City Council Meeting   3/16/2015

Page, you'll call.

Here.

Mr. Huja?

Here.

Ms. Szakos?

Here.

Here are some declarations, preclamations and announcements.

Nice cheery sound to that.

Poison Prevention Week, whereas the Blue Ridge Poison Center has been instrumental in saving lives and saving money by providing individuals and health professionals with free and confidential treatment information and advice in a poisoning emergency.

And whereas last year the Blue Ridge Poison Center responded to nearly 25,000 calls for assistance in its 54 county service region.

including 1,831 in the Charlottesville-Albemarle area.

And whereas poisoning is a leading cause of injury, hospitalization, and injury death in Virginia and according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more people die from poisoning than from motor vehicle accidents.

Whereas poison prevention education, including the use of child-resistant packaging,

Safe storage of poisons in the home, reading and understanding drug facts labels, and keeping the poison control number available is an important mission of the Blue Ridge Poison Center.

And whereas it is fitting to recognize the annual observance of National Poison Prevention Week in order to highlight this preventable health hazard and help educate all Virginians to better understand how to avoid the dangers of accidental poisoning.

I, Satyendra Singh Huja, do hereby recognize March 15th to 21st, 2015, as Poison Prevention Week in City of Charlotte, South Virginia.

I call your observance to attention to all our citizens.

Hello.

Thank you for having us today.

Short person, hello.

I've brought with me Dr. Christopher Holsteg.

He's the Medical Director of the Blue Ridge Poison Center.

And naturally, we think that every week should be Poison Prevention Week.

But we appreciate the opportunity once a year to focus on poisoning and poison safety.

As mentioned in the proclamation, more people die from poisoning than from car accidents nationwide.

So it's a much bigger problem than people realize.

And just like any injury, poisoning is completely preventable.

However, we are all human and by that we are all imperfect and we make mistakes.

Accidents do happen.

So I encourage everyone to keep the poison center number handy and program it into your cell phone so that you'll be able to call Dr. Holsteg or any of the other nurses and doctors that work at the poison center instantaneously if you need our help.

And we are open, I'm sorry?

Oh, the number.

The number is 1-800-222-1222.

And we've brought presents with us today.

We have refrigerator magnets for everyone in the audience.

And for those of you listening at home, you can call the toll-free number and ask us to send you a magnet for free.

We'll be happy to do that.

That's great.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

We have another proclamation for Virginia Organizing.

Sure.

Whereas Virginia Organizing is a nonpartisan statewide grassroots organization dedicated to challenging injustice by empowering people in local communities to address issues that affect the quality of their lives, and whereas Virginia Organizing encourages the participation of those who have traditionally had little or no voice in our society,

and whereas the organization encourages individuals and groups throughout the Commonwealth and in local communities to bring about change by working together and building relationships and whereas among Virginia organizing's statement of beliefs is the belief that all people should be treated fairly and with dignity in all aspects of life regardless of race, class, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, ability or country of origin and

Whereas the organization also believes in the enhancement and celebration of diversity in our communities and in our state.

And whereas Virginia organizing believes that community, economic, social, and environmental policy should be developed with the greatest input from the people it is meant to serve.

And the policy should promote, celebrate, and sustain the human and natural resources of Virginia.

and whereas leaders, members and staff of the organization work tirelessly to connect children, low-income residents, immigrants, veterans, retirees, people with disabilities and other underrepresented groups to the resources that they deserve and whereas Virginia Organizing has worked with the City Council and other officials in Charlottesville on a variety of issues including living wage,

that I, Satyendra Singh Huja, do hereby designate Monday, March 16th, 2015.

We designate it as Virginia Organizing Day in Sri Aishah also.

I encourage others to learn about and support this organization in its efforts, signed March 16th.

Before I give this proclamation to the group, I wanted to mention that I went to visit them a week or two back, and I talked to some former fellows.

It was really so impressive

Thank you very much.

I'd just like to say I'm a proud volunteer with Virginia Organizing and I care very much about social justice, as I'm sure most of you do, and I have found that being with Virginia Organizing is a way to comprehensively address the issues that I care most about.

We're not just about talking, we're about doing.

And there have been many effective changes that have occurred because of Virginia organizing.

And if you're interested in joining us, we meet the first Monday of the month at Legal Aid, and we'd love to have you join us.

It's a lot of fun as well as a very meaningful thing to do.

This is Fix a Leak Week.

It seems I've been making this announcement for about a month and a half.

Somebody must think the city has a lot of leaks, and actually it does because it's an older city.

So you can really save a lot of money with this Fix a Leak program.

Fix a Leak Week.

This week is Fix a Leak Week.

a national awareness campaign sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency to encourage residents to find and fix leaks at home.

To celebrate Fix-a-Leak Week and World Water Day, the City of Charlottesville is holding their third annual Fix-a-Leak Family 5K at 10 a.m. on Sunday, March 22nd, 10 a.m. on Sunday, March 22nd at Penn Park.

The city encourages everyone this week to check for leaks, twist and tighten hose and pipe connections, and replace the fixtures as necessary.

By checking and fixing leaks, you could save as much as 10,000 gallons of water every year.

Go to the city's water conservation page at www.Charlottesville.org forward slash water conservation.

Ms. Lewis?

Yes, I have three announcements.

And I just want to sort of piggyback on what Mr. Fenwick said.

I think it would be very helpful for citizens to know how much to expect that they should use of water.

I think sometimes we get our bills and you don't know what's normal.

So maybe we could get a little information on sort of household size and share that information.

I'd like to share the schedule for the upcoming budget work sessions.

We have one on March 18th coming up.

It doesn't have a day of the week.

Wednesday, Wednesday, March 18th starting at 7 p.m. in city space.

That's a community budget forum.

Really want to hear from the whole community.

Council budget work session on March 26th, starting at 5 PM in city space.

There's a second public hearing.

The first is tonight, right?

Second public hearing and first reading of the budget on April 6th at 7 PM.

That would be here in council chambers.

The council budget work session, if necessary, we often need one more.

We'll be on April 9th if we need it.

starting at 4.30 p.m. in city space.

And then the second reading and the council adoption of the budget is expected on April 14th at 5.30 city hall, second floor conference room.

So, I'm sure that's all on the web.

I assume charlottesville.org, so if you didn't get all that, check it out.

And I have two wonderful Festival of the Book announcements.

Just two of the many, many events that are happening.

The Bus Lines Poetry Reading.

The Charlottesville Area Transit, otherwise known as CAT, and Bus Lines invite the public to attend a poetry reading that celebrates winners in the latest Bus Lines contest.

In a new twist, the contest solicited poems and flash fiction works on the illustrations of Chris Van Allsburg, children's writer.

Illustrator, just amazing.

The Bus Line's poetry reading on Wednesday, March 18th at 6 p.m. is an official Virginia Festival of the Book event and will be held at the downtown transit station.

Of course, right across the mall here.

Additional information on the poetry reading is available at vabook.org.

and also on charlottesville.org slash catch the cat.

That's our transit page.

And then this Saturday, I am honored to be part of this, the Festival of the Book Children's Event, WVPT will host Daniel Tiger on the big screen at the Paramount Theater.

There will be 200 free books for the first 200 families.

That's this Saturday, March 21st.

It starts doors open at 930 a.m. And I usually get to read a proclamation that is in the form of a story.

So how cool to get to read a children's story to hundreds of kids.

All right.

First of all, I noticed that we have a lot of high school students in the room.

So welcome.

I know that it's an assignment or I assume it's an assignment, but I hope that you will also

Enjoy our company.

You often hear a really wide variety of civic issues here, so welcome.

I encourage you all, if you ever have things you think we should know, contact us at Charlottesville, or counsel at Charlottesville.org, because we will listen to you as much as any other citizens of the city.

And when you turn 18, don't forget to register to vote.

Next Thursday, March 26, from 5 to 6.30 pm, the Charlottesville Winneba Foundation will be hosting a reception and silent auction at Feast at 416 West Main Street to raise funds for an upcoming Charlottesville community delegation to our sister city in Winneba, Ghana.

Attendance is free, and there will be live music and complimentary refreshments, courtesy of Feast.

Silent Auction will feature a number of locally made artworks and other cool items.

Good evening.

I'm with the Office of Human Rights and Dialogue on Race Programming.

And I just wanted to make you aware of a couple of events that are coming up.

First of all, I wanted to make sure that everyone knows that the monthly Human Rights Commission meeting, which typically meets in city space, is temporarily being moved to Buford Middle School because of the Festival of the Book.

So this Thursday,

If anyone is interested in coming, it's at Buford Middle School at 7 p.m. in the library.

So there are two events that I want to make you aware of.

On March 21st, this Saturday, it is a follow-up, beginning of the follow-up discussions to I'm Not Racist, Am I, film showing that occurred at the end of February that was sponsored by the Friends Meeting and Tandem School.

and the Dialogue on Race and the Office of Human Rights was able to become a partner to engage the community in further conversations.

So this Saturday from 1 to 3 in the Charlottesville High School cafeteria will be the start of ongoing conversations for the follow-up of that film.

And we hope to bring the film back hopefully this fall

with the director and the producer.

It's going to require some fundraising because it's not cheap, but obviously very valuable because there were close to 1,000 people who attended the showing at the Paramount.

And there were several folks who donated $140 to the continuation of the ongoing dialogue.

So I think that's very important.

The community is showing their support.

The second event I want to make you aware of is on March 24th, which is next Tuesday, here in City Council Chambers.

Richard Dickerson, who is a Charlottesville native, will be coming back home to Charlottesville to talk about how his life experiences in growing up as an African American man

has affected the work that he's been doing and continues to do that involves the US government and some other energy related type companies.

And he's going to do that through the lens of human rights, looking at race and other human rights concerns.

And so it'll be a conversation with him with a small reception to follow in the downstairs basement room.

These sheets, these flyers will be in the back for anyone who's interested in getting more information.

And I will come back at a later date to talk to you about the Daughters of Zion Cemetery.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I do.

I move the following appointments to boards and commissions.

To the Board of Architectural Review, I move Emma Lena Ernst,

To the Citizens Advisory Panel, I move Ida Lewis and Heather Walker.

To CETA, I move Carolyn Shears and Greg Reed-Young.

To Streets That Work, I move the appointment of Everhart Yala.

To the Tree Commission, I move the appointments of Inika Dickman, Bill Downs, and Paul Josie.

Thank you.

Next item on the agenda is matters by the public.

We welcome public comments.

It is a very important part of our meeting.

Please follow guidelines for public comments.

Then in the back of the agenda,

I'll summarize them.

When you come to speak, you have three minutes to speak.

Give your name and address.

Please do not interrupt speakers, whether or not you agree with them.

And if there is public hearing already scheduled, wait for that.

For example, today public hearing is scheduled for the budget.

So if you want to talk about budget items, wait till that public hearing is open.

So with that said, first person signed up is John Hayden.

Mr. Hayden?

Quoting you, Ms. Szakos, we have not raised the property tax in Charlottesville in 20 years.

Every time I hear you say that, my head wants to explode because you, in fact, have not raised the tax rate in this time, but what you conveniently forget to mention is that the appraisals on these properties have gone up by 300% in that same time frame.

Twenty years ago, one of my properties was appraised at $90,000.

Now it's appraised at $280,000.

I paid $900 in property taxes a year.

Now I'm paying in excess of $3,000 a year and getting less city services and having to pay additional fees and taxes for those services like garbage sticker tax, rainwater tax, among other things.

And with the rainwater tax, can the sunshine tax be far behind?

Just to be able to pay the property taxes, I've had to add 150 a month to each apartment's rent to afford the taxes.

And you wonder why there is a shortage of affordable housing in this town?

This meals tax would hurt me the least, and people say only one cent.

But who's to say it won't be another penny next year?

Before you vote to raise more taxes,

and you should be required to go back and ask each department to trim one to two percent from their budgets and stop authorizing these studies that waste our money and get us nothing.

I would like to know what percentage of the budget goes to infrastructure and city services and how much on social agenda programs.

I'm tired of funding your Robin Hood complex.

As long as the stupid taxpayers of this town continue to sit back and allow you to pick our pockets, you'll continue to tax and spend.

We're made to support homeless shelters, housing projects, complete with all utilities, free internet, along with programs for ex-felons, but I know of no programs we support for those who contribute to our society, like veterans or police or first responders.

You need to exercise some fiscal responsibility and live within your means.

As long as you're spending my money, you can afford to give city workers, teachers raises, but I can no longer afford it.

Just a few years ago, we had a $4 million surplus.

Where did all that money go?

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council.

My name is Kirk Cliet, 208 Meade Avenue, and I'm going to talk about what happened after I was here last time in 1968.

I remember a small boy, nine years old, but I remember the impact

Walter Cronkite's words in Changing America after his trip to Vietnam.

Well unfortunately that can't happen anymore.

I've learned the hard way after having the audacity to speak before this council as a TV weatherman about the Civil War and Lee Jackson Day.

That act of civic responsibility has cost me my job and I have never been prouder to be fired.

I was told by NBC 29 management that by coming here tonight I would make a fool out of myself and I would never work again and by innuendo it was inferred that they would make it hard for me to get unemployment compensation.

Well I say to this council there are things that are more important than TV weather.

I prepared a packet, you know, one if you'd like to take a look at it, I'll be emailing them to you individually and I've got an extra here if you'd like that I'll be sending to you.

In case you don't remember, I was here on February the 2nd, also included in the packet a little background on why this is an important issue to me.

I came to Charlottesville because I view this as a progressive community and NBC 29 seemed to fit into this community.

the company handbook even stated, it is the policy to allow and support all employees to participate in civic, political, charitable, and other community activities of the employees choosing.

Then on February the 3rd, even though there were no complaints about my actions, I get an email that states in part, no testifying before a public body on public opinions, on personal opinions.

Now I certainly understand not taking

a public position on stories that you are actively covering.

But I wasn't covering this as a story.

I was a weatherman.

Then on February the 6th I received a letter that directly contradicted what was said in the employee handbook.

This is amazing to me because the station knew when they hired me that my side job as a USA news commentator with politically tinged commentaries

for radio stations in Australia, including some of the major cities, for the past 13 years.

To obey this letter, as a gay man, and I have to wonder, as a sidebar, if that is also, as a sidebar, if that is part of this, as I plan to soon publicly come out, well I guess my coming out is to this council and this meeting tonight.

I respect applause, but I appreciate that.

I would not be allowed to take a position whether it's okay for me to be discriminated against.

Would I be allowed to write a Facebook commentary on the tragic suicide of Leah Alcorn, the 17 year old transgender girl you may remember last December in Ohio that brought me more than a few tears.

There's also the issue of religion.

I was told if I had said the exact same things that I said to you in a place of worship, that would be fine.

but to me coming here had such an impact that it mounts it rises to the level of freedom of religious expression so much so that I even registered the website after this happened churchofthesitizen.org I consider the actions by NBC as unethical and possibly illegal I'll be in touch with you independently about how maybe this council can help me and it just goes to show unfortunately in too many ways the Civil War

is not yet over, especially here in Virginia.

Tom Oliver.

Tom Oliver.

Tom Oliver.

Anybody here?

Good evening.

My name is Tom Olivier.

I'm president of Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population, ASAP.

And ASAP is pleased to present to counselors and Mr. Jones this evening copies of the just published book, Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, and Overshooter, Simply Over.

As part of our dissemination of the volume to Charlottesville and Albemarle decision makers, environmental opinion leaders,

and local libraries.

Our local distribution is part of an international campaign to raise awareness about the impacts of population growth and to stimulate the search for solutions.

The book is intended to illustrate the ecological and social tragedies of humanity's ballooning numbers in consumption.

ASAP's distribution of over is undertaken in conjunction with a network of organizations and individuals

through the 2015 Global Population Speak Out Campaign.

Speak Out is jointly administered by Population Media Center and the Population Institute and aims to bring worldwide attention to the crises posed by overdevelopment and human population size and growth.

Though ASAP's special focus, as you know, is on local growth and limits in the Charlottesville Albemarle community,

Advanced copies of this globally oriented book were awarded to ASAP for its strong history of population activism.

In addition, in keeping with the now old saying, we think all should think globally before we act locally.

We hope this beautiful but provocative pictures and over will stimulate your thinking about population growth and development issues at every level, global, national, and here in Charlottesville.

So I hope you'd like to present these now.

helped do this.

Your name is on each copy.

Thank you.

Good evening City Council.

My name is Lina Saville.

I live at 808 Alta Vista Avenue, and I'm here to talk to you about the pesticide free parks and schools program the Sierra Club has been sponsoring.

I'm here as a member of the Belmont-Carlton Neighborhood Association, but just for full disclosure,

I am running for city council, but that's not why I'm here.

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

And we've discussed this, we met, we had it on our agenda, we announced it, we passed something, a resolution asking city council to adopt a policy to regulate and reduce the use of pesticides on public properties and eliminate them all together unless it's an emergency on schools and parks.

and we have yet to receive a response.

This was about a month ago that we sent something and I know that previously Parks and Rec has presented you with a proposal on how to go forward with this.

I know that other localities have done this so we're not starting from scratch.

There are other policies out there that we can use as an example.

But we haven't seen any movement on this and as budget time of year comes up I know there's a cost to this but I'm seeing a lot of money going into the CIP the capital improvements program from the general fund

We have West Main, we have McIntyre Park, we have the SIA and there's millions of dollars in there and many of them it's just, you know, whatever price was asked for.

Nobody's questioning whether we need all the bells and whistles.

We're putting in everything that's asked for and we can't find $100,000 to keep people and children particularly from being exposed to toxic chemicals.

So some of the suggestions that we mentioned in our letter were notification of when pesticides are being used, an end to the pre-emergence that are applied according to a schedule and not according to when the conditions warrant it as necessary, and also planting negatives, which are less

bothered by bugs, they're more water resistant, they have a number of positives that could be used instead of pesticides.

But our neighborhood association has passed a resolution a month ago, we sent it to council and we'd like to hear a response and we'd like to see the money found for the Sierra Club's pesticide-free parks and schools.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

I'm Peter Castiglione.

I'm here as a representative of the West Main Steering Committee.

We have a meeting tomorrow night on form-based code.

I wanted to take this opportunity to ask all of you to please remind me tomorrow.

I have an accessibility reference manual.

I talked to Tom Bandicoot for quite a while today.

and one of the voices that has been missing from the West Main Street Steering Committee conversation about sidewalks and cycle lanes and infrastructure, pedestrians, is access for people in independent living situations.

I garnered some very nice information today and I just wanted to say, since I will see you tomorrow, the form-based code meeting, please

Give me a minute or two so I can pass this on.

I think it's a real important variable as we think about sidewalks on West Main Street.

I don't really know how to appeal to you in the next statement.

I'm trying to appeal the assessment on my commercial property on West Main Street.

I missed my window of time to do so on March the 2nd.

and I do believe that my property is assessed at less than half of its value.

I'm in a position where I need to refinance some debt against it to save my restaurant and make everything work.

So I'm going to ask council if there is any way that you can help me go back to the city's assessor's office.

and I tried to speak with the city assessor today and we have not been able to connect.

So I don't know if he's happy to do so or not.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name's Edith Goode, 305 Second Street.

There was a meeting, I'm on the FAR Advisory Council and that's Public Housing Association of Residents.

There was a meeting at Crescent Halls a month or two ago where Ms. Lambert from HUD was present.

Other HUD representatives were present also citing statistics to back up Ms. Lambert's talk.

Ms. Dunn, who is the Executive Director of the Housing Authority, talked about how more money is having to be spent than is coming in.

So the Housing Authority is moving quickly toward default.

She recounted a list of actions taken to postpone the inevitable.

and Ms. Lamburg applauded Ms. Dunn and said she had acted wisely.

She then made it abundantly clear that some people in public housing would no longer have any place to live.

I left that meeting

My name is Lewis Schultz.

I live at 1809 East Market Street.

This is the 36th time since October 3rd, 2013 that I've come to Council to say that I have evidence that City Manager Maurice Jones, Director of Public Works Judith Mueller and Utilities Director Lauren Hildebrand

by unlawfully taking my private property for a public use, and by denying me my lawful rights to it, have violated Charlottesville Code, the city's charter, and the Code of Virginia, and in doing so, have violated federal civil rights statutes.

That property is on Steep Hill Street, a private street in the Woolen Mills neighborhood.

For 17 months now, I have repeatedly told council that my rights as a U.S. citizen were illegally taken from me by force, with no due process and no compensation,

by people acting in their official capacities as employees of the city of Charlottesville and under the direct supervision of the city manager.

I have provided council documentary evidence to prove my assertions and I have asked numerous times that council hold a hearing into the misconduct of officials they have direct responsibility over.

A report which was prepared for council in July of last year by the city attorney proves beyond any reasonable doubt that the accusations I have made are true.

Still, despite having access to facts which prove serious wrongdoing, and having all solemnly sworn oaths to support both the Constitutions of the U.S. and the Commonwealth of Virginia, and to faithfully and impartially discharge all duties incumbent upon them, Council refuses to hold any City employees accountable.

Council has known for more than a year that due to several things that City employees did over my strenuous objections, a sinkhole has been steadily growing on Steep Hill Street.

It is now four feet wide and two feet deep.

Every day that sinkhole threatens injury to several small children who live on the private street.

It keeps my neighbors from driving to their home.

It threatens to cause sewage to leak into the stream of my property that I have worked tirelessly for 15 years to restore to health.

It is causing the collapse of the bridge that spans that creek.

That sinkhole and the dangers it presents are the direct result of the managerial incompetence of city officials, obfuscation of facts by the city attorney's office,

Trespassed by the city on property that it has no rights to, negligent workmanship, and a culture in City Hall that treats citizens as the enemy and protects insiders from being held accountable for their failures to do their jobs.

For more than a year now, an inept city management has, with the protection of city council, fumbled around trying to avoid the consequences of the mess they have made for me and my neighbors.

City Attorney Craig Brown, who has been under pressure for months to make me go away, commissioned title research in an effort to discredit me and find a way to justify the city's past actions.

He had his staff request records from VDOT and conduct interviews with former residents of the street.

All of that has only done more to prove that the street is private and that the improvements which the city has unlawfully seized were constructed by private citizens and that the city has no lawful rights to any of what it has taken.

rather than admit their wrongdoing and take the honorable approach of apologizing or at the very least making an offer to fix the damage they have done and finally leave me and my neighbors in peace.

Following city attorney Craig Brown's advice, the city is taking the cynical and appalling approach of attempting to take my property through eminent domain.

That is an abuse of the legal system, a disgrace to the city, and an affront to the legacies of the founding fathers enshrined on this building's exterior.

Two Councillors, Dede Smith and Kathy Galvin, have announced that they will seek re-election.

They have both demonstrated that they are unfit for office.

Rebecca Quinn Rebecca Quinn, 1044th Street, here in the city.

At a December council meeting, some of you all had some questions for the RWSA executive director.

I'd like to know if you got answers because the report up for tonight's meeting doesn't include them.

Ms. Smith asked if the damage analyses for some houses in Woolen Mills had been completed given the nearly complete blasting and tunneling at the pump station.

Mr. Frederick said he would check.

Did he?

Ms. Smith also asked about water consumption, and although not shown in the minutes, I recall she asked RWSA to include water use data in the quarterly report.

It's not in the report before you.

I understand that information can be found in RWSA's reports to its own board, but it sure would be a lot more accessible to our citizens if it was included in your quarterly report.

They already have it.

It's not a heavy lift for them to do that.

Thinking positively, I'm going to say when RWSA begins to include consumption data, I'd like the city to attach a page to reflect parallel data for the city consumption.

One of the really interesting things is for people to see not just total water produced, but how much is used by the city and how much is used by the Albemarle County Service Authority.

Next question, have you been to the Ragged Mountain Reservoir in recent weeks?

There's a lot of area that's not vegetatively stabilized.

Some of that is below the anticipated water level and I understand why that's not stabilized.

But there's a lot of higher slopes that have deep gullies and there's some slope failures.

For example, just down slope of the parking area and on the left side of the dam facing the water.

In December, Mr. Frederick estimated the reservoir would reach its planned level, sort of interim level in early fall.

That seems pretty optimistic, given the water level looks to me, looks just from some pictures, looks more than 20 feet below that level.

That's a huge volume of water.

And remember, most of that water will have to be transferred from Sugar Hollow throughout the summer.

Let's hope it's not a dry one.

And a final item on Fix-A-Leak Week, I can tell you the impact.

I own a rental home that had a sudden increase doubling, more than doubling,

of the long-term average consumption.

I've done all sorts of things, dye in the toilet, replaced the toilet.

I didn't crawl.

Someone crawled underneath the whole building looking for leaks.

We walked the yard, couldn't find any wet spots.

So when I talked to the City Utilities Department, and by the way, tremendously helpful, I'm told I have a sneaky leak and that it might not be noticed by the tenants and could indeed account for up to 1,000 cubic feet of water

in excess of my long-term average.

So put dye in your toilet tanks.

Leave it for a couple hours.

Leave it half a day if you can.

And if there's colored water in the bowl, you have a sneaky leak.

Replace the flappers, but use high-quality flappers.

Otherwise, it will happen again.

Thank you.

Good evening, Councillors.

My name is Nancy Carpenter and I'm an Albemarle County resident.

One issue I was going to talk about, but I wanted to thank the mayor for his verbalization of ban the box when it comes to ex-felons coming back into their communities to once again become productive members of their community.

It is very important that they have as much opportunity as possible and thanks to some employers that I know that are currently

practicing that ban the box too in this community.

The other thing I wanted to talk about is that our cold season thermal shelter known as Pacham will be ending on March 27th.

And thanks to you and your vision, there's going to be an opportunity for people to move out of homelessness into housing through the Spring for Housing Initiative.

You can locate information on the Haven's website,

and also on the TJAC website, which is the Thomas Jefferson Area Coalition for the Homeless.

What individuals can do if they're so interested is read that information.

We all know when we first moved into our first homes, what were the things we thought we might need?

Same for people who are moving out of homelessness into their own home.

So there are items that if individuals or groups or

whoever are interested in providing we certainly would appreciate because I am an advocate for the homeless have been up here many times would appreciate participation.

I think it also would be easier there is a group through the Patrim program called Journeys where they mentor individuals that are in homelessness to look at paths and goals to overcome situations.

So I think having your own home will make it easier.

for these mentors to work with the populations or the people that they've come to know and love.

And perhaps other individuals through their faith-based congregations might be interested in contacting Pacham and becoming mentors.

And I also want to thank you because TJAC has come up with an earmark of about $26,000 a year in this area, the central Virginia area, that it cost taxpayers to have someone unhoused.

and that's through all the systems that they touch down on whether it's the criminal justice system, the legal system, the medical health system and all of that combined.

Actually I think it's a little bit more.

Some HUD statistics depending on the city says anywhere from $40,000 to $100,000 a year.

So this will be saving the city money when it comes to inappropriate use of resources.

There'll be a more appropriate use

resources now in this city and in the county too.

So hopefully next year that can also get the county on board with some of this.

But I wanted to say thank you as an advocate for the homeless that you took this step that a lot of communities are finding that they need to do and that it's simply just having a home is what's going to bring people back to the productive participation in this community.

Yes.

Hi, my name is Dan Zimmerman.

I live at 1101 Sherwood Road here in Charlottesville.

I'm here to talk on behalf and encourage you to vote for approval for the skate park design that we'll be looking at this evening.

I'm on the skate park design committee that's been working with Parks and Rec for the last five years.

We approached them when we found out that the park was going to be relocated due to the interchange.

We've been working with city Parks and Rec

to find a new

gone through your process.

It has gone through the community here in Charlottesville and that is not only skateboarders but bicyclists, roller skaters, old people like me, young skaters, families, and everyone has had a lot of input in the process and also that the designers that have been working on it have indeed incorporated our comments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Counselors, do you have comments you'd like to make?

Yes, I did.

Sorry, John Crookshank.

I apologize.

I'm sure.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is John Crookshank.

I live at 324 Parkway Street.

I am speaking this evening as a representative of the Piedmont Group of the Sierra Club, which has 1,182 members in central Virginia.

We want to thank the City Council, Mr. Jones, and the Department of Parks and Recreation for responding to the requests of Charlottesville area residents to end the use of synthetic chemical pesticides on city properties.

The plan presented at the November 17th City Council meeting by John Mann is a step in the right direction.

I cannot overemphasize the importance of adopting a written policy for the use of all pesticides, including herbicides on the grounds, insecticides in the buildings, and disinfectants used for cleaning.

The policy should clearly state that synthetic pesticides will be reserved for emergency use only, where there is an immediate threat to human health

or irreparable damage to the environment and safer methods have proved to be ineffective.

This policy should include a plan for advance notification whenever any type of pesticides are used.

When making decisions regarding pest problems deemed an emergency, parks and recreation should complete an emergency waiver form

submitted to the city manager, an environmental compliance manager, or the environmental committee for approval.

This manager or committee will be independent of the Department of Parks and Recreation and will provide environmental oversight, develop strategies, and serve to keep council and the public updated on issues involving pesticide use throughout the city.

I want to thank you in advance for adopting a safer chemical management policy that will adequately protect public health and the natural environment of Charlottesville.

Anybody else wants to jump in?

And I can just go in order.

Thank you all for being here.

It's a wonderfully diverse set of topics.

Thank you for this amazing book to the Olivier's.

I obviously haven't read it yet, but I just want to say that it's also worth checking out the ASAP website, because you all have done some really amazing scientific studies.

And as a scientifically trained person, I feel like I can

have the credentials to cite that these are really well done on local issues of environmental importance and so I would encourage anyone to look at that.

About the pesticides, Lena's next on my list here and John, I had a personal meeting with John Mann and Brian Dailey and they are developing a policy using a lot of the information you've provided, particularly Albemarle County's policy and

and I fully expected to come before us in April, so please watch for that and I'll share information as I get it with you.

Ms. Goode, I had exactly the same feeling coming out of that meeting as you did and I'm not quite sure what to make of the housing authority situation.

I've mentioned it a number of times.

I do think the word was used often, bleak.

And Ms. Quinn, thank you.

I have asked for the water use, and actually I asked for it disaggregated by city.

County, and UVA.

And the reason that I have is I know that that information exists.

I've seen it in other forms.

And it's particularly important that we keep an eye on how much water the city and UVA is using collectively because our cost share agreement is actually predicated on it.

And we could be subject to some very large fines if we go over a certain amount.

I don't think we're there.

by any means, but it is a piece of public information that if we knew that, we could engage the community to offset any particularly large costs.

I've been out there.

I saw exactly the same thing.

The erosion actually looks bad.

Perhaps the Rivanna folks could give us some indication as to whether that's normal, but the bare earth

combined with this particularly large water mass we've had recently has created gullies and I just don't understand why it wouldn't be filling in with sediment.

And I happen to know, because Tom Frederick has shared it with me, that Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority produces a monthly report for the DEQ on how much it is filling, as well as the state of the South Fork, as well as the state of the Sugar Hollow Reservoir.

and how much collectively we have in drought protection.

It's a great report.

They've only had to do this particular report since July when they started to fill Ragged Mountain, but if you all get it, it would be good to share with us, particularly on a quarterly basis.

Well, first, Tom and Wren, the book is great.

Words fail me on how to thank you for another three to four weeks of reading material.

And Tommy did a great job at the Senior Center against the debate with the Chamber of Commerce.

You did an excellent job.

Thank you.

Kirk, the city saw an example of bravery.

I appreciate you coming down here and speaking publicly.

I know it was difficult, so thank you very much for that.

And Peter, it's not often somebody comes and wants to have their property raised up, assessed up, so be sure that's what you want.

Because if it happens, you can't undo it.

Yeah, I understand, yeah.

I understand.

Thank you.

And Rebecca Quinn mentioned the leaks in the city.

And that's a real problem.

The utility billing office down in City Hall has packs that you can use to detect leaks in your toilets.

And it doesn't sound like much, but they're free.

They'll show you how to use it.

And really, 50% or 100% increase in water is serious business here.

For most of those, I don't have anything to add.

I concur with Mr. Fenwick.

Thanks for coming and letting us know.

To Mr. Castiglione, I think, thanks for bringing the ADA stuff forward and I'll try to remember to remind you to do that tomorrow, but we do have a very robust ADA policy and we have somebody on staff who is tasked with really paying attention to that and pestering his fellow employees with making sure that happens.

So I'm assuming we have our eye on the ball, but we need to make sure that, so thanks for bringing that forward.

Sure.

Thank you, everybody.

I think I'll start with Mr. Cruikshank that, yeah, we have a policy that's in the works, and it's a lot easier to fund a policy that you have instead of funding something you don't have or understand.

So I think that was a preliminary step that we needed to take.

And thank you for all the work that you've given, the research you've given our staff to be able to begin that process.

With regards to Ms. Quinn's comments, I would like us to actually institute a new practice, Mr. Jones, if we may, that when there are questions asked of Mr. Fenwick, excuse me, Frederick, at the quarterly reports, that those questions and their answers be attached to the subsequent quarterly reports that we receive, and that way we'll know how to keep on track with everybody's issues, because I quite honestly didn't remember what was said in December.

and we will get back, if we, Mr. Jones, if you can work with me on those December questions with Mr. Frederick, that would be great.

Now with regards to actually comments that Ms. Goode made and Ms. Seville and Mr. Olivier made, because I do see them somewhat connected, how we

I think to manage our change in our city really has direct bearing on the welfare of our residents.

I think nothing more urgent comes to mind than what is going on with the public housing community.

as well as the Friendship Corps community, all the communities that are seeing change.

This city is committed to doing one-for-one replacement.

It is a very good thing that there is a strategic investment area plan that has been appended to the comprehensive plan that underlines that commitment.

It is now part of our planning process.

What that also does is it gives us a really good roadmap to guide our investments in infrastructure, which are critical.

So it's not what

kind of came across I think that somehow it was a kind of frivolous plan.

It's actually really important so that we're very, very conscientious as well as very good students, stewards with regards to investing public monies in the kind of infrastructure we need, in the kind of public park structures we need to benefit

all of our residents including those that are low income.

It provides the context for private developers to come in and form public and private partnerships so that we will have, we will have assisted housing in our city.

So it's really important to keep that in mind that failing to plan is planning to fail as they say.

Again, just want to say that a city like ours that's 10 square miles that is reusing its infrastructure

and that is also a jobs magnet and providing opportunities for people to live close to where they work and where they play and go to school is actually doing a number of good things for the environment.

It's allowing for the possibility for people to get out of their cars and use things like buses and bikes and walk to all the places they need to go.

And it also is actually

putting a damper on the kind of tendency that we have in our society and in this country to sprawl, to go into the green lands, the green fields that will really affect our watersheds out beyond the growth areas of the Albemarle County.

So I think it's really important to keep in mind that when you're managing growth within an existing

urban area, you're actually really being quite good about stewarding the resources of our natural environment, as well as providing a good environment to live in for all the residents.

So that's, I think I dealt with three people at once on that one, and in regards to a current client,

I concur with the comments by my colleagues.

I appreciate you coming and talking to many issues.

And as has been mentioned, the city is now in the process of working a pesticide policy.

In the next 90 days, we're going to have some draft in front of the city council to discuss.

And again, we have another public hearing scheduled on the comprehensive plan.

I must have signed the wrong form, but I had a public comment today.

Yes, but you're up.

You're up in a minute, in a minute.

OK. Just one more minute.

Item A minutes for March 17th, I'm sorry, February 17th and March 2nd.

Item B in appropriation, Virginia Department of Social Services Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Employment and Training Grant, $45,000, second of two readings.

Item C in appropriation, USDA Local Food Promotion Program Grant, $25,000, first of two readings.

Item D in appropriation, Central Library Restroom Renovation and ADA Improvements Project, Albemarle County Reimbursement, $19,330.77, first of two readings.

Item E in appropriation, Preston Morris Building Envelope Restoration Project, Albemarle County Reimbursement, $1,300, first of two readings.

Item F for resolution, Virginia Land and Water Conservation Fund Grant Application for Construction of McIntire State Park, first of one skate park rather, first of one reading.

Does any member of the council have comment on any item or would like to rule any item?

Is there a second?

Second.

Mr. Mayor, before we move on to the budget hearing, I just wanted to add one new item for new business at the end of the meeting.

Now, the public hearing on comprehensive planning, Mr. Naira, I'll allow you in a minute to be the first speaker.

Mr. Mayor, I am going to be doing a PowerPoint presentation, so if the council would like to move for that.

We're doing a PowerPoint presentation on the proposed budget and the tax rate.

We have two public hearings on that coming up after my presentation.

We are continuing our strong support for our city school system for public safety and capital needs, preserving quality services here in the city of Charlottesville, and we're focusing on our strategic plan and how that aligns with our budget, and this budget proposes to maintain our real estate tax rate at 95 cents per $100 of assessed value.

Let's talk a little bit about the impacts on residents.

As I mentioned, no real estate tax increase is proposed.

It maintains our quality services and we believe this prepares us for the future when it comes to expenditures and revenues here in the city of Charlottesville.

So let's take a quick look at the changes in the general fund over the course of the last 10 years or so.

As you can see, we reached a high in fiscal year 2008 of a 12% increase in the budget.

that has dropped and we've kind of settled into a new normal of 1 to 3, 4% increase.

This year's budget is an increase of 3.47%.

Some revenue projections, we're seeing similar trends as previous years.

Real estate assessments are healthier than the last couple of years, slightly.

We have positive news when it comes to city development.

revenue that is diverse and we believe well balanced and we believe that this budget is forward-thinking but not unrealistic in terms of what we should expect in the future.

This budget does include a meals tax increase proposed to increase from one percentage point from four percent to five percent, generates approximately 2.1 million dollars in new revenue,

It is estimated by our Department of Economic Development that 40% of those who pay the meals tax are visitor tourists to our area.

This is the first proposed increase in the major tax rate in 11 years, and we believe that it's necessary to help pay for public safety, schools, and capital infrastructure needs, and we'll go into detail on that in just a moment.

Our general fund revenues, this gives you a sense of where our funding comes from.

Of course, local taxes are the largest piece of the pie, accounting for 68% of our revenues.

Our revenue trends have been mixed.

Some areas are doing fairly well.

Others are holding their own or trending up just a little bit.

We'll see here that our real estate tax rate takes up a significant portion

of our revenues and as I mentioned before local taxes, speaking generally here, account for 68% and you'll see the other areas that we do receive some funding, licenses and permits, the city county revenue sharing agreement, intergovernmental revenue is at about 8.5%.

These are our expenditures.

We spend our largest portion of our expenditures on our schools, 33.31%.

The City Council has traditionally strongly supported our schools in both operations and capital needs.

I believe our budget continues to do that.

Public Safety and Justice comes in right behind public schools at 25% of the operating budget, followed by Healthy Families and Community at nearly 19%, and Transportation at 10%.

Let's get into the specifics a little bit of our funding for our schools.

The proposed total contribution is $47.4 million for fiscal year 16.

That's an increase of over $1.743 million.

It's the largest single increase in the city's general fund budget.

And it is almost $2 million more than the 40% formula that we have for funding schools each year.

Compensation and benefits.

We are proposing a 2% salary increase for our employees beginning on July 1st.

We are also proposing to increase our healthcare costs by 3% and that equates about $189,000.

Part of that will also be paid by our employees this year.

It fully funds our city's requirement towards our retirement fund.

So let's talk about how we balance the budget both on the expenditure side, things that we have to pay for and other things that we have proposed to help offset some of the costs.

Landscaping maintenance for the interchange in the John Warner Parkway and the areas that are north of it equates to just a hair under $100,000.

We are proposing to continue the afterschool meals program at $20,000.

We lost, it came to an end of a grant on that and we want to continue to help provide those after school meals.

The funding of the jails, transit, library, the 911 center, these are contractual partnerships that we have with agencies.

$775,000 increase combined there.

It provides the first seven months of the city's share of the new firearms range.

That's the operational cost for that.

It's a total of $44,800

$98.

Several new human services agencies and programs are recommended for funding in fiscal year 16, a total of $88,000.

And there's a general fund transfer to the debt service fund which is increasing at $553,000 to help support our capital improvement program.

We also have found some savings in this budget.

The city departments have identified $268,000 in savings.

These were savings that we had identified as no or little impact to the services that are being provided.

We suspended for one year payments into the computer replacement fund.

That's a savings of $74,000.

We changed our residential recycling program earlier this fiscal year.

There's a contract savings along with that of $162,000.

We're also working to align our budget to our strategic plan and we're highlighting a few of the expenditures, new expenditures.

Goal number one is to enhance the self-sufficiency of our residents.

We feel we can do this by identifying and implementing strategies to promote cradle to college supports for our children.

We are proposing an increase of $32,500 to the City of Promise to help support the director position.

That was a grant-funded position that has now expired.

Goal number two is to be a safe, equitable, thriving, and beautiful community.

We would like to address the needs of this growing community by increasing the number of city police officers by eight officers.

That's going to cost us close to half a million dollars in order to do that.

Also part of goal number two is the establishment of two new fire and EMS medics that's actually funded by CARS by the Charlottesville Area Rescue Squad at $130,000 to have two medics who would be working for the city of Charlottesville.

We've also proposed funding of $90,000 to support the family services specialist positions in

in our social services department to help improve permanency for children who are in the child welfare system.

And goal number five, foster strong connections.

We are proposing to put forward $15,000 for citizen engagement opportunities.

This is to help fund, kind of formalize our funding for citizen engagement.

In the past, we've taken from different departments in order to

to do things like the Neighborhood Leadership Institute, our town hall meetings, that type of thing, and putting $15,000 aside to support those activities and any activities that may come out of our new community engagement handbook that we're working on and working with the community on.

Our capital improvement program, $15.8 million in projects for fiscal year.

16.

We continue to provide funding to the schools for their capital improvements, $1.72 million.

New sidewalks and sidewalk repair, $600,000.

Two very exciting master plan projects that we've been working on.

We'll hear about one tonight.

Tomsler Park is at $1.5 million for this next fiscal year.

McIntire Park is at $1 million.

West Main Street, our streetscaping project, half a million dollars in there for that project.

SIA 250, bicycle infrastructure 200,000, public safety and justice at 3.48 million dollars.

And the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund is at 1.56 million dollars in this proposed budget.

Let me quickly run through the budget calendar.

Smith provided some guidance there earlier in the meeting, but very quickly, two days from now, Community Budget Forum, 7 p.m. at City Space.

It's an opportunity for the public to come and voice their opinion about the budget and things that we are currently funding and should be funding or not funding in the future.

March 26, our work session from 5 to 7 p.m., that's on the outside in nonprofit agencies, and that's also at City Space.

April 6th, we'll have our second public hearing on the City Council's budget, or the second public hearing, but the first reading of the City Council's budget right here in City Council Chambers at 7 p.m. And April 9th, we'll have a work session, a budget wrap-up work session from 4.30 to 5.30 at City Space.

I actually have one question.

We will vote for the budget.

We will vote for the budget.

If Council authorizes an increase in a tax, such as the meals tax in the context of a budget, we would still need to amend the ordinance which imposes the meals tax and that would be subject to the normal ordinance amendment procedures.

Well, I do have a question then related to that then because we're still able to talk about different tax combinations.

Okay.

Yes.

Any other clarification questions?

If not, I'll ask Mr. Teller to come forward.

We've answered a couple of my questions already.

City Manager, Mr. Jones.

My name is M. Rick Turner.

I am president of the Albemarle, Charlottesville, NAACP.

And I am here this evening to bring to your attention a Sunday, March 8, 2015 front page article published in the New York Times.

Ferguson becomes, Ferguson became symbol

but biased goals beyond city.

Vanita Gupta, the Justice Department top civil rights prosecutor has urged police and city officials nationwide to read the recent DOJ report on Ferguson and take stock of whether their police and court system were equally in need of an overhaul.

She goes on to say that the Ferguson Report really does highlight some issues that plague jurisdictions around the country.

Across the country, a mounting number of investigations and lawsuits have focused attention on the heavy burden the justice system places on the poor through court fines and fees.

This article raises questions for me.

as to what percentage of Charlottesville's budget is being funded by court fines and fees.

Is there a formula to determine the percentage of revenue that Charlottesville collects from traffic tickets and court fines?

What options are offered to people who cannot afford to pay their fines?

Does the court fees and traffic tickets have a disproportionate impact on the black and poor community?

Let me end my talk with an anonymous quote that expresses the concern of the NAACP and many others in this community.

And I quote, we will not make any progress

in this country until we acknowledge that tragedies like the one in Ferguson are created not by poor cultural habits, not by poor cultural habits of people in largely black and poor communities, but by the policies, practices,

and preferences of the people who hold office and authority over those communities.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Thank you, Mayor.

About 15 years ago, 400 Altamont Street.

About 15 years ago, I started bringing to the city staff and council

a matter in which I felt that there was not proper notification to neighborhoods and people living in those neighborhoods of situations involving changes to property.

About four years ago, Jim Talbot and Mr. Jones agreed with neighborhood leaders to place the placement of signs to inform the public of changes with Zoning Planning Commission, BAR.

That appears no longer being done.

Neighbors are not being necessarily informed of changes that may be affecting their neighborhoods.

Now I realize that staff and city council is currently working on a program to remedy that, but there is a problem that's existing currently right now.

Next, I guess it's Wednesday, there's some items that are coming up on BAR and I'm not saying I'm pro or con on some of these things, but there are some items that I think should be of concern to some people.

One that I think the public in general should be definitely aware of is the proposal for two murals that are being proposed for the downtown mall on the backside of two buildings.

I think there needs to be some general discussion on this and people be better informed with that.

We had significant discussion concerning the design of two buildings on the bridge, of the Belmont Bridge, and I think if we were going to put

Murals on the side of buildings here in town.

We need to really have some discussion about that and get some community involvement on that.

And I also do feel that in cases of this that the communities that are involved need to be notified of the proposed plans to do that.

Thank you.

Adam Frazier, 707 Grave Street, Charlottesville, of course.

I'm really looking forward to the March 18th meeting.

That is my birthday.

So it's a good way to spend it.

Anyway, I wanted to talk about the meal stacks.

One of the things I did want to touch on was that there was a statistic up there about 40% of people eating out are from out of town.

And that just doesn't jive with some of the statistics that we've seen.

which shows it's more of a 70-30 basis and that is we can show you some statistics on that but that was certainly the case in Fairfax and nationwide.

I also think that if in fact we're targeting tourists the natural place to do that would be of course with the lodging tax or

even perhaps with these other organizations like Airbnb or VROB.

I think they're a great addition to the community, but I don't know how well they're taxed.

So I'm gonna go ahead and launch my spiel here.

I want you to know that a raise in meals tax will cost me money.

You may not know that, but it will by virtue

of a credit card 3% transaction fee or in real dollars $3,500 that the government does not reimburse.

We are collecting your tax dollars and have to pay for the privilege.

One thing to consider would be if you are in fact going to raise the tax, perhaps allowing for a discount or a bigger discount to account for that fee.

A third of the local's business is generated by catering.

We did 134 off-site events, mostly actually, in the county last year, employing over 100 people on a part-time basis.

Surrounding county caterers will have a distinct advantage when it comes to catering proposals for prospective clients, as they will only have a 4% tax while we have a 5%.

In some cases, we are talking about over $10,000 in food and beverage, and a 1% all of a sudden amounts to $100.

The catering business is an extremely competitive arena with caterers undercardening each other just to try and get the event.

Event planners, their clients review multiple bids before selecting a caterer and an extra $100 can make or break the bid.

I would say this, that if I was going to open up a catering business, I'm sort of entrenched in the city now, but I would certainly look at the county as a more viable option because I would have that advantage.

So I just ask city council members to look at other opportunities to fund the additional revenue or the additional expenses.

One last thing, and my wife is probably going to kill me because I should keep my big mouth shut.

Speaking on Peter's point, I have a house and a business in Belmont, and they're literally a block away.

I see my time's up.

But if you just let me finish this.

But I've spent probably 10 times the amount of money on the business in terms of improvements, but they're both a tenth of an acre.

And yet, there's only about a $60,000 difference.

So I do think that there is money left on the table

Again, my wife's going to kill me.

Thank you.

Hello there.

I'm Sarah Eshelman.

I am also speaking for the meals tax component.

I work at Maya Restaurant.

I'm Peter's employee.

I've been a server for about 10 years.

I've been at Maya for about five of the years.

And I did just want to let you know before you do make a decision on the meals tax, I just wanted to let you know what happens when you drop a check.

at a customer's table.

It happened a couple times last night actually.

They get the check, a couple times a shift, and they are enormously befuddled as to how their check got so high.

They see the prices they're being quoted on the menu, they add it up in their head, yet when that final check comes out, they're shocked.

And I do have to say that the meals tax is a large component of that shock.

A customer can't tell you what the percentage of the meals tax is.

They don't know.

They just know when that final number comes out that it's high and they don't want to pay that much money.

So what happens is they tip the server less.

So that's a problem for me.

It's a problem for my co-workers.

On a bigger level, however, it's a problem for everyone because going out to eat becomes vaguely expensive and no one can really put their finger on why it's so expensive.

And that poses a problem because we don't get customers, businesses go belly up.

I've seen it happen, I've worked in restaurants where this has happened and it's horrible.

Charlottesville is unique in that there is such a high saturation of restaurants per capita.

That's a lot of jobs.

We employ a lot of people in Charlottesville through restaurants and if businesses are failing, that's a lot of people out of jobs.

So I also, I encourage the city council to look for ways other than raising meals tax to

to get the funding they need.

That's really all I needed to say.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Jacqueline Dunkel.

I have a restaurant at 200 West Market Street, Fellini's No.

9, and Tin Whistle Irish Pub, 609 East Market, where both St. Patty's Day parties will be tomorrow night.

So obviously with two restaurants I'm here to talk about the meals tax and urge you to reconsider what you have put up on your budget.

One of the things I noticed on the slide presentation was that you were preparing for the future

Well, I will say that this meals tax is not preparing for the future.

It is not a sustainable tax.

It is one that it depends on the economy.

It's not something you can predict.

You cannot assume that it's always going to be the same, that it's going to increase.

And the way that businesses are in this town with people who have to pay the meals tax.

When you look at the number of restaurants in the 10 years I've been

in town here with owning a restaurant.

I've seen 55 restaurants come go change names or whatever.

So it's one of those things you just cannot depend on.

And as you know from the last time I was here, I can't depend on business.

I'm down more than $28,000 from that mess at Second Street.

and with that movie theater that the city council decided was a good idea.

So I will tell you that money cannot be recouped.

So you've lost whatever meals tax I cannot collect on that amount of money and I'm still losing because it's still a mess, so anyway.

So I wanted you to just reconsider a tax that might be more sustainable.

It's very nice to see that you all are getting a possible 2% salary increase.

I wish that my $8.50 dishwasher per hour that I could afford to give him and her a 2% increase.

So you might reconsider that there are things in the budget that need to be looked at that are more sustainable.

And I'm just asking you to relook it.

And I want to say at the end here,

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Beshir Kerafan.

I own Beshir Slapirna International Kitchen Company.

I want to be there for what Jackie just said.

When I moved from the county, I used to have a place called Blackstone.

You know, it was like alone, there was no culture, nothing to build around and I moved to Charlottesville, leering.

I had to pay tribute to Mr. Huja because just when I moved to Charlottesville, he organized two international food festivals, you recall that.

And he's been a custom customer, he checks the pulse of the business, come and ask how is business doing on a regular basis, more is there still.

What I wanted to do is the premises on which this race was based.

I spent a few days checking the Virginia Tourism Bureau, looking at some facts from the Commission of Revenue, calling Monticello to get the facts about the visitors, and I found I think we went wrong in one way.

The attraction to Charlottesville has changed.

The vineyards now have restaurants.

They are the attraction.

There is such a thing as the vineyards trail, trucks,

Buses like organized, they come and visit those places and also they offer them food.

The new shopping center offers good food.

But Charlottesville also, the amount of tourists has declined.

We're in the field, we're not in the office.

Like some people do and project everything, we see it.

The only time we see tourists in town, when there's a game, that's the first thing.

Or when we have a big event like Restaurant Week or the Paramount.

If you check the parking garage revenues, you know of fact it decreased a little bit for the last one or two years.

There's another thing.

Last two or three years, we lost two big employers, Martha Jefferson, we lost Merrill Lynch.

Those were great customers.

Initially, a few years ago, it was better, we had Ninjic.

No reason to complain.

Actually, you've never seen me here before you.

So what I ask you, I'm not going to tell anybody who did their job, but I'd like you to revisit

the elements that you won't take into account.

One thing I can tell you with a 10.3% increase, which is a 25% from four to five, 10.3 is higher than even New York City.

New York is 8.87.

First of all, we're struggling, I think you know that the trend for the restaurant is down.

Not only for saturation, there are certain elements that sometimes people have a tendency to hide, not to deal with it.

If there's an article by USA Today,

I'll invite you to check it.

There is still a certain feeling of unease to come downtown more.

The article quotes an employee from Red Pump who said she's been assaulted three times, she doesn't feel comfortable, and it's been reflected by customers from outside Charlottesville.

As to reply to Leslie Borgad's projection for 40%, on Saturday we get our donors, on Saturday, but the rest of the week, all customers we get are local.

So I'm not going to tell anybody how to do their job, I'll ask you to revisit, because there are certain items that are questionable.

Hi, everybody.

Peter Castiglione.

I'm here as spokesman for the Charlottesville Restaurant Association.

I'm going to try not to go over anything I've already dumped on you guys.

We'll try to go somewhere new today.

5,800 employees employed by the restaurant industry, second to the University of Virginia.

What Bashir is telling you is we out in the field know and feel that it is getting harder and harder.

Our sales are dropping.

The last three months were a really hard winter for everyone in the restaurant business.

You're going to see that reflected in your meals tax, especially the month of February.

You're going to see a big hit in February relative to past years.

I threw a Fairfax study out to you guys because we looked at Henrico County, looked at Harrisonburg, and every study is not like Charlottesville.

A lot of them are apples to oranges.

But if you have not had a chance to read that study, it's two restaurants owned by the same group, the Great American Restaurant Company.

They're within a 10-mile area of each other in Northern Virginia.

Fairfax would be, let me get it right, Fairfax would be the county around us.

Arlington in that particular model would be the city.

There's a higher meals tax in Arlington than there is in the Fairfax, which is where we're headed with this increase.

The county cannot increase without a General Assembly push, so we've got at least a year before they catch up to it.

This puts us at a disadvantage.

This study shows the same two restaurants with the same name run by the same company, the ones with the higher tax increase, the higher meals tax saw a 17% drop in employment

is a $3 million drop in sales.

And this is indicative of higher meals tax, eating the industry from the bottom side and customers having the opportunity to look at two different places that are within 10 miles of each other and choose to go elsewhere.

We had some catering people coming that were not able to come tonight.

They have a real big story to tell.

There's a huge catering commissary being built out in the county.

And when this thing opens, the festive fairs and the MS events of the world, all these people that work in the city and provide catering companies event items, they're going to get underdone.

And this one house shop is going to take everything to the county.

That's coming.

We've never talked about it.

I will tell you more about it later.

All right, 36 seconds.

The Seville restaurant industry has quickly become an oversaturated market and we know it.

And the meals tax collection per seat is not keeping pace.

So whatever you're seeing coming into fun things, we are not getting the same amount on our side.

It's going the other way.

Um, 16 I can do this.

All right.

Quick thing.

Um, yeah, we'll go straight to this.

The petition count, which I've referred to, is over 3,000 strong now.

I've got about 550 online in the restaurant paper.

By the time we get to the next city meeting, we're going to have over 4,000 people telling you guys

This is a problem.

I would also like to thank you, Mayor Huja, for coming to Maya, and I would also like to remind you that I didn't put the petition into your check presenter when you checked out.

But she did.

Thank you guys.

Please look into those other studies and help us.

Are you doing both at the same time or are you having two separate?

Two separate.

Well, I didn't sign up to speak on the meals tax.

I signed up to speak on the budget.

This is the budget.

This is the budget.

This is part of the budget.

This is the budget.

I know, but it's on the agenda as two separate items.

He's doing the budget.

Okay.

Okay.

In that case, Rebecca Quinn, 1044th Street here in the city.

I scanned the budget highlights available here.

and then I downloaded the full proposed budget.

It'd be helpful to know the basis for statements about citizen perceptions such as X percent of residents feel a certain way.

There are a couple of those statements in here in the strategic plan goal three.

The full budget in only two places refers to the results of the citizens budget survey but it doesn't explain what that is.

I think most people have questions about that kind of statement.

Presumably, it's not the results of an online survey.

We all know that those don't produce valid results.

They kind of overly select for people who pay attention to city business on a regular basis and also for those with computers.

I suspect the basis for those statements is the mail survey that was distributed some months ago, but the perception of the statements

in here, well some of the perception statements in here aren't in the full budget and vice versa, so I don't know what's going on there.

But I do think that the full budget document should explain where those numbers come from.

I'd like to know, and frankly the mayor may have mentioned this when he promoted, please be sure to return it if you get one, how many were sent out?

How many were returned?

Most people are really surprised at how few replies are necessary to yield statistically valid results.

But given the small size of our city, I think those numbers would be very interesting.

And also, I'd like to know, were there enough returns to yield statistically valid results?

On another budget matter, I have a suggestion for a way to free some city funds currently locked up for what many people think is an iffy project.

A couple of weeks ago you were asked to extend the term of an agreement to allow the YMCA time to get its act together for its share of funding for what I describe as a private recreational facility proposed to be built on public land in McIntire Park.

At that meeting I suggested the city could have, I should have looked it up, but a million dollars or more for much more urgent needs if you had allowed that agreement to expire.

I still think that's a valid, viable option that would go far towards meeting budget needs, at least on a one-time basis.

You know, an additional million dollars, that's a lot of money for anybody, even for a city that has a total budget of about $156 million.

It's a lot of money.

Peggy Vanyares, 1700 Chesapeake Street.

I'm here to support the school budget.

Having four children go through the public schools and having served on the school board for almost six years, my heart is still with them.

And so I want to support them.

Recently, having read the Blue Ribbon Commission study that you all had sanctioned for the schools,

I just want to repeat some facts that I'm sure you know, but maybe the public doesn't know.

But it seems like we've gotten ourselves in this, the schools have gotten themselves in the hole, mainly because the state has reduced their funding 30% since 2008.

That's about $5 million decrease, and that's a huge hole to fill.

Another thing about our schools is that we have a number of children that need extra help.

You know, over 50% of our children

who qualify for free and reduced lunch.

Eleven percent have English as a second language.

And there are 30 languages that the schools have to deal with.

So that is a huge burden, not a burden that they welcome, but it's something they have to do.

A couple of things that the Blue Ridge

Blue Ribbon Commission also suggested were some ways to raise taxes.

Of course, one is the meals tax.

My friend Peter, I'm glad he's not here because he's my neighbor, but I do support some increase in the meals tax.

I mean, Charlottesville's at the bottom.

The meals tax in all the cities go from 4 to 7.5%, and Charlottesville's at 4%.

You know, it does seem to be justified that you should be able to increase that somewhat.

The lodging tax goes from 4 to 10 percent with the cities across the Commonwealth.

Charles is at 6 percent in the lower half.

So maybe there's another opportunity.

I think the Blue Ridge Commission also talked about the process of looking at the assessments.

That's a long term thing, I know, but maybe there's something to look there to increase revenue to the city.

So just in closing then, I think you all have made this a wonderful, caring, beautiful city.

Certainly our schools are a part of it.

I think they attract people here.

Thank you.

Is there anybody else in the audience who would like to speak and did not sign them?

Good evening, Councillors.

Colette Hall, 101 Robertson Lane in the city.

The most important thing a council does all year is to adopt a balanced budget.

Most decisions you make during the coming fiscal year should be predicated on this budget.

It has been publicly stated that the tax rate will most likely remain the same.

However, taxes are going up for those of us whose real estate assessments have once again risen.

My land and building have been assessed for an increase of $22,300.

The meals tax may be raised by 1%, but my real estate tax is being increased by 5.42%.

Moreover, my lane was plowed only once in the past four snowfalls.

For me, more taxes equals less service.

I continue to see no significant budget restrictions.

Counselors hire consultants as if they were weeds.

Ka-ching!

Counselors continue to approve studies on issues that have already been multiple studied.

For example, the Belmont Bridge and downtown parking.

And study results are ignored or disliked.

Every year the school board produces a budget that is not commensurate with its fiscal limitations and available monies.

Every year the council and city managers say, not again, but every year you bail them out.

They know you will always relent.

It has been reported that the Human Rights Commission, tasked to investigate civil rights, has not settled one case.

Is this body needed?

Many, many city residents asked that question, but it was created and a person hired.

The council had a set of criteria in which they judge if a nonprofit is worthy of city funding.

When the criteria was outcomes, I can still hear former Vice Mayor Holly Edwards voice at a budget work session, but what are the outcomes?

So I ask, what are the outcomes for this commission?

There weren't any.

The city market needs a permanent home, and after at least three studies and two design contests, a design was chosen.

However, the design does not fit into the context of the surrounding buildings, just as the pavilion does not.

Do we like the flat's appearance?

Too late.

I conclude by stating the obvious.

Counselors.

Generosity with other people's money is not charity, nor is it good governance.

Thank you.

Anyone else who would like to speak?

Yes, sir.

No, this is different.

It's the same hearing, sir.

I'm running a meeting.

Mark Cabot, 400 Altamont Street.

There was a gentleman up here a little while ago that talked about other money that may be on the table.

I know it was brought to my attention about two years ago that there's properties in this city that are undervalued as far as the assessed value.

They've actually been sold, and because they've been sold at a higher rate than they would be assessed at, they should be reassessed at that new or higher rate, but in many cases, they're not.

So there is some money out there that probably, the properties were properly assessed,

would bring in some additional money to the city.

As far as meals tax, I have some concerns about that.

In many ways, I like to say also that I would hope that we wouldn't do that.

Maybe if we do do it, maybe do it for one year, see how it looks at, and then decide whether it needs to be renewed or not.

I do find that myself that sometimes I will make a decision

as to whether to go out to eat or grab a sandwich at some place where the food is already prepared because I start calculating in my head what's it going to cost for the food, what's it going to cost for the gratuity, what's it going to cost for the meals tax, you know, and it does have an effect sometimes in that I sometimes decide not to buy.

And Mr. Fenwick, I think you were right in the fact about the statement that you made the other week concerning, you know, it may take care of the situation this year, but

You know, what's going to happen a year from now as to what needs to be done.

Someone else two weeks ago made a mention about police and I just want to give a little story about that actually I just found out about this week through someone, a friend of mine, who has a, probably her future fiancé,

who is a police officer in Culpeper County and I asked her does he want to come to Charlottesville because she loves Charlottesville, she wants to live here in Charlottesville but the problem is he doesn't want to and she told me that the pay is basically the same in Charlottesville for a police officer who is in Culpeper County.

But the cost of living is so much lower in Culpeper.

So they've actually decided to move and move into Culpeper and go that route.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Lina Seville, 808 Altavist Avenue.

I'm here to talk about the pesticides again, but before I do, I don't want to forget to mention the meals tax.

I've worked in a number of restaurants, and I have to agree that an increase in the meals tax is noticed, even 1%.

The food and drink server said that there's that shock value, and it's true.

I try to avoid fast food, and I try to benefit local businesses, but when you think your bill's going to be, I don't know, maybe a little over $10, and you average it in your head, and it comes in and it's almost $15, people start to notice that, and they start to keep it in mind, and the meals tax can make that difference.

So back to the pesticides.

I heard that it's easier to make a decision to fund something when there's a policy, but West Main hasn't been approved yet and it has funding going towards it.

I've heard Jim Tolbert come up here and get $100,000 for a code audit consultant

and all he said, it was ballparked.

Bob Fenwick asked, what exactly are we getting for this?

And we're just ballparking it.

We couldn't get any answer about what it was really funding specifically.

And that was prior to even a lot of the community outreach that was supposed to be done for the code audit.

So I've seen $100,000

and go towards things that were nowhere near ready for it with minimal explanation.

I've seen that same amount of money go towards a lighting study to update a lighting study when there still wasn't money set aside for the actual lights.

and obviously there's a number of places where money gets set aside because we think we're gonna need it before we actually know what it is and we have an estimate on this from our Parks and Rec people.

I think it should be part of the budget.

We're spending millions of dollars on cosmetic things.

This is health and safety.

This is whether or not citizens will be exposed to toxic poisons.

Anybody else would like to speak about tax on the budget?

In the audience?

If not, I'll close the public hearing.

If the Council has any comments, we are going to have work sessions to discuss the details.

I'll just thank people for coming.

This is how we get this input.

You can also email us.

You can come to all of our work sessions.

So there are lots of opportunities, but I really appreciate it.

I do have a comment, though, and I'd like to address or speak to some of the things that Dr. Turner mentioned.

Because another study that came out at the same time, or that I was made aware of at the same time as the Ferguson study, was the President's 21st Century Task Force, the Community Oriented Policing Task Force, the COPS Task Force.

It came out March 2nd, I believe.

And I urge everyone to take a look at it because it does give a list of action items as well as recommendations.

And it's also important to point out that this council has well-funded its police department and actually it exceeds some standard measures of investments per capita.

And that's an important point to understand too because it does mean that we aren't, that that police department isn't depending on fines.

It isn't being enticed to basically manipulate the poor and kind of rely on that as a sole source of money.

Having said that, I do want to take a double check on just understanding the disproportionate impact of these fines on some of our lower income people.

But I did want to bring that report to your attention.

Some of the recommendations or action items were really pretty stunning.

For example, that provide incentives for police officers to live in public housing communities so that you begin to establish relationships.

Making sure that there is economic revitalization

in an equitable way so that people are not in poverty in an isolated way.

So it's a very broad-ranging study, but with some really, really good criteria for success.

So maybe we can have a broader conversation about that, because it was a very rich document.

Actually, Dr. Turner, I don't think that's true.

If you look at, let's say, Ferguson, which was 65% African American, they had three African American officers in their department.

None at all.

But we do have leadership here.

We have African American sergeants who are part of this department who lead divisions.

I have a couple and I do think we also have to acknowledge that the conversations we're having about police in the community, the answer isn't necessarily to put more police in until we deal with some of these issues.

I'm concerned

more than anything with the half million dollars that's going to eight additional police officers when we're four or five down now that, in fact, we're doing what I think Ms. Hall mentioned, which is that we're funding something that we don't even know if we're going to get.

So I would think I know that there are other funding mechanisms for just that particular component that don't involve increasing meals taxes.

without knowing that we can even hire that many police officers and without allocating some resources towards dealing with this issue.

But that said, a couple things came out that I hadn't thought of before, and the catering is a really interesting point.

I'm not sure if we heard what percentage of our food service is catering, and I don't know if we know that, but that would be something I would like to know.

The notion of a catering commissary in the county was also a really kind of scary idea.

But Ms. Dunkel, who's no longer here, also, she really used the word sustainable, and sustainable is the word that concerns me about the way we are approaching funding a lot of the items that are allocated to the schools because the Blue Ribbon Commission did have sustainable funding ideas

But this wasn't one of them.

This solves our problem this year.

But it doesn't solve a continuing need in the schools in future years.

So the most sustainable thing you can do is actually get your budget within the means that you can predictably know you're going to get.

And that's our 40% formula.

So I think those are all operative conversations to have about whether or not it is appropriate to use this kind of revenue source for what is actually being put on the table for its use.

And I think that's important because it's a very, very lucrative revenue source.

$2.1 million is a decent jump in an annual revenue source

So I think we need to be sure that we're using it for the right purpose.

So that's the course of the conversation that I'd like to have about this particular way of increasing revenue.

But thank you all for coming, and I think the budget sessions are just going to be way more interesting this year.

Well, yeah, Miss Smith just mentioned one big thing.

I really appreciate everybody coming out here because not only does it give a broader input, but it gives more energy to the deliberations we have to do with a lot of good ideas.

So anybody out there watching, please come to one of the meetings.

They're all public meetings and speak your mind or come up and talk to one of us.

But this budget business, just like our families, it's not just this year.

It's the years to come as well.

And mostly those are capital improvement projects.

And what I don't want to see is once again we kick the can down the road when we have, right now we have seven bridges that are structurally deficient.

One is going to be rebuilt.

But we, to this right now, we have no idea what that's going to cost.

That leaves six bridges to be rebuilt.

There's money in the budget.

If we were to spend that money over five years,

we might be able to fix three of them or four.

So we have important projects for our community that we cannot lose sight of.

A couple others, Old Lynchburg Road, McIntire Plaza intersection and the Birdwood intersection.

Those intersections and roads might have to be rebuilt and that's going to cost us millions of dollars.

We have a proposal, a long-term proposal, to have another train come down for our community at an Amtrak station.

That's millions of dollars.

The Jefferson Center School might need city aid.

We don't know what condition they're in.

We don't know how much they might be looking at, but we have to know what we might be liable for.

We might need another parking deck at Midtown or somewhere.

That's going to be millions of dollars.

The McIntire Park implementation, which I think we're going to say something about tonight, that's millions of dollars.

And of course the courts.

Right now in our long-term capital improvement budget, we have two figures and they're about two years down the road, maybe three years, of four million and six million.

Somehow we have got to make sure we have that money or the tax increases that we're considering

in the next few weeks will be pennies on a dollar almost.

I mean that will be major money if we are not careful with our spending.

If my focus still for the next several weeks will be to find savings somewhere to cut the fat without cutting the bone.

And I realize you don't want to cut it too much.

But before I consider any tax increases, I'm going to be looking for savings somewhere.

and I would need help from the public to do that.

I would just like to note that I meant to say something earlier during public comment and I can't remember who it was suggested that the departments look at savings within their departments and that actually was something that was done both this year and last year.

All the departments did indeed find savings within their departments and those are in this budget.

We're going to have more work sessions.

I hope you'll be attending them and listening to them because we'll be discussing the budgets as well as the taxes.

Mr. Mayor, excuse me.

We have to have separate public hearings on the budget and the proposed real estate tax rate.

and you've already had the one on the budget.

You're right and we're going to do that right now.

I'm going to open the public hearing for tax rate for 2016.

that that would mandate a public hearing.

We have public hearing open.

Anybody wants to speak?

If not, I close the public hearing.

And I assume that we are a lot of people spoke about the tax rate during the budget hearing because the tax is part of the budget.

You certainly can.

The requirement

The record we have done both of them.

Yes it is.

It's 904.

Let's get started, please.

Next item is the skate park.

Good evening Mr. Mayor and Members of Council.

Good evening Mayor Huja and Members of Council.

Again, my name is Vic Garber and I'm the Recreation Division Manager for our department.

I have had the privilege of working on the skate park master plan with our consultants from Stantec and subcontractor of line and grade, as well as key representatives of the skate park.

Before I introduce our consultant, I would like to recognize our skate park advisory team, Dwayne Brown.

Raise your hand, thank you Dwayne.

Dan Zimmerman, Dan and Desiree Dawson,

and Desiree and your son is all right.

Thanks for coming.

These individuals have been invaluable with their assistance in acquiring community input, working with our local skaters and providing technical advice.

Our consultants from Stantec were hard to facilitate and guide the design phase in March 2014.

Stantec is nationally and internationally known for designing well-friendly parks

and Skate Plazas that fit into landscape.

They have designed over 200 skate parks in the US, Canada and Europe.

On December 1st, Mike McIntyre presented the Draft Master Plan for your review.

Today, following an additional public open house on the skate park, Canton Russell, project manager, lead designer and also professional skater for 12 years.

Well,

is here with us tonight from San Diego, California to present the final skate park master plan.

Canton, myself and Brian Deli or staff are present to answer your questions.

Thank you, Vic.

We're just going to run through the

PowerPoint here to kind of show you where we're at with this final master plan.

For those of you who don't know, recognizing McIntire Park, the skate park here being part of the master plan, this is where the current skate park is located.

And this is the area we're proposing the new skate park.

This is the master plan through the process that came up with the space for the skate park, which is down here.

about two acres of the overall master plan.

And here's some images of an image of the actual process that you guys went through to come up with that master plan.

These are the project goals for the skate park.

This is the previous facility and some of the things that the community really wanted in this new space for a custom concrete skate park.

On this master plan of McIntire Park overall here, you can see where the skate park is located and you can also see where the proposed bridge is coming in here and landing and creating a kind of central area for gathering before you go into the skate park area.

The future proposed parking is also will be done simultaneously as the bridge and that will be over here on the west side.

So there will be parking for this area there and there's some existing parking in the south already.

There's a blow up of that area.

So one of the things you're going to notice is that we try to nestle this gate park into the existing site the best we can to avoid all the tree root zones and

also really to reduce the amount of concrete we're introducing.

In other words, minimizing the impact of the site.

We're actually proposing a majority of the skate bowl area over the existing pool area and the majority of the kind of urban skate plaza area over the existing playground area currently.

So the amount of new space we're introducing is definitely more minimal as if we had just done this and imposed in a lot of open space.

This is a good background of the process we've been through to come up with what we have and the design.

You know, with the visioning workshops, both one and two, then we followed up in the open house meeting.

Then there was the city council presentation that Vic mentioned back when Mike McIntyre presented the design of city council for review.

Then we had another open house meeting to address any additional input that was really desired by the public before we came up with the final master plan which we are presenting tonight.

This is the current updated skate park master plan.

I think the biggest thing you're gonna notice is the integration we have done with the overall McIntyre master plan showing

the entry walkway of the trails into the fountain gathering area that will lead into the skate park area here.

This is all existing asphalt which will not be impacted because it is in the tree root zone as you can see by that clouded area.

So you have an access into the skate park where we come into more of a beginner area.

And this plaza here is really to emulate more of the urban design features you could find in downtown Charlottesville.

you know, where we're providing a safe place for the kids to really have these opportunities to skate some of these things they want to ride, you know, some of the embankments, grind railings, hand railing, stairs, grind ledges, that kind of a thing.

So this is definitely more of kind of an urban aesthetic in this area.

We've maintained the existing walkway here in the park so that we did not disturb the tree root zone as a connection to get to the bowl area here.

But in addition to that, we do have an ADA accessible

Pathway coming off the trail from the raw master plan of the park into this area serves another opportunity to get here with the AD accessible access to the kind of platform gathering area of the existing pool house which will be repurposed and then entry in here into this bowl area which has different kind of amenities and features but again does address all users ages and skill levels.

There's just a blow up of that, a little bit more detail, a blow up of the skate park area here.

As you can see here, it's a little bit more defined.

You can see the drainage area we're dealing with here, and we'll have another slide to address that, but this is really just to kind of show the dynamics of the actual setting, the multi-use sport court here, and the also addition of a half-pipe area here, which actually would be wooden.

The rest of this would be all in-ground custom concrete.

Here is the circulation diagram which shows emergency vehicle access so they can enter the park and have plenty of room to turn around.

We made sure that that was addressed there.

And you have the access into the skate park from this point here from the central area in the master plan.

And then you again have this ADA accessible pathway here and a path of travel between the two skate areas.

This just highlights the critical tree root zone.

One of the major design factors were not only from the community input on what they wanted as far as the skateable features, but also really taking a consideration of the site.

And the limitations of the site for us was to avoid impact of the trees as best we can.

And this was the limit of work we were giving for the tree root zone.

and so we basically designed all these organic shapes you're seeing really came up with us designing around the site and making it work well with what we have.

This shows the drainage, proposed drainage plan.

We have natural bioswales, we have drainage basins for not only the plaza area here but also the bowl area here.

All these bowls have drains at the bottom of them.

more like not unlike a swimming pool which is kind of where we're emulating that kind of authentic backyard swimming pool area here.

More of the beginner to intermediate flow run, snake run we call it here and this is more your intermediate flow bowl which has a very unique shape that's never been done before.

We actually call it the butterfly bowl and I think we've always talked about doing something very signature for this skate park that has never been done anywhere before and that's one of them.

And as we move forward with this we do have the civil design team here with us from line and grade and they can also answer any questions you may have about the actual site grading, drainage, stormwater and bioswales.

And here is an image of some examples of what those bioswales and basins can look like as far as capturing the stormwater and taking it somewhere as shown in that last diagram.

And this is a cross section of not only the skateable features, but of the drainage swell, how it actually works with the skate feature.

We cantilevered it over the top of it and it drains underneath that feature there.

And that's in that cross section right in here.

So again, you know, really working with the site, having the design of the skate park actually work within the site and around it to actually have it fit there properly.

We have some 3D views of the park.

There's a little bit of a better view of what some of this looks like here and how this, again, master plan is starting to come to life, showing you how this could all fit together well with the park.

This would be the entry to the actual park, McIntyre Park.

Here's that fountain area, the proposed restroom, and this would be the pathway entering into a skate park this way.

just to kind of give you a little bit of context.

Coming into the park is what it could look like with the signage, the materials.

That's what we were hearing.

Let's make it look like it belongs in the park.

Let's make it look like it belongs in Charlottesville.

So we really went back and took the time to show some of the materials, colors, textures, and really try to make sure it fits within what we're proposing here for the overall park.

And here's another view of that.

The entry that we just looked at was over here.

and this is the walkway going down to the Bull area down in here.

This is a good view of the plaza area.

You can start to see some of the aesthetics we updated in here.

A lot of natural brick and brick color tones with banding.

A lot of the architecture we tried to

Maintain, whether it was kind of the octagonal corners, the raised round dome, not unlike the rotunda.

And a lot of things we saw were some of the Jeffersonian architecture, whether it be the columns that some of these grind ledges are suspended on, the serpentine walls that have that kind of brick material.

And you can see we even rounded some of these corners in here to be a little bit more radial.

Kind of like organic like the serpentine walls.

So we did go back and really try to make this fit some of the things we were seeing and hearing that to make this look like it belonged here in Charlottesville.

There's a better view of that.

You can see just a lot of attention to detail and materials we came back with this time showing the columns, showing the brick.

Some of this may be more of a stamped brick where it's writable and some of it may be legitimate real brick where we can where it's

where it's safe and durable to withhold the abuse it might take from a skateboard.

There's a better view of that whole overall plaza area.

And this is looking into the bull area again showing you this more beginner level to intermediate level flow bull, snake run we call it, has a lot more bells and whistles and

rounded corners, easier to navigate and roll over these corners and edges and once you graduate from this level you go into the more intermediate level bowl here which again has a lot of opportunities, radial walls, straight walls, corners for the users to get a lot of speed and have fun in and then this is your deeper more competition backyard style bowl for the more advanced users

If we were to have competitions here, events, whether it be for amateurs or professionals, or just to attract events for locals and some of the cities beyond, this terrain definitely has something for everybody.

And we made sure there was plenty of standing room space on the decks.

And again, from the trail side.

There's a lot of elevation viewing areas.

We can definitely have some viewing nodes in here.

And we have just some protective fencing for more of a separation and a barrier purpose to make sure people know they're entering into a skate park area.

And there's a better view of that, some of these features here.

Again, tying into that serpentine wall look with the materials, the shape, the curves.

keeping everything very organic and very wavy.

And here's a view connecting from the plaza down to the bowl, how that might look.

I think the other thing you might notice that's different from a lot of skate parks aside from some of the colors we chose, the materials, the unique butterfly bowl and some others is just the natural setting you have here is very ideal.

with a lot of the trees being intact, creating a lot of shade, picnic opportunities.

Again, for events or for people who may want to really get behind this project more for things like that, it really creates a perfect backdrop for this whole environment.

And just a view of some of those other features here.

This view actually does show one other thing we can talk about that is just a possibility.

If you were to have events here, who's to say that in the evening you couldn't have more of kind of this amphitheater feel?

You have this kind of platform, you have a lot of natural

Seating and viewing opportunities.

Who's to say you couldn't have concerts at the parks here or movies at night?

You can definitely have this more of a multi-use possibilities.

And one of the things that we've seen over the last 10 years in skateboarding is the more authentic it is, the more they like it.

So they want it to be a plaza that looks like you can legally skate there as opposed to a skate park.

So to really push that to the next level, why not go ahead and use this as a plaza

for events and be able to hold multi-use activities like concerts.

We all know music and skateboarding go hand in hand.

I'm sure that that would fit really well.

And again, even looking at that space and all the other spaces we have in here, you can definitely see that there's a lot of opportunities there.

Let me actually back up one more.

Just a lot of seating opportunities up here as well, viewing to look into this plaza going all the way down.

Everything terraces down so you can definitely have a nice view of this bottom level as well.

I'm going to show you some precedent images of other skate park projects, one in particular we did that I thought fit very well.

with this proposed skate park design.

Here is a real life finished bowl, very similar to what you were seeing in those renders as far as some of the curves, organic shapes.

Now you can see some of these seating walls, very similar.

This park has been very well received.

It's about the same size, about 30,000 square feet.

Again, you have these more protective barrier fencing, really just

really for just a separation.

There is ADA accessibility into this area as well.

And you can kind of see how that looks and functions in this area.

This is an overview of that same project.

This is in Encinitas, California.

And the function of this is very identical in the sense you have this more urban plaza area.

Some of the colors and pantones for this project shown is definitely more for this sort of Southern California Mission Adobe kind of color look.

They're really into art there and that city in Antonitas, so this kind of sundial was a pattern they really liked.

Breaking it up with landscaping as much as we can, definitely not as grown in as Charlottesville project is.

But what's very similar to this is the fact that you have a separate

Access walkway to the bowl ADA accessible from this pathway here.

So if you want to get to the bowl, you cannot get to it from the skate park here because of the need for ADA accessibility was not possible at that high elevation.

So you have to leave the skate park and go around this path here, down around here and enter the bowl on this side.

Or if you're leaving the park here or from any of these ADA accessible entries here,

you still have to go around to bowl here.

So it's very similar as far as having to go to a separate path to the bowl and knowing who rides here, you know, two, three hundred kids every weekend ever to complain about it.

There's another view of how that looks.

And again, you know, we can definitely

See some of the textures that were used here on the outside, some of the kind of brick pavers in areas where you wanted to slow speed down, which is something we talked about for the pathway between the plaza and the bowl.

Maybe the pathway has a little bit of a texture to keep speed a little bit lower so people can navigate up and down there without feeling intimidated.

But again, you can kind of see how this really functions and looks from a perspective view.

Very similar features, just different, but similar in the overall layout.

and just some of the details of the railings, the stairs, the ledges.

We definitely use a lot of highly protective materials, so we're not really as worried about the park not lasting long.

We definitely wanna think about long-term maintenance-free opportunities, so we use a lot of heavy-duty metal edging where we need to.

And you can see that in a lot of different features in here.

Again, you can kind of see the more mellow beginner to intermediate features as opposed to some of the bigger ones like you saw on the slide before.

The bigger sets of stairs, the bigger transitions is a little bit smaller and easier to navigate through.

I have a question.

Thank you.

That looks like fun.

I take up skateboarding in my old age.

The path that links the two parks, is that a two-way path?

Yeah, it's an existing path in the park and the reason why it's that narrow is because we do not want to construct anything that would cause damage to the existing tree root zone.

So one of the things we talked about doing is trying to top coat it with the material, whether it's smooth or maybe slightly textured to control speed.

They'll probably ride down it, but they'll probably end up walking up it.

And do you have a track record or a experience in this kind of environment where there are a lot of mature trees

Yes, and like I said, it's ideal because the trees are there.

So we would just have in our plans and specifications to really have a construction path zone called out on the plans and call out existing trees to remain and show the protective limit line of where they cannot really construct.

So they're probably going to have to kind of work themselves out backwards in a sense where

So when it's time to construct this, are you still involved?

Is the construction company

Typically, and it's not something we're contracted for, but typically we could be separately contracted to oversee the construction of the skate park to make sure they're following the plans, the specs, the tolerances.

There are a lot of specialty, very sculptural elements in there that are hard to maintain if, you know, so we would be more than willing to help assist in the bidding process of

you know pre-qualification or some kind of qualifications that really weed out the people who don't know how to do that.

Other questions or comments?

Just for the citizens watching, would you give your name again, please?

My name?

Canton Russell.

And I have to admit,

You have my respect as a professional athlete because I have never seen a presentation with a steadier hand with one of those pointers.

That was remarkable.

But another question.

You mentioned parking on the west side over the tracks.

That parking on the west side of the park was identified in the adopted master plan.

and we're in the process of going through the engineering and some preliminary design on that right now.

And it looked to me to be a little out of scale.

I guess you have industry standards and okay.

Well, thank you.

Thank you.

Personally, I must say, I wish we had something like this when my sons were growing up here.

They broke their wrists, both of them.

So I'm pleased that we have this facilities, possibility of it.

We need to raise some funds to do that.

And I think it's a great design.

I just have three quick questions.

One is, you mentioned concession stands.

Yeah, the existing pool building was talked about being repurposed for, you know, the operations of it has not been determined yet, but it could be used for, you know, I don't know if it would be concessions as much as restrooms and things like that, but there's been some debate on what the function of all the possible buildings around the site could be.

And the other is, I know this is a place where people do death-defying things, but there was one spot where I just wondered about it.

You pointed out in one slide and then there was a 3D picture from above of it.

It was the, kind of if we can picture the plaza area down here, the lower right-hand corner of it.

You want me to get to it?

So this part right here.

We talked with the civil team about, you know, how much we can actually berm up grading-wise to the back of here without impacting the tree root zone.

And if it ever becomes an issue where we can't do that, we would make sure the decks might have to be wide enough.

I mean, if we had to do some kind of a guard railing, we have done that before.

And we would probably have to have something right there.

Normal park hours, I think that's, you know, I mean a lot of times if a park is,

Dawn to dusk, or whatever the normal park hours are, we want to abide by normal park hours.

Again, the operations and maintenance has not really been determined yet, but that is typically what we see for more, you know, bigger master plan projects where this is a piece of the other

Amenities and activities are going to be going on at the park.

We want to make sure that the hours would match that.

But it is going to have lighting.

So we do have a lighting consultant on board.

We have the ability to have lighting in the winter hours where if a lot of the people are working or going to school and have homework,

It allows them to have two or three extra hours in the evening to ride here.

And then that brings up one more question of just, do you all help design the lighting for that as well?

Well, we have a lighting consultant we work with and we have certain standards we've used at a lot of other skate parks.

We're a dark sky community and we want to make sure that we don't have a lot of splash either up or over toward the road or Yeah, we have we have all the diagrams for the spill scans that show how far it's spilling out The company we've already been told to you know that the city prefers to work with Musco has been worked before but they have a lot of not only lighting standards that help eliminate the spills but

Thank you.

I just have a couple of comments.

So, and thank you for the very good presentation.

Anything that's 20,000 square feet or bigger is considered a regional size skate park.

And since this size is about 30,000 square feet where you have roughly 15

1,000 square feet in the plaza, 15,000 square feet for that bowl area.

This is definitely competition level and sized.

That was my question.

Yes, it can.

And when we do economic studies, there haven't been any real official

Studies and a lot of projects we've done, but what we have seen generated from some of the foundations of people who are working with communities to get projects like this happening is that the economic benefits are the fact that you can hold events at a size project like this.

And it's not only from generating revenue from the event, but all the people that you're bringing in and the parents, the families, the spectators, and people coming in constantly

We've seen a big boom in tourism, restaurants, hotels, things like that.

And the only other comment I'll make is that I do like the fact that there's a multi-use component with this urban park piece.

which again will help kind of make it much more accessible to the rest of the community, not only the skaters, but also really impressive community engagement with this particular group of people.

Thank you.

Yeah, and I agree.

I mean, a lot of what you're seeing here, a lot of those ideas, the skateboarding community across the country has

been very well educated on what works and what does not work because we've seen too many skate parks that did not work because they weren't well designed, they were not placed well, they weren't integrated in, it was kind of out of sight, out of mind, hidden, no one can see it, it was not community friendly, it wasn't family friendly, so the fact that they have embraced this site and the ability to use the trees and really integrate into the rest of the park and also even having that kind of multi-use thinking

Great, thank you.

Second.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Can I ask one other question?

Mr. Daly, can you just tell us what the estimated cost of it is?

We are working through that.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor.

This item before you is the final conceptual design for the east side of McIntyre Park, a component of which you just saw in the skate park.

This design is the outcome of many months of community input, public open houses, as well as a presentation to council this past December.

on the current conceptual design you see before you this evening.

Steve Kelly, the landscape architect with our consultant, Mahan Raikil has joined us this evening and Steve will be walking you through the evolution of the concept design since December.

Steve, myself and some other staff will be available to answer your questions and comments.

Additionally, in the council package is the first draft of a memorandum of understanding between the city and the McIntire Botanical Garden regarding the operations of the garden within McIntire Park.

This document has been agreed upon by the Parks and Recreation staff as well as the McIntyre Botanical Garden Board as a starting point for our partnership into the future.

I'd like to acknowledge two members of the Botanical Garden Board are here this evening, Helen Flamini and Peggy Vanyaris.

Thank you for being here tonight.

And we appreciate any comments you may have on that draft MOU as well.

We see that as a very evolutionary document that will continually be changing over time.

Again, we were asking for a council action this evening endorsing this concept design, following which staff and the design team will move forward with the remaining scope of work and the development and construction documents for the project.

Steve.

Hi, I'm Steve Kelly with Mahan Raikil Associates.

Are you supposed to face this way or not?

As you can see, this is what we presented to you in December.

When we came in December, we were really more interested in about talking about some, we'd been to already several public meetings and met with the community and actually walked the site with a group and had come up with some solutions but then wanted to talk about how we could bring more water into the park and what ideas there were for presenting more water.

So at that point we had shown you this plan

So what we did is after talking with you and meeting with the community again, we came with another plan to the community, presented them with an additional, I'm trying to remember,

Whoops, I did the wrong thing.

Thank you.

There we go, much better.

So this is what we took to the community last time we were there and after we, I want to give you a little bit of an idea about what we have in the park in general.

We have Melbourne Road to the north, the 250 bypass to the south, the John Warner Parkway,

on the right-hand side and the railway on the left-hand side.

Also, Shanks Branch you see is here along this edge.

Then we have two natural streams within the site that join at this point and then join into Shanks Branch.

40 acre park, and as Canton mentioned, the skate park is in this zone.

We have the Vietnam Memorial in this zone, which is just outside of the park.

And then we have an eight acre parcel here, which is intended for the future botanical garden use.

And then this is a parking zone for parking for both the botanical garden and users of the park.

We had really three ideas about how we wanted to have this overall park work.

One of it was to connect the rest of the city.

So we have connections in bike paths that connect to other bike paths in the city, also on the north and on the south, and then connections across this bridge into West McIntire Park.

and then actually even an overlook which brings you across and then connects you to Shanks Branch in a sense.

It's really just an overlook, not a connection, a true connection because the existing bike path is up on the bridge right now and we're coming under it.

So as a future rate I think that we could even connect to that as well.

And then the other thing is how could we look at this park in a way that it actually became a

The botanical garden portion is just this eight acres, but we thought, couldn't this whole park in a sense be a botanical garden?

And the way that we thought about that is that even though it's going to be more of a natural use passive park, we thought that there were ways that we could bring in the functions of the botanical garden into the rest of the park and that as we restore these areas for public use,

that they're restored with native plantings that represent the different zones of the Piedmont landscape.

So that was really part of our focus on that.

Then also, what activities can there be in the park?

One of them is, you know, we have two pavilions and two restroom facilities, one in the north and one in the south.

The one in the south can actually also be shared with the skate park.

And then, how do we bring people into the park so that these

people can actually experience the park.

So that was making the park accessible and trying to make it as accessible as possible.

Then how do we bring water into the park and influences of water into the park?

And this is what part of our discussion was the last time we met.

And so what we did is we tried to provide a large water body near the botanical garden, future botanical garden, visitor center.

and trying to make that as large as it could so that it could actually serve some program functions and also just be aesthetically pleasing.

And then one of the great advantages we have is we have this natural stream, but it's currently very incised and not really in good condition.

So our thought was if we restore this stream, when you restore a stream you start to level a stream out, so that actually causes the

Water that's now kind of narrow because it's incised and looking in the bottom.

It actually spreads it out so it makes it feel like you have a greater presence of water.

Another thing that we wanted to do, and we mentioned last time that there's a children's play area, which is a nature play area, which means we're not using traditional playground equipment, but we're trying to use nature as a form of play.

These nature play areas change over time, so it's a really great way to get kids involved with nature and help them learn how nature changes over time.

But we thought we could actually add a stream that goes through the nature play area so that children actually have a chance to play with water and experience water in the way that you would normally experience it in nature.

And even though it would be an artificial stream, we would try to make it look as close as possible to a real stream.

and then I think I also mentioned at one point there's a splash pad.

Then we also wanted to talk about the southern portion and what do we do there to bring in water and we thought of an idea for a future fountain feature that is in this portion which invites you into the park and our intent for that was to make that feature something that is exciting and you can see from a distance but that when you turn it off it doesn't look like you've turned off a water fountain.

So if you look at some of these images, this first one is the idea of the fountain feature and we want it to be very sculptural so that when it's turned on you see something with water, when it's turned off you still see that something, you still see the sculptural element.

and so there would probably not be an actual pond of water ever, it would just be water that recirculates and goes into the ground but it would provide a function that looks great all year round and doesn't look like it's something that's missing when it's turned off.

I also mentioned the nature play stream and this is what we're talking about.

These are all actually artificial streams except that one and it's a really great way for kids to interact with nature and

And then the proposed stream restoration.

This is what the stream looks like now.

And as you can see, it's not all that exciting.

It's a little bit hard to get to the water because the soil is so incised along the side.

What they will do when this is restored is this will be leveled out and so the water will start to spread out.

These are restored stream beds and this is kind of what it looks like right after they're done.

So that's kind of our goal and these are the things that we had changed from the previous time and done more research on from when we were here in December.

I wanted to also go a little over what we had shown you before.

This is the northern entrance into the park.

There's a pavilion here.

And then we cross this stream valley.

The stream is here, but this is the flood plain.

And one of the issues we were trying to do here is make the park as accessible as possible.

But then also, how do you do that when there is so much topographical change in that area?

and the solution was to put a boardwalk along here and that also provides you the opportunities to have views down into that new pond area and also down into the stream as you're crossing over.

And then as you arrive on the southern edge of the park, we have a series of stairs and walls that would come up and to a sculpture element in one of the old golf holes.

And one of the things that we also talked about last time that we wanted to really emphasize is how to use these old golf holes in a way

that we don't forget that this was once a pasture golf course and they provide opportunities for other uses.

One of them is for a play area, a sandbox play area and other are for sculptural opportunities.

And then you saw this the last time, this is the northern entry and the southern entry to the park, excuse me.

And then signage opportunities and how do we get people through the park in a way that they understand where they're going.

And this is something that we've shown you the last time as well.

And then I went through the landscape zones earlier.

We would have actually where the current large trees are.

We would keep that open as a lawn area where there could be activities, passive activities.

There would be another lawn area here in the Botanical Garden that they could do events at and do some of their functions and program elements.

And then the rest of the park really would want to see restored in ways that make sense in terms of the topography.

So the top of the site would be more the meadow, natural meadow areas.

As you go down to where it's more wet, there would be more forested areas.

We would actually want to present opportunities for forest regrowth and along some of these edges so that you can actually experience regeneration over time.

and then we showed you some of these elements as well.

Basically more of a rustic

restroom and pavilion facilities that have stone bases and wood, natural wood.

Paving options that allow for permeability and also the boardwalk options where we need to protect the environment or deal with slopes.

And then using natural stone as much as possible and our goal is to match some of the walls that take place in Charlottesville and also you've already seen taking place at the Vietnam Memorial, wanting to match materials as much as possible.

We've even talked with Canton about bringing some of that stone into the skate park so that the two start to tie together a little bit better.

And then the splash pad and the nature play which again we talked about before.

We've done an initial study.

With the entrance walls.

Exactly.

The visitor center.

on the north end, Botanical Garden Visitor Center.

The Botanical Garden is committed to raising funds for that purpose.

The cost of that structure is totally unknown as no real architecture work has been done for that project.

That is correct.

So what is the process that we're talking about tonight?

Well, we've requested funding in the capital program to accomplish a phased approach of implementing this, the skate park and everything else that's in the design you see tonight.

We will, our next step upon action this evening is to go back with the design firm, begin to start to develop the actual construction documents

make material choices, look at specific cost estimates and make a phasing choice about how we move forward with this.

The critical thing from our perspective is opening the park back up and providing the connectivity east, west, north, south that this plan envisions.

We're talking internally about the date by which to close the golf course permanently so that some of those connections can be made.

That date will probably be in sometime within the next few months.

We'll bring that date to you.

In order to activate the connections down to the interchange, the Vietnam Memorial, to where the bridge is going to come across the railroad tracks, that affects some of the existing golf holes.

So we're looking at that as well as how can we internally accelerate some of this without having necessarily to go to bid.

Some of the trails can be constructed in-house with our own staff.

All we would incur is the cost of the materials and the labor to do that.

So today we have to adopt the concept plan, the concept as a step.

I must say that I am pleased by the introduction of water.

Okay.

Yeah, let me finish it please, Kristin, because it's a beautiful plan, but the way I look at it, with all the stuff we have coming up for the city, this is not a need, this is a want.

So, no disrespect, I'm not gonna support

I wanted this because I couldn't support it when we had bridges that had to be fixed and roads that had to be paved and I could just go down the litany of it.

So it's like we're kind of distracted by something really nice and beautiful and professional and we forget what we need to do for the rest of the city.

So I just wanted that to be out.

People are coming and living here now without that being done.

But I'm not here to argue with you.

I just had a couple of questions.

One, you kind of alluded to, but it was the little spur that goes out onto the existing trail that goes up by the parkway.

the, I don't know what it's called, overlook that thing?

It's actually.

How does it work?

There's an existing bridge right here that's part of the parkway.

We would come underneath that bridge.

There's a level land sort of on either side of the stream right now.

We would use that to come underneath the bridge.

Then build a boardwalk that would overlook

sort of a platform that would overlook the Shanks Branch Creek.

So that's really now just an overlook at this point.

In the future, there could be a possibility of bringing stairs up to this existing bike path or even doing a bike path at some point.

I wondered about that because it is, okay, all right.

The other is, let's see, what else did I have?

If somebody were to, say, have a heart attack at the top of the hill,

Are the trails such that, how would you get to them?

Okay, that's what I want.

I assumed that, but I just wondered, okay.

And I know there's an ambulance entrance at the bottom by the skate park, which is a good place for it, I think.

I feel like I had another question, but I didn't write it down.

I guess one comment that I will say is I was worried about the pond because I know that it was the original very large pond at the top was taking space that we had hoped to use for programming that would bring not only usability and accessibility to the park, but also revenue for the park.

So I actually just have a question.

Did the Botanical Garden

Warder Committee.

Is this something that is a reasonable compromise to that group?

Because it's beautiful and I like it.

I just want to make sure that it doesn't get in the way of functionality for that area.

And I really like the stream being brought out in a different way.

And I love the little fake stream for kids to get wet and dirty in.

It will.

And I'm sorry not to go on too much, but just to kind of put it in perspective, this is something that we've been planning for decades.

So it's not just an impulse buy.

It really is something that's part of the plan for the city.

And we are just at that point where the rubber meets the road and we're starting to talk about money.

So we've known for all these years that it would cost money.