City Council Meeting   11/5/2012

I welcome to the city council meeting for November 5th.

as they helped to orchestrate the 2012 Tech Tour.

The October 18th event hosted over 400 students for the second straight year.

A few highlights from the day include 402 students from 21 area schools participated.

85 of those students were from Guford and CHS.

Sixty-three technology-based companies and organizations were toured.

Eighty-six separate tours were taken by local businesses.

Tours included a live crash test at the International Institute of Highway Safety, how apps are created in a downtown Charlottesville company, access to secure facilities at Engic, Cardboard Safari, Crown Auto, Custom Link, Hemashir, Xigem, and Indoor Biotechnologies, and more.

475 lunches were devoured and 60 volunteers were mobilized.

Many minds were challenged and two $2,500 scholarships will be awarded next spring to Tech Tour attendees.

A quote from one of our school chaperones.

Thank you for another wonderful, successful Tech Tour.

I had the privilege of being with a world-class group of students on an amazing trip to see how technology impacts employment and industry in Charlottesville.

The Charlottesville area provides numerous opportunities for all to learn, grow, and experience, and this tour is indeed one of those must experience opportunities for students.

That was Maria Lewis from Charlottesville City Schools.

So as everyone can see, this event really makes an impression.

Our sponsorship of this event allows us to continue to provide unique workplace experiences for area students.

It also plays an important role in preparing our future workforce.

Before I start my announcement, I'll say that I got a chance to meet the two scholarship recipients of last year's scholarship from that group.

And they were very impressive young people.

One wants to be a farmer, and I think the other an engineer.

Anyway, they were both very kind of self-possessed young people, and I was pleased that we could be part of that.

So I have a proclamation announcing Nurses Week.

Are there any nurses here?

I know we have somebody here, Sarah Halliwell, who we'll accept at the end.

You can stay seated while I read it because it's a little long.

Nurse Practitioner Week.

Whereas there are more than 6,400 licensed nurse practitioners practicing in the Commonwealth of Virginia and more than 150,000 practicing in the United States, and whereas nurse practitioners provide quality health care to the citizens of Charlottesville and throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia by diagnosing and treating a full range of health problems and providing a unique approach that stresses health promotion, care, and cure,

and whereas nurse practitioners advocate for the improvement of health and access to care for all Virginians by practicing in community centers, hospitals, academic centers, long-term care facilities, VA and military hospitals, free clinics and urgent care clinics and whereas nurse practitioners are charting a new course with the passage of House Bill 346.

Now therefore be resolved that I, Mr. Satyendra Singh Huja, hereby declare November 11, 2017, 2012 as Nurse Practitioner Week.

in recognition of the many contributions that this dedicated group of healthcare professionals makes to the health and wellbeing of the people in this community and around the country.

My name is Becky Compton.

I'm the Piedmont Region Virginia Council of Nurse Practitioner President, and this is a great honor.

Thank you so much for doing this for us.

We are certainly working on increasing access to health care for the citizens of Virginia, specifically for Charlottesville.

And as you mentioned, we are working in a variety of settings, providing that health care.

Thank you.

And I'd also just like to make an announcement.

If anyone has not noticed, tomorrow is election day.

Polls will be opening at 6am.

They'll be open until 7.

If you're in line at 7, you can stay.

So I urge everyone to go and exercise your right to vote for whichever candidate you choose or candidates that you choose.

Anyone who knows me knows that I care very deeply for one of the candidates, but I also really care more about our community and just urge everyone to remember that no matter what side you hold in this election,

If I can add, that was beautifully said, but if anybody who's in the room or is watching tonight does not know where they're supposed to go tomorrow to vote, Google has made it very easy.

If you have internet access, you can simply Google the word vote and enter your address and it'll tell you exactly where to go, what the hours are, who's on the ballot, et cetera.

I saw your ad on Facebook.

That's right.

Very good.

Yes, I am honored to announce, to recognize some of our golfers, our young golfers in our community.

And first I'm going to start off with the Charlottesville High School golf team, who on September 20th, 2012 at the Lake Monticello Golf Course, the Charlottesville High School varsity golf team won its first ever Jefferson District Championship.

Let's do the 10th first.

The team was coached by Dick Engle and Josh O'Grady.

Congratulations.

Now I have two special recognitions, some of the same members of the Charlottesville High School varsity golf team.

The first is a first tee recognition for Philip Hoffman.

Okay, Philip, you've got to stand up again.

This past summer, Phillip Hoffman, a six-year participant in the first T of Charlottesville and 10th grade student at Charlottesville High School, represented the Charlottesville chapter at two national academies.

In June, Phillip was one of 52 national finalists to attend the first T training program at the Hank Haney International Junior Golf Academy in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

In July, he was one of 40 selected from the southeastern region of the United States to attend the Ace and Eagle Academy at the Tennessee Golf House in Franklin, Tennessee.

Both academies provided leadership training, selected life skills, core values, and advanced golf instruction.

Philip did an outstanding job of representing the city in his chapter.

Congratulations for a job well done.

and the second First Tee recognition I have is for Thaddeus Probst.

I hope I'm pronouncing your name properly.

This past summer, Thaddeus Probst, a five-year participant of the First Tee of Charlottesville and 10th grade student at Charlottesville High School, represented the Charlottesville chapter at two national academies.

In July, Thaddeus was one of 40, excuse me, selected from the southeastern region of the United States to attend the Ace and Eagle Academy of the Tennessee Gulf

House in Franklin, Tennessee.

During this academy, he recorded his first hole-in-one.

Also, in July, he and 95 national finalists attended the first T Life Skills and Leadership Academy at Hofstra University in Long Island, New York.

Both academies provided leadership training, selected life skills, core values, and advanced golf instruction.

Thaddeus did an outstanding job of representing the city and his chapter.

Congratulations.

And I understand everyone will be being awarded at the end of the year.

And Mr. C is here, who is the director of FIRST-T as well.

I have an announcement dealing with a very important and fun event.

This, as you know, is the 250th anniversary of our founding of Charlottesville.

So on November 11th, Sunday, November 11th, Kool & Gang will be at

at John Paul Johnson Arena.

I hope you'll all buy some tickets for that and enjoy.

It's a very important party.

It only happens once a day every 250 years.

So you're going to have to miss it.

So again, 250 together on Sunday, November 11th.

Do we call that the party of the sesquicentennium or something?

There is a civic ceremony the next day at 11 a.m., I'm looking at George Benford here, at the pavilion, is that right?

So come to that, too.

There'll be lots to celebrate.

It's also Veterans Day?

You don't want to miss a chance.

Thank you.

Any other announcements from the council members or staff?

So the next item is the matters by the public.

If you will come forward and speak.

We have three minutes to speak.

Is there a sign up list?

Mayor Huja and members of the City Council and my name is Paul Long and I live at 1410 Grady Avenue here in the city and I'm coming here tonight to make a few remarks at City Council because I read in the October 17th edition of the Daily Progress a summary of the report that Nelson Nygren will be making in reference to the consulting work that they're doing for the public transit system

and two of the things that upset me very much was that they were recommending that the buses start running later in the morning and stop running early in the evening as they also recommended eliminating Route 9 because they say only three or four people are riding the bus and I think that's very counterproductive and the city of Charlottesville is no longer an idyllic

Southern College Town.

We're very much an increasing urban area and we need an increase in public transportation.

The buses should be running earlier in the morning.

They should be running later in the night so people can get to work.

The Route 9, I happen to take that.

It's a CATEC corner from where I live at.

I took it at the fourth year they were coming into town, there were eight people on the bus.

I don't know where they got that statistic from.

Granted, there's many times, maybe only one or two are on the bus, but a lot of the students from Charlottesville High School use it and a lot of people use it to get back to work and to come from work.

Public transportation, in order to increase, we need more funding.

And I realize that.

And I am hoping that the city will direct their legislative action team to push for increased funding from the General Assembly.

And I'm going to say something that may not be polite.

A lot of, the University of Virginia possesses a lot of land in the city of Charlottesville that is not tax-rateable.

You know, I think that the Commonwealth of Virginia has a responsibility to step in with additional funding because a lot of the land that the UVA has, we're not getting tax-rateables from.

I think they have a moral and legal obligation to help fund public transportation and probably other issues as well.

I also want to tell everybody within range of my voice the Transit Riders Association of Charlottesville is having a rally this coming Saturday, November 10th in front of the Albemarle County office building right across from Wendy's from 2 to 4 p.m.

A lot of the urban growth that's happening is in Albemarle County.

I think Albemarle County is being very irresponsible.

We're not stepping forth and offering additional funding because we need additional bus routes in Albemarle County and they have a moral obligation to join and help fund that as well.

and I think that the city council should keep on pressing for the creation of the transit authority and I'm going to recommend something that I recommended three years ago.

I don't think it should just be Albemarle County and the city of Charlottesville.

I think we should invite the surrounding counties to join in as well.

On an anecdotal level, I work at UVA Medical Center.

I talk to a lot of people they know because of my big mouth with the issue that I'm an inter-resident.

And I ask people, would you be willing to take a bus in to work and a bus to go home?

And a lot of people say yes.

And a lot of people live in the surrounding counties.

We need to increase public transportation.

You know, this is a world-class city.

and in many ways we act like it, but in terms of public transportation, we need a lot of work to do.

If you ever tried crossing Ryar Road in 29, you're literally taking your life in your hand.

People have gotten hit, people have gotten killed, you know, we've got to get people out of their cars at least some of the times.

Thank you very much for your time.

The mayor already stole most of my thunder tonight, but I just wanted to reiterate the 250th Gale event on Sunday night.

It's going to be a tremendous night of fun.

It's not just a concert.

I don't want our citizens to think of this as just being cool in the gang.

This is going to be Charlottesville High School jazz.

It's going to be UVA involved with it, with doing glee clubs and singing.

It's going to be a wonderful evening with 180 when it's a great dance band.

It's going to be playing prior to Cooling the Gang.

It's going to be a video talking about the history of 250 years of Charlottesville and this wonderful city that we love so much.

So it's a celebration, not a concert.

But it's a celebration, so please, everyone, support us, come out, buy your tickets, they're as cheap as $10, everyone can afford $10.

Let's have a great night and culminate what this great year has been.

At Sunday night, November the 11th, the gates will open for the concert at 6.15 for the reception at 5.30.

And where could people buy tickets?

Mr. Falls, you'll have to buy one ticket before you can speak.

Actually, before I talk, I'd like to make a public announcement.

I listened to Paul Long talk, and a public announcement is

The chart is the citizens representation on the Planning Commission, I mean not on the Planning Commission, PJ MPO and with transportation and this Wednesday night at 7 o'clock we will be discussing transportation issues.

Steve Williams will be presenting about six different transport possibilities and their cost basis.

And if any of you are watching on TV, it's a citizens committee.

Please come give us your opinions.

7 o'clock, Wednesday night.

But where?

Where?

TJPDC conference room.

Thanks.

Now, what I want to say, I see that Jason Vandiver has assumed the title of city treasurer, even though Judge Hochschild has not yet decided if there should be an early election.

Moreover, he's mailing propaganda about his qualifications at city expense.

It doesn't take long to ensure that family members of the Democratic Party, leaders, take over our city constitutional offices.

I remember asking you at the last council meeting, I think that was October 15th, to schedule an election for the vacated post of city treasurer.

You declined.

What were your reasons?

Well, one reason was that scheduling an election in February was far too soon.

We could not be prepared.

Of course, many European countries hold national elections with less than a month's notice.

But in a one-party town such as Charlottesville, that would be impossible.

As I recall, a second reason was that spending $30,000 for an election was just too expensive.

Remember?

Yet later that week, less than five days later, the city announced a $100,000 incentive prize as a reward for suggestions about relocating the city market.

in spite of having a stable of four very well paid professional AICP certified planners working for Missy Creasy, our planning manager, you think nothing of blowing $100,000 because an amateur might just come up with a better plan.

Mr. Huja, how many people did you have working when you designed the downtown mall?

That many?

$100,000, but only $30,000 to hold an election, the bedrock of democracy?

No, of course not.

Good evening, Brandon Collins, 418 Fairway Avenue.

I've lived in Charlottesville my entire life.

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

And I've got way too much to say.

I've missed probably two months worth of city council meetings, so I hope you miss me.

I did want to say... You still have to be with us.

I'm sorry?

You still have to be with us.

Yeah, I know.

Well, I might come back later.

You know I did want to say just sitting here I truly realize how much I miss Holly Edwards on this council for a number of reasons and part of that's her commitment to low-income people and African-Americans and to ex-felons in our community but also because at every meeting during the announcement she would bring up stuff about the schools and what's going home to parents and I just realized that as I was sitting here

and in the spirit of Holly Edwards, I would like to say that quarterly reports went out and all parents should be on the lookout for that to take a look at their kids grades and their progress.

I know mine could have done better and I'm on TV to remind her that she can still do better and I'm proud of her but I'll be much more proud when she improves her grades a little bit.

Anyways, I would like to speak first about transit and the disappointment I have with the Nelson Nygaard study.

It seems that they've basically taken the current budget and tried to rework things and address a couple of really important and good things, which is having two-way service and more frequency.

But they've done that at the expense of a lot of stuff, and a lot of that is access, a lot of that is hours, like Mr. Long mentioned.

It had been my hope that they were coming with some ideas about additional funding and that they could look and plan for something really amazing and also have some funding options available to you all to be able to meet a much more expanded transit service.

It seems the way they have it now that overall you're getting

an overall reduction of service in a number of ways and some of that relates to people with disabilities in that there will be much longer distances between bus stops and I think there are some neighborhoods that are really left out in terms of like who's living there what their disabilities may be what kind of elderly folks are in those neighborhoods and low-income neighborhoods in particular seem to be getting shut out and could

are totally rearranged and these are mostly people who are transit dependent.

So I would really hope that that can become a part of that situation.

As Mr. Long mentioned, you know, there are other funding options and we fully recognize that and we really hope you'll look into some of those things and then try to craft a world-class transit system.

Some of that I'm happy to see in the legislative agenda, particularly the request for funding for the Regional Transportation Authority.

That's a great move and I'm glad to see that in there.

And with both the Planning District agenda and the City of Charlottesville legislative agendas,

I'm pretty pleased with pretty much everything that's in there but I am thinking that there could be so much more in there and and it seems like you know so often we come to this to this council and ask for things and the answer is always well the Dillon rule says we can't do that or you have to go to the state and so many of those issues aren't really reflected in that and one of those would be living wage which is something that this council has talked a lot and a lot a lot about and that the state of Commonwealth of Virginia

does have the ability to raise the minimum wage and that's something that I would love to see in your minimum legislative agenda as well as increasing the pay for tipped wage employees who in Virginia get paid $2.13 an hour.

That is the federal minimum for tipped wage employees.

It's been that way since 1977.

And in a town like Charlottesville where you've got billions of restaurants, something should be done about that.

And I'll just come back with the rest of this.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Greg Jackson, 631 Blenheim Avenue.

I'm the president of the Belmont-Carlton Neighborhood Association.

I'm also an architect in Belmont with offices, well, office and projects in Belmont.

I'm speaking to the agenda item on the first reading of the Safe Routes to School travel plan developed for Clark School.

As evident from the included letter in the plan, the BC&A is behind the initiative as we strongly believe in a walkable and bikeable neighborhood, especially for school children and encourage any and all efforts to improve infrastructure in the neighborhood and the city.

However, we want to emphasize an item mentioned in the report that is ongoing and relevant, a relevant issue which has resurfaced lately in the BCNA monthly meetings.

In tonight's discussion about optimizing conditions for walking and biking to Clark School, we want to be sure to delineate the current school district boundaries, a school district boundary that conflicts with the intention of the plan.

The school district concerns have come out of discussions about Clark's academic performance and that of the history of the neighborhood as part of the city's 250th anniversary.

As noted in the report, the neighborhood is one of the earliest planned communities in America, as a matter of fact.

Both items of discussion resulted in a focus on the school district boundary.

Many neighbors are still baffled with the configuration of the Clark School District that extends west across town all the way to the Amtrak station on West Main Street within walking distance to other schools, yet doesn't include a large portion of the Griddick connected neighborhood starting just four blocks from Clark School south of Elliott Avenue.

Neighbors as close as this side of Belmont Park are not in the Clark District.

The historic Clark School building and grounds on Belmont and Monticello Avenue is actually positioned quite well as a walkable neighborhood school.

As stated in the report, the classic three-story 1930s red brick school building has served as an elementary school for the neighborhood for over 70 years.

And yet, to a large part, the current school district disregards obvious historic and geographic relationships to the Belmont-Carlton boundaries.

It is certainly incompatible with a comprehensive walk and bike to school intention and conversations about a cohesive neighborhood and institutions.

With the reading of this walk and bike plan, it would be irresponsible to not note the elephant in the room.

That of the disconnect between the intention of this great initiative and the ironic and odd physical restraints of the current school district boundary.

Actually, I meant to

As stated in tonight's staff report, approval of this agenda item, quote, approval of this agenda item aligns directly with the council's vision for Charlottesville to be America's healthiest city and a connected community, unquote.

We commend but also challenge the council's vision and request that the school district be studied and modified in order to truly meet these lofty and worthy goals.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Nancy Carpenter.

I'm a resident in Albemarle County.

I was going to come and have a few comments about public transit during your public comments section, but I find that there's another issue that weighs more heavily on my mind this evening, and that is that we as a community still need to provide a pillow for every head.

Last night after I finished a volunteer shift with the film festival, I was going back to my car.

And as I was going up the side street, I looked to my left and I noticed there was a man laying prone on the concrete asleep, cold concrete.

This was at 1030 at night.

And I quickly tried to decide what the options were that I could offer this gentleman.

and not deciding to call the police because I feel that the only options they would have offered him would be the Moore Center or possibly going to the hospital or down to the regional jail.

I didn't opt for that.

There was no way to get into Pacham.

So the best that I could do was to see that he had no gloves on his hands and provide them with a pair of gloves that I had in my car and a woolen blanket type scarf.

And it still upsets me this evening and I just know that you alone as a governing board cannot do it all, that we all need to pitch in in this community and still realize that we do have a homeless population.

and even though I didn't know this man, it still hurt me as if it was my brother out there.

And I was very emotional all the way to my apartment.

And I just want to reach out to anyone here in this community that we look at still providing housing first.

your planning commission will be coming up with a proposal, the plaza on West Main Street which is a development to put another 565 people possibly if they get their special use permit in an area that apparently is a growth area that's a positive move for that area but I also would like to see that you put some gumption behind the plans that you've adopted over the years that are on the city website about

wanting low income housing, wanting to decentralize pockets of poverty, wanting to help end homelessness.

And that you put some teeth behind these developments on your end that you put your, you require that there be some type of

Thank you.

Anybody else would like to speak who has not signed up?

If not, we'll close the call.

I just want to quickly say I appreciate the comments by several speakers with regard to improving public transit and we are going to be looking at that very carefully as we consider the study that we've undertaken and I agree, Mr. Long, that this is not the time to scale back transit.

If anything, we should be looking at ways to expand transit.

Let's see.

Mr. Faltz, I always appreciate the chance to be more fiscally conservative than you.

In my opinion, I once again reiterate that the idea of holding a special election in the spring just to turn around and hold another election in the fall for the same exact position in

having it cost $30,000 or more, particularly in my opinion for a position that shouldn't even be elected in the first place, I consider to be not the best use of sitting taxpayer dollars.

I'm intrigued by Mr. Collins' suggestion that the state of Virginia adopts the federal minimum wage as our minimum wage both for regular workers and for servers.

I know occasionally there have been efforts to have the state of Virginia adopt a minimum wage that exceeds the federal minimum wage.

and I'd be curious to see if that's something that our, that council might want to advocate for in our legislative agenda.

I did want to make a slight correction.

Ms. Carpenter, you said that there was no way to get this gentleman into Potsham.

Now unless things have changed since when I ran the place, Potsham does make an exception for anybody that the police bring into the shelter.

So even if they're not there by the official

closing time or opening time, which is I think six o'clock.

As long as the police escort somebody to the shelter, they will be admitted.

And also, sometimes the Moore Center is the best option for somebody, particularly if they are intoxicated.

I would much rather see them get into the detox program at the Moore Center, which does a wonderful job, and I'm not just saying that because one of my colleagues' husbands run the place, but it's actually a very well-run operation.

And so,

Okay.

Well, ditto, ditto, ditto.

I also just wanted to specifically note in response to the comment

that the transit study should have been for expansion and not just for reduction.

I actually had that conversation when they were having their open house with both one of the presenters and with our transit staff that council was quite clear in saying that we wanted also to look at what it would look like bigger, you know, if we had more to put in it, what that would look like and was told that that is a plan as part of this process.

It just hasn't happened yet.

So you and I will both be holding our breath and holding them accountable to make sure that happens because that certainly is something we want to look at.

And yes, asking for transit authority for the region is a key part of that and that's why we are asking the legislature for that.

Yes, I have some comments about the Regional Transit Authority.

We actually have the authority on the books.

What we're writing about today in the packet is to get the authority from Richmond to actually fund the authority.

The other piece about the Regional Transit Authority is that it has provisions built into it to expand to the member

counties that are part of the Planning District Commission.

So it's a regional transit authority.

So again, I'm very happy to hear that the public is so strongly in support of that.

It is really the only solution that we have in order to get people to where the jobs are and

and both from the city and to the counties and vice versa.

So that was one point of clarification.

Thank you, Mr. Norris, for clarifying the housing options.

Ms. Carpenter, your comments are extremely moving.

We really appreciate your comments about housing, but also I'm impressed also with the comments you sent us about the transportation studies that you've been looking at.

So we're all still digesting everything, so I appreciate that.

Mr. Jackson, you raised some very good points about how places should be made and how there should be focal points to those neighborhoods.

It is also something that is part of the jurisdiction of the school board, so I'm sure that this discussion happened within the context of going to your school board.

I will say though that as the city changes,

and as everyone is well aware that we are embarking on a master planning process of the area that is south of the downtown mall that is adjacent to Belmont.

There will be different population dynamics going on, changes to the area which I would just imagine over time by necessity would warrant a revisiting of the school boundaries simply because of the population changes.

So thank you very much for your

your insights and your urban design insights as well.

Yeah, well everybody's said things so well.

I'm always so impressed with our citizens and how much you all pay attention so closely and bring to us such interesting pieces of information and suggestions and thoughts.

I wanted to make a comment about the transit.

I agree with my colleagues.

I'm expecting a much more comprehensive approach to transit, a much more creative approach, and I express that to them personally and at the meeting, and I'm also interested in making sure that it covers the whole city, not just part of the city, as right now the north part of the city does not have any transit, rather than going to CHS.

and I think we could find creative solutions.

I'm looking forward to seeing some more ideas.

Any other comments by any member of the council?

Mr. Huja, I don't have any further comments, but I do have some nominations.

So, I'd like to move the nomination of the following individuals to the City Boards and Commissions, to the Citizens Advisory Panel for the Police Department, Joseph Kopp, Maggie Payne and Winter Warren, to the Dialogue on Race, Julie Curry, to the Jaunt Board, Phillip Jones, to Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, Byron Brown, and to our new Charlottesville Youth Council,

Is there a motion, Ms. Norris?

I'll second.

Second.

Any discussion?

If not, we'll vote.

And in light of that I'd also just really like to thank all of the youth in the community who applied for this and that we were noting as we were discussing these wonderful applications how much work had been put in them.

Next item on the agenda is consent agenda.

Item A, minutes for October 15th and October 26th.

Item B, an appropriation state criminal alien assistance program grant for 2012 for $15,314, first of two readings.

Item C, an appropriation reimbursement from Piedmont Council of the Arts for celebrate to $53,110, first of two readings.

Item D, a resolution market district steering committee, first of one reading.

Item E, a resolution support for Brownfields grant application, first of one reading.

Item F, conveyance of a portion of former Preston Avenue right of way to Region 10, second of two readings.

Item G, resolution support for Medicaid expansion, first of one reading.

I will second that although can I make a couple comments about and I just wanted to sort of get a general support from council I support the as I know I suspect you all do to the support for Medicaid expansion but with the recognition that it will necessitate

Okay.

So all those in favor of this amendment?

Well, we need a second.

I already seconded it.

Are you okay with that amendment?

I'm fine with that.

Okay.

Let's vote over the considerations so far.

Okay.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Members of Council.

You have before you tonight for your approval the Regional Legislative Program for 2013.

The draft program has two sections.

It has six priority items.

For those of you that have been around, you'll note that they've been revamped a little bit format-wise and that they clearly delineate the priority statement

as well as the supporting rationale and then other position statements that are related.

The priorities are as follows, state mandates and funding obligations, transportation funding and devolution, public education funding, Chesapeake Bay TMDL, land use and growth management, and the Comprehensive Services Act.

And these priority items have morphed some over the years, but generally they've been, for the most part, priorities of the region for quite some time.

The second section of the draft is a section of ongoing policy positions.

This is where you'll find a lot of the individual requests that have come from the different localities in the region, as well as addressing position statements outside of the priority topic areas.

I'd like to spend just a minute or two, if I could, to highlight a couple of the priority areas.

The first priority being really a renewed focus that we're trying to make this year on state mandates and cost shifting.

urging the state to not impose financial or administrative mandates, to not shift the cost of state programs to localities, and to not restrict our local revenue authorities.

The position points out that cost shifting and mandates have continued here recently during a time when the state has been boasting of revenue and state budget surpluses.

It also requests that the popular program that you've come to know and love recently, state aid to localities and the reductions that have occurred in that to the tune of about 300 million dollars by the time we get to the end of fiscal year 14.

We're asking that that program be done away with.

Again, as we've seen state budget surpluses, the state is still clawing back money from localities every year.

The position also points out the limited resources that local governments have and so continues to emphasize that the state broadened those resources rather than continuing to put limitations on them.

The second priority urges dedicated revenues for transportation.

It also urges the restoration of both urban and secondary construction funds which were

eliminated within the past couple of years.

There's a new statement in this priority this year that opposes a recommendation that has been made recently to change the way in which state transit dollars are funneled to local agencies and this has caused great concern among transit agencies across the state.

Finally, I wanted to note a couple of changes particularly that are included in the ongoing concern section.

One in particular that was included in the language that you have before you that will be changed.

There was a position that we added last year urging the reenactment of a MOU between the state and local workforce investment boards.

I know what you mean.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Memo, memorandum of understanding between the state and localities and in the local workforce investment boards.

and that has actually been done here over the summer and so that position will be taken out.

Additionally, there are the changes to the section that accommodate the local legislative request.

There are a number of items that you have in your local legislative priorities that is your next agenda item that are incorporated into the regional program as well and then some other changes to address some issues that we anticipate will be coming up in the next General Assembly session.

Before I ask for your questions and comments, I did want to remind you about the legislative forum that we have every year.

The invitations to that went in the mail today, so you should be receiving those in the next day or two.

Thursday, November the 29th at 6 o'clock.

at the TJPDC's Water Street Center.

We're very fortunate to have Neil Manx from the Virginia Municipal League is going to be joining us that evening to make a presentation about the state's revenue and budget outlook.

He's a former Senate Finance Committee staff member, very knowledgeable

all things money as it pertains to the state.

But we're really going to try to drill down and talk about some of these issues where the state has shifted costs, where mandates have been imposed.

We're going to have some graphic displays, posters, to kind of really paint a picture to hammer home our concern that we have about some of these actions that are being taken at the state level and how they impact localities.

Yes.

Thursday, the 29th of November.

That's the Thursday week after Thanksgiving.

Thank you.

I'm just, I find that it just complements our city package very well.

It nests very well, so I appreciate the work.

And I'm familiar with it because I'm on the TJPDC.

I just wanted to note too that I'm heartened by the fact that this is a regional thing and it comes from not only Charlottesville but Albemarle, Livanna, Green, Louisa and Nelson.

and especially in the transportation funding and evolution section.

Thank you.

Yeah, I've been really fortunate that folks around the region with the different, you know, interests that they have have been very supportive in the past of the, you know, regional initiatives and regional positions.

Any discussion?

All those in favor?

Good evening Councillors, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you.

Steve and I come before you once again with our city legislative program.

As I've done the past few years, I've reached out to department heads and to city councilors to get ideas for what we want to put into our program this year.

We have this year six specific legislative requests and ten policy positions.

A number of them are, as Council Szakos mentioned, complemented by the TJPDC program and they do support us, which I'm quite happy about.

The first one

and I will go in order of the memo that was presented to you.

It's a sponsor of legislation that would allow localities to consolidate voting precincts into voting centers during primary elections.

This came from our city registrar, Ms. Ayesha, who's here today and has to get to bed early tonight, so if you have any questions, I'd love for you to speak to her first.

She has something going on tomorrow.

This actually comes because being cognizant of the cost of putting together election polling places and the historic realities of voter turnout in primary elections, they worked out a request to try to enable consolidation of voting precincts into centralized locations for primary elections.

This really is to be a cost-saving measure and it is set up to be a pilot program that would be asked for by the locality and would be subject to Department of Justice approval anyway.

The real reason that stands out in my mind, and Sherry's as well, is that in the March 2012 Republican primary, there's 750 people that voted out of 29,438 registered voters.

In the June 2012 Republican primary, 436 voted out of over 29,000.

In the Venable precinct in June, one person voted.

Now obviously it's the cost issue here that costs about $25,000 for one person to vote, but the real issue is we know how that person voted.

It's tough to not know the truth.

Ms. Aicha, again, is here to speak about it, so I'll go through the rest of the program.

Please go ahead.

Thank you.

The second one is to support legislation to allow localities to give developers the option of installing new sidewalks in residential development or to contribute to a sidewalk fund.

As you know, the city has a sidewalk priority list, and this came up based upon a recent council meeting where some of you folks talked about possibly having a

a fund or allowing developers the option of contributing to the fund rather than putting in sidewalks at the location.

I don't think I used the exact terminology of a sidewalk fund.

I was leaving that open for interpretation.

Once something does get drafted, hopefully it does.

I would like it because this would allow cities to collect that money and to stick it in the general fund.

Not a problem.

The third item

is a technical correction to legislation that we received two years ago, which allows the city of Charlottesville to require contributions to our affordable housing fund.

As it turned out, after this was put into action, we learned that there was a legislative drafting error where it referred to a metropolitan statistical area for housing, which does not actually exist.

There is not one for the CPI for Charlottesville for housing.

We actually fall into the Washington, Baltimore MSA.

So that's what we actually have to follow, so I'm seeking to have that change and that one does not appear to be one that will be a problem to have changed.

The fourth item, a carryover from last year, is requesting enhanced predatory lending legislation.

That's laid out in a memo, the same one that we had last year.

Also following that, the fifth one is to pass legislation removing the felony drug distribution conviction as a barrier to receiving food stamps.

This is also from last year, as you know, food stamps are available to people that have simple possession charges, but once you have the distribution conviction, you're not eligible to receive food stamps.

States differ as to how far they go and what is allowed.

Virginia is somewhat lenient.

We're looking to go a step further, which is not unheard of.

Mr. Bunt, do you know if Albemarle County is seeking similar...

It's not in there.

And we've left the language open-ended to try to get it on the table and see what we might be able to come up with.

Those are the six specific requests that we have.

The policy positions, I'll try to go through this as quick as Mr. Blunt would be able to do.

Sorry about the acronym.

At least I said machinery and tools and not M&T.

The second is also a carryover from last year, supporting legislation to prohibit employment and discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression by public employers.

After that, also the Equal Rights Amendment, which we brought up last year, we have that yet again.

The fourth item, we have seeking a constitutional amendment to reverse the holding in Citizens United versus Federal Election Commission.

As you know, you passed a resolution a few months back looking to

have a constitutional amendment that would prohibit corporations from spending corporate general treasury funds in elections.

That's what this is for and I'm putting forth that resolution that you passed.

Number five is akin to a perennial item that we have in our legislative program, which is to allow restoration of voting rights to nonviolent felons upon release.

We've had that at least for the past five years.

This year, there's actually a House joint resolution coming out of Alexandria that is seeking a constitutional amendment.

I put it into our program that we will be lending our support to that amendment.

Number six, sort of a carryover from last year's support of the trap, duder, and return legislation that we're pushing for the SPCA.

That ended up being pulled last year during the legislative session.

However, there is now a comprehensive animal care laws working group headed by the folks from the Veterinary Science.

And they are looking into that, possibly coming up with new definitions that will affect trap, neuter and return ideas, plus a number of other items.

And I'm saying we should at least follow them, support the work they are doing to at least take a comprehensive look at the animal care laws.

Number seven, support for Medicare expansion in Virginia.

I will be amending this item because I believe you just passed a resolution a few moments ago and I'll be including that in our program instead of what I've written.

Number eight is support for reexamining laws concerning marijuana possession and the jail terms that do accompany that.

That's based upon a resolution you passed earlier in the year.

Number nine is supporting the Virginia Transit Association's position opposing recommendations made about transportation funding.

That was a little bit complicated to explain.

I will try to do my best and not use any acronyms.

The department around public transportation

is making recommendations to the General Assembly that talks about reallocating existing funds amongst public transportation providers and implementing performance measures that will put different modes of transportation in competition with each other for funding.

For instance, looking at rail versus bus and trying to compare apples to oranges.

The Virginia Transit Association is against this type of method of trying to compare them.

They should all be looked at on their own performance measures.

We are supporting the Virginia Transit Association's opposition to the position of the Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

Finally, my favorite one, we are supporting the TJPDC program as well as the VML program.

Those are the ten policy positions I have, plus the six specific legislative requests.

Does anybody have a question about from her?

Does somebody have a question from her?

I actually do.

This I assume if we did get legislation that would allow localities, how would the process go of deciding to do that?

So it just doesn't force us to do it.

Exactly.

It just gives you the option to do it.

And it would just be like picking a polling place.

You know, I have some ideas about what would be a great central location and how it would work based on what other states are doing and what I think is reasonable.

I just want to make sure that we aren't kind of locking ourselves into a particular piece of how that is going to look like.

I think it's a great idea.

Any other questions on this issue?

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Everybody has something to say.

Well, Mr. Harris, over the past couple days you and I have been having conversations about another possible piece of legislation that has to deal with decoupling the fines and debts incurred by people in prison and the kind of restraints on the use of getting a driver's license.

And I'm getting further talk to how that is a very insidious policy in that it prevents individuals from earning a living because they can't drive, especially in an area that doesn't have public transportation.

We've been talking about how much more extensive that needs to be to be able to gain access to some very good paying jobs in other outlying counties.

Having said that, we also talked that at one point there might have been some legislation suggested by Delegate Toscano concerning a temporary driver's license.

I got an email about two hours ago, in fact, from

Delegate Toscano's office.

I'm going to be following up on this to get some more information tomorrow about this.

It seems that there may be a program that's working now between the DMV, sorry, between the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Department of Corrections for temporary licenses.

I've spoken to Delegate Toscano's Chief Aide, and this is before her time, but she believes there may have been a bill that was worked on long ago.

But this program, it seems to be

working or in the midst of being put together and I'm going to look into that for you.

and going forward, if there is any legislation that would be necessary, I've already got that set up for the next session.

Okay.

Because the other concern is, of course, is that just across each other's jurisdictional lines, there are job opportunities.

And what the problem is is that if each jurisdiction has their own peculiar restrictions, somebody couldn't get a job at the Wegmans, for example, that lives in Charlottesville.

Absolutely.

And I had spoken earlier, we identify a group that actually works on restoring and driving privileges too.

Any other questions?

I would actually

I'd like to poll my fellow counselors to see if we want to add language about a minimum wage and a minimum tip wage because that is something that happens at the state level.

It's just a question of what we're asking for.

The minimum wage is really not minimum at all.

It's minimal.

Let me ask you a question.

I'll look into it.

If there is something that's out there right now, I can lend our support as a policy position.

And I would say, not to muddy the waters even more, but at a bare minimum, just to have it indexed to the cost of living.

Yes.

That will be either policy position number 11 or perhaps.

Unless there's legislation.

Unless we need to look for legislation, do legislation.

And then as I know, one more policy position, sort of late in the game, I think it was last year or the year before, we took a stand about some of the anti-immigration legislation.

And just as a policy position,

Well, they were going to do things like try to criminalize, like Pocham, for example.

If Pocham ever admitted somebody off the streets who did not have documentation, then Pocham could, would be, it would be a criminal act.

And I just want to make sure, because this is still my first year going through a legislative packet like this.

When we were talking earlier about the decoupling of the fines from the licenses,

What is the next step then with you and council?

The next step I usually go through, I and Mr. Blunt will get together with our local legislators to go over the programs that we have together and see what might be sponsored there.

At that point, they'll go forward, I'll be tracking everything, I'll keep you updated as to how we're progressing.

if necessary we will have people from the city, could be any of you or department heads, whoever might be interested in the items that could speak intelligibly to actually go there if necessary and try to push for our positions.

Right, right.

Any other suggestions?

Any discussion?

No?

No?

I'm doing a bit of roading because I'm thinking of tomorrow, so don't get too worried.

I know there's going to be a power-point and I think something of viewing pleasure so you folks might want to come down here and have a seat.

Can you be sitting up there?

Okay.

Thank you very much for this opportunity to...

Thank you very much for this opportunity to come this evening to provide you with a marketing update.

You should recall several months ago we came before you and discussed key components of a marketing plan that had been presented both to you, the CACBB Board and the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors.

Contained within the overall scope of what we plan to be doing here this year is a branding initiative which

We have worked with our agency Paine Ross and Associates over the last number of months to bring to you this evening what you will see and we welcome your comment, your input on this.

Thank you, thank you Mayor Huja and City Council for inviting us back this evening.

I'd like to introduce you to the Payne-Ross team that has worked on this project and is here this evening.

The agency executive director, Matt Draper, will be driving, I hope, the PowerPoint, our creative director, Jamie Howard, and the art director on this project.

Vicki Roberts.

I think what you've seen is the acceptance of the proposal and now we're going to show you some creative so that you will see the logo.

The last time we were here in front of you, we told you our goal was to have more people staying longer and spending more in Charlottesville Albemarle.

To do that, we needed to define what our product was, and we can read this, that Charlottesville and Albemarle County is a place treasured by all who have visited, worked, learned, lived, or fallen in love here.

It is a place with a thriving economy,

thanks in large part to the intellectual engine that is the University of Virginia, which brings in and attracts smart people with big ideas.

It's a place filled with world-class cultural events and extremely convenient leisure activities.

People of all kinds, artists, professors, farmers and musicians know how to live well and live healthfully in Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

This product has come from a lot of background work that we've done over a very long period of time, 10 or 12 months.

We've audited existing surveys, both state and local.

We've met with stakeholders in the tourism industry in Charlottesville and Albemarle County one-on-one.

We've developed and distributed an online survey to thousands of people.

both in the tourism industry and people that have actually visited here.

And we've conducted six focus groups with individuals in the Charlottesville and Albemarle County tourism industry.

And I think many of you were able to attend a focus group.

What we found is that the primary audience that we're talking to is coming from Washington, D.C. and Virginia.

Most of the people are coming here for an extended weekend and are traveling by car and that they are 30 to 50 years old with higher education and some with children.

This will be the audience that we are primarily looking at.

Just to tell you the importance of this work, the tourism report shows us that in our area, Charlottesville and Albemarle County, $490 million was generated, which resulted in 5,000 jobs and generated $35 million in taxes.

We have devised the brand that we're going to show you in a minute.

but the brand positioning is that Charlottesville and Albemarle County is an easy access getaway where the juxtaposition of history, tradition, energy and innovation make a unique and unforgettable destination.

The unique promise is that a visitor need not leave the area to enjoy this eclectic mix of traditions and innovations.

So with that, as Susan was mentioning, a large

A large majority of the respondents indicated that history was a reason they were coming to this area.

And so in keeping with our brand promise of history mixed with the juxtaposition of history and innovation, we presented this logo to the tourism board and it has been approved and is our recommendation to you tonight.

This logo for Charlottesville, Albemarle County.

And what we've done is we've taken a

Jeffersonian style piece of architecture and given it a modern twist, a little bit more of a contemporary twist and we've set it above the word Charlottesville and we've used a contemporary font and we've taken the letters and varied the heights to create a landscape, if you will, and I guess the negative space between the

Jeffersonian style architectural piece and the type creates a rolling mountain landscape.

That's another thing that the respondents noted that was a big draw to this area.

We've set it above Albemarle County, Virginia, and again, really focusing on that juxtaposition however subtly, we've got the city, Charlottesville, and Albemarle County, Virginia.

And also by using Albemarle County, Virginia, we're taking advantage of a broader region.

When tourists are looking for a vacation spot, we notice they are looking by region, and Albemarle County, Virginia, in Charlottesville,

And with that I'll let Jamie talk about the tagline.

The tagline that you're looking at here I think we think also sort of reflects our strategy of this the idea of you know the focus groups by majority always mentioned history in some capacity or another but we wanted to be what was uniquely Charlottesville which is the idea of tradition which is a nod to history but it's also the idea that it's always new and you can go that you can look at a whole variety of things whether it's you know renovated old buildings or

sort of intellectual capital of the University of Virginia or just the way things are approached here whether it's new festivals, photo festivals, but it's certainly not what I guess I would call moldy oldy history.

So going forward we'll look at

This line, where tradition is always new and how it would operate in different logo treatments.

Yeah to that point right out of the gate we want to offer up different formats for this logo just because there's so much opportunity for different media with mobile web, mobile apps, a pen, anything that you might want and so starting on the left we offer a seal idea and the seal is really versatile it can be used and you'll see it in later applications in this presentation

Very versatile mark.

The central one is a little bit more of a traditional, just the mark over the logotype.

And the third option on the right is more of a horizontal application.

And again, we are giving you some variety, but we're giving you a level of flexibility, but all within the same look to keep synergy consistent.

We've chosen this yellow color.

Neoclassic yellow, it's also yellow is a very happy color and when you've got people vacationing you want them to feel happy so it's an emotional color.

We're pairing it with a gray and gray is a very

Historic color and it's also contemporary, but the duo of this neoclassic yellow and gray is a very contemporary duo and we're also supplying a blue for a nod to the Blue Ridge, a Merlot, a nod to the wine industry and together it makes a very pleasing palette.

What we thought we'd also do is kind of show this, even though we haven't created an entire print campaign, we just kind of wanted to bring it to life a little bit tonight, so people could sort of see it come to life.

And I think one of the key words I would use to pair with the descriptions of Charlottesville would be authentic.

so again a way to sort of differentiate ourselves and what we would do is a lot of the artwork is going to be shot but it'll be shot in sort of a dynamic style so we're not just going to throw a model in and have him you know pretend like he's barbecuing we're actually going to get someone but the real artist is going to be the photographer so we'll let them go and do what they're going to do but our photographers are going to make it into art and that I think is sort of uniquely Charlottesville and so we found someone out barbecuing at King Family Vineyards here

and we sort of incorporated the tagline which can change as the verbs change.

There may be a headline over here in the future.

We wanted to let you see the logo and the tagline at work.

So in this case, it's feast where tradition is always new.

This one is love, where tradition is always new.

And again, there may be a headline, treatment, poster, you name it.

But this kind of shows you the range of how it sort of starts to come to life.

We just wanted to let you all see that happening.

This is play where tradition is always new and we just thought it was kind of fun to show sort of the whimsical side.

It's not just Monticello and Jefferson locked off a thousand photos you've seen before, but there's also a life that happens here.

There's sort of a joie de vie we wanted to capture that you'll sort of see consistent how we sort of present the product.

Again, this is just a low angle, but you know, you could bring your pets if you wanted to, and this Stroll War tradition is always new.

So I think you start to see it come to life, and it's sort of infinite, the number of categories and ways we'll start to explore it.

But we've sort of had fun sort of getting this far with it.

This is actually a web application and we're going to actually bring both print and video.

And video is going to be a large component of this.

We've actually been shooting for the better part of the fall collecting images.

and shooting them in a way that's gonna be not just sort of a standard tourism fair, but it's gonna really be sort of special images that sort of capture the seasons and the categories.

And this might be a still from a video that someone clicked to press play, but would give them a reason if they're on a wedding site to go, gosh, I wonder what that's about, click and start to explore it.

And I think that's gonna, here it is on your phone.

and you can see how the application starts to come to life.

You start to see it in different categories.

Here it is on YouTube.

This would be a still from the wine category.

In this case, it says tradition tastes even better at sunset.

And this is just another of many applications for the videos which, like the photography, would capture the unique authenticity

I'm against the backdrop of history.

Here it is in the Charlottesville airport.

Same guy, but you can see it's got a bit of energy to it.

It sort of captures, we think, the essence of the town.

Here it is in video.

This would be in video form.

This would be sort of, this would be maybe a couple of minutes long as they're getting their bags and they would see these images fly by that really cue them on all the things they can do, all the historic wine trails they can go.

I think Conde Nast has put us in the top 10 in the world.

So we thought that'd be important thing to leverage as well.

Here it is at Fox Field, another aspect to explore in the category.

It's been our thinking that Charlottesville Albemarle has some of the best festivals around, whether it's the film festival, which we all just enjoyed, or the photography festival, wine festival, just numerous festivals.

We believe that there should be stronger collaboration between festivals and tourism.

Let's show you a quick example.

This would be look three brand alliance where a sponsorship from Charlottesville and Albemarle in the area would include some brand positioning for the city to increase our awareness and with everyone collaborating and directing dollars

Collectively and appropriately we think we will gain more tourists.

One way to do this is to go onto the Virginia tourism website.

You can see up there in the left hand corner, Virginia's for Lovers.

Put our logo in our particular festival.

They get just a million visitors per month, so a lot of traffic.

Perhaps that will bounce us over to the Visit Charlottesville website which will cross-sell with perhaps the Vineyard as well as the Look Free Festival.

And then it will also bounce us down to specifics to the Look Free Festival.

Their website will cross-sell back to Visit Charlottesville.

So under the idea of stay and the idea of staying longer, what we've done is we want to give you a little sneak peek at some of the images that we've collected before they're actually assembled into commercials and videos and promotional materials, just to sort of let you get an idea of where we are today.

So there you go.

Walkin' out just the other day And it was so hot outside, are you good right now?

Talking and I watched as the sweat ran down your face Reached out and I caught it at your chin Licked my fingertips, we were

You are just wasting time When the hours roll by doing nothing for the fun A little taste of the good life Whether right or wrong makes us wanna stay, stay, stay, stay, stay for a while

Are we all still awake?

Healthfully.

I know.

It is a word.

Well, I have a comment.

Just because I don't feel like I've seen it, maybe I'm just not.

It was beautiful, by the way.

Thank you.

I really like that the brand logo is really, really cool and I think it really does evoke a lot of the... A little more current.

Yeah, and the colors are very nice.

So I thought it was really a lot of very cool.

I love the brand, the taglines.

Welcome to the world of advertising.

I went to UVA and learned all my grammar and then I went into advertising.

But honestly, there's a lot of rules in advertising that sometimes have to do more with the ease of communication.

Like, in other words, if you had ellipses and then you put a space after it, we wouldn't normally do that.

You would just actually kind of sequentially space it on either side.

So the period in this case is you are sort of, you know, subjectively choosing to

I figured it was probably something I did, it's just something I noticed right away.

I actually agree with you, and that's why I said this is a sneak peek of the very beginning stages, and I second that.

Yeah.

And I second that, too.

I think that there was a picture early on, the love in whatever it was, that really started to get at what we've been talking about all along, which was that we have to

You know, this is not an all white area, this is not an all affluent area, and we can't look like that's all we're trying to attract because it's not.

And I think that the video certainly was jarring in its absence of that.

And I loved it otherwise, but that was a great job.

And this will be, you probably just saw 20 of maybe 600 images.

I want to second the comments of these two ladies.

Yes.

And activities that are typically

We've been filming one week and I'm not going to make an excuse

The models we had selected didn't show up twice.

We're trying to give you a sample.

These are not finished products.

What's finished tonight is the logo.

Our charge tonight was to show you that, nothing else.

But we felt that it might be better understood in a context.

So we tried to put it in print and everything.

So just you get more of a feel than just a static situation.

I love the logo and I think not only does the undulating heights of the lettering suggest the mountains, it suggests a small city streetscape or a landscape horizon that you can see when you look down East Market Street.

So I like the double meaning of that.

And I think in the original brochure you did, I noted that we needed more urban pictures.

and you put urban streetscapes in there and that's very lovely.

And we have it in Albemarle County.

If you look at the logo today for tourism, it's just Charlottesville.

and we added, and actually we put county because it shows people that aren't from here but from Northern Virginia that you have a city and a county experience which will give more range of product to the people choosing to come here.

The people don't choose to come to a city and just plan to go to the city and the idea is to extend the stay one more day so we added, tried to put both together.

I really like the verbs too, like the stroll and the use of the word tradition.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Who knows what we'll bring next?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Council.

We've been approached by a group of community leaders about having a community trip to the city of Austin, Texas.

They've approached not only the city of Charlottesville, but Albemarle County, University of Virginia, Chamber of Commerce, Piedmont Virginia Community College, and several other groups about sending a delegation to Austin to learn more about Austin's successful efforts in developing an innovative and growing technology sector.

its development of its entertainment sector, especially its music scene and its local food hub amongst some other issues that I think Austin has done very well at addressing over the last few years.

George Benford is here.

George is one of the organizers.

To answer any questions that you may have about this, talk a little bit more about how this came about and more specifically what would be needed from the city.

They are at this point looking at traveling to Austin on February 26th and stay there for a couple of days and return to Charlottesville on the 28th.

There's a cost that's associated with this.

The cost per person would be about $1,200 without airfare.

Currently, airfare is about $350 round trip from here to Austin.

So altogether, the cost would be about $1,500 per person.

What we are

Requesting is that the city, if the city council is interested in doing this, that the city would send three representatives, that is what the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors voted to do, to represent the city down in Austin.

I'll let George talk a little bit more about how this came about and some of the ideas that

are being kicked around for panel discussions while we're there.

Thank you.

This idea came about just in conversations with various people in the city that Mayor Huja knows for many years Charlottesville and other communities did these type of trips to learn and pick a few of the low hanging fruits from what other cities have done successfully.

Austin came about mainly because of the fact that the city of Richmond two years ago went to Austin and happened to read about it and my interest at the time having

and a place on the downtown mall was the music scene and the festivals and what it brought to the businesses in the downtown mall.

I met with people that attended the conference in Austin from the city, talked to the chamber there and the success that they felt that they received by participating in this particular program.

Frank Freeman, of course, who used to be with the Austin Community College System, with the President's Office because she was for the University of Texas in Austin, and others that have lived in our community that were involved with Austin before.

There are many similarities obviously to our city.

The suggestion came up in three meetings that I had with various leaders of the community.

We floated other cities during that discussion.

Tim Holbert in particular floated a lot of other cities.

Bob Stroh also pointed out some other cities.

But when we started thinking about it, we realized that we were talking about cities, some of them in which we were already better in many ways than the cities we were going to visit.

So there might not be much of a learning curve.

It might have been that we would be teaching them some of the things that we do so successfully.

With Austin, there are a lot of things that they are doing very well, especially the music scene, the innovation, realizing the type of jobs that they're creating that are not low-income jobs,

paid jobs that are being able to use the community college system and the university to technically bring these jobs to the forefront there.

There are a lot of things that are different, obviously.

They're a much bigger city than we are.

They are the state capital, which we are not.

But the university is such a major player in their community as it is in ours.

Music is such a major scene, which we are becoming.

Festivals are a major scene.

South by Southwest is an example.

that in the last 15 years has grown to now where it's a four or five day event bringing over a million people a year to the city of Austin for those events.

So those were some of the reasons we did it.

Another reason was that we had already a template to work from.

We had what was placed, what took place with the city of Richmond, the names of everyone, the mayor's office,

the head of the Chamber, the head of the Convention and Visitor's Bureau that we could talk to and change some of the format that they did to obviously more to what we want to do.

I personally went out to Austin, met with the Chamber of Commerce out there, met with the Visitor's and Convention's Bureau people.

We talked about that.

I met with the mayor's office.

The secretary of the mayor's office is

almost like my secretary now, I'm putting things together, anything we need, she's been able to get.

So that was the purpose of it.

Let me say that through all the years I have, and I saw these myself in the Burlington, we went to Atherton, Chattanooga, they're really

Wonderful two, three ways.

One is that you get ideas from your communities.

Secondly, the representative from City, County and University are kept to audience for a day and they can talk to each other.

That makes a great deal of difference, those ideas.

Yes, Mr. Benford, I actually exchanged some emails with you and the council and the city manager.

It might be more instructive for all of us if we can just talk about it a little bit, but

I'm aware of some of the innovative things that Austin is doing from its kind of redevelopment and urban design standpoint, particularly what they're doing for their airport boulevard and their redevelopment of one of their kind of older shopping centers called Highland Mall.

And again, we have some of those similar kinds of development sites with our corridors.

Hillsdale Drive is another opportunity for redevelopment.

That alone, I was quite intrigued by Austin.

However, when I looked at the itinerary, and it is an impressive lineup, I didn't see anybody from their urban design division.

They actually have an urban design division in their planning department, which suggests to me that Austin, yes, is all about growth and innovation, but they're very, very, very concerned about placemaking and about the distinctive character that they want.

to result in the wake of their change.

So, and I didn't see any council members named, and then another important player in the whole redevelopment scene with their airport boulevard is Scott Polacob, which is an important urban designer and development attorney.

So, in light of that, that was my concern, is that was this somehow cast in stone?

Is this something that's still open that we could look at

not only how we're partnerships form but then how we're

developments envisioned and implemented.

Definitely, and nothing was set in stone.

What we tried to do was put out, and after the meetings that we had, the topics that came up the most, okay, and just lay out and find that we did have people that would participate in those particular sessions.

My goal is that once we get everyone together, know that we are definitely going to have the trip and everyone is behind it,

that we would sit down and talk about what other needs, what other programs can we do and what do we eliminate.

Obviously what's important to the county and the city, some may differ, so we want to make sure that we have a blend of everything in that program and what also the civic leaders are looking for.

So your suggestion is a wonderful one and having been there recently and seen some of the redevelopment and actually was taken by the mayor's office to see some of the development they've done,

in some of the lower end properties and how they have made those neighborhoods grow and become more advantageous to the city and cost without replacing people.

This is sort of a minor issue, but you mentioned, Mr. Jones, that you're looking at about $1,550 per person, but then in your proposal here, it says the total cost is $3,500.

Yeah, I think it was a typo.

Yeah, $4,650.

Exactly.

And one of the things is we're also looking for continued sponsorships, Dave, and we have gotten some locally.

We're also looking at some sponsorships from Whole Foods, for instance, where their headquarters is in Austin, looking at that.

Sure.

Well, I mean, there are a couple of different places we could utilize some one-time money to pay for it.

I'm just curious about the size difference, and it's a million or so, isn't it?

Yes.

I think we're better than Austin, okay?

But what we are wanting to do is go in and look at what can we learn from them, how they've made their music scene such a tremendous music scene.

They have a disc that is just unbelievable.

I mean, you can have margaritas and fajitas.

It's on there.

They list all the margarita bands in town and where they're performing.

They have live music at the airport.

There's so much they're doing in that scene alone.

that we can learn from as we want to increase our dollars and our revenue from food and taxes too.

So that was just one area.

The education and what they've done with the community college system and the way they attracted the innovation and the technology field into their city.

was a tremendous thing to learn from.

How they cope with the University of Texas and are able to take advantage of some of the things we talked about with transit and things like that.

These are just things that we have to look at.

Right.

Is it cost of living?

They have cost of living issue.

They have the same type of things in which they do have minorities.

It's a beautiful city.

This won't preclude our visiting Virginia cities and towns I've named like Virginia Beach and Norfolk because again my concern is that we're dealing with code issues as well that vary from state to state.

We can do this on a continuous basis every couple of years, whether it be a city like Portland or it be a city in Virginia, you know, places that have a lot of similarities.

And as we change and as we grow and we adopt new things and, you know, increase our urbanization here, then we look at other cities that this may be worth going to see.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that when you visit a city or outside community, you learn ideas which takes time sometimes, like Land Trust.

We got it on Walmart, by the way, and it took 10 years, 15 years I think.

Yes, ma'am.

The University of Virginia has voted to send people on this and there are also some people from the university that are going on their own.

As well as PVCC?

Yes, the chamber is also behind this.

This is actually going to be run through the chamber and they're sending people and we've had various community leaders that have expressed interest in going.

If there's really, you know, if it is a very inspiring trip and there are things that we should do, is there any value in bringing them here?

I think we could always do that.

I found the people that I met there would be very much fun to have bring down here.

It could be a domestic system program.

Do you guys support us out here?

We would hope to send three people.

Okay, so do we need a motion for support or just...

Thank you very much, appreciate it.

So this was our last major item.

We haven't made a move from consent agenda.

Now we'll go to that item.

Safe Routes to Schools.

Yes, and there's nobody here.

I take it from

I just wanted to give voice to the concerns that we heard tonight as well as I heard those same concerns from multiple people about how

Since we're talking about a neighborhood school that does not encompass the neighborhood, which is a long-standing issue, and this issue has come up earlier this fall, it seems to be sort of rising as a

a broad concern and I just wonder how we can look more holistically at not just this program, but how this program integrates into our comprehensive planning, into our vision, our vision of connected communities, our vision of a healthy community and really what we can do to

One of you said that it is the boundaries of schools are really school board function.

Yeah, and I mean I wonder what the school board's role in this program is.

I mean I would hope that they're getting the same sort of presentation.

And I'd like to just point out that although I

I fully concur that we have some school districts in Charlottesville that are really kind of gerrymandered and skinny and odd and that we do seem to have some difficulty with school engagement at the far ends of those districts and I think bringing in this idea of walkability is another issue about that.

That that's not what we're really here to discuss but I think that I would certainly think it would be appropriate for us to kind of kick this to the school board and say

In light of the Safe Routes to Schools, this would be another reason to be looking at the school districts, not even to make a recommendation, but just to ask that they consider that in their discussion of boundaries.

On the flip side, though, I think that when we have a school district like this, which does stretch into downtown, basically, by doing Safe Routes to School and by working on interconnectivity of walking paths

But I think the issue is not that it extends, it's what it excludes, not what it includes.

And the map that Mr. Jackson brought to us, I mean, you can see it very clearly.

This is actually, the planning district is the red line.

and the school district crosses, you know, splits it and this is not uncommon.

I just wanted to note too, just on sort of a more positive note and one, and maybe Mr. Tolbert you could carry this forward is

Back, not even 10 years ago, we had the same issue over by Venable with the 10th Street corridor and when the school board was approached, and I was on the school board at the time, by parents who said, we can see this school but we're being bussed at Greenbrier in this case.

They were being bussed three miles away when they were with, certainly within walking distance and sometimes within sight distance.

and their issue wasn't being healthy walking to school, their issue was going to parent-teacher conferences and was going to community events at the school and school events at the school because they didn't have cars.

And so to get to Greenbrier was prohibitive, but to get, and we were, it took about a year, but we did just draw, we draw

That particular boundary wasn't that many kids.

It was kind of like this.

It just wasn't that many.

It wasn't that big a shift from a school perspective, but it really addressed a pretty serious educational issue at the time.

But I say that because

I think safe routes to school, and even regardless of this district issue, another advantage of it is it engages families in the school.

Not just the kids, not just about kids walking to school, it's about engaging particularly low-income parents, enabling them to become involved with their school.

And I don't know if, probably VDOT doesn't care about that so much,

To keep in perspective, this is a grant application for safe walking schools.

So the issues you raised are important.

The school board wasn't... Well, but it's the school board, but it's also a...

like Amanda Ponzi who's a bike or bike pedestrian person is writing a grant.

I'm just saying that this is yet another benefit that could be used potentially in funding sources in the future, not necessarily this one.

Are there any problems or questions?

I would just like to throw out that Hampton City does a joint school board planning commission city council

comprehensive plan update together I mean it's a different model that might be something to consider at some point but we don't do that here but in Hampton City they do and that the schools are fully integrated within a comprehensive planning update I mean we we probably engage them in some way but this is something that is really integrated perhaps that could be a future

They're really not.

The schools have their own plan.

That's right.

I'll say there's not always been the case.

I think it depends on both bodies getting together and this body and SCUBO deciding you want to do that and then that can happen.

And what's really interesting is you can see from the map

The bigger map was circulating around with the neighborhood districts overlaying with the school districts.

You can see how they're really, and this is a great example of how they really conflict with each other.

And I think that was Mr. Jackson's point.

I can't remember what word he used.

I wrote it down.

A number of good comments have been made.

We should take into consideration those ideas.

But I think we still need to make a motion to see if you want to proceed as a graduate.

I'd like to make a motion that we go ahead and approve this application.

As I do that, though, I'd like to also ask staff to kind of come up with a possible way forward for looking at combining or at least sharing some knowledge between the city schools and the city in the planning process.

We can do that.

Is there a second?

I do have a request, actually, because I was looking on this, our wonderful GIS viewer, I love this GIS viewer, it's right on our homepage if you ever want to

go on and you can turn on and off different aspects.

And you can turn on the neighborhood plant districts, which, planning districts.

But there aren't school, the school buildings you can turn on, but the school districts aren't on there, which I think would be incredibly helpful to anybody who's looking at buying a house or, you know, coming into the city.

and it would be relatively simple to do.

Good evening.

I'm Peter Kleeman.

I live at 407 Head Street in the city.

There's been a great deal of discussion about schools in the county as well, and there are some neighborhood schools in Albemarle County, particularly in the southern part of the county, and there's a discussion about maximizing the use of those schools, which requires in some people's mind that there be more activities at those schools that support those communities.

it would seem to me that that thinking would apply here as well that integrating the ideas of who are the people that are in the community who could use those buildings whether they're for Zumba or clubs of various sorts, dancing programs, whatever they might be choruses, musical groups, anything that those buildings could be used for that would benefit the community it would make that both a school and a community center and it would require that people get there and get home from there

So the idea of integrating the activities at the school beyond what students do and the paths to and from and the safety of those paths could encourage a lot more walking among the community members, parents and other residents.

It would seem to me that some kind of initiative, if you're going to do something trying to coordinate the schools and planning and the community in general, I think a broadly comprehensive look at how to make those actual destinations

Activity Centers and schools would be worthwhile.

Thanks.

Okay, I said I'd be back.

Part of what I was going to bring up were some more items for your legislative agenda and I'm very pleased to see that three of those items I was going to bring up made it on there.

And it really points out to me, you know, the importance of the resolutions you pass and I know there's sometimes some hesitancy to engage in these resolutions that they may be some kind of distraction, but they really are important and

and I hope when you're crafting these agendas that you look back past the current year to things like the resolution against the anti-immigrant legislation that popped up.

That continues to pop up every year.

And it's the same thing with the attack on welfare and attack on our education and attack on women's rights and all these things.

These things are always gonna pop up and this council could and should take a stand on them and I hope you will continue to do that.

So there wasn't much about women's rights in your legislative agenda, and I think that's something that you should consider getting in there.

Was the ERA?

Yeah, that's right.

Okay, never mind.

Good job.

And then another one of those resolutions that you passed was against wars and against military spending, which is typically a federal government thing.

But the Commonwealth of Virginia really relies heavily on military industry and the military and

I don't think that's a good thing and I don't think it's a good thing when you take students to visit the NGIC for your tech tours.

We do have an economy built on these things.

We have an economy built on the prison industrial complex as well.

That doesn't mean it's a good thing and one thing that the Commonwealth of Virginia could do that this locality could do

is to create a commission to explore how to convert from military use, military industry into civilian use into good things like green jobs and green technology.

That would be an extremely smart thing to do if we're going to cut the military someday and it would show real planning ahead and could really make a difference on our economy and would provide more money to places like Charlottesville which needs to increase revenue.

particularly when it comes to education.

I was interested to hear about the meals tax.

Unfortunately, like all localities in the Commonwealth, most taxes you can lay to raise more funds are regressive, which means that they actually hurt working people and low-income people a lot more than they

hurt those who have a lot more resources.

So I wish it wasn't true.

I wish there was a way for you to have an income tax in Charlottesville.

I know there isn't.

But there is another way.

that I think might be more appropriate and that's the real estate tax.

Now I say that as a brand new homeowner in the city of Charlottesville.

I would not mind having real estate taxes increased.

We have a very low real estate tax here.

I know it's not popular and there are certainly folks here in this community who are low income that own property who shouldn't be taxed and I would think in your legislative agenda you could seek more waivers from

Real Estate Tax, the same way you're now allowed to grant some waivers to the elderly and disabled and veterans, that you could seek more waivers on real estate tax and consider that as a fairer way to raise taxes.

That's if you can get those waivers.

On the other hand,

workers and folks like that in Charlottesville are not going to benefit from the meals tax so please don't spend our tax money on trying to increase profits for restaurants and those profits are not going to be returned to the workers especially when they make so little money, $2.13 an hour is ridiculous and I'm really glad to see that you took that on and I guess my time's up, thanks.

Anybody else would like to speak?

Holly Edwards, 917 6th Street, SE, and I'm also the Services Coordinator for FAR, Public Housing Association of Residents and I wanted to comment about the Austin Exploratory Trip because I found the

exchanged rather fascinating, especially in light of the concern you had about Susan Payne's presentation and the lack of diversity in many of the things that we're able to see.

And I thought that her presentation was nicely done.

But based on the Austin, Texas website, 67.8% of their residents are white, 10.7% are African American, there's a seven member city council,

and the first African American woman ever to be elected to the city council was able to do so in 2006.

So I hope that your exploratory trip is all that you hope it to be but I also have some concerns about the choice of locations and if the

Desire is to explore more the issues about the music scene, and I know that the music scene and the noise ordinance created some tension in our community.

I realize that, but I hope that as you

moved forward with the Austin Exploratory Trip, and you've already voted on it, that you continue your Charlottesville Exploratory Trips and spend time in the neighborhoods learning more about the issues that affect people on a day-to-day basis.

Thank you very much.

Scott Bandy, 1639 Cherry Avenue.

I just wanted to express an observation.

It's interesting that tonight was mentioned the

the uh... the uh... avoiding the election and saving the city what thirty thousand for the position of the constitutional position of the city treasurer or the treasurer and it's also it's interesting that

the political deficiency in this town.

All I want to say is it's interesting that you did not add to your legislative packet since this town has an aversion for having the words on the tip of my tongue.

Elections for Issues Referendum.

Referendum.

It's interesting that in your legislative packet that you did not consider maybe bringing back the issue of changing election to council to award system.

Thank you.

Very quickly I wanted to thank Mr. Norris for your information.

I'll follow that up so I'll have more in my hip pocket should I have that ever to happen again.

And I just wanted to end with a really happy thing that I did this week and I had my inaugural volunteer effort at the film festival which was a lot of fun.

I've met a lot of people and I'm sorry I guess I got a little swoony when I shook Nick Clooney's hand because I realized I was one degree of separation from George.

That was really a lot of fun.

And then I also had a nice experience with intergenerationally.

One of the ushers with me one night was a ninth grader at I think Monticello and we ended up being able to see a documentary called Radio Unnameable.

which was about Bob Fass and the radio station in New York, WBAI, 99.5 and how influential it was during the times of the 60s and so I wasn't sure he was watching it, I wasn't sure if he was going to get it or, you know, I thought it was a bunch of old fogies, you know, look at them.

And so we did have a nice chat afterwards and found out we both liked the movie for about the same reason.

So I just want to say it was a wonderful event and I really enjoyed it and I really would urge people to

supported by coming out and volunteering in many ways that they asked for.

I do appreciate being in Charlottesville and having that Virginia Film Festival here and know that it'll probably be a part of the Charlottesville, Albemarle County, so on and so forth, however that comes out.

Thank you.

Is there anybody else who would like to speak?

146 Baylor Lane, Ryan Averill.

I know that the Austin trip has been on your mind a bit but I would encourage in the future that you look at cities that are a bit different from us because I don't think you can learn as much from a city that has a university that's very musically talented like we are and I feel like

The point of an observatory trip and the point of an experience like that is to see different places and see how different people live.

Mr. Mayor, I just want to remind everybody that all day tomorrow the Charlottesville area transit system is free of charge primarily to help people get to the polls but also to get to work or wherever you need to get around town.

Again, I want to conclude the meeting that everybody should vote tomorrow.

Best of luck.