City Council Meeting   5/16/2011

and David Brown

I've

Ms. Edwards?

Here.

I'm taking both of them.

You cannot vote twice tonight, Mr. Huja.

Unfortunately, Ms. Szakos is not able to join us tonight, but it's for a very good reason.

She's actually participating in a women's leadership development program offered by Harvard University, and we're very happy for her.

We are going to begin with a few proclamations.

I know we have a number of friends here from the bicycle community.

Earlier today we had a nice event outside of City Hall in recognition of Bike Month and I read a proclamation I'd like to re-read tonight.

whereas for more than a century the bicycle has been an important part of the lives of many Americans and whereas bicycling is a relatively safe, clean and affordable mode of transportation and recreation used by thousands of citizens and residents of all ages throughout our great Commonwealth and whereas bicycling provides unique vantage points for tourists and sightseers to explore Virginia's many natural and man-made attractions including our Commonwealth's award-winning state parks, historic battlefields, urban architecture and college and university campuses

and whereas our commonwealth is the host of many bicycling events including competitive races, sightseeing tours, charitable fundraisers and other recreational rides which in total creates a very real economic impact and whereas Charlottesville has been named a bronze level bicycle friendly community by the League of American Bicyclists and in the effort to improve upon this designation will continue to recognize the importance of bicycling in urban and community planning and development

and whereas it is important for cyclists and motorists to take proper safety precautions while sharing our roadways and by being cautious and alert,

Whereas Bike Month allows cycling enthusiasts to increase awareness of their sport and promote the benefits of bicycling through organized activities such as Bike to Work Day and bike rodeos for children, now therefore I, Dave Norris, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, Virginia, do hereby recognize May 2011 as Bike Month and call this observance to the attention of all of our citizens.

Thank you very much.

I don't want to turn my backs to you.

Bike Week started today and goes through Saturday and we have a great lineup of events.

There's something for everyone.

If you're already a cyclist, you'll find something rewarding.

If you're interested in getting involved in cycling, there are a lot of education opportunities to get you geared up to maybe start trying to bike to work, get your bike checked out, learn some safety education.

and on Wednesday there's a huge group ride called the Ride of Silence and it happens at the Martin Luther King Jr.

Performing Arts Center.

It starts at 615.

It's a police escorted procession through town to raise awareness for cyclists and to honor those who have been injured or killed on the roadways.

Friday is Bike to Work Day, a great day to come out and try biking to work if you haven't done it before.

We have energizer stations set up around town.

and Saturday are two really family-friendly events.

I encourage you to think about bringing the kids out.

In the morning, starting at 10 o'clock, is the Tour de Coupe, which is a bike tour through Charlottesville, checking out all the great chicken coops we have.

And that starts at the Jefferson School, the Carver Rec Center, 10 o'clock.

And then starting at 3 o'clock is a 9th Annual Children's Bicycle Rodeo.

For 6 to 12 year olds, bring your bike.

If you don't have a bike, you can borrow one.

All the kids are going to get a free helmet and get their bike checked out and then they'll navigate through a course that'll be set up that'll teach them balance skills, bike handling skills, traffic safety.

It's a lot of fun.

There's snacks.

It's a good time that's from 3 to 5 and that's at Washington Park Upper Basketball Court.

So, something for everyone.

Please do come out.

Thank you so much.

Tuesday at the Community Bike Center.

That's right.

Commuting tips and maintenance on your bike, some great information that's free to anybody that can show up.

Community Bikes at 612 C Preston Avenue, right behind Moxie.

Thank you, Mike Charlottesville.

Our next proclamation, we want to honor the service of some of our public works employees here to our community.

This is National Public Works Week.

Whereas public works services provided in our community are an essential part of our citizens' everyday lives,

and whereas the support of an understanding and informed citizenry is vital to the efficient operation of public works systems and programs such as water, waste water, gas, streets and highways, school and public building maintenance, transit and school pupil transportation, environmental awareness, solid waste collection, recycling, facility development, storm water management and water conservation.

and whereas the safety, health and comfort of this community greatly relies on these facilities and services, whereas the quality and effectiveness of these facilities as well as their planning, design and construction is vitally dependent upon the efforts and skill of our Public Works employees.

Now therefore I, Dave Norris, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, Virginia, do hereby proclaim the week of May 15th through 21st, 2011 as National Public Works Week in the City of Charlottesville

and call upon all citizens and civic organizations to acquaint themselves with the efforts involved in providing our public works and to recognize the contributions that our public works employees make every day to maintain and improve our world-class quality of life.

On behalf of all of the employees in Public Works, you know, we're one of those departments that if everything's working right, you don't know about us, but you sure do when something goes wrong.

So we like to take this opportunity once a year to honor the people that work so hard 24-7 for you all year long.

Thank you, Ms. Mueller.

We also want to take a moment this evening to honor seven of our Charlottesville High School seniors who have received scholarships from our Charlottesville Community Scholarship Program to help them with their college finances.

I don't know, I hope some of them are here tonight.

Ms. Linda Seaman with the Charlottesville Community Scholarship Program, I believe will be introducing the recipients.

Take it away, Ms.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Jones and members of council.

Ten years ago the city council decided that they would like to make a promise to the young people of this community to help them fund their college experience or their post high school experience really.

To this time we have now set up, there is an endowment that continues to fund this and we raise money to help even more students go to college.

We have funded 53 people to the tune of over $100,000 and we just this year have seven new scholars to join that group.

We also have some of our board members here if they would like to stand up.

Do you see SP board members?

These folks work hard to raise money and to be sure we can give it to deserving people in the Charlottesville community.

Good afternoon.

My name is Chris Jason.

Hello, my name is Latoya Hughes and I will be attending St. Augustine's College.

Hello everyone, my name is Shampria Fry and in the fall of 2011 I will be attending Virginia Commonwealth University.

Hey Ms. Schrader.

Hi, I'm Shanice Bradford.

This community can be very proud of its young people and of the promise you've made to them.

We will celebrate our 10th anniversary on October 29th at the Paramount.

and on behalf of the City Council I wish all of the scholarship winners all the success in the world and you've earned the support and I know you'll go far so thank you.

Congratulations.

We will now open the meeting up to announcements.

I have a couple of announcements.

On May 23rd from 830am to 3pm, the Dialogue on Race and other local businesses are having a minority business summit.

If you are a minority business owner, partner, or interested in starting a new business, this summit is for you.

Get information on financing and alternative sources for funding a business, procurement, strategic planning, and hear the success stories of local minority business owners.

The summit is free but you must register to attend.

To register by phone, 970-3115.

In Spanish, 970-3700.

And to register online, www.charlesville.org slash dialogue.

and looking ahead, save the date, June 16th through June 18th is our Juneteenth celebration and on June 17th at 5.30 there will be a book discussion, a panel

New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander will be the book discussed.

And on 17th and 18th reserve those times because there will be other Juneteenth events at PVCC.

And to get more information about the Juneteenth activities, contact Maxine Holland at 295-6632 or Tamara Turner at 825-8204.

I have the full announcement and I hope you all enjoy joining

There is a community band festival on July the 2nd from 11 to 8 p.m. 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

There will be seven different bands in one day at the pavilion here and I hope you can all join us free.

It's sponsored by Charlottesville Municipal Band and Orange County Band.

Thank you Mr. Huja.

A couple other things.

We are offering, our Parks and Recreation Department is currently offering a sale on outdoor pool passes.

This is for the summer season for 2011.

If you would like to purchase a summer pass for our outdoor pools, if you do so before May 31st, you'll get a significant discount.

The number to call

is 970-3260 and those are wonderful facilities.

On June 14th at the Pavilion at 6.30, that's a Tuesday night, 6.30pm, the City of Charlottesville among many other organizations is sponsoring a flag day celebration at the Pavilion to salute those members of our community who have served our country in uniform.

and it will be featuring the Charlottesville Municipal Band again Tuesday, June 14th, 6.30pm at the Pavilion.

It is free to the public.

If there's no other announcements, we will now open our meeting to matters by the public and when you come forward, please state your name and address and we ask you to keep your comments to three minutes.

Good evening.

My name is Jeanette Kent and my address is 1223 Park Street, Charlottesville, 22901.

And to the major council members and other interested parties, having found out that interested parties would like to eliminate

For drastic reduced bus services, I am here to protest that decision.

I and many others rise in number 2A, Locust Avenue Best.

I have heard that it will no longer come up Park Street and continue on north and back to downtown Charlottesville.

Please do not eliminate this route.

Even if it does have low ridership, all of us depend on it to get to work.

Go shopping, get the doctor's office, and the transfer to other buses.

Some of us cannot drive cars, and some of us are unable to afford them.

And please do not let the CAT leave us behind.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Kent.

Good evening.

I'm Page Sullivan.

My address is 101 Melbourne Park Circle and I'm here also on behalf of the people that are counting on the CAT to help us to get to work and to move around Charlottesville on the bus service.

Jeanette and I gathered up 61 names of people that have been riding in the past week and that would really like to make sure that you know that we count on it.

Scott Beyer Scott Beyer, 2556 Summit Ridge Trail.

Good evening, Council.

A lady came up to me the other day and said, I've seen some of your Council comments and you strike me as another one of those nuts that our city is getting more of who want to turn Charlottesville into Manhattan and overhaul all of our single family neighborhoods.

And I responded, not true.

and then said to her what I say here, if we build up certain growth areas in the city, then we can preserve other parts of it because not only do growth areas take housing pressures off farmland and forest,

which is well documented, but they can do this for single family neighborhoods as well.

One example in Charlottesville was 2003 when we created two university high density districts for student housing.

Before this, students had put tremendous pressure on Venable by excessively subletting single family homes to other students.

This was harming the neighborhood's character and jacking up prices.

But when an urban pocket was created for these students around Wortland and JPA, the burden was lifted from Venable.

And here's why that example is important in light of what this lady said to me.

Whenever people talk of the benefits of urban density and of growth areas, they list things like mitigation of sprawl and reduction of auto emissions and increases in affordable housing and economic vitality.

And they seem to think these benefits come at the expense of then having to overhaul single family neighborhoods.

What they don't realize is that growth areas can often assist in preserving these neighborhoods by receiving many of the demands that otherwise would be cast into single-family neighborhoods, as Wortland did for Venable.

In this sense, growth areas represent a compromise in the never-ending debate between those who want Charlottesville to become a full-fledged city and those who want it to remain a town.

So I think it'd be good, especially now that the market's picking up, if the city rekindled some of the previous talks about how we can build up our growth areas.

There are four areas that I think this conversation should center on, and I've chosen them not because I'm trying to denigrate their present conditions, but precisely because I think they're extra important and spearheading a sustainable built pattern within the city.

Number one, West Main between Amtrak and UVA Hospital, where developers presently have plans drawn up but are afraid to build.

Number two, the area between Water and South Street that now consists of two flat parking lots, one owned privately, the other owned by the city.

Number three, Cherry Avenue between Ridge and Sixth Street Southwest.

Number four,

Fifth Street extended between the Tonsler Tennis Courts and Bailey Road, which oddly enough is still zoned residential.

I hope talks about redevelopment in the near future continue to revolve around what the city can do to get these four areas built, whether through infrastructure enhancements, through tax incentives, or through further deregulation.

Thank you, Mr. Beyer.

Good evening, Council.

James Halfday, 2423 Sunset Road.

Council, I'm coming here tonight to talk to you about two issues here, actually one in general.

It's about jobs here in the area.

You know, the dialogue on race, they just completed their ex-offender summit that was held at the Holiday Inn on Emmett Street.

I'm happy to report back that I was able to meet with three offenders that was down at the city job fair that was offered at John Paul Jones Arena.

and I was able to secure three jobs for the offenders with my company along with one outside company as well and that individual is making $28,000 a year so congratulations to the three offenders that

are now officially employed here in the city of Charlottesville.

Then also I'd like to come down here as a small business owner.

You know, I think the city needs to do a little bit more better with the JPA area with the bridge being out.

I understand that the city has to go through the traffic engineers if they want to put electronic signs up there for directional navigation for

for Motors to see that the JPA area businesses are still open.

So, you know, I met with Who's Brews, Mr. and Mrs. Bishop down there, along with the owners of the Fast Mart and Wayside Chicken.

You know, I think it's imperative that we get some more signs down there.

I understand that that's VDOT's problem.

However, I think with the city's

Thank you Mr. Haffney.

Thank you.

My name is Tyler Frankenburg.

I live at 516 Brandon Avenue.

And I'm here with students from my class at UVA School of Architecture.

We're a graduate class in housing and community development.

And our class of 23 students this past semester looked at evidence-based community research in affordable housing, workforce training, and transportation.

Investments in Children and Youth, Increasing Civic Participation, and Access to Healthy and Affordable Foods.

We looked at innovative solutions that other municipalities around the United States are using to tackle those issues and then analyzed how they might be applied to Charlottesville.

We each compiled individual reports and then our professor, Suzanne Moomaw, put them together into one comprehensive report that we've prepared copies for all of you.

We hope it will provide a lens for the community to look at ways we can better serve all of our citizens and we hope it will be a thought-provoking read.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for the opportunity to address you tonight.

I'm here to make some comments about a widely circulated memo about bike helmets or requiring for bike helmets for the youth.

I'm Mack Lafferty.

I live at 135 West Park Drive, Charlottesville 22901.

I have two degrees in engineering, taught engineering and physics at a university level.

I'm on the State Board of Directors of Bike Walk Virginia, responsible for the Tour de Chesapeake, which was last weekend, and Bike Virginia, which is a five-day bike ride that has roughly 2,000 riders in it.

I'm a League Cycling Instructor certified by the League of American Bicyclists.

However, all of these credentials don't mean anything compared to the statistics that I would like to review tonight.

These come from a number of different areas.

This one I'm gonna quote right now is from the Institute of Highway Safety.

It says, most serious injuries among a majority of those killed are head, highlighting the importance of wearing a bicycle helmet.

Helmet use has been estimated to reduce head injuries by 85%.

Currently 22 states plus the District of Columbia require the use of helmets.

Bicycle injuries with head injuries is more prominent than football head injuries in the United States.

Nearly 314,600 children ages 14 and under were treated in hospital emergency rooms for bicycle related injuries.

Nearly half, that is 47%, ages 14 and under, hospital for bicycle related injuries are diagnosed with traumatic brain injury.

Children 14 and under account for 36% of the bicycle injuries

and motor vehicle crashes.

It is estimated the collision with motor vehicles accounts for 90% of all bicycle-related deaths and 10% of all non-fatal bicycle injuries.

40% of all bicycle-related deaths due to head injuries and approximately three-fourths of all bicycle-related head injuries occur among children ages 14 and under.

Who's at risk?

Riding without a bicycle helmet significantly increases the risk of sustaining head injuries in the event of a crash.

Non-helmeted riders are 14 times more likely to be involved in fatal crashes than helmeted riders.

The statistics go on and on.

They are not limited to the United States.

They also apply to the United Kingdom, Australia, and several other countries that have reported and done these statistics.

I know of no member of the cycling community who wants to limit ridership.

In fact, our priority is to make cycling safer for everyone.

There are many programs that give away helmets to all the participants in safety instruction, as you heard tonight about the bike rodeo this weekend.

I know of no organized biking event that does not require each rider to wear a helmet.

If you don't have a helmet, you don't ride.

Regardless of how council votes tonight, you should be aware that the real statistical data and the benefits of requiring those 14 and under to protect themselves.

Peter Castiglione, 1516 Chesapeake Street.

I'm the owner of my restaurant up on 633 West Main.

And this should be a nice segue into my statement.

It's about the safety of the bike lanes on West Main Street.

I would like to note that this statement does not represent a unified opinion of the Midtown Business Association.

In my last four years on West Main Street, I've witnessed five bicyclers knocked off their bikes by people in parked cars opening their car doors.

Two of these situations resulted in serious injuries.

I have witnessed one bicycler knocked from his bike by a turning vehicle making a right turn as the cyclist came past him on the right hand side.

I think in the big picture most of us don't know who's liable for these situations or maybe what we're supposed to do if we're driving or riding our bicycles.

While I completely support alternative transportation in the Midtown Corridor, the bicycle lanes on West Main Street I think are some of the most dangerous in the city.

The lanes are very skinny and they share space with the car doors that are opening.

I applaud the current initiative to educate both bikers and drivers of the traffic laws and regulations, such as who is liable if I am to park on West Main Street and open my door and knock a cyclist into traffic.

What happens if I'm making a right turn and a cyclist comes by me on the right and I knock the cyclist off the bike?

I don't know the answer to these questions.

It seems like the safest way to bike down West Main Street at the time is really to be in the regular flow of traffic, which I believe is legal, especially during the busy hours, not in the current bike lanes, the way they're designed.

Improvement on West Main Street recently with the street lights and the pavement of the Amtrak lot seems like we're really going in the right direction.

As we move forward with the Midtown corridor in West Main and we put money into it in the future, I think it would be nice if we really looked at creating some bike lanes that didn't share that skinny path on both sides of the driver's side doors.

If there's some way to move two to each sides of the street near the

between the parked cars and the sidewalk around the other side.

I know that we're talking about maybe expanding the south side of West Main a bit with new development.

Maybe that can somehow work its way in to getting bikers up and down West Main without having to share that narrow space.

I also wanted to just comment in general with the spaces that will be removed.

I believe it's 12 parking spaces and one of those is a handicapped spot right at the corner of 4th and West Main which is a very sensitive corner I know.

I'm wondering if maybe the taxi stand spots across the street there near the statue could maybe be reallocated for regular parking should those parking spaces be removed because it really does have an economic impact to places like West Main, a Virginian restaurant, and the West Main Market, and anyone who conducts business between the statue and Fifth Street.

Losing those 12 spaces

really makes a difference and we want the bikers to have a safe place to drive between the statue and 4th Street.

but it doesn't really seem like they have a remarkably safe place to drive already so that is a really tenuous area where we're going to move the parking spots and put in the bike lanes.

I would just like to ask the city and the bicyclers of Charlottesville to work towards a bigger and better solution to bicycle traffic on West Main Street as we move into the future.

Thank you, sir.

Good evening, Brandon Collins, 536 Meade Avenue.

I've lived in Charlottesville all my life.

I have a daughter who has also lived here all her life.

Three minutes is never enough.

But I did want to say I was really excited to see this resolution about uranium mining.

and I would encourage you to maybe read that publicly this evening.

I know it's going to be a long night, but I think everybody needs to hear that.

I also encourage you to always, when you do these resolutions, follow through with as much action as possible and really think about what clean energy means to the city of Charlottesville and aggressively make that a priority.

As well as consider

When we talk about uranium, depleted uranium, which is a less radioactive yet still radioactive form of uranium that the military uses, it's very hard and they use it in weaponry and it's all over Iraq, Afghanistan, all kinds of places and it's similar to the leftover landmines that are around worldwide and the long-term devastating consequences.

But I'm really here to talk about transportation.

Excited to see the TDP report.

I think there's some things that could be changed.

I think, first and foremost, don't cut service.

Don't cut hours.

Don't cut the routes.

We should always be looking to expand and not

Pull Anything Back.

People are reliant on that.

They are transit-reliant.

And we want to have those folks be able to do that.

We also want more folks to ride the bus.

So we should always be looking to expand.

I'm running for city council.

One thing that people are really excited about is the idea of late night service.

This is good for us in a lot of ways.

One way is if you work a little later than midnight, you're not going to take the bus earlier on in the day to get to your job.

You're going to drive or you're going to take a cab or whatever.

Late night service is really good for restaurant workers, so they're not spending their meager pay and their tip money on cab rides home.

It's a great way to cut down on drunk driving.

There's a lot of information about that in various places, how that's affected that.

It will increase some activity, especially around downtown, and could have an impact on crime, late night crime.

Overall, the transportation development plan, they're good changes, but a lot of these changes, they're decent big changes, but if we really stretch those out, they're going to be fairly meaningless, and development's going to grow a certain way.

We're never going to get to a point where we're using public transportation, biking, and pedestrian ways of getting around.

and moving from a culture of cars to a culture of mass transit.

So, you know, I would hope you can look at that and find ways in the four to six year plan and the even longer term and make those more in the shorter term.

Hopefully, looking to 2035, that's 24 years from now.

The amount of environmental degradation we're going to see, I mean, it's hard to even contemplate.

We can't wait that long just to get some small changes like a route out to the airport.

I would encourage you to have more ambitious goals for long-term transit.

And there's ways to pay for it.

Thank you, Mr. Collins.

Hi, James Richardson, 115 East High Street, Charlottesville.

I guess first I want to echo some of the praise that we heard earlier for the improvements to West Main Street, specifically the street lamps look great and

and some of the other improvements that are coming along.

The main point that I really wanted to make about is in your consideration of the removal of parking spaces.

In 2008, Charlottesville conducted a downtown parking study with a renaissance planning group and some of the data from that study could be considered in your

analysis of how parking gets used throughout the city, and in particular street parking.

One of the things that they found was that street parking actually a lot of times doesn't serve businesses so much by bringing customers in, but in a lot of cases it's employees and long-term parkers who are occupying those spaces.

So the impact of businesses

from removal of on-street parking is sometimes not as significant as it's made out to seem.

And so then the other side of it is just the benefits of making those improvements for cyclists.

You can consider it a benefit-cost ratio, really, and so I think that's one way to look at it.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council.

Thank you for a few minutes.

My name is Mike Basile and I live at 288 Albert Court and that's in Albemarle County.

And, you know, I've been here since 2006.

I've lived there since 2006.

And ever since then, I've been hearing about violence and mobs and groups running around the mall, the downtown mall, Friday nights and creating violence, causing violence, doing violence, and thuggery and stuff like that.

I know there have been several attempts at addressing it.

We put video cameras up.

We all put video cameras up in the downtown mall, etc.

We've had increased policing during the Friday nights, etc.

And yet, it's happening still.

And this past Friday, at least three young adults were attacked by a mob of over 30, what they reported as over 30 young people, young thugs.

and I want to talk a little bit about what happened and just tell you, this is ridiculous.

Okay, this is the downtown mall area.

Two guys were beat up at McGuffey Park.

One went to the hospital.

Again, these are surrounded by a big group of young people and they're surrounded, they're getting kicked, punched, they get knocked to the ground.

Somebody pulled out a belt and was whipping one of them in the face with a belt and left marks, obviously blood all over the place.

and certainly we're lucky that the guy wasn't hurt worse than he was.

These kind of crimes, frankly, they are caused to use deadly force.

So if there's somebody out there in the vicinity in order to protect the victim, that's what we're looking at.

We're looking at using deadly force to stop these crimes.

Now a little bit about how these groups seem to be getting around.

They're using flash text.

So a group of 30, 40 people hanging out with some other kids.

And some of the kids get this text and say, hey, go to McCuffie Park.

Boom.

Now you've got a whole group of kids there that have been pounding around the mall, et cetera.

They're there.

They do whatever they're doing, whatever violence and bad behavior they're doing.

And then somebody knows the police are coming.

Hey, police are coming.

Boom.

Then they all split.

It happens that fast.

It's ad organized.

And it's, I don't know, it sounds like a game to me for them.

But it's not.

We're talking about violence and hurting people.

So the group was big, it was over 30 people as reported by some of the victims.

These were suspected Jack Jewett, some of them were suspected to be Jack Jewett middle school students.

And these are kids up to 14 years of age that, you know, we're talking about tonight making laws to make them wear bicycle helmets and yet we can't even keep them from beating the crap out of people here in the downtown mall.

So, you know, let's keep our priorities straight and we need to be able to stop this violence in the mall.

We've got the video cameras.

I haven't seen them yet.

My job is to help these young adults get some kind of justice from this.

So hopefully with the police...

We'll be able to take a look at the video, see if there's any kind of pictures or video that would allow us to at least identify.

I doubt if any of them would have.

Well, we'll see.

We'll see what the outcomes may be.

Hopefully that can be used.

And then potentially some things that we could do from the city standpoint is perhaps, you know, not allowing groups to be disorderly on the mall, which some of these groups were.

Yelling out, et cetera.

That may be policeable events.

Also, it may be controlling the size of assemblies of groups on the mall in some manner.

I have no idea.

I don't purport these.

I just want to put out a couple of possible things to look at.

Doing nothing only allows it to continue.

And these are dangerous crimes again.

Thank you, Mr. Bussell.

I'm Scott Paisley.

I'm Scott Paisley, 1207 Oak Hill Drive, Charlottesville.

I'd also like to thank Peter and the Midtown Merchants for really engaging in the dialogue on this as well.

The issue about improving the infrastructure to improve pedestrian bicycle safety.

One of the things that Bike Charlottesville did last year was to conduct a survey that we tried to advertise not just among the cycling public but to the community at large.

The single biggest response to the whole survey was the need for better infrastructure, specifically bike lanes within the city of Charlottesville.

82% of the people who responded to the survey listed bike lanes as their priority.

The highest response of specific locations for

that improved infrastructure was Main Street to University.

One of the things that I've noted for years is along the lines of the fact that bicyclists and pedestrians are kind of like water.

They take the path of least resistance.

because of the directness and because of the levelness of Main Street from the university to downtown.

That is why we all see so many cyclists and pedestrians using that corridor.

And yet as has been noted by Peter and many others over the years, it is also chronically one of the more dangerous corridors for pedestrians and cyclists.

And so, among everything else, I'd really love to thank Jeannie and the city for everything that's been done to re-engage this dialogue for making improvements in this structure for next year.

As a member of the bike business community and a known cyclist around town for years, one of the things that people routinely tell me is that they do not ride their bike because they feel unsafe, specifically because of the incomplete

Infrastructure, and again specifically incomplete bike lanes for the direction they want to go.

Particularly bike lanes that start, run for a few blocks, stop for a few blocks, forcing them back into traffic, and then pick up again.

In Australia and the United States and many different countries, studies have shown that the best thing that can be done to improve safety, to reduce the number of cyclists, motorist accidents, is simply to increase ridership.

The infrastructure helps, education helps, promotion helps, but simply getting more people out makes a bigger difference than anything else.

And the single thing that's keeping people from getting out right now is the incomplete or fractured infrastructure that we have.

And with this as the beginning of trying to improve that infrastructure, I would really like to, led by Charlottesville's voice of encouragement to

to consider to pass Jeanie Alexander's plan for the east-west corridor.

That's it.

Thank you, Scott.

I'm also here to speak on the issue of the bike lanes on West Main Street and I'd just like to address a couple of comments by Peter earlier and there is code, Code of Virginia law

that addresses opening your car doors into traffic and bicycles are considered traffic and it is illegal to open your car doors into traffic so that the person opening the door would be responsible and would be considered liable as well as guilty of a traffic infraction.

A bicycle is also considered a vehicle under Virginia state law and as such, when another vehicle passes, they have to allow room for the bicycle.

In other words, if a car passes a bike and the car turns right in front of the bike, affectionately known as the right hook by cyclists,

the driver is liable in that case because the law states that when passing another vehicle before making a right or left turn that you have to yield to the vehicle that you've passed on the right hand side.

So these are addressed by our current law.

Anyway, I also wanted to speak in favor of continuing the bike lanes, making a continuous bike lane on West Main Street for the very reasons that Scott Paisley addressed.

I also wanted to consider the needs of all users of the road and certainly cyclists are one user, drivers are another user.

Parking is another use of public space.

However, it's up to city council to decide what the best use of the roads, which are public space that belong to all of us, should be.

So the safety for cyclists is obvious, but this also could be a big improvement for the businesses because by removing the on-street parking,

you're actually opening up the visibility of the businesses to the passing vehicles.

Both the cyclists and the drivers can now see these businesses.

It makes a much more pleasant environment.

It increases the perception of safety by the pedestrians as well as the cyclists.

And so the whole area becomes a much more pleasant place to be.

and hopefully will be sort of an extension mentally of the downtown mall.

I just wanted to mention one thing.

We fought this battle over a decade ago as far as putting the bike lanes on West Main Street and certainly the needs of the businesses on West Main Street needed to be addressed.

That's certainly a concern.

However, I find it very interesting that the leader of the

West Main Street businesses at that time has since moved his business to the downtown mall where he has zero on street parking.

And his business has flourished.

And also I know that there are many cyclists in the audience and so could all the people who are here in support of the West Main Bike Lane Continuous and Jeannie Alexander's traffic report please stand up, show your helmets.

Thank you very much to all who came and spoke tonight.

We will have another opportunity at the end of our meeting for additional matters by the public.

Well, Mr. Mayor, I'd like to thank all the bicyclists who came and I'd also like to say I'm sorry I wasn't able to make your proclamation today, kind of kicking off Bike Week.

I think it's a great event.

I know we're going to be talking about this more, so we don't have to spend a lot of time on it, but I actually think I couldn't agree more with Scott Paisley that

You know, it kind of answers the questions Ruth raised at the end.

The more people are bicycling, the more people are aware of being careful when you open your door and to be careful when you make a right turn because it's just, it's bicyclists become ever-present.

And it's the only comment I have.

Thank you, Dr. Brown.

I also want to thank all the bikers who are here today because I think

We need to make bicycles a major mode of transportation and not just for play and fun only.

We need a very interconnected network of bikes in our community which we do not have right now.

people have pointed out what makes difference in people's ride or not if they can't have connected network of bikes.

And I think as for the West Main Street, there are a few places in town which is level.

People can ride very easily and comfortably.

And I think I remember Ruth mentioning about 10 years ago, I was part of that, and we did build, I think, three-fourths of the West Main Street, and I think we should complete it today.

Thank you Mr. Huja.

I do but I'd like to change the protocol if I may Mayor Norris and I would like for Valerie Washington to come forward

to comment on the concern about violence of youth in the downtown mall.

Hello, I'm Valerie.

In response to the violence downtown, it would be nice for young people to actually have something to do because people go out downtown to hang out, but what is there actually to do downtown for young people?

We have really nothing in the city that is really for young people.

And if we do, we don't know about it.

I honestly don't know about it.

My weekends are at home.

And then I know a lot of my friends go downtown.

And this is not the first time that's happened downtown.

It also happened at the mall, I think, last year.

And I feel that if we had something to do, that would be great.

and yeah, we should definitely, this whole mob thing, it's not gonna work.

I don't know.

What do you mean by something to do?

I know when I was younger, I had Parks and Rec and like, it's not really predominant anymore.

Also,

But see, I'm boring, so I don't know.

Yeah, that would be great.

That would be great.

I know even though the little movies in the park are geared toward the younger, younger kids, I mean, I enjoy that.

Yeah, like a little dance party place to do stuff, to dance.

No one likes kids bops at that age.

Dominique Morse, I live on 995 5th Street, SW.

I also think for especially teenagers, it's really nothing but I think we also don't exactly know what we want to do also.

So I think the biking community could help us as an activity.

I know at one time there was an idea of having like a boxing arena or some club.

I think it's really, it would be nice if a lot of adults shared their activities.

The gym also, I like the gym.

And like swimming, that's nice.

But like $5 every time I want to go swimming, that's not my budget.

So generally speaking, more activities geared towards teenagers and older youth, giving them cost effective, engaging things that don't cost, yeah.

Okay.

A couple of comments of my own.

I wanted to thank Brandon Collins.

Brandon, I totally agree.

We should not be looking at cuts in transit service.

We should be looking at ways to expand.

I think your idea about late night service has a lot of merit.

Obviously there's price tags associated with any expansions of service, but I think that's one I'd like to take a look at for our next budget cycle.

And I appreciate, I don't know if they're still here, but Ms. Kance and Ms. Sullivan for coming forward and talking about the importance of the bus service in their neighborhood.

And again, let's not reduce service.

Let's maintain if not expand service.

Scott Beyer,

You made an excellent point which is that creative urban infill higher density development does go hand in hand with preservation of not only our rural areas but also our single family neighborhoods and I fully agree with that.

And I also want to thank all the bicyclists who came out and spoke.

We are going to be talking about that further.

It's a real thrill to have so many people who are mobilized and vocal on this issue because that's what it's going to take to keep the pace of change happening.

Alright, so we're now going to move on to our consent agenda for tonight.

Item A of our consent agenda is minutes of May 2nd.

Item B is an appropriation of $5,625 downtown mall and directional signage purchases, second of two readings.

Item C, an appropriation of $22,840 City Hall window damage appropriation and settlement from Nautilus Insurance Company, second of two readings.

Item D, an appropriation of $22,500, police department reimbursed overtime, second of two readings.

Item E, an appropriation of $187,500, Market Street parking garage replacement of park equipment, first of two readings.

Item F, an appropriation of $23,000, 2010 State Homeland Security Program grant hazmat, first of two readings.

Item G, resolution supporting the moratorium on uranium mining in Virginia, first of one reading.

Item H, a resolution, initiation of text change regarding university related issues, first of one reading.

Item I, a resolution, initiation of zoning text and map amendments, 104 Stadium Road, first of one reading.

Item J, an ordinance, unzoned property, second of two readings.

Item K, an ordinance abandonment of storm drain easement, second of two readings.

And item L, an ordinance 14 and under helmet ordinance, first of two readings.

Mr. Mayor, I do not want to remove any item but I would make comment on the

Okay, we will remove item L, 1400 Helmet Ordinance and take that up at the end of our meeting tonight.

Sure.

Is there a second?

Second.

Been moved and seconded.

Any further discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

It passes unanimously.

So the resolution that was referred to regards, we currently in the Commonwealth of Virginia have a moratorium on uranium mining.

that's been in place since 1983, I believe.

However, there is a movement afoot to undo that moratorium and a number of localities around the Commonwealth, including Culpeper, Fauquier County, Floyd County, Madison County, Orange County, Patrick County have all been identified as potential sites for uranium mining in addition to Pennsylvania County.

and so now there's effort underway to have localities in the Commonwealth pass resolutions like this upholding the moratorium given some of the impacts of uranium mining

Let's see here.

And I'll just read a couple of sections.

Whereas this council is convinced that the social and psychological effect of uranium mining will be unquestionably negative without regard to the assurances and any study of the safety of uranium mining and will result in business, industry and population deciding to locate in areas other than those in proximity to uranium mining.

And whereas such decisions by prospective business, industry and residents will diminish and potentially destroy the economic development efforts of our entire region,

and will sacrifice our economic future including business recruitment, real estate values and retention of youth in our communities with all the social stresses and ills attended upon such economic decline merely for the sake of the limited number of jobs directly created by uranium mining.

whereas such destructive effects upon the efforts to improve the economy of this region will result in additional strain upon the financial resources of local, state and federal governments to increase expenditures on social services programs, financial assistance and subsidies and will render the millions already spent in economic development ineffective.

Now therefore be it resolved that the City Council of Charlottesville supports the continuation of the moratorium on uranium mining in Virginia

and believes that uranium mining in southern Virginia would be destructive to its people and economy and detrimental to the people and economy of Virginia as a whole.

So we are now going to move on to a public hearing and ordinance regarding, relating to utility rates.

Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, Mr. City Manager, I'd like to provide a brief overview of the report that was issued about two weeks ago to the council members and also on the website available to the public.

I'd like to first of all introduce Ms. Sharon O'Hare and Ms. Lauren Hildebrand.

If you have any questions during the presentation, if you all would stand please.

They are here to back me up and hopefully answer the questions for you.

Thank you.

The water rates in the book are composite rates.

Some are and one are combined.

And the average household user, residential user who uses 478 cubic feet or 3,575 gallons, the rate is proposed to go from $24.82 to $24.89 or a seven cent increase, which is about three tenths of one percent.

I happened to check mine and I was at 3,100 gallons, so I think I'm a little bit less than the average.

That's a household of four, by the way.

For each 1,000 CF, and we use 1,000 CF because that's the way the ordinance is structured.

It makes it easy.

The increase would be from 47.56 to 47.70, or 14 cents per month, which is there again, three-tenths of one percent increase.

The chart in the book on page 15

of the proposed utility report details what factors are actually causing this seven cent increase in the water rate.

The increase from Rivanna this year was only two tenths of one percent.

So the base rate of $43.56 from last year was increased by five cents because of the Rivanna increase to the city, the wholesale increase.

The use of rate stabilization funds of $375,000 decreased the base rate by $1.14, which therefore made it $42.47 at that point.

Changes in operating expenses, primarily debt service, increased the rate again by $1.74 to $44.21.

And an overall increase in sales volume when you look at the budget for 12 and the budget for 11

There's an increased projection in sales volume which is based on what the projections are for the remainder of this year and year to date.

So that's up about 3%.

The volume increase is virtually all attributed to UVA.

Budget versus budget, 11 to 12.

That volume increase actually decreased the rate by 51% and that brings us to the 4370 that we're proposing which is the 7 cent increase for water.

That was a dollar and fourteen cents, so it would have gone up a dollar and fourteen plus seven or a dollar and twenty-one cents.

Okay.

At the same format for sewer rate, the average single family residential household using 478 cubic feet, or 35, 175 gallons.

The proposed increase is from 24.15, which is the current rate, to 25.37, or $1.22, which is a 5.05% increase.

For each $1,000 of CF, there again because of the ordinance, the increase would be $2.54, or a 5.5% increase.

The chart on page 32 again goes through how we started with the base rate.

That was in 2011 and the proposal for 2012.

The Rivanna rate, the wholesale rate for sewer was an increase of 10.46%, which is a fairly substantial increase.

And that was primarily because of increased debt service and the Rivanna budget.

That actually increased the rate by $2.84 to $45.

The rate stabilization funds decrease the rate by $2.90 and we use $750,000 in the rate stabilization fund for the sewer.

Changes in the operating expenses, they're again primarily debt, increase the rate by $2.44 and a decrease in volume, increase the rate by $0.16, so the actual recommended proposed budget was $44.70.

or a $1.22 or 5% increase.

Any questions on sewer at this point?

We also, over the last four years, we've done five-year forecasts.

And the five-year forecast for, well the five-year budget for the CIP for water was $25 million.

I'm sorry, it's the seven years from 2009 to 2016.

and for sewer it's $37 million and you can imagine with issuing bonds for these you're talking over the tune of six years about $2.5 million in debt service for water and about $3.7 million in debt service for sewer which is being added to the rates.

That's just the city debt service portion of it.

It's going to be our challenge as it has been over the last several years because of the increases in debt service that we try to stabilize the rates and that's why we call it a rate stabilization fund.

and right now if you look at the five year forecast for water and sewer you'll see about a two percent increase which is just a projection at this point for water and you'll see a close to an eight percent increase for sewer.

Sewer, if you recall, has a much larger capital budget on the Rivanna side than the water does, the water budget does.

And the same with the city, the sewer capital projects is about ten million dollars higher than the water budget.

That's on page 67, I think.

Going to the gas utility.

The gas utility is proposed to actually decrease by 1.13% for the average user from

105.85 to 104.65.

If you recall last year the rate actually increased by 6.24% and that was primarily because gas sales went down.

This year we're projecting gas sales to go up and that's the big reason why the actual cost of gas is declining.

The factors, there's just two factors really that are impacting the gas rate and that's the increase in operating expenses which causes the rate to go from 105 to 108

and also there's an increase in volume which causes the rate to go down.

More sales to cover basically the fixed costs.

One of the things I think we should mention is that a big part of the gas cost is what gas costs us.

If we pay a dollar for gas, we pass that cost on to the consumer.

And if you look at over the last, I think, several years, I think I have a chart here,

You'll see like in the low in May of 2009 the average customer was paying $100.84.

Well gas costs changed dramatically between 2009 and 2008 because in July 2008 that same customer using the same volume was paying $177 a month.

This proposal is $104 a month.

Now if gas costs goes up during the year, that $104 will go up during the year.

but we've been, at least the last two years, very stable and lower gas prices than the last three or four years.

So that's the information I wanted to provide tonight.

If there's any questions, I'm here.

Back in 2008, we actually started charging a facility fee.

Some people refer to it as a connection fee.

And it was $800 per utility for people coming in and doing new homes in the city, that type of thing.

In 2000 and now, we increase that fee from a total of $1600 for both utilities to about $6000 for both utilities.

And that's for basically a single family home.

We're taking all of that money and putting it into a separate fund.

and the reason we did that was because we knew debt service was going to increase dramatically over the next several years so we can take that money and offset that increase in debt service and try to stabilize the rates over the long term so we don't have a 10% increase one year, you know, a 6% decrease in next year and so forth.

For the average residential user, the rate is a 7 cent increase for water, it's about a 22 cent increase for sewer, and there's a decrease in gas

Second question.

I have been asked by a number of people why the city does not charge more to people who are using more and more gas or water or sewer.

In order to discourage people to use these utilities, why should we use some kind of graduated rate?

While we don't charge people more for using a higher amount, there's nothing that says you don't have to do it.

Are you talking about a tier rate structure?

Yes, yes.

Ms. O'Hare is a tier rate expert.

My name is Sharon O'Hare.

I'm the assistant finance director.

We did look at tiered rates this year, particularly because Albemarle County uses them and they're currently using a four-tiered rate system.

But what we found is that our citizenry and our customer base is very different than Albemarle County.

Typically, when tiered rates are applied, they're only applied to single-family residential.

The reason for that is we don't want to penalize multifamily units for having multiple units and potentially multiple individuals living in each unit.

the higher the consumption they would use, the more they would be charged and they would be penalized for that.

We also don't want to penalize economic development and those businesses that might require a great deal of water for manufacturing, for example, would not be encouraged to move into a locality with no tiered rates.

Given that fact, only about 30% of our volume of consumption in the city of Charlottesville is single-family residential.

So if our motivation was for conservation and to encourage that,

We'd only be targeting about 30% of those individuals.

and Charlottesville really has a relatively high poverty rate compared to other jurisdictions, other peer communities and potentially we could be discouraging those individuals for water consumption as well by having those tiered rates.

When we look at Albemarle County, their single family homes are about 50% of their total consumption so it makes more sense for them.

We're gonna be looking at a different type of structure for next year, perhaps expanding the seasonal rates that we have to encourage individuals

Other questions before we open the public hearing?

Thank you, Mr. Ray.

We will now open the public hearing.

Nobody has signed up to speak.

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

Good evening mayor and city council.

I'm Bruce Edmonds of the Willmills on the tax map, that's neighborhood 24.

I'm also the owner of a small business located downtown, Environmental Research Solutions.

I'm the principal investigator.

I'm here tonight to talk about, I want you to please consider no on the tax increase for water and sewer bills.

reject the staff recommendation for rate hike on our water and sewer bills.

And I quote, it is premature to raise these rates until the county cost share agreement on the 50 year water supply plan is finalized.

City taxpayers should not have to pay for the county 50 year growth plan.

And I ask you to at least defer a vote on this rate increase for the water and sewer portion until after the next election.

Thank you, Mr. Edmonds.

Anybody else like to speak?

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Councillors.

Collette Hall, 101 Robertson Lane.

Here we are again, another public hearing for another increase in utility rates.

repeating the same action over and over again and expecting a different result.

Isn't that close to the definition of insanity?

Are ratepayers insane to ask for a halt to rate increases?

No, we are here to direct our elected officials.

Why is it that the Albemarle County Service Authority decided not to raise rates on this same increase by RWSA?

Why is it that city taxpayers are continually subject to utility rate increases?

Water and sewer are not choices for city residents.

I can't tell them to stop water coming to my house so I can rely on well water.

Can I?

Can I drill a well in my front yard?

Can I put in my own septic system, is it possible with the current city code?

The answer appears that when it comes to water and sewer service, the Charlottesville residents are at the mercy of local government or perhaps at the mercy of RWSA.

This increase is only the tip of the iceberg.

Last week the Planning Commission passed a revision to the steep slope ordinance.

Did they take into consideration that the EPA is putting harsh regulations on Virginia localities due to mandatory Chesapeake Bay remediation by using point sourcing?

Did they not realize that local point sourcing is the beginning of the equation?

The EPA will expect RWSA to spend millions more to further treat storm and waste sewer water.

I can extrapolate to the future cost of utilities.

We all know the elephant in the room is the future storm water rate.

Once the cost of that situation is showered on us, this may look like child's play.

Nevertheless, something's got to give.

What will give?

Answer.

Rate payer's ability to pay.

Will it come down to paying for food or utilities?

Has it already?

Thank you, Ms. Hall.

Good evening.

DeeDee Smith, 2652 Jefferson Park Circle.

My, a year goes by quickly, doesn't it?

It was just a year ago.

I was here with a very same concern I have this year.

Last year I was concerned that you were subsidizing water rates at a higher rate than you were the year before.

I believe it went from a combined $300,000 to $500,000.

This year I was shocked to see that the rate stabilization for water, which was $200,000 last year, is now $375,000.

Last year the rate stabilization for sewer was $300,000.

It is $750,000 this year.

This is well over a million dollars in combined

Now, I appreciate the sentiment that you're trying to stabilize rates, but we appear to be digging ourselves deeper and deeper into this requirement that we subsidize these rates.

Is it that we need to pay last year's and more on top of each year?

It appears that way, although it may be something else.

But I appreciate the question about where does this money come from?

It comes from connection fees, it sounds like.

We call them facility fees.

Well, one of the things, interestingly, in the last Albemarle County Service Authority that they noted was one of the problems with paying these off with connection fees is it really discourages affordable housing.

As you're upping, we just heard it went up from 800 to 6,000.

And that's a real burden.

And of course, we don't have

the limitless growth potential that Albemarle County, I mean, really should we be depending on these rates?

Of course, the other concern is this, what it effectively does is hide the true cost of what is happening in our water and sewer situation.

And of course, we haven't even gotten into the debt with the new water supply plan.

I mean, this has nothing to do with that.

So what is going to happen?

And so, I mean, I ask you too,

Focus down.

This isn't fair to our residents.

Our residents don't have a clue what you're paying for our water and sewer.

And it doesn't, of course, even begin to talk about the true cost, the cost of the loss of city assets that is also built in to what you all have agreed to do with the water plan.

Hi, I'm Katie Chester, I live at 1915 East Market and I just wanted to respond to the explanation about the tiered rates, which made absolutely no sense to me because to say that only 30%

of the coverage area single homes.

Well, why is it that only private individuals have to be educated on how to deal with our resources?

Why on earth shouldn't businesses also be encouraged to use our resources more sparingly?

Thank you, Ms. Chester.

Is there anybody else who would like to speak?

I'm Betty Mooney of City Resident.

I also would like to ask you not to vote for this rate increase.

Since 2002, our water rates have been going up and up and up in our sewer rates, and yet we're using less and less water.

What sense does it make if we're using less and less water, not only to be increasing our rates, but as Ms. Smith said, you haven't seen nothing yet because they haven't even started borrowing the money if they try to implement this huge dam plan.

We don't need a new dam and we don't need higher rates.

Here's what the Albemarle Service Authority said.

For the second year in a row, they are not raising their rates.

Quote, we wanted to remain mindful of the area's continued economic distress.

said Lisa Breeden, Finance Director for the Elmore County Service Authority.

So they are being mindful of this.

How are you protecting your city residents?

We don't have a cost share yet for the water plan and yet in your report it shows that the water rate increase is going in part

to pay for the water plan.

Why wouldn't you wait until you really know if, as the county says, they're going to pay for growth.

You haven't seen a cost share plan yet.

We haven't seen a cost share plan.

We ask you, don't go and vote a higher rate on us yet if you don't even know what this is paying for or what you're paying for.

This is fiscally irresponsible of our elected officials to vote for this rate increase until they have that information in hand.

And if this happens in this city with so many smart people and so many smart advisors, I don't know where this is going to lead, as Ms. Hall said.

It's getting so discouraging.

I know there's citizens in this town who can't pay, I was told by one of your financial directors, cannot pay their utility bills now.

They can't pay them.

They're getting rate relief.

So how can you increase this?

You're going to have more and more people needing more and more relief, and yet you're stabilizing rates.

I mean, how are you going to continue this?

It's not sustainable.

So don't, until you have more information about your cost share, go and vote for any rate increase tonight.

Thank you, Ms. Miller.

Anybody else like to speak?

All right, we're going to close the public hearing on this matter.

I'd like to make a couple of comments based on the public hearing.

And to Ms. Chester, I'll try to provide another explanation.

So imagine this.

Someone that can only afford to live in the city if they can rent.

And imagine that person has a large family.

that person is now beholding to that landlord and the living facility, the living building, apartment that the landlord provides.

If the landlord is not interested in having the infrastructure within that home that would allow someone to conserve water or the appliances that would encourage conservation of water, that renter

who already has a hard enough time finding a place to rent within the city now has to pay a higher utility cost

mostly based on just the house that they live in.

And a lot of people in our city just don't have very many options.

And so that disproportionately affects a poorer person within a household that has a large family.

And also, that's the other thing.

We had to figure out a way that we can have tiered rates.

But for people that choose to have large families, it doesn't.

Punish them, but it still allows them the same opportunity to be able to conserve water.

So kind of think of it that way, because if you have a family with three little ones, you know how many baths that's going to require.

You know, just the way the household is set up.

But I think you also brought up a very good point, and that's the importance of having

Conservation information equitable.

Other comments by counselors?

I know we have this before us tonight on the first of two readings, so we're not actually taking a vote tonight, but I do tend to agree with those, or I do agree with those who urged us not to adopt the higher rates, particularly regarding the water issue, partly because we don't have the cost allocation

determined yet, and partly because, you know, I'll restate my long-held concern about building a water system that's oversized and overpriced.

The actual, the net increase is very modest that we're looking at, but that's because, as Ms. Smith and others noted, there's a heavy amount of subsidy being built in to offset the actual increase, the gross increase.

I have a question before we do that, because I did want to make a comment, I did agree with

with the comments that Bruce Edmonds made with the exception of deferring it until the next council.

I'd like to ask a question to staff.

I certainly don't know that.

I mean, there could be several reasons, but, you know, it's just pure supposition at my point.

I know a couple years ago they changed the tiered structure, and one of the reasons may be that they collected more than they thought they were going to collect.

Therefore, they don't need to increase the rate because the rates are already structured to cover their operating expenses.

They could be using the increases in their facility fees to offset this.

There are various reasons.

I think it's a good question for Albemarle County.

Why?

But you'd have to really examine their financial statements to look at their cash flows and really see what's going on over the last couple of years as to why they don't need to do that.

They certainly cannot operate at a loss.

The city of Charlottesville actually budgets to break even.

They sell revenue bonds.

They have to budget a profit.

And I've expressed concern about our stabilization fund the last couple of years when this subject has come up because I feel like it does make the financial part of this less transparent.

And people feel like the system's costing less than it actually is because we're taking money from connection fees and using it to subsidize.

Using the word stabilization fund, does that imply that some of your projections anticipate years where there'd be a decrease based on debt service?

It's more of a how much is increasing every year.

The idea of stabilization funds, you can call it what you want.

You can call it excess cash flow.

That's just a term we use, a stabilization fund.

So rates don't go up one year and down the next.

It's kind of an even change in the rates.

But the whole idea was that we knew debt service was going to increase dramatically.

If you look at sewer in the book, it goes from I think $1.6 million in

to $3.3 million in 2016.

Well, how are you going to pay for that?

You're going to have to pay for it.

The rate payers have to pay for it or you take this basically new fee we established in 2009 and pay for it with that.

And it's been suggested and the mayor said he agrees with the idea of not passing this ordinance.

For water we have to look at the impact, 7 cents impact.

It's going to be basically a financial loss because we budget to break even.

It's as simple as that.

On the sewer side it would be more of a financial loss.

We would have to look at the numbers and see how much money we'd actually lose.

And what would happen was, in order to do that, that would basically, in my

I can certainly prepare for the, within the next few days, what impacts that would have

on the bottom line because as I said we budget to break even.

So what I'd like to do is I'd like to, you know, this is for a second reading we'll have a full council at our next meeting, I'd like to move this ordinance but I would like to ask you in the meantime to detail for us what would the effects be of not passing an ordinance.

And then secondly if there is any public domain information on

The water rate increase is only 7 cents for the average customer.

Five of that seven cents was Rivanna because of their increase.

Their increase was very small, like three tenths of one percent.

I would be really interested in finding out the information that Dr. Brown has asked for before the next meeting so that we can actually have a vote on this.

We can have a more intelligent discussion.

I just wanted to, I agree with that, but I have one more caveat with that.

I think that's fine.

We actually, the rates go into effect with July consumption, so the August bills actually has it on there.

I don't have an issue with that.

Okay.

It was unseconded.

Okay.

Thank you very much, Mr. Gray.

Next item on our agenda is a public hearing relating to the Rivanna Pumping Station before us tonight.

Mayor and Councillors,

At the last council meeting, council requested they were interested in having a tour of the potential pump station sites, and Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority planned that tour last week.

In your board packages are the handouts that were given at the tour, which has mapping for the existing site A, which is located in Riverview Park.

Site C was one we looked at when we went across, when we were at Willen Mills, and we were looking across at the Moores Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant site.

and that was at the end of Market Street.

I believe it was noted during the tour that this is the most difficult site to construct with complications from the existing railroad and close proximity to homes for construction of the gravity sewer line.

We also looked at site D which was across and down the river from the existing pump station site in Riverview Park.

On March 7th, council gave approval to consider option D for the location of the pump station which is across the Rivanna River.

Since that vote, stakeholders have expressed concerns about option D. At its last meeting, the Rivanna board voted to move option C, or a hybrid of option C, forward contingent of the approval of City Council.

Some folks during the tour asked about the feasibility of shifting site C on the plant site away from Woollen Mills

away from the mills site and tunneling from the gravity sewer from the pump station to the plant site.

And Rivanna has asked their engineer, Hayes and Sawyer, to take a preliminary look at this option.

And Tom Frederick, when I'm finished, will give a little initial thoughts based on some input he got from Hayes and Sawyer today.

To summarize the preliminary cost, option A is $25 million, option C is $37 million, and D is $34 million.

To summarize the preliminary cost, option A, and these were conducted by Hazen and Sawyer, option A is $25 million, C is $37 million, and D is $34 million.

Some of you also asked during the tour about the schedule for a decision on the pump station site.

In Rivanna's Department of Environmental Quality consent order, it is required that a plan and schedule be submitted for the pump station in late December.

This project is included in the consent order because due to wet weather flows, the pump station needs to be expanded.

During wet weather events, there's sanitary sewer overflows that occur in Riverview Park currently because the pump station does not have sufficient capacity.

It is estimated the engineer can finish the study work if they get the go ahead in 12 weeks and the study results can be evaluated in late August.

If the results are not satisfactory and another option has to be evaluated, adding 12 weeks to the schedule would put it in late November, but that really doesn't allow for any discussions from various government agencies that you might want to have and it kind of pushes right up against the December deadline.

Staff was requesting direction from council what options are worthy of initial design efforts.

to consider what some call a, someone called option E, we tend to look at it as maybe a variation of concept C. Since it's still a concept and concept C is basically extending the gravity line

to the wastewater treatment plant site somewhere near the compost yard and build a pump station at that location.

And this variation really fits that same concept.

What would be a little bit different is it would, as Ms. Hildebrand mentioned, intersect the gravity line near the existing pump station and through a tunnel would go 2,000 feet of tunnel to the wastewater treatment plant site and put a pump station there.

Hazen Sawyer has given in the last week very preliminary look at this issue.

As I mentioned, it's 2,000 feet long.

It would be at one point 90 feet deep in the ground, so it is truly a tunnel and not any other type of construction.

Right now it's unknown what type of geological features would be encountered at that depth.

Some presume it would be hard rock, but there's a need to know more about the geology in order to really give a tight estimate to the project.

At this point what Hazen and Sawyer has told us is it's definitely not on the low end of costs.

Comparing the options, you just heard $25 million, $34 million, and $37 million.

It's too early to tell or to rule out in their mind if it can be competitive with the $37 million that was put out for Concept C. It is definitely not going to be competitive with the lower priced alternatives I mentioned.

We also inquired with them when they said a great deal of geotechnical explorations would need to be done to understand the geology deep in the ground where the tunnel would be located.

We asked them for some information on how much that might cost.

They did get back with us late this afternoon.

By comparison, when we were looking at studying option D, the consultant said to go to the next phase of preliminary design on that option would cost about $120,000.

and then we asked them if we added C or added A and roughly it was an additional $100,000 for either or both per option of those two additional options.

They told us that because of the significant need for geotechnical information for a tunnel and because that information is deep in the ground requiring

Long and deep cores into rock similar to the kind of geotechnical work that was done for the dam, it would be significantly more and the estimate they came up with this afternoon, late this afternoon was if you want to study this variation of concept C with the 2,000 foot tunnel, the next phase of work alone would cost $430,000 of engineering effort.

Most of that really is not the engineering.

Most of that is actually getting out with the drill and drilling a series of deep holes in the ground to establish what the condition of the geology was at the depth of the tunnel.

Early this morning I received an email from Mr. Jones that some citizens were actually looking at still another option that they were considering and that option that was described to me was to extend the gravity line near the existing Rivanna pump station toward the river and then actually follow the river channel and go under the river for some distance and then turn back in.

We had limited amount of time just today to begin to look at that option but it became pretty clear just from our conversations with the consultant and they had a conversation with the Corps of Engineers that this would be a challenging option from an environmental perspective and one that the staff does not recommend we pursue.

The only way to avoid some significant stream impacts on the river by such an option would be to tunnel under the river so that you don't disturb the stream bed or disturb the stream banks.

If you're going to explore a tunnel, which we know is going to be expensive to begin with, the better location for the tunnel is the variation of concept C not going out to the river because that's a longer distance of tunnel.

Questions for Mr. Frederick or Ms. Hildebrand for that matter before we open the public hearing?

All right, thank you very much.

We do have a number of people who signed up to speak and others will have an opportunity to do so as well.

And again, when you come forward, please state your name and address and keep your comments to three minutes.

I'm Joanna Salidas and I live at 129 Goodman Street.

I hope that I will be joining many tonight in saying that options A, B, and C are completely unacceptable.

But I would like to go further and ask that you seriously re-evaluate whether we need to be building this giant new sewage station at all.

This station is being built to accommodate five times the amount of sewage currently generated, yet we're told that the expansion has nothing to do with new development.

We apparently need this expansion to handle the extra load of wastewater that we get with heavy rains due to water flowing into leaking pipes.

We're told that this huge new station is the most economical choice because the price tag for fixing the pipes, which of course would also prevent raw sewage from flowing out, is two billion dollars.

Unfortunately, due to recent events in local government, I question this price tag.

I've noticed two trends lately.

First, local government has been

favoring building new infrastructure over maintaining older infrastructure.

Second, city assets and land are being used to directly support development in the county.

Both of these trends are illustrated by the recent water and sewer developments.

We are poised to build a giant new dam at Ragged Mountain Natural Area, destroying city-owned forests, even though the RWSA's Tom Frederick

has acknowledged without directly saying so that we could get just as much water from dredging South Fork Rivanna Reservoir as we could with the 30 foot rise.

Then, why are we building the new dam?

The water debate got started in completely the wrong direction by two numbers, the grossly inflated price tag for dredging and the inflated water demand estimate.

I cannot help but wonder whether the $2 billion estimate to repair the leaking pipes is the same kind of number chosen to steer decision making in the direction of new infrastructure.

You can choose your numbers by choosing the parameters covered.

For example, I'm sure that if every single leak in every single pipe were plugged with chewing gum and changed daily forever, that it would cost at least $2 billion.

But what would it cost to use the most appropriate technology available for a satisfactory solution with the necessary critical questions asked?

Why would new infrastructure be favored over maintenance?

In trying to make sense out of nonsense, my conclusion is that it may be a way to shift the cost of new development in the county onto the backs of city rate and taxpayers.

The new water and sewer rates are an example.

By calling new capacity, whether for water or sewage, maintenance, the city pays more.

Once the new capacity is there, though, who's going to use it?

It's too easy to say in the future when more capacity is needed for development that it's time to fix the pipes, which would primarily be the city's financial responsibility.

In summary, I have no problem with increasing capacity for planned development if we call a spade a spade and development in the county is paid for by the financial and environmental resources of those in the county.

We hear a lot of talk about development paying its own way, but I'm seeing new capacity added in the name of maintenance

Peter Castiglione is not here.

Hi, Brandon Collins, 536 Mead Avenue.

I live on a part of Mead that's kind of right where a bunch of different neighborhoods kind of intersect.

Not even actually sure I'm in the Woolen Mills neighborhood particularly, but we smell it.

You know, it smells like the Woolen Mills neighborhood.

And it's been like since I've been down there.

And this is something that folks down there have been dealing with for a very, very long time.

What I've been really excited to see is the Willam Mills Neighborhood Association being actively engaged on this issue and I really hope you all listen to what those folks have to say.

I know you've put attention on the neighborhoods having a little more control over their neighborhoods and this is the time that it really counts.

You know, and it really raises

questions about the process about which option you guys are trying to study and what you're moving forward with when you've got the folks in the neighborhood saying option D is the least worst of the options

and then saying, well, let's go with option C and think about doing a study for that based on the concerns of other interested parties.

I think the folks who are most interested in this are the folks who live in Willing Mills neighborhood.

And what I'm hearing is that there may be other alternatives to option D. Option D is the least worst, and that's what folks are saying.

In any event, option D

may be a new idea.

I hope you can take some time, think about some other alternatives, and make sure there are adequate studies about the impact on air quality, water quality, the historic and cultural value of the neighborhood, economic impact, and of course the total cost.

But that should also include the studies.

You know, what Joanna just said,

I think that's something you guys ought to look into immediately and think about.

Thanks.

Thank you, Ms. Collins.

Good evening, counselors.

Thank you very much.

First, I'd like to say once again for taking option A off the table.

A wonderful thing to do.

It was a horrible idea, and that was immediately understood by everyone that saw it.

It was kind of a no-brainer.

Unfortunately, option A still seems to be rearing its head again and again.

We've been threatened with it on several occasions, and we need to think about that as we move forward.

How are we going to stop the threat from coming back?

It's being hung over our heads that if we don't cooperate, that's what's going to happen to us.

From the beginning, we applied the same critical standards to option C that we did to option A.

It harmed the neighborhood.

But the major difference was we weren't really talking about option C at all, any of us were, because it was the most expensive.

From an engineering perspective, it was very challenging, lots of tricky easements and that sort of thing, and it also had a real potential for cost overruns.

So as far as everyone's been concerned, option C was a non-starter.

We still believe it's a non-starter.

Like option A, option C places the onus squarely on a small group of people to support the enormous burden of the combined sewage and wastewater infrastructure that benefits City, County and UVA.

There are many good reasons why we have opposed

both of these options from the very beginning.

After bearing the brunt of the RWSA's activities in our midst for decades, the broken promises and the repeated application of band-aid solutions that come only after prolonged begging by the neighborhood, there's absolutely no reason why we should tolerate additional enormous burden from them.

Enough is enough.

Regarding State Farm and Option D, why is a business like State Farm that will be minimally impacted under Option D allowed to object and immediately that option's taken off the table?

But our residential neighborhood is expected to take the hit over and over and over again.

What I would like to know is, is this a reflection of how some of our public officials feel about our residential neighborhoods?

You've received a lot of information about how horribly damaging Option C would be.

You've toured, you've seen how beautiful that area is.

I don't feel like I should go down the line here of all about the easements and what it would require.

I think that's public knowledge now.

but option C is going to wreak havoc on people's yards, it's going to wreak havoc on trees, it's going to wreak havoc on the environment, it's going to cause erosion, it's going to wreak havoc on our historic resources.

That is one of the most historic areas in the entire city right there and our neighborhood is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the entire city and that area is a beautiful gem.

The owner of the mill property, Presley Thatch, has been an extraordinary neighbor, he and his family, for many decades.

What he could have done with that 13-acre property could have harmed our neighborhood irrevocably.

But he has chosen to keep the mill as it is and run a responsible business that hasn't harmed any of us.

Any other owner would have torn down the mill, they would have asphalted the entire thing, harming Moore's Creek, they would have put up cheap metal buildings and then we would have had industrial traffic running back and forth through our narrow streets all day long.

We have to listen to him, we have to listen to his interests and what he needs to do with his property and putting a stinking sewage treatment plant right there

is not going to help him at all.

A major issue has been the lack of a clear process that utilizes the necessary criteria for decision making.

Option C had the least amount of study and thought put into it.

The impacted property owners were never contacted by the RWSA to speak about this, and it's the most foolhardy and costly, yet it was the option chosen.

Option D is not perfect but we need to study that and in addition to E and F we want A and C off the table and we want them off the table permanently and we support three options and we're against two bad ideas and I would like the people who support us in this goal to please stand.

Hi, I'm Katie Chester and I'm still at 1915 East Market.

This process has really outraged me.

We started out this meeting recognizing people from the public works for their service and maintaining the quality of life in this world-class city, but I don't understand

how the quality of life in a world-class city continues to tolerate building sewage pumping stations in residential neighborhoods.

Where it is now was a huge mistake.

Option C is more of the same.

Right across the street is the old mill buildings and

They are drop dead, the most gorgeous buildings in the city.

They're gorgeous.

And the 13 acres, it's like an oasis.

Two miles, no, they're not developed yet, but you put that stinking station there and you've blown it.

And once the smell is there, it trumps everything.

How would you like to work next to someone who stinks?

That's what everyone complains about.

You get in an elevator and someone's put on too much perfume.

Smell trumps everything.

It's also really frustrating to hear that the price of A is this, the price of C is this, and the price of D is this, and the only thing that's quoted is money.

Well, what about the environmental impact, the number of people that are going to be affected and the historical structures?

How can you just quote money and not quote the other things when it's a world-class city to live in because we treasure our quality of life?

Doesn't make sense to me.

What has been really frustrating is the process, and I feel like being threatened with running out of, we can't add another 12 weeks, just begs the question, why is the process being run by people who have never done a, never built one of these stations before?

Why can't we get a consultant that is completely impartial, including an engineering company that is completely impartial, that has done this before?

the architecture professor that was just up here titled this thing learning from other cities or something.

Let's do the same thing.

We should not have a learning curve on this project.

It is too big for us to be making mistakes along the way.

And the idea that some of this is involving personalities or politics stuns me because this project is gonna outlast all of us.

How can we be so small?

I really think that we deserve better and the criteria keeps changing.

If State Farm can trump D, how come a whole bunch of people in the woolen mills can't trump C?

If you're willing to study C, the same criteria would prompt you to study D.

If C-Hybrid or E will cost $430,000 and oh my God, add 12 weeks, don't we deserve it?

Deserve to find the best solution?

I really think we can do better than this.

And I'd really like a process where the criteria stays the same, where it is being, our information comes from impartial professionals who have done this before.

Thank you, Ms. Judson.

Hello Mr. Mayor, Council.

My name is Bill Herrick.

I'm at 1915 East Market also.

I live in probably one of the most unique buildings in the whole city.

I have a rock wall when you walk into our atrium.

There's part of the wall that's rock.

It's actually part of the railroad track that runs right there.

Option C, if they were to, or C hybrid, to dig 90 feet down, 100 feet down and big, that would require blasting.

This building that I live in is well over 120 years old.

If they blast in that area, when the railroad, when the train runs by our building, you can feel it.

So if they start blasting in there in a 120 year old building, our building is going to just shake like an earthquake hit.

So that shouldn't be an option at all.

And that's just right across the river from where I live that they're planning on doing this.

So that's going to affect our structure.

First of all, it's going to drop the price, the resale value of the condominium I live in.

Who's going to cover that?

Because if somebody wants to, if I want to sell my place later on and I say, oh, yeah, come on, it's beautiful.

Come look at the most beautiful building.

in all of Charlottesville and they walk in and they say, yeah, but what's that smell?

Have you guys got animals in here?

Oh, no, that's the new sewer plant that they just put across the river from us.

We won't be able to sell ever.

Not that I want to sell, but you've got to think to the future.

The other thing I wanted to mention was that how can a big business, a business, not a person, but a business affect people in a neighborhood?

We're people first, okay?

State Farm has all the money they need.

They got businesses all across this country and in other countries too and they're making money everywhere.

Money should never, ever, ever

beat the concerns of the citizens that live there and pay their taxes and pay their bills on a regular basis because we support this community.

They probably don't even pay taxes.

They probably find a way to get away from paying their taxes every year.

I mean, that's the way big business does it.

I mean, that's a fact.

I'm a small business owner here in town.

I work real hard to support other small businesses.

I believe in our community.

Our community is a strong community because we're all people and we all join together

When things take place, we all get together, we discuss it, and we move forward.

If we stop listening to the people's voice and we listen to business voice, like eliminating option D right off the bat because a business wants it, don't we lose our individuality?

Don't we lose our citizenship?

Don't we lose our community?

Isn't that where we're walking away from?

We've got to work with the people of the community of the Woolen Mills area and anybody else that wants to talk about it and discuss the options that are there.

I mean, it doesn't seem right that we can just walk away from an option that seems most likely for the people that are actually going to have to deal with it on a day-to-day basis.

Would you like to have a potapotty sitting outside of your house when you walked out every morning in the middle of the summer, 90 degree day, getting ready to go outside and ride your bike?

and you walk into a wall of gas, basically.

I don't want that.

I mean, I have it bad enough now.

I mean, on a windy day, it comes right over.

I have a big nine foot tall, big bay window that I look right out over the river.

The river's only about 100 yards away from my window.

I see all the trees and I see the people down there fishing and the little kayakers that come down there.

All that's gonna be gone if you let this option C come through.

because the people aren't going to want to be down there because it's going to stink.

Nobody's going to fish down there no more.

Nobody's going to ride their bikes down to the park anymore.

There aren't going to be kids that want to, people aren't going to want to bring their kids down there to hang out because it's going to stink.

It's not going to be anything that anybody wants to do anymore.

We're going to lose that.

And something I wanted to bring up earlier with the people from the budgeting, he mentioned that there was a 10% increase in the cost of sewer.

At a 10% increase to us, is that going to pay for this pump station when we haven't even

approved it yet and yet they're trying to charge us for it already and then the other thing was was that a seven cent increase isn't really the real increase of what he was talking on the water it was a dollar forty something okay that's that's ridiculous I mean you can wrap up your comments yeah I sure will I just think we need to take a better look at the whole picture of all I mean the sewer the water and the gas because we're not really seeing the whole picture what we're seeing is what certain people really want to do with things and not what are certain companies and and and

Jurisdictions want to do with things rather than the people of this community.

I'm Cindy Cartwright and I live at 1404 East Market.

And I'm actually here representing my kids but it's way past their bedtime so I wouldn't let them come.

So they made a couple posters because they really felt that kids should be heard at this too.

So my daughter Meredith made this.

She's in third grade.

Willam Mills is an historical neighborhood.

If you build the pumping station, it will affect some of the old mill workers cottages.

It will also mean taking down the riparian trees that grow along rivers.

Riparian trees clean out pollution and hold together the riverbank.

Why does the pump station have to be right here?

Can't it be somewhere else other than a historical neighborhood?

And then

The other side says, we do not want to open a US records book and find this.

City with a pumping station closest to where people live, Charlottesville, Virginia.

This is a pumping station built in a historic neighborhood for both them and another county.

Good evening, my name is Evan Hansen and I live at 1404 Burgess Lane in the beautiful Woolen Mills Historical Village.

I come to you as a resident of the neighborhood and as a local pastor and I say that because I want you to know that issues of justice and love for my neighbor are deeply ingrained into the core of my being.

My wife and I have been here for two and a half years.

We saw our house once briefly before we bought it and we're surprised that it came along with a great smell in the neighborhood.

We were quickly over that because we immediately fell in love with the Woolen Mills and since then we've invited many of our friends to move there.

So one of our favorite things to do is walk, and we love walking the streets and seeing the historical houses and the beautiful nature that our neighborhood provides.

And I was shocked when I first saw the existing pumping station down there, and I thought,

In a city like Charlottesville, how could a station like this be put right across the street from someone's house?

And I don't know how long ago that that decision was made, but as I continued on around the bend, I realized, oh, I think I may have a little insight into why this was put here.

Because just up around the corner is a lot of subsidized housing.

It's a very poor neighborhood, city-owned housing.

and I realized that it seems on the outset from this sociologist that a silent few were made to bear the burdens of the city and county a long time ago.

A poor decision was made.

So we're here many years later and the city has an opportunity to right a wrong that was done back then.

A station like this should never have been in a residential area and it certainly should not have been near a city park to boot.

This is not an issue of NIMBY.

I know a lot of people want to throw that around.

We just don't want it in our backyard.

This should be in nobody's backyard.

It has no business anywhere near someone's house.

but we find ourselves here feeling like we're being railroaded into an option that quite literally places the problem in someone's backyard and we're not going to stand for this.

I know you found out that there's no longer a silent few in the historical Woolen Mills Village.

We're loud and we've been angry at times and that's because there's been a lack of trust between us and the RWSA.

We feel like that trust has not been earned and in fact the distrust has been earned.

We feel as though we're being ushered down a familiar path and we're going to do everything we can in our power to stop a poor decision from being made again.

And we're asking the city and the RWSA to make a just decision this time.

And now is the chance for the council and the mayor and the city manager to advocate for us.

Will you?

Will you demand that the RWSA set up an independent commission and design team to study existing options D, E, and F while being open to new proposals and seeking other options?

This commission would need clear guidelines regarding what the city, county, and residents of the Woolen Mills Historical Village are willing to accept with regard to its impact on residences, historical residences, environmentally sensitive areas, and the annexation of properties.

Will you allow us to have the same voice that it seems State Farm has?

All it took was a quick word from them and it seems like everyone is running and trying to appease them.

Please give our voice that same weight.

We deserve it.

It's only right.

It's only just.

So will you be the voice we elected you to be?

Will you speak on our behalf?

Will you stop another injustice from being done?

Thank you.

That's the last person who signed up to speak.

Is there anybody else in the audience tonight?

Good evening, Councillors.

Collette Hall, 101 Robertson Lane.

I don't live in Woolen Mills.

I live in the North Downtown neighborhood.

North Downtown will be the neighborhood most impacted if the McIntire Road extended, that is the road through the park, and the 250 interchange is built.

Therefore, I can empathize with the historic Woolen Mills area having such a negative impact of a new and larger pump station being built in their neighborhood.

Why is it always the city that must bow to county wishes?

The county is huge.

There surely must be land in the county to provide land for this new pump station.

The county is promoting growth.

Let them finally be responsible for some of its negative effect.

Thank you, Ms. Holland.

Mr. Mayor and Councillors, my name is Presley Fatch and I own a moving company security storage in Van Lines that is located at the end of Market Street in the old Woollen Mills.

I've been running that business for 30 years and we have a 13 acre plot that is zoned light industrial.

During that 30 year time period, I've seen our neighborhood, and I refer to it as our neighborhood.

We get along pretty well.

I've seen it evolve from what used to be a place where people would speed down the street, come into our parking lot at the end of the area and do their hangout until midnight at night, dump beer cans, and that was sort of the standard operating procedure for the area.

Since that time period,

The neighborhood has really worked hard to maintain and nurture its historic value.

And the neighborhood has really improved.

It doesn't take anybody to go into that neighborhood and see just how valuable it is.

The Charlottesville aspect of it has gotten a historic designation and it really is a major improvement.

I need to let you know that as the owner of that 13 acre plot,

If you all choose to use Section C or the Plan C that is directly in line with our woolen mills, and I'm going to say our woolen mills because the woolen mills is the focus in fact of why that neighborhood is there.

That neighborhood was built by the owners of the woolen mills.

If you use section option C as the alternative, that removes the ability for us to use more historic style renovation in a possible development, future development of that facility.

Our facility is a four-story facility that looks down right over the site and it's one of the last structures in the urban ring that lends itself to loft-style residential apartment, residential areas.

If you take it and put a three-story

Smelly Sewage Treatment Plant right across the street in the floodplain, right across Morris Creek in the floodplain.

That's going to make it very, very unlikely that we will go the residential route and in the future development.

We are a zone light industry.

We would have the ability to go to a much more commercial basis, possibly tear the old mill down.

I want to give you that as our option and tell you that it's been a pleasure to work with our neighborhood from a business perspective.

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

I live at 1729 Chesapeake Street in the city.

It's always a hard act to follow when you have kindergarten art preceding your own, but let me try quickly.

One of the city's great resources is Jim Herndon.

He's a phenom in community development and he has access to this wonderful machine which will do aerials and then will infill with houses, will infill with floodway, will infill with floodplain.

This is the A location which is off the table, but let's just make sure it stays off the table.

And Jim's mapping shows the roofs in purple.

So you can see

from this, that this circle, which is the existing pump station, is surrounded by purple roofs, occupied by lots and lots of people.

You also can see that, although there may be exceptions for what you can build in the floodway, this property is the additional size of the proposed A, or hybrid A, would move into the floodway.

and the deal there is I think you all know is everything that goes in the floodway raises the floodway for everybody else.

Moving down the river a little bit, we now have the aerial for State Farm and what's dramatically noticeable about this is this 100 foot wide high power easement.

It slices across the hillside just below State Farm and then below that is a substantial amount of property that's out of the floodplain and out of the floodway.

It's a natural and I'm confident that, and I don't mean this facetiously, I think State Farm has been a good neighbor.

And I think that they have gotten the bad rap here.

I think that either a representation of this group or some hybrid group needs to go talk to them.

I don't think that they will oppose it at the end of the day.

And I believe, although certainly historically the pumping station has been smelly, and we smell the plant across from the hillside at Riverview Cemetery where we located, but we have to believe that for the most part we can control

and have the technology to control the odor.

And so it's not going to be perfect, but downhill from State Farm with the very best technology will have absolutely zero negative effect on them.

Mr. Hayes.

Hi, my name is Chris Hayes.

I live at 1900 Chesapeake Street and adjacent to the existing pump station.

I sent a letter previously to you all city council and thanks very much for hearing me and hearing out my thoughts.

In general, I'm sure you've gotten a sense by now the level of frustration that's come about with the various schemes that have been discussed so far and presented.

And my sense is that we're actually looking more at the problem

of the design process than necessarily the design product.

I don't get the sense that there's been so much time invested in looking at these four schemes by RWSA that there are not other possible solutions out there.

And what I would like to suggest is that it's setting up design criteria that have come about from the various discussions that we've had amongst ourselves in the Wooler Mills

City discussions, the county discussions, and further thoughts from RWSA and really develop some sound criteria that could develop other ideas and revise the design process, ask RWSA to go back, look at other alternatives, get their design team together, including Hazen, Sawyer, and other design professionals, architects, landscape architects, ecologists, hydrologists, geologists,

and look carefully at what other solutions might be, giving them criteria that we could all agree upon.

The Willam Mills will put down our criteria.

City puts down their criteria, the county puts down their criteria, let the design team go to work, and really look carefully and see if there aren't other possible solutions that address some of the issues.

I'll just read quickly the criteria that I put down.

This by no means is conclusive, but it comes out of the conversations we've had.

One, increase the distance of the pumping station from the closest residents.

2.

Reduce visibility of building and building elements from adjacent properties and surrounding neighborhoods.

3.

Reduce degree of impact on specific properties.

Are there annexations or easements required?

4.

Use natural and mechanical odor control measures to minimize smells drifting to neighborhood areas.

Can prevailing breezes be used?

Are there specific odor control measures that could be considered

specific to site selection.

Five, incorporate innovative green technologies for wastewater treatment and the pumping station.

Six, increase the distance of the station from the floodway and the 100-year floodplain.

Seven, describe air and water quality impacts.

Eight, describe impacts to historic and cultural sites.

Nine, describe social and economic impacts to local communities.

Ten, detail costs for each alternative to include cost of impacts mentioned in criteria seven through nine.

and at the end of the day, this criteria can be used to evaluate the schemes they come back with and give us a sound basis that the city and the county, RWSA, can all work together towards one solution rather than what seems to be a very circular and difficult process to conclude.

Thank you, Mr. Hayes.

Good evening.

Thank you.

My name is Fred Wolf.

I currently live at 603 Lexington, but my wife and I are about to purchase one of the properties that are directly affected by option C. I think I've sent an email as well as a diagram that I hope graphically illustrates what we think the impact to C is, and I don't want to go through all the same data and rehash.

I think a lot of people have eloquently discussed this issue tonight here.

So one of the things that

struck me and one of the ways I wanted to speak about this was that you know as a community I worry about again somebody earlier said tonight about the emphasis on only looking at cost and I think there are a lot of issues at hand here.

and I think that given the scale of the project and given the impact that it has on the neighborhood and I think that we should be looking for a solution that's fair to all parties and shares the burden equally, that doesn't place the burden unfairly on a small group in any particular option and I should say out front that I'm completely opposed to options A and C and think that D is probably, as somebody else said, perhaps the best solution that exists out of the ones that are on the table, although I'm

I'm strongly hoping that there's some ability to look at the other options, E and F, that maybe have floated and have been discussed by Mr. Frederick.

So, you know, not necessarily looking at purely the money that's spent, but looking at how we get the best solution with the least impact on our concern.

Nor should we avoid an option that presents unusual technical challenges.

I think that we have plenty of smart people, and particularly if you put together a really good design team, and we think outside the box and look at creative thinking, that looking at the solution that's either the quickest, the easiest, or the cheapest is not the benchmark we want to set for this project.

I'd ask you to give consideration to options such as E&F as outlined in the letters and emails, and moreover, make sure that

that RWSA actually looks at creatively thinking about these and other solutions.

A real design team for actual study, better said as Chris just mentioned of neighborhood design criteria, I think are really essential.

Accurate flood map data before we all make decisions that are going to end up being literally carved in stone.

I think we all know that with the dam being removed in 2007,

The flood maps were last updated in 2005.

Almost every solution, every option that's been put on the table, its size and location have been discussed in relationship to the floodplain.

And the floodplain data, regardless of whether it's the base flood elevations dropped by 1 foot, 3 feet, 10 feet, whatever it is, it is different today than it was at that time.

And so if we're going to live with this decision for 50 more years,

that data ought to be part of an accurate and sort of thoughtful process about where this thing gets located and how big it is.

And finally, the environmental impact studies that have been asked for that make sure that we're taking into account other things that have value to us besides purely cost and schedule.

We're asking that you do not approve RSWA's request to study only option C. It seems efficient, ineffective, and an insensitive solution to the neighborhood.

Of the four options currently, D seems to be the best one available.

And if C is somehow insisted on being studied, at the very least, D should also be included in that discussion.

Thank you Mr. Mayor and Council.

My name is Bill Maloney and I live at 1909 East Market Street, that's in the county, and I'm one of the affected property owners that the pipeline would go through on the way to the new, with Schedule C. My main concern about this pump station is actually the long-term consequences over the next five to ten years.

In particular, with the loss of riparian vegetation with the project,

that our yards will be very susceptible to erosion and if the erosion is severe enough, obviously our structures may possibly be affected.

I'm no expert on this matter and I've asked a geologist to review it and I have his report here and I think you'll find that my comments will not be inconsistent with that.

I'd like to make several just brief salient points.

The first is that this is a very fragile area and vulnerable erosion for three different reasons.

The first is a soil type.

It's basically river silt that has very little internal cohesion and the only thing that holds it in place against moving water like the river is large tree structure.

The second thing is the shape of the bank.

The downstream bank, downstream of the properties has been cut all the way into the road.

So our yards are basically a peninsula that stick into the river.

And rivers don't like obstructing objects.

And so the tendency of the river will be to erode this property back to a line somewhere upstream of our property to East Market Street Road down by the mill.

The third reason it's vulnerable is that since the dam went down three years ago, the water flow velocity along those banks has increased significantly with each flood.

And we've had significant erosion over the past three years, even with mature trees.

We've lost a six-foot section of my neighbor's bank has fallen down three feet.

Our bank's cracked and fallen down several feet.

And that's actually with mature tree structure there.

The second point is that the project is massive.

I don't know if you understood that when they were explaining it to you, but our yards are probably 150 feet wide.

This is a 100 foot easement to be clear cut.

There's going to be a 60 foot wide trench that's 30 feet deep.

And there's going to be entrance and exit ramps for heavy earth-moving equipment all in this yard.

That leaves about a 15 to 30 foot space between the river and where the easement's going to be for trees to hold that bank.

It takes just a single transverse of a large erythema of equipment over roots of those trees in the bank to kill the trees through soil compaction.

So I think it would be very unlikely that we're not going to have heavy equipment moving within several feet of the bank, and so it's very likely those trees are going to be gone

after that project is done.

So my concern is that in 5-10 years with no tree structure, we're going to have significant erosion.

If that bank begins to road, the road's going to move closer to our house.

We flooded one time in 1996 with a hurricane.

If we have less bank to protect us from flowing water, we're going to flood much more easily as the years go on.

And if that bank erodes enough toward the structure of our house, I think our house is on silt, too.

The silt under our house could be vulnerable, and we could potentially lose our house in 10 or 20 years.

So those are kind of my main concerns.

The other comment I'd like to take a moment to make is the timeline here.

We're hearing there's a lot of pressure from RWSA to complete this project by the deadline in December.

I know a little bit about government regulatory bodies, and I've spoken with an engineer who's worked with DEQ and RWSA for many years, and you know, their interest in this is that we have the best solution for our community.

If we're not done by December, the last thing they want to do is take this process over as RWSA claims.

They don't want to step into that hornet's nest.

They have other things to do.

If they see good faith effort, they're going to grant stays to continue to work.

I also think it's seriously unlikely that we'll undergo fines for the same reason.

We had a dam by our house that they've been telling us to get rid of, or they've been telling us to see it get rid of for 30 years.

They granted 30 years of easements, never had a single fine with that dam.

My name is Bill Emery, I live at 1604 East Market Street and I hope later on you guys will review the comments I emailed to you today.

I actually just wanted to thank RWSA for providing potable water and for treating my waste water.

I deeply appreciate that.

And I hope as you guys are in this whole process that you'll

Dream a little bit about the potential for our city to reconnect with this river.

Where do you baptize people?

Don't baptize them on the downtown mall.

Go down to the river.

20 years ago when I visited my sister in Providence, their river was covered with parking lots.

Now they have this fabulous economic engine that's been engendered by taking the parking lots, daylighting the river, and reconnecting people with it.

That's what we need to do here.

And I particularly hope that you'll

The smell issue, and I'm being a little bit silly now, but the smell issue is important.

And poor Mr. Huja has been hearing about this for so long in his former role at whatever neighborhood development used to be called, community development, I guess.

Good name, we ought to go back to that.

So it looks like you've been reading your email.

So I won't go on but a minute.

But I did want to just say I personally think we have to take the deadline very seriously or contact DEQ and clarify whether that December deadline is real or not.

Because I think the worst thing that could happen is we come up against that deadline and some solution is imposed on us.

So I think we have to be, personally I think we have to be, it's risky to assume that that deadline is not real until we can verify otherwise.

Something that happened at the last RWSA board meeting was the political landscape suddenly changed.

your representatives at that meeting were left coming up with alternative solutions for which they then had to come back to council.

And so I'm hoping that perhaps in whatever you decide, it gives them the flexibility to then adapt to whatever changing political conditions might occur at that meeting.

And then

that might look like a hierarchy of options for instance, I'm not sure.

And then finally there were a couple other options.

There was option G that kind of came out of various discussions that have been going on about natural systems.

And there are some cities who have developed very aggressive decentralized stormwater treatment

programs.

And so, you know, one thought, option G, is that we incentivize businesses, say, with huge parking lots to install fire retention ponds and rain gardens.

I don't know if it would do it, but it'd be interesting to look at the area, the amount of stormwater runoff from those and see if we can actually not have to build the pumping station and all.

And my final option, H, I've just thought of now, which is that we go back to the chamber pot system.

I think the neighborhood could all get on board with that.

But I do think we need solutions that it can't be we say we just say no.

I don't think that's enough.

We

Thank you.

Hi again, Bruce Edmonds, Willam Mills, Tax Map, Neighborhood 24, Mayor, Council, please again, as you've done before, so reject option C, and remember you have an official vote that

Erejected A and supported D. Let's continue to support the past resolutions of the council.

Now, in regards to the RWSA proposed pump station, we the city need an outside

A professional engineering firm to conduct a review of this whole project including an environmental impact study of the effects this Rivanna pump station will have on the Warren Mills neighborhood.

That includes a professional PAM study of particulate matter impacts from odors, septic, sewage on the health and safety impacts on the Warren Mills.

Remember, the Willam Mills is the home of the City Senior Center and it has two parks with kids.

Anybody that wants to go to Region 3 with me in Philly, the EPA, to talk to them about their PM study section and the new regulations coming out, let's ride, let's go see.

Because the fact that Rivanna's only done a cost and materials and a PM study and environmental impact study are very important.

I know all the time there's criticism of government

but this one comes with free funding for city taxpayers.

First of all, the outside engineering professionals who have built and fabricated and sited urban wastewater pump stations which are of this magnitude, 53 million gallon a day facilities, be under the direction only of city council and not even the city public works, only the city council and that the funding for this study

be used the 30,000 US dollars Rivanna has earmarked to Hazen and Sawyer for public relations consulting which I discovered my firm as chief investigator through FOIA.

They spent 30,000 in the last go around and they have another 30,000 in the 219,000 they just asked their board.

Now,

The next thing is, why is the county wanting to build a 53 million gallon a day automatic raw sewage pumping station in our neighborhood, my neighborhood, since the expanded Moore's Creek sewage plant will only be permitted for 37 million gallons a day?

Where is the extra 16 million gallons a day going to, counselors?

Good evening Council, my name is Nini Beckstrom and I live at 1909 East Market Street and I just wanted to give you guys one more personal face of somebody who would be very badly hit by this big trench because it would go through my backyard and it's been a sleepless night since I found out that this was going to be on the table to vote for tonight as the only option to study which seemed totally insane to be honest

I work at home.

I have a studio.

I'm an artist.

I used to be at the Gaffi and moved my studio home because I needed more outdoor space.

I work on the lower section of our house which faces the river and it would totally ruin my workspace to start with.

I think they're going to, if they do this

We put so much love into our backyard and trying to hold the stream bed

planted trees, my dad who's now dead planted trees for our daughter, my dog is bare in the backyard, I mean it goes on and on.

I know all my neighbors have the same concerns but that's some of the personal implications of this.

So please do not study only option C at least and A is a very bad option too and D is not a great option but maybe the only option.

My name is Betty Mooney and I live in the city of Charlottesville and I had to find a way to get my parking ticket stamped so I decided to come up here and just say a few words.

I have to say I find this discussion completely shocking and frustrating after years and years and years of coming before you about the water supply issue and all the information we unearth

Thanks to a certain reporter also who's sitting in this room about the price of dredging and how we were told there was this astronomical cost to dredging as much as the Panama Canal and guess what?

Thanks to you, well that's what it was.

But thanks to the city council and the study you paid for it wasn't true.

So I encourage you to ask

questions about this.

There's no reason to believe that $2 billion is the price to fix leaky pipes.

There's no reason to believe that this has to be this large.

But above all, you were elected to represent the citizens.

And we've been begging you to do that on the water plan.

We've been begging you to do that for your parks.

This neighborhood is not just a small insignificant neighborhood.

It's historic.

Everyone in the city cares about this neighborhood.

I'm over in that park all the time birding.

I don't want to see this.

There's absolutely no reason.

And isn't it interesting that you're being told there's an emergency.

Have you heard that before?

You've been hearing for years there was an emergency with your dam at Ragged Mountain and you better make a decision right away, right away, right away.

And now the state is saying you have a sewer emergency.

Why haven't you been hearing this for years?

So my question is, I want you to think long and hard about the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority.

I think serious changes need to be made there.

Anybody else like to speak?

All right.

Just one quick thing.

Phoebe Smith, 2652 Jefferson Park Circle.

And I too just wanted to piggyback on Joanna and what Betty just said is to ask not only questions about really what would it cost to repair our pipes rather than build this monstrous thing to

compensate for the fact that we have leaky pipes.

But are we going to have to fix them anyway?

I mean, is the DEQ really going to let us continue to have leaky sewage pipes in our ground?

So I mean, I think there's a multitude of questions that really need to be answered before you make this monstrous decision.

And also just a word for Riverview Park, which is really just an increasingly important park in our system.

It is unique among our parks and please add that to your value judgment as you make your decision.

Thank you, Ms. Smith.

Anybody else like to speak?

All right, we're going to close the public hearing.

Thank you so much to everyone who came to speak and exercise your responsibility and your right as citizens of this wonderful community.

We have before us, well, we have a decision to make tonight.

The specific item before us has to do with

Option C and whether or not we want to move forward with Option C, but obviously a lot of issues have been raised tonight.

I want to just, if I may, kick start our discussion by getting some clarity on this issue that several citizens, including Ms. Salitas, have raised about just the basic need for this project.

And I don't know if that's Ms. Hildebrand or Mr. Frederick or who's best

are positioned to address why are we talking about this in the first place?

Well, I'll try to address the first set and then we'll talk about storm water a little bit.

Basically, when you look at sewer rehabilitation as we've been looking, the city, the county, and Rivanna, it's pretty much a three-prong approach.

And you look at rehabbing your existing sewers and you try to hit the high points.

You know, you hit those that are the oldest in the system, terracotta, getting ready to collapse.

taking on a lot of water and that's what we do when we do sanitary sewer evaluations and flow monitoring within the system to try to figure out what are the highest priority worst case areas in the system and then you have to look at you still have to quickly look at what's the capacity downstream and when you look at pump stations it's figured out on instantaneous peak which is one of the reasons the pump station doesn't quite match the average flows at the plant

because those have to be instantaneous peaks that are handled by your pump station.

So that's the most it can handle at any one time.

But when we looked at this, it was determined that when you look at sewer systems just in general, it's always determined that you're never gonna be able to get all the water out no matter how hard you work on your system.

And if you were able to, it would cost you a lot of money.

and it would also take a lot of time.

And unfortunately we've got sanitary sewer overflows that are happening immediately in the system and that have to be addressed and DEQ has that expectation in our consent orders that we've been issued.

And so in looking at the system as a whole, which is what we cooperatively did as part of the comprehensive sewer study, it was decided that Albemarle County Service Authority and the city would allocate monies

to handle rehabilitation in our highest priority areas to take out about 25% of the infiltration and flow out of the system.

And that's still a very expensive charge and expensive way to rehab, but it can be done.

and then Rivanna would carry what's called a two-year storm in their system and that was the compromise that was made and it seemed to be the most cost-effective way to end the quickest really because time is kind of of the essence and that's

If you look at sewer systems across the country, that's how they look at rehabbing their systems.

It was brought up a little bit about stormwater management and our systems are not interconnected.

They're not intended to be interconnected.

So if we do things to, you know, when we do sanitary sewer evaluations, when we do smoke tests and we look to see if

we're still going to need an upgrade in our pump station.

Yes, we would.

So I just want to sort of get that, address that front and center.

We need to upgrade our pump station regardless.

Now it may be a, you know, you could say it might be a smaller pump station or smaller pipes, but we need to upgrade it anyway.

And there's an argument that we've heard loud and clear from the neighborhood that that plant probably should be moved anyway.

So I'm just trying to get at sort of the basic question here.

Do we even need to do anything about the pump station?

Yes, there does.

OK. All right.

I would like to maybe expedite the process a little bit by negating option C given that it is not a viable neighborhood for a historic district in terms of environmental impacts.

I think we need to talk about what the other options are.

Well, the other options are at least on the table are D, there was an option E, and there may be some other creative solutions which you haven't thought of.

I don't know.

At least those two come to my mind.

Just a couple of thoughts.

I do agree with counsel Huja.

and just thinking about some of the comments from our public comment opportunity, this is a good time for us to just really think about what is the best solution for our community.

And I do agree that the time the decision is made, I question the

the judgment regarding the culture of that neighborhood because it reminded me very much of Vinegar Hill where people lost their homes.

But in that part of Willam Mills the poor people lost their quality of life.

And I have to say that

I have noticed that I haven't heard very much from the trailer park community.

So I'd like to be assured that the trailer park community is also welcomed into the Woolen Mills Neighborhood Association and they're welcome to attend the meetings and to have a voice in this process as well.

And also the bottom line is

health and safety.

We have to keep that.

That's the bottom line, health and safety.

And there's sewer runoff in Riverview Park that has to be addressed regardless of what the regulators say or what the DEQ says.

We have to do the right thing, but we have to do it right.

And in terms of what other options there are, you bring up a very good point because we have to have a plan.

If it's not option C, then what will the plan be?

This is not a third world country.

We have the infrastructure, we have the resources, and we certainly have the intelligence.

May I ask one question, Mr. Mayor, for Mr. Frerich.

Where was the pumping station built?

I was wondering if the city manager or the city attorney or Mr. Frederick could talk a little bit about the deadline and what happens.

I think one thing that we could start with, if Mr. Frederick wouldn't mind, is to talk about the negotiations, either Mr. Frederick or Ms. Hildebrand, to talk about the negotiations with DEQ to get that got us to the point where we would have this deadline.

I'm going to take you, historically, I guess, to a couple of things.

I came to work here in 2004 and part of a natural evaluation anybody in my position would do is to take a canvas of what's working, what's not working, what needs to be fixed, what are the pros and cons of our infrastructure system.

And there were a lot of positive things I found.

There was also a couple of surprises.

to come to a community who claimed to be so green and so environmental.

It was a huge disappointment for me to find how poor the sewer system was operating.

And beyond that, it was a mystery to me why there weren't people in this community outraged that we weren't fixing it.

We embarked upon a plan.

There was no plan, so we had to start from the beginning.

You don't want to just jump into fixing solutions without putting together a good plan.

So we hired a consultant.

We did a comprehensive study.

We put meters in the sewer pipes to measure what was going on when it was dry and when it was raining.

We did a lot of evaluation, calibrated a model that could predict now and in the future what would happen under various wet weather scenarios, under various inflow and infiltration reduction schemes, and under various growth schemes.

come up with an optimum plan.

We invited our partners, the City of Charlottesville Public Works, the Albemarle County Service Authority, to meetings and discussions.

And at that time,

At the time I began work here, nobody, I mean, this includes the city of Charlottesville, was not doing much anything toward fixing sewers.

The Albemarle County Service Authority was doing very little.

I remember going into a meeting not long before Bill Brent retired.

He was the longtime executive director of the Albemarle County Service Authority.

And he said, well, I guess it's time we decide.

Are we going to do something or are we not?

We push forward and recognizing when you push forward to get things done, sometimes

in the process, you're going to find people who don't like what you're doing.

But we needed to pursue what was the right thing.

I was asked recently when our consent order went before our board, and of course a consent order went before the city council for the city as well, I was asked by Brandon Shalita, he said, why are we just now hearing about this?

And I said, it's an excellent question.

I don't know that I fully understand why this community allowed it to happen for so long and not say anything, but that's exactly what happened.

The sewer overflows have been going on for decades.

It's not a new problem.

It's a longstanding problem.

One of the things that we did when the folks who currently work at Rivanna is we're going to report

Incidences appropriately.

We're going to proactively inspect our system after it rains so we can get an inventory of what's happening but also it creates an obligation upon ourselves if we're going to be honest to report those problems to DEQ.

Apparently for a lot of years DEQ didn't know what was going on either but because we were self-reporting the issues that were occurring in our system they began to develop an inventory of issues and they have a point system and when you hit a certain number of points you receive letters.

and that leads to negotiations for a consent order.

Sanitary sewer overflows is EPA's number one priority for enforcement.

Number one, there is no second.

It's not way down the list after a bunch of other environmental issues.

In the mind of the Environmental Protection Agency, this is the most important environmental problem this country faces.

It doesn't just happen in Charlottesville, it's all over the country.

The idea that there's broken infrastructure in sewerage is not new most anywhere.

but we need to take proactive steps to fix it.

DEQ agrees with that.

The interesting thing about our negotiation is we were already far down the path in terms of what we needed to do and our partners

To their credit, the city and the ACSA were with us in developing a plan.

They sat down, they looked hard at their systems, and they made their own judgments.

The extent to which they could cost-effectively remove INI from their system, and the extent to which they needed the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority to build a larger transmission system.

And Lauren, I think, has given you that information.

We've built our plan around that.

It's a collaborative approach.

We can debate things forever, but when we debate forever we don't get anything done.

There's a time for planning and then there's a time for action.

DEQ fully supported the plan that we were already working on through our Capital Improvement Plan that had been worked out with the city and ACSA staff.

And what's in the schedule is basically our plan.

I think it's a compliment to the staff

that DEQ saw fit to endorse our plan, but they also came along with that and said, but you're going to do it.

This problem's gone on too long.

It needs to be fixed.

This is a high priority for DEQ and a high priority for EPA.

I heard some comments earlier.

I heard one comment from one citizen that if we're going to ask for more time, maybe we should ask for it now and not wait until December.

If that's what you're thinking or if that's what others are thinking, there's more than city council in this issue.

But if someone's thinking that, it probably is the better approach to ask and see what the answer is now.

But I honestly believe if we evaluate the data and we make timely decisions on the things we need to make, we've got plenty of time to make that decision between now and December.

And I'm having a hard time and I'm scratching my head understanding why in May.

We're already thinking we're going to need more time.

We've got a problem.

The environment doesn't want to wait.

When I hear someone say that putting off this problem is the way to make the fish happier, it just turns on its head in my mind because putting sewage mixed with rainwater in the creeks when it rains is not making the fish happy.

I'm sorry.

It's not the right thing for the fish or aquatic environment.

I don't think anybody wants to not fix the problem.

This is sometimes it takes time to study to get a good solution and then work at it.

Dr. Brown?

You know, I agree with a lot of the people in the room here today that of the options that are on the table, the option that's across the river on state farm property is the one that seems to make the most sense to me.

But it's not, it's either city property

nor my property.

I mean, it's someone else's.

I was kind of hoping that at the meeting tonight that State Farm would watch it and realize that the choices here were so bad.

I'm a little worried that the number of people who complained about how smelly the station was might have hurt my plan for State Farm to kind of perhaps step forward and help us solve this problem.

But I actually think that I agree with

with Fran Lawrence.

I think that we need to study these options, we need to see what we can do, but I don't think we can make

anything happen.

We have to figure out a way together to try to make this happen.

And I would, you know, the city manager and I had a brief conversation with some people from State Farm who were pretty adamant for some of the same reasons.

They didn't, they really didn't see why they would want to have a plant that was adjacent to a smelly pumping station.

Why would they,

Bob Lee just moved somewhere else, if that's the case.

It's kind of the same argument we heard from, I bet, half a dozen people here.

And I think we should kind of keep that in mind.

I mean, now, personally...

I think the complaints about odor are to some degree in the past, at least as coming from the pumping station.

I've certainly been there several times recently, and it has not been smelly.

I'm sure there are days someone could bring me over there, and it would be.

But I think that there are odor issues, but I think the pumping station has been improved significantly.

And I think in terms of a new station being built somewhere, I'm hoping that the technology is really good, and the smell is not going to be an issue for anybody.

I'll confess to saying that the option A

which just was monstrous.

And we did have a meeting, which I wished I invited more people to, in which I think Mike Gaffney came, the chair of this board, and he realized that this is completely out of scale for a city neighborhood adjacent to a park.

And he spoke up to that effect.

He said, we wouldn't build this in any neighborhood.

It shouldn't even be considered.

Part of me was attracted to the idea of saying, well, let's put the pumping station on Rivanna property and let's dig a hole, bury the pipes, cover it back up and be done with it.

I think what I've learned since then, it's not quite that simple.

And I think that some of the comments, for example, that Dr. Maloney made today and some information, you know, give me some real concern about the feasibility of being able to do that and not have it really

be a difficult technical problem that could fail.

Not the pipes could fail, but the impact on the neighborhood could be overwhelming.

I would say if we decide that we want to keep this on the table, if anyone decides to study it, I think the type of analysis that, you know, environmental analysis, looking at erosion, looking at soils, looking at houses, should be included, not just a technical feasibility of being able to put pipes in the ground.

The big problem is, I think, that there really aren't a whole lot of choices on where this can go.

You know, it's not like it can go, you know, can't go in my neighborhood.

You know, it has to go somewhere that has proximity to the existing pumping station where everything's kind of come downhill to.

And it makes it, it's a tough decision.

and it's one we need to come up with together.

I'm not exactly sure where I am.

I'd like to see us keep more rather than fewer options on the table.

Dr. Maloney mentioned or someone mentioned it being a 60 foot wide trench.

I'm not quite sure if that's accurate or not.

I think we might not know until we've actually really looked at it exactly what the impacts would be.

Having heard all this tonight,

I would like to see whether this option C is doable.

I'd also like to see whether option E, tunneling, is doable.

And I'd like to see option D, the state farm option, also be explored more fully because it does seem like it's got the option that's got the least concern other than the fact that it's on the property of a private business who's not interested in having it there.

And I think maybe

Mr. Hayes gives the criteria, again I am not an expert in this field but I was thinking there are quite good sort of criteria which you could use for something similar to those.

Well, I'll chip in or chime in now with my own thoughts.

I concur with Mr. Huja that we should take option C off the table.

While I appreciate the desire to not overly restrict our process here, for me it's pretty clear that option C, as Ms. Dunham said, is a nonstarter.

and I think the impacts on the residential properties, on the historic character of the neighborhood, on the environment, the financial impacts given the fact that it's the most expensive option, all of those convinced me that

We should not move forward in exploring option C. I agree that option D is the lesser of evils.

I'm not sure that anybody's even had a conversation with State Farm yet to, in terms of

asking them what would it take to make it worth their while.

And I fully agree with the residents of the Willam Mills who said, you know, why should one private property owner trump dozens of, you know, whose parking lot may be affected by this, why should that trump dozens of city and county residents whose homes

quality of life will be directly affected by this project.

I'd like to think that State Farm, that we can find a good solution working with State Farm and in which everybody wins in the end or at least loses less than they would otherwise.

I'm intrigued by the option E and I think it's worth exploring although my first preference would be let's sit down with State Farm and figure out if option D is viable.

If that doesn't prove to be the case then option E in my mind would be the fallback option.

I think if you want to study all the options, it will be worthwhile to look at both of those options, D and E, because if you just study D, there's just one option, it's the answer, you already know the answer somehow, we're not sure we're going to get that.

So, at least one of those, and I'm not sure, there's another,

I'll make a motion.

I mean if I may

One thing to keep in mind is that it is, studying option E is a very expensive proposition.