City Council Meeting   11/21/2022

okay four o'clock everybody's assembled I will call this meeting November 21st 2022 Charlottesville City Council meeting to order Ms.

Thomas would you please call the roll Councillor McGill here Councillor Payne

So glad to have you back and we're at full strength again.

Is there a motion to approve or to amend the agenda?

I move that we approve the agenda.

There will be seating available in the council chamber for up to 23 preregistered attendees and media and others able to join electronically by Zoom.

so we're glad at this point to start on the four o'clock docket and our first item is a presentation from the UVA Center for Survey Research presentation of a 2022 employee survey and I have Dr. Thomas Guterbach and Elena Panzer presenting Dr. Guterbach we're not hearing you hi there I wanted to show you that I know how to work my mute button

I think so.

And then I have to do the slideshow thing.

So those are the things that they can think of as most important.

Do you have an average on that?

who responded, no, this isn't the whole list, is it?

Right.

I'd be happy to get you that answer.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Carry on.

I'm kicking myself because I didn't print out a copy of the report before I started this talk and I could flip to a certain page where I know that number is, but I'll do that later.

Thank you.

Yes, I heard someone.

Quick question, please, sir.

Yes, sir.

Is that the idea?

or I don't feel empowered in my work, that's going to have a big impact.

That's correct.

Again, I thank my co-authors, Elena and Adina, and I'm very happy to take any further questions.

Questions, counsel?

I just kind of wanted to share that.

And again, I'm grateful for our staff who've stuck in there with us.

and you'll see on the top menu it says reports and you can click there and you'll see the full report and the appendices open to everyone csr.coopercenter.org and reports and I believe it's also available in the council website

And certainly our hope that one result of the collective bargaining work is that people will feel more satisfaction in their job.

Communication can be a number of different things and I just want to, if we're going to be addressing that as an issue, I want to make sure we're kind of addressing the right aspect of communication.

My recollection is it again has to do with that top-down communication and it's not so much the guy in the next carol doesn't know what I'm doing it's that I don't know what the heck they're doing up there they never told me I hear about stuff through rumors instead of through official communications and so on so a bit of disconnect again with the top management I think that that's my recollection but I don't have the numbers in front of me to to back up that argument Thank you Councilor Payne any questions

I do feel confident that we'll follow through on it, but for employees who may be listening or reading about this later on, kind of what should they expect that we're taking this seriously?

That's a good word, rebuild.

That's excellent and encouraging to hear because I know this is really the first time I think we as council have discussed in granularity the issues we know we've had with employee turnover and drop in satisfaction.

Those are some buzz words that, okay, we're going to study it, you know.

Then you as council have a framework to hold us accountable for what we do in the implementation.

One question I had, I was sort of curious about the fact that, and if I'm understanding the data correctly, that there were, of your 20 categories, there were three where people thought there was an improvement, 17 where they thought there was no change, but overall the employee satisfaction was lower.

That is correct, and it's a bit of a puzzle.

Have you have you thought about what that what that seeming inconsistency actually means?

in April and finished right in this we got into summer at the end of June so this is at that time the interim manager was still interim and only on a short shorter contract and so on so it was there was greater uncertainty then perhaps than there is right now so just keep that in mind of when when these data were collected great thank you any other questions now we can move on to

Thank you so much Dr. Guterbach.

Thank you.

Okay so the next item

We're not hearing you.

all of these were below that zero threshold means that the percentage of probation violations as a booking, as a percentage of booking volume was up 53% from about 7% to almost 11%.

Was that because there were fewer probation violations or because the other number was changing so much?

I'm going to end here because I just would be recapping what I've already said and take some time for questions.

Council, have any questions?

Did you pick up that that was having any effect on the average length of stay?

He now has around 30.

Do we have any sense of what is driving that?

I think if you ask them, I think methamphetamine is a big driver of their criminal justice challenge.

For the other data showing that, like, on a longer-term time horizon, violent crime is down, did you have any data that was basically just looking at gun violence and isolation in terms of homicides and other gun-related charges?

Simple assaults occur about five times as frequently as aggravated assaults do and have dropped substantially over the last 10 years, whereas aggravated assaults have held fairly steady over the 10-year time frame.

In some ways, it's encouraging to see that our use of the jail is going down.

And when you factored in the crime rates for the member jurisdictions, it had the absolute lowest crime to incarceration rate of all 26 jails in Virginia, all 26 regional jails.

Thank you.

Other counselors?

A lot to think about, for sure.

So thank you very much.

Is there any way to know whether that has changed any in the last 10 years?

I think it's a particularly important question to ask during the COVID era.

Appreciate your joining us.

They've been very active and helpful.

All right, Council, that is our four o'clock docket.

who wants to read that motion.

701 East Market Street and 100 Ryo Road East, and consultation with legal counsel regarding the above reference matters.

Is there a second to that motion?

Second.

Does somebody have a copy of the closed meeting certification motion?

I've got it.

Okay.

All right, 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.

Thomas, you take the vote, please.

Councillor Payne?

Yes.

Mayor Snow?

Yes.

Thank you.

So the motion passes and we are now back in open session.

Other counselors have any comments you want to make?

Other counselors?

to help our community.

Anybody else?

And I also agree with Councilman McGill and her comments about first responders and so forth in the work that they did this week.

Okay.

It's from 5 o'clock to 8 o'clock on the Downtown Mall with the Christmas tree lighting at roughly 7.30, so y'all come.

The Holly Trolley will be going on, which I'm looking forward to that.

Okay.

Signed and sealed this 21st day of November 2022.

Thomas, would you read the consent agenda, please?

One of two readings.

Seeing no one, are there any virtual speakers?

Mayor Snook, I see no raised hands.

So is there a motion to adopt the consent agenda?

I move to adopt the consent agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thomas, will you take the vote, please?

Councilor Payne?

Yes.

Councilor Pinkston?

Yes.

Mayor Snook?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Wade?

Motion passes five to nothing to adopt the consent agenda.

Mr. Rogers, is there a report from the City Manager's Office?

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Rogers.

Are there any of our pre-registered speakers available?

Helen Cawthon will be our first speaker.

Cawthon?

You are on with Council.

John, can you hear me okay?

Thank you.

Just wanted to brief you on this and glad to answer any questions and Chris Engel is pretty familiar with it as well.

Gawthon.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, is Emily Little with us?

Mayor Snook, I do not see Emily on the Zoom.

Identify yourself, please, and tell us where you live.

Thank you.

Come on up.

Thank you.

Anybody else online who would like to address Council?

Mayor Snook, we have Andy Orban.

Mr. Orban.

You are on with Council.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

Mayor Snook, we have Robin Hoffman.

All right, Ms.

You are on with Council.

Thank you very much.

Is there anybody else online?

Yes, Mayor Snook, we have Kate Fraley.

Fraley.

You are on with Council.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Thank you.

Is there another speaker?

Next up, Mayor Snook, we have Ange Khan.

Khan.

I

You are not even doing the bare minimum.

Is there another speaker online?

We have Don Gathers.

Mr. Gathers?

And you will need to unmute.

And again, hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday.

Anybody else online?

We have Jeanette Abinader.

Abinader.

You are on with Council.

Thank you.

Do we have another speaker online?

Katrina Turner.

Turner.

You are on with counsel.

Thank you.

Is there another speaker online?

Mayor Snook, I see no additional hands.

There will be another opportunity for public comment at the end of the meeting.

Mr. Vandiver.

an extension from December 5th to December 19th for the second half due date.

Thank you.

Any clarifying questions, counselors?

No.

Somebody want to make a motion?

So it's the first reading.

There's one reading.

Second.

Thomas, take the vote, please.

Councillor Payne?

Yes.

Councillor Pinkston?

Yes.

Mayor Snook?

Thank you, Mr. Vandiver.

Mr. Sanders?

Okay.

Any questions, either for Mr. Sanders or for Mr. Evans?

Are you able to say just to put you on the spot, just a sentence or two, a couple thoughts about how you see the first year going for you, the first six months in terms of priorities you'd have?

So that's kind of how my first year looks is making sure that we are all on the same page and that we can all coordinate our resources.

This past week was a hard one, but I guess going forward, are there conversations you're having about how to strengthen those ties and how to work better together?

Thank you.

Do you know what the chronology, were you involved at all in the emergency communications aspect of what was going on last Sunday night?

I will tell you that we spoke about it earlier in a meeting just this week about some improvements on our side and just to understand that, you know, to be a little more aware of our response partners' needs and be ready and available when they do call us.

And I hope that we can figure out a way to make sure that we have the best possible emergency communications so that people don't end up saying, why didn't anybody tell me?

And I'm looking really hard into our communications policies.

If not, we need a motion.

So I move to ratify and consent to the city manager's appointment of a coordinator of emergency management.

Thomas, will you take the vote, please?

I do have a question.

Yes.

Robertson can answer whether we need to include the name in that resolution.

I'm happy to restate it with the name if that helps.

I just need it to have clarification before I assign my name to it.

We just didn't do that before the agenda materials were due.

Okay.

Okay.

It's red.

And I accept the friendly amendment to the motion.

Okay, so we have a motion that's been seconded, including Mr. Evans' name.

Councillor Payne?

Yes.

Councillor Pinkston?

Look forward to working with you.

Thank you very much.

So anyway, any other discussion you want to present to us, Mr. Niemeyer?

If you have any further questions, please let me know.

Anybody have any questions for Mr. Niemeyer or anybody else?

No.

I think it's pretty straightforward and good for our ability to enforce fair housing law violations.

Okay.

All right.

You ready for a- Anyone want to make a motion?

Second.

Okay, and that is to include the edits that have been made since the first presentation.

To include the edits that have been made since the first presentation.

Thomas?

Councillor Payne?

Yes.

Councillor Pinkston?

Yes.

Mayor Snuth?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Wade?

Thanks much.

It's doing a lot of good work.

Counselors, any questions for city management to follow up on?

Yeah, thank you.

And I really don't want to be pushing our staff to take time away from their families.

So if it's the week after that, that'd be fine too.

Did you want to?

I may have gotten that mixed up.

Convention and Visitors Bureau.

We definitely want to shorten that.

CACVV.

Thank you.

Okay.

Anybody online wishing to speak to us?

Katrina Turner is back with us.

Turner?

And you will need to unmute.

I'm sorry.

Okay.

You are on with council.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Mayor Snook, I see no additional hands.

So we will close the final community matters section and there's nothing left on our agenda except adjournment.

Happy Thanksgiving Happy Thanksgiving to everybody Whatever you celebrate