City Council Meeting   11/1/2010

I'd like to call this meeting to order if you please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

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

Mr. Norris?

Mr. Huja?

Here.

And here to receive the proclamation is Diane Cook, the Acting Social Services Director.

Thank you very much.

Ms. Thomas?

So thank you very much.

I believe Ms. Szakos has an announcement about something happening tomorrow in Charlottesville and across the Commonwealth.

So everybody get out and vote tomorrow and do democracy.

That will be, I believe, on our next agenda.

For November 15th.

So you will be hearing more about that in the meantime.

I'd like to also make an announcement, which is just to remind people that at least one of my favorite events of the year starts this week, which is the Film Festival starts Thursday, so everyone should check the calendars on that.

The first person who signed up to speak is Dee Dee Smith.

Thank you.

Rebecca Quinn.

Thank you.

Kathleen Galvin.

Thank you so much for your consideration.

Ms. Mooney.

Thank you.

Mr. Kleeman?

I urge you not to even consider it at your next meeting.

Thank you very much.

Good evening, Stratton Sletis, 704 B. Graves, and I'd like to echo what Mr. Kleeman said, and I will add that I think probably one of the reasons that the application is not complete is because of the... Actually, Mr. Sletis, I hate to cut you off, but...

So it's good to have you guys here.

And so let's not go for these kinds of used car sale tactics.

Any counselors like to make responses to Matters by the Public?

It's always worth it.

Anybody else?

Is Jim Tolbert here?

He's not in the room, he's in the building.

I don't know how my fellow counselors feel about it, but I don't know that I would necessarily want to pull it off the consent agenda, but I would like to have that be addressed.

Mr. Tolbert.

I invoked you.

And can you give us your, Ms. Szakos was just wanting to make sure that we don't do this in isolation, that there is a connection between this design charrette and a broader vision for the neighborhood.

If we continue doing it, if it can just be sort of with the understanding that it would be then done in consideration of that wider project.

While we would be doing plans for that property, we would of course do it in context and realizing what was and could happen around that area.

And from what I understand, doing this doesn't preclude doing a later one for the whole broader area?

This could actually feed that as additional information.

Because I know this is a project that you all have been working on for a while and that, you know, we've all kind of seen and I think that it's something that it's time to get that out of the community.

Right.

Thanks.

Any other council member responses?

I really like the idea of an old sign auction.

A suggestion was made that we consider selling off the old signs or auctioning them off.

Most of them have gone to recycling at this point, the ones that have come down, and most of them, the way they're made, we had hoped that we had a lot of people wanting to get the Charlottesville off of them, but they're made into the post, and so you basically have to have the post to get the... She wants one.

Okay.

She's willing to pay money.

Anyone else will be happy to accommodate because we don't have any use for them.

And that actually brings up an interesting point, you know, just kind of for future reference of when we have something like that, if there is a way to sort of, you know, get both kind of community enthusiasm, but also possibility of raising some money for something.

We really talked about doing that, but because of the way they're coming up, it was just so difficult to deal with.

Thank you.

Any comments or questions or a motion to approve the agenda?

I'll second.

Okay.

particular ones that we're recommending abandonment of are in the Cherry Hills subdivision and they cross seven properties.

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

Is there any downside?

I live at 407 Head Street in the city.

Just a thought that I had as sitting here thinking.

Mr. Brown, would you please address Mr. Kleeman's question?

I don't know which is the case on this particular project but I can certainly find that out.

And we'll find that out for you for the second meeting.

Any discussion, comments or a motion to approve?

I would say that, assuming we'll get the information for the second reading, that I'm happy to move for the first reading.

Thank you very much.

And thank you, Mr. Kleeman.

I have Jim Tolbert down for this one.

Can we invoke him again?

It worked the last time.

own that property to maintain that and they're asking for the opportunity to do that and oversee some of the landscaping, maybe put some chairs, possibly some benches out there to allow for their patrons to sit out there, but primarily they'd like to be able to maintain that space in a way that would be similar to what they're doing with the arena.

I thought Mr. Brown was going to cover this one.

I'll answer your question if you have any questions.

It's not for sale?

If what we put in the memo was that they wanted to have a cafe, they would come back and pay for that on top of this at the conventional rate that everybody pays.

Right, that's correct.

Would the customers come either outside with food?

If they do, then what we would say is that they would then be assessed for $3 a square foot for any area that was in.

That's why I'm asking the question.

They would have to do some other things.

The concern is primarily that not that they should not get to maintain it, but if you put chairs and they bring food from inside sitting down and eating there, it becomes like an outdoor eating area.

Unless council didn't want them to have a cafe in that space.

Is there an expiration date to this, or is it a year to year, or how does?

I think where Mr. Brown wrote it is June 30th of next year within renewals.

or four additional one-year hearings.

All right.

Ms. Quinn?

that they make sure that they're not obstructing free access along there, especially for people who may need to travel down or up the sloped area as opposed to...

I think this is on the front side, on the mall side, not on the Omni side, is that correct?

Oh, I saw one of the pictures that looked like it was along the side.

It does not include the ADA access that's along the side of it.

I misread the picture.

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

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

Here's our Director of Public Works, Ms. Judy Mueller.

Are we doing the right things with the dollars that we have?

Do you attribute that to the increase in the materials that we are picking up in our curbside recycling?

And that's the one that's hard to measure.

Is it a recent survey?

But I'm sure we'd have to supplement Rivanna with some staff to

I would love to see some way more accurate because I would hate to put it on each other and also social actions.

but we have lots of recycling as a result and ours is one of those full cars coming in, loading everything out.

And what we're looking to do is in those neighborhoods where we have the highest set-out rate right now, we're working with our collection contractor to try to start this pilot, which may help people like you.

Is that something that we can...

Lowe's will take your old fluorescent bulbs at no cost.

Okay.

But are we looking at McIntyre of being able to do that again?

We can certainly bring it up at the next board meeting.

You asked about batteries also.

And I'm sorry, not fluorescence, DFLs.

If we can do that in the city, I don't know if that's appropriate.

That site is awfully tight.

I don't know if anyone else has an interest in looking at that, but I'd like to see if there are ways that we could generate some funding out of the site itself.

Okay, thank you.

And there's nothing to say that... Well, I was just going to answer your question as to wondering who those people were.

I'm sure Rivanna could set such a scale that you pay higher than an accounting person if you want to use it.

But can you just talk about sort of the management and why it makes sense from your perspective to have Rivanna continue to manage the facility?

I think you know we have in the past approached UVA and they have indicated to us they're not interested because they of course have a much greater program than we do.

And can you explain again, just for the public's benefit, why it is that the Vanderlinden proposal for management of the McIntyre Recycling Center did not end up coming to pass?

But at the budget time every year we can look at anything you want to look at.

I'd also like to see us explore expanding services there to make it more of a convenient center for our residents.

We can certainly ask the staff during the budget for next fiscal year to look at putting those services back in.

I think one of the challenges is, or one of the realities is, since our use constitutes a third or less of the use, then we have to figure out how to work with the county, whether it's through Rivanna directly or whether it's the city and the county, you know, someone providing a service, the other being Bursal, we have to figure out, we have to set goals that everyone is happy with.

And again, I personally would like to see the recycling center not only continue in operation, but just to bolster the operations of that facility.

Well, as Dr. Brown said, it was all about money.

It is all about money, but there were choices made.

We can ask again.

Maybe I just missed it, but it seemed like when it came time to slash the budget.

No, they cut back their services also.

Well, was it commensurate with the cutbacks at the recycling center?

I'd have to go back and itemize them, but yes, there were cutbacks there also.

And I know there's a dollar figure attached to that, but I think this is a community.

And again, we have to work with our partner in the county, and I think that's why they asked you, you know, to see where you were going on the two so that they could make some decisions of their funding levels also.

And I think for us to be clear that we want to be part of a vigorous McIntyre Recycling Center, I think is a good message to send.

And this is one that we have and I think that we really have a strong commitment as a community not to weaken those.

Expansion of services, we ought to explore that I think.

I don't know if you're looking for, Mr. Jones, are you looking for a motion from us tonight on this funding recommendation?

I think we're looking for some guidance from you this evening so that we can take this back to Rivanna.

Here to do a presentation about the center is our Parks and Rec Director, Mr. Brian Daley.

I'd like you to answer any questions you have.

My question was that high school swim teams are also going to use this facility?

The Charlottesville high school swim and dive team will be swimming here at Smith.

How does that work out?

that will be unique for this facility and that will be able to give us a really good idea of complete revenues and expenses at this one location.

is slightly more than in previous pools that we've had, but with the discounts, it often comes out to actually be less, but that there are so many efficiencies, it seems that that's where some of the cost savings is coming, not only the efficiency in the building, not having to pay as much for air conditioning and heat, but also just the efficiency of this fob system and, you know, without having to go through everything every time into staff time, I just, I'm really impressed with all the thought that went into that.

Well, thank you very much.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And those are our expectations.

Are you going to make your employees wear costumes?

And we plan to, again, continue in that direction.

Just commend you and your staff for a successful opening and successful kickoff.

We had a bit of a hiccup last week, but I guess somebody forgot to feed the hamsters down in the pump room.

Mr. Jim Tolbert.

I'll let Steve talk to you a few minutes and then I'm going to get back up and talk to you specifically about a letter we think is necessary to send now since you don't meet again before the state's deadline for comments because we're not prepared to make full comments but we think we ought to make some at this point.

Yes, you should go ahead and turn those around.

Okay, I think they're ready.

Thank you.

These are two incremental milestones that lead us to, if all implementation is affected, acceptable water quality sometime after 2025, understanding that these systems are natural systems and there may be time required for the system to respond.

Yeah.

Now I'm going to turn it over to Steve to talk about some of those details.

Leslie and I would be happy to respond to any questions that members of the council might have.

And we'll, again, as we say, we'll all be glad to answer any questions.

How did the other state plans do?

The plans for the other states not so well and were also identified as Virginia's was to have serious deficiencies.

Or are they kind of, they submitted their plan and they said this is the best we can do?

Does that answer your question?

It's still dismaying.

Although I will say that the present administration does not seem to be embracing this enthusiastically.

Well maybe our letter and those of other localities can help them understand why they should.

They are an engineering firm that is working statewide with different localities to try to address these issues and understand them and provide some quantifiable data to local governments.

The letter we have before us was drafted with the assistance of the Planning District and the River Basin Commission.

Right, we plagiarized a lot of their information, yes.

and then at the next meeting we're going to talk about the pilot project that the River Basin Commission, the Soil and Water Conservation Board and the Planning District have been working on.

That's correct and also we hope possibly to have some statements maybe in the legislative packet that we would be sending based on this as we formulate more information.

I know that in the more rural areas, I think this holding water conservation boards have a lot of respect from the localities they represent.

you know this group effort to work together to craft positions can have some real value for us going forward so not steal the thunder of next week's meeting but... And we think it's very important to have a regional response and probably a regional implementation plan not each local government having its own but we've also felt that since the region was not ready with anything right now that we wanted to get something in to stake out that hey we're really concerned about this.

Ms. Middleton.

Do we need to make a motion to send a letter?

Just a motion to authorize you to send a letter.

I would be happy to make that motion.

We will now, or any other business?

So anyone in your neighborhood probably votes where you do and they can tell you where.

Ms. Dee Dee Smith.

Thank you.

Mr. Kleeman.

It's a great pool.

Anybody else like to speak?

Good staff follow up on this concern, Mr. Cleveland?

Meeting is adjourned.