City Council Meeting   3/5/2012

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Next is Awards and Reconditions.

The first award is to the City of Charlottesville.

I am very happy to present this.

Who should be receiving this?

Let me read this.

Distinguished Project Presentation Award presented to the City of Charlottesville, Virginia for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2011.

This is from the Government Finance Officers Association.

Well, thank you very much.

Yes, we have drawers full of these awards actually, which is something I really am proud of.

I've won every single year since I've been here and since Ryan Davidson, the budget management analyst has been here.

As you know, putting the budget together is a lot of hard work.

It takes a lot of people, a team effort.

It's not just Ryan and I sitting in a room cranking it out.

It's a lot of city staff.

City Manager Aubrey Watts, Department Heads.

So thank you so much again and we every year try harder and harder to make it a better document.

So we look forward to the 2013 document being submitted.

Please keep up the good work.

Next is a proclamation, first one of the book.

Nancy, would you come forward please?

where as literacy is crucial to our ability to understand fully our world and all its diversity, where as reading stimulates the creative and intellectual growth of individuals, where as books help us to explore the past, understand the present, and discover the future.

Where as Charlottesville is the top nation among book reading households,

whereas Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, area bookstores, libraries, schools, and other educational institutions, publishers, writers, and community service promote literacy and reading.

Now therefore, I, Satyendra Huja, Mayor of city of Charlottesville, declare March 21st to March 25th as the 18th annual book festival day week.

Five days.

Let me sign it so it shows.

First of all, I would like to thank all of you so much for your ongoing financial support of the Book Festival year after year.

We hope that you feel, as we do, that you get good value for your money.

And I hope you'll think of this year's Book Festival as kind of a mini vacation in March.

There's so many topics, everything from gardening to hoarding, from philanthropy to cooking, from Appalachia to the super highways,

Romance and Poetry, Murder and Mayhem.

We hope you'll find something for all of you.

And this year particularly we have three programs that are coordinated with the city for the Celebrate 250 celebration.

You can find out a lot more about the book festival by going to our website vabook.org and in the daily progress on Sunday, March the 18th, the complete program, the printed program will be available.

It is an outstanding program and I hope you guys will all attend.

There's one more recognition for the outstanding Fire Chief in Charles Warner.

Sure.

I have the pleasure of announcing that Chief Warner was awarded the Governor's Award for Excellence in Fire Service Management.

The award was presented on February 28th at the opening ceremony of the Virginia Fire Chief's Expo and Symposium.

Well, before you say some comments, let me say some comments.

I think the recognition is a little bit overextended.

However, I will say that the recognition is just a reflection of the men and women of the Charlottesville Fire Department who really support me and make up what we do.

There is nothing, literally nothing, that has been accomplished by me, by myself.

It's been with a team of other people, whether it's the city lead team, my public safety counterparts in our region, or the fire, the great men and women of the fire department, and of course, the support of you all.

and then a great community which supports us in the way of the citizens.

So thank all of you all for everything you do for us.

Thank you Chief.

I agree.

Mr. Mayor, I'm very pleased to announce

On April 5th this year, which is a Thursday I believe, the city is going to be co-sponsoring a very special event that was suggested to us by Herb Porter who is a local resident and a veteran and Herb had asked that we do something to honor

military veterans, particularly some of the older veterans in our community who have not had a chance to see any of the war memorials that have been erected in Washington, D.C. in their honor.

So veterans of World War II, veterans of the Korean War, veterans of the Vietnam War in particular.

and we are working with the, we have set up a free trip, we're calling it Charlottesville on a Ride with the Senior Center and it's free for 20, this first trip will be for 20 residents of our area who are either World War II, Vietnam or Korean War veterans who have not had a chance to see these

War Memorial and may never have a chance if it weren't for this trip.

If you would like more information, if you at home are watching and you yourself are a veteran who would like to participate or if you have a family member or a loved one or a neighbor or a friend who would like to participate, please contact

The email address is cvillehonorride.com or you can call 434-242-5165 and we will get you enrolled.

We are hoping if this ride succeeds to have further rides in the future

It's a chance to honor those who have sacrificed for us.

There is a website as well which is cevohonoride.blogspot.com.

Thank you.

I have a couple little things.

One is next Monday if you miss us because City Council isn't meeting we will be at five o'clock in the basement in a budget work session so we'd love to invite you all to come it's great fun.

Also the Sprout Film Festival will be on the 9th

March 9th, both at 1030 in the morning and at 7pm at the Charlottesville High School Performing Arts Center, the Martin Luther King Performing Arts Center.

It is a film festival sponsored by Very Special Arts.

It's a great event.

We heard about the fact that some of the Festival of the Book events correspond with our 250th anniversary and I'd just like to tell you about three of them.

One is Thursday, March 22nd at noon.

If buildings could talk, it's a

A discussion of some of the historical sites here in Charlottesville.

The next one is Friday, March 23rd at 10 a.m. is What You Didn't Know About Charlottesville.

Just a variety of stories about Charlottesville history.

And the last one is Our Sister City in Ghana on Friday, March 23rd at noon.

And that will be Peggy

What is her last name?

Bartels and Eleanor Herman.

Thank you.

Are there other announcements?

This is the end of our announcements.

Next section of our meeting is public comment made by the public.

You may come sign for these.

You have three minutes to complete your presentation and I request that you please follow after three minutes.

I will have a timer here.

Colette Hall, 101 Robertson Lane.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Councillors.

Every year I stand before City Council and remind it that balancing the city budget is the most important duty that you have.

It is the bottom line to all the other decisions you will make.

The school system is in a deficit position and according to the February 28, 2012 daily progress, the city has promised the school system $3.4 million as quote, one time money.

Quote, officials pointed to the extra money for the school as the highlight of the next FY 2013 year's budget, end quote.

In the same article and on the radio, WINA, Merhuja said, quote, and agree that the extra money for schools was this year's big spending decision, end quote.

This is not new or extraordinary.

In the same article, the Daily Progress points out, in the last 10 years, the city's contribution has increased from 65% of the school's budget to 75%.

As it is now, the school system receives off the top 40-41% of the city's real estate and property tax revenue.

A few years ago, unbiased professionals at the request of the school board audited the school system.

The school audit made several recommendations, one of which was to close at least one of the elementary schools.

How soon we forget.

The then sitting school board and the superintendent followed up on some of these fiscal recommendations, but alas, not on the biggest cost cutting items.

Today the school system finds itself in the largest deficit situation.

I dare to say, not all forced by the state's decreasing lack of local school support.

The situation has finally come to a head and hopefully the City Council will tough love the school board into making the tough decisions that should have been made years ago.

Some school board members have suggested that an improvement in the overall economy will improve the situation.

That is not fiscally responsible thinking, but suggests planning on pipe dreams.

Yes, of course education is very important, but also is public safety, public work projects like snow removal, roads, sidewalks, bridges, and many of the other responsibilities the city must afford and do so without losing our AAA bond rating or significantly increasing our service debt.

Thank you very much.

My name is Erin Rose and I'm here to present a petition on behalf of residents of Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

In just a week we have collected almost 300 signatures on this petition and we will continue.

The petition is for a referendum as required by city code for the right of the public to have a say in the selling of our water rights.

I know, contending that Ragged Mountain Project would be conducted under a lease agreement, you have found a loophole whereby you can bypass the necessary vote from the community.

However, we the people say that a 50-year self-renewing contract, which spans generations and leaves the land irreparably altered, is not a lease by anyone's definition.

We think City Council's decision is in violation of the intent of the law.

City code, which you have all been sworn to uphold.

The citizens of this town are very concerned about what is going on for a number of reasons.

There are several controversies over the project that have not been satisfactorily answered.

In addition to the doubts about the need for such an enormous project and whether or not there are better alternatives both economically and environmentally, we simply cannot accept that there is still no final price tag presented for the total cost of this thing.

This justifies common sense.

And yet the three of you on this council who form a bare majority have decided, not only for the present residents of Charlottesville, but for generations to come, that we are committing to this.

Tell me, who among you would conduct their personal finances in this manner?

Because I can't imagine a single person in the room who would sign a contract on even a washing machine without having some idea of how much it would cost.

Hey, it's our names you're signing on this dotted line.

So we're here to say, hold on.

I know it's late in the game, but do we want Charlottesville to end up like Jefferson County, Alabama for example?

As some of you may know, a few years ago Jefferson County contracted an overhaul of the county-owned sewer system.

The original cost estimates for the new sewer system were as low as $250 million.

But somehow the project racked up more than $5 billion in debt.

As a result of the new sewer system, the average monthly sewer bill went up roughly 400% in just a few years.

The residents could not afford the new arrangement, and many were forced to install porta-potties in their front yards.

Consequently, the county could no longer pay the debt and thus fees and penalty charges increase the amount due.

Jefferson County is now the most expensive municipal bankruptcy in history.

Without a final price tag agreed upon, we have reason to suspect that the Ragged Mountain Dam project could turn into such a boondoggle.

The Nature Conservancy, led by former managing director at Goldman Sachs, has been pushing hard for this and it seems to carry a lot more weight with counsel than the will of the people.

But let's just be clear, the Nature Conservancy is funded by Nestle Waters of America Corporation, which happens to sell bottled water.

Nestle Waters also just happens to be a member of the Conservancy's Leadership Council.

In fact, the Conservancy received a whopping $1 million contribution to this project from Nestle Water.

So there are obviously some very powerful interests at work here.

But my question is, who is City Council working for?

The citizens of this city are busy with their own jobs and expect their elected officials to do theirs.

The unanswered questions around this project lead us to believe that they are not.

But who is ultimately responsible for the funding of this?

We are.

So that said, shouldn't we have the chance to say yes or no to a project for which we and our children will be paying for years to come?

Good evening, my name is Nancy Carpenter from 727 Denali Way.

I'm here to speak real quickly on three topics.

The first one is that even though the campaign leaders may be on spring break at UVA, I still support the living wage campaign and look forward to some additional actions once they get back to help employees at UVA and contracted employees obtain a living wage.

Secondly, I'm here tonight to stand in solidarity with the students at Northwestern High School up in Prince George's County, Maryland.

They had tried to organize a student protest, a walkout, to protest the cuts in public education funding and the cuts in teacher positions, but they were prevented from doing so and the police were called during the school day.

The school was locked down and should students have managed to exit the building in protest, they would have been met

by the K-9 unit.

The five student leaders who they determined were the leaders of the protest were held after school and they can only return

to school after a five-day suspension with their mommies and daddies in tow for the whole day.

So I'm in solidarity with their protest.

The other thing I want to say is thank you.

Thank you to City Council's vision for the crossings building that will be opening here this week.

I've had the honor and pleasure of being able to tour that facility and I really think that that was a great vision to take it to the next level of service for the population that it will serve.

In fact, I have a friend who will be having one of the units and I'm going to read just a real quick part of a document he's written so hopefully he'll publish it at some point in time.

But part of it says, can I ever see myself as other than homeless?

My immediate answer is yes.

Then I think about it and realize how many times in the past I have stopped trying, stopped hoping, stopped doing the right thing, and essentially given up, accepting the fact that this would be the way I would die.

I just need stability from where I will go on to bigger and better things.

And that's what I think the mission of the crossings is.

And that's why I'm here tonight to say thank you for past and present council members to see that vision,

and now to bring it to fruition and can we do more.

Good evening, Brandon Collins, 536 Meade Avenue.

I've lived in Charlottesville my entire life.

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

And I share Ms. Carpenter's sentiments about the crossings.

I know some of you have taken a lot of grief for that project, but it's a very important thing for this city.

And I would also encourage you to think about

The great success that this is poised to be and thinking about having another great success and basically repeating the whole process and coming up with transitional and supportive housing for entire families, for example, and I think that's a great project that I think folks on this council could get behind.

and as well I was very much a supporter of the living wage campaign at UVA as you know I hope for about two weeks there were students fasting, starving themselves in an attempt to bring attention to the issue, in an attempt to get a living wage

for all workers at UVA and I particularly would like to thank Ms. Szakos and Mr. Norris for their involvement in that and their support of that campaign.

That campaign still goes on and I encourage you to stay involved and for this council to be very vocal in its support of a living wage at UVA.

One way you can do that, I've heard through a little bird that

The city is considering keeping pace with the living wage.

There are new numbers for our area.

The cost of living has risen dramatically in the last two years and I would encourage this council as you're looking at the budget to increase the base wage to $13 an hour and to tie that to a cost of living increase or tie that to inflation.

so that every time you go through the budget process you don't have to necessarily think about this, that it's something that's built in and I think with your support for living wage at UVA, the support I heard from Ms. Galvin, Mr. Huja and Ms. Smith while they were campaigning for a living wage in the city that you'll take that seriously and make that a reality.

I haven't had the

the chance to pour over your budget.

I'm looking forward to hearing about it.

I did take a quick glance at what's going on with the housing fund.

I was disappointed to see that there's no real growth in the housing fund for the city.

I've stated over and over again, I think we're at a crisis level.

It's one reason why the cost of living is so high in Charlottesville.

and we could do a lot as a community to spend a little more money on good affordable housing in this city.

Now, maybe I'm wrong about some of those numbers.

I also couldn't find the strategic housing fund that the

Planning Commission had included in their CIP, and maybe I just overlooked that, but I hope you'll look at that.

That was about $600,000 for easy-to-access money for housing stuff.

Galen Stangle Hello, I'm Galen Stangle.

I live at 129 Goodman Street and there's a lot of great issues being discussed this evening.

I have two that I would like to talk about.

The first is the Belmont Bridge and urban design of associated areas.

Some of us were disappointed that you chose not to apply for the NEA grant last meeting, but I understand that it was very late in the game.

But we are encouraged and I'm encouraged that you have shown a commitment to moving forward with looking at the area as a comprehensive and the bridge as it relates to the urban design of the area.

So I want to thank you for that and encourage you to continue those efforts.

There's a number of us in Belmont who are very excited about continuing the discussion to come up with a really good design that engages the area and we are excited and ready and some of us have been talking about creating a citizen group to participate so we're ready to move forward with it.

The other thing I wanted to mention, this is something that came up recently and I haven't really had time to educate myself thoroughly about it.

This is the issue of the new treatment system that RWSA has asked to be installed as part of their new capital plan to put chloramines into the water for our area.

I don't know a whole lot about the chemistry involved with chloramines.

I am a chemical engineer by training and do know some about water treatment chemicals.

And there was a comment that was written by a woman who is the director of the chloramine

Information Center on the Seaville Tomorrow website that was very alarming talking about the hazards associated with byproducts from chloramines and she mentioned that there are citizen groups in seven states fighting the use of chloramines in drinking water and I think that

This is enough information to cause me an alarm, and I hope that you will ask for some more information about why we need to install the new treatment system.

As this woman points out, the levels of chlorine byproducts in our waters are well within regulated guidelines.

So why do we need this?

and what does it mean?

I'll be looking into it in more depth than I would ask that you do as well.

I have a prepared statement so that I don't fumble through this like I did last time.

My name is Jim Ralzavell and I live in Belmont at 1113 Monticello Road.

For the record, I am a registered architect in the Commonwealth with practice downtown, having recently garnered the second place award in the recent bridge competition.

I have participated in numerous city-sponsored public meetings regarding the bridge as well as professional discussions with the city

and MMM.

I'm here to voice my professional and public support for Council's stated goal to fund the effort to review, distill and consolidate the many excellent ideas that the competition generated.

At this juncture, it is abundantly clear from the flurry of bridge activity that the public does not want and will not support moving forward with the current proposal that initially inspired the competition.

By the same token, a proposal that removes the bridge in favor of an at-grade crossing, while popular with the public, is problematic on numerous levels and possibly unrealistic.

So we need to be careful.

On the one hand, dismissing the engineers who have the expertise to negotiate the tangled web of federal and state requirements is probably ill-advised.

At the same time, the public has spoken or more so demanded that whatever takes the place of this overpass must be more than just replacement.

It has to be designed.

After having invested more time than I care to admit studying this problem, I would posit that there are other possibilities and perhaps a synthesis of ideas that merits further consideration.

Heather Higgins Hello, my name is Heather Higgins.

I live at 703 Graves Street in Belmont and I am the spokesperson for Bike Charlottesville and I would like to thank Jim for his very eloquent statement which I can't really add anything to but I'm going to try just to mention a few things about the cycling aspect of it.

First off, I want to thank you for your ongoing efforts to create a world-class bike-friendly Charlottesville.

It's near and dear to my heart, and I know from your efforts that it is to yours.

Just a few highlights.

We have a bicycle safety committee led by the city.

You brought world-renowned speaker Mia Burke to town to train city staff and best practices.

You've increased the funding for bicycle investment, infrastructure improvements, and you have funded and employed, and she's already on the ground and doing a fantastic job, a bicycle pedestrian coordinator.

So your support is quite evident.

On behalf of Bike Charlottesville, I was lucky enough to serve on the Project Gateway jury, and I did see some fantastic designs and a lot of positive momentum.

And as Jim mentioned, I really look forward to the City Council

taking that to heart and leveraging that public sentiment that was expressed there and has been echoed through the media.

I ask that you steer the Belmont Bridge design process to prioritize innovative bicycle-pedestrian facilities as essential to the success of ultimate design.

We're looking for a multimodal solution that is innovative for bicycle and pedestrians.

Please ask the city staff to leverage the world-class training that Mia Burke did bring to town and industry-leading websites completestreets.org and nacto.org.

The importance of how we solve this urban planning challenge can't be overstated.

and to be successful, we ask for your continued leadership on this.

We need a world-class bicycle pedestrian solution if we hope to elevate our standing as a bicycle-friendly community.

Good evening, Councillors.

As you know, we had some great competition, great participation in the Belmont Bridge design competition and we want to continue that momentum and capture some of the best kernels of design insight and move those forward.

We think the right design for the Belmont Bridge replacement can better connect the downtown mall in Belmont.

It can add value to all the surrounding property.

and it can transform this neglected, underutilized area into a vital new gateway to the city.

It's now in your hands to decide how best to continue the design process and harness the community's creativity and vision to get us to that right design.

Many of us were disappointed two weeks ago when you decided not to pursue an NEA grant, but we recognized that the reluctance was mostly due to a very unfortunately tight time frame.

and we were very encouraged by your enthusiasm to invest city funds to continue the design process.

Along the way a number of different parties have suggested that there be created some sort of citizens committee to

joined the process and give citizens input, including harvesting some of the best design insights from the competition.

I'd like to suggest to the council that any such committee include several of our talented local design professionals, including some faculty from UVA, as well as several representatives from the Belmont neighborhood and any other adjacent neighborhoods.

To that end, a group of us who have been involved in the competition thus far and the process thus far have been conferring among ourselves to come up with a list of suggested people who are willing, able and ready to serve on such a committee and we're still waiting to hear back from a few people but we'll be finalizing that list in the next few days and passing it along to city council and we hope you'll consider our recommendations.

There's someone else who did not sign up and would like to speak.

This is a chance to do so.

Please come forward.

My name is Robert Smith and I live in Belmont and I've been coming to these meetings for years and often on

I'm coming here to speak on behalf, or second, the people that have spoken on the Belmont Bridge replacement.

And the process, and it occurred to me what an irony it is that the call for, in this case, the call for designs was something that followed the tail end of the process rather than the first.

I want to emphasize something that's really important.

In the maybe dozen years or more I've been coming to meetings.

As bright and intelligent as most of the people who get elected to city council are, often there's a tremendous amount of very intelligent, very effective citizens arguing against the perceived opinion of the council, etc.

or the various agendas.

and that's always been a little bit disheartening because there's some Charlottesville as anybody knows has some very very bright people who have fabulous backgrounds in a lot of different things.

I want to emphasize the reason I came up here tonight

was to iterate some of that stuff but I really want to point out I think is what is really critical is the bridge and the pavilion connection was a disconnect that has been there five years or more however long it's been open and I want to really emphasize this again.

Apparently at the Planning Commission

It was noted when it was approved the last time, that time, it was noted that the pavilion events would cut off access from the bridge downtown.

Which makes, for a senior person like myself, in some cases, a six to eight block detour out of my way.

So I think the paramount thing is that there should be, in other words, we've had a disconnect for five years.

When we have this new

We need a real connection between Belmont and across the, in other words the connection for pedestrians and cyclists which we've lost because for an 8 o'clock event at the pavilion they've often locked the access down at 4 o'clock in the afternoon

and that was spotted and the reason this is explained to me and it came out in this process and I want to give people the M&M people credit for that.

It came out in the process that it was turned down because it would cost a little more money.

So to me what's really critical is not that this process be moved forward at all, that we look at a crisis mode, that we even slow it down if we have to do the right thing.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else who would like to speak?

Who would like to start?

Ms. Hall, thank you for coming and I appreciate your perspective.

There was one thing that I just wanted to point out.

You mentioned that the school efficiency audit had suggested closing one school and actually I will say that the schools have been working very hard to try to do that, to have one middle school rather than two.

and currently it's expensive because it's a matter of moving students into one school that we're in another school and we just didn't have the money for that yet but that is still on the drawing board and so that is the way I think that they're responding to that and almost every other implementation in that report has been done so I think the schools have really responded to that and looked for ways to find efficiencies.

and I'll say this later too, but the deficit that the schools are seeing is not because of mismanagement or because of anything that they're doing at a local level and the fact that our funding has grown from 65 to 75 percent

is not because we're spending inordinate amounts on education.

It's because the state has withdrawn its funding, has lowered it every year, so that we're trying to make sure that education continues to be funded at an excellent level in our community.

So that's why I continue to support that.

So it's just a little different perspective on that.

But those are true.

I mean that we are increasing our amount.

See, some of these things are things that we'll be having discussions about later.

And thank you Ms. Szakos for making the comments about the public schools.

I would just like to also emphasize that

I was on the school board at that time when the management efficiency study was first put into place and we did see what some of the choices were and the way we chose to close the school was to do a consolidation of our middle schools and it did lead to a reconfiguration division-wide and we would have started getting payback on that in about 20 years but right now we're in a crisis.

And it does pain me to know actually that we've had to use money that we've set aside in the capital improvement program that we put aside for design for this new middle school.

It pains me that the schools had to use that for operating expenses.

So I'm very eager for us to get back on a revenue producing track in our city so that we can get back to a capital improvement schedule.

And the other thing, and it's an asset of our school division, is that we do have many elementary schools.

But they're neighborhood based.

They are within walking distance of where people live.

And as our city is growing, the numbers are moving upwards.

And as I'm sure you'll agree, in the north downtown, I'm seeing an awful lot more babies and baby strollers.

A lot of parents with young children coming in.

It is going to be something that we will see in the near future begin to turn around so that to be penny wise and pound foolish and to not have any foresight and think ahead that we will need these schools.

It's an attractor to our whole

City, that's the job of the council to understand that.

But I definitely appreciate your very hard-headed look at the numbers.

We have to look at these things in concert with everything else.

I think we will be, I do appreciate Ms. Carpenter and Mr. Collins

your support of housing and I think if you stick around and hear the discussion later on we will be talking about housing but in a very comprehensive context in neighborhoods in terms of a neighborhood.

that is somewhere that people can live, work, and play.

That we're not only talking about affordable housing, we're talking about many tiers of housing, but also making it so that it's better for people to work where they live and have better transportation to get to different options for work and employment.

So I appreciate your comments and I hope you stay around to hear the rest of the conversation when we talk about the economic, urban design economic plan for the south side of town.

That will then, is a good segue for me to talk about the Belmont Bridge.

As you all know, the other constraint that we had

was that the matching money we were using was already committed to, very strongly committed to needs of the housing authority community and the goal to have mixed income neighborhoods in the Ridge Street area that makes up a school district of the Ridge Street Belmont neighborhood for the Clark School District.

So again, this is

Very much an important piece is the urban design.

Urban design is the quality of public space.

It is the infrastructure.

It will be very much an important component to this neighborhood south of the downtown mall.

And it is, vice versa, a gateway to the downtown mall.

So I appreciate your comments and I think again we will have a shared understanding and purpose.

So again, this is very good to hear these comments tonight.

I want to thank Colette Hall for, as she said every year, she takes it on as her duty to remind us of the need for fiscal responsibility.

Thankfully, localities, cities like Charlottesville are required by law to pass

I wish we had a similar law in place for the federal government which has been acting with extreme recklessness when it comes to our fiscal management where I think we're about $15 or $16 trillion in debt right now which is an outrage.

But I do appreciate Ms. Hall for being a fiscal hawk and keeping us mindful of the need to exercise wise fiscal stewardship of our city tax dollars.

I want to thank the 300 some odd people who signed the petition regarding

the Ragged Mountain Natural Area and thank you for your diligence and perseverance and for your presentation this evening.

It's a cause that I've long championed and will continue to support.

I also want to thank, I think Ms. Galvin made a good point about looking at housing in a comprehensive fashion.

It's not just about, it is certainly about how do we make sure there's an adequate supply of housing that's affordable to local residents but it's also how do we increase the buying power of local residents and that's where the living wage movement is so important so thank you for bringing attention to that issue as well.

and also Mr. Collins, I think you identified an issue that really needs more attention which is the need for more transitional or supportive housing for homeless families which we have very little of right now in this community.

I spoke recently with the woman who runs Hope House

I think she said for every opening they have at Hope House they get dozens and dozens of applicants of families that can really use that particular kind of a residential opportunity.

So I'd like to see us focus on that a little bit more.

Also, I was sort of

I felt a little blindsided by this whole issue of the chloramines.

I really knew nothing about it.

The first I heard about it was reading it in the paper.

And I think it would be helpful to have, I don't know if Mr. Stengel is still here, but I think he made a good point.

It might be helpful to have Mr. Frederick come to a council meeting and just explain a little bit more about

Yeah, I agree.

And not to say, I just don't know much about it, and it seems like it's a very expensive undertaking, and I'd just like to know the rationale for it a little bit better.

Thank you.

I'd like to make two comments.

First of all, I want to appreciate the comments of Bellarmine Bridge because I think it is an important gateway to our community.

and it needs to be designed, not only designed, but designed well because so my understanding is that staff is proceeding with a group of architects including university architects to review ideas which were presented as part of the contest and then work on new ideas.

So I'm hoping that, I'm also hoping, I'm expecting to see a quality design for Burnham Bridge.

but I would say that bridge in my mind is needed is not something you can do away with just because some solutions have been proposed.

My mind is impractical.

Secondly, a comment I would like to make is a connection to Erin.

Ms. Rose, you mentioned about Nestle's giving a grant to, if you'll check, the grant was never awarded, just for your record.

but there's definitely a Nestle's interest in nature conservancy that's questionable.

I was just trying to check your facts.

Okay, thank you.

Next item on the agenda is consent agenda.

Are the members of the council like to see the items removed or discuss further or make a comment on?

All those in favor, please vote.

And opposed.

Very important task.

Sorry.

We have 11 openings.

We received about, I think it was 25 or 30 applications.

Very much appreciate the strong interest.

I'd like to move the nomination of Michelle Bates, Jesse Ellis, Susan Erno, Harvey Finkel, Andre Haykes, Simona Holloway-Wong, Tim Halbert,

The second is in motion.

Second.

Let's vote on the motion please.

Thank you and I think it would be a great task for us to work with on this issue of concern to a lot of people in the community.

I also want to thank people who applied for this committee even though they did not get on it.

We hope that you will keep on applying and other task forces will be where you can serve.

Next item which is a school board proposal, proposed budget for 2013, Mr. Gillespie and Ms. Atkins.

members of City Council and Mr. City Manager.

It's a pleasure for us to come before you this afternoon, this evening to share and to present to you our budget that has been approved by our school board on March the 1st.

We do understand that this year that we come before Council at a very difficult time when there are competing priorities in our city

and that council has to make some very difficult decisions about funding those priorities and that the well-being of our entire city is under consideration before council members.

So we thank you for all of the consideration that you've given to our school system.

We'd like to start off just by highlighting a few of the accomplishments that we've made in our school division during the past year.

We have just launched a new strategic plan, a forward-thinking strategic plan that can be summed up in four categories that our intent over the next six years is to prepare our students for post-secondary education,

to enhance our partnerships in the community and within our school division to create in our school division stronger communities of teaching and learning that promotes excellence and equity for all students and to make our school system and workplace an exemplary place for our employees, our staff and our faculty.

Our strategic plan will carry us through the next six years.

Also, other accolades that we've received in our school system is that four of our elementary schools have been recognized by the Virginia Department of Education and the Governor's Office receiving the Virginia Index of Performance.

Those four schools are Burnley-Moran, Greenbrier, Venable and Johnson, with Greenbrier and Burnley-Moran receiving the highest honor from the Governor.

We also have many of our students and teams in our school system who have been recognized for their excellence.

Our debate team continues to distinguish themselves in the state and across the nation.

Our debate team came in second place this year, winning the Catholic Forensic League tournament.

also winning the student contest and the original oratory contest.

Those are big wins for our debate team at the high school and two of our students received the National Council of Teachers of English Achievement Awards.

Our Pop Quiz team came in second place in the state and actually scored 53rd in the nation in the Fall Knowledge Master Contest.

Buford Middle School is preparing their students quite well to compete when they get to the high school.

The middle school students scored seventh in Knowledge Master Competition in the state and ranked 82nd in the nation.

Congratulations to Buford.

Our high school continues to produce some of the highest achieving young people in the Commonwealth.

We had 260 students in 11th and 12th grade to take advanced placement exams.

We administered over 619 exams this past spring, highest number in the state.

and those students taking those exams, 90% of the students scored 3 or higher on the exam and over 56% of the students scored 4 or 5.

Outstanding Achievements.

I think this picture represents the esprit de corps that's developed at the high school.

This is actually a high school basketball game.

And I would challenge anyone to find a picture more representative of our student body than this.

Our high school basketball team, the boys basketball team finished the regular season fourth and despite some obstacles they managed to be Jefferson District champions.

Our girls also finished the regular season in fourth place and were runner-ups in the Jefferson District championship.

Winter Warren, who is one of our students at the high school, actually was recognized as the VHSL Region 2 student representative.

High school graduation, what all of the education that we do in our city schools is all about, preparing our students to finish high school, finish strong and be prepared for post-secondary education.

Several years ago we came before this council and our dropout rate was 17.87%.

Our dropout, I'm very pleased to say, has decreased to 5.07%.

Still not where we want it to be.

We'd like it to be zero, but it's certainly better than it was a few years ago.

Our graduation rate is now 86% and headed toward that 90% and higher.

As you can see, we continue to excel in our SAT scores.

Our SAT scores are consistently above the state scores at least by 40 or more points in some areas and above the national mean.

These are some of the activities that are going on in our school system.

One that I will bring to your attention in our strategic plan we're focusing on our students being exposed to college careers and college life.

Our fourth grade students are now

from each of our elementary schools will be visiting the University of Virginia.

Students at Jackson Via visited the University of Virginia, actually sat in the seats in the classrooms, were taught a lesson, had lunch on grounds, and then walked on the lawn to simulate graduation.

It was a very eventful day for our students and for our families.

You can see that we have, thanks to council, we have a wonderful three-year-old program.

I can tell you that some of the students who have gone through our three-year-old program now are entering into the four-year-old program have actually started reading.

We have several students who are actually enrolled in the four-year-old program, but we send them to kindergarten because of their reading abilities now.

Gardens and Business Partnerships.

All of this is what makes our school system an excellent place to live.

Okay, we thought it would be useful to go back and spend a few slides showing from 09 because it was really, it was 2008 that the economy first

really started to show signs of stress.

It was after 09 that the financial markets, the banking system, the real estate value started to get reflected into the budget.

So we go back to 09 as a place to start and we're going to go through a few slides that show how the school division got to today before we go into next year's budget.

So since 09, enrollment is stable.

It's up slightly by 14 students.

That does turn around a trend of more than 30 years of steady declines.

So that's a good thing to see to have the enrollment actually stabilize and go up.

Unfortunately, at the same time, state funding has gone down.

Since 09 to this year's budget, we've lost over 18% of our state funding.

We're down $3 million.

At the same time, the local composite index, which is a relative wealth indicator of this community, relative to other communities in the state, has gone up 12.5%, so Charlottesville does look relatively more wealthy.

At the same time, the city appropriation to the general fund is up 2%, or $1.2 million.

Obviously that didn't cover the entire $3 million deficit, so since 2009 the school division has been in the process of reducing the budget.

and again we did have the advantage of having the efficiency study which we did bring to bear to balance the budget over these several years as well as the strategic plan approved by the school board.

So some of those cuts to services we have increased class sizes since 09 to today.

The elementary schools are based on poverty, highest level of poverty is the lowest level so in 06 those schools that had the highest poverty were staffed at a 16 to 1 ratio, that's now 18.

I'm sorry, and the lowest poverty schools were at 18, they're now at 17 and 19.

Walker Buford were at 16 and 17, both of those are now at 18 and a half.

And CHS was at 19, and it's now at 20 and a half.

Additional cuts to services, we've also eliminated instructional assistants, all second grade instructional assistants, and the halftime instructional assistant media center at each elementary.

Administrative and sport positions were also reduced, 0.85 of a coordinator, four and a half custodial, and two maintenance

or two administrative clerical.

Overall, since 09, we've already reduced almost 26 positions.

That's $1.2 million or 2% of the general fund has been reduced.

At the same time, teacher salaries are up 5% and all other salaries are up four.

Again, that's up over a three-year period going to today.

So now turning to 2013, right now what we have to work with is the Governor's budget.

The total negative impact from the Governor's budget is $4.2 million, some of the significant items that are here.

The first two of these are somewhat unique or at least significantly impacting Charlottesville beyond that other divisions are feeling.

The Commonwealth of Virginia distributes sales tax based on school-aged children aged 5 to 19.

Charlottesville being a college town, we were able to count 18 and 19-year-olds who were attending the University of Virginia but resided in Charlottesville.

The new methodology for distributing sales tax says you can't count those students in Charlottesville, they now have to count in their parents' home district.

That was about 2,000 students that were removed from our counts, costing the school division almost 1.2 million, so that's a significant hit to the budget.

Composite index again increased, indicating that Charlottesville is again a wealthier community relative to others in the state.

Cost about $650,000 to state funds.

And then the other significant item, and this one affects every school district and locality that participates in the Virginia retirement system, a very significant, in fact unprecedented rate increase in the retirement system rates, costing the school division 1.8 million dollars in additional retirement system costs.

And then something that we were anticipating, the state did fund our current year budget with some one-time items, elimination of those funds, 577,000.

Again, that's an item that all school divisions are feeling and we were certainly anticipating that one.

So, given that somewhat gloomy picture we set about at the process that the school division takes for public meetings, prior to the release of the division or the governor's budget, we did have a budget work session with the school board.

We have some new school board members.

It's always a good time to sit down and kind of go over the process somewhat related to what I just went through, a picture where we've been, the items that are in the budget and how it kind of works.

following the release of the governor's budget in December.

We met with the Teacher Advisory Committee.

We then met with principals and coordinators.

We had a budget review committee that we formed.

It's representative citizens, parents, staff, and some business people in the community.

We went over all this information with them.

And along the way here, we've been gathering ideas about how to close a gap the size of 4.2 million.

We then met, started a series of meetings with the PTOs on January 24th.

The first meeting of the PTO was with Burnley Moran.

We then re-met again with the budget review committee, having all the information we had at that time, went back to the committee.

The committee weighed in again with some additional thoughts.

We then met several different schools for the PTOs.

We had a second budget work session on January 28th with the school board.

And at this point, we presented to the school board a series of levels of cuts, from a million to two million to three to the whole 4.2.

We assumed flat funding from the city, and we assumed that the governor's budget was pretty much going to be what we'd have to deal with.

We then met the GAN PTO at Johnson Elementary.

We had a public hearing on the 2nd of February.

GAN met with the Teacher Advisory Committee.

We then met with all the PTO presidents and then finally had a final budget work session on the 23rd with the school board to pull the budget together in a balanced budget, which they did approve on March 1st.

So, the 2013 budget as it stands now, it's a balanced budget.

We have the total budget, this is both general fund and special revenue funds of just over 70 million dollars.

It's an increase of 187,092 dollars or about one fourth of one percent.

The general fund makes up 56,340,936 of that.

It's an increase just under 1.2 million or 2.09 percent.

and the Special Revenue Fund, which is made up of funds that are restricted as to their use or other self-sustaining operations.

Just over 13 million, just under 14 really, a decrease of $964,000 or down 6.52%.

The decrease in the Special Revenue Funds was largely the elimination of federal stimulus dollars that all school divisions were taking advantage of while they were there, short one-time funds.

This is a view of just the general fund.

Breaking that down further, the general fund is really our basic operations of the school division, those that city tax dollars largely fund.

As was pointed out earlier, city funding currently makes up just under 76% of the general fund, $42,808,030.

It's an increase of just under $3.5 million or 8.8%.

This again in the face of a huge decline in state funds.

State funding now only makes up 21% where it was in excess of 36% just before 09.

Again, a decrease in state funding to go along with 2 million of increase in VRS, a decrease in state funding of just over 2 million, we're just under 15% reduction.

Federal funding makes up very little of the general fund.

The federal government doesn't give you money unless they tell you exactly what to do with it.

$19,000 is all that's typically in the general fund.

The large decrease of just about $380,000 is again due to stimulus dollars that were allocated to the school division that we did put into the general fund to help get past these last several years of hard times.

All other sources, tuition and all other sources, about just under 3% of the budget.

It's a 1,664,031.

It's an increase of 118,000 or 7.64%.

That item is largely up because of an increase that the school board approved in non-resident tuition.

We have students who attend the school division from outside of Charlottesville and we went up a little bit on tuition to help balance the budget.

Again, with the general fund turning to the expenditure side of the house, starting with personnel, which is all your salaries, no salary increases being proposed.

People salaries make up just over 56% of the budget.

It's 31,636,878.

It's a decrease of 762,405, just over 2%.

Overall, we eliminated 23 positions, but five and a half of those we actually transferred out into that special revenue fund to take advantage of some grant funding.

The other 17.5 positions were cut.

This is about 2.75% of the workforce in terms of a reduction.

Employee benefits up 21.23% of the budget, almost up 21%.

And again, largely due to the retirement system, again, from the state budget.

Virginia retirement system's better than a $1.8 million increase.

Overall, employee benefits are up about that same amount, 17%.

Contracted services, the large ones are listed there.

Maintenance transportation, we contract with the city.

And the Piedmont Regional Education Program is a special education program.

It's a shared program amongst of Charlottesville and six or seven other localities.

Those were the major contracts that increased.

Overall contract services are about 17% of the budget.

This item is up about 5% or 453,000.

All other operating, this is supplies, materials, equipment, paper, pencils, everything else that the school division operates on, about 5.55% of the budget.

Overall this is $3,126,914.

This item is decreased $282,000, about 8%.

We applied a 2% across the board reduction of all operating budgets that were non-school based and we made a variety of other reductions in the operating budget as well to help balance the budget.

Overall, cuts that were made that the school board approved were about $950,000 to help offset the increase in retirement system expenses and the reduction of state funding.

The rest, again, comes from the increased request from city funding.

A few points to remember.

Again, negative impact from the governor's budget.

This is unprecedentedly large in terms of its negative impact.

The items I already mentioned that were related to that.

Also, the proposal does not provide salary increases for employees.

We also at the same time do not pass benefit costs on to employees.

We're anticipating a 5% increase in health insurance.

We're planning, we're still negotiating with the provider on that, but we're not planning on passing any of that on to employees.

And at this point, the board is not considering passing on retirement system costs to employees as well, although there are some things in the General Assembly coming out that are indicating the General Assembly is going to push for that a little bit, so we'll see.

Also the budget proposals, a mix of one-time, permanent, short-term reductions in expenditures and funding.

City funding is a mix of permanent and one-time.

We're also using fund balances, which are just funds that are left over from one year that roll into the next.

$150,000 from the Piedmont Regional Program, again a shared program.

That's a short-term use of those funds.

And $135,000 from the general fund balance, which currently totals about $700,000.

Again, a short-term use.

But I think worth doing to help, once again, just to get by here.

as best we can.

And then finally the General Assembly actions are still out there and that will of course change everything.

The school board then comes back, makes any changes based on what comes out of the state and the school board goes back and makes any modifications necessary.

And that's the presentation.

I just want to thank you Mr. Gillespie and Superintendent Atkins and your whole staff.

I know it's been a very, and the school board and all the parents and other stakeholders have been involved.

I know it's been a very trying year to come to this point and I think you've made some tough choices and you've had to make some difficult cuts.

So I appreciate the situation you're in and I for one I know I believe I speak for all of my colleagues who want to support the excellent work that city schools are doing and see you continue to move in the right direction which is why I think all of us are willing to provide the additional funds this year to prevent the

possibility of further cuts that would really, I think, cut into the bone of the schools.

The question, of course, is looking into the future.

Other than just sort of hoping that the revenue side will improve and the economy will improve and what are some, you know, plans in place or

Mr. Norris, I think that's a difficult promise for the school system to make that we won't find ourselves because we know right now that we're using about 2.6 million dollars in one-time funding.

What our school board has discussed is that we have given them three levels of cuts.

The ones that we've made this year and then we have two more levels of cuts to cut even deeper into our services and programs.

that our board will come back and look at those cuts and re-examine those cuts as we enter into the FY14 school year.

We'll also be looking to certainly market our school division, give it a higher profile to make it a more attractive place for students to come and be involved in our school system and working with our families and our teachers and our staff members to make sure that we give the best service possible

increase our services where we can and attract more individuals into our school system.

anything that city council can do given the context that you all have at the state level to make it clear what's going on at the state's not acceptable either.

I'd like to add that yes we should be saying loudly and often that we're willing to do this because we believe in education but really our state legislature should believe in education as well and they've been showing that at least a majority of them

are not supporting it in the way to which we've become accustomed and believe is necessary.

And I think that, you know, I don't like to bring politics up and I'm not going to name any specific, you know, parties or candidates, but I think that when people are voting for their state legislatures, both delegates and in the Senate, that's a question to ask candidates is, do you, you know, would you support education and look at their voting record?

And, you know, I think that we, this Commonwealth,

has long prided itself on excellent education.

And I think we won't be able to do that statewide if we continue with this sort of trend in Richmond.

So we have our finger in the dike here locally because we're, you know, I'll...

and I would just like to add as well that based on the conversation we had at our last school board city council luncheon we're also well aware that there's some work that we need to do regionally not only just in Richmond but also between Charlottesville and Almonte County and the bill that shall not be named was hanging over our heads and it went away but it was

also threatened once again that it will happen next year that we could be facing an additional $2.5, $2.6 million again cut if the revenue sharing agreement and the local composite index calculations are brought into play.

So I think as soon as we can, because we made a commitment at that luncheon that we were going to form a commission

that was a combination of former city councilors, former school board members, former school board members from both jurisdictions to start working at a long-term solution that dealt with consolidating our services, whatever means we can to regionally start thinking our way out of this box and stop being enemies towards each other because both of us can't keep killing each other's school divisions.

It's not sustainable.

Ms. Galvin, our school board chair, Mr. Mickey, very recently sent a very warm email out to Albemarle County, the board of supervisors and the school board members, acknowledging that we just both come through a pretty difficult time with the bill.

and both are wrestling with some very difficult decisions with our budgets and budget deficits and invited counsel, the board of supervisors and the Albemarle school board that we could talk and talk about and

Great.

When did that happen?

It's right after our meeting actually.

Any more comments?

I just want to make two comments.

First of all, I really appreciate how great school system we have.

I want to share with you a little story.

I went to high school a few weeks back to attend Hangar Banquet.

There was a young lady sitting next to me, and when she said, I said, where do you live?

She gave me the address, and I knew it was out in the city.

She said, why did you choose to leave school?

She said, oh, your music program.

So we have excellent programs in our system.

We're trying to keep on improving that.

as you go along.

The second point, which Kathy Galvin mentioned already, I also met with the chairman of board of supervisors to appoint the joint committee, so I don't know if she will be appointing one very soon.

We look forward to it.

Thank you very much for your presentation.

Next item on our agenda is city finance proposal.

Are you going to be making a PowerPoint presentation?

I will be.

Mr. Mayor and Members of Council, it is my pleasure to present to you the City Manager's proposed budget for fiscal year 2012-2013.

There are a whole host of folks who are very involved with developing this budget every year.

Our budget team is comprised of our director of budget and performance management, Leslie Beauregard, our COO, CFO, Aubrey Watts, our finance director, Bernard Ray, Rick Berrick from our communications office, Ryan Davidson from our budget office.

In addition, our department directors and their staff spent a lot of time working on their budgets to get us to where we are tonight.

I'd also like to recognize the CIP Ranking Committee, Monica Brumfeld from Finance, Mr. Davidson from Budget, Doug Amen from Parks and Recreation, John Santosky from the Planning Commission, David Chiflet from the Police Department, Hank Strauss from Community Attention, Chad Thorne from Public Works, and Ebony Walden from Neighborhood Development Services.

There are three themes for this year's proposed budget.

Continuing our strong support for city schools, providing quality services, and maintaining our tax rates.

We are very fortunate to be able to provide high quality services to our residents, our businesses, and the visitors who travel to Charlottesville.

In our city, folks have come to expect these types of services, and I believe we are delivering them in a professional manner that addresses the needs of our community.

Public Safety, Education, Parks and Recreation, Social Services, Public Works.

These are just a few of the departments that are serving our residents every day.

So what services do our residents want and how do they feel about the current services that they are receiving?

Our latest budget survey seems to indicate that respondents feel they are getting their money's worth out of the services they pay.

That's about 56%, which is exactly the same percentage as it was from our 2010 survey.

They also have a strong desire to keep their taxes and the services generally at the same level.

And this budget largely tries to do that.

And of the services that they feel most strongly about, public safety, schools, capital improvement, public works, they're all top priorities in this proposed budget.

How does this budget impact our residents?

We are not proposing an increase in our tax rates or in our fees for fiscal year 2013.

In fact, as a result of the new assessment numbers, 98% of our residents will see no change or a decrease in their real estate taxes.

59% will see no change in their taxes paid, while 39% will experience a reduction in their taxes.

In addition, we are not proposing reductions in our services for 2013.

We believe this budget reflects responsible budgeting in these difficult economic times.

In addition to our support for schools, we are living within our means, planning ahead for future costs, meeting our community needs, and reflecting the Council's priorities and your vision.

So let's dive into the details of this budget, which, by the way, you can find all the information related to our budget online at www.Charlottesville.org slash budget.

Let's take a quick look at the changes in the General Fund over the course of the last 10 years or so.

As you can see, the robust economic times we experienced back 5, 6, 7 years ago have settled into a new era of fiscal restraint.

Our proposed budget is a slight 2% increase over fiscal year 12.

And right now the General Fund budget stands as it's proposed at $146,183,446.

This graph gives you a good sense of where our general fund revenues are coming from.

Of course, local taxes are the largest piece of the pie, accounting for 65% of our revenues.

Revenue trends have been mixed.

Some areas are doing quite well, such as meals and lodging, and others not so much, like personal property taxes and, of course, real estate assessments, which are decreasing in calendar year 2012.

Overall real estate assessments in calendar year 12 are projected to decline by 1.22%, with residential assessments taking the biggest hit with a 3% decrease.

Obviously, this is not very good news.

However, the commercial side has helped.

Folks continue to invest in the city of Charlottesville, and that has kept the overall assessments from falling even more drastically.

Another important indicator is the sales and use tax.

This revenue stream has started to see some improvement as consumer confidence increases and as we bring more businesses into the city like the Whole Foods market.

You can see a significant move in the right direction over the course of the last two years.

Surprisingly, the meals tax continues to gain steam and seems to be poised for a 14% increase in fiscal year 13.

Folks may be more comfortable dining out with a new level of confidence in the economy overall, and we hope that continues in 13 and beyond.

Another promising indicator that our economy may be picking up is the increase in the lodging tax revenue.

It's projected to go up by 8.45% over 2012, and you can see it's been a steady increase since 2009.

So that was brief, good news.

Now let's move into the areas of concern.

the state impact on local governments.

The big story is definitely the schools.

The governor's proposed budget reduced the city schools by over $4.2 million as you heard just a few moments ago.

As of now, the General Assembly remains deadlocked and has not approved a new budget.

What this means is that localities and schools may have to approve their budgets before the state has approved theirs and therefore will not have real state budget numbers to consider.

And we may end up having to amend our budget once they've passed theirs.

Let's take a real quick look at the local government and that has not had as much of an impact from a state perspective as it has on our schools.

The state flex cuts are being proposed to be reduced from 60 million to 50 million statewide.

State aid for police protection will remain at the fiscal year 12 level right now and

At one time, the city was faced with a $250,000 reduction in the state aid for urban roads based on a recommendation from VDOT.

We now know that that proposal will not take place in fiscal year 13, or at least that's our hope.

So although our local government is directly affected by the state cuts, as we mentioned before, the most significant hit occurred with our schools.

Earlier we showed you where our revenues are derived.

Now we're going to explain to you where they are spent.

The schools are the largest slice of our expenditure pie, coming in at 32% of the expenditures.

City Council has strongly supported our schools and its operations and capital needs in the past and continues to do so this year and we believe with our budget for next year.

Public safety and justice, that's police, fire, sheriff's office, courts, etc., make up nearly 26% of the operating budget, followed by healthy families and community at nearly 19%, and infrastructure and transportation at almost 10%.

Let's focus on education for a moment.

The city's investment of $3.4 million in new money for next year, that's the largest increase since fiscal year 2008, is a direct response to the fundamental shift we're seeing in state funding of public education.

The state is funding less and we're funding more.

As you can see from the chart, since 2000, state funding for schools has decreased as a percentage of the school's budget from 40% to 25%.

Conversely, local support from schools as a percentage of the school's budget has increased from 61% to 76%.

And we don't anticipate this trend will be reversed in the near future.

So this next slide will give you a sense of how we are able to provide the new funding to the schools.

$1.5 million is being redirected from the school's capital budget, and those are funds that have been set aside for the future middle school reconfiguration project.

That project right now is on hold for the time being as we work our way through our funding issues.

$670,000 is carryover from school reserves that we set aside in this current year's budget.

$176,000 is new money that's part of the formula, the 40% formula that we have for schools.

$250,000 is from the Risk Management Fund.

We determined that due to the large fund balance that we had there, we could afford to transfer some of that money to the general fund and to help the schools.

$228,000 is from the Landfill Fund.

We determined that there are adequate reserves currently in that fund to cover our required remediation of the landfill.

and $630,000 is a mix of revised state and local revenue estimates and some expenditure savings that we identified, such as a reduction to the department's contribution to the equipment replacement fund.

Moving on to compensation and benefits, the city's required contributions to the retirement fund and employee health care plans is significant and are major drivers in the 2013 budget.

The city of Charlottesville is not alone in feeling the impact of lower than anticipated investment returns.

The pension funds across the country, both public and private, have seen an increase in contribution requirements over the same period of time.

In fiscal year 2013, health care costs are projected to increase by 12.5%, and we are proposing a 3% one-time bonus for our employees.

We thought this was a responsible approach.

Considering that we are using a lot of one-time money for the schools, we felt that this would give us some flexibility as we head into next year's budget, fiscal year 14, and it's also an acknowledgement of the hard work of our city employees.

There, of course, has been a great deal of discussion centered on the living wage recently.

It came up again this evening.

As you know, the city of Charlottesville is a leader in the living wage campaign, becoming one of the first employers, major employers in the area, to offer a living wage to our employees.

And here's where we are today.

The city's starting wage for regular, four-time employees is currently $11.76 per hour.

6% of those employees are slightly under the much discussed $13 per hour wage.

92% of our regular full-time employees are actually making over $14 per hour.

The cost of moving up those 52 full-timers to $13 an hour would cost the city a little over $35,000 in fiscal year 2013.

Currently, our seasonal and temporary employees are starting at $10.73 per hour.

We do not have funding currently in our budget to increase our employees to $13 per hour.

However, I anticipate having a deeper discussion of the living wage at our work session next Monday night.

One of the major costs associated with any sort of increase in the starting wages of our employees will be the effect it will have on compression for other employees, and we have not factored those costs just yet.

The fiscal year 2013 CIP is very much about maintaining what we have in place rather than adding a bunch of new projects.

As you can see here, we still continue our commitment to capital improvements with the schools.

We have a new expenditure in the police firearms range.

That's a partnership with Albemarle County.

We have two projects, two parks projects that we're working on.

Reeves, which is fully funded in 2013, and Azalea Park, which is receiving half of its funding in 2013 and then proposed they would get the rest of their funding in fiscal year 14 to make that project happen.

The list shown here are some of the major projects, as I mentioned, that make up the CIP for 2013.

So as we look forward, we'll need to continue to keep a close eye on the state budget cuts to the schools.

We do have a series of major capital needs that are looming on the horizon that you'll see in the latter part of our five-year CIP.

We recognize that for the foreseeable future, one to two percent increases in the budget is what has become the new normal as we continue to see a flat or declining real estate market and cuts from the federal and state budgets.

On the schools in particular, the city council and the school board have committed to working together right after this budget ends to identify what we see as future threats to school funding and what we can do to address that.

We realize that balancing this budget using one-time funding is simply not sustainable.

And we'll be having that discussion beginning in May.

On a positive note, we are optimistic about certain aspects of our economy that are trending in the right direction.

Our unemployment is declining, commercial and real estate permit requests are increasing, sales, meals and lodging taxes are trending up, and we are seeing a significant investment in our city, from downtown with the old Martha Jefferson Hospital site to the new apartment complex near the University and Barracks Road Shopping Center.

The business world is seeing a number of excellent opportunities right here in the city of Charlottesville, even as we inch our way out of the Great Recession.

Additionally, the city continues its history of solid financial performance.

We've developed a strong reserve to provide some cushion during these economically unsettling times.

We obviously possess a stable economic base with the University of Virginia.

And we have a low debt burden that allows us to manage our capital improvement needs.

And we have maintained our AAA bond rating, which allows us to borrow money at lower interest rates, saving all of our taxpayers money.

So those are all positives as we move forward.

So speaking of moving forward, tonight begins a series of meetings and work sessions for the council and the public to hear about the budget and to weigh in.

One week from today, we'll have a work session to discuss revenue projections, anticipated expenditures, and our council priorities, including the living wage increase.

On March 19th, we'll have our first public hearing on the budget, followed two days later by the Citizens Budget Forum at 7 p.m. in city space.

On March 22nd, we'll take a closer look at our capital improvement budget during our second work session.

Seven days later, on March 29th, we'll discuss funding for outside and nonprofit agencies during work session number three.

We'll have our second public hearing on April 2nd, and if necessary, we'll have a fourth work session on April 3rd.

Council will formally approve the budget on April 10th at 5.30 p.m. in the second floor conference room here in City Hall.

and as I mentioned before, all of our budget information can be found at www.Charlottesville.org slash budget.

Thank you for putting up with my cold.

Thank you for the presentation.

I'd just like to encourage members of the public to come to the workshop because this is a big complex budget and I think we can certainly talk a little bit about it today but most of the meat gets done in those work sessions and they really can be interesting.

I think that is a good tradition because it gives the opportunity for citizens to hear the response back.

I'd just like to say thank you to Mr. Jones and Ms. Beauregard and your staff for putting together a solid budget proposal and look forward to hearing all the community input in the weeks to come.

I do, as Ms. Szakos said, do encourage people to

I'd like to chime in.

This is your money.

This is the most important, as Ms. Hall says, it's the most important decision we make every year is the decision on how to spend your money.

And I'll also say that if you do go to that website, Charlottesville.org slash budget, the complete budget is really presented, I mean, it's one of the reasons that our budget folks get this award every year.

It's presented in a way that's really quite comprehensible.

It's broken into kind of sections and things are explained in narrative and then there are numbers and there are graphs, so no matter what kind of a learner you are,

And again, I'd just like to say thank you.

As this being my first budget season as a city councilor, it's daunting.

It's an intense operation and very complicated.

Coming from the school board where there was the one piece, the big piece of the pie,

But it was the one piece.

And then seeing everything in context, it's quite challenging, but again, it's very clear.

So please do come out and ask your questions.

These are important times.

These are important decisions to be made.

And I do want to say thank you to Mr. Jones, though, for also pointing out to us that there are positive trends in the offing, that this is going to be the challenge, but it's the opportunity, as they say, to try to capture that.

And your help is always appreciated.

I also want to second the comments that the staff has done an excellent job in putting together the budget and I want to challenge the citizens to come and take part in this because sometimes it is disappointing that you can have

A hundred people show up for a minor item and only five people show up for the city budget, which is the most important document we adopt throughout the year.

So this is your chance to come and speak and share your thoughts and ideas and we'll welcome those and we look forward to discussing and adopting the budget and so forth.

Any other questions?

No, sir.

Thank you all for your input.

Next item on the agenda is the annual housing report with Mr. Tolbert.

That's not me.

Oh boy.

Frick.

Let's see, get out of this room.

It's a new one of these, which one is it?

I'm getting to make a presentation to y'all that I didn't think I was going to get to make, and I'm glad I'm getting to do it.

Karen Waters, since her apology, she was going to do this as chair of the Housing Advisory Committee, but she is on the way back from being out of state, and then Kathy McHugh, who is in our office doing all the work, fell ill today and had to go home, so they asked me to do this.

This is something that in the reconfiguration of the Housing Advisory Committee, the charge to them, you indicated you wanted an annual report, wanted them to prepare a state of housing report to you and to benchmark it against the 2025 housing report that was done

that was done a couple of years ago.

So what I'm going to do tonight is talk about that, recap the 2025 goals, talk about progress since that time, look at affordable investments since the report, talk about the leverage of funds and other initiatives and then where it looks like we may be going.

As you know, we've got a lot of programs that have had a lot of programs that are funded through the city, through the Charlottesville Housing Fund, CDBG, home monies, where we have free paint program, we have the reduced water and sewer fees, and the real estate tax exemptions, tax relief, rental assistance, all sorts of programs that we have to try to improve the housing situation for the community.

Most of the programs are subject to income and are age

status limitations and the area median income is what we've adopted as a standard for our programs.

The Charlottesville median family income at this point is $77,800 and a very low definition of anybody below a family of four below 50% is $38,900.

So while that just is not a lot of money to try to put into housing and feed a family of four.

The 2025 goals, the primary goal was to increase the ratio of supported affordable housing units in the community to 15% of the total housing units by 2025.

At the time the report was prepared, we were at 10.5%.

our total units being affordable in some way and generally those were units that had some kind of public assistance whether it be a Section 8 voucher, whether it be a project we'd done with Piedmont Housing Alliance or Habitat or somebody of that nature but it was some type of unit that had some public involvement in it.

There may be other units out there that are privately rented that would meet the definition but we don't have any way of capturing those and we hope that there are that help us do better.

Progress that we've made since it was adopted, one of the most important I think is the hiring of our Housing Development Specialist who has been doing a lot of behind the scenes work getting us through the things that we've been able to do and preparing us to do a lot of work in the future.

I think our recent collaboration that was begun last year between CRHA and Neighborhood Development Services on the redevelopment process has been huge and

Kathy, our Housing Development Specialist, has spent a tremendous amount of time working on that.

We've also realized we've got some serious issues and problems regarding long-term HUD funding for public housing and that has a tremendous impact on how we move forward in dealing with our housing issues.

And then one of the biggest things that we've been able to do is a memorandum of understanding that was developed with the Housing Authority and the city.

We've come out with a plan to develop RFPs for Crescent Halls

Avine Garage, Levy Property.

We've determined how to utilize the Charlottesville Development Corporation and hopefully in the next couple of months we'll have that up and running.

The attorney's office is working real hard in getting that ready to take to the CRHA board.

And we've come to council and asked for funding for architectural engineering for RFPs for those first two projects.

And again, we've worked on developing a financing plan and are working on that, developing a strategic plan to redevelop all the CRHA properties is the next thing that we've got to do according to the MOU.

We still haven't drafted the RFPs.

A lot of reasons but we're working on different scenarios there.

We're putting together the basic information and one of the things is we're looking at the approach of using a master developer to do a couple of the first projects.

Somebody that would come in and actually do the A&E work for us at no cost as part of the redevelopment process.

One of the primary reasons is we know we've got to bring the private sector in because of the lack of resources available to do the redevelopment on our own.

When we did the report, the 2025 report, there were 1932 assisted units in the community.

Since the 2025 report, we've added 53 that are either different vouchers, deed restrictions,

Habitat projects.

Those are ones that are complete.

It doesn't sound like a lot, but it's been a year and a half or so since it was adopted.

The good news is we've got, this time next year, that number is going to be a lot larger, but it does show that we haven't gone backwards.

We have increased in the numbers.

Again, we've gone from 1932 to 1985.

The unfortunate thing is that the percent has decreased from 10.5 to 10.34, but in another, if we were doing this report a month from now, that number would be up and be up almost 11%.

So there are things happening and growth is occurring and we are getting units built.

Where are those units?

Well, the first one, the most exciting, I think, is the SRO that will be opening at 4th and Preston.

Actually, they're moving in now.

They got the certificate of occupancy on Thursday of last week.

Grand opening, I think, is on all the council calendars for April 10th at 10 a.m. That's when they're going to do the dedication, but it will be in operation well before then as they're getting ready to move people in.

and if you hadn't had a chance to go see it, I hope you can go walk through it because they've done an amazing job with it.

A couple of affordable housing investments.

The city has provided property for the woods on the south side of Elliott Avenue.

That's 47

dwelling units that will be built there.

The site plan is supposed to be submitted next month.

They've been going through the process.

They've gotten their zoning approval and that's an exciting new development adjacent to Burnett Commons that will provide at least seven affordable units but a mix throughout the affordability spectrum that will give some more workforce housing in addition to what is truly on the lower end of the affordable.

The Nunley Townhouses, these are the three units that you agreed that we would work with Habitat to build.

As you can see, they're nearing completion.

The yellow unit in the middle is the one that is built for Region 10, and the ones on either end are

We're negotiating with a public safety employee now for one of them which was our intent and the other one it looks like will be going to the land trust who will sell it and it'll be the first one of their first property that they have to sell and it will allow them to gain some other funding with a matching donor because of the value of the land there so this project has turned out really well within budget and

and I think you'll be something you'll be proud of and we'll be setting a groundbreaking for that, not a groundbreaking, sorry, broken ground, but a dedication for it probably in the next 30 days.

Timberlake Place is one that the city has assisted 27 units that Java is doing down off of Market Street and they are getting very close.

They're supposed to have their closing in the next 30 days and we'll be putting our money in and that one will be going to construction.

Sunrise, if you've not been over there lately, they are really making progress.

I went by yesterday and it was pretty amazing the amount of construction going on on Sunday there.

They're really pushing.

They've got six of the units occupied.

The duplex units, the larger apartment, condo building is well underway.

We had a great work day a couple of Fridays ago where the planning staff's from

The city, the county and the planning district commission got together for a planners work day to try to do some team building and we had some of our planning commissioners show up and actually had a really good day of working on that.

So that project is really coming along nicely.

It'll be something, again, as a mixed income development.

The city's put some money in in 26 total units.

It'll be occupied very soon.

Of course, EcoRemod was one that we opened this year.

And I've got to tell you that we wanted to do this as a zero energy.

We sold it to you as a zero energy house.

I have to apologize.

We missed it.

We had our highest utility bill we had since it opened was $8.33.

We got close, and that's upstairs, downstairs, total electric and that was during the summer when we had all the AmeriCorps kids that were here and there were probably 25 people running in and out on a daily basis of the upstairs and this has been a tremendous success from what we intended to do and for the new council the intent of this is we built it, we're letting LEAP use the upstairs, the downstairs is rented as an affordable apartment and the

Upstairs the whole building will be on the market in about another 18 months to sell and we'll recoup a lot of, hopefully all of our investment at that time.

As well as I've had a great model to use.

The 2025 plan assumed to get to where we wanted to go that we would leverage approximately 10 to 1 private dollars to city dollars.

Right now the leverage is about $7.70

But that fluctuates.

We'll get another big project that's liable to change.

But we know that's got to increase if we're going to get to the 2025 goal.

Because that 2025 goal assumed that there would be a tremendous amount of private investment to help us get there.

Again, major projects being planned, the partnership with CRHA, and then a project you just approved in your consent agenda, the apartments at Arlington and Millmont are going to be the first property that will implement

an ordinance that you adopted but that you went to the General Assembly for several years ago and got permission to require a cash contribution on any project that was asking for increased density, asking for an SUP or rezoning for increased density or more height and if it's over a 1.0 floor area ratio

One of their options is to contribute and the apartments at Arlington and Millmont will be contributing $360,000.

We've got another project that's moving through the process that will come to almost that amount so we could see within a six month period we could see almost $700,000 in contributions to our housing fund which will be a tremendous boost to help us address the needs that we have.

Other initiatives you helped us provide for a section 3 coordinator and again that work is going better than I ever hoped it would at this stage of the game.

Ms. Howard has gotten several businesses signed up.

She's been meeting with residents and getting residents signed up.

Probably the first big project we include Section 3, not a requirement, but an incentive in is going to be the old Lynchburg Road project, which will be going to bid soon.

And we're really making good progress.

She's got a great steering committee that's working with her and trying to address those needs.

Our housing rehab program, Ms. McHugh has done a lot of great work with AHIP to try to streamline the process.

We put a cap of $25,000 on the rehab so that we could truly be rehabbing and not remodeling, and there's a big difference in the two, and really addressing the needs that people have in their housing.

And we're flexible with that, but we're trying to stay at $25,000.

If it's a true need we can go over, but we can bring other funds.

we're partnering with LEAP so that if there are energy needs we can bring the LEAP funds there and make energy efficiency improvements and we've also greatly streamlined the inspections process to help the both help AHIP deal with the issues and to help the homeowners be able to work through the process.

The HAC is working closely with the Planning Commission and they participated with the work going on in the

Livability plan development for the workshop that was held in December and then they've given formal comments to the Planning Commission.

Another thing that we've done is you just extended December 5th the housing tax abatement program until 2017.

So that's another, just another tool in the toolbox to help housing investment in the community.

Future directions, we've got to still improving the lack of housing options.

We know we've made progress, but there's a long way to go.

We're also working to try to incentivize visitability features in the new housing construction.

We talked about a bill, we couldn't get a lot of interest from our delegation about that because of some

just issues in dealing with the process in the General Assembly and so we've decided that we're working to try to incentivize visibility so that we can get more and more people to try to incorporate, more and more builders to try to incorporate those standards into their construction and we're looking at best practices and finding some people that, some communities that are having a great deal of luck through the incentive process.

Visibility is a ADA disabilities light.

It's to build housing that will allow people that are disabled in wheelchairs to be able to have one entrance they can get in and on the ground floor to have bathroom facilities and doorways that they can use.

It's not true handicapped housing, but it's the next level down to, it's a start going that direction.

And then we've found as we've been going through the review process that we've got probably half a dozen different definitions of affordable in our code and we're trying to unify those.

It's very confusing to people when they ask, what do you mean by affordable housing?

It sounds minor but I think it'll help streamline the process for the community members that are trying to access our programs and find out what's going on.

We want to keep working with the Land Trust.

The Land Trust has been a dream of folks in the community for a number of years and they've been working to try to figure out how to get going.

They've asked us every year in the CHF process for money and we've never really given them money because they didn't have a project ready, but now they do and we're working to provide funding for two lots on Cleveland Avenue

where they're going to buy two lots and in partnership with Habitat who will build the houses and the way the land trust works is really unique is that the land trust will actually own the fee, the title to the land and whoever buys the home will be buying the improvement but they don't buy the land

they'll pay a land rent for the land and it's a way to keep the project affordable.

When we're looking at the Nunley Street townhouse, for instance, if the land trust owns it, they'll have roughly $50,000 in value so when we sell a townhouse that's a $180,000 townhouse, the buyer will only have to finance $130,000.

The downside for the buyer is that should they sell in the future, there's a limit on the amount of equity they can take out, but

It's an opportunity to get in and get a house.

They will get some equity, but it does keep the level of affordability much better and it will guarantee affordability.

And we're also working with them on two lots on Harris Street to buy.

So all of a sudden we're beginning to get some inventory for the land trust and I think we'll see some good things come out of that.

Again, we need to continue to analyze our programs and

and funding ability.

It seems that we've made a couple of big commitments and all of a sudden we've got a lot of opportunities and a lot of projects out there and hadn't been able to move on all of them.

I think we're seeing slow but steady progress since 2025.

Given the economy I think we've been able to make some progress but we need to do more.

We've got to be strategic in investing our future expenditures and again remember we shifted toward a goal of focusing not on doing social programs with a housing fund where we've kind of been going the first couple of years with a lot of things that were good programs but they weren't building us new units until the last year or so we've started focusing on building housing since we adopted the 2025.

and we need to look at the cost for beneficiary to make sure that we're being effective and efficient in getting the matches that are required to make this program successful.

I have a couple of questions and comments.

First of all, the chart that you showed didn't factor in the new vouchers that came into our community with the Blue Ridge Commons deal, which is going to be a pretty substantial increase.

Now, most of those vouchers, at least in the short run, will stay at Blue Ridge Commons, but ultimately

I just think it's important to note that.

And then, probably about four years ago now, we commissioned a study from Java looking at accessory apartments and home sharing, and I don't know that that report ever came back to city council.

I know they did it and we've talked with them about it.

I've never seen it.

I've long believed that promoting accessory apartments is one of the best strategies for promoting affordable housing.

I wish we had the numbers, you know, prior to 2003 we didn't even allow accessory apartments unless they were interior to a house.

It's amazing the numbers that have gotten built and they kind of sneak up on you and we've got another development that's looking at doing 150 new units but probably 30% of that more in accessory units just for that affordability.

and then I wanted to ask the status of the

We were going to go ahead and close with Region 10 immediately on those houses and we decided that we were better off letting them be the landlord as they're moving people out than us trying to manage it from that standpoint.

So we agreed with them to

They're getting new places and they're transitioning those folks into the new places and as soon as they become vacant, we'll close on those, rehab them and put them up for sale.

Yes, sir.

Yeah.

50 units.

Right.

Great.

Yes, sir.

Yeah, I mean this is great to see the annual report.

I know that was a struggle to get that kind of streamlined too while I was on the Housing Advisory Committee, but to be able to get the discipline of that report down and to have a benchmark to the 2025 goals is great.

And you're absolutely right, this definition of affordability, because we kind of loosely talk about

workforce housing and then we talk about low-income housing and so it would be good to pin that down at least to give us the tiers of different ranges of housing because I have been curious how much of the units that we've seen were really actually a workforce housing category and that's just a question for you to kind of dig up and look at because I think that

It does get to that heart of the need for different tiers of housing, the need for different transitions for people to move into as we try to kind of lubricate the wheel so to speak of this upward mobility.

We need to have all kinds of housing types available and not the least of which is to be able to house our own city employees and teachers and firefighters and police officers.

So that would be great to be able to, the next step is to really understand is it all 50% AMI or is it some 60% to 120% AMI, that sort of thing.

So, and the other thing related to the workforce housing, I remember coming across, it was actually like a summit or a workshop that Carr did a couple years ago, and that's the Charlottesville, Albemarle area realtors, and they were specifically focused on workforce housing.

and Rhonda Edmonds is now the coordinator of that program.

She used to be at TJPDC.

Does that ring any bells?

That would be really good to get that back up on the radar screen.

Because the last time I talked with her, she was very interested in resuming the effort.

And then we'll talk later on too about this, what the impact of doing a master plan of an area will do.

I want to highlight one thing that I saw in there about the master planner, the kind of general contractor that we're looking for for some of that work and I think that's something that a lot of other communities have done and I think that that's, it certainly makes sense to me but I think it's helpful to know

how that works in other places just as we lay people are kind of delving into this stuff to see why.

Right, we've got a lot of work to do on that and a lot of community work to do on that.

Can I do it one more?

That's related to looking at kind of the geography and the concentration of the housing, of the affordable housing where we put it.

I'm just curious, where was the area on Cleveland?

Was that already a low-income area?

Harris Street?

and then I guess we need to be looking at other parts of the city where there might be opportunities that are of a higher income level so that we kind of you know even out the numbers so to speak so that we're not concentrating poverty and that's something that I know one of the last conversations that we had while I was still on the hack it was looking at or trying to map even

That's a real issue and it's interesting you say that.

We've just been wrapping up a look we've done at where all the new developments been since the 2001 comp plan and how many units we've built in the mixed-use corridors, how many square feet and how many units

Pretty incredible.

We built about 1,850 to 1,900 housing units and pre-2000 we were building maybe 40 new housing units a year.

The vast majority of everything that we built has been on the south side of the community and that's really a land availability.

It's not just the affordable units but that's where the opportunities have been and it's a real struggle.

It's something that's a goal we've got in mind.

We look for land that comes available

A few years ago we bought a couple of lots on Holmes Avenue and provided those to Habitat who built two duplexes there.

Yeah, but it's very strategic to try to find those, but it's interesting.

It really hit me when we mapped them that the vast majority of everything we built has been on the south side of town, not just the affordable units.

I have three comments.

One, I think, I'm pleased that you are proceeding to build houses to just talk about them.

I know Mr. Norris used to get tired of my asking the same questions at the meeting, what have you built lately.

So I'm glad, I hope that this will move forward more faster, more housing, affordable housing in our community.

Second, I was thinking your report will benefit by a map as Ms. Galvin was saying.

A few years back I did this kind of report and I think it will be helpful to have that graphically presented.

Third, I would also comment on the master developer idea.

To clarify what I said, we have several places in code that define affordability and the council very clearly defined affordable as

Mr. Norris, you may help me, but it's where a family or an individual making 80% or less of area median income is paying more than 30% of their income on housing.

And then you said that you wanted, when we did our assistance, you wanted to try to target as a priority that 50% of that went to those making under 50% of area median income.

So basically we defined affordability as 80% for

for the low income types of affordability.

I think the phrase we use is a range of incomes up to 80 percent.

Right.

Very immediate.

What is it?

I was just going to say one thing that I am on the MPO and we just had a report at our last meeting and it's been part of the regional planning process too.

There were a couple of

Well, it was maps and it was talking about the number of people who spend more than 30% of their income on housing.

And what was interesting was that in the city there were more people spending more than 30% of their income on housing than in the surrounding counties.

But if you added the cost of fuel

The city is actually more affordable than a lot of the outer areas because people are not spending a lot of their money on fuel.

So we talk often about, we kind of flagellate ourselves about not providing enough affordable housing and we certainly need to provide more.

But this is the way to do it because I think that

If we really look at the expenses of people, it's better for folks to be living in the city if there is affordable housing, because then they're not spending all the rest of their money getting home and getting to work.

OK.

I'd just like one more thing.

And it's not really, it's just a comment.

And I think it's in keeping with our latest council priorities as well.

But I do recall reading in the 2009

Management and Efficiency Study that the city did, that there was an acknowledgement that with any future increases in affordable housing, there should be commensurate increases in jobs.

Without those two together working in concert, we are creating a situation where we're making people very, very dependent.

So I think that's the exciting thing for me is it is a much more

I also want to announce that item number 5 dealing with hazard mitigation plan has been deferred.

If you are here for that, you can wait until the next meeting, 19th.

Thank you.

Do you need a drink of water?

As Mayor Huja said, at the last meeting we had some beginning conversation about trying to find a way to take a look at the area of town around the Belmont Bridge and south of the Belmont Bridge to look at urban design issues and possible redevelopment issues.

And you asked us to come back to you and we're here tonight with a proposal to move forward in doing some work there.

What we are suggesting is to try to provide some guidance regarding potential economic development opportunities, possible changes to the urban forum and an improved quality of urban design.

The area is south of the tracks and I sent you today a very draft scope of work and called it a strategic investment area.

a small area plan for that for downtown extended and I use the term downtown extended because we have a zoning classification that covers much of this area called downtown extended and that's really what we've talked about is that downtown moving this area and being a place for urban housing and job creation and there's some real opportunities for that and also to be able to tie in the access, improve the access and the connectivity with the Belmont area and the downtown

and I think it's also important that they've added the area just north of the bridge going up to the new Martha Jefferson development to tie that into downtown because it's really all one corridor there from Martha Jeff all the way down Avon.

I realized as Mr. Huja pointed out to me, my map I thought went across Avon and to conclude all of Avon and it actually doesn't but that's the intent is that both sides of Avon all the way down would be included in the draft scope of work map when we move forward.

I told him his eyes were more experienced than mine in picking that up, but that's the intent.

What we would propose to you is that we would put together a request for proposals.

We would look for several things.

One of them, again, is urban design suggestions for this area.

Another is an economic development analysis and plan.

How can we best take advantage of the development opportunities?

What's the market?

Where are the jobs?

Where are the opportunities to create those jobs?

and in the urban form.

What do the buildings look like?

We've got a zoning ordinance in place that I think addresses that, but it never hurts to have somebody take a second look at it to say, is that truly what we want?

Does it create the form that we want and does it support the type of both housing and job creation that we want?

We modeled the RFP off of what we did in the Tour de Gala study that many of you remember from 2000.

and a draft that we got from Virginia Beach to try to form what it is that we would look towards.

And a couple things that would be very important here.

One of them is we need to move forward with

uh, development of the Levy site and Crescent Halls.

But one of the things we've said consistently about the Levy site is we need to do some more work with the community to really talk about what that is.

How it develops, what it is, who lives there.

And so we would want to pull that as a first priority in the development of an RFP and tell the consultant that we want you to

to come back before anything else very quickly and help us get in the community and talk about that and what that means so that we can then immediately go towards the development of that site.

But there's also other major housing investment there, the public housing sites,

and the Friendship Court site that are going to be coming up for redevelopment.

So a large portion of this property is controlled by the city and CRHA and so there's a real opportunity here to set the continued vision for that and build on what was done in the master plan.

There's some vacant properties

that have the opportunity for commercial and jobs development.

So those are there.

The money, what we would propose to do to fund it is to take $150,000 for the money you've already allocated towards the redevelopment of the CRHA sites and the logic for doing that is that it will provide the first step for the visioning and prepare us to move right into construction on any of those sites once we develop a financing plan.

So I feel like we're taking a little bit from there

but we're doing a lot of the advanced work that we were going to have to do anyway as part of those processes and getting it done upfront and immediately.

I think that, you know, I envision that this will be very heavy on involvement of the community.

There's a lot of questions that need to be answered.

The residents of public housing need to participate and the surrounding community needs to participate.

We want to look at the

the area, and I've not included the Belmont Bridge in this because I think that's a separate process moving forward that we need to continue with.

We've got state and federal funding there, but we are proposing to move that forward using a lot of what you heard suggested tonight.

We've got a meeting next week.

We've actually engaged two members of the faculty at UVA to meet with us and help us go through all of the submittals and discern what is good out of those and try to put those into a format.

And if you move forward with the next item on your agenda, I'd like to suggest that we take that as a nucleus and expand it some with community residents to be a steering committee to help guide the bridge as we go forward with that.

and also to work on this process as looking at a lot of the urban design issues.

So we've got that opportunity in front of us, but I think there's been some confusion about whether this $150,000 study is to look at the design of the Belmont Bridge.

I'm suggesting that it not be specifically for the bridge, that we've got to incorporate what happens and run them parallel, but it not be the part that looks at the bridge.

So there is an opportunity for us to proceed with the study of this neighborhood for design, economic development, and planning-wise.

And we had talked about that last time.

There's a source of funding, there's a special scope of services, so I don't know what to feel.

By taking the money for this study from the redevelopment kind of pot, one concern I have is by going this section here, the Martha Jefferson area, does that imply that some of the redevelopment housing is going to be put in this area, or is that a sort of separate issue?

It's really just to realize that it's a connection and if we house people there's going to be a lot of jobs created on that site at Martha Jefferson with the redevelopment that's going there.

We know that CFA's going there already.

We know that there's some other uses that are going to have a

If that's what it is, then I would be supportive.

I just want to make sure that we don't take money that was designated to benefit people who are now in public in a section 8 housing and divert it to just kind of a general city planning process, that it needs

for me to feel really good about this source of funding for it.

I think it's all worthwhile doing.

Absolutely.

Yeah, but I do have a concern about that little extra extension because I see it as part of a whole other larger neighborhood master plan so that

I'm concerned that we're stretching our monies too thin if we're leaping over that far.

I could see going just to the other side and maybe that intersection of East Market and 9th Street, but when you're starting to get down to the former Martha Jefferson Hospital site, to me, that's like the beginning of a whole other new

area that has currently seen a lot of disinvestment in the sense that a lot of the medical offices have left as went the Martha Jefferson Hospital.

Let me try to be a little more clear about what I was talking about.

I'm really talking about the pedestrian bike auto-connectivity to that area.

I think we're in really good shape.

We've been through a lot of planning with the neighborhood there about what the land uses are.

I think our zoning ordinance sets up what we want to see the built environment on the private side look like there, but it's the public realm and getting people through there that I think is where we could, and that's really a minor part of this

Overall picture to do that.

I think it is really

I think the boundary in my mind is a logical boundary to make sure those corrections are made.

I would support this whole plan including the same one in this area to be more comprehensive study.

And switching to the things that I see very positive about this is that we're not only looking at Crescent Halls and Levy Street, it's also incorporating 6th Street and South First Street, which

Every single public housing site is supposed to be subject to the resolution 1279 and the goals of being integrated with the rest of the neighborhood.

We're killing three birds with one stone here by doing this

Well, including friendship court.

I guess it is, yeah, even public housing.

So we're doing a lot of hunting here, so this is great.

And I did dig up this Urban Land Institute report for 2012, what's next, real estate and the new economy.

and it's quote, the real estate world is hurtling into a different place and time.

Changes coming at a faster pace with more uncertain consequences.

Success will take on different forms and risks will increase.

Standing pat or ignoring the realities is not possible.

Notably, investment will gravitate to places that welcome business and view public investments and education, infrastructure and innovation as prerequisites for progress and economic sustainability.

So one of the strategies is

How can cities help?

And cities can help by creating master plans for whole urban neighborhoods that front load the environmental and community review process so individual developers can then construct projects more quickly at the back end.

These plans should focus efforts on easily funded policies such as complete streets and sustainability practices and healthy community design principles.

So that's the master developer.

We get this going.

A master developer could come in and just take the ball and run with it.

This is what's really exciting about this.

I have a few comments.

I agree with Ms. Galvin that this land area here is much bigger than I anticipated.

Not just the part that's going north towards Martha Jefferson, but there's

and that's my point is that those are very important major entrance corridors which almost deserve their own look and I worry about us moving away from the original intent of this sort of small area study looking at particularly the Lee v. Crescent Halls, 6th Street,

and the area around the bridge and the intersection of Avon and Levy.

That's what I had in mind when we started talking about this, including the excite and adjacent parcels.

I mean, that's...

I think, again, because this is a public housing wall, French Accord and all,

And if I could just give a little history here to this is the site that this is the area that was included in the choice neighborhood grant and the challenge neighborhood grant and they were based on what they call the pedestrian shed it was centered on the ICS building and then within a five minute walk a quarter mile to half mile radius

You have a walkable neighborhood and that defines a walkable neighborhood.

And so that's what that is.

And I think we've been so used to looking at things on a site by site level that it's a mind-changing image to think of it in terms of a walkable neighborhood.

But that's when you can start

Well, I don't disagree.

I don't think any of that's going to happen in that entire section, residential section.

Mr. Norris, I think you make a good point.

I think one of the reasons we came down south was to include First Street.

And so it just made sense to come down around it if you're going to get the context of First Street.

A lot of this, you've got traditional single-family neighborhoods that aren't going to change, and there's not going to be a lot of heavy lifting in the study.

I mean, it's going to reaffirm that.

But the connectivity of the First Street and how you get into places will go through those areas.

So that's why I think it's valid.

Again, you're not going to have a lot of time spent.

on Avon south of Monticello.

You'll look at it, but I don't think we've seen major changes in land use there.

We've seen how does the connectivity work.

That makes sense.

I want to get to your point about – you say it doesn't include the bridge.

And I think what you're saying is it doesn't include the specific design of the bridge.

So do I hear consensus as to move forward this study?

Yes.

Any further discussion?

Thank you.

Next item on our agenda is Place Making, Liveability and Community Engagement Task Force.

It gives me great pleasure to have this discussion of design.

We have talked about the quality of design in this community.

This will be a vehicle for that.

Prior to 2003, we had a group that was called the Urban Design

Committee that was tasked with several things primarily looking at the development of public properties and overseeing that.

It did a lot of the design review and

and is responsible for some of the development that occurred primarily on the CSX properties where the city got them and transferred them.

As I understand, that was the genesis of the committee, but it also worked on public art, the city's Percent for Art program and participated in the development of urban design plans for different corridors.

That group went away in 2003 for a couple reasons, one of which I think it had just sort of burned out.

There wasn't a lot of public property being developed at the time and there was a debate at the time when we rewrote the zoning ordinance and created the Entrance Corridor Review Board of whether or not that committee would continue to do that function or the Planning Commission would and council decided that the Planning Commission would assume that function of review of

projects in the entrance corridor.

The urban design committee never had that but it was a discussion about whether or not they would assume that duty and when they didn't assume that and council went with the planning commission that group basically dissolved.

What you have now is an outline to recreate that, recreate it as a place design task force for the purpose to guide the community in making decisions about placemaking, livability and community engagement.

It's envisioned that it would be advisory to the Planning Commission and the City Council on design issues related primarily to publicly funded projects and then any other project that Council or the Planning Commission might ask them for their input or review.

There's a charge that's listed in the actual resolution that we created and in the memo that has eight different steps in it and again they're all pretty much

around reviewing existing urban design guidelines, their implementation, reviewing special projects, reviewing and advising on proposals for public art, looking at the city's current landscape standards and streetscape standards and recommending any changes, and then advising on projects that are publicly owned or financed land.

I think one of the really good things about the opportunities with this here is we've had some awkward situations in the past without it where

We've had a project that the SRO for one or the YMCA that you asked the BAR to give you design guidance, the council did, and the BAR was awkward in doing it because they function with a set of guidelines in the historic districts.

and they weren't sure what criteria to review it under.

And I think this will give an opportunity for another group that's not constricted in that way to be able to provide guidance in the design.

I don't know that we've got any of those projects coming up soon, but you never know that we may.

It's proposed that the task force would have seven members, that three would be from the areas of architecture or landscape architecture.

So it could be two architects, one landscape architect, depending on who applies and what you felt was appropriate.

one each from preservation, arts, and the development community, and then one citizen at large.

And it's proposed that there would be two ex officio members, one from council and one from the planning commission to help provide liaison with those two groups.

And then the city council, if asked by the planning commission, might appoint special advisory members if there was a project or subject that came up that you felt needed that assistance.

We would make sure that this was coordinated with the BAR if it was a public project in a BAR area.

I envision that this group would act more or less like the owner's rep and a design committee who would then get it ready to go to the BAR for approval.

But I think this would have been a very useful group to have had when we started the Belmont Bridge process to help preparing that to go before the BAR.

We probably wouldn't have had a lot of the

things going on that we've had if we'd have had this in place.

I'd just like to throw in that I think a group like this would have also been helpful in the situation that we faced with the Woollen Mills pump station.

That wound up being very much a question of appropriate scale, context, and it was a resident of the Woollen Mills that happened to have

You know, architectural ability and the ability to draw in three dimension that brought this to the public eye.

And this is an opportunity to think in that way, that this is a, that's a public project.

And we would have had this oversight committee that would have flagged that right away, that that was an inappropriate gesture.

And then it does seem like with the beginning of a master plan process that we just talked about, they could serve as a technical advisory group.

It does not take the place of a neighborhood steering committee, a neighborhood-based steering committee.

Just want to make that very clear.

and it isn't intended to extend or add another layer of discretionary review.

It's to help provide input and guidance.

I think it was the last time I was at a Planning Commission meeting just watching the approval of the

Was it the Arlington Boulevard project?

And it occurred to me that there was confusion about what to do with the streetscape design.

It wasn't clear because that wasn't an entrance corridor.

It wasn't a historic district.

Let me say that this will be a great addition to our review process and improve the quality of design in our community.

I've been waiting for some time.

I think this is going to be a helpful body.

My initial reaction when I heard about it was this is just one more layer of review, this is just going to go off the works, this is going to make us unfriendly towards change.

I think we're very lucky to have two people with expertise in city planning on the council right now because I think that it helps us.

I think we've always spoken about the need to be cohesive and to kind of try to figure out

You know, not just to scatter, shoot, and to be reactive as things come toward us, but how to sort of be a little more broad.

And I think staff has been doing a lot of that, but I think that to now have that here is really helpful.

And I, too, that was my first reaction.

It's like, ah!

But it really isn't another reaction.

group to say yes or no it's just some people to kind of it's like a group to say what if and let's have you thought of and and how to pull things together a little more broadly so I appreciate it I think it's a great idea.

Any discussion?

Last item on the agenda is

Good evening Mr. Mayor, Members of Council.

The item before you this evening is an updated policy regarding business activities in parks and recreational facilities that we originally brought to you back in December of last year.

With me tonight is Allison Davies from the City Attorney's Office.

We've been working diligently over the past several months to craft a document that

It improves on the original policy in terms of clarity and allows us to have consistent implementation of the policy and reducing the ambiguity and the creation of a registration application form which is in your packet.

The policy statement in front of you would provide for and the process would provide for groups or individuals the opportunity to conduct business activities in parks or in recreational facilities within certain guidelines and certain

sets of criteria that are very, very simple to review based upon the application that's provided from the individual or group that's seeking to conduct business in our facilities or on park land.

The original proposal back in December was a fee of 15.15, 15% of gross revenues.

We have adjusted that to 6% of gross revenues, which is consistent with the slot fee and the revenues that are paid at the city market, which is very, very much a similar type of activity.

The vendors pay a registration fee to be a part of the market.

whether it's at the Saturday market or the two midweek markets plus on top of that the 6% of gross revenues to the city for that purpose.

We felt that that would make things consistent and should there be a need or desire in the future to adjust that rate either up or down it would apply across the board.

We also have developed a very specific timeline for which applications would be reviewed.

We would take the application, review it against the criteria that are established here and return an answer to the applicant within 20 days to ensure that if there are business needs that need to be met quickly that we're able to do that.

We may.

There may be activities that are proposed that could conflict with or not necessarily conflict.

We have multiple facility schedules, athletic field rentals and so forth where we need the time to review potential conflicts.

As well, should there be an opportunity where the activity that's proposed

may not work at the time that the proposer has proposed, but it may work at another time.

Thank you.

I had a question.

We got a letter responding to this that seemed to imply that

If I understand the question I believe...

Sorry, I was a little convoluted.

Yes, I received that email as well.

That's how I had understood it, so I just wanted to make sure I was understanding it correctly.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

It's very tight.

I guess so, I'll make a motion.

Any discussion?

We appreciate your effort in getting this together.

I know it took some time and effort on your part, both of your parts.

We appreciate that.

I just had a question, I'm sorry Mr. Tolbert left but just to get some clarity in my own mind and maybe for the public's mind exactly where we are with the Belmont Bridge

I asked him this afternoon to do that today.

As I see it, I've counted five different entities that have some jurisdiction over.

We have the original MMM, we have

I forgot to ask you this question earlier, I apologize, but what exactly is the process now moving forward with the bridge design?

Because I count five different entities that have some responsibility.

We have the MMM, we have your task force, this new place task force, some portion of this new

Small Area Design, we'll address it, I'm sure.

Well, Planning Commission's not in that one, so that's one out of there.

What we had committed to do after the competitions was to try to find a way to take all that information and distill what was good and what we could use and what would inform the design process.

So we basically put MMM on hold until all that was done.

MMM, our engineering firm.

I don't know what MMM stands for.

Never known them as anything else.

But them and Anaki Alde, who is chair of the architecture school at UVA architecture department, and Beth Meyer, a landscape architect, who have volunteered to work with us to

to sit down and take those ideas.

We also went out and asked MMM who is under contract with the city to engage the services of a local landscape architect who actually lives in Belmont to work with them as a member of their design team to make sure that once we have this meeting with the university folks that

What comes out of that gets carried forward into the design.

We have a design that incorporates the most appropriate things into it.

They come out of here.

The way I envision this working is that they will be moving forward.

I think that our place design task force then is the public sounding body initially.

That they will go, once we get them in place, they'll be a great group who will be able to take the design to and say,

Before we go out to the BAR, before we go back out anywhere with it, what are the issues?

What do you see with this?

And give us comment and feedback so that while we've got a design team, we've had the help of the A school, we then have this body to help us make sure that that interpretation meant something.

And so once we get there, then we'll be able to go back out publicly.

You know, I think we'll have another public process.

I had not envisioned having a committee to work on it as much as I had an engaged process.

Again, to be clear, that's the team that includes Beth Meyer and Yaqui?

Yes.

And we'll have to figure all that out.

We're not opposed to having

I don't want to have a lot of engagement because again we don't want the train wreck.

So basically we are proceeding forward in this manner.

Other reason why we need to move forward also is that we are hoping some funding from VDOT for construction of this project and if we don't do something design-wise we're going to lose that.

Is there any other business before we get into public comments?

So we have another opportunity for public comments.

Please come forward and say your name.

Nancy Carpenter, 727 Denali Way.

I'm glad I stayed for the presentations on the neighborhoods and everything.

It gives me a lot of information, so I'll be going to the Albemarle County meeting here on Wednesday on the comprehensive plans.

I'll be talking about the neighborhood I live in, and I think the zoning classification is urban density, so it will give me a lot of good words to use when I go there Wednesday night.

You're welcome.

I'm so glad Ms. Carpenter brought that up because it was supposed to be tonight and it was postponed because of the weather and that is the southern growth areas that are adjacent to our southern neighborhoods and is there any way that we can include that?

I guess I would just like to reiterate that with regards to the bridge that the process remain open and transparent.

We got into this mess because

going through these meetings, the public meetings that we as the public and the representatives of the Belmont neighborhood continue to ask for

a whole host of things that felt like MM&M summarily was not able to provide for whatever reason including such things as simple pleas for would you guys just build models so that the public will understand what it is you're exactly doing and so I just

Thank you.

We have learned from our experience.

We are going to do better.

Anybody else like to speak?