City Council Meeting   8/20/2012

We need to get started.

I'll call orchestral music to order.

There are a few recognitions and announcements we need to make today.

I'd like you to be meeting.

I have the pleasure of making one announcement concerning a Thomas Taylor, who is the Outstanding Principal Award, which he has received from Curry School.

He is the principal of Charlottesville High School, was selected from pool of national nominees to receive 2012 Outstanding Principal Award for the Curry School of Education Foundation.

The award is presented annually to the Graduate University of Virginia Academy School.

Mr. Taylor is the principal of Charlottesville High School since 2008 and he's done an outstanding job.

He's also a member of the Region 10 Services Board and is chair-elect of All-State Group AA School for Virginia High School League.

He'll be officially getting this award on October 25th, 2012.

We thought we'd jump the gun and recognize him publicly for being such an outstanding teacher.

I wasn't planning any comments, but I'd like to thank Mayor Huja and the council for recognizing the good work that the city schools are doing.

I can say that this recognition really belongs to the teachers and students of Charlottesville High School.

They have come a long way in a short amount of time with lots of achievements, everything from increased graduation rates in the city

to decrease dropout rates and increase the academic performance and we hope that that helps to change the city for generations to come and we hope that we make you proud.

I promise you that your efforts are not wasted in the support of your city schools.

A lot goes into making this happen.

A supportive school board and an outstanding superintendent to have my back and outstanding teachers make a big difference and

Thank you again.

Before you leave, I have two more things to say.

First, I want to also recognize your family as it goes here.

I brought with me my wife this evening, Lee Taylor, and my youngest of three daughters, who is now a kindergartener at Venable as of today, Ellie Taylor.

Thank you.

We are very proud of you.

Also in moral support is our Associate Superintendent, Ms. Gertrude Ivey, who is here tonight.

We have Proclamation.

I have one.

So I have the pleasure of reading the proclamation marking Women's Equality Day.

And I won't make her stand yet, but Tanis Fuller is here to accept it.

but let me go ahead and read so you can relax and then when I'm done because it's nice and long.

So whereas this year is the 92nd anniversary of the 19th amendment of the US Constitution giving women the right to vote in 1920 and whereas in 1848 164 years ago in Seneca Falls the need was recognized and proclaimed but after great effort there is still no reliable protection in the US Constitution for women against sex discrimination in general.

and, whereas in the past years, laws and policies in the Commonwealth of Virginia have unjustly discriminated against girls and women in general, or against particular classes of women, such as in matters of reproductive rights, sexual assault, marital property, and sexual harassment.

And although some laws and policies have been somewhat eased, such improvements can be, have been, and are being reversed.

Whereas some institutional policies, whether overtly discriminatory or facially neutral in public, voluntary and private institutions, still have inequitable effects on women.

Policies such as those dealing with insurance, pension, family medical leave,

and from employment, family medical leave from employment, job promotion, occupational choice, recreational opportunities and access to medical care including reproductive and abortion services and stereotypes still exist which limit women's roles and activities and

whereas young girls and adult women still must contend with unwanted touching, sexual, physical and verbal assault and rape and being viewed by men as objects to use, thus illustrating that many stereotypes are still operating which reinforce unjust assumptions and whereas most of the care of young, the disabled and the elderly is still provided primarily by women, many of whom, through economic necessity, must also work in the job market and or at home,

and whereas in many other ways the tasks of providing equal opportunities to women and men and the tasks of removing burdens which fall unjustly on women as compared with men remain uncompleted.

Now therefore be it resolved that the City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia does hereby proclaim August 26, 2012 as Women's Equality Day in remembrance of all those women and men who have worked to develop a more equitable community

which acknowledges both the real similarities and the important differences between women and men with liberty and justice for all.

And be it further resolved that the City Council urges all citizens on August 26th and thereafter to treat all distinctions and classifications according to gender as initially suspect and to be questioned until they are justified by an equitable and compelling interest of the community, the institution, or the individuals affected.

and to require that the burden of justification for any distinction according to gender be borne by those who wish to discriminate against women as compared with men and to examine all facially neutral criteria such as physical stature requirements, occupational qualifications, childcare assistance opportunities, home maintenance responsibilities, elder care benefits and disability benefits to determine whether they have disparate impact on women.

and to promote affirmative action in the public, voluntary and private sectors in order to overcome the effects of past discrimination and stereotyping which have limited the life chances of women and girls as compared with men and boys and to eliminate all unjust discrimination and prejudice against women and ensure equality of rights, privileges and responsibilities under equitable principles and practices for all women and men.

I know there are at least two people who are here.

Thank you for your support.

I have one other announcement now that our school folks have left.

Another reason that it was important that they be here is that Wednesday is a very special day in the city of Charlottesville.

I'm sure that most of you are very aware of it.

It is the first day of school.

Children will be waiting at bus stops in the morning, so I urge you if you're driving in the morning that day, remember to be careful and to look out for kids waiting at bus stops.

Sometimes, especially at the beginning of the year, they're all excited and somebody might dart out into the street, so just be aware that they're out there and again at the end of the day.

And to all parents and children, have a wonderful school year and do your best.

I also have one other announcement, which is the beginning of the newest session of the Charlottesville Albemarle University of Virginia CERT training.

CERT is Community Emergency Response Team.

It trains people in neighborhoods to really kind of know what to do in case of an emergency, especially we found when the

What was it called?

The derecho?

The derecho.

The big storm came through.

In many cases, the power company wasn't able to get to people quickly.

It was a sudden storm.

People weren't prepared for it.

People who were in those neighborhoods and knew what to do were the go-to folks for neighborhoods.

And so you can be one of those go-to folks if you do this training.

It starts September 13th.

It'll be every Thursday evening.

And I don't have the time written down here.

But to find out more about it, you can either call 434-971

1263, or you can go online to www.charlottesvillesert.org.

And some of the classes will include disaster preparedness, fire suppression, disaster medical operations, light search and rescue, team organization, and terrorism.

That's all I got?

I'd just like to remind people that on September 22nd will be the second annual Charlottesville Promise Gala.

This is the Charlottesville Community Scholarship Program.

It is an annual fundraiser.

This is a wonderful program that is co-sponsored by the city.

that offer scholarships to graduates of Charlottesville High School and city employees for post-secondary education.

There's more can be found out about it at SeavilleScholarship.com, but mark your calendars for September 22nd.

I believe it's either Friday or Saturday.

7 p.m. at the Paramount.

It is possible.

But if anybody has a chance to come down to the Omni, it's always a wonderful event where we honor the men and women of our police department.

It starts at 6 o'clock, I think, on the 22nd.

I can do those now.

We typically do them later, but I'm happy to do them now.

Is there a second to that?

Second.

Any discussion if there's more?

Thank you.

Now is the menace by the public.

We have a list of people who have signed up.

There are 12 people who will be able to speak.

Let me take a moment to divert from the procedures to

I understand there are people who are interested in talking about noise ordinance and other topics.

I just wanted you to know that it will be on the council agenda at the end of the meeting today, and if you want to wait that long, you're welcome to wait and speak.

I'll allow some time to speak at that time.

They can speak as long as they're signed up for it.

Mr. Mayor, members of council, I'm Naomi Roberts, 1140 St. Clair Avenue.

I'm here tonight about goats.

If three of you council members remember, I spoke out against goats in the city when it came up before the previous council, but it was approved in a way.

I stated that I have neighbors that would do just that, get goats, if it was approved.

One family who moved to the city brought this matter up and Mr. Tolbert sold council after his research he conducted with a couple cities out west somewhere indicating there were no problems with goats in their cities.

A couple weeks ago, a neighbor on the corner of Land Circle acquired goats.

and they set up a fence on city property, outside the property, fence facing

St. Clair Avenue with a tarp shelter.

I complained to neighborhood development and it was referred to the police department.

They moved them to the front of their house on Bland Circle, still on city property.

Here are the pictures, I have pictures that I'm gonna give you.

Here are pictures that I took this weekend.

Their meeting can be heard all over the neighborhood, even six houses down past Locust Avenue onto Locust Lane.

My neighbor across the street complained to me just this weekend that she had called the police department and was told that it was a civil matter.

I'm giving you her written comments as she had to work tonight.

She did not know that I had already emailed Neighborhood Development and was referred to the police department and I called the police department and was told that it was turned over to housing.

There are four houses for sale on Locust Lane, three just constructed just across the street.

Needless to say, who is going to buy these houses with the goats bleeding and having to view them from inside and outside their homes?

What rights do we neighbors have concerning the noise that they make?

Who do we call?

What violations can they be cited for?

You know, we have warrants for barking dogs.

Are they going to be allowed to have them in the front part of their house even if they are not on city property?

In this case, however, they are on city property and is this

Is the city going to allow them to keep the wire fence on city property?

Where is our relief?

I warned you that this is what would happen in my neighborhood, that one family I knew would get these stinking goats.

Where are our rights?

They are a liability as well, and if they get out, they will play havoc with our vehicles.

They are a nuisance to the neighborhood.

And doesn't the city have a nuisance ordinance?

Maybe we can get a warrant for goat nuisance.

Maybe?

We need answers and relief.

And here are the pictures, and here is a letter from the lady that bought a house

right across the street in July and she's complaining about them as well.

My name is Paul Long.

I live at 1410 Grady Avenue here in the city.

And I'm speaking tonight on behalf of the Transit Riders Association of Charlottesville.

And I had written some prepared remarks to make, which I'm going to not deliver because I was informed that Counselor Smith is going to request that the consent agenda issue of the route changes be taken off the agenda.

But what I would like to say is that

The Transit Riders Association is a consensus of support for route changes that will increase the coverage area of public transportation.

I can do that certainly at the end, but what I would like to suggest to the City Council

As the city council has run through various neighborhoods having meetings and being amenable to hearing comments from neighborhood residents, I would like to suggest that city council and the managing director agree to come to a meeting at the McIntyre Room in the Free Library and publicize the event for people who are users of the public transit system to hear their comments about proposed transit changes.

Many people who use the public transit system

work one, two jobs and cannot come necessarily to a regular city council meeting.

Very well may come to that type of a meeting maybe on a Saturday afternoon.

And I do want to thank city council for their interest in expanding public transportation.

I think it's an issue that should be, you should be encouraging as many people as possible to voice their opinions and I think an expanded, extensive public transportation system is vastly needed for the Charlottesville-Albemarle County area.

Good evening, Councilors.

My name is Nancy Carpenter.

I am a county resident.

I live at 727 Denali Way.

I am speaking tonight on the topic that the Charlottesville Downtown Mall Reclamation Project has been very vocal about recently, the desire to have a cleaner and better shopping and dining experience on the downtown mall.

In other words, the advocating of the passing of ordinances to regulate the free movement of people who happen to be homeless.

Through this group's many meetings with local officials, it is apparent that this is about homelessness and not about behaviors as they claim.

I sent out a letter today to council that explained my viewpoints.

It contains some data from the city of Fredericksburg in reference to interdiction, which is one of the methods that has been discussed.

Interdiction will only increase cost to taxpayers by using an increased reliance on interdiction as a way to solve the social issue.

The use of interdiction in jail time without a discharge planning process at the end of incarceration does not serve the taxpayer or the interdicted person.

Just using punitive measures is punishing people who have nothing to lose.

I also want to comment on the need for peaceful coexistence on the Mall, but I find it hard to believe that all the stakeholders in this issue feel the same way.

Indeed, it could be said that they want to incite negative responses.

In case you hadn't heard, a person I will call a coward, a bullying coward, decided to take matters into his or her own hands and deliberately pour a syrupy substance along a brick planter that is used by the homeless, among others, to sit.

Is that how we treat people in Charlottesville?

Is that really how we treat people in Charlottesville?

I don't know who this person is.

They prefer to remain anonymous and a coward.

But I do know one thing.

No way will I give my hard-earned money to any establishment on the Mall that endorses this kind of action through their silence.

This reflects directly on the members of the Charlottesville Downtown Mall Reclamation Project and is that what this group is really about?

I hope not.

I hope that Ms. Reeves will publicly comment on some of the actions that have been going on down there and I do hope that the city really seriously looks at interdiction and what it would cost the taxpayers because it is a costly way

to deal with the social problem and perhaps not the best way unless we do have discharge planning at the end of an incarceration process that ties people into the social services that they need in order to have a different outcome with their life.

Thank you.

Good evening, Councillors.

My name's Hardie Whitten.

I'm from 2521 Woodland Drive and I'm here

I sent y'all an email earlier today requesting postponement on the item K and the consent agenda resolutions.

The item about the Charlottesville area transit

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Later?

Thank you.

You can speak right now.

Okay, that's fine.

Ms. Long, do you realize how long it's going to be before we speak on that?

We won't forget what you say, we'll write it down.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

I'm Valerie Long.

I'm here speaking on the noise ordinance on behalf, at the request of the House Corporation of the Sigma Chi Fraternity House.

They brought this issue to our attention today and just wanted me to

called me to ask about what the context was and I did a little bit of research speaking with Mr. Tolbert.

I had assumed that there had been some sort of meeting with the neighbors and with some of the representatives of the fraternity houses and others, the student organizations that I understand are perhaps part of the situation there.

It sounds like that has not occurred.

and I wanted to encourage council to consider postponing implementation of the ordinance so there could be an opportunity for a meeting or a roundtable discussion or some sort of communication event like that.

so that the neighbors who have been very involved in this issue could have an opportunity to sit down with representatives of the fraternities.

They're all coming back to school.

They're house corporation members.

Certainly the Sigma Chi representatives have local representatives like me, but also other members of the fraternity who are very interested

in working with the neighbors to understand better how they might work together to provide some solutions to what I understand is a significant problem.

So I wanted to just encourage that delay to foster some communication.

When I work on land use and zoning projects, I always try to reach out to the neighbors because I think that's very important at the front end to understand exactly what people's concerns are and try to find common ground and common solution.

It's not always possible, but it's always worth a try, and I would just suggest that council take that into consideration.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Huja, councilors.

My name is Larae Carr, and I live on 39 University Circle, and I'm here to speak about the noise ordinance.

I live in the neighborhood a little short of two years and all neighbors who lived there for longer than that can confirm that this past year was one of the worst in the neighborhood.

We had so many calls, not just for noise, but for other things like vandalism, public drunkenness, trash, you name it.

and so we as a neighborhood association decided to take the matter into our hands before we approach you as a city councilors, we approach first the university representatives, we did approach the fraternity and sorority council, we approached the dean of students and we were talking with different representatives of sororities and fraternities.

At the end we were told that all the

authorities, fraternities and all the rental homes are not university problem and I was actually confirmed that by even by the local police that these are private citizens living in a private neighborhood and we should deal with that.

So that was the moment when we start taking the other route and start working with Mr. Tolbert and start working with

Dave Chapman as the attorney and seeing what other possibilities we would have to address this noise.

As I sent you earlier on, you already saw it, these graphs.

May I give it to you?

Our neighborhood had in 2011 377 calls for noise ordinances.

You will see on other pages where is the distributions from these calls.

Most of them are from the group housing.

and I would like to just to encourage you.

We understand that these students have wanted to live close to the university but it's the same for us.

I work for the university and I like to walk to work and it's a nice place to live but I don't think that part of the university life should be parties and noise that goes well into the morning hours on average four to five nights a week.

I have a four year old son and he finally sleeps through the night and now he's not sleeping through the night and it's really hard because we do have to get up at six o'clock in the morning and go to work while the people who do the party stay don't.

Maybe last thing what I would like to say is

We would like to really encourage you to pass this change in ordinance before the school year starts.

We already talked with the university neighborhood relations.

They will help us to distribute and communicate to all students the new rules and we hope that you will

you will understand that if these are private citizens living in the private neighborhoods, we should not be treating them differently.

If there would be any other neighborhood in the city of Charlottesville having the amount of problems we have, I think it would be dealt with differently.

Just because we have so many high density housing, it doesn't mean that our neighborhood needs to be mass.

And lastly, I would say,

If the parties are happening when there is rain, when it's cold, when it's too hot to be outside and the parties are inside, we don't hear them.

And I'm not talking about people walking by my house.

I'm talking about being in my bedroom with windows closed and hearing noise from three to four blocks away rattling my windows.

So this is not just people walking by my house.

This is a serious, serious noise.

Thank you very much.

I'm Mary Carey.

I live at 500 South First Street.

And I'm also a FAR intern.

I'm the resident president at Crescent Halls.

On July 24th, we were supposed to have a meeting here in this chamber to discuss a lot of problems that we have in housing.

The Vice Mayor was here and she proposed her pet project of the

I don't know what this is because it reminds me of Vinegar Hill Project, City of Promise.

But anyway, the meeting was never called to order.

But she stood back there and she talked and she gave her summons.

She talked about what they needed

and wanted to get it through that night.

We never ever heard what she was saying and we wanted to abort that session because the people and the housing wanted to say something.

We never got a chance.

We had about three members of the board sitting up there on the council

They didn't seem like they wanted to hear it either because the meeting was never called to order.

But yet the Vice Mayor decided to put her pet project through.

It got voted on that night with three members of the board and an alternate for the next day at Legal Aid, which they were kind of a little iffy about it.

This project, City of Promise,

I was a teenager back in the days that they did the Venica Hill saga.

City Council came down and got money off the backs of poor people.

Sure they got the money, but it took years to build up the city, but people got paid.

This budget here, $3.6 million,

It doesn't seem like too many people in housing are going to get anything.

The money is so hidden in here, I think we need to audit that.

I also think that the Vice Mayor and the housing board need to give an apology to the residents of housing that was in this chamber that night.

Nobody heard what she said, nobody knew what she was talking about, but she took 10 minutes to get it across.

Got her meeting, got her deadline,

This was a disgrace to the government of Charlottesville.

I think she abused her privilege as Vice Mayor.

She insulted me in a way when I asked her, how can you come in our meeting that never was called to order, put your pet project through,

and let them hear you.

Is it because you Vice Mayor?

And she said, well, Ms. Curry, you can go up there and say something.

Who was I going to say it to?

Everybody had left.

There was no meeting call to order.

The residents were surprised.

They didn't know what was going on.

The few board members that was up there were gone.

Good evening.

My name is Laurie Delahanty.

I live in the city at 645 Evergreen Avenue.

And I believe this has been, this is the first city council meeting since the July four boards meeting on Chloramine.

And I'm up here to express thanks and gratitude to the city council and also to the other

boards for listening to our concerns and for doing their homework and doing the due diligence and really paying attention to the issue and for voting not to put chloramine in the water.

And this decision is going to, I mean having the four boards agree on like this was just a really historic decision.

and it will vastly affect us in a positive way.

It will affect future generations.

It affects the health of our water, our infrastructure, our environment.

However, these positive effects aren't just limited to the water.

It's really given people so much more confidence in our community leaders and I hear it.

I still hear it every day.

I heard it twice on the bus coming home today.

about how happy people were about the chloramine decision.

I heard from two people that I didn't even know who are on the bus today even.

Thank you.

Good evening city councilors.

My name is Martin Killian.

I'm a resident of 34 University Circle.

I have lived there for 20 years with my family.

We raised two daughters there.

We love our neighborhood.

We love the circle.

And we also like living among students.

There was a reason why we moved there.

Now, things have taken a turn for the worse in the last 12 months.

We had an increase in noise.

There was vandalism culminating in the take down of the city traffic light which I as a taxpayer resented because the city had to put it up by a new one.

There was also more parting it seems and the noise got definitely worse.

I strongly support strengthening the noise ordinance and the enforcement mechanism because otherwise

We will have no action on this big problem.

To my esteemed student neighbors I will say, well, if you obey the rules as citizens, as we do too, your neighbors, then nothing is going to happen to you.

We do not lower the decibel levels.

We do not try to infringe on your parties.

what we ask you is to be citizens, as citizens obey the same rules we as your neighbors who are not students obey.

And therefore I strongly, strongly urge the city council to do something about this problem which is impacting the neighborhood and also if you look at this map, I think it shows that many of the calls to the police do not come from us who are not students, they come from students who are bothered by this noise.

you do need to take action on this because the neighborhood is under stress and we see this only as a beginning.

Yes, we like to work with the fraternities but we cannot go on as we have the last 12 months.

We are losing people, people can't sell their homes, it is a mess.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mr. Huja and Councillors.

I'm Daniel Friedman.

I live at 1835 University Circle.

I've lived there for 33 years.

I've been the homeowner there, like my neighbor, Martin.

I've raised my family there.

And I'm also with Laddie and with Martin.

We've got to do something about the noise ordinance.

and I tell you that we wouldn't be here tonight if the university administration were working with us and last year, last fall, Alan Groves, who's one of the deans, came to one of our neighborhood association meetings and he told us that if we have problems with students at the University of Virginia, not to call him, don't call the board of visitors and don't call Theresa Sullivan's office, don't call the dean, call the police.

So it was really an unneighborly, it was an unsatisfactory meeting.

And that was a turn, that was new information, new for me living there for 33 years.

And so we need your help really on this because the University of Virginia is really a headless horse and they're not gonna help us with this at all.

To the other person who spoke, the spokesperson for one of the fraternities,

You know, we've had these roundtable meetings for 33 years, okay, I've been there.

We hand out, at this time of year when students come back, we've handed out flyers, I can't tell you all the things that we've done, to student residences, to fraternities and sororities, reminding them that they live in a neighborhood, please be good neighbors.

but none of it really works.

The University of Virginia has gotten to be a much bigger place.

The parties have gotten much larger and much more dangerous.

Earlier this fall I spoke to someone named Harry Marshall who's one of the alumni heads of one of the fraternities and I told him that his fraternity should be shut.

It should be shuttered along with a couple of other ones.

where the mayhem was, it looked dangerous to me.

I saw fistfights and as fathers of kids that age, I worried about some of the kids, some of the kids that I had seen.

Jean Chase, 223 Old Lynchburg Road Mayor Huja, Councillors, thank you for your time and attention tonight and I've come to recap where we are on the OLR project as we see it currently.

We have asked for and are getting due diligence in following some dots to get the fuller picture.

We are coming to ask that you shorten the windows of time that you give people to respond.

I would like to give an example of one homeowner who looked to her bank for the proper steps to be taken on her behalf to get the documents into the city attorney's office.

It went through seven different people who had her file.

And in each instance, each person said

or we'll get back to you in a month.

None of those seven people got back to that lady in a month.

It was just shifted to another person.

So as an example, one example of several that I've personally worked on with the city attorney's office getting full information on every step of the way because my way of working is to be totally transparent.

that everybody knows all the information that's gotten so that the best possible information can be had and the steps move forward in the best interest of each person concerned.

I would like for my counselors to know that this cross check continues.

I would ask that it also continue on the parts of the people who are working within the city government as well.

I would like all of us to become citizens of Missouri, the show me state.

If someone says I am going to do something and have in your hands at a certain time, please cross check and say show me.

Please get that.

and you know human nature, if you give people two weeks to do something, they will wait until the 13th day.

So being that we're working with human beings, please give them no more than 24 hours and then have them be part of the show me state.

Please continue to keep the OLR project which is fully funded a top priority in our city.

We were hoping that the project would have been done by the time that schools opened this year.

We're still waiting to get to the bid stage.

We would like to follow that bid stage in short order, hopefully, with the actual construction.

and then we will all be better served in the problems that we're trying to solve and get to the finish line.

Thank you.

Good evening Councilors.

I'm Lisa Green, 216 Chestnut Street.

First, I want to thank you all for your support and attendance at this Saturday's Bike, Walk, Play, JPA.

I think it was a great success.

It was a great event.

Kudos goes out to Susan Elliott and Julia Williams and their work with the Neighborhood Leadership Institute which the city supports or puts on.

So that's not why I'm here.

I'm here because I

a group of us have gotten together and put together an organization called Charlottesville Pride Community Network and I am now serving on the board and it is an organization that we're putting together to create a vibrant, visible and unified LGBTQ community presence in Charlottesville and its surrounding region that promotes equality and integrates groups and individuals

through events, outreach, resource sharing, networking, and communication initiatives.

I'm not sure, we all have a lot of

things that you support.

We have our dialogue on race here in the city and we have our human rights task force and all those are wonderful and they're doing great things but the LGBT community is one of the only communities that is not protected under the law.

and so it is one of the things that we need reliable protection and we do appreciate all that you all do for us in this community and the support that you give us to what means you can.

We have clear goals.

We haven't received our 501c3 yet, but we are in the process.

We are putting in the paperwork and we've got a board and we hope to move forward with this.

and have this done by the end of the year.

We want to provide a clear, coherent entry point for new persons in the community just coming out who need services and support, whether it be kids in high school.

We have a ROSME project, but we want to be an ally to them as well as people just moving to the community.

connect groups and sub communities and allies that aren't often working in conjunction or aware of each other's existence.

What we are doing now is we're putting together the first ever Charlottesville Pride.

I've been told it's not the first ever, but everybody I talk to about this says it's about time.

So it seems like the first ever.

DC has a pride, Fredericksburg has a pride, Roanoke has a pride, Harrisonburg has a pride.

And so we want to have a Charlottesville Pride to bring together all of the

communities that support and the allies.

And so what we're doing is on September 15th in Lee Park from 2 o'clock till 6 o'clock,

And we're working on a shoestring budget, just getting things together and not being a non-profit.

And we're still short things like festival insurance, security, we're working on a large tent, portable toilets, all those wonderful things that you have to have.

We have had a lot of support through a lot of different vendors who have given us a lot of things.

So we're asking for some in-kind support from city council, possibly security, things like that that you could possibly help us with.

and we think this goes a long way to show the commitment that council has in its 2025 vision for community of mutual respect.

And I don't need to read that to you guys, you put it together.

But I sent Maurice a letter and he's got that and everyone's been very supportive.

Thank you very much.

This is the end of the performance of this stage.

I'd just like to reply to a few things that came up.

First of all, regarding the noise ordinance, I just want to make a process note, which is nothing's going to be finalized on that tonight.

At a minimum, or at a maximum, I should say, we would approve it on first reading, but the way these ordinances work is it has to be approved twice, which would give time for more public engagement.

Thank you, Ms. Chase, for your continued diligence.

We have a lot of citizen activists in this community, but I don't know anybody that frankly works harder than Jean Chase when she sets her mind to something and maybe Joy Johnson back there.

But Ms. Chase, you really have done a lot of work to move this project forward and I hope your words tonight were taken to heart by

All of us up here and the city staff, we all need to keep our eye on the ball and keep moving that project forward to thank you for your efforts.

I certainly, whereas Ms. Green, any kind of in-kind support that the city can provide to this event, I'd love to see that.

So hopefully Mr. Jones can follow up with you on that letter.

I haven't seen the letter.

I do want to, sorry Ms. Carey left because I wanted to reply, I think she made some unfortunate allegations regarding what happened.

Let me clarify for people who weren't here, I was at that meeting, I was up here, she was referring to a Charlottesville Redevelopment Housing Authority board meeting that never actually happened because sometimes when you're on a board or commission you know that sometimes you don't have a quorum.

In that case, even though we have seven commissioners on the Housing Authority Board, we only had three of them come to that particular meeting, which means we couldn't convene the meeting.

And it left a lot of people in the audience confused about what was going on because we're sitting up here waiting for a fourth commissioner to show up so that we could get the meeting started.

And we didn't do a very good job of explaining to the public what was going on.

and I apologize for that.

And also we should have provided an opportunity for, at a minimum we should have at least had a public comment period so that members of the public could have spoken and that didn't happen and I know I myself have already apologized for that and I'll do it again.

in this forum.

But I don't want to leave unchallenged the allegations that were made that somehow Ms. Szakos had favorable treatment or she was asked to speak and give some background information about a proposal that we were going to discuss the next day when we reconvene in a special meeting and I thought that was appropriate.

and I don't think there was anything inappropriate about that.

I would, in hindsight, we should have opened it up for other people and give other people a chance to speak as well, but that was not a reflection on mistakes.

Yes, actually.

I just wanted to, a couple comments, we have a long meeting.

Mr. Long, I don't know if you were happy or mad that I suggested that we take the transit issue off, but I did think that it needed more public input and that seems to be the theme here tonight is communication and really being sure that there's enough engagement with the community that the community does know they've been heard and has an opportunity to be heard and that has to do with the transit, with the noise ordinance,

with what Ms. Carpenter was talking about, et cetera.

So anyway, we'll be talking about it later.

I was happy to take it completely off the agenda, but we will be talking about it.

And just ditto to what Dave said about Ms. Chase as well as we have a whole bunch of people in the audience tonight who are practically staff.

You put so much time in, and thank you all.

I'll go ahead.

Is Ms. Roberts still here?

There you are.

I actually live in that neighborhood.

I have not heard about these goats.

I'll walk up and see what that is.

But I think that being a good neighbor is still important, whether we have goats or not, and I think we need to hold people accountable for that.

I think good neighborliness is something that we'll be discussing later with the noise ordinance as well, so I'll leave that for then.

To Mr. Long, I think just when we call for more participation like when you were talking about a meeting at the library or city space or wherever that is, I think I'm sure that that is part of the plan for

the study that we're having done right now and part of that is to have such meetings so those will be happening and I agree that that's really important and we need to have them at multiple times so people can come even if they work at different times.

I too am aware of a very long agenda here.

Noises later.

One other thing I just wanted to clarify about that CRHA since I was here.

It was not asking for anything for the City of Promise.

It was actually the City of Promise offering about $300,000 of benefits to the CHRA with a grant proposal that hasn't yet been funded, but to say if the grant is funded would you accept this money.

And so that was all that they were asking the

the CRHA for and I just happened to be a steering committee member and couldn't come to the next meeting so that was why I went ahead and talked.

But I think that you explained it very well and I'm sorry there was a misunderstanding because that was certainly not the intent.

and there was something else I wanted to mention.

Oh, for the Charlottesville Pride, I too hope that the city can do whatever we can to support that.

I know that our mayor will be there.

Sorry, I don't know if our mayor will be there.

Our former mayor will be there.

I think our mayor will be there.

I plan to be there.

I think that it's a great event and we talk a lot about human rights and we talk a lot about bringing people in with different voices and I think we need to be really

Thank you.

I agree with my fellow counselors, so I won't repeat anything.

Except I would like to underline what Ms. Delahanty said, that I appreciate the gratitude.

I think all of us received an outpouring of email in the wake of that for a board meeting.

So it goes to show that you give credit where credit is due.

I appreciate that.

I would love

to see more occasions where the boards agree, particularly Almonte County Board and City Council.

I can think of transportation.

I can think of economic development.

There are many and housing programming.

So let's ride that crest of that wave if we can because it was a very profound moment and I really thank you for underlining that for us tonight.

I have two or three comments to make.

Again, I want to second what Mr. Norris said about Mrs. Chase, and she has been working really hard.

I know I get about four or five emails every day, so I know she's working hard.

And besides, our staff is also working hard with her, and I think this project will proceed soon.

As to the bus routes, we're going to be momentarily going to remove that from our agenda.

We're going to be talking about that a little bit more, and then the council can decide how we're going to proceed.

I also support in-kind contributions for the Pride group.

And lastly, as the following on the chloramine issue, as you may remember,

at a meeting before that, when the four boards met at the city council meeting, I said that this council is very concerned and interested in the safety of our citizens.

We will do nothing to harm in any way, and I think you've seen the example of that, and we mean it.

We want to do the very best we can for our community.

Any other comments?

Okay.

No, we will go after that.

Thank you.

Item A, minutes for July 16.

Item B, appropriation, Community Attention Youth Internship Program, $10,000, second of two readings.

Item C, appropriation, Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, Neighborhood of Promise Grant, $97,500, second of two readings.

Item D, Appropriation and Workforce Development Programs and Carryover Funding for FY 2013, reappropriate $20,032.74 and transfer $3,214.50, second of two readings.

Item E, Appropriation Virginia Juvenile Community Crime Control Act Grant, $452,704, first of two readings.

Item F, an appropriation, Charlottesville Albemarle Adult Drug Treatment Court Grant Award, $182,500, first of two readings.

Item G, appropriation, Feed Your Mind National League of Cities Walmart Champ Grant,

55,470 dollars, first of two readings.

Item H in appropriation, check and connect student engagement grant, 75,000 dollars, first of two readings.

Item I, a resolution revisions to architectural design control district guidelines, first of one reading.

Item J, a resolution special use permit at 218 West Waters Street, first of one reading.

Item K, a resolution approval of Charlottesville area transit route adjustments, first of one reading.

Item L, a resolution acquisition of Fry's Spring Beach Club property, Old Lynchburg Road project, first of one reading.

Item M, an ordinance closing Laurel Street, second of two readings.

Thank you.

I have another request.

Okay.

Mayor Huja, I'd like to remove item I from the consent agenda.

Okay.

And I do have a question about an item.

Not to remove it, but just a question.

Is this the right time?

Is this right?

And it's item D. I just want to know, is that 20,000 plus or minus

Okay.

Okay.

So we have removed three items from the regular agenda.

So moved.

All those in favor, vote.

Thank you.

Next item on the agenda is public hearing of sale of property to Fry's Spring Beach Club, Old Lynchburg Road project.

First and second, two readings.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Council, the item before us tonight goes in concert with one that was on your consent agenda, which is the acquisition of the Beach Club property.

As part of that acquisition, we came to you back in May.

We identified property that we would want to

to acquire from the Beach Club but also as part of that to provide property back to the Beach Club where they had improvements that were sitting on city property, city right-of-way.

After we had it surveyed, it was determined that this is 2,488 square feet.

It has a value based on the appraisal of $5,722.40.

But what we're recommending in the ordinance is that this property be conveyed at no cost as part of the transaction on the purchase of the Beach Club property.

We've discounted the price of the Beach Club property that we would acquire to make up for this and to include this.

Thank you.

Any questions before we go to public hearing?

If not, I'll open the public hearing on this item.

Anybody who wishes to speak on this?

If not, I'll close the public hearing.

Any more comments?

No discussion on this topic?

If not, let's vote.

Okay, the third item on the agenda is priorities for CDBG program for the year 13-14.

Hello mayor and councilors.

This public hearing is intended to aid city council and staff in gathering information about the city's needs.

The goals and priorities that are determined as a result of tonight's meeting will help shape the framework for funding recommendations made by the CDBG task force over this winter and into the spring.

It's hard to know what the current projections are gonna be.

Our best, most optimistic guess is level funding.

More realistically, we'll probably be seeing some sort of reduction in our funding.

To put that in perspective, for this current year, we have about $425,000 in CDBG funds and about $85,000 in home funds.

The current year priorities that were set were workforce development with a special focus on the medical field, the construction of new affordable housing, neighborhood stabilization which includes homeowner rehabs and rental rehabs, home ownership and code compliance.

Our current budget also has about 20% towards admin and planning and the 15% maximum towards social programs.

Following the public hearing, staff is asking councils to make the following decisions.

Number one, setting priorities for the CDBG and HOME programs.

The CDBG task force works very hard to follow the priorities that are set by council, and having specific priorities really helps them to target the funds towards council's goals and objectives.

Council may keep the existing priorities or it can change them as it sees fit, and these priorities will be communicated in all correspondence to potential applicants of funding.

The second thing that needs a decision is determining if a priority neighborhood should be designated.

For the past two fiscal years, Fifeville has been named the priority neighborhood.

Historically, Council selects the same priority neighborhood for three fiscal years.

If Council decided to continue this trend, then it would be Fifeville's third and final year.

In the past, the priority neighborhoods have been set to receive $200,000 each fiscal year, but this amount is again something that can be changed for Council's decile as well as the funding realities.

Just to put that in perspective, 200,000 equates to about 45% of our total budget.

The third thing that needs a decision is if CDBG funds should be set aside for economic development.

This is sort of a new option that's being presented and one that hasn't really been done in the city for at least as long as I've been here and probably more years before that.

But that option does allow us to use CDBG funds for economic development projects.

They could be awarded to the Industrial Development Authority to develop a small business incubator.

For example, it could be the development of a commercial kitchen to be shared by local catering businesses or other such ideas.

They could also be set aside for microenterprise loans for startup businesses.

Such programs would be in line with recent council discussions on ways to reduce poverty and promote economic vitality within the city.

Council could decide to set a specific dollar amount towards such a project or a set percentage of our budget towards such a project.

The fourth thing that needs a decision is determining the amount of money to go towards social programs.

The maximum that's allowed by HUD is 15%, as well as setting a maximum to go towards admin and planning.

Again, HUD limits that to 20%.

and then finally any other additional guidelines that would be helpful for staff as well as our citizen task force in making decisions and recommendations for funding to bring forward in the spring.

Specific staff recommendations, the staff does recommend that Fifeville be named the priority neighborhood for its third and final year, and that the Fifeville CDBG task force continue to be allowed to make recommendations for the award of those funds.

Staff also recommends that funds do be set aside for the economic development projects.

Staff recommends specifically that $200,000 be allocated towards economic development projects, but the remaining funds being allocated towards the Fifeville priority neighborhood.

This will leave home funds as well as local housing funds available for the affordable housing projects.

Staff further recommends that 15% be approved as the maximum allowed for social projects and that 20% be allowed as the maximum for admin and planning Alternatives include funding a priority neighborhood at $200,000 with remaining funds going towards the economic development project or splitting it up in different ways, that's all fine One important last note is CDBG funds have very strict spending timelines

So if over the course of the winter a specific spending plan for economic development is not identified or a feasible next step isn't reached, then alternative plans will be brought forth for budget recommendations in the spring.

I guess my clarification, I think I understand what you're saying from what I read.

If we kind of accept your proposal in the most part, really the one kind of tweakable place that I see that I might want to look at is

Just a clarifying question.

You said that the funds for economic development would be allocated through our economic development authority.

If it was for an incubator, then that would be strongly recommended as the best approach to do so.

But it wouldn't necessarily, for instance, if we were to support microenterprise development, we wouldn't necessarily have to use those to set up our own microloan program, would we?

As far as I know, they could go to an existing program in the city as long as the beneficiaries work out would be our concern.

This year our 15% went to someone to... How much was it?

It was...

It was probably a closer, around 70,000.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, I just wondered if the past two years Fifeville has gotten the

CDPG funds, I can never say that.

They're going towards projects to improve Cherry Avenue.

Specific projects include adding a sort of pedestrian median at Cherry Avenue at 5th Street so that folks who are walking to get to the entrance of Tonsler Park have a safe place sort of if you're trying to cross, you don't have to cross Cherry all at once.

And then adding a lot of sort of bump outs.

And is that, so that's a sort of a landscape thing as opposed to housing?

Yeah, it's more landscape and infrastructure.

Just real briefly, and related to the economic development, could that be used for job training programs associated with the building of the infrastructure projects?

Yeah, job training can be very gray, so to the greatest extent possible we would.

The only thing is we'd have to make sure that we're setting up our job training in such a way that it's either tied to specific construction projects or sort of

Very clear that there's not the social ones because we don't want to set aside money for job training and have that trigger part of that 15% cap if we award other projects.

Any other terrifying questions?

Yeah, I'll open the public hearing.

Good evening, Brandon Collins, 536 Meade Avenue.

I'm going to do my annual thing about CDBG and home funds.

And one thing that wasn't mentioned, yes, they're reducing those funds for both those programs, and the main driver behind those reductions, and it's happened almost every year, is the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

as much as we all think those wars aren't still going on.

They are still going on.

Our massive military budget just gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

And the number one target of the federal government to be able to fund these wars, to fund this killing, and for corporations to reap massive profits is the CDBG and home funds.

And that's one reason why we don't have enough money.

That said,

Affordable housing is really where this money needs to be at, and I very much want to caution you against putting too much of any of that money towards small business incubators.

I know everybody thinks this is a great idea, but in the very short term,

There are not a lot of jobs created out of these small business incubators, especially what we've heard about the Green Dot project.

It may be a worthwhile project, not necessarily one that's worth using our funds towards.

It will sell a very small group of people on the American dream of owning their own business.

It does not mean that people will be employed.

It doesn't mean that they will make a living wage.

That said, if you do move forward with something like that, keep in mind even that small business incubator, at least in spirit, should have some connection to Section 3 if you're going to be using CDBG funds.

The other thing is, one thing we've been very concerned about, about the small business incubator, is that these new businesses, if they do hire, should be hiring ex-offenders

Thank you.

Anybody else would like to speak on this topic?

No, not a public hearing, discussion by the council.

Because we have a very long agenda today, let me facilitate your discussion to come to some conclusion.

And Mayor Huja, may I make one clarification based on Mr. Collins' comments?

There is no decision, there is no business plan as yet on the green dot.

Several members of the community are going to be going to DC Kitchens, which is a facility that is owned and operated by formerly homeless people and ongoing homeless people.

and we've been inspired by groups like the Evergreen Cooperative in Cleveland, Ohio, again owned by the people that work there, 100, 200 jobs created, so we are

The people involved with this effort are very committed towards changing the equity that individuals in this community have not had for generations.

And it is not something that is simply going to be shunted into an incubator and not benefit the very people that I think Mr. Conz hopes to serve.

I think that you could opine at this point.

You want to go ahead?

Go ahead.

I would be inclined to support the supporting Fifeville neighborhood for the third of three years in the fashion to honor that commitment.

But I agree with Mr. Collins.

I think this money should go towards affordable housing and of that long list of things that this money can be spent on, the one that is most compelling in my mind is the AHIP LEAP

Collaboration because it serves several purposes.

One is that it not only upgrades our current housing and we're going to talk about the BAR guidelines later.

They say very clearly in there the most sustainable way to provide housing is to preserve what you already own.

It's that whole embedded carbon thing.

And I think that's exactly what AHIP and LEAP does.

Secondly, that kind of partnership enables families who are already living in the city.

These are our own

folks to not only stay in the city but to make it more affordable to live in the city because the partnership with LEAP of course makes houses more energy efficient which makes them more affordable and it's an increasing problem as our utilities are getting higher and as those of us who can are conserving and the rates go up I think it's sort of the perfect solution to

Again, help those who we are here to help and those are our own city residents.

It addresses a concern I often bring up which is that in building new affordable housing very often our own city residents do not get that housing.

Can I ask a question just from this?

Ms. Thackston, where did you go?

Right in front of me.

I'm sorry, I'm looking over you.

Can you explain a little bit about, because I'm not sure I'm clear about the difference between in this case

between CDBG and HOME, when you were talking before about the infrastructure was to come from CDBG, is that right?

Correct.

It's just that we would... We don't allocate those tonight and so that's why they're not here.

I, too, am really supportive of the AHP LEAP stuff and that sort of sustainability of existing affordable housing.

Is that in here or not?

No, I agree with infrastructure in the neighborhood.

I agree with putting that part and then the other part, whatever is left over.

I'm just trying to get to it.

I thought we had said we were going to take out the home fund.

If we were able to get vouchers, then we would come back and use the home fund for it, if we have home dollars.

I'm not talking about that money.

I'm talking about the other potentially $225,000 of the CDBG money.

If it were $425,000, there's another $225,000 that we're talking about how are we gonna use.

It's great that we could use home funds, which is here maybe $85,000 for AHIP LEAP, but I would rather see more than that used for AHIP LEAP.

So it's not a matter of there's some money somewhere.

I support the Fifeville neighborhood for 30 years.

I'd like to support them for $200,000 because this way they'll be able to get something completed and this is a good neighborhood and it could be even better.

I support some funds for economic development because I think in the long run needs of the

is important in my mind at least.

I will support the 15% for social programs, I'll support 20% for maximum vacation for the administration, and the remaining amount will go to economic development, at least in my thinking.

I was clarifying the green dot from my earlier statement but I haven't made a statement yet about the economic development piece and I would like to strongly advocate for the use of the money for economic development and please correct me if I'm wrong but

We have, in the housing fund, is it about $5 million over a five year period we've been putting in?

So we have a large amount of money already set aside for housing.

As I recall, looking at my question earlier about the consent agenda, there's about $20,000 left for workforce development training.

that we have.

The Weldon Cooper Center in 2009 in their efficiency study clearly stated that we cannot afford to not grow a job for every housing unit we create.

Otherwise we're creating a situation where people cannot sustain themselves.

So employment, the dignity of work, is an extremely important

Agenda.

And the fourth item I'd like to point out is that this morning I was in a part of a roundtable discussion with Tom Perriello and several business people.

And around the table about a dozen businesses over and over again there was the comment that we have work, we don't have skilled labor.

We don't have welders, we don't have machinists.

I'm also hearing stories where we may not be able to get funds

in hand to match up the slots, people with slots that are available at CATEC for certified nurse aids programs.

There's a sense of urgency about this that I really hope that we can all grab and understand that work is vital for well-being.

I was kind of conflicted and I think I'm finding some clarity for my own kind of way of looking at this.

I think one of the things that you know I know that when I was running for office years and know these many years ago and knocking at doors and asking people what especially in under-resourced neighborhoods like the ones that these funds are for what people really needed what changes people wanted to see

And there were three things that just came up again and again and again.

And they were by far the most frequent three.

And one was educational equity.

One was housing.

and one was jobs and I think that we have paid a lot of attention to housing through our housing fund and we've really committed to doing that and I think we are doing that never enough because the resources are always limited and I find that frustrating and I will always continue to push for more in our housing trust fund especially.

and I think that we've made some strides toward educational equity in the school system and I feel like we have some general economic development stuff that our economic development office has done a wonderful job with, but I think that when we specifically target these neighborhoods, we need to pay special attention to the kind of economic development that's been shown to work in these kind of neighborhoods where people don't have a lot of capital to start with, where people are kind of, in some of the studies that I've seen,

The best generator of jobs in a neighborhood where there hasn't been a lot of wealth in existence is from people's neighbors.

People hire, you know, start a small business and hire their neighbors.

They're much more likely to hire people with a felony record.

They're much more likely to hire people coming, you know, because people have relationships that matter and people are looking at other things other than a resume when they're hiring folks.

And I think that economic development specifically targeted at these neighborhoods is something that we haven't done a particularly terrific job at.

And I think that this is a chance for us to really focus on that.

and so I would support that for economic development, assuming that that's what it's for, it's for the neighborhoods that are involved in CDBG.

This money has to be spent for these neighborhoods.

I know.

I haven't had my chance to speak but I also had a clarifying question first.

The workforce training was the sort of priority last year, top priority last year or this current year.

Did we fund any, what I'm concerned about is that maybe we allocated funds for some things and then now we're turning around and

Not putting any sustaining funding into those things.

For the workforce training, if that's set as a priority, that would continue under the social programs.

Based on the applications that we got, programs were the funding additional interns through the community attention youth internship program, specifically targeting high schoolers and graduating high schoolers into the medical profession, as well as OAR, helping folks get connected to jobs as they're reentering.

I'm actually on board with what Ms. Galvin and Ms. Hicks, but I do want to remind everybody that there's very few federal programs available that are really targeted at promoting economic opportunity for very low and extremely low income Americans.

And this program, that's what its purpose is, is really to support opportunity.

And I think that's what Mr. Collins was getting at earlier is that it sounds cool and sexy to say we're going to support small businesses, but the reality is that a lot of times when you create small business programs, little of that money trickles down to the very low and extremely low income families that are really supposed to benefit.

from this program specifically, and I think his point is very well taken that if we are,

I do think we have to invest more in jobs and economic opportunity, but I just want to make sure we are, as Ms. Szakos just said, we are actually targeting the people that this program is designed to target.

And so I want us to keep that absolutely front and center.

So I support the economic development priority, in part because I know we are putting a good bit of money into AHIP, and I agree with Ms. Smith, it's an excellent program, I'd love to see more, but we just aren't doing enough on economic opportunity right now.

I'd just like to make another comment about economic development because I'm not going to not support it.

I do support it.

I just think we should use this money for something else.

I am concerned when I hear this emphasis on a commercial kitchen for a variety of reasons.

One is that there is going to be a commercial kitchen in Jefferson School that's being built.

There's also the PB&J Fund is trying to find space for a commercial.

All of a sudden commercial kitchens are like the answer and yet there's no study to say that there's actually jobs out there for

people who have access to a commercial kitchen.

And in fact that was asked during the CIC presentation we had and they were talking about catering and

I think it was during the work session.

I said, was the market study been done?

They said, well, no.

We're not sure that actually we can support any more of this.

And so it concerns me that we will be throwing this good money towards something that's not going to, that has not been studied well enough or not really being thought out because it sounds good.

So that's my concern.

As I say, I'm not going to vote against this proposal if that's the way it goes.

Right.

I can read it.

Yeah.

and 20% for administration and staff recommended that 200,000 be allocated towards economic development with remaining funds to go to Fifeville neighborhood.

I would personally reverse the process.

And I'm concerned, and I don't know how other counselors, I know how you feel Mr. Huja, but about 15% for social programs is another arena where we have lots of other funds in other

ways for social programs.

Well, I mean, I agree with that.

It's just whether these funds, which could be used for other things, whereas the funds that we use for social programs can't, you know,

But if nobody agrees with me, that's fine.

No, no.

I'm just asking because Mr. Norris said that his question also stands that they're still going to be using for the... That neighborhood.

Oh, they do come back to us?

Yes, I did.

I'll second.

As amended by... As amended by Mayor Huja.

Okay, any other discussion on the motion?

If not, let's vote.

We hope so.

Good evening Mr. Mayor and Councillors.

A few weeks ago Mr. Jones gave me a call and in our conversation we talked about the fact that the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors has asked me for some time to provide quarterly updates directly to elected officials and Mr. Jones said why don't we do that with City Council so here I am and I hope it's the first of many more.

I do appreciate these opportunities.

I recognize that

You provide a very helpful service to our board of directors, particularly in your advice and counsel to three of our board members.

I know they appreciate your service and certainly while we're at that, I really appreciate each of you taking a full evening on July the 25th to help us resolve a very big issue and it was resolved in a very

Magnificent unanimous way that gave us the direction that we need to really move forward and all of that all that's greatly appreciated So anytime that I can help make your job easier or you're making my job easier depending on how you look at it I'm happy to do that

We are moving forward with the granular activated carbon, or I'm going to call it GAC for short, technology as a way to meet stage two EPA regulations for our drinking water.

Later this week, a report from Hazen and Salyer, the tabletop that was authorized at the July 25th meeting will be

available for public viewing.

It'll be the first indication and it will be rough order of magnitude of what range of costs might be obtainable with a hybrid option for GAC.

and probably one of the decisions that will be facing our board in the coming months is do we want to use GAC to produce the most outstanding resource drinking water we can at the highest cost or do we want to scale it back use it more for regulatory compliance or perhaps somewhere in the middle and the more you operate the GAC the more

precursors, particularly carbon-based precursors, which can cause byproducts in the water.

The more of them you're removing, but also the more often you have to regenerate the carbon, which is where the real high operating costs are.

So it's going to take some decision that may be balancing multiple objectives, which is usually the way most decisions in our business end up falling anyway.

We define hybrid approach.

I defined it in the memo that I published.

It can be building the GAC units at less than full treatment plant capacity or operating at less than full production capacity on a daily basis or both.

and that's a very broad definition but it's because we have some work to do to refine that process and the refining will come through pilot testing that our board should authorize very soon.

So as this process is refined, we'll welcome additional public comment and comment from this board as we refine the steps further.

I put a couple more items on here to talk about and then I'm very happy to take questions on any subject you want to talk about.

We received proposals earlier this spring on dredging the South Fork Reservoir, which is one of the items in resolutions that both you and the county board adopted and is also a part of our cost share agreement.

Through our council it was determined that two of the proposals received did not meet all of the basic requirements of the RFP and in accordance with our PPEA guidelines

are not being further considered.

However, a third by the Orion Marine Group did meet all those basic needs so it moves forward for evaluation by an evaluation committee.

I do want to mention for the benefit of counselors and the public that that proposal is on our website, has now been on the website about three or four weeks.

For public review, there's also a public evaluation form available on the web for anybody who wants to go through and fill out a form.

If you like filling out forms, anyone in the public can fill those out, push a button and it's submitted to us and it becomes feedback for the evaluation committee.

We'll also just take comments if there's some people like filling out forms and some people don't so if somebody just wants to submit comments there's a place on our website just to say whatever you want to say and it turns into an email to us.

All of those comments will be taken into consideration by five-member evaluation committee and Lauren Hildebrand, the City Utilities Director, is the City Representative.

on that committee.

We are hoping that the committee will have recommendations in October for the board of directors.

We are working toward finalizing a date for a public meeting to receive public feedback in September.

The next item I had included was a brief discussion about the progress on the new Ragged Mountain Dam and also the mitigation plan that's associated with that.

The Virginia Supreme Court did respond and dismissed an appeal that was made from within this community that was attempting to appeal a favorable ruling RWSA received from the County Circuit Court.

This means that the bonds are validated and revenue bonds for the project are

Moving forward, we expect a closing sometime this fall, a date yet to be determined.

Mr. Wood from our staff is doing a tremendous amount of work in that area right now.

Construction is moving forward.

The contractor thinks he's maybe a couple of weeks behind schedule.

I think maybe that's part of how contractors talk to owners.

We think progress is going quite well.

The tunnel is proceeding.

Within the next few weeks, the grout curtain will commence, which is the critical component of the foundation of the new dam.

Mitigation work is happening and this is a delight to people who are interested in protecting our streams and our rivers.

Some tree planting has already been done along Buck Mountain Creek.

Some creek restoration, smaller scale but not too different from the type of work that the city is doing on Meadow Creek has already taken place.

and the contractor is now working on the Franklin Street constructed wetland site which I mentioned in here we hope once it's done to really turn that into a great public education for both children and adults.

They'll be working within the school system to try to promote some ways to show that off for its educational benefits.

The last item in my report is

an accomplishment that I think it took a lot of people but we're quite proud of and that is the recent dedication of our

Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant.

It's a state of the art, one of the best in the, I'll call it the best in Virginia, producing outstanding water to return to our rivers.

DEQ Director David Paler gave us a talk.

We were also honored by Mayor Huja's presence and participation on the program.

And following that, we started up a co-generator facility that is producing

electricity for use in our treatment facility from gas that we produce through anaerobic digestion of biosolids.

Thank you.

I have some questions.

Thank you.

First of all, thank you for being here.

I really appreciate it.

And I know you do give quarterly reports, and however, in terms of timing, it works out best for you to put the two together.

I'm sure we're all very flexible as to when you give these.

In terms of the disinfection

stuff going on.

Yes.

The optimization I think you're referring to is possibly the use of a different coagulant

and the point of chlorination.

The point of chlorination is a costly item to move because there's other trade-offs in the treatment facility.

Optimizing the ferric coagulant is more expensive.

to the process and does require greater pH adjustment.

So it's a higher cost but can remove more precursors.

So it's whatever works is the right combination.

We will definitely look at an iron coagulant as a possible strategy for risk reduction during the period of time that we're building GAC but are forced by EPA short extension.

to still comply with stage two, so we can definitely use it there.

In terms of the long-term, where we go, it really becomes a trade-off.

If GAC does better and allows us to continue to use alum, which is more cost-effective, that might be the right strategy.

It is more expensive, both in itself as a chemical, but also you have to do more adjustments within the water plant.

And in terms of the, thank you, that was a good explanation.

In terms of the dredging proposals, we now only have one.

There is no obligation to take that one, is there?

I mean, to accept it, or to do it, if it's an unacceptable.

Actually, that's true, isn't it?

We don't ever until we sign a contract ever have to accept any proposal.

Is it at all a possibility, since this was done under a really complicated system, the PPEA guidelines, which took a long time.

It took what it costs, $117,000 to develop that, and yet we only got one proposal.

Could we now go back and just do a simple RFP so that we could get more options to see even just what the first three segments could yield?

One of the things that I recommend to a board when a decision has been made, a commitment to go out and receive proposals, is that if a proposal qualifies, take it on good faith and evaluate it.

It's not that you have to do that, but I think it looks bad in the contractor's market if an owner doesn't go through that

due diligence effort and take a proposal that it has solicited and give it a fair shake.

I think it sends a message to contractors that an owner is just shopping around and not really serious so it can discourage people to bid in the future.

So I generally do not advocate that type of approach.

However, I will say if we

decided to move forward and evaluate, critically evaluate Orion's proposal.

If we find it doesn't work, we find there's problems or we find that they can't meet the cost obligations or other obligations so that at that point it may no longer be in the best interest and I'm just, I'm being hypothetical now, I'm not being conclusive.

Then we look back and say, is there another way we can do it?

We certainly can do that.

But we didn't get what it was designed to do, which was to look at options beyond the first three segments.

That was what it was

I think if I can clarify that just a bit just in my view from how I saw the process there were citizens that came forward and said if you open it up people will come in with inexpensive ways to dredge more of the reservoir.

It didn't happen, it's true.

So if segment one through three could be done in a variety of ways and particularly cheaper than 3.5 million dollars, which if when you read the proposal the guy just said, oh you'll give me 3.5 million dollars?

Sure, I'll do it for 3.5 million dollars.

That if we know that there's proposals out there that we could do it cheaper, if that's all we're going to get is segments one through three, don't we have an obligation to

It would have been nice if there had been more than three proposals.

There were more than three firms interested and some firms withdrew for various reasons or decided not to submit proposals.

I will say of the three proposals submitted,

Even if you look past the qualification issue that I just addressed and just look at price, nobody came in with a cheaper proposal.

So I would not read into that that there is some assurance that if you change the process and do it a different way, you're going to get a cheaper number.

You may not get a cheaper number.

You mentioned do a simple RFP.

Those two words are a little bit scary to me.

There are different approaches.

There's a PPEA approach.

which allows for a pretty extensive qualifying process but allows for innovation.

Under the Virginia Procurement Act, there's another approach that you have an engineer design a specific project, lay out specific concrete specifications and you go out for a bid that is a competitive bid awarded to the lowest responsible bidder.

That's a lot more than a simple RFP.

but it is an alternative approach that is acceptable.

You tend to get what you pay for with this.

I would not advocate that we go out with something for the sake of being simple but it begs and leaves so many unanswered and open questions that it invites a tremendous number of change orders.

I'm going to say that the city did vote for

Mr. Huja, that the ratepayers will pay for this?

Okay, even though we don't.

I have one more question, real simple.

And it was an issue with the, you talked about getting the bonds.

Can you give us assurance that only revenue will be used as collateral for the bonds?

Is the order written already?

Well the Rivanna board had to approve the resolution to go after the bonds and at that point it had our leases and permits as collateral which then got taken out.

Can our representatives answer my question?

I have just a clarification question.

You were saying that we didn't need the water and the repairs of pavement.

I think one of the reasons that the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority approved this, the stretching project, was that it was actually responsive to a lot of the citizen concern about a larger water area at the dam.

that a certain height of dam took out a certain amount of woods whereas to raise it up higher would have taken out a lot more of the land and then dated it under water and the hope is that this dredging will have more water available below so it can stock that reservoir without having to raise the water level at the Ragged Mountain Dam.

And so I think that to say we don't need it is not entirely

Are you only going to raise the water in the dam to the point that we need it at any given moment, at any given time?

This is a quarterly report, right?

Yeah.

Thank you.

If you're asking how many acres have been cleared to date, I did not bring that information with me, but we can get it for you later.

Months ago, this was before the contractor was on site, we had meetings with the City Parks and Recreation Department since it's your site.

and since there is a natural area around it.

They felt and we share that view that for public safety reasons that that area should be closed to the public during construction.

I don't even necessarily mean members of the public going in.

I can tell you this, that all due diligence, we have a very good relationship with our contractor.

We've enforced from day one the things that we said that you guys promoted, we're enforcing very, very, very rigorously.

And I wanted to go back to Ms. Smith's line of questioning about the bids.

And I really don't have any interest, and I don't want to set a precedent of counsel interfering with your authority's contracting process.

But in terms, just the process question itself, not getting into any details of specific bids,

You said earlier that upon the advice of your counsel that only one of the three bids was accepted as a completer.

Meeting their basic requirements of the RFP.

Just out of curiosity, because the question's been asked of me, was it that

Your counsel felt that you didn't have the authority to review the other two or bring those other two bids forward or that it was just not recommended that you bring.

First thing I'll say is our attorney's discussion with the board of directors is privileged and confidential and I am I'm actually bound unless my board releases me I'm actually not allowed to talk about the details and so I need to uphold that duty.

I will simply say that it is along the line of

enforcing the terms that were clearly presented to the bidders before the proposal submittal date.

We had pre-bid conference, we had other opportunities where proposers or potential proposers could ask questions.

The rules could be modified right up to within a week of the due date.

Can you just give us a quick update on the status of the Rivanna, the pump station in the Woolly Mills?

The engineer recently had completed a preliminary engineering report that completes the preliminary engineering phase in draft form.

The staff has taken a look at it.

They are now revising that.

based on staff input and that will be a document that we can publish once it's finalized.

So they're completing preliminary engineering and moving very shortly to final design.

And I hear that the city and ACSA are talking to each other.

I'm not participating in those discussions.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Council members.

My name is Jesse Ellis and I'm here representing the Human Rights Task Force, the City Human Rights Task Force.

I'm going to give you a briefing update of what we've done so far.

I want to start out by talking about my agenda.

The task force agenda tonight will be, we're going to talk about the charge from the city council.

We're also going to talk about the task force members and our accomplishments to this point and the way ahead.

We'll start with the charge from the council.

We were charged to look at human rights issues within the city of Charlottesville.

We were also charged to hold public forums and to provide information for referral services, receive complaints, look into those complaints, and also talk with the dialogue on race.

Can you hear me?

Okay, is that better, Tess?

Can you hear me?

Okay.

So this was our charge.

The task force members, we have a diverse group of task force members.

That diverse group brings some professional perspectives and also some organizational skills to the task force group.

These are our accomplishments to date.

What we have accomplished is we've completed our first public forum, which was held in June.

We've also completed several of our task force meetings.

We've completed meetings with the Human Rights Commissions of Virginia.

We've also looked at several other organizations or other cities that do have Human Rights Commissions and looked at their models.

We've invited other organizations that deal with discrimination to our task force meetings and gathered information from them.

We also have upcoming presentations from other organizations such as the NAACP and also the commission here in Charlottesville.

To date, we have received numerous complaints.

Those complaints have been telephonic complaints.

We have referred and followed up those complaints to other organizations.

Most of them have been in call form.

This is our way ahead.

What we will do is the Human Rights Task Force is still collecting and analyzing information.

We're still looking at other models and other options for the city to deal with problems of human's rights and also discrimination.

We will also develop a recommendation for the city council at the end in December.

So we have more work to do.

I also want to take this opportunity to recognize the co-chair, Drinda Johnson.

I have a question.

First of all, thank you for all of your efforts.

I'm curious to know in your research, have any localities looked at the option?

I know one of the problems that was cited as we worked to establish this task force was that

The organization which normally would play a role in helping individuals to work through an allegation of discrimination is considered to be enrichment, it's considered sort of out of reach, it's considered relatively inaccessible if people don't understand how to access it.

And so that's why some localities have chosen to create their own local group

and I wonder if any localities have simply looked into the option of doing some kind of responsibility sharing or cost sharing effort where they help pay for the cost of a staff person from that office to simply work in their locality instead of creating a whole new infrastructure on the local level.

Yes, sir.

Some of the models we have looked at do have cost sharing.

Some of the costs has come out of the city and from other areas.

I have a question.

Hello.

Thank you so much for all your work.

You said most of your

calls in, or calls by telephone.

For now, it seems to be the best that we have.

They're coming in and we have someone that takes down the information and

And can you get a good sense for whether the complaints are within the city because this is one of our limitations of course is that we're just a city and we can't really

doing things outside our borders.

Sure.

Our staff will ask specifically where an act of discrimination, alleged discrimination may have happened,

Right, that's what I was wondering and so can you give us any sense for I mean one of the I think things that we were interested in is really how extensive

is the problem.

I mean, that's one of the things we didn't know.

We're still gathering information in reference to that.

And I think now would be kind of inappropriate to put that information out.

You will have that information at the final report.

In the final report?

In December.

In December.

you know kind of and I'm not really looking for an answer but just sort of a kind of a perspective.

One of the things that we heard in kind of the request to do this process and to have either to have a Human Rights Commission or to look at having a Human Rights Commission was the idea that you know that it could help actually

make things a little less contentious when there's a report instead of filing an official grievance with somebody in another community that it could

be more of a resolution driven in a less than judiciary kind of way.

We looked at a couple models that do have a training portion.

They also have a educational portion for businesses.

They also have a mediation portion.

So we're looking at a wide range

That was certainly one of the things that appealed to me personally in really looking at this is that we obviously there needs to be enforcement but as Mr. Norris said that there is enforcement other places and that you know by bringing it here are we really just reinventing the wheel but if we're doing something a little broader than that I just want to make sure that's kind of out there but I also have heard

from one of your task force members who will go unnamed that he was pleased to know that even though there are disagreements and people from perspectives about this who are working together, and that's got to be a challenge for you too as co-chairs, that people are disagreeing without being disagreeable, and I just really want to give you all some recognition for holding that together and for making this happen.

I would just like to echo Ms. Szakos that it really is commendable that the two of you are able to keep people on task and strive for consensus.

I know that this is interim, but do you have any sense whether most of the complaints are oriented towards real estate living arrangements or is it job related?

Is there any follow-up for when you refer somebody?

Thank you very much for serving on the task force.

Next item on the agenda is the planning and development rezoning

Thank you, Mayor Huja.

Good evening, Council.

I'm going to be very brief.

I know you all have reviewed this application in the Planning Commission public hearing on July 10th.

I'm just going to give an overview, just for record's sake.

This is a PUD rezoning at tax map 48, parcels 39 and 40.

The property in question is approximately 25.6 acres.

It's currently zoned R2 residential.

The land use designation currently in our comprehensive plan is two-family residential.

The applicant is Milestone Partners, LLC.

They're here if you have any questions.

They are proposing mixed residential units comprised of multifamily housing, single-family detached cottages, and townhomes.

They are proposing a range of units from 135 to 175.

Currently on your concept plan you have, it is shown to be 148.

At the July 10th hearing, the commission recommended approval.

Staff recommends approval with the proffers.

The proffers currently are for affordable housing, multimodal construction, and funding of a traffic signal.

The applicant again is here if you have any questions.

I had a question and I'm going to defer to you all who know more about affordable housing.

I was really confused when I was trying to figure out what they could and couldn't do.

I mean, it's sort of what they were proposing.

with the current coded language that we have regarding affordable housing?

No, okay.

This wasn't applicable to those.

But that's just for one part of it.

Exactly, correct.

Okay, so what's the minimum amount of affordable, real housing that they are required to provide?

Is that, again?

We don't really have that, okay.

I mean, within our PUD review, we like to strive that

I have.

I actually think this is a really good project and I like the things that in its second round through the Planning Commission got added especially about affordable housing and I really appreciate that.

I think that this developer has shown a real commitment to working with the community and to being responsive to the Planning Commission, the City Council, and to the neighbors.

The one concern I have is nobody's

I do have a concern with the fact that, and this has happened in other parts of the city as well, because it's on the border, because it straddles the line between city and county, what we end up with is a community where there's an entrance in at one end and everybody in it is not living in the same locality.

kids going to one school who are taking one set of school buses and kids going to other schools who are taking another set of school buses in the same neighborhood.

I can imagine a snowplow driving over the

the first part to get to the city part and then plowing the city part and driving back out over the tamp down snow in the county and garbage service, you know, all these things, road paving, all the things that a community needs.

One of the things I really like about this project is the attention to making it feel like a community.

It's got a community center, there's walkability, there's connectivity, and yet we've got this line down the middle of it that really hinders community in a lot of ways.

And one thing that I would

I would like to ask if staff could explore with staff in the county and potentially come back to us with is the idea of a boundary adjustment to bring this whole community into the city or conversely bring it into the county but to keep it as one unit.

I think it's not something that would be a huge

Budgetary impact on either one, it's housing rather than businesses, so it's not a big revenue generator.

In fact, probably a little bit the other way.

But I would love to see if we could try to figure out, you know, when you try to do a boundary adjustment when people already live someplace, you're talking about making kids move from one school to another, it's very disruptive.

We've had some preliminary discussions with staff in Albemarle County about that.

I would just like to say that I think this is an excellent project.

It's pretty amazing that it meets all ten criteria.

And I really do appreciate staff's effort in reference to the Locust Grove neighborhood plan.

That was very, very well done.

Thank you.

And it does go to show that this is providing an amenity through its connections to Penn Park.

and ultimately through its bike ped connections also to the Meadow Creek Parkway, it's making it a resource for a broader community.

So even though it pains me that we don't have an eastern connector, that everything is being done that's possible to create better connectivity.

The other thing that I'd just like to say is that with regards to the city county,

as I understand it the county part is a by right development and as such it is not going to be able to even have the same street section.

as the city's portion under PUD, even though the city's portion of the PUD is almost fitting the neighborhood model criteria that the county has for its growth areas to a T. So I'm just saying that I would much rather keep the better pedestrian-oriented street section that the city allows than what the county is currently insisting on.

and I think it's unfortunate.

I'd like to just voice one other concern about it because I think it's got a lot of really nice features, but one of my concerns, and it's a concern that I have in a lot of other projects too, something I was just talking to Mr. Tolbert about, is that there's houses being built in the floodplain.

And what bugs me about these PUDs is just

using every available space and when we start encroaching on a floodplain even though it's legal because they're going to modify the floodplain in order to you know

you know, play God with the flood plain.

And so I just want to voice my opposition to any time that we start messing with our creeks and our rivers like that.

It's adding a tremendous amount of impervious surface which will impact the creeks and the creek right there.

I too intend to vote for this PUD and I think they've done a good job.

There were two main concerns that came up over and over again.

One had to do with

connectivity.

And I really do think they looked at every single possible way of trying to increase pedestrian connectivity, vehicular connectivity.

There just wasn't an opportunity to do more on the vehicular side than what they've done.

But certainly on the pedestrian side, they've really

made some really good strides.

And the other issue was the affordable housing.

And I too, I agree with Ms. Szakos that the revisions they made coming back on the second

hearing, if you will, were very positive.

So I intend to offer one friendly amendment.

Hopefully it's a friendly amendment.

I know they've agreed to it, which is the proposal they've made, one of the affordable housing proposals they made was this really creative trust fund, which I hope other developers will replicate.

I think it's a really neat model.

But as it is now, because it's a city proffer, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, as it is now, it only applies to the homeowners that are buying homes in the city's portion of this neighborhood.

And it seems to me that this is a neighborhood housing initiative and it really should apply to any home in that neighborhood.

It's not using city money, it's their own money.

And that we should allow them to use their money for homeowner assistance anywhere in the neighborhood, not just on the city properties.

I do want to say something which I've said to them privately and I'm going to say publicly as well.

I do think to a certain extent there's a missed opportunity here and I'm not suggesting we hold this up.

I intend to vote for it tonight but I really do think there's a missed opportunity and it's not, I'm not faulting them necessarily but

You know, we talk a lot on this council about deconcentrating poverty in our community.

I know it's of interest to all of us up here and how so much of the low-income housing is concentrated in the south side of the city.

I know that's a big concern for you, particularly as it impacts the schools, et cetera, et cetera.

And yet, I don't see us as a city proactively

slash aggressively engaging in conversations with the development community the way that, for instance, Montgomery County, Maryland does where they actually, now I know legally we can't do this, but they actually have a requirement in Montgomery County, Maryland, or at least they did until recently, I don't know if they still do.

that every new development in Montgomery County has to include, 5% of the units have to be offered up to the housing authority for construction of public housing as a way of integrating public housing into market rate neighborhoods and deconcentrating poverty.

Even if we can't require it here, I would love for us to start thinking about how do we engage with the development community to have those discussions

As we're looking at redeveloping our public housing, as we're looking at wanting to deconcentrate poverty, as we're looking at wanting to balance out the schools, socioeconomic population, demographics in the schools, how do we push the envelope when it comes to sitting down with the Frank Stoners of the world and saying, hey, you've got a big neighborhood coming up, let's figure out a way for

You know, a creative mixed income solution to be had here.

So I'll just put that out there.

Can I make one comment related to that?

The last month that I was on the Housing Advisory Committee we were working on our additions and modifications to the comprehensive plan and at that point in time we talked about

And I believe it was looking at the geography of the context and looking at a census tract and saying, think about it in terms of achieving a 15% affordability ratio based on a census tract so that you were going to start avoiding putting in more very, very low income housing in low income areas.

and you would be shifting towards putting more affordable housing, both supported housing as well as market driven lower cost housing in the higher income census tracts.

I don't know what's happened to that.

It's my understanding it's still part of the comprehensive plan update.

So I think that was a lot of our conversation was how do we create some measurement tools to achieve really true income mixing as we put housing in place.

I approve the second of the motion.

I'll second.

I think so.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next item on the agenda is Dogwood Housing.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

September of 2007, this council authorized

a loan of $850,000 to Piedmont Housing Alliance to assist Woodard Properties with acquiring dogwood housing.

The Dogwood housing property had been operated, as you know by Mr. Williams, for years had been affordable housing.

It was on the market and there was a great deal of concern that it was going to be sold for market rate housing and so the city stepped in along with PHA and put together some ideas.

Mr. Woodard

purchased those properties and agreed to keep, as long as the city had money in the project, those units that were affordable and that were part of this, keep them as affordable.

There's 57 units that were part of the deal.

There was more than that in the package, but 57 of them were part of the affordable package that were part of the city's loan.

That loan was for five years at no interest.

and the loan due and payable at the end of October unless extended by the council.

And Mr. Woodard has requested that council extend the loan in the same terms for five more years and $850,000 no interest and that it be payable in five years.

He also has asked for an additional grant of $100,000 from the housing fund to enable him to match some dollars with LEAP and attempt to do some energy retrofits to those properties.

Your loan at the time also required Mr. Woodard to invest a substantial sum of money in each of the properties.

It also proposed or required him to allow

the city to inspect the properties to make sure they met Section 8 standards and all that work has been done.

He's met the investment limits.

He's made a great deal of improvements.

We had some concern when we first started looking at this.

One of your requirements was that rents not increase over 5% a year and we saw a couple of instances where it appeared that rents had increased much more than 5% a year.

and after we finally got down into looking at the financials and looking at the details, the only times that that happened it appears

is when somebody moved out of the unit and they did substantial improvements and upgrades to the unit and then they raised the rents at that time.

So the way it's written could be interpreted as that rent never went up on a unit more than 5% a year or it didn't go up on a tenant.

They have abided by the tenant rule and not raised rents on the tenants.

So we're comfortable that they have

They have met that.

After going through the financial records and looking at the amount of money that they have into this, it seems to us that if we truly want to keep these affordable, that it's in the best interest of the city to extend that loan at this time, the five years.

And so we're recommending that you do that with several conditions, though.

One of them is that by the end of December and at the first of every year they'll furnish us additional information on a spreadsheet that will show each unit address, number of bedrooms, current rent, occupant household size and occupant income.

We've had difficulty getting those things in the past and I think we need, if we're going to keep it alone, we need to make sure we've got that information and we're monitoring it.

The income information we have has a number of folks that don't report income and the reason has been is they are IRC folks that come in and, you know, they've got to either have income or not.

We need to get that on the record so we believe that ought to be a condition.

We also

believe that by December 31st of each year after that they ought to furnish us the same information and that ought to be a condition.

Also that they would allow us to inspect any of the units during a period of time of November 1st of this year until February 15th at our choosing to make sure that any and all of those units to make sure they still meet the standards that they met five years ago and that they are meeting at least Section 8 standards.

We also would like you to condition it that they apply for a scattered site low-income tax credit application which could help their financial position but also allow them to take out part of the city's loan, pay us back part of it.

We may still have to contribute but we think that it's an effort that they ought to make

and PHA has said they would be happy to work with them in a system in that effort to apply for that tax credit application.

It would confuse them with a significant amount of money to be able to do even more rehab and bring the quality of the units up.

It would also ensure affordability if they apply for tax credits that the length of the tax credit would require those units to be kept affordable.

So it would give us an even longer term guarantee

if those units that we've helped would remain affordable.

Again, what our situation is, is as long as we have money in according to the loan, they have to be affordable.

The loan is actually the PHA who passes it through to Dogwood, so it would be, but it's effectively going to Dogwood.

We also recommend at this time that you not allocate $100,000 from the housing fund simply because we don't have $100,000 available in the housing fund at this point to be made for that grant or loan to be made to them.

We would recommend that you extend the loan.

I'd be glad to answer your questions.

Mr. Tolbert, I agree with you on the housing fund, but we do have a separate fund that the city makes available through LEAP every year.

I think it's a quarter million to help make the affordable housing stock in our city more energy efficient.

I believe right now it's targeted primarily at homeowners, but is there any reason in theory that

That's what I'm saying.

It would be an important question is who pays the utilities.

will that actually impact the renters or does that just save money for Mr. Woodearn?

Yeah, I'd be concerned about a policy change like that if it didn't include adding more money to that fund because I think that by giving to landlords who presumably have some resources that you're taking money that could otherwise go to folks who don't have resources to fix their homes.

Right.

The potential, you know, the scattered site tax credits I think shows that there is a possible resource that

Just how would that, applying for the low-income housing tax credit work?

I have a more fundamental question because it applies to lots of our agenda items tonight about affordable housing.

Is there a list or a database of what we code as affordable housing in our city?

We do have a list of all the support.

Any unit in the city that's public housing, that's project-based housing, that's voucher.

We've just expanded that.

Ms. McHugh has been working with an intern very, very hard trying to get that to where we go back to anybody that we've given an AHIP loan through AHIP and where there's a deed of trust that has requirements on it.

We've gotten it to where we feel like we probably are within 1% of knowing all those.

And then using the census numbers, we're starting to try to track where maybe some of those other things are.

We don't know where they are, but we can tell which census tracks based on how many people are paying a certain percent of their income.

And so we are gathering that data, but we do know now

Than is within this 15% goal.

A lot of these are vacant.

Is there

a reason for that?

There's 14 of these units are this year vacant.

Well, hello.

There actually are no vacancies right now.

Right, the dates are up here.

Okay, sorry.

Does vacant mean no information?

That was in our packet.

Oh, okay.

Okay, okay.

I do have a quick question about the data, and is that something that can be mapped so that we get a better sense of... We're trying to get it in that folder as well.

Okay, great.

And then, I'm just trying to imagine that having these, a low-income housing tax credit dedicated, they're dedicated to those units, right?

They stay in that neighborhood.

And I can see a benefit that as a neighborhood changes,

Those become the guaranteed affordable housing because that's the other thing we want to make sure we're doing, correct?

Where as we increase the mixed income and neighborhoods change, we don't want to lose the affordable housing any more than we want to concentrate it.

So I see that as quite a benefit.

So that allows the neighborhood to change, but it has built in some security to maintain affordability.

Do you want to start sounding like a broken record?

Occasionally it's a central water meter.

Okay, so it would benefit the tenants.

I'll make a motion.

Second.

I just have one other question.

Ready to go?

Okay, let's vote.

Thank you very much.

Good evening.

I'm going to pass this off to Susan Payne in just a minute.

I'm going to make a brief introduction.

Are both of you going to stay up there?

Okay, the presentation.

Well, thank you very much for providing us time.

It was just a few months ago that I came here thanking you for the proclamation for National Tourism Week back in May, and then we gave you an update on CACVB activities over the last year, and in both presentations, I mentioned that we had a marketing plan.

We look forward to bringing that forward, and that's what we'll be doing this evening.

This process began back in January when we issued a request for proposal and contained within that RFP were four items that we had to essentially bid out separately.

Marketing plan and associated consulting services, advertising, branding and public relations.

Final portion of that we're working through with the public relations.

We've issued a notice of intent to award the advertising services to Payne Ross.

Payne Ross and Associates has also received the branding services portion and they were contracted to initially begin this whole process early spring on our fiscal year

2013 marketing plan.

There's been a lot of discussion, a lot of suggestions, a lot of thought, etcetera to the fund balance that we had and we took this opportunity with the marketing plan to present both to the council, to our CACB board of directors which have both unanimously endorsed this

a very reasoned, very strategic approach to how we plan to use those funds moving forward in 2013.

Consider this our own stimulus money, so to speak, because as you know, tourism is very competitive.

We're out there not only with

other localities around the country but globally but also within our state.

I'm happy to report that our occupancy numbers are up this year, looking much better every year since we climbed out of the great recession and I think this marketing plan that Susan Payne with Payne Ross and Associates will present to you this evening

We'll give to you an excellent overview and we'll be glad to answer additional questions, but I think that you've received, I see you pulling that map out.

It's quite large.

We'll go through that, but right now I'd like to turn this over to Susan Payne.

Susan.

Technically challenged.

Do I hold this?

Good evening, Mayor Huja and city council members and Mr. Brown.

I'm certainly honored to be here with you tonight.

We've been working on this plan with various groups for about nine months.

So what we sent to you earlier, I think Chris had passed that out, was the very long plan.

So tonight I'm not going to read that plan to you.

because I'm assuming you've had a chance to glance at that.

But just go through a brief PowerPoint which is, you know, a bit of the plan and then certainly take your questions.

I believe the easy way to say this and what we are attempting to do is bring more people to Charlottesville, get more people to stay just one night longer and get them to spend more money.

And that's what the tourism

is all about.

So we started, click it, click it.

I've got this, and Matt, where are you?

This is Matt Draper, the executive director of Payne-Ross.

We started with the mission and positioning, which is to enhance the economic prosperity of the Charlottesville-Ablamarle region by promoting and marketing Albemarle County

and the City of Charlottesville as a desirable tourism destination by reminding vacationing families that Charlottesville Albemarle is an exciting, vibrant and authentic American region that helps connect you to the places and to the people you love.

So that's where we started and the plan has evolved from that position.

Demographics.

On a statewide basis, we are appealing to middle to upper middle income individuals between 25 and 45 years old with a bachelor's degree or higher who are traveling with children and looking for short getaways.

That is our primary audience.

Our secondary audience are people that are 35 to 55 and often include more couples traveling and visiting without children.

What our goals are is to brand the region as a whole.

We want to raise awareness of our product.

We are going to narrow our target to D.C., Richmond and Northern Virginia.

We are going to piggyback and cross-promote with other tourism organizations.

and we're going to extend the tourism season in order to have no off season.

Success in the above five areas will result in the ultimate goal of increased revenue conversion.

We went through, as you'll see in the big plan, if any, I hope you all looked at this.

It just, we got carried away with it because of all the groups that we met with.

What this big plan does is we first evaluated what is your tourism product.

Just in case you ask me some questions, I ought to have this out.

and by month, the middle is every month and then above the line are what the products are that you have locally and your assets include music and events and holidays and sports and the arts and agritourism, vineyards and your history like Monticello Rotunda, family getaways and all the festivals that are here.

So those are all your assets.

Then we took by month in this above the line and in each month we listed what happened in each month.

Below the line we then decided where we would promote each