Human Rights Commission Special Meeting   6/27/2024

Well, we'll keep our fingers crossed.

There's Ernest, TA.

We've got three.

No, I am not driving.

No.

You doing OK today?

Yep, doing all right.

Been busy, but been good.

Here comes Wolfgang.

So good.

Welcome.

Here comes Mary.

Oh, we have quorum, folks.

All right.

Hey, sorry I missed the last one.

We got it.

Things happened, so we're all right.

I haven't heard specifically from Kathryn.

Charley's been having some internet troubles, so I sent him the public link.

He might be in the public.

at the moment.

No, that's another person in the public.

We have a quorum, then let's go ahead and get rolling.

OK. All right.

Good evening to everyone.

I'm glad you guys can make it for this special meeting.

Sure thing.

Wolfgang.

Here.

Mary.

Here.

Make sure Charley's not anywhere.

Don't see Charley.

AD, not here.

Patty's not here, Kathryn not here, Suzanne.

All right.

Thank you.

And thank you, Suzanne.

I hope you're feeling OK after your dental surgery on today.

Thank you.

Yes.

Let us go ahead and recite our mission together.

and one, two, and three.

Act as a strong advocate to justice and equal opportunity by providing statewide leadership in the area of civil rights.

Awesome.

It doesn't get any better than that doing it on Zoom.

or members of the public, if you're participating virtually, if you have or if you experience technical difficulties, you may call 434-970-3115 and a staff person will assist you.

The number is 434-970-3115, all right?

Is there anyone that if you are on the webinar and you would like to speak and you're a member of the public, would you please raise your hand?

Or if you're on a phone, use star nine.

All right, cool.

There's no response from commissioners to the public.

So today what we are doing is hopefully you have had an opportunity to review, for those that were not at the meeting, you had an opportunity to review the ordinance that the office has been working on.

and we wanted to make sure we draft that, the amendments to the ordinance so that Todd can get that to city council for review.

Does anybody have any questions for Todd about the ordinance?

Awesome.

All right.

So,

All right, Heather second and Wolfgang gave a thumbs up for third.

So we have, that has passed.

Okay.

All right.

And I wrote down as the motion to adopt the proposed amendments to the human rights ordinance.

Okay.

Ernest?

Yes.

Wolfgang?

Yes.

Cool.

Mary?

Yes.

No one new has joined us.

Suzanne?

Yes.

All right.

Awesome.

Thank you, Scott and Lily for your hard work on that.

Thanks so much.

And we'll be on city council's agenda on the 15th.

I know a lot of work went into that.

Yes.

Yeah.

If you, if you saw the, what, the 80 page version and not the 15 page version.

Oh my gosh.

So yeah.

Alright, so Todd, myself and Lily met.

That is all you need for that.

Okay, yes, second matters of the public.

Okay, so we don't have anything to report back as commissions.

So, commissioner updates.

Todd, myself and Lily Met on last Friday to talk because I let the members of the commission that were there on our last meeting on last Thursday that we would talk about putting together a letter to get information.

So what we are going to do is we're going to construct a letter asking for those four

points at the very top to foyer those points, those things from the foyer department with the city.

Okay.

So we're going to construct that, get that to you guys.

I've been at a conference all week and today at 12, we're at 12, we got done.

So I've been sending emails and back and forth with Tom Liddy, trying to get today ready.

and some other things going on.

Ernest, if you'd like to see the draft, I've got it ready for you.

That's wonderful.

OK.

If folks have time for that moment, let's see.

Here it is.

Can you see it okay?

Oh, yeah.

So let me let me by how would you like me to share that with you?

What would be best?

The subtitles are catching up.

OK.

I can do that.

Oops, let me move this whole.

I'll send the original over as well so you can all see it.

Screens are having trouble with themselves.

The only difference, we were kind of, we went back and watched the section of the meeting today where you guys talked about this.

I'm sorry, I just looked at it briefly and I'm having a little bit of trouble with my camera, but are we only asking for things that have already been released?

You're asking in addition.

I wasn't in that meeting.

When we discussed it the other day, I think we kind of explored different variations on that theme.

We could ask only for things that have been released.

We could ask for only things that have been released regarding the four points, which was a very narrow space.

Or we could ask for

Just a FOIA of the things related to the FOIA points or get asked for both.

And so this letter is the both.

Could I ask, so why did we decide to

Make the FOIA, the public FOIA request, to highlight that in the first paragraph instead of making it one of the numbers like, you know, number five or number

But they'd be obligated to respond to all of it.

So it's more like if there's kind of a consolidation of those documents already, they can just fire that off because the other four are going to take them more time if they haven't already released that information.

So I want to make sure it was clear that they can send you a bundle right off the bat of everything they've already released.

And then if it's not contained within that, they can send you anything in the four that hasn't already been released.

And so that may take more time because they got to contact each department that holds that, figure out which staff person has it, pull it, redact if needed, and then present it to the FOIA officer who then sends it.

I mean, I don't know if it's interesting because like,

You know, it's a FOIA request, but it's kind of funny because it's sort of internal.

So I don't know if they're going to say, well, we have to compensate that department for their time.

We may, we can do that.

We wanted to make sure we kept it as simple as possible, as best we could.

because a couple of things are happening with the fact that we lost a member of the office staff because they started taking another job so we will need to hire someone else for that position and there's some things going on so we just want to make sure we are doing what we need to do to keep it as simple as possible.

Other communications between the commission and

And her first name is Brittany, Brittany Nelson.

Is that what you're asking?

Or we certainly know her and talk with her regularly and we've let her know that this was coming.

At first I thought we were just going to do already released stuff.

So that's what I had previewed her on, but I can tell her that we're going to add these, you know, there'll be more that may not be contained in the already released stuff.

So just be prepared for that.

So she'll just to give her a heads up.

And she was fine with it.

She said, that's great.

Okay, I was making sure that it seems like a very, very like direct and formal request.

And knowing that there's some context around the conversation means like I back the letter more, I suppose.

Oh, yeah, yes, for sure.

And again, you guys can, you know, this is just, I took a stab at just creating what I heard you wanted, but in very simple format, if you want to wordsmith this, you know, we can, oh yeah, I was sending this by email.

Sorry about that.

I never got that far.

Hold on.

No, it's fine.

I realized I could zoom in.

Okay.

Cool.

And I can say, I realized that I hadn't added that in there.

I think it looks good.

Yeah, I don't have any notes at all on it, so.

Good.

We'll put a date on it.

If you guys want to do it, consider it ready.

Here we go.

I guess one more note.

Has Kathryn provided any input on it?

I know that she was very invested in the process.

She had input on us requesting those four document points.

She agreed with that in our meeting on last Thursday.

And unfortunately, her being not here today for this meeting,

Wolfgang, I can say about, I mean, I hate to speak for Kathryn when Kathryn is not here, but Kathryn did

It was very much in favor of cutting down the number of questions.

And I brought up a number of questions that Kathryn had actually posed.

And she said, no, you know, we can ask those, but we don't need to ask them in the letter.

And there were

But I'm all for circulating this and making sure.

I think it's a good idea.

I agree.

But I don't want to wait too much longer because I feel like we've waited.

I've waited long enough as far as to make sure we got this done.

I know this was important for commissioners to get it done.

So I just want to make sure we get it out.

I'd be inclined to send it out in the morning.

I mean, we can send it to Kathryn tonight.

My experience with her is she almost always responds very, very quickly, although she's not here, which means she may have a conflict.

Wolfgang, do you have your hand raised?

And I just jumped in.

It's fine.

I don't have minimal space.

I don't have, I forgot my headphones.

I'm going off subtitles.

So I just don't want to talk over people.

I was going to suggest doing the same thing, basically send it with a, hey, we'll send it by X date, but we'd love to have your input if you're able to give it before then.

So I think tomorrow is fine.

All right, so let's go ahead and send it to all the active commissioners this evening.

Please let us know you have any comments by 12 noon tomorrow.

I'm drafting that now.

I realize I just sent that other version of the letter, the early version of the letter to you guys, just so you could see it real quick, but I didn't put any context in there.

So I'll resend this with the edits that I just put in while we were sitting here.

And then you guys can all see it and people can provide feedback.

On or before tomorrow at 12?

Great, I will send that after we get off here.

So if you have time, I think I might show up.

I'll know more tomorrow.

So, but I'll see your email.

So, all right.

Any other questions or anything from any commissions?

All right.

Well, thank you, Ty and Lily and all the commissioners showed up today, Heather.

Mary Wolfgang, Susan and Isaiel.

Nice to see you.

Yup.

And we are adjourned at, I can't see my time, at 5.52 PM.

All right.

Thanks Ernest.