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>>> mr. manager. >> mayor, members of council,it's good to see you this evening. what we have for an agendatonight is really a continuation of the council retreat. as you will recall threepriorities that were discussed in september were housing,education, and safety. and over the course of the last60 days, we've had opportunity

to talk about education, andtonight is a follow-up in terms of housing. we would hope that next week, wecould have a touch of the other three items that were discussedat the retreat and that's infrastructure, technology, andresilience, so that we can keep those things going throughoutthe course of the end of the year. so with that said, mayor,members of council, we have two presentations tonight, twodiscussions.

one is an update for the housingstudy which we have susan perry as well as our guest from hr&a,and we also have an update on purpose built communities, adiscussion that the council had back in the retreat of september2015, so we have good news there also. then there are two closedsession items, but my hope, mayor, is that we can have ourguests go first prior to going into the council interests. >> all right.

>> so with that said, i'll turnit over to sue. >> good evening, mayor, membersof council. really good to be here with youtoday. i'm pleased to be joined aboutstand wall, principal -- or excuse me, partner at hr&aadvisors, and phillip kash, principal at hr&a advisors, bothwith the washington, d.c., office. they bring a wealth ofexperience in both public-private real estatedesign and programs and

implementing real estatedevelopment projects. so today, again, at the councilretreat, you heard from phillip and hr&a advisors the beginningpart of our housing study which was the market analysis andneeds assessment. today we are really going tointroduce the tools and programs that the city has at itsdisposal and begin discussing a strategic framework or strategythat we want to move forward with as a city to addressnorfolk's affordable housing needs.

this presentation is just adiscussion and an overview of our options, and so we're notrequiring any decisions to be made at this time. we really just want to give youan overview of the tools and strategies and we'll come backlater and really talk about funding strategies and moreabout that framework. so just to remind you again,this is a process, we're more than just a little bit halfwaythrough that process now. at the council retreat, we didsort of that first bucket, the

assessment of the marketconditions and an analysis of our housing needs. and over the past couple ofweeks, hr&a has done an evaluation of the varioushousing tools we have at our disposal, so this evaluation hasled to the development of strategies and potentialapproaches for housing plans. what you'll hear today will berecommendations for how we might implement an affordable housingstrategy for norfolk. if council is in agreement withthese recommendations, then we

will put together a pod tell andfinal -- model and finalize the strategic framework forimplementing a plan that will increase the availability ofaffordable housing in norfolk. we'll also discuss fundingstrategies at that time. so today, we'll hear therecommendations that will ultimately inform that plan andit will be staff's job in conjunction with city council tocreate the final mix of strategies and activities thatwill -- that we will ultimately implement.

so just to remind you of a fewimportant data points that we heard from the housing marketthat we should keep in mind today as we hear therecommendations, again, first norfolk is a moderate strengthhousing market and we have some areas of strength, but also someareas of weaknesses, and so our neighborhoods can generally bedivided into categories of varying housing strengths. so strong tripping point andfragile stubb markets. the median home value in norfolkis $177,000.

we have unmet housing needs with35u% of -- 55% of our norfolk renters considered rent burdens. that means they spend more than30% of their income on housing costs, and lastly, as we sawagain in the initial market study presentation, norfolk hasa disproportionate burden of public housing compared to theregion, so we have 48% the region's public housing unitswhile we only share 17% of the region's population, so justagain, some important data points to keep in mind as wethink about how we're going to

provide affordable housing toour residents in the future. what we've heard from you andleadership consistently, that there are really two main valuesthat we want to keep in mind as we do this work. first, we don't want ourneighborhoods to fall behind, so we need to strengthenneighborhoods. and jointly with that, we wantto deconcentrate clusters of poverty, so we heard that fromyou at the retreat that as we deconcentrate poverty, we wantto make sure we're strengthening

neighborhoods. these two goals are alsoconsistent with our various plans, our norfolk plan toreduce poverty, vision 2100, our resilience work, ourcomprehensive plan. and so the recommendations thatyou're going to hear today are really designed to ensure thatthese two values are realized. the housing strategyrecommendations are organized around these two goals, again,strengthening neighborhoods and deconcentrating poverty.

these are connected and we'regoing to discuss the various initiatives that will supportthese two goals and then talk about the different programs andlater we'll come back and talk about funding sources for thoseprograms. but we really think that theseare the various programs that we think we can use to reach thosegoals. and so when we began thisprocess, we informed hr&a that there were specific guidingprinciples that must be incorporated into any of therecommendations that we put

forward and so these were basedon conversations with council members at the retreat andreally guide all of the work that we do with povertyreduction in the city. so first and foremost, we wantto make sure we maintain a people focus and a people firstapproach. so under the goal ofdeconcentrating poverty, we'll talk about the redevelopment ofpublic housing today, but i think it's really important tonote that this redevelopment won't just be about physicalbuildings, but also about

resident needs, so it's not justhousing transformation, but also human transformation, so as themanager mentioned, the second presentation will be aboutpurpose built communities and so we really feel like aligningthis housing study with all of our other poverty reductionefforts gives us the ability to really maintain that firstguiding principle. secondly, we heard you at theretreat, that you want a bold strategy and so theserecommendations developed give us a real opportunity to createpathways for residents around

housing. so how are we -- how do we buildneighborhoods that allow people to connect to opportunity? although we won't talk aboutfunding strategies today, we know that we'll have a real needto leverage both public and private resources in order toaccomplish these goals, and lastly, we want to make surethat any recommendations that we put forth align with existingstrategic plans. again, like our resilience work,our poverty reduction plan,

vision 2100 and so on. i'll now turn it over to phillipto talk you through specifically the different initiatives andthese two goal areas. >> good evening. i appreciate the opportunity tobe back in front of you again. similar to the retreat, if youhave -- if you want to stop me, discuss a point in greaterdetail or explain something again or tell me i missedsomething critical, please do. this is a presentation, but alsoa great opportunity for a

conversation. so as susan described, as wecome back with preliminary recommendations for strategy, wereally tried to organize them around the goals, sostrengthening neighborhoods, deconcentrating poverty intoinitiatives. each initiative is composed ofdifferent programs. i'm not going to go through eachprogram because that would be quite a long presentation and ithink i'd bore most folks to tears, but we'll get to eachpoint.

starting with strengtheningneighborhoods, this is a goal that came up consistently fromcouncil, but also from each staff person and communitymembers we've talked with. it's important to strengthen theneighborhoods in norfolk, especially if you're talkingabout deconcentrating poverty at the same time and acknowledgingthat norfolk is a city with neighborhoods that are strongreal estate markets and more fragile real estate markets andthere's a need to address that. the real concept we're talkingabout putting forward here for

the programs as combination ofsome existing programs. the city has a number ofeffective and pretty well run housing programs and thenactually adding those with some new programs, but thesubstantive change we're talking about with this goal is toactually start to concentrate or focus those investments so yourhousing programs really become a neighborhood-based strategy, notjust a housing program. you really start -- the ideathere, going to the principles that susan talked about, is youstart to be able to harness the

private market when you investand concentrate investment in neighborhoods because thatactually attracts private market investment. we're going to talk about threedifferent initiatives, increasing home ownership,revitalizing rental, and creating new rental affordablehousing. home ownership is commonlyassociated with stronger neighborhoods, and it'sgenerally used as way to build the wealth of residents.

the city that is a few programsalready moving towards this goal ifs a we're talking aboutapproach that's about creating new homeowners and supportingexisting homeowners, and again, particularly in tipping pointand more fragile neighborhoods. the gem lots, these are lotsowned by the city, are your most obvious and concentratedopportunity to create new homeownership, concentrated in afew neighborhoods throughout the city and that's the firstprogram we're looking at and we're certainly making recommenddigs that you move forward with

a competitive transparentprocess that focuses on homeownership and leverages alot of work you've already done. you've done work puttingtogether design standards with the neighborhoods, so leveragingthat work and moving that forward. second program we're talkingabout looking at is really development subsidy. in some of the neighborhood. you're actually going to develophomeownership opportunities, the

cost to build the home is goingto be more in the sales price for that neighborhood and you'regoing to need a subsidized development. that might be by discounting theprice of land or putting additional public subsidy in. it depends on the neighborhoodand the conditions. on the existing program side,you all have an owner-occupied rehab program that seems to begenerally well run. what we're recommending changedhere is more of an emphasis on

exterior improvements so thatyou actually have greater impact on the block as a whole and thengreater emphasis on concentrations, so you'rehitting two or three or four houses on a block are an acouple blocks, the idea being you're going to encourage otherneighborhoods to invest in their houses and you push up propertyvalues in the neighborhood as a whole. similar recommendation with thedown payment assistance program. the biggest turning point welook for, is it enough money to

help the family avoid payingmortgage insurance premiums, because mortgage insurancereally -- it's a cost that doesn't provide a lot of benefitto the household. your program is set up that way,so we don't have any changes to recommend there. our only real recommendation isto focus on tipping point and fragile neighborhoods. that's on the increasinghomeownership side. small rental revitalization.

norfolk is a city that issomewhat unique in that it was small rental propertiesbasically throughout the city. i'm talking two units to fourunits to ten units. most neighborhoods in norfolkhave some of this stock in the neighborhood and areas wherethere are well-managed, well-maintained, think militaryhighway, you don't even notice them there and otherneighborhoods you can see in norfolk, they're not as wellmanaged, not as well maintained and necessity start to become --they start to become a detriment

on the neighborhood. there's a need to address themif you're talking about strengthening neighborhoods andwhat we're putting forward as combination of carrots andsticks. the city is already working onputting together a fund to help landlords start to be able torehab their properties. small landlords sometimes lackthe financial capacity or frankly the wherewithal toaccess money and get their properties up.

there's a good reason toconsider a loan fund to help them do that. that's the carrot. also on the carrot side, youhave the rent ready program what you're starting to pilot whichworks with landlords who want to do the right thing, and inchange, you're helping them move through the process and helpthem get access to tenants. have tenants know that they'regood, responsible, quality landlords.

those are good programs, they'requality efforts and they help -- on the stick side, norfolk is abit more constrained. you have a code enforcementdepartment that is targeting at the neighborhood level and doinggood work. they are generally focused onvacant properties and that's largely driven by your stateregulation, where your state regulation doesn't give them alot of leverage with occupied properties unless a tenant iscomplaining or they're really is an egregious issue on theoutside of the property they can

see. similarly on the rentalinspection side, you don't have -- because of state law,you don't have a lot of leverage there, unless folks are engagingon a voluntary basis. what we're recommending is youlook at what you can do inside that state law and i thinkthere's some room for additional leverage and focus on rentalproperties on the code enforcement side and moreworking with neighbors to identify those properties thatare an issue and give them

greater focused attention. you can't -- if you can convincea state legislator to give you more authority, that's a greatroute, but that's always a tough radioed. working with your -- tough road. working with your existing toolsin a focused manner as really opportunity. for this initiative, we're alsorecommending a geographic focus. finally, there's creating newrental housing and this is

something that came out of lookat housing needs and looking at how to strengthen neighborhoods. so we saw the majority ofrenters in norfolk are paying more than 30% of their incometowards housing. that's a real cost burden,that's a real issue. there's a need for additionalquality affordable rental housing and we think tax credithousing can be a useful tool to both strengthen neighborhoodsand address that need and in particularing i'm going to get alittle bit into the weeds here,

so stop me and ask questions. we think 4% tax credits are areal opportunity. there's 9% tax credits and 4%. tax credits are essentiallysubsidy that comes down from the federal government and allocatedby the state to support affordable rental housing. 9% are much bigger subsidy,about three times as much money. ignore the 9 and the 4, theratio is not accurate. norfolk is actually winningthose about as fast as they can.

there's not a lot of room foryou to win any more of those than you're winning. you're doing as good a job youcan probably do, so that's something to be proud of, butthat means we need to look at 4%. there's essentially an unlimitedsupply of them, so you can do as many 4% deals as your market cansupport. the challenge is that it's notenough subsidy usually to make the transaction work, so to do adevelopment of 4% doesn't give

you enough money. usually you need more subsidyand that can come in the form of discounted sale of land from thecity, reduction in property taxes, or just subsidy from yourfederal funding or from a local housing trust fund. we've done some looking atnumbers and different transactions, talked todevelopers here and we think for a transaction that's 20 units,a -- 120 units a 4% deal, you have a gap of around a milliondollars, which is a lot of

money, but a million dollars tocreate 120 new units of quality affordable housing is actuallyamazingly good deal. we had to look at the numbersseveral times to make sure we were looking at that right, butthat's about where it is in your mark. there's a really opportunity toleverage federal money and private money here foraffordable housing. i'm going to pause there andtalk more about affordable, unless somebody has questions onthat.

i know i went in detail. >> norfolk has more affordablehousing than most of the neighboring localities, correct? >> that's absolutely true. >> and this particularinitiative, it indicates we're going to increase the number ofaffordable housing within the city. whatever number we have now, wewant to increase that number. >> that's correct.

>> which means that norfolk isthen housing more of the low and median income housing than it isnow, a greater percentage than our neighbors, and all thestudies show that the lower income housing requires moreservices and more expense to the so we're doing this on this end. how are we going to afford it onthe back end? how is the city going to affordincreasing the cost of services to schools, fire, trash andpolice? >> i think this is a goodquestion and it actually kind of

gets into the different parts ofaffordable housing. with a tax credit affordablehousing, it's not -- it's public housing -- affordable housing inthe full spectrum from homelessness to homeownership,tax credit falls somewhere, affordable housing fallssomewhere in the middle. i'm going to answer yourquestion and move to another slide that i think gets to it. in terms of income, we'retalking about who lives in tax credit housing, i want to comeback to all -- these are all

really important questions. tax credit housing for a familyof four, we're talking about a houfl making between 42 and$35,000, so the cap is about 60% of the area median income andthat's $42,000 and usually you don't see many residents lowerthan 50% because they have to pay the rent. that's higher incomes than manyof the neighborhoods in norfolk that are fragile or tippingpoint right now, so this is actually potentially a netincrease in income for those

neighborhoods as a whole. it is still lower income, lowmoderate income for the region as a whole, but i think thatit's different. these aren't residents whoaren't able to contribute to the tax base and they aren'tresidents who aren't able -- they're generally working folkswho are more able to contribute and certainly for some of theparts of the city would represent a net in-flow ofincome, so it becomes more of a question about whichneighborhoods and how you target

it. it's also a challenge -- i'mgetting a little in the weeds. you can't just build a taxcredit development anywhere. people have to choose to livethere. these are residents who havechoice and it becomes a question of identifying your tippingpoint neighborhoods where the market is strong and people dowant to live there and there's not quite enough housing andstarting to create that housing. the other way we've seen thisused is you do tax credit

housing in an area and you getyour density higher and you're able to use that to supportadditional commercial development and actually perrymore market rate development -- bring more market ratedevelopment along with it, so it doesn't have to be the onlystrategy, but i think that partially answers your question,but i don't know that i completely answered it. are there other questions onthis? i'll talk about this more, but ithink this is important --

>> so basically your affordablehousing is not necessarily your absolute low income housing iswhat you're saying. >> that's right. >> you're looking at anentry-level middle class type of income base to determine -- inthat they're not your low low low income earning families andthey're not your high income earning family, but they're not,like, in the middle of middle income. they're kind of like entry-levelmiddle income?

>> sure. >> lacking the ability to rentor purchase something that is affordable. >> most of these -- and again,we have to do a market study to look at a particulartransaction. a lot of these whereby residentspotentially -- will be residents potentially either living innorfolk or the region as a whole and tax credit housing isgenerally really high quality housing for a couple reasons.

the folks who are investing --the investor in these deals is going to be a large nationalbank because they have to -- they have to invest this type ofhousing for the community reinvestment act, and so they'regoing to require a very well organized property managementcompany and that's frankly the biggest factor that determineswhether a rental property is positive or negative in aneighborhood. if you went and looked at yourrental properties that got in trouble, you find out you almostnever have professional property

management and the correlationis extremely high there. tax credit properties are verywell regulated because bank of america or wells fargo, citibankdoesn't want to risk their reputation and they're generallywell run. you're going to pull in folksfrom across the city and it's another housing option. i do think there's a legitimatequestion about the fiscal impact and fiscal burden it creates. so you have tax credit housingthroughout the city right now

and also one of the advantagesis that it's generally less concentrated than your publichousing, which we'll talk about in addition. just talking about the goal ofstrengthening neighborhoods, we talked about homeownership,increasing homeownership, talked about revitalizing small rentalproperties and talked about increasing the supply of newrental housing. i'm going to turn over and talkmore about deconcentrating poverty, but i want to keep inmind that these two goals really

good hand in hand. as you're deconcentratingpoverty, you have to be strengthening neighborhoods soyou don't end up harming any neighborhood, so that's whywe're keeping this parallel and trying to think of them togetherthroughout all our work. deconcentrating poverty, reallytwo initiatives here. one, redevelop public housingand we'll talk more about but really the driving factor is thepublic housing is your largest concentration of poverty, so ifyou're talking about

deconcentrating, we have toaddress public housing and the second fees with mixed incomerental housing. if you're having deconcentratedpoverty, you have more mixed income community, so you have tofind a way to make more mixed income communities. the biggest concentration ofpoverty in the city are driven by public housing. they're large, located near eachother and that by it's nature tends to concentrate poverty, sowe have to figure out how to

address that piece of it. they're also a regional aspectof it and i think this goes to your question, your pointearlier. norfolk has a disproportionateburden both in public housing, but also of poverty. the poverty rate in norfolk ishigher than the region as a whole, so any strategy toinvolves deconcentrating poverty will almost certainly involve aregional approach to housing. there's real challenges to that.

anywhere we try to take thisapproach, because norfolk only controls norfolk, so there's alimit to what you can do on a regional basis, but when youhave a 19% concentration as a whole, you risk this without aregional approach. redeveloping public housing,whenever you redevelop public housing, this is a large majorundertaking that takes a long period of time, usually involvesa public-private partnership, but when done right, it almostalways starts with engagement of tenants, then landlords, thenthe actually bricks and sticks.

it doesn't always worksequentially. you can run them in parallel,but you have to be moving all pieces at the same time, so oneof the key programs we talk about is tenant mobility. whenever we go to a publichousing site and start to talk about the potential forredeveloping that site, the tenants have the option, thechoice to take a voucher and move. they don't want to remain forthe redevelopment, either

because they don't want thereduring the construction process or they've always wanted avoucher and one has never been available, or they're not surewhat the neighborhood will be like and they had like to gosomewhere else. norfolk, most public housingwill have a significant portion of residents who choose this. norfolk has data, hasexperienced it, it will be similar to that. the challenge, if a residentsays they want to take a voucher

and move somewhere else, oftenresidents don't have the experience or wherewithal to dothat successfully, so they haven't -- either they don'thave the financial capacity to actually put a security depositdown or they've had an issue in the past with bill collection ona utility and that's tripping them up or they don't have acredit score, so they can't get the utilities turned on andfrankly, they don't as much experience picking the rightlocation for housing, so is there transit, get me to my job,get to my school, is this a good

school district, can i stay intouch with my network of family and friends that supports mewhen my son gets sick and i need to go to work still. we looked at baltimore andchicago, two examples that have been pretty effective on thisapproach and they both have very intentional and very robusttenant mobility programs that frankly put a fair amount ofmoney towards counseling tenants and providing counseling andguidance about finding a place, a location to live, but alsofinancial support in terms of

security deposits, helping clearup credit histories so at the present times are capable ofactually -- so the tenants are capable of actually, if theychoose to, not staying in the redevelopment, but moving toanother location. the other aspect both of thosestrategies have in common is they're regional, so they'relooking throughout the region and making sure they'resupporting -- you can take a voucher and export it to anothercommunity. there's a lot of paperwork thatcomes with that and they need

support on the paperwork, andthey also need support picking the right places. both baltimore and chicagoreally emphasized neighborhoods of opportunity. they define it slightlydifferently, but what it comes down torque the criteria comedown -- down to, the criteria come down to lower poverty ratesand better school systems when they look for locations to mofrtresidents to. the idea there is to reallydeconcentrate the poverty and

people move to neighborhoodswhere they know people or there's only certainneighborhoods where landlords are accepting vouchers and thatcan lead to reconcentration. that's why we're focussing sohard on strengthening that gets to the second point iwant to get into a landlord outreach. along with tenant mobility, ifyou're redeveloping a site and you're potentially creating asignificant number of new voucher holders that are goingout and looking for landlords

that are accepting vouchers, youhave to grow that supplies an it has to be an intentional effortor you'll see a reconcentration of poverty. that means getting in touch withmom and pop who are maybe not taking vouchers because theydon't understand the program or they're uncomfortable with itand large institutional rental property owners and making surethey understand it and frankly helping everybody do thepaperwork to get it done. there's different spectrums.

there's different spectrums forhow far people -- how these different programs, the landlordoutreach program with actually work. it can be just getting in touch,encouraging people, helping them through the process to actuallyproviding a guarantee fund so you have reserves and you canguarantee to a landlord that their rent will be covered thefirst year of the lease, so if there's a concern, probably notfounded, but certainly a really concern that the tenant won'tmake good on the rent is address

the first year. that's the tenant mobility andlandlord outreach. you have to do them to make sureyou can do a successful redevelopment and ourrecommendation for norfolk is that both of these be undertakenon a regional scale. then there's that bricks andsticks part. so this is the master plan ofredevelopment. that means engaging with aprivate partner, working with hud.

this is a long process andsomewhat complicated. the most important part and themost important step is to actually start moving thatforward to reach agreement with hud and say this is your intent,to actually redevelop a site. because until you reach thatinitial agreement, you can't start to let -- empty out units,so allow your natural attrition rate to clear units and you havethe risk of more residents -- easier to do a redevelopment ifyou know ahead of time and you can let the building -- you haveabout a 15% turnover rate

annually, let that reduce thenumber of units actually occupied over time. those are different pieces forpublic housing redevelopment. i know susan is going to give apresentation more about this, so you guys are going to talk abouthousing all evening. is there any questions aboutthat before i move on? i know this is an importantarea, happy to talk about it in greater detail. >> i really would like to know,from our retreat, i made note of

the 9% that you mentioned inseptember and the 4%. i'm not too sure, i kind ofunderstand, but i really would like more information on thatbecause that's going to have a great impact on what we'retrying to do for the city of norfolk as well as -- and i knowwe're going to discuss this more -- how do we go about theredevelopment of public housing? >> on the 9% and 4%, i'm happyto -- we're happy to have an offline conversation to followup with you in-depth, but essentially what it comes downto, 9% is a greater subsidy and

4% is less subsidy and then itdepends -- the development lets you go up to 42,000. >> the 9 and 4%, one iscompetitive and one is noncompetitive, so we've beendoing mostly the 9%. >> right, and that's three timesthe amount of subsidies, that's the note that i took, and thatthe 4% can't do development without other partners. you need additional subsidy. you need additional subsidy, butthere is -- there's also a

question of getting into thatband of affordable housing is different than a public housingband, although you can certainly have public housing residents ina tax credit deal, but there are different features here and i'llbe happy to talk about that more. so the other side of the coinhere f we are actually redeveloping public housing, weneed to be creating -- deconcentrating poverty, we needto be creating more mixed income communities and there's reallytwo avenues the city can take on

this. one, whenever you are doing atax credit development, you can require and incorporate someportion of public housing residents, and frankly, yourhousing redevelopment authority is already doing this and doinga pretty good job of it. it's really about memorializingthat and making sure it's an intentional process where it'sactually linked to any plan for redevelopment, so you'refocusing on giving priority to residents in a place whereyou're doing redevelopment, so

you're helping support theredevelopment. you have agreements and goodworking relationships with your private developers, so all i'mproposing here is a memorialization of your existingpractices. that's the tax creditdevelopment and voucher program. >> quick question aboutrequiring mixed income. you are recommending a 4% taxcredit program earlier. is that generally compatiblewith mixed income development. >> there's different ways todefine mixed income and i'll try

to knife through it. if you talking about mixedincome with public housing, yes, it can be compatible. there's project-based vouchersand tenant-based vouchers. it just naturally happens thatyou end up with a lot of residents or some with tenantvouchers who choose to live in the properties. that happens naturally. project-based vouchers, youdon't usually see those in a 4%

deal unless it's specificallypart of the redevelopment because if you put them in the9% deal, you actually get points and your housing redevelopmentauthority has been very smart about maximizing the points,which is why you guys have done so well on 9%. in terms of mixed income andincomes higher than 60% of ami, you can absolutely do that. the problem is essentially youneed a pretty large-scale development to do it becauseyou -- for your tax -- the tax

credit has a bunch of costs thatare specific. whenever you have federal money,there's a lot of rules from people, like me in washington,to put on the funding you get. you don't want that membershipto get into your market rate deal because you don't want tofollow all those rules, so usually you need a big enoughdevelopment, like 200 units or two buildings next to each otherso you can keep the costs separate. it absolutely happens, but thereal challenge becomes is your

market strong enough to supporta market rate development. if the market is strong enoughfor market rate development, you can absolutely do the thingstogether, it just becomes a big deal and you have to work withthe developer and figure out the phasing. >> if we can make that work andtalking about the concern of taking on more of the regionalaffordable housing, increasing affordable housing, but alsomarket rate at the same time, it's not quite as bad.

>> it's not as bad fiscally, butmixed income is -- every study, every person who went to schoolon social policy, this has been the dogma and the right wayto -- it's one of the few areas in social studies where there isstrong data to support it. everyone does better when you doit that. schools do better, people dobetter, employment does better. unfortunately, that's not theway we set up most of our federal programs, so it's noteasy to do, but it's possible to do.

the second piece actually, thesecond program is on inclusionary housing policy. this is something hr&a has givenadvice in a number of markets is this a requirement from the citythat you have affordable housing in developments and there's lotsof different approaches and the right approach really depends onthe city's goals and frankly market conditions. when we looking at knock, whatwe're putting out -- at norfolk, what we're putting out there isa recommendation that on any

housing development that'sgetting city support, so public land, some kind of tax abatementor other support, you should be having a requirement to includeaffordable housing. we're not making recommendationfor our straight private market transaction that you includeaffordable housing in those deals, and in d.c. and sanfrancisco, new york, we would absolutely make thatrecommendation, but for that to work, there has been to be somuch profit in the deal that you can escape that profit anduse -- scrape that profit and

use it to help subsidize thedeal. norfolk is a strong market, butit's not so profitable that -- that will hurt your ability toget market rate deals you should be going after, so if you'realready supporting the deal, we think it makes a lot of sense. this is a public policy goal,you can put that in the requirement. frankly it's going to requireadditional subsidy from you, but not a huge amount.

if it's just a straight marketrate deal, we're not making that recommendation to the city atthis point. we've done a fair amount ofanalysis and talked about those numbers, but doesn't seem like agood thing to get into right now. does anybody have any questionson this initiative? really together, the -- go back. the redeveloping public housingand increasing the supply of mixed income rental housing,those are our two pieces that we

think allow you to deconcentratepoverty and of the two, the redevelopment of public housingis going to have a much much bigger impact. mixed income housing is animportant step, but it's going to create a much smaller numberof units overall. it's still good policy and eyelines with -- aligns with your long-term goals. i want to hand it back over tosusan to talk about the next steps and where we're at.

>> thank you. so again, the next steps arereally for us to model some examples of this, and so to takethese programs, apply them to some prototypical situationsspecifically to norfolk neighborhoods and bring thoseback to you and show you what they might look like indifferent tipping points, fragile, and strongneighborhoods in norfolk. and so we'll take the input thatwe receive tonight and any other input that we might get, applythat sort of to this next step,

and then be back before yousometime in the near future to present this model of prototypehousing strategy. and then, excuse me, ultimatelyto also talk about funding sources. any other questions? >> yeah. i was sitting here and listeningto all of the points that were made, and i have said in thepast that there are not three or four cities in the country thathave been as successful at urban

renewal as norfolk, you know,throughout the freemason district, ghent, things of thatnature. in this particular effort, isnorfolk wanting to gentrify its public housing communities andto do that, norfolk is going to have to, in my mind and for mysupport, is going to have to make a concerted effort beforethe first brick is even moved. you know, we had a presentationat the retreat. we just had a presentation now,tonight rather, so now it's up to us to be real lick as to howto -- realistic as to how to try

to get there done. i would say the best example ofmixed income would be broad creek, but the funding for thatno longer exists. so therefore, we're going tohave to step up to the plate. so now, if norfolk wantstidewater park, calvert park, young park, doing something overin -- norfolk is going to have to pay. it's not going to be as easy asit was back in the '60s when you didn't have representation oflow income people sitting at the

table. now you do, and so it's notgoing to be as easy just to come in and say, well, a, b, c, and din regards to one thing that made mention of, people not --residents not being able to have credit and things of thatnature, not having the proper moving experiences and expenses. well, joe waldo, who is known inthis area, has already said to me that he's going to be rightthere at the beck and call of the housing -- those residentsin public housing to make sure

that they get every dime thatthey should get as far as relocation is concerned. you know, you mentioned thevouchers, and a lot of times, the residents in norfolk publichousing communities, like roberts and bowling, took thosevouchers and they ended up in the areas that the propertiesare not well maintained. one of the things that i believethat has to happen here, before we really consider, we have torecreate our occupancy permit program because if you startdispersing individuals and they

end up in houses that are not aswell maintained as they were leased, then they're going tohave a problem. secondly, this is -- the lasttime we had this issue, and i don't know whether you were onthe council at that time, but making this presentation andthey was moving all of the low income people to the east andwhat it would do, norfolk did a great job at brambleton and whatyou would be doing, you'd be pushing a xob bit tant number ofresidents into brambleton and creating a headache in aneighborhood that had a

successful -- a very successful,i guess you say renovation. and so we really just have to,you know, get together and be realistic about, you know, whatwe want to do. one of the things that i hadmentioned to some of the members of the administration is this. there are several parcels ofland owned by the city of norfolk and the redevelopmenthousing authority on the east side of town. you've heard me say thatst.

paul's boulevard is the lineof demarcation for relatively well-to-do norfolk and poornorfolk. if this is going to besuccessful, then well-to-do norfolk is going to have toabsorb some of this, and it's only being realistic about it. i was just sitting here thinkingwe have that big piece of property where hrt used to be. i don't know what plans theyhave for that. there's a waste management siteon the east side of town, but

that's a site that has -- theold waste management site, which is bounded by norfolk southernand tidewater, let's say tidewater drive on the west, itgoes over to jacox on the east, virginia beach boulevard andthen barraud park on the north. that's a site that has access. when i say access, you havethree schools there. you have jacox elementary,ruffner in walking distance of the community, and you havebooker t. that proper is owned by the cityof -- property is owned by the

city of norfolk. norfolk can go in and make aneffort to show that they're really interested in beingsuccessful. now, in addition to thoseschools, you have the huntersville neighborhood centerwhich has the swimming pool, you have huntersville park, barraudpark with the basically field and a tennis court, an am mi ifi theater and -- amphitheater and multi use land. when we sit back and realizewhat we really want to do, when

we complete the gentrification,it has to be successful, and i use the term "gentrification"because that's exactly what it is. you recognize the fact that wehave all this land downtown, all these businesses coming downthere, but we have all the low income people, so in order forme to support any of this, it has to be done correctly. now, i've been talking about for15 years or longer and my major reason for hoping that norfolkwould have stepped forward ahead

of time was to take race out ofthe issue. if you go through and do thethings that you suggested, and when i say you, i'm speakingcollectively, i'm not talking about you in particular, butcollectively in the presentation, you're going tobring race into issue. you're going to have i don'tknow how many -- i don't know. thousands of african americansand low income people that are affected, and so in addition tothat, the reason that the housing authority is doing anawful job of maintaining the

properties they have now. when i ride through calvert andtidewater park, it's awful and the only reason that the housingauthority has let that property go down, so everybody can say,well, it needs to go and this is what norfolk does. that's what they did with thetexas street. they knew where the drugs were,they knew everything that was going on, but they say we're notgoing to put a dime there because we need to get aconsensus that it needs to go.

and so one of the things thatthe housing authority needs to do right now is go back in thereand clean that community up because it's not going to happentomorrow. they need to go in there andclean it up, they need to repair the curbs, gutters. two or three years ago, we hadto insist that dominion virginia power come in and put lightsback in the community because the housing authority had letthem go dim and did nothing. and so all i'm saying to you,and when i saw you, i'm not

talking about you, i want you toknow, i'm not talking about you, this is not going to be a walkin the park. >> agreed. >> it's not going to be a walkin the park. if it's done, it has to be donecorrectly. if not, then there are forces --and i don't mean violent forces, but there are going to be forcesthat norfolk is going to have to deal with. i could go on, but i'll -- okay.

thank you and i want you to knowi'm not directing this at you because i think you're doing agood job and i just don't want you to think that i'm directingit at you. >> sure, thank you. but i appreciate the commentbecause we certainly, as we work with the housing authority andother partners, we certainly listen to you and understandthat there needs to be a commitment on behalf of the cityand build first is part of our strategy and we can talk moreabout that --

>> what we need to do is get onthe bus and ride through the public housing communities andeverybody at this table will say, my god, we got peopleliving like that? it's unbelievable. i don't know what the housingauthority is doing with the money. they're checking rent. the property has been paid foryears and years and years ago. but it's -- they need a parkingpermit program because if you

ride through there, every unithas three or four cars and the people don't live there. there's litter. i think our solid wastedepartment, when we go through there and make that removal, themen on the trucks need to have shovels and brooms to make surethat anything that falls out of one of those containers, thatthey sweep it up. i mean, there's just so muchstuff that has to be done, and i think this council needs to takea look at it.

that's it, thank you. >> so are you going to come backto us when? what's the best time frame? >> over the next couple ofmonths, we'll schedule them to come back once we've had anoption to run those prototypical situations. mr. manager -->> sooner rather than later. >> so mayor, i know we havecouncil interests, but if you

wanted to have susan just stayfor about six slides, let's do the purpose built. >> yes, please. >> okay. so i'm pleased to offer you abrief update on purpose built communities, just to pull us allback together. purpose built communities is anonprofit consulting firm out of atlanta that helps cities aroundthe country revitalize distressed neighborhoods andbreak the cycle of poverty.

so as the manager mentioned,several of you heard from carol naughtton, the president ofpurpose built communities at your retreat in 2015. i know since then, we've hadsome new council members, so we wanted to start off with just aquick video that grounds us all in the model. \m\m>>> we have a model that, from spartanburg to omaha tobirmingham to orlando to indianapolis, to atlanta and allof the purpose built cities, and

you would find that there issomething to learn in each one of those cities. we are a giving, loving group,but we also are a group that learns. so we come with certainhumility, knowing that local leaders know their communitiesbest. we know what has worked in eastlake and some of the other communities, but we're there tolearn and we're there to learn with you.

>> purpose built is so vital inredeveloping and revitalizing communities because it takesthat holdless stick approach -- holistic approach. you know you have to have theeducation, the housing, the community services, all theaspects to make it a complete picture. >> the purpose built communitymodel proves that it can be done. every community in this countrywho chases that kind of a result

has to understand that theircircumstances and facts are different, but the basic values,the drive, the hope, the belief, that change can occur for thebetter for everyone, all of those are core ingredients ineach one of our journeys. >> purpose built has a wonderfulname in community development and it's starting to really getout there across board. school systems now arerecognizing the value of partnering with purpose built. >> the role of purpose builtreally is to give a structure to

an effort that a lot of peopleare already sharing. they have a goal but they don'tknow how to operationalize that, and purpose built communitieshelps structure the approach. >> the full offering of purposebuilt is lifting up a model for the nation that says you have tobe contract rat of the enter -- considerate of the interplay ofhousing, of education, and of wellness. in many ways, the cohesion, thebuilding of a fabric of a neighborhood and in that way, ithink that purpose built is one

of the most communitydevelopment frameworks that is emerging in our nation. >> so for me, weighs reallyexciting about -- what's really exciting about the purpose builtmodel is that it works with the community and local leaders toreally adapt this model to the particular circumstances of thecommunity. it's a national movement and itincludes a network of experienced professionals fromacross the country that are made available to cities who join itsnetwork.

it's about creating those mixedincome communities that we talk about in the earlierpresentation, but it's also -- it pairs this with qualityschools and services like job counseling and childcare to helpexisting residents. it was founded by an atlantadeveloper tom cousins, and it has other investors like warrenbuffett that has really taken this model to a national level,so again, it is place-based, but also people-centered. and it really requires the openand transparent engage --

engagement of the residents inthe community to, mr. riddick'spoint, so this is really planning with the residents, notfor the residents. it works to break the cycle ofintergenerational poverty, so it works with the entire familythrough there local his stick approach and it assists on bestthis class partners. this is the model. they feel like there are sort ofthese three tenets. it's a defined neighborhood thatworks to deconcentrate poverty

by transforming communities withmixed income housing, high quality cradle to collegeeducation pipeline, and then all those community wellnessservices, career development, life skills programs, financialliteracy, and all of this is coordinated and driven by asingle purpose lead organization, which they callthe community quarterback. they're helping cities acrossthe country do this work where they feel like the criteria forsuccess is present. they currently have 16 networkcities, two of which have just

come on board in the last coupleof months. their intention is to have 25 intotal, and they are all different. they range from large-scalerebuilding of public housing communities to small in-filldevelopments in the heart of distressed communities. some use charter schools, somework within the public school system, and so again, this modelis adaptive to the community. we certainly hope norfolk willbe the 17th network partner, and

so we have been working sincelast year to establish a network of private champions to helpadvance this effort. we've had a couple of trips thathave included business, civic and philanthropic leaders toeast lake to examine whether or not this model is applicable tonorfolk. we've had some other city staff,business community and nonprofit leaders attend the purpose builtconference, and so gives us an opportunity to see this model inaction in other communities. we've established thisinteragency revitalization

planning group with the housingauthority and the city to really think about the things that mr. riddick challenged us withearlier talking about public housing communities. purpose built communities hasoffered to facilitate those groups for us, and the mostexciting thing is that they have committed to norfolk. they've provided us with a teamof experts to help us in these efforts, so in addition to thethree members of the purpose

built team, carol naughtton, thepresident, kathleen brownley, from this region, and has abackground in real estate, brittany collins with purposebuilt who is a former educator, they have also committed to ustwo consultants, renee glover, with the catalyst group. she's the previous ceo of theatlanta housing authority and was for almost 20 years, and soshe has pioneered master plan, mixed use mixed incomedevelopments throughout atlanta and we know that we will greatlybenefit from her expertise.

in addition, they have providedrochelle patton, the development consultant, currently aconsultant with nrha, so familiar with our market and ourarea and is an expert in the rental assistance demonstrationprogram or the rad program. and so -- in addition to that,again, as we talked about earlier in the earlierpresentation, we know that this is not just a norfolk issue, buta regional issue, and so we have begun, next week purpose builtwill be in town to lead a regional conversation on povertyreduction that's being hosted by

the planning districtcommission, so we're excited about that. we're looking to secure fundingfor the establishment of the community quarterbackorganization and sign an mou with purpose built to become parof the network. and so the fact that they havecommitted to us and committed this team of experts makes usfeel like this is an exciting opportunity and that we can makesure that we do this in the right way, that we can, youknow, take the data that we get

from the housing study and makesure that we're taking care of people and creating a communityrevitalization that provides opportunities to people. thank you. >> that's all we have, mayor, soi'll turn it back over to you for council interests. riddick, we'll start withour council interests. >> actually, i don't haveanything. >> all right, dr.

whibley. >> so i noticed that theelection board is here. we had this discussion aboutthe -- >> is that a pop-up? >> yes, we're ready for apop-up. >> what else do we have forthem? >> hello. actually, we were justcompleting a canvass of our election before we stepped upfor the council meeting.

our staff is crunching numbersright now so we can finish the abstracts for the november 8thgeneral and special elections to get them off to the state boardof election. so we're crunching numbers as wespeak. was there anything specific ican address for you? [ all speaking at once ]>> mr. riddick? >> yes, stephanie, let me askyou a question. over in ghent, you have peoplethat vote way over in ghent.

you have taylor and you have themuseum -- >> chrysler museum, ghentcommunity center, park place. >> so let's say just using -->> we have park place. >> on this side of 21st street,the south side of 21st street. you have taylor and you have themuseum. >> yes.>> and taylor and museum -- >> ghent square. >> and i guess my point is ihave a friend of mine who lives over there and he was sayingthat that little small area has

at least five or six votingplaces where in some of your other communities, for example,rosemont and you have maybe bowling, i don't know how theirturnout was, so not having as many polling places in some ofyour communities that have turnouts like rosemont, that'svoter suppression, you know. inch -->> okay. >> and i'd like to you to lookat it. >> and also, it was such adismal turnout over at ruffner. maybe we need to try to getsomething on this side of town.

>> actually, ruffner was greatcompared to it's been in the past. they had over 500 people comeout and vote for this particular election. we've had elections wherethere's been two people voted and one of them has been anofficer of election working the polls. so i was just surprised withtheir turnout. >> so you think it's workingwell?

>> it is. we did have norfolk policeassisting us on election day, directing traffic in the earlymorning because the time change, of course, roll back over theweekend. they assisted early in themorning, they assisted in the we had signs posted assistingwith traffic control to slow the speed down for traffic control,but it has improved. we have looked, at you're wellaware, a number of possible locations.

the pool has worked out verywell and the good news is the schools were closed on electionday and the teachers had a virtual work day, so that leftfor ample parking at most of our polling locations that wereschools, so we were happy with that. we're happy to look at morepolling places. we will be converting from ourcurrent voting system that we've been using. we had consolidated someprecincts back in 2012 to

conserve on the voting equipmentthat we had at that time. the general assembly this yearpassed a bill that is requiring us to move from a touch-screenvoting system, which is what we have now, to paper ballots withan optical scan, which means we're going to have to go outand purchase all new equipment and paper ballots for each andevery election, enough to satisfy the number of registeredvoters, plus extra in case somebody messes up how they markon a ballot or you have people that turn out that think thatthey're registered to vote and

they're not. so we're going to be moving to awe'll now voting base going we knew it was coming and by2020, july 2020, we have to have that new system in place. >> did the general assemblyappropriate any money for that? >> no! >> what? how do they do something likethat? those guys in richmond, i tellyou.

>> no, there's no money treethat i'm aware of. >> where are they when we needthem? >> there will be an up frontcost in purchasing equipment for the optical scanners, but thecosts per election will be going up because of paper ballots. i think you were talking aboutrose mont, that's one of our larger precincts. sherwood was a large precinctthat we consolidated from the school and rec center becausethey were literally right next

door to each other, but we'll behappy to take a look at where our high concentrations of voterregistrants are to see about possibly if we might be able tosplit some of those and look at other buildings. we try and stay in thecity-owned business as much as possible because the city hasmore control with the schools, the rec centers, the libraries. they were very supportive. they have been over the past andwe appreciate all of our support

that we've gotten with theelections from general services, the police, director oflibraries, even our libraries closed that were used as pollingplaces. they were closed to the publicother than voting purposes and we appreciated that to help. >> dr. whibley and mrs. graves. >> i'm sorry.

>> is there a problem atrosemont? >> with the lines at larchmont. >> the lines all day, it wasover an hour and a half. >> there were some lines atlarchmont and a lot of that was due to old dominion collegestudents who thought they were registered at either lambertspoint community center or old dominion precinct, which is atlarchmont elementary. most of these students did endup voting provisional ballots. they were registered in otherlocalities, not here

necessarily, and there was a lotof -- i don't know if you want to say confusion, but there wasencouragement on behalf of some of the people working outsidethe campaigns, encouraging students to go back and voteprovisional ballots when they were not registered here, sothat did slow some of the lines. >> when i was at larchmont, theypulled the students out into a straight line and so the linesfor those -- in a separate line, and so the lines for of us whowere nonstudent's, i waited an hour and 40 minutes.

>> we were trying to verify whowas registered to get them processed and if there wassomebody that needed assistance because they couldn't find themin the poll book, call downtown to find are they registeredhere, registered virginia beach, hampton, newport -->> what you're saying those people that you verified thenwere not voting inappropriately and the lines for an hour and 40minutes. >> yeah, i don't know about thelength of the line, but i know we did have some lines at someplaces.

typically the lines were longerbefore people went to work and in the evening when they got offof work. >> this has been the second timethat this has been, but this was by far the worst and the peopleworking the polls, bless their heart, they were working very,very hard and they were very frustrated with the support theyhad and the fact that they could not provide services for ourvoters for an hour and 40 minutes, and reportedly it wasthe longest line in virginia. i mean, i just am hoping thatyou guys are not just saying,

well, that was a busy time ormaybe some students. and if it were the student much,we need to work that better because we want those studentsto vote and we need to do whatever we can to include thestudents, that they understand -- i understand therewas some confusion on how they're registered, but thebottom line is we want as many students, as many people aspossible to vote and to have them wait for an hour and 40minutes is just like mr. riddicksays, it's disenfranchising many

of them. >> we used to have a pollingplace on campus years ago and were moved off of campus. that would be something toconsider too in talking with odu. >> there was a place right upthe street had no lines. >> we tried to move some of thatbefore back in 2012 and that was not approved by council toconsolidated. >> come back to us.

[ laughter ]>> i might do that. >> mrs. >> we want to -- we tried tostop the polling places with -- stock the polling places withextra personnel that we knew was going to be heavy turnout. it's like winning the lottery,everybody comes out every four years and votes in thatparticular presidential election, so we're working onthat, working on process improvement to help with theline control, but if we could

possibly even create a locationon campus, which we are happy to talk with odu, talk with themabout maybe putting something onsite for the students thatwould separate that whole segment out where they couldvote and it would create a lot less confusion in surroundingneighborhoods with the people that are registered there. that's an option we could lookat to. >> first of all, i want to saythank you for all the extra effort that you guys did putinto ruffner because i know that

was a huge concern. you know, we looked at it andlooked at it again and a lot of the suggestions that we putforward, you all -- your office combined with the city staff andeverything, made that a safe place to vote, crossing streetsand all those kinds of things, so thank you for that. that was what i had, but tommyhas no voice -- imagine that, you guys -- and he's asked me tojust let you know that his precinct ran out of "i voted"stickers and he voted at 4:00,

so after 4:00, there were no "ivoted" -- >> they must have giving them toall the kids that came because we sent a lot of "i voted"stickers. i wasn't aware of that. i know we sent out more, but iknow sometimes when the families come all together, everybodygets a sticker. johnson. >> hi. i just want to say thank you forhelping me out at the last

minute. i got a call and an email fromrichard bowling elementary, they were having mock elections and isent the email to ms. iles, andshe provided sample ballots for every child, so almost 600children, as well as the "i voted" stickers -->> they got all your stickers. [ laughter ]>> the "i voted" stickers and thank you for that because itwas a great day. pre-kindergarten through 5thgrade voted that day.

so thank you so very much. and for richard bowlingelementary, if you went in to vote at 6:00 a.m., you didn'tget out until 7:30. well, it's one of the highestvoting precincts, as mr. riddicksaid. it is always consistent. >> and we're going to be comingback to council after we get through this election aboutrelocksing locate -- relocating into the new school.

the old school, the name changedand we put out notices to the 3,047 voters before the electionto remind them it was still in the building, but the buildinghad a new name. so just reminding them wrr to goon election day so we didn't disenfranchise anybody fromshowing up and we posted signs at the new school letting themknow, please go back to the old school. of course, the doors would havebeen locations locked because the kids were out, but we'vebeen working a lot with mock

elections with the schools. we went to another school,norfolk christian, voted 2nd through 5th grade, passed outconstitutional amendments for the adults so they could learnwhat was on the ballot. we also worked as election pagesthis time. they were work is as officers ofelections. we had a couple of foreignexchange students participating at tcc. they could do everything otherthan handle the ballots because

they were either under age orforeign exchange students, but they were very excited about theprocess and we're hoping to introduce more of those goingforward. that's a great untappedpotential. they have a lot of energy andthey're excited about the process, and as you know, ourcitizens that are volunteer, our all aging, so we need to getmore youth involved. so we're very excited aboutthat. >> all right, thank you verymuch.

>> thank you so much. have a good night. >> since i've been sitting atthis table, we've had discussions, you know that toywhere you get one thing down and it goes down and another onepops up and then you put that down and the other goes rightback up. that would be speeding issues inour city. i think every one of us, i know,has brought up problems that we have speeding.

i mean, i'm always talking abouthampton boulevard, we can talk about jamestown crescent. our last meeting, a woman cameup talking about speeding around norfolk state, and, you know,the police to their credit does great things to respond. they bring out the signs to tellyou that you're going too fast and they increase surveillanceand then that works and then the other one pops up.and i just wonder if instead of trying to just keep puttingband-aids on something, i mean,

i don't know about you, butnobody speeds in emporia. when you're on your way toemporia, nobody speeds and anybody that does, deservestheir ticket. because it's known for a placethat gives tickets. >> absolutely. >> so there's got to besomething else that we can do in this city. this is a concern for ourneighborhoods. we've had concerns around schoolzones.

it's really a detriment, ithink, to our city, and i don't know what we can do. whether it's -- what if we saida speeding ticket cost $500? i know that's being -- butmaybe -- >> they had abusive fees at onepoint, didn't they, in the general assembly? >> i mean, is there something wecan do to be known as emporia of the west? >> since i've been sittinghere --

>> we were together. >> yeah, i've been saying thisfor the longest time and i imagine we probably need tocreate a vigorous traffic division. one time the police departmentgave out a certain number of tickets and the virginian-pilotwrote an article saying norfolk had a quota of giving tickettop -- tickets, but i could -- you know, i'm like you. when you're going throughemporia to get a 95, you know

what's going to happen. years ago when i was ayoungster, the same thing about south norfolk. you knew it was going to bespeed control and i'm with you. i would like for norfolk to berecognized as an area that you have to reduce speed. one time if you went down azaleagarden road, chesapeake boulevard, there were two mainstreets you knew you were going to get a ticket.

manager, i don't know whatwisdom you can leave with the interim or the policedepartment. i don't know how much it wouldcost us to have a full traffic, you know, division, but don't asi said in the past and dr. whibley, excuse me, i don't wantto step on your -- >> no, that's -->> some of the biggest offenders, school bus driversand city employees driving our trucks. and that's dangerous.

>> you put gps on those buses,you know how fast they're going. >> but i'm -- i support dr. whibley 100%. >> and i think we need to beserious about this. you know, not just, yeah. i mean, bernard, are you awareof things that we can do? >> i know that what emporia andwakefield do is just heightened enforcement. newport has a similar program.

you get a two-lane bottleneckand hit the four-lane and there's a police officer, astate trooper waiting for you. >> well, we have neighborhoodsright now that are considering hiring their own securitybecause we don't have proper enforcement or what theyperceive as adequate enforcement for crime. so i don't think we can make theargument that we're going to be able to have more people, morepolice officers out there for enforcement unless you all havesome magic idea on that.

>> let me get back to you onwhether we can increase beyond what the -- what is currentlybeing charged for a conviction. >> is that a state mandate then? >> let me check to see whetherthere's not anything under our charter or any flexibility. >> if it's the will of thecouncil, next week we'll bring in mike and we'll talk aboutwhat resources we have and what we have done will be data drivenand we'll come back with what can be a solution for the issuethat's at hand.

>> how about if we just put upsigns that say aircraft monitoring. then you actually get a ticketin the mail. >> what if a couple people get aticket in a mail -- >> from an aircraft? >> all right, so -->> i'll wait for next time. >> tommy, is your interpretergoing to be angelia? you're good? okay.

angelia. >> two thing. well, actually one.and james has been working on i don't know, i don't see james. but -- he's back there. with the tree over in park placeand the parking on that street, i don't know what we can do. i know the street sweepingrequirement and i get that part of it, but there's a mixed usebuilding where the coffee shop

is on the third floor andapartments are on the second floor and the street sweepingpiece i get, but the parking for customers is problematic becausepeople come in and they stop to get a cup of coffee and theycome back and they have a ticket on their car and we need to fixthat area. >> we'll work with thatdepartment. >> at least during the daytimehours or during business hours. i get that it's heavilyresidential, but there's a business there and theirbusiness is kind of, you know,

it's not just walk-in peoplefrom the neighborhood, but it's folks driving and what not.and so i really would like it if we could resolve -->> we'll work with parking on so that -- because we want to bebusiness friendly and his customers are not going to behappy if they get tickets. they're not going to go there. [ inaudible comments ]>> absolutely. and then when you bring mikeback next week for traffic and speeding, can we get an updateon the...

the high-speed chase, what wasthe -- >> i know mr. riddick broughtthat up several times. ms. >> i just wanted to say thankyou, although mike and chief boone and chief goldsmith arenot here this evening. last night i attended wellingtonoaks civic league and i got lost, although i know where thebuilding is, i still got lost. and there were two officers inthe community, and so i

flickered my lights and put myhands up to tell them to stop and they did, and they proceededto give me directions. but what they did mostly wasthey got in front of me and they took me directly to the centerto help me get where i needed to be, and that meant a great dealto me. it showed that they just wantedto help a lost person in the community. so i wanted to say thank you tothem. and also to team norfolk foraccompanying me to the civic

league. we got a lot of work doneworking with wellington oaks. so thank you. >> ms. mcclellan. >> i have three things. the first is something discussedduring the election, our municipal election in may, andi'd like to bring up again. i wanted to inquire with regardsto norfolk's hiring policy,

whether or not we can include anondiscrimination clause for sexual orientation and genderidentity. is that something that has tocome to council or a code issue or -- i don't think thatcurrently exists, but it's something i'd like to look intoand see if that's something that my colleagues would be -->> yes, it is something that we can do and exists and i left youa copy of a current one. >> as you walked in today. but that's -- it does notinclude gender identification

and maybe can be updated --definitely can be updated, so jack cloud is working with h.r.and it's within the city administration, city councilauthority to regulate in that area for its own hires andstarts to lessen the further you get away from city hall. >> number two was another itemand sort of bringing it back up, that we talked about previously. one was the status of electronicvoting. we had a presentation about itand i'm curious what the

findings were in terms of thecost and etcetera, so maybe if we can get an update on that. i think that seems to be ageneral interest, and along those lines as well, status ofdiscussion about whether or not we want to broadcast theentirety of our council meeting, including the non-agenda items. bring that back up. i'm in favor of that. so i don't know what -- how weproceed with that.

i don't know if that is acouncil issue, a city manager issue, a -- but... >> are you talking about thedecember 1st? >> what was your third one? >> the third one, marcus'sfavorite, just a recommendation that at some point we, believeit or not, need to address dog park policy and a review of thatas well. there is a policy. >> there is a policy.

>> and i think it's -- i thinkit's a good start, but based on recent activity, i think itmight be a good opportunity for us to consider another approach. >> mr. thomas. i would recommend that thecouncil that we consider a consent agency for specialexceptions that come up from the planning commission thatrecommend approval, that they be placed on a consent agenda.

of course, they can be taken offa consent agenda by anybody who's interested on council andif anyone signs up to speak against it, it can certainlycome off. [ inaudible comments ]>> back of the room all meeting long. >> we can do that? >> i recommend a consent agendafor special exception approval and also for the tax rebate thatwe tend to do a fair amount of. >> yeah, we collect them all inone.

>> and then i would agree withthe request that our employment policy on nondiscrimination beupdated to include sexual orientation. >> i just have one more thing. [ cell phone music ]>> i like it! that's awesome. >> i just wanted to say that iknow a lot of us go around to different civic leagues andevents and things like that, and just in light of the recentelections and all of the unrest,

i think that it's just veryincumbent upon us as locally elected officials and localgovernment to make sure that we are promoting an atmosphere ofpeace, of acceptance, of mutual respect in meetings and thingslike that when we're dealing with constituents and regardlessof what our own individual opinions are about the electionor the outcome of the election, that we just don't play intopeople's fears, and that goes for, you know, as far as theadministration trickling down to staff and things like that.

there have been a couple ofincidents, you know, like at schools and things like thatwith children and so i think that as the leadership of thecity, we need to just be aware that these things are happeningand make sure that we promote and foster an environment thatis respectful and that is kind. you know, make america kindagain, you know? i think we can bring that to thetable to all of our residents and just assure them that, youknow, as their elected officials, their leaders, theirwhomever, that, you know, we're

going to work in the bestinterests of the entire city and we're not going to be divided. >> yes. >> i agree. >> kumbaya. >> in clerk. >> move the members of councilassembly in closed meeting on november 15th, 2016, for thepurposes set out in clause one and seven, subsection 2.2-3711for discussion of candidates of

city boards, commissions andauthorities and to receive legal counsel from the city attorneyregarding litigation. mrs. >> aye. riddick. smigiel. alexander.