City Council   4/16/2018

I'm

I'm

The End.

Call this meeting to order.

Okay.

Thank you, Mayor Walker.

is scheduled for next Tuesday, April 24th at 530 at the Jefferson School Auditorium.

We have 16 candidates who will be there at the forum to answer questions for council to consider their responses.

And then council will then provide, well then decide how they would like to move forward with that process and choosing the folks to place onto the Civilian Review Board.

This evening City Council appointed William Coles to the Personnel Appeal Board.

Nominated, excuse me.

All right, it carries, five to zero.

How are you doing?

How are you?

Thank you.

Good evening, my name is Joy Johnson, I reside at 802A Hardy Drive, and I'm here tonight to ask you to pull the land bank from your agenda tonight.

As the Vice Chair of the Legal Aid Justice Center Board of Directors, I took a special interest when I heard that the City Attorney's Office advised to hack against including some points in the ordinance.

One of our attorneys helped me out with some research and it raised questions that I hope you will answer before voting on this, especially if you are thinking about ignoring these points raised by members of the act.

That would be the Housing Advisory Council.

First, the HAC recommendation that the land bank should provide land for non-profits to develop.

From what I understand, the city attorney office recommended that we

proposed be left open but the legal aid attorney questioned that.

We would like to know where does the enabling legislation say anything that would require the city to leave the purpose open instead of making sure that the land bank has the best possible chance to help increase affordable housing by work.

by working with non-profits.

Second, the HAC recommendation, the Land Bank give the Housing Authority the right of first refusal.

Why did the staff and the City Attorney's Office recommend against that?

It seems to me that it would be smart to have that collaboration clearly written in the ordinance provided the city is not trying to undercut CRHA and the need of very low-income residents.

Again and again, city staff have ignored the proposal made by the Housing Advisory Committee.

Even after the HAC conducts a series of participatory public meetings to solicit input on the land bank, public concerns must be the foundation of this policy.

This proposal states that the city staff should have no limitation on the operation of the land bank entity.

The governing board should determine its role through its bylaws and policies and procedure.

The land bank must have a clear purpose to create more affordable housing for extremely low income people.

I know my time is also running out, so I will, if everybody in the audience who I support what I just read, please stand.

And then the last thing before that red light come on is here again we see the same thing that happened with the voucher program where the HAC make a recommendation and then the staff makes another recommendation that comes before council.

You cannot waste people's time that way.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Jeffrey Fogel.

I live at 215 Scrooge Street in Belmont neighborhood.

Good evening.

And a special good evening to Ms. Davies for being here tonight, for me.

First of all, I think you realize there's so much on the agenda tonight, it's impossible for any citizen to stand up here and give you an ample response to what's here.

I want to start with two suggestions.

Now, suggestion number one is that you don't have your staff prepare the annual report.

You have somebody on the outside of that organization prepare that report because what you're getting is pablum, as you got from the police department, or you're getting self-serving puffing by the heads of departments who want to prove how important they are.

I'm struck, for example, by something that is of great interest to me, which is the Human Rights Commission.

I read through the report.

It is amazing that that was all done and very few people know about it.

and part of the problem is it's being written by the people whose job it is to perform and who want to prove that they perform properly.

Secondly, another suggestion is that you do away the mockery of having the city manager respond to concerns of the body.

Mr. Jones has never responded to any concern I've ever raised here, especially when those questions are directed at him.

So it becomes a mockery to say that he's actually responding to the public.

He's responding to those who he wishes to respond to, who he feels confident he can respond to, and I don't know what other reasons he may have to justify his refusal to respond to other concerns.

I want to bring up something very briefly that I don't think you're going to be thinking about tonight.

You're probably going to want to just pass on, which is the $55,000 that's been asked of you for the so-called therapeutic court.

Now, first off, I think we have to recognize each time this comes up that the criminal justice system is not the place to deal with mental health.

It's not the place to deal with drug abuse and yet we persist in finding ourselves only using the criminal justice system for that purpose.

What's most disturbing to me about this process as well as the one of the drug court is that you must plead guilty in order to get help.

You can't come to the court and say, I've got serious problems, whether it's mental health or drug, and I need help.

And the court will say to you, sure, plead guilty, and we'll help you.

Well, but I'm not guilty of this, but I need help.

Well, too bad, my young boy or my young woman, this is the only way you can get it.

So if you screw up while you're on their program, you are immediately sentenced and go to jail, probably.

Why is that necessary?

Why do we need to force people into compliance?

Is there any evidence?

that forcing people to plead guilty serves the interest either of the society or the individual better than not making them plead guilty.

Unfortunately, those who have the power over these courts aren't asking those questions because they like these courts.

But you should ask those questions.

May I have the two minutes?

Mr. Fogel had a couple questions.

So just as we've been doing and following tradition for allowing time for council responses, thank you for your comments.

two questions that I have initially in regards to the staff preparing and creating the annual report.

Are you suggesting, I just want to make sure I heard you clearly, like an outside agency do the staff reports?

I want to ask both of them so I can give you enough time to respond.

That's the first one.

And then secondly, in regards to the therapeutic docket, it was my understanding that when individuals, after they go through the program and if they

I'll address the latter first.

The fact is that you have to plead guilty before you get into the program.

That's a condition of getting into the program is pleading guilty.

We don't need people who plead guilty in order to give them help.

Because the help that they get is help that we get as well.

And I just don't understand it.

To me it has to do with the punitive nature of our society and of our criminal justice system in thinking that way.

The other question that I frankly don't know the answer to.

I hesitate to suggest we hire somebody on the outside to do anything.

Maybe it's a question of having one high staff person reviewing another high staff person, but that has its own problems.

I just think it has to be discussed, because I don't think you're getting accurate, good, solid information here, and nobody is being self-critical, which is probably the most important thing that any administrator could do.

Did I hear someone else?

All right.

Good evening.

Good evening.

I'm Andrea Massey.

Good evening.

My name is Jillian Dinkle.

I'm a city resident at 708 Monticello Avenue in Belmont.

And tonight I'd like to take my time to, good evening, sorry.

I'd like to take my time to voice support for a clean land bank, one with community control and transparency.

There are a few

Big issues about the current land break proposal that I would like to highlight and urge that they be changed.

So one, the current proposal staffs the board of the land bank with finance and real estate professionals who are not representative of the Charlottesville community and would be an arm of the city government unaccountable to the community.

We need low wealth community members and affording housing advocates on the board of the land bank to ensure affordable housing and development needs of the community are being met.

The city staff have ignored proposals for the land bank made by the Housing Advisory Committee and even after HAC conducted a series of participatory public meetings, you must solicit community input and then actually listen to the community around this and all issues.

Their input must be the foundation of the policy.

The current land bank proposal makes it so that CRHA would have to compete with a land bank for resources.

A land bank is essential to creating and maintaining truly affordable housing in Charlottesville.

Instead of competition, we need a land bank that works with CRHA to continue to create and maintain affordable housing for extremely low income people.

The land bank proposal, as it states, says that there will be no limitations on the operations of the land bank entity

The governing board should determine its role through its bylaws and policies and procedures.

This is unacceptable.

The land bank's purpose should be to create more affordable housing for extremely low income people.

The land bank proposal, as it exists now, actively works to avoid transparency and accountability and does not protect affordable housing or low income communities.

I urge you to address these stated issues with the current proposal.

We need a van bank that exists to create truly affordable housing for extremely low income people.

And that does so by listening to community input and having affordable housing advocates and members of low income communities as board members.

Thank you.

I would just like to agree with everything that was said before and urge City Council to adopt the Housing Advisory Committee's recommendations for the land bank.

The Housing Advisory Committee spent a lot of time getting significant community input and I think they developed a really strong set of recommendations that ensured its only use could be affordable housing.

and that the board would comprise primarily of affordable housing advocates and low wealth community members.

And I think they also ensured that they had full community buy-in and support by guaranteeing that it would not compete with the housing authority or other affordable housing organizations.

And in particular, I would really urge city council to support HAC's recommendation to give the land bank right of first refusal for city land under consideration for being sold.

I think if that

is part of all of HAC's recommendations.

It could make the land bank one of the most powerful tools city council has ever created for affordable housing.

I think the land bank does not have to be in competition with a land trust.

I think they can reinforce and strengthen each other because one of the biggest issues land trusts face is difficulty acquiring land.

The land bank, if it follows HAC's recommendation, can start to pull more land off the market and put it in land trusts.

And I think we need to start confronting in some way

City staff, particularly staff and neighborhood development services competing with HAC.

This is now multiple times happened where city staff's recommendations have undermined HAC and resulted in worse policies that are less robust for confronting the affordable housing crisis.

I don't know what their motivations are, but we know that the end result is

Fewer people being able to afford to live in the city and it's happened before with housing vouchers.

It seems to be happening again with the land bank.

And if it's happening here, it's going to happen with the Civilian Police Review Board.

It's going to happen with the Human Rights Commission.

It's going to happen with the Affordable Housing Needs Assessment, the Affordable Housing Strategy.

So we need to figure out a way to start directly confronting where often times the majority of power is in the city, not city council but the city manager and city staff when it comes to development, neighborhood development services.

Because the status quo of Bi-Rite development is fundamentally broken, we see exactly where it's taking us, gentrification, and taking no action

is a continuation of the status quo, which means more gentrification.

So to not adopt HAC recommendation I think would be a big missed opportunity because every week we don't act, there's more lost opportunities where we're going to see more gentrification.

So again, I would urge you to adopt HAC recommendations.

I'm Leah Chaldaris.

I'm on Center Avenue.

I would like to bring attention to the large amount of trash littered across our community.

I'm a sixth grade science teacher in the area and I recently held a trash pickup day with my students.

Collectively, my students found 15 pounds of trash scattered around our campus in several plastic bags we could not fish out of trees.

Recently, the Daily Progress stated that in 2016, each person in our region generated almost 1,600 pounds of trash per year.

This comes to just over four pounds per person per day.

While not limited to, by far the largest contributor to the trash we found was single-use plastics.

These plastics break down into smaller and smaller pieces over time, but never go away.

They are polluting and destroying the beauty of our town and waters.

It isn't confined to just our town.

If you look for it, it stretches as a disturbing scenery all along our major roadways of 29, 250, and scenic viewpoints of our Blue Ridge Parkway.

and our Rivanna River.

They're all littered with styrofoam plastic bottles floating in waters and bags floating through space.

Even larger, an issue of the effects on humans and animals as we consume water and foods exposed to plastics and estrogenic compounds similar to BPA remain known to be harmful and research continues to come out with dire outlooks.

As a resident of this progressive city of Charlottesville, I would like to call our community and our town to consider joining the ranks of other progressive cities in creating public awareness initiatives about the responsibility we have and the waste we create.

rethinking and refusing these non-disposable disposables.

I hope you will support a resolution to reduce the trash in our city as well as support a citywide intervention through ordinance banning bags to further minimize the use of plastics and increase understanding of reusables and waste impacts.

Cities which have taken measures to ban plastics and even bans on polystyrene along with initiatives to teach the importance of sustainability found considerable reductions in the number of loose bags and litter.

A plastic bag tax levied in Ireland in 2002 reportedly led to a 95% reduction in plastic litter there.

In 2017, Post Plastic Fan California found the percentage of plastic bag trash collected from beaches dropped from 7.4% to 3.1%.

Thank you.

Good evening, folks.

I got an email from Ms. Hill.

I have been talking to her for a month, trying to get her to see what she can do about that obstruction at the end of First Street.

and Elliott Avenue.

I don't know if it's ICS's property or the city property, but I've been trying to get people to, especially city council members, for almost six years to do something with that site.

Just cut the bushes down so people can see what's coming down the street from Elliott Avenue going up to Cherry.

You can't see anything down there.

It's a blind spot.

bus drivers, school bus drivers.

I asked for a crosswalk, Ms. Galvin, in 2010.

What did y'all do?

You put it on the other side of the street.

I asked for it to go on the side where the housing is, where the kids have to catch the school bus.

You put it on the side going up Cher Avenue.

Common sense is lacking in this government.

but Ms. Hill sent me a whole bunch of junk.

She sent me stuff about the bus stops.

How many people get on the bus stops?

The CAT supervisor said take 25 to 30 people in order to put up a shelter.

If you got a bus stop and one person's at that bus stop, they should be covered when it's raining.

I don't care where it is.

They're up on Ridge and Cherry where y'all building that broken down hotel.

You got a bus stop up there too.

What you gonna do with that?

Ain't no shelter up there.

What you gonna do with it?

Like I told her, I drove down through that one day it was raining.

Lady standing out there with an umbrella waiting on the bus.

I don't care if it's 50 people waiting on that bus or one.

They should be covered.

The sign said bus stop.

You gotta wait.

But you go out here in these neighborhoods where they got a little money, you even got seats out there.

You don't have nothing in the black neighborhood, low-income neighborhood.

And what I'm trying to say is now, I'm talking safety here.

I'm talking safety.

When the school bus drivers come down the street, First Street, to go over to South First Street to pick up these kids, they look up to the left.

and they gotta get halfway out there in the street before they see anything coming.

I express that to you, Ms. Hill.

And what did you tell me?

You told me in the email.

That's coming.

We're going to talk about that later.

But that's what I asked you to go down there and talk about.

I didn't ask you to tell me how many people going to be that needed for a shelter.

Wait a minute.

To get on the bus.

I didn't ask you that.

I told you that we needed a shelter down there.

because there is a bus stop and we also needed that shrubbery cut down so that it was obstructing the deal.

But you come back and tell me 30 people have to be catching the bus before you can get a shelter.

I don't care.

You talk to Mr. Long about that.

He fighting them buses.

He fighting the bus stop and I'm behind it.

But that's all I ask you for and you didn't even give me my answer.

You got something to say?

Yes ma'am.

I'm talking about

I have a commitment from Neighborhood Development Services that there are several resources that are looking at it is owned by X property and so we have to work with the private owner and what I have gone down there three times myself at different times of day to understand what that obstruction is.

Now I've been coming in here for almost five years talking about that.

No, they have to enforce it with the property owner.

I don't think there's any disagreement about that it is obstruction.

There is an obstruction of a line of sight and I think it's probably less so right now than it will be in two weeks when

I said, so I gotta wait for another council to sit up in here and come back in here again, right?

Cause y'all don't listen to nobody.

When you come up in here and you say what you gotta say, y'all say, okay, we're going to look at it.

We're going to do this and do that.

And then y'all go and get wood at all that damn money.

But I won't hear it no more.

Good evening.

Good evening.

You know, as we continue to address the inequality associated with housing, let us not forget our community health issues and how these issues are related to housing.

An alarming health

issue that we hardly pay attention to is black mothers and their babies and their struggle to live.

Why are black mothers and babies of the United States dying at more than double the rate of white mothers and babies?

The answer has everything to do with the lived experience of being a black woman in America.

This is the title

of a Sunday, April 15 article in the New York Times.

Why do I bring this to your attention?

Just to remind you and the community that this is another problem of systemic and institutional racism that seems, seemingly, won't go away.

As some of you know, this is not a new issue.

We don't in the black community have many new issues.

The black-white divide in infant mortality has been a source of interest and debate for over a century.

In his book 1899, The Philadelphia Negro, W.E.B.

Du Bois pointed to the tragedy

of Black Infant Death and Persistent Racial Disparity.

We talk about the issue, but often we are powerless to do anything about this issue other than just talk.

After reading this disturbing article, I emailed Pamela Sutton Wallace, the Chief Executive Director for UVA Medical Center, and told her what I read.

that black infants in America are now more than twice as likely to die as white infants.

11.3 per 1,000 black babies compared to 4.9 per 1,000 white babies.

I asked if the UVA hospital keeps data regarding infant mortality by race and invited the medical center to share with the NAACP and the community.

A medical center colleague responded that most of the

Care alone can affect any effective partnership are much needed.

Meanwhile, it is encouraging to know that Rachel Sazalo, a midwife and doula based in Charlottesville, has formed a collective of 45 black and Latina doulas in Charlottesville called Sisters' Keeper.

Since 2015, Sisters' Keeper have attended about 300

Big birth with no material death and only one infant death among them.

Thank you by the time.

Good evening, I'm Brandon Collins.

I work for the Public Housing Association of Residents.

We're at 1000 Preston Avenue, Suite C. And I'm here to talk about the land bank and particularly ask you to take no action on the land bank this evening, except to maybe establish a better process for moving forward with the land bank.

Back in July, the council had requested information about forming a CDC so you could bypass the housing authority and create your own housing.

which in itself is problematic as we need to be giving these kinds of resources to our housing authority.

The issue came to you, Land Bank and FAR expressed its opposition to you then.

Part of that opposition was based on the idea that the city needs a comprehensive housing strategy and before you have that strategy you shouldn't be selecting tools to address that strategy and you have yet to establish that strategy and that's something that's taking a lot of time.

and yet here we are looking at a tool.

We also pointed out some of the major problems with the land bank as it was presented to you back in November, which is it could be an end run around the housing authority and that there are many things a land bank can do in this town that are different from a traditional land bank and therefore the destructive power of a land bank in the wrong hands is tangible.

Having said that, you guys sent that to the HAC, the Housing Advisory Committee, and I gotta say they dug in really hard and they had a really open and inclusive process that included community members and they took every single criticism we had of that original ordinance, went through it step by step, and they came up with a really great plan for how the land bank should be run.

Somewhere between then and now, that ordinance has changed dramatically.

and basically goes back to the bare bones format that you were presented with back in November.

And I think that's a shame.

I understand your arguments and I'm not sure I agree with them and we have an attorney that would like to question why we can't include the following things, which would be

when there is property retained that if there was going to be operated or managed that the Charlottesville CRHA would be managing and operating that property if it was not to be disposed of.

And that if the land bank was to dispose of the property that non-profits should get first crack at it.

and a couple of really other great things.

In fact, this calls for defining affordable housing policies, guiding how the land banks should be used.

And yet, the staff has come back and said, well, we don't think you should put any limitations on that.

Now, I understand what you want to do is establish a board that they would then put that in the bylaws.

And I think that's a flaw as well.

because what the staff has advised to you is to start with an initial board of four high level city people instead of an original board.

So we're gonna have to have this fight all over again in a much more closed process to discuss these options for something that could be good but as it stands has the real potential for damage to this community.

Mr. Collins, thank you for your comments.

A couple of questions in regards to some of the items that you raised.

Thank you for your email earlier also in regards to stating Farr's opposition as well as some other community members opposition to this.

You stated tonight, include the following, when property is retained, is your belief that the CRHA should manage the property?

Correct.

Absolutely.

So the way the ordinance is without any kind of protections then that means the city, and I know some of you guys are really into this idea that you could actually construct and manage and operate your own housing.

The problem with that is that what we've seen from the staff here

I think given the right tools and the proper resources from this council, yes they absolutely will and I think you'll see in the coming weeks you'll see a major push on redevelopment and a lot of movement forward.

If this was set up in a way to compete with the housing authorities, those resources are never going to that housing authority.

This housing authority is the arm to create this stuff for this city.

One more question.

I think other non-profits, right?

So say land bank gets a piece of property,

and they say we acquired this and now we're ready to get it out there to build affordable housing.

These non-profits like Housing Authority, other non-profits should have the first crack at that to make the most of that opportunity to put affordable housing in.

I think that should be codified in the ordinance.

I know there's some disagreement that it can't be in the ordinance.

Our lawyers say otherwise.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Kathleen Meyer and I live at 208 Douglas Avenue.

And tonight I'd like to address the proposal from Riverbend Development, Corin Capshaw's project that he's thinking of, or he's planning on putting in in Belmont.

And just to, I'm going to refer to a letter that I wrote to each of you inviting you all to come and walk the neighborhood so we could show you the backyards and where this really will have an impact.

but it's across the street from Maas and it's a five acre parcel and there's a land swap that I want to address as well but one of the things obviously he's looking at a buy right and I think this is the huge challenge that we're hearing tonight and that you all have you know what do we do when buy right is wrong

just because of the changing nature of our town and the different zoning and I think there has been an effectiveness of zoning because I think Mr. Capshaw put his plan in very quickly knowing that you all might be looking at rezoning Belmont, rezoning

our city for better housing, less traffic.

How are we going to do this in a more visionary way?

And I think what he's doing is this proposal that he put forth is

sort of a placeholder.

So we might address some of the notions that came up, but you all responded and took a tremendous amount of resources to respond to this proposal that the River Bend really doesn't want to go forward with because they are looking for a special use permit.

So by right, what he's looking at across from Moss, five acres, even on his plan, he said there's going to be 918 cars, 400 and some cars heading out in the morning, 400 and some cars heading back across from Moss.

I live on Douglas.

If you've ever gone to the local and you're trying to get out of the Douglas Avenue, turning right or left is already pretty much of a nightmare.

I'm a porter property so the Belmont Lofts hired me as a consultant to work on their land and look at the quality for the gardens there.

While it was a railroad river frontage and there's arsenic and they couldn't even put gardens in, we had to build them.

The land swap that Mr. Capshaw is looking at

is an acre, something like an acre next to the lofts and apparently with the city he's talking about swapping a parcel by another project you have, I think it's down on, well anyway, so swapping his land by the Belmont Lofts with this other parcel

that land increase would enable him to have an SUP where he would double the occupancy.

We don't know who's going to be paying for the increased septic.

The infrastructure of Belmont really just can't support this.

So we really appreciate your looking very closely at this.

Thank you.

Mayor Walker, may I make a comment?

And thank you, Miss Meyer, for your I don't think I have questions, but I just want to acknowledge what you just presented.

And I, I do want

to share with my colleagues.

And then, Mr. Jones, I would like a follow-up because last summer I was asked by members of the Belmont Lofts to talk about this issue, about the land swap.

And I actually

had tried to schedule a site visit with some of the residents in Belmont to walk the site, but we couldn't make it work.

It's still going to happen.

But I bring this up because the city is involved with the land swap and actually does have some leverage.

And at a meeting that I had subsequent to my meeting last summer with the residents, it was my understanding that we were going to be insisting on some sort of a community workshop charrette where the community could be involved with the design process.

Mayor Walker and members of the City Council.

My name is Paul Long.

I live at 100 Ridge Street here in the city.

And I'm coming here tonight to address the last City Council meeting that was held in April the 2nd.

and Jason Kessler and his entourage were sitting right over there and Mr. Holder is sitting at now.

And one member of his entourage had a gun on his left, you know, and a holder.

And as a person who grew up during the 60s, I'm well aware of the vast number of political assassinations that happened during the 60s.

There was a congresswoman who I think three or four years ago was in a town hall.

and she was shot.

There was a Republican Congressman within the last year.

There was a base, bipartisan baseball game.

He was shot.

And I believe that the gentleman that had the gun probably had every legal right to do it.

But I think it's intimidating that a person carries a gun into a city council meeting because I believe it was done to intimidate people attending the city council meeting.

and I was living in San Francisco when Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Melk were shot dead in San Francisco City Hall.

If any of us go to this Capitol building to attend a meeting of the House of Representatives or the Senate, we're not allowed to carry guns in there, in Philadelphia City Hall and City

San Francisco City Hall, people are not allowed to bring in guns.

I believe that there should be a policy that the people who are coming to the city council members meetings not be allowed to carry guns within the city council.

I hope that I'm dead wrong, that there's the making of a tragedy.

And Sinclair Lewis wrote his novel in the 1920s.

It can happen here.

But particularly what's happened in the last year, the tragedy could very well happen at city council.

And I think we need to prevent it.

Thank you.

You're welcome, man.

Mr. Long, thanks for making that comment.

I just, if the city manager wouldn't mind making a response, you can.

I've talked to him about this and you're absolutely right.

You can, in courts, you're not allowed to carry firearms.

But as I understand it, one of the limitations that we have in Virginia is there is this law on the books that prohibits counties and cities as opposed to the court system

which is an instrument of the state government and there is a law that the General Assembly has passed which prohibits cities and counties from regulating firearms.

If there's anything we can do about that, we should because we should stop firearms from being allowed in this chamber.

It's absolutely, I agree I had the same concern for all of us that last meeting and that was a very volatile and upsetting situation and

for all those reasons.

That's why you don't allow guns in courtrooms in Virginia.

Counselor, I think we all agree on that and city council agrees on that has on numerous occasions attempted to get authority to limit where guns can be carried in the city and under certain circumstances.

This past General Assembly we attempted to get added to a list of municipalities in the state who have that authority and we were denied that by the by the General Assembly didn't even make it out of committee.

We had tried to get added to that list in the past and similar fate every time we've gone to the GA to try to get some authority to provide some limits on where guns can be carried in our community and under what circumstances they can be carried in our community and

I think it's important also to note Ms. Galvin and I were there testifying and it was strictly a party vote.

Before we could, I mean basically our testimony meant nothing and they shot it straight down.

In addition to that, they wouldn't even hear arguments or bills about just us having the ability to say, well, maybe in certain permitted areas or in certain places, guns don't need to be in this kind of area.

They just completely told us no.

And because we're a dealing rule state, that's essentially it.

If I may, Mayor Walker, just follow up.

It is going to be a matter of actually presenting your case to the General Assembly over and over and over again.

Because there was an additional bill by Cree Deeds, Senator Deeds, where it was specifically prohibiting guns in public places like council chambers.

It wasn't only adding to a list of existing communities that don't allow semi-automatic weapons in public spaces.

We saw that shot down also again in committee.

Couldn't even get out to the House floor for debate.

So this is something that really needs to be dealt with directly with the House of Delegates and the State Senate.

No, don't do that.

Don't do that.

Good afternoon.

I have numerous issues right now that I have with the city council.

And as a citizen, I really don't even have no respect for any of you.

And the reason I have no respect for you

is because of what y'all allowed to take place last, the last city council meeting.

For me to have to go inside of myself to react in a manner of being threatened inside of a city council where we're supposed to come to speak about what's going on in our community and we cannot do that without feeling threatened and being told certain things, that set me off.

mentally, I am still not back yet from that.

Not only from that, but my mother had just passed.

And I'm in a city council meeting trying to listen to what's going on in my community to be threatened and for y'all to continue to allow him to speak.

Not only did he not speak to y'all, but for him to turn around and look directly at the community.

Y'all should be ashamed of y'allself for that.

Two, I'm still not feeling safe if I can't even walk around here in the community wondering am I going to be shot or anything else.

But I'm going to go to the policing issue.

I'm tired of being policed, Maurice.

You and Mike Murphy are in charge of the police.

We're tired of being in a penitentiary, being secured by a police officer.

Black people cannot walk in our own neighborhood without being stopped by the police.

But we can have white people that have money that has moved in our neighborhood that can walk through with poodles

and all different types of animals and not being stopped.

I'm tired of the police officers coming to the black neighborhoods when it's a beautiful day.

Our children or ourself cannot come out and be in our neighborhood amongst each other to become a community without being police, four police riding on bikes.

Five minutes later, they're coming back in a car.

Then they're coming back walking.

How much enough is enough?

And you're wondering why the hell it still stops so much stop and frisk?

It's because y'all racism in the police department.

When are you as the city manager gonna take essence and do your job?

I mean, my God, I've been going like this with you since you've been sitting here eight years.

Your time should be up and I pray to God when somebody take your place he knows what he's doing and I pray to God it's not Mike Murphy because he's no better than you.

I'm tired of our children have to wonder when are they going to go out and play and what's going to happen.

Two, I'm worried about our safety, Mr. Bellamy, up there and Mr. Jones, about West Main Street, where the project is being built to standards.

I'm tired of going across the street, have to dodge cars, trying to get to the bus stop, or trying to even get to the store.

I mean, my God, just because it's a black neighborhood, I mean, how many people got to be killed?

We have no lighting at the bottom of the hill.

UVA, the new standards, oh my God, it has the same color as West Haven.

How much more do we have to be hidden down at the bottom of that hill that we're not in existence?

How much more do we have to endure?

So I'll address again briefly the comments from last week and accept full responsibility for the fact that he wasn't the first person to turn around and address the crowd since I've been up here and I had not been enforcing that rule to only address us.

So again,

making that the first time to address it was problematic.

And so it calls for me to enforce it across the board when everybody's up up in front of us and may have made the commitment to do that.

So that is consistent.

So I discussed that at the end of the last the last council meeting.

So, again, he wasn't the first person to do it.

And that was on me for allowing people to come.

So, and I addressed that at the end.

We could not hear, because of the noise, what he was saying.

Ms. Walker, thank you for your comments.

Ms. Parker, you and I have spoken specifically about there's a light that you are looking for in West Haven.

Excuse me, on West Main Street.

Well, could you keep going to the wrong area?

The area that you keep talking about with maintenance, it don't have anything to do with CRHA.

It's on the top of the hill.

It starts from the bottom of the hill.

It starts right there at 8th and Main.

There's a crosswalk right there at 8th and Main, right beside Mails.

There's no lighting there.

People do not stop for that crosswalk.

It's a crosswalk.

It's a white, a pedestrian walkway.

There's no light by the pawn shop, exactly.

No one ever stops there.

You have to basically dodge traffic to get out across that street.

go up the hill, right there, you're not even going a quarter, up the hill on the, what's that bridge called?

The jury bridge?

The jury brown bridge.

In the middle, right there, where you have the World of Beer.

Gotcha.

World of Beer, two bus stops, directly in front of World of Beer.

You cannot get across those streets.

There's no crossway.

The crossway is wiped out because there's no sidewalk, because that's where the standards is being filled.

So as you walk, as you're going down that street, down the sidewalk, the crosswalk, the crossing thing is way over in the parking lot.

And it says cross the street here.

What are you crossing into the middle of traffic?

There's no caution.

There's nothing that sits there that says caution.

Work is being handled here.

You don't see anything until you get to the, I mean, some says work at the bottom, but it don't say anything about a crossing here or anything.

You have to dodge the traffic to get to the bus stops.

There's no bus stop, I mean, no shelters there.

There's just two bus stops.

Are you talking about the bus stop in front of the, in front of World of Beer?

Stay, okay.

Coming down Main Street.

You got mail right here.

I mean, God, leave, Bellamy, you're right there at the church.

You go to First Baptist, mail right there.

You get there.

That's why I'm confused.

The corner.

The corner.

Okay.

The corner.

Go up the street.

Right next door to the bottom of the street.

We're going up the hill.

I got you Ms. Parker.

near Walker, if I may share some information.

And then again, it will follow on Mr. Jones to get a follow up.

And Miss Parker's right.

This is a very dangerous, dangerous situation.

It's been made especially bad because of all the construction along West Main Street.

And I pulled together several people from NDS Public Works Fire Department.

Mr. Murphy.

This was in May.

We need to figure out what to do to manage the construction sites and to make sure there are clear, temporary, safe crosswalks and bus stops.

There was some follow-up.

It wasn't being fully executed.

I pulled again later in the summer.

And at that point, it was decided that there was going to be a concerted effort to come up with a plan

to demonstrate how we're going to have both temporary and long term solutions.

So I think, Mr. Jones, if we could have a follow up, I can I can send you the emails that I used to organize these meetings.

I really thought things were going to start being solved, but they haven't been because now there's a whole new wave of people complaining about West Main Street, but also the construction on on the ramp exiting to 50 similar problems with construction blocking sidewalks.

and we have ongoing problems with construction blocking Second Street downtown.

It's an ongoing systemic problem of not being ahead of these issues

Yeah, we can certainly provide an update to Council on that.

You know, it doesn't necessarily mean that there are going to be lights that will be erected on West Main Street to address those issues, but there certainly will be

And as an example that there was also serious issues with people that had vision impairments.

Okay, all right.

So that is still an issue.

All right, thank you.

Good evening.

I'm coming to ask about what's being done about my son's case.

A few months ago y'all agreed to open the case back up and I haven't heard anything from y'all so

I just want to know what's going on with you all reopening this case back up.

And if we're waiting on getting a new chief of police, when is that going to be?

I mean, what's going on?

You all might have forgotten what happened to my son, but I haven't because I can still right now tell you

right now like it happened that day, what went on.

But the more and more this goes on, your police, just like the one who testified against my son, is gonna use, I do not recall.

So how much longer is this gonna go on?

How much longer?

Because anytime somebody comes and says,

that the police office has changed records and I can prove that but nobody still has came at me.

Why?

Why hasn't anybody come to me and asked me these questions?

How did they change these records?

What happened?

Why?

Everything that's going on with the police in Charlottesville, you all should want

This case opened.

To want to know everything that happened in this one case, it will blow a whole lot.

Like Maurice, you know, if a woman came to you the way me and my son did, would you have asked that woman how come she didn't have more marks on her face than what she did?

Would you have asked a woman that, but just because it was a man?

You think that men don't get abused?

This is the problem.

Nobody believes them.

But I'm telling you now, no, I wasn't there when it happened.

But when the police did what they did to my son, I seen every last bit of it.

And like I said, I can pinpoint everything.

And it's not just about my son, it's about me because they called me a liar, not just my son.

So this does not just include my son, it's me.

I want to know if they can tell me I'm a liar.

Give me proof.

I want the proof in this decision.

Why won't anybody tell me?

That's what I want to know.

Thank you.

Could we get a response?

I think it is appropriate for the next police chief to take a look at this case.

Because the same folks who are in position now were in position before and they didn't change their ruling on this.

Did you have another?

I can tell you right now, you know they called me a liar, but I can tell you right now

but I bet you your police officers can't stand next to me and tell me what happened that night but I can tell you everything even when both of the officers came to the door because I was on the phone when it happened.

That's how I can pinpoint everything.

They said that I wasn't on the phone and I knew nothing.

Maurice, you looked at everything.

Have you even talked to the council?

Has anybody even talked to, have y'all talked about this?

You all really think this is nothing.

My son's life has been ruined over this.

It's ruined because he called for help that night.

He called for help.

He's bleeding, scratched up and everything but the police.

were the judge and the jury that night.

Why was he arrested?

All's I keep getting is probable calls.

What probable calls did they have when my son is sitting on the phone with me talking to me when the officers came back there in the room?

I'm listening to everything.

Everything on that police report is a lie.

and I'm telling you that now.

How much longer do I have to wait to even see that, to even put my hand on this police report?

My son has no information still.

How can he be accused and everything but not see nothing that was against him?

He wasn't even allowed to put, to hold the police report in his hand.

He's accused of all this, but you can't even hold a police report in your hand and see what you're accused of.

So the police chief, you are saying that the next police chief is who you want to revisit?

Yes.

So I think what he's saying is the next police chief.

Good afternoon.

Good evening, or good afternoon.

One of them things.

Hey, I'm here to talk about the Civilian Review Board.

Next week, next Tuesday, they're doing the candidate form.

That way, you can see who the candidates are.

And if you don't know what the CRB is, the CRB is here to make sure to oversee what the police is doing.

So we really need this to happen.

But with that said, oh, one more thing.

We should put a bus stop back on Page Street.

My name is Aaron Winston.

I am a Charlottesville resident.

I'm a member of Showing Up for Racial Justice and a member of the Charlottesville Low Income Housing Coalition.

Regarding the land bank ordinance that's up for discussion tonight, I'd just like to reiterate

the statements that my compatriots have already made, particularly regarding the Land Banks board composition.

By stacking the Land Banks original board with members of city staff, we're just going to continue this disturbing trend of city staff, particularly neighborhood development services staff, ignoring

side lining, choosing to not address the concerns of the public.

Particularly in regards to the recommendations made by the Housing Advisory Committee.

At this point it seems like the Housing Advisory Committee's role in this process has entirely been window dressing.

Even after the hack has really dug in and done an excellent job of community engagement, it seems like city staff has had the mentality that this is just simply a formality that they need to get through in order to then enact what they feel is best.

I mean this is a very arrogant position that they've taken that by

soliciting this input and then subsequently ignoring those suggestions.

What are we to make of that?

And then to suggest that then these same people should be the ones that are responsible for writing the bylaws of this land bank.

That's extremely problematic.

And especially because that once that council is in, that board is empaneled, there will be no accountability mechanism by which to

change how those bylaws are enacted.

So I would really urge you to follow the Housing Advisory Committee's original suggestion of how that board is to be compromised, especially regarding members of the low wealth community and members of the housing advocacy groups here in town.

So Ms. Rice, do we just go to the waiting list?

So Chelsea is stable.

Yeah, no, we can't.

She's not here to give it.

OK.

So here's my issue.

My issue is actually with you, Mr. Jones.

I emailed you on January 26th requesting pictures of Washington Park.

This was via a FOIA request.

I never got my pictures of Washington Park.

What I did get was an outline of how much money was actually spent on redeveloping the park.

which actually to me is like a foundation of you guys putting out there that you were going to gentrify really well.

You spent a total of $416,000 I believe on the park.

I can't even get a picture of what the park looked like in the 90s.

I can't get a picture of the rules of the park.

I can't get a blueprint of the summer camp that was going on.

Mind you,

90% of the black kids went to a summer camp at Charlottesville City Parks.

I can't even get this information.

Let me give you a little bit more because I called your office today to tell them to make sure you got the message before tonight.

It was a murder investigation at Washington Park, so I know

Very damn well that there's a picture of this park somewhere of the little castles that we used to play on, all the slides and everything for the kids.

I can't even get a picture at all.

This was January 26th.

We in April.

We almost in May.

We about to leave for Africa.

I still can't even get a picture.

I don't know what I gotta do to get a picture of this park.

So you have a whole neighborhood development department and nobody has a picture of Washington Park.

I find that just disturbing and very ironic that of all parks, the blackest park in this city, nobody has a picture of the park.

Nobody.

I mean, and nobody has answers for me.

So once again, I'm coming back to you because my original request went to you.

Four year request went to Neighborhood Development Service.

Four year request went to Charlottesville Parks and Rec.

I mean, look at what they gave me.

The pool.

I could have went to Mr. Bines for this.

Mr. Bines got this.

He taught me how to swim at that very park.

before it was this park.

When it had the high dive and the low dive, you probably don't remember that.

But anyway, I can't get a picture of the park.

I mean, where do I gotta go?

I call the Commonwealth's Attorney's Office.

I said, do you have the case file from the murder in 1994?

I mean, I had to go to your Commonwealth's Attorney's Office to ask for a picture of the park, because I know the investigations team got it there.

They locked two black men up for 30 years.

I can't get a picture of the park.

You gotta have an answer for me.

This is January 26th.

It's April 16th.

Happy Birthday.

I can't get a picture of this park.

Do I gotta sue y'all for a picture?

I mean, talk to me and tell me what I need to do to get a picture of this, because somebody has the park before redevelopment.

So I'll wait.

He responded to everybody else.

Ms. Hudson, when you asked me to follow up on that, I did.

Well, I'm just saying that they responded back to you.

I know but the first I heard about this that you were dissatisfied with the response was today and if you had responded to me I would have followed up before then if you had said that you were dissatisfied then I would have responded.

I will do what I can to see what we have.

I don't personally have a picture of the park before.

Don't have it.

Been everywhere.

This is a year-end research.

My son's family donated that park for black people.

Miss Carrick says her.

So Aaron Winston.

Good evening.

My name is Emily Dreyfus.

I'm with the Legal Aid Justice Center.

And I think most of the land bank comments have been heard already.

But I did just want to echo the concern about the board, because a board that's appointed by council that would only include, I believe, four people, all of them associated with city governance and no community membership is really outlandish.

That would be the initial board that would then

from the organization.

And I also just want to remind you about the displacement data that we were told several years ago about the strategic investment area.

The Neighborhood Development Services staff said that there was an 18 percent decrease in black families living in the SIA between 2005 and 2012.

That information has not been updated, but we all know over the last six years

Displacement has been spreading like wildfire.

So you all need to take the HAC recommendations to heart and do what they suggest because they're putting the community's needs as the number one priority.

Ms. Dreyfus?

The displacement data that came from neighborhood development services.

Yeah, could you send that?

Sure.

Thanks.

Okay, is there anyone?

We have one more spot.

Is there anyone else that would like to speak?

All right, so we're going to close public comment.

and Michael

I'm

I don't know what to say.

Music Playing

I don't know.

D.C.

and Michael Kochis

and Michael Kochis

you you

The End

and Michael Kochis

Alright.

So we're back in session.

Item A, minutes for April 2, 2018.

Item B, an appropriation, reimburse funds to the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau, $35,000.

$517, second of two readings.

Item C in appropriation, Domestic Violence Services Coordinator Grant, $49,336, first of two readings.

Item D, a resolution zoning map amendment initiation, restaurants, drive-through windows, and highway corridor, first of one reading.

Item E, a resolution, extended zoning text amendment deadline for city council initiation of a zoning map amendment, first to one reading.

Item F, a resolution, donation of surplus city police bicycles and found property bicycles to the Charlottesville Police Foundation for pedal power, first to one reading.

Item G, an ordinance, storm drain easement at 1170 Emmett Street, second of two readings.

I believe that can either go to the end of the meeting tonight.

Any other comments or discussion?

All right, now we'll have our first public hearing.

It's on the downtown parks renaming.

Thank you, Mayor Walker.

So back in June of 2017, City Council voted to rename Lee Park to Emancipation Park and Jackson Park to Justice Park.

In December of last year, Ms. Carey brought a petition to the City Council requesting

the city reconsider its decision to change the name of Lee Park to Emancipation Park and she also had a petition encouraging council to do that immediately.

On February 20th City Council held a public hearing and after discussion and hearing from the public directed staff to conduct a new round of community engagement to collect feedback on the names for both parks.

Council specify that the names Lee Park, Jackson Park and Emancipation Park were not to be considered.

And the council also directed staff to collect public input on all previously considered name suggestions.

During the period from March 6 to March 28 of this year, staff collected input through a parks renaming survey that was available online on paper ballots in the city manager's office.

We also received suggestions or votes via email and in letters and through our voicemail line.

The survey included 17 name suggestions for Emancipation Park and 23 name suggestions for Justice Park.

Once all the responses were in, we had a total of 7,535 responses.

7,470 of those came in through the online survey, 36 through voicemail messages, and 29 through ballots and letters, or via email and letters.

for each park, and it included one write-in option for each park.

appropriate park names since up to three choices were accepted for each park.

The survey write-in votes included Emancipation, included Lee for Emancipation Park.

There were 1,825 of those and Justice Park's write-ins referencing Jackson were 1,607.

The overall unweighted voting summary for the two parks came down to, for Emancipation Park, Market Street Park, which received 1647 votes.

Vinegar Hall Park, which received 1266 votes, Central Park, which received 867 votes, Library Park, received 739 votes, and Community Park, 652 votes.

Those were all for Emancipation Park.

For Justice Park, Court Square Park, received 2252 votes, Courthouse Park, 1370 votes, Justice Park, 956 votes, Memorial Park, 629 votes, and the Commons, 538 votes.

The City Council, just so you know, the City Council had previously designated the western end of Charlottesville's of our downtown mall as Vinegar Hill Park.

And it's given money to help design a new park on that end between the Omni and the new development there, what is currently the arena.

and that process is currently underway to move towards doing that.

So we already have, in essence, a park named Vinegar Hill Park that was actually part of Vinegar Hill at one point in our history.

We also received write-in votes, as I mentioned before, for Emancipation Park.

Swanson Legacy Park, or something similar to that, received 146 votes.

Donald Trump Park received 140 votes, Heather Heyer Park received 82 votes.

That was for Emancipation Park.

For Justice Park, Donald Trump Park received 86 votes, Swanson Legacy Park, 24 votes, and Heather Heyer Park, 23 votes.

We also asked participants in their survey whether they would like to have the opportunity to vote again once those naming choices were narrowed down.

And almost 53% of the folks who answered that question voted yes, they'd like to vote again, and 47% voted no.

So tonight what we're asking city council to do is to give us some direction on how you'd like to move forward.

Council could consider renaming the parks after an additional public hearing that we're having this evening.

Council could consider a new survey and community engagement effort to collect public preferences on the smaller set of choices that we have identified.

And Council could consider other names that are not addressed in this survey.

Okay.

You know, Walker, I guess I do have one.

Since the public had said that they would, by a slight margin, had said that they wanted to have a survey again of the finalist name, so to speak, I do want to get some sense.

How much staff time is involved with these surveys?

How time consuming is it for, and I suspect it's mainly the communications director.

Brian Willer ran that for us during this last voting period.

And he could speak to how much time it takes.

It does take some time to put up the survey.

This I would imagine would be less complicated because if council decides to go with the names that have already been voted upon during the first go around.

All told it probably took a day of my time.

You counted up all the hours spent on the surveys.

having this many options and the number of write-in votes that we had.

And because we were accepting write-ins and so many of them were for Lee and Jackson, a lot of the voicemails and other correspondents fit that pattern as well.

Okay, so I'll open the public hearing.

Good evening.

I'm Jim Hingely.

I'm the city resident.

I'm here to express support for Swanson Legacy Park, which was, as City Manager Jones indicated, the top vote-getter, top eligible vote-getter among the write-in votes.

Two suggestions as you move forward if you decide to do another survey.

which is one of the options you're considering tonight, a narrower survey.

I would ask that you consider in the survey putting a sentence or two about each of the park names so that people voting can have a better appreciation of what the park names mean.

Secondly, I would

I would wonder, and I think this may be a subject of discussion among council tonight, if council is considering some way of limiting the people who vote.

I know how it worked the last time, it was limited by computer devices, but we have no way of knowing where people were from who were participating in the survey, and I think it's a good idea to consider circumscribing the number of people who would participate in this

further survey of public opinion if you decide to go that way.

And I would hope that if you consider limiting the people who participate in this that you would expand it beyond just city residents.

These are very important public spaces in our region and to limit it to just city residents excludes a lot of people who

ought to be able to express

The city is very much interested in keeping downtown and entering into cooperative arrangements with the county.

So people who work in the county courts complex are definitely affected by the naming of Justice Park, or if it is to be renamed.

That's one of the possibilities that you're considering.

Similarly, I would say with respect to Emancipation Park, Emancipation Park is located next to

and the Jefferson Madison Regional Library.

There are lots of people who work there who are affected by that name.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Tanisha Hudson.

Is there anyone else that would like to speak?

All right.

So one of the things that we've heard a great deal

about names such as specifically Mr. Swanson and looking at the name of Swanson Legacy Park or Swanson Park.

One of the reasons why that name is somewhat troubling just for me personally is that while I have a great deal of appreciation and admiration for what Mr. Swanson did in regards to his plight of integrating UVA's law school,

If we were to name a whole park after him, does that essentially overstep or place him above many of the individuals who had a direct local impact on our community?

So, like, for example, for me, it's rather hard pressed for me to say that we should name an entire park after Mr. Swanson.

when you've had individuals like, and although she has a school named after her, Miss Alicia Lugo, or the individuals like in the Charlottesville 12 and Alexander and people like that, or I mean people who are currently alive.

You look at people like Eddie Harris or so on and so forth who are here making an impact in our actual communities day by day and not just at the university.

And if we want to try and show there's a true collaboration between

City and University, or that just the city of Charlottesville isn't in the university's shadow, why would we name our park after an individual who, again, did a great deal of work at the university, but I wonder how much time he spent on First Street or in West Haven or in our communities tutoring kids or doing things to uplift and, you know, empower the local African American community?

So that's just my perspective.

And so, and I agree, I agree with that.

I think, you know, we're, we get back to like, you know, elitism and that's a, that's an issue.

And so we have to ask ourselves why we're changing the park.

I wanted to see more,

You know, feedback from the community.

I spoke with Ms. Teresa Price earlier, well, the end of last week.

Who the park could be named after, for sure.

And she actually wanted, she wasn't for Swanson, and she wanted me to say this publicly, but she

wanted a more generic name and then people who called for naming after members of the community.

I know during last year I talked to the Edwards family about whether they were interested and they didn't want

Polly Edwards' name attached to the negativity of the park, so that was a conversation that I did have with them and they didn't want it.

And so, outside of those two individuals, we received an email about Grace Tinsley, local, but we haven't gotten much traction with.

So again, we're back to the community, making sure that we put forth people

It's just like a juxtapose in terms of us like when we think of some of the generic names, again this is just one individual's perspective, but when we think of Market Street Park, which I've heard a lot of people say and things of that nature,

How does that cause us to think about what's actually going on and what's transpiring and has transpired in that part?

and I feel like sometimes we want things to be just easy.

I don't want to have to deal with the difficult part.

I don't want to have to force myself to think critically.

I don't want to have to remember what's transpired before.

Let's just do something easy.

Mayor Walker, may I add something?

Sure.

However, I can't ignore the numbers.

and we kind of have walked this walk before where we had received kind of allowed numbers of people wanting a certain name of the park and this council overrode it for the sake of an abstract ideal and I personally do not believe that we went through all this again just to once more undermine

what we've seen demonstrated as the will of our community, which I see overwhelmingly this community wants place names.

One other thing I think to read from these results and also what we heard last year is that there

There's some wisdom probably happening in this idea from the community.

It's not that they want something vague or not powerful.

It's that they may be seeing how hard it's going to be for us to come at naming a park after one person, given even this back and forth.

We don't need to come to an argument for Mr. Swanson by saying anything

critical about anything that he didn't do.

It's just going to be really hard, given the richness of Charlottesville and given everything we've been through.

I mean, you see it even right here, to come to one person who we should give a park to.

I told Mr. Hingely this.

If there were unanimity, I could see a great argument from Mr. Swanson, especially on the dais here.

I mean I think at this point our choices are pretty limited.

I am certainly not going to get on board pulling anything kind of out of the sky on this given what I saw in those seats last year and kind of where we are and I think we've certainly given the community an opportunity.

I mean unless Brian or Maurice can say that there were other names that just were bubbling the art on these top few that were written in that we should also consider.

I just think it's a matter of us

Naring it down to like a few for each.

And I do think we owe it to the public kind of one more round.

I think how we do that is going to be important and where those are being sourced from.

But I think that's kind of what we've committed to the public.

When we first started, it would be a two-step process.

I know that I asked Mr. Jones about, we talked about the utility bills.

Is that an option to really target it towards a lot of our residents?

That can't be the only way that we go, because obviously there's a lot of renters in our community.

And I understand the perspective that we want to go beyond

just being so strict to our borders, not that we can really have that much control.

Well, do you mind if I just, one idea on Ms.

Hull is that I really strongly believe that we should limit this to residents of Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

It makes a lot of sense given Charlottesville Albemarle Historical Society is right there, the courts, it's the history of the communities.

And even if there's a chance that somebody would lie on an online survey, it's a hurdle to do that.

And if you ask them to put their street address and are you a resident of Charlottesville, Albemarle County, it's just kind of like a,

And I understand that the county is our neighbors but I think the population of the county it still pushes us further from possibly

We have a lot of people voices in the community that we didn't hear.

from any way and open it up to the county population and the racial makeup of it.

I just think that we're, you know, in terms of the black community is going to be outnumbered.

Maybe we could have a vote or a sense, a poll of where people fall in the city versus city and county possibility.

I would be for city residents.

If that's the suggestion, that's all right.

Councilor Signer, I would be for city residents if we were just going down.

I don't know.

I can see arguments.

I'm both ways of that.

I really like to think of us more as one community, but I also think it's a slippery slope once you go beyond the city limits, and this is a city park.

I came into it thinking city only until I heard some of the other folks bring it up.

If I may, Mayor Walker.

Yeah, I know there we we always have our goal and it's a good goal to have better working relationships with Almonte County.

And we're doing that as we're proceeding through working through the arrangements with the courts and the court square.

But these are city parks.

They are maintained by our public dollars.

We have been going through an exhaustive effort to make sure that we're including our community in the redesign of those downtown parks to put context to those statues that are still in place because the courts have yet not determined whether we can move them and the General Assembly has refused to allow legislation to allow us to move them.

So would it be possible for us to get, just a suggestion, would it be possible for us to get the top

Okay, with the exclusion of 45.

I think I would say the top three on that list from the survey results because the write-ins... For each park.

Okay.

I think we ought to leave open, I mean the Swanson supporters have been very effective at advocating, but we ought to leave open a possibility in this next window of another citizen wave of advocacy for whomever, locals or whomever.

This is a great time to do that.

And also, I think it's important to note, like the individuals who have been leading the Charlie Swanson Legacy Party, they're not wrong, right?

Everyone has a right to feel as if they should honor only one.

Mr. Swanson did a ton.

So we're going to have another write-in round.

Well, you have an option.

So if we send it back out, you'll have, for both parks, three choices.

yeah so so if you have one vote yeah if you have one vote so if you were to write in or it's one you're writing right but that's just a suggestion I mean if y'all see otherwise and the only reason that I'm asking is because it wasn't a limit like you pointed out on who could participate in this survey this time so if we're limiting it to city residents figuring out a way to do that and then if more city residents participate this round because of increased engagement in some way

Obviously we mail utility bills every month.

It's staggered in terms of the bills when they go out.

So the returns would be staggered.

It would take two months at least for us to go through a cycle.

So it would take a month to get them out and then a month to get them back.

So in order to utilize that, that's what we're going to have to do.

Just to raise another point about city residency, I think we can try to make that clear, but that won't stop people from voting necessarily.

And what we can put in there, street address, you know,

City, that type of thing, are you city resident?

And then that would help us screen it out to some degree.

But as you know, folks could say, they could Google, you know, names of streets here in Charlottesville and put that in too.

And I was just confused because there was

Something was written about the number of unique IP addresses versus non-unique and I was confused because there was one sentence that described like made it me feel like that they were all unique and then another portion of the report made it sound like no there was one IP address that might have had a hundred submissions.

I'm making that up.

So sometimes you can have multiple devices coming from the same IP address.

It could sort of be masked behind a company or internet provider.

So there's an effort, though, to limit it to the number of devices.

As far as people's address,

I want to just share with you that the data is subject to the Freedom of Information Act request.

There's probably a way to set up a survey where that would not be the case, where you go through the first gate by putting down your address and then you gain, but those two data sets can be disaggregated.

There's technological ways of doing this.

We could look into that.

A single file.

I think that's likely.

I understand, but I'm just saying it might not be that the address would be linked to the way that somebody voted by virtue of the way that the survey would be designed.

you know, limit from the personal identifying information.

I think we could certainly do that.

I would imagine some people aren't really aware of their neighborhood names, too.

I would be comfortable charging staff with just trying to figure out the best practice in figuring out how to ensure that somebody's a resident of an area when completing a survey and that it's anonymous.

and Vinegar Hill Park is not to be on the list.

That was my question.

We already have one.

I think I said Market Street Park, Central Park, and then Swanson Legacy Park.

Correct.

And then Court Square Park.

Oh, on the right end.

So I'm sorry.

Central Park, Library Park, and the write-in?

No, no, Swanson, Legacy Park.

But I think it should be identified as that that was the write-in, even though it's completed.

We can identify it as the write-in, but I think it should be an option.

Yeah.

I didn't think that we were.

I mean, it was the write-in.

You're talking about 146 votes.

Right, which is what we did.

No.

OK. Well, I think we should.

I mean, again, while I may not personally be head over heels of Swanson Legacy, there was a lot of votes in terms of people who sent not only just the writings, but the emails that people sent.

So that should be one of the multiple choice options.

So if I may again just make my case so that the top three of each park name would be the ones from the survey.

So it's Market Street, Central Park, Library Park for Emancipation Park.

And it's Court Square Park, Courthouse Park, and Justice Park for Justice Park.

And then under Emancipation Park, the write-in was Swanson.

People don't know that was the write-in.

But that's the write-in, and you fill it in.

But then in Justice Park, it would be blank as a write-in.

Or else they both are Swanson Park.

as write-ins because they were in both ones and then you have a fifth line for write-in.

Right.

I think that was the point the last time we had this conversation is that we wanted to see those.

So why are we letting these drop out then?

How?

People sent in emails and everything else.

Along with the other top three.

There's a lot of people who want that to be the name of the park.

I think you're saying the same thing, right?

You're saying to include Swanson Park.

Exactly.

And then have a write-in underneath that.

Thank you, Mediator Jones.

Then for Justice Park.

We're just so far away.

OK.

There's no more waiting.

The thing's out.

Just asking the question.

So can I, just to make sure we're clear, so Emancipation Park, Market Street, Central, Library, and then Swanson, and then a write-in.

Swanson Legacy.

And then for Justice, Court Square, Courthouse, Justice, Swanson, write-in.

We're going to be in trouble if Swanson is the highest name for both.

I think it's important for Council to communicate that

you know, how you feel about the surveying, right?

I mean, is this a popular vote, meaning that the highest vote getter is what you will vote upon?

I think it would be OK to put like an asterisk by Swanson saying that was the write in from the first survey.

so that people know it was the write-in.

And I think we can do that.

I was trying to address kind of a bigger issue over how council will make a decision about this.

It's not necessarily the top vote getter, but we need to know if that's from council, if that's what you all believe.

If it is, then that's fine.

We know that going in.

Yeah, I think that's fine.

We're just going back out as requester by the community with the final, the top final names.

I do agree there should be some context around especially a specific name like that and identify it as a write-in.

It was the write-in to you.

So, Mr. Wheeler, if you would, if you could share with council via email just

What that's gonna look like, that way we just know we're all clear before it goes out and then we'll also look at other ways to disseminate it to the public.

I think it should go in the utility bill.

Perfect.

So we'll be back to council in July, probably.

Okay.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of council.

My name is Chris Cullinan.

I'm the director of finance for the city.

This agenda item is a public hearing and resolution authorizing the issuance of up to $11.7 million in bonds to fund the city's capital improvements program.

All the projects to be funded by this bond issue have been previously approved and appropriate by city council.

The proceeds are proposed but not limited to be used to fund portions of projects totaling about $5 million for general government, including public schools, transportation and access,

Public Buildings, Parks and Recreation, and about $6.7 million for our utilities, including wastewater, water, and stormwater improvements.

These bonds will be repaid over the next 20 years with level annual principal payments.

The bonds will be sold by a competitive public sale in mid-May.

The resolution authorizes the city manager to accept the lowest interest rate bid on the bonds.

City Management held conference calls with Moody's and Standard & Poor's rating agencies last week.

I'm pleased to report those discussions were very positive and we anticipate that the city will retain its AAA bond rating.

Staff recommends that Council approve the resolution authorizing the city manager to accept the low bid on the bond sale on behalf of the city.

At this point, I'd also like to take a moment to acknowledge and thank Chrissy Hamel,

back there in the back.

Chrissy is the city's finance and debt manager.

The bond issue, it takes about three or four months for us to get to this point in the process involving several city departments, our financial advisors and bond council.

Chrissy leads and coordinates that effort.

And for that, I thank her.

This concludes my comments.

I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have at this point or after the public hearing.

All right, so we'll open the public hearing.

Is there anyone that would like to speak?

Public hearing for the bond issue.

All right, closed public hearing.

Second.

Is that OK?

Second.

Just to be clear, in all seriousness, I did receive a couple of questions.

And I know during the last meeting we had discussed looking at different ways to use bonds and so forth.

This does not have any bearing on any future bond that we may potentially want to use.

People have been talking about housing and whatnot.

That is correct, this is for, the majority of these projects are actually approved as part of the FY18 CIP and so the money is being used for those projects.

Thank you.

All right, the next we have a report from the Office of Human Rights.

It's their annual review.

Good evening, everyone.

So this is the Office of Human Rights report for activities and events through 2017.

My name is Charlene Green.

Thank you.

So I want to make sure that there is some understanding about the responsibility for the Office of Human Rights.

We do three things primarily.

We investigate discrimination allegations that fall within the ordinance, our human rights ordinance that was created in 2013.

We have a Human Rights Commission that addresses systemic issues of discrimination.

Carlos will talk more about what some of those responsibilities have been during 2017 and what they intend to do this year.

And then we provide education and outreach to the community.

There's been some interchanging of Office of Human Rights and the Human Rights Commission

and I want to make it clear that the Office of Human Rights, and this is for any of the offices in the state of Virginia, they are staffed and they have, for the five that have enforcement power, they are charged with addressing issues of discrimination, the offices of human rights.

The Human Rights Commissions are a group of appointed people, typically by their locality, to either, if they have enforcement power,

to hear concerns from the community or address or hold public hearings regarding specific issues related to discrimination, whether it's an individual discrimination concern that they are hearing or if it's a community-related issue in addition to addressing any appeals.

I'll get more into the responsibilities of some of the other

offices and commissions in the state of Virginia but with this particular information right here I'm focusing on the city of Charlottesville.

So the individual discrimination claims, the data was originally collected when the office was created in 2013 and so the first data set was the end of 2013 into 2014 and the

The way the manner in which the data was reported about the year's activities was all of the contacts that occurred with the office during 2014 and part of 2013 was considered a complaint.

And so when there was an opportunity to make some changes and

Refine the definition of the contacts within the office.

The office contacts were categorized in two different ways.

You were either considered an inquiry if you came to the office asking questions about the services, about the program, possibly seeing if there was, you know, your issue was something that could be addressed

by our office, or it could be just somebody stopping by to say hello, or it could have been someone who had a complaint.

And I'll define that in a second after this next piece.

So all inquiries included any calls, any emails or walk-ins to the office.

and on average for 2017, we get anywhere, we meaning myself and my part-time coworker Todd Niemeyer, four to five contacts per day.

And so when someone isn't in the office, we miss those contacts, specifically the walk-ins.

They're directed to come over here to City Hall if no one is in the office, but oftentimes we

do get some foot traffic, and so it's important to have a body in the office if possible.

For those folks who were outside the city who wanted to file a complaint, there were 27 people during 2017 who wanted to file a complaint, but it was outside the city's jurisdiction.

It's a combination of several different things, and I'll get into that in a second.

So for folks who wanted to file a complaint within the city,

as long as it fell within the Human Rights Ordinance and that person felt like what happened to them required further action then it was logged as a complaint.

And so for 2017 we had 21 people who came into the, or 21 instances where folks came into the office

regarding employment and because our ordinance is limited to addressing discrimination with small businesses.

Small businesses as defined, we have the authority based on the state of Virginia that because we are not in a work share agreement with the EEOC, we can address small business complaints with folks who have employees numbering 6 to 14.

If you have more than 14 employees, then if there isn't a work share agreement in your locality, then individuals get referred to the EEOC.

So all of those folks who came to our office had issues with large businesses, as defined by our ordinance in the state of Virginia, and so they were referred to the EEOC.

The housing concerns, we had 12.

We do not do, we do not address or investigate

housing discrimination complaints based on our human rights ordinance.

And so all of those folks were referred to the Piedmont Housing Alliance.

They do not do investigations in the manner that the Fair Housing Office out of Richmond does investigations.

And I'll explain a little bit more about what the Piedmont Housing Alliance actually does on an informal basis before something is

sent down to Richmond as an investigative issue.

We have had no requests for complaints or discrimination complaints based on credit and or education for a total of 39 complaints in the city of Charlottesville.

Public accommodation, I forgot to mention that.

We had six instances pretty much brought forth by a couple of folks.

regarding their disability and without getting too specific.

Most of the issues, a couple of the issues were the individual decided to address it through the federal system and the other issues were dropped by the person who didn't want to take it any further.

and there were two actual investigations regarding public accommodations.

Both were unfounded.

So the city refers in three different ways.

We refer, based on our ordinance, to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

As I explained before, it's a large business, 15 or more employees than

it goes to the EEOC.

We refer people to the Piedmont Housing Alliance even though they do not investigate housing discrimination.

What they do actually do is they will question someone's concern, some allegation that they may have regarding housing discrimination.

And based on my conversation with one of the employees with the Piedmont Housing Alliance,

What they tend to address are landlord tenant issues that they are able to provide some assistance for that individual or those individuals who might call.

If it however requires an investigation, then those folks are referred to Richmond.

There are only two federally funded

Housing discrimination agencies in the state of Virginia.

The Fair Housing Office out of Richmond and Fairfax County.

Fairfax County is the only FAP or Fair Housing Assistance Program outside of the Fair Housing Office that gets federal funds out of Richmond.

Piedmont Housing Alliance used to get money from HUD before they cut back on their funding.

The funding that PHA got allowed them to do housing discrimination tests so they would send people out to make sure that property managers were in fact being fair in how they made housing available to individuals in lots of different under the protected classes.

The other way in which we refer is if someone has an issue with a mental health concern, then we refer those folks to the local human rights committee that is connected with the state behavioral mental health association.

And for folks who feel like they have experienced discrimination in some manner related to their mental health concerns, then

There's a state agency and the local human rights committee is located at the University of Virginia Hospital.

So those are the three ways in which we make referrals based on our human rights ordinance.

These are just some examples of how the discrimination played out based on class.

These do not match up with the protected activities category because some people will identify one or more protected classes in describing how they felt like they may have been discriminated against.

So race

Just like across the state with all of the other offices that address discrimination, race is the most prevalent way in which people are discriminated against in the state of Virginia.

I would connect national origin to that because that tends to be associated with someone's ethnicity.

And then disability also plays itself out as one of the next highest forms of discrimination based on

Plass status, and that is across some of our other human rights offices in the state.

Counselor Galvin, you had asked about the trend data, and so based on the data that has been collected since 2014, and again I would, it's difficult to make an exact comparison,

with the first year of data collection because of how there isn't consistency in how the contacts are defined.

And so you can see that employment for 2014 was pretty high, and then it drops down into the 20s in the next three years.

And so I think there's some consistency there.

and how people, and this is just for Charlottesville, by the way.

So this is how you can see the trend of how people approach the office over the course of a year with issues of related to employment.

Housing, we had a bump from eight of 2016 up to 12 for 2017.

I believe primarily because of folks from Crescent Halls making complaints about their condition in their facility and seeking some assistance.

For public accommodations, I don't know what were all of the issues that were addressed in 2014, but

As you can see the data has been trending down and I think you could assume it is either because the community is starting to understand a little bit more what the office is able to provide or you know you could also interpret it in another way where you might have some people in the community who might feel like maybe they don't think they're getting any assistance from the office and so that may be a reason why the numbers are declining.

We don't know for sure.

and then we have no requests for discrimination in education and in credit.

This is the complaints filed by location again from 2014 to 2017.

The blue is the Charlottesville number and you can see that we're anywhere from 30 to

40 in terms of complaints from this area regarding all of the protected activities.

There are five of them.

And then the other involves anything outside the city.

It could be Albemarle, Fluvanna, Nelson County, Louisa.

I've gotten calls as far away as Spotsylvania County as seeking assistance.

And so

Okay, so the next part I'm going to cover the Human Rights Commission and what we are mandated to do.

The first one is the address systemic issues of discrimination, review city policy, hear concerns from the community,

and make recommendations to City Council.

The Human Rights Commission, we have 11 appointed members.

We meet every third Thursday of the month and also our subcommittees meet that third Thursday of the month as well.

These were our outcomes for the 2017 work plan and this is just an overview of some of the goals that we accomplished.

The Race Discrimination Committee, we ran two refugee simulations to increase awareness on refugee issues.

The second one we were able to partner with the University of Virginia and it was very successful.

We also, on a weekly basis, contacted the, worked with and contacted the Hispanic community, working through CIMBaredas, as it dealt with deportation, immigration issues.

The LGBTQ Concerns Committee policy reviews revealed inequities and benefits for employees who may identify as transgender.

Right.

So for the disability, age and religious

discrimination subcommittee.

The HRC members attended quarterly ADA meetings.

The American, which is the American Disability Act, reviewed city communication policies on access for people with disabilities, collaborating with local community groups to determine recommendations to city council.

And the housing concern subcommittee attended housing relating

Related meetings throughout the city.

We invited city staff to update the Human Rights Commission members on current housing strategies.

For 2018, our plans that we worked through at the beginning of the year for each subcommittee will go through these and there are four for the race discrimination.

One is to examine and monitor city policies for inequities based on race, skin color, or national origin, support the work of the race on, the work of dialogue on race action teams, examine police data, and collaborate and promote youth engagement.

For LGBTQ concerns, our focus is to examine and monitor city policies for inequities based on sexual orientation, transgender status, and gender identity, collaborate and support the Charlottesville Albemarle Safe Space Training Coalition, and address deficiencies on the Municipal Equity Index Corecard.

For the age, disability, religious discrimination subcommittee, focus is to examine and monitor city policies for inequities based on age, disability, or religious, non-religious beliefs.

Participate in the Charlottesville ADA Advisory Board meetings and identify and create an action plan regarding accessibility to all city sponsored events.

And for housing concerns,

So the third thing that we do is community engagement and in the report you'll see that we have a host of different partners that we collaborate with in different ways.

These are just some examples of some of the different groups that we work with.

These are some of the city departments, neighborhood development services, parks and rec.

We work, we collaborate on providing assistance to the preservers of the Daughters of Zion

with Human Services.

Our office hosts a couple of CAIP interns.

We work with a coalition of other folks who are addressing a disproportionate minority contact regarding the criminal justice system for adults.

And then

Through the police and fire department, we have collaborated on different events in reaching out to the community and increasing awareness about either for employment recruitment, to expand the diversity in those departments, or just to increase the awareness of what those different departments do, especially regarding your rights when you interact with, for instance, the police department.

and then collaborate with the Department of Social Services with training opportunities.

Some of the community and state groups we partner with, the African American Heritage Center in so many different ways, various faith-based groups, done numerous presentations to some of the churches, the synagogue in this area and have attended the events that

our mosque also has to make sure that our commission is aware and that we can help promote any of the activities that any of those groups are doing.

The Charlottesville Albemarle Chamber of Commerce through Leadership Charlottesville is one of the ways in which the Office of Human Rights and the commission have partnered with them

through CRHA, especially through the Residence Advisory Committee and being aware of the concerns that they have in trying to create a more responsive relationship with the staff of CRHA and the residents.

The office staff collaborates with CRHA.

Simbereras, as Carlos has mentioned, the EEOC,

and we are very active with the Virginia Association for Human Rights.

One of our commission members, Ann Smith, who is the past chair, is now the Vice President of the State Association for Human Rights.

We have lots of contact with schools, whether it's the Charlottesville City Schools, the Albemarle County Schools, various private schools, Curry School of Education through the University of Virginia, School of Nursing,

and the Piedmont Virginia Community College are all partners in some of the presentations or different events that occur through the office and the Human Rights Commission.

We are very present in some of the various festivals that go on.

We've been active with the Martin Luther King UVA community celebration for the past six years.

West Haven Community Day, one of the events that I, it's in the report but I'm

I should mention is that every year when the dance and step show competition happens down at the Paramount, where it has one of the most diverse representations of folks attending that particular event, in between the acts, the Office of Human Rights provides discussion questions that the emcee of that event gives out to the youth who are there and they come up to the mic and they answer some of the questions, some of it related to what happened last summer,

In the past, we've had questions submitted where the kids talk about their interactions with the police department, and others have been just giving them something to think about, especially in the engagement with their families.

How do they talk about diversity and being who they are in terms of their ethnic and racial identity at home and at school?

And so we engage the youth in so many different ways.

The two things I also want to bring to your attention in closing, the dialogue on race, which we initially started through an initiative through the city council back in 2010, had a second round of community engagement around the dialogue on race.

And we tweaked the format so we didn't have 48 study circles all over the city going on at the same time.

We had all of our small group discussions at the Jefferson School and the African American Heritage Center.

That was well received because of the fact that it created more of a community conversation, even though we started out as a large group, broke in the small groups, and then sometimes would come back together.

But for the most part, it was the opportunity that the community could come together.

whether it was during the week if it was easy for you or on the weekend if it was easier for you.

We have five different work groups.

The first four, the same groups that we had the first time we did the Dialogue on Race, the additional group that has been added is the recovery and preparation work group where they are focused on what should the city be doing regarding the anniversary of some of the events coming up in the summer.

and then the last thing I just want to mention is the office and the commission have been responsive in some of the events that happened last summer whether it's in a proactive way and it's more detailed in the report about some of the things that our office did and then some of the follow-up that occurred particularly after August 11th and 12th.

So that concludes the discussion about

this particular part of the report.

I know there's another discussion that's going to happen.

Is the next section around recommendations moving forward?

Yes.

So I'm going to cover the recommendation piece here.

So I'd like to begin by saying that our focus should never be to go back in time when human rights were unfairly given based on race and gender, but to further the equitable work of the Human Rights Commission.

We discussed earlier and we shared the action plans for 2018, but recently

Due to a budget session and questions presented by the community, the Human Rights Commission formed an ad hoc group to address some of those concerns.

And these are recommendations that we have not brought forward to the Human Rights Commission, but we will do so on Thursday and discuss further and present a final recommendation to the city.

One of the first questions revolved regards whether the structure of the Office of Human Rights should be led by a civil rights attorney and also dealing with budgetary concerns.

It is our, through the ad hoc committee, we believe that the Office of Human Rights should be, remain under its current structure and not through a civil rights attorney.

The Office of Human Rights Manager enables us the most efficient structure for the Office of Human Rights and Human Rights Commission to be successful and foster a foundation of continuous improvement to be a strong advocate for justice,

and equal opportunity by providing citywide leadership and guidance in the area of civil rights and therefore better suited for this role.

And I believe we shared several activities that I think is of continuous engagement within the community in a variety of areas from community, ages and across the board.

In addition, the Office of Human Rights Manager is trained to investigate acts of discrimination and consults with the municipal attorney's office for legal counsel and litigation cases.

From the budgetary perspective, should the civil rights attorney

lead the Office of Human Rights, there is a concern that the community outreach specialist position would be eliminated.

As the City Council is aware, the Office of Human Rights is currently staffed by one full-time employee and one part-time employee.

The second question that came forward is, should the Office of Human Rights enter into a work-share agreement with the Richmond EEOC Office to become a Fair Employment Practice Agency, also known as FIPA?

could be a logical step in the growth of the Office of Human Rights.

The Prince William's Office of Human Rights sees similar number of cases as Charlottesville office does, and the Prince William County Board of Supervisors has budgeted sufficient funds to support the staffing required for the office to serve as a FIPA.

In order for this to be a feasible option for the Charlottesville office, city council would likely

need to appropriate additional funds for the expansion of the office should the added caseload require the hiring of additional staff.

It is our recommendation if City Council would to agree to this recommendation is to increase the staffing to a total of 2.5 or two full-time staffers and one part-time.

It should further be noted that many employment discrimination cases that pass through the Office of Human Rights pertain to businesses outside the City of Charlottesville.

The current Human Rights Ordinance limits the Office of Human Rights enforcement's jurisdiction to employers within the City of Charlottesville.

Were the ordinance changed to allow for the investigation of discrimination complaints,

originating in surrounding counties, the governing bodies of those surrounding counties would need to be consulted.

It is also important to note that the Richmond EEOC office data for cases in the Charlottesville area is combined data that includes Albemarle County and the city of Charlottesville.

The EEOC is unable to offer case data for the city of Charlottesville alone.

It is the ad hoc's

recommendation to City Council that we do become FIFA.

Our recommendation is that we at least attempt on a one-year trial basis and then report on a quarterly basis to the City Council how that is progressing.

The additional question presented is should the Office of Human Rights enter into a work-share agreement

with the Richmond HUD Office and become a Fair Housing Assistance Program or FAP.

In the Commonwealth of Virginia, there are two FAP offices and Charlene talked about this briefly.

One is the state agency within the Richmond Housing and Urban Development Office.

The other is located within the Fairfax Human Rights Commission Office.

Becoming a FAP is possible, is a possible option for the city of Charlottesville.

and as mentioned previously, like becoming a FIPA, in order for this to be a feasible option, we would also have to increase our staff and funding.

Our recommendation at this point regarding this topic is to not pursue a FAP but to continue to evaluate it on a quarterly basis as well.

One of the concerns that we have is that as we pull the data

of cases presented through the Virginia Fair Housing Office.

Seven cases have been reported for 2017.

The next topic or question that was presented is should

the commission, the Human Rights Commission as a whole conduct one major study of discrimination in Charlottesville per year and produce actual policy recommendations to the city council.

As an Ad Hoc Committee, we do feel there is benefit to this.

We are willing to explore this option and this is a topic of discussion for Thursday.

Such areas of focus would be affordable housing, mental health, case accessibility for the youth, and stop and frisk, for example.

If under this structure, if we were to do a year case study and then come before the city council with recommendations, the question is with what scope and how would the scope of the subcommittees work?

And we would partner with the Office of Human Rights to give us direction in a proactive manner to address community concerns as well as they arise.

The last question that came up was, should the Office of Human Rights and Commission report directly to City Council and the Mayor?

The Office of Human Rights is currently a department under the City Manager's Office.

As such, the Office of Human Rights reports to that office, which in turn reports to City Council.

The Office of Human Rights and

Human Rights Commission present an annual report to City Council as we are doing today.

The Human Rights Commission is currently appointed and reports annually directly to the City Council and the Mayor.

In regards to this question, our recommendation would be one of two.

One that a member of City Council attend our monthly meetings or on a quarterly basis representative or the chair report to the City Council

Okay.

I just want to provide some clarity on the two handouts that you got.

Todd Niemeyer did a really great job of putting together this grid of services that are on the longer sheet and it's available for anyone sitting in the

audience if they would like a copy as well.

On the legal size sheet, it gives you a grid of all of the offices of human rights in the state of Virginia.

There are only six.

And five of them have enforcement power.

Virginia Beach is the one that only does education.

And I also need to point out that the office for Charlottesville is less than five years old.

All of the other offices have been in place for 25 years or more.

Twenty-five years or more, the other offices have been in place that have enforcement power.

Charlottesville is less than five years old.

And so, in also trying to put together this data, not all of the offices keep their discrimination data in the same

format.

So it was very challenging to try to figure out how can we create some consistency in giving you an idea of how we compare relative to some of the other localities across the state.

We're the smallest.

We're the youngest.

We obviously have the smallest budget.

And so you can see regarding, for instance, the number of full-time employees

what some of those different localities have, who has attorneys on staff.

None of the attorneys litigate any of the cases that they investigate in their office.

That's what their local attorney offices do for them.

The offices in Northern Virginia that have enforcement power are all FIPAs.

Only Fairfax is a FAP, a Fair Housing Office, but the other Northern Virginia offices also investigate housing.

Their local budget allows for it.

That is correct.

Their local budget allows for it.

And so for some of the groups that were able to report to us, their numbers, they're listed below toward the bottom there with the five protected activities to sort of give you some idea of what some of these other groups do.

And again, we're, you know, less than five years old trying to figure out

what's the best way for us for the Office of Human Rights and the Human Rights Commission to operate.

The smaller sheet that you have gives you what the state and federal offices do in comparison to Charlottesville.

So you have the Attorney General's Office in Richmond that also has a small staff to address

employment and housing issues for the rest of the state of Virginia who does not have an office of human rights to do that for them.

The Virginia Fair Housing Office, you can see that number seven that Carlos mentioned are the number of housing discrimination cases that were investigated out of Charlottesville, only seven.

And then the Equal Employment, the EEOC office, Darren Calhoun,

is having a hard time trying to get the data we were requesting, but if we go based on the averages that were looked at when the Human Rights Task Force was put together, the charges for the Charlottesville area, which included Albemarle, was anywhere from 30 to 40 charges of employment discrimination.

Yes.

I apologize.

Well, based off of the report, first of all, thank you both for your time.

I know there's been an extensive amount of work put into the presentation as well as coming forth before us tonight.

So I have a couple of questions for both of you.

Well, one, Ms. Green, again, thank you.

So the recommendation that you all are putting forth, one being increase the part-time position that we have now currently to full-time, correct?

So it would be two full-time positions and then a half position.

The half position would be to do the filing for FIPA.

So some of the concern from the community is that it would increase the opportunity so a lot of people may feel that if they have an issue of race discrimination that they have to take their case even though we do everything within our power to make that transition for them as easy as possible regarding

reaching the office of Richmond and filing the complaint and following up, there's a concern that a lot of folks may avoid or just stay quiet.