City Council Meeting   12/1/2008

Ms. Kochis, will you call the roll please?

We'll see.

We'll note that Vice Mayor Taliaferro is not able to join us tonight, but we still have a quorum.

We're going to start with announcements, and I'd like to start by announcing a roundtable discussion on climate action, a regional roundtable on climate action panel discussion that's going to be held Monday, December 8th at City Space in the downtown mall.

next to City Hall here from 11.30 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. and it's going to bring together some community leaders to talk about how we as a region will work to stimulate meaningful climate action and create positive change in a variety of areas.

The panelists include Dr. Brown, who's chair of our sustainability committee and really kicked off much of this work in signing the mayor's climate change agreements a couple years ago, David Selesky from the Board of Supervisors, David Newman, architect of the University of Virginia,

Terry Kent with Better World Buddy and a representative from the James River Green Building Council.

So it's an excellent opportunity to find out about what we can be doing on climate action as a region.

Please remind everyone that the peace marches continue the marches against gun violence and there will be one this coming Friday.

They're now the first Friday of every month.

Thank you.

One other note was we have a special visitor on December 3rd through December 5th from the Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Treasury Unclaimed Property Division.

One out of seven Virginians has unclaimed money owed to them by the state.

Stop by City Hall from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on those days, December 3rd through December 5th to see if money is owed to you.

We are now going to open it up to matters by the public.

We have a number of people that have signed up to speak, and as always, we'd ask you to keep your comments to three minutes, and when you come close, state your name and address.

Good evening, my name is Brandon Smith, and I'm actually, I don't have an address to give you, but I've lived in this city for about 15 years.

My concern is the brick project.

I know it's brought a lot of people down.

I'm going to say I'm opposed to the project as it seems to be considered.

And I want to give you a couple reasons why.

So I am supporting Mr. Vernon Collins' remarks, a few speakers behind me.

I want to be clear on that.

But I've been through 15 years and I'm a carpenter.

And I work construction and my biggest concern

that I want to specifically address is if the work goes on that it not be done, I'd watch the contractor working on the demonstration project using a cutoff saw which is a two cycle saw which is a chainsaw with a long blade on it and it makes a horrible noise and it does so my concerns are it knows

and then dust abatement, which we all have to breathe.

And I noticed in my 15 years of hanging out in the mall, I'm a mall rat, a mall person, that from time to time you will see contractors

Basically they're all in their way with the environment because nobody's detailed the monitoring and they'll ask once and somebody will say the fire department is supposed to take care of that.

But I think it's a major issue that if this part of the internet goes down that a priority would be given to the fact that the environmental conditions, if you really have to listen to them and the air you breathe, be considered.

In other words, so when you have a

A project where a lot of bricks are going to be cut is an electrically run saw that does not make a lot of noise.

And it's much more efficient, safer, and I think the taxpayers are going to get a lot more value from the money.

And I say that as a professional carpenter.

In other words, in all the trades, what's considered a chop saw is the preferred tool for safety and for efficiency.

Now I will say,

that is in terms of alternatives living in Richmond there are sidewalks that I'm pretty sure are 100 years old in Richmond that were done in the dirt they've been there with no maintenance for 100 years but what I want to emphasize is in the process of restoring or renovating sidewalks small crews have worked all neighborhoods in Richmond forever and

and gotten a lot of work done working on very small portions at a time and in some cases using just the old fashioned masons tools which are in other words cutting the bricks by hand which is a simple quick way to do it so what I'm suggesting is if we go in the industrial model we get industrial problems if we want to look at a sustainable approach

and that is what indicates that I'm running out of time.

Thank you Mr. Smith.

Appreciate your comments.

Good evening.

I'm Bill Wellington.

I live technically in the county, but I'll be saying the same things Wednesday night to them.

I want to say three things to you all about the general subject of energy and renewables.

First, I think it's recommended for what you've done so far.

From what I understand and read and know about, you've made some real progress.

The ball is moving, and that's great.

So well done.

Based on that, I would urge you

to think more aggressively, expansively, and act more in a more forward-thinking manner.

Let me offer an example, and then they'll take shape.

I think you passed on ordinance sometime in the summer that created an energy efficiency program for people in town.

If I'm not mistaken, if they have a blow test done, they're 30% better in code, they get, is it half their property tax off?

for the first year or something like that.

If you're willing to ask people if they know of that program, maybe we could do a show of hands, but I'm pretty sure not many people know about it, A and B.

If you do the math, I called the city finance guys, half of the average property taxes

That's the cost of the lower cost doesn't get you much.

So if you're looking to have impact in the existing housing stock, I would urge you to do the math from the point of view of a homeowner looking at what they might conceive we have to do.

Same thing would go for the pay as it goes program that you're contemplating.

If you look at that, the high end is $5,000 a house.

You won't make a dent in the existing building stock with that.

So that all comes down to money.

So there are some people who are doing some interesting things.

All states and municipalities are challenged with money at the moment.

Berkeley, Boulder, places in Pennsylvania have some very interesting and aggressive programs.

Berkeley has the 80, Boulder's got the 40.

They're bigger than we are.

But the point is, my bet is given this economy,

4% and a nice stable time might look pretty good.

And you could finance lots of things with that.

So my questions here at the end is, are you interested in a plan that builds on a dialogue you're inviting to have that really looks more broadly and more aggressively at what you could do?

Guys in Stanton are talking about a municipal solar utility.

That's not just the rules of buildings.

There are lots of things that are going on.

So thank you.

Go forward and do better.

My name is Guillermo Obia and I'm here with the American Cancer Society and I'm here to do two things tonight and the first is to brag about Charlottesville a little bit, which I think we all like to hear sometimes.

For those of you who don't know, Wheeler for Life is the main fundraiser for the American Cancer Society and we raise money for patient and caregiver services and for research.

Basically our goal is to find a cure for cancer.

Not a small goal, but one that's necessary.

We'll have 14 relays for life next year.

We've had 13 so far.

And last year, we raised over $270,000 for those services and for that research, which I think is impressive given our city and our community.

In the past 13 relays we've had, we've raised over $2.4 million total, which I don't think enough people know about, so I'm hoping that you all will help me spread the word about that.

The second thing I'm trying to do is to invite you all and the community to come out to Relay in 09.

It will be on May 30th.

It will be at Montchalo High School starting at noon and it basically goes for 20 hours.

Our motto is that Relay doesn't sleep so neither will we that night.

So hopefully we will see you all there.

Thank you very much.

Hi, I'm Brandon Collins.

I live in Charlottesville.

I've been here all my life, 35 years.

And I'm here, I was part of a crew of folks who drafted an open letter to the city council and the city manager concerning the rebreaking effort, which you all should have gotten in your email boxes today.

And hopefully that's going to be posted in some various spots around town.

and that's been endorsed by a few businesses, a few individuals and have a couple of last minute endorsers as well.

Basically the letter, I'll leave a copy here for you guys, it calls on to cancel or alter the plan reburking of the mall in favor of maintenance and repair and furthermore that the funds and the attention to city council be given

to a serious attempt to address the housing issue in Charlottesville.

I've kind of gotten on this sort of as an outsider after listening to concerns of a bunch of workers downtown and you know folks out there are scared of what impact this is going to have on the downtown mall and their jobs and their ability to pay the rents for one and

The huge sum of money that's being spent on this seems like not such a great idea.

There are a number of concerns in the letter that explain why so many folks think this is a bad idea.

I could go over all of those if you like, but I don't think that's terribly necessary.

But some of those issues are that you guys have admitted that next year there's a budget crunch.

Coming around and a lot of folks feel like 7.5 million dollars isn't

The quality community councilors come to you guys asking to guarantee a local workforce on this project and as far as we've seen there's no real guarantee of that with that contract and that's a concern.

And the folks downtown that work in restaurants downtown are extremely concerned about use of their patios.

doing construction and there are a number of regulations about how that's supposed to go down that most people disagree with and those include businesses, not just the workers and it's my understanding there's a petition being circulated

But you guys might reconsider the rules on how you're going to deal with the allocation of patio space.

I hear it's up to a thousand signatures, so hopefully somebody will get that petition to you soon.

You know, the main thing to me, it seems like

Good evening Mr. Mayor and Councillors.

First I want to thank the mayor and the councillors for the public meeting of the city and the county regarding the proposed water plan.

I think it was a successful meeting.

IDB on the consent agenda, which on the consent agenda reads $7,200, reimbursement to the neighborhood department service system, ICAE.

Apparently two members of staff weren't about moving.

And I think in a time when people are paying and are asking, can I pay the electric bill or should I pay for food this month, that's $7,200 to Minneapolis to me is an unbelievable amount of money.

I'm not so concerned about what matter this conference was about, but that the city spent this kind of money to send to staff members in these tough economic times.

The agenda goes on to say be it further resolved that this appropriation is conditioned upon receipt of the money from ICOER.

My question is has this money been received?

And then also to comment that citizens, council and staff need to ask questions about this type of spending in a tight city budget.

And in my second point, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority and Rivanna Salt Waste Authority is seeking applications as Chair Mike Gaffney's term is ending.

I understand it is the city's turn to choose the nominee and the county to agree or not.

We thank Mr. Gaffney for his service.

After several years, it is time for a change.

If Mr. Gaffney is reappointed, the city will not have another opportunity for two years.

Mr. Gaffney, a county choice, will have served multiple terms.

It is time for a change.

It is time for a different pair of eyes, ears, perspective, and ideas to serve as advance to a more authority chair.

The silent majority of ratepayers have no input regarding reservoir test force questionnaires.

They are again going to have minimal input if the city does not appoint one of its own as chairperson of ISWA.

Slowly and insidiously, city residents are losing their freedom of input and reservoirs will build on all lands.

In 1762, Charlottesville was created by an act of the General Assembly in the present county in 1777.

I'm very upset, nervous, whatever, about some information that came to me.

excuse me, Donnie Smith, 810 Wilkes-Davieux, and I believe that I've all gotten copies of this information.

What it is, is an email from Tom Frederick, the director of the Rev.

Warren Sewer Authority, to Aaron Kimo of Gannett Fleming.

the cover sheet of his edits to a potential report from Janet Fleming to the Ravenna Wilmer Sioux Authority.

The first thing reading the cover page that he has on his edits

He says, please consider the attached comments on your dredging letter.

I have edited this on the basis that this will go public so the public and world become the audience.

It seems like to me that he's trying to control what information is getting at, if not outright misleading the public on what's going on.

Then on page six of the report,

The one that distresses me the most, first he has a comment.

This is a little hard to read.

Aaron, I edited this out because I'd like a softer approach to the future of dredging as opposed to launching into a big situation.

Keep small options open as

This dialogue with the community and then the following was deleted.

Although dredging now does appear to be a practical alternative for expanding largely water supply, water supply system.

to satisfy the projected need, it may be feasible to implement shorter term and smaller quality dredging projects over time that could enhance the South Fork, Rivanna water, Summit reservoir as a community asset in terms of recreational uses and potential

to potentially enhance the overall ecological result of the reservoir.

I'm sorry, this is very small print.

I don't know whether this is criminal or math reasons or anything like that.

What it sure as heck is, is it's a breach of fiduciary responsibility on the part of Mr. Frederick by trying to control whether information comes out of our consultant.

We paid these consultants millions of dollars and

We did this because they're supposed to be experts and we want to hear what they're going to tell us and to give us the correct information.

And it just really worries and distresses me that we are getting the information in this particular case.

And I sort of wonder what other cases, but I don't know about where information has been withheld or altered.

Some things?

I'm out?

You're out.

Okay.

Good evening.

I'm Peter Klenan.

I live at 407 Head Street in the city.

There's an article in the Daily Progress on the 26th of November, I believe, by Roshana Dixit about the capital improvement program and what projects are expected to have to wait or which funding has been taken out of the capital improvement program.

I was curious to see what the details were of that.

I'm not sure that all the details are in that article, but it appeared that there was a substantial amount of removal of funds for community transportation projects.

The pedestrian

Infrastructure projects were virtually eliminated and money for the local park and recreation improvements that were scheduled was also removed.

I believe it was totally removed, but that may not be exactly true.

But those are the pedestrian destinations that people have been walking to.

In our city we have a commitment to a more balanced transportation network and to balance pedestrianism and bicycle infrastructure and transit with automobile use.

It just appears that very little, if any, of the funding for the automobile transportation was eliminated from the capital improvement program.

and so my conclusion is that the non-controversial projects that have to do with pedestrianism and parks and recreation were eliminated while the controversial automobile projects that will promote additional traffic in our city and promote things that we have been trying to eliminate like additional single occupancy vehicles driving in and through the city

But I think we may be on the wrong path.

Good evening.

I'm Nathan Blessing.

I'm a proud residence at the 10th and Page neighborhood at 809 Anderson Street.

I have a simple frustration and an easily implementable solution to a problem.

I am currently entangled with the city with a variance request with the zoning department back too close to a property line.

And the majority of my frustration has come from the fact that

The zoning department of the neighborhood development department does not have a clear and stated mission or even goal of what they're trying to achieve.

When asked the question, the members of the zoning department simply reply, you know, I try to enforce the ordinances, which is obedience for obedience sake without looking at any of the other causes behind the people appealing the ordinances or the rationale for the implementation of the ordinances to start with.

It's kind of a frightening thing.

With that scenario, there's really no room for these individuals who are very hardworking and very committed to enforcing the ordinances to be able to use rationale, reason, or judgment of their own in any way, shape, or form on how to address issues coming towards them or how to deal with issues that are already under play.

So one thing that I think would be very helpful for them is if they did have a mission or vision statement of some sort.

The Planning Commission does, you all know this, to safeguard the interest and well-being of Charlottesville neighborhoods through world-class customer services that provide community-oriented engineering, proactive code enforcement, collaborative neighborhood planning.

Great.

That's great.

They know what they're doing.

Every day they come into work, here's what we're trying to accomplish.

The zoning department should have the same benefit.

I've been working on one.

It's crude, it's clumsy, and it's overly worded, so here it goes.

Through collaborative community involvement, rational zoning efforts, and reasonable enforcements of existing ordinances,

The Zoning Commission is committed to making the city of Charlottesville a more safe, more valuable, more living community.

I believe the people in this department, if they were empowered every day that they walk in the door, we're here to make this community more safe, more valuable, and more livable.

They'd be able to look at the problems that come to them in a different way.

So, I'm sure you can do better than that, but having the simple goals of the way that they are supposed to come towards people I think would be helpful for them.

Thank you, Mr. Curtis.

Mr. Mayor and members of council, my name is Linda Seaman.

I live at 2010 Greenbrier Drive and am a member of the Greenbrier Neighborhood Association Executive Committee.

The Greenbrier neighborhood and other neighborhoods in the northern part of the city, as well as areas of adjacent Albemarle County, will be significantly affected by the Meadow Creek Stream Restoration Project and the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority, Meadow Creek's sewer interceptor replacement and upgrade project.

Both projects are huge and will have lasting effects on Greenbrier Park residential properties and the Rivanna Trail.

At its November 24th meeting, the Greenbrier Neighborhood Association Executive Committee passed the following resolution.

The Executive Committee of Greenbrier Neighborhood Association respectfully requests that the City of Charlottesville form a project committee for the Meadow Creek Restoration and Interceptor Upgrade projects, and that such a committee include representatives from the affected neighborhoods and property owner associations, by the I-Trails Foundation, the Nature Conservancy, as well as City and Ribena Water and Sewer Authority staff.

make this request in the belief that such a committee could enhance communications, provide a forum for the discussion of the complex issues, and monitor the projects on an ongoing basis.

Additionally, our neighbors would like to have a timeline of the proposed activities so they can make decisions affecting their private property.

Thank you, Ms. Simon.

and Jean Chase, 223 Old Lynchburg Road, a 33 year resident of Charlottesville and a 31 year resident of Old Lynchburg Road.

I am here to thank you and I would like to publicly thank Tony Edwards and his design team for the report that they are about to give you all this evening.

in a collaborative effort with the neighborhood, with the neighbors, and for many people who use Old Richburg Road on a daily basis in order to make it safer for everyone and to collect 35 years of bills that have been exacerbated and they are listening, they are creative,

Thank you, Ms. Chase.

I'm David Repass, 227 East Jefferson Street, Charlottesville.

Good evening.

I have observed recently that we have entered the Gilda Age in American politics.

Not the Gilded Age, the Gilda Age, after Gilda Radner.

You may recall her Saturday Night Live sketches, where she would firmly expound a position, but upon being confronted with opposition or difficulty, she would immediately cave in and say, never mind.

Maybe most of you recall.

Well, we see this launch around queuing in in many political situations these days.

Congress gave the Secretary of Treasury $350 billion to underpin the mortgage market and limit foreclosures.

Secretary Paulson decided to do something different with the money.

Congress said, never mind.

In 2006, the National Democratic Party established rules for presidential primaries.

Michigan and Florida broke those rules and held early primaries.

The party leader said, never mind.

The gala age has also reached Charlottesville.

On October 1, 2007, the city council granted a construction easement to VDOT to begin building the Middle Creek Parkway.

Council clearly stated that the easement was enacted with, quote, the expectation that the Albemarle County commit to continued development of the alignment and funding scenarios for the eastern connector.

At your last meeting, when confronted with difficulties with the eastern connector, you said, never mind.

No more pursuit of the eastern connector.

You dismissed the affirmative one and two out of hand, even though staff thought they were worth further evaluation.

I agree that the Penn Park alternative is out of the question.

At your last meeting, you discussed gathering more information.

You do not need more information.

You do not need to spend a cent more on consultants.

You have all the information you need already.

1.

We know Pantops is developing like wildfire and many other things, it will have a major hospital soon.

We know that Route 250 at Freebridge is already extremely congested.

Freebridge needs to be renamed Claude Bridge.

We know that if the Meadow Creek Parkway is completed, more traffic will spill onto 250 as many people use Meadow Creek and 250 as a proxy for the Eastern Connector.

You know that if there is a better lost transit system in the future in the area, 21 North corridor will have first priority.

It will be a long, long time before Pantops would even be considered.

And realistically, do you ever think that a transit system will be designed that will include routes between the North and the East?

Especially now, this point.

You know that if a corridor for the Eastern Connector is not identified now, that future growth in the area of the corridor will make the connector absolutely impossible in the future.

A corridor must be identified now.

Yes, there is no funding immediately in sight.

Why is it that we always project today's political and economic situation into the future as far as we can see?

Two years ago, housing prices were going up and up, and we assumed that that was going to go on forever.

Two years ago, Virginia was assumed to be a solid red state, and the 5th district was assumed to be an inherited right of Virgil Green.

Today, we assume that a no-taxes-for-lays legislature will go on forever.

Things change.

There could be road funding in the future.

Wouldn't it be a tragedy if money became available but any possible corridor for the Eastern Connector had by then been completely built up?

On October 1, 2007, City Council granted easement for the Meadow Creek Parkway with a clear written expectation that Albemarle County would commit to continued development of the Eastern Connector.

The county has remained.

I would say that the easement is null.

Mayor and Councillors, my name is Betty Mooney.

I reside at 201 Sunset Avenue in the city and I have to say at the last meeting I went to about the water supply plan, the Council didn't say never mind.

The Council said we do mind and we are interested in looking at some alternatives and I was very happy to see that.

And I think that the reality is that things really have changed.

and it is hard when things have changed and things have been going in one direction to reverse course and to look at things with new eyes but I think that's what this council is doing and I'm very proud and I'm proud that we're making these initiatives to be a green city to conserve electricity and water and I'm proud to see what you've done with your city buildings and your schools to save electricity

to have sensors on the toilets and the faucets and to save water.

And I'm sure our city manager had something to do with these initiatives and I think these are great.

And that's why I bring up tonight the paper that you all probably saw this summer written by Greg Harper, which I think in his position working for the county was a very brave act on his part.

to put forward some ideas that do say, well we've been looking at how much water supply we need, how much water supply 50 years might need, but he's saying are these assumptions correct?

And I think for the public this paper is very important to read and to discuss and I'm happy to see that

Council Brown is going to have a climate roundtable.

I really think we could have a roundtable about water conservation, how much water we need, because things have changed.

And the assumptions we made when we came up with the water supply plan we have are no longer valid.

We didn't factor in all the conservation we're doing.

and we didn't factor in that we'd been using less water now for six years in the city of the county and the university is making tremendous strides and all of these political bodies are trying but that isn't being factored into the plan we have and the real, the main thing for our citizens is this could save millions of dollars and this could save them at a time when they're very unlikely to be able to pay higher bills this could save them a lot of money

It can also save a lot of trees, a lot of natural resources.

So I'd just like to read a little bit of what Mr. Harper said in his letter to our community and encourage everyone to go to the HOOK website because this letter, you can go to an article that's been on the website about Greg Harper and you can, there's a link there that you can read this entire letter.

He says, there's been a renewed debate lately regarding how Charlotte's fish should best satisfy its future water needs.

People of various perspectives are raising sensible questions and making sincere points.

But while almost all the discussion has been about alternatives for developing a greater supply, there's been a conspicuous lack of serious attention of figuring out how to manage the demand side of the water equation.

How much more water do we actually need?

So I'll leave it at that, but I hope I can come back to you and continue this discussion, because I think it's an important one for our community.

Thank you, Ms. Moody.

That was the last person signing up to speak.

We're actually over time right now on matters by the public, but we will have another opportunity at the end of tonight's agenda for additional comments by matters by the public.

And now we'll open it up to council responses to matters by the public.

Who would like to start?

Thank you.

I'd like to comment briefly on Danny Smith's remarks because they're very serious.

He's making allegations that one of our lead public officials

You know, it's not telling us the truth.

It's basically a way of putting that.

And I think that's a serious allegation.

I don't think it's supported by the facts that you brought before us today.

I'd like you to think a little more closely about the memo you brought up.

You know, it's a complicated issue to try to address.

You know, verbally.

And it's a complicated issue in general, but the essence of it is that the consultant for Rivanna say that judging would give us enough water.

And the head of our water authority said no it wouldn't, you know, and strike that remark.

And in there,

and the reason facts don't support that is number one, Gannett Fleming, the consultant, has consistently said, consistently, that dredging is not practicable.

It doesn't supply enough water to meet our water needs and it's also not practical because of the uncertainties from when you can say you're going to dredge for 50 years and you don't have a public space that you're going to put the spurs of dredging, it makes it very much of a

Hard to plan for type of activity.

The memo you refer to is a draft memo.

And what I believe and what Mr. Frederick will tell you is that his editing of that was to correct an error.

And it obviously appears to be an error to me because it says, this is where it all went.

So although, you know, the word you do is to say, despite the fact that.

Well, he doesn't start the sentence by saying, despite the fact that sentence, he says, although dredging appears to be a practicable alternative, why would he start, if he really meant that, why would he start it with although, because he then goes on to say, it makes it fairly feasible to implement dredging for short term or for smaller quantity dredging projects that could enhance the reservoir.

Why would he use the word although if he actually, unless he meant it, to contrast the rest of the sentence into what Mr.

Frederick has done, and it makes sense to me, is that he has taken a sentence which needed the word not in it, although dredging does not appear to be a practicable alternative, and that's consistent with all the other writing that Gennepin had done preceding that, is using the word not.

The word not was a draft memo.

I think we've all written emails where we've left the word out.

and I think that was where that comes from and I think we need to be very cautious about accusing a public official of this type of mouth reason so I personally think that Mr. Frederick is a straightforward

responsive and responsible director of Rivanna.

I welcome the dialogue that challenges assumptions we make that are fact-based.

I think I bring up information on ways we can conserve, whether we look closely enough at dredging, whether

you know, have we really looked, made a good analysis of how much the pipeline is going to cost.

Those are all, you know, comments I think we should take a closer look at and council agrees.

I just want to thank anybody for

their comments and just a couple things I made an asterisk by the comments about the re-breaking of the downtown law in the letter that was sent today.

I'm just concerned about the timing of it and the feeling of involvement that the restaurants that signed the letter felt that they were able to be engaged in the process in the very beginning.

I guess I'm knowing that there's something that's going on in particular now that has removed the interest in or removed the concern because I know there were a lot of businesses that did get involved with a petition to support the effort even though I know that didn't represent all of the businesses.

But I do have concerns about that.

And, I must admit, I can hear Eugene Reeves' voice in my head early that morning.

Vote Against the Books of Tomorrow, so Mr. Weems, I know you're watching.

Also, to Nathan Glassing and to Linda Sien and Betty Rooney, I'm kind of tying all those three together because what you're talking about is

on the process of more engagement in the community and how decisions are made and what the overall vision and mission for the city staff to do their job, to do it well, and to make sure that people that are looking for city services feel that they're part of the process.

Betty, the Roundtable about water conservation, just I think more education in general about the whole water supply process would be valuable.

I know the neighborhoods are very concerned about that project and it may be just another example of how neighborhoods can get involved even with someone having

a personal concern with a project they're doing in their neighborhood within their home, getting involved in the neighborhood and just understanding more of how the process works and how they're doing on days.

I think it's overall helpful.

And to Dave Reves, I think you were my favorite tonight.

And even though we did have the

Thank you, Ms. Edwards.

A few comments on my own.

I agree with Mr. Huja that the idea that Ms.

Seaman and the neighborhood brought up about a project committee is worth pursuing.

In fact, we've had conversations already along those lines.

I think the city manager was quite willing to support it.

We just want to make sure we have a clear charge.

We want to know why we're

Creighton is committing, what their task is, and I think it's definitely a step worth taking.

I actually don't know anything about masonry, but Brandon Smith, his comment, your comment made sense to me about a wet saw versus a chainsaw, so I don't know anything about it, but it seems like something we should look into.

Thank you, Brandon.

Mr. Dunnington,

You'll be pleased to know that we actually have not only looked into some of the financing programs that you mentioned, specifically the Berkeley model, it's actually on our legislative agenda for the General Assembly session coming up to hopefully get the enabling authority that we need to be able to implement that very kind of financing program here in Charlottesville.

So we're on the same wavelength there.

Mr. Collins,

I think Ms. Edwards raised the question of what's happening now that businesses are turning against the mall project because we had dozens and dozens of businesses that signed petitions in favor of the mall project.

I think the answer was in your letter today and very well addressed in your letter.

It has to do with the frustration, has largely to do with the frustration about the cafe spaces.

and I happen to fully agree with a lot of the frustrations and the concerns that have been raised by some of the restaurants on the mall.

That issue has not come to council yet and I can assure those restaurants who are watching that I happen to believe that we're heading in the wrong path on that particular issue.

and we look forward to having a vigorous debate about the best way to proceed in that regard.

Thank you for bringing all of those issues to our attention.

Mr. Kleeman, I happen to agree with you on the need to preserve pedestrian infrastructure.

Didn't I correct?

You mentioned that it looked like parks and rec improvements were taken out of the budget.

That's not actually true.

Some of the parks and rec improvements were delayed, but there's still a substantial amount of parks and rec improvements in the capital improvement, in the proposed capital improvement program budget.

Mr.

Blessing, please send us your text.

I liked it, and I'd love to forward that on to our neighborhood development services to see if we can't get an admission statement for that department for the zoning folks.

Ms. Hall, the item about ICLEI reimbursing us, the good news is that city taxpayers didn't have to pay a dime for that trip and the irony of your

Your comment, you said that how can we, when people are starting to pay their electric bills, how can we ask them to foot the cost of this trip?

The irony is that the reason why ICLEI paid for our staff to go to that conference is because this was an international or national building code conference.

The entire objective of their attending that conference was to help revise building codes to make our buildings across the country more energy efficient.

and through their efforts, and we received a letter commending our staff for their vigorous efforts, we were able, in the National Building Code, to get a 20% reduction in improvement in energy efficiency for buildings in this country, which is going to result in

who knows, hundreds of millions of dollars of savings to consumers through energy savings.

And I'll just leave it at that.

Thank you to everybody who came to speak tonight.

We're now going to move on to our consent agenda.

We have a number of items on our consent agenda.

Item A is approval minutes of November 3rd and 6th.

Item B is an appropriation of $7,200 reimbursement to neighborhood services from ICLI, second of two readings.

Item C is an appropriation of $2,614 at school construction grant, second of two readings.

Item E is an appropriation of $109,022 fire problem training grant, second of two readings.

Item E is an appropriation of $20,000 Piedmont Housing Alliance loan repayment, second of two readings.

Item F is an appropriation of $4,177.50 bulletproof vests grant, seconded to two readings.

Item G is a resolution of $56,863 carryover of funds for Health Department, first to one reading.

Item H is an ordinance granting easement for steam-toned facilities under University Avenue at McCormick Road to the University of Virginia, seconded to two readings.

Item I is an ordinance granting easement for children, water main and sanitary sewer facilities under stating road to University of Virginia, second of two readings.

There's some move.

I'll second it, but I'd like to discuss the motion for a second.

Okay.

Under item G, the resolution for the fund for the health department is for understanding that there's a fund being sought for both the county

That's fine.

Yes.

Your friendly amendment is accepted.

It's been moved and seconded as amended.

Any further discussion?

Please indicate your vote.

Thank you very much.

We are now going to move on to a public hearing and appropriation.

This is regarding FY fiscal year 2008 year-end appropriations.

This is for the fiscal year that ended this summer from last fiscal year.

Mr. Mayor, members of City Council, I'm kind of suffering from turkey-itis after this weekend, but

In fiscal year 2008, the city has maintained its financial stability, which really makes us one of two cities in Virginia, which is really amazing if you think about it, that have a AAA bond rating from Moody's and Standard & Poor's.

The other city is Alexandria, if you want to know.

The resolution before you appropriates fiscal year 2009 and establishes critical reserves to protect us from adverse economic conditions which I think we're all experiencing.

As we close our books, we will end with a balance of $2.1 million after recommended appropriations.

A combination of revenues over budget and expenditures under budget has contributed to the existing $2.1 million balance.

The major revenue source over budget was the Virginia Communications Sales Tax, which we dramatically under budgeted.

We came in at about $1.4 million over budget.

This was the first full year of it.

So the O'Nan budget, we're pretty close.

It's about maybe $200,000 difference.

We think it's going to be a little bit higher.

And on the expense side, the major thing we saved was basically turnover dollars.

When we do the budgets, we put our cost of living increases, performance increases, in one account.

And if the departments need them, they'll transfer it out.

Well, we had $600 and some thousand dollars left over, which is basically a turnover issue.

This is the third report that I've provided since I have come to Charlottesville.

The first year I reported a year in balance of $7.8 million.

the second year $7 million and this year the $2.1 million after the recommended appropriations.

We are experiencing an economy which in my over 30 years in government finance I have not seen.

I spent 10 years in the prior city revenue forecasting.

It's almost impossible right now to revenue forecast.

It's almost like a crystal ball, throw it up and take a guess, high or low, medium.

Real estate assessments, for example, over the last several years, in 2005 went up 11% just for existing property.

In 2006, it went up over 15%.

In 2007, 5%.

And in 2010, we're looking at, we think the best it's going to be is 1%.

Residential properties have already begun to decline, as we all know.

with what's going on with the business sector, we can look to see commercial properties also get to decline.

Sales tax collections are currently being forecast at $10 million, which is $220,000, the rest of them we collected last year, and $500,000 less than what we budgeted for 2009.

Food and lodging taxes, already looking, the trends are we're going to collect less this year than we collected in 2008.

We don't think we've seen the end of the downward trend.

And that's one of the reasons that we're recommending several reserves in this paper.

One reserve is a utility reserve.

I think everybody remembers DEPCO, Virginia Power, increase their rates by 18%.

And the calculations we've received from facilities maintenance basically says that they're going to need about $230,000 to get them through 09.

So we're requesting a reserve be set up for that.

If it's not needed, we won't use it.

But based on their calculations, they're looking at $236,000.

A dual cost of over $400,000 is being recommended.

Right now, we may not need it.

I mean, it looks like we probably won't need $400,000, but a month ago we did.

And who's to say from what I'm hearing is oil prices are starting to go back up.

We need to make sure that we can get through $2,000 an hour without running out of depth to the situation.

$907,000 and $1.2 million, which really makes up the 2.1 balance, is being recommended, set up as a reserve.

The $1.2 million is a number we need to balance right now, our forecast of 2009.

The $900,000 is just what if.

What if the economy continues to go down?

What if sales taxes come in lower than we're anticipating?

We think we're going to have to have that $900,000 just in case.

As we move forward in 2009, a couple months ago we asked our financial advisor Morgan Keegan to give us some ideas as to how should we be managing in this economy.

And they offered some suggestions and I'll just read a few of them to you.

One was to maintain the 12% general fund balance.

The other was to maintain a debt to operating ratio of less than 8%.

These are all financial policies that the city has adopted.

Contribute 3% to the general fund to the CIP.

Be conservative with future budgeting.

Be prepared to make adjustments, which we're doing.

Closely scrutinize the CIP programs in terms of amount and the timing of when the project should be done.

Evaluate all potential revenue sources, realizing how the increased user fees may be necessary for existing services

but may be extremely difficult to introduce during periods of economic decline as it relates to expansion of services.

So what they're saying is that the whole way you're at right now, don't look too expanded.

Continue to maintain the current financial policies.

The remainder of the fiscal year and the budgets being developed will be a challenge, but from what I've observed since I've been here, the challenge will be met.

If there's no reason, there is a reason why we're AAAC and I have no doubt where we'll remain so.

There's one amendment I want to talk about that we put in here, the wording on the farmer's market, I think it was $67,000.

What we want to do is amend the paper so when it comes back for the second reading, that money goes into the CIP for a future move.

rather than existing services.

This is one they just roll over every year and they really don't need it for the operations.

So we want to put it into MA available if that farmer's market is moved in the future.

So I hope I've summarized it.

I understand there are two more services that you want to put in reserve.

All of the rip operations?

About 3.6 million including all the reserves, except for the 2.1.

Thank you.

What are your items?

So the $33,812 is only the county share of that revenue?

How does that work?

I think so.

I believe the opera house properties that the city and the county bought together missed at the parking lot.

That was a piece of that.

Thank you, Mr. Way.

We're now going to open up the public hearing.

We have one person that's signed up to speak, and again, as always, we ask you to keep your remarks to three minutes.

Ms. Collette Hall.

I read the entire extended agenda on this item too.

There's not, in three minutes I can't ask a question on every item, obviously, so I would like to re-ask the Council or Mr. Ray, I want to be clear.

Is he saying that 2.1 million is going in reserve and 3.6 million is going to be reallocated?

Is that what I'm hearing?

So my comment, even if I may have the numbers of them incorrect, and you will correct me,

As I read it, I noted that so many of the city departments that saved money on whatever, then it turned around and it saved money, then it was reused because it was like, oh, now we found this money that was extra.

Well, how come that isn't also put in reserve?

It seemed like too much money is reallocated.

Thank you, Ms. Hart.

Is there anybody else that would like to speak on this item?

We will close the public hearing.

Well, a lot of the reasons they have money left over is a timing issue.

It was in the budget to spend for a certain thing and they just didn't get around to it for one reason or another, so we're giving it back to them since they came in that much under budget.

2.1 of the 3.6 is what we call continuing appropriations, which basically rolls over based on council ordinances.

1.4 of the 2.1 is the Abbey Landfill, which we had been just rolling over every year and putting in the general fund budget.

This year we're going to not do that and expose it to potentially being spent, we're going to put it in a reserve account.

I'd like to follow up on that.

There are some money that departments don't spend that, as you say, just haven't gotten around to spending.

They haven't purchased a truck yet or whatever.

The continuing, plus all the new appropriations, or new requests where the money wasn't originally for that specific thing.

I asked the same question last year and I share some of the concerns Ms. Hall has about why don't we, if departments save, why doesn't the city end up saving the money as opposed to spending it on something else?

and to somebody I think part of the answer was you know we don't want to create an atmosphere of you better spend at the end of the year is approaching you know you know and in fact if you're frugal something else that you've deemed important can be used on but I'd still like to see a save some of this money and I was wondering if

If you or Mr. O'Connell could comment on whether some of the money that was originally in budgets for various departments is not being returned to the departments but is actually being put aside in terms of the

Generally, if it's not an appropriation here, it's going to fall to fund balance.

The fund balance after these recommendations this year was the $2.1 million.

In prior years, what we've normally done, based on the ordinances, is put it into the CIP contingency account.

Right.

Okay.

Here's the one.

Help me out here please.

We have the two revenues, the communications tax and interest income.

that was larger than what we were paying in the budget.

We also had a number of revenues that are close to $900,000 that we're under.

Whole net revenue is up $1.7 million.

I would get a little bit more follow-up from Dr.

Gallon.

I think it was sort of...

I was staying at Greenbrier for a while, so I know you don't want to discourage selling.

I had a question for Council to see if there would be

Any interest in having a meeting?

I don't know if it would be under the auspices of a work session, but I'd like to explore more of how this can reflect some of the council priorities that we just talked about in our council retreat.

In light of the fact that Council Taliaferro is in here this evening also,

will afford him the opportunity to be a part of the discussion before the next reading.

A quick comment, I mean we could go through, there's some individual items that you might want to debate but part of the thinking of this is to help balance the current budget year we're in because the revenues that are down and using some funds from last year

to help do that and also to reserve, it's close to a million dollars for the future that could be applied towards next year's budget, towards capital projects, towards seeing one-time pilots that we've talked about with city councils that try to get to some of your priorities.

The issue of the $900,000 is that

It would not be spent, and we would come back to council if in fact we needed it because it's being put in a reserve.

It would not be spent unless the economy continues just to go south for sales tax collections, food, lottery tax collections, and those types of things.

We can control the expense side.

We get controls on that.

It's hard to control what somebody's going to go ahead and spend it tomorrow for an example, which affects our sales tax, and that's why we're thinking

What it's looking like now, $900,000 isn't an awful lot of money.

And it could disappear very quickly if we have a couple bad months.

We weren't known until February, for example, what December was for sales tax.

I mean, it's the first week in February before we even know that, and that's just the way the process works.

The state, the merchants collect the money on the sales in October, for example.

I actually agree with Ms. Edwards that I'm sure most of these requests have merit but I think trying to put it more in the context of not only how does it address staff priorities but how does it address some of the council priorities that we've spelled out and I'm not necessarily suggesting that we take all the money that you're

I'm proposing to put aside the reserves here and spend it all, but I do think it might be worth having a little bit more in-depth conversation about how some of these dollars can be used to advance some of the council priorities.

I had a specific question about, you have, there's a lot of little pots here of reserves, so I think it reflects the caution that you have and that Mr. O'Connell has about the state of the economy.

There's a fleet fuel reserve here, $400,000 to be put in reserve to offset rising fuel costs for our vehicular fleet at a time when our fuel costs are plummeting and we don't know what's going to happen next year I suspect this is to address some unknown rise in fuel costs

I think it reflects

Maybe a lack of imagination.

We were so creative earlier this year when utility fuel costs started going through the roof and coming up with a long list of ways that we can reduce our utility expenses.

And there's a goal of reducing consumption by 20%, and this was in addition to that, is what that calculation was.

and I said in my presentation earlier that that's one of the reserves that may be better.

I think you have to look.

The gasoline for vehicles is going down, but we know that the million power bill has gone up.

and we know that reserve is probably going to get spent whereas this is one that hopefully if we can reduce and the prices stay where they are now or close to it or less than what we have in the budget we may be good at the end of the year and all this money would be available to go into a larger reserve for the whole city government

And that's really why we're putting it in reserve so it won't be spent.

To make sure it's there.

You could put it in that department.

I'm trying not to sound like a broken record, but I think the issue for me is I applaud us putting money to reserves.

I think the energy reserve is laudable.

I think the reserves for both expected shortfalls next year or unexpected shortfalls is a good idea.

That's good planning.

We really don't know where the economy is going to be and what our sale tax revenue is going to be.

And six months from now, are we going to be

You know, climbing out of this economic hole or continuing to go down, who knows?

My point is, if the department saves some money, can they just go ahead and spend it again?

in terms of the new appropriations, or are there opportunities to identify priorities for each department, but also look at those savings as something that could be utilized, as Edwards perhaps is pointing out, in accordance with council priorities, or maybe contributes to the reserves.

I think the way to show me that is for us to give you the year-end budgets of each department.

I think you'll see some major savings that have gone into the general fund.

I mean, I think this has the appearance

Most of these are small amounts of money in reality, except for the reserves that come up.

I'm not sure.

I understand we're on a bit of a tight time frame.

We need to approve this via our next meeting in order to close out our books for the year.

Generally, you'll want to get it done.

There are ways to present a comprehensive financial statement that basically says that none of these have been designated at this point, so we're just going to be put in the general fund balance.

Yes, it can be done.

The auditors don't like to have it done that way, but there's nothing that says you absolutely have to have it done.

And I think if we could go ahead and approve it on first reading tonight, I'm not sure if we have time to pull together a full-fledged work session in the next two weeks, but maybe at least a couple of counselors could meet with you, Mr. O'Connell, or...

whoever to talk about some of the allocations and are there any funds that might be shifted to address some of the council priorities or other funds that you know based on the year end reports that we'll be seeing could be more funds people in the reserves I mean just to have conversation along those lines are there any councilors that would volunteer for just to have two of us meet with staff?

Okay.

If there's nothing else, I'll move the hearing adjustments.

I'll second that, and I will carry it forward.

Excuse me.

In his presentation, Mr. Ray, if I understood him correctly, suggested

Moving the continuing appropriation of $67,990 for the city market from the general fund to the capital project fund.

Into a fund designated for the city market.

Right.

What actually has it been?

So that was the intent.

Rather than set aside for that specific purpose.

I'll move it to include that.

All right, so it carries forward to our next meeting.

In the meantime, we'll have a discussion.

Thank you very much, Mr. Wray.

Mr. Mayor, members of council, this is an ordinance that's offered tonight on first reading, which would grant a utility easement to the University of Virginia for underground electrical duct bank facilities near the intersection of Stadium Road and Emmett Street.

Included in your agenda materials is a standard easement deed that we have used in similar utility easements with the university in the past.

There is no city budgetary impact from this easement.

I will open the public hearing.

Does nobody sign up to speak?

Is there anybody who would like to speak on this item?

I will close the public hearing.

Any questions or move to ordinance?

Is there a second?

Second.

Alright, ordinance carries forward to our next meeting.

First of two readings.

Thank you very much.

Okay, next item is our report.

Old Lynchburg Road.

This is our project that our staff has been working on very diligently with our consultants with the neighborhood.

We're here to receive a report.

Mayor, Council Members, thank you for the opportunity to update you on the Litchfield Road project.

We have been working quite a bit on the project and would like to bring you up to speed to where that stands with the issues.

I also thank the neighborhood for their participation and cooperation in the process.

We've met several times which we will outline for you as well.

The input has been very good and hopefully we are closing in on a single concept that you have displayed behind you tonight that we can move forward towards a final design.

As you're aware, the corridor that we're speaking of is from the southern city limits line to Jefferson Park Avenue.

The goal that we have before us is to achieve a project that will provide pedestrian safety, safer traffic movement along with that, and potentially provide some bike facilities

Sidewalks and address the drainage issues along this corridor.

We have the special interest of the park at the Southern Inn and Fry's Spring Beach Club at the Northern Inn and we have spoke with members of both as well as the biking community to try to best understand what all the issues are.

I've had the assistance of our design team from AC Matter and Mattern

Thank you for the evening.

I think we have this handout.

I think you guys have that.

I'm going to start off with, I'll be flipping through these things, it'd be good if you guys kind of flip through here with me, so help out through this stuff.

I guess this is basically the overall picture of the project, which you see there, and get flipped through to the next.

The first step of the design process was for us to set up a neighborhood workshop and meet with the neighbors.

And the goal for the meeting was first to define and basically communicate with the neighbors who are attending the workshop what the goal of the project is.

So basically

for the parameter ORSM so they can understand what the scope of the project is, what are we on the contract to do so we know what parameter we can work with here.

Basically which was to address the drainage issues along the stretch of the road, address the sidewalk or bypass connectivity along the entire length of the project.

and also Addison, Traffic and Safety for the project.

In that meeting, basically, we collected all the comments and heard their concerns.

You know, what are the concerns in relation to those three items?

You know, who are the people who, if they're in front of their houses, flooding, and how is it flooding, how bad is it flooding?

And also, with a bike and a sidewalk, you know, what would they like to see?

And also, traffic.

you know the speeding and what we're looking to base here because we want to hear that first so we can implement that in our design.

So once we got all the comments and all the concerns, we developed the concept plans and we developed two concepts based on the comments and concerns we heard which we presented that on March 4th, 2008 on our first season information meeting.

We have two concepts that we're going

Basically presenting this meeting and see what other comments we hear from that which one.

It wasn't like they were going to be voting for one of the items from each that they liked.

And I briefly go through these concepts there in the next page.

is concept one.

We basically, from the edge of the existing pavement, either side, we provided curbing along the length of the project, which was related to the address of drainage issues, where we're going to have inlets and collection systems with the drainage underground for the length of the project, and also provided sidewalk in either side of the street for the entire length of the project.

That was concept one.

And the next sheet is concept two.

Basically, for the concept two, we had a sidewalk along the length of the project from beginning to the end.

On the right side, which is the Azalea Park side, and on the left side, which is the Fry's Spring part of the side, we had a sidewalk there.

You guys have been probably looking at the plans behind you there, the beginning of the project, if this thing works here.

It's right there from the waterway right there.

I think that might not work very well there, but the waterway that you see out there is the beginning of the project.

Basically it's the Azalea side all the way and then JPA, the other side is the end of it.

So basically what we have there is a bike lane on the Azalea side and a Fry's Spring side, we have the sidewalk for concept two.

We presented that again, we collected comments and looked at the concerns and we started looking at the further developing of the design.

Based on all that concern and learning more about the design of the project, looking into it more and walking the project, what we identified here was

Basically, there were two items that impacts the footprint, which is the bike lane and the sidewalk for the entire length of the project.

So those were the ones that impact it, and it issues a different part of the project.

For instance, in the south of Middleton, there's no driveways and all that, so there wasn't as much of an impact.

In the north, of course, there's more

and

from this point on toward JPA on the right side of the road, Azalea side of the road, we have all these houses and the driveways there.

So if we're going to add a bike cleaner sidewalk on the right side, and if you look at the pictures that I have up here, there are two pictures of the driveways.

And they're fairly steep, so if you guys can imagine adding another five foot there, those drivers are going to be even steeper.

And if the yards that you see over there, in order to maintain the yards, we have to put a retaining wall there.

So that would be, of course, costly.

And the next page of that, if you look at it, I'm kind of trying to get a magnitude of how big these walls are.

We've got two pictures there of other projects, but not this project here.

So you can kind of see there's something four foot to eight foot walls.

It's costly, of course, and it's not necessarily, as far as the aesthetic goes, it's not very pleasing.

So we're trying to avoid it as much as we can.

So that was one design constraint.

The next design constraint, if you guys flip again to the next stage, is the Fry's Spring Beach Club there.

The pictures on the top right, from the outside of the robot, you see the edge of the row is very close to the fence there, the wooden fence.

And the picture on the left corner, you see that there's an existing

retaining wall, and of course the fence.

So you kind of see the relationship of the fence to the pool.

So if you can imagine again adding another five-fold or so for the side wall or bike, what an impact will have to the pool.

Although it's not going to impact the actual pool, but it's going to, definitely it's not going to be a good impact.

There's an adverse impact.

So those were the main design constraints there.

So having those in hand,

We started developing one concept.

What we knew of this one concept that we had, it's going to be a different typical section throughout the length of the project.

And we presented that in October 14, 2008 for the second citizen information meeting.

Basically, so we formed from the beginning where we got the comments.

The second, first citizen information meeting, we collected comments and we wanted the citizen to see how we came out to develop one and what they feel about what we had developed and get their comments.

And again, going through what we had presented in that meeting here is, if you guys flip to the next page here, and I'll have to walk through, look at the plans and these pictures all at the same time.

From beginning of the project, waterway to Middleton Road, if you look at the picture on the bottom right, kind of represents that area.

You have a hilly area to the right side, and you have a big drop-off down there.

So on the right side, we added a bike lane.

and a sidewalk there.

On the left side, we're going to do the edge of the pavement as it is, probably add a curb there, but don't widen that area because there's a drop off and there's a flood plain in that area.

So we don't want to impact the flood plain, so we choose not to widen that side.

and the right side will have a bike lane and a sidewalk.

And we continue this bike lane and a sidewalk all the way to Milliton Lane.

For that lane here, we're going to drop off the bike lane and we feel that if you have a bike lane that's visiting the bike lane, you stop at that point, they can take a right and use the side streets there if they wish to

be separate from the traffic and on that.

And if they want to stay on JP, of course they can, but it's not going to be a designated bike lane for that length of the project there.

So the bike lane and the sidewalk on the right side will be dropped off.

And as we move from Middleton North, we will have the sidewalk on the left side of the road to continue on, which is basically top of the page from the road on the Fry's Spring.

And that will continue on all the way until we get to the Fry's Spring Beach Club.

And for that point there,

I think using the words left and right when the map is sideways.

So basically on the

The upper end of this project, the sidewalk would be on the east side.

Yes.

Well, actually, the sidewalk from Middleton to the Fry's Spring would be on the west side.

On the Fry's Spring beach side.

On the west side.

On the west side.

Yes.

And then from the Fry's Spring all the way to JPA would be on the east side.

from just the south of the Fry's Spring Beach Club to there will be over on the east side.

There you go.

Got it.

Okay.

And again, the reason for that move is because we do not want to impact the Fry's Spring Beach Club.

Okay.

So that's basically where our concept was for the length of the project.

So where we are right now is basically trying to develop the plans, plan your plans, to get it to a point that we can establish the right of way, the limits of right of way for the length of the project so we can see how much impact will have on different property as far as right of way goes.

And as we go through there, those primary plans can be used if you do need to go to a public hearing, they can be used for the public hearing purposes.

Yes.

What are your scores for the details?

Briefly, yeah.

Yeah, sure.

Along the length of the project, as we've been curbing in there, we're going to be looking at the, as far as the roadway goes,

It is going to be going to the east side of the roadway or the west side of the road based on the curves on the road.

So we're going to be looking at low points.

Basically the curving that we're going to be putting out there is our drainage system along with the inlets.

So basically we'll have catch drains along the length of the project that we're going to be putting there.

So it will be a new proposed system along the

We're collecting the runoff and we have a proposed system will come in and we have one discharge right along the creek where it crosses the middle turn on the west side of the Orange Brook Road.

and then the other outfall, and this again is a conceptual right move, the other outfall going to be right along the main land and be going through there and be outfalling right along the Azalea Park, just north of the waterway, east of that and we are planning to use

Yes, yes.

Well, we had developed an estimated back in February there and I got to say, you know, when I say estimated cost it was based on, it was first of all it was conceptual,

where we had retaining walls and all that.

Back then we were a little bit above $3 million, but I guess I say that, but at that time if you look at the economy and all that, the cost of the lot of bids that we were getting were much higher at that time.

Since then we have looked at the plans and obviously removing the retaining wall, trying to remove the retaining wall from the east side of the road.

We hope to reduce that cost, of course, along the length of the project.

I know that, of course, a lot of the bids at that time, as I said, were higher for the project.

Now we think the bids are going to be a little bit lower.

So we'd like to really further develop the plan to get a better number for the cost of the project.

Although it's a number that we left a long time ago, we just tried to

And just so everybody knows, a substantial portion of the funding for this project has been included with the proffers on the biscuit run development.

Now, who knows when we'll see those dollars, but I think it's important for

citizens to know, which is somewhat unprecedented, the fact that we have county dollars paying for a city road project and we can publicly commend the county for making that happen.

But I guess the big question is how do we make up the gap?

It's not so much a question for you, but more for Mr. O'Connell.

The proposal that was sent to the planning commission last week includes $3 million over the next five years.

It anticipates that the city would need to spend the money to do the project and that the point where the profit comes back from, basically that would come back to the capital fund to reimburse it, but we don't know how soon that will be, so we're trying to put us federal together.

As you approved, last year was phased over three years for the three million dollars with large amounts of money being in fiscal year 12 and 13.

What was proposed last year was enough money to do the engineering study to come up with what the exact cost would be to get to the point that we are tonight and then go a step further with actually construction drawings and getting the tighter cost estimates.

The entire design, well we're hoping to have the design completed by first quarter of 2010.

And of course that's part of that is not just sitting there doing design, there's a lot of meeting with the public and all that for the ride away and all that.

So there's a lot of design process goes along with it.

Any other questions, comments?

I'd like to comment.

I think this does address a couple pressing needs.

I think there's a definite need for a sidewalk along the road.

I think one side is a reasonable way to accommodate that.

I also like the idea that there's now

a bike lane going uphill until you get to Middleton Lane.

Having biked that numerous times, you don't really need a bike lane going down the hill.

In fact, you have to worry about exceeding the speed limit going down the hill.

And so I think that's also, you know, I think there's a lot of positive things.

And I appreciate the spirit of cooperation of trying to work through this so that all the stakeholders ended up, you know, the Fry Springs, the bicyclists, the neighbors,

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And thank you to all the stakeholders, the neighbors, for getting involved and making this a good project.

Thank you very much.

We have another report on our agenda tonight.

This is a report from our Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Airport on their master planning process.

Is that better?

Thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight as the sitting manager stated.

Airport has been involved in some of the issues that have been before you in the past six months and we thought this was a good opportunity to reacquaint you with the airport and its activities and reintroduce the master plan.

Not that any of that has changed.

And so I'm going to speak very quickly to move through a lot of information so feel free to stop me if you have a question as we're moving along.

First of all, this is a recent shot of the airport.

The airport was established in 1955.

It was transferred to an authority in 1983 and as a result we currently operate as a political subdivision of the state and we operate as an enterprise fund.

While we enjoy being tax exempt, we operate as a private business with a net income and not as a government fund such as the city or county.

Our primary sources of revenue are parking revenue, airline revenue, and rental car revenue.

We have a host of smaller revenues such as rents, ground leases, and other vendor income, but these are our top three.

We operate through a residual airline agreement in that our net income is preset.

So the airline rates and charges are set each year after we acknowledge anticipated revenues and expenses such that our net income equals $178,000 per year.

And we'll talk about that relevance in just a moment.

And finally, since 1955, the FAA and the State Department of Aviation have invested a little over $65 million into the airport.

And the last economic impact analysis done by the state of Virginia showed that our local economic impact was plus $167,000 per year, and that was in 2004.

This is a shot of the airport in 1969 and as you can see the west side, this is pointing north, relatively undeveloped and there are the tea hangers and the terminal building at that time.

Compared to today, this is a shot from July of this year.

We see the west side development, the northeast development, the development continuing on the east side, and I guess as the economy continues to improve, development has been approved for this wooded area as well, so that will be developed sometime in the near future.

Milestones in the airport's history, airport planning and approval with the city and county in the 1940s.

The FAA issued a grant for construction in 1953, at that time for a 4,600-foot runway.

The first terminal building was constructed in 1960.

The runway was extended to its current length of 6,001 foot in 1966.

The air traffic control tower was added in 1974.

The existing terminal building construction was initiated in 1989.

We renovated the old terminal building to serve as our aircraft rescue and firefighting station in 1991.

And in 2003, a master plan update was initiated.

The first phase of the master plan was a five year phase for 2003 through 2007 that included the construct runway three runway safety area phases four and five and that included the roundabout on the backside of the airport route 743.

Extend Runway 21 that has been in the news this year.

The master plan included in this phase the phase one and two elements of the runway extension as well as land acquisition required to establish the Runway Protection Zone control, which is an FRL requirement.

construct conventional hanger and T-hanger and taxiway.

The hanger has been constructed.

The taxiway has been constructed.

The T-hangers will be developed through private industry and that has not taken place yet.

the airport development environmental assessment, which has been done, construct overflow parking, which has been completed, acquire an aircraft rescue and firefighting vehicle, which has been completed, and design an electrical vault relocation, design snow removal equipment storage building, and west side access road.

Due to some changes in the FOA funding for the past fiscal year,

The electrical vault has been designed, the center removal equipment storage building has not, and the west side access road has not.

The next phase is a five year phase as well and again it covers items including general aviation, constructing an access road, and public parking, sealing and apron, but also the construct, extend runway, runway 21, the runway safety area, taxiway and lighting.

And so that's designed to be a follow on on what could have already taken place but has not from the first phase of the master plan.

Again, an additional airport development environmental assessment, which is a federal requirement for each phase of development.

And designing specifically nav aids or navigational aids to go with the runway extension, such as installing federal required lighting and signage.

A visual approach slope indicator, runway end lights, and relocating localizer.

And then finally, replacing a snow removal equipment vehicle.

As with any master plan, they change.

Before we even print the master plan, some things are already out of date and something new might already need to be added.

So each phase of the master plan really remains fluid and isn't set in stone so it all depends on federal and state funding and so each year we set a six year capital improvement program similar to a county or a city except that ours is required to be six years specifically due to federal requirements.

and so any element may be postponed, deferred, eliminated, or new elements added depending on how the funding scenario comes from the federal government.

The Federal Aviation Administration operates through what's known as the Airport Improvement Program, AIP.

That is a federally tax-supported program.

It is a four-year program.

It expired in 2007.

Last year, Congress failed to reauthorize and reappropriate the program.

So the FAA has continued to operate on 30-, 60-, and 90-day short-term approvals.

and airports have not been receiving their full entitlement or discretionary funding for projects for the past year.

We've been notified that hopefully due to the election being over that Congress will take up the program in the spring, but we've been notified that our fiscal year 2009 funding will also not be fully available as it usually is on a year-to-year basis.

So again that change is how things take place in the master plan and we have not been able to accomplish our fiscal year 2008 or will not be able to accomplish our fiscal year 2009 plan as intended because of that funding.

The last phase is a 10 year phase bringing it to a 20 year master plan.

The last 10 year phase especially concentrates on the west side of the airport which is the last available land for development.

It includes the construction of general aviation hangers both on the east side and the west side.

Installing west side utilities and infrastructure for further development of the west side.

and Terminal Building Rehabilitation.

The previous phase had a parking deck that was studied last year and deferred, so this would have been the second level of that parking deck if the traffic were continuing.

And again, looking at further navigational aids and hangar construction.

Right now we're at a very strong general aviation or corporate base, and our operations actually exceed Richmond International Airport.

not for commercial aircraft but for the general aviation or corporate traffic and we have a waiting list for corporate hangars.

The airport authority has not today been involved in financing of hanger construction and so we've tried to partner with private industry to accomplish that and we'll hopefully be able to do that now.

We're a company interested in looking at Westside development and we're working with the FAA to determine what type of requirements have to be met by the company in order to take a closer look at that with the Airport Authority Board.

One thing that's been in the news is the runway extension and I just wanted to point out that that planning did start in 2003 and why extend the runway?

First of all, just a quote that we like to share, an airport runway is the most important mean street in any town, but specifically two reasons.

First of all,

A condition known as high density altitude that affects an aircraft's performance.

It doesn't affect all aircraft, but specifically regional jets.

We know that regional jets will continue to serve our airport for many years to come.

We're the perfect size airport for a regional jet.

and especially the 50 seat regional jet to 70 seat regional jet.

And the way the aircraft is constructed, it is subject to the high density altitude penalty.

High density altitude is an atmospheric condition that results from a combination of high temperature and humidity, which you know is very prevalent in this area.

Basically it reduces the airplane's performance and in order to take off it needs to either reduce its weight or have increased length of runway.

Right now what happens when we do have high density altitude is that if the original jet is fully loaded and fully fueled, people will have to be taken off of the jet.

It has to reduce its load somehow so it ends up losing passengers, which is

a huge economic expense to the airline as well as to the consumer and ultimately to the airport.

And then finally, number two, aircraft weight and associated economic impact.

We have general aviation aircraft that while the issue may not be high density altitude, it may be that it's an international flight and the aircraft wants to take off fully fueled and because of the length of the runway and it being fully fueled and its weight,

The pilot is not comfortable taking off due to the 6,000 feet.

We also have aircraft charters.

UVA is our number one customer with athletic charters and often they utilize 757 aircraft and the aircraft are full.

UVA packs every square inch with people and equipment.

and depending on the weather conditions, the pilot may not be comfortable if the aircraft's fully fueled.

And so what might happen is that if the aircraft hasn't already been fueled, the pilot will decide not to fully fuel in Charlottesville, meaning that it will have to land elsewhere to fuel again before it arrives at its destination.

What that means to us is the possibility of losing that charter.

the inconvenience to the customers such as UVA or the visiting athletic team but then we also lose the fuel revenue and that goes to another city elsewhere and again that's an important revenue stream to the airport because we are financially self-supporting and receive no forms of income for our operating budget from any other entity such as the city or the county or the FAA or the state

and then finally even troops.

We had an example where we had troops from Stanton and Charlottesville that had been deployed to Iraq and they were returning on a 747 which could have landed at the airport but the pilot decided at the last minute he wasn't comfortable and decided to divert to Richmond but our lobby was full of the media and all the families who had to find out at the last minute that they had to

Drive to Richmond.

So extending the runway creates lots of positive benefits, not only directly for the airport, but indirectly for the local community, especially economic benefits.

The runway extension project was initiated in the master plan update in 2003.

The master plan update was accepted by the FAA and state in 2004 and the county adopted it as part of its comprehensive plan in 2004.

We conducted a benefit cost analysis of the runway extension for the FAA in 2004 and then we undertook an environmental assessment in 2005 of the first phase of the

master plan update that included nine projects, including the runway extension.

In January 2008, the Department of Environmental Quality approved the master plan update for those nine projects, including the runway extension, and the FAA issued a FONSI, a Finding of No Significant Impact, meaning that those nine projects could proceed when they were adequately funded.

Also in January 2008, the Commonwealth of Virginia issued a new license to show recognizing the improved runway length.

We issued, did a quick preliminary design with our engineering firm in the spring when we found out that state funds might be available for us to undertake some work on the runway extension project.

And we received bids in July 2008 for what we refer to as Phase 1A of what will ultimately be four to five phases to accomplish the full runway extension project.

and I'll show you a photo of the Phase 1A in just a moment.

And in December 2008, we hope to commence construction of Phase 1A and also complete our preliminary engineering.

Phase 1A is extremely preliminary.

It's just moving an internal perimeter road and accomplishing erosion and sediment control measures and wetlands mitigation.

It's not really any construction that would be noticed by the public to be runway extension.

And as part of the preliminary engineering, the engineers were tasked with looking at our dire need for fill material, which we'll also talk about in a moment.

And that report is due in December along with a revised estimate for the overall project.

And as we look at January 2009 and beyond in terms of the runway extension project, we have several threats.

First of all, the congressional failure to reauthorize the airport improvement program.

The current economy, which limits the discretionary dollars that will be available from the FAA and the state.

and also decreases our funding overall because in the current economy our passenger levels have fallen and as a result of that our funding falls with them.

Our federal and state funding is based on our passenger numbers.

our opportunity.

A big opportunity is the preliminary engineering report which will reveal that all of the fill can probably be obtained on site and because of that we're able to revise our estimate which will make it more likely for us to receive federal funding over the next five to ten years to be able to accomplish the project.

This is a project layout.

It's a very busy diagram but primarily

You can see the existing runway and the 800 foot extension and basically

This is all airport property, so the extension is taking place on airport property.

We are required to construct or to own what we consider the runway protection zone.

And there's roughly 12 acres that needs to be acquired at the back of these properties and along this property to be able to keep that obstruction free and any type of equipment or facilities from being constructed to ensure the safety of the aircraft and passengers.

This is Phase 1A, and again, this is a busy diagram.

It's a little difficult to see, but basically you can see the outline of the future runway extension right here.

And Phase 1A relocates an internal perimeter road.

It's a gravel road on airport property that currently goes around the end of the runway.

We'll be relocating that to the northern property line and then installing soil and erosion

control measures for the future project.

And then this roadway relocation does create some extra dirt that will be put in place right here, about 300,000 cubic yards potentially.

We call this the sandbox.

As a result of the publicity of dredging and the possibility of the airport being involved last spring, a number of developers come to the airport offering material to the airport.

some free, some for the cost of hauling and some at a price less than what we would have anticipated but we had no place to put it at the time and no county approved soil and erosion control measures in place to be able to stockpile material.

So this creates the sandbox that will ultimately have to be filled in and this also puts us in a position now that we can start filling it in so that if we do have new offers from developers

such as I had a call this weekend for only 10,000 cubic yards but nevertheless 10,000 cubic yards is important if it's free and it was within a mile of the airport from a developer who just needs a place to waste it and if the material is suitable we'll now have a place that needs all local, federal and state requirements for stockpiling and we'll be able to start filling that in.

This is our new opportunity that should be in a report in the next several weeks, but this is a preliminary drawing from the engineering firm just to point out that this is the runway south to north and this is Airport Road from Route 29 just to orient you.

These are areas that the engineering firm investigated and did subfloor investigation, sorry, for the project to determine if there was any suitable material on airport property or adjacent to airport property that we might identify for a source of fill.

We looked at areas south of the airport that is airport property, immediately west of the airport, this being avionics specialties and this being airport property.

the area that needs to be filled in but then some adjacent areas around the perimeter and then this northwest quadrant which is also airport property and we've determined that we have I say 115% just meaning that we've identified more than we need on airport property.

Again, there could be a source available offsite, but its price would have to be less than what it would cost us to excavate onsite in order for it to be attractive to the project overall.

And so we'll be revising our estimate with the FAA to show a lowered or reduced estimate based on this preliminary report that shows we will be able to obtain the fill from our own property without having to haul potentially.

Also, just a quick note on dredging, not to bring up that subject again, but I was able to speak to the South Fork Task Force two weeks ago, and this is just a summary of what we spoke about that evening, and these are all limitations with respect to dredging.

It's not that the airport doesn't want to be a partner in that venture if it were to take place, but we have regulatory issues that we have to comply with.

First of all, the FAA regulates our revenue, and we are not allowed to

take any action that would result in what they call revenue diversion, meaning that we can't spend our money for a non-aviation purpose.

So the federal government would look at dredging as a non-aviation purpose, even if the byproduct benefits the airport.

They would not allow the project funding to be utilized to actually undertake the dredging process.

So that's one regulatory issue that we have.

and we even have to produce reports for them on an annual basis showing every penny that we receive from and or pay to any other government agency just so that we can prove that we aren't engaged in any type of revenue diversion.

We also have procurement limitations and this is another issue that we've talked to the FAA about.

The FAA requires that each project be bid and unlike state code, which allows a public agency to coordinate and purchase with another public agency in the state.

The FAA does not allow that.

They require that everything be bid and in this case their response to our inquiry was that a contractor would have the choice of obtaining the fill anywhere the contractor desires as long as the bid price is met.

So that was one of our restraints.

And then finally our financial status.

If we look at our operating budget, we don't have funds in our operating budget that could support any type of partnership.

With $178,000 net income per year, that $178,000 goes into our capital fund and has to support our matching share for a project and also has to support any

purchase or project that doesn't receive any type of grant funding.

So, for example, parking lot improvements or parking lot construction is a revenue-producing project that receives no funding from the state or federal government.

Also, anything such as purchase of equipment, such as fire trucks or, well, fire trucks are eligible for grants, but pickup trucks or any type of maintenance vehicle on the airport has to come from that $178,000

And then finally, that constitutes our reserve fund.

It flows into our capital fund, which serves as the airport's reserve fund.

And so with our preset annual net income agreement with the airlines, again, the reason that exists is that they underwrite our debt service.

And so that's the exchange.

Our capital funds are limited by the federal and state limitations.

And so we really just have restraints that we do not see an easy way around.

And then finally, I just want to touch on a few current events to let you know what positive things are happening at the airport that I think the community should be proud of.

We just recently underwent our annual FAA certification which gives us the right to continue to operate.

And the airport was commended for the procedures that we use in our day-to-day operations of the airport.

The appearance indicates that we are effective.

And then we received our 18th

Certificate of Achievement, I believe, for Excellence in Financial Reporting from the Government Finance Officers Association.

We're one of only about 38 airports out of 350 in the United States that independently produce our own financial statements and apply for the certification and receive it, so we're very proud of that as well.

The Roundabout approach, we are working with VDOT right now.

This is one of our complaints that we do receive from the public is that the signage is inadequate for approaching the airport, especially for a visitor coming from out of the area or a first time guest of the airport.

The current signage, the green sign, doesn't really indicate very easily if you're driving, especially if it's dark or rainy, that you're approaching the airport and need to be in the left-hand lane.

So VDOT is producing a new signage plan for the entire airport road and we'll be sending that to the airport authority board to take a look at and approve.

So we're very happy about that.

We're also working with Rideshare and looking at the possibilities of two Rideshare lots on the airport.

They are seeking lots that will serve the earlysville area residents and we're looking at one of our regular customer lots but we're also looking on route 743 and route 643 at a gravel lot that was used for construction equipment parking and seeing if we can provide some inexpensive improvements to that area that we might have a lot that Rideshare can have right on 743.

We're also looking at staff initiatives for how we can reduce costs and in the spring the taxi operators came to us and asked for us to improve seating next to their parking area and we didn't have the funding in place to add benches and

So it wasn't completed in the spring, but early this fall one of our staff members approached us and had come up with an idea, actually one of our security guards had come up with an idea for how to renovate some old benches that were in storage at the airport and easily install them.

Little Brick Patio put the benches on and went ahead and undertook this project.

We had and painted the benches all for about $280 and we had budgeted about $2,800 to buy new benches earlier in the spring and didn't get that worked out.

So we had lots of folks working very hard.

We have about 35 employees and they're all working very hard right now to see what we can do to undertake cross savings measures.

looking for new forms of revenue for the airport so that hopefully we can weather the storm without any layoffs or any other service issues with our customers.

We did accomplish some wireless updates.

That was a request from the taxi operators as well, so wireless has been extended to the front of the terminal building on the exterior and it reaches both taxi cab parking areas and the parking lots as well.

and it's been extended to the exterior of the back of the terminal building.

That's been done specifically for operation staff to be able to be in a vehicle and quickly get online and provide an update.

So for example, when it's icy weather,

and there's a plane approaching the airport, we can send out our braking action vehicle, do a braking action report on the runway, upload it and get it to the tower to disseminate via their radio system in a matter of minutes.

Whereas prior to this, the person had to come in, park the vehicle, type it up, fax it, etc.

We're becoming a little more sophisticated in our operations as the systems around us become more sophisticated as well.

That also would allow passengers stuck on an airplane, if by chance you get on an airplane and have to sit on the ramp for a few minutes, you could actually put your laptop out on the airplane and work on the airplane.

We undertook an improvement or expansion of our art program.

We've historically had the Charlottesville Albemarle Art Association in the terminal, but we've expanded that to include other forms of art as well.

And we have a new art in the airport program that we're trying to better represent the region.

And so our first exhibitor is the Virginia Stonecrafters Guild.

They've had a reception in the building and they've actually sold several pieces already by being in the terminal building.

And we now have a waiting list for the next eight months.

We have started a lighting project where we are completely replacing the airfold lighting and signage and putting in a new lighting vault that was desperately needed for operations on the airfield.

And we're also trying to look at improving our terminal signage.

Another complaint that we receive are folks that speed by the front of the building, creating a danger for anybody getting ready to walk out in the crosswalk.

So we're getting ready to take a look at replacing signage and enforcement of the signage to enhance safety in front of the building.

and then finally one of my favorite pictures this is a soldier from Afghanistan and you guys may have been somewhere where you saw our bright green luggage locators and you don't see the logo because he's got it turned around but he sent us this picture from Afghanistan to show that he could find his bag out of all the bags because of our little luggage locator on his bag so we thought that was fun but some other things just through these quick lists

We've just received a draft Air Service Risk Assessment from our Air Service Consultant that helps us negotiate with airlines to maintain and or expand service and we'll be taking a look at recommendations for how to continue dialogues with the airlines to maintain what we have.

We're looking at a partnership with TJ PAD for a survey that we'd like to accomplish with local businesses, again, looking at cargo and shipping needs.

And then we're working with one of our early school neighbors to look at the airport streams and how they flow into Chris Green Lake and if there are any improvements we can make in our stream health.

that would prevent any sediment from reaching Chris Green.

We just recently conducted passenger appreciation day.

We do that on a quarterly basis.

We participated with PEC and the Bi-Fresh Bi-Local helping out volunteering during voting day.

and our staff always adopts a family at Christmas and we typically provide presents for children and about five to a hundred to a thousand dollars worth of grocery cards for a family each year.

And we've just completed draft staff developed vision, mission, values and new strategic plans for the remainder of this fiscal year that we'll be presenting to the airport authority in January at its meeting.

And finally, we've undertaken a new web page.

Again, we're only 35 strong.

We don't have an IT person on staff, but we have undertaken the web page in a manner that we can update it and try to keep it more up-to-date than if we were using a consultant.

And we started a blog, and we're going through social media training and blog training with several staff members, and hopefully we'll be able to reach out more and be a part of the community.

That's our desire, that we become transparent in the community.

We're looking at trying to get all of our documents on the web page such as our master plan, our financial statements, and anything of interest to the community so that people are more informed and have an opportunity to communicate with us 24-7.

Thank you very much, Miss Hutchison, for a very informative report.

Any questions, comments?

I had a question in terms of your long-term goals.

We are keenly interested in becoming part of the planning for the transit authority at some point in time whenever it becomes appropriate.

As you heard me state, parking revenue is our number one revenue.

That makes up about 38% of our budget.

So if the transit authority is successful, we are going to see that 38% start to go down.

One of our questions internally right now is what will we do about that?

How will we begin to replace that revenue so that we're able to sustain the same amount of services that we have for the traveling public?

But we're also interested from community blindness and environmentally conscientiousness being a part of that as well.

And it would be our desire to take a look at it long term.

We did last year, at the request of the city manager, try and experiment with UVA at Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is historically one of our busiest parking times of the year, and in the past we've even run out of parking.

So we went to UVA Transit and chartered buses and drivers.

They worked with us to try to advertise to the students free bus service to the airport on the Friday before Thanksgiving.

and on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, returning them to their dorms or houses, we set up various points at which they could arrange to meet the bus.

And we arranged for that to occur about three times during the day, just as an experiment to see what would happen.

And it failed miserably.

We only had 13 students.

take advantage of that.

However, we also learned several things.

It's very difficult to communicate with the students.

We didn't have access to email or to be able to broadcast emails on a regular basis.

The university was willing to broadcast an email on our behalf, but not repeatedly.

And so, one of the things that we learned was that in order for something like that to be successful, it would

require pre-planning on how to communicate the service and I think it would have been more successful.

I'll just offer a comment.

I speak for a lot of the community and how lucky we are to have an airport nearby.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Ms. Suchison.

We have another report now and another PowerPoint presentation.

on our city's energy conservation initiatives.

Good evening all.

I am here to provide an update on the success of some of the programs we've undertaken in the last several years as we've experienced them.

This is a chart representing avoided utility costs in fiscal year 08 which ended in June and avoided utility costs which we expect to experience in FY09.

I like to say avoided costs instead of savings because these are costs that we would have spent but as utility rates rise sometimes our budgets don't necessarily reflect the say $130,000 savings that we may have experienced last year.

we can measure what savings were avoided.

This chart in particular you can see there are a green and blue section of each year.

The green section are the city of Charlottesville savings and the blue section is Charlottesville city school savings.

This is again based on the difference between what we consumed in F507 versus what we consumed in F508.

Of note should be that if we had used FY06 as the deadline, we could have added about a quarter million dollars to the schools on each of these schedules.

We had tremendous savings between 07 and 06.

and before I go on to the next slide I'd like to say that I'm going to introduce a number of drivers, projects or initiatives in particular that were major savers but would also just like to recognize that beyond the specific projects that I named that there are numerous projects that are undertaken, virtually every project that's undertaken by the Public Works Department, Facilities Management, Facilities Maintenance

that energy savings if there's any opportunity at all to undertake that we will certainly do so and I think the building that we're standing in is an excellent example the roof replacement is not on the slide but that is a reflective roof surface it does have thicker insulation and of course there is a gray roof section very hard to quantify exactly what our savings would be from that

But certainly that is a contributing factor as well as the many, many efforts made by facilities and maintenance staff on an operational basis and making minor improvements as years progress and opportunities present themselves.

We're going back to 2006, 2007 fiscal year 07.

One of the major projects we completed was heating, ventilation, air conditioning improvements to the city hall annex.

That included replacement of the air handler on top of the building, the single large boiler with two smaller boilers, dielectric unions throughout the building,

I'll explain that to you some other time.

It's kind of complicated.

And also installing, for the first time, a building automation system.

That project was funded from a combination of dedicated capital funds for, for instance, replacement of the air hammer and the boiler, as well as council-approved carryover funds from 2006 that went to the replacement of the dielectric humans and the installation

of the building automation system.

Those carryover funds were approved somewhat vaguely for energy savings initiatives and left to me to an extent to decide what to do.

But as you can see, in just this past fiscal year, we saved $72,981 in this building.

versus what we would have spent if we hadn't made these improvements which is approximately a 50% improvement in the efficiency of this 30,000 square foot building.

So really a rather remarkable turnaround and for such a significant investment of $350,000

That last bullet point there says simple payback period of 4.8 years.

That essentially means that without accounting for inflation of utilities in any way that this project would pay for itself in less than five years.

Also that year we did some significant work to the same type of systems at the circuit court.

This was identified as a building that was less efficient than it should be.

We again used a combination of capital dollars and carryover funding to replace the boiler and install a building automation system.

That project cost was $135,000 and we saved almost $20,000 in the first year.

The simple payback period for that project is approximately seven years.

We're also in the process of bidding out the replacement of the air handler on this building

and also making some improvements to the way air is moved within the building with capital dollars this winter.

So we will certainly see some additional savings in future fiscal years from those efforts.

to fiscal year 2008 and up to as recent as a few weeks ago, we implemented an energy performance contract.

Counselors will probably recall in the spring that you approved a $1.9 million bond issuance to fund this project.

Via this project we worked in 31 city buildings and replaced 7400, replaced or upgraded 7400 lighting fixtures, almost 1000 water fixtures, installed 1700 occupancy sensors, and as you can see in the picture here installed a solar water heating system on the central fire station.

That project is projected now to save us $253,000 in the first year with, of course, the savings increasing as time moves on.

The simple payback period on that project is 7 points.

Two years and that quarter of a million dollars represents about an 8% cut in our total utility budget as a city.

So far in the last two months, which have been the first four months that we've had of data on our utility bills,

When we got to the point where we were saying 99% complete with the project versus the same months of last year, our electricity consumption was down a little over 14% in those specific buildings and we've saved about $44,000.

Another project that was done not by my division of Public Works but rather by the Public Service Department of Public Works was the replacement of traffic signals around town with LEDs.

This project wasn't highly touted in the media but it was really a tremendous project and essentially it entails replacing at the many intersections around town

the old 120 watt fixtures with much more efficient 16 watt fixtures.

Our initial cost estimate for this was approximately $450,000 and I have to say that the public service department and the public procurement system in general came through rather well.

The project was completed for just under $125,000.

The savings we're experiencing are roughly 50% more than what we had originally estimated.

So that brings the simple payback period of this project down to 1.7 years.

Going forward, the net result of all of these projects is, you know, savings within existing fiscal years.

We did end up this past year under budget.

and for fiscal year 09, we hope to at least offset the increase in utility costs that we've experienced this year, if not experienced in the actual savings and because of the energy performance contract and other measures in fiscal year 10, instead of going up our utility budgets are actually, as they're submitted, will be going down.

So it's been a really very busy and very exciting

This slide is just intended to show some of the goals or challenges that we have remaining to us.

What this represents is our key buildings, larger buildings.

This is a measure of

B.T.U.s or British thermal units of energy per square foot of a building per day.

It's intended to show how efficient one building is compared to another.

So you can see this chart represents October of 2008 data, just this most previous month's bills.

The blue portions of each bar next to a building represent the BTUs of electricity, and the purple portions represent BTUs of natural gas.

So if you look at the 7th and 8th down the circuit court in the City Hall Annex, those bars would have been close to twice what they are now in length, and since those are significant buildings in size,

The opportunity we get for savings there is really tremendous.

If you look at the bar at the very bottom, the Wheeler Building, that is a smaller building.

It's less than 3,000 square feet.

It will by its nature be less efficient than other buildings.

We also have to consider when we think about investments there.

How much effort and time go into just making that building more efficient versus what we get out of it as an end result.

Average bills for that building only come up to about $400 a month.

I find that my baseline that I go back to over and over again are the Charlottesville City Schools.

You can see the second line from the top there is Buford Middle School.

That is not one of our most efficient schools, but it's one of our more efficient buildings.

So when I look at our city buildings, I tend to think

in terms of trying to get our city facilities in as good a shape as our school facilities, which has been the result really of decades of the school systems and my staff's focus on making energy improvements in our largest buildings.

and working very closely with the occupants of those buildings to make sure that they are run from the standpoint of the people in the building as efficiently as they can be and I think they've done an excellent job of that, of working with us.

and Mr.

I have a question.

Two questions.

One, on the memory that you gave us, the sales that you have said about, almost half a million dollars in 2009.

The particular projects that were shown in that slide for this past fiscal year, these past fiscal years are representative of the projects that you could say were dedicated almost solely to energy efficiency improvements, certainly the Energy Performance Contract was.

Again, there are any number of projects, other major capital projects for window replacements, roof replacements, where it was simply time to do those projects.

However, it was an opportunity that was taken to do those projects a little more efficiently than we might have.

It's not a number that we have

In the last graph you showed many buildings, especially the same buildings, same kind of museum of energy.

I sit down with Steph every month and we look at this chart and about a hundred others similar to it and try to identify where opportunities are, what problems are, what the sources of those problems might be

and do what we can from an operational standpoint or making adjustments or working with occupants or making minor investments in properties to improve these numbers.

Some of these are going to require capital investments in order to

to achieve any significant savings.

One example might be the Central Library.

We track that building and most of our other buildings on the Energy Star website.

It's an EPA-sponsored site that allows you information about your buildings and about the utility consumption in those buildings.

And ultimately, it returns back a score between 1 and 100

on each building.

If a building gets a score of 75 or higher, it's eligible for Energy Star certification.

One of my internal goals is to achieve Energy Star certification for as many of our buildings as possible in coming years.

Currently we are very close for a number of buildings, but not there yet in any of them.

As far as the Central Library goes, that building is our lowest scored building.

This past month it was scored a 9 out of the possible 100 points.

It's essentially 60 to 70 percent less efficient than it should be.

It's efficient since you're looking at the city archives

Absolutely.

It's certainly something that we're thinking about.

There are a number of buildings that you really just can't compare an office building to a building that's got an open repair bay or a data center in the case of the City Hall Annex.

You obviously have two-thirds of this transit operations building that's exposed to the weather.

Doors that are opening and closing.

In the next few weeks we will be installing a sensor at the top of each bay door which will realize that the door is open and shut off the heating system so that we're at least not creating hot air if the bay door is open all day all night.

Similarly,

There's a vehicle wash facility that also doesn't seem to look very good on charts for a similar reason that we're installing similar technology on.

That's actually the kind of opportunity that we look for that often requires a few hundred dollars investment and eight or ten hours of time to make improvements.

Much of that is related to improvements in data collection.

One of the benefits potentially of having each department pay its own bills is that if they're high they have to swallow them.

The downside is they don't really know how to compare their utility bills to what other buildings should be.

So about a year and a half ago we made an effort to begin collecting bills from every department in our department.

I don't have any questions, but I'd like to make a few comments.

One of the really great things about this is that not only is the city making some investments, having them pay off in a short period of time and saving energy and saving money, but it really contributes directly to our

our goals of decreasing our carbon footprint.

But the city, municipal building energy use, it's just a small piece, very small piece of the local use of energy and so I'm hoping that more people will hear this, think about the fact that the city has invested within

you know, three years, five years, at most seven years is seeing that investment completely recouped and I know a few people have approached me and probably other counselors and been referred to you for your assistance in guiding them in doing that

I'd also like to point out that replacing the LED lights on all our stop lights is not a safe energy, but it means you don't have to change very often.

They'll last a lot longer.

About 10 years is the estimate, so maintenance and operation is there as well.

And the third question is not for you so much, you may know about it, but when we talk about city energy use, you know, that's like maybe some kind of summary of sort of policies that the city's enacted to help us be frugal using energy.

And a good example of that is our anti-idling policy so that city vehicles don't idle very long except when there's certain prescribed

circumstances, emergency vehicles and things like that.

You know, I'd always be curious to know to the degree to which the city has instituted policies about turning computers off and other types of electronic computers off or using power strips rather than just plugging things straight into the wall.

Not necessarily a competition for David, maybe a memo to that effect might help give a broader picture of what we're trying to do on this.

But I think you've really done a great job and I'd like to thank you for it.

Thank you.

I agree.

Wonderful, John.

Thank you.

I want to ask you a question.

I think I asked the same question last year, which is we did the inventory of carbon emissions and energy use.

One of the major energy hogs was street lights.

I'm afraid my answer is the same.

So last year, you know,

I'm a building guy and I understand that the Public Service Department has had discussions with the Dominion of Virginia Power who are the owners of the streetlights.

We certainly do pay higher bills than we should and it certainly impacts our carbon footprint and is ultimately in the best interest to see that we are provided with efficient streetlighting sources.

That's what we're interested in, you are.

The reason we have is the street lighting is part of a contract that all municipalities around the state negotiate with Dominion Power on behalf of the municipalities as a group.

So part of it's been to try to get that contract changed that would allow

some changes that would affect Charlottesville and that's been where the push has been and it's been difficult to get done.

We'll get you an update on where that is, but that's the dilemma that we have.

One more question.

I was pleased to see the solar water heater and the fire station.

The one additional opportunity that we identified from an early standpoint is the group home that we own that's located behind the Juvenile Domestic Court.

It takes a building that really has fairly intensive use of hot water in order to make a solar hot water heater effective.

That is not really the case in the standard office building.

like it would be in a home.

The fire station was identified, of course, because the fire department showers the ribs there, cooks three meals plus a day there and have really intensive use of hot water.

If you've ever had a teenager, you know that they take good long showers.

You can tell by the chart here as well that their gas usage in particular is quite high.

That was something that I considered moving forward with.

The cost was not tremendous.

I felt though that I really wanted to see, because the north-facing side of that roof is adjacent to what would be a new parking deck for the Juvenile Domestic Court, I wanted to see how high it was.

I wanted the engineer who designed that to take a look at that building once it was in place to see what the impact would be or whether we needed to relocate that.

I didn't want to make an investment that didn't pay back for itself.

And also, of course, it would be a BAR issue.

because of the location of the neighborhood.

So that's something we're looking at.

There are also other opportunities that we're exploring now at Charlottesville High School in particular with the kitchen there and some other opportunities that we might have for savings there.

Unfortunately, kitchens at schools aren't used as much in the summer when you'd best be able to take advantage of the preheated water.

When council passed our clean energy resolution last December, the flip side to promoting more of the kind of work that you're talking about here tonight in terms of energy efficiency was exploring purchase and or production of renewable energy.

As regards the purchase of renewable energy, I'm afraid we're not in better shape, but probably in worse shape right now than we would have been last December.

The state passed an act that essentially

changed the way energy is sold in this state going forward, the result of which Petco, one of the major energy suppliers in the country for renewable energy, has just recently announced that they're backing out of any local Virginia markets for residential.

They had been selling renewable energy to some major commercial clients in the northern Virginia sector, but not in central or southern

Virginia.

So that had not been available, but the fact that they were exploring Northern Virginia gave us some hope that we would have some avenues there.

But now that they are pulling out because of the re-regulation, it looks less likely in the short term anyway that we will have an alternate supplier other than Virginia Power.

Of course there are other avenues, wind farms and such and of course as part of the re-regulation act there were built into that act inducements for all energy suppliers to build new power plants that are based on the new resources.

Whether they take full advantage of those is yet to be determined right now.

Approximately 5% of the energy that we buy is from renewable sources and that percentage could climb over time.

As far as generation of renewable energy, our only feasible option, at least on our municipal sites really, is solar power and this is something that we've followed closely in the past year.

There are some new technologies that have just emerged that seem to be proven

and depending on the cost, the initial cost of that investment significantly they now have instead of a standard panel like you would see on most roofs now they have arrays of convex mirrors essentially like little

dishes that would point to a central place that there would be say 10 foot by 10 foot wide there might be 300 or 400 of these so they reflect the light back up to a small point and of course the most expensive part of the solar array is the solar collector itself so instead of so that small say half inch by half inch

Square now collects all the energy of a 4 inch by 4 inch mirror.

So the upfront cost is cheaper.

Hopefully that makes a major investment either by the city or in partnership with some other entity.

a more feasible option for us and we do think that we may be getting closer especially with rising energy costs for that being a technology that we might be able to afford to do.

In the next week or two our environmental

Group will be going forward to the CCOES with a proposal to do a feasibility study that will formalize some of this and bring in a consultant that can study all of our alternatives, take a look at some of our buildings.

to see if there would be opportunities there, look at local weather patterns, do some cost estimates for us, estimate how many kilowatt hours we might get, do the background that we want, what we'll need to do to be in a position by say next fall to make some recommendations for capital investments.

So that's going to the CCOES with the intention of requesting that funds be freed

to fund the study.

We don't at this time really know what the study will cost, but we have hopes that they will release some portion of the $50,000 funds that I believe they have available to them for purposes similar to this one.

There's also some hope that the federal grants that have been promised but not funded

Thank you again for all your work.

And the last item in our agenda tonight, we have a ordinance before us regarding zoning density limitations in R3, RUMD, and RUHD districts.

First, the two meetings.

I went to public hearing at the November meeting.

Most of the discussion was based on the potential to increase the density in those zones that you mentioned.

The Planning Commission voted unanimously to recommend that you deny this request and I can take any questions that you may have.

Any questions?

Can we talk about the procedure?

I mean, so what's before us today is whether to move forward with an ordinance that the Planning Commission recommended against.

There is a proposed ordinance in your notebook.

One option is to

to entertain a motion and second to carry that over to a second reading.

I will suggest that we do a second on the floor to deny, concur with the commission's recommendation.

Any further discussion?

So the motion on the floor is to support the planning commission's recommendation to deny this tax amendment.

Please indicate your vote.

Thank you, Mr. Luskin.

We'll now open it up to matters by the public.

Thank you for your patience and sticking around.

Thank you and good evening.

My name is M. Rick Turner.

I live at 1663 Brown U.I.

Drive in the city.

I am president of the Albemarle Charlottesville branch of the NAACP.

As most of you know, the mission of the NAACP is to ensure the political, economic, educational, social equality of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.

I am here this evening on behalf of African American men

who have worked or who primarily work for the City of Charlottesville Parks and Recreation and who claim that they have been subjected to discrimination in the workplace based upon the color of their skin.

As we all know, discrimination is against the law.

Racial discrimination is any action or attitude conscious or unconscious.

which subordinate an individual based on race.

These employees claim that the Human Resource Department has failed to address repeated incidents of workplace racism which includes ethnic slurs, derogatory comments, and blatant double standards based upon race.

It appears that these complaints over too many years have fallen on bulkiers producing an uncomfortable and unwelcoming work environment.

As president of the NAACP, I find it very difficult to understand how the city, management, and human resources

could be aware of a double standard based upon race and not address this very serious and unacceptable situation.

The NAACP requests that the city council conduct a thorough investigation regarding these charges and hear yourselves and the city manager and others that he supervises accountable

As representative of all the citizens of Charlottesville, you cannot allow the scourge of racial discrimination to continue on your watch.

You may immediately think, as I make this presentation, that more diversity training is needed.

Diversity is just another clear word for business as usual.

Parks and Recreation and many of the other departments like vulnerable, decisive leadership and a firm commitment to racial justice.

Without it, systemic, institutional bio-racism would persist.

My major concern this evening is not only what is happening to adults and parks and recreation and other departments within the city.

It's not so much what they're going through and what they're involved in.

but also what will happen to our children and grandchildren if we continue to ignore injustice in our midst.

Thank you, Dr. Perman.

Anyone else?

My name is Betty Mooney.

I reside at 201 Sunset Avenue.

I wanted to clarify a little bit this issue of the emails you received and for the public who might be confused

The issue really is, for those of us who've read them, is not the matter of a typo or we're here or we're there out of place.

It's really more serious than that.

And I realize you may not have had time to read the emails earlier, study them, because it's complicated.

But the issue is really, is

You could choose, we have had to get information by Freedom of Information request and when we came across these we could have chosen to ignore them.

but they're serious.

And I'm not a lawyer.

I'm just a citizen.

And so I'm really asking your opinions of this.

And when I read them, it looks to me that our consultants tried to give advice but were steered to give different advice by the staff and advice that they wanted to hear.

I'm not saying I'm right or wrong.

All I'm asking is for you as counselors to really think about these emails and give them some time and look at them because those of us who've read them think they're serious.

and I personally would like our attorney, our city attorney to look at these emails and to render an opinion because the issue really is were we getting independent advice from our consultants which we needed or were the consultants being steered to give advice that the staff wanted them to give and that's the issue in these emails and as I said all I'm asking of the city council and our city attorney is to read these

I can't tell any of you what to think about them.

All I can tell you is people I respect a great deal have read these emails and find them very disturbing.

Thank you.

I mean, your style of bringing that to us just now is respectful.

It asks us to look out.

Some other people's styles has basically accused people of lying.

And there's a big difference.

There's a big difference.

And so I think the way you coming at the forward saying, please look at this, great.

That's what I expect to hear.

What I don't expect to hear is a very small piece of evidence being publicly

and forcefully seen as evidence of a conspiracy.

And that's what irks me is to see publicly someone's good name being attacked.

And that's what you're not doing and I wanted to thank you for that.

I'm an adult, hopefully, at this age.

I'm old now.

I hate to admit it, but I've been around a while.

I know Ms. Chase has been in Charles for a long time, and so have I.

So we've got some history here.

But I can only speak for myself.

Even though I've worked with people to find out information, I can't tell anybody in this world what to say, not even my husband, not my daughter.

So I understand how you react.

I don't take it as a reaction to me.

I mean, we all have to have our own judgment about this.

And all I'm asking is for myself.

Thank you.

Anybody else like to speak?

Okay, we will close matters by the public.

Let me just make a couple comments.

We've got a lot of policies and programs in place to really help promote a healthy work environment for all our employees.

As you know, council made diversity one of your top seven priorities for next year.

As we said, which was soon,

to address community-wide concerns and the current issues of inequality and perceived inequality in race journeys has been research and best practices for community dialogue on race and we plan on having a report to you in January with the intent that there be a community discussion later in the spring or early summer.

I should remind you we have a very diverse workforce.

We have 95 employees and 27% of that

or filled by African Americans.

I should let you know, I don't know that you know this, all of our supervisors received mandatory training on their non-discrimination and harassment policies within the past year.

And each year an employer is informed of these policies as part of their employer orientation.

And with all that being said, and I haven't tried to talk to Dr. Turner today, issues deal rise on occasion.

From my perspective, sadly, there's still discrimination in the arts as soon.

We may bring their prejudice to the workplace, but let me just say loud and clear, and I think, speaking on behalf of council,

This will not be tolerated in city government, whether it's discrimination or harassment.

When we notice specific incidents, a fair delivery investigation will take place and a swift and appropriate action will be taken.

We have an investigation underway right now, and if appropriate, we will take action.

I think here as a council, the community at large, our citizens and our employees expect nothing less in that.

But if we know about it, whether it's the Human Resources Department, whether it's our office, or any of our supervisors, we have and will continue to investigate it in great detail.

I do have an intent to follow up with Dr. Turner, try to get some specifics to where we can build an investigation.

I think I'm aware of one of the incidents that he has a concern about, but I'm not sure.

And those involve, I think as he said, either people that work for us now or have worked.

Could I suggest that at some point, Mr. Connell, that you involve the mayor in your discussions so that there will be a council role in that way.

I don't think it's something that needs the full council, but I would certainly be very comfortable to have the mayor sit in on certain meetings and make sure he's fully abreast of what the issues are

Happy to do it and I appreciate your swift response.

Music playing...