City Council Meeting   1/4/2016

Music

And then there's the citywide one.

I'd like to call this meeting of the Charlottesville City Council to order.

Mr. Bell?

Here.

The first item of business tonight is the election of the mayor and the vice mayor.

By city code, every two years the city council, following a city council election, holds an organizational meeting to elect the mayor and to elect the vice mayor for two year terms.

So we will do that this evening.

Mr.

Thank you, Ms. Galvin.

We have a nomination.

Do we have a second?

Second.

So we have a nomination and a second.

Any discussion?

If not, please vote.

So it's 5-0.

We have not replaced the names yet, but it was a unanimous vote, five to nothing, to support Mr. Signer for mayor.

Thank you.

We have a nomination.

And I'll second that.

We have a first and a second.

Do we have any other discussion?

If not, let's vote.

Mr. Bellamy, congratulations.

Thank you.

Hello everyone.

I would like to take a moment to read a statement.

I've been told that I have an hour and a half to speak here tonight.

I'm just kidding, it'll be much quicker than that.

I am very humbled by this trust that my colleagues have placed in me.

As mayor, I will do everything I can during the next two years to honor that trust.

I know that being mayor will be a lot of work in the city and that there is certainly a lot for us to do, but I believe that my work will be made easier by the qualities of the men and the women on this dais around me.

Vice Mayor Bellamy, I admire your commitment to social justice and your activism, your academic accomplishments and aspirations, the work you do as a teacher, as a father, and as a husband-to-be,

and the fact that you have your pulse in what often seems like this entire community.

Indeed, the only real flaw I see in you is your allegiance to the Dallas Cowboys.

Counselor Szakos, you have the heart of the public and civic journalists you once were and I'm grateful for your service to this community on racial and economic justice, opportunity for our youth and building an infrastructure for the future and the lasting impact you've already made on the city through many projects including the City of Promise.

Counselor Galvin, it has been a real privilege and pleasure getting to know you so well during our joint campaign.

I'm always grateful to share in the depth of your knowledge, both vocational and avocational, across virtually every area related to planning, design, environmentalism, economic opportunity, and infrastructure.

And Counselor Fenwick, I admire not only your independence of thought and tenacity, but your creativity.

You are, I think, the only one up here on the dais who has written children's books.

Those are my children who we

We're sure we're probably going to disrupt the meeting at some point.

So you have written children's books, and you bring a practical dimension to government that comes not only from running a small business in construction, but a military career before that.

Counselors, I am looking forward to working with each one of you.

And last, but certainly not least, Mr. Jones.

I've gotten to know you over these last few months of meetings and briefings.

I admire both the head and the heart you bring to the complicated machinery of our city's government.

And I'm very excited to collaborate with you on the mission I know that is closest to you, which is helping this government serve the people of Charlottesville.

Now I'd like to tell you a little bit about my values and what I will bring to this position.

My campaign theme was One Charlottesville.

and I intend that to be the theme of this mayorship as well.

By one Charlottesville I mean public policies and the benefit, not special interests, but the common good of Charlottesville as a whole.

A government that concentrates on what unites us and not what divides us and that seeks to build bridges among and between our various communities.

To state the obvious, there is a lot of cynicism today

about politics and government alike, and I see it here in Charlottesville in every anonymous online comment where someone casually hurls invective about local officials, and I see it on the national stage in the toxic politics of Donald Trump.

We have an opportunity before us, I believe, to rebut today's cynicism with governance itself.

As mayor, I want schoolchildren to watch us on television and think that they might want to be on city council themselves someday.

I want to help lead this city council to become an exemplar for our citizens of collegiality, of deliberation, of transparency, and of good government.

And I want to be very clear about one thing.

My colleagues and I are not doing this for personal reward.

We're not here for the compensation we receive.

We are here because we each love this city.

Yes, each in our own different ways, but all because we want to give back to Charlottesville.

And so my main value as mayor will be always to strive for the common good of this city.

Well, I have the privilege to serve as your mayor that will mean two goals to this council, respect and results.

We are a small city and we're all neighbors.

I believe it's therefore crucial that we treat each other and this institution with respect.

We will be facing a lot of challenging and important issues on this council, ranging from moving forward with the strategic investment area, to expanding pre-K, from resolving the landmark hotel, to getting the West Main project moving, from redeveloping public housing, to getting the Belmont Bridge underway.

These issues will be challenging because they'll require change.

and taxpayer dollars and some measure in all of them of uncertainty.

We will naturally all have strong opinions on charged and difficult matters, but we can disagree without being disagreeable.

As mayor, I will always treat my colleagues, our staff, and each and every citizen who comes before us with respect, and I will not tolerate disrespect by anyone on this dais toward anyone else.

I will expect members of staff to treat members of this body with civility, and I will expect council to treat staff with courtesy as well.

But respect is not worth the paper it's written on, this paper without results, without action.

Local government matters perhaps more than any other branch of government because it hits so close to home.

Our feelings about speeding cars and residential roads or the sizes of classrooms or the cost of redevelopment project or the quality of a waterway can seem and are incredibly important to us.

Temperatures can naturally rise on these issues.

Sometimes it can be more convenient to respond to these passions with symbols than with answers.

Instead of proceeding to policy, it can be easier for officials to tell the public that they're with you on this or that symbolic fight.

As mayor, I do not believe that my job will be to play to the public's passions, nor to provide symbolic victories alone.

When we're talking about decisions within a $160 million budget for a city of nearly 50,000 people, there will always be risks.

But we have been elected as leaders.

and that means making decisions.

I therefore see my job as collaborating with my colleagues, with Mr. Jones and with the staff working full time for this city to lead our government to take action for our city and for our citizens.

So in conclusion, I don't like elected officials who make a lot of promises any more than you do, so I will close by offering just two.

I promise that I will demand and practice respect and I promise that I will strive for action and results for the common good of the city we all love so dearly.

Mr. Bellamy, would you like to say anything?

Sure.

I wasn't expecting to say anything, but I actually just put this on Facebook.

Thank you guys so much.

We really appreciate the support.

We are really looking forward to working together as an entire council, as a cohesive unit.

We can assure you that we will work till the work is done.

We will work to the best of our ability to make sure that we lead this city in the best way in which we can.

I know that there is

There are a lot of people who may feel as if they don't know which foot we're going to get off on or what direction that the city is going to go on.

And I'll only ask one thing.

If you all could please give us the opportunity and afford us the opportunity as a council, Mr. Fenwick, myself, Mr. Signer, Ms. Szakos, Ms. Galvin, if you all can give us the opportunity to show you all that it is a new day here in Charlottesville.

Please provide us with the opportunity to make the difference that we all are committed to making.

Please don't judge us based on what has happened before us because we're a different group.

There will be a new energy.

There will be community engagement.

There will be people who are committed to making sure that we hear your voices, but you all have elected us to make the decisions.

And that is what we will do.

As Mr. Signer alluded to, I'm not one who's going to come up here and just make a ton of promises about this and that.

We can show you better than we can tell you, and the work will speak for itself.

So give us the opportunity because I'm looking forward to working with each and every single one of you and everybody out there watching on television.

Excellent.

These are the first and then the announcements I think is usually what we do.

Or is it the other way around?

Okay, we have two announcements to read.

Ms. Szakos, would you like to?

Sure.

City offices will be closed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, January 18, 2016.

And on that day, Monday, January 18, Charlottesville area transportation will operate full service, curbside trash and recycling will be collected as usual, but the City Council will not meet.

We will meet the next day on the 19th.

A couple of other quick announcements that I don't really have the materials for, but I just wanted to make sure to get out there.

On the 17th, that's Sunday, yes, the day before.

I'm sorry, I gave you an accurate information.

It's actually on Monday.

Okay, I'll let Mr. Bell let me give that one.

And then on the 24th is the citywide Martin Luther King celebration at Mount Zion First African Baptist Church with the choir that

I will be in.

I think Ms. Galvin also will be in and maybe many of you.

It's a mass choir.

Great.

So I just have a couple of quick announcements.

As Ms. Szakos alluded to, the Dr. Martin Luther King continuing his dream and works event will be held on Monday, January 18, 2016 from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Carver Rec Center.

It's a family affair and it's free.

Some of the program highlights include the third Alicia B. Lugo Award.

The keynote speaker will be Mr. Jay James.

We have Christian vocalist Charles Lewis, youth musician Dante Walker, hip hop artist Shad D. Gill.

Health issues will be led by Dr.

Brandy Wright.

and Alexander will present the Dreamers and more.

The mistress of ceremonies will be Ms. Spencer Burke and this is sponsored in part by Donnell Taylor Cleaning Service, the Jones Heating and Air Reeds, excuse me, Jones Heating and Air Reeds Supermarket, Carter's Taxi, Inc. and Our Legacy, Inc.

I would also like to make one more quick announcement on January, excuse me, yes, on January 17th, which is a Sunday at 5 p.m. and there'll be more information forthcoming, the location has not been set yet, but there will be a

making sure that we finish the path realizing Dr. King's dream, Black Town Hall.

Again, that information will be more information in regards to location will be forthcoming, but that will be if you like to mark your calendar Sunday, January 17th at 5 p.m. And I'm sure we'll get all of that information on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and everywhere else for everyone.

Yes, I have one more prosaic little announcement after the very, very good comments that were made by Mr. Signer and Mr. Bellamy.

But it is the end of the holidays, and with it goes the Christmas trees.

Charlottesville's curbside pickup for live Christmas trees will be the week of January 11, 2016.

Trees need to be at the curbside by 7 a.m. on Monday the 11th.

Decorations, stands, and nails must be removed.

This collection is for Christmas trees only.

Please no yard waste.

Shortly after the pickup, the city and county, Elmont County Park crews will join forces and ship an estimated 2,500 trees at Darden Tow Park.

So free mulch from the recycled trees will be available starting February 1, 2016 at Darden Tow Park.

It's a really good use of the old Christmas trees.

They continue to live on forever.

So anyway, that's going to be February 1, 2016.

Mr. Signer, I'd like to announce the council member boards and commissions appointments.

I'm going to go in, it's somewhat random order, it was the order in which we considered them.

The Police Advisory Board, the CAP, Wes Bellamy, Jefferson Area Community Criminal Justice Board, Bob Fenwick, the Rivanna River Basin Commission, Bob Fenwick, School Capital Projects Committee, Bob Fenwick, Charlottesville Development Corporation, Wes Bellamy, Piedmont Area Workforce Council, Kathy Galvin, School Capital Projects, there are two people on that, Mike Signer,

Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, Bob Fenwick, Audit Committee, one of two positions, Mike Signer, Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority, Wes Bellamy, Java, Jefferson Area Board for Aging, Bob Fenwick, Metropolitan Planning Organization, MPO, Kathy Galvin, one of two positions, Planning and Coordinating Council, one of two positions, Mike Signer, Darden Tow Park Board, also one of two, Wes Bellamy,

the LEAP Advisory Board, Bob Fenwick, Retirement Commission, Wes Bellamy, Rivanna River Basin Commission, the other position is Bob Fenwick, Social Services Advisory Board, Mike Signer, Planning and Coordinating Council, Kathy Galvin, Albemarle, Charlottesville Regional Jail Authority, Kristin Szakos, actually the Kristin Szakos to the next several audit committee, Charlottesville Community Scholarship Program, Darden Tow Park Board, Housing Advisory Committee, Metropolitan Planning Organization,

Virginia First Cities and the Charlottesville Area Transit Board, the CAT Board, then Historic Resources, Bob Fenwick, the MAP, which is the Health Study, Kathy Galvin, Piedmont Housing Authority, Kathy Galvin, Route 29 Advisory Panel, Kristin Szakos, Cable Franchise Committee, Mike Signer, and Place Design Task Force, Kathy Galvin.

Second.

All in favor?

We have a second?

That was my motion.

Okay, we have a second?

Any discussion?

No?

Okay, all in favor?

Otis 5-0.

Okay, we're gonna move now to matters by the public.

I'm going to read the rules that we have used.

Guidelines for public comment.

We welcome public comment.

It's an important part of the meeting.

Please follow these guidelines for public comment.

If you're here to speak for a public hearing,

Please wait to speak on the matter until the report on that item has been presented and public hearing has been opened.

Each speaker has three minutes to speak.

Please give your name and address before beginning your remarks.

Please do not interrupt speakers whether or not you agree with them.

Please refrain from using obscenities.

If you cannot follow these guidelines, you'll be escorted from City Council chambers and not permitted to re-enter.

We have 11 people who signed up to speak today.

Good evening.

I came for the excitement of seeing who was going to be the mayor, but it wasn't very exciting.

Why not?

There was no discussion.

I thought there would be a nice discussion as we would expect in anybody that believed in transparency among yourselves, open to the public, about why was Mr. Signer chosen?

I'm sure you all have opinions.

I'm sure you all discussed this beforehand.

Why was Mr. Bellamy chosen?

We don't know.

Was Mr. Signer chosen because he raised the most money?

Was he chosen because he has the best connection with businesses in the community?

Was he chosen because he has the best connection with the Democratic Party, perhaps, and the state?

I throw those out, but we don't know.

And we won't know unless you tell us.

But you don't want to tell us.

In this respect, this council is no different than any other.

You're going to have to prove otherwise that you believe in transparency when you start out with a lack of transparency.

You have chosen different people on the council to serve on different committees, task forces, and so on in the city.

On what basis did you choose each of these individuals?

On the basis of their knowledge of certain things?

On the basis of their connections to developers?

We don't know.

We don't know because you don't tell us.

And you won't tell us.

Because the truth about this city, Mr. Signer, is it doesn't believe in transparency.

The truth is there's apathy and there's anger and the anger is not apathy.

The anger is citizen involvement.

The problem is you all have to recognize that you were chosen by some 20% of the population of the electorate that's eligible to vote and therefore you should be coming to this position with a good deal of humility and not with the notion that you are in fact the leaders of this community.

Because if you were, you'd get more than 20% of the electorate to come out and vote for you.

But there are reasons for this.

One of the reasons is the reasons I talked about the last meeting.

You have to recognize the truth.

There are two Charlottesville's.

One rich and one poor and unequal.

One black and one white and unequal.

That was not discussed in your list of items that you thought were important to do, Mr. Signer, but to many of us, that is the issue, that's been the issue in this community for hundreds, and I say that hundreds of years.

When will you come to the realization that that's what leadership means?

It doesn't mean following, it means dealing with the crisis issues in this community.

We have problems in our communities that

We've got about 15 seconds left.

But we'll be more interested and concerned about procedure and about being nice to each other than we will be about substance.

You will not do anything different if you don't open your eyes, talk the truth, and be transparent in the real way.

Thank you.

My name is Jean Hyatt.

I live at 1534 Wreckby Avenue.

Welcome, Mayor Signer and our new city council.

As a resident of a neighborhood adjacent to McIntyre Park, I'd like to bring three concerns to your attention.

I have read that the softball fields are due for new lighting.

The present lights are extremely bright and glaring and can be somewhat blinding to drivers passing by.

My request is that the new lighting be

be required to comply with the dark sky guidelines so that unnecessary light does not reach into the surrounding streets and neighborhoods.

Secondly, I would like to strongly urge you to require porous surfaces in the new parking lots that are created.

This will help deal with runoff as well as aid the trees and plants in the area.

And lastly, I would like the city to carefully consider what the goal is for a planned new skate park.

My feeling is that we should be creating a park that serves Charlottesville residents and to the extent that the county shares financing of projects serve county residents as well.

Our goal, in my opinion, should not be a state-of-the-art skate park structure that draws skaters from up and down the east coast, as is stated by the skate park designer.

Such a facility would bring in large numbers of added people and vehicles that could easily put undue pressure on the park as a whole as well as overload the adjacent streets with parked cars.

We have lived on Rugby Avenue since 1982 and half of the park has been relatively inaccessible to our family and to Charlottesville residents due to the existence of the golf course and to some extent the softball fields.

Now finally we have an opportunity to visit and enjoy our neighborhood park with the closing of the golf course and the proposed construction of a footbridge over the railroad tracks.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm Roy Van Doren.

I own City Select on High Street.

And what you have here is a product of a lot of work from the community.

And it's designed specifically for travelers.

It's called Discover Charlottesville.

It's an annual in-room coffee table book that reflects the essence of Charlottesville.

Charlottesville being the general area, not specifically to the city.

It's published and written by our company, a local company involved in the printing.

We distribute brochures, create visitor maps.

We've been here since 2000.

We use stunning photography, coupled with fascinating articles, complimented with selective advertising, and we wanted to make the book enjoyable for readers, and yet make it an informative

experience.

What most people don't realize is that in today's branded hotel experience, hotels have somewhat sanitized the exposure of the community to their visitor in the room.

This is the lodging community's way of bringing that experience to the guests in a very one-on-one experience.

and about 40% of people that stay in hotels read books like this.

It's available in over 60 locations and in over 3800 guest rooms.

It's all been distributed already.

Lastly, I wanted to say that we, in creation of this, it's an annual book that comes out every Thanksgiving, 100% new every year.

and this year I want to really extend my thanks to Kurt and Bree at the CACBP.

They've been extremely helpful in the execution of this project and in promotion of tourism specifically.

One major goal of this particular publication is to encourage repeat visitors.

That's the lifeblood of hospitality and tourism

is not churning customers, but making them so excited that they want to come back.

And that's really the goal of hospitality right now, is returning guests.

And so the CAVCB has been extremely helpful in contributing, giving advice, and working with us.

This is also available in a multimedia presentation with a flip book you can take with you.

and I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Nakia Walker.

Nakia.

I was at home watching the last city council meeting and I just want to reference something.

Counselor Galvin talked about a MLK quote.

about the road to Jericho.

And in talking about that, you referenced the things that the council would do to make changes possible.

But I wanted to read, and you all can go back and listen, I'm not going to spend my time reading that.

I wanted to read what

Dr. King actually said.

He said a true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.

On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's road, but that will only be an initial act.

One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not constantly be beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway.

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar.

It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

And the policies that we currently have in place won't break the systemic discrimination and racism that we have in Charlottesville, Dale.

You were just in the back, Signer, kissing your kids.

Unless you had to worry about your kids growing up,

entering a prison cell, not being able to afford college, it's not a common good.

There's a system in place in Charlottesville, Jeff just referenced, that has been in place for hundreds of years.

And unless you really understand what's going on, and unless it really affects your family, there's no common good.

You have to come from a completely different place.

So when we're talking about the road, we're talking about breaking down and shaking systems that have been in place.

In this, and the title of this in the beginning is when silence becomes betrayal.

We have to start having conversations that are really hard.

The transparency that Jeff is talking about, you have to be willing to have it.

for people to really know what has been done and where you're moving to.

And until we're at that place, we're not going to get anywhere.

So breaking down systems and are the right people in place who can actually break them down.

Thank you very much.

Good evening.

My name is Nancy Carpenter.

I live in the Rose Hill neighborhood.

Good evening.

I just looked at the temperature outside.

The thermometer says it's 30 degrees.

The wind chill says it's 19.

I've just recently found out that one of your constituencies, those who are unsheltered,

but do vote, there are plenty of people who are unsheltered that vote, don't have the availability of what was called the warm room anymore.

And for those of you on the council that don't know what the warm room is, it was a space that was devoted for those evenings when the temperatures were critical like they are tonight and will be for the next couple of nights, where individuals who were not comfortable in accessing our thermal shelter,

or perhaps our thermal shelter was full, would have a space to go where they could set up, feet on the floor set up, not very comfortable but you're out of a cold.

That's not available to people who are outside tonight.

And I think it's a very simple problem that can be addressed and possibly one that can show what One Charlottesville is all about.

I'm sure there are perhaps some city resources that could be used.

We're not talking about every night.

We're talking about certain parameters can be established and a spot opened up so that individuals can go in and not be found frozen to death on the street.

I was just reading today that Governor Cuomo up in New York, he and Mayor Blasio were having a little bit of a fluff up about how to deal with New York City's 6,000 homeless.

Governor Cuomo just wants to take them off the street, no ifs, ands, or buts.

He doesn't care if they're pissed off at him in the morning.

He'd rather have them angry at him and be alive instead of dead and cold on the street.

So I'm hoping that we can have a quick conversation, because it shouldn't be a hard problem to solve.

I mean, within a short amount of time, a conversation with the players that are involved in these things could certainly occur.

We've been lucky in December.

I don't know what January and February are going to show for the rest of that population.

But even myself, you know, I'd be willing to be a volunteer to do something overnight just to make sure that these individuals are safe on those nights when the temperatures are very life threatening.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

My name is Paul Long.

I live at 1410 Grady Avenue here in the city.

And first of all, I want to apologize to some people who may have attended the show for the rally, and nobody was there.

It was so cold that we cut it short.

And unfortunately, I don't have the vitality that I have when I was 25 or 30.

And it was freezing to death.

So my apologies for that.

Mayor Singh, I want to say this in all deference and respect.

I'm very cynical of this city council.

I'm very cynical of your election.

I'm very cynical of your election as mayor.

You know, and I'm just going to say that I'm very disgusted with the amount of money that was spent and raised by the Democratic candidates for election and also the fact that so much of that money came from big business and from companies that have business before this council and developers.

I think it's a disgrace

I'm 66 years old.

I remember the time when the Democratic Party stood for something, when Lyndon Johnson led the crusade for the war on poverty and civil rights.

And the Democratic Party of the 60s and the 40s and the Franklin Roosevelt is not the Democratic Party today, and it's not the Democratic Party in the city of Charlottesville.

Now, having said that,

and there's a lot of issues that have to be addressed.

Mr. Fogel mentioned it, affordable housing and homelessness, the problem of people being homeless and I hope that this city council addresses these issues with the vitality that is devoted to bringing in development in the city and I hope that all five city council members are attuned to that.

I'm going to mention an issue that I've been involved with for years that I beat like a dead horse.

This city council has not done anything to expand public transportation, even though in 2009 the city of Charlottesville was given the authority to form a public transit authority with Alarum County and they've never acted on it.

I think it's a disgrace that on legal holidays only the number 7 and the free trolley run

I think all the routes should be running on the weekends and on Sundays and on legal holidays and I think we should be discussing expanding public transportation.

You know, you go into Charlottesville and you see the people that are being killed trying to cross the street because there's too many cars in the city, you know, in the streets.

You don't need a master's degree in public policy to figure that out.

You know, I just want to say one thing, too, and I'm going to try to be within the limits

Tasteful discussion.

When I was a young man, my mother came from Lafayette, Louisiana.

And she heard me talking when I was eight or nine years old about somebody.

And she told me to shut up.

And she took me to that person and said, you tell that person what you said behind their back.

And I did.

And she said, if you want to talk about somebody, tell them that to their face.

And she used the word, I didn't raise my son to be

Punk.

So I'm going to say this.

I'm just going to go over it for five more seconds.

Mr. Bellamy was nice enough to give me a call last night, or a couple nights ago.

One of the things that disgust me with politics in this city... You are out of time, so... You know... Well, why don't you finish your story?

Okay.

and I mentioned to Mr. Bellamy that one of the people who contributed to his campaign and I guess the general campaign in general was Mark Brown.

This is an indication of where the city council is going.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name's Brandon Collins.

I live at 418 Fairway Avenue.

I've lived in Charlottesville my entire life.

I have an adult daughter who's lived here her entire life and two very young children who plan to be here for most of their childhood and probably beyond.

I am here sort of maybe in a more broad sense than I

Typically, I think what you've heard tonight are very broad concepts that this city council needs to keep in mind moving forward.

We all want you to establish priorities.

And what you've heard tonight is those priorities really have to be based on transparency, first off, but also a willingness to confront severe crisis in this city.

For the past six or seven years, I've come to this city council talking about an affordable housing crisis.

This crisis still continues.

We've seen very little change in the situation for low-income renters in the city of Charlottesville.

This really needs to change.

This has to be a priority for this city council.

Another priority, over the past four years, we've been looking into racial disparities in the juvenile justice system.

and the adult criminal justice system.

We really haven't seen much headway on those items, despite four years of talking about it.

We still haven't done what Nakaya suggests, which is we need to have a conversation.

These are hard conversations, but we need to recognize there is a crisis going on.

We have systemic racism in this community.

We have severe poverty in this community.

And it is on you all, city council,

to take this matter extremely serious.

Now, I know you talk about it.

I know you all have hearts.

I know that you're going to come back and say, well, we are doing things.

We are doing things.

Yes, you're doing things.

They're not enough.

You need to establish priorities from day one.

This is your chance to say, we, this city council, are going to do our best to deal with the significant problem of poverty in our community.

And that's going to start with affordable housing.

Another priority I want to bring to your attention for anybody new, but I think it's been on your minds a lot, which is the redevelopment of public housing, much needed redevelopment.

Fifty years ago, West Haven was built.

People there live in cinderblock homes.

The walls sweat in the summer.

During the winter, people have to sleep in their living rooms because the heat doesn't fully heat their bedrooms.

That's just one example of one of our oldest spots.

Crescent Hall is under severe distress.

The time for redevelopment is now.

You need to prioritize this and I really hope you will embrace FAR's concept of a positive resident-directed vision for redevelopment.

You will be seeing a public draft of that very soon and there are some things we can share with you.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Lina Seville, 808 Alta Vista Avenue.

Thank you.

I'd just like to reiterate some of the things that we've already heard tonight.

I especially appreciate Wes bringing up community engagement as a priority.

I really appreciate that.

And also Jeff Fogel talking about transparency.

I think these are real, very important issues that make the citizens feel like you really are doing what's best for them because they understand the situation.

When you don't know what's happening and you don't understand it, it's easy to be critical.

And we do have a lot of really important issues facing the city.

And my last public comment, I talked about some of the things that Brandon just spoke about, racism and poverty and affordable housing and how when we're not creating affordable housing, we are pushing our poverty problem away instead of addressing it.

We need not just subsidized housing, we need housing for low wage workers, for the working poor, for the workforce housing, for the teachers, for the policemen and firemen, for the secretaries,

you know, service jobs, we need to have those people here also.

It makes for a diverse community, it makes for everybody being able to be more stable and happy and healthy and it's just the right way to do things.

So I hope that along with homelessness, we've heard about campaign finance reform,

and one of the ways to address all of these is a little bit out of your area, but I'll make an announcement about we're having a rally for Bernie Sanders this Sunday, January 10th at City Space from 4.30 to 6 o'clock.

For those of you who aren't familiar with him, he is a proponent of living wage and a lot of different things that try to bring some fairness to our society.

Thank you.

I would like to speak first about accountability.

But what I see here on city council is people who actually have a lot of depth and experience in different ways.

Ms. Galvin, I know about some of these issues that are talked about like new construction and what we build in the community.

You had a great idea about

getting more accountability from the developers that build things here by setting out up front what the city wants in areas rather than making the process so vague and behind the scenes with these boards and commissions that a lot of people in the community don't talk to that the only people who end up doing anything are the people with the best ability to work the process, not the best ability

to deliver what the community wants.

Ms. Szakos, your depth of experience as a community activist and as a journalist is very important.

The way the city often does things I think is it either kicks the can down the road

or makes what looks like the best decision of the time or commissions a study to provide cover for what's going to look like the best decision at the time.

There are people that speak before city council all the time, they have different issues and they have different, they come from different backgrounds and they have different concerns and you also have people lobbying you behind the scenes.

and one thing is it's on you as city council to investigate these things.

Mr. Bellamy, you represent a large number of people in a large number of communities that have been ignored before city council often.

And Mr. Fenwick, you have some very deep experience with the way that the local business community works and very deep knowledge of that.

So bring that knowledge, bring those skills, that investigative ability

It's on you.

There are no Republicans on this council.

There's no Donald Trump on this council.

It's on you to find out about these issues and take the people seriously that bring them to you and find out what's really going on.

And that's something all of you have some background and experience that will lend to that.

You can't hide behind the GOP.

There's no GOP here.

Thank you.

Rebecca Quinn, 104 4th Street here in the city.

I also am not thrilled by statements of anticipated unity by this body.

With the diversity of this city and our issues, I hope you won't always be in lockstep.

I want different viewpoints.

I want discussion and I want debate.

I think that's the only way we can really get to good decisions.

But on a lighter note,

Sometimes it doesn't take that much to make me happy.

Tonight I'm happy the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority announced McIntyre Recycling Center will start accepting compostable kitchen scraps starting January 6th if the bins are delivered on time.

That's the message I got on Saturday when I was there.

Now we need people to know about it and we need people to use it.

I'll share something I do.

A lot of people don't go to the recycling center every month or every week.

To maximize my recycling of kitchen waste, I keep enough space in my freezer to hold a month's worth.

So then when I go once a month to recycling center to drop off my office paper to make sure to maximize that recycling, I take a month's worth.

I will take a month's worth at a time.

I used to do this to take it to my sisters.

Compost, but now I'm going to go to McIntyre.

To everyone in this chamber and everyone watching at home, please collect your kitchen scraps and take advantage of the drop-off at the McIntyre Recycling Center.

We need lots of people to use it to make it worth Rivanna's while, to keep doing it, and so please again, join me to help reduce the volume of garbage that gets landfilled.

We pay to landfill that garbage.

and it's there forever.

Let's recycle.

Reduce when you can.

Let's reuse.

But in the end, what's left?

Please recycle.

And please follow the rules for recycling.

There's way too much stuff going in those green bins that is not supposed to go in the green bins.

Check the lid.

Check the instructions.

Go online.

Thank you.

My name is Lewis Scholz.

I live at 1809 East Market Street.

I'd like to commend Paul Long for bringing attention to the influence of development interests who paid about $50,000 of the money that was raised in the last council election cycle.

I think it's equally important that we take a look at the corrosive effect on government

of having a single party in power for decades.

Because there has been no opposition voice calling into account, not to mention the dismal state of our daily news, City Council has become so complacent, so assured of its superiority, that it doesn't even feel bothered to obey the laws that govern its own conduct.

There was a vacancy in the office of the mayor, and the charter does allow that to be filled, as just happened, but both Section 9 of the charter and Sections 2-39 of the Charlottesville Code of Ordinance

clearly established the first meeting in July as the start of the mayor's term.

Tonight's election of a mayor can by law only be to fill out the remainder of that term.

A two-year term cannot begin tonight.

As I just noted, Charlottesville's code and charter both require an annual meeting in July as does Section 1416 of Title 15.2 of the Code of Virginia, which says, the governing body shall assemble at a public place as the governing body may prescribe in regular session in July for cities and towns.

A resolution purporting to establish a 2016 meeting schedule for council is among the items in tonight's consent agenda.

If it is passed, it will be void immediately, and council will have broken the law as its very first act under a new mayor.

Title 15.2, Section 1416 does allow some localities to establish a meeting schedule in July, but it has no effect on Charlottesville, where the city's charter requires that an ordinance establish regular council meetings.

Section 2-41 of the city code says that meetings must take place on the first and third Mondays of every month unless there is a holiday in which case the meeting is delayed one day.

No meeting may be cancelled and the only way to amend that ordinance is with another ordinance so tonight's resolution has no effect.

Several months ago, council also exceeded its lawful authority in authorizing the mayor to sign a contract specifying a five-year term of employment for the city manager.

Section 7A of that contract explicitly states that his term of employment is for a fixed period of time, which is in clear violation of Title 15.2, Section 1503 of Virginia Code.

The resolution authorizing the mayor's signature was in violation of the supremacy clause of Virginia Code, which says any resolution of any governing body shall not be inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States or the Commonwealth.

That resolution was void, meaning Maurice Jones does not now and never has had a valid employment contract as city manager.

The most troubling thing I have discovered recently is that when Charlottesville passed an ordinance in 2004 moving its council elections to November, that ordinance was in violation of the city's charter, which requires May elections.

Section 222.1 of Virginia Code Title 24.2, which the city cited as the authority to change that time of its elections, doesn't state any intent that section should take precedence over any locality's charter.

It is a long-standing principle of statutory construction that a general law which does not state an intent that it do so does not take precedence over a special law like the city's charter.

Numerous decisions of Virginia's Supreme Court dating back to at least 1886 have fully agreed with this principle.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, responses from Councillors.

First, I'd like to remind everybody, and what people come and speak to us about is very important.

It's about their families, about their childrens, about their relationships, about their money, about their life.

And I'm not trying to minimize the things that are being said, but I would like to remind everybody that we encourage children to watch these meetings.

They can hear a lot of what's going on because it happens in their own families, but I just want to send a message.

I want to remind everybody to be careful of the language that you use.

To Rebecca Quinn, reduce, reuse, recycle, and I'd like to add repair.

and Mike mentioned in his opening remarks about speeding around town and the neighborhoods are up in arms about people speeding.

Old Lynchburg Road has a fine of $200.

Locust Avenue, if they don't have it right now, they're going to have it shortly, a fine of $200.

That's money.

That's big money.

Big money for me.

So I would like to remind everybody that might be watching or might be listening.

Slow down in the city.

And the settlement can best be encapsulated by five sentences that the Locust Avenue residents brought up.

The city has responsibility to its citizens to provide for their safety.

Beyond ensuring safety, the city has a strong interest in ensuring that residential communities retain their residential quality.

Speeding distracted drivers are a threat to our residential communities throughout the city.

We must proceed expeditiously but wisely to return the traffic safety of our residential neighborhoods to saner levels.

and finally reasonable technologies exist that can address our speeding distracted driver issues in a very affordable way.

Thank you.

First I'd like to correct something that I didn't say earlier and I want to make sure that I give honor to God who's the head of my life

and my pastor and my mother who's probably watching online would kill me for not saying that just now.

So I'd like to go through and address some of the things in which I've heard.

And thank you all for coming out tonight.

Those were for our first public comment session.

That was very interesting and entertaining.

And that's part of the reason why we decided to run.

I can only speak for myself.

It's part of the reason why I want to run and I want to hear those concerns and many of them in which we've heard before and we are looking forward to addressing.

So I would like to address Mr. Fogel specifically because you went first.

Mr. Fogel, you stated a lot of things and a lot of issues that we know that we have here in Charlottesville.

Transparency is something that is indeed very important to us all.

When decisions are made, we have no issues whatsoever with discussing how those issues

were made as long as they are within our rights to do so.

So if we have the okay to do so and if you and I want to have a conversation, if you'd like to have a conversation with me about why Mr. Signer became mayor, we can do so.

I have no problem with doing so and I can tell you again, just specifically for me, I decided to vote for Mr. Signer because I believe that he's a strong leader.

He will run a very good meeting.

He's also an individual who has shown me over time that he is committed to this city and taking us to new heights.

So you ask for transparency and that's where we are.

Now again, if you'd like to have another conversation, I have no issue with doing so and I look forward to speaking with you soon.

I'd like to also address Mrs. Walker who spoke on systemic racism and things that we have seen here in this community for hundreds of years and she is absolutely right.

And we are prepared to take those issues

Mr. Long brought up an issue in regards to speaking about the low-income community and I've heard several people talk about those things.

While I want to say this, I know exactly what it feels like to have to cut mold off of your bread to eat a grilled cheese sandwich.

I know what it feels like to have to heat your house up with the oven.

because you don't have anywhere that's warm inside your home.

I know what it feels like to not have a coat when it's cold outside.

I know exactly what it feels like to live in a neighborhood in which you don't want to invite any of your classmates or anyone else over because it looks like a word that I won't say up here behind the dais.

I know what those things feel like.

and you can believe me that we are committed to making sure that we change those things here in our city.

Those issues that we have did not start overnight.

They will not be solved overnight.

But, but, and I'll say it again, but it is important that we all decide to work together

in order

In order for us to change them, we are going to have to work together.

I'm in West Haven, South First Street, South Sixth Street, Friendship Court, and everywhere else around the city all of the time.

My counselors, we have all discussed these things about making sure that we are in tune with the community to figure out exactly what needs to be done.

When I tell you

that I'm there all the time, that they're committed to being there to make the change that needs to be done, you can believe me or you can join me.

The question is going to come down to everyone in this room.

We're going to have to make a decision as a community.

Are we going to point fingers at each other and say this is what happened before or are we going to roll up our sleeves, work together, lock arms and do what we got to do?

Mr. Fogel, I'm looking forward to working with you so I'm not going to sit here or throw your name under the bus or talk about what's happened before because I don't believe in doing that.

But I will offer you an open invitation.

If we want to continue doing the work to make the change, then let's do it.

If we want to throw dirt on each other's names, then you can keep that to yourself.

If anybody in this city, anybody who's watching on television, if anyone here in the city of Charlottesville

wants to work together in terms of making this city a better place for everyone, then we, the five councilors up here, are committed to working with you to do so.

What has happened before has happened before.

But where we are now, January 4th, 2016, we are a council that is committed to getting it right.

Does that mean that we're always going to do everything right the first time?

Probably not.

Does that mean that we're going to do everything to your liking the first time?

Probably not.

But I can guarantee you that we will try.

You will not be able to question our effort.

You will not be able to question our motives of our intentions because we will be transparent and we're going to do what's best for this city.

So the question is for all of you now.

We've laid it out.

Are you with us or are you going to be detractors?

Because if you're with us, then I'm ready to work with you.

If you're a detractor, I just ask that you stay over there.

because I want us to work together.

Children are watching us.

My children.

You spoke about Ms. Lena Seville.

You want this to be a place where teachers can live, firefighters, police officers.

I'm a teacher.

I live in Belmont, the same neighborhood as you.

I want my friends who are also my colleagues to come and live in my neighborhood also.

So yeah, we got to make it affordable, but we have to do that together.

He's committed, she's committed, she's committed, he's committed, and he's committed.

And with that being said, thank you.

This is not proper procedure.

This is not proper procedure.

We're going to have to have you removed.

This is not proper procedure.

We're still going.

You're an attorney.

You know about parliamentary rules.

Thank you.

Ms. Szakos?

No.

No.

So I'd like to go next.

One of the things that I've been really impressed with over the past really couple of years, when I was first on city council, I felt like no one ever really came and talked to us about the things that I felt mattered and the reasons that I had run for city council.

And the first person who did is now sitting over there, Mr. Bellamy, who came up and said, you know, I hear a lot of talk.

At that point, it was about the water plan and about streets and stuff.

And he said, I know those are really important, but we need to talk about

We need to talk about systemic injustice in the community.

We need to talk about equity.

We need to talk about our children and how they're doing and the gaps in opportunity that we see every day in this community.

And at that point, I remember saying to him, where have you been?

Go find more people because this is what we need to be talking about in this council.

and so it's really for me a wonderful thing and I know we're not there yet and I know there's plenty left to criticize and to be frustrated about and I know that we're not always on a straight line towards solution but the fact that Mr. Bellamy is now up at this table working with me

on these issues, and that this Council has expressed a strong commitment to actually start moving forward on these issues, gives me great heart.

And I know, like Mr. Bellamy has said, that we won't always do what you want, and we won't always feel like it's moving fast enough.

I've discovered after six years on Council that the wheels of government, even when you're impatient, grind incredibly slowly.

And in a way, that's a good thing.

You don't want a government that just jerks back and forth.

and when somebody gets on and has a strong opinion that suddenly everything in the government changes direction.

But I think that over the past six years we've seen that direction turning.

I think we've seen some real momentum now building.

So I am looking forward to the next two years.

Just as a specific answer to a question from Mr. Long about the transit authority, the county would have to go in with us on the transit authority and has not agreed to do that.

We've kept open the lines of communication.

We continue to encourage that and talk about that, but we need their participation to make that happen.

So yes, we do have authorization for a transit authority, but we don't yet have one.

And I am sorry about that because I think we should.

The compost I've looked up here online, they're not giving a date on the website yet, but they do say standby.

There will be a press release.

So watch your TV, watch your newspaper, watch Facebook.

And we'll try to let you know when there will be compost pickup at McIntyre.

And just as far as transparency in decision making, generally personnel decisions, even in council, are discussed in closed session.

And part of that is because we don't put people's personal stuff out in the public as much.

And we're public officials, so we can take a fair amount of public scrutiny.

But that is traditionally why that discussion

It can be discussed up here, but that's why we often kind of talk about what's going to happen so it doesn't end up being a brawl at the council meeting.

And I think that a lot of you know, but for those of you who don't know, in Charlottesville we are a city manager, weak mayor, which doesn't mean that Mike is weak, but it means we are a weak mayor form of government, which means that the role of the mayor is to run the council meetings,

to help set the agenda for these meetings.

But other than that, he is one of the counselors.

So he doesn't get special powers.

He doesn't get to fly.

He's pretty much just a regular person and a member of council who runs the council meetings and keeps decorum within the council.

So just kind of wanted to clarify that.

And that's all.

Oh, and the boards and commissions, just one piece of policy is that we generally, the boards and commissions, because someone asked about that as well,

that we have already served on, so the three of us who are remaining on council, we generally get first dibs on the ones we've been on.

We can give up some if we don't want to serve on them anymore, and then we just kind of people decide if there are things that they're particularly interested in.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, may I say something?

So I will not elaborate any further on some of the previous comments, but I will like to say that with regards to the transit authority, what has happened at this point in time is that Chip Boyles, who is the director of Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, has been charged by the Planning and Coordination Council, that's the university, the city and the county planning group, to go and to really investigate

how to better coordinate Jaunt and the city's CAT service, Charlottesville Area Transit.

That is the first step towards getting improved regional service.

And that was the first step that the decision makers that have been elected of both bodies wanted to move forward to because it is actually going to be cost efficient to find out how we can better be served by what existing resources we have.

Just wanted to give everybody an update on that.

I guess the next planning coordination council I believe will be in about another month or so.

And that's when I think there will be a report out.

With regards to Ms. Carpenter's concerns, I do have a question for Mr. Jones because I thought that we had, between Pocham and the Moore Center, I thought we did have warm rooms.

Sure, we'll look into that.

Thank you and that would be great even at the next meeting because it is very cold out there tonight.

I would like to mention or speak to Mr. Brown's comments because I think it was also referenced in Mr. Signer's opening statement

and it's echoing some of what Ms. Szakos has said.

The mayor is what you call the first among equals.

That is the role of the mayor is to basically capitalize on the skills and the talents and the expertise of this governing body.

That is what has impressed all of us about the discussions we've had with Mr. Signer and that is something that we all realize we are our own best

resource for each other.

And it is a very complicated city.

It's a very complicated world.

Each of us does have an orientation based on our experience.

But we are committed to working together and we are committed to implementing many things that we have gotten going.

In February, we're going to get the update on the strategic investment area.

We've got to know what's going on with the redevelopment of public housing.

This is going to be a very big year to move from the talk to move towards the doing.

And I just can't underline that enough.

Excuse me, Mr. Mayor, may I ask one question, please, sir?

I'd like to ask Mr. Brown if you could check on Mr. Scholz's request in regards to his comments about the mayor and the city manager just for clarification and furthermore to follow through with some transparency as to why Mr. Signer was elected mayor based on the guidelines that we have as well as Mr. Jones's contract.

And I will add a final response to the public comments.

I would associate myself with all of my colleagues' remarks here.

There were a number of specific policy complaints or suggestions that came up in the course of these public comments.

I would include Ms. Carpenter's idea in there.

Ms. Hyatt spoke specifically about some ideas and there were several others.

One of the things that we're going to do in the meetings coming up is start to have a discussion among ourselves about our rules and procedures.

One of the things I would like to do, and I think that we're going to discuss hopefully the next meeting, is talking about the city manager reporting back to the public the next meeting on specific policy ideas or complaints that were raised.

That is one way to think about the utility of these public comments.

When somebody is not being heard, when they feel that they have not been able to get through to city government, when they want all five of us to hear at once and the city manager

This is an excellent venue for that sort of idea specific request policy.

I think that it can be a less effective, I mean it's free speech is wonderful, it can be, it is a forum for shouting at us about a million things and that is a fine purpose, but I do think that it

It's great utility for city government being responsive and active is to give us ideas and we are going to start being as constructive and specific about what we can do about those ideas going forward.

So we're going to, I hope, institute a process about that.

With that said, thank you all.

And let's move on to the consent agenda.

Second.

Is there a second?

Second.

Any discussion?

OK, vote, please.

The vote is five to zero.

It's being blocked by the flag a little bit, but I'm pretty sure that we're five to zero.

I think you did.

Still getting used to our ceilings.

Wes, how can you possibly say that you are turning over an impact when the first thing you did was violate the law?

I love this city.

Nothing like a little excitement to spice up our first meeting.

Alright, so let's go on to item number two, appropriation.

I'm here asking for you to approve an appropriation of federal funding.

This federal funding came through the state of Virginia.

Virginia was one of 12 states that received funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for pilot programs and the SNAP program for recipients of SNAP, which is the supplemental nutrition assistance program.

That's the largest benefit program we have in the state of Charlottesville.

This grant would fund a 20 hour a week position in social services.

The pilot program for the state of Virginia is coordinating SNAP recipients with the community colleges in the state of Virginia.

So we would be making referrals to PVCC for education and training for folks that are recipients currently in SNAP.

The education and training programs

will be designed by PVCC.

They will be similar to our GO programs in the city of Charlottesville.

In fact, I think the state actually in their request for the grant was impressed by what was happening in Charlottesville.

So they will be similar.

They will be targeted towards specific jobs and hopefully a step in a career ladder for folks to improve their goals of obtaining self-sufficiency.

So the 20 hour week position would be coordinating with our benefit program workers.

They would be referring people to this person.

The person would be contacting their SNAP recipient, asking if they would be interested describing the program to them.

And then from there, if the person's interested, they would be doing some assessments for the person.

they would be directing them to the Adult Learning Center for further assessments and the person then would be referred to PVCC from there PVCC would be doing intensive education and training over a number of weeks full-time with the hopes that they would be in a job and like our GO programs PVCC is going to be looking for jobs that

have vacancies, are looking for people to be qualified for those positions, but just need further employment training prior to stepping into the positions.

So we're requesting that you approve this $37,000 plus dollars.

It's all federal funding.

There's no local funding in it.

It's a three year grant.

So the person we would hire would know that it's grant funded and that, you know, depending upon whether anything happened after the pilot, but the position will be a term limited position due to the federal funding that's attached to it.

I have two questions.

One is, do you know, at least in the first year, what the caseload is expected to be for this person?

And it won't be just Charlottesville.

So it will be all the feeding communities into PVCC.

So we don't have that information at this point, how many people they're going to be able to accept at this point.

We're still waiting for more distinct numbers and people and programs that PVCC is doing.

The reason we're looking for this appropriation now is we want to get the job description formalized.

We want to get posted so that when PVCC should be ready to go in April, that we have people that we can refer immediately to the program.

But I do not know the numbers of this.

And how many of these people are there in the state?

are here in the state of this position.

Any local social services agency that wanted to participate had to express their interest.

I do not know how many local agencies have, but certainly Charlottesville has and Albemarle has and numerous other ones.

They did a pilot of the pilot in the Tidewater area already.

And so that's in process right now.

Yes, it will.

So they will be there right with our benefit and view teams.

Yes.

Oh, yes.

Thanks.

And if the decision is

Like, will we accept free money?

Any other questions?

I have one question.

Okay.

Well, I support this, Diane.

I think it's very important that you have the money you need to do the social work that you're doing.

It's critical to the city.

Okay, I just think it's important, Mr. Jones, when we have these things in front of us, and the budgetary impact says there are no federal fund dollars,

No general fund dollars being requested.

That there is a note that after one year or two years or three years, we will pick this up.

Because I certainly wouldn't vote to terminate this.

And that would just give us a better idea as we work through the budget.

Thank you.

Mr. Bellamy.

That was my question.

Yeah.

Mr. Mayor.

Yes, Ms. Geller.

I have a couple questions.

Yes, and in fact it will be tracked in a state system.

So when we refer people then they will be put into the state system.

I hope so.

I hope it's going to be able to be that by locality that we'll be able to get those outcomes.

We can ask the state that question, but like I said, we will internally be keeping our own.

Of course, once people get jobs, we can't always track

That would be very important even at that level.

I know that the follow-up with the job retention is also important.

If they're not a VIEW participant, now I don't know because we haven't seen the system from the state yet, so I don't know whether they will be tracking retention in that system also.

I mean, they track retention in the VIEW program, but I don't know.

Can we find that out as well?

Yes.

That's wonderful, but it sounds like a great program.

I just have one other question that came up concerning what Mr. Fenwick was saying.

If this is a pilot program, is there some hope that after three years that it will become funded again?

Has there been any indication from the federal level?

It is federal funding, so we may have more knowledge of that a few years down the road than we do right now.

Thank you all.

I don't plan to do this every time, but I think this first meeting of the year and for the purpose of public education, would you mind

So yes, so the alignment with the council's vision areas and the strategic plans are, the council's vision is a center for lifelong learning, economic stability, and the city's mission is to provide services that promote an excellent quality of life for everyone in the community.

It contributes to enhancing the self-sufficiency of our residents.

It promotes education and training.

It reduces employment barriers.

And it improves the college career readiness of folks in our community.

And it also helps us have a strong diversified economy and develop a quality workforce.

So those are all parts of

For the public's knowledge, these are all specifically enumerated components of the strategic plan, which is the governing document that we have adopted and will continue to work from when we try to serve the public as a governing body for the city.

So it's important for us to hear that our commitments meet up with the strategic plan.

I'm happy to make a motion that we adopt

Second?

There was a second.

So it loses to a second rating.

Oh, OK. All right.

And that's all we just do.

Sorry, I'm still getting my own seat legs.

And that's all we have to do just with the, OK.

Thank you, counselors.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right, appropriation.

Hello, everyone.

My name is Tiara Howard.

I'm the Grants Coordinator in Neighborhood Development Services, and I also have Matthew Slats with me.

You can actually come up and stand with me.

He's going to be presenting the majority of what we're going to be discussing today.

We are requesting approval of a match appropriation of $30,000.

I'm going to give you some background and then Matt will go into the discussion and talk about what the match will be used for.

In January 2014, the City of Charlottesville and the Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative along with partners Piedmont Council for the Arts, the University of Virginia School of Architecture and other community partners applied for funding through the National Endowment for the Arts, also known as NEA.

Our Town grant for a project, well the grant was called Our Town and they applied for funding to basically do a project called Play the City.

The NEA Our Town grant supports creative place making projects that contribute to the livability of communities and place the arts at their core.

The NEA selected the city of Charlottesville as one of 66 2014 Our Town grant winners for Play the City.

The project received $50,000 towards the $200,000 project focused on activating Charlottesville's strategic investment area through a series of workshops, public art installations, and festivals.

On January 20, 2015, Council approved the appropriation of the NEA Our Town grant of $50,000 in addition to the City's commitment of a $30,000 cash match.

The match funds are now being requested to complete the project.

Just to go into some discussion, Play the City focuses on engaging those living in the SIA area to deeply understanding their knowledge about the neighborhood and then partnering with artists in the community to produce several artworks that respond to community concerns.

For year two of Play the City, the Bridge Pie will utilize and match funds for the following projects.

And Matt can come up and give you just some background about the goals of

Thank you very much

So Play the City, as Tower kind of presented, is a two-year project to engage those living in the strategic investment area.

And as she said, use art as a way to build connections, to understand the dynamics of that neighborhood, and to work together.

I mean, a lot of what's been talked about tonight on Council, this project really fits into what that focus and those efforts.

And really, it's a community building effort.

But I would say that the SIA is an area that's, it's a multitude of different communities, and it's not one community.

And I think over the last year, we've been working hard to listen and learn from those communities.

As Councilman Bellamy mentioned, we haven't always gotten it right, but we've been trying and listening and trying to learn and not trying to impose

the Bridges idea of how this neighborhood should be but find ways to match and learn and listen and to move forward on these art projects.

And there's a multitude of projects that we've provided posters for.

You can see them up on the wall and behind the screen that have taken place over the last year for the most part.

And there's a multitude of people in the audience actually that we've worked with on these projects

Colin who worked on the Ryman Design Camp to Mr. Eamon who actually helped us with the Seeking the City project.

Toni Eubanks was here.

She worked on a push play event, a monthly platform for presenting the creativity of the neighborhood.

And this is a project we want to keep going.

It's a two year grant.

And this funding that we're requesting is a part of that second year and a part of the matching funds for the NEA.

So for year two, our primary focus is to take all the things that we've learned in year one, to focus them and to strengthen them.

So what we're focusing on primarily is a residency program as stipulated in the grant application that is going to have an artist working with children and artists and other residents in the neighborhood that's going to take place at the ICS Art Park.

It's with local artist Jennifer Tidwell.

We're working with people at Friendship Court and Piedmont Housing, working with the local school system, working with the juvenile justice system to create what will be

And then in the summer, we're going to be continuing to build on some of the educational opportunities that we started last year and strengthening those, working with a partnership with

The Curry School and City of Promise and again the school district and continue to build a relationship with Pima Housing and those living at Friendship Court.

And then in the fall our focus is to do a project which

has come under different names, but it's really focused on, as the grant stipulated, how do we find better ways for artists to respond to what residents need and want?

And so we're putting in place a process that's gonna ask residents for their ideas and their needs in their neighborhood, then we're gonna ask artists to respond to those needs, and then we're gonna have the residents of the neighborhood vote on which projects they deem are worthwhile to them.

So really, how do we tie together

resident needs and creativity in this neighborhood.

As far as alignment with council vision areas and strategic plan, Play the City aligns directly with council's vision for Seaville arts and culture.

Expected outcomes include improved services provided to Charlottesville residents as well as enhanced local quality of life and creative economic development initiatives.

The project also will help realize the following strategic plan objectives.

2.6, engage in robust and context-sensitive urban planning.

5.1, respect and nourish diversity.

5.2, build collaborative partnerships.

And 5.3, promote community engagement.

He did talk about how

He plans to engage the community, but we can discuss that again if you want to elaborate on it.

As far as the budgetary impact, this will have an impact on the general fund and it would be a $30,000 cash match, which would come from the city-wide reserve.

Staff recommends approval and appropriation of the match funds and any alternative.

If the match funds are not appropriated, then we won't be able to complete the project as initially

was required by the grant and was submitted when we submitted the grant proposal.

Back in November we had the presentation and in order for me to understand what the report was that the brief presented to us, I had done a chart

and there were one, two, three, four, five, six, seven categories of activities that were done by the bridge throughout the first year.

And just to illustrate, one of them was the push play.

About a total of 450 people were served from that.

30 local artists were involved.

But what we don't have from that

is any understanding of whether the participants were satisfied?

What were the outcomes?

Is this it?

Great.

I wish we had gotten this in the packet a week ago.

Because quite honestly, I need time to digest this.

But I, then, because I don't know whether you've responded to my question about, so, because you talked about listening, and so what did the people and the children say they wanted?

And that's, if that's in here, great.

And the other thing is just how, yeah, I just, the other thing would be, what sort of evaluation are you doing internally to capitalize on those activities that sound very rich

Mr. Fenwick and Ms. Szakos both have.

The city is the applicant and then the bridge is responsible for overseeing project management, etc.

We're just responsible for reporting and you know making sure that we're coordinating as far as

Okay, so you don't apply for it.

We enter the information into the database.

Okay.

The reason I ask is I've been advocating for the city because we got a lot of people coming to us looking for money that we have.

We explore the possibility of having a super grant writer

available to organizations that may not be able to afford that.

But that's aside from my process question here.

It says, the council approved the appropriation of the NEA Our Town grant of $50,000.

Okay, so it came into the city treasury.

So we have already committed to… Yes, so when we submitted, basically we submitted a project budget to NEA when we applied for the funding, in addition to a scope of work, et cetera, project description, when council approved the $50,000 to be appropriated, they also, as a condition, approved

the $30,000, which it stated that it would be requested at a later date.

Okay.

So we've already given the word of the city, basically.

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

I guess that's it.

Thank you.

I was just going to—I shared Councillor Galvin's

need for reading glasses, actually, to read this quickly.

But then I realized that on the agenda, this is the first reading.

So all we need tonight, basically, is a motion and a second.

And then we can consider this and ask questions for the next time before the vote.

So that was the point of information I was going to offer.

But just since it's now my turn, I think that I kind of come down where Councillor Fenwick is

that we did.

And it was two readings at the time.

On the second reading, we voted unanimously to approve the $30,000.

So I think that we have kind of given the city's word, and this is the allocation of that.

So I would definitely support it.

But I do want to know more information.

And I think it's important that when we spend that kind of money, whether it's pre-approved or not, that we really know what we're getting.

Thank you all.

For the – for transparency's purpose, what – this is a – it's a little – it's laudatory and a great purpose.

It's a little loosey-goosey in terms of the budget for me.

because we're still looking at, we're actually still trying to raise more funding based on, we got a $10,000 grant from the Community Foundation actually to support this work coming into the next year.

We got a Bamworks grant recently that's going to support this and we've been raising more funds.

It's all based on what those funds are coming in and our

and as the grant stipulated, the original application was for $250,000.

NEA gave 50.

It was the match that the city was in and we've been raising on top of that.

So this is still in the vein of seed funding for future fundraising.

The 30 grand that we're putting in goes toward that purpose.

I still think that for the public, given the debates that we go through about a few thousand dollars here or there that goes directly to services that we need,

a very clear budget and explanation of that purpose.

I'm sorry, may I ask one question?

This just popped into my mind.

So if you all receive the matching dollars from us, however, if you're not able to raise your total goal of $250,000, will you all return the funds or would you keep it?

Typically in the projects that I've done, when a total amount of funding hasn't been provided, you scale the project back to fit those needs for the most part.

So we've been doing that as best we can and looking for in-kind contributions and support from others as best we can.

So the funding that we're requesting is $30,000.

I'm happy to provide specific budgets for those things.

Okay, so I think we need, for the second reading, a budget with an explicit statement of what the funds are being put toward as we can know it without the contingencies.

I think that the project has always been about how can we leverage this funds to support efforts in the neighborhood and I think the things that we're trying to do now are to say, hey, we have this, we've done this project, we want to see it move forward, how can we work with local residents to provide leadership skills and

opportunities to other sources of funding that they can pursue to take hold of those projects.

Because a lot of these, I will say, we're resident-led.

I mean, the Push Play event is the brainchild of Toni.

And we want to keep supporting her and seeing that move forward.

But I also really believe that that's her project.

And maybe the bridge, instead of a leading role of one of them, we provide opportunities and support for her to move that forward.

And the same would go with the Ryman Design Program and that was the brainchild of an artist, Bernard Hankins.

I'd like to move forward if we could, but Mr. Bellamy?

We are now up for a report.

I would remind everyone we have

We have 18 minutes to go until our mandated two-hour break, which I was informed about as a council procedure.

So we may need to take a break midstream after comments on this, but we're looking forward to your presentation.

Yes, good evening.

We'll try to get through the presentation in 18 minutes.

No, you don't, and I didn't.

We just may take a break.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of council.

I present you with a brief update of our Parks and Recreation facilities, services and programs and some recent improvements and some things that are on the immediate horizon.

The presentation tonight is not intended to cover the entire breadth of services and programs that Parks and Recreation offers for the community, but just to highlight a few things and give you some indications of the impact of the community's investment.

over the past several years in improving the parks and recreation system here in the city.

With me tonight is Doug Eman, our Parks Manager, and Mr. Vic Garber, our Recreation Manager.

We're going to share in the information presentation this evening.

And first is going to be Mr. Eman to talk about some of the things that our Parks Division does in terms of its scope of services and functions.

Parks Division has an operating budget of approximately $3.5 million.

We have revenue of approximately $78,000.

And that's generated one of three ways.

One is opening and closing of graves in the city cemetery.

The second is rental of picnic shelters for firm use by folks on weekends or organizations.

And the third is a leasehold with SACA for the Davis

Park property for soccer facilities there.

The primary core functions are to acquire, develop, maintain, and operate public parks and other spaces for the safe enjoyment of the residents and guests of Charlottesville.

Parks Division acquires, plans, develops, improves, operates, and maintains all park properties, including facilities and off-street trails.

We also maintain and operate the three city cemeteries, Oakwood, Maplewood, and Daughters of Zion.

We also have operational support and repair for all recreational facilities.

Facilities at Toddsler Park, recreation center at Washington Park, picnic shelters.

Everything is supported operationally out of the parks division.

We also maintain the turf, landscaping trees at all park schools and rights of way.

We also maintain all publicly owned landscape beds and street trees.

An example of a landscape bed, a very good example, is right outside City Hall here on the corner.

Fifth Street at Fifth and Elliott, there are beds there that we maintain.

So we do all that stuff.

Basically, if you see a street tree in town that has a green bag on it, that's a tree that's under our management.

First time in five years I've noted

Some that aren't are the new street trees around the Marriott and those will eventually come to us anyway.

That was our requirement that they have those Gator bags on.

We mow and remove litter and trash in rights of way.

We also do similar operations including custodial efforts in all park areas.

We maintain or repair all playgrounds and parks and public schools.

And there's 22 sites and 45 composite structures.

And plus the swing sets, spring toys, therapeutic elements and whatnot.

If anybody's wondering what a composite structure is, if you look at the bottom picture in the center, the purple-slided unit is a composite structure.

The yellow is a composite structure.

Then you see the spring toys.

A little climber and a bounce unit.

The unit on the left in the middle is a single composite structure.

We also do the daily maintenance and operation of the downtown mall and the UVA corner.

On the downtown mall, we are in charge of the lights.

We're in charge of electricity to come off those lights.

We do the water.

We take care of the flower pots.

We replant those.

We push the snow, and that's an excellent picture of that, which I hope I don't see again this year.

and we do similar activities at the corner even though they're reduced at the corner.

We do remove trash and we do maintain trees.

We also remove snow from sidewalks that front city properties and bridges and there's a boatload of them.

And we also have roughly 63, and I really gotta count late this afternoon, there were 66 downtown special events festivals and functions this last year that we support.

These include things like the Dogwood Festival,

4th of July.

We also support the pavilion Fridays after five.

We also support a lot of festivals.

I was trying to think of something I can't.

Natural resource wise, we've planted over 1300 trees since 2010.

This winter we'll be planting about 160.

We'll have about 450 that will come off warranty period on the

Interchange that we'll be responsible for and another 87 that we'll be responsible for that will come to us off the Water Street Extending Project.

We also have been able to implement a integrated pest management policy with your assistance this past year.

First cycle on the report of that is about ready to kick off and we've drafted that and there will be a review team that consists of citizens and staff.

We'll be looking at that later this month for the first part of February.

We've also added 134 acres of new parkland since 2009.

Thank you, Doug.

Recreation Division, the primary responsibilities are to oversee facility operations, staffing, program development, partnerships and customer service,

offering quality health and wellness opportunities and educational and recreational experiences for individuals, families, and visitors of Charlottesville.

Our budget consists of $4.6 million in expenditures, $1.6 million in revenue, and our cost recovery is approximately 35%.

Core functions include recreation centers, five recreation centers, four housing sites.

Recreation centers include Carver Recreation Center, Key, Tonsler,

Pro, and Washington Park.

Programs include enrichment classes, drop-in fitness wellness classes, special events, our meals programs and nutritional classes, facility rentals, structured and non-structured programs, and birthday parties.

Aquatics include Smith Aquatic and Fitness Center, Pro Indoor Pool, Honesty Family Aquatic Center, Washington Park Pool, and three spray grounds.

Staff also oversee the maintenance of each facility.

Programs include learn to swim classes, swordfish swim team, rentals, and events.

Athletics includes our leagues and tournaments such as softball, basketball, that's youth basketball, volleyball, we offer four seasons of adult volleyball, tennis classes, other classes, sport camps, events, and rentals, youth and adult enrichment, summer camps, holiday camps,

Outdoor Education, Gymnastics, Art, Dance, Cooking, Fitness, etc.

We offer over 720 registered classes on a yearly basis.

Events, Sounds of Summer, Daddy Daughter Dance, Safe Downtown Halloween Festivals, Sunday Sundowns.

We serve over 8,000 individuals in those events.

Therapeutic Recreation serves over 20,000 individuals with disabilities ages 8 to 90.

This is a regional program and a strong partnership with Albemarle County.

Programs include the VSA Arts, Outreach Today support programs, nursing homes, camps, social events, trips, special events, sports, and outdoor recreation.

Just as a note, we hire over 490 temporary year-round or seasonal workers, lifeguards, arcades, camp counselors, officials, scorekeepers, etc.

My point is we provide residents with jobs.

Carver Recreation Center.

Attendance in fiscal year 15 was 119,175 visits.

This is our backbone of our land programming, open seven days a week, 90 hours a week.

Amenities include 33,000 square feet, including a fitness center with cardio and strength training, a gymnasium, recreational studios for arts and gymnastics and dance, classroom meeting room, plus a free teen center.

offer a strong array of youth and adult enrichment classes from gymnastics, dance, art, martial arts, to spinning, Zumba, yoga, and kickboxing.

We offer over 40 drop-in classes each week at Carver as part of the membership program.

Also offer facility rentals opportunities, birthday parties, roller skating, and special events.

Smith Aquatic and Fitness Center.

Smith AFC opened in October of 2010.

We had in fiscal year 15 over 80,573 visits.

We offer a strong variety of land fitness opportunities upstairs in the studio and fitness room and water fitness classes in the natatorium.

The natatorium amenities include the lap pool with diving board, separate leisure pool with water slides, current channel,

and an in-water playground with zero depth.

We offer over 20 fitness classes a week in the upstairs fitness studio and 15 drop-in water fitness classes a week downstairs in the auditorium.

We provide learn to swim programs, stroke development classes to lifeguarding classes.

We offer over 55 aquatic classes every four months.

We also offer private swimming lessons, birthday parties, rentals, and Smith is the Home

for Charlottesville High School swim and dive team.

Washington Park swimming pool, open Memorial Day to Labor Day attendance in fiscal year 15 was 15,306 visits.

Swimming lessons are offered in the morning, outdoor birthday parties.

Washington Park pool is also where the city swordfish swim team practices and holds their home meets.

Honesty Family Aquatic Center opened Memorial Day to Labor Day.

Tenants was a little bit higher with 25,000 over the past fiscal year.

Swimming lessons are offered in the morning, including birthday parties.

And Honesty is a small facility, but it does offer all the whistles and bells for features and amenities that one would find in a larger water park.

And our spray grounds.

Seasonal spray grounds at Forest Hills, Belmont, and Greenleaf Park.

Our spray grounds are eco-friendly, recycling chlorinated water.

Open May to mid-September, and it's not uncommon to see several buses about every other day from churches or summer camps that like to drop in.

These facilities are very popular.

And finally, programming.

Drop-in fitness and wellness programs held daily at Smith and Carver.

Total attendance is 16,000 at both locations.

We offer over 62 drop-in fitness classes at both facilities a week.

Also provide for 1,500 classes, programs, and camps.

Well, there was 7,000 in attendance.

Offer two, example over the holiday season, we offered two holiday camps before and after Christmas.

Before Christmas, we had 107 youth

signed up participating at Carver and afterwards we had 118, after Christmas, we had 118 for the second week at Carver.

Give you an idea of the numbers.

The Learn to Swim initiative continued in 2015 at Smith for Buford Middle School and will continue at Crow for fifth graders at Walker.

This is a good solid partnership with the city schools and it's just developing.

Our scholarships are available for city residents by discount pricing on a sliding scale.

Access passes to Smith, Carver, Key, class programs and camps, and summer pool passes.

Currently, 727 city households are on scholarship.

Average household size is between two and three.

And just to give you an idea, FY 15 level of discount

provided $100,000, which basically was unearned revenue for our department.

Thanks, Vic.

Real quickly, I wanted to highlight some recent improvements in the park system that are the outgrowth of master plans that have been approved by city council over the past several years.

Our most recently open facility is a disc golf course, which is in the Meadow Creek Valley.

This is near the Meadow Creek Gardens garden plots near the English Inn.

This facility was a direct partnership with the Blue Ridge Disc Golf Club which provided us with significant financial support as well as elbow grease and sweat equity and the baskets that you see there from the discs and assisted greatly in the construction of the facility.

This opened just this past summer and is very, very popular.

At Reeves Park,

The master plan there was adopted many years ago and recently had an amendment to the master plan that added some garden plots, some community garden plots to the park.

These renovations that you see on the screen were completed about a year ago at the beginning of 2014.

New picnic shelter, restrooms were installed, the playgrounds were replaced, an additional gazebo was added, the basketball court was rebuilt.

The trails connecting the two sides of the park were completed as well as the garden plots, which I believe is the next slide.

So you can see those in that corner of the park.

These are plots that are available to individuals that live within immediate one quarter mile radius of Reeves Park itself.

Azalea Park has undergone some significant renovation as well over the past couple of years.

All of the facilities that you see here on the screen are new.

Picnic shelter, playground, the restroom on the right.

Those were all identified in the master plan that the council adopted.

We also built a new dog park in the back of the park near the garden plots.

It has two bays, one for small dogs and one for large dogs.

It can be rotated to help us keep grass cover in the facility.

And 87 new trees were planted just in Azalea Park as well as the construction of a couple of small biofilters.

Tonsler Park's master plan was most recently adopted and we have been working diligently to implement that in phases.

The first phase was the replacement of the, reconfiguration and replacement of the basketball courts.

These opened this past summer.

That's a picture actually yesterday of the courts.

Very nice.

Secondly, the second thing we do is remove the outfield fence along the diamond field and construct a circumferential trail shown in the master plan.

Should be the next slide.

a picture of the trail.

As Doug has said to me a couple of times, there were actually people waiting to walk on this trail while the asphalt machine was still there and it's steaming.

So that's very popular.

The next phase of the master plan implementation at Tonster will be the spray ground.

What you see here in this photo is just an image of a point of departure to get some conversation started.

It's not a design at all, it's just here's some ideas about what could be in the spray ground at the park.

We will be conducting a series of public engagement sessions at the park over the next couple of months, similar to what we did with the playground when it was rebuilt a number of years ago.

An additional thing we're working on is the implementation of the master plan for the east side of McIntire Park.

See on the screen is the design that council adopted this past spring.

Three of those elements include parking on the west side of the park that will be near the pedestrian bridge over the railroad that will connect to the skate park on your right.

The design or the conceptual design we have for the parking there is under review in the site plan process as well as the bridge over the railroad.

We hope to have final approval from VDOT and the railroad on the bridge very soon and can get that project put to bid and constructed this year.

We also manage the Meadow Creek Golf Course, which is located at Penn Park.

It's an 18-hole course.

Meadow Creek is managed through an enterprise fund, so all of the revenues that are generated at the course pay for its operation.

Those are numbers there at the end of fiscal year 2015.

The course has 18 holes, as I mentioned, full practice facilities.

We have contracted golf instruction and food and beverage services.

MediCreek's host to this four city championships that are held every summer, the women's, the juniors, the men's, and the senior city championship as well as a two-person team tournament.

And it's located in Penn Park.

Some of our upcoming initiatives, I've mentioned the Tonsler Park spray ground public input sessions, those will be starting very soon.

I mentioned the parking lot in West McIntyre and the pedestrian bridge and the skate park, those are ongoing.

We continue to conduct further planning for trails and

Construction of some of the backbone trails in McIntyre Park and some of the other new lands that have been acquired.

We're continuing to do minor repairs, renovations, and refreshment to the Parks and Recreational facilities system-wide.

It could be painting of picnic shelters, replacement of fencing, creating no-mo zones, a whole bunch of other things.

We're looking to significantly enhance our inclusion programs in our therapeutic recreation program and broaden not only the scope and breadth

Services, but look across the ability spectrum a little further.

We continue through our budget process and our internal reviews on a regular basis to review our offerings and operations to ensure efficient and quality service delivery in all that we're doing.

And one of the things we need to pursue here in this calendar year is investigate some options to update the 2016 Parks and Recreation Needs Assessment, which is now 10 years old.

That's all.

And we have just run up right on our two hour break.

So let's take a five minute break.

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Dr. Michael B.

Music playing

I don't know what you're thinking.

Okay, so back into session and we're going to questions from council.

You want to start over there this time, Mike?

Sure.

Thank you.

So Mr. Daley, has Parks and Rec ever come up with a metric about cost per acre for a new park?

Because you mentioned 134 acres of new public land.

There are metrics, but they are unique to how you use the land.

If it is a natural area or a forest that we primarily tend to leave alone, then our maintenance costs are minimal, if nothing.

There may be a curative cost to go in and move a tree that may have fallen on a trail where we would cut it up and place it to the side and let it become habitat.

On the other hand, if you have a park that has a much more active recreational components or components, such as athletic fields or playgrounds or indoor facilities, then the cost of operating those facilities

varies depending upon which type of facility it is.

So if you have an athletic field that's gonna require a certain frequency of maintenance on a weekly basis, mowing, dragging of infields, lining of fields, maintaining the lights, et cetera, that's gonna cost you a different amount than let's say an indoor recreation center that requires it to be staffed.

So cost per acre is a metric that you see a lot in a lot of benchmarking work.

But you could get an average over time, because this was 134 acres since 2009.

I was just wondering if there was an average that caught.

Because that's a budget item for us to consider at all times.

How many more additional park lands are we going to acquire?

And we forget about even factoring in the maintenance.

And just be kind of curious on average what it costs to acquire.

We can work something up.

Again, it's very dependent upon

Well, I guess I want to tease out the acquisition costs.

Just keep it simple.

That would help me in making budget decisions, if I could see that right up the chart.

The other thing is related to budget is, and we had this issue come up not too long ago, and it was a differential in fees between county residents and city residents.

It's annual?

We do an annual fee review for fees that we believe need to be adjusted.

We prepare those documents internally.

They're presented to the city manager who then approves any rate changes.

And any rate changes include both a resident and non-resident fee.

If there is a differential fee, not all of the things we offer have differential fees.

So if, for example, there are no differential fees at Meadow Creek Golf Course, it's an enterprise fund.

There's no differential fee for a picnic shelter rental.

Those fees are very nominal of themselves and can be extrapolated out to be a dollar per person for the rental or slightly more, slightly less depending on how many people you bring.

But for all of our programs, admissions, and passes, there are differential fees.

We try to align them in around the 30 to 33 percent differential.

between resident and non-resident.

For every program that you would see in our program guide, every four months, you'll see a fee differential between the cost of Learn to Swim, Starfish Level 1 for a resident and a non-resident.

In order to compute those fees, we use an internal template that identifies the cost of the instructor, any indirect costs or supplies that may be associated with the program, and the indirect costs of potentially the cost of the building and the structure.

and it calculates the actual fee.

Okay.

I just have two more questions.

You talked about the swim meets at Washington Park in the summertime, and I vividly remember the issues that revolved around the parking and the traffic during those swim meets.

I believe so.

I'm going to actually ask Vic to speak to this because for the past three summers, we host three meets each summer with the city swordfish hosts at Washington Park.

The remainder of their meets, they travel to other places in the region for those meets.

Basically in working, I guess the last three years, working with Ronnie Roberts with the police department and we've had police patrol, we've had staffing, we've had orange cones making sure that we block

And I want to make sure that we assist the area residents to make sure that no one's parking near their driveway so that when they go out for groceries, when they come back, they have a place to park.

Between the police department and our staff, I've been between the school and basically we also worked with the school to make sure that we had plenty of parking down there.

Okay, very good.

And so the Navid Association hasn't

contacted you in any moment about this, because at one point, two or three years ago, it was pretty much a hot issue.

Okay, excellent.

That's great.

This got resolved then.

Cheryl, let me speak to the second part of that first.

We're working through a sequence of how we need to conduct the planning process for the location of the trails and the use upon them.

And we will hope to reveal, you know, finalize that process and publicize that here in the next couple, three weeks with specific dates of when public meetings will be held.

The BioBlitz itself is still ongoing.

As we've gone into dormancy, some of that work has ceased.

The BioBlitz fieldwork will be done in an April time frame.

We should get a report in a mid to late May time frame.

And we would adjust things we have done through the planning process based on that.

Environmental assessment if needed.

There was a lot of information that came, the BioBlitz actually started in late March last year so we got to get back to the same place in the environmental cycle.

If we can

The good thing about that is when you start in March, most of the growing season you've already gone through, there's a few extra things they caught as going into dormancy and they'll be catching as if they come out of dormancy and begin to bloom.

And that's why we're gonna let the Bob Blitz probably run until the first part of April.

So we get a little bit overlaps, we gotta make the seasonal adjustments and look at the variation from year to year and make sure we got everything covered.

Okay, thank you.

Start with the picnic shelters in McIntire Park.

Both of those have been taken down by now, right?

That's correct.

It depends on the size of the units that are involved.

We've bought two units recently, one, well three actually, for Reeves and Azalea Parks.

Those are a little smaller than what we'd like to have.

We'd like to have something probably half a gig as big there and for planning purposes with all the work that needs to be done plus the unit coming in we're using as a planning number $75,000 a piece.

It could be a smidgen more or a smidgen less and when I say a smidgen we're talking $5,000, $6,000 or $7,000 each way we're not talking $30,000.

Yeah, we buy from a group called Polygon, which probably makes the best shelter right now available.

We do have them do the install because they do it all the time and what would take us six weeks to do, they do in three weeks.

So they cut the time in half, it gets up quicker, we know it's done right, plus the warranty is not impeded by our inadvertent errors.

So yes, they are big kids that come in, we'd have to do some site work, we'll have to get electric to them.

Okay, well that's,

I've only been doing this 40 years.

I understand.

I'm going to come back to that in just a second.

That's just in those two portions of the operation.

If you add the entire Parks and Recreation Department budget

Together, all of the cost centers, not the enterprise fund.

Cost recovery is about 20%.

Expenses are, I think, in the proposed budget somewhere, I believe it's $9.4 million.

OK. As you're looking at Tonsler Community Center, looking at the front door, off to the left there is what I call an arena.

that little concrete thing.

What are the plans?

I mean, to stay there.

I didn't see it on the master plan.

OK, so it's going to stay there.

And we had a number of questions last summer, swimming season, about the swimming program at Washington Park.

The action that was taken this past summer was an expansion of the scholarship program

The Vic mentioned in our presentation to include the summer pool pass.

The current and the rate still exists is a pass for any city resident youth 18 or under.

It costs $20 for the entire summer.

And that provides for unlimited visitation to both facilities all summer long.

You can go every day to both places if you want for that one price of $20.

That price, that fee point still exists.

In addition to that, those who are within our scholarship program would have a discount based upon the level of scholarship they receive applied to that $20.

So the highest level of discount is 90%.

OK. And let me come back to the reason I asked you about the picnic shelter thing.

Probably 80%, 90% of the briefings we get up here on budgetary impact has none.

There's always a budgetary impact, even if it's in the current budget.

So I would very much appreciate it if you made an effort to, if on the shelter thing, how much it's going to be, including the ground work, the electric service, all of that stuff.

And if it's covered in the budget, you can mention that.

But as far as our task to pull up a new budget,

Agreed.

I understand that, but what I'm saying is these books that we get

before each meeting.

Instead of reading no budgetary impact, we actually read it.

First of all, I have a comment and two questions.

And the comment is just that as a resident of Charlottesville for 21, 22 years,

I have just been astonished at how many ways that my life has been touched by Parks and Rec, because I had two kids who were swordfish who learned to swim in the city, who went to summer camps, who participated in therapeutic recreation.

And I learned to swim this summer.

I'm very proud of myself.

And I take yoga and use the fitness center at Carver.

So I just want to, I'm sure that I'm not unique and that a lot of us have those impacts.

So I think it's really helpful to have this report so that people can kind of see what it is that

that you all do.

Everybody walks in the mall and doesn't see cigarette butts all over the place.

It's because somebody at Parks and Rec picked them up, right?

So anyway, my two questions.

One is about trees.

You said that there were 1300 trees and then you added a bunch more trees.

That's 1300 trees that have been planted.

in a managed method by our department.

And then you inherited some and got some donated.

So that goes back to 2010.

So we're looking at six fiscal years comprised in that 1300 number.

And those are trees that we have planted ourselves with our own staff or we have contracted for them to be planted.

The additional trees that Doug mentioned are trees that have been planted in the Parkway 250 interchange that are coming out of their warranty cycle

So I just, you know, we often in council meetings talk about the need for street trees.

We're in a southern environment and we want to make sure we have enough shade and that things are pretty.

And I know about eight years ago there was a goal set by council for the amount of tree canopy that we wanted to have, and I understand we've overshot that goal by a fair bit.

and so I just want to kind of get your sense and I'm sort of asking for your your opinion or kind of your sense as an expert in this in this field as our director of Parks and Rec of whether as a as a general practice we should still be pushing for more and more trees or whether we should be making sure that we're you know actually I'll stop right there so I mean obviously we get to make those decisions but just kind of get a sense of

Okay.

Just as a bit of context, a number of years ago the kind of the council goal was to have 40% aggregate tree canopy throughout the city.

After an analysis was done, a leaf on imagery photo was taken and we actually got data provided to us by the Department of Forestry and Virginia Tech did some work for us.

We were able to get tree canopy information by every parcel in the city.

Aggregated together at the time, the total tree canopy was 47%.

So at the time we had exceeded the goal by 7%.

Now, if you look at that graphically on a map, certain sections of the city have 80, 90, 95, in some cases 100% tree canopy coverage.

Other areas of the city are in the teens,

or in below 10% depending upon where you were, if it's in the right of way, if it's the roof of a large building, et cetera.

So in aggregate, we seem to be in really good shape.

Over these last six or seven years, as we've looked at where we've planted these last 1300 trees, we've been very strategic about where those trees are being planted and they're being planted in areas where those tree canopy percentages are below

in the lower range.

So a lot of trees have been planted in the right of way.

A lot of trees have been planted in open areas of parks and in those open areas of parks we've ceased mowing functions to allow things to regenerate, to provide water quality habitat and a whole bunch of things.

I think we as professionals believe that just planting a tree someplace doesn't really solve anything.

You need to have the right tree, the right species in the right location taking into account

Climate, the environment that's going to surround that tree, is it next to a road, is it going to be inundated with fumes that it wouldn't necessarily be having, breathing in in a park, what kind of root systems do certain species have, how fast are they going to grow, there's a lot of variables.

We think that

We want to keep planting trees in places where we know we need to increase the tree canopy.

Thanks.

And then I have one other question, which I have mentioned to you outside of these meetings,

I've met with a couple of folks in the community and I'm interested in the idea of a women's swim time at Smith Pool.

There's several communities that have done this as part of the Welcoming Cities Initiative and other ways of kind of making sure that everybody in the community feels welcome.

And one area in swimming that a lot of women from traditions where they can't be exposed in front of men

can't use our public facilities because they're always coed.

And some communities, especially university communities that have a lot of international folks, have taken to doing like a one Wednesday a month women's swim time.

And it's not just for people from those traditions, but it's a time when

women can get together and just kind of enjoy that.

All the lifeguards are women, anybody who might be there.

Yeah, I'd say yes.

So I would just love to kind of see a plan of what that might look like and what it might cost and how we might be able to make people feel welcome in our fields.

I'll close with a brief question.

I also want to compliment your work.

We were just playing at Tonsler Park this weekend with the boys.

Playing basketball.

Not basketball, just swings.

It's such a comprehensive presentation.

I know from the briefings you all did for us as incoming counselors, for the public benefit, because we're going into budgeting season, I think that it would help the public for education to know

If you could briefly explain, I know that we spend in Charlottesville a fairly high dollar figure per capita compared with pure cities around Virginia and I think the figure used in the briefings was about a dollar per resident as compared to about 33 cents would be the median.

The reason I'm asking, well, whatever the figure is, I think that it would be helpful to give a brief explanation from your view as a professional in this of why that's the case.

What have we inherited in Charlottesville in terms of the norms that we're governing with?

Why does the city value parks and recs so evidently so much if that's our long-standing practice budgeting-wise to spend a lot more than pure cities?

Sure.

In fact, I ran, did some of these calculations today.

The current population estimate that's developed by the Weldon Cooper Center at the University of Virginia for the city is, I think, 47,700.

If we take our FY16 budget, the net cost to the city and divide that by the population, the per capita expenditure is $160.

The National Recreation and Park Association recently released a study

that kind of compared per capita spending by different communities based upon population density, figuring that that might be a much more accurate predictor of cost or expenditure per capita than let's just say cost per acre or number of playgrounds per population and things like that.

So the city's about 10.2 square miles and our population density is

well over 4,000 per mile.

We would be in a higher level of density in comparison to other communities, and this study was done across the nation.

And that $160 would be in the highest 25% of those communities with the highest population density in terms of per capita spending.

Now, in any community, the per capita spending on any service is an ethic that the community has chosen over a period of time.

Charlottesville has a significant amount of parkland for the size of the city that it is.

I believe within the city limits like 12 or 13 percent of the total land area is either a park or a school.

That's a very high number, particularly in an area with a population density that Charlottesville has.

So the number of

Different types of facilities that the community has provided, whether it be parks with a number of amenities or indoor facilities that have the amenities that our facilities provide, is an ethic that the community has chosen.

Many communities do not choose that as an ethic in terms of Parks and Recreation provision Charlottesville has.

And the amount of investment that's been made in the last 10 years in the Parks and Recreation system by the city is significant.

It's well over 30 million dollars and it's to bring our facilities back to what they once were many, many years ago after a long period of not much happening.

So it really is a community ethic.

Thanks.

I think that's it.

Yeah, I'd like to bring up the RFP, the Request for Proposal for Belmont Bridge.

Mr. Fenwick, the floor is yours.

And for anybody who sort of doesn't understand what I'm saying or wants to get better information, the background documents and supporting documents are on SeavilleCitizen.com

along with a picture, a rendering of what the bridge supposedly is going to look like.

So I just wanted to make it clear and have it in the record.

In the RFP it says these criteria, and one of them is two lanes, one lane in, one lane out, have been endorsed by the Charlottesville City Council and I do not endorse the one lane in, one lane out.

The bridge as it is now is two lanes in, two lanes out,

I think the RFP should reflect that.

And if people should remember, if people remember, the bridge at Ridge McIntyre over the railroad tracks, right catacorner to the new Marriott, was planned to be one lane in, one lane out.

And VDOT would not accept that.

So that's why it is today two lanes in, two lanes out.

This is a southern gateway to the city of Charlottesville and the community will not support one lane in, one lane out for that bridge.

So I wanted to make it very clear where I stood and I want it to be in the record.

I think it's just going to lead to unnecessary delay and extra expense if we don't make that RFP

Thank you, Mike.

Mr. Mayor, I would like to just provide some information as well for the record.