City Council   3/6/2017

Okay, we'll begin with awards and recognitions.

We have a, let's, and proclamations.

Let's, let's mix them all together tonight.

And whereas reading stimulates the creative and intellectual growth of individuals while also building community and sharing experiences and understanding.

And whereas the Virginia Festival of the Book draws attendees and authors from the region

Serving as an economically significant event for this area while providing the majority of programs free of charge,

and whereas the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the Virginia Center for the Book, the University of Virginia, local businesses and schools as well as cultural and civic organizations collaborate with the Virginia Festival of the Book to promote literacy and reading.

Now, therefore, I, Michael Signer, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, do hereby proclaim Wednesday, March 22nd through Sunday, March 26th, 2017 as the 23rd annual Virginia Festival of the Book and encourage community members to participate fully in the wide range of available programs and activities.

Thank you.

These proclamations feel rather ceremonial, but I will tell you we do not take either the ceremony nor your support for granted.

We at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the Virginia Festival of the Book greatly appreciate the support of the city of Charlottesville for the festival.

Reading offers a powerful pathway to civic engagement as well as economic and social independence.

In addition to financial support, we appreciate the unflagging help of city staff in support of programs held right here in City Council Chambers.

Our work, in turn, supports many of the goals and objectives of the city's strategic plan.

Goal one, enhance the self-sufficiency of residents.

Almost all of our events are free, offering educational opportunities to the community.

And with the partnership of Charlottesville City Schools, Festival authors will be visiting every school in the district.

Goal three, have a strong diversified economy.

The 2016 festival brought in almost 25,000 attendees over five days.

Attendees who purchased books, dined in restaurants, and stayed in hotels, inns, and guest houses.

and Goal 5, Foster Strong Connections.

As a reflection of the community-wide support of the festival, we count more than 200 community partners for the 2017 festival and will produce the festival with the help of an army of more than 300 volunteers.

Thank you for all that you do to support the festival, making it available for residents and visitors from afar, and we'll look forward to seeing you there.

Thanks so much.

Yeah, I might as well do this now.

We're getting into tax season, and there are a number of scams out there.

Scams on your smartphone, scams on your internet.

I'm getting voicemails with a mechanical voice saying, if you don't call this number immediately, the IRS is going to come to your door.

And just on the way in here tonight, I heard another scam.

Guys he got he got a call saying you missed your appointment to be on a jury and And the sheriff is on the way.

So please pass the word To your friends and neighbors any elderly people that you know Just hang up because these official agencies do not do their business like that If it is they'll come back at you so just yeah

So just be very, very careful.

Duly noted.

Thank you.

So I have a couple of announcements.

Good evening, everyone.

We've been here like a year and a half.

I don't know.

Good evening, everyone.

There we go.

We're going to get this down packed before this year's over with.

A couple of announcements for everyone today.

March 6, 2017, Council Community Budget Forum.

We invite the community to come out to the community budget forum on Wednesday, March 15th at 6 p.m. at City Space to discuss your budget priorities with council.

Now this meeting is open to the public and we want everyone to be there.

If you want to know how the money is spent or how it may potentially be spent, we need to see you there.

Next announcement will be for everyone in the city of Charlottesville.

Tomorrow the Charlottesville Alliance for Black Male Achievement will have our regular first and third Tuesday meeting.

That'll be at 6.30 PM at the Carver Rec Center.

We'll be discussing the importance of skill trades as well as computer technology trades.

We'll also be going over with our young men how to build a productive resume as well as looking at potential job opportunities.

Charlottesville Alliance for Black Male Achievement.

This particular portion, My Brother's Keeper, is for African American males between the ages of 17 and 29.

So again, that's tomorrow, Tuesday at 6.30 PM at Carver Rec Center.

If you know someone who needs a job,

Any help with their fees or outstanding fines, whatever the case may be, please send them down.

Lastly, we want to make sure that we put a plug in for everyone throughout the community.

We are looking to collect 1000 ties.

We want to put a hand, excuse me, a tie in the hand of every young man throughout the area.

Okay, there's three drop off locations.

You can take them to the Boys and Girls Club.

off of Cherry Avenue.

You can take them to the Senior Center at 1180 Pepsi Place, or you can take them to Virginia organizing at 703 Concord Avenue.

The goal is, again, to have a Young Men's Conference later in the month in which we will teach all of our young men how to tie a tie.

I think we're at about 500 ties right now.

So we're looking to get to 1,000.

Look in your closet.

If you have any old ones, please drop them off at one of those three locations.

Thank you.

All right.

I have calendar items.

We will be having a joint council school board meeting on Wednesday, March 8th at noon at City Hall in the basement conference room.

It's open to the public.

The council budget work session, I think we've already mentioned, but I'll reiterate since it's on my page.

Thursday, March 9th at 5 p.m. at City Space.

And there's a joint council planning commission meeting on Tuesday, March 14th at 6 p.m. at City Hall in the NDS conference room.

There will be another council budget work session on Thursday, March 16th at 5 p.m. in city space.

Mr. Mayor, I just have one announcement and it's kind of a bit of a tongue twister.

Registration is open now for Fix-a-Leak Family 5K, March 26, 2017.

So Charlottesville, Virginia, the city is encouraging residents to find and fix leaks at home by holding the annual Fix-a-Leak Family 5K at 10 a.m. on March 26 at Penn Park.

This annual event is being held as part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's EPA's ongoing Wear for Water and Fix-A-Leak Week.

It's a good thing I had a good night's sleep last night.

The Fix-A-Leak Family 5K is a family-friendly event, and participants will chase a running toilet, literally, through Penn Park.

Natural Trail, and along the Rivanna River.

During and after the race there will be music, family activities, snacks, awards, as well as water conservation tips.

for all in attendance.

Registration is open now.

It is just $10 for city residents and $15 for non-city residents.

Everyone who registers will receive a Fix-A-Leak 5K race t-shirt.

You can register now at www.sharlesville.org slash water conservation, all one word.

For more information about water conservation in the city of Charlottesville, please visit www.sharlesville.org slash water conservation.

Did you say that they have to chase a toilet?

It's a running, you know, running toilet.

Bob will be joined.

No, no, no, no.

You pulled it off, Ms. Galvin.

We have a prize waiting for you after me.

Okay, I have two announcements.

We have a proclamation for Ebenezer Baptist Church.

Whereas this is a proclamation commending Ebenezer Baptist Church.

Whereas Ebenezer Baptist Church in Charlottesville is celebrating 125 years of serving the community in Christ's name.

And whereas Ebenezer Baptist Church was founded on March 25th, 1892 by the Reverend Alexander Truitt.

And whereas the original church building was destroyed by fire in 1907, but a new Ebenezer Baptist Church edifice was rebuilt on the same location just 11 months earlier

or later in Charlottesville's historic Starr Hill neighborhood and whereas in the early part of the 20th century Ebenezer Baptist Church purchased a parsonage and Deacon Adolphus Page Sr. rebuilt the structure which is now located at 402 8th Street Northwest and whereas Ebenezer Baptist Church's ambitious three-year $250,000 maintenance renovation and restoration efforts in the first decade of the 21st century

included the comprehensive refinishing of the church sanctuary, which features a hill-borne Roosevelt pipe organ, and whereas included in the upgrades made by Ebenezer Baptist Church was the purchase and installation of an elevator lift, a project that was recognized by the city of Charlottesville with the 2008 Herman Key Access to the Disabled Award, and whereas the University of Virginia recognized Ebenezer's missions efforts by creating an academic course, Disaster Preparedness in St. Kitts and Nevis, an annual overseas research study practicum for approximately 30 undergraduate students,

and whereas Ebenezer Baptist Church reaches out to help the underserved in the Charlottesville community through participation in projects and partnerships with other congregations and their faith fellowship organizations and whereas during its 125 year history as an agent of change Ebenezer Baptist Church has been served by 17 pastors and since 2006 the Reverend Dr. Leemon Dr. Bates II has led the church's congregation and whereas Ebenezer Baptist Church marks its 125th anniversary in 2017

during a weekend of celebratory events March 17th through 19th that culminates with 125th anniversary worship service on Sunday followed by dinner.

Now therefore we, the City Council of the City of Charlottesville, Virginia, do hereby commend Ebenezer Baptist Church in Charlottesville on the occasion, the wonderful occasion, the 125th anniversary of its founding.

On behalf of Pastor Bates and the membership of Ebenezer Baptist Church, we thank you for this proclamation and we plan to be around 125 years more.

We have one more word of recognition, which is the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada, the GFOA Distinguished Budget Award, which has been awarded to the City of Charlottesville Distinguished Budget Presentation Award for our Fiscal Year 2017 budget.

This is the 24th time that Charlottesville has won this award and the 15th consecutive budget award.

This award represents a significant achievement by the city.

It reflects the commitment of council and staff to meeting the highest principles of government budgeting.

In order to receive the budget award, the city had to satisfy nationally recognized guidelines for effective budget presentation, guidelines that assess how well an entity's budget illustrates in the following areas, introduction and overview, financial structure, policy and process,

financial summaries, capital and debt, departmental information, and document-wide criteria.

This is really wonky stuff, but this is where the rubber hits the road, and you've got to have a government that runs really well, and that serves the citizens well, and that's what we have here, and that's what the budget award recognizes.

Thank you, Council.

I just wanted to say this is really the culmination of the hard work of many people throughout the city from Council down to the linemen on working for the city.

So it's a truly collaborative effort.

We're getting ready to kick off the budget process here again tonight and hopefully 15 more in a row.

Next item on our agenda, City Manager response to matters by the public raised in the last meeting.

Just a few items from the last meeting to touch upon.

There are several folks, Ms. Sarah Claiborne, Ms. Susan Payne, and Mr. John Peaty who spoke in favor of

of the city creating an arts director's position.

Just wanted to provide council with a quick update that the staff is working to schedule a meeting with representatives from the arts community to discuss the next steps in that process.

Mr. Paul Long raised the issue of limiting matters by the public sessions to city residents or to at least give them a first right to speak before non-city residents.

This has been raised in the past with the city council and councilors decided against limiting matters by the public to local residents.

Staff has not been directed by the council to change our policy on that issue.

And Miss Kate Bennis read a statement on behalf of a number of city neighborhood associations asking for additional input into development projects here in the city and the future design of a form-based code in the strategic investment area.

One of her immediate requests was a meeting with me and our Director of Neighborhood Development Services.

We are working on a date for that meeting in April right now.

We're just trying to find the appropriate time to meet.

May I just ask a follow-up question?

The city resident speaking first, I was somehow under the impression that we weren't allowed to do that.

I know there are some jurisdictions that have done that and I believe there are some case decisions that have upheld that.

I would be at least interested in knowing what our options are.

Okay, well we're going to go into the matters of the public now.

OK, perfect.

We welcome public comment.

It's an important part of our meeting.

Time is reserved near the beginning and at the end of each regular city council meeting for matters by the public.

Please follow these guidelines for public comment.

If you're here to speak for a public hearing, please wait to speak on that matter until the report for that item has been presented.

And the public hearing's been open.

We have one of these tonight, and it's on matters by the public.

Each speaker has three minutes to speak.

Please give your name and address before beginning your remarks and then I'll read the sections from section nine of our guidelines.

Improper comments and disorderly conduct are not permitted.

Persons appearing before the council will not be allowed to

campaign for public office, promote private business ventures, use profanity or vulgar language or gestures, threaten violence or counsel city staff or members of the public, engage in behavior that intimidates others, interrupt other speakers, or engage in behavior that disrupts the meeting.

Any speaker who violates the rules will be called to order by the mayor.

If their marks or conduct persists, the mayor shall order the speaker to cease speaking and be seated.

If the order is not heeded, the mayor shall direct the sergeant-at-arms to escort the individual from the meeting room.

With that said, we are, we have, we have nine folks who signed up in the beginning and then we've got, we do have a wait list tonight of about five people.

So we'll try to get, we should be able to populate the 12.

So Karen Stevens is first.

I should say we've got a timer also up here.

When it gets to yellow, you have 15 seconds left.

When it gets to red, you're out of time, so that makes me not be the bad guy.

Hey, my name is Karen Stevens.

I live on 100th Street, which is Midway Manor.

I was actually going to speak on

The Landmark Hotel, but a more pressing thing came up last week.

I was crossing the pedestrian crossing on the corner of Main and Ridge Street.

The short crossing to the statue.

I got hit by a car.

The car ran, she trapped my foot, my left foot underneath the car, and so I fell on my right side.

Obviously I was not badly injured, but the woman was not given a warrant for reckless driving by the police department and I am outraged by that.

I didn't want to take her to court, you know, I can't take the police department to court, but it was, you know, like there needs to be a camcorder on

in that corner because I went to the police department, they have no camera there.

And I think, you know, on behalf of the other pedestrians that use that, you know, series of park, you know, crossings, it is dangerous.

When I started the crossing, it was red.

It turned green when I was in the middle.

I'm 66 years old.

I can't run across.

and she hit me.

And, you know, it shook me up, still shakes me up.

It happened like a week ago Sunday, a week ago yesterday.

So I want the city council to please get a camera installed, you know, on behalf of the pedestrians and the vehicles, you know, too.

I mean, people have accidents up there all the time.

So that is it.

Do I have time?

I would really like to talk you know like I wanted to talk at length about the landmark but I feel like if City Council is making decisions to give this person after eight years of it standing there and rotting it's a danger

and it's an eyesore.

And if you're gonna give them a break, it should go into like affordable housing for people or something for the community, not another hotel.

The Omni's already there.

So that's it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

David Swanson, Gillespie Avenue

Rich Lord will be up here to read a resolution that a long list of organizations, a growing list, is proposing to city council.

We recommend improving it, amending it, but we would love to see something like it acted upon.

We have over half of discretionary spending in Congress going into militarism.

and we have a president who denounces that as counterproductive, says we've created a hornet's nest, it's been a disaster, it's not even debatable and yet he wants to increase it dramatically to put it up over 60% of discretionary spending

and taking that money, taking another 54 billion out of everything else and putting it into militarism.

This is a level, a percentage we haven't seen since the Cold War and it's not justified and it's producing the refugees that are being denounced as if they weren't being created by the wars.

We have incredible trade-offs here.

The number one way in which war kills is by denying that funding to other things.

Small fractions of this kind of money could end starvation,

and the lack of clean drinking water cure diseases around the world and transform this country and just the tax dollars out of Charlottesville into just the Pentagon are enough to hire over a thousand teachers at a hundred thousand dollars or to put solar energy in every house in Charlottesville

Instead these things are going to be cut.

Education is going to be cut.

The EPA is going to be cut.

Probably racist chasing toilets are going to be gone.

Everything is going to be cut except the military.

Charlottesville has passed very similar resolutions in the past.

The difference is that the problem is worse.

The need here is worse.

Other cities have already started.

I like it when Charlottesville's the leader.

It can still be the leader.

New Haven, at least, has already just done this.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors is already looking at it.

I think Charlottesville, to be the leader of the resistance, needs to speak up in a moment like this and send a message to the Congress

and send a message to the world.

The world needs to hear that there are people and there are governments within the United States that are opposed to this agenda of dumping everything into more wars.

And this idea that you put more money into wars and you'll get fewer wars hasn't worked for the past century, isn't going to work now.

We have now a situation where when an Iranian ship sails around Iran,

It's a mortal danger to you and me and we're at risk of a war.

Charlottesville passed a resolution years back against a war on Iran that was very helpful and inspired other cities to do the same.

Charlottesville has passed resolutions against wars on Iraq that we now have universal agreement, have been disastrous.

The money is the root of the problem and we need the money for other things.

This is not a zero, this is not, you know, this is a zero-sum game.

We need that money.

Thank you.

Michael Payne.

Michael Payne.

Good evening, Council.

My name is Jay James.

I live at 169 Brookwood Drive in the city of Charlottesville, and I'm here to talk about

You know, first I would say I just want to thank all of you for serving because I can understand when I witness these meetings, you're going to be dealing with some controversial issues today.

And I appreciate that you're willing to tap on them.

And I'm really here to talk about hope and not to talk about anything that is controversial that needs to be dealt with that people have differing opinions on.

I think we can all agree on wanting to help people who are homeless, who are indigent, who are addicted to medication,

I'm here on behalf of the Bridge Ministry Program.

We're an 18 month residential program.

We started here 25 years ago and were birthed in the city.

In the last two and a half years, we've been really making an effort to reintegrate ourselves into serving this community.

We've always been there, but we're coming back stronger.

So I think what I wanted to share with you is just to ask you all for your consideration in discretionary funding to support us because

We work with homeless.

We work with folks who are indigent.

Our fees are very low compared to other drug treatment programs by over 10,000%.

And these programs cost thousands and thousands of dollars.

Ours do not.

I was in the jail today interviewing a young man who was 24 who was in jail for heroin.

He was 24.

I go to Charlottesville Circuit Court and Albemarle Circuit Court tomorrow to represent a 29-year-old man

who is being held on drug charges.

70% of all offenses are drug charges.

And I'm concerned about our indigent population that is dealing with the opioid epidemic.

Deaths have quadrupled in our country.

We are a 45-bed residential facility that 7 out of every 10 people that come to overcome addiction.

And my hope, guys, is this.

that this is the place where we were birthed that Charlottesville can point and say we have something that we can use because we are a city with all the other programming that we do that is excellent by the way.

Charlottesville is full of fantastic programming but this can be one more that is added to the equation where people who have been caught in the cycle of addiction have a place that they can go that removes them from the city environment for a temporary amount of time so that they can return as productive citizens.

Lastly I would say we are part of the ABRT process

Anything that the AVRT would find, you know, they're looking more for them, I take responsibility for because I read their feedback.

Our staff has worked extremely hard on preparing that application and I'm the communications director, so it's my responsibility.

So I'm asking you for leniency and consideration that we continue to help this community.

Thank you very much.

Good evening, counselors.

My name is Josh Scott.

I work at 1700 University Avenue for the Impact Organization.

Hello.

I'm Pastor Liz Emery, pastor of New Beginnings Christian Community at 1130 East Market Street here in the city.

And I'm also Vice President of Impact.

And I'd like to thank you all for putting

the Women's Treatment Center in the budget.

We really appreciate this and we want to affirm the importance of the decision for humanitarian reasons because like the Bridge Ministry and the Moore Center are only for men and there isn't a single place for women to get detox and treatment here in the city of Charlottesville.

There's not one for 70 miles and often there isn't one in the entire state.

One of our members, Diane

on a Sunday morning put on her Facebook that she was high on crack and suicidal.

And we rushed over and got her to the ER at UVA.

They kept her for 24 hours and then released her back to her home, still suicidal, still high on crack, because there wasn't a single bed in the entire state for her to go to.

And so we really affirm the Women's Treatment Center

It's a model for this state because it's the only one that will allow a woman to bring her two preschool children with her to the treatment center.

And you can stay there for two to three months.

There's daycare, there's wraparound treatment, and this time with an opioid and heroin epidemic in our community.

The Women's Treatment Center is desperately needed.

They're going to break ground for it the end of this month.

and open it up before the end of this year.

And we hope to see you all there to celebrate with us.

And we encourage you to continue affirming the Women's Treatment Center for our community that it is just $75,000 and you already spend $80,000 a year on the Men's Moore Treatment Center.

So for justice and humanitarian reasons, we thank you very much for affirming this.

and just want you to continue with your work for the Women's Treatment Center.

I'm Richard Lord.

I am a board member at the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice presenting a proposal.

I'm going to do it in abbreviated form given the three minutes.

All of you have the full one and any of you who do not, we have extras if you'd like to see the full thing.

This is a petition proposed to Charlottesville City Council

to fund human and environmental needs, not militarism.

It is endorsed by Charlottesville Veterans for Peace, Charlottesville's AMC International, World Beyond War, Just World Books, Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice, the Piedmont Group of the Sierra Club, candidate for Commonwealth Attorney Jeff Fogel, Charlottesville Democratic Socialists of America,

Indivisible Charlottesville, Heartful Action and Together Charlottesville and the list is growing.

Whereas Mayor Mike Signer has declared Charlottesville a capital of resistance to the administration of President Donald Trump.

And whereas President Trump has proposed to move $54 billion from human to environmental spending at home and abroad to military spending, bringing military spending to well over 60% of the federal discretionary spending.

Whereas a United States responsible for providing clean drinking water, schools, medicine, and solar panels to others would be more secure and face far less hostility around the world.

Whereas our environmental and human needs are desperate and urgent.

Whereas economists at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst

have documented that military spending is an economic drain rather than a job program.

Thank you.

Hello.

My name is Dan Saint.

I live on Sawgrass Court in Charlottesville 22901.

I am from Veterans for Peace, and I'm here to speak in support of the petition proposed

that David Swanson and Richard Lord spoke of.

I'm a former U.S. Army infantry captain, spent time in the 82nd Airborne Division, the 3rd Infantry Division, and 12th Special Forces Group.

At $600 billion, our budget is higher than the military budget of China.

It's higher than the military budget of Russia, of the United Kingdom, of France, of Saudi Arabia, of India.

In fact, it's higher than the next eight countries in military spending on this planet.

And President Obama spoke to that, that he was proud of that at his last State of the Union address.

Since then, President Trump has proposed an additional $54 billion of military spending.

And so our question should be not whether we should spend an additional $54 billion, but how do we reduce the obscene amount that we're already spending on the military?

So that is why we've proposed this proposition, and we ask you to please consider it.

Thank you.

Kenneth Jackson.

Kenneth Jackson, 1534 A. Cherry Avenue.

Mr. Mayor, members of council, I can actually say this is the first time in the first meeting I felt safe here.

It's not something to smile about.

See, many of you aren't from here.

You're transplants.

I've been coming to city council meetings since I was 18 years old, actually 16.

I've been involved in government from that time.

Charlottesville has always been a city of unity and inclusiveness.

We aren't as bad as people think we are.

We're not as bad as some of you think we are.

I found it disturbing when you read of how to conduct yourself in meetings.

When the last meeting

I've been cursed at after I spoke and it's not right.

We went down to the park and there was only like 25 of us gathered around the statue and a group of people waving Black Lives Matter signs came up and accosted us.

It was really funny because there was five of us black people over here.

who like history, who don't have a problem with the statue, but to be called racist, to be called white supremacist.

For a 50-year-old black man who's raised a child, that was just weird.

But for the police to be told not to come into the park when we were being accosted

That was ridiculous.

They were ordered that.

And that was told to me by a Capitol.

We, for some reason, get so heated in issues and discussions.

And some people on this council have even called people out to rally.

You can live in a gilded city if you want.

That's not the way I want to live.

Some of you think that we are so racially hung up and such a bad place.

If you didn't like it, why'd you move here?

For 50 years of my life, we and the University of Virginia, in just the way Charlottesville has been, opening arms and welcoming and able to get along, cross racial lines, cross religious lines and stuff.

That's what attracted people.

You want to talk about unity?

You need to start building it.

You need to start to learn to communicate and respect the rights of other people the same way you want them to respect your rights.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of council.

My name is Valerie Long.

I'm an attorney at Williams Mellon Business located at 321 East Main Street.

I was here two weeks ago.

As you know, I've been a longtime proponent of economic development in the city and the county and our entire region.

and I continue.

And like I think most people in this community, we welcome the Landmark Hotel coming to the city.

I'm one of those folks.

My business is on the downtown mall.

I walk by it, and I very much look forward to seeing it continued and completed and benefiting the city in many ways.

However, as I've also stated previously, the clients that we represent in Charlottesville have strong concerns about the proposal, even in its new form from this presented tonight.

We continue to ask that the city not move forward with this request, given the disparity that it would create among landowners equally situated.

The only justification that's been provided thus far, and I recognize there will be a presentation tonight, we may learn more about that, but we won't have an opportunity to speak at that time since it's not a public hearing.

But so far the only justification that's been provided is that it's a special situation because it's a safety issue, it's a

and economic blight issue.

I don't disagree that it is a safety and blight issue, but I do disagree that it's a unique situation, especially given that that unique situation has been created by the owner.

We recognize there may well have been reasons for the delays that have been carried out over the past five years since the owners owned the property, but nevertheless, those delays were created by the owner.

Therefore, I think the argument that there is a unique situation

that justifies the disparate treatment fails on the merits.

We thought Ms. Galvin's suggestion for a performance bond by the city was very strong and had merit.

My understanding is city attorneys advise that that's not permitted.

We think that there's, I know of no reason why the city could not require the owner to obtain from its general contractor a performance bond protecting the owner.

can recognize and it perhaps can't benefit the city, but it can protect the owner.

If a performance bond had been in place when the original developer started the project, we might not be here tonight.

So I think that should be a bare minimum and would support Ms. Galvin's suggestion in that regard.

I don't think that anything unique is being provided by the owner in exchange for the significant financial assistance that's being suggested other than finally completing the project.

but the requirements in the agreement are fairly low.

Most of the other hotels, if you run the numbers, far exceed the bare tax revenue figures that are suggested or required.

There's no publicly provided evidence that this agreement is actually necessary to ensure the completion of the project.

I have other comments.

I'd be happy to

Now we're going on to the three in-person sign ups.

We have two and then we're going to go on to the wait list by two.

Good evening Mr. Mayor and city councilors.

I'm Sarah Peasley at 511 North First Street and I'm also part of IMPACT and we're very appreciative of you putting the Women's Treatment Center on consideration for the budget this year and I'm going to agree with what

Pastor Lee said, Pastor Liz said.

I also want to add that as a nurse in the psychiatric unit at UVA Hospital, I see many, many women come through the revolving door at the hospital because they do not have follow-up treatment.

And that's a huge cost to our community.

With this treatment center, we will be giving care, not jail, not hospitalization.

This will be a huge economic savings for the city.

And these women then will have the opportunity to recover

and their children to break the cycle of addiction and then they will become family supporting citizens in our community and help others recover and build the fabric of our community.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Dr. Alia Robinson Henry and I live at 1617 A. Madison Avenue and I'm speaking on behalf of the workshop on gentrification and

I'd like to begin by pointing out that redevelopment thus far has deviated little from the initiatives laid out in the SIA plan.

and it is therefore not lost on the poor amongst us that this farm-based code encompasses all of the area's low-income and public housing developments.

Once again, we are being, through our limited participation, being asked to legitimize a process that may amount to little more than a fraud perpetrated on the poor and less well-off.

by dissecting public housing into separate city areas, CRHA and FAR are deprived of developing a holistic plan for all of the city's public housing and low-income residents.

Moreover, in this decision to improve the city by collaborating with private actors, the city is overlooking the fact that it was a failure of the private market to adequately provide for the needs of

the poor and less well-off that spurred the growth of federal programs that bypass state and local governments in the first place.

The SIA is the template that says to our architects, city planners, and lawyers, fill it in and then serve it up to the public.

That's not working for us.

We need something that takes into account the interests and needs of our community as a distinctive neighborhood.

What happens when we have our next economic downturn or government strips away funding for public housing and or Section 8s altogether?

What happens when white residents start to complain about our music, the way we dress, or the company that we keep?

What happens when the city has only 10% affordable housing and 35% demand and blacks are once again relegated to the bottom of

for the affordable housing list.

What happens when private realtors start to make rental decisions for these buildings that give preference to certain racial or ethnic groups over others?

Will we see in Charlottesville slash the Charlottesville slash Albemarle area the resuburbanization of black poverty as is occurring in other urban areas?

Yes, with the adoption of foreign-based code, Charlottesville would replace much of its public and low-income housing with street after street of lovely, modern, planned community homes of certain design to meet certain standards and ideologies.

By definition, Charlottesville is and will be a diverse city, but it will also be one that stands on the preface of decimating its black population by design.

Finally, I would caution the city to remember that the poor have always and will continue to play roles in urban centers, and as such, deserve to live here.

As my case illustrates, any person can be just one paycheck away from a medical catastrophe.

And I can go in that...

Thank you, I'm sorry.

We have your letter.

I'm sorry.

Thank you very much.

My name is Avery Chenoweth.

Chenoweth is how Siri pronounces it actually.

I live in the county on Arden Drive and I'm here tonight to make a, start a conversation with the city about new statues given a recent year of controversy, year plus.

Seems to me that we live in a town whose history is often lost.

and the reason for that is obvious, we all live in the shadow of the big house and the big hill and the other stories that matter do not get heard and it's not simply a matter of not hearing those stories but the fact that they are not told, they're not known in schools destroys the confidence and aspirations of children who don't see themselves represented

As you know, the university is now building a slave memorial and not actually building it but planning and designing a slave memorial and their intention is to reach out to the city.

And I've been to the meetings and I've heard the designers speak and I've seen the designs and the most compelling of them all is one that parallels the rotunda and the lawn.

The lawn is a closed system that looks outward.

This new memorial would look north toward freedom with its arms open.

So it invites the public in to discover the story of the enslaved workers at the university, just as it invites the students to look out toward the city.

But we don't have a comprehensive iconography of statuary or monuments in the city.

There's nothing to read, nothing to understand.

But the Lee Park debate offers us a unique opportunity.

Lee Park itself is a sacred space

surrounded by timeless values in the library, the history, the churches, the funeral parlor.

These are all the places where we respect spirit and society.

So it seems to me the ultimate get here would be to start the process of creating a readable iconography.

We have Jefferson at the Rotunda and over here in Lee Park.

I think we should seriously consider erecting a statue to Sally Hemings.

and her children.

And you will understand as I say this that she is not a small time person.

She has been denigrated by every single historian as Jefferson's mistress.

But I'm here to tell you raising that man's children for four decades makes her his common law wife.

And the fact that he ignored her in public makes her a woman that a lot of people could probably relate to.

So I think we need to create

a system by which these stories are told and an iconography between the head, Mr. Jefferson's cool intellect in the university and the heart and the society between Sally Hemings and her devotion to sustaining that world and take it forward from here.

Thank you.

Now for our last, I have Elizabeth Emery down here, but you've already spoken.

So, the last would be Christian Ciacia.

I'd like to thank the members of IMPACT who came tonight as well as Mr. Jay James speaking in regards to a very serious issue.

I think it's time for us to start looking at this conversation and really dealing with it from a different angle and perspective.

And I think it's going to take more than us providing line budget items or throwing money at the drug and opiate

situation that we have here within our community.

One of the things that I would really like to see us do is I would love for us to convene a community meeting of sorts to deal with or begin talking about how do we deal with, as a locality, the issues of opiates, specifically heroin use.

We look at other drugs that are plaguing our community.

I've read different studies that say in the state of Virginia it costs $35,000 to $40,000 to house an inmate.

they're asking for essentially $75,000 that's going to house, what was it, 50 people, 50 women.

That is heartbreaking and we've heard this story several different times that this lady was admitted to the hospital because she was on drugs and she couldn't find a bed in the state in 24 hours she's released.

As someone who has several different drug users in my family, that is definitely not a recipe that we want to have in this city that proclaims to be the best for

XYZ.

So if we could have a community meeting involving our schools.

I see a lot of our school board members, our superintendent here, different partners from the community who are dealing with this issue.

And I know we've heard on several different occasions from people specifically within minority communities saying that this has been an issue for decades.

and we haven't done with, we didn't deal with it then, but because it's affecting quote unquote a new population, now we're putting a lot of resources into it.

I think that's neither here nor there.

Let's just start to do something about it now.

May I just ask a question?

Yes.

The meeting would be to talk about it.

Well, I think we need to look at more tangible solutions.

I love the idea of us helping the bridge and impact, but I think that's not going to be able to really solve the larger issue at hand.

Are you envisioning like a work session?

Yes.

During a meeting.

I think that's a good idea.

Okay, thank you.

It's a work session during a working meeting.

Mr. Mayor, I don't have a specific response to the matters by the public, although it did come up during the matters by the public, but as I mentioned to a couple of my fellow councilors,

Not for a decision this evening because I think it needs some crafting, but I would like to discuss having a resolution that calls on Congress to not increase the military budget and take it away from social spending.

We have generally two reasons why we do resolutions that aren't specific to council or to city issues.

We've kind of set policy for that, and one of those

is if it is a national campaign where cities across the country are doing it and so as part of that we can lend power to a statement that's national.

No, three to get it on the agenda.

I think we have three.

No, it's three.

We have three?

And Mr. Mayor, one thing, and this is for Mr. Jones, as Ms. Alia was talking about the foreign-based code and the strategic investment area, there has been a lot of confusion about those two topics.

And I think at this point, if you could be prepared at the next meeting to provide a really clear

kind of overview of what staff is planning to do for public and community engagement with regards to those two topics in particular.

That would be much appreciated.

OK, everyone good?

We've got a very busy meeting tonight.

All right, we are moving on to the consent agenda.

Before we get to it, I'm going to take a point of privileges because we have a number of folks that are involved with one of the items on the agenda, which is the resolution to

I'm going to read it and then ask you all to come up and receive it briefly and then we'll execute it in the consent agenda where there's two other items.

So would you all mind leadership coming down?

So whereas the Charlottesville Area Alliance, CAA, is a collective of organizations who aim to lead

The advancement goal is making the Region 10 area an age-friendly community, being mindful of the unique needs of those aging in this regional community and taking action when needed.

And whereas the CAA includes the Alzheimer's Association, Jefferson Area Board on Aging, the Senior Center, Jaunt Incorporated, Westminster, Canterbury of the Blue Ridge, and Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission as the initial lead organizations.

And whereas the CAA's primary purpose is to provide leadership for and to develop an age-friendly community

through educating, advocating, engagement, planning and evaluation, bringing organizations together to create an age-friendly community by developing a common understanding of the needs and issues, developing policy recommendations and joining together to encourage the implementation by government, nonprofit organizations, the general public and businesses,

And whereas the vision of the CIA is that the greater Charlottesville area will be the most age-friendly community in the country, and whereas the mission of the Charlottesville Area Alliance is to lead the advancement of an age-friendly community, and whereas the CIA has identified five goal areas of work, including assessment, monitoring, planning, advocacy, education, public relations and engagement,

and whereas the CAA will utilize the World Health Organization's measurement and indicators of outdoor spaces and buildings, transportation, housing, social participation, respect and social inclusion, civil participation and employment, communication and information, and community and health services and whereas the City of Charlottesville supports the participation of staff,

for coming.

Just a real quick thank you to the City of Charlottesville.

I'm sorry, Peter Thompson with the Senior Center and representing all of our friends at the Charlottesville Area Alliance.

Just want to mention some of the other partners that have joined us.

AHIP, Seeville Villages, Home Instead Senior Care, Hollywood UVA, Thomas Jefferson Health Department, UVA Health System, and most recently the Piedmont Housing Alliance.

We're very excited to work with the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County that has also accepted this resolution.

to enter the WHO-ARP age-friendly network and work together to make an age-friendly community.

Because as we heard tonight, it's not just a 66-year-old who sometimes can't scamper across the street when maybe in a crosswalk there's all of a sudden has a car coming down on her.

It could be anybody with a different ability at any age.

It could be a woman who's pregnant and can't move very quickly.

It could be somebody temporarily

in a boot.

It can be a number of things.

Item A, Minutes for February 21st.

Item B, Appropriation, Bama Works Fund Grant for Family Advocate Program, $9,000, first of two readings.

Item C, Appropriation, Local Government Arts Challenge Grant to Virginia's Discovery Museum, $5,000, first of two readings.

Any questions?

Second.

Second.

Any questions?

Discussion?

All in favor?

The consent agenda carries 5 to 0.

Thank you all very much.

Now moving on to matters by the public procedures.

We've allocated 20 minutes to this.

We do have a public hearing, so if anyone would like to sign up to speak on this, the hearing sheet should be down here.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Just a refresher for the Council and our audience.

Last February of 2016, the City Council voted for revisions to the City Council meeting procedures.

It was an effort to help ensure that our City Council meetings were more efficient.

The council voted to implement several new items including, but not limited to, incorporating a number of work sessions into the second council meeting each month, allotting a maximum of 20 minutes for presentations and discussion of most of our agenda items, not all, limiting most city councilor comments to three minutes, the same limited comments by the Matters by the Public,

establishing new guidelines for council inquiries to city staff in order to improve operational efficiencies and expanding opportunities to speak during the first public comment period by allowing requests in advance by email and or telephone.

A random selection process was established for speaking slots for the first matters by the public section and it was developed in this way to allow for requests that would come in via email

by phone or in person to the city clerk by 9 a.m. on the day of the city council meeting.

Each of the requests was given a number.

The random number generator generated 12 speaking slots.

The remaining group of people who signed up to speak were placed on a waiting list.

both the list of assigned speakers and the wait list were published on the city's website by noon on the day of each one of the city council meetings.

The council asked for staff and the council to review the matters by public procedures in six months.

That was done in September of last year and the council

took comment from the public and discussed the procedures and revised the matters by the public section by reducing the number of speakers who were assigned by the random number generator from 12 to 9 and included three slots that are now assigned on a first come first serve basis on the evening of the city council meeting nights.

The council this evening will be reviewing once again the procedures and discussing whether to keep them as they are or to revise them.

And I'm going to, before we get, we have a couple of motions I want to talk about.

I think the best way to do those, I think that, but there was a presentation of some additional statistics that I was going to do.

And as she's looking, I just want to offer my apologies to the next item, which in the original agenda was before this item, and that's what I had told them it would be, so I apologize.

Oh, sorry.

Okay, so we're going to show you some charts with statistics, so I'll start reading while we get these up.

Thanks to the hard work of three staff people, Sarah Brazelton, Ella Jordan, who's subbing in for Paige Rice, our clerk while she's on attorney leave, and Barbara Ronan, who's in the legal office, we were able to assemble comprehensive data for public comments from 2012 to 2017 in

Six categories, number of speakers and first matters by the public, number of comments, the first matters by the public about agenda items, number of folks who signed up for the wait list, that only applies to the year that we've had a wait list, which is the last year, number of speakers and the second matters by the public, number of public hearings that were created in a meeting,

and sometimes public hearings that we have chosen.

You can choose to do public hearings about matters that you're not required to do.

So that's another means of public engagement.

For instance, tonight we don't legally have to do a public hearing, but we're doing one about this.

We did it also about deer and snow and a whole number of things last year.

Statues, a number of other issues we've done public hearings for.

And number of speakers in public hearings.

So these data

They go from March of one year through February of the next starting in March of 2012 so we can compare five years evenly because the public new procedures came into effect in March of 2016 and went through February of this year so we have a year of data so we can evenly compare apples to apples

the last several years.

First come, first serve.

We've also increased the number of public hearings.

This year, we thought, I was curious to see the data on that, we've attempted to make meetings more efficient by working under Robert's Rules rather than an exception to Robert's Rules and by limiting speaking times for ourselves among a whole host of other changes.

Before we get to the results, I hasten as a social scientist to note the difference between correlation and causation.

It's impossible to know whether these procedures actually caused any changes here.

There's a lot of stuff that happens in a given year in any local body in any given meeting, so it's very hard to say that these meetings caused these procedures, but we do know that they're correlated.

We do know at very least that the new procedures are happening along with what I'll describe as an increased level of public engagement and that at the very least they're not preventing large numbers of people from participating in our meetings.

So the results show that in general more people are participating in our meetings than in any of the past three years and that more people are focusing when they speak on agenda items.

The number of speakers participating in the first Matters by the Public has gone up and down over the year.

Under the new procedures, it was 224, so that was about the same as in 2013-2014, which was 225, a little under 2012-13, 232, and 2015-2016 was 231.

2012-2013,

was a banner year with 252 people speaking in the first matters of the public.

So that comes up a lot when you look at this.

For some reason that year there was a lot going on.

We have seen a steady increase including under the new procedures since 2013 in the number of people speaking about agenda items in the first matters of the public, which means that when people show up they're talking more about stuff that's on the agenda that night.

But 2012-2013 again had a significantly higher number than in any of the following years.

We've seen an even greater increase in people speaking in the second matters of that public in the years since 2013, including under the new procedures.

In 2013-14 there were 35 people, the next year 52, the next year 64, and under the new procedures 80 people have shown up.

But that is only, that's about the same as the 78 who spoke again in the same year of 2012-13.

We've seen an increase in comments the second matters of the public again about agenda items 2013-14 there were 14, next year 20, next year 31 and this last year 39 but 2012-2013 thought 39 as well.

We're also interested in the numbers of public hearings as I said they were very high in 12-13, 39 dropped to 34 and 13, 14 the next year dropped to 22, 2015-2016, 27 and under the new procedures were back up close to the high of 35.

public hearings.

And finally, the speakers in public hearings, in 2012-13, 149, a huge total, 2013-14, 96, 14-15, 90, 15-16, it dropped down to 79, and this year it went up significantly to 113.

And the total number of speakers, there are two big figures that matter, including adding up first matters by the public, people speaking in public hearings, and second matters by the public.

This last year under the new procedures we heard from 417 people.

There were 357 only in 13 and 14, 394 in 14 and 15, 374 in 15 and 16, but 2012 through 2013 the big year was 459.

And then if you look at averages, the average number of speakers in meetings under the new procedures, the total this year was 18.1.

The average in 2012-13, the big year, was 20, but then it dropped to 15.5 in 2013-14, 17.1 in 2015-15, and 16.3 in 2015-16, which means that the average number of speakers in this last year was higher than the last three years, a little lower than 2012-2013, but

Anyway, so that's that's where we are when you look at and the the this is this is data These are you can have your own opinions, but you can't have your own facts So the the data shows that these procedures did at least correlate or coincide with a healthy amount of public participation This last year across these different sectors and a lot of people speaking about agenda items in our in our matters of the public sessions, so

That's where we are.

It looks like tonight we have two motions that have been prepared by my colleagues.

One is a motion by Mr. Bellamy, which is about the first matters of the public and a new mechanism for setting it up.

And another one is an omnibus motion by Ms. Galvin that has a few different moving parts and a few different changes.

So I think that we could, it really depends on which we want to talk about first, but I think we should talk about them separately.

That we could roll into mine.

Yes.

I will accept a friendly amendment if that's how.

Or you just make it with those changes.

Should we do the hearing first?

Yes.

So let's do the public hearing first.

It looks like we have two folks signed up.

Ms. Brazelton, would you mind handing this one?

Same rules, comments are limited to three minutes.

Please start with your name and address.

Rebecca Quinn.

Every time I see her, she reminds me we're related.

I was looking for her.

Rebecca Quinn, 1044 Street here in the city.

I really hadn't intended to speak.

I was a little concerned about focusing too much on numbers that, as you say, there's no way to tell causation.

But most of us have been around for a long time, and we know that the issues that draw citizens out come and go.

I think it's pretty easy to tell what was going on in 2012, 2013.

So changes from year to year, be very cautious about imbuing that with any significance.

But the reason I decided to speak was the question about limiting speakers to city residents.

I have to say I'm shocked.

What happened to one community?

What happened to being good neighbors?

So many issues that come before council affect us as a region.

especially the city and the surrounding county.

And I've got several, but I'm sure there are others.

History.

History wasn't confined to today's boundaries.

Transportation.

Our buses don't stop at the city line.

Water and sewer services, solid waste.

Courts.

Parks are now on our agenda.

Tourism.

So the idea of

Limiting to only city residents, I find, I will just repeat, shocking, and I would be very disturbed if you continue down that line.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Peter Kleeman.

I live at 407 Head Street in the city.

I like to think of this public involvement process as a conversation between city councilors and members of the public.

And part of that conversation is to develop resolutions or ordinances that would work best for the city as a whole.

for the counselors, for our attorneys who have to worry about different problems.

But we have a very capable community with many good ideas that I think could bring much better proposals for consideration for passage as resolutions and ordinances if people were allowed to participate in the conversation.

As an example, it sounds like there are prepackaged proposals that will be voted on which will not occur after the possibility of considering the information that comes from the public because they've already been drafted and it sounds like they're going to be made.

So the value of this conversation is limited.

I get to speak

but there is no conversation.

If I had a philosophical point to make I would say perhaps if you could look at this ordinances that you're considering and say how can we actually include the ideas of the public not just allow them to speak and express them but include them and perhaps have a conversation.

If Rebecca Quinn makes a comment and one person thinks it's important and another person

It doesn't mean it shouldn't be discussed among the counselors as well before the decision is made.

We learn from each other and it's not like we learn instantly.

So I feel like the process that you're considering needs to be expanded to be a public conversation process, not just a comment process.

We can all comment.

But as I say, if there's a responsibility, if there's freedom of speech, there's an obligation to listen.

And so I hope that we can find a way to tweak our public involvement process to open to more conversation,

to actually allow counselors to get in touch with the person who made a comment that might change the way a whole ordinance might read or the way a resolution might read and say, that was an interesting comment.

Can we talk about how we can integrate that into our plan for the city?

and I would be much happier if we had those opportunities explicitly available rather than say on Thursday a resolution may come out.

On Monday someone may have an opportunity to comment on it but it will be voted on that night.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, closing the public hearing.

Is there anybody else?

So I just looked at the background information for this meeting about this particular subject and it's two pretty short pages talking about what happened in 2016 when this was originally instituted and it makes it really difficult to give a really informed public comment because

Apparently there are two different things being proposed that we don't know about.

So having a public hearing without having sufficient background information, what can we really say?

We don't know what's being proposed.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Members of Council.

I'm Valerie Long, again, owner of a business at 321 East Main Street.

I want to thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council, for the opportunity to speak.

I've been involved in the process for many years, and I want to share my opinion, which is that I think these procedures work very, very well.

They're not perfect, but it's a tough balance to provide sufficient opportunities for public engagement and input

and also to balance the council's very important, equally important needs to conduct its business in a timely fashion.

And I know that's very challenging, so I appreciate the opportunity that you went to the effort to gather all this data and facts.

It's very interesting.

My two simple suggestions, one you alluded to, Mr. Mayor, in your presentation is to open up more agenda items to public comment.

Perhaps they don't even need to be official public hearings as required with all the procedural requirements of the Virginia Code, but you could put on the agenda public comment will be accepted.

And that would go a long way to giving people that opportunity to provide that meaningful comment for the reasons you said and the reasons we're here today.

And finally, sort of a technicality when you have special use permits and rezoning applications and zoning text amendments that are often of great importance and interest by

Not just applicants and landowners, but by members of the public, neighbors.

Because you have your joint public hearings with the Planning Commission and City Council, obviously the public has an opportunity to come in at that point.

But often the Planning Commission will make changes to conditions of approval or proffers, things like that.

And then when it comes before City Council, the applicant and the neighbors

and other public interest groups do not have an opportunity to address you all as a group necessarily about those changes.

And a project can change very dramatically.

And yes, there are always opportunities for us to reach you by email and try to get you by phone and maybe try to get a meeting with you.

But those aren't always successful.

And I would say there's really no substitute for exactly what I'm doing, which is talking to you as a group, getting your undivided attention,

and so to the extent you could also provide an opportunity again, at least for public comment, but when that special use permit or rezoning application comes back before council, I think that would be the type of meaningful conversation that Mr. Kleeman was just mentioning on those issues that are so important to our citizens and community.

Thank you.

Good evening, Breidlin Collins.

I live at 418 Fairway Avenue.

And I did want to confirm what Ms. Seville and Mr. Kleeman said about this sort of conversation about this issue that hasn't occurred.

I think originally there were some concerns that there were folks dominating the public comments section and I feel like it would have been great and still something you could do which is to approach some of those folks and say

We hear your concern.

We've heard it over and over and over again.

A lot of some people brought this to your attention and shown their opposition to the changes.

Poll the people who come to the meetings to see how best they think they could work this out.

Maybe you'll find that folks are more willing to sort of grant a little wiggle room if they feel like they can have better access to the city council.

My main concern

The lottery system I don't think is working well and I think having to sign online even though that's not the only option does seem to be the only option and is a barrier to many people and I've heard this consistently through some of my work with low-income residents and kind of seen this play out among other folks that I know.

I think other ways

I think one way you can deal with the problems of the lottery system is to expand the amount of public speakers that you have for public comment.

That's not always going to do it, but if you can expand by five more folks.

I think that would have a big impact so that there would be less likely that the actual lottery system would have to kick in and people would be left out.

Now of course it would still happen.

However, I do know that there has been an idea to have this happen but limit the amount of speaking time to two minutes from three and I would very much not be in support of that.

I think folks need that three minutes.

Most folks run out when they're trying to make a clear

thought and if somebody's trying to get really nuanced that time goes way too fast.

I don't think that it'd be interesting to see, I don't know how late your meetings have gone and if you've actually shortened those over the past year and I know that was a concern of you all that you don't run too late.

I'm not sure that adding an extra 15 minutes or half hour to your meeting is going to have much effect because I've seen you guys staying late irregardless of what's going on.

So you do need to do the people's business

We do still want you all to speak.

There should be no limitation on council interactions with each other and council speech to one another, nor to the public.

We have to hear what you have to say, and we need you to take the time to do your business.

So ultimately, I'm in favor of the old, old way.

I think that worked best, and I think there were no problems with it.

I don't think it caused any problems for this council.

Maybe there are some things to get past, but moving forward,

I'm Nicole Scrow.

I live at City Walk Way, but I also work on the downtown mall.

So, as a fellow social science geek, I really enjoyed the data, but I will say that you could make an argument that there were a certain amount of events this year that you would expect public comment, and you didn't get a certain increase, and so perhaps

There was less than expected but it's very interesting to see the data and I do think there has been a lot of input.

One thing that I think would be great is I do believe that counselors can call up applicants and call up people from the public to have a back and forth and I think that can be really efficient just rather than internal discussion and not

Thank you.

OK, going gone.

OK, so closing the public hearing.

We're going to get now to the business at hand.

I will start with mine.

And although I will, since I was the one who brought it up, just responses to mine are really short, to the idea of city residents that Ms. Quinn brought up.

I actually am not proposing that we limit anything to anybody, but we do have sometimes

cases where, well, for instance, around the issue of the statues where we had a lot of people coming from very far out of town who had no local interest and having a way that we might be able to prioritize people who are local, which doesn't necessarily mean just living in the city.

It might be city county or people who live or work in the city.

but I would like to know if we can do that.

I'm going to insert a note and just say that we are under our own rules tonight.

So my suggestions, which I will not need

In number A, paragraph 2, I would like to just to clarify business meetings and working meetings by saying that regular meetings shall be of two types.

The first meeting of the month, the business meeting, will be focused on information, blah, blah, blah, just so it says when it is.

And then the last part, the second type, the working meeting, will also add the word also include work sessions and reports.

That way you don't have to say that votes may be taken as necessary.

So it just, it's both simpler and more clarifying.

The second is in D3.

I would omit, and this actually does go towards something that somebody mentioned here, omit the word shall before not respond.

It was the council members, hold on, I've got too many machines open here.

the council members in responding to matters from the public.

She'll generally refrain from, here I'm using my minutes.

In the interest of focusing the city's response to public comments on engagement policy and action items, it's a measure.

Members of council in general shall defer to the city manager's response to public comments and this is and shall not respond and that is a command the word shall so I would rather it say In general shall defer to the city manager's response to public comments and not respond to public comments as a whole Which is really what we've talked about with our intent So I'm just trying to make it more toward our intent which is not a command but but it's sort of self-controlling and d9

The improper comments and disorderly conduct are not permitted.

Persons appearing before the council, it says here before the council will not be allowed to campaign for public office and various other things.

And it sounds like anyone who speaks before public city council will never be allowed to run for city council or for any public office.

And so I think just to clarify that persons appearing before this council may not use this platform to ABCD.

So campaign for public office, promote private business ventures, use profanity or vulgar language.

So it's just as they're making their public comment.

And that's all I've got.

So that was a motion then.

May I make a friendly, just grammatical suggestion?

Sure.

Yeah, I know, it's just, it's not a good, the platform is a little.

during their public comment.

May not use their public comment time to.

Okay, it's fine.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, I'd like to make a few comments.

I appreciate the fact that Kristin has cleaned this up a little bit.

but I didn't support it when it first came around and I won't support it this time.

And for one reason just occurred to me exactly what's happening here.

We are figuring out matters before public, before the public comes back to us and says this is what we like or what we don't like.

That seems kind of backwards to me.

In no particular order,

I was told a number of times that the reason we went through this entire exercise was there was a guy who was cutting in line and my response was well just you know don't let them cut in line so this to me is unnecessarily complex I don't think anybody in this room could actually

Give back what you heard about these statistics.

As an example, there's a business owner downtown who wanted to come speak, but she wouldn't know until 1230 if she had a slot to speak in, and she just couldn't do that.

She could not make up her schedule that late in the day, so she didn't show up.

I like what Brandon Collins says about the old, old way to do it.

It seemed to be working fine.

There was one fellow who abused it, and we could have taken care of that pretty easily.

And at the city residence, one of my concerns with the public dialogue that we've been having here for the last couple months is it's gonna, we all understand about freedom of speech, but it's gonna affect ordinary citizens' freedom of speech if we don't find a better way to do this.

and you're seeing a little bit of that in what we're structuring up here now.

I don't know the answer but I think we've started that conversation.

I wouldn't, I wouldn't limit it to city.

I'd say city and county but I know that Nelson County has interest, Greene County has interest, Fluvanna.

Okay, thank you.

Further comments?

Okay, all in favor of Ms. Zakos's motion?

So, Mr. Mayor, I have a set of six amendments that are a little bit more meaty, if you will.

So they may generate more conversation, but I'll just make a motion to amend the council meeting procedures as follows.

In paragraph B3, I am proposing that we add to this sentence

Any materials in addition to the background materials shall be distributed to the council by the clerk of council no later than the Friday before the regular council meeting or any joint meeting with Albemarle County Planning Commission, advisory group, or additional work session outside of the regular meeting schedule.

That was the first subamendment.

Second, and this would be to add an item number four under section B, and that item number four would read,

Agenda topics without background materials for upcoming city council meetings, working meetings or work sessions shall be made available to city council three months in advance.

The third change would be in paragraph C3 and it would be to delete the phrase ordering audio and visual equipment temporarily turned off so that you can just see

It is a segment that is a part of the authority of the mayor and it just removes the shutting down of the audio and visual.

Fourth subamendment would be to change in paragraph F1b change 20 minutes to 30 minutes to allow more time for discussion.

In that same paragraph F2.a

change five minutes to seven minutes for the person who makes the motion and change three minutes to five minutes for each counselor to make comments and that is in direct a direct effort to address the the issue of the public wanting to hear more of the rationale behind council decisions and the last sub amendment would be under I

and that is a new item, five, which would read as follows.

Each counselor or his or her designee shall report to counsel on his or her committee, board commission and task force assignments once a year.

So I, as I, that's the complete list of amendments and as I said within the body of my amendments that I was attempting in certain aspects to create more of opportunity for the counselors to actually say

And then we'll have discussion, okay.

So I guess, first of all, I just have a question.

In number one, when you have the materials have to be ready by Friday for any meeting, what if the next meeting is on, say, a Friday?

It was to allow for a weekend to be built in between receiving the material and then having to work on it.

And that is directly related to individuals on council that may be working full time,

We all have meetings at night.

I'm just not sure that, like for budget meetings and things like that, that we could get things a whole week ahead, that that would be a very efficient way of using time.

So that'll go to discussion.

My other question was agenda topics without background materials for upcoming city business meetings, working meetings, or work sessions should be made available to the city council three months in advance.

Well, I think when we know what they are, I would love to see it.

So it shall be made available when possible.

The other things, number five, I actually don't agree with.

I think five minutes and three minutes works.

because we do have written into the procedures that once you've had your five minutes and everybody gets their three minutes who wants it, you could go again.

And that can go as many times as we need to.

So I think, I'm not sure we have to make these long speeches each time.

I agree with Ms. Szakos in regards to not moving it from three to five because I agree that we can just always request more time.

Ms. Galvin, if you could answer the question.

I know you were trying to ask for having the materials earlier in the event, you know, we're all really busy, but kind of to Ms. Szakos' point, because I think the way you described it,

essentially means that they, in some cases, staff may have to give materials to us a week early.

And that was where I'm getting to, that I was working with the fact that Friday was already established in this statement, so I would agree that

or three days before any meeting.

Or three days before any joint meeting, blah, blah, blah.

Yes.

So the only one that and I, you know, I can agree to get rid of the fifth one, which is about the five.

Thank you.

Great.

And I also don't favor the number four or five.

I think that the time limits are very hard to enforce.

Whoever is mayor, I think, is going to have a hard time.

But I think that they're good on the merits and that they can be adjusted.

So I would not vote for it if it included those.

So Mr. Fenwick, do you have any?

Well, I'm kind of in the odd position of saying that I don't like any of it.

Well, it's not that I don't like any of it.

I just thought it was unnecessary.

Well, I agree with what Mike said and Kristin.

My biggest thing in reading this was

We're imposing this on the community to make sure that we follow the same rules that the community is going to have.

Because I don't think I got this until today.

Well, if I may add, the process that we go through whereby we make amendments to materials that we receive, we don't have to give each other anything ahead of time.

We make the amendments tonight at the dais.

This was a courtesy so that we all can see these things.

But it's not a requirement that we put our amendments in writing.

And I may have confused the public or made a mistake by describing these as proper resolutions for an ordinance.

They're not.

They're amendments to a self-imposed resolution that we have so they don't trigger any requirements whatsoever.

They could just be brought up on the fly.

And if I may, I would like to very much clarify that we got the council book on Wednesday night.

We're reading all the materials.

We see this for the first time.

The only time all five of us get together to speak is that Monday.

We can't make any amendments without all of us being together.

Okay.

With that, I would really like to go through any other motions in advance of breaks.

So, are there any further discussion on this?

I thought I was clear that I agreed with the changing the addition of the three days before.

OK. And then we're keeping four.

Yes.

Change 20 to 30.

Because we almost always.

OK. Is everyone any further questions, amendments?

No.

OK.

So voting on this amendment as amended.

As amended.

All right.

All in favor?

All against.

All right.

I believe there's one more that we have.

So I'd like to present this motion.

So this is an amendment to the motion as it's written and I'd like to make a motion to portion A where it says, my proposal rather, goes as such.

Members of the public may request 1 of 15 speaking slots for the first session of matters by the public by email, telephone, or in person.

with the clerk by 9 a.m. on the day of the meeting.

And then through this process, I'd like to ask that we allot 10 slots for email, telephone, or in person, and then five slots for individuals who sign up at the meeting.

So essentially, this moves the requirement from 12 people speaking in total, because we have nine for pre-registration, and then three during the meeting.

You now have 10 people who can sign up

on online or by telephone before the meeting and then you have five slots for people who can come to speak or sign up the night of the meeting.

This provides for more community engagement and my personal estimation and then also in regards to us, I spoke to my colleagues about members of the public, imagine the public speaking for only two minutes but I would actually like to suggest kind of after hearing

Some of the comments tonight that we don't go to two minutes that we just leave it remain at three minutes and essentially it only adds nine more minutes to the meter if we were to go that route.

So that's actually something I just thought of.

Based on hearing you all, the other portion that I'd like to ask to be amended was section D, number five.

And again, that goes to the maximum amount of time that people can speak.

So actually, we're leaving that one, because I was going to suggest two, but we're leaving it at three.

So I'm leaving that one.

And then amendment to section C3.

During a city council meeting the mayor shall have control of the council chambers and the connecting halls and quarters and any other venue where a council meeting is being held in case of a disturbance or an orderly conduct that disrupts the meeting.

The mayor may take measures the mayor deems appropriate to restore order and I'm requesting that we remove the language including but not limited to suspending the meeting until order is restored, ordering audio and visual equipment temporarily turned off,

And for this amendment it's great if my colleagues agree.

It's fine if they don't.

But I do think that Mr. Kleeman

as well as a few others who spoke tonight.

They have a valid point.

I'm not quite sure how we would have another hearing of sorts, but I do think it's important that we hear from the community about how they feel about these changes, specifically if we're going to go from 10

to 15.

If there are other ideas that people have out there, we've had some some pretty good changes based on the time since I've been on council with ideas that come just from people talking to us while either we're up here or during community settings.

And I don't think that we may have it all hashed out.

So if that means kind of holding my amendments off until we could have another time for it to get public feedback, I'm fine with doing so.

Again, I just want the community to be able to touch on some of the changes that I suggested.

So I don't know what that is.

Is it a motion to have right now in this meeting?

Same way that we do when we have first and second readings, right?

So just putting it off.

Let's just follow our, is there a second on Mr. Bellamy's motion?

Okay, so Mr. Bellamy has seconded.

Well, I guess what I was asking for, if I may, a point of clarification, whether or not his amendment

Yeah, we just added it.

I just think that

In the sake of the way in which we've done things on several different occasions before.

I don't think that we've had that kind of conversation that people are looking for in which we say something, they say something, or they offer suggestions.

We haven't done that yet.

Now yes, some people will say we've heard from the public, people have sent us emails and so on and so forth.

I think there's a in my view that that community engagement that is being discussed about yeah there are many different ways to engage the community much more more aggressively and continually than we're doing today and have done in the past

The council dais is the opportunity for us to actually get business done.

And that is not the time, give and take, to hash out a site plan with the matter of the public.

That is a separate kind of category of community engagement.

You could call it a workshop.

You can call it an open house.

But that's not what this

OK, OK, OK.

No, no, no, no, no.

But I think she makes a valid point, so let's not cut her off.

I think you're right.

We haven't done enough of that.

Couldn't agree with you more.

We have to clarify one thing, Mr. Bellamy, we just did vote to, in all four to one, to remove the, and I enthusiastically support this, the part about ordering audio and visual equipment temporarily turned off.

So we already voted on that.

Okay, so we can take that question out of the way.

So we voted to get rid of that, and I think that I'm a, I'm personally a strong supporter of that.

I think that's confused the public.

I think it was unnecessary.

So would you amend your motion to remove that?

So we've already voted on it so we can take that part out.

The other thing I would ask a question, I'm confused because we're here now because Mr. Bellamy, you moved another business several months ago that we talk about removing all limits at all and we invited the public to hear from them any and all ideas in that

I don't think people knew the same way in which we think that people knew to come out just because we've stated that we're going to have a public hearing.

I don't think that it was out to the masses that tonight is going to be the night where we're talking about

This is just what I personally believe.

I mean, the last two meetings I actually said it.

I went through a speech about how we were going to be.

And who wants to keep going would you be willing to have that?

Because I do support your motion, but I want to vote on it tonight because I think we were elected to do the people's business.

This is on our agenda.

We said we were going to vote on it and people need to have some clarification about what our procedures are.

It's going to look real crazy if I don't vote for my own motion.

Well I'd be happy, if you want to withdraw your motion, I'd be happy to make your motion.

Would you like to withdraw?

We put it on an agenda in the future, because that's the only way I can think of to do what you're doing.

and then we'll put it on in agenda in the future and then people will know it's noticed and we can debate it in the future and have public hearing.

No, that's fine.

Proceed on this meeting.

Alright, any further, so we have, we have a motion that expands from, to 15 slots before the meeting from time immemorial, it's been 12, so we go to 15, it'll be 10 in advance, 5 in person, 3 minutes, more public engagement, removes the mayor's power to specifically do these things, but the mayor still has the, any mayor has the power to

to take measures the mayor deems appropriate to address disturbance or disorderly conduct.

But there was a ton of concern, and I agree with it, about these specific things about turning off audio and visual and all that.

So it gets rid of that.

And this is Mr. Bellamy's motion.

So my last comment I want to make on this motion.

We came up with this because of the things that we heard from the community.

As elected officials, we don't always get it right.

I wish we could hear from everyone all the time, but I think this also kind of shows, even this conversation tonight, just kind of how the democratic process works.

So I hope people can be pleased with us moving to 15 people in total.

Any further discussion?

Amendment?

All right.

All in favor of Mr. Bellamy's motion.

OK, carries four to one.

All right.

We're going to take a five minute five minute break.

Everybody bet seven.

Well, seven.

We'll be back in our 915 Sharp.

And then we're starting on Mr. Dewberry Landmark Hotel report and a resolution.

Chris Angle will be presenting director of the Office of Economic Development.

Sure.

Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, just real briefly, this is a follow-up item from last meeting, and your packet is nearly identical with the exception of the items that are bolded, which were responses from you all and indications for further negotiations.

So those are in your packet as bold items.

We also included a resolution for your consideration that includes those very items that are in bold, but they're not in bold in the resolution.

After hearing the presentation from Mr. Dewberry, you may wish to

Disregard that resolution or change it or tweak it but it's there for your consideration.

Thank you.

I am John Dewberry and do I have to tell where I reside too?

No.

Okay.

One thing we're going to say is

I might not be the least technologically advanced person who's graduated from Georgia Tech in the last 30 years, but I bet you I'm in the top two or three.

I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do this or not, but if not, maybe Jamie can help me.

We'll go through this proposal and this deck, and it's going to show a little bit of some graphics and a little bit of the things you guys have been talking about.

Don't be distracted by this.

I'm not used to people seeing my backside in the crowd either.

No.

Used to be better though.

So anyway, we'll go through this because I think probably there's people that want to

asked some questions and poke at me a little bit and I'm happy to answer those questions.

But once again I appreciate the work that's been done by the mayor and the council folks as well as the staff, Mr. Brown and Mr. Jones, Mr. Engle and all the folks that work for them.

It's, I know, been a tough process for you and for my part in the toughness I've

Apologize for that and also for the time that it's taken to get here.

As I stated when I bought the property, we intended to finish Charleston, South Carolina first before we came.

And unfortunately for a lot of things, Charleston has taken longer than we thought it would.

But you'll see with some of these in this deck that it's turned out fairly well.

So we'll go through this quickly.

Told you I can't do this.

Oh, does it go like that?

All right, so this basically just a kind of a compendium here, and it's probably a little easier to go, or a table of contents.

It's probably a little easier just to go on through this.

This is what we're saying about Charlottesville.

Our brand is the stated goal of hospitality offering, which best reflects in a quintessential fashion the city in which it resides.

We've had some really good success in Charleston, as we said, and we want to try to perpetuate the brand and the mission here in Charlottesville.

One thing that's near and dear to our heart, as I tell folks, I was given two and a half years to live with cancer in 2008.

My father had lung cancer at the time.

He didn't make it.

I did.

I tried to name our project in Charleston

because it was an old federal building, the Federal, but they said they were not real fond of the Federalists.

So I told my father right before he passed that we would name this hotel and this brand after him and I think you can come to Charleston to see a couple of cool pictures.

It's a mid-century modern building in Charleston and I have a couple of pictures of my father.

We're from Waynesburg, Virginia, a couple of pictures from

Waynesboro and Richmond that are in the lobby.

So if you ever come down here, please take a look at my father.

That's who this thing's named after.

These are some of the images of our hotel in Charleston.

This one over here is our living room, which is a lot of fun with a big brass bar.

We try to emulate that a little bit here

and that open space just off the mall behind the marble facade.

That's the brass bar that accompanies it up there.

Of course, this is our restaurant, Henrietta's, and then these two images of what we call our Charleston flat.

Actually, those three images are of that room.

We have been nominated for the World's Best Awards by Travel and Leisure.

We just won their

It Awards, which is the top new 44 hotels in the world.

There that is there.

So that's great.

Departures named us the 15 most important new luxury hotels in the world this year opening.

And this is Conde Nast, who is also going to confer on us the same type of award that they have, because they've already

told us that it just has not come out, but this is another article that they did in Condé Nast Traveler back in October of last year.

Forbes said we were the 25 coolest hotels in the world.

I don't know who votes on that, but we certainly appreciate it.

This is a project budget for our hotel.

As you can see, we plan to spend somewhere about $450,000 a key

on the hotel.

We hope to get about 110 rooms out of the structure.

This is a lodging tax analysis that folks have been going through to try to figure out what would be contributing to this city.

I know there's great conversation and some angst about our ask for a tax incentive, I think.

If you put our five-star product up against other offerings in the marketplace, you will see that our lodging tax total, as well as the fact that we'll also have event space and a couple of bars and restaurants, I think you'll see that our incremental give is a lot more than our incremental ask.

But we'll get into that as questions arise.

Here again is a property tax analysis which goes through the tax incentive that you guys have been gracious enough to consider.

This is a parking analysis where we have been negotiating with the city staff about getting some help for parking.

I'll also talk about that with questions.

And this is where we propose it.

And that's on the roof of the deck, the Water Street deck, I guess it's called, right across the street from the back of the proposed hotel.

And one of the things I'll say, you'll see that we're at the very top of the deck.

And one of the things I think should be borne out in those 75 parking spaces, if things go the way we want, and that is we actually lease hotel rooms.

Obviously, we have more than 75.

With us valleying cars there, we hope to be able to park more than the 75, therefore creating a bigger pie in the parking deck than the 75 spaces that we're asking for.

We believe we can create some more revenue, provided we're able to valet their cars, mostly those folks that are staying with us.

Because I think some folks, as I've mentioned to the staff, will just go to the deck and park in there,

and come over to the hotel which we won't handle that money.

So just trying to, as I said before, kind of help grow the pie there for everybody in the deck.

And that kind of concludes our

presentation.

And so like I said, I'd like to kind of just open it up and see if there's any questions.

I didn't know if this was a public hearing or just between you guys.

But anybody and any questions, I'd love to answer.

And again, thanks again for the opportunity to come up and present tonight.

OK.

That is a piece of which I would like to ask.

In the resolution that we have before us, it's about the parking spaces and the payment for the parking spaces, that we thought that it had been sort of run by you and that you had agreed to, in year one, the hotel would pay

not less than $40,000 in the second year would pay not less than $60,000 and in the third and subsequent years not less than $80,000 but what you're asking for in your proposal here is $40,000 forever or at least for 10 years.

Well, yes.

What we determined is as we looked at the parking and got closer to it is that without getting to a long drawn-out comment about that it's

Our fear about the parking is, because I've done the same thing, we have a very little drop off in the back.

So unless you're staying with me, let's say you're coming to have supper with the mayor, okay?

If we only, we can only accommodate three or four cars in that back area at this time.

So, you know, Councilwoman Galvin and Mr. Brown may be

Families may be coming to town and they're occupying that.

It's likely that you're going to go and park in the deck.

Come to my restaurant, but I'll never handle your car or your money because you will not be going to the 75 spaces upstairs.

So while I'm creating revenue after hours in my deck for the city's benefit, I may never benefit or see that car because it's not likely that you're going to go wait for five minutes

while I handle the luggage of these folks and move in because just don't have that much room.

So that's why I said a moment ago that it was 75 spaces on the roof, and we have 110 rooms, hopefully.

Now, it's not likely that 110 people will be there or even that they'll be with cars.

Some will take Uber or whatever.

But on some occasions, we also will be able to drive revenue by folks who do come to a wedding or what have you, and they do let us actually handle their car.

If we're gonna be a five-star establishment, we'd like to handle your car for sure if you're staying with us.

But I can't guarantee that you're gonna be parking in my 75 spaces, therefore allowing me to valet your car.

when you can just go park in the deck next door.

And candidly, because of its proximity, it's a whole lot easier to do so.

I've done it just to check.

So that's kind of why I said I didn't want to be stuck paying you guys a payment at the end of the year.

Would you consider

Well, the spaces are more important to me than anything.

Because if your daughter comes for a wedding and I can't handle that, then that would be bad.

I'm just saying if you're coming down and we're going to have a spa

We'll have a ballroom upstairs.

If you're just coming or you're having, you know, the Rotary Club meeting is upstairs in what we hope to be called the Founding Fathers room upstairs and have

and a meeting at lunchtime and you're not from downtown and you know there's a great chance that we won't handle your car only because it's easier for you to go into the parking deck and probably cheaper at the end of the day it's whatever it is two dollars an hour I'm driving revenue in your deck so I'm creating it's a non-zero sum game I'm creating revenue in the deck but I'm not getting a benefit for it so that's that's when we started looking at what the net would be

It could be less than the $40,000.

But on the other hand, you know, Councilwoman, I think that we may have been increasing income on the other side of the equation.

I think that I think that a well, and if it were to get crowded at your daughter's wedding, then hopefully we can park 120 up there of which we have taken a ticket from.

And that would go into the revenue.

Right.

From my perspective, I would rather see that

and we didn't get a chance to discuss this, but I'd rather see that as a 30% percentage or something than I would for the net to go up.

You know, we're just trying to keep it.

It's a five-star hotel, as I mentioned to you earlier tonight, is a dangerous endeavor.

We seem to have found a model of success in Charleston, but we certainly don't want to go against that and we don't have any parking

Cost in Charleston.

And we started looking at what that would, if we did, what that would do.

The overnight customers will get charged basically what it was overnight costs in the deck, which I think right now is $16 if you stayed all night in the deck.

Isn't that right?

for our hotel.

That's right.

And you know, essentially what this does is look, this shouldn't be a problem after several, you know, after we ramp up, but we're, it's a function essentially of the occupancy of the hotel for us.

Now you could count on what I just said, I guess, if we had no occupancy of the hotel,

Therefore, we had nobody waiting in line when you pulled up to go to supper, then we would handle your cost.

But then everybody splits.

You could say, wait a minute, you just took 75% of my money.

Yes, sir?

I have a series of questions, Mr. Dewberry.

Thank you for coming tonight.

There's been a lot of different community conversation about your arrival.

I haven't seen this many photographers in here since we've had another issue as of late, but that's neither here nor there.

In regards to the parking piece, I've heard from several people that the parking suggestion or what you're

This partnership of sorts is somewhat negligent because you're going to be making way more money on the dinners per se than what you'll be providing in revenue to the city for parking.

At a five star restaurant if myself and Mr. Fenwick or my daughters, I have three daughters, to take them to your restaurant it would be rather expensive even if I wanted to park.

There, or if you wanted to valet my car or whatever, you're going to be making way more

on the meal than the parking, so that kind of leaves us out to dry.

How do you respond to that?

We have a five-star restaurant called Henrietta's in Charleston, and I'd say right now we have a 98, 90 to 95 percent expense cost.

We're making less than 8 percent right now.

We've got to work on that.

And that's part of the problem with the five, you know, if we were to do another

two-star or three-star hotel.

There's just not enough people.

You wouldn't need any kind of help.

You shouldn't.

I mean, it's a proven model in Charlottesville and a lot of other places, right?

But if you strike out and try to do what we're doing, the number of employees that it takes and the quality of food that it takes,

You know, a two or three star hotel, number one, doesn't even have a restaurant, right?

So, unfortunately, Councilman, I found that out myself, the hard way.

I thought, wow, we're doing some pretty good revenue and every month now we look at the bottom line and we have yet to

to clear 8% on our restaurant.

Now, as we get more occupancy, I'll get more focused on the hotel in Charleston.

Well, you'll have immediate revenue taxes and lodging.

Outside of that.

Yeah, you get that immediately.

Well, if there are only a few rooms rented, we'd only get tax on it.

Right, right.

So, so if you look on, we've done an analysis of that, building up the building up the occupancy.

Let me see what they... Is that page 10?

This should be after all the

Can we get 15 more minutes?

We're showing an occupancy of 35%, 45%, 55%.

So you would say in year 5 you're stabilized at 70.

Obviously we hope

So the next question I have for you, and again I have a couple, in terms of the bottom line, and in some people I've heard several people rather say, well you guys are going to make several different accommodations for an individual or entity of sorts that's essentially only going to bring in about a hundred jobs and maybe seventy of those jobs will be low wage

Jobs that are essentially not going to pay an affordable living wage for people who live here and they're still going to be employees that have to work two or three jobs just to maintain themselves.

Well, as it relates to the jobs, I would say this.

The good news

You know, you and your family go to eat at my five star hotel as your example.

It might be expensive for you.

And I might not make any money.

But that person who's serving you, they get tipped pretty well.

Believe it or not.

Ours are earning a pretty good wage in Charleston.

Because their tip comes on the percentage of the cost of the food.

Unfortunately, mine comes out of the net.

So those jobs are actually better than you think.

Now we also have

I would say your number is probably pretty close, maybe 30-40%, let's just call it 100 employees at this point.

I think we'll earn a wage that is

that is above what you might think.

My F&B manager is making 90.

Manager.

Yeah, and so we've had now.

No, no, no, no, no.

Before we finish, we've hired kids from the College of Charleston.

Right.

Okay.

Who were working at the front desk, who, unless we opened in July,

And here we stand in March of 17, open July of 16.

They are now managers.

So that's the beauty of the hotel business.

If you're pretty keen and pretty switched on, as I like to say, you can move up pretty quickly in the hotel.

Well, if you don't, you stay in the same job, but that's true of any job, right?

Well, again though, so that brings us to the dichotomy of sorts.

Individuals will say, like the kids who I work with, a lot of the population in which I work with, I can very much see them looking to apply at your job.

And are they going to be able to feed their families

by working at this beautiful illustrious hotel.

They may not start that way, and that's the beauty of the hospitality business.

I mean it's still, like my father didn't have a college degree, and I was talking about that earlier today.

In times gone by, a generation before us, perhaps, you know, a lot of folks didn't and a lot of folks did real well.

And I still think in the hospitality business that that is still available to the kids, to young, not just kids, but we've had all ages who come along, yeah, I've got guys that I've hired that were

came to us from, we hired from Staff Zone, okay, which is, okay.

We got two guys that I've put permanently, okay, so they came, they picked up trash, they did all this stuff, I liked the way they work, I said hire that guy, they hired him as a night cleaner, whatever, he is now the night manager, okay, took another guy who, you know, was basically

looked like one of my old linebackers from Georgia Tech and he was cut and helping us cut marble and one of the guys cut marble I said you ought to hire this guy he's a good worker you know blah blah blah so they hired him when the job was over I said I'd like for you to come work you know with us where do you want me to work I don't know why don't you see if you could work in the kitchen staff so he's working the kitchen staff and and he started in the cleaning thing and now he's out prepping food gotcha and now he's could be you know on his way to being a F&B

you know kitchen manager this is all within

I'm going to try to steer this a little bit because we have to worry.

I got another question.

Ms. Bellamy, I'm in charge of the meeting.

Hold on a second, please.

No, that's fine.

I need to allocate more time.

We have a whole bunch.

We have other colleagues who need to be heard.

So if we're going to, everyone good with adding?

So 20 more minutes.

We've only gotten through two colleagues here.

I know there's more coming.

So I just want to be sensitive to each other's time.

We have 25.

OK, so 20 more minutes.

OK, so another question that we've heard from people throughout the community is why give Dewberry a break?

Right.

We've heard even in the public comments today, as well as the ones in priorities.

And there's a lot of chatter throughout the city.

Why give this individual who's a multimillionaire?

Some people say we're getting played, so on and so forth.

Why do you believe that we should go into a partnership and provide certain tax breaks for you when we haven't kind of followed that same model?

Well, as I said before, and I've told mayors and others, guys, if we can't get help doing the five-star product, it simply won't work.

And we can go, you know, I'm not going to do it.

We're kind of what I like to say as a high-end developer.

You know, if somebody wants a high place or something like that, then I would tell you, you don't need to give an incentive.

It's just not that intricate of an operation and it's not that labor intensive and therefore not that expensive.

For the same comment or explanation I gave you for Henrietta's, the same is true.

You're not going to have valet guys running around at a two-star hotel.

You're not going to have doormen open the door for you when you show up.

It is labor intensive after you open.

Certainly it's capital intensive.

I mean, nobody's spending $450,000 a key on a hotel in Charlottesville.

And we think there's a great opportunity here.

I know Keswick is a beautiful property.

Boar's Head has renovated their property.

So both of those are upper end hotels and certainly Keswick with Mr. Goodwin, everything he does is five star.

But they're out of town.

I think there's a great opportunity here for

the things that we're adding with Advanced Space, ballrooms.

In Charleston, you know, it's the number one, they say, destination wedding area in the country, and I guess Charlottesville now is in the top four or five itself, so hopefully we can help bring some revenue to the city, tax rolls that way as well.

But from the standpoint of need, you know, if I were not doing this type of product, we wouldn't ask.

I mean, I don't

We got help in Charleston, and this month I think we'll finally make money.

So we've lost, you know, but that's part of the program with a five-star hotel, so I'm not here complaining.

From one quarterback to another, I know the pain.

Yeah.

Thank you, sir.

I've got a couple.

I've got a couple.

Yes.

So thank you, Mr. Duberry, for coming.

And I've got a couple of questions.

Many of the additions that I made at the last meeting were incorporated in the agreement.

And it does seem that Mr. Engel and you have reached an understanding.

And I see that they're embedded in the agreement.

So I thank you very much.

So I've got two things I'm going to ask questions about as to why they weren't included.

I noticed that in under the Dewberry Capital agrees to there is the item number two and in the bold it's written developer agrees that the primary lender have experience in hotel financing will provide such qualifications to the city upon request.

My original amendment had the phrase

The developer agrees that the primary lender be a bona fide institutional lender and have experience in hotel financing and will provide such qualifications to the city upon request.

So why was the, the bona fide institutional lender piece not included?

and my other addition that was excluded dealt with the developer agreeing to secure a performance or in other words a completion in payment bond as evidence of the developer's ability to perform.

So those are the two items.

Well, the first one,

My first job was Marie Midland Bank, which is now Hong Kong Shanghai Bank.

And my brother was Bank of Boston, which is now Bank of America.

If they don't do hotel financing, they won't finance the hotel.

So it's a redundant comment.

So if you want to have that in a document, it's fine.

Oh, okay.

You see what I'm saying?

Well, if it was, it wouldn't matter.

But I don't care.

I'm just saying it's kind of— And for the sake of time, then we don't need to not belabor that.

I don't think people understand—and maybe Mr. Bell meets the same issue here—this is not

going and building a Shopperson.

I did that at 25 years old and was hugely successful at doing it.

This is not building an apartment project.

It's child's play.

It's not even building a 25-story skyscraper, which I've built.

It's child's play compared to doing a five-star hotel.

So the hotel lenders, some of them won't even lend on hotels because of that.

I mean on five-star hotels.

They're happy to go lend on the Hyatt Place or the

you know Marriott Courtyard and that's all great but when we created our own brand I mean we're selling our own amenities in the spa our own soap our own lotion it's out selling every other names that you guys know in the spa so it's a full-on endeavor a lot of them would not even finance a lot of lenders and including when we were when I was at Marine Midland they just some of them say we just don't want to lend on five-star hotels they're risky

So the point is that if they're not a bona fide lender, they wouldn't do it.

Now, that's not to say Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and all the big names don't do that.

They do.

I had a loan down in Charleston.

But I think for the sake of the public, we'd like to see it.

And on the bond issue, we haven't bonded anything in, I don't know,

What ever have I put up a performance bond?

I think maybe when I was very young we had the contractor do something like for every sub over $500,000 and again it's belts and suspenders.

So if you were to ask me, we don't need a bond, the contractor we would use would be big enough to just, it's probably a 2% cost that's going to obviate why I'm standing in front of you candidly.

If I were to have a 2% bond on this project, you would wipe out any conversation we have about tax incentives or parking or anything else.

So, you know, I will most likely be guaranteeing the loan and which, you know, is in and of itself a surety for the bank for it to get done.

Can I just ask a quick follow-up to that question?

So, I understand the amount of it, but I think the reason we were looking at the bond is that if you just decided, you know, I don't want this incentive, I'm just not going to do anything and I'm going to leave it vacant there for another 20 years, so what do we have that protects us against that?

There was a comment earlier today about maybe we wouldn't be in this position.

But let me finish my question.

That if the project was not done by 2021?

It would be better for us to move on if we don't get the incentive to sell it now.

Yes, that would be okay.

Yeah.