City Council Meeting   10/17/2016

Good evening, everyone.

Welcome to Charlottesville City Council.

Call this meeting to order.

Pledge of Allegiance and I'm very pleased to announce that we have the Cub Scouts here who are working on their Build a Better World badge and are interested in how their community works and the boys will be moving on to Boy Scouts next year, big step, and they are now ready to be part of making Charlottesville an even better place to live and they are going to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance tonight.

Very good, thank you.

What's the troop number?

36.

Pack number 36.

Ms. Szakos?

Here.

Ms. Galvin?

We have several awards.

We go through from the order of who has them.

Great.

Well, I have a couple of water conservation program awards.

The City of Charlottesville recently received both regional and national recognition from two organizations for excellence in promoting water conservation in the community.

The Virginia Section of the American Water Works Association recognized the City of Charlottesville with a 2016 Public Information Award.

This award recognizes the program's dedication to communicating with the community on resources, tips, programs, and events through the use of social media, including Facebook and Twitter.

That's what this one looks like.

And following that award, this award, the city of Shostel was recognized on October 6th as a 2016 WaterSense partner of the year by the US Environmental Protection Agency, EPA.

This award is given to organizations that made a difference every day through water efficiency innovation and WaterSense promotion in the past year.

More than 1,700 utilities, manufacturers, retailers, builders, and organizations partner with WaterSense.

However, only a select few are recognized for their significant program contributions.

So you can find out more about these awards at www.scholzeville.org slash water.

So who is going to be accepting the Virginia section of the American Water Works Association Award?

You got a

I'm just really excited that the community is so, you know, really great about trying to save water and they're really progressive about, you know, wanting to do more and always asking how to do more and how to save more water, energy, and all that.

And so it's been really excited to work with Charlottesville because they're always willing to save water.

And so we're excited to see you find new ways to do so.

Thank you for all your work.

All right.

Well, to continue with the environmental theme, I was at the Virginia Municipal League meeting this past week.

In fact, went to Virginia Beach as the hurricane was leaving and saw flooding.

It was all quite dramatic.

But in the meantime, Charlottesville won two awards at the Virginia Municipal League meeting.

The first was the city of Charlottesville has again been certified at the platinum level by the Virginia Municipal League in the 2016 Virginia Go Green Challenge.

The award was presented to the city at the conference last week.

The challenge, which was run annually since 2008, is a friendly competition encouraging local governments and school divisions to implement environmental policies and practical actions that reduce energy usage and promote sustainability.

After winning first place in its size category for the first year of the competition, the city has achieved the platinum designation seven times.

Thank you.

And the other thing that we got at the meeting was for our healthy eating, active living initiatives.

On June 3, 2013, the City of Charlottesville City Council adopted a resolution supporting a number of HEAL, healthy eating, active living, initiatives and committed the city to pursue those goals.

Subsequently, the city's strategic plan was adopted, and it includes specific goals and objectives.

Goal two is to be a safe, equitable, thriving, and beautiful community, and objectives under this goal include consider health in all policies and programs, provide reliable and high quality infrastructure, and engage in robust and context-sensitive urban planning.

At the recent Virginia Municipal League Conference, the city was presented with the highest level of heel achievement a city can receive.

the platinum designation from the Institute for Public Health Innovation.

Charlottesville is one of only two Virginia municipalities to have reached the platinum level.

The other was Arlington.

This designation is the result of many staff in multiple departments.

We want to congratulate our city manager and our staff for a job well done and continue to make Charlottesville a great place.

And I will say that I actually introduced the resolution in 2013

But one of the things that we really got credit for in getting this platinum thing, there's of course the bronze and silver and gold levels, and you get those for doing programs, a bunch of programs, but you get the platinum one only when health and

Kind of healthy living, so walkable sidewalks, routes to school, the way that we design our, the stairways in our buildings so that they're inviting more than the elevators.

That's it for awards, recognitions?

And then the announcement is about the AIA award.

Keep going.

Good evening everyone.

All these people in here and y'all look like y'all don't want to talk.

So, very excited to announce last month the City of Charlottesville was recognized by the International City-County Management Association, ICMA, for its innovative job-driven workforce development training program.

Go Driver, which trains city residents to become bus drivers for Charlottesville area transit, also known as CAT.

During ICMA's 102nd annual conference in Kansas City, the city was presented with the prestigious Strategic Leadership and Governance Award, which recognizes successful government organizations' culture and strategic direction.

Since the Go Driver program was piloted in October 2014, over 30 city residents have successfully completed training and become employed in commercial driving jobs paying a self-sufficient wage.

The downtown job center will begin recruiting for the next Go Driver cohort in early 2017.

Other awards won this past year for the Go Driver training program include

the Virginia Economic Developers Association Community Economic Development Award, say that five times, the Alliance for Innovation Outstanding Achievement in Local Government Innovation Award, the Charlottesville Society for Human Resource Management Hooray Human Resource Excellence Award, who named that?

In any event, very proud of our Workforce Development Center and our Go Driver program.

Let's give them a round of applause, please.

You can all come on up.

Thank you all so much.

Well, thank you.

I'm pleased to accept this on behalf of the Office of Economic Development, but this is truly a team effort between our agency and the CAT, Charlottesville Area Transit as well.

Our colleagues that accepted the award for environmental stewardship are excited about saving water.

We get excited about creating jobs and particularly connecting people to those jobs.

Again, we thank you for recognizing the effort from Economic Development and CAT

for providing a service that has been actually a service for us as well.

These employees have come eager to work, and we have been eager to put them to work.

Thank you.

This will be very brief, but it's just an acknowledgement again of a major city effort

by another organization in the community.

The Strategic Investment Area plan for the city of Charlottesville has won a merit award from the American Institute of Architects, the Central Virginia's Design Awards for Excellence.

So that is a major honor.

It's in my field of endeavor as an architect, but I think it is a tribute to the whole city that the plan is also a good design.

It represents good design.

and it'll be at the old Metropolitan Hall, Wednesday, October 19, 530, 830, but that's the only other award I have.

Right.

Okay, now ready.

Well, let me do sort of a semi-acknowledgement, actually.

Is anybody going to recognize the band, CHS band?

Let me start with that then because they have a very special achievement and I'm going to ask you to come up please and say a few words because if I say it I'm going to get something wrong because you all made an effort to dress up for one thing and we'll need the names

OK. First of all, thank you for inviting me to be here tonight and speak with you all.

Can you introduce yourself?

My name is Jason Hackworth.

I'm the director of bands at Charlottesville High School.

And so this past September, we were approached by the Lord Mayor of London and invited to march in the Lord Mayor of London's New Year's Day Parade this coming 2017-2018 New Year's Day.

And they've invited the marching band to come into this.

This parade is the largest parade in the world for the New Year's Day parade.

has about half a million people on the streets of London, about 280 million television viewers from across the world.

So you can actually watch the parade here in Charlottesville.

And so we're just we're happy to be invited to that and just happy that you guys invited us to come and speak about that tonight.

You all play special requests?

Andrew's sisters or something.

And one of you does look awfully familiar.

So congratulations.

That's a signature honor that the band got.

And I'm going to try to keep with great when the young people show up here, whether it's grade school, high school, UVA, whatever.

So I'm gonna try to keep these groups separate.

The youngsters who led the Pledge of Allegiance,

That's PAC 36.

We have another visitor from Troop 127.

And you're probably getting a merit badge for this or something.

OK. We have, of course, a band.

We have other students from CHS government attending.

So I want your teacher to know that they're actually here.

And Robbie Savage is chaperoning a group from Batten School, Leadership and Public Policy.

A class that focuses on the effect climate change has on water policy.

And there's another group from Batten who is now doing interviews with both the council and the Albemarle Board of Supervisors on how government works.

Did I miss, are there any other school groups that I missed here?

Well look, congratulations on what you do and thanks for showing up.

It's really important to see how the government works.

because I think you're going to find out.

Okay, announcements, Java Medicare open enrollment.

Java Jefferson area board for aging is hosting Medicare open enrollment October 15th to December 7th.

This is the only time you can change your Medicare prescription plan for 2017.

This is a free service offered Monday through Friday at the Java Hillsdale office

by appointment only.

And a mobile unit schedule is also available for Albemarle, Fluvanna, Green, Louisa, and Nelson.

So please call 434-817-5248 or go to Google and Google J-A-B-A, Charlottesville.

Sometimes people don't take notes here.

I don't blame them.

The efficiency study that is currently going on

On October 18th and 19th, which is tomorrow and Wednesday, the city will engage the community in two community roundtables regarding its efficiency study.

The purpose of these meetings will be to solicit community input for the city's efficiency study, to learn what city operations the community appreciates, and to identify opportunities for improved efficiency in city services.

So tomorrow, October 18th,

from 730 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Carver Recreation Center.

It's an informal roundtable type thing, so it's not like this at all.

And light refreshments will be served.

And Wednesday, October 19th, from 1130 to 1 p.m. at the Carver Recreation Center.

And at that one, lunch will be made available.

So please come out.

It's your opportunity to tell the efficiency experts how we can make the city run better.

and we hope that anyone who is able or willing to participate in one of these focus groups on this very important topic will attend.

The Charlottesville Time Bank Repair Cafe.

The Charlottesville Time Bank is holding Charlottesville's third Repair Cafe on Saturday, October 22nd from 12 noon to 4 p.m. at ICS Art Park.

Volunteer fixers or handymen or handywomen

will be on hand to fix broken items free of charge for anyone who comes to this event.

For anybody who doesn't know what a repair cafe is, it passes on valuable skills and builds community by engaging residents one on one to help each other.

Each visitor can bring up to three items for repair, including small appliances, clothing, bikes, jewelry, toys, and other household items.

Popular items include vacuum cleaners, fans, sweaters, costume jewelry, broken dishes, and small pieces of furniture.

Please do not bring microwave ovens, TVs, or lawn equipment.

The Charlottesville Time Bank Repair Cafe is made possible by a grant from BamaWorks Foundation and through the support of many local organizations and businesses and hundreds of volunteer hours.

The Charlottesville Time Bank is a reciprocal service exchange organization whose members earn and exchange time dollars by helping one another with no money involved.

And if you want further information, you once again can Google Charlottesville Time Bank Repair Cafe or go to www.seavilletimebank.com.

And the last one would be the Blue Ribbon Commission.

This is, we're getting to the end on this commission.

We have three more meetings including this one.

So please come out, give your input, I guarantee you will learn something

about the true history of Charlottesville and Central Virginia, if not across the country.

And I think that does it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I have a couple more announcements.

This month is Energy Action Month.

So October is Energy Action Month.

We are still participating in the Georgetown University Energy Prize Competition, and your involvement is important.

Take advantage of this month to pick three simple actions to improve your home's energy performance and lower your monthly utility bills.

Visit energizecville.org for tips and resources.

Again, that's visit energizecville.org.

Another announcement that I'm very proud to announce, the ISA Gold Leaf Award at their annual meeting in Morgantown, West Virginia, the mid-Atlantic chapter of the International Society of Arboriculture.

That's a new word you don't hear every day.

We'll have the pleasure and honor to present the ISA Gold Leaf Award for Outstanding Landscaping Beautification Activities to the Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards, also known as CATS, with Chris Jensen receiving the award as their representative.

Tonight, we present the ISA Gold Leaf Award to CATS Chairperson Rosanne Simon in the presence of others involved in this project, the International Society of our Bureau of Culture, Gold Leaf

Awards are given by local chapters of the ISA to recognize worthwhile Arbor Day or landscape beautification projects within the chapters' areas.

As a part of a larger effort to increase the tree canopy in the Charlottesville area, the project is underway to plant trees in the median of Route 20 between the city limits and Route 53, called the Monticello Gateway.

The Charlottesville area tree stewards, with the help of the city's tree commission members, have already completed the first phase

of this overall project.

the purchasing and planting of 10 swamp oaks near the city limit at Moore's Creek.

This fall, a second large planting, roughly 70 trees, will take place to beautify a major quarter of travel for local residents and tourists.

This project involves many partners brought together through extensive efforts by Dorothy Smith, CAT's representative on the Charlottesville Tree Commission, Chris Jensen, Charlottesville Park and Trail Planner, and CAT's member Ann Paul Josey, chair of the Charlottesville Tree Commission.

So with that being said, is there anyone here?

from CATS.

Let's give her a round of applause please.

Yes, I will.

My name is Ineke Dickman.

I am a representative of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the International Society of Arboriculture and also a member of the Charlottesville Tree Commission.

and as such I have the great pleasure and honor of giving the award for this wonderful project that is definitely a cooperative effort between CATS, Charlottesville Tree Commission, many, many other partners.

tonight to Roseanne Simon.

Unfortunately, I would have liked to put many, many more names on this award, but I could only put one name on it.

And so that's why it's going to the Charlottesville area.

Tree Stewarts and not to everybody else involved in the project.

The first phase of the project has been completed and with the help of the Ballyshannon Fund and also Brimo Trees who donated money to the Charlottesville Tree Stewarts.

The second phase will actually be underway coming November 5th and 19th and we will need many, many, many volunteers to come out and help plant and it's definitely been a wonderful cooperative effort between everybody.

So I had the great pleasure of handing you the award.

It's a great honor.

Thank you.

I'm Roseanne Simmel.

My name looks like Sun.

We really would love your help.

November 5th, it is going to be a very good day.

Specialists, the tree stewards, they will help you plant.

So bring a shovel.

You don't have to spend long, but do come.

We'd love to have you.

I want to applaud Chris Ginsick, who was so instrumental in this, and Paul Josie.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

Miss Bellamy, any others?

No, sir.

OK.

I have one more.

One more.

Today was the deadline to register to vote in Virginia or to update your registration address in time for the November 8th election.

The applications were supposed to be received in the voter registration office by five o'clock or postmarked by today.

So those deadlines have passed.

But if you already have a Virginia driver's license or DMV issued ID, or if you are only updating your voter registration information rather than registering for the first time,

You may be able to register online tonight at vote.virginia.gov.

The Virginia Department of Elections reported this afternoon that they were working on changes to handle the, quote, unprecedented activity levels that their website experienced today, so that online registration would be available tonight.

Apparently, it overloaded the system.

These changes will temporarily disable the ability for the voter to look at their existing voter record or to conduct other business on the site so that only registrations will be allowed.

Elect advises, I'm not sure who elect is, but I think that means the State Board of Elections, advises that if someone can't get their form to submit on vote.virginia.gov, they should wait a few minutes and try again.

The registration deadline is now 11 59 tonight, so don't wait until too late.

After tonight's deadline, late registration will only be available to absent active duty and recently discharged uniformed service voters and their family members and returning overseas voters.

Contact the Voter Registrar's Office if you have any questions at 970-3250.

And so I have a couple of other very short announcements.

One is that the Charlottesville MPO, which is the Metropolitan Planning Organization,

It's the regional transportation planning body of the city and the county together, the urban areas.

We'll be meeting with the Augusta Stanton MPO over the mountain.

We've realized that we have a lot of things to talk about together.

The commute that a lot of people make between Stanton and Waynesboro and Augusta County to Charlottesville to work, the I-65 corridor.

And so we met together last year and found it very helpful.

So we're doing it again this time.

October 26th at 11 a.m.

It's a public meeting, so if anyone wants to come, you can go on to the TJPDC website to find out the location.

On October 28th, on Friday, there will be Howl-o-ween, when the dogs of Charlottesville will come out and troll for tricks and treats.

They will be on the downtown mall.

There will be a lot of local businesses that will have treats for them as they go by.

It starts at 6 p.m. My dog Jacob and I have judged it for many years and enjoy it very much.

There's a costume contest at the end.

Only dogs who enjoy their costumes should apply.

And so that is on the Friday the 28th.

The last one that I have is that we actually in the agenda tonight at the little blurb at the top of the agenda that talks about public comments.

It's actually the old version from before we changed the comment policy at our last

Two very quick announcements and it concerns the local energy alliance program commonly referred to as LEAP.

So first hum energy checkup provided by LEAP that is going to be ending December 24, 2016.

So with LEAP's low-cost walk-through visit, you'll get an evaluation of your home's energy efficiency, the advice of one of LEAP's certified residential building analysts, and installation of energy-efficient products such as CFL and LED light bulbs, smart power strips, pipe insulation, water-saving shower heads and faucet aerators, plus a customized list of recommendations for additional energy-saving improvements for your home.

It's very important cost savings.

The second announcement with regards to LEAP, the Home Energy Audit.

LEAP offers a comprehensive home energy audit, which covers every square inch of your home, wall to wall, room by room, including crawl space, attic and garage.

It utilizes the blower door test and can sometimes involve a thermographic or infrared inspection.

and includes vital health and safety components like testing for carbon monoxide and gas leaks and checking for mold and mildew.

Very important health considerations.

Overall, the comprehensive energy assessment is a very personal tailored service with the end goal to make your home a more affordable and livable and healthy space.

So for more information, please contact Leslie Crowther IV, Associate Director of the Local Energy Alliance Program, LEAP.

Her cell phone number is 434.

2 4 2 7 0 6 5.

That's 4 3 4 2 4 2 7 0 6 5.

That's it.

Appointments of boards and commissions.

I'd like to make a motion for the following appointments.

Matthew Slatz for the CDBG task force.

Is there, that's a motion, is there a second?

Any discussion?

Questions?

All in favor?

There's five to zero.

Council meeting.

Mr. Mayor, couple responses from the October 4th meeting.

Several speakers brought up the issue of using cameras to help the city increase

This will require receiving authority from the General Assembly.

We met last week with Delegate Toscano and Senator Deeds to discuss our legislative packet for the next session of the General Assembly.

And the idea will come to City Council for review and consideration in November as part of our legislative packet.

If it is passed, we will officially seek sponsorship from our local representatives for this session coming up in January.

Ms. Rebecca Quinn raised questions about concerns she had about restaurants and trash in downtown.

She had concerns about how the trash receptacles and trash stickers are being used.

Yes, we did actually, I'm sorry that was actually number three on my list.

We did follow up with her.

There are no violations currently at that site right now.

and she told as much to our inspectors when we followed up on that Monday, or excuse me, after the meeting.

So currently no violations that are taking place there right now.

In essence would be a civil case that they have to take up.

Guidelines for public comment, so 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, as there is one tonight, please wait to speak on that matter until the report for that item has been presented and the public hearing has been opened.

Each speaker has three minutes to speak and in this, three minutes when it's green and I think 15 or 30 seconds when it's yellow and when it's red, you're out of time.

and a chime will tone.

Please give your, this was about the brownies here which Ms. Szakos is responsible for.

Please give your name and address before beginning your remarks.

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

Please refrain from using obscenities.

There are a series of other requirements or guidelines that are in the City Council meeting procedures which are on our website.

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

Thank you Mr. Mayor, Mr. Vice Mayor, Councillors.

First I'd like to thank both the Mayor and Ms. Szakos for coming to the Virginia Conservation Network's event.

We were one of the proud sponsors of having our state conservation organization come here to Charlottesville and if they could give an award they would because it's a great place to have our environmental neighbors come and visit and see how Charlottesville's run.

I want to talk to you about two things.

I'm Robbie Savage.

I'm the Executive Director of the Rivanna Conservation Alliance.

And I want to talk to you a little bit about trash and dirt and the mess that we make in our community.

And I want to thank Bob for, um, Councilor Fenwick for mentioning the time bank and the repairs because if more people were repairing, less of their stuff would end up in our river.

Specifically, Rivanna Conservation has been working with Parks and Rec for a number of years and one of our focuses in the city has been Corey Park and the amount of trash that we took out of that area was unbelievable and I didn't think it could get a lot worse until we moved a little further downstream to the area by Route 64 and Route 20.

In the last six months, we've done more than six cleanups in that area and we've had more than three tons of trash.

And it seems that no matter how hard we work, we come back several weeks later and there's more trash.

We do have some folks that live in that area in various camps, but I think that the majority of the issue is coming from folks who don't want to take their trash and their goods and their home and yard waste

to the recycle center and they just back their trucks up to the river and dump it in Moore's Creek.

It's wonderful to have so many young people.

For example, Batten Bill's helped us with new stairs at Riverview Park, the law school and APO.

Chris and I spend a lot of weekends together.

I organize and lead the trash cleanup, and then Chris comes with a truck and picks it all up.

And so your city employees working on their weekends for you.

So I would just like to make number one a plea that this is the gateway to our community, 64 and Route 20.

It's right there as people come into our community at Morris Creek.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Amy Berry.

I am the Program Manager of Community Engagement with Region 10 Community Services Board at the Meadow Creek Adult Day Services Center.

At our center, we support

just over 60 individuals with intellectual developmental disabilities as well as some co-occurring mental health concerns.

And I came out tonight because I wanted to speak on behalf of the Senior Center, which I understand is presenting to you a little bit later, regarding the Belvedere expansion project.

We have been really fortunate the past couple of months partnering with them to get our individuals into community-based programming at the Senior Center.

You know we support a wide variety of individuals in terms of having mobility impairments and cognitive differences and just really the whole spectrum and the Senior Center has really embraced that and been a very welcoming community where we've been able to expand the programming that we already offer.

That's been courtesy of their scholarship program because the individuals we support do

typically have Medicaid funding and limited means due to living on Social Security based income.

So the scholarship program has been excellent at being able to really give us additional opportunities.

And another thing I thought I'd add about that is they have helped us get connected with activities at the Paramount because they have a partnership with them.

And later this month, we have some individuals getting to go

to a show at the Paramount and that's something that without that relationship and this scholarship program we would not have been able to do.

So when they come up tonight to talk more about the Belvedere project and what they offer, I just wanted to give some additional insight as to what they do and that their programs are open to everyone and they've been a really warm place to get to know and get started with over the past few months.

Thank you.

Mr. Bellamy, at your very first city council meeting I encourage you to be a counselor for all the citizens of the city, not just your constituency.

You clearly did not heed my advice.

What I would like to know is why Wes Bellamy, a city official, is allowed to engage in an activity aimed at destroying a taxpayer's business.

There must be a code of conduct or rules

that a city official must abide by.

Surely the city manager or city attorney can answer that question here and now.

What I have found under Section 2.1, Public Employees Code of Ethics, employees will not engage in any business activity or professional activity that would appear to be in conflict with their job responsibilities or that would tend to impair independence of judgment or action

and the performance of official duties.

I don't believe your position as city councilor allows you to participate in activities aimed at destroying the taxpayers' business and livelihood.

I do believe you have the first amendment right to free speech, but I don't believe that extends to trying to destroy a man's business.

Doesn't that same business owner have the same right to free speech?

It seems that there is a double standard around here

when it comes to free speech.

You and your minions have the right to say what you want, even to the detriment of taxpayers' business.

Yet when he or I or anyone with a differing opinion dare to express it, we're shut down, dragged out, or picketed by city officials.

What do you think would happen if the situation were reversed

where it was a white city official using his position to shut down a black business owner.

Also, would they have protested if the business owner was black?

Do we live in a city where white people don't have the right to free speech?

After all, what this all boils down to is that you disagree with his opinion.

his First Amendment right to free speech and you're using your position as city official to curtail and punish him.

America has come so far.

We're less racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-religious and we have one remaining bigotry.

We don't want to be around anyone who disagrees with us.

That was a quote from Bill Clinton and I think it applies to you people.

Good evening.

My name is Will Lister.

I'm from Louisa County.

When we come up here to speak, we're asked not to single out city councilors or members of this council.

However, when a member of this community spoke out outside of these chambers, one member of council had no problem singling out and admonishing a fellow educator and local business owner.

It is unethical for an elected official to publicly encourage people to boycott a taxpayer's business for any reason.

including his right to free speech.

I will refuse to pay our $6,000 annual business license tax to this city if this type of behavior continues.

I request that the members of this council formally censure and reprimand Mr. Bellamy.

First, I'd like to caution the parents here

and the parents of children watching at home, that if you don't want your children exposed to the fact that your local governing body in a pitiful, pathetic manipulation of the political process in order to avoid criticism, accountability, transparency and the truth.

As you know, I have been before this council numerous times on the question of the overwhelming over-representation of African Americans who are stopped, frisked by our police department without reason.

These are innocent people that you have failed to care about.

On October 3, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for statistics for the first half of 2016 with respect to stops and frisks.

I received a response a week later from the law department saying, we cannot comply because the police department is in the process of compiling the data that you have requested.

And they sought a seven-day extension.

Of course, the FOIA law, that's the Freedom of Information Act, does provide that if the

Agency cannot make the response within five working days because of certain conditions that the body shall have an additional seven days.

But that condition of course is that the information was not available.

Your agenda did not include the report by the police chief that is now on the agenda, which was not placed on the agenda until Saturday morning.

Obviously, you did not want people to know about it, those of us who regularly watch and read the agenda items.

And the report was prepared and submitted to you by the police chief, including a number of the statistics that I sought and have yet to receive in my FOIA request.

It is apparent that the city did not want anybody to know about these statistics, to challenge the report that was going to be presented to you tonight by the police chief, nor have you ever been interested in transparency on the part of the police department or accountability for acts of the police department and others, including in this instance the city itself, for violating the FOIA law.

I ask people when they do hear, if they choose to stay long enough to hear the police chief, that they don't take the information that he provides with a grain of salt, rather a pound of salt, because that's where we have come to.

Now it seems to me that the people in our community are being left with one choice, and that choice is, as Yogi Berra said, throw the bums out.

Good evening, Council.

My name is Maeve Curtin and I am the UVA Student Liaison to City Council.

I'm pleased to be here tonight to announce a few events to the community that I want to welcome everybody to attend in these upcoming weeks.

The first of which is the Keep the Movement Coming On, a symposium in memory of Julian Bond.

A number of events

Roundtable discussions, panel discussions, and wonderful activities that anyone is welcome to engage in will be held on Thursday, October 20th and Friday, October 21st.

So that's at the end of this week.

All the events are taking place either in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library on UVA grounds or at the Paramount Theater downtown.

So I encourage you guys to look that up and anyone is welcome to attend.

It's going to be a wonderful program.

the other thing is one of UVA students favorite events of the year and I hope the community as well that is trick-or-treating on the lawn that is going to be from 4 to 6 p.m. on Halloween so Monday the 31st this longtime tradition was established by students in the late 1980s to open and is open to children and families from the local community

It's co-sponsored by residents of the lawn community.

And the residents and members of student organizations will be stationed in each of the 54 lawn rooms and along the south lawn and in the amphitheater to give out treats to anyone and everyone who attends.

So all of the candy is donated and distributed by approximately 70 student groups and other organizations.

For any families or any community members looking to attend, free parking will be available.

be starting at 330 in E3T4 in S6 slots at Scott Stadium and at University Hall.

Then beginning at 4 PM, parking will be available in the Culbreath garage, which is off of University Avenue up towards Art Grounds right before you get to Cars Hill Field.

Also, paid parking is available in the Central Grounds parking garage.

and Metered Parking, if you can find that as well.

So I hope that a lot of you guys will be able to attend those events.

Maeve, do you have a contact?

I couldn't write down all of that.

Do you have something like Google?

So yeah, there's a Facebook event.

If people have Facebook, you can also, I believe it's on Housing and Residence Life website.

But the trick or treating on the lawn, we'll get the information out.

It'll be in the paper too, I mean.

Yes.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm Peter Kleeman.

I live 407 Head Street.

I wasn't going to continue our conversation about interactions and responses.

related to matters by the public, but I'm hoping that Mayor Signer misspoke when he said that the city manager would respond to matters by the public that were presented in the first part of the meeting last week.

I'm not sure we discriminate between matters by the public.

Okay, so I'm hoping that that is the case and I hope that when the items are put on the updates to the announcement that

It is clear that all matters by the public are treated equally.

My apologies.

Okay, moving on to the consent agenda.

Item A minutes for October 3rd.

Item B, appropriation Virginia Juvenile Community Crime Control Act Grant, $452,704, first of two readings.

Item C, an appropriation Runaway Emergency Shelter Program Grant, $212,000, first of two readings.

Item D, an appropriation Edward Byron Memorial Justice Assistant Grant, $27,198, first of two readings.

Item E, a resolution transportation alternative program grant application for Rugby Avenue shared use path, first of one reading.

And item F,

Well, let me, I have a question for the city manager probably.

When people read this, and this is online, the agenda, and they see grant, that's money coming into the city.

That's correct.

And if it's an appropriation, it'll say

where it comes from and all of that.

That's correct.

Any other questions?

I so move the approval.

Move the approval and consent agenda.

Okay, is there a second?

Second.

Any questions, comments?

All in favor?

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

This is a public hearing and ordinance.

And again, we have a signup sheet for the public hearing component.

This is, there's no vote.

This is the first of two readings.

So we'll just have a motion and a second on this.

This is a release of a sewer easement at 324 Oak Street.

Good evening.

Good evening, Mayor and Councillors.

In 1894, the city was granted an easement for a sanitary sewer line across the property.

which is currently known as 324 Oak Street.

This property was formerly part of a larger parcel that was subdivided to create the buildable lot.

In order to build the single family house, a sewer line was relocated and installed across the property outside of the house footprint.

The owner has signed a deed of easement for the new sanitary sewer line

in this relocated area, but a certificate of occupancy for the house cannot be granted until the old sewer line easement is released.

It was included in the council packet a plat showing the location of the easement that needs to be released.

If approved, the city attorney's office will draft a quick claim deed to release the city's rights in the original 1894 sewer easement.

A public hearing is required by law to give the public an opportunity to comment

on the proposed conveyance of the property interest.

Staff recommends council approve the ordinance abandoning the 1894 sewer easement across the property at 324 Oak Street.

I have one question.

You gave a kind of the picture of the plat of where the original easement was that we're talking about giving up.

Is that on this picture?

Yes, it is.

You'll notice they have little circles.

Right.

And the other story is right here.

OK. And it goes around the footprint of the house.

See it.

You see it.

Is there a reason why it goes around?

That's right.

It can't run under the house.

It did run.

I will open the, Ms. Rice, would you mind handing me the?

Lauren, could you get that?

Oh, Lauren, sorry.

That's easier.

I'm going to open the public hearing for this matter.

We have two, oh no, sorry we don't, that's just an example.

Although there is a Jane Smith in the city.

Good evening.

My name is Joey Conover.

With my husband, Jeff Erklins, we have a small home building, business latitude 38.

We acquired this lot in 2014.

It was somewhat of a difficult lot.

The sewer ran directly through the lot.

You can see from the angle of the entry and where it goes back around the house, it went straight through the lot.

Our business is focused on building housing on infill lots in the city.

We feel strongly about creating urban walkable housing for people who feel committed to living in the city of Charlottesville.

We moved the sewer, which was a significant task for a relatively small property.

It's the scale of the building is a single family house, but it's actually three apartments, one on each level.

And we've done this.

The sewer was moved and complete in February of this year.

And then we commenced building the building itself.

And this probably should have done

been done a little bit earlier, but this is the process we took going through the site plan.

Any questions?

Okay, anyone else want to speak in this public hearing about this matter?

One, two, three.

Okay, closing the public hearing.

Mr. Mayor, I

Is there a second?

Second.

Any discussion, questions?

All in favor?

Oh, we just needed the first and the second, as I said.

Okay, so we have first and the second.

Moving forward, that's the first of two readings.

It gets easy to get used to the

Okay, is Chief Thomas here by any chance?

If he would, sure.

That's fine.

Why don't we do the next?

All right, we're moving on to the next item on the agenda, resolution, National Endowment for the Arts grant changes approval, first of one reading.

Hi everyone, my name is Tiara Howard and I work in NDS.

I'm the grants coordinator.

And then I will be having Matthew Slatz from PAWS Lab and Chip from the TJPDC up to answer any questions after.

So just to give you some background, in January 2014, the City and the Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, along with other partners, applied for funding through NEA, Our Town grant, for a project known as Play the City.

The NEA Our Town grant supports creative placemaking projects that contribute to the livability of communities and place the arts at their core.

The NEA selected the city of Charlottesville as one of the 66 2014 Our Town grant winners for Play the City.

The project received $50,000 towards a $200,000 project

focused on activating Charlottesville SIA area, strategic investment area, through a series of workshops, public art installations, and festivals.

On March 7th, 2016, council approved the appropriation of the NEA Art Town Cash Match by the city of $30,000 to contribute to the artist in residency project and the BC build project.

On July 11th, 2016, the Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative informed city staff that the bridge no longer had the capacity to continue to partner with the city on carrying out

and the NEA grant project.

As a result, the bridge reimbursed the city's match funds of $25,000, which of the $30,000, $5,000 was utilized on the artist in residency project.

Tonight, PAWS Lab and the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission are coming forth to request to serve as the new partners with the city to complete the NEA grant project by August 2017.

PAWS Lab is a fiscally sponsored program of the TJPDC,

The TJPDC has a non-profit 501C3 arm, the TJPDC Corporation, which will serve as the fiscal agent.

The TJPDC and the PAW Lab would like to request approval from city council to partner with the city to complete the BC bill project.

As outlined in the attached proposal, city match funds will be used to support the calls for the art projects and community engagement activities.

How does this align with council's vision, areas and strategic plan?

Play the City aligns directly with Council's vision for Seabill arts and culture.

Expected outcomes include improved services provided to Charlottesville residents, as well as enhanced local quality of life and creative economic development initiatives.

The project also will help realize the following strategic plan objectives.

Engage in robust and context sensitive urban planning, respect and nourish diversity, build collaborative partnerships and promote community engagement.

A large component of play the city involves engaging with the residents of the SI area through a series of workshops and resident directed art installations.

Budgetary impact.

This will have no impact on the general fund if approved.

The match funds have already been committed by council on March 7th, 2016.

If not approved, the city will then have to reimburse NEA $25,000.

Recommendations by staff.

I recommend that council approve the program partner change.

Alternatives.

If the partnership is not approved, the project will not be completed to meet grant requirements.

And as a result, the city will have to reimburse NEA $25,000.

Thanks.

Got questions?

Quick questions.

Does NEA have any veto part of this?

I'd like to make a motion that we do this.

I think that Mr. Slatz is the one who sort of conceptualized a lot of this grant proposal in the first place and he's been carrying it forward until this point.

I think he's shown his

Is there a second?

Is this for comment?

Right.

Approving the program?

Approving the program change.

So if we change partners, that would be change in scope of work.

So that is your motion.

Second the motion.

Okay.

Discussion, questions?

And we may want to have, if there's any from Mr. Slatz here.

Do you want to, now that we have a motion, would you mind if he says a couple minutes about?

Just a follow-up.

So the project is basically the exact same project.

Matthew Slatz, I'm with Paul Slab, I live here in Charlottesville.

So the project as originally conceived and presented earlier in the year is the exact same project that has not changed.

The only change is the partnership of who is actually executing on the project.

So I think the

The fact that the bridge decided that it was no longer willing to pursue it actually created a really amazing opportunity to start partnering with the Thomas Jefferson Planning District.

This falls in line with one of their, the TJPDC Corps goals of supporting the arts.

It also gives more robust background behind doing this type of

creative place making and the wealth of experience that the TJPDC brings to this project in the planning initiatives that they do and thinking about how the arts can play a part in that is a really major piece here and beyond that

Responding to Bob, the NEA has been in contact with us constantly throughout the process.

They know exactly what's going on.

I actually saw the director last weekend in D.C., and we've been in constant touch with them.

So they're confident in the project.

They're excited about the project.

And we've been out engaging the community.

I think the main piece of this project, it falls in line with various

It's much more of a process-driven initiative than just an outcome-driven initiative

but the things that we've been hearing already, I mean we put out 1500 door hangers last weekend to almost every house in the SIA and we're going to be doing that two more times and we've got collection boxes for collecting ideas at 20 businesses in the neighborhood

We've been partnering with the schools, FAR, public housing.

Those relationships are growing and evolving.

And PHA too.

I do have a question.

So again, thank you for answering a lot of my questions earlier today.

So that saves us a lot of time tonight.

I do want to get a little bit of a brief overview from you, though, because since the NEA grant was first distributed to you as part of the bridge and as a partner with the city, a number of things have changed in the SIA, all for the positive.

but one has been the increased involvement with PHA in the redevelopment effort of Friendship Court.

They have brought in their own team to do community engagement.

They will be pursuing additional avenues for community engagement.

The public housing community with the Schausal Redevelopment Housing Authority has gotten a CACF grant again to do community engagement, thorough community engagement with the public housing community and so in light of those two major engagement efforts, oh and

At the same time, this council has adopted a work plan, an action plan for the implementation of the SIA that calls for engagement.

So you have a lot, it's a more crowded field, if you will, with entities doing their own community engagement.

And Brian Lemar has come to us about their engagement at the ICS part.

I think there's a multitude of different ways of thinking about community engagement.

I think the excitement of the fact that community engagement is being talked about more and more, and understanding the role that residents can actually play in that process, it's exciting to see the work that Liz Obu has been driving forward at PHA

I've been in conversation with Frank Roche about trying to actually bring an initiative like this into that process.

I've been talking to Grant Duffield at CRHA about getting similar ideas, how can we link this initiative to

the work that they're already doing.

So there's a lot of collaboration there and conversations that are evolving over time.

We're just trying to be responsive and flexible.

I'm not trying to get in anybody's way.

I'm trying to be cognizant of what other work is going on.

That includes the neighborhood associations, the churches, there's so much thing that's happening in the SIA right now.

And just really trying to magnify each other

versus trying to compete with each other.

Okay, thank you.

Two quick questions.

One is, who is the Executive Director of TJPDC?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Councillors, Chip Boyles, Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, and also 948 Raymond Road.

I'm the executive director for the PDC, the TJPDC Corporation, which is our nonprofit arm.

I was confused when I saw Billy Campbell's name and who I thought was the program manager.

Wonderful person and position, but she's the director of the nonprofit.

Thank you.

I just want to make sure there was nothing in here that might lead us to problems.

and the others.

The toys.

So several weeks ago as a kickoff for BCville, we wanted to create an event that would kind of spur the community's imagination.

Maya and Devaney were these two amazing young women that just brought this wonderful energy to the work that we were doing and we said we want to do this event and it's yours to plan and so they came up with this idea of trying to break a Guinness Book of World Records and they wanted to do this idea of a space themed initiative

So we together worked on designing a large 30 foot by 10 foot cardboard rocket that I would say over the months that we created it, at least 75 different people from kids at 6th Street building spacesuits to artists working on building the project at the ICS to the, I don't know, 800, 600, 800 people that were at the WTJU concert series event that night that participated in it

I mean Wes was there doing a great job emceeing that event and one of the events I think that was like the most diverse event I've seen in Charlottesville since I've been here.

So the Rockets actually are a gift for you guys.

I assume they're not 30 feet tall.

No, they're not.

So we collected a bunch of ideas inside the rocket.

Residents could write their ideas for how to improve the neighborhood.

And we collected those, and we've written them on the rocket as a kind of a symbolic gesture of giving this to you.

And now it's your opportunity to send this into outer space and let us move forward.

Actually, there's a rocket taking off right now, I think, out on the Cape.

So did you make a world record?

So the great thing about Guinness is that you can either pay them $10,000 and they do all the work or you can submit your stuff on your own.

So we've actually submitted all of our information and officially we have beaten the record but we're waiting for official approval from Guinness which is taking forever.

Clarified.

Any further questions, comments?

Yes.

Okay, all in favor?

That carries five to zero.

Okay, we have an item on the agenda that was going to be another business, but we're going to move it up to this one now, which is the investigative detentions report by Chief Thomas, who is here with us.

Mr. Mayor, before Chief Thomas begins, just to clarify a couple of things that were brought up by Mr. Fogel.

He said that the report that Chief Thomas is giving tonight, the written report was not placed on the agenda until Saturday morning.

It was actually placed on the agenda on Friday evening, which is not unusual.

And the information that he requested and his FOIA request is different than the

the information that the chief is presenting to you tonight.

There are elements of his FOIA request that the chief will talk about in terms of numbers for this year up to October.

But there are other elements of his FOIA request that are not in this report and are still being worked on by the police department and our city attorney's office that will be included in his FOIA when it is submitted to him on Wednesday.

So there are differences between what he's asked for and what Chief Thomas is presenting this evening.

So I just wanted to clarify that.

Very helpful.

Well Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, my name is Al Thomas, I am the Chief of Police of the City of Charlottesville and I thank you for an opportunity tonight to present the 2016 CPD investigative detention report.

I have had an opportunity to thoroughly vet our investigative detention protocol within the agency and also look at some of the raw numbers that have been compiled recently and prepared to share those numbers with you tonight.

Can I just ask one clarifying question before we start?

When I read this, because I'm not in the police department, investigative detention sounded like people being put in jail, but it's not.

It's when somebody has stopped, right?

It doesn't even involve necessarily frisk.

I can, and it's actually defined on the council agenda.

But detention doesn't mean that they're being locked up.

It's a brief detention.

Yes, exactly.

I understand.

Thank you.

And again we'll go through the numbers but I want to start by saying what's important to me in terms of our procedures, our protocol, what are we doing.

Well we have to ensure that we are presenting accurate information, consistent information.

and it's very complex.

We've taken a lot of time to sit down with my crime analysts, my command staff to review the data that's being presented tonight.

While I have not had an opportunity to review data from prior years, we will do that as well.

That's important.

I think we can learn a lot from the past.

But while many of you have had four years to review this data, I've had four months, and I have reviewed the data from this calendar year

and ready to share that information tonight.

Having accurate information is important.

What's more important, I believe, is how do we treat people.

That's more important than any number that we present.

It's how are we treating people in this community?

Do my officers treat individuals with respect during not only the brief detentions, but even during arrests?

How do we treat people?

Are we being respectful of our victims and our suspects?

And that's what's important.

Those are the marching orders from me, from my command staff.

If we're not doing that, then we are failing.

We treat people with respect.

We don't have a number of complaints from our investigative detentions.

And I believe that's because even during an investigative detention, while we are investigating criminal activity, I do believe our officers are being respectful and they're explaining the reason, the purpose for the investigative, the brief detention of individuals.

And we don't have many complaints on those detentions.

And that's important.

That is the most important thing is that we're being respectful to our citizens.

I do feel comfortable at this point with my assessment of the information.

To date we have been reviewing our procedures, our reporting requirements, and our internal control measures.

And what you may or may not know, we have very in-depth internal control measures in place currently.

They were in place prior to my arrival.

All officers are required to complete, we call it an IBR, a police report anytime they have an encounter with a citizen where they are briefly detaining the citizen to investigate criminal activity.

I believe our protocol surpasses most agencies currently in the state of Virginia.

Officers are required to document, to articulate the reasonable suspicion for the brief detention.

Why are they stopping individuals?

Why are they getting out and detaining someone that may or may not lead to a search depending on the circumstances?

Our officers will complete a police report on each occasion.

That police report then is reviewed by our first line supervisors.

our sergeants.

We then have a subsequent review and that is a command review.

Our command officers will then review all of the reports, review the recommendations by the sergeants internally.

We have another layer if needed.

We have the Commonwealth Attorney's Office can also review our investigative detention reports.

Typically, if there's a criminal element involved, i.e.

officers effect an arrest during the detention.

I've met with a number of local community members.

I've met with civic groups.

I've met with council members, the city manager to discuss this and to listen to the concerns of our citizens.

What's important to you?

What are your concerns?

The main concern that I hear from local citizens, it's not brief detentions of individuals who are being arrested.

It's why are individuals being stopped, detained, and sometimes searched and not arrested?

Why?

There's no control process.

There's no process then to review, to ensure that we're doing this for the right reason.

And that's the concern that I've heard from this community.

Why do you do that?

And I think that's what most people view when you say investigative attention or stop and frisk.

Why are we getting out with someone, typically today the discussion is why are you getting out with the young African American on a street corner and you're not making an arrest?

Who's seeing this?

Who's ensuring that your officers are doing the right thing?

Because it's not going to trial.

There's no judge.

There's no common attorney.

There's no defense attorney to review this process.

What I propose is we really focus on these investigative detentions that do not lead to an arrest.

Why are my officers stopping and detaining individuals in our community and not affecting an arrest?

And I think that's important.

And I think we need to distinguish between that

and begin reporting in the future to ensure that we understand the difference.

We certainly have a vetting process when there's arrest made but we need to scrutinize these reports very thoroughly when there's no arrest made.

Those are your true investigative detention reports I believe and that's something I've had discussions with a number of you and community members and we will have new protocols in place going into the future and that remains a work in progress.

Corrective actions.

Currently, we take corrective actions when we identify problems with the reports that our officers are submitting.

I'm pleased to say, and I don't have the numbers to support it today, but I met with my command staff members and they assured me that our corrective actions, albeit whether it's discipline, retraining,

Whatever that needs to be, the supervisors indicated that our corrective action, the number of reports being sent back, are declining each year, and that's positive.

This past year, and I don't know the exact number, but I know it's less than 10, I had an opportunity to review the reports.

I believe the number was 6 reports were sent back for corrective action.

I believe forward through the disciplinary process and then a couple were officer retraining and those numbers are lower than prior years.

We are taking action when we deem necessary and not all of the action or the disciplinary action or the retraining is for legality, reasons of legality.

Some are just protocol.

Reports returned because the officers did not articulate their reasonable suspicion thoroughly to us.

We did not have enough information to determine whether or not this stop was reasonable.

We all know police are not reasonable.

What does a reasonable person expect?

So we do a good job internally, I believe, and we are looking at ways to improve, even strengthen, our current control measures for the future.

I'll take a moment and go through the stats that are listed in the agenda.

To date, calendar year 2016, there are a total of 60 investigative detention reports between January 1 and October 13 of this year.

60, 6-0?

6-0.

Of these 60 investigative detention reports, 45 resulted in no arrests or summons.

and I think that gets really to the essence of investigative detention.

We have 45 incidents that did not result in arrest or summons, which accounts for 75% of all the investigative detentions that we have reported in the past.

The origin of the 45 investigative detention reports that resulted in no arrest or summons were as follows.

17 were officer initiated and 28 were dispatch.

One of the 45 investigative detention reports without arrest or summons involved groups or individuals that were classified as different races or other.

Thirty-six.

Thirty-six.

Of the thirty-six investigative detentions involving African Americans

23 were dispatched.

13 were officer initiated.

Seven investigative detention reports without arrest or summons involved individuals that were all white.

Three were dispatched.

Four were officer initiated.

We have one report listed, the race is unknown.

There's been a tremendous amount of discussion on the investigative detentions involving African Americans in our community.

And I go back to the breakdown, 36 total.

In 26, 23 of those cases were actually dispatch calls for service.

We had citizens who contacted 911 and reported some type of suspicion of criminal activity.

and their community and officers responded, which led to the subsequent detention.

Officers on 13 incidents briefly detained black African Americans in our community for reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.

You will hear a lot about the percentages, the percentages

are high.

I think the percentages don't always paint an accurate picture and I think that's what we need to do.

We need to stop trying to divide our community and we need to share information, truthful, honest information and we need to bring our community together.

The numbers are important and it's important that we report accurate information but I've told you what's more important and that's that we are treating people with respect.

We're treating people with dignity.

That's what's most important.

Quick question, Chief.

For those listening or watching, when you say dispatch, is that an individual within the police department?

Yes, we have a regional 911 center.

They dispatch calls for service for the City of Charlottesville Police Department, the Albemarle County Police Department, and the University of Virginia Police Department.

Thank you Chief for the presentation.

First and foremost, I'd like to commend you because I think the fact that you had the

I want to say I'm very proud of the fact that you were willing to come and put these numbers in front of all of us in a full measure of transparency especially in a time in which individuals feel as if there is to a certain degree us versus them and furthermore when there's a lot of mistrust with our police officers throughout the country

from several different people.

I think your point is also very well taken.

We need to move towards an effort in which we begin to unite and see how we can work together.

So again, I applaud you for being brave enough to come and just put this information out in front of everyone.

That being said, I have a couple of questions.

So out of the 36 of the 45 investigative detentions involving African American males, and that is out of a total of 60 correct?

Yes, 60 includes arrest reports.

The 45 or the actual investigative detentions that did not lead to an arrest.

That's what we've really focused our attention on.

So out of the 36 of the 45, which is essentially 80% being African American males, the 23 were dispatched, 13 were officer initiated.

When you spoke with your officers in regards to why

specifically out of the 13 that were officer initiated, why they decided to have the investigative detention.

The officers are required to complete a very thorough police report on every single incident.

And we read every report.

We read the reports for details.

If details are lacking, we have a process to correct that.

If the officers are

For every report we do know and have the reasonable suspicion

for the investigative detention in every single incidence.

And it varies.

Right.

So, I mean, one of the things in which I'm really looking forward to working with you on is trying to figure out how we can bring that number low.

When you look at, again, 45, or excuse me, 36 out of the 45 investigative dissensions being African Americans, and then when we know that African Americans represent roughly 19% of the total population,

in the city of Charlottesville, that shows our largest proportionality.

So we got to figure out, and I'd love to hear your opinions in regards to what we can do from a police officer's side, what we can do from a community leader, civic leader, just individuals working with the community, God bless you, working on this side to try to bring both sides together.

Do we need to do more training on the police side?

Do we need to do some training on maybe community forums?

working with our citizens to kind of say these are situations you don't want to put yourself in.

What do you suggest for us to move in terms of solving the actual problem and bringing that number from not just the 36 out of 45 for African Americans, but the 45 total coming down to five.

Like we got all these awards at the beginning, and I'm going on a tangent, but we got all of these awards during the beginning of the meeting today

about us being great with trees, great with architecture, gold leaf, so on and so forth, but we still have this looming issue of race.

And I would love it if we could have an award for us being one of the leading cities in the country in which we have little to no officer detentions, where we are leading in terms of African Americans not disproportionately being stopped.

Well, thank you.

One of my discussions with our city manager, he was surprised that the number was so low that we only had 13 incidents of also initiated investigative detention of African Americans in our community here in mid-October.

He was surprised by the number and he asked me, he said, Chief, are you okay with this number, this rather low number?

And I paused and I said,

No, not yet.

Not yet.

Yes, the number is low, but we still have work to do.

And I think it is a, there's a training component there.

We continue to offer training to our officers.

I think our problem is we've had such high turnover during the past few years that we offer training one year and then we feel like we're, you know, let's take a victory lap.

We've trained our officers.

And then we have, you know, a quarter of the department has turned over in just a couple of years.

We've placed a new emphasis and a focus on retention.

You know, and we've been very successful.

We have filled the majority of our vacancies in just a short time.

In six months, we've gone from down 20, over 20 officers to now we have just a handful of vacancies, three or four vacancies.

However, many of those officers remain in training, but officers are not leaving.

Officers are excited again.

They're motivated and they're staying with us.

That's going to solve half the problem because we're going to put more veteran officers on the streets.

They're going to understand and share our values and what we expect.

I think that's going to help.

But I do believe there's an education component to the public as well that's important.

It's not just the police department.

Because while you can certainly use the 13 officers, the 13 individuals that were detained by officers,

What do we do about the 23, the higher percentage, the 64% of citizen initiated calls for service?

What do we do about that, Mr. Bellamy?

We have work to do in our communities.

Why are we still seeing violence in certain communities, certain neighborhoods?

Why are they experiencing more violence?

We need to do something about that.

And we do that as a community.

That's not a police problem.

That's a community problem.

So I look forward to us working together as we've been doing since you've been here.

You've been a breath of fresh air in regards to kind of alleviating some of these issues.

And I look forward to us continuing to do those things together.

and with everyone else.

And I'm sure my colleagues have questions.

But again, kudos to you for opening up this information.

And again, I can't reiterate it enough, elated that you were here and more than just happy that you're here.

Thank you.

Yes, I'd like to add my thanks to you for doing this.

I think under Chief Longo, the Charlottesville Department was one of the first in the state who was willing to

really do those reports and collect the data about race and stops and frisk so that we can actually find out what's happening.

Yes, and I'm glad you all recognize that this agency is far, far ahead of the curve in this regard and I do give Chief Longo a tremendous amount of credit

I have just a couple questions.

Do we need to do more minutes or is the discussion now which is separate from the presentation?

So one of the reasons that we wanted to be able to collect that data was so that we could look at police data along with imprisonment data and all sorts of other things in our city for disproportionate minority contact and I understand that we've

It's a very similar grant.

I have not been very much involved.

I've attended one meeting, so I think I know enough to be dangerous.

It's an opportunity for us to study disproportionality, but on a broader scope, it's again, as I said, it's not just a police problem.

We're one component.

The city is taking a more holistic approach, and we have individuals from our school systems, individuals from the judicial system.

We have, you know,

University representatives and we're really looking at the holistic approach.

We're looking at our risk factors in our young people and we're looking at how do we mitigate some of these risk factors.

How do we prevent this from occurring in the first place?

And that's what excites me is how we are looking at this and now the grant goes from

just looking at the minority population to the adult population as well.

Counselor, Assistant Manager Mike Murphy is here.

Because I know that one of the things that's kept us from doing that is that there are so many different systems that the police system, computer system doesn't speak the same language as the prison system, which doesn't speak the same language as the jail, which may or may not talk to the police once.

And so it's complicated to do the adult system, and I'm just delighted that this grant, which I knew was out there, has been awarded because it's going to take some money to do it.

Good evening, I'm Mike Murphy, Assistant City Manager.

So, yes, we did get official word just last week about two grants from the Department of Criminal Justice Services.

One is an extension of our strategy for truancy with youth.

A grant in which we'll hire another Check and Connect worker, which has been a really great strategy for truancy prevention.

The schools are actually partnering with us and providing the match money that won't be council extending that.

On DMC, disproportionate minority contact, I thought we had already covered that one.

We have a two year

$100,000 in each year grant, $90,000 from the state, $10,000 in match from the city, which is coming from the Human Services Fund, to partner primarily with the group of criminal justice professionals in the adult system who call themselves the evidence-based decision-making group.

And there is certainly

Thank you.

And then I had one other quick question, which was that you mentioned the six reports, discipline or retraining on reports that didn't meet the kind of qualification, what was a good report.

That would be really useful, I think, to see if you're seeing any kind of, you know, if that's more likely with African-American

people being stopped than might.

That's all I've got.

Just a couple of questions.

And again, thank you very much for your very lucid report.

And just a couple of things that wasn't clear to me whether we were going to be getting longitudinal data about this so that we can see year to year how these numbers are changing.

And so that's your plan moving forward is that we're going to see quarterly or biannual reports of something that shows a trend.

Yes and my point earlier was I have not had an opportunity yet to do that in prior years and we will do that but absolutely yes we will continue to report and I believe we always have reported the data we're required to it's public information so we have always reported the numbers I think there's an opportunity in the future for even greater transparency from the police department and that's what we're working on

And then the other statistic that I know you and I have talked about when you first came on board back in June or so and it was the calls for gun service or calls about gun usage and the data that I've looked at shows high incidence of gun

usage in neighborhoods that correlate with very high poverty.

Is that something that you have been able to think through in terms of looking at a correlation with your arrests or stops?

Absolutely.

I concur.

I would go further to say that race has nothing to do with crime.

We have to look at poverty and other socioeconomic concerns.

So yes, absolutely we understand that.

We are seeing a level of violence in this community in certain areas, certain neighborhoods that's unacceptable.

And we are working towards preventing that.

But we have to work together.

It's not just a police concern.

It's not just a police issue.

It's a community issue.

Chief Thomas, I just wanted to add a closing couple words.

One of the reasons we hired you was because of your deep, profound commitment to relational policing, to what that meant.

You spoke very eloquently about that in our process, and not just community policing, but relational, thinking about the relationships between the police and the community.

And I think you've spoken very eloquently about this tonight, and I want to thank you for that.

I think everyone agrees we need a conversation about race and policing in the city, in the state, in the country.

For that conversation to happen, we're going to need transparency and honesty.

It's not going to be an easy conversation.

As we've seen, it's probably one of the most important ones happening in the country, as we've seen.

I would associate myself especially with what the vice mayor said on this front.

I'm very proud that you're, I think, articulating a process here by which Charlottesville will be on the leading edge of that process.

It's beginning, it's beginning data-wise, it's beginning in terms of your tenure, it's beginning in terms of what it will lead to in the protocols, but you're beginning with transparency, and it's probably the most important thing that we can do, is to be honest about

these facts.

And they are beginning.

So I applaud your leadership and thank you very much for starting this.

And I think we're grateful.

I think Chief Thomas, just to conclude on the comments that I'm going to make, I think you made a very valid point when you stated that this is just not a police problem.

And furthermore, violence does not have a correlation to race.

But also we have a serious economic problem when we look at the issues here within our city specifically.

to the African American race.

And when we look at the work that's being done with the Black Male Achievement Initiative, who's meeting tomorrow, and we have several different partners and different groups doing different things and getting these young men jobs, but that work needs to be continued and that work requires more work than just one individual can do.

That is a position where we look at specifically something that is focusing directly on

making the changes in what you're talking about, that is something or that is an initiative that needs to have individuals working there either full time or much more capacity being given to it than what we currently have if we want to truly make this something or an issue that kind of goes away.

We can't just talk about it, and I agree.

We need to talk.

Talking in conversation is great, but when we talk about moving from words to actual action, we need the hands on deck, and we currently don't have the hands on deck.

I can't do it, I'm not saying I'm doing it all alone, but I can't just do it in the capacity that I've been doing now.

I can't be the co-chair of BMA, be the president of 100 Black Men,

your teacher, and then be a vice mayor.

We gotta get some other hands up.

And a dad and a husband.

And a dad and a husband, you're right.

Ashley's watching.

Love you honey.

But yes, in all seriousness, we have to look at, as this body,

This is Council looking at making sure we put the resources behind initiatives to make sure we can have people to work on these issues full time.

Because if we do it how we're currently doing it, we're going to see some impact and I think we've seen some change thus far.

But if we want to make significant impact, we got to put our hands on deck and we got to do more.

Thank you.

Okay, we're wrapped up.

Thank you very much for your time.

All right.

I think we will take our 9 o'clock break 10 minutes early.

Let's take 5 minutes.

Music Playing

Dr. Michael Kochis

you

Council.

Come back.

I'm under Ms. Szakos' watch.

Our next item is a report on the reauthorization of our technology zone.

I'm Chris Angle, Director of Economic Development.

And this is not for decision tonight.

Not for decision.

Report and discussion.

And this is our second meeting of the month.

So under our new procedures, we made the decision to move work sessions from the first Thursday of every month when they were not seen by the public.

Unless you were at City Space, they weren't on television.

to the second meeting of the month so you can watch us deliberate and ask questions.

We are not under Robert's Rules of Order for this or under the specific restrictions that we have in our rules because there does not need to be a motion on the table.

So we can deliberate freely in the amount of time that's allocated to this item in this working meeting.

All right, thank you.

Good evening, Council.

My name is Chris Engel, Director of Economic Development.

This item relates to the Technology Zone, which has been in place in the city of Charlottesville for almost 16 years now.

The city was one of the first, once the state gave permission to do such back in 2001, to put one in place.

And I will describe quickly the current state of the Technology Zone and walk you through your memo.

I'm not going to hit every point, but you have it in front of you as a resource.

The technology zone as it stands today provides a reduction in the business professional occupancy license, otherwise known as BPOL, fee that businesses pay.

And there's basically two thresholds.

If you produce less than $50,000 in gross receipts, you get your BPOL fee reduced by 100 percent.

If you produce more than $50,000 in gross receipts annually, you get your BPOL reduced by 50%.

And that's open to any qualifying business anywhere in the city.

That's the other unique feature of this particular technology zone.

The entire 10 square miles, 10 and a half square miles of the city, if you are a technology business, technology based business.

And there's a definition for that in the code.

but it's things like you would expect, research and development of IT products, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, things of that nature, are typically able to apply and be accepted.

Our office administers

The promotion and awareness of this activity, the Commissioner of Revenue, Mr.

Divers, who is here tonight, actually administers the actual program, sends out the notices, qualifies folks, and reduces their bills accordingly.

Some of the data that I will reference tonight has been provided by his office.

This data can only be shared in the aggregate.

It cannot be shared on a case-by-case basis, and there are some limitations to that.

On average, 78 firms have been enrolled over the 16 years.

Some years we've had over 100.

Some years, like this year, we're in the 40s.

Last year, I think there were 65 or so.

The average benefit per firm, and once again, this is an average across all those, is about $2,400 in a year.

Some firms that have high gross receipts have benefited certainly much more, and others that are very small businesses have simply had their business license

The benefits vary widely, but it is open to everyone who qualifies and it's a very simple application.

once a year that you put in to be considered.

As I mentioned, this year 42 have been enrolled.

This costs the city, as you would imagine, this is a reduction in a revenue stream that the city does receive.

The B-poll produces somewhere in the six and a half to seven million dollars a year annually and that contributes to the city budget, obviously.

This incentive reduces that by roughly $75,000

We have prepared a fact sheet that was the colored item that you'll find at the back of your agenda.

that just highlights some of the most recent activities of the Technology Zone, gives you the history over the 16 years.

In preparation for this, we also did a survey, electronic survey of companies that have participated and we've highlighted some of those results for you as well and I'll just hit a few of the key ones.

Two-thirds of the respondents felt that the Technology Zone was influential in helping them locate in the city of Charlottesville.

All the firms, most of the firms showed significant growth over the period of time that they were in the program.

The incentive is good for five years currently, so a company can use the technology zone for five years.

Most of them showed significant growth from during that five year period from growing more than three, excuse me, having less than three at the beginning.

of less than three employees at the beginning of their tenure in the program to go into more than 10 across their their employee base.

And then 100 percent of those surveyed felt that it should be continued in some form or fashion.

There's also some direct quotes from from some of the business owners that were able to provide direct quotes for us there.

This item was also discussed at the mayor's Advisory Council on Innovation and Technology several times, most recently in September.

And there was lively discussion about continuing it and potentially revamping it.

There was discussion about adding what we might call an additional layer to the top that would specify a particular geography that might get an additional beyond the 50%.

The strategic investment area was mentioned as an opportunity or a possibility for something of that nature.

There was also discussion about Fredericksburg, Virginia has a technology zone in their model and how they've employed that.

I've given you some information in your agenda item about that and I won't go into detail unless you want to have questions in regard to that later.

There's also some basic context about some of the other activities that we have used

specifically performance agreements to incentivize larger activity, larger companies to make investments in the city and also some information about our Virginia Jobs Investment Program which is actually a state program that we at the local level have a local match for and we've been very successful in engaging companies

that are growing rapidly and helping them onboard new employees as they grow here in the city.

So just to give you a little context, each of these is not kind of a one size fits all.

The technology zone piece probably has its role to fulfill and these other ones are more appropriate for different levels of activity.

But I wanted to provide a little bit of that context as you have this discussion.

I also mentioned that

The Commissioner of Revenue Todd Divers is here.

He can help answer questions about the actual mechanics of the program if you have those.

Jason Ness with our office is also here.

He is the individual that leads our business visitation program and speaks to companies that engage in this type of activity.

He also authored the survey that you have in front of you as well.

And then finally at the end of the agenda, I've framed up four potential options to help guide the staff.

as you have this conversation if those are helpful to relay those to us as you go forward.

Would I, do you mind, would my colleagues give me the indulgence of asking a couple of questions at the top here?

I'm trying to frame some of the discussion a little bit.

So this is not meant.

Lots of questions or issues could come up.

But I wanted to give some of the experience and ask what staff thinks about the consequences of different ways that we could go about this.

Just for the public's knowledge, we've received communications today from representatives of a pretty wide range of tech companies and associations representing tech companies in Charlottesville supporting both the retention of the tax credit and, in some cases, the expansion of it in some way.

Imo Shear, the Charlottesville Business Innovation Council, Tom Tom, the whole number of serial entrepreneurs who have all reached out to us and talked about this.

There are some problems that we have with the current system which is very laudable and we were one of the first in Virginia to do a city-wide tax credit that could be addressed with some changes and the question is how would staff see these.

One is that what I've heard through the Advisory Council this year, many conversations, because I think we've done three meetings where this has come up, is that this is spread fairly thin and it's not known about that much.

It's not seen as that impactful.

And that's why this Fredericksburg example is so starkly opposite.

It only goes to four or five firms.

It's highly curated.

There's an application process.

Much more staff work required.

Absolutely.

but the question is could this be made more strategic where it's not sort of an afterthought that comes when you're doing your taxes but it really has a little bit more impact and it could shape more decisions so that's that's one question.

The second is that young tech companies because you get to claim it for five years a lot of the time they're pre-revenue even that's what it's called in the first couple years they're just not making any money at all and then they don't make much money in five years a lot of smaller tech companies because they're plowing all their

as much of their income as they can back into the company.

They pay themselves very little and so they take a lot of deductions and so they're, or even their gross revenue is what we key it to.

So the question is could it be extended to more years so they wouldn't burn through it before they start becoming more profitable and more, you know, having more income that we could generate as a local company.

The third

question is it can only be taken on gross revenue and so Fredericksburg, for example, allows you to take it also on property tax.

A lot of companies, what we heard in the advisory council was, you know, indoor biotechnology, for instance, right off of Preston and Harris Street.

they invested a ton of money in biotech equipment to doing testing and they do immuno- they do stuff I don't really understand but they've got a lot of equipment and you get a big tax bill on that equipment and so the question is is another incentive we could provide giving some discount on personal pro- business personal property you know a company buys a lot of laptops a lot of tech equipment a lot of servers those are also things you're gonna be taxed on by the city of Charlottesville so that's another incentive we could offer

And so the three things I'd like to sort of be in this discussion is one, and then the fourth thing is it's citywide.

So it applies equally across the whole city, whereas Fredericksburg has five zones that they're really targeted to.

We have a lot happening in the city with small areas.

We're trying to drive development, redevelopment to certain areas in the city.

So could we, and one of this actually came up, I think it was a conversation with staff and with a couple people from UVA in one of the meetings, was maybe we could add an extra

So those are the questions I guess just to put into the mix for my colleagues and for staff is

adding an additional benefit for certain areas, extending the duration possibly, extending the credit to personal property tax, and none of these, I heard the misgivings of staff by saying, well, if it made a lot of extra mechanics required, so applications, extra staff, we'd still want it to be roughly

You know, but there might be ways of keeping it more or less automatic, but still having it be more strategic and more impactful to some of the firms from the feedback we've heard.

And obviously, we'd need an estimate of cost from staff based on the feedback here.

Do you have any feedback to those three or four additions we could do?

Yeah, I'll weigh in on a few and then let Mr.

Divers jump in.

The state enabling legislation does allow up to 10 years for these benefits to so to answer that.

And this would be the fourth council to actually weigh in on on this ordinance.

And it has gone up and down a few times.

It was first five years, then it was three years, and then it was back to five years.

It was back to five years for the reason you cited in that it didn't seem to be sufficient enough to help these young companies kind of do what it was intended to do, which was help them get started, get a firm grasp here.

So we can extend it.

It can extend up to five years, 10 years, excuse me.

One of the concerns about pivoting to a completely different program would be there are some companies with eligibility on the table, so to speak, as we sit today.

They used it last year.

They've got four more years.

And we heard from one of them.

And they said, we'd really hate to see this go away.

I made a plan based upon using this.

I'm Todd Divers.

I'm the Commissioner of Revenue.

I'll try to respond to a couple of these.

First by saying our office administers the program, but we're not an economic development office.

So it is, if we're going to keep doing it, it is important that it remains streamlined and fairly simple to administer.

As far as extending it to 10 years and small companies not being able, or I guess sort of wasting the first few years, we encourage companies starting out to not actually take it in the first few years.

They can take it whenever they want, right.

And we encourage them if, you know, if they think their revenues are going to grow later, hang on, don't take it.

Most of them take it right off the bat, though.

They don't know if they're going to be there.

Well, yeah, as far as you know, if you if you had a personal property benefit, I couldn't speak to the cost of that.

I would have to look into it.

I don't know.

What an administrability would it be?

Is it a I mean, if if we just added up a personal property benefit, I don't see that as too dramatic an increase.

I'd have to see it.

The devil's in the details.

I don't want to commit my office to something without knowing what we're getting into.

The same kind of thing goes for targeted areas.

If we're talking about GIS layers and things like that, that's going to be difficult to implement for us.

We're going to have to have some outside help.

And I would point out that the plan in Fredericksburg

is not administered by the Commissioner of Revenue.

I assume it's their Economic Development Office or some outside agency, I'm not sure.

So since we've gotten all those cautionary notes about all the additions that the mayor has provided, I'm going to just throw some more additions on to this program.

And it's very much in keeping with a lot of the discussion we had with Chief Thomas in the sense that we do have this thriving economic sector that is reflective of growing prosperity in the city of Charlottesville.

I think every turn, every opportunity we can find where we can link that prosperity to opportunity for the local residents is something that I'm going to be looking for and most of us are going to be looking for.

So, could we have as one scenario, again incentive based, not mandatory, but incentive based, where, and I gave this question earlier today,

where the technology zone would have criteria specifically designed to promote local hiring of and paid internships for existing city residents who graduated from or enrolled in either the city's GO programs, PVCC, CHS, or the CATEC technical career programs like the IT academy.

And I just played out kind of one of the scenarios that was given in the example with the Fredericksburg model.

So there were four different goodies in the goodie bag that you could get if you had certain criteria.

The base criteria, for example, for a relocating business was to create 10 new jobs or make a capital investment of at least $250,000.

Could we say that instead of 10 new jobs, there were either 5 new jobs or 5 new paid internships in partnership with the city's GO programs, PVCC, CHS, or CATEC.

with the IT Academy.

That's just an example.

Can we at least research that?

I know that there are many people in this tech space that would really like to have the opportunity and the ability to hire local or have paid internships.

They don't have the resources for the paid internships themselves.

It would require a local match.

But it would also be a driver and incent our educational offerings

to provide more programming to feed into this industry.

So that is a big question.

Can we craft a separate program?

I want to reauthorize this.

I'm very intrigued by the idea of the added incentives for certain geography.

But I do really think we need to start looking at ways this sector can be tied to local hiring, local paid internships, so that the prosperity is shared.

I think we can look into that.

I mean, it sounds great, but it sounds difficult to administer, at least the way we're administering the program now.

I mean I don't have the people to track those things down to verify.

Well, and there also then might give rise to what is the structure that you need to do that.

So that's not something that no one's expecting you to answer right on the spot, but it is something that I think you're hearing from council we're very, very interested in.

And so what would that need?

One thing I think that Councilor Galvin is seeing is that there are lots of places in which we would like to insist on local hiring, and we're not allowed to by state law.

And so this is one where we might be able to try to figure out a way to incentivize local hiring and add on to a program

like this.

So here's just general questions because we're kind of mixing jobs and incentives and all that.

Do you have any idea how many GO graduates have not gotten jobs?

Yes, that's how the GO programs are structured.

So we create the program when the jobs are ready and available and then train towards them.

What is that recognition the city recently received?

The number one city in the country for being hospitable to start up something like that?

Yeah, that's number four for entrepreneurship, I believe.

We do another five minutes.

Okay, I'll speed up then.

And these are just general quick answers.

I'm fine with that.

They were in the top ten.

Okay.

And where was Charlottesville?

Number four.

Okay.

Is this, you hear a lot of apps, a lot about applications for smartphones and computer-focused jobs.

Is this strictly for that kind of technology or would this also cover

Well, it's really intended to help a young growing company continue, but anybody can use it.

OK. Do you have any idea of how many of these companies have failed?

And I ask that because one of the mantras is fail fast.

And they fail like 90% or something like that.

So do you have any feel for how many businesses that have utilized this

Okay.

Any way to find out?

Just generally.

That's not easy.

being in the tech zone, and the answer is no.

But for every job that a tech company creates, there are four to five other jobs in the community that get created.

You say for every job a tech company creates, there's 45?

I certainly heard you and Councilor Galvin, and I didn't say it, but I'll say it out loud, support for reauthorizing this.

In a way, I'm not that enthusiastic about increasing the length of it, because I think that if people can redshirt, if they can defer, it might be that we just need to accept that if people don't want to, they don't have to, and that they use their five years.

Can I sort of poll a couple, so a couple questions here.

Lengthening it out to some, I will say with this, definitely what I have heard is that even though I know that your office advises them to take it, they're in an un, or to wait, to wait, but they're not in a position that, to Mr. Fenwick's point, their lack of confidence about their future

which is in the nature of startups means that they kind of have to take it.

So my guess would be that a very small percentage of them take that good advice probably.

Could we say that you could lengthen if in the, you can lengthen it by the number of years in which you actually only were deferred nothing.

The thing is it would zero out anyway, so if you got to take it for eight or ten years, then you just didn't get it for two or three years.

I mean, if you gross less than $50,000, you're gonna... What if you gross zero?

You don't have to pay a $35 license.

Five more minutes, okay.

No, you would have to pay it.

Okay, that's one question.

Second question is property tax being included, at least with advice from staff, business personal property tax.

Yes.

Yeah, let me sort of answer that by kind of folding it in to the previous comments about, it seems to me that the program is working well.

that we have right now.

Startups, I had a couple startups and they're still started so they're working.

I didn't need government grants, I needed customers.

I needed a product and in my case it was my talent, what I could do.

So it seems with the recognition we're getting from national organizations about the hospitable atmosphere we have

And we also have not a block from here, I think, a Charlottesville incubator, technology incubator, which is vacant all the time.

So we have the assets here for a lot of things that we can use.

So my feeling right now is everything's working fine.

I don't see any reason to add on or to extend it.

But there's also, it's the same sort of documentation that you have to provide for the whole idea of growing five to ten jobs.

It's just a particular kind of job.

I just wanted, so it sounds like there's broad enthusiasm for local hiring and more justice.

The idea of adding personal property, personal business property on as an additional program without some sort of incentive like that, without some sort of performance agreement, I'm a little leery of because the tech businesses already have this

Sounds like there's some clarity coming in.

To Mr. Fenwick's point, the reason that it's, I would argue, that it's important for governments to set the climate in these sorts of ways is it's not about innovation or technology per se, it's about a creative economy.

It's about building an economy that has innovation and creativity and a startup ethos.

within it of which technology and innovation are the symptoms.

So that is the opposite from a technology where it's one big spaceship comes from a Fortune 500 company, has 5,000 jobs, lands in town, builds a new building, creates the same jobs for 30 years.

We have moved away from that sort of reliable company town economy.

And Charlottesville definitely, with the exception of UVA and a couple other incumbent big players,

is a creative economy, but it's a competitive world like this.

I know from lots of other cities around Virginia, there are lots of other ones that are angling and competing with us every week.

And if we're not agile and assertive about the creative economy that we're going to build, we could start to lose our edge to other

So that's one of the arguments I'd make.

I'd also suggest that these companies are very socially conscious.

Mr. Bellamy has done incredible work with his Black Male Achievement Initiative and

sort of almost developing kind of a go code program.

And Willow Tree has sought to become involved with training folks.

Cytent has come up with a couple of jobs that they would like to hire to quote, unquote, non-traditional candidates.

So I think there's a lot more enthusiasm like that.

So I wholeheartedly support this direction.

I would like at least to get staff advice and options on cost and possibility on the zone idea, the geography,

property possibility and the durational possibilities.

Could I ask that, I mean you're not going to be able to commit to anything like this, but I'd hate to see a renewal of the current program held up over

trying to create, make it better, and we are under a bit of a time crunch for getting to the end of the year.

We need to get our paperwork ready, mailed out to businesses.

We're not taking a vote.

This is a parallel.

We're asking for add-ons that could be included and amended into the current renewal of the program.

I think Mr.

I think if we do intend to do just the program as it stands today and then add on to it later,

Five years more property tax.

That would be something different.

Well, I mean, that's, that's what we'll counsel.

I don't know.

What, may I ask then, what is your timeline?

What is your deadline to get the reauthorization submitted?

Well, that's why I was suggested that if you could possibly go ahead with the reauthorization of the current plan with the understanding that any improvements be an add-on later or be maybe another program.

But that's not what we're discussing.

But in a way it is, because this program is specifically about the BPOL.

And if we're OK with extending that,

the only question I've heard about that is whether it be a three-year or five-year or ten years that I don't know that we still need to have that conversation but it sounds like that's something we could decide relatively soon and then some of the other bells and whistles that are going to need more research that may not be ready by the time we have to make that decision.

That's exactly right.

And we might be able to come back to the first meeting in November to talk about the current

the current ordinance as it stands now with a discussion over 5, 7 or 10 and then come back to you later in December with any other add-ons that we can do later on.

One last question.

For every tech job that is added, there's four to five peripheral jobs.

Is that close?

Yeah, that's the research.

So if a tech company were to lay off a job, would we lose four to five peripheral jobs with that?

OK.

Thank you, gentlemen.

I think we're in good place.

Thank you.

OK. Moving on to the next item, major snowstorms.

Mr. Mayor, Members of the Council, this is the Alex and Judy show.

As you know, we each have our own distinctive responsibilities during snow, but we did do a joint memo.

Which one would you like to do first?

The ordinance and talking about sidewalks and then follow up with the streets?

Start with streets.

Start with streets, okay.

I'm Judy Mueller.

I'm not Lance Stewart.

Unfortunately, as some of you know, Lance has had some complications from his leg surgery and is unable to stand as much as he wanted to be here tonight.

What we tried to outline for you in the memo that we put together is there's always an expectation level on the part of our citizens

Sometimes I like to think that we do our best and sometimes we spoil them and then they want the next level of service.

So we tried to put into this memo of what it actually, there are no specific recommendations in here, but just letting you know, here are some other things.

And I think you have to keep in mind

You may not remember the name Jonas, but that was the last big storm that we had last year.

And with the frequency of storms 12 inches or greater, the increased population density

and our whole multimodal, you know, we're far more sensitive now to bicyclists and pedestrians and that's put an added kind of weight on what we're trying to do.

So some of the things that we've looked at and we'd like some, obviously this is for feedback from all of you.

The first thing is driver training.

We have discovered that VDOT has a far more

sophisticated driver training program than we do and we're currently looking into that and trying to get a better idea of what the cost that would be.

We've had a number of retirements in the past few years and

Unfortunately, plowing snow isn't something you learn overnight.

So being able to do some advanced training we think would be worth it.

Another thing is, and you may be surprised at this, we have 120 dead end and cul-de-sac streets in the city.

So, you know, it's not like in Albemarle County where the snowplow goes down along Two Lane Road and just

you know, throw snow wherever it goes.

We just can't do that.

We have to work at a much slower operating speed.

And a lot of our big trucks cannot make it into these small streets.

So historically, they've been kind of, you know, we do arterials first, which are the main roads.

And once those are cleared, we go into the what we call neighborhood

Street, and then the cul-de-sac and the dead ends are the very last.

And we want to revisit that and say are there some things we could do at a reasonable cost that would give those people who live on those

I can see a smile up here.

Somebody lives on one of those streets that we think we might be able to do.

Mine doesn't get plowed because it's not a public street.

Oh, okay.

But, you know, there are two different ways of doing it.

One is to require, rent some equipment.

The problem with renting equipment is, and I want to make this clear,

Every able-bodied driver in public works is already assigned something.

So we would have to pull some from some other places or take people who may not have CDLs, commercial driver's license, so they can't drive the big trucks but they can drive pickups.

But again, we

I go back to the driver training.

We'd have to train some folks because plowing snow is not like driving your personal pickup down the street.

The other thing is to look at contracting out.

Obviously, contracting out is more expensive, but it isn't an option.

The other thing is to consider hiring a contractor to do our major streets.

to do Emmett and the 250 bypass and that.

There are a number of contractors here who have large equipment and we could do that.

It's dramatically more expensive.

Some of the numbers in here are estimates.

This one would be about $32,000 per event.

But that's a possibility that we can look at and evaluate.

and the biggest thing I think is we need to look at increasing our salt storage.

We do have a salt storage building at our facility at Avon Street.

Last year after Jonas, if there had been another storm, we would not have enough salt.

We'd use what we had, we'd use it very sparsely, and mainly the arterial roads is what we do.

What happens is after a major snowstorm, depending on how widespread it is on the East Coast, everybody's run out of salt.

And so everybody's trying to get, even though we have a contract for salt, they

they historically have not been able to produce.

The other advantage of having an additional bulk storage is we would be able to buy salt in the summertime at summer prices, which are dramatically lower than the normal wintertime.

The next thing is talking about bicycle and pedestrian facilities.

And I think if you look at

The pictures we have on page four, you can start to see some of the things that we're up against.

Look at West Main Street.

You've got a travel lane, you've got a bike lane, you've got parking, and you've got a sidewalk.

So where do you put the snow?