City Council Meeting (2nd Part)   11/21/2011

We're going to move forward because we want to breeze through, try to breeze through as much of the rest of this as we can.

All right, so the next item on our agenda is Resolution 600, Preston Place Special Use Permit, first to one reading, Mr. Jim Tolbert.

And thank you all for your patience.

Thank you Mr. Mayor and Council.

This is an item that was on your agenda at the last meeting.

It's a request for special use permit at 600 Preston Place.

The request is to expand the number of people permitted to live in the fraternity there to 14.

The Planning Commission actually recommended to 17.

You had some questions at the last meeting.

You asked that

We pulled some numbers on property maintenance and on safety issues, police calls.

We did that and I think we sent all those numbers to you and they're all in the report.

The actual police calls for 600 Preston Avenue for the last two years plus this year are relatively minor.

There were 14 total calls.

but a lot of those calls were for instance that probably had nothing at all to do with the fraternity like a traffic stop out front or towed car out front shows up at that address but it's not typically tied to there.

The one that we usually get more calls about than any other noise complaints, there's only been one and that was in the last school year and so there have been very few

From a property maintenance standpoint, there have been very few issues and those issues are ones that typically, that paternity is very good about responding to and correcting so our staff that does property maintenance doesn't view those as, again, in the whole scale of things, very relatively minor and they take care of them and are very responsive.

And one other point to clarify, the request that was before the Planning Commission was to go from 10 residents to 14 and again the Planning Commission recommended 17.

In doing some further investigation we found that in 1986 there was a special use permit

approved that it's still valid that it allows 13 residents there.

So actually to meet the request made by the applicants would only be allowing one more than what is already approved by special use permit at that location.

So currently they have how many...

They have 10 there.

They asked for 14.

The staff report that evaluated it looked at it at 22.

Planning Commission came back and recommended 17.

They're allowed 13 now, yes.

I wanted to ask a question of the city attorney.

Is there an expiration date for special permit?

I'm sorry?

Is there an expiration date for special permit?

No sir.

It was approved for up to 13.

Site plan was approved.

Site plan references, actually references the 13.

Actually, I'll ask you to hand me that last cookie down there.

I'm sorry?

Oh.

Well, I had originally asked for the police report and the neighborhood services report to kind of see if these folks were good neighbors or bad neighbors and if we were going to just add fuel to an already existing fire.

and it was the reason I did that is I felt that if it were compelling it would convince me that we should override the planning commission and I found that although there were a few issues and I think that when you have a bunch of teenage boys living together there are always going to be a few issues that compared to other groups of teenagers in the neighborhood they're actually reasonably good neighbors and I think are determined to be good neighbors and I would encourage that and so I personally am satisfied that

Dr. Brown, Ms. Edwards?

I agree.

I support this.

I think 14 is a good number.

Is it ordinance or resolution?

I'll move the resolution.

I'm willing to second it.

I had a couple of questions, really.

We received an email from a member of the public making, I think, some very reasonable requests about lines of communication so that whenever there's an issue, they have somebody that they know they can contact and then a backup person they know they can contact.

It's already there, I'm sorry.

There is a, it says a contact.

All right, so I do think we should, can we specify that there's also an alternate designated?

There's a suggestion about the university doing a better job of educating their students about their responsibilities, how to be a better neighbor.

I don't think we can necessarily attach that to this specific resolution.

That would have to be a separate resolution.

Right, right.

Yeah.

But I do think there's some good ideas along those lines here.

My other question is,

And I'm wondering, it just seems like in taking the sort of piecemeal approach that we're taking, are we not looking at the forest in terms of the cumulative impacts on the neighborhood?

Well, again, we established many years ago R3 zoning, which is a multifamily high-density zoning in this neighborhood, in this property here.

It was, that was done, it's been there.

The special use permit recognizes that in some situations and at some levels fraternity houses are appropriate in an R3 property.

I think one of the concerns is that 608, which is

right next door is planning or talking about coming in and their track record is not as good as 600.

We pulled the same numbers on theirs.

It's also larger, but I think you have the right to evaluate every special use permit based on the individual circumstances related to that and look at the impacts of it.

And so that one may be as big as it needs to be.

You're not under any obligation

All right.

I still have concerns about the systemic impact on the community because I'm still thinking about this as part of a larger part of the quilt of that area.

All right.

Knowing that this is now really only adding one more, or one more authorized tenant to me, it seems like it's something that I can support.

But I do think we have to be very mindful as we're looking at future applications about cumulative impacts.

So anyhow, we have a motion.

The alternate contact.

And I do believe, I hope that you will work with whether it's the off grounds housing office or Idly Wooten or somebody at the university and follow up on some of these other suggestions about what more the city can be doing to encourage neighborliness and on the part of

students, fraternities in particular in this case.

All right, so it's been moved, seconded, as amended.

Any further discussion?

Please indicate your vote.

And the motion carries.

Thank you very much.

I vote too.

Thank you, Mr. Tolbert.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

This is an opportunity we have that we've had some conversation with you about.

There's three Region 10 properties, one on Cedar Hill, two in Johnson Village that they would like to sell.

They've been operated as group homes for a number of years.

They are trying to get out of some of those old home conversions and into a more efficient way to deliver services.

It actually will end up being a net increase in the number of units that they have available, number of bedrooms.

The plan here is because we have to partner with one of our non-profits.

PHA has agreed to work with us.

We would provide the $750,000.

They would purchase the properties.

They would collect the rent until Region 10 has the new housing available and we would split the rent with them so that they would have some reimbursement for their operating costs and then we would provide up to $75,000 to PHA

to rehabilitate those houses, put a new roof on one of them to do some weatherproofing, waterproofing of one, and then some cosmetic changes, some paint and just improvements to them, flooring work, and then sell those houses for workforce development for up to 120% of area median income to make them available.

One is a five bedroom.

They've got a lot of potential.

We feel like that for $750,000 for the purchase and the improvement,

We will get the money back.

This money will come from the strategic investment fund and economic development that you actually set aside several years ago for housing that we haven't used.

At the risk of making us take two minutes longer, I'd like to say that given our conversation before about some of the causes of homelessness, I think that, you know, decent housing for people who are clients of Region 10 is huge, and I think that although this is, in a way, it seems like taking away housing, it's actually a way of providing more housing ultimately, so I'm for it.

Is this a motion?

Moved and seconded.

Any further discussion?

Hearing none, please indicate your vote.

Carried unanimously.

Thank you very much.

Report and resolution, allocation of Charlottesville and Hovington dollars for fiscal year 2012, $344,500.

So thank you again, Mayor.

This is our CHF fiscal year 12 money.

You appropriated $1,410,000.

We've already allocated a large portion of that, $690,000 for the Nunnally Street projects and $500,000 for the Java projects, leaving us $463,000.

At this time, we've got a recommendation to award $344,000 of that.

Just quickly, Java for a market study for some work they're going to do at Sunrise.

They had asked for more and then they said they were happy just to get the 10-5 for that to do the

Marketing, Building, Goodness, we give them money every year to spread around the community to help folks that really need help.

AHIP for rehabilitation, $250,000 worth, $50,000 on that for their emergency repair, which has been a really successful program.

AHIP and Habitat, a planning grant for the Build a Block program to get us started on that.

We've had some conversation with you about that.

Habitat for down payment assistance for Sunrise, $15,000.

Abundant Life Ministries, $11,000 for the planning to begin construction of their development on Fifth Street Extended and then $3,000 that would go to Habitat to complete the closing calls for properties that we ask them to buy for us on 8th Street.

So recommendation here, $344.

Two issues, if I could, that have come up just to hit

because there may be questions about, I'm just trying to preempt those, about why we didn't fund PHA for down payment assistance and the reason for that was they already have a great deal or a significant amount of money in CRHA that's out there and available for down payment assistance.

They've only drawn down about 12,000 of their allocation from fiscal year 10-11 of down payment assistance.

and so we felt that to put money there where they weren't using that money right now was not furthering the goals of the program.

We are holding a little bit in reserve for the opportunities and then the same thing Mr. McGee asked about $60,000 for the Belmont Cottages project.

As a staff we felt like we had

contributing a lot of money to Habitat.

They're finishing up Patton Street, they're doing Sunrise, and this is a project that 60,000 right now is basically allocating money where they would have to go out and raise a lot more to do the work and we didn't feel like it was an effective use at this time of

of the CHF dollars.

I thought she had given me that money before she left but it's in the vicinity of about $80,000 that's in their account right now.

Is there a motion to approve?

Yes, sir.

Is there a second?

Second.

Any further discussion?

Hearing none, please indicate your vote.

Thank you, Mr. Colbert.

Thank you.

Next item, Report and Resolution Legislative Program, Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, first one reading, Mr. David Blount.

It's no problem, Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, and I'll give you the very brief version in the interest of time this evening.

You do have the legislative program before you for your review and approval.

It should look very familiar to you in terms of the priority items, which are the first part of the program.

followed by the section of ongoing concerns which really incorporates those requests that have come in from localities and addresses other issues outside of those main priority item topic areas.

Let me just, if I could make just two brief points.

The first concerns the only new priority item in the program this year and that concerns secondary road devolution.

There is a statement that the top priority for

the region to be opposed to the shifting responsibility for secondary roads to counties.

But I think this has implications for those localities such as yourselves that maintain their own roads.

I think any time you start talking about dividing up the pie differently, there's the potential for concern.

And then also the fact that the CTB, Commonwealth Transportation Board, this past year

here in the fall has been looking at how it allocates street maintenance payments.

So in accordance with that, I've also included a statement in the transportation funding priority that encourages the street maintenance payments to be stable and increasing payments to localities.

Secondly, we have a perennial position on state and local funding and revenues.

A couple of changes in that position.

One, to introduce the concept of contractual arrangements between the state and localities, that there be a collaborative look at that.

And I think this just kind of grows out of the ongoing and ever increasing frustration that we have at the local level with the state shifting cost and program responsibility to the localities.

So introduction of that concept into the program this time.

And then the second thing within that position,

is showing support for an action that you and the other localities in the region took this past year to support the elimination of those across the board aid to locality reductions that have been in the state budget for the last couple of years.

So those are really the main things I think that I would point out to you this evening.

I'm afraid I have one.

On the section on education, public education funding, the second to the last paragraph on that page, I think?

Yes.

If your page is the same as mine.

Concerning the local composite index, we support establishment of mechanism for local appeal of the calculate LCI to the state.

That has actually been in the program for a number of years, really came at a request of one of the rural localities at a time when they had seen their composite index make a really substantial jump from one year, from one index to the next, primarily driven by some small amount of high property values.

It was put in there generally in that regard.

I certainly can

I understand your question with regard to the current situation or the discussion that you all are hearing here locally.

Well, I think there would have to be a process set up in order to allow for the appeal to take place and then define the parameters by which that would take place and who would make that decision.

Well, I think that what you typically find, if there is an adjustment in a composite index, and I think sometimes they do if they found errors that have been made in property values or income data that's been assigned to the formula, and an adjustment is made for one locality or two localities, then the change is actually spread

among the remaining 130 plus.

So it wouldn't be a, you know, a direct impact on any one or two other individual localities or school divisions.

It would be a very minuscule change affecting everyone.

Certainly.

Other questions for Mr. Blount?

All right.

Thank you very much.

Sure.

I would like to have your vote to approve.

That's probably important, yeah.

So we do have a resolution before us in support of the legislative program.

It's been moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any further discussion?

Hearing none, please indicate your vote.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Next item.

Good evening, good morning.

I will try to be as good as possible.

Good morning.

This is our legislative program that I bring before you every year.

Once again, I've reached out to all city department heads, city staff, two council members in particular that had a large hand in putting this together, coming up with the items that I have before you today.

What I do want to impart to you is, after I went through these, we have

Eight actual proposals and eight policy positions.

When you put them together, there's a few trends emerged.

There are really three main issues that we're working towards here.

There are human rights, public safety, and not unsurprisingly, this day and age, cost savings.

Every one of these can fit into one of those categories.

I'll go through a few of the main ones that I have here.

And of course, I'll take some questions on the ones that you might have some concerns with.

The first one you saw is from the police department, which is seeking the authority to allow CSOs or community service officers to initiate TOEs within the city.

This is, while it seems like public safety, it's actually a cost-saving measure.

Having CSOs do this work saves the cost of training those officers, and they pretty much do most of the work anyway for that.

Second, fire department, this is also a cost-saving measure.

As it turns out, a lot of fire alarms within the city are actually false alarms.

Chief Warner has decided to cut down having an emergency response to these alarms, which means less apparatus, less people, and less danger to the public, because there could be accidents when fire engines are racing to a scene.

The problem this poses

They cannot respond as quickly to the fire alarms because they cannot use these transmitters that control the traffic lights.

It is now, an emergency situation is based upon whether or not you're going in with lights and sirens.

If you have your lights and sirens going, that's when it's just an emergency response, that's when you can use the transmitters according to state code.

The idea is, chief awareness does not want to go in full emergency mode to fire alarms anymore, because a lot of the time it's a waste of time.

Probably.

Okay.

We've got a few items that are under the human rights category as I stated.

The first one would be to remove felony drug distribution conviction as a barrier to receiving food stamps.

Right now, if you're convicted of possession charges, you still are eligible to receive food stamps if you apply and you qualify.

You're ineligible if you have a drug distribution conviction.

Every state handles this differently.

Some are more strict.

We're about in the middle according to the states that are researched, and we're looking to go one step further to allow those with convictions to be able to apply for food stamps.

The idea being, if you rehabilitate it, this is your chance to get back into the world.

Next, a perennial issue, restoration of voting rights for those convicted of non-violent felonies.

This has been our program every year for as long as I've been here.

And we have it there once again.

The next one is amend the Virginia animal laws to allow trap, neuter and release practices within localities in the city of Charlottesville.

You remember a few, about a month ago at a membrane of understanding that was

signed between the city and the SPCA endorsing this as being their preferred method of dealing with community or feral cats.

That showed up on my desk this afternoon.

I'm working on that one.

Universal design, this is putting accessible features into new homes, wheelchair ramps, grab handles, items that make it so you can actually age in place, which is the term that Java uses.

Java is behind this, the hack is behind this as well.

Right now there is a tax credit available for putting in universal design or visitability features.

I have not myself.

The HAC meeting where this was reviewed and discussed, Mr. Spurson was there, Mr. Armstrong got the agenda.

Neither have raised any concerns at this point about it.

Last year I think it was actually relatively successful in dealing with the home builders and getting something passed for us.

So hopefully that would work out again.

Next item from our Bicycle and Safety Committee, they had asked that we ask for anti-dooring legislation, which is one of the most straightforward items there, that when you're opening your door on a parked car, you will look to make sure a bicyclist isn't coming at you so they don't run into your door.

Legislation like this is all over the country.

Many states have it including Maryland, Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, and Georgia.

We're looking to do the same thing here.

And finally, a request from NDS is to support legislation to allow a locality, Charlottesville, to prohibit the storage or use of indoor furniture outdoors.

This comes under that health and safety issue that I talked about before.

We get many complaints, particularly from the university area, about indoor furniture being used outside.

Health risks are certainly possible there.

Rodents, infestations, mold, fluids of many different kinds.

that came from NDS through our property maintenance inspectors that actually handle the UVA areas.

I'd say outside.

In the inside.

Legal purposes, no, but probably so.

We get this complaint an awful lot in the university areas from the neighborhoods and attempt to respond to that because we don't have the code to deal with it now.

Blacksburg has

What defines indoor furniture?

Typically upholstered.

I think as our staff does on everything we would use some discretion.

That seems a little overreaching to me personally.

I could go along with it if it didn't include porches.

A lot of fraternities have

Kochis is on the second floor, Jack's on the second floor.

And if we got the approval, we could tailor it to be a little lesser if we wanted to when we adopt an ordinance.

I guess the concern is because it just sounds so subjective.

I think we'll have to define it when we do a local ordinance.

A draft in that way is proposed legislation from our enforcement methods and what we can and cannot handle.

This seems to be the broadest way to look at it.

Rather than just a counter, there could be other items that could cause an actual health and safety issue.

I would say if council were to put this forward and it were to be picked up by one of our, by our delegate or senator,

This would be hashed out when it actually gets to Richmond and try to figure this out because there are some issues that have to be discussed here.

What's the chance of counsel on that one?

Dr. Brown, Ms. Edwards?

I'd just say for the record, in my last house, I would have been in violation of this ordinance.

I had a couch on a covered porch.

That should look really good.

Those are the problems.

We're talking about the health and safety issue.

We want something that's protected from the elements.

Right.

Right.

So we've got at least three votes on that.

That's right.

Understood.

Under policy positions, we now know that we didn't know when this was first drafted that the county school board has asked the board of supervisors, who I think is still expected to do it, to put forth legislation in the General Assembly.

to change the LCI so that money comes out of our school budget and goes into their school budget.

Let's just skip ahead.

I had a question.

This issue has come up a couple times, particularly in Belmont, but I know in some other neighborhoods where some residents would like to see the current

Speed zone that's allowed for schools to be extended.

This is where you can reduce the speed limit to 15 miles per hour, have that extended to neighborhood parks, streets that are adjacent to neighborhood parks because you've got kids running back and forth and playgrounds.

I'd want to hear from our traffic engineer about is this feasible?

Is there something we're not thinking about in terms of these streets?

Whereas this would be all day, every day.

I think I can speak for Jeannie because we've had a lot of conversation about this.

Her response has always been to people that ask for it is that we don't have the authority.

She's okay with it, and again,

If it's couched and with the recommendation of the traffic engineer and approval by council and it's the way the state code is written now for schools it's 10 miles an hour less than what the posted is so if it's a 25 it could go to 15 if it was a 35 it would only be able to go to a 25 so it's not a it's not an automatic 15 mile an hour change but I think I think Jeannie would be okay with it again with the

Right.

Same as with the schools.

So if we add that, can we have the caveat that we run this whole idea by her at the next meeting?

You could come back and let us know.

Maybe there were some.

I'm currently on schedule to meet with

Can you just talk to Jeannie in the next day or two?

Mr. Mayor, is this ready for a motion?

All right, so are you making a motion as amended?

Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any further discussion?

Hearing none, please indicate your vote.

Carries unanimously.

Thank you, Mr. Harris.

Thank you very much.

Very much appreciated.

Mr. Huja has agreed to take up items F and J on the consent agenda at our next meeting, so we'll defer discussion on those.

Are you okay?

Didn't we agree in council to have a work session on that?

Mr. Jones, what's your current thinking on those two?

I wasn't here when the council had their discussion about the workplace issue.

We could hold a work session.

I'm not sure if we would fill two hours of discussion on that.

I know some of the councilors have expressed an interest in putting it on an agenda for a couple of reasons.

One, there would be an opportunity for it to be televised, unlike a work session, so there could be a discussion there.

And two, there tends to be more

interest in the city council agenda versus a work session in terms of publicity.

So that was one of the suggestions from council.

So we could go either way.

The feeling is that maybe we can discuss that between

Is there anybody on council who feels strongly that it needs to be a work session versus a council discussion at a council meeting?

Although I don't want to do it on the 12th because I had something else that night.

I think we had talked about it, but then Dr. Brown had said, well, let's hold off on making any concrete plans until we get the results of this survey and then we can figure out how to proceed.

I think what we heard from the public is they want us to bring it up.

I think it would work just as well as a council agenda item given with the caveat it might be a night like tonight where we have a long agenda.

I mean if it's a short agenda meeting I think we can devote some time to it and people would be happy with that.

So I would suggest that the mayor and city manager look at

Sure, we could put it after whatever public hearings we may have.

And I would suggest the 19th then, because the 5th is right around the corner.

That's also slated for the 19th, so we could have both discussions that evening.

And as far as the solid waste, even with my agenda book for tomorrow, the plan for next year is to begin to have quarterly meetings.

So I'm really concerned about the direction that we're going with solid waste.

I just wanted to plant that seed to see if we need to have that as a council discussion.

We have a report, maybe similar to the one that we had at the work session.

Once again, I could suggest that we could put that on one of our agendas in December for discussion.

Either the 5th or the 19th, I'll have to check with the folks at Rivanna to see if they'd be able to get us some information in time for the 5th and they may be able to do that.

and I'll take a look at the agenda for the 5th.

All right.

Any other business?

Hearing none, we'll open up the meeting to one more round of matters by the public.

Is there anybody from the public who would like to speak?

All right.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Reconvene into a closed session.

Do I need to state the purpose?