Sanders briefs Council on other community interventions such as purchase of portable restrooms

(Second of two parts)

Charlottesville City Manager Sam Sanders spent just over an hour on October 21 explaining to City Council several “community interventions” he expects to make in the coming weeks and months.  (read part one)  (download the presentation)

At about halfway through the meeting, Sanders began discussing quality of life issues with a discussion of the Downtown Mall. 

“It’s a centerpiece and it is ground zero for a lot of things, good, bad and otherwise,” Sanders said. 

The 50th anniversary of the mall is in 2026 and earlier this year a committee produced a report with several action steps. Sanders said it is time to prioritize what to do including the tree replacement plan. One suggestion is to make permanent what is to soon be a temporary holiday display. (read the mall report)

“A couple weeks from now, Friends of Cville Downtown will initiate a brand new holiday lighting display,” Sanders said. “It’ll be a very colorful experience.” 

Sanders said he is considering leaving the display intact year- round but converting the bulbs to all white in order to provide more lighting on the mall. He also wants to add more public seating.

“I know people don’t want to add benches because they feel like if we do then homeless people will take them,” Sanders said. “And I say, well, learn to live with that because we’re going to put them back out there. And we’re going to find additional ways to bring seating that doesn’t require you to be in a cafe space, which meant you had to spend money in order to come to Charlottesville’s downtown.”

Previous coverage on Charlottesville Tomorrow:

• City panel seeks more options for Downtown Mall seating, Sean Tubbs, April 30, 2016
• Local business community weighs in on Downtown Mall seating, Noah Zeidman, June 4, 2016
• Design panel denies backless benches for Downtown Mall, Sean Tubbs, April 18, 2017
• Efforts to change downtown mall seating stall, while controversy remains, July 23, 2017

Sanders also wants to hire someone to manage the mall so members of public can easily contact someone if there is an issue. He said it is time to create a public restroom that is more than just space leased from York Place and he showed a demonstration of a high-end port-a-potty that could be purchased for $80,000 each. 

“This is about solving problems,” Sanders said. “I don’t want to be here five years from now and not know that we haven’t solved this bathroom problem.”

Sanders said he wants to buy three of them to get started with placements to be determined later. An advantage is that they do not have to be connected to utilities. However, they would need someone to service them and Sanders is recommending taking another $450,000 from the American Rescue Plan Act funds toward a pilot program. 

“The goal would be for us to add additional staff and resources that we would need, that they would work a schedule, they’d be branded the same way and you would see them in key areas,” Sanders said. 

Sanders said there is no plan to prevent the unhoused from being on the Downtown Mall, though he knows there many who want that to happen.  

“Not saying that, because I don’t believe that is what you want,” Sanders said. “And ultimately I do not believe that is what the larger community wants. That is not a solution.” 

However, he did say that some people have been encouraged to get their possessions off of the mall. The city has provided bags to some people to keep their items at a pod provided by the Salvation Army. Sanders said the policy is so far working.

“That has been why we don’t see what we saw just three months ago,” Sanders said. “And I measured three months because I go out on the mall now on a much more regular basis. And I don’t see the big piles of things in places. And I know it’s because of what we’ve already been doing.” 

Sanders said the city is not seeking approval at this time from Council to be able to clear out encampments but Police Chief Michael Kochis may want that ability. 

When it came time to give comment, City Councilor Brian Pinkston said he appreciated Sanders’ long list of community interventions, but wasn’t so sure about a plan to purchase six prefabricated homeless shelters from a company called Pallet. 

“I would probably put buying $600,000 worth of, you know, corrugated metal boxes maybe at the bottom end of my list,” Pinkston said. 

Pinkston also said he would support lowering the speed limit to 25 miles per hour immediately. 

Councilor Michael Payne suggested that any improvements made on the mall could be paid by property owners through formation of a business improvement district (BID). That’s the case in portions of Arlington and Alexandria. 

“The businesses themselves came together to basically tax themselves but it is all going directly right into that business district,” Payne said.  If we’re going to make some of those investments sustainable, if it’s just for that downtown mall area is just something, you know, I had wondered about in terms of figuring out how we make this all work.”

The idea has been floated before with a proposal in 2014 from the defunct Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville.  For more information, visit this page on cvillepedia.

All of these conversations took place at a work session and there were no official votes. Council will have to vote on resolutions to appropriate the money for any of the interventions at future meetings. Stay tuned to Charlottesville Community Engagement.

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