City Council Meeting   5/16/2016

I don't know

and Michael

Ms. Rice, will you call the roll?

We are going to put at the top of our item an announcement related to a series of memorandums of understanding for collaboration that we are going to vote on tonight in a motion that was voted on last week by our colleagues in the County Board of Supervisors.

My colleagues, any

And again, kudos off to you and your colleagues.

of City County Collaboration and I'm really happy to see us doing that.

Thank you.

We work best when we work together, so welcome and we will continue.

So I'd like to, before the Chair and the Vice Chair come up, would you all, can we do a motion to pass these?

I'd like to make a motion that we adopt the Memoranda of Understanding that are in our agenda.

Chair Palmer and Vice Chair McKeel, would you all come up and speak to these?

And we have cookies at our meeting, so you're welcome to sign.

So our Vice Chair McKeel would like to say a few words and thank you again for having us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

They're being signed as we speak.

He couldn't sign them until we voted.

Okay.

Do we do two copies?

It's like a receipt in a restaurant.

Thank you.

And now we're going to move on to other announcements.

You want to do proclamations first?

Yes, let's do proclamations first.

I happen to have one.

Great.

Okay, great.

with the county and city collaboration where transportation issues do come up.

Do you want to introduce yourselves?

Thank you all very much.

Thank you.

Right, I have a couple of announcements, but I'll wait until the other proclamations are proclaimed.

Mental health awareness?

Let's give them a round of applause if we can.

very tall.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for the work you do.

Staff will be presenting potential plan options for consideration and comments.

That's all I have.

Mr. Bellamy?

And I'm glad to see all the young people taking advantage of these open meetings.

I have nothing else, sir.

Any other announcements from my colleagues?

Okay.

Mr. Fenwick, would you mind reading the motion for appointments to boards and commissions?

Certainly.

I would move the following appointments to boards and or commissions for CEDA, Paul Beyer, Human Rights Commission, Laura Kepley, and for the Retirement Commission, myself, Bob Fenwick.

Is there a second?

Second.

Mr. Jones, City Manager, response matters by the public from the last time.

So I just wanted to provide you with a quick update on those items.

That's correct.

Any others?

So.

We still do have a public hearing on the utility rates.

Okay, Kia Wassanar.

Thank you so much for your time.

Shelly Stern.

Thank you.

John Dove?

You may have several.

Nancy Carpenter.

Thank you.

Emma Trimble?

Thank you.

Alex Curry.

Thank you so much for having us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for your time.

R. Salzman?

Thank you very much.

goes to an issue that

I don't know if there are any shows left, but it was great.

Ms. Rice, would you mind reading that?

And item Q, an ordinance, sanitary sewer and slope easements abandonment, William Taylor Plaza Project, second of two readings.

Anyone want to move anything off of that?

Thank you.

I have a motion in favor.

I'll second.

If anybody else wants to speak, the sign-up sheet is right here.

I'm going to be referring to the at-a-glance from the meeting that we had the other day, and I have copies of that if you need them or if anyone in the audience would like to take a look at them.

I have plenty of copies of those.

That is down $3.87 or 3.36%.

In terms of the water rates, we expect that the water rate for 1,000 cubic feet will be $54.51.

and again the single-family household which uses 427 cubic feet of water will spend $27.28.

Yes, exactly.

So I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Do you have a single vendor for gas?

Yes, British Petroleum.

Are there two main pipelines coming in the city or just one?

Just one.

Is it a spot market or do you lock it in for a year?

We don't lock in 100% of it, but we do lock in a portion of it.

Yeah, make sure you talk into the mic.

at the beginning of the year of the gas.

How difficult, and you know we try to make these bills easy for people to read and understand, to do it in terms of gallons.

In each bill it is marked in gallons as well.

And what is the seven gallons, seven and a half?

7.48 gallons or cubic foot.

Okay, and the price of one gallon of fresh water is?

Okay, thank you.

Any others?

What am I missing?

Thank you.

I do have a question.

It's a question I often get.

One's the operating revenue and one is the revenue from a

because these are all separate and they are treated separately, you see them, the inflows and the outflows throughout the budget document.

Thank you, and I just wanted to point that out that that is in our budget, it's always been in our budget.

the possibility of lack of public knowledge about the basis of the PILOT, the payment and loan taxes, would it be possible to increase the transparency in the public education around this with including an annual, in a mailing a year including a narrative about it and putting something on our website about this explaining to the public what the

We could either put an article in there or do a separate insert into the bills.

Just in the vein of disclosure, when you get a cell phone bill, all those different fees, they should be explained to us.

If we wanted to go that far, that would help.

Or we could even, on the back of each bill, have a pilot and payment and explain what it is.

That would be possible.

It would be on every bill each time.

And there would be, I guess the main point is there wouldn't be resistance from staff about any of these ideas.

I may offer that later.

Ballpark?

And through April of this year, we're about 36%.

Do you have any handle on that?

And then it would say if there was two or three or four or five cutoffs running around.

Could you do it quickly so people could understand that there is like an appeal process and there is help available?

When their amount is over $70 and they've been delinquent for several months, they will be cut off.

What would be the, could they just call the mayor or the city manager?

That is utility billing.

Utility billing, okay, thank you.

So for folks who are having trouble paying, we also have the assistance programs when they call the same number, they can inquire about their eligibility for that as well.

of the requests we got for assistance, we were able to meet those within the funds that we had.

Realizing that they'll probably be about $10,000 to carry over.

Okay, great.

So we receive both the city contribution, but also donations from our customers.

Anyone who's listening who does that?

Rebecca Quinn.

Why don't we leave the money in the pockets of the policyholders and stop making a profit and calling it a pilot.

Any other comments?

Is there any discussion?

OK, closing public hearing.

Oh, excuse me.

And generally we don't, I think as you pointed out the last time I brought a motion, that we don't vote on a motion the night that we see it, so.

This is just to consider and actually have staff consider.

I would love to, I probably agree with it, I just would rather have another two weeks to discuss it.

I offer that as something to entertain, provide to staff for further vetting, and maybe vote on it at the next meeting.

I'm fine with it being a resolution also.

I'd be more comfortable to bring it up with the next

And we do have a second reading of this at the next meeting, so we could add that to the document.

OK. You amenable to that?

I'm very happy with that.

OK. Any other questions or comments on this?

I'd like to make a motion, then, that we adopt the utility rates as they appear in our agenda.

Is there a second?

And so that's all we need tonight.

Item number two, Tree Commission Annual Report, Paul Josie.

Good evening Mr. Mayor, members of council, Mr. Jones, Mr. Brown.

If you have any comments, you can contact us.

Was that a city study?

The mall study or the urban tree canopy?

I talked about the urban tree canopy.

Is it on the website?

Tree Commission holds regular meetings open to the public when and where?

It's in Parks and Rec's conference room below city space.

Well, so that's actually a much more complicated question.

I don't think we'll see that for a while.

Are they loosening up on that at all?

I don't think there's any, we haven't done any work on that and I'm not sure if there's any.

However, both our urban forester and that regional forester we're working with have retired, so we need to get a new person in place, then hopefully they'll have a new individual in place to mean well and we'll begin to develop that relationship again, hopefully sustain it.

And we're also advocating for certain types of trees that can be planted underneath power lines that work well with cleaning as well.

facing the city with regards to tree canopy, street trees, your whole bailiwick.

So those are the two areas.

Then if that is embedded in your report, we need to turn that into a policy of some kind, or staff does.

And those are a little bit, you know, there's a few more higher dollar cost items on that than typical tree maintenance.

Thank you.

What is the best way to do that, to translate these into asks for...

So the only ones that are from a policy standpoint that would affect the overall dose.

But it is a sign that we love our trees, that we take care of them.

Thank you.

All right.

Brian Daley.

I'm gonna turn it over to John.

Are there any questions?

Does that have an impact on what you do with pesticides?

less pesticide input because the problem with perennials is once weeds get into it then there's only certain targeted products that you can use like a bed of liriope say when grassy weeds get in there they're impossible to dig out properly so you have to use targeted herbicide products that will target that plant species so it's a trade-off good question and it's something we'll learn over time as some of the beds are converted to perennials.

I'm not sure you said this or not, but most of the glyphosate uses on sidewalks and right-of-ways, is that correct?

That's correct.

So have you been using those burner things as well as chemical?

I'm very honest with you, they are extremely dangerous.

overheat and burn the area.

When you do the targeted herbicides, do you stick a little sign in the ground or something and say, we've done this today.

Seems I have a memory of little signs in some kind of garden or something.

So a negative can become a positive as long as people understand it's not indiscriminate use.

Could you describe the size of the sign, the wording on the sign, the color?

Approximately five by seven, and it says caution or warning, and it says pesticide application, it has my phone number on it.

And it's on page 11 in the report.

So it was brought to my attention the gardeners said they really would like to see signs that say organic so that people get a better understanding when we're using those products.

I know you provided that information at one point.

But again, if we target much more closely where these products would be used, I think it's a doable and be a wise increase.

Would other councils be interested in at least finding out that dollar amount for schoolyard sites?

I would.

Thank you.

Mr. Daly, is that OK?

Thank you very much.

All set?

Any other business by Councillors?

Mr. Jones, correct?

We are working to schedule a meeting, a joint meeting with the CRHA board and the city council for some time probably in late June, early July.

It is something that we are looking forward to moving forward on.

At least that's what I've heard from the residents.

We'll have a chance to address that and obviously present that in advance of the work session for council to consider, CRHA to consider and their new executive director who begins work next Monday.

I do have a question for Councilor Bellamy.

Yes, ma'am.

Would it all be possible for Council to be able to get a handle on the, or have a copy of the Alexandria Redevelopment Housing Authority Improvement Plan?

Yes, I think that's something that is indeed needed, so I'll be reaching out to the Chairwoman of the CRHA Board, Ms. Julie Jones, requesting that copy tomorrow morning.

It would go two by two.

I would certainly go over and see.

So, any other items, other business?

I just have one thing I'd like to flag for future discussion.

If that's at all of an interest to council, I would like to get that on a future agenda where we talk about how can we really rigorously enforce our speed limits and also how can we extend the effectiveness of law enforcement using technology.

And our city engineer's name is Rashad Hanbali.

Thank you for reminding me.

I'm certainly interested in looking at more enforcement in selected areas, but I don't want us to become a hyper-enforcing... Sure, if I may follow up on that.

And if we're interested at least in researching this and seeing what are the options, I think we really have to take it seriously.

I mean, how would this work?

But we can certainly do that.

It's a matter of processing those issues, coming up with what is really going on, and giving us a menu of options for a solution.

And to look at what our policies actually are and then maybe to get staff's recommendations for if we were to ramp it up a little bit what what would that look like and where would they recommend that?

really ticket people more randomly, more often.

Is that something that we'd want to look at?

So I think, again, we're moving in this direction, but there is an immediate serious problem that I'm getting a little bit anxious here that we're not enforcing things correctly or as intensely

We actually brought this up at an interview.

There are several cities in the southeast or wherever.

I'm not a fan of speed cameras either.

We also have the Batten fellows this summer for research.

And that to me is one specific question that would be great if we could get the police chief to answer in conversation with Mr. Rifuna.

And do we want to take a look at several different options to consider for moving forward, or do we just want to concentrate on one or two?

Mr. Jones and I will meet tomorrow about the agenda, and we can talk specifically about ways to put this into the mix.

I'm just so compelled to bring this up, because Friday's meeting was very, very intense and informative.

This is a start, and it's long overdue, but it is a start, and as long as we keep going forward.

We will.

You know the drill, Ms. Johnson.

Thank you.

Any others?

So it is the fifth Monday?

The 30th, yes ma'am.

Thank you.

Run your own benefit cost analysis and I think some people will find knowing where your car is, parking it once a day might actually be a good solution.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.