City Council Meeting   9/19/2011

Music

and Michael

I'd like to call this meeting to order.

Before we have our roll call to get us going tonight, we have a very special presentation.

I would like to introduce a combination of four choirs from Charlottesville High School to provide a selection under the direction of Mr. Will Cook.

Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight

O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?

And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.

O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave

That was delightful.

Thank you.

Ms. Barfield, if you'll call the roll, please.

Dr. Brown?

Mr. Huja?

Yes.

Ms. Dangas?

Well, I would just like to

bring to everyone's attention that this past week we lost a wonderful citizen of the city of Charlottesville, Marianne Elwood.

And Marianne Elwood, and I think a lot of you have probably read about her in the paper, she accomplished a tremendous amount.

She started kindergartens before they were public kindergartens, she started the Book Buddies program, she taught in the Alternative Ed program, she was the first woman to be the president of the Chamber of Commerce,

But she also was one of those people that just touched a lot of lives and inspired the people around her to be better people.

She had a tremendous impact on who I am as a public servant.

She was just inspirational and she was also

Just wickedly funny and insightful.

I mean the two kind of go together.

And just as a little anecdote, if you'll indulge me, one time I was having a meeting at my house.

and so she called about half hour before the meeting and she said, David, I have a quick question.

I don't want to interrupt you while you're sweeping the kitchen floor and I literally had the broom in my hand.

So, you know, it was just, she was really funny.

She was a wonderful person and she'll be missed by a lot of people in this community and I appreciate the chance to say a few words.

We had quite a number of

Proclamations tonight, but we're going to start by honoring some members of our community for a very special program that they undertook this summer through First Baptist Church on West Main Street.

I don't know if Pastor Hamilton would like to come forward and introduce

Mayor Norris and to the council if all of those First Baptist members would just stand Just stand where you are

Amen.

This summer they fed 1,250 children our meals and so we give honor to God and we thank God for the opportunity to serve our community and to serve our children.

So we thank you.

We are excited to be part of this community for now 148 years I think.

Amen.

Great.

Thank you very much and thank you all who are part of the Summer Food Ministry.

Let's give them a big round of applause.

That really is a tremendous program this summer.

I'm quite grateful for your efforts.

I do have a few proclamations, and if you'll bear with me, there's more than normal tonight.

We're going to start with a proclamation regarding Family Day.

Whereas the use of illegal and prescription drugs and the abuse of alcohol and nicotine constitute the greatest threats to the well-being of America's children, and whereas 16 years of surveys conducted by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse have consistently found that the more often children and teenagers eat dinner with their families, the less likely they are to smoke, drink and use illegal drugs, and whereas frequent family dining is associated with lower rates of teen smoking, drinking, illegal drug use and prescription drug abuse,

and whereas the correlation between frequent family dinners and reduced risk for teen substance abuse is well documented,

Whereas family dinners have long constituted a substantial pillar of family life in America, and therefore I, Dave Norris, Mayor of Charlottesville, do hereby proclaim the fourth Monday of September as Family Day, a day to eat dinner with your children and urge all citizens to recognize and participate in its observance.

And here, I believe, is Bob Garrity here with us?

Yes, Bob Garrity with CASA, Piedmont CASA,

Sorry, I had it written down wrong.

Thank you, Mayor Norris.

Safe Schools Healthy Students Project, which is a city and county joint venture with the school systems, is supporting the idea of Family Day on September 26th.

It is a program of the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, and as you've indicated, has lots of research that indicates that family dinner

enhances children's decision making and reduces the risk of them getting into problems with substances, alcohol and smoking.

Safe Schools Healthy Students has been working with community partners including the city of Charlottesville to support the idea of Family Day.

We have grocers and pizza companies that are putting flyers similar to the one I have for you there.

Next we have a proclamation regarding International Day of Peace.

Whereas the International Day of Peace has been recognized and celebrated by millions of people worldwide since it was started by the United Nations Resolution almost 30 years ago, and whereas many civic organizations and religious congregations in our community have formed a coalition to both celebrate the International Day of Peace and to challenge our community to envision peace and nonviolence in our society,

Thank you, Mayor Norris, and thank you for the council.

I'm Robert McAdams, Bob McAdams, and I'm representing a broad coalition of civic groups and religious congregations who have joined together

to commemorate this day of the International Day of Peace on September the 21st.

We have two celebrations planned.

There will be one in the afternoon beginning at 1 o'clock at the Senior Center, and there will be a second one at the Burley Middle School on Rose Hill Drive beginning at 7 o'clock.

We hope that you all and everyone here and everyone in the community will join us for these celebrations.

There are many talented performers who are contributing and your mayor has also helped out with this in a great way.

In addition to the celebrations, we've been challenging the community to envision peace.

This process has revealed a deep, solid longing for peace, mutual respect, nonviolence, and compassion.

And it's been revealed in many ways, but particularly through peace vision cards that we've distributed.

and we feel that this proclamation that you are making, this formal statement, is helping us move the community conversation toward these benefits of peace and nonviolence and away from all the divisiveness and rancor and enmity that often occupy our conversation.

Thank you, Mr. Kapp.

When we talk... Sure, let's give him a round of applause.

When we talk about peace and nonviolence, we're not just talking about peace and nonviolence abroad.

We're also talking about creating a culture of peace here in our own community.

And to that effect, I'd like to also read a proclamation regarding Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

Whereas the problems of domestic violence are not confined to any group or groups of people but cross all economic, racial and societal barriers and are supported by societal indifference,

and whereas the crime of domestic violence violates an individual's privacy, dignity, security and humanity due to systematic use of physical, emotional, sexual, psychological and economic control and or abuse with the impact of this crime being wide ranging affecting individuals and society as a whole and whereas in our quest to impose sanctions on those who break the law by perpetrating violence we must also meet the needs of victims of domestic violence who often suffer grave physical, psychological and financial losses.

Whereas no one person, organization, agency, or community can eliminate domestic violence on their own, we must work together to educate our entire population about what can be done to prevent such violence, support victims and survivors and their families, and increase support for agencies providing services to those community members

and whereas for 32 years the shelter for help and emergency has led the way in the city of Charlottesville and five surrounding communities providing unparalleled services to women, children and men who have been victimized by domestic violence.

These services include 24 hour crisis hotline, safe shelter, case management and support services, legal advocacy, information referral and safety planning.

Whereas in 2011, in Charlottesville, the Shelter for Help and Emergency offered safe shelter to 115 women and 102 children for a total of 3,981 nights, over 4,000 hours of advocacy and counseling, including advocacy services to 134 women who do not stay in their residential facility, provided information and educational materials to over 10,000 members of the community,

with support from 7,500 volunteer hours.

Now, therefore, be it resolved in recognition of the important work being done by the Shelter for Health and Emergency, I, Dave Norris, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, do hereby proclaim the month of October 2011 as Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

and urge all citizens to actively participate in the scheduled activities and programs sponsored by the Shelter for Health and Emergency and to work towards the elimination of personal and institutional violence against women, children and men.

Thank you very much.

I would just like to say that we have several events that are open to the public beginning in October.

October 3rd is our Candlelight Vigil in Jackson Park that's at 7pm which none of you can come to because you'll be here.

But also every Wednesday at our outreach center from 12 to 1 we have brown bag lunches which are also open to the public and then we also have our 5k race on November 5th.

and if anyone ever needed to call the hotline for any reason with any questions or concerns, the number is 293-8509.

Thank you, Ms. Goldstein.

Next, we have a proclamation about an initiative that the city is very proud to support, the Better Business Challenge.

Whereas Charlottesville is recognized as an exceptionally beautiful and healthy community in which we live, work and play,

One that is rich in environmental resources, home to thriving businesses and educational institutions.

And Whereas Charlottesville supports broader community economic vitality, fostered by cost-efficient operations that are not negatively impacted by rising energy costs.

And Whereas Charlottesville is committed to sound, thoughtful environmental stewardship, understanding that in order to maintain the current quality of life, we must take measures to operate businesses in a responsible and forward-looking manner.

and whereas Charlottesville supports the goal of lifelong learning driving innovation and leadership in business and whereas Charlottesville now supports this community-wide collaboration between local governments, non-profit organizations including churches and schools and business organizations including the Chamber of Commerce called the Charlottesville Area Better Business Challenge

with the goal of keeping Charlottesville a vibrant and healthy community.

Now, therefore, I, Dave Norris, Mayor of Charlottesville, do hereby proclaim the city's support for the Better Business Challenge and call upon our business leaders to participate in the challenge by enrolling before October 1st, 2011.

Thank you very much Mayor Norris and all the members and everyone who's here.

We're excited that 81 businesses are already involved.

And this week, Thursday, September 22nd, we're having our lunch and learn on energy efficient lighting in commercial spaces at 11 at City Space.

So we're very excited to help businesses be better stewards of the environment in our city of Charlottesville and increase their efficiency and reduce their waste.

So it's not too late to join.

Thank you, Ms. Kim.

I have the Infant Mortality Awareness Month Proclamation.

Whereas good health for a baby starts long before the baby is born, and whereas the education and empowerment of women and expectant mothers to be fully involved in their care can improve the chance of a successful birth,

and whereas the same village that it takes to raise a child should be the village that supports and protects a child, a child's mother and whereas there are large disparities in infant mortality and low birth weight between African American and white infants in Charlottesville and Albemarle.

and whereas early and regular prenatal care is more likely when the mother-to-be has been properly educated on prenatal care, has a support system and a caring and understanding medical provider and whereas the Charlottesville Albemarle Improving Pregnancy Outcome, IPL work group is dedicated to reducing infant mortality in the region by engaging the community through its commitment to

work with Medicaid providers to improve access to quality health care for low-income pregnant women, raise community awareness about healthy pregnancy, newborn care, and the area resources that support pregnant women and their families, and increase awareness of Plan First, the state program that helps women and men prevent unintended pregnancy.

Now, therefore, the Charlottesville City Council recognizes September as Infant Mortality Awareness Month and hereby publicly states its support of the IPOs activities and other actions to reduce the infant mortality and low birth weight rates of children born to mothers in Charlottesville and Albemarle County, signed until this 19th day of September, 2011.

Thank you, Mayor Norris, for allowing me to read the proclamation.

This has been an issue that's been very important to me during my term on council.

Good evening.

And I think this proclamation said everything.

One thing we would like to do is thank City Council for your support in our efforts to address infant mortality and morbidity.

First of all, we have a health summit coming up.

One of the things the group does is try to raise community awareness of different health issues that can impact infant mortality.

And this year the topic chosen was obesity and pregnancy.

And we work with Ms. Edwards every year to look at statistics, look at what's happening in our community.

And so that is one of the big issues.

So on October the 18th, we will have a summit that day that will raise awareness to communities as well as providers.

And second of all, we have a safe sleep program in Charlottesville and we are able to distribute portable cribs to families who wouldn't have the means to provide a safe sleep for their infants.

So it's with the support of city council that we were able to initiate this program.

Thank you very much.

We have some other announcements to share.

The first is, I'm not sure, did Rick Berwick have to go home or is he here?

He is our director of communications.

He's not here to receive it, but I'm still going to talk about it because we're happy to brag about this one.

At their annual national conference, the National City County Communications and Marketing Association recognized Charlottesville's Department of Communications

for their efforts in 2010.

And they got two awards at this.

One was the Award of Excellence, the best overall website in the country out of 45 entries.

And they specifically noted the fact that our website was done with staff,

creation rather than hiring some firm to do it.

And so it was also done very efficiently and inexpensively, and they just were really impressed.

So that's one.

And the other is for best public service announcement for the Love Somebody campaign.

I don't know if you saw it with Sissy Spacek, to adopt animals from the SPCA out of 35 entries nationally.

So they also got this.

So thank you to everyone in the, I think we have some people in the back room here behind this door from the Department of Communications, but they did a great job.

And my next announcement is yet another in our series of Our Town Charlottesville meetings where we bring the city council show on the road and we bring all of the councilors and the department heads out to a different neighborhood for each time and meet with folks in the neighborhood or anyone who wants to come, but generally about neighborhood issues, about things that people in that neighborhood are thinking about and need to tell us.

It's free dinner, usually a very good caterer.

often from the neighborhood itself.

We have child care also for no charge with kids activities during the meeting.

And then the whole meeting is public comment.

So if you have something to say to us, this is the place to do it.

Thursday, September 22nd at Burley School.

And the neighborhood that we're looking at specifically is Rose Hill and Kellytown neighborhoods.

Thank you, Ms. Szakos.

Mr. Mayor, I have two announcements.

First time I had last council meeting also is announcement of community job fair on Thursday, September 29th at John Paul Jones Arena.

From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., there are a lot of job opportunities there.

If you're looking for a job, it's a great place to go.

Let me remind again, Thursday, September 29th, 10 to 3.

Second is a brief report from Celebrate 250 Charlottesville.

As you may or may not know, in the next year, 2012, we'll be 250 years old.

We don't look that old, but we're getting there.

Maybe some of you guys look that old.

I want to just bring you up to date what has been planned.

The reason why we are trying to inform you today is because, first of all, this Friday, September, Friday the 30th, September at noon, in downtown, in front of City Hub, Plaza will be changed, we have no name, called Celebrate 250 Plaza.

So, kick off meeting for celebration.

We've got a big party for the whole year.

So, let's get started.

It's so fun.

Second, the Coe Barefoot, who is very knowledgeable about the history of Charlottesville, will be talking right here in the city council chambers.

At 1 p.m., talking about the history of American schools in Charlottesville, plastic resistance, vinegar hill, and all different discussions.

So if you're interested in your history, it would be a great place to be.

Third, we are inviting all the residents of the community to come and bring their family pictures to City Space, which is right near the garage.

So they can scan your pictures and become part of the history of Charlottesville.

So if you have pictures you'd like to share, please come to City Space at 1 p.m.

First, we are also doing this celebration with many partners.

Some of them are First Night Virginia, Dialogue and Race, Festival Book, Festival of Photography, so they'll be incorporating our birthday celebration at the same time.

There will be three signature events in the year.

In May, there will be a history festival next May.

Then in the summer, there will be a fantastic music festival.

There's a great surprise going to be there, so watch out for what that might be.

I'm not going to tell you, obviously, today.

There will be also a gala on the founding day of November 12th.

So that's important if you want to join the gala.

This requires everybody joining in, including citizens, businesses.

So we need partners, we need businesses who will be happy to sponsor the celebration.

If you have any questions, please call Rick at 970-3129.

So again, let me remind you, 250th celebration party.

Thank you, Mr. Huja.

As a reminder, Government Services Day is Friday, September 30th from 10 to 2 p.m., 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. downtown.

Great way to learn about all the services that the city provides to the community.

Also, we have a very important series of meetings coming up this fall regarding the future of the east side of McIntire Park.

This is the portion of the park that currently features the golf course.

and the Dogwood Memorial and the small wading pool and other amenities.

On September 26th at 6.30pm at the Martin Luther King Jr.

Performing Arts Center, we're going to kick off a series of community meetings to

plan, master plan, the future of the east side of McIntire Park.

So if you have any interest in what's going to happen in McIntire Park on the east side of the park in the future, September 26th from 6.30 to 8 o'clock p.m. at Martin Luther King Jr.

Performing Arts Center.

The second meeting will be October 24th.

Same time, same place, 6.30 at the Performing Arts Center and then December 12th is the third meeting and we'll be making sure to remind you of those.

Any other announcements or items for other business?

I wanted to bring up something under other business.

and any other announcements.

I also had an item for other business regarding a request we received from Equality Virginia to get city support for an effort to prohibit discrimination against public employees based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Okay, let's see.

We are now going to open our meeting 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.

Hello, my name is Cherie Seis.

I'm a resident of the city of Charlottesville at 210 Sunset Avenue.

I'm here today on behalf of Virginia Organizing, a statewide grassroots organization that's based here in Charlottesville.

Virginia Organizing has been doing anti-racism work in the city of Charlottesville for the last 13 years.

And we recently held a dismantling racism workshop in which the participants, myself included, discussed ways that we could continue to do anti-racism work in our communities.

And I want to recognize that there's many organizations in Charlottesville that are doing great anti-racism work.

Our comments tonight come from that particular workshop that we had.

An issue of great concern to us at Virginia Organizing is the fact that among Charlottesville City employees there's a great disparity.

People of color are significantly underrepresented at the supervisory and managerial positions.

We at Virginia Organizing urge City Council to set as a high priority the development and implementation of a strategy for moving more people of color into supervisory and managerial positions.

Virginia Organizing believes that there are many methods that can be used to accomplish this.

You will hear some more details about this issue from the other Virginia Organizing members that come up to speak.

Thank you very much.

Good evening, Mayor Norris and City Council.

My name is Janice Lewis and I live at 832 A. Hardy Drive here in Charlottesville.

I also wish to address the severe under

representation of people of color in supervisory positions among Charlottesville city employees.

For example, of 291 public works employees, 102 are African American.

However, of 49 supervisors in this same department, only eight African American city camps, excuse me,

Only eight are African American.

City Council must develop and implement a strategy that combats the systematic racism inherent in the city's hiring practices.

We ask the City Council, number one, prepare for development of this strategy by charging the City's Human Resource Office to conduct an anonymous survey of City employees in order to identify what barriers impede workers

movement into supervisory and managerial positions.

Two, assemble a work session to objectively review hiring practices and the results of the survey in order to determine appropriate strategies for addressing the imbalanced numbers of people of color in supervisory positions.

Virginia Organizing is asking City Council to help solve this problem.

Thank you very much, Ms. Gates.

Hello.

My name is Jonah Noelle Bailey.

I live in Charlottesville at 130 Apple Tree Road.

I would also like to bring attention to and follow up on the comments of my fellow Virginia organizing members regarding city employees.

Other recent statistics indicate that African Americans make up to 25% of all city employees.

However, only 13% of supervisors and managers in city departments are African American.

The city's current hiring practices are contributing to another major problem in Charlottesville.

Minority groups are being forced to move or commute to other counties or cities because they have no adequate jobs here for them.

For example, Virginia Organizing Headquarters is historically located in a predominantly African-American neighborhood made up of homeowners and professionals.

However, on weekends you can see lines and lines of cars filling the streets with license plates from DC and Maryland.

It is most alarming that we are losing qualified and talented youth to other locations because of the inequity in the city's hiring practices.

And those who do stay in Charlottesville are forced to work in jobs that do not support their highest potential.

Good evening.

My name is Thomasine Wilson.

I live in Charlottesville at 4080 Cypress Point Drive.

And I would like to reiterate the comments of my Virginia organizing members in urging city council number one to make this issue a high priority.

And number two, to conduct an anonymous survey of city employees to identify why the people of color do not hold managerial and supervisor positions.

And number three, to organize a work session with the objective of reviewing city hiring practices for promotions and addressing the issue of under representation of minority groups in higher level positions.

And number four,

to hold city departments accountable for advancing racial equity in managerial positions.

And number five, to establish the guidelines for measuring progress in these areas and by achieving more fairness in the representation of people of color among the supervisors and managers of city departments.

The City of Charlottesville stands to make considerable progress toward one of the most essential goals highlighted in your City Council vision statement and to be leaders in social and economic justice.

We at Virginia Organizing are committed to working cooperatively with you

and staff to make progress on this important public issue.

And everyone that's in agreement with this would like for you all to stand.

Thank you very much, Council, for your time.

Thank you, Ms. Wilson.

Good evening, Brandon Collins, 536 Meade Avenue.

I've lived in Charlottesville all my life.

I have a daughter who's also lived here her entire life.

I want to add to the call for you all to particularly have an anonymous survey about these issues that were just brought up and to have a work session.

And I hope also that you will include organizers and participants with Virginia organizing in that process.

I think that would be extremely helpful.

As so often I've got a laundry list of things and maybe three minutes isn't enough to get to all of it.

But first I wanted to say thanks for the Peace Day Proclamation.

I think that says a lot.

And I particularly wanted to thank Mayor Norris and Ms. Szakos for showing up this weekend for some of the conference on the military industrial complex.

Peace is a local issue.

It affects our funding of many, many social programs and we need to

constantly raise that issue.

It's not just something that the national government has a responsibility to deal with, but on a local level as well as it affects many of our social programs and the funding for many programs.

Another thing about funding, I know on your consent agenda there's a letter going to the state about restoring funding from the state and I hope maybe there's so many people here today that it would be really good for those folks to hear what that letter's about and sort of understand that the state

really needs to start kicking us down some more money and you know one of those ways that they like to ignore it is that they won't raise the corporate income tax but if they were to do that we would be in a much better place.

I'm very excited to see tonight the report on the CAT.

I hope as you get that report maybe you can get some more information about the cost, what the cost would be like for full service on Sundays.

I very much like this idea of having service on some of our holidays and I hope you will consider you know making that something that could happen this year it didn't seem like a ton of money but there are various things for expansion of the bus service particularly for Sundays and holidays that getting some accurate numbers on that would be really cool.

I want to go back to hiring again and

Y'all definitely need to address this issue of disparity when it comes to supervisors in this city.

There was something I brought up two weeks ago as well about hiring and that is when the position for the coordinator for Section 3

Enforcement.

That position has been filled and there was no inclusion of the Public Housing Association of Residents in that process for the hiring of that coordinator and I never actually heard back from you all why that was and maybe some thoughts on what you can do to sort of remedy that and make sure that FAR is directly included in the creation of this new position and

and you know they're directly served by this.

Mayor Norris, Councillors, I'd like to applaud the efforts of Virginia organizing for highlighting the very important issue of balanced representation and equal opportunity here in Charlottesville.

While public housing is good, if people are able to train themselves and if people are able to get good jobs or create jobs when jobs don't exist, people can buy their own homes and stop renting and then contribute to society.

So I definitely applaud the efforts of Virginia of organizing.

I'm here tonight.

I moved to the Belmont area.

I live at 501 Reeve Street.

And I was at a meeting last week regarding the Belmont Bridge.

And the biggest concern was that it wasn't a million dollars worth of design.

What we should do and what I would encourage you all to do on behalf of not only Belmont but Charlottesville in general is to continue to exercise good judgment as it relates to appropriation and holding the people, holding contractors accountable, holding non-profit organizations accountable

accountable because they should be able to support their argument and support the idea for more funding if they have the results to show it.

And in this tough economic time, it's very important for Charlottesville and our surrounding areas to join together and try to figure out some good joint initiatives that can support our residents and our people and help our communities.

In the future, in talking about the pedestrian bridge inside Charlottesville's McIntire Park, I applaud all your efforts as well.

I know it was tough and a lot of people would come up presenting their arguments.

But please don't forget about the aesthetics.

As Charlottesville is the mosaic, a very important piece in the mosaic in our region, we need to also

Pay attention to the degree of artistic expression.

When people think of Charlottesville locally or regionally, or as far as the state is concerned, they think of art.

They think of Charlottesville as standing out good.

Thank you, Ms. Burns.

Walt Heineke, 1521 Amherst Street, Charlottesville, 22903.

First I wanted to applaud the City Council for

taking the time and the effort and the concern to change the strategic plan and the vision statement to include issues of making Charlottesville one of the best cities to live in in terms of race relations and racial equity.

So I think that's a fundamental step in moving the race dialogue forward and

and making Charlottesville the best place to live in the country.

That being said, I think the issues that were brought up by the Virginia Organizing Project today are significant issues and they need some attention in terms of being indicators, significant indicators of the progress of the race dialogue.

Those statistics that they're talking about are clear indicators that we still have a problem.

And I know your hearts are all in the right place, I can tell from

and what you've done in the past.

It's a matter of moving forward on the nuts and bolts and the mechanics of making that change.

What I want to share with you tonight is just a story, actually.

I was out and about in Charlottesville the other day and ran into a city employee who was African American and had been with the city for over 15 years, had come to the city with a bachelor's degree.

and significant experience prior to working for the city.

This person is about to retire and is still working in a line position and will retire in a line position and not in a supervisory position even though it was really apparent to me that this person was very qualified to be a supervisor in his department.

and I asked him specifically because I'm always doing the data collection thing, it never stops.

I asked him specifically because of some of the things I had heard about the problem, have you been sort of restricted from moving up the chain because the nature of the job requirements, because it requires overtime, the structure of the job is unattractive or unappealing.

And he flatly told me that was not the problem, that's not the issue.

The issue is not that the job isn't attractive enough to apply for.

He intimated and told me specifically that it's more of what's going on in the bureaucracy and the institution and the culture and climate.

of the city structure.

So I think we have some work to do.

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

Regarding the regional water supply plan and the debate about the period to submit public comments, I remind you that at the November 6 council meeting, the fact that there would be a public hearing wasn't even mentioned.

And not once in any of Rivanna's public notice, web page, or press release was it mentioned that written comments and responses must be included in the plan.

While the state regulations don't identify a specific comment period,

The fact that they address written comments at all is sufficient to interpret that the public should have been notified that comments could be submitted.

Only an organization that does not want comment would take it any other way.

Council has to adopt the regional water supply plan.

Have you ever adopted a plan so chock full of technical information

for which you do not have a written staff report.

You should not adopt this plan blindly.

You need a critical staff report before you take action.

Just a few of the key things you need to be clear on.

NDS memo on population didn't explain how the trend was estimated but referred to growth over the past 13 years.

If that trend was based on permits issued for dwelling units, well, we know that some of those permits were for new dwelling units specifically intended for private UVA

Student Housing.

In that case, the growth rate, that means AECOM analysis double counts at least some students.

NDS should ask UVA to determine how much of the student population increased over that same 13 year period and then back out that number from the growth rate used to project city resident population.

The demand analysis does not clearly account for the fact that every new housing unit and every new commercial building

will meet low flow code requirements.

This should be reflected by reduction in the gallons per capita per day figures over the planning period.

We've replicated AECOM's chart for the city to show the effect of reducing employment demand just once to mimic the reduction in residential demand.

That alone reduces the city's 2055 demand by 0.5%.

4 or 5 million gallons and other adjustments we think are appropriate would further lower the estimate.

On safe yield, how can you accept Rivanna's black box results without question?

We need a long work session with hydrologics at which you and the public can ask questions.

Rivanna has a strong hold over the input to the model and it's increasingly clear that there's some manipulation going on.

Does it account for a number of things in writing?

I'm running out of time so I'll skip to the bottom.

Regarding the community water plan, I think it borders on unconscionable that the council lets Rivanna get away without providing any sort of estimate.

of the total cost plus interest that the entire dam and pipeline scheme will have on rates.

How does this serve your constituents?

At Rivanna's last board meeting, Supervisor Boyd, speaking about the pump station, worried only about $10 million, insisted that it was important to know the impact of the higher cost alternative on rates.

If Rivanna can estimate that, then the only conclusion I draw is that Rivanna simply refuses to do the same thing for the water plan.

I didn't start out a suspicious person.

I'm a UVA grad.

I grew up in Charlottesville.

I grew up with the honor code.

Good evening, I'm Stratton Salias, 704 Grave Street, and I come to you before you today

to discuss the potential big money takeover of Charlottesville's water supply and the role of some of you in it.

Mayor Norris and Ms. Edwards, I thank you very much for your efforts to protect our Charlottesville's water supply.

And the rest of you, I hope that you will address some of these concerns that I have.

First of all, I think a lot of people out here in the community don't know that the origin of this water supply plan is a million dollar grant from Nestle Corporation.

Nestle is the biggest bottled water company in the world.

Nestle gave a million dollar grant to the Nature Conservancy for two different projects, one here, one somewhere else, I can't remember where it was, but these were to be pilot projects to help municipalities store water.

and what Nestle does and you can look at this in movies like Tapped and Blue Water and other things is they go to various places all around the globe and they help localities plan their water supply and get them into debt more than they can handle and then those localities are more likely to make a deal with Nestle either to allow them to buy some of the water or just buy the system outright.

and then once they have, if they do buy the system outright, a lot of times they'll just let the infrastructure of that community go to waste and then people, instead of getting water delivered to their houses, can buy it in bottles from Nestle.

So that's where this plan comes from and that started in, that was a grant given in 2005.

and in case anybody thinks that the Nature Conservancy is a particularly great organization, I hope that they'll read the Hook article.

You can just Google Hook and flaws and they will learn that it's gradually been co-opted and recently now most of the board is made up of ex-Goldman Sachs bankers who are capitalizing on the good name that it had made and feel free to Google Nature Conservancy and scandal

and I also hope people will Google Nestle and Babies if they think that Nestle is a well-intentioned company.

And also I hope people will look at this flyer that our very own Sproul Growth Lobby put out in support of Mr. Huja and Ms. Galvin and Mr. Byer.

and note that they say that the community water supply plan cost $25 million.

Well, actually the community water supply plan would cost about 142 million and as noted more like 200 million when you include interests.

So please don't make our general population pay for something we don't need and that would destroy one of our best natural areas.

Thank you.

My name is Kate White and I'm here in honor of the Infant Mortality Awareness Month.

I'm also here to thank the City Council for supporting the Healthy Birth, Healthy Baby Health Fair that we had in May.

I live at 658 Tyree Lane in Charlottesville, Virginia 22901.

I have written a report about this health fair that was supported.

Should I submit it to you?

This health fair happened actually in March here in the Key Center and it was the city council that supported it through the donation of that space.

It was a beautiful health fair.

I was the coordinator for a perinatal collaboration.

It's a group of professionals that wanted to come together and help support perinatal outcomes here in Charlottesville.

This health fair brought together businesses and practitioners

and government agencies with us hoping to support local families and increase perinatal outcomes here in Charlottesville.

We had raised over $4,000 in cash and we also raised over $4,000 in in-kind donations.

And there are some very supportive businesses that gave over 378 prizes, door prizes.

We had over 500 people come and tour the hall.

They were able to receive free door prizes if they went around and got evidence that they had talked with people in the hall.

We had over 400, excuse me, over 40 exhibits.

I wanted to read to you just a couple of the responses from the businesses that attended that were part of this health fair.

The Healthy Birth Healthy Baby Health Fair gave me exposure to a large number of women looking to take care of themselves and their babies.

The result was new clients for myself, but even more than that, I met other amazing practitioners who were all working toward the same goal.

I now feel connected and have a network of referral practitioners.

That was from a massage therapist here in Charlottesville.

Then the Jefferson area CHIP was there and they said the time around childbirth is a unique opportunity to positively be involved in the life of a young family.

While I was manning our display, I watched the fair give many families a place to ask questions and consider new ways to be healthy and well.

That was by Carrie Bailey from the Jefferson Area CHIP.

We had a new business open that supported this effort.

There was a birth center here in Charlottesville.

She wrote

Thank you so much for all the hard work you have done in putting together a health fair.

Nearly 100% of my clients for the first six months after the fair found me there.

So the businesses were very happy.

And overall, when I was supporting this effort, going around and asking for donations, I found that Charlottesville businesses really did care very much about healthy babies in Charlottesville.

So I am asking you to consider to please to support this effort again coming up next year in March.

Thank you, Ms. White.

All right, that's the last person to sign up to speak.

I just wanted to ask the last speaker what kind of support, monetary support you're looking for, for the fair?

Well I would definitely like the Peace Center again for the health fair, just the donation of that space for that one day in March.

I'd like to thank everybody who spoke.

I'll start at the beginning.

I think that the things that the Virginia organizing speakers were talking about were really specific things that I think I would actually like to, I don't know if we can discuss it now, but maybe it's something to put at the end in our new business.

A discussion on an anonymous survey of employees to find out what the barriers are.

And also just, I would be interested in finding out kind of what the attitudes are toward, you know, how it feels to be working for the city of Charlottesville in this context.

A work session.

And I don't know if we have the October work session free.

I know that we have the November one has been scheduled.

But I think that the October one, which is October 9th, maybe?

Is it a town hall meeting?

Okay.

possible time I would like to talk about having a work session to discuss that and to invite not only department heads but also members of Virginia organizing and perhaps our attorney because I know that on some of these issues we skate somewhat near to legal things about what we're allowed to do as far as setting quotas and things like that but I want to not back away further than we have to and make sure that we get what we need out of that work session.

and to come out of that work session with a real plan for how we plan to have a different outcome because I think as one of the speakers mentioned we all have our hearts in the right places but I think by their fruits you shall know them and I think that not only do we have a rather poor

percentage of African Americans, particularly in supervisory positions.

But although we haven't lost any people, we've lost a little ground in percentages over the past five years.

So I think we need to really be very proactive in making sure that we do that.

Let me see if there were some other things.

The Belmont Bridge design, we've gotten quite a few questions about that from various people.

I think I was not at the meeting discussing the bridge design, but I think that this is a chance to really be

kind of again proactive and innovative about the way we look at it and I think that that's something we probably need to be looking at.

I don't want it to stretch on infinitely because I know we need a design before we can get the bridge built and we need the bridge built but we shouldn't rush just to get it done too fast.

And I really like Mr. Williams' statements about aesthetics on all of these projects.

I think that's important.

And Mr. Collins, I was happy to go to the conference.

I think that you're right, that peace as the thing that we did today, but also the absence of war is a local issue, even though it's an international issue.

It affects the money that's available for programs in our localities, not to mention just kind of our moral position as a nation.

Let's see.

I had never heard about the Nestle grant, so that was interesting.

Just one more comment.

I was really pleased that Council was able to adopt the Peace Resolution.

And as somebody mentioned, peace is not just national and international, but also local.

Dr. Brown?

Well, I agree with Ms. Szakos.

I think the compelling things we heard tonight really came from FAR and VOP and calling to our attention the importance of addressing this issue.

But I think there are a couple reasons that weren't brought up that I think are a couple aspects of this.

You know, what the city can do ourselves is small compared to the bigger community we're part of.

And I think that for us to take public actions in trying to provide more opportunities for people of color within the city obviously has an effect of hopefully having everyone kind of look at themselves and look at their hiring practices.

And the second thing is that I think it's a big problem that we lose a lot of

talented African Americans and you know to other communities and I think that's partly a reflection of opportunity but I think it's just as much a reflection of the type of city that Charlottesville is and the lack of sort of a social environment that young professionals are looking for and young professional African Americans are looking for and I think that

I see that our

Director of Human Resources is here.

Is this the time to allow him an opportunity to comment?

Because my comments will include the fact that it is not easy to come before counsel.

So I commend all of you who chose to spoke, chose to spoke.

Shelby, you did not hear that.

It's not always easy to speak up here either.

I commend all of you who chose to speak this evening because not only are you bringing awareness to an issue that we know we have a lot of work to do.

We know that we've accomplished a lot of things, but there's still so much more to be done.

And to keep in mind, our city manager has only been in his new job a few months.

It's going to take time.

But I just want you all to know, I'm just really pleased at how well you were able to execute that, obviously better than I could at that moment.

But to show you that, it takes time and it takes practice, so I have a high expectation of seeing you all in the future.

And also, Mr. Collins, I will follow up with your concern about Section 3 coordinator and FAR.

I'll talk to the FAR chair to see if there's any concern.

I hadn't listened to what everyone has said.

I know some of you are healthy about this.

I'm on the dialogue committee that's looked at government employment.

Dr. Heineck is on that committee.

So the concerns that are being raised aren't new.

And in fact, they go back quite a while.

Mr. Huja was, in fact, involved with the longstanding commitment that the city has to having a diverse workforce.

All of the things I think have legitimacy and certainly I think out of talking to you about what can be done, the one thing that I heard that I think we can work on is that we all have the same interest in terms of working collaboratively together to do that.

There were some specific things that were raised for example and you mentioned in terms of the survey.

We do ask employees what needs to be done in terms of personal development.

There are a variety of things that may be impediments.

The one thing that I would disagree with is that the city has an inherently racist hiring practice.

I mean, I couldn't stand here and not say that.

And I know we may disagree about that.

There are a number of people who certainly would like and do want to work for the city.

There are some things that we can certainly do more of.

Marketing.

I think someone mentioned that in terms of just communicating what the city is about and the opportunities that are out there.

we talked about the possibility of working together in terms of doing outreach to different communities building relationships with historically black colleges and so forth more internships where we get people into the city to work and then build an opportunity for them if you look at in terms of where we've had some successes like at NDS in terms of using interns and getting them in recruiting engineers who are African-American and female I think we have done some things since I would just share that and this is not enough

Hopefully not in a defensive way, just simply saying, yeah, we agree that there's work to be done.

We've talked about, and the council's commitment to hiring ex-offenders, and so there's a whole variety of things that we're looking at and that we can do, and there's certainly more that needs to be done with that.

Rather than a survey, I guess one way that I would suggest, perhaps a better way or in addition to the survey, is a personal development plan where supervisors will work with employees to ask them where they want to be, look at where they are, look at the resources that are needed to provide that development.

And the city does provide quite a bit in terms of tuition assistance, educational opportunities, if you look at the opportunities or

places where there have been success.

If you look at police, I mean, we have three African American supervisors who are sergeants now who weren't there when I came to work for the city.

There may have been one, but we've had some additional ones.

If you look at Fymer, same thing.

If you look at NDS, there are places where there are successes.

When you look at public works, the numbers speak for themselves.

I'm not going to stand here and tell you that they're different.

And why they're different, I can't speak to that either.

So I guess in terms of some trying to respond, simply there is work to be done.

We certainly would welcome a partnership with anyone who

would help us in terms of achieving those goals.

We're clearly aware of the council's commitment to having a diverse workforce in its entirety.

I think one of the things that was mentioned in the press release was about Hispanics and the lack of Hispanic representation.

We don't get a whole lot of, frankly, we don't get a lot of applicants for, a whole lot of Hispanic applicants for the position.

I think Dr. Brown's comments about attracting

Young professionals, period, to come to work here and stay here is something that's a challenge.

So I'm not sure if that responds to your questions or if you'd like more information now.

But in terms of the survey, that would be my suggestion is to look at, in addition to the survey or perhaps instead of do something more direct,

The survey, probably what we've done is we did an employee survey and there's some concern on the part of employees about how that information is going to be shared even when you're sure of them that it's going to be anonymous.

So asking them directly, having the supervisor work with them, having them identify where they want to go and what they want to be would be my suggestion about how we go forward.

But building the partnerships, we're going to be at the career fair that was mentioned.

The university has a diversity career fair that's on November 2nd.

We're going to be a part of that.

We've added some additional staff to help in terms of doing additional outreach with colleges and building those relationships and getting the pipeline going where we have interns that are coming in and being in the organization.

and also balancing against the external and the internal because we also are criticized sometimes for why do we always hire from the outside as opposed to developing from within.

Ms. Edwards, did you have other comments?

Okay.

I had a few.

I wanted to make, let's see.

Well, let me just start by thanking Mr. Beck for your comments just now.

And I also know that I want to commend you personally for not only working, you know, internal to City Hall to push this issue, but also you personally have gone out and spoken to ex-offenders and people who, well,

Formerly homeless and others about applying for city jobs and helping them navigate through that process so you've made it a personal mission as well to get people into the workforce and I appreciate that.

It is an important issue.

It goes, as Dr. Brown said, it goes well beyond that.

Representation is very important in management and supervisory positions in City Hall.

And as Dr. Brown said, it's an important issue across the board in our community.

And it's a community challenge on how to make Charlottesville a true community of choice for professionals of color.

Representation is important in our elected bodies.

Representation is important in our appointed bodies.

As of January, it's very likely that of the four most powerful public bodies in the city and the county between the City Council and the County Board of Supervisors and the City Planning Commission and the County Planning Commission, there will not be a single African American represented on any of those bodies.

And I think it's an indication of one more gap that we need to work to fill.

Brandon Collins,

Thank you as always.

It's really because of your urging and others, but you've really taken the lead on pushing us to consider expansions of our transit service, particularly to meet the needs of workers who don't always get holidays off.

And so it's prompted us to take that up for discussion today and hopefully we'll make a decision to move in that direction.

I did want to note you also raised the point about FAR.

FAR was essential in getting that Section 3 coordinator position filled in addition to our vice mayor and others.

And I had to double check with Mr. Tolbert.

FAR will have a position on the steering committee for the Section 3 initiative.

Is that right, Mr. Tolbert?

That's what I was saying, she's only been on the job about a week and a half and taking a trip working on CRHA and visiting other Section 3 coordinators to get some information this week but there is a steering committee and Farr has a prominent role in that and will be involved and she will be contacting

Next week the representatives from far and other organizations to

And I just want to quickly also thank Ms. Quinn for your comments.

And I totally agree.

I've never quite understood why it is that Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority either couldn't or wouldn't give an accurate – at least an estimate about what's going to happen to our water rates if different variations of the

Water supply plan are implemented.

You know, they're able to give short-term estimates, but I think what people want to know is what's going to happen after the next 5 years, 10 years out to our water rates.

Okay.

Well, thank you again to everybody who came and spoke.

Did I get that right, Ms. Edwards, came and spoke?

We are now going to move on to the rest of our agenda.

Dr. Brown, you have some appointments to our nominations for boards and commissions.

I'd like to make the following, to move the following people to serve on our boards and commissions.

To the Board of Architectural Review, Melanie Miller.

To the Charlottesville Sister Cities Commissions, Greer Johnson, Kara Nelson and Yates Noble.

To the Dialogue on Race, Roscoe Roxley.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

Hearing none, please indicate your vote.

And the motion carries unanimously.

Thank you, Dr. Brown, and thank you to everybody who applied.

On our consent agenda tonight, we have item A, the minutes of September 6th, item B in appropriation, Virginia Juvenile Community Crime Control Act Grant,

$452,704, second of two readings.

Item C in appropriation, fiscal year 2012, friendship court, sponsorship agreement for enhanced police coverage, first quarter, $22,130.50, second of two readings.

Item D in appropriation, McIntire Park,

Bike, Pedestrian, Bridge, Transportation Enhancement Funding Grant, Phase 1 and 2, $517,500, first of two readings.

Item E, an appropriation, donation for Riverview Park improvement, $2,000, first of two readings.

Item F, an appropriation, recycled railroad steel income, $1,870, first of two readings.

Item G in appropriation in 2012, Department of Motor Vehicles, Virginia Highway Safety Grant, $30,386, first of two readings.

Item G in appropriation in 2011, Edward Bryan Memorial Justice Assistance Grant, $37,336, first of two readings.

Item I, Resolution, Honorary Street Name Designations, first of one reading.

Item J, Resolution, Support of Restoration of State Funding for Aid to Localities, first of one reading.

Item K, Resolution, Paving of School Bus Parking Lot, Transfer of Funds to Facilities Repair Fund, $85,122.99, first to one reading.

Item L, Resolution, Buford Cooling Tower Replacement, Transfer of $40,165, first to one reading.

Item M, an Ordinance, Spot Blight Abatement, 704 Montrose, second of two readings.

Item N, an Ordinance, Infrastructure Maintenance Bonds, second of two readings.

Item O, an Ordinance,

IPP, Individual Protected Property for 104 Stadium Road, second in two readings.

And item P, resolution.

Contribution to the Piedmont Council for the Arts for support of City Space exhibits, $3,000, first of one reading.

I would only add, in making the motion that we approve this, that that particular grant is for exhibits of art by kids in the community and is a way to really help to expose children to the arts who might not otherwise get those chances.

I'll take that as a motion.

Is there a second to that motion?

It's been moved and seconded.

Any further discussion?

Please indicate your vote.

Thank you very much.

It passes unanimously.

We did want to acknowledge we have some special guests.

Dr. George Beller is chair of the Piedmont Council of the Arts Board.

Maggie Guggenheimer is their executive director, so thank you for all that you do.

Okay, next item on our agenda is a public hearing and resolution subleased to Martha Jefferson Hospital at Jefferson School.

Good evening Mr. Mayor and members of City Council.

The item before you this evening is approval of a resolution authorizing the sublease of space to Martha Jefferson Hospital at the Jefferson School City Center and the Carver Recreation Center portion of the building.

The city and Martha Jefferson Hospital proposed to sublease approximately 1,800 square feet of the second floor of the center.

The city is leasing from the Jefferson School Partnership for the Carver Recreation Center.

Effectively two classrooms, existing classrooms, comprise the space being proposed for sublease by Martha Jefferson which will be housing their women's health initiative and a clinic in those spaces.

The upfit of these spaces will be included in the city's portion of the renovation project and the cost for the upfit specific to Martha Jefferson will be borne by Martha Jefferson Hospital.

The terms of the sublease have been negotiated between the city and Martha Jefferson and are acceptable to both parties.

Council action this evening will authorize the city manager to execute the sublease agreement in the form approved by the city attorney.

Any questions for Mr. Daly before we open the public hearing?

Thank you, Mr. Daly.

We'll now open the public hearing.

There's nobody to sign up to speak.

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

Seeing none, we will close the public hearing.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

Hearing none, please indicate your vote.

And it carries unanimously.

Thank you, Mr. Daly.

Next item on our agenda is a report from Neighborhood Development Services.

And I failed to acknowledge at the beginning of this meeting that Maryse Jones is not with us tonight.

You hadn't noticed yet.

I want to thank Jim Tolbert as director of Neighborhood Development Services for filling in as acting city manager this week.

Maryse is attending a city international city management conference.

and thank you Mr. Tolbert for filling in.

Mr. Tolbert.

Do you have a PowerPoint?

And while you're moving, I noticed that Mr. Barak is here now.

and I have a couple of things for you.

I think everybody's seated.

Go ahead and start.

This is just another continuation of the reports that we've been trying to do over the last couple of months about different things that different departments are doing and ours has got two pieces of it.

One is

are the CIP projects that have been going on and the other are developments that are going on in the community recently completed and planned and in progress that are helping to pay for some of those CIP projects.

So wanted to go through and just show you some of those.

We've been doing an awful lot of sidewalk construction lately thanks to the funding that council has given us.

This is the largest stretch of sidewalk I think that we've ever undertaken.

On Brandywine it was completed probably eight months ago.

Locust Avenue ramp, this is a small little piece but there are quite a few school kids that are living down below Locust and couldn't get up to Locust Avenue.

It was a couple hundred feet but with the shrubbery overhanging and the traffic very dangerous and the neighborhood wanted this and this is one that was done for that reason.

The Meadowbrook Heights road sidewalk,

which will connect all the way from King Mountain down Meadowbrook Heights in this phase to tie into the trail that will then go all the way into McIntire Park and across with the new bridge that Parks and Rec is getting built.

Mobile Lane in the Fry's Spring neighborhood.

We've been doing a lot of ADA ramps.

Everywhere we get a chance trying to put in ADA improvements and just a lot of places

Americans with disabilities for the disabled.

The yellow with the truncated domes to let people particularly that are blind know that they are coming up on an intersection is a great safety improvement and then putting the ramp in for wheelchairs.

We've continued the LED crosswalks.

The most recent installations are at the university and on Avon Street.

That was the university ones were joint 50-50 funding with University of Virginia.

We've also been trying to mark bike lanes wherever possible and as council knows the bike lanes were put in on West Main Street to give a more continuous set of bike lanes there.

Mr. Jefferson didn't design our roads wide enough in a lot of places to put bike lanes but where we can go in and put them without removing parking at this point where it's the only parking available we're doing that but we're trying to cram them in everywhere we can.

Again, these West Main bike lanes.

We just completed the street lighting, pedestrian lighting along West Main Street.

And we are about to get underway, we hope, with two safe routes to school projects, St. Clair Avenue, Burnley School, and

One near Buford, we're waiting on VDOT to approve the plans and hopefully that's happening any day.

Old Lynchburg Road, we're in right-of-way acquisition, the plans are 99% complete for that and we're getting people to donate the right-of-way and we've got one or two pieces that may be a little problematic but everybody else is enthusiastic and we hope to bid that in the next 60 days.

We're doing a lot of neighborhood drainage work, and neighborhood drainage is our 75-25 cost sharing, 75%, 25% cost sharing that we do with the community.

If you have a drainage problem from street drainage, we will pay 75% of the cost if you pick up 25%, and generally it results in curve and gutter.

Sometimes we throw sidewalk in if it connects something, and we can finance it if you meet, or we can finance it period, and then there's some cost savings if you meet certain income levels.

It's really a good project and we get a lot of use out of that.

These are some of the more recent.

We do a lot of erosion sediment inspections.

We have a lot of construction work going on and we've really ramped up our efforts in doing that.

We've got almost all of our inspectors are certified by the state and we have contractors doing a much better job but sometimes they forget and they don't do everything they should so we call it to their attention.

We've started issuing reports that have a cost to the contractor if they don't comply.

and so we're getting a lot better compliance because of that.

We also have gotten a lot of projects now that have put in stormwater best management practices and what comes with that is a lot of inspection.

We've got about a hundred that have to be done now.

This is before and after the completed BMP.

What this means is this is a way for dealing with a development project, the stormwater that comes off of that, that doesn't go into pipes, that doesn't

It cost us more money to have bigger pipes to carry.

It also treats it and cleans the water before it gets into the system, what gets in there.

So once they're put in they have to be maintained and we have to inspect them annually and we do a lot of those every year.

This is what the difference was made or got the best after.

JPA bridge replacement, we're not actually doing that project but we are coordinating with VDOT and that project is coming along and is currently under construction

We're doing a lot of bridge repairs.

You've noticed in the CIP there's been a lot of money for bridge repairs and there will continue to be.

Our infrastructure is just like infrastructure all over the country.

It's getting old and we inspect our bridges annually and it's a lot of bridges we have to inspect but we have to also stay up on them and do repairs.

This is the 250 bypass bridge over Rugby.

Had some concrete work that had to be done, some work to the deck.

Beta Bridge was not one that was due to old age but due to a bus hitting it.

We had to repair a university bus, I might add, not a city bus that hit it.

And that's been repaired now.

The Belmont Bridge fence was one that we just recently did.

Hopefully it's going to be temporary if we get through the design issues and get that project built.

Maybe there will be money, it looks like, maybe shortly to get that moving.

and we are in the process on design and construction and just to answer maybe a question that came up, we are not going to the Board of Architectural Review for approval tomorrow, we're going for discussion and getting their input so that the design can be refined and improved.

Hillsdale Drive extended phase one was completed in phase two.

We hope to have ready to bid in the next spring.

It's moving very quickly and we're hoping things fall into place with getting that finished.

McIntyre Road extended is moving towards a bidding, the schedule stays complete sometime late spring, early summer.

Excuse me, that's the extended, that's the road is under construction, the interchange we're looking to, the next one we're looking to bid late spring, early summer.

Just throw this in because I think it looks so good.

The EcoRemod house, we're looking for another one of those, but that's a project, as you know, that we completed that energy retrofit to a single-family house that remodeled and being used by LEAP, but in a couple years we'll put on the market and sell to a homeowner who'll have a great house to live in at that point.

And we have an affordable accessory apartment in the basement that is rented right now.

Had a lot of housing development going on.

Patton Street, where you approved about a month and a half ago building three units and those should be under construction by the first of November.

One of those will be for Region 10.

and two others, one for market rate and one for a transition unit.

This is the area where they'll go.

There'll be townhouses and those plans have been approved by the staff and are about ready to start.

Sunrise, we're doing a lot of inspection.

Habitat is making great progress and a lot of work going on there and that mixed income development.

Again, they're making great projects.

Bigger city development projects that were just finished.

And again, I think a lot of people are surprised when we go to conferences and talk about the amount of development that's going on in Charlottesville.

There are a lot of communities that don't have that development and aren't seeing the progress that's being made.

Brandon Monroe Apartments is a student housing complex.

on Brandon Avenue that's really been a nice addition to that part of the university area.

Of course Whole Foods recently opened.

The Densmore, which we've nominated for a Virginia Housing Award for Energy Efficient Design.

This is a very energy efficient property that was built by CBS Rentals, Jim Stiltz, that opened this year.

And they used a lot of energy efficient techniques going for LEED rating on it and

really a great example of what things could be done.

Monroe, another one that's there, Squirtland Square, a recent student housing.

Waterhouse is well underway and this picture is about a month old so it's changed considerably since this but a great addition to the downtown with a lot of jobs and good for the tax base.

The battle building that is under construction by UVA on West Main Street that's going to, I think, start to change the face of West Main and create more activity and maybe drive some other development that we'll see very soon there.

We've had a lot of folks coming in to talk all of a sudden about properties on West Main and I think this has led to that.

The mosque project kind of flies under the radar, but this was built and occupied.

It took them a while, but another great little project and nice addition.

The crossings, again, you know, a couple weeks old, a couple months old in the photograph.

Crossings is the SRO that the city participated in on 4th Street, and it's well under construction, looking at a March-April completion date, so probably May, but March-April is what they're shooting for.

550 Water Street is right next to the C&O properties across from C&O restaurant.

The plans are approved for that and we've heard have an anchor tenant and are looking to start that project very soon.

Oakhurst Inland Apartments is still out there and working with the owner trying to work out some details and he's working out financing but this will be a bed and breakfast inn and 24 housing units.

Of course the fire department will be under construction.

The plans actually this week is the opening of bids and they'll be starting that very soon on Fontaine Avenue.

The station at 1st and Garrett just got its approval.

This is a mixed use project.

If you know the parking lot in front of the Gleason next to the tracks, the mud hole there, that's where this is going.

So it's hard to imagine that a real building can fit in that little sliver of land.

Their architect has done a great job of designing a building that works there.

The Woods on Elliot Avenue, this is going to the BAR tomorrow night.

This is the one that you are participating in by donating land to Habitat.

49 to 50 residential units with a group of those being affordable and the others market rate, preserving open space and I think it's really a good partnership between the city, Habitat, Southern Development to see this property developed and a lot of good neighborhood support in putting this plan together.

YMCA, those plans have been approved and just weighing resolution of their issues.

1600 Monticello Road is a new residential project that came out.

Monticello at Druid just came up and these plans were approved and they're ready to start construction.

Johnson Village Phase 3 is probably will be approved in the next 30 days, right around 150 residential units, townhouses and apartments on 5th Street extended right below Village Place.

It's the final part of the remainder properties of Johnson Village that went through a zoning process about 8 or 9 years ago.

Coal Tower site plan, Coal Tower, this phase of the site plan has been approved and they actually received HUD financing and they should start by the first of the year construction of 300 residential units which will be a real asset I think to the downtown putting that many more people living right near downtown and creating a lot more folks to shop in the downtown area.

If you remember two years ago in the winter when we had all the snow, we had quite a few residential developments that had not quite finished and gotten their roads accepted and there was a lot of contention.

You got a lot of emails, a lot of angry folks that had been living in houses for a couple of years and we really undertook a concerted effort to get those accepted and just wanted to run through those because they all have been done now and accepted so we can plow their snow if we get any this year.

We're picking up their garbage

and maintaining the roads.

But Brookwood, Village Place, Carter's View, Cherry Hill, St. Charles Place, Roy's Place, Blanco Street, and a portion of Longwood Drive.

All those have been just recently done and all those are in the city now so those residents who have been paying their taxes can get the services that they desire.

Then we've got a couple of special projects.

The wayfinding has been completed.

We're

We're entering into a maintenance contract and making some changes that have been discussed that will happen in the very near future.

A couple of those changes are the Performing Arts Center will be named as the Martin Luther King Performing Arts Center instead of the MLK, the abbreviation that was on there, and the Charlottesville Home of the Black Knights signs that Miss Edwards has talked about, among other things.

Neighborhood leadership is up strong and running and we've transitioned to Ebony Walden in my department is taking that on and got a lot of new ideas and looking at making some important changes there I think we'll keep reinvigorate that and keep it going.

This is something that was requested by Masakos after an incident where we had some folks that had property maintenance issues so we went in and actually developed a property maintenance brochure that has responsibilities for tenants and landlords and we have it printed in three languages and we have it in Spanish and Arabic and English

so that we can provide it to apartment complexes, to anybody.

We give them to the international rescue folks and anybody else that might want some, we have them to give so you can help and pass those out.

But it talks about if you're a tenant, what your responsibilities are, but also what you can expect out of your landlord and if you don't get that, where to go and how to handle those situations.

And then our newest little project is one that our interns have

developed, oops, I don't know what happened there.

And we have, as part, one of our interns working with our historic planner, Mary Joy Scala, developed an audio tour for significant historic locations around the community.

And I just wanted to

Hopefully it's hooked up.

Just give you a hint of what that is.

This is the intro.

Uh oh.

It worked all afternoon.

Rick, where are you?

This is Kristin Roark.

and what they did was they identified buildings or the Sacajawea statue that things that had some significance.

This is what you'll get.

The first county jail would have been located near the courthouse in Scottsville, but after the county court moved to Charlottesville in 1762, a new jail was constructed to hold those on trial at the court.

The current jail was built in two phases.

First, the stone jail, surrounded by a brick wall and a jailer's house, was built by local architect George Wallace Spooner.

The second phase was the addition of a brick section sometime after 1896.

The inmates who were segregated by race and gender would usually serve a short sentence before being released or sent to the state prison.

But some spent years confined to a crowded cell.

According to Virginia newspapers of the 1890s, there was one man who escaped through the roof of the jail and climbed down on a bid sheet to get outside the wall.

In 1895,

Henry Robinson, an African American man, was found innocent by a jury but was sentenced to 14 years in the state penitentiary to protect him from lynched mobs.

One notorious prisoner was the mayor of Charlottesville, J. Samuel McHugh, who stayed in the second floor room at the western corner of the building.

McHugh was found guilty of murdering his wife in 1904 and publicly executed in February 1905

has done most of this work on her own time.

It's just something that she really wanted to do to contribute and these are the signs that will go on the buildings and again they will have the phone number and people, tourist visitors that are walking around will see them and be able to get information.

It's about a dozen different places in town.

That's it.

I'm going to present the CATEC project.

I'd like to thank you especially for the brochure about tenants and landlords.

I think what precipitated it was a family who had very little English, was living in an apartment when the ceiling caved in on them in their sleep.

and they had been having a hard time getting their landlord to respond to them and they didn't know what their rights were.

There was nowhere for them to know.

And so this is a place where they can look and say, you know, do you have a problem with bugs?

Do you have a problem with, you know, other kinds of maintenance?

Here's who you call, here's who you talk to, here's what your landlord should be doing for you.

I had a question about Middlebrook Hydro sidewalk.

Yes, sir.

Other questions or comments for Mr. Tolbert?

It's very informative and you've been busy.

You and your staff have been busy.

Thank you for all that they're doing and that you're doing.

Good evening.

I'm not so sure I would characterize this as a report as offering some information and hopefully beginning a dialogue on the direction the council would like to go.

I've looked at a couple of things.

One is holidays and the other is Sundays.

It's sort of the tip of the iceberg kind of situation so I want to acknowledge that up front that there's

More work that will need to be done should council want to move more in this direction.

Right now there are 11 observed city holidays and Charlottesville Area Transit operates on five of them.

The other six are, let's see, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, New Year's Day, and Memorial Day.

I think I've got them all.

So what we would be looking at if we were going to add service on holidays is the additional six and do we potentially add service on all of them or a subset of them?

The other challenge would be what level of service would we offer?

There are many possibilities just to try to give you a sense of what the range could be.

Currently on Sundays we operate the free trolley in Route 7 and if we were to operate that level of service for the remaining holidays as outlined in the memo to you, that would be about $12,500.

So it's about $2,500 per holiday if we operate at that level.

And so on a full year basis that would be about $20,000.

In addition to Charlottesville area transit's cost, there would be costs associated with Jaunt offering service on these holidays because currently Jaunt does as Charlottesville area transit does.

The preliminary indication from Jaunt is that their costs on these days would be somewhat more than ours, perhaps a little bit more than $3,500.

So we would be looking at $6,000 plus in total between Charlottesville area transit and Jaunt operating.

and John would have to operate if we did operate the fixed route service because under our obligations to the feds we when we operate fixed route service we are obliged to make the complementary Americans with Disabilities Act paratransit service also available.

So I guess that's what I wanted to offer as sort of what we might be able to do in the near term with service on holidays.

In addition, there's some information provided to you about Sunday service.

Right now we do offer the most modest amount of service that we offer is on Sundays.

Sunday service began a little more than four years ago now.

The thinking I guess was that that's what we could afford to do in terms of startup.

In terms of the productivity of the service, as indicated by the recent transit development plan, we do carry more people

for every hour of service on Sunday compared to the rest of the days.

And the reason behind that is pretty straightforward.

By only offering those productive services, the free trolley and Route 7, the overall performance of the system is higher.

So one of the things that would happen if we add service is that that productivity level, the average number of riders for every hour of service would come down.

What we could look to do is to identify a service level that is more than what we're doing now.

Currently, we only have sort of two options readily available, which is we have a weekday level of service and we have a Saturday level of service.

There isn't a lot of difference between what we do on a weekday versus a Saturday.

The difference in a nutshell is that there are several neighborhood routes that we do what is called peaking, which means that we add an extra bus in the morning commute window and in the afternoon commute window.

And what it means in those areas where we're putting that extra bus on is that instead of having service once an hour, service is every 30 minutes.

And that impacts route 3, 6, which works in combination, route 4 and route 8.

So if we offered a weekday level, that's what the difference would be between what we're doing on Saturdays and what we would be doing with that weekday level.

So by default then, if we offered a Saturday level, which would be somewhat less expensive than offering a weekday level, we would not have that extra service on those four routes.

One of the challenges with looking to add service on a Sunday at that order of magnitude is it would require us to staff up.

We'd have to do a fair amount of hiring.

It would be rather expensive.

It's looking like that having a Saturday level of service would be about $600,000 additional on an annual basis.

It's certainly something that

If the direction of council were to do that, that's something that could easily be incorporated into the fiscal year 2013 budget and we could plan to staff up getting ready for our annual service change in August of next summer.

It's not too much different

of an addition than some of the relatively large expansions to service we made.

So, for example, when we added Sunday service four years ago, we increased service levels on Route 5 a few years ago, that sort of thing.

It's not something that I think is feasible to do.

It's not the budgetary issue.

It's more the logistical issue of the staffing this fiscal year.

And if I understand your report correctly, your memo correctly, ramping up to provide a substantial expansion of service, let's say on Sundays, would take a significant, it's not something you could do overnight, it would take a good amount of time, as you say, to staff up, et cetera, and that given that fact, it might make sense to fold that discussion into the budget for next year.

Correct.

Is the same true of simply extending holiday services?

For our cost for Charlottesville Area Transit, it should be about $2,500 for each holiday if what we're offering is a Sunday level of service.

So it would just be the free trolley and Route 7.

The preliminary indication from John is that their cost would be more than $3,500.

It would potentially include Christmas Day on an ongoing basis going forward.

Correct, and I'm including John in that $6,000.

You are?

Okay.

Dr. Brown?

How does Albemarle County fit into the cost of the 7 and the cost of the John service that's associated with the county residents?

I'll start with the last.

It's certainly something that is brought up every year with the university.

What will their contribution to support the free trolley be?

And for that matter, what will their contribution be for universal access?

There have been modest but incrementally upward growth in the amount of money that the university is providing.

There is no contract, so it's sort of

a very genteel kind of discussion about what the performance has been.

We've had great growth in the amount of ridership on the free trolley as well as overall growth in the number of folks that are affiliated with the university using our service.

So if what we're also doing

is adding service on additional days and therefore potentially giving them more benefit.

I guess what I would say is it at least creates the potential to make the argument to the university that their contribution should increase, but there are no guarantees.

In terms of what is currently in place with Albemarle County, the free trolley and Route 7 don't receive support from Albemarle County.

Route 7 does serve into Albemarle County.

It has been the topic of some conversation during my seven plus years here, but to date there has been no agreement for Albemarle County to be

supporting the Route 7 in some fashion that takes into account sort of what increment of the route serves into Albemarle County.

We did talk about a number of formulas.

I remember many of those conversations very well.

What we have been able to achieve in terms of cost sharing is that when Route 2B came into being,

When the downtown transit station opened in the spring of 2007, that became our first route that we had hoped would sort of serve as a model where we split the cost between the city and the county.

So we have a route that serves both within the city and in the county.

But don't we charge the county for their service?

It is based upon a formula that takes into account what we anticipate our grant assistance will be, what we anticipate passenger fare collection will be, and therefore the remainder is what is termed local match.

And so on Route 2B, we split that local match between the city and the county.

All the other routes are treated as either being city routes or county routes.

So the county pays that local portion on Route 5, which is service that goes west of Route 29 corridor between Birchwood Shopping Center and Walmart.

Route 10 which is serviced from downtown to Pantops including the new Martha Jefferson and a night route which is route 24 which goes between downtown and Pantops but doesn't go to the top of the hill so therefore doesn't serve Martha Jefferson.

I think the holidays seem to be the easiest to add, other than the Christmas holiday, maybe Christmas Day itself, you take that out, you get five holidays worth $30,000 you're talking about.

I would love to see that happen starting next year, next calendar year, I would say.

Whereas other things which are

One thing in the RFP that went out for looking at that redesign of the system or looking at ideas about how the system could be done, one of the things I noticed was that there wasn't, at least if there was I missed it, specific language saying that the council was looking at possible

that it would be a bonus if you could come up with efficient ways to offer Sunday service, holiday service, as well as more frequent service rather than just another way to offer what we're already offering.

I mean personally I think it's a good idea to do this in context of next year's budget.

I mean tinkering, I mean holidays might be something we could start but I think it's

You know, I mean some of this could be really important stuff but it could also be quite expensive and I think doing it where you really can have a chance to see where we stand.

I think one of the things we learned from our neighborhood, our last neighborhood meeting in particular, was the perception among our residents that the value of their homes is continuing to decline and I think that has implications for

I'm also thinking if we start holiday service, even if it were just for five holidays starting in January, then we have some data to look at to see how much that gets used this year when we're making those decisions for next year.

Well, we're talking about $30,000.

Has the money already been appropriated?

No.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

We will have that process begin.

It carries unanimously.

I think you sent strong support for moving forward with holiday service and

and then looking to next year's budget as a forum for discussing other potential service enhancements.

Next item is a report on the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission legislative package.

And here we have Mr. David Blount.

Thank you for having me.

I really appreciate your time on the agenda this evening.

And this is the first of my annual two visits to you in the fall to discuss the regional legislative program.

I want to go through the process with you just briefly this evening and

or importantly get some feedback from you all as to what you'd like to see in the program.

I am going around to the local governing bodies in the region here in September to do this presentation and then I'll be drafting the report and getting that back out to you sometime the first part of October and then we'll be making a request to come back to see you again in November to discuss the program and to get your approval of it.

I believe you had in your packet this evening a one-page summary of the priority items for 2011.

Again, those are boiled down from the larger version of the program that has looked the same for a number of years.

Those are kind of our established positions that we've had here in the region for some time.

Just to touch on a couple of issues real briefly.

First and foremost, budget is always on our minds and of course this is going to be the year for the state to do a new biennial budget.

And I think you'll see, as you all do, the Governor and the General Assembly will be proceeding with caution as they make their way through that process.

This is a re-benchmarking year for public education when the state determines the cost to the state and localities for education, and the preliminary numbers on that are an additional $300 million in state cost.

I think you'll see VRS rates on the increase.

For you all, that means you're school teacher employees.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see the employer contribution rate, which now is just over 6%, go to somewhere between 10 and 12%, so it could almost double.

and of course you're familiar with some of the things that have gone on with VRS in the last couple of years.

Medicaid is always a cost driver, public safety, law enforcement, other health and human services such as CSA, so there will be a lot on the plate in terms of the budget.

Outside of the budget, the issue that is of most concern, particularly in the counties,

so far has been this renewed discussion of the state transferring responsibility for secondary roads construction and maintenance over to the localities.

I think if we move in that direction and depending what that may look like, that could have some implications for our cities and towns as well.

And at the same time, the Commonwealth Transportation Board is going through a process right now where they are looking

at Urban Street Payments.

So I think those two are perhaps, you know, dovetailing and working together in concert at this point in time.

And I would expect by the end of the year we'll have a better idea of what we may be facing in the General Assembly on that front.

Well, I'm maybe going to defer to the next presenter who's probably just as familiar with that as me.

A number of things.

In the region, I think the local staffs have been working to get their arms around some data in terms of what is the state that we have here right now, and I think that's been kind of a difficult task so far.

From there, there are certain deadlines that have to be met in terms of

the localities developing their local watershed implementation plan, getting those into the state for review and I think by the time we roll around to next spring I think it is in March or so that those local plans have to be submitted for approval.

Come on up.

Erin Yancey, Environmental Planner at Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.

DCR has made available a small amount of money available to localities or planning districts

to basically respond to the data that they release to localities on local land use and best management practices that are currently on the ground.

I think it's a maximum of $15,000 per applicant, but a total of $200,000.

So it's pretty small, but it's really for localities to be able to respond by February for input into the phase two watershed implementation plans.

Thank you.

I hadn't mentioned too, I also have met with your staff and a couple of members of staff and working on a couple of local initiatives which continue to press forward with you all on that.

I guess from my stand as far as how you all would like to proceed with any recommendations this evening or you may recall last year that we had a smaller group of you

that got together and kind of fleshed some of these issues out and then brought them back before you in November when you look at both your local priorities as well as the regional program.

Thank you, Mr. Blount.

I thought the process last...

I'm not so much volunteering for it.

Maybe there ought to be two people in the meeting on that because I know that Kristin did want.

No, I'm not volunteering.

You're volunteering.

Not that I didn't like it.

I did.

Like I said, I'm Erin Yancey from the Thomas Checkerson Planning District Commission.

I'm here to talk to you about the update of the Solid Waste Management Plan.

A little background on the plan.

It was adopted in 2006 when all localities were required to have a Solid Waste Management Plan required by the state.

Our region is the City of Charlottesville, Albemarle, Fluvanna and Green Counties.

and so the plan is required to be updated every five years so this is our first update and the point of the update is basically to make the data current, review system capacity for the amount of waste we're generating and revisit the strategic plan and we've involved the committee, our solid waste committee which is made up of locality staff and other stakeholders in each step that we

done to update the plan.

So to make the data current that basically involved data gathering on demographics, waste generation and recycling rates, which we have available because we're required to do an annual recycling report every year, and facilities inventory.

And then we revisited the system capacity and what that involved was to

make projections on a 20 year timeline on the waste that we would be generating in the region and that was based on population projections projected by the Virginia Employment Commission and then we kind of multiplied out our current waste generation rates by the future population.

Then we compared that to the permitted tonnage for each of our solid waste facilities in the region and also the landfill that all of our facilities use in Amelia County.

And the result of that analysis was basically that we will have enough capacity for the 20 year timeline with our current permitted tonnages for each of our facilities and the landfill.

Next we revisited the strategic plan.

We added a progress report to kind of see where we've been and what we've done in the past five years.

And then we reviewed it for kind of relevance and feasibility given the state of the economy and the way our local governments are right now.

And we basically tried to bring it up to date by adding and removing goals and objectives and strategies.

The strategic plan is basically structured to fit the waste management hierarchy that's established in the DEQ regulations and that starts with source reduction and followed by reuse, recycling, resource recovery, incineration, and finally landfilling as the least desirable option for waste management.

Our goals and strategies emphasize regional coordination and that takes the form of cooperative contract language, cooperation between localities on special waste collections and using the Thomas Jefferson Planning District as an archive for data, contracts, planning and reporting.

and a lot of these things are kind of ongoing and we've included that in our tracking system in the new plan.

It also emphasizes maintaining the minimum 25% recycling rate that's required by the state and there are several strategies related to increased outreach to citizens and the business community so that we can achieve reduced total waste and increase recovery of recyclables.

Outreach would be focused on kind of increasing awareness of the traditional services available but also the committee felt that there's not a very good awareness of sort of non-conventional services that are offered now through things like Goodwill, Recycles, like all electronics, Best Buy accepts for electronics in Crutchfield as well and Home Depot is accepting

compact fluorescent light bulbs and some of those services that have been cut back by our government services.

So also we think that there's an opportunity for more environmentally preferable purchasing in the government sector and the private sector that we'd like to increase outreach on.

And then also online reuse services like Freecycle and Craigslist.

There's also a couple of strategies related to evaluating options for large scale or commercial scale composting that will be available in the region soon, we think.

And we think that's important because the food scraps and post-consumer waste represent

Relatively large percentage of the waste stream at 14% and it also contributes to contaminating other recyclables and We have reason to believe that the services the service that will be provided to the region will be priced competitively so that further efficiencies can be achieved in waste management

The plan basically wraps up with a discussion about funding, which nothing really new there.

Basically describes that solid waste management is funded with a mix of tipping fees at our transfer stations, tax revenue, and fees for service for collection.

I always have questions.

My first question is on page, let's see which page is it, page seven of your report.

Okay.

There was just one thing that just had a percentage and I wasn't quite sure of what and so I figured while I have you here I would ask that question.

of 90% of anything it receives.

And I don't know the percentage of CDD that they receive of all.

At CDD?

Sorry, construction and demolition degree.

Okay, alright.

That was what I thought it meant, but I wasn't absolutely sure.

Sure.

No, it's a different facility.

This one, the owner has purchased a piece of property in Augusta County.

So is it possible that that's something we could look at doing curbside composting to send to there?

Because I doubt that we want Charlottesville residents to drive to there.

They're going to provide a pickup service and I'm not sure how it will work with homeowners but I think starting off they're going to be looking at like

I think I have, but I'd also like, you know, that's something that I think for a lot of folks who aren't going to go to the extra effort of doing it, and for often for a home

person, it's not something they're going to be wanting to pay a lot of extra for, would still participate and it does decrease our waste stream a lot.

Significantly.

And so I would love to see us kind of keep that on the burner as we look at these kind of long-range plants.

I think I had one uncomposting related question.

Oh, actually it was on page 10.

There's a chart there, municipal solid waste disposal, recyclable solid waste reused.

It actually is another composting question.

The only composting that I see here is fat, bone and grease, composted sludge.

We don't collect any data on food waste.

If there were any sort of random things about composting and any data that we collect for the recycling rate report, it would go up in yard waste, composted, or mulched.

It's mainly like yard waste kind of stuff.

You know, I'd just like to follow up about where the numbers in this report come from, kind of coming from that, because it seems like the playing field's changed in the last few years.

I think it used to be kind of easy because both the city and the county sent all their waste to authority, the Havana Solid Waste Authority places, and so the tonnage was pretty simple to calculate.

Yeah, each of our localities send us a report on, they kind of collect it at the public works level and send it to us.

So we get a report from RSWA.

I get something from

Fluvanna and the Green County Transfer Station.

But looking at the RSWA area, what happens to people who no longer take their stuff to a Rivanna facility but they go to Van Der Linde instead?

uh... no it's not actually this is the first year we had to grapple with that issue and they would not cooperate with providing us any data so you'll notice i think it's on page ten again put something in there about uh... our recycling rate for the region ended up being twenty nine point

Not required.

I was in touch with DEQ to see if they could do anything and since we're reporting to DEQ they know about our issue about not being able to get data from them but there's nothing legally that they can do to require it.

The way that we kind of estimated the current waste generation rates was to take the difference from the numbers we received this year and compare them to the numbers from 2009 and kind of took the difference to see where all that Albemarle trash is going.

But as far as the trash that's going to Vanderland from the city, we got those numbers from the city.

So the city pick up, you know how much of that, but you don't have a, I know that that's also being recycled, right?

The number comes from all of the solid waste facilities have to report to DEQ on what they receive and how they handle it.

So that comes from their reporting to DEQ.

And that's for household waste.

That doesn't count the part that goes for construction debris.

So the demolition debris was upwards of 97%.

So they've got that going pretty well.

It seems like, I mean, it's easy to extrapolate one year and come up with a meaningful report.

Would it be useful to ask for that in our contracts with that particular provider?

It would be very useful.

A lot of what's collected doesn't come from a contract, it comes from private haulers.

Well the city has been able to provide me with the tonnage that they're sending.

Well, I think there's several problems.

I mean, I could see immediately.

There's also private haulers who are collecting trash in the city.

I mean, they advertise for it.

I know some people have decided they'd just as soon just pay a fee instead of a trash sticker, right?

And then there's also, to some degree, I mean, I'm just thinking about other things that were in here, but like private haulers pick up cardboard from businesses.

Yeah, there is a vendor we contact for that.

Okay.

All right, thank you very much for your report.

That was the last item of regular business.

We do have three items of other business.

Yes, I just wanted to make you all aware that we did indeed have a meeting with the officers of the Downtown Business Association and it is the first of many meetings.

We did have Charlene Green from the Dialogue on Race was there to facilitate the conversation.

Just to mention just a couple of things.

What I'd like to do is provide a more detailed overview when the city manager returns and we get a chance to have the dialogue on race staff available.

But overall,

Everyone that attended was very open, very honest about the concerns.

When you talk about race and racism, it's a very sensitive issue, but we were able to really explore a lot of topics that I'm glad we had an opportunity to do so.

The business owners were just particularly disturbed about the comment that there was some kind of a secret code that they were adhering to in terms of their hiring practices and to assure us that that is not true and that they're willing to look at ways to make the businesses

to have a culture within the mall that is more open and that the businesses are open to hiring people and having a more diverse staff.

For example, one of the things we talked about was

You know, for example, the marketing material of the mall doesn't always represent a very diverse community.

Most of the images that we see now just are basically of white people at this point, even with some of the things that we see in our tourism.

So clearly there was an opportunity to look at some of the marketing material.

And another thing to look that we talked about was

Even with the hiring, this is also an opportunity to think about some of the soft skills training and to have a pool of qualified candidates that will be available for positions that become open.

So I thought it was a very good beginning and I thought it was important to address the issues as soon as we were able to do so.

and I don't know whether or not the next step would be to have a more detailed conversation at the same time we would have a work session to talk about some of the other issues that were brought up earlier because it's not just the city, it is about the community and it's about our entire locality and how we could really change the culture in which we live.

Thank you, Ms. Edwards.

Did you also want to bring up something?

I'll do mine next.

Okay, all right.

Thank you.

So I think that the, did you all, are there localities that have done a similar survey or are you asking us to look at doing a survey that we would design or that we would design with you or is there something that you already have in mind?

So that might be something that we might ask staff to come with a proposal to this work session.

This might be one way to look at that.

So I think that the survey and the work session, there were a couple of other smaller things like accountability system.

I think we've talked about already including some of these things in our P3, which is our performance indicators.

But to have that as one of the items on the agenda at that meeting.

There were four things that I numbered one through four, but I can't find them now.

Which we actually did at our council retreat.

I like the idea of doing an anonymous survey and I appreciate your willingness to work with us and staff and maybe find a tool that we can use or help us develop a tool.

In terms of a work session, I think if we're going to do a work session, it really, I was communicating with Mr. Foley about this earlier this week, it really should be addressing, as Ms. Edwards just said, sort of the broader

dynamic in our community about how do we grow and recruit and retain a more diverse workforce and attract and retain more professionals of color in our community, with the city leading by example, certainly.

Do we have a work session time, like on our calendar, if the kind of normal Thursday time is not available because we have one of the town hall meetings.

Is there a time perhaps in October that would look good for, should we do that by email or how does one set?

Yeah, maybe that Ms. Barfield work on trying to schedule.

This is not a problem we got into quickly.

That might also give staff a little more time, some of the department heads a little more time to kind of come up with some plans and some suggestions.

I also really think it's a great idea to include a broader discussion.

I would think though that what would

And there are some examples of cities, of communities that have really undertaken concerted efforts to attract and retain professionals of color and I'd like to learn from their example.

Well, I'm just thinking of this now, but it kind of seems to me that the two things we're being asked to do, both of which I think are good ideas, are kind of sequential in nature.

that a survey would give us information that would be very useful at the work session.

And I think if the meeting that we had with the DVAC was an indication, it's also helpful to have someone from the Dialogue on Race available as well because

We have a lot of things we need to improve on but it was really, I think it was just great timing that at this point there was a dialogue on race entity to go to and a few years ago we didn't even have that.

Absolutely, Mr. Jones and Mr. Beck.

Thank you very much again.

I had one last issue.

I'm just going to read this letter.

It's from Equality, Virginia.

It was written to myself as mayor.

Dear Dave, I'm writing to ask for your public support of legislation to ensure fairness in the workplace for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender employees of the Commonwealth.

The only real and permanent solution to this issue is passage of a state law prohibiting discrimination in statewide and local employment based on sexual orientation and gender identity and gender expression.

Equality Virginia helped usher a bill doing just this through the state senate in 2010 and 2011, but the house failed to pass it for the fourth year in a row.

Now is the time to act.

Today, 87% of Fortune 500 companies protect their workers from discrimination based on sexual orientation, yet the Commonwealth offers no such protection for its employees.

Please sign the enclosed letter in favor of legislation to protect GLBT Virginians from discrimination in public employment and return it to me.

Join the growing list of over 40 elected officials who support equality and fairness.

these letters along with resolutions of support for this legislation passed by municipal bodies and university faculties and thousands of petition signatures will pressure the General Assembly to act and so I have a letter that they've asked me to sign what I'd like to propose tonight is that we as a council agree to sign on to this letter which we would then transmit to Equality Virginia and then in addition add this issue to our own legislative

And so I would ask Mr. Brown to take this to Mr. Harris who's putting together our city legislative package and the letter basically just says

Bipartisan research shows that more than 87% of Virginians support the right of gay and lesbian citizens to work for the government without discrimination.

Currently, Virginia has no workplace discrimination law.

Did we?

I think it was about a year or two ago.

We did.

Mr. Mayor, before we leave other business, can I bring up some business which actually would be more properly under the last regular business item on our solid waste report.

But I was just sort of mulling over whether there was something we could do affirmatively to help ensure that we have good data as we move forward.

And I kind of thought of two ideas.

the first one is one of my favorite pastimes which is thinking for things for the mayor to do and it occurred to me maybe you could write a letter just simply you know from from the city urging Mr. Van Linden and any other private

places that would collect data on waste to participate fully in order that we can have good data and result in good planning.

And then secondly, the other idea would be, is there a legislative solution?

Maybe the, I guess we're not here anymore, but maybe Mr. Tolbert, if you can have somebody contact TJ PDC on my behalf and get the exact language.

Way to delegate, Mr. Mayor.

Hearing none, we'll open up one more session of Matters by the Public.

Good evening.

I'm Peter Kleeman.

I live at 407 Head Street in the city.

I appreciate having the opportunity to see the infrastructure report.

I was disappointed, however, to see that the textured ramps that were shown in the video continue to direct the visually handicapped into the center of the intersection and not across the crosswalks.

as a part of the pedestrian and bicycle committee about 18 months ago, I believe, perhaps two years ago.

This very item was discussed and a recommendation was made and I believe approved by the city that all future ramps that were going to be constructed were going to follow the, use the bumps as a

A guide path for visually handicapped who use canes to be able to identify the direction they need to go to cross the road.

The diagonalized ones that were as shown in tonight's presentation direct you straight into the middle of the intersection and that's not safe for motorists nor for the visually handicapped.

Also the fence that was put on the Belmont Bridge, I don't believe the goal of that was to be an aesthetic installation but actually to have some function of limiting pedestrian activity on the bridge and I was disappointed that there was no mention of whether this has actually succeeded.

There was a major city investment to have a certain outcome and I'm curious whether the city has looked into whether that has been successful.

The third thing, since I'm talking about pedestrianism, I am a downtown resident and I walk quite a bit in the downtown area.

And there remain a large number of tripping hazards and issues in crosswalks in the downtown area.

Also some of the, I think one of the biggest offenders and

because obstacles are these metal plates that are put over the water drainage areas that take water from one side of the sidewalk and into the street.

They get damaged, many of them were damaged during the snow plowing last winter.

They've been bent and pushed up in the air and they remain up in the air.

There's one right in front of the county courthouse on Jefferson Street just opposite from the Monticello Hotel that is

a dangerous hazard and there are several others in the downtown area.

It would not be difficult to take a short walk around the downtown area and probably identify dozens of significant tripping hazards, all of which could be easily eliminated.

It would just require fixing the metal, removing it, and I would recommend that the city consider not using those sorts of structures in the future or those installations.

The plates move.

I have a routine where probably every three days I kick together these little three plate sections that are right over by the law offices opposite Jackson Park because there are gaps that occur.

And if we thought that the gaps on the downtown mall were hazardous to people with narrow heels, these gaps would capture whole children's feet.

And I think it's a really dangerous situation to have these

It's just a random opportunity for people to have serious injuries.

And I think it would be maybe wise to either weld them in place, bolt them in place.

I guess they're designed to be opened, but bolting them in place, they could be opened.

There are probably ways that appropriate fasteners could be used.

But I think that pedestrian safety in the downtown mall can be dramatically be improved at not significant cost.

Thank you, Mr. Cleaner.

Anybody else like to speak?

Sir, did you have your hand up?

Alright, last chance.

Meeting's adjourned.