City Council Meeting   1/5/2015

I'll offer just to let you hit a button.

Ready to get started, please.

Have a seat.

The Colorado City Council meeting on January 5th.

Your number of announcements and awards and recognitions.

Yes, I am very pleased to announce the following awards that were given out last month at the annual Virginia Recreation and Parks Society's conference.

The City of Charlottesville Parks and Recreation Department received three statewide awards for the year 2013.

The first award for best new program

was received for Art Adventures, a preschool open studio.

This program was developed by Erica Goode and uses traditional and non-traditional media to explore projects based on monthly themes and inspired by the interests of the children.

Children and caregivers can move through the space visiting project stations with varied themes.

This class is designed to encourage students to learn through play,

and Erica Good, Program Manager for Parks and Recreation.

Can we do that cool program?

The second award, Best Environmental Sustainability Effort for the Meadow Creek Stream Restoration.

This project was a multi-year partnership between the city, the Nature Conservancy, and the Virginia Aquatic Resources Trust Fund that restored almost two miles of an urban stream right here in the city.

Thank you.

This award is really the outcome of a lot of people's work, both on the part of the city staff and Parks and Recreation, the Environmental Office, Public Works, as well as staff from the Nature Conservancy, the Aquatic Resources Trust Fund, and the consultant and engineers who did the work itself.

So very well, we're very excited to receive this.

Fantastic present.

Wow.

and the third award for best renovation addition is for the Carver Recreation Center.

This multi-year effort as part of the renovation to the historic Jefferson School involved a multiple partnership between the city, the Jefferson School Foundation and numerous other community partners.

Receiving this award on behalf of the city is Dan Carpenter, manager of Carver Recreation Center and Jeff Bushman and Mr. Jeff Dreyfus of Bushman Dreyfus Architects of Charlottesville.

Thank you.

I don't have any awards.

Is that the end of the awards?

Yes, I do have an announcement from the Charlottesville Sister Cities Commission.

call for grant applications.

The Charlottesville Sister Cities Commission is now accepting grant applications for projects beginning in the 2015 calendar year.

The commission invites Charlottesville nonprofits, arts organizations, schools, businesses, and individuals to apply for a project's funding up to $2,000.

Grants are available to projects that benefit the Charlottesville community as well as our sister city communities in Bissonçon, France, Plevin, Bulgaria, Winnebogana, and Poggio al Caiano, Italy.

The grant application is January 15th,

and the applications must be received by then to receive consideration.

Incomplete applications will not be considered and recipients will be notified within 60 days of the deadline.

Applications may be submitted by individuals or groups.

Previous award recipients are eligible to apply after a year.

Funds must be used within the year and expenditures must be detailed in the year end report.

I have a brief announcement, and I think it's a little controversial at this point, but at this point, the City Hall will be closed for Lee Jackson Day, January 16, that's Friday, and Martin Luther King Jr. Day, that's Monday, January 19 for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

The Charlottesville area Transit CAT will operate on a normal schedule.

City trash and recycling will be collected as usual.

and city offices will reopen Tuesday, January 20.

This is to announce our town, Johnson Village, Fry's Spring, Forest Hills.

Our town, Charlottesville, a series of town hall style meetings in all of Charlottesville's neighborhoods will begin again on Thursday, January 8th with a meeting for residents of the Johnson Village, Fry's Spring and Forest Hills neighborhoods at Buford Middle School.

These meetings are part of a series of community conversations that began in 2010 by a council initiative.

City residents are encouraged to attend these informal meetings to discuss emerging issues

Ask questions or share concerns with city council and staff about their neighborhoods.

The entire community is welcome to attend any meeting, but issues related to the surrounding neighborhoods of each meeting site will be given priority.

Dinner and childcare will be provided.

And, Mr. Mayor, two other things if I could.

I'd like to thank the people who volunteered at the Haven over the holidays.

They are always looking for volunteer work and

We welcomed probably 40 to 45 people, mostly men, a couple of women over the holidays and it gave them some place to go.

So if you have a mind, please volunteer.

They're always willing to take you in there and it's just very worthwhile.

And I see we have a group of young people in the background.

Is this CHS?

Okay.

Uh, junior, senior, the same.

Okay.

Seniors.

Welcome to city council meeting.

It's great to have you here and we hope it's productive and informative.

Yes, and I have, would like to just announce a few of the Martin Luther King Jr. events that are coming up on January 17th, which I believe is a Saturday at Jefferson School at 10 a.m.

There'll be a draw-a-thon.

This is at least the second, if not the third annual.

That's a really, it's a great event.

You can just come and draw your heart out.

At 3 p.m. there will be a Starr Hill walking tour starting at the Jefferson School.

This will be at the African American Heritage Center.

At 6 p.m. it will be a Charlottesville Dialogue on Race event and that's all on Saturday January 17th.

On Sunday January 18th will be the annual Mount Zion, the annual celebration of Martin Luther King

junior birthday at the Mount Zion Baptist Church.

And that will be at 5 p.m. at Mount Zion.

At 1 p.m. earlier that day will be the Bridge to Ridge Arts Festival.

I believe that's along Ridge Street there.

Just be sure to go on Facebook and look for Seville MLK for all of the details.

at 7 p.m. after the Martin Luther King celebration at Mount Zion.

There will also be a party at the ICS Art Park.

And then on Monday, the actual celebratory day at our own Carver Recreation Center, we'll be continuing the dream.

Starts at 1 p.m.

It's from 1 to 3.

It's a family affair.

It's free.

and we'll be giving out the second annual Alicia Lugo Award.

The keynote speaker will be our own Charlene Green from our Office of Human Rights.

So come on over to Carver on Monday, January 19th at 1 p.m. Could I add one more event from that weekend on Sunday?

from 1 to 5 p.m. at Mount Zion, First African Baptist Church.

They're also gonna be having various events, but during the whole day, they'll be showing several times the award-winning video, That World is Gone, about Vinegar Hill.

Any other announcements?

Oh, excuse me, I do apologize.

I do have one more that, with the free trolley, just want you to, heads up, that it will be experiencing

a long term detour due to the construction of the new Violet Crown Cinema at the, where it crosses the mall.

It will detour the free trolley beginning January 7th, so that's I believe Wednesday, along the 2nd Street Northwest will not be served during the detour.

The detour is expected to last through early April.

In lieu of using Second Street, the free trolley will turn left off of West Main Street onto Ridge McIntyre.

The trolley will then turn right onto East Market Street, where it will resume its normal route.

Before we start the public comment period, I wanted to just refresh the rules of public comments.

so that we are clear on those.

And on the agenda, it says a public meeting, public comments are permitted twice for up to 12 people in the start, three minutes each.

And then in the end of the meeting, if you would like to speak, you can speak at the end of the city council meeting also.

It's also expected that you will not interrupt people

in making comments.

If you do not agree with their ideas, you may not interrupt them.

Because if you do interrupt them, I'll be forced to ask you to leave or escort you out of the city council chambers.

And I hope it does not become necessary.

There are people who have different ideas.

One of the nice things about democracy is that you can't express different ideas.

You don't have to agree with all of them.

But it's useful.

interrupting people speaking.

If there are people who are speaking, please limit yourself to three minutes.

And when you speak, you identify your name and address so that you know who you are.

And I'm looking forward to this opportunity.

And we hope that we'll be productive sessions.

I really enjoy these sessions.

Good evening.

As I said in my letter, I don't think we should stop the discussion that you started in the last meeting about police community relations.

This city has apologized for what it did at Vinegar Hill, and presumably it did or would apologize for closing the schools, for apartheid, and for slavery.

When are you going to acknowledge the fact that black people have been mistreated for decades by the police department?

When are you going to recognize the fact that repression is not the answer to social problems?

Why is the city so afraid to even examine the question, which some of us have been struggling to do at the DMC committee, about why it is that there appears to be such gross disparity in the treatment of black people by our juvenile and adult criminal justice systems.

Why are you so afraid?

What is at risk in examining that very question?

But I'm also here to talk tonight about the security cameras that have been proposed yet for a third or fourth time by the police chief, and I think it's a bad idea.

and I would hope that you would apply the principles that you claim to believe in with respect to best practices and best evidence and look at the report that was submitted to you from the Justice Department.

What does it say?

There is scant evidence that surveillance cameras will have any impact on crime and that's where it's being monitored in real time.

Where it does have some impact is the impact is on property crimes and not personal crimes or crimes of violence.

So why are we talking about spending perhaps a million dollars on adding security cameras?

Finally, the report, not finally, the report talks about if you're going to put in cameras, you would naturally put it in a place where you have significant crime problems.

The downtown mall and West Main Street is not a place in the city where you have significant crime problems.

You're going to hear people tell you that it will be helpful, and obviously it has been,

in solving some crimes.

But you know what?

If we took DNA smears from everybody at birth, it would help considerably not only the criminal justice system, but many other systems.

And it would be minimally intrusive.

Little baby wouldn't even realize what's going on when you take a little swab with a Q-tip.

Why not do that?

You would rebel at that thought, but you don't rebel at the thought of conducting a surveillance program on us all.

I found it quite amusing

that the police chief cites for a part of the alignment with the council vision areas and strategic plan, America's Healthiest City.

Now, unfortunately, I didn't bring it with me, but I had a quotation from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that talked about these kinds of overall surveillance systems creating paranoia and the specter of an Orwellian society.

Is that part of the plan for America's Healthiest City?

If it's not, what is it doing here?

Community engagement.

Police chief says he's talked to some of the people in the community.

He doesn't say who.

Certainly hasn't talked to any of the community groups, low-income community groups that I work with.

And finally, what he does say is very critical.

And it is

Video surveillance technology serves as those eyes constantly present when human assets move about patrolling larger areas of responsibility.

These systems create an omnipresence that in my opinion cannot be replicated.

Good evening, Brandon Collins.

I live at 418 Fairway Avenue.

I've lived in Charlottesville my entire life.

I have three children who've also lived here their entire lives.

And I share Mr. Fogel's concerns on every point he made, including about the DMC task force and about the city taking meaningful action, especially now when you have hundreds of people in the city of Charlottesville mobilizing

For the city to take some kind of action to address racial disparities, to address institutional racism, and address all forms of oppression in the city.

The time is definitely now.

Tonight you're hearing a proposal to increase the level of fear in the people of Charlottesville that they have of their neighbors.

When George Bush declared the global war of terror 13 years ago, there was a lot of debate about increased surveillance and the loss of civil liberties due to perceived desire for so-called security.

Many of you in progressive-minded Charlottesville probably expressed agreement that our civil liberties should not be on the chopping block in favor of increased security state.

And yet tonight you're considering the same thing.

It isn't fear of terrorism and foreigners, though the chief in his proposal does point to terrorism.

but it's actually the fear of crime and our fear of our fellow neighbors as reasons for installing surveillance cameras.

And yet, in the proposal, it's noted that crime in Charlottesville has gone down.

There is no backing reason for having security cameras on the mall.

No reasons at all, except for the desires of the Downtown Business Association and a few citizens in the city who have had their fears stoked.

Orbitz just told the entire country to come visit Charlottesville.

And I imagine being a visitor to the downtown mall from out of town and seeing signs posted that you're under surveillance.

Your first thought when you see that is not, oh, I feel safer.

Your first thought is this is a high crime area.

I wonder what's wrong with Charlottesville.

Should I be afraid?

Should I be worried?

I am afraid and worried.

What kinds of bad things should I expect?

If I see something, should I say something?

What should I be on the lookout for?

Who should I be on the lookout for?

People not like me.

Other people.

People who don't look like the people who frequent the downtown mall.

Should I call the cops?

As we all know, and some don't like to admit it, but the downtown mall is mainly a white space.

It is not a space where you see people of color.

When people of color are on the mall, they are instantly identified.

If we create a climate of fear and surveillance, they'll be targeted.

We already have a problem with this kind of fear and targeting in Charlottesville.

70% of stop and fresco are African Americans.

Black youth are three times more likely to not be diverted from the criminal justice system.

On the DMC task force, we hear the excuse that instead of taking meaningful steps on the identified institutional problems that it's the citizens that are calling the cops there the real racist.

Good evening, Jim Moore, 1213 Hazel Street.

I have two topics tonight.

First, before proceeding with surveillance cameras, please consider the Citizen Data Bill of Rights proposals that are currently working their way or being introduced in Richmond.

It might save us a lot of money.

Second, the main reason I'm here is to respectfully ask you to deny another extension

The YMCA McIntire Park lease.

The YMCA is a wonderful organization, I love them, and this project is supported in good faith by some of our very best residents.

I'd like to share with you three reasons why I think this should not go forward.

First, losing McIntire Park open space has never achieved community support.

It was previously rejected by the Eastside Master Planning Committee.

The YMCA and city manager conducted pressure meetings with dissenting counselors, but they still couldn't get a supermajority required by law, so they had to utilize a legal loophole by employing the landlord-tenant model.

The project still only passed three to two with Kevin Lynch later expressing regret and Kendra Hamilton saying, we have not gotten consensus either in the community or on council.

Number two, the site simply is too small to conform to quality site plan design standards.

The site did not comply with city zoning parking codes, so the city changed the code.

The YMCA's very esteemed architect from VMDO describes the site as highly constrained.

In 2008, the then Parks and Rec director said, for the record, there's not enough room in the park to continue to use the two softball fields.

But then the city was unable to replace the fields as had been expected.

and although only leasing a small footprint, very clever lease wording gives the wife full control over all of the parking spaces on the west side of the park.

Finally, the facility is located precisely where it's expressly forbidden by the lease and thereby destroys two popular picnic shelters.

Reason three, lack of clear financial future.

The market forecast and the financial report

have not been adjusted to our unusual demographics of our college town.

It doesn't stress test probable future periods of high inflation.

It does not include planned increases in the storm water taxes.

And as Kendra Hamilton said even before the financial crisis of 08, council is rushing and the Y will require occasional infusion of city money.

Thank you.

Good evening, my name is Nancy Carpenter and I'm an Albemarle County resident and it's 2015 and it looks like we have a lot of

issues that will be coming before city council.

I just wanted to say that I am in agreement with the comments, previous comments by Mr. Collins and Mr. Fogel.

But what I'm here this evening to talk about, sometimes we hear talk about panhandling.

Well, I want to talk about our own panhandling of our own humanity towards other people.

Because in the next couple of nights, this area will experience some of the coldest temperatures we have had so far.

And there are quite a few people

in this community, whether they live in the city or whether they live outside in the county, that are going to be unsheltered.

And I would like to think that if we are in our daily travels and we see someone that may be in need, that we do not fear them and walk up and say, sir, ma'am, do you need a cup of coffee or a cup of hot cider?

Do you have what you need to stay warm?

Even in some of our shopping centers in the county, there are people that are sleeping in cars, and some of them are families with children.

So that I just hope that we, you know, we don't, we are not afraid to reach out and panhandle ourselves and our humanity for taking care of those who are more vulnerable than we are, especially in the next couple of nights and in the rest of the winter to come.

Because it would be really wonderful if we could do a surge maybe towards the end of the season, perhaps get 20 to 40.

people, couples, families and to secure good shelter and so that this time next year those people have their own windows and doors and locks and keys and can look at the cold from inside their own home.

So please think of others for the next couple of nights and do be on the lookout for those who are unsheltered because even though they try to be invisible, they are visible if you look hard enough.

Good evening, Mayor Huja, council members and staff members.

My name is Morgan Butler and I'm speaking for the Southern Environmental Law Center tonight.

We spoke last month at your public hearing on the Sycamore Hotel proposal and I wanted to take a couple of minutes tonight to update some of the recommendations and concerns we raised then.

The Sycamore is the latest proposal for a new building on West Main Street in which the applicant seeks to build to the absolute maximum height that council may allow.

Other recent requests include the flats, 1000 West Main and the standard

all of which were granted special use permits to build to the uppermost limit.

Not surprisingly, new applicants are now pointing to those prior SUP approvals in West Main as precedents.

The application and staff report for the Sycamore refer to the flats and the 1000 West Main approvals and asserting that the height and scale of the proposed Sycamore building are appropriate.

But as a nearly universal reaction to the flats indicates, that building should not be considered a standard bearer.

and the developers of the 1000 West Main project have now reduced that building height proposal from 101 feet to 66 to the relief of just about everyone we've spoken to about it.

To be clear, SELC supports density, infill, and redevelopment downtown and along key city corridors.

If done well, new development can complement and enhance the city's special character.

But conversely, that character is harmed when new buildings overwhelm the surroundings, suffocate pedestrian vitality,

overshadow the city's historic resources and small town charm.

At your work session on West Main last month, you were presented with an updated version of the zoning envelope that the city, its consultant, and the public have been working on for quite some time.

Based on what we saw, it reflects a scale that's much more appropriate for this important corridor than the current zoning, and we urge you to evaluate the Sycamore proposal with that envelope in mind, and note that it calls for a maximum height of 75 feet in this location.

We're concerned that the Sycamore Hotel, at the 101-foot maximum and with the minimal setbacks that have been proposed, would overwhelm the buildings immediately to its left, to its right, and across the street, several of which are contributing structures.

But more broadly, we also urge you to move forward as soon as possible with considering the new building envelope changes, even if that means separating them from the more complicated form-based code discussion, which could easily bog them down.

Things continue to happen very fast on West Main,

and it's way past time that we consider much needed changes to the zoning envelope there.

I'm John Hossack from Davis Avenue.

I'm here to talk about the proposed Rio US 29 interchange.

As you will be aware from the recent press, there is now considerable controversy surrounding this project.

The justification for interchange-based and traffic estimates has been called into question.

Many people are asking for a pause in this project while a more detailed analysis of the need is reviewed.

What I can tell you from my own experience when I attended an October 2014 VDOT meeting was that VDOT was still developing traffic estimates.

In fact, they were handwritten and they were using very rudimentary approaches.

Keep in mind that this was four months after the project was approved, just before the July 1st deadline, at which point House Bill 2 would go into effect.

Does anybody around here think that this project would still pass House Bill 2 criterion review?

Why is it considered okay to rush this project through just to find a means to assure the money is spent within this community on any project, no matter how dumb, just to beat the intent of a new state law that has near unanimous bipartisan support?

I still can't see how it's anything but a scandal that a 240 million project can be approved based off conceptual sketches absent reliable traffic estimates.

City Council and staff have paid practically no attention to this matter.

Certainly there was no public meeting or vote on it.

Despite the reports and the daily progress by Dennis Rooker, City Council still has not officially endorsed this project.

Clearly I represent the interests of residents of Park Street.

I pointed out this project has a potential

Not repudiated by any of this, as far as I can tell, by eliminating the need to yield to through US 29 traffic to basically triple the potential flow of traffic down Park Street and the parkway.

Some estimates suggest that the

The traffic can go from 20,000 to 60,000 and even some city estimates suggest that by 2030, traffic on Park Street will be worse than it is today and will carry more volume than the parkway.

We've been told that the long-term hydraulic junction will be upgraded and that will relieve our neighbourhood.

Unfortunately, I've given up on this happening in a meaningful time frame.

City Council has a decades-long policy against a major upgrade at this intersection.

I presume in response to citizen antipathy towards new construction,

and also to reflect business concerns in the vicinity.

Now it seems a none other than Philip Shusett.

has mentioned to Bill Cratchfield in person that he doesn't envision that the hydraulic junction will be upgraded and therefore that he won't spend the entire $10 million budgeted for this nth study of the junction.

Think about it.

He's basically admitting that whatever portion of his $10 million isn't spent is pure waste.

Given all these things, I plead to the council, respect the interests of the resident.

The Rio Junction, absent progress hydraulic, is an unmitigated disaster.

You still have

an opportunity to separate yourself from this train wreck.

I'd like to hear your support for or against this insane waste of taxpayer money and I'd like to hear your official position on the hydraulic junction.

Finally, I'd like to note the nine points up in the wall and the vision.

There are two that don't apply to this project.

Thanks for letting me speak.

My name's Derek Bond.

I'm at 501 East Water Street.

My business is located there on a restaurant downtown.

And I'm not exactly sure if the cameras are the right answer for public safety on the mall.

I do think something needs to be done.

I had an employee last night that had their car broken into.

I've had numerous employees that have left work and been harassed, had vulgar things said to them.

They've come to me with concerns

for their own safety.

I've had guests that have come into the restaurant that are concerned for their safety.

I don't want to violate anybody's civil rights, and that isn't what I would advocate for.

But I do think you guys need to consider the hardworking, taxpaying citizens of Charlottesville that come out to spend money that want to come to work and work hard and do the right thing.

And I think they need to definitely be taken into the equation.

It sounds like a lot of people are getting up here speaking about

you know, another sector of Charlottesville society and I just want to make sure somebody's thinking about the kids that are coming to work, thinking about the people that are coming and working hard, and thinking about our guests that are coming and spending money.

Good evening.

William Page, 1401 Walford Street in the city.

Jerry Garcia said what a long strange trip it's been and indeed it has been a long strange trip with the YMCA.

The city's not in the same situation that they were in in 2008 when the Y signed the ground lease.

Carver Center and Smith Pool facilities are modern and centrally located.

Membership fees are significantly less than the Y's projected fees, yet these two centers have had enough trouble attracting membership that they're currently running an $800,000 deficit.

And they won't, they're not servicing a $12 million loan as the Y will be doing.

Are we learning anything yet?

The city studies many things before making their decisions, yet we have taken the Y's word on everything.

There have been no outside studies.

The Y never solicited funds from the general population.

This would have been a good indicator of both potential membership and inspired community involvement.

It was never done.

It seems physically irresponsible to give away city property on faith alone to a business model that has failed at least five times in Charlottesville.

You have so many financial responsibilities as stewards of the taxpayers' money.

Currently, city pensions are underfunded.

City and school deficits run into the millions.

And the Y's difficulty in getting a loan approved tells me that the banks see risk, great risk.

The city's exposure to financial risk will be perpetual.

If the Y does go into insolvency, the current contract is unacceptably vague

and transfer of ownership.

The city basically gave the Y a prime location on which to build.

If they fail as a going concern, the city should be handed the keys, lock, stock and barrel without encumbrances or liens, and it should so be stated clearly.

I urge you not to approve for the third time an extension.

and if you do give them an extension, put them to the task and make it six months.

I urge you to look thoroughly at the contract the Y brought to us to make sure the taxpayers are completely protected in the event of failure.

Counselor Szakos, you asked Mr. Krueger how hard it would be to raise additional money the last time they came before you.

He answered, easy.

It's a year later.

His task is always to give you a positive face and say everything is fine.

Thank you.

Rebecca Quinn, 1044th Street, here in the city.

I also ask that you not approve the third extension of the YMCA ground lease at McIntyre Park.

I understand the city is committed on the order of a million dollars to this project.

The supporting documentation provided to you neglected to indicate the positive budgetary impact should you not approve the extension.

Imagine what you could do with another million dollars.

We've heard about shortfalls, we've heard about housing needs, we've heard about pension needs.

A million dollars could go a long way.

The FY15 adopted budget shows the numbers for visits to Smith Aquatic Center and Carver Rec have increased by 5% in the past year.

I don't know if that's a healthy increase or not, but if they are running a deficit, then I raise the same questions about the financial viability of the YMCA.

After more than eight years and given two new facilities in town,

How can the proponents still claim the same need exists?

Will it be financially viable?

And how do you know other than what you are told?

As a city property owner and taxpayer, I think it is reasonable, and that is the only test you're given, that you shall not unreasonably withhold an extension.

Well, I think it is reasonable for the city to allow the ground lease to expire

You can indicate your willingness to reexamine the matter after the YMCA updates its financing, its market research, and demonstrates both the need for services and the long-term economic viability of the facility.

If the users don't show up at the rate projected, could the city end up burdened with more debt, with ownership and maintenance of an underused facility?

If we have trouble filling and meeting

filling the capacity at our existing facilities.

How could we do yet another one?

I also agree if you're not going to simply withhold the or not approve the extension, extend it for only six months.

Ask for financials.

Ask for updated membership projections.

Consider what it would do to your facilities at Smith Aquatic and Carver.

Those are important questions.

On another matter,

McIntire Road is McIntire Road.

Previous councils have already skewed, some may say skewered, the McIntire vision and now it's proposed to take away the name.

McIntire Road should lead to or at least toward McIntire Park.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm Asia Carey.

I live at 2572 Marcy Lane of Albemarle County.

We're here, well my CAP group and I from Monticello High School, we're here to speak with you about the security cameras for the downtown wall and just areas that we think we feel we need better safety.

We spoke to Tim Longo about this and he's a very big advocate and he has been for many years.

He feels that it's necessary to either get more cameras or get more policemen.

Does Charlottesville approximate to major interstate influences crime rates and causes it to go up?

Second, sorry.

We came to the conclusion that we know that people are worried about privacy issues and

and Invasions of Privacy, Constitutional issues and all that.

It's not really about that.

It's about protecting our citizens and caring about our peers and just, we don't want Hannah Graham, we don't want another Hannah Graham case to happen.

We wanna have people feel safe when they're walking on downtown Mall.

They don't wanna feel like they're gonna be robbed or mugged or their car broken into like someone else had that happen to them.

We feel that,

Adding cameras will raise awareness, which will not prevent crime, but reduce it.

Cameras will not only help pedestrians act better, but it will also help policemen act better because sometimes policemen, I, this has been on the news, policemen have been a big problem in many states.

This will

raise awareness for them they need to keep their acts together and be civilized and protectors properly.

Tim Longo informed us that 2.2 police officers per thousand people are in a city so the cameras would act as another major set of eyes.

Two jewelers added their cameras for not only because they're a jewelry store but because they know

They have a camera that feeds to the CPD in the front of the store, and it just helps them feel like they can be comfortable and not fear for their lives.

Destiny Hodges, will your destiny here?

My name is Louis Schultz.

I live at 1809 East Market Street.

This is the 30th time since October 3rd, 2013 that I've come to Council to say that I have evidence that City Manager Maurice Jones, Director of Public Works Judith Mueller, and Utilities Director Lauren Hildebrand have violated Charlottesville Code and the Code of Virginia and in doing so have violated federal civil rights statutes.

For 15 months now, I have repeatedly told counsel that my rights as a U.S. citizen were illegally taken from me by force with no due process and no compensation by people acting in their official capacities as employees of the city of Charlottesville and under the direct supervision of the city manager.

I've asked numerous times that counsel hold a hearing where I may present evidence and give sworn testimony so that justice might be served and those who have broken the law might be held accountable.

Council has steadfastly refused that request despite having received a report six months ago which was prepared by their own city attorney which proves beyond any reasonable doubt that the accusations I have made are true.

I would speak more on that subject tonight were it not for the shocking events that occurred at the last meeting of this council.

A citizen named John Hayden signed up to speak at that meeting under the rules established by council.

Those rules say that public comment during the council meeting is for the purpose of stating a position

providing information to city council, commenting on the services, policies, and affairs of the city, or presenting a matter which, in the speaker's opinion, deserves the attention of city council.

Those rules do not require that his speaker express thoughts that are popular with council, nor do they require that his speaker please the audience.

And I should note, I generally do not in any way agree with Mr. Hayden.

Those rules give a speaker three minutes to speak.

They also prohibit anyone from engaging in behavior that intimidates others or interrupts other speakers and from engaging in behavior that disrupts the meeting.

According to code, the mayor has only a few specific duties.

Among those are that the mayor shall enforce the rules of the city council and preserve order and decorum at meetings.

Given those rules and the role of the mayor, it is implied that the three minutes allowed for a citizen to address council will be uninterrupted.

Yet before Mr. Hayden even arrived at this microphone to begin speaking, heckling began in the crowd.

Mr. Huja made a feeble and ineffective attempt to keep some order at first, but then sat silent and did nothing as Mr. Hayden tried to speak and the crowd took over to shout him down and silence him.

Mr. Hayden tried in vain to speak for an uninterrupted three-minute period, but the mayor, rather than restore order, allowing that, as is his duty, joined with Kristin Szakos in calling for an armed police officer to come forward and take Mr. Hayden away before he was finished.

Other speakers had just minutes before been given complete freedom to use well over their allotted time and did so with no interruption.

Mr. Huja's inability to preserve decorum at that point set the stage for the complete breakdown of order that came only a little while later.

A disgraceful moment in this council's history that should be the cause of the mayor's resignation tonight.

As much as members of this council like to pander to the local African American community and to make a show of paying attention to their concerns as happened at the last meeting, no person of any color who knows anything at all about this city's history or the basic reality of life in America

It's time for the city council to respond.

I'll request city council members, there are a number of these items which have been brought up on the city council agenda, so if you could restrain from those would be helpful.

I'll start, because I'd like to actually respond to Mr. Schultz, and I appreciate that you brought up what happened at the last meeting.

because I'd like to comment about that last meeting in which some people insisted on extending the public comment period, which that in and of itself is not necessarily a major problem.

Sometimes voices really need to be heard, but we at council need to remain in control of our own meeting to ensure that the very workings of representative government are not lost in the fray.

And as I said at the last meeting, I personally endorse the three suggestions that were brought forward about the relationship between the community and the police as well as adding a fourth that I think we need to

ask our officers to inform citizens of their rights when they are stopped.

But using offensive language directed at the police is not the way to make that happen.

I'm convinced that if we work cooperatively with our Chief Longo and our dedicated police force that we can address these really important concerns.

Our meetings are public forums, but they're also business meetings and we owe it to this community.

to manage our affairs within acceptable and within accepted bounds.

Full debate and good discussions need a minimum of order and respect.

That said, the tension between the free speech ideal of the First Amendment and the special needs of an orderly meeting have been faced by many communities.

and even in the courts.

And with that, I'd like to ask our attorney to advise us on how the First Amendment can be honored while assuring orderly and productive meetings and just where that line is.

My job as a counselor is to listen to all the voices in the community in order to make our city a better place to live and work for all our citizens.

We may not always agree.

We don't always agree.

with each other, but I hope we can voice our opinions in a constructive and respectful manner.

That said, I thank everybody tonight.

We had, I believe, a respectful meeting tonight.

And a lot of the items were on, will be on our agenda.

I wanted to thank the CAP group.

I always enjoy it when the folks from Monticello High School who always do really interesting projects, they often contact us about our positions on things.

Well, I have really professed a lot of sympathy with a lot of the other comments made about cameras.

You brought up a really, really good point, which is that cameras also will work at the level of police.

That actually is in the report we have tonight, and it's one of the justifications for body cameras, which I think is sort of an interesting

overlap.

So we appreciate you all coming.

That said, I appreciate every, also I wanted to acknowledge the folks who came out for the why because it illustrates a really important part of our active citizenry and that is providing an institutional memory.

Those of you, particularly Mr. Moore,

who cited the history of this very long and, I can't remember, Jerry Garcia's weird trip this has been, is vital.

It's vital that we remember the background on particularly something as complicated as that.

First, I'd like to say ditto to what Dede just said.

She said it very eloquently about the common work of the meetings.

And I will respect the mayor when he says we're going to discuss most of what came up at public comment throughout the meeting.

But a couple of people in particular, the CAP project, I have an email in my inbox from a fellow, and I'm going to jump on that at some point this week.

Nancy Carpenter, you're exactly right.

Keep on the lookout.

If anybody in our community sees anybody in distress when the temperatures are going down into the teens, please call the police.

911 is not an emergency call.

I think 311 is a normal call.

But call somebody, because we can get him or her into a place where they can survive.

And John Hossack, I appreciate you coming down here.

John, are you still here?

Thanks for coming down.

That is very important.

I'll go next.

Like Bob mentioned, there aren't a whole lot of things that aren't on the agenda, but I did want to respond to Mr. Hasek who actually asked a specific question about kind of our positions individually on the the Rio Road intersection and and the hydraulic intersection and I will say that the Rio intersection is in the county

and I generally don't think that it's a good idea for a city panel to tell the county what they should be doing in the county and it is something that does have the full support of the Board of Supervisors.

It also has been, you talked about the need for public comment and engagement in that project.

That intersection and that whole project has been on the MPO master plan for

years and years, and it has gone through a fair bit of public process, not this year, but it did go through some this year.

But I think that that is something, it was the plan all along, it wasn't funded, and so it wasn't coming up as soon as it is coming up, but the funding became available, and so it is going forward with the full support of the Board of Supervisors, so I certainly don't feel the need to second guess that.

And I am on the MPO, and the MPO voted for it as well, to support that, as did the City Council.

The McIntyre Exchange, one of the things during the meetings about that whole project, I expressed real reservations about the hydraulic interchange, not because I necessarily oppose it, but because I think things have changed so much since it was originally envisioned that I think that we really need to make sure that it's the right thing to do, or not.

And I actually was not a big advocate of putting funding forward in that plan.

The funding came from the state level.

Yes, I thank you everybody for coming tonight.

I want to thank the mayor for actually reiterating the rules of conduct.

I think that has helped set the tone.

So thank you, Mr. Mayor.

And I do want to thank the audience here tonight for really abiding by those rules.

It's the way that we can all respectfully agree and disagree with each other.

And it's much appreciated both on this dais and as well as the viewing public and everyone else that's sitting in the room with you.

So again, thank you very much.

Everything that's been said, I concur we will be dealing with a lot of this later on in the evening.

I do want to bring up Mr. Hossack's comments.

I do think that there is the part that really directly impacts the city.

We all are part of a transportation system, so we are pretty much interdependent on each other.

in that regard.

But I really would appreciate having an update from the Director of Neighborhood Development Services on the small area planning prioritization, because it is my understanding that Hillsdale is a small area plan and that is a priority that the group subcommittee from the Planning Commission has identified that as a priority.

This council has not seen, heard

touched anything at all with regards to those ruminations on the part of the Planning Commission, so I would like to get that as much as possible if my fellow councils would agree to get that on the docket soon so that we can begin to have these serious, serious discussions about how land use and transportation interface at hydraulic

That plan does need to get updated.

Councilor Szakos is absolutely right.

It's been many, many years since the last one was done.

But it's going to have an impact with that parallel road network.

That parallel road network is really important.

for the entire package to work.

So we've got to get moving on that.

We've got to do it in a way that is really, really a good example of integrated land use and transportation planning and really good strategies for implementation.

So that's my major request.

I also concur.

My colleague's comments in many ways and we'll be discussing many of these issues throughout the evening.

I also appreciate people following the rules.

I think it's a more productive meeting for all of us.

Item A, minutes for December 15th.

Item B, an appropriation, Virginia Department of Health Special Nutrition Program Child and Adult Care Food Program, $32,000, second of two readings.

Item C, an appropriation, 2015 Department of Motor Vehicles Virginia Highway Safety Grant for Speed Enforcement, $7,680, first of two readings.

Item D in appropriation, VDOT funds for the condemnation of CATEC property used for the Meadow Creek Parkway, $144,700, first of two readings.

Item E in appropriation for the National Endowment for the Arts, Our Town grant, Play the City, $50,000, first of two readings.

Item F, an appropriation for the Central Library restroom renovation and ADA improvements project, Albemarle County reimbursement, $10,033.19, first of two readings.

Item G, an appropriation, local contributions for crisis intervention training, $16,000, first of two readings.

Item H, an appropriation,

2015 Department of Motor Vehicles Virginia Highway Safety Grant for alcohol enforcement, $24,114, first of two readings.

Item I, an appropriation, Preston Morris Building envelope restoration project, Albemarle County reimbursement, $1,200, first of two readings.

Item J, an appropriation, outside area contributions for crisis intervention training, $3,500, first of two readings.

Item K, an appropriation of the Environmental Protection Agency Solid Waste Management Assistant Grant for composting at the Charlottesville City Market, $9,000, first of two readings.

Item L, an appropriation for the Adoption and Incentive Funds, $2,977.92, first of two readings.

Item M, an appropriation for the Virginia Initiative for Employment, Not Welfare, Purchase of Services.

$12,675, first of two readings.

Item N, a resolution, tax payment refund to Jefferson Properties, Inc., first of one reading.

Item O, resolution, special use permit for 722 Preston Avenue, first of one reading.

The new member of council would like to remove any item and consider the agenda.

I have a question.

OK.

There are two items on here of grants from the Department of Motor Vehicles, Virginia Highway Safety grant.

One is for speed enforcement, and one is for alcohol enforcement.

And yet, in the memo that we have for each of them, it says the Charlottesville Police Department will utilize awarded grant funds in the following areas, pedestrian and bicycle safety, speeding and aggressive driving, occupant protection, seat belts and child safety seats,

alcohol and impaired driving, highway safety training and equipment.

I don't know off the top of my head.

So it doesn't matter.

OK. And if it's not true, can you make sure to update for the minutes or for our records?

That would be great.

Thank you.

I have no objection to the program.

Other comments or questions?

I have a comment to make.

Item K, composting.

I'm supportive of it.

I'm pleased to see that we're going to try it.

And it's a good start.

Is there a second?

Next item on agenda is Public Safety Camera Proposal.

I know I was happy to see 2014 go out the door.

Let's hope it's a better one than last year.

Hopefully we'll be blessed with a better year.

With your permission, Mr. Mayor, I'd like to have Mr. Chapman join me at the dais.

As you know, Mr. Chapman is our elected Commonwealth Attorney, has served our community for many, many years as its chief prosecuting authority and has had the opportunity to

have experience with use of video surveillance technology and the prosecution of criminal cases and I thought his insight and wisdom would be helpful to counsel.

I was encouraged to see students from Monticello High School here tonight and I did have the privilege of meeting with them for well over an hour in my office at their request to talk about this important public safety issue and public policy issue in fact.

and there were other students at Monticello High School that I interacted with by email asking questions about this topic.

So we know there's interest and we know that there's a diverse set of views as you've all heard thus far this evening.

I've had the opportunity to speak with business owners and citizens around Charlottesville about the importance of this topic and the importance of council hearing more about this topic and reconsidering

your position.

It was a different council in 2007 when I was privileged to come before them and urge them to consider allowing us to go into a direction of further exploring public safety surveillance technology in our city.

The vast majority of that group were not in favor of pursuing a fixed camera system, suggested that we pursue something that was more portable.

At that time in 2007, doesn't seem like that long ago, but

Really, a system like that would have been cost prohibitive for the city, so we did not pursue it.

This technology has evolved tremendously over the past several years.

It's become more flexible, it's become higher quality with respect to the images that will yield, and it's certainly more cost effective for communities.

I've given you a ton of information.

much of which is academic and you'll notice on page 20 I believe of the COPS report or the bottom of page 19 that Professor Radcliffe points out that academicians, I believe is how you pronounce it, oftentimes are cautious in their language but they understand that there's a complex pattern of factors that really impact whether a system is successful or not and I couldn't agree with him more.

Nonetheless, what I want to focus on

is just a couple things before I yield to Mr. Chapman for his comments.

There are two questions that I don't ask in my report that each one of you should be asking, and I think every citizen concerned, regardless of what side of the fence they are on this issue.

You are the policymakers.

I will carry out the policies that you dictate, whether it's for a camera system or against a camera system.

I want to say that first and foremost.

I respect and appreciate the positions that you're in.

But the first question is, how would the system be used?

What would we do with this system?

I think people understand that as they walk down the mall or up the West Main corridor or any public place that their privacy expectations are certainly diminished.

But nonetheless, they still have a concern for the government, in this case, the government capturing their image.

So the question is, what would we do with this?

And why would we use these images at all?

I think I point out in the memo something very clear, and that is we'll be retaining these images for no longer than 14 days.

I think that's a fairly conservative number.

You may or may not recall that at the time we initially proposed such a system, the library of records required

that these records and images are records for purposes of the library of records for 30 days.

At our request, it took about two years to get them to reconsider that number because that is very cost prohibitive for a municipality to have the storage capacity to keep images like that for that long.

And they reduced that timeline, I believe, and I'll yield to Mr. Brown and his staff to confirm this.

I believe that that's been reduced to seven days.

Fourteen days is a reasonable amount of time.

We believe we certainly could discern within that time period whether an image that's captured by one of these cameras in this system would have some public safety purpose or be related to a criminal investigation.

These images would be only used for those purposes.

We would not monitor these cameras 24-7, 365 unless there was a

specific public safety reason to do that.

But we would retrieve those images if in fact an event occurs that could provide information to help us investigate our work.

Now, we've seen a lot over the last year and we certainly have seen examples of where privately owned camera systems have been useful in the investigation of violent crime here in this city.

We have pending prosecutions that will bear that out.

We had a recent case that I won't go into much detail where once again a private video surveillance camera was able to capture information that helped us quickly resolve an investigation that led to a pretty quick arrest.

And so there's a lot of examples that folks in our community have seen that would help support why we believe these systems are

are successful not so much in crime prevention but in this retrospective investigation of crime.

I think the second question and for what purpose will they be used is really a policy issue that if council chooses

to permit the department to go forward with further exploring the type of system we would implement, develop a rough order of magnitude for you so you would have an understanding of what the system could cost, a wide range depending on what you want.

It could be something as simple as a couple hundred dollars for a camera.

I gave an example of a system we purchased for our building.

It's a $10,000 system.

It's a state-of-the-art quality system.

It's hardwired.

It requires an electrical source.

That may not be appropriate on the Mall, but there might be other systems that are very cost effective.

Detective Blaine Cosgrove is our expert in this area, and he truly is a subject matter expert in this area.

Serves in a national organization and is part of our Executive Officer Board, is well respected for his thoughts and opinions on this topic, and he would be the best resource for us to turn to as a next step.

to come back and say, okay, this is specifically what we're looking to do.

But if you choose to move forward, we would work with people like Jeff Vogel and John Whitehead and Dave Chapman and members of our community that have a stake in the outcome here to make sure that we develop a policy that will respect the Constitution of the United States of America and the laws of Virginia to ensure that these images are used in accordance with the law and that the retention schedule and access to the equipment

and all those things that are important to people will be effectively addressed in that policy.

So I want to ask Mr. Chapman just to take a couple minutes because we want to be respectful of your time to give some examples of some cases in which he filmed that video surveillance technology was helpful in his work and the work of his associates.

Thank you, Chief Longo.

I'm Dave Chapman, Charlottesville Commonwealth Attorney.

I live on Lyons Avenue.

I wouldn't have recalled that it was seven years ago and a little bit more maybe that the topic of cameras was last before you.

It would have seemed sooner than that.

But I remember being here.

The issues are really not different now than they were then.

There's a tension between privacy and the management of a surveillance system in comparison to what use you can make of it and what the benefit is that comes from it.

Those are really the same issues today as they were back then.

One of the things that has happened over the 35 years that I've been in practice, largely practicing criminal law, and for the last 25 almost exclusively, has been an evolution in the process of making the criminal justice system more effective in terms of accuracy and decision making.

We have seen the era move from very rudimentary blood analysis to DNA and how that's indispensable in today's age.

Think of how many exonerations have resulted from the advent of DNA and now it's increasing availability elsewhere.

and everywhere.

We've seen how we go from rudimentary recording systems for statements made by key witnesses and by suspects in criminal investigations to now we would not think of doing a major case in this jurisdiction and really it's true about everywhere without having videotaped interviews not only of

suspects but also the significant and even mid-level witnesses in a case.

And that's not just for us to review in order to prepare, but it's for the officers to prepare from and it's also for the defense to be able to have access to and see exactly what happened.

What we've done over that period of time is we've

increase the expectations of citizens when it comes to decision making.

They want the very best evidence that's possible and the more that we can bring them to a position where they can have seen the events occurring, where the forensic evidence being transferred in retrospect through scientific testing and testimony about it, the more they're able to feel comfortable with the decision making

that they're called upon to do as citizens.

So the greater certainty that we can introduce into the criminal justice system, the better we all are off and it's very important.

Cameras are not a panacea when it comes to reducing crime.

There are probably as many studies for and against when it comes to assessing the utility of camera systems when it comes to preventing crime.

I can tell you about one this past fall.

that shows the potential for having prevented crime in the future and it's an awfully important one not to forget.

But cameras aren't a panacea.

To draw upon our experience from real cases we've had, let me show you some contrast between what we had without cameras in cases on the downtown mall and some that we had

from the downtown mall and nearby the mall with the availability of privately owned camera systems.

August 20, 2012, right in the middle of the central place, broad daylight, a crowded day down on the mall, there was a confrontation between two groups of people approaching each other from different directions.

One of the people involved in one of the groups is said to have physically assaulted a woman in a different group.

People in his group would say he was being physically intimidated by an individual who was with the woman who said to have been assaulted.

That young man's reaction was to pull out a .22 caliber pistol with 10 rounds in the chamber in the magazine fully loaded and try and squeeze off three rounds at the person in broad daylight

in the city of Charlottesville in the downtown mall in the middle of the day.

And the gun misfired three times.

He was such an ineffectual person with that firearm in his hands, there was no chambered round.

Otherwise, that would have been a homicide on the downtown mall.

We have not a single camera.

And everybody in the case, with the exception of two people who would have been a witness, would be in the nature of a common alcoholic,

in and around the downtown mall or someone who's in and out of court all the time.

And the biggest difficulty in using them as a witness would be to get them to be able to remember what they saw.

And then the next biggest difficulty would be to have them available to come to court months later when the case came up.

We had one gentleman who's sitting in an office at the central place on ground level who saw a teeny little bit out of the corner of his eye.

as to how this encounter started.

We had a woman across the mall on the second floor who didn't see any more than that.

We had basically no case, but just enough that this guy was willing to plead guilty to a much lesser offense than the charges that would have required mandatory time in prison because of the use of the gun and the commission of a felony.

No cameras.

That certainly would be a place where cameras would be in coverage and in broad daylight you'd have good image of all those events and you could see exactly what happened.

Both the commonwealth and the defense would have equal access to those results.

Second example, December 20th, 2013.

A confrontation again at the central place.

This is very late at night.

Almost nobody out and about on the mall and many of those who were out and about were completely inebriated.

There was an assaultive event that occurred on the mall.

A police response.

The pokes weren't there when the police came.

There was not much in the way of investigation.

victims in the case started a chain of events of reporting a horrific assault on the mall that was said to be a hate crime or a crime of bias.

And you all will remember with clarity the reporting that was done about that.

The police waded into that event and were ultimately able to identify two people who happened to be out there that night who were reliable people.

and the events as they came to court took all day to try and the people who were thought to be the perpetrators were found to be the perpetrators and found guilty but a far, far, far less degree of assault than was said to have occurred and the people who were said to be the victims turned out to be the victims.

One of them was a bit of a perpetrator.

But what happened to them wasn't a hate crime at all.

It was an encounter between drunks at night on the downtown mall.

Cameras would have allowed us quickly and easily to set the record straight and understand what happened and not spend months and hours and hours of police time trying to figure out this event because it became so widely reported as a serious hate crime.

It had to be looked into in detail.

What can you do with cameras?

Parking garage next door.

Now under new ownership have the same camera system that's been there for years.

It's a wonderful device.

August 19, 2012.

A gentleman, a young man and his girlfriend are returning to their floor of the parking garage after Fridays after five.

As they come up onto their floor of the garage they can see

across the garage, there's a woman on the ground in obvious distress, an adult woman on the ground.

She's visibly upset.

She's crying.

There's a gentleman near her who appears to be agitated.

They're walking towards their car.

They approach these people.

You can see the woman who's come with the gentleman from the mall to this scene go and try and help the woman on the ground, find out what's wrong with her.

You can see the gentleman who came with that woman who started to help out.

interact from some distance apart with the gentleman who appears to be agitated.

You can see them conversing and you can see how the gentleman who came to that scene with his girlfriend from the mall was standing there impassive, his arms at his side, he's not moving, he's not demonstrative in his actions, but you can see the gentleman who had been with the woman on the ground dancing, begin to dance around him and then assault him.

without any provocation whatsoever in a vicious attack.

You run the camera back to the time period before those people come up onto that floor of the mall, and you can see the knockout punch delivered by that agitated man to the woman on the ground.

Much like the much exposure that's been given to the football player who punched out

his fiancee in an elevator recently.

That's exactly what it looked like.

And we end up not with a victim of domestic violence who's reluctant and resistant to coming forward in court.

But you don't even need to have her there to testify.

She doesn't even have to go through that because you could see for yourself not only what happened but how and how hard.

and you could see that when the perpetrator of it all says that this guy who was coming to the rescue of somebody, as it turns out, tried to assault him how he was telling an abject lie about what happened.

Only good for prosecution, maybe so, that's darned important stuff to the citizens of the Commonwealth and this community and the judges in our court.

September 12th,

and 13th of 2014.

If it wasn't for the work of a detective in thinking I'm going to go looking for cameras and what might be the view we get going to the corner of Preston and 10th Street, we'd still be looking at the university corner in the vicinity of University Avenue and 14th Street for a crime scene where Hannah Graham was abducted.

but Detective Gibson widened his search and went to Preston, to McGrady's and found the first camera view and traced her all the way down the mall.

Why is it that we're looking from the backside, from the back wall of a business on the downtown mall through its front window and solving this case?

You have to ask yourselves that why.

and now think in terms of what's the value of cameras in preventing crime.

We now know that the crime that gets solved beginning with that camera view from a business on the back wall of their place has kept us in all likelihood from some other young woman somewhere maybe in this community

maybe not, maybe in a different one from suffering the same fate as Hannah Graham because there's not a darn thing that takes law enforcement in this community to that perpetrator except beginning with that camera and what's interesting about it is on that back wall of that camera you're looking out across the mall and when police first looked at it they're watching a guy come from west to east

and you can see Hannah Graham coming up the mall and the guys in front of her walking along, it's a Caucasian male, and you can see him duck into an alcove.

And as soon as she goes by, you can see this guy come out from behind and start following her.

And the police thought at that time of when the first review of that video, that's the guy.

That's who we're looking for.

Well that guy saw himself when Channel 29 played that video widely on the air.

He saw himself and he came forward independently to the police and he was able to explain himself in his bona fides and the input he gave was of another man who came up the mall, passed him and made contact with her and within minutes was in physical contact with her right on the downtown mall.

The police go back to the video

and they can see that person coming from east to west on the opposite side of the mall as you see Hannah Graham coming up.

He passes and within seconds he's on the opposite side following her and it's off the camera view that that individual then comes in contact with Hannah Graham but it's right in front of the gentleman who we at first thought was the suspect.

That's the power of it, ladies and gentlemen.

We took someone out

of play as a suspect who would have been given enormous scrutiny and turned attention to who turns out to be the person of interest.

And this is preventing a crime of enormous magnitude.

Don't think that by solving cases and increasing the likelihood that we find a perpetrator of a big crime or a small crime that we're not doing

effective work on behalf of public safety.

Your most likely offender is your current offender base.

And if all we're accomplishing is to get someone before the court and on probation and receiving appropriate services, we can prevent crime.

And that's not crime prevention in the sense of having somebody in a room somewhere monitoring cameras in real time.

I'd love to show you these videos, but I'm not going to drop them out in public and show

innocent people.

That's the way we do business.

That's the way we can do this business and we'll do this business in this community.

It's for you all to decide whether it's worth the cost or not and that's a legitimate discussion to have.

I don't quarrel with that whatsoever, but know the power for good that can come from a robust camera system on a place of public amusement that we depend on

and we've invested heavily in it.

Thank you, Mr. Chapman.

Detective Cosgrove, if you'll just come up in front of the dais case, counselors have any technical questions.

I am certainly not in a position to answer any of them.

Mr. Mayor, before I finish, I just want to say one thing off topic and I ask your indulgence in doing so.

There's not a

Seems like not an hour, not a day that's gone by over the last couple months that citizens of this community haven't stepped up to the plate to support our police department.

To say kind words, to send cards and emails and we are so very grateful to the citizens of this community for the outpouring of support that they've showed this police department.

These are honest, hardworking men and women who show up for work every day and try to do the right thing and I hope and I know that you'll, next time you see them, will express your appreciation as well.

It's a tough time to be a cop in America.

for lots of different reasons.

And we need that support and those words of encouragement.

And I thank each of you and the citizens of this community for that support.

I have a couple of not entirely questions, although they kind of lead to some questions.

Thanks, Mr. Chapman.

Where did you go?

There you are.

Sorry, I put my glasses up so I can read, and then I can't see farther than up here.

I appreciate the value of cameras for prosecution and from your perspective I can see why that's very useful and I don't have any problem with that.

And I will say that I am really hesitant about this project and I'm here with open ears and I'll listen, but my primary concerns are, well, for one is that because the downtown mall is not our highest crime area,

that if what we were really trying to do was prevent crime by having surveillance cameras, then we would have to have them everywhere.

And I'm not sure that anybody is proposing that, and I certainly wouldn't support that.

But I think that to pick one neighborhood at the expense of others and choose that one to do it sort of takes away the idea that it would be a prosecutorial benefit

in a way that really prevents crime.

It's more in one area.

And while it might well be effective in that area, I think that there may be other ways to go about that.

And I think that there's quite a lot of talk about constitutional rights.

And I think we're fortunate to have a police chief who is a lawyer himself.

And we have a fine legal department.

And I think that we would not

Violate Rights.

I think when you're out on a public street, you don't have a whole lot of expectation of privacy.

Somebody was joking to me that the sales of makeup and shampoo might go up because people would know they were on camera.

But I think that's also not really something that I spend a whole lot of time worrying about.

My main concern is financial.

And it's not just do we have money for it or not.

I think that even Mr. Chapman

who's very supportive of this, a lot of people have talked about supporting this but don't support raising taxes or trying to get more revenue.

And so if we do this, then we're using money that we would otherwise be doing something else.

And I think that for a bang for the buck for crime prevention, we can do better than this.

I think we're doing things that have, we've very ably brought down the crime rate in lots of ways.

I think by good policing, by good training, by intervention programs,

Expanding opportunity to education and employment, recreation program for kids.

We have a chance with the diversion center that the jail is talking about to do something that will keep recidivism down, really things that cost money.

And so for me, it's not that it's bad or good.

It's that it might be good, but I don't see that it's better than what we're doing.

If we had a choice between doing lights or doing cameras, I think lights are probably more effective at preventing crime.

if the crime prevention is merely, well not merely it's important, but in one particular area being able to prosecute better.

One thing that I really would love to see is I know that the downtown businesses are looking at forming a bid, a business investment district, and a bid can be used, it's a self-taxing district where they can use the money to do things that benefit that area.

so that rather than taking money from the whole city to use for one particular area, we're actually raising money in that neighborhood to do that.

And if the bid should decide to do something like this with the money that it raises from that, or if there were a bid proposed at the corner by the university, I would have a lot less objection.

It would be less a diversion of what we're doing throughout the city.

And if we were talking about police spending, I would rather spend the money for police officers on the ground walking, biking,

interacting with people doing, I think in your report you called it relational policing.

And that, I know, takes a lot of resources.

And if I had the choice, I would rather put resources toward that than toward cameras.

I have questions at this point, not a real comment.

And Chief Long, I just want to make sure I understand in your memo, when you were talking about public-private partnerships,

a partnership.

Yes, ma'am.

So it creates this, if council is favorable towards continuing to explore this, that would be an option that we could immediately exercise.

There's enough

There's enough interest in the private sector, particularly in the businesses, to have this discussion.

And there may be an opportunity for us to do, as I've said in the memo, not just create this public-private partnership, but bring some consistency with equipment, a common platform, improve the imagery that's out there already, not just presently, but for future acquisition, and also find an additional funding mechanism.

Yes.

I think we have in-house technical expertise.

Okay.

But I'll be very candid with you.

It's going to be very hard,

based on our previous track record of interest in this topic to get vendors to even be willing to sit down and help us develop a rough order of magnitude.

But knowing that their support and interest is certainly a benefit for us to go to them and say, look, we have a council that's interested in looking at this further, but they need to know some hard numbers.

I think that's a fair question.

It was fair at the onset.

Great.

Well, that's one.

And then then you also mentioned that there's a lack of fiber access on the mall.

That means there's not the I mean, we have what did that mean exactly?

Because then the next question that comes into my mind, well, when we're doing West Main Street and we're digging up that road, is there additional

on fiber optic technology that would be wise to put in place.

I'll yield to Detective Cosgrove.

We did request that there be a central conduit the length of that mall where we could access fiber, especially if we ever wanted to mount cameras on the city-owned lighting structures along the mall.

That isn't in place.

It was bound to be cost prohibitive to put that in place.

So therefore, if you were mounting on the light structures that the city owns on the mall, while there's electrical power there, you would have to more likely go with wireless transmission.

Okay.

and then I guess just as a bigger question is that we've got this potential for this study of the cameras.

We've already sanctioned a lighting study and then we'll be talking later on tonight with the Office of Economic Development's parking study that also has technology with it.

Okay, alright.

Yeah, I have a couple questions and a thank you for this memo and the report.

It was really interesting and I thought quite comprehensive and had some very, very good points in it.

including quickly one little sentence from this excerpt from this report where it talks about the choice of camera locations and it says it has to be done with an appreciation for the types of crime the system aims to target and that's where my question goes is I think we need to make it really clear particularly to the public when a

the video surveillance would actually be taken down or however you do it, when you would actually look at it.

And I just want to preface this question, that's going to basically be my question, but with the report, the very sad report about the accident at the Water Street Garage where video surveillance was used to determine that it was accidental, but they referred to hours of looking at this videotape.

So I think we have to be very cognizant of the time

it takes to use video in order to solve a crime or, you know, we heard about adjudicating a crime.

So I would assume we'd have to be fairly selective in the types of crime where this would actually be used.

And so I ask you, have you sort of given that thought about what

percentage of the crimes.

Sure.

I mean, that's a legitimate question.

And to be quite honest with you, not knowing the direction council would take, I haven't given it much thought.

My initial reaction would be the kinds of crimes that Mr. Chapman referenced, the assaults that would take place, the robberies, the fondlings, the obviously shootings and more violent crime.

And the case that you reference,

those were hours well spent because there was a terrible, terrible incident that occurred to such a young man and to get to understand how that occurred that camera system was very useful in helping us do that and so we were grateful that the system was in place in the parking garage but again you're right as a matter of policy we need to think about again the types of offenses that we would be most concerned about using video surveillance technology

to help support

as frequently we have larceny from automobiles.

If there's a rash of larceny from automobiles or residential burglaries or thefts of parcels from front porches in a particular neighborhood, we can deploy.

That would be a specific type of crime we would be investigating.

So I would want to leave some flexibility in the deployment of those kinds of systems, but my gut tells me that we would be more focused on recovering this video for the purpose of violent crime investigations.

So I mean that just, I think we need to have reasonable expectations should we decide to go in this direction that the public thinks that somehow this is a huge public safety measure when in fact your report very clearly says it doesn't, it's not a crime prevention as much except perhaps if in the case of what

Mr. Chapman was talking about in terms of getting someone off the street, but but rather solving of crimes.

So it I think it's important to keep in mind what types of crimes we are targeting and really where are they?

This, I believe, you know, Ms. Szakos was talking about this, certainly some of the public speakers that the downtown mall isn't necessarily

a hotspot if you look at crime across the city.

Well, Professor Ratcliffe certainly mentions in his COPS report that that requires a crime analyst to really do some homework from a statistical standpoint.

But he does go on to say, too, I happen to note,

that to move beyond a strictly statistical interpretation, it's possible to say there's some evidence of crime reduction in most of the systems reported in his report.

So he kind of cuts both ways.

Yeah, and I'd actually like to ask Mr. Chapman if you could give us a sense for how many times this year

You know, if I were going to say a number, that would be very hard, because we don't keep track of data according to how many cases we have videoed.

I would say, in terms of significant cases, a minimum of several dozen.

they would tend to be the big ticket cases, serious cases, because now it's a race video.

If something bad happens, they launch in the investigation section a bunch of detectives out to find camera handles.

And that's reality.

And Ms. Szakos mentioned thought be given to where we would deploy systems.

You know, it is to me unforgivable, thank you, sorry, but unforgivable that we didn't have a camera system deployed on Run Street when a gentleman was killed at the west end of Hardy Drive, an area that's known to be a place where drug dealing occurs, where violence

starts or ends up and we've got a bunch of people out there a week after a homicide that occurred down here at the Yix building that's thoroughly surveilled by camels in this private sector spot.

It's just unfathomable to me that we don't have camels over all of our hard drive.

It's just wrong not to.

So where do you draw the line then?

I mean, crime can occur anywhere.

I live in a very quiet neighborhood and yet a few years ago we had a drive-by shooting because the grandson of one of our residents was stealing drugs out of their house.

And so, you know, do you put cameras everywhere?

Do you cloak the city with cameras?

Do you put drones and kind of watch everything?

I mean, I'm just really trying to figure out where does usefulness become

If I were to make a recommendation, I would suggest a camera system that is deployable remotely to areas where you are currently having problems that are reported that might be short-term in nature, but they've propped up statistically.

You can measure them, and you have an understanding of what you're looking for and maybe how long you're going to be looking.

certain critical spots that are historically the numbers and if you don't think in terms of Page and Hardy Drive and Run Street as a critical area I can count the numbers of murders that occurred in that neighborhood of course in my time in the city.

A place of amusement.

where you're inviting hopefully thousands of people to come on a Friday or Saturday night or really any night of the week, especially in warm weather, and be there in great numbers in and about an offending population that we house in the downtown and subsidized in the downtown in a variety of ways who are the source of many, many crimes that don't become reported

and they're for sure impossible to prosecute because the people are in the line.

If you don't consider seriously surveilling that type of an area, if that gun went off in 2012 three times, that is a deep effect on the law for a significant period of time to the people who go there, the people who have their businesses there, and the like.

All you need is one homicide down there.

You know, why do we have them all over our schools?

Why do we have them all over the Hicks building?

And can show you in the aftermath of a murder, somebody fill in the air full of lead as a vehicle flees.

Why do those people make those decisions?

By this very measure, do you think it would be wise to put cameras on Rugby Road?

I can tell you which blocks and what times of the year and what days of the week.

That might be something that's appropriate for a deployable system.

But it's not an especially high priority

Yeah, 14th, how about Wirtland?

I talk to parents who are sending their kids here to go to school.

and friends don't let their kids' friends live on Wortman Street.

If you live there for three or four years, if you are not mugged or you don't see one happening or one of your roommates is not mugged, you are really lucky.

All due respect, I understand your passion and I appreciate it.

We want somebody as our prosecutor who's passionate about that.

But I think that when we look at the research, the research that we were given in here, and I did a bunch more kind of online, although I must say I didn't find much more comprehensive than what you gave us, the data that shows effectiveness at fighting crime isn't really there.

And even the article that you had, his conclusion was that, yeah, maybe.

It was you know that it especially in property crime might be a little bit more useful than not but I Know that's the inadequacy of that and that data is not unreal.

I'm not disagreeing But I'm saying that the perception that that that we feel like we're doing something there are things that we know work better It's not that it doesn't help at all

and I don't think anybody's arguing that.

I'm just saying with limited resources, what works better at preventing crime are feet on the ground, are other kind of programs, re-entry programs, things that you were talking about the population of people who offend again.

Chief, let me cut to the chase and then I'm going to work backwards.

Okay.

Because what's in front of us right here, your recommendation, you request city council support to move forward in the development of a rough order of magnitude as to both the scope of the project and its estimated cost of implementation.

You have my support, Chief.

Thank you, sir.

I think this is very important.

The community thinks it's very important.

And I think we're starting to get in some of the weeds that you're going to get into the weeds about as this thing unfolds.

So let me just give you the comments now.

Yes, sir.

I agree about the prevention.

That's probably lowest on the totem pole.

But I saw how important it was with Hannah Graham, not just in getting a suspect, and I understand

you know innocent until proven guilty and all that but there's a suspect in the case moving forward.

There is a man who tried to help apparently on the face of it and he was exonerated and if we did not have a camera that man's life would be hell.

His identity would be out in public and once you get that out in public it's tough to pull it back in.

As I read the

sort of the first couple pages.

It's not just the cameras, it's the officers as well.

It's a combination of the two.

And from what I'm hearing in the community and what I've seen over my life, I agree with that.

It's important to have the officers on the mall to establish that relationship with the businesses.

They used to walk waitresses and clerks to their cars, which is in a darker area.

And everybody still remembers that, and they appreciated it.

and a couple other things you mentioned, mobility.

I think that's important, but that's your call.

I understand that.

As you suppress certain actions in certain areas, bad people will move to another area.

So I appreciate the mobility part of this.

I appreciate the fact that this is measured and flexible and that you're including people like Jeff Vogel

And by the way, Jeff, I'm glad you kind of took back that DNA swab thing.

I appreciate that Because that's what we need is we need a community effort And we need to know as this program unfolds where it is really almost at each step So I would call that phasing it so that you don't

commit to something very expensive that could change.

We could go to Wi-Fi or something like that.

You just never know about the technology in a couple of years.

And I appreciate Dave Chapman's comment about the jury room.

I've been thinking about the victim, the perpetrator, somebody who might have his innocence proven.

I had not thought about people in a jury room trying to figure out who's telling the truth.

So I think that's very important as well.

and that's it.

I was the only one on this podium who was here seven years ago and Mr. Brown, I think, was here.

I worked against it.

I had serious doubt about camera at that time and my mind has changed somewhat and I would

I'm willing to rethink about this tool, the one tool in crime solving, that is the answer.

And it can be helpful.

So there are five or six comments I'd like to make about this idea.

First of all, I would be interested in supporting a limited experiment from up to anywhere from 15 to 50 cameras, fixed and mobile, both combined.

and we've done it in phasing.

Secondly, I would be interested in placing them on hotspots.

We know they're hotspots.

Some data which you have can help us there.

And we wish for at least part of these units to be mobile and be relocated as needed.

I also would like to see some

in the generosity area, especially Portland, Rugby, and Hardy, those places.

And again, I also encourage public and private partnership with some of the women in downtown.

And it is a, I don't do this idea that we solve all our crimes, but I think it will be a tool

Mr. Mayor, if I could, with the number that you gave, did you say 15, sir?

15 to 15 in the draft.

Yes, Mayor Huja.

This is the comments that I am in support of investigating this, as you put it, force multiplier.

And I think that's the main advantage that I see in this, that it will actually allow the police department to put more of a high touch presence in our neighborhoods that really do need much more of a community policing orientation.

so that this will be where you aren't.

This will be giving you the information you need to solve the crimes that are happening in, as I've talked to many businesses and many business owners telling me about their employees, the drug dealing that they'll see in alleys, on the side streets, that you can't, the police cannot be everywhere at all times and if you were, it would feel pretty stifling, I would think.

So the idea of having the cameras to supplement your work to go back and solve the crimes that are generating the criminal activity just makes an awful lot of sense to me.

I really am very appreciative of this hybrid idea.

It's building on the existing assets of the private establishments we have.

We're already obviously being surveyed.

That was one thing that became so clear to me.

looking at the footage.

It was spotty.

It wasn't consistent.

But it was already there nonetheless, so let's make it extremely useful and extremely efficient for solving the activities that are so problematic for us on the Mall and then along West Main Street.

And I agree with looking at the Whirlwind 10th Street area.

That does bring up, I really do believe this needs to be coordinated with our lighting study.

Lighting is critically important as part of the crime prevention strategy, as we all know.

And to have things going on at different times, not coordinated, would just be a waste of resources.

And I guess the last thing I'll say is that I do appreciate you working with the community to make sure the civil liberties are not being

And I do believe that in the discussions we've been having about increased use of body cameras, in my mind, it's a corollary.

It's a complementary piece.

People are accepting the idea of being watched because they do believe and understand that it is providing safety for both the police officer as well as the person who is being accused or charged with a crime.

So I don't see this as different than body cameras.

I see it as a different kind of surveillance that is helping expand your capacity to protect the community.

This is not a voting.

Well, I think we need to express that the majority of the council wants to proceed to do something.

Well, I've just noticed in the past that we have left this meeting and not had clarity on what direction to go in.

So I want to make sure it's, without a doubt, very clear for the police chief what we're doing.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

But on our agenda, it doesn't say we can vote.

Yeah, we're talking about an order of magnitude.

We're talking about the first step in a very difficult process.

So you cannot have, I mean we're dependent on you chief and we're dependent on people in the community who worry about rights and all that.

This is a community decision.

So I'm not prepared to say you do this and you do that.

I will vote to

So is that fair to say then that you'll come back because this is, for the sake of the public, this is what Chief Longer wrote in his memo.

I respectfully request City Council support to move forward in the development of a rough order of magnitude as to both the scope of the project and its estimated cost of implementation.

Yes, sir.

I'd just like to say one more thing because I still continue to worry that we are misleading the public

as to what the effectiveness of these cameras will be, what their purpose is.

I'm quite disturbed by the idea and the pointing fingers at certain communities when, in fact, we have equal but different demographic problems throughout our community.

And I think that is the biggest danger of

And we heard even tonight, even talking about prosecution, talking about the Hannah Graham case where that video showed something that didn't in fact play out to be the perpetrator.

And it took somebody else, it took a human voice to change the look, how you looked at that video.

And the report says this, it says,

you cannot ignore the human element.

And it talks about the human looking at videos.

You will have the same biases, our own human biases, looking at a video as you do in other forms of investigation.

Thank you.

Yeah, you're right.

We'll take a five minutes break.

This is only the first of the year, you know.

Next item on the agenda is a report by Human Rights Commission.

Good evening and happy new year.

Mayor Huja and members of council.

My name is Zan Tewksbury and I'm the manager of the Charlottesville Office of Human Rights.

I'm going to be presenting tonight with Idene Mills, chair of the Human Rights Commission, and I wanted to note that we have four Human Rights Commissioners, five with Idene in the room, and Charlene Green, the other staff member of the Office of Human Rights.

Good evening and thank you for this opportunity to let us share some of the important work that we've done as a commission this past year.

So I'm just going to review some of the highlights of the report.

So as you've seen in the report, our work from this past year can be broken down into three parts.

First, we spent significant time establishing the foundation, the organizational structure of the commission.

Second, we addressed issues of systemic discrimination raised by members of the community.

And the third piece of our work centered on outreach and community engagement.

So with respect to the first piece of establishing the foundation of the commission, as you've read, for example, we developed a mission statement for the commission to provide ideological orientation for our work.

because this commission is new.

We spent several work sessions trying to understand the role of the commission and how we can effectively go about doing our work.

We developed operating rules and procedures and we're continuing to, we're still developing rules and procedures as diverse and unique kinds of situations arise and we're trying to figure out how can we effectively respond to these different kinds of concerns.

and we're thoroughly exploring the Human Rights Ordinance and trying to understand how to honor our charge per the ordinance.

and with respect to the second piece of addressing issues of systemic discrimination, members of the community as they've learned about the Human Rights Commission, they've been coming to our monthly commission meetings, they've been raising concerns through Zan and the office and through email and through

Interaction with us as members of the commission.

So for example, one concern that you've read in the report was regarding the adoption of a recent policy by the Virginia High School

athletic league, Virginia high school league on the participation of transgender athletes and based on the research that we did as a commission with advice from legal counsel we determined that the policy as it currently stands would adversely impact transgender students so we

made a recommendation to the Virginia High School League that they revise their policy.

And that's just one example of how the commission has responded to concerns raised by the community.

We're also participating in the Disparate Minority Contact Task Force and in its implementation phase and there have been

There's been interest expressed amongst the Commission to participate in this proposal for an expansion of the scope of the task force.

And we're just waiting for Mike Murphy's presentation in February and for guidance from Council in terms of whether or not that's something that the Commission can in fact take on.

and another important piece regarding the investigation of systemic issues, discrimination, we've also discussed as a commission the possibility of forming a gender violence task force given the gravity of some of these issues that are coming to the surface right now regarding rape and other forms of gender-based violence.

The commission feels that we can do something important and necessary to respond to this very serious and prevalent and long-standing issue of gender-based violence.

So we're currently considering this and we're going to continue to talk about it specifically at a retreat in February and see if this is something that as a commission we can take up.

And the last piece, Outreach and Community Engagement.

We mentioned this at our mid-year report that because the Commission is new, we have spent significant time trying to inform the community of the Human Rights Commission, what it is we do, that we're here to serve the community, to act as a forum for their concerns.

We recently had a community-wide event where we did just that.

We introduced the commission to the community and we explained what our role is and we listened to different members of the community articulate some of their concerns and their expectations and hopes for the commission and how they might be involved in our work.

We're planning on following up on some of the suggestions raised and concerns raised and we've talked about having

quarterly community forums.

So an event like that would not just be a one-time event, but we would have these regular opportunities to engage with the community.

And through the office, we've continued to try to raise the visibility of the commission by participating in different community events, facilitating workshops, participating in dialogues.

Again, just to hear directly from the community what it is

what are the problematic issues for them and hear directly from them how we can serve them and how they also can be involved in this process of responding to issues of discrimination.

So as I mentioned, for next year, we'd like to continue to be involved with the DMC Task Force.

We're very much interested in this issue of gender-based violence.

We've also, you know, at the start of the year when we were investigating how, what exactly the commission can do, we identified education and employment as two important areas that the commission can be involved in.

We're going to continue to explore that.

Again, as we start to understand the dynamics of, you know, the specificities of the dynamics of this community and who the existing organizations and actors are, we're

Thank you.

I get to be the numbers person.

I have to start off with a little chart correction here.

The chart on the bottom of page six had some

It's some wonky numbers that that chart I just gave you should make right.

So it's been the function of the Office of Human Rights to not only house and staff the Human Rights Commission, but also to assist individuals in the community who believe they may have been victims of discrimination under the Human Rights Ordinance.

and likewise as Idene was saying that a major aspect of the outreach into the community has come from the office specifically with Charlene Green's efforts in that regard.

But as to the complaints, this was the year to kind of see what came in and I think we've learned something about how to

how to keep the numbers and how to display the numbers and so we kind of have the categories of those complaints that can fairly be investigated or referred per the ordinance say to the EEOC for the employers with 15 and up employees and to Piedmont Housing Alliance for the housing complaints.

and so we also we we see what what came in and there are those complaints and then there were the two dozen complaints that were of the systemic type which were shared with the Commission and I think none of those we kind of what we like to say is we put them in the parking lot none of them are off the table they're there for consideration there's

and they fell into categories that were fairly discernible such as the most prevalent one being concerns regarding biased policing and then also some concerns regarding equity of resource allocation in lower wealth communities in the city and then impacts of the

Yeah, as I understood from the several people who came with those kinds of concerns, raised those kinds of concerns,

I think the perception or the concern or the question was are resources, are city resources being allocated fairly across communities, you know, given that some communities are of greater wealth.

We know this from the Orange Dot Project and other areas of the community are of lower wealth in general tend to be.

And so there was just

Yeah, and that would, well, that would be the question.

I think, you know, the concerns are raised and then the commission is given the concerns and then if through whatever fact finding they can do to see if there's a basis for

Can I get a little bit more clarification again on that?

I'm sorry for being dense and attributed to the flu.

So is it a situation where the, say, lower

I'm not sure, I'm understanding.

And I don't think that there was enough specificity to the, it was just a concern.

It's like, is money being spent equally in all communities?

You know, maybe there's, you know, more gentrification

Well, yeah, I'm not sure exactly.

And again, these are things that the community raises and then it's up to the commission through examining, as I understand it, to understand just what the nature of the concern is.

Is it private in fact?

Is it public in fact?

And that's part of the learning.

Well, we did give you some data charts.

And I just wanted to say in the employment complaint areas, it's real clear that the prevailing or the predominant basis for a discrimination complaint is race there by far.

And all of those complaints so far received have been referred to the EEOC.

I was in communications with the former director, Mr. Graham, who was wonderful and he was so wonderful he was promoted to the Atlanta office.

So we have another wonderful new director in Richmond and I'll be going down there early this year to continue the conversation about finalizing an MOA so that we can actually get a sense of, you know,

Just for kind of a similar clarification, I would like to know, one of our hopes was that even though this was going to be deferred to the EEOC and to the PHA,

that having a central place to report them might well make it easier for people to do it.

Yes, absolutely.

And I think that, you know, they're usually places or a year behind and they're reporting out certainly at the federal level.

If you have presented all the data, I have two questions I'd like to ask.

On page 9, second paragraph, last sentence, it talks about institutional racism, white privilege, and microaggressions.

I understand the first two, but I don't understand the second, third one.

Well, you're pretty smart for an Indian guy.

I can say that, you kids.

I was going to reference that new film that came out, Dear White People, and it was a new term to me as well, but I have a report that was on my desktop, and I think it's a wonderful topic of conversation for our community, because a lot of it is, the community of mutual respect is such a noble vision, and I've come to, I think in this year

all in the office and the commission and realize that this is mutual understanding is the first step and the necessary precursor to mutual respect and so we're looking forward to 2015 to being a year where we can get together, dialogue, have these difficult conversations which we're already having but as a community but to continue that and for the office and the commission both to be a

Another comment I'd like to make just for, as you're making comments, I'd like to see more dialogue from race happening in our community.

Okay, thank you.

We'd like to see that as well.

I have a comment related to that, if I may.

And I'm just reflecting on some of the outcomes from the dialogue on race, and it was like the Minority Business Council, there's the Charlottesville Investment Collaborative.

Is there any initiative that you can imagine that can bubble up from this that is the next kind of

kind of solution that actually gets people working together on a solution as opposed to sitting opposite each other dialoguing about conflict.

Maybe is it something related to a youth center, youth employment?

There seems to be a lot of concern about directly related to the

disproportionate minority contact report that focuses on youth, but what are some positive initiatives that could come out of this that are in the spirit of the dialogue on race?

And I know that we've got, and then you can tap into the resources that the city has in terms of really experienced people with lots of access to good data.

But it's just something that I share with Mayor Huja that when you do look at your numbers,

none of the complaints go to the Human Rights Commission itself.

Oh, absolutely.

I think it quickly became clear that 70% of the work of the office and the commission was in the outreach

education and community engagement piece of it.

And through that piece, you get the feedback.

It creates a feedback loop.

You get the community concerns come out, people partnering, a lot of partnering going on with the organizations, as Ms. Mills said before, understanding who's doing what out in the community and how the

and should we be sending you these things?

Oh absolutely, absolutely.

I collect things myself and share them with the commission and things that come through and people on the commission share them with me and we're partnering with Ridge Schuyler and the Charlottesville Works Initiative and we have our wonderful downtown job center

I've referred people to that when they have lost their jobs.

You know, they get a referral to the EEOC and then they get a referral to the downtown job center, which is just wonderful to have.

But yeah, I think that in this next year, these more concrete initiatives will arise.

We're right in place for it to happen, and I think it's just a matter of letting the community let us know what

is what's the priority.

We kind of get a sense of it.

I mean, it's many things, but we get the urgency.

I mean, jobs is a huge, it's a huge piece.

Any other comments or questions?

I absolutely do.

I would concur with the mayor about kind of re-adding in the kind of dialogue on race, peace,

All right.

have any sense of

But one of the things I think that happened with the dialogue on race, it really wasn't adversary.

It wasn't sitting around talking about conflict.

It was talking about commonalities and visions of what things could look like.

And all of these ideas came out of that in a way that I don't think will necessarily just come out of meetings where you get kind of complaints.

And I think that the energy behind, whether it was the Human Rights Commission itself or the

some of the re-entry work or the City of Promise, those things came because people saw that common energy and saw each other as partners in working toward those solutions.

And so I would love, and I know, I talked to Mr. Jones who was kind of the staff person who did a lot of that at the beginning before Charlene was doing it and then with Charlene.

It takes a lot of work and I understand that but I think that some of the energy that's been going into kind of giving a what is the Human Rights Commission talks

Yeah, and I think that's definitely the intention.

And I also would, I do sit on the DMC, with these acronyms, the DMC for Juvenile Justice.

And I think it's really good what's happening in that group and the kind of,

using data to actually see what's going on, what's possible.

And I would, just as one counselor, think that that might be a really good role for the Human Rights Commission going forward, as for adults.

A couple questions.

Do you feel as a commission that you're waiting for direction from somebody that you have, that you feel reluctance to jump into anything

You could take that as a rhetorical question and I'll go on to the next one because the reason I ask is that I would encourage you to develop a robust human rights commission.

If something comes up in the community, I would like to see people think of the human rights commission first, almost first and foremost.

Don't wait for city council.

Don't wait to vet anything through the legal department because I sat in on one of your meetings and there was a big to do about can we release this

We have to wait, and I think it was like a six month wait.

I may be wrong on that.

You know, I would encourage you.

You get a lot of support if you just jump in.

Do what your heart tells you to do.

You have good people on the commission.

And I'd like to see you go for it.

If you make a mistake, we all make a mistake.

There have been mistakes made.

That's why we have the commission.

We're trying to fix it.

So I would encourage that.

One other thing, pie charts are good, a lot of complaints.

But I understand you're getting your feet wet and you're processing your hearts out and all that stuff.

That's great.

And you said mutual respect comes first.

With all due respect, I would go back to what the mayor said.

It's the dialogue.

so that people are not afraid to say what's on their mind.

They're reluctant to talk about this for fear of saying the wrong word.

And then you got people shutting up and you don't really have that mutual consideration that I think leads to some really good results.

And one last thing, on all these programs that the city does, I would encourage people to tell me what the problems are.

I don't expect these things to be perfect.

They will never work perfectly and we have to know, I have to know what's going wrong, what we can do, what we can do maybe public education wise or whatever.

And I'll just piggyback on that because that was really the gist of my comments as well is

is that I would love for the Human Rights Commission, at least that arm that are the citizens, to be the conscience, basically, of this community.

And so when we have a report here in city council on stop and frisk, which made the headlines in the paper that the Human Rights Commission is just on that, that you all react to that, that you take it on.

And really watch what happens in city council, as well as on the school board, which are two public bodies

and I think speak to a lot of human rights issues.

Well, it may be that this is fine, you know, but it's all about communication.

I've worried that we're two separate bodies and we shouldn't be.

Yeah, and in the last two months, I have to say, there have been, for our little commission, a lot of people from the public.

Last month, I think there were about 40 people, and maybe 20 of them spoke.

Which brings me just to my last point, and I won't go on, but it would be, I think, great to have a spot on our homepage, and how do you get in touch with the Human Rights Commission?

And I'm going to say one other thing.

And so my other thought is that could be something we really need to know about, because it could really address policy if it has to do with various people with disabilities or other ways that our policy may impact accommodation.

also take advantage of all the other task forces and committees that the city has as a resource.

And I know you and I have talked before that the Place Design Task Force had spearheaded community engagement a couple years ago and it's kind of evolved into becoming kind of a city policy.

Mr. David Ellis took over it and after one of our staff people left.

But that to me is crying out for input

from a more diverse perspective.

How do you do very effective community engagement strategies if you're doing any kind of planning, but any kind of public process period?

So that is a rich kind of field to mine.

And I just encourage you to get in touch with folks in other task forces, like the places like Task Force that are doing work on this, from a different perspective, i.e.

Right, right.

But it really affects how communities are interacting.

So I think you got the message.

But constructive, hold us accountable.

I just wanted to add quickly, in order to really respond quickly, as you were saying, and make sure that we can serve as the conscience of the community.

Yeah, yeah.

And thanks to the commission for your work.

Thank you Mr. Mayor, Members of Council.

This is a special use permit for increased height at property located at 1106 West Main Street, also known as the Sycamore House Hotel application.

The applicant proposes a 101 foot tall, 150 room hotel with 90 cars in a structured parking lot and also a ground floor restaurant.

In addition to the request in front of you for additional height, the applicant requested

some modification to the setbacks.

The resolution states those setbacks, those modifications as a six foot minimum setback along the subject's property, subject property's 11th Street frontage.

The elimination of the five foot step back required along for the tower feature, which is the kind of the building element on the corner as that's shown in the proposed documents.

The Planning Commission also recommended 14 conditions, which I will not read to you tonight, and then recommended that the application be approved.

The maximum height of an appurtenance can be 16 feet above the finished floor elevation of the building.

Why is it called an appurtenance?

I have my own

Rationale for that.

But it would be in that situation and it would only be for mechanical uses where you basically couldn't put them anywhere else in the building.

That's the way it was originally written.

There was a code change made at some point, I think around 2008, that stated that

You could make usable space of it, which kind of created a mess out of it.

And so, yeah, and so our interpretation based on that change made by Council is that

Other questions or comments?

It already happened.

We do allow applicants to speak.

I'm sorry.

We do allow applicants to speak.

Oh, but not the people that are affected.

No, they're not.

You had it on the hearing.

OK.

Good evening.

My name is Austin Flasier.

May I interrupt you one more second?

Sure.

So I would be... Yeah, I would appreciate it if you would use your prerogative.

This is not any ordinary hospital.

I will do that.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Good evening, my name's Austin Fleischer.

I'm with Carr City Centers.

We are the developer applicant for 1106 West Main Street.

We do in fact have a poster as was mentioned which is the building finishes should that be helpful as part of the conversation later on.

Really excited to be here this evening.

We've been in the public process for several months now in developing our plan and we feel like we've got

a project that really embodies the city's vision for West Main Street, specifically an active urban planned West Main Street.

I won't go through all of the programming, the building, since I believe you're familiar with it, although I have the development team here with me this evening to answer any questions that come up.

I do want to point out one key change that arose from a condition in Planning Commission, and that is specifically our, we moved the entrance, the vehicle pick up and drop off, off of West Main Street, which was a

a major area of concern for several vested parties and we've moved it around to 11th Street.

We submitted sheets on that and hopefully you have those along with preliminary updated renderings.

The end result is West Main Street that is still actively programmed with our restaurant taking up the majority of that streetscape.

but now over 2,000 square feet of unimpeded pedestrian space that will be lit.

There'll be signage, there'll be planting, there'll be, as I mentioned, a restaurant with significant amount of porosity, a nano wall that's gonna, in good weather, open a large portion of that facade to give an in-out experience for the pedestrian.

So we haven't sacrificed the activity on West Main Street, but we have been able to accommodate the concern of the traffic and the vehicle drop-off on 11th Street.

Simultaneously, we have been able to keep, which is one of the main things we wanted to do with this project on that facade, we've been able to deliver a sidewalk on 11th Street.

Today, if you want to traverse from West Main to the parking garage that UVA constructed, you have to cross over to the core lab side of the street and then cross back over to the parking garage where UVA had built a sidewalk there.

We're going to be able to connect West Main to that sidewalk so that you can traverse the whole way.

We have six feet of sidewalk on our property,

as opposed to five feet that you'll find many places with an additional two feet in the right of way through consultation with staff.

So you have eight feet of sidewalk there is what we're showing you in our plan.

So we think that you've got a great frontage on both sides and greatly improved from what's there today.

I want to talk just briefly about how we got to this site, how we selected this site.

It's at the nexus of your two greatest demand generators for room nights, at least in that corridor.

You have university grounds, obviously, where it abuts the medical campus.

There's been a significant amount of investment on the university's part in the medical campus, which is what attracted us to the site, as well as the growth in the undergraduate population.

Both of those are room night drivers.

When we looked at the fact that this is an urban site, you've got to accommodate a lot in that site, we wanted to see if it fits in that place, and what we saw was

You have almost a void there on the corner.

You have a surface parking lot and low-rise retail, whereas directly behind it you have the garage and directly, or almost directly adjacent to it, you have the battle building.

So the height of the building we're talking about tonight already exists on that block.

It's there.

So when we're programming this and sensitive to what you are fitting into, we're already fitting into an existing context.

And in fact, when we were at Affordable Architecture Review, we're seeing as positive that we're actually helping to break down the scale and specifically what you experience today at the corner of 11th and West Main is a parking garage.

What you would experience if this project moved forward is a first-class hotel and not looking past to a parking garage.

When we started programming the site, I just want to speak a little bit about why we're requesting this additional height and why we need it.

We looked at what was there.

We had the city's desire

of an urban landscape and an actively programmed landscape on West Main, which is we share that those are the projects that we design and deliver.

It's urban design.

It's active frontage of buildings.

For us, the business reality is we don't want just an in-board restaurant that you're only there if you're a hotel guest buying a room.

We want the community to stay and visit with us and spend their dollars with us as well.

We looked at CoreLab across the street also and who our neighbors are and I think through the process have come to learn even a little bit more about the importance of that to the university system and the sensitivity of what they have running onto the street.

We need to accommodate parking in our tower, but it's not practical to dig several levels below grade because of what's going on at CoreLab and disruption to the nearby neighbors.

So what we do is we have it in our tower.

So among other considerations, you've got that now inside the core of the building.

So with the actively programmed frontage inside 11th Street and the parking spaces accommodated within the core of the building, the hotel rooms, which is what you need to make it economically viable, go one place, they go up.

So you have now the hotel rooms accounted for in the tower.

So that's how we got to our program to support the number of keys we need to deliver the amenities of the project.

I want to touch on the community benefits for the project.

There's been a lot of conversation about the comparison between this, because it's similar in height to other projects that have been approved, 1000 West Main, which I understand may be changing, and the flats as well.

Important thing for us as hotel developers is the difference in benefit that a hotel brings versus residential development.

Hotel development is often the darling of urban planning for several reasons.

You have one reason that a lot of time has been spent on security and safety tonight.

We have 24 hours eyes on the street.

The most useless thing in a hotel budget is the lock on the front door because once you unlock it the first time, you never lock it again.

Our lobby is staffed 24-7.

You have traffic concerns as opposed to residential or commercial use when you have on-peak traffic, rush hour traffic.

Our check-in times are 10 or 11.

Our check-out times are 3 or 4.

So the traffic sort of trickles in, trickles out.

It's not a convention hotel.

We don't have a lot of meeting space in this hotel.

There's no glut of rush at one particular time, but we're off peak traffic.

Economically, also, in addition to paying the real estate taxes and personal property taxes that a residential or any use might pay, we've got meals taxes, sales taxes, transient occupancy taxes.

These are all on top of what residential development might pay.

For the city's study, that's $825,000 a year in taxes, or $17 million over the next 20 years.

The benefit of these taxes also is it comes with the lowest net demand on city services.

We're a transient use.

Our hotel guests aren't putting their children in the school systems while they stay with us overnight.

There's not that demand on city services.

So it really comes at a premium, those tax dollars, to the city.

and then perhaps most importantly for any community is jobs.

With any construction project we are bringing jobs and there will be plenty of them during construction.

I think the city estimated at anywhere from 40 to 75 while this project is ongoing.

The important thing about a hotel is the sustained jobs.

These are good quality jobs that don't leave town once construction goes away.

We're estimating just north of 40 jobs which is 30 to 35 full-time equivalents and then it could go north of that depending on how the restaurant is ultimately programmed.

So we think that this hotel brings a lot of benefit to the community.

We're excited to bring it forward and we can answer any questions you may have.

I got a couple.

On the appurtenance, what is going into the appurtenance?

It's a mechanical appurtenance.

And that's what you sort of guarantee, you give us a word, it's not going to turn into a penthouse or something.

In the 11th Street, the way I'm looking at it here, is that two lanes before we start talking about drop-off?

Yes, two lanes of traffic.

Okay, so in the drop-off we're going to lose a lane.

pulls underneath the building.

And you mentioned who's going to sort of be the customers of this.

You mentioned people going to the hospital.

Not undergrads for room night.

Undergrads, they generate room night demand.

It's their parents coming to visit.

It's people bringing kids on college visits.

That sounded odd.

And this is a special use permit.

Yes, sir.

So does it kill the job if you don't get the special use permit?

If I don't have the additional height for the rooms?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's not economically viable.

So the job would not go if you did not have the SUP?

I'm sorry, the job— The job wouldn't progress— Correct.

Oh, I understand that.

I just wanted to answer that the SUP is critical

Yes.

Other questions?

If not, I have a, I'd like to invite somebody to the University.

Yeah, I do actually have a question of the applicant, because looking at our purview for impacts on the neighborhood, and in general, I'd just like to say generally, I think this is a much better use.

or a large building on West Main than the previous residential ones, but since I voted against all those I just wanted to say that.

Parking I'm concerned about because you only have half as many parking spaces as you do rooms after you consider employees and things.

There are other garages in the area that we have not, we're so early in the process we haven't

We don't have any deals with people, but what we typically do is we set up an arrangement with a local operator whereby if we do have overflow, we can move cars to those garages.

We have never, as a practical matter, used those in other applications.

We've got several projects going in Old Town Alexandria, which is somewhat similar although admittedly different in demographic.

We're parking to a point three there.

And actually that's utilization as well because we have three operating hotels in that market.

This is admittedly different.

We recognize that.

It's a university market.

There will be spikes in demands on weekends.

What we don't have is you don't have a big ballroom.

You don't see that anywhere in my program.

So it's not like I'll have a wedding with a big

One time rush of people.

So we believe we're adequately parked.

I don't think we're over parked.

Exactly, exactly.

And we have a parking study going on.

I don't think it goes past your site, though, in terms of the parking garage like on

down by the university.

But it is I think a concern, parking's a huge concern in our considerations of the other parts of West Main and to see this, my concern being that we are a public university so we have a predominantly Virginia based population and so they would likely drive if they're coming to see their children.

So that is

I'll just say that out loud.

That is just a concern I have.

And the other, of course, is, as Mr. Butler from SELC was noting, the height, the mass.

How does it compare to the parking garage behind it, to the University Hospital?

I think it's at the same height or just slightly taller.

as the parking structure.

I have one question.

You were talking about the parking and that it's

It's tight and I'm actually very supportive of tight parking.

We've got to finish programming exactly how the kitchen will interface with it.

I think it will be in the neighborhood of, it could be 80 to 100 seats.

Theoretically 80 to 100 people at a time with a few waiting to get in because it's going to be wildly popular.

Thank you.

Where are they gonna park?

Can they park in your garage?

In our experience, a lot of times the restaurant is for people that are sort of within walking distance.

These become popular if you're in the area.

I would love to have something so popular that people drive their car to it, and certainly that does happen.

But the utilization of cars coming and going is not always as frequently as you might expect.

But yes, the expectation is, and we did studies of what we typically accommodate in more of an urban restaurant, we believe you have the capacity in the garage.

Mr. Mayor, while he's coming up with me real quick, what is the construction material of the project?

We don't do anything stick.

And you mentioned other projects in Alexandria.

Yes, sir.

One of them did.

Please have a seat.

I'd like to invite Dr. Hart to come forward.

He's not here to make a speech, but I have some questions for him.

I do, actually.

My name is Charlie Hurt.

We certainly heard about the concerns with 1000 West Main and the Core Lab and the Heliport.

Well, our concern is not with this special use permit or the over height or the use.

Our concern is 11th Street access to the hospital and what this use, how that will impact that.

And just to give you a sense of scale, there's over 1700 appointments

every weekday at the hospital.

And there's two access points to the 11th Street garage and one of them is on 11th Street.

So our real concern is how do we manage access on West Main and turning movements onto 11th Street and getting people in and out of the garage.

And we actually, and given the fluid nature of real estate along West Main, even though

These are nice folks to deal with.

There's potential that this project could change hands now or at some point in the future.

So right now there are two lanes on 11th Street.

The Planning Commission suggested that they could maybe use two feet of 11th Street to provide a wider sidewalk, which may prohibit a third lane in the future.

and given the potential for additional construction in that area both by private developers and by the university, we would like to have a special use permit prohibit the taking of that additional right-of-way so it would provide additional flexibility in the future in case we wanted to make, let's say, a left turn lane from 11th Street onto West Main.

So with that two feet, we believe we haven't

Oh, I do have one question.

The applicant did mention that the reason why they couldn't go underground was because of the Core Labs infrastructure, so there's, could you please explain that a little bit?