City Council Meeting   8/15/2022

Everybody ready to go?

I see the city manager is here.

So I'll call this meeting of the Charlottesville City Council to order.

Ms.

Thomas is working from her office at the moment.

Any discussion?

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion passes for a 5-0.

I should have said aye too.

For those who are watching, this meeting will be divided into three main sections.

The first section is a work session right now to hear and discuss presentations that do not require a council vote.

There will then be a closed meeting soon thereafter to talk about a number of things

permitted to be discussed in closed session including litigation matters for example and we will move ourselves into that meeting and then at the end of things have a vote to establish that we did not in fact talk about anything we weren't supposed to talk about.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

We decided we'd come visit you in the chamber for this presentation because this is a momentous occasion for rolling out something that the city has never done before in terms of collective bargaining.

In the council packet was the memorandum.

The memorandum kind of gave an overview of how we got here.

As you recall, after the state legislature approved collective bargaining in Virginia, that gave city councils and school boards an option to pursue collective bargaining.

that there were two ordinances proposed by employee groups, one from the Fire Department and one from the Department of the Transportation Union.

And after reviewing that,

the council authorized the city manager to pursue consulting assistance to sort this out and come back with a recommendation of that.

What I did was establish a task force of internal directors who had prior collective bargaining experience, James Fries from Neighborhood Development Services, Chief Smith from the fire department,

Stacy Smalls from Public Works, Dana Kessler from Parks and Recreation, Garland Williams from CAT.

And added to that was Sam Sanders, our Deputy City Manager for Operations, Ashley Marshall, Deputy City Manager for RDI, Lisa Robertson was our advisor, and our new Human Resource Director, Mary Ann Hardy, who comes to us with a great deal of experience.

Council approved $685,000 to support the acquisition of the consulting support services.

The manager issued an RFP for consultants with demonstrated experience in public sector collective bargaining.

That was the main focus.

There were only two respondents to the RFP.

We selected Venable LLP.

Venable is a Washington-based law firm with considerable labor relations experience and employment law, and particularly on the public sector side.

And they've served a number of labor counsel to a number of local and state governments.

The team is represented by

Senior Partner Claude Bailey, who you'll hear from tonight, and Attorney Robin Burroughs, who is counsel and was supported by Robert Ames, another Senior Partner.

And of course, the City Manager has

a number of years of collective bargaining experience.

This is not my first rodeo.

And we're fortunate to have a human resource director with considerable experience as well.

With that introduction, I'll ask Mr. Bailey to walk you through the proposed ordinance that's in your packet.

along with the highlight memo that points out some key areas that we should discuss tonight.

Mayor Snook, members of the council.

My name is Claude Bailey.

I am a partner in the Washington office of Venable, and I'm joined here today by my colleague Robin Burroughs.

In our role as outside council, we are pleased to prepare before you today to explain the proposed ordinance that would authorize certain City of Charlottesville employees to elect representatives to engage in collective bargaining regarding some of the terms and conditions of their employment.

As you know, prior to 2020, Virginia law prohibited collective bargaining for public employees.

However, the council, I mean, the Virginia legislature enacted Virginia code section 40.1-57.2, which became effective in 2021, and authorized local jurisdictions to engage in collective bargaining with their employees if the jurisdiction chooses to do so through the enactment of an ordinance.

When the legislature passed that bill, the bill was fairly broad.

It's not very specific about the processes and procedures that the jurisdiction would use to engage in collective bargaining.

It pretty much left that up to the local jurisdiction.

It also did not provide any financial support to support the initiation of collective bargaining proceedings.

In addition,

That same law also places some limitations on the scope of collective bargaining process.

For example, negotiations may not restrict the local jurisdiction's ability to establish a budget or appropriate funds, nor are public employees permitted to strike.

Immediately following our engagement as outside council, we worked closely with the city manager and senior management team and city department heads in developing this legislation presented to you for your consideration.

We also drew upon our experience

with collective bargaining in neighboring jurisdictions including Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia with particular attention being paid to local Virginia jurisdictions that recently enacted similar ordinances including the City of Alexandria, City of Richmond, Arlington County, Fairfax County, and Loudoun County.

Some of the provisions of the legislation before you were taken from the ordinances enacted by them.

We also took a look at and considered the proposals that Mr. Rogers mentioned earlier that were submitted by the Amalgamated Transit Union and the President of the Charlotte Firefighters Association.

I would now like to turn over to the brains of this operation, my colleague, Robin Burrows, who was actually very involved in the development of the legislation.

And she will discuss the ordinance in much more detail.

and I'd like to thank Robin and our associate who is not here, Hermione Menard, who did most of the work in putting this proposed ordinance together.

And once Robin completes her presentation, we will be happy to answer any questions you might have.

I don't know where the powers that be are that control the slides.

I'll next slide them wherever they are if that's okay.

Can we go to the next one?

I think we might need to skip a couple, but that's okay.

So Claude told you a little bit about the code.

We were just calling out here for your notice some of the provisions in the Virginia code.

that we are operating under the code that actually authorizes the ordinance that we're putting before you today.

As Mr. Bailey was saying, there's not a whole lot in there.

It's a pretty lean piece of legislation at the state level.

It just says that we have to provide procedures for certification and decertification of collective bargaining representatives, that you cannot restrict the city's authority to establish the budget or appropriate funds, and that employees aren't permitted to strike

That's it.

That's all.

That's all we get.

So today we're presenting something a bit more fulsome for your consideration.

Next slide.

Thanks.

So just to give a little background on where we are in the grand scope of Virginia public sector collective bargaining, a few counties and cities have adopted ordinances to date, including Alexandria, Richmond, Arlington, and Fairfax.

A few have also rejected the opportunity to have collective bargaining in their locality, including the city of Portsmouth, Radford and Prince Edward County.

There are a number of other jurisdictions that have proposals under consideration that haven't been acted on yet.

So didn't list those for you.

And I also didn't list the school boards because school boards also can adopt their own collective bargaining ordinances.

But for the purpose of our presentation today, we were looking mostly at these jurisdictions that have adopted ordinances so far.

And I think it's important to keep in mind that there are those that have rejected collective bargaining after being offered the opportunity to have that proposed, which is something you could avail yourselves of in lieu of this ordinance and that was in the memo as well.

So next slide.

We can skip this one because I think it was already covered.

It's just about the development process.

Sorry that Mr. Rogers and Mr. Bailey already talked about.

So as we worked with the city manager and his wonderful team to develop this ordinance, we really came out with a couple of highlights that governed the provisions that we put in.

The first is that Charlottesville is not Fairfax or Richmond or Alexandria.

for a number of different reasons.

I'm sure you guys are much more attuned to that than I am.

But it has its own unique workforce with special needs and collective bargaining here has to represent those needs and this workforce and might not be the same as what Fairfax or Loudoun County or another jurisdiction might adopt.

The city manager in our discussions has recognized the importance of the adoption of a collective bargaining ordinance, but also that it will be a big change for the city in administering something like this, and also for the employees as they kind of get their feet under them and bargain for the first time in the state of Virginia.

For that reason, this ordinance takes a moderated approach to adopting collective bargaining.

It's sort of a walk before you run model of how to set up a statute like this.

And you'll see that I think in a number of ways as we walk through the specific provisions.

This is really in recognition of the fact that this is a new process on both sides for employees and for the local governments.

Even though there are some localities that have started enacting collective bargaining ordinances, there has not been a lot of collective bargaining in Virginia yet because those ordinances are just getting off the ground.

So this is still really new in the entire state.

The ordinance that we're presenting today recognizes that and, you know, the view that we've taken in its development is that it would be problematic to adopt wholesale what other jurisdictions, other states or in the private sector have taken decades to develop.

The last point is again that the City Manager's goal is to provide meaningful bargaining rates, but it's really a balance between that and exercising the decision-making capability that's necessary to provide services to employees in the City of Charlottesville and to be a good steward of the City's tax dollars because ultimately any dollar that we spend on this is a dollar that's coming out of

a taxpayer's pocket.

And we want to make sure that those are going to the best places among the many priorities that the city has.

Next slide.

So the first kind of substantive piece of the ordinance I'd like to talk about is the number of bargaining units.

This ordinance would allow for three units, one of police, sworn police officers in the Charlottesville Police Department.

The second would be for sworn uniformed firefighters in the Charlottesville Fire Department and the third is a transit union that would have a number of different positions but it's basically the full-time and part-time maintenance and operations employees in CAT.

These units all exclude seasonal and temporary employees, confidential employees, management employees, supervisors, volunteers, and probationary employees.

Those are all really typical exclusions that are consistent with the ordinances in other jurisdictions and also consistent with private sector labor relations.

In particular, police and fire are often

It's often important to note in police and fire the relationship in the chain of command between the supervisors and the lower ranked officers and to do that the ordinance includes a meet and confer right for supervisors in police and fire who are not included in the bargaining units that have been defined.

So anyone who's at a rank that would not be

defined as within the bargaining unit would have an additional right to meet and confer with the administration.

That's not as fulsome as a full bargaining right, but is a statutory commitment to meeting with those employees, listening to their needs and to addressing anything that may come up, particularly as things may come up as the city bargains with their subordinate employees because those issues often

flow up and down the chain of command.

We started with these units for a couple different reasons.

As Mr. Rogers mentioned, fire and transit have both been units that have expressed interest in organizing in the city.

Police is also, like fire, a public safety unit, and like transit, a group of employees that is having direct contact with the public on the front lines every day.

It seems like these would be three good places to start and a place where providing collective bargaining would have a really immediate role and benefit.

It is not the end all be all.

We understand as we'll talk about as we go through this, some of the other ordinances in other jurisdictions have more units or have a larger group of employees covered by those units.

and that's not the route that this ordinance takes again kind of a walk before you run sort of system in this one.

The thought here allows the city to set up its collective bargaining program and start negotiating really meaningful first contracts with three unions assuming that they all do seek to be certified.

and to focus on making sure that those those contracts get up and running and that the personnel and the system necessary for collective bargaining get up and running in the city right off the bat.

First contracts are very time consuming to negotiate both from the employee side and also from an administrative side in the private sector.

First contracts can take over a year.

The average first contracts take more than a more than a year to negotiate.

So it's very

personnel and time heavy.

And so rather than certifying eight unions and negotiating eight first contracts in the very first year of an ordinance like this, we've tried to focus our attention on the place where we could do some meaningful collective bargaining very early.

Sorry, I'm checking my notes to make sure I didn't miss something for you.

Next slide.

The ordinance would set out provisions for a labor relations administrator.

As we said before, the Virginia authorizing statute provides kind of a few do's and don'ts.

It doesn't really provide a lot of prescription about how this is supposed to be administered.

Other states, when they set out collective bargaining in the public sector, will sometimes set up what's called a personnel, a public employee labor relations board or a personnel board or a PERB, which administers and manages a lot of the logistics of getting a collective bargaining program up and running.

Virginia did not do that here, so the labor relations administrator is a position that seeks to fill the gap

left by that Virginia enabling legislation.

Again, this is an approach that's taken by a lot of other Virginia localities.

I think every other statute that's been enacted has an LRA or a labor relations administrator of some kind because somebody needs to be the person or body who is going to run elections and otherwise kind of meet out the neutral administrative nitty-gritty that comes with having a collective bargaining program.

Under this ordinance, the administrator would be a contract position that would serve for a four-year term that could be renewed if the relevant parties like that labor relations administrator, they could keep bringing that same person back.

The labor relations administrator would be selected by

by the city manager from a panel of candidates that's prepared by a joint committee.

The committee would have an equal number of union and management representatives either from a certified union if there is one or from a prospective union to the extent that there are any as the statute is getting itself up and running.

It would also provide for termination of the administrator by a joint agreement of the unions that are certified and the city manager if for some reason they think that person isn't doing a great job.

And then the administrator would serve as needed.

There would be funding necessary to pay for the administrator and their services.

In the early stages of the ordinance, I would anticipate the administrator is mostly overseeing elections and overseeing certification proceedings.

so that would be their first kind of series of jobs for any units that would like to be certified.

Later on the labor relations administrator also has a role in assisting with labor management disputes after collective bargaining agreements have been negotiated and with some other sort of decertification if a union wants to if a group of employees wants to decertify their union and not be unionized anymore the labor relations administrator would also run that

that proceeding.

Next slide.

Thank you.

So as far as unit certification and decertification, I think that you'll find this is really typical of both the public sector and the private sector and other jurisdictions in Virginia.

A prospective union can submit a petition for certification if 30% of the employees in that unit show interest in having the employee organization as their exclusive bargaining representative.

They usually do that by collecting signatures on a petition, something like that.

They get 30% of employees.

And then that would trigger a secret ballot election.

The election would be held within 30 days of

they're completing that showing of interest process.

Employees would have the opportunity to make a choice of the union that has brought forward the petition.

There's also a process for intervening unions.

So if one union wants to represent a group and another union comes in and says, me too, they can get their own signatures.

And the employees would eventually have a choice between the initial union, any intervening union, and no union.

in the election that would occur.

The election process is overseen by the administrator, and the ordinance contains a number of procedural outlines to make sure that that gets up and running in a neutral way.

and then employees who later might want to decertify an existing union would follow an analogous process.

They would get 30% signatures from people who are in that union or in that unit that the union is representing.

They would then either choose

continued representation by that union, no representation by any union, or if there's any other union that wants to step in at that point, they could be certified through that process as well.

Next slide.

So this slide and the next cover subjects of bargaining.

The first one here is the authorized subjects of bargaining.

And the next slide is the not authorized subjects of bargaining.

So I'll touch a little bit on both.

The authorized subjects include wages, salary, any monetary compensation, working conditions, which includes hours of work.

There are other things that are carved out as rights management rights that are reserved to the city.

I'll talk a little bit more about those on the next slide.

and the last is the non-health and welfare benefits like leave and holidays.

So the ordinance that the city manager is presenting extends bargaining in really what are the three main areas of labor relations, wages, hours, and terms and conditions of employment.

While I'll talk in a minute about the restrictions, I want to point out that not every proposed ordinance in the state of Virginia extends

all three of these areas, wages, hours, and terms and conditions.

There are some proposed ordinances that have only extended the opportunity to bargain on wages and hours and have excluded terms and conditions of employment.

because you guys have the choice, you as the council have the choice to enact this ordinance, another ordinance or no ordinance at all.

It really leaves a wide range of ground that you can cover as far as what can be authorized for employees to bargain over.

So if you choose no ordinance, the answer is nothing.

If you choose this ordinance, I'll talk about kind of what we envision as being appropriate subjects of bargaining.

but anything that's really on this list is more than what is currently happening and more than what could potentially happen if the council adopts no ordinance at all.

Go ahead to the next slide and I'll talk about those carve outs.

So the first one, and you probably noticed this on the previous slide, is health and welfare benefits.

The ordinance only provides for bargaining on non-health and non-welfare benefits.

So the things that would be excluded here would be health insurance, dental insurance, and retirement programs, other things that are really governed by plan documents and negotiated by the city through providers usually.

These sorts of things are really benefit from being economies of scale.

Charlottesville is not as big as Fairfax or Loudoun and the benefit plans that the city has are made better by being able to negotiate for a larger group of employees.

As soon as employees start negotiating a carve out from the health or the welfare benefit program,

It puts at risk the ability to maintain the same level of benefit at the same cost for all employees.

So once you start pulling people out of that group, you're not able to negotiate terms that are as beneficial.

So that's one reason that those benefits are not subject to bargaining.

The next one is a group of things that I kind of put under the heading of core personnel rules and decisions.

Section 5.01 of the Charlottesville Charter gives the city manager the full executive and administrative authority, and that includes the right to employ and discharge all employees under his control.

So consistent with the charter and with kind of general labor relations principles, we need to preserve the ability of the city manager to direct and control the workforce in order to provide the city services that are important to its residents and to the employees.

So things that are not subject to bargaining would be who is hired, who is terminated, who gets promoted, a subset of things around layoffs in the event that there's a need for a budgetary layoff, what jobs exist and the qualifications for those jobs, and other kinds of rules and decisions that are necessary to direct the workforce.

The third item here is budget matters.

That is per the Virginia enabling legislation.

We're not able to give that away.

And I'll note that any of the things that are not subject to bargaining, anything excluded by the ordinance is just not subject to bargaining, but it can still be discussed between the union and the city or the union, the city and an employee or another group of employees.

It might not be subject to collective bargaining under the terms of the ordinance, but to the extent that

The city and the employees have a mutual goal.

They can always work together toward that goal.

It's not closing the door on these discussions.

It's just not bringing it under the umbrella of this ordinance and requiring collective bargaining on it, which is where it currently is.

Those decisions now are with the city manager or the city council.

So it's just not changing who would be making those decisions.

Next slide.

So for dispute resolution, there are a number of different disputes that could arise in labor relations context.

The labor relations administrator will handle some of those that I talked about earlier.

The parties can also negotiate procedures for certain disputes.

Once a union is certified, that could be a topic for negotiation.

The specific dispute that I'm going to talk about on this slide is called impasse, which is when the city and a union can't agree on the terms of a collective bargaining agreement.

So they've been negotiating and for some reason they just can't come to an agreement on what the CBA or what the agreement is going to say.

In order to resolve that, the ordinance provides for a multi-step procedure.

First to try to get the parties to reach a negotiated agreement because negotiated agreements are generally really better for both sides than a mandated agreement.

So the first step would be mediation to try to really get the parties to work together to come to that negotiated resolution.

If mediation fails, the parties would then engage a neutral fact finder who would issue written recommendations about how to resolve the items that are in dispute.

Those recommendations would go to both parties and the city manager would consider them before submitting his budget to you, the city council, and the city council would retain the ultimate legislative discretion on any of those proposals.

So anything that costs money that comes to you in the budget, you can either adopt or decline.

The unions and the city like I said are free to negotiate other dispute resolution procedures for certain items but the ordinance focuses on impasse because when you can't get to those dispute resolution procedures for other items you need some way to break the tie.

So that's what this mediation and fact finding procedure is set up to do.

Next slide.

So, as noted, we did consider in our development proposals from the Amalgamated Transit Union and the Charlottesville Professional Firefighters Association submitted by one of its members.

There are a lot of similarities in this ordinance that we're putting before you and the ordinances that the union submitted.

I'm calling out on this slide some differences just to note kind of where we went in a different direction and why.

So the two union proposals provided for nine and eight bargaining units respectively.

It's a lot of units.

No other Virginia localities generally keep the number of units smaller and we've gone in that direction by limiting just to fire police and transit here.

Some of the other Virginia localities keep the number of units small by putting a much larger grouping of employees within one unit.

Some, for example, have fire, police, and everyone else in another unit.

We're going a different direction with that by starting with just police, fire, and transit.

The more units you have, the more collective bargaining agreements you have to negotiate, the more personnel that you need to negotiate agreements, the more potential there is for impasse

and disagreement over those collective bargaining agreements.

And the more people that you need to have in human resources who are familiar with each of those eight or nine agreements and their terms so that they can make sure that they're honoring those terms in the administration of personnel actions.

So it's the more unions you have, the more contracts you have, and the more cumbersome it is to administer them all, which is one of the reasons we're trying right now to keep things smaller than that.

The union proposals had very broad subjects of bargaining with little discretion left to the city manager and the city council.

We want to make sure that the city can continue to run efficiently and that the city manager is able to exercise those powers given to him by the charter.

So we took a different approach on the subjects of bargaining.

And like I said, the economies of scale and the ability to negotiate better terms on especially those benefit packages is a big part of the difference there.

The proposals from both unions required the city to pay union representatives for performing union specific work.

That's a provision I think that could be negotiated if a union wanted to negotiate that but wouldn't be appropriate for legislation.

Similarly, requiring final binding arbitration over any grievances in the contract is something that's frequently a topic of negotiation between a union and the city.

but I don't think that's an appropriate place for the council to be stepping in and legislating or requiring that type of arbitration.

The firefighters proposed ordinance rather than having a labor relations administrator had a three-person council

that was convened to run elections and resolve disputes and do other things of that nature.

So that's a different approach to how to administer these provisions in the absence of something like a PIRB.

Other Virginia localities have gone with the one-person approach rather than creating a council.

The council, three people, is more cumbersome, more expensive than one.

So I think we're in line with other jurisdictions by recommending one labor relations administrator here.

and then the impasse procedure that the unions provided in their prospective ordinances was a little bit different.

It required final binding arbitration over negotiation impasse and then when that binding arbitration decision came to the council, it required the council to adopt the award as a whole in the budget or reject the award as a whole in the budget.

I think that that's a challenging way to resolve a dispute

because if there's something that the council does not like in the arbitrator's award, you're left with an all or nothing approach.

And if you take the nothing approach, the union proposals would have you send that back to the parties for more bargaining, which really just prolongs the bargaining process.

and the amount of time that there isn't resolution.

At some point there needs to be finality, especially when you have a city to run.

So we've taken an approach that gets to that finality I think a little quicker and maintains more of the authority of the council for rejecting or accepting those items that the parties either negotiate or that come out of the fact-finding procedure.

Next slide.

So since we're trying to walk before we run here in the ordinance, we do kind of reflect that we may want to run later.

To make a commitment to that, the city manager has put in a provision that allows for review after a certain period of time, after the ordinance has had some time to kind of run its course.

The review would include a collaboration between any unions that are certified and the city manager and his staff to make sure that

both sides get an opportunity to kind of raise areas where there may have been either concerns or hiccups or potential problems or where there remain opportunities to better develop the collective bargaining process.

This would come after two years because as I'm going to show you on another slide it does take a while to get elections and collective bargaining

agreements up and running after all of that happens.

And the city has started to actually develop the collective bargaining program, has some personnel in place for this, has selected a labor relations administrator.

The city will be in a better position to anticipate the budget needs of potential expansion and to understand sort of where things went right and where things could be improved in the ordinance as it was written.

Next slide.

So here's that potential timeline.

If you decide to adopt the ordinance effective January 1st, I'm just trying to run it out until its logical conclusion based on the timelines in the proposed ordinance.

unions could start petitioning for election immediately.

Oh, I should go back actually, because the time between whenever you adopt the ordinance and January 1st would be the time the city has to try to obtain a labor relations administrator who's going to actually run those elections and take any petitions that the unions have.

So there does need to be some time to put out a call for that person, do some potential interviews, negotiate a contract with that individual regarding payment and all those things.

assuming that can be done by January 1st.

January 1st could be the dates that unions submit petitions for election.

I know there are a couple who are itching, so maybe they'll do that.

They could be then certified as early as March 23rd because the labor relations administrator would collect the petition, verify it, and then set up that secret ballot election and certify the results of the election.

So it would take a little bit of time to get notice out to all the employees that there's going to be an election, get them all there, get the votes counted and all that.

The city and any certified unions could begin negotiating first collective bargaining agreements anytime really after certification, anytime both parties are ready.

Like I said, first agreements take a lot of time, so it would be good to get those negotiations underway quickly.

If they can't reach an agreement on that first collective bargaining agreement, they would start to follow the impasse and mediation and fact-finding procedures probably in late 2023 or early 2024, depending on

kind of when impasse is declared.

The City Council would then have time in spring to figure out what funding is needed to implement the collective bargaining agreements that have either been negotiated or resolved through mediation and fact finding before the adoption of the budget process.

And then we would propose that the collective bargaining agreements run with the City's budget cycle, just

It's easier for you all to be able to put things in the budget if they're effective July 1st with the rest of the budget items.

Subsequent contracts would then be negotiated based on however long the term of the first agreement is.

If the parties have a one-year agreement, they'll be back to the bargaining table pretty quickly.

If they have a four-year agreement or something on the longer side, they'll sit on whatever they have for a little while and then negotiate when that comes due at a later time.

Next slide, which I think is the last slide.

Yep.

Anybody?

Yeah.

Yeah, I have several kind of comments, questions, and I don't expect, like, answers today, but just kind of as you're talking, as I read, I had several things.

Thank you.

So a couple of times you mentioned Charlottesville has, you know, special needs as far as employees and things.

And so I understand that, but is there something particular that, you know, I'm still new to this that I don't know, like, you know, or, you know, what,

Sure.

So your transit group has both public transit and pupil transportation.

That's one thing that's a little bit unique about Charlottesville.

Its size and its proximity to the University of Virginia is also notable.

So you obviously have a tax base that differs because of the University of Virginia and the kind of things attendant to that.

Obviously, the university brings its own benefits.

It also brings its own challenges.

And I'm sure you guys see that.

So I think that's relevant in this as well.

Just looking at the

localities that so far have adopted or not adopted collective bargaining.

I think size and budget size are important in there as well.

You have fewer employees, fewer residents, and a smaller budget than a lot of those other jurisdictions that have adopted collective bargaining so far.

I think the next largest is the City of Alexandria.

and it's got four times the budget that you guys do.

It is, yeah.

Okay, so thank you.

That's very helpful.

That clears that up.

Some of these you responded to later.

So, as far as the agreement itself, let's say we have that agreement, and whether it's one year or four years, let's say it's four years, hopefully it's more than one year.

It's often between the two, but yeah.

Yeah, so, but let's say, particularly the first one, we go through one year, and we realize that, you know, because we're new at this, that we, both sides want to make changes, even one side.

So both sides could voluntarily reopen a collective bargaining agreement if they wanted to.

Sometimes things, COVID is a good example, will step in and sort of change the course of events where maybe one side or the other wants to reopen.

And it's usually a conversation between the two parties about what can be done, what must be done, and what would kind of work between them.

If the union and the city are both like, wait, we messed this up real bad.

We need to go have a redo.

That's definitely possible.

We'll try to get it right on the first way.

My next question is that kind of what my schoolboy had on is that when we looked at a school, we saw every

person is important, from the janitor to the cafeteria worker to the principal to the teachers.

As we're going through this, how, you know, when one goes first, how do we, I mean, we don't want to seem like we're negotiating with one union or department, seem like we're giving them more and the other ones not.

How is that

You're absolutely right every employee is important and but remember what we've said here our rationale for bringing you three union units at the beginning was two

came forward first and so out of courtesy to that consideration and they happened to be very clear units around which a bargaining unit could be placed and then we added the other public safety unit to that.

That does not mean that other employee units or any possible units are not important.

Mr. Rogers, I understand it.

What I'm getting at is that let's say we support these three or whatever and next year someone else comes to us and we've given these three A, B, and C and this next group say, well, we want to give you A and B.

because I'm just trying to see how we can say, well, we're not going to give you C even though we gave the other ones.

I understand.

Let's just say once we established a collective bargaining agreement with any unit, anyone who comes behind that is going to begin the process with what we gave the last one.

and we're going to have to deal with that at the bargaining table.

So people won't be left out.

Yeah.

I just have a couple more comments and then please

Thank you, fellow counselors, for this time.

So I'm thinking about the impacts, like if one locality decides to do it, has there been any studies or information on the impact, like

Employees of adjacent locality saying, well, they seem like they're treating their employees better or worse.

I'm not aware of any studies because most states that adopt collective bargaining do it on a broader, less decentralized basis than Virginia.

I'll look a little bit to Maryland because while they don't have a similar statute, they are in a way decentralized.

Maryland doesn't have a perb like Virginia won't.

and I think that each jurisdiction in Maryland and I've worked with a couple of them look at how their individual bargaining units and what they bargain impacts surrounding jurisdictions and especially when it comes to recruitment and retention in particular.

Each jurisdiction that I'm aware of is keeping a keen eye on what other jurisdictions bargain because they want to make sure that they're competitive from a recruitment and retention perspective.

So I'm not aware of any kind of larger studies as far as collective bargaining versus not, but it's a very common problem or line of analysis in public sector bargaining where you have to look at your neighboring jurisdictions and

see what they're doing.

And it's not entirely dissimilar from looking at the wages of the police department, the next penny over and seeing if you're competitive with that.

Yeah, and right here, we know that the county will be looking at what we're doing, and even though the university is not subject to collective bargaining, they'll be looking too, because it will have a collateral impact on what their employees are thinking and attempts by unions to approach their employees.

So my last comment is concerning the ballot of the certification, I guess, the 30th once it's approved, we get to 30%.

I mean, they must get to 30%.

And as I understand, did you say that the administrator kind of oversees that?

Or is it the union oversees that?

What I'm trying to get at, I'm sorry, is that

I want to try to make sure that, you know, someone, an employee comes in.

I don't believe that the process was clear or fair whether they were in support of it or against it.

Yeah, so the first step is on the union itself, on the prospective union to collect those signatures for the petition to show interest.

That process is not really overseen by the labor relations administrator or by anyone but the union, except to the extent that once they bring their petition to the labor relations administrator, the administrator could say, hey, I don't think these are, you know, valid signatures, like these, you know,

Joe Smith is not an employee in the union.

Something like that could be called out at the petition stage.

The election stage is where you get the oversight.

So after the 30% interest is shown with the petition, the Labor Relations Administrator will hold that secret ballot election.

The ordinance has some provisions in there for election administration, but the administrator also gets to kind of set the

Thank you.

The any proposed so at this point the ATU and the firefighters organization have already stepped forward and shown interest so they would have a seat at the table in that conversation because they've they've kind of got the ball rolling if any other unit is sort of moving in that direction

It would also be relevant.

It becomes clearer.

It would depend on who the union would select.

Okay.

And all the unions would make

What I'm asking is if let's say down the road we have eight unions, does that mean there's eight representatives at the table?

Yes.

Okay, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I'm just saying that that could be a very clunky thing.

That is part of the reason we're trying to limit ourselves at the outset.

Yeah, I don't understand that last piece.

Could you explain it to me again?

So if we have three unions, you're saying that

They would generally they would select a representative so in other Virginia localities they've either selected like the president of the employee organization because even though Virginia has not allowed for collective bargaining

in the sense that we're talking about today.

There are certainly employee organizations that in other states act as collective bargaining representatives that exist in Virginia and I think that's how you got proposals from ATU and from the firefighters because there are fraternal organizations or employee organizations that already kind of exist out there.

In other jurisdictions, those organizations, even before they were certified, have sent a representative, either the president of that organization or someone on the leadership committee, whoever they decide through whatever their processes are.

Sometimes they send an attorney who represents that union to the table with an equal number of management representatives, and then they would

You would put out a call.

Anyone who wants to be a labor relations administrator, please submit your application.

And then that committee would then hire that person.

Yeah.

But then they would pick a slate of three and then send the slate of three up to the city manager who would make the final decision.

Okay.

I had two more questions.

How often do you do the actual collective bargaining agreement?

It depends on how long the contract is that they negotiate.

Some unions will do a yearly contract, and depending on what the union and the city wants, sometimes two years.

But I guess within that agreement you could set up sort of progressive raises or whatever.

So if you had a three-year agreement, you would have three years of wage increases that are included in that document.

Okay.

All right.

And then the other question I had, you mentioned something in the context of the fire department and the hierarchy in the fire department in terms of, I know that what's been laid out is below battalion chief would be-

available to participate, able to participate.

So supervisors within that lower part of the hierarchy or supervisory above that?

Meet and confer, yes.

So fire is a good example.

So fire below battalion chief are eligible to be in the bargaining unit where they would have collective bargaining rights.

Battalion chief and above would not be in the unit, but they could meet and confer with the city would have an obligation to meet and confer with them.

So even though they won't negotiate a collective bargaining agreement, the commitment is to sit with those supervisors at the metaphorical table, probably a real table too, I guess it depends on COVID and Zoom, and all of this.

Okay, but those supervisors you're speaking of, are those the battalion chiefs?

Battalion chiefs and above.

So I have a couple of questions as well.

What is a confidential employee?

Sure.

So all of these things are defined in the ordinance.

A confidential employee is just someone who has access to highly confidential information usually.

So sometimes like an assistant to the city manager might, you know, they read all his emails, they might have The entire legal department?

The entire legal department.

Well, they wouldn't be eligible for a bargaining unit right now as they're laid out anyway because they wouldn't fall within transit, fire, or police.

And those positions would be defined under our personnel rules that we are drafting and right?

And that's, I guess, kind of leads into my next, since temporary and seasonal employees are not eligible, we need to further define what that is in reality versus just what is temporary.

We had a very extensive conversation about that this morning as we discussed our personnel rules, and you're right.

We would like to really, under the personnel rules, clarify what that means because it has implications.

in terms of hours worked, has its implications in terms of pension eligibility, et cetera.

Okay.

I just, yeah, I just, and I just want to make sure that we're not closing the door down the road on anybody who wants, and that's an issue for me because just because we have a couple of

divisions right now who are ready to go.

I think that what we've set up is an initial infrastructure that we want to get in place.

We, with the timetable that takes about, you know, two years.

And as, and in the meantime we'll be working toward, shall we say, establishing the new infrastructure.

Other employee groups will be able to observe that and they will be, it will be a textbook case of how they, too,

can participate in collective bargaining if they choose to.

And so we're not closing the door.

No, that's fine.

That's fine.

And that's... I'll add, if I just could add to your answer a little bit, the exclusions that we've written in are very typical exclusions that would from units that wouldn't necessarily change once we add units.

So supervisors are almost never included in a unit with the employees.

Confidential employees are almost always excluded from collective bargaining.

This is typical in both the private sector and the public sector.

If there was, would, I know disciplinary, currently we are saying disciplinary action is being removed from bargaining.

They'll be set forth in the collective bargaining agreement.

Okay.

It is management's right to discipline.

It is the union's obligation usually to, if they think it's wrong, to follow the appropriate grievance process in the interest of the employee.

Thank you.

I've got a few comments, some I've shared previously, but I do continue to think that portions of this are weak in a way that concerns me.

Particularly the big things that jumped out to me is I do strongly believe that benefits should be included as something that can be bargained over.

I looked at the other localities in Virginia that have approved ordinances and we would be the only one that doesn't allow benefits and I understand the concern over economies of scale but to me that issue seems to be addressed by the fact that there's no binding arbitration over fiscal issues so city council will always have that final decision making if there is a request that would not be in the financial best interest of the city

And I also think that there are other things employees could bargain over related to benefits that may not be just switching from one plan to another.

I know in the past with school bus drivers there were concerns about how to expand, for example, just who qualifies for full-time benefits.

The second would be, I understand the framework I guess the state legislature has, doesn't like a lot of other states, it's not binding arbitration over fiscal issues, but other localities had binding arbitration over non-fiscal issues and anything fiscal sort of followed the process that was laid out in this current proposal.

I like that framework.

Third is we also stand out in terms of our definition and exclusion of temporary employees.

I know the Richmond School Board did not exclude any temporary workers and all the other ones did exclude temporary workers but they defined it in terms of someone who had worked for less than four months consecutively or less than 90 days consecutively

I think there's more work we need to do to figure out exactly what that's going to be particularly in light of what Councillor McGill raised in terms of we know that the city has a long-term issue in terms of how we've classified our temporary employees.

Some have literally worked for the city for over a decade as their primary employment yet still remain temporary.

And the final comment is, if we're going to limit ourselves to three bargaining units, I understand why transit and fire jump to the top, because they've both made formal requests to collectively bargain.

But I don't understand why police has won out over any other bargaining unit.

To my knowledge, they have not come forward to us requesting unionization.

I have heard that there are employees in Public Works who had reached out to unions.

And so I'm wondering if it could potentially make sense as a third unit to have that be a unit for general employees that could be general municipal employees that would be organized under ASCME or SEIU rather than limiting ourselves in this way.

But greatly appreciate the presentation information.

That's all I have.

So questions I've got.

The information we have is not very fulsome.

They went to the council, they took a vote, and they rejected it.

Yeah, that's what I can take some guesses.

I gather if we

If we pass this particular ordinance and we wanted to add a fourth union, that would require an amendment to the ordinance?

And a fifth and so on.

There's not an automatic process, but the ordinance does require after two years that that committee get together of the unions and the city manager's team and will come up with a list of recommendations that will be brought before the council.

So while it's not automatic, like

Shazam.

One of the issues that I know some people are concerned about because they've reached out to me and expressed their concern

deals specifically with the question of police unions, and in particular, this ties very directly into the question of grievance procedures and grievance actions, and I'll distinguish between

negotiating over the procedures where you might say we're going to make it a part of the contract that you have the right to this hearing and this hearing and this hearing as opposed to the grievance action where

as a part of the contract the union folks would be basically there would be a right for the union to take an active role in on behalf of the person such that I guess in most of the places where it's really been a problem there ends up being some kind of arbitration a mandatory arbitration

in that respect, that when people complain about, gee, we can never fire a dirty cop because their union then goes and gets them reinstated, is that basically because there's some sort of mandatory arbitration provision in there?

I know there is.

Sure.

So to start with this ordinance, it doesn't overstep anything set out in state law that provides rights to public safety employees.

So for example, I'm going to call it the Firefighter's Bill of Rights, but it's kind of a colloquial name.

It has another name under the legislation.

sets out a set of procedures that must be accorded to firefighters when they are undergoing discipline and this ordinance doesn't and can't as a local ordinance overstep any of those procedures set out in state law.

So that's

kind of the first part.

For police specifically, there's a whole lot of stuff going on right now around citizen review and oversight boards.

And this ordinance carves out that as an area where there wouldn't be able to be bargaining that would reduce the authority of those boards.

So that's a particular place specific to police that is carved out of the ordinance because it is a concern and

because it's something that's coming from the state and there are procedures and rights under those grievance provisions that are separate from things that can be negotiated.

As a general matter, I agree that there's news coverage and other things like that about how hard it is to fire dirty cops because of the union.

I think that it depends on the procedures that are negotiated for discipline between the union and the city.

And that's a place where we spent a lot of time talking about what that can look like.

It is ultimately important to us that the city manager maintain the prerogative to terminate employees.

That's something that's granted to him under the charter.

and I think it's something that's appropriately the city's responsibility.

I think that there's likely to be proposals regarding discipline that a potential police union could bring forward and we'd need to look at those and in bargaining determine whether they're bargainable under the ordinance and also determine whether they're appropriate.

under the particular circumstances of the Charlottesville Police Department.

But it really is all a matter of what gets bargained for.

And I think that this ordinance tries to maintain a lot of that discretion with the city manager for exactly the reasons that you're alluding to.

that ultimately it shouldn't be the unions who are deciding who gets to work.

So I will confess that because until just very recently,

it hasn't been relevant to anything I've been doing.

I haven't paid a lot of attention, but it seems my guess is that most of the situations where police reform activists get involved and get upset about people who can't get fired, in most cases there has been some issue that has been submitted to an arbitrator

That or localities would trade increasing pay or benefits in exchange for less discipline.

Yeah, it is one of the reasons that final and binding arbitration was not our preferred method of dispute resolution, although for grievances and things like that could always be negotiated by the parties within the confines of the collective bargaining agreement.

But it is true that if you submit to final and binding arbitration, it is final and it is binding.

And that is extra true in Virginia because

In some places you can submit a final binding arbitration award to a court for judicial review to make sure that it aligns with the law and Virginia's Arbitration Act does not allow for that.

In Virginia, if you have a final binding arbitration decision that you want judicial review of, the court will only really look to determine whether there was an arbitration agreement and whether the arbitrator acted in the scope of it.

A court in Virginia will not overturn a final and binding arbitration award

for manifest disregard of the law or for an arbitrary and capricious decision-making process.

It basically has to be fraud, like we bought the decision for a court to overturn it.

Is there anything in this statute

Not in the statute itself because the statute doesn't have any final binding arbitration.

It has fact finding and mediation subject to the review of the city manager and the council.

This would come into play if the city and one of the unions negotiates a final binding arbitration procedure in their collective bargaining agreement for some type of dispute that's not otherwise covered by the ordinance.

The ordinance itself wouldn't touch that.

Okay.

I can look up their ordinances if you like, but that sounds correct.

I don't have them in front of me, but I think that sounds correct.

They also reserve in their statutes a set of management rights.

Discipline falls to some degree or another within their management rights.

So in theory, you could have, if you're negotiating over just in theory,

Well, to the extent you guys are writing the ordinance, you can write whatever you want, so that's it.

I think it becomes difficult to negotiate those boundaries, though, as you get through, because the first thing you mentioned about whether it's a fiscal or non-fiscal matter, I think is a really illusory and difficult question to answer, because really everything has a cost.

Like, you know, if you negotiate a grievance procedure, there's no immediate expenditure related to that.

But there will be an expenditure down the line as you have to hire personnel to handle grievances, as you have to pay arbitrators for different arbitrations that they do.

So while a lot of things that seem non-fiscal at the outset can often have fiscal implications, so I think that that's a really difficult line

to walk, but you could start carving out from binding arbitration certain matters, but that line drawing problem will occur with each matter you carve out.

The parties, as they sit down at the negotiation table, will be asking each other, like, is this subject to binding arbitration or not?

Or like, is this actually fiscal or is this actually discipline?

And it could create a lot of unresolved

Do you know one of the issues that has been raised already is the question of Charlottesville's, the suggested exclusion of the health and welfare benefits.

Of the jurisdictions that have approved

Do you know that one?

So, Charlottesville is not.

Right.

I don't know whether that makes a difference or not.

I mean, it is a difference.

Whether it's a difference that's important is another issue.

Do you know whether those other five jurisdictions are jurisdictions that have

Basically, are any of them self-insured for those benefits?

Do you know?

I don't know that.

We'll get back to you on that.

You have a contract with Aetna or

Is that not what we have?

No.

You know, and we pay, you know, they set up the service and they pay the bills, we pay them.

And we pay them to administer it.

So as far as an employee goes, they may still think they're dealing with

I don't even know who the administrator is.

But in fact, the money is coming, the payout is coming from the city.

It also makes a difference in the pool of risk that you have.

If you're self-insured, the pool of potential risk you take on is the

It's basically the group of employees that you are insuring.

If you're not, they can carve up the risk differently to create larger groupings and diversify the risk of a potentially large claim.

Okay.

I note a quick confab here with our HR director.

Are we getting into perilous territory here?

Excuse me?

Well, you know, that's why I think we're okay.

We will get back with a very clear statement on the other jurisdictions and whether they're self-insured or not and whether they are in the Virginia retirement system.

I think, you know, all that makes a difference.

Let me remind you that we cut it where we did because of our capacity.

We looked at the other jurisdictions.

They are all much bigger than we are, have far more resources than we have here, and therefore being able to do benefits by bargaining unit will have less of an impact.

on them.

And even with that, they have so many employees, I think Fairfax has 12,000 employees, that it's still a much larger bargaining unit than would exist here.

And so they would still have some economies of scale, you know, that would get them certain discounts.

Sure.

What's the biggest driver of capacity?

Wouldn't that be

It's bargaining units and it takes a lot of time to negotiate contracts.

It's both for the management staff of our human resource director and the labor relations person that we hire and those in the agencies, the management in the agencies at the table and the employees who are away from their jobs

during this bargaining process.

And if you can imagine, if we had those eight unions that we were bargaining with, there's a sequencing of that and just having the staff to be able to address all of those meetings.

Right.

Well, I suppose at least to me it sounds like the most consequential decision there is just the number of bargaining units.

Do you think the size of a bargaining unit, does that impact the difficulty of

Well, no, not specifically.

It depends.

I think when you have a bargaining unit like, you know, police and fire and transportation, they are all the same.

But when you have a general employee unit where you have trades people and planners and

and clerical people and other policy people that might be included.

Yeah, it's not driven, I agree, it's not driven as much by number of people in the unit as kind of the diversity of interests that they have.

So in a general employee unit, you'll typically see the union negotiating for salaries for each specific title within that unit.

And if there are multiple divisions or departments, for example, within that general employee unit, they'll negotiate a separate salary scale across departments and across positions.

So you're basically, even though it's one unit, you're negotiating

I had one other question about the meet and confer provision what what would

So wages are often an area of concern because when a subordinate unit negotiates a wage increase, there can be compression between the lower and the higher ranks.

And so although those supervisory units don't get

collective bargaining and that there will be a written salary scale.

It's certainly something that the city wants to keep its eye on.

Is there compression occurring?

We want generally supervisors to make more than the people that they supervise.

Otherwise, people will never become supervisors, among other things.

So just kind of addressing those sorts of issues.

Salary compression is usually the biggest one.

But sometimes there are other issues that I've seen come up in those sorts of scenarios, too.

So what action is being asked of us tonight?

This is the first unveiling of the proposed ordinance.

We will certainly get feedback.

You will get feedback.

Starting at 6.30.

Yeah, starting at 6.30, right.

And there will also be on the next council meeting a public hearing.

and in between I'm sure that there will be emails going back and forth and people will express themselves and in our discussions you will

I had one more question.

I didn't think I would get an opportunity, but it seemed like we had a few more minutes.

Go ahead.

And that was one of the comments that you had when you had the two columns up is that I think that if I understand it, the union was they were requesting that

Yes, yes.

So I've experienced that in the past where there's a full-time steward

that's selected by the union whose job it is to walk around, talk to the employees, go to grievance meetings with employees to collect their concerns and bring them to management.

It's been, it's usually an employee

who's kind of pulled out from the union, you know, and they are paying.

And, you know, you have to, I have to, where I've experienced that in the past, it's been much larger jurisdictions and much larger bargaining units than we can expect here, which meant that there was enough activity

that it would warrant a full-time union representative.

Right.

We've come, we've followed what we think is a very good process.

I'm very pleased with the collaboration with Venable and with our team and it got us to this point.

Yes, there are differences in what we propose against what other jurisdictions have done, some slight differences.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

So that's our 4 to 5.30 time block.

I want to thank both Mr. Rogers, Mr. Bailey.

Burrows, yes.

Ms.

Burrows, for your efforts here and your time with us here.

Thank you all.

Appreciate you coming.

Yes.

So pursuant to section 2.2-3712 of the Virginia Code, I hereby move that the City Council close this open meeting and convene within a closed meeting as authorized by Virginia Code section 2.2-3711A1.

Is there a second to the motion?

Second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion passes.

Okay, by my clock it's 6.30 and time for us to reconvene.

I move that the City Council members certify by a recorded vote that to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting.

Any discussion?

All in favor say aye.

Actually we have to do this by roll call.

Beg your pardon.

Ms.

Councillor McGill?

Yes.

Yes.

Mayor Smith?

Yes.

Motion passes 5-0.

Next on the agenda is Boards and Commissions.

Second Ms.

Thomas

Councillor McGill yes Councillor Payne yes Councillor Pinkston yes Mayor Snook yes Vice Mayor Wade yes that motion passes five nothing and just so folks will understand there are still two vacancies on the CRHA board which we will take up after we have as we are required to do by statute by ordinance after we have interviewed the applicants and so that will be taken up in in September

We should have begun the 6.30 p.m.

business meeting with a moment of silence.

Let's have a moment of silence, please.

Yeah, I wanted to make one briefly.

I just wanted to thank the Clergy Collective for their efforts on Friday night in the commemoration of the August 11th and 12th, 2017 events.

The Clergy Collective had something they called Unite the Light.

and it was basically two parts.

I agree, both of them as well.

And I would also like to say, because we had some discussion of this over the last month, that one of the things that I had

had been assuming and it turns out to have been a valid assumption.

Charlottesville is a community of a lot of intelligent and creative people and we saw a lot of their creativity and intelligence on display in the past week or so starting with Eze Amos but not limited to him, Wes Bellamy,

Jelaine Schmidt, the Clergy Collective, the Soul of Seville is another example of something that was going on this weekend that it had been my hope, quite frankly, that

Yeah, I have a couple.

One, I just want to thank the councilors and the city.

I was away for a couple of meetings.

I was doing some incredible mission work with my church in Gumball, Ethiopia.

It was great.

It was just beautiful to be in Africa doing that work with my church.

But it was good to get home to see my family and get back to the city business.

It was a great, some activities that took place over the last couple of weeks was West Haven Day.

That was a lot of work that was done to pull that together and also participated in the Greenstone

on 5th and that was also another incredible opportunity for different city agencies and nonprofits to come out and

Friday, I was able to help with the unveiling of the Reverend Brown's street naming sign over on Rosser and to do a welcome to a lot of out of town guests that was visiting Charlottesville.

So it was just an incredible time.

And also our tourism board got recognized for its effort to

promote black businesses and here in town was recognized nationally competing against some really big cities and things.

And so just really incredible work that we're doing to promote all of our businesses here in Charlottesville.

Vice Mayor, I'm really glad you brought that up.

I was going to bring that as well.

Again, wanted to say thank you to the Charlottesville community and

Essay's photographs are incredibly powerful and I hope everyone has a moment to go and experience them.

I also just wanted to address a few things that came up after our last meeting in general.

This is outside of some very particular one-on-one issues but I know people have been feeling

a little bit unheard.

I do want to assure people that I take notes about what everyone says so I can refer back to it and I can remember it more easily and it does factor into how I vote and how I ask staff to pursue various projects

policies.

Some of them we can't always talk about publicly.

I know because they have to do with various either employment issues or

Budgetary issues that would put us in a bad bargaining position.

Some of the concerns I've definitely been hearing are about rent and mortgage relief coming forward.

This is one reason we have put significant ARPA dollars repeatedly into this and we'll keep looking at that.

that there's also concern I heard about those being housing challenged as we look towards the 50th anniversary of the downtown mall.

And so we will make sure that that is kept in mind and that equity issue is kept in mind.

And that those who are housing challenged aren't run afoul of the law or something in that way because they have

the bad luck of not having a roof over their head.

They don't need additional issues on top of that.

uh let's see I understand I know the definition for affordable housing has been something that has been brought forward to us on numerous occasions and we have talked about it as to how we can try to define that it does get difficult since the state has definitions the federal government has definitions and then there is

Colloquial definitions that are used so we just need to work I think a little bit stronger on having a more detailed definition or maybe multiple definitions of affordable housing did want to mention that telemedicine in schools would be a school issue and that the city wouldn't be part of that that would be something the school board would have to be addressed on

I also want to be grateful for the Midway Manor Tenant Association.

I understand there was a first meeting.

I'm sorry I was not able to attend.

And please let us know how we can help with pursuing the tenant's rights.

Any other council announcements?

Okay.

Next, we have proclamation for the Kiwanis Club of Charlottesville.

Mr. Hart, you with us?

So I have been asked to prepare a proclamation, which I'm glad to do, for basically any organization that's been doing good work for 100 years or more deserves some recognition.

Whereas the Kiwanis Club of Charlottesville, founded in April 1922, is celebrating its 100th year of service called Serving the Children of the World, 1922 to 2022.

Whereas Kiwanis International was founded in Detroit, Michigan in 1915 as a global organization of volunteers dedicated to improving the world one child and one community at a time, there are over 200,000 adult Kiwanians and more than 325,000 Kiwanis family members in 80 countries and geographic areas around the world.

and whereas Kiwanis has been a pioneer in empowering community volunteers dedicated to tackling local and international community issues especially those that affect young children and youth

Whereas Kiwanis International's most recent World Service project in conjunction with UNICEF helped to eliminate maternal and neonatal tetanus from the face of the earth.

This project followed Kiwanis International's previous successful project, also with UNICEF, of ridding the world of iodine deficiency disorders, the leading preventable cause of intellectual disabilities worldwide.

and whereas Kiwanis is perhaps best known for its service leadership programs currently with key clubs at four local high schools the Circle K International CKI Club at the University of Virginia

and an action club at Innisfree Village.

More than 300 youth are members of these clubs.

And whereas the Kiwanis Club of Charlottesville is committed to serving the children and youth of the community through volunteer projects, civic engagement, fundraising and leadership development, Kiwanians and Kiwanis family leaders have been giants of service and leadership in this community for more than a third of the span of this community's history.

Now, therefore, the Council of the City of Charlottesville hereby proclaims August 29, 2022 as Kiwanis Club of Charlottesville Day in celebration of this milestone centennial year.

Signed and dated this 15th day of August 2022, Lloyd Snook, Mayor.

And let me also add, as a Central Little League coach of many years standing, Kiwanis has always had an excellent Little League team in the Central Little League, and my guys could never beat y'all.

So, Mr. Hart, let me give you this proclamation.

Ms.

Consent agenda, number two, minutes, July 18th, council meeting.

Three, ordinance, 415, 10th Street, Northwest, rezoning from R1S to B2, second reading.

Four, ordinance 415 and 415B, 10th Street, Northwest, designation of property as an individually protected property, second reading.

Five, resolution

Refund of Business License Tax, $5,719.45, one of two readings.

Thank you.

So we will now take public comment regarding items on the consent agenda that were just raised, that were just read by the clerk.

Each speaker will have up to three minutes.

In the Zoom webinar, you can select the raise hand option to be placed in the speaker queue.

If you're joining us by phone and wish to speak on the consent agenda, you can press star nine

and we'll alternate in person and virtual speakers.

This is only for just the few items that were just read to us.

The old minutes, the 415 10th Street Northwest, the refund of a business license tax item and the homeless solutions program.

And if you are signed up on the community matters sign up list,

Your time will come in a few minutes, but not right now.

So is there anybody in the council chamber who would like to speak on one of those consent agenda items?

Rosia Parker.

It was very disheartening this weekend to actually be on the downtown mall and to see so much people

that are houseless with mental illness and to see how they react and especially some of the ones that just came home that have been locked up 20 and 30 years.

And there's really no help with region 10 or any other mental establishments right now.

Um, it needs to be something from the city where

People that already have mental health issues or can be taught and trained how to help other people like peer recovery specialists, which I have become, to be able to help the community of mental health.

We don't have a lot of those type of people in our community.

I think there should be money allocated to different trainings for this.

because to see these people down there, I mean, I sat down and I cried.

I cried for hours.

I used to be homeless for five years with my kids.

So I really know how it feels to be houseless with a mental illness, to be discriminated against, to be oppressed and suppressed.

So I see this in my people out there.

I feed them.

I talk to them.

I've chased them.

I've even helped with the Haven.

I've done so much with the homeless, houseless.

And it's time for the city to do something.

These people are laying right here in front of the city hall in every corner that you look at.

Charlottesville is not built for that.

And there's a lot more that's going to come.

I've been trying to warn Charlottesville for years, right here in this chamber, for what was to come.

But people want to be personal.

It's not about personal with me.

It's about fighting for humanity and the right people that are supposed to work for the people, not just feel that your personal and profession is not in place because people put you there.

This is taxpayers' money.

So something needs to be done for the people.

Thank you, Ms.

Is there anyone, are there any virtual speakers?

We'll be alternating in person and virtual if there's more than one.

Is there anyone else in person here who would like to speak on a consent agenda item?

Okay, I see nothing.

Okay, Ms.

Johnson, go ahead.

Yeah, good evening.

My name is Joy Johnson.

The home, the Haven,

and Patcham is put in place to help navigate some of their homeless people.

But there are some barriers that needs to be broken down in both of those programs.

Trying to get people through the IMS, I think that's what they call it,

You have to get him into that system, through the haven, and then it's left into Patrick's hand.

But there is a barrier because either, you know, one person is saying this is, you need to do this to be able to get to here, and when they do this to get to there, when they get to there, they can't get to that.

And so I think you need to

is a challenge for the homelessness people or people who are homeless or houseless.

New word, Rosita, hats off to you.

Is that there are barriers that are keeping people from utilizing some of these programs.

And I think it's time that you all take a good look at what is in place so that more people can funnel through those systems.

Thank you, Ms.

Johnson.

I note that this grant award that we're talking about here includes as one of the items that's being provided is the Homeless Management Information System, the HMIS system that Ms.

Johnson referred to.

So this is minor.

I know that the term that we're using now apparently is unhoused, and sometimes, you know, I think we're kind of going through the transition now, and if the document says homeless, maybe as we finalize it, it can say unhoused.

The grant itself is called the Virginia Homeless Solutions Program.

So

I think we're sort of stuck with that name at least as we deal with the grant itself.

How we use the term homeless.

I don't know.

Okay.

Also not an option for us then.

Thank you.

I would just like to offer one comment and that is that the memo that we received explaining what all of this is all about includes language that says under community engagement this partnership is reflective of the new governance model for Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless and the priority request of the interfaith movement

Promoting Action by Congregations Together, otherwise known as IMPACT.

I was curious about this.

The same language appeared back in January, and I was curious about it then, too, and I asked.

There is not, in fact, a new governance model, and what we're seeing here is the recycling of the same document that needs to get edited a little bit so we're not going to be confused

to think that every six months we've got a new governance model.

It doesn't really matter to the long term because that language does not appear in the resolution, but it is something that I think we ought to clarify because if somebody looks at this sometime down the road and says, hey, what's the new governance model?

We don't have one.

It doesn't require any amendment or anything, but that's just a point I wanted to make.

Any other questions or comments from Council?

Okay.

Any further questions?

Ms.

Councillor McGill?

Yes.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Wade?

Yes.

Okay.

Motion passes 5-0 to adopt the consent agenda.

Yes, we have provided you a written report.

Last meeting I did a verbal report that contained a lot of issues, but we're back to our standard report.

We'll give you at least one per month.

The one thing I'd like to highlight is the fact that our police chief search is underway.

I reported last week that we had a link on our webpage to a community survey and a number of people have taken advantage of that.

The deadline was initially advertised as tonight, August 15th.

I want to announce now that we will extend the deadline until next Monday night and give people opportunity to go on.

You can find the link

on the Charlottesville.gov website.

It's in one of the banners.

Just click on it, and it'll take you directly to the Polyhire webpage where the survey is.

It's confidential, and we encourage people to really tell us what you think.

You know, what do you want to see in your new police chief?

What are the issues you want your new police chief to address in this job?

What should we be asking them in terms of to assure that they are focused on our issues?

So we very much encourage as many people as can possibly be to go to the website and take the survey.

There are a number of other issues there that I won't highlight tonight.

The Convention and Visitors Bureau Black Seville issue has a recognition has already been recognized.

I was going to cite that.

I think that's a very good thing for the community.

And I think Sam Sanders had an update on the school community

walkway issue.

Great.

Thank you, Mr. Rogers.

Thank you, Council.

I just wanted to give the community an update on safe routes to schools work.

We continue with the internal team working to work with the school leadership on prioritizing their list for improvements that are all aimed at ensuring safe routes with the expansion of walking zones.

I just wanted to share with you our progress support from the public service division they have been hard at work getting all the preparations done 61 intersections have been striped to date 12 of those were brand new and we'll have another 11 of those crosswalks done this week eight more still being planned so we'll be able to get those done before school starts in addition to a wide array of new signings going up along the routes

There have been some installations of flex posts at multiple intersections to try to help slow traffic down.

And we've also done some work with CAT getting information out in regards to Route 9 and how he can support students who might be able to ride the bus to Walker and CHS with the support of parent groups that have been working to identify how they can safely ride the buses back and forth to school.

We've adjusted some signal timing at multiple intersections.

including the addition of no turn on red when pedestrians are present that's something that we've had the ability to do at different times but we've added a few more of those in areas that we've heard from schools just the reports of some serious interactions with cars as people have been trying to cross the roads and we have a series of additional items that we'll be bringing before council at your September 6 meeting some of those include some speed limit reductions as well as making a change to

how we're making a four-way stop temporarily at Rugby and Rose Hill as an intervention.

That intersection is going to be getting a new signal project in October, but based on a lot of the inquiries that we've had in regards to that intersection, we're thinking we may be able to go ahead and temporarily

I understand that it might be a little controversial as it's been a problem in the past so we want to make sure that council has an ability to weigh in and if you want to take public comment I guess we'll be able to do that as well but ideally we want to make sure that that is a safer intersection the schools are going to try to get a crossing guard there but it's a big intersection it will require multiple people working that intersection but if we can turn it into a four-way stop we think it would be the easiest and best way

for us to do this until that signal work can begin in October.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

And I'd just like to say that I've really appreciated getting this report, being able to put, in this case it's ten pages or nine pages of text anyway, of things that sort of department by department what the city government has been up to.

We tend to report on things only when there's a crisis of some sort and it's useful to know what is happening on a month by month basis.

A couple things I wanted to kind of highlight.

One is the deadline for filing to participate in our revamped tax relief program, the CHAP program.

That's a deadline that runs through September 1st of 2022.

You can file them online at charlottesville.gov slash COR for Commissioner of Revenue or in person in the Commissioner of Revenue's office through September 1st.

Also, for a deadline of this coming Wednesday,

to register for the Town Hall Community Workshop.

This is part of the Community Greenhouse Gas Reduction Workshop.

During this event, the City of Charlottesville encourages all community members to provide input on developing potential greenhouse gas reduction priorities.

So you can register for that at 6 to 8 p.m.

on August 17th.

Register.

at a particular link.

I suspect that this is probably available through the Public Works website as well.

So rather than my reading off a 100-character or a Zoom link, go to the Public Works website if that's of interest to you.

And the last thing I wanted to mention is not something that is referred to here in the report, but it's something that's also going on right now, and it falls under the category

of elections.

Virginia now permits localities to authorize ranked choice voting or what's sometimes called instant runoff voting for local elections in city council in particular.

That is something that's been championed by Sally Hudson

and she's talking with a bunch of folks, including yours truly.

I guess, Councilor McGill, are you also on that call on Wednesday?

Somebody.

Anyway, there are a bunch of folks who are talking about this.

If you are interested in the question of ranked choice voting or instant runoff voting, both at the nominations process and at the actual election process, we would have the ability to get it up and running before the 2023 council nomination and election.

If you're interested, please contact

me, contact Councilor McGill, contact the registrar, send us an email to council at charlottesville.gov, whatever, because that's something that we're going to begin to talk about.

My hope is that if the idea has traction that it would come to this council probably by November or December or something like that.

So that's the only other thing I wanted to add.

Okay, so let's move on then to community matters.

We have eight pre-registered speakers and we have a few on our waiting list.

If one of the first eight speakers is unavailable, the speaker on the waiting list will move into that slot.

Each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak.

And once we get past the eight on the preregistered list, we'll alternate in person versus online.

So first of all, virtual attendees wishing to speak may select the raise hand option.

in the Zoom webinar to be placed in the speaker queue.

If you have joined by phone and wish to speak during community matters, please press star nine.

In-person attendees, just raise your hand to be recognized and we'll alternate you with virtual speakers.

There will be an additional public comment section at the end of the meeting.

So let's see.

First, let's deal with the online speakers.

Great.

Okay, great.

Good evening.

My name is David Koenig.

I'm a Charlottesville City resident and a Charlottesville City Schools teacher.

I also serve as the co-chair of the organizing committee for our teachers union and I'm speaking tonight in solidarity with the public employees of our city and in support of their effort to secure their right to collective bargaining.

My main purpose in speaking tonight is to attempt to persuade the members of this council to enact a fair collective bargaining ordinance but I would be remiss if I did not note that our city's teachers are currently engaged in the struggle to negotiate a fair collective bargaining resolution with our school board and the precedent that this council sets will almost certainly have an impact on that effort as well

Collective bargaining is a fundamental right of all workers, established as such by Article 23, Section 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It is the main legal tool that provides workers with a powerful voice in their workplace.

When workers have this voice, they are able to work together to build a better workplace and a better city.

Workers become part of a community within their workplace rather than isolated individuals.

If you see collective bargaining in this way as a fundamental right and a positive good rather than as a privilege that you have the power to dispense or not, then you will see that efforts to limit or restrict it are antithetical to the spirit of worker empowerment.

You will instead enact an ordinance that establishes the right to collective bargaining in full and empowers and includes your workers in building a more just and equitable workplace and city.

To that end, I ask that this council amend the collective bargaining ordinance to allow bargaining on benefits and disciplinary procedures, which are essential components of workers' lives and their workplace culture.

Amend the ordinance to include binding interest arbitration to resolve bargaining disputes, an essential piece of this fundamental right.

Finally, amend the ordinance to extend collective bargaining to all city employees.

This is a human right, not a teachers, police, firefighters, transportation workers' rights.

Thank you, Mr. Koenig Mary Carey is up next.

Ms.

Carey?

Ah, okay.

Good.

Mary Carey, City Resident.

I haven't been here like you can tell for three years.

It's good to be back.

But about Midway Manor, you know it's a mess regardless of who bought it.

We had a meeting Wednesday night.

I'd like to thank Councilman Payne and Councilman Pinkston for attending and a few of the other entities throughout the city.

So right now, we're supposed to have a meeting tomorrow that's supposed to designate when this renovation is supposed to begin or how it's supposed to work, I guess.

I don't know.

Anyway, I am here tonight to ask Council, since y'all was so, you know, part of them getting that grant, is it possible you can let anybody that's in this brochure, pictures of anybody in this brochure, to actually come to Midway Manor and let us know what's going on, because the current staff there are

I'm not saying that the office manager but the current staff that's supposed to be a regional thing is not very professional.

We have been sending emails since March and we begin nasty responses from those people, especially one who had said in the email that she has no desire to talk too far or any of the residents in a meeting.

We can have our meetings in our apartments.

Hey, that wasn't professional.

So I'm asking you if you could contact any of these people that came and stood in front of you and beg for that money, $23 million, to come and let us know what's going to be done with it.

And one more thing I would like to say for our city manager's position,

I remember back in the day when Lake Monticello was a witness protection program for the mob out of New York and Maryland.

We don't want to make Charlottesville a haven for white supremacists.

Thank you, Ms.

Our next speaker is Matthew Ray on Zoom.

Hello, my name is Matthew Ray.

I'm a nine-year operator at CAT and I'm here to speak in favor of a strong collective bargaining agreement.

I saw the earlier session when y'all were discussing the ordinance.

Y'all touched on some issues like a neutral arbiter, which I

really hope that you guys decide to go that route and give us someone that will be neutral in determining grievance process and allow us to negotiate health benefits, even though our health benefits right now are good.

I mean, I have no problems with our health benefits right now, so I don't see that to be a big issue.

I would also like to tell Council that they have an opportunity here as Council Wade touched on earlier, the effect that it could have on the surrounding counties.

Charlottesville could be a leader for the entire region here to show that, give them a precedent that look at what Charlottesville is doing to give their employees a strong collective bargaining ordinance.

I implore you to do this.

We are really in desperate need at CAC.

As you've talked with the school bus issue, which is part of our transit, we have a lot of needs at CAC right now, and pay is one of them.

Health benefits, not so much.

Like I said, it's pretty good.

I would also like to talk about the right for all of our

Departments to unionize eventually.

I understand you want a slow progress, a slow roll of this.

I get that.

But we're here in Central Virginia.

Everything to the west and to the immediate east of us, I mean, we're better than everybody else.

I understand the budgetary concerns.

But you're the second biggest employer in Charlottesville.

Give us a strong collective bargaining agreement.

John Ertle is next on the list.

Mr. Ertle?

Hello, thank you.

My name is John Ertle.

I live in Charlottesville.

I'm a representative of the ATU.

I want to first applaud the city for finally moving forward on collective bargaining and making good on its commitment to its workers.

We're very appreciative of that.

However, we do believe, as you heard from our member Matthew Ray, that the ordinance would benefit greatly from a number of improvements, and we're happy to share those with you in the coming weeks and months.

I just want to first off say we sincerely hope that the city council will take seriously the feedback of its frontline workers.

Collective bargaining in the public sector is fundamentally about collective problem solving and working together is therefore sensible that we take into consideration frontline workers feedback as we craft the ordinance that will allow them to engage in collective bargaining.

In its report today representatives of Venable LLP acknowledged that it was guided by an underlying edict that it's better to pursue collective bargaining in moderation and not to do too much too quickly.

I, however, don't think the city has anything to fear about collective bargaining that would warrant such kind of trepidation.

Most states in this country, their public workers have union rights.

Most have binding arbitration.

Most can bargain over benefits.

This may be new to Charlottesville, but it's certainly not new for so many areas of the country.

And I just want to make a couple of brief points on the specifics of the legislation.

We'll more thoroughly cover all of it later, but the unions aren't seeking to change the benefit plans.

A lot of hay was made about that today.

First off, no union can force the city to adopt a different benefits plan.

As Matthew said, we don't want to do that.

We like our benefits.

We just want to hold on to what we have essentially.

Nor are we interested in preventing the city from being able to discipline workers who aren't up to the task of carrying out their duties.

In its form, however, in its current form, a number of essential parts of any union contract would be prohibited.

I'd bargain contracts for a living so I can speak to the kinds of things that we're seeking.

In every contract negotiation, we seek to win due process rights for workers for anyone who's being disciplined.

Management retains the right to discipline, but they have to make sure that it's justified and that it's carried out fairly.

This would be disallowed by the ordinance.

As for protection against non-discrimination, our standard contract language would be disallowed.

We would seek transparency and promotional opportunities to make sure that it's equitable and that we would eliminate favoritism.

That's not allowed.

We would want to protect current benefits so that they can't be unilaterally reduced so as to render a wage increase irrelevant.

That's not allowed.

I could go on, but I'll just say in general that the carve outs are excessive relative to any practical need for the city to scale down the ordinance.

And I'll be emailing to all of you a comparison of the different municipalities and what they've done and

and as written, this one would be the weakest that has been adopted.

All the others allow for the bargaining and benefits.

Most of them have neutral arbitration for contract disputes.

In closing, we welcome the opportunity to partner with the city on this important topic.

I want to thank you for what you've done so far.

Our next speaker is Jeff Vogel on Zoom.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Our city is still mired in racialized policing.

And though the city has done nothing except come up with a proposal to provide the very culprits of that racialized policing with additional leverage to deal with the city.

I'm gonna keep repeating these numbers as long as they exist.

55% of the people being arrested in Charlottesville are black.

What's the explanation for it?

None is forthcoming and no one seems to care about it.

Nobody on this council nor anybody in the city manager's office seems to have lifted a finger to deal with the issue.

We had a report several years ago that showed scientifically that black people in Charlottesville were subject to additional charges

compared to their white comparable defendants and to more serious charges.

Has that changed?

Has anybody shown that it's changed?

Listen, this is racism at its worst.

And the worst part of it is nobody seems to care about it.

Not even say a word about it.

Nobody on this city council has spoken up about this issue.

Nobody in the city manager's office has.

I don't care what color you are.

This is racism exposed in the policing of our community, and it must stop.

And to the extent that you all have power, either you or the city manager, who is after all the public safety director, to make some changes in that, you have to do so.

Because otherwise, you are complicit in the very racism we're talking about.

I just want to make one other point with respect to Mr. Grove.

Don't treat us like we're stupid idiots.

Somebody lied and it was Mr. Grove.

We were told that Mr. Grove was a freelance photographer who left the Capitol as soon as he was told to.

That was not the truth.

It was repeated by the mayor.

Who lied?

Let's assume Mr. Grote lied.

Well, I just finished the case where I represented an employee who lied during an investigation, and it was the basis for a firing.

Now, don't tell us that you can't fire an employee who lies to you during an investigation because it's not the truth.

So start telling the truth, start admitting who's making lies, and start dealing with the issue of racist policing.

Thank you.

She's here.

Ms.

Good evening.

It's nice to be in front of some familiar faces and some not as familiar.

My name is Nancy Carpenter and I'm a resident here in Charlottesville.

I wanted to share with you on the subject of homelessness what the child of someone I follow on Twitter wanted his father to write.

This is not a local person.

It's someone else.

And so he wanted to say the following.

Some people think that people without homes are garbage, but they're still humans.

Here's what they need.

Toothpaste.

Band-Aids if they need them, new clothes, money, a lot of money, a job, friends, be friendly to them, give them food, a shower, shelter, like a really good house.

Even if they could live in a haunted mansion, that would be better.

A car, some help, medicine, and a doctor.

The father asks, anything else you want to share with the people?

Just be nice to them and treat them good.

And that's what I'm asking the city to do and your counterparts in the county because the problems I think that we will be seeing over the next few months

are going to transcend any type of geographical boundary that exists in this community.

I was just reading a blog post regarding a right to counsel in Richmond.

A report came out.

There's a hashtag that goes with this, Housing Justice Works.

and it was based on some 2019 figures in that in Richmond they had served about 2,000 people with right to counsel and the average income for those folks under 13,000 about 12,005 and it resulted in many many many of those families and households staying housed and I know that a couple of years ago there was a lot of discussion about a right to counsel in Charlottesville it's imperative

that this city and this county work together because so many people who need right to counsel have been pushed barely across the city lines into the suburban urban ring into some of the properties that are low income tax credit properties which are facing their end of time with their tax credits to which they may re what revert into fair market rentals which we know

People don't get a housing wage in this community.

They barely get a living wage in order to afford their housing.

So hopefully we'll carry this message to the county, but we need to have really deep right to counsel for people.

We have seen the reports out of our local media, whether it be broadcast media or other independent media about what people are facing here.

and we really need to do more.

Nonprofits are not going to be able to address the problem.

Municipalities are going to have to put some money up and that beyond our housing trust fund and beyond some of the tax relief things.

Thank you, Ms.

Our next speaker is Gregory Weaver on Zoom.

Can you all hear me?

Yes.

Go ahead.

Three minutes.

Hey, City Council.

This is Greg Weaver.

It's Friday spring.

Recently, I took a work trip to Vancouver and I wanted to tell you a little bit about my experience using public transit there because it was pretty fantastic.

The good stuff started immediately.

I got out of the airport and walked down to the train station that would take me downtown.

I was frantically figuring out what kind of pass I needed to buy when the train came and left, but no worries.

It ran about every six minutes.

After a fun ride that allowed me to enjoy the views of the city, I got downtown, stepped out of the station, and to my delight, saw two-way bike lanes that were fully protected by a concrete divider, some bike share stations that were completely emptied out, and a ton of buses.

During my stay, I rode the bus multiple times.

The service ran probably every 10 to 15 minutes, and there were times where there were lines at stops.

Riding the bus, catching the train, and biking around the city were all super accessible and very popular.

However, I noticed that Friday rush hour traffic was still bad.

That got me thinking about home.

What I experienced was a testament to how we too can provide a robust mass transit service as well as streets that are safe to bike on and how all that would be doubtlessly extremely popular.

But it was also a testament to how if we don't take specific action to transform our infrastructure away from being car centric, we'll still run into the same old roadway congestion problems as we grow.

As a result, our impact on climate change and public safety will be insufficient because of how many single family vehicles will still be on the road.

We need to pair a great mass transit system with the city structure that prioritizes the bus rider, bike rider and pedestrian and makes it difficult to get around in cars.

We need to do this before we've grown too much and it becomes absurdly difficult to make these changes.

This actually brings me to my next point.

This weekend I took the walking tour of AZA's exhibit on the downtown mall.

I'm really glad to hear that a lot of you experienced that as well.

We got to Fourth Street and I couldn't help but think of how perverse it is that Heather Heyer Way is still a thruway for cars.

I want you all to think about that really seriously.

It's insane.

If we can't permanently close that street, the site of extreme trauma to our community and our city, how are we possibly gonna make that kind of transformational change to our infrastructure that's so critical to our climate needs?

The only thing stopping us is your willpower to act and see it through.

You say that you're serious about climate and transit and caring about the community's wellbeing.

You have to prove it.

Closing that street traffic is the right thing to do for our community, thinking both in the now and in the future as we take control of our own climate destiny.

Let it be the first dominant fall.

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker is Tanisha Hudson.

So...

Mayor Snook, I'm just wondering if, do you suggest that we change from the capital of resistance to capital of resistant anti-racism?

Should we provide the alt-right their own proclamation since we continue to show the world that we stand for racism and that we deeply believe in it?

Can you also explain Mayor Snook, because you're an attorney, or should I say attorney Snook, how is it that you can ignore a chief

But you take a word of Grote.

A chief is a director, basically, of her department.

So you ignore her entire investigation, but you accept Grote's words.

You accept his apology.

You're okay with this man saying, hey, I was only there to take pictures.

When we clearly have video footage of him going into the Capitol, storming in with everybody else with everything but a camera.

As a body of government, I know that there's a policy for you to maintain information for up to five years.

There's no way that this investigation file is missing and Michael C. Rogers couldn't get his hands on certain information.

There's no way.

Now I get the HR policy is missing some things, but there's no way that this man should have his job.

We've clearly allowed people to be terminated for doing their job.

No way.

Now, I'm going to paint a picture for you all.

Grote and Mooney knew exactly what they were doing.

This is clear corruption, but I believe Grote and his Proud Boys have enough power, resources, and a unified group of individuals to rally behind him, beside him, and in front of him.

that if you did terminate him, they would expose some of your hoods.

Some of your hoods would come off and your faces would be exposed at that point.

I think that's the only thing I'm battling with really proving how corrupt this city is, is that some internal individuals are more deeply involved with this.

And y'all know it.

And that's why it was easier to knock off the people, the two people doing their jobs.

than it is to let this man go.

And if you're afraid of the Proud Boys, just say that because you've allowed them to look victorious and you continue to allow them to look victorious.

And as far as the union, I believe in a fire department union.

I believe in a transportation union.

I do not believe in a police union because they're only going to target more black people.

I do believe that you need to pay your employees a hell of a lot more money and stop paying for comp studies and take a look at the other three that you've already paid for.

Just add more money on it because things have went up with inflation.

Thank you, Ms.

Hudson.

So that gets us through the first eight.

Is there anybody else in the room here who would like to speak to counsel?

Ms.

Good evening, Ms.

Parker, again.

This weekend, when I seen y'all in public, Snook, Pinkston, Payne, McGill, and Rogers.

I spoke to, and Mr. Pinkston, I spoke to you last week at Community Day, and you turned your head and turned your back on me.

Mr. Wade spoke.

I seen y'all at the reception for the pictures.

Y'all chose to turn your back on me.

Then you finally spoke, Mr. Snook.

How do y'all and Mr. Rogers, you just completely turned around with Snook, because y'all were talking.

And I don't see how that's professional.

If the community speak to you, speak back.

But the disrespect, I will not tolerate.

and I am back.

I'm back in these chambers and I'm back with a vengeance for my people because it doesn't make no sense how y'all are now in charge and y'all are in our communities rallying to get y'all in these seats and y'all are not doing your job.

And Mr. Rogers, an interim city manager,

that don't give a damn about Charlottesville and the pain that we endure.

White supremacy is still rising.

And we need a police chief.

And you need to listen to the community.

And that online BS, uh-uh.

You're leaving out a whole community.

Ashley, what, y'all's deputy manager, supposed to be for equity and diversity, doing nothing for the people?

Online, half of our people don't even have a way to even have a house, let alone a phone and online.

You're leaving out the black community, elders.

You're leaving out teenagers.

You're leaving out public housing.

We need paperwork.

We need paper, not your consultants coming in here on computers.

Anybody can hack.

Didn't they hack the federal court?

White Supremacy calling us niggas?

So would you think they're not gonna get into the computer and put on there what they want?

I would like to have a meeting with you on the police chief and the hiring of that because now the PCOB, Snook,

that y'all have changed up, that myself and Katrina Turner specifically put stipulations in those resolutions as we were victims of police brutality.

That's online.

That's not in community engagement.

We were on the ground, and that's what y'all need to be.

Thank you, Ms.

Parker.

Let's see.

We have online George Davis.

Okay.

I moved to Charlottesville back in 2012.

Worked a few places.

Go driver came up.

I applied.

Got the job working with transit.

I love my job.

I love helping the community.

I love helping my passengers.

Several of your speakers already spoke on some of the topics that I was going to speak on.

Benefits being one of them.

Inflation has gone up.

Benefits have gone up.

Pay scale hasn't.

We're getting ready to lose quite a few drivers because pay scale has not gone up.

Benefits, I'm not asking to have anything changed.

The union, we just want the union to guarantee the right to be able to keep what we already have.

I'm for the union.

I don't think that the union will be here to fight against y'all, but to help y'all and transit.

Me being a seven year employee of transit, like I said, I love my job.

I love to drive.

I love helping the public.

That's what I was born to do and that's what I was raised to do.

The most high has built me to help others.

Benefits are killing my paycheck.

When I look at my paycheck,

Majority of it is in insurance and other benefits.

We got to have a better pay scale.

People coming in, they see what we're making, they turn their backs.

That pay right there, they're not filling out the applications for it.

We got six people right now training for transit.

There should be more.

There should be more.

We have less drivers than we had when I first started.

Trying to get people to come in now with the pay scale that we're starting off at, they're not filling out the applications.

If they see that their benefits are not adding up to what they should be making, it defeats the purpose.

I ask you, please allow us to have this union.

Thank you, Mr. Davis.

How about Elizabeth Stark?

Thank you, counselors.

Thanks for having me here today.

My name is Elizabeth Stark.

I am a resident of the Woolen Mills in the city of Charlottesville.

I'm here tonight to talk about two issues, collective bargaining and the school bus issue.

So first I want to say I applaud you for

we're looking at collective bargaining and being willing to embrace collective bargaining unfortunately the proposed ordinance that you looked at today is too weak and it needs to be strengthened one of the major gaps is the that the proposed ordinance doesn't allow city workers to bargain over discipline or disciplinary procedures which is a right that should be granted to all non-police employees

As anyone who has worked under a mercurial manager knows, arbitrary and unclear disciplinary standards leave workers at the whims of their managers and open them up to harassment, retaliation and discrimination.

A clear set of standards and a fair process ensures the dignity of workers and prevents managerial abuse of authority, which none of us want.

And I know, you know, I think in these situations, people tend to say things like, well, you know, I'm a great manager.

I would never do that.

Or, you know, we're a great council.

We would never put our...

our workers in this position.

But collective bargaining is something that strengthens the role of workers for the long haul, and they need robust protections now and for the future.

Just as discretion over pay opens up racial and gender-based pay gaps, discretion over discipline opens up racial and gender-based disparities over

who gets punished for what and how severely.

We know that people are often more sympathetic to those they see themselves in and that leads to discrimination and disproportionate discipline.

We all want a city where workers are respected and treated fairly and managers don't abuse their power and this is a way to make it happen.

So while I appreciate the time you've put into collective

bargaining, this issue and many others that so many people have brought up tonight are important and we need to strengthen the ordinance.

The next thing I wanna talk about is the school buses.

For the second year, I have a child at CHS and one at Walker.

And for the second year in a row, neither of my children have been awarded seats on the city buses.

Each pickup and drop off,

takes about a half hour.

So between my husband and I, you know, we could spend two hours a day making sure our kids get to and from school.

Now, I know, of course, we'll try to do carpools and all those kinds of things, but the fact is that the logistics of that is

Okay, sorry, there was no timer.

But I urge you to try to solve this problem for me and other city parents.

Thank you.

So continuing to alternate, is there anyone in the room here who would like to speak?

Ms.

Katrina Turner.

You all want to know what the people want

for a new chief of police, but you have someone who literally attended the insurrection, took pictures with Alex Jones, bragged about securing Alex Jones, Infowars, the Proud Boys, he bragged about it.

But I want to know how many of you were

were there on August the 12th, who were literally on the streets August the 12th, who seen people threaten your child and the police did nothing, who seen those Proud Boys and the white supremacist spit in people's face with the police standing right there and nothing was done.

The police stood down.

How are we supposed to trust that you all are going to make the right decision in this next chief of police if our city manager accepts the apology of this man?

Why would he accept the apology of someone who literally, evidently hates us, who hates my people?

Why is this man still working for this city?

Did he apologize to us?

Did he apologize to us?

Do you know what we went through in 2017?

I was pushed out the way of the car that day.

Understand?

And you all are going to keep this man who attended the insurrection?

Employed with this city?

Really?

Mr. Snook, you had a town hall about August 12th.

Why weren't the people invited?

Why don't you want to hear what we went through that night, that day, August the 11th, when that church was surrounded by those boggle tiki torches?

Why don't you want to hear from us?

When is there going to be a town hall for us?

Because we are still hurting.

There are people who still need their medical bills paid.

They're still hurting in this city.

But you all don't seem like you care.

Hold the town hall again.

Okay.

Is Meredith Murray here?

Okay.

Good evening.

I'm going to speak up a little bit, but yes.

My name is Daniel Summers.

Okay.

I'm with the Charlottesville Area Transit.

I'm here to speak on the bargaining rights in the third party

I've been with the city for a little over 10 years.

What's needed for us to be moved forward as a stronger transit system is the bargaining rights and also to maintain

the proper structure for new drivers that we will have in the future with the union and arbitration is needed as well because we need someone to speak on the driver's behalf when issues occur.

So with that being said, we do need a stronger place for the union to be put in place.

That's all I have to say.

Thank you.

All right.

Good evening, counsel.

I just wanted to quickly thank you all and hope that you do go ahead and approve the funding and the ARP package that you're going to talk about for the second time later tonight.

particularly the 500k for the Meadow Creek Trail which will be part of a comprehensive connection really from the John Warner Parkway eventually all the way to Greenbrier the 29 corridor at Greenbrier Drive

and then down to Mickey Drive and Hardywood.

This is not a local recreational project.

This is an important regional connection.

And also as well, the money's in there for the Safe Routes to School.

I would especially also like to thank the city staff and the schools for rapidly implementing the several safe crossings and walking routes to school.

These are not permanent solutions, but they're good ways to buy us time to get those permanent solutions.

It's stuff we've been talking about for a really long time.

I mean, it's interesting how sometimes it takes a galvanizing moment or a crisis to do stuff that we know we ought to do.

So, thank you for this.

It's gonna result in healthier kids.

a cleaner environment, less driving and a better community.

Thank you, Mr. Krebs.

Is there anyone else in person who would like to speak?

Mary Carey and everybody else said about what I was going to say.

and I'm like you, I can't see.

Y'all so good from way back there.

Oh, Connie Rosenbaum, sorry.

City resident.

Thank you all for being at Midway Manor and we're having that meeting tomorrow and I would like it if y'all could be there between 1 and 3 possibly to meet with the new people that's supposed to be showing up tomorrow to meet with us residents and

I'm going to tell you, this town used to be a very nice, clean town.

It's not anymore.

It's a nasty little town.

There's potholes everywhere.

There's a pothole at Page Street that's got water running out of it.

Thursday when I come out of Page Street off Hardy Drive, the hole was running out of water again.

It's been going like this for three or four months now.

Them holes shouldn't have been patched up.

Dairy Market where they built that new apartment building.

Those are dips in the road.

They half-assed, excuse my language, but they half-assed done them when they patched them up.

Now when you're going down Preston Avenue to go to Emmett Street, they're working on that road where there's dips in the road.

There's no lights down that road.

Even in the daylight, you can't see where the dips are in the road until you done hit the dips in the road and your car goes boom.

Well, you can bust a tire or anything.

They need to put a sign up the road that says bump to let us know there's a bump in the road because if I bust a tire, then I'm the one that's going to have to pay for it.

It ain't going to be nobody's going to pay for it than me.

So y'all need to do a little bit better about the town and get it cleaner.

That's all.

Thank you, Ms.

Rosenbaum.

Yes, Mayor Snook.

Bill Goldeen is our 16th speaker.

Good evening, Council.

Sorry, I couldn't be there in person.

I didn't know I had to register in advance.

You guys saw me earlier today.

I want to speak about the unionizing.

I drove school bus for the year because the city needed it.

And I drove a school bus in college and I loved it.

So I came back to it to help the city.

I ended up quitting because

The rules kept changing.

The description of my job kept changing.

The description of our standards kept changing.

And since we're a right to fire state, my only option was to accept the change or resign.

So the end of the year, I resigned.

That said, the question that's being asked is wrong.

It isn't that there's a nationwide shortage of drivers, which is true.

The question should be, why can't you keep drivers?

There were 18 or so drivers the last day of school.

I believe you have five left.

Having talked to my coworkers at length about this, none of them quit over benefits or salary.

They quit because of management.

Without a union to protect your employees, you're not going to keep employees.

I'm not sure what else to say about that.

Mediation, not binding arbitration is not going to work because you end up having ultimate say.

And that is the antithesis of a union.

There are many issues I would speak to you about

privately, publicly.

We need a union.

I did resign.

I am not coming back, but I told the drivers I would continue to fight for them, even though there's only five left.

We need representation from the union.

I was a union driver in California for years.

It was a

classified employee union for the state.

So this whole issue of the diverse needs to me is irrelevant.

I was the shop steward my last year and we always had, I was always there when there was a disciplinary meeting in order to make sure employees were represented and protected instead of

Fairly uneducated employees being called in to the managers and being disciplined and told sign this and then given a week off without pay instead of having someone there to protect their interests.

Yes, you can fire employees because you have that right and that's not going to change.

Thank you.

I know.

Thank you.

Okay, so that is our 16th and final speaker for Community Matters.

First item up is the Preston Place Utility Easements.

Ms.

Yes, I am.

All right.

So this agenda item is a request to allow some existing utility easements to be replaced by a new

utility easement and for a boundary line between three privately owned parcels and the city owned right of way for Preston Place to be adjusted.

Anytime that

City-owned real estate, whether it's an easement or it is the amount of land within a public right-of-way, anytime you adjust or vacate city interests in real estate, that proposed action has to be brought to city council.

As you will see in the plaques that are attached to this agenda item,

Most of the changes are proposed to happen along the frontage of three different privately owned parcels along Preston Place.

And so the specifically the two actions that are

being requested of you after a public hearing is conducted are to enact an ordinance that will vacate existing utility easements and authorize the adjustment

of the boundary line between these lots and the Preston Place right of way.

And then separately, the adoption of a resolution that will formally accept the additional right of way that will be dedicated to the city as a result of the boundary line adjustment.

This is fairly straightforward and all of this is to facilitate the proposed development or redevelopment of these three privately owned lots and so unless you have any questions of the staff recommendation

Thank you, Ms.

Robertson.

Counselors have any clarifying questions?

And so I'm just assuming that what's going on here is a lot of these are internal easements and again, merging some land so that a larger parcel can be developed.

That's right.

Okay.

That's right.

I just wanted to make sure I'm not very great at reading land plats.

They're just, yes.

Ms.

Robertson, this is not really terribly germane to the particular issue in front of us, but when I looked at this area on Google Maps, it indicates that the new parcel A basically has numbers 502, 504, 506, 508, 510, and 512 designated for it.

I'm just wondering, is there a plan in place to divide that into six separate parcels?

How do we end up with six separate numbers there?

I have not.

Is there history?

I have not looked at any proposed subdivision plats that may be going along with the development of the lot, but usually going from three parcel numbers to six would indicate that each of the lots is being reconfigured or re-divided into additional lots.

So I haven't looked at those specific subdivision plans

I have no other questions.

Anybody else have any questions?

If not, let's go to the public hearing.

I'll open the public hearing.

Mayor Snook, I see no raised hands.

Okay.

So we can then close the public hearing.

It's now up to Council.

Thoughts?

Okay, we have two separate motions.

We can take them in sequence.

Anybody have any broader questions before we move straight on in?

Okay, is there a second to this motion?

Second.

Okay, any discussion?

Ms.