City Council Meeting   7/18/2011

I'd like to call this meeting to order.

Dr. Brown?

Here.

Ms. Edwards?

Here.

Mr. Norris?

Here.

Mr. Huja?

Yes.

Ms. Szakos?

Earlier this summer we were very pleased to be joined by a group of visiting dignitaries from the nation of Afghanistan and I'm very pleased to note tonight we have a second group of visitors from Afghanistan who are here in the United States studying our democratic institutions and our form of government as they seek to build a new nation

and so we're delighted to have amongst us tonight many friends, wave hello, and we're happy to have you.

I would note that about half of the women here with us tonight, I met with them before the meeting, about half of the women here tonight are judges.

So these are some high profile people who, again, who are doing just critically important work to build a new nation under some very, very daunting conditions.

So welcome.

It's great to have you.

Tonight we're going to start with some recognitions that the city of Charlottesville has received recently and we wanted to commend our staff for all the work that they put into

making some of these recognitions possible.

One recently that Vice Mayor Edwards and I received on behalf of the city is a very distinguished award from the United States Department of Defense called the Seven Seals Award and it was represented to the city of Charlottesville

for meritorious leadership and initiative in support of the men and women who are employed by the City of Charlottesville and who serve our nation in the National Guard and Reserve.

And in particular, they honored some of the supervisors here in City Hall.

and various departments at City Hall who support their employees who are serving our country in the National Guard and Reserve.

So we're very proud of this award and we thank again our supervisors and staff for making sure that our employees can participate in those vital institutions.

Also just wanted to note a couple of, you know, Charlottesville often gets recognized for national lists.

Recently we were named the sixth most walk-friendly community in the country.

I always hesitate to announce these awards because we all know that

You know, there's always room for improvement, but it's nice to get some recognition that we're at least in good company and absolutely heading in the right direction as a walk-friendly community, as one of ten cities that embody the American dream, and also the local food capital of the world, according to Forbes magazine.

A couple of other announcements.

Actually, a resident of the city called me last week and asked me about cooling centers, places where people can go when it gets too hot if they don't have air conditioning or if the air conditioning breaks down.

And I didn't know the exact answer, but now I do.

And it's going to be getting hot again this week.

And so starting tomorrow and for the rest of the week, the Key Recreation Center, which is right down here, it's on the other side of the city hall annex, will be open from 10 a.m. until 9 p.m. every day.

For anyone who wants to come and just cool off and be where there's air conditioning, sometimes if that ever gets full or if we need additional sites, the city will alert the public through the website as well as public and media notifications.

Mr. Mayor, I just wanted to announce today that there is a public hearing scheduled for Western, at MPO, dealing with Western Bypass on July the 27th, on Wednesday, July 27th, in the Kennedy office building.

That's where the action will be taken and decisions will be made.

Thank you, Mr. Huja.

Dr. Brown?

Mr. Mayor, I have a really kind of exciting announcement to make to bring everyone's attention.

There's a new game in town.

And that new game is a semi-professional football team, the Virginia Silverbacks in Charlottesville, Virginia.

And I think it's really an exciting and very positive development for our city.

I learned about it a couple months ago.

I ran into a friend of mine, Matt Johnson, who's sitting out here in the audience.

told me there was just a bunch of people putting their heart and soul into bringing semi-professional football here.

And it turned out there's a man that lives here who's actually starred in semi-professional football for a number of years.

And I'd like to invite him to come up and tell us a little bit about what's going on with the Virginia Silverbacks, because they're getting ready to have their first home game.

So Jamie Davis, if you would, and any of the rest of the people who've come would like to come up and say a couple things.

Hello, this is Jamie, this is my brother.

He originally, he's played football for Charlottesville High School, moved on to semi-pro, Switzerland, Spain, Northern Virginia, lots of other places.

And he had this vision that, you know, he wanted, he played every year in the Turkey Bowl here in Charlottesville and he wanted to bring something to the community that, you know, is positive for the young males and, you know, for the younger kids growing up.

and so he had the idea and he asked me to be the president.

So we've been working and working and getting this together.

We just played our first game, not this weekend, the weekend before in South Carolina and the guys won.

What was it?

40 to 15.

We played this Saturday in Falls Church, Virginia and the guys won again 26 to 18.

Let me correct that.

Our first home game will be this Saturday at Monticello High School and we just want to let the community know that we're here and we practice Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, 6 o'clock at Beaufort Middle School.

We just want the community to come out and support these guys and they're trying to do something positive in the community.

What time is Saturday's game?

Anything you'd like to add, gentlemen?

We invite a lot of kids out to our practice to just work out with us.

Once we get into hitting, they just got to stand off to the side.

But we try to teach them a little bit more about the game and to have positive attitudes and try to get some kids to hang out on the street.

and we also had a couple guys that coached low league football and they're actually on the team now.

So that goes to show that they're up and coming and when Jamie came to me and asked me to help coach the defensive backs and put a little work for him and like I said we're just getting everything out of the pocket right now just about thanks to Mr. Brown over there.

He's helping us out a little bit there and downtown athletics doing a couple other folks.

and we're just trying to get some more sponsors.

All right.

If you could stick around, maybe we could do that when we bring this up on the other business.

Great.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good luck.

Couple other announcements.

The second City Council meeting in August, which I believe is the 15th, has been canceled.

So we will not be having our regular second, second, or third Monday meeting in August the 15th.

As a reminder, Farmers in the Park, which is our Tuesday, Tuesday afternoon, Farmers Market at Penn Park is underway.

And we encourage people to check that out at Penn Park from 3 p.m. until 7 p.m.

Tuesday, July 19th, which is tomorrow, over at Charlottesville High School.

There is an open house.

The Nature Conservancy and the City of Charlottesville are jointly sponsoring an open house regarding the Meadow Creek Stream Restoration Project, which is the largest environmental restoration project, I believe, in our city's history.

It's going to be a wonderful product and it's an opportunity for members of the public to come and

get an update on where things are with that project.

Charlottesville High School tomorrow, Tuesday, July 19th from 6 to 8 p.m. We also want to introduce you to somebody.

Right here.

This is James Maurice Jones, the fourth.

The fourth child and fourth son of our fine city manager, Maurice Jones, who was born last week, Tuesday, July 12th.

You look remarkably well-rested.

I fake it well.

But we wanted to congratulate you and your wife and your entire family on this wonderful addition.

Thank you very much.

We appreciate it.

I hope things go well.

They will.

Thank you, sir.

I do have one announcement.

One of the barriers to youth participating in sports is not having a sports physical.

There will be free sports physicals provided at the Westhaven Nursing Clinic, 803 Hardy Drive, on August 6th from

10 a.m. until about 2 p.m.

The physicians and residents from the University of Virginia Department of Orthopedics and the Family Medicine Clinic will be available in addition to several nurses and other volunteers.

So keep that in mind.

Thank you.

Any other announcements or items to be added under other business?

Hearing none, we will now move on to matters by the public.

And as is our custom, when you come forward, please state your name and address.

And we ask you to keep your comments to three minutes.

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

This Wednesday, July 20th at 11am is the Planning Commission Interviews.

As a city resident, taxpayer and electorate, I have attended these interviews for several years.

Why?

Because I think the Planning Commission is the most important and integral part of writing new city code, city planning following the comprehensive plan, multi-level decision making, and the most important advisory board to city council.

I implore you, our elected councillors, to put party politics aside and choose people who have past experiences, credentials, and knowledge of the responsibilities of a city planning commissioner.

Unfortunately, I have witnessed applicants appointed in the past who are not as qualified as other applicants are, but belong to the city's dominant political party.

The citizens of the city deserve the best applicants to serve on this most important board.

Good evening, my name is Pat Napoleon.

I live at 700 Lyons Avenue in the city.

I have come to speak to the tragedy of city government stealing property within the People's Park, McIntyre Park, and then allowing a throughway and numerous buildings to be built within the green space.

Buildings where folks conduct activities inside rather than outside.

I commend Ms. Edwards as she has courageously opposed the highway and the YMCA within our park.

Ms. Edwards has a vision and she realizes an alternate location for the Y would better serve those she represents.

Mr. Brown, Mr. Huja, Ms. Szakos, your performance in offering protection for McIntire Park garners a failing grade.

Have you listened to the appeals of taxpayers and park advocates?

Have you adequately responded in halting the destruction within McIntire?

The answer is no.

With your votes, you have sanctioned the ruination of McIntire Park.

It is unbelievable that this board is more concerned with halting another road outside of the city, a road that will enhance safety and ease traffic congestion within our city.

It is clear that outside pressures are influencing a mission here.

The irony some on the board have promoted and now condone a road through McIntire Park

even as they work harder to meddle in stopping a road in the county.

Finally, I mention a situation that negatively affects communication for citizens of Charlottesville, the media, and collectively city council.

I must relay a serious concern relating to a sitting council member and candidate for re-election.

Ladies and gentlemen, others and I have been unable to hear or understand Mr. Huja's conversation within council meetings or city forums and for years.

It is the right of all taxpayers and citizens to adequately hear and comprehend what is going on.

This is an official's dialogue during the meetings.

The situation at hand is a critical and alarming circumstance.

Citizen rights are being violated as we are often left in the dark.

I would suggest that any elected official hire a translator at his or her personal expense as needed.

It is each individual board member's responsibility to ensure that the conversations regarding city business are heard and fully understood.

both in person or via the TV computer system.

Citizens have a license and a claim to hereby write.

I appeal to counsel to rectify the situation as soon as possible.

It is crucial that citizens understand all that is discussed within public meetings.

Good evening, I'm George Larry.

I live at 107 Tally Ho Drive and I'm representing CATCO, the Charlottesville-Aubemarle Transportation Coalition tonight.

As you know, CATCO has opposed the Western Bypass for 25 years and the Secretary of Transportation has offered to fund the bypass if certain conditions are met.

The question is whether this

whether this community is better off funding the bypass or funding the Places 29 projects that have already been approved by all the localities including VDOT.

Places 29 has three parallel roads which parallel to 29 which will take substantial traffic off Route 29 at less expense and more traffic than would be served by the bypass itself.

The bypass has many problems with it.

One of the basic ones is that it's too short.

Lynchburg and Danville's bypasses are three times longer.

As a matter of fact, Supervisor Snowe recently commented in the paper, he's not going to call it a bypass anymore.

He's going to call it a connector road, which is what it is.

It dumps out on Route 29.

south of Forest Lakes to heavy construction and congestion.

It puts heavy trucks through many neighborhoods, taking 40 homes in the process, impacts 4,000 students that are schools, and it impacts the water supply at the reservoir.

And the most discouraging thing of all is that VDOT studies show that if the bypass is built, the level of service on Route 29 will still be F.

Some folks have said they should build a bypass and add to it later on.

The problem with that is the bypass is in the wrong place.

A bad decision continues to be a bad decision.

You could put lipstick on the pig, but it's still a pig.

Following this offer by the Secretary, CATCO, under the Freedom of Information Act, requested documents concerning this from

from the Transportation Department.

There are over 800 documents that we received just in the last two days that we've been desperately looking at trying to understand what was going on.

It's very clear that this is an action which has been contemplated by BDOT since at least January of this year from their internal documents.

So we want to tell you more about that and Bob Humphries is going to speak next.

He'll tell you some specifics.

All right.

Mr. Mayor and council members, my name is Robert Humphries.

I'm from Albemarle County.

Okay, is that better?

I'm from Albemarle County and I'd lived in the city for, my wife and I, for 15 years and been in a county for 42 years.

In the early 80s, when the first bypass came around, it was 23 miles Piedmont corridor, started down Red Hill, went up to Ruckersville.

And we were very much opposed to that because it went through the watershed and across the reservoir.

And we've been opposed to all on that side since that time, but it ended up fairly close to me.

But these are some of the documents

some of the more pertinent ones that we've run across so far.

There's one here dated June the 17th and it talks about north of the Rivanna River that the estimates of the 18 parcels have not been acquired yet and including condemnation it's about 40 million dollars required.

All of these are not reported in what VDOT has said so far.

They're using 19, 2007 numbers for everything.

What do you mean for that?

Or it could be if they can ease some of the right-of-way accesses that are there, there might be 29 million, so at least 29 million more.

At the southern connection for the University of Virginia, they need seven parcels, and the right-of-way costs there are estimated at 16 million.

These have not been included.

And a fee right-of-way needed on some of the large property that the university has of 9 million dollars.

and that's for land and damages at the UVA.

Another million on Barracks Road for a PUD that was landlocked.

There's another one which is most interesting that it looks at, let me get this straight here.

Well this one dealt with, got about 8 million more is needed just for some of the deeds that have been filed before the bypass was stalled.

and the interest has been accruing on it and it amounted to $8 million apparently.

And let's see, the big one here I'm looking for, I missed it, I don't know where it is.

I can't believe I've lost it.

Here it is, I'm sorry.

With hazardous materials, demolition and property management on parcels already acquired and also no acquisition cost estimate ever been provided to account for the access to Ashwood Boulevard because they didn't realize that the plans from 1997 blocked off the intersection with 29 of Ashwood Boulevard where all the accidents had been.

and they had planned on, at that time, to have a parallel road going up to Hollymede for the Forest Lakes people.

So if that is true, if access is to be provided, it will take 6 mobile homes, 16 townhouses and 3-4 single family relocations in that area for an additional $11-12 million.

Exclusive and acquisition costs, that's not included.

There's interest on that too, but all of these have not been included.

I don't know how much time is doing.

You're actually out of time, so if you could write up your comments.

All right.

I'm sorry.

I could go on for 20 minutes here if I hadn't had it or more.

But anyway, as Mr. Larry had mentioned, it's going to be at least $75 to $85 million above and beyond what they are reporting for the total cost.

They're not reporting anything at all on these things.

And VDOT is running wild.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Melton Moore.

I live at 106 Falcon Drive and I served on the chart committee several years ago and I've been opposed to the bypass and attended numerous meetings for the last 20 years.

I'm going to be here tonight

for the main thing to appreciate your opposition and your integrity of maintaining your commitment to your position for the last 15 to 20 years on this bypass of opposing it.

You received a copy of my email this afternoon to the CTB that votes this Wednesday on funding, so you should all have a copy of that.

VDOT and three members of our Board of Supervisors have been working behind the scenes most of this year to control the Board of Supervisors and the MPO.

And so it's very difficult to get any, you know, to stop the bypass that they have revived.

As I noted in my email, VDOT's Secretary can out and call the Board of Supervisor member, Mr. Durya,

and persuaded him to change his vote on June the 8th at 11.35 at night.

I had emailed Mr. Doyer after that and asked him why he opposed the bypass

or excuse me, why he changed his vote.

And he said it's because the secretary persuaded him that they would have the funding.

And in that email, he also mentioned that some of that funding may come from Lynchburg and Danville's transportation funds.

So actually that may be, but we don't know, you know, exactly where the funding is coming from.

Our main point in going over on Wednesday to the CTB is to try our best to get them to not fund it and so that it won't go in the tip and stick.

I urge you to continue to do what you can to stop this road.

You know all the background on it and why it shouldn't be built.

Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Moore.

Good evening, Councillors.

My name is Vera Mason.

I live at 621 Lexington Avenue.

I have been living here in the city for 44 years and in that time I have seen Charlottesville and parts of Albemarle County transformed from quiet, peaceful rural communities to busy urban areas.

Unfortunately, there has not been a company in Rhodes built

to accommodate the tidal wave of growth that's happened in that period.

In fact, in those 44 years I have not seen one single new road built, which the general public can use.

I acknowledge that half of the Meadowbrook Parkway has been built, but that one half has been cut off to the taxpayers who paid for it.

I don't think that's in the public interest and neither it is in the public interest to deny construction of the Western Bypass, both for safety reasons and to alleviate the congestion on 29 North.

So my vote is yes for the Western Bypass to be built.

Finally, for people who cannot attend public meetings, I would respectfully suggest that

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, first I was here for part of your meeting with the delegation from Afghanistan and I want to commend you on your sensitivity and your responses to their queries.

You did a great job and I want to commend you for that.

Thank you.

RCS and water supply, we support the water supply plan.

Thank you.

I agree.

I am an environmentalist.

I started my legal career in Virginia fighting on behalf of Citizens Group to stop a power plant from being built on farmland.

I wanted to do more so I went to Capitol Hill and worked for a decade on legislation to protect our environment for both a Congressman and a Senator.

I helped write the 1992 Energy Policy Act that has led to so much water conservation across the country.

I worked at the Nature Conservancy for eight years protecting miles of river and thousands of acres of forest including 600 acres of trees on either side of the property owned by the city at Ragged Mountain Reservoir.

I don't just talk about protecting the environment, I do something about it.

I am an environmentalist and I support the plan adopted by city council earlier this year because it will best restore our rivers which have been decimated and disregarded for decades.

The plan does this by setting aside enough water at Ragged Mountain so that when it gets dry during the summer, we are no longer forced to choose between holding water back for ourselves or releasing water into the rivers.

We will have enough to do both.

Now, I have heard people stand right here in front of you and the public and claim that dredging alone will create enough water, will create more water than raising the height of the dam by 30 feet.

Raising the dam by 30 feet will store an additional 1.1 billion gallons of water.

Dredging the South Fork will store an additional 151 million gallons of water.

There is no way that 151 million gallons can yield more water than 1.1 billion, which is why the Department of Environmental Quality has labeled that claim inaccurate and inappropriate.

Not only is the phased approach adopted by Councilor Green plan, it's also the cheapest plan.

Here are the facts.

Building the new Ragged Mountain Dam 30 feet higher will cost $23 million.

According to the new dredging study, dredging the South Fork just one time will cost $30 million.

and you still have to fix the dam at Ragged Mountain which will cost another $6.4 million.

So there's your choice.

Create 1.1 billion gallons of additional drinking water storage at Ragged Mountain for $23 million or create 151 million gallons of additional storage at the South Fork for $10 million more.

But I'm not here tonight just to defend the water plan.

I am here tonight because I think it is disgraceful that we are still talking about this.

I am here tonight because I think we've misplaced our priorities.

We have single moms desperate to find work to provide for their children.

We have children struggling in our schools where there is an achievement gap that is stubbornly hard to close.

We have an infant mortality rate among African Americans that is many times higher than among whites.

We have a public housing system in desperate need of attention.

Instead of addressing those problems, we spend week after week after week agonizing about whether to go ahead and expand a reservoir on a reservoir site that's been a reservoir site for over a hundred years.

As an environmentalist, I support the water supply plan that City Council adopted earlier this year.

It best protects nature.

As a rate payer, I support City Council's plan because it costs the least.

I'm Joanna Salidas, 129 Goodman Street.

Last week, we got some good news with the new demand forecast numbers.

As you all know by now, the forecast projects that our region will use 13% less water than previously forecasted.

This number means that we can meet our demand for at least 45 years with dredging alone, which using the small bites approach,

Anyway,

Some might question, well, it's just a forecast.

It could be wrong.

I couldn't agree more with that.

All forecasts are inherently flawed, as AECOM, the consultant, said in their report.

In fact, professional demographers actually say that it's pretty much pointless to forecast population as much as 50 years out.

Population, of course, is half of the water demand forecast.

because of this uncertainty that it is so irresponsible to waste $140 million and destroy our mature forest to build infrastructure now that may not ever be needed.

Although forecasts are all inherently flawed, we all want them to be as good as possible, yet there's considerable reason to believe that the new forecast, which does still validate dredging, is still too high.

The consultants projected a 10% increase in population in the city each decade, which leads to, in 50 years, a near doubling of population in the city.

That's hard to square with some other things.

For example, in August 2007, just four years ago, the city council adopted the 2007 comprehensive plan from which I quote, between 1970 and 2005, Charlottesville's population grew a total of 1.9 percent.

Demographers expect the population in Charlottesville to remain stable over the next 25 years.

Chapter 3, table 2, population projection through 2030 shows no growth.

Also, in May 2009, just over two years ago, the Metropolitan Planning Organization, whose board includes two members of city council, adopted UNJAM 2009, from which I quote, the population of Charlottesville has stayed relatively constant since 1970, hovering around 40,000.

Charlottesville is nearing build out, number two, and number three, the projected population for the city in 2030 is 42,278.

Thank you Mr. Hayes.

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

Citizens for a sustainable water plan has always endorsed the premise that the Charlottesville urban area should have abundant growth, abundant water

for Expected Growth.

But you just heard about population figures in two official adopted plans.

Now we hear that AECOM, Rivanna's consultant for the draft water demand analysis,

decided after talking to Neighborhood Development Services that using 1% per year growth that we've had in just the last six or seven years is acceptable to project for the next 50 years.

This, despite what we understand, are some cautions shared by NDS that the city could support that growth rate, quote, for a while longer, and that NDS, quote, is not comfortable projecting a new number.

How that got turned into more than 10% per decade steady growth for the next five years is an important question.

That would be another 28,000 people.

We now have 43,400.

Think about that.

71,500 people.

We look forward to welcoming new people to Charlottesville.

That's part of what keeps us vibrant.

But we want to be sure that Charlottesville remains worthy of some of those accolades we've stacked up in recent years.

What kind of growth, with that kind of growth, will we still be a city that embodies the American dream, a charming town, a healthiest place to live, a top place to retire, a walk-friendly city with all those cars?

Now, back to demand.

Population is one of two significant factors that go into the demand projection.

The other is per capita consumption and how that will alter over time.

One of the things that we really like about the report is AECOM confirmed that our drop in use has been sustainable and it's real.

We met with AECOM, they've been remarkably open.

and willing to discuss and reconsider things and we will be submitting written comments asking specifically about a different approach to future conservation.

You know sometimes it's funny how things change and sometimes it isn't funny at all.

If nothing else we'll learn that this projection business is tricky which makes it all the more important that huge investments not be made too early in a planning period.

Will this council

officially and publicly endorse a steady growth rate of 10% per decade for the next 50 years?

Will you use it for all planning purposes, not just the water plan, but for the new livability, comprehensive plan?

Will you use that growth rate planning for transportation, parks and recreation facilities, schools, workforce housing, aging in place?

Hi, my name is Tuan Nguyen and I live in the city at 710 Lyons Court Lane.

I have two issues I want to talk about.

As you know, my wife and I have a business here in the city called Seawall Coffee.

As a coffee shop, we are highly dependent on the availability of water to make the coffee, to clean dishes, to provide water, to wash hands, et cetera.

Because of that dependency on water, I'm very interested in the issue of the Water Albemarle Water Supply Plant.

I have two comments about this water issue.

One is on the economic reality of the issue and the other one on the fairness issue.

First, the economic issue.

By the way, the numbers I will be coding came from Charlottesvilletomorrow.org.

So the dredging only plan would cost $36 million to provide 151 million gallon.

If you work that out, that's $237,000 per million gallon.

The cost of the Compromised City Council plan this past March would cost $25 million to provide 1.2 billion gallon or to the cost of $21,761 per million gallon.

So let's put it in perspective.

This is equivalent to $237,000 versus $22,000 and so the difference is 10 times.

I mean we throw around numbers and after you get to millions it doesn't make sense.

So the difference here is 10 times it will cost more to dredge.

So I don't understand why we would consider that plan.

The second is the fairness issue.

I understand that the city and the county has reached an agreement in 2006 to raise the Ragged Mountain Dam.

Lots of study was done at that time and an agreement was reached.

Now, unless something drastically changed, the city must abide by that decision.

That's only fair.

I mean, you cannot go back and forth all the time.

So I applaud the city council for passing the compromised city council plan in March.

As a citizen and as a business owner who depends on the very water that you are debating on for both personal use and for business survival, I hope that you will not change what you pass.

The second issue is I want to thank Mr. Huja for all he has done

for us.

I mean, you started the meeting with saying that we're the sixth best city for walking.

That is in no part due to Mr. Huja's contribution to the city.

I've been here 28 years.

I've been in many meetings with Mr. Huja, and I can understand him perfectly.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Nguyen.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Councillors.

Congratulations, Mr. Jones.

Thank you, sir.

Peter McIntosh, 624 Davis Avenue.

And I'm here tonight to support the community water plan.

I think you all probably saw former Mayor Slaughter's letter in the Daily Progress and that puts it in a very simple position.

The community needs more water.

Dredging will not provide it, contrary to Mississippi's statements tonight, it just will not provide it.

1.51 million gallons in a 60-90 day drought means you sacrifice the Mormon's River.

There's just no other way around it.

We need more water, dredging won't do it, a dam will do it, and the reservoir's been a dam and been a reservoir for more than 100 years as an earlier speaker said.

But the cost is also important and I think Mr. Linn and Mr. Schuyler pointed that out, but when someone asks what do we do with the pipeline that's going to go from South Fork, which is a later part of the community water plan,

The other question is not being asked is what do we do when we have to dredge again?

If we're going to pay $36 million to dredge now for capacity, do we dredge in 2025?

Do we dredge in 2035?

And how much more is that going to cost?

So there are costs on both sides as you're going out and I think the costs play out very much in favor of what the council voted for in March.

And environmentally, there's no question that if you follow the dredging model, you destined the Mormon's River to death.

I mean, every time there's a drought, and it's not if a drought happens, it's when.

There's been four major droughts in my 36 years in town when measures were considered by this council, not always enacted, but serious enough that it was on the political horizon.

So the next one is going to come 2012-13.

It's going to be here.

And if you're dredging, then when, if dredging is your answer, when we get to that point, you cut off the flow of water to the Mormons River.

On the other hand, the environmental impact in its real of the dam is that we lose multiple acres of trees, over 40 or 50 acres of trees at the Ragged Mountain Reservoir.

Recall also that that

reservoir area was clear cut by the city for income.

This is not original growth trees, these are second growth, third growth trees up there.

And when the dam would be built, that area up there would be still 90% forest.

So it's not like it's going to be just all water and no forest.

If you look at both of those in terms of environmental impacts, I think it's very clear which one really serves the environment best.

Decision was made.

Good evening, Brandon Collins, 536 Meade Avenue.

Lived in Charlottesville all my life.

I have a teenager who's also lived here all her life.

And, you know, I think this world is giving her a heap of responsibility for her and her children and her grandchildren.

and it's time we get really serious about doing something about that.

Tonight you're going to see a report on Green City, things that we've done here in the city and you know I'm glad we've been able to take some steps to sort of push in the right direction but

You know, most of that stuff's too little, too late.

When you're looking at that stuff, please be more forward thinking.

Be more ambitious in all of this stuff.

You can do it.

Charlottesville can be a place where we can make really, really big changes.

And, you know, when you're listening to this report on Green City, you know, think about

Are we really that green if we're going to build this road through our Central Park?

That we're going to build this harmful new dam?

These are really big decisions that you guys are dealing with and these are the ones that count.

We can change all the light bulbs in town that we want.

It's nothing compared to destroying a park.

So you know with the new demand analysis I don't think you can find an immediate need for building the new dam.

I would hope that you will wait until new council is seated and maybe look at this maybe even ten years from now.

You know we keep data on these things and let's continue to keep data but we don't need to do this right now.

Again, these are the big decisions that you can take a stand on.

It's cool that you're taking a stand on not supporting the Western Bypass.

By taking a stand, you're really not doing much because it's out of your control.

I hope you'll stick to that opposition.

It sounds like the funding for Belmont Bridge and the Hillsdale Connector are still there, so there's no reason to compromise on any of that at all.

So please continue to take a hard stand on that, but also reconsider the Meadow Creek Parkway and the water supply plan.

If you want to do something about 29, let's look big about expanding CAT on 29.

Let's look at HOV lanes, all kinds of different things, tons of ideas we can do.

to improve traffic on 29.

I find it really unfair to equate the water supply plan with issues of poverty and social justice.

I'd like to point out that two of our strongest counselors on social justice issues have also been the strongest on environmental issues.

and are opposed to the new dam and new pipeline and I think that was an unfair characterization.

You can do both.

Yes, hello.

My name is Barbara Cruikshank.

I'm 324 Parkway.

And as a community health nurse and a former school nurse, I work in the area of environmental health and I'm here to talk about the children.

I have serious concerns about the construction of the Western Bypass as it is designed to come dangerously close to six different schools.

Study after study confirms young children are particularly vulnerable to the pollution from motor vehicles.

This is due to their high metabolic rates.

It's due to the fact that their organs are still developing and they spend more time outside in active play.

A long-term study was released in 2005, the Children's Health Study.

It followed thousands of children from fourth grade through high school and measured the effects of air pollution on the children's development.

The study showed pronounced respiratory defects for children who were exposed to higher concentrations of traffic pollution.

Another study published entitled The Effects of Exposure to Traffic on Lung Development from Ages 10 to 18

In this study, the researchers found that children who lived within 500 meters of a freeway had pronounced deficits in attained lung function by the age of 18.

I mean, that's pretty dramatic.

That's very dramatic.

Picture children as young as four, all the way up through 18, running on the track fields, playing in the playgrounds, playing kickball,

and this traffic pollution so close to them.

It is not a question of will the children be harmed by the effects of this pollution.

It is a fact that they will be harmed.

Small children are not here to speak for themselves.

They expect that we, the adults, are going to make decisions that are in their best interests.

The proposed bypass will put the children at great risk for serious health problems.

And I ask that you continue not to support this proposed bypass.

Thank you, Ms. Cruikshank.

Good evening.

My name is John Cruikshank.

I also live at 324 Parkway Street in Charlottesville.

And I'm also going to urge you, as I've urged you many times, please do not build a road through McIntire Park.

I also feel that it would be a mistake to build the Western Bypass.

So I'm going to encourage you not to build either one of them.

And I really would like to speak briefly about induced traffic.

This is a phenomenon.

that has been recognized by traffic engineers for many decades.

When a new road is built there is an increase in vehicle miles traveled.

In 1969 J.J. Leeming wrote that motorways and bypasses generate traffic that produce

that is they produce extra traffic, partly by inducing or encouraging people to travel who would not otherwise have done so by making the new route more convenient than the old.

In his book, Traffic, an excellent book here in Chapter 6, Tom Vanderbilt wrote that when more lane miles of roads are built, more miles are driven.

even more so than might be expected by natural increase in demand like population growth.

In 1996, the Commission on the Future of Transportation in Virginia stated that congestion increases as people move outward from urban centers and additional lane miles of roads to accommodate the people lead to more development and more people and more congestion and more lane miles.

The VDOT traffic engineers understand that you can't build your way out of congestion.

But the political appointees in charge want more roads, more development, and more sprawl.

The community gets paved over, becomes less livable, and a few people get very rich.

An intelligent solution adopted by many communities in the United States and around the world is to stop investing in new roads.

Instead, we should improve public transit, create a truly walkable community, and make it safe to utilize the most efficient means of transportation, the bicycle.

Good evening, I'm Bob Fenwick, 901 East Jefferson Street.

Charles Rogers is 76 years old.

He lives alone and is disabled.

He has lived his entire life in Charlottesville.

He has worked for 60 years, paid all his taxes, and he is now retired.

He owns a home on Montrose Avenue that has been designated a blighted house.

But Charles Rogers is different than most of us.

He hoards.

He collects books.

You and I get a book, we read a book.

Mr. Rogers gets a book, he stacks it on top of the one he got before, and then he goes and gets another one.

He stacks so many books in his house nobody can live there.

He stacks so many books in his car that he gets another one, and then he goes and gets another one.

We could say Charles Rogers has a problem, but maybe it's not Charles with the problem.

Mr. Rogers marches to a different drummer.

and it's difficult, if not impossible, for us to understand why he does what he does.

It could be he's just different, but just because he's different is no reason to take his house.

When I heard about Mr. Rogers, I got a mental picture of vultures circling overhead waiting.

Somebody's going to make a ton of money on this, but it will not be Mr. Rogers.

That's the root of this problem, money.

Not long grass, not a possum living under the house,

and the inability of the city, its money and the inability of the city government to bend this citizen, this neighbor, to its will because he's different.

I have spoken to his nearest neighbors, the ones on either side and the ones across the street.

None of them take offense at what Mr. Rogers has there.

I wanted to know if Mr. Rogers was a mean man, a cantankerous man.

They all said no, just eccentric.

They felt compassion for an aged man in a perplexing predicament.

And none of them said he was affecting their property value.

You have the power to take his house.

As citizen representatives, you should also have the compassion to let him live the rest of his life in peace.

Belmont will survive Charles Rogers and the blighted house.

It has survived much worse.

Thirty years is a long time to thumb your nose at the government, but 76 years of age, 60 years of being a productive citizen of our community and serving in the United States Army is even longer.

I appreciate a city inspector being watchful of neglected properties, but I can't help but wonder if this is less about cutting grass and more about frustration and not being able to make this man more like us.

Thank you Mr. Fenwick.

Good evening Mr. Mayor, Councillors, Mr. Brown and congratulations Mr. Jones.

Neil Williamson with the Free Enterprise Forum, 550 Hillsdale Drive.

One of the questions the Free Enterprise Forum asks often is what is the proper role of government?

Tonight you've heard a great deal from all sides about two key issues, but it really boils down to one word, capacity.

What is the capacity that the government wishes to have for this community?

Earlier this week there was a letter in the Daily Progress I'm going to read a portion of.

I was here in 2006 when the city and county adopted a community water supply plan supported by a broad spectrum of environmental and business groups.

This past spring local governments agreed on a compromise, a further compromise I would suggest, to implement the plan that some council candidates would now seek to overturn.

Yet the facts are clear.

The council adopted compromise will replace the unsafe Ragged Mountain Dam with one that is 30 feet taller, providing 1.1 billion gallons of additional storage.

This provides enough water to meet human and river needs for at least the next 20 years.

By contrast, the opponents want to repair the Ragged Mountain Dam and dredge the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir, providing only 151 million gallons of additional storage.

Less than 14% of the Ragged Mountain amount.

An insufficient supply for humans and the rivers during time of drought.

In fact, the drought of 2002, dredging created additional water storage would have lasted only 15 days.

This leads to a simple conclusion.

The 2006 water supply plan will meet human needs and the needs of healthy rivers.

Dredging alone will not.

In fact, the recently released AECOM Regional Water Supply Demand Study validates the phased increase adopted by City Council this year.

Now it is exceedingly rare that I would read a letter authored by Kay Slaughter.

She and I disagree probably about more things than we agree about, but we agree about this.

In 2006, a broad spectrum came together

for this compromise and now this further compromise.

I beg of you, support the community water supply plan.

Thank you, Mr. Williamson.

Good evening.

I'm Tom Olivier.

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

First, I've come to thank you on behalf of the Piedmont Group for your decision to not support construction of the Charlottesville Western Bypass at the MPO meeting.

on the 14th of July.

And second, we've come this evening to ask you to continue to not support construction of the Western Bypass at the MPO meeting next week.

The Sierra Club opposes the Western Bypass simply because it's a bad road.

It has limited effect in relieving traffic congestion that exists on Route 29 and it has serious environmental risks attached to it.

These arise in part from proximity to six schools and in part because of proximity to the reservoir.

Also, of course, it's expensive, maybe $250 million, perhaps more.

We know promises are being made regarding non-bypass projects that will be funded if localities here agree to support bypass construction.

We also know though that worthy projects that are already on the books are already being supported by localities, plus simply maintenance of our transportation system could suffer if the bypass is built.

You may have seen the Saturday Daily Progress.

The article in it noted that the Culpeper Chamber of Commerce

commerce has expressed concern that if the Charlottesville western bypass is built that transportation projects that are needed in the Culpeper area may not be funded and also Jim Rich who is the CTB representative for the Culpeper district has expressed opposition to the bypass.

We hope you'll keep all these in mind this evening when you discuss the western bypass

and in the short amount of time I may have left, I want to reiterate that the Piedmont Group continues to support the development of an alternate water plan built around capacity-restoring dredging of the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir.

We do not support building a big new dam at Ragged Mountain.

The AECOM report supports, we believe, that

the view that there is enough water that can be made available by dredging to support our population for decades to come.

Some of the numbers you heard earlier about the relative costs of capacity development by dredging versus by building a new dam we believe are misleading in the way they're presented.

And finally, the claim that underprivileged children

All right, thank you for everyone who came to speak tonight and we will now open the meeting to council member responses to matters by the public.

Who would like to get us started?

I just have a very short one.

I'm kind of sorry that our guests from Afghanistan were here.

I was going to reassure them that we don't normally have such xenophobic comments during our public comment time.

I was embarrassed about that and

I also do not support the sentiments expressed.

But I think as to the rest, I will leave it to later discussion.

Ms. Edwards?

I didn't want to make just one comment.

were that Mr. Fenwick used was different as related to Mr. Rogers and my hope is that we can allow him to live with dignity in the same way that we can allow people that have a different accent to be able to live and serve our community.

One of the things that I've learned about public comment and one of the things that Counsel Huja and I agree on is that it is an opportunity for a free-for-all, and those are his words, but I've learned that

Happy people give you encouragement and unhappy people give you ideas.

I'm sorry, so what is the motion then?

A vote of confidence.

A vote of confidence.

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

Any discussion?

Please indicate your vote.

Dr. Brown.

Why didn't I speak before Holly?

Actually, I was going to make a comment regarding that, but I think she did it much better than I possibly could have.

The only other comment I was going to make is that we do work earnestly and hard on every issue that comes before us, but the fact of the matter is we have jobs, city staff has limited amount of time, and

More often the same issue comes up and comes up and comes up.

There is less time for work sessions.

There's certainly less time for me to feel like I have time tonight to read this.

So the idea that there's no validity to the concept, that the more we talk and talk and talk on one issue, that we're not taking time away from another issue, it's just not true.

I mean, we all have limited amounts of hours per day.

I mean, if I get 75 emails on one issue, I'd look at 75 emails.

That might take me an hour and a half.

That's time I don't spend on something else.

So it's not to say we should stifle concern on this, but I completely agree.

I think, you know, we made a decision we should move forward on it, and it does give us more time to devote to other issues.

I think everything has been said, needs to be said.

I don't normally take exception to Ms. Hall because she's usually right on point, but I have to say I do take exception to the notion that this city council plays party politics in appointments to boards and commissions.

I can assure you that we have never once broached someone's partisanship in appointing them to a board or commission.

In fact,

We've appointed numerous people that I know for a fact are not Democrats and we have not appointed people who are known Democrats.

And I'm going to embarrass our own chairman of our Democratic Party who recently appointed, applied for a commission, was not, sorry Jim, was not appointed.

So the idea,

The idea that we play party politics, I don't think that it was a fair accusation.

I also want to take exception to a number that was thrown around by some of the supporters of the Adopted Water Supply Plan who keep referring to a dollar figure in the 30 to 36 million dollar range for dredging the South Fork-Rivanna Reservoir which refers to an approach to dredging which I've never heard any opponent of the Adopted Water Supply Plan endorse.

which is sort of this drudge it all at once, you create these large retaining basins, you have to build a lot of infrastructure to do that.

I've never heard anybody, I know that was outlined as an option in one of the reports, the HDR report, but I've never heard anybody here endorse that alternative and in fact

The approach that Mr. Lloyd and others have commonly referred to as small bites, which is a pay-as-you-go market-based approach to judging all the evidence is that it would cost significantly less than that.

So I hope we can acknowledge that at least, that fact.

And of course the $23-$25 million figure for building the Ragged Mountain

Dan does not take into account some of the ancillary costs which run into the millions of dollars.

So I just want to make sure we're comparing apples to apples.

And I firmly agree with Brandon Collins that we can do both and we have done both.

And that even while

We did pursue additional studies and I think showed very conclusively that there are other ways, we didn't end up choosing to go in those other directions, but there are ways to meet our long term water needs to provide water security for our region that while we were doing that

We certainly were undertaking initiatives to address all the issues that Mr. Schuyler brought up.

Well, I wasn't going to address the water issue, but you know, everyone's agreed that we're going to do phase one dredging, which is the part of dredging that doesn't cost a lot.

It's the part that you can actually sell the dredged materials and regain, you know, and so it's the good stuff.

The other stuff

It's going to cost money whether you do it all at once or you do it gradually.

It's still going to cost a lot because there's no return on it.

There's just the cost of dredging.

So to say it's market driven implies that someone's going to want to at some point buy the stuff that our own consultants have told us it's not sand, it's not valuable, it's a building commodity, and it's going to cost a lot of money no matter what.

And if we do it in a small

the small bite schedule.

It also means that we're taking a long time before we actually increase the capacity.

So I find that equally disingenuous.

I know we disagree on this, but I think the bottom line is we're agreeing to dredge the stuff that's cost-efficient to dredge.

All right.

That concludes council member responses to matters by the public.

We are now going to move on to appointments to boards and commissions.

It's me again.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to move the following appointments to the Charlottesville Redevelopment Housing Authority, Sherry Clark, Claudette Green, and Hosea Mitchell.

to the Charlottesville Sister City Commission, Blake Caravati, Brittany Spinagle, Jim Tolbert, and Terry DeCentio, to the Dialogue on Race, J.D.

Any discussion?

Hearing none, please indicate your vote.

And carries unanimously.

Thank you, Dr. Brown.

Next, we have our consent agenda.

Item A on our consent agenda tonight are the minutes of July 5th.

Item B has been deferred, which is a resolution regarding land conservation foundation acquisition of Hartman Mill.

Item C, a resolution, water resources database enhancement, authorization to enter into the cost sharing agreement with the U.S.

Corps of Engineers first to one meeting.

Item D has been deferred as well, which is a resolution regarding the acquisition of acreage of Stream Valley land.

Item E, appropriation of $500 for the 2011 Charlottesville Police Department Foundation donation, first to one reading.

Item F, an appropriation of $5,000, Virginia Commissioner of the Arts Challenge Grant, first to two readings.

Item G, an appropriation of $2,774.80, Federal Bureau Investigations Overtime Reimbursement for the Cyber Crimes Task Force, first to two readings.

Item H, an appropriation of $5,505 for the 9-11 Memorial Steel Project, phase one, first to two readings.

Item I, appropriation of $1,011,823, appropriation of fiscal year 2012 transit grants, first of two readings.

Item J, an ordinance exchange of land, Madison Avenue and River Court, second of two readings.

Item K is an ordinance transfer of property on Elliott Avenue, second of two readings.

Item L is an ordinance validity period of certificates of appropriateness, second of two readings.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

Okay, duly noted.

Hearing no other discussion, please indicate your vote.

It carries unanimously with the one exception noted by Dr. Brown.

Good evening and I know you hear it a lot but congratulations in addition to your families.

That's great news.

I was asked to come before you tonight to talk about a couple of issues and also here with me tonight is Mr.

Troy Kinser with AECOM and he will then stand up and address a third question that you directed to him regarding summarizing for you what's going on with the new comprehensive regional water plan demand analysis.

The questions I was asked to address include the DEQ letter that was sent recently

with regard to a permit modification request on Ragged Mountain and second, status of the dredging RFP process.

And I'll take them one at a time, so if you want to take them question individually, we can do it that way.

We did receive a letter from DEQ reviewing the contents of the letter.

Most of the items on the letter was requests for some clarification that the permit writer needed after reviewing our permit modification.

Having worked with DEQ for quite a few number of years, that's a fairly routine item where the permit reviewer, the permit writer

will review the application contents and may have some questions and wants to have those questions clarified.

And we are in the process of doing that and plan to get a letter of response out this week.

There was one statement in the opening paragraph that stated that the DEQ had considered this a major modification.

That's an interpretation of one piece of their regulation that states that a permit modification request is a minor permit if it's one of the following, which implies that it otherwise is major.

And if you read the list of things that they consider minor, the first one is a typo in the permit.

and then there are a few other procedural things but the reality is when you look at it is DEQ has defined very narrowly what's a minor permit versus what's a major permit so the use of the word major does not imply great things in terms of its

in terms of its scope.

It just simply says it doesn't fit these procedural and very minor issues.

And DEQ tells us one reason they drafted the regulation that way is they want to encourage public comment.

And the way to do that is to be very narrow in how you define what does not require a public comment process.

And everything but a minor, what they call a minor, does require a public process.

So that's kind of a round up on the letter.

For DEQ to review?

They will not put a time frame and the regulation does not bound them to a time frame.

In some of our conversations with them, they have indicated that the process has been slowed to a significant degree, not on the basis of any plus or minus of the merits of the request, but because they have a hiring freeze in Richmond imposed by the governor's office.

They have had some vacancies and they tell us they're woefully and adequately staffed

to address the permit modification.

So it's going to take a little bit longer.

Other questions on this issue?

Okay.

Our board has been for

several months now addressing pretty regularly on its agenda this issue of putting out an RFP to dredging.

And I think one way I'd like to summarize this is maybe take a little step back briefly where we've been.

A dredging feasibility study was done by HDR.

It was completed a little bit over a year ago now.

This council, as no one needs to remind you,

put a substantial amount of funding into that, over $300,000 and quite a bit more than any staffing, any funding levels anybody else put into the project and you deserve recognition for that.

The study delved into some deeper issues that had not been covered in previous studies, largely because those studies were not scoped to get into those kinds of details.

And coming out of that, HDR identified some pluses and some minuses.

They had some difficulty finding property owners who would be willing to allow the handling of the material, but they did eventually secure enough land to cover most of what the original objective was.

On the positive side, they were able to dig in because of the amount of funding they were given, dig into sand recovery issues in a depth that had never been before discussed and came back with some scenarios that suggested that dredging in the upper portions of the reservoir with sand recovery could be done at a fairly minor cost compared to what they represented to be removing the silts and the clays, which would be more difficult.

When the reports were released last in June of 2010, the Rivanna staff actually recommended that this community move forward to receive proposals for the part one dredging, which is, for those of you following it, segments one, two, and three, which is the part with the same recovery.

Board in wrestling with, I think, what came really from the elected officials, and I think I would be fair here to say both city and county through the four board's process said, we've got a process we want to move forward to with respect to water supply, but we don't want to leave out trudging to the extent it's cost effective is the way some people put it.

Our board has wrestled with what the scope of that should be, how much money to put into it,

I know we initially at the staff level recommended that because most every good project manager understands that the very first fundamental to building a foundation for a successful project no matter what you're doing is to clearly define what outcome you want.

And that's been an issue that's been a little bit of a struggle because there's been an idea that this should be very flexible and open.

and while there are many virtues to flexibility, like many things you can take anything too far.

And it's important to define at least the minimum of what you hope to achieve.

Also the board struggled with budget and passed off on numerous meetings setting a budget for the project and appropriating the funds.

They did last month appropriate $3.5 million which I think is a big step forward

in an effort to do a dredging project on a successful track.

HDR was hired after the board decided to consider the PPEA process, which does allow some additional flexibility from a traditional project where you decide exactly what you want, detail it, and then ask contractors to bid.

and then the traditional approach, bidding is done lowest responsible bidder, so the evaluation process is easy.

If the contractor that's got the lowest price meets certain minimum qualifications, he gets the job.

PPEA allows a lot more flexibility, so it allows some advantages.

Also misused, it can have some disadvantages.

HDR is helping us at present to try to

use it if we're going to use PPEA use it for its advantages and discourage using it for its disadvantages and that's a simple way of putting it but they've come up with a four-step plan to do that and our board has adopted the first step already and that step is they call market sounding which is to reach out to a representative sample of dredging contractors that they know who they know do very successful work and this community would be proud to invite to the table

and ask them in confidential discussions a series of questions regarding the decisions made to date, the PPEA process, the draft RFP that is available now and it's on our website.

Ask them some questions about that and say what are the positive things about doing this, what are the pitfalls?

A more direct question is would you make a go, no go decision if this were released today in its current form and if not, why not?

and what would it need to take to improve the process to make you willing to consider a go process.

I think every one of us in this community who want to see a dredging project want to see it succeed.

So these are critical questions at a time that I think need to be fairly wrestled with to ensure that we are successful and that we don't set ourselves up on a path to fail.

The other three things that HDR is recommended be done include preparing performance specifications.

If we stay with a PPEA process after receiving the market sounding these are not the detailed specifications that would be in a traditional bid, but they would dig into some of the details far enough to set boundaries.

Since we're providing a flexible process, there are boundaries so that proposals aren't all over the map and very difficult to quantify or evaluate.

And those boundaries can be based on the number of different things that are important in this community that we want.

Noise is an example of one.

How is the contractor going to get paid?

That's a very, very important one because we don't want to end up writing a blank check to somebody who hasn't proven their performance.

So those are very important criteria to talk about.

A third is a draft comprehensive agreement.

PPEA states that when a contractor has been selected, that the owner and the contractor will enter into a comprehensive agreement.

The draft is a framework.

It provides, basically if you will, a legal boulder plate.

It allows a section to be entered later.

where after you've reviewed the contractor's approach in their proposal, you can insert what you've agreed to from negotiations as the negotiated approach.

But it provides up front a wide range of parameters.

Maybe insurance requirements fit into that category.

Other types of fundamental legal responsibilities that apply no matter which

proposal is selected or which approach is selected.

HDR's advice is very important to put that out.

It expresses a commitment on the part of the owner that this is not something that's just been thought about on the back of an envelope and put out wide open but has some scope and some content.

It expresses a serious interest on the part of the owner.

to proceed with a project.

It also helps to avoid having to review apples and oranges proposals to a degree that becomes unwieldy and makes it very difficult to make a decision, or at least an objective decision.

And the last thing is that they suggest a proposal evaluation plan be put together.

And that is a plan that says how are you going to choose the most meritorious contractor.

And this would ground that decision making process in technical criteria based on the idea that we again want the most meritorious contractor we can get to do the project.

That one that would lead us down the path of success or have the greatest potential to do so.

and avoid potential pitfalls that might occur in selecting the wrong contractor.

Wrapped around this, HDR has told us that from a contractor perspective, if we can put a contractor hat on for a minute and pretend we're a contractor, an RFP hits the street and the first thing the potential bidder or potential proposer is going to do is have a few people in the firm, high level people, take a quick look at the information and then they'll conference and they'll say, do we go or do we no go?

and the contractors looking at it that investing time and effort in a proposal is money spent, no income gain, because there's no guarantee at that point in the process that they'll get a contract.

Contractors understand that they have to put that upfront time into a variety of projects in order to win projects that do make them profitable, but they have refined, especially the good contractors, have refined how to smoke out the seriousness of the owner,

integrity of the documents that are presented and understand pretty quickly is this something I'm wasting my time on or is this something I want to go after.

And of course what we want is for people who are well qualified to say we want to go after this.

So that perspective is helpful and HDR has framed that as the perspective for all of the information here.

Now there's one other thing that HDR recommended to our board last month.

And that was that as long as the board is moving through this process without setting a budget, without making a commitment, saying this is how much financial money we want to commit as a community to this, they're sending the signal to many good contractors to say no go, to say these folks are out exploring, they're not really serious.

Our board took that to heart and our board did adopt.

That was an easy one.

You don't have to pay HDR or anybody else to do that when you just make a decision.

And our board made that decision and I applaud that, that they did do that.

So with that I hope I've given you a good overview of the process and where we are.

I probably should say before we do questions the market sounding recommendations will come back to our board in August from HDR and at that point our board will need to decide based on the comments and I'm sure HDR will recommend do we stay with PPEA or is the sounding telling us that dredging contractors are really more comfortable with a traditional approach.

Can I assume any of the firms that are consulted in this market sounding phase would not be disqualified from applying?

The contractors who talk with HDR are not disqualified from submitting proposals.

Their names also will remain confidential.

The Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority will not know who they are.

That is actually fairly commonly done.

Having spent time in the consulting industry myself, it's very important for contractors not to live in a shell.

Engineering firms think, well, we're engineers, we've got licenses, we can do great things.

But contractors bring a lot to the table, especially in determining the constructability of a project.

And it's actually very common practice that consulting engineers, good ones, reach out to contractors during the design phase and say, tell us if we're flawed here, tell us how we're doing.

Any ballpark of how long BC&D would take if they come back saying go ahead and do it in this format?

Thank you.

Good evening.

Thanks for allowing me to be here today to present the status of where we stand with our water demand forecast.

I object today to give you an overview of where we stand in our water demand forecasting process.

This is a

Abbreviated version of the presentation we gave on the 12th to the urban group that was at Burley Middle School.

Objectives here, we're going to go through a little regulatory overview of why we are doing what we're doing for the water demand forecast.

I'll go through briefly about work that's accomplished to date, share with you some of the results.

This is from our technical memorandum number two, which is posted on the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority's website, so if you need more detail into where our numbers came from and the background behind it, I encourage you to go to the website and download the report.

Then I'll talk about some additional conservation examples that we presented in our report.

I'll go through those briefly.

And then I'll talk about what our next steps would be.

Why we do what we do.

This is a regulatory requirement.

This was in response to the droughts from 1999 to 2002.

The state said, let's create a statewide water supply plan

being in that plan they said we're going to ask each of the localities and you can perform a regional plan also to be able to feed into that plan.

What we are preparing as AECOM is a water demand forecast and that water demand forecast is just one component

and one part of the regional water supply plan.

The plan is revised, revisited every five years and revised and resubmitted to the DEQ every 10 years.

And this, as I said, this is part of an overall plan that must be submitted to the state, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality by November 2.

So we are on a pretty tight time frame to get our plan completed.

Where we are in the process we've just completed the middle portion of this which is our draft water demands workshops and to do technical memorandum number two which was our draft water demand forecast.

Now I'll highlight the term draft in this.

We submitted it to the

Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority.

We posted it on the website and it is being reviewed and we're asking for comment and for information back about what we need to do to modify our plan.

Where we are to date, stakeholder meetings.

Stakeholders, there's a lot of folks in the community that I know would be considered a stakeholder, but these were the communities that would be served by the water supply plant and some of the major water users, the hospital for example.

Technical Memorandum number one, which we issued, was our methodology.

We wanted to show the citizens and Rivanna what kind of methodology we were going to go through to prepare our water demand forecast.

Second was technical memorandum number two which we submitted on July 5 and we've just completed some of our public meetings last week and it is under review right now.

The next step in this process will be, as you saw in the previous slide, will be to submit our final sometime in the September timeframe and present that to the different governing bodies in a public hearing format where they need to adopt this plan.

This is our planning area.

You all are familiar with that.

We broke it down into the different service areas.

The urban was the city of Charlottesville, the urban ACSA area, and UVA.

That's what we'll focus our presentation on tonight.

But you see the other parts of our regional water supply plan.

This was our methodology process.

We looked back at historic water use.

We looked at normalization.

Is the data set that we used normal for us to use to move this process forward?

So we went through that normalization process.

Then we look in population and employment forecast to be able to look and see what those needs would be over the 50-year planning horizon that was used for this plan.

then we have projected baseline water demands and then we apply conservation to it to come up with our recommendations for what the water needs and this is for human consumption right now is all that we were focusing on in our report for human consumption for the next 50 year planning horizon.

This is just an example of where the water is used on a percentage basis

throughout the different areas in our planning document here.

Won't go through the numbers.

I think it's just interesting to look and see where single family water use 30% and then you can see the different percentages that are used in each one of our character areas.

Always interesting to see what is our total demand, what is our overall water consumption.

You see for the Rivanna Water and Service Authority 106 gallons per capita per day, so that's 106 gallons per person.

And then we break it down over into the overall category for the different regions that we're studying and looked at the overall and the residential and employment irrigation.

That is for those who have a separate meter on their house for doing irrigation that that water is metered separately.

Everybody wants to compare.

How are we doing within this region?

106 gallons per capita per day.

I compliment the people in the planning area because you can see the consumption, the per capita consumption.

You're near the bottom, and this was in a study that was done in 2010.

You're near the bottom.

Communities that are closed would be the town of Cary, North Carolina, and

I believe Spartanburg was in there as a comparable community.

But you can see your water consumption is fairly low and that's we attribute it to good conservation measures that are employed in this region.

Talking about employment, I know that there's been some comments today, public comments on the employment.

I did state that this is a draft report.

We are verifying and having these numbers reviewed to make sure that we interpreted through our stakeholder meetings that we interpreted the data that we received correctly.

I'll point out that

This population number here, you see the urban number, I'll run all the way out to 2060 for the city of Charlottesville.

That 71,500 does include the UVA student population in here.

So it is, the UVA student population is a subset of that 71,000 number.

I know there's been some questions about what those numbers turn out to be.

But anyway, this is one component as was stated today in our water demand forecasting methodology.

Next we'll look at employment.

Employment is a ratio to per capita or household is how we came up with those numbers.

Next, the formula, how we calculate water demand.

Pretty simple formula.

People times the per capita water use, employees times the daily employee use, and then we have a factor.

It's either plus or a multiplier, depending on how we organize the formula.

But it is a non-revenue water.

It's water that's used for firefighting, for line flushing, for water that's produced but is not billed or paid for by a customer or end user.

Next we want to come up with what is the, what are the water needs for this region?

So I broke this down into our characteristics.

If you read our other presentations, this is a, the numbers are the same, they've just divided up a little more so that you can see a breakdown.

For the city of Charlottesville,

You can see the numbers, you take the numbers below for City of Charlottesville and UVA Charlottesville, you add those together, it sums to the bold number at the top, the same thing for the ACSA urban area.

You come down to the urban total, 9.95, these are million gallons per day, up to 17.01 million gallons per day in 2060.

And then you look at it, because again, ours is a regional plan, so you look at the regional needs and it was 22.25.

million gallons per day needed for the region.

There's a breakdown just to give you, I'll just give you a moment to absorb the pie charts there.

That gives you a breakdown of the water usages and we just picked the 2060 for the 50 year out on the planning horizon.

That just gives you some percentage and some breakdown of the water use.

The number that, look at the city of Charlottesville in the middle pie chart, 8.57, that is million gallons per day and that equals 39% of the total that we have in our planning region.

Next we look at a couple scenarios.

We were encouraged to be able to look at what could be done additionally to be able to conserve water within this community.

What could be done to reduce the demand.

So we looked at the water conservation programs that were existing.

Then we looked at some additional water conservation measures and these are just examples of what some other communities are doing.

There are others that could possibly be implemented.

But we tried to put some, using national numbers and the way that these have been calculated in other communities, what kinds of savings could be generated from this in water usage.

And also there's a cost associated with these also.

just to give you some idea of what kind of potential savings there would be from some of the measures, the example measures that we listed in the cost of implementation.

And again, this is a cost out into the anticipated cost through 2060.

This is not the one-time cost.

This number has been dissected just for the city numbers.

Where we are in the process, again, we just finished the middle, the third block in.

We finished our draft water demand workshops and had our office hours.

Next we'll do our final water demands report will be coming out in September and then we'll be presented to the elected boards in the public hearing format in September also in anticipation of getting this approved so that it can be incorporated into the regional water supply plan that must be submitted to the DEQ in the November timeframe.

What do we need to look forward to long term?

We listed about four bullet items right here, just things that need to be considered for the communities.

One, continue to track demands and observe changes, as we noted earlier on in the presentation.

This is to be revisited every five years and to be revised and resubmitted every ten years.

So we need to look and continue to look at change.

There were comments up here today that forecasting is not an exact science and I can tell you for sure it is not an exact science.

Projecting what it will look like in 50 years is not exact.

So we need to observe and observe those changes.

Track the impact of continued and or new water conservation efforts.

There is a strong

Sense of water conservation in this community, but in order for us to calculate those into a demand forecast, we really need to see results.

We need to see what these new programs would look like, how they're going to be implemented, how they're going to be embraced, and what the results will yield.

In an upcoming review and modification to the plan, we'd be able to factor those in.

Modify future forecasts as needed.

That's obvious.

Again, we talked about forecasting being an inexact science, so we modify and we watch those and then explore ways to provide water.

Our task was not about coming up with how to supply the demands.

Ours was only to come up with what the water demand would be.

Do you want one before they disappear?

They smell really good.

Thank you very much.

It's very impressive work that you're doing.

I wonder if you could, you heard some of the concerns that were expressed earlier about the population number and the population projection.

I have a feeling that a lot of people in the city would

sort of be shocked at that number and think that, you know, in the next 50 years we're going to add upwards of almost 30,000 new residents to the city.

I'm not sure, you know, that's a number that has ever been broached before, particularly when our population has been fairly level around 40,000 for quite some time.

I wonder if you could walk us through again

We looked at census data from 2010.

We did go back and look at the historic growth that had taken place within the city and all within the planning region and then we vetted those assumptions with different staff members from the city and the county and the other two localities we were looking at just to see if they had some reasonableness to them.

There's some question about the census, about whether that number is actually valid, that you can actually record the transit population that exists, students that are within the city, and that you can actually record those.

And then the city had experienced some growth.

over the, I guess, a shorter period leading up to this that was not representative of what the smaller growth that we saw historically over there.

So we said, well, what is reasonable to assess and then to be able to vet that with the different local governments.

That was what we put into the report.

We understand there is some concerns with those numbers right now, and so we're going back and revisiting those population numbers just to make sure that we have the most accurate data that we can put in.

Accurate is a relative term here because we're forecasting, but to have the most, I guess, thoroughly considered numbers to put into the report.

The overall objective with this, as you all know, is that we want to make sure that we forecast numbers that look reasonable, that look accurate, so that the water supply plan can make sure that all the citizens of the region, that's what the state's objective is, is to have a safe and reliable water supply plan, excuse me, water supply that will meet the citizens' needs into the future.

I think you're exactly

on target in wanting to make sure we have sufficient water.

I think it's probably a good idea to err on the side of overestimating population.

I just think this number is so far out of left field from what we've been internally using and thinking about as a community that I think there's some legitimate questions and I'm glad to hear you're revisiting it.

My understanding is that, according to census, in the last 10 years we've grown about 8.6% or 8.7%.

It's 8.7% growth in the last 10 years in population.

If you went back and looked at historic numbers, it would probably be, for our horizon, would probably be a .35 to .4 percent growth.

It has been in the more recent history shown that there was about a 1 percent growth.

I don't have any questions, but I would like this report to be placed in the time capsule.

All right, thank you very much.

And thank you, Mr. Frederick.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council.

I'm not sure that I can say much that some of our Council probably doesn't know more than I do, and I do hope that you will add.

As you recall this was on your agenda at the last meeting and you talked about a council position in preparation for the public hearing that the MPO held last week and you discussed a council position in case there was a vote that was required at that meeting and of course there was not a vote and then there's another hearing coming up next week at the MPO where there will be that opportunity to vote.

Just a couple of

Quick things in the way of updates.

One, of course, is the letter, and I understand all of you received a copy of it today, that the MPO sent to the Secretary of Transportation outlining the MPO's discussion at the last meeting.

And that letter being signed by the Chair, Mr. Thomas, and the Vice Chair, Ms. Szakos, of the MPO that outlined

the desires of the MPO that were the western bypass to be considered.

Several other projects, Hillsdale, the Best Buy ramp, Burkemore Drive extension, the Belmont Bridge, transit to Hollymeade, Forest Lakes and the airport and the Northtown Trail also be included and funded with that.

This afternoon we were made aware of an interview actually that was done by Charlottesville Tomorrow with the secretary

and there were some interesting quotes in there that we have contacted the CTB, or excuse me, the VDOT representative on the MPO, Mr. Utterbach, and asked him to verify that those statements were to his knowledge correct and he said that to his knowledge they were correct.

He didn't have any reason, any information to doubt them, but those comments from the secretary were that

Apparently he has found the money for the Western Bypass and would be pulling it out of a number of sources.

The Future Projects pot, a public-private partnership

Pot that's out there and a couple of other sources would come together to form the money to pay for the bypass and that's what at Wednesday's meeting he would be asking the Commonwealth Transportation Board to approve.

Also interestingly, he stated that

that that money included, as we understand it, funding for the bypass and the widening of 29 north of the river.

It did not include the list of other projects that are in the MPO list, although he made the statement that those would be, of course, considered in due process as part of the six-year funding plan.

So that is information, again, that we received through

and an interview that Charlottesville Tomorrow did but did make a phone call to the CTV or to the Department of Transportation to ask if there was any verification of that and apparently there it seems to be the case of what's going to the Commonwealth Transportation Board on Wednesday.

Well, I can report a little bit on this letter.

I think that one of the things that we on the MPO the other night were able to do is even though some of us were prepared to vote no on the western bypass and some of us were prepared to vote yes on the western bypass, we were able to reach kind of a consensus on that none of us would even consider voting on the western bypass until we had some

assurance that some of our other local priorities would be funded by the state.

I think that, you know, I don't know a lot of people now have heard that this region, this metropolitan planning organization received about 10% of what other MPOs received in this year's planning dollars from the state per capita.

So we were, you know, everybody else was getting this kind of pot and we were getting this kind of pot and now told, oh, but

You can have this other project.

And so what we're looking at now is saying, well, first let's talk about our pot.

Let's talk about the projects that we had in our regional transportation plan, things that we've had a lot of public input, things that we've already talked about being local priorities.

and we all agreed that these were things that we would want considered before we would consider a bypass.

They include completion of Hillsdale Drive, which is the one that ends in the movie theater now that goes by the Whole Foods, which would provide a good

parallel road to 29.

It is designed to get some traffic off of 29.

U.S. 29-250 ramp and lane improvements, which are actually already underway, but completing that.

Berkmar Drive extension, which is another parallel road up the other side.

It already goes to Walmart, but on past Walmart going north.

also designed to get traffic off of 29, allowing people to go to local businesses without having to get on 29.

The Belmont Bridge was, from both the city and the county perspective, was considered a really important project, partly because it involves public safety, partly because it had been committed for funding and then was sort of de-committed for funding, so that was considered very important.

to the Holly Mead Forest Lake, Charlottesville Airport was added the other night.

That would mean a bus to the businesses between where the buses now end and the airport.

And also the Northtown Trail, which is something that the MPO recently saw kind of preliminary designs for, that would actually starts downtown, goes up

through the Meadow Creek Parkway, goes up over the Hillsdale Drive, could potentially go all the way up to Engic, could also potentially if there were a bypass follow that, but to have non-car transportation opportunities for people to get north and south.

So those were things that we

discussed in our meeting, I certainly received and I think the other members of the MPO received lots of other suggestions for things that should be on that list, but today when we finalize this letter,

I felt very strongly, and I think that my fellow councilors agree, that what we do in a letter like this should reflect what was done in a public meeting, not be a backroom deal.

So we didn't add more, we didn't subtract anything.

This was what was voted on in the MPO in a public meeting, so that's what will go forward.

Personally, I place an awful lot of trust in the public.

I think that we need to have that sort of openness for this process, and so I'm glad at least at this point we're beginning to have that.

Okay.

Questions for Mr. Tolbert or Ms. Szakos or Mr. Huja?

Alright, well we appreciate you keeping us abreast of this evolving situation.

Next item on our agenda is a report on the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention Visitor's Bureau.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

I'm going to be doing a PowerPoint presentation this evening.

And before I do, I'd like to ask you to take over these, please.

Let's see, where's the advance on this one?

The right?

Okay.

Good evening Mayor Norris and honorable counselors.

My name is Kurt Burkhardt and I'm the executive director of the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention Visitors Bureau.

I wish to thank the city manager for inviting the CACVB to be here tonight to present an overview of CACVB programs and activities over this last year.

As you know, tourism is a key economic driver for Charlottesville and Albemarle County, and the CACVB is charged with actively promoting our area for visitors, whether it be large groups such as the wine bloggers that will be here this weekend, or the extended weekend getaway most Americans seemingly prefer and enjoy.

To briefly summarize, the CACVB receives a portion of the overnight bed tax, or the transient occupancy tax, which is referred to as TOT.

With city and county funding provided through the collection of the TOT, the CACVB staff administers our downtown visitor center, open seven days a week, along with the county satellite office, while executing key marketing initiatives and programs that can work to increase overall awareness for our destination and stimulate increased visitation.

Our full-time staff consists of five professionals and we will be interviewing this week to fill the director of sales and marketing position along with six part-time travel specialists and four summer interns who enthusiastically work to meet the needs of customers, partners and various community stakeholders.

The 11-member board of directors meets every other month and sets policy for the CACDB with staff executing the direction that's given by the board.

Five statutory seats provide for representation by the city, county, Chamber of Commerce, University of Virginia, and Monticello.

The city and county have equal appointments to fill the remaining six seats.

Those that are bolded represent the statutory seats on the bureau's board.

And by the way, I have two members, Chris Engle, our chairman, and Lee Catlin sitting in the back representing the county.

As I've already noted, tourism is tremendously important to our local economy.

In fact, according to the U.S. Travel Association, tourism ranks as the first, second or third retail employer in nearly every state.

This illustration, which many of you may have seen during National Tourism Week in May, shows how money channels into various businesses through visitor spending, which ultimately supports jobs and sustains commerce.

Much of this money remains right here in our community.

The economic benefits that tourism brings to our community is illustrated with the slide that shows that with more than $412 million in direct visitor spending to Charlottesville and Albemarle County, the items listed in red show Charlottesville.

Tourism supports nearly 2,000 jobs in Charlottesville with nearly $35 million in salaries and wages paid to tourism-related jobs.

When businesses are patronized, these dollars will circulate within our community to continue to pay for ongoing goods and services.

We're proud of our accomplishments over the last year, especially in areas where our reach to prospective visitors has been amplified through the use of a robust website that continues to meet user demands.

We have worked hard to attract various conferences and feel that our soliciting for business in Washington, DC, Baltimore, North Carolina and throughout Virginia will continue to provide the kind of group business that helps nourish our local economy.

Charlottesville recently hit a milestone with the 100th person to receive the designation Certified Tourism Ambassador, a nationally recognized certification program that enhances customer service excellence.

And we continue to support this program which is offered through the Journey Through Hollywood Ground.

And speaking of exciting initiatives,

Vintage, The Winemaker's Year, which I passed out to each of you, the DVD.

We have the Brew Ridge Trail, Monticello Wine Trail, the soon-to-be-opened Monticello Artisan Trail.

These are all cooperative marketing programs that have helped provide Lyft, or will with the opening of the trail as well, the Artisan Trail, for Charlottesville through the leveraging of partnership support.

Also initiated in 2010 and refreshed this year, My Backyard Vacation, you've heard it, stay local, play local, was launched over the concern of rising fuel prices and the impacts this would have on discretionary spending to take longer and more expensive vacations out of area.

This is a continuation of a partnership between the county, city, and the CACDB.

By rallying local businesses and with the support of the Newsplex and WINA, we have been able to highlight and promote every week local fun spots and unique summertime offerings that have provided alternatives for travelers for traveling out of area.

Through our website, mybackyardvacation.org and with promotional marketing in washingtonpost.com through media releases and social media, our summer campaign has reached local, regional and statewide audiences.

Some of you may have also seen the catchy public service announcement.

Hi, my name is Will, which has been shown on the Newsplex.

Well, the City Communications Office put that together and it's been really well received locally.

I'm going to have to pass through this.

It was a slide that obviously didn't work and I was going to show that to you.

Our local efforts to galvanize a working committee to delve into activities and events related to the American Civil War and to share stories about how this conflict impacted our community has been extremely challenging.

Essential to having a successful story to tell is the need for involvement by the African American community.

Later this summer, an announcement will be made regarding a unique partnership project that the CACVB has embarked on locally that we hope will provide the traction needed to complete the loop, thereby providing for an inclusive committee that can begin to build momentum leading up to 2015.

The University of Virginia will host the final signature conference in 2015, culminating the Commonwealth Civil War sesquicentennial activities.

Quickly, I want to note that the CACVB has had an active year.

Meeting is charged and engaged with the public through informational fulfillment and effective public relations.

Please note that the media coverage was over one half million dollars.

That's the value of stories that were written about Charlottesville, essentially providing the CACVB with free advertising.

Smith Travel Research, the Global Authority in Hospitality Research shows that for the first 11 months of the fiscal year having just ended the average annual occupancy rate in Charlottesville area was 65.8% with $104.79 at the average daily rate for hotel rooms.

Numbers for June will be available for another 10 days, however, compared to the same 11 months in the previous year, we are up by nearly 4% in occupancy, and Revpar, which is the revenue per available room, is also up by over $4 in the same comparison.

The CACVB employs all avenues to reach out to potential visitors, both the leisure traveler and to group travel leaders through traditional print, electronic marketing and public relations.

We have realized expanded reach in the key and additional markets through partnership opportunities made available through the Virginia Tourism Corporation, which allows the CACVB to wisely leverage its resources for maximum gain.

What we're seeing is that the key travel trends listed here very much favor what Charlottesville has to offer.

Travel is a discretionary item in most household budgets, so finding value-based offerings that provide appeal to the audiences the destination has identified and markets to is key to initiating new and sustained consumer business.

The markets we reach out to in the primary and growth audiences are listed in this slide.

We continue to find that Northern Virginia and Washington DC metro area is our best market for inspiring travel to our area.

Tremendous growth lies in other cities and states within the mid-Atlantic region.

That's where the proverbial fish, let me start over again, that's where the proverbial fish are biting, can be stated, up in Northern Virginia and Washington DC.

We also know that typically long-planned summer vacation has given way to short getaways, extended weekend travel.

These have become the new family vacation.

As travel has now become a year-round event, spring and summer months continue to hold top billing.

We continue to see seasonal events that create the allure to experience something fresh.

And our audiences, according to the Virginia Tourism Corporation, are growing in the need for experiential travel with baby boomers not going the way of their parents' generation.

The cornerstone of our outreach to prospective visitors and integrated communications network for local partners, business officials and consumer media is our website.

The CACDV has created nine specific interest consumer newsletters that are sent out monthly to individuals who have opted in to find out more about local accommodations, arts and culture, culinary, family and kid friendly places, festivals and special events.

General Communication, Historical and Heritage, Outdoor Recreation and Shopping.

We continue to build monthly the number of subscribers which now totals over 10,000.

With our recent entree into social marketing, our Facebook page, Charlottesville, Virginia, shows the increasing importance of social media to the CACVB as this Facebook page ranks fourth in dominion referrals to our website or domain referrals to our website.

As this quote notes, the internet continues to be the indispensable source of information for travel.

Data shows that from idea generation to travel planning to actual making the trip, time has compressed what was normally six months to a year to a new norm as few as eight weeks.

All this is largely due to the internet.

We launched our site one year ago as the last three bullets show that the site has shown stellar results when compared to our former site.

Of note is the high percentage of new visitors to Charlottesville.org and the length of time visitors remain on our site over four minutes.

Last July we rolled out a first screen kiosk at the Monticello Visitor Center.

Designed to fit in with the architectural setting, this added convenience for visitors provides real-time information directly from our website.

Any changes we make to the website automatically updates at the kiosk.

We are also exploring a possible upgrade for smartphone accessibility.

Here's ribbon cutting day in February with County Board Chairwoman Anne Mallick and the CACB Board Chairman Chris Engel with his children.

Some of the data captured within kiosk shows where folks are visiting from.

In this map you'll see the Washington DC and Virginia, Northern Virginia area are key markets.

You see 208 up there in the District of Columbia, 68 there in the Maryland, and 30, I think that's 39 there in the Virginia area.

The CACVB continues to keep its presence in many of the tried and true traditional print publications such as the Virginia Official Welcome Guide, AAA World, Virginia Golf Guide and Amtrak's In-Service Magazine arrive.

We find opportunities in other print offerings and take advantage of those especially when the Virginia Tourism Corporation creates a special advertising offer on a cooperative basis allowing the CACVB to buy down at reduced rates.

We attend a small but select number of travel industry specific trade shows.

This year we attended the American Bus Association Marketplace to promote Charlottesville tour operators so they can receive new information to be added to group tour offerings for charter motorcoach travel.

Another is the U.S. Travel Association's Pow Wow.

this country's largest travel industry showcase that batches over 5,000 international buyers with US destinations interested in the growth of inbound travel from overseas.

We saw a tremendous amount of interest in from the UK, Germany, Netherlands and Brazil.

And travel media showcase allows the CACBB to engage directly with travel writers and other journalists to pitch all things Charlottesville.

This appointment-based show is by invitation only for journalists assuring the quality of writers who will meet on a one-on-one basis with destination representatives.

Again, going back to our mission, we are clearly focused on group business for Charlottesville that brings organizations, associations, and various affinity groups to our area.

This week in the Wine Bloggers Conference, we'll bring over 325 out-of-town guests, which translates into nearly 1,000 room nights.

With food and beverage while at this conference, along with small group outings to area eateries and restaurants and retail shopping, the overall impact of numerous groups to our city becomes all the more impressive.

Because of Charlottesville's ideal positioning as a destination, our community is served by both Amtrak and Air Service in and out of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport.

This past year, the CACVB lent support through a cooperative partnership with Virginia Tourism Corporation and the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation, resulting in new Amtrak service to our area.

Additionally, the CACVB supportive chose DOT grant application to launch additional direct air service from Charlottesville to Chicago resulted in American Airlines inaugural flight into show last month.

Understanding the current economic and marketplace challenges the CACVV has focused on but is not limited itself to five key priorities.

Keeping true to our mission, we believe our first three priorities are key as they immediately increase direct economic impact to our area.

The last two priorities provide the CACVV with ongoing opportunities to find synergies and create common engagements with our local stakeholders.

To keep this council informed on an ongoing basis, the CACVB chairman and I agree that regular updates forwarded to you and short memo summary will be the best way to communicate our activities.

Again, I thank you for the time you've provided me this evening for the purpose of updating you on what your official destination marketing organization is and continues to do for the city of Charlottesville.

Thank you very much, Mr. Burkhart.

Any questions or comments?

Actually, I had two questions.

Thank you.

This was very helpful.

And I think, you know,

I think we all see how important this is to the economy of our region, so although I'm kind of nitpicking, I want to thank you first for the whole presentation.

One is just a question.

You mentioned that $1.2 million comes out of mostly from room tax and

Well, as I indicated, it's almost evenly split between what the hotel tax is, that although we get a portion, not the entire amount, we're nearly entirely funded through the tax that's collected by overnight stay.

If citizens here in Charlottesville stayed at the Omni, for example, then that would be a small portion of whatever tax that they paid would then go to support us.

But we have a goal in our joint operations agreement between the city and the county and the bureau

Our goal is to achieve a 7 to 1 rate of return on what is provided to us.

I think it was well above that in some of those areas, which is great.

My question is just really more specific.

Oh, we track the TOT.

We get reports every month from the county and from the city on the TOT collections.

I was just interested to see if that was proportional.

The other question I had and have had before is, and you mentioned it a little bit, but I was actually kind of looking at the website as you were talking about historical and heritage tourism, and I think that a real

opportunity that I've certainly seen in this area is especially for black history, African American history, tourism.

We have a lot of really rich history in this area.

Having taken my own children when they were in middle school through the New Orleans, Selma, Tuskegee, Atlanta, kind of southern sweep, was really impressed with the way that towns along that route have really sort of

pointed out important pieces of history that people visiting can experience in one way or another.

I would love to have your direct involvement to get together with you at some other time to further discuss that, because that has been a real challenge.

During our website focus groups, we had 14 that we reached out to.

Kids and families, hotels, wineries, African American community, we reached out.

So we tried to gather as much information as we could, but especially with the Civil War sesquicentennial and there's so much that could be developed in terms of a trail that would be inclusive in that one area.

Because I know the Jefferson School will be a piece of that, but I'd love to see more of that as we move forward.

It was an excellent presentation.

I agree.

And congratulations.

All right.

Have a good evening.

Our last item on our regular business agenda tonight is a report from our environmental administrator, Ms.

Good evening.

My name is Crystal Rittervold.

As the Mayor mentioned, I'm the Environmental Administrator for the City of Charlottesville and I appreciate being asked to come tonight and give an update on the Green City status and exciting projects that are going on and a heads up on some of the things coming down the pike.

I wanted to start by putting Council's Green Vision Statement up on the screen, both for the benefit of the folks in the audience here and for the folks watching from home.

And as you read through these phrases, I would offer that the goals that we talk about when we talk about a green city are most certainly about protecting our community, about protecting the natural resources, our residents, our visitors, our businesses, our students.

But it's also about making it a cleaner and healthier place for our businesses and community members to live, work and play, whether that's through cost savings or the benefits of actually having a cleaner environment.

And furthermore, this has everything to do with the city as an independent or an individual distinct entity being about the business of lowering the impacts of our operations, demonstrating projects and strategies that save money and reduce the impacts on air and water quality.

and then certainly trying to push towards promoting and expanding on the city's reputation as being an environmental leader.

We've been there, you go around the country and people talk about Charlottesville and I think we all have a collective goal of seeing that reputation actually grow and not just rest on our laurels.

Charlottesville has a history of making many commitments and formal presentations and resolutions on the topic of environmental sustainability.

I would say in and of itself that's tremendously important, but part of what I want to do tonight is share with you actual tangible projects on the ground that show these commitments in place and in action.

Traditionally, environmental programs are thought of as being focused on compliance, on pollution prevention, and on this concept of continual improvement.

And I would say the Environmental Sustainability Division, which is part of the Public Works Department, has a mission of, is dedicated to environmental compliance, to pollution prevention, and to looking for opportunities both internally and within the community to promote and pursue stewardship.

On the subject of compliance, I would also be remiss not to mention that you don't hear about our compliance issues very often because it tends to be quite good, our compliance posture.

And the fact that you don't hear about it is also good because it's a sign that we're doing our job in terms of inspections and reporting.

and that covers the spectrum of hazardous materials and hazardous waste, fuel storage, storage tanks, storm water, our municipal permit, our industrial permits and the list actually goes on and on but I know you're not here for a compliance lesson.

our office is also in an ongoing process of collaborating with numerous divisions and departments around the city whether it be our utilities folks when they're doing work along streams and in other sensitive areas whether it's with the fire department when they're dealing or and our public service folks when we get calls about illegal dumping where basically we've got pollutants entering the stream and those of you know water flows quickly so both the pollution and the clues associated with move through very fast takes a fair amount of coordination

We work very closely with neighborhood development services on an expanding and an increasingly complicated stormwater program realm.

Those of you who are tracking the information coming out of the EPA as it pertains to the Chesapeake Bay and as it pertains to our local stream conditions and as it pertains to overall water quality goals and the

the acknowledgement that we as local communities have a role and a right to protect watersheds.

And then there are numerous other folks in the community who actually, what I want to show with this slide is the fact that although that's the traditional interpretation, in Charlottesville I'd say we are lucky that it takes quite a number of other forms, but with that comes the fact that the roles

and the responsibilities for environmental programs and things which contribute to our Green City vision are actually carried by a lot of other departments.

Our IT department is reducing paper through various transitioning to electronic file management and transactions.

I'm sorry, that's our finance folks.

They're promoting green purchasing policies.

Our IT folks are upgrading the network to be able to allow more folks to work from home and reduce

Commuting, they're upgrading the systems and the infrastructure to reduce the energy consumption associated with it.

And they're doing a pilot with our planning commission with iPads.

And so there's quite an ongoing process that really isn't solely directed or guided by the environmental program, but I think we're all marching towards an end goal.

The good thing is that that end goal also keeps moving.

You all have frequently had us come and talk about issues of water and water quality and certainly that remains critically important.

We've got 35 miles of open waterways running through the city and as I mentioned this is going to become increasingly important as programs that NDS takes the lead on for private BMP inspections, programs related to our erosion and sediment control and the monitoring of development and redevelopment.

considerations of funding for water resource programs and a stormwater utility.

All that's in play and we continue to do studying, but I want to highlight a few things where we also got projects on the ground.

At Charlottesville High School, last year we had the opportunity to build a very aesthetically appealing and very functional biofilter, which is this feature on the left.

It actually receives the runoff from the entire uphill parking lot, cleans that water,

We also collect the rainwater from the performing arts center, which is the structure you see here is a rainwater harvesting system, a 40,000 gallon system being put in place that irrigates the practice ball field.

And essentially that water either stays on site for something that we were formerly using drinking water, or it actually gets cleaned before it hits the stream at a much slower volume and rate, lower volume and rate.

I think it's hard not to smile when you see the little cisterns in the middle here, but we've got a number of other projects going on around the city and either in the ground or on the ground or in design, we're looking at over about 120,000 gallons of rainwater harvesting.

As I mentioned here, it's a small scale at a couple of schools, but it ranges up to an 8,000 gallon tank that gets used for our street sweepers.

The Tin Man, as I think the

System at Buford Elementary has been referred to, irrigates the gardens.

So there's a lot of connections between water and the role of water even in our schools and in our day-to-day public operations.

The issues you see here are by technically are often referred to as retrofits, which basically means going back in and installing practices that deal with a built condition.

So at the high school, that high school was developed before stormwater management.

And we've got retrofits throughout the city and we're looking and will be obligated through some of our water control

and the Chesapeake Bay Area.

It traps the debris and the sediment and the other items that typically come off of a public works yard and they get cleaned out and on a regular basis we're coming up with an average of over 100 pounds of debris that's getting pulled out of this site.

So it's small scale, somewhat labor intensive, but really quantifiable and kind of eye opening what runs off of our streets and parking areas.

Last year we also had the opportunity to address a small stream erosion project just over 160 linear feet.

For those of you who play golf, this is right near the third hole.

And up on the left you can see a deeply incised stream with a high pressure water line for the irrigation system exposed.

We had the opportunity to go in and not just protect that infrastructure, but improve the cart path that went over it and apply what's called natural stream design, creating a shallower, softer transition between the waterway and the ecological functions that it serves and the surrounding areas.

I also refer to this project as the appetizer because many of you know we've got a very exciting and very significant stream restoration project coming just around the corner.

9,000 linear feet is about a mile and a half, which is a tremendous stretch of an urban stream to have the opportunity to undergo what I would call an environmental transformation.

It also will use this concept of using natural systems, natural hydrology, the drainage area that feeds into it, the fact that we're not trying to turn it into a pristine wooded stream but trying to respond to our urban impacts and have it be stable and be a long-term investment.

It does include over 70 acres of forested stream valley which include about 11 acres of very valuable and environmentally functional wetlands.

I think certainly with this project the fact that we have close to 4 million dollars of non-city funds coming to it is in our lifetime also a tremendously unique opportunity for the city.

I think of the downtown mall as our urban park, our paved urban park, and I think this is our jewel.

This is our next natural jewel in the community.

And for those of you who want to hear more, we have an open house where further design details will be shared tomorrow night at 6 o'clock at B Commons in Charlottesville High School.

I want to transfer quickly to this subject.

Obviously, parks and our green spaces are an integral part of a green city vision, but it's not just the fact that they're there and that they're green, it's how they're managed and how they're operated, whether that's considerations of reducing chemical inputs, whether that's creating zones that are mowed less frequently so that they do serve as buffers to our waterways.

We have calculated about 47% canopy cover in the city, and that's good, but it's not just the fact that it's there.

We need to be working on the quality of that forest.

It isn't just invasive trees that are the types of trees that provide healthy and long-term forest areas.

This slide, if I leave it too long, will grow very quickly and cover the screen, because those of you who recognize it as kudzu, that's what it tends to do.

So good management about replanting and making sure that we have mixed-aged forests and that we have diversity in our tree species and that we use native appropriate trees are critical.

And then we have the mugshot of our favorite strategy for dealing with invasives, which you see in Penn Park here.

We've planted, there have been over, there have been about 500 trees planted in the last three years.

Many through projects, many through volunteers, many through staff operations.

There have been a huge amount of park acquisition in the last decade.

More than the majority of this being in the last five years and the majority of that being associated with the stream project that I mentioned.

And so we now have about 10% of the city that falls into that parkland area.

Obviously a green city is tied to the concept of connectivity through bike trails and pedestrian trails that provide loops but also provide connections between parks and schools and public areas.

We have three and six

miles approximately of these trails respectively.

And those of you who have seen recently, there's also efforts now to provide some distinct markings on the road to increase the use of bike and vehicle, safe bike and vehicle sharing of our roads.

I put the topic of community gardens and the increasing number of farmers markets on here as well because I think it's another way in which connectivity is promoted by bringing people closer to where their food comes from and supporting many of our local businesses and making them part of the day-to-day life and meals of our local residents.

And what's not on here but obviously clearly a part of connectivity as well is parks, the public,

Education and outreach and engagement activities, whether that's bringing folks into streams to do cleanups or whether that's bringing folks into the greenhouse for therapeutic sessions that really help people touch plants and have an experience that enhances their connection with the natural realm.

I'm going to move into some of our more operational areas.

We are greening our fleet, and environmental folks don't typically talk about cars, but since I've been here, which is about 2002, we have actually seen a pretty significant transition of our passenger fleet to be more hybrids.

We have about 18% of the passenger fleet is currently hybrids.

There are a couple of other alternative fuel vehicles that we have.

There is a plan to transition our buses to hybrids as well.

We do use a biodiesel blend on a seasonal basis and we are embarking on a research and development project with some local folks on fast charge electric vehicle technology.

Plug-ins typically take a long time and this is an experiment to see how well can we prove that doing this in a shorter time makes a lot of sense for small communities.

and then obviously having an anti-idling policy seems minor but it's one of the biggest housekeeping pains in the neck you can imagine and it's important.

Greening our buildings, we are the proud owners of the first municipally LEED Gold certified building in the state of Virginia which is the downtown transit station.

I think we've quickly learned from that experience and really put our commitment in a larger scale

where we now have close to 100,000 square feet of building space in the hopper for LEED certification.

And that essentially encompasses five projects.

The two at the top, Smith Aquatic Center and the Charlottesville Area Transit Admin and Maintenance Base.

Those are both built and operational.

EcoRemod is a project many of you know that we work closely with NDS and UVA and a number of other community partners including an invaluable private sector contractor and retail side and it's the home of one of our local nonprofits that I'll speak about in a moment and then the Fontaine Fire Station is in design but it's not just about new construction we've also now committed and are in the process of

repurposing and significantly renovating the old CTS maintenance building and turning it into facilities maintenance central, which is one of the main functions within Public Works.

It's what keeps all the lights going and the places clean and stuff fixed, amongst other things.

and then it actually goes beyond just building new stuff.

We're committed to integrating green building practices into day-to-day renovations, smaller projects.

I put a couple of unusual suspects on here.

The police department, they actually spec'd recycled content steel for the lockers and have selected a flooring that's a combination of rubber and cork.

They needed some rubber because it's a wet environment.

A lot of policemen with wet boots marching in.

but that's not atypical, that's now become more standard than not we use low toxicity interior paints and cleaners and then in places where challenges pop up the downtown transit station is oriented so you get a fair amount of sun and glare inside but rather than going a fairly expensive screening or

Glazing strategy, we went a softer route of putting bamboo planters inside which actually enhances the indoor experience at a fraction of the cost.

I want to highlight a couple of energy related projects because I think these really are the ones where we see significant cost savings.

A few years back we had the opportunity to convert all of the signaled traffic light intersections from incandescents to LEDs.

LEDs are a lighting technology that essentially has a significantly longer life, requires significantly less maintenance,

uses about 80% less energy than an incandescent light.

And so if you start talking about 500 lights at our 48 signaled locations, we incurred $150,000.

It included battery backup and some meters so that we could document the energy savings.

About 80% reduction was seen and in less than three months we've seen that project pay for itself and I put the kilowatt hour reductions on there as well.

This is a project that was subsequently done by VDOT around the state.

I mean we did them pretty early compared to a lot of other communities and there are many communities around the country now that are doing this with federal stimulus monies that they've got, ARRA monies.

This and many other energy efficiency projects really are the ones that many communities are stepping into the environmental sustainability realm because they pay for themselves.

And I would put out there Charlottesville did this on our own before the stimulus generation.

But utilities management and energy management goes way beyond just a couple of projects.

It's actually a pretty comprehensive and pretty mind-boggling process of tracking everything that gets used everywhere.

And our facilities management folks, Lance Stewart, has done an incredible job, again, a leader in our Virginia Commonwealth, on taking public buildings and really figuring out what's going on with them.

Frankly, the folks in DC don't know what was going on with their buildings until they started that project just 6 or 12 months ago.

In 2008, the city invested $1.8 million in what's called an energy performance contract.

You see some of the big numbers on there.

It was a committed effort to squeeze some serious energy reductions and cost savings out of our projects.

And many of these things, many of the strategies are strategies that are completely applicable to just about any other commercial space in our community.

We installed a first solar thermal system at the fire station, which, sorry, was supposed to show up over there.

We have over a million dollars that we've seen in savings in the last five years from these energy efficiency measures in existing city and school buildings.

And I believe you all have recently had some information passed along from Lance Stewart as well that actually bumps that number up closer to 1.4 million.

Tremendous payback and we are getting EPA third party outside recognition that these buildings when you compare them to like buildings stack up as high performers and many of these projects are taking average performing buildings and bumping them up to be qualified for this Energy Star certification.

I want to put up a really glamorous picture of something called a VAV box and I have a prize for whoever knows what that means.

Anyone?

It's Variable Air Ventilation boxes and this is a project in Charlottesville High School.

There are 171 of these units.

It's a significant project but it was done not so much for the energy

It was maintenance nightmare.

It was complaints about air circulation.

It was areas that were getting too hot, too cold.

Across that building, it's a very difficult, huge space to manage.

And about 60% completion, we were already seeing 17% energy savings, which is huge.

not only because that translates to cost savings, but it actually dropped the peak energy use to a point where that building is eligible to be billed at a lower rate.

I mean, again, this is why energy management ends up becoming such a business.

Charlottesville High School spends about $35,000 on energy bills every year, so you can imagine that reductions like this make a lot of sense because those dollars need to be going into other parts of our schools.

And then I think what we've all been waiting for is coming soon to a school near you.

We're looking to, we, Charlottesville was able to get a grant from the state.

We are looking to put a minimum 66 kilowatt solar PV system on the Charlottesville high school and all that power will be used in the high school.

They use more than what this will generate so it's not a function of selling it back.

As part of this project, there are a set of city staff who are actually going to go and get trained on installing solar panels, which I think demonstrates a commitment to doing more of this in our community.

And then there's obviously a fair amount of coordination with UVA students, with some students and faculty and staff at the school to come up with educational displays and how to integrate this into the curriculum.

and then really no green city update is complete without throwing graphics and logos of a number of our really critical community partners on here.

The Local Energy Alliance Program, many of you are very familiar and probably get updates on a regular basis about what these folks are doing, but it's a nonprofit that was essentially started up with a half a million dollar grant that the city and the county successfully got

They have since then established themselves as a real entity in the community that carries out the commitment and the goals and the programs that we as a city know are important which is tackling the hard business of energy efficiency in our existing buildings.

They have since then brought

They will be bringing over $3 million to our community and that's not dollars that are going to fund them.

Those are dollars that they're facilitating moving towards residents, low-income multi-family buildings, the commercial sector, to make sure this stuff gets done and that those dollars get moved as effectively as possible out into the community.

they have 129 city residents have signed up with the program 30 plus of them have been supported through the city's home energy conservation program which helps actually further assist some income qualifying residents and we have about 90 of the projects are completed and I would say this is a process that

Actually requires all of us to talk it up.

I mean to talk about pointing people towards this entity to help get this stuff done.

They have a pretty intense group of folks from AmeriCorps coming later this summer and so that'll be dozens of boots on the ground walking around and helping to promote and provide more information about it.

The Charlottesville Area Better Business Challenge is another very exciting initiative that we're doing with LEAP and another nonprofit, Better World Betty, also with the county and also with a number of other community partners, UVA, the James River Green Building chapter.

But it's a friendly challenge to our private commercial sector to say, let's play this game of, you know,

building up points and trying to see who can be successful in certain areas.

How can we learn from each other in some of these other areas?

And for us as a community to recognize those successful participants, there's a lot of information sharing, there's a lot of networking, and so folks who have ideas about it or know businesses that you want to point towards this.

It's the Charlottesville Better Business Challenge.

And I'm not going to go into it today because I hope to be back in a few months to talk about another important initiative, which is our local climate action planning process, which is an exercise where the city and the county and the university have looked at this pie chart on the right, which is essentially the carbon footprint of our community, have recognized that about 4% of those emissions are directly linked to municipal operations.

So we have 96% of our emissions that come from the rest of us in how we travel, where we live, what we do, what we throw away, where we shop, how that runs.

And so, you know, it's been an honor to work with a number of folks on trying to wrestle with what opportunities does that bring to a community, and I'll kind of leave it at that as a teaser for the next time I come back.

Well, thank you, Ms. Rittervall.

You continue to do pioneering work and make our city proud.

One thing that I'd like to see next, since you asked, we had a city council retreat recently and one of the priority areas that we sort of agreed upon was how do we take

you know all the great work that we've been doing under your leadership in making Charlottesville a green city and how do we leverage that

on the economic development side and really make Charlottesville a center for green jobs, for clean energy, enterprises.

No, but I think we're at a point where I think we've evolved in our programs that we're in a good place to be asking those questions and that those conversations

and

Okay.

I can just mention the students because I don't want you to underestimate the power of your presence as a woman in this field and the impact you can have on girls who may be thinking about this kind of career or the seniors thinking about different majors in college.

I will make one suggestion which I've made before on behalf of some of my neighbors who are very excited about the possibility of curbside composting.

Just keep kind of pushing that out.

Also just wanted to point out that next council meeting I believe I will not be the only counselor up here with an iPad because the city council is going paperless.

The city of Hampton saved $35,000 the first year they did that.

even after they bought the iPads for their counselors through printing costs and the cost of paper, the cost of staff time, but also just the trees that didn't have to get cut down.

Thank you.

I just want to add, we're not going completely paperless for the first couple of meetings.

Oh, of course.

I've been data in the system, but we're transitioning.

I'd just like to say a lot of the great things that get done in the city have to do with the individuals involved.

I think Crystal's done a great job as our environmental administrator.

So I'd just like to thank you.

Thanks.

We met some of the members of the Virginia Silverbacks earlier and I've attended a couple practices and have gotten to know some of the people on the team.

I actually think it's a really great thing for our community.

There's a whole bunch of

young to not quite so young men who put a lot of time and work into this effort.

It provides a bunch of things I think are really good for us.

I think sports can give our youth a sense of purpose in schools.

I think having a team where there's connections in the community of people continuing to benefit from the discipline of sport is a good thing.

It's also, you know, we talk a fair amount about re-entry into the community and I can tell you right now that one of the things it's giving some of the men who are re-entering a sense of purpose is this team and the structure and the connections they're making.

Having said all that, I think what's happened with this team is it's an expensive venture and I think their fundraising hasn't been quite as robust as they were hoping.

and maybe even some of the planning for how expensive it actually is, perhaps underestimated it.

I think their expenses for a home game, of which they have five coming up, are probably in the range of over $1,000 a game with the field rentals, paying for the referees for the games, things like that.

You know, I look down the road and I think the reality is at the moment they've kind of exhausted what's come in initially.

I think they've spent on the order of, I think they've told me around $6,000 or $7,000 up until now, both from donations, sponsorships, player dues, and things.

But I think they probably are looking at

something in the neighborhood of $7,500 or so to get them through the rest of the season.

And I do think that once they get established, it's going to be a very positive thing.

I'd like to see us see if we can't help them get through this first year.

I'd love to see us perhaps consider giving them $5,000 from our council reserve.

I don't know off the top of my head.

I know we made some commitments, obviously, during the budget cycle.

I'd have to come back.

I can get that information for you.

I think it's, well, I don't want to venture a guess, but we did make some commitments during the budget cycle.

There's still a pretty healthy balance.

Yeah, there is, without question.

No, I think it's an LLC.

So I wouldn't view this as being an ongoing commitment unless they do change their type of structure.

Well, part of me looks at the discussion that we had last time and how we allocate funding and one of the things we talked about was that the council reserve is here for things that might rise up between processes for that.

I think it meets many of our objectives in our vision statement and I think

Some contributions will show our faith in that direction.

I was thinking about the same conversation that we had and thinking about how they have been able to address a niche in our community that was missing.

Apparently there are some people that fall into a gray area

Weird, Parker and Rex, they don't fit in.

YMCA, they don't fit in.

They don't fit into the Boys and Girls Club.

They don't necessarily fit in with the sports that are being created at Buford.

I know there's a football team coming in the air and CHS.

They may not necessarily fit in.

So you've been able to figure out how to create something that people can feel as if they can just be a part of.

I would like to figure out how we could

maybe work on the field rentals, do something specific to see if we could address that and I don't have a problem with using the council reserves but

I think that could be exactly that.

And I think this is a lot of controversy about

turf field versus regular grass.

But the advantage of a turf field is you're able to use it for a lot more events like this without feeling like you're hurting it.

And this is Joey, right?

Yes.

And Davis?

Davis, that's my brother.

Yeah.

When we first started, we went to Monticello and Charlottesville about using the field.

Both of them gave us an OK, but Charlottesville is going to give me the redo their fields.

So we're using Monticello and I mean the fee for the field is $500 then.

We got to pay for six referees and it's like $120 a referee.

Well, I'm hearing support for some form of allocation and I hear at least a couple counselors leaning towards a $2,500 allocation.

I think this is right in line with a lot of the things, as you mentioned, Dr. Brown, that we've been talking about.

I've been going around myself getting

We needed football hammers painted.

I went to Primo Finishing and they told me if they could get somebody to supply the paint, they would paint it.

So I went to Charlottesville Finishing and they supplied the paint and they painted the hammers for me.

Like I told my brother, it's not going to be easy the first year.

Is there a second?

Second.

Any further discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

The motion carries unanimously.

Good luck to you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you, Council.

Mr. Mayor, I'm sorry, I have just one announcement.

You mentioned earlier that Council will not be meeting on August 15th.

There are a couple of other public meetings that Council will be involved with over the next month or so.

We just wanted to kind of clarify that a little bit.

This Wednesday, July 20th,

The council will be conducting planning commission interviews.

On the 27th at the MPO public hearing, council's been invited to be a part of that.

We have two of our council members who are a part of that at 4 p.m. at the Lane Auditorium.

Council's been invited to be a part of the

Retreat and Work Session Concerning Community Solid Waste Issues on August 1st.

That's at 815 at the Albemarle County Service Authority.

Of course, we will have our regularly scheduled meeting on August 1st at 7 o'clock, and then the Planning Commission will be meeting, and Council will be involved with that on August 9th as well.

So just wanted to run through some of the meetings because, you know, this time of year, there's questions about whether or not certain meetings happen.

Great.

Thank you, Mr. Jones.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Mr. Jones.

Congratulations, Councillors.

Jason Halbert.

I live at 803 Stonehenge Avenue in Belmont.

You'll have to forgive me for not being more vocal and present during the debate over the water supply plan.

I've been involved in quite a few other things as you are aware of.

But I have made my opinion known and I stand today to support the 2006 plan as modified.

I know the Rivanna River intimately.

Every year I do several multi-day canoe camping trips on the Rivanna.

I swim, fish, and float the river from above the Sugar Hollow Dam all the way to the mouth at Columbia.

I canoed the river in the summer of 2002.

Not many people did that.

It was unbelievable.

A wild river during a drought suffers.

A river with reservoirs and humans taking most of the water suffers beyond measure during a drought, the one like we saw in 2002.

I saw totally dry stretches of the river.

I walked and carried my canoe over some impassable places.

There was so little water.

The fish and wildlife suffered.

The American eels, lamprey, gizzard shad, the federally endangered James spiny missile all suffered.

And we have no way of measuring how much they suffered.

I know these are abstract concepts for most people who are just concerned with their daily lives and going about their business.

I understand that.

but we have a duty and obligation not only under the law for some of these species but as humans I feel to take these things into account when planning.

If you recall the debate then, it was mainly on when and how severe our drought restriction should be.

In other words, it was on how much water we could use for our lawns and whether or not we could wash our cars.

That was what was being discussed right here.

The juxtaposition of the choking river I saw and the whining of people unwilling to forgive a few car washes was just mind-numbing to me.

But I understand, like I said, that these are abstract ideas.

The opponents of the 2006 water supply plan would have us believe that dredging in a smaller dam would do the trick.

It won't.

The scientists who studied hydrology and ecology of our watershed and helped create that plan concluded otherwise.

Usually left out of the debate is what's going on in the river apart from the reservoirs like I've said.

The only plan that allows for adequate water supply for the humans and the rivers in a drought condition is the 2006 supply plan.

I'm not entirely opposed to dredging as it's been discussed, but as we've already heard many times, the dredging will not supply enough water to help the river and us during a 2002 drought and it won't do it at a cost per gallon that's reasonable.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Sorry I waited until the end here.

We hear that the Fairmongers are back.

I opened up the paper and I saw an article from Kay Slaughter saying we're running out of water.

We don't have enough water.

Councilor Brown say, if we dredge, we only get X days for this and X days for that.

What does Kay Slaughter know about the plan other than what she's told?

Who told you those numbers or did you compute them yourself?

We heard the Free Enterprise Forum saying we're running out of water.

We heard the Nature Conservancy, a rich scholar after his long critique of his accomplishments, which are notable, say we're running out of water.

You know what they fear, what they don't tell you?

When are we running out of water?

Every piece of evidence says we have 30 to 40 or more years before the existing impoundments with dredging will not carry you through the drought.

30 to 40 years.

And I would challenge any of these men, including Kay Slaughter, to come forward and prove to me otherwise.

There is no proof.

And you're smiling, so you must have some proof, Counsel Brown.

Save the Mormons River.

A dam was built to supply water to the Sugar Hollow pipeline.

That's because in the summer, many summers, there's no water in the Mormons.

I think Mr. Fenwick over here has made movies of the last summer where you could go up.

I went up myself and dug a foot down and couldn't find any water in the North Fork of the Mormons River right at the mouth where it goes into Sugar Hollow.

So there was no water there, so they decided to build a dam so they could use the pipeline

to back up the Ragged Mountain Dam.

Now, some people in this community want to take that dam away from the water supply and supercharge the Mormons during its natural low flows.

Natural low flows.

If there's nothing coming into the reservoir, then nothing should leave the reservoir because the reservoir is an unnatural reservoir.

Let me change the topic for a minute.

Mr. Huja, Mrs. Edwards, City Council, and Ms. Napoleon, with no disrespect at all, I do have a hard time understanding you, and I ask people in the back of the room, and maybe it's the room, maybe it's the microphone, maybe it's my aging ears, but we need to do something so that we can understand, and it's not meant as a disrespect by any means, it's meant simply as there's a problem that needs to be addressed.

and the last thing that caused me problems tonight was that I went to office hours for ACOM and I asked them where did they get their population numbers and they said we did not do the population numbers and this is what they told me.

I know what you just heard them say but this is what they told me and I wrote emails to people right after I left.

They said that we were told to go to Jim Holbert at the city and David

Bemish in the county and get the numbers.

I said, well, did they come with any tolerance?

Was there any statistical probability that these were going to, the tolerances were going to open up as we go out in time?

And they said, no, they came as raw numbers and we used them.

I said, well, what about the Weldon Cooper people?

They said Weldon Cooper was nonresponsive.

She said that forecasting, she said Tom Frederick came here two years ago, we haven't heard from him since.

Yes, Rebecca Quinn, 104 Fourth Street.

Following up on Mr. Lloyd's observation as documented by Mr. Fenwick, you can walk around the Sugar Hollow Reservoir during dry periods and you see no surface inflow.

This means the Mormons River below Sugar Hollow naturally would go dry without Sugar Hollow.

You've heard again tonight about the stream flow benefits of the pipeline, dam and pipeline plan.

Here's a question.

If the Sugar Hollow Reservoir is going to be taken out of our system, water supply system, why shouldn't we take out the Sugar Hollow Dam and let the Mormons become a natural stream?

Short of that, why don't we sell it?

Why don't the people who want improved stream flows pay for it rather than the rate payers paying for it?

Why should the city of Charlottesville

maintain a reservoir that we're not using that we, all the rate payers, will have to pay maintenance for, not the people downstream of the reservoir.

We, the city, will maintain some liability for failure to maintain or remember that reservoir is also aging.

Someday it will also need major improvements.

But listen again to what they're saying.

They're talking about improving the stream flows.

We're all environmentalists.

We live in Charlottesville.

Look what we are dealing with.

And I love what we just heard.

But we've heard most of the water behind a 30-foot rise dam will go for stream flows.

Not for people, but for stream flows, at least until the pipeline is built.

How much of that project, the dam and uphill pipeline, really will be artificial resuscitation, so sugar hollow and pounded water,

can be used to artificially augment the base flow of Mormons.

Even with the steep population numbers that AECOM used, the study shows we don't need more water for decades.

We don't have to make this decision now.

We don't have to build now.

Yes, permits are important, but permits can always be obtained in the future when you really have a need

Please don't make our rate payers, more than 20% of whom are low income, pay for stream flow improvements under the guise of a water supply emergency.

And I actually meant to start with a wow on the green cities presentation.

As a young woman engineer many years ago when it was still pretty rare, I have few role models.

and I tell you if I was starting over after listening to Crystal specifically but also looking at what the city does and what is in this industry I might think again about what I do.

And of course I have one more thing related to water.

There was a list of environmental commitments up there.

It was pretty long.

They may have to squeeze the font to get one more on there and that would be a 2011 bullet

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Quinn.

Anybody else like to speak?

Good evening.

DeeDee Smith, 2652 Jefferson Park Circle.

I too loved the green city presentation.

I mean, how proud can we be to be a city like that?

But how ironic that a city as green as we are would approve a plan that would throw away a natural resource in the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir, that would throw away a natural area like the Ragged Mountain Natural Area.

I continue to be really offended by this script about the dredging versus dam volumes.

What people who propose that fail to mention is that the loss of an additional 600 million gallons at the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir

that if it's allowed to silt in.

What they fail to mention is the loss of the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir, the water storage there, represents fully half of the drought protection owned by the city.

It in fact takes us from a healthy surplus in drought protection to an actual deficit.

What they failed to mention is that by refocusing our water resources at the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir, it actually allows for better flows in the Rivanna as we heard suffers under a drought.

And in fact, would allow these large environmental groups to do their river restoration project at the Mormons.

but you don't hear that because what it would mean is that they would have to pay for that river restoration instead of the urban rate payer.

In fact, who is going to pay for this river restoration project is that single mother we heard about earlier who is already struggling to make ends meet.

This is a fleecing of the city.

We can have all of the things that are being proposed.

We can have a healthy water supply and they can get their river restoration project, but it should not be at the expense of city residents.

Thank you, Ms. Smith.

Hello Stratton Salitas, 704 Grave Street.

I wanted to come back to respond to some of the comments I heard earlier tonight about the dam and the dredging and such.

First of all,

We hear a lot about how important rivers are and I think we all agree on that.

And I see dredging as being far better overall for river health in addition to preserving the ragged mountain natural area.

When we're dredging we are creating more capacity but also we are doing so in a place where when it rains the water can quickly recharge.

So not only are we creating capacity for water, but in a sense, we're actually creating more water, or at least the capacity to take more water.

If we build a dam, all we're doing is creating a place for water to go.

We're not creating more water.

So that's one big objection I have to some of the way that this has been characterized.

And when we talk about filling the

Dam at Ragged Mountain, we're still talking about taking water from the Rivanna.

And if we haven't dredged, well, now the Rivanna is going to be at an even lower level than it would have been otherwise.

And I heard what Dr. Brown said about how everybody agrees that we're going to be dredging, but

also as it's already been said there's a big difference between doing it all at once and doing it in small chunks in terms of the costs and ultimate feasibility relative to and also it has

it's not being counted as capacity.

In the plan, they just want to count the dredging as maintenance.

And that seems to me to be yet another way in which we're just trying to fool ourselves as we did with the demand study and hopefully now we will see, now that it's coming in even lower,

even though the population figures were grossly overestimated, hopefully we can admit to ourselves that no, we do not need the water that was claimed we would in the future.

I heard it stated earlier that we don't, the dredging won't do the job because hydrologists and ecologists told us that.

Hydrologists and ecologists cannot tell us how much water we're going to be using in 50 years.

That's a choice that our community makes.

And if we let the sprawl lobby do it for us, it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy because we will have borrowed a lot of money and the only way to pay those loans off is to bring more people here in order to meet those demand projections and pay off the demand.

And I think that's really what is at the heart of this.

Well, thank you all very much and I hope you all will consider voting for Dee Dee Smith and Colette Blount on August 20th.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Salidas.

Thank you.

I do want to correct one thing.

The South Fork Rivanna Reservoir may be an asset, but it is not a natural asset.

It is a man-made asset.

And I think before we focus a lot of money on fixing man-made assets, we should focus first on restoring the natural assets.

In order to share enough with the rivers, which we are not doing today,

We may have enough water for ourselves if we don't share them with the river, but if we want to have enough water to share with the river, we need more storage capacity than we have today.

We certainly need more than can be restored by opportunistic dredging, which I support, which everybody supports.

But that opportunistic dredging, that part one dredging that you mentioned, will restore 58 million gallons of storage to the South Fork.

That is what will be restored after 40 years when we take out the sand that has accumulated in the last 40 years

We'll get 58 million gallons.

That would have lasted us six days during the drought of 2002.

That amount of storage is not enough to allow us to meet our needs and the needs of the rivers at the same time.

That is my concern.

That is why I think we need more storage.

Just to let you know about the price,

Even opportunistic dredging is twice as expensive per gallon as building the dam at Ragon Mountain.

It is still more expensive.

Even though it's the cheapest way to dredge, it's still twice as much.

And if you looked at how much that price would have to get down to in order to equal the cost of building the dam, you'd have to be able to dredge for $4.60 a cubic yard and you will not find anybody, even people who sell the sand

who can do it for $4.60 a cubic yard.

Let me move on to the AECOM study for a second.

People have said we should not build a water supply plan for the next 50 years.

We cannot forecast for 50 years.

Well, what you all agreed to do was not build for 50 years.

You have decided to build a 30-foot dam which the DEQ report says would last us 20 years.

The AECOM study and the DEQ report says that the 30-foot dam would last us 20 years.

We've built 20 years of a water supply system, which is just half of what our forefathers did when they built the South Fork Reservoir.

They provided us with 45 years of storage.

We're going to provide our kids with just 20 years with a 30-foot dam, but that's fine.

We'll look at what happens in 20 years.

Finally, when I talked about misplaced priorities, I want to be very, very clear.

I am not questioning the capacity of members of city council, the mental capacity or the heart capacity to cover many, many things all at one time.

But I do have a concern about whether the community thinks that we are focused on this issue too much.

When I think about the column inches that have been written about the water supply plan and the column inches that haven't been written about the achievement gap, when I think about the community perception out there that we talk every city council meeting about the water supply plan but we don't talk about the infant mortality rate among African American kids,

That's why there's perception out there that we care more about water supply than we do about people.

and that bothers me as a person in this community.

And finally, when I think of the citizen energy that has been devoted to keeping us from building a reservoir on a reservoir site rather than tackling some of these other issues, it just makes me sad.

Good evening.

Neil Williams with the Free Enterprise Forum.

About 12 months ago or so, we were starting to talk about the demand study.

And there was a very vocal group in the community that was asking, begging, pleading to have the latest trends included.

We now have a number that's being revisited with regard to population

that does that very thing.

It looks at the most recent data.

It looks at the most recent trends.

It seems as though some in the community would like to have it both ways.

To take the most recent trends when it helps support an argument and not take the most recent trends when it doesn't support the argument.

You can't have it both ways.

Thank you.

Oh, I'm sorry.

If you've already spoken.

I'm sorry.

I didn't, I had forgotten.

Is there anybody else who has not spoken in the second public comment period who would like to speak?

Meeting's adjourned.