City Council Meeting   11/7/2016

OK, good evening, everyone.

Thanks.

Calling this meeting of Charlottesville City Council to order.

Thank you all for being with us here.

Ms. Rice, will you call the roll?

Mr. Fenwick?

Thank you.

Ms. Szakos?

Here.

Ms. Galvin?

Okay, welcome everyone.

We have a very abbreviated agenda tonight, which is customary of City Council meetings the night before an election.

So the

We have big things ahead for the city and the country tomorrow and polls open very early.

So we're going to start with awards and recognitions, then go to announcements.

This would be the time to introduce guests.

Well, speaking of the election, I have brought some guests this evening all the way from Tajikistan.

These are folks who are with us as well as their American hosts from the friendship force.

And they're here with a program called Open World, which is run by an agency of the US Congress called the Open World Leadership Center in Washington.

They're political leaders and researchers in their country.

And they're here to learn about the electoral process and the various levels of government in the United States.

And today I took them on a little tour of the downtown mall.

We visited the voter registrar's office and the free speech wall and a campaign office.

We also went to Timber Lakes.

And so they are here tonight to observe part of a city council meeting.

And this is their flag, the flag of Tajikistan, which I would not have recognized, but now will.

So I just want to welcome you all.

Welcome, thank you for being here.

So this right now is about acknowledgements.

So we have a couple of visitors from another part of the world as well.

And these two young women are brought here through the US State Department sponsored program administered by the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative and the ICMA, the International City Managers Association.

So the young professionals that are here with us tonight both work in environmental sustainability.

and Mr. Gary O'Connell from the Alma County Service Authority has been their host and as well as the city, county and the university.

And so the one young lady is Carol Eye from Myanmar, Burma.

And the other is Surya Negsi from Indonesia.

So thank you for coming.

and just before the meeting tonight we had a very good conversation about how each country deals with solid waste and water treatment and stormwater management and the difference in scale of the cities were like two million and two hundred thousand compared to our 47,000 person city so they know really what a big city is

and as I believe Carol, I said that there are no trees in her city.

Did I get that right?

And that was one of the marvelous things to see so many trees in Charlottesville and that the idea of having a grove of trees in the middle of your downtown mall was quite unique and quite fascinating.

So anyway, welcome.

So I guess I'll wait.

One award to announce, but are we there yet?

Yeah.

Okay.

Other guests.

Other guests.

Sure.

So good evening, everyone.

Yeah, I do better than that.

Good evening, everyone.

Tough crowd tonight.

Everybody must be geared up for tomorrow.

We are honored to have here with us this evening Miss Naya Fairchild, Charlottesville High School's 2016 Homecoming Queen.

Miss Fairchild is a senior at Charlottesville High School.

She has been in the public eye since before her birth when a Boston Globe reporter

began chronicling her and her family's experiences with Down syndrome.

Those Boston Globe articles yielded a book called Choosing Naya, along with national coverage on programs such as Dateline.

Despite the challenges she faces, over the years Naya has continued to excel.

At Buford Middle School, she served as a cheerleader and she continues this work by managing the cheerleading team at Charlottesville High School.

Excuse me.

She has held three summer internships including one with BreadWorks and two with the city's Community Extension Youth Internship Program to and from which she traveled by CAT.

She and her mother served as the keynote speakers at the 2015 annual meeting of the Massachusetts Down Syndrome Congress.

Aside from her accomplishments, Naya is well known and loved at CHS.

She is known for her friendliness, her school spirit, her humor, her work ethic,

and her commitment to overcoming challenges.

As a result, last month the CHS student body honored her by naming her their homecoming queen.

As CHS homecoming king Frances McCall told the Daily Progress, she exemplifies what we as a class and as a school want to show off.

I just want to say thank you.

This has been a true honor for me to become homecoming queen.

And this is a word to say thank you for your votes up for high school and all student body.

I want to give a big shout out to them and to homecoming kids and to everyone.

Yes, I am a really good role model.

And I want to say thank you.

I am truly honored to be a homecoming queen.

I want to give a big shout out to my teachers and everyone who voted for me.

Somebody has to take a picture.

Do you want to take a picture?

Yeah, the brothers.

They got to get some credit.

I want to say thank you to the City Council and the Charlottesville community for all the warm receptions that we've gotten on this really wonderful honor.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Let me continue the sports theme because last Friday night Charlottesville High School won the championship for their division football team.

They beat Louisa and congratulations to them and in the spirit of community cooperation whatever Albemarle County also won the championship to their division.

So congratulations to you and the

football teams.

Now, we have something new here and it's the budget office seeking citizen input.

It's a new process that we hope will work out for the city.

As the City of Charlottesville begins the fiscal year 2017-2018 budgeting process, we are seeking citizen input to create a budget that best addresses the needs of the community we serve.

The Balancing Act is a tool that allows citizens to put together the budget that best aligns with their priorities.

Users can go online and tinker with the adopted fiscal year 2016-2017 budget to show how they would meet their goals and keep the budget balanced.

For every change in spending or revenue, there must be an offsetting change somewhere else.

The budget must balance.

After creating their ideal budget, the user hits submit and city staff and city council will be able to review the changes and ideas.

A report will be provided to City Council and the public in mid-January summarizing the budget priorities and input from the community.

To try it out, simply visit www.Charlottesville.org forward slash budget and click Balancing Act.

And I bet you can get to the same place if you Google Balancing Act Charlottesville.

This tool replaces the paper budget survey mailed in the past.

For those citizens who may not have internet access or who prefer the paper survey, one may be requested by contacting the city manager's office at 970-3333.

So this is new, try it out, see how it works, and we'll tinker with it if we have to make improvements, but it sounds like a great idea.

Blue Ribbon Commission, next meeting is this Thursday from six to eight and I believe it's at Walker School.

This will be the second to the last meeting of the Blue Ribbon Commission and it's a learning experience for everybody there, the people participating and the public that comes and watches them so it's really part of the democratic process and it's if you're here I don't know if you'll be here but it would be very interesting for you to

see how we do this, how the citizens come together on a very serious issue.

And one thing might be out of place here, but we had a city manager, we had the town hall meeting a couple weeks ago where somebody mentioned the roads, the paving on the roads that seemed not to be finished, so if at some point

Sure, Mr. Fenwick, I believe these were two roads that we've

put a trial, we've taken a trial and we've tried a different type of pavement on both 4th Street near Preston Avenue and then 5th Street, Ridge and 5th Street in that area.

In terms of the pavement itself, that is done.

On 5th Street, they will be putting down markings in the next couple of weeks or so.

But there was a question about the

the different type of pavement and the way it feels on the road.

It's a rougher field than normal pavement.

We we understood that going in.

We wanted to try something a little bit different from what the folks in public works have said as a trial.

We're trying to get a sense for the durability of this pavement.

And then also we do know it's less expensive to put in place.

And so that's we're trying something a little bit different there and collecting information for folks as they as they comment on this.

Thank you very much.

But it should not damage your cars.

There was one person who felt that it might damage your cars.

Bellamy, do you have anything?

My only announcement actually includes Mr. Bellamy.

Just to let you know that two members of the Council are going to the National League of Cities meeting about a week and a half from now.

It is in Pittsburgh this year and I'm going actually for a couple of extra days because I sit on a few panels, national panels with the NLC including the Public Safety and Crime Prevention Policy Committee and the Youth Education and Families Council

as well as the Race, Equity and Leadership Board of Advisors.

And this year I've also been named to the Task Force on Economic Opportunity and Mobility which sounds all very

kind of highfaluting, but it's really a way for cities to come together and talk about best practices to recommend to other cities in the National League to bring back home and help our communities.

I'm also going to be presenting with Paul Beyer, our own Paul Beyer from Charlottesville, about the TomTom Festival as part of a program called Big Ideas for Small Cities.

So I have one more award, and then I do have an announcement.

Should I just go do it together?

Sure.

This fall, the city's neighborhood development services staff responded to a call for proposals that will highlight best practices, new technologies, and lessons learned, and advance the state of the art and public involvement for transportation in the Transportation Research Board's 96th annual meeting held in Washington, DC, January 8 through 12, 2017.

The city submitted the Streets That Work live demonstration project that was hosted as part of the Tom Tom Festival on Saturday, April 16 last

This past spring, in partnership with several groups to help citizens visualize and experience the different outcomes of the new street design guidelines.

In a quarter of the guidelines, the event included a temporary street redesign, a five-foot bike lane, they had

put in the bike sharrows and curb extensions they drew in with chalk.

In addition, they had concepts such as a denser street canopy.

They provided active retail frontage and identified safe routes to school.

So all of these were interactive and educational installations.

For example, there was a mini meadow of native plants seated in a traffic island.

There was a story walk guiding children along the sidewalk with a series of large picture book illustrations, pop-up vendors and a pedestrian and bicycle way-finding system.

The citizen feedback then in turn helped city staff finalize the guidelines and it represents their popular support to the Planning Commission and the City Council.

So the public interaction with demonstrations helped the citizens understand the implications of this very new but complicated document.

So this Transportation Research Board's annual meeting is expected to attract 12,000 transportation professionals from all around the world.

And our small cities initiative is being featured.

So kudos to the Department of Neighborhood Development Services staff, particularly Amanda Ponce and Heather Niemeyer.

and Alex Ikafina is the director of NDS.

The free service will give area residents an opportunity to try transit while offering reliable transportation to and from the poles.

For assistance riding CAT, as it's called, or getting to their polling location,

Residents are encouraged to contact customer service at the downtown transit station by calling 434-970-3649.

That is 434-970-3649.

You can also visit www.catchthecat.org for route information.

I'm sorry, Mr. Merritt.

I do have an announcement.

I completely forgot.

Sorry about that, everyone.

So, next Wednesday, November 16th, at the Paramount Theatre, the 100 Black Men of Central Virginia will celebrate their National Chapter of the Year Award.

So, again, this will be next Wednesday, November 16th, at the Paramount Theatre.

100 Black Men will celebrate their National Chapter of the Year for Mentoring Celebration.

The event is open to the community.

We will have food, refreshments, some short speeches, as well as a few different mentees of ours who will be highlighted for their work.

You coming?

Yeah, put you on the spot.

That's one of our mentees.

So we look forward to having a bunch of our young people from the community as well as all the people who have helped make this award possible.

So we look forward to seeing you there.

Sorry, I forgot.

And I have an announcement about Election Day, which will overlap a little bit, but this is our official announcement of the voter registration office.

As has been stated several times, but can be stated many more, Election Day is tomorrow.

Your polling places will be open from 6 a.m. until 7 p.m. You must be in line by 7 o'clock p.m. at your assigned polling place in order to vote tomorrow.

If you are in line by 7 o'clock p.m., then you have an absolute

If you have questions about whether you are registered or where you vote, you can look up your information online at http.

vote.virginia.gov.

Use check registration, so click that link.

or you can call the voter registrar's office tomorrow, Tuesday after 6 o'clock a.m. at 434-970-3250.

Photo ID is now required, unfortunately, for all voters.

In Virginia, if you do not have an acceptable photo ID, you can vote with a provisional ballot and provide the ID by noon next Monday or have a free temporary voter photo ID made in the registrar's office.

At the polls, curbside voting in your car or in a car is available for disabled voters and voters age 65 or older.

You must park near the entrance to your polling place and send someone in to let the officials know you are waiting to vote outside the polls.

and they'll bring a machine out to you.

Accessible ballot marking equipment is available in each precinct which can be used with an audio ballot and a headset and the machines are compatible with many attachments used for accessibility.

Over 450 Charlottesville voters as of now have not yet returned their voted absentee ballots to the voter registrar's office, so voted ballots, everyone, must be received by 7 o'clock p.m. tomorrow

where they cannot be counted.

Voters who have not yet mailed their voted ballots should return them tomorrow in person to the voter registrar's office which is right here at City Hall Annex right near, right at the end of the downtown mall and you can call 434-970-3250 with any questions.

And remember we have had several recounts in statewide elections in Virginia in recent years including for Attorney General

and for U.S. Senate, meaning that these elections get very close in our very purple state.

So just make sure to vote and your vote actually could, the contravention of all the political science and conventional wisdom out there, it could actually make the difference in Virginia.

Mike, if I could real quick, I'd like to just remind people around town, Wes and I were tied in a vote for city council.

Duly noted.

Okay, we're now going to move to the city manager response to matters by the public raised.

Last time we have the sign-up sheet here.

If anybody would like to sign up for the slot in the next couple minutes while Mr. Jones speaks and then we'll take up the matters by the public.

But these are, this is in response to matters raised last meeting by the public.

Mr. Mayor, thank you.

We have one response from last last meeting, which occurred on October 17th.

Mr. Elliott Harding asked if we have the ability to collect and show data points that are similar to the issues surrounding the Floyd versus New York City stop and frisk case from a few years ago, whether we can do all of that in one system.

Some of the questions that he asked were, you know, how many and what percentage of stops originate from dispatch?

How many and what percentage of stops were consensual?

and how many cases and what percentage of cases is force used, what percentage of all stops are accompanied by protective frisks, how many and what percentage of stops yield weapons, drugs, or other contraband.

Those are some of the questions that he raised.

There are a couple of those that we do keep on our own right now, but it's not in one system.

However, beginning in 2017, we will have a system that will allow us to collect most, if not all, of that data that Mr. Harding asked about.

and there's a demographics module of that system that would capture that information that Mr. Harding asked about.

Thank you.

Okay, guidelines for public comments.

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, please wait to speak on that matter until the report for that item has been presented and the public hearing has been open.

There are none of those tonight.

Each speaker has three minutes to speak.

Please give your name and address before beginning your remarks.

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

The overarching rules for this part of the meeting are contained in our council meeting procedures, which have an open link on the city council website.

Please refrain from using obscenities.

And you have three minutes.

Green is the beginning of your comment.

It slows to when you have 15 seconds left, it goes to yellow here.

And then red is when your time is up, and a chime will tell.

Good evening.

I'm Jim Self of 612 Lexington Avenue and I'm here to talk about Java, the Jefferson area board for the aging.

As a representative of the city of Charlottesville and the Java advisory council, I've learned about the many ways Java serves the city in five nearby counties.

The organization relies on very dedicated staff and a core of 1700 volunteers.

What I know best is the insurance counseling program.

For the past year, it's been my privilege to serve as a volunteer Medicare counselor.

I advise fellow seniors throughout the year as they consider and choose Medicare options.

But the real action is from October 15 to December 7, the open enrollment period for prescription drug plans and Medicare Advantage.

Some 30 trained and certified volunteers

worked cheerfully and diligently at Java, helping clients get the best plan, and for many, saving them money by changing plans.

During the 2015 open enrollment, Java counselors saw over 1,100 clients and saved them nearly a half million dollars.

This year, the program has expanded with more volunteers and more workstations at the Java office, and it has even created a mobile unit

that travels to various places in the six jurisdictions.

I spent a recent Thursday morning counseling at the Mary Williams Center at the Jefferson School.

We are now three weeks into the 2016 open enrollment.

We've already seen 600 clients and have saved them $400,000 in drug costs.

And we are less than halfway through the period.

I'd like to close with a few comments.

First of all, the volunteer work is personally very rewarding.

People are so pleased to receive competent, unbiased assistance as they negotiate the complicated provisions of the Medicare program.

Speaking personally, my time is very well spent there.

I would also encourage every Medicare recipient to see a Java insurance counselor during open enrollment.

and anyone about to join Medicare should contact Java before signing up.

Finally, if you're in a position to support Java in any way, please do so.

The organization does wonderful work.

Thank you.

Mayor Signer, members of the City Council, I wanted to come here tonight to commend two of the councilors, Ms. Szakos and Ms. Galvin, for recent comments that were made in the press.

First, Ms. Szakos, apparently you attended a meeting several weeks ago.

I imagine representing the city and the Metropolitan Planning Organization discussing public transit, and I was very encouraged by the subject matters that were discussed where I was really talking about regional transit needs, including

many other areas and it gave me encouragement that at some point we will truly get a regional transit authority to expand the transit needs of the city and Charlottesville has a good public transit system already but it needs to get much better and much more extensive and I wanted to congratulate Ms. Galvin for making a comment that we need expanded public transit

particularly for those who do not have automobiles to let them have access to the new job openings that are occurring throughout the area.

And I complain a lot about city council, particularly about public transit, and I think it's important to congratulate the city council as when they're making positive inroads into a very pressing problem.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

We don't have a stapler at home so we just put them together.

If I'm not able to say everything tonight, I think I gave the press certain web addresses in which they can look up information.

This weekend there was a loving protest at PVCC Green County Sheriff's Office.

There was a meeting inside that was surrounded about the threat of Islam and then a meeting outside.

that were protests lovingly.

It was first free speech at its finest.

While there were many heated debates, people were allowed to protest and ideas were changed.

It was amazing to see Muslims speak with those that found them to be a threat.

It was especially amazing for me as a female to see young Muslim women who are attending JMU

that were able to talk and speak with people, some who very much did not like them, in fact hated them.

And they're on the web addresses.

You're able to go and see pictures from the event.

People were able to exchange ideas civilly.

At one point, there was a lady who was in the seminar to hear about it, yet saw us outside and decided to join us.

and that's what free speech is all about.

It's a time where people can speak with each other and exchange ideas and whether we like them or not, that's what the United States is built upon.

In fact, Obama just recently, there was an elderly man who was at an event who was a supporter of Trump and people started heckling and making fun of this individual

and Obama said, stop.

You know, this is not okay.

And seeing the President do that for kids that have been bullied and hurt or whatever, to see somebody rise up and say, you know what, this person is allowed to say what they want to even though it may not be appropriate or you may not think it is, is the way America works.

There's another comment that I'd like to make

about another young man that I admire and about an event that occurred right here, December 15th, 2014.

At this meeting, residents came out and spoke about the Black Lives Matter movement.

I have to question if council was aware

that under that moment, and that was the moment where I decided, you know what, if this young man is going to run for council, I'm going to help him.

Because what he did was unprecedented.

And what I saw was people that were able to talk and that were able to express their feelings, and they cried.

But at that moment, that young man, Wes Bellamy, under the rules that we have right now, could be arrested.

He could be kicked out.

He could be escorted out by three, four, five, six policemen.

And I do have some other stuff I'd like to say.

If anybody would like to follow me outside or again, there are

Internet addresses that you're able to go to and see the amazing event today.

Yeah, I know.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Nearly 50 years ago, the Kerner Commission, appointed by Lyndon Johnson, spoke of the dangers of our society becoming two societies, separate and unequal.

Well, Charlottesville is a perfect example of the dangers that were described by the Kerner Commission, and it continues unabated, unfortunately.

We had a recent report touting the fact that the West Market Street corridor was going to generate an incredibly greater amount of tax income.

Well, yes, we can generate more tax income if we raise the prices and if we push people who could otherwise afford those prices out of those neighborhoods.

Even as you looked at the $3 million that is supposedly going to benefit the city, there was no analysis of what the cost of the city would be, either in economic terms or in social terms.

You cannot have a balance sheet without looking at the cost and only looking at the revenues that come in.

and you cannot do so without looking at the social consequences.

What is happening to the people on the north side of Main Street as you go down into West Haven?

What I would refer to as the working poor in our community.

Is that extra three million dollars being devoted to them?

Are they part of a neighborhood and the natural neighborhood for those people would be West Market Street where they could have the kinds of restaurants that working class people can afford, the kinds of markets that working class people can afford?

No, that's not going to happen.

We see it going on.

It is entirely gentrified.

and we are pushing the people further out.

Now, I don't know whether the goal here is to push them out of the town or not, but you're not doing anything to bring anybody together.

The mayor goes around and talks about how important it is the high-tech industry.

Well, the high-tech industry may be important, but that's another area where you're leaving people behind and you're not recognizing that in that process you have two societies here

separate and unequal.

And as I said, that process is continuing unabated.

The people who are in the tech industry are principally people who are coming in from elsewhere, as all of us did.

But they're people who are upper middle class.

Developers, I'm sure, are very happy about that process.

That means that they can build high end housing.

And as we build that high end housing, and as we re-gentrify neighborhoods that would otherwise be available for working class people, we won't have any working class people.

Now at some point, at some point, you have to take this seriously.

You set up a blue ribbon commission to study monuments and memorials.

What about a blue ribbon commission on the working class and poverty here in Charlottesville?

To do something serious, you may be able to, through some of your programs, employ dozens of people, but there are thousands of people in our community that need decent living wage.

and there are thousands of units of housing that are needed as well.

Thank you.

Rebecca Quinn, 104 Fourth Street here in the city.

Today I downloaded my last three months of cell phone photos.

Despite a bike trip to Vermont and visits to Bryce and Zion Canyons and the Grand Canyon, the vast majority of my photos are of trash.

No.

Well, trash violations in the immediate vicinity where I live.

No, I'm not weird.

I want to be proud of downtown.

And right now, I'm not.

Look closely at those photos and you'll see there are some of those cans that were there for five days in a row.

Some of them have maggots crawling out of them and the stench, it has gotten worse in the last two weeks.

I know the wheels of government can turn slowly and I know it was just the last council meeting at which Mr. Jones let us know that some action would be taken with downtown businesses and restaurants, but I assure you it hasn't taken yet.

and business managers continue to think trash is not their responsibility.

Lack of attention and responsibility, especially by restaurants but also other businesses and residents, it's gotten worse in the past year.

Businesses fail to train staff, to use stickers, to follow guidelines, to separate recyclables.

They fail to use their bins.

I know because they use mine.

It's marked for my apartment building.

The trash haulers do the right thing at first.

They don't pick up without stickers, and a day or two later, they're reeking, they have warnings on them, and they still don't pick them up.

Businesses think the city's at fault for not picking up their trash.

If what I've just said sounds familiar, it should, because I said this two sessions ago.

But maybe I shouldn't assume you remember everything, but I'm gonna skip to the end anyway, and pick it up here.

So at a minimum, I requested that there be some communication with the downtown property owners and businesses, because they're not always the same thing.

And I said, let's start with encouragement.

But I also said, maybe it's time to issue some citations.

Well, guess what?

Chapter 26 of the city code makes it a class one misdemeanor to dispose of trash.

Let's see.

to illegally dump or otherwise dispose of trash or garbage on public property.

And that includes our streets and public rights of way.

That's my alley.

That's all of the other locations around town that are marked for trash and for cans to be picked up.

Many aspects of Chapter 26 are violated every single day, and not just my alley.

You know, a lot of people compliment me on speaking before council, but I've never had more people catch me in the last

a couple of weeks and say the trash in their areas of downtown is just about as bad as mine.

So it's not just me.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm Brandon Collins.

I live at 418 Fairway Avenue.

I've lived here my entire life.

I have three children who've lived here their entire lives as well.

And I'm here, I know it's an exciting day where folks start to think about democracy and what democracy means.

To me, democracy is more than voting.

and I hope folks will consider that and particularly on the local level it is really important that in a community like Charlottesville that all voices can be heard and responded to and folks can work together to bring forth ideas that our governing bodies can get to work on.

I am perplexed still at the resistance by the city council to revisit your matters by the public rules

and your council procedures, despite a lot of people coming to you and saying they have issue with this.

I think you've heard all the arguments for why

your new system is not one that's accessible to folks.

So I'm not going to rehash those, but I don't think you're doing any harm by going back to the old system when so many people have said, go back to the old system.

I think what I've heard is that folks feel that it's not accessible, that you are not accessible.

Combined with the new council procedures for not commenting after public comment,

We don't as a public understand or know what it is you're thinking about things that are brought forward and it makes it much harder for people to really just get here and bring forth ideas and show their support for it and see what your support might be.

I really don't think it does any harm to go back to the old system and I'm not sure why you all are so dug in on defending that system.

So I'm going to ask that you put that back out there for reconsideration.

I think some of the data may show that you're not getting the kind of participation that you once had.

Now a lot of folks will say that's issues, but I can say when folks are feeling shut out they're not bringing issues and those issues aren't going to get bigger and bigger and you're not going to see the kind of public participation unless they're getting some response from you or that folks are feeling like they can access things.

So you know at the end of the day it really is an access thing.

For me, I don't get down here.

I find it's a difficult system, and I'm somebody who pays attention to this stuff and could access this stuff fairly easily.

But it's just a pain.

Why make government and citizen involvement in this community a pain for people?

And I think you've heard from enough people that the old system was working, and there's no reason to not go back to that system.

We really appreciate people coming and talking to us during Matters by the Public.

It takes a lot of courage and it's not easy to be on that side of the dais.

So we listen very carefully to everything we hear here.

We read all the emails we get.

We take meetings in our offices and we get phone calls and voicemails.

Any other?

Thank you very much, everyone, for coming.

I'd like to.

Anyone else?

One second, please.

So we have an upcoming retreat on November the 10th, correct?

Oh, I'm sorry.

Oh, excuse me.

That was an oversight.

Nancy Carpenter.

Sorry.

My name is Nancy Carpenter and I live in the Rose Hill neighborhood and I just want to comment on what Councilor Fenwick said about the budget app that you could go to and play around with the numbers.

It was very eye-opening.

It was a lot of fun.

in some ways to see how quickly you can get in the red unless you really are really mindful.

So I would recommend a lot of people to go to that website and just kind of play with that and submit it because I think it is important to get that feedback from us.

so that you know where some of the desires are from the community overall.

So hopefully a lot of people will take advantage of that.

Secondly, I want to support what Mr. Fogel said about the social costs of the development that we're having in this community.

I went to a meeting today, trauma-informed network, second meeting, very, very eye-opening, very, very good.

I'm looking forward to getting some good information and participating.

But you think about social costs and you think about

Living.

Where am I going to live?

Where am I going to house myself, my family, whatever?

And that can be a situation that's very fraught with tension, and I'm thinking of little children specifically who may live

and areas of the city where parents or mothers or fathers or parents or whoever are not sure where that money is going to come from to pay the rent.

Because I have a lot of phone calls about that every day.

And I also think about if you're a parent, you try your best to put on your game face.

But a lot of times that doesn't work.

And children pick up on that.

And I think that sometimes they pick up on that and they internalize it a lot and then it becomes external.

when they're in situations such as in their classroom situations or other social situations.

And I think about the idea that being unstable in your housing or not sure where your family's going to be, whether you're a child or an adult, can create a sense of trauma in your life.

And also sometimes if you don't know how to deal with that trauma, you turn to other methods or other avenues

to feel safe and secure or to forget about those traumas.

And that all has a social cost.

So I think that an analysis, a very, very deep dive analysis would be important, which is why there is someone I need to contact about impact statements that can really be a tool for analysis for the city council, for our planning commission, for

for the bar, for any other group that has to deal with these types of developments, because trauma comes in many forms.

It's not just a physical trauma.

There is emotional trauma, and it does carry a lifelong, it can carry a lifelong inability to be able to have a positive trajectory in your life.

You're trying to provide a lot of opportunities for people in our community, but if we're taking

that opportunity, but cutting it with the development, I think we just need to do a very deep analysis.

Thank you.

Mr. Bellamy.

Mr. Kleeman, do you want to?

Yes.

Sure.

A couple empty spaces.

Well, so we have a record.

Good evening, my name is Peter Kleeman and I live at 407 Hedge Street in the city.

I noticed on your agenda today that you have the Sunrise Park Development Amendment listed and often there are items on your agenda that have to do with development in the city.

I brought up at a previous meeting

about the issues of congestion in the city as a whole that results from developments in different parts of the city.

And I suggested that perhaps you could come up with some scheme for looking at what the impact on general congestion in the city would be for all future development projects.

I noticed in the last several weekends a great deal of congestion in the downtown area.

Some of that's related to specific events like the film festival, we have book festivals, we have football games, we have all sorts of things, but we have so many of these things that these are the typical patterns of traffic in the city.

So if there's going to be some development potential at Sunrise Park that's going to be adding

Additional residences that would add new vehicles to the city.

These vehicles will take trips around the city.

They'll go downtown to the bank, to their dentist, to the hospital, to city council, and they will be driving on our streets.

And there is a limited capacity in the city, and this capacity gets eaten up with every new development.

and as we have more and more events and we have more and more development and we have virtually no expansion of in-city capacity for transportation, we get an ever more congested city.

And so I would like to recommend that as you have your conversation on Sunrise Park,

that you consider what will be the impact of any changes that might result from your decisions on the city as a whole, how that will eat up additional capacity, and what our actual capacity is for getting further development without major upgrades of streets.

And if we do need major upgrades of streets, we need to consider whether that's an appropriate thing for a historical city like Charlottesville

to be expanding thoroughfares through downtown.

Will we lose the character of our city as a result of these developments?

And is that something that we as a city and as a community would care to do?

Thank you.

Excuse me, everyone.

I'm battling a little bit cold.

I do think it's important for us to recognize some of the comments that we've heard

continuously from several of our residents in regards to the public comment section.

I was having a question about the retreat that we have scheduled for this Thursday at Mormon.

Is that open to the public?

It is.

It's the strategic plan.

And then there's an opportunity for the council to go through an exercise called Emergenetics.

In the afternoon.

Just wanted to make sure that the public is aware of that.

I would like for us to, in some shape, form, or fashion in the future, possibly even before the end of the year, for us to bring up and discuss the public comment section once again.

I serve on the State Board of Education, and after sitting during our last meeting, I kind of had somewhat of an epiphany.

We literally had 29 different individuals sign up for public comment.

They received their three minutes, and we just sit there, and we have to listen.

to a certain extent, it comes with the appointment, it comes with the job, yes it makes the meeting longer, but I do think it's something that even though we talked about this a couple meetings ago and we went from 12 to 9, I do think we may need to look at tweaking this once again because it is something that we've been hearing repeatedly from several different people and if it's causing this much of an issue,

And I'd like to second that.

I would support that move as well.

But I'd like to thank Mr. Fogel for his comments.

It was as if you were reading my notes.

I do appreciate what you said, and we'll be doing much more.

I'll just say, Mr. Bellamy, because you raised it, there's always negotiation that goes into these sorts of things and I certainly have followed the lead of my colleagues as one counselor, including yourself on saying that the current system was working very well.

I was very interested in thinking about how the county does theirs and where they hear people sign up both.

They do pre-registration and they

People in person are put into two different lists and they sort of call from both of them in the county.

It's very interesting and everybody gets to speak.

But what they do in the county and in a lot of other jurisdictions is they, because of their interest in running an efficient meeting, that that is the primary interest around Virginia in these, is they'll change the amount of time.

They'll go from three to two minutes based on the number of people who are interested.

And when I talked about that with with when when we were developing all this, there was not much interest in

that kind of variability being put in.

But that's one of the ways that bodies around Virginia try to just manage the amount of time that goes into getting the meeting into public comments.

And it's a, as we said when we did this initial vote, very hard to get an answer to this right that will please everybody.

And that's what I've heard certainly hanging out at the Virginia Mayor's Institute or with the Virginia Municipal League.

So this is a

Well, Mr. Mayor, I have a question and a point of order because it's been our typical procedure that if two councilors want to have an item on an agenda, it gets put on a future agenda.

I would actually think, you know, it may be that you'd want it sooner, but one way to look at it might be to say, we did the six-month check-in, do we want to do it after a year, or do we want to look at it sooner as far as putting it on the agenda?

Yeah.

Okay.

All right, any others?

Moving on to the regular agenda.

We will go to the consent agenda.

Ms. Rice, would you, and then I know that a couple other people want to speak about individual items, and I do as well, that are on the consent agenda.

Item A, Minutes for October 17th.

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

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

Item D, an Appropriation Edward Barron Memorial Justice Assistance Grant, $27,198, second of two readings.

Item E, an Appropriation Grant for Construction of Water Street Trail, $318,730, first of two readings.

Item F in appropriation funding for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education and Training Pilot Program, $34,584, first of two readings.

Item G in appropriation.

Local Emergency Management Performance Grant, $7,500, first of two readings.

Item H, an appropriation State Criminal Alien Assistance Program Grant for 2016, $10,375, first of two readings.

Item I, an appropriation Charlottesville City High School's Check and Connect Student Engagement Grant, $50,000, first of two readings.

Item J, an appropriation Disproportionate Minority Contact in the Charlottesville Albemarle Criminal Justice Research Project, $100,000, first of two readings.

Item K, an appropriation, Virginia Department of Health Special Nutrition Program, Child and Adult Care Food Program, $32,000, first of two readings.

Item I, an ordinance, quick claim gas easement to VDOT and 5th Street Station Parkway, second of two readings.

Item M, an ordinance, release sewer easement at 324 Oak Street, second of two readings.

The consent agenda usually contains routine items or things that don't generally call for a public discussion, although any member can ask to remove an item from the consent agenda and we can discuss it during the meeting.

But sometimes what's in the consent agenda is worth mentioning in public without removing it for discussion, so I'm not recommending that we remove anything.

Since I've been on council, I've been really impressed with the non-local funding that our city brings in, especially for projects to improve conditions for our most vulnerable citizens.

I know that some of this funding has always been happening, but I want to offer a note of appreciation to the staff who've really gone above and beyond in researching and securing grant money for city projects in recent years.

In this consent agenda alone, we have more than $1.2 million in grants that fund services for kids in crisis, adult education and training for SNAP recipients, improved police services, a new bike and pedestrian trail on Water Street, community emergency services planning, training, and capacity building, our jail,

a program to improve school attendance and nutritious after school meals for 350 children a day.

And I also want to call special attention to the grant to fund a project to document how and why African Americans are disproportionately represented in our criminal justice system so we can start to see how we can begin to close disparities in the system.

I just wanted to make sure that people know that even though we don't have discussions about these things each meeting,

So I spoke to Mayor Signer earlier as well as some of my other colleagues on council in regards to one of the items on the agenda.

Specifically, why is it that when you always want to talk about something you can't find?

All right.

So item I,

in regards to disproportionate minority contact in the Charlottesville Albemarle Criminal Justice System Research Project, the $100,000 awardee, or appropriation rather.

I see Mr. Chapman here, our Commonwealth Attorney, as well as Mr. Neil Goodwill.

I'd just like to give kudos to those individuals, as well as our city manager, our assistant city manager, Mr. Murphy.

I believe that this is going to do a great deal of good work within our community to continue the work

It has already been taking place.

There's been a lot of conversation from several different people about how they would like to see the DNC task force go further, dive deeper into certain issues.

and I think that these funds are going to allow us to do so.

I think it's also important to note that while we may not get everything right all of the time, we may not be doing it exactly how people, some people may want us to do, we are doing something and in my personal estimation, we are moving forward.

We're also making an effort to put our money where our mouths are and I'm just very proud of not only city staff and our city manager for his leadership, but the members of the community in terms of their commitment to getting this right.

We are one of the few localities in my personal opinion throughout the Commonwealth who literally makes an effort when you look at issues in regards to discrimination, when you look at issues in regards to disproportionality with contact, when you look at some of the real race issues that we have in our state, in our country for that matter, we continuously make an effort to do what we can to get it right.

Mr. Vice Mayor, thank you very much, I appreciate that.

I'd also like to thank Rory Carpenter, who's here from our Department of Human Services, and Gretchen Ellis from the Department of Human Services, who've done a lot on this issue as well, and of course our Director of Human Services, Kaki Demick as well, so thank you very much.

And I also want, this will overlap a little bit, but I was equally struck by how much action and work

was happening in this consent agenda for this time that was going to affect so many people and that is such a profound demonstration of how progressive this government is at the spending and staff work and action level when it comes to helping people.

There's a lot going on in this consent agenda and a lot has gone on under the hood.

The runaway emergency shelter program,

The $32,000 to keep on the program of free meals for kids at the public locations in the parks, in the centers in the city.

And not to mention what Mr. Bellamy talked about with the dispersed minority contact.

So there's a lot happening here in a government

You know, the values of the governing body and the community are represented in how we raise and spend money and how many people we try to touch with our programs and so you see that here.

I did have one question, and Mr. Jones, I meant to ask you about this earlier and I just didn't get around to it, but the Water Street Trail, is there somebody who can just say a little bit more specifics about that?

I'd just like to know more.

Yes, good evening.

Chris Genzic with the Parks Department.

If you notice the new trail that was built by the coal tower developments, there's a gap between that and the Belmont Bridge.

What we intend to do is continue that trail in a very similar design from 10th Street to the Pavilion Tunnel.

And then when the Belmont Bridge design is finalized, we may be able to get it to the transit center.

So you can get to the mall.

Great.

OK.

Second.

Any other comments, questions?

All in favor?

Carries five to zero.

Thank you.

Okay.

The next item now is an ordinance reauthorizing the technology zone.

We have 20 minutes allocated to this.

I think it'll probably go longer.

I'm sure Chris Engle is going to present.

We also have Todd Divers, the commissioner of the revenue here to answer questions or maybe talk as well.

Good evening.

and this item before you tonight is a follow up from your meeting on the 17th where we had a discussion about the technology zone which has been in place for the past 15 years and is set to expire at the end of this calendar year.

You all asked us to follow up on a number of items and explore those as to their viability.

There were four specific items that we looked at.

The first was to extend the period of eligibility beyond the five years.

The current benefit is a five-year limitation, and that's a reduction in your business professional occupancy license over those five years.

The state code does allow to extend up to ten years, so that was one of the things we looked at.

The other thing we looked at was adding a business personal property tax benefit, which is also possible.

The third item was to look at a specific targeted area such as a strategic investment area or some other small area and consider adding an additional benefit for businesses that were to locate within that area.

And then the fourth item was to look at an additional benefit for local hiring and or internship programs for those who are participating.

So your memo has details on each of these and I will walk through each of these briefly and then we'll allow for questions at the end.

And I do want to thank the Commissioner of Revenue and his staff for working very diligently to pull up estimates on what these additional options would cost if they were to be implemented starting in calendar year 2017.

So option one, and each of these options has unfortunately

a couple of variations to make it a little more complex to understand.

But anyway, we'll walk through those and get the hang of it pretty quickly.

Option one is to extend the eligibility period to seven years and maintain the current B poll as the benefit.

So 50% of your B poll would be reduced instead of five years, but for seven years.

The cost for that is estimated to be an additional $50,000.

That's in addition to what the current program costs, which is in the neighborhood of $75,000 to $100,000 on an annual basis.

Option 1B is to take that to 10 years.

So instead of 7, take it to 10.

That costs about $90,000.

Both of these options are manageable within existing resources that the city has available to it.

Option 2 has

Four variations to it, and 2A would be to maintain the five-year eligibility period for the BPOL and then add a 50% reduction in business personal property tax.

This would cost an estimated $12,000 to add that.

So that's keeping it as is, but adding the business personal property costs about $12,000.

Option 2B extends the period of eligibility to seven years and adds a 50% reduction in business personal property tax.

This costs the additional $12,000 plus the $50,000 to extend it to the seven years.

So that costs about $62,000 in addition.

Option 2C extends it to 10 years for the B-poll benefit and adds a 50% reduction

and the business personal property tax.

That one costs about $102,000.

Option 2D is to maintain the period of eligibility for five years and add a 100% reduction in business personal property tax.

That would go away for the qualifying businesses.

That costs approximately $24,000 per year.

All the items in option two we believe are manageable within the existing resources that the city has available.

Option three looks at doing a targeted area and adding an additional benefit within a targeted area.

The system that the Commissioner of Revenue currently uses to track tax receipts in this type of process

won't currently accommodate multiple benefits over multiple geographies.

So this option is not viable at this time.

Side note being that the commissioner is putting in place a new software middle of next year that we would hope have the enhancements that could potentially handle this in the future.

So it's not completely out of the question, but I think for tonight's conversation,

in terms of moving this ordinance so it's in place for the beginning of calendar year 2017, it's not an option.

And then option four looks at creating an additional benefit for businesses that hire folks that have completed a CATEC or PVCC or GO training program over a recent period of time.

This one was a little different.

There aren't a lot of good examples of such programs out there that fit within the technology zone ordinance mechanism.

So we were unable to see any good examples and unable to really estimate the cost.

But we did some thinking on this one and ultimately we believe what it comes down to is in our experience businesses hire the best available candidate that they have at the time.

and to enter into a situation where you try and manipulate that or adjust that to encourage them by an ordinance or any other mechanism to do otherwise, we just don't think is really feasible.

Given that the average benefit to a company in this program in the past 15 years is roughly $1,800 on an annual basis,

We don't believe there's a practical incentive that would be large enough to get somebody to say we're going to create an internship program and hire folks that come out of CATEC and put them to work that way.

So I just don't think it's practical to use this mechanism, the technology zone ordinance, to actually implement that.

I would mention that we are doing, and you all are aware of our growing opportunities programs,

that take this approach and our downtown job center folks are working on a daily basis to take underemployed and unemployed folks and connect them with an actual job.

Our GO Training programs do that specific training for a specific individual for a specific job.

And then one of the lesser known programs, and I brought our little brochure here, is GO Hire, which is a very specific program that helps any city business that wants to hire a city resident

with a short-term wage subsidy to assist them in getting them on board, so in hiring a new person.

And then if they have an existing incumbent worker that needs some training, there's also a training subsidy that helps address that specific training need.

So we do have mechanisms that speak to the notion behind option four of hiring city residents and helping city businesses at the same time.

So I did want to mention that.

The ordinance that you have before you is as written as the current ordinance that's in place now with simply an extension for a five-year period to the year 2021.

And that, as the mayor mentioned, is on for first reading tonight.

Time is of the essence on this.

To some extent, the commissioner and his staff need to prepare the paperwork and be prepared to

to handle this at the beginning of the year.

So if council desires to implement any additional benefits as described in options one or two, we believe those can be handled through a motion tonight, and by the time this comes back to you for second reading, we would work with legal staff to incorporate that into the actual ordinance.

So with that, the commissioner is here to answer specific questions about how this is administered, and I'm happy to answer any additional questions anybody has.

In part, I hope my colleagues will forgive me because there's a couple of things I wanted to say that are going to end up in a question leading up to you all.

I don't really want to introduce the motion myself as the chair of the meeting.

I could, and we've done it occasionally, but I'd prefer to kind of get out some of what I would like to say.

But it is going to end up in a question.

So thank you all for the amount of work that's gone into this.

This has been a good journey, and it's really, I think, gotten some ownership from staff and also some nuance based on how our government is set up, which is sort of where my question is going to end up.

But thank you very much for the amount of hard work that's gone into this.

I personally, as an elected official, in a part-time capacity, bring to this the experience of working as an attorney with corporate practice, working with smaller tech companies here as outside general counsel.

So I care and know a fair amount about the life cycle of these companies, especially ones that are in the city.

So I'm paying very close attention to what we do with this because I do hear about it a lot and these sorts of incentives.

I support renewing and expanding the tax through the options of 1B and 2C which would extend the B-poll reduction of 50% to 10 years and 2C would extend the 50% reduction of the business personal property tax for three reasons.

I'm curious, this is going to end up in a question for you all because it does go to how the government deals with this.

First, I think this is broader than tech or even innovation.

I think those are actually misnomers for what we're talking about.

It's building a creative economy whose productivity for this city

and our future will depend on creativity, innovation, even disruption rather than, say, having a Fortune 100 company with a satellite and some number of jobs in an office building plopped down in the center of town, which would not be organic to our economy.

$75,000, which is what we currently spend, is 1% of the $7 million that we take in through this.

So 1% for that sort of economy is a pretty good investment, and it's an investment on money that we receive so we're not spending it out of hand, even if it'd be 1.5% if we went up to what you all are talking about.

And that kind of economy will be the most resilient while solving a problem that plagues Virginia at large, which is too many fortunate, these big companies creating too many service jobs in a city.

So this is a different kind of job.

It's based on creativity, brain power, innovation, rather than just

working for a single big company that came from out of town.

Second, the investment would be helpful to our larger economy.

We heard a couple of stereotypes tonight about tech companies.

Just as it's important to avoid stereotypes in our lives and our politics, I think we ought to avoid them in policy too.

Some people say that these jobs are helping people already well off, but that is not, in my experience, the case or a part of privileged groups.

For instance, there's a company called Totem here in town, which is led by an African-American man who grew up in this area, came up through the iLab, got $5,000 to help start this company, and the company is dedicated to telling the stories of nonprofits so they can gather more funding.

I met last week with a gentleman named Baron Schwartz, who's the CEO of a company

called Vivid Cortex, which is a database company whose customers include large online companies like Etsy.

He's from Charlottesville.

His father ran a motorcycle repair shop when he was growing up.

He attended PVCC.

He held a variety of manual and service labor jobs before getting into the database industry.

Not a glamorous upbringing.

And this led to the founding of his company.

After getting started in Albemarle County, they just moved their offices to Charlottesville because they want to be near the downtown mall.

They want to be in this.

They've created 30 jobs.

They're on a growth trajectory.

He is a very strong supporter and sent us a very passionate argument for sending the credit to 10 years.

Finally, according to Enrico Moretti and the new geography of jobs, each knowledge economy job creates five other jobs.

Doctors, nurses, restaurant owners, property appraisers, architects, builders, restaurant jobs.

That is the nature of this economy.

And third, I would say that this would be good for Charlottesville in the bigger context of Virginia.

We're in a very competitive Commonwealth.

If we don't keep our edge as a city with a creative economy, we will fall behind.

This is the reason that so many other cities in Virginia have done, have acted on this.

Other cities in Virginia that have credits that go to 10 years include Arlington County, Newport News, Front Royal, Caroline County, and Kilmarnock, even up in the Northern Neck.

I would like for Charlottesville to earn the reputation of a leader in Virginia's creative economy.

This is one way to do it.

That's why we've heard from the Charlottesville Business Innovation Council and from a lot of other companies and entrepreneurs all in support of expanding the credit.

This gets me to a question.

So this is a couple of thoughts about the design of our program from the government's perspective.

When you look at all the other Virginia cities who have very different kinds of technology zones,

There is a class of them, and we went through this in the research process, like Fredericksburg, where there's a more heavily curated part.

So there are a bunch of other cities.

Halifax County, you create five new jobs, and you have to do $250,000 in capital investment.

Chesapeake, five new jobs, $200,000 in capital investment.

Lynchburg, five new jobs, $100,000, even to get in the door to get the credit.

This is also how Fredericksburg was set up.

But our government is run where

the operations of this credit go through Commissioner of Revenue rather than Office of Economic Development.

Office of Economic Development is the place where there would be a staff member who could handle 40, 60 applications from the conversations with Mr.

Divers.

There's not the resources and it's not really the right place for a more strategic

Technology Zone program.

So this is getting me into the zone and Miss Galvin is going to raise a whole other thing in other business about whether we would have a strategy about creative economy.

but we don't have even a single staff person who works on these issues in this part of the economy because we have several who work on apprenticeships, wonderful, valuable programs so it's kind of backing us into a bigger discussion if we were to do something more strategic like the zones of whether we'd create a new staff person inside economic development who would work on all things related to creative economy.

It may not be the right idea, it may not be support from my colleagues but one of the things that

We see looking at other cities and counties in Virginia as the ones that have a more strategic approach looking at capital investment and at job creation.

They don't do it through Commission of Revenue.

They do it through their Economic Development Office, which we just haven't happened to do in this city.

So I wanted to

asked what you all thought about that, I guess.

And so my sort of opening offer, as I think the counselor has been the most involved in this, is to say that I think there's a lot of support for going to tenure on both fronts, but I can see a lot of room for compromise between that as a proposal.

Well, I don't think either of us would turn down any additional staff.

I don't know that as currently designed that a full-time position would be warranted.

Todd can speak for himself on that.

And neither of us were here when this was created in 2001.

My best guess as to how and why it was created, the way it was, was to create a benefit that was broad and felt throughout.

Charlottesville was unique.

I don't know if we're still the only one that has our entire city footprint as the tech zone, but we certainly were for a period of about 10 years.

And I think the philosophy was let's let anybody, we're a small city to begin with, you know, creating a lot of smaller districts where you're in or out.

Didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, and I would suggest we're probably still in that same boat now.

We haven't gotten any bigger.

and there's even fewer places for companies to go.

So I think the idea was to cast a wide net to let home based businesses, anybody that qualifies no matter where they are, receive a modest benefit and I describe it that way, it's a modest benefit.

It's not anything that's going to make a bottom line decision on a business to move from

or neighboring county or any other place mostly.

I think some folks will indicate that it gives them a sense of encouragement.

They see it as a signal, a sign that the city's interested, but it doesn't move the needle with respect to some of the larger, you know, when you hear about the state offers an incentive package from the governor to do something.

So it's a very different thing, and I think it was set up that way.

and I think to make the transition as we discussed a little bit before, if we were to transition to a different model, we're kind of betwixt and between where we have a system that there's existing eligibility out there for existing companies that if we cut that off,

They would feel slighted to start up using a different mechanism.

The Fredericksburg model is different.

We looked into that one most specifically, and it actually, one of the downsides to it is it brings the process to the council on each and every

Each and every one.

So it in some way politicizes the process.

Applications flow through the Office of Economic Development, but each and every one of those are approved on an individual basis.

We do have a similar process here with our performance agreements of which we have two in existence right now.

They're for major projects.

at least one or two of you on council will remember those and those are individually approved by the council as they materialize.

So that's a similar process and we do have that in place and if a company were to be interested enough to be making a decision and we felt we needed to engage in pushing them across the line, that's a tool we have in our box right now that we could pull out and use outside of the technology zone or anything else.

Can I ask one other specific question, which one compromise might be if you look at all these other cities in Virginia, some of them stagger

the gift when you get later on in the life of the 5 or 10 years and so for instance Front Royal years 1 to 5 you get 100% of the tax back if you qualify.

Years then it goes 80%, 60%, 40%, 20%.

Caroline County is 100% the first year and then years 2 to 10 is 75.

Would there be any issue with an administration of this if you were to

Yeah, I would prefer not with the software we have now.

That, that, you know, we talk about it then, we can talk about it sooner when we get the new, you know, get the new system in, but what we've got now, it's, you know, I'd have to have somebody come in and

changing things around.

I have a question that isn't about, actually I have two quick questions that are kind of around it but not really responding to your questions.

The first is that I know a couple of years ago in the state budgeting process at the state level they were talking about taking people away, the business professional, whatever license

that funding away from the localities and seizing it for the state.

We fought that off at the time but I expect it will be back and I'm just wondering what would happen if we did do you know five or seven or ten years and then suddenly it all goes to the state.

Do they typically talk about sending it to the state or just dispensing with it all together?

That's what I always hear.

Well both.

So that is, I mean, it is something, this is a kind of tenuous tool, although it seems last year didn't come up, so maybe it's not happening anymore.

They've been saying it for 20 years.

Yeah, okay.

All right.

And the other question is that this expired, or will expire at the end of this year.

In five years.

So what I would like to suggest, because part of this discussion that we're going to have tonight is constrained by the fact that there's a certain amount of logistical ability

to implement whatever we do.

And so we're kind of looking at it in possibly two phases of doing what we have to do right now so you can get stuff printed and everything ready for the tax season, as opposed to really what we want to create as a community.

So I would like to suggest that in four years and three months, we tee this up again so that we're not at the last minute doing it, just to kind of put that on our collective calendar to start sooner next time.

And the other is that I will say, just kind of as a philosophy, I'm happy to engage in the discussion of how many years and which benefits I tend to favor, 1A and 2A, which is the five years with the half of a business property tax, or seven years with the business property tax, 50% off.

But one of the things that I think that it's important to recognize when we're talking about this is that a lot of the places

that have very robust technology zones or incentives for tech companies, those communities may not have very many other reasons for tech companies to want to be there.

I think one of the things that we do spend a lot of time and investment and really putting our collective not only mouth but money into

is creating a community that is supportive of tech businesses and a creative economy.

We have excellent public schools.

We have walkable city.

We have lots of infrastructure that people want to be at.

We have a downtown area that's exciting and where there's a lot of what Paul Beyer calls creative collisions where different kinds of people are meeting.

And it's a great place to be a tech business.

So I think that I don't want to just throw money at people

in order to kind of incent them to stay when I think there are other things that we do do that make it a good place for them to be.

I understand the concern that this is kind of a form of corporate welfare where we're giving money to companies that make their own money and why are we doing that and I do understand that there are ways that we can

kind of sweeten the pot for companies that do improve our economy.

As a question.

As a question.

Well, I had asked a series of questions earlier this evening, Mr.

Angle, and it was related to option four, and I understand the logistical problems with option four.

and for the sake of the public, option four was to create an incentive for the tech industry to hire local residents who had come through a local training program like CATEC or PVCC or one of the GO programs.

I do feel very strongly about the fact that we do need to be aggressively making sure we're creating pipelines and paid apprenticeship programs for our local residents to take advantage of this growth industry.

It is our target industry.

As CBIC has said, the average wage is $75,000 a year.

That's 50 percent more than the average for-profit wage.

These are high paying jobs.

We have got to be aggressive about tying them to our local training programs that go deep, deep down into our neighborhoods.

So with that, I do want to have a serious discussion about what can a program be designed that would be in partnership with local tech companies to incent the hiring of local existing city residents

within the tech field have graduated from either the GO program, the PVCC, the high school or CATEC tech programs.

Well, I can say we're having discussions right now with a couple of interested companies around the idea of a tech program, a GO tech, if you will.

Mr. Bellamy is aware that there

There's a pilot underway this fall with Black Male Achievement that's exploring that.

Well, I guess what I'm saying is that I would like that to be a council policy, and I have created

A draft resolution that at some point we can talk about, but I don't think this is just something that is a pilot in a particular program.

This could apply to the redevelopment of Friendship Court.

It could apply to a lot of different other avenues that we're looking at.

So I want to broaden that discussion that this is something that we're serious about

for every neighborhood in our community and for demographics that have not been represented well in this sector, be they minorities or women.

So I'm going to be putting that out later on, not to decide tonight, but for a future discussion.

And the other thing is I wondered about,

Has there ever been any in, you know, research into the President's Tech Hires Program?

I know that Lynchburg is involved in that.

I don't know what they did to get involved.

But is there anything preventing us from doing that?

I'd have to look into it a little more.

Okay.

Let me start off with a question and then you tell me.

Am I correct if I say

The beginning salary for a programmer in the range of $40,000 to $45,000.

Probably close.

Yeah, a little higher.

So when you get an average, you're averaging in those starter jobs with the top executives.

have come up with 74,000 a year.

Is that correct?

And this is just a ballpark in the area discussion.

And we were ranked number four in the country for being supportive of tech firms.

And we received an email from one of the firms that said Charlottesville ranked first out of 133

Metro areas in both the greatest growth and the greatest rate of growth since 2010.

So what I'm trying to get a handle on is when you spend in public money it seems to me we have to spend it on the jobs that need it first or at least don't leave them out of the equation.

and the end of the briefing book or your section here had a graph that showed that the tech companies actually their survival rate is better than the non-tech segment which I presume would be retail,

It was a combination of all sectors we tried to control for transient kind of temporary businesses that go quickly.

OK. And I don't know, is there a program similar to this for those kinds of startup companies?

Entertainment agents, whatever it could be, whatever it would be.

If there is, I don't know of it.

Is there?

Not that I'm aware of, no.

And I have to question again how many, when you create one tech job and the odds are it's going to be an entry level tech job, how that one entry level tech job is going to support a lawyer, a doctor, actually five professionals basically.

I don't know how that works.

And then on the reverse side of that, if we have layoffs, and they happen, if we were to say that one entry-level tech job created five peripheral jobs, when we lose one tech job, would we lose five peripheral jobs?

So my feeling is the program we have now is working

as well if not better than almost any other in the country.

Okay.

Anybody okay with 10 more minutes?

Okay, or just a motion.

And not 100%, right?

OK. Is there a second?

I can second it because, yeah, I can second it.

So I'll second that motion.

All right.

I think the polling would be useful.

I think having a discussion in this case would be useful.

Well I'd like to make a friendly amendment.

Would that be after the discussion?

Yeah I think so unless Ms. Galvin accepted it.

Unless she accepted it so it would be before the discussion.

I would not support it my

The default position would be not to support it unless there is some recognition, the will of the council, that we would have a similar program for lack of a better description of that other group in your graph at the end of the briefing.

And that would be restaurants, retail.

Entertainment Agents, whatever it is.

So this is a fairness thing across the spectrum of jobs that the city has.

If there's some recognition on the part of the council that that would need some work, then that might move me off the default position.

And it wouldn't have to be in this consideration, but

I think the staff would really need to look into what our authority is to do that as well, Councillor Fenwick.

And Mr. Mayor, I might make this comment that

I actually made the motion to get the discussion going.

However, Mr. Mayor, you did have the opportunity to explain your rationale.

And in retrospect, I'm thinking that Councillor Szago said she had a combination that she has not described.

So I'm actually willing to retract that motion to let more open discussion about the combinations and permutations.

Can I do that?

Also, for the purpose of discussion at this point, since we're not voting, actually I have a question.

Okay, because I'm leaning toward it, and so I'm willing to make the motion, but I'm not, we haven't finished the discussion yet, so.

Okay, so then I would make a motion for a seven year extension, which is 1A, or a two year extension,

to Seven Years, which is 1A, and the 50% 2A.

I think it's leaving 2A.

Oh no, that was, actually it would,

I'm trying to understand my own notes.

So mine was either 1A or 2A.

And I would leave it to others to discuss.

But I'm fine with either extending it to seven years or adding the business personal property.

Not so much both.

So that's kind of where I'm starting.

So may I ask a question?

Yes.

That's part of it.

I think that we do a lot of other things.

I want to be supportive.

I do want to stimulate this creative economy.

I think it is important.

And I think, in fact, I would defer to the mayor, to other members of council who do more business with this particular body of folks.

In the emails that I read, I heard more interest in the business personal property, but I think that that's less of a benefit.

So I'm guessing that

that it would probably be a bigger benefit to those businesses to extend it to seven years.

I don't think there was that much, actually I think there was less support for business personal property.

It would go to a much smaller group of people, right?

Lower dollars, you know a lot of these businesses don't pay very much in business personal property but there are a few that pay significant amounts and so I guess when we sort of added $12,000 a year to D you know we were thinking that you know if the idea is to kind of target someone with a

So Ms. Szakos' idea was that we would choose between just between going to seven years and expanding by two years the current system or alternatively going to the business rebate on the business personal property.

Yes.

Which I think is appropriate.

I will be following the first one.

The seven years?

Well hearing support for that, I will officially make a motion to extend the period of eligibility to seven years and maintain the 15, 50 percent reduction in B-poll benefit.

Is that right?

Okay.

All right.

I've seen comments on that during other business.

I've actually done some notes on your materials, so I think we should have a good discussion about that.

That's all.

Okay, I think we're in good shape.

1A, and that's it, yep.

All right, thank you all very much.

Ordinance Sunrise Park Development Amendment.

Again, first of two readings.

Good evening, Carrie Rainey with Neighborhood Development Services.

An applicant has requested an amendment to the Planned Unit Development, or PUD, known as Sunrise Park, to allow accessibility parking in the northeastern parcel of the development, along with other minor changes to the approved PUD plan.

On November 16, 2009, City Council approved the original rezoning request to establish the PUD with associated proffers.

On June 20, 2011, City Council approved an amendment for the inclusion of an additional parcel and other modifications to the approved PED plan.

Both plans are available through the link in your staff report in your packet.

The Sunrise Park development is approximately 70% built out.

The northeast block, two parcels in the southwest block, and six parcels in the southeast block remain undeveloped.

Staff has focused their area of review on the proposed amendments from the approved plans.

The proposed areas of amendment include land use, open space, built form standards, landscape standards, and parking standards.

Staff found many of the proposed modifications to be minor and appropriate per Section 34519, subsection 1.

However, staff found those modifications to add surface and garage parking to the northeastern parcel for the land use permitted and prohibited by block section and the parking standards to be substantial and thus provided additional analysis per section 34-42 and 34-490.

Through this analysis, staff determined that these modifications benefited the surrounding community and were in line with both the comprehensive plan and the goals of the existing approved PUD plan.

City Council held a joint public hearing with Planning Commission on October 11, 2016.

Several speakers expressed support for the proposed rezoning, indicating they believed it would help alleviate parking concerns that already exist in the community.

No speakers expressed concerns with the proposed rezoning.

The Planning Commission took the following action.

Mr. Centowski recommended approval of the application to rezone the property from the PUD plan from 2011 with associated proffers to the PUD plan brought forth with the date of October 15, 2016 with associated proffers on the basis that the proposal would serve the interest of the general public welfare and was good zoning practice.

Ms. Dowell seconded the motion.

The commission voted 7 to 0 to recommend approval of the application to rezone the parcels.

Thank you.

I don't have a question.

I just think this is one of those cases where the Planning Commission is unanimous, where it is serving the needs of low-income residents in our community, making life more livable and pleasant.

Any further discussion?

Again, I just would like to say that I do think that this furthers the creation of affordable housing.

and Creation of Housing in general that is a much needed resource in the community.

So the parking is an ancillary need and it also does again alleviate stress on the surrounding neighborhood.

I'd just like to clarify, Mr. Creeman was

spoke about this in public comment.

And this is not approving something to build more houses.

Yeah.

66 was the...

Correct.

Yeah.

Second.

Any further?

Okay.

All in favor?

Oh, this is a first and second.

My apologies.

Jump the gun.

This is a first and second, so we did not need to vote.

Apologies.

We have first and second, first two readings, but we're moving forward to the next meeting.

Okay.

Let's go forward to other business now.

We're still 10 minutes ahead of our regular 9 o'clock break, so I know that Ms. Galvin has an item.

All right.

And again, I'm

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council, for letting me just put this forth.

This is not for action tonight, and it's not even for deep discussion other than, again, a request that it be entertained for a future council discussion.

But it is very much related to the early discussion we had this evening about the growth of one of our target industries, which is the tech sector.

As you can see, the way I've laid out the resolution, it does provide as where as is due the rationale for why it's important to be very intentional about tying our training programs and our educational programs to this growing industry.

It is something that's been endorsed at the federal level.

It's something endorsed by our Piedmont Workforce Network and at the state level.

It's something that our local business community and research done by CBIC has identified that it is a growing sector with very, very good jobs.

As I said earlier, the on average employees in the city's tech sector earn $74,000 a year, which is 50% more than the average private sector job.

And it comports with our council's strategic plan goal for

enhancing self-sufficiency of our residents at the same time is growing a strong diversified economy and it comports with our comprehensive plan goals for economic sustainability both in determined and developing educational and training programs that coincide with that target industries partnering with local workforce service providers to offer retraining opportunities and again adopting the growing opportunity plan as a framework for citywide policy to facilitate economic prosperity for all city residents

So the resolution is clearly to give directive to the Office of Economic Development.

The charge to create a comprehensive strategy with performance benchmarks in partnership with the city's tech sector, business community, state, federal governments, economic advisory groups, workforce development, adult ed partners, training providers to promote career pipelines and create paid internships in the tech sector for existing city residents

who have either graduated or received certification from an applicable Charlottesville GO program, GO means growing opportunity, PVCC high school or CATEC program.

I also put a, be it further resolved to have that strategy come before council for action within nine months.

So I do want to just say one more comment that

Looking at examples of places like Chattanooga, Tennessee, which did have a very, very concerted effort to grow its technology sector, along with its very, very much a place-based economy.

It didn't keep its eye on the ball on that third leg of the stool, which was equity, being an equitable, creative, and place-based economy.

As a result,

Chattanooga wind up having a severe, severe shortage of affordable housing and which deepen the income disparities along race and class.

So what can we learn from Chattanooga?

What does that mean to Charlottesville?

We really do need to be

At every step of the way that we grow that industry, we need to redouble our efforts to identify and invest in the kinds of initiatives and institutions that are going to be able to grease the gears, if you will, of upward mobility of our resident population so they can get out of poverty.

They can have that opportunity at the same time as we grow that opportunity.

So that's the rationale behind this proposed resolution.

I would like to say a couple thoughts about this.

So really appreciate the hard work that went into this and I know that Mr. Bellamy has been working on a similar angle of this, which is the connection between tech companies and the

Black Male Achievement Initiative, and then there's some work happening within the Economic Development Office about a Go Tech application of this, the Go programs, the tech sector.

With all that said, so we had a meeting of the advisory council I've set up just with me personally with innovation and technology last week, and it sort of followed on this visit to Charlottesville from the Virginia Velocity Tour, which visited four other cities around Virginia, and it was this amazing

Brainstorming session that they did where they had 50 or 60 people over at the iLab and they spent a prospective budget and tried to figure out what were the priorities they would do for strategy for Charlottesville and for these other cities that they went to, Virginia Beach, some of these other ones around Virginia.

And it was really interesting and it had different, it had the idea of a quarterback inside the Economic Development Office.

It had a branding marketing campaign.

It had a code academy.

It had housing relief.

So, and the idea that came up out of this was we really need, and Mr.

Angle was there, and we had a really nice conversation about this, was we need, with the other people, we need a strategy.

We need a strategy about the creative economy.

And it would absolutely include the issue you've raised, which is equity in it.

How do we create more opportunities with it?

But it could also touch on four or five other, not too many, not 20, but probably four or five other priorities to try and ensure that this part of our economy

is what is our strategy with it?

Creative Economy strategy.

And it could have sector training, including through a code academy and offerings at CATEC, PVCC, Charlottesville High School, collaborating with the University of Virginia stakeholders on issues like intellectual property, tech transfer, whether those companies are staying here, whether we want them to stay here to come out of UVA.

That's a big area of discussion with the university and an incubator accelerator.

And there's movements happening.

But the point is, with our full-time staff rather than our part-time policymakers, we have put these into one place and a strategy.

Another one would be developing strategies in the comprehensive plan for providing commercial space and housing suitable to this sector.

So we would have some goals where we're thinking about it.

Branding, marketing the city's creative economy while providing transparent accessible resources in a one-stop shop.

Like a lot of cities have one place where you can find out about the creative economy.

We haven't done that yet.

And we could look at incentives.

And I think it should be six months.

I think that within the resources of our office, it could be

They could put together a strategy and it would include what you said but four or five other pieces so we would at last have a strategy but it would come from your resolution and we would of course listen and talk with Mr.

Well, it's clear to me that there's a lot of different pieces happening all over the place and they are not getting tied together and that a lot of us are working at things in parallel instead of working together, which both council and probably even departments, so having a unified strategy makes a lot of sense to me.

What are the other components?

There might be more

need more discussion by a council because this was very narrowly defined as tied to the equity piece of what I call that three-legged stool of creative, equitable, and place-based.

So I think the idea of a comprehensive strategy for our creative, I'd like to say again, creative, equitable, place-based economy

because we've worked on these issues for a long, long time.

It's not just one aspect.

I'd like to say that although I think having a broad strategy is always a good thing that I really do understand the rationale for this resolution, which is more than improving the outcome for companies.

This is improving the outcome for people.

I would resist making the strategy co-opt this resolution, because this resolution to me is about equity.

I've looked in Austin, Nashville, a couple of other places that have really embraced this tech economy and they have had very similar outcomes to Chattanooga.

While their economies thrive, their people don't.

I really agree that we do need to make sure

that we very intentionally, whether it's this resolution or something else, very intentionally make sure that if we are building that economy that we are also building safeguards that make sure that people who live here can participate in that economy.

For those reasons,

I like the resolution.

I just think that it's going to take, in my personal opinion, even more than, longer than six months because to do this and to do it right is going to take some time.

I don't think we need to put a timetable in regards to how we do it.

One thing that we're seeing, even with black male achievement, you have the brothers come back, you know, consecutively week after weeks, but learning how to code is hard.

Learning how to get into these programs, especially when you don't have the resources.

If you don't have a laptop at home, you can't practice Khan Academy.

Mr. Bellamy, if I could just clarify, the nine months wasn't to have the program

I'm with that, but I don't think the staff needs to be the individuals making the strategy.

We can have the conversation later.

It's fine.

But somebody, as you well know, that we as counselors

aren't the ones that can shepherd this through.

It needs to be.

Well, let me sort of tag team off of that in a way.

This strikes me as a, this is imposing from the top down instead of letting initiatives like Wes is involved in bubble up.

So we have a firmer basis on which to base all this.

This seems kind of grandiose to me, not just on the,

the economic side or the creative economy side but all of a sudden we're hearing it's going to help in housing and we're going to have incentives.

I'm just getting a bad feeling that this is a government imposed program or process that people are working on now.

PVCC is mentioned in here.

May I make one comment please?

What thing I've heard from members of the tech community is that they have not been working with CATEC and PVCC on the programs themselves.

This specifically is creating a partnership with the private sector and the training vendors or educators

using our government resources as the facilitator.

And that is a very good role of government to facilitate the engagement and also then the coordination.

Ms. Galvin, do you mind?

There's one comment that I would like to add on this, and it goes to what Ms. Szakos said, which is one of the reasons for me of trying to embed this in a strategy is I'm a little concerned with the, of having a goal that we can't meet given the nature in this city of 47,000 people of the sort of companies that we have.

So the fact is that in Charlottesville,

We don't have that many tech companies that are either of the scale or that have the uniformity among them to have classes of jobs that would be well suited to uniform structures.

I think that Mr. Bellamy has seen this with the

company relationships with Blackmail Achievement.

Willow Tree is a company that's of the scale, two or three hundred jobs where it really does have a whole set of people doing similar things like web design.

But there really aren't, our tech community here is very stratified.

There's a handful of

companies with over 100 employees, but it's really literally a handful, I would say, and then there's a lot of companies with 5 to 25 or 30 employees.

They're small, so they're not really, they just don't have the scale of a company that even has a critical mass of similar jobs that would plug in to CATEC.

It would have a, and then the companies themselves are very heterogeneous among them, so you might have an online education

company like Cytent or Archimedics or something, but there's not that many of them, or food comp, you know, Relay Foods or Foodio or whatever, but they're not, they're just, they're not, there's not enough uniformity in them, whereas in a city with a million people, or 500,000, you would have that.

You'd have 10 energy companies, but you have a couple here.

So, I just, I think that that's a, it's a practical problem with, with the goal, whereas

Right, and nowhere in this resolution is there a specific benchmark, it just says identify a feasible benchmark.

It says identify paid internships so that it is really

I think that one thing that I don't think, at least I haven't, we got this at four o'clock and I glanced through it and I like what you said about it but I haven't really delved into the details of it.

But what if one of the things that we have recently talked about as a council is

is kind of looking to our city manager sometimes for this sort of guidance of what would be a resolution that would make sense given the discussion that we've had.

And I'd like to suggest that we might want to kind of give this draft and this discussion that we're having here.

I think I agree.

I think it's a great idea for a couple reasons.

This is a very complex issue, right?

And it's not as, I don't think the solutions are as

clear cut and the pathways to success as clear cut as maybe they are with like for instance the Go Driver program or the Go Electric program.

So it is going to take time as Vice Mayor Bellamy mentioned, as we've learned with the coding effort that's currently underway.

It takes a little more time and I think a strategy for getting us there would be really important and staff can certainly develop that for the council for consideration.

I also believe that maybe on

Thursday at our retreat, there is a time where we're spending talking about our strategic plan and we can spend a little bit more time on this to get a sense of where council is and your thoughts and ideas behind this before we come back and bring a resolution for you to consider before the end of the year that would take into consideration where the council is and what direction you'd like this to go in.

That sounds very good.

Thank you.

Any other business?

Okay, matters by the public.

I think we can wrap this all up.

Anyone want to speak?

The floor is yours for a three minute period.

Just say your name and address.

Going once, going twice.

Vote tomorrow everyone.

Protect our democracy.

Thank you.