City Council Meeting   7/6/2009

you

I'd like to call this meeting to order.

and the division with liberty and justice for all.

I have a few announcements to make.

First of all, letters were in the mail last week for our housing grant program.

This is our tax property tax relief program for low and moderate income homeowners.

Last year, the program awarded 1,003 Charlottesville families with $431,000 of relief, and the new applications for tax relief for this year are in the mail.

So please be on the lookout for those.

New trash decals are available for those who would like to use an annual trash decal for trash collection.

They're now available for buy from the treasurer's office in 32, 50, 64 and 96 gallon sizes.

Customers can call 970-3146 for more information.

I've been asked to give an update on our job hotline for city positions.

We currently have over a dozen positions open in city government employment opportunities.

Some more information on employment opportunities in city government.

Dial 970-3450 any time, day or night.

Any other announcements or items to be added to the agenda?

I believe we do have one item regarding community development block grant funding that we are going to be adding to the end of tonight's agenda.

We are also making a change on the agenda.

Item 7, which is an ordinance regarding rezoning 814 Hinton Avenue because there are a number of people in the audience here to hear that discussion.

That's going to be moved up on the agenda to just pass, just after item 3.

So we'll be hearing 814 Hinton Avenue after we discuss

I guess I could.

Just generally, I got some comments over the weekend about how it can be not difficult, but sometimes people don't know how to get in touch with council.

Okay.

I'd like to meet him.

Thank you.

We will now move on to matters by the public and as is our custom, if you would please

When you come forward, state your name and address, and we ask you to keep your comments to three minutes.

Mayor Norris and members of the City Council, my name is Paul Long.

I live at 1410 Greedy Avenue here at Charlottesville.

I've come here tonight to make a few remarks about the public transportation in our area.

I believe in an efficient and extensive public transportation system

is vital to the continued growth and expansion of our city and the surrounding areas.

I believe that all bus routes should be operating from 6 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Sundays and on legal holidays.

And I also believe that the routes 6, 7 and about 5 buses should be operating every 15 minutes.

And I also feel that all other bus routes should be operating every half hour

and I also strongly fear that new bus routes should be established from downtown Charlottesville to the Charlottesville Airport and to the Alameda, Charlottesville Regional Jail.

If thousands of area residents who currently use their cars can meet to work, go to the theater and movies, to go to the downtown mall to eat out or to go to art galleries or other entertainment venues, or to be convinced to give up driving their cars on at least summer occasions,

and they must offer them a quicker and more efficient public transportation system than currently exists.

Someone who owns a Quora and decides perhaps to catch a bus to come downtown and catch a show at the Paramount, if they miss the bus by a minute, they're not going to wait an entire hour to catch the next available bus.

They're going to hop in their Quora and drive downtown.

There is a proposal for the city of Charlottesville

and out of our county to form a regional public transportation authority.

I think that we should go a step further and create a truly regional public transportation authority and I would like to see Fladonna, Green, Nelson, Buckingham and Orange counties invited to join the public transportation authority as well.

The city of Charlottesville is the hub of a growing metropolitan area and apparently an operation of a truly regional public transportation system

is an issue that should be handled on a truly regional basis.

Thank you, Mr. Long.

Next is Brenton Nelson.

Oh, sorry, Brenton Nelson.

Good evening.

Brent Nelson, I live at 707 Northwood Avenue and own a house at 214 West South Street in the Zone 8 South Street Permit Parking District.

On your consent agenda tonight, you had before you a request to extend the permit parking hours for this district to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Because our street is a major gateway into the downtown mall, the current limited hours of operation, midnight to 7 p.m. each day, have been very inadequate.

Ten years ago, when we applied for seven-day permit parking, midnight to 7 p.m. each day was the only option available.

24-7 permit zones did not exist anywhere in the city at that time.

To say our permit zone is currently overwhelmed daily with non-permit illegally parked vehicles is a vast understatement.

I am here to ask that you vote to amend our zone to the 24-7 designation as requested.

However, I am here before you also for one other related reason.

If you check police records, you will see that a massive number of tickets are given out weekly for vehicles parked illegally in our zone during current hours of operation of midnight to 7 p.m.

While amending our current hours of operation to 24-7 is important, it will not address the constant

and I mean constant illegally parked vehicles at all hours and days of the week.

It has become quite apparent to everyone living on South Street that this is due to two issues.

The first issue is the inadequacy of the signage that currently designates our permit parking district.

The current signs are designed to look just like those designating permit parking districts that are not 24-7 days a week.

Because of the identical appearance, drivers are quick to assume the sign designates a daytime-only Monday through Friday permit parking zone.

Something as simple as a change in the sign colors could help to get a driver's attention.

The second issue is that we badly need an additional permit parking sign mid-block on the telephone pole between 218 and 222 West South Street.

It is quite apparent to those of us on South Street every day

that 80% of those who park illegally do so because they simply do not see the signs designating our apartment zone.

Of course, it can be said that ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law and that is certainly true.

However, what good does that sentiment do for the residents of South Street who then continue to have little use of the parking in front of their homes and for the police who spend countless hours writing more tickets for this zone than probably any other in the city.

Here are copies of my statement and on the back are photos of the permanent parking sign and the suggested location for a third sign.

Thank you, Mr. Nelson.

I'm Stratton Salitas.

I live at 74 Grave Street.

members of council and citizens of Charlottesville.

I'm here to speak about the Meadow Creek Parkway and to make another appeal to you all to protect our Central Park and also to follow state and federal law with regards to this process.

Thank you, Mayor Norris.

and Ms. Edwards for your continued support in protecting the park and following the law.

And for the rest of you, I hope that you have had a chance to see the 250 Interchange website where in the frequently asked questions section

In response to the question, what would happen with the Meadow Creek Parkway if there was no interchange, the answer at this official city website is without the interchange Charlottesville would build a 17-lane at-grade intersection.

and everybody who knows that that is not the case, that the city of Charlottesville decided specifically against that and said that an interchange was necessary for the city's agreement to build this parkway.

Still to this day, at the website, there is essentially

something is untrue and if it's allowed to continue after it's been pointed out how can it be anything other than a lie and the reason this law is necessary is to perpetuate the myth that the interchange is an independent project from the Meadow Creek Parkway and that myth is necessary because otherwise we would have to apply federal environmental parkland protection and historic preservation laws

to McIntyre Road or the Meadow Creek Parkway itself.

And so I hope that you who are full of this road will respond to that and tell me why you think it's okay for there to be this disinformation on the city website.

and people at homes if you're interested in helping make sure that justice happens here.

You know, somebody dedicated $30 million to build the Scott Stadium, so UVA could have a football stadium.

I think for one-thousandth of that, we could probably make sure justice happens here in our Central Park.

maintained for the citizens of Charlottesville.

So please feel free to donate to this tax deductible clause.

My number is 882-1069.

Dee Dee Smith, 2652 Jefferson Park Circle, and I'm here in the same vein as Stanton that

I am here to hopefully clear up what I feel has been some misleading information that is just yet the next piece of misleading information about the water supply and what I have for you actually are a couple things that I gave to the Havana Water and Sewer Authority at their retreat to begin with I have at the top just one section out of the four-party agreement because I felt that that was left out of their discussions and that is the section

whereby it talks about for additional facilities, additional need for water that either the city or the county would pay for it depending on who needed it, basically.

So I just wanted you to have that language in front of you.

And then the next piece is actually from the demand analysis found on the Havana Water and Sewer Authority website.

that was used to come up with the size of the water supply plan whereby the consultants used only a 5% conservation rate.

As I've told you many times before, we are now at a 25% conservation.

25% less water than this plant is based on and that is what that graph right there, which is the Urbana's graph, it's Granite Forming's graph actually, where it predicts that we would be using 12.5 million gallons in 2008.

when instead we used 9.5.

So anyway, the piece of what I feel is misleading information, the latest, is the last piece and that's the report on UVA's increase in water use.

Now it's not false that UVA's water use has gone up, but what, and I'm taking this off the Shadows for Tomorrow website, but what the story fails to mention, although it does link to their own story about this, is that since 1999, and including this last year where the water use did go up by 9%, they are down 24%.

Same number, we keep hearing this, 24, 25%.

and they are down 24% despite the fact, and I'm taking it again from the Charlottesville-Tumano website, the fact that they have increased their square footage to 35% since that time and their population has gone up, yet they have been so

studious about conservation that they have managed to reduce by that much.

The important thing here is the baseline has changed.

When we're talking about how much water, nobody's disputing that use may go up, that population will go up.

That's not in dispute.

It's how much water will we need in that 50 year time, or that 30 to 50 year time, which 30 years being much more reasonable.

That is the question.

My name is Betty Mooney and I live in the city of Charlottesville, Virginia.

And I would like to thank all of you very much because this last weekend for the 4th I decided to liberate myself from my messy basement.

So I locked myself in the house and started cleaning the basement.

And in my basement are thousands and thousands of pages that I had gotten from the Rivanna Ballroom sewer party.

and I realized that we would not be here even discussing this plan were it not for the city council and I had great admiration because I think it is taking courage, it's taking a lot of hours, a lot of attention, a lot of reading on your part and you have a lot of other things to do and so I greatly appreciate that because I think one thing we all know now is with Gannett Fleming's firing

that we have had six years of paying over four million dollars, it'll probably be five million dollars by the time we're through, for mostly information we cannot use.

And that's a shame.

And a lot of mistakes have been made, but you all have been willing to call it mistakes and to ask for better information.

It is just wrong for the citizens of Charlottesville to have to pay for a huge dam if we don't need it.

It is wrong for the citizens of Charlottesville to have to burden a 200 million dollar, and not just Charlottesville, Albemarle too, plan if we don't need it.

So I respect and admire you for saying we need to find out.

We just can't do this.

And luckily, we've only spent $5 million.

We haven't gone into debt.

Can you imagine our community in debt for $200 million for the next 10 years?

In the paper yesterday, I don't know if any of you saw, but maybe we're getting some support from the county.

New water rates are ridiculous.

This was a letter to the editor in yesterday's Daily Progress from someone in the county.

And the last sentence says, and what is the purpose of this greater rate structure?

So can the taxpayer to fund a reservoir boondoggle?

That's a county person.

They're listening too.

They are getting hit harder than we are.

We're going to get hit hard.

200 million dollars isn't going to be just the county.

We're going to have to share that.

I think this is somebody complaining new water rates are ridiculous and they haven't even seen yet the increase from the water supply plan because we don't know the cost.

So, thank you all and I hope you will stand up and I hope you will do what you've said.

No construction on the dam till we have the dredging surveys.

Our mayor has said not one tree cut.

We know that the powers want to go forward with this dam.

They're going to push you.

They're going to try to trick you.

We've already seen that in emails.

I'll go into that next council meeting.

But you are going to need to be alert.

You're going to need to stay on your toes and you can't let this community down.

You can't let the citizens down.

Thank you, Ms. Mahoney.

Mr. Mayor and members of Council, my name is Frances Fife and I live at 501 9th Street, Southwest.

And I have a very watered down version of what I was going to say about the water issue.

I am here to urge you to remind the Rivanna Wall and Sewer Authority of the Council's action when it voted to require the Authority to proceed with the feasibility study of dredging the South Falls Rivanna Reservoir.

This action was to precede action by the Authority toward construction of the dam at the Rocket Mountain Reservoir.

It is apparent

that dredging could not only save our right on the reservoir but also save multimillions of dollars.

This in turn could save the city and county ratepayers a huge amount of money.

And I think people are looking to it and I call your attention to it.

It's something I think you must have seen and that is the editorial in the partners about the water issue.

Thank you, Mr. Fry, you can let him know.

Hi, I'm Tomás Reyjal, 501 Monticello Ridge, Belmont neighborhood in Charlottesville.

I'm here to talk about neighborhood development specifically in Belmont.

and our commitment to a strategic urban plan that promotes neighborhood residential and historic preservation policies in balance with further commercial development and enterprise.

Most of our energies to date have been spent creating rather than preventing and reducing problems of vehicular congestion, air and noise pollution and vandalism.

This misallocation of scarce resources revealed the severe flaws in how we address growth and preserve the gains of residents over the past 20 years in costs associated with the constant police and emergency vehicle response to violence, late night noise and traffic violations.

To these ends, MAS has already committed resources towards the following goals and hopes Council will roll up its sleeve and develop policies that will seek to promote neighborhood residential historic preservation policies, continue to consult with neighbors on a regular basis while fostering a pro-family, pro-residential character in all our plans going forward, forbid outdoor amplified music in outdoor speakers or bands without appropriate permits and supervision,

to prevent the misallocation of community resources towards bad practices and foster proactive, sustainable practices and maintain order and place authority for long-term change back in the hands of the neighborhood, not planners.

The creation of bike patrol with the police department to reduce vandalism, monitor noise complaints and traffic flows and bad behavior before they erode social fabric of residential neighborhoods.

and first the closed door policy for businesses playing music inside at night.

And then some more proactive ideas would be to reduce our waste stream through composting organic materials in restaurants and businesses and homes, perhaps in conjunction with community gardens.

Encourage service deliveries to utilize smaller vehicles to lessen the impact of air and noise pollution while calming all traffic in books to the neighborhood.

Reduce congestion and space needs through an employee and customer bicycle initiative.

For example, encourage all customers to walk or ride their bikes to Balmain, rather than using up all on-street parking options.

Disadvantaging residents.

Preserve right of way for wheelchair and physically challenged residents via side watch rather than roadways.

And then, I couldn't have the notice on the back of the agenda, Charlottesville City Council's vision for 2025.

If we just follow these principles, I think we would be in good shape.

Economic sustainability.

Quality Housing Opportunities for All, a green city, a healthy city, a connected city that provides transportation opportunities around commercial corridors, and last but not least, a smart, citizen-focused government.

Working on developing green spaces for gardens as a community garden initiative and perhaps establishing car-free zones on particular days like a Saturday or a Sunday, we give neighbors a clear break in the business cycle and boost the concept of pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods with accessible mass transit supplementing it.

Thank you.

Glenn Hart, 101 Robinson Lane.

Young people often come up with the shortest and most expressive way to say things and they know how to interpret the meaning.

Words like butter and not and bogus.

I say to be that's pronouncement that they must close Royal Road this fall to finish the Royal Road and Royal Ridge piece that will be forcing commuters to use the Medically Parkway from Royal to Melbourne Road is bogus.

I have lived in 11 cities and 5 states.

Many, many times a complex and heavily travelled road must be repaired or reconfigured or a bridge built over it.

The engineers detour the traffic usually toward the shoulder with temporary paving or the usable road is narrowed or a flag person is used.

Everyone copes and knows there will be delays and so it goes.

To use the excuse of reconfiguring Wild Road and forcing traffic onto the northern part of Meadow Creek Parkway is an excuse to get commuters used to driving the parkway.

Once you exit the northern terminus, you are still south of the area

of the railroad tracks which they say that peace will still need work.

In the recent past of a few years, the city told Viva in a county that the Meadow Creek Parkway could not be used until it and some sort of interchange were completed at Route 250.

Now they are using this excuse.

I guess they do not remember that they spoke this to the public while on their oath in the court and many people were listening.

Hi, my name is Allison Wilfner and I reside at 735 Grave Street, the pink house.

I would just like to talk very briefly about general commercial development and zoning in the, what is I guess now coined the downtown Belmont district as a resident who's been there a long time and has gone from being yippy woo and I can't wait for the next business to going, my god I can't wait to sell my house and get out before I'm threatened again or I'm vandalized again.

I'd like to just read something real quick here and remind people when they consider development in that area.

The intent of the neighborhood commercial corridor as stated in Section 34541A of the City Code is to establish a zoning classification for the Fontaine and Belmont commercial areas that recognize their compact nature, their pedestrian orientation, and the small neighborhood features of the business.

This zoning district recognizes the areas of small town center type commercial areas and provides for the ability to develop on small lots with minimal parking dependent on pedestrian access.

The recreation's recognize the character of the existing area and respect that there are neighborhood commercial districts located within established neighborhoods.

Recently, planning commissioners observed the development in downtown Belmont is shifting the character away from a small town center that would include more diversity of business types and is beginning to look like a mining culture or an alternative to the mall.

For this and other reasons, they recently made a recommendation turning down a rezoning application.

I understand that City Council can amend these applications if they serve the interest of the public necessity, convenience, general welfare, or good zoning practice.

However, I find myself with other residents sort of questioning how these are being approached with zoning and rezoning.

In terms of concerning public necessity, there are already other properties zoned as commercial in the Belmont Quarter which are available to the applicants.

In addition, there are a plethora of other commercial sites available in the City of Charlottesville.

This application also, or in this case, sometimes when this happens, this appears to conflict with the city's goal of providing affordable housing as it does, can possibly remove a residence from the area.

In general welfare, and this is really important to me, there are well-documented studies that show a direct inverse correlation between noise and the general welfare of citizens in established residential neighborhoods.

that is noise lowers property values, noise injures health, and noise can negatively affect student achievement.

If we increase or improperly develop commercial areas, we can increase noise by bringing more people, cars and everything in there and impact that negatively.

It is a fact that families with children have had to move out of the neighborhood because their children could not sleep at night due to the noise.

Home ownership does increase the stability of Beaumont and homes of children in school and I'd like to remind the city that you all have enacted a tax abatement program to encourage owner-occupied homes and renovation.

This was very successful in Belmont, and when you increase commercial areas, this appears to conflict with that stated goal.

Expanding, and we don't want to expand on an environment which invites a late night element, but does not respect with residential character, but rather jeopardizes the neighborhood fabric and quality of life and is a source of conflict.

Thank you, Ms. Rochman.

Mr. Mayor.

Most of the issues she just brought up are issues we're considering tonight.

We have a policy of having public hearings or not taking additional comments.

She didn't mention this proposal by name, but other than that, it's pretty much the comments that have come across during the public hearing previously, and I think we should be careful about either rescheduling this for a public hearing or

Well, I understand your point.

I did discuss the comments with the speakers before the meeting and asked them to keep it general to concerns of development in Belmont generally and not address the specific merits of this specific parcel.

And several of them hurriedly went back and revised their remarks and so I appreciate your input.

We have not scheduled a public hearing.

We've already had two public hearings on

I thought the first comments really didn't.

I thought they were general comments.

I thought that one pretty much was about the merits of this.

I think it was a little disingenuous.

Well, I will remind the speakers, we do want to keep the comments general to issues in Beaumont if you're going to be speaking tonight on this topic.

Next is Albemarle,

Hi, I'm Eleanor Biasioli.

I live at 622 Evergreen Avenue.

I'm aware that Jim Talbot's office is looking at issues that you have become aware of recently in Belmont.

And so I would like to bring your attention back to the intent of the neighborhood commercial corridor, stated in Section 34514-8 of the city code, which is, quote, to establish a zoning classification for the Fontaine and Belmont commercial area.

that recognize their compact nature, their pedestrian orientation and the small neighborhood nature of the businesses.

This zoning district recognizes the areas as small town centered type commercial areas and provide for the ability to develop on small lots with minimal parking dependent on pedestrian access.

The regulations recognize the character of the existing area and respect that there are neighborhood commercial districts located within established neighborhoods, end of quote.

So next I would like to address standards of review that you look at concerning convenience.

A lot of cultural business does not add convenience for residents, but rather creates a district that draws in non-residents.

The thousands of restaurant patrons, business owners and staff who do drive into downtown Belmont every week have the convenience of neighborhood parking.

It is the residents that carry the burden of significant increases in parking needs and the increase in illegally parked cars blocking driveways and dangerously narrowing streets.

The general convenience for vehicle and pedestrian access and safety is at greater risk with the significantly increased traffic in downtown Belmont due to the quality and type of businesses flooding the area.

Is it good zoning practice to remove homes from Belmont residential inventory when the city is advocating affordable housing?

Is it good zoning practice to continue to ignore the NCC standards already in place which call for minimal parking,

It was called for respecting that they are located in established neighborhoods of Belmont.

The current commercial development is already in conflict with the intent of the NCC's stated guidelines, which call for businesses to be of a small-town, center-type commercial nature.

Expanding monoculture is not good zoning practice.

So in conclusion, we contend that taking homes out of residential inventory is not a public necessity.

It is not convenient for anyone besides property owners.

It would not benefit the general welfare of the neighborhood.

And finally, adding to the monoculture of restaurant entertainment venues in our

neighborhood commercial corridor is not good zone practice as it runs counter to the current NCC standards.

Your decision to make on any rezonings will send a message to the Charlottesville community as to your priorities and your goals.

Thank you.

Is there any way you can interpret that as comments on what's before us tonight?

I mean, I mean, it is.

And I'm not saying one way or the other, but that's just, that's not, that's like splitting hairs to not mention by name what addressed all those comments we're addressing.

And it's just, I think you need, we either need to have a rule and follow it, or you need to not have a rule and allow everyone to come speak.

All right, well, I appreciate that feedback.

I believe those are the last speakers on this issue specifically, and I understand your point.

My name is Julia Williams.

I'm at 751 Donmont Avenue, and I see a lot of my

So on that note I think we need to remember to listen with respect and think with an open mind and act with fairness and this council chamber is no place for sarcastic remarks and belittling people's opinions and

One small thing to say, I'm eager to see city government work thoughtfully and openly with residents and business interests in our NCC districts.

to craft planning goals and modify zoning ordinances to allow development without jeopardizing established residential neighborhoods.

Thank you.

That's the last person to sign up to speak.

We are now going to move to council responses to matters by the public.

I just wanted to thank Paul Long for the comments he made about public transportation.

It was refreshing.

hearing some of your ideas and to also just to again talk about the importance of alternative forms of transportation and also just echo what Council Taliaferro said about the signage in the permanent parking on South Street.

You said your name was 882-069?

Got it.

I think there's other conversations that we need to have as a council about how we want to create our culture for public comment and just a way of being just consistent and I guess respectful for the guidelines and sometimes maybe with this time

to look at the guidelines to see what's going to fit the culture that we have now at the time that those guidelines remain that may have been appropriate but now is maybe it's time we have a conversation about that and to some of the people that spoke about their concerns of the city there are some positions open on the planning commission and some other boards and commission in the city please consider

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to comment on Congressman Paul's argument on transit and I suppose this is what he said.

If I could only figure out where we can get the military to do all this stuff, then I would have to see that it takes

I would support us if we want to revisit

our policy on whether to allow public comment after we've had a public hearing because we should either have a rule that we allow it and anyone can come speak and come speak again or we should have to follow a rule of saying once we've had a public hearing we've kind of you know that's a chance for the public to speak because otherwise you know it just we need to make sure that all sides get to be heard and one side follows rule another side doesn't it's just you know

I'm sure there's plenty of other people who would like to speak tonight on that issue because it's a controversial issue and it has two sides and it's not an easy issue and I just think either we should invite everyone to come speak or not and I'm not sure if we really followed those guidelines very well last time when we heard this issue where we heard extensively from the applicant and we didn't hear from anyone else so I don't know if we actually ran that particular portion of the

Are you finished?

I was just going back one comment on the grazing years that

I know you all continue to remind us of the importance of that, and I think you've got us convinced, and I'm not speaking for my colleagues, but I think they're on board that we certainly want to get all the facts on dredging before we proceed in doing this thing, but I just want to assure everyone that I think where we all are on that coordination for our community.

Well, I don't want to extend this discussion too much.

One of the things I want to say is that it's a free fall, half an hour.

Okay, well we're going to move on to our consent agenda and we have quite a few items on the consent agenda tonight.

Item A is approving minutes of June 8th, 12th and 15th.

Item B is an appropriation of $11,500 historic resources grant match first of two readings.

Item C is an appropriation of $88,522 enhanced police coverage at Friendship Court first of two readings.

Item D is an appropriation of $59,723.33 school CIP contribution first of two readings.

Item lead appropriation of $13,500 First Tee Program grant for the first of two meetings.

Item absent appropriation of $5,000 Ben Works grant for First Tee Program first of two meetings.

Item G in appropriation of $1,000 Junior Lead grant for First Tee Program first of one meeting.

Item H, appropriation, $572,780, fiscal year 2010, transit grants, first of two readings.

Item I is a resolution expanding permit parking hours for South Street, first of one reading.

Item J, a resolution initiating zoning text amendment regarding parking on corner lots, first of one reading.

Item K, a resolution allocating $13,500 for waiting pool repairs, first of one reading.

Item O, an Ordinance Abandoning Drainage Easement for Grove Square Flea Project, 2nd of 2 Readings Item M, an Ordinance Zoning Minute Regarding Equestria Dwelling in its 1st of 2 Readings Item N, is an Ordinance Zoning Minute Regarding Single Remark and Sea Regulations, 1st of 2 Readings Item O, an Ordinance Expanding Permanent Parking Zone, 9th of 1st of 2 Readings

Item P is an ordinance, cafe signs and sandwich board signs, first of two readings.

Are there any other items to be removed or any comments about item N, the zoning amendment regarding single room occupancy regulations?

Okay.

So we'll take that up as well.

IMK on wading pool repair.

If I can just get an answer to that question.

We had a lot of comments about the deplorable conditions of the restaurants.

The money that's here is just for the co-repairs themselves, not the building.

There are some cleaning issues, there was some kind of back-up in the sewers owner's credit that they've gotten fixed and cleaned.

They're not proposing to make a big investment.

If it gets too bad, we'll bring in some portable bathroom facility.

Okay, so items M and N have been removed.

Is there a second?

Second.

Any further discussion?

If not, please include a vote.

Thank you very much.

Mr. Mayor and members of council, this is an application for a rezoning.

This has previously been heard by the Planning Commission.

It was forwarded to you at which time the applicant changed the proffer statement that was attached to it, the preliminary proffer statement to the final proffer statement, which is before you today, and as you know, at your knee.

I believe it was May meeting.

You elected to have a public hearing, which is the reason we're here tonight on this matter.

The applicant's layout of development hasn't changed from the preliminary recovery plan presented to the Point of View Commission in January.

You do have a copy of that.

The proper statement has changed, and I will go through that.

The pedestrian trail out of number one, the pedestrian trail from Longwood Drive to Jackson-Byas School,

is the same as what was in the preliminary proffer statement.

Item 2, a new pedestrian trail connecting the end of Longwood Drive to the existing Rivanna Trail system is the same as the proffer that was in the preliminary proffer statement.

$20,000 for improvements to existing trails from Jackson High School to the Rivanna Trail.

That was a profit that was held over as well.

Use of previous painting methods for any newly constructed off-street parking spaces.

That was held over.

15% of the dwelling units designed affordable.

That was held over as well.

The next three profits through them are the new profits that you are considering.

A $50,000 donation to the City of Charlottesville Housing Fund.

Relocation assistance for any resident displaced by construction activity into another unit owned by the owner and full rental units, all normal drive will be made available to all souls with Section 8 vouchers for a period of five years.

several items, the preliminary coffers statement was much longer several items staff indicated were items that were best shown in the plan of development and the rest of the items were not coffers so they've been stricken out of that statement so that's why it's shorter the review, the

This is a focus really on the standard review that we had at the Planning Commission level.

There was a healthy debate regarding this.

The topic that really I think it boils down to is the provision of affordable housing.

One of the comments I made in that public hearing that still stands I think is the idea

diversifying the different economic classes of people across the city rather than having our employees of low income and moderate income, but one of our goals is to integrate all types of people throughout the city.

This application I believe attempts to try to do that.

The other side of that

that recommendation is this is a move to introduce some market rate units in an area that is traditionally been a middle to low income neighborhood but the corollary to that is there's not a lot of efforts, we haven't seen a lot of efforts in incorporating affordable housing into some of our higher income areas of our city so while

The diversification in this particular area can be commended.

There is some caution that should be exercised in terms of how this affordable housing gets spread over the city and whether or not we're merely gentrifying an area and pushing lower income residents out of the city altogether.

So, staff's recommendation is we've recommended this application be approved.

The Planning Commission has not reviewed it in its current form, so they don't have a recommendation.

I believe their recommendation previously was a recommendation of denial, based on the preliminary proffer statement.

A little clarification.

Are there two of those showing on your slide?

This happened in the hearing as well.

The concept plan shows the demolition of the two units, replacing those with 43 townhouse units.

That's 25.

So that would be 25.

In terms of

I think one thing might be if you have time for a presentation from the developers to just double check the numbers within because this came up last time too and I would just want their word on it.

Just that question, yeah.

That's correct.

25 additional units.

Did you have any other remarks?

No, sure.

Sure.

Well, let me just preface by saying that since I bought my first house in Belmont almost 29 years ago and Jimmy Carter was still president, this is the first time I've been before this body to seek a rezone.

But the long term,

the long term future of Longwood Drive requires it.

So, in any case,

I think that Hollispell with his staff report sums up the project pretty well.

It was important for council to realize that this is really the last step in a very long process.

I started investing on Longwood Drive 11 years ago.

and over that time negotiated through 15 separate transactions to buy the units that I now have on it and during that time we've taken a number of steps to improve the neighborhood.

I was responsible for getting the speed humps installed on Longwood.

We got additional street lighting installed on Longwood.

We got Jackson Valley School to put up a fence.

along part of their property line to stop people from cutting through.

And I also went through a big tree planting program, spending about $40,000 to plant trees down the whole street.

So this PUD application is really the last step in the long process.

You know, I gave you all a summary of the reasons why I think this PUD meets several of the city's long-standing goals and I won't read them all, but I'll run through them briefly Economic development, generating new tax revenues, increasing the percentage of home ownership in the city

improving the city's housing stock, making housing opportunities available to lower income residents, encouraging infill development, higher density near large arterial roads, and basically what we're doing here, what Mike Osteen designed with this plan was to

was to eliminate this 1970s suburban type cul-de-sac development that was developed by Dr. Hurd in the mid-70s and to replace it with this other idea which, as Mr. Horska said, will lead to a much greater diversity of housing types along with a greater diversity of income

levels among the residents.

Right now, along with the 70 units of all three bedrooms, one and a half bath, townhouses, you know, it's pretty much the same.

Basically I'd just like to say that the staff did grant approval and since the Planning Commission meeting we have gone to great efforts to try to address the concerns of neighbors, also the concerns raised by commissioners and also the concerns raised by all of you here and I sent out an email which is also attached there that it goes through all of those concerns and how we try to address them.

Now obviously any plan is going to have some perceived negatives and I think the job for you is to decide whether this plan overall has more positives than negatives and I think it does.

It's a tremendous 10 million dollar redevelopment of a street that

years ago used to be mentioned in the same draft as Prospect, 10th and Page, Garrett Square.

So this is important for the future of Longwood.

Thank you, Mr. President.

We're now going to open the public hearing on this matter.

We have two residents sign up to speak and others are welcome to do so.

My name is Brian Hall.

I live at 2611 Jefferson Park Circle in the Fry Springs neighborhood, which is part of the community where this project is proposed.

I'm wearing several hats here, a property owner in the neighborhood, someone who's worked in land use regulation for the better part of 25 years.

As a historic preservation person, I've dealt with questions about gentrification and the effect of change in neighborhoods.

I think this proposal finds a good balance between retaining a mixed level of income, redeveloping the neighborhood.

It furthers one of the neighborhood's goals of increasing the percentage of private property owners in the neighborhood.

It was identified in the community planning project a couple of years ago.

It's a handsome plan that I think will benefit.

The property owners in particular have

a larger neighborhood impact that I think would be a substantial benefit to the community.

In considering the question of moderate or low moderate income housing and retaining it, I think it's important to think about the quality of the housing that you're discussing.

And that's a particular point in this situation.

Houses on Longwood were never very good to begin with.

They're like 1970s cars.

defined replacement date.

They were designed to wear out and I think looking at these it's reasonable to believe that perhaps these houses have reached the end of their useful life and that a thoughtful replacement is a timely undertaking.

Since I've got a couple of grains of sand left, I'll also mention that I've known Richard for close to 30 years now and

As you consider projects from people, it may not be in the rules, but it's worth thinking about someone's commitment to a community.

his work in Beaumont starting close to 30 years ago.

And he's always worked in the low and moderate income neighborhoods and has provided really good housing for a lot of people over the years.

And I think that this project demonstrates that kind of ongoing commitment, not just to make a quick buck in his projects, but to be an important part of the community as it changes and grows.

Thank you, Mr. Albemarle.

Good afternoon, my name is Cindy Stratton and I reside at 122 B Longwood Drive and have for the last 22 years.

I've been before the Planning Commission Council before in this regard and I will continue to share my concerns about the smoke and mirrors effect of this development project and urge you to consider

the impact that it will have on the residents of Longwood Drive now.

If the developers aren't able to maintain the properties that currently exist there, there's no reason in my mind to believe that there will be any significant

improvement in the maintenance of additional units.

The parking already is deplorable and we're unable to handle that so increasing units in my mind is not logical in that you're only going to increase the need for parking and there's nowhere to put them.

Additionally, I have shared with you before my concerns at the arrogant lack of communication with the neighbors and the adjacent

neighbors on Harris Road, Lodge Creek, Mosley, those areas will be significantly impacted by this development.

There has been no communication with them, nor has there been with the Jackson Valley School.

And those things I think ought to be of primary consideration as we talk about having community dialogues and making this a wonderful place for everybody to live.

Thank you, Ms. Dren.

I haven't been able to clarify 101 Roberts and Lane.

I haven't been able to see a diagram, but

Okay.

I thought we were trying to, I know they're on the county, but I also thought the city was really looking at PUDs with the idea of always having another exit.

Thank you, Ms. Hunt.

Yes, my name is Wadi Zaki, I live at 116 Meade, Longwood Drive.

I own that building.

I spoke before the Planning Commission earlier, and briefly I want to touch on some of the issues that I touched on here.

When you speak about density, you're bringing in so many extra units, you're going to bring in so many more tenants.

If he's going to sell some of your properties,

then those properties have to be considered...

Excuse me, I'm low.

My main mission is this.

The density of it, having all these extra units, and removing a few by adding plenty more, having more people, safety issues for children, which we have more children coming through, playing along with, and we have cars now that are constantly flying through the air, which creates safety hazards for kids.

The parking issue is

It's almost unheard of or deplorable because most of the time you come here, there's really nowhere to park.

People are always bothering their apartment positions.

Like the spirit before me,

I don't think much consideration is taken for the additional traffic that it will add to the school.

Because when kids come out, you have constant traffic coming in.

When UVA have games and functions, the traffic coming through Harris Road can be

Very heavy at times, which just getting out of Longwood can be rather difficult.

You add two or some more units, that is going to add to the problem.

First, the trail.

That trail, it's never was told to explain exactly how close it is to the

units on Longwood going down the back portion of it.

My concern is as a property owner, I often grow in the back and I have to pick up trash and bottles and everything already that's actually a city property, but still I pick this debris up.

Now, you're talking about adding trail.

That in itself is going to be more than great, which I find a problem.

I know there are more people that ought to be here speaking right now and have concerns, but for one reason or another they are unable to make it.

But I sincerely hope that you actually consider the impact it's going to have on that particular sector and know that

As well as the presentation may appear, it's going to have the effect that it's going to be somewhat difficult for it to adjust to for all the residents by living in error.

Thank you very much.

Anybody else like to speak?

My name is Cal Tate, I live at 104 B. Longwood Drive and I'm here to speak on behalf of the plan to improve the quality of life at Longwood Drive.

I've been there for about four years now and I've seen some

noticeable improvements with the neighborhood and some of the properties in that area.

And I believe that the management will make a conscious effort to bring some diversity and to work along with the residents in that area so that the quality of life does improve and is sustained.

have been a vocal part in seeing some of the improvements taking place on Longwood Drive.

And I just want to say that I'm in support of the plan, and my wife has been here.

She was born and raised here in Charlottesville, and she's heard the stories about Longwood Drive, but I think that has been dissipated now.

Hi, my name is Selena and I live at 101 over on the drive.

and I would like to say I've been there about three years and I've seen a major improvement in the properties over there.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

My name is Allison Ruffman.

I live at 735 Grave Street.

I don't know if I can give a perspective on this particular property in our neighborhood.

People in my part of the neck of the woods, I do know that it's true that with a recent purchase where my mother rents, which is in the county,

They're much happier with the service.

I would say, though, in Belmont, I'd have very mixed feelings about in the process of regentrification.

I really didn't see anything happen until owner-occupied people started doing it.

And then afterwards, it's like the renters began to do it.

What always concerns me when we look at projects, whether it's rezoning, whether it's something like the pavilion, or what on the face of it, I think this lady was talking about smoke and mirrors, and I'm not implying that this project is like that.

that we always seem to want to ignore really the externalities.

And, you know, this is a very common term in economics, but it's really, what are we attracting to this area?

What is the pressure that's going to happen?

I mean, I don't live next door to the pavilion, I don't live downtown, but I am very heavily impacted by it.

I didn't sleep for two years because of it.

It invited in neighbors that wanted to party all night, and the house across from me was called the Frant House.

So when you look at reasoning or not zoning or doing these developments, I hope that all of these externalities can be taken into account and really thought about the impact on the whole area.

That's all.

Hi, my name is Satyendra Anderson.

I live at 103 B. Longwood Drive.

I would like to say also that I proved to the building a little more improvement in it.

I've been there in that one spot for 19 years almost, and I don't find nothing, you know, really wrong, and I'm all for it, so I'm looking forward to the improvement.

Thank you very much.

Good evening everyone.

My name is Deni Rahe-Albert and I live at 108 in Longwood.

Thank you very much.

Anybody else?

Speaking out, let's have a hold of peace.

All right, I will close the public hearing.

Thank you all for who spoke tonight.

I have a few follow-up questions for Mr. Holuska.

My experience is when we do have a number of just the record of the PEDs that we have is really dependent on what comes up at the public hearing at the time, whether or not there's a concern about access out there.

We've had another couple of examples where a PED has come up in the rezoning stage.

and adjacent neighbors have been concerned about cut-through traffic creating that second link.

The Cherry Hill development is one that comes to mind.

The interconnectivity is an issue in terms of

how you design a neighborhood and how you allow people to move through it.

In this particular case, we're talking about redevelopment of an existing road.

People do look at the map.

There is a plotted second way in and out of this road that is not developed at this point, but there is right-of-way off of that.

And if you look at the maps in your booklet, I think you'll see the

What is the process from here forward if the council tonight were to approve the rezoning to PUD?

You can't approve it tonight.

If the rezoning is approved at the second of two readings, the applicant will then submit a site plan to Neighborhood Development Services for review.

The PUD process requires a site plan.

That site plan is required to go to the Planning Commission for review.

The main question the Planning Commission has to deal with is does that plan match or become reasonably close to the concept plan that was approved with the planning development.

The applicant cannot radically change what they've submitted.

The plan that you have in front of you is a part of the zoning.

With any site plan, we have a site plan conference that we do with any preliminary site plan that comes into the city.

That's a meeting that's held during the day at about 10 o'clock.

The adjacent property owners, any adjacent property owners are notified by our office by mail.

Is that...

The parking calculations are shown I think on page

The applicant shows a net increase of 76 off-street parking spaces, so that comes out with the increase in units to about three spaces per unit, which is above and beyond the parking requirement for these types of units.

Basically every unit on Longwood right now has two spaces per unit if cars park front to back.

The plan has at least two spaces for every new unit but also there's an additional 30 spaces in the

that if you're talking about selling a house to a couple or something that you may well end up with fewer cars than what you would have under a rental situation where people can have by the city thing you can have two people per bedroom

Yeah, Mike Osteen designed sort of a choke point at the front of the development where we're going to redo the sidewalks and the road at that section and sort of choke it down to stop the speeding traffic, but I also mentioned that Longwood was one of the

I think the second place in the city they have to speed humps after Penn Park so there may be a need for more of those but just to answer your question there is an adjoining piece of property that's owned by R.L.

Is it fair to say that the differences in what we're considering, what the Planning Commission considered is in the profits?

I think it could be mentioned that the amount that's been proffered for affordable housing is to this point unprecedented in the city.

We offered a 15% which is the city goal plus

Thank you very much.

Who would like to start, Mr. Olga?

I think this is a very direct point around the street.

It took us four years, so twenty-five years, and it's gone from a very bad situation to a very bad situation that we're in.

It's a very wrong thing, but we still could use all of our problems right now as of today.

I could see there was this kind of development that would make a better neighborhood.

One of the criteria's always is to see if we can improve the neighborhood.

I think this kind of development will improve the neighborhood.

It will also provide affordable housing.

It will provide a little bit better neighborhood that is consistent with comprehensive plan.

It will provide a better mixture of income and housing type.

I would essentially agree with what Mr. Huja said.

I, you know, observe the transition of the neighborhood and I think that the real question in my mind is does this improve the neighborhood and I think it would do that.

I'm all for making improvements in improving maintenance in the neighborhood, but I'm not sure if that requires a PUD.

I think a PUD is a gift, so I want more.

And the concerns that I had was in terms of immunity for the neighborhood children, when I look at other areas of the city, I see how

Basically Johnson School was built around Johnson Village and I just wish there had been more interaction with the school and the impact that a neighborhood can have on a child's development.

and given the concerns that we had with the graduation rate and achievement gap, this was really an opportunity to again transform the neighborhood and also what's important about the neighborhood is the school.

Also regarding the trail, I was a little concerned about the $20,000 and wondering whether or not that was just one year's worth of maintenance for the trail and there wasn't any discussion about what would be

the ongoing maintenance and then someone made a comment about having to pick up the trash and everything right now so I think that that I was hoping for more regarding that maybe overall that's an indication that we need to pay attention to that trail anyway and also regarding the

I'm concerned about the definition of affordable housing.

Can the people that currently rent ever become home owners?

I'm going to go to some discussion about the use of Section 8 vouchers and what we haven't done in our locality that I've seen done in other areas is the use of Section 8 for down payment for home ownership.

Any concerns?

Well, this came before the planning commission.

I think I was somewhat favorably disposed towards this project as bringing some needed improvements to that area.

And I have to say that I think in the current proffer statement, it maybe sets an example of what we want to see in proffers

for PEDs, which is significant contributions for affordable housing.

In this case, it's a donation to the housing fund.

It's a commitment for some of the, for sale units to be affordable, a commitment to making rental units designated for Section 8 vouchers.

I was not favorably inclined towards this project when it came forward but I do appreciate the work that's been done in revising the project statement because I believe it's a much better project as a result and I think there's still some legitimate concerns that have been raised about parking but I trust that the provisions that have been put in place regarding the additional off-street parking areas will help with that

I would strongly encourage the applicant to continue the ongoing outreach to the neighbors that you've been doing and I think they need to be part of this process for it to be a successful development.

I have a little present.

I heard that in the second language stage that one of the zeros in the house clearly had children, smaller children,

Okay, there is?

I didn't notice that.

Okay.

All right, so we have it before us on first reading.

Is there a motion to approve?

I move the ordinance.

First second.

All right, so it's been moved and seconded.

Carry forward to our next meeting.

Thank you to the applicant and thank you to all the residents who came to speak tonight.

We now have before us a public hearing and ordinance regarding an alley closure from 900 block of Elliot and Alta Vista Avenue.

This is the first of two readings.

Mr. Brown.

Mr. Mayor and members of council, this is a request to close what we sometimes refer to as a paper street or alley.

It is a planted right-of-way, but it is overgrown with vegetation.

It is

To the best of my knowledge, it's never been used for vehicular traffic.

The city has a policy for closing alleys of this nature which allows for it to be done administratively if all the adjoining landowners join in the petition.

In this particular case there were two landowners who did not and therefore it was not a candidate to be done administratively.

It can be done by ordinance adopted by council.

Since this was prepared, as a matter of fact, today I think we did hear by telephone from the other two adjoining landowners who had not joined in the petition and they did express no opposition to the proposed closing.

I think it was a situation

where they just didn't fully understand what was being proposed.

Since we are at this stage, my advice would be to go ahead and hold the public hearing.

Any questions for Ms. Brown before we have the public hearing?

I will open the public hearing.

There's nobody signed up to speak.

Is there anybody here tonight who would like to speak on this matter?

I will close the public hearing.

Is there any motion to report?

Mr. Mayor and members of the council, this is an application for rezoning a property located 814 Hinton Avenue.

This is the second of two readings on this subject.

The application has not changed at all.

I do have a question.

Can you talk about the, you know, I said when this came before us last time that my support for this application was contingent upon the city engaging with the neighborhood in a process to address some of the broader concerns that have been raised in the process of discussing this particular application.

Mr. Tolbert and I have met with Jesse Fisk who is the president of the Belmont-Carlton Neighborhood Association sort of as a kickoff type meeting to get an idea of what type of issues are out there to kind of get an idea of what kind of process we could go through.

We've also met with, we talked with Jean Alexander, traffic engineer for the city and Chief Longo, chief of police, regarding some of those other issues, kind of getting some initial buy-in on that process.

I think the next step that we are planning to go forward with is a meeting with the Neighborhood Association and staff members.

That is tentatively scheduled for the basement conference room 7 p.m. next week, July 13th.

I haven't heard back from Jesse yet to finalize that, so those of you that are in the Belmont-Carlton Neighborhood Association, check your emails.

But that'll be the first process.

I think there's a lot of issues that have been raised.

Jesse gave us a letter, I think a three-page letter, when we met with him originally, addressing some of those concerns.

We've been taking notes throughout this meeting through the comments that were made and managed from the public.

So those type of things are all going into that list.

All those things are going into the list.

We'll be looking at short-term, long-term solutions.

I believe Ms. Mueller has also been out there talking with business owners about trash collection and I know she's made some preliminary findings in that regard.

Question about the specific application or the appeal.

Yes, the proffers statement with a rezoning stays with the property.

The property can change hands ten times, but whoever the current property owner is at 814 Hinton Avenue is bound by the rezoning and the proffers.

Just to chime in on that, obviously this applicant has offered some proffers that deal with how a restaurant use would be run at the location.

If a subsequent owner is not prepared to operate a restaurant in the manner which is described in this application under the proffers that have been offered, then really the only option is some use allowed permitted

Other questions for Mr. Hornske?

Thank you.

Yes.

I was here at the last meeting, so I looked at the record, I have viewed the pictures of the centers, visited the site, and I have heard a lot of emails, like you have too.

I also stopped by Congress to say that I was impressed by the applicants,

Cecilia Rookin, as well as Carson Ross, I hope to go do a reading also.

So it's very peaceful and stable in that sense.

After looking at the situation, I plan to go against it for four or five reasons.

First, is to continue to compose a plan.

And I think it is a need to be very careful as to whether you contradict that plan or if there are very good reasons.

Second, is to continue to the intent of a more relevant commission earlier.

Thirdly, it is that I have already existed an issue zero label that's zoned, which can be used by an applicant for this purpose.

And lastly, I always try to find out whether this is good for the neighborhood.

I am not sure if it is good for the neighborhood.

It is good for the applicant, I am sure.

Whether it is good for the neighborhood.

And so, given this consideration, I would like to

and also I would like to point out that the resolution of the package, I think in the last few years, and that 4-0-1-0 is consistent or physical, is that correct?

We are not going to find that out from the player or facilitator of his office.

Yes, I can.

It is, if you look at the Albemarle newspaper, which clearly indicates that it is for a member commission and not just for a general commission, but it's for a similar family, and on the best side, it shows the comprehensive plan, and on this plan.

It is just a trans-document in the plan.

Is Mr. Velasquez still here?

With regards to the consistency of the comprehensive plan, there is a document within the comprehensive plan related to the future land use of the city.

It's a map that's, I think, dated the future land use point.

2025 shows each individual property and a future intended land use.

So that document is a part of that.

It is a very heavy document.

It weighs very heavily on the determination of whether or not it is consistent as to whether the colors match between the land use plan and the proposed zoning.

The consistency of the comprehensive plan does talk about that entire document, not just that map.

That in terms of is something consistent with the comprehensive plan really is a judgment call that you have to make as a city council.

We certainly make a statement in the staff report.

I believe the statement I made was that it was inconsistent with the comprehensive plan in terms of the land use map.

I'm inclined probably not to support this.

I guess that, you know, one of the issues that I have in addition to what Mr. Huja's already pointed out is the fact that I think when you start doing this, where do you really stop?

And I understand that each one of these reasons stands on their own merits, but

that there are clear issues and I think they've kind of come to light in this process.

I mean there's issues of parking, there's issues of noise, there's issues of traffic, there's issues of trash and I think that those issues in my mind are really separate from this particular property.

Those issues will be there whether this property is changed or not and these issues

in my mind will not be dramatically affected by this one piece of property being changed.

And so I think we shouldn't, we should take those issues and look at them in the context of, as you've done, Mr. Mayor, and I think you should be commanded of initiating a process to address those issues regardless of what happens with this issue.

When I look at this single property, if you look at it on a map and you look at the properties around it, it seems out of place.

It's directly across the street from a commercial property.

It's within five feet or seven feet of a business.

And yet, an it, we're at a business, serves as a nice, almost a natural buffer to its neighbors.

I think considering the proffers

that have been offered, which address the main issue here, which is the issue of noise.

To have an inability to have amplified music, I think, does address that issue.

And Emily, anything different to offer?

I'm sorry, but what I did was I had a... Little kids.

I know.

But I had a long conversation with one of the Planning Commission's about it.

And the analogy that he brought was he said, well, Holly,

What if there were, he said, you know, you had a six street market.

I said yes.

And he said, what if there were six more six street markets right across the street from me?

And I thought, well, if one of them sells Starbucks coffee, maybe that wouldn't be too bad to be able to have something that convenient in my neighborhood.

But the reality was, I want to stay consistent with what I said initially about supporting the idea

and I think that there are a lot of things that we have brought up that we do need to address anyway and I believe that unfortunately it came in the same time that this was brought forth but there were issues that we needed to address in the neighborhood there were things that we needed to pay attention to and I think this is an opportunity to pay attention to those things to resolve those things and make the neighborhood better and also to be honest

I believe that having businesses in the neighborhood really changed the culture within the area.

And I do wonder if there were more businesses around Sixth Street, if there were more opportunities for jobs, and if there were more things for young people to do when there were job opportunities.

I would rather see more businesses on Sixth Street

than the violence that I have seen on my block.

I think very loud and clear that many residents of Belmont, downtown Belmont, are under siege, feel under siege by noise and traffic and impacts.

and I don't think anybody can deny that there are issues to be addressed and I commend the staff for stepping up and working with the neighborhood in a really holistic, comprehensive way to address some of those long-standing concerns and we were late in the game in addressing some of them, but I think we're now, we've got our attention.

But I agree with Dr. Brown.

I don't believe that this one parcel, this one rezoning is going to create, you know, to worsen that situation measurably and I happen to agree that this particular parcel is a benefit with the commercial district and provides a better buffer.

So I am prepared to approve the appeal.

and I will entertain a vote unless there's further discussion.

This is the first...

This is the second reading.

So a motion to... You can call the question.

I'm sorry.

It's been written second in the first reading, so I would now call the question.

Motion carries.

Thank you very much.

So we're done.

Next on our agenda tonight is a, we'll give them a moment to evacuate.

Mayor, Members of Council, it's an honor to provide the introduction to this next presentation.

This is the second presentation from our Neighborhood Leadership graduating class of 2009.

Two weeks ago, one of our project groups reported on their efforts to bring poetry from high school students to our buses in an initiative called Bus Lines.

This evening, our second group will provide us with an update on their project concerning the fire department's free smoke detector program.

Hi, thank you for having us.

I know many of you attended some of our sessions for NLI and some of you were at our graduation, so you got to hear a little bit about our project.

And really our inspiration for the project was Chief Werner when he came and spoke to the class.

But we wanted something that was going to be measurable so that we could easily make goals for it.

And the Smoke Detector Project provided that.

There are obvious benefits for the city and its residents.

And just a statistic here, the last fire death was March 18th of 2007 and there was no smoke detector present at that location.

The reason we picked Fry's Springs as our first neighborhood is because it does have the longest response time from any of the three fire stations in the city.

And it also happens to be where April lives.

And it's a very attractive neighborhood association in an equal number of households, so it wasn't too ambitious.

But numbers on that, we have actually about 50% of it are owner occupied and the rest are tenants.

And we chose to revise the goal.

Our original goal was to be able to truly cross off and put a check mark beside every home in Fry's Spring that they had a working smoke detector.

We found it's very difficult to get people to respond to us so we've revised it with we are just going to blanket the neighborhood so that they are so aware of it they can't help but respond and if they need a smoke detector they get one.

What we've done so far is we did create a project plan.

We identified chief owner as our project owner and came up with our key contacts.

We got a compiled list of all the homeowners.

We presented it to the Fry's Spring Neighborhood Association and I'll be at their meeting again this week.

And we've emailed the Fry's Spring Neighborhood Association which reaches about 300 of the residents and I've probably received responses from about 70 of them so far.

And right now we only have four requests for smoke detectors.

So it's pretty good numbers.

We did have a story that aired on NBC 29 on April 29th and 30th, which got some great publicity for us.

We are working with a nonprofit group called One Neighborhood at a Time, or ONAT, and we were hoping that they could be here tonight as well to talk about what they're doing, but their goal is to raise $10,000 to purchase the smoke detectors for the fire department.

And we talked about, we may not need that much in smoke detectors, so the next thing might be carbon monoxide detectors, or detectors for people with disabilities.

We've developed a utility bill insert to alert people to the project.

We've involved the Charlottesville Fire Department's Civilian Fire Corps, which I am now currently a member of.

So this is our top project and it gets noticed every single month by our group.

We've created a press release and we are still working with the reverse 911 calls so that we can alert neighbors again.

It's one more way to alert the neighbors that we have this project going on.

The Charlottesville.org website, the CFDonline.org website both have information that's very prominent on websites and we are looking at distributing fires at the Fry's Spring Beach Club and other Fry's Spring neighborhood areas.

We're also looking at coordinating a firefighter visit to the neighborhood.

We feel like that will get the children involved and whenever neighborhoods see a fire truck, they just are drawn to it.

They want to know what's going on.

We've looked at possible use of incentives like free pizza for the first 50 people to respond and Papa John's is involved very much with the On That organization so it's very possible that they'll work with us on that.

On That is also budgeting money for some PSA ads again to get more information out there and we are beginning to extend this to other neighborhoods through the Fire Corps

Because we did not want to overwhelm the fire department if we got a huge number of requests, we started off with Fry's Spring.

Like I said, we had four requests, so we're not overwhelming them in any way.

And so we decided we were going to move it to Greenbrier, 14th Street and Fifeville, and we're underway now to get a project plan in place.

We've already started getting requests from other neighborhoods, so the road is out there and people are hearing about it and they are requesting it.

And we also talked about sending home flyers the first week of school with the children.

And as April said, on that is a nonprofit group comprised of local businesses and the raffle, the way they're going to attempt to reach that 10,000 hour goal is sell raffle tickets and there's the list.

I won't go through it, but

a list of their Apple items on here and that can also be found on their website which is on that.org O-N-A-A-T.org

Our successes to date, awareness, our efforts have definitely built awareness within Fry Springs, but other neighborhoods too, as April said earlier.

We had the four Fry Springs residents request detectors, and the feedback when we went and presented to their homeowners association was very positive.

I guess is really if you want to... We basically had some elderly residents who said, you know, after I called and left a message and then I got a call back, I really wasn't sure if it was somebody from the fire department.

How do I know this and how do I know the people coming out are really from the fire department?

So we're able to clear that up and get the message out that when you get the call back, they will identify themselves, who they are with the fire department, and then it will be firefighters in full uniform with IDs in a fire truck.

Which is another, the owner installation versus the professional installation by a firefighter.

Really just comes up with a liability issue, but they will come in and, you know, find investigation in the house and install it themselves.

and how you can help is really purchasing the tickets through ONET for the raffle to help us produce that, get close to that $10,000 goal.

Feedback or suggestions to make this more of a success is always welcome.

I have some available this evening.

If you go on that website, the www.onaat.org, it will give you all the information there.

And how does, if somebody's watching at home right now and does not have a smoke detector and they would like one from the fire department,

I did not include that in here.

Do you have an email, Maurice, for any chance?

I believe it's 970-329-0 It's on the website and there's also a form on the website and as we were sitting here I thought, oh that's one thing I forgot to put in the presentation.

Thank you.

What a great project.

We've done great response and the feedback has been very positive.

Well, if you save even one life from this project, it'll certainly be worth it.

Thank you.

and who'd you found the first money for?

Well, we got started with that.

If it hadn't been for that, we probably wouldn't have got started.

Well, thank you both for getting started.

Good evening.

Good evening.

I'm pretty excited tonight.

I've got a lot of good news to share with you.

One of the things I should do though is to correct what the plan is.

It's probably better to call this the fiscal year 2010 service plan.

What we're doing is talking about what we will do with service beginning on August 22nd if I persuade you that what I propose that we do is a good thing.

Before I do that, I want to talk to you a little bit about what the context is and perhaps give you an opportunity to ask questions if you have them.

One of the things that we've been doing over the past several months in transit, and that represents 96 people other than myself, and to the extent that we're doing things right, they're the ones that get the credit, not me.

I'm just the one that comes here to talk to you about it.

What we're doing is we're providing the ride and what I want to do is to prove it to you that we provide the ride.

Last time I spoke to you about a month ago, I had some statistics to share and you need to scratch all those because all of those are bad.

They're old news.

Everything has gotten better.

We've crossed a barrier of two million riders.

We exceeded 2 million riders in this past year.

I know that you had a report at the beginning of this year that had some unfortunate numbers, but the true number is that Charlottesville Transit Service has provided 2 million rides in the past fiscal year and we're going to do more in the coming fiscal year.

Now, where have we come from?

Well, two years ago,

It was 1.5 million rides.

So in the past two years, we've increased our ridership by a half a million passengers.

Well, only five years ago, before you brought me here, we were at less than 1.3 million rides.

So in the past five years, we've had an increase of more than 732,000 passenger boardings.

That's more than 57%.

We're getting more people on the bus and I'm happy and proud to work with you to get even more, but we are getting more people on the bus.

And this is because we've done some good things.

We're making our buses run on time and we're connecting people more directly to the places that they want to go.

Last year in August when we made service changes, we made some changes to Route 3.

This is the route that connects Belmont to downtown.

Now what did we do differently?

What we did differently is we added extra buses in the peak morning and afternoon commute times so that it would be more convenient for people going to and from work.

We also tied it together with Route 6.

So what we did is we created a new crosstown route to provide more direct connections from Beaumont, places that people live that work in the university area, and we brought them on a direct connection over to the university hospital area where they work.

And I think that's why more people are riding Route 3.

Route 5, a county route.

What we did was to add night service and that's something much to the credit of Albemarle County that they supported.

Route 6, as I mentioned, we brought connections over to the UVA hospital and we tied it to the Belmont route.

There were about eight, again, direct connections.

What we did is we took the bus that goes between downtown via Preston Avenue and goes up to Kmart and Seminole Square and we added service to Barracks Road Shopping Center.

We also added service to Best Buy and World Market.

Route 9, we made direct connections to Charlottesville High School.

We connected the 10th and Page neighborhood not only to downtown, which had already been done, but we also connected it over to the UVA hospital area, the corner district of the university.

This is why every single route change that you made last August has led to more ridership on Charlottesville transit service.

We've made some very good decisions about what we do with our resources.

What else have we been doing lately?

Well, in March we had a passenger survey and more recently a study was presented called the Regional Transit Toolkit.

This is something that the city participated with the county and the Metropolitan Planning Organization to learn what people in our region, Charlottesville and Albemarle,

would like to see different to improve public transportation.

Now certainly a lot of the comments are about adding service to new areas.

And I would be very pleased to work with you to add service to new areas to make service more frequent.

But as Councilor Huja mentioned a little earlier this evening, that does take more money.

And right now we're working with trying to take what we've invested in transit and make it return better in terms of ridership and we're succeeding with that.

So we had a passenger survey and we had a regional transit toolkit project which included things like telephone surveys and other ways of gauging what people's opinions are about public transportation.

And what it boils down to when it comes to trying to make transit better without expending additional resources is we need to make sure that we place an emphasis on employee courtesy,

and we've recently had some sessions with our employees to help them learn the importance of being courteous to the public.

We want to treat the people that ride on Charlottesville Transit Service as our guests.

They tell us this is important and when they rated our performance on this we got an 87% satisfaction rating.

Hopefully a year from now or whenever our next report on this I'm going to be able to tell you that the satisfaction rating is even higher because we are going to measure it.

We are going to do additional surveys to see whether we're improving on this very important feature.

Now what else can we do?

Well, we can keep the buses on schedule to tell us that's important and we can make the buses more direct.

And so that is what we have been trying to do with the routes last year and what I'm bringing to you tonight for a proposal.

There's a map on the wall and in your packet

You have a map.

Now, I realize it may be a little bit of gobbledygook.

You should have this map in your packet.

Hopefully that's a little easier than craning your neck.

It's pretty simple in terms of colors.

There's green and there's pink.

and where you see green and pink running together it's doing the same thing we're doing now where you see green alone those are areas where the bus wouldn't go anymore and where you see pink alone that's where the bus will go in the future if you prove this approach that it doesn't go now

So what do we want to do?

What we want to do is to make service more direct to the UVA hospital.

We talk to riders, particularly on Route 4A, people that live on Prospect, people that live on Bailey Road, that area around the park.

They want to go to UVA hospital.

So I said, well what if we make the bus go directly to UVA Hospital rather than taking you downtown first?

Because that's what we do.

The current green line shows we go out and we make a loop through this area and we bring them downtown.

And if they want to go to UVA Hospital, they can stay on the bus and that bus will take them out West Main and down to A.P.A.

and they can get off and go to UVA Hospital.

That's because the way this route has been organized, downtown has been the center of the route.

I want to make UVA Hospital the center of the route.

So what we would do, sure, we continue to serve from downtown, but instead of coming downtown twice an hour, we come downtown once an hour per bus.

Now we will have two buses.

So at peak times, this will be serviced every 30 minutes.

We will go through the neighborhood that we're going through now, just as we go through it now, and then we will go up Roosevelt Brown and we will go to UVA Hospital.

We will shorten the commute time for people that want to get to the UVA Hospital area for jobs.

They can probably take the next bus.

They can go 30 minutes later and they can still get to their destination when they get there now.

Now on the other end of the route what we're proposing to do is something that was changed in March of 2007.

The loop through Johnson Village was removed and we have been using this shuttle ever since and what we can do is eliminate the need for that shuttle

and just have this new Route 4 go through Johnson Village.

And just like we would be connecting folks on the other end of the route to the UVA Hospital area, these folks will be coming up JPA and they'll be able to go to the UVA Hospital area.

If they want to come downtown, the only difference would be that the bus is going to go down to Cherry in order to get downtown rather than going down West Main Street.

And it seems like perhaps a long time ago, I think it was before some of the councilors were even on council, one of the things that we were looking to do was to not have so much of our service stacked up on West Main Street.

And this is the last piece of that puzzle.

To take time that is currently overlapped by the free trolley in Route 7 and have this bus run on Cherry instead of on West Main.

So essentially what I'm proposing we do, this is a cost neutral thing, you take where you only have green showing on the map and you don't do that and then you can do the areas that are shown in pink only on the map.

Everything that we've heard

in our passenger survey and in the regional transit study and in talking directly to passengers, in talking to the neighborhood organizations affected by this route, this is the right thing to do.

And we can do it without expending additional resources.

Perhaps in the future we can talk about what we might do if we have additional resources, but this is something that is manageable given the fiscal year 2010 budget, something that I would like to implement come

August 22nd of this year, and this is something again that would be in combination with the changes that were approved by you last month to passenger fares.

Thank you, Mr. Morrison.

Congratulations on the achievements.

I appreciate that, but it's also because you're supporting and you're interested in making transit better.

I wanted to comment.

I also wanted to thank you for the work you've done.

I think the big improvement you've made has been getting the buses to be on time and that's not been a single thing you've done.

It's been a combination of things you've done.

I apologize for interrupting.

I don't drive a bus.

I'm not doing it.

Our drivers are doing it.

I apologize for interrupting.

Why don't you not interrupt?

Okay.

And I think you do deserve to pat yourself on the back, but I also think you neglected to thank some other people who had a lot to do with the increased ridership.

I think the University of Virginia needs to be commended for their support of CTS.

They support the trolley, they support, they pay us for employees, staff, and faculty to ride, and I'm pretty sure that has something to do with our success.

I also think we should thank Albemarle County several years ago

they made a significant increase in funding and it's resulted in us being able to expand routes into Albemarle County and I finally think it's actually really a pause to thank a couple members of city council because I think you've done a great job of implementing night service and Sunday service but I think that was Holly Edwards came to city council with the idea saying you know it's shameful that members of the public who rely on buses can't get to work on Sundays

and can't get home from work in the evenings.

And so that wasn't exactly the initiative that CTS came to council with.

It was the initial that council had.

And I'm not saying any of this to diminish it.

And so we all need to concentrate on that.

So, I just wanted to...

I want to commend also for especially the relationship between the last two years of the living great.

and I think I also saw the changes to the proposal going to add to our service, the quality of service and the customer service satisfaction and how they support those.

I think the council has in the last few years or half been around and we have supported our view on the budget.

I think the city budget has grown up.

In the last two years, COVID, it was the transit budget for these appointments and what they want is what is the

So in the last two budget years, there was significant increases in the budget, which I think will help those.

And I think that city will continue to support this, my colleagues are supporting this, in terms of transit.

And one of the things which I still have, is the Greenbrier development, there is no transit service,

Thank you.

I think that there will be an opportunity this fall for discussion of where we ought to go with the future of public transportation.

Hopefully there will be some progress on the question of the regional transit and we can make those two things dovetail.

Thank you.

I have one question.

How would the citizens find out these changes in routes, not just people who ride the buses but who don't ride the buses?

It is more difficult to share this information with the broader public because there's a cost element in terms of advertising the information.

But one of the things that we are going to be looking at doing is taking space on our buses that isn't being sold as paid advertising and use that advertising space to advertise our service because we do charge for it and therefore it's a commercial transaction.

I agree that that's a very worthy objective and one that we want to do better on.

In my experience, it is something of an incremental approach.

I think that making sure that

What is being accomplished is shared accurately as certainly a foundation, and we're trying to do that now.

There will be opportunities, I think, to do grassroots kind of communication about our service, and again, I'm open to any suggestions you have.

If there is a community meeting that you would like me to come and talk about our service either in general or anything specific, I would be happy to do that.

If we're being asked to support this plan, I think these all look like good improvements.

I support it and also in terms of a grassroots idea to give the information out, maybe there will be a way to combine your

advertisement efforts with some of the organizations that encourage alternative transportation and even doing the bike safety.

One of the things, again, I would anticipate that we're going to have some discussion on in the fall is what does the future hold.

Councilor Riggio was there.

I don't believe that Councilor Taliaferro was at the MPO Policy Board presentation of our marketing plan proposal.

That's something that is in the future and we want to talk about how we do get the word out sort of in the more formal channels.

The other thing might be just kind of cool to engage some of our middle school and high school students to see what they think about our transportation system and just to just emphasize the freedom that you have to get places where you can just simply catch the bus and you don't have to rely on

having a car maybe can change the culture of our young people so you don't need a car to get around.

Thank you.

Mr. Watson, thumbs up.

Appreciate it.

I want to announce, we did get the word, that the phone number to call to anybody at home would like a smoke detector.

The correct phone number to call is 970-3245.

Mr. Mayor, Councillors, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this evening.

I know you received the annual report a couple of weeks ago, so I want to talk about just a couple of highlights.

Typically, I go through the charges and the orders that they are placed in our charter, but I'm going to switch that up a little bit because I've got some good news to share with you.

Two of our charges are to identify and encourage new and innovative approaches to program development and to identify additional public and private funding.

On Thursday, at the end of the day, I received a call from Senator Mark Warner's office informing us that Charlottesville and Albemarle had been awarded the 2009 Safe Schools Healthy Students grant.

This award is almost $6 million.

over a four year period to support a comprehensive system of structure and support for our students ranging from preschool through grades 12.

This grant will add an additional three year old pre-k classroom for the city and an additional family support worker to support that classroom.

It will provide mental health and substance abuse clinicians in all of our schools.

It will introduce additional evidence-based bullying prevention, classroom management, academic enhancement programs across the school system with special emphasis on at-risk youth and the achievement gap.

So I'm delighted to be able to share that good news with you and I'll let you know more as we hear more about it.

I'm going back to the beginning of our charge, and that's the management of the Comprehensive Services Act.

I'm aware that you have a team studying this right now, so I want to talk to you about changes in the process and in the underlying philosophy that are necessarily related to the study that's going on right now.

Over the course of the past 18 months, the CSA process improvement team and the systems of care leadership team have worked to improve the local practice model that serves high-risk youth.

As a result, we've adopted a practice model based on a systems of care approach with the vision that children live safely and productively with their families and in their communities, and in their communities is really the key part of this, and I'll talk a little more about that.

and a mission that the CSA system uses highly collaborative, responsive and cost effective policies, procedures and structures.

to flexibly and creatively support children and their families.

The practice model that we've adopted locally is child-centered, family-driven, strengths-based, culturally competent, and community-based.

While all of these components are equally important, it is critical to have community-based services to make the model work.

We can't bring children back to our community or keep them out of candidate care without adequate services locally.

Three specific barriers were identified.

The first was a lack of a local assessment and diagnostic capacity.

Prior to August of this year, we were sending many children out of the community to be assessed at residential facilities that often had long-term programs, and the children often stayed in those programs.

The CSA community partners came together and created a local assessment and diagnostic facility, outpatient at Region 10, in partnership with Community Attention and with

Jefferson Trail, formerly Whisper Ridge.

So we're now keeping many more children in the community.

Of the 18 children, I believe, who have been assessed so far, only two have been placed out of the community.

We've seen a chronic lack of foster homes, which is being addressed by community attention and private providers as they look to expand our pool of foster homes.

The final bar has been a lack of educational services for high-risk children.

We often have children who are ready to come home from congregate care, but we can't bring them home because we don't have a place for them to go to school.

We've just completed interviews with six vendors who are interested in coming into the community and are in negotiation with two of these to be able to have expanded educational services.

Finally, I want to highlight a few other things in the annual report.

We continue to have a very solid partnership with the University of Virginia, which has resulted in, just for work to the commission, not to our community partners, over 3,200 hours of assistance valued at over $320,000.

We also broker a lot of connections between the university and other community nonprofits to help bring that sort of assistance in, so we've seen a real positive change in that.

Our youth development network, which Ms. Edwards had been involved in at one point, continues to be well supported and utilized by community partners.

We have quarterly informational meetings for people who are working in youth development to discuss how they can better coordinate services.

We also have a volunteer land hotline that takes calls from parents, students, citizens,

teachers to help connect kids with services.

Our motto is, you call it work.

So if there's a child who needs some kind of out of school service, we're able to connect them in about 85% of cases.

And when we're not, we know what the problems and the gaps are.

And finally, we're in the third year of a small grant-funded pilot truancy prevention program at Burn in the Room, which has shown remarkable results with the eight families that we've worked with at that school.

It's a joint program between the city and county.

We're also serving children at Greer with side results.

I gather from the staff at Burn in the Room, I'd love to see this pilot continued and expanded and we're looking for funding sources for that.

In terms of what's next, we will continue the implementation of the community practice model with systems of care and strive to bring children back from congregate care and keep them from leaving the community.

We will complete the CSA process improvements.

We will expand our capacity to serve children locally.

We will complete full implementation of the human service strategic plan, action plans regarding child care and youth development services and we will try to expand the youth development network.

Questions?

I have a couple of questions and some comments.

At this point, we had a very small group that we got from the Charleston Department of Social Services that we launched the program with, and we had a half-time coordinator.

We're now working with volunteers.

We typically have somebody 10 hours a week answering that phone.

So if we had some capacity to have somebody being able to not only answer the phone, but also go out into the community, I think as some of you are aware, last fall and

The spring of 2008, we had a number of community outreach events in various communities in the city and county, particularly with high-risk youth.

The other thing I wanted to comment about was the CSA process improvement.

Yes.

And actually, I tried to spend some time looking, because I noticed that with the

Efficiency Review that the city did, there were some comments about it, and there was also some comments about it in the county.

So I just wanted to see if there's more, and I'm always looking for opportunities for the city and county to work together, especially as it relates to how we can provide some continuity of care for our youth.

And I don't know if you would know this, but

I'm highlighting the report from the city.

It said ideally placing CSA under the city's DSS department allowed better case management and programming and allowed the city to have more effective financial controls of CSA expenses.

I was just wondering if this is a good opportunity since we're kind of looking at the process.

We can also get input from Regentan and the courts in the schools.

I think that when the report was done that most of the conversations were with DSS.

I would welcome that opportunity.

As far as I know, the consultants for the city did not speak with any of the community partners, including my office.

The consultants with the county did indeed have conversations with some of the community partners.

As I understand it, Ms. Beauregard and Mr. Elliott are leading a team that is

preparing to bring recommendations to you and to the Board of Supervisors.

Because it looked like from the county report of the Comprehensive Services Act that they, it sounded like they had a chance to spend more time with some of the other

of the partners and so it gave me a different picture of the whole of the possibilities of the whole process and it made me wonder whether or not maybe not so much as dividing things out where

Kennedy would do their thing and DSS would do their thing basically by kind of separating it out which is one I'm concerned that that might be one of the directions that the recommendation may be going but also this could be an opportunity to look at

What value would there be in having a CSA director?

Because I couldn't tell from even from reading reports and looking at the systems of care, and I did get the information about some of the meetings that were being held about it, but just by looking at it, is this an opportunity to look at how the whole systems of care model in Comprehensive Services Act can have a director in and of itself to kind of final decisions and responsibilities?

I feel like I'm in a bit of an awkward position because the study's going on.

My personal opinion, and I frankly told the county consultants, I think that there's some merit to having a CSA director who has both responsibility and authority.

It's a tricky situation when you have eight partners around the table who have different priorities and different

needs.

Okay.

Okay, I didn't even put you on the spot, but I didn't really get reading the report, and I think just, I think we just talked about the six schools grant award.

Yes.

It is, and the six schools grant

Excuse me.

The state school really ties the systems of care philosophy and practice model into it.

Right, now this means that grant is another example of other grant opportunities that we need to explore in other ways of working together without

I agree with you.

Okay.

There is a $12 million systems of care federal grant opportunity that people are poised to look at.

Unfortunately, it requires a very large match.

Other questions?

I think it's incredibly important both personally and professionally.

I've worked in this system for 30 years and I think that frankly

I was particularly excited to hear about the additional three-year-old classroom.

I am too.

Absolutely.

Thank you very much, Ms. Ellis.

Keep up the good work.

Thank you.

We'll start with, I don't know if Mr. Talbert is still here to read.

I'm with a background on accessory dwelling units that were first introduced into the zoning ordinance in 2003 and the current code states that an accessory dwelling unit can occupy up to 30% of the rear yard.

It has to meet the setbacks of five feet from both the side and the rear property line and it can't be taller than the height of the primary dwelling unit on the property.

And in recent years, we've had a couple instances where essentially a second single family dwelling has been built on the property because the allowances aren't very stringent.

Accessory drilling units are designed to be subordinate to the primary drilling unit on the property, not in a case to be able to build a second mass of drilling.

And so staff sought to try to tighten this allowance up a little bit.

And we brought two options to the Planning Commission in the last meeting.

and they're actually visually displayed on those posters and what I'll essentially tell you in a nutshell is option one, which the Planning Commission chose to go forward with is to take, to allow an accessory dwelling unit to be 40% of the excess, I'm sorry, the footprint of the accessory dwelling unit can be 40%

of the footprint of the primary dwelling unit on the property.

So that would be the yellow model in those two posters.

The other option would be to take the average footprint of all the properties that touch the property in question, take that average and then

allow the accessory drone unit to be 40% of that number so that any potential development would be more in scale with an immediate neighborhood.

The Planning Commission, the Planning Commissioners chose option one because they felt that people with bigger houses should be able to have a bigger allotment for an accessory drone unit.

That was pretty much

for the overall census.

They did, however, tighten up the proposed height regulations.

We proposed 25 feet and I believe Mr. Osteen put in an amendment to actually not allow an accessory drawing unit where, for instance, there's a grade change.

Let's say the backyard is taller than the front yard, so you would have a dwelling unit perhaps overshadowing the primary dwelling unit.

So he said that perhaps the ordinance should state that the eve of the accessory dwelling unit should be taller than the eve of the primary dwelling unit on the property.

so that we don't have a situation occur like that.

And so what's being presented to you today is that the accessory drilling unit, the footprint of the accessory drilling unit can only be 40% of the footprint of the primary drilling unit on the property.

It cannot take up more than 30% of the rear yard.

The setbacks will remain at five feet for both the side and the rear.

And so all of this was prompted essentially by, there was one rather egregious, I think it was some people's opinion, rather egregious case that's prompted this whole discussion and I guess in my mind

I hope Mr. Paul had a little bit of some of this predates him.

If you recall, we did not allow

and the accessory dwelling units that were separate and detached until 2003 so this was really the first out of the box and I think that was the Planning Commission concern is that when we allowed them in 2003 we didn't put any restrictions on the size of them so while the reaction may have been to the first one I think the concern was we haven't had a lot of them yet and realizing that we probably should have in 2003 put some better restriction on the size to make sure they were

truly subordinate to the house.

So how do you address the objection that's been raised that we're penalizing owners of smaller houses, low and moderate income homeowners primarily, by saying they cannot have

the concern that's been voiced is that they'd like to see another unit for income purposes and to allow another family and if it's single family zoning that's really not appropriate for that and I think that's the concern yes it does relate to the size of the house it probably does restrict it to some you know against some of the smaller lots of smaller houses but it's the nature of it is an accessory dwelling unit that's supposed to be subordinate to the primary house

and it's not to create a second unit.

Also, I think the original character of the default accessory unit is not the primary role for that, the primary role for the new family.

Well, I understand that concern.

It would potentially be very small, but they are allowed to go up, so there could be two floors.

And when you look at the mass occupancy, it's two unrelated people, they actually don't need that much livable area as opposed to a family of five.

And, you know, to restate what Mr. Tolbert said, that this really is subordinate to the house.

They have a single family home.

That's what the zoning of the property permits.

But I think the answer to your question, Mayor, is that there would be some lots that would be prohibited, but I think for the blanket statement that 10th and Page couldn't have on this is false.

I think they may be 200, 250 square feet on the floor, but as Reed says, you could go up and look more like the traditional

attached unit that you get in garage apartments and that sort of thing.

In preparation for this meeting, I actually looked at GIS this afternoon at a small duplex on Orange Dale.

Well, I think the mayor raises a good point because, you know, as I understand the history of this, part of, I mean, one of it is a way of getting density without, you know, having to create a whole lot of new development.

But another thing is to create a vehicle where someone can age in place as their income decreases by creating a vehicle where they can live in an accessory unit and rent their house, they can, you know,

create something where they can rent it out.

And I do think we should make sure we don't penalize the people who most want to take advantage of that opportunity.

So having said that, I'd like to encourage the mayor and all of us to be responsive to the concerns that have been expressed by saying, well, let's do it proactively.

at the ordinance, and as a result we saw an example of something that kind of shocked the neighborhood.

And so trying to address that issue now, maybe we should look at the concerns that are being raised here a little proactively.

Can we identify types of houses or neighborhoods where this restriction really might be prohibitive, and if so, can we craft a solution?

And I don't think that's a burden to place on the staff.

I think if there's people who are identifying, you know, Java or anyone else who's identifying this as being an unintended consequence, well, let's be more specific about the consequence.

I was going to say too, I think we could very easily take the GIS and take some systems and some areas ourselves and go to the 10th and Page neighborhood and some others that have small lots and very easily

Chris wasn't arguing that we shouldn't have this ordinance or amend this ordinance.

We might be able to provide some of this information to him and give him a comfort level.

I've been in contact with Chris Murray and I think unfortunately they got on the go at a little late and they actually, I read a statement from Mr. Murray in the public hearing

But, you know, I definitely will work with that.

Second?

Does it make sense that the light is still on?

There's no rush.

Why don't we do that, and that'll give us time to put some information... Because you might have less than a week to get the rest of this together.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

While you're here, Mr. Tolbert, do you want to talk about the community development document?

Okay.

Good evening members of City Council.

This, before there's an ordinance, will relate it to similar occupancy facilities, a zoning text amendment.

It was initiated by all in April and discussed at three meetings of the Planning Commission and before you is their recommendation.

It was a very close vote, three to two.

And what they discussed at that meeting basically was a definition

whether more than one person should be allowed in a unit and whether they should have kitchens or bathrooms, whether those should be required.

The zones where they should be allowed

and the specific regulations regarding those.

In a nutshell, what they decided on as a commission was allowing up to 15% of the units to be occupied by two persons, so that's included in the regulations but also in the definition that up to two persons would be included.

Units must have kitchens or bathrooms.

This is the item that they demoted the most for those of you all who are here.

For all our discussions, I recommended May because looking at all the other ordinances from around the country, in Virginia, it was usually an option to allow them or not.

They erred on the side of musts, basically citing that if you have your own kitchens and bathroom, it's more like your own unit.

It's one step.

in the line to Independence and so they aired on that and I think Mr. Ferruggio as a police officer thought it was probably better to have those units have kitchens and bathrooms.

There would be less conflict, less calls to the police department and things of that sort.

They wanted to change the language to delete some of the submission requirements to make it more simple and the applicant would be able to submit less, changing bus stop to transit stop.

taking out the highway corridor and the allowable districts and adding university districts.

This was not included in our first round discussion of where the districts should be allowed.

And so because it was not, didn't make it into the list of districts in the public hearing, we couldn't then discuss it and add it into, because it hadn't been advertised.

But if you all want to include those districts, that will require an additional public hearing by city council.

They did recommend including those

districts and the places where they'd be allowed.

Removing the co-location of shelter language.

We discussed this in the meeting as a commission and with the deputy city attorney.

There's nothing in the ordinance that would preclude this, so adding, I think I put something in there that when the commission was requested that nothing would preclude that.

We don't have to specifically say that.

There's nothing in the code that would prohibit it.

This would, as long as both the uses are allowed by right or by special use permit in a particular district, we don't have to specifically say this in this ordinance.

That was pretty much the gist of it.

You know, I basically, and I think I wasn't the only one who was interested in bringing this off, but I'll just speak for myself, but I had, there were probably two issues that I was most interested in, and I thought the fact that this was a close vote by the planning commission and a planning commission that wasn't at full strength, so, you know, it's a smaller sample.

The one issue, probably for me, that's most important is the issue on whether to require bathrooms and kitchens.

I guess the early discussions we had about this were not about the SRO being a vehicle to self-sufficiency.

It was to address a pressing housing need.

and in that pressing housing need we seem to argue for the option of creating units without the requirement at the discretion of the person developing this obviously as opposed to us requiring it and so I kind of throw that out there I'm kind of you know I would rather see more flexibility than less

I'm all for this being a vehicle of self-sufficiency, but I'm also recognized as probably some people who are in desperate need of a stable place to live who benefit immensely who may not really ever transition to self-sufficiency.

Well, your second comment, I don't support additional districts personally.

I think there is a lot of accountability in the university area, and I think, for those of us here,

and so on and so forth.

I'd like to speak to the University District.

I have some real concerns about that.

I think that I can see some of our

Creative developers using this to circumvent the density regulations and put more units in a place than we intended and they have nothing to do with the homeless but they have to do with students.

I really think that could be an issue and we have very limited area for university high density.

It was intended specifically to try to get students living near grounds and I'd like to see us protected for that.

My concern is

The definition does say it must provide counseling and training for that but I think that's loose enough that somebody that was created that put some kind of office in there and has some kind of social counseling for students and circumvents this and we've seen our development community take advantage and really play games with identities in the past I would hate to open that door while we're trying to do something creative for SROs and I'm just not sure that's where we want to put if you look at where the UHD and UMDR

I'm not sure that's where we want to put it They could put a small apartment complex if they wanted to or with small rooms but to be an SRO they also are limited on the density if they put apartments and the SRO density is limited only by whatever is felt appropriate through a special use permit so I just have some concerns about it I can see

down the road, us having some issues with it if we open it up.

That's why we didn't include it originally.

There are not.

Most everything is going to be redevelopment.

when you're dealing with special use permits.

Again, I just wanted to raise that with you that I have some real concerns about that district.

Right.

You can adopt all of it now and then consider that separately.

On the second issue, I think that it is good to have women to dance for work, especially dance for work, as well as kitchen bowls.

I would say from the research that most, at least the ones in Virginia, a number of them, the newer ones as well, have both kitchen and bathroom facilities.

I'll talk to Virginia Supportive Housing, which they're pretty much the premier housing developer, and all of their new developments will be kitchens and bathrooms.

With that said, I always supported from the beginning the name, the option of what the developer would want to do, because there's a lot of different

All those similar models for doing SROs.

Some people consider small hotels in that sort of fashion.

Others, I believe the genius sport of housing is moving to small efficiency where you would have your own apartment.

If they came here, that's probably the model they would do.

That being said, I believe the commission, the people who voted for it, wanted to be for someone moving towards independence.

That was that.

Any potential conflicts that would occur from having communal kitchens, which we can all imagine what those might be, from people who are trying to transition from being homeless to having to live together.

Just one more comment on this.

Communal kitchens are very difficult to manage.

All right, so it looks like there's two issues before us that we need to resolve.

First, let's get a straw poll of city council on whether or not we should open it up to university high density.

Sorry, I'm gonna make sure I get the wording right here.

No.

No, I vote no.

And then secondly, on the kitchen and bath facilities, whether we should require each unit to have a kitchen and bath or whether we should simply allow each unit to have a kitchen or bath.

I'd like to have the kitchen and bath.

Require it.

Yes, Edwards.

Okay, so we'll leave that language as it is now and we'll leave, actually we'll leave the University of High District language as it is now.

So a number of other languages is proposed basically.

Right.

All right, so we'll move the second and carry forward to the next meeting.

Thank you for taking the time to come back and allow us to actually settle a bit.

It's been an up and down couple of weeks with our community development stimulus money.

We got all excited Thursday just to give you a little background.

We got a call that said that the Vice President's office was terribly excited about our project.

They thought it was a phenomenal project and he wanted to come to town to have a press conference and talk about our use of stimulus money to do two LEED certified units on Patton Street.

Two hours later we get a call from HUD saying that the national office says the project is not eligible.

Can't do it.

We found out the regional administrator didn't know what Habitat was when we had the conversation, which really was an interesting series of events.

Today we got confirmation from HUD that for regular CDBG Habitat, this would have been a perfect project, they didn't have any issues with it, but it causes some language

that's in the stimulus bill which has some different requirements which I still haven't wholly understood yet.

They said that we could not use the money to do the project with Habitat and it's not Habitat in particular, it's a Habitat with a board makeup that they have concerns about the numbers of low income residents and it's any non, if it was a CHODO it would be completely acceptable, they've never gotten CHODO acceptance.

So we started spinning, trying to figure out what we could do to make this work.

We've only got to the 15th, that's why we've got it before you now, we lose the money.

So what we looked at was where do we have CHF funds that we could take and swap out, do this project and then use the stimulus money on the eligible

a project that we'd already funded with Charlottesville Housing Funds.

AHIP, you gave them $175,000 last month to do homeowner rehab and so we called them and said, would you mind the swap if council approved it?

They said no, but we've only got one caveat there.

As we've discussed many times before, if we get Charlottesville Housing Fund money, we can do a lot more with it than we can with anything CDBG because of the restrictions on

the use of the CDBG money, primarily Davis-Bacon and lead-based paint removal that they don't face with our dollars when they do rehab and so what we suggested to them is that we would come to you and say what we'd like to propose to you is that you authorize us to swap, use the CDBG, our money of $144,637 instead of going to Habitat that those dollars go to AHIP for housing rehab that $144,000

637 of AHIP's Charlesville Housing money go to Habitat to do the Patent Street LEED certified.

They'll still do the same thing that they were going to do.

And that we also go ahead to make, because AHIP's got a number of projects in the pipeline, people are taking applications counting on the 175, but we go ahead and allocate them a hundred of next year's million dollar, that's actually this year's million dollars,

so that they get an additional 100,000 which will allow them to do the 8 to 10 that they were going to do with the money that we'd already given from Charlottesville Housing Fund.

Yes, they can do smaller ones because what you get into now with lead-based paint is lead-based paint costs as much, that removal and remediation quite often costs as much as a rehab job and you have to do that with CDBG dollars, there's just no way around it.

discussing, they may give us a break on the Davis-Bacon because it's never applied to CDBG, although the oversight on all the stimulus says any project has to use Davis-Bacon wage rate.

The wage rates aren't the problem, it's the administrative headache that's involved with dealing with those.

That's the one that...

They're working really good with us right now.

We'll be happy to make them aware but we found out for sure today and we've got to have all the paperwork done in less than two weeks or ten days, nine days really.

Sometimes the difficulty in getting in touch with counsel or just being aware of how to get in touch with counsel.

I also think it's good I did.

I was worried that you were going to, people were complaining that I didn't reply to my email, so.

He just said, and the way it was framed was, does the ordinary person know how to get in touch with you?

Good idea.

And we're all in the phone book as well, so I believe we're all in the phone book.

Thank you, Ms. Edwards.

Any other business?

We'll now have another session of matters by the public, if anybody from the public would like to speak.

Okay, meeting's adjourned.