City Council Meeting   9/4/2012

Dede Smith

Dede Smith

Music Playing

Music playing...

Mr. Norris?

Here.

Ms. Smith?

Here.

Mr. Huja?

Yes.

Ms. Zikas?

Here.

Ms. Galvin?

Thank you.

We'll take some time to have some recognitions and awards and proclamations.

Thank you.

I have the honor of reading a proclamation for National Preparedness Month.

Whereas National Preparative Month creates an important opportunity for every resident of the city of Charlottesville to prepare their homes, businesses and communities for any type of emergency, from natural disasters to potential terrorist attacks,

and whereas investing in the preparedness of ourselves, our families, businesses and communities can reduce fatalities and economic devastation in our communities and in our nation and whereas the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Ready Campaign, Citizen Corps and other federal, state, local, private and volunteer agencies are working to increase public activities in preparing for emergencies

and to educate individuals on how to take action and whereas emergency preparedness is the responsibility of every citizen of Charlottesville and all citizens are urged to make preparedness a priority

and work together as a team to ensure that individuals, families and communities are prepared for disaster and emergencies of any type.

And whereas all citizens of the City of Charlottesville are encouraged to participate in citizen preparedness activities and ask to review the Ready Campaign's websites at ready.gov or listo.gov.

Oh, excuse me, that's in Spanish.

I should have said that with an accent.

and become more prepared.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Charlottesville City Council hereby proclaims September 2012 as National Preparedness Month and encourages all citizens and businesses to develop their own emergency preparedness plan and work together toward creating a more prepared society.

And I believe Kirby Feltz is here.

Thank you all very much for issuing this proclamation.

Personal preparedness and taking the steps that you can to prepare yourself, your family for an emergency is so critical in

our ability to respond to and recover from an incident.

Absolutely.

I'm Kirby Feltz.

My email address is kfeltz at Albemarle.org, K-F-E-L-T-S at Albemarle.org, and my phone number is 434-971-1263.

The website that's listed is ready.gov, which is the FEMA preparedness site, and then the Spanish version is listo.gov, L-I-S-T-O dot gov.

Thank you.

I too have a proclamation.

This is a proclamation declaring 2012 World Alzheimer's Month Proclamation.

Whereas the nation and the state of Virginia observe World Alzheimer's Awareness Month during the month of September,

and whereas Alzheimer's disease, a progressive neurodegenerative brain disorder, tragically robs individuals of their memories and leads to progressive mental and physical impairments and whereas an estimated 5.4 million Americans have Alzheimer's disease and as many as 200,000 of those are individuals under age 65 who have younger onset Alzheimer's.

and whereas Alzheimer's disease is the sixth leading cause of death in Virginia, and this eventually fatal disease is a serious and growing threat to the health of our world, and whereas the human cost of Alzheimer's disease is staggering, more than 15 million caregivers provided over 17.4 billion hours of unpaid care in 2011.

and whereas the annual cost to our country in total payments for health care, long-term care and hospice for people with Alzheimer's disease was $210 billion in 2011 and whereas in recognition of the individuals, families, friends and caregivers dealing with Alzheimer's disease and the researchers who are seeking a cause or a cure,

and Satyendra Huja do recognize the month of September 2012 as the world's Alzheimer's awareness month, signed September 4th.

Good evening, members of council.

I normally wear a different hat

when I'm speaking with you folks or working with you folks as the executive director of your Emergency Communications Center, but tonight I'm a volunteer advocate for the Alzheimer's Association and certainly as the proclamation says, I think that many of us know

or have had family members that are touched by this terrible disease.

So what I would like to do is extend an invitation to all the members of council, Mr. Jones and Mr. Brown to walk with us at the annual Alzheimer's walk which is going to be held at Lee Park on Saturday morning, September the 22nd at 8 o'clock and that will be our annual walk to end Alzheimer's.

The Central and Western Virginia chapter

of the Alzheimer's Association sponsors eight such walks throughout their coverage area with all of the funds going toward research and how we fund the programs within this area.

The funds stay in the local area so we'd certainly like to extend an invitation to all of you

Thank you.

Yes.

I have several with regards to the Dialogue on Race and the Human Rights Task Force.

September 5th, you have to be carefully taught, talking to your child about race and racism.

A presentation by the Dialogue on Race, parents and family members are encouraged to attend.

That will be at the city space from 6 to 730.

September 13, Human Rights Task Force, Second Community Forum.

The Charlottesville community is encouraged to come and let the task force know if and what type of Human Rights Commission the city of Charlottesville should have.

That will be at the First Baptist Church, West Main Street, 6 to 7, 30 p.m.

September 18, Chamber Minority Business Council Conference hosted by the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce.

The Dialogue on Race is one of the main sponsors.

And that will be at the Omni Hotel from 8 to 4.15.

I have a flyer here about that.

It also, they'll have a keynote address by Jerry Bias, founder and CEO of Sugar Leaf Vineyards.

He will share his story of entrepreneurship with everybody who attends.

So it's a very, looks like a very exciting day.

The only other thing I'd like to mention, if I may, Mr. Huja, is that the Paramount Arts Education season for 2012-2013 is about to open and their first event will be Friday, September 28th, A Perfect Balance with Kevin Rees.

He is an artist in residence, I believe, with the Charlottesville City Schools and he uses the making of a mobile to tell the story of

More parkland, preserved more green space than probably in the previous decades, few decades combined.

A lot of that has to do with some of the folks here in some of the front rows, Mr. Genzic and Mr. Daley and your staff.

One of the biggest pieces of parkland that we've acquired

Maybe the biggest piece is along Meadow Creek and there is a public planning meeting, the very first public planning meeting to look at ideas for this piece of parkland.

It's going to take place on Thursday, September 6th.

from 6.30 to 8 o'clock p.m. in the gymnasium at Greenbrier Elementary School.

So that's this Thursday, September 6 from 6.30 to 8 o'clock p.m.

It's a kickoff meeting of a planning process for both the existing and new parkland along Meadow Creek.

The area that we're talking about includes all city-owned land from Meadow Creek Gardens off of Morton Drive to the railroad at Greenbrier Park.

Parks and Rec Department staff will present information on the area to be planned.

and begin the process of collecting public input on potential uses of that parkland.

So if anybody's interested, you can contact Chris Ginzik at 970-3656.

Thank you.

2012 Charlottesville Community Career Conference.

On Wednesday, October 3rd, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at John Paul Jones Arena.

There's opportunities for job seekers to connect with employers.

and many employers will be there and participants can learn all the opportunities they can have in this community.

They can meet and find their career goals.

They can also help with resumes, interviewing, online application.

It is a very important conference dealing with employment.

Wednesday, October 3rd, 9 to 3.

And for the website is www.charlottesolo.org slash career conference.

So if you're interested in jobs, this is a great opportunity to take part in.

Any other announcements?

If not, I would ask

Is there a second to the motion?

Second.

Any discussion?

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Thank you.

Next item on the agenda is matters by the public.

This is a time where you can come and speak for three minutes on any subject you desire, as long as it is not on the public hearing agenda of the city council.

And we will appreciate if you will exercise that time limit as best as you can.

Good evening.

My name is Jim Respis, and I live at 1033 Sheridan Avenue.

I've been hurriedly editing my comments here, so please pardon me if they're a little awkward, okay?

This is about something that's coming up at McGuffey.

Let's go to the top.

Over the past couple of years, the Department of Surgery at the University of Virginia has been developing an educational academic partnership with surgeons and trainees in Rwanda, a materially poor nation in East Africa that came to international attention following the genocide of 1994, but has since made amazing progress in health and development.

Dr. Forrest Calland is a trauma surgeon at UVA and has led the efforts in the department.

Dr. Robin Petrozzi is currently a general surgery resident with an interest in international development who has spent the past two years living in Rwanda as a research fellow in the Department of Surgery at the National University of Rwanda.

The mission of this effort is just that, an academic partnership, building a relationship

to foster and improve surgical education, clinical care, and research in Rwanda while at the same time building cultural awareness at UVA and teaching our trainees about resource utilization in the global world.

In the process of working in Kigali, Doctors Calland and Petrosi have made contact with the artists cooperative, Ivuka Arts, along with the two brothers that are running the cooperative, Emmanuel and Innocent Claranga.

through dialogue with the McGuffey Art Center and several internationals, hasty international shipments of unstretched paintings.

We've been able to schedule a show of Immanuel and Innocence work in the upstairs hall gallery for the month of October along with several fundraising events over the month.

Iluka Arts is an artist cooperative in Kigali with the mission to promote young talent

and to give back to the community.

Emmanuel and Innocent are both self-taught painters who run the Art with Mission project in Kigali.

Through Art with Mission, Emmanuel and the other Aivuka artists teach disadvantaged children in their Kigali neighborhood and in several Kigali orphanages.

The children's art is displayed alongside their own, both in their small art gallery off a potholed street in Kigali and in international shows around the world.

all of the money from their work goes back to the kids.

Emmanuel and the other Avuca artists also sponsor a children's dance troupe with neighborhood children that aims to bring Rwanda's traditional dances to the international audience through empowering disadvantaged children.

The artists at Avuca have had shows all over the world from major cities in Europe to New York City, but their hearts are in Rwanda.

McGuffey is currently investigating the possibility of developing ongoing exchanges in the future both of work and possibly of artist residencies.

We are also working with the local dialogue on race initiative as well as with both the city and county school systems to maximize the effects of the show and the presence of the artists.

Those of us

from Charlottesville that have either been to Rwanda or have developed relationships with the Ivuka artists have been truly impressed by the amazing power that their art and dance have had to inspire the local community and to promote healing and hope.

The show is going to be in October with the opening on October 5th, Friday, October 5th.

I don't have the dates of the

Thank you very much.

Good evening, Councilors, Mayor, how are y'all?

I'm Jennifer McKeever, 1140 Locust Avenue.

I'm here today on behalf of the Parks and Rec Advisory Board.

I'm the chairperson of the Parks and Rec Advisory Board, and we're here basically to support the final master plan of the McIntire Park East that staff will be presenting later this evening.

I believe the process was really open.

very lengthy, which allowed for lots of public input, so we ask that you support the vision that we have agreed is a positive vision for our future.

Just one

One tiny thing that we have a concern about is the rectangular field.

The consensus of the board is absolutely, not only the consensus of the board, but the needs assessment and the field allocation study have all indicated the same thing that we need more rectangular space.

and Diamond Field Space in our community.

We just need more fields.

I personally support the idea of including a rectangular space in the Family Activity Center, but the consensus of the board really is for a rectangular field that has the ability to have significant usage.

from the high school, from our community.

I just think I do believe that a rectangular field of the sort that I'm sure staff will present this evening will be delightful for a community.

I want to see kids playing there all the time, so I think it will make it easier for families to come into the park.

and you make use of its other uses if that little rectangular field is being used a lot.

So the board really does want a synthetic field with lights that's

and all of our studies indicate that that is needed in our community.

Good evening, Mayor Huja, fellow council members, and Mr. Jones.

I'm Jean Chase, 223 Old Lynchburg Road.

I'm here to tell you that the neighbors of Old Lynchburg Road have worked extremely hard to get the paperwork in that is needed to advance the OLR projects, safety, sidewalks, and drainage.

We are here to let you know that we appreciate your continued effort in advancing this project so that it is indeed ready to see dirt being moved because we have been shovel ready.

I would like to compliment tonight Barbara Ronan of the City Attorney's Office who has worked diligently with the neighbors of OLR

to get those documents in, get them properly recorded so that everything is in place properly so for the project to have a top notch readiness to it.

I would also like to let you know that I'd like to compliment Tony Edwards

of the NDS staff who has worked alongside of the neighbors of OLR to listen to their ideas, to validate their ideas, to suggest perhaps ways of tweaking their ideas so that this is a true combination of ideas going forth to make this the best plan possible.

I would like to also say thank you for your diligence

and your ideas as well in getting this moved forward so that we can really see the work progressing and that we can finally see a timeline that we can count on, that we can know that it's in place, that we're working toward that finish line and that would be very much appreciated by everybody.

Cole Burrell, Mayor Huja, ladies and gentlemen of the council, my name is Cole Burrell and I live at 5685 Peavine Hollow Trail in Free Union in Albemarle and I serve on the board of the McIntyre Botanical Garden.

And I would like to thank the council for recognizing the merits of devoting a portion of the McIntire Park to a botanical garden.

As a lecturer at UVA in the Department of Landscape Architecture and an instructor in horticulture at Piedmont Virginia Community College, the botanical garden will be an invaluable resource for post-secondary and graduate education as well as for the many school children on lesser levels of education that can be served

in the city, the county and within the region.

In addition to its potential for active recreation and education, the garden is also a place for passive education by providing a place of beauty within the city as well as a place of repose.

The council

As the council weighs options for the many potential uses of the park, I hope you will hold to the vision that the garden is also a park in and of itself, a place for active and passive recreation for all to enjoy in a myriad of different ways.

It is my hope that a large portion of the site will be designated as Botanical Garden, including areas labeled as golf course and passive sites on the current plan, so that our board's vision for the garden, which is available on our website at www.mecantirebotanicalgarden.org, can become a reality for Charlottesville, Albemarle County, and all who visit this beautiful region from around the world.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you very much.

I'm Nancy Carpenter.

I live at 727 Denali Way in Albemarle County.

I have a few comments tonight in reference to the upcoming report later about the Downtown Mall Ambassadors Pilot Program.

I have done a lot of reading since this was put on the agenda to understand what an Ambassadors Program is.

There are some good points, but there's also a dark side that I'm very concerned about because as the report says, this comes in the context of trying to legislate individual behaviors.

I am concerned about the potential police powers these individuals might be given, what their role would be, what their training would be.

Are they going to be trained in conflict resolution?

are they going to be trained in the psychology of the individual?

Will there be some type of first aid and CPR training?

I'm also concerned that this is also a slippery slope to abridgment of constitutional freedoms that we enjoy, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech.

that that could be an opening salvo for that.

I do understand that the downtown mall is an important revenue center for the city.

I do understand that people who do take the risk of being an entrepreneur should have the potential to recoup some of that risk and a positive outcome.

However, we all have to live together and we all have to understand that we're not going to have a Disneyland

on the downtown mall, that real life is ugly, sometimes really ugly, and we bring our own prejudices to life when we confront these situations as to how we look at them and how we react to them.

And when we talk about rude behavior, one of the rudest behaviors I've heard about recently on the downtown mall

was once again, and I'll say it like I said two weeks ago, a coward who took it upon themselves to syrup a concrete planter, which is a form of vandalism to city property.

Frustration is neither an excuse nor an acceptable reason to do this.

In the Seaville Weekly today I know that you know the rant is something that we all read and laugh about but there again there was a comment and I'll take it at its face value that a 61 year old woman who enjoyed coming to the downtown mall is now deciding not to come down because there's no place

for her to comfortably sit at a reasonable distance because apparently there's some medical issue and she was very upset to find that there was not reasonable accommodation for her to, you know, sit and enjoy under the trees, the breeze, the birds, the passersby, you know, that kind of thing that we enjoy downtown.

and the other thing that I think that we talk about rude behavior is language and I find it kind of hypocritical that we can condemn some uses of language when just a couple of days ago we had a rather well-known celebrated actor participate in a political convention talking to an empty chair

and basically was telling the person that was supposed to be sitting in that empty chair was basically saying for this actor to tell this political candidate what they could do to themselves.

So if we can accept that as a piece of theater or avant-garde theater on the television, I don't see how you can once again legislate it in the context of speech that you hear in passing

in the downtown mall.

It's just life.

Thank you.

Good evening, counselors.

I'm Alex McGee.

I live at 1205 Mowbray Place.

I've lived in Charlottesville for four years and lived in the Charlottesville area for 14 years.

For the last six months, I have been walking at McIntire Park about once a week.

I have read the four page memo which is in your agenda packet prepared by the Parks Department for you and I have studied the other supporting documents of the master plan.

I'm here this evening to ask you to add at least two and perhaps four pedestrian access points

to the east side where the new road is not yet built.

Pedestrian access would allow neighbors of all ages to walk or bike or use wheelchairs to go to the park.

and if I understand correctly and I hope I'm understanding correctly that the city staff say that they think that's a possibility and so that's part of why I'm suggesting it.

I also suggest that sidewalks within a half mile of the new interchange be contiguous so to the southeast of where the new interchange will go

because at the moment there's sidewalks that stop and start and in order for neighborhoods to have safe access to the new developments at the park, that's what I'm suggesting.

I know that Charlottesville is committed to being green and connected and so I also want to underscore that I am passionate about sidewalks for three reasons.

That when people have access to sidewalks they are more likely to know their neighbors and have a more cooperative atmosphere.

They are more likely to exercise which leads to better public health.

and they are more likely to enjoy mental health due to the benefits of exercise and neighborliness.

So I hope you'll consider adding more pedestrian access through access points on the east side and sidewalks to the southeast.

And finally, I would like it if the park had more or maintained the natural open space that it currently has.

Thank you very much.

Good evening, Brandon Collins, 536 Meade Avenue.

I've lived in Charlottesville my entire life, which is about as long as Mr. Huja has been in town.

And I also have a 10th grader in Charlottesville City Schools who's also lived here her entire life.

I'm going to try not to wear too many hats tonight, but first off I would like to talk about our bus system and some of the proposed route changes.

I'm a member of TRAC, the Transit Riders Association of Charlottesville, a fairly new group, but one that's really trying to get its head around how to get transit dependent people and users of public transportation involved in decision making about the bus system.

First off, I wanted to say many thanks to Ms. Smith for attending our last meeting and I think

I'm pretty sure Ms. Smith came out with as many questions as we have in general about some of the proposed route changes.

We look very much forward to meeting with Nelson Nygaard before they come to you with their proposals and I really hope we'll have an opportunity to do that.

I would encourage all of you to also do this and express to them, particularly upcoming developments,

particularly in employment and things like that that they need to be on the lookout for when they're analyzing the whole system as well as McIntyre Park and having proper access to the park.

One of the things, though, what we saw in the proposed route changes were pretty big changes and represent kind of a philosophical change from how the current system works.

That is, certain routes would be not all going to the downtown transit center.

Now this may in the long run be a great idea, but there's not been any rider engagement on this issue really at all.

And I think it's highly critical that that stuff comes into play before any route changes.

our group the track really feels strongly that those types of changes maybe should wait until the community has engaged on the whole process after Nelson Nygaard brings everything to the table and then we can discuss those things instead of just

changing two or three routes in a major way.

I feel like if we're going to change everything all at once we should just hold off on those other route changes until then.

One of those routes, the number six, serves in particular

many people with disabilities that live at Crescent Halls and the route in particular with the change will include a whole lot of low-income people and I think it's highly important to engage those folks in those neighborhoods about those routes and one idea that we had was can you do surveys for particular routes on the bus of riders with particular attention to folks who rely on public transportation and are frequent users of public transportation.

That said, I wanted to quickly say about the mall.

The ambassadorship, you know, a lot like these route changes raises so many questions.

I really look forward to seeing what's going on with that.

But I hope you'll keep in mind, you know, rude behavior, things like that.

You see a lot of that coming out of the bars at night.

You see a lot of people who are just regular users of the mall.

And is this really going to be targeted at poor people who are just hanging out on the mall?

You know, how do you differentiate that from people who are spending money and are just hanging out on the mall?

I don't think you should differentiate at all.

And I would say the downtown mall is bustling, and that's why you have people down there.

Businesses see opportunity there, so does everybody else, and that's why they're there.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of the council.

My name is Bill Mueller.

I'm the executive director with SACA, the soccer organization of Charlottesville Albemarle, and I'm speaking to the issue of the McIntyre Master Plan, and I just want to encourage you, as the plan is examined again, to please include

the rectangular field that was mentioned earlier.

Please do include a small soccer court in the northern end of the park.

I know the plan has been evolving for some time going through a lengthy process and athletic fields have sort of come and gone and I just really want to encourage you on insisting on something that will be very useful for the community.

I think we can make several arguments but

One is it certainly meets a primary objective of the 2007 comprehensive plan by adding some athletic field space.

We know that this will be a great place for members of the community, both youth and adults, to come and play

in unstructured environments but in constructive activities.

It's just exactly the sort of thing you'd like to have in city parks.

We know that with 5,000 soccer-playing families in our community that this would be a much-loved feature of the park.

Soccer players represent a significant constituency in the community and I hope they'll be considered in the final resolution of the plan.

We know that the sort of court that's being proposed can certainly fit the land and meet the aesthetic

and ecological concerns that have been mentioned previously.

We know that the courts can be built beautifully and cleverly and included in the park without detriment to the remainder of the park.

At the north end, the north end is fundamentally different than the large remainder of the park.

It's topographically removed.

and separated by the Creeks.

It's adjacent to a high school and a lit stadium, so it has a rather different look and feel and we certainly believe that it can coexist with all the other wonderful uses that are proposed.

We're certainly not suggesting that the other uses shouldn't continue.

and in the end I'm speaking rather less about soccer and more about soccer and more about just useful, healthy recreational activities.

This, if it gets built as a small court, will be of minimal use

to SACA as a programmed space, but it will be a much-loved space by members of the community who will come and use it as we envision.

So I just hope that you'll consider that request and include the rectangular court in the final plan.

Thank you very much.

Is there anybody else who would like to speak to that side?

Maybe I don't have that opportunity, but we have some vacancy if you want to speak.

That will close this part of the agenda.

Well, I'll start.

And I will respond.

Thank you all for coming.

And always, as usual, great ideas and wonderful input.

And I'm going to wait to respond to anything that's on our agenda.

But I want to thank Mr. Collins for coming.

It really was a very interesting meeting.

I encourage other councilors to go.

They're the first Saturday?

of each month at noon at the library.

Am I saying that correctly?

I learned a lot and when Nelson Nygaard was here for the consultants for our transit study, they said they were going to meet with TRAC and so I would hope that can be arranged.

because I mean I know the value having been at that meeting of talking to people who actually use the transit every day and they are frequent riders.

Great idea about the survey.

I agree with everything Ms. Smith just said and I also, Ms. Chase brought up the idea of having an updated timeline for the old Lynchburg Road project.

Although we're going to talk about the park and so Alex McGee's comments about the park itself I'll not address but the thing about the sidewalks

I really think that you're speaking to a council who values sidewalks.

We added money to the budget this past year for sidewalks, and I think you mentioned three things that come out of a better community, health and mental health, and I think also just the basic public safety, people being able to not be hit by cars as they're trying to get places.

Yes, I will only address those issues that we won't talk about later on.

And Mr. Respa said thank you for giving us the dates on the art opening on October 5th.

Thank you.

Is he still here?

About Ms. McGee and the sidewalks.

It's my understanding that

The city staff have been able to get a grant that was going to be then used to do a design and a plan for pedestrian improvements at the intersection of Harris and McIntyre.

Can we get an update on that at some point?

Because this is exactly what you're talking about.

The idea being that the connectivity between that major intersection and destination to the interchange and to the park beyond is going to be very, very important.

So there is supposed to be a whole plan to connect that and not have the sidewalks just dead end.

And I would like to know that too.

And then about the Nelson Nygaard study, I guess I would like an update about when there's more public engagement

happening.

And my understanding was that we were supposed to get three scenarios that then will be part of a big public process.

So just a little refresher on that would be great.

And other than that, we can just wait.

I'd like to make a comment on Mr. Collins' idea.

I agree with him that we ought not to change bus routes at this stage before we complete the study.

And there are minor things we can adjust.

but I think we've got to wait.

Anybody else have any other comments?

If not, we'll move to consent agenda.

Everybody please read the consent agenda.

Just wait for a second.

Item A, minutes for August 20.

Item B, an appropriation, Virginia Juvenile Community Crime Control Act Grant, $452,704, second of two readings.

Item C in Appropriation, Charlottesville Albemarle Adult Drug Treatment Court Grant Award, $182,500, second of two readings.

Item D in Appropriation, Feed Your Mind National League of Cities Walmart Champ Grant, $55,470, second of two readings.

Item E in Appropriation, Check and Connect Student Engagement Grant, $75,000, second of two readings.

Item F, a resolution, reallocation of and approval of new allocations from the Charlottesville Housing Fund Dollars, first of one reading.

Item G, a resolution, 715 Nall Street in fill special use permit, first of one reading.

Item H, an ordinance, sale of property to Fry's Spring Beach Club, Old Lynchburg Road project, second of two readings.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Huja.

I would appreciate 1F, the

reallocation of CHF funds be removed just to discuss.

I would like to move approval of the rest of the consent agenda, but in doing that, I'd also just like to point out that I think a lot of people look at the way that we raise and spend money in the city and that a lot of our

Is it a motion?

That was a motion.

Is it a second?

Let's vote on the agenda.

Okay.

Now we are on item number two, McIntyre Park Master Player, Mr. Daley.

Yes, there will be.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of Council.

As you're aware, staff presented the draft master plan for the east side of McIntyre Park to Council in July, following nine months of community involvement in the city's park master planning process.

The master plan being presented to you this evening represents the comments of city council upon the draft master plan presented in July.

What we will outline this evening are the adjustments to the final plan based upon council comment.

Following the PowerPoint, staff are here and available to answer any questions and engage in any further discussion.

Chris is going to push the buttons for us.

This slide before you is the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board's recommended plan that was presented to City Council on July 16th following the presentation when the screen is no longer visible.

The original, the first plan presented to Council is on the left behind the dais and then the plan being presented this evening is to the right of that.

In July we heard from council a number of different comments regarding the plan.

The council did not have any support.

There did not seem to be support for synthetic turf or a lit athletic field in the northern portion of the park and it seemed that the consensus was to convert that to an open play area.

There was also consensus to include a water feature in the park, a lake or a pond.

to accelerate the date of conversion of McIntyre Golf Course to passive use, to close McIntyre Golf Course a few days a week to allow access to the entire park, to include an aquatic play element in the Family Activity Center in the northern portion of the park.

In the plan presented in July, the word possible was noted in the narrative.

to address some parking and transit concerns around the perimeter of the park.

There was support to study the expansion of potential golf opportunities at Penn Park and support to engaging a landscape architecture firm to perform the final design for the park.

The final master plan we present to you tonight is shown here.

There are changes from the original plan presented in July, which I'm going to walk through in more detail here.

This is the Family Activity Center in the northern portion of the park.

You'll note that the rectangular field has now been converted to an open play area.

As Ms. McKeever, Chairman of the Advisory Board, noted earlier tonight, the Advisory Board has been consistent in their support for a presence of an athletic field in the master plan in the northern portion of the park.

There is an opportunity here to perhaps take a different approach.

and look at a smaller sport court that is multifunctional and could be included in the Family Activity Center here versus the either or position of an athletic field or not an athletic field.

We think that might be a solution within the Family Activity Center.

The skate park located in the southwest corner of the park.

This has not really changed from the first plan with the exception being the removal of a to be determined notation on the emergency access.

The park itself, the skate park itself, we're proposing to move the existing portable skate equipment that's at the skate park on McIntyre Road to this location this fall.

That would be in advance of construction beginning on the US 250 McIntyre Road extended interchange.

that would allow us to have a very brief break in service for the skate park and all of the folks who enjoy that facility.

We're proposing that it would have a, we would take the new, the existing equipment, excuse me, put it here temporarily while we work through a design including the skaters and the skating community for what the final ultimate skate park would be.

We're anticipating it would have a hard surface court of some kind, have restrooms be lit, and that the emergency vehicle access off of the 250 bypass in this location currently, that entrance would become emergency access only upon the completion of the road projects.

The Dogwood Vietnam Memorial, which is in the very southern portion of the park adjacent to the interchange.

There are improvements to this memorial as part of the interchange project.

Those will move forward.

What is represented here in this dashed line is an accessible path that meets ADA requirements from the interchange itself up to the new location of the memorial.

and then there's a parking lot that will be constructed as part of the interchange project as well south of the interchange.

It's not on this photo, but there will be 30 parking spaces in that location.

Botanical Garden core area, the only change to this from the plan presented in July is the inclusion of a pond or lake within the core area.

It is not shown on the plan because there's some questions to be determined about.

the form and function of the botanical garden, where a pond or lake would be best suited, how it is sourced and how it is managed.

But we're including it in the narrative as clearly the intention of the city to include this pond or lake in the core area of the botanical garden.

It allows for potential expansion over time as the golf course adjusts.

In talking about parking and access, we noted on the plan the three new parking areas and they're color-coded so they're a little easier to see.

There's a total of 120 new parking spaces, 60 of those located inside the park itself.

We're proposing 30 spaces on the west side of the park, adjacent to the bike pedestrian bridge, which we're working on currently.

and the park down near the Rescue Scott which I just mentioned.

Those are all new pedestrian access points.

One idea we've come up with and included on the plan is that as you enter the park from the Rose Hill drive side and go underneath the 250 bypass and sort of swing around to the left to go into the west side of the park,

that a drop-off area be created in that location that could serve folks who are dropping off children to attend a skate park or other folks who are going to the park.

It could also potentially serve as a transit stop.

The golf course, there was comment that the date that was proposed in July be accelerated.

We're proposing at this time that that date be accelerated effectively by three years.

The golf course would revert to passive use no later than December 31st of 2016.

We're proposing also that golf-free time periods

begin in this December, Sunday, Tuesday and Thursdays of each week from 2 p.m. until the park closes.

And that would begin in December following the relocation of the skate park and allow us to work through some of the logistical issues associated with that.

Again, that is the map of the final master plan.

Moving forward from this point, we obviously have council consideration and adoption of the plan hopefully this evening.

We need to begin discussions regarding the botanical garden, what its scope is, its design, how it will be funded, as well as some discussions about management and operations.

Who would be the operating entity and who would manage the facility?

We also need to engage in some discussions and begin to move forward in the potential expansion of golf opportunities at Penn Park and see what market feasibility would tell us about that as well as scope development for design services for an RFP for the design of the park.

All of these things should begin immediately following adoption of the plan and can all move forward concurrently.

Mr. Mayor, if I can get us started.

Mr. Daly, can you, pardon the pun, but shed a little bit of light on the lighting that's being discussed for the east side of the park?

As it is now, that side of the park does not feature lighting.

And I think there's a general sense that we want to keep it as sort of a natural passive recreational area.

And so when I hear about a lighted skate park, when I hear about a lighted soccer court or athletic court, is this going to be dark sky compatible lighting?

Is this going to be really intrusive lighting?

I think any lighting projects that we would do on any facility throughout the park system would be dark sky compliant, number one.

Secondly, the lighting technology today

is incredibly precise.

The lighting system, for example, that we have on the tennis courts at Penn Park are focused directly onto the court, and if you are 15 feet from the edge of the court with a light meter, you get a reading of less than one foot candle.

So those lights, and the light goes down, it doesn't spill over and out.

That southwest corner of the park

you know there would be some lighting in the evening obviously with vehicles moving by and so on and so forth as well as the the lights on the west side of the park for the softball fields which are not dark sky compliant and we're looking to replace those with the compliant fixtures.

Sure, there are what's called an astronomical timer.

We actually have them on a few of our lighting systems now that are programmed by

Not to get too technical, you program the latitude and longitude in of your location and then you tell it when you want the lights to go on or be energized or go off, whether it be 15, 20, 30, 60 minutes before civil twilight, which is effectively sunset, or civil daylight in the morning.

So those lighting systems would go on and only stay on until you program them to go off.

And you can also set up a system where you have a push button on the system so that the system would be hot, kind of like the lights in your house.

But if nobody shows up to use them, they don't go on.

And then can you address, Ms. McGee, I think Ms. McGee made some excellent comments as a couple counselors have noted about pedestrian access and how that's addressed in this final version of the plan.

Are there ways, I mean she said that there might be ways to enhance it even further.

Well, I do.

I think there are ways to enhance it.

Certainly the plan provides more access points than currently exist.

In the east side of the park, meaning east of Shanks Branch, there are certainly possible easement discussions that could happen for pedestrian access off of Park Street.

And then lastly, this isn't so much a question as a comment.

I do think it's important that when we're talking about, and I mentioned this to you earlier today, when we're talking about planning for the future of the Botanical Garden, that we specifically name the McIntire Botanical Garden group as the group that we're going to be working with to develop a management plan for the Botanical Garden.

We can't determine at this point yet exactly what their role could be or would be.

I have two questions that are not so much about ultimate design as about process.

One is you mentioned that you were looking at moving the equipment over for the skate park this fall.

This fall?

Yes.

So how would people get to it if it's

Okay.

So it wouldn't be that whole purple area.

Exactly.

We're working through the logistics of this right now.

We haven't pulled the, we haven't immediately begun.

We need to have the plan adopted.

Our vision is that the parking area and a little bit

North of the parking area beyond the existing fence can be used to create a temporary, quote unquote, temporary skate park location.

Partly I'm repeating questions that I've heard, but that's also good for my own clarification.

The other one is the Vietnam Memorial.

What is the plan for access to that during construction?

So I love the idea of having that accessible pathway from the ultimate parking lot under the interchange.

But before that interchange gets built, but after some of the construction starts, how are people going to get to that?

We actually have figured out a route from the parking lot area to the memorial for any events that would happen during construction.

The long range plan accounts for that.

I just want to make sure people know that it's not just going to be landlocked and inaccessible.

That's what I have for now.

I think we'll at some point get into more of a conversation about the field and all that kind of stuff.

Oh okay, so are we in discussion or in question though?

There's two questions.

I actually have a question.

Golf, you note that there'll be three golf free days, but in fact there is golf on those golf free days until 2 p.m.?

So they're not really golf-free days.

They're golf-restricted days.

So that's just to be clear.

In discussion, I actually would like to talk about the possibility of having real golf-free days.

My question or comment is that we don't think that we agreed last time to have some kind of water feature.

I do actually have one other question.

Peter Kleeman emailed today about what he felt were contradictions to the MOA in terms of historic preservation.

Can you or somebody here address?

I haven't seen the MOA, so I don't know what he's referring to.

I did not see his most recent email.

And I did respond to counsel and subsequently forwarded a copy

of my email to Mr. Kleeman.

They're really two separate and independent processes.

The memorandum of agreement, which is between the signatories, I believe, are the city, VDOT, Federal Highway Administration, and the State Historic Preservation Office, address how the impacts from the interchange project

on historic properties can be mitigated.

The MOA itself specifically recognizes that any future decisions about how the park is used will be decided through a master planning process that we're going through now.

So to that extent, I don't see the inconsistency.

The MOA does not require, in my opinion, the city to maintain golf as it is presently done at McIntyre Park.

It requires certain mitigating actions to be taken by the city, and I think the city, by signing the agreement, agreed to take.

Now, at the Ragged Mountain Natural Area, that was a real process where you had to photograph and do some archival kind of things.

Is that going to happen?

It's happened.

Oh, it is happening.

It's already happened.

Oh, it's done.

For the golf course and for the waiting pool?

That's correct.

I think that was part of the MOA as well, wasn't it, Brian?

I have five or six points, but as this final master plan graphic is going to be very informative to the consultant that we hire, as well as probably be folded into their contract, I do see that this is really important to get the language right on it.

And so one of my first comments is that when you have your qualifying note at the very

Right hand corner, it currently reads, this master plan is illustrative.

Final configurations and components of use areas will be confirmed during site design.

I would like us to consider strongly adding the two words location and size

right after the word configurations so that it would read final configurations, locations and sizes and components of use areas will be confirmed during site design.

The reason why I mention that is because you don't understand and you can't figure these various things out until you do your diligent work at the site level.

If it's 0.9 acres or one acre, I think it would be extremely difficult to hold this to that level of detail.

If they have this as a concept, I think we need to give some latitude to the landscape architectural firm that will be working on this.

I totally agree with that.

I think it will change when detail design is done.

Is there anything in that language that can include something about the

I think I'm comfortable with fudging the sizes.

I have another problem with the idea that we will have, I don't have a problem with the idea that we'll have a landscape architect, I think we should, but the process that we're being, that's outlined here actually starts building things, like before golf is terminated, and I would think that the landscape architect would do a plan without golf, don't you think?

Because that's ultimately what the garden, and so if we start building things that

you know unless they're in some sort of final architectural plans and I'm thinking specifically about the trails which are on pretty steep slopes at this point and you know we were talking about that on our walk pretty much everything and correct me if I'm wrong that we see called pasture golf is the high level-ish area and the reason that

But I get the impression that some of those trails will be built.

Maybe I shouldn't care that trails will be built that won't ultimately be used in the park.

I'm just saying that that's probably not where a landscape architect would put the trails.

So should we

It's kind of a chicken and egg thing here.

I think that's a really good point and I think that any kind of thought to that ultimate use is probably a really good idea.

I would hate for us to just sit and wait and not do anything until the plan is done because that would be pushing it a year ahead that nobody would be able to use the park.

But I think that the things that we put in, like the fact that the skate park will be temporary stuff.

And I think certain pieces are going to just kind of have to happen, like a parking lot.

If we're going to be able to use that part of the park, we need a parking lot up there.

And so the designer's going to kind of have to take that as sort of already there.

Well, there's certainly opportunities to do temporary facilities.

You could make a trail, nothing more than a lower mowed section of grass that people could walk on, and then over time those things can change.

I would prefer that, personally, because I think designers should have the

opportunity to do a good design.

For example, the area you mentioned, family, recreation.

I think it could be very crucial that it be an attractive entrance to the park and not be the parking lot.

Because it's like coming to most American homes, a garage is the first thing you see.

And that you want to avoid in a major park in a community, you want to have it.

So I would be in favor of doing temporary things

And I would agree with all that this is going to be the gateway to the city from the north.

The second point is related to the rectangular field and I think the phrasing that's been used is that it's a sport court.

I don't think, at least it wasn't my intention to completely do away with the idea of a pickup field last week or last two weeks when we met.

and also that we mentioned that it might not be formal.

That's correct.

Correct.

But right now in the plan it's un-lighted and natural grass.

The play area is, but I think what we're talking about now is the possibility of including in the family

activity area, a small sport court or soccer court that would be lighted that would have artificial turf.

I don't think we agree to that.

I know, I'm saying that's what... That's a compromise that's been put forward I think by staff that I think is something that I don't know that we need to decide today because it's still kind of a future programmatic piece, right?

It would be...

That's correct.

Well in lieu of no athletic field or an athletic field that we would, these court systems that you were just describing that are very popular in Europe and other parts of the world could be included in within the Family Activity Center and there's no reason that it has to be synthetic grass or synthetic turf.

There are other surfaces that would

the purpose there that don't have to be synthetic turf.

There's a lot of evolution happening in athletic flooring and athletic surfacing these days.

There's some really interesting stuff out there.

What I would hate to see happen is to be again east part of the park become what is the west part of the park.

I would be really comfortable with kind of putting that on a list for the architect to look at and to make a recommendation one way or the other.

I think one of the things, Dan Rosenzweig showed me some pictures that he had of places where they've done this, not for that program kind of play area which we're looking at in the brown but in the purple, to have

a potential kind of little space and again I would certainly defer to any architect who said that's a bad idea or to other fellow counselors but it was an intriguing idea.

We had one when I lived in France in our neighborhood every neighborhood had one it was just a little kind of a square court and it was marked for a mini soccer field or for basketball they had basketball hoops going this way and soccer goals going that way and there were lines that were kind of out of bounds lines and a center line so you knew where you were

And kids were in it all the time.

My daughter and I used to go play pickup basketball in the evening, and there were always people there.

And it was just a really nice place to kind of play a sport, whereas the other one we're thinking, I think, more of kids running and playing with kites and a little more free form.

It's a possibility out there.

Yes.

Right.

Would that be where what you're talking about?

No.

So, I mean, flying kites and stuff, don't we do that in the passive area?

So we're talking about really having two fields.

I mean, if that concept goes forward, really having two active play areas.

I'm with Mr. Huja on this one that that is moving more and more towards that active area that we have always said that's what the west side is for.

I mean, there's lots of language if we want to go with text in just the materials that we had.

saying the public wants this to be minimally managed and indicate that the west side has the much more active sites.

So it makes me nervous when I see more and more activity coming onto this side of the park.

Likewise, and Kathy I'm not trying to show your time here, but I personally think all of that active, even if it's a playground, should be concentrated on one side or the other.

If it's, you know, in this case, bring it down to the south side and really have that, your active area, and leave that passive botanical, and really the topography really works much better on the north for having an

give it to those people in our community of which I can guarantee you there are tons and tons having run Ivy Creek who really want a natural experience, want to enter through there.

And it's really, if you walk it, you can see it's really just set up for that.

And I wonder how much parking we couldn't more have in looking at bigger maps and I was looking at the environmental assessment for the interchange when I was

I'm trying to find Peter Kleeman's stuff.

and then the rest of what is now the skate park, what's going to happen to that?

So there's not going to be any more land left over from what is currently the skate park?

Yeah.

There is a green space scale branch comes down that could continue to where it used to be skateboard right now.

I would like to suggest that given Mrs. Smith's comments just now that I mean assuming we're going to keep it on the north side of the park that we just remove any reference of open play area and task the landscape architect with designing a family activity area that doubles both as somewhat

As long as we agree that it's not synthetic.

But I think that's a very good suggestion to keep it both flexible as well as sensitive to the need for a sport court.

And I'm glad we're not talking at this point either about putting any permanent pavilions there.

That was one thought that has come and gone, correct?

As in a shelter?

Yeah, at one point Mr. Dale and I were talking that the pavilions that were going to be moved from

It's the permanency thing that's in keeping with your idea that we shouldn't put anything there permanent at this point in time.

From the east side access.

She was talking about that point, and I guess she talked with you, Mr. Daley?

So to be all along from that area, that right now somehow to create some way of getting into the park through pedestrian, is that possible?

Yes, pursue options as possible.

And the other thing is getting down to the idea of using some of the expertise we have on the place design task force to both assist with the writing of their RFP as well as to be part of a review, citizen review committee to select the consultant.

Mr. Daley and I have had some conversations about that, that there are at least three practicing architects on the place design task force.

And it would probably be very helpful to have at least one of them take a look at an RFP before it goes out so that it does reflect some of these nuances.

But also, just as importantly as the selection of the consultant, I know that during the strategic investment area process, the place design task force was extremely valuable.

and this is not to preclude any other citizens, but this is just to supplement whatever review committee you were thinking about using.

Place design was appointed for their purpose to have that kind of input and design.

So I would think it would be logical to have some input.

Yeah, I would like to talk about the golf.

I appreciate that you all changed, you know, pulled up the termination date by three years, but personally I think what's going to happen is that come

December 31st or probably January 1st, 2017 is what we're going to do is just have the discussion all over again.

That by, you know, putting this off for four and a half years that there'll be, you know, potentially different people on the Council.

It's not making a decision about golf in my opinion.

in my estimation.

I suggested last time and I'll suggest it again because why not, that we take, consider taking one whole lot of service each year up until December 31st, 2016 at which point we

called Golf Either Quits, or my favorite idea, which is to reconsider keeping a few of the golf holes as a opportunity for young kids to swing a golf club, to be right next to this, you know, in that case, probably be sort of here by the skate park.

I've got my own little laser, probably right there.

But what you could do there is if you've got the botanical area here, you've got your nature trail here, you're doing whatever is happening to the botanical area, as you take a hole you could start expanding the botanical area or conversely you could take the area

that is going to be open right away which is at High Hilltop and start whatever makes sense to just start expanding the opportunities and that's the phasing in.

The phasing in it was referred to in this plan but I don't actually see phasing in other than temporary trails and etc.

and that way I think it would make it easier to

have to let go of the golf as we know it.

It's only seven holes now.

It's not a full golf course.

Let me add to your comments lately.

I think we should make a decision.

I think we are making a decision to win the golf course

and as part of the plan.

I think we are saying that clearly, at least I'm saying that.

Well, you know, you can't control the future councils.

and you can't tie their hand but they can change plans.

That's my point.

I just don't see it.

I think that, you know, I've been a proponent for taking golf out of this part of the park but I think that

One of the things we have to recognize is that people do play golf there and that programs use that golf course.

And if we were going to take a hole out every year, we would be having to put a hole in somewhere else every year.

And I don't think they're prepared to do that.

I think the only reason we're giving them the four years is to make sure that they have something to land on when they leave McIntire Park.

And I think it's kind of it's taking with both hands to say,

you have to leave then and you have to partly leave now but there's nowhere for you to go now so you just have to kind of hang there until there's something left or later so and I also think that there's construction going on during a lot of the period that we're talking about during that four years and it's not like we're going to be programming that part of the park anyway because there's going to be construction there so to me it's nothing lost to leave golf there in its entirety at least as far as it fits

during this period of construction, which is basically what that is.

Well, first of all, I think they've already lost two holes and they weren't replaced anywhere.

I'm not quite sure where the concept is that you have to replace every hole that you've lost.

I mean, we're going to look for opportunities at Penn Park, but there is an 18-hole golf course.

at Penn Park right now.

So it's an economic thing.

And so what we're looking for is an economic opportunity for people to play golf, not that we need another golf course.

We don't.

We have an 18-hole golf course in our city parks.

It's, you know, as I say, it's a different issue.

I'm not saying that we should replace everyone.

I'm saying that we've already said that you have to leave in four years.

I understand the concern that you have because we have gone through many of these master planning exercises for McIntire Park and then they kind of sit on a shelf and gather dust.

But I get the sense, maybe I'm naive, but I get the sense that this is different.

So I want to feel like we can trust this process.

Either that or the four of you just need to stay on council until 2017.

But I really do have confidence that this plan is going to move forward.

I really feel like we've asked a lot of the golfers and they've stayed with this process and they may not

like the outcome, but the fact that they have been at the table and continue to largely support the process because they know that we aren't going to pull the rug out from underneath them, that we are going to provide for replacement golf space, that we absolutely are going to make sure that First Tee has a long-term home, maybe even a better home than what they have now.

I think that the kind of change you're suggesting might really alter that dynamic.

I also just, as we were looking at the north part of the park, I just want to really, you know, the decisions of this rest with council, and I think we all know that.

I think that it's good that we also

look at what an architect might do and kind of respect the expertise of people who will come in after us and do the design.

But I think we also need to respect at some level the efforts of all the public who came out in the putting together of this plan and the Parks and Rec board who kind of came up with a plan to bring to us and has been very responsive to our concerns and our kind of tweaks and the things that we've tried to do.

I would hate to just sort of throw out a whole piece of this plan and say, well, you know, we think differently.

So, so far, maybe you can read it yourself.

I've been trying to capture it for the last couple of minutes.

That these aren't in any particular order.

That no permanent structures or facilities be constructed in the north end of the park before the final design is completed.

Or in the south, right?

Because that was, you were doing temporary

Well, I believe the skate park probably should be treated a little differently in that.

And I can agree with that.

That we would give the chosen architect the opportunity to include a sport court facility within the northern portion of the park and specifically that it would not be have a certain synthetic turf surface.

It might be that we could say also final configuration, exact location and sizes.

Yeah.

You've got to get into water specific.

I know, I know, but.

But what else?

We will correct that in the narrative report.

Let me ensure that the reference to Ponder Lake is in the narrative.

Can we look to one weekend a week being truly golf free?

We don't know.

We capture, we know when people come in general.

The tickets aren't picked up every single day.

We've noticed a steady decline in the total number of golfers, so it's hard to say, unlike our other facilities where we know exactly the date and time when people come in.

The reason we kept it, we wanted to be consistent so that the message to the community was consistent.

Oh, it's after two o'clock today, I can go.

I would actually be interested in, kind of in the interest of inconsistency, to make an hour, like on school days, to have it three on, because then we're talking about after school and on Sunday all day.

No.

Thank you.

Well, again, I just want to make sure that we are specifying Magtire Botanical Garden as the partner in developing the management plan for the botanical garden.

I think it's important that they be named by name.

I know you said that your intention is to make sure that the lighting is dark-sky compliant.

I want to have us go on record as saying it must be dark-sky compliant with the timing feature that you mentioned.

And then just some reference to enhanced pedestrian access as...

Well, I want to make sure it gets in his list.

The only thing about the...

I'm not sure that we...

Yeah, all I'm suggesting, as I said earlier, it's too premature to say exactly what their role is going to be, but to make sure that... We will negotiate with them.

I would like to make one... Oh, sorry.

Go ahead.

And it's related to something that I guess it was Mr.

Mr. Bernal made a comment and if we could add a note under the Pasture Golf section.

Note the use of the word passive does not preclude a botanical garden design.

that the use of the word passive does not preclude a botanical garden design.

So we've been making a distinction between botanical garden and passive, but I wanted to get in there that it's not saying that it cannot be a botanical garden.

So I just made that note, the use of the word passive does not preclude a botanical garden design.

So are we actually talking about what language we might like that whatever landscape architect or firm does.

I would like to see at least a consideration of the use of elements in the historic pasture golf to be used in the design.

I mean, it doesn't have to, but just a consideration of preserving the history in some fashion.

I mean, if you've walked out there... That might be something for the RFP.

Right.

This is for the motion to approve the plan.

Yeah.

Although, having said it in a public meeting, it's now part of the record, so that's...

Is there a way to make a motion with these ideas?

Second the motion?

Second.

Yes, and I'd like to thank Parks and Rec.

I'm not going to vote for this plan because I didn't have anything that I wanted to do.

But I do appreciate everything you've done and, you know, it was tough.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your, I want to thank you and your staff also for being patient and working with the community and working with the city council.

As a board, I think we should include in that gratitude.

And this is exciting.

Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, over the last several years city staff has been working with members of the community to address issues and concerns around rude and disruptive behavior on the downtown mall, especially at times in the area near Central Place more recently.

In response to those concerns, the

The city has stationed additional police officers along the mall on Friday and Saturday nights.

More recently placed an officer in Central Place on a daily basis.

We've strengthened our aggressive hand handling ordinances a couple of years ago.

We made it a little harder for some folks to commandeer the benches along the mall, especially at Central Place for long stretches of time, which was causing some issues there.

In addition, we've been discussing what we can do to make downtown a more inviting place generally.

for folks who come down here on a regular basis and for those who are visiting our area.

So we've spent some time researching our peer cities around the country, including Boulder, Colorado, Burlington, Vermont, Iowa City, Iowa, and Ithaca, New York.

And what we learned was that the issues that we've experienced in downtown are not exclusive to Charlottesville.

Almost every revitalized downtown that we research has experienced similar issues, especially since the economic downturn began.

One of the ideas we're bringing forward for your consideration is the initiation of a downtown mall ambassadors program.

We envision the ambassadors assisting tourists, providing extra maintenance downtown, building relationships with business owners, and providing an extra set of eyes and ears for our service providers and our police department.

and we're proposing that the program will begin this fall with four 30 to 40 hour per week seasonal employees.

They would receive training by both the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau and our Charlottesville Police Department.

The ambassadors would be active through the fall and would be called upon for special events over the winter.

They would be brought back to work on the mall in the spring and summer of next year.

and at that point we anticipate evaluating the program near the end of the summer to see how it worked for us and if we feel confident that this is something that we should do on a regular basis we would include that as part of consideration for the budgeting process for fiscal year 2015.

We anticipate the pilot program to cost approximately $80,000 and would be allocated out of our strategic investment fund.

This will be the first of several proposals to come to the Council as part of our effort to address some of the behavior issues along the Mall, which according to a number of business owners has improved slightly over the course of the last one to two months or so as we've taken some steps to curb some of that behavior.

I think in most of those places it's been a success.

We've also looked at other places that offer ambassadors programs out west, San Francisco as well if you call

I know there was some concern expressed during the public comment that this is an attempt to limit constitutional rights in a slippery slope.

We think this is probably something that should have been in place a long time ago as the downtown mall became successful.

We do have issues with folks who come in from other places who aren't familiar with downtown.

And it would be nice to have friendly faces down there who are obviously folks who are working on behalf of the city to help direct people to places.

I was in Arizona in Phoenix at the last National League of Cities meetings and you know I've mentioned this before but they had a program like this and as a person visiting the city I'd never been to Phoenix I had about a three-quarters of mile to walk from the convention center to my hotel so I was kind of on the street quite a bit and it was really comforting for me especially as a woman traveling alone to just kind of have people say hey welcome to Phoenix you know can I help you is there it was just it made me feel like

You know somebody would pay attention if I needed something and I didn't really need anything.

At one point I was out on a Saturday evening and this one gentleman I was quizzing about the program because I was interested as a city councilor and it

said that if I needed to he could have somebody walk me back to my hotel which I thought was just really a nice thing to have as I didn't feel like I needed that and I had a perfectly safe walk home but I think that this is something that as a visitor to another city I've seen in DC when you come up out of the metro there are these folks with red vests who say, hey, welcome to DC, can I help you, is there any place you need to go, they'll tell you how to get to the

the museum or wherever it is you're going.

I think for a city like ours that has so many visitors, I had come back from Phoenix really before there was a real critical mass of folks complaining about behavior on the mall, thinking this would be a good idea.

So it's not really so much just a response to trying to crack down on misbehavior, it's just a way to make everyone feel more welcome on the mall.

One thing I would really love to see is if

I think it will help with behavior because I think a lot of the problem people have had with some of the behavior on the mall is that it's made them feel uncomfortable.

And I think if we do something else that will make them feel more comfortable, then that helps to alleviate that feeling, which is as much a part of the problem as real danger is.

One of the things that we have been looking into is replacing the benches with maybe some backless benches that would still be inviting to folks to sit down and get a spell, dispel themselves when they're tired, eat their ice cream, whatever it may be.

And I think it's reasonable to not put those benches too close to like where petit pois people are eating, you know, just to kind of make a little space in between and just

Other comments?

There was some question at the transit meeting actually as to whether benches had been taken out at some of the transit stops.

I got one email that were on the side streets of the other transit stop.

I think I sent it to you, the email.

Yeah, we'll follow up on that.

I just have a couple comments.

One is I think it's absolutely critical, I don't think this is rocket science, as to who these people are and that they represent our community in whole.

And because of some of the criticisms, it's a great opportunity to address some of the criticisms we've had about

People not feeling welcome who aren't even the troublemakers, but not just feeling welcome and part of the community in downtown.

And this could go a long way to addressing those concerns as well.

And I would hope that it could morph

or at least potentially morph into having more volunteerism associated with it.

And I'd also hope that city councilors would like to be able to take a turn out there as ambassadors.

With a thing on saying city councilors.

I just want to make sure I'm in support of this program probably because actually this is something that the you know over the years the Downtown Business Association has been asking for and advocating for or some variation of this so I think I'm willing to give it a try.

and see if it has positive results.

I don't want us to think that this is going to solve the problems downtown and that this is sort of, now we've done that, we checked off that box, I think there's a lot of work to do.

For instance, a number of people in the homeless advocacy community have talked about the need to do more proactive street outreach to the homeless.

I don't want anybody to think that this Ambassador's Program is doing that.

Can I interrupt?

A couple of issues that both you and Councilor Smith raised.

One, the volunteerism.

We've had a couple of folks who've already stepped up and said that they would be interested in volunteering.

We decided to begin with the four as paid positions, but we are certainly open to the idea of having

volunteers supplement them and then we'll see how that works during the first year.

And if next year we've got an army of volunteers who are willing to step forward and do it that we can count on, I think we'll certainly take that into consideration for the future of the program.

The Outreach Coordinator position, we have talked about that in Social Services.

Actually, Diane Kukniew, our Director of Social Services, was up in Burlington, Vermont this summer and had a conversation with some of their folks.

They have a very expansive outreach program, and so we're looking to learn from that and see how we can apply that to Charlottesville.

And I'd just like to say, in terms of volunteers, having run a large volunteer program at Ivy Creek, you do have to be careful.

I think there could be a tier of responsibilities, too.

Actually, I have a question.

In the near term, the police department will be working to schedule folks and help supervise them.

That was the concern I had was if that was the place to house it.

I'm not against that but it seems like in a way I would feel like it sort of conveyed the intent of what we're looking at a little better if it was Parks and Rec or even the tourist office or city, your office.

The police department has the manpower to do it for the pilot.

And more specifically, the Neighborhood Services Bureau of the police department will be overseeing that.

We've made a shift in terms of the supervision for downtown.

In the past, it's been patrol that's been overseeing that, and now it's been shifted to the Neighborhood Services Bureau.

Let me make one or two comments.

First of all, I support generally the idea.

My hope was that we will start as volunteers and then hire people if need be.

So once you hire people, it's very hard to go back to volunteer, in my mind.

But I generally support this general idea, but also hope that there will be

I require training for these people so they can be helpful, as Kristin was saying, her experience.

Mayor Huja, I have a few comments too.

And I support this program.

I do see the reasoning behind having it for pay because that is the way people will really, really pay attention and be held accountable.

So that would be setting the standard for this force of some kind so that when volunteers come in they would already be coming under kind of a high bar.

So I can see why you did it this way instead of the other way.

but I also am noting that this program is addressing behavior issues and that future reports are going to come out about solving these behavior issues and we've been receiving many, many emails about the physical place.

The maintenance of the place and the overall diminished quality of the public place, particularly in the center part of the downtown mall and also at the side streets as you enter the mall.

And Mr. Jones, you and I have talked about this before, but I'll just reiterate some of them.

Some of the points that if we could start tracking and getting some scheduling or feedback on from staff, but the general mall upkeep, including the paved areas, the fountains, the side streets entering the mall.

Second point, building maintenance in general, especially immediately around the central place.

You did mention that the awnings along the central place buildings will be replaced.

If any of you notice, they're moldy, they're rotting.

That is going to make a major impact.

But there's also buildings around that area that are peeling, blank walls, blank windows.

and all of that deactivates street life.

It does not make for an inviting place to come.

The third part, we talked about possibly putting Urals on the blank walls like the Oyster Building.

There was an old Coca Cola sign on the Oyster Building.

Perhaps that could be popped out a little bit.

I think Mr. Brown actually had that suggestion a few weeks ago.

The window openings in the Landsmark building, if we could put photographs, images within those slots, it would hide what's going on inside that building but then give a sense of company and enclosure into that part of the mall.

Screening trash receptacles as you come into Second Street.

The first thing you see from Petit Pois is the garbage can and it doesn't smell good, it doesn't look good.

More planters, colorful plants, as well as removing dead plants and dead trees.

Those are still on the mall, especially in the Central Park.

And again, I think it's important for everybody to know that the outdoor programming that the Paramount is really interested in providing, am I correct?

If we can get that going, that would be having live entertainment, interacting with people on the downtown mall, really making that a destination.

It's not just behaviors, it's adding beauty.

I would just like to second, this kind of

comment that we need to really pay attention to, like when we're looking at hiring folks, to make sure that they're people who will make all folks feel welcome.

Yes.

I second.

Discussion?

Can I ask one more question about it?

Sure.

Just not, obviously, to the vote.

But in talking to people about the $80,000 that this costs, will we offset some costs by what we have been putting in to have added police and

I mean, at this point, that's not part of the plan.

We want to keep those police officers down there.

That's been well received by the community.

So this, as we were looking at it, it's one-time money.

And that would certainly be part of the conversation as we're looking at long-term financing if the City Council decides next year, going into the budget cycle, that this is a program that we'd like to incorporate into our operating budget.

So during the pilot program is it possible to kind of track expenses and like if we have fewer police calls or

And once again, that police presence that we currently have is during the busier times of the year.

So you won't see on a Friday and Saturday night in

December, three police tables set up throughout the mall.

So this would be, once again, you would start it again in the spring of next year where you'd have more police downtown.

Well, I would really hope that we could, because I actually did envision this as an alternative to a police presence, not entirely police presence, but we did up the police presence, and I saw this as an alternative to that.

I think this, it goes back to the point I was trying to make earlier, how we just, we need to continue this discussion.

This vote tonight doesn't end the discussion.

and whether or not, I mean, so I think we need to talk about the police, ongoing police presence, we need to talk about more proactive street outreach.

As I mentioned in my presentation as well, this is the first of a series of proposals that will certainly bring the City Council for consideration.

Mayor Huja, members of the city council, I was going to say there's no elegant way to present from here to people who are everywhere, but apparently there is, so thank you very much.

I'm James Pierce.

I'm the executive director of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Virginia, and we serve five different clubs.

We have over 2,000 members at all the Boys and Girls Clubs combined.

From where shall I click?

These are just a few images of our summer program.

I'm here to do two things.

I want to give you an overview of our program for the summer and then I want to say thank you because you did two really good things.

You allowed us to run a summer reading program that we've never done before and also to stay open until 11 o'clock on Friday and Saturday nights, which is a first for us.

Here are just a few of our partners.

I want to highlight the first row, second column, because that symbol is many, many.

That's the Charlottesville Police, that's this entity here, and also the second one down, first column, the City Schools.

These two police, the City Council and the schools have been integral to what we've been achieving this summer.

At the Charlottesville Club we were open from before 8 o'clock in the morning to well after 5 o'clock and that was for over 360 registered members this summer.

We ran for 10 weeks and our goal was to be educational, healthy and fun.

Outcomes that we have our eyes on nationally show that 30 to 40 percent of kids are overweight or obese.

and that 75% of kids are graduating from high school on time.

Fortunately the second number is much better in this community, proud to say.

We are working with the Charlottesville Action on Obesity to track the first one up there and in some cases

Local data are showing that up to 50% in some subgroups, especially African American males, are overweight or obese in this area.

So those are just two areas that we're looking at very carefully at the Boys and Girls Club.

I'd like to talk a little bit about our on-time graduation effort.

We did three things this summer that really advanced our effort.

And the first one, with your help, we really made a dent in what's traditionally called the summer slide.

That's when kids, because they don't have access to educational travel or they're not in a print-rich environment, they tend to fall behind their same-age peers by about three months.

The second, we wanted to give kids access to college campuses in a town outside of their own.

And lastly, we wanted to provide them career speakers.

Here's a picture of a couple of our kids.

We went to six different

local destinations including McIntyre Recycling Center and the Charlottesville Albemarle Rescue Squad.

And this, believe it or not, was an effort to reduce the learning gap.

So one thing we know is that if kids don't have a framework to hang their knowledge on based on their actual real life experience that it's harder for them to learn new stuff.

So we reversed the traditional model that existed when I was an elementary kid and we went on the field trip first and then we did the reading, non-fiction reading second for two weeks at a time.

We kept the reading theme based and it was amazing.

Here's a couple of different shots of things that kids did when they got back to the club.

We were really happy with our overall effort and here comes the big news.

90% of our kids showed no learning loss through this program.

90%, that's kids that you helped us to reach that would have otherwise started school,

three months behind their same age peers.

We track them in fluency, comprehension, we haven't really found a great way to track them in background knowledge yet, but we're working on it.

And I say we, I mean, I'm going to name them specifically Aggie Craft and Gertrude Ivory from the city schools as well as Mike Irani from the Albemarle County Schools.

We had a committee of school people as well as club people to help us put this program together.

So it really was a collaborative effort.

The woman in the lower left picture there is a member of Lynx Incorporated who is a local service entity that we found that found us this summer and they provided us outstanding volunteer support to help us reduce the ratio of kids to adults and really help kids get their eyes on text very frequently over the summertime.

So again, the model was travel first, read about it second, and build all of that great knowledge that we know kids don't get unless they're actively engaged.

Last fun statistic for summer reading program is that 54 kids set reading goals at the Cherry Avenue Club and together, age appropriately, they wrote over a thousand books.

54 kids, a thousand books.

These are not Pride and Prejudice.

They are age appropriate, age appropriate pieces that they're reading.

Next is college tours.

We took 60 teens on three different college tours over the summer, and that was an outstanding experience for them.

I'm not going to go as deeply into that because it's not the purpose of what you have helped us to support, but it's generally what we've done with our older group.

And then lastly, we had 100 kids see four different career speakers.

Anyone from an artillery Navy officer in the lower right to a former college basketball coach, upper left.

Achieving our goals in healthy lifestyles, we focused on fitness, nutrition, we specifically did a health fair for 250 kids, and then with your help, really focused on social decision making by being in the right place in the right time.

Again, I said we had over 360 registered members.

250 was our average daily attendance.

So 100% of our kids who attended, they got 45 minutes of fitness activity every single day of the 50 days that we were open over summer.

In addition to that, we had some special programs such as the Women's Formiler Program, which paired up a one-on-one community mentor with a young lady aged 10 to 14.

We had eight of them.

All eight of them completed the Formiler.

With their team, they are called the Pink Pacers.

They came up with the name themselves.

We also have 12 kids that are training for our upcoming cycling challenge, which will be happening on September 16th.

That's 12 riders, teens, you have to be a teenager to participate in that program, and they're training from anywhere from 25 miles to 75 miles.

Some of our kids are riding

and they're training with great community mentors to achieve fitness levels that they've never achieved before.

Also we had 60 kids two times a week at Tonsler Park and working with your parks department.

We have Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday programs over there.

We hire a certified tennis pro named James Bland who's been instrumental for us for the past five summers.

and I'm very proud of this next one.

Here's a picture of two of the six teams that were in our first ever lacrosse league that we ran at the Boys and Girls Club at Cherry Avenue.

That was a summer program in partnership with the Lacrosse the Nations and that involved over 60 kids who now own a lacrosse stick that's theirs to keep forever.

Two days a week ran nutrition classes.

We used the Buford cafeteria as well as our own cafeteria space to educate kids on nutrition and they were, as you can see, actively cooking.

So two days a week, 60 kids.

And every Friday we ran a farmer's market.

Ms. Smith is no stranger to that one.

Thank you for coming out.

And there's a picture in the upper right of our farmer's market that our kids manage and run.

Also, school system resources are well used.

This is a picture of the schoolyard garden.

In addition to frequent trips to the schoolyard garden in partnership with them, we also took frequent trips to local farms to talk about how food is grown and actually our kids love those field trips because they got the snack on them as well.

Our health fair for the seventh year.

UVA Health Systems helped us bring together six community agencies, and again, over 250 kids learned a little bit more about keeping their bodies safe and their communities safe, as well as participating in a Zumba class with the UVA football team.

And I have some great video of that, but there's no time to show you right now.

But here's just the culmination of all that, and we gave out some healthy lifestyles prizes.

Also want to point out that

I feel a lot safer at work now because the local Red Cross helped us to train hands-only CPR in the lower right there.

And my office is right downstairs from where those kids are after school, so I feel much more healthy, or much more safe.

And here's the final highlight that I just want to, I can't say thank you enough for helping us do this because it really was an amazing program for us.

Ten straight weeks, we were open Friday and Saturday night from 7 to 11 p.m. and we saw over, what do I have, let me not get to that yet, in addition to the bull riding and the slam dunk contest and the laser tag, things that are not pictured up there, we ran a Monopoly tournament

A trivia night, we were in three different dances, one of which was shortened by, there was a stormy night, I'm not sure if you remember, but three dances all together and we provided dinner for all of the kids who attended.

So the results are in, we have over 700 teens, 700 individual teens

who participated in this program, who attended at least one of the Friday Saturday Night programs.

Thank you for making this a safer community with more options for kids.

Absolutely amazing.

If clapping were allowed, I would be clapping.

Nightly, we ranged anywhere from 30 to 300.

depending on what we were happening to be running and the regulars we had about 75 kids who really were frequent attendees of the Friday Saturday night program.

I cannot wait to try this again next summer because we had a little bit of a short time frame in ramping up to it.

We didn't know if we were going to be able to pull it off and with your help we did.

I think with a little bit more lead time it can just be that much greater.

I had never been to a neon dance before.

I really enjoyed watching one.

Our youth council, which was made up of kids from seven different local high schools, had input into creating this dance.

We never would have come up with this idea on our own.

But with these different representatives from all over, we were very successful in putting on something that they felt very invested in creating themselves.

And as a veteran of many, a middle school and high school dance supervisor,

I can say this is one of the top two I've ever been to.

I was very proud to be a part of it.

Here's a shot of our open gym.

This is the most typical scene on a Friday or Saturday night during our program.

And lastly, our aspiration is to instill a desire to give back and this was the scene every day at lunchtime.

We're very proud of the kids that choose to give back and so many of the people that allow us to do what we do model that behavior for us.

including you through funding of this program.

These are kids who every day helped get lunch ready.

Lunch was provided for free for all of our kids during the summer.

Most of the preparation was done by the kids.

Once it was delivered, they took it off the truck, they set it up, they stuffed the bags, they made sure that the beverage table was ready and you really do start to develop

Leaders through some of these programs that we think are kind of incidental.

The farmer's market is one example and here preparing for the other 250 kids that are in the club that day is another.

So here's a couple happy smiles I want to leave you with.

These are a couple shots from the tennis program at Tonsler.

I'd like to close by saying thank you for investing in area kids and by investing in the Boys and Girls Club Summer Program.

Thank you.

I'm proud to say we have an agreement with both the Albemarle and Charlottesville City Schools where they've agreed to share with us their PALS data where they give a PALS assessment at the end of the school year and at the beginning.

It's basically literacy screening and we have a partnership with our committee members, not just school districts, but the actual people who are on our summer reading committee where they will share with us the end of year and beginning of year data.

So we have two bookends.

We have the PALS data, which is the end of school and back to school, and then we have our internal data.

And what I shared with you is our internal data, which only focuses on reading fluency and reading comprehension.

Thank you.

Have you done that before?

We piloted last summer.

We did it with 15 kids.

We thought we wanted to have something to bring to potential supporters.

And it was good.

We ramped it up a lot this summer.

We did times 10.

We don't have any data on our specific kids.

It's really amazing.

I mean, it's almost as if you're providing school for, I mean, you know, enhanced.

We have a vision next summer to make this a community-wide effort if there is a will to do it.

And many agencies can do it.

No, I think the obligation that out-of-school time providers have to think in those terms is becoming more and more obvious.

So our board of directors was very interested in learning more about what the differences were that were created by not having an active summer learning program.

And we've always had books that we put in kids' hands, but we were just more purposeful and included all the people who were having success already.

Our school systems are a great example of what you can do when you put effort and expertise in the same place.

So we thought it was our obligation and we didn't want to create it from our perspective because they know more than we do.

Now what we did want to do is not lose any of the flavor of the club and we didn't want to go all day with school.

So one hour, 45 minutes to 60 minutes every day, the kids actually loved it.

Yeah, I think the state government

doesn't allow our city schools to have an extended school year.

And it's something a lot of people realize would be helpful to a lot of kids.

It doesn't?

Only by certain exceptions can you do it, but so far they've not been able to go further than that.

And I think this shows how we can respond as a community instead of just railing against the state, oh darn, we can't do it.

Just do it and not have to do it within the city school system.

but in cooperation with the city school system because like you said they're the people who know kind of a what's needed and have a lot of expertise in doing it.

I hope my staff will stick around.

Just one more observation.

You know, I've been on city council in my seventh year and every single summer that I've been on city council we get complaints from people about kids that are causing problems and

particularly in the downtown area.

And there was a summer a couple of years ago when we were getting dozens of such complaints.

This is the first time, the first summer that I've been on city council where I haven't received a single complaint.

Not to say that it wasn't happening at all, but

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

They do, and there were dollars built into this budget for transportation, so you already helped there.

Certainly,

We'll put that one out for discussion.

And I also want to comment, their model of partnership is amazing.

To see all of those different partners you have is fantastic.

And this is real quick.

At some point, I guess you shouldn't be considered a pilot anymore.

I mean, that's a bigger question, but is this going to be something we fund on a pilot basis, or at some point we decide that this is what you would come in and get permanent funding for every summer?

And it's something we can talk about as we talk about ABRT funding that this was very much focused towards summer and late night.

Okay, thank you very much.

We make all the good news.

Seems like there's always less crowd by the time I get here.

Mayor Huja, members of council, it's a pleasure tonight to talk about our internship program, which you all have sponsored now for the seventh summer.

and I'm pleased to say that we continue to be very successful providing that to youth in our area.

I want to say that the program started with a pilot with 18 kids, run out of the city manager's office.

16.

16, I think.

16?

I'll have to double check, but we'll go with the...

Mr. Norris, he was certainly one of the founding fathers and has steadily grown over time.

We're purposefully a bit smaller this year due to some funding constraints and wanting to focus more on city kids by just a few, I think about 30 participants.

but we still served 158 kids this summer.

We show you there in the data that the vast majority of those kids are from the city and we're serving a huge number of kids from low wealth areas and minorities as has always been the case with the program.

About 87% of the kids who were in the program were able to complete the entire six-week cycle, and that's in keeping with about the 91%, which has been the average for the program over the past seven years.

It takes a lot of partnership for this program to run.

and you can imagine whether it was 16 or 18 placements originally with 158 it takes a lot of businesses from our community in order to make it work.

Originally the idea is we could place all these kids in city department offices or at the non-profits and obviously the scale doesn't allow for that any longer but it's really been a positive expansion and partnership with the

private businesses in the community and in fact that allows for more kids to continue a relationship where they actually become workers afterwards.

I think that's probably an important part of the evolution of our story and that we need to be bringing you data in the future about how can kids stay employed.

Okay, well I like to anticipate these things, that's good.

I do want you all to know also that summer's not the only story for the internship program that we do run during the school year for what I'll call vended slots, kids generally from the child welfare, juvenile court, or special education systems.

Four eight week programs,

which have the capacity to serve between 25 and 30 kids each.

So in total we're talking about between 250 and 300 kids throughout the course of the year who receive paid internship experiences.

And I want to emphasize that of course it is a generous appropriation that you all make to the summer program each year.

but of the $121,000 that you appropriate, almost $95,000 of that ends up in the pockets of kids as a reward stipend for the good work that they do.

In addition to the actual work experience, each of the kids has to attend a workplace readiness group for six weeks and our staff conducts that group also in partnership with the UVA Community Credit Union

which has generously flexed some of their account standards to get kids banked.

And I think that, you know, we'll continue to talk with them as we launch the Bank On product later this year as they are a partner in that launch too about going further with these kids and their families in the future with both bank accounts and financial literacy.

I hope you'll acknowledge tonight also that only three months before we had to launch this I had to bring on a new supervisor and Misty Graves is here tonight to answer your questions.

I have some comments because I went to the orientation and to the graduation and I was so impressed with it.

You did an amazing job, Missy.

I mean it was just the organization of it was impeccable.

The kids were excited.

At the graduation I was talking to some of the kids just as we were waiting for it to begin and a number of them had been offered jobs.

talking to supervisors.

It was just great and thank you.

I have a comment.

I don't know if it's because Mr. Jones is on vacation but I somehow was asked to give the commencement speech at your graduation and it was a real eye-opener for me to see how complicated a program it is but also just how everyone, every player was enthused about it.

So I am really intrigued about what follow-up you're going to get in terms of the long-term job placements, because the private employers that were on stage were just as committed as anyone else to make sure that these kids succeed.

And I think that's a story that's not told enough about the private businesses in this community are really, really willing to put their shoulders to the plow.

So thanks for putting everything together.

It was an honor, like Ms. Smith said.

And again, and you've already alluded to it before, Mr. Murphy, that just thinking about how

We'd certainly love to be able to track that specifically with the kids from our cohort.

What we know is that nationally there's a lot of work on that done and that this is a real positive impact for kids as long as during school times they don't work more than 10 hours a week.

And then there seems to be a change where it is not a positive impact.

So we want to scale school year internships to 10 hours or less for that reason.

Mr. Lewis?

I just want to say, I say it every year, I think in terms of bank for our buck, this is quite possibly the most important, valuable thing that we do.

I mean, I just love this program and I'm glad to see it's grown over the years.

I'm really pleased to hear about the progress that's been made on getting kids accounts, because I know Holly Edwards pushed that year after year after year, and the connection with the credit union and the potential connection with Bank On,

I think the more we can do to get kids into the sort of mainstream financial markets and getting the financial education and I think that's all critical.

I also wanted to second Mr. Norris's comment, especially the last part, financial literacy and bank account.

I hope you can do.

So require a checking account?

Yes.

Directly deposited.

I think it is important to learn the financial responsibilities in managing accounts

and then I think become more responsible that way.

So as the person who sits in our offices till well after five o'clock on a lot of Friday evenings, I bet Ms. Graves would love to see us direct deposit those checks.

And I'd like to, for any business people who may still be watching on TV and I don't know if anybody's sitting in the audience, I think that the comments that a couple of folks have made and you alluded to that more and more businesses have become involved in this as hosts for these kids.

I think that that's exciting for us because it's a way that we can grow the program, but I think it's also just a really good opportunity for businesses in the community to kind of train children up in the way that they should go, you know, to kind of really get kids young and teach them, you know, work ethic.

And these kids are actually doing real work, so it's not like it's just, you know, you're just paying for a kid to be there.

I was in one local business this summer.

and the proprietor came up to me and he said, I just want to thank you for the summer internship program.

Wait a second.

He called this kid and he brought him out and he said, this is my intern and he's fantastic.

I don't know how I would have survived the summer without him.

Just a piece of data.

It is in your folder.

There are 85 internship sites in the city, public and private.

So if there are people who are listening, they'll think for next year to be becoming one of the sites.

So again, last two programs which have been presented have been a really example of how we're trying to reach the youth, especially in the summer and work program.

Yeah, nice back to back.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Now we have one item which has been removed from our consent agenda and now we're going to discuss that.

It is relating to Charlottesville Housing Fund.

Good evening.

Item before us is the reallocation of some Charlottesville Housing Fund dollars that have been previously set aside for other purposes that are no longer needed because they've been achieved in other ways and also requests for allocation of CHF dollars for some new activities.

I'll just hit on those and highlight those fairly quickly.

The reallocation of the dollars, we had actually three sources.

One was from Elliott Avenue, the north side of Elliott Avenue, and most of you are familiar with the RFP that we did soliciting proposals for developer team to come in and look at housing development on that three and a half acres that are beside the cemetery.

Because of that we had two allocations that were previously made and dates and so forth are highlighted in the memo but had funds that were no longer needed.

We did want to set aside and leave $25,000 because our agreement with the developer, Southern Development and Habitat for Humanity had a contingency clause in it

which if they decided or elected not to move forward that we would agree to pay, the city would agree to pay up to $25,000 of shared environmental study costs and we would share basically in those costs.

So just for insurance purposes, you know, we don't know what will happen.

Hopefully we won't need those dollars, but we're going to set those aside and leave those for later.

So that left us a little over $70,000, $70,743.60 exactly.

Another source was from our Nunley Avenue project, Nunley Street project, excuse me.

We had developed some townhouses over there, a total of three.

And the negotiated price with Habitat for Humanity was actually $5,000 less than the budget we had.

So it was a savings, just been there and we hadn't done anything with it or reallocated it back into the housing fund.

The last part was for the housing inventory and land use survey that was done.

We had again negotiated a contract with the Thomas Jefferson Planning and Development District and had a savings of a little over $10,000.

So those funds, it's really kind of a housekeeping measure, but it's funds that are no longer needed for those purposes and we want to put them back just into general circulation for allocation for housing projects.

The second part of our request goes to new allocation, and we're specifically asking for three things.

$200,000 for rehab, housing rehab.

It's been a long-term priority of council as well as the Housing Advisory Committee.

It is an activity which directly benefits city residents, which I know is also important.

Secondly, we're looking for money for the H-O-M-E, our home,

Home program match.

And our grants coordinator had given me that amount.

It's exactly $58,000.

And due to timing, this really covers two fiscal years.

So it just so worked out that we didn't need the money until now.

So we're just now asking for it, but that is for two fiscal years.

and lastly $30,000 for miscellaneous training and other administrative expenses.

What we found in particularly implementing section 3 is that we just didn't have money in the budget to do things like we have an upcoming training for contractors and just

Luring them in by providing cookies You know drinks and refreshment that sort of thing.

We didn't even have funds to do that and so we were having to kind of pull and and prod and Use things as we as we could to make that happen, but we really need a budget for that as well as for training Tierra Howard the second three coordinator recently got a chance to go to

to Tampa to become a certified section 3 coordinator.

She went, took the test, and did become certified, but that was training that basically, you know, we had to allocate otherwise, but we want to have funds in there for those specific things as well as I'm in the process of taking some housing development finance courses.

I just took the first one last week, as a matter of fact.

Took the test, don't know if I passed yet, but

Very hopeful.

And there's a series of four of those.

Yeah, since I asked for it to come off, I'll start.

Can we get a copy of this survey?

this inventory.

Home money.

That's 58 plus.

We allocated home funds, it seems to me, last year.

This is a match.

I know it's a match.

So what is the total of that and how is that being used?

I'm sorry, I probably should know this from what we decided.

No.

No.

As proposed, at least for the last year, it was to use the funds for purchase of lots on

Harris Street, Land Trust, yes ma'am to use with the Land Trust.

So that 58 is going in addition to what's in the home program.

That's right.

So 200 is going to AHIP.

There is an allocation of funds specifically for LEAP activities but one of the things that we did really over the past, I guess this summer, past few months has been to work out an informal agreement because we don't really have a mechanism by which to require LEAP and AHIP to work together but the three of us, the city, AHIP and LEAP sat down at the table

to try to iron out a procedure by which we want to make sure that we're doing as many energy efficiency improvements as we can and partnering with LEAP to one, do those energy assessments and so forth to make sure that we're getting what we need.

Anyway, we did come up with a system and while it is not formalized in the

Well, since I've been on board I've become quite active and involved Do they have enough resources to be able to handle additional work?

Yes sir, they've basically exhausted the funds that we've already provided them.

They've already identified houses, projects that are in progress and in place now that are being implemented and finalized.

Without these funds, essentially they're about to hit a point where they don't have any money.

And that's including CDBG and home funds from prior years and all that have been hanging out there.

I would love to have a report on what the need is out there, what's been identified, if it's been identified as a total need, what we have been able to do, but really where do we stand in terms of, just within the city.

Well, the housing survey essentially gave us some information about need and that was a windshield survey but essentially what they did is looked at the exterior of homes and made some determinations about deferred maintenance and other needs.

That's not quite as definitive as

Having a good and reliable list, which AHIP has, there's been some concerns with it, need to have that information up to date, which is an ongoing concern of mine.

AHIP is aware of that.

But they do have a waiting list where people apply and get on the list basically and just wait for the funds to become available.

They're certified at that time relative to our income requirements and so forth and the houses are inspected, but typically they just, as they're on that list, they just get, the houses age more and there's more problems.

So there's sort of two sources of information.

One would be self

Those who apply, and the other would be this survey that at least will identify at some level what...

Yes, sir.

In fact, the council approved that.

I don't remember the date, but it's been a couple of months ago, probably back in June, July, for $50,000.

And that program, we could put every bit of the housing fund dollars in that, I think, and still use it effectively every year.

I actually have one comment and one question.

We often talk about how we want to be a green city and looking at the energy impacts of some of the renovations and I think that it's really one of the things that I really like about AHIP is that they say the greenest building is one that's already built.

To tear things down and build new even if they're really eco-friendly is often more

Taxic on the environment than fixing an old house.

And so I think that what we're doing by supporting AHIP in fixing old houses

not only kind of retains some of the kind of integrity and character of our community and helps people in their homes to feel safe and housed, but is a really green thing for us to do.

It's called sustainable preservation.

But I also just have a real short specific question.

Is this

Does this include, I know that they were talking at one point about doing a kind of block by block program.

Is that this or is that just?

No ma'am.

Okay, alright.

Thank you.

And I have one other question.

Hopefully so.

There were three units built.

That was basically a gift for special needs housing, which was again a focus of both council and the housing advisory committee.

But the two end units are up for sale.

and hopefully are on the MLS as we speak.

But they are being sold through the land trust.

This is the first time we've tried to sell anything where we're selling the improvements but not the land.

So this is kind of a test for the Charlottesville market.

So we will actually basically get for those two structures, what we lent out for the construction and land, we'll at least get some part of that.

Back, okay.

Is there a second?

Second.

Discussion?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor.

I would like to bring to the Council's attention the item concerning additional fund request from MACA to fund ten slots at the CATEC certified nurse aid program and that is my understanding that this funding, it seems to be two different kinds of

parts to the story.

Initially there was funds available that came in through the Virginia Employment Commission through their WIA voucher system and there were seven slots from that agency and NACA matched with three and they were able to cobble together ten candidates and ten slots with CATEC.

My understanding is that money had come in sometime around June and then there was baton school funding for about $15,000.

So I bring this up because it's out of the budget sequence that we're typically familiar with with the ABRT review process.

However, my understanding is that since then

that program hasn't, has already been filled, those 10 slots, but that CATEC has agreed to provide another 10 additional slots.

Okay.

Good evening.

I have Brenda Desabrie with me.

We do have 10 slots.

Bruce Bothelman, who is the director of the adult education program, is going to put together another class just for these 10 people.

So this class gets them to a point where they are then employable.

It's one of the fastest growing

employment opportunities for people without college.

Yes, and above minimum wage.

Oh good, so it does cover the exam as well.

Is there a transportation issue?

Um, CATEC, we have had some transportation issues too, but they've been resolved luckily.

Usually within the group, maybe somebody won't have a car and they'll pull together.

We are not

providing any kind of supportive services this time.

Who would monitor the program?

I'm sorry?

CATEC usually, they call us.

I mean, you know, we get daily reports, weekly reports.

If a student doesn't show up, there's always somebody.

And these people who we have identified, these potential class members or participants, they are most of them part of public housing and or the social services.

Is this a grant to CATEC or is it a grant to MACA?

We won't benefit from this grant.

It's just for the students and I mean, you know Right because we yeah, we have the contracts with the state troopers and with the health department.

but they are part of a MACA program.

I just wanted to sort of be, they're identifiable people.

I was just looking for security that they're, yeah, that somebody is, okay, so it's not just 10 random people.