City Council Meeting   1/3/2011

Dr. Brown?

And I want to thank Mike Smith for filling in on short notice tonight.

Unfortunately, our clerk is ill this evening and we wish her a speedy recovery and thank you for stepping up, Mr. Smith.

We have a very special award or recognition to make tonight.

I'm very pleased to announce that our Thomas Jefferson Health District has been recognized by the National Association of County and City Health Officials Project Public Health Ready, or PPHR for short.

PPHR is a competency-based program that assesses public health emergency preparedness.

Their criteria are the only known national standards for local public health preparedness and are updated annually to incorporate the most recent federal initiatives.

Each of the three PPHR project goals, all hazards, preparedness planning, workforce capacity development and demonstration of readiness through exercises or real events has a comprehensive list of standards that must be met in order to achieve PPHR recognition.

Our local health district has received this recognition and we want to take a moment to thank Tara Blackley for her leadership in this effort.

Special thanks also to Jack McClellan, Chris Bruner, Elizabeth Davies, Peggy Pavier, Jeff McDaniel, and Eric Myers for their assistance in developing our plans.

I'm here to comment briefly on this recognition.

This very special recognition is the director of the Thomas Jefferson Health District, Dr. Lillian Peek.

Hi, good evening.

Thank you so much for recognizing us.

The health department has worked really hard over the last five years to develop public health emergency preparedness plans, and we've really come a long way.

So we're excited to be recognized at the national level for this effort.

I think sometimes you get recognition on paper, but I feel like we also in practice have come a long way.

Last year during the H1N1 pandemic, our health district had the highest per capita vaccination rate in the state.

Thank you, Dr. Peet.

A few announcements for this evening.

First of all, the city of Charlottesville offers free Christmas tree pickup.

Our recycling program begins Monday, January 10th for city residents.

And city residents must have their tree free of decorations, wires, stands, tensils and nails, curbside by 7 a.m. on the 10th to ensure pickup that week.

And those trees will be recycled into mulch for use in our city parks and trails.

Also, we have a new web poll.

We're working with the Charlottesville Airport, the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport, to determine public interests in new destinations for airlines flying out of and into the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport.

If you go to the Charlottesville.org website, you can find a

a link to that poll.

Already we've had quite a number of responses, but we're looking for more people to give us input and where they'd like to see the airport serve.

And lastly, just an announcement, City Hall will be closed on January 14th and January 17th.

That's for Lee Jackson Day and Martin Luther King Day, but there will be normal CAT, Charlottesville Area Transit and trash and recycling service on those days.

City Council will be meeting on January 18th

which is a Tuesday and the Board of Architecture review will be on the 18th as well but in the basement conference room.

I have a couple announcements.

Our local chapter of the NAACP is having a college readiness seminar entitled I Am College Material on January 29th from 930 a.m. to 1230 p.m.

at the Central Library Downtown Conference Room.

Students of all grades are welcome.

Refreshments will be served, and for more information, contact Charles Lewis, the Youth Work Committee Chair, at 964-6166.

And again, I'd like to remind you of

a poster that you'll be seeing around town about the Charlottesville High School Orchestra and the presentation of PETA and the Wolf January 22nd a show at 3 o'clock and at 7 o'clock the Martin Luther King Jr.

Performing Arts Center

If you'd like more information, please contact the Charlottesville High School Orchestra at 245-2726 or at www.chsorchestra.org.

I'd like to announce the third in our series of Our Town Charlottesville community discussion series where city council and department heads go out to the neighborhoods to solicit public input about anything that people want to talk to us about.

Dinner will be provided and fun supervised activities for the kids.

It's on Thursday, January 13th at First Baptist Church, 632 West Main Street from 6 to 8 p.m.

If anybody wants to know more about it, they can go online to Charlottesville.org or they can call City Hall and find out about it.

Thank you Ms. Szakos.

Any other announcements?

We're now going to move on 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.

Hi, my name is Serena and I'm here on behalf of dredging because even a fourth grader can handle this stuff.

I think dredging is a good idea because one, it can hold more storage.

Two, dams can block river life.

Three, we can reuse the soil that the machine sucks up for our plants.

Four, it is an easier and quicker way to get water.

Thank you, Ms. Cooper.

Nice job.

Tom Olivier.

I was thinking exactly that, as I said.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Tom Olivier and I'm the chairman of the Piedmont Group at the Sierra Club.

Our group represents over a thousand numbers in Charlottesville, Albemarle County, and nearby areas.

Later this evening, you will consider a new report by Black & Veatch Engineering firm.

This report indicates that raising the existing dam at Ragged Mountain is practical and economical.

The Piedmont Group supports phased rate increases in water capacity storage at Ragged Mountain, but only if and when facts rather than speculations on population growth

indicate that more water storage capacity is needed.

The Piedmont group takes the position that building more infrastructure than is needed is not good and prudent.

New infrastructure costs a great deal of money and destroys open spaces.

As an example, we need look no further than the forest at Ragged Mountain.

In 2002 Albemarle County created a biodiversity work group.

For two plus years the group labored to identify important biological resources in the county and develop strategies on how to protect them.

I had the privilege of serving on that group.

My colleagues formed a quite expert crew, some of the best naturalists in Virginia,

present and past heads of applied research at the Virginia Department of Forestry, members of the environmental science faculty at the University of Virginia, and other talented scientists.

Our report in 2004 included a list of 38 biologically important places in Albemarle County.

The forest at Ragged Mountain is one of those places.

As we all know, building and filling the proposed full height earthen dam at Ragged Mountain will entail much cutting of the Ragged Mountain forest.

Doing so undermines our community's claims that we intend to live sustainably.

Recently, citizens for a sustainable water plan wrote to the Department of Environmental Quality and Army Corps of Engineers.

Citizens asked them to require, during permit modifications, one new demand analysis using water consumption data through 2010 and the American Water Works Association methods, revision of the safe yield analysis, incorporating capacity-restoring dredging of the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir, and reevaluation of the costs and benefits of alternative materials.

The Piedmont group has written to the Department of Environmental Quality and Corps of Engineers expressing support for the request by citizens for a sustainable water plan.

We also have asked that the permit modification process include public hearings and we requested that the water plan alternatives be considered using integrated resource methodologies recommended by the American Water Works Association.

Consulates should have received an email this weekend with a copy of this letter.

Finally, the Piedmont Group again wishes to thank you, the City Council, for the leadership you have shown in insisting that fuller, better information be obtained and examined in water plan deliberations.

Thank you, Mr. Levy.

Mayor Norris and members of the City Council,

and my name is Paul Long.

I live at 1410 Grady Avenue here in the city.

We have a tremendous problem of people being homeless in the city and there was a document distributed at a recent city council meeting entitled fiscal year 12 proposed timeline and within that document was a statement city council strategic priorities.

This city is catering to the upper middle class and professional segments of our community

and while there is nothing wrong with their issues and problems being addressed by City Council, it is time to spend more time addressing the problems of the homeless within the city.

Thank you Mr. Long.

Hello, I'm Pat Napoleon, 700 Lyons Avenue.

I have heard and read reports that some Charlottesville city councilors are considering offering approval for a complex earthen dam.

I hope I am mistaken.

I want to thank Mayor Norris and Councilor Edwards for first supporting what is best for the Charlottesville citizens, business owners and taxpayers.

Thank you also for the very hard work of citizen advocates including Mr. Richard Lloyd, a capable and highly qualified engineer.

Mr. Lloyd certainly understands what is at stake here.

He has ably communicated the risks of moving forward with a higher earthen dam.

It is inexcusable, wasteful and reckless for the city to have waited too long to dredge.

Some councilors are willing to give away our treasured parkland for a road serving county interest.

Are they similarly willing to buckle to the railing of special interest groups, the county or the University of Virginia?

Are you willing to steal rights and finances away from the citizens and taxpayers of Charlottesville as you sign on for the dam?

Remember, your allegiance is first to the folks you represent.

Mr. Norris and Mrs. Edwards have demonstrated good sense and loyalty to the citizenry taxpayers in regard to the Meadow Creek Parkway issue and the dam issue.

Good for Mayor Norris as he sought advice from the DEQ.

I view a questionable pattern of behavior as some councilors consistently listen more to other municipalities.

and special interest groups and listen less to the wishes of caring folk they represent.

Have any of us heard Charlottesville citizens calling for a costly dam?

It would be immoral to take on any expense-filled project as is the issue tonight.

There would be two questionable

There would be a questionable use of power in approving.

Resolve to have the courage first and foremost to stand firm for the interest of taxpayers and citizens.

Dear Mayor Norris, Councillors, Charlottesville, my name is Frank Biller.

I live in 1225 Old Ghost Road, Charlottesville.

I moved to this beautiful town about a year and a quarter ago and ever since I'm very happy here of course.

I was born and raised in Switzerland, also kind of like a nice country over in Europe.

Being from a small country myself, speaking four different languages there, we're very used to doing compromises and deals and a lot of things are being done through the back door.

One look at banking, where I worked before as well.

However, when I came to Charlottesville and first caught attention to the existing situation with the water plan and how much money just a feasibility study would cost, I got a little bit suspicious.

When a politician like Marinaris stepped up, I think before your reelection if I'm correct, and forward and called out for the facts and brought the facts on the table, I was utterly impressed.

And I started to look at the whole thing a little bit more.

My conclusion at this point is

or I would like to encourage you councilmen or councilwomen to step up and do what's right and do what you're sworn in for and look at the facts and don't be pushed around.

If there are some lessons to be taken away from business, it's always ask

Who is paying for it?

And B, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Right now it seems to me there's a lot of free lunches and no one's asking who's paying.

And it seems there is a very one-sided push towards the increase of the dam and not reaching the reservoir.

I think one should ask and probably wonder why that is and how it's about and what the motivation of these people is to do that.

I encourage the city to stay in charge and do what's right.

Thank you, Mr. Miller.

Hello, I'm Phyllis Koch-Sheriffs, 340 Cedar Bluff Road, Charlottesville, Virginia.

I want to start by congratulating the Council for the elegant solution that you came up with and voted on at the last time this was convened, and I urge you to stick to that and hold your ground.

If not, we are about to

possibly commit a great crime against nature.

And nature has no one else to speak for it, so we must do that.

If not, we are at risk of losing some of our best resources.

A river that if it is not dredged will be destroyed forever.

We will never be able to get that back.

And it has been shown, as has been mentioned, that it is a valuable resource, that if we do dredge it, there is much that we can still get from it and that it will give us, along with the phased plan that was come up with before.

It seems like a no-brainer to do something that would cost us less rather than something that will cost us more and who knows even how much more in the future.

So if we want to maintain this beautiful city that we have and I sympathize with developers, people who want it to grow, the university, but if we destroy what we have, people will not want to come here anymore.

In fact, we will leave because it won't be the city that we love and I know that you all love.

So please stick to your ground.

Don't let the special interest sway you out of fear and greed.

That has been the thing that has swayed people so much.

And if we stick to the facts and look at what is reasonable and economical and logical,

and even more at this time of the crisis that we're in, I think that we will and you will stick with the best solution and I pray that we do.

Thank you.

My name is Rich Collins.

I live at 108 Wilson Court.

and I was reminded before I came down here this evening of a statement of a woman who just had about as much as she could take and they asked her, how are you feeling?

He says, well I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired and I'm hoping he won't feel that way about my presentation this evening.

I know that this issue

in the eyes of many has taken much too much time in light of the other pressing needs for housing, for helping people who are unemployed, and for generally taking care of those things that are so important to the welfare of our community.

I understand that.

So I want to impress upon you that you have done so much to illumine the choices

on this important individual project of the infrastructure of water supply, that you should not look at this as a problem of delay and of extending discussion, but rather as a sign of progress that is clearing, I think, the path to an imminent change in the water supply plan that will make everyone feel that we have achieved enough water supply and with fairness to all and to protect nature at the same time.

I'd like to just deviate a little bit from the usual.

I think by complimenting Mr. Brown, I think all of you Councillors have struggled hard with the facts, with the issues, trying to understand how the city and the county can cooperate.

And David is co-chair of the Rivanna River Basin Commission, on which I now serve.

And I want to compliment him on what I consider to be a very fair

leadership role there and I think that the Rivanna River and the resources that bounded our watershed is, if we keep that in mind, we're going to make the right decision.

I want you to keep on.

You've done so much to change the groundwork of how we now think about this.

and perhaps ironically the most interesting thing is that the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority, which was an unknown agency, what do they do?

What do they do?

Well, we're a wholesaler.

And that is part of the reason that we are in the situation we are now.

Nobody knew how important it was.

Nobody really doubted the competency of their experts or of their capacity to look through all of the issues that had to be addressed.

Now that will never happen again.

The Rivanna, Water and Sioux Authority, whatever the future holds, will never be less accountable than it was then.

And what you have done, I think, strangely and ironically, is to emphasize the importance of our regional needs, the need for cooperation.

And it now, because of your efforts,

has been made much more clear to our citizens how our regional needs need to be debated as you have debated them and brought them out to the public for their full discussion.

Thank you, Ms. Collins.

Lynn Wolovich, I'm at 504 Rookwood Place, good evening.

I was here in September when you had your struggle making your decision and it seemed to be a real struggle.

And it hinged, the fulcrum point was really dredging.

And we talked, or you talked about, well, you know, we don't know what dredging is truly going to cost us.

So we're going to go out for RFQs and get some quotations and see what the real cost of this project is going to be because in your mind, in our mind,

The whole project stems on what's the cost of dredging and how effective it would be to relieve the problem.

Here we are now in January, three and a half months later, and I understand that the City Council isn't going out for quotations on the RFQ, but really the RWA is going out for quotations, and there haven't been any quotations received.

or as far as I understand, there haven't been any specifications put out yet.

So if that's the crux of the problem, my question to the Council

Mr. Mayor Norris, I've watched you on television, read you in the papers and the media or the heat that you've taken because of this decision and you've defended it well in the three and a half months.

How can anyone make a decision about what we're going to do on this project if we don't have the facts?

And we don't have the facts based upon what it's going to cost to dredge this South Fork reservoir or what effect it will have.

once we do it.

So you've got Wackenveech doing some work for you.

They're objective.

They can be precise.

They can be quick.

I would suggest that you utilize them to get quotations and a specification worked up and find out really what this is all about before you go ahead and make a very crucial decision.

And our esteemed council members, my name is Jack Can.

I live at 450 Woodlands Road, which butts the reservoir.

I moved here about three years ago and I work for a defense-oriented think tank.

We spend a great deal of time examining the sources of conflict, which are largely water resources.

and in every case over the years that we have looked at this sort of problem, we have found that the simplest, most direct thing to do is to take care of what you own and what you have, to clean up the resources that you've got, to improve them and to make them work better.

In the case of Rivanna, I think this is probably the least expensive

the most environmental friendly and will serve the population best.

And one of the things that in my experience in dealing with this sort of situation is the unintended consequences.

Is the trajectory of the city of Charlottesville the same as the one for Albemarle County?

Are we going in the same direction as they are?

Will it tie down you financially?

What will it do?

I think those are many questions we probably don't know the full answer to.

And cleaning out what we have, taking care of what we already have and own is probably the best trajectory for us.

Good evening Mr. Mayor and Councillors.

Glad Hall 101, Robertson Lane and also Happy New Year.

Yesterday I spoke to a small businessman, an entrepreneur, who started his own company with no government help and works hard to maintain it.

He told me that no businessman would invest or plan the proposed 50-year water supply plan.

It just doesn't make fiscal sense to spend multi-millions of dollars when a smaller plan, in this case fixing the spillway, reinforcing and heightening the present Reagan Mountain Dam, and judging the South Fork Reservoir can meet our water needs.

If these measures do not work, then and only then would a businessman consider securing funding for a huge project which would indent him for years and perhaps put the company's future in doubt.

At every public meeting where I have heard Mr. Tom Frederick speak before the City Council, the Board of Supervisors, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority Board, and the four board's meetings, he has mentioned the 50-year water supply plan is having two parts.

One, enlarging the dam at the Ragged Mountain Reservoir, and two, building a pipeline connecting the two reservoirs, that is the South Fork and the Ragged Mountain.

Mr. Frederick has stressed that both pieces are needed and only enlarging the dam would be building a larger bathtub.

How is it that no one speaks any longer about the pipeline?

The pipeline has no land, no route, no design, no engineering, and may even actually cost more than a dam.

Moreover, who will pay for the pipeline?

If you approve a new dam, that is a new earth dam, by the plan's very design, you are committing to approving a future multi-million dollar pipeline.

Thank you, Ms. Hall.

Mayor Norris, fellow Councillors, Sam Freilich, 505 Rookwood Place.

Over the last several months I've attended meetings of the City Council, Board of Supervisors, and the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority, along with reading numerous articles concerning the water issue and the daily progress.

I've spoken to individuals with VDOT, Albemarle County Service Authority, and the Corps of Engineers to consider whether the county water plan or the city plan is the best for our community in satisfying future water needs.

I concluded that the city plan, well, is simply more logical.

The county plan attempts to pinpoint water demand 50 years from now in a possible task and further states that we have to start as soon as possible.

The 2006 water plan calls for the construction of a 100-foot earthen dam and a nine-mile pipeline that is estimated to cost $63 million, which is critical to utilize the expanded reservoir.

The $63 million price tag is subject to using the western bypass right-of-way.

This morning I spoke with Lou Hatter, the public relations spokesperson for VDOT at their Culpeper headquarters.

He stated that although the bypass is still in a six-year plan, there is no money available for the next six years for the bypass or in the foreseeable future after the six-year planning period is terminated to construct the bypass.

This means that still more land will have to be acquired for the pipeline, and the 9-mile pipeline will have to be extended over some of the most difficult terrain in the county, potentially costing millions of dollars more.

Not the best news for city and county residents in these financially difficult times.

Further, the county plan doesn't allow restorative dredging for another city asset, the Southport-Rivanna Reservoir.

By dredging, we gain over 260 million gallons of water as well as maintain a significant recreational asset to allow city and county residents the pleasures of boating and fishing in an easily accessible area while at the same time assuring years

of water sufficiency.

The county refuses to even discuss the city plan, outrageous.

The city plan is most reasonable in that it assesses the need for additional water every 10 years and expands the dam at that time if needed.

A vote for the earthen dam assures that the county plan will move forward with its devastating impact as it clearcuts tens of thousands of trees that act as a carbon sink.

Further, the quarrying of 635,000 cubic feet of rock and soil

for the dam along with cutting roads through the forest will decimate the animal habitat.

Also the county plans to expand the reservoir to the point where it goes under both sides of Route 64.

VDOT has documented 63 toxic spills between Western Richmond and Crozet over the last 19 years.

For the sake of our community, I respectfully ask you to endorse, not to endorse, the Earthen Dam and to continue to retain Black and Veatch.

Thank you, Mr. Fryler.

Dan Beaker, Laird Lane, North Garden.

In all this back and forth on the water plan, it's easy to lose sight of the big picture, especially concerning the environment.

The opponents of the 06 water plan cite the benefits to increased streamflows in the Mormon's River, and they're absolutely correct.

That's important, and it's worth pursuing.

However, they're incorrect in minimizing the impacts that will happen at Ragged Mountain, a valuable forest resource, irreplaceable,

The 06 plan falls short though in its failure to utilize conservation as a major focus.

Whether or not we draw water directly from the river or move it into storage, we're disrupting the natural flow of that river.

That's not going to change.

As long as we have two dams on that river, it will never be a natural free-flowing river and we need to recognize that.

What we should do though is minimize the amount of water that we draw from the river

and mixed with our sewage and re-release is treated effluent.

We certainly can, there's room to do this.

A 25% and totally feasible targeted figure, 25% reduction in water usage in 40 years would mean roughly 4 million gallons a day less water drawn from the river system and re-released into the stream.

This has ramifications for both stream flows and water quality.

What do we say to a farmer upstream from the reservoir who would want to keep his cattle out of the river when he says, why should I go to that trouble when you've abandoned this reservoir dissertation anyway?

Where is the motivation going to come for building and landscape codes, for rebates for progressive water saving appliances, for grey water recycling?

Where is the impetus for the financial and environmental concerns going to come from if we concentrate on water supply over conservation?

The plan that you've adopted in September at least leaves room open in the decades to come for a focus on these policies as well as preserving the tremendous financial and environmental costs that went into the South Fork Reservoir 40 years ago.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Patty Mooney, 201 Sunset Avenue.

If you approve the building of the Earthen Dam, you're not just building a huge new dam.

You're voting for an entire new water infrastructure system that will destroy the viability of all the dams and rivers that the city currently owns.

This complicated and expensive water system will mandate untold new personnel, maintenance and energy costs to pump massive amounts of water uphill and costly new ways to protect our only remaining reservoir from toxic spills and I-64 as that reservoir flows under that highway.

You will be asking your citizens to forfeit hundreds of millions of dollars of paid for water infrastructure.

Why are we even talking about this dam?

We now know that dredging is the place to start and that building a new dam is like dropping a bomb on the beautiful Ragged Mountain natural area.

Dredging is far less damaging to the environment, far less costly, and in this day and age, with all we know about dredging, as this little girl did her research for us,

and sustainable practices to maintain reservoirs, why would we not do that first?

There is no recent data that shows that dredging alone will not provide decades of abundant, affordable, safe water for this community combined with the capacity of our other reservoirs.

The citizens of this community are about to be walloped with rate hikes for mandated sewer repairs and infrastructure upgrades.

They're going to be taxed

for mandated stormwater improvements.

For these reasons alone, we should not be discussing this expensive dam plan.

We have an answer before us thanks to the studies that you have paid for.

It's the best financial plan, the best environmental plan, and will be the quickest way to provide decades of water supply.

Dredge our reservoir.

The only repair needed to bring the Ragged Mountain Dam up to stake code is the spillway repair.

The DEQ has never, never said that dredging alone or dredging plus a modest increase in height will not satisfy stream flows if they take into account the last decade of falling water usage.

This plan is not affordable, reasonable, or rational by any measure that can be put before us.

I'd like to ask everyone here in the audience tonight who came to support dredging for the water supply plan, repairing the Ragged Mountain spillway.

Dredging is the first step and restorative dredging for our community to stand now.

Please.

You have heard, we have been told that this is a small group of people, just a small group of people in this community that want dredging first and that want to keep the dam we have and that are against the 2006 plan.

You have received emails, we have had public hearings

These people have taken their time to show up.

We're not a small group of people.

We are your citizens and we are asking you to look out not only to these people but to people in this community who cannot afford this plan and cannot be at meetings and cannot go to lunches and dinners with you.

Thank you.

Chris Murray, 1217 Hazel Street.

I'm here to speak for Java, not about the flow of water to the community, but the flow of affordable housing dollars.

We have, Java has asked for funding from the Charlottesville Housing Fund for the Timberlake Place Project and before you, you have a memo from Mr. Talbert suggesting that funds be borrowed essentially from Charlottesville Housing Funds in 2012 so that we might need a

low income housing tax credit application deadline.

And we're in total agreement with that and would endorse it fully.

I just want to remind you that the 2025 affordable housing goals that were adopted by the city in February of this year, 2010, it looks for a 15% increase over the next 15 years in affordable housing.

That means that

In order to meet the 2025 goals, we need to add 63 units per year to break even.

Timberlake Place Project adds 28% in 2013 and that would be almost 40% of that goal.

Thank you, Mr. Murray.

Good evening, Council, attendees.

Mr. Fenwick?

Bob Fenwick, 901 East Jefferson Street.

Any day we can pick up the Daily Progress or any of the online newspapers if we read them and we can find that an expert was baffled that one of his predictions was incorrect.

We have the same situation in our community.

The experts who have a vested financial interest in being involved in probably the biggest public works project in Central Virginia history have been consistently wrong.

They were wrong about the water demand figures.

They were wrong about the water consumption figures.

They were even wrong about the basic design of the dam.

Until last summer it was a reinforced concrete dam.

And then suddenly in the space of about two weeks it changed to an earthen dam.

Now they want us to believe the new dam won't cost the citizens of Charlottesville a dime.

Is there anyone in this room or in this city or even in the county who really believes a dam of this size with the pipeline and all the pumps and easements and infrastructure will not cost the citizens of Charlottesville a big time?

We are told by county politicians that a new dam is needed to guarantee water for the county.

Setting aside the fact that the county already owns five reservoirs, this Orson Dam at Ragon Mountain will not guarantee water for anybody.

How can it?

It will be filled from the Rivanna Reservoir.

That's like borrowing from Peter to pay Paul.

In a period of low flow as we had this past summer and as we will have time and again over the next 30 to 50 years,

How in the world will you fill a huge reservoir from a reservoir that is itself distressed to the point that in a period of low flow you can almost walk across it?

It's the Rivanna Reservoir that is and will continue to be the guarantee.

That's why it's so important to dredge, and we have already paid for dredging.

If the county pays for the new den, it will have a legal claim on the entire Ragged Mountain Reservoir.

And if the city loses the Ragged Mountain Reservoir, it will be the first time in the history of Charlottesville that a city council has lost a major city asset.

You are stepping into a quagmire.

In eight and a half years, and after almost six million dollars of public staff time and public money wasted, not one cubic foot of dredge material has come out of the Rivanna Reservoir.

County residents have wanted dredging for 20 years.

City residents want to dredge, repair the spillway, and then phase in any additional work as needed over the next years.

We own an old fashioned water fight, but instead of hired guns, we have hired consultants.

I would hope and expect that at some point, common sense and respect for community wishes would kick in.

Thank you, Mr. Fenneman.

And now I'm going to get to say the things that nobody really wants to hear.

Mr. Fenwick and your troupa below the servers, you should be commended.

Yes, commended for being honest about what you stand up for as well as contrivedly believe.

There is quite a bit, I don't see eye to eye with these folks on, but the First Amendment all the way.

So congratulations citizen Fenwick and fellow citizens for sustained water.

You are doing more than Albemarle County could possibly do through hiring a new police chief and installing stoplight cameras to Fairfax this city.

I'm literally put off that this group has taken over and owned the water supply matter and have made it just about sustainability and not supply.

Isn't that peculiar?

This council would rather accept what their ideal of sustainability is instead of taking to task a one-sided definition of sustainability.

Then look again at the works and maintenance of previous city councils and RSWA boards have achieved.

And oh yes, Mr. Fenwick, dredging should have, could have, and hasn't been one of them.

I hold study to the conviction that this council does not intend to advance any water supply plan or related infrastructure action further.

I stand by my belief the same as last September that it is your intended result for the usual no action status quo to repeat being taken.

Again, the political expediency of an appearance of acting when the typical result is no action as your modus operandi.

Still, furthermore, you can call for all the studies and analysis you can, to your heart's desire, but not follow through or execute a single plan.

Listen, why must city council keep persisting in doing what's right from the start?

I've had it with these act one way but do something else shell games.

By the way, let's not forget the complicity under your auspices to include directly or indirectly, dispensment of whatever city staff or significant department that does your bidding.

How does your city service... Let me restate that.

How does our city service its infrastructure?

Let me count the ways.

Though I claim to not know necessarily all.

Well, I'll give you two for starters.

One, green lighting, Cherry Hill built before the stadium interceptor sewer line was replaced on that redeveloped property tract.

and two, breaking the downtown wall while ignoring and disregarding the full surrounding drainage system.

Although I understand, council must nail down much more important things, such as friendly bike lanes, increasing CAT ridership, and what else be required to justify the downtown transit hub.

keeping a canvas tarp over the pavilion intact from damage also for signature pet events.

And the list can go on and on.

Mr. Banny, if you can wrap up your remarks.

I'll be glad to.

Oh, and when it comes to brass tacks, I'm so certain local interests know what they're for and not, despite whether related to the actual water supply.

I remind our council that the citizens for sustainable water supply here in this room are only a fraction of the city residents at

choose or cannot be physically here tonight.

Why, Mr. Fenwick, why?

I'm going to have to ask you to wrap it up.

We'd be happy to take them.

Mr. Mayor, City Councilors, Happy New Year.

Again, like Chris Murray, I'm kind of glad I'm in the housing world tonight.

I thought housing was complicated, but I think water supply is even more complicated.

On behalf of the board of Piedmont Housing Alliance, again, I'm Peter Loach, 1620 Rose Hill Drive.

On behalf of the board of Piedmont Housing Alliance and its staff, I want to express our gratitude for your consideration of our funding proposal that's under the Charlottesville Housing Fund tonight.

PHA is taking a unique approach to a tough housing problem all across the United States like in Charlottesville.

There is much rental housing stock

that is in desperate need of repair.

This housing, type of housing, is often owned privately for generations.

It is often cheap and affordable, but inadequate and sometimes unsafe.

City staff spend many hours keeping up with code violations on many properties

Our project is to take more than two dozen rental units that are in this cycle of decapitalization and creating unsafe housing, to revitalize them, to make them more energy efficient and accessible, and lock in affordable housing rents.

the low market for very low income families.

City staff will present to you tonight an approach to making this project happen across two fiscal years under the Charlottesville Housing Fund.

We support that very much.

We are pleased to hear about it and it will help us leverage millions of dollars of affordable housing in the city.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Koch.

I want to thank all of you who came to speak tonight and would now open the meeting to council member responses to matters by the public.

Who would like to get us started?

I would, I guess I could respond a little bit to, was it Len Wallowick?

Am I saying that right?

Is it close?

Okay.

As a person also with a hard to pronounce name, I'm a little sympathetic.

Where you were asking, where's the RFP?

We actually asked that very same question today and that is something that we're continuing to hope for.

I think the Rivanna board hadn't met over the holidays and things got slowed down but I think that that's, you know, we definitely want to expedite that.

It's a good question, thank you.

The, let's see, I guess that's all I'll say for now except that, you know, I really, you know,

when Stratton was talking about the brownies up here.

I bake those because I think it's really important that people come and speak out.

And so thank you for coming.

If you didn't get your brownies, sneak in after.

But it's kind of a symbolic and goofy thing to do, but it really, I mean it.

It really is important that people come when they can.

I just want to

to give voice to the comments that Paul Long made, even though he was the only person that spoke about the homelessness.

His voice and his concerns are no less important.

But I will say, as I've said before, that the issues with the homeless are complex, and we do have a fiscal and ethical responsibility.

But I'd like to

to currently look toward making sure that we have wraparound services and that we are able to move

people out of poverty and out of their homelessness and to the next stage in their lives, whatever they choose that to be, but to make sure that we're a city that offers those kind of options and that kind of support.

I do believe that Housing People First has its advantages because in many ways housing is healthcare.

Housing is education.

Housing creates the support you need for workforce development.

And housing also creates the security that children need in order to go to school ready to learn.

So thank you, Mr. Long, for reminding us of our...

In many ways, we talk about

Environmental Sustainability and we even talk about how important it is to recycle but we tend not to recycle our best resource and it is just our citizens.

Dr. Brown?

Well I have to thank Rich Collins for the kind words.

I want to reinforce that behavior.

You know, I am chair of the Rivanna River Basin Commission and even though there's been a lot of sentiment expressed tonight about how important it is that we protect the Ragged Mountain Natural Area, which is a wonderful place, I think it's significant that a number of the organizations that focus on rivers are in favor of the other plan, the proposed plan.

the Rivanna Conservation Society, the Nature Conservancy, and I think to some degree the Southern Environmental Law Center and Piedmont Environmental Council are concerned about building, making sure we have enough capacity so that we don't have to take water from the streams, from the rivers unnecessarily.

Betty Mooney made reference to the

letter from DEQ about that issue, and it was a letter that was written last summer, and unfortunately we didn't have access to it, we hadn't received it at the time we had our previous discussion.

But in that letter, they actually say, and I'm not sure if I can say it very clearly, but they say, the dredging and dam alternative, when evaluated in the context of the existing permit conditions, would not meet the in-stream flows that were originally proposed.

You know, that's not exactly the clearest thing in the world.

So what we've asked is we've asked DEQ to try to clarify that to see if we combine dredging and expanding a dam a small amount, can that protect our rivers?

And I'm hoping that we'll receive an answer

Mayor Norris brought it up at breakfast when he saw him but if not maybe we could get that sometime because I think that would be useful information to know if we proceed this way are we protecting one natural area at the expense of another.

I appreciate comments of many people in the audience today and my recollection from the last meeting when we acted on the War of the Blind was that it was a unanimous decision and we all supported dredging and conservation

and spending the least amount of money we had to deal with water needs.

As Mr. Brown said, we are not aware of any similar information if you are hoping to get more.

I want to thank everybody coming who came out to speak on the water issue as well.

It's always, I always get a chuckle when people say it's just a small minority, a small faction who supports a phased-in approach, supports a dredging, supports a smaller dam.

Every time that this issue has come up publicly and in emails and in

The overwhelming sentiment that I hear from citizens of Charlottesville and including many citizens of Albemarle County

is that the 2006 plan spends too much, indets us too much, does too much environmental damage, and I think we owe it to our citizens to stick with the plan, the proposal that we agreed to in September.

But we do have some other questions, one of which we'll touch on momentarily tonight about the feasibility and cost of expanding the existing Dam at Ragged Mountain.

We'll be hearing a report shortly on that.

and we're hoping to get a little bit more clarity from DEQ and hopefully in the very near future we can come to a final decision because I think we're all ready to implement a plan and move forward.

So thank you again for coming to speak.

We're now going to move on to our regular business agenda tonight.

On our consent agenda,

We have item A which is minutes of December 20th, item B an appropriation of $167,312.71, CATEC, VDOT funds, second of two readings.

Item C is an appropriation of $5,000 stipend, Project Child Hands participation, second of two readings.

Item D is an appropriation of $1,954.92, 2010 Charlottesville Police Department Foundation donation, second of two readings.

Item E, an appropriation of $6,187.50, U.S. Department of Justice 2010 Bulletproof Partnership Reimbursement Grant, second of two readings.

Item F, an appropriation of $12,520, Community Detention Youth Internship Program, first of two readings.

Item G, an appropriation of $157,000,

$157,143 Victim and Witness Assistance Program grant, first of two readings.

Item H, an ordinance amendment, a vendor fee, second of two readings.

And item I, an ordinance electronic gaming, first of two readings.

Are there any items to be removed from the consent agenda?

Mr. Mayor, item I, the electronic gaming, we just now received that information.

There's a blank spot in our agenda.

I haven't even looked at it.

I'm not against it.

I just don't really know much about it.

Or we could just defer it.

Let's just defer that item until we have a chance to review it.

Thank you.

So item I, Ordinance on Electronic Gaming, first two readings will be removed for our next City Council meeting.

I'll move.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

and carries unanimously.

Thank you very much.

Next item on our agenda tonight is a public hearing and a resolution regarding the lease of 608 Ridge Street.

Good evening.

608 Ridge Street is commonly referred to as Eco Remod.

It's a project that City's undertaken to, City owns this house and has undertaken to achieve a high degree of energy efficiency and to use the property as a model and hopefully to house the local energy alliance program, commonly referred to as LEAP.

In addition to looking at having LEAP on the upper two levels, there's

a first level and upper story in a basement, but the top two stories would be housed by, were proposed to be housed by LEAP, and then the basement apartment, which would have a separate entrance, would be occupied by a renter.

It would be set up to be leased as such in the future by someone who would purchase the home at some point in time in the future so that they would have a rental property in the basement.

But what's before you tonight is a proposal to approve lease agreements.

The property is not ready just yet to be inhabited, but we have a projected mid-February date for completion of the unit.

But what you have before you today is a suggestion to approve a lease for both upper stories for the local energy alliance program and for a visiting professor from UVA who's coming in from China and one of the professors who has been involved with the project, John Qualley, he had

at a recent meeting.

He said that the professor was visiting from China and that it would be great, because he has a special interest in this project, to be able to be housed in it and almost be an international ambassador, if you will, to go forth and to share the information when he goes back to Hunan University.

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

Thank you very much.

We'll now open the public hearing.

There's nobody to sign up to speak on this matter.

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

Collette Hall, 101 Robertson Lane.

Just clarity.

Did the women just say that

It's a rent-to-own and that LEAP is only going to use this for, what, a few months, a year or two?

Okay, good question.

Anybody else want to speak before we let Ms. McHugh answer that question?

Alright, we'll close the public hearing.

Skip that detail, I apologize, but the lease is proposed to go for two years and have an option to renew for an additional year.

LEAP is a relatively new nonprofit.

As such, they've been getting grant funding and trying to get established.

But until that time, providing them with this lease at this particular property will allow them, one, to showcase all the unique aspects of the home's energy efficiency, but also allow them some time to

to basically get on their feet in order to be self-sustaining and to get some additional funding.

Yes, sir, I think that had been the intent.

Of course, that would be up to council at that point, but the idea initially had been, my understanding was to

You said they have two years with an option to renew the lease?

Yes.

I think a lot of that would depend, I'm sorry if I interrupted your question, but I think a lot of it would depend on what the housing market's doing at that point in time.

Has it rebounded to the point that it would make good sense, you know, at this point, a low point in the market, probably not the best time to put it on.

This is a good time to

to rent and showcase the property.

But the option goes both ways.

I mean, we have the option to not.

Right.

But it has to be both parties.

Right.

I mean, if the city wasn't agreeable at that point in time, then we'll basically have to provide the written notices as outlined in the lease.

and Ashley to start looking for something else because we wanted to take the property back.

We also have the option to, if we had a buyer that came forth, we have the option to take a valid offer if somebody came forth during that period of time, again with sufficient notice.

So this really isn't a permanent home for LEED?

And the basement apartment is just a one year.

I have a question.

In the lease agreement that we got in our packet about this, a couple of things are different from what you described.

And I'm wondering if somehow we don't have the most recent version of it.

Under term it says the terms of this lease shall commence February 15th, 2011 and end on February 14th, 2012 which is a one year lease.

It's just item number one.

It says for the two main floors of the building.

There's another one for the basement apartment, which is also a one-year term.

And in this thing, it also doesn't have an option to renew it.

It can be terminated at the end of this term, and it should be broom clean when they leave.

It doesn't say anything about it.

If we approve it, I just want to know which one we're approving.

That's our recommendation.

And to be honest, I prepared this, went away for the last two weeks of the year, came back today.

Thank you.

Yeah.

I think that's what he did when he put the dates in, he put it in there.

The idea was that it would be

One year leases for two years with the option for the third year, I mean automatically renew after one.

So this then would be 2013, number one, and then somewhere in number 15, something about... Yeah, that was February 14, 2013.

On ours it says 2012.

Right.

So now it will say 2013.

And I think, I was listening to that, I think what Rich said is that's an option we have anyway and so at the end of the two years we can come back.

I'm not sure, Mr.

If it's not in there, you would have to come back to council to get authorization to lease it for that third year.

I think it was our intent to bring it back to council at the end of the two years to see if council desired to, as Ms. Edwards said, if you wanted to proceed with it or not.

Correct.

And it's your intention to have the basement apartment leased only for one year?

Yes, his term is only one year.

Thanks.

Any further discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

Carries unanimously.

Thank you very much, Ms. McHugh and Mr. Tolbert.

Good evening.

I'm Greg Zeminski and Black & Veatch.

Mr. Zeminski, can you start by just telling us a little bit about Black & Veatch?

Who is Black & Veatch?

Back in Beach is a civil engineering firm that is quite diverse in its capabilities at the moment.

There are several divisions.

A division is a water division, the division that I work in, that is exclusively devoted to water projects, almost entirely to municipalities and local jurisdiction type clients.

There's also a power division, which makes up a bulk of the company.

My personal or the corporate?

The company's experience goes back quite a ways.

Black & Veatch can, as a company now, can trace back its

and if we want to be specific, it's dam engineering experience back for more than 100 years.

We have offices abroad that have been working on dam and reservoir projects since the 1880s or so.

Within the confines of the U.S. since the 1920s.

Black and Beach has been working on dam and reservoir projects.

It's a core business for the water side of Black and Beach.

It's just not something we go about advertising because we focus mostly on water clients.

We're not advertising ourselves as dam engineers.

That may be why we're not recognized as a dam engineering firm, but we have a wealth of experience.

I would invite the council members to go back to the proposal that was submitted when this RFP was announced and we submitted on it.

Our credentials are listed there.

All right, so as a summary to what's been going on, subsequent to the RFP and Blackened Beach being accepted, we worked to produce a letter dated August 30th which provided a summary of several alternatives that we considered to be feasible alternatives for addressing issues at the lower Ragged Mountain Dam.

a large dam raise, an intermediate dam raise, and then just simply repairing or addressing dam safety deficiencies.

That August 30th letter included a relatively brief description of the alternative, but also included a cost estimate for each.

Between August 30th and November 22nd, Black & Veatch basically just back and forth with public works on trying to put together a time to meet the ITRT and Rivanna staff.

Independent Technical Review Team.

I'm sorry, it's November 22nd, right.

And so November 22nd the workshop was held, discussions were had and the following day

The presentation was given to the Rivanna board.

We provided a response and at that time the comments that were issued by the ITRT were verbal and reasonably extensive.

there was discussion at that time as to how to respond.

What could Black and Beech do?

What were the meaning of the comments?

So what we proposed to do at that time, knowing that time was reasonably critical, within about two weeks we would respond to as many of the comments as we possibly could.

To be honest, much of the ITRT comments could only be resolved into their entirety if a design was actually completed.

but with that said we attempted to address some of the more easily addressable comments as well as the ones we felt had the greatest cost impact because at the end of the day that's what everybody's really concerned about is the cost implication.

So within about two weeks we issued the December 14th response.

Now I should preface what we provided in December as a response to comments that

the Black & Veatch personnel took as notes during our workshop and the reading of a September 1st letter that was penned by two members of the ITRT but was provided to us on November 23rd.

So the detailed discussion that Rivanna was given on the 23rd of November, we didn't receive those written comments until December 6th.

So to really maintain the timeline

That may be a bit confusing, but to maintain our original timeline, we produced a letter on December 14th doing our best to address comments that we perceived were, as again, the simplest and the most cost effective or the ones that had the most effect on cost.

Okay, so when you boil it down, the comments issued, and I'm not going to go through the comments in detail, the comments issued by the ITRT really revolved around the foundation materials, how deep you would need to excavate, the geometry of the cross-section that we had originally proposed,

and the use of the existing structure at the dam to convey water from the reservoir to the downstream side of the reservoir, the intake structure.

And so in the reading of the December 14th letter, that's what we did, is we attempted to address those issues.

and I think we did accommodate many of the comments made by the RTRT.

I'm not going to go into detail, I'll let you ask the questions if you have specific detailed questions.

At the end of the day, the cost implications of their comments resulted in an increase in the overall cost of larger of the three alternatives.

Now, I should say that there were three feasible alternatives listed in the original letter that we issued on August 30th, but only one was discussed in our workshop, and that was the largest dam raise.

No attention was paid by the RTRT to any other alternative.

We still maintain that all three of the alternatives submitted are feasible and can be done in a sound engineering manner.

So the cost implication of the original

of the ITRT comments was an increase to a range of 13.5 to 19.5 million.

That range indicates the confidence level that we have at this time.

based on the level of design that's been done.

Yes, now there was a question asked about the potential for phasing this alternative.

So taking the large dam footprint, taking it to an intermediate height, and then finishing the dam at some later date.

I was able to look at that and the construction, and I'll compare the number, the 19.5 number, which is the one with the contingency added to it.

So that's the high end.

And the low end was?

Right.

That's right.

And when you say relatively easily, do you have a rough idea of cost at least in 2010 numbers of if we were to come back 30 years from now and add another 29 feet

to say to the dam, when you say relatively easily, what does that look like in terms of dollar figure?

Yeah, the approximate would be, the difference obviously is four million, but you're going to encounter some increase in cost because of multiple mobilizations and other things.

Yes, at the end of the day you get a dam which is completely compliant with dam safety regulations.

The one thing I was added to also describe would be what are the potential next steps if right now we're at a conceptual level design, it's not directly comparable to a design which has been advanced to 50% or 60%.

So the next step would be to collect additional subsurface information and advance the design to an intermediate level so that a more accurate cost estimate could be done which is

make something out of it.

I think that's an important question.

I think the question I hear is for you to get to the same point where the earthen dam is now 50%, 60% engineering, what would that take and how long would it take?

I think that's the kind of question.

from a time perspective, three to four months to get to an intermediate level and cost.

Can you compare, maybe this isn't a question for you, maybe it's a question for Ms. Mueller, but compare where we are now with the design process for

It's safe to say, would you at least say we're further along in the process of flesh?

I don't want to put words in your mouth.

I just have a clarification because I think you said this, I just want to make sure that I understand your answer, is that you're saying that if we built the whole dam, or renovated the whole dam to its full potential height today, or if we instead started out at

The four of that would have been the cost that it would have cost to put it now.

That's right.

Because the bulk of the cost is in the foundation, and you would already have done the design work, the engineering work,

There are dollars associated for improving the access road.

There were a lot of discussions had at the workshop about the access road and then returning it to its existing state and the cost implications of such.

I wasn't aware of the details and even at the workshop the details were somewhat sketchy.

What we have intended to do is follow what the proposed earth dam has used for their estimate.

So they have incorporated a certain dollar figure separated into several items to address the access road.

widening it, creating it, and doing whatever else with it.

We have duplicated those dollars.

I don't have complete information to understand if that's sufficient or not.

And does your study cover it all?

And I'm sorry that I put on my reading glasses and looked at the teeny type.

One of the things in the difference between a 13-foot rise and a higher rise than that is dealing with the highway and going beyond the highway and all that mitigation.

No, no.

I've attempted to keep the cost estimate as directly comparable to the earth dam estimate as possible.

For reservoir levels, as I understand it, higher than about 13 feet.

Yeah, exactly.

Yes.

To refresh my memory, but we've talked about various dam configurations of a 15-foot rise, a 30-foot rise, or a 45-foot rise, just generally, not yours specifically.

On August 30th the letter we produced provided for a modest rise and repair of the spillway or addressing the spillway issues.

So effectively you could get rid of the upper dam

retain that volume which would need an increase of two or three feet or something like that in the lower reservoir and then otherwise have a new spillway and address all dam safety issues.

That was an alternative.

Second alternative was a 13 foot rise in the reservoir and then the last alternative was a 45 foot rise in the reservoir.

Now the dam raise is different than that because the dam needs to be higher than the reservoir level.

And you have a, again, going back to the point you made a few minutes ago about once you get to a certain point, the rest of it is relatively cost effective.

I mean, it doesn't cost a lot to add another.

So I think Dr. Brown's trying to get at, you know, what would we be looking at if we were to go to a 30-foot rise?

Yeah, I mean, that would be,

I was just trying to figure out whether that had been done or not.

It is the geometry of, if you're using the geometry of the largest rise possible as your blueprint, then all other raises that are lesser than that

You could reasonably put a line, a direct correlation between the height.

I mean, not directly.

I mean, at some point it becomes not a direct comparison.

A 30 foot rise would be, you know, obviously in between the 15 and the 19.

The 40, 45.

Right, between the 40 and 45.

Now, I should say that the idea of, that's all predicated on the idea that you want to expand the dam or raise the reservoir level later.

because if you were to simply want a 13 foot raise or a 20 foot or a 30 foot, it would be most cost effective to design a dam specifically for that.

and that would be less than say the 13 or the 15 and a half million for or intermediate a specifically designed dam for that rise would be less.

Because it wouldn't have to carry the possible weight of something on top of it down the road.

Right.

Basically a foundation for a 40 foot high dam raise is this wide.

Okay, so you're assuming that for a 13-foot high dam raise.

So if you were seriously about just a 13-foot high and didn't want to think about expanding, well, that foundation becomes much smaller because the height is much less.

Basically, the dam safety regulations require various elements.

Stability of the structure, sound foundation, which goes to stability, and the ability to pass a design storm that's dictated by downstream consequences of its failure.

And so, I've spent my entire career working on dam projects.

When we come up with an alternative that we considered feasible, it is inherent in indicating it's feasible in our understanding that it's going to be safe and satisfy dam safety criteria.

And you have a rough idea if you were to be asked to put a warranty on this dam.

Are we talking about provisions for dam safety that are going to last 30 years, 40 years?

Perhaps I'll couch it.

Assuming that the regulations don't shift.

Right, okay.

The regulations don't move.

I'll couch it in sort of historic terms.

The dam industry has been a remarkably safe industry.

You don't see dam failures in the U.S. very often at all.

And that goes to the conservatism that's built into the industry.

and we've done, effectively done ourselves a bit of disservice now because nobody believes that the dams will fail and so there's a lot of problem dams out there.

But that goes to the fact that the dam safety industry by its nature is quite conservative.

So when addressing dam safety, addressing state criteria now in terms of stability, size of storms, size of earthquakes, that sort of thing, those are all quite conservative in their foundation.

I have a question.

One of the ideas that had come out at one point, and I'm asking so that I can really see what we're comparing here,

was having a high dam with a low reservoir level and having it so that it drains out until you need that higher level and then you can change it so it holds back more water.

Well I haven't been specifically asked about that.

Just thinking out loud

I'm thinking it, and this is again just one of the things that's been thrown out just so we can have apples to apples to compare it to if this comes up in our discussion.

If we had a 30 foot dam, but we don't want a 30 foot reservoir right now, we really are committed to a 13 foot reservoir, partly because it stays on the inside of the highway for various reasons.

Thinking out loud, it's a difficult question to answer.

The permanent pool, the way to establish a permanent pool is through what you would like to be a passive system, so a spillway, where water just simply flows over it and that maintains that pool and storm events come in and out, which you're describing

makes the difference between 13 and 42 or 45 feet.

That difference makes it very difficult to maintain the 13 feet during storm events.

Now, with that said, it is possible to maintain the 13 foot, but you might get more fluctuation because of storm events.

The exit for that level would be an opening in a gate or a tower

that would then feed water supply or directly discharge if for some reason you didn't need the water because the stormwater was not something you needed to pump through your treatment plants.

You would need to bifurcate the flows and put them into the stream.

It's conceivable to do that.

Right.

Yeah, the implications of that are more of a NRCS or a flood retention structure is what that would be more akin to.

I was reading the independent technical review team report.

It was a little bit alarming to me on page two.

Is it dated November 23rd?

Is that the...

Yes.

Okay.

It says indicating that the integrity of 100 year old existing dam is highly questionable.

and has been since first filing.

ITRT seriously questions the overall safety of the existing dam with regard to seepage, integrity and sliding stability.

This is a very alarming comment by three experts.

To be honest, the 100-year-old dam idea was not a particularly great one initially for me either.

So I went in skeptical, as all dam engineers would.

However, we investigated the structure.

We penetrated it with three borings through its entire length.

and have come to the conclusion that the existing structure is in pretty good shape, actually far better shape than what we had presumed based on literature that had been provided.

There's historic 1912 documents and other stuff.

So we think the condition of the dam is certainly suitable to be raised.

That previous compression tests show that the strength is adequate.

And that the continuity is there to accept a raise of the full height.

Regarding the seepage, we also did pressure testing of the dam itself.

So pumping water into the holes we had drilled to see if there were large cracks that took water and we would need to deal with it.

And there was nothing that

In talking with the ITRT, there was some discussion about, well, what would you propose to do with seepage through the dam?

At the time of our discussions, the idea or prospect of grouting, putting concrete grout or

and another type of route in the dam as you might do with the underlying rock to help prevent the seepage or reduce it.

That's correct.

I just have some curiosity about the spillway.

It's been mentioned a couple of times.

I was just wondering if we go over the 13 feet, how does that impact the spillway?

And what happens with the spillway if there's an increase in increments?

Over time, how is that impacted?

Well, let's see.

It's a good question.

Let me answer the first one.

Fixing the existing spillway, yeah, you could.

You could simply just repair the existing spillway.

The dam itself is

One could argue is stable.

I would argue that.

But the spillway could be repaired.

However, it would be quite a costly repair because you would need to really expand its capacity.

And that would mean basically removing a lot of rock where the existing spillway is.

The best idea would be to say remove a lot of rock.

expand its size so that the existing dam wouldn't be over top.

So you can do it.

It would be quite costly.

I don't recall the cost, but in our August 30 failure, that was one of the alternatives, was raising the dam slightly and then expanding the spillway.

In regards to the raised structure, the proposed spillway is about 50 feet wide.

and at its full height has a crest which is a curve.

Basically water would flow over it and then just tumble down the downstream side of the dam.

If you were to just go with an intermediate raise and you were to simply picture yourself slicing the dam at that elevation, 13 feet, removing everything on top, you have your 50 foot wide square wave section, but you're left with not that curve, it's a relatively sharp curve at the top, you're left with a much broader section of concrete.

There are things that could be done to make that a more efficient spillway.

A broad section of concrete is not the most efficient way to get water from the reservoir to downstream.

But in the request and looking at the alternative of phasing, what I simply assumed was, let's just keep it a flat section.

We'll protect the concrete with a little bit more

rigorous or high strength concrete, and then just make it a more inefficient spillway.

It's just not going to produce or convey water as well as the final configuration might.

And we just make up for that in storage of water when a storm comes along.

So the height of the dam on either side of the spillway is a little bit higher in my estimate to do that.

I just want to make this an anecdotal comment since you mentioned sophisticated.

I was at the Rivanna meeting and I just appreciate the work and time that you put into this.

Thank you.

On that note, any other questions for Mr. Ziminski?

I want to make it clear that we're not actually going to be voting tonight on this issue.

I think some people came into the meeting tonight expecting a vote, but our task tonight was to hear the report, ask questions, if there's any further discussion, but we are coming to a point

Very soon, hopefully by the next city council meeting, we are going to have to make a final decision on this because we have some deadlines to meet.

I know that we have our city staff here and we also have Mr. Frederick here and I'm wondering if there are any responses that they have in listening to this or things that they would like to either ask

I heard Mr. Frederick is here.

He was involved in the independent technical review team.

Their observations don't bother you?

I'm talking about you.

I'm not, I'm going to tell you what I have said before.

I'm not a damage designer.

I have a very different job.

That's why we engaged the expert panel, or ITRT, whatever your preference is to call them, in reviewing the August report.

We have not asked the panel to review the December 14th.

It was a report that, as we read it,

addressed some but not all of the issues from the November 22nd review.

I have no idea, I really still don't know now what the city intends to do with the December 14th progress report.

Are you going to advance it to complete the recommendations of the panel?

Are you going to say, well, we've done enough, let's have it reviewed again?

What's your end goal?

Does the city want to take over the Ragged Mountain Dam and advance this project and administer it?

Does the city want to work out some other arrangement with the county?

Does the city want Rivanna involved?

There's really a lot of fundamental questions that I don't understand the answer to at this point in time.

I guess the fundamental question to ask first is the panel came up with a list of a number of items.

Some of them have been addressed, some of them have not.

I think the first question before asking the panel to review the latest report is, is the intention to address all the items?

I'm not personally convinced that that makes

I mean, I think we're at a point now where we have to decide whether or not we want to proceed with final design.

And that's the question at hand.

And I found the presentation tonight to be very compelling.

My sense is, and I know Ms. Miller doesn't want to go on record on this, but my sense is that we're actually a good bit further along in the review of this option than we were

when we initially chose to go with an earthen dam.

So I don't think we need to necessarily wait until we've caught up to where the earthen dam design is before we decide whether or not we want to do this.

I guess part of what I'm thinking, what the city's trying to do is create a situation where

Things can be phased either by filling or by building so that we can see where we go in terms of population growth and in terms of water use.

But beyond a certain expense, the cost of building a new dam, I assume, is to be borne by the area of projected growth, which is mostly in Albemarle County.

and so what I'm trying to figure out is where our role should be if we're not going to be paying for most of it or are we anticipating we may go down a path where we pay for most I mean can we discuss that a little bit I mean if we're talking about a certain amount of water being expanded and most of that is for growth

I'm not expecting the city's going to pay the lion's share of that cost, but we seem to be very interested in how that money is spent.

I guess that's my point.

I guess I would have an ancillary question, which is if these questions are answered to the satisfaction, especially the safety issue, if we, you know,

get to the point where we feel this is safe.

And this option is considerably less expensive than the other option.

I'm not quite sure why either Rivanna or the county would be upset that we've done this.

It just seems like we've uncovered a potential real savings of money that's largely county money.

I think the other important thing to note in answer to your question is that it's not, you know, it's the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority that's going to be floating the bonds to make this project happen.

It's not Albemarle County.

So even though they may be paying a lion's share of the debt service on those bonds, it is going to heavily in debt Rivanna and inhibit their ability to address other infrastructure issues which are arguably

even more pressing, as Miss Moody always reminds us, than this one.

And it also does affect our asset, if you will, of the natural area, which I think we have an obligation to preserve to the greatest extent possible.

I have a related question.

It's one I sort of brought up in the comments by the public.

It is the hope that we would get some response within a couple of weeks or so.

I'm not sure I understood what I just heard in terms of a comment if another alternative is cheaper, why would someone else be upset about it?

I'm not sure I understand why that statement was made.

I haven't heard anyone suggest

that if another alternative is truly cheaper, they're going to be upset.

I haven't heard anybody, the county say that.

I haven't heard anybody or advantages say that.

The purpose of having an expert panel with you, you've solicited a consultant.

They've come up with a conceptual plan.

They've put a lot of assumptions into the conceptual plan because it's not developed.

And every engineer does that.

When you start a project, you have to put a number of assumptions in because you haven't uncovered all the details yet.

And the question is, is it really cheaper?

And the test, if you will, I'm not saying it is cheaper or is it cheaper, I'm saying I don't know yet.

because it's not developed as far at that point.

The question that I think is in front of the public, in front of the leaders, you as well as the Rivanna board and others, is it worth the time it's going to take to take additional investment to determine if in fact it is cheaper?

When time has a

I think that's a good thing.

Construction prices down the road are going to be more expensive as well.

And then you've also got the deadlines with the state that you've got to consider with the soil and water.

If you're going to need more time, when do you go to them and say, please, can we have more time?

Or are you going to let the deadlines pass and then ask forgiveness?

You've got to weigh all those issues as well.

I guess I was responding to your statement of wondering why Rivanna should

Does the city want to take this over?

It seems that it would behoove Rivanna and all of us if we're talking about a possible three month look to see if this is as significantly cheaper as it looks to be, that that would certainly offset whatever raise there might be in construction costs between now and three months from now.

That it would save us all money if it's

No, I know, but that's why I'm wondering why there's a resistance to having the Rivanna board pursue this.

And maybe I misunderstood what you said, because it sounded to me like you were saying that Rivanna shouldn't have to

No, it was really more a question of what are your intentions, not assumptions the other way.

I'm asking questions.

Because I don't think that the city has ever expressed an interest in taking on the new water plan.

In fact, the new water plan is not really something that the city

I think the real key here, and I put it in a report, I think you all probably have seen, that has gone to the Board of Supervisors, is the elected officials

This Board and the County Board of Supervisors need to be talking to each other.

We're put in a very difficult position because the County Board of Supervisors has essentially said we're not interested in talking.

We've drawn the line and we're not going to compromise and there's no point in

meet with DEQ.

They said they didn't want DEQ to come mediate.

That's what they said.

And that idea, I thought, was different than what we talked about at the board boards meeting.

We talked about having a small meeting with two people go and meet.

And that idea seemed to evaporate.

Well, I actually didn't, I initially threw out that word and I quickly withdrew it once it became clear that that's not what the county was interested in.

Mr. Tucker said, I have no problem meeting with him, I just don't want to call it mediation.

Yes.

Just let me follow up on this.

We are partners, Sydney and Cowley are partners in this affair of water.

It is not just our plan or their plans together.

So we have to talk to each other.

I think D, Cowley has said they are not interested in DEQ coming and hearing our discussion, but we can still, I think two bodies can easily discuss a water plan.

I would be happy to sit down with Albemarle County.

I'm not sure that a four-boards meeting is a productive way to do that, but I think it would be a very smart thing for the city and the county to try to put our heads together and come up with a resolution.

I'm not Dr. Cawley, but I'm not sure.

And I think in all fairness, I think the county was reacting, truthfully, to after agreement that all of us would meet, to having one of us go and meet privately with DEQ.

I agree with Mr. Huja.

Well, again, I'm happy to do.

So we are going to schedule a vote for our next meeting.

And in the meantime, we'll reach out to the county.

A vote on what?

I think if we have to do it at our own expense, but obviously the strong preference would be that this does become a regional solution.

Should we instead say that we'll vote at the meeting after we receive that information, assuming that that will be as soon as possible?

Sure.

That's fine.

Thank you all very much.

you

Thanks for watching

All right.

We will now reconvene the meeting.

The next item on our business tonight is a report from our very fine registrar-voter, Sherry Iacheta, on voter registrar re-precincting update.

This is Iacheta.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council.

I have a PowerPoint, so I'm prepared if you all would like to move down here.

I've got big colorful maps.

There are copies of it in your packet, yes ma'am.

In October I had the opportunity to meet with council during a work session to go over some of the information about why my office and the electoral board feel it's important to re-precinct.

Some of the information that I gave you all in October was that in the last 11 years voter population's grown over 10,000 by 10,000 registered voters which is wonderful and I think that's a great problem to have.

Some of the things that we wanted to talk about when we re-precinct, when we're looking at these, was that right now we've got certain precincts, and one specific Venable precinct is beyond its legal limit as far as registered voters, according to state law, in my interpretation.

Alumni Hall also according to the state law is not contiguous.

I'll show you a map as we go further on and I'll explain that.

In a nine month period in 2008 we registered over 5,000 voters and that's typical and that's right before presidential election.

We saw an increase in 2000 before the presidential election and in 2004, but nothing like we saw in 2008.

And I don't doubt that we're not going to have the same increase or a comparable increase for the 2012 election.

And all indications will show that we're going to have over 30,000 registered voters by November 2012.

And that's our goal.

At least that's my office goal.

That's what we're looking forward to.

Some of the things that we talked about in October about why we need to re-precinct was, you know, the city right now, you're very well aware that we have very strong neighborhoods.

And so is it important that we keep neighborhoods together while we think about that?

We also have one of the things that we need to consider is when we're actually redrawing the lines, do we actually have buildings that are suitable precincts within the boundaries that we're looking at?

We've talked about polling places and places of worship.

The electoral board had some concerns several years ago when we pulled all of our precincts out of actual churches and places of worship because of some concerns that we had.

But we are probably the only locality in this state that doesn't have a precinct and a place of worship.

So again, that's something to think about.

and the law does allow polling places to be located up to one mile outside the precinct boundary.

Is that something council's interested in?

So you've got the boundaries of Charlottesville.

We actually are able to go a mile outside into Albemarle County.

If we're not able to find a suitable place, we can go into the county.

So in October, council directed the staff to work up three scenarios.

The first was to retain the existing eight precincts but just adjust the current lines where we solved the problems.

So tweaking, if I can use the word that was used for us, to tweak some of the boundary lines that were the issues.

To retain the eight precincts but also to move the lines just to take the software that we purchased and to actually

make the lines equitable.

So just throw the numbers in sort of like a pie and do eight equal precincts and to show what that would happen.

And the third one was to add the additional precincts in order to take some stress off the current and make them equitable in size.

So we've done this.

We have examples of all three of them.

What I wanted to show you was our eight existing precincts right now.

The one that I wanted to show you was Alumni Hall, contiguous.

It's not

Contiguous, meaning that the Census Bureau sees Alumni Halls as in two parts.

In 2000 when we got our numbers, it was really interesting and took us a while to understand and we worked with Neighborhood Development, but they had Alumni Hall Part 1 numbers and Alumni Hall Part 2 numbers and we couldn't understand what that meant and it meant that they didn't see Alumni Hall as a whole area.

They saw it as two separate parts and so it's not contiguous.

So there are eight precincts.

These are the number of voters we have per precinct.

Again, this was as of the work session that we had in October.

We are at 28,600 and change basically in voters.

So we are considerably up, which always happens after an election because you have so many people that register to vote during that 29 day period that the books are closed and so obviously we've been registering people to vote since then.

The information right here is the size of the current precinct and the square footage of the precinct.

So you're seeing that right now

The Hermann Key Recreation Center has 4,420 give or take probably a hundred because recreation is a very actively growing precinct and it's almost 6,100 square feet in size so that gives you some idea of the size of the rec precinct and then you can see the rest of the precincts and their size.

I can tell you that one of the problems that we're seeing right now is the Tonsler Precinct because the Tonsler Precinct is growing so fast and one of the slides we have towards the end of the presentation talks about the building in the area and the units that are going to be built and that is so small.

One of our hopes is that we can split Tonsler, take some and add some to another precinct.

Can you talk about that?

How long do people have to wait to vote there?

Was there a delay in voting?

Were people standing for half an hour or 45 minutes?

The size translates into the problem that we have people calling and saying they can't park at Tonsler so they leave and come back.

Parking is a huge issue at Tonsler and waiting because there's really no place to wait in line.

I mean, you're walking in and when you walk into the tonsillar precinct, the demonstrator desk and the desk where you fill out all of the information is in the foyer area.

That's how many we had.

In the presidential election in 2008, there were issues with people having to stand in line.

There was a long line.

There was a long line everywhere.

But in Tonsler, we always get complaints in Tonsler.

And I always have a sheriff's deputy at Tonsler because parking and getting in and out of Cherry Avenue is just really tough.

Did you have any more questions on this page?

So this is the first one that we did, if you can accept the word tweaking.

These are our eight districts that we have.

We tweaked some of the lines.

We tweaked the line at Venable, right up in here, and what we did was we added Alumni Hall,

into this area and made this area JPA and then called this Fry Springs again.

Again, there's Tonsler, Belmont, Recreation, Carver and Walker.

So some of the names have changed slightly.

I mean, this would be Clark.

But what we did was we took Alumni Hall and we took the boundaries for part one and put it here and put the boundaries for part two, just made that a separate area.

and what that did was that shows you the population in each precinct.

Yes sir, we did.

Because it's a different voting location.

That's JPA.

Yeah, that's JPA.

Where did you put it?

Right here.

Yeah, right there.

Right.

But it adds, Venable is one of our largest precincts and that's the problem that we're having.

We have much more parking up at St. Anne's and it's a larger facility than Venable itself.

So that's a possibility.

Okay, so the board has looked at this.

So that was the first one.

That was the first one that we were asked to do.

The second one that we were asked to do is just to make eight precincts and make them equitable.

And that's how that would look.

and trying to get all the numbers the same.

And I do need to say we are working with 2,000 numbers, 2,000 census numbers.

So I have no idea until next month what our numbers are actually going to be and where all of the population is going to actually fall out.

It's total population.

The census requires you to do total population.

So what we're looking at is the total population that we're working with is 40,341.

So if you divide that by 8, the ideal district population, again, is 4,900 people.

That's total population.

Well, in October, if I'm not mistaken, Mr. Huja and Ms. Szakos asked us to do one tweak and then one which is eight, just making them all equitable.

This is just making them legal but not necessarily equitable?

Yes.

Okay, now I got it.

the third one the third one is adding precincts and what this does is we have again added precincts to take some of the stress off of some of our larger precincts now when you dissolve Alumni Hall

You're down to seven precincts, and then we've added four.

And I think when you see one of the maps that we have coming up that talks about where all the building has been and is being, you'll see that if you could take the city and draw it right there, you know, an east to west line, you'll see that all of the building and is going to continue in this area right here.

So you all know this is our Denzis area.

That makes them more equitable.

Again, this is total population and it makes the ideal district population at about 3600 people, which means we're not going to have to do this again.

And that gives room for growth, which would be the ideal situation.

Okay, the next slide shows some neighborhoods.

And we strive, I think, very hard, and you can ask Jim because he and I sat down and did this on the board.

I have these big maps in my office and we sit and take pencils and move lines and it's just been really interesting over the past couple of months doing this.

and trying to keep neighborhoods together.

But if you look at our neighborhoods and you overlay a precinct map with it, which is what we did, you'll see that there are neighborhoods split in half already, currently.

So even though it's very beneficial to try to keep the neighborhoods together, it might not be an option in some situations.

and so this is the significant development, again this came from neighborhood planning and they worked really hard on this map so I so appreciate it.

It shows you where all the building is going to happen through 2012.

Potential.

Expected.

Some key dates to remember.

I have no reason to believe we will not get our census numbers in early February.

All indications, we've already started getting some numbers.

I know that neighborhood development's already gotten some big numbers.

But when talking to legislative services last week, my friends in legislative services have said, yes, we are on track to get early February, which is so good, because in the past it's been early March, which puts a cramp on everybody.

My hope is that council will look at these key dates and realize that we have really a tight window if we choose to go through this.

The law is requiring everything to be done by November 2011.

It has to be in place by the November 2011 election.

So everybody that would vote in the November election of this coming year would vote at their new precinct.

But they need to get voter cards and we need to get justice approval.

And so it's a tight timeline, I understand that, but it's one that I think is very doable and we're not the only locality everybody's going to be doing this.

Our difference is that we're not redistricting, we are re-precincting.

We're just changing some of the lines and making things a little bit more equitable.

We are an at-large voting system so it has nothing to do with When you vote you go to the precinct based upon yes it is it's at large no no no no that's don't want to talk about it I don't

This is very non-political in my opinion.

I just had a quick question that had to do more with the timeline.

You don't have to put it back up.

I noticed that summertime is when you expect the council to give final approval to the actual lines, but that federal

approval has to come after that.

Is there, you know, the only concern that I really have about this, because I think that, you know, we have a board of elections, we have, you know, I really think I'm appreciative of the work that you're doing and I want to support that as much as possible, but if we're going to make big changes,

The one thing that I want to make sure we do, and we talked about this before, is make sure we get lots of publicity and lots of marketing, get everybody into their polling place in the summer or sometime where they can have a picnic there and really make sure that people feel comfortable knowing that they know where to vote.

Can we do that if the federal government hasn't approved our polling places yet?

Do we have to wait until October to do that?

Mr. Brown may be able to answer that.

If we want to do a big kind of marketing campaign to kind of let people know where they're supposed to vote so that people, by the time November comes around, feel comfortable knowing that they know where to go.

We were envisioning at our last work session, you know, potluck dinners or some events to kind of celebrate the opening of your new polling place.

You can.

There's always an inherent risk of the federal government saying, no, we don't approve it.

And then you have given a lot of marketing to something which is not going to come to fruition.

And they won't sign off on it until council makes an ordinance.

So that's why it's in that order.

I'll go back to the original.

Can I do the precincts, please?

One of the things that you mentioned, there's only two parts.

Easy way to do it would be to just extend Alumni here and make this part of the Venable.

In my mind, it will be contiguous and then you will be able to... You mean take that little line off between Alumni and Venable?

Make it part of the Venable and make this part of Alumni.

They say compact and contiguous.

No sir, it's not.

How old is it?

As old as redistricting is.

Is that something we should have as a top priority is to do that?

I mean, if it is, I think Mr. Huja has a good idea.

Let me get rid of my comments first.

Can you go to the next square, please?

To me, this seems changing and interesting in my mind.

My idea of tweaking the line was not that drastic, what you end up doing.

I would keep the precincts available.

Yes.

I'll give you an example.

Since I've been registrar here, we've moved the Jefferson Park Precinct four times, not because of the

influx of people but because of issues we've had with the actual buildings in that particular precinct.

And we're having to move it again.

And we are going to have to move Carver.

So Carver and Jefferson Park are going to have to be moved regardless.

What's going to happen is if we don't alleviate some of the stress on some of our precincts, like Venable, like Recreation,

then you're going to be seeing me a lot.

I'm going to be up here telling you that we need to redo this again because the law, I don't see the law changing, the over 5,000 voters or 4,000 that have voted in the presidential election because with the number of people that we're still getting and they're moving in and are registering to vote,

which I think is wonderful.

Ms. Aicha, can I just clarify, you mentioned Carver, that's a temporary move, right?

Carver's a temporary move, yes.

Can you show us this?

And it would be right up here?

Yeah.

I'm not sure which that is.

That's Venable School.

So we could change the Venable name to St. Anne's, of course leads out as Hooten, like Huja said, to lead that Venable.

Carver would be the

When we were at the Jefferson Park Baptist Church we had people send letters to the board saying they were uncomfortable with going into a place of worship with religious symbols on the wall.

When we left the

Jefferson Park Baptist Church.

The board made a resolution in their minutes at the time, excuse me, the board at the time, because this was years ago when I first started, they said we were going to try in all practical purposes to stay away from places of worship.

When we moved to the Carter Family Life Center, which is the gymnasium which is adjacent to the Carter Family Life Center, they felt comfortable with that because it's a big gymnasium.

It wasn't an actual

Sanctuary.

And they allowed us to move some of our things in front of some of the things they had on their wall that might be offensive to people.

So they were very willing to work with us.

But our elections and some of the activities that they had planned

got into the way and so they sent us a letter saying that we couldn't use the Carter Family Life Center anymore.

We went to the Municipal Arts Building.

There have been, I know that in Venable and in Belmont and

Venable Clark, Walker's not a problem because Walker has a really nice parking area and so it's not an issue but in Clark and in Venable we always have problems with parking and we go and we talk to the neighborhoods, Jim and I, Jim Tolbert and I specifically talk with the neighborhoods right prior to an election to let them know that we're going to be using on street parking even though that's neighborhood parking and it's zoned residential for

was bothered by the location of your proposed St. Anne precinct and the voting thing.

Because I think one of our values should be that we should encourage walkability both in areas that are dense, in areas where in precincts that have a fair proportion of residents who may not have cars.

And I think that that in particular stands out as a going from the dense part of the precinct to the less dense and going from the area where some people can walk because they don't have a car and now how would they get to the polls.

And so I don't know if that's

how that plays in some of the other precincts but I would hope that that would be a value that walkability both in terms of density and in terms of income levels would be considered and you know bus lines would be secondary but walkability is a great thing for people who want to vote and I know that you know Venable has an advantage that way, Carver has an advantage that way and the Rec Center has an advantage that way, there's a lot of places where people

I was actually going to say almost the same thing except that I would say that if if we're in agreement on that that we might even now you know ask the board to use that as one of the guidelines you know as the council that if you want to make us happy and you want us to approve it that that would really be

They have been making noises over the last year about saying they're private and especially in June when we have June elections it's very tough because of all of the things going on at Alumni Hall and so sometimes we get booted out of the ballroom and get a very small room which is okay because the

The other thing I was going to point out is that if we have the smaller districts, I think that increases walkability.

I think that the smaller a precinct is, the more people can walk to their precinct polling place.

And that's why this configuration, not the specifics of it, because I understand that you haven't really chosen polling places for all of them.

I think the walkability is important.

Also, the parking has to be convenient because a lot of people vote on their way to work and on their way home when they

kind of make their voting schedule around their work schedule.

So the more convenient the parking is, the more apt people are just to pull over and just take a few minutes to do that.

The sense I have is that people are used to voting in certain locations, and I would hate to change that

because during the time between October and November, you don't have that much time to educate people.

I agree.

And I think the question is, do we have voter confusion once and then get it out of the way?

I think we have the opportunity, if we go forward with this, of talking about it and talking about it and talking about it and letting people know and sending letters and putting it in the city notes and having open houses at the potential precincts and letting people see what's going on and getting the marketing out there.

We can do voter registration drives at these precincts.

I think we have the opportunity of educating our already educated public because we have a smart locality and I don't think that this is going to...

I think if we just do it once and get it over with, I think we'll be fine.

I think what we do is keep the existing polling places like Huja said, keep them there.

What can you comment on?

Yes, I can comment on that.

One of the things that was a concern was more election officials, but that would not be a concern for us because we've got such a large pool of election officials currently and all we're doing is taking some of them out of our larger precincts and putting them into

the other precinct.

So it means we wouldn't have to have as many election officials at a precinct.

So that cost wouldn't be a large cost at all.

The voting machines would be an issue because right now if you remember in November you're able to choose whether you want to vote on the electronic voting machine or you want to vote on paper.

So we would have to get the machine that you would vote on paper and slip it through the scanning machine, but

We've got a pretty decent deal with our current vendor about that machine.

I kind of agree with Mr. Huja's sentiments, in particular by keeping our existing voting places.

I also worry that we're taking a simple problem, which is a fairly simple fix, and we're creating a complicated answer to it.

And the complicated answer being is to confuse everybody for a while.

It's hard to imagine we can't tweak our lines in such a way that it's not going to be a problem for a while if it becomes a problem.

Even in our busy precincts, we don't have unbearable lines where people don't vote.

I mean, you guys do a good job.

You should be proud of that.

And I like the idea

You know, we do have a lot of new voters.

I mean, I think Kristin could take some credit.

Lots of people take some credit for that.

Good candidates, maybe, take some credit for that.

And I like the idea of the new voters having voted once and now voted twice.

I just like the idea of keeping it the way it is as much as we can.

I think it's a simple fix.

I like the way Mr. Huja looked at what the clear dilemma was.

And so, you know, my inclination is to not

make a problem much more difficult that needs to be a solution, much more difficult than it needs to be.

I'd also like to make a comment, which is just an observation, which is this year my father voted for the first time in Albemarle County.

He's 88 years old.

and I went with him anticipating that it was going to be hard for him because I pretty much knew that if he was in the city and had to figure out how to turn the little dial to get to where he wanted to be, it would be a challenge.

It would be a new, it would be a learning curve and it would be difficult and their systems, their touch screens are so easy to use, it's unbelievable.

I was, I mean I can't wait going, wow, that is really easy.

Nobody can complain about that and I don't,

Thank you.

Well actually the only recommendation that I was hoping to get from you all this evening was that you allow my office to form an advisory group so that when we do get the February numbers and working with neighborhood development

We could sit down and actually use the real data in developing the scenario and then come back and say, here it is, and you all vote on it.

I found them from, I just went down the mall and said no.

I found them from members of the Republican Party, members of the Democratic Party, the League of Women Voters, the Weldon Cooper Center staff, a former council member who said he was very interested in doing this, and anybody else that you would say, representatives from the IRC, Tom Vandiver,

As a general balance in terms of gender and race?

Good.

You've got one blessing then.

Okay.

Are you asking them to flesh out

I hope that you will do all those things.

My concern is that when I look at the map, like JPA, you're divided into two precincts.

The track is a major barrier.

Most traffic goes on JPA, not across the shamrock, I think.

We had to have a polling place.

If we get them in early February, I don't see that we can't have something to you by the end of February, early March.

Do you need to make a motion to encourage her to keep on?

So you heard, you're supporting.

The next item, let's see if I can find my agenda here.

The next item on our agenda tonight, the report and a resolution, allocation of Charlottesville Housing Fund dollars, first of one reading.

Good evening.

I'll try to go through this as quickly as I can.

Back in August we came to council and talked about the allocation of the FY11 dollars for the Charlottesville Housing Fund and we asked that we set aside $800,000 for an RFP process and we've gone through that process and we actually received applications from non-agencies for 12 different projects.

Those are listed in your memo, but they're basically from the AIDS Services Group for rental subsidies, AHIP for hormonal rehabs, CRHA for implementation of pre-development funds for the renovation of Crescent Hall site, from the city for the work on the Elliott Avenue site for development plans, from the city for acquisition of property on Riverside

Avenue Habitat for funds for the implementation of Sunrise Park Phase 1, Java for the Timber Lake Place Project in Willing Mills,

PHA for down payment assistance, PHA for the acquisition of the Otis Lee properties and a tax credit project as was the Java project, PHA for friendship court resident services, and 10th and Main LLC for units in a development owned JPA, Dakota JPA.

and Emmett and the Thomas Jefferson Community Land Trust for their land trust projects.

The CBG task force met and made recommendations on each of these and essentially they recommended that funding

for a group of these that would include AHIP at a lower level and requested of $65,000 toward rehab, CRHA for $150,000, Elliott Avenue Project for $70,000, Habitat for $300,000, PHA for the Tax Credit Project at $100,000, the AIDS Services Group for $15,000, JOGA for $75,000, and the Land Trust for $25,000.

As we've been working on this and since the task force met and since the RFPs went out, as I indicated in a memo that went out to you last week after the agenda packet,

We've had an opportunity, really we've got three projects out there that are major projects that will do a lot of what it is I think we intended the housing fund to do when it was set up and that's create real housing units and for different levels of affordability.

Those are the summarized trailer park property, the phase one, which will create 24 affordable units in phase one

the PHA purchase of the Otis Lee properties which will purchase and keep affordable and rehab and put in much better condition 30 affordable units and the Java Timberlake project which has 28 units of affordable senior housing so an opportunity there for some 70 plus units of affordable housing.

Unfortunately we didn't have enough money and the task force didn't have enough money in making their recommendations

They felt like all three of those were very good projects and yet they felt that the PHA projects and the Java project might not have been ready at this time.

So in trying to look at how we could make these happen and remembering that

In addition to creating units of affordable housing one of the things you want to do is to leverage other funds and all three of these projects are leveraging a tremendous amount of other funding.

We've suggested to you that if you agree with us that these are desirable projects that we shuffle the funding for this year and we actually out of the FY11 monies we not fund Java or PHA

and that we increase the funding for Habitat from $300,000 to $400,000 to fully fund that project and that we commit to PHA and Java that we would fund at $500,000

They're projects for out of next year's money which is available July 1 Now understanding that commit to them means you've got to appropriate it and then you've got to still make a decision July 1 that those are viable projects that you want to go forward with

lock up money that hadn't been appropriated yet, but you can indicate your willingness to do so.

And there was a substitute resolution provided to you both by email and I think by hard copy tonight that if you felt that that was the way you'd like to go that it would allocate $750,000 now.

Again, it would be AHIP $65,000, CRHA $150,000, the Elliott Lot $70,000, Habitat $400,000, AIDS Services Group $15,000.

Thomas Jefferson Land Trust, $25,000 and the other one that we've added in based on Council's previous commitments is $25,000 in FAR which came in after the process but you've indicated in the past you wanted to match the BamaWorks grant that's facilitating

the FAR involvement in the CRHA redevelopment.

So that would total 750 and then the resolution would also make that commitment of your intent or statement of your intent to fund PHA in Java.

out of next year's money should they receive the tax credits.

If they don't get the tax credit application funded, then there is no project on either one of those cases next year.

So we could then go through another process with that money.

That leaves $50,000 on the table.

You had $800,000 originally.

My thinking was if council has some idea of how they'd like to use that, we'd be very open to that.

My idea was to do a payment program, because there's only $40,000 left there.

It leverages one to ten to every dollar.

Are we using those monies though?

I'm not opposed to that.

I would like to see us do more for AHIP because I know of the long waiting list in the community, particularly among elderly and low-income homeowners to get their houses repaired.

I think that it's really, and I really love the creative solution of kind of figuring out ways of saying yes to more people.

Along the same line, I had reservations for AHIP before but I understand that

Our staff's been working very closely with them as well.

Ms. McHugh has rewritten the rehabilitation policies.

I would offer, and again we have another $50,000 that we reserve for miscellaneous for future allocation that would also be available if you chose, if you wanted to do

More than $50,000.