Human Rights Commission Regular Meeting   1/19/2023

Lloyd Speyer's 630.

How do you get it for that long?

I got an email just like maybe 10 minutes ago from Mary that she is not going to join.

All right, happy New Year.

Okay, there I won't have feedback because I turned my computer off.

So happy New Year's everyone.

Yay!

That's exciting to me.

So Kathryn will be joining us virtually.

Is it possible to have Kathryn on the screen?

So she is joining us virtually.

And we will do roll call.

Yeah, I was distracted.

I'm like looking at all the technology and being distracted.

Here we go.

Jeanette.

Present.

Mary.

Not here.

Andy is not here.

All right, then we're going to recite our mission.

Are y'all ready?

This is the awkward part.

Okay, act as a strong advocate to justice and equal opportunity by providing city-wide leadership and guidance in the area of civil rights.

Okay, we're gonna open up for public comment.

Todd will have the timer that will display on screen.

I'll just read this.

The Commission welcomes comments and questions and commits to listening carefully and thoughtfully to what is presented.

A maximum of 16 public comment time slots are allotted per meeting.

Each speaker will have three minutes to speak.

The commission requests that members of the public refrain from engaging in personal attack against commissioners and staff members and ask that comments and questions focus on matters related to human rights within the city.

Are there any, and if you're online, star six, star nine, sorry I can read my agenda, star nine if you would like to unmute and if you're on Zoom feel free to mute or raise your hand and we can have you on.

Okay, so no public comment.

That makes it real easy.

So then there's no commission response.

So then we have action items to approve minutes.

Yep, and I'm going to do the one kind of new thing that I keep forgetting to probably, I should probably just add this to the agenda, but if anybody is participating, or not participating, but participating or watching virtually and you have any trouble with that, I have to give you a number to call.

And the number would be 434.

9703023, so that's 434-970-3023.

That'll ring to this phone here, but try not to do it unless you really have to, because it'll ring and everyone will hear it.

Nobody sees the chat in the virtual thing.

Okay, let's go with 1822 regular meeting minutes, and I'll just go through a vote.

I think what happened was, maybe Jenny and I can remember this together, is I think there was either not enough folks or I think we posted it so late that folks didn't get to read it and felt like they wanted to wait until the next meeting and then the next meeting came and we forgot about it.

So here it is.

Are we ready for a vote on that one?

Ernest?

Yes.

Kathryn?

Yes.

and Lyndele.

Approve.

All right and then we'll move on to the August 30th Community Engagement Committee meeting minutes.

We'll do another roll call vote here.

Jessica?

Approve.

And Lyndele.

Approve.

All right moving on to our November committee meeting minutes.

That was the combined committee so we're just kind of lumping it all together and saying do we approve of those minutes.

Ernest.

Approve.

Wolfgang, Kathryn, and Lyndele.

And now onto our December 15th regular meeting minutes.

Yeah, that's a really good question.

You might choose to abstain.

That seems reasonable.

OK, I'll abstain.

I wasn't there.

Ernest?

Mary?

Kathryn?

Approve.

I almost said Andy but I didn't.

Lyndele?

Abstain.

Okay so now I actually have to turn over

Thank you, Jessica.

That felt so official.

It feels so official.

I like that we giggle when we do it, so that makes me feel less formal.

I have to giggle.

So I'm going to go the old-fashioned way.

I've pulled up our old bylaws because the last page of the bylaws is where our election procedure is.

It's normally a little bit more complicated if we have a lot of nominees, but I don't know that we do this time unless we have some from the floor.

Great, that was the slate, so we may be at the same position.

Okay, so here's what we're going to do.

So let's just confirm first of all our nominations for the Office of Chair, and that would be Jessica, is that correct?

Any other nominations from the floor?

I move to nominate.

OK, so Lyndele moves to nominate.

We've got a second from Wolfgang.

I know it's already complicated.

We love you.

All right.

No other nominations from the floor will hold a vote.

It's complicated.

And nominees can vote as well.

You can vote for yourself if you'd like.

I'm doing the roll call vote.

Sorry.

Sorry.

Yeah.

Yes.

OK, great.

Self-confidence there.

Ernest?

Yes.

Jeanette?

Yes.

All right.

Did she say?

Sorry, I said yes.

I said yes.

We're looking at different screens.

That's the problem.

Very good.

That means you are now chair.

So let's go ahead and do the same process here for the vice chair.

Do we have any new nominations for Vice Chair?

No.

Any nominations from the floor?

Okay.

Ernest, from the meeting in December, you were nominated as a candidate for Vice Chair.

You guys are just like, it's like clockwork.

So Lyndele made the motion, Wolfgang seconded.

We're going to move to a roll call vote.

All right.

That was good.

I like that.

Ernest.

Yes.

Very good.

Jeanette.

Yes.

Kathryn.

Yes.

You were both on it.

I looked at you, and you were unmuted.

So good.

Lyndele.

Yes.

Very good.

Ernest, welcome back to vice chair.

So exciting.

Congratulations to you both and super look forward to working with you for yet another year.

So good.

Thank y'all.

I just, you know, I'm the sappy one.

I just want to say I appreciate that being chosen as chair and for Ernest to be chosen as vice chair, y'all have made it really easy.

So I appreciate the work that we have done and the work that we're going to continue to do.

That is my update.

I would just say that as we're, I know I read in the minutes we're going to be meeting next month for the committee engagement, so I'm looking forward to getting back to that work.

I'm looking forward to working with Todd about what the retreat can look like and what things we can do for this year, but I think we have had a lot of great momentum last year, and I'm looking forward to putting and implementing

All right, I'll jump in here.

As usual, we have the big colorful chart in there.

That is the complete data for 2022.

That was a huge team effort to make that happen.

So just want to give a shout out to Victoria and Jenny, who's here with us today, and Lily.

Lily did the bulk of the data entry for us and she did that big push to kind of create that navigational contact bit which has been really helpful for us to kind of reevaluate like what all are we doing that's sort of outside of what we're kind of technically supposed to be doing for the ordinance and so we're doing a lot of kind of internal reflection on

How do we manage that?

What can we do differently?

How can we do it better?

And so we're thinking a lot about that for the coming year.

And so just to kind of make a point that this 2021 was the highest number of incoming contacts that we had ever.

And incoming contacts this year were 1,290 higher.

And so we're just kind of reflecting on that now and looking at why that was, what does that mean, and we're really looking forward just as another update to hiring an intake and admin specialist soon.

So the position closes on the 20th, tomorrow.

I'm kind of like waiting to open the present, right?

I get to look at the computer program that tells us who's all applied and I'll probably do that tomorrow and just kind of take a look and see what all's coming.

Ooh, that's a good question.

Would you want to take this and see if they're calling about virtual access to the meeting?

Thank you.

It's one position right now.

So we still have funding from ARPA dollars for an investigator position.

But what I want to do is, I think I want to do this kind of sequentially.

I want to hire the intake person first, get them really solid, make sure that they feel trained and ready to go, and then we'll work on the investigator position.

So that's kind of the plan.

And it also dovetails with I sent an email to Eric Steinecker, who I think some of you have met in a meeting before, but he's the representative from HUD, who runs the Fair Housing Assistance Program.

This is Eric Steinecker.

He's now, he was, I think he was staff attorney before now.

He's the interim director of the FAP programs for the U.S.

So he's changed, he's got a big role now.

Is he based here in Shelton?

He's in D.C. Is there any way we can, I don't know, thank God,

I'm sure he'd be willing to come back to a commission meeting.

He joined us virtually from DC once when we had a bunch of questions about all of the process and everything.

And he just kind of sat down, just did a question and answer with us.

Yeah, if we ever want to do that again, we can.

Other big things to think about.

I think I sent in the email.

The kind of summary of the upcoming meetings where we have a committee meeting that's going to be virtual on the 2nd of February because council's going to be in here.

Was that a technological question?

No, something else.

Okay.

And then the retreat

We're going to aim for March for that.

I had put in the notes the 16th, which is the third Thursday, I believe.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Is that what we want to do?

Do we want to?

We've done it in different ways in the past.

And right now we're starting to meet.

I still feel like this is a little bit nascent, right?

We're still starting to meet in person and figuring out being in person together again.

Do we want to do something different than meeting here?

I think that would maybe put us in technological challenges from the standpoint of broadcast.

We're well set up here to do that if we want to do it here.

In the past, when we didn't broadcast or do anything like that, we would meet off-site and sometimes on Saturdays, in fact.

I think my thoughts on that keeping it on that day was I think it was a regular meeting day anyway and

We had to put things together and make it very difficult.

So that was my thought.

But I didn't think about the timing.

And as far as do we start earlier in the day or do we stay later in the evening or what have you for it's because of this retreat.

So there are definitely specific things we need to take care of on that day.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Saturdays are a little hard for me.

I mean, with some caveats, but yes.

I mean, I teach on Monday afternoons, for example.

So Todd, if we did a retreat, we don't also have to have our regular meeting at 6.30, right?

No, no, no.

And to throw a new twist to the story here is that now Council has also scheduled a budget work session on top of that meeting as well.

Before they hadn't, yeah, they've also put, so it's starting at five, so city space would, if, so the talk about meeting during the day,

is advantageous because we no longer have city space on that day either.

Before when I had brought this up, I had noticed that council had scheduled over our committee times, but they hadn't scheduled over our regular meeting.

Now they've scheduled over the regular meeting as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Probably, yeah, yep, because they're going to want to restructure the room and everything for that broadcast.

I can figure it out.

Alternatively, if I look toward Friday the 17th, nobody's grabbed city space that day.

So you could potentially do that.

Friday evening?

Friday all day.

It's empty.

I'm seeing the calendar right now.

So two of our commissioners are not here.

So can we, I mean, I'm sorry, let me ask the room.

So how do y'all feel about the 16th, which is a Thursday during the day?

So like proposed, I would think of like 10 to two type thing.

Would you have to take the whole day off?

I mean, Ernest, we did a 10 to two.

What time could you start?

If we do during the day, it would be beneficial for me, I guess, if we do like a morning, like a nine to one or a one to four kind of situation, that way I could like go into work the rest of the day.

The rest of our commissioners that aren't here, Andy uses it during the day works for him.

He's a flexible schedule.

Yeah, we can do a quick poll.

So we're going to go to a poll.

So all the commissioners can have input on this.

Is that 2, 3, 4, 5?

Oh, that's right.

12 to 4.

12 to 4.

Which would mean you would not have.

Or vice versa.

Wolfgang's putting together a win to me.

Oh really?

When is the earliest that we would want to beat?

9 to 1?

9 to 5 window.

I don't think we like the Saturday.

We don't like the Saturday.

Solid action step.

So that's great.

Thanks for putting together the win to meet.

That's super wonderful.

The way Mary or Andy have conflict.

Sounds good.

very good thanks thanks for working that out a little bit that was that was an important one um other little tidbits um other things to tell you that's pretty much all i wanted to say i do want to just give a shout out to jenny too because she's

giving us a lot of her winter break.

And so we've been working a lot on our annual report.

So what's so nice about having gotten all the data kind of together really quickly is that we could take advantage of Jenny's presence to really crank in on the annual report.

She's done a whole lot of great work on the charts that we use in the annual report, just kind of rethinking how to structure those in new and more readable ways and consolidate data to condense things.

So it's been fun, actually, really fun.

yeah it's like this puzzle each year where we're like how do we convey this message with the least possible pages and I always like get up into the 50s and she's bringing it down for me which is wonderful so that that's just really good stuff and Victoria's been working on all the outreach data and I am guilty of not putting in my data yet so that's my next big project is to get in all the outreach stuff that I've been doing so that we have good solid outreach data as well so it's going to come together the intent will be to get this

done hopefully before March, and then we'll have it ready for the retreat, and also what I'd like to do, talking with Ashley, I want to be well prepared for presenting to council, because in the last few years we haven't actually gotten a request for our annual report, so I just kind of like

Yep, yep.

And I think that we should, maybe the three of us, now that you're re-voted in, re-elected, let's maybe look at a date where we can, if you have time to come to the office, sometimes it's just easier to meet in person, use a big screen and kind of work on some stuff.

Happy.

So, I love the totals.

Yeah.

What I would love to see is a comparison of years, pre-COVID,

Yeah.

Everyone's got a mask on.

So I guess I would love to see

Very good.

You know, we have that chart actually in the annual report.

Yeah.

Just by year.

Yeah.

The totals by the year.

I would love to be able to see how that has changed, especially if you are saying you have

got a thousand more contacts in incoming contacts in this year alone from last year.

And then you said a lot of them are like you're referring out to like a warehouse, like referring people out.

And then my other question was about it was you had something about

Asim Barreras, yeah.

Oh, that's an interesting line that's still in the thing.

Nothing went to them.

Yeah, okay.

And do we vice versa go back?

That would be in all of the referral part.

And so you're going to see a huge change in how data is reported and collected in 2023.

We've kind of refined a whole bunch of the pieces.

That's another thing that Lily's working on in the background right now.

It's a huge project because once you make a big change to the database, you've got to reprogram all the formulas and it takes hours.

But she's diligently working on it.

But one of the things we'll see in the past, we kind of had we'd collect referral numbers

on sort of a tight collection of organizations like Legal Aid Justice Center, Central Virginia Legal Aid Society, Department of Occupational Regulation, which is the State Fair Housing Office, EEOC, and the Attorney General's Office of Civil Rights, because those are the closest things that mirror what we do, but in 2023 we're going to

and so we have numbers for those and the other ones we just like make a list of in 2023's data it's all you'll see the exact numbers of how many referrals we made to every organization so it's a little bit more complicated from the data end but yeah it'll be you'll see that a little bit more clearly.

No, it's good.

And Ginny I think pulled up the comparison between the different years so you can see the numbers if you want to.

Nobody on screen can see it because we don't have a way to, I guess we have to log into Zoom and share our screen.

That's a little bit complicated.

It'll be in the 2022 Annual Report, so for those who are joining virtually and can't see what we're looking at right now, this is something that's going to be published once we finish the draft of the Annual Report for 2022.

Except for complaints I think.

I believe that's true, yeah.

About the same, but still a big increase over the earlier years, so yeah.

And with our new mediator that started, was it last year, I believe, we're doing a lot more resolution through mediation than we ever have, because I don't think we ever did mediation before, and it's been really helpful for some people to get solutions through mediation, so.

Always learning.

Thank you, sir.

Do you all have any updates that you wanted to share to you?

Oh no, I was just going to comment on what he said about the mediation, that it was 249, which is like a high number.

Now I'm curious, Todd, of like inputting the data, is it yourself inputting the data, like every day?

And so we're getting way into the weeds, but we'll nerd out on it because we think about it all the time.

But we're things like phone calls, emails, that stuff.

Once we get them, we read them, we log them.

And so we can do that directly.

When we're interacting face to face, it'll often be that we're doing something on paper and then that goes in later.

I'm wondering I don't know my scientific brain is always active in some ways but I'm wondering if we could partner with like like I know you guys are doing it you were saying you're making like drastic changes but maybe

It's a good question.

So we've looked at, so you're asking a couple of things that I hear, like working on maybe a different interface.

We've looked at that.

What we do like about Excel is that when we want to make a change, we can just do it.

If we have an interface, we have to find somebody who knows the programming language to make the change.

So we actually started drafting a new UI to make it a whole program that was more automated.

But the amount of work it was going to take to even get it up to par with our Excel sheet was monumental.

What was my suggestion?

Because I had to do something similar at EVA where I literally hired

actually the department hired someone else like that expertise it's very different bringing someone their expertise that can like I mean within months time like it took a month's time kind of back and forth what I needed and sharing and like we had this lot easier interface that was able to manipulate your data so I think making it

just thinking about making it more efficient not just of inputting the data but also the output of the data a CS major is going to be able to do that a lot easier and more like efficiently where like here it's easier for you to interface it's also easier for you to make changes and then on the back end when you have to do graphs and

We could continue to think about it.

Right now it's like such a work in progress that it's hard and it's really hard to sort of walk people into it.

There's always the scientists in me.

Definitely our younger generation has that social justice.

a little bit yeah it's it's I don't know any other way to capture like for example like I go over to Midway Manor and I talk to somebody and like I can't take I'm not gonna take my computer and log in and do it there I'm gonna write it on paper because it's this is very organic interaction yes like for example

Well, thank you, Jenny and Victoria, for your all work.

We really appreciate it.

It's good.

I can't wait to see the chart with the side-by-side, just to see the increase in the numbers.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, OK.

I actually have a question for you related to that.

Yes, there was going to be a non-voting UVA affiliate, I guess, on the commission.

And then, yeah, it just sort of, they weren't able to participate regularly.

We lost all the contacts, and we tried to follow up with them and didn't hear back.

So yes, that was something that, and then so I think we decided to just not pursue it any further.

But that was a good read.

I think I was on the commission at the start of it.

It was a cohort of UVA students that used to come regularly to HRC meetings and they expressed interest in being a part of it even though they weren't Charlottesville residents permanently, they wanted an UVA presence.

Yeah, and then it didn't.

I think just people changed.

I think that's the hard part is that people's lives get busy and it just changed and there was nobody to sort of pick it up after.

I have a question about the way in which data is collected and how it's tied to personal information.

Is it completely separate?

For us, this is a case management database, and so you all will never see the database itself where we're entering it.

What you'll see is the output that comes from it, and that's this chart that it pops up and populates when we fill it out.

We also use it as our case management system.

Once a week, we do a case review.

There's a column in there that we can mark if we need to follow up, and then we just sort it for that, go through our list of follow-ups, make sure we haven't missed anybody, and then go off on our way and do the work.

Every point on there is tied to a specific entry, which is tied to a specific person.

Good question.

Thank you for being interested.

I don't think so.

Do you all have anything that we've been working on that we should share?

I can't think of anything at the moment.

I think we're still working with the animator.

So what we're working on with, she's an animator based out of Richmond and the goal is to eventually have her kind of, I guess maybe like one step further back is Ginny and I, once again Ginny kind of super saved the day on this.

We went and we recorded kind of like a brief description of each of the protected activities under the human rights ordinance as like a vocal piece.

What our work with the animator is aiming to have at the end result is to have a brief animated video that discusses each protected activity.

make that available on our website or on city social media.

So far, we're still kind of in the first stage and we're working on creating our first video with her.

So I can share that once it's completed.

But we're still kind of getting that set up.

For the panel discussion, we're working with Disability Law Center to have kind of maybe like a Zoom format or maybe a hybrid format meeting with Disability Law Center from Richmond.

We're working on maybe including like other voices that could talk about things like reasonable accommodations and then how our office can sort of how disability as a protected class kind of interacts with that.

But that's also kind of still getting set up.

Can I just ask, I love the idea of the animated videos.

I think that's brilliant.

Will it be possible to have those say in Spanish as well?

That should probably be pretty easy.

I mean, as long as it's legal taking the creative property of the animator.

I feel like probably we can work on that.

Are we good with no more updates?

I imagine this meeting was going to be quick, which it is.

So I could be corrected.

I don't think there was any ad hoc committee updates, but is there any committee ad hoc committee updates?

I sent out an email to say that basically many hands make light work and I would love for people to want to join the housing subcommittee since I think this is the bulk of the work that we are intending to do, to continue doing into this coming year.

I didn't hear back from anybody so there's still opportunity to join if you'd like to.

About budget proposals, I don't know if it's a human rights commission's space to offer that feedback, but I drafted a thing, would love some feedback on it as we're looking at housing issues in the city.

Wolfgang, did you see Ashley's response at 6.30?

I wasn't sure if that was related as just like a good resource for us, if it was related specifically to the letter.

Cool.

Thank you, Wolfgang.

It wouldn't hurt, too, after this meeting to read, maybe, recent news to people.

Yeah.

I saw it, but-

It's less of the letter, more just the ongoing work of the housing community.

I think now it's public comment again, which we don't have because we don't have any attendees.

Okay.

Oh, when is that?

What time?

No, I just like when I'm reviewing the notes, they're always like, chair asked to resend it.

It was just like, I always feel so embarrassed.

Like, I'm the one always asking to resend it, but

Yeah, I just want to thank, I know I saw Ernest and maybe some other folks who came to the Liveable Seville webinar on homelessness.

It was actually really well done, I thought, and it was recorded.

So if anybody wants to go to the Liveable Seville site, they can see that recording.

I'll just give you the too long, didn't read, which is that it turns out that housing cures homelessness.

So we can ponder that deep thought.

Yeah.

You know, a couple of things.

We have a new police sheet in the city map.

Hopefully that will

write the ship or get a handle on what's going on in the city with all of the gunfire and what have you.

So you just have to have a leader in place.

So we haven't had you a little bit.

So it's nice to have you.

I don't think I have anything else.

Looking forward to the retreat coming up and what we do on that day.

and if we get a chance to please take a look at budget stuff that the city is proposing.

Well, I would also like to follow up.

I mean, much of our discussion with Chief Brackney centered on the lack of detail and transparency in the budget.

Seems like he doesn't want to change it.

Seems like he wants to keep it so he can try to hire

I recall too there were also some recommendations that the Commission had made to Chief Brackney that seemed like we never really were able to connect with her on that or have a discussion about it.

Yes, okay.

Let's try to see if we can

Put some in place maybe sometime in the summer.

If I may, I think it's also important to kind of think about sort of the bigger picture too of like the PCOB is now right now in the process of hiring their new director and they're also going to need to connect with the chief so and it's more their overview their purview to be kind of thinking about this sort of police work so I just want to be mindful of the fact that

We've also tried to connect with the PCOB several times to see if we can make sure that we're not duplicating our work.

We can support them.

And I used to have regular meetings with Hansel about that like monthly to talk about what they were doing and talk about what we're doing and kind of make sure that we were on the right track.

They're in the hiring process right now.

And special thanks to our interim, Tito, who was standing in the gap.

So I have special appreciation to him.

And he also spoke at the NSPP opening remarks for us.

So just thank you for the work and standing in this interim.

I think he was planning to retire, and then he was interim police for a little bit.

So thank you, Tito.

Just wanted to extend gratitude to both you, Jessica and Ernest, for staying into these roles for another year.

You're doing a great job.

Thank you.

Seconded.

All right, well, I hope Kathryn had to jump off soon, so we're honoring that.

Oh, next up, sorry, I should say next up's for us.

I will be meeting with Todd just to start planning out this year, doing some workshopping.

We should get back on schedule, Ernest, Todd and I, just on our regular check-ins.

We will have when to meet went out.

Thank you so much, Wolfgang, for sending it out during the meeting.

And so if you guys can complete that,

So we can iron down a good time for the retreat.

Did I miss anything else in the next steps?

And then we're going to have our next group committee meeting in February.

Assuming you don't have a committee meeting in March when you have your retreat, that makes kind of sense probably not to have a committee meeting early.

And the hard part is that we yeah there's just not another space that I

that we can reserve.

And so the easiest way to make it happen was just to burn up a couple of the virtual ones to still keep it on the calendar, unfortunately.

Yeah, I know it's a challenge right now.

Yeah, and well, so you, so like the commission itself only can like have full remote.

Twice a year, 25% of all meetings, individuals can participate virtually if you meet one of the like five criteria in state law.

So like, for example,

Kathryn is distant, right, more than 60 miles distant from the physical meeting and so that's justification to join remotely.

I think, so did somebody quickly do the math?

We've done this a couple of times in the meeting.

So 25% of 12 regular meetings would be, what is that?

Is it three?

But that's not fair, Todd.

I can't fix it.

I think we talked about you know I could push harder to find an alternate space that's one way we could preserve those if what I'm hearing is that is important to you as chair of the Commission to like preserve some of those abilities to meet virtually

For whatever reason, in the future, I can ask about other spaces in February and other spaces in April.

And then we didn't really talk about a committee meeting in March, but we could.

I would say it doesn't hurt for you to see if there's other spaces.

I just hate by like a technicality, we're removing two of our three options to be virtual where

And I suppose that we could look at like Key Rec Center, I don't know, I have to look at what the approved spaces are, like it's, there are very few right now that are approved for

I'm not happy that we had to change up March 16th.

Yeah.

Nope.

OK. All right.

We will officially adjourn the meeting at 730 PM Eastern.

Thank y'all.

Thanks, Jessica.

Thank you.