City Council Meeting   7/5/2016

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Good evening, Charlottesville.

I'm going to call this meeting of city council to order.

Thank you, everyone.

Councilor Szakos?

Here.

Councilor Galvin?

Here.

Here.

We begin our meetings with awards and recognitions.

If we could go with announcements.

I will start.

The first announcement is that our clerk is not here.

She had a health problem and had to be home tonight.

She sends her greetings, and Miriam Dickler, who is our Director of Communications, is filling in.

So speak clearly as she takes notes, and we'll try to do the same.

The first announcement is about Sunday Sundowns.

Charlottesville Parks and Recreation with the support of Bama Works and the Loroy Moore Fund will host the second of three Sunday Sundowns of 2016 on Sunday, July 10th, that's this coming week, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. at Washington Park Pool.

In its sixth year, Sunday Sundowns is a free community celebration that provides residents and families with a great opportunity to get together

and enjoy a Sunday afternoon.

The event features free swimming, music, a healthy cookout while supplies last, games and activities for the whole family.

The free swimming is at Washington Park Pool and the other events will take place in the lawn adjacent to the swimming pool.

Washington Park Pool is located at 1001 Preston Avenue.

Parking is available in the lot located next to the swimming pool or at the lower level of the park.

For more information, please call 434-970-3260.

Thank you.

This is from LEAP and Public Works, July 5.

Solarize Charlottesville 2016 launched on June 20th.

For the third year in a row, LEAP is facilitating this community campaign to increase the use of solar power and energy efficiency in the region.

It is easy to participate.

Sign up online at solarizecville.org.

Send in a utility bill and signed letter of interest.

Attend a free information session.

Receive a free solar site assessment.

Obtain a low-cost efficiency assessment.

This is optional but highly recommended.

There is no commitment until the client signs a contract with an installer.

The next information session is the 27th, 6 p.m. at the Crozet Library.

More to come.

Highlights from 2014 and 2015 campaigns.

There have been 60 installations to date out of 129 total in city.

And the rated capacity of those systems combined is 287.78 kilowatts.

Get renewable ready.

Dominion home energy checkups are just $20 for city residents.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone.

Good evening, everyone.

Good evening.

All right, there we go.

So I have a short announcement about Safe Routes to School.

As part of Charlottesville Safe Routes to School program, the city is making enhancements to three intersections in the Belmont neighborhood, Monticello Avenue and Rialto Street.

Monticello Avenue, and 6th Street and Meridian Street in Belmont Avenue.

Improvements include curb extensions and more visibly painted cross works.

Work began July 1st and will proceed in phases.

First phase, Monticello and Rialto.

Second phase, Meridian and Belmont.

And the third phase, Monticello and Sixth.

Work should complete by August 2016.

No streets will be closed.

These improvements will help make the neighborhood streets safer for children and adults by shortening crossing distances and helping those walking, biking, and driving be more visible to one another.

This work will also bring the intersections into compliance with the Americans

with Disabilities Act, also known as ADA.

And before I pass the mic on, I am very elated to see all of you here.

Looks really good to see this many people in the crowd.

I would also like to make the announcement that many of you, for many of you, this will be the last time that you see Mr. Bellamy a single man.

He's getting married on Friday.

Thank you.

I have a small announcement for Ms. Galvin.

As most folks know, I usually do open office hours on the first Thursday of the month.

There's been a death in my family, so we're going to be traveling out of the state Thursday through the weekend, so we're going to postpone them to next month.

But I want everyone to know that, and we'll announce them on the next meetings next month.

Well, great.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thanks for the opportunity, Council, that, as you all know, I wasn't here last Council meeting.

It was the first Council meeting I missed in my five years on Council, my fifth year on Council, and my four years on the school board.

But I had the great opportunity to go to Italy to attend the conference, and the reason I went was because what we're doing in Charlottesville by way of

Doing community revitalization was of interest, and so I presented a paper on the strategic investment area.

I want to underline again, I did that all in my own dime.

It did not cost the city anything.

But I did bring back some important pieces of information, some knowledge for the city.

Yeah, well, it's art, so.

Okay.

It's okay, it's okay.

I know art is kind of a subjective thing, but it's from the heart, so I know you get the heart, Mr. Bellamy.

So, from June 13 to 17, I was in Rome for this International Making Cities Livable Conference, and we focused on one big question.

What makes a city healthy, equitable, resilient, and beautiful?

And we debated that challenge in work sessions, walking the city streets, checking out the squares and the piazzas,

psychologists and geographers, planners, mediators, architects from all over the world.

And here are some takeaways.

Baltimore lost 300,000 people over the last 55 years due to the loss of manufacturing, suburban flight, and the failure to diversify its economy.

The depopulation has met 16,000 vacant houses and 14,000 vacant lots at a rate of $1,400 per property per year cost to the city.

The city spends $2 million every year on demolition.

That's kind of what we spend extra on city schools.

We're very blessed that we don't have a depopulation problem.

The Bay Area, in contrast, has grown an innovation economy of over 600,000 jobs, but not enough housing, only 300,000 units.

Since the recession, housing production has dropped from 23,000 units a year to 9,000 units a year.

Medium price sales of cost has gone up 49% and rents have gone up around 40%.

The only kind of housing being built is high end.

The cause relates to global investment, lagging production, declining public resources since the state of California dissolved redevelopment authorities and barriers to development either through zoning or really strident public advocacy.

Another point was according to Dr. Richard Jackson, type 2 diabetes has increased in children all over the world from 3% to 50% in the post-World War II years, 3% to 50%.

The percentage of children who do not get regular exercise went from 17% in 1988 to 52% in 2007.

So we need to balance live, work, and play within our cities, not just remove the need.

And that does not remove the need for fair and authentic development.

Skyscrapers that are functionally, economically, and socially segregated and resource inefficient aren't the answer.

Successful cities in the future will provide access to nature and independent mobility for all people of all ages

facilitate positive social interaction in well-designed parks and squares and streets and build human-scaled mixed-use environments that retain a diverse mix of buildings and people while retaining nearby rural communities that can still produce local food.

So those were the takeaways from this conference that our city was in good stead with our principles, but we're not alone in our challenges.

Now in Poggio,

On June 20, I was able to visit our first sister city.

Mayor Marco Martini and his council colleagues gave us a tour.

of one of the villas, the Medici Villa in Poggio, Ocana.

We then talked at length about the reason why there is a sister city relationship to begin with.

It started with Filippo Mazzie, who was a friend of Thomas Jefferson.

And it can be argued that central Virginia wouldn't have a wine industry today if not for Mr. Mazzie introducing viticulture to Mr. Jefferson.

We also discussed the upcoming 40th anniversary of our relationship in 2017.

I hope to be meeting with Terry DiCintio soon to begin a discussion on ways that we can best celebrate that anniversary.

The finale was unforgettable.

It was an unforgettable Tuscan dinner at Chef Roberta's Trattoria Il Falcone.

Some of you may remember that at the beginning of June, Chef Roberta was here in the audience and we gave her acknowledgement for being a visiting chef at Tabla in the Belmont Center.

So many thanks.

to Mayor Martini and his colleagues, Chef Roberta and her staff, Terry DiCentio, Page Rice, and Stella Mattioli, who played the role of translator for making all the connections work so flawlessly.

So grazie mille.

And here are the, just, it's photography by a man named Valentino Grassi, and he gives you his love and appreciation.

Thank you.

Under $50 a million.

Thank you very much.

Any other announcements?

Okay, we're moving on to appointments to boards and commissions.

This will be a motion to the Albemarle, Charlottesville Regional Jail Authority, Kathy Johnson Harris, and Lawton Tufts, and to Charlottesville Redevelopment Housing Authority, CRHA, Mike Osteen.

That's a motion.

Any discussion?

All in favor?

Motion carries 5 to 0.

Congratulations everyone and thanks to everyone who was interested in these positions.

We have many more available, many openings that are all publicized on the Charlottesville City Council website.

So we welcome and we love it when citizens show interest in serving on the many boards and commissions that we have.

We're now moving on to city manager response to matters by the public.

So in matters by the public, those comments that are made where they go to a response by city staff, we have a relatively new practice this time where the city manager responds the next meeting to matters that are raised where there's a staff question or response that's asked for.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

There's one issue to report back on from our last meeting.

Mr. Mark Briggs spoke to the City Council about a problem he had with mold in his apartment.

The folks in NDS, our staff, are working with the City Attorney's Office to see what options he may have to mitigate that issue.

The City may not have direct authority to address his concerns, but there may be other avenues that

Okay.

Thank you.

We're now moving on to public comment.

We'll read the guidelines for public comment.

We welcome public comment.

It's an important part of our meeting.

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 for public comment.

If you're here to speak for a public hearing, and we have three tonight, please wait to speak on the matter until the report for that item has been presented and the public hearing has been opened and the sign-up sheets for those are right here.

I see several folks have already signed up for, on the one about Booker Street, I believe.

Each speaker has three minutes to speak.

Please give your name and address before beginning your remarks.

I'll read the section from our City Council meeting procedures.

This has been in place for several years.

Improper comments and disorderly conduct are not permitted.

Persons appearing before the council will not be allowed to campaign for public office, promote private business ventures, use profanity or vulgar language or gestures, threaten violence toward council, city staff or members of the public, engage in behavior that intimidates others, interrupt other speakers, or engage in behavior that disrupts the meeting, and defamatory attacks on individuals or groups.

If you cannot follow these guidelines, you'll be escorted from City Council chambers and not permitted to re-enter.

Any speaker who violates the rules will be called to order by the mayor.

If their marks or conduct persist, the mayor shall order the speaker to cease speaking and be seated.

If the order is not heeded, the mayor shall direct the sergeant-at-arms to escort the individual from the meeting room.

We really appreciate public comment.

We have three minutes for each.

Comment.

And the green light is when you have plenty of time left.

The yellow light comes on, I think, at 15 seconds.

The red light is when you finish with your time.

And please begin by stating your name and address.

Nikaya Walker is first.

Good evening, Nancy Carpenter, Henry Avenue.

I'm here tonight.

I heard some interesting comments from Ms. Galvin and World Class City.

One word I didn't hear is automobiles.

I'm very dismayed that we lost $300,000 in our public transit budget and had to cut two buses on the extremely busy Route 7 line.

We were here several years ago, citizens talking about that in reference to the two studies that were done.

for the transportation and talking about how important it was to have these extra buses that the 20 minute intervals at the time or 30 minute intervals were creating stacked buses.

The drivers didn't like it.

It wasn't terribly efficient at the time.

And it was also a detriment to the public that relied on the seven to get to downtown, to get to UVA, to get to the corner.

to make connections to other buses.

So I hope that my desire is that this will be revisited.

And I know that, you know, a lot of this has to do with monies coming out of Washington and all that.

But I think if we're going to be a world class city, we're going to take Charlottesville, you want to take Charlottesville further into the 21st century, we have to have a robust public transportation system.

I know that the Route 29 Express service is available.

I'm hoping that it's being used.

I don't see it advertised very well, so I'm not really sure what kind of response, but that is the first step, is to bring the transit out to some of the areas that experience very heavy traffic volumes during commuter times.

And if a developer of a shopping center is not getting any bang for his buck, oh well, that's not the point.

The other thing I want to say is that

I'm hoping that you as city councilors will be, you talk about our sister cities, but that you maintain and create the vibe that welcomes refugees into this community.

One of the things I think that makes this city very different from other ones is that we do open those arms.

And I've heard a lot of

vitriol and rhetoric in the last couple of weeks that I find, you know, dismaying.

I'm sorry that some people feel that way, but I myself as a voting member of the city and as you all are my electric representatives, I hope that you will maintain your support of those organizations that bring people to this country because they see something in the United States that

draws them to this country.

Now we're not perfect.

We've got a long way to go in ending our own problems, our own segregations, our own Jim Crow, even into the 21st century there's a lot going on.

But I hope that we will maintain in this 10 square miles that openness to our refugees from other countries.

Thank you.

I am Joe Drago and I do still live in Carlsberg.

I didn't hear what you said when you walked in.

That's what I thought.

Easy to say it just to me and not in public.

That's what I thought.

I've come here now, this is the eighth time I've come here once in your office seven times here.

Each time I've come to express my concern about not the fact that we're bringing

foreign peoples here.

That's not the issue.

It's who we're bringing here.

That there are some foreign folks that come here that deserve to be brought here, deserve our help, and there are some that we need to be very careful about bringing here.

And in fact, the empirical evidence is overwhelming.

But it doesn't matter what empirical facts I offer.

You simply, of course not, you simply eliminate.

They disappear into thin air.

So all I can do then, all that's left to do is to stand here and bear witness against you.

So that when things do start to change here in Pleasantville, and they will because they happen everywhere else where there's been large influxes of Muslim migrants, in particular unattached young men between the ages of 15 and 45,

that in every instance there's been increases in rapes and assaults all throughout the world.

In fact, not just throughout the world, but all throughout history.

You can murmur and do what you will.

The facts are the facts.

I didn't make these facts up.

These are the empirical facts.

Easy to be found if you have the courage to do so.

I bear witness against you.

When these assaults and things, the tenor of our city starts to change.

Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor, Mr. Jones, good evening.

In response to Mr. John Jones' detailed breakdown to add bus service on Great Avenue at a cost of $135,000,

$6,000 a year plus weekend cost.

We are not asking for weekend service, only during the week when citizen has business at City Hall, drug stores and other business that require you to travel to other points in the city.

I have looked at the actual CAT transit routes and it seems that the Route 8 and Route 9 bus could incorporate and include Great Avenue,

Route.

Someone needs to look at the peak hours.

There's a regular bus that runs from 6 30 a.m. to 6 30 p.m. Route 8, Route 9, from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. and from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. You could reroute bus 8 and Route 9

during peak hours.

That would include Grady Avenue.

With Route 8 and bus Route 9 being an established service route, there will be no additional cost, no additional driver.

I hope that this matter is not closed.

You need to have Mr. Jones go back to the drawing board and as much as we will not have to purchase a new bus and a new driver.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Jeffrey Fogel.

I reside at 215 Spruce Street here in the city.

I wanted to share with the community tonight some information about the status of criminal justice reform here in Charlottesville.

A spoiler alert, it's dismal.

Let's start with the DMC Juvenile Task Force.

Mr. Murphy, who heads the task force, was quoted in the Seville as saying, some of us were frustrated by our inability to come up with a reason why we have disproportionate representation of African Americans in our juvenile justice system.

We're not frustrated by that.

We're angry about the fact that the city staff will not even let us speak about that question.

And what that does is frustrates the mission of the task force that you assigned.

You assigned the task force to find out why.

The task force says we don't know why and we won't even talk about it.

And so that's the status of DMC with respect to juveniles.

And it's the inability and unwillingness of the city to have the police department examined in that connection as one of the primary sources of disproportionality.

And while we're on the subject, let's look at stop and search.

Three years ago, Chief Longo came and announced that 70% of the people being stopped and frisked were African American.

Only one counselor even said anything about it.

We have been trying to get those records so that we could verify whether the police department knows what it's doing and whether that's the problem or whether there's some form of either unconscious or conscious racism in the police department, but we've not been, as you know, because you opposed us getting that information.

And as I recall, it was Counselor Szakos who said, oh, don't worry.

You don't really need that information.

You'll be able to see as years go on, things will get better.

Well, they don't get better.

In fact, they got worse.

They went from 70% to 78%.

And last year, 2015, it miraculously went down to 68%.

68% of the people stopped and frisked on the streets of Charlottesville are black.

And let me tell you the most interesting statistic of all.

Of all of those people who were stopped and frisked,

Further law enforcement action is only taken in 14% of the cases.

But when there are white people involved, 23% of the cases result in action.

And when there are black people, only 13%.

Now, if you're going to form a program to use stop and frisk in order to either stop criminal activity or to prevent the carrying on of contraband, you would focus on white people.

You wouldn't focus on black people.

And yet we continue.

We continue to focus on black people and we don't get an answer as to why this is happening nor are we being allowed by the city staff to go into that inquiry.

Now we've got serious problems in our adult criminal justice system.

Charlottesville is playing its role in the horrible

My name is Dornita Herndon.

I live at 1808 Eastview Street.

I am a native of Charlottesville.

I've lived on Eastview Street for four years.

I addressed my landlord for the last two years about the parking in my area.

I have a gentleman that lives in front of me who has at one point had four cars.

One parked in this driveway, three on the street.

He sold one of them.

Then when my landlord took over, she asked him to remove one of them.

After removing one of them, he put up orange cones.

He put his car in the middle of three parking areas and put his cones up.

I continued to try to talk to her to mitigate.

I went to the police department.

I have reached out to the neighborhood association for Belmont.

and as a result I hold in my hand an eviction notice.

An eviction notice.

Last weekend I was spat at.

I was called names because I exercised my right to ask the police department to help me with the situation in an adult way and in turn they asked me for her information and told her everything.

Last Sunday she also

showed me her phone where she had been communicating with the police department and two police officers that I spoke with and told me, my skin is white.

I have the police on my side.

This has not only angered me.

It has not only angered me.

but it has caused me a lot of physical, mental, and financial problems.

When is it going to stop?

Does a lando have to happen to Charlottesville for this to stop?

I'm a black woman, 52 years old, been in this area all my adult life.

I love Charlottesville.

My ancestors fought for my right to be black,

To be heard, to be equal, I'm asking you, make us all equal, not only just me, a black person, but Muslims.

808 Eastview Street.

Okay, go ahead.

Louis Schultz.

Oh no, I'm sorry.

Good evening.

Lena Seville, 808 Alta Vista Avenue.

So I'm here to follow up on a conversation that's been happening over the last few meetings and I'm just going to say my point first before I get to the background because I want to make sure I don't run out of time for it and that is that government entities should be balancing the needs of many groups and individuals and when a particular group gets a special interest

then it means it's not fair and it's not equal for everybody.

And so I'm talking about this in reference to something much less important as the previous speaker, but still something that shows a pattern of decision-making.

And that is about the light at Third and Water.

I commented about it a month ago that there had been a process that had been used

It's a light that goes, it's on Water Street and the cross street is Third and it's the parking garage on one side which is basically a building so there's no Third Street on one side and there's a half block on the other side going up to the downtown mall.

A lot of people know it as the bank stop.

It's the bus stop near the bank and the light

stays green the same amount of time in one direction as it does the other.

So Water Street gets just as much green as a half-block side street.

And there was a process in place to look at it.

And there's been all kinds of misunderstandings and confusion, I guess, about what's going to happen.

And I came and talked to you about that about a month ago.

And the response from the city manager at the last meeting was that a couple of businesses

had objected to being changed or removed.

Last time I checked, we weren't supposed to make decisions based on a special interest of a couple of businesses.

That's special treatment, that's unequal treatment, that's unfair.

Governments are supposed to balance many different needs of businesses and individuals and transit and everything else and that a couple of businesses can ask for something and it put the brakes on something that has been approved and

Thank you.

Here's a question I would like to have answered.

John Hayden, Westwood Road.

I'd like my 15 seconds back.

Here's a question I would like to have answered.

So please write this down so you can give me an answer.

Who do you people think you are?

I understand voting on and spending money on projects that maybe the public doesn't agree with, but what you pulled last meeting, in my eyes, was outright theft of taxpayer dollars.

You gave over a quarter of a million dollars of taxpayer money to a private political organization headed by the husband

of one of the city councilors.

And we weren't notified about this.

We had no chance to question you about it.

And when I spoke up to ask a question, I'm threatened with arrest.

You treat taxpayer coffers like it's your own personal piggy bank.

If I had the opportunity to question you, I would have asked one.

For the quarter of a million dollars, will the taxpayers have a lienhold interest in this property, or did we just put a quarter million dollars in someone's pocket?

How do you justify spending my tax dollars by giving it to a political party that I do not approve of?

Is it even legal to use public money for a private political organization

regardless of what you claim it will be used for.

When and if this property is sold, if the taxpayers have no lienhold interest, does Virginia organizing get to keep my tax money?

Even if you have the best of intentions, how do you justify the way in which you did this?

On another subject, how do you justify your tactics in denying citizens their First Amendment right to free speech?

I saw no sign above the door here that said free speech zone subject to our approval.

When confronted with uncomfortable facts that don't fit your liberal socialist agenda, you have citizens dragged out.

Why do we not have a right to share our concerns with you?

Why don't we have the right to protect ourselves if you insist on relocating refugees here

that our own government says they cannot vet.

Thank you.

Rebecca Quinn, 1044 Street here in the city.

I think Charlottesville residents who are interested in open government would like to know that a new law went into effect July 1.

Every local government is required to designate someone as the FOIA officer.

That stands for Freedom of Information Act.

The city recently designated the Director of Communications, Miriam Dickler, as our FOIA officer.

So now it's really easy.

Go to the homepage,

Charlottesville.org, click on I want to and right there you'll see a tool to submit requests online.

You can also mail, walk into the office, give Ms. Dickler a phone call, but you should put it, my recommendation is put it in writing and be as specific as possible.

The rights and responsibilities of the city are spelled out on the web page as are the citizen rights under FOIA.

This is really important.

I remember having to search Virginia code and now it's easy.

But one caution, if you have a request that turns into a heavy lift, a big effort, you can ask the city to estimate charges.

But for most requests that I'm familiar with, the city doesn't charge.

So it's all spelled out.

In my experience,

Also for the most part, the city's done a really good job of responding to FOIA requests.

Even if you don't specifically cite it's a FOIA request, it's treated as a FOIA request.

And whether it's City Manager Jones or a predecessor of someone else, I thank you for that leadership and openness.

However, I recently learned the bar has been raised.

Arlington County implemented several initiatives

to improve transparency.

A significant one, every request or the response to every FOIA request will be posted online.

Their reasoning is obvious.

If one member of the community has an interest in asking for records on a specific topic, others likely have the same interest even if they've not expressed that interest.

And because the county's already done the work, it's a simple matter, an admirable open government to post the results for general

Public Access.

So I would like to ask the city leadership and this council to do the same.

Hi, I'm Luis Oyola.

I live in the 10th and Page neighborhood.

I come here speaking on behalf of Lolita Smith, who is the grandmother of Sage Smith.

And for those here who might not know, Sage Smith is a black transgender woman from Charlottesville who went missing on November 2012.

And there have been no significant leads on her disappearance since then.

I come here to bring a request from Lolita Smith to establish a memorial bench in Sage's name.

We have a donor who's willing to back this project and I just request proper contacts to work out logistics.

We are requesting for the location to be at the Amtrak station on West Main Street.

and we want this to be kind of a permanent kind of visual in her name and as we continue to push for a more proper investigation of her disappearance

and continue to advocate for Sage Smith's family and community.

So I will be sending an email right after this and if I don't hear back, I'll be following up within a week.

Thank you.

So we want to thank everyone who took the time to come and speak to us.

A lot of people don't recognize it.

It takes some courage to come up here and share your opinions and special experiences on matters.

And we do take them extremely seriously.

We read also the emails that we receive from everybody, every single one.

There were a number of matters tonight that were very specifically about city staff responses.

And I know that next time, in two weeks, Mr. Jones will

will respond to those matters that were raised about governmental responses for us.

The clerk was out sick today but we actually do, you actually, there was a sign up spot available, yes you can, there's actually one spot left

There was, and since he first come first served, there was one left on the 12th, so.

If she's not going to be available.

My name is Raymond Mason.

I live at 717 Cynthia Avenue, and the reason I'm here is due to the lack of crosswalks at Washington Park Pool, as well as Washington Park Main Interest, which is on Preston Avenue, as you stated earlier.

That gate has been there since I was a child.

It's right there across from Ross Avenue.

There is no

Crosswalk there and all the kids that live in Gordon Avenue, Roster Avenue, 10th Street, 12th Street, all those areas, when they come to the park, they cross at Roster.

They don't walk down to the Legal Aid Department.

They like water.

They follow the path of least resistance.

They're going to cross right there, going to the park.

So either close that gate, remove those steps, so those children can walk all the way down to the corner and then go into the park.

We either put a crosswalk there.

The issue with the pool, it's ridiculous that there's no crosswalk in front of the pool when you're talking about children crossing the street with all that business going up there, Shenandoah Joes and all the other businesses up that way.

It's almost criminal that you people sit here and do not do anything about it.

It's a shame.

I've been talking about this for two years or longer.

and we've yet to have anything done.

I had the traffic people come up here last year, put calendars up there, and I never heard a word from them.

So either they don't care about the kids in that community, which are black kids, or something's going on, you know, if you don't want to spend the money, ask someone for the money.

Last year for the swimming initiative, I asked people for money, I got tons of money, for 40 kids plus to go swimming.

At that pool, they cost six dollars, which is

Outrageous, you know.

You compare yourself with Fairfax, you know.

I heard him say, oh now Charlottesville has the lowest unemployment rate.

We beat Fairfax out.

The Fairfax Pools are 50 to 75 cents to go swimming in.

Can you beat that?

I mean, if you want to beat something, let the children, you know, I had a picture on my Facebook page this morning of young black kids in the 50s looking in the pool watching people swim.

I see the same thing in Washington Park in 2016.

Are you aware of it, Ms. Szakos, because we've talked about it before.

Now, you said there's a event at the park this week?

Why so many kids of color be in that pool, okay?

It should not be looking like a private pool on a regular basis.

I live close to that pool and I'm marching every day.

I can get the black kids in that pool on my hand.

And that pool, that park was designated for the black community and it shouldn't have been priced out.

Now I don't know who was the brain that charged, you know, figure $6 or $4 was a good price for swimming.

They couldn't have based it on the inner city salaries of the people who live in the inner city and it's not fair and it's wrong.

Like I say, it's criminal in my, you know, someone should take legal action against you for doing it, whoever's behind it.

Thank you.

I think we have a Mr. Mason.

And all of our meetings are available to be watched online.

They're all recorded and broadcast.

Mr. Mayor, if I could.

City Space?

Yes.

Thursday, July 7th, that's meeting number three.

That's the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials, and Public Spaces.

Yes, I know that we generally don't reply to things that have to do with staff things and I think the pool thing is a staff decision, although we will be participating in that as well, but I would like to just make a comment about the comments about immigrants in our city and our city policy, our council policy of welcoming immigrants by officially welcoming the 75 new citizens who became citizens at the Monticello

We had a ceremony on the fourth of July yesterday and also just happened to have a friend from Turkey visit over the weekend and he had driven from California through Texas all the way to here and was heading to DC visiting relatives along the way and I will say that although we hear a lot of hateful rhetoric in our country

Any others?

Okay, we will move on to the consent agenda.

consent agenda minutes for June 20th the appropriation sidewalk improvement fund contribution $15,344.60 second of two readings see appropriation approval of revised home budget allocation for FY 2016

to 2017, second of two readings.

D, appropriation, Virginia Department of Health Special Nutrition Program Summer Food Service Program, $90,000, first of two readings.

E, appropriation, Albemarle County reimbursement for court roof replacement, $737, first of one reading.

F, Appropriation, Fire Prevention, Restitution and Recovery Donations, $300, first of one reading.

Any questions?

Is there a second?

Second.

Any questions or discussion?

All in favor?

Mr. Mayor, may I just make a brief comment?

I just want to acknowledge that item G, the designation of the SIA as a revitalization area, is something that I think staff should be commended for having identified, that this designation allows a developer to use the Virginia Housing Development Authority's mixed-use, mixed-income loan program to expand workforce and affordable housing in a private development project.

and in this case, it's 925 East Market Street.

I think that's really pretty exciting that we've got another tool at our disposal to expand the stock of mixed income housing.

Thank you.

All right, we're moving on to our next item on the agenda.

It's a public hearing resolution, a special use permit at Alumni Hall at 211 Emmett Street.

Matt Offley, Neighborhood Development Services City Planner.

Mayor, City Council before you tonight is an application to amend the 1980 and 2006 Special Use Permit at 211 Image Street, the University of Virginia Alumni Hall, to allow for a 1,346 square foot addition for meeting space to the southeast corner of the building.

On June 14th,

The Planning Commission held its first public hearing and discussed access to Alumni Hall during the election and consolidated the 1980 and the 2006 SUP resolutions to one comprehensive 2016 resolution.

The Planning Commission voted 6-0 to recommend approval of the SUP.

and council has several alternatives in front of them tonight.

They can approve the SUP as recommended by Planning Commission.

They can make amendments to the SUP and approve.

They can defer the SUP and they can deny the SUP.

Thank you.

I'll repeat the question that I asked during the public hearing at the Planning Commission, although I know the answer just in case people are wondering.

There is voting that happens there in November.

Well, at any time there's voting.

Correct.

They still have access to voting during construction.

I move that we adopt the resolution.

If there are no other questions from council, we have no other comments from staff.

We have a public hearing on this matter.

Nobody has signed up, but if anybody would like to speak on it, we have an open sheet here.

I'm Jim Boyd with Grimm and Parker Architects.

I'm here representing the Alumni Association.

We believe that item one in the resolution contains a mistake and if approved would actually prevent people from voting.

The way the resolution is worded it states that we're to close all entrances from Sprigg Lane.

In the 1980 project there were three entrances on Sprigg Lane and the agreement with the city and on the site plan was to permanently close one of those entrances.

That has been done.

There are three entrances to Alumni Hall for cars.

Two from Sprigg Lane and one from Lewis Mountain Road.

An effort was made in 1980 and reinforced in 2006 to limit access from Lewis Mountain Road in order to protect the neighborhood.

So before voting on this resolution, I would encourage you to

Okay, so we're looking at number one here on the prepared resolution.

There shall be no entrance to the parking lot from

But, there shall be only one entrance to the rear parking lot from Sprigling.

So instead of no, only one.

Only one.

and of course that same paragraph goes on to say the amended final site plan shall demonstrate connections for the internal circulation between the northern and western portions.

I think that change will be fine by staff.

The intent was to clear up the two resolutions at the time and the language could have gotten

misconstrued in that but I think what staff is looking for is this show on the plan that they implemented all the 1980 and the 2006 requirements of the SUP and of course you need to have parking there.

Okay and I should say we're still in the public comment period but there were no

Okay, so is everyone amenable?

Okay, so if the change is just in the language that we would adopt.

And I believe the city attorney maybe could come in on this, but as city council you have the power to amend

the conditions.

Is there anybody else on the public hearing who would like to speak to this matter?

I'd like to make a motion that we amend the resolution as previously stated.

We don't even get a motion.

We haven't made a motion yet.

So move the resolution with change which is just there shall be only one entrance to the parking lot from Sprigling.

Thank you.

Okay, so moved.

Second.

Second.

Any further discussion or questions?

All in favor?

That carries five to zero.

OK, thank you.

Moving on to the next, item number three.

This is another public hearing resolution.

Lease of city public right of way to Omni Hotel for Terrace Cafe.

Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, this is a proposed resolution which authorizes the execution of a lease between the City of Charlottesville and the Omni Hotel for 502 square feet at $5 a square foot for the operation of an outdoor cafe.

This lease would be for a term of five years and it has previously been in existence for five years.

The rent, as I say, is $5 per square foot but it is tied to the schedule of fees which City Council approves for outdoor cafes so that if a change is implemented in that schedule it will apply automatically to this lease.

Any questions?

I assume it's not in that vicinity.

I don't know the precise location.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Mr. Brown?

Okay, let's open the public hearing for this matter.

We have no sign ups, but would anyone like to speak about this Terrace Cafe at the Omni?

Anyone?

Okay, closing the public hearing.

Any further questions on this?

Second.

Okay, second.

Any further discussion or questions?

Okay, all in favor of the resolution as drafted to authorize the lease of City Public right-of-way at Omni's Charlottesville Hotel for sidewalk cafe space.

That carries five to zero.

Just to clarify, it's a renewal of a lease.

Renewal.

Okay, now to an item which I expect many people here are interested in, from the ribbons I'm seeing.

Public hearing and ordinance for 624 and 626 Booker Street rezoning.

We have allocated, instead of the usual 20 minutes, we've put 40 minutes on the agenda for this item.

We're expecting there to be several people signed up already for the public hearing on it.

But if more folks are interested, we have seven folks signed up right now.

I can put this back down on the sheet on the front.

Mr. Altheli will be presenting on this.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Mr. Aliska.

Mr. Aliska is set.

My apologies.

Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, this is a rezoning request for 624 and 626 Booker Street.

Request is to rezone the property located at that address from R1S single family residential to B3 business with proffers.

The proffer statement is included in the staff report.

I will not go over the history of the property because it's documented in the staff report.

Just say that the Planning Commission heard this item at their previous meeting on June 14th and they recommended

Thanks.

Questions?

I have one question that I brought up, I think at the Planning Commission.

What is the height?

What is the maximum height permitted in R1-S70?

The structure currently on the property?

Yes.

Okay.

I have.

It's 42 and a half feet.

The curved item is an impertinence which are allowed to be 16 feet at the time it was submitted.

Okay and they changed it

Okay, I just want you to put that in the record that it has been measured.

If you don't want to take it that's fine, but it's 42 and a half feet.

Okay, any other questions?

Would the appellant be interested in?

Anybody here on behalf of the appellant wants to speak?

Okay, I'm Richard Spurs.

By way of introduction, I made my first investment

in Charlottesville 35 years ago when Blake Caravati and I bought a house together in Belmont.

We renovated it and to this day I still own that property.

Since that time I've owned 345 separate parcels in the city, 2.3 percent of all tax parcels in the city.

In Belmont alone

I renovated 41 houses and developed 150 lots that allowed hundreds of people to achieve their dream of affordable home ownership.

The proposal you have before you today could not be simpler.

The request is to combine two single family lots into one single family lot.

Each existing single family lot can presently have a single family dwelling plus an accessory apartment for a total of four units.

My proposal is to combine the two lots together and have a maximum of three units and to have one of the lots be used as green space.

So the proffer that I made guarantees fewer maximum units

and protected green space forever.

There has been some misunderstanding about the B3 zoning, but the proffer does say, and the city attorney I'm sure can speak to this, does guarantee that the parcel will never be used for commercial purposes.

But the larger

The larger issue that I think that the city is confronted with is one of how to attract and encourage private investment.

I stood here 27 years ago before Bitsy Waters and other counselors and tried to preach the importance of private investment for the future of the city of Charlottesville.

Then, and many times since then, my words have fallen on deaf ears.

I don't need to spend another million plus dollars to finish this monstrosity that was built by a former, another builder developer that abandoned it.

I don't need to spend millions of dollars to develop a nice mixed income project

on Rose Hill Drive with retail stores on the ground floor and apartments above.

I don't need to work with the doctors at the corner office building to build a 60,000 square foot office building that would front Preston Avenue.

But the question is, who is going to do this?

You all know what the projections in your budgets look like five and ten years out.

when assessments will not rise as they have risen over the past 20 years.

Without several hundred million dollars in private investment, the city will have to cut its services and raise taxes substantially.

Where is the city going to get this private investment from?

It won't be from me.

Okay, any questions?

Well, we could have kept you up.

I have a question for the speaker.

Would you mind coming back up?

He may return.

Your comments, excuse me, good evening.

Your comments were interesting to say the least.

I believe when

a point of clarification or a point rather that you were significantly trying to make in whether an underlying fashion or some would say a very direct fashion in regards to who will be the ones to invest into our community if you choose not to.

I think that answer would be you're not the only investor in town.

Nor

Nor do I see this one in particular instance as we have not voted yet a decision in which you should feel as which you want to leave the city or choose to do other things.

And we actually appreciate the different things in what you've done for our city.

However, I find your comments and I'm getting to my question, but I find your comments somewhat disrespectful from

the perspective in which you have a community of individuals who have spoken very loudly about how they would like to maintain and preserve the integrity of their neighborhood.

There are several different scars that have taken place and we still feel the remnants of those scars from Vinegar Hill as well as several other injustices that have taken place throughout the city.

But yet, and here's my question to you, we have the audacity of such

to come before council and before many of the same constituents who frequent the neighborhood and where your business located, you have stated emphatically, in my opinion, not so subtly or indirectly, that you will be willing to essentially pick your ball up and leave the basketball court if you do not get your way.

My question to you is, does that make you feel good at night?

Did you say something like that?

Are you confident?

No, I'm happy to do what the neighbors want to have done and this is not, as I said, this is the simplest rezoning request possible.

If the neighbors

and the city does not like the proposal life set forth, which is to combine two city lots, have a nice green space, then there will be another house built there.

By your own admittance, you have invested a ton

a great deal into the community.

Yeah there's been a lot of talk recently you know that there's a

quote developers roundtable discussion that's been going on recently.

And the point I'm trying to make is that not this process, not this simple process, but all the processes that people have gone through for special use permits, that it encourages developers and people in this community to only develop by right.

and not to go through the special use process, the rezoning process.

Excuse me.

So that's my point.

You speak a great deal about process, but how does your process equate to the process of families who have essentially been having to be moved and thrust out of their neighborhoods for decades here in this city?

How does that equate to the social impact that what you are attempting to build will have on that community and the outspokenness of members of that community who have emphatically stated, invited you to different meetings.

I've been to two such meetings, neighborhood association meetings in which you've been asked to attend.

I've seen you participate in different conversations, and you're speaking in which of this process, while these people are clearly stating to you that this would disrupt the integrity of their neighborhood, a neighborhood in which many have frequented before you bought any of your businesses or done any of the things in which you spoke of to this city, you feel it is okay to disrupt what they feel to believe?

You didn't let me finish because I didn't interrupt you.

You feel it is okay to interrupt or disregard essentially how I'm personally taking it, the responses in which they've given you, because you feel as if you may not be getting your way.

As I've been quoted before, I told people that, you know, it's way above my pay grade to talk about the neighborhood and the historic, I know that the neighborhood wants some historic protection put on the neighborhood, which I think is great.

I have no further questions.

Okay, we have a public hearing now.

Any other statements from my colleagues or questions?

Okay, Clarissia Bell, a reminder, everybody has three minutes.

Please begin by stating your name and your address.

I am Clarissa Witcher Bell and my sisters and I own the properties of 906 Charlton Avenue and 904 Booker Street.

We are very much opposed to the rezoning of the properties on Booker Street.

The Rose Hill neighborhood is our childhood neighborhood.

It has always been a safe haven for children and the same momentum exists today.

The neighborhood holds many great memories of Washington Park and Burleigh High School.

The Rose Hill neighborhood is one of few neighborhoods in the city that have many of the original homes still owned by the original families.

One in which new families have renovated old homes and become a real family of the neighborhood.

One in which folks still stop and say hello on their way to Rose Hill Market or on their way to work.

One in which you see children running and playing.

The Rose Hill neighborhood is a perfect example.

of a village of love and kindness, people helping people whenever they see a need.

We believe the rezoning of the 624 and 626 properties will cause the present neighborly atmosphere to die.

With rezoning, we fear our neighborhood will suffer much unwanted change, more traffic, more disruptions day and night, noise, higher taxes,

More parking issues, crime.

But more than that, our house sits right next to the alley that the developer hopes to access his properties on Booger Street.

We share a wonderful porch.

Our neighbors come and sit there with us.

However,

With cars waiting there to pull on to Rose Hill Drive or to pull out in Charlton Avenue to go to Rose Hill Drive, think about the fumes that will be in our faces.

A city such as Charlottesville should embrace neighborhoods, have houses that are in character with each other, and a place where all can live in harmony and an atmosphere

that demonstrates that the city cares about its residents.

We, as long time residents of the city, ask that you not rezone the 624 and 620 lots on Booger Street.

Consider the happiness and well being of long standing citizens and a community where moderate homes and happy families exist.

in a community that represents a real, true neighborhood of love in every sense of the word.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Steve Ivory.

I live at 915 Charlton Avenue.

I'm apologizing now.

I want to read this so I can get my three minutes in.

So if I'm not establishing eye contact with you, I'm sorry.

I don't want to get through this because I don't want to get buzzed.

OK. First of all, thank you all for considering stopping our neighborhood from being gentrified.

Because that's basically what it is.

That's what it is.

It's getting gentrified.

And a lot of things have been said about my neighborhood.

But we love this neighborhood.

And that's why we're sitting here wanting to fight for it.

Right here it says, I personally do not want to see another vinegar hill situation that would destroy the fabric of the Rose Hill Drive community as we know it.

We already have businesses in the neighborhood that are being patronized by those who live outside of the neighborhood only.

I constantly notice all the extra cars parked in the neighborhood on the weekends.

My family was placed here as a result of the Vinegar Hill tragedy.

Now it looks like we'll be eventually displaced again if this zoning change is granted.

The developers are interested in personal profit, not for the best of our community.

I'm asking you to please deny the rezoning change requested by Mr. Spurson.

Here are a few facts and questions.

The previous owner

knew exactly what he was building.

He decided to build whatever he wanted to, pay whatever fine he had to pay, accumulate any fines, move on.

He basically said, to heck with zoning ordinance.

612 Booker Street, which I think is also owned by Mrs. Burzum.

If you go inside that building right now, that's a shop.

He didn't do it, but the previous owner turned that into a shop.

That was a workshop with chemicals, machines, and everything.

And I really don't think that's probably within the zoning.

But if you open up that building and look at it, it may be changed by now.

But I go look at a lot of things like that.

Number two, the new owner was Weller Wells when he was purchasing.

And did this not because of the love of the community, but for personal profit.

Number three, he stated that all the houses that were torn down were in poor condition.

My house was built, I think, in 1937, but we renovated and we got it up to par.

Those are the houses that most of us can afford.

I guarantee my little 1600 square feet house is probably the size of his garage, so it wouldn't be something that he would live in.

He just wouldn't.

But that's what we have to live in.

As an educator, a teacher, I have another choice.

That's all I can afford.

Number four,

Mr. Spurson, he acquired this property, you know, and now he wants to change his zoning, but you know, what is going to stop him from doing this to another piece of property that he owns?

He owns more than just one piece of property on that street.

He owns more lots that he can afford and he may buy them from someone else.

If this zoning is given to him, he could just build another building just like that.

or some other development could.

It was stated that the news clip that it would bring diversity to our neighborhood.

On my street right now, there's about 14 families that are non-black and about 17 that are black.

Thank you.

I'm sorry.

That's fine.

Good evening, Bishop Gohena, 930 Charlton Avenue, also the president of the Rose Hill Neighborhood Association.

I'm here standing before you with concern about how other investors can come into our community and decide what's best for us.

I'm concerned that they can make decisions not only what's best for us, but for their own personal gain.

that have not considered the sensitivity of our community.

We've gone through, we've lived through, we're living through Vinegar Hill, which we've lost businesses and homes, and they're placed in communities that does not meet their needs.

We find that on Rose Hill Drive and Booker Street is a concern because no one has consulted us

was best or what is in our best interest.

We're concerned on how people who have no connection to the community can come in and decide what they're going to build and how they're going to build without the integrity of the community's concern.

We have houses, as you've heard before, residents, owners of homes from generations to generations.

And those homes, residents have done well.

It's affordable for them.

They're not struggling in terms of taxes and the ability to pay because they are homeowners.

When you talk about diversity, as you've just heard, we have a diverse community.

Who is to come into our community and decide for us what is diversity?

Are you talking about diversity in economics, or are you talking about diversity in culture, or are you talking about diversity in ethnic?

We make a decision on what we want in our community.

We've looked at how people come in.

It's a family community.

We recognize, you've heard earlier about the alleyway that want to be made a driveway through with pollution, smoke pollution, noise pollution.

You put a park in there.

We cannot decide who can come into the park.

We're trying to keep crime down.

And when a private person comes in,

and Bill Le Park, no telling, we cannot identify what's going to happen and how it's going to happen.

Our concern is for the betterment of our community, not based upon what someone else thinks, but what we think about our own community.

Good evening.

My name is Mary Carey.

I live at 100 Ridge Street.

My children's grandparents built their home at 631 Booker Street, which is across the street from that building.

Anyway.

They built onto their house as the family got bigger.

They didn't have contractors and developers telling them how much to build or what materials they need to add onto their house for their family to grow.

This is the way the neighborhood is.

My sons, who are grown men now, they played on Booger Street as did their father and their uncles and their cousins and their friends, which are family.

I thought of that neighborhood as my neighborhood, and I still do.

And what I'm here tonight to say is that rezoning things like that, like Mr. Kohler said, no one asks anybody what they think anymore.

You come into, we come in here, we don't get any response from y'all anymore, which is boring.

Then you have your city, what you call townhouse meetings, because you don't have any cameras there.

But I'm gonna tell you something right now.

A lady asked me, why do some black people do not stand for the Pledge of Allegiance?

because just like the Saw Paint Spangled Banner, it has been rewritten so many times because of the wording.

Now I won't let you know, I don't stand for the Pledge of Allegiance either because of the freedom and justice for all.

Justice, that word you got to remember, justice.

If you can't remember justice, think about it.

Justice for all.

Evidently somebody forgot.

We are all, black people are part of that all.

And I stood, I marched, I sat for justice since I was 13 years old.

I am 70 years old and I'm still standing, sitting, and marching for justice.

Rebecca Quinn, 1044 Street here in the city.

So this is clearly a difficult situation to resolve a problem that apparently went off the rails quite a while ago.

We can't wish away the building, although it sounds like cutting off the top or pertinence might help.

The idea of green space, I have not followed this through all of the hearings.

The idea of green space is good, but we certainly didn't hear much about that tonight.

Would it be public?

Would it be accessible?

There's a lot to work out if you're leaning towards approval.

Next, building code.

The residential code covers one and two family dwellings and townhomes.

From what I can tell, I mean, they want to make this three independent residential units or three independent dwellings.

That means it has to be brought into compliance, not with the dwelling, not with the residential code, the dwelling code, but part three, part one of the Virginia Uniform

Statewide Building Code, and unless it can be converted to townhomes.

So there's a lot of challenges in that, and presumably the applicant has looked into them, but I think it warrants your asking the question of both the applicant and the building inspector.

For example, how will the firewall and fire separation be accomplished if it's going to be retrofit to truly be three separate dwellings?

So I would say if you end up overturning the Planning Commission, and of course that's what you would be doing if you approved this, be very specific and direct the building inspector to report back to you that full compliance with part one of the code can and will be achieved.

So where am I next?

Okay, a procedural matter.

The last council, many of you may recall, followed a policy to not take votes

on the same night as a public hearing, especially on controversial issues, because doing so leaves all of us who speak the impression that you made up your mind before you even listened.

So obviously there's a caveat that Council Szakos pointed out at one point.

If there's a truly compelling reason to vote, well, I submit

that there is no truly compelling reason to vote on this tonight when so many people have spoken and it appears to me there may be a couple of substantive issues to resolve.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, Councillors.

Good evening.

City Manager Jones.

The Rose Hill community is not carry-on.

It consists of front yards across which neighbors share new tidbits, spread a good word, and nod to say how do.

It is the place our children call home.

It is not the love conjured by all of our diverse neighborhoods just as profitable to the greater good than the spectacle played out by developers.

Motivated to make an even larger profit than the Joneses or by those desperate to get their piece of the pie before someone else swoops in.

Re-zoning requests put forth by Mr. Spursom and associates are anything but stand-alone requests.

Rather, they are a piecemeal series of events aided by policies that in some ultimately tear the Rose Hill community to shreds.

Are there any on this dais who think the raising of Vinegar Hill a good thing?

Any among you who see the progress made by having lives and businesses ripped apart as a feather in our cap?

If you were on the dais then, how would you have voted?

Who in today's political climate would try to pull an outright Vinegar Hill?

Given the decisions of Charlottesville City Council of the 1950s and 60s in regard to Vinegar Hill, one cannot in good conscience defend today's rezoning request

as wholly different.

Yes, the process may differ, but however overt or covert the means, the end result remains the same.

The widening absence of a racially diverse presence on the mall or even in the town's popular weekly newspaper is the outcome of things put in place decades ago.

Whose interest was former mayor Thomas Mickey serving when he made this statement on June 10, 1960?

Now up to this time only quote, and this is a book given to me by Teresa Price whose home used to be on the ground that we now reside in, City Hall.

And the book is Urban Renewal and the End of Black Culture in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Now up to this time only public housing had been under discussion and little attention, and this is by Mayor Mickey, had been paid to the possibility of urban redevelopment.

About this time, however, someone had the idea that not merely the worst slum houses back in Vinegar Hill should be torn down to be replaced elsewhere by good public housing, that the whole area should be converted into a fine, modern business area.

An extension of the downtown main street area which was blocked from moving in that direction by the existence of this slum.

I cannot conceive of anything that would give the downtown area more of a shot in the arm, emphasis mine, for the downtown area will be a great boon to the entire city.

Perhaps most of you do not realize that there is no residential area in the city of Charlottesville that pays enough taxes to pay its share of the total cost of running the city government.

It is the business areas, largely the downtown main street area, which pay the taxes that carry the lead for our government from a financial point of view as well as from a social and cultural point of view.

The substitution of a fine modern business section for the slum area now existing back in Vinegar Hill

Is that the three minutes?

Thank you.

I will speak again at the second meeting.

And this is the first of...

I'll just remind everyone, this is the first of two readings of this decision.

Hi, my name is Christina Reebling.

I live at 812 Rose Hill Drive.

And the proposal before you is one that stems from a flawed process that is presented by the applicant as a solution to a problem.

The original plan and construction proceeded with full knowledge of the zoning regulations and the purchase by the new owner transpired with full awareness of overbuilding of the property in question.

To those of us in the Rose Hill neighborhood, this zoning request is a solution looking for a problem.

The original building permit was for a single family home and the neighborhood would like to remain one of single family homes.

The Daily Press editorial concerning this zoning request concluded that the Planning Commission should deny it, which they did.

Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, it emphasized that the city needs to develop mechanisms to assist those of more modest means to maintain their homes, which to my mind is the best form of private investment.

Otherwise, our modest but historic homes are vulnerable to tear down and replacement with expensive structures.

I'd like to point out that the original new owners of the property in question are now responsible for the demolition of four modest single-family homes within a block radius.

Those homes were not the liability to the neighborhood as been suggested and they are now significant lost opportunities.

I know something important was lost because my husband and I, a different breed of private investor, purchased and renovated a hundred year old house that the applicant would have likely considered a tear down.

We live in a home rich with character and history.

Some of my neighbors were married there and family of Bishop Gohana passed away there.

That history is worth preserving.

I'm here because I've been welcomed into the friendliest neighborhood I've ever known.

I know more of my neighbors' names and have seen more of their living rooms than anywhere else I've lived.

Thank you.

Joy Johnson.

Good evening.

My name is Joy Johnson and I reside at 802A Hardy Drive.

How you doing?

I'm here tonight to support the Rose Hill neighborhood by asking you not to approve, to do exactly what the Planning Commission did by listening.

If that investor

wants to go ahead and wants to be neighborly, he should go back and work with the neighborhood to see what they can come up with.

One of my mentors was Professor Harris, William Harris, who taught at the School of Architecture.

And there's a couple of things he taught me then that just went in one ear and out the other.

But as I got involved with the Housing Authority and Redevelopment,

I understood what he was trying to tell me.

When you see new roads being built, and when you see parking lines, it means your neighborhood is going to change.

And the one way to kill a neighborhood is to take away the services.

We have a great planning department here.

When I went to Greensville, South Carolina, that planning

Greensville, South Carolina, that planning department worked with their neighborhood.

They became the advocate for the neighborhood.

They became the advocate not just for the developer, but they became the advocate for also the people who

lived in the neighborhood.

There was one incident where there was one lady who was living in a run-down neighborhood, but she had lived there for years and didn't want to move.

What they did was they built her a house on the other side of the street and said, we'll bring you a brand new house, and we'll just move your stuff over there so we can revitalize what's over here.

That is called working with a community.

I grew up at 800 Rose Hill Drive, the Shoppeforts.

went to school with their kids, went to school with Mr. Harris, not going to call you that nickname.

And that neighborhood was a neighborhood that was safe.

I feel like this city council needs to respect the Shackelfords who stood up.

Stand up against these Shackelfords, the women.

They're the matriarch of that community.

And I really, I really, really, and I know my time is running out, but when I was sitting back here, Mr. Spruzam, and I hear you talking, it sounded to me like blackmail.

And I really didn't appreciate that.

If you're going to invest in a community that we love, you have to watch how you say those things.

Because even, it may be taken out of context.

And that was one thing that I just didn't like today.

We have concluded the public hearing.

Are there any questions for any, is there any, first of all, anybody else who's signing up for public hearing?

I'd be happy to make one.

I would like to make a motion that council deny this rezoning and do what the Planning Commission suggested.

It's only the passage of an ordinance which is required for rezoning that requires two votes.

Do you have a simple motion to deny it?

To deny it?

And we can do it tonight?

If there's a motion and a second to deny, you're not proceeding with an ordinance.

And just since we are talking about voting, before I start explaining why I support this, let me just sort of respond to Rebecca Quinn's invoking the policy of not voting during public hearings.

We did have

members of council in the previous council who wanted that to be a policy.

We never officially adopted it as a policy.

We would sometimes wait on something that had really changed or when things had changed, but I think in this case I am personally ready to vote and I'll let the rest of council decide if they're ready to vote or not tonight.

I've been on council for six years and often we find when a development comes into a neighborhood, especially when the developer has not gone ahead and talked to the neighbors before beginning the project, that we get a lot of opposition.

Sometimes this council is in a position to approve it anyway because we see some sort of greater good, but generally that sort of opposition happens when the developer has not started

by discussing it with the neighborhood in the first place.

And I think in this case, Mr. Sperzen was here presenting this, but I think that the developer who particularly did not do that is the developer who is not in this room, the one who started this project.

And I have heard from neighbors, and I just wanted to say that I really appreciate your calling this out, that staff has been very helpful to the neighbors in this process, that it's been very frustrating because the

And so although it is something that no one in the neighborhood is pleased with, I think that within the law that the staff has done what they could to keep it where it is,

And that may be one reason why it was sold.

I think Mr. Spurson, though, has bought it knowing where we were on this process and has taken a gamble.

And that's something that a lot of entrepreneurs do.

Entrepreneurs are often risk takers.

Developers are often risk takers.

and I think in this case that gamble I don't think is going to pay off in this particular way.

We'll see what happens with the property.

My hope for this property is that a family will move in there.

We did a housing study that showed that the big gaps in our housing in our city are affordable housing like the four units that were torn down.

and High End Housing.

And those two are the areas that we actually need more housing.

So you do have a beautiful neighborhood and I hope that if a family does move into that house that you will welcome them as you have welcomed your other neighbors.

Well, for a couple years now, I've been talking about the character of neighborhoods, the character of our city, what brings people here, why do they stay here.

Charlottesville is special, and it's special knowing that it has a flawed history.

It is still special.

They have people that are very patient, that have lived their lives here trying to seek justice.

And some of them do stand up and say the Pledge of Allegiance, knowing they have not had justice.

And I really admire people like that.

So that's sort of a background.

But as you saw with the question I asked, this house was not built according to code.

That's a problem.

And at some point, somehow, and there's no penalty.

I don't believe there's a cash penalty when you do that.

I'm a builder.

If I build a deck or something too close to a property line,

I have to tear it out.

I have to take the hit and I wake up late at night wondering if I've done everything right.

Well this thing was not done right.

And not just the people in the neighborhood noticed it.

I noticed as I go down Rose Hill Drive or Preston Avenue, I'm thinking how in the world did that thing ever get here?

Somebody just yelled out, ugly.

I think it's a great architecturally designed building, but it's in the wrong place.

Out in the country somewhere, it would be beautiful, but not on Booker Street.

So I'm going to vote to uphold the Planning Commission.

That's the bottom line.

But I would like to find some way that we make sure this doesn't happen again.

And we're here for this particular parcel, so I think I'll leave it right there.

But I really do appreciate the neighbors coming out and telling the city your history.

And for those lovely ladies right in the middle of the crowd here, I just love you to death.

Ms. Galvin?

Now the way I always look at any issue that comes before me is to look at the law and to look at what that law tells us to do.

And I appreciate very much the very kind of passionate statements that have been made tonight

However, I do think the law is clearly on the side of the community that has spoken tonight.

And I want to go walk through that because I think it's very important to understand that we do have tools at our disposal that can ensure that we are fair and our deliberations, especially about issues of land use.

So back in April,

I got wind of this project or this issue and I began asking some questions of staff and as I asked, I was focused specifically on the rezoning.

Not the building that was there, but the rezoning going from an R13 to a B3.

As I probe further, that new use did not seem to provide any amenity for the residential neighborhood.

That residential neighborhood was already well served by businesses within walking distance.

It also wasn't clear what the community was going to need or what need that was going to be met by this upzoning.

The recommended upzoning, however, was not envisioned or shown.

for this parcel by the land use map that is in your 2013 comprehensive plan.

That's your vision plan.

It wasn't shown as a B3.

It was always shown as R1S.

So that led me to think, well, okay, so I am by profession an architect and an urban planner, and I went and I looked at some of the people that write about these things.

what is within the power of a community to handle the future of their communities.

So one person in particular, Michael Chandler, who teaches at Virginia Tech said, zoning represents a democratic method for setting the ground rules for how development can occur within the community.

It's important for you all to know what the zoning is.

This other person, an attorney, Robert Widner, who works in Denver, Colorado, said a zoning decision that merely provides for individual benefit without a relationship to public benefit cannot be legally supported.

That is a rezoning decision.

So then, more locally, this person, A. Milt Hurd, who has a practice in Leesburg, Virginia,

said the most important tool to implement that comprehensive plan is the zoning.

The zoning and the comp plan need to be in sync with each other.

So in light of the best practices that I read about, and in light of our own comprehensive plan, I couldn't see how we could accept the rezoning request.

It was not defended by the land use plan adopted by this city in 2013 and its comp plan.

Experts in the field written extensively about the importance of aligning our comp plan with zoning.

So any rezoning request has to meet the terms of that comprehensive plan.

Since this rezoning does not align with that comp plan, it is not defensible and it doesn't reflect good planning practice.

So two years ago, I remember being on this dais, a resigning request came to us on Lyman Street in Belmont.

That was in August 2014.

And the statement I made then applies now.

So this happens in all of different parts of the city.

But it's particularly a painful moment for you all tonight.

But I said then, all citizens want their laws to be predictable, stable, and not subject to the dictates or unique desires of any one individual or party.

As the Code of Virginia states, zoning ordinances shall be for the general purpose of promoting the health, safety, or general welfare of the public and to facilitate the creation of a convenient, attractive, and harmonious community.

And finally, according to our records, we should have completed our code and policy audit a year ago.

And by now, we would have been close to completing the revision of any zoning ordinance changes that we would have made.

So we're two and a half years behind acting on our own resolution to get all of our zoning more in sync with our vision.

So on that score, I hope we redouble our efforts and move forward to get our zoning much better in line with our vision.

So with that, I intend to vote to deny the request to rezone.

I'm going to vote to deny the amendment, the change as well.

I have a couple of personal things to say though about this that I just want to be sure that my own decision is characterized the right way.

I grew up going to majority minority public schools in Northern Virginia.

They were about 30% white, 30% Latino, 20% African American, and an assortment of the rest.

So I bring to very difficult questions about race and diversity in all areas of public policy a real interest in diversity.

And I think that these questions are very hard for all of us.

And in my kind of approach to making this decision, I just wanted to explain one of the points where I'm coming from is that racial diversity residentially should be a good thing.

I taught a class at the Batten School at UVA this spring called Race Policy in the Past and we read a book called American Apartheid where it went through the history of residential segregation going well back into the 18th and 19th centuries and what my students were pretty amazed to read that in the Reconstruction era before

Jim Crow really got started.

Most neighborhoods in America, and especially the South, were far more integrated than they were in the 20th century.

So blacks and whites were living side by side very happily.

Then what happened when residential segregation got started, de jure segregation, where they started saying blacks could only live here

then you started seeing far more segregation and it got way worse with redlining and obviously Jim Crow and redlining.

So that brings us to the present day.

The one thing I want to say in this discussion is I know that with all the good people who came here today and with this discussion going generations into the future, I know that we want

People of different races and ethnicities to feel comfortable in all neighborhoods in Charlottesville.

That is a good that we all feel good about.

And what I heard most powerfully in this discussion was this neighborhood must stay for single families.

For people to feel that's the character of the community that they have and that they're treasuring.

I just want to make sure that that's clear on this discussion, is that in Rose Hill, as in all neighborhoods in Charlottesville, that we are inviting all people in, and that we just know that in this one, this is a residential neighborhood.

And I feel like everyone here agrees with that point.

The other thing I would say is just about the private sector, tax-based discussion and development here.

This is tough business, figuring out how the tax base of the city works, development decisions.

I don't want to demonize anybody in the city, Mr. Spursam or anybody.

You have done hundreds of developments in the city and have been very local.

I think what I'm bringing to this is every developer when they make a decision, and Ms. Szakos brought this up, you go in with your eyes wide open and you must know what the assets are that you're acquiring and in this case there is very powerful and eloquent community sentiment about maintaining the zoning in this neighborhood for many good reasons.

I think smart growth is the goal and in this case we see it's not just I think that in the testimonial you gave it really was in isolation you said I'm just looking at this parcel I'm not thinking about the bigger community it's our job to think about the bigger community it's our job to think about the fabric of Charlottesville

For those reasons, I feel very good about voting against this, and I want to thank everybody for coming and sharing your opinions about the future of our community.

I think we're ready to take a vote.

So we have a motion.

We have to deny in a second.

Any further discussion?

All in favor?

That carries five to zero.

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The End

Dr. Michael F.

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Drums,

Coming back into session.

We are moving on to item six, which is a resolution of zoning text initiation automobile uses in the central city corridor.

We have 20 minutes on the agenda.

Hi, Missy Creasy, Assistant Director of Neighborhood Development Services, and we're coming forward with an initiation request to amend the City Zoning Ordinance to allow automobile uses in the city central

Central City Quarter Mixed-Use District.

The zoning matrix has a variety of uses that fall under automobile use, which can be authorized either as a group or individually.

We have it set up such, and that can include different things such as a gas station, parts and equipment sales, rental and leasing, repair servicing, businesses, sales, tire sales, and recapping.

The request presented to staff is the result of a High Street property owner's concern that such uses are currently prohibited by the zoning ordinance, specifically the possible leasing or sale of property fronting on High Street to a rental trailer company, which would be considered rental leasing automobile use.

However, the addition of this use to the zoning district in question would also allow that same use in other locations within the zoning district around the city and Central City Quarter exists right off of High Street and also on Preston Avenue.

In cursory beginning reviews of this, automobile uses are not a desired use within this corridor.

We have denoted just on our initial review a number of statements within our existing planning documents that denote the vision for this area.

and I won't read all of those but can go into detail as you all would like.

First of all, it's within our entrance quarter areas which is a pretty important area of the city.

In addition, in 2003 when the zoning ordinance was updated,

Automobile uses were specifically removed from these corridors.

There are a number of non-conforming uses within these areas and the intent is over time that those properties will change to be more in line with the vision that exists for those areas.

We've also got links in here to the comprehensive plan as well and within the comprehensive plan the small area process that we started within the comp plan had some statements in reference to the areas where central city corridor is located so we've provided those statements of

the vision of where these areas are planning to go.

So the another thing we wanted to point out is there are a number of areas where automobile uses are allowed within the city and that's the industrial corridor B3 in the industrial area and the highway in the urban corridor.

Just for reference in case anyone needs a visual I put the zoning map

back there just to kind of get an idea.

The IC District are the gray areas that you see up there.

B3 are red, like the true red.

The MIs are also the gray areas.

and Highway and Urban Quarter are along Barracks Road and Emmett Street up on 29th where one would assume that there would be the opportunity for those type of auto-oriented businesses.

So we are bringing this forward, but staff does not recommend initiating this consideration at this time as it's not in line with the community vision that's in place.

But if council does choose to initiate this review, then staff will review and research and within 100 days return

that back from the Planning Commission.

We will make any adjustments that we need to in order to make sure this occurs within the time frame.

Thank you.

I have a question about kind of process.

So obviously, if we wanted to initiate the zoning text amendment, we would pass this resolution or put it forward.

If we wanted to not, would we just not make a motion?

Correct.

You wouldn't take action.

Just a general type question.

Okay, and just as you were talking, so if Booker Street had been

rezoned to B3.

Not the request that had come forward to you all.

That request was for B3 with proffers and they had eliminated uses, most of the uses that were allowable in B3.

The main item that they were looking for there was multi-family housing.

So they had eliminated the uses outside of residential and a couple of

Okay, thank you.

Okay, any other questions?

Just move on.

Life goes on.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

No, correct.

Okay, thank you.

Call the standing pat.

Action.

OK. All right.

Thank you all.

So moving on to the next item, item number seven, resolution.

This is a BAR appeal, certificate of appropriateness filed by Dr. Hellman at 550 East Water Street, first of first reading.

We have 20 minutes on the agenda for this item.

And we're going to have Mary Joy speak first.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Mayor.

I will summarize the staff report and then the appellant will present.

If you have questions later, Tim Moore, who is the vice chair of the BAR, is present and also Robert Nichols, the project architect, is here if you have any questions and he's here on behalf of the project applicant, Andrew Baldwin.

This is an unusual appeal in that the appellant is an abutting property owner who resides on the opposite side of Water Street from the proposed project

and the appellant is not, as is more typical, the project applicant.

The basis of the appeal is that the BAR did not follow the correct process in approving a new mixed-use building at 550 East Water Street.

The property is located on the east end of Water Street.

It's currently used as a small parking lot for the C&O Restaurant, which is located diagonally opposite on Water Street.

and the surrounding uses.

It has the railroad tracks on the south side and then historic buildings on either side, formerly the King Warehouse on the west and the former CNO train station on the east.

Those are both currently used for office uses and then opposite the site is the Holsinger

mixed-use building.

It was built in 2005.

It is five stories.

It's 63 feet in height, and it's mixed-use.

The zoning in this area is Water Street corridor, and it allows a height of 70 feet by right.

The proposed use on the site is a mixed-use building similar to Holsinger in that it has residential units, it has commercial on the first floor, probably office, and one level of parking garage.

The proposed use is six stories and 70 feet in height, which is the maximum by right height allowed in Water Street corridor district.

The current application process began about a year ago in September.

The BAR held a preliminary discussion on this new building and in October of 2015 the BAR approved the massing.

The massing is not a separate certificate of appropriateness or COA, but what it means is that the BAR has given the applicant some sort of assurance that the massing is correct so they can go on and then prepare more detailed drawings.

In March of this year, the BAR approved the COA for the building design with the details to come back later.

In that same month, we received a FOIA request from the appellant asking for details about the height of the proposed building.

In April, the BAR approved the final details, so that means the applicant was done with the BAR process.

They could then go on and get their building permit, I mean their site plan approval, and then their building permit.

However, in May we received an appeal so that stopped the process.

In the appellant's words, the appeal does not concern the BAR's determination that the massing is appropriate nor that it will have a significant effect on the historic district neighborhood.

So that is significant.

Instead, it concerns whether the BAR is required to consider each factor required by the city code.

So it's a process appeal rather than an appeal

that the BAR approved the design.

Some of the specific complaints from the appellant are that the BAR failed to consider the ADC design guidelines, specifically those that reference, there are two of them, 200% and 130% of the building height, and I'll talk about those more in a second.

that they failed to make calculations of the heights of existing structures in that area and that we accepted an incomplete application with no 3D model and no view from the west.

So staff, particularly Lisa Robertson, who's also here to answer questions, prepared a response to each statement in the appeal.

Some of those main points were that the BAR did correctly

consider the guidelines and found that the design met the standards and guidelines and was compatible with the character of the historic district.

The BAR considered and discussed height questions at every one of those four meetings, including the relationship of the height of the proposed building with the existing buildings.

The 130% guideline that they refer to does not apply.

It refers to the street wall height, not the total height of the building.

And there is not a street wall requirement in the Water Street corridor zone.

The street wall, if there is a requirement, is the front part of the building on the street that goes up a certain height, and then there's a step back requirement, and then the building continues up.

So in this, it is staff opinion that that

130% guideline refers to the street wall, not the overall height of the building.

Further, the BAR is not required to make height calculations.

The guidelines are not regulations.

They're intended to provide a general design framework and to assist the BAR in making consistent decisions.

And finally, the application was complete.

They did include digital models and views from the west.

So staff recommendation is that the city council should determine

that the BAR acted appropriately in reviewing the application and the BAR decision to approve the COA was correctly made.

And finally, I just want to draw your attention to certain attachments.

I did include the BAR staff reports to show they include, everyone includes criteria standards and guidelines.

The BAR criteria, those are the two points.

The BAR must approve an application unless it finds that it does not meet the standards and guidelines

and that it is inconsistent with the character of the historic district.

So it is the B.A.R.

's job to make that determination and they make it on every application.

Also, there's a section that gives the B.A.R.

motions.

Every motion includes the language, having considered the standards and the city code including the design guidelines.

I wanted to refer to the two guidelines in question.

The first one says, and these are under new construction height and width,

attempt to keep the height and width of new buildings within a maximum of 200% of the prevailing height and width in the surrounding sub-area.

The surrounding sub-area in this case refers to both sides of Water Street and South Street where the large buildings are.

It doesn't refer to South Street where the individual homes are.

So if you think about that sub-area, most of the buildings I would say have a lot of mass.

So that guideline does apply, and the BAR did consider it and found that it was in compliance with it.

And then the one about 130%, it says, in commercial areas at street front, the height should be within 130% of the prevailing average of both sides of the block.

And then it talks about West Main Street specifically, and then it goes on to say, additional stories should be stepped back so the additional height is not readily visible from the street.

So that is clear right there that that guideline is pertaining to the street wall, not to the overall height of the building.

and then the final attachment is a diagram and that shows, I hope you had a chance to look at that, it shows the footprints and the relative heights of every building on East and West Water Street.

So you can look at that one diagram and get in just in a nutshell what's going on on that street and that was submitted by the architect at the very first meeting in September.

We also received elevation drawings of all four sides of the building

and prospective drawings that we consider digital models and views of the west side of the building and we received that in September of 2015.

So that's all I have.

Thank you.

Quick question.

The complaint was they did not get 3D models.

You said they got digital models.

We require 3D models, either physical or digital.

Right, yeah I understand that.

The digital 3D model shows the building in perspective.

Yeah.

So that's the whole point is to be able to tell what it will look like when it's built in the context of what's around it.

Any other questions?

Good evening.

I'm David Thomas.

I'm here on behalf of Dr. Hellman, the appellant in this matter.

Before I launch into my presentation, which hopefully you all knew was coming, I think there are probably three things that should be pointed out just because there are errors in the staff report, I think inadvertent.

This whole appeal is about massing, and I will quote here from paragraph 18 of the appeal.

The factors ignored by the board in this particular case concern the height and width, parentheses, what the BAR terms massing

closed parenthesis of the proposed building relative to its neighbors.

That's exactly what I'm here on, and it's in the appeal plain as day.

Second is whether or not the 130% only refers to the street wall.

You all, I'm sure, got counsel from Mr. Brown in your executive session, and you'll get more.

I would simply ask you to look and see if you can find the word street wall anywhere in the ADC guidelines we're referring to.

I'll spoil the ending for you.

They're not there.

It just says 130%.

I'm going to make it be exact so that I can not be accused of misquoting it.

In commercial areas at street front, the height should be within 130% of the prevailing average of both sides of the block.

And then the picture that is next to it shows buildings with no specific street wall or step backs.

They're simply three-story buildings right up on the street.

And the third point is to Mr. Fenwick's question.

We have very different definitions of what a 3D model is.

As detailed as it may be, a flat drawing is not a 3D model.

It simply isn't.

It's a picture.

Having taken my daughter to a 3D movie, I'm aware of the difference.

One gives me a headache and one does not.

And I'll get to why that makes a difference with respect to this actual appeal.

Because this isn't just an academic concern.

I'm not up here just to spend some time

and to waste your all's time, city code section 34-276 requires, and I'll quote, the following features and factors shall be considered in determining the appropriateness, and then skipping down to eight because that's the one we're really talking about, any applicable provisions of the city's design guidelines.

So shall be considered.

And 288, sub paragraph six, which is referred to

States develop and recommend to the city council for its approval design guidelines for the city's architectural design control districts, and then it calls them design guidelines.

Now, the mayor, Mr. Brown, and I are the only ones who would waste our time reading stuff like this on a daily basis, but any one of the three of us can tell you that when the code section uses the phrase, shall consider, it is mandatory and not permissive.

You do not get, as a city agency, as an individual, as a regulatory body, you do not get to consider some and not others.

When the code that this council or its predecessor passed says, shall consider, it's not optional.

You must consider.

Now, you can reject it, you can say it doesn't matter, but you have to at least hear it out.

You have to consider it.

in making your decision.

And I have a number of sites I'll leave with Mr. Brown, 5 Virginia Pellet, the Court of Appeals in the Gibson case says that when a statute requires that a decision maker, quote, shall consider the following, it, quote, must consider all of the factors enumerated.

and the court goes on to explain lest you think that simply putting in the resolution or the ordinance approving we can just say well we considered all of the relevant factors and having done so we approve.

Court of Appeals says consideration entails more than a recitation in the record or decree that all factors have been considered.

There has to be actual substantive conversation in this case of whether or not this building is within 200%

of the prevailing average in the sub area.

And I promise you that phrase appears nowhere in the record except coming out of my mouth on two occasions.

I'm the only one talking about it in either meeting.

And that was reaffirmed 41 Virginia appellate 806 and 46 Virginia appellate 309.

And all of these cases are the Virginia Court of Appeals following the Virginia Supreme Court when the court struck down a DEQ permit issued to a solid waste facilities management.

The court held that the reason the permit was invalid was that the code, that the determinations required by the code, quote, must appear on the face of the agency record with the degree of particularity that demonstrates a substantive consideration of the statutory factors, a conclusional recitation, dot, dot, dot.

is insufficient and the determination could not be implied from the department's actions or approval.

So it's not enough to just say we considered it.

It's not enough to put it in your staff report.

You have to actually make a substantive determination.

And so what the question before this city council here tonight is whether or not the BAR actually substantively considered, actually attempted to keep the height and width of new buildings within a maximum of 200% of the prevailing height and width in the surrounding sub area.

And it didn't, because the city staff cannot tell you what the sub area is or what the prevailing height and width are.

Even today, in the response that you got to this appeal, city staff still cannot define for you sub area or prevailing height and width.

And cutting to the chase, and I give staff credit for this, they concede that.

At some point, I believe it's in response to paragraph 24, they tell you that actually we've never done those calculations.

We've never done them.

We don't have them.

We don't have that information.

We haven't done them.

and they fall back on the conclusory recitation in the approving resolution and I'll read it to you.

Quote, having considered the standards set forth within the city code, including the city design guidelines for new construction and additions, that's what's in the order.

That's exactly the type of conclusory recitation that the court has said is not enough.

It's not enough.

But Mr. Thomas, you say, as I have a conversation with myself, the staff report to the BAR does include a section on the heights of certain buildings.

So perhaps it's just the case that each individual BAR member saw the staff report, saw the heights of the six buildings recited in the staff report, and came to an individual determination that it was within or that it didn't need to be within 200% of the prevailing sub-area.

and they just didn't ever talk about it.

They all came to the conclusion independently but they didn't feel a need to talk about it or write about it or ever discuss it publicly.

And I will tell you that it is true that it does recite to that and I think there may be a slide show, is that, excellent.

and what you'll see is this is what's in the staff report and I'll move very quickly using my time.

There are six buildings and all of them are taller or as tall as the proposed construction.

What I hope you'll see from this is that two details should jump out.

Staff had to go all the way over onto Westwater Street to find two of these buildings, at least two of these buildings, and they managed to select the six tallest buildings in south of downtown, two of which haven't even actually been built yet technically.

Here's a short list of the buildings omitted from the staff report and what the address hopefully gives away is they are next to or in proximity to 550 East Water Street and significantly they are two and three story buildings.

These are the buildings on all five cardinal sides, west, northwest, north, northeast and east of the proposed development.

This is what we're talking about.

This is a view looking south over the Holsinger and that empty area in front of the trees is where the building is going to be put in.

And if you remember back to the staff report, the only buildings they selected were the Holsinger building in front and the parking garage on the edge.

The other four buildings are all within a block of each other.

They're just five blocks to the west and completely out of this picture.

So if you actually put together an honest list of the buildings that are next to the proposed development site, here's what it looks like.

And the address is given away.

And what you see here is that the prevailing height of the six buildings closest to the proposed site is 2.67 stories.

I had to do the math twice and get my paralegal to check it, so I'm pretty confident that's right.

And the proposed building is six.

It's not within 200.

It's frankly not even all that close.

Now here's why that's not an academic concern, because with respect, there was a single west view that did everything it could not to show the extent to which this building would loom over the King Building.

Here's a picture taken this afternoon, and the outline in red is to scale the size and massing of the proposed building, and what you should notice is that it looms.

It looms over the skyline, and this is the view you get driving towards the Belmont Bridge from the proposed Market Plaza

from Live Arts and from everything that's located in South Downtown.

This is what it's going to look like from the West.

This is not an academic concern.

I'm going to jump right ahead to this question of, well, maybe they took it into account anyway, even though they don't know the sub-area, they don't know the prevailing height and width, with either a simile or a metaphor, and Google wouldn't tell me which one was which.

So I'm going to go with metaphor in the hopes that that's right.

My wife and I have two small children.

and sometimes we get a babysitter and we go out to dinner.

And when we do that, we tell the babysitter what time to put them to bed.

Well, imagine if I said to her, I want you to put them to bed, try and put them to bed within 30 minutes of their regular bedtime.

But I don't tell her what their regular bedtime is, I don't tell her what times they've gone to bed in the past and she doesn't ask.

The one thing I know for sure is regardless of what time she puts them to bed, she won't have tried to put them to bed within 30 minutes of their regular bedtime because she doesn't know what it is.

and to stretch it as far as I can, imagine that what she asks me is the six latest times they've ever gone to bed and she uses that as a comparison for what time they should go to bed.

Well, that's what the staff report does.

It cherry-picks the six tallest buildings in all of south downtown and then says, oh, it's really close to these, so it was probably fine.

While I understand the staff's position it doesn't maintain, it's really not that hard to get.

In one afternoon, my paralegal pulled the heights of the 35 closest buildings, four hours, not city staff.

Thank you.

Okay.

Questions?

But I just have a question.

Given your argument, the building that your client lives in could not have been built.

The Holzinger is in the sub area.

It is actually one story shorter and I believe either seven or eight feet shorter.

I take your point, I don't know the answer to that question.

I was also still in law school when it got built so I can't tell you the deliberation at the time and I can't tell you if the BAR looked at it because here's the thing, it doesn't say has to, it says attempt to keep.

Yes, and I'm not trying to be flip.

I would agree the guidelines are guidelines.

No, but it's a very important point in terms of enforcement.

Yes, ma'am.

And that's why I don't think they're mandatory.

I can't come up here and say it's more than 200 percent.

Yes, but but the one difference I would say in the guidelines is that the city code makes consideration mandatory.

Everyone OK with five more minutes for this agenda item?

And I appreciate the, I assume that the correction is valid that at one point it said that the issue was not about massing and it is about massing but other than that I think I agree.

I actually had that same reaction as I was looking at the buildings that you chose to show as the neighbors

that indeed the Holstinger Building would not have been allowed to have been built if that were the way that the BAR had considered it then.

His point in regards to the question and what you asked, though, it didn't say, the guidelines didn't say that he asked to, it just says that they have to attempt to.

It sounded like, Mr. Bellamy, is that a question to our staff about that?

Yeah.

Or the BAR, excuse me.

I think the BER was very aware of the guidelines, particularly that one, and I think they discussed height and considered it, and I believe that

They considered what the existing zoning is because they have to.

And if you look at the whole sub area, which I did define, it's defined in the guidelines, there's a map of it in the guidelines.

If you look at that whole sub area, and you know, I don't think it's necessarily important to be able to look at

I think in terms of mathematical calculations, if you're familiar with a street or an area, you could probably describe it right here.

You could probably describe Water Street.

You're aware of the heights there.

It was I think there might have been one that there was a new

He gave us 502.

I have the votes here.

In March it was 502.

Mr. Graves recused himself.

He must have had a relationship with the applicant.

And Mr. Ballou

Okay, thank you.

I think we should do, let's do another 10 minutes after we make a motion.

Is that okay?

Okay.

Anybody have a, are you ready to make a motion?

So what's the form?

You have to either sustain or deny the appeal.

If you uphold the appeal, you're overturning the BAR's decision.

If you deny the, or if you sustain the appeal, you're overturning it.

So that's the, the motion is to uphold the, the BAR decision.

Okay.

Is there a second?

Okay.

I do have some comments as the one that initiated the motion.

I do understand, however, or appreciate some of the frustration with the inherent flexibility, if you will, of guidelines.

and there were phrases and words that I admit in particular with the characterization of the Water South Street sub area like quirky.

It would be great to have those words defined.

Prevailing average needs to be defined.

However, just overall guidelines are inherently discretionary and they are more subjective.

than a zoning ordinance.

And I and I'm hearing the argument that you've made is actually an argument to bake in more certainty, more precision of a form oriented nature into our zoning ordinance.

The way you do that is with the form based code.

It is not done with a design guideline and board of architectural review regimen.

So given our regimen for regulation,

I believe proper process was followed.

And again, as I said earlier, the applicant's building, the appellant's building seems to be the same scale.

I get confused between the applicant and the appellant.

The applicant of this new project

seems to have created a building of the same scale as the Holzinger itself, which is across the street.

So that is contextual.

Again, I just want to point that I understand that there was a desire for more precision.

It's just not the way this whole regulatory framework is set up.

And the process was, as far as I could tell, was followed.

Well the way I see it is zoning is for the citizens to control and manage development and that to me is pretty straightforward.

The zoning is for the people that are out in front of me right here.

And when you read, when we read the zoning documents it should be the plain meaning of the English language and we shouldn't have to go into nooks and crannies to try to figure out what something means.

So

My normal default position is to defer to the BAR or the Planning Commission, but in this case I'm going to support this appeal.

And what I read is the board, I might have different page numbers than somebody else, but this is page number two, legal background.

In determining whether to grant certificate of appropriateness, the COA,

Charlottesville City Code states that the Board of Architectural Review must consider at least three factors.

A, whether the proposal meets the specific standards set forth within the city codes.

This probably does.

B, whether the proposal meets the specific standards set forth within the applicable provisions of the design guidelines established by the boards, which they may or may not have.

but C is whether the proposal is compatible with the historic, cultural, or architectural character of the district in which the property is located.

And to my eye, on this part of West Main Street, I'm sorry, Water Street, this is out of scale.

And just because a building that's been there, Holstinger, I think maybe for 10 years, is also

looks out of scale.

We're not here to discuss the Holzinger building.

It kind of reminds me of the discussion we had on West Main Street where everybody saw the flats go up and there were three more to follow very quickly.

And one of the developers said, well, this may look out of place and all that, but just wait.

Once we get the other three or four up, it'll look pretty good.

This part of Charlottesville and this part of Water Street is very special.

It's got the old train station.

It's got the C&O restaurant.

It really has a different feel from 60, 70, 80 yards west.

It's like a little enclave almost.

So I'm going to support, and I think that's it.

Ms. Szakos?

No, I'm good.

OK, so I have to begin by saying that Mr. Thomas was a classmate of mine around the same year at UVA Law School.

And you see a very capable UVA Law-trained advocate here, a lot of passion and facts at his disposal.

In general, I'm inclined to defer to the BAR also as a matter of policy.

Those are folks who pour an immense amount of care about the historic quality of Charlottesville and their decisions, and I know that individually and collectively that is what they bring.

So that's where I'm starting from as a premise.

I have a couple of times voted to overrule them.

In this case, I actually see a flip side of the kind of approach here by the appellant, which is I totally get bringing in case law and these standards in circuit courts and so on, but I am concerned that if there's a span of

where we're making a reasonable decision that is legal across any part of the spectrum, I'm very concerned about an unintended consequence of our decision-making being to require stacks of paperwork and kind of defensive regulatory rulemaking by bodies like the BAR.

I would be very concerned.

The people who serve on these bodies already are doing

unbelievable amounts of work as volunteers and I'm worried about ushering a new era where they would be doing that in such a way that they're defensive about their adherence to standards and that we're requiring whole new reams of provability by them and so I am worried about that and to the extent I feel like we can make a decision

that is squarely within our authority, which I think we can because the materials I've reviewed and the advice we've gotten, I think that they did adhere to their mandate and I think that they did operate within the realm of reason in their decision making and it was a very solid decision by the BAR.

Mr. Mayor, may I make one more comment?

And it's related to what Mr. Fenwick is bringing up, because to my ear, Mr. Fenwick, I'm thinking that you're trying to use the BAR to change zoning.

The building heights are established by zoning.