Danville City Council – LIVE! (2/2/16)

SouthsideCentral was LIVE! at Tuesday’s Danville City Council meeting. We’ve cleaned up the article and added bonus content, so enjoy the most comprehensive recap of the meeting!

We’re underway! John Gilstrap leads the prayer & Pledge of Allegiance. We start with the public comment section and Duke Energy’s Davis Montgomery is up first.

We heart Davis Montgomery!

He talks about the coal ash cleanup process at the Eden power plant. He also says that the work on the new & impoved Abreu-Grogan park will start soon and will be finished by the end of April.

Steve DelGiornio takes his five minutes (and only uses 2 of them).

(Editor’s Note: Jeez. There’s a big startling difference between my phone and my camera photos. Ugh.)

Steve DelGiornio, owner of The 616 restaurant is up next. He urges council to consider a police precinct in the North Main Hill area like there used to be. Shameless plug: The 616 is open Thursday-Saturday nights for dinner and Sunday for brunch.

We’ve missed Glenn Scearce.

It’s Glenn Scearce! He’s talking about something. Start the clock! While Glenn Scearce is talking, let’s take a look at tonight’s audience while they’re trying to understand what Glenn is talking about.

On the left side, Mike Miller (on the front row) is looking puzzled. He ended up leaving halfway through the meeting. LE&D’s Mark Johnson also looks puzzled. Dianne McMahon is doing something and Petrina Carter’s hair is above Dianne McMahon’s head due to the camera angle.

Dolores Reynolds, Harold Garrison, Stave DelGiornio, Wayne Alan and Mike Rembold (among others) appear to be wondering what in the hell Glenn Scearce is talking about.

Less than one minute remains… (suspenseful music plays)

Glenn Scearce finishes his speech with two seconds left before the red light. Masterful clock management and he got his point across. Whatever that point was.

Wayne Alan magically appears at the podium! See what I did there?

Wayne Alan, owner of the North Theatre echoes Steve Delgiornio’s comments about an increased police presence in the North Main Hill area. That’s the end of the public comment section and we move to regular business. The minutes are approved and it’s all rezoning items tonight.

Oops. One old business items for matching funds for a criminal justice grant. Now to rezoning items. The properties above Danville Toyota and across from the Food Lion are rezoned for commercial. There were seven houses there (all in bad condition) with only three there now. Those three will be coming down soon.

Next, a small bit of land near a cellphone tower across from the Schoolfield mill property is re-re-zoned back to industrial after it wasn’t needed for the cell tower. After that, council takes up the proposed convenience store at 541 North Main Street. The owner of the property never showed up for the Planning Commission meeting. Steve DelGiornio spoke at that meeting saying that is was a bad idea. Everybody though it was a bad idea and it was rejected 7-0. Well, it still has to be officially rejected by city council. Steve DelGiornio is back to remind everybody it’s a bad idea.

Hey! We’ve got a surprise. Khan Abdul, the owner of the property comes to the podium and asks to withdraw the Special Use Permit proposal.

Khan Abdul plays “Stump City Council” and wins!

Nobody knows what to do and looks at each other for a few seconds. Finally, City Attorney Clarke Whitfield comes up with an idea that sounds like it’s probably right or close enough to being right that nobody will give a damn. Council votes 9-0 on a motion to allow the withdrawal of the item from the agenda.

We move along to the around the horn section. Fred Shanks is the main feature here, as he talks about errors on the city website and questionable tax valuations on IDA-owned properties. All council members thank the city workers for their work during the snowstorm. We’re moving to the work session.

Sherman Saunders moves police chief Philip Broadfoot’s crime prevention presentation up to first.

Philip Broadfoot knows his stuff, folks.

Here’s the main takeaway from tonight’s presentation.

Here’s some points made from the presentation:

50% of Danville’s robbery victims know their attacker. 20 of Danville’s 144 aggravated assault cases came from just 2 driveby shootings because there were 10 people inside the houses that were shot at.

The shootings in November and December came out of a broken relationship. Broadfoot says a 20-year-old man and a woman broke up with each party recruiting gun-packing reinforcements.

Chief Broadfoot says that the police department can do the job with the currently authorized 131 officers, but the department never is at full staff because of attrition. He’s asking for authorization to move to 135 authorized officers, that way he can continually test and hire new officers. This wouldn’t cost the city any money because he’s already authorized to pay 131 officers.

Larry Campbell says that being #2 in crime doesn’t really reflect how Danville is. Broadfoot says it’s disturbing to him, but the way that statistic is generated is what it is.

Violent crime is down, but the high numbers of non-violent crime distort the statistic that some people fixate on. People need to look at the overall numbers over a long term trend. Broadfoot said that year to year fluctuations are normal, a trendline calculation accounts for those fluctuations. He also said that strategic decisions can’t be based on a single year’s fluctuations.

Broadfoot is adamant that the police department can do the job when the department is fully staffed at 131 officers, but the 10% attrition rate makes full strength unlikely.

Gary Miller asks if all cities and towns count crimes as strictly detailed as Danville does (10 aggravated assaults from one shooting into one house). Broadfoot says “I hope they do, the rules are out there. But I can’t say that happens.”

He also says that restoring the second shift animal control officer position (cut because of budget concerns) would really help because those calls are now handled by police officers who aren’t fully trained in animal control. Those officers have to return to the police department to get the animal control truck or call another officer to bring the truck.

In 10 years, the police department has had 4500 applications but has only hired 90 because of the strict hiring process.

City council was ready to throw money at Broadfoot to hire more police officers but Broadfoot frankly said he didn’t need that to get the job done. Many councilmen said that was a surprise and showed fiscal conservatism.

That’s the end of Broadfoot’s presentation. Let’s take a smoke break (even if you don’t smoke).

And we’re back and the rest of the work session goes into Speed Round mode. Next up is talking about the removal of the dam behind the White Mill property. Public Works director Ric Drazenovich explains what could happen with the removal. He also reminds city council that this request is just to get the process started to get the costs of the project and see what grant money is available to reduce the city’s costs. There would still be a public hearing and other studies required before the dam removal would even come before council for the final word. Council gives Drazenovich the approval to start getting some numbers.

Utilities Director Jason Grey is next and he explains wanting to buy the electricity generated by a to-be-built solar farm on Kentuck Church Rd. This is a no-brainer because the power is at a good price and the city doesn’t have to do anything with the solar farm. It’s not much when compared to the Danville Utilities’ total power sales but it definitely can help cut costs when it comes to high power usage days. Council agrees to put it on the next agenda and I’m sure it will be approved by a 9-0 vote.

Finally, it’s back to the “Discussion of Rules of Procedure for the Council of the City of Danville, Virginia.” that everybody bickered about two weeks ago. City Attorney asks the council members if they liked what he emailed to them and they said that they did. I have no idea what was emailed to them nor does anybody else in the gallery. They didn’t even have a handout copy for the media so we could know what is going on. Bad form. Fooey.

Since there’s a closed session for economic development talk, we’re getting kicked out. That also means that we’d have to wait in the hall for that session to finish before the final around-the-horn session and that stinks too. Bad Form. Again. Maybe that can be changed in future work sessions. Anybody?

Oh well. We’re done. Thanks for reading the most comprehensive recap of Tuesday’s Danville City Council meeting… and it’s only here on SouthsideCentral!