City Council Meeting   12/3/2012

Okay.

I call to order the City Council meeting of December 3rd.

Mr. Regents.

Here.

Ms. Smith?

Here.

Mr. Huja?

Yes.

Ms. Szakos?

Here.

Ms. Galvin?

Next is awards, recognition and announcements.

Jim Tolbert?

This is a fun thing I get to be here for.

I think Mr. Jones sent you a notice about this, but a little publication came out just recently, Walt Friendly Communities.

And Charlottesville was identified in the rating.

There are several levels.

There's the platinum level, gold level, and silver level, and bronze level.

And we actually scored a silver level.

So we were recognized for the efforts that this city has made for

pedestrians and we have some room to grow but there are only three communities in Virginia that were recognized and so it's pretty good to be one of those.

Alexandria was a silver and Arlington was recognized as a gold level so we want to shoot for the platinum level but it's pretty good to be in this recognized this way and so we just wanted to make you aware of that.

We've got a copy of these for you we'll get

One to each of you.

And it's got a nice little write-up on every community, including us.

Great little picture of the downtown mall.

and there's some really interesting information in it about best practices for sidewalks, trails, and other pedestrian activities.

So we can learn a little bit from the book, but we also get the pleasure of being recognized.

So we just wanted to make you aware of that.

Thank you.

I have two announcements.

First is about time capsule for our celebration of 250th birthday.

There will be time capsule burial suddenly at 2 p.m. on Sunday, December 23rd at Lee Park.

So Sunday, December 23rd, Lee Park, 2 p.m.

Please come and join us and be part of our history.

Second, holiday market.

We want to encourage people to shop locally in the holiday season and there will be a holiday market from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday through December 22nd in Water Street parking lot.

So you're welcome to do shopping there also.

I'd just like to announce the ribbon cutting for the Jefferson School City Center.

It's been a long time coming.

A lot of people have worked very hard to make it happen, and it's actually opening.

It's going to be on December 11th, which is next Tuesday, I believe, at 10 a.m.

So the public is invited.

I hope you'll be there.

Mr. Norris?

Mr. Mayor, I believe we're going to be hearing about this in public comment as well, but I wanted to make sure that everybody's aware.

We do have a young person who is missing from our community.

I know his family and his friends are very much concerned.

If I could have, okay good, I was going to ask the cameraman to focus real tight on this flyer here.

Deshad Sage Smith has been missing since November 20th, 19 years old.

If anybody knows anything about his whereabouts or the whereabouts of Eric McFadden, please call Crime Stoppers at 434-977-4000.

There's also a very active Facebook page regarding Deshad's disappearance called Find Deshad Sage Smith.

Please, anything

that you may know, any information you have, please share it with us so that we can bring him home to his family and to his loved ones.

Thank you.

I'm very pleased to announce a new initiative that our regional library is undertaking called the Fresh Start Program.

This is thanks to one-time funding from the city of Charlottesville.

All children who live in the city under the age of 18 are eligible to have all of their fines and fees on their public library accounts paid off in full at no cost to parent or child.

So if any children would like to take advantage of this one time amnesty program opportunity, they need to get what's called a golden ticket which is available at all city school libraries as well as other youth service organizations and present that golden ticket

to one of three library branches between December 22nd and January 6th to have their cards cleared.

And they can present them at the Gordon Avenue Library, the Central Library downtown, or the Bookmobile.

And again, that's between December 22nd and January 6th.

It's a great opportunity for all Charlottesville children to have a fresh start with their local public library.

And last, I wanted to

I second.

Any discussion?

Thank you.

Are there other announcements?

Council of Staff?

Thank you.

Next item on the agenda is matters by the public.

As our procedures are, we allow for 12 speakers to start.

It is amazing that at the end of the meeting you'll have a chance to speak and you're welcome to stay or come back as you like.

But if you limit yourself to three minutes, we'll appreciate that.

And I have a list here, sign list.

Mr. Mayor, Members of the Council, Naomi Roberts, 1140 St. Clair Avenue.

I'm back here again.

I've been here since 2007 on Mickey Drive.

It has not gotten any better.

And if you will recall, some of you may be old enough to remember when three out of town students mistook Mickey Drive for a way to get to the Fashion Square Mall.

However, there was a branch that was overflowed because of a downpour.

They were killed because there was no guardrail at the end of Mickey Drive.

That was corrected, but three people lost their lives.

And I remember being here since 1955.

East High Street, Tarleton Oaks Service Station, and the light there, it took a minister's wife to get killed

way back when before that light was installed.

Are you all going to let someone get killed at Nicky Drive before you do anything about that?

Just this week, a tractor trailer came down there and almost hit a car.

They will not pay any attention to those lines.

It was a waste of money, waste of time.

And I'd like to know what you all plan to do, at least have the police monitor the situation

Be present there where the drivers can see them and possibly, if they don't adhere to the traffic, pull them over and give them a ticket.

Something has to be done because someone else is going to get killed.

Now, another matter that I have is with the fees for the storm runoff.

I'm not against the fees.

However, what I am against is that we rebuild our infrastructure and we don't keep it up.

An example, Belmont Bridge.

I remember when that bridge was built.

Nothing's been done to it.

So it's falling apart, crumbling apart, causing taxpayers more money.

The mall was bricked way back when.

and my tax dollars had to pay for it to be redone.

Are you all going to continue building and not keeping up our infrastructure?

My name is Paul Long.

I live at 1410 Grady Avenue here in the city.

Mayor Huja and members of the city council, a little bit over two years ago I approached the council at a public segment session when the city had a $10 million surplus and asked the council to appropriate $3 million of that for agencies that were dealing with the homeless.

Now, realistically, I didn't expect City Council to appropriate the $3 million.

What I was hoping for was the open discussion on the city's response to the homeless situation.

David Ben-Gorian, who was the first Prime Minister of Israel at the formation of the State of Israel, said that he had no need for Karl Marx and Marxism because he had the whole tradition of the Hebrew prophets.

and the reason I'm mentioning that is in the Judeo-Christian tradition, with all due respect for people who are not part of that tradition, there's a great tradition of standing up for the defenseless and the homeless and feeding the hungry and housing people who have no housing.

and I think that there's a mean-spirited feeling amongst many of the people in this country and in the city of Charlottesville for those who are unfortunate enough to find themselves homeless.

And I don't see any long-term strategy either nationally or in this city to helping the homeless to get them out of that situation and get them into a place where they could lead a productive life.

One of the greatest privileges of my life in Pennsylvania where I was raised that when you register to vote, you register by party.

And I was very proud when I registered to vote to register as a member of the Democratic Party.

I still consider myself a loyal Democrat, even though I run for office down here as an independent.

and the Democratic Party that I am proud of is the party of Andrew Jackson, William Jennings Bryan, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy.

And the Democratic Party of 40 and 50 years ago is not the Democratic Party of today.

President Obama won reelection.

Thank God he did.

I contributed to his campaign.

But all I heard was, we're fighting for the middle class.

And thank God the Democratic Party is, because with the economic meltdown, the Democratic, the middle class needs people to defend them.

But there was a time when the Democratic Party stood up for the people who were immigrants, who were homeless, who were down and out, and they were very proud to do that.

I haven't heard the Democratic Party talking about doing stuff for the homeless and for the poor since Lyndon Johnson, and that should change.

You know, Governor Romney was very mean-spirited in some of his comments, but unfortunately, he speaks for a great many Americans to our shame.

No American should be living out in the streets.

They should have housing.

They should have adequate food and medical care and it's incumbent upon this city council to start working in that direction as well.

I appreciate that you people waited for your clapping after the finishing.

That will be very, very helpful.

It's not interrupting in the middle, so it's very kind of you.

If you, because we are only 12 people who can speak and start, if you do not have the chance to speak and if there is somebody speaking and you support them, then please stand up to acknowledge that or clap, whatever you wish to do.

Hello City Council

My name is Marco Brown.

I've been homeless and less fortunate for about a year and a half now.

I want to express some issues and concerns I have about the Panhandle Award as the City of Charlottesville is trying to pass.

Myself and many others in my situation know it's a violation of our constitutional rights and at the same time we have tried to comply with the law of the land.

with all the land and have yet to have seen some respect from the city and the citizens who are supposed to uphold the law.

As we all know, the economy is still on the rise and jobs are very hard to come by.

Although no one said it would be easy, myself and others in my situation don't expect it to be easy, just fair for everybody.

And I'm not proud

I am not proud and could never have imagined having to sit on the downtown mall and hold a sign just to make a few dollars so that I could feed myself and purchase the necessities.

I need to take care of myself in this hard time of not being able to have a job.

May I say once again, jobs are truly hard to come by.

I find myself having to humble myself to prepare for the war I have to face day to day and say there's a sound, yes this is how I feel, I truly feel.

I find that I have to set aside my pride just so I can do what is required of me while I hold my sign.

It truly hurts when I see that more fortunate still and disgusted, the poor and

and to know that they hold so much hate for the less fortunate.

For what reason, I don't know, but if I took a guess, I guess it would probably be because they have never gone through the experience of trials we go through on a day-to-day basis.

It feels like

It feels like what one of my signs reads.

Many may fear, but others don't know.

The reality of the situation is some have never hit rock bottom, not knowing when the next dollar is coming their way, where they will get their next meal, or where they will lay their head down at the end of a long day just to get some meat while I need the rest.

and to prepare themselves well-needed rest and where they will find decent clothes to wear to go job hunting or to interview.

I'll be the first to admit Charlottesville, we do indeed have a problem.

The flood will not get clear if we sweep the dirt only for rugs, and in particular it's not there.

And that is how I see the citizens of Charlottesville are doing if they pass the panhandle of the orders.

See you in your time.

Amy Marshall, Mayor Huja City Council.

My name is Amy Marshall, 1717 East Market.

I am president of Charlottesville Pride Community Network, an organization representing the LGBT community in Charlottesville.

Not quite three months ago, Charlottesville had its first ever Gay Pride Festival.

Along with over 1,000 members of this community, both gay and straight, every single member of city council was in attendance.

So you guys know about that.

I don't think that you maybe understand that your presence had an absolutely huge impact on our community.

It sent the message that the leaders of the city not only care in their hearts, but they're willing to commit their time and their energy to actually show up.

It was a fun festival filled with music, dancing, bouncing, balloons, drag queens.

One of the many people who attended and enjoyed this event was Dashad Smith, also known as Sage, a transgender teen from our community who has been missing now for 13 days.

We are so grateful that you came to Lee Park on that day in September for the Pride Festival, but only one of you showed up to Lee Park last Wednesday for the vigil in support of Finding Sage.

Supporting LGBT equality in the city is not just about going to the fun events.

Recently two events have happened to the LGBT community.

One was on November 15th, the UVA student attack due to his perceived sexual orientation and the other is the disappearance of Sage.

We all appreciate the efforts by the police and the members of the community who showed up for the search party last Saturday and to the vigils that have been held.

And I'd like everyone who's here in support of Deshad's stage, if you guys could stand up so that we can see who's here tonight.

Thank you.

You can sit down now.

We are here because we feel there have been some missed opportunities.

There is growing frustration and anger due to the perceived lack of priority placed on these events by the media, the police and the city.

People look to past cases of missing persons where the family had resources to hire a PR firm in order to keep the issue constantly out.

in front of the public eye, and then wonder if what this looks like is true, that we live in a city that poses as this liberal Mecca, but when it comes down to it, privileges, money, race, and social status.

Do we live in a city where if you are not a person of privilege, whether due to your race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status,

that you will not get the equal treatment when a tragedy occurs.

Are we second-class citizens?

This leaves members of our community feeling less safe, less protected, and like they matter less overall.

These perceptions of discrimination may be, and I hope they are, misperceptions, and if so, there needs to be better communication to that end.

We need to know, and the individuals affected by these events need to know, we need to see and hear explicitly that there is concern for their suffering like there is for anyone else's, and empathy for this student and this teenager and their families.

We need your... Can I just finish one more thing?

We need you to speak out and show that you care.

There is still discrimination in our community.

You just have to go online to see that people are still thinking that because this person was transgender, it makes sense that they are missing and who cares, okay?

It's still out there.

We need your leadership on this issue and we need it for UVA as well.

There's a rally tomorrow at two at UVA to end hate crimes of all kinds.

and we would also, Charlottesville Pride is calling on all of you to put your resources behind a commission that, Human Rights Commission, for good, that seeks to end discrimination in our city.

Nancy Carpenter.

Good evening.

My name is Nancy Carpenter.

I live in Albemarle County.

I have some comments for the counselors tonight and also this issue carries over into Albemarle County as well to our supervisors.

As City Council mulls over possible enhanced ordinances concerning behaviors that for some diminish the downtown experience, be aware that homeless individuals can and are fighting back on ordinances that are going too far.

Charlottesville is welcome to join cities such as Salt Lake City, Utah, Phoenix, Arizona, Detroit, Michigan, San Francisco, California, and Grand Rapids, Michigan, among others who have had their ordinances struck down and deemed overreaching.

Charlottesville staff is considering ordinances similar to these.

What these cities enacted were measures that moved homeless folks out of downtowns, tourist areas, or even out of the city.

This appears to be what the city is considering based partly upon a questionable survey.

It is easier to do this than grapple with poverty and homelessness issues.

In my opinion, showing a sign is not threatening on its face and is a very passive method for asking for money.

As I said previously, the potential for infringement of First Amendment rights is a slippery slope.

If the city adopts ordinances that prohibit individuals from passively seeking donations, to me it is unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court has held simply because the public is uncomfortable with someone's message, the government cannot criminalize that person's speech.

The right to beg is protected by the First Amendment.

In 1980, the Supreme Court in Village of Schomburg versus Citizens for a Better Environment recognized that charitable appeals for funds on the street or door to door involve a variety of speech interests, communication of information, the dissemination and propagation of views and ideas, and the advocacy of causes that are within the protection of the First Amendment.

Lower courts, especially the Seventh Circuit, have held that people that panhandle for money cannot be distinguished from organizations asking for financial assistance.

Just because seeing poverty is inconvenient or annoying is not a strong enough argument for this council to justify prohibiting certain kinds of speech.

You cannot legislate your way out of this issue.

and as an aside for Ms. Roberts, Culpeper about 30 years ago had a similar traffic issue with Route 29 North and the then shopping center called Dominion Square, they had a belt center.

It was an unlighted intersection, there were lots of near misses, there were lots of comments at town council and to the state to please put a traffic light in there, please put a traffic light in there and unfortunately it took

the death of a toddler at a T-bone type accident before that light was installed.

In fact that infant was decapitated and there were a lot of first responders had to go through a lot of heavy duty counseling because of the severity of that particular accident.

So I hope that in the future the city and the state will get together and light that or do something with that intersection.

Good evening, my name is Scott Bandy.

I live at 1639 Cherry Avenue.

You are probably now well aware about the news in the decision with the April 2nd set date special election for the Constitutional Office of City Treasurer.

Yes, even I have to confess I was rocked a bit by this news.

Yes, this is something different outside what the rest of us are usually expecting from a one-party, city-run government.

For the sake of everyone's civic-minded capacity, I take this moment to thank Judd Cogshire for deliberating and reaching the decision he did in calling for this special election.

Though mere words are insufficient, a citizenry at true liberty deeply thanks him.

Now, within the stopwatch seconds remaining, I turn my remarks toward this elected city council, the audience in both this hall and public access television.

Now that the given expense and assured civil right for this special election must be held, I petition this council, through the appropriate state legislative channels, to arrange also for a referendum on the matter of electing candidates to city council.

I would also humbly request that you ask the Commonwealth of Virginia's legislature to consider a multi-choice referendum between the choices of A, retaining elected counselors by at-large, B, electing counselors by mix of both at-large and at wards, or C, electing counselors by just wards.

I close by drawing attention to the fact

I've been before you on several occasions.

I remind three of you that of public duty, because I ran with you also in the election of 2011,

As a matter of smart, citizen-focused government as invoked by City Council's very own 2025 vision outline, I beseech you to, while the window enrichment of the state legislature business is still open, to consider having the question of how we elect our City Council brought forth on the ballot this year.

Good evening Mr. Mayor and members of the council.

My name is Jeffrey Fogle.

I reside at 215 Spruce Street here in the city.

Seven months ago I presented a proposal to this council to eliminate jail sentences from the offense of simple, mere possession of marijuana.

at that time the council was considering a resolution which part of which passed calling on the state to consider decriminalization but even the two people who voted against that resolution were interested in exploring a lessening of the sentences that were involved in marijuana possession right now under the state statute you're subject to a thirty day sentence for your first offense

one simple joint and for your second and subsequent offenses for one simple joint up to 12 months in prison.

Now, I think there's nobody on this council who believes that people should go to jail for simple possession of marijuana.

There were a number of concerns raised particularly by those members of the council who voted against that resolution.

One was the message that we were sending to our young people by calling for decriminalization.

Well, the message here is it's illegal.

So any concerns you have about the message is resolved by this proposal because it does not do anything other than continue its illegality.

There was a concern by Councilwoman Galvin that we focus on local issues.

This is a local issue.

This is not a bully pulpit.

We're not asking you to pontificate, ask somebody else to do something.

This is something within your power and in our view, your responsibility to take care of as well.

And I think most of the members of the council, even those who opposed the resolution, agreed that jail time was inappropriate for simple possession of marijuana.

And so I'm calling on the council, even though there's been deathly silence in these ensuing seven months about this proposal, whether that was through administrative inadvertence or perhaps even a purposeful desire not to reconsider this issue, even though most members of the council at that time indicated a desire to consider this very issue.

So the proposal is very simple.

the same as the state statute much as about a dozen of our ordinances mirror precisely the state statute for the same conduct and simply changes it from the state statute which classifies this as an unclassified misdemeanor with a 30-day jail sentence and a 12-month jail sentence for any subsequent offense and transforming that into a fourth misdemeanor

which would eliminate the possibility of a jail sentence.

It would still be a crime.

The disability's attendance upon conviction of a crime would still be there.

People would still lose their license or get limited licenses for six months.

So the only change that this would affect would be the possibility of going to jail.

So it's hard for me to imagine that there would be anybody here who thinks that people should go to jail.

and then sometimes I think well maybe the feelings of some of the members of the council are well it's not going to happen to any of my friends well maybe it doesn't happen to middle class people who are mature but I assure you it happens to young people and it happens to people of color and you represent all of us not just the middle class so I urge you I realize that you know you can't take it up tonight and it requires three readings and so on but I'm here to urge you as are a number of other people who are going to speak tonight to put this back on the agenda and to consider this very simple

Proposal, which I think meets everybody's concern on this council.

Joining McNish, 2560 Beasley Lane.

I'm here today to ask you to consider Mr. Fogle's proposal.

Before I went to jail, I thought that only drug dealers or people with weapons actually went to jail for marijuana.

I've since learned that's not the case.

I had this misconception because very often offenders are cut slack, which in the case of marijuana possession means losing the right to drive for six months, having to pay for an SR-22, mandatory classes and dishing out over a thousand dollars.

Other times the judge makes an example of people and sentences the heaviest sentence possible.

Virginia law allows police to assume that a person with more than a half ounce of marijuana is distributing it.

This is akin to determining that a person with a case of beer tends to distribute it, since no reasonable person would consume it in one sitting.

Colorado and Washington have just passed laws that legalize twice that quantity for personal consumption.

Many of you who oppose the resolution express concerns about sentencing guidelines and a willingness to look at Mr. Fogel's proposal.

I don't know how long of a sentence the current guidelines permit, but I know that I was given a five and a half year sentence, six months active.

It could have all been active and will be if I'm to reoffend, as OAR statistics show 42% of those convicted for marijuana possession do.

If I were a marijuana addict, which I am not, the commonwealth's cure for me would be five years in prison.

This is for possession.

I do not know why the high rate of recidivism is used as evidence that marijuana smokers should be incarcerated.

This statistic is evidence that either people don't realize they will go to jail for a second possession, or that they have an addiction issue that they may need to address.

However, jails do not rehabilitate drug users.

This issue needs to migrate from the realm of criminal justice to that of public health.

Virginia locked me up with no attempt to rehabilitate me, save the looming threat of five years in prison.

By losing my right to vote, I learned that this discussion is off limits in Virginia.

Never mind that there was no aftermath, no one was injured.

I was in jail with a man my age who killed someone while drunk driving and his sentence was lower than mine.

It's almost flattering that my right to vote was perceived as such a threat that it was taken away from me.

However, I'd be kidding myself if I let that loss make me feel empowered.

Kids put Mr. Fogel's proposal on the agenda.

It solves almost all of the issues that you guys expressed about the resolution.

It prohibits marijuana and imposes a fine on violators.

This does not send a message to kids that marijuana is okay.

Some of you also said the resolution wasn't city business.

Well, ordinance is city business.

Also, from a racial perspective, as long as drug laws have been around, they've been enforced selectively, leaving a massive racial disparity in prisons.

Eliminating custodial sentences for simple marijuana possession will help.

Based on your objections to the resolution, all of you should be at least willing to consider Mr. Fogel's proposal.

Brendan Connors.

Good evening, Brandon Collins, 418 Fairway Avenue.

I'm actually here, as you can tell by my t-shirt, speaking on behalf of FAR, Public Housing Association of Residents.

FAR is perhaps one of the most important organizations in the city of Charlottesville.

We are one of the few that speaks loudly and powerfully for low-income people in our community, in particular people

who live in public housing.

Just a quick note to all of you who are here who aren't related to FAR that all our sisters and brothers in the LGBTQ community and in the homeless community and those of you who want some kind of sense of justice out of our drug laws that your struggle is our struggle and we stand with you.

And we're going to ask you to stand with us today.

We're here.

FAR has been around since 1998.

We're a very strong and well-known organization nationally.

And the cool thing about FAR is that we are recognized by the Housing Authority and HUD actually specifically says that the Housing Authority

has to recognize us and has to negotiate with us and work with us and communicate with us to make a better situation for people in public housing.

CRHA has failed to meet that requirement and that is a federal requirement.

and I think you all may know already that public housing in Charlottesville is in turmoil and it's been that way for the last nine months.

I would encourage all of you to go back and watch some of the videos of past CRHA meetings.

I would encourage you to find the minutes for past resident services meetings and look at what kinds of things have been brought up by residents to the housing authority about the administration and the executive

administration of public housing in Charlottesville and you will see that the same problems keep coming up over and over and over again and they are not being addressed.

There are so many of those things and so much bad feelings in the public housing community that we cannot list them all.

I do have a list of some of these things, problems with the administration.

of Public Housing.

And we come to you, we know you don't have a whole lot of power, but you've got a whole lot of influence.

You appoint those members of the CRHA board who we've come to consistently to ask for help in dealing with the executive situation

with public housing and we would like you to get involved.

Some of you have heard about our concerns and they have failed to hold any of their staff accountable to anything.

They've failed to hold themselves accountable to residents and they've failed to provide any, just the smallest bit of dignity to residents of public housing.

Some of these issues, and I will send you this list, but consistently approaching policy without consulting the Resident Advisory Board, which is far

They have done a great deal of attempting to mess with other tenant's organizations and tenant's groups and specific members of FAR.

There's been retaliation.

There's been no response to issues brought up in resident services committee meetings.

We have a number, a large number of policy changes that have gone into effect without any consultation with FAR and in fact without any consultation from the CRHA board.

We're asking you to do something about this.

We ask for change, fundamental change in executive leadership at the CRHA and we would like to see restructuring of the CRHA and all of those who want to see justice and fairness in public housing in Charlottesville, I would ask to stand up and we want to change and we think you can help.

Good evening, my name is Lennis Worth and I have a statewide drug policy organization and I'm here to comment on the marijuana issue for you and I want to compliment you all on how these meetings are conducted, it's really good.

I want to share with you some of the results from jurisdictions that have liberalized

through initiative or other ways there are marijuana laws.

In the states that have had marijuana liberalization initiatives,

They have had a reduction in suicides, reductions in auto fatalities, and they have also found now the latest information is as much as a 20% reduction in youth arrests for whatever reason.

I think they're myriad and multifaceted, but these are excellent outcomes and I think that it's

connected to what I was saying before when I was here a few months ago that

you know you can wag your finger at children and you can say we don't want to send the wrong message but there's a certain point at which that Pandora's box becomes the issue but we're seeing excellent results from liberalizing marijuana laws and I think that this proposal that you have before you really does answer the concerns that you mentioned now I see this as a continuing conversation that we should all have because there's lots of facets to it

and one of the things that was brought up in the last meeting was the issue of schizophrenia.

Since then I did a little bit of research and we found out that the schizophrenic persons who actually have used marijuana are less likely to commit suicide or have serious negative outcomes.

So we don't see increasing numbers of schizophrenic cases

with increasing numbers of marijuana use.

So that's a huge open question.

And after the last meeting, I emailed some information about that to you, Ms. Gavlin.

and I hope you read it.

And what I want you to do, I urge you to do is to read the information that I send forward to you because I intend to do that so that we have all the facts on the table and we really know what we're doing because we do need to be careful.

But I think that be careful in this case

involves not putting people in prison or incarcerating them for very minor offenses and reserving those sanctions for more serious offenses.

Good afternoon.

My name is Deirdre Gilmore and I live at 613 Hinton Avenue.

I want to talk about what's going on with our housing authority.

I'm coming here because we've been going before the housing authority board complaining and things aren't changing.

I know there was a time where the housing authority was under the city and I think that's where it needs to be because

It's just not working.

We need new leadership.

We have people that are hurting.

And if you think you have a problem now with homelessness, if someone don't step up and change what's going on, we're going to have a bigger problem here in Charlottesville.

I also want to talk a little bit about Marco because I sit here in these chambers and I remember people coming talking about the homelessness on the mall.

That was on a Monday.

Y'all talked about how people sat around on the benches and they was begging.

By Friday, it was on the news, y'all went down and the benches were removed to keep the homeless people off of the mall.

So if you can do that in a number of five days, and we've been talking about our housing authority probably five years,

and nothing has been done, then I know that something can be done.

I know that things need to change because I look at him and I also sit here and I heard y'all talk about jobs.

Ambassador for the Mall,

Why not take a homeless person and give them that job?

What better person to be an ambassador for the mold than a homeless person?

You also talk about someone picking up trash.

Give them a chance.

Give people a chance that once they come up, then they can reach back and they can help someone else.

You know, the only thing they're asking for is a chance.

Nobody is asking for a handout.

They want a handout.

So I feel like if with all the money and the influence that we have here in Charlottesville, all the pain and suffering that's going on with the low-income community, with the homelessness, it should not be happening.

Because what you need to think about is if it was you, how would you feel?

And I always hope this proverb

It's 2113 that says, whosoever stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself but should not be heard.

The last speaker is Shamikul.

Hello, I am Shamora Cooper and I reside at 713 F. 6th Street, Charlottesville, Virginia.

And I also too would like to come today and just talk about the leadership of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

From my understanding, the council appoints the people that sits on the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority board.

and I just think that that needs to be revisited because we've been coming back time after time expressing our concerns about the housing authority because right now the housing authority is at the all-time worst.

Families are being broken apart, confidentiality has been broken, people are being homeless and nothing is being done and nobody's being heard.

We talk month after month saying the same thing.

and we just feel like we're at a point where we're tired.

We need change.

We come every month and we say the same thing over and over.

It's almost like we're a broken record so I really hope that the City Council can take a look and just go back and revisit the minutes and hopefully that maybe y'all can have a word with the board and just let them know that we are people and we would like to be treated as so.

Thank you.

Anybody who would like to speak again, you need to wait till the end of the meeting.

Yes, sir.

I'm from out of town.

If you could just give me one minute, because this is the gentleman's grandmother.

She's sick.

So if I could just give one minute.

I live at 317 High Rock Road in Rice, Virginia.

I'm born and raised here, moved eight years ago after my daughter graduated Charlottesville High School with an advanced honors diploma.

One time I was proud of Charlottesville.

I can tell you in Prince Edward County that's all I ever bragged on, is how we should be like Charlottesville.

But I can't brag on Charlottesville when my little 19-year-old cousin is missing.

I've been told, well, when the Harrington girl went missing, her family had money.

You shouldn't have money for the doll to do what it's supposed to do.

I've known Chief Longo when he first came here.

Chief, the police department has not done what it needs to do to find our child.

This is not the first time I've had a 14-year-old cousin on Little Woodfall who's been missing for years.

This makes no sense.

Is it because they're black?

Is it because they're poor?

Because that's the only thing I see.

And I've been in this city a lot longer than some of you.

My family's been in this city.

They helped build this city and this county.

Call your office, Mayor Jones.

You don't return people's calls.

I've got news for you.

Even if I don't live here, when I come in this city, you're a part of this state.

I'm a citizen of the Commonwealth.

I should feel just as safe.

My daughter still lives here.

My niece still lives here.

The rest of my family lives here.

If this young man can go missing and we don't call in the state police, the FBI, and any other resources we can to find them or to find any of our other missing children, how dare you?

You're the leaders of this community.

And I've got news for you.

Your gay community, which I'm a part of too, your black community and your poor community are not feeling safe.

and make no mistake, just like you got elected, they'll vote you out.

As a Democrat, I have never seen this committee so unreflective of the citizens.

We've always had blacks, we've always had minorities, we've always had whites and we've always had women.

We look like the Democratic committee.

What happened in eight years

What happened?

Did blacks not be too kind of good enough for you?

Were we not educated enough for you to sit right there with you?

Mr. Huja, you came in as city planner.

Yes, sir.

You helped build this city.

Keep it together.

Bring it back to what it was.

Most of all, find DeShad Smith.

Thank you.

I'll start.

I'd like to first comment maybe before they leave.

One thing that I would like to clarify is that I have been thinking a lot about Deshad Sage in the past week.

I was out of town when the vigil happened and I did not know about it.

I think several of us didn't know about it.

So I'm sorry that we weren't there, but we

you know we can't read minds and so if people tell us about things it helps but we will certainly be there when we know and I think that we really do you know my prayers and thoughts are with family and with the whole community because this is a horrible thing that's happened.

Just to kind of keep going, let's see

I guess I have a lot of things I could say, but I won't.

I appreciate, Mr. Brown, what you said about the floor doesn't get clean if we sweep the dirt under the rug.

I think that that's true.

I think when we talk about issues of free speech and free assembly on the downtown mall, they're guaranteed by the Constitution for a reason.

I think if they didn't somehow sometimes get unpleasant, we wouldn't need a Constitution to protect those rights.

and I think that that's something that I believe very strongly and it's the right of the people to assemble, the right of the people to speak and I will continue to defend those rights as often as I can so thank you for being here.

Let's see.

And I will also say that about the marijuana possession plea, I was one of the folks who was not particularly inclined to consider

taking away jail time for

concerned about the fact that in order to get marijuana you're buying it from criminals.

It's an illegal act and it worries me if it's not a state thing, because I do support looking at state laws of decriminalizing marijuana.

But I've got to say that some of the talk today compelled me to reconsider.

I can't say I've come all the way, but I would be interested in considering that at some point in the future.

and I think I may have been the third voice needed to make that something that we might bring to our Council.

It's not that I'm ready to vote, yes, so we might want to take our time in getting it on the agenda, but I'm at least thinking about it.

And, actually to Ms. Gilmore,

When you mentioned that the homeless folks or people who need jobs should be hired as ambassadors, that's exactly what I had pictured.

Not necessarily homeless people, but people who really need jobs.

It's not a super high skilled, you know, you don't have to have a college degree to be an ambassador, you just need to be good with people and you need to know the city.

And so I would encourage people who do need a job to look at that as a position, because that's exactly what it's for.

Let me start with Naomi Roberts.

As you may recall, I have supported a stoplight at that intersection for quite some time, and I was pleased to hear recently that it is something that the staff is now looking into and has at least tentatively allocated some funding for so that we might finally see a stoplight there, because I agree it's very important.

In terms of folks who have come forward tonight as they've come forward in the recent past to talk about homelessness and panhandling on the mall, I would just reiterate once again from my perspective, as I told I think Nancy Carpenter in an email today, you know if people are

uncomfortable viewing homelessness and poverty, the answer isn't to try to sweep it under the rug and to hide it, it's to redouble our efforts to fight homelessness and poverty.

Really the focus should be on behaviors and if there's threatening and harassing behaviors going on, regardless of who's perpetuating those behaviors, that's where I want to see the focus and not stigmatizing or criminalizing one segment of the community

over another or at all.

And let's see here.

I'm in full agreement with Mr. Fogel and Mr. McNish and others who have spoken about this opportunity that we have to address I think what in 20 or 30 years is going to perceived as a great injustice the way that we perceived prohibition now and

Back in the 1920s, I think future generations are going to perceive the way that we treat marijuana now and incarcerate so many of our citizens for simple possession of a drug that's actually less dangerous than alcohol in many ways.

and the fact that we're filling our jails and filling our prisons with people whose crime was possession of this drug which the majority of Americans now feel should be legalized I think is going to be perceived as a great injustice and a great waste of resources and of human capital and human potential

and so I am in full support of anything that we can do on the local level.

I know it is primarily not a local issue, it's primarily a statewide issue and even more so a federal issue but anything that we can do on the local level

Let's provide our own ordinances to move us in a better direction.

I'm in full support.

And thank you to the members of FAR who've come forward tonight.

It's absolutely important that everybody in our community be treated with dignity and respect.

And that's clearly not happening right now.

And that's

We need change.

We need change in the way things are going with the Housing Authority.

So thank you for speaking up.

Let's see.

And again, I'm in full support of anything that we can do as a community to bring Deshad home.

Thank you for coming to speak tonight.

I know his family have spoken to his mother and his grandmother and others who care about his well-being and his safety and we really do hope that

There's not a lot to add.

I agree with everything I've heard.

Ms. Roberts, I cringe every time I go by that intersection and I too look forward to a solution, a better solution than we've had.

Mr. Brown, thank you for coming.

You're always so incredibly pleasant and friendly on the Mall and I've often noted that and I really thank you for that.

and Mr. Long.

In terms of our resources, we really are a city rich in resources.

We might not have enough, but I think we've really got to try harder so that people can access them and know what is available.

I would love to see a better, more comprehensive way of people being able to find out even just, you know,

somebody helping somebody who's homeless or in need or in any other particularly emergency situation to key in a few words and have all the resources that are available and how to access them.

Really it's so much of it is about getting them then and just as important as making sure that we have enough.

Mr. Bandy, I actually agree with you.

I think we need a better geographic distribution of elected officials and whether that's a referendum or not, that's an interesting idea.

And I'm totally in support of the legal, the

liberalizing the marijuana laws and whatever we can do.

I know we've had consultation about it.

I apologize for not being able to bring it right up into my memory banks, but definitely we'll see what we can do about that now that it looks like we have consensus on it or enough.

And thank you, Pharr, for being here.

It's always

So thanks for being here.

Yes, Ms. Roberts, I agree and I am very happy to hear that we're going to be moving towards another solution for Mickey Drive that was always viewed as a test, as an interim, and it's not working.

With regards to everybody that came out in support of DSHOD, again, as Ms. Szakos said, myself and Ms. Smith, three of us were out of town in our

We were in a conference and did not know anything about it.

Very, very sorry about what happened and I have actually a lot of faith in our police department that they are in fact doing all they can.

We are all committed to finding Dashad.

and again, our sympathies go out to you.

Mr. Fogel, yeah, at that time when we were talking about marijuana, I was very concerned about the sentencing.

I was very concerned about the mixed messages.

I do think we're going to have troubles passing anything that's going to be in keeping with state law.

I'm willing to look at it, but I also challenge our counsel to make sure that we create a campaign

to insist upon the dangers of marijuana use among our young people similar to what we've done against smoking cigarettes.

It is not child's play, absolutely not.

So yes, I understand to imprison people for this we need to reconsider, but we cannot, we cannot give the message that it is okay

for young children to use this substance when we are trying to get kids to focus and stay committed and to grow in school.

I'm very firm about that.

But I do appreciate the fact that you've come up with a solution that addresses everyone's concerns.

Mr. Collins and Ms. Smith, I think I relate to you that I am going to be going on a tour of the public housing sites with Ms. Dunn to get a sense of what's really going on myself as an architect.

I think I have a particular kind of perspective to bring to bear on this.

And Ms. Smith, if you would like to take me along.

Oh, sorry.

It's the Deidre part.

I am so sorry.

Anyway, Ms. Gilmore.

If we can get together, that would be great.

Because I do want to see what the physical issues have been as well.

And then I think the one thing I do want to end on by talking about the

what we're trying to do on the downtown mall and I think at the last meeting there were some very very harsh statements made and myself and another counselor actually singled out and told point blank that we could not possibly know anything at all about poverty and I want to kind of set the record straight just because someone is a professional

and someone sitting on council doesn't mean that they did not grow up in poverty.

I did.

I know what it feels like.

I know what it feels like to have barely a roof over your head.

There was no AHIP in Brockton, Massachusetts.

My father was disabled.

He was a disabled vet.

But because he was Irish American, it was automatically assumed his liver disease was not caused by diseases contracted in the Pacific as a veteran, but that it was because he was an Irish American.

My mother on a school nurse's salary raised us.

My brother and I kept us afloat.

There is many of us who have a first-hand understanding of what poverty means.

And I constantly, constantly am striving to work to improve the opportunities in our community, just like my fellow counselors, because I know what it feels like.

Having said that, I've worked many jobs.

from as a kid picking up bottles to get refunds to cleaning people's houses.

As a teenager working on assembly lines, working in restaurants, I have worked with many people of color, many people in poverty.

and I cannot accept in my heart of hearts that they would accept vulgarity, that they would accept menacing behavior in their children or in themselves.

My parents certainly didn't and we were poor.

So we've talked about slippery slopes.

It's a very slippery slope to begin to equate poverty, people of color, homeless people,

with certain aberrant behaviors because it's not true.

Our policy is a balance.

We're trying to strike a balance between compassion and setting high standards.

If we don't set standards, if we begin to differentiate our standards between groups of people on the basis of race, class, whether they live in a house or not,

That snacks to me of this concept called the soft bigotry of low expectations.

We don't accept that in our classrooms, we don't accept that in our workplace, we don't accept that in this council chamber, and we don't accept it on our downtown mall, our public place.

It is for everybody, a peaceful place for everybody regardless of class, race, religion, gender orientation.

I agree with most of the comments of the members of the council.

I just wanted to address Mr. Long.

I understand his concern for homeless.

I think in the last few years City Council has done a fair amount, building 30 units for homeless and many other programs.

So I'm sure more can be done, but I don't think we have made some efforts along those lines.

Any other comments from anybody else?

No?

Thank you.

Next item on the agenda is consent agenda.

Item A minutes for November 19th.

Item B in appropriation, FY 2012 year-end appropriation, second of two readings.

Item C in appropriation, 2012 Edward Byron Memorial Justice Assistance Grant, $28,386, second of two readings.

Item D in appropriation, Federal Realty Sponsorship Agreement, Police Patrol at Barracks Road Shopping Center, $30,000, second of two readings.

Item E in appropriation, Charlottesville Area Transit Project Landscape Performance Bond Release, $13,621.86, second of two readings.

Item F, an appropriation of FY 2013 transit grants

second of two readings.

Item G in appropriation of Runaway Shelter Emergency Shelter Program Grant $212,444 second of two readings.

Item H in appropriation 2013 Department of Motor Vehicles Virginia Highway Safety Grant $18,975 second of two readings.

Item I in appropriation and reimbursement to city for Comcast Celebrate 250 donation $5,000 second of two readings.

Item J in appropriation Albemarle County reimbursement for the Gordon Avenue Library Masonry Project $3,452.25 first of two readings.

Item K Albemarle County Reimbursement for the Central Library Elevator Replacement Project, $8,906, first of two readings.

Item L, an appropriation aid to locality's fire disbursement fund, $116,218, first of two readings.

Item M, an appropriation and a resolution.

Funds for the Human Services Planner, $63,766, first of two readings and resolution to resolve the Commission on Children and Families, first of one reading.

Item N, a resolution, Dominion power easement across Darden Tow Park, first of one reading.

Item O, an ordinance, abandonment of gas easement near Dunloris subdivision, second of two readings.

Item P, an ordinance, Ivy Creek Natural Area Tenant House Police Agreement, second of two readings.

Item Q, an ordinance zoning text amendment medical labs, first of two readings.

Ms. Smith has asked that item M be removed from the consent agenda for further discussion, so we will put it at the end of the meeting.

I was actually just wondering, Ms. Smith?

I do, actually.

I don't want to remove minutes from the agenda, but there are corrections in the minutes which says I was opposed to... You might say it out loud anyway, just to make sure people know.

I was not opposed to Ambassador, I was opposed to finding a new position in the city for advocate.

I'll move that the consent agenda be approved with the taking out of item M. Is there a second?

Is there a discussion?

If not, both.

Thanks Mayor and Council.

This is an item that was on your agenda back in August of this year.

We had brought you a potential change to the noise ordinance to up the penalties based on conversations with neighbors in the university circle and Venable neighborhood related to some issues they were having with noise from parties and activities in their neighborhood.

After a great deal of discussion at that meeting, it was suggested that because we were also making some changes in policy and procedure that the police department were going to implement that you not take action, so you deferred any action in August and you asked that we come back to you in December and talk about what the impacts had been of those changes.

and quite frankly what we're, you know, the bottom line of what we're here for tonight is to tell you that we probably haven't had enough time to truly gauge what those changes are.

What we can tell you is based on the data from 2009 through 2012, the number of calls is down from 2011.

There were 312 total calls in 2011.

They're down to 264 for the same period

So each of these is just August to November for each of those years?

This data is from August 15th to November 8th.

Right, everything, and all the data there is the same period of time, so it's apples to apples comparison.

There was some confusion in the report because the number of calls is down.

I made a mistake and said the number of verified calls is up.

I was looking at the wrong columns.

It was non-verified, but the number of verified calls is essentially the same also and actually is down.

I will.

Chief Longo is joining us somewhere and is here.

And if I mess it up, Chief is able to jump in.

But essentially, verified means they got there and there was noise, but it may not have risen to the level of being a violation of the noise ordinance.

So they got there and they found that there was something that would have generated that call, but it didn't necessarily rise to the level that would, when they put the meter on it, that would rise to the level of a violation.

You've got some extra data today that Mr. Jones sent out and what the police have done.

There's been a great deal of cooperation and a great deal of conversation with the students of the university that the police have done.

the university actually provided an extra meter, they purchased and provided an extra noise meter for the police and when the police got their policy in place and the meter and they started the policy of issuing written warnings it was mid-October before that happened

and so the numbers are, we don't have enough time on that but it appears, the reason you only have 31 warnings is that the violations that would cause that warning were issued in, beginning in mid-October.

And so that's when the tickets were in place.

That's when they started the actual when they arrived on the scene.

If somebody was in violation of the ordinance, they would issue a warning first.

And if they went back the second time, as I said, with the new policies and procedures, then that address would be issued a violation notice.

So the number of arrests or violations that have been issued

is up from three in 2011 to 11 over the same time period.

So pretty substantial increase for a short period of time with the number of tickets given.

And as I said, Chief is here can completely explain or answer any questions you've got about the details.

But I think the bottom line is we wanted to make the report to you tonight.

and provide the police here to provide any information.

We're not asking you to adopt this ordinance at this time.

We did meet with the president of the Venable Neighbors Association last week and talk about the plan and the intent was that we would not ask for you to adopt the ordinance but that we would suggest that we continue throughout this school year and see how things go with the new processes in place and then at the end of the year make an evaluation

and meet with the neighborhood and see where we are.

The only thing I would add, Members of Council, the numbers are slightly up from what Mr. Tolbert indicated.

It was actually, I believe, 12 arrests or citations.

33 warnings, so when we went back to scrub the numbers, we actually found where there were additional citations, another way for saying arrest, and also warnings that resulted.

I would just say that, as you can see from the information we provided you with, this really is a work in progress, and we're putting our best foot forward by looking at our practices, our procedures, the way we handle these calls, and want to do so in concert with both the Venable neighborhood and also the University community.

I have real kind of straightforward definition questions.

Sure.

On the list of violations, what does no UU mean?

It's about my pay grade.

That's one of those crime analyst technical questions.

Okay.

Because it's really hard for us to look at this and tell if, when you said that verified just means that there was noise, but it may not have been a violation.

The reason for that is there's only certain ways that the ECC will allow us to close a car, provide a disposition.

And one of the ways is to say that we've gotten there, it was verified, there was either action taken or no action taken, was unfounded.

And what we're going to try to do as we move forward is actually have the officer note in the call history.

Now it's going to require us to go back and look at each individual call, but actually note in the call history that they verified noise existed, that they actually took a noise reading and what that reading was.

and whether it was a violation or not.

Right now, with the way that we're able to code the calls, we're not able to capture that information.

The next column is code.

Code 5 and 6 would be unfounded, not verified.

Code 1 would be arrest.

Code 2 would be arrest.

Okay, but verified it was in violation or just that there was something?

Just that there was something.

Okay, so one and two means clearly there was no violation.

Yes.

A warning could be, a warning would be one or two.

Thank you.

Because I noticed that like, well, that's part of the discussion.

I'll wait for it.

And so we're basically just dealing with like a month's data, right?

Yes ma'am, a little over a month.

Okay.

And I still have a funny question.

Sure.

No, a citation could be an arrest.

Yes ma'am, that's correct.

Okay.

Good night public hearing.

I'll open the public hearing on the side.

How are you all?

My name is Andrew Johnson, 29 University Circle.

There's a bunch of guys here from the IFC, the Interfraternity Council, who have come to talk a little bit about different aspects of this noise ordinance and how its effects and just an all-around view from a few different viewpoints.

My role, I'm the VP for Judiciary, which essentially means any judicial matters with 28 fraternities, 1,500 men, I take care of them.

So I've gotten pretty used to dealing with fraternities when they're in trouble.

But a lot of what we do isn't necessarily reactive, it's proactive.

We take a lot of steps to prevent problems from coming up.

Noise is kind of a tough one because noise is not something that can be easily handled.

But we revamped our trash enforcement policy and it's been a tremendous success.

any trash complaints since very early in the year and the new policy has been well received in the sense that it makes it a little easier for everybody and it will continue to be enforced in the same way and it will be passed down and so that's now going to be part of the IFC's policies.

And also, I sanctioned a lot of fraternities for various actions to different levels of severity.

And I usually consider three main factors whenever I'm trying to produce a sanction for a fraternity.

And I found these three factors work very well.

First of all, you have to consider the severity.

Obviously, there's going to be a huge range of things from fights to breaking objects to all sorts of different stuff.

You've got to consider the severity.

The second thing you really need to consider, and I think this is most important, is the underlying cause of the problem.

And then the third thing is, what's the best way to fix the underlying cause?

This noise ordinance does not address the underlying cause.

This simply addresses the symptom of the underlying cause.

And the underlying cause in this particular situation is neighborhood relations.

The neighborhood relations have been strained in the past and we've been working proactively to help make those better.

And I think they've been strained in a sense because there's been a lack of communication.

there's tenuous trust and also there's been a lack of respect in the past and we understand that we've been taking proactive measures and they've been well received by a lot of neighbors that I've talked to and going forward we will continue to take those proactive measures even through the new people who take our positions and then also

The noise is a symptom of that problem, but also by addressing the neighborhood relations issue, you're not only addressing noise, you're also addressing trash.

You're also addressing respect for your neighbors.

You're going to create a better community.

And right now the noise ordinance is actually going to be a step back for us.

because we're going to have to deal with frustration from the students and that's just going to worsen the neighborhood relations from our point of view.

The way we see it, the current ordinance that's in place, we've noticed it has been enforced in a much bigger way than any other time in the past and people have taken note of that.

We've taken actions and some of the other guys, I'm not going to get into the actions they've taken, but there's been a huge call to action and it's been received by all the members and we will continue to do that.

Hello, Council.

Thank you for having me.

My name's Andy Kolberg.

I'm a fourth grader at the university, 21-year resident of Charlottesville, elementary, middle school, high school, stuck it out at UVA.

And I'm currently the Interfraternity Council President right now.

I wanted to touch on a couple different things.

First of all, we just want to come forward and say thank you for allowing the students in on this.

We haven't really felt like we've had a voice yet, and this is a great opportunity for us, because we have been working on this all semester long.

This has been really our only focus, frankly.

And we recognize that there is a problem here, but we also recognize that community relations and building those community relations is the way out of this problem, not by putting on additional violations to potentially send somebody to prison for just noise over 55 decibels, which on a decibel reads as its office noise or slight kind of water falling.

So that's from the road, not in the house.

We're not saying that's the noise in the house.

A few things I wanted to touch on first, though, is just the communication that we've built with the neighbors.

I've sat down with President of the Venable Neighborhood Association, the U-Circle Neighborhood Association.

We have had meetings with all of them, gone to their meetings.

We had a big one over U-Circle where we had all the students who lived there communicating with each other.

It's gotten much better.

But the feedback that we've got at these meetings has been excellent.

We put in a lot of measures at first as soon as we heard about this in the beginning of the year and they've really, really worked.

The student body has pretty much, specifically the fraternity student body has united behind these.

Just to list a few, we've redone our party patrol process, we've updated our trash pickup.

No parties are outside now, all are inside.

That's a massive change since when I arrived at the university.

Windows are always shut.

No bands are outside.

We have even used mattresses to cover the windows inside.

You laugh.

However, the fire department was very, very, very mad at us because had anything gone wrong, that would have been a very big disaster.

And that is just an effort to build, to

kind of stopped frustrating our neighbors.

But we are the social scene at UVA and that is something that frankly employers value.

When I got my job this summer I was told explicitly that one of the reasons that I got my job was because I could interact with people.

And having a social life at UVA is not just about throwing big parties, what it is is about bringing people together.

And that's an opportunity that we don't want to lose just because a sound is slightly above 55 decibels.

Unfortunately this year we have had

Tailgates for the football games in the middle of daylight, alumni events, things like that that have been shut down.

A lot of alumni really feel very strongly about this.

However, the reaction from the neighbors that we've got has been unbelievable.

At every single meeting, they have said that we were doing very, very well.

They said that they have seen a major difference this year.

And they're looking forward to working with us in the future, which is something that is very, very pleasing to me.

And it's one of the biggest reasons why I don't think that putting through extra violations is really going to help the situation.

I think that allowing us to work with the neighbors is really going to help the situation.

Communication dives, beneficial change, increased penalties are only going to break up this system, drive fear, anger, and distrust.

And finally, I just wanted to quickly comment that in some of these meetings, every single meeting I asked,

You know, what are some things we can be doing as fraternities and as students that could be helpful for, sorry I'm not speaking to this, that could be helpful for you guys?

What can we do?

What more than what we're doing right now?

How are you feeling?

And almost every single time that I asked that question, the answer was we're very, very happy with what you guys are doing.

We're very impressed.

The change has been big and we don't really have any practical suggestions for you right now.

One suggestion I will say,

I've had a lot of meetings with Lottie and she's been very very helpful and we've tried to implement many of her suggestions but the last meeting that I had with her she said the exact same thing that it had changed very much and there has been a lot of good that has been done and we believe that that is something that we can build off of for the future instead of putting violations on that are really going to break up what builds UVA, what is special about UVA which is that we are social but we're also smart we can go out into the world and do good

And that's something that I believe that this Noif violation would really, really kind of break up the community for.

So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, can I ask just an informational question?

Yeah, absolutely.

In terms of the changes that you put in place, what kind of reassurance can you give us and give the neighborhood that these aren't going to go away after the school year?

No, absolutely.

And that's something that we've been thinking quite a bit about because it's very easy for us to kind of say in this situation right now we're going to do this.

Currently we're going through the transition process where presidents who have been working with us the whole entire time who fundamentally understand the issue will now be stepping out and letting the third year's natural progression go through.

However, I think it's going to work very well.

And the reason why I think it's going to work well is because these third years that are taking over the leadership positions

usually have been working with the presidents all the way through.

They understand the issue now.

As with any societal change, any kind of culture shock that happens, and this was certainly a culture shock to the university, it takes a little while for that to get established, but we're well on the road to making sure that works.

IFC policies, those are on the books.

And that's something that we've put in place.

But I think that it's the transitions that are really going to work out in the springtime.

I transition in February, which is after about three months of time where the new presidents will be in.

So they'll be speaking with me.

I'll be walking them all the way through this.

And we're going to be doing something in the very early, right after rush, which is about February, we'll bring all the new presidents in.

We explain the whole entire new changes to them.

What has to happen, what the rules are, how to work within the rules, how to build relationships with the community and that's something that I'm proud of.

My name is Neil Branch and I'm a local resident of Albemarle County and UVA student.

I currently serve as the Vice President for UVA Student Council.

As a local resident and now student, I have always appreciated the interaction and collaboration between students and residents.

I enjoy attending events that bring these communities together from the Virginia Festival of the Book to the Farmers Market.

The university experience could not be what it is without the great support and environment offered by Charlottesville residents.

One thing I believe that the university has encouraged is being an active member of this community.

Results have shown students embrace this message.

Each year more than 3,000 students volunteer through Madison House.

By the end of the year, our students have given 110,000 hours of the time.

This is not even including

the numerous service organizations and consulting groups that work with local schools, nonprofits, and small businesses across Charlottesville.

My fear, however, is that a change to the noise ordinance could set us all back.

I realize we are not perfect, but we are making progress.

When residents brought forward concerns about the noise, we as students took it seriously.

This has created a renewed dialogue about what it means to be a good community member.

Through this, there will be a solution.

I just want to close by thanking you for your time and thank you for including students on this conversation.

My hope is that with this spirit of engagement we can continue this dialogue of cooperation and collaboration.

Good evening.

My point is actually going towards transition, so I think it's timely that I'm talking right now.

But you need to say your name first.

I apologize.

My name is Bo Swindell, and I live at 33 University Circle.

And I am the president of my fraternity as well as I sit on the exec board for the Interfraternity Council, so I think

I have kind of a three tiered understanding of what the transition is going to be like and I know that we just selected our new president of our fraternity a week ago and the entire conversation focused around noise and what the liability presidents would have.

Going forward, if the noise ordinance got passed, and there was a lot of talk about whether it was going to get passed, whether it was not going to get passed, but at the end of the day, the conversation came down to continuing the progress we've already made so far this semester.

I know speaking personally, my opportunity got a warning at the beginning of September, and we have made drastic changes to the way that we work our parties, whether it goes noise risk, making sure the trash is clean up the next morning, and that

that progress continues.

And I know that coming from the neighborhood relations, we've made a serious effort in getting to know the neighbors around us, whether it's an informal conversation of talking to them as we walk by on the way to class or like we've talked about already, attending the forums that the school has set up and that we've tried to set up as well as the university social community.

So I think

Thank you very much.

Andrew McGee

Well, he's coming and I just want to say that I've been working with Citi for almost 40 years.

Well, thank you very much.

My name is Andrew McGee and I'm currently president of my fraternity, St. Ima Hall at 130 Madison Lane.

A lot of the guys have spoken tonight about transitions being made with their presidents and many of them have, some of them haven't made, however, many of them have not.

And in talking with my counterpoints from other houses, I'm seeing a recurring theme.

Those who thought to be the next leaders of the institutions have foregone this opportunity and in my seconds have told me that the proposed changes and penalties due to the city's noise ordinance are too high.

The risk to themselves, to their record, is too high.

The class of misdemeanor that will be sent, put forward and the fines that come along with it, students are wary to take on the roles.

Well, I'm not worried about the transition that will come from before tonight and in February.

I'm confident that we can make these transitions.

However, I'm afraid that some of the best leaders that this university has to offer are not being sent forward before the community.

The philanthropic events of the community which raised over $300,000 and again set over $100,000 in manpower.

The educational benefits for students, the GPI for the Greek institutions is on average higher than most of the other undergraduates.

and the experiences that bond the university students in a unique way are just a few of the positive effects that the university sees from the Greek institutions.

Without the right leaders in place, the Greek system at UVA will put itself in a position where the benefits may not be as impactful, inspiring, or as positive to the community we serve.

This system has long had a great impact on the university as a whole and makes the University of Virginia and Charlottesville as an extension, a unique place and desirable destination for the world's top students and leaders.

With proposed changes and penalties, we will rob this community and the university itself from the leadership that a lot of these students have to offer.

Hello City Council.

My name is Kathy Lovell and I'm a third year at the University of Virginia and I will actually be the upcoming president of the Inner Sorority Council.

So on behalf of the Inner Sorority Council, I would like to begin by saying that we are

fully committed to community relations just as the Interfraternity Council is.

And in light of these recent noise ordinances, it is something that we have strove to educate our women because we realize that this is a concern of the culture and we want you to know that we're also justice behind it.

Our goal in educating our women is to make sure that they know to foster this community relations because it is something that is very important to us.

Many of our girls also live within the University Circle neighborhood and just all throughout that area.

We hope that you'll, we believe that just continued conversations similar to what the Interfraternity Council is doing really is the key to solving these problems.

The last thing we want to do is create any sort of resentment, just creating the strongest lines of communications that we can.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Mr. Mayor and members of City Council, thank you for allowing me to speak here.

My name is Miles Kerwin and I am the president of Theta Chi Fraternity at UVA.

Our house is at 600 Preston Place and is in close proximity to many of the neighbors who had previously voiced concerns about noise violations coming from fraternities.

Last year, if you remember, I came to this council to gain a special use permit in order to increase the max occupancy for our house.

And there was actually a lot of opposition to that from neighbors.

After you approved our permit, we began a renovation and expansion of our house that is scheduled to be complete in the coming weeks.

In that time, we have made substantial improvements to neighborhood relations, and our fraternity is just one example of the larger effort the university has made to that end.

Our efforts began on November 15th of last year when I met with representatives from the Venable Neighborhood Association to discuss any grievances they had with our fraternity.

Obviously, noise violations were one of their biggest concerns.

At the conclusion of the meeting, we developed a memorandum of understanding that outlined a plan to improve neighborhood relations over time.

We agreed to add a good neighbor policy to our chapter bylaws that includes limiting noise from any of our parties in accordance with the city ordinance and with IFC guidelines and to see our fraternity house as a part of the neighborhood fabric rather than being independent of it.

I agreed to notify neighbors in person before every party and ask them to contact me if they had any problems with unruly students or the party being too loud.

I also agreed to have each new president meet with neighbors on an annual basis in order to continue the lines of communication and a relationships bill.

Since implementing this plan, we have received zero noise violations or warnings, and our relationship with the neighbors has never been stronger.

Simply by keeping our parties contained within the house, closing the windows and keeping the speaker volume to a minimum, we have received no complaints from neighbors.

I believe the key to our success is not in the fear of getting a noise violation, but rather in our communication and friendship with the neighbors.

What started as a desperate plea to renovate our house has turned into new friendships with neighbors that I've never expected.

I now know every neighbor around Preston by name and have even been invited to dinner at a few of their houses.

One house has even taken care of my dog for a month.

And one neighbor who had previously voiced a large concern about us getting the renovation actually painted a portrait of our house, which now hangs in the fraternity house.

So relationships have never been stronger.

and by getting to know these people instead of ignoring them, I understand the need to keep our fraternity, our parties from getting too rowdy.

By getting to know me, the neighbors are able to contact me about noise complaints before resorting to calling the police.

The proposed noise ordinance threatens to hold presidents accountable for all noise violations by the fraternity.

I could face up to one year in jail for a noise violation that I was not even a part of.

and in addition to being a fraternity president, I'm also a cadet in Army ROTC and with a year in jail, I lose my commission in the military and my career in the process.

Although we have not received any noise violations so far, all it takes is one loud conversation between two people to set off the police.

So I ask the council to please reconsider this proposal and use my fraternity as an example of what student-neighbor relations can be like in time.

Thank you.

My name is Rick Jones.

I just want to say hello to you, Mr. Mayor and members of City Council and Mr. Jones.

I'm a member of the Fraternity Alumni Council, also an alumni advisor, and got very interested in this back in August when this was on the consent agenda.

And I appreciate you all putting that off.

I'm very happy to hear that staff is not recommending to change the law right now.

I think it is early, but I would say that having read the report, I would disagree a little bit.

There has been a huge change, certainly from the fraternities part.

As you said, you've probably never seen this many fraternity men in coats and ties in here in a long time.

I have met along with other members of the Fraternity Alumni Council with the

Dean of Fraternity and Sorority Life, I guarantee you that this is number one on their agenda.

They have met not only with fraternity and sorority people, but with all of student organizations.

For a city that is seeking always to find that perfect level of mutual respect, you have to remember that

A lot of these kids are only 18 to 21 years old.

They do not know every single law that's on the city books and I was interested to see that really only 30% of the calls for service came

with regard to fraternities.

The rest are probably some of my apartments and other houses.

And these kids don't know what 55 decibels is.

We're all violating the ordinance.

We've been doing it all night long.

So it requires, I think, a lot of patience on the police department.

I know there are

are strong abusers out there who deserve to get those tickets, but there are a lot of kids who just, they're flabbergasted.

I've been to at least one Saturday afternoon party on a sunny day at a football game and we know we're breaking the law.

you know, just by having conversations.

No music, but 50 people on a deck is going to get you in trouble unless the police have some restraint.

So it's difficult if city council is pushing the pedal to the metal and saying, you know, we want you out there and we want those, you know, those decibel meters used all the time, it would be

I think the pendulum is going in the wrong direction.

I had a couple of questions and I know I'm not going to get them now, but I'm just wondering, you all had questions about the report itself.

Do all these calls come from

I didn't get a chance to look at the large agenda pack, so I don't know exactly the ordinance change that you guys are talking about.

But I have done a pretty significant amount of work on noise ordinance issues in Charlottesville.

Bailey Hampton, 505 Elliott.

And I think that

If you want Charlottesville to be the artistic community that we're proud of being, that these rule implementations that you guys keep putting on sound is going to stifle that creativity because if it isn't for house shows and parties, a lot of times bands don't have places to play.

I don't know if any of you are familiar with the band Pavement.

but they got their start playing UVA fraternities.

Thank you.

Anybody else would like to speak on Rose Island yesterday?

Thank you very much.

My name is Sean Carr.

I live at 309 University Circle.

Thank you, Council.

Thank you, Mayor Huja.

And I'd also like to thank members of the fraternities, their counselors, members of the alumni groups, and others.

And in particular, Chief Longo.

I just have a few points to make and a few things to say in reaction.

I guess one thing is I think it's a testament.

So first of all, I'm a UVA alum.

I'm a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity, so I get it.

I'm also now, I work at the university as a scholar, as a teacher, as an educator.

I believe everything you said about developing the leaders of tomorrow in the most holistic fashion, so that means lots of things.

By the same token, I am a taxpayer, a homeowner, a husband and a father of a four-year-old, and I live in the community where they reside.

But here's the point I'd like to make, that everyone you've heard from today is, they're doing excellent work, and they've heard it from us, you've heard it from others in the community, in our immediate community, particularly in Venable, but I'd like to remind all of you that this is not a fraternity problem.

Now you've seen the highest representation here from members of the fraternity and sorority groups, which is terrific.

And you're seeing their leaders, who are among the best and the brightest, and in fact, probably the best that UVA has to offer.

So the fact that they are here, they speak so elegantly, they have taken responsibility, is admirable.

But that's not the whole picture.

So as a resident at 39 University Circle, there are multiple homes.

that are not fraternities or sororities.

Now in some cases they're satellite locations for fraternities and sororities, but they really have nothing to do with the administration proper of those social organizations.

That's where the problem seems to reside.

As Mr. Jones pointed out, many of the calls that came in in the data set that you saw at the last time this was brought up in August were not calls about fraternities and sororities.

So again, it's terrific that they're taking these actions, but that's not really addressing the larger issue.

So I'd like you to bear that in mind as you consider this going forward.

Also, I'd also encourage all of us, in particular you on the council, not to lose the forest for the trees on this one.

Yes, this is about a noise ordinance.

So we're talking about noise issues and decibel levels and so forth.

But really what this speaks to is a larger set of quality of life issues.

You know, all the students here, all the students at the university are entitled to a rich, rewarding and exciting college experience.

But they are not entitled to a number of things.

They're not entitled to taking out the street signs.

Sorry.

Well, I'll go on at another time.

But those are the two points I'll make.

Hey, what's up everybody?

Can you speak your name, please?

My name is Thomas Jefferson, like the man who raped his slaves, and I live on the street.

Anyway, a lot of the UVA folk, I see them all dressed nice coming out here, talking about this noise ordinance, and I just wish that they put up as much of a presentation and as much concern about

queerphobic violence and the rape culture that exists in UVA fraternity culture.

So it's really annoying to me that someone will come up and address these very, very pathetic concerns when somebody on the corner was assaulted by someone who may or may not be a UVA student but definitely possesses the UVA mindset because of their gender and sexuality presentation.

Anybody else would like to speak on this issue of noise ordinance?

Good evening, my name is Latikar and I reside on 39 University Circle.

My husband spoke and I will not repeat all he said, but the only thing I would like to say, as I spoke with a lot of the fraternity representatives, I know they do, they start, what happened after August, it really started a conversation and I think that's great.

I personally have to say that our family choose not to be in the city any weekend.

We were here one weekend starting from August until this weekend, just because we didn't want to deal with it truly.

So we were not the people who were making those phone calls.

Also, I wanted to say maybe, as we're saying, this was not enough time to find out if the new procedures

that police is implementing if they are working or not.

I think for some of the parts of our neighborhood they're working or starting to work, but I still believe that

You know, over 150 calls.

No matter what, if they are verified or unverified, if somebody calls at 1.30 in the morning, they're not calling just because they have nothing better to do.

And I would like to know next time when we meet, whatever that time will be, it's going to be May, June, what would be the acceptable number for my neighborhood?

Is that going to be the average, that is 60 calls a year?

Or it's going to be 150 in three months?

That's all.

Thank you.

Is there anybody else who would like to speak about the noise ordinance?

If not, I'll close the public hearing.

Council members?

Let me make a comment.

As you heard, we are not planning to take any action on this time.

Excuse me.

For Chief Longo, perhaps?

Or Captain Lewis, perhaps?

We certainly could try to do that.

This information comes from our emergency communication center.

It's only as good as the incident in the manner in which it's coded by both the call takers, the dispatchers and the officers when they clear the call.

It's easy enough to figure out exactly where the call came from.

It is true that lumped into those calls for service are self-initiated police activity.

So not every call for service is an actual telephone call.

It could, as Mr. Jones indicated, could be an officer who's passing by the residence when he or she hears the sound.

And when he or she calls that information into the dispatcher, it is then created as a call for service.

But we certainly could.

It would take some time to do that.

But we could break that data out.

And I don't know if it would be useful data as to whether it's a fraternity house or the other residents.

We could certainly do that.

Also understand that, as Mr. Jones also pointed out, some of those calls may be coming from apartments.

And I wasn't sure whether this list that you gave us, particularly what was sent to us this afternoon, was complete.

It does appear to be generally university-related.

Well, interestingly enough, when we began the process of issuing written warnings and actually citing a violation of the noise ordinances, some of the very few, first few, I should say, that took place didn't take place necessarily in the university community.

Now, whether it's to the same magnitude, we certainly could do that analysis, but what we've given you is very specific

to the university community and only during a specific time frame.

And it would be interesting to know if the offenders are university linked.

And I only say that because if we're really primarily dealing with university students, whether they're undergraduates or graduate students or whatever, I mean that at least narrows our focus.

If it's really a much broader

That raises a lot of concerns, and one of the concerns I've had all along is that if we're only focusing on the university, particularly with this one warning a year, we're really tailoring

That's an excellent point, but I'll just remind you that the procedure that we've implemented, we've implemented citywide.

So if that calls to Belmont or to Locust Grove or to some other part of the community, you will get a warning, and if there's no compliance, you will get cited.

Not law students, maybe business students or medical students, but not law students.

We can certainly do it by neighborhood for the same time period that we did this run for you.

Maybe that might be helpful just as an exercise to look and see what that might look at.

Other questions?

I noticed in this report, and again, I understand that there's only so much data we can get out of it.

It's what we have, so we're kind of drilling down into it.

that on the last page, which is only a half a page, is most of the actual citations.

So what I'm guessing that represents is that it was like the period during which there had been warnings and citations.

Is that fair enough?

That's correct.

Yes, ma'am.

Because that certainly, we may start to see some real results from that as far as reduced noise, even if we haven't yet, because there were one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight just on that

You know, the last few on that last page, so.

But one concern I have is, and I think that the, oh I don't remember who it was who spoke, talking about the fact that they had had that, oh I guess it was Miles Kern that

instituting a good neighbor policy before we started talking about a new ordinance.

But it seems like a lot of these efforts came up because we proposed the new ordinance, or at least with the threat of that hanging over people's heads.

And while I really appreciate the fact that it's happened and I think it's great, I wish that it happened two years ago when this first started really coming up, because I think even then, the fraternities should have known that they were causing troubles to the neighbors and no action was taken.

And I think that's why the neighbors feel compelled to try to put this in law.

because unless there's some threat, there doesn't seem to be action.

And so while I'm glad there's action, I'm wondering if we shouldn't kind of keep that threat hanging there.

So maybe the citation after one warning, which is within the law that we have now, will take care of that.

Well, I also think it was a teachable moment for the police department as well.

I mean, we stepped up our game.

This is the university.

The students have stepped up theirs.

We've stepped up ours, and perhaps we should have done so a long time ago.

I do have another question.

When you're called to a residence,

and it's the second warning, who do you cite?

How do you choose who?

I mean, we actually was brought up that, you know, some of these young people might not want to be in a leadership position if they're the ones who get the citation.

I'd have to go back and look specifically to the ordinance.

I believe we can ever cite, we can say whoever has control of that house.

Yes, I think the mapping was great.

I loved seeing the before and after of 2011 and 2012 and that was very impressive to see where the incidences of arrest were taking place.

I would love to see more of this kind of mapping in different neighborhoods just so that we can see where the patterns are.

I would love your opinion as well about how can we tackle the issue of the

of the non-fraternity problem.

Is it something that we could pull together the property owners, the real estate management companies to begin a dialogue with them?

Just because it sounds like the dialogue that's been going on between the frat houses, the sororities, and the neighborhood associations has been productive.

To the extent we haven't already tried to do that, I think we absolutely must do that.

I don't think it's fair just to focus on the fraternities and the sororities when we know that there are other

either private residences or residents owned by larger real estate firms or management companies.

And then the only other comment too is, and it gets to what Ms. Carr was saying, is that we do need some sort of a performance indicator that things are succeeding.

And so what might that be?

Is it a matter of the counts going down?

Is that really impacting quality of life?

So I do think measuring those performance indicators in some way to see if there's a change in behaviors

but also this is something that Mr. Jones and I talked about earlier this morning related to using a survey tool with some of the neighborhood association members, people in the community and we could do it to different communities but maybe kind of sampling just to see what, engage what before and after like do it now between when classes end and when final exams take place this semester do a survey of the residents

You know, Survey Monkey or something.

How's it going?

And then do it another time in the spring semester between the time classes end and the time finals take place.

Just to try to get a gauge from the community in a broader way how they're feeling about the quality of life in the community.

It's something that we could look into.

How we would get to the neighborhood associations and more specifically to the residents because as we know, as important as the neighborhood associations are, it doesn't always involve all of the neighbors and all the residents.

Okay, any last comments?

I want to commend the members of the IFC and the ISC for all the work that you're doing.

You've really risen to the challenge and I appreciate that.

I think students are more apt to learn from their peers and to learn, you know, if you have an administrator telling them they have to do something, I think

Can I actually just ask one other question of our law enforcement and this actually stems from something that one of the IFC folks said talking about underlying causes and I don't mean to assume that the stereotypes are true but there's alcohol usually involved in these parties too.

When you go in for a call

Keep in mind there's only three ways you get in somebody's house, a warrant, consent or exigent circumstances and I'm not sure a noise complaint would give rise to exigent circumstances.

Certainly if the officer can see evidence of

another violation of the law.

He and she will take steps to pursue that.

Oftentimes we'll communicate those thoughts through the university so that appropriate interventions may take place.

But we're somewhat limited and I will be very cautious with how I will allow those officers to act when it's going into other people's homes for violations of this type.

We want them to run afoul of the Constitution.

Thank you.

Just, we appreciate your coming, all the people who have come and spoken, and we will move on to the situation and in the next few months we will get another report back.

Thank you.

Next item is under the public hearing, the resolution.

Good evening Mr. Mayor, City Councilors, Mr. Jones.

This is a special use permit for increased height and density.

The address is 852 to 860 West Main Street.

Let's go the other way.

This was the special use permit that was heard at the November 13th Planning Commission meeting.

It's essentially the exact same application.

There was a bit of a discrepancy within the acreage of the property.

Just to refresh, the special use permit was at 852 to 860 West Main Street.

It was for increased density from 43 dwelling units per acre to 98 dwelling units per acre.

That would allow also from 70 feet to 101 feet for the height.

The developments for a mixed use, 219 residential units and close to 12,000 square feet of ground floor commercial and underground parking.

The only thing that has changed with the application, the first in October the BAR had their meeting and they reviewed the design and it was unfavorable recommendation but the applicant revised their design, went back to the BAR and the BAR has rendered a positive recommendation for the special use permit.

If you guys have any other additional questions or if any of you weren't at the public hearing, I'm here to answer any questions.

I wanted to give the applicant a chance to address an issue that came up in the Planning Commission hearing regarding activity on the street.

There was a concern raised that by having a significant portion of the street fund

Facility B for use of a club and leasing space if that would affect the way that the building relates to the street.

And I thought Ms. Long provided a very helpful response.

I emailed her about this and I want to give her a chance to share that publicly about how what you're doing might actually end up with more activity on the street.

Certainly, I'm Valerie Long.

I'm here representing the applicants and my business address is 321 East Main Street.

Thank you, Mr. Norris.

And I've had similar conversations with a number of people who've asked about this since it was a topic of discussion.

But in essence, of the roughly 22,000 square feet of total ground floor space,

about approximately 15,000 square feet of it will be dedicated to either public space or retail or commercial space.

So we have a very large public plaza.

We also have the space that will be a restaurant or a market of some sort, maybe some combination thereof that will obviously be publicly accessible.

And so the remainder, there will be some area that we're calling kind of a club room or an activity room that will be available to the residents

It is, the goal is really to have that ground floor space be as lively and vibrant for as much of every day as possible.

And we're obviously optimistic that with a restaurant or a market that that would be achieved, but as my clients are telling me with other projects they've worked on around the country, where they have a mixture of uses like this with a restaurant or a market of some sort,

You know, those businesses obviously shut down, close at regular hours.

Sometimes it's 10 o'clock.

The space goes dark.

There's not as much activity.

At most, there may be just people there cleaning or restocking.

By contrast, when they have these activity rooms, especially for those residents that are students, and these students are kind of 24-7.

You know, if they're medical students or they're residents, they may have a late shift, so they may be there at

for somewhat unusual hours, if they're local employees that, you know, hospital employees, for instance, may work a night shift, so they may be there at more unusual hours.

They're really working hard to provide the best mix of those uses in that space to increase the chances of having it be most vibrant.

And so the activity room space, which would be part of the remainder, so the, what is that remaining, 7,000 or so square feet, would involve

all sorts of activities for the residents.

There would be designated study spaces for those that are students there.

They'll have sofas with televisions.

Residents there interacting with each other, maybe watching a football game late into the evening, maybe having a discussion group, a study group.

So we think it'll be a very vibrant community there.

It's a good way for people to make friends, especially if they're a student or graduate student who's maybe come from another area

Medical school doesn't have any friends here.

They can go down to the activity room, play pool or foosball or play on the Wii or the Xbox with some of the other residents in the community.

It really does help foster a sense of the community.

So what I indicated to Mr. Norris was just that the vast majority of that space will be publicly accessible, either the plaza

or the restaurant market space, there is this small area set aside for the resident activity room and then a smaller area for the leasing space.

But we did pay a lot of attention to the comments that were made at the last meeting and we took a hard look to think about whether there were any other types of more purely commercial uses that we could work to try and attract to that space that might make it even more vibrant.

And what our folks are telling me is that there's nothing that would help make it as vibrant

sort of the perfect mix as will this proposed activity room.

I apologize.

the combination of in terms of publicly accessible so the commercial space is I think it's about half of the total square floor area is the restaurant market space and then there's the plaza it's probably not quite half but the total it's about 15,000 of the overall 22,000 that's combined the plaza space which is

It's quasi commercial because there'll be some outdoor seating for the restaurant.

There'll be kind of a coffee shop grab and go area.

There'll be public seating area with a fireplace for people to just sit and mingle and interact, wait for the bus.

That plaza area is definitely publicly accessible.

We'll be open to all.

One completely unrelated question.

By right, it's 42.

But it's by dwelling unit whether it has one bedroom or ten bedrooms?

That's correct.

So is there a different metric at all that's ever used in terms of

Right, okay, well the number of bedrooms is 495 I believe.

There are, I mean you raise an excellent point and in fact the city did address that with, and Mr. Tolbert or Ms. Walden would be the better expert to tell me, but there are certain zoning districts in the city that are the university zoning districts and perhaps a few others, but definitely the university housing districts.

do regulate not just the number of dwelling units per acre but the number of bedrooms per acre.

This is zoned West Main Street South and is not one of those zoning districts.

We said when we did the zoning ordinance in 2003 in the university high density and medium density, we didn't want to create student ghettos by having nothing but four bedrooms.

While these folks are not held to that, they have really met the spirit of that and would pretty much comply being in one of those districts by mixing four bedrooms and ones and twos also.

So there's opportunity for non-students or either grad students or medical students to live in some of those other places.

So while they're not held to that mixture of bedrooms, they've done that.

Well, because we don't limit the number of bedrooms beyond limiting four.

It could be, yes ma'am, because some of the units are four bedrooms and you would anticipate that those would be occupied by four individuals.

If I could interject, Mr. Tolbert, it's not 98 units, it's 98 units per acre.

Right, 98 units per acre, right.

No, $4.95 is the total number of bedrooms.

Right, they could, if it's 200, how many units?

So it's about 200 plus bedrooms per acre.

if you're looking under a different, because it's 495 bedrooms, it's two and a half acres.

Yeah, I actually have another clarification.

No, we actually, when we wrote the zoning ordinance, we tried in some districts to say, by mixed use being residential and non-residential, but we tried to say that there ought to be a certain percent in some zoning districts.

And what we realized very quickly, and we amended that, was the market's going to dictate that to a large degree.

So what we came back and said is, in most of the zoning districts, including West Main South,

that we wanted the ground floor on the primary streets to be non-residential to create that regular activity but beyond that we didn't define it.

Is the second building ground floor non-residential?

So is that ground floor non-residential too in that part of the building?

No.

Oh, it's parking.

And the ground floor is only the street.

One concern I have is the

actually the exterior plaza and wanting to make sure that that stays an activated place.

One of the ways you can do that is to make sure that there are doors entering onto it and that those doors have access to something like a restaurant, an eatery that again will activate the place.

So you're talking about the corner that's closest to the bridge and the train station.

We're actually looking into rearranging the location of the ground floor uses and having that area be the restaurant use.

Right now it's proposed to be the exact opposite end of the building, but the more we looked at that, the more we realized

that that's a natural location because of the natural sunlight that you get there.

It's a more prominent location that would probably be helpful for a restaurant there to have better visibility from the street and to pedestrians, and it would create some more vibrancy there.

So we're still working through all of those things, but that is what we're looking at now, that that would be a better location for better use of that space and that perhaps the

activity room would be better served at the opposite end of the building.

Regardless, that has always been intended to be an outdoor plaza space.

We haven't done as well of as good of a job sort of providing exhibits or renderings as to what that space would look like because we frankly just don't know yet.

Where's the leasing office?

It would probably be a small space on the ground floor as well, but they have flexibility there depending on how big the market space gets and where the plaza is and the restaurant is and so forth.

But it probably would be there.

We think it's going to be an exciting mix.

Obviously, it'll be very attractive to students, both undergraduates and graduate students, just by virtue of its location and proximity to the university.

But equally so, its proximity to the university hospital makes, we think, makes it very attractive to medical students, medical residents, faculty, staff at the hospital, really anybody who likes the idea of living in an urban environment where they either may not need a car or want a car, may not have a car,

may not want to have to use their car at all, be able to just leave it in the garage and walk or ride their bikes or take the bus somewhere.

They've done a lot of market study on the area.

They've been wanting to provide a project in Charlottesville for many years.

What they really love about this location is the fact that it can really be, it's attractive to anyone.

They're realizing

with the trolleybus, young professionals working downtown, it would be very attractive.

Even if you didn't have the trolleybus, you could walk downtown.

Young professionals, you might have one person at the university, one person working downtown, go in either direction in the morning.

You can walk to shopping.

So really we think it's almost unlimited as to who could be there.

When we had a neighborhood meeting, it was a week or so before the joint public hearing, we met a couple who had just moved to the Cream Street condominium building which is kind of on the other side of West Main Street adjacent to the train tracks.

They talked about how they downsized and moved there and they're still working but they just downsized and didn't want to have to maintain a yard anymore and they loved it.

and they were thrilled with this coming because it just provides more people like them living.

They told us they think they'll be retirees living there.

So we're going to market it, they're going to market it to everyone.

It will be, you know, students, again, we think will be particularly interested in it, but with the variety of, you know, bedroom types and some of the apartments will be, you know, one bedroom apartments with balconies, we think those will be very attractive too.

younger professionals, young faculty.

I may need to defer to them on that.

I believe that that's not been set yet, but they may have some projections.

Is there a per- Per projection?

Per bedroom.

Per bedroom.

Yeah, actually, and so that's sort of a new piece of information, at least for me, that there aren't just all going to be that student model, that kind of Eagle's Landing for university place model, where it's really meant just to be

It's a lovely idea of this mix of people, but quite frankly the way that kind of student housing is built, it's very limiting as to who it will be available to or attractive for.

Unless there's more traditional mixing of a

You know, kind of real apartment.

I mean like why would a faculty want to live there, for instance?

Exactly what the mix will be.

As I described, we hope it'll be a vibrant mix of students, non-students.

Right, we have

Then our site plan and I can pull it out and tell you how many exactly we have of each one.

You don't have to do that.

But there is a mix of one, two, three and four bedroom units.

It's about half in terms of dwelling units.

Roughly half of them are one or two bedrooms and roughly half of them are three or four bedroom units.

Now certainly if you count them as you had by bedrooms as opposed to units, it's a little heavier on the three and four bedroom bedrooms versus one and two.

but they are planning to utilize their standard leasing system where they do lease each bedroom on an individual basis.

So even if a young couple or even a young family, say a couple with one child and they wanted to rent a two bedroom unit, there would be one lease but they would be renting two bedrooms.

as part of their lease.

But if you had an individual living there, they would obviously rent their one bedroom.

If you have four graduate students in a four bedroom unit, each of them signs their own individual lease and is responsible just for their bedroom's rent.

as opposed to having to worry about the liability of whether their roommates, who they may or may not know that well yet, are actually going to be good for the rent, which is a little bit of a risk.

So it works out well from their experience.

They've been using it for a while.

So they won't...

Okay.

I'll have more.

Because that's what I'll wait for after the public hearing.

Okay.

Thanks.

That's open for public hearing.

Have a seat.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

We have two people signed up for public hearing.

Hi, I'm Nancy Carpenter, Albemarle County resident, and I live in Eagles Landing, one of the student-oriented type developments, I guess one of the last ones built in this area.

One thing I want to, a few facts I want to say first, which came from the HousingVirginia.org website.

Rents have increased 14 percent statewide over the past three years.

Over 1 million Virginia households are housing cost burdened as they pay more than 30% of their income above the national standard for housing.

The trends in Virginia housing demands will change from single attached housing to more smaller urban style housing.

homes.

In 2011, 33% of all senior renters, which I'm one, paid more than 50% of their income for housing, making us severely rent burdened.

I'm part of a tsunami that's coming in housing.

The 40 to 65 plus age group is going to be one of the biggest groups coming up that cities and counties are going to have to deal with when it comes to housing.

While I think that the plaza is a great idea for urban density and it's a great place to put that, I am concerned about the mix of housing.

Right now, I don't mind telling you, I pay $400 a month in a four bedroom unit, utilities included.

What they're proposing is almost twice that much.

And perhaps students can afford it.

I don't know, perhaps some of the professionals that are being discussed can afford it.

But it's also a great place for people who are transit challenged to be able to have access to their jobs or to get jobs to move out of areas that

This city has a public policy or an initiative that they want to continue to move forward.

I know it sometimes has to chug along, but there is that opportunity here for that.

The other thing that bothered me at the Planning Commission was the conversation about the accessibility by the public.

walked from the medical center downtown quite a few times a month.

And it would be nice to say, oh, if there's a nice little sandwich restaurant or something in this space to partake of that.

But there was a conversation about how we access that as the public, not being part of that exclusive community that has access to the gym or to the

of commercial space that they were talking about.

So hopefully those ideas have been worked on and it will be more accessible to the public because what's the point of having mixed use if I can't use it?

If you're supposed to have commercial development and I can't use it, what's the point of having that?

And the other point I wanted to make out is traffic.

There's no place for people to go grocery shopping there so they're going to have to rely on either their own cars increasing the traffic on West Main Street which is going to be really constricted at both ends because you'll have that hotel I guess at some point will come to fruition and you'll have this at the other end so you're going to have a very constricted West Main Street and

People will have to either try and use public transit to get out to Barracks Road or use their whole day to go grocery shopping on the transit until the study comes back and we see what kind of changes that the city will be able to make.

What I'm saying is that I like the idea of it.

I'm concerned about the public space, how we'll be able to access that.

I'm also concerned about the cost and the mix of people who will be in there.

Members of City Council, I'm Donna Deloria with the law firm of Payne and Hodes at 414 East Jefferson Street in Charlottesville.

I spoke at the joint public hearing on behalf of the Ivy Land Trust and University Station LLC, the owners of 1002 to 1006 West Main Street and 118 11th Street Southwest, which are also located in the West Main Street South Corridor Zoning District.

My clients stand behind their earlier comments.

This is the area of the city best suited for development at the maximum height and density allowed by the zoning ordinance.

The city must be open to this in order to spur successful mixed use in the blocks west of the train station.

Buildings such as these will be in character with the district and will have benefits beyond West Main Street.

Thank you.

Evening Brandon Collins, 418 Fairway Avenue.

I had to cover up my shirt because I haven't discussed this with some of my colleagues yet.

And I wish we had been involved in some of the conversations about this.

It's my understanding that folks in the neighborhoods really weren't consulted about this.

Certainly nobody at West Haven was asked about how this is going to be set up.

Nobody at FAR was consulted about this.

And I think there's a whole lot of questions.

And one of those things is something that I've been talking about for a few years now, which is

The University of Virginia has plenty of room on grounds for student housing and this seems to me, while I know it's a commercial thing, that maybe they should be looking at where to build on grounds.

This is like one of the biggest developments that Charlottesville's going to be putting up that includes housing for people in this city and for a couple of years everybody on the city council said

I said, oh yeah, we're into housing, we want to make more affordable housing.

We're going to do stuff about housing and it's not always about the money so we're not going to put a whole lot of money into it and we're going to use leverage and stuff.

And this is what we wind up with.

This is the most significant building project that we've had in a while and I don't see how this fits low income people in our community.

My feeling is that if you're going to grant a special use permit, if you're going to make things more dense

A lot of different kind of changes about how our city operates and how it looks.

First you need to talk to the community around there and see how they feel about it, but also make it so it really is a mix of different types of people in that.

And you've said 15% affordable housing.

I think if you're going to have that kind of density, you need to up that number to much higher.

I would say 50% would be great, but not sure we would get that.

$700 is barely affordable.

$1,200 is a huge difference.

It's a big gap between $700 and $1,200.

And I don't know that too many people that I'm concerned about, that I know need housing, we're talking about homeless people for weeks over here.

This is not meeting that.

Thank you.

Mayor Huja, city council members, I'm Ivo Romanesco.

I live at 117 Bolingwood Road.

I have no relationship with Ambling and I have never met the applicants before, but nevertheless I support this project for three reasons.

It is a new urbanism project.

I've had the benefit of working with Kathy Galvin and Mayor Huja before on the DISC committee and so we know what urban renewal and urban development is about.

It is also an economic development project and the city does need additional revenues.

In addition, we do have a zoning and a comprehensive plan that has been discussed, argued and agreed upon.

I think we should be able to trust in the plans that have been agreed upon and I think the applicant has met the obligations set out by the plans.

My view of why this is a good project is that, first of all, it's on West Main Street.

The center of West Main, roughly halfway between downtown and the university, is an area that has been lacking in development.

There isn't much demand in that area right now, and yet we want to have and we need living and working households in that area.

We have a train station that's almost adjacent to this property.

We have bus service that's through this corridor.

We have students, faculty, and other households that are already in this area.

So the issue of traffic, well yes, it's always an issue.

But yet, this will serve the needs of people who are already working and commuting through this corridor.

The tax base, we all understand the tax base.

It needs to be approved.

But there's more than just taxes here.

We have a pull of business and interest to an area that is developed with a new project.

This is a project that will bring people into the neighborhood.

Again, they only pass through this neighborhood.

They already work in this area.

And yet this would be a project that would allow them to live here, have some services, some shopping, and also cause some reinvestment in this community.

There was talk about the square footage of commercial area in this project.

In some cases, looking to increase it from 15,000 square feet.

I would say that 15,000 square feet is actually a lot of space.

This project is not large enough to sustain 15,000 square feet of retail or business or service space.

Requiring space that is not leasable or occupied on a regular basis is not good planning.

You need to set this up so that it is likely to work.

And so all the project will bring to the area in terms of households is a good thing.

This is a seminal project to bring people there.

But if you have all the square footage to serve this project on site, it doesn't help cross-pollinate other projects that are nearby.

By that I mean, if you have two or three projects, each having some level of services, people can get on the sidewalks, travel from one building to the next, that gets them on the street, gets them on the sidewalks.

That, I think, is one of the goals.

And that's something that has really been discussed.

I think, frankly, the density is an important element here.

240 units per acre is a pretty lofty goal.

But if it can't be achieved here on West Main, this is Main Street.

If it can't be achieved here, where can you get it?

If it's on the roll, if it's in the plan, and it's part of a legally allowable use with an SUP, and the applicant has done all the things required, has met with city council, I'm sorry, not the city council, but with the planning commission, the BAR, done things to meet the requirements, it seems to me that it ought to move forward.

So I think it's time to turn the page on West Main Street away from used car dealerships, vacant parking lots, shops that are one story in height, and that sort of a low density type of style of use.

Thank you.

Nobody else would like to speak on this special permit.

Good evening, counselors, city councilmen and women.

My name is George Johnson and I reside at 823 D. Hardy Drive.

I just came in to support earlier what Farr wanted to put on the table, but something kept holding me in that seat back there.

Now I kind of see what it is.

I just want to know can I get a copy of that because it's the first time I've ever seen that design.

And I think the fact that we have neighborhoods connected to West Main Street, this is something we should have been familiar with.

This really, really scares me.

I understand the fact that it's new.

and I understand the fact that this is something that needs to change the way the face of West Main Street looks like, but West Main Street has connected neighborhoods to it.

And so I'm just wondering, did you all talk to anybody beyond West Main Street?

Did you meet with anyone else beyond West Main Street?

And how is this going to impact where we live?

And are any of our folks who live in our neighborhood, who are not students, not faculty, not lawyers, not physician, will be able to live in these units?

I don't know.

I don't know that much about it and I'm just wondering how many people in our neighborhood, in the Fifeville neighborhood or in the 10th and Page neighborhood really know about this and how is it going to affect

I support economic development and I support new ideas but I don't know enough about this one which kind of scares me and I don't know if it's the new gentrification that's getting ready to happen.

and I don't know, every day when I get up I see new projects and maybe I'm just not paying attention and I should be because I'm on the Housing Advisory Committee but we have to find a better way in how we inform our neighborhoods about projects such as this.

I'm Luis Oyola.

I live on the 10th and Page neighborhood.

I want to echo everything that Joy Johnson just said, especially concerning West Haven residents and how currently they are very hidden, yet they will probably feel the impact

the most about this project and the way it will gentrify the area surrounding it.

Thank you.

If nobody else would like to speak on this topic.

I can start because I don't have a whole lot, although I may come up with more after I hear what other folks want to say.

One actually that just kind of first of all responding to some of the public comments a couple of questions that I had is One that Miss Carpenter was talking about that people would need a grocery store And would be driving in and out of the neighborhood because it's hard to carry groceries on a bus although a lot of people do that and I'm one of the things that I'm wondering about is is talking to our economic development folks and

that if this does go through and the hotel goes through and we've got some of this, that becomes the standard for this corridor.

My mom used to live in Cleveland Park in D.C. and there's a giant and contrary to its name, it's very small.

It's kind of a corner giant and it's always packed because the apartment building's near there.

People could walk to the grocery store, bring their little cart, the little two-wheeled cart and it seems like that would be a really good use for this neighborhood as we get

this sort of development since that is what our comprehensive plan calls for.

And I do hope that a small market would be part of this, but that's probably not going to serve people's grocery needs more like their snack needs.

But the other thing that I would really like to push a little bit is the idea of affordable housing.

I know that there's one idea that under our current ordinance that you can offer to pay money into the housing

and the Affordable Housing Fund, and that's all well and good, but I think that what we heard about the construction of this particular project and the density and the convenience and being on transit lines, especially a free transit line with the trolley, it seems to me like a perfect place to have some affordable housing.

And I would really like to explore possible ways that we could have some of these units be set aside as affordable housing in situ,

You know it's often said the only thing people hate more than suburban sprawl is urban density.

And the reality is that we need, in order to stop suburban sprawl and roll it back, we need to create places in the urban core for people to live and work and shop and play.

And so we have welcomed higher density in our urban core, but it has to be situated correctly.

We don't want to, you would never put a project like this in the middle of the Woollen Mills, for instance, or some of the other neighborhoods.

But as Mr. Avanesco said, this is a part of the city that, Romanesco, sorry.

This is a part of the city that's really designed to accommodate higher density and in fact I would remind all of us that the city just undertook a process just about four years ago, five years ago that looked at how dense we want these corridors to be and went through a very deliberative process to come up with the numbers that we were talking about earlier where we want to channel that density.

So from a density perspective, I think this is exactly what we were looking for.

and you know people can disagree about design and some of the features in the commercial space but I just for me personally the density is not a negative in fact it is a positive and I think it will help breathe life into this community.

What's going to really impact places like West Haven is what happens right across the street from this site.

The same owner owns both parcels

and I've had conversations with that owner, I know some other people in the room have conversations with that owner about what happens to that site and how the development of that site can help tie West Haven into what's happening on West Main Street so it's not nearly as isolated and segregated as it is now.

West Haven was deliberately built to hide poverty, to hide away poor people, to wall them off from the broader community, in some case literally wall them off from the broader community.

And what happens in this stretch is really going to help reintegrate West Haven

or integrate West Haven to the West Main Corridor.

One thing I'll say about affordable housing, we're one of the very few cities in the Commonwealth, I don't know if there's any others, that we actually went down to the General Assembly.

We're the only one?

Okay, there's one other.

We actually went down, I personally, others from the city, went down to the General Assembly about, again, about five years ago.

got a bill passed that allows us in instances like this where we have projects that are relatively high density to require under these conditions that we're talking about tonight require the developer to either include units, affordable units on site or contribute to affordable housing fund.

That's typically not done in Virginia.

The General Assembly doesn't give localities very many tools to

to incentivize and or require affordable housing.

We're one of two localities that have been given that tool.

In this case, this project could result, I believe, in the largest ever contribution to our city's affordable housing fund.

Is that correct?

Almost $500,000 to our city's affordable housing fund, unless they choose to build the units on site.

and that money can in turn leverage millions of other dollars and we've seen this time and time again where an infusion of a few hundred thousand dollars here or five hundred thousand dollars there can be used to leverage millions of dollars in additional capital to create affordable housing for families and individuals in our community.

So I wanted to make sure that that was sort of understood.

For all those reasons I'm

I'm prepared to support this project.

I do believe that it is going to breathe life into a stretch of the city that really needs it.

I'd like to say something.

In terms of process, as Mr. Norris says, this project has done everything right.

This site has done everything right.

2000 there was the Tortigales study that generated a change and an incorporation into the 2001 comprehensive plan.

That in turn generated changes to the zoning ordinance 2003 that then gives everyone the predictability, the awareness that they need of what is supposed to be going on there.

It did everything right.

It's a best practice.

This doesn't happen everywhere in the city, but in this particular case, this really has followed best practice.

I think it will fill in a major missing tooth.

It will begin to fill in all the missing teeth.

along the West Main Street which is again essential for activating that street life that will make it possible to attract more rooftops in and just like public transportation which needs at least seven dwelling units per acre

to sustain an effective, efficient bus service, you can't attract a grocery store without at least 800, 1200 units within a 120-acre area.

I mean, it needs a lot of roof, and that, clarify that, that's only for a 3,000 foot corner store.

So to get a real grocery store there, you need a lot of people, a lot of people.

This is the beginning step.

It is going to increase the city's tax base twelve-fold from what's existing there now.

An empty parking lot at $28,000 for the year is going to go up to be a half a million dollars a year.

It's going to be contributing to the housing fund, which is again,

will leverage hundreds and hundreds of more different kinds of units in the community.

The fact that the owner of the property is also the owner of the property across the street does give rise to some wonderful opportunities for the West Haven community.

And there will be engagement.

But again, there was a lot of public engagement

throughout the last decade about what this zoning and what this vision was all about for this site.

I feel very strongly that this will promote the multimodal corridor.

It's going to be promoting pedestrian activity, bike activity.

It is in keeping with so many other aspects of our comp plan.

I've already mentioned the idea of the plaza, but the applicant's already moving in that direction.

I would just like to emphasize the importance of looking at

the Architectural Control District guidelines with regards to the kind of the scale and detailing of your storefronts.

I know that's another level of detail.

That is also going to be making or breaking the experience, however.

And those guidelines have some good comments to follow.

And I understand that there's going to be the opportunity to meet with staff as the process unfolds.

I would like to encourage staff to work with the Place Design Task Force as they need to to get some insights as to what that would be expeditiously, not to slow anything down, but just as a resource.

And I'd just like to end that, I mean, as far as I know, there's probably three different documents you had to be working with, right?

There was the Architectural Control District, there was the entrance corridor, there was the zoning itself, there was the comprehensive plan, there was four documents.

You also had a seven-member Planning Commission.

You had a nine-member Board of Architectural Review.

I must say I'm just pretty amazed that you came up with a building that has as much kind of design integrity as it does because it could have easily been the horse designed by committee.

And so you've got more details to go and do, but every step of the way, and I've watched the Planning Commission, I've watched what's going on in the BAR, you've been incorporating all the comments.

I have

I have a lot of faith in the applicant to do the right kind of design in the final analysis.

Yeah, and don't worry because I'm going to be in the minority.

But I hate to disagree with my fellow counselors, but I find it hard to believe that the planning that was done four and five years ago, which I absolutely trust was very thoughtful and cognizant of our history and our future dreams for Charlottesville, envisioned student housing.

on Main Street.

I mean, this is student housing.

This isn't residences.

This isn't households.

It's student housing.

It's basically, I hate to say it, but it's a glorified dormitory.

And it's designed.

And that's what you do.

And that's fine.

It's just on our Main Street in a zoning that, it's a university zoning in a different, you know,

zoning area, basically.

All of the things we heard, is student housing new urbanism?

Maybe it is.

And, you know, so be it.

But there are living and working households in this area, and that's one of the concerns, is that this does back up to a very, you know, one of our vibrant neighborhoods, one of our neighborhoods that's really coming alive, Fifeville.

not to mention Western Page.

10th and Page, sorry, and West Haven, but just immediately behind it is Fifeville and one of my concerns both at the Planning Commission and in here and in listening tonight is there's been a lot of attention to the design in the front of the building that which faces West Main Street and very little about what faces Fifeville and in fact that's where this eight story

The power is the only way I know how to say it.

It seemed to be this cement thing that went up, and I hope it's got more design than that, but eight stories is a lot.

That's the Lewis and Clark building, and we're told on a very high point, which means it's going to loom over Fifeville.

So, you know, as I say, I just can't imagine that

this kind of density.

I wish it was more households.

I wish it was more mixed use.

I have another hard time believing that this is actually what mixed use means, that there's just open space on the ground floor and a whole bunch of that's going to be parking.

I don't believe it's mixed use.

I don't believe it's new urbanism.

I think this is the right project in the right location.

It will provide the density we need in West Main Street corridor.

It will be transit oriented.

It will be mixed use.

It will also provide, as Mr. Norris said, money for affordable housing.

It will help in many ways people who need help.

It will help our tax base.

and it will also provide some public spaces and public plaza.

I think the design is getting in the direction of where it is not only one-sided design but all four-sided has been designed, including the back, with landscaping, with the design of the building itself.

We've already got three votes and I'm actually the fourth, but I just wanted to kind of

respond a little bit to the idea of students in that neighborhood.

And I think that what we've seen over the last several years is that we already have students in that neighborhood, especially graduate students.

And I think that one of the concerns that I've really had is looking at neighborhoods like 10th and Page and Fifeville, the fact that a lot of those students are moving into houses that had previously been affordable houses for families.

And because they could pay more, the rent prices for those houses have gone up.

Houses that are broken up into apartments, they've brought noise into the neighborhoods.

It's a whole different kind of feel when students are living there.