Council Candidates Environmental Forum   5/29/2013

Well, wait for Dave.

Sounds like the mics are working.

Good evening and welcome to the Charlottesville City Council Forum on Environmental Issues.

I'm Jessica Gephardt and I'm the political chair for the Sierra Club's Piedmont Group here in Charlottesville and I'm going to be tonight's moderator.

Tonight's forum has been organized by the Sierra Club in partnership with a number of local environmental organizations including Appalachian Voices, 350 Central Virginia,

Virginia Organizing, Transition Charlottesville Albemarle, Community Bikes, Healthy Food Coalition, Rivanna Conservation Society, Living Energy Farm, Eco Fair Committee, and Slow Food UVA.

Hopefully you got all those.

Tonight's forum is a non-partisan event and all of the announced candidates who are going to be running in November are participating tonight.

and tonight's event is going to be broadcast on Charlottesville TV 10 and video of the event will be available online.

So the five Democratic candidates tonight, Wes Bellamy, Bob Fenwick, Melvin Grady, Adam Lees and Kristin Szakos will be competing in a June 11th primary.

The winners of the primary will then compete along with the Republican candidates, Mike

Ferrugio, and Charles Weber for the two seats on City Council up for election in November.

The Charlottesville City Council plays an important role in local environmental issues ranging from land use to transportation to sustainable living.

We hope that tonight's forum presents an opportunity for the candidates to share their positions and ideas on local environmental issues.

We also hope that it gives a chance for the environmental community here to share which issues are most important to them with the candidates.

Tonight's forum will begin with a two-minute introduction from each candidate, followed by four questions submitted by members of the co-sponsoring organizations.

The candidates have been provided these questions in advance.

and we'll be allowed one and a half minutes to respond to each question.

During the second portion of the forum, we'll be taking questions from the audience.

These questions will be submitted on a note card.

There are note cards available in the back with pens and John Cruikshank and Dave Redding.

will be collecting those so you can just hold the card up sort of in the air or past the end of the aisle and they'll collect those, look through them and pick a few of the audience questions for us to go over then.

After the audience questions we're going to allow each candidate to have a one minute closing and then we will wrap up.

Our time keeper down here is going to be holding up a yellow card when there are 30 seconds remaining and a red card when time is up.

Hopefully everyone can see those.

The total time for the forum should run just under two hours.

In addition to thanking all of our co-sponsors for this event, the Sierra Club would also like to thank City Hall for allowing us to hold the forum here in this venue, and Joe Rice for his help with all of the audio-visual equipment, all the candidates here for their participation, and all of you for being here tonight.

So with that, we will begin introductions with Mr. Bellamy, and we will rotate the first speaker for each question.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

Smile, guys.

We're going to have some fun tonight.

My name is Wes Bellamy, and first and foremost, I'd like to give honor to God, who's the head of my life.

I'm a teacher at Albemarle High School.

I've been here a few years now.

I also direct a nonprofit organization entitled H.I.P.E., Helping Young People Evolve.

H.I.P.E.

is a boxing and mentoring program for young boys and girls.

We have about 24 kids.

We also have a stepping and women empowerment component for the young ladies.

We've been able to raise our cumulative GPA from 1.8 to 3.2 in about 15 months.

So as you all can pretty much see, I'm really, really big on education.

I'm also very big on economic development.

Charlottesville currently has 29% of our families living below the poverty line or they're not self-sufficient.

That's something that has to change, and I have a plan on how we can do so.

If you guys want to meet with me at any time, we can go over it.

As I alluded to earlier, I'm really big on education once again.

I feel like we need to place more emphasis on our pre-K and three-year-old and four-year-old programs, but also provide some more guidance from council.

And we can't really tell the school board what to do, but we also could suggest certain things and partner with them and work with them a little bit more to improve our local city schools, who I think are also fantastic.

And lastly, I'm really big on culture.

I think Charlottesville is a diverse place, but we always can bring about more diversity.

We can have improve our arts programs.

I'm really big on community engagement.

As some of you all have known, because I've worked with many of you in our big coat giveaway, we've given away nearly 1,800 coats over the past two years.

So those are the same things that I plan to bring to council.

A lot of energy, innovative mindset, and a person who wants to get things done.

That's it.

Good evening.

My name is Mike Ferugio and I'm here to ask for your support as I run for city council.

Probably or you may be asking yourself, why should you support me?

The answer is our common concern for the environment and because I will vote for positive long-term improvements for our city and our region.

A healthy environment is in the best interest of every citizen in the community.

I believe that it is my duty to be a great steward, not just a good steward, of all that we are given, the land, the animals, plant life and all of our resources.

This belief was formed early in me

As a young kid, when my mom and dad encouraged us to be out in an environment and to be out and enjoy nature.

When I was a kid, it started when I was young and we had all sorts of pets.

We had fish, gerbils, hamsters, cats, dogs, birds, snakes, ducks, and even pigeons.

My parents bought a house that had no backyard but a park.

It was a natural park.

Milburn Park was between Freeport and Baldwin.

It was literally right over my fence and it was a mile and a half long riparian paradise that had a multi-use trail, sports and playing fields in it, Brackish Water Creek that came up the whole creek all the way to the end.

My brothers and I, we fished there every summer for snapper, which is baby bluefish, eels, blue claw crabs, and carp.

We enjoyed feeding the ducks that were there.

There was all sorts of ducks that lived in that creek.

There was also swans and Canadian geese.

As a child, that was my playground.

Every day, I played there.

As a young teen, I joined the Boy Scouts and began a lifelong adventure in backpacking.

Every month, I looked forward to our trips up to Bear Mountain with the Adirondacks, where I would experience nature and always look to hopefully find a bear or a deer, which were always very eluding.

We never got to see that.

As an adult, I've continued this into my adult life.

I still backpack all the time, and I wish the same for my family and my community.

I raised my children with the same desires, and I bought a house on Monte Vista Avenue with the, oh, I'm sorry, there we go.

Hi, Steve, I have 30 seconds.

Want to do the yellow one there?

30 seconds.

You have 30 seconds left when you get here.

Okay.

Good evening.

It's great to see so many familiar faces here.

I'm Bob Fenwick and I'm an environmentalist.

I've done this three times up here.

Now, and I think most of you know me from clearing Rock Hill Garden or trying to protect McIntire Park, these issues that I've been involved in.

So I'm going to use my intro to get a few things off my chest about environmentalism.

because I believe it's economically, there's an economic benefit to environmentalism.

A lot of people don't see it that way and I'll show you why I say that.

You can go to Lowe's and you can buy mulch, which should be a natural product.

They give you three choices, brown, black, or red.

This is red mulch.

Now, it does not come from a redwood.

If it did, somebody would be in jail, or should be in jail.

They have painted mulch.

And that's, I'm not making this up, it's red mulch.

And there's a warning on this label that says when you spread it, you have to use gloves.

Now, okay, what's up with that?

When I was a child, my mother would wash the fruits and vegetables, and that was great.

And then Monsanto changed the formula so you couldn't wash off the pesticide.

Now they put it in the vegetable.

They put it in the corn.

When the children, who everybody likes to see kids eat corn, that's what they're eating.

But the best thing is my clean coal.

This is a hunk of coal.

And everybody in this room has seen the advertisements.

Thank you, Mr. Fenwick.

Hello, my name is Melvin Grady.

I'm with the City Council.

I need your vote on June 11th.

Let me tell you why I need your vote on June 11th.

I'm a Charleston native.

I'm 45 July 12th, so I've been here for 44 plus years, and I went to school here at City Schools, Greenbrier, Walker, and Charleston High School, where I graduated in 1986.

I attended the University of Virginia, and I finally got through after a long stretch of schooling with a mathematics degree in 1994.

I've been teaching

Math for 15 years, and my last two years have been in Buford Middle School, where I currently teach algebra and Math 8 pre-algebra.

I've also been in the National Guard 13 years here in Charlottesville, and I've been an adjunct instructor at Piedmont for 10 years.

So I've really been around Charlottesville in different capacities.

I'm running for the three C's, Charlottesville City Council, and I also have three C's for my agenda.

I would like to get some things done here in Charlottesville.

First is children.

The second is community, and the third is communication.

First off, children.

It has to be done.

We need to increase our pre-K education.

If we don't do that, we're going to constantly be behind.

With the achievement gap, students fall behind in school.

It's a recurring theme.

Also we need affordable childcare.

If I can't afford to go to work, I mean if I have childcare, I can't afford, if I can't go to work, I can't afford childcare so I can stay home like that.

Community, I support small businesses.

We need a stronger workforce development center right here in Charlottesville, in the city itself.

And also we need to expand on community gardens and farmers markets.

And last, the communication.

Thank you all for coming out here tonight.

My name is Adam Lees.

I'm proud to say that I am the graduate of two Virginia schools, recently UVA with my masters, and from Hampton, Sydney.

My mother is a native Virginian.

Our family goes back as far as you can even think to count.

And they raised me, my mom and my dad, my dad is a retired Marine Corps colonel, they raised me with the mantra that if there's something that needs doing, don't wait for someone else to do it.

You have the duty to do it if you have the ability to do it.

And that's part of the reason that's guided me as I've run for city council.

I started this campaign while I was writing a master's thesis and teaching at UVA, and I've continued it.

I look at this ring from my undergrad because it starts with On My Honor.

Nothing I say is a lie.

I want a government that's accountable.

I want a government that goes out to its citizens.

The three issues that I see City Council not having dealt extensively with are improvement of the public transit system, of which I am a writer, providing job opportunities for our young adults in our community, whose unemployment rate is three times the city-wide's average, and finding a dignified solution to homelessness, among which will address the mental health needs of that community, 35% of whom have such needs.

Most importantly, I listen.

This will probably be the most, if I'm elected, that you will ever hear me talk about myself.

I promise.

I'm here to hear what you have to say.

I'm here to learn from y'all.

That's what's helped me be, I think, a successful candidate.

That's how I've learned so much.

That's how Charlottesville has become my home and will stay my home, God willing.

Thank you.

Ms. Szakos.

So I'm Kristin Szakos.

I am the vice mayor of Charlottesville and a member of city council.

And I'm sure we'll get a lot of chance to talk about issues later.

So I'm just going to give you a little bit of synopsis about kind of who I am outside of council.

but I will say that I'm passionate about issues of access and equity.

I have a very professional background.

I studied for the ministry and then ended up switching gears and got a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School in Chicago.

I worked at Associated Press and for a newspaper as a reporter and later edited a regional journal called the Appalachian Reader about community organizing throughout the Appalachian region.

I've also worked as a grant writer and a newsletter editor for nonprofits and my current job is as editor and

Proofreader for translations from French to English for an international translation agency.

And I found that journalism is a really good training ground for city council.

You have to research and understand very complex issues very quickly.

You have to understand them well enough that you can communicate them to people who haven't done that research.

And it's something that I found has served me well on council.

My husband, Joe Szakos, is over here.

He's Director of Virginia Organizing.

And we have two grown daughters and a dog or two dogs and a cat.

And over the years, we've had four foster children.

And as a family, we've done lots of hiking and camping and traveled a fair amount.

And we lived two years abroad, one in Hungary and one in France.

Now I have to totally read because I serve as Chair of the Regional Jail Authority Board.

I'm a member of the MPO, the Metropolitan Planning Organization, the City Scholarship Board, the Housing Advisory Committee,

the Disproportionate Minority Contact and Juvenile Justice Committee, the City's Audit Committee, the Planning and Coordination Council of the City, University, and County, the City of Promise Steering Committee, the Board of YouCare, Friendship Court Advisory Committee, the NAACP, and Trinity Episcopal Church.

And I'm a representative of the City to Virginia First Cities, a member of the Statewide Advisory Board for ROSEME, an organization for LGBTQ youth, and a vice chair of the National Council for Youth, Education, and Families.

Thank you Ms. Szakos.

Thank you.

My name is Buddy Weber and I ask for your support for my campaign for City Council.

I've been quietly advised by some to stay away from this forum because the Sierra Club has become too politicized and would never endorse a Republican.

I hope that's not true because I really believe that our core values and our common interests outweigh our political differences.

I'm 67 years old and was an environmentalist at heart all my life.

I was 16 years old and a veteran of numerous camping and backtracking trips by the time Rachel Carson published Silent Spring.

To this day, I'm an avid backpacker and outdoor adventurer.

Mike Ferruggio and I are members of a local backpacking group that ventures into the wilderness at least three times a year.

Just a few weeks ago, Mike and I and others spent three days in the Dolly Sods wilderness in West Virginia.

And every few years, we plan more ambitious expeditions.

Last year, Mike and I trekked 120 miles through the Swiss Alps.

And several years before that, we trekked through the Pyrenees, traversing from France to Spain and back again.

I first read Joseph LeConte's Journal of Rambling to the High Sierras of California while backpacking in the Ansel Adams Wilderness.

Joseph LeConte and John Muir were close friends.

I've been face-to-face with moose in the Grand Tetons, with buffalo in Yellowstone and rattlesnakes in Southern California.

I return from each trip with a renewed sense of humility, knowing that there are forces of nature over which we have no control and will persist long after we are gone.

Most importantly, I understand why John Muir referred to the peaks of the Sierras as sacred summits.

You simply cannot appreciate the majesty of God's creation until you experience it firsthand.

Preserving and protecting this earth we inhabit is not just a politically correct thing to say, it's a sacred duty of each and every one of us.

Well thank you to all of the candidates.

We will now move on to our main topic and move into some of the environmental issues.

I did want to remind all of the members of the audience that you can submit a question to Dave or John if you just sort of hold it up or pass it to the end of the aisle.

There are note cards by both of the doors and pens if you'd like to write a question down.

All right, thank you.

And so now for our first question from the co-sponsoring organizations.

What would be your highest environmental priority if elected to city council?

Thank you.

One of my priorities when elected to city council will be to address the pollution in our creeks and rivers caused by runoff and water infiltration into our sewer system.

I'm sure you know water infiltration

into our sewer system is a huge problem where we're paying to process clean water that doesn't need to be processed.

The water often ends up overflowing our sewage treatment plant, running raw sewage into our creeks and rivers and directly into the Chesapeake Bay and the wildlife and food source that it provides for the entire East Coast.

This was caused by 30 years of ignored maintenance to our systems, which necessitated the need for a newly instituted rain tax, which is an admission of 30 years of council neglect of our infrastructure.

Seeing this neglect on our infrastructure is part and parcel of what prompted me to run for city council.

As elected officials, it is our responsibility to properly manage our assets and to look out for our people and their quality of life, which includes the environment.

As a police officer on patrol, I remember calling into the city yard by radio for 20 years ago maintenance needs that went unfixed year after year.

As a planning commissioner, I was involved in ways where we protected our streams with buffers,

and I proudly remember the satisfaction of planning an inclusion of virus swales and water treatment for our projects that we do.

Thank you.

Before you all leave here tonight, I'd like you to take a minute and read that vision statement that's up on the wall there.

Because it's very important, not only for the environment, but for everything else the City Council does.

I would make sure if you trust me with your vote, excuse me,

that the environmental policy would play a part in every capital improvement project that comes before me or any decision of any import.

It's that important.

I would also use a platform, even if you don't trust me with your vote, I would still use it, to make sure people understand that environmentalism is economically fruitful for the city.

If you think about it,

The biggest transfer of people and wealth in our country's history was because of environmentalism.

And I'm talking about people coming down from the northeast, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, places like that where the city's water was fouled, where the air was bad, where the infrastructure was crumbling, and they flocked to the southeast and the south and a little bit to California, where the air was cleaner, the water was better,

That was a drawing point for those localities to bring new businesses and new people into their communities.

Thank you, Mr. Fenwick.

My highest environmental priority is two-fold.

As Mr. Fenwick said, reading the vision statement, I'm going to read the Charlottesville vision for the

for Green City 2025, where we see ourselves about 12 years from now.

Charlottesville citizens live in a community with a vibrant urban forest, tree-lined with streets and lush green neighborhoods.

We have extensive natural trail system along with healthy rivers and streams.

We have clean air and water.

We emphasize recycling and reuse.

And we minimize storm water runoff.

Our homes and buildings are sustainably designed and energy efficient.

My first thing I would do priority-wise is education and awareness of the current state of our environment as a city.

We need to continue to encourage the use of solar panels, the purpose of energy-efficient vehicles for the city and individuals, and the use of green rooftops on new and existing buildings.

Examples of the solar panels placed on the Main Street Arena, also the police department has a green

Ruth, and right now if you speak, City Hall has a green roof as well.

We can do that immediately to encourage more green roofs, solar panels, energy-efficient vehicles.

So we want to our priority is to try to continue the vision of the Charlottesville Council.

Thank you.

I can think of a few major issues that the city could stand a look with, but having walked through Fry's Spring in Belmont and talking to the people who live there, there's one thing that they all say straight off the bat, what needs to be done is get a rain on these developers.

And that resonates with me.

Where I grew up with southeast Florida in the middle of the building boom, when that recession hit in 2006, and it hit us a lot earlier,

All of a sudden you had units completely vacated that were now overdrawing the infrastructure but looked horrible and were devastating to the environment.

Saltwater intrusions only got worse in Florida.

I don't want to see that happen to Charlottesville.

Runaway development completely taking away a city's promise.

And such as it were, and especially with the new storm waters utilities fee,

We need to start incorporating greener design elements into planning guidelines.

No building houses right on top of each other so they can flood each other's lot.

No letting development sites fill up with all kinds of rusted nails and garbage.

And start a program, investigate a program to help bring our, especially the historic buildings, to be more environmentally friendly.

This is a major challenge financially for homeowners of these buildings.

I live in a house, for instance, where it costs $10,000 to replace one window with energy-efficient windows.

Incorporating greener design elements into our planning process.

Thank you, Mr. Lees.

Ms. Szakos.

Hi.

So there are a lot of important initiatives that we're already working on.

Improved infrastructure for bike, pedestrian, transit travel.

and 21st century tools like Travel Smart, Transportation Demand Management and Bike Share to get folks out of their cars.

Green building practices in hybrid and electric cars for city departments, expanded recycling and potential curbside composting, implementation of the storm water utility fee to provide incentives to encourage responsible onsite runoff management.

Renovations of existing housing to increase energy efficiency with support of renovations for low income homeowners.

Encouragement of residential density and mixed use development to slow down rural development

support urban transit and reduce commute times economic development to create more jobs in the city so people can get to them without cars even paperless city council and planning commission meetings an initiative I started that has saved hundreds of pounds of paper but I'd have to say that my highest priority is affordable housing by enabling more workers in the city to be able to afford to live in the city will reduce the number of commuters and the automobile miles driven on our roads combined with residential density and appropriate areas and mixed-use development

Thank you, Ms. Szakos.

And Mr. Weber, on your highest environmental priority.

My highest priority is to ensure that the money that's collected from the rain tax is actually used to reduce the pollutants in the water that enters the watershed to the Chesapeake Bay.

I attended the public hearing on January 22nd and I listened patiently to what everyone had to say and there was almost nothing I disagreed with except what I found missing in the documents was an actual metric that said here's the pollution that's going in and in the end we're going to measure it and we're going to show that there's some performance.

I challenged council to establish that metric.

Our priority is clean water, not to create new jobs that accomplish nothing or a new slush fund for other city council adventures.

In 2006, I penned an editorial criticizing the unsustainable growth in taxes and spending by the city government.

Between 1996 and 2005, they had collected over $42 million in surplus revenues with less than a transparent audit trail.

Let's be clear, this new tax is only necessary because of years of neglect and the failure of city council to invest in the necessary upgrades to our stormwater system.

Money is fungible, people will forget, and city council will blow with the political winds du jour.

I won't.

I will demand accountability and focus laser-like on performance.

Thank you.

I'm ready whenever you are.

So after being forgotten about, no I'm kidding, it's okay, it's okay.

First and foremost, I would like to instill a sense of pride within our community.

I think that's the biggest thing that has to happen throughout the communities throughout the city.

That's from our lowest income communities, from our middle class income communities into our more affluent neighborhoods.

We all have to have a sense of pride and we all have to know without a shadow of a doubt that this is our community.

from the smallest kid who's just walking to school to the high schooler who is riding around because he just got a new car during his lunch break to the parent who has to come and pick up their kids or to the people who are actually traveling and commuting in and out of our town.

We all have to know that this is our community.

We all have a responsibility to it and we all must ensure that this is the best place to live.

And also,

My answer is kind of two-fold.

One of the other things that I would really like to do is improve our bike system.

I would like to actually put in more bike lanes.

And here's a reason why.

There's a few benefits.

The environmental hazards of motorized vehicle traffic are no secret.

And according to the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center, transportation emits large amounts of pollutants into the atmosphere.

The university's research found that 80%, 80% of the carbon monoxide in the atmosphere came from motorized vehicles.

Well, here's something that we can do.

Riding a bike, however, contributes zero pollutants.

And that's a statistic that is definitely a pro for the environment.

Furthermore, it also burns no non-renewable fuels.

So no non-renewable fuels will be burned.

And that same study also found that motorized vehicles...

Oh, man, you cut me off and you let me start late.

Alright, now moving on to our second question from the co-sponsoring organizations Transportation funds for the city of Charlottesville are limited What do you think will be the best use of these funds for improving our transportation system?

Well, I would like the city to consider lowering the speed limit in the city limits to 25 miles an hour across the city.

JPA just had a, the neighborhood association just had a proposal to lower JPA from 35 and they wanted it at 25.

I think they got 30 now.

But JPA is one of our most beautiful boulevards in the city.

There's really no reason to have the cars racing down JPA.

If they're 25, you can enjoy the neighborhood.

Locust Avenue on the other side of town, I've seen guys go down there 80 or 90 miles an hour.

They try to max out before they hit the bridge and somebody's going to get hurt.

If you do the city-wide limit of 25 miles an hour, accepting the 250 bypass and 5th Street extended, you would be able to coordinate all the lights in town much better than you do now.

Now you're going from a 35 mile an hour limit on one street into a 25 mile an hour limit.

And I know for myself, I'm checking, I'm looking for a speed limit sign to make sure I don't get a $100 ticket or something.

So I think that would slow people down, it would be safer, and the bike club in Charlottesville is doing a marvelous job of getting what they can get because it's an old city and it's hard to squeeze these bike lanes in.

So I applaud their efforts and I would do everything I could to encourage biking and walking in the city.

Thank you.

Forest funds, I don't see big roads.

More roads is not the answer.

We need to reduce cars on the road, period.

Forest pollution, for starters.

We need more carpooling.

We've got to encourage more carpooling.

We need more bike lanes.

We need to encourage more bike ridership.

Just building the lanes is not enough.

We have to encourage that and have people actually do that via our examples.

As far as pollution, just building roads for the sake of having money to build roads would not be the answer.

I won't go into the bypass issue, but, and we'll find this out if it comes to fruition, but I don't see the major benefit of saving three or four minutes off your travel time with all the money put into that.

Where it could be, we need timely, mostly transportation, such as buses running 15 minutes per site.

Thank you.

I am a major fan of getting every bang for your buck and especially with limited funds you don't need big expensive projects or huge extensions to use these transit funds.

There's a very simple thing we can add to every single bus stop in the city and that's a garbage can and a recycling bin.

There are none everywhere.

Have you been to some of these stops?

They are covered in trash and not just cigarette butts, Lord forbid, bottles, bags,

Detritus of every single kind.

It's disgusting.

And that stuff, once it pours, because it pours here, you know it, once it pours down rain here, all of those get swept up in the stormwater, flooded straight into our sewer systems.

Worse, they clog up the storm drains and flood the streets, which can make for any anywhere between an inconvenience to a perilous situation, depending on how deep it gets.

then to solve this is $25, maybe $25, think of it, to put one recycling bin, one trash can at every bus stop.

Maybe even combine them together and just get a service to separate them.

Not have to make people think, do I put this in the trash can?

Do I put this in the recycling bin?

Thank you, Mr. Lees.

Well, there's some transportation initiatives that don't cost a whole lot of money that I think we need to be really paying attention to.

One is finding creative ways to slow down traffic and residential streets, especially cut-throughs, places that other drivers go through.

Things like painted mandalas that some neighborhoods have tried, speed bumps, signage, road striping, changes in parking and traffic patterns.

We need to emphasize complete streets with appropriate tree canopy and walkability and bikeability.

We need to work with our neighbors in the county to create a regional transit authority.

to fully fund regional transit.

But some of the other things really do cost a lot of money.

We need to focus on transit, sidewalks, and bus routes between housing and job centers, particularly off-road and out into the county.

We need to pay attention to improving the connectivity and usability of the infrastructure that we already have.

And we need to fund transit effectively and expand it, including a possible bike-ped transit bridge across the Rivanna River to encourage transit use and reduce headways.

and to ease congestion on free bridge rather than building new bridges.

And when we build physical infrastructure, it needs to be built with history in mind.

How will it function in 50 years?

What does it say about who we are as a city?

Is it adaptable to new uses?

Low balling and cutting corners doesn't produce that kind of result.

Thank you.

Many of the projects that we have on the table are area-wide and the MPO input should certainly be considered and we definitely need to cooperate with the county.

There are neighbors in a lot of these road projects extend into the county.

However, Charlottesville owns the public transit system, the bus system, and it's underutilized and as a result it is not achieving any of the environmental benefits that you get from having buses.

Let me quote a few quotes from the Charlottesville area transit development plan.

They have an operating budget that's one-third higher than the peer average across Virginia.

They've got a capital budget that's the second highest relative to the peer average.

They claim that the ridership is 8.6 percent higher, but that's the one metric that they've included the university transit system in.

If you've ever been on a university bus, you'll find it's packed.

I've been there.

That's a very misleading statistic.

What is interesting though is the riders per trip.

The free trolley gets you 36.3 downtown to Fashion Square Mall 21 and Pantops is 20.

It's just very underutilized.

I think

The first thing we need to do with our transit system is to establish what our goals are.

If our goal is to move people, then we need a system that's convenient, reliable, frequent, economical, on time, and a viable alternative to the automobile.

Thank you.

Yep.

Sure.

So there's a couple things that I feel like we could do.

First and foremost, I think education is going to be a huge point or play a huge role in this.

And there's a program called Rideshare.

I don't know how many of you all are familiar with it.

But Rideshare educates commuters and students throughout Charlottesville, excuse me, throughout Central Virginia about how transportation affects the environment and encourages alternatives to driving alone.

So they also are speaking to our individuals and our students and our constituents about carpooling, bike riding, and things of that nature.

I also, again, would like to see some more bike lanes throughout the city.

Charlottesville is a town that is essentially 10 and a half square miles.

So in a town that's 10 and a half square miles, we can encourage some of our patrons to ride bikes.

You can walk.

You know, I walk all the time.

I live in Bellemont, and I walk right over to the downtown mall.

It's healthy for me.

It makes me feel good.

Sometimes with my kids in height, we run from Tonsil Park down to the downtown mall.

all the way back up down to Crow Rec and back up to Tomsler.

Now, that's a workout.

I would encourage all you guys to do so.

But, you know, it's just an alternative.

And also, when you think about bike riding, there are several benefits, including cleaner hair, excuse me, not hair, cleaner air, healthier living, and more physical fitness to the engagement piece.

So our kids could develop bike clubs and actually begin starting to interact with some people who they don't do so on a normal basis.

and secondly, I hear a lot about the transportation.

I spoke with a high ranking individual in CAT today.

One thing that we need to do is offer more support to CAT because what they have done is, what they've noticed is that there are several bus routes and there is indeed a lag time but that's because they don't have the staff.

They need more staff to work more efficiently.

Thank you, Mr. Bellamy.

Yeah, most people think only buses when this question is asked.

As if it's a magic bullet, it's going to improve all the transportation needs.

But intermodal transportation means using other means as well.

I think we all agree and support the idea of reducing single occupancy vehicles.

I do.

As an officer, I've seen our transportation system close up.

Imagine driving around in a police car for eight hours a day.

That's experience.

What I've seen over the years is lots of single occupancy vehicles, empty buses, people struggling to walk on our blocked sidewalks in the blazing sun with no shade.

I've seen bicycles in congested and dangerous streets and cars sitting still spewing exhaust and traffic that isn't coordinated and moving.

I've seen the same sort, I've seen counsel in charge of this for many, many years and I've not seen much change to be honest.

Some call for smaller buses and then we buy larger ones.

Some call for another costly study to consider changing the routes or how else we can improve it.

But I still see the same thing for all these years.

Some even want to raise parking fines and others want to make driving so difficult like it's a punishment.

I don't think those tired solutions will work and I don't think they'll last.

I don't want to see us make it so hard that people begin to go living, shopping and moving into other areas, other counties.

I want to support our small businesses in the long term.

I don't want to create any unintended consequences of chasing shoppers to Stonefield or beyond.

If we do that, we're going to hurt our citizens, we're going to hurt the businesses and we're going to be driving the money out of town.

This affects people and their quality of life.

If we don't see this as a concern to downtown at the Barracks Road, then we're not paying attention.

Now before we move on to the next question, I would like to remind any viewers joining us that this is the Charlottesville City Council Candidates Forum on Environmental Issues organized by the Sierra Club and local environmental organization co-sponsors.

This event is non-partisan and all announced city council candidates are participating this evening.

Additionally, if anyone in the audience would like to submit a question, you can raise your card in the air and Dave or John will collect that.

Now, for the third question from the co-sponsoring organizations, what ideas do you have about how Charlottesville can be encouraged to reuse, reduce, and recycle even more than we do already?

Lead by example.

As a father, husband, educator, I recycle.

I have my nice two little red bins at home.

I'm constantly putting in recycled materials and make sure I put the right materials in there.

I think the city does provide a sheet that shows you which materials they take.

But the city takes that, or have newspapers that take to McIntyre Recycling Center, and first place in the schools to encourage the school systems to encourage recycling, provide bins in the schools.

also businesses, provide them with recycling bins and things like that as well as in the neighborhoods we need recycling bins.

It should be there so that people won't throw everything in the trash can.

Thank you.

So first thing you need to figure out what you want to reduce, what you want to reuse, and what you want to recycle.

because if you're reducing something that's already at its bare minimum, it's not going to have much of an impact.

But if you reduce something that has a massive impact, such as, possibly today, everyone taking a shower at once for 20 minutes trying to cool down, you reduce that time, that's going to have the impact you want.

For me, like I said before,

moved Charlottesville's trash collection system to a single pickup so that everything you put in will be pre-sorted, will just be sorted and dealt with.

That way people are not only more likely to throw things out, but you're more likely to pick up recycled materials to begin with.

The other thing that I would like to see as far as reducing and reusing and recycling

is once you figure out what you need to do, go tell people how it affects them.

Say, your water bill could be $10 less if you did these things.

Say, your electric bill would be less if you raised the temperature in your house by X degrees.

Those things have major impacts because it's in a metric that people understand intuitively.

And if necessary, walk door to door.

Don't send out a mailing.

That's kind of counterproductive.

Walk door to door and talk to people.

That's how it works on a campaign trail.

Thank you, Mr. Lees.

Sure.

I've been working for quite a while to encourage curbside composting, and our public works department has gone from thinking, no, it's impossible, to really kind of looking at some possibilities.

We now have a company in town that's starting to do it with larger customers, and we're keeping an eye on that, and I think that that is something that we'll be doing in the future.

I also think that validated recycling is important.

When we have vendors who pick up garbage and say that they're recycling, whether they're picking up only recycling or mixed recycling and garbage, we need to be able to get actual documentation of where that stuff is going, because we need to know that our recyclables aren't being landfilled.

We've recently done a pilot of covered containers for recycling.

They're larger than the average little red pail, and they keep the materials dry.

You can collect more at a time.

And in the neighborhoods that we've done that, we've actually increased both the number of people recycling and the amount of stuff that's being recycled.

We need to keep the McIntire Recycling Center open, especially the reuse center there.

We need to put recycling containers in all city offices and buildings.

We need to continue to donate old computer equipment to groups that recondition and distribute them to people who need them.

Thank you.

Thank you.

This is one area where I actually think Charlottesville does fairly well.

People seem well educated and sensitive to the issues and my experience with public works in dealing with them is they're fairly responsive.

Call for a large item pickup, they come and do it fairly quickly.

Having said that, there are people who don't get it and unfortunately in dealing with human nature it's probably going to always be that way so if I were to give one catch phrase it would be to say we've got to make it easy, effective, and transparent for everybody and in that regard I am a fan of technology and entrepreneurship

I think the Vanderlinde Recycled Center is at least a case study.

I don't know for sure where it all goes, but they do claim to do the sorting for you.

When he was coming online, the city filed suit against him.

delayed all that for a while.

I assume the suit had some merit, but I don't know for sure.

But if we're going to encourage people like all of us to build a better mousetrap, then we ought to at least allow them to catch some mice.

If private enterprise can do it better than the government, then we ought to allow them to do it.

I understand the exigencies of the city.

We've got 4,300 people per square mile, and it's not just about environmental friendliness.

We've got public health mandates that all the trash be collected, whether or not people can pay the fair market rates for it.

Our goal is a clean city.

We ought to at least make allies to everybody who wants to try to do that.

And public-private partnerships are part of that.

Thank you, Mr. Weber.

So when I think of Charlottesville, I think of a world-class city and one that's also very innovative.

And I think we can have an alternative, innovative way to try and get more individuals to recycle.

For many of you all, you already, already do it.

But for those who don't, we got to give them some common incentive.

So I was researching this question and I looked it up in San Francisco

they made composting mandatory.

So instead of dinner being scraped into the garbage, food scraps go into sealed food compost bins that get picked up by the city every day.

And this report was done by Treehugger and last year they stated even before the law went into effect, it already seemed to be a success.

Compost bins were handed out early and garbage officials of this forward thinking city were stunned by the amount of food waste that started streaming into the organic annex where half of the city's food scraps went.

The benefits is that it's trimmed garbage disposal costs for apartment buildings, Bay Area farms and vineyards get compost, and it doesn't cost much for the city.

Landfill space is freed up and garbage is significantly less smelly.

Anyone who has ever jogged through a city in their neighborhood on garbage day can appreciate that.

One other thing that I really think we could do or we could look into is something that they did in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

So they had a cash back program or recycle bank rewards program which measures the amount of each household recycles and rewards them with points.

Recycling rates went up 137 percent.

It's actually amazing how many retailers and companies accept the recycle bank points.

Whole Foods, Kashi, Rite Aid, Home Depot, and even McDonald's.

Our citizens are pretty amazing.

After the drought of 2012 when our water department

and our city asked us to reduce water consumption.

We did an incredible job doing it.

UVA stepped up.

They fixed up a lot of their ailing systems and I applaud them for the maintenance and upgrades that they did to their systems.

Now we boast one of the lowest water consumption rates per capita in the country and I think that's pretty amazing.

How can we do better?

One area I'm thinking of is 20 year old students that are living off grounds around UVA.

I can't imagine that's a high priority for them to separate their trash so maybe there's a program that we can

get working with them to do that.

I think that is something.

I know on my street, everybody has a recycling bin and they're always full.

My family has two and they're always full, so we're working there.

Other incentives that we could do, I was thinking about anything that we find that we're not doing good at, then maybe if we are doing good, maybe we can shift, reprogram money to other areas that could help in other areas.

I think we should actually recycle carbon dioxide.

We should plant some more trees and get some of that done.

Seriously, I think there is one other important aspect and that's the, I love this term, the embodied energy of a home.

We should be recycling our houses.

We should be using our housing and our housing policy a lot more effectively.

These are houses that sit too small, unused, and we can recycle our houses.

That would be fantastic.

Thank you very much.

Okay, that's the three R's, reduce, reuse, and recycle.

And I see a lot of people out in the audience.

And I have three words that people – the city does a great job already, but if you want to do better, join Project Transition.

If you Google Project Transition, you'll see an organization that preaches this.

They have, every month, a special meeting they call Skillshare.

They teach you the things that my mother and father did when we were growing up.

How to can, how to make clothes, how to make soap, all kinds of different things.

My efforts in that area, I've done little videos on how to repair refrigerators or how to keep from having to buy a new engine for your car.

These catastrophic expenses that would just really, really injure a family.

There's things you can do to prevent this in many cases.

But there's another R, and that's repair.

And that's what I've made a living out of for almost 40 years, repairing older houses, bringing them back online.

It's not just the housing that you can repair.

It's things like bridges.

It's things like the Belmont Bridge.

We don't have to spend $20 million for a new bridge that's 40 years old.

Europe has bridges hundreds of years old.

UVA is now tearing down and replacing a bridge that has a date of 1934 on it.

We can get a lot more use out of that bridge that's over there by repairing it and put the money into all the things we've been talking about.

Thank you, Mr. Renwick.

All right, and now moving on to the final question from the co-sponsoring organizations.

What ideas do you have for making this a healthier city?

How would you reduce health risks for the population?

Now, if there is one thing Charlottesville has been exceptionally good at, it's taking care of itself, mind, body, and soul.

Charlottesville is one of the healthiest metropolitan areas in the country, not just the state, the country.

So what's that statistic hiding?

Don't trust statistics.

They lie to you all the time.

They're the best way to lie.

But who's not healthy in this city?

Who's not getting the kind of help that we need?

We need to target that.

That's where you need a customer service approach to your social services.

Right now, I just became unemployed courtesy of graduation.

If that sticks up,

No one's going to come looking for me to help me and trying to fill out applications online.

It's daunting.

You have no idea what's coming up.

But dealing with a person makes the process a lot easier.

So for people who are having the hardest time or who are the least healthy, for what we can do as a city, we need to find what we already have and connect them to those programs.

I'd love to promise single-payer health care, but there's this Congress, you see, and it's kind of annoying.

and more than one way.

The other is really improve our alternative transportation systems.

I was all over Fry's Spring and Belmont today.

It's like playing Jack in the Box with the sidewalks.

They mysteriously vanish.

We need to be consistent in our development and purposeful.

Thank you, Mr. Lees.

Sure.

I just recently introduced the HEAL.

It's Healthy Eating Active Living.

ordinance that'll be considered on Monday night at council to begin implementing city policies like action breaks and meetings, healthy food at city events, local foods when possible, architectural and structural guidelines to increase activity and walkability in the city.

One guideline might give preference to buildings where the stairs are encountered before the elevator is to encourage people to use the stairs.

Combined with a couple of programs that we've recently implemented, Let's Move for Kids,

and Move to Health for adults and our emphasis on biking, walking and transit.

These will improve health, reduce air pollution and reduce healthcare costs.

I'd also like to add HEAL indicators to our ABRT process priorities so we can fund projects that teach adults and kids to cook local vegetables, expose children to healthy foods at school and in the community and increase access to low income, in low income neighborhoods to high quality, especially local produce and community gardens.

I'm looking forward to helping the city market find a permanent home.

and also wraparound services for people with mental health needs are critical.

And we need to pay attention to the need for public health nursing in neighborhoods to help residents, particularly elderly residents and pregnant women, to access preventive and maintenance care close to home.

Thank you.

Sure, thank you.

And if you haven't figured it out by now, I try to stay focused on one thing at a time.

I don't throw out a whole panoply of things that we can and be trying to do.

So I've got one issue here and I'd like to raise it and see how it floats, and that's to establish a walk to school program.

I came of age in the 60s when there was a war on poverty and the images we saw on TV were of hungry children.

Today, the First Lady's top priority is childhood obesity.

Yet, when I go to work, I see children standing at bus stops, they get on a school bus, and they ride three blocks to get off at school.

I think there's two impediments to a good walk-to-school program.

One is the infrastructure – the sidewalks and the crosswalks.

We've got to build them.

We've got to start at the schools and radiate outwards until every child who can walk to school has a sidewalk and a crosswalk can get them there safely.

But more importantly, the other impediment is public safety.

Parents have to know that when they let their children out of the house and send them off to school that they're going to be safe while they're walking to school.

We would have to, I think in today's day and age, establish some sort of program of route monitors and crosswalk safeties that might entail some volunteers

perhaps some community service officers, perhaps even some hired folks.

But we could start this with a pilot program.

Start at one school.

We don't need a million-dollar study to figure out how to do it.

We're smart people in this city.

We ought to be able to figure out how to do it at least at one school.

Get it moving.

Plan for the contingencies.

Listen to the people as a feedback.

And I guarantee you, I think if we get the children walking to school, we'll get the parents walking too.

Well, I actually kind of shared Mr. Weber's sentiments.

I would actually start with the children.

However, I disagree a little bit because we currently have a walk to school program.

And actually, by many accounts, it's a pretty good one.

Also, I think we need to be the trendsetters and trailblazers for this initiative.

At Hype, we only eat healthy snacks.

And I warn all of the boxers and the steppers in the program that eating bad will have a negative connotation on your performance, but also on your mental state, your energy levels, and in some cases, your life.

by eating bad.

So we have to be the ones that show the kids that you must eat how you're supposed to.

You must eat properly.

You must exercise properly.

And again, that starts by us setting the example and we being the trailblazers and the leaders of the city and the community to show the little ones that this is actually what you need to do.

We also have to implement and create more bike paths so that as a whole children across the city can see the benefits of being healthy, riding a bike, and not always relying on your car to go two minutes up the street.

Very simple, very plain.

All right.

Thank you.

Well, we are often voted as the best place to live and even the healthiest place to live.

Sadly, that refers to our metropolitan area so much and not the city of Charlottesville.

But I believe it can be the city of Charlottesville specifically.

And I go back to what I've said a couple of times.

What has changed in the 25 years that I've been here?

And one thing I thought of that 25 years ago was incredible was a green belt.

It was going to circumnavigate the city.

It was going to be 24, 26 miles around the city.

Everybody's going to be able to bike, run, and walk on it.

And here it is 25 years later, and two miles are done.

To me, that's unacceptable.

We hear about smart traffic.

For over 15 years, I've been hearing about smart traffic, coordinating the traffic lights so cars, trucks, and buses don't sit in traffic.

Yet on one afternoon, any afternoon, if you get on

Preston Avenue at Reed's Supermarket and you try to go to Emmett Street, that's over 15 minutes worth of driving.

That's a mile and a half to two miles.

And our sidewalks, they're in dismal shape.

They're blocked by poles, fire hydrants, signs, cables.

Where there are sidewalks, often there aren't.

They're adjacent to the road where they are.

They're very narrow and they're covered with, they're not covered with any shade.

We need to do more to create sidewalks and bike paths.

That's going to be one of the biggest things we can do.

We need to make decisions and as a counselor we need to make that a priority and move forward with it.

If we started doing that now and we kept doing it, then in 20 years from now we're going to have all of this done and people will be able to walk and bike a whole lot easier.

Thank you.

Okay, a healthier city.

Now, I think most of the talk up to this point has been about people who can walk.

Well, let's not forget about the disabled people, about the elderly people.

And I just went to a function a couple days ago where Mildred Spicer retired from Parks and Rec.

She was in charge of a fantastic effort to help the disabled people.

That room was packed.

We are bringing everybody into the community and that's very important.

The Jefferson Center is important for that reason because it gives the elderly someplace to go.

And I'm sorry I have a soft spot in my heart for the elderly.

So that's very important.

Walking to me is very important.

There's nothing better than if you can, early in the morning, to get out and breathe that fresh, clean air and walk at least around the block.

If you're in Fry's Springs, walk up and down JPA.

If you're in Martha Jefferson area, walk up and down Locust Avenue.

It's a beautiful city.

We're putting more and more trees around the city and we should all enjoy it.

One other initiative about the project transition is we have a group that does neighborhood house gardens in the back.

And if you can grow your own food, that's a major accomplishment for you because we would turn over a garden about eight by eight for anybody in the city to get started on their garden.

Within 47 days, you can have food on your plate that you have grown.

Thank you.

Speaking of house gardens, I have a garden at home as well, and my second year planning.

When I was young, my father had a garden in the backyard.

He also had a garden at Meadow Creek Garden Plot behind English Inn, which is still, the Garden Plot is still there.

The city runs that.

and we need more, one of my platforms is community and to have more community gardens and more fresh markets.

I just went to a meeting today at 5.30

and concerning putting a fresh market in front of an Estes store.

People would say, we have a market, city market downtown.

Who goes there though?

What does this people look like?

Think about that.

Even if you say we have some of these things, we have to have outreach to get people to go to these things.

So not the average person looks like me will go there.

I will go there.

you know, I feel comfortable anywhere I go.

That's why I want you to vote for city council by the way.

I mean that.

But everyone is not good because they don't feel as comfortable or you know, it takes more than just having a place there.

So try to expand community gardens and

Also school gardens.

We're going to be from middle school.

We have a school garden.

It was the first school garden in the city.

Then we have seven school gardens out of nine schools.

The kids come there.

They love growing things and eating them themselves.

They take it back home and that spreads the word for us, eating healthy and spreading the cleaner environment, et cetera, et cetera.

Great.

Thank you very much.

And we are going to now move on to questions from the audience as soon as we get them from John and Dave.

I think they must be out in the hall.

Audrey, could you check on them?

There you go.

We have a bathroom and a bedroom downstairs.

Okay, and if there's time, because we actually are running a little bit ahead of schedule, we might sneak in another question.

All right, so the first question from the audience, and we'll be starting with Ms. Szakos, is continuous economic expansion and population growth a threat to our community?

Explain.

Can I have a minute to write down the thing before we start the time?

Yes, ma'am.

Can you repeat the question?

Is continuous economic expansion and population growth a threat to our community?

Explain.

I'm ready.

I think that expansion and especially population growth is a danger or a threat to

civilization.

I don't think it's something that we have alone here in Charlottesville.

I think that when people talk about growth, about expansion, about economic development, I think that there are a couple of things that get kind of crossed in the discussion.

One of the things we have to remember is that we can't really put a wall around the city.

And so one of the only ways to keep people from moving here is make it miserable or too expensive to live here.

And those are not things I support.

I think birth control is great.

There are a lot of things I think we can do to limit population, but I think density in urban areas is an appropriate way to deal with growth.

Thank you.

Mr. Weber, is continuous economic expansion and population growth a threat to our community?

In the short answer, no, I don't think so.

And the reason I don't think so is because of the way we advance in technology and the way we deal with the population growth and our land use.

Charlottesville's got 10 square miles.

We're dense at about 4300 people per square mile.

Albemarle County is about 135 per square mile.

Across the United States, the average is about 200 per square mile.

So, Charlottesville's pretty dense compared to the rest of the country.

And I think that by creating healthy environments in a denser area, which we are leading the way doing, and a lot of other cities are leading the way doing, we are in fact, and the way our technology has helped with able to feed the number of people we got.

Remember that population growth in the United States went up 9.7% in the last decade.

And it's not going to stop.

Mr. Bellamy, is continuous economic expansion and population growth a threat to our community?

I would say no.

I actually think it's an opportunity.

It's an opportunity to do a few things.

With economic development and also expansion, we can also bring about more affordable housing and bring in more individuals to live within our city.

And if we can actually be the trailblazers and the leaders to encourage these people to live a little bit more healthier, not use cars to go two blocks, actually bike ride and things of that nature, we can actually see the benefit.

Also, with expansion and economic development comes self-sufficiency.

See, that brings in more jobs when we can bring in more people and also create more individuals and more spaces for people to actually live.

It also helps bring about diversity.

Community engagement is really big for me and collaborating for kids throughout different races and different ethnicities is always a benefit for our city.

So when we can bring in more people,

It's just a benefit for the future and for those who are coming behind us.

We also, again, can be one of the trailblazers to promote healthier living here in the city.

We can be the ones that lead that charge.

Thank you, Mr. Bellamy.

Now, Mr. Ferrugio, is continuous economic expansion and population growth a threat to our community?

Well, our community represents the city of Charlottesville as far as the city council is concerned, but maybe the question is talking about the broader community, the water community.

I would concentrate more on Charlottesville and I would say no.

I think we do have an opportunity here to increase the density of Charlottesville, which is going to give us many, many opportunities for more folks living in town, more folks being able to drive bicycles and walk and be on a bus line to get to work as opposed to the single occupancy vehicles that we were talking about earlier.

All right, thank you.

Mr. Fenwick, is continuous economic expansion and population growth a threat to our community?

Well, it could be a threat if it's not done in the proper way.

I think everybody in the room has heard the economic baseline of you need a healthy middle class.

Everything that goes on in this city is paid for by us, the people in this room, the people across the city, the middle class.

You will hear that growth pays for itself.

If that's true, why when some community wants to build a school do they have to borrow money for that school?

Growth does not pay for itself.

We pay for the growth.

And there are segments of our community who are being left behind, whether it's because of education or whatever.

Thank you.

Mr Grady, is continuous economic expansion and population growth a threat to our community?

Most definitely not right now because

I don't see a lot of economic expansion right now in Charlottesville, period.

I don't see a lot of business coming to Charlottesville to start there.

The population doesn't grow there.

I've been in Charlottesville 44 years since we've been here long and a half.

There's not a lot of growth in Charlottesville.

You can't even grow in Charlottesville unless you have people to stay in Charlottesville that requires affordable housing, and it keeps spouting back around.

If the jobs and businesses aren't there, people would not want to stay here.

The graduates of the colleges

Don't always stay.

Has to be graduates who want to leave Charlottesville in general or live in the county.

It's very hard to find affordable housing, to find a quality job that you can pay for housing.

Thank you.

Mr. Lees, is continuous economic expansion and population growth a threat to our community?

Sure, if you go about it the wrong way.

We forget there are 8 million Virginians today.

Thank you, Jesus.

The United States population when we became independent was 3 million.

We're 315 now.

The entire population of California can fit inside Tokyo and live comfortably and healthily.

The average age of the expected age in Japan is 81, much higher than the United States.

If you do it right,

You can have a successful no matter how many people are living here.

Thank you.

Now before we move on to our next audience question, I would like to remind any viewers joining us that this is the Charlottesville City Council Candidates Forum on Environmental Issues organized by the Sierra Club and local environmental organizations and this is a non-partisan event and all announced City Council candidates are participating tonight.

So for our second audience question, we'll be starting with Mr. Weber.

You repeat that question?

You're asking me to support an ordinance that tells people they can't idle their car.

I think the only reason people idle their car is when they're in traffic.

Maybe they idle them when they're trying to heat them up or something like that.

Alright, let's let Mr. Weber respond to the question.

No, no, no.

Let me finish here because the answer, I think, is better sequencing of traffic lights so that we don't have to idle anywhere.

Now, I've seen police cars idle when they stop in parking lots and things like that because they have to keep their vehicle ready to go.

But by and large, most of the idling that occurs occurs in traffic.

Alright, thank you.

All right.

Thank you, Mr. Bellamy.

I'll elaborate a little bit on that.

We can't have people just sitting places idle and not moving, especially in the town, but again, it's only 10 and a half square miles.

And as busy as it is for as small of a town that we are, you can't just come somewhere and just think that you can park your car and just sit there while everybody else either has to move around you as if you control the entire city.

We can't have those things.

And if you do those things, if elected, we will try and enforce an ordinance.

You will get a ticket.

We can't have you just sitting around.

All right.

Thank you.

My answer is yes.

However, you got to look at the which is a bigger problem, cars sitting in parking lots idling all over the city or traffic sitting idle in the roads all over the city.

And what Mr. Weber said is right spot on.

And I've mentioned it half a dozen times during this brief forum right here.

For 15 more years, we've been talking about having smart traffic.

There's no reason.

Everybody here is probably driven down Emmett Street, 29, near the mall, Fashion Square Mall, and you hit all the traffic lights.

It just all turned green for you when you go through.

We've all been in many other cities where that happens all the time.

There's no reason why we can't be doing that in Charlottesville right now.

And that's a much larger idling issue than parked vehicles.

Thank you.

Yes, I would support that.

I think this community can come up with some very creative answers to things like this.

The problem today is how would you enforce it?

I believe every department in this city has had their budget cut back.

If we did that today, we'd be putting an additional burden on, say, the police department.

I would much rather have them out looking for that young boy that has gone missing, Sage Smith.

That's a much better use of their resources.

So yes, I would support something like that, either some kind of mechanical device, perhaps.

But as I said, we can figure this thing out.

It's almost like in the old days you'd throw your cigarette butts out or your trash out on the highway.

We see much less of that today.

I would say no.

To me that's a heavy-handed.

I'm not sure how far you want to get into private lives and

I'm not sold on the idea, mainly because it sounds to me like, would I like to spend another $400,000 pumped into the court system to process all the ticket fees, the people appealing the tickets, saying, I was only idling for two minutes and 37 seconds.

Why are you doing this?

It's three minutes.

I don't actually want to have to sit a police officer and watch somebody for three minutes to make darn sure and record all of that to enforce this.

Now you present me a good way to enforce this or show me even how limited enforcement will have an impact, you can win me on this.

But right now this just seems like it could be penny wise and pound foolish in the long run.

We already have enough problems with the wrecker services harassing businesses.

Thank you.

Ms. Szakos, would you support limiting idling of all vehicles to three minutes when stopped other than in traffic?

It's actually something that I have proposed and staff is looking at now.

There are certain exceptions, I think, that everybody could understand.

Refrigerated trucks, you know, things like that, trucks where the stuff inside would be damaged.

And I think that, you know, I tend to agree that heavy-handed enforcement is probably not terribly effective.

But I think that it's, you know, as you noted earlier, Mr. Frugio, the police do go around the city a lot.

And it is somewhere where a policeman or even a resident could remind somebody, hey, you know, we have an ordinance in town that you're not supposed to idle your car for more than three minutes.

I know sitting, even eating ice cream down at Chaps, you know, you're sitting at the picnic table and a big truck is sitting there with its engine running and running and running so the people can sit inside their truck with their air conditioner on.

It's not good for the environment.

It's not good for your micro environment as you're sitting there.

And I think it can certainly be dealt with.

Thank you.

Now, moving on to our third question from the audience.

And this question, we're going to be starting back here with Mr. Bellamy.

You mind repeating that one more time, please?

All right.

Well, I think one of the things that we could do, especially in a matter such as this one, is create a committee of individuals or citizens from both the city and the county who live in both constituencies and who could really speak to this issue.

They can even be appointed by City of Charlottesville counselors as well as Albemarle County Board of Supervisors to really speak to these issues because no one can speak to more what's going on in your backyard than the person who actually lives there.

I'm assuming that the point of the question is on environmental issues, but I think it's broader than that.

Both in my employment with the police department, being on the planning commission, everything breaks down to relationships.

How you get along with people, how you know people, how you trust people.

So working with people, working with the county, letting them be able to predict the way you're going to react, that they can trust you.

I think is probably the best way to increase the cooperation between the two bodies.

When it comes to environmental issues specifically, there's probably a give and take that needs to take place because they understand that we can have more density and we can do things that they can't do in the county and there's probably things they don't want to do that they would like us to do.

Thank you.

Well, I think it would depend on how we go about it, how I make my arguments to the county board of supervisors.

If I go in and tell them that I really appreciate the work that bees do and I want to increase the number of bees in our community, I don't think that would go.

But if I went in there and talked to them about the economic benefits of environmentalism, I think they would hear that message.

If there's any realtors in this audience tonight or across the city watching this show, one of the three things that a realtor uses for a prospective customer is parks.

And one of the most important decisions on where to buy the house and how much to spend for it and all that is the community, the quality of the community.

If a family feels comfortable there, if it's clean, if the air is fresh.

Thank you.

Yes.

That's the short answer.

One of my platforms is communication, and I'm a math teacher, so I want to sit down and look at the issues and things that can benefit Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

I want to work with them.

Charlottesville, the line is just, it's invisible, right?

When you leave Charlottesville and come back and forth in Albemarle County, it's just a boundary line.

We're in the same community.

We're just in Charlottesville, 10 or so square miles.

Albemarle County surrounds us.

But still part of the same community.

So anything positive we're doing that can benefit Albemarle County, I want to communicate with them that way.

And vice versa with the county.

I want to show them that we do care about our environment.

We're part of the same environment.

Thank you.

Well, how about actually working with them?

We can't sit here in Charlottesville and dictate things to the county any more than the county can sit back there and dictate things to us.

That's not a way to go about things.

You need to go and engage them personally, have meetings with them.

Get to know the supervisors better and then when you have that kind of trust with each other, you can begin to build the trust among your organizations.

Start with smaller projects.

Start with a common statement that clearly affects both.

We already have most of our civic organizations branching Charlottesville and Albemarle.

Build on their kinds of connections.

Go to the Albemarle Board of Supervisors meetings.

Not the ones at the courthouse, mind you, but the ones that I actually have.

It was a joke, I promise.

Thank you.

I think that a couple of things have come up that are very true.

I think that personal relationships are important.

I know I've tried to develop personal relationships with all of the supervisors on the board of supervisors and we can disagree about things and we often do but if we know how to talk to one another in a respectful way we can sometimes work things out.

We work together in the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority and that's a place where we often do disagree but we have to kind of engage and work things out.

I think a regional transit authority is another place we can work together.

I also think that when we think of Charlottesville as the downtown for this whole area

I think the county understands that the urban kind of density that we have in Charlottesville and in the ring around Charlottesville is very important to the way of life of people in rural areas in the county.

Thank you.

Sure.

I've never really been a fan of Virginia's system of independent cities and independent counties.

I think in a situation like we have here in Charlottesville where Albemarle has such a huge urban ring.

We really are more one community than not, and to have two separate governments and two separate ways of doing business makes it harder.

But I think certainly building trust and building relationships is the first step.

But beyond building the relationships with the people, you have to understand that there are both near-term and long-term

Clashes of interest.

Sometimes they perceive their interest to be one thing and we perceive it to be another and we have to work through that and try to get to what's good for the entire community.

Case in point was a few years ago when they went to the General Assembly to try to get the composite index change to the detriment of Charlottesville.

I actually went on the radio and

debated Rob Schilling on that issue and I took up for the city.

And I'll still stick up for the city like that.

So I'm gonna put Charlottesville first, but we have to understand what our interests are and how they mesh and clash.

Thank you.

All right, for the fourth question from the audience, and it looks like we are gonna have time to do another one after this.

So we've got a fifth question in here, but we'll start with Mr. Ferugio.

How do you plan on working together

with the environmental groups sponsoring this forum.

And that question is, how do you plan on working together with the environmental groups sponsoring this forum?

I think that's a very

It's a very easy to answer question.

As I said before, trust and relationships are everything.

I would vow to never misrepresent myself, to lie, to make something that seems like it wasn't going to be.

Trust is critical.

conversation is critical.

With every group of people, especially one group that is an advocate for one specific issue, there's going to be conflict and there's going to be disagreement.

That's to be expected.

Thank you.

Well that wouldn't be too difficult for me because I belong to many of the groups that are in front of me here.

Particularly the group in Project Transition that does the gardens.

Because I have the shovels.

And without the shovels we can't do the gardens.

But it's a beneficial relationship.

I believe in the environment.

I started out by saying that I'm an environmentalist and I believe in being an environmentalist for many different reasons.

So it's something I believe deeply.

The garden program, it's a great way for somebody to get out of the house.

Many people look outside to their backyard and they're thinking,

I wish I had a garden.

This is the first step.

Thank you.

First off, we're part of the environment as humans, so that's said and done.

As far as environmental groups, anything that will make Charles feel better, I want to hear from environmental groups.

I do not belong to any environmental groups.

I do follow 350.org pretty intensively.

But I'm open to anything that makes Charles feel better.

So there's no magical answers, but if there are developments or designs and a certain group says, hey, look at these different facets of design that could cause environmental detriment to our society, I'm going to look at that.

Thank you.

Like I said, I would deal with anyone.

Like I said, I would work with anyone.

I'll listen.

It may not be the greatest area of light that's ever come in human history, but it means something.

I'm an old southerner.

I really do value interpersonal communication.

Just going up and listening to someone say, what are you interested in?

Tell me about this.

I didn't know about this.

And even having a creative back and forth.

I'm not going to come to them and say, this is what we're doing.

How can you serve my needs?

I say, what are you most concerned with?

I want to know how I possibly could be of help to you.

Can't promise I'll join all the organizations, although Sierra Club has been trying to send me a backpack in the mail now for a month.

I'll give you all credit for tenacity.

But it's a very easy thing to come to meetings, say, I'm available.

What do you need?

Thank you.

Since one of the groups is Virginia Organizing, I've kind of got a lock on that one.

I think that the way that I approach my work on city council generally is that we are here as representatives and we are here to give our best shot at trying to do the right thing.

And the only way that we can really get a full picture of what information is out there

We have to research, we have to read, we have to listen to staff, but we also have to go to residents in the community who know what it is we're talking about.

So if we're talking about a neighborhood sidewalk, we need to go talk to people in that neighborhood.

If we're talking about environmental issues, we need to talk to people who spend their lives eating and breathing this stuff and who know things we don't.

I think that the chloramines issue is one of those areas where we didn't know.

Thank you.

I think that's an easy answer because every member of any one of the groups that are here are citizens of the City of Charlottesville or at least Albemarle County and they deserve to be heard and I will

to give you my ear and my rapt attention to hear what you have to say.

I used to teach leadership and one of the principles came out of Stephen Covey's book and it's habit number five and it says seek first to understand and then to be understood.

That means you turn your transmitter off and you turn your receiver on.

So I think I mentioned to you earlier on that I am an environmentalist at heart

I live and breathe it.

It's in my blood.

I think I've actually looked at all the websites for the sponsoring organization so I think I know what you stand for and at least we can have an intelligent discussion and if I disagree with you I'll tell you.

I won't lie to you.

I'll tell you I disagree.

But if I agree with you and I can support you, I will tell you that too.

That's how I'll work with you.

Thank you.

I like to serve as a conduit between many of the environmental groups and some of the underrepresented communities here in the city.

One thing that I'm very proud of is that I had a community day through our nonprofit organization Hype earlier in May and we were able to bring about the Sierra Club to South First Street.

Now many of the kids that lived in the South First Street neighborhood

didn't even know how to plant a tree they probably never even seen what a real tree growing out of a cup even looked like and I was very proud that the Sierra Club came over they had a table they set up some information and they actually talked to the kids about not only the environment but some of the benefits of taking care of your community and those are the things that I plan to do if elected and hopefully when elected that's why I need your vote on June 11th get some of these underrepresented ethnicities and groups here in the city and hook them up with more groups such as yourself who

Thank you.

And now for our final bonus audience question here.

The bonus round.

We'll be starting with Mr. Fenwick.

In recent years the Rivanna walking trail has been damaged by road building and cutting down trees.

Well, that kind of echoes on the answer I gave earlier about how to make a healthier community.

The trails in this community are a great asset.

And I would try to reconstitute the trails that go all around the city once again.

I try to bring the river into our community, environmental assets.

There's no reason why we can't, if a road cut the trail, there's ways to continue the trail.

It's just an asset that we can use.

Right now it's sort of underutilized, probably because it's been cut or because of the trees have been taken down.

But we can rebuild that.

Thank you.

Mr. Grady, in recent years the Rivanna walking trail has been damaged by road building and cutting down trees.

I echo Mr. Fenwick's explanation of that one.

The trails need to be

Preserved.

That's an environmental thing.

That's a health issue there.

So that's a no-brainer.

Either you fix it or you find a way to have a crosswalk through the road where the case may be.

I'm not sure which trail this may be, but you should always preserve your trails.

Thank you.

Mr. Lees, in recent years, the Rivanna Walking Trail has been damaged by road building and cutting down trees.

Well, in a simple one, you can just plant more trees to fix the lack of tree.

But I'd like to include these trails in a longer term, more comprehensive assessment of all of our, not only transportation, but our park facilities.

My friend Sarah Hunter was the one that introduced me to the Rivanna Trail.

I didn't even know it existed.

and I enjoy walking it so much that every time I bring someone to Charlottesville I said, you want to go on a hike?

Come on, we're going.

Because I can get to it via the bus, just behind barracks.

But once you get to the end of parts of those trails, the signs stop.

I don't know where that trail goes.

I didn't know it went around the city when I first went on it.

That's a problem.

Thank you.

Well, last summer my dog and I set out to walk the ring around the city and we've walked most of it.

We haven't quite finished and we did find places where it just disappeared and where we had to get up on the road and kind of look at our map because there is a map of the trail system and find another place to get in and finish it.

And so I think that, you know, that is a concern but I think we should look at it in a

kind of in the context of our network of trails, the city trails, city parks.

We've done a lot of park acquisition the last couple of years to really try to connect some of those trail bits and make sure that where there's a place where somebody's put up razor wire or something so you can't get through that we're trying to acquire easements on those properties.

So I think we are working hard.

I think that Kristin Szak and our Parks Department has been doing really yeoman work trying to do this, and I think it does need to be continued.

Thank you.

First of all, before I got arthritis in my knee, I used to run and I probably run the entire length of that trail at one point in my life, segments at a time, but I've been on the entire thing.

It's not just the road building and the tree cutting that has taken out parts of the trail.

It was actually part of the upgrade to the stormwater system over there off of Park Street.

There's a whole segment of the trail there that has just disappeared as a result of that project.

It would be nice if we could restore it.

I would note that the Greenbelt portion of the trail, as my understanding, is owned by the city, whereas the rest is private property.

It's all done with easements and by permission to the Rivanna Trails Foundation.

I think in segments where we need to re-establish it, the city probably needs to get involved in some way to make sure that we can get a complete belt around the city.

I really enjoyed the trail.

I can't run anymore, but I can still walk.

Still hike and I can still walk and I'd still like to do it.

Well, I think there's several things that we could do.

I've been fortunate enough to be able to run that trail with a few of my boxers, not the entire thing, half of it, the entire thing.

I don't think I'm in shape enough to do so at this point.

But I think a couple of points that a few other individuals have touched on is really key.

Looking to reconstruct the trail and also rebuild and revitalize and use some of those methods is very, very important.

One thing that I feel like we haven't done enough of is actually hearing from Mr. Chris Jensen in the Parks Department about what actually he feels that trail needs.

He's a source, he's being paid actually to, that's kind of his job, to see what exactly the trail needs and how we can make best use of it.

And he's an individual that we need to talk to more.

Thank you.

I love the trails.

I've mentioned it a couple of times already.

I have walked, run, biked, and hiked the trails around the city numerous times.

Oftentimes I used to run it with Mr. Webber, but I too, dude, arthritis in my feet don't run as much and now I bike ride.

The trails were awesome.

One of the things I would do, what I would do is support the trails financially if I was on the city.

Chris Jensen, our Parks Department, does a fantastic job.

I've often used the trail that goes from Ryer Road down the new parkway to ends up near CHS and that it's going to continue down further.

I've used that trail quite a few times as well.

I find that a trail that's paved

is going to be used a hundred times more by folks of all different economic groups and abilities than a trail that's a rugged trail.

I love the rugged trails.

I go to West Virginia to find them where less people are there still, but having the paved trails I think is the way to go.

And I would strive to pave the entire Greenbelt like it was originally planned 25 years ago so that folks could get out and get 25 miles in if they wanted to.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It's a pleasure being here on city council, at least once I can say I sit on city council bench.

I want to also sit here in June, I mean in November as well, so I'm asking you for your vote.

The one thing that the city has not done a good job, I think, or enough of is the community garden piece.

That's one of my platforms.

I have a garden at home.

I was raised with a garden backyard.

My father owned or leased a garden in Meadow Creek Parkway.

I've talked to residents.

We need more gardens promoted, and the city can do that.

I believe we have two now, and I think Reeves Park has been trying to get a garden there that hasn't

seen fruition yet in a farmers market.

Hopefully we can expand the farmers markets in Charlottesville to have more access and more accessibility for different residents.

Thank you.

Mr.

Thanks so much for all coming tonight.

I wish I could give more stellar answers, admittedly, but this is why from my classroom to my own personal life, I value listening.

I emphasize the people.

We talk about Charlottesville, the trails, the environment, transportation, but it all comes down to the people.

That's where we will truly stand or fall as a city.

As a councilor, my office will be open.

It will also not just be in this building.

I would continue my campaign in a sense, going door to door to make sure that every single citizen of Charlottesville gets a chance, even just to vent at a city councilor.

But I want to know, I'm not the font of all knowledge.

I'm not proud enough of myself to think that.

But I want to hear from you all, especially with environmental issues, but I want to hear from the people in general about all issues.

I'm here to listen.

Thank you.

Well, I just, you know, there are a couple of things I just sort of noted that I wanted to get out if possible that didn't come up in questions.

So I'd like to just kind of touch on a couple of those.

I'd like to see us working a little more on transportation demand management.

The university is doing that.

with some of our larger employers particularly, helping them help their employees to figure out how to get to work without cars or with less reliance on cars, some travel smart transportation planning, bike share, I'd like to see us expand the universities, the little booths where you can get a bike and rent it for a little while.

I'd like to close the Meadow Creek Parkway one Sunday a month in the warmer weather so that we can get people out in the park running around on the road, maybe making chalk drawings and having

about roller skating races.

But we do have some serious issues in this community.

We have a large air pollution problem.

A lot of it comes from outside our region.

But we need to respond by really being

Thank you.

Thank you.

I don't claim to have all the answers, particularly to a lot of the questions we had here tonight, but in this Twitter-based world, the real question is, is how do we advance the ethic of John Muir in our civilization?

John Muir did not start out as an environmentalist.

He went to Yosemite because he needed a job and his experience there changed his life.

Joseph LeConte was a professor of geology when he was invited on a camping trip into the Sierras by some of his students.

His experience there changed his life.

I first took my daughter camping when she was six years old.

We camped and hiked all over the mountains in the deserts of California and later in Japan, Virginia, and elsewhere as well.

Her fondest childhood memory was walking hand in hand into an open meadow on Palomar Mountain at midnight, lying down in the soft grass and watching shooting stars dart across the sky.

She calls it a small investment in parenting.

I call it an investment in her future.

Today she's married and a mother of two.

She's also a project geologist and works for an environmental consulting firm.

Thank you.

Thank you guys for having me out tonight.

I really appreciate it.

I think this was a very fun forum, one different from a lot of the ones that we've had so far.

So for that, I'd like to say kudos to you all.

One of the things that I really want to do, and I'll reiterate over and over again, is bring about community engagement.

I think the environmental groups here in the city are fantastic.

However, many of our patrons here in the city don't have access to these groups.

Whether that be for several different reasons, I would just love to serve as a conduit to those who aren't as involved in some of these environmental groups who don't know as much about our actual environment and how the benefits of having a clean environment, what they can really do for our city, and hooking up those people who don't know with those who do know.

And that's how we truly move this city forward.

You see, Charlottesville is a place

that is oftentimes ranked as one of the top 5, 10, 15 places to live in the country.

But until we really want to make this city as good as it can be, and as great as it can be, we need to make sure that we include all of the residents here in the city.

And that's what I'm here to do.

I'd like to connect, to be the connector, the conduit, whatever you want to call me, to make sure that Charlottesville moves forward.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I, too, don't have all the answers.

I come here with an open mind and an open heart, but what I do have is experience.

I've served you for 25 years in your police department, driving around in your city, and I know it intimately.

I speak to and serve the citizens of this community.

For 15 years, I've been on the Fry Springs Neighborhood Association, representing the citizens that live in my neighborhood.

And for four years, I was on your planning commission.

I look forward to the ability to work together to create the solutions that we have the brain power to come up with, quite frankly.

My desire is not for power, party, or popularity.

It's local, and that's why I'm running.

My desire is for the city to be all that it can be, for you to want to stay in the city and not move out anyplace else, for my children and your children

to want to live in the city in the future and to be able to live in the city in the future and that desire is what's pushing me forward to serve you in this capacity.

Thank you.

Well, there's a lot of issues that need your help.

There's a gentleman in the audience, Randy Salzman, who's now involved in a big fight about the 29 bypass.

There's people that I'm looking at right now that are involved in similar fights.

And chloramine might come back, you never know.

So my plea across the city is be involved, whether it's Sierra Club, Project Transition, 350.org, whatever it is, be involved.

Help us have the community say in these decisions.

Um...

My, the way I approach these things really is to beg forgiveness rather than ask permission.

I saw Rock Hill Garden as a overgrown treasure and organized an effort to clean it.

I tried to protect McIntyre Park from commercial development.

I don't just talk environmentalism, I do it.

Thank you very much.

And thank you to all the candidates for spending your evening here with us talking about these issues and bringing up some really important environmental issues.

If we could all give them a round of applause.

And thank you to all of our co-sponsoring organizations and all of you who attended this forum tonight.

Remember that the Democratic primary is on June 11th and five of the candidates up here will be competing in that.

They'll go on to compete with the

to other candidates in the general election in November.

So remember to get out and vote.

In addition to tonight's event, the Sierra Club Piedmont group is sponsoring an event tomorrow night with the Charlottesville and Albemarle NAACP on African American heritage sites and the Route 29 bypass from 7 o'clock to 9 o'clock in the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center.