City Council Meeting   12/20/2010

I can't remember a worst December Just watch those icicles fall What do I care if icicles fall?

So I will weather the storm What do I care how much it may storm I've got my love to keep me warm Yes, snow is snowing, the wind is blowing But I can weather the storm What do I care how much it may storm

I've got my love to keep me warm Yes, I can't remember, I watched December Just watched those bicycles fall What do I care if bicycles fall?

Baby, I've got my love to keep

I've got my love to keep me warm The snow is snowing, the wind is blowing But I can weather the storm, storm, storm What do I care how much it may storm?

I'm pining with love, my heart's on fire The plain grows higher, so I will weather the storm What do I care how much it may storm?

Music playing

Music Playing

Music playing...

You better watch out, you better not cry You better not pout, I'm tellin' you why Santa Claus is comin' to town He's makin' a list, he's checkin' it twice He's gonna find out he's not even nice Santa Claus is comin' to town

He sees you when you're sleeping He knows when you're awake He knows if you've been bad or good So be good, for goodness sake You better watch out, you better not cry You better not pout, I'm telling you why Santa Claus is coming to town

Santa Claus is coming to town How do you capture the wind on the water?

How do you count all those stars in the sky?

How can you measure the love of a mother?

How can you write down a baby's first prime?

Candlelight, angel light,

Fire, light and star glow Shine on His cradle to the breaking of dawn Gloria, Gloria, Jesus is there Angels are seen

Christ Child is born.

Share wolves and wise men will kneel and adore Him.

Nations proclaiming their love and their savior But Mary will hold him and sing him to sleep Candlelight, angel light, firelight and star glow

I'd like to call this meeting to order.

We're going to start with the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Ms. Barfield, would you call the roll, please?

Dr. Brown?

Does that work?

We have a few recognitions tonight.

First of all, mostly in the form of an announcement, is keep in mind that tickets are on sale now for First Night Virginia.

We are now 11 days, 4 hours and 50 minutes away from this year's festivities.

Every year on New Year's Eve, thousands of people come to Charlottesville's Downtown Mall to participate in this fun-filled

Celebration of the Arts.

It is in its 29th year.

First Night Virginia promises to be our best night ever.

You can order your tickets online at www.firstnightva.org or at various retail outlets downtown.

So please come in and enjoy First Night Virginia.

We are very pleased to announce that our recycling program with the city has won a prestigious green carpet award from the Virginia Recycling Association.

This is an award in recognition for our curbside single stream recycling collection program that we do in partnership with Allied Waste.

Charles was recognized by VRA for our commitment and leadership in seeking out innovative approaches to improving traditional curbside recycling systems.

And here to I guess receive this award and make a few comments is Judy Mueller and I believe David Outing is here also from Allied.

Again, my name is David Outting, I'm the Division Manager here for Allen Place Services in Charlottesville.

We don't travel alone.

We have a phenomenal team.

And we actually have some of our management team, Brian Wright, sales team, Gerald Wiley and Brian Kunz.

And most importantly, the driver who actually services the curbside recycling.

And if you ever see these guys out there doing it, Troy Gentry actually services the city of Charlottesville.

In just a few words, an ongoing allied waste services nominated the city of Charlottesville to the Virginia Recycling Association for an award citing the outstanding achievement made by the city in recycling and conservation programs over the past two years.

At the BIA annual conference in May, the city of Charlottesville won a green carpet award for demonstrating excellence and dedication to the recycling in Virginia.

The city was cited for doubling the amount of recycled materials

and its residential curbside recycling program.

Working together with Allied Waste, the recycling program was expanded to a single stream collection system in late 2007.

Since then, Charlottesville residents have increased the amount of recycled materials from 3.6 million pounds per year to 7.2 million pounds per year.

On behalf of the Virginia Recycling Association,

We'd like to present this award to the City of Charlottesville, the VRA's 2010 Award for the Extraordinary Dedication to the Curbside Single Stream Recycling Program here in Charlottesville.

Thank you very much Mr. Outing and Ms. Mueller.

The next recognition I'm thrilled about a

We have some really outstanding young people in this community, and this group is taking that to a whole new level, taking it into outer space, actually.

We have a group at Charlottesville High School, the Charlottesville High School Science Club, which is also known as AKA Bacon, or also known as Bacon, the best all-around club of nerds, B-A-C-O-N,

under the direction of their teacher, Matt Shields, who recently competed, as you may have heard or read about, in a zero robotics competition hosted by NASA and MIT.

They are one of 24 schools nationwide to compete in this particular event.

Three of the team members, Lizzie Hilton, Dania Gisouli, I'm sorry if I mispronounced your name,

and Jesse Price-Williams, who wrote programming code to manipulate simulated robots on a virtual space station.

And they won 13 of 23 rounds of that competition, finishing eighth overall, which was high enough to advance them to the semifinals.

And in the semifinals, they scored enough points to advance to the final round.

and the final round is actually going to take place on the International Space Station.

And so these students will actually be having their robot or having a robot under their control operating in space on behalf of Charlottesville High School.

It's such a thrill to have several of the folks from the best all-around club of nerds

Bacon here tonight and to give us the chance to honor and recognize them for this remarkable accomplishment.

And here to be recognized is their teacher, Matt Shields, along with Lizzie Hilton and Dania Gisouli.

And we have a special gift on behalf of City Council and the people of Charlottesville if you would come forward and receive it.

For each of the students we have points set on behalf of the city.

Okay, so the programming competition, we found out about it actually because one of the people on our team couldn't make it here tonight, Jesse, had done a previous competition with NASA that involved sending balloons in outer space.

So they emailed us about this competition, thought we might be interested, and so since early September we've been involved in initially creating a proposal that explained how we were going to organize our team, how we were going to

budget time and to successfully do projects and then after being selected, kind of like the marriage plan, we just have been programming a lot the last couple of months, going through different rounds of competition.

We had to program in C, which is one of the languages, and make the robots fully autonomous, which is pretty tricky because they're

have lots of imperfections, especially on space.

So after a couple of rounds, we actually were there a couple of days ago for the final round at MIT and got to webcast with one of the astronauts, Commander Scott Kelly, on the space station and watch our robots run.

Add to what Lizzie said, I think first of all the main thing I wanted to say is that this is my third year at Charlottesville High School and I've been very lucky and very blessed to work with some of the most brilliant students that there are at

I think in the country and I think this competition shows it.

So like Lizzie said the competition actually was last week and we went up to Boston and it was pretty remarkable to be standing in an MIT auditorium and to have a live video conference with the space station that as it's traveling at 200 miles above the earth at 17,000 miles an hour they were able to communicate with us and for them to say

Congratulations Charlottesville High School to you.

It's pretty amazing to hear.

So I'm very lucky to have been a part of this.

Charlottesville High School, as you probably know, is renowned for their theater and their arts and their music.

It's a great school to be at.

And the last couple of years, due to efforts from Lizzie, Dania, Jesse, and some other students, I think we're bringing STEM

STEM classes and STEM technology, science, technology, engineering, and math up to par with the arts and the theater that we already have going at Charlottesville.

So it's exciting to be a part of that.

And the last thing I would say is I encourage anyone, if you ever have the ability to offer any kind of resources to our school system, in any sense, especially in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and math, please do so.

If you feel like serving as an extracurricular coach or mentor, if you feel like

Throwing a couple bucks our way, it's bacon.

That's how I call the nerds.

Put that in the memo line.

And thank you very much.

Thank you again.

I do, it's very simple.

I just spent a week in France on a gospel choir tour with singers representing Charlottesville and also Stanton, Virginia, as well as a couple of other towns around us.

And one of the things that I got to do while I was there was to meet with the mayor of Besançon, our sister city in France, and a city councilor.

Actually, I met several city councilors.

They have 30, I want to tell you.

They were very impressed that the five of us could get things done and figured that we probably did it a little more efficiently.

The mayor very graciously gave us a present, which I brought to us.

It's a book about Besançon, our sister city.

He's got lots of beautiful pictures, and I can attest it really is that beautiful.

I would encourage anyone to go.

And this is from Mayor Jean-Louis Fouceré.

And he says, avec mes compliments très sensirment, which I'm sure I have mispronounced, but that is with his most sincere compliments.

Thank you, Ms. Zakes.

That's wonderful.

It was typical France weather in late December.

It was rainy and 34 degrees.

Not exactly conducive to a visit, but it was beautiful.

Thank you.

A couple of reminders.

City Hall will be closed Friday, December 24th.

There will be normal trash and recycling, but no bus service either Friday or Saturday.

We will be closed Friday, December 31st as well.

Again, normal trash and recycling, but no bus service that Friday or Saturday.

There is a community blood drive on December 31st from noon to 5 p.m. outside of the Omni at the Bloodmobile.

For everybody who donates blood, they will get a free first night button, which is quite a good incentive.

We have a great new program that just started in the last year.

A volunteer program for snow removal.

This is a program that's already attracted a couple dozen volunteers who volunteer to shovel the sidewalks of people who are elderly or disabled in their neighborhood who may need a little extra help meeting the requirements about snow removal and sidewalks.

If you would like to volunteer with this program, we are looking for more volunteers.

and you can simply dial 970-3700, 970-3700 to leave your name and number or you can go online at charlottesville.org under the section that says I want to.

There's a little item on there that says register for snow removal and you can volunteer online.

So, there is that.

A couple of programming notes for those of you who saw an early version of our city council agenda tonight.

Just wanted to clarify we have postponed the discussion on the or an update on the water supply regarding the report from Black and Veatch because the representatives from Black and Veatch could not be here tonight so we will have that discussion January 3rd.

and similarly we have postponed discussion on, or we haven't, we never actually officially scheduled discussion on the CAFE ordinance that will come back potentially next year at some point.

And I just wanted to note publicly, and I know she's going to be embarrassed for me to say this, but I wanted to recognize that this is the last City Council meeting that our friend Rishana Dixit from the Daily Progress will be covering.

Roshana is moving on to bigger and better things and has taken a new position with a media outlet up in Washington DC.

So thank you Roshana for your years of coverage and for all the patience you've shown in sitting through so many of our meetings and planning commission meetings.

I know it's a tireless and thankless job that you do, but let's give Roshana a round of applause.

And we wish you the best in your future endeavors.

I just had one announcement.

I'll just end the announcements with another announcement about Charlottesville High School.

I want everybody to start looking for the Pizza and the Wolf poster.

There will be the play Saturday, January 22nd, 3pm and 7pm.

So start looking forward to the new year.

This is also an opportunity to support the Spring Ensemble as they plan to perform in Florence next year.

Buy tickets.

It makes a wonderful Christmas gift.

And speaking of Christmas gifts, reminder, buyartgiveart.org, or .com, sorry, buyartgiveart.com.

We're encouraging people to support local artists through this campaign.

Any other announcements?

We're now going to open the meeting up to matters by the public, and as is our custom, when you come forward, please state your name and address and keep your comments to three minutes.

Members of Council, Peter McIntosh, 624 Davis Avenue.

I want to congratulate you and city staff for the foresight that you've shown that was reported in the daily progress this morning of going after grants to build a pedestrian and bike bridge across

the railroad track.

This is a key part in making sure that McIntire Park is open to the most number of people in our community and it's an underserved, underused resource at this point and this would be a way, and I disagree with the gentleman in the paper who said softball players don't cross the bridges.

There are a lot of other people that get into that park on the east or the west side that aren't softball players during the day and they can't get to the west part.

If you've ever walked

in the east side of McIntire Park.

It's gorgeous.

And let me be the first to wish you all a Merry Christmas.

And the second thanks, and that is for your astute decision of hiring Mr. Jones.

Years ago, when he and I were both slimmer and faster, he was the one that ran circles around me on the basketball court.

And I know he'll do a great job for us in the city.

Congratulations.

Thank you, Peter.

Keith Rosenfeld, 283 Broad Axe Road.

I'll be gone January 3rd, so I thought I'd hit it tonight.

Without a 13-mile pipeline to fill it, a 42-foot Ragged Mountain Dam is as useless as a fish on a bicycle.

It cannot fill itself without a hurricane because Ragged Mountain has only a two-square-mile rain basin versus 230 square miles for South Fork.

It's time to clearly state in public the real driver behind this plan.

The Nature Conservancy, a 6 plus billion dollar organization, has an interesting environmental theory and a desire to find someone else, our community, to pay their 200 million dollar lab fee to test their solution.

Here's a book that details this.

It's co-written by a local hydrologist and is actually good reading with a lot of very interesting observations and theories.

Many write on target.

The book makes clear that man is bad for the environment and that the authors believe that much of society's water infrastructure should be demolished so that we can transition to out of river systems.

They want to destroy our existing in-river facilities and force our south fork to silt in and become, quote, natural.

That's why they're so determined to kill dredging.

Luckily for TNC, this coincides with Albemarle County's political interests, but that is for another night.

You must remember that their solution is completely untested.

That is why they are here, spreading their wealth and influence.

Do you remember how 10 plus years ago the Southern Environmental Law Center sued to block the 29 bypass, claiming that highways should not be allowed within 300 feet of a reservoir?

Well, Southern Environmental Legal Center is now saying that driving I-64 truck traffic over this proposed main reservoir is perfectly okay.

To modify the quote of a famous president, beware the eco-industrial complex.

The question you are really deciding is, should Charlottesville spend $200 million and be complicit in the destruction of its main reservoir to help TNC test its theory?

Such a gift would be especially magnanimous since current data categorically show that we just don't need as much water as people projected 10 years ago due to dramatic and proven changes in our water use.

If this 42 foot dam is built, you will all get a nice bronze plaque with your names on it.

That will feel good today, but someday it may well be covered with spray painted graffiti stating, we told you so, you wasted our money, destroyed our resources, and left us with a big bill.

The political landscape of this plan is littered with special influence, misrepresentations, and outright lies.

The initial approach was the classic political strategy, just keep repeating the same stuff and ignore the facts.

Ultimately, people will get bored giving and let you do what you want.

It has largely worked, but not totally due solely to a few cool heads on this city council who are using their God-given intelligence and doing things in a business-like, not governmental, fashion.

There is no rush here.

We have enough water for at least 42 years.

Please continue to do the due diligence you have already started and which has already proven so much of this plan to be a fish on a bicycle.

Make your decisions based on facts.

Don't just say we need to do this for our grandchildren.

The reality is we will do it to our grandchildren.

The cost of the dam is just a down payment.

Unless you know the actual engineering, design, route, and cost of that big pipe, you don't have a clue what this thing really costs or the effects it will have on our community.

Finally, I remember a NASA scientist addressing my UVA environmental science class in 1976, warning us all about the dire and immediate consequences of global cooling.

Some of you are too young to remember that, but some might.

Back then, everyone swore the Earth was going to get colder because aerosols injected into the upper atmosphere were reflecting sunlight.

It was a universal theory at the time.

Aren't we glad we didn't jump and embrace it as religious dogma?

Finally, I do want to state that there is some great science in Rivers for Life, and I think very highly of what Mr. Richter has written.

My complaint is just that this is the wrong solution for Charlottesville.

This plan is tragically damaging to the city's interests and a huge waste of our existing facilities and assets.

But if TNC wants to pony up a couple hundred million dollars and assume any liability for an I-64 accident, I'm interested in listening.

Thank you, Mr. Roosevelt.

Good evening.

My name is Tom Olivier and I'm the Conservation Chair of the Piedmont Group at the Sierra Club and I'm speaking on behalf of that organization this evening.

In September, you passed a resolution calling for amendments to the adopted water plan.

Your proposed amendments included capacity-restoring dredging of the South Fork-Rivanna reservoir, an aggressive program of water conservation, and phased raising of the dam at Ragged Mountain.

The Piedmont group has expressed support for these amendments in the past, and we wish to express our continued support this evening.

We believe your proposed amendments can serve as key elements of a much better water plan, a plan that makes good use of new information obtained since the current plan was adopted, a plan that is far more compatible with our community's commitments to sustainability.

Our community has reached a critical point

On paper, various local organizations have made strong commitments to protect our environment and live sustainably.

However, too often, when key decisions are made, environmental considerations are discounted.

The city to date has played a lead role in demanding that our water plan promote sustainability.

We urge that you continue to do so.

Thank you, Mr. Livia.

Good evening Mayor Norris, Members of Council, Mr. Jones, I'm sorry I don't know the gentleman down there.

Mr. Harris.

And Ms. Barfield.

The county, oh 810 looks at it here, the county has abandoned all pretense of cooperation or compromise on this water issue.

The county was never serious about compromise.

For Albemarle County there is no code and cooperate, there's just operate.

Basically, they just wanted to string the city along, hoping through intimidation, pressure, trickery, they'd eventually get what they wanted, sort of like they've been doing with the Meadow Creek Parkway.

The county should be extremely grateful that the city has shared their reservoirs for decades with the county, and they should be extremely grateful that we're even thinking about expanding our water supply solely for their use.

It's a fact that only half of the current users are city residents and there's more than enough water to last the city indefinitely.

So we don't really need this.

But a lot of pressure is being put on city council by the following organizations Albemarle County and our service authority, Leonard Sandridge, Free Enterprise Forum, Chamber of Commerce, Piedmont Environmental Council, Southern Environmental Law Center, and the Nature Conservancy.

But none of these organizations represent the City of Charlottesville, the citizens of the City of Charlottesville.

They all have their own agendas, they all have their own constituencies, and they all have their own funding.

So let's play hardball.

Let's give notice that we're canceling the lease with the RWSA.

So then if the county doesn't want to play ball with us, let's take our reservoir back.

I'm sure the city can operate it just fine and probably make a profit.

I'm sure Mr. Jones would be much better at doing that than the RWSA is doing.

And I think we can make some money.

And don't all of y'all have some projects that you'd like to do but you don't have the money for?

The RWSA has been squirreling away millions of dollars for years.

I certainly think we could use that extra money for a lot better things than letting it sit in the RWSA coffers.

Thank you Mr. Smith.

Richard Statman, 116 Old Indoor Drive, Charlottesville, Mr. Mayor, Councillors, Mr. Jones

For those to whom much is given, much is required, and when at some future date history sits in judgment on each one of you, recording whether you fulfilled your responsibilities to our city, your success or failure may be measured by the answers to four questions.

First, were you truly men and women of courage, with the courage to stand up to one's enemies and the courage to stand up when necessary to one's associates, the courage to resist public pressure,

as well as Private Greed.

Secondly, were you truly men and women of judgment with perceptive judgment of the future as well as the past, of your own mistakes as well as the mistakes of others, with enough wisdom to know that you did not know and enough candor to admit that.

Third, were you truly men and women of integrity, men and women who never ran out and needed the principles they believed in or the people who believed in them, men and women who need the financial gain

or political ambition diverted them from the fulfillment of the public good.

Finally, will you truly men and women of dedication with an honor mortgage to no single individual or group and compromised by no private obligation or aim devoted solely to serving the public good and the public interest.

I have paraphrased part of a speech by President Elect John F. Kennedy, January 9, 1961, given to the Massachusetts State Legislature.

Those words struck me as true then and true now.

and ill wind is blowing in Charlottesville.

A water proposal has been developed primarily by an appointed board, the RWSA and a private group, the Nature Conservancy, both of whom feel emboldened to speak and act ex cathedra in the matter of any community water needs.

They have sought to leverage themselves into our political and public life.

Our city's questions, our city's reservations and amendments to the water proposal have been pushed aside, denied, tabled and marginalized.

Our city's efforts to voice approval for dredging and phasing any dam, our city's requests for substantive answers to cost have been met by obfuscation and resistance, finally dismissed by a very unfortunate letter from our county partners that speaks to no room for compromise.

Special interests should not be sitting at the same table with those who decide policy.

We elect and appoint officials to put their legal and fiduciary responsibilities to the public first and foremost.

Families on Page Street, Montrose Avenue, on Greenbrier Drive, on every byway expect nothing less than a full commitment to keep our city strong, to protect city-owned assets, including three city-owned reservoirs and the Ragon Mountain Natural Dam area, and seek the best cost-effective and environmentally responsible solution to any water proposal.

Good evening members of council.

I'm here tonight to thank you for your recent vote in support of the plan that focuses on dredging and conservation and just raising the dam 13 feet rather than going with the big dam.

Personally, I don't think we need to raise the dam at all, but certainly 13 feet is much better.

So thank you very much for that.

And I just wanted to make note of some of the disinformation that's out there in support of that decision that you made.

First of all, there's a lot of people talking about the approved plan.

and calling that the 2006 plan, there was an approved plan in 2002 before that approved plan.

So what you just voted for is really harkening back to something much closer to Council's original intention.

And in fact, on the basis of the approval of that 2002 plan, the Water Authority started squirreling money away, which now they intend to try to spend on the big dam.

and I, you know, even after that vote that you all took, they still, I can't remember if it was the water authority or the county board, decided to try to spend $800,000 to study this dam that Charlottesville said we do not want on our reservoir.

That is an incredible amount of arrogance, so I'm glad that you're standing up to them about that.

So I also wanted to mention about the demand study.

We already, the information's in.

It was done with 2001 figures.

So it's about 10 years old.

We know that it's 26% wrong already.

So if we extrapolate that error rate over the 50-year period that they pretend to know how much water we're going to use for, we find that it's off by 130%.

That's about how much we should be able to assume the demand estimates off if we use a methodology similar to what they used to come up with it.

So thank you very much for resisting this unholy alliance of our local sprawl growth industrial complex and NIMBY county environmental groups.

Now, in terms of PEC and the Nature Conservancy, I think they do some great stuff.

I don't want to see a 29 bypass either, but I don't want to see the water plan in hopes of a pipeline that might take the same route as it be a reason for our water

plan being enacted.

And I don't want to see their need to get along with those sprawl interests and the County Board of Supervisors also influencing city policy.

And let me just say, if you Google Nature Conservancy and scandal sometime, you'll see that they actually do have fairly close relations with developers.

Thank you, Mr. Salinas.

Rebecca Quinn, 1044th Street, here in the city.

Good evening.

You've heard me say it before, if we don't need the water, we don't need the dam.

I've also said if we don't need that much water, we don't need that much dam.

We know that dredging will provide enough water for decades to come.

But tonight I want to talk about the Lower Ragged Mountain Dam.

We visited, a number of us yesterday visited that beautiful corner of the county and it was really hard to stand on that dam and imagine water rising

50 some feet above your head or 40 some feet above your head and all that it would do.

I distributed in advance a handout and I just want to hit a couple of the highlights in this handout.

First, the community water plan adopted in 2006 called for phasing in construction of the dam height.

The permit support document submitted in 2006 to the state and the Corps of Engineers called for phasing in the dam height.

In particular, there's a quote from the permit support document.

Construction of the dam's first phase would produce adequate yield to cover an interim period while avoiding the greater capital cost associated with future needs.

The dam would be raised to its full height in the future

when more users create additional demand and those additional rate payers can share the cost.

Four, the council's September 20 resolution calls for phasing in the Ragged Mountain Dam height.

We now know Black and Veatch's response recently to the issues raised by the ITRT reaffirms that the lower Ragged Mountain Dam can safely and cost-effectively serve as the basis

for a 13 foot raise or up to a 51 foot raise in the future if needed.

The DEQ and the core permits allow phasing in stream flows as volume grows.

We all applaud your action on September 20th and urge that you hold firm to its particulars.

And I'm not sure that I've got a good segue to this, but I do want to say this.

Last week, as you know, the Citizens for a Sustainable Water Plan delivered a letter to the Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S.

Corps of Engineers because of new data and new information, largely because of studies that your foresight and your stewardship called for.

We now know there are new information and new data that are material and substantive changes in the premises on which the permit support document was based.

We call on those agencies to do what the laws charge them to do, protect our water resources by ensuring that any alternative is the most practical and least environmentally damaging alternative.

Thank you, Ms. Green.

Good evening, Councillors.

Later tonight, Mike Smith is going to give you a report

and a resolution on the proposed tree commission and I'm fully in support of that and really excited about that.

Mr. Huja, I've heard you say before that in Charlottesville we work on every issue for a long time and trees are no exception to that tendency.

At your October 18th meeting I gave you guys a copy of the 1975 guidelines for

a tree playing master program that was prepared by George Brigg and Claire Bird.

I hope that you would make one little tweak to your resolution.

The resolution currently reads, be it resolved by the City of Charlottesville that a tree commission be established, outlined in the attached council amendment for December 20th.

And I would suggest that you make the following modification, and it would go under the duties paragraph 5, which currently reads,

to develop a street tree master list.

I would also, I would get you to add the words and plan there after that statement.

And then under the, you know, the sort of words underneath, suggest that the commission will study the 1975 street tree master plan and make a

Suggestion to council regarding the revision and degree of implementation of that plan.

The urban forestry management plan, which is also a wonderful document, addresses tree planting and its tactical

statements, but it's not a plan.

And like right now, Mike Osteen recently mentioned that UVA is planning on planting 200 trees on campus this winter.

I'd like to actually see part of the Tree Commission's idea to get trees where people are, where people walk, where pedestrians are.

I mean, you know me, I'm Mr. Willam Mills.

The 1975 plan actually called for the planting of trees down

Willam Mills all the way in.

That never happened.

Now, seven years after Mr. Huja got here, he oversaw the planting of trees on West Main Street.

And you imagine what West Main Street would look like if those weren't there now.

But also, I challenge you to imagine what the city would look like if the 1975 guidelines had been implemented after their construction.

So I just encourage you to consider that.

Thank you, Mr. Henry.

Mr. Mayor, ladies and gentlemen, welcome, Mr. Jones.

I would like to make a request

regarding the RFP for dredging.

I think that for whatever reasons that has dropped out of sight and if it were possible tonight to have at least a brief comment from city staff about the status of the dredging RFP, I think that the public really needs to know where that is because many of us

had expected that by now the RFP would have been out in the public and it would have been a source of factual information about the true costs of dredging based on companies that actually do dredging.

My fear, and it's been spoken to by others tonight, is that

RWSA and those entities that support RWSA in obstructing finding the data and the facts that you all are diligently now seeking out are obstructing getting the RFP for dredging out to the public.

I hope that that's not true, but given the length of time that it's taken so far, I hope that you can reassure us that obstructionism is not, to use maritime analogy,

leaving dredging dead in the water while any efforts to build a dam seem to be full speed ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Murray.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, City Councilors.

Kevin Lynch, 609 Locust Avenue.

Good to see you all tonight.

I want to go back to the 2002 plan and remind you all that in 2002, City Council, of which I was a member at that time, and the county, and Rivanna, passed a water plan that was based on principles of sustainability.

It was a $30 million water plan, and it consisted of dredging the South Fork reservoir, increasing the capacity of the South Fork reservoir, and

of Preparing the Dam at Ragon Mountain.

But we didn't just pass a plan, we financed the plan.

We raised rates over a two year period, 2002 and 2004, by nearly 70%, going from nearly the lowest rates in the state to nearly the highest rates in the state.

It was a painful transition for a lot of residents and we told them in justifying that that we were doing it because we were paying for long deferred maintenance.

Now I believe that any public official, including myself, when we reach into the pocketbooks of residents like we did, whether it's for taxes or for rate increase, we have an obligation to make sure that that money is responsibly spent.

and that's what keeps bringing me down here sadly eight years later I don't want to be here and I'm sure you don't want to see me here anymore either but that money has not been responsibly spent.

Eight years later, 25 cents out of every dollar that Rivanna gets they're simply putting in the bank and holding.

They've turned that 30 million dollar maintenance plan

into a down payment for a plan that's way bigger than what we need and even likely to need for the next 50 years.

I do commend council for doing the Black & Veatch study because now we know that simply repairing the dam, which is really all that the city should be obligated to do, would be an $8 million expense.

So regardless of what happens, the city shouldn't be putting any more than $4 million into this.

And I think it would be in your best interest to take a look at that pipeline

and see how much it would cost to repair and to keep that maintained as well.

I want you to remember we've paid the city 65% of a water system that can provide 12.8 million gallons a day.

In other words, we've paid for about 8.3 million gallons of capacity.

That's about twice what we're using.

So even if we doubled our water usage in the city, which is very unlikely, we've already paid for that capacity.

I want you to think about what happened in 2008.

We're still getting over the effects of the bursting of probably the greatest bubble since right before the Great Depression.

And the sources of that bubble were many, but they were largely based on a whole lot of people

being persuaded to buy more than they could afford, more than they needed, while the people that were selling them, making the pitch, were hiding the true cost and the long-term cost of what was happening.

And that kept on going for about a decade until finally the chickens came home to roost, and here we are.

What we're looking at with this water plan

You've got a five-year balloon payment coming.

It's called the pipeline, the software pipeline.

So I'll wrap it up by saying I applaud the leadership of the Mayor of City Council in supporting them.

We need a solution clearly.

We need a solution that fits this community and not the pocketbooks of a lot of special interests.

Hindsight is great, but we have the opportunity to apply foresight here.

Thank you, Mr. Lynch.

D.D.

Dede Smith, 2652 Jefferson Park Circle.

Good evening, everybody.

And I have a handout for you.

Before I explain that, I'd just like to reiterate a couple things you've heard, and you've heard a lot tonight, and I appreciate your patience with all of this.

But for somebody who's been through, who really kind of went to all of those meetings before the 2006 plan was approved and have obviously been very enmeshed in it since that time, I'd just like to explain that

But again, that what City Council and Board of Supervisors approved in 2006 was a phased-in dam height, not the kind of phasing we're hearing about now, which is a dam and then a pipeline.

That didn't happen until 15 months after the

2006 vote.

That was in a September 2007 meeting when Rivanna called about financing because what happened you see is that in all of the discussions that came, that

led up to that 2006 plan, what they were talking, they never ever actually considered when they were talking about raising the Ragon Mountain Dam, filling it from anything other than either the Mormons or the Mormons and the Meachums.

And so when the pipeline didn't come up until the very last minute, and it seemed to solve, everybody loved it, it seemed to solve all the problems.

but the problem that they, and so it was a concept that just seemed so great and everyone jumped on it.

The problem is it's outrageously expensive which they didn't know really until 15 months later and then we got this new definition of phasing because they couldn't pay for it.

It's all in black and white.

It's in the minutes.

They said we can't do them because we can't pay for them.

We can't bond them.

It's too much money.

and that's why we're seeing this sort of iteration of a plan that was not supposed to look like this.

So you're now back to really where we were back in 2006.

You're talking about phasing the dam.

It's a very logical thing to do.

The chart I've given you actually I just thought might be helpful as you're making this decision

or talking about this at your next meeting because it talks about the cost.

The costs just drop dramatically as you not only build on the existing dam but also with the height.

And I would really like you to consider the risks, the cons and the risks with building at different heights because one of the consequences of building that 45-foot dam

and then saying we're going to build a pipeline 10, 15 years later is we may never have enough demand to pay for that pipeline and then what do you have?

You have a great big old dam.

that you're still paying off and you have no way to fill it.

With a 13-foot dam, you have many more options to fill it.

You can address the Mormon's issue if you are just filling a much lower dam and have the resources to pay for it because you're not paying off for this huge earthen dam.

and I think that really is what is probably of all of these the greatest risk you have is that you will never be able to build that pipeline because in truth the pipeline was a pipe dream.

It just is way, way too extravagant.

Thank you Ms. Smith.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of council.

My name is Francis Fife and I live at 501 9th Street, Southwest.

I'm a little bit embarrassed to follow this group of people that you've heard speaking about the water issue and the dam and so forth.

I have never seen a group of people, and I call them young people because they're all much younger than I am,

work as hard and I will put them up against any group of experts that Robbanna has or the county or whoever else and I guarantee you they will know more and bring more expertise to you all than any other group.

You've heard of the canary in the coal mine and I'm going to speak of something that you may think is a little flip.

and that's about birds.

Birds are an indication of life.

And when you destroy 200 acres or more of forest land, you're disturbing and destroying the home life of a lot of birds.

Last night at my house, a group of people who had been counting birds during the day, I mean we do these censuses every year,

came and the report that had the most birds were around Racket Mountain and it was simply amazing.

When the names came up, oh yes, I saw one of those.

There were two people who covered that area and it's a wonderful area.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Fife.

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

We have time for one or two more speakers or anybody else that would like to speak.

I hadn't planned to speak tonight so I didn't sign up, but I heard some things that just really impressed me tonight.

One was Mr. Stotman talking about the public trust.

this community and trust you people to take care of their assets, to give them what they need, to not give away their property.

So I encourage you to think about that.

The other one was bacon.

These two young ladies are 18 years old, they vote, but you know in 15 years history will be made.

Next council meeting

and these people will be affected.

In 15 years they'll be having families.

They'll look back and they'll say, what did this council do?

You're making history when you vote on this.

And they're going to be the people who decide whether that was a good decision or a bad decision.

Did we need it?

Did we not need it?

Is the city now better off or has the city been stripped?

So I just encourage you to think about the Bacon people.

I slipped them a note and said I would certainly like to talk with them just to see where their interests and their sentiments lie because we're talking about their future.

Thank you, Mr. Lloyd.

Anybody else like to speak?

We will now close matters by the public and open our meeting to council member responses to matters by the public.

Mr. Lloyd.

Mr. Huja.

I just wanted to comment on Bill Emery's suggestions on tree gardeners and I think we should probably, we will be discussing that in a few minutes.

I would like to suggest that we do some of those things and have some other ideas also.

Mr. Jones, do you want to address that now while it's on the table?

Sure.

Currently the Rivanna board is discussing the dredging RFP and more specifically how to go about

doing the dredging RFP.

Would we do it in a traditional manner or would we do it in a way that would allow for a little more flexibility with companies that were coming in and were interested in bidding a proposal?

So I believe at our next board meeting we'll have a better discussion or more in-depth discussion about that and hopefully we'll be making a decision on that.

Is that pretty accurate, Mr. Mayor?

Dr. Brown?

Well, most of the comments were about water tonight, so I guess I'll respond a little bit to that.

First, I will agree completely with Francis Fife that people in this community have worked enormously hard on this issue.

You know, it's Kevin Lynch and D.D.

Smith and Rebecca Quinn and a host of other people have really put a lot of effort, and I admire it.

and a lot of discussion on the water supply has been pretty fact-based, which is kind of interesting.

You have some wildly divergent opinions trying to sort through the same pile of information, but there's certainly been a lot of stuff that's been brought to my attention.

I think it's been very important.

But having said that, what I don't want to see is the discussion we're having here become like the discussion in Congress, where one side is right and the other side is not only wrong, but they're a little

they're not truthful, they're making things up, they're somehow not good people.

And I'm afraid that some of the comments tonight, Mr. Rosenfeld in particular, crossed that line.

You know, when we talk about Piedmont Environmental Council, we're not talking about a faceless organization that's somewhere else.

We're talking about Jeff Warner, you know, a friend of ours, a lot of people's here.

When we talk about the Nature Conservancy, we're talking about Rich Schuyler.

A very good person.

Okay, when we talk about the Southern Environmental Law Center, we're talking about Case Slaughter, we're talking about Morgan Butler, we're talking about a number of people we know.

So to somehow imply that those organizations are taking a position not because

of their interpretation of the facts, but somehow there's something going on with money and politics and intrigue and growth.

I just think that's an unfortunate thing to do.

I think all the comments kind of

encompass my view of the community and my new word now is called healthscape.

So thanks for reminding us about the healthscape of our community.

To Mr. Statman, the words from Kennedy were eloquent.

I have an autographed copy of Rivers for Life.

I think that's about it.

Cameron Lynch, you're always welcome.

I want to thank all of you who came to speak tonight, particularly those who came to speak on the water issue.

We've come a long way in the last couple years in developing an alternative that I think serves our community well or would serve our community well.

I have also urged, I think it's important to keep focused on the facts and not make it too personal.

But I think we're coming to the point now where

The plan that we adopted back in September is really, I think, it's proving to be a viable plan and proving to be a good alternative.

And so we're going to continue that discussion in January, but I appreciate all of you who came to speak and to support.

us in that direction.

I wanted to slightly correct something that Ms. Smith said when you said that the 2006 vote was a vote for a phased plan.

I think the county would say that it's a plan that allows for phasing.

It's not a plan that dictates phasing.

Just a slight sort of alternative

version of that.

But I get your basic point and Ms. Quinn made the point as well.

The plan is explicit in allowing for the construction of the dam to be done in phases as needed, which is exactly what city council is on record as supporting.

We are now going to move on to the rest of the items on our agenda.

First is appointments to boards and commissions.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to move that City Council appoint Mike Gaffney as a citizen representative on the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority and the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority.

And I will note that this is a joint appointment and the county has already

Discussion?

Or a second?

Sorry, was there a second?

Any discussion?

I do think it's important to note that two years ago it was our turn to appoint a citizen representative and the county essentially blesses that and this year it's their turn to appoint the representative and it's been moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

And the motion carries.

Thank you very much.

We now have our consent agenda tonight.

On our consent agenda is item A, minutes of December 6th.

Item B is an appropriation of $20,000, finance and warehouse operation, used forklift purchase, second of two readings.

Item C is an appropriation of $167,312.71, CATEC, VDOT funds, first of two readings.

item D is an appropriation $5,000 stipend project child hands participation first of two readings item E an appropriation of $750 Sam's Club Foundation community grant first of one reading item F an appropriation of $1,954.92 2010 Charlottesville Police Department Foundation donation first of two readings item G an appropriation of $6,187.50

U.S. Department of Justice 2010 Bulletproof Partnership Reimbursement Grant, first of two readings.

Item H, Resolution $32,500, Funding for the Paramount Theater Outreach Initiatives, first of one reading.

Item I, Resolution T, Grant, McIntire Park Bike, Pedestrian Bridge, Overrail Road, Phase II, Construction Funds, first of one reading.

Item J, Resolution Reentry Summit Funding, Authorization, First to One Reading.

Item K, Resolution DCR, Washington Park, First to One Reading.

Item L, Resolution Amendment of Funding Agreement between City of Charlottesville and CEDA, Charlottesville Economic Development Authority for the Jefferson School of Innovation, First to One Reading.

Item M, an ordinance mixed use matrix, second of two readings.

Item N, ordinance parking entrance widths in historic districts, second of two readings.

Last but not least, item O, ordinance vacation of subdivision plat for 2210 Berkshire Road, second of two readings.

Mr. Mayor, I don't want to pull out any item, but I do want to make a comment on item H, and I support it.

It's been a month here.

An additional location, but I would suggest that we ask them to talk to Cody also to match this effort.

Thank you, Deputy Minister Huja.

Motion to approve the consent agenda or any other comments?

So moved.

Second.

Moved and seconded.

Any further discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

It carries unanimously.

Thank you very much.

Next item on our agenda is a public hearing and an ordinance regarding the donation of land to Habitat for Humanity.

This is before us tonight, first of two readings.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council.

Over the last couple of months I've talked with all of you about some property that we have that's on Elliott Avenue that's adjacent to the Eco Mod House and Burnett Commons.

It's a parcel there that we've had a subdivision done for in anticipation of having this discussion where we've

created two lots, two single family lots, one on the east side, one on the west side of the lot, leaving the central portion open for possible redevelopment either of that side or additional development of the site or

partnering with the property behind it in some form or fashion that's privately owned.

This has been advertised as a public hearing and suggestion before you tonight is to provide these lots to Habitat for Humanity for them to develop affordable housing on.

Again, the EcoMod house that they developed along with the University of Virginia is adjacent to one of these.

The other side is adjacent to Burnett Commons and I've heard some

comments from some councils may be concerned about that one in particular about maybe that's not the appropriate use there.

Maybe we want to look towards something else.

If you want to convey one and not the other, that's perfectly all right.

You would need to amend this ordinance on first reading to do that to convey lot one and not two.

I also understand there may be some questions about how much might it cost to remediate the site if we do donate them because of the problems we had on the adjacent property.

That was for one of the lots at that time but again this is before you for public hearing and

And like I say, if you wanted to do one and not the other, you could do that tonight also.

Not necessarily.

Well, I wish you wouldn't have asked me that.

And there were also costs associated with the sewer line, is that right?

Some of that cost was water and sewer line and that's already in and done and would serve these lots.

Okay.

So that's already been taken care of.

Right.

That's already built.

Right.

Thank you, Mr. Tolbert.

We will now open the public hearing and is there anybody signed up to speak?

No.

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

Hearing none, we will close the public hearing.

Questions or comments for Mr. Tolbert?

If you look at the drawing which is in your packet, this is a lot one and lot two.

Especially concerned about lot two, because there is an entrance to one of Scarlan, which is a grand PUD,

and at least it will provide, I think it will provide some effect on the development and I would hope that we can not donate that lot, only do lot one and then leave that alone or maybe sell it to the private common, if not just keep it.

I tend to agree.

I think Mr. Armstrong has a great deal of interest if we were to make it available to him.

One thing that I really like about this is that we've talked a lot about the need for affordable housing and this is a way of getting more affordable housing in the city.

If we were to decide not to do that and were to sell it, I would like to see that either tied to affordable housing in some way in the city, whether we use that funding to offset some affordable housing or talk to the folks at Burnett Common or whatever it was.

No, just one.

One family's home.

Yeah, I would have no objection in that case.

All right.

So this is before us on the first two readings.

Do it on the second reading.

Okay.

I would so move.

And will you then also prepare a, I guess an offer to Southern Development?

Absolutely.

Okay, great.

I'll second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Carry forward.

Thank you, Mr. Tolbert.

Thank you, Mr. Harris.

Next item before us is a public hearing ordinance regarding amendment of vendor fees.

Our first two readings, Mr. Jim Tolbert.

This is an item that I hope and I think is just a matter of housekeeping.

A couple of years ago we came to you with a suggestion that we increase our vendor fees and council felt like given the economy at the time that was not

I was

in place that did not actually have those fees.

So what we've got before you tonight is an ordinance to align our current vendor fees with what we have been charging to the vendors for the last two years, which is $800 for assigned, $600 for unassigned spaces, and then we're also recommending taking out

all of the side streets and other locations because nobody is using those and vendor spaces in our conversation with a vendor space is a vendor space and you know if it's on a side street then they're going to be if that's the only space they're going to be paying for whatever anybody else is so this has been working and we like to say we'd like to get our ordinance in line with what the practice has been and we're not sure where the disconnect occurred

Any questions for Ms. Tolbert before we open the public hearing?

Thank you, Ms. Tolbert.

There's nobody signed up to speak.

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

We will open the public hearing.

Seeing none, we will close the public hearing.

I'd just like to say I'm for doing it, but it is a little distressing that something like that could happen, that we would have something like that just sort of get lost.

We've changed over at one point from the fees were not in the code and now they're in the code and I think that's where the transition, when we transitioned from something that wasn't in the code to putting them in the code, that's where the disconnect occurred.

It just seems like this might be one of those learning moments where we could figure out how that wouldn't happen because the code gets revised periodically and it would be good to know.

Any other comments, questions, or a motion to approve the ordinance?

I'll move the ordinance.

It's been moved and seconded and it will carry forward to our next meeting.

Thank you, Mr. Tolbert.

Don't go anywhere.

We now have a public hearing and ordinance regarding sale of 409 Stadium Road again before us tonight.

Okay.

Seven months ago I started talking to you about the possibility of selling a piece of land that we own that's actually at the corner of JPA and Emmett.

but for some reason has an address of 409 Stadium Road.

This is a piece of property that someone asked if they could swap a piece with us for we found out at that time we owned it.

This piece of property the council had considered selling in around 1997 and

pretty much agreed to do and then the deal never happened at that time.

So we felt like it was an asset that we had that was not being used that we could put on the market, see what the interest was and raise some funds for the housing fund.

You directed that we go out for an RFP and we did that and we put it out and we got actually four proposals ranging with a proposed purchase price at that time

from zero to $250,000 and the $250,000 price being a proposal from Charlottesville Apartments

who desired to purchase a property and construct housing units for student housing on the property.

Our RFP said we wanted money and we wanted housing out of this.

That was the ultimate goal.

So this is before you tonight.

It's been through your process for sale of property and in addition we did an RFP which is more than you actually require in that process.

and we have had subsequent to receiving these interest from one organization, Management Services, who is in writing said that they would match the $250,000 offer and would like you to consider that and Mr. Jones is here to address that and I'll just say that in talking to the city attorney about this, if you desire to go that route, he would suggest that we advertise a public hearing again

with that being known publicly now and allow additional comments.

So if you wanted to consider that offer that has been made in lieu of the one that we're recommending, which we've recommended at this point, that we go with the offer from the Charlottesville Apartments that you would then put it back out.

Thank you, Mr. Tolbert.

That is correct, sir.

We did an RFP process and not just a bid process.

Yes, sir.

Good evening, I'm Gait Pratt with Limehouse Architects in the city, 946 Grady Avenue.

I'm here representing Charlottesville Apartments and we'd like to thank you for the opportunity to make a proposal on the project.

After two months of suspense we were pleased to learn that Mr. Tolbert was recommending our project to the council and I simply wanted to say that we would be pleased to work with the city, the planning commission, the entrance review quarter and the citizens in the area to achieve a project that everybody would be happy with.

We think we've come up with a very nice proposal and a concept that

We think initiates the beginning of a dialogue.

We'd like to put a project there that everybody's happy with and we did our best effort in a very short period of time to come up with a concept that we think will propose a nice student apartment.

We don't think it's final but we think that what will result will look a lot like what we've proposed and we understand that there's a period of discussion and review that will ultimately generate the right density and the right look for the site.

We would be happy to work with you and come up with an apartment complex that represents what you see here.

John Crayfact from Charlottesville Apartments is here tonight and I am also, if you'd like to ask us any questions, we'd be happy to discuss it with you.

Thank you, Mr. Pratt.

Anybody else like to speak?

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of City Council, Mr. Jones.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you all tonight and thank you to Mr. Huja for reminding you all that the RFP did allow for me, and by the way, it's not management services that is making an offer, it's myself and Doug Caton.

We own all of the

surrounding parcels on each side of Woodrow Street at the moment.

We have, again, it's kind of a strange situation for me.

Developers are usually asking for permission to build something and build more than it's allowed.

that's actually not what we were doing.

And it's kind of strange to be having a public hearing on a real estate deal in public.

So why would you agree to sell to us?

Because essentially we've said that we don't plan to do anything there.

We have offered $250,000 to the property

There are basically five reasons why we think that we've got a good reason for you.

One, the site is extremely challenging.

And I don't know exactly how to do this, but I'll just kind of hold it up here.

This is JPA, this is M that comes around, turns into JPA.

You guys can see the site plan.

The way the ordinance reads, according to my interpretation, there's going to be a required 50 foot setback on this front yard.

The way zoning describes this weird pie-shaped is that that curved part is the front yard and it requires essentially a 25 foot setback, but you also have to take into consideration all the properties in either direction, I think it's 400 or 500 feet,

and the average setback of the existing buildings, which is 50 feet.

So, you can't park here, you can't build here.

If I were doing this, that would be a challenge.

I haven't seen Mr. Pratt's design, but for us, it was...

a challenge.

Access is a huge problem.

Woodrow Street, which runs right here, you cannot park along the side of Woodrow Street.

If you have a driveway onto the property you can't park in it.

It's kind of an invitation for trouble down the road if you do build that driveway to get to it.

It's kind of ironic that you all are going to be talking about a tree commission.

and I'm surprised that you're selling or desiring to sell a property that's got some huge mature trees on it.

I hope they aren't cut down if you do.

As I said, we don't plan to build anything here.

Our vision is long term for putting this density onto the rest of our property and not to see it developed.

Lastly, we sunk a huge amount of money into that adjoining property.

It is right there.

You can almost see the house on that property line.

and like the people at the Burnett Commons, I'm going to be devastated when that happens.

This house was condemned, we brought it back, got a lot of coverage in the paper, we'd hate to see that happen.

Thanks.

The other offer is basically a free look for 100 days.

It's my understanding it has a 100-day due diligence clause.

Thank you, Mr. Jones.

We responded to the RFP that you all sent out and addressed all the issues that he brought up and we thought that the sealed proposals will be required will be received until 4pm on October 29th and while you could certainly negotiate with anybody

that doesn't seem quite fair that once they saw our offer then they decided to match our offer.

They had an opportunity to come forth with whatever plan they wanted to have by October 29 and didn't do so.

The building challenge I think we've met, you see our proposal there.

The access that Mr. Jones talked about, they would increase the density on adjacent property has the same access issues.

As far as the trees are concerned, we would certainly replace trees that would cut down data development.

So I would think that the city would lose a certain amount of credibility if you

We'd be happy to answer any questions that you all have with regard to our proposed project.

Thank you, Mr. Gray.

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

Mr. Speaker, I think we have a very good piece of property, very strangely located

and it could be developed but as it is a difficult site to develop in such that there is no access setback as particular setback would require a really creative process to develop a building on this site.

I have a question and a comment.

I'm not sure that 50 feet is exact and I'm not sure that 25 feet is.

I know that Mr. Pratt and Mr. Krafick met with our staff today.

This is one that you rarely get a curve like this.

It's open to interpretation and I know that they've asked for it.

an official opinion.

That's one of the reasons we put a due diligence period in so that whoever was the proposer would have an opportunity to see if they could actually build what it is they're proposing to build.

That's correct but it's the question here is how much of that is JPA and how much of it is Emmett and there's different averages on Emmett from JPA and when you get across the street you know it's if you only were counting what's on JPA on Emmett

and then where it becomes JPA.

It's so confusing because it changes names and what you might think would be in it is JPA.

It would be one thing.

If you counted as the two different streets, it's something totally different.

And I think what we had to have was somebody sit down and say, you know, let's divide it up, look at a potential as they did today and try to figure out what it might be.

I must say that although I

You know, I understand the neighbor's concern about this property.

I also am concerned about process and the fact that we did issue this RFP and we said we wanted housing there and that was the plan and it was, you know, Mr. Krafak said, you know, this was a sealed bid process and that's why we do sealed bid processes.

So I would

I'd just be a little uncomfortable about reopening it up.

Can I clarify one thing?

It's, as he read it, a seal bid.

It's really not a seal bid.

It's an RFP process, a request for proposals, that is a little different.

We can, in a seal bid, you take highest qualified, and so this is not that.

And it's not a bid so much as a proposal.

Right.

So it is a little bit different, but same issues.

I mean, I sort of agree.

You know, it's an unusual process, but to some degree, you know, I know the council's interested in housing, we're interested in money for the housing fund, but I also like the idea that we have some input as to what form that particular corner takes.

And so I'm a little uneasy, I mean,

with it just being the highest bidder.

I'm not sure if that was our intention to begin with, maybe it was, I'm not really sure, but it seems like there's, you know, it's a not process we followed here, but I'd like to see us have some thought as to making sure that the site works, you know, I mean, I don't have any detailed information, but for example, are there safety issues with

going in and out of that site, you know, or not.

I mean, I just don't know.

I certainly support that.

Is there other counselors who, Mr. Huja, I heard you support for that, Dr. Brown, Ms. Edwards.

The agenda's not too full.

That's fine.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Next item on our agenda tonight is a report and resolution.

Tree Commission follow-up.

Let me introduce, and I'm not sure if all of you all have had the opportunity to meet Mike.

He's a very good brother.

Thank you.

I didn't know Mr. Tobra was going to introduce me to you all.

I've met you all plenty of times.

But this is just a follow-up on what Mr. Tobra brought on October 18th.

And I think you guys are very familiar with what we want to do with this commission.

And what we all want to try and emphasize is only this is going to be an advisory commission.

essentially not have that much authority in tree removal and tree planting but essentially assist commission you all and staff on issues regarding planting and preservation and things of that nature.

As you've seen tonight there is some support and I appreciate Mr. Emery's comment and I did want to say that I think

On the duties I listed, especially number eight, develop and update a longer age preservation plan.

I think that satisfies your concern.

I wasn't as sure about the 1975 street tree master plan, but I appreciate him bringing that to our attention.

Just to get to some basics of what we want to see with this, the membership would be seven city residents, and we've had a lot of interest from Jackie Balder who represents Charlesville Area Tree Stores, so we thought having some connection to local non-profits would be pretty beneficial for the effectiveness of this commission.

And also the Blue Ridge Permaculture Institute, and aside from those, they'll have three at large, and we'll try to select members that have

Primarily interested in urban forestry, have some background on landscape design and natural resource protection and habitat restoration.

A lot of concerns that you gave Mr. Tolbert at the last meeting that I noticed was one, dealing with trying to reach the public and how this commission would do that.

So I tried to emphasize, you know, engaging the youth and

Jackie Potter from Charles and Mary Treestewart's already told me that they already do a lot of workshops and a lot of tours around town.

So I think that would be good that that would be already implemented within the commission.

And a lot of other basics.

The meetings will be quarterly.

And let's see.

And staff are committed to approval.

So if you have any questions, please know how to take that.

First of all, I'm very pleased to have this proposal.

I've been talking about it for the last 20 years and it takes a lot of time and short-term to get things done.

the same people and I would like to see that five of those be citizens instead of three of those be citizens I think it would be healthy to have citizen majority on the commission for this nature.

Secondly, I would like to add a number ten in terms of

Duties is to basically to recommend the creation of additional trees and the creation of a tree plan for the city of Charlottesville, working with the staff.

And that would be all the other things I would like to add.

How is that different from you?

The second set of operational plan I think, at least that's what it looks like.

You're trying to get at the same comment that Mr. Emery is doing.

I think the thought was that the urban forestry management plan is broad and as Mr. Emery said it's tactical but what the 1975 plan actually got down into discussing specific areas of the city, specific streets where we might want to do more tree planting and I think having this body look at that plan, update that plan

The only comment that I had was also regarding the membership.

I think this would be an opportunity to provide some diversity to the commission and also will provide an opportunity for maybe some of the members to simply learn something new and to engage in the part of the community that otherwise wouldn't have the opportunity.

And QCC does have a pretty active pro-age club

and I think in terms of redevelopment this is probably a good time for Farrar to get involved to understand the importance of trees and landscaping as far as the healthscape of the whole city and how trees are a big part of that.

So will the appointments for this come back to us just like for any other board?

So what I'm kind of wondering is if we could have a suggestion I might have is that rather than since the other organizations that are named here are very tree specific, what if we had a little more general language such as at least one representative from an organization representing the

low-income community or something like that, to say at least one, but it wouldn't limit that.

It might be someone who is involved with some other organization.

Well, if we follow Mr. Huja's suggestion of adding two more seats for citizens, it makes sense to me to actually outline QCC and FAR and then we still have three more seats.

I think this is a council that's made a great deal of effort to promote diversity on our various boards and commissions and we don't always get there but we have a clear intent and desire and so if we had applicants from those organizations for this position who were clearly motivated and had a strong desire to serve I can't imagine we wouldn't

to appoint them or at least seriously consider appointing them.

I'd like to go on record as saying we want to encourage each of those organizations and others who serve the low income community in Charlottesville to nominate representatives.

I would also be willing to make a commitment for those two groups right now.

Except that I remember we have had all the U.S. boards who are very specific that we have all had trouble finding spaces.

If there's consistently trouble or if either of those organizations ceases to exist, a future council could make a different decision than other organizations.

What about if we do, as Dr. Brown suggested, and my only concern is I don't want to make it too limiting, but I have no problem saying at least

But just not necessarily specify those two particular organizations because there may be somebody from Abundant Life or MACA or

I agree with that.

Are you ready for making motions, Jim?

Sure.

I'd like to recommend that we adopt this resolution as submitted with two changes.

There will be nine people in membership, but two of those must be learned from, I don't know how the wording would be, learned from individuals representing them.

I'd say at least two.

At least two.

And that we, at a minimum of nine, we develop a

tree master plan, and number 10 will be the maintaining tree inventory.

I'd like to propose an amendment if I could.

Okay.

If we were to do it that way with the membership, could we put in maybe as item number 11 to work closely with public housing residents

Yes.

Okay.

It's been moved.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any further discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

And it carries unanimously.

Thank you very much.

The last item on our regular, and thank you Mr. Smith for your work on this.

The last item on our regular business agenda tonight is a report on the city market.

Good evening Mr. Mayor, Members of Council.

I hope everyone's doing well.

Last month, first part of November, City Council held a work session about the future location of the city market.

And one of the outcomes of that work session, some folks from Market Central, was a local 501c3 non-profit that was

started to support the city market, made a recommendation to council that a task force be established to study and look at potential locations for a permanent home for the market and ultimately make a recommendation to council for where the permanent market home would be.

Since the work session, staff have met with the folks from Market Central a couple of different times to talk through what the composition of the task force could be to ensure that we had both folks from Market Central but individual vendors that represented the artisans, the food, and the farmers, as well as some other folks who are either general customers of the market or folks who have an interest in participating in the task force.

What you have before you tonight is just kind of our next step forward.

The task force would be established.

We are currently working through a work process, how the task force would actually get its work done.

I think we would, following this evening, we would immediately get in touch with those folks who will be appointed to the task force this week and get a couple of things to them.

The criteria for selection that were discussed at the work session, some draft definitions of those criteria, and another list of the locations that were discussed at the work session, and schedule the first meeting for probably the first or second week in January.

I think we can get this done by the end of March.

I really do.

Sir, may I also make a comment that I think there are a variety of people on this committee for task force, including Market Central.

It is a community group, not just Market Central group.

Right.

I do have some other individuals that I think would bring a lot of value to this task force and have all offered to serve, including Sherry Lewis, who's a former planning commissioner and attorney, Kate Collier, who's a local businesswoman, owns Feast, Mark Johnson, who's on the faculty at the Darden School.

I think each of these would bring good value to the task force and like to suggest that we add them to the list.

I know ultimately it's the city manager's call.

There's another question I should have made.

Our tradition is that the city council appoints the task force and not the city manager.

And I don't know why you're changing the tradition.

I mean there are a couple, actually there are some task force and panels that have been appointed by the city manager with the recommendation of city council.

So this would not be a first or precedent setting.

So we offer it up mainly in the spirit of moving quickly to get this up and running.

So this is an ad hoc committee, not an ongoing committee?

Yeah, I agree.

I think on a number of occasions we've wanted to address an issue fairly quickly.

We've had the city manager make the appointment and kind of had a discussion like this.

And I think the additional names you mentioned would be very good additions.

And I think there's a very thoughtful list that's been presented to us.

Thank you.

Well, we're actually providing direction.

I think you got your directions.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Daley.

Any other business before council tonight?

Hearing none, we will open up another episode of Matters by the Public.

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

Dee Dee Smith, 2652 Jefferson Park Circle.

I wanted to thank you all for creating the Tree Commission.

I think it is just going to be a really cool, really fantastic addition to our community and outreach.

I would like just to suggest, and I'm not suggesting you change anything you just did, but as you're looking for your citizen representation, and I applaud Ms. Edwards,

Thank you, Ms. Szakos, for the support of diversity.

There's a different diversity that I'd just like you to consider, and that's a geographic one.

Maybe it's because I live on the south side of town, but it's really, really common for there not to be a lot of representation from certain parts.

I know we're a tiny little city, and maybe I'm overly sensitive to it, but I see it a lot.

Do you remember me?