City Council Meeting   4/3/2023

See that tree down on Medbrook Heights Road?

Yes, what happened?

I can fake it for this, but It's turned over.

It's under your Oh, okay.

Thomas, would you call the roll, please?

Councillor Payne?

Here.

Councillor Pinkston?

Here.

Mayor Snook?

Here.

Vice Mayor Wade?

Okay, we're all here, present and counted for, and welcome back, Councillor Puryear.

Thank you.

Excuse me.

I think that's the first time that I've been on council today we hadn't.

It is.

That's a moment.

We will recess until the business meeting, which will begin around 6.30 p.m.

Others are able to join electronically by Zoom.

Thank you for joining us.

But the starting slide.

What do we need to do to make something happen here?

I need just one second.

and as my friend Chris Murray put it when we were envisioning the center can just brush up against one another some of its scheduled stuff but we also just create and for those and I believe everybody's been there you come into that beautiful atrium with the Green Berries Cafe and it's a place that everybody can come together and celebrate community and so we're really pleased that we made a lot of progress in those areas in the last year and particularly in a little bit more in the overall three years so if you want to bring up the next slide I'm going to bring up my colleague Melanie Benjamin who's going to talk a little bit more about our success and then I'll come back and wrap it up

And now, if there are no questions, I'll turn the program back over to Peter.

Thank you.

Next slide, please.

What does that mean, satellite delivery?

A little over time, but Mayor Snook, if there are questions, I'm happy to take them.

Benjamin, thank you.

Anyway, you're probably already thinking in those ways.

We're going to be working with the health district about that as well.

Do you have a, just briefly, and we could talk more offline, in terms of your ongoing funding for the work that you all do, is it, I'm sure some of it's paid for by subscriptions or memberships or whatever term, but presumably you do a lot of fundraising as well.

But yes, as Melanie said, private philanthropy, people like you and me and many people listening today are the backbone of what it takes to operate the center each and every day.

So keep up the good work, sir.

Do you teach the knitting classes?

Bring it on, Juan Diego.

So if there's anything that we can do or that Leah can do personally, you know where and how to find me.

We know where to find you indeed.

and it always has been really incredible to read and hear about the amount of change that there has been at the center compared to its previous history so I really appreciate all the work you do in the presentation Peter I understand you're a short-timer

So I think it's going to attract a really awesome pool of applicants and somebody else will be up here the next time with even bigger plans than I ever envisioned.

So what's the timeline looking like?

If they want me to give them the keys and get out of the way, I'll do that, too, because the new executive director will be the captain of the ship, and I'll do whatever they think is best.

But anyway, it's a great resource, and it happens to be not very far away from my house.

No, we can walk.

Anyway, thank you so much, and I appreciate your presentation to us today and all the work you've given us over the last 20-plus years.

Take care.

Thank you.

And so I asked him and he put a couple of students on the task of trying to bring order to our chaos and I understand we're going to get a report tonight explaining how we're to turn chaos into order.

And just as a brief disclaimer, we want to make very clear that our recommendations today are our own findings, that these do not represent the positions of UVA or the law school or the state and local government policy clinic.

You can go ahead and move it to the third slide, I believe.

Okay, there we go.

We're very grateful for your contributions.

Out of sight, out of mind.

and finally the last phase that we're going to be spending some time focusing on is board dissolution as I mentioned earlier unless specified in the ordinance boards don't have the city of Charlottesville doesn't currently have a uniform process for reviewing boards and commissions and making decisions about their continued use so we're going to provide some options to council if they're interested in pursuing this as well

It's our understanding that the clerk has attempted to implement a quarterly appointment schedule, but the council has not always adhered to this schedule, which makes it difficult to keep that.

Are you sure about that diplomatically put?

Yes, so that makes it difficult to keep track.

Shame, shame, shame.

We're relying on you to bring order to this chaos from up here.

You heard that charge, didn't you, Professor Block?

This means that boards with limited purposes may continue to exist even after accomplishing their goals and they may also begin to take on tasks outside of their original scope.

We also recommend adopting standardized appointment guidelines.

Every four to six months do what now?

So where possible, if there's a vacancy on a board, doing appointments in a batch every four to six months.

We've been trying to do it every three months.

Okay.

Should we be changing that or is that...

So depending on what council thinks the capacity of the city is to implement regular trainings at the three-month mark or the four-month mark or the six-month mark, the timing really depends on how council wants to schedule their meetings and administer these trainings.

Thank you.

So doing this would allow the city manager's office to take on more responsibility in the oversight of these boards and give them some of the authority to either consolidate boards that have overlapping purposes or to dissolve them without having to go through the formal ordinance amendment process that would have to take place with council Could I ask a little more clarity on the third point?

Or are you saying the duties that a particular board is doing give them to the city manager's office to just handle without public involvement?

Okay.

I think we could use the term city manager rather more loosely about city management.

Thank you.

And so that would probably be an example of that third category.

And then finally we've talked a couple times about curriculum or trainings and we think that developing these kind of like teaching tools would be really useful especially on the staff liaison and board membership level to kind of help folks really understand their obligations under law currently.

and we will use the remaining time for questions.

Who wants to start off?

I'm not sure if that's been done before.

We don't know what the needs are.

There probably are some sort of, you know, requirements for people coming from certain backgrounds or whatever, but I don't know if that... Well, I just know there are a couple of them, and they have to do with...

What is it again?

And it requires a parental representative and an organizational representative.

Is that a statutory thing, do we know?

Yeah, it is.

So we have to have it and it's got to be appointed by council?

But I can look into, like, exactly what authority is required from council because it is an expenditure of funds, essentially.

So anyway.

I'm glad that y'all were willing or to stick with us, you know.

if we do have commissions that we don't need you've given us a way to review that and if there are certain things that we have to do through ordinance we'll know that as well so thank you again thank you I'll send the presentation thank you

you know we often just don't get a quorum applying and that seems to that seems to me like our biggest challenge is just we have so many that for years a quorum might not apply for it so one I had a couple of thoughts as well one was there are some boards and commissions that we have given some real

And we are not doing that.

Perhaps.

I think we ought to give some serious thought to and you've given us some good ideas about ways to think about it.

Mr. Mayor, this whole area of boards and commissions will be teed up for an in-depth discussion based on this report for our strategic planning hearing so you come out of there with a focus.

So six or seven weeks from now we will discuss this in a whole lot more detail.

and I think this may be the perfect time because with the COVID restrictions ending nationally, they're not going to be able, even if we wanted them to, to meet via Zoom anymore is my understanding and I think that's going to be a big shock to a lot of the way they've been conducting businesses and how many will likely have quorums and stuff so this might be the perfect time.

Do you know?

So I think it's one of those areas that is best tackled in enacting legislation that it might be a place for council to kind of re-examine as they go through.

information from the city attorney's office on that.

I mean, they're certainly express provisions for specific boards, and I'm not sure management and advisory agencies will need to research that because that's purely discretionary within council as opposed to a board that is being created under state law and therefore also has some other structures and guidelines.

Okay.

I have a question, Mr. Mayor.

Yes.

who has the authority to appoint the chairs of these boards and commissions?

But that would be something that we'd have to look into further.

You want to say a few words about your prodigies here?

Our semester is almost over so we're losing them but if there are follow-ups to this work now that we've done a lot of it where we can be helpful don't be shy about either through one of your team or directly asking us to help with that.

Well our retreat where we will be discussing all of this is happening at the same time as university graduation and I suspect that I know where you all will be.

Probably you're correct.

Thank you all so much.

Have a good day.

Turn off the audio.

Are we ready to go?

We're good.

So we will call this meeting back to order at the 630 business meeting.

We'll begin it with a moment of silence, please.

Counselors, any announcements?

So kudos to the Visitors Bureau and their staff.

The sponsors of this event are Wegmans and partnering with the Charlottesville Parks and Recreation.

Burrier.

And again, they close this Friday at 4 p.m.

Muriel was a really good person.

Would you like to read it for us, please?

One of two readings.

Anybody online who would like to speak on the consent agenda item?

Mayor Snook, I see no raised hands.

Is there a motion then to adopt the consent agenda?

I move for approval of the consent agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thomas, take the vote.

Councillor Payne?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Wade?

Motion passes 5-0 to adopt the consent agenda.

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

Beverly Moultrie?

I am available.

Moultrie.

I also served as a project director for this engagement.

David, are we ready?

Yes, I am pulling it up now.

Thank you.

Do I have control of the presentation?

Just tell David when you want to move to the next slide.

Well, if you all are ready, I am ready to proceed.

Please do.

Fire away.

I'm sorry?

Just somebody clearing a throat.

raised your salary structure should be adjusted at a lower rate so let's say two and a half two percent or two and a half percent so those those never need to be at the same rate of advancement next slide okay well that concludes uh the presentation portion i definitely am prepared for any questions that you may have counsel any questions

Is that, or consistently with our peers, is that sort of a safe takeaway?

and I believe we had a few categories that were highly competitive.

I don't know if that question makes any sense at all.

with and also making sure that you're competitive to be able to retain your handlat.

intrinsically or implicitly comparing ourselves to the largest institution in the area.

I'm pretty positive we didn't look at the specific university there in the Charlottesville area.

Thank you.

Is that just me?

so that they understand what is the value of your benefits so that they can stay.

keep up with the various annual reviews that was mentioned.

We'll be coming back to you with human resource information management system appropriation that will provide a tool to better enable us to do that.

And I saw a lot of different... Let me step in here.

Okay.

Is that what that's saying?

So it just keeps you more current.

Is there a way that you could explain it?

A 2% increase or 2.5% increase, but it does not need to be equal.

Thank you.

One, when you were doing that analysis of being in the 50th percentile of other competitors, did that factor in cost of living, or is that just looking at the salary amounts themselves?

Those were on actual salary amounts, so the cost of labor is what we used.

Was that a problem you looked at specifically in terms of the extent of our problems with wage compression and kind of the ability for people's salaries to rise with experience?

that we've been discussing with the city and the HR and I understand that there's an approach to obtain that information because that would be a part of the best practice recommendation is that when you make an adjustment that you consider performance as well as the time that individuals have in their positions as well.

Stanton or surrounding counties.

Definitely.

But we do have in the budget, as included in the budget resolution that we're going to take up later this evening, a 6% proposed cost of living increase.

that what you've done does not take into account any proposed 6% across the board pay increase because it hasn't happened yet, right?

It does not.

I assume we have some rough structure, but I have a sense that it doesn't include 20 pay grades.

We have pay bands.

Is there any suggestion that you all have developed at this point as to what would go into those calculations about 20 pay grades?

That's work still to be done.

Okay.

Mary Ann, did you have any points you wanted to make here about the pay grades and the structure?

We know how important this is, we know employees have been waiting, and we really want to get this underway.

All right.

Mayor, Council, thank you for your indulgence this evening.

And is that complete your report or is there something else?

Moultrie.

Would that include some ability to have people participate by Zoom?

to make that final determination, and we'll come back to you at the April meeting.

Once that ends, does that make us legally unable to do Zoom participation, or am I misremembering that?

Mr. McRoberts, yeah.

We don't, I mean, not necessarily tonight.

I just am curious to know.

We got a couple emails just this afternoon about the point, so I wanted to see if we could get an answer.

Oh, okay, yeah.

I did, I did, and I think it's something that we need to huddle up on.

Thank you for your indulgence.

Is that?

We've issued an RFP for a consultant to work with us on that acquisition and make sure that we're ready.

Thank you.

Okay.

Is our first speaker available?

Yes, Mayor Snook.

Mr. Hartline, you have three minutes.

Thank you for your time.

the name change of the schools.

Thank you.

Pause until after the elections?

Mr. Hossack.

Thank you.

Barker?

It is Parker, but it's Carr.

I'm sorry.

Thank you.

So do we have someone online who would like to speak to us?

We have Brian Campbell.

Mr. Campbell, you have three minutes.

Thank you for your time.

Anybody else online?

We have Matthew Gillican.

Three minutes.

Thank you very much.

Next on line.

Marcia Geyer.

Geyer, you have three minutes.

You can hear me, yes?

Yes.

Thank you.

Anyone else online?

Mayor Snook, I see no additional hands.

at least two public hearings so that if you're wanting to speak about budget taxes and or the SOCA field, there will be an opportunity for that in a minute.

Hamill will present.

Hamill you want to make any further comments on this?

It does not include any amendments that council may or may not make to that budget and that will be part of the work session that we will be working on this coming Thursday evening.

That is additional revenue and it's spelled out in the memorandum.

Okay.

That is basically the resolution that assigns the percentage for the personal property tax relief assistance.

All right.

Okay.

We are having a work session on Thursday, I believe?

Right.