Board of Supervisors Adjourned Meeting - Joint Meeting with City Council   6/6/2019

I'm just curious as to why there wasn't any mention of a hydraulic small area plan.

Because it's right at our border, and it also called for affordable housing.

It also called for implementation strategy, which actually pointed in the direction of the city and the county creating a common code for that area on the edge.

And I don't know where we are on that.

Putting on my CRHA Charlottesville Redevelopment Housing Authority cap, the Housing Authority Board is really interested in having some discussion of sorts with the county in regards to how we view public housing as well as providing more affordable housing because as we all know, we're in a lock.

And as we have to provide vouchers for many

whether that's landlords and how they may treat some of our residents or whether that's how we can work together to ensure that our residents, although they have city doctors, they're spending them in the county, how we can have more cohesiveness there.

I'll take some fault or some blame.

I will say clearly that we don't and again, I'll take the blame.

That's perfect.

So what we're really hoping today is to foster a discussion about exactly these types of things.

So I've got that one recorded.

And with all due respect, I'm all for the parking list and parking lot items, but I want us to truly have the conversation because I think sometimes when we have these meetings, we develop lists and then we don't talk again or hear about them until we get together, which is sometimes four or five months later.

I think it's a great idea but again I want to be respectful of both our mayor and our chair in terms of just saying hey let's start a committee.

A subcommittee among the electeds or among staff who will report to the electeds.

I'd like to say that I feel that same way about the Hydraulic Small Area Plan.

That was adopted a year ago in March.

And so we heard nothing about it.

City Council and Gantt County, we both appended that plan to our conference of plans.

Just get some word and like about it.

And I just have one question.

Because the two jurisdictions are right next to each other, it would be great.

I'm not mad at y'all for the five-year plan.

I think that's great.

But it would, yeah, you have to.

Institute One Old Lynchburg,

just something about the

We've got to get in a car and drive over there to have a little child.

But the one thing that I wanted to point out is that this county has put some money aside in our CIP for just that project, that one project, not all three.

And if we don't get the grant, we want to go ahead.

And this is a poster child for a project that the city

We decide to give over to you.

For example, if you're heading down, just to use an example, Barracks Road, you have three blocks of the city and three blocks of the county.

For me, I think it would be nice, I guess, in a way, these development areas, they're pedestrian generators and they're right at the border.

You don't have the infrastructure in place to accommodate the new growth.

And it would be helpful, because you brought to our attention the sunset.

This whole Lynchburg Road is the Elliott Park area, the last time we met.

And I'd like to see what the other kind of projects

When we talk about it in our budget discussions for our CIP, it would be something that the council could look at and say, look, this is a line item on the budget of the CIP.

I mean, this is kind of something that we need.

It's an asterisk, this particular project.

Because right now, we have a lot of projects that are varied that we don't fund for our city.

and that hopefully will get started on that this summer.

The first thing, to be honest with you, was getting the contract.

The MOU signed so that we know how we would have paid for it.

Yes, but just wondering if you knew your staff and the areas where it's needed had it started out.

Okay, yeah.

I see Chip Boyles with the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission nodding very affirmatively behind you.

I just have a question.

Because we have an opportunity zone.

Has any investor been interested in our opportunities?

Chris, can I ask you to step in a little bit?

Is there any affordable housing component, any of them?

There could be.

Some of the funds are looking at that, looking at affordable housing as an investment.

So it is a possibility.

I was wondering if, maybe it doesn't have to be today, but in the very near future we could have some discussion tied around how both the city and the county are supporting minority businesses.

We had a minority business breakfast.

Our second one, a couple weeks ago, off Mount Walker, two, three weeks ago.

In any event, nearly 60 businesses

I'm not going to the Workforce Development Center to teach me how to do my taxes.

If you would email that over to the board.

Okay, I'm gonna ask Ryan Davidson and Lori Alshouse to step up.

That's our plan here today to share information as a discussion starter for you.

So we're going to team check on the slides very quickly.

We do have some other folks in the room that have also worked very closely with capital and CIP information.

So Ryan and I usually have like the first sentence or two and then that's about it in the budget office and then our experts are here around us.

So these are just some completed shared projects and these are just examples again all these slides are examples

So over on the bright side, if you can see that, Ivy Creek Natural Area Barn painting.

That's an example of co-maintenance that we do in our parks together.

The one on the bottom right is Gordon Avenue Library improvements.

Again, another example of how we jointly support our library and our libraries in the city and we jointly put money into the ones in our region as well.

That's an example of a children's area of the library that's just recently been completed.

I'm going to step over here to the River Run stream

So that's something I think that just got completed this week or is completed right now or just it's really just recently done but it reduces pollution, minimizes tree loss, stabilizes a channel together so another

and then the Preston Morris Building upgrades.

Preston Morris Building is also known as a Juvenile Court Services.

So you can see some recent interior improvements that we've done together on that.

Again, just some examples.

This next slide.

This is just some things happening right now on the parking lot paving, ADA enhancements.

Again, as Laurie said, there's many things that are going on, but these are just a few of the examples that we have pulled out, some of the larger examples.

It's going both ways where it's not just one person doing all the one locality doing all the work and then the others contribute and

I think it's important to note that we're seeing a shared workload between the two localities and that bag of work depending on what the item might be.

But as Louie was saying, Darden Tow, we do a lot of stuff together there.

The big thing coming up there is the synthetic turfing and lighting of those fields that's been talked about for a while and it's finally guided to both of the cities and counties.

There's been a lot of work done around that, not only the course complex but also the parking agreement and the parking garage that will be constructed along with this.

There are a lot of things going on, but some examples of projects that we're calling along our border are things that are really close to the border that will affect both areas.

And so on the right side, you see some of the county projects.

We have the Rivanna Greenway Trail, but there's a lot of things, as I said, going on about Rivanna.

We're doing sections all along the way, but it's a connector for

Lori already hit on the Penn Park River on stream restoration, but that's a great one where the county got the grant funding and led phase one of the project and the city contributed and then for phase two the city was awarded the grant

One of those shared efforts in all ways.

Hillsdale Drive extended the city portion.

That's where we connected from over at the Whole Foods to the existing Hillsdale Drive, right past Greenbrier Drive, and that's one that helped complete the construction.

Ricks Road.

Those are small-scale projects where the city receives some grant funding that will be happening within the next two to five years between planning and construction.

And they'll be, you know, going off as we get those plans completed.

They'll be putting them out to bed and starting that work that will affect both school and college.

Oh yeah, and by the other shared efforts, a lot of these are VDOT funded efforts.

This is a really great transition.

We prepared a map.

We're going to break into small groups for a little bit and then come back together for a broader discussion reflecting on that.

There's three materials that we're going to

The first is you're going to be sitting around a map.

The map is zoomed into Albemarle's urban ring in the city of Charlottesville.

There are four geographic areas that are called out to sort of focus on the discussion.

The hydraulic road area, specifically thinking about the development opportunities there.

that's not all of the areas that we share a border, but those are four areas that we felt like made sense to focus on today.

We didn't want to focus on the area adjacent to UVA because they're not at the table with

And then the other thing that you're going to get is it's a look at my 17th sheet.

It's another matrix that has across the top columns the five MOU headers.

And then along the sides are those four areas.

And then in the middle, the two organizations work together to put together a list of things that are going on, sort of a situational awareness, things that are going on in the city and the county in those areas.

relate to the MOU focus areas.

And the things on this map include public projects, so the Old Lynchburg Road sidewalk project and Sunset Avenue study that's currently underway.

The opportunity zone areas are called out on here.

And then there's also some private development that we flagged on here that might just be interesting to be aware of.

One specific one, the Kmart site at the corner of Hydraulic Road and 29, that's not a city

for a county project, but it will have a big impact on the public infrastructure that serves that geographic location.

So that's what that is.

And then the last thing is a stapled eight and a half by 11.

It's sort of a glossary for the things that are highlighted in the matrix and on the map to serve as a reference point.

It's not exhaustive.

Everything got sort of one sentence.

And we're gonna have some questions up here for you all to discuss.

So we'll kind of go area by area and I'll kind of call out to keep the time.

And the questions by area are here.

What are the challenges facing this area?

What are you hearing from your constituents?

What are the opportunities in this area?

And how does this area fit into the context of the strategic plan for the jurisdiction that you represent?

And then when we run through all four,

I'm not going to cover these questions specifically, but really focus on what are the themes that emerge in your discussion together?

Are there any particular locations that stand out as a high priority?

And are there other things going on that you feel like, regardless of physical location, are really important areas for the city and the county to be focused on in collaboration?

I think we've heard affordable housing, minority business work are areas that sort of fit into that bucket.

So the groups

You're seated in your group.

We're going to have a note taker come and sit with you and just sort of jot down notes.

But you all will be responsible for the report out piece.

The note taker is really just there to kind of capture the main themes so that when the staff are reflecting on what the action items are, we have sort of an accounting of what some of the smaller group discussions entails.

So when you say themes, you want themes overarching themes that encompass all four areas or themes for each area?

That was all four areas and then all four areas as well need more attention to inclusive housing

single.

because the infrastructure in place doesn't seem to be adequate to carry the growth.

That leads to lower quality of life in current residents.

It is an area that has affordable housing, though, in it.

I'm just gonna make sure that it doesn't get gobbled up by all the development going on there.

Pan tops.

and one that includes vehicular crossing, just one connectivity.

And then we need bridges across 250 between the two sides, the north and south sides of 250.

So that was a big theme for Pantops, bridges.

You want to actually, and connectivity between the parkway

the county.

And in doing so, combined with bridges, we can be creating alternative commuter pathways for bicycles.

Avon Street, this street, think about more ways to improve by pet infrastructure that can then be tied to employment centers.

Sunset Bridge needs to be repaired and maintained as a good example of that because then it can become an access pathway to the Fontaine Research Park.

When you do that, you need to think about the streets that are near it, like Stripling Avenue.

and then obviously meeting without talking about

That was a high-level theme in each of the four areas.

when we moved over to the 5th Street area, we really, mainly, I mean we noted Biscuit Brown was coming on and noted

conversations about what AMIs are being used for those developments.

So affordable housing, I think, really became a main theme throughout the whole discussion.

And then, of course, transportation access, similar themes, right?

I have a couple of questions to sort of help talk between the groups to go through.

So when we came out of the January meeting,

The focus, at the end of the meeting when we did our recap, the focus was around looking for opportunities for, as the organizations move into their fiscal planning for 2021, what are some opportunities, what are some things that the two elected bodies would like to have staff work into the assumptions that they're building.

in a collaborative frame of mind and whether that's, again, specific geographic areas of our shared boundaries or is it more thematic items like affordable housing that really cross an individual area.

So based on your discussions in your small groups and the share out that we just heard, what does a short-term success look like to you all?

What do you want to see

So you want actual examples, perhaps.

For example, I think there's some real low-hanging fruit that could be very short-term, that could make a big impact in the connecting areas between the Charlottesville and Albemarle.

Liz and I have talked about them, Heather and I have talked about them, Kyle, about those areas

The city does not have public works.

The city is running a street sweeper or cleaning sidewalks or doing whatever they're doing.

And can we somehow or another, our staffs get together and come up with an MOU.

It might be down in Lynchburg Road area or out on Rio where if the city, and I'm just giving you a really specific example.

The city is running a street sweeper.

Instead of stopping and doing a U-turn, it goes two more blocks.

We pay you for it.

We're talking about actually crossing over county line to the city, so we want to participate.

But if we, I mean, I guess willitry is going to be building a bridge.

That's a whole, but that's part of it.

So, I mean, if we committed to saying that we just wanted to have a bike pad bridge crossing over the right side, that would just begin the process of working with the neighboring residents.

It does just get back to what we were talking about, making one bike-ped connection across the river.

We would be meant to work together on that.

Where exactly it is, is part of the planning exercise.

you know how, what we're doing.

Longer, so that's short term items.

Longer term items, are there, you know, I've heard a commitment, a potential commitment for a crossing of the Rivanna River that may be short or long term.

There's one that I'm gonna throw out and I know we can't discuss it now, but I gotta throw it out.

Next month at the Solid Waste Authority meeting, Kathy and I are going to probably get the plan for

We have transportation is a big cost and trying to get rid of the composting.

And it would make this, this is something the city wants to do, this is something the county wants to do.

If we could, and volume is important here.

and commit to just having a discussion about what a potential partnership with development would look like when we're talking about that county land and if it's something that the city and county could talk about funding and if we could commit to a number of units and maybe a five-year, ten-year period

to make a commitment to solve this crisis.

I'm going to review the actions from this focus discussion that we've had.

So our action list, to come back with more information to the two elected bodies, understanding of how the housing voucher program works and what opportunities for collaboration might look like, an update on where things stand with the hydraulic small area plan implementation, information about how Sunset Bridge maintenance might work, and that I think ties also to the levels of service

Public Works, information that McKeel has requested, information on how the minority, understanding of how the minority business support works in the city shared with the county and then again some understanding of what a collaboration on that front might look like.

And then a general understanding that the

by Pedcon Activity and looking at an opportunity to get the two budget staffs and other subject matter expert staff together to look at what the fiscal year 2021 budget might look like if we were planning together to achieve that goal.

And seems to be some strong interest in looking at what getting another crossing of the Rivanna River would look like.

I think also there are some very high priority things for us on the transit side that we want to move on.

Oh, I'm saying

No.

What I'm saying is that when I hear you talk about the housing piece and the land and the fund, it's like it's important.

is there interest?

Do you want an update?

Do you want an update?

Do you want an update?