City Council Meeting   6/15/2020

I move as council certified by recorded vote to the best of each council members knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion convening the closed session were heard discussed or considered in the closed session.

Second.

Thomas, will you take vote, please?

Mr. Payne?

Yes.

Mr. Snook?

Yes.

Mine is one thing that I did get an email during that time about the CRHA winning the Governor's Viburn Communities grant, and I did make that announcement during the session.

Yes.

Thomas, would you do the roll call, please?

Mr. Snook?

Here.

Magill?

Here.

Hill?

Here.

Agenda approval, is there a motion?

Ms.

Thomas, would you take vote please?

Mr. Payne?

Yes.

Mr. Snook?

Yes.

Hill?

Yes.

Mayor Walker, I do.

Jason Vandiver, city treasurer.

Yes.

I will come back to that.

Catherine Galinosa.

I believe that is all of them.

I'd second the motion.

Thomas, would you take the vote, please?

Mr. Payne?

Yes.

Mr. Snook?

Yes.

Walker?

Hill?

But now I have to make another motion because I realized where the page I was missing.

Okay.

So I also have to move that council appoint the following to these boards and commissions.

Piedmont Virginia Community College Board, Pam de Guzman and Janet Morrow.

the Region 10 Community Services Board, Helena Banks, and the Sister Cities Commission, Michael Grinnell, Stella Mattioli, Elizabeth Smiley, and Adrian Ward.

I'll second that motion also.

The Tree Commission also has, did I say Mark Zallenhofer earlier when we did the other Tree Commissions?

Right, that's the additional one.

I'll second it as amended.

Okay, Mr. Payne?

Yes.

Mr. Snook?

Yes.

Hill?

Thank you, sorry.

Ms.

Thomas, could you read it, please?

Additional funding for adoption assistance.

$625,000.

Second reading.

5.

Nine, appropriation, Bureau of Justice Assistance, Coronavirus Emergency Supplemental Funding Program, fiscal year 2020, $80,781, first of two readings.

Ten, ordinance, taxi cab driver ordinance amendment, second reading.

And this may be passed with a four-fifths vote on the first reading.

Mr. Wheeler, is there anyone who signed up for public comment?

Go ahead.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

All right, thank you.

You've got three minutes.

I'm sorry.

Oh, it's the consent agenda.

I'll wait.

Bill, you're on the city council, you've got three minutes.

The problem is that the window at the Charlottesville Police Department is not accessible to an essential business during the virus.

We think that this should match all permits that are given through the City Hall.

Did we lose them?

Thank you.

Alright, do we have anyone else?

Ashley, you've got three minutes.

I echo Mr. Williamson's comments about the housing crisis but we also are in a budget shortfall and so we think it's also important to recognize that new development and redevelopment greatly contribute to the city's tax base and the longer we wait to reopen that's going to have a negative ripple effect on our community and all of the projects that could be in the pipeline now.

Thank you for your time.

that you wanna talk about the consent agenda at this time?

I do not and apologize and let me know somehow when community matters is, thanks.

Mayor Walker, that concludes the people who've raised their hand.

Is there a motion, any comments from council?

Well, I would like us to pull item 11 for discussion this evening.

at the end of the agenda.

So is there a motion for items 1 through 10?

I second that motion.

Thomas would you take the vote please?

Mr. Payne?

Yes.

Mr. Snook?

Yes.

Hill?

Yes.

And Mr. Blair we don't have to do anything differently just to let that go to the last item on the agenda.

No, Mayor Walker, it'll be after the current item number 14.

All right, next we have the city manager's response to the community matters from the June 1st meeting.

And I know that's a larger discussion beyond my response time, but I just wanted to bring that up so the public understands and know that we did receive a number of those emails.

Do you have any suggestions?

where a call goes in and it talks about other services that are offered as well as the other public safety calls that may be requested.

Mr. Wheeler, do you have that list?

I do, Mayor Walker.

Okay, so if they are on there, you know, in order that they are signed up, then we can start with them and then we can continue till we, you know, reach 16.

Can you hear us?

Yes, I can.

You've got three minutes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Davies, can you hear us?

I can, thank you.

Did you want to speak at this opportunity as well?

So it's great to get some good news today.

Thank you.

You've got three minutes.

Thank you very much.

You've got three minutes.

I cede my time to Jeff Fogel.

Good evening.

I don't understand how you could possibly pass this moment without addressing, at least preliminarily, what we're going to do about policing, what we're going to do about racism in the police department, and how we're going to change how we do policing and how we're going to transfer money from the police department to more effective means of safety.

Thank you.

Mayor Walker.

But if we could go back to those original bylaws, I would appreciate that as well.

You either gonna have a policy for protest or you're not gonna have a policy for protest.

Thank you.

You can't just, oh, three minutes out?

Three minutes, 37 seconds.

You still in your feelings.

You've got three minutes.

Thank you.

But so that is definitely a conversation that during that time I will be bringing up.

You've got three minutes.

Thank you.

And Dr. Richardson, Chief Brackney, is there any additional information about why they, who invited them to the area?

I'll defer to Chief Brackney on that.

Mayor Walker, unless you had something a bit more detailed you needed.

So I just wanted to

You've got three minutes.

We demand the end of pretrial detention.

5.

We demand the police end targeted harassment and surveillance of black, brown, and undocumented folks in our community.

6.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Don you're on with council you've got three minutes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You've got three minutes.

Thank you.

So I have some, you know, a lot of thoughts about all of this, but I'm going to share it at the end of this.

You will have to unmute your microphone.

Thank you.

Nancy, you're on the city council, you've got three minutes.

I certainly do appreciate it.

Thank you.

You've got three minutes.

Is this working?

It is.

So I'm just wondering if the city police or somebody else is requesting.

All right.

I'll try to just briefly say that you're still, we still can't hear you.

I'm sorry about that.

Sounds like a microphone problem, Brad.

Your mic volume went down suddenly.

All right.

No, it's not.

It comes and goes.

Do you want to work on it and try?

You've got three minutes.

Can you guys hear me OK?

We can.

So thank you.

So I get your concerns.

Brad, can you hear us?

Can you hear me?

Go ahead.

Thank you.

You've got three minutes.

Thank you.

You have three minutes.

Thank you.

Any comments from Council?

Could we ask Chief Brackney to tell us what Charlottesville is doing that implicates either of those two requests?

If there's something I missed, please just flag me on that.

What training do the officers receive now in de-escalation?

And again, hopefully that answers the additional question that you had.

Mayor Walker, if I might comment for just a moment.

Yes.

I know that they have been looking into that now for a while and trying to work towards this.

The other question though that I had, and this kind of gets back, gets to something that Jeff Fogel was asking, is there anything that the police department is doing to respond to or adjust to or to cope with the issues about disproportionate and disparate impacts that were revealed by the DMC study?

We're now posting all of our internal affairs, when they come in, everything that you can do to at least try and say, here's more additional information to help our citizens make an informed decision about how they want to, or the services and what they want and demand and should demand from our police department.

So if you're concerned about the validity of the data collection, but you acknowledge that there are disparate impacts, which is what the data collection is intending to prove, what are you, completely aside from the data in the DMC, what are you doing to address the disparate impacts?

In addition to it, we paid for our officers also to be funded or have additional funding in de-escalation training and had one of our officers a trainer who is now housed in our police department so that we can train internally as well as some of our support systems.

Thank you all.

You're welcome.

And I'll just say the comments that I have received and some of the Facebook posts and stuff, I don't

There's not one thing that I'm ashamed of about my time on this council.

Thank you.

When we did that other broader boards and commissions decision-making, that the CRB, even though they hadn't convened yet, were one that I thought we had agreed to let begin convening, is that correct?

I just wanted to make sure the public was aware.

I know Max has sent that out to confirm a date, but it is the last week of this month that we are scheduling a meeting with the PCRB.

All right, thank you.

you

Thanks for watching

Is everybody back?

Well, sorry, I didn't.

Thanks.

We are ready for that conversation.

Unless, Chris, you have something you want to add?

It can't be used for lost revenue.

They're scarce, and we need to treat them as such and make sure that we are being as thoughtful and diligent in the way that we're spending them and the way that we plan to spend them.

I guess I – Go ahead.

I'm sorry.

And then do we have to then do another reallocation or reappropriation to make those adjustments?

you know this is certainly going to be an ongoing effort and the appropriation is written in a way which grants the city manager some discretion and some flexibility into how these dollars are allocated just recognizing again that you know this is a bit of a fluid situation and there are some uncertainties coming but it certainly gives the council and the community an idea of the direction that we're going in and the order of magnitude and the priorities.

We'll talk about that strategy and what we were trying to do with that.

Will we come into open session to do that vote?

So Thursday, you could, in open session, do your second reading.

But we just needed to talk about it as a council, just so that we could have the option for the meeting.

So that's the rationale for our request and the three sort of broad buckets for our request.

Well, maybe it'd be helpful if we understood more deeply that category.

and if there are any things that maybe we could deprioritize within that larger category of operations.

He can explain a little bit more.

I'd be happy to dive deep into that if you'd like.

So that was helpful for me.

I guess I'm just curious the timeline of when some of these things you're not estimating might come to fruition so that you know if we can free up some dollars to allocate to these other priority areas.

So we don't have that quite laid out yet, but as we start to reopen, we're evident.

where everything ended up being spent or not.

Yes, we'll keep a tally of this and we're happy to report back on any frequency you like.

And this could be a part of our monthly updates that we're going to be starting following the adoption of the budget that we said that we were going to be doing as a city so you know where we're at in terms of our overall revenues and expenditures.

Would that even be enough for past support over the past few months?

for working through this COVID-19 pandemic.

You see what I mean?

Dante, come here.

OK, thank you.

All right, so any further discussion for counsel?

Is that the reason?

I'm sorry, Councilor, can you repeat that about the second reading?

Sometimes when we have, for things we want to get going quickly if there's, you know, if we have a four-fifths supermajority that is in favor of that, we've done that and I'm just curious because it sounds like we're gonna be now meeting on Thursday to do this and I'm just considering staff's time of engaging with us in that way and I'm just kind of curious of the thought there.

and there is not a four-fifths waiver requirement or waiver provision in that specific city code section.

I now would prefer to make sure that citizens have an opportunity.

Okay.

Yeah, I just want to make sure I have the number.

Interlude, but if you want to look at 2-97 you will see that for general ordinances there is the four-fifths waiver requirement, waiver provision if the council wants to exercise.

Thursday?

I think Thursday, June 18th.

So just that modification, and do we need to vote on that?

Since this is the first.

And it's one reading.

and then we're going to ask you to approve the amended agreement that sets those other items in place.

Jackson, are you?

I do have a PowerPoint that I put together to show the numbers that we've serviced for this year.

And that PowerPoint's on your screen and you can tell me when you want to advance to the next slide.

And this is the breakdown of the spinaches that we've done throughout July 1st of last year to June of this year.

And could the, are you going to talk about the increases?

been taken out of the program due to program violations as far as being evicted from their house their households and we weren't notified until to help them to assist them until after the fact.

So the

to get their girls in to make sure that their numbers are capped with the program's requirements.

One of the goals I wanted to do was to create a survey for the current participants in the landlords to get the feedback of how this program is actually helping families benefit from this program.

to keep the Charlottesville Supplemental Rental Assistance Program to continue to provide services.

So did someone else have any questions?

Really comfortable and certain enough that that cushion is large enough to prevent the risk of anyone having to be kicked off the program and face the situation that that would create should, again, the economy not rebound well at all in terms of the amount of job losses.

adding additional households to be able to go out and look for housing.

and at some point we may have to step outside of the HUD limits too and that's just something that we may have to think about and discuss.

But yeah, so that's that.

So is there anything that we can do on that end to help strengthen that so that people are not being put out without notification?

They were set out.

Was that an issue recently?

And then two, I know this is a bigger discussion that's gone on in the past, but so just some of the, here's some of the dynamics in terms of number of landlords in Charlottesville who are even willing to participate in the program and how many people are still having to go out into Albemarle County because of that shortage of local landlords participating.

and I'm at a loose end because I can't help them anymore.

It's so sad.

Most of the people that get the vouchers in the city, they always end up at Mallside, Rio Hill and stuff like that.

because of the lack of the housing type that best matches their needs not being available in the city or just landlords just saying, you know, or maybe it's the landlords who fit that housing type also saying, you know, I won't take it.

Yeah, I think it's a combination.

Yeah.

They all end up either on that Prospect Avenue curb that have the duplex or something like that.

And it's just a perfect time for me to just say that.

I think that question of units or landlords not accepting them or the unit type not existing locally certainly for us as a council as part of our housing strategy as well as some of the legal changes that have been made this General Assembly session because I think the challenge is what policy tools do we have access to that can allow us to make that the reality and I don't know the answer.

It's probably important to Mayor Walker and Councilor Payne's point to use that process as well to look at policy tools that can be woven into both the comp plan and the housing strategy to look at more voucher availability and units throughout the city and other affordable housing strategies.

So next, we have questions from council, then a motion.

I move for approval of the third amended grant agreement of the Charlottesville Supplemental Rental Assistance Program.

Mr. Payne?

Yes.

Mr. Snook?

Yes.

Yes.

Next we have the resolution allocation of the Charlottesville affordable housing fund for programs in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

So I'll use that as my presentation and open up for any questions that you may have and I can answer them for you.

Other counselors, what are your thoughts there?

I mean, I think from my fuzzy memory of the HAC meeting, I think it was kind of a smaller technical point, I thought, in terms of how the program may interact with

But again, support staff's recommendations, and I think this is the best path forward given bad options in front of us.

and it was a regional funding and it was barely enough to fund one of the programs that I've recommended and it was for the entire region and not just for Charlottesville itself.

Is it legal to say that if you're under, let's say, 60% of the AMI, that this could be forgivable or anything like that?

Again, that's the legal authority, and I do think it's fairly broad, looking at just the city charter, but I'd be interested if Mr. Sales has thoughts on the practicality of that and the administration of that, even if it is legally permissible, with kind of the broad authority, if he has thoughts on the administration of that, if it's possible.

Otherwise, everyone that applies is probably going to have a loan that's not going to be paid off because they're 80% AMI or lower now.

But it's something just to think about.

Is it 30 years?

And that's a decision that you all can make.

But they could decide to vote.

But that might be my suggestion.

So what does it sort of look like to prioritize which applications get approved if more people apply than there's the ability to meet?

And I know that was something that the council wanted to see based on the two to ones we had.

I just want to bring this up.

I just wanted to put that out there.

Yeah, and I agree with you.

But that is something we can't solve tonight.