City Council Meeting   9/15/2008

I don't know what the person is doing.

I don't know what the person is doing.

That's the sheriff.

I don't want to get into any of this tonight.

These are all important issues.

I just wanted to be in front of you, because I haven't heard much of those folks.

They're sort of in these issues to be in.

I'd like to call this meeting to order.

Ms. Kochis, if you could call the roll, please.

Dr. Brown?

Ms. Edwards?

Here.

Mr. Huja?

We're going to start with some announcements and a couple of announcements from the city staff.

First of all, I want to announce that some work is going to be happening along Hydraulic Road starting Thursday, September 18th.

Due to utility improvements, Hydraulic Road will be reduced to one lane and traveled west of Brandywine Road to its intersection of Emmett Street for storm sewer work.

and the work is scheduled to last for 10 days, so please be aware of that.

Also, there will be an open house, excuse me, at the Martin Luther King Jr.

Performing Arts Center at CHS, September 24th.

This is relating to the Meadow Creek Stream Restoration Project and the Rivanna and Warren Sewer Authority Meadow Creek Interceptor Upgrade.

I know a lot of residents are concerned about that project.

If you have questions, comments, please come to the open house, September 24th, 2008, from six to eight p.m.

at CHS at the Performing Arts Center.

I wanted to issue a public word of thanks to Rick Berrick and Joe Rice for organizing a successful and I think pretty touching peace concert on September 11th.

So thank you to Joe and Rick for that.

It did get a little rainy at times, but I think it was a very well organized event.

I have a couple announcements.

I have my ticket.

This is the NAACP Albemarle, Charlottesville chapter annual Freedom Fund Banquet honoring legendary civil rights leaders and community activists Paul M. Gaston and Dr. Reginald A. Johnson.

I have my ticket.

Tickets are available

For information and tickets, contact Ms. Lynn M. Boyd, 975-0661 or 220-1493.

Second announcement, the Faith Christian Center International's Walk for My Life 5K will be this Saturday, September 20th.

Walking for My Life participants can combine their efforts with other walkers and runners to raise money for the University of Virginia Health System Stroke Center.

This money will go to help in research, development, and ongoing care for stroke patients.

This will be this Saturday, September 20th at 830 a.m. at Newcomb Hall.

If you would like more information, 979-1700.

And lastly,

On Wednesday, September 17th at 5.30 at the Ivy Creek National Area's Education Building, the Charlottesville-Albemarle League of Women Voters Natural Resources Committee is having a water forum.

Storm water runoff are reservoirs in the Chesapeake Bay.

And also I'd like to add

Ms. Sparrow, I also have my ticket for the Freedom Fund Banquet.

Last year was a great event.

Thank you.

Any other announcements?

We do have a number of awards and recognitions that I'm very proud to share with you all tonight.

The first is a proclamation on behalf of a very important organization in our community, the Shelter for Health and Emergency.

And I'm just going to read, not the entire proclamation, but it starts by saying, whereas violence against women, children, and men continues to become more prevalent as a social problem in our society, and whereas the problems of domestic violence are not confined to any group or groups of people but cross all economic, racial, and societal barriers and are supported by societal indifference,

whereas the Shelter for Health and Emergency has led the way in the City of Charlottesville in addressing domestic violence by providing 24-hour hotline services to victims and survivors and their families, offering support and information, and empowering survivors to chart their own course for healing.

Now, therefore, be it resolved in recognition of the important work being done by the Shelter for Health and Emergency, that I, Dave Norris, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, do hereby proclaim the month of October 2008 as Domestic Violence Awareness Month,

and Regal citizens to actively participate in the scheduled activities and programs sponsored by the Shelter for Health and Emergency and to work toward the elimination of personal and institutional violence against women, children and men.

And I believe we have somebody here from the shelter to receive the proclamation.

Ms. Goldstein.

Thank you, Ms. Goldstein.

A woman of few words.

Secondly, I have a proclamation on behalf of another very valuable organization, Literacy Volunteers of Charlottesville Albemarle.

Whereas Literacy Volunteers of Charlottesville Albemarle is a nonprofit agency that offers free basic literacy and English as a second language tutoring to adults through recruitment and training of volunteer tutors who work one-on-one with learners, helping them become more productive workers, parents, citizens, neighbors, and consumers.

whereas LBCA is celebrating its 25th anniversary of service to adult learners, whereas September 8th is National Literacy Day, now therefore be it resolved that I, Dave Norris, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, do hereby formally recognize literacy volunteers of Charlottesville Albemarle as an invaluable asset to our community.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor, fellow council members, we'd like to thank you very much for this award.

It's great.

I just want to share a few success stories from our organization.

One, an example is one of the former board members had a student who was, in her opinion, held captive because of her literacy.

with an abusive relationship.

She was able to learn through literacy volunteers how to better read and communicate in which she was able to rise above and move out of that situation.

I have a student right now who is from Africa.

He is an English as a second language student

who's probably seen a lot of atrocities that none of us have seen unless we have visited war or something similar to that.

And he is a very, very hardworking student.

I'm not a teacher by background, but I have given him workbooks that are supposed to take six months and he shows up in a few weeks and polishes them off.

There is a third learner who coincidentally we have featured in our newsletter who really one of her proudest moments was her first chance to vote and be involved with politics.

So she considers that a very good thing.

She's achieved her GED.

This was after being a parent of four children.

So tenacity pays off.

We thank you for this award.

Appreciate it.

Bye.

Next I'd like to honor two different departments here within City Hall for receiving some important recognition.

First of all, very pleased, some of you may have seen this announcement in the newspaper that Golf Digest magazine has named our own Meadow Creek Golf Course here at Penn Park as one of the best places to play golf in the entire nation.

And we're very pleased tonight to announce this and like to publicly thank

Ryan Summers from our golf department.

We invite Mr. Summers to come forward if you like and share any thoughts that you might have about our golf department or about the Meadow Creek Golf and while he's coming up let's give him a round of applause.

Well thank you.

I want to thank you Mr. Norris for allowing me to be here tonight and I know you got a full agenda tonight so I won't take up a lot of your time and the fellow council members for allowing us to do what we do at Meadow Creek Golf Course.

We worked hard on giving the golfers a good experience and hopefully exceeding their expectations when folks come out to play and when you get this kind of recognition from

unsolicited sources such as the readers of a magazine.

It really sends a positive message to our mission and the focus has always been there.

So it's nice to get that recognition.

Thank you.

And lastly, some of you may have noticed a large glass flame, which is another award, another recognition that the city department received.

I'm afraid to touch it.

But our information technology department here in the city just recently received the Going Green award.

It was given to the organization in the Mid-Atlantic region by EMC Corporation that scored the highest

in going green in terms of transforming our IT infrastructure to a green environment.

Some of the steps that our IT department has taken to earn this distinction was there was an estimated 75% reduction in power consumption in the data center.

Reduction of storing redundant data, creation of an efficient business continuity site, planned consolidation of telephones and computer networks, resulting in further reduction of power and significant capacity to grow data center value in the future with very little growth in power consumption.

I'm very pleased on the efforts that have now been nationally recognized and would like to invite forward Mr. Kerry Dude to receive this flame.

on behalf of the city.

Mr. Mayor and Council, I just want to

Thank you for your support and the funding so that we can do these improvements to our IoT infrastructure.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, before we leave the subject, I'd like to personally thank Mr. Goode for his efforts, not only in the broader sense, but in the specific sense of helping make the city's website more friendly to Macintosh users.

And we also want to acknowledge Mr. Goode for receiving his Master's in IT from the University of Virginia just recently, so congratulations to him.

And that's all the awards and recognitions that we have tonight.

We are now going to open the agenda to matters by the public.

Before I do so, I did want to note one last minute change to the agenda in case any of you were here to speak on issues relating to the affordable housing policy recommendations that are on item number five on the agenda.

Those have been deferred.

We're going to be taking those up in a work session at a later time.

And also item I on the consent agenda, also relating to affordable housing, has been deferred for the same purpose.

So item I on the consent agenda, residential and regional action agenda on housing, and item 5 on the regular business agenda, allocation policies for Charlottesville Housing Fund have both been deferred for further discussion.

but you are still welcome to comment on those items if you so choose.

So now I'll open up to matters by the public.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Councillors.

Colette Hall, 101 Robertson Lane.

Water is necessary for life.

Sewage treatment is necessary to prevent deadly diseases.

Two meetings ago, I talked about the reservoir task force and that I planned to speak my same concerns to the Board of Supervisors, that is the public, the people, the users who pay for water and sewer, who pay rates that have gone up significantly twice in the past five years, who are voiceless, will need a voice at these meetings.

At the Board of Supervisors meeting, Supervisor Ann Mallock said, and this is a paraphrase, don't the people speak at the meetings?

Supervisor Thomas replied, no.

At the last task force meeting, the public, the people were able to speak for a few minutes.

Whoever made that happen, thank you.

And thank you, Councilor Edwards.

Additionally, people I spoke to and I would like a public hearing at a task force meeting where individuals can speak and I ask you to support that as well.

I spoke to one of the task force members after the meeting was over.

I asked him why he was in support of the proposed future water plan and against dredging the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir for potable water.

I also asked him who would pay for water to be pumped uphill to fill the Ragged Mountain Reservoir, a Holden tank.

His reply was the water users.

Later I learned that he has a well and perhaps he uses a septic tank.

I have no option of a well or a septic tank.

With the decrease of funds coming into the treasuries of municipalities across the nations, fiscal responsibility is imperative.

Why not dredge to increase potable water rather than build a pipeline?

The tens of millions of dollars to build one will come from whom and from where?

Let us build a new dam at the Ragged Mountain and to increase its height a little.

Period.

At this time, this is a reasonable fiscal option.

Also, how will we pay for a regional transit authority?

I overpay real estate taxes and have for nine years as my assessments have increased 200%.

The market says my house is not worth the assessment and it isn't.

Money is tight and so I, and maybe other taxpayers, expect my assessment to decrease as well as the tax rate remaining the same or decreasing at the rate hearing in April of 2009.

Taxpayers must pay mortgages, buy food, and are unable to subsidize new government programs or projects.

Thank you, Ms. Holm.

My name is Joe Mooney.

I live at 201 Sunset Avenue, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak.

Actually, what you may hear is an echo, and it may sound familiar because I'm going to say pretty much what I said in March of this past year when, in February, the Daily Progress printed an article reporting that the Charlottesville Albemarle Airport was going to be extending its runway by 800 feet.

Immediately, the thought came to me and a number of other people that since the airport runway is about two and a half miles away from the reservoir, it was a win-win situation both for fiscal responsibility and for the environment to study and consider dredging the reservoir and using that sediment, that fill, for the runway extension.

The airport was budgeting $44 million for

fill both the transportation costs and the purchase costs.

Immediately, we learned that no, that's not really going to happen.

The runway extension, the executive director was wrong, she didn't know what she was talking about, it's all a mistake.

Next, we did have the dredging consultants come visit the reservoir, study it in May, and what they told us was that dredging was not only feasible, but also much less expensive than the previous estimates.

that probably $39 million in that range would be adequate and that it was necessary to do technical surveys to determine the content of the settlement before it could be learned how much of that could be used for the one-way extension.

They also, by the way, said that if the studies were done promptly, the bids were put out, dredging could have started in September of 2008.

That is now.

And what we're doing is having a task force delay the entire process of proceeding in this direction.

So, what I would like to do is just call your attention to an article in the Daily Progress this Sunday, which again says, airport gains money for runway extension.

It looks like it is going to happen, so the information that we got that it wasn't going to happen apparently was wrong.

I would hope that you would take very seriously this as an opportunity to have a real win-win for everybody in this.

There are at least eight advantages to combining this project, and as far as I know there are no disadvantages.

The cost savings are significant.

The environmental degradation that would be prevented is remarkable.

Now, why the opposition, which is coming mainly from the Illinois Water and Solar Authority board, from the airport board,

and from the Nature Conservancy and its supporters and allies.

It's as strong as it is to study this issue.

I leave you to ask that question.

So, I hope that you will reconsider this again.

I think the fact that the airport extension is going to happen is a tremendous opportunity for us.

Good evening.

I'm Peter Kleeman.

I live 407 Head Street in the city.

Number eight on your agenda is potential funding, a discussion of potential funding mechanisms for regional transit authority.

And since I can't participate in that discussion, I would like to encourage you to consider some issues that I think would be worthy of discussion.

I looked online at the most recent proposals by the U.S. Secretary of Transportation's Department on their

proposed reauthorization of their service transportation funding bills that should be coming up in 2009.

And there's a strong incentive toward spending some federal dollars in the area of expanded regional transit.

And I think that if the city and the county would like to think bigger than they're thinking now, that there may be some great opportunities for funding under these federal programs

I think that Charlottesville as a small city could become a poster city for some of these investments in transit.

I think that transit could work really well here.

I think these opportunities are great.

And I think that if we expand the notion of having our transit being a truly regional transit, which would include connections to our surrounding counties, with growth that we see in Green and Savannah and Louisa,

Nelson and other surrounding areas that it's not inconceivable that we will really be looking at wanting to connect them as transit partners in the near future.

So not only will we have a better transit direction, we'll be in keeping with some of the initiatives currently being proposed by the U.S. Department of Transportation, making funding available for it, and I think that we could become a true leader in the area of small city urban

So I would hope that you would consider what the appropriate scope is.

Think about the scope of your development of a region as well as the funding opportunities.

Good evening, my name is Collin, I'm Collin Hood, I'm a resident at the University of Virginia in Linfield.

I come tonight to introduce myself, I was appointed by student council last week to serve as the student council representative for the Charlottesville city council.

A couple other things I'm involved in, I'm involved in Who's Ready, another organization at school, and the second year council as well.

I live in Columbia Heights, Virginia, right outside of Richmond.

I'd also like to introduce Shannon Smith back here.

She lives in Richmond, Virginia, and she'll be the deputy city council representative.

I'm really excited to get a chance to work with you all tonight and throughout the entire year.

We have a lot of initiatives that we'd like to voice to you all, and we're really excited about hearing your concerns as well.

Anything we can do for you as student council.

So if you all have any questions, make sure to let me know and get in contact with me.

We're just really excited to work with you throughout the year.

Thank you, Mr. Jones, great to have you.

Good evening, members of City Council.

My name is Ann Hemingway.

I live at 800 Park Street in Charlottesville.

and I'm here tonight on behalf of the Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center of which I'm currently serving as president of the board and I'm here to thank you.

I'm here to thank you for the funding through the City Parks and Rec program for three weeks of very successful morning camps at the center this summer.

As you know, the Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center is a hands-on education activity center, which is located in Darden Tow Park.

Our current programs are all at the Kill Boat Barn.

This summer, we had two weeks of middle school kids coming to the barn, one group from Walker School and one group from Tonsor.

They came to the Exploratory Center and participated in a slew of activities that were organized by Alexandra Searles, our executive director.

They did hiking programs, leadership programs.

We had one morning where a musician came and introduced him to instruments to traditional music that Lewis and Clark would have used on the expedition.

We taught him kayak lessons in the river.

One morning, Alan Thomas from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation came and did water testing in the river with the kids.

And all week, they participated in our

our famous boat building apprenticeship program where they learn carpentry skills of drilling, sawing, hammering, that sort of thing.

A third week was organized by Fran Lawrence and that week focused on boat building, in particular our building of the White Piro replica which will be one of our permanent exhibits at our permanent site in the park.

At the end of that week we had our annual boat race in the river which is always fun.

for everybody because a lot of these kids had never been in a boat or handled a paddle so it was really exciting for them to participate in an actual race and us adults were in the river making sure everything went okay.

I'd like to present you with a packet.

It has some pictures of what the kids were doing this summer as well as a list of the workshops that we have for the rest of our open program which runs through October on Saturdays and Sundays.

and I also want to thank, in particular, Erica Sims, who's your camp director in the summer.

She did an amazing job this summer, really for, as far as I can tell, for all the camps, but she worked well with us and we really extend our appreciation to her and the great hope of counselors that you have for the kids in the summer.

I think just in general, you know, you make these budgets and you

Good evening, my name is Raymond Mason, I live at 717 Cynthia Avenue, and I'm just here to publicly thank Vice Mayor Taliaferro and Councilman Huja for meeting with me Wednesday after last, Wednesday before last, at the Westhaven project to get the ball rolling on the cleanup there.

They made some good statements in the paper.

They had a good article in the paper today.

And I feel good because, you know, when a concerned citizen can come here and have something done, it makes you look good.

And I just want to really thank you for it.

But there was a downside to this whole situation, which really has bothered me, and perhaps someone up here can help me.

On Thursday, myself and Calvert Constance, who worked for Seaville, in one of the local papers here in Charlottesville, were standing in front of the

substation in West Haven and I saw Mr. Norris Schwartz and I made a statement, it's nice to see such an immediate reaction to my concern and his reply back to me was, what, are you in charge of cleanup in West Haven?

I'm just a concerned citizen and perhaps I should be in charge of cleanup in West Haven because it looks so bad.

But the thing of it is, I don't feel that that was wanted for him to address me like that in front of his workers or a local reporter and I was embarrassed and it's like,

How could he come out so unprofessional and so childish?

And, you know, I made a phone call for you and I left you a message, Mr. Norris, and I don't know if you, I hadn't got a call back.

I also called Jason Toba, whatever.

But the thing of it is, this, it was unnecessary.

I mean, this was something that needed to be done and his response was just, it was negative and it was just degrading.

And I feel that I'm owed an apology from him and I don't, you know, I don't know if it works for you or whoever he works for, but whoever appointed him needs to appoint him to give me an apology because he was wrong.

I was talking to people on the 10th and Page about the lamps, the new lamps down there in front of their homes provided to see, had put out there between 10th and Whirling and a lot of the concern was, well, are they going to put lamps all the way on 10th Street in front of our house or in our neighborhoods and people are concerned.

They had a couple different things, they were saying things like,

where perhaps the city is showing favoritism or they're doing something to improve their investment but not ours.

And they were pretty disappointed.

Hi, my name's Pat Smith.

I'm at 100 Boulder Spring Court in Marl County.

I'm here tonight just to thank the counselors for I'm on the consent agenda for two items and I just want to say thank you for your support and just to let you know that I was here in case you did have questions regarding that.

That's it.

Thank you.

Good evening counselors.

Kevin Lynch, 609 Locust Avenue.

I'm here on two water issues.

The first one being a follow up to some statements that Joe Mooney made about the recent information that came out of the paper with the airport authority getting money to build the new phase of the runway.

and as he noted before, this is an issue that he has been following for some time came to city council in the early part of this year identifying what appeared to be a clear win-win situation he was too polite to go through what happened between then and now but I think it is important to fill in some of what has happened and where we are now because the reaction from staff to this was to say, you know, we may never build that

Airport.

At the time Gary said, won't be in the next five years, probably could be as well as long as 20 years.

Barbara Hutchinson, when she gave her speech at the water supply meeting on the 6th of May, said, and I quote, it's not yet even under design, this new runway.

But somehow this design, somehow this airport extension went from not even being under design on the 6th of May to a full blown site plan submitted to the Albemarle County Planning Commission, pages thick, as thick as your notebooks up there, and a big proposal on the 27th of May.

So that's pretty fast work for something that wasn't even under design three weeks earlier.

So that's puzzling to me.

It's troubling that we could hear on the one hand this will never happen and yet clearly someone is working to make it happen while they're denying that it's ever happening.

I think we hear in the city a lot about does the right hand know what the left hand is doing?

My question is does the right hand know what the right hand is doing and do you all know what the right hand is doing?

That's with the airport because clearly we have the money and the airport runway has been under design for some time.

This is an opportunity that could have been taken quite some time ago and still could be taken now.

My next issue is the Meadow Creek Sewer Interceptor, a project that we've known about for a long time.

It was an issue when I was on city council.

and one of the big questions that we've had, now there's a question about where exactly is it going to go and I think staff dropped the ball on communicating with residents clearly, but a larger question is how much are we going to pay for it?

For over a year, when I was on city council, more than a year ago I've been asking this question to staff, how are we breaking down the cost of this new infrastructure?

Because if you all read the Rivanna CIP, the justification for increasing the

Meadow Creek Sewer Interceptor, it's all about capacity.

We're not talking aging infrastructure that is crumbling or has problems, it's simply not big enough.

And the reason it's not big enough, we just saw in the paper the other day, more development in the county,

There's the Albemarle place that's coming online, so there needs to be an upsize of that pipe.

Now, in the past, we've split that cost, and if the new capacity is needed by the county, they would pay for it.

Working in the budget, there is no differentiation of that project from the normal CIP projects, which means Solidsville residents will pay 56%

of a project that is needed by the county, unless you do something different to say no.

In March, I will say, in March you asked Gary when are we going to get our cost allocation, something that I've been asking for months before that, and you said by the end of the month.

Thank you Mr. Lynch.

Good evening.

I want to thank you Mrs. Edwards and Mr. Brown and all the counselors for your support of the September 26th Freedom Fund banquet.

I won't go into all the reasons why we are doing this but as you know last year we honored Eugene Williams

one of the legendary civil rights activists.

This year, as Mrs. Edwards stated, we are honoring probably the last of the Freedom Fund fighters.

Hugh Johnson, Dr. Reverend Johnson, and Professor Emeritus Paul Gaston.

You know, as we honor these men,

There's also a downside of this whole issue because they are the last of the freedom fighters.

They are the men who changed the face of Charlottesville when Charlottesville was wrecked with segregation.

Norwood has followed these men.

Not only am I thanking you this evening, but I'm also encouraging you to let the community know that Charlottesville is still in need of freedom fighters.

Again, thank you and I hope to see all of you at the DoubleTree Hotel on September 26th as we honor Paul Gaston, William Johnson, and Dr. Reverend Reginald Johnson.

Edith Goode, 3R, Washington St.

I'm a member of the advisory board of the Public Housing Association of Residents, known as FAR.

As you may recall, I should have preceded Raymond.

As you may recall, Raymond Mason has commented a number of times about how bad things look at the West Haven site.

He complained about trash and how rundown the housing is in general.

He said it needed a coat of paint.

Several residents of public housing and forest board were going to speak tonight to address his complaints and they intend to speak probably at council's first meeting in October.

The reason they're not here tonight is because a large group of residents and board members is attending a community forum tonight in Richmond on public housing redevelopment.

to learn about the issue of public housing redevelopment from the perspectives of public housing residents, community organizations and public officials.

The forum is sponsored by Richmond Jobs with Justice, the Legal Aid Client Advisory Council, the Legal Aid Justice Center, the Richmond Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Virginia Organizing Project, and the Partners of the Richmond Equivalent of FAR.

Foreign leadership has talked to the executive director of the housing authority about maintenance issues, groundskeeping, repair of lights and playground equipment.

Lights at a playing field at South First Street were out for over a year.

Another example of substandard maintenance was the amount of work it took to get West Haven ready for community day.

The residents held two community cleanup days with staff working along with them.

The day-to-day upkeep needs improvement.

Programs are another urgent need.

The CRAHA prevention specialist is working with local service providers to better connect residents to services.

But we ask you to consider how to expand recreation and social services.

Hello, I'm Stratton Salitas.

I live at 704 Grave Street.

members of council, citizens of Charlottesville.

First I want to note that there were a few comments that I agree with about the water plan and I also wanted to say that I've found some similarities in the way the water plan has been carried forth in the Meadow Creek Parkway.

In both cases, city residents are being asked to give up city green space

and also ultimately pay for growth that's happening in Albemarle.

And both of these decisions have been moved forward with bad information.

Whether or not that was purposeful or not, who can tell?

But certainly in the case of the Rota Plan, the dredging estimates were several, perhaps ten times over estimated.

Mr. Lynch earlier spoke of some other bad information.

With the Parkway, of course, there's all kinds of misinformation, I'll say.

Last time I was here, I mentioned that y'all were not following the law on the parkway at least in two ways.

And when I say y'all, I mean Mr. Taliaferro, Mr. Huja, and Mr. Brown.

And the first of those ways was that it takes four, not three, counselors to give away city parkland.

Craig Brown, the city attorney, quotes the attorney general

in an opinion regarding the transfer of parkland, but that opinion did not count for the permanent easements that would be required for the CHS land.

The Attorney General also quotes extensively Dick Howard.

This is what Dick Howard had to say in a letter.

He had to write the Constitution, by the way.

And this is what Dick Howard had to say about this issue.

and a letter to the Dare of Progress.

The first paragraph of Article 7, Section 9 of the Virginia Constitution forbids the sale of public property, including parks, except by a recorded affirmative vote of three-fourths of all members elected to the city's government body, that requirement categorical in nature.

It plainly requires the votes of four city councils, five members, to convey portions of McIntire Park for the construction of a roadway.

In case there is any doubt, he also goes on to say at the end, when they fairly debate whether the building of a Meadow Creek Parkway is a good thing or not, we all know how controversial the idea has been and remains.

But councils should not resort to an evasion of the Constitution's requirements to bring about a result that is not consistent

with constitutional limitations.

That's what Mr. Howard had to say about this.

Thank you, Mr. Salinas.

That was the last person that signed up to speak.

Anybody else have a burning desire to speak?

Okay, we will close public comment period and now open up the council responses to matters by the public.

Just three items I would like to follow.

First of all, I would like staff to explore

The suggestion by Peter Cleaver about funding for transit so we could explore that part would be helpful.

I would like to ask the city manager

Can you elaborate a little bit on the runway issue?

We'll get you a specific report.

Just in general, this is phase 1A of a long-term project that is primarily going to use fill that's on the site and move fill around to relocate a road.

It is part of a long-term project.

To my surprise, and I think the airports, there were some state funds that were available that have allowed that first phase to go forward.

It's in front of the county for a site plan review.

But it is part of a longer term project that we've talked about here before that the airport's been considering to try to allow larger aircraft, aircraft with heavier loads to be able to land there.

Yes sir, we've got, I think as you know, we've been having discussions about the cost allocation for those

Water and sewer projects.

All the sewer rehabilitation projects, there's a piece of it that's sort of existing maintenance.

Some of it's just to rehabilitate it to keep the sewer inside of the lands.

and some of it is for expansion.

Okay.

But you'll get us an recommendation.

That's okay.

Dr. Brown?

I agree with Mr. Taliaferro and I appreciate Kevin Lynch coming forward to raise issues about the MediCreek interceptor.

I think there's two big issues that we need to be very vigilant on.

One is to make sure that Rivanna goes the extra mile

to not decimate the existing greenway there, whether it's in their current right of way or not.

I'd rather see it cost more rather than clear cutting a big swath of land.

But equally importantly, it does seem like a big part of this, if not a big part of this, is capacity related to

the Albemarle place and to the degree that that's the case, this should not be a burden the city has to bear, so I'd like to get very clear on that and appreciate Kevin Lynch.

A couple of other things quickly, I'm glad to have Mr.

Hood come and represent the city council.

I think we talk a lot about city university relations, so I hope at some point you'll invite, well maybe the mayor to come to one of your meetings.

In Hemingway, I really appreciate the Lewis and Clark Center.

One of my sons has volunteered there a lot.

It's a great program, and I also think Erica Sims is doing a great job with our summer program, and I've also been present there some when the kids have been there.

It's really a real asset.

I noticed Pat Smith's sitting next to you, and I'd like to call to everyone's attention that Pat was honored by the United Way recently.

She's done a lot for our community, and everyone should be real aware of that, so thank you, Pat.

I actually liked everything that everybody said.

And also Stratton, it's always a pleasure to see you.

And I'm going to give a brief update of the task force meetings.

I haven't had an opportunity to do that and I have enjoyed learning

all of the new information and I do echo the concern about the public input and in my summary I'll discuss that too but that is still something that hasn't been placed in stone and something that we're continuing to look at to see how it can be equitable.

And also, Mr.

Hood and Shannon, glad that you're here.

and my daughter is here so you can be role models for her so I'm glad to have her at the same meeting.

She was trying to hide back there.

I couldn't stand it any longer.

Thank you.

I don't have anything to say that hasn't already been said, so we're going to move on.

Thank you all for speaking tonight.

We'll move on to the consent agenda.

We have a number of items on our consent agenda.

Item A is 30 minutes of August 5, 6, 18, and 22.

Item B is an appropriation of $30,326, a restorative justice grant, second of two readings.

Item C is an appropriation of $149,927, a weed and seed program grant, second of two readings.

Item D is an appropriation of $46,765, justice assistance grant, first of two readings.

Item E is an appropriation of $10,000 Police Department Foundation contribution, first of two readings.

Item S, an appropriation of $8,548 OAR Supplemental appropriation, first of two readings.

Item G, an appropriation of $294,000 Lighted Crosswalks Grant, first of two readings.

Item H, resolution special permit for restaurant drive-through window at 600 Cherry Avenue, first of one reading.

Item I has been removed from the consent agenda.

Item J is a resolution of policy on Sudan investments by the Retirement Commission, first of one reading.

Item K is a resolution authorizing $7,000 for Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission for Regional Transit Authority Development related expenses, first of one reading.

Item L, an ordinance decreasing certain electrical fee permits, second of two readings.

Item M, an ordinance rezoning 600 Cherry Avenue from R3 to mixed use, second of two readings.

Item N is an ordinance designating 2115 Jefferson Park Avenue, otherwise known as Fry's Spring Service Station, a portion of 459 Locust Avenue, which is the Patterson Wing of Martha Jefferson Hospital, and a portion of 133 to 155 Carlton Road, i.e.

the coal tower as individually protected historic properties, second of two readings.

Item O is an ordinance zoning density amendment, second of two readings.

Item P is an ordinance, zoning allowing indoor recreational facilities on public property, second of two readings.

The authorization for the Regional Transit Authority, we sent out some supplemental information on Friday.

There was an error on our part for the amount, so it should be $7,000.

You should have gotten the information in the package, but we didn't get the agenda revised.

Anybody else?

Yes.

Okay.

I'll second it.

Any discussion?

If not, please indicate your vote.

Thank you very much.

First item on our regular business agenda tonight is a public hearing and ordinance relating to the sale of city land at 521 and 529 Ridge Street and adjoining right-of-way on Ridge Street.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of City Council.

The item for your consideration tonight involves two city-owned parcels at 521 and 529 Ridge Street.

And to help orient you, there's a map behind you and to my right.

The two city parcels are indicated with the black arrows if you look at the aerial photos towards the top.

The two parcels are currently undeveloped and have been under city ownership since 1976.

They total approximately one third of an acre when you combine them together.

In recent years, the city has began to receive some interest regarding the potential sale of these two sites from developers.

Earlier this year, the council indicated their interest to move forward with the formal RFP process.

Staff prepared an RFP and was issued in April.

Responses were received through May 8th of this year.

The results of that RFP were a single response from local developers, Southern Development.

Southern Development further indicated that their desire was to combine the two city-owned parcels with five of their own parcels that surround the property.

And those are shown in blue on the map up there as well.

They'd like to combine these into a single master planned development, also known as a planned unit development, PUD.

This would require an extensive rezoning.

provided they would have control of the city-owned properties, they would then pursue that at that point.

In considering this item, it's important to understand that 7 Development has existing rights for their five parcels, by-right development rights for those five parcels should they wish to develop them on their own or without the city parcels.

These five parcels are currently zoned in the R2 and R3 zoning categories and would permit approximately 64 units under the current zoning.

What Southern would prefer to do is to develop it under a planned unit development option which would offer more creativity and perhaps be able to preserve some pedestrian space, excuse me, preservation of some open space and provide a variety of housing types.

Southern has proposed 40,000 square feet of commercial space as well as 40 residential units as part of its plan.

The PUD rezoning would allow the overall development to be more dense and be pulled more towards the street frontage, therefore allowing better preservation of green space towards the rear of the parcels.

There are a number of key benefits that we see from the city side to doing this in conjunction with southern development and a planned unit development.

Number one would be to create a gateway building, an opportunity to create a gateway building along the key entrance corridor coming into the city from the south along Ridge Street.

This could potentially help jumpstart development along Cherry Avenue as well.

We would also add office space to the city, which is often in great demand.

As I mentioned, this would be a mixed-use development that would have up to 40,000 square feet of commercial space.

The additional commercial space would be beneficial to our existing businesses and allow them opportunities to provide new jobs in the city.

The planned unit development approach will also, as I mentioned, provide an ability to preserve additional green space and treat canopy.

It would also provide infill development opportunities which are consistent with the comprehensive plan and the zoning ordinance that was amended in 2003 to encourage mixed use, higher density development.

It would take two parcels that are currently not on the tax rolls and put them on the tax rolls.

And finally, upon completion, the development would realize upwards of $325,000 annually in additional tax revenue to the city.

And that's real estate, business license taxes, permitting fees, etc.

So, just so everyone understands, there's the two options, the buy right option and the planned unit development option.

In addition to the two parcels, Southern has requested a small piece of right-of-way, which if you look on the lower topographic map there, you'll see a triangular-shaped piece that is currently a sidewalk and part of the roadway along Ridge Street.

They requested this in order to pull the entire development more towards the street and create a better streetscape environment as it comes along Ridge Street.

So the two parcels and the small piece of right of way is what's being requested.

The city attorney and I have met with representatives from Southern Development and created a proposal, a proposed sales agreement, which is included in your packet here tonight.

I'll just quickly outline the key characteristics of that sales agreement.

including a $253,000 cash contribution that could be designated towards the Fifeville Affordable Housing Fund.

In addition, the developer has committed to diligently pursue necessary approvals and to pursue substantial conformity to the plans that they have submitted to date.

There's a rendering also available up here that shows the proposed development as they've submitted it.

They've also agreed to pursue LEED certification and have those plans certified by an architect prior to building.

They've also provided an option for a transit stop as part of this project should the city so desire to include one.

They've agreed to allow public access to the open space that would be preserved behind the property, behind the actual developed area.

And they've provided an option for the city to lease space in the commercial area if desired for a police substation

So the item before you tonight simply involves the execution of the sales agreement.

This would be similar to a real estate transaction that many of you might be familiar with where you create a contract and then have a period of time before closing actually occurs.

That would be analogous to what would be happening tonight.

If approved, the developer would proceed with the normal review and approval process, which could be quite lengthy.

It's estimated to be two to two and a half years for this particular project.

During that time the public would have considerable opportunity for comments on the details of the project.

This review would include not only staff but the Board of Architectural Review, the Planning Commission, as well as City Council if it were to involve the rezoning that they have suggested that it would.

That's a summary of what we have for you tonight.

I can try and answer any questions you may have at this point.

We initially were talking about a price tag in these lots of approximately $60,000 an hour.

We're talking about getting $250,000.

The two parcels as currently assessed

are assessed at roughly $60,000.

These folks at Southern Development Commission an independent appraisal and that was provided in their packet as well and that is where the $253,000 price tag is derived from.

And just to reiterate, one of the requirements before the property is transferred would be a traffic study to make sure that the

Good evening, Councillors, Cloud Hall 101, Robert Slane.

I'm sorry I'm the only one signed up.

I was hoping there were people here from the Fifeville neighborhood.

I've talked to people from the Fifeville neighborhood and my impression is I'm not from the Fifeville neighborhood.

My impression is they don't want these pieces of property sold.

and nobody's here so that's all I can say.

As for myself,

We call ourselves a green city, and yet I see development in different pockets around the city and I see trees being cut down.

A good example is Whole Foods.

And now Whole Foods told the Planning Commission they can't put up as many trees as the ordinance requires, so they have come to a compromise that they'll put up some trees in another place in the city.

But I hate seeing these magnificent, mature trees cut down.

Also, when you cut down trees, that means you increase impervious surface.

I just heard the report of Andy talk a little bit about green space.

There is no, looking at this photo, well it's not a photo, I guess it's a sketch.

Looking at the sketch, yes there's a few trees there, but it's nothing like what is there now, and I've passed that intersection frequently.

And as was mentioned in the report, this is an entrance corridor.

Personally, between you and me, I think trees are nicer than buildings in an entrance corridor.

I'm sorry, I love the parts of the city on an entrance corridor where there are beautiful flowers and trees.

I did have a question about the traffic.

There is a huge problem intersection for traffic, so I'm glad to hear about the study that you brought forward.

The study must be done.

I know there's an ordinance now regarding infill, but does that mean that every spare, every little piece of property must be built on, even if green space is going to be eliminated?

And then he talked about in the report a possibility of a police substation.

Well, that's nice, but we're short of police now.

We're especially short of police on the evening and night shifts, which is probably when that substation could use policemen.

Does the chief really have extra men or women to put in that substation?

And last but not least, and most important to me as a neighborhood president, I really, really must say this.

If the neighborhood doesn't want the land sold, shouldn't their wish be primary?

Thank you, sir.

Anybody else?

How you doing?

I was just looking at that drawing up there.

It seems that the city owns two nice portions of land.

The corner on both sides looks like

I didn't hear anything about putting any affordable housing down in there.

I missed it if they said that.

They might say something about the possibility of putting money to it.

But if you want to pay what was raised at $60,000 and you want to pay $253,000, that's letting me know that you have a lot of leverage.

I mean, that's twice the amount, but that land could be used for something that would benefit the people in the community or in that community.

There's a lot of things we don't have, like a homeless shelter for one thing.

If you're going to let someone build on that land, why don't the city build on that land and build something that the people in the city can use?

And that's basically all I'm saying.

Thank you.

Anybody else like to speak?

I appreciate both the comments that were made.

The issue before us isn't whether we can keep something there from being built.

The issue is should we sell the two pieces of city land

and if selling those would allow it to be a better project and it may or may not be that we concluded it would but the issue really isn't, the no build option isn't something we control, it's something the developer controls and I think there's a lot of development that can be done by right on that piece of property.

The issue as I understand it kind of is that can the development not build in the ravine on the steep slope if they use the city land, will they agree to a site plan that involves that?

I'm also sort of disappointed there's not more people from Fifeville neighborhood here.

I think unlike North Downtown, Fifeville hasn't had a vibrant neighborhood association.

I do think a good neighborhood association gives us a lot.

It allows

a person to come and say, you know, we've had a lot of discussion on this and it's a broad range of people living in the neighborhood and this is what we think and I think Fifeville has had sort of a splintered neighborhood association and I don't know that we really have a real good read on, we know what some individuals think and I'd be curious to hear what other councilors can report on how, where the neighborhood is on that.

So, I mean, I'd like to have more discussion on does

These pieces of land allow for better development and I'm going to leave it maybe to the Mayor to talk a little bit more about the pieces of that because I think he's been more involved in it.

You know, I think it may.

Just to add to Dr. Brown's comments,

I agree first of all, I agree with the general comments about this choice we have.

The choice is basically to have 64 units, grade the whole site and put the 64 units or save the most important area of open space and do housing which will be attractive and will be as complement to the neighborhood in this street because as you may know this is a

historic district corners, there will be design review part of that.

So it is not, you know, it will save more trees than if it was by right, without a doubt.

Plus there is a growing will which can become open space and become accessible to people.

So I think that it is a, why is it the courses in my mind to sell the land and get a better development and protect the trees and as well as the natural environment

I'll just say I'm kind of disappointed too that there are not so many people there from the Fifeville neighborhood, not any people obviously because I think we do appreciate hearing from people and I think what we're really dealing with is an issue that we have some control but not a whole lot of control and the real issue is

Do we do buy right or do we try to make this a better project?

I don't like either of the options.

I really feel torn because we don't have anybody from the neighborhood here

And even though there isn't an active neighborhood association doesn't mean that the neighbors still don't have a valued opinion.

And because I still have variations of that opinion, and because there's no one from the neighborhood here, I'm struggling to move forward with this.

I was torn because the developers owned the land and they can build what they can within the guidelines.

They can go in and build something.

And the land that we own will provide them an opportunity to build something that would be better than initial ideas.

Is that the case?

So what would be

Because you'd be having a regular subdivision.

That means you'd have been a street in the middle, you'd have to build again

by Wright Development.

I had a question from the staff.

My understanding is that a notice went out to all the adjacent properties actually heard back from one of the residents about the notice.

I didn't think it was well written enough, so I know at least some of the people received it.

They did receive it.

Adjacent to the site?

Yes.

So people living two or three streets over wouldn't have received it?

I wonder, Mr. Mayor, if it would be possible to have a public hearing before the second reading of this, assuming this gets moved to the second reading, so we could get some more input from the neighborhood before we make a decision on this.

I think we'll just allow for a second public hearing.

This is a matter that's on the first of two readings tonight, so we're not being asked to vote on this tonight anyway, so I think that's appropriate.

I tend to share the comments shared by Mr. Taliaferro and others that

This is a project through which our participation is going to result in a better project and I actually, this may be a slightly controversial view, but I actually am generally a supporter of urban infill development.

I'd much rather see this kind of development happen here in the city when it's done well and I think this is a good project than to see it done out in the county.

I encourage more sprawl development.

I want to see people living in town and walking downtown.

I want to see jobs in Charlottesville.

I certainly am sensitive to the loss of green space, but as all the comments have indicated, this, by allowing our two parcels, which really aren't developable, to answer your question, Mr. Mason, they're

You can't really do much with our little parcels, but by contributing them to the overall project, it allows for a project that is going to minimize the loss of green space and actually end up preserving some of the nicer green space towards the back of the property.

and you mentioned affordable housing.

We've done something which I don't think the city's ever done before, which is in selling these parcels.

Normally, we just take that money and add, you know, consider it income to our general fund or put it into our reserves.

I don't know what we do with it, but we're actually taking all the money and putting it into an affordable housing fund, 100% of the money, to allow low-income, elderly residents of Fifeville to fix up their homes, be able to stay in the neighborhood and maintain the fabric of the neighborhood.

So there are some benefits.

There are certainly some drawbacks.

Not everybody in the neighborhood is happy with this.

There is no monolithic Fifeville opinion about this project based on the conversations that I've had.

Mr. Mayor, I'm not, without committing myself to a vote a second thing, I'll go ahead and move this to a second meeting.

Second.

Alright, it's been moved and seconded.

We'll carry forward to a second hearing, second meeting.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Engle.

The next item on our agenda has to do with one of my all-time favorite city programs, our summer internship program.

This is a program where we, as you'll be hearing momentarily, where we hire young people from Charlottesville, primarily in low-income disadvantaged neighborhoods, not exclusively, for summer jobs and on-the-job mentoring and training opportunities.

When I first got on council, we had about 15 kids in the program, and we doubled it to 30 last year.

This year we doubled it again to 60.

I'm hoping we can double it again next year.

And we're here tonight, Heather Kellams is here tonight, who's the coordinator for the Summer Internship Program, and has done a truly outstanding job pulling this program together for the third year in a row, for maybe four years now.

And he's here to give a progress report.

Thank you.

To double again, I might have to definitely invest in a new hair color or something.

It went from 30, then I went to 66, a little bit more.

Mayor and City Council, first of all, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to speak before you about the outcomes of the program.

Hoping you had a chance to review the outcome report and watch the DVD.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to show it publicly because of the confidentiality issues we have with the youth.

But we're very proud and excited about the DVD which really shows a lot of the interns working really actively in their community with all the different sites.

And certainly on behalf of the internship staff and the youth that were involved and all of the 47 site supervisors,

Heartfelt thank you for funding the program and taking the time and effort to do that.

Tonight I'm going to talk to you about some outcomes and some of this is in the report and I want to talk a little bit about some of the real heartfelt stories that happen with the interns.

Starting in May,

I received 80 applications from our participating partners that made referrals and those were agencies like Abundant Life, Urban Vision, Young Women Leaders, I Have a Dream Foundation, Community Attention, City Schools.

We were able to

We served 66 youth this summer and I'm very pleased to let you know that 60 of those 66 successfully completed the program and that wasn't easy but that's about a 91% success rate and so we're very pleased to have those outcomes.

We interviewed all 66 students face to face and in your packet we had an interview tool that we rated them on performance and attitude and we really prepped them on the fact that this interview is going to be serious and that was stage one of teaching them about jobs, their dress, their attitude.

There was one young man who we did not offer internship because he started to pout about having to work hard and had some attitude and we called his mom and said,

You know, I don't think he's ready this summer, but maybe next summer.

So we tallied up their scores.

We chose all the interns to be in the program.

We tried to match them to the best of our abilities based on their interests.

They filled out interest surveys so they were able to put whether they wanted to work with clerical, or they wanted to help animals, or they wanted to work in landscaping or in the environment.

and we tried to match as best as we could for compatibility.

As far as demographics, we ended up with 42 females and 24 males, 4 Caucasian youth, 1 Hispanic, 4 multiracial, 57 African American youth and 27 of the interns lived in public housing, which was 31% of our interns.

We started with an orientation and we had a two-day orientation where they focused on teamwork and learning workplace readiness skills.

And if you saw the video, they did a lot of exercises on learning how to communicate with each other.

We also set up the next day, Mr. Norris was there and Mr. O'Connell.

We had a great showing off of about, gosh, about 150 people at Charlottesville High School.

Every site supervisor showed up except for one.

Every student showed up to the luncheon except the ones.

We were really pleased with those results.

Following June 24th, they actually worked 18 hours a week in about 47 different agencies around the community.

We had youth working in lots of government offices.

We had youth working in about seven Chamber of Commerce businesses.

We had youth working in a variety of different non-profits.

We had youth working in seven schools for the Camp Excel program.

We had youth working in seven schools in the city of Charlottesville for custodial.

So a lot of varying degrees, public works, parks and rec.

We got involved with the green team initiative of the urban farm and public works and parks and rec and a variety of different other kind of green focused agencies which we were excited about.

I guess the other things that the students did throughout the six week period is they attended a weekly job readiness group which is held in the city council chambers and they reviewed everything from how to be on time to how to

to deal with challenging workplace scenarios, to take an initiative, to learning about how the best place to cash their check, to what banking's all about, to what's the better way to get a bank account or savings account.

SunTrust is very interested in partnering with us and although we didn't do anything formal this summer,

We're hoping to offer a day next summer where they actually can sign up for a savings account and some of them did take advantage of their partnership.

They gave them a $50 Visa card if they open a savings account at SunTrust.

So that was really great and we had to do that more next year.

They were evaluated again this summer, we changed the evaluation a little bit, but it was all performance based and primary deductions, they could earn up to $100 a week, $600 for the whole summer, they were provided a stipend three times and I have to tell you, I think it was, I actually distributed the paychecks twice myself and it was the most

heartwarming time because we had kids literally jumping up and down for joy and smiling and just so excited when they opened up their paycheck.

We also had several youth who were not as excited because they got deductions and so we had to be very careful in how we documented those deductions and usually deductions were based on primarily being late to work

Poor attitude and kind of refusal to do certain tasks.

Missing the group weekly, that wasn't a very favorite thing for them.

They enjoyed going to work better than going to our group, so they got deductions on that.

But overall, the deductions were fairly minor, so we were really, really pleased.

I guess the most thing that I, one of the things that I really feel so positive about in this community and that is the response that I received from all the different site supervisors and business owners.

In fact, we had about seven or eight businesses and agencies that we just didn't have kids to place.

We couldn't do it.

We didn't have enough kids to go around.

And so the calls I received, the Chamber sent out a large email, we got lots of business support and the quality of work tasks and internship opportunities really, really pleased me and made me really proud about just citizens in this Charlottesville community.

I mean, I can't tell you how many

All these site supervisors took extra time and energy to purchase clothes for the interns, clothes that would be appropriate like work clothes.

Take time to coach them about the careers and their life and education.

Link them to educational programs at PVCC and UVA.

Provide them all kinds of extra counseling on what was going on in their life.

Throughout the summer we had one little girl whose father died and the site supervisor took lots of time to address that tactfully.

When the shooting happened, Josh McRuder passed away.

Many of my interns were very close with him.

Many of the site supervisors took the time and effort to really nurture and listen and really build relationships.

The interns did everything from helping the little kids at Camp Excel learn how to read, to playing games, to learning about computer skills, to filing, data collection, fleet maintenance.

They did all sorts of work on cars.

One custodian at Johnson Elementary said to me, you know, this school would not have opened on August 20th if it wasn't for this intern.

So obviously there were varying degrees of skill level and performance.

But I was very pleased from a perspective of really taking time to mentor an at-risk youth and give opportunities and chances to the organization of the different placements.

And that was, I think, really exciting to me.

The evaluations from the interns, you probably had a chance to look at them, but just briefly, we received 58 evaluations back and they were overall very, very positive.

Most of the interns shipped 97% so that the interns followed their attendance policy, 98% they followed the behavior expectations, 98% they said the intern benefited, helpful to the agency department and program, 98%, adequate support from my staff, 100%,

I'm willing to work with an intern next summer, 98%, and 67% gave their interns a rating of 8.5 to 10, and in fact I was so alarmed when I tallied these things, you know, 41% gave their intern a marking of a 10, which is unbelievable to me.

Some of the comments, I love Ron Price.

I don't know if you guys know Ron Price, but he was an awesome site supervisor working at UVA's Human Resources Ground Division.

In our closing ceremonies, he said that, you know, he worked so hard with his young men.

He said that these two young men definitely went from Gs to Gents.

And they loved that comment.

And they learned a lot from him as a role model.

Ann Blockley from UVA's Human Resources Department said,

I appreciate the opportunity to work in this program.

You should be very proud of her writing this opportunity for both employers and interns and win-win for all involved.

Palisa Lee from Jackson Fire Class really illustrated, I think, what I'm trying to talk about with relationships and impact.

She said all my interns were very positive and helpful.

I think we made a lifelong bond.

These interns made a difference in my life and I'll remember them for a very long time.

And they're still interacting with each other after that.

The negative feedback we received from intern supervisors had to do with a couple kids who just didn't get a 6 out of a 60, just didn't kind of work, very non-compliant, had a bad attitude, and kind of disappointed in the quality.

The other feedback that we'll work on next year is that a lot of them talked about, well, wanting more hours in the week, wanting more length of time, the six weeks was really, really quick,

School year program came up, came up, came up.

And then the other thing that came up which is really great constructive feedback for me is, you know, can we put more focus on compatibility and interns?

So, for example, the intern that worked with neighborhood development was very, very shy

and probably didn't have the people skills necessary to meet the needs there.

So we're going to be working on tools of compatibility and how to maybe increase that a little bit better.

But overall it's very, very, very impressed and I was very pleased with those site supervisors.

As far as the internship,

We're excited to continue.

I wanted to just read a couple testimonies from the interns and then wrap up and see if you have any questions or comments.

Over 60 of these testimonies that are in your book are just amazing about what the interns learned and got out of their experience.

And I'll just, if you can just take a minute, I'll just read a couple of these.

This one was from Tunis Lee from Jackson Valley.

Thank you for letting me be part of this lifetime experience with Camp Excel.

I will never forget the smiles and giggles on the children's face.

What I enjoyed best about my internship this summer was experiencing fun and excitement with the kids, such as field trips, pool and bowling, and the Children's Museum in Richmond.

I also enjoy the talent show and all the fun parties.

I learned a lot about responsibility and caring so much about each individual.

I truly can say I had it last.

Thanks again for mentoring with me this summer.

This was from the Long Price at UVA Division of Grounds.

Thank you for having me here with you.

I enjoyed the wonderful experiences.

What I enjoyed best about my internship this summer was the fact that you all cared about my education and tried to put me with everyone that you thought would be able to help me.

I learned a lot about how UVA works as a team to complete all of the work.

Thanks again for mentoring me this summer.

This is from La Quinta from State Farm, which is an awesome business chamber that participated.

Thank you for providing me with information that will prepare me for college and also my future.

I feel blessed for having you guys as my mentors.

What I enjoyed best about my internship this summer was that everyone was so helpful and friendly to me.

I was a little nervous at first, but you all opened me up.

I learned a lot about what State Farm has to offer.

I will make sure I take all the advice you all gave me on my journey to adulthood.

I will try to keep in touch and thanks again for mentoring me.

And finally, this is from two wonderful city site supervisors, Rick, Derek and Joe, who just had an amazing situation with a young, very at-risk young man.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity this summer at the city communication department.

What I enjoyed best about my internship this summer was learning to operate the cameras and allowing me to be on television and hanging out with you guys.

I learned a lot about dealing with people positively while answering the phones and hanging out with you guys.

I met a lot of important people around the city.

I really enjoyed my time with you this summer.

Thanks again for mentoring me.

And I can't, you know, I could read this for, these are, I think, over 60 testimonies of just what the interns learn and how they grew and developed and made an impact.

And I guess from my perspective, August 1st was our ceremony where we showed the DVD and it was actually my 19th year of running programs like this in Charlottesville, which was sort of poignant for me.

And I guess I'll close by saying

About a year ago, I was driving down the road and since I've been running human service programs for troubled adolescents and pretty seriously at-risk youth for 19 years, I saw this bumper sticker that said, the best human service program is a job.

And I felt like this summer, in all seriousness, that that was actually a true bumper sticker from what I saw.

Thank you, Ms. Collins.

I just want to make a comment on the question before we go away.

First of all, thank you and for your enthusiasm and energy.

I think that must be pretty contagious and it shows the students have learned and enjoyed and brought new values and attitudes to be very helpful.

I'd just like to add to that also.

Um, you know I um...

I think I take most satisfaction having been, of the things that happened when I was mayor was getting this program started.

It's certainly something I put some personal energy into kind of coming out of having done the soccer program.

But I have to say that you've completely exceeded my expectations.

And I think it's been really great to bring your professional expertise in terms of really understanding what the skills are that these kids need and how to make this program work.

And I think

You know, what I get out of it, I don't know if there's much we can say.

You've kind of said it tonight.

But I think what I get out of it is, you know, these kids just need a chance.

They need to have the tools to succeed and just be given a chance.

I wanted to make a comment also, while you were speaking, you had a flashback of mine.

First summer job, and you won't need to be here.

Remember that first summer job you had?

I made hero burgers and bagged fries at Jim's.

And I will never forget that first summer job.

And to the participants in the program, just remind our youth, despise not small beginnings.

Don't underestimate the power of that first summer job and the things that you can do.

with that experience.

Also, I did have a couple of questions.

I wanted to know when you talked about the non-compliant kids, what were some of the barriers that you noticed?

for Completion, and with the youth that weren't as successful as we had hoped, were you able to steer them into programs that may have benefited them as well?

Yeah, a couple of the youth.

You know, it gets a little complicated when you get into the whole system.

When we got into the first couple weeks of the program, we probably would have had lower numbers if we hadn't recognized initially that certain interns were going to be compatible with certain jobs.

So we did a couple switches around, which I think helps with some compatibility.

And the reason I'm commenting on that is because

like one little girl who is very non-compliant, really poor attitude had a real run in with her site supervisor as far as just meshing and getting along and so I think that one of the barriers or recognizing that that probably wasn't we pushed it maybe too far to try to make it work and teach her and I think what would have been better is if we just sort of said you know I think this young lady needs more of a supervisor who takes more time and effort in guiding and mentoring

You mean there's different degrees of patience and enthusiasm from site supervisors too.

So that would be one thing.

Some of the kids who didn't make it, we enrolled them in our Teens Give Service Learning Program under our gang prevention grant because we felt like they needed more supervision than just going out and working 18 hours.

There was a couple of youth who we felt like just couldn't go out and work alone.

They needed more of a

I guess I'm wondering too by the time you were able to see was going to be six that weren't going to be as successful was had too much time to last she couldn't

We went up to 66 because we knew we were going to have some attrition.

We had an alternative list.

We were able to choose, we were able to do 66 because the seven businesses paid the stipend.

and the city budgeted us for 60 kids with a stipend.

We now have a report from the Charlottesville Redevelopment Housing Authority.

We've asked the board chair for the Housing Authority to come and give us an update on the Housing Authority's redevelopment plans, maintenance plans, anything else that's on their minds.

Thank you, Dave, Mr. Norris, Mayor, for how to address you.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak publicly about the Charlottesville Redewindland Housing Authority.

I don't normally read comments, but I've drafted some, so I'm going to do so.

My name is Jason Habbard.

I reside in the city, and I'm serving my fourth year as Commissioner of the Housing Authority.

Contrary to what many may assume, the Housing Authority is not a department of the city of Charlottesville.

It was created by referendum in 1954.

The people of Charlottesville created the Housing Authority and placed its board on the direction of council.

We do not receive annual funding from the city.

The housing authority occasionally and gratefully receives pass-through funds from various federal sources such as CDBG.

On rare and appreciated occasions we receive direct city support.

Last year we received just over $160,000 in direct support with an additional $50,000 granted from KF funds directed towards our efforts to start redevelopment planning and $600,000 in CDBG funds for capital improvements over several years.

Our 2008-09 fiscal budget is $6.4 million for all operations, including several programs that are not directly related to public housing or the Section 8 voucher program.

I joined the board the same month as Noah Schwartz, our Executive Director here in the audience, in June of 2005.

The agency was very close to being repossessed by the federal government due to persistent mismanagement.

Lack of adequate financial controls, inadequate maintenance, and more.

So this problem has been around for some time.

Our Section 8 program was labeled troubled.

Through Mel's leadership, strong efforts by staff, including two staff that have left us, Kathleen Glenn Matthews and Randy Bickers, the Section 8 program was no longer troubled and is now a standard performer.

As you know, we just reopened the Section 8 waiting list for one week last week, and as of this evening, 615 low-income candidates have signed up for potential vouchers.

So that's a tremendous success.

I've divided this report into three areas.

Communication, capital improvements, HUD, MLA and site conditions, and then a master planning redevelopment at the end.

Communication between the Housing Authority and City Council and staff needs to improve on all sides.

I come to you tonight to provide an update on our activities and intend to do this as a regular quarterly report as long as I'm Chair and as long as the Mayor will add me to the agenda.

The phone number for the Housing Authority is 970-2253 and your office is located in the basement.

I have attached my business card and my cell phone number to my comments for each of you.

Feel free to call me or Executive Director, Nora Schwartz, anytime you have any questions or concerns.

Good communication is imperative if we are to work together for the benefit of all the residents, both low-income and not.

Now onto the details here.

Capital improvements.

Attached to my comments is our spreadsheet of capital improvements for the agency.

You can peruse that at your leisure.

There's quite a few capital improvements that are underway, many pending different areas of research.

But as you can see, this has been something we've been working on for several years now.

Because of our physical situation, our actual physical conditions, HUD has deemed us as troubled for that specific area.

So we're still considered troubled overall as an agency, meaning what that means is we have to enter into an agreement with HUD.

I've attached part A of that agreement to my comments as well.

We will be signing that at our next board meeting and entering into a time of work plan with HUD as required by federal law to correct these items.

This has been known for some time and we will continue to address it.

None of the issues raised by council or others falls outside the scope of our efforts.

We are addressing all of the concerns raised and we are working to hire a capital budget or modernization coordinator as HUD calls it.

City CDBG funds are helping us achieve our goals for capital improvements and for that we thank you.

I won't go into the specifics unless you want to hear them.

We are using over $600,000 in CDBG funds.

I'll give you a few examples.

The elevator at Creston Hall is needed to be replaced.

It's a large capital project.

You helped with that.

We're going to use funding to help replace the roofs at West Haven, which have been in disrepair for some time.

There will be delays in this due to the sharp increases in costs of materials as part of the downturn in the economy.

and we intend to use the remaining $200,000 as partial payment for replacing windows at Crescent Halls.

That's something that's underway.

We're also working with the city and others to implement as many energy conservation measures as we can, including purchasing only Energy Star appliances such as refrigerators.

This saves us money and residents money when their utility bills are in excess of what is allowed by law.

for us to pay.

We are thankful for the donation of a thousand compact fluorescent light bulbs from the city and they will be installed in the coming weeks.

We have conducted full energy out of all of our sites as required by law and will continue to implement the least cost short payback measures to reduce energy consumption.

We're trying to be mindful of the idea of redevelopment in the coming years.

We don't want to do a complete overhaul of some of these sites and then actually go in and tear the sites down in a few years from now.

Regarding non-capita site conditions that have been in the news lately, Noah Schwartz has communicated to you via email and in person and I would only add that it is a few bad actors who are consistently littering and throwing trash wherever they want and really ruining it for all involved with public housing.

We're addressing this through a variety of means and I have a copy of Noah's email if we want to go over it again.

He's put in place a number of issues including additional staff time and additional attention to some of the sites.

Master Planning and Redevelopment Perhaps the source of most recent attention is our efforts to advance redevelopment of all 45 acres of our property.

Nothing frightens a community more than uncertainty about its future.

Personally, I would hate to be in a position where I felt helpless about the future of my own housing.

That is why when I joined the board and saw that multiple ideas for redevelopment were on multiple tracks with different people discussing different properties without any knowledge of the full board, let alone residents or the community,

I insisted on completion, transparency, and accountability.

I insisted the meetings and lunches stop and that we embark on a comprehensive master planning process for all 45 acres.

I'm happy to announce that over 100 separate requests for our recent request for proposals for master planning services have been sent out.

Responses are due Thursday at 11, so it's an exciting time.

It may be a flood of work for us, but we're excited to get this.

Along with our own 376 public housing homes, this process includes the parking lot on Garrett Street, often mistakenly referred to as the Levy Avenue site across from French Accord, and empty lots on South First Street.

So there are properties that do not contain any housing that we would be working with.

This is very important.

The burden is clearly on the Housing Authority to prove we are acting in the best interest of residents in the community.

History in Charlottesville is not on our side, unfortunately, but I accept that challenge as I think the rest of the board and the staff do.

I assure you that the worst possible thing that can happen in this process is another closed-door meeting or a second parallel process or that no effort is made at all.

I'm grateful that so far, despite many disagreements and differences, we are on track to right many of the wrongs of the past and create a more sustainable agency

and more sustainable, healthy communities in many of Charlottesville's oldest neighborhoods.

The process will cost just for master planning alone.

This is just where we discuss what we're potentially going to do.

At least $300,000 to do well.

We're hoping that the city will support one third of this through its affordable housing funds.

I know you've deferred your discussion of that tonight.

We are working to raise $100,000 in private funds and CRHA hopes to pay $100,000 of its own towards this goal.

Finally, when looking forward at the City's Strategic Investment Fund as part of affordable housing, my recommendation is to reserve most of the funds for actual redevelopment of housing authority properties.

The capital improvement required to improve our sites will bring the agency out of treblet status and return us to eligibility for federal grants and loans.

As of now,

We will be off that list soon.

The city will not be asked to bear the burden of redevelopment costs, but it will be asked to contribute significantly.

I urge you to save now for the future.

Thank you, Mr. Halbert, for that very comprehensive overview.

I would say that I appreciate you making the report.

I appreciate y'all getting on the issue up there at West Haven the other week.

Just a couple comments.

One of the things I noticed up there, and you maybe can't do anything about this, but it's like the dumpsters, they had a pretty bad odor, and they were the kind of place to raid people's back doors and

It's kind of like pretty offensive to me just walking by there and I was kind of wondering about when people are walking out of the back door and I don't know what you, I don't know.

I don't know if that's an issue of people not putting the trash in the dumpster.

or if they were placed in a different area you maybe wouldn't get as much out of it.

And the other thing, and I'm sure this is a cleanup issue, but I mean there were large pieces of glass everywhere up there, big jagged pieces of glass and I kind of think about children out there playing, particularly if they're barefoot or something, that they step on there and cut their feet.

and then the other place was the children's playground up there looked kind of shoddy to me I don't know, it needs sprucing up a little bit the equipment didn't look that terrible but I guess I don't know what they put in the playground but it looked like it needed to be maybe something done to that and cleaned up a little bit but I'm glad you're working on the master planning process because I think that's the right direction to head in and I think we have got to do something about

a lot of the units, particularly those units up there because they've been there a long time and they probably weren't designed too well to start with really and so hopefully we can solve that issue down the road, but thank you.

Thank you as well.

I do think it's a real issue between spending money now and having enough money later to do the job that needs to be done when we can actually redevelop it.

I think that's an exciting prospect.

You know, the assets of the Housing Authority, you know, there's a lot of low-density or no-density land that's owned, and I think something really good that can help us meet our needs and goals can occur.

Obviously, that takes a process that involves the community, and so there aren't any biases, and you can kind of mention that in your comments.

But I do think, you know, it's a big challenge.

I think Housing Authority's

have had diminishing funding and growing needs, and so I think it's, you're kind of asked to do an impossible job, and I think we need to make sure, I'm very supportive of us trying to do our part for the Capitol, certainly for strategic planning, and I've been a supporter of us designating you as a priority neighborhood, and I think

I'll just respond if I can.

It's a conundrum that we don't really have a choice in the matter.

We're required by law to meet certain standards and scores, and when we fall below those scores, we have to react whether we're going to redevelop tomorrow.

In other words, we have to improve the situation.

That's why I think in a lot of situations you see people demolish federal housing rather than address these problems proactively.

We're taking the proactive approach.

We're trying to be smart about it.

It's not simple, as you pointed out.

And I think that the master planning process will bring a lot of this out.

And hopefully, I'm hopeful that the process itself will begin to ease people's fears and concerns

Elevating Crescent Halls is part of your report and it's ironic because I was in a meeting this morning about capital improvements in the school and we got a report about the new elevator renovations over at Jackson By.

I think Miller would be the best person to do that.

I think our journey is kind of the right terminology.

It's a project, from the beginning it's been difficult for us to put online.

These are elevators that we believe are original to the building with the original hoist equipment.

that were in such a state that the folks who used to maintain it would no longer guarantee the repairs on it.

We put a plan in place and actually bid this project three times before we could get folks who would give us pricing to do the elevator.

I think part of that is associated with working with a housing authority, part of that's associated with sort of a small community and getting folks on sort of the bigger companies to come do that work has been difficult.

After three attempts, we were able to get one bid for just about $300,000 for this project.

Elevators, as I learned, and there's two elevators in this building, are basically special order projects.

There's no stock elevators.

They build them to suit the particular shafts that you're trying to run the elevators in.

It took about seven months for them to build the units that would go in the building.

They've been installing them, once they're completed, they've been installing them now for

probably five months.

The project is nearly complete.

There was one piece where they were waiting for the Housing Authority to finish one electrical issue to connect up the file alarm system with the elevator so it would work properly so the elevator would be called back to the first floor.

It's one of the issues that the authorities got.

We have very little institutional memory at this point.

And just finding someone who knew how to use the old system, who could give us the codes, it took us a month to find the codes to get into the firebox so that we could make this connection.

And that's the last piece we're working on now.

I believe that will be done this week.

At that point, the elbows are just about complete.

They will go into inspection.

Once inspected, they will get the second lever released back to us.

At that point, they change out the cars.

They'll put new walls.

and new floors in the elevators.

So it's nearly completed at this point.

I would like to also address one of the other issues as well earlier about the lights.

The lights were a travesty that there weren't lights at our South First Street site.

I believe I talked to city council about this last time I was here.

Going back to 2002, there were issues with the lights and being repaired.

In fact, they vandalized so often that the Dominion, who owned the poles and the lights,

I want a payment before they come out to even provide service to them.

To address this, we put out a bid and we installed our own lights.

We replaced their poles with our poles, with our lights.

So as there's an issue with the lights, our crew can get out there the next day.

and replaced the lights to try and address it.

It's a project that took us probably about a year to get rolling for similar reasons than what we had with the elevators.

But that was an issue that had been long-standing, long before the staff that amazed the organization at this point had come on board.

So, again, from the larger projects, some of them are very difficult.

The rules that we're doing at West Haven, which we signed a contract last week, it's a project that was built out of 200 and

$57,000, I believe, to replace 18 roofs at West Haven.

For that project, we were able to get a number of bidders to look at, so it moved around a little bit differently than some of the other ones.

But these are the sort of issues that we're looking at.

I know some of the things that we heard at the last council meeting had to do with some of the other conditions at the site.

The rear hill must be the south hill near the basketball court where there's heavy erosion.

Coming back five months now, we talked to the owner of the property behind us for the water shooting off a parking lot.

It's over 20 years it's created the erosion issues on that hill.

We've had our architect and their engineers working on this for several months now.

Actually had preliminary plans brought to us about two weeks ago.

So that's an ongoing issue that we hope to get resolved over the next few months.

Doing something to address the water sheeting.

and to address the erosion and fill in that.

So there's a number of projects that are underway to address some of the issues that JAW brought up.

None of these things are new to us, they're things, as our board chair, Mr. Halbert, stated, that we're aware of, that we're trying to get addressed.

and some advice, advice given without being asked is not really taken but I will give it to you anyway.

When I was back somebody asked me what is a good neighbourhood and good housing.

My response to them was I would like to live and live by children.

So that's what I want to be able to, for you to be able to say that about all the public housing in the two courts.

I know you are trying

As Mr. Taliaferro mentioned, what we saw is a very important role to maintain what you have first before you can build more and I think it's important that people who live there live in a decent environment and I know they have to take responsibility themselves also but basic necessity and hygiene I think should be taken care of and I think

and Stelly, we're working on them and we hope that it will be pretty soon improved.

And also, I have a question about, I'm still in the lab at 30 years old and I could be wrong.

We can give it to some public housing owners.

And I was wondering, why is the case and if, is there a deliberate move or is it a

I was thinking that if you had them occupied you would get more income.

But I don't know what the logic is.

It could be all the questions but you can go at them at the same time.

Two or three other, I guess, philosophical issues I would like to share with you.

First is that you are going to now settle redevelopment.

And as you know, I am very sure you know that there is a history of redevelopment in this community.

and people have long memories and you were not part of it, I was not part of it but people still have memories and I'm hoping that you not only make effort but make sure that it happens that people are participating as to what happens to them in future

They take part in those processes, in those designs, those plans, and so that there is no question in their mind that they have been heard, but this has been a chance for how many would have been heard.

Although so much, I think, helps some dearie to people who live there, they can assure that they are not going to lose their house, that they are going to have a house there.

I think many people are worried

if you do redevelopment, they will lose their houses, their homes, where they live, and I think, so I'm not sure if they understand, but when they say that, so they feel that it really means it, there is some kind of guarantee that they have a home that deals with dental respect and care as you and I would like to have it done, I think, so those things that I had

I would also suggest that if you do redevelopment, it is full of pitfalls and full of excitement which you don't expect and I have had so few in that area and so I hope that you will start off starting first on the working lands that you already have so that you could use those houses to relocate families

who are now there, so there will always be some place.

Plus, that will give you an experience in working it out without moving people around.

And then start a small phases-wise, so that it's not, there will be no need to grab the whole public housing development.

We will take selectively certain parts of it, and we will be a master plan, I will tell you when it will be appropriate.

We will need to start at the bulldozer, we could start there.

Careful, Nelson.

I think this master planner should help you in the process.

So those are the general comments I had to make and I appreciate you coming and I've been in this council for eight months.

This is the first time I've heard anything about housing authority, directly from housing authority.

Thank you.

I may just address your comments just very quickly.

In fact, there were closer to 40 vacant units.

Back in 2005, we were running a 14-15% vacancy rate.

Through a lot of hard work, our staff and staffing, we dropped that rate to 3%.

That's where it ran through last summer.

We had some staffing issues over the summer and lost most of the staff in our office that determines our eligibility.

We took a very purposeful approach to refilling those positions and weren't able to find people with appropriate training, but we found the right people, we did the training.

And what happened was we saw sort of our inability to do the eligibility, we needed to keep people moving along to get the units filled.

As that issue started to get resolved, we ended up in an issue trying to address REAC issues.

These are the physical inspections that HUD does, that Mr. Halbert was referring to, which was coming through the winter into the spring.

So we tried to address those.

We purposely redirected staff, our limited maintenance staff, to try and address those issues so that we could be in a better spot for the physical inspections.

I personally made the decision that

you know for the short term we needed to try and address those issues to try and pass that inspection and develop better systems to get them online and that it may result in us not being able to turn units as quickly as we want to do and unfortunately that is what happened.

It sort of didn't work for us on two fronts.

We didn't do all that well on React because of the long term physical issues that we weren't able to address as quickly as we wanted and then we did see sort of a

a spike in our vacancy.

Over the last five weeks we have turned 21 units, we have seven more that will be turned in the next week and basically another two weeks every vacant unit we have will be turned.

These units as they're turned and occupiable are being offered to the residents or hopefully to future residents.

We've already done eligibility on them, we have our list in place.

and we're filling them as quickly as we can.

It was sort of an odd series of events that led us to this point.

It's not something we're particularly proud of, but the decisions we had to make along the way we thought were the appropriate ones at that time.

Regarding resident participation and evaluating the RFP, which is for master planning, the point of evaluation process includes a resident committee that will give a brief, it's the last 15 points,

that may be earned by folks submitting proposals to do our master planning.

Those last 15 points really are the swing points.

That, I believe, will be the deciding factor on really who gets the project.

So there is a very real impact on who's even coming in to help us with the master planning.

amounts to resident involvement will increase over time, and we need to put them in the driver's seat so they're part of this.

But very purposely, even on the front end and doing the evaluation to decide on the provider of mass planning services have put the residents first.

It's not important to us.

Regarding the folks losing their homes, you know, that's very important to us.

If you look at our guiding principles that our Board of Commissioners passed in 2002, they made it very clear that to be a minimum of one-for-one replacement, so the folks living there when we do re-event will be offered a home to come back to.

We are subject to the Uniform Relocation Act.

It's a federal regulation that describes how we may relocate our residents and the guarantees they have coming back.

Staff certainly backed this position as something that's important to us.

We've talked with our resident associations, put together a resident bill of rights that we presented to our board shortly that also states this.

So relocation and right to return are very important to us and will be

an integral part of any relocation that we have to do.

As for the vacant lots, that's a great idea.

We hear that from many folks.

In different communities, they do relocation different ways.

Some use a lot of Section 8 vouchers.

Some use a lot of vacant units.

Some contract with other housing providers to do this.

I worked with a project in Connecticut where they basically handed out new vouchers to everybody.

In this community, handing out vouchers, as an example, isn't the solution.

It isn't available housing.

if we handed out 376 vouchers.

There's no place for our residents to go.

So I suspect what we'll have is a combination of different things.

Some units that may be vacant, some amount of vouchers, and maybe contract with other providers of housing in the community to help us put folks up, and maybe build some new units.

Not just the vacant lots, but we also have a fair amount of green space in some of our properties depending on what the ultimate plan is so it makes sense to build this building first to help move folks.

So I think it's going to be a number of different things that kind of piece together

When I said open space also, one was the site that I actually drew firstly, one was the scattered sites, another was open space that you can use.

I have forgot to ask one more question.

The President here of the board said that you are in one area with a trouble agency category for HUD.

You know, we're certainly endeavoring to pass our next work inspection will be in the spring.

That's why we're moving forward on projects like the roofs at West Haven and looking at the windows at Crescent Halls.

The items that affect us the most really are the big ticket exterior issues.

It's the erosion on the hill.

It's what they call uneven walking surfaces.

Roots sticking up out of the ground in a grassy area would be considered a trip hazard and we'd get binged per se for that.

Overgrown trees.

This is why we're working on this issue.

We have a contract with the fact that we've tapped the city's contract to free back all of our trees, working on erosion as I've discussed.

the rooms at West Haven, the windows at Crescent Halls, the elevator at Crescent Halls, the new traffic impactor that got installed today at Crescent Halls.

So a lot of the big issues we're trying to get at, and it's certainly our intent to pass this inspection in the spring, there's a lot to be done between now and then, we have limited resources, limited manpower, we're directing it all there to get this done, and that is our intent.

We have to get to the inspection process.

and received a score of 18, I guess is the numeric score we have to achieve.

It's interesting, if you look at the way HUD scores the organization both in terms of Section 8 and public housing, our scores over the last few years have risen dramatically, except for the physical piece.

Section 8, which was in troubled status when I arrived, we're one point short of high performing this year.

One point.

We scored an 89 on CMAP, which is the evaluation tool for it.

If you look at public housing, which has evaluation scores for management, we have as high scores as we've ever had.

Looks at finance, our score is about as high as we've ever had.

ARAS scores, so resident survey scores.

They're not good to be hired, but they're still good scores.

So I think you can see progress across the agency

We're trying to achieve a higher status and try to provide better housing for our residents.

The physical piece, unfortunately, is the most expensive, the most logistically difficult for us to take on, requires the most manpower at a time we don't have as much manpower as we would like.

I'm not making excuses.

I'm responsible for the organization.

But these become difficult obstacles for us to try and overcome.

Looking at lifting the whole agency all at once because that's what it took.

Mr. Schwartz, I want to thank you for your honesty because I think a number of the other departmental reports that we've heard haven't always talked about the challenges and the things that maybe have not gone as well and I appreciate you sort of laying it all out for us and all the work that you're doing to try to address all these challenges.

I've said it previously publicly, I'll say it again, I really do strongly feel that

Redevelopment of public housing in Charlottesville is our best opportunity in Charlottesville for expanding our supply of affordable housing.

It is our best opportunity for improving the lives of our public housing residents and it's our best opportunity for changing the dynamics of poverty in our community.

and nobody wins if redevelopment fails.

And so I think as Mr. Halbert said in his report and said in our last redevelopment committee, we really are all in this together and I think we can proceed in that spirit.

The resident engagement piece is absolutely essential as we've all discussed as Mr. Huja I think eloquently explained

One of the things that I was excited to hear at the last redevelopment committee meeting is the Housing Authority is actually going to be chartering a bus to take a group of residents and community members down to Raleigh, North Carolina this fall to view a successful redevelopment project so residents can get a first-hand feel of what redevelopment looks like.

So it's not just some amorphous thing, but they can actually see what it looks like and maybe learn

Okay, thank you.

The next item on our agenda is a resolution authorizing $48,500 for purchase of voting machines.

Mr. Mayor, Council, Mr. O'Connell, Mr. Brown.

I thought what I would do first was to start and give you a synopsis, sort of a timeline about how we got to where we are right now.

November 2004, the last presidential election, we had 21,335 registered voters.

Of that, 78 percent

of them voted during the presidential election.

Charlottesville has always been a high loaded turnout locality, higher than the state and higher than the national average.

So when we knew that we were going to have a high turnout, we decided that we were able to lease and rent.

We went to our vendor and we rented eight additional machines for the 2004 presidential election.

But you'll know from voting that we actually had a wait in a lot of our precincts.

In the recreation precinct, we had about a two-hour wait early in the morning.

In JPA, Jefferson Park precinct, we had a significant wait, too.

But, I mean, that's good because we have people that want to vote, so that was great.

In 2007, the General Assembly passed a law that stated that on or after July 1, 2007, no county or city shall acquire any DRE, electronic voting machines, for use in elections.

Well, we actually quite honestly thought that we would still be able to rent them.

We had the February primary in 2008.

We had a 40% turnout which is pretty unprecedented for a primary and we steadily, steadily have had people register to vote.

So here we are present day.

We again had decided that we were just going to rent some more machines to use in the precincts for election day.

Another electoral board in this state

wanted to do the same thing.

So what they did was they actually asked permission instead of forgiveness and they went and got an attorney general's opinion on this particular issue.

The attorney general was fairly specific about the definition of acquire.

I kind of saw acquire as purchase

The city attorney and the attorney general saw a choir in other terms.

We really were trying to be very creative in trying to get through this coming election.

It really turned out that we weren't able to do anything with our current machine, so we really only had two options.

One option being just to do a really good public campaign about letting people know that there were going to be significant lines and a significant number of people voting on election day, November the 4th, or we could do what

What our proposal is this evening.

I know that you all have been handed out a packet that I had Ms. Koch's hand out earlier and I wanted to kind of show you, to walk through this through with you.

We've been really busy in our office.

August the 1st we had 23,799 registered voters.

Today we have 26,085 voters.

So in six weeks we've registered 2,286 voters in the city of Charlottesville.

That's about almost 400 a week.

That's a 9% increase.

And we have 21 days left until October the 6th.

And it's not slowing down.

And I'm not complaining.

Don't get me wrong.

I'm not.

I'm saying that people are excited, they are passionate, and they want this election to mean something to them and that's wonderful.

But we have to do something about it.

So my electoral board reviewed the topic at their meeting September the 9th and gave this potential purchase their unanimous support.

With all of these factors, the staff recommends that the city purchase nine state-certified ballot scanning devices to be deployed in conjunction with our current electronic voting machines.

And there is a handout, and it does show you, it's called the e-scan, and this is what it's going to look like.

I have a demonstrator right here that I actually am going to show you, and you can see the second page also is our current machine, and they would be used in conjunction with each other.

and the neat thing about the e-scan machine is really we're only limited by the physical space of the precinct meaning we can deploy this machine we can deploy these privacy booths at the recreation precinct we can potentially vote 20 to 30 people at a time so we can really make that line go fast

I've had the opportunity to share this proposal with members of the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the League of Women Voters, Quality Community Council.

They've all expressed their support for this and are just anxiously waiting for tonight to be over so we can start a joint campaign with this voting machine.

Second.

Any further discussion?

You sold us.

I love it.

Well I will show you that you all are the first ones to see the sample ballot.

So that's the ballot, the paper ballot that's going to be

in the precinct.

And what's going to happen is the voters will come in, they will go through the registered voter list, and then they will be given a piece of paper.

You have those pieces of paper in front of you.

They will ask, once they're registered, would you like to vote on a paper ballot, or would you like to vote on the Eastlake voting machine?

No sir, we're going to use them in every single precinct.

Okay.

You know, we've talked about this before when we were deploying, when we brought in the original East Lake machine, deciding whether we were going to do it in one machine and phase it in, and it was very difficult to try to decide which precinct we were going to do it in and be fair.

So everybody wants a chance to use the new machine, okay.

Alright, thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Sanchez.

Next item on our agenda is an ordinance designating a number of properties for individual historic protection.

I just had a process question for Ms. Scala, Mary Joy Scala.

Okay.

So do you want to explain what we're doing here anyway?

Thank you.

Last April, the Board of Architectural Review recommended unanimously the designation of 10 historic properties.

These are the first ones.

It sort of was the culmination of a several year process where they tried to identify the most important buildings that had not been designated yet.

This is the first time buildings had been designated individually by you all since 1993.

The ones we have now, some of them were designated in 76 and some in 93.

It's been a while since we've done this.

The properties that they recommended were interesting because they represent a variety of building types, not just grand residential buildings but also industrial buildings, industrial structures, churches, a bank, a gas station, a hospital and social clubs.

In August, the Planning Commission at a joint public hearing recommended 4-3 the four properties that are before you tonight for your consideration for designation.

Now you must consider the recommendations of the Planning Commission and the BAR as to the proposed designations and those recommendations address eight specific criteria found in the ordinance.

The four properties before you tonight are two Coca-Cola buildings.

One is a former Coca-Cola building now uses an apartment building on 10th Street.

One is still used as a Coca-Cola bottling company on Preston Avenue.

One is a bank at Babsburg Shopping Center, and one is the former Monticello Dairy Building on Grady Avenue.

You've received positive letters from Dan Bluestone regarding all seven

designations that were on your agenda tonight.

You also received positive letters from Brian Hogg, who's a member of the BAR, and Christine Madrid French, who is president of the Recent Past Preservation Network.

And those two letters were specifically regarding the Wachovia Bank.

I also have in my follow-up letter from Federal Realty,

in opposition to the Wachovia Bank designation.

Two of the properties are recommended for partial designation because they're on such large parent parcels.

The Monticello Dairy buildings on a total of approximately 4 acres and the Wachovia Banks on 22 acres.

That's the shopping center property.

I'm not going through all the criteria, but I did want to point out a few items on each property and then I'd be happy to answer questions.

The Coca-Cola property on 10th Street is on approximately one half acre.

It was built, the oldest part was built in 29.

There are two editions, one was before 1937 and one was before 1952.

It's an intact, well-designed industrial building and it's unusual to have one like that from this time period.

The design actually looks very contemporary, reflective of its industrial use.

The owner is opposed to the designation and as I said before, it's currently used as an apartment building.

It's been rehabilitated.

The second property, Coca Cola on Preston Avenue, is on approximately one acre.

The oldest part, which is two stories in the front and then one story immediately behind that, was built in 1939.

It's the largest art deco building remaining in Charlottesville.

There are four art deco buildings in Charlottesville remaining and this is by far the largest.

It has a lot of features and decorative elements which give the building its character and they remain on the building.

The windows have been blurred out but they could easily be opened and the whole thing could be restored to its original beauty.

The owner was actually not opposed to designation.

They were concerned that there's some more recent additions in the back of the building that they wanted to be able to remove.

The one in the far back, I believe, was a garage built in 39, same as the front, but it's far less ornate.

It's a very simple brick design.

And then in between that, there's a 1981 building connecting them.

and then to the east side is a 1954 edition.

Those three editions, I would say, are not nearly as significant as the original structure, which is both two and one story, the 1939 part.

The third building, the Wachovia Bank, as I said, it's on part of the shopping center property, which consists of 22 acres.

It was built in 1965.

You receive two letters describing it much more eloquently than I can do, but I will say that it was designed by Louis Scribner.

I stand back from Scribner as a branch bank of National Bank and Trust in 1965.

The addition, which is a wedge-shaped addition and probably the canopy as well, were added in 1968.

If you look at it, the whole thing is very well designed.

The materials are sustainable.

It's concrete.

It's nothing like you would see built today on an out parcel.

The building continues to be used as a bank and the importance of preserving a modern building, well this has a couple of things that are significant about it.

One is a local architect.

Two, it's designed to be sort of evocative of the rotunda.

with his dome and then also it's a fine modern building.

It's elegant and I think it could be used, for example, as a marketing element for the shopping center.

I don't think it's something that would detract from the shopping center in the least.

The Planning Commission, at the request of the owner, recommended designating it without the canopy.

They thought that that part could be removed.

And I will say this about all these buildings and their additions.

If they're designated, that means that any change to them has to go before the BAR, including demolition requests.

but they can certainly, the BAR certainly has the ability to say you can remove this part or that part and what they would do is look at the plans and make sure that it's done in a way that doesn't impact the original part of the building so that's a benefit of having them look at it and

and the other thing is it's protected from demolition until that happens.

In addition to the BOR being able to approve a demolition, if they vote against it and city council decides that it is in the best interest of the city, you all have the ability to overturn that decision based on the additional information and plans for development.

So the owner of this one was opposed to this designation.

The designation covers about six or seven thousand square feet, less than a quarter of an acre, out of 22 acres.

And the final one, the Monticello Dairy Building, the former Monticello Dairy Building, is on

A four acre parent parcel, the oldest part which is the central two story part and flanking one story wings right next to it was built in 1937.

And then in addition when you look at the front of the building the part on the far right is an addition from I believe 1959 and the part on the far left

It was built partly in the 40s and then partly in the 60s.

The interesting thing is those two wings on the far left and right, even though they're more recent, match identically the one-story part of the 1937 section of the building.

It's architecturally significant because of its scale and presence, its design, and the amount of detail given to an industrial building.

It was designed by a local architect, also, Elmer Burris.

He also designed the Hill and Irving funeral home and the Albemarle County office building adjacent to the old historic courthouse at Court Square.

The drawing that you have, and this is a huge complex, and the Planning Commission recommended designating only the front part of the parcel.

That would be the original 1937 parts, which are both two story and one story, and then the flanking side additions, and they're shown on your drawing.

And they also designated the land that lies between

that building and 10th Street and also Grady Avenue.

Thinking that, you know, without that landing designated, the applicant could build something in front and block the view of the buildings.

It's similar to what was done with the Martha Jefferson property, the Patterson wing designating the land between the street and the building to protect that view.

And again, the owner of this property is also opposed.

There was an interesting philosophical debate about designating specific portions of a building versus designating an entire property.

I'm sorry, I'm talking about the 66 properties that are already designated.

Of those, by far, they're almost entirely on the whole parcel.

On these, it was a little bit unusual because the parent parcels are much larger, and there are obviously questions of the buildings that are

perhaps not significant as in the case of Monticello Dairy.

So they did talk about it at length and I think there was a mixture of opinions but what they finally decided on was sort of a compromise and they felt like it was important to have part of it designated at least.

And that, as I said, even if you designate the whole building, that doesn't mean you couldn't come back later and have part of it removed.

It's a little arbitrary.

It's a little arbitrary, but mostly I think it's looking at the building and deciding the parts that are the oldest and the most significant.

And normally the BAR does that, I'd have to say.

And I guess we're trying in these cases to reach

And just to clarify, you said the Monticello Dairy owners were opposed to the designation, but what I was told is that they're not opposed to designating the original structure, they're opposed to the scope of the designation as recommended by the Planning Commission.

I see.

One other question if I can remember what it was.

Oh yes, there was some conversation about whether or not we should be offering incentives for historic preservation to help.

You know, this is an unusual situation where

The only one I was able to identify would be National Register designation so that

If they do renovations, then they could make use of the tax credits.

I think that would be particularly appropriate for the Monticello Dairy Building and the Preston Avenue Coca-Cola Building because they haven't been renovated recently.

So I think it would be a good idea for the city, it would be a matter of funding it, but that the city could offer to write the nomination and submit it for national registry designation for those two buildings.

I think one of the planning commission members, Genevieve Keller, offered to write a joint nomination for the three with the Coca-Cola building and the

which are in close proximity with the Montella Dairy building.

We did that for Fry's Spring Service Station.

I had an intern write the nomination.

It's all ready to go as soon as we get owner consent.

Any other questions?

We do not have a public hearing, there was already a public hearing scheduled, but some of the property owners are here if we have questions about specific property owners.

Well we can certainly, if you have questions about specific properties, I don't know how many of them, I know Monticello Darius here, is there any other property owners, Ferro from Barris Road, so we have two of the property owners here.

I think we have specific questions.

I think the property owners spoke, we attended those public hearings.

I think there's questions we have, so if we ask questions we should do that, but I think it would be

If we want to allow the property owners a chance to make their case, I think we should conduct another public hearing.

Right, I agree.

Good evening.

My name is Joe Cochran.

I'm an attorney with Richmond and Fishburne, and we represent the owner of the property.

I guess the main concern is flexibility because of redevelopment potential of this site and there's been discussion about how much of the building do we designate

and it's such a large site, it's almost four acres.

It has great redevelopment potential.

You know, I don't think we are.

I don't think that's a concern either.

Mister, I want to share with you a map.

These packages of our packages are a little larger.

This is the 1937 part.

That's correct.

Possibly, or incorporate them in a development in the future, but we think that the proper part of the building to preserve is the 1937 portion.

I'm done.

Any other questions?

I'd like to put this in the context of

Two contexts.

One is, you know, people make a lot of, are we, you know, making someone designate their building.

Well, you know, in earlier this year, we had the issue of Compton House, and I think as a council in this city, we felt powerless to prevent an historic structure from being torn down.

And, you know, we can't have it both ways.

We can't only have it be voluntary

and still protect structures.

And so then it leads to the second question, is it a burden to be designated?

And I think the history in the city is that no, it's not a burden to be designated.

And I think the history is full of property owners, of historic properties, coming to city council with a proposal and getting their way.

I mean, the Holstener studio was torn down

The historic structures were torn out on Main Street in order for the Marriott to be built.

and so I don't think that it's necessarily a burden if someone has a good project.

I know that from discussing with these property owners that the idea was, well we might want to do it piecemeal.

We might not have the assets to do everything all at once, so we would like to be able to do a little bit now, a little bit later.

Well that concept actually makes me very uncomfortable.

You know, I'd much prefer someone to come in with a plan.

with a fuller plan and come to council and say we've got a great project here and this is what we're asking because in order to make this project work we need to do this or this.

That makes me pretty comfortable and it doesn't mean you're going to immediately do everything in that plan but the idea that we're going to not

in a more comprehensive way in order to allow it to be done piecemeal.

In other words, not a project that's thought out in detail ahead of time, but rather can be done incrementally and not necessarily coherently.

Okay, so I'll take that as you're in favor of designating the entire amount of the parcel that's recommended by the Planning Committee.

Okay, thank you.

Yes, I was going to not only frame it in terms of the Compton House experience, but also my very first city council meeting.

We got a portion of that building from Daniel Bluestem.

and in addition to the fact that I won't forget it because it was my very first council meeting, but it also framed the way we would look at how we wanted to protect properties in the city.

That said, I was kind of feeling like it's kind of hard to do a partial designation, either do it all or nothing, but given the Planning Commission has decided that we should move forward,

What I wanted to bring up was another example of how there was concern about a design and we were able to bring the neighborhood and the architect and the owners together because I think that the house on Second Street by far is the best example of how we were able

to really communicate and come to terms about how a building would be designed and how it would meet the needs of the neighborhood.

I'm hearing the concerns, not like the people that understand it, the owners that are opposed to this.

I'm hearing the concern, but I also really believe that we will be able to communicate well and really come to

in terms about any redevelopment plans for the future.

I think that Preston Avenue has such great potential, because even thinking about the historic designations, you have the Rock House up by Legal Aid, you're coming down Preston Avenue with the designations, and even

Thank you, Ms. Edwards.

You know, I think I'm a grape in what the plan information is recommending.

Oh, I am in agreement with it.

Mr. Huja?

Sorry, four votes in favor of the Planning Commission recommendation.

I will be the dissenter.

Either way, it looks like the motion carries.

I do believe that...

I do believe in

Preserving the original structure, the Planning Commission already exempted a substantial portion of this property from designation, so it is a little arbitrary, but

I think the portion that really does resonate the most is that original building.

I'm inclined to support the property owner in wanting a little bit more flexibility in some of the newer parts of the structure, but it certainly looks like the prevailing sentiment is to honor the recommendation of the Planning Commission.

Is there a motion to that effect?

All right, I think that's the first, the two rooms, is that right?

And that was for all four ordinances?

We're going to do a one by one by one, so we'll now move on to, how about the Wachovia Building?

Well, sir, this is a really good example of that era, and I think we ought to try to preserve that building

So Ms. Sklar, just to clarify though, the recreation planning commission does not include the canopy?

That's correct.

I think the, I guess the, I'm trying to get the right word, I guess the appealing part

about that Wachovia building and what I looked at looked at a lot over the weekend was just the dome on that building and how as you enter the city and then make your way through town and up Main Street that it is part of the kind of the Jeffersonian feel when you come and make Charlottesville, Charlottesville.

Mr. Taliaferro?

All right, five to zero.

Is there a motion?

Dr. Bynum?

So moved.

That carries forward.

Coca-Cola on, let's do the Coca-Cola one on Preston, which is not contested.

That's definitely not contributing I would say.

I think the 39 part could be determined to be contributing just because of its age and association with it.

The thing that I just did want to point out that if you designate the whole parcel and then the BAR approves the demolition in the back then they also get to review any new construction.

If you just designate the 39 portion

and not the back part, then they could tear it down and build something new without any review on the back.

I think it's not that onerous of a process on any of these if someone has a good economic reason why they need to change the nature of their property.

All right, well I'm going to vote and I'm going to preserve just the front two parcels, 1939 on Preston.

So that, is there a motion?

So moved.

Second.

That carries forward three to two.

And lastly, we have Coca-Cola on 10th Street.

I'm so glad the owner doesn't oppose it.

He does.

He does oppose it.

It was just an unprecedented.

This is on 10th Street.

10th Street.

This is on 10th Street.

This is the department's.

Yeah, I support it.

Well I think his concern was, going back to this issue of incentives, if we're going to be doing this, should we also be looking at ways to soften the impact, and I tend to agree, but I am in favor of designation.

Is there an option?

I don't know if the staff ought to do it, but if they can.

It's really helpful to the local protection of those buildings if they are going to take that spirit.

Historical designation, it's not related to anything we talked about because I'm thinking about how we're starting at the Rock House and going down Preston.

We're going down past the Derry building and past Coca-Cola building.

And our COVID building was built in 1965.

And I mentioned this at the city council meeting where

When I lost it already, where I got this, in terms of historical designations.

To reconsider, or at least consider the West Haven community in terms of historical designation, it may not have the

the quality of character and brick and everything like the other things that we discussed, but it certainly could fall into the category of having a cultural significance to the community.

And then we think about

If you come down 8th Street and right through the corner of 8th and Hardy Drive and you look at the community center right across the street where the elderly apartments are, for the elderly and handicapped, it's the way they're designed with the balconies is unique from just the rest of the neighborhood and it was designed that way so that

It's certainly possible to do what we call a historic survey of that property, to document it and to determine the significance architecturally and historically.

Exactly.

With emphasis being on the historical and cultural surroundings, the cultural implications of the neighborhood.

The last item on our regular business agenda tonight is a discussion on potential funding mechanisms for regional transit authority and this follows on the joint work session that we had with the County Board of Supervisors earlier this summer.

We are in the process under the able guidance of Melissa Barlow who was here a moment ago.

We're in the process of putting together an England legislation that would allow the city and the county to create a regional transit authority and also parallel legislation that would allow us to seek sources of revenue for local transportation projects which would include funding for increased transit.

and the discussion really is before us tonight is of the different revenue enhancement measures, i.e.

tax increases that are sort of within the realm of possibility, which ones do we wish to

include in this enabling legislation that we are soon going to be asking the General Assembly to approve.

In Hamilton Roads in Northern Virginia,

They were able to get General Assembly authority for a grab bag, if you will, of tax increases including sales tax on gasoline, grantor's tax, motor vehicle rental tax, transient occupancy tax, safety inspection fee, initial vehicle registration fee, sales tax on auto repairs, regional registration fee, commercial real estate property tax increase, local registration fee, commercial residential impact fees.

That was, those were all measures included in House Bill 3202 which did pass the General Assembly for Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.

Those of us who have been involved in the working group for the Regional Transit Authority

It felt like a better option for our locality was a simple sales tax, 1% sales tax increase.

And so we're trying to seek some guidance tonight.

We are not asking City Council tonight whether or not

We would definitively vote for a 1% sales tax increase if we were allowed to even have that vote or vote for this other range of tax increases.

We're just trying to get a sense of counsel as to those two options, the grab bag approach of 3202 versus a 1% sales tax, which is the preference of counsel.

The County Bureau of Supervisors had this discussion at their last meeting and they unanimously supported the option of a local sales tax increase versus this other range of tax increases.

The other thing I should mention, I should have prefaced my remarks by saying what this money would be used for.

We are looking at substantially increasing our regional transit system to be able to go more places more frequently, serve more people, get more cars off the road, be more user friendly and reliable.

But this would also generate revenue that could be used for local road projects such as the Fontaine Sunset Connector, such as Hillsdale Drive, such as a new bridge on Berkmar Drive, such as a new access to 29250, improved access 29250.

A number of rail projects that are right now in limbo because we're not getting funding from the state.

In fact, the state funding is decreasing.

I would be in favor of the 1% sales tax, I think, other than some of these others.

I also think this is a good person to go with.

It keeps it from being borne by the homeowners, real estate taxpayers, which I think is an important issue for us.

I'm happy to just go ahead and agree on a funding mechanism, even though I think it's unlikely that we would be given permission for the funding mechanism, but I'm hopeful that we can get in place a structure

for a regional transit authority because I do believe as the next few years come along that there's going to be more money for transit and I think for us to be in a good position to do that would be important.

There's a bunch of other issues and it may be that we don't get a lot of traction

soon on this, but I think we need to go ahead and get the structure going.

Okay.

May I just say one more?

Please.

I think if we

We'll come to that point.

We can come back to council and see if that's an advisory course of action.

Okay, that's the other business.

Right, and I just prepared something I wanted to read.

The task force has been formed to look at the future of the South Fork, and as I mentioned, there have been two meetings that I've attended.

The task force has met twice and members have begun posing questions that should lead to a recommendation about what to do next.

Specifically, we're looking to what are the current uses of the South Fork Rivanna River Reservoir and what uses do we want in the future?

What can be done to overcome these obstacles?

And ultimately, we'll have to determine how much it will cost to remove these obstacles.

Finally, most painfully, we'll have to determine who should pay to remove these obstacles.

So far, we've heard a lot about the sources of sedimentation, work that coincides with the work of the Rivanna River Basin Commission, and the existence of an invasive plant called hydrilla, which is difficult to control.

We've heard about a number of uses of the reservoir, including rowing and fishing.

We've heard from those living around the reservoir about the changes they've seen over time.

There's a blue heron whose opinion I value and I must admit it was the first time I'd ever seen a blue heron and that's just a magnificent bird.

I also value the opinions of the public.

I also value the opinions of the public.

and we're working to make sure that the public has multiple meaningful ways of expressing their desires for the future uses of the reservoir and we have not yet settled on a public input plan.

Our next meeting is on September 29th with the time to be determined.

Questions for Ms. Edwards?

I appreciate your update, and I too share your interest in hearing from the public.

That's such an idea from the hearing that sometimes along the way, we never get elsewhere.

Alright.

Dr. Brown, anti-idling.

So in the General Assembly this year, a bill was passed that allowed localities to restrict idling by tour buses.

We talked about this at the Sustainability Committee meeting the other day.

One of the subcommittees has looked into it.

They discovered that actually tour bus operators don't oppose this bill because it will save them money if localities make their operators turn their bus off.

Is there any opposition to having staff come forward with a proposal?

Sounds good to me.

Thank you very much.

I had a point of personal privilege which is, this is a rather unusual statement to make, but somebody has been spreading a rumor about me going around Charlottesville handing out bus tickets to homeless people.

to get rid of them with the requirement that they not come back to Charlottesville.

Normally I would just laugh off such rumors, but one of our local papers printed the rumor without checking its authenticity, which I thought was quite unfair.

And so now I'm being approached by people who I respect and who used to respect me, saying, how can you be doing this?

And that's a really dumb-headed thing for you to be doing, and I actually agree.