City Council Meeting   11/16/2015

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Dede Smith

Pledge of Allegiance, please.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Please, your call, please.

Ms. Galvin.

Mr. Fenwick, do you have a proclamation you'd like to read?

Satyendra Singh Huja.

Thank you very much.

You did an outstanding job.

Thank you, sir.

You also were the driver for my first ride-along, so memorable, very memorable.

Ms. Kitter, do you have any announcements?

Volunteers are needed, however, go to www.sharltsville.org slash Grand Illumination, all one word, for more information or to sign up to volunteer.

Do you say time and date one more time, please?

Sorry, 8 a.m.

It's sort of looking at our budget guidelines, looking kind of an overview of the budget process that we will begin on Thursday, December 3rd.

For more information, please visit Charlottesville.org slash Parks and Rec or call 970-3371.

Okay, cool.

Okay.

Come on out and find out about our wonderful historic resources.

John Cruikshank.

Thank you very much.

Mrs. Kuchik.

Stephen Wilson.

Please come here.

It's televised and so people at home can't hear you if you're back there.

Is this better?

No, we've got a microphone for you right here.

Can I have a piece of cake?

Yes.

Where do you speak first?

And give us your name and address, please.

Thank you, have a seat.

And we'll answer when everybody's anything or done.

Kate Benes.

What's going on?

Rebecca Quinn.

Thank you.

So that's my vote.

Comments from the city council members?

I walk that way a lot and I think there is a lot more traffic than there used to be and I think that it may well be that this is the time to do something about that and I think the fact that we heard today from two different, three different people who came independently shows that that's really bubbling up in that community and we should get ahead of it.

So other than that, we'll talk about everything else.

Yeah, I'll jump in.

And if we're going to get a report on composting, we'll be talking about that.

So thank you for coming down.

Any other comments?

So I'd just like us to consider doing that.

Any other comments?

and I don't know if it's possible to, at some point, do a really comprehensive look at our traffic lights that are crosswalks that are, you know, other mechanisms and how we control them and whether or not we're really doing the right thing by our priorities.

Okay.

I have no idea how that happens, but, you know.

Next item is, can you read those?

And item G, a resolution purchase of parcel of land for Greenbelt Trail, 604 Rock Creek Road, first of one reading.

If not, there's a motion.

I second.

Mr. Gensick.

And there were five yeses to the consent agenda.

$41 a year back into the property tax base and that's where we're at tonight is to seek your approval to allow this to go through with the $1,000 transaction where the land becomes private property and we can clean up that claim.

Do you have to be a prisoner of this property?

What was that?

Do you have to be a prisoner of this property?

It was $4,400 by Mr. Barber when he was still there.

Any questions of clarification before we open public hearing?

Who would pay for the fence?

I believe Mr. Andrag would fence it properly if it was to become his, but now he doesn't feel that he wants to.

That's what we called it.

Strange Corner that is entirely encompassed by his backyard.

I'm looking at the one that does connect.

Okay.

I take it back.

Governor's like council on motion.

Mayor Huja, I move that we adopt an ordinance authorizing the conveyance of a portion of Reeves Park to Gaines Anderig.

I don't have any kind of interest financially.

My name is Chris Engle, Director of Economic Development, and this item involves a loan that was issued through the EDA two years ago.

Can you spell out acronyms?

If you'll recall at the time, there was a similar loan of the same amount issued by the county through its EDA.

I understand they're having those conversations with the county as we speak.

So we're here to talk and answer questions about the request.

What is the website if somebody wanted to get information about the Lewis and Clark, what is it called, the museum or the center?

It is Lewis and Clark, Virginia.

V-I-R-G-I-N-I-A?

I'm sorry, Lewis and Clark at Lewis and Clark, Virginia, spelled out, dot org, sorry.

Or just go to Google and pop right up.

Any other questions?

I'm used to CETA, but I couldn't figure out how this comports with that.

And so I guess the question is, can you tell us more about the discussions that you had before the EDA last week?

Occupancy Permit on September the 11th of 2015 and we had a lovely party that most of you came to and I think you'll agree that's a pretty neat place and it's our first connection on the river and so we're not actually, for a time I thought this was kind of a new, this is sort of a new budget thing for you but actually you talked about this when you found the $130,000 and I guess it would be great if you could complete that grant at this point and if you can't we certainly understand that.

I don't have more questions.

So I guess I'd like to ask you if you're comfortable giving your sense of what the pros and cons are of forgiving this or not from the perspective of the city's economic development.

type activities along the river, so there's certainly some merit to supporting that type of entity.

And I did send these kind of late in the day, so I apologize, Chris, Mr. Engle, but have we forgiven any other CEDA loans in the past?

None in recent memory that I'm aware of.

Okay, so this is, is this fair to say, pretty much a precedent that we would be forgiving this

I don't know that it's precedent, but it's a unique circumstance for sure.

Have we forgiven any loans from other sources?

That's an existing loan that's still in place.

So we haven't forgiven that loan?

I don't know for sure.

But that might be some kind of something that would

Other questions and comments?

We into comments now?

And so we're contributing.

So I will support this for those reasons.

So I do, I agree that it actually is certainly appropriate for economic development.

Is there a motion?

I would also just request that you just talk with the city and county and some mutually agreeable kind of arrangement that they can, and then they'll appreciate it the most.

Discussion.

Assuming the the discussion here that meeting rooms be made available when available and that a report be made at the end of the year Before you all vote the resolution as written is contingent upon the county And I support that contingency very much so Thank you

Mr. Robertson, you're on.

If you'd like me to wait a little while, I don't mind doing that.

Maybe we can.

That's fine if you'd like to do that.

OK.

So we can edit those, we can add or delete them at your pleasure.

Was funding for the Center of Risk Reduction, Diversion Center?

I remember talking about it, I wasn't sure.

programming and facilities to reduce incarceration.

We can add that in.

I'd really appreciate it.

Any other comments or questions?

kind of allies in this venture?

more permissive but we definitely have been working hard the last couple of years to prevent any erosion of the limited areas that we are able to operate in right now.

because I've heard this before that we're not the only ones that would like to be able to hire local on our public projects.

I'm not sure as many of the more rural localities are interested in that sort of thing, but definitely a number of other cities have similar legislation and have similar issues that they're trying to address.

Thank you.

As we go through this General Assembly session.

Find out who else is interested in this.

Thank you.

That might be something that you could use when you're trying to get other localities to support something that we want.

Is that correct?

I'd like to know what our chances are for the clean energy initiatives.

the next couple of years.

So, hope to see you at that event.

Any questions or comments?

Thank you.

Any questions or comments or questions?

Can you give a little bit of information about why the folks who put together this thing felt strongly about it, and either why we should or if we don't?

I think with regard to the notifications, there's been some sense that with the advances of technology and people's ability to find out information about meetings and other items that local government is dealing with outside of just publication in the newspaper, that there should at least be some alternatives for local governments.

Instead of or in addition to?

to make a publishing in a newspaper.

So what would be the safeguard if you had a local body that was not interested in really getting information out and wanted to be as secretive as possible saying well we'll put it on this little inaccessible part of our website?

So you couldn't just stick it on one little thing that people see at two o'clock in the morning.

And the other one was about electronic meetings?

Was there a specific comment?

And so what is its benefit?

There's a special notification that has to be made concerning that.

So does this include if we had a public meeting somebody could be in by Skype?

So I don't know that I would see the ability for local governments to meet electronically like state bodies to come out with an agreement from this group.

So what is the pushback for not erring on the side of more information, more notification, rather than less?

But that's still the right required and only solution for everyone in 130 some counties and cities across the state.

Is there a motion?

Second.

and more information about other localities that are pursuing local hiring legislation.

Yes.

That's all I wanted.

Thank you.

Kristin.

So I'm going to introduce Anne Bedarf and Erica Stratton from Greenblue.

Erica ran most of the market for us this season, so Erica's going to take us away.

But when we had a good number of volunteers, we had good sorting.

There was an audit done towards the end of the market where we found that more of the material could be compostable.

And other localities are looking at the model.

I think that's it and we'll take questions now.

Well, let me jump in.

So I guess that would be – Crystal?

I think that you know the ideal is that everything gets served in a compostable container but most every place you go that serves food isn't there yet and so even this pilot sort of exposed a lot of hurdles and sort of evolution that we're gonna have to go through.

Alright well if they show any reluctance just remind them they're gonna get a very good brand new market.

So have you at all attempted to put some price tags on those options?

Because, like everything, we need to go from a pilot to a program, and that's a financial transition too.

So that will be part of the discussion that council will have in a few weeks.

Right early before the market season starts, there's communication with the vendors.

for the vendors themselves.

But that would be another UVA that already is doing a lot of that type of ordering and there's a possibility of joining in on one of their orders through Cisco or another group like that.

People do it all the time.

Require compostable

I just wanted to know what the next steps were because this is obviously

So I'm very interested in knowing what is the step-by-step scale-up to go from pilot, is it just a bigger pilot, to go from pilot to program, and then what is involved with that in terms of commitments from a long-term financial perspective.

I would like to find that out.

I guess, one question that I had, there were three tons of compostable materials that were taken out of the stream, as well as probably a fair amount of recyclables, but what does it cost, do you know, to take a three ton dump to

Well, the way it was set up is we paid per bin.

What are we taking out of our landfill costs?

But at the same time, we wanted to be able to report out on this pilot and get some response from you before we go and look at sort of interim solutions and then perhaps transition to programmatic.

and I was a weekly user of the service and incredibly enthusiastic because I'm one of those people who don't have compost at home because of squeamishness.

And we heard a lot from people who live in apartments and that's a big user of something like this.

stuff out of our garbage stream if we did it collectively than if we just encourage people to do it at home.

And I think you can appreciate the challenge for the team to come up with fun and interesting ways to market composting.

And I don't know about my colleagues, but I'd just like to kind of put that forward.

And we may have to think about whether there's sufficient time to sort of build it this season, or if we look at following next market season to transition into...

It's just how fast, how far is going to be something that we have to make a judgment on, call on once we get some more information.

They have done some composting at farmers markets and they gave us some lessons learned up front which helped us be a little bit smoother on the launch.

Can I ask one other question?

If we're talking about an off-season one, how important is it that there's somebody standing at that then?

And we have staff members there that are very passionate about composting.

We need to keep moving.

And so that was another savings that you could just... Other questions or comments?

Next level is Page City, just left.

So we're really excited about what the future holds and would love your support in helping make that happen.

Any other questions or comments?

And the National League of Cities might have some further kind of information about people doing that well.

Again, it brings people together and they can interact with one another and learn from one another.

I would love to see that, yeah.

You know, the huge chess pieces?

And the girls, we started making games out of the new structures and it's just amazing to see the fact that we do have some very beautiful playgrounds in the city and over time we're going to continue to have those happen.

because ultimately your community engagement message is listen to the neighborhood, but I couldn't find anywhere what you were getting.

Some of it is on these posters.

OK, great.

But it's something that as we move forward, the metrics are going to be driving forward the programs and making sure that we're gathering that information as we move forward.

Do you have a Facebook page for this whole thing?

The question is which opportunities are the most important to move forward on, especially with such a small staff.

Are you seeing much of an issue with mobility?

Define mobility.

I've since heard that there's a more certain niche of the population that is decidedly not mobile, but I just wondered if that was an issue.

not necessarily within the public housing or affordable housing areas, but back into the neighborhoods that we got to know people.

Do you do theater at all with the neighborhood?

But I know there's some initiatives that are starting up now in connection with the university to do some movement-based projects.

OK, thank you very much.

It started with Jim Talbert and has there been any kind of a cross-realization of ideas going on between Miriam, Mike and you?

I would love to make that connection.

really to be able to see what has resulted from this, because a lot has, but I think the metric is an easy way to grasp the magnitude.

The last item on the agenda today, John Eno's report.

Good evening.

Take any questions that you might have.

I'm a little bit older than Brad, so congratulations, and I hope it continues that way.

I've worked all around the country, and there's not a system like John's, in my opinion.

When it started, I'm really happy he's doing well.

You know, I'm the chair of the CAT Advisory Board to help the effort to encourage those able to use CAT instead of John.

It only takes one or two phone calls to be made before they're on their own and they never have to call again.

Is it fear?

I have to say, my wife is married to a transit planner, and to this day, she still has anxieties riding transit in other places because she's well versed in a lot of this, but she still has a little bit of the unknown and is not sure where does he catch a bus when she's out of town somewhere or something like that.

So that's actually a big push.

Would you feel comfortable at all talking a little bit about the park and ride program that you're starting?

And I think that was the original plan for Big Blue back in the 90s, and that would be this plan as well, is that if we're seeing dozens of people wanting to ride, then the idea is John's nimble, we can get around some stuff, but once there's solid ridership, hand it over to CAT.

to 50 Pantops.

What can we get done?

So I think your ridership accounts are getting to a point where that could be more feasible.

I think places like Crozet, even further out, and then we start marrying those with, we could still transport some agency people and things like that that kind of help off some of those finances.

I'm really interested in watching this.

The county, I think, is nervous because they don't want to take an obligation that they're not sure they're ready to make a commitment to.

Other questions or comments?

Are you going to be doing that in Stanton?

I'm optimistic to see it happening but I think we have to convince people that there's the density of that ridership and that's where UVA and some of the other major employers really need to help us identify who we could target to get on the bus.

We had a joint MPO meeting with the Stanton MPO and it was discussed there too and so they're very motivated.

It's amazing when you bring it up, there's so many people who start calling and emailing saying, is this going to happen next year?

Thank you for your report, we appreciate it.

Look for that link tonight to the video.

Is there any other business to discuss today?

I just went to the National League of Cities meeting in Nashville and got lots of new information, went to a couple of workshops and would be happy to report on that if the council would love that.

And I would really appreciate knowing when that new data is gonna come out and whether this is to be anticipated every time.

So I would recommend that we allow Mr. Frederick to respond once he confers with his engineers.

I'd be like to know.

I mean, I really, I'm only responding from the basis of what he sent to us, and out of respect to his position, I suggest that.

it should be really helpful for our rehabilitative efforts.

So you're asking more, not so much a detailed analysis, but just kind of like where are we?

I want to know what the balance between city, county, how it's changed with this wastewater metering, which has nothing to do with population projections.

Anybody like to speak?

Thank you.

Does anyone else would like to speak?

I just wanted to comment on a few matters.

Maeve, could you say your name and your address please?

So I think that would be something really wonderful for us to look into.

Have a wonderful night.

Anybody else would like to speak?

and just generally the studies of an intersection don't involve consultants but your point is well made.

You're a joke.

Dede