of the sites that the neighborhoods had the most to comment on and so it became one of the more talked about neighborhoods which was a pleasant surprise to us.

As of the printing of the master plan, that yellow rectangle is the former Walker garage site, which we were in contract negotiations on to purchase and have since closed on that deal.

So now that parcel, in addition to the parking lot that we own, gives us about an acre on that corner.

In the master plan right now it shows 36 units of public housing because initially when we first started this was going to be a relocation resource for us and we were going to rotate families through as additional units were being worked on.

Since then we've had additional discussions both with community members and with the residents and we do not see this site ending up as solely a public housing resource but will be a mixed income, mixed use site.

Now that we have the addition of the new parcel of land as well.

So of all the drawings that we're going to show you tonight, this drawing is going to be the most different when it's built.

So please don't get too attached to anything that you're seeing for the Levy Avenue site right now.

Next up on our list is Crescent Halls, which as Randy mentioned is our site

which currently houses a majority of our residents who are elderly and or disabled.

It's the eight story high rise right across from the new ACAC on Monticello Avenue.

Hopefully everybody knows where that is.

Crescent Halls is going to get more of a gut rehabilitation than a redevelopment.

So we'll be keeping the structure of the building and we'll be looking to rehab both interior and exterior spaces.

On the top of the screen where the red and orange rectangles are, what we'd like to do is add

A bridge from the Monticello Avenue side of the building into the second story of Crescent Halls.

Right now all residents are asked to come around the building and enter from the back side of the building.

So what we'd like to do is make the building more physically accessible by building a bridge across on the second story as well as adding some recreation community center space and potentially

Light retail space on the Monticello Avenue side.

For those who are familiar with the site, you know that we just have a steep bank on the front side of the building and that land is not being used for anything right now.

Other than that, we're looking to make the units more physically accessible and visitable.

So we'll be moving some walls around inside to make the bathrooms a little bit bigger, make the kitchens a little bit bigger, because neither are accessible right now, with the exception of a few that we have renovated ourselves.

And then we'll be looking to rehab the first floor of our building, which currently houses a nursing clinic, a small computer lab, a couple community center rooms right now,

and our rental office is located in this building.

Oh, sorry, currently 105 families at Crescent Halls for anybody that's interested in the data data.

Next up is West Haven, which I think is our most talked about neighborhood.

It's our oldest neighborhood in Charlottesville and also our largest in terms of number of families that live with us here.

Currently, we have 126 families living on close to 10 acres.

So we're looking at

about 12 and a half units an acre for those who are interested on the density side.

West Haven is one of the sites where we're looking at speaking with property owners about adjacent parcels.

This rectangle on the bottom which if you can see has sort of a yellow dotted rectangle about it around it is I think two or three parcels that front on West Main Street which is at the bottom of your screen and what we'd like to do is

Our existing parcel sits behind that and it sits about 20 feet below Main Street.

So as you're driving down Main Street headed westbound, you probably don't even know that West Haven is sitting to your right hand side because you can't see it from Main Street as it is.

What we'd like to do is work with the property owners that own those parcels on Main Street to punch a new road through so that the neighborhood has an additional means of access into the neighborhood.

and the scenario that we're showing here would go from 126 units to 180 units and we'd go from 126 units of public housing to 90 units of public housing.

The remainder of those units would be tax credit units, would be affordable rentals that are non-subsidized and would be market rate units as well.

The next one that you're going to see is what we're calling the higher density scenario of West Haven.

As our board was working its way through the scenarios, it decided that it really wanted to push the density a little bit more than what they had seen in the draft plan in December.

So for three of our neighborhoods, the ones where we have the largest amount of land, they asked WRT to come up with yet another round of scenarios that really max out what we think we can put

on these parcels.

So this scenario is 255 units, still on the almost 10 acres, 100 public housing units, it'd be 80 tax credit and affordable rentals, and then 75 market rate units.

And the primary difference between this scenario and the one previous is that many of the two-story buildings are now three-story buildings, and then additional height has been added to the commercial and residential spaces that front along Main Street.

Okay.

The next scenario is for our South First Street neighborhood, which is located, Elliott Avenue is going to be on your left-hand side.

The Mount Zion First Baptist Church is located with the parking lot on the lower left-hand side.

And Elliott Avenue, as everybody hopefully knows, turns into Cherry Avenue as you head west.

Langford Avenue is in the middle and Belmont is going to go up towards the top of your screen there across the creek.

South First Street is our largest neighborhood in terms of gross land that we own.

We have about twelve and a quarter acres between the parcel on the upper side of your screen and then on the lower right hand side of your screen you'll notice that we own this one little parcel with four little houses on it right now.

Excuse me, which is vacant right now but in the drawing has the four little houses shown on it.

So we have twelve and a quarter acres.

We have 58 families living there right now.

So this is one of the sites where we saw the greatest amount of room to grow.

In terms of density, we're sitting at about four and a half dwelling units an acre right now.

This scenario has 98 units, 50 of which are public housing and 40 of which are going to be tax credit and affordable rentals.

This lower parcel on the lower right hand side with the four houses is actually going to be four duplexes.

which will eventually turn into eight home ownership opportunities for eight of our families that we'd like to turn into homeowners.

So what we're going to do is we're going to start the process now prepping those families to become homeowners such that by the time construction happens they will be ready to purchase those units.

Yes, please.

And then this is South First Street is also one of the options where we looked at a higher density scenario.

So again, still 12 and a quarter acres.

This is 116 units.

Again, many of the two story structures became three story structures.

The eight duplex or excuse me, the eight homeownership units stayed the same community center is still there, as well as the green space.

Next is Sixth Street.

Sixth Street is just down the street from our Crescent Hall site.

The only thing standing between us is the Ix property, which hopefully everybody

is familiar with.

We have Monticello Avenue along the top of your screen.

Friendship Court sits to the north of us and ICS sits immediately to the west.

Currently we have 25 families living with us at Sixth Street on a little over seven acres.

So we're sitting at 3.4 dwelling units an acre right now.

And this is another neighborhood that our board saw as having tremendous room for growth potential while still being respectful of the residents' wishes.

This first scenario from the draft plan has 40 units on it.

You can see the new units are added in orange color and there's a new parking lot and a new park space as well as a rehabilitated community center on site.

And then if we can go to the next one.

This is the third neighborhood where the board looked at a tremendously higher density scenario.

So this option that you're looking at now has 108 units proposed, which brings us up to close to 15 dwelling units an acre.

Again, many of the two-story structures became three-story structures.

and then on the far north side of the site you'll notice in sort of that purplish color is a, I believe it's a four or five story apartment building and so that would be a mixture of public housing and market rate housing.

We're trying to be very sensitive of the community garden that's already on the Sixth Street site and maintain its current location as much as is physically possible because we don't want to see the work that QCC has done there.

be destroyed by having to move that garden in any way.

So that's why the building is shaped in the L configuration that it is now.

And then we would move the community center from its present location on the south side of the site to the north side of the site.

Next is our Mickey Drive site.

I think everybody knows where Whole Foods is.

Either you've been there or you've heard about it.

discussed at the Planning Commission and City Council level.

The new Whole Foods is currently being built just to the west of us on Hydraulic Road and our Mickey Drive site sits right below that.

Currently we have 23 families living with us at Mickey Drive, all public housing on just under two acres.

What we'd like to do is just add a few more public housing units to this site, keeping the configuration much the way it is now to end up with 26 families here.

and we would also add a community center and a community garden to that site.

So Mickey Drive is going to be one of the areas where we see the least amount of change as far as what's shown in the master plan right now.

Next is our Madison Avenue site.

Madison Avenue sits, let's see, almost geographically in the center of the city.

Washington Park is going to be to the west side and it's Burleigh Middle School that sits just south of us and the ball fields back up to our neighborhood.

Right now we have nine duplexes, so 18 families living with us on the north side of the street.

This option proposes to relocate the street more to the center of the land that we own and do the cul-de-sac with duplexes ringing both sides.

So what we're showing right now is 46 units, a mixture of 20 public housing and 26 tax credit and affordable rentals on just under four acres of land.

and we will be adding a community center to that site as well.

And last but certainly not least is our Riverside Avenue site which is on the far southeast corner of the city in the Woolen Mills neighborhood and this is our other neighborhood where the drawing that is currently shown contains land that we do not own and again if you can see that yellow rectangle

that is on the northwest corner below the church.

There's a family in town that owns that piece of land that we have not spoken with yet, but best case scenario, this would be our option right now.

Currently, we have 16 families living in eight duplexes that just run right along Riverside Avenue.

But if this scenario were to go through, then we could break that row, add 25 units there, which would be a mixture again of public housing and affordable rentals.

We'd be able to add a community center to the site and then we would relocate the playground and basketball court that are already there closer to the middle of the site because right now they're sort of tucked on the northern fringe.

So that was a very quick overview.

I apologize, we were given a limited time frame to speak to you tonight.

If you have any questions of numbers that you heard or anything that you'd like us to send to you, please get in contact with us and we'd be happy to follow up with you.

Last thing we want to mention is some next steps that we're working on now that the master plan has been adopted by our board.

Thank you very much.

We're very excited that it's finished.

The next thing we'd like to do is to work with the neighborhoods that have been interested in the process or have not yet been engaged in the process.

We'd like to take our master plan around and share it with everybody to continue to gain support for the plan.

We can do a presentation similar to this.

We can just sit down and have a conversation, whatever the neighborhood prefers.

But we'd really like for those who have not had a chance to plug in to learn more about what we're trying to do since, as Randy mentioned, we have property in a lot of different neighborhoods around the city.

We're also working on finding the money because one of the biggest questions we hear is who's going to pay for this and how are we going to make it happen?

So Randy and I have been working on a few different grant applications.

The first two, CDBG and Home and the Charlottesville Housing Fund are local money here in Charlottesville.

And then the Choice Neighborhoods grant is one that we're working on that's due next week.

And for those who are less familiar with it, it's sort of the sister grant program to the federal HOPE VI program that the Obama administration has created.

This is the pilot year for that program.

We feel like we have a very strong story to tell here in Charlottesville, so that application will go in next week, and hopefully we'll hear by the end of the year whether or not we were chosen for that funding.

We'd also like to begin our next round of hiring a development partner for implementation.

As Randy and I can both tell you, the Housing Authority does not want to be the developer in this deal as it moves forward, so we'll be looking to partner with outside developers

to make the construction part happen.

And one of the reasons we're excited to be invited here tonight is that we've been continually exploring ways for the city to be involved with this project, both on a formal level and an informal level through their attendance at meetings.

So we thank you again for having us on your agenda tonight.

And that's all I had to say.

I think our next slide is just our contact information if you want to find Randy and I.

The master plan in its written format is this document right here, but each of you should have a CD that has the information in this sort of bulky, very large written master plan at your location.

So that has everything that we talked about, all the drawings that were in here tonight, as well as financial information, a lot of the process information.

Obviously, this was a huge process for us, so this was, as you heard, a very condensed version of the last decade of our lives, 18 months or so.

I have one question.

I know it's very recent development, and I don't know if you've kind of incorporated thinking about it, but I know that the Planning District Commission, with help from the city and the county and the university, just received a rather large planning grant for sustainable communities, and I noticed in the grant itself there's some talk about this plan and how that's supposed to kind of fit into that.

Amy might be able to answer that better than I.

We certainly will be part of the implementation of that grant and we'll be working with them to see where we can plug into the resources that they have.

Certainly a large part of what we're trying to do in this process is put in sustainable green features and certainly a lot of the rehab

that will be going on in Crescent Hall will be to green the building, work on energy conservation.

It's something we struggle with, especially with the stock of housing that we have.

We know we have inefficient systems, both water, electricity, gas, so we certainly will be working with them wherever we can to

access the funds they already have and see how we can plug that into this redevelopment process.

I have one more comment.

You showed some properties that are not owned by you.

I would hope that you'll talk to this property owner soon.

Yeah, what we had sort of heard from some of those landowners in the past is sort of come back to us when you know what you want to do, when you have an actual plan, which is why we've been waiting till we have an actual plan to go back to the table with them.

As Amy said, we haven't talked to them yet.

Some may or may not be interested in working with us.

Some have certainly expressed an interest in the past but have been sort of waiting to see what we

were proposing what we wanted to do.

I just wanted to know from you what is it that you're hoping for this whole process?

Like the concept question or I guess in my dream and my vision if we had all the money that we could have

This process would be really about changing lives for our residents in Charlottesville and changing the connections they feel to the city as a whole, connections to their surrounding communities and neighborhoods.

Not, as I said, just about changing the buildings, but that alone I think will start changing some of the dynamic and I think we see a sort of a lack of hope sometimes within our properties.

and whatever we can do from our standpoint to change that would certainly be the overarching goal of this process.

I'd like to see the time that public housing look like every other housing, all other housing in Charlottesville that you can't tell.

Right now you can sort of drive around and see that it's different.

All of our housing sort of looks the same except for Crescent Halls, so if we could change that.

Certainly,

adding community space and other resources within our sites so that we can make, you know, bring additional programming into our sites, computer labs,

Boys and Girls Club has an amazing new facility if we could do that type of thing within our sites.

Also establishing commercial opportunities.

As I said, one of my goals or dreams is to have some resident owned businesses, child care centers or beauty shops, those type of things within our sites so that we can really start changing that.

So the economic dynamic of residents from within at our sites would be an additional goal.

I mean, there's so many things we'd like to accomplish.

I have a few observations, if you will.

First of all, I think one of the most exciting aspects of this plan and this whole effort is the extent to which you involve the residents in helping to shape the future of their own neighborhoods.

In so many communities all over the country, as you know, when they've done redevelopment of public housing, it's been very top-down.

and they've just gone in and leveled entire neighborhoods and not really done a very good job of involving residents, not making any kind of commitments for one-for-one replacement housing.

And I remember one of the very early meetings, and I know Amy will remember this too, when the consultants were here from Philadelphia that we had hired to help us draft this master plan, we presented the Bill of Rights to them and they kind of all shook their heads.

They're like, there's no way you can do what you want to do and still meet all these conditions.

And fast forward a year, year and a half,

and they came forward, we came forward, you came forward with a plan that actually does accomplish, you know, fulfills the goals set forth in the Bill of Rights and fulfills the housing authority's overarching goals for redevelopment.

So I'm going to commend you for that, commend you Mr. Kilroy, commend FAR and Legal Aid and others who worked on that and got it to this point.

Obviously this is just

There's a lot of details that have to be worked out.

One concern that I heard, which I want to echo, which is a comment that I believe Kenneth Martin made, having to do with the fact that for a couple of the neighborhoods, maybe several of the neighborhoods, when we talk about

changing the mix of incomes, we're really not changing it that much when you talk about taking public housing and then mixing in some tax credit housing.

The reality is that's only increasing concentration of low-income housing in that given neighborhood.

And I realize the rationale for it was because we know

How to find money through tax credit financing to make housing construction work.

That's the sort of tried and true tool for developing affordable housing.

I want to give you a chance to go on record as

and if you're willing to do so, to sort of alleviate that concern somewhat because I think there are opportunities there that we haven't had a chance yet to explore with the private sector, with other partners to where it may not end up being 100% of low-income housing in those neighborhoods if we can find other sources of financing to make it work.

Yeah, I think that's absolutely correct.

And as we said, sort of as the discussion continued in the Redevelopment Committee, a lot of the discussion went to exactly that issue.

Right now, you could see we're serving primarily the extremely low, under 30%.

So even if we go to that 30 to 60% of affordable housing, which is the tax credit sort of range, we're changing the income mix to a certain extent.

That is still considered low income.

Schools will still be impacted by adding additional low income

children to, you know, all of that.

So, certainly you're right.

The way we looked at it is what are the known financing sources and certainly tax credits and in the plan you'll see tax credits are a huge chunk of the dollars that are there.

But as we explore this and as we find, we will certainly look for opportunities.

And I think when we added the density, that's certainly what we were getting to.

The additional density was not additional public housing units.

It was not additional low income tax credit units.

it was additional market rate units so that we were trying to change that mix so that it wasn't exactly what you were talking about which is just bringing in maybe a different level of low income but additional low income individuals into an already sort of burdened space.

So yeah, we will continue to explore those as we can.

Ideally, obviously, we would be mixing in more of the market rate

but it's harder to finance.

That's the problem.

The financing gap, that was another thing we told the consultants to do is don't bring a plan back that is just not affordable.

So the gap gets bigger, the known financing gap gets bigger as you take tax credit units off the table and replace them with market.

Okay.

And then one other concern, and I want to give you a chance to address this as well, is, you know, the reality is that this

Redevelopment effort's not going to happen overnight.

I mean, we're talking a multi-year process.

It's not, you know, we're going to go, as Ms. Kooy laid out, it's a phased-in process.

So for many of our residents, they're not going to see any changes in their neighborhoods for maybe 5, 10 years.

And so what are you doing?

What are we doing to make sure that in the meantime, we're keeping up the sites, we're maintaining the properties, maintaining the buildings, the infrastructure,

You know, certainly our obligation to HUD and something, you know, as the council is probably aware of, where we were struggling as a housing authority was our physical site scores for the last, what, three or four years before the most recent two years in which we passed.

We're certainly not going to let that backslide and we've

We remain committed to maintaining our sites.

We get capital fund dollars every year from HUD specifically for that.

This past year we got additional stimulus dollars to address those issues.

So we're trying to spend the money wisely, obviously.

We're looking at projected timelines potentially for when we start these different phases so that potentially projects or sites that are further out

would get maybe a higher priority in capital dollars.

But I think our main priorities for spending the capital dollars are safety, making sure that obviously the basic needs, roofing and basic safety of the sites is maintained.

So we're certainly not deferring maintenance for any length of time.

We're continuing to address all of those issues, but trying to do it in a responsible manner so that we're not investing hundreds of thousands of dollars

and a site that, you know, one or two years later, looking at useful lives of things that we're replacing, all of those types of things.

And it's certainly trying to address energy efficiency issues as well as we go because obviously the payback for those is much quicker.

So I'd say we're trying to spend those dollars wisely but certainly we will be

and I said I think the last time I was here we sort of established a new what I would consider baseline for what our sites should look like and we're not going to let that go the other way in the meantime.

I want to add to Mayor's comments and commend you to address that issue which he's raised because there are people who are living there now, their lives are going to be there for 5, 10 years.

Absolutely.

I mean, this whole process of everything that, you know, I think everything that staff does, whether we always do it as well as we can or not or, you know, maybe other people don't always see what we're doing, but really what we're trying to do is improve the lives of our residents and not just maintain where they are, but to certainly, as I said, my vision is that we give our residents the same quality of life and the same quality of housing as any other resident in the city.

We remain committed to maintaining that as we move this redevelopment, sort of a two-pronged approach that we're on right now, redevelopment and then operations.

One more comment.

Yep.

I mean, communication will continue as we go through this.

As Amy said, we'll be chopping the plan around back to our residents again, hopefully to the wider neighborhoods.

I mean, we really want to get away from, you know, our sites being seen as separate from the neighborhoods.

Certainly some of these community centers we're trying to establish will be for the community and not just for our sites.

So absolutely, we'll continue.

One of the aspects of this process which I thought was very useful was actually taking groups of residents and community members and city staff and city officials on field trips to actually visit other cities in this region that have done public housing redevelopment to learn what went well, what didn't go so well.

I think that really helped to inform and enrich this whole conversation.

Joy Johnson, one of your commissioners suggested we take a trip down to Mr. Watts old stomping grounds in Greenville, South Carolina and the thing that impressed me most about, that was the one trip I was able to participate in, the one thing that impressed me most was the

extensive involvement of the city of Greenville in the redevelopment process and so I appreciated the last bullet on Ms. Kilroy's presentation about just continually looking for ways to involve the city.

I think there's been sort of an artificial wall between the city and the housing authority for far too long and

And we'll probably be back in front of you in hopefully the next couple months.

One of our media next steps is to work on an MOU between us and the city to sort of formalize.

We're still just in the sort of brainstorming mode of what exactly that will look like and who will work on it from our side and who will work on it from the city side.

But we're certainly trying to do that to sort of

take that to the next level, that level of cooperation because I think we've learned through this, just the planning process, there's no way the housing authority can really do all that we want to see or all that the city wants to see, the neighbors want to see from this process just by ourselves.

Great.

Well, thank you very much, Mr. Bakers, Ms. Kilroy.

Thanks for your time.

Next item on our agenda tonight is a report, an update from ASAP on the city-funded research findings.

And this is advocates for a sustainable Albemarle population.

Evening.

As Dave said, my name is Jack Marshall and I'm the president of Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population.

And tonight I'd like to give you a very brief summary of the results of the first phase of our optimal sustainable population size project, the OSPS project.

As you know, ASAP is a grassroots non-profit group begun eight years ago.

We now have about 320 members.

Our mission is to share information about local growth and to help find our community's right size.

The USPS project begun two years ago was funded by the City of Charlottesville, County of Albemarle, the Colcomb Foundation, and private donors.

This research, the first of its kind in the nation, was intended to provide scientific guidance to residents' efforts to understand our community's optimal sustainable, our right size, not just leaving our future population growth to chance or the wishes of a minority that profit from growth.

This first phase examines the relationship between Charlottesville Albemarle's growing population and its natural environment.

The second phase of the project, now underway, consists of three studies examining socioeconomic issues relevant to understanding the community's optimal size.

And I trust I'll be invited back in nine or ten months to tell you about that.

The full reports are available on the ASAP website, but in our limited time tonight I want to sketch these five new studies.

I hope you'll agree at the end, I hope you'll agree that they suggest that we revisit policies regarding growth and development for both the city and the county.

Working toward consensus on what constitutes a sustainable population is a first step, a first important step in that direction.

Keep in mind that all the research that ASAP has done assumes that Charlottesville and Albemarle County comprise a single community.

Let's start with our study of stream health.

Building on the work of StreamWatch, stream health is determined by the size and types of the water's invertebrate communities over time.

Best practices, managing runoff and sewage and maintaining buffers, mitigate damage, but decreasing forest cover continues to degrade stream health.

Using US Census data and satellite imagery of forest cover layer, this study determined population density and forest cover percentage in each of 30 sub-watersheds in the Rivanna River Basin.

The relationship between forest cover and stream health is virtually linear.

The more forest cover, no matter how much forest already exists, the better the stream health.

As population density increases, forest cover declines.

In fact, even a small number of additional people will degrade a watershed.

In areas where there are already higher population densities, population growth only marginally decreases, already compromised stream health.

The research suggests a density of more than about 63 people per square mile likely results in water quality that exceeds the Clean Water Act threshold.

A density of 210 people per square mile would persistently impair water quality.

We think

The clear relationships among water quality, forest cover and population density are strong enough to justify public policies that preserve watersheds by protecting and increasing forest cover and by limiting population density.

Another study examined local groundwater.

Public policy and land use regulations have focused on the amount of groundwater extracted, that we extract to support development.

In considerations of sustainable population size, though, non-extractive groundwater

Non-extractive groundwater management is a more significant ecological factor.

By non-extractive groundwater, we mean the water beneath the surface that provides moisture to sustain forests, crops and fields, and for base flow to streams, ponds and lakes.

In our area, groundwater isn't uniformly distributed, nor are bedrock fractures, even within small areas.

necessarily, nor are bedrock fractures that are even within small areas necessarily interconnected.

Moreover, the ability of water-bearing zones to be recharged is affected by a number of complex factors, which means that it's hard to tell how much water we can get in any single place.

This research, among other things, discusses two scarcely examined areas of the county where groundwater recharge and flow are very large, we've discovered, relative to the volume of groundwater needed for non-extractive services.

In theory, it might be possible to mine significant quantities of water for municipal or agricultural consumption.

Moreover, the reality is that more intensive widespread mining of non-extractable groundwater eliminates base flow in many streams and could significantly alter the environment.

In developed areas, impervious land surface degrades streams.

and degraded streams are a signal that non-extractive water quality is also endangered.

The threshold at which stream health is degraded occurs when impervious land cover exceeds 5 to 20% of land surfaces.

Conversely, healthy non-extractive groundwater must be recharged at the rate of 80 to 95%.

Limiting impervious land cover and runoff sustains groundwater health and the potential for groundwater extraction.

So we have to be careful that we don't increase impervious surface in recharge areas in order to protect groundwater supplies.

Moreover, we must be cautious that as we tap groundwater for human consumption, we don't deplete non-extractive water sources.

We also conducted the first ecological footprint assessment of our community.

This study estimated the ability of the 736-square-mile Charlottesville-Albemarle landscape to generate biological products of use to the community's residents.

That's our biocapacity.

and then compared this biocapacity to the community's estimated need for such products and for absorbing the waste we generate and that's our ecological footprint.

What we found was sobering.

If we assume the ecological footprint of the average resident of our area is pretty much the same as the average American, then it would take

Not just our own land area to produce what we consume.

Not even twice our land area to produce what we consume and not even three times our land area.

It would take approximately 3.7 Charlottesville Albemarle land areas to provide our population with the biological products that we consume here.

Stated another way,

Using only the products of our own area's biocapacity, with no biocapacity import or export, our 736 square miles can sustainably support 37,000 people at current consumption levels.

Our community is now home to 135,000.

We find ourselves in a condition called ecological deficit.

consuming more biological productivity than we can sustainably produce.

For the short term, we can maintain this level because we're depleting resources in our own area faster than they can be regenerated and simultaneously we're exploiting the products of other areas in the world.

Our community, to be truly sustainable, and we keep talking about sustainability, must significantly cut consumption or limit population, or in fact both.

The fourth study in the first phase of this OSPS project looked at how local growth might affect our air.

But the research, as expected, revealed one, a virtual absence of local data on air quality, and two, the observation that locally produced air pollutants tend to be wafted out of our community by prevailing winds, eliminating or at least significantly reducing

and any local growth air quality link.

As a result, no conclusions can be made at this time about air pollution being a factor limiting population growth in our community.

The final research in our first phase examined the impact of population growth on ecosystem services.

A community's ecosystem, its natural environment and all the interacting organisms living within it, provides many benefits from polluting crops and reducing erosion to filtering toxins from streams and purifying air and groundwater.

These services are nominally free and, though of immense value to humans, are often taken for granted.

This study quantified selected water and atmosphere related ecosystem services generated in the Albemarle, Charlottesville landscape and modeled the effects of population growth on ecosystem services.

The study used current land development patterns as the basis for modeling future land consumption.

In the study simulation, all growth reduces ecosystem services.

The most significant and immediate of the many effects of population growth is the increase in impervious surfaces and the loss of forest cover.

In the last 35 years, our region has more than doubled its population.

In the 15 years alone, the county has lost 16% of its farmland.

If Charlottesville, Albemarle's current population of about 135,000 were to increase by as little as 5%, the capacity of the tree canopy to filter air pollutants would exhibit rapid decline.

We're rapidly losing open space, as you know.

an increase of 50% population up to 186,000 in the Charlottesville Albemarle community would result in a significant decline overall in the quality of ecosystem resources.

Although this decline would not be universally apparent, current areas of marked development in, for example, designated growth areas in Crozet, Rivanna, and especially the Route 29 corridor would experience severe degradation

At 125% of current population, that jacks it up to about 280,000, considerable environmental degradation will occur everywhere, even in the rural areas.

These five studies have brought to our attention a number of facts that would seem to be important in planning our community's future if we really take seriously this concept of

sustainability.

We're using biological resources faster than we can regenerate them.

We need forests to sustain stream health.

Population growth beyond 200,000 will significantly degrade our local ecosystems.

and our lifestyle relies on imports whose production degrades environments elsewhere.

We can do it.

We can keep importing because we've got the wealth and the power to do it.

But should we be doing it?

Again, let me thank you for supporting this research.

We hope it'll be helpful to you and other community decision makers in creating a sustainable future.

Thank you, Mr. Marshall.

Comments?

The next steps will focus on issues to help Charlottesville and Albemarle examine

and others.

One is a major study looking at the economic costs of growth and we're doing two clusters of studies, one separately for Charlottesville and one separately for Albemarle.

Another will review the many surveys that have been undertaken in the county and any we can find in the city asking residents over the last 25 years how they view

issues related to growth and the localities dealing with growth.

And the third study is going to be, I think, fascinating.

Using a database in Colorado of more than 400 communities, ranging from very small ones to big ones, the data is residents' satisfaction with elements of the community and with the way their governments in those communities have dealt with

issues.

Our question is, is the relationship in general satisfaction by residents as a function of size of the community?

Our hunch is that as communities grow, there may be less satisfaction.

But it'll be an interesting study.

I just have two questions, which may be naive questions.

And I read your original report, and I look forward to reading this.

Well, I find a lot of the data very valuable to have and I appreciate the fact that you're doing this.

I just have two kind of big question questions.

One is if you want to limit the size of this community and keep people from being here, A, how do you keep them from being here?

But the bigger one is where do you want people to go?

It seems that this sort of

philosophically encourages sprawl.

It encourages people to live broadly over lots of land rather than concentrated into dense urban areas while preserving open land.

Smart Growth started about 30 years ago.

And Smart Growth said,

More people sprawl into areas and that's not a good thing, it degrades the environment and we don't want it.

So let's cluster people in places where they do the least damage.

ASAP argues that smart growth, reducing sprawl, is necessary, but it's not sufficient.

We should be doing everything we can, and much of what both the city and the county are doing is smart growth.

And we were ahead of the ball, ahead of the game on that.

But it's not enough, and what we've got to do is also, in our own community, because we are stewards only of our own community, decide the right population for us.

Now, your point, and I'm glad we talked about this at the farmer's market at some length, is, well, where do people go?

if we, and I'll get to the mechanism in a minute, but if we were to succeed in saying, let's have a cap, for example, at 250,000, arbitrarily.

So what happened?

Where does the 251,000 bunch go?

Well, that's really not our concern.

We hope that other communities will say, wait a minute,

We're smart enough to recognize that we can't grow endlessly either and we want to also impose reasonable limits on the growth in our community.

And we think the Sharpsville Albemarle could become a model.

Right now, as you know, a lot of folks who are working in our community, because of the cost of living, are having to live in contiguous counties.

If I were in Nelson or Madison, I would be upset that those communities have to build the schools for the people who are working in our communities.

And I would think that those communities would soon say, hey, let's do what

This is the same kind of thing.

Let's identify an optimal sustainable size for their communities as well.

Another issue you raised is so how do we do this?

Well, the fact is any community that has zoning already has a theoretical cap on growth.

If you tally up the number of residential units that can live on each plot,

All the plots added together provide a limit, a maximum build-out for residential units.

Ah, okay, well then you're ahead of Albemarle County, because in Albemarle County they

throw up their hands and say, we don't know because it's a terribly laborious process to look at stream buffers and slopes and so forth.

But the fact is, it is probably a build out in Audemarle County that's there.

And what ASAP is saying, let's ask if that's in fact what we want, or the optimal sustainable size might be here.

And then the logical corollary of that is,

If we want fewer potential development, less potential development in our community, then we monkey with zoning.

It may well drive up housing costs.

And our, what ASAP is saying is

We don't have all the answers.

We don't pretend to have all the answers.

But we are pretty sure that the costs of endless growth will be greater than the costs of trying to solve some of these problems.

It's obvious that there will have to be, as you've just heard a report, a public-private

The county, I think the city is doing far better than the county on this, and it's going to raise these, it's a legitimate question, we don't have the answer, but let me urge that when you ask that you consider the alternatives.

What will happen, we think that if endless growth occurs, the poor will be the first

to be affected by it.

So you're talking family planning, though, rather than – No, we're talking – ASAP doesn't get into family planning.

In the county, as you know, the city isn't growing at all.

But in the county, 75 percent of the growth that occurs is a function of net migration, that is, more folks moving in than out.

Only a quarter of the growth, roughly, is a function of natural increase.

What are the implications of your research to date on policies and practices of the city of Charlottesville specifically?

I mean, clearly you're focused primarily on Albemarle County.

Because that's where the growth is.

Right.

But I'm wondering, for instance, you know, this is a city that's been open to creative urban infill development, partly because if there's going to be growth in the region, we'd like it to be transit oriented, pedestrian oriented, we'd like it to have as low an ecological footprint as possible.

We think it is apparent that endless growth cannot occur in any finite area.

and that whether you have the luxury of open space as Albemarle does or you're in a well-planned city like Charlottesville that doesn't have a lot of open space, that you've still got the same issues confronting you.

The question before Charlottesville is, what's your right size?

Keep in mind that just as the United States

because of its high level of consumption imposes ecological costs around the world.

So to the Charlottesville, outside Charlottesville, the population of Charlottesville isn't, the impacts of the population of Charlottesville aren't confined just to Charlottesville.

You are making ecological demands on the county and lots of other places.

Well, it's also a matter of

perspective and I'm sure that there are communities that, I don't know of any community like Charlottesville that's 100% self-sufficient in terms of not having any ecological deficit as you call it, but I imagine there are some communities that are more self-sufficient than others and so obviously

I don't think we should aspire to be a region of 37,000 people.

And we're not saying that.

So the question is how local can we get?

I mean there's obviously a lot of interest in local foods, local trades.

What's interesting, Dave, is that environmentalists and sensitive planners who recognize the ecological costs of what the way we're living talk about reducing consumption.

What ASAP is saying is simultaneously we have to reduce the number of consumers.

It's the equation, or at least hold it constant, not increase it.

Keep in mind that if Charlottesville somehow or other were able to reduce

It's, no, not Charlottesville because you're already steady.

If Albemarle County were somehow able to reduce its consumption by 20%, an impossible goal, but let's say it happens, at the current rate of growth it would take 10 years for the population to bring that total net consumption right back to where it was.

We have to be working both on consumption variables and simultaneously

on the number of consumers.

If we're not, though, talking about family planning and presumably not talking about mass numbers of people falling off a cliff somewhere, and there are people in the world, the only logical sort of conclusion I can see, if we were to sort of take this approach to its

kind of absurd conclusion would be one person per acre spread out across the planet with no empty space at all so that we're all sort of self-sustaining in our own area but not impinging on anyone else's.

And I think that there's a reason why the sort of density, less dense area model has been

promoted by a lot of people who care a lot about the environment.

I've read carefully, because after our conversation at the market I've read carefully through this stuff, and I find it hard not to feel slightly appalled at some of the

I'd like to just make a brief comment.

One is ASAP, I don't think in any way advocates a homogeneous dispersion of the human race over the surface of our land masses of the planet.

In fact, I think quite the opposite is the case.

I think that, for example, one of the consequences of the stream study that was presented to you is that we had some watersheds in Albemarle County which have very high water quality because of very high forest cover and low population density.

And what the analysis suggests is that even just adding a few people to those high

density watersheds because you have a curved relationship between population density and water quality will in fact cause significant degradation of those high quality watersheds whereas adding them to watersheds that are already degraded has relatively less effect.

In other words, it's not a straight line relationship.

So you actually do protect water quality by

concentrating people in more dense settlements in some areas and leaving a lot of relatively unprotected areas which, for example, also is necessary to protect the biodiversity composition of ecosystems.

I think that the kind of problem, I think what's a challenge and very difficult here is that simultaneously, and I think the mayor was alluding to this somewhat, we're facing an issue that sort of at one point is local

but at another level simultaneously becomes global.

And the big problem that we face in the world, I think the reason perhaps that was, I think a problem is that, as Jack pointed out,

We could in fact at this point in time import resources from other places and if you're going to support any large cities like London for example, you have to import materials from other places and that to a degree is feasible.

The problem is that the world as a whole seems to have gone into ecological deficit about 20 years ago.

We're in an overshoot right now and this simply is not something that we can

do indefinitely and from my point of view I think the kind of central message here is that we need to recognize that there is a huge and very serious challenge facing both the human race globally and us locally and no one has all the answers but the thing we have to do now is begin coming to grip with this and to kind of use whatever creative abilities we have to find the will and means that are acceptable to people to

deal with the population issues while maintaining the kind of democracy and so on that we think is essential to a sort of worthwhile, you know, way of human life.

Your support of the studies that I just reported on shows that you're concerned about these issues and we don't, as Tom said, expect to have answers, but they need to be discussed more seriously than they have been.

In fact, planners really don't talk about absolute numbers of people.

It's more where we can put them.

Well, thank you very much.

I just want to make a comment.

So I'm still looking for that balance.

But I do think it has a place as we start thinking about a comprehensive plan.

And where does this conversation fit in with that?

Because it has its place.

Thank you.

And also, to make it a bit surreal,

that we're having this conversation.

We just talked about the redevelopment of our public housing site.

We saw the density scenarios.

And perhaps ASAP should be a part of the community groups and community partners that are involved with the redevelopment process, because it was a huge list.

We would be delighted.

And in fact, I'm tickled that you would think about inviting ASAP to join some

Let me go back to your question about the comp plan.

The short term goal, although it may not be real short, is for both you and your colleagues in the county to incorporate a comprehensive plan amendment that says

In all planning we will consider the issue of trying to identify an optimal sustainable population size for our total community, I don't think Charlottesville should do it by itself, and use that as a planning tool

when we think about what are the developments, perhaps what low-cost affordable housing should be developed, roads and schools.

If we could identify this water issue that you've heard so much about endlessly, if we knew what our optimal sustainable population size was, if we could get consensus on that and say that's what we're aiming at, we could provide the water for that size population.

And I think much of this discussion would have long gone away.

If we had that planning tool, an optimal sustainable size, I think it would help us deal with a lot of other issues.

Thank you very much.

Keep up the good work.

The last item on the regular agenda tonight is a follow-up as a report, a follow-up from the Transit Summit.

Mr. Mayor, ladies and gentlemen, as my cover memo stated to you, on July 15th you held a transit summit.

We brought some experts in from around the country and I think we had a very interesting discussion in my cover memo.

I've tried to look at the major themes that we heard through your discussion with those consultants.

What we know is coming out of this is it's time again for us to do our transit development plan.

This year it's being done a little differently in that the Virginia Department of Transportation

Royal and Public Transportation has selected a consultant that will be doing our plan.

Unfortunately, when I wrote my cover memo, we didn't have all of the information and it just came to us this morning and I sincerely apologize for it being so late.

But the fact that we had it, I felt the need to share it with you because I think it's

It's terribly important to your decision as you move forward for this and so I've brought

a paper copy for those of you that may not have had a chance to look at it electronically.

Part of the transit development plan is, as it has been in the past, an extensive outreach to our stakeholders, to everyone who rides, currently rides on transit, to others in the community.

It's a very, very large

outgrowth.

And if you've had the chance to look at the types of things that they're going to be looking at, I think it's pretty much most of the things that you would ask for.

I would ask you to turn to Page 10, which is Task 7, because I think this summarizes the issues.

Mr. Watterson, our Transit Manager, has been working with VDRPT

to expand what would normally be the transit development plan to try to include what we believe to be your concerns or issues that you want us to look at as it relates to our public transportation system.

So you can see that they're going to do the normal things, which is collecting all the route data,

They're going to look at market conditions, travel patterns.

But one of the things that you asked them to look at was the actual route structure.

And we've been able to have them incorporate into this that they will look at.

And if you look at the second paragraph on page 10, it says, this task will begin with the general assessment of potential route structure concepts and their applicability for the Charlottesville area.

E.G.

radio grid trunk line feeder and the potential advantages and disadvantages for that.

That's what I've heard you ask me for and I think it's pretty incredible that we've been able to incorporate this into the state and they're going to pay for it.

So hopefully this is what you've been asking for.

The timeline, which is on the very back, and I apologize after I did it, I realize it isn't in color, so let me explain what it means to you.

You can see the little boxes where you see the little stars.

The star that's very dark, that's the first in a section of public meetings.

The consultant is very limited in their availability in November and unfortunately they selected a public meeting time that happens to be the same as your November 1st council meeting and we've asked them today to please change that.

They're going to be here for two days and what we're hoping to do is flip that and do the one in Albemarle County on the first and do yours on the second and I will be back to you about that.

I know that you haven't had an opportunity to look through this, so I don't expect you to give me all of your input tonight.

What I would like to know is how would you like to be involved in the process?

Do you want each of you to meet with the consultants one-on-one?

Do you want to try to arrange some kind of work session, all of the above?

Let me have your

your feedback.

We want to take advantage of the people.

This is a big issue.

I know it's a big issue to all of you and to the community.

I would like to make one or two comments.

I would be very interested in talking to the consultant individually, personally, and maybe use the group as a counsel conversation also.

I also read this section of the email you sent to me.

Thanks for sending that.

And I think it goes in some ways to address some of the questions we have been asking.

I must admit that it seems like a very hard task for us to ask, as we've been asking for three years now, the idea of restructuring the roots and doing so that it would be

Okay.

They're a part of the group that's working with us, yes.

The TDP is done, Bill, every three years?

I wanted to say that I think I'm not wrong to say that

All members of the council would like to see improvements in our transit system.

It would be a good system and we can do a lot better.

Okay, we'd like to see it too.

We'd like to do it for the least amount of money.

What we're hoping that this will do is take a look at our resources as the last time we did it and say, is there a better way to spend the money that we already have?

And if we're going to do incremental increases, where do we get, as they like to say, the biggest bang for our buck?

Or if you were going to invest more money, what would they suggest we do?

It shows our priority.

Maybe one thing you may want to consider is have a one-on-one.

You have the opportunity to talk to the consultant as they're putting things together.

Okay.

Okay.

Great.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Watterson.

We're now going to move on to other business.

I had one item that I wanted to just address publicly that we received a letter recently from the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors inquiring as to City Council's

Intentions regarding the McIntire Road Recycling Center.

And we have, I believe we're going to add it to our, that item will be on our agenda for the next meeting?

For the November 1st meeting, we are going to have a council discussion regarding the future of the recycling center.

and I hope it will also touch on some of the other issues relating to just sort of the whole issue of what do we do with solid waste given that the contract or for the agreement to operate Rivanna expires December 31st, is that right?

Okay, I'm seeing Ms. Mueller's head nodding so we will have that.

A couple of things I wanted to bring up.

The first thing was

Dialogue on Race is going to be updated soon regarding the action plan.

But we are still working with making sure that we reach all segments of the community.

So I wanted to talk about adding another board member to the Dialogue on Race Steering Committee.

And the council would be open to the idea of having a seat on that committee for a FAR representative.

It's generally, it's been, I think we started out with 20 members anyway, it's up to about 19.

And it's been a good mix of people that attend the meetings.

But I wanted to get a feeling from you all about that would be okay.

That's a great idea.

And the second thing I wanted to bring up was just a quick update on some of the things that I've been working on.

And what I have here is just a reminder of the article that came out in the paper.

It was November of 2008 when we had the first work session on poverty.

And actually there'll be kind of a follow-up to that.

One of the ideas is to have

and we saw that it's come up and even in public comment here is a reentry conference to have an opportunity to have.

and a comprehensive approach to how we're welcoming people that come out of our jail into the community and what workforce opportunities are available.

And two, after we had the work session on poverty, I was really hoping to have a systemic change in the way that we approach our low wealth community.

And one of the ideas that's come up is a bank on program where we really encourage people to have savings accounts.

When I started working with some other community groups we found that most people were getting a payday loan of about $500.

The goal should be to try to save that amount of money and other people saying this is a hard economic time anyway, but to really approach this in a way where we're encouraging people to live within their means.

And for some people that could mean not taking their lunch instead of buying their lunch.

For some people it could mean

not smoking as many cigarettes and investing money someplace else.

So it could look a variety of ways for a lot of people.

But the reentry conference, I hope to have some update about that to happen in the spring.

And the bank on Charlottesville idea will be in the form of work session probably in January.

But those are some of the things that I've been working on.

Thank you, Ms. Edwards.

That's all very good stuff you're working on.

Anybody else have any other business?

Hearing none, we are now going to do matters by the public and then we'll adjourn into a closed session.

We'll now open the meeting to matters by the public.

My name is Betty Mooney and I'm from the city of Charlottesville and I just wanted to give you a few things to think about when you're having your

discussion about the solid waste options that you're going to be looking at for the future of the city.

And I think, I hope the city's goal is to recycle as much of its waste as absolutely possible.

And I know that's what you've all been working toward.

So when you think about the McIntire Recycling Center, look at how much of that waste is now going to landfills.

and how much is really being recycled.

And with a goal in mind that if you do keep the McIntyre Recycling Center open, that it's really operated as a convenience center for recycling and not for waste that's going to be landfilled by big waste companies.

And the same thing with the Ivy Recycling Center, you know, that I really feel that could be very utilized as a convenience center.

But right now, it's being mainly used by very large waste haulers that are taking the waste to landfills.

And I think those days are over.

We have a wonderful, very local recycler here in our community that we could utilize far more than we have.

We're moving in that direction.

But I hope when you look at these decisions, you'll keep that in your mind.

Let's get rid of all waste.

Let's make everything recyclable and sustainable in our community.

And I think that's a goal that San Francisco has put before themselves and that they are accomplishing.

And I would like to see Charlottesville be the second city in the United States to make that our goal for this city as well.

Thank you, Ms. Murray.

Anybody else like to speak?

I appreciate your discomfort with some of the studies that ASAP does.

I have a similar discomfort with

How do we tell people they can't live here?

But I think a much more important, but I still am very attracted to the idea that we will sustain our environment and something that ASAP does say but I think needs more emphasis is this idea of limiting our consumption and I think it's all about how much

where each individual is having an impact on our immediate environment and that's all about management and it's really one thing I do disagree with what was said is that well if we just knew what a sustainable population our water plan would be.

It's not about that, it's about management, it's about demand management and that extends to so many other avenues in how we live.

and one of the things that really upsets me as I go to environmental meetings and I go to a lot of them is kind of that people seem to have given up on Moore's Creek, they seem to have given up on the Rivanna River around the city that somehow we can't have a stream health and have a vibrant, even, you know, a concentrated community and I don't think that's true.

I really think it's about really thinking, making our decisions based on

Stream Health and based on solid waste management and just always having at the top of our minds that we are going to limit our impact on the environment and that maybe we can have some better blending of these goals.

Anyway, just wanted to say that.

Thank you, Ms. Smith.

Anybody else like to speak?

All right, we will now close matters by the public.

Motion for a City Council closed session.

Since Mr. Brown isn't here, I'll read it.

Pursuant to Section 2.2-3712 of the Virginia Code, I hereby move that the City Council close this open meeting and convene in closed session for discussion and consideration of prospective candidates for appointment of the Planning Commission and for employment as City Manager as authorized by Virginia Code, Section 2.2-3711A1.

Any discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

Motion carries.