Human Rights Commission Regular Meeting   2/16/2023

Jessica, you may have had this last month, but I wasn't here, but your hair is awesome.

Oh, thank you.

It's a new color, so you didn't miss it.

I love it.

Thank you.

Love it.

But it wasn't in like all of my hair, it was just like...

Even like that vacation, I didn't even take it anymore.

I was kind of speaking out of it.

Yup, we're on.

Ta-da!

There she is.

Great to see you all.

Can you hear me?

Okay, great.

I'm going to mute just in case.

I do know that the internet connection is really, really awkward.

Good evening.

I will do attendance.

Jessica.

And now we get to recite our mission awkwardly out loud.

Okay.

Act as a strong advocate to justice and equal opportunity by

Civil Rights.

It's not as awkward in person.

We will open up for public comment.

Oh, wait.

Sorry.

I have to say to read my statement.

So we were going to open up for public comment.

The commission welcomes comments and questions and commits to listening carefully and thoughtful to what is presented.

A maximum of 16 public comic time slots are allowed per meeting.

Each speaker will have three minutes to speak.

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

So there is a timer in here that we will start if you have a comment and question.

So open the floor if you have anything.

I think we have three guests.

And if you're

Online you can raise your hand and then we'll promote you to panelists and if you're calling in you can press star 9 to unmute.

Okay.

There will be another opportunity for public comment.

We'll move, so there's no response to public comment because there was no public comment.

And that's a typo.

I think it was 1-19, wasn't it?

Second.

All right, ready for a vote?

Ernest?

Yes.

And Lyndele?

Yes.

I don't have many chair updates because there's been quite a bit of time today talking about the retreat.

We just want to announce we do have a new commissioner who will be joining us next month.

So thank you so much for being here.

So she'll be joining us next month and Todd and I and Ernest were able to meet with her last week.

Was it last week?

It was like so long ago for some reason.

So thank you for being in the audience today with us.

That's all my updates.

Not too many things to provide as far as updates but we did you'll see in the packet that we did drop in the data that we have so far for 2023 so you can take a look at that there's some new

New fields that we're working out to try to collect some more information on about like the duration of time we spend on certain types of contacts to see kind of how that pans out.

So that'll be interesting to see how it works out.

Just to note that some of the numbers might change as we fix our formulas because a lot of these have new formulas in them and we're debugging as we go.

No, I mean, are the numbers we're seeing in minutes.

Yeah, in the unit of minutes.

Exactly right.

That's right.

Yes, they're in the minutes.

As close as we can come to.

Oh no, I'm sorry.

It's in hours.

OK.

I was like, what are we looking at?

Let me go back over there.

I'll tell you where it is.

That's a good point.

We should probably label the type of data that you're seeing there.

because it's usually just quantity or account if it's not a percentage, but those are hours spent.

Just on contacts, so we don't really record the time we spend afterward working on documents and doing things like that, but it's the contacts that we're trying to record a little bit.

Other than that, I was going to let you know for and thanks for those who made sure to ask, are we virtual today or not?

It's confusing because we keep having these kind of back and forth.

It looks like, based on the win to meet, thanks Wolfgang, it's going to be on the 16th of March.

Based on what I heard, it's going to be sometime in the afternoon, after work time.

So one thing that's challenging is for public meetings, we have all these requirements under city policy that the place has to be an approved meeting space.

And there are very few of those that are also easily publicly accessible.

So Carver Rec is what I found.

And I just reserved it from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. and just held it, because I knew we were going to use it sometime in the evening.

So there's that.

So that's the 16th.

And then we can talk more about the exact time, but I've got that block.

And then for the committee meeting on the 6th of April, which is another time when council will be in here for a budget session, I am reserving a smaller conference room that's also in Carver Rec.

So that seemed to be available.

The big one was not on that date.

So I reserved that from the usual time starting at 6.30, but only up till 8 because they close at 8.

But committee meetings are usually a little quicker anyway.

So there's that.

That's really all I was gonna share.

Yeah, it's an interesting one.

10th of an hour on your, like, by case.

We've never done that before.

Billable hours, right?

Yeah.

We thought about that just to say, like, how much time do we spend on each, like,

I guess attached to each person perhaps, but it's all such a kind of a jumble in the day because the phone's ringing and you're working on a thing and then another thing comes in.

People put in the time they spend putting in their time.

Yeah.

So at this point, just because we're so public facing it, it's really hard to regulate what you're working on at any given point.

I don't have an exact way of doing that, but the contact stuff will definitely give us some data.

So at least when we're interacting with somebody, we know how long we're spending on that interaction, what the interaction involved, that sort of thing.

I think it does also, sorry.

I think it does also help us a little bit know how much general activities take, like how much a certain type of contact might take.

If it's an inquiry for navigation versus if it's an inquiry for a different kind of thing that we do.

One thing I was going to suggest, I'm not a lawyer to do bill of hours, but I do consulting work, which I do have to do bill of hours.

But even outside of that, I'm just curious about the way that I work.

And so there's a free app called Toggl Track, T-O-G-G-L Track, that does a great job that you can put in like, you're meeting with different people.

So let's say I'm meeting with Todd, so I can put in like timer with Todd.

And you can code it however you want.

I have mine up right now and like I have mine like per project or per something that I'm doing and the great thing about it is you can note like whatever it is so like

Right now I keep track of the Human Rights Commission because in general I want to be able to contribute once I leave.

This is actually how much time I spend on the Human Rights Commission.

And so you can have that as the project, but then whatever it is you're doing that day, you can specifically say.

So today I'm saying it's the HRC regular meeting.

That makes a lot of sense.

I'm going to look into that.

Thanks for that suggestion.

And I was just asking, I know you guys do a lot of work and I know you do a lot of great work, but I just wanted to make sure when we look at contacts and things that if it's low for

It's not low because, it may be low because of the contact, it's not a lot of numbers, but the time that you spend with that contact could be an enormous amount of time.

Just because the numbers say you didn't have a lot of contacts doesn't mean that you did not spend a great amount of time.

with that contact or the many others that you see.

I have two questions.

First, I see you have a meeting scheduled with Eric Steinecker for this coming week.

You are most welcome to come.

Thanks.

Thanks for asking.

Like I can if anybody does want to join for that.

That's so that's a meeting with Eric Steinecker, who's the what is he the interim director of at HUD for fair housing assistance programs, FAP programs.

Yeah, if you want to join, it's a zoom meeting because he's up in DC.

Let me know like shoot me an email and I'll forward you the link.

Yeah, it's basically I'm just kind of going to ask like, okay, we did the ordinance.

What next?

Yeah, I'd be interested in attending that if it can work with us.

That'd be great.

Sweet.

Second question I have is if you've noticed, you, Victoria, have noticed anything in the trends of your actions of people coming into the office?

If there's any more housing or employment discrimination complaints?

See if I can just do it out of my head, but hopefully that matches the data.

Like if the data says the exact opposite, then let me know.

But I would say that most of what we've been seeing in the last two months has been

housing related.

A lot of it, you know, the data will tell you that a lot of it navigational, like people saying, not necessarily alleging discrimination, but saying like, I'm having trouble with

some aspect of housing, right?

Whether that's like understanding the voucher process like they're struggling to attach a voucher to a place or they're looking for housing navigation, finding housing.

And so a lot of it is like redirecting and or facilitating a conversation with a landlord and say like a voucher administrator or something like that.

And then it's also we've had a few folks that we've known for a long, long time

that we have assisted you know through a long process of some type of negotiation so some folks we've actually seen some success like oh they're finally housed or things like that so there's been a bit of that we have a lot of people I shouldn't say a lot but there are a number of people who've just come to visit us for

on a regular basis for many years.

And so, yeah, we try to guide them to resources but not get too deeply into it.

But it's hard because we're maybe a little overly compassionate at times.

I've got a question following up on that.

Yeah, that's a good question.

That's part of the reason we're collecting the data so that the city management can understand how we're spending our time and then they can talk about why, right?

So what would better fit that need?

There are sometimes it's easy to refer somebody, like that's a clear thing like, oh, here's the phone number you need to call, here's who you need to ask for,

If you don't get through, let us know.

We can facilitate a conversation.

Sometimes there's just nobody.

And I think, yeah, sometimes there's just nobody for certain things rather than to go into details about what's missing.

But yeah, that's the challenging part.

Thank you.

Yeah, that's a good question.

So like, for 2022, we kind of started this process with Lily going back through and relabeling everything that that appeared to be sort of a navigational type interaction.

And then I did an aggregation of all that data and talked about like, we and we broke it down by staff.

And I was able I think I showed you maybe showed you this.

And then I was able to pass that to Ashley and Mr. Rogers to say, you know,

This is approximately what it would cost.

At that point, we hadn't tracked how long contacts would take.

Now we're going to do that.

So it's kind of probably an annual thing.

I think we'll just see how it pans out.

Or maybe midway through the year, we can send something to Ashley to say, here's what it's looking like from a time perspective for staff person this year.

So you can put a dollar figure on that and decide what it is that the city needs to create.

Yeah, at this point, I don't know if there's an ask per se.

That's a good question.

In terms of like, if we had too many commissioners would it suddenly become a publicly noticed meeting?

Correct.

That's a great question.

I have to ask, to be honest, if you're not conducting

Commissioner of Business.

Let's say it was Eric Steinecker presenting at a housing conference.

Like you could all show up and go listen to that.

But this is commission-related business, so yeah.

I'm making an interpretation here, so we probably should maybe ask and not show up as an entire commission.

What time is the meeting?

I may not be able to go.

I have to look at my calendar.

I don't remember.

Let me just do this.

I'm going to make a note that both of you want to come, and then I'll send an email to everybody to say this is how it works after I consult with Allison, because it's a little confusing.

I mean, we have a policy that actually says

very robust amount of outreach and organizations and meetings that you're attending and staying in the loop and making those connections.

I noticed at the end it talked about you working on the educational materials.

And I know at one point the commission was supporting with that a while ago with the video that was being produced or whatever.

I would definitely love to have your input on it.

I was telling Jessica a little bit, but we decided with the graphic designer to start, initially we had been thinking to just kind of plunge into doing like a protected activity, just like per video and have there be like five videos on protected activity, but we thought about it a little bit in the office.

and we decided to maybe start with just like what is the Office of Human Rights and just do like a really short like introductory like what what the office does do and where you can find us and like what we don't do but and I guess that maybe less explicitly but like what we don't do but just like a like a broad like this is what our office does and this is what you can bring to us that we can help you with and so she's gonna get started on that

Yes, or that.

If anybody would like to actually record this, it's very fun and very painless.

Yes, reviewing the script.

All of it, yes.

Yes.

For me.

Awesome.

Amazing.

Is this in a collaborative workspace that we can kind of look in whenever we...

It's on Teams so we can use SharePoint to give you access to the document and you can make comments on it.

That would be awesome.

That's so exciting that you're interested in that.

I think what we want to find out too is like how we're able to use the video once it's created for us and if we can translate it and like just rerecord the audio and just apply the audio in different languages over the same video

yeah probably we haven't figured that out quite this quite yet which also reminds me we there was a survey that Ashley sent out to team leadership about language access so language access piece is starting to come together I just want to make sure because I know that was something that we were all interested in

So she's surveying department heads to say, what is your current language access scheme and what resources are you lacking and what do you need?

And so it's in the works that it's kind of exciting.

And I want to give a shout out to Remi, you helped record the first script.

And we may not bother you too much more for more recording, but we might.

But we also have, like, we may just record in the office with, like, computers and a microphone, too.

So we'll figure out just to be.

So you heard us say that, and you're like, oh, man, I'm going to have to do a little bit more stuff.

Victoria, did you want to speak to anything?

I don't know.

I don't know if this counts as drawing attention or as an update, but it was good to see both Wolfgang and Ernest at the open house for the Haven.

That was really cool.

That was a great open house as well and very, very informative.

I think in the realm of outreach, I think there's not a ton of regular outreach activities going on, but I think as we move towards the end of the year, we can go back to maybe at the start of each month, I can send out events that I'll be tabling at.

I will say we got an email today about the Thomas Jefferson Planning District's coming back home conference which is like an all-day

housing-related regional discussions.

I can send out emails about that.

I'll be tabling at least for the start of it.

I'm not super certain what the parameters for vendors who are being permitted to table there is.

But I've signed up to do that.

And I can send out the flyer if anybody would like to attend or would like to come for any part of it.

What is that?

And I just learned today that from Deputy City Manager Sam Sanders that there may be actually more tickets available if anybody on the Commission would like to attend that.

I was invited to attend but I think we're just going to have maybe the table there for part of the day.

And we just can't probably leave the office vacant for a whole day because it really sets us back.

But if any of you all would like to go as sort of like a way to get some knowledge about the housing scene, it might be a good opportunity.

Victoria's going to send us an email and we can reply to the email and say yes.

By the way, the Eric Steinecker meeting is on the 21st at 1pm.

If it's at 1 o'clock I can be there.

On Zoom.

I think I might have class.

Yeah, so.

Yes, Friday, March 24th.

I'll forward the Eventbrite out to the group.

I will say I had

A couple of city departments attended housing opportunities made equal.

They had a community discussion last Wednesday or Thursday.

That was very good.

It was just a couple of hours, but it was home of Virginia, which is based out of Richmond and does

And I'm going to turn it over to the panelists.

It was in person?

I don't think so.

Just because it was like pretty informal.

Okay.

But I think they're doing a second one.

Okay.

I'm not sure when.

Okay.

I would love to hear that discussion.

Absolutely.

She said, I'm so impressed by the amount of work that you and your team do, Todd.

She may be dropped off.

OK, so we're going to move on to the annual retreat planning.

So Ernest, Todd, and I were able to meet last week.

Everything feels like

So far away, even though it was just last week.

So we've identified the place, but we did spend a portion of our time talking about a space.

We are still putting together the agenda, but one of the things I'm gonna explore, I know I mentioned this a lot, but I love training, and I love that Right to Be training, which I've shared to you guys about, the anti, okay, you guys remember?

We talked about that.

So I have a meeting tomorrow,

with someone who may be able to do it.

I don't know their schedule.

I don't know if it'll work on specifically the March the 16th because even when I felt the form they're like do a date range and I was like well Thursday and Friday instead of one day.

So now that we've honed down the day it may hit or miss but I think it'd still be great to do so if it doesn't work maybe for our retreat maybe having them come in a different time just to meet with us I think it'd be a great exercise for us to do but also

because it's public facing people would be joining in that too so just that's something I'm investigating we'll have a meeting tomorrow one of the things I was talking about maybe if you can't do that training is that

I know we have a new commissioner coming on and the educator in me always loves to do like teaching and I just did this activity related to I've done this activity before many a times in a person but I had to do this activity I modified it for on zoom which was really interesting but it's a speed activity that talks like just really just expresses how we all have privilege it's bead because it's like seven different areas of privilege where you read statements and then the statement like applies to you then you take a bead

So some classes like I don't take beads.

There's only like one class that I wouldn't like take a bead from, at least where I am now in status.

But the, I'm giving away the whole activity, but I love doing it because no one, I've never done this where no one walked away with zero beads.

We may have less beads than others when no one walks away with zero.

So just an idea for that.

We've also talked about if that didn't work out, that means like default.

I think we should definitely do it if we can't get another one.

And we've also talked about possibly bringing in someone to do a training related to community resilience initiative, just addressing like trauma,

and just being able to identify that because we are, we just engage a lot of different people and when we are outreach events to have that kind of support with us.

So outside of training, we were talking about the bylaws.

I know Kathryn's not here.

That was something Karen and I were gonna work on and we kind of put on hold because the city was doing some things related to that.

So maybe a point of discussion.

We'll talk about the annual,

Report, Presentation, and then most of the day will be spent on strategic planning for the year, just kind of planning out our priorities.

We did collectively a great job last time.

I've been identifying a lot of priorities, which I think were great and in good spirit for the time.

and then life happens and we all have full-time jobs and so maybe this year kind of narrowing down the scope but again still working together as a commission together to figure out what we want to focus on for this year to establish our focus for the commission this year based on our ordinance and what we're doing.

And then we talked about food because we don't want to bring you for our hour meeting and not have food.

I know it sounds silly, but what we came up with was possibly Pearl Island, Angelique's, or Roots, and then that was all of it.

So just kind of summarizing, but if y'all have questions, like this is the time to give me your input.

And we're looking to honor the time, Mary, that you're available.

I appreciate that, thank you.

I mean, I was fully prepared to have to miss part of it, but I will definitely be there.

Do y'all have preferences?

Any of that?

Those all sound great.

I'm going to do any and all of those activities, depending on what's feasible.

Oh, yeah.

I was telling Todd, well, not a whole lot of events, but I go to a lot of events that came with Pearl Island.

My son had a summer job working at Pearl Island.

I think it all sounds really good.

Thank you for meeting and fleshing that out.

I was wondering in terms of training, if there's anything that the Ashley Marshall and the REDI department of the city, like any models that are being shared at the city level, that it would be good for us to know?

And so, I think that was the main push thus far from Ashley's side of things.

I think individual departments may do things, like I know the Department of Human Services and MISTI, they have done some good things as well.

but and we've taken some of the other like Ashley Wilson does notices of other classes like mostly from equity in the center that have been pretty good like there was like building black power there was one that was like beyond white fragility which was like a like affinity group like white affinity group like talking about how to dismantle racism things like that

But yeah, as far as an ongoing citywide effort, I don't know of anything right now that we could just plug into.

What Jessica was saying about the Community Resilience Initiative, so that's the training around trauma-informed care.

There's a whole system of classes around that.

I don't know, maybe you all are familiar with it, but I do know that there are some trainers now within the city and Department of Human Services and Social Services, so I was going to reach out to them and see, like,

diverse groups of people I know that work has drastically helped me even though it may not like I'm doing STEM how does that apply because we're humans and we have things that are going on and so I have found that training like really really helpful to better be able to navigate when someone's really actively in a trauma moment or what we call like a crisis moment being able to kind of like calm them or kind of de-escalate

before it escalates kind of thing, but having been trained of what to look for and how to respond.

Y'all kind of checked, but this is always my thoughts on that.

Yeah so the reservation for the space in its entirety is four to eight so I figure there'll be a little bit of setup time like I think they they use that part of that time to set the room for us.

What time do you want to start?

So I do have a question about the sort of narrowing down the focus.

I guess I'm wondering like are we just gonna come in and everybody has

Are we going to present ideas there?

I actually do think that choosing a couple main big projects would be really helpful to giving us some focus, but what should be our process for doing that?

Do you want us to do things in advance?

Do you want us to bring

Yes, I have thoughts.

I love Mary because she always is like, but tell me the how.

I hadn't thought about that far.

Let me think about it.

My initial response to you is similar to what we did last time, but if we could, last time was more of what you described.

We kind of did like a dumpster dump of like, here's the 20 things, and then we can drill it down to five things.

Maybe we don't have to do that, but if we could potentially come prepared with a few, or even, I'm giving you a straight up response, because I hadn't thought about that, of the how.

Let me slow down my thinking.

One suggestion we could do is take the five focuses from last year and kind of yay-nay that and have that be the center of the conversation.

And just remind us what they are.

I mean, honestly, I'm embarrassed.

I don't remember what they are.

OK, I can also send that out.

And then maybe that we can do workshop via e-mails.

I can resend that out.

We can workshop, well the thing that's the top of my mind that's stuck from those vibes, or Wolfgang you're going to do it because you're amazing.

One of the things that's standing out from that was the community engagement and then the housing.

I think that's right.

I'm gonna stand in chair and believe that that was the right thing.

Housing and community engagement.

And then the other were, yep, don't make me try to say it right now because I can't think of it.

But yes, we can send that around and then if that doesn't hit and we're like, we don't want to do any of these, we can workshop it via email.

Does that sound reasonable?

The one thing I want to add

her Todd because he says it all the time and I want to like honor that one thing I don't think we've yet like put a

a cook into that we've decided we want to do that one of the things we're asked as the commission is to do like a report that we present to city council around something specific or kind of some kind of research project that we're doing I don't think we've ever found like what that can be or we want it to be so I'd like to use some of that time to kind of figure that out I think we have a lot of good like nuggets and starting points but for example if we're wanting to do housing we want to do research around that like kind of doing things that

are in the spirit of the same thing if that makes sense.

So if it's housing, if we wanna do research, we should probably do that on housing versus doing a lot of divergent different things.

Sorry, I was all over the place.

And I just think with housing, we all, I think there's a pretty broad consensus that housing is pretty much a crisis in the city and beyond, particularly for low-income folks.

but that's also there's a lot of things in housing right so I think like yeah really like trying to push us to say like these are our two like we're gonna work on services for homeless people or

Yes, so yes, the spirit of it, I don't know the how at the moment, but I think the spirit of it is to walk away from the retreat with that being very clear for all of us, like this is what we're going to focus on, these are the ways we want to go about that, even if it's not all fleshed out, right?

it just is like we're gonna attack it from this point of view which is also some of the lay work that Wolfgang has been doing even just related to housing or the community engagement work I missed part of that meeting but yes I was saying in the beginning I want us to come together with the ideas because that's what I've loved about our Commission is that

We all have different perspectives and insights and I want us to feel like when we do decide the focus that we all had say.

It wasn't just like my agenda or Ernest's agenda or Todd's agenda.

It's like we collectively are saying like we agree upon this and we've had time to talk it out and ask all the questions but I don't understand this or I don't understand that or we are focusing in housing but we don't understand these three things so we need to do our first task work to identify those things.

it'll be more clear obviously during the retreat but that's my thoughts in response of the hell in the moment but yes I would want us to walk away as clear as we did last time of like these are our focuses and then a little bit more we did a great job yesterday last year of identifying the focuses but it kind of fell apart in the like

When we went ad hoc to kind of what the next step was, I think it was just overwhelming.

I don't think it's anyone's fault, but I think we're adding new things.

I agree, I think we did a great job of getting information, but it was so very broad, and not knowing how exactly to tackle those things really made it difficult.

So this is what I would ask is, and I know we did something, Wolfgang, you did something last week, but I don't know if it was in terms of this, is if we're gonna do something around housing,

If we can put together a spreadsheet with some links of some of the... That's all Lyndele.

Oh, Lyndele, okay.

Can we get some links together about what are some of the hot button topics or the groups here in Charlottesville that are doing something within housing like Charlottesville plans,

Farr, I don't know what else is out there, but there are some other organizations that we can put in a spreadsheet that we can, that would have a link to it, that we can click on to get information about.

So when we came in, I mean on the 16th, we had information to know, I think this is the, you know, we could probably do some ranking and say this is what we need to tackle, or this is,

The Rights Commission can be more effective.

I think that's kind of, especially around housing.

Because there's so much stuff going on with housing in the city.

Having a place or a group we can champion behind will make a difference.

It's something we can go to city council with some information to say this is what we believe you guys should continue to support.

And you mentioned that I feel like we lost momentum a little bit in that, but I think it was a great gain that we had last year was talking to council and being very clear of like how they need information.

I think we started it and then we didn't get to formalize it enough to say like, this is what we found, this is what we're requesting of you and making it kind of the package that Councilor Payne gave us.

And then John Sales, y'all can't see who's online, but he is here.

and in the audience.

So John, if you have something to say to us, please, when it comes to public comment, please let us know.

I had two thoughts.

The first, to the end of like, how are we about to accomplish all the things that we want to accomplish?

If we are able to find a few actionable items, I think Todd has repeatedly recommended a project management approach.

I can't speak for community engagement on it, but I think I'm speaking for them this evening because Lyndele asked me to.

Community engagement wants to host a project.

to get various actors in Charlottesville together to either work as sort of a town hall or as an expert panel, format still TBD.

And so if we want to do an event like that, we kind of have to plan it back.

And so maybe part of the retreat can be identifying specific actionable items that fall into a specific category we want to take action on, probably affordable housing, emergency housing in Charlottesville.

Ernest, you were talking about the

the Google Doc that Lyndele had shared out, the Google Sheet she shared out last week and that's different stakeholders in Charlottesville to speak with.

We obviously have sort of scarce resources of if two or more of us meet then we must have a meeting but we can still do lots of one-on-ones so that sheet is an opportunity for us to identify people we'd love to talk to, have those one-on-ones and then use it as an opportunity to share that knowledge of the rest of the Commission.

and potentially they can be one of the people that we invite to speak on the panel too.

So it's kind of multi-purpose.

I feel like Todd and Victoria had things to say.

I know.

I was waiting for you to stop to say that.

I was just going to say, while on the topic of a Google document that gives housing informational resources in Charlottesville,

The Haven has a really awesome part of their website that's called educational resources and it has just like a list of like articles about housing like zoning or policies or people's like testimonials on how they have seen housing shift in their life or proposals that people have brought to the past to in some cases to city council for things like where parking should be or like what kind of curve is the appropriate curve and things like that I can email that to you all

So before Todd responds, for all of us to remember, our focus from last year was the Community Equity Assessment, Community Engagement, Equity in City Government Review, and then the Human Rights Commission and Office of Human Rights Capacity Expansion, which got answered pretty immediately after our retreat.

with the approval of an intake person.

So those are just the four areas identified.

I was just trying to go through all these emails, trying to find where the link to that spreadsheet was.

And I put a bunch of names and contact is in there already.

I can't remember where it was.

When I go, I just go on.

OneDrive, and find where the SharePoint was, because I think it's not on Google.

I think it is actually in our SharePoint, which is good so that it's easy to find.

I was going to say that if housing is already kind of in the minds of commissioners the focal point, as you said, it's so broad.

that really you could spend the time at the retreat narrowing down what aspect of housing because there's so many people working on it but there's aspects of it that may be overlooked.

And John you're on here watching tonight.

I'm thinking a lot about the CISRAP program which is the Charlottesville Supplemental Rental Assistance Program and that's something that

John and his team administer for the city but it's a city program and just thinking about looking at that program and understanding it better and saying how this is a thing that the city is spending money on is it is there a way that we can do something unique and different with that because I think there's more flexibility in that program than say like the housing choice voucher program which John and his team also have to administer

But it's very, very strictly regulated by HUD.

So I'm curious, that's just one example.

And that's something you can recommend directly to council, because council controls that money, right?

So just thinking about stuff that you are uniquely positioned to impact, that maybe a niche of a larger topic like housing.

and I will lead and guide you to the end, I promise.

That is my strength.

Anything else?

So if I guess an actual item for all of us is just to review the priorities from last year, just as a focal point, but if there's something else that you feel like we should focus on, maybe we can workshop that via, workshop meaning like just send it via email to all of us and then we can maybe narrow it down so we can potentially go into the retreat.

Knowing our focus.

Again, if it's housing, then we can dwindle it down that we'll focus.

Well, one of the things may be focusing on what specifically we're coming with.

We can come with as prepared as possible if that's the case, but we can workshop prior to the meeting.

So that was broad, not great project management.

So if we could have this by

or your ideas and thoughts by March 3rd.

Is that reasonable?

It gives us two weeks to think about this?

Yep, sounds good.

Okay.

All right, so by March 3rd, if we can have your, I can have your ideas, then we can circulate that.

Okay.

Thank you for that.

And if you're getting it, a reminder, if we all had the birthday backgrounds.

That was kind of cute to see that.

Are any more questions, comments, concerns about the retreat?

I don't have my notes on hand because they were analog, not digital.

But I'm here to report on the, I think March, February, sorry, February 2nd ad hoc committee meeting.

So Lyndele was representing community engagement, me and Ernest were representing housing,

We had three things that we discussed.

First was planning for an upcoming expert panel in Town Hall.

We already kind of discussed that briefly, but that Google sheet sort of lists people that we think might be good individuals on a panel.

We still have yet to decide if we want to have sort of the framework be an expert panel or a town hall format.

It'd be town hall with experts that could potentially respond to citizen comments.

So we're still trying to figure out what the format should be and then also who we want to be on it.

So that's still brewing your feedback.

Welcome.

And then housing discussed two issues.

First, affordable housing and the opportunity that this commission might have to give its voice during the city budget forums.

I attended the last city budget forum.

that was open to the public.

And there's an opportunity on March 22nd.

It's also open to the community to give our opinion about what we should do.

And I think we have an opinion to support affordable housing and the city funding it in the city.

I circulated a letter that everybody should have.

If you want me to bump it, I can bump it.

I'd love your feedback on that.

Actually, I think I need to rewrite it because Todd, I saw your feedback on it and some of the notes that I had in the bottom were just notes from the first public budget forum, not actually things that should be included in the letter, so I might want to clean it up a little bit so folks aren't confused about that.

And then we also brainstormed a little bit about

data exploration and the ways that we might be able to provide, meet the research question piece of the ordinance as opposed to research and provide something research related to council.

Doobouts being thinking about panel structure, thinking about panel experts, and then the letter to support funding for affordable housing.

Thank you.

Thank you for the update.

I appreciate it.

I was on for half, but I had to get off.

So thank you for that.

We're zooming through this fast, which is great.

We don't have a lot on our agenda today.

So now we will open it back for public comment.

Thank you for those that are online viewing us.

Thank you for being here.

We appreciate it.

All right, so there's no response, obviously, to the public.

Yeah.

The VABF, which is the, no, that's the Virginia Association of Biological Farmers.

Sorry.

Take off that hat.

But that's something, I don't know where they're going to take that, but it's just another thing to keep in mind that how do we want to engage with that group if indeed it can sort of materialize again.

That was the VA one?

Sorry, say that again Todd?

Yes.

So what were they saying about Sue?

Oh, Sue Lewis used to be on it, yeah.

It would be the two of us at the moment, yeah.

I think we're by default, like directors and chairs are on the VAHR board.

I was going to say the wrong thing.

the one that I just sent out.

That's curious.

I didn't create it, but I can try to give you access.

Oh yeah, maybe Lyndele grants access.

I'll try to see if I can give you access.

Yeah, it's not really an update.

I want to encourage us to think about whether this commission should play a role in

There are multiple issues related to affordable housing but one of them is just the construction of more housing generally and that that's an important part of creating affordable housing is just having more housing.

So I guess I'm encouraging us to think about whether there are ways that we can show up in that process as part of our sort of thinking about housing.

And there's just been a lot of pushback in the community and a lot of like narrative that I think is false about why the rezoning is

So I think having this commission look at it and potentially say that we actually think it's really important given the racist history of zoning and the efforts to undo that through this process.

Anything else y'all?

It always feels weird when we end like really early.

I feel like we're gaining momentum.

It's like part of that like being in a new year and

I found the event I was thinking about.

Livable Seaville is hosting an online Homelessness in Charlottesville is a Housing Problem webinar, March 1st, 6.30.

Yes.

Okay.

Is that right?

Yes, yes, yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yes.

And I don't think we just like, yeah, that would have been the same day as the meeting.

committees usually meet the first Thursday and that's still open here I think let me make sure again like I'm always it's been a little confusing let me make sure the next so well we kind of go through the dates here and maybe I should send an email with a summary of these but um Thursday March the 2nd is the committee meeting date and nobody else is in city space so that's in person

Then the 16th of March is a Thursday and that is our retreat meeting.

We'll be at Carver because City Council's in here.

Then, what's the next one?

Then the next one is April the 6th committee meeting and that will also be at Carver because Council is in here.

But it will be in a smaller room at Carver because the big room is already taken.

It's complicated.

All in person.

Every one of those is in person.

So no more virtual this year?

Yeah, or something happens.

Whatever.

But for now, yes.

Okay, anything else y'all?

Thank you.

All right, I have to officially end the meeting.

What time is it?

So we will call this meeting.

was the reverse to order.

The opposite of order.

They're ending this meeting.

What did you say Todd?

Adjourning.

Thank you.

What's the opposite of calling?

Adjourn.

We will adjourn this meeting at 739 p.m.

Thank y'all.

Oh it's a lot of big brain action.