Human Rights Commission Work Session   1/4/2024

I think this is where I'm supposed to... That's further down, further down.

One more overview that I think... Yeah, sit next to you there.

Right here.

Are there any new places, or...

Okay, that's... Yeah.

Okay.

Remind me.

Okay.

We ran out of time.

Well, there was seven in when they sent out the agenda that said they were going to have some.

Well, it says that they bought enough for us, too.

Thank you.

Do you need parking validation?

Yes.

It got me off the wedding list so I had my spot in Market Street Garage.

Yeah, I guess that's the most desirable because it's the closest to city hall.

Right.

Hi, how are you?

If anybody comes here, I will.

Thank you very much.

I would like to eat now.

Jesse, there we go.

Um, I have not heard from anyone that they would not.

You know, maybe one of them.

People get bored every once in a week and chat about it.

That's the land that he's in.

So, yes, they're solid.

Yeah, nice things to have.

Caroline, we are anticipating Commissioner Angela Estes, who is the new commissioner, to participate in the assignment.

Thank you.

Angela Estes?

Yes.

Yeah, she should be on her way as well.

I have not.

I had chatted with Katrina though earlier in the week and she dedicated and she was kind of iambic and prepared some materials.

She may be making her way over to her another, she's right on time.

Well, good evening.

Welcome, everyone.

I am present.

And I do not see Mary.

Wolfgang.

Present.

Kathryn.

Here.

Here.

And Charlie.

And do we have Angela on?

not yes okay all right oh we don't have our i know we don't have all right so if you have your agenda if you will look as we do uh recite our mission together to catch up

Everybody OK?

Do you have it memorized?

We know it.

OK, we got it.

All right, let's do our mission.

One, two, three.

Act as a strong advocate to justice and equal opportunity on the right of citywide leadership and guidance in the era of civil rights.

All right.

I also want to make sure you make a notice to members of the public that are participating virtually.

We have been experiencing difficulties virtual, so you may call in at 434-970-3151 and a staff member will assist you.

That is 434-970-3151.

I'm going to make a quick correction.

3115.

Oh, 3115.

Sorry.

434-970-3115.

All right.

So I want to welcome everyone on tonight.

I want to welcome our new commissioners that are filling spots that were left vacant by commissioners who have decided to step down.

That is Angela Estes and Charlie Burton.

So Charlie, we welcome you here.

Angela hopefully will be joining us virtually.

She is out of town.

So I look forward to meeting you guys real soon, hopefully before our regular scheduled meeting the second Thursday, third Thursday in the smart.

So we've done our motto.

Who was in the room?

Well,

If you look, we have our city manager, Mr. Jay Stromer here.

City attorney.

Sorry, city attorney, Mr. Jay Stromer here.

We have our outgoing mayor, but still counselor, Mr. Lois Snook with us.

And delegate.

And incoming delegate.

Katrina Colson are going to be with us as well.

So tonight, we want to spend some time and Happy New Year to our commissioners.

Glad you guys are here.

Thank you for being here.

Yes, back here.

So thank you, thank you.

You're welcome.

Tonight, we want to

There have been some city, the council annual legislative process per shelter human rights ordinance.

One of the roles for us as a commission is to provide and recommend to the council regarding the city's annual legislative program with the emphasis on enabling legislations that may be needed to implement programs and policies that will address discrimination

which is one of the codes in the Charlottesville codes that some of the commissions have recommended for the year.

We have been lucky enough that the city, that council has adopted some to send to the legislative.

So I want to pass this over to Mr. Louis Snook to talk about what council has done.

Well thank you.

The process that we go through is obviously we want to make sure that we get to our delegate and our state senator a legislative agenda in time for them to do something with it, which as a practical matter means we're shooting for the beginning of December since the term starts in January and we have to give the legislators time to, among other things, get the bills submitted to the

the folks who actually draft them, legislative services and then to be able to pre-file them and get them on the docket of the various subcommittees.

You don't start filing bills or sending bills to your delegates in the middle of the session.

That's just too late.

So we had collected various comments and suggestions from people over the course of the year

and of course one of the letters that we got was the letter from this body and let's see, dated September 22nd.

Appreciate the fact that it came in nice and early and gave us a chance to think about it a little bit.

So there were of course other things that we were working on all the time as well.

One of the things that we tried to do this year, which is a little different from prior years, in prior years we would submit about a 10-page list.

Nobody has time or the ability to focus on 10 pages worth of

of different legislative requests.

And so we last year for the first time had distilled everything down into a one-page submission of our COP 8 or 9, I think it was, priorities.

And that was, I think, very helpful to our legislators to know what things were there that we actually wanted them to be

to be investing political capital in.

What were the most important things?

Not merely if this one comes by your desk, vote for it, but rather what are the things that we really want you to be spending your time on?

And so that was sort of our goal in coming up with the, it wound up being almost two full pages, but there was a lot more text of explanation of these than we had had the year before.

The single most important priority that we feel that the city has legislatively is to expand the option for a one cent local sales tax increase for construction and renovation of public school facilities.

That's the way that we're going to be able to take the next step.

We've already funded Buford, but the next step to fund what's gonna happen both at Walker and at each of the elementary schools is something that at this point, we don't know where that money is coming from, except that we know we won't have it until at least 2027.

That's too late.

It's important that we find a way to get those projects going earlier.

And the only way we're going to do that is to get this sales tax increase.

The other thing that would happen, we would have to work to look at this kind of, you know,

if and when it gets passed is it may be possible to basically take some of the money that is now being covered through bonds for Walker to move it over and have some of that Walker money paid for out of this tax.

The point is that it allows us to do the things that we need to do on a schedule that's a reasonable schedule.

that doesn't leave half of ours or really the first five years, six years of our schooling for our kids in schools that are not adequate.

And so that's our single most important priority.

And what I told the legislators last year and we'll tell them again this year is that if there is anything I want you investing your political capital in, it's that.

The other issues that we've designated, I mean, there's some, for example, continuing from the funding of the Virginia's home visiting programs is a, I mean, it's a simple problem that we know that these funds are going to decline unless something is done, and that's important.

The next item up is salaries for members of local governing bodies.

Frankly, I don't care very much about that, but other folks on council do.

Come on up.

My apologies.

We'll just have to blame Richmond.

We blame Richmond for everything else.

And what I had just finished saying to them was that I will say to you all this year, as I said to everybody,

Sally Decree last year, that the single most important issue for us is the one cent sales tax increase.

Yes.

So I'm happy to listen.

And so there, as I said, I am less concerned about salaries for members of local governing bodies than others.

Some people regard it

as important to be able to give people who do not have other jobs a chance to serve on the local governing bodies.

If that passes, that's fine.

It doesn't automatically increase the salaries.

Council would then have to take further action.

It would just allow us to take further action.

Funding for regional transit authorities

This is in many ways an equity issue because the only way we're going to be able to afford the significant increase in our transit capabilities that we know that we need is if we can establish the sort of transit authority that would involve some kind of commitment of taxing authority or even a commitment, even as just a commitment from the localities

and somehow or another we would come up with another $10 million, however we want to do that.

And Albemarle would come up with another, however much money they would need.

Well, it would be an additional one cent sales tax.

So in theory, it could be two cents worth, but it could also, I mean, there are a lot of ways it can be done.

It would not have to be a full one cent, for example, but it might need to be.

I'm just concerned as, you know, sales tax is considered more regressive.

Yeah.

Sales tax, of course, you know, the governor is now talking about increasing sales taxes himself while decreasing income tax.

So we want to make it that.

The problem that we're sort of limited in that

There are only a few kinds of taxes that we actually have any authority over and sales tax is one of those.

And roughly one cent on a sales tax right now is we figure is about $12 million.

Yeah.

And so anyway, then we move on to something that is near and dear to Jay's heart.

The General Assembly this past year did something we think inadvertently that just kind of confuses lots of city attorneys and mayors and other people about how exactly we're supposed to proceed with some notice requirements.

That's probably going to be done, and I suspect there's not going to be a lot of opposition.

Ben, the next one may be important to you all.

Right now, our Freedom of Information Act basically prohibits all virtual meetings.

Now that the crisis of COVID is over, there are many groups that have found it useful to have all virtual meetings, or at least to have meetings where you don't have to have a quorum, a physical quorum present in one location.

So there may be some change in that.

Then the part that embraces some of y'all's legislative agenda is the affordable housing accessibility by enhancing tenant rights.

Some of these things were specifically things that we had worked into.

The Affordable Housing Plan passed two years ago.

We did not, frankly, as we looked through your list of things, we chose some things that we thought would be easier to get than some others, recognizing that we, of course, at the time we were drafting this, we were still looking at a Republican, at the time that you all were drafting it, we were responding to it initially.

We're still looking at a Republican majority in the House.

We now have a Democratic majority in the House.

We still have a Republican governor.

We have to be somewhat realistic.

And as we tried to draft a combination of positions here, we tried to keep in mind some sense of what we thought might be politically doable.

This is not a statement that we reject the other things you have asked for, but simply a recognition of things that

I think are possibly doable.

I will add that the provision under which we made G1 Mending Landlord Tenant Act to allow tenants to raise unsafe or unsanitary conditions as an affirmative defense

to nonpayment of rent.

When I was in law school in Michigan, I worked for the legal aid office up there.

And there we called the term partial constructive eviction.

And partial constructive eviction meant that you had a right to get a credit against your due rent.

for the amount by which the landlord had not lived up to all of their obligations.

So you didn't have to flat out move and quit or start putting up your entire rent into escrow or any of the other things.

But it was allowed as an affirmative defense.

And so when I saw you all suggesting that, I thought, yeah, right on.

I remember that from 40 years ago.

Anyway, so these are the things that we had put into our

our specific short list.

I will also tell you that we have a longer list that we sent along as well that the TJPDC legislative program that is about 10 pages long.

I don't know there's much of that that is of great interest to you all and rural broadband for example is probably not a high concern for this body.

But there are some, I will just note, if anybody looks at the TJPEC legislative program, you will see that there are two places in particular where Charlottesville dissented.

One was they wanted to maintain the principles of sovereign immunity for local government.

And we dissented saying, no, we think sovereign immunity ought to go.

That's still a legislative position of ours.

The second legislative position

that they took that we disagree with.

They say we oppose legislation mandating expansion of the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act's coverage area.

Instead, we would like to have that coverage area increased.

Other than that, the TJPDC legislative program is what it is.

Thank you, sir.

Any commissioners have any questions for

Snow.

Yeah, I can jump in.

I'm doing a lot of things on the fly now.

I'm good.

Yeah, I'd be happy to jump in and happy to.

The good thing is, good news is there's a lot happening.

There's a lot of really eager Democrats right now.

I was just meeting with a whole bunch of them and I had the opportunity to talk with a lot of them about things that they have in the pipeline.

And I'm happy to share that with you.

In terms of G, I put in for drafting all four parts of G and then I started working them and seeing where we stood.

And I'm happy to tell you that.

So Delegate Elect Ray Cousins is going to be doing something around one.

Her specifically, which I'm happy to share with you, actually printed off a draft of what she had, but she's going to be putting in and it's an escrow account type thing.

This was a conversation from two hours ago that I was, so I've not had a chance to review it all.

I knew that she was doing what I had to get a copy of what she was doing, and she sent me that along with the amendments, but it's a VRLTA escrow bill that would allow tenants to basically not have to pay their rent while they're pursuing, you know, trying to get fixes for the places that they're living.

I think she'll be a good advocate for that.

She's working with the Virginia Poverty Law Center.

I met with Virginia Poverty Law Center and they're pouring a lot of resources into getting that passed.

Can I ask a question?

Can you say escrow?

You mean that some people would have to pay money into the court system?

I am going to say I have not had a chance to read it other than to stand so I can literally just say what

The section I saw said, which yes, it was that they would pay into escrow, but at least would allow ability for them to get their money back.

Which you're hinting at a bigger issue, which is that the whole system, so I've been meeting with Virginia Poverty Law Center, I'm sure you guys are well aware that the whole system is, it needs a lot of work in Virginia.

It needs a lot, a lot of work.

Even some of these, like the waiver of the appeals bond, which that's the next one.

So that one I met with Virginia Poverty Law Center, they requested that I,

Hold off on that one because they think sequentially it should happen after we make reforms to the process because otherwise indigent clients are not pursuing appeals because the process, they're still required to pay the rent while they're doing it.

And so she said, and I asked her,

What do you guys want to see that has the highest likelihood?

And she said, we would like to do this and pour advocacy into these pieces.

And there's other pieces that I'm not aware of.

And then we'll work town halls and get advocacy behind waiving the appeal bond, which is the second piece.

And I think I will be the patron of that next session and jump in with questions because I'm discovering it too.

I would just say, I think requiring

indigent individuals to pay money into the court is extremely ineffective.

Yeah, and Kristy, who I was talking to.

Kristy Gara?

It's not a, it's not,

accessible to most individuals.

It's just too onerous a process to have to go through that.

Yeah.

Well, the optimistic thing is Kristy has a legion of delegates working with her or trying to pass this.

And she's really invested in it.

And she's got a pathway that she's moving forward.

And I'm in that conversation now.

And I'm happy to bring y'all's experience with me when we're going.

So Ray Cousins is doing that one.

I'm probably going to do two next year and sequentially after they do the other things that they're doing.

Three, requiring landlords to disclose a complete list.

That looks like it's set to fly.

I don't want to promise anything.

I can't promise anything, but that one's a good one.

I mean, it's transparency.

It's hard to argue against transparency.

It's being carried by Kathy Tran, who's going to be an effective advocate.

She's not speaker, not leader, chair of the caucus right now.

For authorizing localities to pass rent stabilization ordinances, that's being carried by Nedarius Clark, co-patroned by Adele.

Nedarius has been working it for over a year.

He actually introduced similar legislation last year.

He's taken those, continued to meet with stakeholders throughout the year, and he's carrying that piece.

I'll be co-patrons on this, but I'm not going to be the patron of these ones, although I do put them in for drafting, but I'm not going to file them just to say I file them when there's other people who are

Also, really quickly, I sought out some information about other things that were happening.

So Truth in Renting Act is Delegate Tran, also being carried on the Senate side, Senator Voisco.

It's all about the naming.

That's what they're calling the transparency, truth in renting.

Prohibition of fee for maintenance calls, which prohibits landlords from charging a fee for responding to requests for maintenance, unless the maintenance is in response to damage caused by the tenant.

That's being carried by Delegate Tran and Senator Eben.

14-day payer quit is being carried by delegate price.

That increases the time during which a tenant can pay late rent and prevent the filing of an eviction case from five to 14 days.

I'm going to say there's a lot of good things happening.

We'll see where they get.

And they're trying to be very sensitive to the fact that they're still a Republican governor.

So I'm trusting their expertise with how they move forward.

I'm not going to talk much more longer, I promise.

Next one, eviction expungement.

It's carried by Delegate Hope, Patrick Hope, and he's head of courts, I think, or general court, so that's a good one.

He clarifies the timeline for expungement unlawful or detainer cases that have been dismissed or non-suited and makes expungement automatic.

Currently expungement is available for those cases, but has to be done by petition, which as we talked to before, I mean, using the legal system to

achieve your means is usually out of reach for people that aren't lawyers.

Anti-rent gouging, that's what they're calling the rent stabilization, that's Delegate Clark, Senator Voisco, and limits on attorney's fees awards is being carried by Senator Stanley.

That requires attorneys seeking a fee shifting

order from a court to file an affidavit detailing the work done.

I'm reading this verbatim.

It puts elements of the legal ethics rule, reverting attorney's fee into Virginia code.

I had a longer conversation with her about that.

That's like a nuanced little piece that I guess attorneys can really overcharge when they're doing these eviction cases and it can become problematic.

So those are just some of the exciting things that are happening.

On my end, I'm putting in a bill, I'm co-patroning a bill that's really just a tiny little chunk, but it's a study about single stare

I met with some housing groups locally and that was one that they were championing.

And there's other states that do it and there's other ways that you can have safety.

And just as of a few hours ago after I was talking to Ray Cousins, I'm going to take a bill from her that is about tenant screening and having to provide a reason when you reject someone from an apartment.

So that's one that I'm going to be patronizing.

As of like two hours ago, I need to read it.

It's being worked by an advocacy group and it's already been worked.

So it's in a good place.

In fact, I have the whole like a white page here, but all that is a long way to say that there's a lot of people focused in on housing right now.

There's a lot of people who've been doing the work for a long time.

I'm really excited to join the conversation.

I'm sort of the new person, so they're helping me along.

I've been in contact with a lot of organizations.

They know that I've told every single one of them that it's one of the top concerns of my constituency base.

And so I'm starting to get in the mix.

So these are the bills I have.

That's information I have about where they are and what I can help them with and what we can help them with.

My last piece, which maybe you all know, is that

And I doubt y'all need to attend it or would want to attend it, but the Virginia Poverty Law Center is having a housing advocacy class this Sunday, January 8th.

And I'm happy to share that information.

And I guess they're going to talk about ways that you can do advocacy around these issues as they move forward in the next two years with the Democratic majority.

So those are the housing bills, and I don't want to take all your time with my other bills because I have other bills that are foster care and the sales tax and

Will that program be in person or virtual?

Let me send you, I did not print it out, so let me forward it.

Oh, the snow, right.

Yeah.

Yeah, it should be good.

And I should just say I'm happy to be a partner with you guys.

Hopefully I can attend more meetings because there are other things that I'm working on that probably touch upon a lot of the work that you guys are doing.

Like I said, foster care, a lot of local government issues.

And you're catching me again at the end of the day when I'm trying to remember my bills all from there.

It's an area of interest for me is making sure that people are served well and that they can live happily, freely with the resources they need to get by.

Oh, criminal justice reform.

Could you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, so for criminal justice reform, I have

Three bills in.

The one that I'm most excited about is a probation reform bill that would allow probation to be shortened by up to 90 days for achieving certain things, credentials, going back to school, working.

That is being, it's already drafted.

I have a lobbyist that's working with me.

It's actually, interestingly enough, I think there are two musicians who are

Really pushing this.

They've done it in other states.

And it's actually passed in Republican states.

It's passed in states that have Republican governors and Republican because it makes them I mean, that's the point of probation.

That's what we want to see out of the criminal justice system is that people reintegrate into society.

It's hard to argue against that.

And so why not encourage them to get to get whatever they can out of the program and then reduce their time?

So that's what I'm most excited about.

The other two

come from the Virginia trial lawyers.

There's an acronym of some other group that they meet all year.

It includes defense lawyers, it includes prosecutors, it includes judges.

And so they carefully vet the bills and they come to a consensus on them.

It's like a seven letter acronym of things, but prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges.

Joe Platania approached me about two of the bills that they are doing and I'm carrying them.

Wood Graves, Wood Graves Conference Friends

So yeah, I can be really open with that.

They're not the most progressive because they've been vetted and approved by all stakeholders.

That's good for this session because the governor's tough on crime.

And if you're going to get anything approved, it needs to be something that you can say, there's been a lot of work and there's still good steps forward.

One is about reducing the automatic felony that you get for residual amounts of drugs.

Progressive prosecutors try to get around that by charging things like drug paraphernalia, which isn't actually what fits the crime because you have to do a felony right now.

And so what this would do would make it so that at the discretion of the prosecutor, it can be dropped to a misdemeanor.

The non-progressive enough for me that I struggle with is I would love for it to be also at a motion of the defense attorney would be nice.

But that apparently killed the bill when that was mentioned.

And I don't think the governor will sign that.

So we're going to go with now at least allowing the prosecutors

the chance to make it a misdemeanor instead of a felony and with the hope that you know prosecutors are elected in Virginia so they have to answer their constituent base if they're doing crappy work or sorry they're doing bad work.

So felony misdemeanors and then the other one is our first time offender program so we have first time offender rehabilitation programs that we offer for drug cases

Right now, if you have any prior marijuana conviction, that's considered a first time.

You no longer qualify for the services.

That's first time offense.

I don't think that's aligned with the current thoughts around marijuana is legal now.

So having for marijuana that's 10 years old shouldn't really prohibit someone from accessing drug rehabilitation services if they need them.

So it's expanding that.

So those two and I'm hoping those ones will I've been told it's hard to even get one bill passed.

I believe that I've had many people tell me, but those are

Those are well vetted bills.

Joe is being very helpful.

And he's a great resource.

And I actually just met with an attorney today to talk about it a little bit more.

Mark Wicks, I want to say.

So those three pieces.

And then I put in for drafting also the thing about redoing, please.

But I don't think I'm going to have space to carry that because.

If I may, Mr.

Chair, in our office, Katrina has been for several years an expert on juvenile and domestic relations law and has a great interest in issues in that space, strengthening families, foster care, and I think that might be an area of

Yes, that's right.

So when I first started, we still didn't know if we'd have the majority.

And I was really told, focus on your strengths because everything is so new.

You're literally meeting everyone.

You don't have relationships built.

You don't know, you don't remember people's names.

You don't even know where to walk in the building.

So they said, focus on areas that you can bring professional experience because then you won't have such a heavy lift learning brand new areas of law and all this.

And so my background is foster care.

So I'm doing some pieces of legislation around that that I'm excited about.

The biggest being kinship is foster care prevention, so really strengthening and giving funding so that we can place abuse and neglect to children more often with their family outside of foster care versus having to go through the foster care system.

Right now, most people go through the foster care system because you get more money and

Families usually need money if they're taking on an additional child.

We don't offer those same resources if you do it outside of the foster care system.

So this is actually gonna be hopefully appropriating around 16 million, which is actually already earmarked in the governor's budget for a program like this.

So if we can get them on board with ours, it will be 16 million to help beef up kinship placements for these children so that they're not interacting with the court system.

That's fine, right?

Okay, y'all are testing me.

That's good.

No, that's where I'm at right now.

I get to make amendments.

I'm also doing a little collective bargaining piece, but I get to make amendments up till tomorrow.

I'll be filing all my bills by Tuesday.

I would love to meet in the future.

This session is pretty much set, although I can make changes and I'll be working the bills that I mentioned, but I'll produce later bills only the next year.

So hopefully we can start conversations around what y'all want to see out of that.

Thank you for sharing.

I've been on the Hill since day four.

I did want to, I wanted to ask something, I guess, to Laura, to Mr. Snook about the, D, about the funding for Regional Transit Authorities.

And you talked about trying to find money for that.

Right.

Well, bus drivers have collective bargaining.

They're trying to work on a contract.

The issue there, there actually is an interesting question of whether

whether there is some voice that they need to have in all of this.

And I'm not gonna try to get into that process but I will tell you right now, I mean, the dominant concern is that we are trying, we're hoping that say by the year 2026, we will be able to have buses that are essentially double

The frequency of what we're running now, because buses once an hour, that's not an adequate service.

That we're hoping the buses that are now running every 30 minutes would go to every 15 minutes.

The buses that are now running once an hour would go to every 30 minutes.

We're also hoping that many of those buses, not all of them to start, but many of them would be battery powered buses.

So we would be able to

be moving towards a greener bus system.

We're not gonna be able to go there straight away for a couple of reasons.

Number one, because we've still got diesel buses that we're actually legally required to operate for 12 years before we can take them out of service.

and so there's some there we're just, we're gonna have to keep up.

I'll tell you one of the problems, just a little aside, a few years ago we bought some hybrid buses.

The hybrid buses had severe mechanical problems.

We haven't been able to get them on the road often enough to be able to meet the requirements to be able to take them off the road.

And that's a federal requirement because most of the money comes from the feds and they get to, they've got these regulations we're trying to get

a waiver from them on the hybrids, but that's an issue.

Anyway, so 2026, if we were to get this authority, we would have to place the orders for the buses and most of them would be paid for largely by state and federal funds.

But when you snap your fingers and say, we want to buy a bus, you got to wait two years.

It just takes that long for them to get through the pipeline.

So we have to be looking forward.

And the idea would be that

By 2026, we would have all of the plans worked out.

We would have the money in place.

As I said, I think the amount that they're talking about needing from the city would be in the order of 10 to $15 million a year and a larger amount probably from Albemarle County, although

And one of the schemes that I think we're going to have to be looking at is increasing the number of ways that we allow access to basically university and downtown to people coming from out of town so they don't have to come into town.

So they don't have to rent a parking space.

So we don't have to build them a parking space.

Building a parking space in a parking garage is a very expensive proposition.

If we can avoid that, we would like to.

So, park and ride lots and things like that on the exterior are going to be important and so access and use of transit in the county is going to be important as well.

I can speak a little bit about the collective bargaining piece because that is the piece of legislation that I put in.

And I'm sorry, I realized I was only looking over here.

So I'm sorry that I haven't even like this way while I was talking.

Of course, now I'm like trying to be doing this.

So John is trying to unionize with ATU.

And they were having issues with whether or not the enabling legislation applied to them since they're not a public, they're a public body, but they have to

for all authority from several localities that pay in and also they take private funds.

So that is being clarified.

The enabling legislation I put in a draft to have clarified.

The draft came back and only had the definition of a transportation district.

There's been a lot of back and forth within the last few days.

I actually have a meeting tomorrow morning at 8.30 with Mike Murphy, who's heading up Jaunt right now to get their take on it.

Long story short though, because I also just talked with Kathy Tran today, she is actually overhauling the collective bargaining

And so I asked her if she could include the transportation piece in it and she was willing to do that including the definitions that we had worked out and Delegate Anthony is doing it with me.

So she's going to take it into her bill.

I am probably still going to file mine.

because it was something that I worked on and I want to file it, but the intent and I've got the confirmation from her is that it's going to be included in the bill that she does.

And that would make it so that John will still be able to make the decision about whether they want to allow their workers to unionize with ATU, but they certainly can't.

They wouldn't be able to point to the legislation as the stopping factor for that.

If I may, so that collective bargaining process is actually well underway and in fact there's been some tentative agreement on some of the non-economic aspects of that contract and that work continues and in fact they'll be reconvening on Monday to continue those talks and the message from the council and from the city manager is bring us a contract and obviously all of us are working on that issue.

There are a whole lot of things we're going to have to do.

And part of the problem is if we get the power and we know we're going to be having this thing starting, let's say,

Let's say we can start it up in 2026.

All of this is gonna take a couple of years of lead time.

It's not only the buses that are gonna take the lead time.

It's gonna be, if we're gonna have park and ride lots, those are gonna have to be worked out.

If I could add just one other comment to something that Jay said.

We got a number of comments at the city council meeting on Monday night from people on behalf of the transit union complaining about the city's position on things.

And I just want to make very clear to everybody that city council cannot comment on that.

And we will not comment on that.

And if we were to comment on issues like that, it may well be an unfair labor practice.

So if people say, well, why didn't council, you know, get there and get behind the transit?

We can't do that.

And we're not gonna.

Understood.

Yeah.

Can I make one plug?

Reach out to me earlier rather than later because I'm getting a lot of people coming at me.

So there's not really, it's not like they've had a lot of time, but a lot of people just, I don't think realize the timeline.

So I'm getting like meeting requests for this week.

Like let's talk about some legislation that needs to happen.

And it's really feels too late to work a bill well and to get stakeholder feedback and get momentum behind it.

We're going to have our work session February when we get all of the new commissioners involved as well.

I'm ready.

The appeals bond in particular is a piece that I've already got some people behind.

We'll have some to City Council.

And I will say, just so you all know, the no politics is weird.

And there's like bigger picture things that people are trying to do.

So I'll tell you, since I'm a Democrat, I'm like the Democrat and

The Democratic caucus has a majority and so caucus leadership's got a pretty strong hand right now, making sure that we get basically our top priority, identified priorities through without making so many waves that we have that swing back that we had when we last had the majority.

So speaker elect Scott has been pretty strong handed with how we're proceeding, which I think is smart for this session.

So that's been kind of, and there's so many freshmen, there's 34 of us, it's the largest class since

Yes, absolutely.

There are so many women ready to go on that.

So I'll hopefully be co-patroning a lot of the bills.

And that was one of the top four priorities.

Which it's too late for y'all to quiz me.

Thank you.

And to clarify, people out there, when we do our work session, we will do our work session and get the information to city council.

and City Council will take it from there so that you know we will not be, so that's the way the ordinance is written for the Human Rights Commission.

So, okay.

I was just gonna say, obviously, my role here is much smaller.

I support the council in trying to do the, trying to assist from a staff assistant standpoint.

Number two, I have to say this,

How fortunate, having had an opportunity to work with Katrina for the first six months or so of my tenure, how lucky we are to have someone of her intellect and her talent and her passion.

I hope everyone appreciates how good we have it here in Charlottesville with Senator Deeds and Delegate Kalsum because we really, I had a conversation with her very early and she has embraced, I think, a number of the issues on council's legislative priorities.

Obviously, it's incredibly invested in a number of issues of importance to the commission and I just,

I really want to thank you for the fast start that you have as a delegate.

What a great service to the council and to the commission and to the city.

You really appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right.

I'll just be curious to hear where things go.

And if y'all come to Richmond, let me know.

Room 901.

In the fancy building?

Yeah, it is.

It is.

It's quite a fancy building, right?

It is.

I believe.

Anyone's welcome.

It's less than $25.

May I bring up one thing?

So just to say that, you know, I've been doing work with the commission for a while now and recommending working with the commission to make recommendations to council with regard to the legislative agenda.

And I just want to celebrate the fact that I feel like this collaboration has been one of the more successful ones that we've had in the years that I've been here.

So just want to encourage that continued collaboration and, and to maybe ask you all.

If you had any suggestions in terms of how we proceed this year in terms of timing, or do you want us to reach out to invite you to a meeting?

I think Natalie Ochsner is going to be on it.

If around the time, or maybe right after the time that you

Submit another letter like you did this past September.

If you want to sit down with Natalie and me, that would probably make some sense.

You know, I'd say I don't want to be in a position of trying to be censoring or discouraging or screening at that point, but it might be useful for everybody.

Thank you.

Do you have any public comment?

No one's here.

And I'm not sure if anyone's online.

We have no response to members of the public.

Lily, do you have anything?

I will be sending out an email in the next couple of days about upcoming events.

There haven't really been any lately, so that's why you haven't gotten any, but we do have a few things coming up.

Awesome.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Next steps.

Our next meeting is what?

January the 18th right here.

ADA transition plan.

ADA transition plan.

We'll be talking about that on that evening.

All right.

Anything else we have on that evening?

And elections.

Officer elections.

All right.

Anything else?

Thank you again.

City Attorney Jay Stroman, thank you again.

City Councilman, Saloy Snook, and Delegate, Gina Colson.

Thank you for coming.

Commissioners, thank you for being here.

Appreciate you guys so, so much.

Again, happy new year to you all and see you guys January 18th.

That was great.

You've been busy.

I just want to give you my card.