City Council Agendas & Minutes

City of Hampton, VA 22 Lincoln Street Meeting Minutes Hampton, VA 23669 www.hampton.gov City Council Ross A. Kearney, II Christopher G. Stuart Angela Lee Leary Donnie R. Tuck Will Moffett George E. Wallace Molly Joseph Ward, Mayor Staff: Mary Bunting, City Manager Cynthia Hudson, City Attorney Katherine K. Glass, CMC, Clerk of Council Wednesday, October 13, 2010 1:01 PM Council Chambers, 8th Floor, City Hall CALL TO ORDER/ROLL CALL Molly Joseph Ward presided Present: Ross A. Kearney, II, Angela Lee Leary, Will Moffett, Christopher G. Stuart, Donnie R. Tuck, George E. Wallace Agenda 1. 10-0446 Briefing on Resolution Concerning Hampton-Langley Air Force Base Joint Land Use Study (JLUS) Ms. Mary Bunting, City Manager, stated this evening, we will request formal action on the acceptance of the Joint Land Use Study (JLUS), a document which has been prepared in cooperation with Joint Base Langley-Eustis (JBLE) and in concert with our surrounding communities. She explained the goal of JLUS is to look forward to the future and continue to support our military assets in our community and the various actions that government and private individuals can take to insure we continue that support which is important to our economy. She stated Mr. Bruce Sturk, Director of Federal Facilities Support, and Mr. Keith Cannady, Planning Services Manager, will explain the expected actions and answer any questions Council may have about the document. Mayor Ward noted as of October 1, we use the acronym JBLE (Joint Base Langley Eustis) instead of LAFB (Langley Air Force Base). Mr. Cannady stated Council was briefed on this report in May and since that time, they have gone through a public process and taken the study before the Policy Committee comprised of representatives from different cities and counties overseeing this process. He said Langley and the Planning Commission have endorsed the study. He said we are ready to move forward and consider this a positive step for Hampton, the Peninsula and for the facility to nail down these recommendations and begin the process of strengthening the facility and achieving better land use and development around it. Mr. Sturk stated Langley Air Force Base leadership will be present at the evening meeting. He said Colonel Gene Kirkland, Commander, 633 Air Base Wing, Langley Air City of Hampton, VA Page 1 of 9 Printed on 11/18/2010 City Council Meeting Minutes Force Base, will be attending an exercise at Langley, and apologized for not being able to attend the meeting; however Lt. Colonel Marc Vandeveer, Commander, 633 Civil Engineering Squadron, Langley Air Force Base (Langley’s Public Works Director) who will be leading his staff in moving forward in the implementation phases of the recommendations outlined in the JLUS, and Lt. Colonel Mike King, Deputy Commander, 1 Operations Group, Langley Air Force Base, from the flying operations will both be in attendance. Mr. Sturk said we are excited about getting to this stage and moving from a study phase to an action phase and working with Council to improve relations with Langley and developments in the City. In response to Councilman Kearney’s question regarding how long the two way communication has been taking place, Mr. Sturk stated it was a very lengthy process which took about 18 months. He explained no stone was left unturned and they are pleased with the results of the study outcome. He noted Newport News, Poquoson, York County, Langley Air Force Base, and Hampton staff were all involved in this process. In response to Councilman Kearney’s question if Langley Air Force Base is still the City’s largest employer, Mr. Sturk stated it has $1.2 billion annually of economic impact, and has approximately 12,000 to 13,000 employees. Vice Mayor Wallace noted that the report was complimentary of Hampton and Langley’s long, harmonious relationship in reference to land use and other factors going back to after World War II when the Army Air Force became the Air Force. He reiterated we have a long and positive history in terms of land use issues associated with the Base. Mr. Cannady concurred with what Vice Mayor Wallace said and stated there has been almost 50 years of cooperation and working with Langley. PRESENTED by Bruce Sturk, Director of Federal Facilities, and Keith Cannady, Planning Services Director. 2. 10-0447 Community/Strategic Plan Update Ms. Bunting stated there was a community strategic plan update kickoff meeting last Thursday at the Convention Center, with well over 230 people in attendance. She explained the meeting served as a validation of the focus groups we want to convene as we do the strategic plan update and visioning update with the community. She stated Mr. Terry O’Neill, Acting Director of the Community Development Department, would give a brief synopsis of what took place at the kickoff meeting and what action steps will be taken from this point. Mr. O’Neill presented Council with a package of information comprised of data from the kickoff meeting. He explained the package includes information from all of the individual focus group conversations, sign up sheets listing those who attended, and a spreadsheet listing over 110 participants interested in continuing to be part of the process. He reiterated that the purpose of the kickoff meeting was to raise awareness that the process is beginning, to provide a comfortable forum for people to begin sharing their ideas, and to identify people in the community who have an interest in being a part of this process and to share how they would like to participate. He said the package also includes a general schedule of what the next steps are. He said they are now City of Hampton, VA Page 2 of 9 Printed on 11/18/2010 City Council Meeting Minutes prepared to take this information and formulate focus groups and populate them with stakeholders in the community who are experts in particular fields and the people who said they would like to be involved and get those groups to meet and become organized. He explained they will be staffed by City staff from various departments and hopefully the first meetings can begin later in October and continue to meet for the next several months into the spring. At that time, they hope the groups will be prepared to forward to Council their recommendations as to what the strategic issues are and what the general goals are and proposing specific strategies to possibly move forward. He said as those groups meet, they will be encouraged to draw in experts who will help them become educated about best practices and current thinking in those fields. He said the focus groups will be encouraged to cross pollinate and meet with other focus groups discussing related issues and will require the focus groups to meet with the general public at checkpoints along the way to share information. He said all of this information will be put online and made available through other sources so that the general public that cannot attend meetings can follow the process and provide input without having to attend meetings. Councilman Kearney thanked and commended Mr. O’Neill and the staff for all of their work. He noted that the information was very informative and that it was interesting to see some of the same themes and concerns be brought up by the different groups. He said this year Fort Monroe was a main concern of each of the groups, regardless of what topic was being discussed. Mr. O’Neill stated there were approximately 60 staff members who attended the kickoff meeting and even more who supported the effort. He said it was a big effort on the part of the City Manager and staff to be able to make the meeting successful. Councilman Stuart commended the overall structure of the event, particularly the fact that people were invited prior to the event to talk with their neighbors, City staff and elected officials. He said it was formal enough to provide structure, yet informal enough to allow everyone to feel they could participate and that their voice and opinion mattered. Vice Mayor Wallace stated he would like to see something developed that would show correlation between the current planning process in terms of the issues defined and presented with plans we are already implementing to see what the differences are. He said he believes this would be helpful to the old and new members of Council. He asked if Council would be getting periodic reports on the current status and accomplishments of the existing plans. Ms. Bunting said we will look into Vice Mayor Wallace’s request. She also noted that although the breadth of work that the Waterway Management focus group has to do, they will have their work being completed around the same time as the other groups, it is further in the process and slightly ahead of schedule. She said the invitations for membership for that committee have gone out and the first meeting has already been scheduled for the near future. In response to Councilwoman Leary’s question whether the list of greatest threats were in order of importance or a random list, Mr. O’Neill stated they were a compilation of all the comments that came in and were in random order. City of Hampton, VA Page 3 of 9 Printed on 11/18/2010 City Council Meeting Minutes Ms. Bunting noted that these charts were handed out at the public input session based upon individuals who had completed the survey opportunity given in advance. She explained the number of responses which were 154 were roughly half of the number of people they expect attended either through pre-registration, RSVP’s, or through the normal Council meeting. She further explained this was only a piece of information intended to give some meat to the conversations the focus groups would have. She explained as we get people in the work groups, they will do a more specific threat analysis for each of their issue areas. Councilwoman Leary stated she received favorable responses from people who attended the meeting and wanted to inform the City Manager of that publicly. Councilman Moffett expressed his appreciation to Mr. O’Neill and stated everything went well during the portion of the meeting he attended. He said, however, there are some people who do not believe that their input matters. He asked if there was some type of report card or system at the end of the process which could be used which would show what the people expressed they wanted versus what was actually accomplished. He said even though we may not be able to accomplish everything requested, this would give an idea as to what was accomplished and would let the citizens know we listened. Mr. O’Neill stated they have discussed evaluation points along the process, and it will take a few months to develop, however they are working on figuring out how they can give people an opportunity to tell them how they are doing. He said the challenge at the end of the process is taking a mountain of information and processing it through staff and boards and commissions before reporting back. He said there are always going to be people who have the right to and will disagree with the choices made. He said one of the hardest things Council has to face is distinguishing between the criticism of not listening and the fact that there may be differences of opinions in terms of priority, which are two different things. He said that is inevitable when you have to process a lot of information and make choices from that information, and that the essence of strategic planning is taking all of the information and deciding what is most critical and important in order to move our community forward. Councilwoman Leary said at the National League of Cities, there are several types of documents, one being an evaluation form for staff to use when they put on citizen engagement events. She said perhaps we could use one of those as an example and fix it to suit the City of Hampton. She said she would provide that to Mr. O’Neill. Mr. O’Neill said if there is already a good process available, he would be happy to use it. PRESENTED by Terry O'Neill, Acting Director of Community Development Department. 3. 10-0451 Briefing on Status of Ft. Monroe Ms. Bunting said Council and staff and the community are in agreement that one of the most pressing issues facing our community and Commonwealth is the transition of Fort Monroe from a military use to what is currently defined in State legislation as a State owned village whose goals are to preserve our Nation’s valuable history, but also to ensure self sufficiency in terms of the service delivery that needs to be provided as well as the economic impact to our larger community. She said as we move forward with City of Hampton, VA Page 4 of 9 Printed on 11/18/2010 City Council Meeting Minutes less than a year before the transition occurs, her plan is to provide regular updates to Council either from the staff or Fort Monroe Authority (FMA) staff as it is appropriate to let Council know how that transition process is going. She said there are several issues they are currently trying to jointly manage relating to how the State owned village works, working through issues of governance and how decisions are made, who they are made by, how they are financed, how service delivery decisions are made and who provides various services. For instance, State law defines two types of services, governmental and proprietary services and suggests how decisions should be made about those. She said this is done at a high level and we will be doing that in the coming months and we were pleased to have a beneficial conversation last week with the chairman and staff with the Fort Monroe Authority and committed to weekly conversations to move these definition processes forward. She said as those occur, she will report them to Council and the larger community about the work in progress. Ms. Bunting said we have some of the larger issues at hand with the re-use and while the FMA is clearly the decision making authority about re-use, Hampton does have some seats at the table and have used our seats to advocate aggressively for the need of a national park service to protect and preserve special emphasis on our Nation’s history that occurred at the Fort, be it the African American History that is unique to the Fort as well as many other historical events that have occurred there for our larger National heritage. Everyone agrees they need to be protected and preserved and the National Parks Service presence would be an important component to make sure it is given the national prominence it deserves. She said the staff and Council members have had conversations with Congressional delegates and furtherance of the resolution Council previously adopted in which Council stated it was their desire to see a National Park Service presence at Fort Monroe. She stated those conversations continue as was reported in the Daily Press recently. The National Parks Services issued a report indicating their interest in concurrence with the valuable national historic assets that are there, but the next step in that process is to get either a Congressional or Presidential directive to the National Parks Service and it is her intent with Council’s concurrence to use staff and larger community resources that we can marshal together to bring about the National Parks Service presence and get the Congressional and or Presidential directive sooner rather than later. She said we will continue to staff the two Council people who are FMA representatives as well as do the weekly staff work. She said she looks forward to giving regular updates and increasing our communication with the larger citizenry about the importance of Fort Monroe and the role they each can play in helping to ensure the transition is a positive one, not only for Hampton, but for our larger Commonwealth. Mayor Ward asked if there were any questions for the City Manager. Councilman Kearney said he did not want people to view Council as being blasé because they had no questions for the City Manager on this topic. He explained they just finished an hour and half presentation on the role they have to assume in the aggressiveness in which the City has to take in promoting the new role for Fort Monroe. He said Council is much behind this and he is very excited about the Manager’s leadership and what the entire team is doing and this is going to be good for our community. Mayor Ward stated in this case, silence means support. City of Hampton, VA Page 5 of 9 Printed on 11/18/2010 City Council Meeting Minutes PRESENTED by Mary Bunting, City Manager. Regional Issues Councilman Kearney stated he serves on the Hampton Roads Regional Jail Authority. He announced that the present superintendent, Mr. Roy Cherry, who has been there since its conception, has announced his retirement. He said there were over 100 individuals that applied for the position through the Hampton City Human Resources Department, and the Committee has narrowed that number down to approximately 40 applicants and will put those through a set of criteria developed by the committee and board to begin the process of finding a replacement. He said he would keep the City Manager abreast of what is going on with this since she is serving on the nominating committee. Ms. Bunting said each City has a formal representative to the personnel committee. She said in Portsmouth, it is Council member Mr. Stephen E. Heretick; in Newport News, it is an Assistant City Manager Mr. Alan Archer; in Hampton, it is Sheriff B.J. Roberts or his designee; and in Norfolk, it is a Council member Mr. Andrew A. Protogyrou. She said as Chairman of the Regional Jail Authority, Councilman Kearney has a seat which he has asked her (City Manager) to facilitate the process on his behalf. She said they are trying to have a committee that reflects the three interests of the board including the law enforcement end, the elected end and the staff end. New Business Councilman Kearney requested a discussion on the purple building in Buckroe prior to deploying to closed session. He said there is a great lesson to learn from this situation. He said a person comes in, buys a piece of City property with all the caveats placed on it legally and within the powers of the Planning Department and Neighborhood Services and once it has been purchased, it just sits there. He said it was purchased at a reasonable price for the purpose of fixing it up and beautifying the community and giving Buckroe Beach what they wanted, a coffee house, and everything was in line, but now the property just sits there. He said the new members of Council need to understand this frustration. He said he is not referring to the personality of individuals or owners involved, instead he is referring to the concept of the City attempting to improve the building and following the City’s input and following the open bid process, picking the individual that is best for the project based on the criteria established, then when all of the work is done the property just sits there. He said people in the community then begin to blame Council or state that Buckroe is not improving, yet all of the direction has been for the improvement. He said he did not know the answer to this problem. Ms. Bunting stated Ms. Cynthia Hudson, Mr. O’Neill, and Ms. Vanessa Valldejuli, Senior Deputy City Attorney, are prepared to address this in detail to help people understand what has and has not transpired and why. She said there are always economic forces that we as a local governing body cannot control. She said whether it is the purple building or other buildings Council has wanted to do things with and has tried through conversation to get property owners to do, we cannot control private ownership and local economic forces and we try to put as many protections in place as possible when we do development agreements and when we do sales contracts. She explained, in this case, we required the owner to get a certificate of occupancy which they did get, and they can City of Hampton, VA Page 6 of 9 Printed on 11/18/2010 City Council Meeting Minutes open when they are able to economically afford to open. She said the current general economic conditions in our nation present challenges for new business owners. She said we have effectuated what legal power we had which was to get the building rehabbed and to the point of certificate of occupancy but we cannot control local economic forces. Mayor Ward cautioned Council about having this discussion. She stated Council has recently been criticized for bringing up topics under new business and getting into long discussions about them without them being published on the agenda and informing the public that the topic would be discussed. She also cautioned against having the discussion because the owner of the purple building was not present. Councilman Kearney stated this is a learning experience for all members of Council, especially the new members of Council to learn what can and cannot be done. He requested this topic be placed on the agenda for a subsequent meeting. Ms. Bunting stated this topic would be placed on a coming agenda for a full conversation with full disclosure that we intend to discuss it. Mayor Ward stated she agrees that is the best thing to do. Councilwoman Leary stated she did not want the public to be under the impression that legal staff had not made every effort to protect us. She said that needs to be reported on at the next work session so that the message can get out to the pubic what we have tried to do. The other information we don’t have is on the employee situation, if we get all of that and read it then we will be prepared in two weeks. Ms. Hudson said there are components of that discussion that are better held in closed session as they relate to this particular property development. She recommended in addition to that, having a larger discussion in open session that answers Councilman Kearney’s question about how we come at these types of situations in the future from a general perspective to best protect ourselves. Afternoon session completed at 1:36 Closed Meeting 4. 10-0414 Closed session as provided in Virginia Code Section 2.2-3711.A.1, .3, and .7 APPROVED Motion made by: Councilmember Ross A. Kearney, II Seconded by: Vice Mayor George E. Wallace Ayes: 7 - Ross A. Kearney, II, Angela Lee Leary, Will Moffett, Christopher G. Stuart, Donnie R. Tuck, George E. Wallace, Molly Joseph Ward Nays: 0 . 10-0438 to consult with legal counsel employed by the city regarding specific legal matters pertaining to Bay Days and requiring the advice of such counsel City of Hampton, VA Page 7 of 9 Printed on 11/18/2010 City Council Meeting Minutes NO ACTION REQUIRED . 10-0448 to discuss the acquisition of real property in downtown Hampton where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the negotiating strategy or bargaining position of the city NO ACTION REQUIRED . 10-0331 to consider an appointment to the Purchasing and Procurement Oversight Committee NO ACTION REQUIRED . 10-0398 to consider the appointment of Hampton's voting delegate and alternate to the National League of Cities (NLC) Annual Business Meeting NO ACTION REQUIRED . 10-0412 to consider an appointment to the Hampton Clean City Commission NO ACTION REQUIRED . 10-0419 to consider appointments to the Coliseum Advisory Committee NO ACTION REQUIRED . 10-0420 to consider appointments to the Golf Course Advisory Committee NO ACTION REQUIRED . 10-0421 to consider citizen appointments to the Senior Citizens Advisory Committee. NO ACTION REQUIRED . 10-0422 to consider the appointment of an alternate to the Cultural Alliance of Hampton Roads. NO ACTION REQUIRED . 10-0429 to consider appointments to the Citizens' Unity Commission NO ACTION REQUIRED . 10-0453 to discuss a personnel matter regarding the conduct or performance of certain department heads. NO ACTION REQUIRED Certification City of Hampton, VA Page 8 of 9 Printed on 11/18/2010 City Council Meeting Minutes 5. 10-0415 Resolution Certifying Closed Session WHEREAS, the City Council of the City of Hampton, Virginia, has convened a closed session on this date pursuant to an affirmative recorded vote made in accordance with the provisions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act; and WHEREAS, Section 2.2-3712D of the Code of Virginia requires a certification by the City Council of the City of Hampton, Virginia, that such closed meeting was conducted in conformity with Virginia Law; NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the City Council of the City of Hampton, Virginia, hereby certifies that, to the best of each member’s knowledge, (i) only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements by Virginia law were discussed in the closed session to which this certification resolution applies, and (ii) only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered by the city council of the city of Hampton, Virginia. ADOPTED Motion made by: Councilmember Angela Lee Leary Seconded by: Councilmember Will Moffett Ayes: 7 - Ross A. Kearney, II, Angela Lee Leary, Will Moffett, Christopher G. Stuart, Donnie R. Tuck, George E. Wallace, Molly Joseph Ward Nays: 0 ___________________ Molly Joseph Ward Mayor ______________________ Katherine K. Glass, CMC Clerk of Council Date approved by Council _____________________ City of Hampton, VA Page 9 of 9 Printed on 11/18/2010