City Council Meeting   6/20/2011

Music playing

and David Brown

I've been waiting for you.

Music by David Bowie

I've been waiting for you

I've been waiting for you.

Dr. Michael F.

Ms. Barfield, call the roll please.

Dr. Brown?

Ms. Bevers?

Here.

Mr. Norris?

Here.

Ms. Huja?

Yes.

Ms. Szakos?

I want to do, we always start with some awards and recognitions and announcements.

I want to share a recognition that I received.

We always like to recognize city staff who go above and beyond in service to our community.

I was copied on a letter that a pastor in our community from Wesley Moray United Methodist Church, Pastor Elizabeth Foss sent to our Chief of Police Timothy Longo and I'd like to read the first paragraph of this letter.

Unfortunately, Pastor Foss is leaving Charlottesville but wanted to leave these comments with us.

Dear Chief Longo,

As I prepare to move from Charlottesville to a new church appointment in Arlington, it is important for me to take the time to express my profound respect and gratitude for you.

As a senior pastor at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church for the last seven years, I have personally called the Charlottesville Police Department on numerous occasions and have been awed by the professionalism, expertise, and caring of Charlottesville police officers as they have responded to an astonishing array of situations.

I see you as a visionary leader at the helm of an organization for which you have set and embody the highest standards of excellence, ethics and service.

I have personally heard many Charlottesville police officers share words of appreciation in high regard for you in this church and in the Charlottesville community, your presence, your accessibility and responsiveness, your unique capabilities as one who has both a law degree and a positional oversight of law enforcement.

for your ability to attend to the big picture while also attending to details all underscore the special capabilities you bring to your position.

Charlottesville is so fortunate to have you as its chief of police and I fully agree.

So I wanted to share that with the public.

We do want to acknowledge the work of one of our committees.

The city's historic resources committee was originally created as a task force by city council in 1998 to promote and help develop the historic resources of the community.

This committee, which is now called the historic resources committee, serves an important educational function for the city's historic preservation program.

and they advocate for historic preservation, promote appreciation of local historic resources and encourage and coordinate with appropriate agencies and organizations the documentation and interpretation of local history.

So we wanted to take a moment and I believe Mary Joy Scala is here or Melanie Miller is here to share recognition of our Historic Resources Committee.

So the committee is involved in a lot of educational projects trying to just kind of inform the citizens of Charlottesville about some of the different facets of history.

It's not just old buildings but it's also things that have happened here so we've

We worked on the state signage that you see, the big metal signs that there's one in Court Square for Jack Jewett's ride, that kind of thing.

So we're in process of working for one for Reverend McGuffey and for whom the art center and the school's named and also one at Penn Park describing how that's related to the Revolutionary War.

We've been doing a series of bus posters kind of like a did you know this happened and you know showing pictures of buildings from long ago and you can see how they compare now and then we're also doing something exciting Mary Joy's intern Kristin is in charge of and that's exciting doing an audio tour of Charlottesville so if you go to the courthouse you can dial from your cell phone or log into a website from your smartphone and it'll give you recorded information so we're having

Local celebrities of different kinds and hopefully Mr. Norris will be included.

As part of our consent agenda tonight, we have a resolution regarding appointment of members to the Historic Resources Committee.

I'd like to read at least the last portion of this resolution.

Whereas our historic buildings and historic places are defining elements of our community character, our well-being, and our future development,

and whereas City Council recognizes and appreciates that the Historic Resources Committee serves an important educational function for the city's historic preservation program, now therefore be it resolved that the City Council of the City of Charlottesville formally appoints the following persons as members of the Charlottesville Historic Resources Committee.

Mary Hill Caperton and Melanie Miller, Co-Chairs Mark Belisle, Helena Devereaux, Winston Churchill Gooding, Genevieve Keller, Edwina St. Rose, Ingrid Smyer Kelly and Steven Meeks, ex officio, excuse me, as President of the Albemarle Charlottesville Society.

So that is on our consent agenda tonight.

But thank you for your service to the committee and thank you to the other members of the committee.

And let's give them a round of applause.

Let's see, I believe we have some other announcements.

Yes.

On July 2nd, Saturday, July 2nd, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., there's a community band festival.

There will be lots of bands and there will be a lot of fun, so if you enjoy music, I would encourage you to come on Saturday, July 2nd, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

I have two.

One is Washington Park is the place to be this summer as our free swim days continue.

Every Saturday evening starting on June 25th from 5.30 to 7.30 city residents can swim free at Washington Park.

All you need is a city, just a

confirmation that you are a resident of the city like a driver's license, utility bill or report card.

Come enjoy the new amenities at the pool like the new giant water slide and the expanded deck area.

You can get in for free June 25th, July 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd and August 6th.

Those are all Saturday evenings.

And so I hope to see you there.

My second announcement is the 4th of July is conveniently this year actually on a Monday.

We will have normal trash and recycling that day so go ahead and put your cans out but there will be no bus service on Monday.

Other announcements?

I mean, I'll follow up on that without having the exact details of time, but the 4th of July ceremony at Monticello is a wonderful annual event as people are welcomed, as sworn in as new citizens, and it's something I never experienced until I became a member of city council.

Thank you.

You may have noticed we have some very special guests with us tonight in the back row of city council chambers.

If you read the paper over the weekend, you know that the University of Virginia this summer is hosting two separate groups of women leaders, governmental leaders from the nation of Afghanistan.

These are women who work in different

ministries of the federal government and in non-governmental organizations.

I'm here studying government, studying how we administer public services in this country and in the city and the state.

We are delighted to have them here.

They are going to be joining us at least for the first half hour, hour of our meeting.

And we're thrilled to have them here as observers.

And I hope you all will extend them a warm Charlottesville welcome.

So let's give them a round of applause.

I had another, actually just an announcement.

I wanted to note that this morning, I'm very pleased to note that the United States Conference of Mayors, of which I'm a member, passed a resolution the first time since the Vietnam War this group of mayors has gone on record as

asking the President and Congress for a speedy drawdown of American fighting forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and a redirection of resources to meeting needs here at home.

And so I was proud to be part of that effort and hopefully it will have an impact on the national level.

We will now open up our meeting to matters by the public.

And as is our custom, when you come forward, please state your name and address and keep your comments to three minutes.

Good evening.

Brandon Collins, 536 Meade Avenue.

I lived in Charlottesville all my life, as has my daughter.

I first wanted to say the Mayors for Peace resolution.

Congratulations and thank you so much for signing on to that.

You might note that Dave was actually the first to sign on after the resolution was actually written.

So thank you for that.

I hope as always we can maybe follow through in action when we're talking about peace and war and as well as make it a really public thing.

You know, we talk about sustainability and we've been able to make that an issue of local importance and I think the wars and occupations we're engaged in can also

be brought onto the local level, and I hope we can find ways to do that.

You know, besides the great human cost, there's the financial burden, and it's really, it's keeping the federal government and state governments from being able to give money to localities like Charlottesville for things like the CDBG and the home thing that you're going to be passing tonight.

And, you know, that means we have to supplement that, and I know we have to put in 25 percent

of whatever that was, but you don't have to just stop there.

So, you know, consider finding ways to get more money to these programs.

I know the Economic Downturn Fund isn't really used for this kind of thing, but these are programs that are affected by the economic downturn and they serve people who are

in an economic downturn and have been for a long time.

The last thing I want to say, I had the unfortunate experience of witnessing the Board of Supervisors a couple weeks ago and I just want to point out there's a lot of nonsense from the actual elected officials there, the majority of the officials on the Board of Supervisors.

You know, they either buy this nonsense and this conspiratorial stuff or they're using it as a cover to not participate with their neighbors and they're not interested in sustainability.

I really hope you keep that in mind as you're working with the Board of Supervisors on things like the water supply plan, Meadow Creek Parkway, and now the bypass.

As far as Parkway goes, there's these lawsuits.

I really, really hope you wait to move on those until after you get rulings on both those lawsuits.

A whole lot of new information is going to come out.

Win or lose, you're going to learn new stuff and you're going to have to do new stuff.

So just wait, just wait.

And I would say, you know, why not wait until January when the political makeup of the Board of Supervisors might change, hopefully, and perhaps the Council as well.

Thank you, Mr. Collins.

Good evening, Council.

James Halfaday, Sunset Road.

Council, I'm up here to talk to you about the Belmont Bridge.

I'm also going to be up here for every meeting until this Belmont Bridge gets fixed or replaced.

We need to fix this bridge for our residents and small businesses here in the Belmont area.

For example, today, just a block from Hinton Avenue right down there in Hinton Road, there was a power line down and that was on the side that was

that leads up to the bridge that has the open access walkway.

Now if that power line would have been down one block away from that bridge, that access would have been denied to anybody crossing that bridge back and forth.

So we need to have an in and out on that bridge.

If one side is down, the other side is not going to be able to go through.

So we need to look at that as a serious option, especially with power lines along with the trees in that area, they're not being properly maintained as well.

Also with that bridge, I can't stand the side of that fence there.

I just want you guys to know during the wintertime when snow forms, when plows go by, you know, snow is going to break that fence.

It's going to break those bars like you're not even going to believe.

So that was $15,000 almost – almost $15,000 wasted money right there.

I have personally seen people down at the intersections down there almost be hit by automobiles down there.

You know, people are having to cross all at one intersection, and I don't think that's a safe

I think it should be a controlled intersection for the residents of the city of Charlottesville

I just want to leave on one note here as I will be back here to talk about the Belmont Bridge because we need to replace this.

Ronald Reagan once said, you know, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

I say to you, City Council, Mr. Norris, tear down this bridge and give us back our bridge to our small businesses and residents and let us thrive with our bridge.

Thank you, Mr. Haffney.

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

At the last council meeting we had a public hearing discussion on the utility rate increases.

At that time I asked why city ratepayers will be paying more and the customers of the Albemarle County Service Authority will not.

This is a second article that's now been written about the fact that those ratepayers will not have an increase.

Due to parliamentary procedure, that issue is now on the consent agenda.

I hope that one of you will pull item M utility rates for further discussion and answer the public inquiries by many citizens and ratepayers as to the justification of increased rates.

And my second item on item five, which is report and resolution for the allocation of the Charlottesville Housing Fund dollars for the purchase of lots for $690,000.

The resolution states both for and from the Habitat for Humanity.

It's very confusing.

The resolution says purchase of lots for Habitat for Humanity and then further down in the resolution under the whereases it says for the purchase of four townhouse lots on Payton Street from the Habitat for Humanity.

So before you sign that or whatever action you need to take on item five, I hope that's corrected.

I think it's a significant error.

Thank you.

Can you say again where you see four?

Well, in the title it says, for resolution purchase of lots for Habitat for Humanity.

Then as you read further down into the resolution, it says the lots are going to be purchased from Habitat for Humanity.

Got it.

Okay.

Thank you, Ms. Hall.

Michael Farbaugh, 24 Rosalind Heights Road, here in Charlottesville.

Not a very good speaker so please bear with me.

Good evening Mr. Mayor and respected council members.

Tonight, the short version of it, I'm asking that you vote no on the bypass.

The longer version, I'm asking that you vote no to changing the existing language that blocks the allocation of funding.

In other words, vote no on the western bypass for the following reasons.

It's not a bypass anymore.

It's St. Anne's, Bellefield to Forest Lake South and we've all seen the accidents that are at Forest Lake South.

It's not going to fix anything.

The way our federal and state, or the way all of our budgets are, we can spend that money in better ways.

In fact, there's no money, as you probably already know, there's no money allocated for this bypass, so they're going to have to borrow from Peter to pay Paul to get this thing going.

So what are they going, and they haven't

stated where they're going to take the money from to make this happen.

in other ways.

It's actually costing us money, city or county.

There's $30 million in real estate that's been sitting idle that's not been drawing any tax money.

In fact, there are several rental properties, several houses that have been taken over by the state that are actually drawing rent and going into the state.

So in a way, the state's taking money from the county.

I'm sure you've heard it before.

You'll probably hear it again from some other folks this evening.

So I think I'm going to stop right there.

Thank you, Mr. Farbaugh.

Ma'am, gentlemen, Mayor Norris.

First for the city manager.

What is the status of the RFP for dredging the Rivanna Reservoir?

And that's the Request for Proposal.

Sometimes it's called a PPEE and you're on your own for that, Maurice.

I don't know.

PPEA.

So who is paying for the new dam?

Last year, the former city manager stood in front of you and said the new dam wouldn't cost city taxpayers a dime in higher taxes.

and more recently the finance director said none of the recently issued $3 million bond for water and sewer, which is borrowed money, will go towards building the new dam.

So I guess that means the city taxpayers are off the hook.

For several years the county has not raised water and sewer rates, so I guess the county taxpayers are off the hook.

The dam and the reservoir, not including the pipeline,

are easily over $60 million, but apparently nobody is paying for it.

This is my March 2002 water and sewer bill.

The cost that month was $43.

Then the rates were raised and a large part of the increase was to pay for dredging.

Eight years later, my water and sewer bill

adjusted for consumption for the month of September 2010 was $90.

$43 to $90 every month.

A 200% increase in eight years and I didn't even get any dredging.

Where did the money go?

At that rate, even without being charged for a new dam, a new reservoir, and a new nine-mile uphill pipeline,

that we won't need for at least 40 years, my water and sewer bill eight years from now will be around $180 a month plus the proposed increases that you have in front of you.

How in the world can people on fixed incomes keep up with that kind of increase?

Social Security will not keep up and retirement, private retirement plans will not keep up.

Instead of first time home buyers putting away money for a down payment or a matching payment, this kind of increase will suck the life out of their plans and dreams to buy a home or even to keep a home.

Goodbye affordable housing.

Hello more subsidized housing.

Right now there are hundreds of households and small businesses in all parts of our city who dread getting their utility bill.

We know we will get whacked on the rent or the mortgage, but we don't expect it on the utility bill.

We have been charged a lot of money and gotten empty promises.

Where did the money go?

Before you vote in favor of any further rate increases, you ought to insist, show me the money for the water plan.

Mr. Ray, I believe, or somebody from his office probably will be here later in the meeting.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Penwick.

I don't know what that low sounding voice in here is, but it's creeping me out.

We have an interpreter.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Oh boy.

I thought it was the TV.

I thought it was the TV thing.

It's in your head.

Okay.

Yeah.

I thought that might have been the other thing.

That was going to creep me out even more.

Okay, well I was in here a few months ago and you all seem to agree with this basic premise that moving in the direction of building for people instead of cars is a good thing and you all seem to understand how that affects

moves us in the direction of cleaner water, cleaner air, greater economic justice, better stewardship of the land, less energy use, all of these things.

Pedestrian oriented development is a solution magnifier and sprawl or auto-centric is a

a big problem, problem magnifier.

But what I don't understand is how you all think that building a road through our central park, and when I say you all, I'm of course excluding Mary Norris and Miss Edwards, is not going to contribute further this trend towards reshaping our planet for automobiles rather than people.

Mr. Brown said something along the lines of stopping the parkway is not going to stop sprawl.

Well, of course that's the case.

Building the parkway is certainly going to help build more sprawl.

I mean, just because you can't fix an entire problem by doing something doesn't mean that you're going to want to do something that's actually going to make the problem worse.

And I think it's pretty obvious that building a road is going to lead to a lot more auto-centric development.

For every square foot of pavement,

A public body like city council puts down many square feet of pavement are put in by private developers, parking lots and such.

And the opposite is also true.

If we put in walking, biking and transit, then that makes it worth people's while to take those modes and it makes it worthwhile of the developers in order to meet the needs of people who are going to be coming to their places via those modes.

Also I think if we build this road through the park instead of then thinking oh now we can finally talk about moving towards pedestrian oriented development what we will be talking about for the next 20 years is widening the Meadow Creek Parkway because after a couple years it's going to be filled up with traffic

and Park Rio Street will be exactly the same as they were except now we'll also have traffic on Ridge Street and all other kinds of places and then people are going to widen it.

And if we've already built it through the park there's going to be less to stop widening it because most of the damage has already been done.

And then also the 250 bypass is going to get a lot more traffic and they're going to want to widen that too.

Also, if we build this, the political will and the money is going towards again subsidizing auto travel rather than welcome biking and transit.

And so I just want to say again, we do not owe this to the county.

The county has been so shrill about this precisely because they're trying to pressure county council, pardon me, into getting this road through before people figured out that they jumped the gun and built a road to nowhere.

Thank you, Mr. Salinas.

Scott Beyer, 2556 Summit Ridge Trail.

Good evening, Council.

While there are a lot of factors, much of what contributed to America's urban renaissance from the early 1990s to today was the rededication by local governments to funding large-scale urban beautification projects.

These projects have ranged from the Transit Mall in Portland to Milwaukee's Urban Farming Initiative to the reclaiming by Reno, Nevada of its industrial waterfront.

And these projects have helped along with improved schools and policing and luring people back from the suburbs into the cities.

For its size, Charlottesville has been a national leader in this as well, and in the last decade has funded some projects that have reshaped the city's built fabric, ranging from major ones like the Transit Center and the upgrading of Bee Park, to small-scale ones like tree planting on West Main, or flower-embedded traffic buffers on Park Street, or the brilliant sculptures funded by Art in Place.

These projects often get criticized by budget hawks who argue that they emphasize style over substance and steal funding from core services.

But these arguments ignore the vast economic returns that can result from urban beautification.

And of course, they ignore the broader point, which is that such projects are more about aesthetics and quality of life than purely about dollars and cents.

and it's in light of this positive trend that I'd encourage the city to have particularly ambitious goals for McIntyre Park East.

I already know discussions about a botanical garden and I think this garden could also include sculptures and other art pieces so that it balances natural landscapes with human creativity.

Such a hybrid was created in Chicago in 2004 when they built Millennium Park atop an abandoned rail yard

and this sculpture park has been a stunning success for the city's downtown and it has been imitated elsewhere.

Something like this should be considered in Charlottesville during the master planning process of the park.

What I don't think McIntire Park East should continue to be is a golf course and I hope the city is active in finding a different use for it.

To this point, that golf course has compromised the park's aesthetics, has narrowed its demographics, and has been the leading cause of underutilization, even more so than the park's lack of pedestrian access.

Adopting a more creative use will finally draw people to McIntire Park East and will cement it as Charlottesville's Central Park, rather than as an open space that many now feel is inaccessible.

Thank you, Mr. Beyer.

Good evening, my name is Tom Olivier.

I live at 4632 Green Creek Road in the Schuyler area of Albemarle County and I'm speaking on behalf of the Piedmont Group of the Sierra Club this evening.

For years our organization has opposed construction of the US 29 bypass.

Our reasons include the proposed route runs near the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir and constitutes a risk to that water supply.

The proposed route runs near six schools exposing children in those schools to elevated byproducts of motor vehicle operations.

The route begins, runs through and ends in developed areas.

It will disturb neighborhoods.

A state study indicates most traffic on US 29 is local.

The bypass will not address this cause of traffic congestion on that highway.

The bypass will be expensive, hundreds of millions of dollars.

The dollars it consumes could, in this period of government austerity, be far better spent toward other purposes, including enhancement of alternative forms of transportation.

And now, in addition to the old reasons, the June 8 vote of Albemarle's supervisors that revived the U.S. 29 bypass proposal was accomplished through a

unannounced late night process that required suspension of board rules.

It was done in a manner designed to limit public scrutiny and justified by reports of verbal promises from the Commonwealth for local transportation product support.

For all these reasons, the Piedmont Group of the Sierra Club urges City Council to instruct its representatives of the Metropolitan Planning Organization to not support construction of a Route 29 bypass.

Thank you, Mr. Livia.

Good evening.

I'm Jeff Warner and I'm speaking on behalf of the Piedmont Environmental Council.

I also live at 212 Wine Street, so I speak tonight as a city resident.

Since most of my PEC work is related to activities in the county, I don't often get to speak to you all.

And so I thought that while most of you know me, it's important that I once again let people know that I am a city resident and I am very involved and very interested in what goes on in this community.

My daughter just graduated from CHS.

My son just finished 7th grade at Buford.

I'm both entered first grade at Burnley Moran.

For the past five years I've been the lacrosse coach at Buford.

I helped Drew Kraft start the lacrosse program at Walker and I'm assistant coach at CHS and we've worked at all three schools very hard to get minority and low-income kids out and with great success.

For the past 13 years my wife and I have been restoring our house down on Wine Street so I'm very involved in the city and I'm very, I care very much about the issues that will impact its future.

and I'm here tonight to talk about the county's recent vote on the bypass.

On June 8th, in a late-night move and without informing the public, the majority of the Board of Supervisors voted first to suspend their rules of procedure and then they voted to reverse the county's long-held and unanimous opposition to the bypass.

For almost 30 years, groups including the Southern Environmental Law Center, PEC and the Sierra Club, as well as engaged residents, have worked diligently and even in court to oppose the bypass, a quarter-billion dollar project that even VDOT concluded will not significantly reduce congestion on 29 North.

Supervisor Doyer, who made the motion at the June 8 meeting, stated the Secretary of Transportation promised to fund the bypass and other local projects.

Juriously, the Secretary told the media he offered only to fund the bypass.

And where would the money come from?

Charlottesville Tomorrow quoted the Secretary as saying funding for the project would come from reallocating money from other projects.

He didn't specify which ones.

So is this how government is run in Virginia?

late night votes after vague, unwritten promises, promises that now don't even appear to be true.

As a city resident, I hope the city makes every effort to distance itself from this type of governance.

I urge you to oppose the bypass outright, but before casting any vote at the MPO, you must have a thorough evaluation of all the facts and potential consequences of the bypass being elevated to a priority.

How many city transportation projects might be affected or even defunded?

and for projects that will improve Route 29, how many of these mutually vetted priorities will be cast aside because of late night votes and backroom deals?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of Council.

My name is Morgan Butler and I'm with the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Thank you for the chance to speak tonight.

The discussion of the proposed Route 29 Bypass had to be added to your agenda tonight because the County Board of Supervisors, with VDOT's prodding, is recklessly trying to rush a decision through the MPO process.

We have shared with you some of our concerns already.

I'd like to highlight a few critical points tonight.

It takes only a quick review of the facts to see why the bypass proposal has consistently generated such overwhelming opposition in our region.

VDOT's own studies show that even after spending a quarter of a billion dollars or more to build the bypass, the overall effectiveness or level of service of the bypassed portion of Route 29 would not improve, so it will not effectively address local traffic.

and all the development that's been approved north of where the bypass would tie back into Route 29 has overwhelmed any minor benefit the bypass might have offered to through traffic.

Meanwhile, as was pointed out earlier, the road would inflict tremendous harm on our area, including generating new threats to the public drinking water supply and to the South Fork Reservoir in particular from erosion, polluted runoff and toxic spills.

It would also impact several area schools and damage a number of established neighborhoods.

So it's clear the cost of the bypass would far outweigh any benefits.

The far better solution to congestion on 29, as determined by numerous studies, is to create a better network of parallel roads and make improvements to key intersections.

The MPO's transportation plans currently reflect this smarter strategy, and they have for years.

But now the county suddenly wants the MPO to rewrite those plans so that the bypass can be built.

A majority of county supervisors were convinced by some vague promises that the state would fund the bypass and other county priorities if the MPO were to remove its opposition to the bypass.

But because the county board pushed this forward unannounced and sought no input from county staff or the public before they voted, the details of that deal are extremely unclear.

Even the supervisors themselves seem confused.

We strongly urge the city to vote to uphold the MPO's opposition to constructing the bypass.

At the very least, we ask that you give your MPO representatives guidance only after you and the public have a better understanding of the deal.

This includes understanding the details of each of the projects that are apparently part of the deal and knowing whether the bypass would be pushed in front of critical projects like the Hillsdale Drive extended.

It also includes understanding what this deal would mean for future transportation funding for our region.

Even if the deal won't require shifting current funds around within the MPO, it could easily influence the amount of money our region receives in the future.

In short, your partner on the MPO is peddling a half-baked deal, and citizens are depending on you to help bring the details to light and ensure an informed decision.

If the county feels that's asking too much, it would take too long, and that's all the more reason for you to oppose this deeply flawed proposal.

Thank you, Mr. Butler.

Rebecca Quinn, 104 4th Street here in the city.

Good evening.

I actually have three quick questions.

The first on the water plan cost share agreement.

We've heard for some time now that city staff and Almaron County Services Authority staff are in negotiations on the cost share agreement and the land use agreement for the water plan.

The results of the cost share agreement will of course have long term effects on water rate increases year after year after year.

Will there be a public meeting or hearing on those agreements and if so, when?

Number two, on dredging.

Two months ago, Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority anticipated delivering a draft RFP PPEA

to the board this month.

We don't yet know if it's actually on their agenda.

But last time we had some discussion, or at least requested that there be a committee with citizen representation.

So my question there is, has that request been submitted through to Rivanna?

And third, on the dam inundation zone maps,

I appreciated Mr. Jones confirming today that a request has been or that you've asked Rivanna to hold a public meeting and I hope you will make sure that that also includes more than just publishing a little notice in the paper but letting all those people know who got certified letters remember that a meeting will be held.

I spoke to the Department of Conservation and Recreation project engineer who's reviewing

and the technical background for the construction document.

I spoke to him about questions I had about those inundation maps, about the hydraulic modeling.

And one of the things that I told him that there were questions, I said in public that if we need a big new dam, and I still remain firmly on the no side, but I do believe that the Schnabel Dam is a good dam.

So I'm not sure that there are safety issues that rise to the level

states regulations that would prompt them to hold a public hearing.

But when I explained to the project engineer the questions that I've heard from citizens and that I don't feel like I should be the one to respond to, he did indicate that DCR could attend a public meeting.

And you heard some suspicion earlier at the last session.

I think it would go far towards alleviating some of those concerns to have

the person who's doing that technical review on behalf of the state attend that public meeting as well and I hope that you'll submit that request.

Thank you Ms. Quinn.

Martha Wilhelm, Roslyn Heights Road.

First of all, I wish to commend the Charlottesville City Council for having the courage to do what some members of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors were too cowardly to do.

I wish to commend you for allowing this controversial topic, the Route 29 Bypass, to be addressed in an open and public forum where the wishes of your constituents can be heard and considered.

Thank you.

Now I would also ask you to have the courage to act on the wishes of and in the best interests of those constituents who say no to squandering 250 million dollars of limited transportation funds on a project that at least two of VDOT's own studies have concluded would be ineffective, obsolete, and should not be built.

In fact, to my knowledge there is not one objective study that concludes that this is the way to solve the problem of congestion on the Route 29 or to speed travel through the corridor.

Still, there are politicians in Richmond who are now attempting to force this project on our area by subverting the political process with backroom deals and midnight subterfuge.

I have to assume that these politicians are smart,

are well informed and they understand the issues and realize this would not be the best or even a good solution to the real problem.

All I can conclude then is that they want to spend this 250 million dollars of our money to promote their own personal agendas by using it to buy favor with voters downstate.

Ironically, if this wasteful and destructive project is ever brought to fruition, it is the people downstate who would be most disappointed when they discover that they were sold a bill of goods and they were duped into believing that this project would actually enable them to pass the congestion on Route 29.

They will learn the hard way that calling a road a bypass doesn't make it one.

There are less expensive, significantly more effective plans on the table that need to be funded so there can be true improvement in the traffic situation on Route 29 all the way to Culpeper.

Instead of fighting each other, we would do better to join together to fight this wasteful boondoggle and actually put our efforts towards one of those plans.

So I'm here tonight to ask you to do what those in Richmond want.

Stand up for your constituents in Charlottesville, your neighbors in Albemarle County, your friends downstate, and your fellow citizens.

Say no to these self-serving politicians and say no to throwing away 250 million dollars in precious taxpayer money.

Make them use those funds for genuine improvements.

Thank you, Ms. Wahum.

That concludes matters by the public.

We will have another opportunity at the end of the meeting for additional public comment.

I'm happy to start.

As one of the two representatives on the MPO of the Charlottesville City Council, I'd like to save most of my discussion for when we have a discussion, but just to

Mr. Farabaugh and Mr. Olivier and Mr. Warner, Mr. Butler and Ms. Wilhelm, you had me at midnight.

I guess, and maybe to Mr. Haffaday, I think when you asked about building a Belmont Bridge, are you still here?

Yes.

That was one of the things that was on our list of priorities that did not get funded and now they say there's free money available for this project.

So, I guess

I think most of the other things we'll be talking about at some point.

To Mr. Beyer, I must say that often I have fussed about things I disagree with, so I should say that I agree that urban beautification is hugely important, although I'm not sure that the park

is something that we need to build over like a railroad track, but I think that any efforts that we can do to build urban beautification are really important for the future of our city.

So thank you for reminding us of that.

I too am waiting for just the reports about the dredging study.

Sure, there are several questions I think that Ms. Quinn asked and one response will also answer Mr. Penworth's question about the RFP.

We will have on our next agenda for the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority board meeting a presentation from HDR, which is the engineering company that we're working with on the dredging, and they will be presenting a draft RFP at the next meeting next week.

There was a question about the cost share that Ms. Quinn had asked about whether or not we would have a public hearing.

Yes, we will have a public hearing on that.

We have not scheduled that just yet.

We are still in negotiations over the cost share at this point, but we will have a public hearing here in council chambers for that.

and there was a question about the inundation zone which I responded to in an email today.

We have asked for a public meeting that would be held by Rivanna to answer any questions concerning the inundation zone.

I appreciate you following up on that.

I just had a couple of questions directed at staff.

Do we want to hold off on that until, is anyone planning to raise, to pull that from the consent agenda for discussion?

Okay, I think we've, if I remember correctly, let's see, let me go back to Ms. Hall.

She asked about the reasons why the Yomar County Service Authority had not raised their rates.

I think we've answered that at the last council meeting as well.

One of the reasons was because their connection fee balances and their operating reserve funds were used to offset the rate increases for this year.

They explained to us that if it wasn't for the use of that connection fee revenue, that their residential rates would have increased by about 17% this year.

Okay and the only other comment I wanted to make was for Michael Farbon.

Dr. Brown?

I'll concur with the good job that Mr. Farwell did speaking.

When I was mayor one time someone came and expressed how nervous they were and I made the mistake of pointing out that they were on television.

I feel like that actually wasn't really a nice thing to do.

The only comment I have is I do want to respond a little bit to Mr. Fenwick in the sense that, you know, it's sometimes presented to this, why don't we just dredge and still building a dam?

And the problem is because they're not really that comparable.

Fully dredging, according to the HER study, would give us, you know, doing both parts one and two, would give us 151 million gallons of additional storage.

151 for a price of 30 million.

For the same 30 million in a dam, we get 1,100 million gallons.

And so you get a lot more water with the dam and I think it's important to, I mean we can still argue about what do we need and what do we need to do, but the fact of the matter is there's a whole lot more new storage that comes with the dam than it comes with dredging.

I mean another way of looking at it is that

Dredging, fully dredging, gives us about 15 days of storage.

And if you look back to the issues at our current rates of usage, that's not a whole lot of additional water.

Mr. Mayor, I would like to commend Scott Byer for his Congress on urban beautification.

I agree with him totally, at least the part dealing with the sculptures and art and landscaping.

Alright, I don't have anything additional to add.

I think I agree with most of the comments that have been made.

I'll take exception to the comments on the water supply, but I don't want to rehash that.

We are now going to move on to other items.

The next item is appointments to city boards and commissions.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to move the following appointments to the CDBG Fifeville Task Force, Antonio Lodordo, Tate Huffman, and Missy Wenstrom.

Is there a second for nominations?

Hearing none, please indicate your vote.

And it carries unanimously.

Thank you very much.

On our consent agenda tonight, we have a number of items.

Item A is the minutes of June 6th.

Item B is an appropriation of $119,000 a grant for Azalea Park Stormwater Wetland Project, second of two readings.

Item C, an appropriation of $386,000, Charlottesville High School Solar Power System, appropriation of grant funds and local cash match, second of two readings.

Item D in appropriation, approval and appropriation of CDBG and home funds for fiscal year 2011 and 2012, second of two readings.

Item E in appropriation of $751,016, amendments to fiscal year 2012, adopted City Schools General Fund and grant and other governmental funds budget, second of two readings.

Item F in appropriation of $3,000, Player for Life grant from the U.S. Gold Association, second of two readings.

Item G, Resolution, Historic Resources Committee, appointment of members and acceptance of new rules of procedure, first to one reading.

Item H, a resolution, acceptance of street and St. Charles subdivision, first to one reading.

Item I, resolution, public infrastructure maintenance bonds, first to one reading.

Item J, resolution, irrevocable election not to participate in line of duty act fund.

First of one reading.

Item K, resolution, reimbursement of city employee legal fees, first of one reading.

Item L, resolution, promised neighborhood matching grant, $50,000, first of one reading.

Item M is an ordinance, utility rate, second of two readings.

Item N is an ordinance, street closure, closing of a portion of Seminole Court, second of two readings.

Item O is an Ordinance Zoning Text Amendment Assisted Living Facility, second of two readings.

Item P is an Ordinance Sunrise Park PUD, second of two readings.

And item Q is an Ordinance Homeowner Tax Relief Grant, 2011, second of two readings.

Mr. Mayor, I don't have a question on moving, taking out any

I do have a quick question, maybe Mr. Talbot could have a response to that question.

Promise Neighborhood says there is a $50,000 matching grant.

I think I probably can.

I'm not sure who's going to be writing the checks.

I believe that it's with a contract through Children, Youth and Family Services.

But it may be, I'm not absolutely sure of that.

We can get that to you.

But it'll be overseen by the city.

I would make the same comment.

So Ms. Edwards and myself on record as voting no on item M. Any other comments, questions, or a motion to approve the consent agenda?

So moved.

Any further discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

and it carries unanimously.

Thank you very much.

First item on our regular business agenda is a public hearing and ordinance relating to the temporary move of the Carver Precinct.

First of two readings tonight and here to present is Ms. Sherry Iacetta, our registrar of voters.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, council members.

I actually have very colorful maps here.

I'm sorry I didn't have them for your

That shows where Carver currently is.

You all know that Carver Rec Center precinct, those are the Carver Rec Center.

And Jefferson School is going to start being renovated in July of this year, so I understand.

And it's going to be a 15-month project, which means that we're not going to be able to use it as a precinct.

We looked at a lot of different places while we were going through the re-precincting process and we weren't having much luck.

So as to not to hold that specific process up when we went through the whole re-precincting, we kind of put Carver aside so that we could get that done and then we worked on that.

We went through 10 different locations, and I'll very quickly let you know the other 10 places that we looked at.

We looked at Burley Middle School, Murray High School.

We looked at Virginia Blood Services, Ebenezer Baptist Church, Trinity Episcopal Church, the Zazion Union Baptist Church.

We looked at the County Office Building, McGuffey Art Center, Washington Park, and we looked at the Omni.

as potential places.

All of these places either had accessibility issues, high rent issues, or they just flat out told us no.

So in looking at other areas in that particular precinct, we happened upon the Virginia Institute of Autism, and they are on Westwood Road.

And quite honestly, they're a really good location.

They are off, they're off of Westwood Road.

They have a really big parking lot.

They've got three buildings, if you're not familiar with it, you should drive by and see it.

It's very accessible off of Rose Hill Drive and the 250 Bypass.

And for our November 2011, this coming November, the fall, and our March Presidential Primary, and our June Primary, we thought absolutely perfect.

We were a little concerned about November 2012 it being presidential and knowing that we weren't going to be able to go back to Carver, but the director

actually said why not combine two of the buildings together.

There's a hallway, obviously they're both combined, there's a big gym area which is where we'll be for the first three.

And what he thought would be the perfect thing to do in November 2012 was actually go in this other building that is joined by a hallway, register everybody there, they walk through the hallway and then they vote and they go out.

So they go in one door, out the other.

It's absolutely perfect for November 2012 also.

He said it would be silly on our part to have people vote in three places and then move them for our largest election we have.

And they were very willing to allow us to use the place for four elections if we needed it.

And there's plenty of parking.

Tom Vandiver, the head of the Independence Resource Center, who also is charted with making sure all of our polling places are accessible, went with me.

and it really is a nice location and they're very excited to have us there and to partner with us.

So you noted that it is off of Rose Hill Drive but you can't really see it from Rose Hill Drive.

Yes sir.

There's going to be great signage and they've also allowed us to possibly have an open house.

I know one of the things that Ms. Szakos was talking about was having an open house at

all of our new properties that we're using for polling places and this is one of the things that they're allowing us to do.

So I really am excited.

I've also talked with the neighborhoods and I've talked with Kellytown and all of the neighborhoods surrounding.

We are going to be very generous on signage, yes sir.

We're going to be generous on the signage off the 250 bypass.

and off of Rose Hill Drive and letting people know.

That's something I'm going to have to work on with the city.

I'm assuming that election day, it's going to be torn up and it's going to be under construction.

So we've got to find a place to put signage there and I'll work closely with the city in order to do that.

It's not like we can tack something on the door.

I can't imagine what it's going to look like in November and how deep into construction they are going to be.

But I, again, I will work to, maybe we'll put a billboard out, maybe we'll

In addition to that, it'd be nice, you know, if you think about what people do on election day, especially in the middle of the city, where they walk there on their way to work, or on their way home, and I think if we haven't been somewhat thoughtful about how to make it easy for a person to get a mile away,

and they're going to say, you know, it's 20 of 7, I don't have time to get there, or I've got, you know, this is my plan.

Well, I'm open for suggestions as far as creativity.

I mean, a hot air balloon, a big tent, I can think of a lot of different creative ideas, but we can come up with some other ideas that would really

Well, I think we've talked about this in one of our earlier meetings Carver's really not going to be the only issue because we've got all the other precincts, some others have moved, we've got new precincts so we're looking really at the entire city

That's something that the city's going to have to decide if they're willing to do as far as transit.

You've talked about having free transit that day.

I don't know which bus route.

Yeah, there's one nearby that stops on Rose Hill Drive near the corner of Rose Hill Drive and Rugby Avenue.

So it's a couple blocks away.

I think you've done as good a process as you could.

I mean, it sounds like the places where I would say, well, that would be better.

Obviously, you've tried and haven't worked, and I understand that.

And I appreciate your reaching out to the neighbors, and I think that that's all.

You've done a really good job of making that happen.

I'm still really concerned that this takes the voting place away from an area where most people do walk.

to an area that's hard to get to for folks.

And so I think that the open house is a great idea.

If we can do some sort of transit between them is a great idea.

Although I look at it and think, I appreciate the Institute for Autism's willingness to do it.

It's not anything against them.

Yes sir, in writing.

Every single voter in the city of Charlottesville is going to get a brand new voter card whether they've been affected or not.

But there'll be a note saying your place has changed.

We can put maps in there, yes sir.

I think that's going to be the key, is the pre-publicity before Election Day.

The more we can do to get the word out, I think it will lessen the possibility that people will get confused or go to an old polling place.

I think, especially the way the precincts are changed, in those places there's a small

Simple map would be very helpful.

Well, I'm very intrigued by at least the possibility of some kind of a transit option particularly.

This precinct includes our largest public housing neighborhood, includes other neighborhoods that have a lot of seniors, people that have limited mobility, and I'd love to see what you all come up with in terms of ideas on transit.

This is maybe more of a question for Mr. Kilbert than you, but there also is a major construction project planned at the Institute of Autism.

So it's still on track and I've been assured as I can be assured by Mr. Tolbert and his department that it would be ready for voting.

Okay.

All right, so this is, any other questions for Ms. Aicha or any other comments?

This is before us tonight on the first of two readings.

We do have, we are required to have a public hearing.

I don't believe anybody has signed up to speak, but I will now open the public hearing.

Is there anybody from the public who would like to comment on this issue?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

It will carry forward to our next meeting.

Next on my agenda is a public hearing in ordinance relating to the transfer of property on Elliott Avenue, first of two readings, Ms. Kathy McHugh.

If the railroad will come through with their permission, then we're in good shape.

Our engineering plans are getting very close to be ready to go to bid.

We just don't have the railroad.

consent, yeah.

Thank you.

But Mr. Mayor, this is a drainage project, so even if for some reason it's delayed and it begins before the election, we can make sure that the site is cleared for election day.

Yeah, if it gets too tight, we won't start until the window goes away.

We've also got to work with via schedule too.

All right, thank you.

I'm here to talk about potential transfer of property

which is located on the south side of Elliott Avenue, the Habitat for Humanity.

As you may recall, last year we had this parcel of land surveyed and broken up really into three different lots.

There's a mount in your packet and it shows it as locked.

Yes, sir.

Sorry, I don't have one tonight.

We can certainly have one for next agenda though.

But the map that you actually have in your packet, just a reference, one is labeled Habitat, one is labeled Approved to Southern Development, and the other is labeled Subject.

We had these surveyed and delineated in December of 2010.

It was proposed and discussed that the lot for both of these lots would be conveyed to Habitat or transferred to Habitat.

Council instead came back and said

We'd rather consider selling the lot that's closest to Burnett Commons neighborhood to the developer to see, you know, there'd be a potential for developing another house there.

So that's what was done in January.

Well, first reading in January and then it was official action was taken first meeting of February this year.

Subsequent to this, Southern Development approached the city

about doing a potential larger project that involved not only the city's parcel but also adjacent parcels that go all the way over to Blanford Avenue and encompass a portion or the rear of lots that actually face Ridge.

And they've met in conjunction with several property owners to kind of compile that and they either have purchased or have options to purchase those lots.

But Sutter Development is offering to partner with Habitat to obtain both the lot that has been transferred to Habitat, which was done back in December of 2010, as well as the subject parcel.

What they are proposing to do is to come out with Burnett Commons Phase 2.

which would involve 47 attached, detached accessory drilling units and or live-work units.

They have entered into a memorandum of intent with Habitat.

I believe a copy of that is also in your packet.

And as a result of that memorandum of intent, they would provide four finished lots for building

units that Habitat would propose to put on there that are consistent with the look of what would be done for Burnett Commons Phase 2.

They've gone ahead and met with the Burnett Commons Neighborhood Association, at least on two different occasions, and copies of those minutes are in your packet.

And we have been in discussions with Southern Development personnel.

We've learned they've also spoken to owners of property on Ridge and Langford and

and had dialogue with several individuals as well.

If we deed the subject parcel, of course Habitat already owns the one, but if we deed the subject parcel to Habitat and Habitat through their memorandum of intent with Southern Development, proceeds with what is proposed, an additional three lots would be proffered

for affordable housing units.

Last thing that we're looking at is there's the lot that was approved for sale to Southern Development back in February.

That lot has not been closed upon.

In other words, we haven't actually transacted the final sale, so that lot remains in city ownership.

And in your memorandum, we have proposed

Keeping that maintained as landscape space, green space, adding in probably some art in place or something.

There's a strong feeling with Burnett Commons neighborhood that they'd like to see some art in place there.

But Southern Development has subsequently came back and asked about

Possibly including that in the transfer of the habitat so that they would have access to it and the HOA eventually could take over it and they would be responsible for maintaining that as opposed to the city and some possible signage there for Burnett Commons neighborhood and a place for art in place should that be negotiated as well.

There is a

Thank you, Ms. McHugh.

I want to add one thing for clarification real quick that this is the item that the Daily Progress made a mistake in the publication so while this is a public hearing tonight, it is not an official public hearing.

We'll have to have another one.

It's second reading on July the 5th.

No sir, it's not.

You have the option not to take any action on it tonight.

You could pass it on first reading, do the public hearing and then the ordinance on second reading next time.

You could wait and do first reading on July 5th if you so chose.

One more question.

Yes sir, that's correct.

All right, thank you.

We will now open the public hearing on this matter.

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

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of City Council.

My name is Dan Rosenzweig.

I live at 740 Lexington Avenue in the city, and I'm the executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville.

First of all, I want to thank you for considering the matter.

As many of you know, this past weekend we celebrated our builder's blitz where we built four homes in three days and finished off two others.

We were a little ahead of schedule.

This is at Sunrise Trailer Park, the first trailer park transformation in the country that doesn't displace residents but instead provides homes for them on site.

It's been a long haul.

It's been seven years in the making.

We've learned a lot as we've gone along.

We've done another mixed income development in Fifeville and we're very proud of that.

But I have to give a little bit of a history lesson.

We didn't become developers by choice.

We became developers by necessity.

We weren't being invited into other developments with a mixture of incomes, so we felt like we had to take matters into our own hands and create it ourselves.

It's very hard.

It's outside of our normal scope of activities.

Our goal and our dream all along has been to create our own beautiful mixed income communities that are better places to live for everybody, the low income residents as well as the market rate residents, and provide a template that can then be used and created in different ways that didn't necessarily necessitate Habitat being the developer.

We're an affordable housing home provider and builder.

and we do best when that's when we stick to our mission.

This opportunity is one that I think has enormous potential for the city and for the future of affordable mixed income housing in this community.

This is really sort of our dream is that

market rate development invites Habitat in and we're in from the start and so the residents in the area know what they're getting so that we have, so we can participate in the design of the community so that you can fully integrate units throughout rather than stuffing the affordable units in on one side or worse, having people pay in lieu of payments to proffer out

of any onsite affordable housing.

We talk about creating units in the city, but there have been very few units created.

It's a very challenging thing to do even after the recession.

So what I'm asking is that you approve the conveyance of this property.

I think it's a win-win.

It provides affordable housing in a mixed income development in a way that the neighbors are already bought into, the surrounding neighborhoods.

It's a small investment for the city because this is a very troubled and distressed piece of land that's been used as a dumping site and so the developer is going to come through at no cost to the city or habitat and actually clean the site up and prepare it for development, create a little bit more density and ultimately a beautiful neighborhood that's going to provide tax revenue over and above what the city would get by selling it to a private individual.

Thank you, Mr. Rosenzweig.

Hi, good evening.

I'm Paul Koch.

I live at 101 Burnett Street.

Just wanted to thank Council for the opportunity to speak on this.

Wanted to also thank Jim Tolbert and his staff for sending out notification about this.

Very appreciated.

Just wanted to kind of provide the irony to this that I was up here in February advocating

The parcel that was conveyed to Southern Development or sold to Southern Development be discussed in this larger context and now it seems it is, so I'm glad of that.

I do want to thank Southern Development for really reaching out to Burnett Commons and soliciting their input on this.

Once it came to the

attention of the neighborhood.

They really did seek out our opinion and have done a very good job of that.

Also, am excited about the opportunity for Habitat for Humanity to be part of this.

I do think it is a great opportunity for the city.

I would say that I really do support the development of this parcel by Southern Development and Habitat for Humanity.

Largely contingent, however, on a few items.

One is that there's a continued engagement with Burnett Commons and the surrounding neighborhood.

Particularly, not only Burnett Commons, but those on Ridge Street and Langford as well as the Ridge Street neighborhood in general.

I do believe that they have committed to that and will do that.

So fully expect that to be met.

I also do

have that support somewhat contingent on an adequate study and solution to any traffic concerns.

As you all know, this is a – the Elliott Street corridor is a relatively high trafficked area.

And with increased density there, certainly traffic becomes, any time you're developing the city, a major concern.

And certainly think that that needs to be adequately addressed in any subsequent plans.

Thirdly, I would say that the –

that this has kept in mind that this development is something that will improve my neighborhood, Burnett Commons, will improve the Ridge Street neighborhood, and really will ultimately improve the city.

You know, my vision for this is it's really a great opportunity for this to be a vital

neighborhood within Charlottesville.

It's really ideally located south of downtown.

And really, this is a great opportunity for the city.

Great.

Thank you, Mr. Koch.

Anybody else in public like to speak on this matter?

Good evening.

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, Mr. Jones, Mr. Brown, Ms. Barfield.

I've had the opportunity in the last week and a half to review the Southern Development and former Mayor Kochis and Habitat's proposal for this property and it's really good work.

I think it might work with some further changes.

I don't agree with it totally.

However, while I'm here tonight is, after Mr. Rosenzweig's wonderful words just now, might be tilted at windmills, but I hope not.

One thing that really bothers me about this has been the fact that on December the 7th, I happened to see the for sale sign on the subject property.

That was a week and a half ago.

Excuse me, I was thinking about my birthday.

No, thank you Mr. Brown.

June the 7th and then I received this on June the 9th.

Unfortunately, I did not receive this as a city's policy for lot number two and it was advertised

I believe in January or February or right at Christmas when y'all first took that up and didn't see it because I was out of town for Christmas when you actually started that.

The thing that really bothers me is the lack of transparency.

The science is for sale, which people in the public, I would think, normally would feel that it's for sale.

However, hearing Mr. Rosenzweig and this gentleman's name,

and then reviewing plans and some of the notes, it's fairly clear that this project has been a topic of discussion amongst staff and city council may have been aware of it since December or January of this year.

That's six months ago.

The reason I bring that up is, now I'm thinking about Oreos.

What are they doing there?

The reason I bring that up is my partners and I have an interest in this property.

We are in the same neighborhood.

We do own some houses there that we have rented for over 25 years, affordable housing as our own policy.

And we would like the opportunity to consider this property.

We would like the opportunity to actually pay the city money for this property and develop it for housing that we can guarantee for long term use

and our families and individuals that normally couldn't afford housing in this neighborhood.

So I think I would ask the city council to first of all, all of you and all the candidates for city council to first of all review the transparency issue that is often used by many candidates as a major issue on city council.

Because when it comes to things like this before the public that are clearly cooked,

You heard Mr. Rosenzweig, you've seen the documents.

They were cooked before I came up here and so I would like to ask you to review that policy first and then please consider putting the sale of this off and advertising it in a normal manner, a normal for sale manner.

that other people like myself and maybe other developers would come in and actually pay the city money even though we know it's good land we already have an answer for that.

It's a fairly easy answer believe it or not.

So please review those two things since this is not actually the last public hearing maybe we'll be able to in a week's time come together with a part of a plan

Similar to what former mayor Kochs has done on the development of this property.

But I think it's only right in the long term for the city and the city council to consider to putting this off a little while, as Ms. McHugh said, it's not immediate, is to put this off a little while and open it to the public with the hope that

you can maybe get some more creative ideas.

Now it's really hard for me to tilt the windmill of Habitat.

It might be a losing combination but there might be others out there other than Southern Development that want to work with Habitat or Piedmont Housing or such to build affordable housing on this lot.

Then the last thing I'll say is I'm really still confused despite having Ms. McHugh and Mr.

told me spending time with me about Lot 2.

It's been advertised for sale here.

Whether it's for sale or not or it's under contract, I'm not sure.

So I think that's something that also needs to be cleared up.

Thank you very much.

Can I have a word on it?

Thank you, Mr. Caravana.

Anybody else from the public like to speak on this matter?

All right, we'll close the public hearing.

Sure.

I think this is a unique piece of property.

One is

Back in December when this first came to you, Mr. Armstrong talked about the desire for this piece of property.

When we had the issues that we were concerned about, about the notice that went on with Lot 2, which is under contract to Southern Development, you asked us to meet with the neighborhood and

Mr. Armstrong presented an idea to the neighborhood initially at that meeting after I had left the meeting that he wanted to talk about bringing this forward and making an offer.

I think the uniqueness of it is that he's put together options and partnerships for all the surrounding properties

and then he came to us and said we knew it was in the works but he came and made an offer for this piece of property which is not uncommon and we do post a notice as we did on 401 Stadium Road that says for sale but and we got you know alternate proposals that came in on that but I think Mr. Caravati indicated he didn't get a written notice on the sale of Lot 2

We are required to send to adjacent.

We sent it to a lot more than adjacent.

I think, Dr. Brown, the difference with this one is that, in a way it's similar to the offer that you ultimately went with, is that the habitat southern development

Partnership has gotten all the surrounding properties here, whereas if any other group was to buy, it would be that one lot, which doesn't have a lot of utility as it is because of its shape.

The big piece that's under consideration tonight, the assessment that Mr. Barber put on it was $90,000-$100,000 but that's conditioned on the fact that there is probably that amount of work to be done to make it usable so he acknowledges that while it's

If it's perfect ground and the size and the zoning, it's roughly $90,000 to $100,000 Lot 2, you agreed to sell for $40,000 And then you gifted the other lot, which was of equal value pretty much, to Habitat You didn't sell it So you're talking about $180,000 worth of land Probably altogether $180,000 worth of land Again, with significant cost to remediate the landfill the city's put over there down through the years

Other comments, questions?

I generally support this

Can I ask a substantive question, just putting off whether we're going to do anything tonight or not?

With our agreements with Habitat, all of the, any units they do have provisions in them that are maintained that way.

so there's not a problem.

On proffered units that's a little bit different and we'd have to see what came up actually in the rezoning in the proffer then.

What we have discussed is it would meet our definition of affordability that you have adopted.

I guess my point would be, I mean, one way to create affordability is to have a smaller house.

And I guess I'm just wanting, it'd be nice not to look at the development and be able to say, oh, I can pick out the three affordable units, they're those little ones.

And I don't know what, it'd be nice to have something that in the spirit of affordability is broader than that.

So I don't know if there's any discussion on

We would get that in the proffer, that would be the intent.

I mean that's been the discussion all along has been that it will be architecturally compatible with everything around it, that it would be

that it would be truly affordable meeting our definition and that it would fit into the community.

My conversations with Mr. Armstrong, Mr. Kochis, the other two people that have been primarily working on this is that they don't want you to be able to ride through their intel which one is the affordable unit.

But the form that takes because they don't have the other part, they may end up having Habitat build the other three, but they haven't gotten to that point yet.

So the intent was that would come in on the proffer.

Not right now.

I just want to say for the record that I think this is a very creative, very positive idea, proposal for development of the site.

The fact that you've got buy-in from neighborhoods on all sides is really remarkable.

And it shows what can come out of proactive

neighborhood engagement, which we don't always see, so I want to commend Southern Development and commend Habitat for doing that.

I agree with a lot of the sentiments expressed by the mayor and I think if, you know, I understand where Mr. Huja's coming from but if at the end of the day all we're doing is putting it off, I don't see a reason to put it off for that reason.

I mean, did I make any sense just then?

And where I am on this is I'm getting that 459 Stadium Road deja vu all over again.

kind of feeling.

And I'd like to put this off until we have a public hearing, just in the spirit of transparency.

And I think just like the Stadium Road, things worked out for the best, and we got the best development for that site, that things will work out for the best again.

But I think we need to

in the spirit of being transparent.

And this is one of those things where I would say, you know, charge your head, but not our heart.

It's anything we deliberately set out to do.

All right, so we'll have the first reading after the, we'll do another public hearing at our next meeting, have the first reading that night and carry forward from there.

Great, thank you.

Thank you very much.

Next item on our agenda is a report and a resolution, section three plan and policy, first of one reading.

All right.

I don't want to steal Ms. McHugh's thunder, but I like to.

I've been around longer than her and been hearing Section 3 longer than she has, so I'm going to do this one.

I will.

Section 3 of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968.

Essentially it is intended to ensure that training, employment, contracting and other economic opportunities generated by certain HUD financial assistance to the greatest extent possible will be directed to low and moderate income and very low income individuals, especially recipients of government assistance.

for Housing, and to business concerns which provide economic opportunities to those low and very low income individuals.

So it's a federal law that says that if you take HUD money, most HUD money, then you will comply with it.

And the way that you have to comply is that it applies to any contracts and subcontractors

that are performing work in connection with HUD funded projects, the total federal assistance exceeds $200,000 and any contracts exceed $100,000.

So while we've been submitting reports for years in the city that we are Section 3 compliant, primarily because we haven't had those big contracts.

We haven't been doing anything of that nature.

So what this does is say we believe that we can do more and we want to put a plan in place to do more

to try to assist and benefit those businesses and those individuals of low income.

So what you have before you is a model or is a planning policy that's based on ones that were written by a couple of various communities that have been very successful, much larger than us, but we use their model because they have been successful.

The other thing that, the primary things that this does, it says that a business concern is seeking to qualify for a Section 3 preference, which you can give a preference in your contracting to qualified Section 3 businesses on HUD money, meaning that if they meet the qualifications as a Section 3 and are certified as a Section 3 business, and they're bidding on a competitive project,

that if they're competing against somebody that's not certified, you can actually award the contract to them if their bid is a little higher than the person that's not certified.

And this document contains the scale of what those limits are.

Now that only applies to HUD money

that's in the program.

One of the reasons we want to go ahead and get this in place is if CRHA truly goes through with redevelopment and we're able to move that forward, there will be some opportunities with some substantial contracts there that this could apply to.

What we've also done though is we've written a clause here that says

that the city of Charlottesville also desires that contracts which do not include Section 3 funds, or a few federal funds, would benefit Section 3 individuals and businesses.

Now, we can't give a preference, but what we can do is tell everybody out there that might be bidding on a new fire station or a Belmont Bridge project, but that's the goal of the city.

and we want you to do this and by providing a program we can help identify those individuals when you go to hire people into jobs that are created by the project or when you go looking for subcontractors.

Here's a list of people that we've certified as Section 3 and we'd really like you to consider them.

We can't go any further than that but we think that we can create a climate where people understand that we're wanting to move in that direction and we can ask them to

to consider them.

The federal and state law do not allow us to do that.

It's just the bottom line.

And we have had this plan reviewed by the city attorney's office and it is the, it does go to about the limits that we can go.

There would be several goals of the plan, seven specifically that we would attempt to implement.

We would identify Section 3 residents and businesses, develop and implement marketing strategies, establish a referral program,

support the transition of Section 3 residents and businesses, certify the Section 3 residents and businesses and contractors, train the Section 3 sub-recipients about the regulations, and ensure that sub-recipients develop procurement practices that include the provision for contracting preferences and understand how to participate.

and those each have more specific goals underneath them.

But basically the program would say that we would put in place the certification of individuals and we would look for those individuals who need work that meet the qualifications that again when we put together proposals on federal money we can say if you want to be qualified here are the people you hire, here are the people that are certified as

as a Section 3 business, and we would make those same lists available to other contractors.

We would train businesses how to get qualified, and we would partner with different groups to make sure we were also helping them get the type of training that small businesses need on how to have a business plan, how to do proper bookkeeping and accounting, all those types of things.

We would put together an advisory group that would involve a lot of folks.

the Small Business Development Center, Economic Development Department, Procurement, CRHA, the Plain District Commission, FAR, other groups.

There's another group that Ridge Scholar is now working with.

Any more that we found out there that would be all inclusive to try to make sure that we were meeting regularly, talking about the issues and trying to move this forward.

but again we think that this stretches us as far as we can go legally but it also provides some opportunities to deal with other contracts where there's really initially more opportunity maybe for folks to get hired very similar to what we did on the downtown mall project where we created opportunities.

We'd be looking for those opportunities.

We anticipate if you adopt this that we would want to hire, as the memo says, a Section 3 coordinator.

We can fund that out of our CDBG admin for about a year and a half along with a contribution that the Housing Authority would make of $10,000 a year to cover that cost.

Mr. Bicker said that's about all he can do right now but as we get into redevelopment there's some other opportunities for funding.

We also will be applying for a grant that would fund one year of that and relieve us if we got it of the responsibility.

What we would anticipate doing with your blessing is hiring somebody in one of our long term temp positions

and full well knowing that we had it for 18 months to see how it worked and how we were developing and what the other resources were, come back and evaluate that at the end of 18 months.

But we think again we can do that pretty much without touching anything but CDBG admin and the housing authority money.

and without being allowed to answer questions we'd recommend adoption of the resolution and also let me clarify one other point is the intent is that CRHA is going to take this up next week and adopt it.

Thank you, Ms. Tolbert.

I'll start.

First of all, I would just like to thank Vice Mayor Edwards who has said the words Section 3 more than anyone I think has and I think that's largely why we're sitting here today listening to this report.

So I really appreciate your responsiveness to that request and the persistence of that request.

I have just a quick question about the staff person.

Is that an entirely administrative position?

You were talking about training of people.

Our vision is this person would be hands-on,

Right, SCORE, Small Business Center, our Economic Development Office, all those other resources out there.

Mr. Mayor, I also support the idea of Section 3.

I think it is a good approach to follow on.

My concern relates to the staff acquisition.

It refers to CDBG funds.

My understanding is that you can only spend about 15% on administration and I don't know how close you are to that number now.

Secondly, I also see a comment that is supplemented by CHF funds, which I think bothers me.

If I could respond, we're well aware of the 15%.

And that's the limiting factor.

That's why we think we're good for 18 months.

And we originally put it to CHF, but I got a confirmation from Mr. Bickers that he can do his part now.

So we wouldn't be asking for that at this point.

I just appreciate the work that's gone into this and I value the work that you've done also, Kathy McHugh, for the research you've done and I know that

This has been, it's just a long time coming and I'm glad to see it on the agenda now.

And I just hope that this will be not only an opportunity for us to truly become compliant with Section 3, but also will provide an opportunity to really create some job opportunities.

I'll just echo what Ms. Edwards said and I want to thank you.

First of all, I think Ms. Szakos is right, we owe a debt to Ms. Edwards for championing this cause and getting it to this point and thank you and Ms. McHugh.

I really do wish there was more that we could do, maybe something we could put on our state legislative agenda for next year, but in terms of

incorporating the same kinds of goals, if not requirements, in our own projects.

Particularly when you look at, yes, you're right, with redevelopment there's some real opportunity there, but up until, in the meantime,

We don't get a huge amount of federal dollars in this area, but the real impact will come if we're able to draw down some huge significant dollars for redevelopment.

Then you look at the products that we're involved with where, you know, whether it's a new dam or whether it's a new road, whatever it is, whether you're talking tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, that's real jobs.

And that's a huge, significant number of new jobs that if we had the same kind of goals.

I think this will also help.

Having a person that's actually focused on that can help us.

And I think Mr. Watts and I have had some conversations about some of those other projects.

We spent, with your encouragement, maybe $50,000 out of a $6 million project on the mall and put 10 people to work, seven of which, when the project was over, had jobs that continued on.

So I think that was a wise investment, and we're going to keep looking for opportunities

At the National Low Income Housing Conference last year there was a discussion between HUD, Department of Transportation, and Department of Education to talk about how Section 3 can be within the Department of Transportation specifically since we're

It seems to be building more roads than anything else that there would be an opportunity to create some employment opportunities there.

All right.

So we have before us a resolution to adopt this new plan and policy.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

It passes unanimously.

Next item on our agenda, a report and a resolution regarding allocation of Charlottesville Housing Fund dollars for a purchase of lots, $690,000 before us tonight, first to one reading, Mr. Jim Tolbert.

Got that on my first note here.

I think what happened is the first draft of this had a typo and said buying lots for Habitat for Humanity.

Your report, I think the one that was in your packet, says from Habitat but I just noticed that the resolution says four so apparently when the resolution was authored it was looking at the original report but the idea is to buy lots, for lots from Habitat for Humanity and not for $690,000 which is another point of confusion in the title.

What we have

suggested to do here is one of the issues that's come up recently in our look for affordable housing is the need for special needs individuals in particular and we've been trying to find a way that we could do something for particularly for region 10 clients that where they could have a place where people could live and primarily on their own but some with supervision

and be integrated into the community and not be in a true group home or really be in a real housing environment in the middle of a community.

And after looking at a number of options and having conversations

with Region 10 and with Mr. Rosenzweig, we came upon the idea that we could purchase these four lots in the Patton Street development PUD.

These are four townhouse lots and have negotiated a price of $150,000 for those.

Townhouse lots are going anywhere from $50,000 to $80,000 depending on where they are.

So these have a value of, we believe, of $200,000 and up.

If you look on our city assessment records, because they are Habitat Lots at this point, they're just sitting there holding them at $15,000 each, which we know they're developed lots.

They've got water, sewer, the pads are ready.

Again, the market is much greater for that.

And Habitat actually had a deal to sell them for $200,000 at one point, and the deal fell through with the private investor decided not to buy them.

So we've negotiated a deal for $150,000.

What we would like to do and what the resolution would do is to allow us to purchase those lots and then proceed to partner with somebody, one of our non-profits and quite possibly Habitat, maybe we've had some initial conversations with John Qualley about the potential for an eco-mod situation but to build four townhouse units on those and when we get those four townhouses units complete, the idea would be that we would deed two of those to Region 10

to use as the housing for their residents.

With the understanding that we were deeding them to them, but they're not to ask us for any operational costs.

The rents would cover the operational costs, and so we would be deeding them.

It would be restricted to Region 10 clients, and then they would operate them in whatever form they chose.

One of them we would like to keep as a transitional house, transitional unit for both CRHA redevelopment potential but some other plans we have to look at programs where we have the ability to go in and instead of paying substantial rehab dollars on homes that really are in bad shape but to put the money in them to rehab them that would be needed would be as much or more than the houses are worth now where we could go in

work with the owner, demolish what they're in and rebuild them a new house that's energy efficient and meets all the codes.

But they're going to need a place to live and this house could provide that.

But also as part of CRHA redevelopment, it would be one of the transitional places they would use.

Mr. Bickers and I have had conversations about them managing that or Habitat, one or the other managing it.

But it would be a partnership no matter which one ended up with it.

We'll deal with that as we go down the road.

one of them would get it.

And the other, what we'd like to do is to sell it and put it into a first time home buyer type program or one of our police officers or teachers, firemen, those folks had some initial conversations with the chief about that.

The foundation has some money to help there and so we would want to sell that one and then those proceeds, and it would probably be worth to be in the range of all the other

of around $200,000 worth of value that we would take and get back on this.

How many bedrooms roughly on the two Region 10 units?

Roughly three, maybe squeeze four if we could.

Right, right.

Possibly having one of the units have a bedroom where one of the social workers might live to provide service, but the other unit would be more standalone but have a social worker there that would work.

We would want, again, part of this would be to design those and work that end of it out as we go forward.

Thank you, Mr. Cholbert.

I'd like to make a comment that, you know, for all of the folks in Charlottesville who are members of IMPACT or whose congregations are members of IMPACT, this is the sort of thing that was asked of us for really the following year.

And so we're sort of, you know, this is going a little bit above and beyond that commitment and saying we're starting now.

As the parent of someone who might eventually live in a place like this and who has in the past lived in a place like this, I think it's hugely needed.

Long, long waiting lists.

Other comments?

I guess I could make the motion that's not a conflict of interest.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any further discussion?

That carries unanimously.

Well, don't go far, Mr. Tolbert.

We have you up again.

So in your packet is really a sort of a history of the bypass and I don't know that I need to do a lot of lead into this is that you had several speakers that addressed it but as you know on June 8th the Board of Supervisors voted that they wanted the NPO to reconsider

the Western Bypass.

You agreed to place it on your agenda tonight to discuss, to give direction to your two MPO members.

Just a point of process in discussing this with Mr. Williams before the meeting.

This is coming up at a meeting on July 14th of the MPO.

It does require two hearings, although he's

had some requests to maybe only do one but right now the intent is that there would be a hearing on the 14th and another one on the 27th and then the vote would occur at that second hearing actually on the 27th.

So tonight this is on the agenda for you to discuss your desires about how you might like to deal with this.

It is, there's the opportunity

that you will have again to discuss this at your meeting after the first of those hearings that the MPO will have prior to the second one.

So there's no need for you to actually take a position tonight.

You can wait and see what the outcome of that is if you want to or you can deal with it tonight if you desire.

And then our only suggestion would be that if you choose to

support it, we think that there are some opportunities that you may want to take advantage of and try and negotiate some good outcomes for the city, particularly Hillsdale Drive funding and the Belmont Bridge that you might

And before we get into that, can you explain to the public how the voting works at the Metropolitan Planning Organization?

There's two members from the county, there's two members from the city, and then there is an appointment by the Secretary of Transportation, who is the regional, I never can get Mr. Utterbot's title right, but he's out of Culpeper and he's the regional appointment to it.

Each one of those five has an equal vote.

The bylaws for the MPOs say that a quorum is three members, but there has to be one Charlottesville, one Albemarle,

member there.

So it couldn't be two from city or two from the county and the one VDOT member.

It has to be representation from city and county.

So even if we instructed our two representatives to oppose inclusion of the bypass on the project list, that wouldn't necessarily stop the project?

It could pass by a 3-2 margin.

It doesn't require that there be support from both local governments for something to pass.

I have a series of questions, but I'd be happy to open it up to other counselors first.

Or not.

Let me just walk through some questions for you Mr. Tolbert.

Steve Williams, Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission and the Charlottesville Albemarle MPO.

Before we can do the update to the long-range transportation plan and the transportation improvement program,

Those are required to be what we call fiscally constrained, meaning we can't propose to spend more money than we actually have.

And my understanding is that at the most recent meeting of the, I believe it was the Commonwealth Transportation Board, they essentially said that this is money that would be reallocated from other projects.

I don't think the CTB said that.

Right, that's my impression as well.

And do we have a sense of how much time?

That's not something that we have any information on.

Okay, now there was a lawsuit filed I believe by Mr. Butler's organization against the bypass and I understand there were some findings regarding environmental impacts, design.

There was, as a result of the lawsuit, there was a supplemental environmental impact statement that was prepared that made certain recommendations related particularly to water quality but also to some other issues.

My understanding is that

The supplemental environmental impact statement was approved in 2002 and soon after that the city, county and the MPO agreed that they did not want to see the project move forward.

And then the last question is, there was a series of transportation projects that were outlined in sort of sequential order.

And my impression was that the bypass was sort of at the end of that series.

And that included grade separated interchanges at some of the major intersections on 29, included some other projects that would take traffic off of 29.

That's my understanding of the original agreement.

That's right.

Just a comment on history, Mr. Tolbert.

It is not all the history I'm aware of.

Right, that's my understanding up until the point in

It was 96, it was still done.

It was 2002, I think, that the support was removed.

My understanding is that it only takes away 15,000 trips from the western bypass, whereas you can get about 11,000

Can you shed any light?

I guess in particular, for example, this money is going to come from somewhere and as you pointed out, people around the state are worried about it.

And is, you guys can answer this better than I can, but I know that the city, we get an urban allocation, we're kind of treated differently than the county's roads and the state-maintained roads.

The, you know, the low end estimates for the bypass at this point are, you know, sort of the guesstimates are in the range of 250, 300 million dollars.

Certainly could.

trying to figure out where the city's interest is and how it could hurt the city.

And to some degree, could it be considered an expensive parallel road?

I mean, would it function?

I think that was kind of what you were getting at a little bit, Mr. Huja, that it would be a road that would perhaps be comfortable to Hillsdale but at a way higher price tag.

Well, to some extent, but the thing you have to keep in mind is that it starts at Holly Mead, it ends at Leonard Sandridge, and there are no access points in between.

And so it is not serving local traffic at all.

It's only, you know, so for instance, if someone lived in Crozet and worked at Engic,

There are two sources of traffic to deal with.

One is the through traffic you mentioned, which is very minimal.

Back when he was on the Board of Supervisors, Mr. Slutsky had come up with sort of a variation on the bypass that would have extended Leonard Sandridge north and beefed up the hydraulic road, Berkmar Drive kind of corridor to serve as a mini bypass, if you will.

Well it was one of the alternatives that was proposed in the corridor study.

There was a public meeting that was held up at the Department of Forestry.

Close to 200 people turned out.

Another comment I guess I should make that the whole process by which this decision is being made seems very unfair and I'm democratic in many ways.

I agree with that.

When I told our public commenters earlier in the evening that they had me at midnight, to me, even if I thought that this was a great project, and I really don't because I've looked at the studies that showed that it would have minimal improvement, and even if it was four minutes, really, to save somebody

In Dandle, four minutes on their trip from Washington isn't worth to me $250 million.

It's lovely, but to me it just doesn't seem like a good investment.

But even if I thought it was a good idea, the fact that it

I certainly feel like it's being rammed down our region's throat in a really kind of strange way.

The least of any district in the state per capita by like 30 fold.

I mean it was incredibly less than any other district had.

for transportation projects from the State Department of Transportation.

So already, when we talk about where this money has come from, it already came from us.

And so they give us almost nothing and then they say, oh, but by the way, here's a big pocket over here that we just found some more money in, but you can't use it for what you wanted.

You have to use it for what we want.

and to me that's not the whole purpose of having an MPO is to bring public process into this and to have the localities work together to come up with things that they feel it takes in negotiations because we don't always feel the same way about things but we work together to try to find things that we can work together on and that's what we ask for funding for.

and we did ask for funding that we did not get and now they're giving us this and so you know and the fact that that it was ran through in the Board of Supervisors at midnight or almost midnight with where they even had to waive their own rules to do it just the whole thing stinks and and you know I just I can't imagine voting for this on the MPO.

Well, I don't know what we're choosing to do.

I mean, I agree that I think the process that the county

chose to follow on this was embarrassing.

It was just an embarrassing way of doing business and it's hard to fathom it why.

On the other hand, this is a road that starts and ends in the county.

And to me, if it doesn't take money away from it, it probably would help us.

It would help us in that we talk all the time about being worried about people driving straight through the city of Charlottesville to get to 29 North.

And I think if there's another route around, which would be

For nine years, the county MPO members have voted to oppose it.

And so I think at this moment, we have that.

But we have this long-range planning process in which the county representatives, as well as the city representatives, voted not to do this.

I have a question for Mr. Williams.

There was some effort to try to change the language of this so that there would only have to be one public hearing.

Well, the way things work is that we have plan and tip changes that we treat what we call amendments and we have actions on the plan and the tip that we treat as updates.

The difference in terms of how we interpret that is that an amendment is a relatively minor action

to change the year, change, perhaps make a minor change in scope in the project or it may add some new project to the plan or to the TIP.

So that's what we identify as an amendment.

TIP is standing for Transportation Improvement Program and LRTP stands for Long Range Transportation Plan.

Under our public participation policy, an amendment

requires one public meeting and 14 days of notice.

An update is considered a major change, a major new project or major new portion or an addition to a project or a project phase that significantly increases the cost, the impacts, the right of way takings and the impacts of the project on the transportation system.

An update under our public participation policy requires a 30-day notice and two public hearings.

And so at the staff level, we make the determination initially about whether it's an amendment or an update, and then of course we schedule based on that, but the MPO Policy Board has the opportunity

in a publicly convened meeting to override that.

And so what I have been asked by VDOT if this should not be considered an amendment rather than an update, and I've told them that we're convinced it's an update and that's the way we intend to go, but that the policy board could override that decision if they chose to at their meeting on the 14th.

However,

So you're full update?

It certainly has impact.

Just one more question.

If the members of the Board of Supervisors or the Transportation Department or anybody wanted to, other than kind of

trying to stick this into the existing plan, wanted to have an impact on the next plan or on the next phase.

Well, the typical procedure, we're in our long-range transportation plan update cycle now.

And so the intent there was that actually in January,

We were going to be identifying transportation system development scenarios that we were going to study.

And I would assume that if we were going through the typical process, we would identify this as a component of one of the scenarios that we were going to study.

We would do some environmental review.

We would do some traffic analysis.

We would report back to the MPO Policy Board.

and then it would ultimately be up to the MPO Policy Board after appropriate public input to decide if it was then appropriate to include this particular project among the others in the long range transportation plan.

Now that's a lengthy process.

But if it's waited, what, 20 years?

To me, that seems to be the process that is set up in this whole mechanism to make changes like this, this sort of major change.

And I'd be comfortable if the county wanted to come back and initiate that process.

with all of the public input and research and analysis that that entails.

I think, as you mentioned before, a lot of the analysis that we have now is based on very old figures.

Sure.

The schedule that we have proposed at this point is that we would advertise on July 27th.

We would at that point be advertising two combined public hearings.

Those combined public hearings would meet our requirements for both a long-range transportation plan update and a transportation improvement program update.

The 27th, yes.

We said July.

Oh, I did?

Well, I'm sorry.

Yes, you're right.

I'm sorry.

I did mean June 27th for the advertising.

July 14th for that first public meeting from 4 to 7 p.m. at Lane Auditorium over at the county office building on McIntire.

The second public meeting would then be held on July 27th, also at Lane Auditorium from 4 to 7 p.m. over on McIntyre.

Alright, so we have at least one

Vote in favor of waiting and hearing the public hearing, hearing what comes up at the public hearing.

Well, I'm comfortable going now, but I think it would take an awful lot to convince me to do anything but vote no on this as an MPO member.

I'm going to make a couple of comments that I am just so disappointed in the Board of Supervisors and the direction that they've chosen to take with this.

And to make a decision and not know where the money is going to come from makes it even more unethical.

And I'm also disappointed because they put us in a position where it doesn't matter what we think, it doesn't matter what we believe,

and they don't even care how we feel about this.

I did notice that within the staff recommendations included maybe discussion with the Secretary of Transportation about other projects including the Hillsdale Drive connector and replacement of the Belmont Bridge because the replacement of that bridge is important.

But is it really worth the discussions almost by putting other projects out there where we would almost be selling our soul?

as a way of trying to bargain in a way to make this work for us.

Because the discussion that I wanted to have was, I'm just intrigued at the way the bypasses come back to life.

That I wanted to have CPR for the Eastern Connector and bring that back to the table.

If they can have the discussion about the Western Bypass,

How dare they not have the same conversation about the Eastern Connector.

So for my perspective is that there is no point in continuing this discussion because we have so many other problems that we need to solve.

Instead of worrying about building a road in the county, we need to focus on Tom and building roads of opportunities for the citizens in the city.

I don't feel a point in discussing this any further.

I've been impressed by the comments and the questions that have been made, but to spend any more time on this would just not be a good use of Tom with all the things that we need to do.

So I'd be willing to put closure on the decisions that we need to make.

It's the first public hearing.

Well in which case it doesn't matter what we do tonight anyway.

I think us, you know, being able to benefit from whatever comments come up and any light that's shed on where the money is going to come from would be a good thing.

I actually agree with Holly in that I think that the place for those public comments, you know, people are welcome to comment here, but I would urge people to go to these MPO hearings on July 14th and July 27th at the Albemarle County office building at Lane High School at 4 o'clock, 4 to 7, and speak out about, you know, how the state wants to use our tax money to do something that is not in our region's best interest.

So when you say you're in agreement with Holly, with Ms. Edwards, it sounded to me... That I've had to make the decision tonight and as far as we can and we can always...

I'm in the same camp.

I think it's important to remind people that this project was named by a taxpayer advocacy group as one of the most heinous examples of wasteful government spending in the country.

and if Albemarle County is not going to be good stewards of our tax dollars, I think even if it's simply a symbolic gesture on our part, I think we need to stand up for common sense and fiscal common sense.

and I'm terribly worried about how this road may affect other transportation priorities here in our region.

And to me, the lack of any kind of concrete commitments one way or another in terms of where the money is going to come from and how it may or may not impact other regional transportation priorities gives me enormous worry and concern.

For 250 or 300 million dollars, we could rebuild the Belmont Bridge, we could build Hillsdale Drive, we could build the Sunset-Fontaine Connector, we could radically overhaul our public transportation system, we could make major, major upgrades to our pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, we could do other improvements in our own transportation system here and still have 100 million dollars left over.

This is an enormous pot of money that's going to benefit 10% of commuters, 10 to 15% of commuters in our area and save them, at best, a few minutes of travel time.

But to be clear, we're not making a choice saying we'd rather, you know, we somehow think that we'll get to spend the money somewhere else.

It's already been taken from us and I think, I hate having votes where you vote against a motion, someone misinterprets it, but I would like to see us have a chance to find out, can we leverage this and get some other things here built?

If this would be built in such a way that it didn't take any money away from our priorities, I'd like to see where the discussion would land then.

I don't know.

That we should oppose the pending public input at the two public hearings.

So why don't we wait until after we get the public hearing instead of saying pending the public hearing?

Yeah, I tend to agree with Dr. Brown.

It seems to me that it would be worth the wait to listen to people and then we won't be accused of the same thing which we've been accusing the county of.

So in terms of ethics, is it really a public comment period or

Or is it that they didn't give us or give us an opportunity to pretend as though we were being listened to, which is a difference.

And that's where I'm struggling.

Obviously, we're going to listen to them, what they have to say, and part of the result of public hearing, we can't predict what they will say.

You know, what I'm trying to say is that we just stopped to start criticizing the county board of supervisors for just taking action at midnight without public hearing.

We put it on our agenda ahead of time.

It was publicized to everybody.

We have a motion on the table.

But just to address that, and then I'll be quiet.

But I came in here thinking that we were directing you and Mr. Huja to vote at the next MPO meeting.

So it makes sense.

We have to discuss it tonight so you can have a clear direction.

But that, as I understand it, that's not, you're not going to vote at the next meeting.

We may.

We may.

Okay, great.

So would you be willing to amend your motion to indicate that if a vote occurs at the next meeting, the instruction of counsel will be to oppose it?

Sure.

If there is no vote, then they're not under instructions either way.

So the motion on the floor is if there's a vote at the next NPO meeting that the city representatives are instructed to oppose, including the bypass and the plan.

I'll second that because I liked it better than the other day.

It's getting towards 10 o'clock.

I know, I know.

Any further discussion?

Okay.

Thank you very much.

We'll have a chance in the meantime to see, get the whole picture.

Next item on our agenda is a report, hopefully a brief one on the Belmont Bridge update.

Good evening.

I'm just here to talk about the bridge that needs to be replaced.

It was built in 1961, so we had an expected service life of 50 years.

With the advances in technology, we're looking at average lifespan of 75 years for the new bridge.

So we want to be careful, you know, carefully consider our options with this new bridge.

We've been collecting data, traffic counts for both vehicles as well as pedestrians, pedestrian origin and destination study.

We've done surveying as well as geotechnical borings.

Once we collected all that information, we created informational boards which were included in your packet that we then presented to the public, one in a general public kickoff meeting and then to five separate stakeholder meetings that we identified for bikes and pedestrians, the Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown Business Association, the business and property owners, as well as the neighborhoods.

And each of those meetings was also open to the public as well, except for the Chamber of Commerce.

The information was relatively the same.

We kind of took off from questions from the public.

We got a lot of good input.

It ranged from very high level to very detail leveled in the weeds of, you know, ranging from we want a connection from the bridge down to Water Street so that we can connect to our buses easier.

Or we like to maximize parking under the bridge, the parking lot that we currently have.

From there we distilled about six general

ideas to help lead the design.

And one of those is that this bridge is seen as a community asset, that it needs to be multimodal, that it's a gateway, it needs to be safe and attractive.

To limit impact, if we could stay within the right of way limits, that would be great.

As well as construction sequencing, it's possible to, there are two bridges currently side by side, that is Belmont Bridge.

We could take one down

reconstruct it while leaving traffic on the other part of the bridge.

So there would be one lane of traffic in each direction as well as pedestrian connections during construction.

So from these six ideas we went ahead and incorporated them within this cross section of the bridge.

We gave several options of what we could do within the right of way.

And based on public comment, what we heard was that pedestrian access on both sides is very important.

So we gave five foot of sidewalk on the east side, separated with a barrier from the traffic, then a five foot on road bike lane, which the bicyclists prefer for commuting purposes, two 11 foot travel lanes traveling north, a six foot painted median that would provide for flexibility in the future of whatever our needs are in the next 75 years.

and an 11-foot southbound travel lane, along with another 5-foot bike lane going south as well, a barrier, and then we had a little extra space that we were able to squeeze an 8-foot sidewalk on the other side of the bridge that's closer to the downtown mall.

It gets a little bit more use now, but again, things can redevelop, so we thought, again, pedestrian access on both sides was important.

From this cross section we went to the roadway layout and we looked at ways that we could improve the lane configuration on the bridge.

And at the Market Street intersection we are able to extend the left turn lane which will help operations at that intersection as well as dedicating a right through lane that helps the buses as they come around.

and two through lanes.

And then the Garrett Levy, that's basically the same configuration that we have today.

So that is basically how we see the purpose and the need of the bridge and how people use it as a function.

What was kept coming up and keeps coming up is aesthetics.

And based on all the public comment, again we have all that.

in the record that we'll be referring back to as the design progresses.

But we also did a design charrette with the local design community that we got ideas and concepts of what they would like to see.

And again, it goes back to use, but we did see arches.

We saw more modern light design, not very heavy.

That was the majority of what we were seeing, the themes.

And those are available on our website Belmontbridge.com.

The design charrette we also folded into two meetings that we've had with the Board of Architectural Review.

The first meeting we went over the same information we've been doing at the stakeholders meeting and the kickoff meeting.

And the second one we focused a little bit more on bridge form, piers, abutments, etc.

So this is where we're at.

I was asking you all tonight if you have any input or direction that you would like the design effort to move in.

I want to emphasize the importance of quality design.

It is an entrance to the downtown area and we want to make sure that it is a very attractive entrance and welcoming entrance.

Another thing which interests me is that lighting.

Everything we do nowadays, we do a new kind of lighting.

Try to use some existing lighting, so that we don't need to introduce 10 types of lighting every time we do a...

I know every designer wants to have their own mark, but there ought to be some consistency.

I know you haven't really gotten into more of the sort of design elements, you know, the sort of architectural flourishes or the plantings.

Oh, absolutely.

We've given examples of what's been done in the past.

But we haven't gotten to the detail.

Just to give you an example, the Spain Street Bridge is an example of a good design.

Absolutely, absolutely.

I just had a question.

Well, light and airy is definitely still in the foreground.

I hate to say that anything's not possible.

However, I would, based on our funding that this is a bridge project, et cetera, we're not going to do anything to make the sound worse in Belmont.

But I don't believe that a sound barrier for that very purpose would be allowed in the funding for this project.

But you don't think that it would make it worse?

Definitely not worse.

Now, we're not making more lanes.

We can use different treatments that hopefully will soften it.

I mean the sound of music.

From the pavilion.

From the pavilion.

Yes.

Well, again, we're not changing very much.

We have a restriction from the railroad that we need to clear it.

And then as you push the bridge up, you get more of a hump and on a curve.

that it creates a sight distance issue.

So I don't want to say you're going to get the exact same bridge, because we're going to certainly make it look better.

But for the form and the height, and that's what you'll be getting.

You won't be a lot higher into the neighborhood.

It won't be lower.

Yes.

I just hope that that kind of concept, if there are ways to mitigate that sound, that they just be kept in consideration.

But you mentioned that you're going to raise the bridge for hire.

No, I don't believe we'd have to do double decker.

The reason why I ask this question is because when we're doing the West Main Street Bridge,