City Council Meeting   3/7/2011

Dr. Brown?

Here.

Ms. Edwards?

Ms. Zakos?

Here.

Mr. Huja?

Here.

Thank you.

And you'll note that Mr. Huja is not with us tonight.

He is actually traveling in India and we wish him safe travels and a good time with his family.

Before we begin our meeting, I wanted to point out that we found out this past week, sadly, that we lost one of our own in what is being described by the United States State Department as a terrorist attack.

21-year-old Zachary Cutaback was assigned to the Air Force's 86th Vehicle Readiness Squadron on Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany.

He was at the Frankfurt Airport last Wednesday where he was one of two Americans killed by a lone gunman who shot into an Air Force bus that was headed for the base.

And I wanted to tell you a little bit about Zachary tonight.

He was from Greene County but actually spent a lot of his time here in Charlottesville, specifically on the downtown mall where he enjoyed playing hockey at the ice park with his friends and competitors.

This week, thanks to his friends and family, we've gotten to know him well.

We have heard Zachary described by those who knew him best as honorable, tough, dedicated, and the definition of character.

It is a tragic loss for our community to lose someone with such a hopeful future

Somebody who could have made a true difference in the world, but we can at least celebrate all that he was able to do during his short life for our community and for our country.

There will be a public memorial for Zachary this Wednesday at the Main Street Arena, formerly known as the Ice Park, from 1 to 3 p.m. and the public is invited.

The family has also opened up a memorial fund for Zachary at First Citizens Bank.

We have a number of awards and recognitions to get us started tonight.

First of all, we always try to recognize our city's staff when they go above and beyond and receive commendation for the good works that they do.

We're very pleased to note that the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada

recently presented a distinguished budget presentation award to the city of Charlottesville and specifically to our budget department for the annual budget for fiscal year beginning July 1, 2010.

In order to receive this award, a governmental unit must publish a budget document that meets program criteria as a policy document, as an operations guide, as a financial plan, and as a communications device.

and we wanted to share this plaque and express our appreciation and praise for Leslie Borghardt and her staff in the budget department.

Thank you Mayor and City Council for presenting us with this award.

We do work really hard to get this award every year and I honestly can't remember how many years in a row we received it, but we're going on 20 I think.

So that's pretty impressive for the city.

I want to thank also Ryan Davidson, he's my budget management analyst, everybody in the finance department, actually there's a whole list of people in the budget document that we acknowledge.

Every single one of those persons contributes to the budget to make it as successful as it is each year.

and we continue to improve it in leaps and bounds I think.

So thank you very much and I look forward to working on this next round of budget that we're beginning tonight.

Thank you.

I have a series of proclamations to read.

The first one is in recognition of

multiple sclerosis and the efforts that are being made to combat this disease.

Whereas multiple sclerosis MS is a chronic, often disabling disease of the central nervous system that affects approximately 10,000 people in Virginia and 270 people in the city of Charlottesville and the surrounding county.

and whereas most people with MS are diagnosed between the ages of 15 and 50, but the unpredictable physical and emotional effects can be lifelong.

The progress, severity and specific symptoms of MS in any one person cannot yet be predicted, but advances in research and treatment are giving hope to those affected by the disease.

Whereas MS is a disease that not only affects the person with the condition but also greatly impacts family, friends, and the community.

Whereas the symptoms of MS may be mild such as numbness in the limbs or severe such as paralysis or loss of vision.

Whereas every hour of every day someone is newly diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

And whereas the National Multiple Sclerosis Society envisions a world free of MS,

and whereas the Blue Ridge Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society provides programs and services to address the challenges of everyone affected by MS. Now, therefore, I, Dave Norris, do hereby recognize March 14 to 20, 2011 as MS Awareness Week in the City of Charlottesville and I call this observance to the attention of all of our citizens and do we have anybody from the Multiple Sclerosis Society here?

Okay, if you want to come forward

Well, just to say thank you very much for the city, we appreciate it.

I think a lot of people are unaware of the fact that the multiple sclerosis society in the Blue Ridge chapter has more than doubled its size in the last 14 months.

We've taken over all of West Virginia, very small portions of Kentucky and Ohio, so therefore we've gone from 3,000 clients to now over 6,000 clients and so we have quite a

task ahead of us and we appreciate all that you've done.

Thank you.

We have a couple of proclamations and one announcement all have a similar theme which you will notice momentarily.

First we'd like to honor

The Festival of the Book, which is coming up soon, and we have Nancy Damon here tonight to share a little bit about the Festival.

Whereas literacy is crucial to our ability to understand fully what we read, whereas reading stimulates the creative and intellectual growth of an individual, and whereas books record how philosophies are formed, literary worlds are created and our past and present endeavors connect, and whereas Charlottesville is top in the nation among book-reading households,

and whereas the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Area Bookstores, Libraries, Educational Institutions, Publishers, Writers and Community Activists promote literacy and reading, now therefore I, Dave Norris, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, do hereby proclaim Wednesday, March 16th through Sunday, March 20th, 2011 as the 17th annual Virginia Festival of the Book and encourage community members to participate fully in the wide range of available events and activities held during this time period.

And I know I saw Nancy earlier, let's

Those of you who know me know I can't go anywhere without taking something to read, so I've got something for you all to have.

The Virginia Festival is celebrating its 17th year.

We hope to be of value to anybody, whether you like horses or cooking, whether you're interested in the Middle East or the American West.

We have programming for children as well as adults.

Now we're going to talk about the Big Read.

Whereas the Big Read is designed to restore reading to the center of American culture and provides our citizens with the opportunity to read and discuss a single book within our community.

And whereas the Jefferson Madison Regional Library invites all book lovers to participate in the Big Read that will be held throughout the months of March and April 2011, the Library's goal is to encourage all residents of Central Virginia to read and discuss

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammond.

And whereas the Maltese Falcon is about what it's like to want something, a fortune, a lover, or even respect so bad that you would kill for it, give up a chance at happiness to get it until finally the chase itself means more to you than what you're chasing.

Sounds intriguing, doesn't it?

Whereas the Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Arts Midwest and is supported by the Art and Jane Hess Fund of the Library Endowment.

Now therefore be it resolved that I, Dave Norris, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, proclaim the Big Read during March and April 2011 and I encourage all residents to read the Maltese Falcon during this time.

And is there anybody from the library here to receive this proclamation or speak on the Big Read?

Okay, well, read up.

We have another reading related proclamation.

Whereas literacy is essential to our children's ability to function successfully in society.

And whereas reading stimulates the cognitive and creative growth of a young child.

And whereas WVPT promotes literacy in children and joy in reading.

WVPT's children's programming has been transformative in how very young children are introduced to letters, words, languages, and respectful relationships with their families, friends, and communities.

And whereas

Every who down in Whoville thought books were a ball The tall and the small ones, they read them all They dashed into town and off to the store Out with new books, they'd want some more They'd wake bright and early and rush for their reading In school, on the bus with their friends, they'd be reading They'd read in their beds, they'd read in their sheds They'd read till they filled up their eyes and their heads All the who's down in Whoville thought books were a ball The tall and the small ones, they read them all

and for those of you, I know there's some out there who are a little tired of seeing me as mayor of the city.

I have a very special announcement that will make your day.

Therefore I, Dave Norris, mayor of the city of Charlottesville, do hereby proclaim the cat in the hat as honorary mayor of Charlottesville for the morning, wait, the morning in the,

For the morning of March 19th, 2011 and the downtown mall as Whoville in honor of Cat and the Hat's visit this Saturday, March 19th, 2011, I encourage all the Who girls and boys to participate fully in this literacy celebration.

I don't know if Ann Jolly is here from WVPT.

Oh, there she is.

Great.

I just hope that not only the little who's come, but big who's are welcome as well.

So it should be great fun.

Last year we did Sesame Street during the Festival of the Book, and this year we're doing the Cat in the Hat.

It's a new series on PBS for kids.

It's a science show.

It's called Cat in the Hat.

Knows a lot about that.

Thank you.

While we are on the subject of literacy, because Charlottesville is such a book-friendly town and a town that values literacy and our libraries in particular, our sister city committee, the Charlottesville Winnebus Sister City Committee,

which is working on projects to benefit Charlottesville and our newest sister city of Winneba in Ghana has chosen as their first big project helping Winneba to plan and build their first library.

and we have a delegation from Charlottesville that's going to Winneba in May.

There's no city dollars involved in this trip.

This is a community supported trip.

We have representatives from the Jefferson Madison Regional Library, from the UVA Library, from the Festival of the Book, from Literacy Volunteers, Quality Community Council and other organizations going to Ghana.

And to raise money for this trip,

There is an event coming up this Saturday the 12th of March at Main Street Arena from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. called Wine for Winneba and it's a fundraiser for this trip and basically it'll have wine and beer, local wines, it'll have food from Harvest Moon Catering, it'll have lively music and good fellowship.

If you'd like more information you can go to

www.tinyurl.com slash wine for Winneba.

There's also, for those of you in the room, there's little leaflets in the back on the table in the back.

I hope people do come and participate.

Yes.

Charlottesville High School Theater presents Ragtime.

It will be two performances, March 17th and March 18th.

The tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for students.

Any other announcements?

I have just one of the, you all now have the brochures from the Festival of the Book and I'd just like to point out one particular event that's happening.

It's something I went to last year and it was a really amazing experience.

It's the Voices of Adult Learners.

It's at Burnley Moran at 6 p.m. on Thursday the 17th of March and it is people who are

Adult language and literacy students of various organizations in this area and they read from their own works that they write as they're learning English or learning to write.

And they're wonderful stories and glimpses into childhoods and experiences that many of us have never imagined.

and two other quick announcements.

First of all, the City of Charlottesville is sponsoring a life-giving blood drive, our spring life-giving blood drive, Tuesday, March 22nd from 12 to 5 p.m. at the Hermann Key Rec Center next door.

To make an appointment, go to www.vadonor.com.

or you can just walk in.

We encourage people to donate blood and lastly we have a competition going for children in our community to help design a logo to commemorate the fact that in 2012 the city is celebrating our 250th birthday.

So we are asking children to submit designs.

There is a couple big cash prizes for the winners and you can

submit those.

You can just call us at 9703101.

Thank you, Mr. Jones.

9703101.

Thank you.

We are now going to proceed to matters by the public, and as is our custom, when you come forward and speak, please state your name and address and keep your comments to three minutes.

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

Due to the fact of having recent surgery and that my mother is dying, I have scented myself from public discourse for six weeks.

I found separating myself gave me a more objective perspective on community issues.

Unfortunately, I have still heard and still seen decisions made that have not benefited the citizenry of Charlottesville as a loss of import infrastructure, loss of power plant, loss of mature forests, and commitments to future spending when the country is still in a recession and unemployment is still high.

We are now entering the active public phase of the budget cycle.

Counselors, I respectfully remind you and us that the monies you approve and allocate is not yours.

You are elected to be the stewards for the electorate.

You are entrusted with our resources.

If you ask a self-made, very wealthy person how it is that he or she is so wealthy, the answer I've heard most often is, I don't spend money, I save it.

Please save our money and resources for what we need and not what you want.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Hall.

Good evening Council and our City Manager, Mr. Jones.

I would like to come this evening to compliment the design team that's headed by Tony Edwards for the Old Lynchburg Road project.

They have listened, they have integrated ideas, they have worked with the neighborhood, and now they will be coming before you with the design

that is all of that and more that will identify the things that go to solve safety, sidewalks, and drainage.

I would also like to compliment our council and our city manager for keeping the eye and the focus

to getting this project to the construction phase, which is the next thing on fulfilling the safety, sidewalks, and drainage project.

Thank you, Ms. Chase.

Scott Beyer, 2556 Summit Ridge Trail.

Good evening, Council.

I'd like to comment on the proposed revision of the Critical Slopes Ordinance and why I disagree with it.

For the last two and a half years, I've been researching and traveling cross-country to write a book analyzing major American cities, namely their decline in resurgence in the last half century and their future growth.

My conclusions thus far have not veered too widely from smart growth orthodoxy.

I believe that cities become successful by building up their central core through dense mixed-use neighborhoods and by minimizing development on surrounding rural lands.

The strategy I know is not original and among planners it's not controversial, but it has been controversial in Charlottesville and Albemarle the last few decades while scarcely being practiced.

For proof of this, just look at the numbers.

According to the 2005 estimates from the comp plan, the Albemarle County population has, since 1970, grown by over 52,000, while Charlottesville has contributed only 730 to this number.

For Albemarle, this is a population increase of 238%.

For Charlottesville, it's an increase of just over 1%.

These numbers are validated tangibly by the growth pattern that's been left behind.

County roadways, once noted for their winding pastoral qualities, are now called bumper to bumper.

Former farmlands and forests have been replaced by shopping centers fronted with massive parking lots, and new subdivisions have sprouted up throughout the countryside, in some cases practically piecemeal.

The question I'd like to raise tonight to Council before attempting to answer it myself is this.

Why has such a discrepancy in growth existed between the city and the county over this time so that areas like Pantops, Hollymeade and Crozet

in no way resemble what they did as recently as my high school graduation.

My first guess is that cheaper land prices and more open space have made these areas more competitive in the free market.

But I also think some blame lies in the city, where an anti-growth sentiment and an unfriendly business climate have further widened this competitive disadvantage.

While indeed the city has designated its own growth corridors, it hasn't always allowed development to actually go on them, with the most recent example being William Taylor Plaza.

Moreover, it has heavily restricted development in neighborhoods outside these corridors, requiring developers to spend thousands on special use permits and proffers if they want density bonuses, while in many cases disallowing the bonuses or even the whole projects altogether.

This has created an even greater incentive for developers to build in cheaper rural areas, pushing the growth pattern further out.

With that said, a critical service ordinance revision with broad language which will judge projects not only on environmental merit but on aesthetic merit will perpetuate this pattern.

It will be another measure making infill land in Charlottesville that much more scarce and the approval process that much harder while making sprawl in the county that much more inevitable given future population increases.

In this sense,

Allison Ewing, 1900 Chesapeake Street.

Could I ask anyone in the audience who lives in the Woolen Mills to please stand up?

And would you please keep standing if you are in opposition to concept or option A, which has the expansion to the pumping station located at the entrance to Riverview Park?

Thank you.

I provided some visuals to give you all a sense of the scale of the project that RWSA is contemplating at the entrance to Riverview Park.

The building I hear through the grapevine is 50 feet by 90 feet.

We've done

some calculations based on their existing facility and knowing that the new facility has to be twice that.

The size is something like 90 feet by 90 feet by 35 feet tall.

The drawing on the page one indicates that only 0.8 acres by my calculations is outside of the flood

Way, where nothing can be built.

So there's a real feasibility issue here.

In the neighborhood, when the pumping station was first installed, there were, was first being presented to the neighborhood in the 1970s.

The neighborhood was told no smells, no noise.

And we've been living with that promise or that broken promise for this many years.

And as

We continue to experience smells and noise.

We will continue to ask for improvements and more money will continue to be poured into the existing pumping station to try to accommodate us.

So we ask, why would our WSA continue to spend good money after bad?

Please take this with all due respect, but this is not an issue that we, it's not real.

It's a gag.

But, so you understand, for us, when someone splashes their toilet in Forest Lakes or at the university, we don't want to be smelling it in the woolen mills.

The Willam Mills, I believe it was last year, was designated a historic neighborhood both in Virginia and nationally.

So we ask how an expansion as large as this could possibly be contemplated in a historic neighborhood.

The scale is massive compared to adjacent houses.

The environmental impact is a large concern.

Both sides of the existing site are bordered by streams, and there are stream buffer ordinances in the city, there are stream buffer ordinances in the county, which are more restrictive, 100 feet.

This further restricts the property available.

No, no, you're out of time, so if you could wrap up your comments.

We have one more speaker from your neighborhood coming up right after you, so maybe he could

We're concerned about trading park land for industrial use.

I'm going to have to cut you off there, I'm sorry.

Mr. Mayor, Councillors, I hope as you receive the report this evening from RWSA that you will

consider the impact on quality of life to residents of the city of Charlottesville, both those who live near the proposed pumping stations, you know, the various concepts, both those residents that live nearby and also the users of the Rivanna Park, one of our most popular parks.

And I hope people drill down and

Get that information, the human impact.

Thank you, Mr. Emery.

Hi, I'm Jacqueline Dunkel, 200 West Market Street.

I own Fellini's number 9, where the Mardi Gras party is tomorrow night.

So I'm here to talk about the sign ordinance and I've been here before when the signs were redesigned.

and unfortunately, I mean it's hard enough for us to get business on the side streets and when the redesigning of the signage went up, if you'll notice on 2nd Street, the signage is directly behind the map.

Can't be seen from people walking from the Omni that way.

It's totally blocked by the map.

Also, the size that's allowed, I was hoping that I could buy like two or three because I have a lot of stuff to tell people, but that one three inch sign is just not ample to kind of get the message across so people know what is down the side street.

I've said before that I have to abide by all the rules of the historic downtown area, but I don't get free Wi-Fi down there.

I still have to pay for the same mall price for outdoor space.

And I feel like I deserve to have the same benefit of the signage as people on the mall.

But I don't get it because I don't have mall frontage.

I don't own mall frontage.

The people on the mall, no disrespect to them, I know they have business too, but they're right there.

They have a big window and a place to put a sign right in front.

And then they have the tripod signs, which to me, if you have a visual impairment, are almost as bad as the reasons why the signs are taken down in the first place.

So I would just ask, what can I do

to help us figure out a way to maybe include the side streets as part of the historic area so that I can have a sign down there.

What is the next step?

Because it's amazing how many people don't see the sign for Fellini's, don't see the sign for Monsoon, don't see the sign for McGuffey.

You know, we're part of the historic area.

I mean, I'm in a historic building myself.

So I'm willing to

You know, do what I can to help either figure out what the problem is, what can be done, but the signs right now, they're just not ample.

And it's, like I said, it's hard enough right now during this economy for me to get business and, you know, restaurants and how many there are.

It's just, I just want people to know what is actually down that street.

So I'm just asking to be part of any future planning.

What can I do?

Do I need to get more people together to complain about it?

Because we know they're out there.

I'm Kate Barton, 108 Second Street, Northwest.

I'm across the street from Jackie.

I own Skylight Studios, an art gallery on the downtown mall.

I'm also on a side street and I appreciate the effort of the city to make really nice presentable signs for the streets that are on the side street.

I mean, for the businesses that are on the side street.

However, they are really small and they can't, they're just not big enough to explain all that we do.

Not only do we sell art, we have art classes, we show films.

and you know we're trying to do our part to bring culture to the downtown mall so it's just really frustrating when there are thousands of people walking down the mall in the summers.

Hi, I'm Robin Haynes, 1709 East Market Street.

I have a petition about the pumping station.

The half that I have copies for to pass out to council is from our internet part of the petition and it has the more lengthy discussion of what was called.

The part that wasn't copied was done in person.

I also have a sign by one of our local children saying, say the Spring Peepers, please don't build a two-story thing at the park.

We have a sewage pumping station in our city neighborhood at the entrance to our popular park next to people's homes.

All those elements should set off alarms in your consciences as you were elected to represent us.

We have grown as a neighborhood and family oriented park with a playground and a busy paved pedestrian park along the river.

We are within easy walking distance to downtown and this very city hall.

I bring you a petition stating I oppose the expansion of the Rivanna Pumping Station near the entrance to Riverview Park.

Option A, I support option D.

The total signatures gathered is 124.

I personally had only three times to approach people this last week, primarily in the park, and got 48 signatures plus six tonight, which makes 54.

People did not hesitate to sign, and many who have enjoyed the park for years were emphatic about the odor.

The warm milk odor has diminished since the dismantling of human waste composting project, which we crusaded against.

The existing pumping station, as well as the sewage treatment plant, still have odor issues despite the authorities' denials.

I call their hotline about strong odor often, especially during the summer when I have learned to close my windows at night despite living half a mile from the pumping station and miles from the treatment center.

Our WSA asked to double the sewage amount to be pumped and the size of its pumping station

with option A.

They asked to include a generator elevated high up because of the current location in the floodplain.

I believe the building they plan will have to be three stories high, a major eyesore.

I believe there will be twice the odor and twice the sewage.

From the large

plus the noise from the large generator despite being inside a building.

Thank you, Ms. Haynes.

Hi, good evening.

I'm Paul Koch at 101 Burnett Street.

I'm here tonight to express my opposition to the sale of property owned by the city located on the corner of Elliot Avenue and Burdette Street to Southern Development.

A public hearing for the sale of this property was held on January 18th.

However, adjacent property owners were not notified of this public hearing.

The lack of communication on the public hearing surely limited public participation.

I'm perplexed by the utter lack of transparency displayed by the city in the proposed sale of this property.

Jim Tolbert was kind enough when it came to his attention that notification wasn't given.

He was kind enough to come to the Burnett Commons Property Owners Association meeting.

During that meeting we also heard from Charlie Armstrong, who's the Vice President of Southern Development.

During that meeting it came to our attention that Southern Development currently has under contract two parcels of land adjacent to Burnett Commons.

It's Southern Development's hope to develop those parcels in conjunction with city-owned property, which is adjacent to the parcel in question.

The potential development, in addition to the

Potential development across Elliott Avenue next to Oakwood Cemetery makes the sale of this parcel seem imprudent at this time.

To sell this property without considering the larger development potential of other city-owned property and the immediate area seems to be a piecemeal approach at best.

The loss of numerous mature maple trees along the LA corridor I think certainly is a blight to the community.

Trees are always important to this council, as they rightfully are, and the loss of those trees I think is significant.

The specific site remediation required on this parcel, in addition to Southern Development's intention to include this parcel in a larger development, should also be considered.

I am by no means rejecting growth or development, but it just seems that to sell this property at this time would be part of the piecemeal approach that I think is a detriment to the city.

I strongly urge the council to reject the sale of the parcel at this time and certainly have the opportunity to bring it up with a larger conjunction for larger development in the Elliott and Ridge Street neighborhoods.

Thank you Mr. Kochis.

I'm Joanna Salinas.

I live at 129 Goodman Street.

I'm here tonight to ask you to make sure that the city's interests regarding the county water plan are protected moving forward.

There's at least two areas I'm concerned about.

First, dredging must be included in the cost share agreement because it is central to our community's environmental and financial interests.

Dredging South Fork could determine whether we really need to build the new pipeline.

Especially given our current lack of reliable data on future water needs, a productive reservoir could make the difference not only for the new pipeline but also for the eventual dam height.

Getting more water out of South Fork in the future could negate the need to go up to 42 feet at Ragged Mountain.

Finally, it seems likely that the county water plan actually requires dredging.

In order to have enough water in the South Fork bathtub to fill Ragged Mountain, while maintaining seriously minimal flows in the Rivanna, dredging should be our first step in meeting our water needs and the county should help pay for it.

Some have continued to argue that dredging is too expensive or that we won't get enough water out to justify it.

These things are not entirely clear now, only because council decided in October to put the RWSA in charge of the RFPs.

I think they're finally moving on this, but even so, as council was told in October, the way the RFPs are written is critical and this makes me nervous.

Please do whatever is necessary to protect the city's interest in dredging.

A second area that I'm concerned about is the cost share agreement more generally.

To me, Ragged Mountain Natural Area as a mature forest easily accessible to my home is priceless.

There's no sum you could give me for my personal use that would be worth its loss.

However, if I could use the money for anything, I have to admit that from a utilitarian perspective, I could do some good with what that land is worth.

That's the position you are in.

As you negotiate the cost share agreement, what good for our city can come out of losing this forest park?

We need to fully take into account its value as a starting point, plus make sure the city pays, plus make sure the county pays for all the new infrastructure they need.

Why am I worried that our city will get the short end of the cost share agreement?

I've observed that the Board of Supervisors and RWSA fiercely pursue their own agendas.

One example is the Board of Supervisor letter in December in which they said they would support no compromise.

This was not about the DEQ as some have tried to suggest.

They were saying clearly, it's my way or the highway, about our resources.

What would have happened if you came back to them and said, well, we'll get back to you when you are willing to compromise?

What are you afraid would happen if you unapologetically stood up for our best interests?

What would happen if you said, we're building a 13-foot concrete dam and we're dredging and you're paying for it?

Take it or leave it.

Would they do everything in their power to go back on past agreements to the tune of moving $2.8 million from our education budget to theirs?

Would they demand we place a road through our central park?

Would they suggest Riverview Park as a reasonable site for an expanded sewage facility?

What has the Board of Supervisors ever done for the city that didn't directly benefit their constituents?

In conclusion, I hope that moving forward, you will relentlessly protect the city's interests.

At the same time, I want to be clear that I support working to find solutions that meet everyone's needs.

I believe the plan you approved on September 20th would do that.

Instead of refusing to even discuss it, the Board of Supervisors could have ensured their need for water would be met and reciprocated your compromise by working to secure a demand analysis and dredging study that could withstand informed criticism.

Perhaps if you say, take it or leave it, they will pursue such a rational course.

Thank you.

Good evening, Council and Mr. Jones and Mr. Brown.

Well, I have to agree with a lot of what my sister just said.

One thing I would say is that the County Board of Supervisors, one thing I might disagree with, though, is the County Board of Supervisors is not really looking after its constituents, or not all of them, but particularly looking after what I call the sprawl growth

industrial complex and I spoke about that a little bit last time how there is a group of people who

spend a great deal of money in order to get the public into spending a great deal of money so they can make more money on these public investments which ultimately don't help anybody but these sprawl developers.

And I would put the Meadow Creek Parkway in that category and also this water plan as well.

both of these plants have been made under false pretenses in both instances there's one key piece of false information which we just

pretend is true.

In this case, the dam, it is that we're going to need a certain amount of water in 50 years.

And this study, the demand study that came out in 2004 is now over 26% wrong after just a little more than six years.

And yet they're telling us that they know how much water we're going to use in 50 years.

If we extrapolate that rate of error 26% after only a little over 6 years, but they're assuming

the demand study is for 50 years they're over 200% wrong and yet we pretend as if it's true and there's a great deal of deception that goes on as well for instance there's this rush about the April 30th permit and how council needs to make a decision as soon as possible but

It's come to my attention that at that same meeting that the state water control board gave us the permit extension to April 30th, they extended the permits for over 75 dams in the state at just that one meeting.

And it's also come to my attention that the board was

considering a 12 month extension, but the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority actually suggested that a six month extension might be a better way to go.

And so essentially City Council is being played by all kinds of forces which ultimately owe their allegiance to the Sprawl Growth Industrial Complex.

Carl Ackerman, 1611 East Market Street in the Woolen Mills.

I would like to correct something that my neighbors have said and I'm sure that they would go along with my correction.

We refer to the structure that sits at the entrance of Riverview Park as the pumping station.

That's a fairly benign name.

It almost sounds like a place you might stop by to have a beer on a Friday afternoon.

What is being proposed, and this is also the language of RWSA, which frankly to us we've been, we've listened to a lot of euphemisms from RWSA over the years, so I tell that joke, but I ask you not to laugh.

What is being proposed is an automated sewage treatment plant.

All of the sewage from this city will go through that plant and be pumped up to the RWSA facility.

What I would like you to think about tonight when you look at the information that Allison gave you is to ask yourself the question of why is option A on the table?

Option A is on the table only because the pumping station, the current plant, sits there right now.

If RWSA had no facility there and came to you

You would never agree to put a 90 by 90 or whatever the size is.

The point is it's all coming out of the ground.

That's been the problem.

It's all been underground.

It will now be double the size.

It will be half the size of a basketball court all the way to the ceiling coming out of the ground.

They would never come to, you would never agree to that because the city doesn't operate that way.

There isn't a bolt from that plant that will move to the new plant.

This is a new facility.

This is a facility that needs real estate that can accommodate it.

It's absurd to think that the real estate where the current pumping station exists can function for

an automated sewage plant.

And you know, I think option B was quickly taken off the table because despite the money that RWSA spent, they didn't make a few phone calls to determine that there was historical Native American land in the park that they couldn't build on.

I would argue that option A should have been off the table at the same moment when they were just looking at the size of the plant.

We're not denying that we need a new facility.

We absolutely do.

But it needs to be cited in a way so that 50 years from now other people don't come before

the people who follow you to say why on earth did you put that structure at the very entrance to the most pedestrian friendly park in the city.

Thank you, Mr. Ackerman.

Peter Markish, 1207 Grove Street I came originally to remind council about the letter that I wrote on February 21st asking for clarification on the noise ordinance but I decided instead that it would be more fun to play the fiddle.

This is actually relevant.

So what I'd like to know is if I do that on the downtown mall, is it illegal?

Because right now I've been told by a police officer that it's too loud.

Secondly, if it is illegal, should it be illegal?

That's really all I need.

Mr. Brown, Mr. Jones, Members of Council, I'm Fran Lawrence.

I live at 1729 Chesapeake Street.

It's probably appropriate that I'm following a fiddler because even though I live in the ruling mills, I'm here as a cheerleader for the Rivanna River.

And actually I may start by saying I would like everybody in this room who loves the Rivanna River to raise your hand.

It's pretty much unanimous.

Although I live at the top of the hill above the Rivanna River and in the Willam Mills, I have a history and my family has a history of commitment to the river.

My wife and I were part of the original founding group of the Rivanna Trails Foundation.

She was on the Parks and Recreation Board at the creation of Riverview Park.

I'm part of the founding group of Lewis and Clark.

I was on the keel boat when it was on the river.

My three children have built boats and sunk boats and fallen out of boats in the Rivanna River.

It's an extraordinary community resource.

And we only connect with it two places that are accessible.

One is at the end of Chesapeake Street and East Market Street, and the other is along River Road.

And I was a member of the River Road study group that looked some years ago about how to create some sort of market or facilities on the river there, but there's no road that goes to the river there.

The only interconnection with the river

is the end of Chesapeake Street, the end of Market Street.

And we try to, thanks to Allison Uley for, this is way beyond my capability, but Parias is the name, the historic name of the Woolly Mills and the Seaport

and the reason it was named that was because it was thought that Charlottesville was the Athens of the south and so our interface with the river was Piraeus and one of the benefits of the removal of the Woolamills Dam is that the Rivanna has become navigable again the way it would have been in the 18th century and this is it folks, this is our only way to get to the river, this is our only access to the river, urban access to the river and it should look like

It should be the two historic houses looking out on this plain that goes to the Rivanna River.

And we, the city, have a real commitment and responsibility to do that.

So I'd love to be Jack Jewett.

I feel like I'm being Jack Jewett again, you guys.

We've got to save the river, OK?

Thank you, Mr. Morris.

That's the last person who signed up to speak and we are now going to move on to council member responses to matters by the public.

Dr. Brown?

Well, I love the phrase, Sprawl, Growth, Industrial Complex.

I did feel like I'd like to get some feedback from staff on the side street issues and now that we've kind of come up with signage, you know, wayfinding and new signage to make sure we haven't neglected the important merchants on the side streets.

Just a couple of comments.

I think

Only in Charlottesville can you come to a city council meeting and hear about the art of music and the science of very smelly smells all at the same time.

Colette Hall, my condolences as you continue this journey with your mother and you have consistently indicated the importance of the budget.

I'll never forget the first year I was on council you said the most important thing that you do will pass the budget and you have emphasized the importance of maintaining a triple A bonding and a triple A rating so I appreciate that.

I don't think this is really building old Lynchburg Road safety sidewalk and drainage project.

This is giving birth.

because you have really been a part of the labor and the pains that have brought this project to where it is right now.

Allison Ewing, you get the prize for the most thoughtful, the most

We'll put together a presentation.

I know you put a lot of time in that.

And the time you put into that is greatly appreciated.

We're going to have a longer discussion about that later.

But I don't want you to think that your time does not go unnoticed.

And I think some of your neighbors are really jealous because you can do that stuff.

They're still trying to figure it out.

and to the comment about sudden development and the concern.

I'm going to pull that from the concern agenda so we can just have a discussion about that.

To the Salidas siblings, it is my hope that there will be a chance to have a conversation about opportunistic dredging.

I also wanted to express my sympathy with Miss Hall, having recently been through a similar thing.

I know it's hard, but I appreciate your coming, and I just wanted to make sure that everybody knows that everyone can keep as close an eye on the budget proceedings as Miss Hall does.

This Thursday and next Wednesday at 5 p.m. in the basement conference room, if you really want to get into the high leads with us,

It's not public comment time but we'll be looking through parts of the budget and getting a work session on the council and the following Wednesday the 23rd at City Space there's going to be a community budget forum where we really encourage people to come and talk about what's in the budget, what you want in the budget, what kind of your philosophical views and very specific views might be

This year, I was impressed in our budget survey that most people actually feel that we're spending about the right amount, taxing the right amount, and the people who don't, who think we're either spending or taxing too much or too little, are equal.

So, in a way, we've kind of reached an equilibrium, but we still need a lot of public input, so I encourage you all to come.

Let's see.

I was really, really kind of touched by Mr. Lawrence's plea for the river.

You made me see it in a way that I haven't seen it and I walk often from my house to that park.

So I'm very familiar with that riverfront area and I know that we are looking at ways of trying to make the river

kind of an integral part of our community and not just of your community.

We're jealous of you because you all have it.

But I think that that's something that is really very true that we do need to kind of think about that as a resource.

And I think I'll stop there.

Well, actually, one other thing I'll say is that Mr. Cook, with the property at Burnett Commons and the lack of

Welcome back, Ms. Hall.

I wanted one minor correction.

You said there wasn't public comment at the meeting on Thursday.

There actually will be public comment and that was because Ms. Hall pressed us to include public comment in our budget work session.

Let's see here.

We are going to be discussing Old Lynchburg Road and the pump station later on, so I'll just echo the comments that have already been made.

and appreciate all who spoke on those two issues.

I, too, would like to see the staff look into the issue of the side streets, the signage for the businesses along the side streets and how we might improve that.

Thank you, Ms. Solitis, as always.

Always very articulate, on point, and I fully agree that dredging must be included in the cost sharing.

I want to apologize to Mr. Markish for not following up before tonight about the email that he sent recently because I think he made an excellent point which is we do have a noise ordinance relating to sound on the downtown mall and I don't think a lot of us necessarily realize that

There are two criteria used to regulate sound.

One has to do with the decibel limit and then apparently there's another criterion relating to if you can hear it within 100 feet, 125 feet that is considered in violation of the noise ordinance.

I think we need to revisit that because clearly what you heard tonight in my mind should be entirely legal on the downtown mall.

and it's concerning to me that Mr. Markish has been told that he cannot play his violin on the downtown mall.

And so I'd like to have staff look into that and get back to us with some feedback.

Okay, we're now going to move on to our regular agenda.

Starting with our consent agenda tonight, we have item A, which is the minutes of February 22nd.

Item B is an appropriation of $3,177, 2010 State Homeland Security Program Grant, 3, second of two readings.

Item C is an appropriation of $18,362, 2011 Juvenile Accountability Block Grant, second of two readings.

Item D is an appropriation of $2,500, Charlottesville Newsplex Scholarship Program, second of two readings.

Item E is an appropriation of $382,090, Highway Safety Improvement Program, second of two readings.

Item F, an appropriation of $102,576, A in Localities Fire Dispersment Fund, second of two readings.

Item G, an appropriation of $122,398, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Sustainable Communities Grant Fund, second of two readings.

Item H is an appropriation of $250,000, Charlottesville City Schools, appropriation of capital improvement program, large cap supplemental contribution, first of two readings.

Item I, an appropriation of $980.45, state assistance for Spain, new to program at SPCA, first of one reading.

Item J, an appropriation of $44,336, domestic violence services coordinator grant, first of two readings.

Item K, resolution, new sidewalk prioritization process, first of one reading.

Item L, Resolution, Entrance Corridor Design Guidelines, first of one reading.

Item M, Resolution amending the SUP for 207 14th Street NW, first of one reading.

Item N, Resolution, License Agreement, Quest Communications, first of one reading.

Item O, Resolution, CRHA City Council MOU, first of one reading.

Item P, an Ordinance Changes to Cafe Ordinance, second of two readings.

Item Q, an Ordinance regarding Fiber Light Agreements, second of two readings.

Item R, an Ordinance, Lonewood Park PUD, Exchange of Land, Second of Two Readings, last but not least, Item S, an Ordinance, Sale of Land to Southern Development, Second of Two Readings, and Ms. Edwards, I believe.

May Norris for Item 0, Resolution, CRHA City Council, MAU, want to make a comment.

for Item S, Ordinance Sale of Land to Southern Development.

Okay.

I wanted to comment that I thought that was a very positive and productive meeting that we had.

And I just wanted to publicly acknowledge that.

And there were a couple of things that came out of that meeting that I wanted to mention.

Well, one thing that came out of the meeting I wanted to mention was that we talked about having an apology for the urban renewal.

in the same way we had an apology for our schools a few years ago.

Yes ma'am, since your last meeting, as the gentleman who spoke earlier said, I went and met with the Bernack Commons Neighborhood Association and we talked about it

Mr. Armstrong from Southern Development was also there and talked about the parcel and we had a good meeting.

I also notified the treasurer that you would be meeting on it tonight so that they would be aware and they could get that word out.

Again, we did have, I felt, a very productive discussion.

They raised some concerns about the sewer line work that had been done there recently and the drainage implications and we've had our engineers look at it and as soon as the weather is warm enough to get some grassing back in and that sort of thing, we'll be doing some work to try to stabilize it some more and all.

There was some concern about the sale of the parcel.

I think that the majority of the neighborhood I felt was comfortable if it was going to be developed, that southern development was the appropriate

group to build on it because they would do something compatible with the rest of the houses in Burnett Commons and that's the commitment they have made that would be something that would be compatible, would be one house.

And I would say that I do not feel like that this lot would be part of a larger development.

It doesn't fit this part of it with anything else.

Yes ma'am, absolutely.

And perhaps an opportunity to have a follow-up to make sure that that's happening.

Sure.

While you're there, I don't want to pull it from the agenda, but I have a question about the sidewalk plan.

There was a question that I had asked at a Planning Commission meeting, and I'm not sure if we have a solid answer.

It's not in this plan that I could find.

Is there a motion to...

I'll move the concern agenda.

Any further discussion?

Hearing none, please indicate your vote.

and carries unanimously.

Thank you very much.

We start our regular business tonight with a report from our friends with the Charlottesville City Schools on the school board's proposed fiscal year 2012 budget and here to lead the presentation.

Good evening Mayor, Council, people, and Mr. Jones and Mr. Brown.

On behalf of the Charlottesville City School Board, I believe there are two more members here.

Ms. Brown and Mr. Mickey are back there, as well as a whole host of our administrators that I'm sure Dr. Atkins will introduce because I don't want to miss anyone.

I want to thank you for the opportunity for allowing us to present our budget for 2011-2012 as state funds and federal funds shrink.

A lot has fallen to you all, local funders.

And unlike some of my colleagues in surrounding counties and surrounding cities, you have always maintained an open dialogue with the school board.

And for that, I thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Duggar.

Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, City Council Persons and Mr. City Manager.

Thank you so much.

I do have a presentation for you tonight.

I'd like to echo Ms. Duggar and thank you for all of your support and all of the avenues that you've taken to support the Charlottesville City School Division throughout the years that I've been superintendent and certainly long before I came on board.

Thank you to my school board members, Mr. Ned Mickey, Ms. Colette Blount,

And I think those are the two in addition to Ms. Duggar for being here tonight.

And also thank you to my senior leadership staff, each of you.

Thank you for being here tonight very much.

As you can see, we have many wonderful programs that are going on in Charlottesville.

You have funded us and you have supported us in a tremendous way over the years.

So what I'd like to do is take just a few moments to tell you about some of the successes that we've had in Charlottesville because of the support that you have given us.

Many years ago, several years ago, we started an elementary school Spanish program.

We have continued that program and we are one of the few school divisions in the region that offers an elementary school Spanish program in which we have face-to-face contact with our students.

We also have a virtual high school offering in the makings now.

It's a collaboration between Charlottesville City School Division and Albemarle County School Division and we believe that that will help to bridge the transition between what we offer in the traditional classroom and what many of our students and families look for now is virtual learning.

So we're excited about that initiative.

With virtual learning, we know that it's important that we have in the hands of our students laptop computers or some tool by which they can access the internet.

Many of our textbooks now are becoming digital content, so it's important that we look ahead to the future and start planning for access for our students with a one-to-one computer initiative in grades 6 through 12.

We also have and are very pleased with an AVID program at our high school and at Buford Middle School.

The AVID program is advancement via individualized determination.

It's where our students look forward to, talk about, and plan beyond high school, plan for post-secondary education.

We're seeing an enormous amount of success in that particular program.

We also, through funding, have been able to put in something called PowerSchool.

PowerSchool is a part of our student information system, and it opens access to our parents to their individual student data, where they can look at test scores, grades, attendance, any time of the day, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

So it's an instant communication tool between the classroom and our teachers.

We also have parent university offerings in which we offer classes for our community, our parents, and for any member of our community.

Our professional development has increased tremendously, is currently aligned with the teaching learning and the performance of our students.

Voice over IP, we were able to install upgrading our telephone system so that it is now wireless and it also offers telephone access from the classroom for our teachers.

We have continued probably more than a six year trend.

Our SAT scores continue to be over 100 points above the national average and over 150 points above the state average.

We have increased the number of minority students taking the SAT test.

42% more of our minority students now actually sit for the SAT test.

That certainly is in light of now we offer the PSAT test starting in 9th grade to all of our students, 9th, 10th,

and 11th grade in preparation for the SAT.

So we expect that that 42% will increase significantly in the future.

Since 2007-2008, we have seen an increase of our dual enrollment classes.

We've gone from three classes now to seven.

We've increased the participation in those classes from 96 students to 133 students now in dual enrollment.

We've also had a 30% increase in our AP classes.

We've had our African American students with who actually have a 3.0 grade point average or above to increase by 46%.

Huge achievement for us, but certainly not enough.

We'll continue to increase that percentage.

We've decreased the achievement gap in math, science and social studies.

We have also decreased our teacher turnover.

I'll never forget during my either first or second year headlines in the paper.

I'd like now this to be the headlines in the paper.

We've decreased our teacher turnover by over 54% and that's just at the high school.

If we look across our entire school division, it has been decreased by more than 54%.

We've cut the retention rate at the 9th grade level in half.

We've also decreased retention rate at the 10th grade level by more than 55%.

All of that's leading to

higher percentages in on-time graduation.

We've moved from 74% in 2008 to 80% with this most recent graduating class and look forward to it being even higher with the 2011 class.

We've also significantly decreased our dropout rate in 08.

We were 17.8%, close to 18%.

Most recent calculations, we have decreased to 6.8%, and we intend for that number to decrease to zero.

Those are some of the successes.

As you can see, we have many awards, and these are the most recent awards.

I probably could take up two or three hours telling you about the awards that we have received.

We have four schools that have the Virginia Index of Performance Award that's given by the Governor's Office, Burnley Moran, Venable, Jackson Viya, and Greenbrier.

We have in our school system the Virginia Council Social Studies of the Year teacher.

We also have a special education teacher who was awarded by Virginia Tech the Excellence in Education Award and has also been published in an international textbook for her performance.

We also have a home at CHS, the Jefferson District and Region 2 Scholastic Bowl titles.

And you've heard a lot about the Bacon Group.

Amongst their many accomplishments, most recently, they were selected as a finalist in the Spirit of Innovation Awards and have been invited to perform in their competition.

It's hosted by NASA and Conrad Foundation.

Most recently in the last few weeks we found out that we have the Emily Couric Leadership Scholarship winner at the high school which will be announced in about two weeks.

We have two students at our high school who are finalists for UVA's Jefferson Scholar.

We have the National Achievement Scholarship Finalists coming out of the high school and we also have five National Merit Scholarship Finalists.

And these are events that have occurred in the last few weeks.

So thank you for your support.

It has meant a lot.

In developing this year's budget, there were three priorities that we considered.

We want to continue with the high quality programs that we have in our school system and we offer our students.

We want to continue to build on programs that help prepare our students for global competitiveness and strengthen our ability to attract and retain high quality staff, reducing our turnover rate hopefully down to zero.

With that in mind, we have looked at class sizes and we proposed to our board and we have proposed and will be proposing to you also to maintain our small class sizes.

As you can see, here are the class sizes that we maintain at our elementary schools and these are average class sizes.

We also would recommend to continue with some support positions that are located in our schools.

Some of these support positions during the 10-11 budget were funded with stimulus or grant funding.

What we would propose to do is use some of the jobs funding to continue many of these programs.

An ESL program at our elementary school,

We would increase an algebra readiness position 0.34 bringing it up to one position.

Talent development positions are located at our kindergarten and first grade levels and they are intended to help develop the cognitive and creative abilities of our students so that as they progress through the elementary schools they will have the cognitive skills that are, or demonstrate the cognitive skills that are

are necessary in order to get into our Quest program.

So we'd like to continue the 2.6 positions that we have at the elementary school level.

The City Council has funded us to allow us to add to our programs a three-year-old program and with that three-year-old program last year we put in a vocal music position.

and we'd like to continue that.

A point five reading position specialist at Burnley Moran, science position at Henry Avenue Learning Center, another math position at Venable Elementary School, a school psychologist position we would like to continue.

Family support worker position which is located at Johnson Elementary School and we've been very fortunate that the Department of Social Services has helped to support that program.

We pay 50% and that department pays 50%.

Our work source enterprises program, we'd like to continue that.

We used to pay for some of that out of CSA funding but we have recently been informed that we can no longer do that so we have to incur that cost.

Some positions and materials that we'd like to continue would be continue with the elementary school program position.

Increase that by one FTE.

by one position.

We'd like to also increase an ESL position by 40.

These two next positions, elementary literacy lead teacher and the secondary literacy lead teacher, is in response to what we recognize as a need to separate how we approach reading at the elementary school level and at the secondary level.

We're proposing that we take out

a K-12 literacy specialist and instead of that position have two lead teacher positions that will serve the entire school division, one at the elementary school level and the other at the secondary level.

keep three open positions.

This year we have seen our student enrollment stabilize after a downward trend over the past six or seven years.

We've seen it stabilize this year and actually go up slightly.

We anticipate that the same thing may happen for the 11 school year and we would like to be prepared with three open positions.

My Chinese 360 is a program at the high school that we teach Chinese.

That's a very popular program.

We'd like to expand that program.

Playaway Auto Books, Type to Learn.

We certainly have a need to teach our students at the elementary school level keyboarding skills, so Type to Learn would do that.

We'd like to expand the AVID program that we highlighted as one of our successes.

Expand that to upper elementary school to include 5th and 6th grade and increase our literacy resources.

As we mentioned, we have started to develop plans and we're issuing RFPs for a laptop initiative in grades 6 through 12.

We'd like to also increase the support to our nutrition program.

We believe that it's important that we be a model for our students with nutrition and increase support to our adult education program.

In order to continue to strengthen our ability to attract and retain high quality staff, we know that benefits are important and we want to stay competitive in the region and be attractive to any potential employee that looks at us from outside of the region.

So we want to maintain healthy premiums or coverage for our health insurance,

Maintain the current percentage that we offer our employees.

It's our contribution.

Correct the step and years of experience in our employee compensation.

One of the things that creates a problem for our school division is last year we froze employees on our pay tables.

Well, if an employee had eight years of experience, when they moved into their ninth year, they were frozen on step eight.

When we attract employees or potential employees from other locations and they come into our school system, we are obligated to use the same method for placing them on the pay scale.

So if they have 10 years of experience, we can only award them nine years of experience when they come into our system.

So it's important that we correct that scale.

In this particular budget, we'd like to do that.

Now for the more mundane.

The correction in step and position, one of the challenges that we had was in order to correct that, it actually would have been about 60% more expensive than this had we left things alone.

So we went through a process of having to look at all of the scales and the distance between steps and do a little bit of compression on the scales in order to get it done in a way that wasn't too expensive.

In the end, the overall average increase was 2.4%.

It varied by step and position, and for those staff that were already at top of scale, it was about half of that increase.

In other words, a typical scale will go from zero years of experience to 30.

Once you hit step 30, you're done in terms of increases.

That happens for a number of years.

You get into some difficulties in retaining some of these folks.

So we wanted to make sure everybody got a little something, and it was about half of the average for those folks.

This budget, the numbers that you see here are based on the Governor's proposed budget.

Since then there's been a House version and a Senate version and the General Assembly has come together with a compromised set of amendments.

Ultimately the budget won't be finalized until the Governor approves.

So we've left in these numbers the

The proposal that was made by the governor, even though we know there's going to be some changes because we suspect that the General Assembly actions will ultimately be approved by the governor.

In any case, the governor's budget had a VRS rate increase of almost 34%.

We now think that's probably going to be more like a 25% increase.

State budget reductions.

Virginia Retirement System is a retirement system that applies to most states or cities and local governments like school systems.

Other state budget reductions, the LCI is the local composite index.

It's an index that is a relative wealth indicator.

It indicates how Charlottesville is relatively more or less wealthy than other communities and the state uses it in the funding formula to determine how much funding the state ultimately gives us.

As the local composite index goes up, we get less state funding because we appear relatively more wealthy.

In this current biennium, when the LCI changed for all school divisions, many school divisions ended up getting less state funds.

So the governor put in the budget what was referred to as a hold harmless payment so that school divisions wouldn't take the full brunt of that loss.

The governor then, in the second year of the biennium, said, no, we're not going to make that payment in the second year.

We're just going to eliminate it altogether, which cost the school division $1.25 million.

Overall, state funds are down almost 24% or 4 million from what was budgeted in fiscal 09.

And in this proposal is an increase in city funding of just over 1.7 million.

Once again, the proposal does not pass any cost benefit increases onto employees.

It is a balanced budget.

It's a mix of one-time revenues, permanent and short-term reductions.

The school system, much like I'm sure the city will be facing the state and federal government, has had to get through these economic times by, in some cases,

putting into the budget either cuts or uses of revenues that are only one-time in nature.

So as we go forward, we're going to have to put in place of those items long-term sustainable funds.

In this case, an example of a one-time and short-term, the most significant items, $810,000 of stimulus, which is one-time funds.

We know this is going to go away next year.

And $285,000 of fund balance is being used to help balance this budget.

As a summary, the school systems, much like the city, is really broken into two funds.

The largest is the general fund.

It funds the basic operations of the school division.

Special revenue funds is largely grants or other revenues that are specific as to use.

Again, the general fund, by far the largest, just under $54 million, an increase of $1,166,000 or just over 2%.

On the special revenue funds, just under $14 million, a decrease of $2.161 million, almost a 14% decline from the 2010-11.

And that decline is largely due to the loss of stimulus funds that have now expired going into 2012.

so that overall the budget proposal, $68,500,567, a decrease of just under a million dollars or 1.43%.

Revenue and expense, this is total revenues of all funds.

What's changed here on the revenue side most significantly I suppose would be the definite shift down in state funding for K-12 education and a like increase on the city funding.

On the expenditure side, that's largely stayed the same.

If anything, there's a bit of a larger shift toward the employee benefits.

Health insurance and the Virginia retirement system rates have definitely significantly impacted us.

We do report long state functional categories.

You see them listed on the right.

This pie chart has, again, not any significant trending differences, slightly higher percentages for instruction in technology.

The remaining numbers are about the same as they have been over the last several years, slightly smaller.

This chart here, the green bar shows city funding since 89 all the way through 2012.

The starred line in the center is the local composite index.

Again, this is the item that's used to determine state and local funding.

Basically, it determines how much state revenue we get.

the bottom line there shows the state funds and I like this chart only because it points out rather well how city funding tends to follow the composite index as opposed to state funding which moves in opposite directions.

Overall there's been a definite shift from what the state was doing to support K-12 education at 31% back in 89 down to 23% going into 12.

So there's definitely been a shift and you can see most dramatically really from about 07

It's been a very definite shift from the commitments that were being made by the General Assembly to fund K-12 education.

Just a little expanded slide on the one-time and short-term funds, the $810,000 of stimulus.

We have $380,000 of that in the General Fund, meaning it's in there supporting our general operations.

$430,000 of that is in the Special Revenue Fund and it's funding positions that we had already placed there going into the current year.

and of course the $285,000 of fund balance.

So that's just something we have to keep an eye on.

I think these are the kinds of times where you should do this kind of thing but obviously you can't sustain the budget forever on it so you want to make sure you keep an eye on what you're doing when you place one time funds into your longer term operations.

Okay, the General Assembly amendments.

Again, all of what we've got from the proposal here was based on the Governor's budget.

These are the General Assembly amendments.

Overall, there in the center, total additional resources of just over 765,000 sounds great.

The problem is, it's all made up of one-time, again, one-time funding or very short-term funding and doesn't really help K-12 education at all.

So, in spite of what you might hear coming out of the General Assembly, this isn't really the kind of resources that we as a community would like to see.

If we're going to be able to plan our long term implementation of programs, you've got to match that with long term funding.

Hold Harmless payment, there's that local composite index, Hold Harmless, instead of going with the governor's plan to eliminate it, they went with the Senate version which said we're going to give school divisions some of that money.

In Charlottesville's case, it's $415,000, but again, specifically one time in nature, it goes away in 13.

Same is true for a line item they added called support for school operating costs, a very generalized category that said we could use this money for anything that's educationally appropriate, but again, in the legislation, it says this is one time only, it goes away in 13.

a little small decrease in other state funds and then the reduced Virginia retirement system rate the retirement system is facing a deficit of about 18 billion dollars that's happened over the last decade or more while what we wish the General Assembly had done is fully fund the recommended rates for VRS for all those years because we wouldn't have that situation now so I think the deal there is that we are supportive of rate increases in the retirement system because we want to see those liabilities fully funded

So when they make this kind of reduction, yeah it provides additional resources but we know in 13 this is going to go right back up and it's probably going to go even higher than the original recommended amounts.

So again, that's what makes up the 765.

Given that those are short term or one time, the school board's recommending that the use of those funds goes in a similar nature.

There's been a change in the state law that requires that school systems pick up the costs associated with AP testing.

That's just happened in the last couple of weeks.

So we are proposing to put some money aside as an estimate of the cost that the city schools would incur under that.

This buys us one year while we make adjustments in the budget going forward.

And we have custodial equipment.

Custodial equipment can last quite a bit of time.

We generally will not budget on a year to year basis to replace, but we have opportunities with one time money to take care of some of that equipment that we know needs to be replaced.

It's an opportunity to do so.

and then we would propose to take the rest of that amount and turn it back over to the city to support the capital improvement plan.

There's plenty of projects in that plan.

It's almost endless.

So it's a good use of one-time funds.

Well thank you very much for your presentation.

I must say that it is nice, you started off by saying that the city has always supported education and I think that the quality of the

The education that you all are providing is reflective of that support and I appreciate it.

I think I often, when I'm out and about and talking about the gaps that we have in our educational system and in our community, kids who don't do as well as other kids, and I think that you all are doing your part in trying to close that gap and I hope that we as a city can do our part to make sure we support you in other areas.

So thank you.

I just want to echo that comment.

And since I've been on council, there's just been consistent progress every year that I've been on council.

I'll agree with that.

You've got some great stats at the beginning of that.

But I would like to ask a couple of questions while we're here.

One of the numbers that comes out in here is the pay increase that you're recommending for your staff.

It's 2.4% on average.

Typically at our Region 5 superintendents meeting, which is made up of all of the superintendents in this geographical area, about 20 different superintendents, about 50% of them will be making a recommendation for salary increases.

The highest that I've heard is a 3 percentage point increase.

and the lowest that I've heard is about a 1% increase.

There are some who will not be recommending any increase at all.

For your budget.

For overall.

We did.

We had, back in the fall, many school divisions gave their employees a bonus.

All of the school divisions received job funding and many of the surrounding school divisions made the decision to give to their employees some kind of bonus during December or January.

We made the decision not to do that.

And the reason that we did not do that is because, one, we felt fairly certain that there would be a gap or hole in state funding that we would need to fill.

And perhaps we could use the jobs funding, although temporary or one-time funding, we could use that to preserve some positions for the FY12 year.

So we held off on doing that.

So your overall budget this year is actually less than your...

or the proposed budget for next year is less than your budget for this year, is that correct?

Correct.

And I understand that you're proposing, which didn't really come out in the presentation today, you talked about a lot of good things that you're going to be maintaining or building on, but you're also proposing some cuts, some positions, I believe.

As you recall, last year one of the recommendations that we made was to cut, we cut some central office positions last year.

This year we will be cutting one position from the central office.

We will also be implementing the second half of some cuts that we started in the FY12 budget.

and that was decreasing the number of instructional assistants that we have at the second grade level and instructional media positions.

We are also cutting, based on enrollment or projected enrollment, some of our teacher positions at the elementary school level.

In some places we will be increasing those allocations, in other places we will be decreasing those.

So that's where most of our cuts are coming in.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to do that.

Most recently our school board voted that Beaufort would be the location of the middle school.

After that vote was taken, we met with Mike Mollica and other members of his team to talk about

Now starting with the cost estimation, we're looking at the renovation of Buford, the preschool center at Walker Elementary School and housing the central office adult education at Walker and Henry Avenue

being relocated to the current location of the central office one and the renovation at the high school to actually expand our walk program.

So we're in the process of now getting the cost estimations and we anticipate that we should have that to council by September.

The cost estimations, however,

And you're still looking at implementation of this change starting in 2013?

We actually extended that time.

We would be 2014.

Other questions or comments from Councillors?

Well thank you again so much and this is the start of the process I know and I look forward to working with you in the weeks and months ahead.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, members of council, this is also a PowerPoint presentation so you can make your way to your preferred seat.

I do have to say I was really excited tonight when I came into the council chambers and I realized we had set a record for the number of people who were attending to hear the city manager's proposed budget.

So I'm very excited about that.

It is my pleasure to present to you my first proposed budget as city manager for fiscal year 2011-2012.

There are a whole host of folks who are very involved with developing this budget every year.

Our budget team is comprised of our director of budget and performance management, Leslie Beauregard, COO, CFO Aubrey Watts, finance director Bernard Ray, director of communications Rick Berrick and budget analyst Ryan Davidson.

In addition, our department directors and their staff spent a lot of time working on their budgets, especially in the fall.

Every department's budget and the capital improvement budget, which is also overseeing the process for developing our CIP, is overseen by a committee that's also helped develop that, as you see their names up on the screen.

All of our departments submitted their budgets and we asked a lot of questions and challenged them to stay within their means for the next fiscal year.

Our goals for this budget to continue to provide quality services, maintain our tax rates and our fees at current levels.

We have a strong emphasis on infrastructure and of course we want to support our schools.

By the way, all of our budget information can be found at www.Charlottesville.org slash budget.

So just in case you forget that, we have the URL on every single one of our slides.

Let me set the scene by taking you back a year ago at this time.

The FY11 budget was developed in a way to guard against a deep decline in both local revenue and in state and federal funding.

The recession had wreaked havoc on state and local governments around the country, and we were anticipating that the tsunami of economic misfortune that had forced many localities to deeply cut their services or raise taxes, we were afraid that that was finally reaching our shores.

As council put the finishing touches on the budget, we were beginning to talk about what we needed to do to prepare for the worst.

We discussed beginning the budget season much earlier than normal, setting up meetings with staff to discuss how best to go about cuts, and developing the most prudent ways to bring the public into the discussion over a budget that would look like nothing we had seen in nearly two decades.

The possibility of an economic crisis was indeed real.

But fortunately, we did not experience those severe cuts in spending or unmanageable drop in revenues.

In other words, we were spared at least temporarily from having to make the types of cuts others have had to make around the country.

So with that in mind, we went about building this budget to be able to continue to provide high quality services to our residents, our businesses, and the visitors who travel to Charlottesville.

Whether it's Parks and Recreation, Public Works, Public Safety, or Social Services, it is our goal to deliver top-notch services that compete with any locality.

Here in Charlottesville, we are in the business of improving upon our quality of life.

This budget, I believe, does exactly that.

We continue to protect the services that our residents have come to expect and we're doing it in a fiscally responsible manner.

So what services do our residents want and how do they feel about the current services?

Our latest budget survey seems to indicate that folks feel they are getting their money's worth out of the services that they pay for, and that is up from 42% in 2008.

They also have a strong desire to keep their taxes and the services at generally the same level, and this budget tries to do that.

and of the services they feel most strongly about, public safety, public works, schools, capital improvement projects, they were all at the top of their list.

So how does this budget impact our residents?

We are not proposing an increase in our tax rates or in our fees.

In fact, as a result of the new assessment numbers, 71% of our residents will not see any increase in their taxes or will actually see a decrease.

In addition, we are not proposing to reduce any of our services.

The proposed budget is balanced within the revenues that we expect to receive next year.

Our revenue estimates are conservative and we believe we're presenting a budget that lays a solid foundation for future budgets while strategically investing in our community.

Our approach also provides some protection from an economy that seems to be slowly recovering but is certainly not out of the woods just yet.

This budget meets our community's needs while reflecting the City Council's vision.

On to the numbers portion of this presentation.

Our proposed budget for 2011-2012 is $142,938,401, a 1.55 percent increase over last year.

This slide is intended to give you a feel for the dramatic change in the economic conditions of our city.

We anticipate this new normal will guide us over the next several years as the economy slowly inches forward.

As you can tell by this graph, the times, they are changing and we have to be flexible enough to change with them.

This graph gives you a good sense of where our general fund revenue is derived from.

Of course, local taxes make up the largest source for the general fund with the real estate property taxes accounting for a significant chunk of that.

By the way, our overall revenue for last fiscal year was actually down $1.2 million.

Fortunately, that deficit was closed because our departments delivered a sizable amount of money back at the end of fiscal year 2010.

We are anticipating a slight increase in the real estate property taxes for fiscal year 2012.

We believe this will be fueled by new construction.

Another important indicator is the sales and use tax.

We believe 2012 will provide the first increase in this revenue stream since 2007.

The meals tax has gained steam over the last couple of years and seems to be poised for a 3% increase in 12.

So it looks like folks are becoming more comfortable with dining out again.

Plus, it seems as though we are still experiencing a significant level of travelers who are coming to Charlottesville.

And that's evidenced by the strong showing of our transient room or lodging tax returns.

We anticipate a significant jump there as well.

As you can see, the city, like all localities around the Commonwealth, has had to learn to live with less from Richmond.

We've witnessed a significant loss over the last few years, and we are preparing for another drop in support from the state.

We are still working through those specifics right now, but it does seem as though the cuts will not be nearly as bad as we had anticipated.

Earlier we showed you where our revenues are derived from, and now we're going to explain where they are spent.

The schools are the largest slice of our expenditure pie, clocking in at 32%.

This staff, the City Council, has traditionally strongly supported our schools in both operations and capital needs, and I believe our budget continues to do just that.

Public safety and justice, and that's police, fire, sheriff's office, courts, etc., make up nearly 26% of the operating budget, followed by healthy families and community at nearly 19%, and infrastructure and transportation at almost 10%.

So let's focus on education for a moment.

As Superintendent Atkins mentioned in her presentation, the schools are witnessing significant improvements over the last few years.

They have also been cut by the state on a number of occasions in the last couple of years.

And our proposed increase of $1.7 million in new money is meant to help Dr. Atkins and her staff continue the momentum of the last few years by stepping in where the state has walked away from their commitments.

In addition to the $1.7 million, we are proposing $2.5 million towards capital improvement projects in the division.

On a much smaller scale, we've made room in our budget for the expansion of some current programs, including the Summer Youth Internship Program.

Council asked us to consider allowing more youth to participate in this successful program.

We are proposing additional funding to accommodate another 40 students in the program this summer.

The Community Dialogue and Race Initiative has become the city's largest civic engagement project in over a decade.

We estimate that over a thousand people have contributed countless hours to this project in hopes of improving race relations in our community.

We have a series of action teams that are working to develop the ideas that were generated from the study circles and

in 2010.

This will be the first raise for our employees since 2009.

We believe this will keep us in a good position to retain our staff and to remain competitive in attracting quality employees.

We are proposing to reduce our economic downturn fund from $2.8 million to a little over $700,000.

This fund was developed several years ago to help blunt the impact of the recession.

And now we're hopeful that the worst of the recession is behind us and that $700,000 will be more than enough to cover any loss in revenue for the rest of this year.

We also have built a downturn reserve that we could tap into if necessary if the economy falters in the next 6 to 18 months.

Our capital improvement budget for next year includes two big ticket items, the Fontaine Avenue Fire Station and the Old Lynchburg Road Project.

Both of these projects promise to improve safety in our city.

We're also continuing our commitment to building new sidewalks with an additional $300,000 for next year.

The housing fund is proposed for $1 million for next year at this point.

Council has decided not to use HOME or CDBG funding to get us to our goal of $1.4 million for next year, so we are in the process of identifying another source for that extra $400,000.

We will probably propose using it, using one-time funding for next fiscal year and then building the additional funding into the CIP discussion for future years.

And we will touch on that issue at our CIP work session

First and foremost are our looming capital needs.

With the reconfiguration project in the school division, possible expansion of our courts, plus continued focus on improving our aging stormwater infrastructure, we are facing some very difficult choices in the future.

And we will know more about the school reconfiguration options, as Dr. Atkins mentioned, in the fall of this year.

And that, I believe, will set the stage for discussions about our CIP in future years.

We're also getting used to a new normal in regards to the growth of our budgets.

The days of 8 to 10 percent annual growth have come to an end.

So we need to be more creative with what we have.

We also must take into consideration the discussions of spending cuts that are occurring both in Washington and in Richmond.

Those cuts will have an impact on our future budgets and the budgets of our school division and outside agencies.

It is important to maintain our AAA bond rating.

That is a critical objective of the city government.

These are some of the principles up on the screen that have helped us maintain that rating over the years.

Consistently providing solid financial performance and management.

Conservative budgeting that has provided a cushion against the recession and a low debt burden that is manageable.

All critical points that we consider as we develop the budget and will continue to consider as we look into the future.

And this is why it is so very important to be strategic in our investments.

As you can see, the assessment trends have plummeted over the last few years.

As far as assessments, what has kept us above water over the last couple of years has been new construction.

And that may be the case for the next few years as well as residential properties and commercial properties inch long.

We also think it's important to see how we rank in terms of our real estate property tax rate.

We currently stand at 95 cents per $100 of assessed value.

That keeps us below the statewide average for cities.

And we've been able to maintain this rate while continuing to provide quality services and investments.

And that will continue to be our goal as our country and our region continue to face uncertain economic and uncertain economic future.

So now let's take a look at the calendar for the rest of the budget season.

We have our first work session this Thursday night from five to seven in the basement conference room at City Hall.

We'll touch on revenue projections, expenditures, and council priorities.

We've built in time at each work session for public comment.

The last 15 minutes of each public work session is open for public comment.

And that work session will be followed by our CIP work session on March 16th in the basement conference room, same time, 5 to 7.

Our first public hearing will be held two weeks from tonight in the city council chambers.

and once again we'll hold a budget forum for our residents.

It is scheduled for March 23rd at 7 p.m. in city space on the mall.

Our third work session will be held on March 31st followed by the second public hearing on April 4th.

We have tentatively scheduled a fourth work session for April 7th and we hope to formally adopt the budget on April 12th.

So there are plenty of opportunities for the public to get involved.

In addition to those public hearings, we encourage folks to send us emails or give us calls to voice their opinion about the budget for next year.

Well done.

Any other comments?

I agree, do.

Well, we will have plenty of opportunity over the next month to discuss various aspects of this budget, but I want to commend you and your staff for getting us off to a good start.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you very much Mr. Mayor and members of council and thank you for the opportunity to be able to come and talk to you today.

In essence, I'll start by framing the issue and then we'll probably take a step back and bring you up to speed on some of the information related.

As you've heard, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority has been

Engaging in an attempt to have a dialogue, I think it's been a productive dialogue with the community, in particular citizens in the Willam Mills area.

The need is for additional pumping capacity.

The method in which it's done is flexible at this point in time.

It's open.

We're looking at various alternatives.

We had meetings in December and February.

at the Willam Mills Chapel.

Four concepts were presented.

At this point in time, we're attempting to take the preliminary information we've gathered on four concepts and begin to narrow those concepts and then go get more detailed information toward eventually making a decision.

But at this point, no decision's been made.

There are no leanings in one way or another.

At the February board meeting we sought from the Rivanna board of directors

to authorize additional engineering funds to pick two concepts and carry them into more detailed investigations.

Mr. Jones asked that vote be tabled in order to

make this presentation tonight and get your input.

At the end of my presentation, Mr. Jones may have some specific requests of the council what he's looking for in order to frame his responsibilities on the Rivanna board.

I think the dialogue so far has been generally very positive.

I think it's avoided some of the

I do want to take time before I get into the details to talk about one issue that I heard a little bit about tonight.

and that was with respect to odor.

There was a comment made that suggested that there were continuing to be broken promises.

I really don't believe that to be true.

If people feel like there's still a few occasions where they believe it's not as perfect as it can be, then if we know what the issues are, we're going to work our tails off to fix it.

But I do want to comment to the council that

Beginning in 2003, this actually occurred a little bit before I got here, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority spent $280,000 in capital to put in a carbon scrubber system at the Rivanna pump station and that operates continuing today and according to our operating reports is operating very successfully.

The compost yard was closed in 2007 and Rivanna contracted with an outside company

near Waverly, Virginia to do continued composting.

That's costing the ratepayers of the urban area $413,000 in additional money every year to conduct that.

And it was primarily done to reduce, substantially reduce, over complaints and related issues, which the Royal Mills community did have a big input in.

Last year, $1.47 million was spent at the Morris Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant on a new septage receiving station and for scrubbers for key facilities at the wastewater treatment plant.

Those scrubbers are now operational and will cost our ratepayers $44,000 a year in annual O&M.

The last item I'm going to mention is one that came out of my office just recently.

It did not come from any other source.

But we are in the process right now of doing an assessment of the Rivanna interceptor, which is the gravity sewer pipeline that leads to the existing pump station, looking for issues that might be identified that might require maintenance or rehabilitation.

One of the things I asked our staff to add to that is to check all vents.

because gravity sewer pipes need venting just like the roof vents on your house to make your plumbing system work.

But to check all those and eliminate those that are not necessary and those that remain necessary for the functional operation of the system to investigate carbon canisters that can be placed on these to make sure just in case there's any possibility that that might be another source.

I mention that only to express how deep

we deal with and take this issue very, very seriously.

And I do hope that, I know that the number of complaints have fallen dramatically since these steps have been put into practice.

However, we still, if we get a complaint, we investigate every single one and we take it with the utmost of seriousness.

So I did want to get that out of the way in the beginning.

Let's take a step back now and maybe a little bit of background and if I get too elementary just wave your hand or something and I'll pick up the pace.

There's several components to a well-functioning wastewater system.

They start with gravity sewer lines.

They're called gravity because they are on a slope so that when the water hits the pipe it naturally runs downhill without any help.

Those start in the streets for most residences of the city.

In some cases, if the street is higher than the home, the sewer line may actually be in an easement toward the rear of the property, but in many cases it's the streets.

Those are operated by the City of Charlottesville.

Those sewer lines then intersect ditches that run downhill where lines what we call outfall lines then take the sewage down toward the major streams and rivers.

At the major streams and rivers there are interceptor pipes typically operated by the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority because they also handle county wastewater as well as city wastewater and then the transmission continues from there.

to a point where there's no more gravity to give and a pump station is installed to pump and force the wastewater uphill to the wastewater treatment plant.

We operate two major pumping stations.

One, the one that's been discussed tonight, the Rivanna Pumping Station.

A second one is called the Moores Creek Pump Station.

It serves all of the southern areas of the city through the Moores Creek Interceptor along Moores Creek.

that pump station is also being upgraded.

When I came to work for Rivanna about six years ago, the board of directors was very specific that the biggest goal they wanted me to deliver on was the water supply issue, one you've heard quite a bit about.

But another thing that I had to do in my capacity was to do my own investigation about what the strengths and weaknesses were

of our systems, Rivanna's operation, but also the city and the county's operation that we depend upon and that create the issues that we also have to work with and solve.

And I will tell you without question the major issue that I found that was on the con side, on the negative side, is that this community for many, many years, for decades, has not done enough.

to maintain its wastewater collection system.

And that applied to Rivanna, to be fair.

It also applied to the city of Charlottesville.

And it applied to Albemarle County.

It applied to all of us.

And our goal in 2005 was to fix that.

Because I can't think of many things that are greener to a community than to fix our sewers so that we don't have wastewater coming out of the tops of manholes or coming out of the tops of lagoons.

And that's the goal that's led us to the point where we are now.

A consultant was retained in 2005.

They had to collect a lot of data.

A lot of flow meters were put in various pipes to determine what happens during a sunny day, what happens during a rainy day.

We found problems when it rained, as you could probably expect.

In 2007, as our consultant was ready to start,

evaluating and analyzing that data, we immediately brought the City of Charlottesville staff and the Albemarle County Service Authority staff into the dialogue so that we could have a collaborative approach as to how we solve our problems.

And overall I would say that process has worked and I'd say it's gained mutual respect.

And I would have to say today all three organizations are putting more effort

and more time and attention to wastewater repairs and rehabilitation than what I saw happening when I came to Charlottesville several years ago.

And it's a compliment to this council that the city of Charlottesville has taken major steps forward.

You've increased your budgeting and you've recognized this is a very important problem.

The comprehensive planning that I talked about led to some recommendations, but not before.

There was substantial discussions among the three agencies, Rivanna, City, and County, as to how much of the problem we were going to address by increasing transmission capacity versus how much of the problem we were going to address through rehabilitation of collector source.

It is well documented through EPA, state agencies, consulting, engineering companies, associations like the American Society of Civil Engineers and others.

It is thoroughly documented that the best approach any community can take

and the details depends on the characteristics of the individual community.

But it's a balanced approach of doing both.

Some transmission system improvements and a lot of work toward fixing older sewers or sewers that have come into disrepair need rehabilitation.

And what our dialogue here was about was trying to find and strike that balance.

Last year the city, in collaboration with the Albemarle County Service Authority at the staff level, came up with a goal that 25% of the water that gets into sewer pipes during a rain event should be removed by those agencies through aggressive inflow and infiltration management or reduction programs.

and the rest of the flow, the more difficult to identify and treat cost-effectively or rehab cost-effectively should be built into the transmission system.

And that became our marching orders at Rivanna.

Our four-party agreement says that the city and the county, if they need more capacity in the transmission system and are willing to pay for it, it is our obligation to put it in.

And that's where we basically are today.

From this point, what I'd like to pick up is a PowerPoint presentation that was provided to the Rivanna board last month, and it won't go very long, but if I can ask you to get some exercise tonight, get up and down a couple of times.

Can I have that so I can face the audience?

Before I go further, are there some questions about what I've said so far?

This again is the presentation that was presented first to our board of directors last month.

There we go.

This map to the right here is a map showing the urban wastewater collection area as a whole.

I understand from talking to Mr. Barrack before this was over that my pointer will not be seen on TV for anyone watching the city council meeting on television, but for those of you here in the audience today, it may help to point to a few things.

The Rivanna Pump Station is located here.

The Moore's Creek Wastewater Plant

just south of there.

The Moores Creek line runs along the south end of the city here.

The Rivanna interceptor runs north to a point here near the South Fork Dam and then there's flow coming from Forest Lakes down

Here's the Meadow Creek interceptor which serves a large portion of the north area of the city.

So most of the north and east areas of the city are served through Rivanna.

The southern and far western areas are served through Moores Creek.

Can you show us the Moores Creek pumping station?

Yeah, I may need somebody to help me back this thing up.

Here we go.

It was easier than I thought.

The Moore's Creek pump station sits right here.

It's just to the west of the plant, actually sits on the same property where the wastewater plant is located.

It's the first building, for those of you who have been inside our gate, it's the first building you see as you come in the gate.

This slide shows a deficit.

The Rivanna pump station currently can handle a peak flow equivalent to 25 million gallons per day.

I just took you through the process we've gone through with our comprehensive planning with the aid of the city and county goals on inflow and infiltration reduction where we need to upgrade our transmission system to handle the remainder and that number came to 53 million gallons per day.

That number is equal to

the capacity that the existing pipe coming down the Rivanna Interceptor is capable of handling now.

So we don't plan any upgrades to the pipeline any time in the near future.

But that leaves us with a deficit of 28 million gallons per day.

To put this in a little bit of context, right now, on a sunny day, the flow coming into this pump station is around 7 million gallons per day.

well within this capacity of 25 million gallons per day.

We've looked at 2060 forecasts, which is out 50 years from now, for a sunny day just based on the businesses and homes that would be in the area that would be using wastewater capacity at that time.

and that number came to around 13 million gallons per day, still on a sunny day within the capacity of what we can handle now.

So what we're really talking about here is not about future growth, it's about the rain and it's about handling wet weather in a way that's environmentally friendly.

Anytime we have an opportunity like this, it's an opportunity to go and look at the best practices for operation, what creates the most reliability, so that if we're going to make improvements, we do them right at one time and we're not coming back piecemeal manner.

And some things that we've identified, we don't have sufficient standby power at the present time, so that needs to be addressed.

Standby power can be addressed with a standby generator, for example, that comes on when the normal power goes off.

Reliable flood proofing.

We do have an underground pump station at Rivanna right now.

All the electrical gear is underground when it, go to the next slide.

The 100-year flood is a little bit of an extreme event that probably for most of us would hopefully only occur once in our lifetime.

But you can see it would come up to a level here where everything on this site would be underwater, flooded underwater.

If the doors and all the openings in this pump station are not watertight,

The switch gear gets flooded, we're out of service and out of business for weeks.

So that's a major issue for us.

Today's current standard best practices would put critical electrical equipment above the 100-year flood plain.

So that creates a need if we're going to stay at this site.

It would be a building that would be taller than the building that's there now.

But as you'll see as we go through this, there are also other options being considered right now.

which let's move to that.

We have gone through our mapping and looked for at a concept level now possible options of where this additional pumping capacity could come from.

There are a lot of constraints with waste water, topography, the lay of the land is everything.

The gravity lines are going to be in the flood plains.

areas near the river, we must, the flow that we pump must come out of those lines so we have to intercept those lines where they're located.

If you move uphill with pump stations, then it gets very, very deep.

For example, at the Rivanna pump station today, the pipe that's coming into the station is coming in at an elevation of about 290 reference to sea level.

That's about 10 feet below the bottom bedrock of the Rivanna River, which is at about 300.

If we were to, say, move the pump station to high ground up here where, say, the top of ground's about 400, we still have to dig a hole deep enough to reach 290 and then bring a pipe to that location, which means then you have a 110 foot tall pumping station, which is the height of maybe a 10, 11 story building, much of which is underground, much of which is probably blasting rock out to get to it.

So you get, when you start moving away from the river on either side,

fairly quickly it gets cost prohibitive and in many cases becomes impractical.

So there's just a narrow area in which we can look for potential sites.

We identified four.

One is for the additional pumping capacity to be at the same site where the existing pump station is, or we could just simply replace everything that's there and come up with a new pump station that would have better best practices than the existing station, or we can move it upstream

to some degree from where the existing site is, keeping in mind that there's more piping needs to move upstream because now you have to take wastewater that comes from this area and send it up here and then pump it back down.

So it starts increasing the cost as you go further upstream.

But to some degree you can do that.

We also identified a concept across the river, which we call concept D, and the concept C

is actually on the property owned by the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority on the other side of Morris Creek but requires going across, going under a railroad which would be tricky and along here in behind some houses and against the abutment of the old Woolen Mills Dam which is an historic

Resource.

So there's quite some challenges here, but this is actually the old compost yard here, so by reference, this is getting it on the Rivanna property.

Those are the four concepts.

Our consultant, Hazen and Sawyer, has come up with concept level cost estimates.

These estimates have 30% contingency in it.

For those of you who have been following some of the discussion recently about the concrete dam, when you're at a concept stage, you put more contingency into your numbers because you basically haven't gone through and analyzed all the details yet that give you a more precise cost.

But yet, these can be used for relative comparisons of the concepts.

from an estimate of $25 million dollars associated with staying at the existing location to $37 million dollars to move downstream to just below the compost yard.

This map shows the work that's been done on the four concepts in kind of a, it's all thrown together so it's a little bit hard to follow but this gives you some of the things that we have evaluated so far including a desktop analysis of wetlands

An analysis from topographic maps of critical slopes, which are identified in this yellow color here.

The green is the flood way, which is an area generally not permitted to build upon.

There are a few exceptions, but it's a rigorous process and you have to prove that you're not impacting downstream or upstream properties during a flood event.

This purple area is the flood plain.

It is possible to build in the flood plain, but you have to build high enough, at least your critical facilities, so that if they're flooded during a major flood event, it doesn't damage the facilities.

Cultural resources, there's an old cemetery.

Up here, this area where the Woolen Mills neighborhood is is considered an historic, is registered as an historic area along here near the old dam as I mentioned earlier.

So these are some of the constraints.

This is a transmission line, major transmission line owned by Dominion.

They do not allow building structures underneath their power lines, so they do allow underground pipelines, but not building structures, which proved to be a constraint, particularly in this area up here.

We tried for purposes of discussion to boil this down to a matrix.

Many of the items in this matrix are based on judgment with several criteria over here on the left and the four concepts over here on the right.

We intentionally chose verbal descriptions for a relative comparison.

as opposed to numbers.

At this point in time we don't have enough information to quantify the impacts and as you see there's no score at the bottom, there's nothing on this matrix that says one is necessarily better than the other.

But we did use this to begin to have a discussion in February at our last public meeting about which concepts are we going to continue to study and evaluate further and which ones can be discarded.

And here's where we came to.

And this is the recommendations made at the February neighborhood meeting by the Rivanna staff.

Eliminate concept B from further consideration.

That's the one that's upstream, up north, in the city park.

No citizen comments at our first neighborhood meeting supported this idea above and beyond other ideas.

There are significant, the most significant consequences to Riverview Park and the Rivanna Trail are in this alternative.

There will probably be periods where the park might need to be shut down entirely during construction.

While it gets the pump station away from the neighborhood that it's currently located in, the current station's located in, it would move it adjacent to other homes, so you're trading one issue for another.

There were significant cultural resources in the area.

It would probably take some substantial effort to identify the extent of the cemetery, for example.

and there may not be any land left after that, but there would be some effort to try to find that.

And then the Dominion power line.

And when we add all these issues up together, we suggested that it was something that probably this alternative concept doesn't need to be considered or studied further.

There were no objections that I recall from any of the citizens who were at the meeting to that particular step.

We suggested that concept A be refined for further analysis.

That does not mean it's been selected.

A key strength was identified as its lower cost, but equally a key weakness.

The view and some of the social aspects of having a pump station in a residential neighborhood are some real serious drawbacks and need to be very seriously contemplated and considered.

Our approach here is to take the areas that we carry further and attack the weaknesses to see if we can strengthen them and that applies to all of them.

In this particular case, addressing the weakness meant probably putting some substantial effort in architectural and landscaping.

approaches, so some consulting services to try to improve upon the weaknesses that exist with this concept and also further delineate wetlands and historic issues.

While the site itself is not in an historic neighborhood, it's not physically in an historic area, it is adjacent to an historic area.

So it creates a significant number of issues that need to be addressed.

We also suggested that either concept C, which is across the river,

from where Riverview Park is, or concept D, which is just down from the compost yard.

One of those two would be carried for further analysis.

There's some similarities we saw in those two concepts.

Both have the strength of basically getting the pumping station out of the residential neighborhood where it is right now, but it also had a weakness in that its costs were considerably higher.

In this case to pull up the weaknesses there means trying to come up with strategies that lower or reduce costs.

We are open and continue to be open to suggestions and out of the box thinking if anyone has some ideas how we can reduce costs while meeting all the objectives.

that have been set out for this project.

One suggestion we put on the table was maybe look at it as two different options or maybe take one of these concepts and do two different plans with it.

One is moving all the pumping to the new location.

The other is leaving the existing pumping, the 25 million gallon per day pumping where it's at.

but get the additional 28 million gallons from a different location.

And some of the things we can even work with with that is if the two locations are not too far apart, maybe we put the new generator we're talking about for standby emergency power, all of that at the new source and bring the power across back to power the existing pumps and that might be a way to deal with the potential that the switch gear at the existing site is underneath the 100-year flood plain.

We proposed this at the neighborhood meeting in February.

A substantial number, I think, of the persons who attended that meeting would like to eliminate concept A, and I think many of them told you that again tonight.

I've heard from just the comments I've heard, I've probably heard more people express favoritism toward concept D than to concept C. But when we presented this at the neighborhood meeting, the neighborhood wanted to think about it a little bit more and they did not want to make a decision that evening, which is very understandable because they were getting some information for the first time.

So we talked about having another meeting in March.

That meeting has not yet been scheduled, but our staff is talking with the President of the Neighborhood Association in an attempt to set that up.

That concludes my presentation.

Is it possible to tee up that matrix chart with all the options?

So when you talk about over and noise being low across all options, does that reflect your belief that

It's more of a belief, it's a commitment that we will provide high quality odor control at any location where we build.

But certainly no odor control system is going to be perfect and work all the time and so an option where the station is significantly removed from its current location would improve the odor issues in the residential part of the neighborhood.

I understand the argument, but I think a well-designed, well-operated odor control system is very reliable.

Can I follow up on just that topic?

Is there something in a new or expanded pump station?

The technology itself is similar to what's in place today.

What's in place out there right now is called a carbon scrubber.

It's a dry scrubber.

All of the air is collected and moved through the system before it's been into the atmosphere.

What's out there now, and that's one reason it does not look very slightly with all the pipes above ground, is it was adapted from a pump station that was built without thinking about how to ventilate air in the design concept, and then that was sort of an afterthought.

If you're building a new building, you would incorporate the ventilating system into the design so it could be inside so it doesn't have the visibility issues that the current one has.

You know we're hearing a little bit of a disconnect because what we hear from the neighborhood and from a lot of the people who live in the neighborhood is that there continue to be challenges regarding odors and what we're hearing from you is that you feel that for the most part the odor situation has been addressed, resolved,

Certainly historically there have been problems at this site and I don't blame anyone for coming up here and telling you there have been problems.

I'm aware of problems when I came here

There's money we spent and I went over those dollars with you earlier to address those problems.

Within the last few months, particularly since we put the scrubber online at the wastewater treatment plant, there's almost been a million and a half dollars on.

The number of complaints we receive have gone down dramatically.

We may get one complaint every two to three months now.

We still investigate it.

One of the things that's troublesome for me right now, I don't know the cause, I don't know the reason why, but of late,

The complaints that we evaluate, we go to the site where we try to get a location and we immediately send someone to the site.

We're not substantiating, that doesn't mean they're not happening, but we're not substantiating them when we investigate, which means we don't know the source.

and so it becomes something that we just have to, if we get another complaint, we just have to continue to be diligent and hope if there is still an issue that we will find it.

But for the most part, what we're finding, and I think even in the neighborhood meetings we've had, if you sit down and talk to people, they will admit that it's much better than it used to be.

I wonder if you could explain, you had a line up here on impact on park experience, why the leaving an existing site which is at the entrance to a park is considered minimal versus when you move it across the river a good bit away from the park it's considered medium impact.

In this particular case, the rationale was developed by the City Parks and Recreation Department.

We actually did not rank the impact on park experience.

It's just a curious, I'm not sure I understand that.

There's no park there.

I have one question.

Actually, if you could go back, I think it's like two or three slides where you were talking about the costs of the different ones and you mentioned that

Yes, go.

Which plans require land acquisition and how much?

All of them would require, except, well even C, the pump station on C is on Rivanna property but the piping that has to be extended from the existing site, pumping station, to a new pumping station location would require at least easements.

So all of these would require land acquisition.

One reason there's no cost, the land acquisition is not included in these costs right now is these are still concept level.

For D,

A pipe would need to be extended by gravity from where the existing pump station is east under the Rivanna River to whatever site is selected on the other side of the river and in that same corridor a pressure pipe from the pumping can be brought back across and tied in again at the existing site because that's where the pumping starts right now.

Then the site where the pump station is on the other side of the river would also need to be acquired and an access road to get to the pump station so we can bring, deliver equipment, perform maintenance that's needed.

And the pipe that goes under the river toward, across the river,

It could come through the same tunnel.

It could be a separate one.

That would be a detail that the engineer would work out.

It's possible it could be the same tunnel and another thing we've just tossed around trying to think out of the box a little bit is if the new station were on the other side of the river put the electrical switch gear and the emergency generator on that site

Alice Newing brought some sketches of what she envisioned as an architect of the potential building and how large it would be with the idea it would be at least 50 by 90 or perhaps even double that and that it would be quite tall.

We're still at a concept level, so we don't have architectural renderings or anything of that nature at this point in time.

But one, we just tossed around some ideas.

One of the things that, I have to give Hazen and Salyer credit for this, is that while the area underneath the ground may need to be of the dimension similar to what you're talking about, the pieces that are above ground don't have to be one solid 50 by 90 area.

and one of the things that they came up with is the area that's seen above ground could look like two houses sitting side by side and the sizes of those houses complementing what's already in the neighborhood and also the architectural features could be designed to complement what's already in the neighborhood.

This is just, again, this is just thinking conceptually at what it could be.

We as a staff wrestle with that because if we're not careful it can compromise our goals.

But what we've talked about in trying to think out of the box of some ideas a little bit is if we can bring the electrical power from another source.

One risk we eliminate is having the electrical switch gear underground in the existing pump station.

I do have to say the four pumps that are operating inside that station now

include motors that if those motors became submerged, that would create problems for those as well.

But in the industry, there are pumps that are made that are called dry pit submersible, which is a little bit of fancy words, but it just means that they can exist in a dry hole like what we have at the existing Rivanna site, but they can be submerged

without being damaged.

So there are ways to work around those problems.

And final question I have is Allison also had some calculations on how this might impact ratepayers.

Have you looked at that and are you kind of familiar with the math and is it pretty accurate?

We've not looked at it at that level, but we'd be happy to do that.

What's being presented is an urban wastewater budget, a five-year budget, and it includes $25 million for this project.

It does not include these higher numbers.

You referred in your presentation to best practices in the design of facilities like this.

Certainly it is an important consideration to try to

working within the topography constraints that you have to work within to try to site it out of residential neighborhoods when you have reasonable alternatives.

I guess I had a question maybe along the same lines in terms of option D and across the river, extremely difficult.

Do you have examples of

Pipelines under rivers, tunneling under rivers is done on the layer under, for example, shipping channels.

The pipelines have been tunneled under rivers.

The technology is available.

It can cut through rock.

It's expensive.

Unless you're looking at the pluses and the minuses, the minuses is a very expensive process.

But it's certainly done.

It's done multiple places.

Washington, D.C. is a

City that has a combined sanitary and storm sewer system and we are blessed that we don't have those kinds of problems because they're very, very expensive.

One of the ways that they deal with is they intercept stormwater and build very large tunnels, tunnels as high as this room, for example, to store stormwater in under the Potomac River, places like that.

So the technology can go far beyond what we're talking about here.

But that cost is in your

The cost of tunneling is in concept D in that $34 million includes tunneling, yes.

And it's already at that level, right?

It's not going down to tunnel, it's already down.

Mr. Jones?

Yes, sir.

As Mr. Frederick mentioned at the last Rivanna meeting, the request from Rivanna staff was to move forward with a design process for a

and either C or D, those options, depending on where the neighborhood stood.

I think it's pretty obvious from the responses that we've been getting from the neighborhood that they have sent two messages.

One of C or D, they support D.

and that they are not in favor of supporting A.

What I need from council is some direction as to how you want us to pursue this at the next meeting that we'll have, or I guess the second meeting in March.

We have a special meeting tomorrow, but the second meeting in March to address this issue.

A couple of weeks ago when we first started looking at this really seriously, I was kind of wondering why we would want to spend a couple extra million dollars to move a project that really isn't that bad where it is and it's gotten a lot better and they've spent a lot of money to mitigate it.

But the more

Not only, I think when we get into the kind of he said, she said of whether it still stinks, I think that since when was the plant built originally, 1970 something?

Yes, the pump station.

1980.

For at least 20 years, this neighborhood dealt with a lot of problems and I think continues to deal with some, whether they come from the manholes or the pumping station itself.

And I think that as Mayor Norris mentioned,

This is not where we would be putting a pumping station if we were building a new one.

And so rather than kind of saddling our future city residents and people in that neighborhood with continued issues over a pumping station that's twice as big, I personally would not support A. I think that I can see looking at two options as

D1 and D2, you know, D as in moving the whole thing across the river, D2 as in looking at that possibility of bilocation.

So that's, you know, I think I was saying before that I was really compelled by the idea of that riverfront as a treasure that we have in the city and right now a bunch of it is fenced off and it wouldn't have to be if that wasn't part of this and it certainly wouldn't be if we built twice as much

Thank you Ms. Szakos.

You waiting for me?

Yes, we're on.

Okay.

I agree with Ms. Szakos.

I'm probably as concerned about the viewshed from our park as I am about anything.

I think that we put a lot of resources into creating an urban park.

It's where you can put in a canoe.

You know, to have something that has to be quite tall and kind of massive, even if it's broken up and kind of made to look something like something else, I think it's a bad idea.

And I think it's, in a long scheme of things, I'm not sure what the monthly rate changes would be, but I think we're going to do this once, we should do it right.

I agree with that.

And if you've ever spent time over there, we talk about the impact of the quality of life there.

It's just, it's amazing.

So if there's a chance to mitigate that within all the things that we need to do, this is the time to make the investment.

And I think that Mr. Ackerman said that they're not denying that we need a new facility.

I agree with everything that's just been said.

I think for me it all comes down to if we were starting from scratch in locating a facility like this, which in essence we are, would we put it in that site?

And I think if there are alternatives, and I think the answer is pretty clearly no.

And I think what you're hearing, Mr. Jones,

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Frederick.

Thank you to everybody who spoke from Will and Mills as well.

Next item on our agenda is our annual report from our Social Services Advisory Board.

And here to offer the report, Stephanie Keneshen, Chair of the Board.

Kengan.

Stephanie Kengan.

Yeah, we have a PowerPoint presentation as well.

Rick to the rescue.

It sounded good at the time, an original even.

I hear this one is really sad.

I'm clearly out of my element technologically wise.

The good news is that I do somewhat know what I'm saying about the Social Services Board.

Good evening Mr. Mayor and members of the council.

Alright, let's see if I can do this.

Aha.

My name is Stephanie Kang and I'm the Chair of the Social Services Advisory Board.

Diane Kukniew, who's the Acting Director of Charlottesville City DSS is here as well.

We can probably do a little bit better job of answering your questions.

Tagger funding increased caseloads is going to be sort of the theme of the evening.

This is direct services and administration funding.

This actually led to, the city put out $176,892 in fiscal year 10, but it led to matching of over $59.2 million in state and federal funds.

So there was money coming into our community being used for rent and groceries and medical care and whatever else.

within, so this is the expenditure by the city is definitely being used within our community with the state and federal funds.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, what we used to call food stamps and most of us still refer to as that, it's called SNAP now.

People are staying on it longer.

There's a great project that several of the localities around here use where the SNAP funds, the food stamps can basically be used in the city market.

You know, is the local food, the organic food that's seen at the city market something that's sort of, you know, just for limousine liberals or whatever.

There actually is a match program for up to $10 worth of food at the city market.

It's only good for food.

You can't use it for crafts or anything like that.

But, you know, they're able to spend a dollar of their food stamps and get $2 worth of fresh vegetables at the market.

We're also seeing with both SNAP and temporary assistance for needy families, people are staying on it longer right now.

So increase in the number of families in the last three years receiving TANF and increasing the amount of time they're staying on it.

General relief is being cut.

It's been cut.

We used to have five types.

We now only have three emergency assistants, burial expenses, and unattached children, which is a horrific name, but it basically means a child who's in the care of somebody who's not a parent, a relative, and also not a foster parent.

That's going to be cut down to just the unattached children, non-relative caretakers of children.

I'm sorry?

The state is cutting generally.

Like I said, it already cut two of the five kinds.

It actually cut more of it than they reinstated some of it.

Medicaid has actually stayed fairly steady in the city.

And the view

These are number of cases is going up.

Number of people who stayed employed after three months is remaining steady.

And I wasn't sure where that fell within the statewide average.

I know that we're 38th out of 120 in the state was what I was told on this information.

and if I'm going too fast let me know because I'm trying to fly.

Adult services, adult protective services is based on how many people call in with a complaint about adults who's being abused or neglected.

Adult services program is actually companion services.

Helps elderly and disabled people stay in their homes rather than assisted living and nursing care.

So this is a

The numbers are going down because the state decreased the funding by 10%.

It's going down another 14% in 2011.

So this is sort of a robbing Peter to pay Paul situation.

These adults are going to wind up in some sort of assisted living care being paid for by other funds because we can't pay for them to have companion care to stay in their own homes.

Innovation, some of what we've seen.

We've got the family support workers, or I'm sorry, school-based family support workers.

There's one at Johnson Elementary School.

They've added another position at Clark.

This is working for families with preschool children.

The position at Johnson is being funded half by the schools and half by DSS.

There's a grant funding the position, the Safe Schools Healthy Students grant is funding the position at Clark.

So we've been able to expand that.

The systems of care is basically bringing in everybody involved with a family to a family planning meeting when there's a situation where there's a chance that the child's going to be coming out of the home.

It could be anywhere from the pastors, the neighbors, the extended family, the children themselves, to brainstorm on what's best for this family, whether it's finding some alternate placement for the child that is not foster care, finding some sort of therapeutic care for the child, and how it can be supported.

This is sort of a new and innovative program

So focus on the family and the needs for the children.

The CPS complaints, again, this is sort of dependent on reports.

There's never going to be, you know, up, down, et cetera, is not going to be consistent.

It depends on what's called into DSS.

A number of kids in foster care stayed pretty steady.

It's come down slightly.

One of the big stats that gets thrown around is that City of Charlottesville had more kids per capita in foster care than anywhere else in the state.

That's no longer the case from what I understand.

We're still kind of up there.

There is foster care prevention, which is utilized by DSS to provide services to family to keep kids from going into foster care.

and there are also things like wraparound services.

There's Family Treatment Court that's run through the Juvenile Domestic Relations District Court which has wraparound services through DSS, Region 10, counseling and that's for people who have substance abuse issues.

whose kids are either in foster care or possibly going into foster care.

So that's another way to get kids back to their families and also or to keep them from going into care.

The job fair, 2,300 job seekers coming out.

The employment picture still not particularly rosy but

Working with the Department of Economic Development to work with the job seekers, help them, resume building workshops, helping them with applications and the closed closets.

The Outstation Benefit Specialist at the Haven twice a month to assist there.

There's also a

Proposal for Promise Neighborhoods which I believe that the city did not get that the first time around but are reapplying from what I understand for the Promise Neighborhoods grants.

So there's a lot of partnership going on with other agencies.

Another example, working with OAR, Offender Assistance and Agent Restoration, excuse me, Charlottesville DSS is administering the Second Chance Act grant.

and also working with OAR and Albemarle County DSS.

It's for people leaving the Department of Corrections as opposed to people leaving, they've been a program in place for people leaving the local jail, returning to the community.

This is for people leaving DOC, basically the state prison system.

Also the readiness classes, working with OAR for that.

CSA Administration, Comprehensive Services Act, we now have a dedicated CSA administrator, I guess.

Coordinator, sorry.

I knew I had the wrong word.

Dedicated CSA Coordinator to work with the agency, with the FAP team.

And they're also adding a position, well let me reclassifying a position, to, we talked about the family partnership meetings, bringing in members of the family's immediate community, the family

teachers, pastors, counselors, whomever, there is a

They've changed a foster care worker position to a coordinator for the family partnership teams.

So when they have family planning meetings, there's one person who is in charge of facilitating those for, you know, bringing everybody to the table, getting those invitations out, et cetera.

And I guess the good news about our foster care is that we were able to spare somebody from the foster care

team or the position from the foster care team to do this.

Continuing challenges, living wage, I'm sure I don't have to tell counsel or probably most of the folks who are sitting here.

People coming who are in view earn $8.46 an hour and that's not living wage in Charlottesville.

So they still need the other

they still need the other benefits such as Medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance, energy assistance that DSS provides even when they're working.

We also have the people coming into the community who may not speak the language or be from our culture who needs the assistance of DSS.

So there are

DSS is using translator services.

We've got in-person IRC I think helps with that to some extent.

So that we're dealing with people who, you know, not originally from this culture, may not speak the language and how to deal with that issue.

Family engagement.

we talked about that before it's time intensive and so this is a new project by the services section child protective services, foster care prevention, foster care all of those people will be coming together but

is basically letting the family, and that includes the child, if the child is old enough, have a say in what they think is best for them.

Which, you know, may or may not be what the professionals agree with, but everybody has a say, everybody is heard.

The advisory board

We spent 2010 or 2009-2010, we sort of run out of school year schedule, meeting with the department, all the aspects of the department, learning what they do.

We have people basically from everything from the customer service folks who are the first people you see at the window to the support staff to the

Foster Care, CPS, Adult Protective Services, Benefits, et cetera, come in and talk to the board and talk about what they do on a day-to-day basis.

And then from that we spent the beginning of this year learning, you know, what we could do to support the agency.

One of the things that we've actually already started is a taxi program for people to take taxis to the remote parking.

The people who work at DSS, their parking is across the Belmont Bridge.

You know, if they've just taken away somebody's child or they're dealing with somebody who may be mentally ill, their safety is important.

Obviously we're going to encourage them to continue to do things like walk in pairs and move their cars during daylight hours if possible.

But if not, the board has actually gone to set up with DSS and taxi companies so that they can get a voucher.

They don't have to have cash on them before they had to have cash and get reimbursed.

Now they're able to take a taxi back to their car and be safe.

We're working on establishing a fund or getting a grant to help with books and fees.

City employees can get tuition paid, but books and fees can sometimes still be cost prohibitive.

So we want to assist with that.

There's a workplace essential skills certificate that is made available to DSS clients.

We want to promote that to the business community and tell people about what it means to have that and why they should look for that when they're making hires.

generate community support for offsite employment training, improve buildings and grounds maintenance, and advocate in the community for the programs and the staff.

Last couple things, and this is the opinion of the board, not DSS, because they're not going to tell you they're some of the hardest working folks in Charlottesville.

We'll tell you that they're some of the hardest working folks in Charlottesville.

So, and they tend to go above and beyond.

Meeting with the staff,

left the whole board nothing short of impressed that these people show up and do this day in and day out.

They've got one of the toughest jobs and most thankless jobs out there.

And so as they continue to be fully funded, I believe that there was no request for an increase in their funding this year, but please don't decrease it.

They're doing a lot with a little right now.

They're only janitorial services.

Well, we have trash pickup in the offices once a week.

We have...

and I think that the other thing is I mean you know we've got families in some of those rooms you know who are changing diapers and there's trash pickup once per week so there's also the outside grounds yeah when they Fridays after five sometimes leads to the outsides of the building

being in less than stellar condition.

And not only Fridays after Friday, but any kind of pavilion event, I guess I should say.

So the trash pickup is one thing that's sort of at the forefront.

And that was something, again, we heard from across all areas from staff.

So anyway, I'll let you guys go back to your seats.

You're probably so sick of standing up and sitting down at this point and answer any questions that you all have.

I don't want to stand too close to that one.

Questions or comments for Mr. Kengan?

Well, I want to thank you and thank the board, but most importantly thank the staff and the leadership of our Department of Social Services for the great work that you all are doing to serve the many needs in our community.

I'm the council member on the board, so I'm here

both as board member listening to this, but I have seen it before.

And this, I mean, professionally, I deal with several different DSSs.

I deal with people who deal with social services and interact with them.

And the City of Charlottesville DSS has a very good statewide reputation.

I mean, when I was at a treatment facility in Tidewater visiting one of the kids I represent, and they specifically said, you know, Charlottesville and Albemarle, you know, the focus on mental health and things like that, you know.

I'd just like to second those comments.

I think that the dedication of the people who work for social services really shows in the product we have.

And, you know, a lot of times people during budget sessions, people come up and say, why don't you just cut the funding across the board?

And the problem is social services in particular, because of all the funds that are leveraged

You just can't do it.

You're 170 something thousand turning into 59 point something billion or million, sorry.

Million.

Just a couple of questions.

That was part of the

A group of elected officials that were exploring areas where the senior county social services could continue to have successes in working together.

So my question is the possibility of the advisory board for the county in ours actually meaning it may be working on a common goal and also it's the second part to that any

I think as far as working together, I may have to defer to Ms. Coutinho on that.

because I don't deal with the day-to-day operations.

A lot of what we find out about legislation comes from the director and the social services executives.

While we wait for her to come up, I think maybe what she was talking about was having the advisory boards get together and meet.

We had talked about that before and I'm not sure where it stands as far as a joint meeting between the two advisory boards.

I have to admit, I have no idea who's on the county DSS advisory board.

I do know that, you know, to some extent that

at the upper levels, the directors get together all across the state they do, but it's certainly something we could pursue.

Sometimes we, you know, our board only meets once a month, so as far as legislation, I know that what social services executives are proposing that DSS, Charlottesville DSS might want to have that, you know, followed up, recommended

lobbied is a possibility.

I'll just mention that Kathy Ralston, the director at Elm Row, and I have been discussing bringing our boards together.

Whether it will be working on a project or combining ideas and innovations or creative things, we're not sure yet, but we will be looking into that.

Concerning legislative stuff,

It's kind of interesting how so often, I mean, we do not know what's coming forth from the legislature until they begin their session.

And this year, there were a lot of surprises as far as funding went, and mainly concerning CSA, which could have cost the localities a lot of money.

And a lot of that we deal with through the Virginia League of Social Services executives on working on that.

But there were a number of things that did not pass and changes to CSI funding this year.

It doesn't mean they might not rear their

It's every fall when we get a chance to have our presentations by David Brown we get a chance to add things to our

kind of legislative package.

And it may be that next year we could look at advocating for re- you know, increasing again taking, you know, the cuts that we've taken in adult companion services.

There are a number of things that we've gotten cuts from in the purchase service side from the state level and companion services doesn't have federal.

That's state dollars that have been cut and we match

You know, we have heard that in the past.

I don't think we're hearing as much of that now as we heard in the past.

It is a difficulty because the bus route is a few blocks away from it.

But I can't say that that's been an overwhelming concern recently that we've heard.

The increase in the usage in that center has gone up considerably.

Well the reason I ask is I know there was discussion and I know there was discussion because I was part of the discussion about the potential for opening a satellite job center downtown and the potential for DSS to be involved in that in some form or fashion and it's not clear to me if that discussion is now concluded or if that's still an active discussion

It certainly seemed to me that for people who did not have access to their own transportation, we were hearing at the time that it was difficult to access the services out on hydraulic.

The problem got hijacked a little bit by the economic picture in the locality.

So we're just getting back to where we can start working on that.

One good thing that really came about as we tried to be more efficient was a lot of those processes at the Workforce Center went online.

So we can help clients from our own desks help people access their benefits through the Workforce Center or do job searches.

I mean, I think it's something that we can certainly talk to them about.

Any other comments or questions?

Well, thank you all, and keep up the great work.

Next on our agenda, and I want to thank all of you for being so patient, all of our friends from the shelter for help and emergency who are here tonight.

We have an appeal

Okay, thank you.

This item regards a possible demolition of an individually protected historic property called Riverdale.

It was built in 1912 and it's located

In 2009 the property owner made application to the Board of Architectural Review to demolish the property, the 1912 building.

and the BAR denied that request and then the property owner appealed the decision to City Council.

City Council upheld the BAR's decision and denied the appeal and that was in May of 2009.

Previously, the same property owner had attempted to delist the property.

That was in 2003, meaning remove the zoning that made it an individually protected property.

It would be probably, well it would be removing any kind of regulations so as a practical matter it would have permitted immediate demolition.

In the following year, in 2004, the applicant, again, this time they tried to get the BAR to approve moving the building on site and the BAR denied that.

And then in 09, they came forward with the demolition request.

Per the city code section 34286D, which closely mimics the state enabling code on that topic, following a denial by city council of a demolition request,

The owner may make a bona fide offer to sell the property to a person who's willing to preserve it and If they offer it and no one comes forward during that year with a bona fide offer to buy it then the owner is has may come back and renew their request for demolition with City Council and they must show that they've met the conditions of that particular section of the code and if they have then they have the

So that's not a council discretion.

Yes.

It's provided for in the state code and it's their way of allowing that kind of safeguard.

So one of the particular conditions that must be met, and this one is the only one to my knowledge that's in dispute, is number two, that the owner has offered the property for sale at a price reasonably related to the fair market value of the subject property.

So going back to the sequence of events, after the denial in May of 2009, there was no further communication from the applicant until almost over a year later, June of 2010, when the owner renewed their request for demolition.

They sent us a letter.

They said they'd offered the property for sale for a year at a price of $890,000 and that

They have been unsuccessful.

No one had come forward to make any offers at that price.

Now we are at the point where we have brought this before you.

You are being asked to decide if all the conditions in City Code Section 34286D have been met, which would allow the property owner to demolish the property.

So specifically the question tonight is, did they offer the property at a price reasonably related to the fair market value?

The city's assessor, Roosevelt Barber, has stated that the current assessment is $607,300 and pursuant to state code, all real property must be assessed at 100% of its fair market value.

Therefore, according to that, the assessment of $607,300 is the fair market value.

You are not being asked tonight to determine whether $607,300 is the correct assessed value.

If the applicant does not agree with the assessment, they have the right to appeal the assessed value through the City Assessor's Office and ultimately the Board of Equalization.

And to my knowledge, they did not exercise that right.

You are being asked to decide if all the conditions have been met.

It is staff opinion that the asking price was not reasonably related to the fair market value with the offering price being actually 47% higher than the assessed value.

And therefore that condition number two of section 34286D has not been met.

So staff recommendation is that city council should determine that all the conditions

required by City Code Section 34286D have not been met and that therefore the denial of the demolition request remains effective.

I'm confused.

It says 30% in the staff report, but I believe that math was incorrect.

I believe Ms. Sherry Lewis

Oh, I'm sorry.

And I have no power points.

Thank you.

My name is Carol Cron and I'm the past board president for the Shelter for Health and Emergency and I'm on the board of directors.

I'm here tonight on the shelter's behalf asking that you grant our demolition request for the Riverdale property.

In the years since we realized this building no longer met the needs of the shelter's operations and should be sold,

We have made every effort to follow the law while seeking to receive a fair price for our property.

We hired what we believe to be the best commercial real estate company in the area, perhaps in the state, to handle the property for us.

We asked them to guide us in setting an appropriate listing price and to vigorously pursue the marketing of the property by every means at their disposal, as they have done for many other property owners in downtown Charlottesville.

When I appeared before this council more than a year ago regarding this property, I had high hopes that given the resources that were being devoted to this, we would have a buyer within a year.

And yet I knew even then that we had already made an effort to sell this property.

I'm nearing the mandatory end of my six years as a volunteer board member on the shelter, and we have been actively working to sell this property for that entire time.

We began making quiet attempts to market it while we were still using it as a residential shelter.

This location, we are required by law to maintain confidential.

You can perhaps imagine the difficulties there.

We eventually listed the property for sale with MLS in March of 2009, which means it's been on the market a full year beyond the year required by law.

Unfortunately, all our efforts have proven fruitless.

This property has now stood empty for nearly three years.

Our agents have found absolutely no one interested in purchasing it.

The few parties who were interested enough to view it found it unsuitable for their needs.

No one was ever willing to even begin a negotiation on the question price.

I cannot state this strongly enough.

We and our realtors have made every effort to engage potential buyers.

There has simply been no interest in this property under the restrictions that currently apply.

and so the shelter has continued to pay for taxes, insurance, fire protection, heat, termite protection and maintenance on this property using funds that we as a non-profit can ill afford to divert to this cause.

Our executive director, our volunteer board of directors and our realtors have devoted countless hours to this as well.

This asset has become a cash drain on our non-profit social service agency.

Our mission, as you all know, is to end domestic violence.

Our role as stewards of the donations that support the shelter demands that we liquidate this asset at a fair and reasonable price and employ the proceeds in serving better women and their children in this community.

I know you're aware of the value of the shelter's life-saving aid to Charlottesville residents.

Now I'm asking you to help us by removing what has truly become an unjust impediment to our mission.

I realize your role as the city's elected councilors sometimes requires you to balance conflicting interests of your constituents.

We have made every effort to sell this property to anyone who is interested in purchasing and protecting it, but no one has expressed such an interest.

The law is structured to provide relief in cases where a historic designation becomes an intolerable burden on the property owners.

We have been as respectful as we know how of your process and your priorities, and now we need for you to be respectful of us and the victims we serve.

I ask you simply to follow the law, to do the right thing, the fair thing,

and Grant, our request.

Can I ask a question of board before a question of law?