City Council Meeting   7/16/2012

Mr. Norris?

Ms. Smith?

Here.

Mr. Huja?

Ms. Szakos?

Here.

She is a lawyer in Washington.

We hope she'll be here.

A few announcements for the meeting today.

We'll start with Mr. Norris.

Mr. Mayor, I want to announce that we do have some openings on the Police Citizens Advisory Panel.

This is the group that advises on Charlottesville Police Department.

If you have any interest, please go to the website, Charlottesville.org for your application, or you can call the Clerk's Counsel at 970-3113.

I have three announcements.

There is a photo exhibit of historic photos of Charlottesville by Ed Roseberry at City Space right now.

It opened on Friday.

It's incredibly cool.

I had the opportunity to go there.

It's really fun to look at the photos and see if you can spot where the

the stores are that you know now and there's this incredibly cool picture of Chuck Berry singing M.M.

Jim.

It's really amazing.

Anyway, so that's all month at City Space.

That's, of course, right around the corner up here on Fifth Street.

Also, Dialogue on Race will be hosting Movie in the City Summer Film Series.

These are free films every Thursday beginning, it's already begun, July 5th.

It's going to run through August 9th.

It's at 630 here in City Hall Council Chambers.

Each movie is about an hour long and there will be a discussion after each one.

There's a poster here, I assume it will be up, somewhere around City Hall and around.

But every Thursday beginning from now until August 9th, 630 right here.

and the Great Scott's on the Downtown Mall is providing free popcorn.

So, thank you Great Scott's and come on out.

My last announcement is a really amazing event that Susan Elliot put in as organized called

Bike, Walk, Play, JPA.

And it is an event on August 18th, and I'm announcing it now because we won't meet again before then.

It starts at 9 a.m.

It goes till noon.

It's on JPA where the bridge is closed.

All the way to JPA Extended.

Wow, okay.

So all the way down that stretch of JPA will be closed off, although there will be opportunities actually for people to get across in their cars if they need to.

But there'll be activities, recreation, come meet your neighbors and other folks who come.

There's a water balloon gauntlet, drawing a street mural, decorating a place.

your bike parade, trash bowling, there's going to be music, food, vendors, it's going to be great.

That's August 18th, it's a Saturday from 9 to noon.

I am going to announce that the four boards, which is the four boards of the Rivanna, Water and Sew Authority, so the Authority Board, the Charlottesville City Council, the Albemarle

Board of Supervisors in the Albemarle Water and Sewer Authority.

County Service Authority.

Thank you.

We'll be all meeting together in a big jamboree on Wednesday, July 25th to discuss the use of chloramines as a secondary disinfectant in the water system.

It will be Wednesday, July 25th at 7 p.m. in Main Auditorium at the Albemarle County Office Building.

And then I also would just like to, slightly before the fact, welcome Mrs. Obama to Charlottesville.

She'll be here on Friday.

Mid-afternoon, the time has not been set.

I'm pleased to announce that this morning is the 14th November of the release of Charlotte's October the 11th of 2012.

We will bring two presentations, one will be here with compassion of human 21st century medicine at Paramount Theatre, the second will be public speaking arrangement of Pavilion,

dealing with political ethics for the whole world.

Of course, if you're interested in taking part in the Republican end, you can go to www.sharksville.org slash Delilano.

Let me repeat it, because I already had no requests.

www.sharksville.org slash Delilano.

So I hope you guys will have a break a little bit.

Okay.

Now it's time for the director who has the chance to speak on a topic you wish, or else doesn't come up on his hands.

With three names, please identify yourself and follow the time limit.

I won't take a lot of your time because I think next Wednesday will be very important, but I just had a question.

It was brought to my attention that this chloramine issue is a big one and important for Charlottesville.

I moved here about a year and a half ago from the beach and I've been in healthcare for about 27 years.

And I just had one question.

Is it true that the cost of implementing the safer system, which it sounds to me would be safer with the charcoal, is only 91 cents a month?

Is that true?

I'd like to elaborate a little bit on that.

One of the other remaining questions we're trying to determine, however, is what is the cost to institutional users as well as the governments as well as the universities and hospitals.

So we don't know what that is.

Your figure of 98 cents.

I'm not sure.

So is that the case?

That was just my remaining question because it seems so obvious and common sense that if it was only a dollar difference or triplet for the hospitalists that are obviously making a lot of money as it is that they could afford a few extra dollars a month.

I had a hospital stay for less than 24 hours and they charged me $7,000 so I'm sure they could afford a couple extra dollars for water.

But I was just wondering if that was the case, that it was a ballpark of around 91 cents.

Cesar here, would you speak in moving view?

Okay, so I've never done this before, so nobody knows what it's going to be.

Good evening.

My name is Mary Delahanty.

I live in town.

I live on Evergreen Avenue.

First of all, I'm very, very happy that we're going to have our full board's jamboree on the 25th of July.

I also want to invite

All of you to our teaching.

I'm sorry you missed the previous teaching.

It was on a city council night, but I'm inviting everybody to come to the teaching.

This is a real heart-to-heart talk of what this means for our community.

We talked about the advantages of chloramine as well as the disadvantages of chloramine, what it means in the future.

really, really new research that's coming out that doesn't look very good for it.

But the newest research that's coming out, what GAC looks like in a general sense and what it does.

And I want to hand this over.

We're going to have a chance to take a look at it and make good on our invitation to come.

It is on the 19th which is on Thursday at The Haven in the kitchen at 6.30 and we're going to have a PowerPoint, we're going to have questions and we're just going to have a sit down and have a heart to heart talk and what this really means and we're not slamming it and we're not

rejoicing over it.

We're just having a straight talk about it.

The other thing I'd like to talk about is that we're working with an independent consultant to put together some figures on a granular activated carbon system that is workable for a community of our size with our population being with the number of people served by the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority which comes to a round figure of about 98,000

and uses some, what, 19.5 million gallons per day somewhere in that ballpark.

So using those figures, coming up with some figures for the South, North Rivanna and the Observatory and what the capital costs are and the operating and maintenance annual costs are,

and he comes up with figures that are considerably lower.

Now we do have some questions about the differences in the systems that the granular activated system that Hayes and Sawyer came up with versus what our consultant came up with.

We don't have a good breakdown of the numbers from Hazen and Sawyer.

We really would like to see those in the type of system they're talking about because there are more ways, there's more than one way to skin a cat when it comes to granular activated carbon.

You can have these giant bed systems that take in raw water or you can do your flocculation screening and then do a post-filtration

activated carbon, which is considerably less expensive.

But anyway, I would like to leave this with you.

These are the figures that our independent consultant came up with.

They are about a third of the cost of what Hazen and Sawyer came up with, but I at least want you to look at them.

We're still getting the particulars on what it means and what the different systems are, but we really do need to know what Hazen and Sawyer means on the type of system they're talking about, and if it's taken in raw water, if it's taken in screened and filtered water.

We need figures from Hazen and Sawyer.

We need to firm up some of our figures, but here are some ballpark figures for you to look at.

They are considerably cheaper than what Hazen and Sawyer came up with.

Hi, I'm Mae Leo.

I'm at Albemarle County.

Citizen.

I'm just going to kind of read from here because I'm not so good with winging it.

There's a quote, true science teaches us to doubt and in ignorance to refrain.

That's Claude Bernard, he's a French physiologist.

And so I'm here to plead with anyone who's still a chloramine advocate to refrain because there's still so much to know about chloramine.

For example, just as a lay person I was wondering, actually is taking an alkaline salt bath for health with chlorinated water you actually risk forming hydrazine which is basically a human carcinogen known by the EPA damaging your liver and kidneys and central nervous system

It's rocket fuel and one of the known DBPs of chloramine and that would happen if you take an alkaline salt bath in trace amounts and that's confirmed by Mark Edwards but I still think that we don't really want to be soaking in that and I bring it up not because I think that an alkaline salt bath is going to change your mind

but to point out that once the water leaves the water treatment plant, there are just so many different, unforeseeable, common ways that we all use water that can produce known toxic byproducts and then a host of completely unknown byproducts.

Incidentally, you'll also risk nitrification in your hot water heater if you go on vacation for three weeks.

That also was confirmed to me by Mark Edwards when I asked him in an email.

So today, we're just so exposed to so many different toxins.

Just yesterday, I was hearing on the radio, the EPA's regulating compounds from dry cleaning.

But the thing is, I have a choice with dry cleaning.

I can try to avoid dry cleaning.

I can't do that with water.

So I'm pleading with people to not add another unknown chemical into the water to complicate the picture.

I understand that a lot of people think, oh, we've learned from all the disasters and the other places that use chloramine like Washington, D.C. with the lead scandal or Greenville, North Carolina or Poughkeepsie, New York.

But don't you think the experts in all those places also thought before they added chloramine?

We know, you know, we know as much as we do and we think it's safe.

You know, I think that they probably all thought that it was going to be safe.

Some of the byproducts that are known as the most toxic were only recently discovered like eight years ago, iodo acids.

So with 83% still of the byproducts unknown, much less regulated, I mean, it's highly probable that they're going to find something else that's even more toxic.

Mark Edwards in his email to me also said at one time he was more concerned about chloramine than he is now, he admit that, because he's done a lot of research to prove that the above points in some of his previous papers he's not so concerned about with our community.

But he also went on to write, quote, I am still not an advocate for chloramine and I even have significant reservations about whether we will learn about more problems in the future with it.

I believe that GAC used with low levels of chlorine is a superior approach if money is not a concern.

So obviously I know that the whole debate with this is money as the Rivanna Water and Sewer even threatens that it's not politically acceptable for you guys to pick, you know, not pick the cheapest option.

I mean that seems like the only reason that they're picking it.

But really for 91 cents or 3 cents per day per person,

I think it's politically unacceptable to put the community at risk that way or to make us absorb the cost.

Even if none of the bad things happen, we're going to have to try to find new water filters and purchase that.

Or if we don't want to drink chlorinated water, we're going to have to purchase spring water.

And for people who are low income or fixed income who can't afford new filtration systems in their home,

you're forcing them to do.

I just want to point out one other thing.

In the water industry news in June, Cabot Corporation purchased Norit NV for 1.1 billion dollars and Norit NV is the world's largest producer of activated carbon and they did that in anticipation that the EPA was going to backpedal from chloramine and go towards activated carbon.

I'm here to talk about the community from Prospect Avenue, from Hardy Drive to Friendship Court to First Street.

I don't feel like that we're doing enough to help the youth.

You say the youth is the future, but I don't think that we are helping them at all.

We speak truth.

Now, they get out of school, they go to the Boys and Girls Club, but they get to see the same old thing every day.

Nothing changes.

They have nothing to do.

They get to learn the same thing the older kids are doing.

It's not right.

I have a little girl.

I don't want her in that type of environment if I'm living there.

It's something that we can do to help the youth understand that some things are wrong.

I didn't have to live there.

I grew up.

I didn't graduate.

I grew up there.

I hung out in the streets and everything.

My mind state was to leave.

At the same time, I understood that things wasn't right.

But I just don't feel like that we are doing enough as people to help our future grow.

They keep seeing the same things over and over and they're learning things that they're not supposed to learn at an early age.

So I know it's something that we have to come together and do.

I'm here as one person trying to figure out can we do something to help them.

I'm there all the time.

Nobody else comes there, walks around and sees what I see.

It's sad to see that.

It's sad to see they have a mind state of an adult, which they are not.

I'm just here to want to know, is there any way that we can make a change for them?

I mean, you have minorities there, you have blacks there, you have some Caucasians there, but it's mostly blacks.

And when people see them, they look down upon them because of how the whole, all the areas are.

The kids just don't have a chance to sit there and learn the right things.

They might have good parents, I understand that, but when they come outside in the street, they see things.

So it's got to be a better way to get them to do things.

I mean, Charlottesville has nothing for kids to do.

Nothing.

So when you speak truth, that's a fact that that's happening.

It's not nonfiction.

It's really happening.

So it's got to be something that we can do for them.

It has to be.

And that's really all I have to say.

Thank you for coming.

Hi, I'm Julia Whiting.

I live in this city.

I'd like to address an argument that's been made why we should go along with the crowd and use chloramine.

The argument's been made that it's been used by the majority of systems and for decades and that's suggested as evidence for safety.

Asbestos has been mined since Greek and Roman times.

Tobacco has been smoked since Columbus' time.

Therefore, this must be evidence for safety.

We know better now.

We also know in recent experience that the FDA has approved multiple drugs that have been pulled from the market and the problem is getting worse.

At the recent forum, Jerry Higgins of Blacksburg Water said that they switched to chloramine in Blacksburg and they had no problem.

But in October 2005, after chloramine was added, 19 TAPs were checked at the schools routinely and they were over the EPA limit.

One was 3,810 parts per billion, 250 times the EPA action level.

The argument has been made that chloramine lowers infection rates in hospitals, but that cannot be substantiated.

It's known that chloramine is far less effective against E. coli, Giardia, Cryptosporidium, Polio 1, and Rotavirus.

I'd like to read from the experience in Pinellas County, Florida, and I can provide the citation.

These are quotes.

Changes in microbial water quality began in May 2002, almost immediately after chloramine was implemented.

Flushing is a primary method of addressing water quality deterioration in Pinellas County water system.

Average flushing volumes went from 5.7 to 35 million gallons a month.

This is to get rid of E. coli.

Finally, I have eight citations, which I can also provide, of how chloramine sickened and killed dialysis patients.

The two patients who died were in England.

This was published in 2010.

The arguments made, well, we have the technology, we're going to filter it out, and there's never going to be a problem.

These patients did not die quickly.

They were worked up extensively for hemolysis.

Chloramine causes your red cells to explode.

Despite an extensive workup, the diagnosis was made post-mortem.

I also have three citations here about chloramine causing swimmer's asthma.

This is a known phenomenon.

Hi, my name is Saffron Hall.

I'm a Charlottesville resident, a member of the UVA community.

I'm a graduate student and teacher at the university.

I've been the director of the RWSA, well, one of them, and asked him about the caramine issue.

And I asked him about an article I'd read that said if I use certain kinds of shampoo, like suave, it's got an ingredient that when it reacts with caramine, it creates nitrosamines.

and I asked him if he knew about this and he said no, he didn't know about that.

And then, so I said, well, how does that impact your decision of implementing the chloramine and he said, well, we can't be expected to test for every single daily thing you might use.

That's not reasonable.

But for us who use shampoo every single day to wash our hair, the nitrosamine we'd absorb that would to me have an impact and there are obviously plenty of other things that haven't been tested for in that test they claim to have done.

But the main point I wanted to come talk to you about today is I've been going around canvassing opinions from the business community in Charlottesville

I've been going around several places and as a representative of the people who I have been speaking to, the business owners and managers there, they strongly oppose it and wish me to convey that message and I've got a list of businesses who wish me to convey this objection to you as they are very concerned that it will affect their pipes and their costs of appliances because especially the restaurant community is concerned about that.

So I have Eric Girtman from Feast.

I have Catherine Krolov from Calvino.

I have Lauren Gurner from Sustain.

I have Pete Moger from West Main, he's the representative of West Main restaurant, he's the manager there.

Laura Galgano, who's the owner of Blue Moon Diner.

Melvin Walker, who's the owner of Mel's Cafe.

Frank Russo, the owner of Bella's Restaurant.

and Barbara Lynch who owns Evolve Salon because it will affect hairdressers particularly because putting ammonia in water, the organic hairdressers in particular are trying to go ammonia free and they won't be able to do so unless they get chlorine filtration which is very expensive.

And it affects all the hairdressers even if they're not organic.

Samsung's Zhiyuanbing Chinese restaurant,

C&O Restaurant, Dave Simpson, Gwendolyn Hall at Tea Bazaar, Fifth Season Gardening, Fellini's No.

9, Marco and Luca Dumpling Store, Commonwealth Restaurant and Sky Bar, Five Guys, Sal's, Cafe Cubano, Horse and Hound, True Pilates, Beacon Yoga Studio, Sal's,

VitaNova, Bluelight, TEN and Epi's.

And these are just the places that I've been to so far.

I haven't even been to that many places yet.

But according to the number of places I've been to, like 99%, basically, have said they don't want it.

So thank you very much.

Our petition's up to 940, I believe.

And if you please look at that, the newest wave of entries on that is from businesses.

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.

So many things I would like to say.

First, on the subject of chloramines, I feel like I should chime in.

You know, if you build this giant dam that you're building, this giant gold-plated dam as some of us call it, but you poison the water in it, what good is that?

What good is a tree commission if you poison our water supply?

I think there's plenty of data there and there's plenty of reason to think there's another way to deal with this issue of making sure our water is safe.

making it cheaper and dirtier is not the best plan.

So I hope you'll consider that.

I also, I'd sent you all an email about two weeks ago when I was here and I did want to just reiterate that I'm very sorry I broke with protocol.

I know that's not something that happens often.

I've often been upset when other people do something similar where they'll bring somebody to speak up in their place.

So I hope you'll allow me that one chance and I hopefully won't do that again for another

year or so, can't make any promises.

I did also want to let the public know my view about this, that the behaviors that so many business owners downtown seem to be so concerned about, it's also behavior that happens inside those very same businesses, and there are plenty of people who will tell you exactly which businesses those are, where you see

Open Drunkenness, Profanity Being Used, Drug Dealing, and Prostitution.

These are not just things that happen outside of those businesses, but they happen inside of those businesses.

And just anecdotally, as I walk down the mall, business is booming down there, and also the problems that I've seen, the biggest problems, the biggest fights, the biggest nastiness happens inside those bars or as a spill out from those bars.

I'm not saying you should crack down on the bars, I'm saying that, you know,

If you look at where the problems are, specifically going towards one class of people who has no money and not going towards another class of people who have money and are spending it is not a fair way to deal with that situation at all.

I did also want to just chime in about living wage.

I know you'll be talking about it tonight.

As you know, I ran for city council recently and one of the things that I talked a lot about was UVA living wage and

You know, the feeling from most people was that there was very little that the Charlottesville City Council could do about a living wage at UVA, but that everybody was pretty much supportive that the City of Charlottesville pays a living wage, and that they encouraged their contractors to do the same.

And I would like to remind you all of that commitment.

As UVA prepared for the hunger strike and other actions to really push a living wage recently,

Many of you have chimed in.

Some of you even signed on to a letter.

Some of you have spoken at those rallies saying how much you want a living wage at UVA.

I think it's pretty much a no-brainer if you support living wage at UVA that you would support living wage in Charlottesville.

Now, $13 an hour, I'm not sure the EPI is actually going to go for that.

I think the EPI is probably going to say that the living wage for this area is much higher than $13 an hour.

but 13 hours is kind of a compromise.

At $13 an hour translates to $27,000 which equals $750 per month in rent for an affordable rent in the city and I don't know anybody who can find that rent in the city and I think you need to consider making sure at least $13 an hour.

Is there anybody else in the audience who would like to speak?

Please go forward.

Hello, my name is Susan Elliott.

I am one of the main organizers for the Bike, Walk, Play, JPA event that Ms. Smith spoke about earlier.

I wanted to share with council that the real seed for this event came out of the city's Neighborhood Leadership Institute program and it was a wonderful resource to find people to start looking at the feasibility of this and then to see where this idea could grow.

We received a very positive response from the neighborhood and from the community which is why we

pursued turning it into an actual event at which point we started working with the city's special events committee and we thank the city for having such a thing and for their expertise and their time working with us.

I would like to extend a personal invitation to all the council, to all the staff, and then to everyone who's listening to please come out to the event.

It is a community event.

Oh, yes.

It is August 18th.

It's Saturday, about one month from now.

And the event goes from 9 a.m. until noon.

Thinking about what the gentleman earlier said about providing activities for the youth.

This is a one day event.

It's a one morning event.

It doesn't address the root of this problem, but we do hope to see the youth and we hope to see everyone in the community, all ages, all physical abilities come out for the event.

And if you're interested in coming, the free trolley will drop you off right at the doorstep to the event at the JPA Bridge.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you all for coming out.

We are all looking forward to the July 25th event.

We actually have a work session on August 19th, so maybe we can come on over afterwards to the Haven.

I would ask our Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority reps if we could get a breakdown of the GAC Hazen and Sawyer estimate.

Just kind of what kind of GAC was it, how they came up with the figure would just be helpful.

I think these folks have done a lot of work, so that would be helpful to them.

And just one other thing, I'm so excited about this bike walk play, JPA,

You know, the city has helped out with a number of neighborhood events this year and I hope that the city will help support this really exciting event.

These folks have put so much work into this.

Come on out.

Let's see.

I just wanted to say that when the chloramine teach-in is happening, I'm actually going to be in Nashville, so I won't be intentionally not coming, but I won't be able to be there.

And I'm sorry, because I would like to.

The gentleman who spoke about the youth did leave, and I think that he's speaking a real truth and that that's worth saying, and I'm really glad that he came.

I think that sometimes there's also a problem that when things are happening and when we do have activities for youth, often the youth who need it most don't hear about it or don't have a way to get there or for some reason are disconnected from it.

So I think in addition to making sure that we have things, we have to make sure that we have things that are accessible and that we make sure that we reach out to the kids who do need it.

So I really appreciate the comment of our last speaker about how you can take the free trolley

to get to the JPA Bridge and participate in that event that morning at 3 and then head back.

But I think that that's something that we need to constantly be thinking about as we look at just sort of the way that our youth are experiencing Charlottesville.

We're considered this most livable city.

and yet there are a lot of kids for whom within their neighborhood they don't see those opportunities and they don't experience it as a place where they can be anything they want to be.

They experience it as a very kind of closed system so we need to constantly be working to make that better for them.

I think the only other comment I had was

I actually, Mr. Collins, thank you for reminding us of our previous positions on living wage.

I think that we have long prided ourselves on being a city that pays a living wage and is committed to having a living wage.

And I think that we have been working, and we'll discuss this later as well, we've been working to try to get the EPI to do a specific index and that's been delayed.

And so it's been really frustrating for us to not have

something to index it to and I sense that frustration in staff's report but I think we really do if we don't pay a living wage we can't say we pay a living wage so we need to be really clear and I just also wanted to say about the bike walk play event that I am delighted to hear that it came out of the Neighborhood Leadership Institute all sorts of fun things are coming out of the Leadership Institute this year that there was a big family day at Tonsler Park a couple of months ago which was well attended and that came as a project also

Last year it was the GOATs and a couple of other projects.

I would just echo Ms. Smith's request regarding nailing down some of the numbers, cost estimates on the granular activated carbon.

And I would, I think, I was going to say essentially what Ms.

Sake has just said about the opportunities in our neighborhoods.

I think you said it very well and I just say, you know, to that.

I certainly appreciate the thrust of Mr. Collins' comment about some of the activities that business owners have expressed concern about out on the mall are some of the very activities that occur

and some of those businesses, but obviously the main difference being that, you know, you don't have parents walking six-year-old children through a bar at 2 a.m., hopefully not, whereas when we have people that are screaming profanities at each other in the middle of the day on the downtown mall, across the mall, when there are children and families present, it's obviously a different

dynamic.

And I think we have an obligation to ensure that the mall stays a family-friendly place.

But I take to heart the point that we need to be concerned about behavior.

It doesn't matter if you're a homeless person or a stockbroker or a UVA student or whatever.

It's really about behavior.

Sure.

First to let everyone know, one of the reasons why I was late today, in fact the reason why I was late, was because I was coming in from Washington, D.C. and I went up with the other member, the other elected official from the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority Board and a staff member, Mr. Frederick, and we met with several people from the EPA that included their engineering staff, also their

people who are responsible for public health and safety and from their headquarters in D.C. as well as in Philadelphia and in Fredericksburg.

I've got several pages of notes that's going to take me a while to boil that down.

I do need to tell you, though, that the EPA, in reference to the article about whether EPA is backpedaling, I pressed them over and over again.

I cited the article.

I read from the article.

They unequivocally said that, no, they are not dismissing chloramines as a solution.

I just need to let the public know that.

The EPA's position is that chloramines are safe.

Then the other point that was made is that the GAC system is, because it removes the precursors out of the water supply, it is viewed as a technically superior strategy.

That is the two things they say.

They leave it up to the local jurisdictions to figure out what is the best approach.

I asked them repeatedly as well to give us peer-reviewed research on the long-term effects of chloramines on skin.

There are none.

They will be doing and giving us information about various studies that were done on cancer, in which case chloramines and chlorine come out quite the same in terms of cancer rates.

In fact, in some cases the chloramines led to fewer incidences of bladder cancer.

So we are now looking at, again, making this decision.

We want to be as broad-based as we can.

We did have a work session that Thursday night, but I believe that when I'm done with that, I will certainly come.

I'm trying to think of some of the things that kind of stick out in my mind.

Can I just ask a quick question?

Yeah, thank you for reminding me because that was a very big question.

The short answer is that we must do something.

The EPA has been involved with this discussion since 2005.

They had an advisory commission made up of people from various engineering as well as public health community groups beginning this discussion about the stage two regulations actually beginning in 2000.

So by 2005, 2006, they were beginning to then articulate the regulations that they would be promulgating.

So these, the stage two regulations and the kind of the

the engineering standards that provide a margin of error.

People refer to them as like the 80% of EPA standards.

Hazen and Sawyer were not the ones that came up with that.

That's an EPA kind of rule of thumb.

So that's why that standard is so much more severe and why EPA standards when they're just kind of employed face value

It doesn't look like we have many violations, but when you impose that 80% of EPA standard on that to take into account any exigency that you can't foresee,

that's when there starts to be these problems.

So that is it in a nutshell.

We are definitely still working and thinking about this.

I appreciate what the community has been bringing to the table.

But again, that was, and it was quite, and I will be writing this.

Yes, it'll be much more detailed.

And I do want to make a comment, a couple of things, if I may.

It's with regards to what the young man said about the situation and about the youth.

Can we please get an update from staff at some point as to the status of the $50,000 grant that we issued using our city council discretionary funds?

And I believe that went to the Boys and Girls Club.

because our goal during the last budget cycle was precisely to make sure we were providing an innovative program for youth to address these things.

And I think we have every right to follow up with that with Mr. Pierce.

And then what else?

Ms. Hall, Saffron Hall, getting back a little bit to the chloramines, if we could get that list of businesses, that would be very good.

I think that is it.

I want to make one comment about a number of people spoke about Claremont.

I wanted to make sure I'm pretty certain that none of us would make a decision which would jeopardize the health and safety of our citizens.

So I think you can be fairly sure of that.

So some implications that somehow we don't understand and we don't care about it is far from the truth.

Discussion or a motion?

Can I vote because I wasn't there?

Mr. Mayor, could I respond to a couple of questions that were raised by City Council and by the public.

The costs of the two different systems, the chloramine system versus the carbon activated system.

For the carbon system, it would be estimated about $18.5 million around that.

I think Ms. Delahunty passed around something else that questioned that and brought it to

to our attention, maybe some other costs that could bring it down or some other approaches that could bring it down.

We'll take a look at that.

We haven't had a chance to review that just yet.

And the cost for adding the chloramines to our present system is a little over $5 million, $5.5 million or so based on estimates that we have now.

We don't have that broken down per cost per rate payer just yet.

And that is largely dependent upon the cost share agreement and those types of things that we'd have to go through.

A $13 million difference.

And we can try to provide more information to you in advance at next week's meeting.

On the other issue, the Boys and Girls Club did receive, they were awarded the summer program.

We can bring them to Council on August 20th to provide us an update on where they are with their programming, how many kids they're serving, that type of thing.

And can I mention one other thing on that same topic is Washington, actually Parks and Recreation in conjunction with some donors including BamaWorks will be sponsoring

Free community events at Washington Park, too, on Sunday, July 22nd, August 5th and August 19th, from three to six, another thing for community folks to do.

These events are sponsored by Bama Works and the Leroy Moore Fund, and they're gonna promote, provide music, food, free swimming, moon bounce, and more.

Thank you.

Item A, minutes for July 2.

Item B, an appropriation of Jordan Park playground equipment insurance recovery funds, $43,828, second of two readings.

Item C, an appropriation for the Pavilion at North Grounds affordable housing contribution, $278,095, second of two readings.

Item D, an appropriation historic facade settlement, $16,000, second of two readings.

Item E, an appropriation community attention youth internship program, $10,000, first of two readings.

Item F, an appropriation, Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services Neighborhood of Promise grant, $97,500, first of two readings.

Item G, workforce development programs and carryover funding for FY 2013, reappropriate $20,032.74 and transfer $3,000

$72.50, first of two readings.

Item H, a resolution for FY12-13 Charlottesville Housing Fund Albemarle Housing Improvement Program, first of one reading.

Item I, a resolution to transfer funds from the Capital Improvement Program project contingencies to honesty pool, $100,000, first of one reading.

I actually just had one question and I know it was addressed in our email, but I'm still just confused as for the item F. Is this a second match or is this the original match?

It's the one we already set aside.

Okay.

Let's vote.

Thank you.

Next item was a public hearing and a report from McIntyre Park where it was a long time in coming.

Mr. Daly is here to introduce it briefly and then to open up the public hearing.

Mr. Daly?

Do you have a PowerPoint or are you just talking?

Yes.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of City Council.

Tonight's presentation of the draft master plan for the east side of McIntyre Park is the culmination of almost a year of work on the part of the community.

Beginning in September of 2011, the community embarked on a comprehensive park master planning effort for the east side of McIntyre Park using the city's adopted master planning process.

Now, here's some ten months later, we are pleased to present city council with the draft master plan for the park.

I would like to personally thank our staff in Parks and Recreation and our landscape architect consultants with land planning and design associates who worked diligently over for almost a year to ensure that the plans that we present tonight reflect the desires of the community.

More importantly, we would really truly like to thank all of the members of the community who shared with us over this period of time and throughout this process shared with us their vision, their passion, and their commitment to this very important open space.

We have a short PowerPoint for you this evening that gives us a brief history.

Some of these things, if you folks have attended the meetings over the course of the last year, we'll have already seen and we'll all culminate in just a brief outline of the draft master plan.

Chris Gensick, our park and trail planner, is going to actually start the presentation and then hand it back to me in a moment.

Good evening council members of the public we're here tonight to present the McIntire Park draft master plan and again I believe a lot of people have seen some of these so we may not go into quite as much detail as we have in the other meetings but we'll go through a brief power point we have here the area of study again this focuses on the east side of the park the west side of the park had a master plan process a number of years ago revolving around a potential YMCA there so we limited this to an east side plan since we already have plans for

the west side.

This shows the area bounded by 250, the McIntyre Road extended project, Melbourne Road and the railroad on the west side.

That area encompasses approximately 75 acres.

Most people have seen it.

It's a mix of open and woodland.

It's very little change from its original topography, but back when it was a farm, there are three streams that pass through the section of park.

And again, the boundaries are there below with the railroad and the roads that surround the park's boundaries.

The known history of the park is that it was the Mason Family Farm called Claremont.

That farm was going out of business effectively and Mr. McIntyre and some others came together to purchase parcels of land that became all of McIntyre Park.

The majority of East McIntyre Park was the Claremont Farm and the old railroad line which was abandoned.

That old railroad line is currently where the McIntyre Road project is being built.

Rock Hill is adjacent to the park but it's not at this moment part of the park.

We did a review of courthouse deeds and we determined how each piece of McIntire Park was purchased, who it was purchased from, when that happened, and this map is available in your packet that shows the order and parcels that were acquired as well as the 250 bypass being constructed between the time that we purchased it and today.

Some other changes that have been made including McIntire Road south of 250.

The entire park boundary is shown here and again we're concentrating on the east side and particularly the east side north of 250.

Skanks Greenway Trail was built five, six years ago and we renamed that portion Skanks Greenway because it doesn't feel like part of McIntire Park anymore.

Same with Greenleaf that was split off by 250 Bypass.

Currently the park has mostly open space associated with the golf course and the woodlands around it.

There's also a playground, a wading pool with a bathhouse.

Golf course includes a, what we call the golf shack, it's the restrooms and where the crow stays and the equipment.

The Dogwood Vietnam Memorial, one of the first Vietnam memorials in the country, and a number of trails that were built with the help of the Rivanna Trail Foundation in the northern end of the park that you access off Melbourne Road.

We are also aware of a number of projects that will have impacts on this side of the park.

The McIntire Road extended, plus the trails and biofilters.

For purposes of this planning exercise, we assume everything east of the new road has already been planned and we did not open that up to planning.

That's already been laid out with the biofilters and trail.

The interchange project will have an effect on the southeast corner of the park.

It can improve access in a number of ways, but it will also impact the park.

There is a

Transportation Enhancement Grant that is funding currently a design and follow that with the construction of a trail bridge over the railroad tracks that would connect roughly the softball fields to the golf shack were not far enough along to really nail that down exactly and the 250 bypass trail which was recently paved behind the fire station would come across that bridge and hopefully intersect with the interchange to create part of a longer trail from the downtown mall to the route 29 corridor Greenbrier area and Meadow Creek

We did analysis of the park including cultural, environmental, utilities, some historic things, and all of these maps are in your packet, but we know some of the constraints as to what's under the ground, where the streams are, where some steep slopes and sensitive areas are, that when we get to park design, which will follow this land use process, those types of things will be considered as to where we put bridges, trails, buildings, parking lots, things like that.

and we're also aware that a number of plans have been done for McIntire Park in the past.

These are the three we could find.

There's reference to one even earlier that we simply can't find any records of.

To our knowledge these were not run through the recently approved process that you'll hear about in a minute that actually gets to council approval and becomes a really official community plan.

So the ideas in these plans were brought forward and considered as we move forward and a number of them carried forward into what you're going to see as a plan for tonight.

and again the planning area here is 65 acres of the main part of the park and there was about 10 or so on the east side of the road that is part of the park but we did not include in the planning process here.

That interchange footprint is way out of scale but it was just there for reference.

Thanks Chris.

What you see before you at this point in the presentation is our adopted park master planning process which begins with some pre-planning and a directive from city council to staff to move forward with, you know, with a master planning process for a park and leads us all the way through the public engagement cycle through conceptual development into conceptual diagrams for plans, the draft master plan, a public hearing on that draft master plan which was held

in front of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board at the end of March of this year.

The adopted recommended draft master plan by the advisory board again in May of this year.

City Planning Commission comment last month and then here tonight in front of city council.

Pardon the technical difficulties there.

The master planning process in our public meetings that occurred began in September of last year.

The first meeting was held to provide an introduction to the park, the acquisition history and environment, some of the things that Chris outlined briefly, as well as a detailed outline of the planning process.

The first public comment meeting was held in October.

Individuals were provided three minutes to make their comments, similar to in front of council.

We provided some organizations that were interested in making longer comments up to seven minutes to present their ideas to the public.

In December, a table exercise group planning charrette was held at Charlottesville High School.

Eleven concepts were produced by the groups.

These were actual paper maps with

Layouts on them of potential uses within the park.

And throughout the entire process we received public comment through email, telephone, United States mail, and all of the comments that we received were captured verbatim and available on our website, which is Charlottesville.org slash McIntyre Park.

This is an example of one of the table concepts that came out of the planning chart in December.

We began to see some common elements start to emerge down here in the south part of the park, the Dogwood Vietnam Memorial, which will be slightly moved and improved as part of the interchange project.

This shows a skate park on the southwest corner, parking and so forth on the northwest corner, and then a split between a botanical garden and then

first tee or youth golf from this particular table concept.

This was just one of 11 that were completed.

In January, that is a typo, that is this year, in January of 2012, we presented a summary of what had come forward in all of the planning charrette documents as well as some concept diagrams that were presented by our landscape architect in an effort to begin to distill those 11 designs and concepts down into something a little more manageable.

And in the process of doing that, some of our analysis led us to development kind of a pie chart that showed general desires for park uses.

And the concept diagrams were created to show some various land use arrangements based on the public comment that we received.

And it boiled down to four drawings at this point in time.

The common plan or common elements diagram, which showed vehicular access off of Melbourne Road in the north, parking in that location,

Pedestrian Connections from the west side to the east side of the park, Skatepark in the southwest corner, and the Dogwood Villanelle Memorial.

Seem to be consistent across all of the planning, most of the planning documents.

Concept Plan 1 as of January of this year.

This represents a multiple use park with passive areas along the railroad, a golf experience here, a botanical garden fronting the

to McIntyre Road extended in the bypass, an athletic field in the center, a mixed note of activity coming across from the pedestrian bridge to the west, aquatic feature at the top and parking, again showing the common elements of a skate park.

Dogwood, Vietnam, Memorial Islands, and parking on the north.

Second diagram, slightly similar but a little bit different.

No athletic fields shown in this plan and much more of a passive larger garden area here in the south.

Third diagram showed a buffer between the golf activity and a botanical garden of passive activity around as well as mixed activities this way, skate park here and an aquatic feature on the south side.

In response at the public comment meeting, we actually conducted what we do call a dot vote where everybody gets a bright green dot and we had all of the drawings up on easels and people could go and put a dot on the concept that they felt most closely reflected their desires for the park.

Coming out of that meeting was a fourth concept which showed the common elements of the skate park in the Dogwood-Vietnam-Rimal-Orland parking on the north

with the remaining part of the park being a botanical garden slash park slash passive with no golf in this concept.

And there were a lot of folks who felt strongly about that.

The other concept that received the most kind of interest and dots at that meeting was concept three which showed golf in the center of the park with the passive buffer botanical garden here and these more active mixed uses on the south side.

In May, the Parks and Rec Advisory Board, as staff, we worked with additional public comment to derive a draft master plan that the advisory board could consider for adoption.

And it reflects kind of the universe of comments that we've received.

The common elements, again, the Dogwood Vietnam Memorial in the south, the skate park on the west side,

Parking and vehicular entrance from the north side off of Melbourne Road.

A family activity center, which could be playgrounds, picnic shelters, a possible aquatic feature.

A lit and fenced rectangular field in the north side of the park.

The advisory board recommended that.

We as staff feel that if a field in this location is going to go forward that it would be synthetic turf.

It's very difficult to keep natural grass on lit rectangular fields with

the kind of use we would expect a field to receive in this location.

With passive areas in the botanical garden quarry area, excuse me, in the north part of the park, with the pasture golf experience retained in the park for a period of time, but would revert to passive use no later than January 1st of 2020.

In this plan we also offer showing additional parking on the west side of the park as you come in off of Rugby Avenue.

This area here would not affect any existing parking or the existing athletic fields and would provide a location where folks could park and walk across the bridge into the park.

As well as south of the actual interchange itself closer to the entrance to the Charlottesville rescue squad, there's an additional parking lot there that is planned as part of that construction.

with plus or minus 30 spaces in the south, 30 spaces in the west, and plus or minus 60 spaces in the north.

This is the plan that we took to the Planning Commission back in June for their comment and I won't read through all of these.

I'll just highlight some of the comments that the Planning Commission made to make the passive areas as multi-use as possible.

used low impact development practices for the parking areas, which is consistent with one of the things we've done to keep an aquatic use on the site, meaning in the larger site of the park, allow for some flexibility so the botanical garden could expand as needed, to pursue a way to locate somewhere low cost golf in the area, area meaning the larger region, not necessarily within the park,

and supportive of passive use and consideration of concern that the resources are not present to support the botanical garden, as well as a few other things.

At this point, we're at the point in the process where we bring it to the governing body for your review and comment and discussion.

Ultimately, council will take an action on adopting the final master plan.

that is to be determined at your discretion.

The design work and implementation of the elements of the master plan would be undertaken in a phased manner and pursued through both the capital improvement process, partnerships and other agreements.

Mr. Daly, for the benefit of the public, I know the waiting pool has a lot of fans and has a lot of sentimental meaning to the community.

Yes, my apologies for not mentioning that.

The existing weighty pool has been operational since we believe the late 1930s, 1940s.

We continue to operate it.

It was open today.

The construction for the interchange project brings the westbound merge lane coming off of the interchange into the two westbound travel lanes.

Those three lanes merge into basically the current existing entrance

to the golf course and wading pool slash playground.

It also brings the edge of the road much closer to the corner of the bathhouse.

I believe it's eight or nine feet is the actual distance, not much farther away than we are today.

The plan recommends that we operate the wading pool through Labor Day of next year in 2013, at which time it would close to align with the construction of the interchange

Thank you, that's very helpful.

And also for the benefit of the public, can you talk about some of the measures that you would undertake in the coming months and years to find a replacement home for some of the golf activities that currently take place in the park?

We have had some internal discussions that have kind of grown out of, of course, the master planning process about potentially where could we find a place to do an additional golf experience, whether it be a pasture golf experience like this is currently with no inputs into the turf and sand greens, or a more traditional green grass golf facility that would be a shorter experience than playing a traditional 18-hole round, which is four to four and a half hours.

It could be a shorter golf course.

It could align with instructional needs.

It could align with the First Tee program.

There are certainly possibilities that that could happen at Penn Park.

It would require some good thought and analysis and I would encourage a park master planning process for Penn Park if we were to do that.

That is correct, within the Family Activity Center.

That's correct.

Thank you.

I have one question.

Do you know at what point the pedestrian bridge on the southern end will be in such

particularly as it relates to the construction of the interchange.

It's federally and state funded, so on a good schedule, Easter.

this coming Easter on a bad schedule 2037.

That's a federal project.

Speaking of pedestrian access to the park, Colette Hall emailed us today.

I don't know if you've seen that.

One of the concerns she raised had to do with pedestrian access on the east side, particularly coming from the Locust Grove neighborhood, coming from the Park Street Bridge.

Her concern or her contention is that there will be no pedestrian access from that neighborhood.

Is that accurate?

If you're speaking to the east of McIntyre Road extended south of Melbourne Road, very little pedestrian access exists today unless you're walking through, yards are going down through the MACA property.

It would require us to look at acquisition potentially or some partnerships or an easement to provide a trail from the east to the west into the park that could provide that access.

Couldn't it be something as simple as a bike path or pedestrian path adjacent to the off-ramp or the on-ramp?

Something tells me that there's already a sidewalk comes down from Park Street.

There is.

You can get almost to the stoplight and it peters out.

But we can check the interchange plans to make sure.

And we are working on how to get through there.

It's tricky with a stream and the steepness of the hill just west of the road engineering wise.

Any other questions?

Okay.

I will open the public hearing.

First person sign up is William Page.

I can't write my notes fast enough to change my story after Brian gave his presentation.

We'll see what we can do.

My name is William Page, Randy Page.

I live on Wellford Street in the city.

Over the next couple of weeks, you will determine the future of McIntire Park.

Your decisions will affect the park for decades.

And considering only the east side of the park, as you gather your information, could result in a dysfunctional and exclusionary Central Park, lacking the openness it now enjoys.

Fedot's Acceleration Lane directing traffic to 250 West from the interchange at McIntire Road will necessitate the closing of the golf course parking lot, if you will.

Activities in the Eastern Park will be served by either pedestrian bridge from the west or parking off Melbourne Road.

It means parking on the west side will become even more stressed.

I was in the park

Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, the softball game and little league games were being played that evening and they left no parking.

Cars were parked in the grass wherever a spot could be discovered.

On Saturday, I quickly counted over a hundred cars at the skate park for a lively, well-attended event.

Their recommended new home is the golf parking lot.

Together with the hundreds of annual first tee participants, they'll have to park on the west side and walk across the pedestrian bridge.

How much vehicular activity can the west park absorb to feed the east park?

We have to consider the existing activities.

And I'm afraid you're not going to want to hear it, but the coup de grace is going to be the YMCA.

You have to consider the existing activities in the wise required parking for the 70,000 square foot facility.

Will it support?

Will it sport YMCA parking only towing and force signs out of a necessity?

That'll be a sad day for our free and open park.

Mike Svetz, former director of Parks and Rec, said the reason the softball fields have to go is for parking for the Y.

In saving the softball fields and adjusting the city code's parking requirements, we possibly doomed the Y in the park.

The activities of the entire park will hamper wide patronage, affecting its profitability and possibly making it a permanent ward of the taxpayer.

Current parks and rec

Head Brian Daly did an admirable job opening the design of the East Park to the public.

The West Park plan seemed rushed and guided not by the public but by powerful interests.

Dave Norris, you said in council that there were parts of the Western Master Plan were lacking in public input and I think you're right.

I don't think the people really had their say.

We did not consider the plan design and requirements of the Meadow Creek Parkway because we didn't know them at the time.

All right, I'll close with to say to ignore the mooning storm is to fail in our custodianship of Mr. McIntyre's park.

We need to look at this.

We need to look at the why hard in the park.

Hello.

I'm a county resident.

I have a long history of working with Charlottesville environmental issues and many of you may have seen me, some of you recently.

Tonight you'll hear a whole lot about the use of the land at McIntyre.

I invite you to think first though about an organization that works in partnership with city staff to change the whole way the region interacts with their natural world and its resources.

You see, without stating the obvious, what makes the garden botanical is the botany.

In other words, at the core, a true botanical garden is deeply involved in the science of understanding the natural habitats around us, then applying that research to education, conservation, and restoration of biodiversity.

Imagine an organization that helps determine what plants work best on a green roof, helps local nurseries provide more native plants, assists the city in developing more attractive and sustainable plantings for all its public spaces, and educates children about local food.

Most of all, imagine an organization that serves as a catalyst for protecting our unique local biodiversity habitats and natural resources.

So, what do I mean by biodiversity?

How many of you know that in our area we have a 10,000 year old habitat left in the Ice Age?

With white paper birch trees, some 70 feet tall.

So, I mean, that's just one example of the incredible things that we have in our area.

So as you discuss how this important piece of land is used, I encourage you to keep in mind what a botanical garden does and hold space for the important discussion of how the city and other agencies could play a role.

Most of our make sure that no plan for the park precludes or impairs that core function.

Specifically, make space for support facilities on or off site.

Also think creatively about water features and play areas, integrate it into the garden.

Make sure the gardens are put where they'll provide the most benefit and backed by sound horticultural science.

Most of all, whatever you do, don't design a garden with a mission that stops at the edge of the park.

And if I have a minute left, I'd also like to say just on the Stonefield issue, I think the Planning Commission made the right decision.

Good evening.

My name is Bill Mueller.

I'm the executive director with SACA, the soccer organization of Charlottesville Albemarle.

SACA's been involved throughout this master-paying process and we're delighted and glad to be here again tonight to continue our participation in the process.

We're glad that our input has been sought and heard.

SACA includes over 5,000 families locally, making over 10,000 registrations annually.

and all those soccer players need fields to play on for both organized and unstructured play.

So we're delighted to see a soccer field included in the current proposed plan and because as you know,

There's a documented shortage of soccer fields in our area.

The demand on the current fields is simply exceeding their capacity for play.

The fields are simply being loved to death, they're being overused and under-maintained.

And the city recognized this problem in the 2007 comprehensive plan where they identified in goal number 11 objective G, the need

which is stated as adding four soccer fields in the Parks and Rec network.

So we're glad to see that we're making some progress toward that goal as McIntire Park represents one of the last significant opportunities within the city boundaries to add playing fields.

including the soccer field has had the full support of both the park advisory board and the planning commission and we look forward to seeing the park built with a soccer field in it especially since there is no rectangular field or soccer field on the west side of the park.

It seems to make great sense to include one then in the east side in this master plan process.

We believe the park can easily accommodate a small-sided soccer field, especially in the topographically separated north end of the park where it will complement the planned family activity area.

We think a field is a great fit in the park and enhances the uses, the variety of uses that are planned to take place there.

We think the park is a great resource for the community and should serve multiple uses and multiple users.

Through our visits to Charlottesville's sister city and Poggio Iacchiano in Italy, we've seen how soccer fields can be woven into the urban fabric and we've seen how those fields will add to the vibrancy

of the community.

And we've seen this elsewhere in the United States as well.

So we know that fields like this in a location like this will be loved and played on by both youth and adults.

We look forward to continuing to work with the Parks and Rec staff, sharing all that we've learned over our 30 years of operation to make sure that this facility adds constructively to the park, helping to make the park a great addition to the community.

Kelly Tucker Mr. Mayor, Councillors, Mr. City Manager and others,

I am Ellie Tucker, and I've been a member of our community for 36 years.

In that time, I've only been to the eastern side of McIntyre Park twice, both times to help clean up after fireworks, as my husband was one of the sponsors of the Save the Fireworks.

I don't play golf, so I never had an opportunity to go there until there was a family event only a few weeks ago.

It is the first time that I saw the potential in allowing this space to be used as a botanical garden and nature trails.

My husband is from Huntsville, Alabama, and having seen their botanical garden, we know what a garden can bring to a community.

Besides offering relaxed green space and educational opportunities, Huntsville's botanical garden adds to the revenues of the city by special programs and events, as well as a place that community members might gather and enjoy the beauty of nature.

Ours could do likewise and perhaps even enjoy the addition of a fountain, pond or lake as Huntsville's did Proper planning will make this a valuable community resource and a wonderful family destination Golf benefits just a few hundred people a year while passive parks and educational uses of a botanical garden might use this space thousands of times

Penn Park has the signs up that it is home to the first tee.

I think that that option should be developed and looked at further and then give the park back to the people, families, nature lovers rather than just golfers.

Moreover, since many have attested that the first T program is one way that local youth can gain social and life skills, and now that the Parks and Rec Advisory Board has recommended that golf be relocated prior to 2020, I would urge you to consider moving that date up to coincide with the end of construction of the interchange so as to minimize the time that this program will be in limbo.

Also, please make sure that we have a master landscape plan before beginning any work at the park.

Proper planning will make this a valuable community resource and a wonderful family destination for people from all socioeconomic groups and demographics.

Thank you.

My name is Frank Gray.

I'm a city resident, and I've been working as a custodian, a seasonal worker out at the McIntyre Park Golf Course.

And I think this is an important resource.

I have been looking over a document.

I think Councilor Galvin got a copy of it from VDOT, which relates the history of the golf course, why it was developed, and what was the idea behind it.

And the idea behind it was to provide a golf course that would be affordable for the entire public.

since golf, unfortunately, is quite expensive and even the Meadow Creek Golf Course is beyond the reach of many people.

And the other group that benefits most from this golf course are the youth.

And the First Tee Program is one of the organizations that use it, but I have been noticing quite a few more families use the golf course and they'll bring youngsters out that could not go out and play at Meadow Creek.

It's simply not practical.

But the course at McIntyre is accessible, it's generally open, they have plenty of opportunities to play.

I think that if it is underutilized, and a lot of people have said so, that is not the fault of the course, it may be that people have not thought, how can we make better use of it?

I've worked with the First Tee program, we've worked with the kids who are enrolled in the program, we've also worked with the Boys and Girls Clubs, we've also worked with elementary school students, and I personally believe that the golf course could be a part of a program that would introduce golf to kids in any of our school systems, elementary, middle schools.

especially children who might not ever otherwise have an opportunity to learn the game of golf and I think there are a lot of advantages in reading the report on the golf course it kept reporting back to one of the reasons that they thought it was a good idea was that they thought the game actually promotes virtue well it does in its own way there's no other game I can think of where somebody's called upon the referee themselves and in fact if they commit a foul

They have to call it.

So I'm hoping that we have a grace period between now and 2020 that we can do some experimentation with scheduling if necessary.

The golf course is quite flexible.

We had Kite Day out there.

There was no problem.

at all using the golf course to fly kites.

There's no problem using it as a picnic area.

It's certainly no problem with people who walk dogs because they currently do.

As a custodian, I haven't denied anyone access to that park in the time I've been overseeing it.

And several people do come out to jog or walk their dogs.

They're aware of people playing golf.

We have not had any incidents so far and I don't think that we'd likely to have any.

But I also think if it were decided that there needed to be times when golf is shut down for a time, then you can schedule it so that the golf course is put to other uses.

But I hope that this period of time there will be some thought given to how can we better utilize the golf course and I think bringing programs that would

involved the children throughout the city and for the surrounding areas.

Take advantage of this opportunity because it's not often you have an opportunity like this.

Golf courses are not commonplace.

They're usually very, very expensive to construct and to maintain.

Thank you.

Good evening, I'm Peter Kleeman.

I live 407 Head Street in the city.

Some things that have not been mentioned in the presentation include the fact that the McIntire Golf Course is a nationally registered historic site on the National Register of Historic Places.

and it had been discussed as something worthy of preservation during all of the negotiations about the so-called Section 106 process for the road going through the eastern side of McIntire Park and using some of the surrounding areas as screening from the park, from the road from the park on both sides of that road.

Also there are some terrain issues that some of the passive areas that are listed on the map have very rugged terrain that's going to be cut material that's going to have a two to one slope and I don't think that uses of that slope area are going to be very significant that people are just not going to go.

It's like doing recreational activities on your roof because the slope is two to one grade and that's pretty steep.

Also, no mention about access to the park by public transportation.

I'm not sure what the plans are, whether there are any plans, but the whole issue of the movement of elements in the park seems to be a plan to try to maximize the construction costs of providing less resources than we currently have.

If you look at the plan or as was described, the plan to take the golf course that exists and then change it to passive recreation and construct a new golf course someplace else.

The skate park which is currently available will be moved to replace the pool.

The pool will be removed and built in the north which will then displace some of the small amount of remaining natural area that's in the eastern side of the park.

In addition, the Botanical Garden will be introduced which will remove most of the rest of the natural area that's in the north side of the park.

A synthetic field will be placed to remove that last tiny bit of the natural area in the northern side along with the parking lots that will be placed there to replace the parking lots that exist.

When I look at the map, it looks like there are so many opportunities

to use the park in many different ways and others have mentioned, Mr. Gray for example, about there can be a sharing among the uses in the park.

We can do that with existing facilities where they are.

It looks like it's the changing area that affects

is affected by whatever the current design of the ramps from the interchange, but the pool itself I don't believe is affected.

If you look at the map here it looks like the pool is going to be eaten by the skate park.

So it seems to me that

Some creative thinking and reorganizing of one's ideas about how to program the area rather than to reprogram virtually the entire park.

The only original use ultimately being used would be the memorial for the Vietnam observances.

Hi, I'm Virginia Doherty, 104 West High Street.

I'd like to congratulate the Parks Department for coming up with this plan.

I think it's an excellent plan.

And I'd just like to make two comments on it.

One is I would like to see the date of the change over to the passive use and the botanical garden before 2020, if possible, moved up.

And second,

I think that the Parks Department and maybe some community members should get together and talk about using Meadow Creek Golf Course in a different way.

If we want to have low-income golf, that can be part of our current golf course, our real golf course.

There could be a day or two, a morning or two, or whatever, when the rates are lower.

We pay for other things for our low-income community and we can do that too.

And as for the children's program, think about some creative ways that could be integrated more into Meadow Creek Golf Course.

Thank you.

Brandon Collins again.

So I don't have much of a dog in this fight though Mr. Kleeman I think raises some really important things to think about.

What I do think about when I see things like this though are jobs and access and the first things that come to my mind are section 3 employment for our residents of public housing and the home to work program for ex-offenders and I really really hope that this is that any of the work that's going on in this park

that there are jobs available to those folks who can be employed under Section 3.

And for ex-offenders, I think this is an amazing opportunity to open up more jobs for ex-offenders in our community and doing work on the park.

Now access, as Mr. Kleeman mentioned, public transportation, you know, we would like to see a greater, a better deal on public transportation in general, but I think this applies to the park in a big way.

I don't think I need to remind too many people the history of the park that the park when it was originally donated was a park for white people and Washington Park was a park for black people.

and I think even though segregation ended a long while back, legally, we still have very much a segregated park system with McIntyre Park mostly being a white park and Washington Park mostly being a black park and I think with adequate access to that park,

Counselors, my name is Kenneth Williams, I'm a nearby resident, someone who works in the field of urban design and I just wanted to reiterate that this is a great opportunity for the vitality of downtown and I hope you will consider it from not only is the park as an entity itself but also the larger context that it will have ramifications for and just in that I hope that you properly

push funding towards it and possibly, and I appreciate, I want to say I appreciate what the Parks Department has done to date but that you continue to push the design and address some of the, maybe some of the issues that have been brought up already about increasing the sophistication of the design because this can be Charlottesville's Central Park.

It's really located right in the nexus of so many important things right downtown, all the neighborhoods and schools and

the downtown mall and I think the possibility of a vital botanic garden and vital educational opportunities and passive recreation right there will have so many positive, so much positive feedback for the vitality of downtown over the long term as opposed to a lot of the

There's sort of a competition as you know between the county development and the downtown development and to keep Charlottesville vital I think this is an important piece in that whole composition.

I think if we think about the long-term sustainability of downtown having this important park that's right there that's much more inclusive than it has been so far with golf in there but to really think about how possibly it might be an RFP to get an outside firm and that can provide a sophisticated

Truly Central Park-like, or Maymont Park to compare, and Richmond has much more, a higher usership.

But they can really pull off this Botanic Garden and all the other features that have been talked about over the term of a multi-use park.

Nobody else would like to speak?

My name is Kathy Welch, I'm a resident of Albemarle County and I really like the design of the park in and of itself, the elements in the park, but I guess I'd like to echo Mr. Collins and Mr. Kleeman's concerns about access.

It seems like the primary access that's being provided is for people with cars and kids with bikes and people who are walking and people who need to use public transportation

Perhaps you've taken this into account, but it doesn't jump out at me how those people are to be able to get to this park to use the really great thing that it will be.

That's my sole concern.

Good evening.

I'm Peter McIntosh, 37-year resident of Davis Avenue, which is just about a block from the park.

Thank you all for your service.

Every time I come to speak to you, I want to get you some good words because I know the tough work that you do.

And I want to give a special thanks to Brian and Chris, who did a marvelous job over the last 10 months.

probably four or five months longer than they had anticipated, but getting it all done.

So what we have, I think, for you is the uses that the community said we'd like to have there.

But I think what is the next step is to how do we design it?

How do we address the issues that Kathy mentioned of access?

What does it look like from Melbourne?

Do we have to do something from Melbourne so that it's a city bus stop so people can get there in the downtown mall from other neighborhoods?

I have two recommendations to make to you.

One is that you walk the park before you decide this.

And second, you visit Kennan's suggestion and that is Maymont Park in Richmond.

And please do it on a weekend.

If you want to see what a park does in an urban setting for a city like Richmond, it's marvelous.

Grey open spaces and a number of exhibits.

And that's been developed over

30, 40 years.

So when you're looking at McIntire Park, I hope you will look at it as a 20 to 25 year project for the city of Charlottesville.

As part of the McIntire Botanical Garden Board, we researched a number of parks and botanical gardens and not a one of them

didn't begin with a master plan that was at least 20 years long.

This is not something that will be done quickly.

Access may be getting people into the park can be done relatively quickly, but the features should be well thought out so we're not digging something up in year five that we put and have to put something else down in year 10 or year 15.

That could happen unless we have a real nice long-range plan.

and the second suggestion is again I think echo what I think Elliot Tucker said is that the end of construction will be when people will most likely want to get to the park or be able to get to the park I mean not just the access issues that Kathy mentioned but

bulldozers and everything that are working around there.

It's going to be a traffic mess.

So getting to the park now to 2015 will not be easy.

We won't be able to attract people there.

But when that's done, we could really unleash a flood of getting people in there.

So moving, working on getting Meadow Creek situated so it can take fully operational first tee, which it can't right now, and maybe some pasture golf or other things.

That gives them two to three years to do that and then

The Parks Master Plan could be done by 2015 and it would all come together at that time.

Hello, I'm Matt Wilson.

I live at 602 6th Street Southeast in the city.

I'm an advocate of athletic fields and following the process for the last year attended some of the meetings.

The park itself is a great park.

It's sadly lacking in any rectangular athletic fields.

There's four diamond fields on the other side of in the west side.

There was a plan at one point to convert one of those to a rectangular field, but that's no longer part of the plan.

So we have no

We have rectangular fields there and we have few in the city as a whole so this is an opportunity in my mind to start to correct that and hopefully include a field that's rectangular in nature for soccer, football, lacrosse, unlike some of the other

groups that have been going through the process, SACA and others have not tried to turn this into a five-field complex.

We'd simply like to get one field if we could.

The location there at the northern end of it is, I think, a great location.

It's a stone's throw from

the Charlottesville high school stadium field.

It's right across the train tracks from the baseball field and the school itself.

So it'd be a good opportunity for the high school students to use it for practices as well as community members.

So I hope you include the rectangular field in the park.

Good evening.

My name is Susie Hoffman.

I've been a resident of this city for over 25 years.

I have spoken and been at all of these sessions on the park.

I encourage you to find a place for inexpensive golf and youth golf before you force it out of McIntyre.

This would be a great loss to the community.

One of the largest groups that has demonstrated their interest in McIntyre throughout this year-long process has been the golf community.

I am not a golfer myself.

I understand the

The emotions of feeling like the golf course is off limits to everyone else.

But McIntyre's not like that.

I have a son that's in the first T program and I have seen the positive impact that it has had on his life.

I think that any way that we can provide sports and activities for the youth in this community is to be pushed.

But if you take the McIntire golf course away, there is no other place for kids to play golf.

We have lots of other soccer fields.

We have lots of other free space.

There is no other place that they can play golf.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Huja and other city council members.

I'm Helen Flumini.

I live at 3431 Cars Ridge and I've been in the county for over 25 years.

As I'm also president of the McIntire Botanical Garden,

a nonprofit 501c3 organization that has done a lot of community awareness over the past four to five years now about the benefits that McIntire Park East can have to the community.

We are very pleased with the design that has been worked by the Parks and Rec Department.

They've put a lot of hard work into it.

All the supporters that have come out from various other organizations

and others who have spoken up for it.

Seeing the plan and the potential that it has for the community is wonderful and very, very exciting.

Opening up the park to everyone in the community to have a free park that they can come to and enjoy.

Seniors, students, children, families, the disabled, volunteers, visitors, tourists, all will come and use this park and take something away as they leave it because it's going to be so beautiful and has so much to afford to everybody who will come from an educational perspective, from just the enjoyment of the beauty, the magnificent topography that we have no place else and also the accessibility.

We can.

It's a park that you can actually walk to and it will be available to everyone.

So we're really excited, especially in this year of the Celebrate Show, let's roll 250, that if the plan, the land use plan is adopted during the celebration, I think that's very memorable and hope that it'll get buried in the time capsule for the next

50 years that we can open it up and look at everything that has been done in that 50 year period.

So thank you and I applaud all of the hard work that has been done by City Council, the Planning Commission, the Advisory Board, and Parks and Recreation.

Is there anybody else who would like to speak on the issue of McIntyre Park?

Go ahead.

I'm Dwayne Brown.

Born and raised Charlottesvilleian.

I'm the, I guess I'm the longest standing advocate for the skate park in the area.

Just wanted you guys to know that the skate park committee did extensive research on all the available public spaces that the skate park could possibly go in and

it was just decided that this looked like one of the very best places because of existing facilities like the building that's there that could hold the pads and there's water there.

Like Mr.

Page, I'm also concerned about the parking.

I actually would like to see the parking lot remain there and the skate park be put around it or in that matter, it doesn't really matter where exactly the skate park is in the

whole area as long as it is in there.

I guess since there's 70 some acres that the two acres of the skate park could be placed anywhere and be effective.

I kind of went into this really looking specifically at the skate park, but I found myself really in

Thank you.

Anyone else who would like to speak?

Okay, let me close the public hearing.

Thank you for the discussion with the city council members.

We also say that we'll be discussing this today, not necessarily adopting today, but at least having discussion probably in the next meeting or the meeting after we get it adopted.

Who wants to start with the comments?

I have a list, so I'll start, and they're not necessarily responding to the public comment, although I marked a couple of things that people said that I'd like to bring in as well.

First of all, I'd like to say that I really think that after all of the kind of public input and almost wrangling over what seemed at the beginning to be impossible to get everybody happy uses,

I really think, in a way, it was a stroke of genius to look at the idea of gradually pulling golf out.

I'm sorry, I'm not going to be able to look quickly enough for names.

The First Tee Mom mentioned making sure that we have a place for First Tee to go before we pull out golf at the park, I think is really good.

I've been an advocate for having that as a non-golf space, but I really think that that's important to not just jerk it out and to really make that a plan rather than an abrupt end.

So I just want to commend the Parks Department and I think the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board as well for kind of looking at that as something that is

is both thoughtful and humane and also makes a lot of sense in the way that we do business.

There were a couple of questions that I had about uses that, you know, overall I think that the plan looks like a really good start to me.

I think that there were just a couple of tweaks that I wondered if we could look at.

One was that I understand there's some problem, you can't do a pond because you can't dam a creek, is that right?

So I'm just wondering, I understand that it might be like a water park or something for the kids in the programmed area, but one thing that we don't have in this park is water.

and so if there's any way to put either a pond or like a duck pond or something that, even a fountain, something that brings water, because especially in the summertime in Virginia, I think parks are a lot more pleasant if there's water involved.

I too would encourage us to try to move the Gulf

transition into a shorter period, partly because parts of the park will be inaccessible as they're being constructed.

And I think that that's an already accessible space.

We'll have the pedestrian bridge from the other side of the park, the western side.

And so I'd like to see that happen.

And in the meantime, one thing I'd like to propose is to have

As actually one of our speakers mentioned, golf-free afternoons after school so that families can take their kids and go and play on the golf course and know that there's not golf happening then to have certain afternoons every week that are just for play for non-golf purposes.

And let's see, what else?

I love the idea of a rectangular field.

I think we did make a commitment to add four fields.

We've added Davis Park to that stable of rectangular fields.

I'm not as excited about the turf or the lights.

I would much rather see it a part of the park rather than fenced off in a part.

that can be used by soccer for games but can also be used by a couple of kids with a football on a Saturday afternoon in the off-season.

There's been some talk about having professional architectural services and I'd like to see us discuss that further.

I'm not sure quite how I feel about it but it's definitely a question we need to be bringing up.

I too am concerned about parking but I'm even more concerned about transit.

That wasn't part of the mission of this group to come up with a transit plan but I think it doesn't work unless we have a transit plan because we need to keep as few cars

out of there and as little crowding as we can, but we also need to make it accessible to the entire city, including people who don't get to places by car.

I'm pleased that it will now have pedestrian access over the bridge, and I'd love to see a second bridge further up over the railroad tracks.

Let's see, there were two other... Well, somebody was saying that the... Oh, I guess Mr. Kleeman, noting that the

You would prefer to see the current configuration sort of stay there.

I'm in broad agreement with virtually everything that Ms. Szakos just said.

I came in tonight to this meeting, well first of all let me take a step back and say this is, it's an exciting moment that we've come, I mean this we've been talking about.

what's going to happen in the east side of McIntire Park for a number of years now and I really want to commend Mr. Daley and your whole staff for shepherding this entire process because I agree that I did not have a lot of hope coming into this that we were going to be able to come up with a plan.

It's not going to necessarily please everybody but at least people can see a path forward for addressing a variety of

priorities simultaneously.

And you really pulled the rabbit out of the hat.

And as I've told you privately and I'll now tell you publicly, I really commend you for coming up with this plan and incorporating all the public input.

And I want to thank all the members of the public who participated.

I came in tonight not actually preparing to support the athletic field because it sort of felt tacked on.

But I actually, having listened to Masaikis, I am actually okay with

the kind of field that you discussed.

We do need more rectangular fields, there's no doubt about it.

But I do feel like a lighted turf field just seems not in keeping with the spirit of what we're hoping for in the east side of the park.

I love the idea of some kind of a water feature, pond, whatnot.

I'd like to see that included in the plans.

I, too, would like to see the transition accelerated, if possible, primarily because I agree I don't want to leave First T in limbo.

It's a great program, and I want to see, I totally agree that we need to guarantee replacement space.

if not better space for First Tee and explore options for low-cost golf elsewhere in the system before that transition happens.

I've got to believe that's possible before 2020.

I absolutely agree that as we move forward, contracting with a landscape architecture firm is essential because this really is going to be Charlottesville Central Park and we need to do it right and we have some amazing talent here in our own community.

that we can draw from to help us in that process.

I want to make sure, I asked this question at the last meeting about the, is this sufficient parking?

Because I think Mr.

Page nailed it and I think others have addressed it as well.

We want to make sure, even though I agree that we have to make sure there's transit access and very clear pedestrian bicycle access,

We do want to make sure that there is sufficient parking to accommodate the multitude of uses.

The skate park, I fully understand why this site was chosen.

It feels also to me a little bit tacked on, not entirely in keeping with the spirit of passive use, passive enjoyment of the side of the park.

So I'm certainly not going to lose any sleep if we end up keeping the skate park in the design, but I would also encourage the staff

If there are other opportunities that arise in the next year or two that might make for a better home for the skate park, let's not rule out the idea that there might be a better home for the skate park than the east side of McIntire Park.

Let's see here.

I was one that was asking, you know, I've asked several times in this process about the fate of that parking lot, the existing parking lot, and I'm just, I'm not convinced that it's going to be at all safe to keep that open as a parking lot.

There's so much traffic that's going to be flying right by that lot, and

right where the skate park is envisioned now.

I just don't see how we keep that.

It's dangerous now and I just don't see, you know, it's going to be so much more traffic flowing through there and crossing and merging.

I just don't see that as a viable parking lot anymore.

Let's see here.

I love the idea that Mr. Collins raised about making sure that we incorporate the whole Section 3 component and make sure that residents of our community have access to the jobs that will be created.

members of the public have asked the question, well, who's going to manage, who's going to pay for this botanical garden?

And there's a lot of questions that have to be answered regarding the management of the future botanical gardens.

So I would really like to see as part of the implementation plan that we charge staff with getting started sooner rather than later working with McIntire Botanical Garden to develop a

proposed public-private partnership for management of the park.

And that's all I have.

Thank you.

Again, my fellow councilors have already said a lot that I agree with and kudos to staff.

I really do appreciate your master plan process.

I think it's something that we can use the spirit of at least in other areas in what we do in the city.

So thank you very much for taking that initiative back in 2009.

So I want to

I would like to just kind of maybe highlight slightly different things, but are I think in keeping with what's been said.

I do think it's very important to have this designed all of a piece, not do incremental design, but to think about it at one time

and to really, really consider the expertise of a nationally acclaimed landscape architectural firm that understands botanical gardens, that understands trails, that understands how to integrate learning programs into a natural park area.

We have an incredible opportunity to resurrect a horticultural program that was once at CATEC and that could come back again.

Likewise, such a firm could help us strategize parking.

Why not consider shared parking with the high school, with CATEC?

Think about on special event days having shuttles from these places.

There's plenty of asphalt all over the place that we could put our cars on.

Please don't take up the remaining green spaces to do that.

I do find it really incongruous to have a synthetic field in this park, especially if our goal is to have a state of the art, sustainable

Garden and Passive Recreation Area that will be teaching our children sustainability.

We have biofilters already on site in parts of our park.

I think if we can, again, integrate a rectangular field without it being contrived, without it being forced, I can agree with that.

Again, that is what the expertise of a professional, nationally known

design firm can do for us.

When I think of the whole idea of designing this all of a piece all at once, that means that, you know, we could put trails in now, but make it so that they're flexible, make it so that nothing is undoable later on.

I think we are very eager to get going and using this park, especially because we've had a taste of what it could be like when we had Kite Day.

I do think

that this kind of a firm needs an RFP.

We need to get competitive bids on this.

How that is achieved is another story.

But I do hope that we have design professionals involved with the RFP review and selection process.

We're going through a great process right now with the place design task force for the strategic investment area proposal.

So there are at least three landscape architects on that

on that advisory task force already.

We can avail ourselves of that, combine it with the Park and Rec Advisory Committee perhaps.

The connectivity to the neighborhoods east and west is extremely important.

We talked about it, Brian and I and Ms. Smith talked about it, that trying to get some bike connectivity even from Rio down to those multi-use trails

and then doing it from the other direction.

This is something that the public has said repeatedly.

We must make it very accessible to the entire community, to the adjacent neighborhoods and then it brings up again the transportation piece.

We've got to make this extremely connected to downtown, to the parts south of downtown and so that it is definitely a community park.

and again expediting the process so that maybe the triggers for this are related more in line with the construction of the road infrastructure.

So it's not just an arbitrary date.

I do agree we need to make it so that we can accommodate first T

as a learning experience and look at how we can do that with Penn Park.

But I do think again that's another transportation issue.

Penn Park already doesn't have ready access by bus.

We know that's already a problem.

Well now that we make more of a multi-age use facility out there,

It could be something very compelling to make sure we do have some better access out there by public transportation.

So I think Mr. Williams, Kenan Williams, and Mr. McIntosh again just very well said how this is our central park.

And then Mr. Collins,

This is reminding me of Providence, Rhode Island's Public Housing Authority redid their grounds, redeveloped their grounds, and in the process employed through the Groundworks USA a sustainable landscape training program.

so that the public housing residents became skilled in the actual implementation of sustainable plans that involve stormwater management, rain gardens facilities.

I am all for that.

I think the more we can implement really strong training programs tied to real work that we need to have done in the city, that's going to have a long lasting impact.

The residents will become extremely employable thereafter.

My turn.

I too thank you all in Parks and Rec for handling a difficult task of trying to accommodate lots of different perspectives.

I don't think, I'm quite as enthralled with the plan as my fellow counselors, but there are certain elements that I do like.

One thing that I felt was,

In a plan that accommodates so many different interests, the one that really lost out was ultimately the historic preservation of this sand green golf course.

Not that I believe it should be kept intact in its remaining seven holes, but I would like to see some preservation of one, two, three holes, something that kids could come and learn.

could become part of the Family Activity Center.

I understand and I appreciate actually that the skate park looked at other sites.

This doesn't seem like a natural site to me at all, even the site where it's being placed.

I did go back and look at the PowerPoint last night that you all put together.

Excellent PowerPoint.

But I couldn't envision those places in this park.

It's a very constructed, at least those in the PowerPoint, was sort of constructed from scratch.

whatever, skate park.

And it just seems out of place here.

I would really, I really too wish there was some more appropriate place.

I was talking to one of the skate park folks about the recycling center, which I would bet is not going to be a recycling center forever.

And anyway, so I'm

I'm saddened that this is the only place that this skate park could go, but I just don't think it's an appropriate place at all.

I wonder if it is in the park, if it shouldn't be up at the northern end.

But that said, speaking of the northern end, I'm also very disappointed that a field got in there.

The field was not, I know, part of the original draft master plan and got put in after it went past the Parks and Rec Advisory Board.

Again, it feels out of place, it feels tacked on.

I'm very disappointed that either of these places would have lights.

Again, I don't think it's in keeping with what you all captured really as your overall theme.

Again, pasture golf, I agree with my fellow counselors that, and I know you say no later than 2020, I think eight years is far too long to keep the whole thing, but I think there are ways to

kind of gradually phase it out as opposed to just one day it being gone.

Maybe take a whole year.

Or take a whole, triggered by certain events so that we could kind of slowly recapture the land for passive area, but still retain some of that, again, that history.

I certainly hope there'd be a historic sign.

somewhere about what this used to be.

Again, the trails I'm seeing are on the steep slopes appear to be and also right next to the road.

One of the beauties of some of the old plans, going back you showed three,

Three former plans.

I'm sort of curious as to why they never happened.

I'm sort of wondering, is this ever going to happen?

I'm not really sure why this one would, if these didn't.

In 2004, I actually had a lot of the same elements that came out in the public meetings here, got rid of the Gulf.

But it's got a nice system of trails.

And one of the things I'm seeing in this plan that doesn't

Seem to accommodate its use as a passive area is the trails don't go up to the high areas.

And I know that it would cross the gulf if it did that.

I think that's what you lose in trying to have them both and that would be another reason to sort of gradually get, pull the golf back.

It would change the way people use the golf course but they still could use the golf course for at least a time.

So sort of in summary there

If we're going to have a skate park, and even if we're going to have a field, I'd like to see the Family Activity Center.

I'd like to see those things pulled together.

into one place.

And again, if we're going to have that kind of active recreation, let's try to concentrate it in one place.

And maybe we could offer rental bikes.

People could come and bike around.

I think that's a lovely idea.

Rental golf clubs, if we have a couple holes still there.

And that might work well, actually, on the sort of more southern end.

I share my, again, concerns about access and we talked about this when we met earlier, when Kathy and I met earlier with Mr. Daley, that it's just a shame that the entrance to the park is now way over on the other side.

It doesn't feel like it's in the city.

All of a sudden it sort of feels like the park is on the other side.

You know, not that there's anything wrong with coming in from Melbourne for people who live up there, but most of the city lives on the other side.

I totally agree that we should have an RFP for a nationally acclaimed architect, you put it so well, I'll just go with that one.

The other thing I'm a little curious about is what assumptions are there for funding in some of these decisions.

I know that the skate park actually, there was a feeling that, and certainly a lobbying, to have the skate park in before the other one went out, but

If it's one of these fancy skate parks that were envisioned in the PowerPoint, where is that funding going to come from?

Is that going to drive how we decide what we fund and when?

Also, I'm a little curious after our budget discussions this spring whether all this discussion of accommodating first T either here or elsewhere is contingent upon city council continuing

to richly fund that program.

We've cut back a lot this year and just really how those decisions, how do they relate to each other and I would hate to see us make one decision that then kind of necessitated something else that we hadn't really planned on.

Anyway, I think

Again, I would love to see a pond.

We not only don't have a water feature here, we don't have a pond anywhere in the city.

And a pond is an amazing learning tool, particularly for children.

There's just something about a pond, too, that makes it just such a draw for all ages.

Maybe we could dig a hole.

We can't dam up the creeks, but obviously up at the northern end there is topographically the logical place to do it, like the nature trails, they are the logical place to do it, to put those in.

Thank you.

A number of comments, and I agree with quite a few of the comments of the council members.

Life of any community, there are times when we make big decisions.

I remember when I first came to Charlottesville, the community made a big decision about the heart of the city, about the law and other improvements, which took almost a quarter of a century to happen.

So you need to have a vision and an idea, but you also need to have persistence to carry out the vision.

Similarly, there's another opportunity for us, you can call, this is a

Norris of the City of Charlottesville, Mr. Hart.

It is an opportunity in my mind to have an open space which can be used by the whole community and be a truly central part of our community.

And you need to be able to get to that in many ways.

And that's a part of our transit plan we're doing now.

I'm hoping that we'll do that.

Primarily I would like to see this to be a passive park because we do have plenty of parks and including the rest part of this McIntyre Park which is very active oriented and there ought to be a place where you don't have to hit ball or hit each other and just be able to walk peacefully and enjoy flowers and water and trees and be able to walk along the line

and spending some time with your family.

I think the idea of the Botanical Garden fits into that general idea and I think it could be a great addition to our community.

A few years back, one of the things I would like to see added, I think if you see the two previous versions of the park, it had a lake.

I still believe that it is important to have a lake or a pond in this land.

I don't want it to be a Huja Memorial Lake.

I would like to see it in my lifetime.

We've been talking about it for 25 years.

So I would really encourage that we think of

I can't think of a great city that does not have a body of water and this is an opportunity for, I think, to have that and it could be incorporated with the botanical gardens.

I've been to many of them and I can't think of a single botanical garden without a water body in many ways.

Our topography in the northern end lends itself to provide a water body in many ways.

I also think that

I am not quite supportive of the rectangular field because again, as some people have mentioned, it seems to be a forced in facility.

I can see the open green space where people can throw ball and do things like that.

But not a synthetic field with a fence and a barbed wire on top of it.

will disgust me.

So I would be opposed to that kind of feel in my mind.

But I think there could be open space, which could be we can throw a ball, those kind of things happen.

But not a organized feel.

I also agree with my colleagues that you need to find alternative for golf, and if you can do it sooner, the better, I think.

Because otherwise you're hanging around for a long time, and I think it's fair to them.

Also, I agree with my colleagues, especially as Kathy outlined, we need to have a detailed design, not only a detailed design, but a great design of the park.

And that needs to be done holistically, not just one piece, not field, botanical garden, skateboard, neighborhood equipment area.

We need to think of the whole

The whole park is a design which is a unified and harmonious and attractive and beautiful design.

I think that's what we need to do that.

We need to do that soon.

We need to do that with a very open competition with very good landscape architects here and then other places in the world also.

We can hire anybody.

Helper and Associates to do the downtown mall which is an example of a quality design.

Because it is one of the last open spaces we have in our community and I think we need to make sure it is the best open space.

It brings me also to the question of phasing and implementation.

Once we have a clear vision, we need to make sure that we do a systematic way of improving it

It is gradually but surely it becomes a reality.

It is that a something which hit and miss kind of affair.

Things can be planned.

Things can be done and implemented.

I know it is not going to happen overnight, but it can happen if we plan together.

I'm really excited about the possibility.

I want to thank again the staff for working with the community to come with ideas, but the two changes which I would suggest

is not having a rectangular field as a field but as a dystopian space but also a water body.

Just as a little bit of a, probably for direction for Mr. Daly, that what I'm hearing is that we all have kind of a desire to either move things around or replace some things or have a different orientation, i.e.

the field is not synthetic.

I would like to propose that that is the charge of the design firm, whoever is hired, to do this holistic plan.

that they are the ones that they get they get our program but they're the by by having a very good in-depth understanding of the topography of where there's a lot of water on this site that we could we could reveal again and use as we're talking about water elements so I would like to say that

I'd like to make a recommendation kind of in the meantime sort of recommendation because I think that if we do look at doing an RFP for a grand design which I'm fine with that that is likely to take a while and in the meantime we have this beautiful space there that very few people actually get to use.

We're having a bridge is going in soon and that's going to open up access to this side of the park to the west side in

And we have right now the parking lot still available by the golf course.

And I'd like to see us really start putting some trails in where people can get to them in the park that we know is going to be kind of, at least for a while, trailable.

I wouldn't necessarily talk about paving trails or anything like that, but places where people can get in and around the park now.

I'd like to see us do golf-free days so that we can, you know, have afternoons in the park for families and really publicize them so that people get used to being on that side of the park.

So as we go through that design later, people are, like when somebody mentioned that we should walk the park, I have, but I know a lot of people haven't, and I think it would be nice to get people in the park more, just like next week, you know, just from now on.

Let's see, I think, yeah, that was really what I was looking at.

I also just really wanted to note that this is more kind of out in the distance.

I would suggest that we just have

I believe we certainly can do that and if we believe that it takes maybe a meeting beyond the very next scheduled meeting in order to fully flush this out that we could do that.

Okay, thank you.

And thanks again to you and also to everybody who showed up to any of those meetings or comments or submitted comments online.

So, thank you.

Next on our agenda is Rose Hill, Santiago, Israel.

Thank you, Mayor Huja.

Thank you, Council.

I must acknowledge that this is the first time my young student has come to present in front of City Council.

I know.

I know.

We'll see.

Can you switch for a second please?

Thanks.

Okay, go ahead.

Okay.

Amidst concern by some of the neighbors within the neighborhood, council desired the staff and the applicant meet with the neighborhood to ensure all neighbors were well informed of the proposal.

Staff and the applicant attended the July 10th Rose Hill Neighborhood Association meeting in an effort to discuss this proposal with the neighborhood and field any comments or questions they may have had.

Some of the concerns that were noted at the meeting were such potential negative impact to the property taxes within the neighborhood.

Some neighbors believe that an increase in density with this proposal would make the neighborhood unaffordable to current residents.

Some are also concerned with the affordability of the units.

They believe that the units would be rented at a rate that wouldn't be affordable for current residents.

Additionally, neighbors also expressed concern with the potential for traffic to increase along the local roads of 4th Street and Cynthia.

At that meeting, the applicant responded to the concerns of the rental structure by noting that the units will be rented at a structure of $1,200 to $1,500.

And I'd like to correct that memo that I sent you all that noted that the structures will be rented at $700 to $1,200.

$1,215.

Yes, ma'am.

Staff mentioned that they understood the concerns regarding the potential increase in taxes.

However, that is not within our range of staff's review of rezoning applications.

Overall, staff believes the subject parcel is appropriate for the density that is proposed.

The city has language within the comprehensive plan, notably within the housing and land use chapters.

that seek diverse housing options in locations near workplaces, parks and community facilities, and access to public transportation.

Staff feels this rezoning adequately reflects that desire.

I have a question.

So when the residents gave their, I wasn't able to be at the meeting, so when the residents gave their concerns and the developer answered them, did you have any sense of the response?

Well that's a good question.

At the end of the meeting I just wanted to get a general idea of what was said at the meeting and I said it seems to me that the potential increase in taxes was one of the big concerns as well as the affordability of the units.

They seem to be more concerned with the potential increase in taxes.

I can't really say how well received they were from the applicant's response or my response to their questions.

I think it was a general good discussion.

I think getting them to understand that that is not within staff's review of taxes and how they may, or how rezoning applications may impact taxes within the neighborhood.

I think that was a good step.

I also told at least two or three of the neighborhood residents to come.

I don't see anybody today who would have at least met with two or three of them individually.

Do we say any comments?

Remind me now.

Overall we look at if the current zoning is appropriate versus the proposed rezoning.

That involves factors including consistency with our comprehensive plan, most notably our land use plan.

Also it looks at

recent development patterns, adjacent parcels, and what their current zoning and land use designations are.

Yeah, I just don't quite see how this satisfies a lot of those.

I mean, so thank you for reminding me of those, because I was looking for them.

I had seen them written down.

One of the rationales was that there's an apartment building next to it.

Well, that apartment building's off Forest Street and it's not on Rose Hill.

Most of what you see around that area is single-family homes and older single-family homes of a historic nature.

I saw a reference to being

I mean, Preston's way down there.

It certainly doesn't feel like it influences.

Let me help you with that.

I think I told Mike I'd help him with this one.

The map in the plan shows low density residential.

But what the Planning Commission looked at is that the map is a general map.

The policies of where we try to fall back and the policies they looked at are that we want to promote in-field

development and more density in areas that are adjacent to or near public transportation and community facilities as Mike said.

The fact that you do have the R3 on one side, you have the school on the other with the facilities there.

This is one of those kind of in-between gray areas and the Planning Commission felt like six units was not an overburden on that one site.

It was not that out of character given the mixtures throughout that neighborhood and right there.

They felt that it was consistent with the policies of the plan even though the map may be different from

The old school way of doing this used to be, well, does the map say yellow just to say brown?

Yeah, you know, and I've been in a discussion about infill before and there's a difference between infill of a large area and just infill of a lot, or in this case, two small lots next to each other.

And to put something out of place because it's denser in a neighborhood is jarring for me.

And, you know, I have a problem with the fact that this is

a modest neighborhood where people have lived for a long time.

It's not an affluent neighborhood.

And so I personally am going to be pretty sensitive to whether or not we are doing this for the right reasons.

I actually got out and I looked at the site.

I don't get the criteria for saying that this is appropriate in order to get

You know, it's six unit apartment building versus two houses.

I guess I'm a little confused whether this is the time for questions or comments.

I do want to bring to everyone's attention the 2006 design day.

and when you look at the comments that were made by the Rose Hill community, they say things like preserve single-family character, maintain the integrity of height lines and square footage of the new development, increase accessibility to city meetings to neighbors in terms of time scheduled.

So I'm not sure if that's why they're not here.

They wanted to think about the Burleigh Middle School as being a historic structure.

They thought of the community design center that no longer exists as an important vehicle to empower residents in the design decisions.

They wanted to be involved with the design process.

They wanted to examine the feasibility of design guidelines and historic resource survey of Rose Hill neighborhood.

They want to be more informed of development plans and have access to the development map.

When we say we're citing principles of the comp plan, we need to look at all the aspects of the comp plan.

I mean, it was definitely taken into account.

because they were also very concerned about traffic calming.

I mean Rose Hill Drive is exceedingly wide so that there and then my comments will come later because there are no existing guidelines and as far as I can see existing zoning from the 2025 land use map said that this should be single-family detached in this area.

So again I'm very much a supporter of making sure that we have

Well, I think one thing's important to understand that we talked to the neighborhood early on, as did the applicant.

I'm not sure why things didn't, you know, that came late didn't bubble up then.

But the neighborhood association president said, we have no concerns about this.

We've talked about it in our neighborhood.

We have no concerns.

So I think that the applicant did meet with the neighbors.

Our staff did meet and talk to them.

We filled a lot of calls, answered a lot of questions.

The zone, as I said, the land use map is a general map.

We look to the policies as much as we look to the map.

So that's why you sometimes see a recommendation that is not consistent with the map because the map again is a picture that's not property by property specific.

So we do look to the policies.

The issue of design, I wish that every property would have to go through design.

We captured things in 2006 that people expressed.

We have no authority

You can do master plans.

I'm sorry?

Let's hold the comments till later.

Okay.

I have one other clarification.

In the rezoning, in what's called one of the proffers, seems kind of odd to me, but where one of the proffers is that the applicant will not take advantage of the full R3 scope of options, will only build this six unit.

How does that

Contingency transfer in terms of, is it on the lot itself?

It's on the land.

So that if the applicant decided not to build and sold the lot.

It would be tied to the land.

Good evening, council members.

Mark Green from Rosanna Dana LLC.

This is a unique piece of property.

It does front on Rose Hill.

It has 125 feet of frontage on Rose Hill and only 100 feet on Sintiana.

The frontage that it does have on Sintiana is very steep.

And just as we looked at the property and we looked at how the topography works,

We looked at the adjacent apartment building, which you're correct, it does enter from a different street.

But if you're out there on Rose Hill, it does look like it's adjacent.

And we looked at the kind of eclectic uses up and down Rose Hill.

We felt this was a

a good use for the property.

We thought that the alternative of having two single-family homes with their side, with the corner lot side yard facing Rose Hill wasn't nearly as attractive for Rose Hill or for the resident that would be living there on the corner as having an apartment building.

And we see this as, you know, kind of workforce

Two bedroom units.

We got a lot of questions from the neighbors about what the rental structure would be and we haven't really gotten into planning the inside of the building in terms of how many of each type of unit and exactly what our rental structure will be.

It'll be market rate and

The design to the design issue will be very similar to what we presented in our package to you all.

It's a building that has three stories facing Rose Hill with parking underneath.

It moves the access point to Rose Hill, takes it off of Cynthia.

We think that's good for traffic in the Rose Hill neighborhood.

and the frontage, the side of the building that faces the Cinthiano side looks more like a two-story structure.

So it sits below the two adjacent buildings.

The top of our roof would be lower than the apartment building.

The top of our roof would also be lower than the house that's up the street from us on Rose Hill because that street is so steep there.

The neighbor we did, I met with the neighbors

Twice I attended two of their meetings.

There was a lot of discussion about taxes and they didn't use the word gentrification, but I think that was kind of a general concept that if we built something there, that would in general raise the valuations of properties in the neighborhood and might create a tax affordability issue.

Obviously, that's not something that I can address with our specific property.

There was a question about whether we would build anything if we didn't have this and the answer is yes.

We bought the property to build on, so if we don't build an apartment building, we will build two single-family homes for rent.

I did offer the thought that two single family homes for rent would maybe affect property taxes more directly because those are comparable to the other single family homes that are in the neighborhood as opposed to an R3 building.

That may have assuaged some concerns.

So we talked about traffic, we talked about the building heights, some questions came from council about whether there was any

Water on the property standing or streams or anything there or not.

There's no critical slope issues.

There's no environmental issues.

I actually do have a question.

Well, it's sort of a question.

One of the things that actually attracted me initially to this project was that the parking is underneath.

And so if there were two houses, where would those people park?

Okay.

I'm curious about the third proffer, which was low-impact development.

Right, so staff had pointed us to those criteria there in the low impact development guidelines and we said that we would meet as many of those as we can.

I can't remember

all of them standing right here, but some of them are not achievable, I think just because of the size of the site and because of the vegetation that's there.

Are there any questions for the applicants?

It just seemed really vague to me.

I didn't see that any of the proffers were actually things that enhanced the decision to rezone a piece of property.

So I thought maybe there were more details than I was reading, but I'll try.

I'll try.

It doesn't seem like a very powerful proffer.

I know in the, I watched the plan, I wasn't, had no longer, I didn't stay that long for the planning commission, but I watched it and I know that some of, that was one of their concerns and what else did they say?

I guess that was it too.

What struck me is that, and I don't blame you for this because you don't have the R3 at this point, but there were

I mean you couldn't say I will do this or this or this because there is no design at this point, right?

I mean it really has an advance to that degree so which I guess is why you can't also say what elements of low impact development you'll do because you're not there yet.

So it's a little bit of a chicken and an egg thing.

Right.

I'm sort of new to this proffer game, but I just didn't see that the proffers were really proffers because they didn't

Staff had a concern that if we got the zoning that we could potentially do things besides the apartment building that we'd drawn some pictures of.

And so we said we won't do any of those other things.

If we get the zoning, we'll only build a building similar to this.

I know, this whole thing is the chicken and the egg thing.

Any other questions for the applicant?

If not, have a seat, please.

Thank you.

Are there motions on the floor?

Mr. Mayor?

Yes.

This is before council on second reading.

There has been a motion and second.

Sure.

Okay.

That was the motion.

That was the motion.

So now it's open for discussion?

Yes.

I just would like to again reference the, I think the importance and the seriousness of rezoning.

And a rezoning is a change of an agreement of sorts that the community is aware of.

It's the zoning map.

So whenever, in my experience, whenever there has been

a rezoning, it usually is very clear what those goals are that the community is striving towards.

And there is often, very often, in fact most of the time, some sort of a map image, some sort of a set of standards, not only narrative, that is of a general nature throughout your comp plan.

So that's why I went back to the design day.

that was where I saw some level of specificity that would give us some criteria that would allow us to then make a very, very objective assessment of the appropriateness of this rezoning application.

I couldn't find a lot.

And so what I come back to is

in the 2006 design day.

The neighborhood residents would like to be involved in the land use planning part of the comprehensive plan and guide future development.

So also they would like to have seen standards.

They would have liked to have seen how this was going to be in a context.

And so I would just like to say that when I look at that,

I feel that this application, as I've studied it, has failed on several levels.

It may preclude a stormwater facility.

We talked about that last meeting.

It personally believes, and I believe the Planning Commission made this very clear, it does degrade the pedestrian quality of Rose Hill Drive.

It does add more cars directly across and opposite a parking lot.

Rose Hill Drive is already too wide with few streetscape amenities like gracious sidewalks and street trees and bus stops.

And we're adding a now big gaping big parking lot with a garage that's about over 20 feet wide across an historic building.

Absent a corridor plan that identifies potential focal points for mixed use development with site development standards that promote a sense of place, I believe I agree with Ms. Smith.

This is out of scale.

It looks like it could fit very nicely in around some of the dormitory spaces close to Rugby Road.

And in fact, it looks a lot like one of the buildings near Westminster Presbyterian.

So it does seem out of scale when it's not part of a bigger plan.

It may provide much needed and conveniently located workforce housing, which yes, is a very big goal for us.

But without any notion of where pockets of higher, moderate and lower density and mixed use development should go along Rose Hill Drive, there's no way of knowing whether or not this currently incongruous building type

will eventually be compatible with the context in the future.

So if I had a plan, and I saw this as the first puzzle piece, and that plan did show higher density and intensity, I could have accepted it.

But it's like, oh, it's adjacent to a building that's already multifamily.

But on the other side, there's adjacency to single-family detached.

So it had no overarching vision attached to it.

Residents have not been assured of any transitional zoning strategies to safeguard against unwanted noise and visual concerns about scale.

That was something that came out in some of the earlier notes.

I did a quick sketch to see, well, what if you pushed the buildings up so that you didn't have a 26-foot setback from the edge of public right-of-way?

That's a very suburban setback.

the edge of right of way to paving is another 20 plus feet.

So already that face of that building is over 45 feet from the paving of the road.

If you push that forward to be a more urban streetscape, you could allow an alleyway.

You could allow a 10 foot buffer between that and the rest of the facilities.

But none of this thinking was discussed or even required.

And this is a rezoning.

We deal with these things with the PUDs because they submit new standards for us to critique, but there's nothing to say that this is making it better.

And residents have not been engaged except for these couple of meetings.

In the meantime, from our last meeting to now, I really did dig deep and see where there were holes in our process.

And this isn't your fault, in my mind, but I do think that we need to do a much better job of understanding why we rezone and when we rezone.

Let me just clarify.

I'm sure many of you are concerned, but as Mr. Tolbert said, our law does not allow us, in resolving the law, to deal with many of those issues, unfortunately.

And I understand what you're saying, but I have concerns also.

But my position is that I go along with the only graphic representation we have in comprehensive

the land use plan, which is single family.

So I personally, the only thing I can go by is what is in the map or a text or a policy.

But if you, then you just simply don't grant the rezoning.

I mean, we were pulling out

goals of the comp plan.

Pedestrian safety, pedestrian accessible streets are also part of our comp plan.

So the character of a street scape is still also a goal.

We can do that in PUT, whether it's a special parade or PUT, we can do those things.

But we cannot do that in a resorting.

We could have a vision, but we can't require it.

Anyway, it is a debate we could have for a while, but is there a motion on the floor?

I have discussion.

I also have a question.

Forgive my ignorance here, but is this a property that could not have asked for a PUD instead?

Ah, okay.

That's all I need to know.

All right, so I guess that as I'm looking at it, and I too have been digging relatively deep and talked in the first round to neighbors, I feel like that Councilor Galvin is in a way looking at this as a planning commissioner.

I feel like, I guess, although I don't disagree with all of her points, I feel that we have a planning commission for examining those particular issues.

And when the planning commission comes to us with a unanimous recommendation, I feel like the things that we need to look at about why we wouldn't do it are

need to have some value beyond what we asked them to do, unless we feel that they just totally messed up.

And if you feel that they messed up, then that's, we need to talk about that.

But I guess that to me it would have been if the neighbors were still really concerned and coming here and saying this is, you know, we weren't involved enough, we really feel like we weren't heard, then I would say that that would be a thing as a city council that we should say,

That doesn't have anything to do with what the Planning Commission discusses.

That's something we look at if our residents are being treated fairly and dealt with well.

What I'm hearing, and I hope I'm correct, is that the residents were brought in early, the residents were brought in several times, the residents were brought in again after we asked them to.

We've asked them to come to this meeting if they had concerns.

I haven't heard any concerns since that meeting.

and I know it may be that there are individual concerns, but as a community I don't hear that still.

And so, to me,

I think that you're concerned about the setback.

I think that that's something that I would love to see us maybe offer an exception so that it could be further closer to the sidewalk.

Maybe we can't do that, but those are things that we need to be looking at as we're going into our comprehensive plan for our next plan.

But I think as we look at mixed use and density and infill, this is near downtown, it's on a bus route, it's in an area of lots of services, jobs,

I think that it fulfills more than it doesn't of things that we have in our comprehensive plan.

I would be inclined to go with their recommendation

Council overturning a unanimous recommendation of the Planning Commission.

I think the circumstances need to be pretty extreme for a council to overturn a unanimous recommendation.

So we are in a little bit of a box because you have raised some legitimate concerns, certainly.

but the law does tie our hands to a certain extent in cases like this and in my mind a six unit structure on this site is particularly given the fact that this neighborhood does include apartments, it does include commercial, it does include a mix of uses.

Yeah, this is what scares me about the term infill development, that we've got a residential neighborhood and you put a completely incongruous building and call it infill.

And we see it in some of our old neighborhoods when it happened in the 50s and the 60s, and it's jarring.

And I don't know why the law ties our hands.

We don't have to accept a rezoning, if anything.

I think the assumption should be you don't rezone unless you have a compelling reason.

Let me make one or two comments.

I see one of the concerns of Ms. Galvin, but I also realize that we try to follow the recommendation of Planning Commission.

In this case, I'm going to vote against it for two reasons.

First, I think our land use plan says you ought to be still in the neighborhood and this is what our comprehensive plan says very clearly.

So I think

We should follow our principles as I understand it.

And secondly, I think it just does not fit into this situation.

We can go on.

Just one quick thing is that

I do think of the design day comments as something that's part of what we should be referencing and a rezoning is a very, very serious matter that we need to strive as a city to create then the vision documents that clearly this community said in 2006 they wanted to be part of and we haven't done it.

even though it's not an entrance corridor, even though it wasn't one of the corridors identified by the Tordi Gallas study, it is one of those other areas that we're currently talking about between Planning Commission and City Council.

The motion on the floor, motion is to

Follow the recommendation of the Planning Commission, vote yes or no.

Mr. Huja, Mr. Mayor, in this type of situation the ordinance approving the rezoning has obviously failed but you have not yet taken action.

My advice to you would be to entertain a motion denying the rezoning and the motion should articulate the reasons that the movement is

suggesting that it be denied.

And a number of legitimate grounds have been stated by several counselors tonight.

Those included the reasonableness of the existing R1S zoning, the lack of compatibility with other uses, the lack of compliance with the land use plan of the comprehensive plan, the effect of pedestrian safety and access on Rose Hill.

I've got three of them.

Mayor Huja, I'd like to make a motion to deny the request for rezoning for the property in question on Cynthia and Rose Hill Drive for the various reasons related to its failure to comply with aspects of the comp plan that deal with pedestrian safety and also lack of compatibility and reasonableness of

The Existing Zoning.

Any discussion on the motion?

Mr. Brown, if we had

accepted it, would we need to state those reasons?

I find that sort of curious that you would, you know, that again wouldn't be the default, that you would keep the same zoning but okay.

Okay, the next item on the agenda is the issue of living wage.

Good evening, Mayor, Council.

I'm Galloway Beck, Director of Human Resources, and I have a report for you on the living wage agenda item.