City Council Meeting   12/5/2011

Only five of the 60 recipients of this very prestigious award have been public community facilities in the United States.

And the only other facility within Virginia to have received this high honor during that time is the John Paul Jones Arena at the University of Virginia.

So we want to extend our congratulations to the project team, Bargmann, Hendry, and Archetype, and training partners, architects, and staff from the city's facilities development division and parks and recreation.

on this well-deserved honor.

We have a plaque designating the city of Charlottesville as a Facility of Merit Award winner for the Smith Aquatic and Fitness Center.

And I'm going to present this to our Parks and Recreation Director, Brian Daley.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

This truly is a very, very prestigious award that is only awarded to those facilities throughout North America that really go the extra mile both in architecture in terms of programming and how they're planned.

Personally, this is a very high honor for me.

This is an award I've wanted to be associated with my entire career.

So to have it happen is

One of the things we wanted to do tonight very briefly is to share with you some images of the other Facility of Merit award winners throughout North America.

You can see the types of facilities that were award recipients this year.

The first is California State University at East Bay in the Bay Area.

Student Recreation and Wellness Center, funded by student fees with gymnasiums, track, fitness center, wellness center, multipurpose rooms, and locker rooms.

Those are some images there.

MetLife Stadium, the new stadium in the Meadowlands in New Jersey, home of the NFL, New York Giants, and the Jets.

This facility opened last year.

Interestingly enough, the facilities that received the award range in cost from $11 million to $990 million, which is this facility, $998, excuse me, almost a billion dollars.

This facility is in Canada, in Stouffville, Ontario.

A sports complex for the Stouffville Clippers, two sheets of ice, lobby rooms, changing rooms and spectator seating.

This facility is a community facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Mayor Sheila Doyle Russell Youth and Community Center with a gymnasium, fitness center, exercise room, project room, computer room, kitchens, and a small auditorium you can see in the picture at the bottom.

This facility, the Aquatic Center at Hillcrest Park in Vancouver, British Columbia, this facility was actually the curling venue in the 2010 Winter Olympics and post-Olympics the facility was repurposed into an Aquatic Center and some other community facilities.

locker rooms and so forth.

This is possibly the most striking building I've seen in quite a long time.

The use of the wood in the natatorium is quite beautiful and the repurpose of this was intentional pre-Olympic games to do this post-Olympic games.

The University of Iowa Campus Recreation and Wellness Center.

Many university facilities have been recipients of this award, a total of 22 in the last six years.

This kind of carries that on.

Campus Recreation Center, 215,000 square feet, an auditorium, fitness center, climbing walls, activity rooms, and so forth.

The Telepson family downtown YMCA in Houston, Texas, $33 million facility.

In the picture at the bottom, you can see what looks like dozens and dozens and dozens of Stairmasters and elliptical machines for their cardio room.

Above that is a running track.

It's making interesting use of the space and its facilities directly in downtown Houston.

The Barbara and David Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center at Rice University, also in Houston.

Two group gymnasium, outdoor pool, fitness rooms, classrooms, wellness suite, and some offices.

The Drexel University Recreation Center in Philadelphia.

This facility is also on the cover of the athletic business magazine that outlines the winners this year, which you have at your place.

Again, right in downtown Philadelphia at Drexel University.

And then our facility, the Smith Aquatic and Fitness Center.

This photo is taken from the northwest corner of the building looking into the natatorium over the top of the zero-depth area with the ceramic tile wall, the blue wall in the back there.

This is taken from the balcony outside of the fitness center overlooking the competitive pool, the leisure pool, the current channel, and the slides and the splash pool, which is an area we also use for a lot of programming, the shallow water there, three and a half feet.

One of the really neat things about Smith is while we've also received LEED Platinum certification for the building and an award from the James River Green Building Council,

We made sure that we could accommodate the needs of the Charlottesville high school swim team here.

And we have a Colorado, it's a brand, a Colorado timing system.

The black scoreboard that's hanging from the ceiling actually records the times of the swimmers as they occur.

There's touch pads that are put in the pool.

It records the time of the swimmers.

They leave the starting block and return to the touch pad, giving instantaneous feedback.

This is the fitness room with cardio.

The cardio equipment shown outside of the photo is a strength training circuit as well as an area for stretching.

with resistance balls and other resistance equipment.

Each of the treadmills on the right hand side has a television monitor that the user can choose to change the channel or to watch what they would like.

There's also iPod jacks for everybody to use to listen to music.

The TVs above serve the middle row of cardio and there's switches on the machines for folks who can listen to those.

and the lobby area.

Other announcements from Councillors?

We have another Our Town, Charlottesville meeting coming up.

This one is in the Meadows neighborhood.

It's going to be Thursday, this Thursday, December 8th at Meadows Church at 2200 Angus Road.

And we're encouraging anybody who lives in the Meadows neighborhood along Angus, any of that part of the city, to come on down.

At 6 o'clock, we'll have dinner provided for free and fun supervised activities for the kids.

You can either eat with your kids, or I suppose you could have them supervised before.

But after about 30, 40 minutes of eating, we will get down to business and have the rest of the time being public comment.

Anybody who wants to speak to council, you can do it without a three minute limit.

And we really want to kind of get a sense of what some of the issues are that face that part of the city.

We find that going into neighborhoods makes it easier for people to get to the meeting so we really hear a lot of good things and so I'm hoping people will come out.

So, we will, just since it's been a while since I've done the whole spiel, all the council will be there, we also have a lot of our department heads, police and fire will be there, so that often if you have a question you can actually get it answered on the spot, otherwise we keep a list of the requests and suggestions that people make.

We put them on the website and we keep track of the progress on each of those.

Mr. Mayor, I'm pleased to announce that there is going to be a holiday market every Saturday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. from November 5th to December 24th.

It will be a city market site, so if you haven't been there, I highly encourage you shop local for all the gifts and Christmas gifts.

I have an announcement on behalf of Thomas Taylor, principal of Charlottesville High School.

I'm writing to invite you to two special events on Tuesday, December 6.

and he begins the letter with, Hello, CHS families.

The first is our PTO parent social, which will be held at CHS and A Commons from 6 p.m. until 7.30 p.m. No agendas, just a great time with friends, new and old.

This is the first time we have tried something like this and we hope that you will come out and share the CHS parenting journey with us.

Our second event on Tuesday is an annual winter band concert.

The concert time has been changed from 7.30 to 8.

We hope you can join us.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

Then he says, P.S., a copy of the adjusted midterm exams will be available because it will be mailed home with the interim report cards.

Thank you, Ms. Edwards.

I had a couple announcements.

We have a community engagement opportunity coming up Thursday, December 15th for the Citizens Advisory Panel for the Charlottesville Police Department.

Chief Longo will be there to talk about the importance of community involvement and citizen participation

The City of Charlottesville is once again partnering with the Charlottesville Albemarle SPCA

to collect new or used blankets for the dogs who are SPCA residents.

Last year, thanks to the generosity of the people of Charlottesville, we were able to raise or collect over 1,000 blankets and this year the goal is 1,500 blankets.

Those are used to keep dogs warm during the colder months.

and if anybody has a blanket to donate, they, that, let's see, they can bring it here to City Hall, to the City Manager's Office, to the Neighborhood Development Services Lobby or to the SPCA or purring at Pantops.

We have one more meeting coming up for the master planning process for the future of the east side of McIntyre Park.

It's coming up on December the 12th, which I believe is a Monday.

Monday, December the 12th from 630 to 8 o'clock p.m. at Charlottesville High School, not at the Martin Luther King Performing Arts Center like the last two were, but in Commons Room B, which is right inside the front door of the high school.

This is really the first chance when, first chance where citizens will actually be able to kind of get their hands dirty and

breaking on the groups and starting to draw and map out proposed uses for the park.

So it's really getting now into the actual planning process, and that's pretty exciting.

So any other announcements?

All right, hearing none, we're going to move forward to matters by the public.

I'm going to try to get through everybody who signed up to speak tonight, so if we ask people to stay focused.

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

And while Pat is coming up, I will urge people who come up to speak, those cookies are for people brave enough to come speak at City Council.

Freedom of speech for everyone in Charlottesville?

Does city council actually have a realistic concept for fairness in addressing all citizens equally?

Weeks ago, I spoke before this board and honestly relayed the fact in unfortunate circumstance in being unable to fully understand conversation on the public board in all respects.

Ms. Szakos reacted in accurately labeling my speech as xenophobic.

Ms. Szakos later inappropriately reprimanded another citizen and labeling him disagreeable.

Such rants make no sense as there is no proof.

Such attacks by those in authority paint leaders as agitated or confused.

There was a failed attempt to stop and squelch free speech that Ms. Szakos didn't agree with.

Yet the story doesn't end here, oh no.

During recent days the same counselor and others on the record

are on the record for actively defending the right for free speech and illegal camping in Lee Park.

The type of occupation and camping the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled against.

We are witnessing a concerning pattern on council.

There's a lack herein for the equal treatment and fairness of all citizens and groups in the situation, Lee Park and beyond.

City Council ignored the rule of law in tweaking permits and allowing squatters on city parkland.

During the last council meeting this board rolled out the red carpet for hoodlums and it backfired.

The leadership and decision making skills for this collective body garner a failing mark in this case.

Council sanctioned and allowed a very dangerous and costly venture.

A criminal element easily slipped through, young girls were victimized.

Basic rules for health and sanitation were ignored.

Carol Thorpe and Rob Schilling deserve a community service award for accurately predicting a bad ending in this case and the videos on YouTube document a horror for everyone to view.

Mr. Whitehead's piece in yesterday's Daily Progress made many good points regarding free speech.

What was not addressed therein was the huge cost for the taxpayers.

As it stands, taxpayers must assume the responsibility in footing the bill for an orgy in Lee Park.

Irresponsible campers left trash.

The foul-mouthed protesters required a full-time police presence, ending with a grand finale requiring a riot squad.

I believe the lack of oversight by council will go down as one of the worst examples for irresponsible leaders.

Irresponsible Leadership in Charlottesville's History.

In light of the situation of gross negligence and poor governance, I suggest that city council members along with the city manager, Mr. Jones, personally assume the cost associated with the catastrophe in Lee Park.

Joanna Salidas, 129 Goodman Street.

Counselors, I have heard that you are negotiating to immediately build the Full Height Dam at Ragged Mountain in return for a more so-called favorable financial split for the city.

I would like to point out that it is illegal to discuss undisclosed public, business and closed door sessions.

I do not buy for a moment that it is okay for you to substantially

Secretly changed the water plan just because the other side is using financial pressure for leverage.

All five of you agreed on September 20th, 2010 to a true compromise, a 13 foot rise of the old dam at Ragged Mountain.

When you chose to give in to outside pressure,

and overturned that decision.

You spoke of the 30-foot rise as an important component of conservation and compromise, yet now we hear that with no public debate or discussion, this important component may be sacrificed.

Unfortunately, a switch from a 13 to a 30 to a 42-foot dam is only the latest aspect of this epic bait and switch your government has so far allowed to be perpetrated on our citizens when the so-called community

Water supply plan was supported in 2005 by a broad coalition.

It looked remarkably like the Norris plan adopted on September 20th.

It included incremental dam raises, aggressive conservation measures, dredging, the use of Beaver Creek and Chris Green Lakes in the event of drought.

Now though, the currently approved plan has somehow lost each and every one of these features.

Still, some cling to the current plan because they believe the pipeline will be good for the streams.

Please recognize that the pipeline is a fantasy.

It has no engineering, no cost estimates, and no right of way.

Mr. Frederick says that the board has given him no direction on its incorporation in the plan.

So, you are negotiating to build a giant reservoir to be filled from a mountain stream whose water can only be distributed to 20% of the households in the service area.

I have heard some say, don't worry, city ratepayers will get a good deal because we will pay a much smaller percentage of construction costs than county ratepayers.

This is like giving away our house, our home, which we own and live in, in return for paying less rent on a new house that we will share with a friend.

We own Ragged Mountain, Sugar Hollow and South Fork reservoirs.

We have the rights to and control our own water.

If the new dam is built, we will only own a small portion of it at best.

We will lose our investment in our other reservoirs.

We will have only a vote or two on a board that controls our water.

This is not a good deal.

Everything I've said I can back up with documentation, which I would be more than happy to point you to.

I can tell from your public comments and questions that you remain uninformed about important aspects of the current plan and its alternatives.

I believe that each of you wants to leave a positive legacy for Charlottesville.

I ask then that you do some serious due diligence yourselves before it is too late.

I ask that you take the necessary time to make further decisions and not bow to pressure for speed.

It is not acceptable to rush through negotiations to meet the supposed December 31st deadline, for example.

Mr. Frederick asked for that deadline.

You can ask him to ask for another one.

I also ask that you not allow the citizens of this city to be disenfranchised without due process.

The state constitution, state and city code support greater citizen input and transparency than is so far apparent.

Thank you.

Good evening, Brandon Collins, 536 Meade Avenue.

I've lived in Charlottesville all my life.

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

Three minutes is not enough.

You've got a huge agenda and I have a lot to say.

But, you know, first I wanted to talk about, you know, as I was campaigning, one thing I really realized was that when we're looking at housing,

and we come up with these developments and public-private partnerships that if we just have a small portion of those new units in those developments that it's not really affecting our affordable housing crisis and it is a crisis out here.

I know it's a little too late here maybe but I've been watching this Burnett Commons thing come through the council here for months and I just realized two weeks ago that what's going on there is you've got 50 units but only seven of them are going to be affordable and that to me does not qualify as mixed income housing.

What you have is 47 market rate houses and just a sprinkling of affordable housing.

That will help those seven families but it does nothing to deal with the market so as we're building more and more market rate houses it's just playing into the market and as we know living in Charlottesville the market is

Unsustainable if you're somebody like me who pays more than half their income towards rent.

So again, I know it's a little too late, but as you're looking at the zoning thing on your consent agenda, if you wanted to pull that out and kind of rework that and maybe bulk up those seven units to 14 units or even 21 units or

You know, something like that.

Anyways, as you're putting your money and your attention into these things, I hope you'll consider that.

That percentage of affordable units needs to be greatly increased.

And as you're looking at the comprehensive plan and the budget in the year coming up, you know, I hope you'll consider that and really take some adequate steps to address that.

I did have a question about the Dogwood properties which are 57 affordable units that the city had a hand in making that happen but the agreement to make those remain affordable is up this coming year and I'm just kind of curious what the status of that and I would love to hear what you say.

Redevelopment, this MOU that you're going to get tonight, another question is, has there been much input from residents of public housing into that?

I know it seems like a small thing, but it should be important to you.

I also, as you consider redevelopment and public housing, that you consider scheduling a work session for the new counselors coming in in January to discuss redevelopment and to consider a series of our town town hall meetings in all of our public housing neighborhoods.

I also very much would like to support the Commission on Human Rights, Diversity and Race Relations that you're going to be considering tonight and you're going to hear a lot of

Speakers talk about that.

I hope it's an important extension of the dialogue on race.

And I think you need to put your money where your mouth is and give people access to housing justice and workplace justice.

I sent you all a report about race disparity, particularly in juvenile detention, but also mental health services.

And this is something that I hope you will take very seriously.

I haven't heard anything in the media or from you all about this, but if we're serious about confronting the new Jim Crow,

We really need to look at criminal justice, so I hope that's something you consider as you're considering the human rights thing.

Good evening Councilors, Mr. Mayor and Councilors, Collette Hall, 101 Robertson Lane.

Tonight I'd like to speak about item 4, the Human Rights Commission.

Quoting from an article of the November 27th

2011 Daily Progress, quote, the Charlottesville City Council will soon consider a proposal to create a diversity commission with powers to investigate claims of racial discrimination, hold hearings, impose penalty on offenders.

Commissions in Charlottesville are not elected but appointed.

Therefore, they do not have the same legal and fiduciary responsibilities as an elected council.

A council is directly responsible to the electorate, the citizens of Charlottesville.

People have been freely quoting the United States Constitution, and so shall I.

The Fifth Amendment concludes with, no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

A commission does not have the right to formulate and pass laws or punish.

According to the US Constitution and the Virginia Constitution, these are powers of the legislative branch and the judicial branch.

A commission that represents the city is an advisory board.

It is neither an elected legislative body nor a judicial court system.

If you subscribe to an advisory body, the power to impose

The very thought of an advisory body with those powers sends chills up my patriotic and law-abiding spine.

Thank you, Ms. Hahn.

Hello, Stratton Salaitis, 704 B, Graves.

I've been watching some of this Occupy Charlottesville and the rest of the world and I think a couple things to say about that.

One, I would like to see Lee Park become a 24-7 free speech zone.

I don't think that camping is necessary in order to, at least over a long period of time, I'm perfectly happy with the way that it happened in terms of having that be something that happened, but I think in terms of a longer range solution, I think

I don't think that camping is necessarily a part of the right to assemble.

But at the same time, another part of that message was using public space for the most vulnerable of our citizens, for those who have been the most disenfranchised from society.

And I think that this highlights how important public space is.

And I wanted to remind council

that you are potentially set to take action to permanently take away over 200 acres of public space and clear cut it and flood it.

Think about if one thing that we are concerned with is places for people to camp without homes, think about how many people could potentially camp on those 200 acres.

many times, maybe a hundred times bigger than Lee Park.

I mean, I'm sure it's not bigger than say five acres or something, I don't know.

But in any event, so please think about that.

And again, as my sister said, without, and Mr. Huja, I spoke with you about this a couple weeks ago, you said that you were not aware

that until the pipeline is built, we can only distribute the water to 20% of the urban service area from Ragged Mountain.

You said you would look into that to see if it's true, so I'd love to hear if you did check into that and if you have confirmed that until the pipeline is built, that water is just sitting up there.

First of all, we can't distribute it to 80% of the system.

But second of all, until the pipeline is built,

We are still going to be taking that water from Sugar Hollow and not releasing that water into the Mormons.

So essentially, this plan does nothing of what it was said it would do.

So I hope that you all do not give in to the temptation to try to push this thing through during everybody's post-Thanksgiving, pre-New Year's turkey coma, as often happens when council tries to go about its most embarrassing business.

Oh, so another thing is please follow the constitution which says that you're supposed to have a supermajority to give away our land, our public land, and also please follow the city code that says that you are supposed to have a referendum and consult the citizens who own that land before you give it away to the Sproul developers.

Thank you very much and please do not open the Meadow Creek Parkway.

As per the agreement, the city should not have started, I mean pardon me, VDOT in the county should not have started on that project until the city's conditions were met for the road and until there was a full plan.

I'm Brenda Lambert.

I hadn't planned to speak tonight, but I'm glad I did for Kristin's cookies.

I am, because they couldn't be here, reading a letter from two people at the Legal Aid Justice Center.

Legal Aid Justice Center encourages creation of Commission on Human Rights, Diversity and Race Relations, dated today, December 5th.

The Legal Aid Justice Center urges the Charlottesville City Council to adopt the proposal for a Commission on Human Rights, Diversity and Race Relations.

Charlottesville history of state required race discrimination and its history of race discrimination in the massive removal of African American homes and businesses from Vinegar Hill left remnants of race discrimination in housing and land use which continues today.

The closing of the city schools during massive resistance and the barriers to integration also have left areas of unequal education which persist and impact employment opportunities.

At the Legal Aid Justice Center we speak with hundreds of people each year who come for legal advice and representation with employment matters.

a significant portion of which involve allegations of discrimination.

We cannot meet the large number of requests that people from Charlottesville raise.

We encourage the establishment of the commission and the hiring of sufficient staff so that people in Charlottesville can receive advice and investigation of their claims of discrimination as well as redress.

for these problems.

We have participated in the design and the vetting of the Commission and believe the City must have the capacity to address these ongoing issues of discrimination.

We regret that we cannot attend and testify to our support in person.

Gloria Rockhold, 1417 Lester Drive.

I'm a member of the Dialogue on Race steering committee and a voice for the Latino community.

As you know, the Latino community or population is growing in Charlottesville with over 4% Latinos.

Latinos work in a wide spectrum of jobs around the area.

My name is Gloria Maria Rockhold.

I live on 468 Lester Drive.

I am a member of the Executive Conseco de El Diallo de la Raza y un abor Latina.

As you know, in the Latina community in Charlottesville, I am now at 4%.

I hear many stories and we hear bosses not paying Latinos equally as their co-workers.

Other common themes are housing issues, as a person requesting information on rentals, for example, with a heavy accent that does not get accurate information.

De Apartamento por ejemplo y porculpa de lo hacento, no nos dan información de adécualdas.

These issues are common and in the coming months we'll be coming to you with our stories and experiences with racism and racial discrimination in Charlottesville.

My voice brings stories of many Latinos in our community who have faced racial discrimination without any community or institutional recourse.

Estos untemas comunas de muchos y el ojmesa que viene vamos a venir aquí a contarles nuestras historias y esperiencias de racímó.

Mi bostra es solo una historia de muchos en la comunidad latina que nece an enfrentado con racimos y entre recursos a munde reclamar.

The creation of the Commission on Human Rights, Diversity and Race Relations is important to our community as we feel that it will foster communication and a common language of understanding for our community to grow in Charlottesville with equality and peace.

We urge you to enact the commission.

La creación de la comisión de derechos humanos diversidad y relaciones raciales y importante para nuestra comunidad porque va a promo ver comunicación y crear un lenguaje en comun de entendimiento para crecer en Charlottesville con Iwaldad y Paz.

Le imploramos que a puede en la comisión.

Thank you.

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

Just a few weeks ago, large and enthusiastic crowds gathered at Venable and Old Lane High School to remember the victory over massive resistance that was won in those places 50 years ago.

As we celebrate the courage, the heroism of the handful of African American children and their parents and the wisdom and tenacity of the NAACP leaders who framed the strategy for that victory, we mustn't forget the method that was so vital to their success.

and that is they brought the power of government and the force of law to bear on the situation, to break the grip of Jim Crow on our public school system in Charlottesville.

In fact, that's a lesson that was repeated many times during the civil rights movement, that noble words and bold deeds alone do not suffice to defeat discrimination.

The power of government, the force of law are necessary elements in that fight.

Now, ironically, you can see this by looking at what happened just a few blocks away from Venable School and Old Lane High School at that same period 50 years ago when greedy, racist interests conspired with the city government of Charlottesville to drive the residents of Vinegar Hill away and level that property so that profits could be made off that destroyed neighborhood.

Now recently this council to its credit condemned the shameful craven behavior of the city council of that period and apologized to the African American community of Charlottesville for those deeds that were done.

Now you have in your power the ability to go beyond apology.

You have before you, I mean you have the ability I want to say to do the opposite of what that city council did years ago.

You have before you a proposal to create a commission that armed

with anti-discrimination ordinances and the authority to enforce them can bring down the power of government and the force of law on those people among us today who continue to practice discrimination.

You know, every discrimination is an echo of Vinegar Hill, whether it's a large act or a small act of discrimination.

It's time for us to say to those who discriminate in our city today, no more Vinegar Hills in Charlottesville, large or small.

It's time to say to those who discriminate, if you discriminate in our city, you will be called to account.

You will pay the consequences.

So counselors, don't let this opportunity pass.

It may be another generation before it comes up again.

Don't let our noble words and public displays of today turn into empty symbols or worse, hypocritical charades.

Don't let our city down.

Remember the example of Venable School in Old Lane High School and don't forget the sad, sordid tale of Vinegar Hill.

Give us this instrument to fight discrimination.

The ball is in your court.

Keep your eyes on the ball.

Thank you, Mr. Shea.

Jason Cook, 693 Country Green Road Good evening distinguished members of City Council.

I on behalf of myself and my fellow students behind me wish to thank you for this opportunity to speak before you present our opinion on the Meadow Creek Parkway project.

My group and I have been researching this topic for the past couple of months and have found that in our opinion the parkway is an item that the city doesn't need as well as citizens not wanting it.

This parkway project has been on hold for 20 plus years due to several groups who show their opposition by constantly filing lawsuits against the project and further expressing their feelings of not wanting it completed.

This parkway is planned to take away from the existing McIntyre Parkway, a park that has been here since 1926.

At what cost are we to put a few layers of pavement down to destroy part of a park, take away baseball fields, or even a skate park?

I feel that instead of taking away from the community, we should be giving back.

And with all the money being put towards the road, I ask why isn't this money being put towards improving our schools?

We could instead use these funds towards buying new technology, new books, or saving art and music programs, programs that have always been suspended upon uncertainty on whether they will be cut.

Again, I thank you for this opportunity to be heard as well as this experience.

Council members, I'm Gary Elwell.

I'm a local tennis pro and it was much my attention that there's a policy that's in the works to possibly keep private instructors from teaching

private lessons on public facilities.

The issue was teaching at pools, but I'm a tennis pro.

I teach some on public courts, have been charged for 10 years and been teaching that way, about eight years.

There's some other issues, business licenses, liability and that kind of stuff.

I'm not sure how that applies to the pool.

That is an issue.

I'm a certified tennis pro with USPTA.

I have $9 million for liability insurance and I've been teaching in DC and then here.

My concern is that these policies could possibly keep me from teaching.

I came down here after doing quite a bit of research to teach tennis, and I don't take public courts from people.

If the courts are filled, I won't teach, and that's my policy because I'm a tennis player.

and I understand how that works.

So I try to teach at times when the courts aren't full.

If I teach a lesson when a court's available and I finish my lesson, I have another lesson to schedule somebody else, you know, there's people waiting, I won't teach because I feel that that's the right way to do it and I've never had an issue with that.

But this policy

I'm not sure how

you know depending on the availability of courts and stuff.

Now I know a constitutional issue was brought up by the person that made this known to me and I didn't know about that.

I'm not going to go into that.

You probably already have been familiar with that.

One of the other things is along with this stuff, and by the way, I do have a business license to teach tennis in Charlottesville.

I've had it since about eight, nine years now.

There's a service fee of 15% of profits being talked about is another issue.

It seems a lot to me as a self-employed person, you know, taxes now are already up around 45%.

For most people, another 15% tax, that's up over 60%.

That seems like a lot.

And what's really going to happen is more likely you charge, if I get charged 15%, guess where that's going to go?

That's going to go to the student, probably.

I mean, somebody that's playing on a public court would normally pay for free.

Now they want a lesson.

I give them a lesson, then they have to pay extra.

That doesn't seem like it makes much sense to me either.

Right now, if you reserve a court in Charlottesville, it costs you $5 an hour to reserve a court to play.

That would be, to me, if somebody teaching a private tennis lesson has to pay that fee, that'd be fine.

I mean, I'd probably add that on to the lesson, but that makes sense to me.

Also, it's possible that you might not let people like me advertise that I'm teaching lessons.

Now, here it says if you advertise on a non-city website that you're going to teach lessons in public courts, that might be an issue.

You know, I can advertise that I'm teaching lessons.

I don't have to say where I'm teaching them.

And I could get by and just, they call me and I tell them where we're going to have a lesson.

But that really doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

And I talked to Bernie Garrison, who I know quite well about this this week, and one of the other people with the city.

And we feel like you can work this out, but I just want to make it aware that, you know, it's not just a pool issue, there's other people, and I don't know whether, how many other people are doing other lessons on, you know, city territory.

So just, you know, when you, if you make an arbitrary decision, don't just make it for everybody if it doesn't apply.

Okay?

Thank you, sir.

Good evening.

My name is M. Rick Turner.

I am a resident of the city of Charlottesville.

I'm also president of the Albemarle-Shalewville branch of the NAACP, the oldest, most revered civil rights organization in America.

The community depends on the NAACP to speak out against injustice and to support community efforts that focus on the protection of civil rights and enforcement of anti-discrimination laws.

I speak this evening on behalf of the NAACP in support of the proposed establishment of a Commission on Human Rights, Diversity, and Race Relations in the city of Charlottesville.

It's been my observation and experience that in the Charlottesville community, unless a blatant act of racism

Racial discrimination takes place.

Many people think that racism doesn't exist here.

That's because of the sly and subtle nature of structural and institutional racism.

To understand structural racism, think of a framing of a house.

The frame provides the underlying support for the walls, ceilings, and floors.

You can see the framing once the walls and floors have been completed.

As long as a house stands, the way in which the house was framed dictates not only its shape, but also the mobility of the people who live inside the house.

Structuring and institutional racism are often ignored in efforts to address racial inequality, even though they play a primary role in shaping our lives.

affecting access to decent housing, quality education, good jobs, and other life opportunities.

We are often fooled by racism.

Racism is slick.

Oftentimes, institutional and structural racism do not have an identifier perpetrator.

It's embedded in the frame.

What we now have is a dialogue.

The dialogue on race is a fine first step, but we need more.

The proposed Commission on Human Rights, Dignity, and Race Relations complements and builds on the dialogue on race.

It is a much needed follow through effort.

Will the establishment of a commission rid our community of racism?

Of course not.

What many of us who support a commission hope for is that it will make people accountable for acts of injustice and discrimination which violates the civil rights of our citizens.

So when a complaint of racial injustice or any human rights violation is logged, whether it is against a police officer or an office manager in this building, they know that they will be held accountable for their actions.

At the present time, all of the communities, human rights organizations combined, don't have enough juice to hold violators accountable for their actions.

The citizens of Charlottesville are being short-changed, meaning live and work in fear because those who supervise them at some of the city business establishment and institutions dismiss their complaints and treat them disrespectfully.

We get calls from high and low level employees at the University of Virginia, the city, the county, who are frustrated because they feel that their civil rights and human rights are being disrespected or ignored and there's no place they can present their complaints and be taken seriously.

The establishment of a commission on human rights, dignity and race relations in the city of Charlottesville

would move the city's commitment to equity and improve human relations beyond talk to concrete action.

Thank you for giving me this opportunity and giving this matter your full and mindful consideration.

Thank you, Doctor.

My name is Carmen Farfa, I live on the 24th of April, 15th of April, and I am here to support the creation of the Commission of Human Rights, diversity and racial relations.

My name is Carmen Farfan of 2405 Peyton Drive.

I'm here to lend my support to the proposal for the creation of the Commission on Human Rights, Diversity and Race Relations.

I have a long history of racial discrimination lasting many years, including discrimination because of my lack of English, insisting I sign papers in English not knowing what they were.

Bailey Hampton, Homeless, resident of Charlottesville.

I'm here tonight to express my disappointment with counsel with the exception of Kristin Szakos and the city regarding the eviction of Occupy Charlottesville.

We were told that there would be an ongoing dialogue to discuss alternate locations and outside of the one GA that Mayor Norris attended on November 27th, in which he suggested McIntire Park, there was no open dialogue.

We told him that day that we would make our decision the following Tuesday evening.

Tuesday evening we decided that we would pack our belongings and try to shoot for the George Rogers Clark statue park at UVA with a backup plan being the free speech wall downtown McIntyre did not work for the group because of accessibility reasons The following morning we received notice from the city that all belongings had to be cleared out by 6pm At that time we received notice from UVA that we would be charged with trespassing if we tried to occupy that space

We tried to reapply for a permit for Lee Park and were denied.

At that point we tried to apply for a permit for McIntyre so that the homeless would have a safe space to go to and we were denied.

In fact, we were denied for any space.

At that point we started packing, moving and clearing the park.

Several times we were reassured by Mayor Norris that we would be given three days notice to ensure the restoration of the park.

We were not given that notice.

So we did the best we could.

We made piles by the edges of the park and even bought trash stickers.

We did not have the notice to rent a dumpster.

We did not have the notice to reseed the grass.

We did not have the notice we were told we would be given.

On the evening of November 30th at our General Assembly, we were informed that Mayor Norris had said that the free speech wall was an inappropriate place for us to demonstrate our First Amendment rights.

It was at that time that I and several others decided to risk arrest and stay past curfew to try to hold the space.

Proper protocol was not followed in my arrest and one other, and we have filed formal complaints with the police department.

Regardless, even the UN Human Rights Commission recognizes that localities such as Charlottesville are infringing upon citizens' First Amendment rights by disbanding occupations.

To quote, it is clear that occupiers have a right to occupy public spaces as long as that does not severely affect the rights of others.

Quote, Citizens have the right to dissent with the authorities and there is no need to use public force to silence that dissension.

Quote, The demonstrators are treated as if they are presumptively criminal.

Instead of looking at free speech actively as an honored and cherished right that should be supported and facilitated, the reaction of local authorities and police is very frequently to look at it as a crime scene.

Mic Check!

Mr. Mayor, members of council, staff, thank you for providing space to allow me to speak.

My name is Herb Stahl, 1014 Grove Street.

first regarding the incident in which Shelly Stern and at least one other nonviolent protester was injured due to clearly inappropriate and excessive use of police force.

I expect this of police because they are not trained to discriminate between laws that are for the benefit of our citizens and laws that are for the benefit of wealth and power.

Even officers who are hand-picked for their supposed ability to deal with non-violent civil disobedience will become confused, angry, and exercise poor judgement.

Police violence is to be expected.

Second, regarding repeated promises from the Chief of Police that no peaceful non-violent protest or exercising First Amendment rights would be heard, how could anyone make such a promise

after taking an oath of office to uphold and enforce all laws, both laws serving the interests of ordinary citizens and laws that only serve the accumulation of excessive wealth and power.

Such a person would have to be naive in order to serve two masters without being aware of this conflict.

Third, regarding the differences between what members of council say and what they actually do,

As members of the government, you must support the Constitution, which has been corrupted by court decisions and political decisions, influenced or controlled by power and wealth.

You must recognize that you serve not only the citizens of Charlottesville, but, unfortunately, your position in government forces you to do the bidding of unjust power and wealth.

An example, you say you're against big banks whose greedy and corrupt policies are smashing the security of citizens across the country.

Yet you invest our money in greedy and corrupt banks to assist them in funneling the earnings of the 99% into already overstuffed pockets of the corporate elite.

And then you offer a flimsy excuse about why you have to continue serving these corrupt institutions of greed.

My monthly check of $75 is auto-deposited without Mutual of America having an account at my bank.

I don't know why the city can't do that with paying employees.

So in summary, I say to the police, stop your violence.

To the police chief, stop making phony promises.

To the council, take our money out of Bank of America and other greedy big banks.

I'll respectfully pull my name as I think Gailey.

OK.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, I'm John Faults.

I live at 1503 Rugby Road.

I don't know whether I support creating a commission on human rights, diversity and race relations as reported in the progress or not.

It's not at all clear just what problems are going to be solved by that.

It's not at all clear what the function and power of this commission would be.

With a full-time director at $100,000 a year and an investigator at $60,000 a year, plus $40,000 for support staff, will the council be spending $200,000 per year just to fund a feel-good commission?

Or will it have real power?

For example, will the Commission and investigators have the power to subpoena testimony from individuals and firms regarding their activities?

Or will these firms or individuals just be able to ignore talking with the Commission?

The former Congressional Un-American Affairs Committee found the power of subpoena to be a very powerful tool for obtaining compliance.

The paper says the Commission would have the power to punish acts of discrimination.

Would these punishments be liable to appeal and judicial review, as are parking tickets?

Would our Commonwealth Attorney be obligated to prosecute diversity violations should an individual appeal?

Or would the Commission be able to retain its own counsel?

What kinds of acts of dissemination would the Commission be uncovering?

And what might be the nature of these punishments?

Consider, for example, one glaring lack of diversity in our downtown mall and a blatant example of age discrimination.

All of our waiters and waitresses at our many mall restaurants are young.

I love only one waiter who might be over 40 and none who are over 50 or 60.

Trying to get a waitstaff job or any job when you're over 50 years old is extremely difficult.

We have a lot of age discrimination in this city.

I don't know whether or not the commission would choose to act on this example of discrimination, but let's suppose it did.

Could it force local restaurants to advertise for older waitstaff and find those without a sufficient number?

Spending $200,000 a year to fund a toothless tiger without real power just so we can say we're in favor of human rights and diversity seems nonsensical.

Either create a commission with real power or apply these excess monies to something like our city's workers' retirement fund, which is far from fully funded.

I urge City Council to defer any decision until you clearly explain to the public why we need this proposed commission and what its function, scope and power will be.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Michael Sloan, I'm homeless, and I come on behalf of the homeless here in Charlottesville.

As I spoke before last city council, the situation is bad.

It's going to get worse.

It's not going to get any better.

It's going to be cold this winter.

What we're going to do about the people that won't go to patching, that won't go to SRO when SRO is open,

I've asked before to do something about this so people can be warm and safe for the winter.

And I come to you again and ask that you do this.

You have a big field in the back of Riverside Park that would be perfect for a tent city.

The armory, they have all the equipment that would be necessary to provide a tent city for these people to give them

That frees up churches, that frees up a lot of funds.

Some of those funds can be diverted to the tent city.

Employment for the homeless because people complain about pain handling.

I walk the streets of Charlottesville every day.

I'm all over.

You know that yourself, Mr. Norris.

There's trash in the streets, leaves everywhere.

Workforce, they don't have staff at the jail bringing workforce out to clean the streets.

You use machines, that's going to cost a lot of money.

Why not employ some of the homeless through Haven?

Get them out there with rakes and bags of clean streets.

Give them minimum wage.

Do something to help the homeless in Charlottesville.

Don't leave them out there unnoticed.

Please, I beg you, do something with that field in the back of the park and give them a good place.

Ask the Army to put up the equipment

They have kitchen equipment.

Everything needed to provide a tent city.

It's needed.

That's all there is to it.

You're going to let people lay out there and freeze, lose limbs, maybe lose their lives.

Not everybody's going to go to Patrick and Mr. Norris.

That's the sad state of affairs.

People like me cannot be in that institutional type environment.

People like me have pets, can't go there because of that.

SRO is the same thing.

Don't leave them out there.

That's because they won't go to passion because they can't go to SRO or whatever.

Try to find something

to help these people, please.

That's all I ask.

I try to find a way to help.

Good evening.

My name is Jeffrey Fogel.

I reside at 215 Spruce Street.

Frankly, I'd like to start off giving a piece of my mind to the Council for its treatment of Occupy Charlottesville.

But frankly, that's not why I'm here tonight.

I'm here to urge you to adopt the Commission on Human Rights.

Now, this commission has two aspects to it.

One has to do with the investigation and resolution of individual complaints of discrimination involving housing and employment and so on.

And frankly, I believe if you read the Commission's report,

You'll see that it has a mechanism for enforcement.

You'll see that it has a mechanism to subpoena people to come to it.

But I want to speak about the second part of this commission, which will deal with issues involving civil rights in our community in a more broad sense, the kinds of issues I think that got started with the dialogue from race.

And let me start by saying something that I hope is not a surprise to any of you.

Racism is alive and well in Charlottesville.

I don't know how many of you have seen, Brandon made reference to it, a report that was prepared for the Charlottesville Albemarle Commission on Children and Families Task Force on Race Disparity and Disproportionality in Youth Services.

Now this was presented six months ago.

and was adopted by the Commission some three months ago.

Hasn't been a word about this.

Now what this document demonstrates and it was the study was performed by a group of people at the University of Virginia Department of Psychology that children who are of a different color skin than white are adversely treated in our criminal justice system and in our juvenile justice system and that is the fact without any doubt whatsoever.

Some of the relevant quick statistics, African American youth are over-represented in arrest rates, referral to intake, petition, diverted, probation, detention and confinement.

In Charlottesville, Caucasian youth are more than four times more likely to be diverted from the juvenile justice system and that's taking into account all potential risk factors that these researchers are able to identify with respect to juvenile justice.

This is nothing but pure and unadulterated racism.

Now how are we going to get to the bottom of this?

This was presented to the commission.

Since this report was presented to the commission, the staff of that commission has been reduced from six to one and is incapable of really doing anything about this.

It is beholden on this city council to do something about this.

This is outright

unmistakable racism and we have children in our community suffering from that direct racism at every aspect of the criminal justice system that our young people interface with.

And that is unfortunately with the police department, with intake systems, with the court system that is making decisions about referring young people either for court proceedings or for diversion, our detention systems as well.

This is out of control.

This is not a study.

What this is is an indictment, an indictment of the juvenile justice system in Charlottesville and it's beholden on this body because no other body has the capacity and the resources to do so and no other body is a representative body that can do so.

It is incumbent upon this body to take it up.

Now, it is difficult, I understand, for commissioners to take up all of the potential issues that exist within a particular community ranging from water supply

to transportation and so on.

And that thereby lies the importance of an organization like the Commission on Human Rights.

They can, as a public entity, hold hearings, shine light on the problem and delve a little more closely into precisely where is all of this discrepancy and racial disparity occurring in that system and can we put some either resources, public pressure or public light in order to change that system.

But this is one of the critical aspects I think

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, Mr.

Manager, members of the City Council, my name is Timothy Halbert.

I live at 2246 Brandywine Drive in the City of Charlottesville.

I work for the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce, which is located here in the City of Charlottesville for the last 98 plus years.

I'm here to talk on two issues.

One is on the Med Creek Parkway project, which is wholly in the county and is ready to be open.

VDOT, as you know, is certified as safe and the decision to open it does not lie with the City Council, it does not lie with the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, it lies with VDOT.

The good news is that

The city does have an opportunity to fix a problem that it has and should have fixed years ago, which is the turning radius at Melbourne and Park.

It's a problem that exists today.

It exists five or ten years ago.

There's no city plans to fix it.

Now we have a city plan to fix it and it is part of the consensus to move forward with Meadow Creek Parkway.

So I urge you to do that.

Secondly, our Chamber of Commerce was fully engaged in the dialogue and race at every juncture and as you may or may not know we are very active with the economic work group for the formation of the, the reformation of the Minority Business Council which we're very excited about and we're going to bring some significant energy to that.

The subject, which comes from another part of the dialogue on race, is for the proposed creation of a Human Rights Commission, which certainly sounds very good.

The question is, what is the goal, and Mr. Faulk sort of stole some of my thunder, and I'm not going to repeat it because you want to get on with the rest of the meeting, but the question is,

What is the goal of the city here?

The goal of the city should be to eliminate racism wherever it is and what's the best mechanism?

I'm not certain that spending three quarters of a million dollars over the next three years on a commission with

really no history and no teeth will accomplish that.

What if you gave three quarters of a million dollars to the Legal Aid Justice Center which knows what it's doing and has an infrastructure already in place.

That might be a better way to accomplish the same goals.

The questions that Mr. Faltz raised are legitimate.

And so the question is to you is what would be the unintended consequences of creating a high commission

politically appointed high commission with really no teeth unless you add the teeth and then you've got to figure out how that works in the context of what's going on, what your role and what your abilities are within the context of the state constitution.

So I would urge you to go methodically through that exercise and find the best mechanism and I'm not certain that it's this commission.

That is not the formal position of the Chamber of Commerce.

That's my view today.

I've had a lot of concerns raised with us.

We may opine at some point in the future.

Thank you, Mr. Halbert.

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

We're now going to turn the meeting over to council member responses to matters by the public.

Who would like to get us started?

We obviously had a lot of people who had some comments on the Commission, so since that's an agenda, I know we'll all be talking about this.

I'm actually going to, you know, the mayor is a focal point for all the events surrounding Occupy Charlottesville.

And, you know, I don't often sit up here and stick up for Mayor Norris, and I hope this doesn't backfire as a plan.

but I like to think that I think Dave has a long history of compassionate involvement in the community through Pacham, through Big Brothers, Big Sisters and I think he's very aware of the pros and cons of different ways to proceed forward and in my view, I think he really worked really hard to try to find a way in which the residents of downtown Charlottesville could get their park back

and that Occupy Charlottesville could continue to have a meaningful free speech role.

I think a couple of the items that people talked about are on our agenda and I'm going to save most of what I have for that time.

Occupy Charlottesville is not on our agenda and I mean you all know that I feel very strongly about the application of the First Amendment to this issue.

I am actually personally just

Beyond that, relieved that people are not sleeping outside as it gets colder, but I think that it's not something that the city should be doing is to tell people that that's not part of their speech.

So I continue to feel that way.

However, I think that it's important to remember that the city is not the enemy.

The city is not what, you know, I think that people who

were involved in the events of last Tuesday.

We're not doing it because they hate you or because it's a police state.

I think that there are people of good will trying to do the right thing.

And although I disagree with how it came down, I think these are not

people who did this for evil reasons and I just hope that that you understand these are difficult decisions and that we're really I think all trying to do the right thing.

And I'd just like to thank a couple of folks who came and spoke representing what I would consider underrepresented people in our city council meetings to Jason Cook and your classmates.

Are you still here?

Oh, I missed them.

I really enjoy it when younger folks come and get involved and I think it speaks well for their future that they're already feeling a need to speak out to us and tell us what we should be doing.

I think that we need to hear from them.

Also, to Senora Farfan,

Thank you for coming.

I know it's intimidating to come and speak in Spanish and have an interpreter, and I just want you to know that I may not have understood every word, but I understood what you said, and I thank you for coming.

Just a couple of comments to have staff follow up with Gary Elwell in terms of the policy is something that we're still developing and I mentioned him because he used the word unintended consequences and

My philosophy about public comment has been happy people give you encouragement and unhappy people give you ideas.

And so to Pat and Bailey, you two couldn't have given more different views in watching the same scenario kind of unfold.

Pat, I will say that at the time that I made the decision about encouraging Occupy, I felt that was the best decision to make.

And I stand by my vote.

And at the time, the timeframe was to have everything unfold by Thanksgiving.

And I thought that was a reasonable request.

But as time evolved,

There were things that the group learned that they brought back to council that they wanted to change.

And there was an opportunity to see if council would be interested in extending the time.

So to Bailey, when I said that, I didn't think that was an appropriate thing to do at that time.

I stand by that decision and thought that was the right thing to do.

I'm not, and I'll stand by that because the bottom line is when you're in this position you have to do the best that you can, you do the best that you can and I've always given everything prayerful consideration.

I'm just glad that we've had to have conversations about some of the difficult social issues that have never been brought to council in this way ever.

We have spent 40 years talking about a road.

And we generally hear things about water, transportation, roads, because those are abstract issues that may have emotionally-laden comments, but for the most part we don't hear about these issues.

I just hope that

as a result of all this.

And I'm not sure where this will lead to, but that the conversation just doesn't end here.

That this movement is not just a moment.

And that not only do we continue to hear from the Baileys of the world, but we need to hear from the Pats of the world, too.

Because all of those opinions do matter.

Mr. Huja?

I just wanted to make some comments about the Occupy movement and I was very greatly impressed by their comments in the last meeting and I'm sympathetic to their desires in many ways and I think the city did try to accommodate them in Lee Park but their balance had to be achieved somewhere and I hope that

their movement will continue in spite of movement is not the stance, movement is human beings.

I wanted to follow up on a couple of comments first that Mr. Collins, Mr. Brandon Collins made.

I would like to get a report from staff, not necessarily tonight, but soon on the status of the Dogwood properties.

That was a strategic investment the city made with housing dollars to help preserve those units and I know the commitment at the time was that as long as there was city money in that project that they would

that stay affordable.

And so I just want to get a follow up on that maybe at our next meeting.

And also I really like the idea about once the new council is in place about having a work session on redevelopment, just so we can all make sure we're on the same page.

And I see Ms. Smith nodding her head over there.

I guess I'm a little bit concerned about the comments from Mr. Elwell because I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater and if we have a policy that's going to make it difficult or impossible for somebody like Mr. Elwell who's trying to work well within the system and I don't want to

I want to make sure that the policy is crafted in a way that we're not allowing people to abuse the system but accommodating somebody who's trying to work well within the system.

Thank you.

Let's see here.

I'll probably refrain from the most part.

I think a lot has already been said about the Occupy movement and I think there's some good comments that were made.

I do want to give Mr. Jones a chance to follow up because somebody mentioned the woman who filed the complaint and I'd just like to have Mr. Jones follow up in terms of what the process is going to be for

investigating that.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

We are taking this very seriously.

Actually, the investigation into the concerns actually began that night.

Discussions took place that night.

We have interviewed the folks who filed the complaint, at least in one of those situations.

I'm sure, Chief, you have additional information to add to that.

Chief Wong goes here.

But we are taking this very seriously.

We are doing an investigation.

We hope to have that wrapped up pretty soon.

And you know, Mr. Mayor, I also wanted to take a moment to thank Chief Longo and his officers for the professional manner in which they handled themselves on Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

They performed admirably in a very difficult situation and before, during, and after

The curfew was reinstated that evening.

They worked with folks during the occupation.

They had officers there on a fairly regular basis establishing relationships.

They were very responsive to calls for service during the occupation, and I think they did their best to respond in a very professional manner.

on Wednesday night and into early Thursday morning, in a very difficult situation that they found themselves in.

Well, you stole my thunder, Mr. Mayor.

I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor.

I was going to say essentially the same thing, so thank you.

And I know it was a difficult environment to be in, but I do agree that your officers handled themselves very professionally, so thank you very much.

I'm not going to rehash some of the other things that I think I agree with Mr. Huja.

I think the focus now is on what happens from here forward.

And we've obviously got a situation we're looking into and taking that seriously.

But really the critical issue now is what happens from here forward.

And I do think Occupy Charlottesville has a lot to offer this community.

Alright, we are now going to move on to our agenda.

We have a consent agenda tonight, a number of items on our consent agenda.

Item A, the minutes of November 7th and November 10th.

Item B, an appropriation State Criminal Alien Assistance Program grant, $16,738, second of two readings.

Item C, an appropriation Charlottesville Police Foundation contribution, $2,376.14, second of two readings.

Item D, an appropriation Bulletproof Partnership DOJ grant, $4,392.92, second of two readings.

Item E, appropriation proceeds $250,000 from sale of 409 Stadium Road, second of two readings.

Item F, appropriation of fiscal year 2011 year-end appropriation, second of two readings.

Item G, appropriation highway safety grant, $422,869, first of two readings.

Item H, Reimbursement for Extradition, $6,959.22, first of two readings.

Item I, Appropriation, Reimbursement for Voting Machines, $7,920.00, first of two readings.

Item J, Resolution, Acceptance of Sculpture in McIntire Park, first of one reading.

Item K, Resolution, Business Activity Policy for Parks and Recreation Facilities, first to one reading.

Item L, Resolution, Acquisition of Land on Jefferson Park Circle, first to one reading.

Item M, Resolution, University Community Next Generation Innovation Project, first to one reading.

Item N, Ordinance, Abandoned Gas Line Easement in Pavilion Subdivision in Albemarle County, Second of Two Readings.

And Item O, Ordinance, Rezone Property at Elliott Avenue, Burnett Street, and Langford Avenue to PUD, First of Two Readings.

I personally would like to call Item F, regarding Fiscal Year 2000, Year in Appropriation, to be able to consider a proposal that came forward from a citizen this weekend regarding use of some of those surplus dollars.

and we also have, I believe there's also a request to pull item K, a resolution business activity policy for parks and recreation facilities.

I would like to make the motion after expressing my delight for the donation of the sculpture in McIntire Park.

That dinosaur, whatever it is, has given me great joy and I like the terms in which it's being donated to that it doesn't bring us a whole lot of maintenance budget and if we choose to do something else with that space we can, but for the moment it's there and I'm happy.

Thank you.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Hearing none, please indicate your vote.

Motion carries unanimously.

All right.

Next item on our agenda is a public hearing in ordinance relating to neighborhood development services fee schedule changes before tonight's first of two readings.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council.

This item is before you.

It's actually

on the regular agenda because any fee changes require a public hearing.

So it started off as something fairly simple and we started trying to pull all the myriad of changes that have been made to our fees over the last many years into one document and realized we had some things in there that didn't make sense and so we're trying to clean it up a little bit.

Let me run through them just very briefly.

The first is we put in a new computer system and we found that many many cities around the state when they do that and go to computerized permitting have a permit maintenance fee that they put on to help pay for the maintenance of that and eventually upgrades to the system so the first you see is simply a

a graduated fee that's based on the value of the permit which is a small percentage of any permit to help pay that fee.

Elevator maintenance fee, we handle all the elevator inspections for all the elevators in the city, we coordinate those and have to keep records and have no current fee and this is, it's a lot of time and a lot of effort and so we would like to get something to cover the cost of doing that.

Currently we also offer, our building official is very good at what are called building code modifications.

We are a very old city and a lot of our buildings are very old and sometimes people just can't meet the current building code and they'll bring in a request to modify the code.

It's permitted by the building code.

There are fees allowed per the building code.

and they require quite a bit of research and time so we'd like to get something again for that so we get some that are kind of frivolous where we don't charge anything and they could make a decision and do it and we think this will cover the legitimate cost and cut out maybe some of the frivolous kind of requests that we get.

The other are special events, we have from time to time

Special events occur at locations that are not approved for assembly and we'll get a call generally at the last minute, have to send fire crews ourselves out there and do inspections to make sure that that facility is code compliant or generally what we have to do is tell them how they can become code compliant and it takes a lot of time and we feel like that there again needs to be something to cover that cost.

One question I think had been raised is why

does it go up based on the size of the group and the reason is that the building code issues become much more complex as the size of the group goes up.

Assembly in the code is based on the size of the group primarily and there are different code requirements.

You go 0 to 50 and you have some requirements then you start adding sprinkling, ingress, egress, restroom facilities and all those things and we have to involve the fire department, the health department and a lot of times a lot of different folks.

and then the vendor fees is one.

The rest of these are really pretty much cleaning things up.

The vendor fees, we're just asking you to codify what we thought we had approved, what we actually had approved about four years ago.

We had a conversation.

We'd come to you to raise the fees.

You didn't want to raise them.

So we set the fees and then somehow in a subsequent change to other things, the vendor fees got

showed up as having a different amount.

We've been charging the 800 and 600 that are shown here for a number of years and everybody's used to it, don't have any issues.

We're not asking to raise those, we're just trying to get straight what we are currently charging.

Again, we found an error on our special use permits.

On the site plans, we are, again, just trying to clarify those, some changes.

We have on the preliminary residential and the final administrative commission review, somehow those fees got inverted.

We were charging more for an administrative review than we were for a commission review, which was crazy.

So we just wanted to fix that.

And then we've added a couple.

One is we've had some requests that, can we do a combined preliminary and final together?

and it's a more complex, a little bit more complex review and we said sure, we'll just put one fee in there but we do it one time, we still send the notices, we still have the public process but we can get streamlined development a little bit by doing that and then we also don't have anything specifically for if a utility line's going in, it's not as complex a review but instead of charging a utility, the regular site plan fee because we're not reviewing any buildings, generally we're just reviewing

the utility work and making sure there are no conflicts, we thought we'd create a special fee for just that kind of work and one where there's no impervious surface created.

Sometimes we get them, there are landscape changes, things of that nature which are much simpler to review but we want to be able to process them and so those are aimed at trying to get more realistic and lower the cost on certain things.

And then on our BAR and ERB reviews,

We currently have a fee of $3.50 for those reviews and then we charge for the mailing cost on them and what we realize is that's more of an administrative headache than it is to collect it so we said let's just raise it $25 that's about the average of what we collect from people after the fact after we do all the mailings and just charge that and that way they don't have the hassle of coming back we don't have to to bill them and so

it's costing us more than we were collecting to go through the process.

Primarily these are housekeeping other than the addition that I talked about of the permanent maintenance and the special event.

Thank you Mr. Almerich.

Compared to the old market fees, how do we raise?

Thank you.

Okay, so this is less than for them if they're doing them together.

It's kind of an incentive to get people to do it at the same time?

On the special event inspections, can you give examples of that and what kind of groups?

My only concern is are we going to ask a fee of $200 or $300 that in cases would be prohibited given the nature of the event?

I have no idea.

I think the most recent one and probably the worst case scenario we had was Taste of Seaville a few months ago.

We didn't know about it until the afternoon of and they had numerous potential fire code violations, health violations, and so we put a lot of manpower into trying to help them work through that and resolve those issues so that that event could go on four or five hours after we found out about it.

We're hoping by having a fee and we'd send that out and people know about it that we get those on the front end too.

That's like a big example.

That one is the biggest one.

Generally, I can't think of any specifics.

I know we've got one venue that has done that to us on a time or two.

Most times they go into a place that's already approved for assembly, and so it's not a problem.

It's when they go, they decide they want to go to the Frank X property, which is one that we had a problem several years ago where before it was approved, we'd have different groups that would show up there at all size of events, and that was just basically a warehouse that was used for that reason and hadn't been approved for assembly.

It doesn't happen a lot.

It just happens maybe once or twice a year that we get

I don't think they have those fees in place.

Oh the rest of things are other than the permit maintenance fee I'm not aware of them having that but I do know that they're

You know, we'll still, even with that tacked on, we'll still be considerably less than what it cost you to develop in the county.

We're just identifying one that we can earmark for that purpose.

Some of those were where those particular fees were, and that's why that was a comparison.

Any other questions for Ms. Tolbert before we open the public hearing?

All right, thank you, Ms. Tolbert.

We are now going to open the public hearing on this matter.

Nobody has signed up to speak.

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

Good evening Mr. Mayor, Neil Williamson, 550 Hillsdale Drive with the Free Enterprise Forum.

Most of these items as you've heard are housekeeping items.

There's one that raises a little bit of concern, the idea of online permitting and maintenance fee.

When online permitting came about many years ago, it was really a cost savings.

The city would save money because there wouldn't be paper to shuffle.

The developer would save money because there was an easier way to track and move through.

It seems as though this is a shared savings and the cost should be a shared cost.

I was not able to track down the backup to this particular charge, but it would seem as though that's a cost of doing business for the city that results in staff savings.

Rather than having someone walk in and having to have personnel deal directly with an individual, you have a cost savings of doing it online.

It's a savings that's shared, however I think this cost should be shared as well.

Thank you, Mr. Williamson.

Anybody else like to speak?

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

Mr. Tolbert, do you want to comment on that?

I would.

This is not necessarily online permitting that we're doing.

We have a system that maintains our files and we haven't gotten, unfortunately, too online permitting.

We still have to deal with every individual that comes through and love doing that.

I'd almost hate to see online permitting.

Scheduling of inspections, some of those things, maybe eventually.

But again, this is to maintain the system that we operate with.

We could have come to you and said let's up our fees by 5% and not identified it for that.

We haven't raised those fees in several years on building permits, but we thought this is something to look at that we can capture exactly how much we're getting and while we won't put it aside to save, we'll be able to when we have to pay that several thousand dollar a year maintenance fee on the system and then when we have to upgrade it at the cost of a couple hundred thousand ten years from now,

Thank you Mr. Taylor.

Comments, questions from counselors?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

It will carry forward to our next meeting for a second reading.

Thank you, Mr. Tolbert.

Next item is a report, city market update.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of council.

This evening I wanted to try and do a couple of things, give you a brief update about some activities regarding the city market since the city market task force and council work session this past summer.

as well

meeting and work session with you regarding some improvements to the market that staff have made additions of tables and benches and some tents for shade for folks to have a place to sit and eat during the market.

We were also working to improve the old H&R Block building to allow some more livable space for our market masters and site for some folks space for custodial staff that work on the downtown mall.

The third recommendation that came out of the task force was to establish a research partnership with the university for the purpose of collecting, correlating and visualizing data for decision making.

And one of the things that was happening concurrently with the task force and so forth was the Jefferson Public Citizen's survey work.

I'd like to invite Carla Jones up.

Good evening Mr. Mayor and council members.

Hi, I'm Natalie Roper and I'm a third year UVA.

So we're all members of a Jefferson Public Citizens team.

The Jefferson Public Citizens program is a fairly new initiative at the University of Virginia that partners student teams made of undergraduate students, a graduate student, a faculty advisor and a community partner.

Our team focused on the issues around the city market and conducted a survey of current market patrons.

We worked very closely with Market Central with

Cecile Gorham and Kathy Kilday which were awesome community partners.

We'd really like to thank them for their work with us.

You all in your packets received kind of a brief document that talks a little bit about the methodology.

We wanted to briefly go over that.

We surveyed for seven consecutive weeks with the first week being a pilot.

We did completely randomized survey collections with 261 randomized responses with 407 responses

in total.

We also did population counts and estimated that approximately a little over 5,000 people attend the market every week.

We, in addition, gave out disposable cameras and had market patrons take pictures of things that they enjoy at the market and then we displayed those from week to week.

As an incentive for taking the survey, people entered a raffle for $25 gift certificates to the market and we gave away eight of those as a response.

We also took note of everyone who refused the survey and reasons why.

We then launched a marketing campaign through our local newspapers, television outlets, and radio stations.

In October, we presented to the vendors at the Vendor Appreciation Day.

We then, later on in the middle of November, held a vendor listening session and two community listening sessions.

How these kind of worked was we gave a brief 15-minute presentation and then opened it up for the community to kind of give us feedback on certain topic areas and really workshop through some of those issues.

All right, so we know all of you have already received our survey as well as the results, but we kind of wanted to go over some of the things that we saw to be most pertinent, especially looking forward towards the future growth of the market.

The first one being the fact that the average person going to the market is spending between $21, $30, and if you multiply that by the 5,000 people going every week, you see what an impact the market has on our local economy.

Furthermore, looking into the market advertisement, we asked a question on our survey that said, you know, how did you find out about the market?

And we found that a lot of people just said, you know, from a friend or I've just always been going or I don't remember.

So while that's good and it's a continuation through word of mouth, if we want to expand the usership of the market, kind of expanding advertisement to beyond just the little sign that you see on Market Street advertising advertisement.

And then the last point we had was the fact that everybody kind of threw comments on our survey as well as the questions that they answered saying that the market's just not a place where they go to buy food.

It's a place where they go and they utilize it as a community space, as a place to go with friends, and as a place to talk to vendors and spend their Saturday.

But also noting that that's not a community space for the whole community, but a very specific portion of it.

Great.

So three main points that we saw as a theme through the vendor listening session and the community listening sessions were location, price, and transparency.

So location, it was a general consensus that downtown was, the current location was popular and well liked.

However,

There were comments on the importance of changes to this location, importance of seating, and as Ryan mentioned earlier, they've already been working on and current changes, sorry, continuing those changes.

In terms of price, both concerns of a price perception and the actual price, some people aren't coming to the market currently due to a perception that

The prices are too expensive.

Also, for current customers, some feel that prices are out of their reach.

In terms of transparency, this is both in transparency of product and of rules and regulations of the market.

At the vendor listening session, this was a very popular comment that there was a concern over transparency of how the food was being produced, where it was being produced, and bios of the farmers, and having this be very clear to the customer was really important.

In terms of transparency of regulations, vendors were

Eager to mention that they felt that input would be important in terms of creating these regulations for the city market and also that if there are these regulations, the importance of enforcing them

Thank you so much for sharing.

instrument that we could use to survey businesses downtown to try to get at the answer of what is the economic impact to the businesses downtown from the market.

We have this empirical data now about market customers.

We need to find out that other ancillary data about businesses downtown and how the market impacts them.

And there are some other questions in your council packet that we're trying to get the answers to in this survey work.

How can the market better attract more underserved populations and reflect the ethnic and cultural diversity of the city?

How do we make decisions about market growth?

Vendors need to make decisions as well as marketers and farmers.

How do we do that?

And this work is going to continue into next year to develop this and get some of that survey work completed so we have a better idea about how much the market really is impacting the city.

One of the follow-up lines of inquiry is a sort of a parallel survey on people who aren't patronizing the market and why not, is that correct?

Well, I just want to start by thanking you guys for getting involved.

I'm a big fan of the Jefferson Public Citizen program and the university and the students and faculty there and grad students and undergrads are an untapped resource and it's great to see you guys getting involved and being of such valuable assistance to

Market Central and the City Market Task Force and the staff.

So thank you for that.

This is very valuable information.

And I know it's already informing how we operate the market now and certainly will inform changes and improvements in the market in the future.

I have one specific question on page 17 of your report.

There was a question that I bet has all sorts of interesting information for us, but it wasn't on here.

It was, please enter the following information about where you live.

City, town, state, zip.

And it just said how many people answered the question, not what the answers were.

We had some that was done very specifically for the institutional review board to avoid some extra hoops but we understand that limitation of the study and just to give you a little bit of insight into some of the customers we did find that there are quite a bit of tourists that come to the market which was an exciting information I know some zip codes were as far away as Florida so

Yeah, that too would be really interesting to find out how many, you know, what portion of people are coming from out of town.

But thank you so much for doing that.

Other comments?

I guess what I appreciate about the report is that we've been hearing a lot of anecdotal stories over the years and we've been hearing a lot of opinions and people are feeling strongly about the market but this is, I'm glad we're getting objective data in this actual research being done and so I think this will be the beginning of answering a lot of the questions and I really appreciate the attention you're giving to the

Because one of the other things that stands out in this report is the lack of diversity of the patrons both ethnically and socioeconomically.

There's a memo in your packet from Chris Engel with our Economic Development Office kind of talking about the whole market district concept in this

area of town.

He's much closer to this than I. Yeah, so in your packet there's a brief kind of synopsis of our initial opinions of the market district concept and it's really premature to weigh in on it, you know, conclusively at this point.

I did give you some snapshots of what varying levels of development would potentially, how they would impact the city in terms of returns, tax dollars and things of that nature.

But the market district concept is a bit nebulous and one of these notions that sounds good and if you recall back to the design competition that was done in 2007,

the winning entry incorporated the market on a significant level.

I'm not quite sure it accommodated the market that's there today or any potential growth but that would be one of the concerns in going forward would be

you know accommodating any growth along with development at that site.

You know the city owns the current site and to dedicate it to a market exclusively would forego any future opportunity at development.

The design competition concept looked at both blocks which includes three property owners and obviously gets a bit more complex.

We do believe there is an opportunity to do a development, a mixed use urban development that adds to the fabric of the downtown as we've always envisioned and incorporate some level of what you currently see in the market.

What that level would be and what it would look like I think are kind of yet to be determined

factors beyond many of our controls including the vendors and what they're interested in as well as consumers and what they're interested in.

Typically a market district is something that's along the chain of evolution is way over here.

Seven days a week operation, air conditioned buildings, rents and things of that nature.

You know, the current market is one day a week, three quarters of the year, for four or five hours a day, so there's a lot of difference between those two.

Significant amount of time and obviously development would need to occur to truly get to

the market district concept.

I guess what I really want to get at is sort of where do we go from here in terms of exploring this idea further.

We heard the report from the task force.

Well, I think the way we move the ball down the field is to

get some more empirical data about is a market district viable within our market, the market meaning let's say the region.

Is there enough

interest and buying power and so forth within the market to support a market district on this type of scale that Chris described, seven days a week, you know, multiple, a long time during the day, you know, with dedicated buildings and so forth.

And I think we're developing that kind of survey instrument with the university staff right now, separate from the work that the citizens will be doing.

In order to make a determination, does this make

financial sense from a city's perspective and a potential developer's perspective, does a market district really work?

And what is the market feasibility of that?

I'd just like to offer a comment, but since the next time this comes here I don't think I'll be sitting here.

I'm a little worried that we might be taking a narrow view of the benefits of a market district or of committing to a permanent home downtown to the market.

And in particular,

You know I'd be curious to see is there some way of talking to people who chose to invest downtown in terms of a residence and the impact of having a walkable weekly market for much of the year has had on making

downtown Charlottesville be a place where people want to buy a condo or a home or live in an apartment.

There's an article in New York Times this Sunday talking about the issue.

And the flip side of that is when I got on city council the one kind of you know

development proposal that I saw sketches of way back in 2004 or so was somewhat appalling and I think it was you know it was it was unimaginative blocky and I think there's also the other direction we can go where we end up with taking this great space and someone develops it but it's not something that actually lends itself to downtown being

I wanted to make one comment.

I just want to say I often don't get up here and support David Brown, but I fully agree with his comments and I do think the more that I've kicked around in my own head the recommendations that came out of the task force

The more and more intrigued I am about the idea of exactly what Dr. Brown is talking about, about an asset, you know, a mixed use kind of development where it allows the market to grow and thrive while providing for some commercial and potentially residential infill on that site as well.

For me, as I think is fairly obvious, it's not going to work on the one site that we own.

I don't see that happening.

You can't have a market district on a tiny little postage stamp of a parking lot.

and so it really needs to include both of those lots, all of those lots and I guess that's from day one been the big question mark is whether or not we're going to have access to the entirety of the site and I don't know if that's, obviously that's not something we can necessarily answer tonight but I hope we continue to explore it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you Mr. Mayor, Members of Council.

The Dialogue on Race Steering Committee is requesting that the City Council consider forming the Charlottesville Commission on Human Rights, Diversity and Race Relations with the intention of addressing concerns over discrimination in our community.

The proposed Commission would have investigative and enforcement capabilities, be engaged in education and prevention activities, and in some capacity continue the work of the Dialogue on Race.

As proposed, the commission would be comprised of seven members who would be appointed by the city council.

The commission would be staffed by an executive director, an investigator, and an administrative assistant.

And the proposal calls for the staff to report to the city manager.

After reviewing the proposal, staff has developed a list of follow-up questions and concerns.

And these are just a few of those that we've identified so far and we believe need to be addressed before proceeding with the final decision on the commission.

First, we do need to determine what type of commission this will be.

There are different models that are out there.

We're investigating those models.

The dialogue and race action team that has proposed this did a lot of due diligence and research and we're following up on that right now.

Second, we need to determine whether enabling legislation is needed to provide the City of Charlottesville with the authority.

It needs to establish this type of commission.

Other localities have asked for that type of enabling legislation and received that.

And City Attorney Brown can address that further in a moment.

Third, we need to determine to the best of our abilities the level of need in our community for this type of commission and that includes engaging some of the groups that came to speak before us tonight.

Once again, I think the action team did an excellent job of engaging those organizations.

We need to follow up as well to try to get an understanding of how much need is out there for these types of issues.

and you know I believe that the proponents of the proposal will say that we don't know the complete level of need at this point and we at some point would have a better understanding of that once you have a commission and an investigator that's up and running so we need to further investigate that.

and of course we do need to weigh the potential cost of this commission versus other needs in our community and other budgetary decisions that the city council has to make and will be making over the course, discussing over the course of the next four to five months or so as we head into the budget season.

So all those things need to be considered and there are a host of other questions that have come up that I've spoken with the city attorney about, some other staff members about and of course you heard in public comment tonight as well.

So we believe that we do need some additional research.

We do need some additional time to have those questions answered.

We have started that process.

We've been engaging with our counterparts in other jurisdictions.

I know the city attorney has reached out to others.

I've done the same thing with county executives and city managers in other parts of the state especially.

We're really kind of focused on the state of Virginia because we do have several different models in the state to

to choose from, including, of course, the model that's been proposed by the dialogue on race steering committee and the action team.

So we believe we do need some more time.

All right.

Thank you, Mr. Jones.

I have a couple of questions to start with.

Both Brandon Collins in the email he sent us and

Mr. Fogel in his public comments sort of gave examples of a disturbing report from the Commission on Children and Families about the inequities in one of the areas being the juvenile justice system.

But in my reading of this proposal, it seemed like it talks about employment and housing really being the focal points.

Yes, I think there's a mechanism that would allow us to have those discussions from an education standpoint, prevention, that type of thing.

I think some of the folks from the steering committee are here tonight that can answer that question as well if they'd like, but I think that there would be a mechanism for us to have those types of discussions and really bring some of the issues to the forefront, whether it's before city council or within the community, I think there will be opportunities to do that.

Well, as it's proposed right now, I think it would be given some opportunity to do that.

Other comments or questions?

I'm convinced of the need for it.

I'm comfortable with waiting until we do our due diligence and see how it would work.

Hope and work to make sure that what comes out of that is that we do something.

Certainly as I was on the board of the NAACP several years ago and saw as complaints came in, I think that Ms. Rockhold pointed out that we have a lot more people in this community who may not be represented by the NAACP who also have experienced discrimination.

I know

just recently two friends who are professionals in our community, one who was told there was not housing available when someone else with the same parameters an hour later was told there was in one particular site, another who was required to bring extra documentation to open a bank account when a colleague was not required to provide those same things and so I think

I love Charlottesville and I think that we are a lovely community but we are not without racism and we're not without discrimination and I think that we definitely need this.

I think that I've been looking at this as a thing that we might be able to phase in so that we could have a director and a commission start working that way and see how much we need for investigators on staff, maybe contract out for a while for part of that.

and I also am very interested in seeing the work of the dialogue continue.

Well, I'm in favor of, the way that I see it coming together, and this is just my own thought, is we have a dialogue on race steering committee that wasn't necessarily intended to be a permanent body

and we have a dialogue and race staff coordinator who wasn't necessarily intended to be a permanent staff position.

And I believe that the work of the dialogue is a good first step, as Dr. Turner said, and that we need to continue doing those kinds of things that you just mentioned, Ms. Akus, in terms of public engagement and dialogue and discussion and some of the forms and the

the markers and the history, all the good things that the dialogue's been doing, we need to continue doing that.

I don't think the work is over.

And so I can easily see that becoming a major task of this standing commission, is to continue that kind of work and have the dialogue and race coordinator have that position morph into the

whatever we're going to call the title for the staff person for the commission.

So essentially make a standing city commitment on those fronts.

I found Mr. Fogel's comments to be incredibly compelling tonight in terms of

looking at patterns of institutional or systemic racism in our community, patterns of discrimination in our community.

Because frankly, we have some mechanisms that are in place today to deal with allegations of individual discrimination in housing and employment.

And so I think part of the work of this commission has to be to assess how well those mechanisms are working.

and if they're not working as well as they could, why?

And how can they be improved?

But I do think that right now there isn't a group or a body that's charted with the mission of shining a spotlight on patterns of discrimination like in our criminal justice system.

Nobody has that on their to-do list.

And to have a group that can

dig into issues like that and then come back with recommendations for action, for remediation, I think could be incredibly helpful for our community.

Where I'm not at the point yet, and maybe I'll get there eventually, where I'm not at the point yet is the need for the city to create our own investigation and enforcement

mechanisms on issues of housing and employment discrimination because first I want to ask the question, I want to have the question answered, how well are the existing mechanisms working and how can they be improved?

So that's kind of where I am.

I thought you, Mr. Jones, you raised some good questions in your opening remarks as well.

I'd like to see us move forward with creating the commission.

I'd like to see us move forward with creating the staff position, not necessarily tonight, but I'm saying in general.

I'd like to see us move forward with an active civil rights focus, and I'd like to see us move forward with it, playing a role of ensuring that

I wanted to just follow up with Mayor Norris's comments and I basically agree with his position that I think we need to check the existing mechanisms to see if they were working or not.

Secondly, I am somewhat reluctant to spend $200,000 per year in this tight time of the budget time.

for this creation of a new position which may or may not be essential at this time if the other existing programs can work it out.

My comment is I agree with I think where Mr. Huja was going is I think we do need to decide what do we need but then you know

My feeling is that the budget in the spring is going to require either significant cuts in spending or raising taxes because I think you know we have declining revenues and we have both state and federal governments that are going to be cutting money in a significant way that comes to Charlottesville.

So what I would hope is that City Council will weigh spending new money versus

Any other comments?

Just be helpful, I think, for the public to kind of know what that timeline is.

Well, certainly, either the first or second meeting.

I think timing is important in the sense that you do the good research and not just rush into something which

All right.

Well, I want to say a thanks to the members of the action team who came forward with this proposal, Mr. Heinecke in particular.

And I think it's got some traction, and we've got to figure out the best way to move forward on it.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Let's see here.

The next item on our agenda is a report and an ordinance on Meadow Creek Parkway conditions for opening for public travel.

Thank you again.

This item is before you because construction is complete on the county portion of the Meadow Creek Parkway, as you know, and the Board of Supervisors has an item on their agenda for Wednesday to request that VDOT open the parkway, the county portion of the parkway.

and the reason that that is a decision for VDOT and the county is that contrary to what a lot of people understand is that the intersection of Melbourne and the parkway is completely in the county.

That section of Melbourne is actually in the county not in the city so that entire section is under the jurisdiction of the county and VDOT.

In 2008,

VDOT came to the City Council requesting your sign off on an agreement for the provision of permanent and temporary easements to build the county portion.

If you recall, the land that was part of the CHS properties came before you.

And when you authorized the easement along with the school board, you placed five conditions on the grant of that easement.

One was that no part of the parkway, the county, the city, or the interchange portions would be open for public use until the entire project was complete and ready for opening.

You conditioned it on safe and efficient means of passage for bikes and pedestrians at the intersection of Melbourne and Park.

that appropriate landscaping and planning be done to screen the parkway from the playing fields, that the speed limit be 25 miles an hour on the parkway approaching the intersection, and that the deed of easement would provide that the city would operate the traffic signal at Melbournum Park.

Two of those conditions, the landscaping and the operation of the signal have been complied with.

There was money provided to our Parks Department to plant the appropriate landscaping so that condition has been complied with already and there has been agreement.

In fact, it's a necessity really that the city maintain the traffic signal at that location because it's built with our equipment and not equipment that

that could be maintained by VDOT.

So it's in our best interest we want it to be maintained and that's been agreed to.

In the memo that I sent you there's a summary actually prepared by the city attorney of the timeline for how this has all happened and I think that the important piece of that for you to think about as you're making this decision is that

When that action was taken in June of 2008, I think everybody thought that these things would fall into place one behind the other and within six months to a year of the time the parkway was built, the county portion, that actually the interchange would be opening.

We know now that it looks like it's going to be late 2013, early 2014 before the city portion is done and the interchange is looking like a 2014 scenario.

So as you consider this, I think, as you pointed out, there are two issues for you.

One is the conditions that you placed on it and whether you're willing to move forward with consenting basically to the opening with a change in those conditions and it really being the first condition that all three sections be opened at the same time.

The other is traffic and

There were a lot of questions and concerns raised about the traffic.

If you recall back last year, VDOT opened the county portion of the road while Ryle Road was also closed because of work that was going on with the parkway at the Dunlora intersection.

and there were some pretty significant traffic increases that we saw as a result of that.

So we asked VDOT if you're going to do this, we would love to see some modeling and traffic analysis of what would happen with the Parkway open.

They provided that information to us, our traffic engineer has reviewed that in great detail, has met and worked with VDOT staff

and also she asked the TJPDC staff that does modeling to take a look and work with us to make sure that we were looking at numbers and traffic that she felt like the model was realistic.

It's very difficult to model on this scale when you're not looking at the whole region.

You focus on one road, it's very difficult, but on balance

Ms. Alexander feels like that the traffic study and modeling that's presented is fair and accurate.

So what does that say?

It basically says that there will be some increase of traffic on Melbourne.

The vast majority of it, though, appears to be between the intersection of the Parkway and Park Street, but there will be some increase on Grove.

and we had a lot of concern about that because when the parkway was open for that temporary period there was significant increases on Grove but they were eastbound and so it really looked, we were trying to figure out what the issue was and it appears from what, from running the models by closing Rio that what was happening was that people were, that were coming westbound on the bypass

Instead of taking the Park Street exit to go north on Rile, that they would come all the way down to Meadowbrook Heights, turn on Grove, and then hit the parkway to bypass those lights and those intersections on Park Street.

We didn't see the numbers because we did traffic counts during that period.

We didn't see the traffic going westbound.

Why not?

I'm just curious.

That seems counterintuitive to me.

They don't do that now.

So now if you're coming to shortcut that, Brandywine, Greenbrier, Brandywine is a cut through to get you there.

And that's already happening.

And if you do that, you're missing another two signals by being able to do that.

So I think that's one reason that happens.

And the other is if you're already on 29,

and you're going west, then you can make that movement, particularly AM movement, you can make it a lot easier.

So the modeling just doesn't show it's going to happen and anecdotally when, and we really think that the closure of Park Row with the opening of the parkway is worst case scenario, so we didn't see it.

The five that were put on it before that I just went over.

The recommendations for if it's open?

I was about to get there.

So the other question that had been asked though before I get to those is how about accidents?

What are we seeing as crash data around there?

And Ms. Alexander went back and looked at three years and there was really only one off school grounds accident and that was because somebody tried to make a U-turn and sideswipe the parked vehicle.

There's really been no crash data around the high school area and there wasn't when the parkway was open.

So if you decide to open, or not to open but to consent to the opening, we believe that there's five conditions that address city issues that should be met and I'll read these to you as they're in the ordinance and then tell you that this has been a moving target because we've been

As part of this, we've been trying to work with VDOT staff to determine what could be done and how best to do it if that decision is made.

Again, in the council considerations that the speed limit be 25 miles per hour on the parkway approaching the intersection.

This is simply posting the signs and we don't think that's going to be any issue and it'd be marked by the standard school zone signs with the flashing lights.

The intent is that when the whole thing is open it'd be marked on both sides, both directions, but right now it would be only on the parkway coming into the city.

that we enter into the agreement to assume maintenance of the signal and again VDOT has agreed to that.

Again, we feel like that needs to be stated again.

And then the traffic study that Tim Lee Horn prepared at the behest of VDOT had several recommendations that we feel are important.

The first is that to improve the turning ability for particularly school buses at the intersection of Melbourne and Park, particularly the buses that are turning south on Park Street, the conflict there is so that they don't, as they swing out, they don't head on into the cars coming from the other direction.

And so that movement needs to be improved.

And there are two ways to do it.

back into the right-of-way or into private land and widen the road.

But in doing further investigation, this is one of the changing targets.

We believe, Ms. Alexander believes, that we can accomplish this through striping.

The road is wider, striping of Melbourne and Park.

The road is wider than

than necessary there and it can be widened back the stop bar up further south on Park Street and you get the clearance that's necessary and so that condition we feel like we can we can meet with striping and however if that doesn't work we've identified funding with VDOT so that we could come in and do the fiscal improvement but we don't think that would even be necessary at this time.

The second, that the left-hand storage lane be increased and that being the storage for vehicles turning left on Melbourne that are northbound on Park Street to back those up so that we don't get long backups on Park Street and that can be done.

And then at the intersection of Melbourne and the parkway in the westbound direction,

There would be striping to allow through traffic and a continuous right turn there or a right turn lane.

That's something that didn't happen when there was an interim opening but there's room for it and everybody's in agreement that needs to happen.

And then the other two conditions that were recommended by the traffic consultant are actually in the county at Rio near CATEC and both of those are right near the CATEC entrance.

So we assume that the county is going to have those done, but those really don't impact the city.

This is before you tonight as an ordinance on first reading.

The ordinance does state that you would consent to the opening.

We feel like VDOT should pay for all those improvements when they're made.

Since we don't have to do the construction at this point, we feel that we could go roughly in four weeks to five weeks to have it done.

And the big thing is, very short time for the work, but it's getting a contract

to have somebody actually do the striping work.

The signal, the traffic signals are here, the pedestrian heads are here.

So, if we did nothing, or if we said no to this ordinance, I know that Mr. Boyd and Mr. Utterback from the Department of Transportation have both said that they would go ahead and do it anyway.

And is there anything that the city could do about that?

I'm not talking about you.

I'm just saying, is there really a reason that we're doing this?

Is it to try to get these improvements locked in?

I think we wanted to bring it to you, and Mr. Jones may speak to this, but to give you an opportunity, if it's inevitable, to at least make sure we state our position of what needs to be done to make it safe and to have traffic flow.

I understand the frustration of people who thought that the city portion would be done sooner, and that when they did this, thinking that, you know,

Our part would come on soon, but it's not like the city has really dragged its feet in the last couple of years.

It's been a lawsuit, it's been regulatory things at the state and federal level that have slowed down this portion of it.

And I think that when the city, before I was on council,

made these five conditions, one of which would be that none would be open until all were open.

There were reasons for that and I think we're seeing some of that at this intersection and some of the congestion that I expect is going to still be on Park Street is going to back up probably across that intersection of North Avenue where the light is and it's just going to, I can picture a certain amount of locking there at certain points of the day.

I just, I'm a little

One of our responsibilities as a council is to watch out for safety of our citizens.

I think these improvements will do that.

Otherwise, without those improvements, I think we will have some danger to our citizens in the city bar.

I mean, they may not have road staff, but there's certainly, I mean, what I think would be powerful would be if both the city and the county together said that we think all these improvements need to be made for the community.

Yeah, I can't speak on behalf of the county staff.

We have communicated that to the county staff.

Our concerns over safety, especially because there was a comment made earlier this evening about the safety of the turning radius there and that it was identified as a concern even before the parkway came about.

Well that may be true but we know that there will be more traffic coming off of Melbourne and onto Park and from Park onto Melbourne than we've had before too.

But we can again communicate that to the board itself as soon as we act on this.

I also would agree that, I'll take the word of the staff that there will be not much traffic in Grove, but I'm still not sure of my lines.

We will certainly keep an eye on that.

We plan, if it happens, to monitor it.

One of the great things about us maintaining the signal is that we can control the timings on the signal.

and adjust how many cars can go at any particular time.

I think their part of the road is built and our part is not going to be built for years and I think it is appropriate for us to open our part with these improvements.

There's a lot of people in the city that don't think we need the road, there's people who don't think we'd open it now, but there's also plenty of people, city residents, who say we should be opening it.

We've heard by email from

and a couple of former city councilors whose opinion I value greatly that says, yeah, we need to go ahead and move ahead with this.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

I'm sorry.

We had public input earlier in the meeting.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded.

It will carry forward to our next meeting and there will be opportunity between now and then for additional public comments.

Thank you, Mr. Tolbert.

I'd just like to add that I think, you know, we asked, well, let me say, the school board, which had been maintaining that piece of property that was put up for construction of the road,

I think very deliberately worked through this resolution, spent a lot of time on it, considered all the variables and came forward with this provision that no one portion would be open until all the other portions would be open.

And we heard, once the road was open temporarily, we heard from school administrators who were

I'm concerned about the additional traffic impact on Melbourne Road immediately adjacent to our high school.

It seems to me that – and I realize – well, it seems to me that we owe it to the school board to go back to the school board since they were the ones that asked for this and insisted – not just asked for it, but insisted on

that provision that would give them a chance to review it and decide if they wanted to withdraw that provision since it was, I guess legally it was city property, but it was property that they had been administering, if you will, for many, many years.

But anyhow.

I realize I may not speak for the majority in that regard.

But anyhow, we will take that up again at our next meeting.

Thank you, Mr. Tolbert.

Next item is a report and resolution regarding redevelopment of public housing.

This is a memorandum of understanding between the city and the Charlottesville redevelopment and housing authorities before us tonight on the first of one reading and I will note that at our housing authority board meeting this past Monday.

Oh I'm sorry, I'm sorry, thank you.

We have had a request for a brief recess so we're going to recess for 10 minutes or 8 minutes.

We'll come back at quarter till.

While the merry bells keep ringing, May your every wish come true.

Happy Holidays!

May your calendar keep ringing, Happy Holidays to you.

Happy Holidays!

Christmas bells are ringing

and David Brown

Music playing...

Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock Jingle Bell Swing and Jingle Bells Ring Snowing and blowing up bushels of fun Now the Jingle Hop has begun Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock Jingle Bells chime in Jingle Bell time Dancing and prancing in Jingle Bell Square

Pinned the frosty air What a bright time it's the right time To run the night away Jingle bell time is the swell time Up to gold gliding in a one-horse sleigh

Giddyup, jingle horse, pick up your feet Jingle round the clock Mix and jingle in a jingling beat That's the jingle bell rock Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock Jingle bell swing and jingle bell ring

Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell Chime and Jingle Bell Time Whatever I have, it's the right time to rock the night away

Is that you, Santa Claus?

Gives time preparing for some Christmas sharing But I pause because Hang in my stocking, I can hear the knocking Is that you, Santa Claus?

Shoe is dark out, ain't the slightest spark out Upon my clacking jaw Who's there, who is it?

You're stopping for a visit?

Is that you, Santa Claus?

Are you bringing a present for me?

Something pleasantly pleasant for me?

Then it's just what I've been waiting for Would you mind slipping it under the door?

Whole winds are howling Could that be growling?

My legs feel like straws Yeah, my, my, oh me, my Kindly will you reply Is that you, Zanny Clark?

Yes, hang in the stockin', I can hear a knockin' Is that you?

CATEC love!

I said, who's there, who is it?

Are you stopping for a visit?

Is that you?

Santa Claus!

Oh, Santa, you gave me a scare Now stop teasing, cause I know you're there We don't believe in no problems today But I can't explain why I'm shaking that way

Better I can see old Santa in the keyhole I'll get to the cause One peek and I'll try there Oh, there's an eye there Is that you, Santa Claus?

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree, Thou tree most fair and lovely.

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree, Thou tree most fair and lovely.

Thou dost proclaim this Savior's birth, Goodwill to men and peace of earth.

Alright, we're going to reconvene.

Good evening.

I get to go first.

We're hopeful that you've been able to review the report that was included in your packets because tonight we really wanted to focus on the action items that we proposed in the report and I'm going to take a few minutes to go over our suggestions, recommendations for board configuration, project management, and Amy's going to step up and overview the action plan and kind of next steps with Melissa picking up on action items and the resolution that we've got proposed.

First off, I'd just like to thank the City Council for allowing us to work with CRHA.

It's been very enlightening, very beneficial.

I think the staff certainly learned a whole lot and determined there's a whole lot of work that still needs to be done, but that was kind of part of the process.

As far as board configuration,

Jim Toberdat had asked for Allison Davies with the attorney's office to prepare a report in O'Kine relative to the status of the non-profit entity that exists currently under CRHA.

It's known as the Charlottesville Development Corporation or CDC as we refer to it in the report.

and she had in fact, after looking through everything and back at the original articles of incorporation and the amendments there too, that it's actually advisable to use the CDC as we move forward in conjunction with both CRHA and the city in order to do redevelopment.

In fact, involving the CDC is a necessary next step, and so we looked at the board configuration based on what it currently is and what modifications might need to be made.

Currently, the board, as of March the 4th of 2009, includes all seven of the CRHA board commissioners that serve at present, along with the executive director, Randy Bickers,

Those eight members can additionally vote in two at-large members, but to my knowledge I don't think that has been done.

The future board configuration can take on, you know, numerous different configurations that isn't set or, you know, the articles of incorporation would have to be amended, but we looked at two specifically.

One is because of

The city gets federal funds of HOME or HOME and then CDBG for the Community Development Block Grant.

HOME funds require that if you want to use their money for new construction that you have to form what's known as a CHODO or Community Housing Development Organization.

But given that home funds have been set aside for roughly about a 15-year period at this point in time to pay for Section 8 vouchers that have been dedicated to the SRO, we really don't feel like there'll be, particularly with federal cuts and whatnot that have been occurring and are predicted to continue with home, that that's going to be a very viable source.

So we sort of disregarded

focusing on that and instead looked at CDBG funds because we have talked about using such things as the Section 108 program, which is a CDBG loan guarantee program, as well as just their regular funding.

If CDBG funds are used, we would have to form something called a Community Based Development Organization, or CBDO.

That one you can't really pronounce.

And CBDO

would have to be configured with the board at 51%, represented about basically one of three ways.

One, low to moderate income residents of the city.

Two representatives of low to moderate income neighborhood organizations that are located in the city or three owners slash senior officers of private establishments and other institutions located in or serving the city.

And then the second criteria is that no more than one third of the membership be appointed by or consist of elected or other public officials or employees.

A final determination would really need to be made ultimately by the Board of Commissioners, we believe, based on recommendations from their legal counsel.

However, creating a board that's focused on redevelopment rather than just operations for running the Housing Authority is advisable.

And whether it takes on the CBDO or some other configuration, we believe that needs to be done.

And to take the current board that's on the serving CRHA

to have them focus really just on running the housing authority and have a separate board focused on the redevelopment effort.

Okay, as for staffing, initial efforts we believe should be provided from the team that somewhat has been involved heretofore, which would include myself, grants coordinator, director of neighborhood development services, which is Jim Tobert, the section three coordinator, Tierra Howard,

as well as a CRHA staff member.

to be determined by the new executive director who will come on board at some point in time after the first year, and then also utilization of the city's facilities team for construction management.

We feel like that would be critical as well for helping manage redevelopment projects.

This is viewed as a potential short-term arrangement, not necessarily long-term at this point in time, but would allow a couple of critical redevelopment projects to move forward quickly.

Good evening.

I've been asked to speak this evening on the recommendations in the action plan, which is pages 11 and 12 of your report.

As Kathy mentioned, we have a couple action steps we'd like to talk about tonight that are mentioned in the resolution that is before you.

The first of which is to develop two

Request for proposals, one for the Levy Avenue site and one for the rehabilitation of Crescent Halls.

The rehab of Crescent Halls has a draft RFP that is currently being reviewed at the committee level and no RFP has been drafted at this time for Levy Avenue.

Recommendation number two for the action plan is to further the discussion that Kathy was just mentioning about how to restructure the board of the CDC

and then how to pursue staffing options for that entity in some hybrid of CRHA and city participation.

Item three, asking city council to appropriate funding to do some of the pre-development work that's necessary for both Levy Avenue and Crescent Halls.

Those funds are currently earmarked to either come out of the CIP contingency or the 2013 Charlottesville Housing Fund

Pot of money, and that decision is to be determined by the council, but those are two suggestions right now.

And that money will be used to supplement money already given to the housing authority by the city to do some pre-development work that has not gotten started yet.

Item number four in the action plan is to develop a detailed financing plan for the renovation of Crescent Halls.

As Kathy mentioned, federal sources are dwindling, so we are continuing to research what other options are to fill those gaps.

And action plan item number five is to develop a strategic plan to complete redevelopment of the rest of the Housing Authority's properties beyond Levy and Crescent Halls.

So we see that as a way to further flush out the information that is in the master plan and to add these

practical level of detail to those other sites in years to come.

And if I can deviate from the script for a quick second, I just want to address Mr. Collins' comments from the public comment period earlier.

I think we would all very much support having a work session with city council, especially our new councilors.

Fortunately, Mr. Huja has been involved since he's been on council with us.

Ms. Galvin has been involved almost since day one, maybe day nine.

pretty close in the past four years.

And Ms. Smith has already begun reaching out to get more involved in redevelopment and get her feet wet and learn more about the project.

So I think that's a great idea and I think we would be happy to support that.

Also, involving the residents in the future of what this partnership looks like.

For a quick bit of history, we did a series of meetings over the summer in June, July, and the beginning of August to let residents know about the MOU that was in place.

At the time it was not a decision-making body, it was more just the staff-level partnership coming up with recommendations.

So the conversation that we were having with residents at the time was more of a, here's what we're thinking and here's what the benefits of the partnership could be.

I could very easily see us going back to the residents again as some of these technical details are decided upon and having further conversation to let them know what we're thinking and to gather feedback.

So thank you to Mr. Collins for those comments.

Back to what I was asked to speak about.

The city's report that you have in front of you upholds the Bill of Rights, which is our most important policy document to date.

The report also makes a couple suggestions about housing authority policy that's existing and how tweaking some of those policies could further strengthen

the position of the agency moving forward under new leadership.

Green construction and energy efficiency has always been a priority for us in the project and we would certainly love to continue to find ways to incorporate that into the project.

And finally, the last suggestion in the action plan is to do another market analysis.

We had one done in the master plan, but that was several years ago at this point.

So what we'd like to do is make sure that

The mixed income and mixed use decisions being made at each site are the most appropriate for our families and for the city as a whole.

And the market analysis will be one way to do that.

So the action we're requesting from council tonight is just a vote on the resolution that's before you.

The meat of that resolution is the action items that Amy was just mentioning.

I'd like to just point out that while one of the action items refers to coming to council for an appropriation, that is not what we're here for.

Tonight we're not asking for any money here tonight.

That would come forward in a separate item with a separate hearing.

I think one of the most important things to note about these action items is that this is really taking that first tangible step towards redevelopment.

For the past four years we've really been doing a lot of planning, researching, planning, researching, really getting in the best position to move forward and we're finally at that point.

to make a decision and move forward and so we're really very excited to present these action items to you all and to really start taking that step and getting just tangible design plans through the RFPs and getting ready to get on the ground with redevelopment.

Questions for any of the presenters?

It says it requires two RFPs for two sites.

The RFPs?

Yes.

I would like to make sure that you involve not only the residents in the housing, but also the surrounding neighborhood.

One more comment.

As to the board of the new voting,

I would hope that there will be enough people in that who have some development experience and not so that we can utilize that expertise in our benefit from their experiences.

Agreed.

Any other comments or questions?

For the resolution?

Second.

Been moved and seconded.

Any further discussion?

Hearing none, please indicate your vote.

And it carries unanimously.

Thank you very much for all your hard work.

Next item, a resolution regarding allocation of funds for the Vinegar Hill Monuments.

Before us tonight, I'm the first one reading and here from our Art in Place Committee.

I recognize that hat.

It's a very nice hat.

And today I get a cookie.

I already got it.

As you may know, as well you know, the dialogue on race after those 600 people talked, what rose to the surface was a request for a monument to Vinegar Hill.

The word that I have learned in the process of all this is that it is not a memorial to Vinegar Hill, which would only say that it was something that was gone.

A monument to Vinegar Hill speaks to using the information we learned from that experience

and using it with the housing authority or city market conversations where you make sure to involve the people you're going to influence in the decisions that you make.

So when the few of us with a number of people behind us raised our hand, we assumed it would be a small sculpture up in six months and done.

Little had we met the Jefferson School and you should

Be very proud of the fact that the Jefferson School is absolutely due to become a national monument to the education experience of the African American community.

An invisible history made visible.

And Vinegar Hill is another example of an invisible history that if you make it visible, we will learn from it.

And it is the crying need in our community and in our nation today.

Because Jefferson School convinced us of this, we realized we absolutely needed to make a national call for an artist.

Not a local call, not a small sculpture, but something that people would send their children.

Industrial magnates in Chicago would want to make sure

that when their children came to Charlottesville and saw Monticello, they also saw Jefferson School and in front of it a Vinegar Hill monument that speaks about urban revitalization in the 60s in America and where the mistakes were and what we can do about that today when we make sure to involve everyone in our conversations.

So because that is true,

We're asking for proposals from art teams.

We don't want plop sculpture.

We don't want a sculpture that just lays down.

We want a sculpture that speaks about the land around it because the land in that schoolyard is looking over Vinegar Hill and so you need a sculptor who can do that.

If you notice, I gave you all the budget and you will see that it's a process budget.

Our plan

in order to make a national call to artists is that no artist or artist team will come forth with a proposal unless you give them money for that work and the quality of work.

They will make a proposal that is able to be presented to this jury that you see described, the six person jury, three nationally recognized professionals and the three owners and the community.

And the three owners would be the representatives from Jefferson Partners,

the Jefferson Tenants and the City.

When you go through that process of three proposals that you're giving each, three or four proposals where you're giving each team $3,000 to create that kind of proposal, when they're finished, the winner needs to make you a proposal that we're offering $10,000 for that's the engineered drawings.

I carry, my team carries that proposal forth

to what I'm calling Chicago.

I have promised Jefferson School and I promise you that the $100,000 to $200,000 that is needed for that sculpture will not come from the city of Charlottesville or the community which should be supporting Jefferson School.

My plan is to bring that money from African American industrialists who understand the importance of having the national story told using a local story to tell it.

Our story is so wonderful.

The NAACP here was the largest organization on the East Coast.

It was the one that did so much of the action that then made desegregation occur.

Vinegar Hill being destroyed is one of the outlandish examples we have of urban revitalization.

But every city in America has that urban revitalization story.

Now 50 years later, what did we learn and what are we going to do about it?

So when I go to Chicago, I think that there will be people who will know that we need the national story told on this level and that when people come to Monticello, they come for Jefferson School and the Vinegar Hill Monument.

When I went, Mr. Huja, of course, using his due diligence, as he always does, said, too much money.

So we went back and reviewed similar organizations which have asked for money.

Alexandria offered $2,000 for a proposal for sculpture alone for a recreation center.

That was $2,000 for the proposal.

Norfolk offered $1,000 for five finalists and $32,000 for the design for a $500,000 sculpture in a park about massive resistance.

Toledo, Ohio offered $25,000 for a proposal for a median sculpture.

Fort Worth offered $45,000 for all phases of design for a gateway monument.

Percent for art has the money and it has $92,000 in the budget.

We feel like that the percent for art money was specifically allocated for public sculpture and there could be no more public sculpture.

As a matter of fact, the last person to actually commission a sculpture in Charlottesville was Mr. McIntyre for $250,000 for five sculptures.

and after that David Breeden was commissioned by the juvenile court for a $10,000 sculpture.

There have been no other commissions.

since then.

So again, just to reiterate, just for the public's benefit, this is money that's already been allocated by the city for public art?

Yes.

No.

The only people, well no, you all use some of this for the city hall mural?

And then you've been using some of it each year for

Art in Place, that other hat.

Well, I guess I had asked that we discuss this, so let me make a few comments.

First of all, I totally support the idea of having a monument of national scale, and I think it can be done.

And I was pleased to hear that Elizabeth is not going to be coming back to us for money for that part.

But so be it in the sense that

We have been involved in many art projects and to my recollection we have never paid more than $15,000 for any sculpture, let alone for the process.

So I personally don't think that there is a need for $24,000 for the city to contribute for two or three reasons.

One, I think all the examples must be in a game of totally out of scale with a series of large million people and not 40,000 or 50,000 people.

as to paying for jury stipend, I think again we can get a great jury without stipend.

I don't think we'll be lacking a jury in this country, city.

I can see some money being needed for making a final proposal and some travel money for the people who are going to be proposing final proposals.

One more comment.

Hi.

I basically agree with Mr. Huja.

I think this is an awful lot of money in today's climate to be spending on this process.

But I also have a concern about initiating this process with the idea that down the road someone else is going to pay for it.

I think

I mean, just as an example, when we initiated the Dialogue on Race, it was a one-time spending of $25,000, maybe $40,000.

I can't remember exactly what it was, but we've ended up spending a lot more than that.

and I think that I worry that the money for the sculpture is actually going to end up coming from the city.

Just because I've seen that happen, I mean the purchase of Parkland was another example where we promised that we would, somebody else would be paying a lot for that.

It's not that the promises aren't sincere, but there's a worry I have that

that it'd be nice to come in with some commitment, some conversations with people who would pony up some money for this so we'd have some assurance.

Having said that, I would like to say that was an extremely compelling presentation.

I think there is a need for some type of commemoration.

I guess I see this money, if it were coming out of the general fund, I would feel a little differently about it.

I think that to me it seems like a really appropriate use of money from the Percent for Art Fund.

I think that our largest public art in our city now is a bunch of Confederate soldiers in a cannon, and I think we need to counter that.

One more comment just to, as I said I support the general idea and I think you ought to contribute some money.

Well, you don't commission someone for a sculpture on a national level for free.

So this is what it costs to commission a national sculpture.

You do get a sculpture at the end and you're right, how do I make a contract with me?

but without a drawing of a sculpture I can't get somebody to give me $200,000 for it.

So yes, you're right, there's a carton horse going on here but that's because I've just tried to take you from buying a sculpture you already have on your streets that someone didn't make for you that now represents your town because he got it here on the cheap to let's have a sculpture that actually represents something we believe in.

So it's a very different concept and it's the down payment on the sculpture and it lets you then say that you could manage to commission somebody.

No one on a national level comes in and gives you any of his drawings for free.

That's why he's national.

Now, quite frankly, most of the guys that we wrote are in their 60s and 70s because it took them that long to be nationally recognized.

Right, but I also can't, it's very hard, here we're carting horse again.

I can't go out to someone who gives major money to art and say, well the city was kind of behind me.

I want to say the city of Charlottesville has commissioned this piece.

So let me ask you a couple questions about the budget specifically.

Sure.

The $10,000 for the design drawings, that's to me sort of a no-brainer.

I mean that's money you're going to have to pay for whatever sculpture gets chosen.

Yes, it's the engineered.

So that's pre-development expenses so to speak.

the $2,000 for jury stipend and travel, I'm guessing that a high profile sort of distinguished jury is going to help sell this product to a big donor.

So I don't have any problem with those two.

What's usually done on these is it's not just the artist doing his renderings but he also has on his team a landscape architect and frequently an engineer and then perhaps a fabricator as well.

So for all of them to spec the job and we're going to assume it's two weeks work for each one of them.

they don't go into calls like this without being given a little front money that even if they don't get their, you know, it's one-third, one-third, and one-third, that's probably only their first third of the money of the work they've already done because they're pretty sure they'll get it when a team of that level has made a proposal.

Norfolk's, the massive resistant one, seemed to go that way.

That their second, the person who didn't get it, was the guy in Chicago, and

Walter Hood who did get the commission in Norfolk

The Percent for Art money in Norfolk that funded this, they ended up paying Walter Hood $30,000 for a plan that's now sitting on a shelf that may get built when the building gets built or may not.

They may have to do a whole other search.

Walter Hood is the person who did the piece down at the university at the Kitty Foster Memorial.

So, I mean, that's the level that we're shooting at, okay?

And this is moving to another plane.

The vote of confidence from city council would be a big push to move that along.

Ms. Edwards, you've been a little quiet.

Just anecdotally that we have a percent for art fund.

I hope that maybe future council can have a percent for housing fund.

But also that the current memoriam that we have for vinegar hill is about the size of this postcard.

I know that there is some concern about

about the money, but it seems as if we talked about this at a council retreat where we discovered that the percent for art fund hadn't been used.

And so I thought this was an opportunity to use that fund.

I would like some clarification if there was something in there about not being able to use it specifically for this, but I guess the feeling I'm getting that there's not a support.

on counsel for the amount of money that you're asking for.

Is there a way, would you consider redoing your budget?

I can reduce the number of people I ask to give me requests for proposals and just get two requests for proposals instead of four.

He wants three, of course.

You know, you can hear back there, three.

And, you know, I think that if you take me down $6,000 so that I'm asking for 18, are you good with that?

Because I'll go out and ask local people.

No, I cannot ask local people.

I will go to Chicago and ask Oprah.

And it was my concept that when you go out nationally to talk about a national sculpture, you bring money to Jefferson School.

So my sort of promise to Jefferson School was

I can make a motion for $15,000.

Would you be happy with that?

I agree.

I'm not hearing a second on that motion.

I'd like to

I assume you're suggesting that we use the same budget that was presented here.

Yes.

Is there a second on that motion?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any further discussion?

Hearing none, please indicate your vote.

That carries unanimously.

Thank you very much.

And thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Breeden.

Thank Art in Place.

Alright, let's move on.

Next item, ordinance regarding tax abatement program for rehabilitated properties before us tonight in the first of two readings.

Who wants it?