SouthsideCentral was LIVE! at Danville City Hall for Tuesday’s Danville City Council meeting. This article is now as complete as it’s going to get, so enjoy the recap!
We’ve got a good attendance today, well at least relatively good from what it’s been before. Let’s take a look at the right side of the gallery.
We’re moving Sheila Baynes into our “Regular Attendees Club”, and she joins Dolores Reynolds and Harold Garrison. HELLO!
Yes, that kid has a stocking cap on. I’m guessing those three are there for a school project. Gus Dyer is here, and he tells me he’s going to have a surprise in his speech to Council. Oh boy. Let’s see who’s here on the left side.
We’ve got Glenn Scearce, Dianne McMahon, Lynette Lawson and this year’s Leadership Southside class, Stan Jones, Melissa Newton and Bill Sgrinia (and others). HELLO!
We’re underway. Sherman Saunders does the prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. The public comment session is next, and Sherman Saunders reminds everybody about the five minute time limit. Gus Dyer goes first and makes a claim that he’s owed $55,000 in rebates that were due to him under the old program that partially reimbursed developers for creating new subdivisions. He tries to get an answer on the spot from council and Saunders, but that’s not going to happen. Saunders asks Acting City Manager Ken Larking to find out more on this issue.
Gus Dyer makes his speech.
Yes.I said Acting City Manager. Although there’s been no official word on that, retiring City Manager Joe King hasn’t been around for a month. King’s still technically City Manager until the end of November.
Moving along, Tommy Goddard steps up and claims that the police department isn’t reporting shootings that are happening in Danville. On Friday, I factchecked this with Danville Police Chief Philip Broadfoot. He told me that all police reports that are taken are automatically loaded into the Police to Citizen part of the city’s website. The police department issues media releases on incident that are public safety concerns or incidents where rumors have the potential to spiral out of control. Anybody can access the P2C website and see where police reports and incidents have happened.
We give Tommy Goddard bonus style points for the Virginia Flaggers t-shirt.
Glenn Scearce is up next and he’s off-base again. I’m not going to barbecue Glenn this time, because he’s started to reach out for the facts on what’s going on with the city. I give him credit for that. He’s still off-base with his comments that the police has too many high-ranking officers and not enough patrol officers, but we talked about that on Friday morning.
Glenn Scearce is close to becoming one of the “Regular Attendees Club”.
The consent agenda is this year’s capital improvement projects and a lot of small grants for the police department. It passes with no issues. City board and commission appointments also fly through and so does the regular business. The regular business was funding the annual Community Development & Block Grant program from grant money, putting money aside for legal expenses, completing the agreement to buy the electricity generated from the Schoolfield dam and doing a moral obligation for Sky Valley Foods’ expansion project loan. There’s no Job Bust loss risk on that Sky Valley Foods loan, since they’re doing great and the IDA is backing the loan.
We move to the around the horn session. Nothing from any of the city staff. James Buckner & John Gilstrap have nothing. Larry Campbell & Gary Miller talk about lessons learned from the Virginia Municipal League meeting. Alonzo Jones reminds everyone about breast cancer awareness month. That’s a silent moment because he lost his sister to breast cancer earlier this year. Fred Shanks needles Sherman Saunders about the Dallas Cowboys and gets everybody laughing. Saunders returns fire in his talk.
We’re done here, so let’s move to the work session.
We’ve got five things to talk about in the work session…
- The Parks & Recreation fee schedule
- The 2040 Long Range Transportation Plan overview
- The annual VDOT revenue sharing grant
- Food trucks operating in the city
- Reimbursing developers for building infrastructure
This is part of the presentation on the Year 2040 Long Range Transportation Plan.
Here’s tonight work session gallery.
Parks & Recreation director Bill Sgrinia tries to explain things to City Council.
We’re underway in the work session.
I’m getting really mad as we start with Parks & Recreation fees. It seems that the support of elimination of the library fee isn’t unanimous. Gary Miller is strongly against eliminating the fee. Buddy Rawley joins the opposition. John Gilstrap points out that non-residents of Danville aren’t charged for parks and walking trails usage.
The opposition is that city residents pay for the library through taxes. Yes, that’s true. But it’s the spirit of cooperation with the county that’s the bigger concept. Fred Shanks points out the similarities between museums that have reciprocal agreements. Pittsylvania County doesn’t charge Danville residents. Buddy Rawley says that he believes that non-residents have all library use except checking out books. That’s false. I’d like to thank Lee Vogler for being a sense of reason in all of tonight’s discussion.
This discussion broadens out to the difference between all city resident and non-residents.
The non-resident library fee will be eliminated by a probable 7-2 vote. Who in the hell knows what will happen with other Parks and Recreation fees?
Lee Vogler has left the meeting and John Gilstrap has to leave. As Gilstrap leaves, he points out that Pittsylvania County doesn’t charge different rates for non-county residents.
Deputy City Manager Acting City Manager Interim City Manager Ken Larking makes his presentation.
We go through a presentation about the long range transportation plan and move along to a discussion about relaxing city rules on food trucks. James Buckner started this discussion after seeing other cities having great success with them. Amanda Paez has done an excellent job researching other cities’ rules on this.
We heart Amanda Paez.
Corrie Teague does an economic development project update and it’s time for a closed session, so we’re done. We’ve got more material that we could put here, but the article is already around 1100 words long. That’s enough for now.
This is the most comprehensive coverage of tonight’s Danville City Council meeting. Thanks for following along here on SouthsideCentral!
Please, please, someone save us from these people that preach cooperation and then don’t want to practice what they preach. The library is a resource that should be shared since it serves the entire area and many students (DCC, Galileo for example) and employees of the city do not live in the city. And no, if you do not have a library card you cannot use any of the resources available, it is not just about “checking out books”. Let’s spend an umpteen million dollars on the river district and bringing in the grand series of disappearing jobs but heaven forbid we let someone that might actually spend a couple of bucks eating lunch or shopping downtown in the precious district from using our library. The county doesn’t seem to have this “non-cooperation bug” and frankly their library system is far better than the one Danville offers. Rant over.
I can’t believe any county resident would be clueless enough to actually pay the fee. Go to a county library.
Those who don’t want to let us use their precious library need to stop profiteering off my utility bill and realize that treating us not like neighbors but foes will go a long way toward helping us decide to go to cheaper out of Danville restaurants in NC or maybe just staying home instead of paying meals tax. It’s not just about cooperation and the way the surrounding communities offer amenities to Danville residents. It’s that Danville wants to be the economic and cultural center of the region and that means encouraging people to visit instead of rolling out the “go away” mat.
Those who want to vote against this need to strongly consider just how dumb that vote would be.
Do you have any idea what happens if a city resident get caught placing waste in a county owned dumpster? The city & county are separate things. If you own a house valued at $150,000 in the city, you pay a good deal more property tax than you would if the same house was in the county. Services like the library cost money, and the county can have as many libraries as they want, but county taxpayers will have to pay for them. The same goes for professional fire fighters, police department, trash pick up and lots of other services.
http://www.danville-va.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?CID=5 You might want to do more fact checking they only have 1 shooting on this page and robbery. I’m not saying it’s no where but someone is covering up as much as possible to make Danville look safer than it is!! Please understand I’m not attacking you either I don’t want to get into a battle. I just want the information to be out there. To me I think in the 2nd 1/2 of this year there have been many criminal acts that are being violent.
You’re looking at the media releases. I explained the difference in the article. As for the covering up, that’s just impossible to do because the data has to be forwarded to the state police for the compilation data.
And let’s be real. With the exception of Bennie Sigmon, no truly innocent person has been shot in Danville in the past few years. In the last few weeks, we found out that the guy who was shot and killed at Woodside Village wasn’t the saint that has friends claimed him to be. He was a drug dealer who pulled out his own gun.
What I’m asking for I guess is more of a public release. I’m sure the state police is getting the info. What I want and think is not that big of a request is for more public release. If the police has that media release why not use it? How about the 17 year old shot in woodberry hills? The only release says he was walking to the store at 8 in the evening and was jumped? To me seems like the cover up is more to public information.
Chief Broadfoot gave me a good example. If Subject “A” says he was walking down the street and got shot but a quick investigation shows that Subject “A” accidentally shot himself while sticking his gun in his waistband, it’s not reported as an aggravated assault because the police don’t believe him.
One other problem with the myth of “Danville’s crime rate is high” is that too many people put credibility into people like Leonard Harville who has been well documented for making crap up. I’ve found that the Danville police department has been extremely cooperative with answering any questions that I’ve asked them. I asked for a factcheck on your speech and within an hour, I had Chief Broadfoot returning my phone call with the information.
I do get that example but if that person is underage or has no license for the gun other charges schould be filed. There are other shootings and hard to believe that 5 out of 6 are them shooting themselves or bad people. Either way what I think we schould have is a good way to see what’s going on like that and information on investigation like that example. Would make me and others fill better knowing information like that. Thanks for all the info you are relaying and that person does jump the gun sometimes. I just really want more information on violent crimes to be more for the public.
We need to get together and talk. I have a feeling that we may agree on a lot more than we disagree on.
Sounds good u probably have my email and my shop is down at the flag on n main st. I’m there most of the week.
Sorry they have 1 shooting in the last 60 days but several robberies. I think shootings are very important!!
The police haven’t made any public statement on this, but that string of 6 robberies in 3 days has been solved. The guys were arrested over in Greensboro.
The bank robbery right near the airport? Those people are in a North Carolina prison.
Yes my concern is like I was talking about the different shootings in different areas and just the lack of coverage and updates. 1 was a block from me and I was outside when it happened. There are 2 stories about it and no updates. Then 1 2 days later near my business and nothing on that one. I have a felling that there are more in the bad parts of town that I don’t know about. Like I said I was not trying to call anyone out I just think more information on shootings are needed. A lot of people I ask in Danville have only heard of like 3. Thanks for all you do and any info you find out.