City Council Meeting   1/19/2016

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you

I'd like to call this meeting to order.

Good evening, everyone.

We are lucky to have with us Mr. Wendell Santiago, who is a senior at Charlottesville High School.

He also served as Charlottesville High School's representative to Boys State this summer, and he's going to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

and every public for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Nice job.

Mr. Szakos?

Ms. Szakos?

Either one?

Pardon?

Here.

Ms. Galvin?

Awards and recognitions and announcements.

We want to say that item three on our appropriation decisions on the agenda has been deferred at the applicant's request.

That's the National Endowment for the Arts, our town play the city grant.

And announcements.

Mr. Fenwick.

We do that before we do the commissions and all?

Commissions afterwards?

Okay.

Well, I just want the community to know that this week, actually last night and yesterday morning, a virus or whatever is coming through people's smartphones and it comes from SunTrust and it says urgent, call immediately.

We checked it out, not through my smartphone, but

and it is, I don't know what they're after, what they're fishing for, but if you get an announcement or an automatic beep or alert sound and it says SunTrust, contact us immediately.

Don't open it.

It's not going to work well for you if you do.

So that's it.

Thank you.

Yes, sir.

In anticipation of a potential heavy snowfall on Friday, here are some things to keep in mind.

Please, please, please stay off the streets during snow emergencies if possible.

Please use off street parking if available prior and during a snow event.

On street parking complicates and slows the process of plowing slash removal of ice and or snow.

Stranded or illegally parked vehicles inhibiting emergency snow response will be towed at the owner's expense.

The city ordinance requires property owners and or occupants to clean sidewalks around homes or businesses within 24 hours after the end of snowfall so pedestrians will not have to walk in the street.

The city manager declares the end of snowfall and the information will be posted on the city website.

Please assist neighbors and family who may need extra help shoveling.

Please wait until streets have been plowed before shoveling driveway entrances.

It is unlawful to push snow or ice from private property into the street.

Please deposit snow or ice from your sidewalk behind the walk and not in the street.

Please deposit snow or ice from your driveway entrance beyond the driveway entrance so the city plow truck will not redeposit it in your driveway.

please understand when streets are plowed some snow will be left in your driveway entrance the city does not open up individual driveway entrances please do not call to request special applying for your street all streets in the city are on established routes major streets are cleared prior to residential areas and if you have any more information excuse me if you need any more information please call the public service office at 970 3895

I have another announcement.

I don't think Mayor Signer knows about this, but I'm going to challenge him to a duel.

If we get more than two feet of snow, you have to meet me at Washington Park for a snowball fight.

You got it.

As long as I can enlist the 16-month-old.

Yes.

Mr. Bellamy, you have a bet.

All right.

We have a bet.

OK.

All right, I have an announcement about this Sunday will be the community-wide celebration of the Martin Luther King holiday, which was yesterday.

There is a mass choir from

and a whole lot of churches and congregations around the city.

In fact, there are several elected officials singing in the choir.

Councilor Galvin is singing.

I am singing.

Our sheriff is singing.

We have a school board member.

Sherry Craft is singing.

I think that's it of elected officials.

But there are over a hundred singers, so it's always wonderful.

There's always a keynote speaker.

It's just a great event.

It starts at five o'clock at Mount Zion African Baptist Church on

Langford Street, 105 Langford Avenue.

And I would recommend that you come early.

The seats always fill up.

There is over overflow seating in the back.

But if you want to be in the main room, you might want to get there a little early.

There'll be a little bit music to kind of keep you occupied before the event starts.

Yes, and Mayor Signer, Mr. Bellamy, and Mr. Fenwick, there will be auditions for the MLK Choir immediately following.

You don't want to lose your audience, Kathy.

I have one announcement.

It is also on Sunday.

It's that time of year again.

It's called the Vortex.

It sounds like something out of Star Wars, but it's actually coming out of the architecture school at UVA.

And this year the school is looking at Preston Avenue from Ridge McIntyre all the way up to Grady and looking at ways that that could be imagined as a different kind of place and a different kind of corridor.

So at the Carver Recreation Center on Sunday, the 24th from 11 to 1.30 p.m., all the projects will be on display.

And then later on that evening when we will be singing in the choir, there's gonna be a jury review and awards given.

But all the projects will be, there's about 30 teams working on this, the projects will be on display at the city space for the rest of the month of January and through February.

So I hope some of you check it out.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, may I make a couple more quick announcements?

I'm sorry, I just received this email, so forgive me everyone.

I was given strict orders to make sure that we announce on Thursday, January 21st, there will be a FAFSA completion night.

For those who don't know, FAFSA is the college financial aid

of the

Thursday, January 21st from 6 to 8 in the Jefferson School and the PBC Center.

Tomorrow night, in addition to all of the MLK events going on over at UVA, Gary Flowers will be presenting Dr. King, Analysis to Action, The Common Ground to Higher Ground.

That will be

tomorrow, Wednesday, January 20th from 6, or excuse me, beginning at 6.30.

And on next Monday, so you all come out to the singing and the community service on Sunday the 24th.

And then on next Monday, the 25th, the 2016 keynote event, Alicia Garza, who is the co-founder and co-creator of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Not giving up mine.

Thank you.

And I have one announcement.

I would like to announce that I, as the newly elected mayor, am going to start holding monthly open office hours.

To me, this is about the idea of one Charlottesville.

I'm holding these office hours because I want to listen and learn.

In the months to come, I'm really looking forward to hearing ideas and concerns and suggestions from around

The City and hopefully making some new friends as well.

The way this will work, we're going to figure it out as we go along.

The first one will be on Thursday, February 4th from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. during the lunch hour.

There's no perfect time for everybody, obviously, so we may in the future move this before the workday or afterward, but the first one will do.

at the Mayor's Office in City Hall.

The Clerk of Council will confirm future meeting times and locations on the City's website and on our Facebook page so you can please stay tuned.

Parking validation will be available for people who come in the Market Street Garage.

We will do 10-minute increments for the slots.

You can come and walk in, but you're encouraged to contact Ms. Rice beforehand for slots that we're sure that

You can be accommodated, and it will be 12 to 1 p.m. on Thursday, February 4th, and then we'll repeat again the following months.

Contact information for Ms. Rice is 434, it's just the city council number on the website, so 434-970-3113 and RiceP at Charlottesville.org.

So you can do it by email as well.

Okay, matters by the public?

That's right, so we go through the, oh, I guess I need the, sorry.

My second meeting.

Okay, Mr. Paul Long.

Oh, and I'm sorry, I wanna, before we get started, we are going to do a system tonight, just because the meeting last week, there was some confusion, so I want every speaker to know we have three minutes, and I'm gonna

Read the guidelines for public comment.

We welcome public comment.

Time is reserved near the beginning and at the end of each regular city council meeting for matters by the public.

Please follow these guidelines.

If you're here to speak for a public hearing, please wait to speak on the matter until the report for that item has been presented and the public hearing has been opened.

Each speaker has three minutes to speak.

Please give your name and address before beginning your remarks, and I want to point everybody to this handy device right here, which is green when you have a lot of the three minutes left.

It's yellow when it starts to, when you are winding down, I think 30 seconds, and it's red when you've run out of three minutes, and we're gonna sign automatically to a chime tonight at the end of three minutes, just that everybody knows it's meant to be unobtrusive, and so I don't

I'm not interrupting everybody.

And when that three minutes is over, please respect that because we want to make sure that the meetings are fair and expeditious.

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

And please refrain from using obscenities.

If you cannot follow these guidelines, you will be escorted from city council chambers and not permitted to reenter.

With all that said, Mr. Long, I'm sorry for making you wait the beginning.

Mayor Signer and members of the city council.

My name is Paul Long.

I live at 1410 Grady Avenue here in the city.

and our public transit system is totally inadequate for our city and the surrounding areas.

Automobile traffic is overwhelming our streets and pedestrians and children are getting killed and injured trying to cross the street.

The council needs to fund the Charlottesville area transit system so that all CAT buses, bus routes are running on Sundays and legal holidays and they also need to fund

Shelters and benches throughout the city at bus stops so that people who are waiting for public transit during inclement weather can have shelter and

Also, I would like to recommend that the buses stop every block.

Recently, the bus stops were extended every three to five blocks for the convenience of the bus drivers.

People that are handicapped and old, that's a problem walking three to five blocks to the nearest bus stop.

In 2009, six years ago, the General Assembly of Virginia gave Charlottesville and Albemarle County authority

to form a regional transit authority.

Nothing has been done to implement this in the last six years.

The people of Charlottesville and Albemarle County need an extensive public transportation system, and I urge the council to work on this.

Thank you very much.

Jessica Otay.

It's true.

My name is Jessica Otay.

I live at 129 Observatory Avenue in Charlottesville.

I have lived in Charlottesville since August of 2008.

I work at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory as a system administrator.

I'm also the vice president of Charlottesville Women in Tech, a year-old nonprofit 501c3 organization committed to bridging the gender gap in the tech field.

As part of my engagement with the local tech community, I've recently started a group called Open Source Civics Charlottesville, or OSCC.

Several of our members are here tonight, hi guys, in order to introduce our group to the council, and I guess to the city since we're on TV.

OSCC intends to leverage the power of the open source movement

including the ability to collaborate easily and on all sorts of projects to identify projects of civic interest and engage the local community therein.

As our first civic action so to speak, the group has identified the distribution of sample ballots to all city registered voters as an important improvement to the civic process.

Many states and localities, including where I grew up in California, provide a sample ballot as part of official voting materials that are mailed to registered voters a few weeks before a general election.

In a recent Washington Post article, the author reported that, quote, when the election office communicates more often with voters, more of them vote, end quote.

It is often assumed, but wrongly in my opinion, that the existence of information online means that mailed communications are no longer necessary.

Online information must be sought out, and many voters may not even know that the ballot is available before the election.

I note also that the sample ballot for the last election, November 3rd last year, was in fact not available on the city's website.

When I called the voter registration office, I was told that this was due to website maintenance.

I received a sample ballot only when I arrived at the polling place, here it is, a bit late to help me prepare.

I found the state's otherwise useful website surprisingly unhelpful when I attempted to figure out exactly what the ballot would look like prior to the November 3rd election.

What I needed was a sample ballot and I couldn't find one.

We asked that the council consider mailing a sample ballot to all registered voters before each general election.

We would also like the council to consider distributing the ballot as an insert in the Siebel Weekly newspaper the Wednesday prior to the election.

OSCC is committed to providing additional non-partisan information about the sample ballot, and we will be using the visual of the sample ballot to do so.

I have created a mock-up of what this could look like online.

I'm going to read the URL.

It's o-s-c-c dot Jessica Otey.

My last name is O-t-e-y dot com.

We would love to have the city create something similar or provide a link to what I'm calling our info ballot on its own website.

Thank you.

I'm Robin Haynes.

I live at 1709 East Market Street.

I'm a Charlottesville area tree steward.

and I sent you guys an email I hope that you received regarding the report tonight on the YMCA's progress in McIntire Park.

I sent a letter to the WISE board chairman with the signatures of 34 tree stewards requesting that they move soil and silt fencing back from the large tulip tree just beyond the northern end of their project.

Many large trees had to be killed

for this project and it's kind of a celebration that we've got one nice one at the end and it's really not too much to ask to protect this tree.

It needs about 30 feet of clearance at the base of the tree and the silt fence, which is quite close, should be moved back as well as the soil because, you know, once if we have a heavy rain, you know, that soil will come right back down.

This is a, you know, I hope that you'll check out the tree.

There, it's probably a hundred years old and the, I did write Parks and Rec, the staff about this and

Mr. Kessler wrote back saying that they're hoping to put a dumpster nearby and that their pad for that dumpster has its requirements.

I just hope that he will talk about this more tonight.

I'm just not sure that

He can't move the dirt back.

There's a pretty big stretch.

But there's also, I sent you a photo of another group of trees at the sort of southwest end, which also has a couple of sizable tulip trees, which are worth saving.

And this area looks like it's already been fenced pretty well.

It's right next to some kind of construction.

I don't know if it's a pool or some kind of building.

but there are a lot of other trees in there too.

Some of them aren't that healthy and they'll probably need to come down.

I just hope they'll get some special attention.

And so I just, you know, as you can see, there are a number of people who are concerned about this and I hope that you'll respond.

You're out of time.

Okay.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I just want to let everybody know that the city manager is going to be taking notes on specific concerns that are raised for city staff.

And we'll be doing a response the next meeting.

And we're going to do the first one of these after our responses tonight.

So this is a practice that we're going to start to institute here.

So before my time.

No.

So you all are not commenting?

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

So I'm here to speak about a few things.

And I want to start with just referencing a book by a professor that was at VCU.

I'm not sure if he's still there.

But the political world of a small town, Nelson Wilkstrom, and how the small town politics mirror national politics.

politics and I think sometimes here we take a lot of the good but leave the bad and I just want it's a lot of information in there but I wanted to start with I think Charlottesville mirrors national politics and especially in the black community is a lot of the negatives.

and a few things that I want to discuss is one, I sent an email last year about dismantling Jade Task Force as it's currently run and we know that based on the new face of addiction that there are families, primarily white families, who are pushing for a movement from incarceration

to effective treatment.

And I know in the black community in Charlottesville, it's been ravaged by the Jade Task Force, and I want you all to really take a look at that and take that seriously.

Second, Friendship Court, again, and really just I keep speaking about Friendship Court because it's concerning, it's alarming if people do not have homes.

I will reference the SIA, that in the SIA,

area from 2000 it went from 51% black or African Americans to 38.8% and the city of Charlottesville as a whole from 22% to 19%.

So black families are going somewhere and I think it's a major concern.

So hopefully PHA and their intentions will be true but if not it's an issue and it's already happening.

Three services, so if

Friendship Court works the way PHA is planning it too.

You're still going to have people who could afford the Gleason's, your workforce housing, and then low-income families who currently live in PHA all living in a very small area.

I think in one part of Friendship Court on 3.5 acres for Burnett Common there were only 43 or 46 units developed on that property.

and Frank Grosh is saying up like to 500 to keep it marketable for the higher income families.

So I mean, that's a question.

And then policing equitable defense for indigent clients and just judges, referencing the comment that Diane made in a previous meeting about sometimes judges overrule social services and really questioning why.

for that.

Thank you.

Baylor Fuchs.

My comment is directly related to the NDSV schedule.

Now.

Oh, no, later.

I'm sorry.

OK.

Thank you.

Eberhardt-Yala, is that correct?

Happy New Year.

I'm Eberhardt-Yala.

I live at 1402 Hazel, 1402 A. Hazel.

I've been a resident of Charlottesville

pretty much since 1959.

And I've been a city employee with a couple of absences.

Probably the city's longest part-time seasonal employee, that's since 1975.

Anyway, for the record.

I'm here to make a few remarks related to Streets of Work.

I am on the Streets of Work Advisory Committee.

as well as the West Main Street project that Council has been wrestling with for quite a long time as well as the coming snow and how just a reminder related to that if I run out of the three minutes before the thing on snow I would like to have a second or two to remind City Manager and Council about what needs to be done.

One particularity that didn't get covered in the last several snowstorms.

Here in Charlottesville, we've experienced 60 plus years of emphasis on level of service as far as local transportation.

And to put it bluntly, that's simply how fast can commuters, fire trucks, ambulances, delivery vehicles traverse through our framework streets?

With double may care what it might mean for both commerce

pedestrians, bicyclists, people who would like to shop in leisure in an area and window shop.

It's well over time.

It's time now to focus on not level of service, but level of mobility that we make, particularly West Main Street, but also our other main corridors accessible to those who

because of their age, either young age, old age, or because they want to get some exercise accessible to people who traverse those areas by foot, as well as those who might commute or run errands by bicycle.

We want our residents to feel safe commuting, shopping, going to school, exploring our fair city, as well as window shopping.

We feel safe as pedestrians on West Main Street.

We'll explore more of West Main Street.

So let's see if we can make some real progress in that direction, certainly in this calendar year going forward.

As an example, I'd like to focus very, very briefly on my neighborhood, the Martha Jefferson neighborhood.

If you think of it,

More than three quarters of the students who are at Burnley Moran Elementary School have a tough time because of four major streets.

The one quick item for public service is brining.

the bike lanes, especially the eastbound bike lanes on the southern side because they are shaded both by the curb, by the buildings next to them.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Peter Kleeman.

I also want to tell everybody

as Mr. Kleeman is making his way down here, that we are going to be talking about the Landmark Hotel during other business at the end of this meeting.

Okay, your time, Mr. Kleeman.

Good evening.

My name is Peter Kleeman.

I live at 407 Head Street in the city.

I was disappointed I could not attend your first meeting as a new council.

I was out of town in Florida, but I did take advantage of TV 10 to see what had

happen.

I'm very interested in council business and elections and the like.

And in observing on TV 10, I saw several things that I thought I would respond to.

One about the issue of conversations before votes, etc.

There was very little conversation about the mayoral election and choices.

And interestingly, in years when three people are elected, which is every fourth year, but the intervening two year, only two people are elected, and that based on the fact that the two leadership positions came from people just elected, it brought to mind the idea that, and also in light of many 3-2 votes in the past council and councils before that, it brought to my attention the idea that

a group of three people who run on a ticket and decide they're gonna run as a unit have the opportunity to control all of the votes for the next four years on three, two votes if nothing else.

So it appears that having three people elected only every other election puts that into a kind of unbalanced position if those people run as a unit.

So that and the idea that we could have a better discussion and fewer one vote decisions if we change the nature of council to have a sixth member.

You see this in the county, but if we have a sixth member, there would be three council members elected in every election for council.

No one council election could have a controlling vote that would last for any length of time because there would be three other

Balancing Voters.

The other discussion at the meeting last time was about some inconsistencies in dates on the formation of the council, et cetera, and clearly you need to update the errors that are in the city code.

And I looked at the city code, and if you did choose, which I hope you'll consider, to have a sixth councilor, you'd only have to make one or two word changes in the entire city code to make that happen.

to have three councilors elected in each of those elections and that it would require a 4-2 vote to pass any resolution, ordinance, appointments, etc.

So there would be less contention because it would be not one voter on the council that would sway the whole election.

The bonus is that councilors would have fewer committee assignments

and that the cost would only be the cost of one city councilor's salary and overhead.

Thank you.

My name is Louis Schultz.

I live at 1809 East Market Street.

There was a lot of talk by council two weeks ago about how different this new group will be, but its first meeting didn't inspire confidence at all.

As of that meeting, we have an attorney as mayor, a PhD candidate as vice mayor, and three additional counselors with 12 years of experience among them.

We also have a city manager who has been in that position for more than five years.

Those six are advised by a city attorney's office with four full-time attorneys who ought to be experts in Virginia law and who cost the city nearly a million dollars a year for their services.

That team of 10 people has already failed twice to have counsel follow some of the city's simplest and most important laws.

Both Section 9 of the Charter and Chapter 2, Section 39 of Charlottesville Code of Ordinance clearly established the first meeting in July as the start of the mayor's and vice mayor's terms.

Despite claims to the contrary in the last meeting agenda packet, there is nothing anywhere in the law other than pure fantasy which might allow those terms to begin in January.

A vacancy may be filled, but only through the end of the term, not for two years.

It appears that no councilor understands the few simple pages of city code which clearly describe their duties and none seems to know how to perform the simple task of legally amending an ordinance.

Section 35 of the city's charter says very plainly, the council shall fix by ordinance the time for holding their stated meetings.

Chapter 2, Section 41 of the city's code is that ordinance and it says that meetings must take place on the first and third Mondays of every month

unless there is a holiday in which case the meeting is delayed one day, like today.

No meeting can be legally canceled for any reason.

If council wanted to amend that ordinance, it would be a simple thing to do, but passing the necessary ordinance would be to admit that three of these counselors committed a crime last August 17th when they failed to meet as required by law.

What council did instead is to hope no one was watching and try to pass a resolution establishing an alternate meeting schedule by sneaking it into the last meeting's consent agenda.

A resolution can't amend an ordinance and it certainly can't amend the charter, which is an act of the General Assembly.

Council has absolutely no authority at all to pass that resolution and it has no legal effect, which leads us to something much more important.

Not a single councilor sitting here tonight has been elected in accordance with Virginia law.

The ordinance passed in 2004 moving city council elections to November was also in violation of the city's charter which requires May elections.

As already noted, that charter is an act of the General Assembly as authorized by the Constitution and the city has no authority at all to amend it or to ignore it.

Virginia Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed the long-standing principle of statutory construction that a general law does not take precedence over a special law like the city's charter unless it clearly states an intent that it do so.

Section 222.1 of Virginia Code Title 24.2, which the city cited as the authority to change the time of its elections, doesn't state any intent that it should take precedence over our charter.

Therefore, the ordinance moving elections to November is void and always has been.

This council has no legitimacy and there is no reason to believe that any of its actions are lawful.

Thank you.

John Hayden.

Well, Mr. Hayden is working his way down.

I would like to alert everyone to Ms. Szakos's truly remarkably delicious peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies that are for everyone up here.

There's a lot of them.

You're time.

I never thought I would say this, but I agree with Mr. Fogel.

I was struck by something he said at the last meeting when he spoke about passion.

I used to think he just got up and used to

Ranton Ray, but I think I understand him better now.

The same holds true for Mr. Schultz.

Why would he come here and talk almost 50 times now on an injustice he feels has been done to him if he wasn't passionate?

Dr. Turner is another who speaks with passion and conviction.

Then there's me.

I've talked on a number of occasions about taxes, crimes, personal responsibility and accountability.

and Race Relations, and I've been called a racist by some counselors and have heard, quote, I think he only comes here to see if he can get a rise out of us.

How arrogant.

Why would I come here and endure name-calling, threats, interruptions, and indifference to my issues?

Do you question my passion?

I realize, as counselors, you come to the job

with your own agendas, beliefs, biases, and passions.

But what makes any of your passions and concerns any more valid than mine or anyone else who comes before you?

You need to realize that you now represent all of the citizens and not just your own constituencies and can't use your position on city council to promote some to the exclusion of others.

You need to leave your biases at the

Chamber Doors.

In the past, it's those biases that have allowed those who you agree with to go on well past their allotted time while others like me are allowed to be interrupted with no consequence and shut down before they're finished.

I may not agree with Mr. Fogel or Mr. Turner on some things, but that doesn't mean I don't want to hear what they have to say, even if it goes over time.

I write out my remarks and practice them in order to fit them within the three-minute time frame, and I realize that some people come up here and ramble on with no specific train of thought.

But there are some, like Dr. Turner, Mr. Schultz, Mr. Fogel, and myself and others, who have something that you counselors need to hear.

Some you agree with, some you don't.

Don't take it personal.

But this is

The only opportunity the public has to air their grievances with you, and it's hard to do it in three minutes, so I propose you lengthen the time from three minutes to at least four minutes.

Given that you only allowed 12 speakers, that would only take up an additional 12 minutes of your time.

You need to listen to us, and we all deserve responses to our questions and concerns, not just those who you agree with,

I'm tired of being ignored, and you work for us.

Thank you.

Okay.

And then we will get to Mr. Jones' responses to last time.

First of all, Paul Long, I appreciate you talking about the transportation system personally and talking to people around town.

It is the bus shelters that make an incredible difference, particularly in inclement weather, cold weather.

And that's one thing I'll be addressing in the budget talks.

So I mean, I think we can increase the use of the transportation system.

Something as straightforward as that.

John Hayden, I do listen to you.

You perform a valuable service.

You are not being ignored.

I hope I'm not being disrespectful.

So I appreciate you coming down here.

I don't think anybody around town really ignores you.

So personally, I enjoy seeing you come down here because I know you're going to say something important.

I'd like to also address Mr. Hayden initially.

We've talked a great deal about during the campaign and since we've been on council about the community and the city coming together and what I heard you say tonight was actually music to my ears because I heard you agree with and say that you understand the perspectives of some individuals who personally I didn't think that you got along with so to hear that unity

and hear that you all can agree on something was delightful to hear.

So thank you for your comments.

I really appreciate it.

Mrs. Walker, excuse me, Ms. Walker, thank you for your comments.

We will indeed be taking them seriously as we will everyone else's comments.

There are a lot of people who said a lot of different things and I think I wanted to please, please everyone understand that

When you all come up and you speak before us, we do not take any of those things for granted.

We don't take the fact that you came up here, took time out of your evening to come and speak to us for granted.

We take it seriously, and we do our best to make sure that we can adhere to your request, look into your request, or do the best job that we possibly can.

Mr. Mayor, I'd just like to say something to the public, those who may not be here.

One of the things that

I am very interested in, and actually just put it up on Facebook, I would like to know from the public, so when they see me out or they see us out, please let us know why don't we have more participation from the community as a whole at the council meetings.

We had a town hall, we had the quote-unquote black town hall this past Sunday, upwards of nearly 120 people there, all inside of Tomsler Park.

I come here, I counted tonight, there were 25 people.

We often hear from some of the same people on numerous occasions.

I've heard from different people that sometimes they feel intimidated.

Sometimes they feel like the people who come here and speak to us all the time, they hog up the time sheets or that they do different things.

They don't want to come and talk.

I'm not going to sugarcoat anything.

That's what I hear all the time.

I want to know from the public as a whole.

Why don't we have more participation?

I want to hear from different people within the community as a whole.

I want to hear about the issues that we do not often hear about.

I do not want the remainder of my time period on council, the remaining four years or three and a half years, whatever it is,

to go as they've gone in the past.

I want to hear from new people, and I want to hear about the things that we don't talk about.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

And I will say, these are not a frivolous action.

I've been baking cookies for council meetings for six years, partly because I used to say that we should actually be serving dinner.

We should have free childcare.

It's hard for folks to get out and so I really do appreciate the fact that you all come.

and I think we should make it as easy as possible.

From what I understand, we'll be starting up the town hall meetings again where we'll be out in the community so we can get more public comment without time limits because I think that's a time when we really do, we can have a broader length of time for people to speak because we don't have a lot of business to get through and we won't be here until one in the morning.

I heard you, Mr. Hayden, about the four minutes.

No, Mr. Kleeman about the four minutes.

I don't at this moment support that.

I think it used to be two, now it's three.

You can always keep expanding it.

But I do think we need to make sure that we do make sure people have that three minutes and that everybody keep to it so that other people have it as well, but also provide other opportunities for people to speak.

Just a couple of quick things.

I won't repeat what my fellow counselors have said.

Although the open civics thing, where did you go?

There you are.

I'm really interested in that.

That's something that I've been to a bunch of workshops on open data.

The town hall meetings are part of this.

I want to make sure that we are as open as possible.

I encourage you to keep us apprised of what you're doing.

Keep in touch.

The tree, I think Mr. Jones will look at.

You make me, Ms. Walker, want to read the political world of the small town.

Where did you go?

There you are.

Sorry, I put my glasses on my head so I can read, and then I can't see beyond the third row.

There was a specific thing here.

Oh, the level of mobility is something we've talked about before.

I do support it.

The grinding of the bike lanes, can we check and make sure that happens before the next storm?

That's all.

Thank you.

I won't kind of belabor any of the points that my fellow councilors have made.

Just thank you everybody for coming.

I concur with just about everything that's been said.

I do want to underline there was that concern that Ms. Walker raised, and I do remember when it was that issue about the judge is not always

agreeing or listening to the social workers.

I do want to figure out what happened there, because I know we asked that question before, and I honestly can't remember what the answer was, but there was that issue of why do judges many times overrule the social services personnel opinion.

And that's, we're going to be talking about streets that work, we're going to be talking about the YMCA, and

and we will be having ongoing conversations about a regional transit authority.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

There were several comments that we were able to follow up on out of last week's meeting.

Ms. Jean Hyatt came and spoke about the lights on the softball fields at McIntyre and the surfacing of the parking lots at the YMCA.

She also mentioned the size and the scale of the skate park, which is more of a political opinion than it is a political opinion.

policy issue or something that we can provide facts to.

The athletic field lighting, the replacement lights for the two diamond fields will meet the dark sky requirements.

That was a question for us, as have all of the field and court lighting installations that we've done in the past several years.

And the new parking areas and the entrance turnaround to the YMCA will be permeable pavers predominantly throughout.

The entrance road and transitions from the road to parking or asphalt currently, they will remain that way, but the new parking will be permeable pavers.

And all the stormwater facilities were based upon calculations of these surfacing pipes and were approved in the site plan process.

So those were all taken care of.

Ms. Carpenter, Ms. Nancy Carpenter remarked on her concerns about the warm room at the Salvation Army.

Mr. Murphy spoke to representatives at the Salvation Army.

They are operating a warm room.

They have specific guidelines that are in place.

The room is open with temperatures, when the temperatures fall below freezing.

Patrons must be in place by 9 p.m. No alcohol is allowed in the warm room and they are offered breakfast in the morning and most of them do leave right after breakfast.

So just wanted to provide some information on that.

If someone has specific questions about the room and services offered by the Salvation Army, they can call 295-4058.

Ms. Walker brought up concerns that she had about a FOIA request with the city.

We are working with the city's attorney's office to determine if there are any missing items from Ms. Walker's FOIA request, and we'll provide that information to her when we find it.

No.

Mr. Mayor, may I say one thing?

Yes, sir.

I would also like for the public to make sure that they understand

We've been talking about transparency and moving forward and doing something new.

If I'm not mistaken, this is a new precedent that our mayor, Mr. Signer, has set and also followed through with in regards to asking our city manager to report out on the comments from weeks prior.

Major kudos to you, Mayor Signer.

Thank you for your leadership in moving us in the right direction.

Thank you, Mr. Signer.

This is out of order.

You're not allowed.

Thank you, Mr. Signer.

You are not.

Okay.

Sir, he needs to be removed because this is a violation of our rules of procedure.

You're not allowed to interrupt unless recognized by the chair under our rules of procedure.

Please remove.

You don't know what's out there.

This is a violation of city rules.

Maurice Jones has not followed through on that.

Where is the answer to that?

Where is the answer to that?

Where is the answer to that, Wes?

Wes, where is it?

Don't challenge me.

Where is it, Wes?

Thank you, Mr. Signer.

Thank you.

Motion for boards and commissions.

Mr. Fenwick?

The Historic Resources Committee, Margaret O. Bryant, has been appointed.

The Human Rights Commission, Nancy Carpenter, has been appointed.

Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee, Elise Cruz, David Hirschman, and Mary Elisa Wilson have been appointed.

the Sister Cities Commission, Matthew Murphy as the Pleven representative, and the Social Services Advisory Board, Christine Goff, I hope I pronounced that correctly, G-O-U-G-H, and Amanda Key have been appointed.

Water Resources Protection Panel, Dustin Green, Michael Ramsey, and Trey

Well, let's just make clear this is a motion for appointment.

So that was the motion.

I'll second that motion.

Any discussion?

All in favor?

Any opposed?

The motion carries 5 to 0.

Thank you.

Congratulations, everyone.

Ms. Carpenter, congratulations.

You're in the chamber.

All right.

Item A, minutes for January 4th.

Item D, an appropriation, additional funding for benefits program, $89,548, second of two readings.

Item C, an appropriation, funding for SNAP E&T pilot program, $37,581, second of two readings.

Item D, an appropriation, local emergency management performance grant, $7,500, first of two readings.

Item E, an appropriation, Albemarle County reimbursement for the Charlottesville Albemarle Technical Education Center, Department of Education interior renovation project,

$33,162.74, first of two readings.

Item F, an appropriation Albemarle County reimbursement for the Health Department Facility Condition Assessment Project, $5,122, first of two readings.

On item G, I would like to ask that the words the city of be removed

So I guess to amend the consent agenda.

Do I have a second on that motion?

Second.

Is there any discussion of that motion?

Do I have a vote on that motion?

Just make sure that you... Alright, so motion from the floor from Ms. Szakos to adopt the consent agenda.

Any discussion?

All in favor?

Motion carries 5-0.

Okay we're moving on now to the next item the agenda public hearing ordinance neighborhood development services fee schedule.

Good evening, Missy Creasy, Assistant Director of Neighborhood Development Services.

I'm here this evening to bring forward a proposed revision and re-adoption of the NDSP schedule.

Every couple of years we take a look at this internally and

proposed adjustments as necessary.

This is a very conservative review.

This was all done in-house with in-house resources.

And you'll note that a number of

the changes that are proposed are relatively small and more so for clarity and to catch up with codes that have changed in other places.

One thing that we had noted in the materials that you have that we found that was an error is on the first page of the 12 page matrix which denoted that there was a tiered cost added to building permits and that was crossed out on this draft and that needs to remain in there.

We verified that with our building permits folks who were concerned that that showed up there So I apologize for that, but that's the only change to the materials that That we were proposing at this point in time I could go through each of the fee changes if that's something that you all would like for me to do or I can speak to specific ones and

I also anticipate that we have a few members of the public who are interested in speaking too, and I can help respond to any of the concerns or comments that they may have as we go forward.

Questions from my colleagues?

Mr. Fenwick?

There will be a question mark after this.

I have no problem with that.

Mayor Signer, I did have a question that was brought to the attention of council by a member of the public.

Well, we didn't study that extensively.

We don't anticipate that this is actually going to generate a lot of extra revenue in any sort.

Like I was noting before, a lot of them are for clarity.

There are a couple where a code change was proposed, such as in the amusement ride section, where there's a code change there that allowed for a $10 increase, and so we're matching the code there.

As many of you all are aware, we had significant changes in our stormwater and water resources practices over the last year and a half.

And so our staff is still trying to feel out exactly what's necessary for that, but that's one area where staff did spend some time looking at other localities and what they're doing at this point in time.

We're all still learning through that process.

and the fee that we proposed is on the low end of the variation that we found across the state because we don't really know how it's going to come into play until we've had a couple of years at it.

Yes.

So we don't anticipate that it's going to be a huge revenue generator.

It will just help us to be able to clarify things that are there now.

Now one of the things we noted in here is that we anticipate that

Which brings up my second question, if I may ask, and this is my only other question.

In my earlier set of questions I emailed to you, I mentioned both the 2009 efficiency study, which did indicate that the revenues, that 30% of the fees should cover the expenditures from the department.

that 30% of the expenditures, I should say, should be covered by revenues from fees.

And that was something that you didn't have any information on at this point in time.

And then I had a follow-up question.

If we do move forward with an efficiency study and a management audit, would that be something that would make some sense to fold into that?

Well NDS is open to whatever decision is made on that from an organization-wide perspective.

Concerning fee generation versus service generation, there are a lot of activities that happen in neighborhood development that are

kind of difficult to quantify.

The one thing that is very easy to quantify has to do with the building permit aspects of things.

And so part of our mandate is that we cannot charge on that end of things more than the service pertaining to building permits.

And so there is a general analysis that's done regularly with building permits.

Thank you.

Real quick, what do you do when you do that analysis?

I mean, if you figure out that, say, the fees are not covering the cost, what do you do then?

Well, if the fees weren't covering the costs, then we would have to evaluate the fees at that point in time.

We haven't had that concern to date.

Fees fluctuate.

It's based on construction, but we

I have one question, which is, I thought this in general seemed very thoughtful.

I'm all considered.

And it does decrease costs in a couple of respects.

On page 11 of 12, there are two, the B.A.R.

certificate of appropriateness and the other one, the appeals to city council.

I just wanted for the purpose of transparency, if you could explain, because in those cases, it seems that you're not it's not so much the higher costs are not funding.

Well, it's a little confusing because it says B.A.R.

appeals require significant research and staff time.

But it seems to me

that the purpose is more to set an incentive to make it, you know, sort of a nudge in the language so you're not doing these appeals without consideration for the fact they do, but that 125 bucks isn't funding the work that the city's doing.

I just would like for you to talk about the purpose of those two raises.

Correct.

The first one which you were referring to had to do with the demolition item.

Currently what's charged is the other BAR fee.

So something that doesn't necessarily fall within the new construction realm.

So other would be somebody changing materials on the exterior of their house.

It could be

it's usually a much smaller type of item however when you get into a demolition it ends up being much more significant and so that's where the request for the fee that's equal to the new construction fee because that's looked at very similarly to what needs to occur with the new construction

Anyone else have any other questions?

We also have a public comment in the public hearing.

Are you going to read your short list?

Yes, I can do that right now.

There's a change requested for the trailer change out and that is we combine all of the activities that need to happen for that instead of getting four permits, you get one permit.

So it's a cost, a small cost increase for that.

If you got four permits, it'd be much more.

So it's a

More of an efficiency type item.

The same is true for a temporary office trailer, that would be two permits versus the one permit that's set up in the system.

Mechanical and plumbing permits, right now there's an added item, so you get to a certain point and then you add

a technology into the mix.

Right now it's a set $11 charge for that, but the technology could be anything from a little widget to some significant type of additive.

And so what the building inspections folks are noting here is to have folks use this valuation table that's set up by the building official

the state building official group that denotes the cost of what that would be and what you should charge for a permit for that specific item.

And that comes into play because technology is changing all the time and so there's new items that come forward in that group.

keeps up with the valuation of that.

Fire protection fees right now, the same price as charged for someone who's getting a kitchen hood put in as sprinkling a large nine-story building.

We thought that was a bit of a discrepancy, quite a bit because there's a lot of fire official work that needs to be involved in that larger scale item.

Water protection fees, I did talk a little bit about that but I can get into that further if you all like.

Portable storage containers, sometimes they're called pods, you've probably seen them out in the street.

There's a fee for the pod and then there's a fee for the parking space and we felt like it wasn't fair to charge both so we lowered the fee for the parking space because someone's gonna be charged for both the pod and the parking space and all of the other moving things that they have going.

So that just seemed like something that made sense.

Subdivisions, so we've had some change in the legislation for subdivisions as well as site plans where a preliminary is no longer required.

You can go straight to a final.

Well our fees are front loaded so right now a preliminary is more costly.

Folks now can skip that and move on to the final and so our proposal here is to back in the fee, put it at the final

and then have a small fee for the preliminary because the preliminary still has a lot of value.

We have a lot of applicants who are still working forward through the preliminary and we want them to continue to do that and so encouraging that with that smaller fee.

That's the same with the rezoning and special use permits.

Council as of last December changed some of the requirements so that there is a community meeting and some other

requirements that have to happen before an item can be scheduled for a hearing.

So essentially both the rezonings and the special use permit processes have become have now mirror one another due to those requirements.

So we wanted to have the same fee.

It didn't make sense to have two separate fees.

We're adding a level for special use permits for a family day home between six and 12 children.

We found that the fee for a general special use permit has been cost prohibitive and we have a lineup of people who are interested in family day homes that are hoping that that moves forward.

So we're hopeful for that.

We talked about the site plan and BAR.

The next one is the zoning compliance letters.

We spend a lot, our zoning staff spends a lot of time working through these, especially since we, the practices for

lending have gotten much more strict.

So the volume of those letters has increased quite a bit.

So our zoning staff took the opportunity to contact other localities and found out that Richmond as well as Albemarle have a tiered system.

So depending on the type of zoning compliance letter you need,

and how complex it is, they have a tiered fee system for that.

So that's what we're proposing here.

And also, in addition to the water resources additions that we've had, we've had a lot of upgrades in our floodplain ordinance.

Many of you all would remember, some of you remember the change in ordinance that we had last year.

And with that came a number of new plans and new requirements for review.

Thank you.

For the public's knowledge, just so that everyone knows, all this information, as is typical of materials for Council, is available on our website and in materials previous, so it's in the agenda with background, which you can find on the website for the future.

Thank you.

Any other questions before we proceed to public hearing?

Okay.

Thank you so much, Ms. Creasy.

Hi.

I'm Baylor Fuchs.

I live in the county.

I'm a business owner of a business in the city, co-founder of Charlottesville-based Blue Ridge Internetworks, which became known as Ting when they acquired a majority stake in our company last year.

Since February, we've been investing private funds in order to give residents and businesses in Charlottesville the choice of gigabit internet.

and or crazy fast fiber internet as you may have seen on the CAT buses.

I'll try not use my time talking about why this is great, but I think it's important for a community these days to have a choice and to have a gigabit choice is a really good thing.

I'm here to share my opinion on the NDS fees, specifically the building fee, building permit fees that we're paying.

At Ting, we spent a large portion of our time and money last year simply getting the neighborhoods ready for fiber.

We're in the process of what feels like paying for every utility pole that has been neglected for decades to be brought up to code or replaced.

It's consumed a lot of time and money.

And frankly, these are obstacles that other localities are eliminating for us when they're trying to lure us to their towns.

So because the poles are in such bad shape, we often go underground.

And right now, we're paying $1,200 for a fee called a zoning fee.

Special site plan application fee, other utility work.

So each time we go underneath a road, we're paying a $1,200 permit fee.

And because our

need to go under the road sometimes is twice in a block or several times in a small section of a neighborhood.

It adds up.

It's often 20 to 25 percent of the cost of that little piece of the project.

So I ask you to consider reclassifying our permits or coming up with a fee that's specific for telecommunications conduits.

Thank you so much.

Rebecca Quinn?

Yes, if you sign up on this sheet right here, but you need your address.

Thanks.

Rebecca Quinn, 1044th Street here in the city.

I want to express my support for the proposed fee changes.

I think it's appropriate for developers as well as property owners who are doing work to contribute to the costs incurred to make sure that that work complies with city code, with state codes,

and is done in a safe manner.

That's what these codes are really about, especially building codes to make sure things are done safely.

I did submit questions in advance, and I want to appreciate the prompt and I think thorough response from Ms. Creasy.

If you recall, I didn't ask for a written response.

I encouraged you to get responses, but I do appreciate her being so prompt.

If I understand it correctly, the fees for building permit fees appear to cover current operating costs.

For that unit with NDS, sometimes people say fees and they don't understand, or they say permit fees, they don't understand the breadth of fees, the types of fees that the city issues.

Ms. Griese's summary touched on all the different kinds.

As an aside, I do want to say it's actually fairly common practice to have a separate floodplain fee because you don't want to go crosswise with FEMA on those rules, so it does take a careful review.

But it also seems that taken as a whole, all of these various NDS fees may not cover all of the operating expenses to perform all of those services.

So I do think that at some point it may be

warranted to come forward with a more detailed review.

It's been about 10 years since the last comprehensive review, and at this point we don't have a whole lot of comparison with other cities our size.

Ms. Creasy, I think, mentioned it was in the materials that Albemarle County went through an extensive review recently and updated their fees.

If I recall correctly, sort of on average it was an 8% increase.

So if in the future, no, when in the future, because it'll probably happen at some point in the next 10 years, I hope, when NDS requests funding to do a comprehensive evaluation, I urge council to support it.

Thank you.

Ms. Creasy, would you be interested in responding to the concern that Mr. Fuchs raised?

Is that possible?

Yes, I would.

I'm sorry.

Have we?

Oh, yes, I do.

Excuse me.

Thank you.

Because we have Andrew Grimshaw who was put down the same.

My name is Andrew Grimshaw.

I'm a professor of computer science at the University of Virginia, but I do not represent the University of Virginia.

I want to make that really clear.

So

The first thing I want to point out about this particular case that was brought a moment ago about broadband.

Broadband in many countries is considered actually now a basic human right.

In Norway, it's considered a basic human right.

If you're going to have people do things on the Internet, my son, when I lived in the county, had to do his homework on the computer on the Internet, and we actually could get no broadband where we lived.

So I think broadband and broadband like Ting, I don't have it, we would like to have it, but we had to pay $1500 to get it put to our house because I just learned permitting was going to be a major problem.

So my point in all this is if you look at the current incumbents in that market, they overcharge tremendously.

They provide a very low quality of service, and that's partly because they built their infrastructure back when they were public utilities, and they had incredibly much lower costs.

And now when new people try to come in and compete, which is what American principle

they're being held up from doing that.

And I know on my street the utility poles are in lousy shape and they've been putting a lot of reinforcements in them to keep them from falling on our house.

So I would just like to say that anything that we can do as a city to change things is really important.

I travel around the world all the time.

Almost everywhere I ever go in Europe people have a gig into their home, okay?

45 bucks a month.

everything that, you know, all your TV, all of that, 45 bucks a month.

Compare that to the United States, and that's bi-directional KG.

Japan, you could buy KG into your house or your apartment in 2002 for about $50 equivalent.

So the current incumbents are basically, I can't say the word that they're doing to the consumers, and we need to move out of that venue.

I mean, the incumbents have no incentive to compete as long as the new vendors are kept out.

So I would just give you my

My two cents worth there to say, let's not make it harder to get better bandwidth into the homes.

Signing up on them.

OK. Good evening, Mayor Signer and council members.

My name is Maynard Sipe.

And you know me as a land use attorney with a firm of Boyd and Sipe here in town.

I wanted to comment on the fee structure.

I don't have any particular comments on the fees before you, but I wanted to mention a couple of points for you to consider as we go down the road.

The purpose of fees is not just to offset the city's costs.

They can serve some other purposes.

The BAR fee was discussed, and I think that serves as a threshold to ensure someone is serious about an appeal.

The processes that these fees are for serve a public purpose.

So I think it's appropriate that the city absorbs much of the costs associated with the review, particularly zoning applications.

One point I want to present is the city should consider setting a lower fee, a new category, for minor amendments to an existing special use permit.

Staff tonight acknowledged that the special use permit fee can be

Prohibitive for some uses such as the family day home care.

And I think these fees can have a big impact on a small business owner in particular.

And I want to, we shouldn't have the fees being a barrier for small businesses.

With a special use permit, there can be times when someone wants to come back in and perhaps amend the conditions.

They may just want to amend a simple condition that sets hours of operation to extend their hours of operation or something like that.

Or they may want to change something about the area involved in the special use.

I think where the special use amendment is not giving you a new use or a changing use and the changes to the plan or the use are probably less than 10 or 20 percent in scope, I don't think

I think it would be good to see a minor amendment special use permit fee that's less than what the current special use permit fee is.

Staff noted, of course, or they will note for you that any amendment has to go through the same process with public hearings and so it does take some of the staff's time, but I think in these cases of amendments, especially where the use isn't being changed, there's no new use,

You won't have the same level of research.

You already have a lot of the background.

And the analysis would not be that involved for staff.

And I think it would be appropriate.

This would particularly help some small businesses that require special use permits and may want to see a change in their operations.

So I'd like for you to consider that.

It may not be something you can incorporate tonight, but certainly maybe soon to follow up on this.

Thank you.

Any other participants in the public hearing on NDSP schedules?

Okay.

Mr. Creasy, would you mind responding?

I'm closing the public hearing.

I don't have a clear answer at the moment concerning the utility cost.

I know they're submitting a site plan for work within right of way, and we have a separate utility site plan fee, so that's what they're being charged.

and we separated that out a couple years ago because it used to be the full site plan charge which didn't really fit that exactly either.

I'm not the expert on that end of the detail work, so I need to confer with those who work with that end of things.

But we'll talk with Mr. Folks about that.

and concerning special use permits, minor amendments and fees as such.

The process is the same no matter what the special use permit is for.

We have found, like we were noting, with family day homes, that's a very small business.

It's a home occupation.

And so that was why we proposed that smaller amount there.

And we've had a lot of experience with a number of people who found that cost prohibitive.

But we really haven't experienced comments from others about the special use permit costs being

I have two questions.

You just said that you can't do things that weren't advertised, and I understand that, but on the utility, can we

Since this is the first reading and we have the vote in two weeks, can we look at modifying that from the floor?

We didn't pull that one out specifically, so I'm not sure that we would be able to do that.

because it was in the chart but not on the...

Correct.

In that case,

My other question is about what Ms. Quinn brought up, which is the idea of looking at—and I know we're doing a code audit.

Is this part of that?

If it's been 10 years since we've had the kind of thorough substantive review—I understand this mostly came out because of certain tweaks and legislative changes, and I understand that—when do you next anticipate, or should we ask you to anticipate sooner, a review that might include things like

Well, if we're bringing it forward again, it would depend on, for those two specific things, those could come forward much sooner if we were going to look at it from a comprehensive standpoint.

Actually, the review that was done 10 years ago was in-house.

as well and we've actually had updates probably every three years but it's been pretty specific to whatever codes have changed at that point in time and not really getting into the weeds of things because you really need to have a very detailed analysis in order to do that.

You know we could look at a few items more specifically in-house but if we get much broader or if there's interest in doing that then we would have to

Right.

That's exactly what we've done here.

I do have a question because I'm then a little confused because when I looked at the 2009 Weldon Cooper efficiency study, it stated, currently NDS offsets less than 30% of its gross expenditures through fees and charges, a regular peer review of fees and charges.

needs to be implemented to lower the general fund cost of this department.

Was that ever done since 2009 to the present?

That hasn't been done.

That's never been done.

Okay, so it does seem to me that that level of intense review is necessary if seven years ago that was what was recommended and it hasn't been done.

which is fitting for our next topic which could be folded into our management audit.

Any other questions?

I just had a question in regards to one of the comments that was made from the public.

I think we need to be very careful in regards to when we assume in some cases that or what some people can afford

and also I think it would behoove us to understand that internet and I say this as a computer science teacher.

I think it is important for us to understand that some of these things are luxuries and that not everyone's family can afford to be able to utilize these services.

Sometimes a question in regards to $45 may be whether or not you're going to feed your family or whether or not I'm going to get them fiber internet.

and those are real situations and perspectives of some of our constituents here in the city.

Really noted.

And this will be just a, we're asking questions now and this is also the sort of thing that can come up during the comments when we're considering a motion.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

A question and

I don't know if you'd be the correct person, Messy or Baylor folks.

Did I get the last name correct?

Folks, okay.

Okay, that's what I thought.

So my question is, when you go to put more stuff on the phone pole, on the Dominion's pole, whoever has that pole, maybe even the city,

Are they using you to upgrade their stock of poles?

Do you ever get that feeling?

Okay, I think that's pretty important to understand.

Yeah, okay.

I would like to hear what you and maybe other people in your business think about that and what we can do about that.

That's it.

Thanks.

So in the interest of keeping this topical, this sounds like an excellent thing to work on in the future.

And it sounds to me like there's consensus.

Oh, with the amendment that you noted at the beginning of your presentation.

Thank you.

Is there a motion?

Ms. Szakos and Mr. Bellamy.

Any discussion?

Okay.

No.

Excuse me.

Okay.

My apologies.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Several City Councilors have expressed an interest in the City looking at an effectiveness and efficiency study of our services.

This is not a new item to be brought to City Council last July.

We brought this item to Council for consideration.

Council at the time decided that they'd

I did not want to move forward with the study.

We had a brief discussion about a smaller scale study back in December in which we would partner with the University of Virginia Darden School to take a look at some of our services more specifically in certain departments just to start as a pilot to see how that would go.

there once again wasn't support to do that necessarily but I think there's been some interest in bringing this back especially when it comes to addressing issues of the budget for fiscal year 18 which if we were to move forward with a an RFP for for this study

We believe that it would take a significant amount of time to post the RFP, get proposals back, negotiate with the vendor for this, and then to conduct the study and we envision that.

any sort of study of our services in-depth comprehensive study of our services would take a number of months to complete but would be completed in time for us to inform our budget for budget development for fiscal year 18.

We have in the packet a scope of services for consideration for the City Council that would include the vendor working with the City Manager's Office to outline the organizational analysis process

developing a timeline for successful completion of the contracted services, reviewing department service delivery models and recommending alternative models.

Those areas for consideration are recommending best practices, evaluating services, eliminating certain services, combining consolidating services within our departments or divisions or with other service centers within the city's organization, entering into service agreements with other municipalities, agencies, or districts,

possibly outsourcing and privatization of services and the centralization of services.

They would also prepare an analysis of department staffing for each one of our departments.

And some of those areas of consideration would be staffing and workflow efficiencies and inefficiencies, overall workload and skill levels.

They would also prepare an analysis to determine if departments employ the latest theories and best practices and organizational structure to determine if restructuring of the department is required.

They would review the procedures and processes that the city employs in order to project, assess, and collect the various revenue sources that we have.

Conducting, they would be required to conduct a meeting with the city manager's office to discuss those preliminary findings once that part of the study was done.

And then if deemed appropriate, based on these findings, we'd recommend changes to the organizational structure of these departments back to city council.

and we would obviously be willing to consider alternative approaches to the way we are currently structured and the practices that we put in place.

And so once this study was done, we would come back to city council with a set of recommendations that came out of the study.

As we did back in 2009, we'd also talk about just the practicalities of moving forward with any one of these options for city council to consider.

and then council would consider that as part of the budget process for next year.

We estimate that a study of this magnitude would cost somewhere in the range of $90,000 to $100,000, but we won't know for sure until we've put the RFP out on the street, we get the proposals back and then we can judge it from there and make any changes as part of the negotiations if we felt we could bring it down to $90,000 to $100,000 or if there's a lesser number than city council.

believes that we should top out at for this process.

We could certainly try to negotiate to get down to that number.

I will say that based on what we have seen from other efficiency studies over the course of the last five, six, seven years or so, you, in essence, you get what you pay for.

So if you spend $30,000 on a study, it's not gonna be nearly as comprehensive and certainly wouldn't get us to this level of detail in terms of recommendations coming back from a vendor.

Thank you.

I want to remind everybody to keep their questions to the point and brief, and then we will get to a motion, and then we can do comments after a motion.

Mr. Fenwick.

OK.

I was under the impression that last year we approved a initial study of $5,000.

I don't recall a study for $5,000.

I think the council had asked us to come back with an idea for moving forward that was not the comprehensive approach.

Yeah, and that wouldn't in December.

It was earlier than that, and I thought we were given a range that started like 60, 70, 80,000, and the vendor had different grades, and we chose the 5,000.

That doesn't ring a bell.

Let me wait until we do comments.

This is still all questions, right?

Yeah, okay.

And then I might sneak a question in during the comments.

Other questions?

I have one, Mr. Mayor.

Based on the recommendations that was presented to us in the packet, when will we need to have our prioritized

You mean before or after the RFP?

To inform the RFP?

Yes sir.

Yes sir.

That's my only question Mr. Mayor.

I guess the only question I have looking through this

I assume that when you do something like this RFP, you're looking at other RFPs that other localities have used and kind of standard template and then you add and subtract.

You mean as part of the scope of services, the draft scope of services that we have?

I don't think so.

I think we were looking at different ways to come at the services and take a close review of them.

I'd have to go back and take another look at what other folks have done.

But I think we have covered a lot of the important areas.

Very close.

Mr. Mary, do you have a question?

It's much more comprehensive than that study was.

Back then the city council, I believe it was $50,000 that the council made as the top level.

We actually spent less than that as part of the process.

You know, honestly, I'd have to look into that, counselor, to see if that would affect it one way or another.

It's something that we could certainly try to put in there and see how they respond.

I do believe that last time there was a, there was not a close look at the fee structure that we had, but there was comment on our fees.

Mr. Mayor, I'm sorry, one more question.

I think the best guess that we have right now is $90,000 to $100,000 to do something like that this time around.

Okay.

It could come in lower, but that's just… Mr. Jones, I have one question.

In a meeting that we had, we talked about the possibility of just, you know, for the purpose of titling, communicating this public, the efficiency and savings study, and you're amenable to that change.

And this is just sort of from your position as city manager, Mr. Jones.

I think that we, I think one, if we go back to the 2009

We have on our own through the budget process found 1.5 million dollars in savings over the course of the last three fiscal years.

working with our departments, reviewing those departments and coming up with recommendations that we felt comfortable and moving along to city council as part of the budget process.

So I do believe that we would be able to find savings.

It's hard for me to put a price tag on that right now.

And then, you know, there will be a discussion about services, right?

One of the things that the 2009 study found was that we were rich in services.

That was not a surprise to anybody.

who's utilized our services here in the city of Charlottesville.

And so then that will lead to a discussion about what are those services, are they still needed, that type of thing, which I think can be a healthy discussion that the city council could have as we're going into the budget cycle for fiscal year 18.

Mr. Jones, I have a question to follow up along that.

So we are doing a retreat of this body where we're talking about budgetary priorities.

One of the things that it occurs to me could be included in this, either by amendment now or by passing it later, would be an express inclusion of conferral with council about our priorities if we determine that to

to fund all the things we do need to fund that we need not just, that we do need savings, that we need to at least have options presented to us for savings that could come through this study.

So it's not just looking at best practices or looking on the consultant's analysis of what they think will be efficiencies, it would be working with this city council for what

in concert with our request that we might need to find efficiencies.

That's a different direction.

Ms. Signer, I have a question about that because this efficiency study, it's also been called an effectiveness study.

We're also looking at how we can become a more effective government in delivery of services.

It's kind of an organizational review and the priorities of each council changes.

from council to council.

I'm just making a comment to your, because I don't think you have a consensus.

That's fine.

We can talk about that during the debate.

Okay, other questions for Mr. Jones?

Okay.

I think to the person making the motion you could confer with them and have that language.

So I would suggest that we do, I will introduce a motion for this efficiency saving study.

So we need a motion for this resolution, and can I, shall we have a, shall I read it?

I don't have to read it because it's been publicized.

Yes, I made the motion.

The resolution is to secure cost savings and increased efficiencies in local government.

Can I ask a question before?

Yes.

And we haven't had discussion either.

The way that you characterized it is not at all how I would characterize it.

And I know that's the title here.

But what we had talked about in asking that this be brought forward was, as Councilor Galvin mentioned, looking at service efficiencies and cost savings, not just efficiencies.

So I think that's why I'm not making the motion or didn't make the motion or second it.

The resolution is to secure cost savings and increased efficiencies in local government, whereas local government must be ever vigilant in search for management efficiencies and best practices so as to continue to provide excellent services without overly burdening

Charlottesville taxpayers, and whereas recent tax increases to balance the FY 2016 city budget when necessitated by the growing fiscal needs of our city schools, the need to increase our law enforcement presence, our business quarters, and our neighborhoods, the need to invest our infrastructure and contribute to our debt service payments, thereby keeping our AAA bond rating.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that coincident with the passage of new taxes to balance the FY 2016 city budget, Charlottesville City Council hereby authorizes the city manager to undertake a review

of the city's overall management efficiency, real estate assessments and procedures, transient lodging ordinance, parking plan implementation, overall tax revenue trends, and fines and business license.

Collections.

May I make a comment?

Yes.

I think that what the city manager has brought forward and the scope of services is not what this resolution is about.

And I might support the scope of services and offer an amendment that our motion be that we proceed with the efficiency study according to the scope of services.

I think the resolution that was first read, I believe, was included in this as a point of information.

Because that was the resolution that I first proposed back in April.

The resolution before us is

It starts on page 58 of our packet, and it says, City of Charlottesville Organizational Efficiency Study, Scope of Services, and then the resolution itself is very short.

Yes, that's what I said.

Page 60.

if that's what's under motion.

No, no, that's fine.

So that motion, I was reading the resolution as withdrawn, I withdraw it.

I'm going to go to this motion, which is at the back, which is a resolution which is

So I'm moving.

Resolution, now therefore be it resolved, City of Charlottesville organizational efficiency study scope of services proposal.

Any discussion?

Is this the time?

I understand the value of an efficiency study.

I like the term effectiveness study.

I understand that.

I don't really blink at the $100,000.

My question is the timing of it.

and it would come out of the current budget.

There would be, well, yeah, there would be a couple of different account codes that we could take it out of.

There's a city-wide account that we could take it out of and then there's also

So my point is that we can find $100,000 in pretty short order for this which does have value.

What I would suggest or propose to see if I have support on council would be to make this motion

Part of the motion could be review the 2009 study first and squeeze everything we can out of it.

It has already been referenced tonight on the fees portion which is important and one of the biggest things in the 2009 efficiency study was neighborhood development services and their efforts are what we wanted, what the council at that point wanted to

encouraged them to do was to be more open with the citizenry and that has been a major concern in recent times, past couple years.

I got an email just yesterday or the day before from a neighborhood president who was not informed of a major development in her neighborhood.

NDS did not notify her of that even though we just had this

discussion and I think we passed some kind of a resolution about NDS improving in that area.

So there are major things that we can still get out of the 2009 study.

And there has been no public hearing, there may have been a public hearing, but there's been no public meeting to hear from the citizens about this study.

I think it's important that we hear from the community in a formal way, not just tonight, but some kind of maybe a work session or something, so they can chime in on what they think is important in crafting this RFP for one thing.

It occurs to me from what I've heard that we're kind of crafting this RFP on the fly, so it's kind of open-ended as far as I'm concerned.

One of the most important things is we have a man that I have great confidence in, Maurice Jones, city manager, who will be graduating from arguably the best business management university college in the country, Darden School, and it seems like we're bypassing

him and not giving him the opportunity to show what he has done, what he has worked on for over a year and will be finishing up in April.

And I think that would be a more appropriate time the RFP can be worked on.

He can have his input, our input, the community's input, and I think we come out with a much better product.

If I don't think there's support on this council for that, I will not offer that as an amendment.

Mr. Bellamy, I want to let you speak.

Is that part of what you were going to say?

Yes, I was going to speak about the question.

I was on for comment, rather, about the question, if that's in order, mister.

It is, ma'am.

So, initially, well, you addressed

or you stated several things.

I'd like to initially start with Mr. Jones and our city manager in regards to, I feel as if, and I can't speak for Mr. Jones, but I would not like to see him do or work on this study because we have him working on several other things for the city right now.

If we were to pull him as well as city staff off of the items that we've already discussed and we have on their plate, that's only gonna prolong the process in terms of us

actually getting the action and moving forward the things that we've all talked about so eloquently that we want to do.

The second comment that I'd like to make in regards to your amendment of the motion is in regards to the public comment piece.

I understand wholeheartedly where you're coming from that you believe there should be public comment in regards to us spending money for efficiency study.

I disagree with you from the perspective, excuse me, from the standpoint in which we are a, the elected body.

The people have spoken because they, I feel as if they, they believe that they trust what we will say or trust what we will do in terms of moving the city forward.

That's first and foremost.

Secondly, if we want to be a body that is about action and if we want to be a council that does not get bogged down,

and have things

Another drawn out session with work sessions, more public comment about us just spending $100 for an efficiency study, something that, excuse me, definitely not $100, thank you.

Spending $100,000 on an efficiency study that so many people have said that we need, they want to find out where we are inefficient or where we are efficient, then what is the problem or the issue with us moving forward with that?

I personally am of the position in which I would not allow, I don't want this to be held up any longer.

Mr. Mayor, can I make a comment about the public engagement?

I do believe that we have to have public engagement as part of the process.

but we could have that as one of the services that is offered by the vendors.

We did do a little bit of that back in 2009.

The vendors at the time did talk to folks in the public and we can include that as part of the process if that remains a concern and if council wants to go in that direction I just raise that as

the fact that we will have some public engagement as part of this and I think it's an important part of the process.

But I think it can be very effective if it's after the RFP is already out there and we have vendors who have responded, we have a vendor who's hired and can build that into the process.

On the amendment as suggested.

With regards to the amendment, I could agree to that amendment if it were item number 10 added to the scope as written by Mr. Jones, which would simply read, review the 2009 efficiency study.

So that's included as part of the scope.

I'm sure they would do that.

So I actually have a question of parliamentary procedure for Mr. Jones on this.

execute that with regard to you.

And Ms. Robertson can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think in this situation you can add to that and that would be part of the motion then you would vote on.

and typically it would happen after, well we're, yes, yes, I think that's fine because we're having a discussion now.

Are we still in discussion?

Do you have any other?

So I haven't seen comments.

Okay.

I was just, this is the right occasion.

And it is, we're going over why each one of us thinks this is appropriate or not and I do believe that when we all took the oath of office, we

We made a promise to the city that we would be good stewards of the public's money as well as the public's trust.

And to do that, I do believe that an outside third party taking a fresh look, unbiased look at how we do things is important.

And it's going to be important to make us more effective, more cost efficient and proactive.

And judging from the thoroughness of the scope that Mr. Jones has put together,

It is clear to me that Mr. Jones agrees with that and I offer for my council as well as the community at large some reflections on what has happened in the last seven years since we did the last efficiency study.

First, in 2009, that study was done on the cheap.

It was bare bones.

But second, since 2009, I could list a lot more of these, but we've created an office of human rights, downtown job center with apprenticeship programs,

instituted Enable to Promise, initiated young black male achievement programs, updated the 2003 bike pet plan, initiated a Streets that Work initiative in order to implement the Complete Streets Policy from 2010, finalized the West Main Improvement Plan, we're committed to redeveloping public housing, we've implemented a storm water management plan, we've expended our parks, it goes on.

We also have an unprecedented number of new department heads.

If you think about it, there's a new director of the neighborhood development services, we will be getting a new director of public works, a new director of budget, finance, human services, police chief and fire department chief is all new.

So now is the time, it very much is the time to put in place a new system.

and so that we don't recreate or build on old habits that may not be moving us to the next level.

And I do believe Mr. Jones has been hired to execute our policies and part of that is that he needs a blueprint in order to have a good direction

and he needs to have the right tools to get our local government to the next level.

So we need to take advantage of the new leadership and we also need to support, I think, the city manager in his efforts to have an efficiency study done, especially at this time of great change in our leadership.

and a time of great expectation on the part of our public.

So I agree with this study wholeheartedly.

I'm glad to see it come through.

It's been something I've been advocating for for over a year now.

Music Playing

I don't.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Music playing in the background

The End

I don't know.

Dr.

All right, we're going to try to get back to business here in a minute or so, if we could.

I think we're going to have to pass an ordinance that mandates that Ms. Szakos provides these exact same cookies every three seconds.

Wait till you try the other kinds.

All right, we are back in session.

Ms. Galvin has just concluded making comments.

I think that we're down.

I would like to make a comment now.

Ms. Szakos has just taken a bite of cookie.

Go ahead.

So I ran for city council in part with a health, I made an announcement called Solutions Instead of Studies where I talked about a sort of

I wanted to bring studies and I laid out a framework talking about the amount of studies that the city had done and I laid out some principles for how I would approach voting on studies as a new counselor.

such as avoid studies that might delay or substitute for a solution, avoid studies if the advice could be generated by staff, and I went through a few principles.

So I am not somebody who wants to throw around money on studies or advert to studies when they're in place of a ready solution.

Given all of that, I'm a strong supporter of this action by the government, by Mr. Jones, and by working with council.

I think that

Six years ago, as Ms. Galvin pointed out, that was a fairly incomplete

The study that we did, I've met with former city managers of governments, talked about this, tried to do my due diligence.

I think that it's spending pennies to get dollars of benefit.

It is a service that is performed by professionals.

When we talked about the option of, say, a blue ribbon volunteer commission doing this, you run into the same thing that happened with the blue ribbon commission on the schools, which was charged with

savings and they left the savings piece incomplete because it's a very intensive expert thing to do.

If I'm going to professionally interview staff people in a department or look at best practices of 25 other municipalities or really review budgets closely, that's not something that you can have people doing, you know, in a monthly meeting or in a bi-weekly meeting in a volunteer blue ribbon commission.

That's something that experts do.

There are people who have degrees in this and a lot of experience and

Also as alumnus of the Warner administration where there really was a focus on metrics, baselines, best practices like this, I saw there the professionalism that it requires.

So in this case, I believe that this passes the test that I tried to develop for being pretty hawkish on studies or whatever the metaphor would be.

So I am a supporter of this as it's written.

I would like to

After the discussion, I am going to offer an amendment that the city council be included, city council priorities be included in the RFP and I think that we can include that with an amendment about looking at the results of the 2009 study and I'm hoping that that will get the votes of all my colleagues.

So, yes, I would just

I've been through the discussion of this that got put off and not carried through several times.

I must say that I was a little more amenable to the Darden School model, where we would have UVA folks coming in and helping us with that.

That said, I think that it is worth every several years to go through and look at efficiencies, not just financial efficiencies, but operational efficiencies.

I'm glad to see it does include both of those.

I would caution my colleagues, especially the ones who are just coming onto the council, to not assume that there are magic pots of money that's out there being wasted in the city budget.

I've been on council for six years, since the recession hit, really.

And every year we have asked not only department heads to look at their own budgets, but to look at each other's budgets and to cut, cut, cut.

And they have been cutting the original efficiency study we had in 2009,

said that we were already a very lean organization, so I'm not expecting that we will find lots of money in it, so I just want to make sure that we understand that that's not a given and that we don't assume that it is unsuccessful just if the consultants come back and don't find lots of money for us to not spend for the things that we in previous councils have decided are important in the service delivery to the citizens of our city.

That said, I do think that

The more efficient we can be, the more we can do.

So if we do find pockets of money, that means that that's money we don't need to be spending on stuff.

So I do expect to find some financial efficiencies, and I do expect to find some operational suggestions.

I would not support that.

I would rather have them kind of take a third party view.

We are the city council.

We're elected to make decisions.

We get to take what their recommendations are and use our priorities to decide that.

I don't want that to be a rush thing in our next meeting and then kind of jam it in out of the public eye.

Okay, we're not at the, okay, thank you.

Any other comments?

I have one more follow-up comment because of the priorities that, Mayor Signer, you're introducing.

I'm gonna be willing to vote for this with that inclusion.

However, with this caveat, if that winds up adding

50 to $100,000 more to the price tag and slows down the process considerably because this group is building in a lot of

You sound like reasonable concerns to me, and based on that I am

I'm going to withdraw the amendment that I've made because I think they go all right.

I think it will add to the efficiency of the efficiency of study, to put it that way.

Any other discussion?

Okay.

So I think that we are ready for an amendment.

Anybody want to make an amendment here?

I mean, sorry, a motion.

Well, excuse me.

This is the cookie break.

That would be a friendly amendment to me, and I would accept that.

Whoever seconded has to accept it.

Matt, before we second, I know there's a motion on the floor, is there still time for a question?

Or a comment, rather?

No.

Somebody did.

Did I?

Okay, then you'll accept that amendment.

Okay, yes, now we can do discussion on the amendment as seconded.

Not this comprehensive of a review.

It would take all of our time to do that.

It's probably best to bring somebody else in.

But, you know, obviously within the scope of services, working closely with the city manager's office is an important part of this.

Okay, so we have the motion that I made for the resolution.

The amendment is that an item 10 be added to the scope of services that includes reviewing the 2009 efficiency study.

The language of what I just said I think is sufficient.

So we've recorded that.

So can I have any further discussion on this?

Okay.

Would you like to ask for permission to abstain?

Yes, I would.

OK, permission granted.

Thank you.

OK, so the motion carries 4 to 0 with one abstention.

All right, thank you all.

Hello, good evening.

This is going to be a PowerPoint presentation, so I guess we need to lower the score.

Thank you, Page.

And will we be getting a copy of the PowerPoint presentation?

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name's Kathy McHugh.

I'm the city's housing specialist.

Tonight's presentation will attempt to summarize the housing report and condense information included in this report to provide you with a brief overview.

Need to use the computer.

Thank you so much.

We're getting closer here.

All right, tonight I'll be providing you with an overview of existing housing programs, an update of the status of the 2025 housing goals for affordable housing, analysis of the 2025 goal as well as challenges to meeting that goal, an overview of affordable housing investments and efforts and opportunities for future efforts.

As to our existing housing programs, and some of you are familiar with these, for others some of this will be new, but the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund and our federally funded home programs are used to provide financial assistance to nonprofits to undertake housing construction, housing rehabilitation, and or activities that directly support such efforts, such as down payment assistance to assist low wealth families with purchasing a home.

While CDBG can be used for housing also, most recently the council has approved funds for social economic development and neighborhood improvement projects only.

The city has a variety of programs, not all handled by NDS, that provide tax relief, reduce fees, and even free paint to qualified individuals and households.

Most programs are subject to income, age, and or disability status.

However, the tax exemptions for housing improvements program is based strictly on the age and the value of the structure as well as the amount of investment by the homeowner.

Income restrictions are either a fixed amount or they're based on a percentage of area median income.

In Charlottesville, that number is $84,100.

As of March 6th of 2015, it has not been updated more recently.

What this means is for a four-person or low-income family, they could not make any more than $65,800.

And as to the update of the status of our 2025 goal, I've included all the prior updates, the initial number that we started with and an update since then.

Just wanted to reiterate that the goal is actually to increase the ratio of supported affordable housing units to 15% of total housing units by the year 2025.

The most current percentage, which you'll see on the bottom row of this chart, is 10.06 or 2006 housing units out of a total of 19,937 housing units.

However, please be advised this percentage is still deemed to be slightly high due to the uncertainty surrounding the total number of residential properties in unclassified and multi-use buildings in the city, some of which may contain residential units.

and by that I mean I give an example I did this I think last year the Holsinger building has the melting pot and other commercial uses on the bottom floor and then apartments overhead there are a number of buildings within the city we don't have full classification or disclosure on exactly how many residential units are in there so causes some confusion on the numbers

The report goes into a good bit of detail on how we've attempted to measure the percentage of homes in the city that could be classified as supported affordable.

However, it should be noted that the original 2025 goals for affordable housing report was based off a point in time guesstimate rather than hard and fast numbers.

The report also contains details on how each of the figures have been derived over the past five years.

I want to attempt to explain that here, but determining the exact number of residential units is perhaps the most challenging task in assessing the status of our goal.

I alluded to that with the last slide, but the Tax Assessor's Office does not track the number of units in multifamily buildings, and so apartment units as well as mobile homes were previously tracked separately, which increased our chance for error.

We've changed over to use of the city's master address table.

and that's a shift in providing more accuracy.

However, we still need to identify all the residential units and multi-use properties which we were just talking about in order to refine our methodology and provide the most accurate data possible.

As far as the city's ability to maintain the percentage of supported affordable units at roughly 10%, it's largely due to the fact that we haven't lost any of our larger affordable housing developments.

I would note that CRHA properties, Friendship Cork, Hearthwood, Greenstone on 5th, which is formerly known as Blue Ridge Commons, have all maintained the units that they started with.

While we look forward to redevelopment of CRH8 properties, as well as Friendship Court, the only recent example of improving our existing supported affordable housing stock can be demonstrated by what Community Housing Partners did with Greenstone on 5th.

In 2012, DHDA provided low-income housing tax credits to rehab this property, providing many basic improvements to all units, including new kitchens, baths, flooring, etc., as well as energy-efficient appliances.

In addition, community housing partners also constructed a new community room, which is included in the building that you're seeing on this slide.

In fiscal year 14 and 15, city council committed funds to go toward construction of a new 54 unit housing complex to be built on Carleton.

Avenue known as Carlton Views.

This project is currently under construction and will provide accessible units for special needs and disabled persons.

Co-located next to the PACE Center, this facility will provide a housing option for PACE clientele as well as employees.

However, the units themselves are not restricted so that any person meeting income restrictions can qualify for housing.

And income restrictions for this particular property will be

40 to 60 percent of area median income.

Currently underway, Burnett Commons II, the Woods, should be finished within the next several months.

This southern development project located on Elliott Avenue includes seven affordable units out of a total of 48 homes in the development.

and all the affordable units have been built through a partnership with Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville.

The affordable units, in case you're interested in looking at them, are on Pennant Court and Burnett Way, but they blend seamlessly in with the neighborhood.

Just dedicated this past weekend, Burnett Commons 3, the park.

It's just across the street from the woods on Elliott, and this mixed income development is being built on a former city landfill.

It's the result of a partnership between Southern Development Habitat and City, and the city provided the land at no cost contingent upon Southern Development and Habitat removing the debris and developing the site to include mixed income housing.

As planned, this will be a development

We provide 18, which is actually different from the number that's in your report.

I think it's 20 affordable units out of 46.

And the reason for the change is I used the land purchase agreement rather than the final site plan to base my numbers off of.

So I apologize for the mistake, but I wanted to correct that in the presentation.

Lastly, Harmony Ridge is planned to be built

at 991 5th Street Southwest.

Council approved funds in December of 2013 to support the development of this particular project, which will include eight affordable units out of approximately 12 to 14 total.

This will be developed and built by Habitat for Humanity.

The land sales agreement between Habitat and Charlottesville Abundant Life Ministries, who formerly owned the property, allows up to 20 units to be built, but the final number has not been yet determined since the

Site plan has not been finalized.

Plans are still underway to work with Piedmont Housing Alliance as a CHODO to build at least one unit with our home CHODO funds and Habitat will work with a private developer to build the market rate units as well.

Having spoken about goal progress, I now want to transition to discussing the challenges to meeting our 2025 housing goal.

I've listed these here and elaborated on each in the written report.

The lack and expense of land.

The original housing goal did not really take the lack of an expensive land into consideration.

However, it's one of the largest obstacles to affordable housing development.

The lack of land and the high cost of land increases development costs for what are already a marginal development based on rent levels and purchase prices that can be charged to maintain affordability.

The housing goal report was also based off of leveraging 91.6% of funds from outside or other sources while only using 8.4% of our Charlottesville affordable housing fund to do projects.

We've determined this is really not realistic because there's many projects and activities that can't realistically leverage this percent of funds.

Staff believes that economic projections are a little bit overstated, meaning that more local dollars will ultimately be needed to achieve the same goal.

As far as integration of affordable units throughout the city, we found that challenging.

The comprehensive plan goals and objectives calls for achieving a mixture of income in as many areas of the city as possible, which means that large-scale affordable or low-income housing tax credit projects are less likely to be supported, particularly given that the award of such priorities

such funds prioritizes areas that have existing high rates of poverty.

Construction of new market and purpose-built student housing is increasing the city's total number of housing units which negatively impacts our ability to increase the affordable percentage.

Between city city walk and the flats along the city added roughly 500 new units.

It's difficult not to concentrate affordable units.

Without large scale affordable projects, it's difficult to maintain and increase our percentage of affordable housing.

However, such projects may find it difficult to satisfy our comprehensive plans, goals and objectives.

Kind of lastly, the focus on the number of units rather than on people is a bit tricky.

Poverty and self-sufficiency issues impact the ability to pay and housing needs can vary widely across families.

Building affordable units is part of the answer.

but we can't be expected to totally alleviate our problem with that.

I think that rental subsidies for rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing and other efforts are still needed.

Perhaps it's time to reevaluate the 2025 goal in a lot of these factors as well as data from our new housing study.

Again, just to reiterate the impact of land expenses, the city's only 10.4 square miles and limited land means limited options.

also as developers look at locations to build low-income housing tax credit properties.

It should be noted that they get extra financial incentives through the tax credits for building and qualified census tracts or QCTs as they're known.

These are defined as having poverty rates of at least 25% or 50% or more of the households with income below 60% AMI.

This slide shows

Just the overall housing investments and efforts.

The report provides much more detail on individual projects supported through the housing fund.

However, this chart will give you some general ideas about total assistance and the number of units assisted by fiscal year.

Please note that these include both supported affordable housing units as well as non-supported housing or non-supported units such as those assisted with our emergency repair programs,

and City's free paint programs which don't require deeds of trust which would make them be classified as supported affordable.

The report also shows total funds available by year and a breakdown of the cost per benefit by type of assistance.

This varies from a low of $288 per unit for a free paint program

Assistance to highs of $31,753 for AHIP major owner rehabs and $48,426 for assistance to construct new single family homes in various developments such as Bellman Cottages and Nunnally and Patton Street development.

Next couple of slides, I want to attempt to read these.

It's a list of other initiatives that have not been included in the summary of the CAP projects, but have been undertaken by city staff in support of affordable housing efforts.

As far as opportunities for future developments, these include the need to support CRHA during the current transition period,

Looking forward to future redevelopment opportunities and working with the Charlottesville Development Corporation.

There is currently a housing specific code audit also being undertaken by the Housing Advisory Committee.

A list of initial suggestions is included in the full report.

However, I would note that the code audit subcommittee members are currently working on research projects for many of these suggestions.

looking to come back in March with reports for a working subcommittee.

Preliminary work could be helpful as we move toward a full-fledged code audit.

And lastly, RCLCo, our Robert Charles Lesser and company is working through roadside and Harwell has just recently completed and finalized the comprehensive housing analysis and policy recommendations and would be coming to present a summary of their findings and recommendations at the February 1st city council meeting.

In concluding my presentation, I want to note that the 2025 housing goal of 15% supported affordable housing units is a great aspirational goal, but it presents some challenges and likely needs to be reevaluated in light of the new housing study.

As we look to the future, we need to start thinking about how to consider the people aspect of affordable housing as well as focusing on the fiscal number of units.

To succeed, we have to consider both.

This concludes

I have a question.

Thank you for your report, Mr. Cuse.

Great.

I do have a question in regards to housing.

So housing is a big one, and specifically affordable housing.

It's going to be something that is going to have a lot of different, it's just going to be a major issue coming up.

I wanted to know, have we thought about, in terms of density, building up

opposed to, I mean, because essentially since we're landlocked and we want to create affordable housing, I don't really know what else we can do if we don't have the space.

You know, zoning ordinance.

I know that some of that would be looked at if we went into like a code audit.

But the city doesn't have a development arm.

I mean, we can't go out and develop units ourselves.

We have to rely on the private sector as well as nonprofit partners.

I just want clarification for that.

We'll be exploring it.

We'll see what happens.

And I agree with Wes.

It's going to be a very important conversation we have in the community.

And I appreciate you starting to tee it up in this respect.

A specific question about the tax credits.

Has there been any change in that?

Are we losing them?

Are they staying the same?

Well, the tax credit program in the Commonwealth of Virginia is administered through VHDA, which is the state agency or arm that's responsible for overseeing the competitive process and selection of the tax credits that are awarded to Virginia.

and that is an IRS program, the Internal Revenue Service, so they designate, you know, how much each state gets and then VHDA for the purposes of Virginia comes up with something they call the qualified action plan on an annual basis which details how that they will award funds and then there's a competition for it.

I understand that nine percent credits have just been reauthorized by Congress.

So we'll have those on a permanent basis, which is great.

But in terms of, you know, Charlottesville getting those private developers, non-profits have to apply for them and get them.

Charlottesville Housing Authority, Redevelopment Housing Authority could apply for tax credits.

You know, the one example we gave with Carleton Views

If it went anywhere, it probably would go down.

No, I think the program's staying fairly stable.

It's probably the number one source for affordable housing development in the United States today.

But Charlottesville's participation in that is somewhat limited by the fact that we don't have large tracts of land where you can go in and to be competitive with a tax credit proposal,

Scattered site is much more difficult, so they tend to want to pick an aggregate site and just build the units at a single location because of the economies and scale and so forth.

Okay.

And real quick, I appreciate your mentioning not just units but families, families that are helped, people that are helped.

Right.

So one of the statistics you had up there was 15%.

We need to up at 15%.