City Council Meeting   6/17/2019

I call this meeting to order.

for God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Roll call, please.

Dr. Bellamy?

Here.

Ms. Hill?

Here.

Ms. Walker?

Present.

Mr. Signer?

Here.

Ms. Galvin?

I believe I have one announcement.

A public meeting of the Rugby Avenue McIntire Park Trail Project on Tuesday, June 25th at 6.30pm and the Friends Meeting House at 1104 Forest St. to discuss design options, project timeline and gather input on the Rugby Avenue Shared Use Path Project connecting Rose Hill neighborhood with McIntire Park and the 250 Bypass Trail.

For more information contact

Are there any other announcements?

The four-mile training has started.

We have a couple more spots.

We have 70 people signed up, so we're going to cap it at 75.

I'm not going to announce that, Mayor Walker.

You're funny.

One announcement.

Thank you for the reminder, Mayor Walker.

Next Saturday, June 29, we go to have the Run These Streets 4-Miler, in which we start at the African American Heritage Center.

We will run four miles through traditional African-American neighborhoods and landmarks.

We are looking at capping at 125.

Right now we're at 112.

So we have 13 slots available.

There will be some space for people to sign up on site.

All participants will receive a t-shirt, a medal.

and we're looking forward to everyone joining us.

So training is every Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 30 a.m. at the Jefferson School.

It's a walk run.

It's not a race.

Oh, and I wanted to make a motion about moving two items from the main agenda to the consent, and that was item 4, which is part A, 219.

City Climate Protection Program, Program Support Grant with LEAP for $104,928, first of one reading, and B, authorization for City Manager to sign the Memorandum of Understanding between the City and the Local Energy Alliance Program, LEAP, for grant funds to support the Climate Protection Program and promote energy performance improvements, first of one reading.

This is typically done annually and it's typically on the consent agenda if the mayor and another councilor would be in support of that.

I second that.

Do you have any concerns, Mayor Walker?

Okay, thank you.

Consent Agenda 1A, Minutes, May 14, May 20, May 22, June 3, 2019 Special Meetings B, Appropriation, Appropriation of Human Services Balance for FY 2019 Expenses, $400,000, Second of Two Readings C, Appropriation, Highway Safety Improvement Program, Appropriation of Funds for Pedestrian Connections within Hillcrest-Birdwood Neighborhood

$708,932, first of two readings.

D, Appropriation, Virginia Department of Education Special Nutrition Program Summer Food Service Program, $100,000, first of two readings.

E, Resolution, Transfer of Fiscal Year 2020 City of Promise Funds to Ready Kids, $81,837, second of two readings.

F. Resolution, First Amended Grant Agreement, Charlottesville Supplemental Rental Assistance Program, CSRAP, First of One Reading G. Resolution, Accepting Burnett Commons Development, Phase 2, The Woods, Into the City Street System for Maintenance, First of One Reading H. Resolution, Accepting Portion of Belmont Cottages Lane, Into the City Street System for Maintenance, First of One Reading

Aye resolution amendment to Rivanna solid waste authority RSWA McIntire recycling center agreement first of one reading J ordinance utility rate report fiscal year 2020 second of two readings and we are adding resolution for the 2019 city climate protection program program support grant with LEAP $104,000 104

And Mr. Blair, I do have two questions about F. Can I ask them now or pull it, vote, and then ask the questions on F?

Okay.

So just for Dr. Richardson, there were two parts in the

The agreement that I would like for us to just maybe, if we could modify, just in the itemized quarterly reports, if we can make sure that it's clear whether these are city or county, it says unit address, but just if we can make it clear that whether it's a city or a county property,

Okay, so I make a motion to amend the agreement

Is there a second?

I'm in favor of that if we're going to do a quick poll.

On the amendment.

And then I'll re-adopt the consent agenda with this amendment and the two items that we've added.

And please vote.

That carries five to zero.

Thank you.

Next we have the city manager's response to the community matters.

Are there anyone who wishes to speak on items on the consent agenda?

Well, it doesn't change the vote.

I'm commenting on item F about the agreement on the CSRAP.

I want to say that I'm pleased to see that there was an amendment about the length of time that individuals can use to find housing and that it went from 90 days back to 60 days to look for a city address.

and extended it for one time to 120 days to look for housing either in the city or in the county and I've heard anecdotally that a lot of people don't make that first 90-day cutoff to find housing in the city and

I think with the four month period of time now that it will give them a lot more time to maybe find something in the county and the city.

And also I didn't have time to catch up with CRHA to find out if the vouchers for 15 homeless people that was stipulated in the original agreement had been filled.

and if there was an internal mechanism for communication to get that information to TJAC because as we work towards functional zero and homelessness it's important as we create a by name list of those folks who are challenged by homelessness that we keep up to date with those folks who have been fortunate enough

through that particular stipulation to find housing.

And there may be one, but I just read the agenda too late to really make a phone call.

But if there isn't, if those who are involved with the agreement make sure that information is passed on to TEACH Act to help keep tabs on who is and who isn't experiencing homelessness.

Okay.

So I assume that there would be a referral process.

Is that not the case?

There's no set process in place.

Okay.

So we'll check on that.

All right.

Is there anyone else who would like to speak on any other item on the consent agenda?

Okay.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, Madam City Council and the public.

The first one with the comments that was made was pertaining to the right hand turn to 5th Street Station.

We're going to stripe a dash turn guideline and also put up a no turn on red sign.

We're also working with the city engineer to make sure that we are basically improving

that lane in order to prevent any accidents or folks actually continuing on without understanding that it is a turn lane and not impact of the cars to the left of that right hand lane.

Moving on, Ms. Kahn came last week to request that we change our bathrooms to gender neutral restrooms or all gender restrooms, the signage.

We found that we had approximately 40 locations throughout the city that were considered to be single stalls.

Out of those 40, four of those locations were basically for all genders.

The remaining 36 restroom signs will need to be replaced in order to make them gender neutral.

and we're still working on trying to get pricing for those signage changes.

So once we have solidified the cost for changing out those signs, we'll get back to the council and provide you with the cost for that.

Moving on the last item was from Ms. Hudson pertaining to cleaning behind our public works facility that backs up to the West Haven community.

Had our guys go out and clean that area and then cut back some of the brush.

So we'll try to maintain that better within our community.

I'm going to actually ride with Ms. Hudson to see other locations within that area that

She had mentioned pertaining to having a litter overgrown brush in that particular area of the community.

So we will be looking into that and then trying to maintain regular maintenance in that particular area.

Dr. Richardson's presentation reminded me of something that came in.

We had received an email from a person that was a visitor to the city and the email was pretty distraught about the bus transfer station and how it was really pretty filthy.

Yes, we actually sent an email over to them to keep a better eye on that.

We also had parts go down and cut the overgrown grass at the station.

We'll maintain better maintenance on that, keep an eye on that.

Alright, thank you.

Next we have Community Matters.

Good evening Members of Council, Mr. Richardson.

I'd like to talk about the ABRT process a little bit, but before I do that I want to say that I totally support the idea of moving the Sacagawea statue off and putting it somewhere else.

We can do better.

We can have statues that represent women of different ethnicities that support ideas about moving us in the direction of passing an ERA amendment in town.

The second thing I'd like to say is I support the mayor's idea of nixing the Thomas Jefferson holiday and replacing that holiday with the Liberation Day.

I think, again, we can do better.

Maybe we only have one day off for city employees instead of two, but at least I think it's moving in the direct direction that shows that the council would be listening to the tenor and the climate of the community and how things have changed since 2017.

So, on to the ABERT.

Thanks for the opportunity for ability to weigh in on the ABERT reform.

I think it's, again, as I've said before, I think it's one of the, it could be one of the key focuses of your equity initiative post Summer of Hate in 2017, indicating that you've listened, you've considered, and you're making significant changes in this community.

I think it could be one of the top equity initiatives that you accomplish with this Council's work this year.

I think the focus on the perspective of non-profit clients is really, really important.

Keeping the focus on the perspectives of those clients that are served by non-profits is crucial and I think you're getting there in this draft.

I think you could include the city services as well.

If you're going to look at non-profits, why not look at the way the city delivers services as well from the same perspective.

I thought the measurements and solutions group mission that you have in the draft today looks pretty good.

It's solid except for there needs to be more emphasis on non-profit clients and I sent you an email about that.

I'm not sure what the plan for is for this August through October for the process from August to October.

It's not clear from the draft about what's going to happen.

Other than the draft says, for fiscal 2021 process only, request or allow the non-profits to identify specific criteria solutions and measurements or metrics.

If we do that, we're just doing more of the same.

It's sort of like we're just going to keep doing what we've been doing in the past.

So I'm really not sure, I think that's problematic, and I'm not sure how we're going to evolve the same dynamic to prevent the same dynamic from functioning unless, why not let your four focus areas that you've decided on from the university influence the process this coming August?

Why not tell your folks to start giving points to those applicants that are working under those four topic areas?

I also think you could change the composition of the working review team right now.

You don't have to wait for another two years to do that.

I think that could reflect the priorities that you've identified as important, including representatives from the low-income community and clients of the nonprofit community, clients of the nonprofit work and nonprofit leaders of color could be involved this year.

And I also just lastly think that the facilitator for the group process

should include somebody with expertise in critical race theory and multicultural evaluation.

Not Blair.

Blair was called out of town on an emergency, so she asked me to step in at her stead.

Counselors and Dr. Richardson.

2019 marks the 100th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Memorial.

The memorial faces- Mr. Williamson, so we will have some slots it looks like left for sign up but sent that Blair isn't here to cede her time to you, then you can come back up during one of those times.

Mary Carey, City Manager.

Okay, I thought we were going to have a segment on the statue, or we can say it now.

Okay.

Well, when I was in the fourth grade a hundred years ago, I was taught by Mrs. Rebecca McGinnis about Lewis and Clark, you know, with patches, all that stuff, Sacajawea and everything.

She should have been the one standing tall.

They should have been the one kneeling to her, because she was the guy.

She gathered them through the passage so that they could get there and get back.

And then they put up a statute in the Jim Crow area all around the state and the country in the 20s to recognize a lot of white heroes that weren't really heroes that took the credit.

But I think the statute should be removed.

and put wherever and replace with a Vinegar Hill monument, because that's the place it should be, lacking the 10 feet from that ugly hotel that they built, which they took advantage of Charlottesville and didn't say, oh, we all give you $500.

So I think that should be, it should be gone.

Then again, I got Mr. Bellamy never did get back to me from December about to merge it with the,

are far in the CRHA because right now it's a lot of controversy going around about those two buildings that has collapsed up there in Hardy Drive that far should have been in on getting it fixed.

And I know some friends of mine went up in the 90 degree heat last year, helping them with the cleanup day.

And one of the five board members told me if they didn't leave, they were gonna get arrested.

And see, you don't do stuff like that.

And I still would like to know why FAR and CRHA merged and it's still a whole bunch of stuff going around in housing that FAR should be attending.

And CRHA should be accountable for it.

You got people over there still being terrorized by the interim

Property Manager at Crescent Halls, and the Executive Director is sitting on his fist and rocking on his thumb.

And he's not doing anything.

And these people are being terrorized.

And they have a lot of medical problems, some of them are amputees, and the city don't seem to be caring too much.

But just take down the statue, replace it with a Venegah Hill monument,

And let's move on and get the history going.

Yes, sir.

All right.

So I apologize.

I haven't formally responded to you.

I thought we talked about it, but that's my fault.

In regards to FAR and CRHA, having discussions with them, so FAR is the legal appointed

resident representative for all of our public housing sites.

So that's why essentially the two entities are working together in terms of, excuse me, the two entities being CRHA and FAR.

Now, the other issues that you raised in regards to why FAR may not be speaking for X, Y, or Z, I think that's a discussion that you have to have with the FAR board, or you feel free to come to the housing authority meeting

As you know, just for everybody else's information, we meet the fourth Monday of every month right here in council chambers at six o'clock.

And that's really all that I can say about it.

That's the information that was provided to me.

Because I went through the internship program through FAR, and I also was one of the people with

Joe Sakos and Ben Packer-Gordon and Colonel Waters-Wicks, the founded bar back in the 80s, but I'm never mentioned.

But anyway, I was on the far advisory board from 20...

13th to 2017, and they send me an email saying they no longer needed my services, only because one of the board members didn't like my ideas about what I was doing for the people in the housing.

So I know what you're trying to say, Mr. Bellamy, but it's not working.

Because when I was living in housing, when I moved from Lake Mountain, back to Charlottesville, and was living in housing,

Pharr didn't stand for stuff like this.

They didn't let stuff go undone.

But if you're living in a house with somebody that's supposed to be paying the rent, you can't go against them.

And that's what Pharr's doing.

They're living in the same house with CRHA and they are not questioning them.

I don't care if they don't like it because when I used, I was on the advisory board for, and when I used to tell them things was going on in the city and they acted upon it, things were smooth.

But I wasn't getting paid, I didn't ask for any money.

But the ones that were getting paid weren't doing their job.

But yet I was criticized for helping these people.

Now when funds start acting up, it's when people call them.

When residents call far, they can't get anybody.

When they call CRHA, they get snubbed.

So you tell me what far is supposed to be doing.

They supposed to be kicking ass and they're not doing it.

So if you got a better explanation, I'm willing to hear it.

And one thing I'd like to say to you, in the last two months, if you had been doing what you were doing in the last three years, you could be going to Richmond.

Anthony Lopez, UVA alumni, enrolled member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe.

I live in Fairfax County, Indiana Dale, 3366 Woodburn Road.

Thank you all for

being here every other week to meet with the people here.

It's a really great democratic exercise.

And I'm here to talk about the Sacajawea Lewis and Clark statue.

And I understand that there was a letter sent to all of you from the Sacajawea Interpretive Cultural and Educational Center by their director, Lynn Gray.

If it's permitted, I'd like to read the letter.

It's not very long because I think it's to the point of the decision that you're making.

So Lynn Gray, the director, writes, Dear Charlottesville City Council, I'm writing this letter in support of allowing the descendants of Sacajawea to provide input on the future location of the statue standing at West Main

and Rich Streets.

That is on the agenda for June 17th, 2019.

As the director of the Sacajawea Interpretive Cultural and Educational Center in Idaho, I work closely with her band, Sacajawea's band, the Akaidika

Salmon Eaters who are recognized as part of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes located at Fort Hall, Idaho.

The center provides a space to commemorate the history of the Akaidika and their role in the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

It is my understanding that several descendants of Sacajawea traveled to Charlottesville a number of years ago to install a plaque at the statue to better honor

Sakajawea and her contributions to our nation.

I know her descendants have strong feelings about how she is portrayed alongside Captains Lewis and Clark and I urge you to consider their views before you make a decision.

I realize the statue itself is historic as it was installed in its current location about a hundred years ago.

You certainly did not have any control over how Sakajawea was depicted in it.

But you now have the opportunity to improve upon how she is portrayed in a new location with more information about her story.

To include the voices, history, and views of native people will be a step toward healing past wrongs, which is something I hope you will consider as a representative government body.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

I would be happy to help in any way I can.

You can contact me at her phone number and her email.

So I urge you to consult with the relatives of Sacajawea, her tribe, her tribal historic preservation officer, and organizations like Miss Grace to build something that we haven't yet had in Charlottesville.

Understanding mutual agreement concerns with indigenous peoples in Charlottesville.

My name is Nelson.

I live here in Charlottesville.

I've only lived in Charlottesville a short time.

And in trying to get a hold of my local government,

I've met many roadblocks.

I've been told, oh, they're busy.

They don't have time.

I've tried to get ahold of you quite a bit of time.

Finally got an appointment the other day.

I've asked to speak with the chief of police.

For the last six months, I've been denied

And it seems to be that the police like to use those famous words, it's officers discretion on what laws they enforce.

Maybe it's because there's a video out there on YouTube of four officers allowing a handicapped parking to be violated, has over 90,000 hits.

Trust me, the handicapped community is not too happy.

but yet the chief of police does not want to hear from me.

Curious on why that is.

They pick and choose who they want to write tickets to.

Witnessed first hand a violation the other night.

Police came, rode by, no ticket.

But yet I got a ticket and I was the victim.

and yet the officer and the sergeant lied to the magistrate.

I was unable to press charges against the limousine driver who put his vehicle in reverse and headed towards me and my two service animals.

That is the way the police are handling matters.

Now the police, all of a sudden, they're running my license plate

because they want to know who this person is.

They have no right to run my license plate.

I've done nothing wrong.

But now I'm facing a court date because police officers are lying.

They don't want to do anything.

Chief of Police doesn't want to do anything.

What's the deal with that?

90,000 views as of today.

because you have a company parking in a handicapped parking place and the disabled community, quite frankly, are ticked off.

Nobody cares about the disabled.

As a matter of fact, just this last weekend, this last, was it, last council meeting,

You guys had a dirt bike parked in handicapped right over here, right outside your own building.

You guys had a group here, Last Council, with gun violence.

You've got a thing, no bikes, walk your wheels on the mall.

There's a small white car driving down the mall.

That group of people are yelling, get the kids, get the kids, because you've got a white car driving down the mall.

What did the police say?

We didn't see it.

We can't do anything.

Mark Cabot.

My name is Paul Long.

I live at 100 Ridge Street here in the city, and I told the clerk that I wanted to speak about public transportation, but it's really too big of a topic to make any comments in three minutes.

What I would like to give the city council and Dr. Richardson is a copy of an article which was recently published that goes into great detail about why we need to improve the public transit system in the city

and does a much better job than I could have in any kind of public comments.

So if Mr. Wheeler can distribute that to city council and Dr. Richardson, I think it would make a very good background reading as we try to deal with this issue.

I want to thank the city council for the time and hope everybody has a nice night.

Myra Anderson.

Good afternoon, Council.

Dr. Richardson, Dr. Bubly, mayor, vice mayor.

I'm here tonight to talk about the CRB.

The People's Coalition, as you know, has been pushing for a strong CRB.

And the People's Coalition wants to know and hope that this council don't bury the bylaws and not do nothing and wait for the next council.

Because we don't know what's going to happen.

And so I have questions.

My first question is, what's the council plan going forward regarding the CRB bylaws?

What does the council plan to do after the bylaws are submitted?

When will the draft bylaws be voted on?

Will there be a public hearing?

How will council get community feedback?

Could there be a community forum?

with the Jefferson School and the CRB or counsel regarding the bylaws?

And if there's like a push for extra time, could counsel extend the initial CRB extra time to finish what they need to do?

Finally, Pittsburgh has one of the strongest CRBs and

During Dr. Chief Brackney's time there, that's when the CRB was thriving, well still thriving.

But unlike Charlottesville CRB, the Pittsburgh CRB had investigated and subpoenaed power, which the Charlottesville would not have.

So I'm hoping that council along with

Chief Brackney will support what's going forward, but my question is, those questions, what's going to happen, when you're going to vote on it, and will people have opportunity to comment about the CRB.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Councillors, and Mr. City Manager.

At Friday's Juneteenth celebration, the late Raymond Bell was one of the community elders.

Oh, I forgot to say, I live in the city, K-Slaughter, short 18th Street.

Raymond Bell was one of the community elders who was honored.

He's also one of the 37 bridge builders who's been recognized

for the bridges he built across racial and economic differences in this community.

Ray was the first African American to serve on the city school board and was appointed at a critical time as the schools were desegregating.

He's memorialized with others on the Drury Brown Bridge with the intent to make

to invoke curiosity and to inspire us.

And I'd like to also mention that I just learned tonight that Paul Gaston, another of the bridge builders, passed away on Friday.

And he also was a critical person.

He, with Floyd Johnson, led the sit-ins here in Charlottesville.

But this only monument, the bridge to local heroes, needs Council's help to push beyond its tokenism to become a true monument that's worthy of Drury Brown and the other bridge builders with prominent signage, lamppost banners and public art announcing it is a special place.

I was surprised to discover staff recommendation of the $75,000 appropriation for another blue ribbon commission to consider the future of the Sacajawea statue and yet nothing about the bridge on West Main Street.

$75,000 could go a long way toward meeting the modest needs to make the bridge a true monument.

Second, on the issue of the statue, I have written counsel and co-authored a daily progress op-ed favoring its retention and pointing out its historic cultural and artistic merit.

And thus, I respectfully differ from the other speakers including Mr. Lopez who's also written an op-ed.

I view Sacajawea engaging in her task of tracking to find the way across the West and or gathering roots and herbs for consumption multitasking like most women while she's caring for a baby which she had gave birth to on the trip.

Sacajawea ironically was the symbol for the women's suffrage movement from 1895 to 1920 when the amendment was passed.

But I want to focus the rest of my time on the public process by which we can consider the merits of retaining or removing this statue.

Ten years ago, under the leadership of the Historic Resources Commission and Mayor Dave Norris, an event brought together a group of Shoshone and Monacan peoples

and UVA students in Charlottesville for a ceremony.

This was a creative process involving 100 people.

Thus, I urge you to consider a different process for public input, a community walk at the site followed by a workshop, perhaps two workshops and a public hearing, not a $75,000 commission.

with a whole separate infrastructure.

And I also request that the Drury-Brown Bridge, as per recommendation of the last Blue Ribbon Commission, be treated as a monument and steps taken with all deliberate speaking to accomplish this.

And I have a few comments, but we're going to get to that item number three, so there's no need to say it more than once.

I'm John Edward Hall, Fry's Spring.

I have an economical approach to the affordable housing crisis for the homeless and poor who are without shelter in Charlottesville.

I propose an experiment in one or two selected parks with bathroom facilities established, such as McIntire Park and perhaps another.

Shower facilities need to be added by city council directive.

The program is to allow overnight camping in the designated parks between 8pm and 7am with camp tents, air mattresses, inflation canisters, and sleeping bags in a city truck delivered by 7.30pm and picked up at 6.30am with parking and storage in the city yard during the day.

Homeless campers can get used to the schedule and police supervision can be provided.

Food can be provided by food mobiles and drinking water coolers added to the new shower facility areas as the program gains popularity.

Chapter 18 of the Parks and Recreation section of the Charlottesville

Virginia Code of Ordinances will have to be changed to allow this experiment.

I'm willing to rewrite it if the council wishes to give my proposed experiment a try.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Michael Payne, resident of Belmont.

I just want to speak briefly about an issue that may seem small and I'm sure will not dominate the headlines but I still think has an impact on the community and that's the recent changes to the city's parking garages.

I saw there was a press release sent out about the improvements.

I checked out the improvements today and had a giant machine with a dystopian robot voice yell at me to please take my ticket.

And I just wanted to voice, you know, there's a lot of members of the community who do not view automating away human engagement as an improvement.

But more importantly than that, the concern that has happened at UVA and a lot of other places which have seen attendance replaced with automated machines, that this will eventually result in the parking lot attendance being fired.

I know that the plan now is to have them be ambassadors of the new machines, but the concern is that long term their positions may go.

Again, just wanted to give voice that there are community members who are concerned about how we're going to treat the workers who we see every week who actually make the city run and the long-term impact they'll be with this automation coming.

Thank you.

The absolute last thing that I ever wanted to do again in life was stand before you all and talk about statues.

And yet here we are.

Before we, I understand we planned in panel another Blue Ribbon Commission and my recommendation to you simply would be don't.

Before we allocate or attribute any money or any funding to any other commission dealing with this issue, I would recommend that you spend some time in conversation in depth with some of the Shoshone Tribe, that you would speak with the Monacans, and then and only then if you move forward with empaneling a commission that you make sure that it is heavily populated with Native American people.

their voices need to and deserve to be heard so please take that into consideration and I agree the statue should be moved but just as I said of the Lee and Jackson statue they should be moved to one centralized location put them all in one park if you're going to move it 20 feet just keep the truck rolling keep it going to a designation out of the immediate downtown area

where they don't at all belong.

Put it somewhere where people, I'm not saying destroy it, I'm not saying put it out of the city somewhere, put it somewhere where people who still want to revere it can still do so.

And I want to echo Mr. Heineke and thank you, Mayor Walker, for your foresight and your vision.

And it's time that we do go ahead and have the in-depth and tough conversations about Mr. Jefferson.

Yes, indeed, he was the third president.

Yes, they say he did author the Declaration of Independence.

Yes, he had his slaves, the Bill Monticello and UVA.

But we can't overlook or continue to overlook the fact that he was indeed a slave holder.

He was indeed a racist.

He was indeed a rapist.

And we don't need to continue to glamorize and glorify individuals of that ilk.

Thank you.

Charles Knight, KNIGHT, 1243 Cedars Court, Charlottesville.

I don't have a statement prepared.

I just am here on the principle that for bad ideas to proceed, good people do nothing.

And so I would like to say I think Jefferson's birthday should be left alone and urge all counselors

to vote in that direction.

And then if I may, I have a question.

And a vote will be taken?

We'll be discussing it.

Okay.

I just wanted to make that clear.

Sena Magill, Anderson Street.

Very, very quickly, thank you so much for painting.

The yellow lines on 8th and Preston, so I have already noticed I have not been flipped off once by somebody making a legal U-turn.

Since they have been painted, I am truly grateful.

I am not, the parking, I'm already seeing traffic patterns easing up a little bit, so thank you very much.

and I would officially like to put out there to thank you Officer Sykes who stayed on an issue I had about a vehicle that had been abandoned beside my house.

It took a number of months.

It was because the ground was very soft with all the rain before it could get removed but he stayed on it.

It was about a six month process that he kept checking back and I just wanted to officially thank him for that.

So thank you.

I'm David Rhodes, county resident.

About the Jefferson thing, we all know about Jefferson.

But I thought you might be interested in a story about Liberation Day.

This is a count of a former Albemarle County Commonwealth Attorney about his childhood on so-called Liberation Day when the Union troops came to town.

I am not, as a general rule, malicious or unforgiving, but to my dying day I shall hate and despise the miserable wretch that caught hold of my mother.

I think I would know his brutal, mean face today.

I would like to kill him even now, 42 years after the event, and would like to do it slowly and with deliberation.

As from a personal memoir of Richard T.W.

Duke,

A former Albemarle Commonwealth Attorney.

So if white women were treated like that on Liberation Day, I shudder to think how some black women must have been treated.

Nancy Carpenter, City resident.

I also want to urge that the City Council pass a very strong CRB.

I'm sorry that they don't have investigative powers.

After what I saw happened in Phoenix over the weekend to a pregnant mother and a one year old child for a stupid

imported plastic doll.

I can see now why this community should have a strong one because all they're getting right now is an apology from their city mayor, oh I'm sorry the police almost shot you and your one year old child over a purported

You know, store theft.

I mean, for God's sakes.

So please do that.

Number two, I also support moving the Sacajawea statue totally out of downtown.

Biscuit Run would be a good option, I think, for it to be.

Number one, it might be 100 years since the 19th Amendment was passed, but it didn't pass for indigenous women, and it certainly didn't pass for black women in 1919.

So to use that as a reason to keep the statue I think is a little, I don't know, specious.

I got a couple things I want to cover tonight.

Tanisha Hudson.

The first thing, Mooney's in here.

Give Mooney a round of applause.

Listen, let me tell y'all something about him.

He answered my calls 24-7, okay?

So my uncle is in hospice right on his last breath.

That's why I'm late.

I just left the hospital from seeing him.

We had a cookout yesterday, and we did a raffle to raise money for him.

And the police showed up at a black cookout.

Now, I don't know about everybody in this room, but the summertime and nice weather and holidays with yesterday being Father's Day and him being the father, we cook out naturally in the summertime.

and so for the police to just pop up and say before the sun went down, this was before the sun went down that there was a noise ordinance, that bothers me because we have a noise ordinance in Belmont, we have a noise ordinance on 10th Street at the new bar that's literally right across from West Haven, we have a noise ordinance during Tom Tom Festival every year, we have a noise ordinance during the Friday after five every Friday and we have a noise ordinance on 14th Street when the students here all year long.

So I think that the noise ordinance probably should be revisited because back in the day the parks used to be open here till midnight and now y'all done shut the parks down.

The second thing I want to cover is the BCBA dance team was given permission from Crow, I believe, either Smith or Crow to utilize a space and now they're saying

Oh, it's straight in?

Oh, alright, alright, alright.

Cause you know I was ready to go in.

The last thing I want to talk about, because we sometimes get carried away and don't pay attention to certain stuff.

I want to take y'all back to when everybody pulled City Council's credit card spending and how the main focus was put on two black people, Wes and Nikuyah, right?

And then I just saw an article on Page Rice with equipment not being turned in.

Let me tell y'all something.

So I say this all the time and it really upsets me.

Stop thinking that white women do stuff and we gotta allow the media to sweep it a certain way.

Because when the people black, we're comfortable with letting black people get dragged in the city and I'm sick of it.

Like I'm sick of it.

Like white people do just as much, if not worse,

But we just, since they control the narrative, that's the power of supremacy, they control the narrative of the media, they control the narrative of the story, and I'm talking to y'all people up there in the media place too, because y'all part responsible for this, the way y'all write these stories and the way y'all want to report it.

Because when that article came out about spending, although they mentioned everybody,

Mike Uber, Wes going to Hooters, Nakai buying shoes for a race that the community is involved with.

They made a big deal out of that.

And the way that they did the story on Page, whether she turned the equipment back in or not turned the equipment back in or how, whatever have you,

If she was black, y'all would have been talking about that tonight up on this council podium.

But because she not black, it's like everybody want to just sweep it up under the rug.

But see, I just know how things work.

It's the reason why she's not here.

What that reason is, whether y'all want to discuss it or not, you know, clearly the media tried to portray it in a different way.

We have to get away from that.

I still don't really think that we learned that lesson from August the 12th.

I think that race is a huge issue still in Charlottesville and the world is watching us and unless we really start to put focus on the what ifs and I told this to Mooney last night the way they popped up at that cookout.

They don't do that to nobody in Belmont.

At all.

Period.

But they pop up at a black person's cookout.

We gotta get away from picking and choosing when we want to police and when we want to have the law being followed.

Let's focus on that, please.

All right.

So we will break for 10 minutes.

Or was there any comments?

you

Good evening, Mayor Walker and Councillors.

Before you tonight at your June 3rd meeting, Mayor Walker requested that we look at that the Council examine the idea of no longer observing April the 13th as a city holiday and instead looking at possibly adding one or two additional holidays.

Marking March 3rd and March 4th, March 3rd would be known as Liberation Freedom Day.

Doing some research on this topic to give the council some background.

City holidays, 1933, I was looking through the old minute books in Ms. Thomas's office and 1933 there were five city holidays that were talked about in a resolution by the city council at that time.

April 13th at that time was not recognized as a city holiday.

Fast forward to December 3, 1945.

The city council did pass a resolution establishing eight city holidays at that time.

April 13th was observed as Thomas Jefferson's birthday as a holiday at that time.

So this actually seems to be first observed by the city as a holiday 74 years ago.

After that recognition via resolution in 1971 is the first time the city actually listed its holidays in the city code.

And that occurred January 4th of 1971.

In terms of the change, I wanted to go over a couple of aspects of this.

Mayor Walker's proposed that both March 3rd and March 4th be observed as city holidays.

April 13th would no longer be observed as a city holiday.

March 3rd would be known as Liberation and Freedom Day and on that day is the day that the United States Army forces came to Charlottesville under the command of General Sheridan and at that time enslaved individuals, the emancipation process began.

Concerning the logistics of this proposal,

I know there's been a couple of questions about how this would work with weekends.

The current city ordinance, which is in your packet at section 2-6 of the city code, states whenever any holidays fall on a Saturday, the preceding Friday shall be a legal holiday.

And whenever the days shall fall on a Sunday, the Monday next following the day shall be a legal holiday.

And so that would sort of be the explanation if you had, say, March 3rd as a Saturday and March 4th as a Sunday, then March 2nd would be observed as Liberation and Freedom Day.

March the 5th would also be observed as a city holiday.

I did need to add one line of text to the ordinance and the last line that I added said, when the fourth day of March occurs on a Saturday, so March 3rd would be on a Friday as Liberation Freedom Day, March 4th would be on a Saturday.

Now, currently as the code is written, it doesn't really perceive that.

of March, if you're observing a holiday on that Friday and then the other holiday falls on a Saturday.

So the text now states that when the fourth day of March occurs on a Saturday, the sixth day of March, which would be that Monday, would be the second holiday.

Those are the logistics of how this would work and I also wanted to add that if you take a look at the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors website, their agendas are listed and this Wednesday on their consent agenda is a proposal.

Albemarle County also observes April 13th as a holiday to observe Thomas Jefferson's birthday.

The consent agenda on the Board of Supervisors website states that the proposal from the county executive is to no longer observe April 13th as a county holiday.

Instead it would be a floating holiday for county employees to use between January 1st and June 30th of each year.

I have a question of the distinction between a holiday that you take and have a day off for employees versus something just on the calendar.

Is there a distinction there?

So every one that you're referencing, there's five and now these are all ones that are observed by there's a day off, whether it's on an actual day or it's on a day that's nearest to that day.

Okay.

Well that's the proposal on their Wednesday Board of Supervisors consent agenda.

Well, it's what I would call a legal holiday.

And if we want to go just briefly into that topic,

The city code for city employees sets out these legal holidays.

The state code has a separate provision.

As you're aware, they set out the state legal holidays.

A couple of differences in the city code and the state code is that the state code still observes what they call Lee Jackson Day and Columbus Day.

The city does not observe either of those days.

If you go to a state court, which our courts are a state, actually our courts don't observe April 13th as a holiday in terms of they're closed.

The courts are still open on April 13th even now, but they are closed on the Friday preceding Martin Luther King Day in January.

So that's, you know, when we talk about holidays, these are legal holidays when government offices are closed.

Now, obviously there are other holidays that are not marked that are, that may be

Designated, but are not businesses nor governments are closed.

I'm thinking of something like Arbor Day, for instance.

And that was my question earlier, I was trying to distinguish between when we just recognize the day versus we actually give a day off.

And I shared an email with counsel last week that without getting input from staff, when to designate a day was really troubling to me without getting the input from staff.

So.

No, but I did, and I think I did mention this, you know our minutes, and actually Ms. Thomas and I were talking about a different matter today, the old minutes were purely action minutes, so all it said was this was the proposal, this was the vote, but I did go after seeing that,

University of Virginia has their Virgo online service.

And I went in and the Daily Progress article about this from the city perspective stated that the city in December adopted that holiday schedule based on the county the preceding month had adopted the same schedule.

So it was really the city at that time in 1945 was trying to link up with the county.

So I asked staff and Ms. Green to give some ideas about what could replace the April holiday and her reply was that from the staff members that she spoke with that it seemed that the Liberation and Freedom Day seemed the most ideal day to have

either replace or in addition to the April was her, I believe that was the exact wording of her response.

Part of this work that we say that we're doing in the city requires that the message is clear, that it's not just about taking something or not ceasing to do something.

It's about making a strong statement about why we're doing that.

So when the city started recognizing, and this is on the Jefferson School website, it says Liberation and Freedom Day, which commemorates the beginning of emancipation for over 14,000 enslaved residents of Albemarle County in the city of Charlottesville.

The next paragraph says, at the start of the Civil War, 52% of the residents of Charlottesville and Albemarle County were enslaved, a historical fact that remained little known until 2016 worked with the city's Blue Ribbon Commission on Race Memorials and Public Spaces.

All the things we're talking about in the city in terms of equity moving forward, this isn't the only possibility, but this sends a very strong message about our commitment to the work.

So it's not just

adding a day, a different day, floating a day.

I think just to follow up on that, Mayor Walker, the original intent when we were writing up the resolution to celebrate Freedom and Liberation Day, Dr. Jeline Schmidt, and I know we worked for a long time on the resolution,

Council members saw it.

Everyone was in support of it.

And I don't think that there are any of my colleagues up here who are against the idea of Freedom and Liberation Day.

So I hope that we can proceed forth in terms of making that something that is recognized holistically with days off and being very intentional about it from a city's perspective.

In regards to Thomas Jefferson, there's a sign out in the crowd that I think is, in my opinion,

point for today's discussion.

Thomas Jefferson already has 365 holidays, and I do think that is the case here in Charlottesville.

You can't go anywhere.

You literally can't go anywhere within our city without hearing or seeing a reminder, quote unquote, of Thomas Jefferson.

We received an email earlier today, or it might have been over this weekend, and I've really been thinking about it because someone says, well,

Someone, I'm not going to say who it was, but the individual sent the email and essentially stated, well, we don't have to judge Mr. Jefferson by the bad things he did.

And let's think about this holistically and let's just bring about something else.

We don't have to, we need to look at bringing our community together and not devising us, dividing us anymore.

But I wonder if that individual or any of these individuals who firmly feel that way, they're not black.

and when you think about specifically when you see an individual plastered across the city who literally Thomas Jefferson said that he didn't believe black people had the ability to emote.

He also went on to state how foul we smelled.

He went on to, it's well documented that he raped Sally Hemings.

There's no relationship that a slave owner can have with a slave

So when we think about how we want to continue to commemorate this day on one side of our words, but then on the other side of our words, say how emphatically we want to discuss equity, those two things don't add up.

You can't express to me that you want me to feel empowered, you want people to have their voice, you want people to feel as if they're included, and we want to have unity days, and we want to commemorate all of these other events.

But then by the same token, say that we have pride in acknowledging an individual who firmly felt these things about people who look like me.

I don't understand how we can continue to go down that path.

And I'm going to be very frank.

Individuals will say, well, Wes, you said a lot of different things when you were young.

And I hold no punches and take no quorums about it.

But when I was 21, 22, 23 is a lot different from Thomas Jefferson being an old, wealthy, well-to-do individual who had already written the Declaration of Independence and accumulated all of this quote unquote wealth, still saying these things and having these firm beliefs about different people.

yet we still want to recognize, acknowledge, and dare I say celebrate this birthday.

Mr. Walker, I'd like to make a statement please.

And Mr. Bellamy, Council Bellamy, you have laid out the horrific things that Thomas Jefferson has been responsible for and others have said so as well.

And it also is important to think about what Thomas Jefferson has done that relates to, particularly with the Religious Freedom Act.

And I want to read something from that act.

And it goes as this.

No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, for that all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

That was said at a time when Baptists, Presbyterians, anybody who wasn't of the Anglican Church were persecuted.

That included Methodists.

That is directly counter to what happened in 2015 in the state of Indiana under the governorship of Mike Pence, which then reinstated restrictions against religious liberty.

So in that sense, Thomas Jefferson was ahead of his time.

He was thinking about freedom of thought.

And in fact, the Freedom of Religion Act is viewed as the

the settlement, the entitlement of the freedom of thought.

And I find it somewhat ironic at this point in time that the very founding father that gave us the ability through our laws to give us the ability to question our holiday schedule is now not going to be able to be at least acknowledged for that

So wait, please.

No.

Can we?

We're having a discussion up here.

Thank you.

So we're having a discussion.

Tanisha.

Oh, it's time for me to go home.

You will never get it.

Let's flip around to the side of the person at those 14,000 people who made up over 52% of the population at the time.

Let's talk about some of their thoughts about Thomas Jefferson.

So let's talk about when you think about lynchings in this country and you think about black men hanging from trees castrated while rope is around their neck.

Oftentimes there are children and women watching them.

Let's talk about black women hanging from trees, rope around their neck, babies in their bellies, bellies slit open, babies fall to the ground.

Let's talk about some of that imagery that happened

at the hands of white people.

in this country who have very barbaric practices.

Let's talk about signage that said, Negroes, horses, cattles, and auction blocks, okay?

Let's talk about people who don't know still to this day, but at that time, where their family members ended up at.

And let's talk about the founding fathers never thinking

Black people when they were creating these laws because it only applied to, as we know, primarily white male landowners, right?

So I can't even understand how we're having a conversation about

At this point in time, still about what the perception of what he did well is.

Even as we watched in this room today, we had white women and white men, even with an indigenous male in the room saying, reading a statement,

from a director of a center dedicated to Sacajawea, dedicated to truly honoring her, what our interpretation, just see it through our eyes is what I'm hearing.

Just see what we see.

Not ever really coming over to the other side and understanding you should never have had the right to always form your interpretation and force everyone else to live by it.

So it is insane that in this time when we say that we're supposed to be doing equity work after all the horrific things and that you can still have individuals who every day don't know whether they can continue to exist or not, that we will have a conversation about let's just look at what he did well.

That's insane.

It says of the over 600 people Jefferson owned, he only formally freed seven of them.

During his lifetime, Jefferson, this is Monticello's website, so if you have an issue with the facts, talk to them.

And we would also like to point out that Montpelier started doing work with the descendants before Monticello did and because they started telling truths that Monticello said, okay, this train is moving, let us begin.

We cannot wait for people to dream up a different world and allow you to tell

us what you should see.

What if I said, and I know this is probably as inappropriate as they come, but what if I said, oh, let's have a Nat Turner day.

Do you want to see through my perspective what you don't want to see that through my perspective, right?

Not at all.

That's not what I said, Mayor Walker.

I said that.

I'm not just saying you.

I'm just saying anyone.

If you start talking about

A situation where the guy came up here in red.

What happened to a white woman on this day?

Right?

We're not even here focusing on the troops.

We're focusing on those 14,000 people who were enslaved.

Those 14,000 people who had their first glimpse of freedom in that moment when they were told, okay, now you are free.

How does someone even have a right to own someone, right?

But again, we're supposed to allow, and whether it's this day or not, it just speaks volumes to whether we can truly do this equity work, which I think we're spinning our wheels in a lot of ways.

And for a primarily white controlled area, Charlottesville and Albemarle County, we are still

Given permission for what you all will allow us to recognize, honor, and say is true.

And as I mentioned earlier, I'm looking at this more from just in terms of just the logistics of changing the holidays is all I'm asking for is for us, I mean this just came up in our last meeting, I don't feel like we've gotten a chance for staff to weigh in on how they see us playing out.

I also, until later in the review process, didn't realize that we were talking about two days versus one.

So we're talking about adding another holiday.

So there's two days that we were talking about recognizing in March in place of a day in April.

And I just, and I've said this in my email last week and I was very clear about it, I just feel that we need to get input from staff on are there considerations they want us to have because that's the precedent.

When we've done other, when the past councils have had other opportunities to look at these dates, staff has had a chance to weigh in and I have personally heard from staff

I've also heard from staff that they want the days to proceed forth.

And it's like we do this all of the time.

No.

What do you mean?

I'm just saying all I'm asking is to give them a chance to...

I was talking...

So what I'm asking is, if you're talking about a March holiday, it's a month before the current holiday, right?

I spoke with the city manager,

I'm asking that from a cost standpoint, first of all, and also just from a logistics standpoint, when are these days going to fall and can we let staff weigh in on if it falls

Can they be observed in a time that would have bought up with a weekend?

That's just some of the feedback that's come through.

I don't want to speak on behalf, I mean I haven't done this full on outreach to all of staff.

I just don't understand why we have to make this decision tonight and not give staff a chance to weigh in on what their calendar schedule looks like.

I hear the points about the days and the recognition.

So without looking at

What Mr. Blair has put in the

In here, if the Saturday is the third, then it'll be a Friday.

I know in a three-year cycle, in a five-year cycle, there would have been three weekend holidays.

So I'm sure that doesn't change that significantly.

So it would only be twice in five years where it would be a Tuesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Thursday, based on

The other time staff would have a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday in this scenario.

I don't know what it looks like.

Like with that, I'll also say that based on the equity work that the interim city manager did for nine months, that if you're talking about being intentional about what you change this day to, we do not have the staff capacity to be intentional about this day and about why we change it.

Based on

the narratives that we did not see.

So essentially where I am proposing that we are intentional about when we take this day away that when someone goes through the archives in a hundred years they can read that the city of Charlottesville stop

And celebrating them not just from the way in which, like I think we've taken steps

And first commemorating the day, which we did a couple years ago.

Last year, we did the whole thing with the soil, the pilgrimage and so forth.

And we've made efforts.

But this is the next step in terms of us being intentional.

And like everyone up here likes to talk about healing.

That seems like it's the buzzword throughout our community in our city.

Let's heal.

Let's work towards unity.

Let's working together.

But how can we heal

or even have any unity if we can't even, we as the elected officials make a decision about a day.

in providing our staff with a three day holiday, which I don't see how any of them are going to turn down.

And then furthermore, to the point, a two day holiday, excuse me, that I don't think any of them are going to turn down.

And then we are placing the fact that, okay, we may have to have an inconvenience, quote unquote, as I'm hearing it from City Hall being shut down.

But black folk in this community as a whole have been inconvenienced literally their whole lives.

So we're going to be intentional.

We're requesting that we be intentional in regards to how we address this situation to bring about unity, to bring about healing.

And it seems as if to me, whenever we have these very difficult situations and topics revolving around race, we want to study it.

We want to have another commission.

I'm not comfortable making a decision on something that I'm not even the recipient.

I'm not an employee of the city in that way and I just don't understand why we can't at least get like we have in prior situations like this feedback from staff and if there's preferences around how

We modify whether it's a moving this day towards an observance on a Monday like we do for many holidays.

You observe them on that Monday regardless of the date where it is.

I don't understand why we just can't get that feedback.

It can happen in a pretty short period of time.

Madam Mayor, I was hoping to ask you and Dr. Bellamy a question just about how you would, your opinion on a

I'm one, just a question.

So you referenced both Montpelier and Monticello, which have done very dramatic work.

At Montpelier they converted the whole bottom floor to a testimonial to the role of race and slavery in the Constitution, Madison's deep sins in this regard, and at Monticello they've

you know, at first reluctance and then much more proactively upended a lot of the whole narrative there around Jefferson's role with race and the Hemings family which was previously hidden and it really has totally changed I think the way that people, the way that they were presenting Jefferson and

And then at the African American Heritage Museum in Washington, they made a decision under Lonnie Bunch, who's now going to be the head of the whole Smithsonian.

They do have a statue there of Jefferson, but he is overtowered by the sculptural elements that represent all the slaves that, all the enslaved people that he unfortunately owned.

And they are taller than him.

That's one of the ways that they've dealt with this, is they have these statues, you know, I think it's bricks that are meant to represent the humans

And I'm just suggesting those, I'm curious, I really would like to know, so one of the, a possible way that this could happen, I remember a couple of years ago when Dr. Bellamy had, when we were first before the injunction I think with the parks,

There was going to be a plaque series and Professor Schmidt may have been involved in helping draft this language.

It was very bold language about the facts around what gave rise to the statues in the Jim Crow era and it was incredibly strong and I wonder if the city

If the holiday still did stay, setting aside the issue of creating a new holiday, which sounds like a great idea, and the city spoke with a voice like they did at Montpelier and Monticello about the truth of everything with Jefferson,

All these truths you're saying in the city's voice and so it forced people to deal with and to acknowledge these facts and it was an occasion for dealing with this history and the city told the facts about Jefferson but it might be a way of doing what they did with these other ways.

Nobody is proposing in Montpelier that they just raise the mansion to the ground.

or I mean some people have proposed that UVA which is a public institution that they would just you know tear down the statues but to Jefferson but if you tell the truth it's I'm curious about how you all

I think that in a location like even when we're talking about the statue, you put the statue in a museum and you can contextualize it and people who want to go to that museum and see those statues, then they can do that.

We're talking about the power of these individuals and so there's no way that someone was going, Monticello wasn't going anywhere.

The only thing that you can do if you're gonna, if it's gonna stay, which we know it is, UVA is gonna stay, is if you start doing this work is how do we acknowledge the other story, right?

That is what they're saying, as if that,

It really provides any true healing.

I think it's just we're in a society where white people control almost everything and we'll start telling the truth but we're going to keep our truth.

If you need your version of the truth on the left side, our version is still going to stay on the right.

I don't think that's the same thing as making

making this kind of statement.

Well, may I answer the question?

I think for me, Councilor Signer,

I enjoy seeing other people's perspectives in terms of like how they address different situations.

I think there is value in that.

But I think there's also value in us being a leader in regards to how we address this issue in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

So specifically for us, I think not to make a headline or not to

get people quote unquote riled up or be divisive.

But I think in terms of us doing what is right and taking a bold step in saying this is how we are going to address the situation, it's imperative for us to come up with our own solution.

And us taking the stance in which we will declare we were the first city in the state to celebrate Freedom and Liberation Day.

I think this will also be very important and send a clear message in light of everything that's transpired here.

When people talk about what steps we're going to take moving forward or what's transpired, we have been very intentional in regards to addressing equity, healing, and in bringing about unity and telling full stories specifically of people whose stories haven't been told.

This allows us to do such.

Some people will say that it's symbolic.

So, Mayor Walker, may I finish what I was trying to say?

That this was, and Councilor Bellamy just mentioned the phrase, the full story.

A proposal that I would like to make is that we would make Liberation Day, the observance of Liberation Day, a legal holiday in Charlottesville.

Make that a given.

Codify that in our law.

Doing away with Thomas Jefferson's birthday doesn't do away with the history.

That birthday is still here.

What he has done in the past is there.

And to play off of what Counselor Signer said, that is the day to tell the full story.

The good and the bad.

But it is the American story.

It is the full picture of this country.

So this is a sort of balancing.

Kathy, there's no balance.

To wipe away things, to not tell that story means that you're not telling the full story of the United States.

So yes, add the Liberation Day and make that the paid holiday.

I don't know.

In 1945 I wonder why that was brought about.

When we have these discussions, there is literally no way in this city in which you will not be able to acknowledge or forget about Thomas Jefferson.

But that doesn't mean that we as a city have to celebrate, commemorate, or acknowledge him with a day.

You will not, this is similar, and I'm gonna, this is a parallel in my opinion, I think it's one that's very easy and plausible to make.

This is similar to the message that people say when they talk about the Confederacy.

If we remove these statues or if we stop doing X, Y, and Z, we're going to erase history or people will no longer know what's going to happen or transpire.

We live in Virginia, which literally 70 miles away was the capital of the Confederacy.

There is no way in which people are going to forget about

individuals being raped, individuals being enslaved and in bondage.

There's no way in which we're going to forget how things were in the good old days when Dixie ran wild.

We won't forget that.

The same way we're not, the University of Virginia is literally five miles away.

There's no way we're going to forget Thomas Jefferson's birthday or the city is no longer gonna be able to recognize or know when that date was.

But there is value and power in us being intentional when we're hearing from community members, we heard this from the Blue Ribbon Commission, and we're being very clear that we want to do something that's going to show that we have your back.

Again, some will say it's symbolic, but these are truly the kind of steps that we have to take if we want to bring about healing, quote unquote.

Healing isn't always easy.

And sometimes we want to take these easy positions in which we appease both sides.

But at some point, we're going to have to decide whether or not we're going to do what's right or we're going to do what's going to make the majority feel good.

And they've been able to feel good for a very long time.

And I think there's also a lot of the majority, specifically white people, who also want to see this day go away.

And I'll just say my focus is not about the April 13th day as it is about understanding what decisions are we making about the time that staff will get off on this other day, March day.

Dr. Richardson, I'm curious because what's been proposed is two days off.

Either way, it's the council's decision in terms of what you want to make in terms of making it a floating holiday or whatsoever.

That's at your discretion.

Either way, either we're off or we're going to work.

I mean, it's up to the council.

I agree.

It's up to us.

And I think when we do things, like, let's send it back to hear what staff is going to say.

It essentially just, it kicks the can down the road.

We have to stop doing that.

Like, we are the electeds.

There's this precedent that when this has been discussed before that staff has had, this is not a big deliberation.

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

Let's let Ms. Hill, let's let Ms. Hill, let's let Ms. Hill, please.

I just have a hard time when those of us who aren't employees of the city are going to dictate when those days are off.

If we could just get input from those folks.

And there's precedent for doing that.

And if there's not an interest among council to do that, that'd still be it.

That's my position.

I'm also hesitant about the two days.

When I talked to Dr. Richardson about this, I think we have 11 holidays now.

This was also me attempting to, I think it gives this

It makes this holiday significant, I think, by people, you know, maybe, you know, thinking about it.

We originally had, like, Liberation Freedom two days, but I told Mr.

Blair that it's one day and so it just we will write it as the day after.

But I also think with the 11 holidays that if I talk to Dr. Richardson about you know having 14 holidays a year and how could we you know make that happen which is just something that I have you know tabled just for staff in terms of how do we care for our staff.

So I don't think that

I just want to, so I've been listening very carefully to this, and I didn't know, I wanted to hear the answer to that question.

And I'm looking through the list of holidays right now.

It goes New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Day, President's Day, Thomas Jefferson's birthday, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving Day, Thanksgiving holiday, Christmas.

And I've been wrestling with it.

I remember when I read, Henry Wienchek wrote a book called Master of the Mountain.

where they did an excerpt in the Smithsonian Magazine.

It was about how Jefferson calculated the labor of the children that he owned.

And it was this very brutal, horrifying expose that was written down.

And he really was like an accountant of the utility of these kids that were working in the nail factories.

and I have been frustrated for a long time at this kind of mystique that Jefferson wove and I do think it is odd that we single him out of the three other presidents of four with a nexus to this area.

And I do think that I can, and I hear the passion and the pain that, and I've generally had a lot of misgivings about, as Dr. Bellamy, we've gone through the wars on this, about symbolic actions, but I think right now, I think that I would support the move to remove his, the holiday.

And I do think that it would be, I do think that it would send a message, and I know that,

Democratic committees around the country have changed their Jefferson Jackson Day dinners, and he will still be, and I would like there to be some recognition of the story that, it probably doesn't matter.

Yeah, to explain, because sometimes we forget the history

of how changes happen and the narrative that would go into the new holiday if it would explain.

And I'm hearing that too and all I'm just saying is as we look at the date that it becomes, I'm just trying to understand how are we marrying up with those dates and is it two dates or one?

I would rather we just have

I know that the individual date is very important, but I think it would make more sense to have it be the third Monday of the month than it would be.

I know that wouldn't correlate to it, but it looks to me like the liberation period was a period of days.

So if it was one, it seems a lot to create a full weekend of a holiday, but it seems like we should have one day.

That would be my instinct is that we create a new holiday.

That would be my... Well, it was just offering the third and fourth as holidays for city staff and however that fell is what

I don't think they want, I mean, just a Wednesday in the middle of the week, which is kind of what happens with the current, April 13th, it just kind of falls where it does.

I was just trying to have some consistency, people can rely on that and have it be a long weekend.

And I'm not, that's why I think we need to get input from staff, but there doesn't seem to be any energy for that, so that's fine.

I'd rather have them have a floating of some flexibility with that second day than having four days in March.

They wouldn't have four days in March, it's two.

I'm confused.

So it would be March 3rd and 4th.

What, um, Counselor Hill said she was concerned about was them not being able to have long weekends.

Why can't it just be a one-day holiday?

It could, but that was another attempt to give.

I think it should be a one-day holiday.

That's just my...

I can't change the...

Jefferson Holiday and have it be a new one-day holiday.

I need a clarification on what you just said.

I just want to clarify this, that there is no interest at all in having Liberation Day as March 3rd as the holiday.

and then also retaining the April 15 as a day to really tell the full, whole story of Thomas Jefferson.

There is actually no interest in that.

But would you support March 3rd and 4th?

Well, you don't have support for two days in March.

I'm asking you.

No, I don't.

No, Dr. Richardson didn't say that was an issue.

I'm confused about that one then because I thought going to two days was an issue.

It's $62,000 for each day that we're off.

So if we get one day,

That's a number.

We get two days.

That's double that number.

So I would propose that March 3rd is the paid holiday, but that April 13 is not the paid holiday, but it is still a holiday on the books that people can choose to, that we can acknowledge.

No.

Okay.

Madam Mayor, my suggestion would be we, I mean it sends the clearest message if we are changing, that the new holiday becomes March 3rd.

So I have a question.

I hear you.

I just have a question.

It closes during the week on Tuesday.

No matter what day.

So that's the parallel that I'm looking at.

Sorry.

So that's something else we'd fix.

Yeah.

So if it like if March 3rd,

to me, I don't think it matters because we need to show the significance of that March 3rd and March 4th.

If that's the preference, I don't feel strongly about it.

I am talking about two days, so March 3rd and March 4th.

It feels more symmetrical and it feels like it's stopping one, creating another one, and then we get to tell people it's not a, there's no budgetary impact, but we did a very meaningful, sent a message, and if you were to change it so that people could take a three-day weekend, it's really helpful to staff, but we haven't had a lot of staff feedback on it.

the planting a flag in the middle of the week this is the day that we're and especially you do that with two days but I'm just saying that if you that's why I think the power is and that's being and that may be specific in regards to it is this day maybe and the other thing that I would like to say is later we're going to have a conversation about and we know how much money that we waste 60 and again I was just attempting to one this seemed like

The time we could also make a statement about this day but also maybe inch towards this 14 pay holidays a year and maybe not.

But I feel strongly about the day.

I do think that we could, you know, say to staff too, we appreciate the work you do.

the other days minus the 11 that you're currently off and figure that out.

Okay, so I would.

If I may, did you have something?

No, I just, you know, for me, two extra days is great.

I just make a request if I may.

I support creating the Liberation Day holiday and that's March 3rd.

I would like to be able to go on record to support that if that could be something that could break the vote up instead of one that

discontinued the April 13.

I don't need April 13 to be the paid holiday, but I do think we need an acknowledgement of that day.

That president was of this area and that president started University of Virginia, the first university in the country that wasn't a seminary.

Again, it was about freedom of thought.

Again, that is the, that is what, so I do, I just want to ask this council if it would,

create a scenario where we could vote for each date separately.

that the March 3rd would be the paid holiday.

I would very much like to vote for that.

I think it's important for the record and for history to show clearly how we each voted.

So I have no issues.

Well let's go through, this is procedural so if that's what you're talking about we can either have this as an action item on the next agenda or we could have adding March the 3rd as a holiday as like item C on the consent agenda and deleting April 13th

as a separate item on the consent agenda.

That's literally what I was going to propose that we have two votes.

Okay.

I can do a council memo.

OK, so one specifically in regards to getting, excuse me, no longer celebrating Thomas Jefferson's birthday of April 13th and then the other for us clearly recognizing as a city, as a paid holiday for March 3rd for Freedom and Liberation Day.

Oh, OK. Dr. Richardson, I would be super curious if there was any way to advise us on whether staff would prefer for the March 3 to be recognized on a Monday or Friday just for convenience or whether there's more significance in Dr. Bellamy's argument that it is planted.

I just, if there's a way of informally testing, we're going to do it.

But I'm just, it.

I think this is what we're talking about with getting staff feedback because it seems like I'm thinking about the way that you plan out and take advantage of a day off.

We could do a survey.

And the reason of a day off is, yeah, I think that would be great.

We could do a survey, but you're saying that you're still going to adopt it anyway.

Right.

So there will be a day, it just is whether it could fall on any day of the week or whether it would be intentionally scheduled to go up against a weekend.

Well, I mean, I think it's fine to do the survey.

And I said that from the beginning, so.

And Mayor Walker, with regards to Mr. Blair, I'd like one more point of clarification.

In a way, what

I just want to make sure that March 3rd is the one that's the paid holiday, April 3rd even as the consent agenda is the one that's not the paid holiday.

Right.

We're no longer celebrating April 13th.

Let's see, in terms of April 13th, are you asking that, in effect, it would be an unofficial holiday?

Well, it's essentially swapping out the way we're currently treating Liberation Day.

We're going to be just making April 13th like a holiday.

Well, here's what I would offer on that to you.

If that is your interest, I will compose the council memo and the ordinance to reflect that March 3rd will be an official city holiday.

April 13th will no longer be a city holiday.

Thank you.

I'm not sure.

You're just going to bring that forth on your own.

Got you.

Right.

But it's very clear to me now what we're talking about.

And we have more things.

OK.

So just for the sake of this conversation, we all know March 3rd is now the official holiday in which we're celebrating.

We're voting on that next month.

I mean, soon at the next meeting.

OK.

Thank you.

All right.

I do need a break.

No, no, no.

After that.

Let's go.

Now I was just saying it, but if I did need a break, we could take a break.

So next, we have the disposition of the Lewis and Clark in Sacajawea statue.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, City Council, City Manager.

What you have before you, it's a

Recommendation from staff at the request of the City Council regarding a disposition of Lois Clark and Sacajawah statue located at the corner of West Main and Ridge McIntyre intersection.

The City Council approved on May 6, 2019, a resolution accepting staff's recommendation

Additionally, council also directed staff to design a public process for addressing the disposition of Lewis Clark and Sacajawha statue to be considered for implementation separate from the state funded components of the West Main streetscape plan.

Following staff discussions, there are several staff involved in this discussion, including NDS planners, Historic Preservation Planner, the Director of Human Rights Commission, Charlene Queen.

We discuss various aspects of this recommendation and then

regarding a creation of a process, a public process to drive disposition of the statue.

What staff is recommending is for council to consider setting up an 11-member committee to oversee the public process.

Staff is also recommending that the following composition, the committee be composed of six at-large members and one representative from each of the following boards.

and Commissions, the Board of Architectural Review, the Historic Resources Commission, the Human Rights Commission, the Place Design Task Force, and then the 11th designated member will be a city staff, probably from NDS or another city department who will assist in the coordination of the consultant activities

Staff also is proposing that Council allocate $75,000 to support the activities of the Committee.

Now, it doesn't mean that the process will consume all the $75,000.

Whatever is left will be returned to the General Fund for reallocation to other

projects.

There is a resolution attached for the council consideration which outlines the number of months the committee will deliberate and responsibilities for the committee in terms of driving the public process.

There are a couple of things staff wishes to point out to the city council.

Just in case, at the end of the day,

The council decides perhaps at the recommendation of the committee to move the statue from its present location to a different location, other than 20 feet from the current location.

If that becomes the decision, then it has to go to the BER, Board of Architectural Review.

If Board of Architectural Review denies or approves that request,

It could be appealed to the city council and if council decide to reaffirm Board of Architectural Review's recommendations, somebody can also decide to take the city council to the circuit court.

So that would be where people can appeal the decision of the city council.

So council needs to keep that in mind.

Yes, Mr. McCabe.

So, how did you come up with the $75,000?

And then secondly, in the committee, there's no reference to members of the

Why aren't they included in the committee?

There are 11 people that have been proposed to serve on this committee.

We decided to ask for representatives from

from City Boards and Commission.

With that six, there are still about four appointments to be made, and those could be for Native Americans to serve on the committee.

Regarding the $75,000 staff thought that in terms of hiring a consultant or a facilitator, if you will, that could be somebody from University of Virginia or some other facilitator and then meeting expenses for the committee.

Thank you.

No.

Because what Council approved as part of the schematic design was to shift

the statue 20 feet away from the current location.

But the public-driven process was not part of the street-scape design.

However, at the last

At the meeting, we are council directed staff to create or recommend a public process.

Thank you.

So

I think if we create another, it's insane to me that we need to create another commission to continue to do this work.

Mr. Willard, can you pull an image up here?

The dignity statue, do you know that one in South Dakota?

but if you Google it, it might pop.

Because I think what we, when we're talking about the intention, you know, the emails that have come through have talked about what the, again, we have the same individual who commissioned the Lee statue, commissioned the statue and

This is different.

This is clear.

There's no question.

You don't have to put signage.

You see the grace, dignity, humanity, and you understand whoever did this, they truly understood.

People who went on the pilgrimage with us, when you saw those sculptures, you could see the pain, the hurt.

You knew that the individual who created it understood what individuals had gone through.

When we were in the slave dungeons, you could see the

Heads that have been created to represent the individuals who died there.

You could feel the energy.

It is so important for you to understand, you know, for us to understand that just the intention, and we always talk about what was the intention, the fact that we should just be proud that the sculpture, sculptor included Sacajawea when it's clear

that there wasn't really any honor no matter what has been written.

If you have to question when you see something, whether she's cowering or whether she's tracking, when you see, when you look at it and the primary thing you see is two white men, that is different from this.

It's different.

So I think when again, when you're talking about doing, truly doing the work, if we're at a place where we're talking about moving something, and there's going to be a cost to move it, and we're talking about something that really should stand in the center of our city, should it continue to be that?

We did have an email and it was asked to be read and so I do feel that we should.

It was asked to be read on their behalf.

Buna greetings.

My name is Roseanne Abrahamson and Sacajawea is my great, great, great aunt.

Years back, we the people and familial descendants of Sacajawea came to Charlottesville for the statue's plaque dedication in the city center.

I understand that it is to be removed from its standing spot for surrounding repair work.

I believe it should be replaced back to the site once the repairs are made.

I'm asserting this because a decade ago, we came across this country to bring together people and to commemorate our shared history.

I can vouch that, at that time, Charlottesville citizens came together harmoniously with celebration to pay homage to heroes of two different races.

This statue stands for that unity, harmony, shared history and event.

I also think that when the statue is replaced, it should be celebrated with the same thought togetherness.

I firmly believe this will erase what the world witnessed in Charlottesville's recent events of disharmony and division.

Do it for your citizens, for you, and to bring a positive face to your city.

I hope that my words will be heard.

But I think we need to even point to the

That day, at that time, it was when I saw the statue, I was very sad.

So initially, and I spoke to Dave Norris this morning about

Contextualizing the statue, putting up something different, them doing the smudging ceremony and bringing that energy in, that's still very different from having something of authentic representation.

If they are thinking, I don't know what, because I haven't talked to them, but if the thought process is that we're going to remove the statue and not put anything back, that they won't have a say in creating something that truly honors

their history, then I would want to keep it too.

I think that conversation should be had with them to understand if you had a different option to create anything you wanted to sit in this space, would it be this or could it be something else?

If the city is saying that we will rectify, I don't know what we're saying, but I think that it should come from them.

We don't know what her thoughts were outside of that email, but the fact that when they came here, that was her first comment.

I was sad until we had the ceremony.

That's still different.

And I will just, real quick, I want to hear from the family and from other indigenous peoples from the area.

So what I've heard and what you just were talking about was that making the decision with another decision kind of moved into it, which would be doing a whole new memorial along the lines of this incredible one.

That is a very different, complicated, fraught

One that does not have a good history in the city.

Like the sculpture that was going to be at Vinegar Hill outside the Jefferson School was done several years ago.

Very hard time raising money for it, very hard time giving money for it.

We gave a little bit of money out of the Equity Fund, which is a big debate.

We have had a very hard time coming up with names that would go toward individuals.

It is really, it's just in terms of getting anything done in the next

five or ten years, and that doesn't, I'm not meaning to be a kind of wet blanket about it, but it's just, it's very, very hard to do new statuary, especially with all the other statutes that we still haven't been able to do, and if you look at that being a priority for city dollars as compared to, you know, the major school CIP issues that are bearing down on us, and the major equity issues for real.

you know for living people it's going to be really hard to justify to the public to invest a million dollars or something like that and a whole two or three year period of community engagement and hiring a sculptor and doing RFPs and if that's what we're really talking about it's like doing that

Those two are combined that we wouldn't make this decision because we're going to engage the family on doing a new statue along the lines of this beautiful one.

I definitely think that would be something that the new council, there's three new members coming on the new council.

That's a big serious endeavor that you guys would have to

Two of whom are here, but maybe if they win in the general election.

It's just a big serious endeavor and the Vinegar Hill experience has not been positive for it.

And it means that you in the next two years, it will be a big priority in the next two years that you have to do is this one statue that you're working on.

And I think that's why I would incline to just

I mean this was very powerful for me to read.

And so was James.

And I think if you, I wish Dave had come because I called him after that to say, hey, just to clarify, are you saying that

The statue should definitely stay.

And that's what I took away from, I talked to him this morning too and that's what I took away was just what can we do to further make, you know, create a vision to see the things that we can't see right now but in a new pocket park environment there's a lot of opportunity there to do that, to do just that.

But that's a University of Virginia piece.

But I do think we still need to engage the Monacan Native American tribe as well as the Shoshone.

I do think we do need to reach out and have a conversation.

with the Native American peoples about this.

Right.

But it's not going to cost $75,000 to do that, right?

No, it's not.

And I think $75,000 is way too expensive.

I don't think there's an energy and counsel for that.

So could we pay

Could I suggest

So this firm that we have doing the West Main plan has, I believe they have a committee and they have somebody who's consulting with them on how to do historical elements within the design of West Main Street.

And if we just kind of, if the decision was just for design purposes, yeah, it's going to move 20 feet, and that was the original plan, but there's a lot of

We know there's going to be a park.

There could be plaques in it.

There could be information.

There could be all kinds of different ways of explaining to better than the one plaque right now.

And a lot of community engagement went into that.

that we would include as much as possible.

We would kind of make the first decision, but we would do a whole element of community engagement, like you're saying, to include their feedback in other components of the park, now that it was going to, because the staff needs to have this decision.

If this keeps on getting kicked six months or a year down the road, or more than it'll, that kind of,

twist up the whole plan.

We already made the decision to move it.

We agreed last in May 2019, May 6th, that we were going to still move the statute, but we were going to be having a further discussion about what the long-term fate of the statute is.

So that we're not holding up the West Main Street Improvement Project, but this is to figure out what is the long-term strategy for

Right.

That would be the decision.

If we call the question.

Well right now all we're looking at is are we going to, all we're being asked right now is are we going to give staff the direction to take this approach that's been laid out.

I think we can have a work session in early fall and I think we need to, when would the work start need to start?

Well, the last staff presentation to city council, council farm staff presentation, so that decision is already made by the city council.

On a related note, you also made a decision directing staff to provide some kind of recommendation on public driven process to decide the fate of the statue.

So that's what we are discussing right now, but in terms of moving- The 20 feet.

Right.

So this is still the long term

Faye of the statute and how we make that decision.

That's correct.

It could move into the next council, but I do think the voices of the Native American peoples need to be brought in in a much stronger way than what, you know, I know staff is being very careful to have representation from our advisory groups, but I do think it needs to be very much weighted towards the Native American voices and that that would be the

We've referred a lot to this process from 10 years ago.

Was there a report from that?

And we haven't seen it, right?

My impression was this all was done.

There was a very fulsome public engagement process with members of tribes that was

pretty thoughtful and that Mayor Norris was the, and that this all went, this was what went into that plaque being there.

It's just in a crappy location.

Could we, could we read

Okay, this is just the first paragraph, just for the benefit of the public.

Counselors, I have never liked the design of the Lewis and Clark statue.

This is from former mayor Dave Norris.

Because without the benefit of context or history, it leaves many viewers with the unfortunate misimpression that Sacagawea has portrayed as cowering.

When you spend time researching the history of the expedition and the history of the statue, as we did in great depth 10 years ago, and when you speak with Sacagawea's descendants about how they wish for the statue to be perceived, you come away with a much different impression.

She is not cowering at all.

but rather performing the vitally important role of tracking.

Unfortunately, the casual passerby does not have the benefit of that context, which is why moving the statue to a pocket park where people can read the interpretive signage would be quite helpful.

Bottom line, it may be a poorly designed statue, but I do not believe it was malevolently

Intention statue, especially when you consider the fact that the sculptor himself chose to add Sacagawea to the piece to honor her for her role in the exhibition.

And then he goes on to bash the Lewis and Clark statue at the corner and say it should be melted down.

Essentially, Section 106 is a federal historic significance property or structure review process and whenever there is federal funding in such a project, then it triggers Section 106 and if it does,

Then chances are the Westman project may never take off in the next four or five years.

That's a very rare possibility because it gets to be reviewed by folks in Washington and at the same time

Our project is one of the projects.

There are several thousands of projects in the United States that have been funded by the federal government that will be waiting for the same review.

So if phase one of this project doesn't have any federal funding, phase two

Those have a combination of states and federal funding.

potentially could may impact the project and then phase phases three and four.

We haven't gotten to that point yet because they haven't been fully funded.

The first and second phases, we've got the funding for those projects.

Did we get some word, though?

I don't know.

If there is a decision right now, the city makes a decision or city council votes to relocate, to move the statute.

from where it is right now as opposed to the 25th.

25th, the State Historic Resource Department will work with the city.

If the city is proposing to move the status, council votes now to move the status away from where it is, then it becomes a huge challenge.

We have to go through the state's historic review process and if that becomes the issue, then there is a real possibility that the Virginia Department of Transportation may tell the city where

I just had a brief conversation with Jeanette Jatacek who's managing the project.

I guess I'll say right now there's a whole lot of unknowns.

I kind of came into the evening discussing an idea for a community-led discussion on the disposition of the statue.

It's sort of like the conversation we had today.

I said I'm not an attorney and offering just a perspective on my experience.

First off, Section 106 is a federal process.

There is a state-level equivalent.

There is no easy term for it.

So you'll hear Section 106 a lot discussed, but that is the federal level.

The statutes on the Virginia Landmarks Register, my understanding is

with state funding and with that state designation, that equivalent review would be necessary if something were to, for removal of the statute.

The relocation of it, our indication of DHR is that they'd work with us on it.

Jeanette today said she believes that VDOT would

Consider allowing the city to decouple it from the project.

I just don't know much more than that.

I didn't come in here this evening prepared to entirely discuss that.

But as I mentioned to you earlier, there still is a matter of this is a, you know, the Board of Architectural Review has been involved in this review, the design review.

The correct process would be if a decision were made to remove the statue, it would go to the BAR first.

And as I mentioned today, a decision by the BAR, let's say the BAR said no, we won't grant a certificate of appropriateness for its removal, that could be appealed to council.

Let's say the BAR approved it, that decision could be appealed to council correspondingly

City Council's decision can be appealed to the courts.

So given what I'm hearing within the community, you sort of see the dominoes lining up for possibly a protracted challenge.

So I think that all has to be sort of reviewed and calibrated within your decision, just so everybody understands what's going on here.

As I said, the discussion tonight was to come in and I drew the short straw after the meeting we all had and I got to draft the resolution and I intentionally put what I could in and Guy has been emailing me with some wonderful recommendations and suggestions and I felt like I had put in here that

A conversation with not only the Shoshone Tribe but our local tribes and with other stakeholders and I also, I felt it was important to put in here too that not just the contributions of Sacagawea or Lewis and Clark but the entire core discovery including York and

If I could just see here, I'll throw this in.

Last couple of months we've been having discussions with groups about West Main, as you all instructed us to do.

Nobody told, in those conversations, nobody said remove the statue.

The comment that we got associated with the statue was, well what can we do more about York?

How can we bring him to the fore?

I'll just offer that what Charlene Green said to me is, you know, we have an opportunity adding to this discussion, to be adding to history, not removing.

And I wish I had brought her quote because it was very strong.

And I just maybe throw that out there as a personal thought.

But as far as your question, I wish Jeanette were here and we could really bring.

But it sounded like VDOT would contemplate decoupling it.

Decoupling.

And that's important.

And it would require city funds and city action.

Thank you.

That is important.

VDOT is taking a look at possibly saying, if the city council looks at this,

and you want to make this statute decision that VDOT may say, and again we don't have complete confirmation, but they may say, okay, city, do it with your own dollars, your own process, but it will not be subject to the state process.

I was here 10 years ago and I just as I am now today in front of you I came before the City Council and I worked with Jennifer Hoyt Tidwell and

other community members and we lobbied the council and the Historic Resources Committee to, well first we wanted the removal of the statue but it was so far out of possibility it just seemed impossible at that point.

A discussion happened and then we reluctantly agreed to having a plaque.

So then I lobbied the Historic Resources Committee very hard to include the language that the family provided, including Miss Abramson and Rosina George.

And that was a battle.

And then also getting the city to fund the dedication ceremony.

That was another battle.

But we basically dragged the city along, kicking and screaming.

Not everyone wanted to do anything with the statue.

The community rose up and said, this is appropriate.

And the reason why eventually there was a consensus, I think people agreed, that something needed to be done to mitigate

the way the statue portrayed Sacagawea.

And so when Lebby Shoshone came, they said they were saddened by the image and the portrayal.

And that's why they dedicated the plaque.

There would be no other reason for them to have to do that if it weren't for the portrayal of Sacagawea.

However historically intended it was, as a forager or as a tracker,

It still is probably the worst statue of Sacagawea in the country.

If you do the research, you won't find another one as demeaning.

And that doesn't mean to say that foraging for food is a demeaning thing.

It doesn't mean that.

It just means that in that kind of portrayal, it's usually the people are portrayed

in a way that Lewis and Clark were portrayed, you know, standing, proud, you know, being aware and having some kind of, like her actual role was actually, she was a translator.

She had much more executive kind of role than just a food gatherer.

But I don't mean to knock the food gathering.

You know, I think what I'm,

saying in the work that I've been doing here, lobbying the city, is that the conversation needs to happen with the native people.

If we care about foraging for food, native food, then let's have a program that supports native plants and that knowledge, if that's the kind of thing we want in the city.

Let's work with indigenous knowledge and the people that have it, and let's build a program

And I think the, in my thinking, the statue, if it were moved to the Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center, which is closer to the birthplace of one of the, of Lewis or Clark, I think one of them, maybe it was.

There's a plaque over there on 20 which says that Lewis or Clark was born there.

It's very close to there.

So it might even be extremely close to the side of the Darden Tow Park.

There's the replica of the boat.

There's the facility there for teaching.

I think there's a lot of potential for educational programs and exchanges, and I think it's just a better site for actually doing something with that representation.

Now, I don't know if you have any other questions about what happened 10 years ago, but for it to be portrayed as something that, you know,

unified everyone.

Even in the news reports from the time and the presentations that were made, they acknowledged that the image was saddening to them.

And they did their best to kind of doctor the whole thing, to kind of heal what they could in the manner that they knew how.

And it was a good thing.

It was a good thing that brought us all together.

In hindsight, I think we can do a lot more.

And I think Ms. Abramson's point of view, I think your interpretation is accurate because

She doesn't understand the context here and the potential that we're being given.

If it's just going to take the statue away and there's nothing to replace it, then I think she would, of course, take that position.

But I understand that there are other people who have a different view in the tribe.

It's not monolithic.

There's other points of view.

I think life is much more complicated.

I think the city should work to invite the tribal members, their tribal leadership, historic preservation organizations like the one that I read a letter from earlier today.

and meet with them and develop a program and take steps that are substantive, that teach because the city has profited so much from the legacy of Lewis and Clark's journey and it's been a very one-sided portrayal of history and I think there's a point in time where we recognize let's have, you know, this is one kind, if it is unifying, then let's have a real dialogue

Thank you.

Mayor Walker, Ms. Grace Hayes, a Native American resident of Charlottesville is also here and she was asking if she could have a couple of minutes to say a few words.

She was supposed to speak earlier but was having car trouble during a public comment session and she was wondering if she could speak during this moment.

I'm a Chickasha woman.

I'm a citizen of Charlottesville, and I appreciate you hearing me today.

I emailed an image, if you can find it, of a statue that I saw in South Dakota just a few weeks ago.

And I was there with a young relative at the time, and it was, I have a picture of her.

I'd share it, but I can't share it through email.

It's not really right to do that, but I will let you look at her face when she sees this statue.

That's what the face of a Native American child looks like when they see a statue like that.

As a Native American mother, I raised three sons in this community and at the angle of the statue, when you're in a car seat, you can actually see her face quite well when you pass by.

So as my children got old enough to see her face, they would cry and ask me to pull over so that they could see her closer and I did that.

They wanted to know why she was scared and why she was sad and so I got Charles Eastman's book about her life, who's a Native American historian, and I also went to the library and I got the Lewis and Clark journals.

and in most cases photocopies of their own words.

And I read those and I shared those stories with my kids so that they could have a more full understanding of that story.

So I ask that you consider as citizens when I'm prepared to go to the museum, I'm ready for that.

You know, when I go to the Native American Museum in Washington, D.C. or I go to the Monticello Center, I'm prepared for what I'm about to see.

I prepare myself.

I pray as much.

But when I'm driving for the first time in the city of Charlottesville that I've just moved to, I was not prepared for that.

Definitely not prepared for the conquest statue or for explaining that to my children.

And when I pick up speakers from the airport to speak at the University of Virginia who are themselves Native Americans and we have to pass by both those two statues on the way to the university, they ask me if we're safe here.

So when you go to a museum, you're prepared to look at various stages of history.

But when you're in a city and you portray a statue that's larger than life, you're saying this is the city of Charlottesville and this is how we feel.

So raising children in this community with a lot of historical content is not as easy as you might think.

They asked me a lot of difficult questions and I'm still trying to answer those questions myself.

I don't know if you found that email to the city council.

But I would very much love to see some statues.

There have been Native American artists who've come to Charlottesville who said they would themselves donate their artwork, donate the labor of that.

My middle son, Holden,

who had a lot of questions about that statue, has looked at all of them and has at this point from the influences of growing up in a community with a lot of art, he has become a sculpture artist and a historian and a paleontologist and, you know, you name it.

He wants to understand the history and the truth and he would donate his hands to create a sculpture that would tell a healthier truth of reconciliation and where we are

as a people and how we want to represent ourselves as a people.

So we can talk about history, you know, but as a person walking through the city feeling that history, I would rather have time to be prepared than, you know, to have to walk past it and feel that because it doesn't feel the same to me.

I don't wonder whether she's tracking.

I remember how that started that story.

Sacajawea was not a woman who fell in love with an older man and got married.

She was trafficked.

She was a murdered and missing woman.

You know, we have tens of thousands of women, Native American women who are missing right now.

We don't know where they are.

Some of the bodies have been found, but we are not being paid attention to.

When I look at her face, and I know that that woman did not fall in love, but instead was kidnapped by a French trapper, and then did this work,

is not the same story.

And when I look at her face, I can't really forgive that story.

So I think that communicating with the family members and with Native American community is very important and moving forward as a community and as a nation.

So let me, just for clarification, council wants a meeting with Native Americans, is that?

Okay.

And I think we need to authorize, because if we're asking people to come here, we need to take care of them while they're here and help them get here.

So it shouldn't be $75,000, but... That should be less than that, if that is your name.

Do we have enough information to estimate?

I don't have an idea of how many people they would want to have coming here, how many people would already be local.

I would, could I suggest that the city, we haven't, a process did happen 10 years ago that they presumably they intended to do pretty, it may have had shortcomings but looking at what they did 10 years ago critically and then seeing whatever the shortcomings were and advising us on

ways forward from whatever happened then and allowing us to see that report, I think, or whatever came out of it.

If it was a city commission, they had to have done, they had to have taken minutes at the meetings.

It wasn't a commission, it was a, it was contact, Historic Resources Committee was contacted, as I understand.

There's actually a binder in my office, but I'm welcome to come and see.

But the Historic Resources Committee and some other individuals in town who were concerned about

And so they worked on reaching out to members of the tribe, bringing them in so that it was not the result of a commission.

And the staff memo does identify that outreach to stakeholders would include the Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center, the Virginia Indian Heritage Program, and the Lennie Shoshone Tribe.

I'm not sure if the

The Heritage Program would include the Monacan Indian Tribe as well, but I do think that there is at least a framework there that we can draw upon.

And the question is, you know, how many people that would make a good opportunity for a work session and that we would get

the perspectives that we're seeking.

But we can just agree that we are dedicating, we are asking staff to do this and that the funds that they deem necessary to return for this to set up

But I don't, Mayor Walker, I don't know what we're talking about.

I mean we're talking about having, like at Monticello when they did meetings of all the Hemings descendants, there were I think over a hundred folks, I mean if we're talking about

I was going to say you do have a $75,000 marker in here right now and to the mayor's point this may not even be $75,000 but the council could say that instead of the $75,000 resolving instead of the $75,000 to hire a consultant they could ask that the city manager along with the director of neighborhood development services and his staff

use that money to set up a work session using those funds for the council to hear from representatives that the city manager and the director of NDS probably talked to the Historic Resources Commission as well.

My issue with that would be is that the people who voices dominate the conversation here that we need to see and have people and know that they and show that they're truly valued.

You got earmarked, $75,000 for this.

What we'll do, we'll go back and do our due diligence in terms of looking at overall expenditures for trying to produce what the council is asking in terms of bringing people here or having those discussions with local folks.

Once we're done with that, we'll be able to provide you with a better accountant.

And if I may suggest, too, that in the resolution as written,

It does provide a kind of a framework of questioning that could guide the structure of the work session.

Such as, you know, what, because the topic is the disposition of the Lewis clock and Sacajawea statue, included but not limited to removing it, retaining it here and or elsewhere in the city, creating opportunities to more fully express the historical context

identifying additional opportunities for the city to more fully express the community's Native American history, which speaks directly to what Mr. Lopez was talking about in terms of creating the programming that we need to fully educate our community and future generations about this relationship with the Native American peoples here.

So I think what the staff has written actually has not been for nothing at all.

I mean, it really gives us a framework

of what we want to explore but this time instead of the 11 member committee doing work sessions we want to have that a group of representative people coming to speak with us to have and I would think that we have within staffs means the ability to facilitate that conversation so that we can devote this money to getting to getting our guests to come here

Do you have one second?

I'm typing up something now.

Do you mind if I read it?

Be it resolved by the Council of the City of Charlottesville that the City Manager and the Director of Neighborhood Development Services shall contact the appropriate representatives of Native American tribes to attend a City Council work session in the early fall of 2019 to discuss the Sacajawea Lewis and Clark Statute, the cost of

The work session and attendance shall not exceed $75,000.

Second.

Any further discussion?

Please vote.

That carries five to zero.

All right.

Thank you.

Next we have the revising the agency budget review team and setting funding priorities.

I am here before you.

with revised sort of what was described as the alternative scenario on May 20th when I was here before to talk about the agency budget review team process.

As you'll recall, we've had recommendations from a work group from last year.

We had those recommendations come before council in January.

which yielded a work session, which yielded a follow-up to come with specific recommendations to postpone the process for another year to make the more substantive changes.

Council requested an alternative scenario that did not postpone the process for one year and that was presented at the 11th hour at the last time we were here on May 20th and then was incorporated more formally into this council memo

for today to allow for additional comments.

both from city councilors but also from community members.

The resolution attached would form a benchmarks and metrics committee or benchmark and solutions group that would identify both the metrics by which the ABRT should be measured, either successful or not, but also and more specifically the solutions that

Community members would like to see provided by nonprofits in this community.

It also includes recommendations to adopt the priorities of the UVA working group, which were jobs and wages, affordable housing, public health care, education.

That also creates a modified process for a recommendation, I mean for proposals under $25,000, which would be permitted for any nonprofit that could demonstrate that they would meet a city council broad strategic goal.

There was some concern expressed by sort of what those breakdowns in terms of amounts have historically been and so better to better understand the impact on existing nonprofits.

for the vast majority of nonprofits receive less than 10% of their overall budget from the agency budget review team process with the notable exception of George's Healing House, Home Visiting Collaborative, On Our Own, FAR, and Cinbereras, each of which receives close to 20% of their overall budget.

Four out of five of these applications would easily fall

into one of the priority areas in terms of their requests, assuming that their proposals would be for similar programmatic requirements or proposals that they've had in the past.

Of the amounts, which is different from percentages, there are five community agencies that receive grants that are more than $25,000 historically that do not fall easily into one of the priority areas, and they include Foothills Child Advocacy Center, Shelter for Help and Emergency, both programs, both residential services,

and Community Outreach, Legal Aid Justice Center's Child Advocacy Program, Offender Aid and Restoration has three out of five of their programs that fall amounts of more than $25,000 that don't fall readily into one of the four priority areas.

and then the Pathways Program which is an emergency assistance fund.

Actually the city has requested that the Haven actually administer on behalf of the city and so that would be fairly easy for us to carve out since that didn't start as a competitive grant anyway.

But the other four agencies would have an impact in terms of reducing their amounts given if we adopted this as written.

So it's important for a council to know