City Council   10/15/2018

Ms. Hill?

Here.

Mr. Signer?

I have one brief announcement.

On October 23rd at 7 p.m. at Charlottesville High School, the City Schools invites you to a community forum on equity.

Join us for a community discussion about our shared commitment to serve all our students well.

The Charlottesville City Schools, we're making progress, yet we still have much work to do.

We want to hear from you and answer your questions.

All right, I have one announcement.

The city of Charlottesville is one of many jurisdictions in the United States to participate in a national citizen survey in 2018.

Starting Friday, October 19th, pre-notification postcards will be mailed to a random sample of 1,800 Charlottesville households, informing them that a questionnaire will follow asking for feedback on the quality and usefulness of city services.

The National Citizens Survey is sponsored by the International

City County Management Association in cooperation with the National Research Center.

The questionnaire and survey procedures were designed based on the experience of hundreds of local governments ranging in size from small to large.

Scientific sampling and weighting of the responses in each jurisdiction ensures accurate and reliable results.

Because each city survey is developed using standard template and many cities can be surveyed at one time, the National Citizen Survey is a very efficient way to measure citizens' opinion.

Previous survey results and reports can be found at www.shawlsville.org slash budget.

This is important.

Today is the last day for voters to register to vote.

or update their address before the November election.

A voter registered at his or her current address does not need to re-register.

Although the deadline to register with a paper application or mail has passed, there are a few hours left for some online transactions and that's why this announcement is important.

A person who has a Virginia driver's license or Virginia DMV issued ID and provides their DMV number online as their signature

may apply for voter registration or update their existing voter registration entirely online.

Go to vote.virginia.gov.

Again, vote.virginia.gov all locates.

and submit your application or update by 1159 p.m. tonight.

If you have to leave this meeting, go ahead.

In-person absentee voting is underway through November 3rd for city voters in the Voter Registration Office and the City Hall Annex.

during these office hours, 830 a.m. to 430 p.m. Monday through Friday, and on two Saturdays, October 27 and November 3, 830 a.m. to 5 p.m. Again, the Saturdays are October 27 and November 3.

Curbside voting is available in the CAR for absentee voters who are disabled or who are age 65 or older and have another qualifying absentee reason.

An accessible

ballot marking devices available in the office, the voter registration office.

Voters must show a photo ID when voting in person, absentee, just as on election day.

Voters who do not have an acceptable ID may apply for a free photo ID for voting during office hours in the voter registration office.

The deadline to apply for a mailed absentee ballot is 5 p.m. on October 30th, but that is probably too late to receive and return your voted ballot by mail.

If you need a mailed absentee ballot, apply online now at vote.virginia.gov.

Please call the voter registration office at 970-3250.

A couple of announcements, Mayor Walker.

The first being that two weeks from today on Monday, October 29th,

Let me make sure I read it correctly.

Yes, on Monday, October 29th at 6 PM right here in council chambers will be the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority meeting that starts at 6 PM.

I know that we often hear about affordable housing and what's going on in public housing, but for you to hear specifics in regards to what the Housing Authority Board is doing.

We encourage you to attend again at 6 p.m. the fourth Monday of every month right here in council chambers at 6 p.m. for the Charlottesville Redevelopment Housing Authority meeting.

Also on November 8th at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center,

from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. will be the inaugural Charlottesville Women and Minority Business Expo.

Again, that is November 8th, Thursday, November 8th from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Jefferson School City Center slash Carver Rec Center at 233 4th Street Northwest.

Please, if you're interested in being an exhibitor, come on out, you can register online.

All of the information is on our city website, charlesville.org, or you can just Google Charlottesville Women and Minority Business Expo, you'll see all of the information.

Yes, so, from this, yeah.

So last council meeting we talked about a proclamation for Ms. Maybelle Kinney and we discussed reading it tonight for her.

Just off the phone, Ms. Joy Johnson, Ms. Kinney is actually sick, so she won't be able to make it tonight.

However, we will be in contact with her as well as not only checking on her but letting her know that we have this proclamation for her.

And when she's up to coming, we'll present this to her.

We know she's listening, so Ms. Maybelle, get well soon.

Thank you.

We have four sister cities, three active ones in the city of Charlottesville.

Good evening.

Thank you for letting me have this opportunity to speak to you about Besançon, our sister city in France.

I'm Yates Nobles, and I'm the Besançon representative for the Charlottesville Sister City Commission.

and

We have found in our relationship with Besançon as with the other sister cities that we, by our relationship, can help and advise each other on governmental affairs and projects.

We each can enrich our citizens through cultural and educational and citizen exchange.

We find that our perspectives are broadened by our trips abroad and having our visitors here from other cities.

We have learned many things from one another.

I will talk about some of that later.

And we cooperate.

It's a great example of people with different backgrounds cooperating.

We share interests with Besançon, which is why it was one of our sister cities.

We are very much alike in many ways.

I'm going to give you a packet that describes some similarities.

And we share a lot of experience about development.

They are doing many things that we may want to replicate or take pieces of, and they certainly have learned many things when they came here in May.

So my report tonight follows, is a follow-up to the visit that the Besançon delegation paid to Charlottesville in May of this year.

And I'm also going to give you a copy of a summary of what we did for them, because we did quite a lot for them as well.

So we have a delegation of 12 people who went to Besançon September 12th to the 18th.

I have many of them here tonight and each is going to say a few words after I finish my report about what the visit meant to them or any observation they might have.

The city of Besançon, their mayor Jean-Louis Fusseray, and the other officials and educational and cultural leaders all participated in making our visit successful.

They gave a very generous expenditure of their time and their money to make this a worthwhile visit for us.

and among those who spent time with us, there's a long list of people.

I'll quickly just read.

The President of Greater Besançon and Mayor of the Capital of France Conte is Mayor Fusseray and his wife Regine.

the Chef du Cabinet, Jeremy Cholie, the Director of International Relations for Cooperation in Sister Cities, Thibault Bies, the Cabinet Press Attaché, Alexandra Cordier, the Director of International Relations, Arlette Bourgie-Pouffaut, the Assistant to Arlette and the Mayor, Dominique Lévry, the Art Historian Consultant for Besançon, Lionel Estavoyer,

The Director of the Book Festival Jean-Michel Maté The Director of International Relations for Jean-Françe Conte Bourgogne Region of the Rectorat Natasha Lanois Le Conte The International Projects and Education for the Rectorat is Sylvie Schmidt

Inspector for the Academy of Besançons, Odile Maligot, the Principal of the school we visited there, at Lycée, they're called, Monsieur Tessier, the Headmaster of Victor Hugo Middle School, Monsieur Fito, the English Program Director and others at the Lycée Ledoux,

the Director of the Tramway, who is now the Director of the Cabinet, which is similar to our City Council.

His name is Pascal Goudefan.

And Yagmar Oz, who was a previous intern here in Charlottesville at the Alliance Francaise, was on hand to help along with another lady named Cecile.

So members of the delegation were given free entry to see the Citadel and the Victor Hugo Museum on their own and the rest of the events I'm going to mention we were taken to and guided through with translations because about half of our group spoke French and about half did not.

I did not.

But you did great with the chemical experience.

On Thursday, we arrived Wednesday evening, had a welcome dinner by Jeremy Cholie, who's the head of the, he's the chef of the cabinet.

Then on Thursday morning, we had a coffee with members of the cabinet in Mayor Fussire's office and began our discussions about our similarities and differences and what we could learn from one another.

Then Lionel Estevoye, the art historian and cultural consultant to Besançon, took us on a tour of the Time Museum and the Roman ruined North Gate, the Cathedral, and the 17th century pharmacy.

The special opening of the Museum of Fine Arts has been closed for about three years in Beaux-en-Sons, but they managed to surprise us, have it open, and have the director of that give us a special tour through that museum, and we were able to see the work in process with paintings still stacked against the wall somehow and work going on.

It was a fascinating look into renovation of the museum.

There was a, then we had a dinner at this restaurant called the Tandem, which overlooks the Dubes River, and John Dearth, who joined us on our trip, played there with Damien Grollo, who is an internationally known pianist, who later shared his spot on the International Festival of Music with John.

So, I might mention that their river, which surrounds the town,

has a wonderful development around it.

It's very much used by the citizens both for recreation and for some of the businesses that are there like cafes.

On Friday we toured the city hall, it's called the Marie, and we saw how they store their records, how they do passport applications.

We actually witnessed someone doing a passport application.

And we saw the center where they have a special center for responding to citizen complaints.

And that's complaints about all the infrastructure, anything that could be wrong in the town that needs attention.

And they have a turnaround of about 24 hours on addressing complaints.

So I think that may be something that we see some action from here in Charlottesville based on what we saw.

They explained urban planning and projects and so we went on a tram ride where they have light rail, a tram that runs 14 and a half kilometers in two directions for Besançon which has greatly helped the city to be a pedestrian city and has eased the pollution and the burden of traffic in the city.

When I was there in 2016, the person who created that tram system and saw it through to fruition is now the head of the cabinet, offered to consult with Charlottesville.

Should we at some point like to try to do a tram here to ease our traffic burden and look ahead to the future with that?

We went to the service center for the tram and had an explanation of how everything works.

Then Sophie Parson, who's the director of the Allianz Francaise here, met with director of officials to further the work between, educational work between the two cities.

We had lunch and a tour with the people from the Centre Linguistat Liqueuil, with Frederic Penilla, who's the director.

We went to the book festival opening.

They have a festival book, as we do.

And authors from all over were there.

It was lovely.

And both mayors spoke, our mayor and the mayor of Beaux-en-Sons.

We received recognition at every place we met.

We were treated then to a five-course official dinner that evening at a very fine French restaurant called Cirque du Suisse.

And then afterwards, John Dearth played with Damien Grollo and a group at the International Festival of Music called the Piano Bar.

And then on Saturday, the city chartered a bus to take us to Fort Chardon, which was the site of a World War II battle, and they gave a tribute to the United States soldiers of the 3rd Division who were killed there.

We had a guided tour.

We had lunch at a country restaurant, the Bistro of Fort Le Nez.

Then we visited a chateau, a chateau d'Arlais, and had a guided tour by the co-owner, Anne De La Guiche, and then wine tasting that was hosted by her husband, Alain De La Guiche.

That area around Besançon, like here, is rich as a wine country.

They make something called Louvain Jean, which is

to my knowledge, only made there.

It's just a different kind of wine than you have anywhere else.

And again, looking ahead, one possibility may be an exchange between vineyards.

We continue to work on that.

Then we went to a concert for the Bez and Sol Music Festival at the Curacao Theater.

Charlottesville and our Mayor Walker were recognized when they called up for the first encore.

They dedicated that to us.

And after that, John Dearth met with the musicians in the orchestra, as well as with Eric Tongi, who was one of the composers whose pieces were played there that night.

On Sunday we went to the Prefecture du Police.

It's not like a police station in America.

This is the presence of the federal government in the city and in this region.

And it's a gorgeous palace and we were addressed there and taken on a tour and everything was explained to us about the relationship of the national to the local.

Then the two mayors and the head of Allianz-Française and I and two members of the Sister City Commission were invited by the mayor to go to the architect Ledoux's utopian city that he created for salt workers long ago.

It was magnificent.

It gave us a chance to chat informally and formulate some things for the future.

And then I visited with Marie-Françe Luc who was the counterpart of our Sister City relationship when it was first begun.

The relationship was formalized in 2006, but it actually began long before that with the exchanges.

Then the mayor gave a dinner with his wife for both mayors and for Sophie and me again to have more conversations.

On Monday, we visited the Lycee Ledoux, which was their counterpart.

It's their version of high school.

And we saw at school, we had many conversations about how their school system differs from ours.

And we were taken on a tour of the school, including a classroom where we interacted with the students who gave speeches in English.

It was a group of a class where the students were learning English, and they made their presentations in English.

and then we had a dedication ceremony just as we dedicated the street in front of McGuffey down to the mall from High Street, Esri de Besançon is an honorary name.

They have long hat or what they call a roundabout in Besançon that is named around about Charlottesville and there was a formal dedication of that which had never been done before and they installed a big brass plate there and both layers got out the shovels and planted the tree

together.

There were many speeches there, both mayors spoke and also I spoke as well.

And then I met with, oh we had a taste, we had a tasting of local products and wines down in a, you know, you talk about wine cabs, caves, so it was a cave underneath one of the beautiful government buildings where we had wine tasting.

and then I met with Dominique Lévry who's helped us make all these exchanges possible.

She's worked with us a lot along with Arlette.

Then on Tuesday morning, the group departed, Besançon, whereas Mayor Walker and I remained for a while.

And we went to a restaurant there with Arlat, our head of international relations, because it was the restaurant where we're going to have an exchange between the Ivy Inn chef, Angelo Vangelopoulos, and the chef, Christophe, in this coming summer.

And so I hope that you all will come when he's here

and then after that I met further with the mayor's wife.

We went off together somewhere.

Now, our delegation was comprised of the following people, and as I call your name, will you please stand and come up here?

Terry DeCentio, and I'm going to have, as they speak, they're going to give any relationships they may have, like Terry is a co-chair of the Sister City Commission.

And so we had both heads of organizations and people involved with organizations and just citizens who were interested in going.

And I would like, before you speak, to mention that we extend our appreciation and our thanks to Sophie Parson, who's the director of the Alliance Francaise,

for her competent translation of French to English for Mayor Walker at various public speaking events.

Mayor Walker spoke many times eloquently, eloquently I might add.

So thank you.

And also for her ongoing translations for Mayor Walker and the rest of the group.

Okay.

Thank you all for having us here tonight and letting us share a little bit about the experience that we had.

I am the co-chair of the Sister City Commission and I'm also the representative to our Italian sister city, Poggio Accaiano, so I've been lucky enough that this is my second

trip to one of our sister cities.

It would have been wonderful to experience regardless, but it was particularly wonderful for me to have the experience of having been to our Italian sister city and this as well.

There were lots of things that were extremely meaningful, but I do have to say that the dedication of the roundabout and the planting, mutual planting of a tulip poplar

Hi.

Thank you.

I'm a long time Francophile, I grew up speaking French and this was, I've been to France many times, this was just marvelous, absolutely marvelous.

One thing they did that impressed me I think the most was that the mayor and the art historian guru got them to open up the art museum that's actually closed for renovations till almost Christmas.

Thank you for the invitation to come tonight.

I'm just a citizen of Charlottesville.

I'm not a member of the Sister City Commission, but I also am a lifelong Francophile.

And for me, the truly special thing about being able to participate in this visit was the learning across cultures and the cultural exchange that comes out of being able to plant yourself in another city on another continent for a week

and discover that community from the inside out, which was what we were allowed to do, not just as tourists, but as special invitees.

And that cultural exchange goes on and on because I would like to introduce to you Tom LaRoche.

Anyone else here?

This very week,

A delegation of students has come to Charlottesville from a lycée, a high school in Beaux-en-sans to stay with host families and to learn about our high school education system.

And we have two of them here tonight.

Welcome.

Thanks.

Thank you so much, welcome.

Yes, welcome.

And our goal?

Our goal for these students is to have a similar kind of experience.

Of course, they may not be going to museums or they may not be going to the theater, but they are diving in and living la vie American while they are here.

So like us, they get an immersion experience and that cross-cultural learning and exchange just continues.

They're staying with families here in the community, so they have a rich experience.

We have 26 students here from the Lisie Pasteur at the moment for a week.

I had thought that it was 23, but it is 26.

Hello.

Hi.

I'm Stacey Evans.

I'm an artist at the McGuffey Art Center.

My interest in going to Bey Saison was to create imagery, but to also

see if there's a type of visual arts workshop that we can establish between the two cities.

I was able to talk with Sylvie Smit, who is a part of the international projects leader in education over there and was able today to talk to three teachers that are in town with their group, with the Besaison group here.

Stacy took beautiful photos for us, many of which you will be seeing on Facebook.

We have a Facebook page and the City of Charlottesville page.

Then next to Pammy Keviny.

Good evening.

Bonjour, Madame Lemaire and council members.

I was on the trip as one of the members of the Sister City Commission and I'm also an arts editor for a local Seville Weekly paper.

and I was most impressed just being in an environment where art, culture, literature, music were just such a part of everyday life and how beautifully integrated it was into people's lives with no effort and so publicly supported.

So, I'll leave it at that.

Thank you so much.

Hello, thank you for having us this evening.

I just feel like this trip was a trip of a lifetime for me.

I had always wanted to go to France, and being able to see it from the inside perspective was so much better than I could have even imagined.

And since I'm the representative from the greater Charlottesville area, not living in the city, I was especially impressed with the tramway.

and the fact that I stayed outside of the loop of the city there and I was able to get back and forth and walk.

It was wonderful to be able to walk.

And they received us so warmly.

Hi, I'm Julia Kudravitz.

I'm the owner of the New Dominion Bookshop on the downtown wall.

I went as a community member, but also as a, hopefully it's representative of downtown, as a downtown businesswoman interested in the arts.

I visited some bookstores there and met some bookstore owners.

There was a literary festival happening at the same time.

and we discussed literature and the arts in America and in France.

We hope we can set up some exchanges.

I was very impressed by how much public arts funding there is, both at a local and a federal level.

It's really, really well organized and they really politically value the arts.

I also really loved going to the high school there.

We went to an English class and just seeing how many students come

to our city, to CHS and Monticello and other places.

They love coming to Homecoming, I think, this week.

It's like a really great time for them, and I hope that we can continue to send students over there and make that a priority.

I would like to mention too that we're hoping that we might end up having an exchange, like having a French author at our book festival.

Madam Mayor, member of the Council, thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

I'm a French citizen, recently arrived in Charlottesville, I like it very much, very happy to be here, and I'm the director of the Alliance Francaise of Charlottesville, we are a non-for-profit organization on Harris Street, and I was part of this delegation.

It was a great honor for me to contribute to this delegation, part with some translation work for the members, and we really had a great, wonderful time together, so it was a great Charlottesville community moment as well.

What impressed me the most during this visit, and it may sound strange as I'm a French citizen, but it was the hospitality we received from our guests in our sister city commission.

People, incredible people, were willing to open, in my case, the houses.

They're scheduled for us and all the beautiful things they have in this city.

We were stopped very often in the streets, asked to take pictures or selfies with.

Mayor, you may remember those policemen who stopped us, but

just for a picture, so that was okay, no trouble.

And we also, the opportunity for projects and not only educational that we saw there, it's really incredible and I hope we can take the train there and be meeting them there for their willingness to cooperate with us.

And the last thing, it's really the love the citizens have for our city here, for our country, the United States, and that was really flagging during all our trips, so that was a really beautiful experience.

Just to mention that the Alliance Francaise is a great source of citizen support for the sister city relationship with Beaux-en-Sons, and it is an international organization.

We're very fortunate to have that in Charlottesville.

It adds to our cultural richness here in Charlottesville.

and again thank you Sophie for your help.

Hello everyone, Mayor Walker, good to see you again.

I went as a musician and Wes, I'm very evangelical since the events in Charlottesville two summers ago on the relevance of jazz music to world

Culture, basically, and social concerns.

I didn't used to push this much, but since those events, my position as a white person playing black music, the music of black America, makes me feel that this is a very significant thing to share.

And my theory is, this music went around the world and changed everybody's hearing.

So we went to France and met Damien Grelot, who was a

Musician there who really invited us invited me to participate and he was incredible playing also

Music of Black America, that's where it's coming from, what he's playing, jazz music.

And it's beautiful to see that worldwide.

You see it worldwide now.

Also, I just want to say that another reason I went, full disclosure, was because I knew that Mayor Walker was going to go, and I looked forward for the opportunity to interact with her, and I was so impressed with your eloquence and accuracy in your speeches there.

Sandy Anderson's not able to be with us tonight, our other member of the delegation.

Everyone take one.

Please.

And this is a picture of the mayor of Roosevelt.

I have summarized it on the sheet but we have all kinds of exchanges coming up and good things coming out of this visit.

Is there anyone who would like to comment on the consent agenda?

Sarah, we may need a consent agenda sign up sheet.

Yeah.

My name is Louis Schultz.

I live at 1809 East Market Street.

Council's first order of business after I speak will be to vote on tonight's consent agenda.

The first item is the approval of the minutes from the last regular meeting and four special meetings.

Council is getting closer to following the law now that these special meetings are at least mentioned in the agenda, but there's an ongoing problem since the public still can't see the actual minutes of those special meetings.

The city's meeting calendar indicates that on October 3rd, council met in closed session to discuss the recruitment process for the city manager and chief of staff and cited a section of Virginia code that doesn't authorize that.

Council was going to do the same thing at an October 8th meeting, but I wrote to them in advance to warn them that it would be illegal to do so.

The minutes from the October 8th meeting either record that council violated the law after being warned not to or dropped that item, which is an admission that the discussion that took place on October 3rd violated open meeting laws.

The public can't see minutes from either meeting.

The same thing happened on September 17th when the minutes of 13 meetings were approved, most of which still can't be found online.

Among them were minutes from September 10th when council held its first meeting under the remote meeting policy it approved only three weeks earlier.

Mike Signer called in, but the minutes of the meeting, which I had to FOIA, don't record where Mr. Signer called in from or why it was necessary.

Both the new policy and Virginia Code require that information to be recorded.

A million dollars a year spent on the city attorney's office and council's other support staff still isn't enough to make sure council meets legally or keeps proper records.

Also being approved tonight are minutes from October 1st when I asked city attorney John Blair for an explanation of why Maurice Jones had $80,000 in loans forgiven when his contract requires them to be repaid.

According to those minutes, and I'm quoting directly, there was a resolution by council on July 2nd, 2018 that approved an alternative arrangement for Mr. Jones' exit from city employment and based upon that,

the $80,000 loan was forgiven based on the contract from 2015.

That raises a few questions since that explanation does not accurately describe what council approved on July 2nd, is completely different from what was reported in August when it was claimed that Jones's original contract authorized the loan to be forgiven and differs from Mayor Walker's admission on the Schilling Show on October 3rd that I was right and that Jones is not entitled to that money.

Another very significant fact about Maurice Jones' contract that has not yet been addressed is that it was never a valid contract in the first place.

Virginia Code section 15.2-1503 clearly says, and I'm quoting, all appointments of officers and hiring of other employees by locality shall be without definite term.

unless for temporary services not to exceed one year.

Jones's contract, Police Chief Rachelle Brockney's contract, Interim City Manager Mike Murphy's contract, and Al Thomas's still secret employment contract all violate that law.

Council knows that and the city attorney knows that.

That law is even cited in Murphy's contract and then violated in the section that Deputy City Attorney Allison Manson-Davies tried to illegally withhold from the public.

It is imperative that the city treasurer act immediately to recover the funds that have been improperly paid to Maurice Jones.

No, not yet.

So there are no amendments.

Item A, minutes of council meetings, October 1st, October 3rd, October 4th, October 8th, and October 11th, 2018.

Item B, appropriation, VDOT primary extension paving project funds, $31,441, second of two readings.

Item C, appropriation, insurance reimbursement for fire truck settlement, $89,369.91, second of two readings.

Item D, resolution, funding agreement between Senior Center at Belvedere and City, first of one reading.

Item E, resolution, approved permit parking in 600 block of Hinton Avenue, first of one reading.

Item F, ordinance, zoning text amendments requiring temporary use permits for temporary service.

Parking facilities and temporary construction yards, second of two readings.

Second.

All right, any further questions?

All right, it carries four to one, four to zero.

Mayor Walker, Council have a number of items that are follow-up from our October 1st meeting.

First among those is a question from Council about voucher rates for this area and what the difference might be and whether we're operating from 2016 rates for housing vouchers.

We do have that data.

It does appear that there is a difference, although it is small, between the rates that are approved by the Housing Authority right now and what they could be.

Approximately $30 for efficiencies, $17 for one bedrooms, $8 for two bedrooms, $25 for three bedrooms, and $94 on a four bedroom apartment.

The other option that needs to be explored

is to discuss with the Housing Authority there's an option which in my understanding they have not availed themselves of in the past which is to go up to a hundred and ten percent without HUD approval of the fair market value which would make a much more significant adjustment to the potential vouchers and so we have that on our list to explore with Mr. Duffield.

We discussed in the same meeting the possibility of scheduling a work session to go deeper on behavioral health services in the community.

It's my understanding that the mayor has agreed to a staff proposal for December the 12th, and if that is true and council is okay with that, then we'll reach out to the different behavioral health organizations and begin the planning for that.

Ms. Carpenter asked some questions about 10th and Henry where it kind of bends there after the parking lot at Washington Park and we've had the traffic engineer out on site

and it's actually not so much created just by where the parking spaces are approved on either side of the road as the overall width of the road and so the traffic engineer has suggested

one of three courses of action.

One is don't do anything because the conflicts for folks where they might have to wait are occasional and probably mostly in the summertime.

Two, take parking away from two different houses on the street on one side.

which would result in the loss of five spaces for neighbors.

Or two, if you really looked at the width of that street, then you would only have one side parking and we would lose 15 to 20 neighborhood parking spots.

So, it is the recommendation of the traffic engineer that we would stay with the current situation.

I want you all to be advised since it was raised by citizen.

There was a question about what was the process by which some neighborhoods submitted different projects to the capital improvement program to different departments for consideration.

and how did North Downtown do that but Belmont-Carlton didn't.

Actually, North Downtown did submit to the CIP for our consideration as did seven neighborhoods including Belmont-Carlton and that was the result of some comments that I conveyed to council where in the last quarterly meeting of neighborhood association leaders

This is brought up by Mr. Ned Mickey.

He brought it to you again in public comment during one of our work sessions and there were 17 total projects from seven neighborhoods that were brought forward and staff and departments are considering them right now.

What would it take to bring back the Neighborhood Leadership Institute or some project like that be my recommendation to council after talking with staff that

Probably the right combination of players to take lead on that would be the council outreach and communications person, Matt Murphy, Brian Wheeler, and Alex Akafina.

And then I would coordinate with them about what the potential curriculum for that group would be.

We have a quarterly meeting coming up with neighborhood presidents where I'll address some of the questions Ms. Galvin had about the use and communication with that group.

We're trying to iron out the date right now.

It was supposed to be this Thursday.

There are a few conflicts.

I believe it will be November the 1st in city space.

talked a little bit about the question I believe Mr. Signer had stemming from Ms. Katz's comments about kind of what is the relative amount of support that each distinct neighborhood association gets from the city and should that be more structured or formalized or should it be kind of decentralized in the way that it has generally been in the city

Neighborhoods decide what level of organization they'd like to have.

And so we've had some discussion with staff.

I'm going to bring this to the next neighborhood president's meeting.

In communities where it's a little bit more formalized, that's typically about how do you access dollars from the city or planning services.

And so it may not be so much about the support that we're giving neighborhood associations, particularly.

how do they relate to their planners and how could they perhaps leverage resources.

There is a separate matter of is there assistance that should be given to neighborhood groups about obtaining their nonprofit status and that'll all be part of our discussion.

Because that would be a key element of anybody receiving dollars for projects from the city.

There's a question from Mr. Fogel and I have a meeting to discuss his concerns about internal affairs next Monday morning, or actually Monday afternoon, I apologize.

Mr. Blair has done some research.

It's going to be a little bit more than the two weeks in between council meetings for us to answer your question about changes to the affordable housing fund agreements and the possibility of some inspections or a clawback, but that is certainly underway.

Mr. Acafina and I have talked and as a matter of update, the 2019 budget has a position that was approved by council and he is interested in advertising for an engineering role for that.

The final matter for follow-up is Chief Brackney had been asked by Council some questions about warrantless searches and she is available this evening to give you an update and a quick PowerPoint should you want to do that.

This is an update from the City Manager, Mr. Fogle.

Good evening, Mayor.

This is in follow up to several of the Councillors who had asked questions about what does that look like in terms of encounters that lead to detentions, how there's a possibility that we can mine some of our data out of the, how we mine some of our data out of our systems.

and then what does that look like in terms of input from council and what data they would like to see us additionally mine so that we can have the opportunity to start posting all of our data online.

So the first thing I had our staff do and from the time I've arrived is to start looking at the data much more in depth.

There were numbers that had been given out previously.

under different committees and different boards like the disproportionate minority contact, whether it was the juvenile studies or whether now the adult study that is underway.

So the first thing I did is what does standardization look like?

We had not had a real standardized process by which we collected data.

Whatever person was in front of the data stream was the person who used their own sense of what was going on to try to pull the data out.

So what we now have done is we are now tracking all detentions regardless of the outcome.

The previous standards, it was just self-reporting.

Whatever the officers had submitted as part of an incident report and had checked a certain code that we could pull out of the system is the only thing that we were doing.

We had not standardized our encounter definitions so that the officers were clear on when they were moving from possibility of a consensual encounter into an investigatory encounter

and then possibly a detention or arrest or release.

And then now we're also triangulating all of our data.

I now have them pulling it out by CAD report, incident reports that are submitted by the officers, and then that's also verified through all-body CAM.

So when we do submit a report now, we have three different data points and points of entry by which we can validate the data and pull out the specifics.

Again, prior

The collection was strictly based on self-reporting by the officers in the police report.

So we are not relying on self-reporting any longer and we now have mandated fields they must fill out that did not exist prior.

We've also now defined definitions so that the officers are very clear about when they're moving from an encounter that's consensual.

Sometimes you'll hear the word mere encounter.

That's the encounter where an officer can come up to you, engage you, and you have the opportunity to leave.

You do not have to engage with them.

You can just go on about your day.

If they approach you, they can ask you different things like your name and things of that.

You do not have to submit to their authority.

under those genuine or those mere encounters.

Reasonable suspicion.

The officers are now very clear on what the standards are for reasonable suspicion and it must be articulated very clearly in every incident report.

When we're using the reasonable suspicion standard, that is the standard that has been established through law in which they have to have a very well-founded

Suspicion of criminal activity.

They must articulate what that is.

The only time that they are then under those conditions allowed to pat a person down of their outside clothing for weapons only, they cannot look for contraband, they cannot look for drugs, is if they can articulate that the person they encountered, they currently believe is armed and or dangerous.

So in other words, they can only look for weapons to touch the outside of the clothing, cannot go into their pockets at that point in time.

Then the last one is the probable cause encounter in which you have to have facts and circumstances in which the officer's knowledge or would be reasonable knowledge based on the officer's standards, that there's sufficient information to encounter them, that there is a belief that an offense has been committed.

The standard is that the belief would rise to the level that they could have a warrant issued for that arrest.

But it would be a case in which they did not have to have a warrant, an offense that was committed in their presence or certain felonies on which they could arrest on site, domestic violence, some of those other ones of that nature.

So very clearly now defining when we do all of the reviews what the standard has to be in each and every one of our reports.

So here's what the data is starting to look like and what we're going to ask for is tell us where you need more information.

I looked at the month of September and had them start pulling out the data for the month of September.

For the month of September, they had a total of 62 encounters of a various rate in which there were 82 individuals within those 62 encounters.

Of those 62 encounters, 30 of them did result in arrest.

The other 19 had probable cause to arrest, but they did not introduce them into the criminal justice system.

The other ones, they had reasonable suspicion that could have risen to the level of arrest.

Again, they did not.

And there were two consensual encounters.

As you start to look at the demographics, which we're now asking more of when they encountered individuals, what those demographics looked like overall.

So of those 62 encounters, 82 of those individuals were part of that.

Of those arrests, you can see the numbers going straight across.

They had 36 arrests.

They had probable cause to arrest and did not in 29 cases.

They had reasonable suspicion in 14 where there was the possibility it could have escalated to an arrest and three consensual encounters.

Now what's interesting is in our data, if you'll see a note that I have there, is Asian is not included in one of the categories and neither is Hispanic or Latino.

We are now mandating a field in which they must capture that, so that we're capturing race and ethnicity.

as well and that was not captured prior.

They had no default and then the officers could actually move through a system without adding ethnicity.

They now cannot do that as part of the data collection processes.

One of those 62 incidents, what I started having them look at is the non-officer initiated versus the officer initiated.

Non-officer initiated is those calls where there's a possibility someone dialed 911, the officer was flagged down or there was some encounter in which the officer was not the impetus for the contact or the detention.

So these are what we're dealing with strictly is their detentions.

of those there were 27 that were officer initiated.

The reason I have an asterisk beside that is they are still not pulling out the data as clearly as I would like it.

And what I mean by that is if you see that there's 35 non-officer initiated, officer witnessed and reasonable suspicion are more than 27.

What they're doing is actually if it was an officer witness and it was a 911 call,

as they were coming up to that and they were witnessing a crime of progress, they're actually putting that in under Officer Witness.

We're now pulling it out for October or the next set of data as we continue to scrub the data and give you more information so that we're strictly saying was it initiated by an officer or was it initiated through some other means.

And that way we get a clearer picture of who we're encountering and how we're encountering them.

of those 27 officer initiated contacts is what I've started to drill down on versus those ones that may have been introduced from the other systems.

When the officer initiated, they had 27 officer initiated contacts with 33 individuals.

In other words, they may have had 27 ways they encountered them, but there were being multiple persons that they encountered.

And that often occurs in a traffic stop, that if you have someone in a vehicle in a traffic stop, they may have more than one individual.

in that vehicle.

So that would be counted as a single incident.

Our current way of counting is under what's called UCR.

UCR allows us to have individuals counted versus incidents that are counted and we're trying to make it much more reflective of how many times we actually engage.

These are the times of the 27 that we had probable cause to arrest and how they were moved.

So of those 27, 10 were introduced into the system by arrest.

And you can see by the type of crimes, alcohol-related, it's oftentimes the call or the see someone with alcohol as their open containers and things of that nature, major crimes, et cetera.

As they looked at all of these individuals, these resulted in arrest by

gender and or race we will be able to pull it out even more specifically to include Hispanic and Latino as well as Asian communities as well as we start to drill down a bit further into our data.

These are officer-initiated of those same 27, so I'm going to stay focused on when the officer was the one who decided to engage in some way, that they had probable cause to arrest but did not arrest.

In other words, they didn't introduce a person into the criminal justice system.

Of those, they had 12 of which they defaulted outside of a system.

Again, if you look at the type of encounters that they're having, it's alcohol related.

There are major crimes in which they believe that there was some crime going on.

And if you have probable cause, you may have a victim who says, I don't want to prosecute, but the officer has found the suspect in that case.

Finally, we have five incidents in which there was reasonable suspicion but it did not rise to any level beyond any further.

What I want to make note of is in the traffic incident where I have the traffic one there, we through our triangulation now have discovered that this report was sent back and that the officer believed they had reasonable suspicion but upon our scrutiny did not rise to the level of what we believe the officer should have encountered those individuals for as part of that traffic stop.

So what we're finding is that as I'm continuing to have them drill down that we are discovering if there is not rising to our standards now that they have these very clear ones.

When that does occur, they are now being sent for either retraining, they're being counseled or something of that nature so that we are clear on how we encounter and the standards of those encounters.

also what it comes up a lot is what do our pat-downs look like when do we search people when we encounter them when we don't have probable cause that's that reasonable suspicion some people will refer to it as the New York model the stop-and-frisk it is our model is the pat-downs as authorized by Terry of those they did three

but we had nine vehicles that we actually searched.

So the persons themselves that we actually put our hands on were three individuals.

And when you see the individuals where there's an asterisk, there was a consent.

The officers asked for consent to search and the person said, yeah, sure, search me.

There was no contraband found on any of those, including in those vehicles.

If you could, except for the narcotics, that line under evidence recovered, narcotics five, they were found in vehicles only not on persons.

And then finally, what are some of the results once we did have the opportunity for enforcement action?

Of those 27 times that they encountered the 33 different individuals, 6 of them resulted in arrests, 4 they issued summons, and 24 there was a warning that was issued and documented that the person received a warning.

This is what the communities look like in which they encountered them.

This is a flawed process and we are now correcting it for the next one.

They have been capturing it by where the officer not initiated the original stop, but where they finally stopped them.

So if there was a vehicle pursuit, they didn't capture it where the starting of it was, they captured it at the end.

That does not give me the type of data to tell me what neighborhoods we are in or where there may be.

A person is going to go towards their own home neighborhood, and that's going to be more reflective.

But if I can get it from where they first encountered the individual, that's much more reflective to see if there are any patterns or practices of engaging persons who

from the communities and it will give me a better picture of what that looks like.

So that's what our year to date looks like of the 82 individuals.

These numbers will start to rise as we are asking for more and more data because we are now giving you data for every person in which there was a detention.

Previous presentations, they only gave you data for detentions in which there was no final outcome.

So now in the interest of transparency, every single person that we encounter, which there is a detention, you will have that data available for.

So what do we do moving forward?

We're trying to see if there's any additional information to drill down any further based on Council's request from the last meeting in which Councilor Galvin said that she wanted additional information and how we're getting that.

I followed up with several of the other members on Council

to ask is there anything else that we need to look at.

So part of this will be asking of you, here's what we're having, here's how we're putting it together as a format to make it a very readable, easy format.

There are certain things we will not be able to give you because in this data is also juveniles.

So when we're giving you data, we'll give you that information but not enough information

for locations of certain ones because we don't want you to be able to identify a juvenile and we have certain protections in place that juveniles are afforded under Virginia law.

We are requesting and sorry I'm sure you've heard this before but we do need a person full time to do data mining until we can continue to be able to get data out of our system in a more

Software related way.

It's imperative that we have somebody who does all of our data mining so that it is an accurate, complete, rich, thick, descriptive way in which we engage every person.

Our goal is once the format is finalized, and this is as close as I could see at this point, and again, wanting your information, is that we will post our data on the website within 15 business days for the preceding month.

We've committed to that.

That gives them 15 days to look at the full complete month ahead to start pulling out any of the data.

And the individual assigned to that is currently a part-time individual who is doing that data mining for us.

So again, what I'm going to ask for is your input as to where there are gaps and what we may be pulling out of the system, what we believe the community may want to see, and then meeting our own accountability standards of putting something on Earth for the next 15 days preceding.

We would be willing to do another update in November at one of the other council meetings that would then show whatever additional information you want from September and October so that you can start to see trends for what's going on.

And then we have a clear format of how we will post every single month.

And just one quick question.

So in the numbers that you presented today, these include juveniles or they don't?

It's approximately 10 juveniles.

And the majority of the juveniles, giving you a little bit of information, were in a traffic stop.

So they were in two cars in a traffic stop.

If you would like, we can indicate that there were juveniles involved and pull that number out even more and stay away from identifying information.

So thanks for the report and responding to the community issues as we had in the last meeting.

One thing, in regards to the data that was brought forth, I have a couple of questions in regards to the data.

The numbers in which you provided to us are a little different, seems to go a little bit more in depth and show some other issues that we've had in comparison to the reports we've gotten in years past from our previous police chiefs.

So for those who provided that information before or who were kind of acting upon these things, how do you handle that?

So I'm not sure 100% of the question, but I think one of the keys is just standardizing how we pull information out, understanding what fields we're looking for.

And again, as you're familiar when we're doing studies, if we don't get the correct information and pull the exact data points out correctly,

then it's easy to skew data.

It's easy to just put percentages out there and then not be held accountable or responsible for them.

The way I'm handling it is the more information we give you, the more data we give you, posting it on websites, being transparent of how we're engaging any of our citizens or even those individuals who may not be our citizens of Charlottesville but

or greater Charlottesville community, the more data we give you, the more explanations being upfront about what we're doing, having it up there as quickly as possible allows us to be transparent and it sends the message to the officers that every single thing that they're doing is being looked at by three different lens as well.

And they're growing comfortable with my style of saying I want this, I need this, and sending reports back, this doesn't meet my standards.

So they are becoming much more comfortable with some of my sticky notes as the lieutenants that are back there asking those questions that I don't know if they have a lot of that review.

And again, it's also with the training.

We are part of a regional training academy, so are we training to the level of our standards and standards of excellence that we're hoping to see here in Charlottesville?

just a couple of follow-up questions in that regard.

So the officers who we may have seen in terms of investigative detentions, who may, because I think since you've been on, we've seen a difference in, me personally, I've seen a difference in our officers and their mannerisms and whatnot.

But for those who may have had negative encounters with our residents for things in which they shouldn't have had encounters about, how do you deal with those situations or those officers?

We can generically tell you, and this has, in the entrance of transparency, when I spoke with all of the two, the one who's mining and the one who we were putting together, we've actually, in the last

since I've been here we've been sending back reports and we've now discovered at least 15 of reports in which I said you need more information on this.

That they may have even risen to the level of judicial scrutiny but is it the way that we would have said hey

This is how we place.

What we do is we retrain.

They can be counseled either formally or informally.

Even informal counseling is put in their personnel files as well so that we can track.

And then we'll start digging even deeper into this to say of the 27 encounters.

are they the same officers who are doing the self-initiated?

Okay, and that may be fine, but are we in the same communities?

Are these also the same people?

So that we're not just looking at a single data point of that being a person, but is it the same person?

So everything's documented.

I appreciate that information.

Are you open to, I mean I thought your presentation was good, are you open to maybe collaborating with community groups in regards to discussing the information or even thinking about

Best Practices or different measures.

I know we have some very active community members who are very interested in this information.

Yes, and the key is making sure everything's up first so people have the data and then can ask an informed question.

At the time, we're just in the dark because we don't have the information in front of us, right?

And if we put it up in enough time that the individuals can say or the communities can say, I want to have a discussion about that, what I'm hoping to get is the formatting in which we do it and if there's any additional data that we're attempting to collect, however they want to send that in,

Chief at Charlottesville.org that says, is there a possibility of capturing this?

I would have no problem with actually, if this is the formatting that we're looking at, this could go up on our website and people could have access to it if the PowerPoint way is easier.

I mean, it's not going to be a PowerPoint, but very clearly explaining each of these things that we have an entire section that says monthly data, monthly reports, monthly contacts.

My last question, I think you just answered it.

It was going to be revolving around why didn't we get a chance to see the report before maybe the public get a chance to see the report before it's presented.

Right.

Let me address that to Dr. Bellamy and just say that I have never observed any report from the manager on any item or, you know, and I've been here a long time where we announced ahead of time what those items were we were supposed to follow up on from last time.

So if the council wants those enumerated in the agenda, that these are the eight things we're following up from from the previous meeting, that's a new practice.

Say so.

But, you know,

With regard to the intrigue about we were hiding something, this is not any surprise.

This is what we always do.

So the officers who are involved in the stops.

Yeah, is that something that can, how many officers were involved in the total number of stops?

Of the 27?

Yeah.

Is that something that you could add to the...

Right.

Is it the same officer engaging over and over again?

Yes.

I can add that easily to that as they go through the reports to see how many contacts that individual officer had that it's officer initiated.

And then making sure that as we even delve down even deeper, is that the same officer that we have to continue to even possibly send their reports back or send back to training and things of that nature?

Mayor Walker, I have a question.

Thank you very much.

I think I appreciate this format.

It would be wonderful, I think, in November, that when we have another update, that it is on the full agenda, so that it is now.

You've got the OK that this format works.

And then we can just have maybe some longitudinal information by that time.

I know, I know.

Trend, yeah, the beginning of trend.

Yes.

But speaking of trends, because we have in the past, something like the last five years ago, with the concern raised about

and at that time we were calling it stop and frisk.

And there was a concern about concealed narratives, the narratives, the police narratives weren't available.

So now we've got, is there any way that that old data that clearly was not packaged well?

Is there any way at all to compare then to now?

So before I say yes and or no, my response would be

who could do that, you know, who do we even have on staff to do that would be the first.

And because the part-time person we have is doing this current data and getting out the information that's much more real time and real actions.

I could commit to, like I said, even possibly looking at August, because we have September that we have in some real format, and we might have enough of it to be able to pull out in the August to maybe look at an August, September, October for November.

That would be it.

And then the second thing I would ask is the value to doing that.

I know they have a lot of data that they've obtained from the prior disproportionate minority contact studies and that they're now attempting to even pull out from the old formatting and that may be and Mr. Murphy could probably speak with a bit more authority on that with the groups that are heading up that new project and there is a

We actually do have a commission and they put out an RFP for that.

There are people who are looking at that and maybe that's the experts that we allow to do that and then hopefully have a conversation about what that data really looks like and are we now instituting best practices to capture and answer the questions as I tell our team, we need to be able to answer questions that individuals don't know to ask yet.

And the full-time position, is that something that you plan to have for us by our next meeting?

It's only we're in the planning process for budgeting.

So I have the person who is temporary, is a temporary part-time that is doing that, who was brought in for just that temporary duties.

indicated that February would probably be his last day of doing that, either mid-February somewhere, and we can get a more specific date.

But absolutely, if it's one of those proposals that we could get in front of you sooner versus part of our budgetary ask, I'd support that.

and we could get a job description out if we could have HR.

Yeah, I think it's a matter, Mayor, whether we have the budget right now with vacancies to just go ahead and post that and then

you know redeploy personnel or whether it's wise to bring it forward to you and just ask for the new role right away because if we're working a timeline where somebody's gonna be really retired now then I think that recruitment should probably start pretty quickly.

I do want to add

that one of the other issues for Ms. Galvin's question that she posed is that we have undergone a significant change in the data system which is creating a major problem right now and that data system that we've transitioned to

First encountered an 18 month implementation delay and continues to have a lot of deliverables that are not meeting our expectations.

So, you know, it is doesn't track things in the way that we anticipated when it was put out for bid and the way that we were able to provide data in the past.

was basically by entering parallel incident-based reports so that the chiefs could make good on their promise to the community that we were tracking these investigative detentions.

And this system doesn't do that.

One last question for me, Chief.

So one of the things we've noticed is in terms of reporting and demographics, oftentimes individuals who are Latinx or Asian, they may identify as white, and then sometimes that convalesce the numbers.

So how do you plan to address that description?

Because I was just getting a message from someone who identifies as African American, they look African American, but on the census, they're identified as white.

so that's why we're now having a default with ethnicity as well so before we've only been tracking race not ethnicity so that the officer will now not be able to move beyond that

and as simple as I tell people it's ask.

Because if someone's Lennoxian, if they say they're white you can't say no you're not.

Right.

And there is, you know, white non-Hispanic and particularly if you're coming from Spain, Portugal, they will often identify as white.

That is correct.

Got you.

Is there anything else?

Any questions?

Is there any additional information that you would like beyond the officers and can't say yes to your five-year previous trends?

Which officers and how often they're encountering?

One, quickly, even if you can't, is it possible if you have trouble, and I'm understanding the problem with the data system, but even having that old information, because there were prior reports done by Chief Longo, Chief Thomas, even putting them out there and critiquing them as to why they're not telling us good information.

I can find the old reports.

I did find the old PowerPoint that Chief Dupuis had submitted.

We remember it.

I didn't see it, but I found the report as well.

And again, from day one, how do we give more information and better information?

Because that's what we're accountable for.

And to be more specific, when we make a mistake, we own it.

And that's what we say every single time.

Is there anything else?

Thank you.

I appreciate you.

All right, now we are moving on to community matters.

Hi, so I'm Chantelle Bingham.

I'm speaking on behalf of the Charlottesville Food Justice Network in support of the Food Equity Initiative.

I believe it's agenda item number six.

So I prepared some words for you tonight.

These are the words of Tamara Wright.

She's a mother of three in Friendship Court as well as a resident board member of the Piedmont Housing Alliance.

When you're trying to make every single meal healthy for your child, SNAP doesn't go far at all.

Not to mention that availability of affordable, nutritious, and high quality food in this area is non-existent.

I mean, we used to have Kathy's Market, that place I could go and buy quality fruits and veg in bulk.

Then that got replaced with a high-end store I can't buy nothing out of.

That's why the Urban Agricultural Collective of Charlottesville is so important.

It helps me make ends meet when it comes to quality food for my kids.

Still, many times I am choosing between eating and keeping the electricity on.

Well, we've been seen in the dark because the full stomachs and health is more important to me, but other moms don't make that choice.

It's time for us to start taking a look at the facts of our city.

Many residents living in low-income areas are facing limitations when it comes to acquiring healthy foods.

1 in 6 are struggling with hunger and from 2001 to 2016 the number of households receiving SNAP increased by 160% in Charlottesville.

And when it comes to diet-related illnesses, the CDC reports that the Charlottesville black residents are four times more likely to die of diabetes than their white counterparts.

So race and health is huge in our city.

Today you're going to hear from Thomas Jefferson Health District, Rebecca Schmidt on the Food Equity Initiative and a request for funds in support of Charlottesville City's decision making as well as Thomas Jefferson's Health District.

I'm here on behalf of the Charlottesville Food Justice Network comprised of 25 organizations working in all 18 neighborhoods as well as 8.

Charlottesville Public City Schools.

Our reach touches 3,249 Charlottesville youth, more than 1,349 parents living in West Haven Friendship Court, Mickey Drive, Starr Hill, 1st and 6th Street Public Housing.

And as a network, our collective organizations grow more than 75,000 pounds of produce for distribution a year.

Partners such as City of Promise, City Schoolyard Gardens, UACC, Engage30 Youth in the Internship Program for Low-Income Communities, and Trinity Bread and Roses, as well as PV&J Fund, whose cooking class is engaging over 650 residents.

I'd also like to report that the local food hub, as well as Lowes and Fishes, does some incredible work trying to reach those 7,630 food-insecure citizens in our city.

But still this isn't enough.

Our programming does have impacts and I can go on about the Charlottesville Food Justice Network.

We need more line, systemic efforts around education, research, city planning and policy to uphold long-term change and keep people from suffering in the waters of hunger, to be quite frank with you, and start getting up.

and really thriving.

The Food Equity Initiative stands as a stepping stone towards this.

At this time, I know it's been a while, but I would like to ask people in the audience to stand if my words resonate with you.

Those standing behind me.

as well as 25 organizations, 276 people in that short term of advocacy that we've been able to do stand in support of building a food secure Charlottesville through initiatives such as the food equity initiative proposal from Thomas Jefferson Health District and I'm really asking that all of you consider voting yes for agenda item six.

I have one question for you ma'am.

One question for you.

So how do you respond to the individuals?

Yeah, whomever.

Can you see how that may

That's great.

Yeah, I hear you.

I grew up food insecure too.

I'm one of six and low income in North Carolina, but I went to UVA.

City of Promise is one of those on the ground organizations that's a part of the Charlottesville Food Justice Network.

And I kind of just also want to lean onto Tammy Wright's words.

She's a mom, a single parent.

And this isn't us telling people what to eat.

This is more about creating

Maybe, but I mean to me it's just about we need to be more strategic about planning, about redevelopment, and about things that we can do on a policy level.

We have the community organizations that are there on the ground meeting with people.

They want this food.

It's not us telling them what to eat.

This is coming from them, which is Charlottesville Food Justice Network.

I'm here to communicate to you that the city also needs to do something because these 25 organizations working day and night and growing food and giving it out is not a means to an end for food insecurity.

and you think this is a solution?

That's what I want to hear.

Thank you very much.

So, Myra Anderson.

Good evening.

I'm Justin Schimp.

I'm here to listen to our project latest scene, but I wanted to talk about a general housing concern I have in the city.

And that is that we really need to stop thinking and planning for cars and start thinking about people.

What I have observed is that in all my projects, people, our neighbors, are reduced to some impact.

It's more kids in the school.

It's more cars parked in the streets, more traffic.

You know, I never hear, like, oh, this project will enable now a single mom to walk her kid to school.

Or this project will enable someone to ditch a car, save some money, pay off their student loans.

Those are the sort of things that are very much part of the land planning business that I just don't hear anything about.

I think we need to start thinking about those things.

I think part of the problem, the reason we don't talk about those things is we sort of have this entrenched preservation of single family neighborhoods and preservation of that, you know, it's a wealth building thing, right?

People who have had these a long time have benefited from them.

and I understand that.

I understand their, you know, aversion to, you know, new things in the neighborhood, but you're sort of holding one class of housing above the other.

I don't think that's, it's maybe fine for the single-family housing, the owners, but it's not fine for everyone else who's trying to, you know, get ahead in this city.

You know, missing middle housing we talk about, it's really difficult.

The project we have here, you know, we are going through 12 months of rezoning, site plan, landscape plan, more parking for four more bedrooms.

So 8 to 12, that's it.

And so the reason we don't have a lot of missing middle housing is because every incentive is against you doing it.

You're better off just flipping your property to single-family housing, making a quick dollar, and moving on.

And I think that's something we've got to think more broadly about as we attempt to add some dents in the city.

One of the things we can do is think about parking.

Parking adds a lot of cost to any project.

You could add a lot of affordability to your neighborhoods by reducing parking requirements.

There are neighborhoods where there are just acres of empty streets where more density could put people parking those streets, yes.

that will be inconvenient maybe for some people.

But again, what are our priorities?

We have this public infrastructure sitting there to be used, and if we can't use it to sort of help people we say we're trying to help, what are we doing here?

I look at, I walk through the neighborhoods, we do our projects, and there's always the little signs, they're wonderful.

Wherever you're from, you're my neighbor.

Until they're worried about some new neighbor parking in front of their house.

Then they're all upset.

And I really just want to see that.

I really want to see a change in perspective on that.

I think that when I look at a car little project, and in general, well, many little projects like this, I thought that three or four added cars parked in the street would say, oh, we need to shut down a project of six units.

Think about the six families that could benefit from that project and weigh that against this impact of three or four cars.

Thank you for your time.

Michael Paine I just wanted to speak about last week the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report that I think should be at the center of every political conversation at every level.

The Paris Climate Accord agreement was for 2 degrees Celsius.

The IPCC's new report has shown that the scientific consensus is now that 2 degrees Celsius equals no Arctic ice in the winter, significant sea level change which will displace cities and coasts throughout the country, over 100 million people exposed to food and water scarcity,

at a minimum tens of millions of climate refugees from areas that are experiencing desertification, a reduction in bug population by over 50%, and this is what we have agreed to.

That was the goal, two degrees Celsius.

We are currently on track for over four degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century.

A scientist has called it a genocide in slow motion.

So,

What can we do about it at a local level?

Obviously, these are decisions that go much beyond just local decision, but giving the scale of the problem, I would propose that City Council consider one immediately divesting all City Council assets from the fossil fuel industry, which there is a clear precedent for.

City Council divested from South Africa during the anti-apartheid movement.

Two, to publicly pledge to have Charlottesville be a zero waste and zero net emission city by 2035, which other cities have done.

And again, the science tells us that is at a minimum what is needed to meet even the minimal Paris Climate Accord goals.

and then third to have the Office of Economic Development, in a similar way there's a comprehensive affordable housing strategy, have a comprehensive community development strategy to start thinking comprehensively about how we can reorient our local economy to be centered on community wealth building and cooperative economics to have the bedrock of our economy be things like community gardens, food co-ops, job training for rehabbing buildings to be renewable,

That is going to be the bedrock of our economy going forward.

And I think the conclusion of the report is simple but quite sobering.

And that is that averting climate catastrophe is no longer possible.

All that we have control over is the scale of the crisis and how we respond to it.

and I think what we will find is that the communities that respond best to climate change are strong communities that have built solidarity and so we need to be focusing on how we build a solidarity economy.

And I'll just end with this real quickly.

The affordable housing crisis has come about because 30, 40 years ago elected leaders had no long-term or mid-term planning or strategy.

That same mistake is happening throughout Virginia right now but this time the issue is climate change.

When our children and grandchildren look back

What will their evaluation be of the actions that our local governments took throughout Virginia?

I think Mr. Payne raises an amazingly urgent message.

It's something that I've been talking a lot about with many constituents all across the city ever since the U.N. report came out.

I'm going to be reaching out to Crystal Riddeball to kind of look at the longstanding

resolution on sustainability that this city has had for probably the last 10, 15 years and see where we are.

We are members of the Healthy Eating Active Living Coalition that is nationwide.

We have a resolution on that.

Part of the reason why we're so concerned about the standards and design manual tonight is that we wanna make sure that it is very much in keeping with our Streets That Work policy, which is about multimodal transportation.

given that a third of the greenhouse gas emissions comes from the transportation sector, getting our streets to be much more walkable and bikeable is essential at this point in time.

So we've got to make sure that that manual is done right.

That is in keeping with our whole ethos that we've had about sustainability.

But I do think we need to become much more aggressive.

And I am personally going to be starting to dig deep into how we can move to the next level from where we were on the

sustainability accords that we had.

I also have found out that we're going to be piloting hydrogen buses.

I got that from Mr. John Jones recently.

We looked at electric buses, but mind you, electricity is still based on coal and natural gas.

We don't have it to the point where we have batteries designed efficiently enough to be sustained by solar energy.

So we do need to look at these interim steps, but I am

Katrina Turner.

Good evening.

I just want to say that I do not want to keep coming here, every city council talking about my son's case.

We have all of our details.

We have all of our records.

We have everything.

It's there.

It's not going anywhere.

It's not like a 9-1-1 tape.

It's not going to be erased in six months.

We have that in place.

If we get to that point at a higher level, at a higher court, whatever that looks like in the future, that information is there.

If it's there for me to have, I want to know how I can get this information.

That's not all that's on here.

It's also on here how I complain that the records were changed.

how the chief of police states that subsequent evidence can be put on a police report two or three days later.

But my son's police report was not finished two weeks later.

What?

The chief has called me a liar right here.

You

You have accused an officer of lying in court about an injury you believe was deliberately caused by an officer when a set of keys hit Mr. Porter in the head, but that is not corroborated by the video available of the rest, the court transcript, or by any other information provided by an internal affairs investigator to date.

Where's the video, Chief Brackney, that you viewed

to help you with this.

Where's your video at?

Not just that.

She said I lied on the officer.

When did I lie on the officer?

This is why people don't want to file complaints.

It's because of what the police department does and comes at them.

But I've been at this for two years.

and y'all are still with our standing here going to tell me that y'all are not going to do anything after Chief Thomas told me that these records will be here when I need them.

What do I have to do to get these answers?

These are the lies I have been being told all this time.

What do I do?

Who's going to do anything about this?

What more do you want to hear off of this videotape?

I mean off of this tape recording.

What more do you want to hear?

There's a cover up in the police department and you know if this case is open, what it's going to do to that police department.

And does anybody in here know Pleasance?

Detective Pleasance?

They actually told me there was a thorough investigation done on him and nothing found on him.

That's not true.

Somebody, I need for something, Mike Murphy, Mr. Murphy, I need for something to be done.

Because they, I have literally been called a liar all up and through this.

Thank you.

Hold up, Mayor Walker, just one question.

So while we have Chief Brackney here, I know that there's been a great deal of discussion in regards to this particular case.

Ms. Turner has asked for a video.

Is there a video that you're aware of?

I mean, I don't know if you can, I mean, specific case.

So this case has been reviewed by, I believe, three different chiefs, two different managers, and myself was asked to review it as well.

Some of the allegations were that Ms. Turner's son was arrested based on racial bias, that there was excessive force, and that

The officers were rude or discourteous and when they were arresting him that they smiled as they arrested him as well.

And I said excessive force.

The first part is that, if I'm correct, the statement was that her son was found guilty

of those charges based on the officer's line.

The allegation is that our officers arrested him for racial bias and that he was found guilty.

In this case, he actually pled guilty to the charges.

The second part of this, the second part of it is, is there a video?

So since then, and when I looked at hers, we said video, it's a photo, it is not a video.

The video is, she had asked that her son was damaged and that he had injuries to him.

We used the jail intake photo of him in which there were no injuries or marks to his face whatsoever, saying that the officers had injured him and used excessive force.

and the second part of it is the third part of it is the third part of it is whether or not the officers were discourteous when they engaged her son.

The original finding was that the officers were not discourteous.

I sent the letter out that there is not enough information for any of us to determine whether an officer was discourteous.

It would have been perception, and I actually not resolved that where it had previously been unfounded.

So that actually changed based on me looking at the information, saying there were no independent witnesses to how the officers may or may not have smirked

when they were making the arrests.

There were no allegations that there were any words, there were no allegations that there were any words used according to the complaint.

So I hear you, Ms. Turner, but if I can't hear her explanation, then there's nothing that we can do.

We're trying to hear her perspective at all.

So it is a photo, not a video.

It says video instead of photo.

She provided us with a photo.

So the arrest that occurred in 2016, ultimately, the question was, were the officers racially motivated when they arrested her son?

The call came in from her son, who was ultimately arrested for domestic violence, to which he then pled guilty.

The second part of that was, OK.

So is there anything else?

Is there anything else?

Chief Thomas said these will always be here.

What do I have to do to get these?

So can I ask you where the video would have come from?

So if you tell me where the video would have come from, then I can ask where the video is.

OK, so what she's saying is that there isn't a video.

I have nothing else to say.

OK, so Mr. Wash, thank you.

Come on.

Katrina, I don't have eyes.

Wow.

Wow.

Again, if anything, she should have informed me and not you, Mayor Walker.

I still have not heard anything from that woman, because she spoke to you about Newton, and she shouldn't have did that.

Well, how did you get the letter?

She's the one told me she was supposed to write me a letter stating that she made a mistake.

I've never gotten that letter yet.

I've never gotten that letter yet.

So she never contacted me.

And that was wrong.

I'm fine.

Thank you Madam Mayor, Council Members.

I would like to ask the same question that I asked at the June 18th Council meeting one more time in hopes of getting an answer.

Why is our downtown mall not safe for pedestrians to walk on sometimes but safe most of the time?

For example, this past Saturday evening, I was on the mall from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m.

There were very few people walking the mall.

So can someone

On the council, please explain why it was so critical to have city trucks blocking the 4th Street crossing to all vehicles.

When I asked the city workers who were with the trucks why now was the crossing blocked and not on other times, I was told they didn't know.

The trucks were there from 5 p.m. until midnight.

I have asked some legal minds if at any time when 2nd Street and 4th Street were not blocked off, but vehicles were allowed to cross the mall and a pedestrian was injured, would the city be held liable since this safety situation has been brought to the attention of the City Council many times?

I was told that it could lead to a civil lawsuit against the city.

Mr. Blair?

When will the safety of our pedestrians walk in our downtown mall be addressed by this council?

When will we replace those metal barriers that are at the other streets that were there when the mall was constructed to stop traffic?

If there was one at Fourth Street,

August of 2017, there would not have been an incident.

The car would have been destroyed when it hit the barrier.

That's a pedestrian mall.

The definition of pedestrian, if you look it up in the Webster's Dictionary, is a walkway free of any vehicles.

So I'm sorry.

I hate to beat a dead horse, but

I don't know how anybody could live with if somebody was injured at either Second or Fourth Street because of this situation.

Thank you all for listening to me.

Mr. Blair, I wasn't kidding when I asked Beagle people, especially at the University of Virginia School of Law.

One second.

One second, sir.

So Mr. Murphy, yeah, hey.

So Mr. Murphy, in regards to this request about

how Second and Fourth Street is protected.

Yeah, I think it goes beyond just one department.

an incident management team

Homeland Security folks and then an engineering firm about what type of barricades are needed at all the entrances to the mall.

And I will say that in general it has been approached from the idea that should you at any time want to

to prohibit the access, but not that council would entertain permanent closure of vehicles on 2nd and 4th Street.

If that's the item that council wants to entertain, then that takes a lot longer than coming back at the next meeting.

because I do believe that there are some impacts with the commercial corridor.

And depending on what steps you take, what the impact may be on public safety and fire.

One thing I would be interested in

for 4th Street specifically after everything that's transpired and entertaining the notion in regards to what it would look like to close it in regards to access.

If I may add,

I mean, this issue has pretty much been revisited like every three or four years.

I mean, and we have to have a full discussion with everybody in the city.

It has to be on the agenda.

And then you wind up hearing that there are just as many people that want to keep the cross streets open as well as they want to close them.

So I think we need to know if there's been data that shows that people have been injured.

Mayor Walker, the people laughing and disrupting our conversation is extremely distracting and it's ridiculing.

We're trying to come and assist this gentleman with his problem that he's brought before us.

So I would ask that we please refrain from laughing and interrupting so that we can have an intelligent conversation.

So Mr. Wash, that has been my experience about the many times we brought this up again.

I'm willing to bring this up again, but it has to be a full discussion with the rest of the city.

And that there has always been reasons why those streets have been open.

And yes, it has been related to business activity.

It's also been related to people to be able to find them all.

I agree with Ms. Galvin.

This is really, really elongating this meeting and we're really trying to get better about the timeline that we get to actual business and here we are at 830.

Thank you.

Madam Mayor, I still have a little bit of time.

Yeah, I'm addressing it to you, because he stated I don't want a misconception.

If you go back to the minutes of the council, no.

So 1992 or 2002?

Yeah, Back to the Future.

Anyway, the barriers were removed, not because of the cinema, it was the gentleman that built the ice skating rink.

He threatened, he built half of it, he stopped, and he threatened the city council.

That's today.

No, no.

I'm just clarifying the issue, that's all.

And the holes are in the road and somebody has the metal posts that were there.

There's no doubt that there are posts but you know they are not sufficient in order to stop a vehicle and so there's a lot more that you would want to dive into if we were to bring this to you.

We'll give you an update at the next meeting about where things stand on taking this out for engineering, what the goals of the project are, and for you all to tell us if you want to entertain a community discussion about closing those

Pathways altogether.

Hi, my name is Kelsey Schlein.

I'm a Charlottesville resident.

Tonight, I would like to talk to you about vision for land use planning in Charlottesville.

The comprehensive plan is one of the main planning tools we use to guide development in our community.

It is the document our community has accepted as our vision to move forward with growth.

Contained in this document are 70 pages, hundreds of goals and thousands of words outlined for our community in regards to housing, economics, transportation, the environment and land use, among others.

In your evaluation of development projects that come before you, I would hope you would consider the words in this document beyond the lines drawn on a map.

As a community, we have stated our goals in writing to promote mixed-use, mixed-income communities, promoting walkability and accessibility to employment opportunities.

However, the colors we have shown on a map are inconsistent with the vision and writing we have accepted.

A future land-use map is a planning tool we as a community have accepted to guide growth in our community, but we have also adopted 70 pages of text

that define our vision of community.

In evaluating development in Charlottesville, especially given the current state of housing in Charlottesville, I hope you can view the vision of our community with a holistic scope and look beyond individual parcel boundaries and colors on a map to consider the housing needs of our community.

I would like to shift the conversation from planning away from parking and parcel boundaries and shift the focus to people.

Tonight before you, there is the opportunity to add six units to the housing stock in Charlottesville that would adhere to promoting mixed-use, mixed-income, walkable community.

I would like to tell an anecdote about the people who can live in mixed-income communities when a variety of housing types is available to neighbors.

A friend of mine has been a parking booth attendant with

at a downtown parking garage for the past decade.

She lives in a six-unit apartment building on Leonard Street.

That's about 30 feet away from 1206 Carlton.

For the past decade, she has been able to walk to work, hasn't had a car, but the location of her home allows her convenient access to her employment opportunity.

and in the last 12 months the home price in that area within a quarter mile radius of 1206 Carlton nears $300,000.

I don't think that would be affordable to her were there not a variety of housing types available in that neighborhood.

Thank you.

Lots of lies have been told and some of them tonight as well.

To tell you very quickly, I don't believe the police chief, nor should you.

This would be the fourth police chief in a row that has bamboozled you about stop and frisk.

The only way this can be worked out is let's look at the raw data.

Let's compare the raw data to what you're being told to see if it's the truth.

Maybe it is, but there is no reason to trust this police department or unfortunately right now this police chief.

A year ago, we were told that one day Chief Thomas came in and decided to retire, practice belongings and left.

That was a lie.

You knew it was a lie.

You knew it was a lie.

Mike Signer knew it was a lie.

At the next meeting, our city manager told us he voluntarily left.

I asked him, didn't you have a conversation with him before he left to find out why he left?

Because remember, he denied many of the things that were said in the Hafei Report.

He said, yeah, I had a conversation, but it's private.

I'm not telling anybody.

That was a lie.

Now even bigger than the lies that you allowed to perpetuate, and you did, I don't know whether you knew all the details, but you certainly, this past council, allowed that monster lie, what I call the big whopper, to be perpetrated on the people of Charlottesville.

And I can assure you that in that contract is a provision of non-disclosure or non-disparagement.

because no employer would engage in any severance pay without such a provision and any lawyer who would ever handle an employment case would know that.

You don't have such a person.

You could have asked your lawyer.

That has to be opened up.

What has happened here is that Mr. Thomas was paid $270,000 to keep his mouth shut.

And you all, by perpetrating that lie and that series of lies, have buried the opportunity to ever find out what happened on August 12, 2017.

You've got to open up that contract.

Imagine, it's one thing in the private sector to have contracts like that.

It's another when the government pays somebody hundreds of thousands of dollars to squelch their free speech and to deprive the citizenry of knowing what's going on, not just with their police chief, but what the hell happened here on August 12th.

Don't forget the fact I respect Chief Thomas enough to want to hear his version that he had denied what Hafe said about him.

And there were underlings there who sought to undermine him.

And they have never been dealt with.

And they're not being dealt with now.

If you do not unlock that contract, you are all perpetrators of a conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Unlock that contract.

I will not be getting down on my hands and knees for any reason.

So I just want to point that out.

For anyone.

Good evening.

I promise I won't ask that of you.

I'm Dan Rosenbach, 740 Lexington Avenue.

I'm speaking as part of the Charlottesville Albemarle Affordable Housing Coalition and also as a former member of the Charlottesville City Planning Commission.

I want to speak in particular about the standards and design manual draft that's in front of you tonight.

It's a very little known, misunderstood document that actually is maybe one of the couple of most important tools we have in our toolbox to guide growth in Charlottesville.

There really are only three things in the neighborhood, physical things.

There are buildings, there's open space, and then there's the right-of-way.

This is the right-of-way, this is the public realm.

and what you have in front of you is something that I actually really appreciate city staff and city council putting resources in over the last few years to try to update the standards design manual because what we have is a tool that is very, very outdated.

But I think what the draft you have in front of you is lacking.

I'm going to talk about that just a little bit.

First of all, a little bit of history.

The reason this is in front of you is because about seven years ago the Planning Commission looked at an application in the JPA neighborhood.

that ultimately the commission recommended for denial and council denied it.

It was not a particularly creative and clever application.

The neighbors hated it.

But planning commission to a person said something should be built there.

but our standard design won't let anything, won't enable us to build anything that's, or approve anything that's context sensitive, that's environmentally sensitive, that's neighborhood friendly, that's human scale.

And so we asked city staff at the time, we asked NDS staff to come back to us with a series of recommendations for updating the standard design manual to bring it up to date with modern trends in neighborhood development.

I think, although I appreciate the effort, the draft you have in front of you continues to have wide roads and contradistinction to what the streets that work manual asked for.

There are no low-volume residential streets.

There are wide utilities, regardless of how deep pipes are buried in the ground, which brings up really incredible contradictions, such as you might have zoning districts that contemplate small setbacks so you can have front porches.

right on top or near sidewalks, but the utility easements are so big that you can't actually build to the zoning envelope.

It's full of holes right now.

It's prohibitive to affordable housing in that you're spending money on asphalt instead of on the things that really matter to a community like open space, trees, green space, and housing.

And it's a significant social justice issue.

We have a 4,000 unit deficit in the city of Charlottesville.

So an awful lot of building is going to happen in the next few years.

It's going to be creating neighborhoods to the benefit of low income people.

And what we are going to do

is constrain them to living in neighborhoods that are built for cars and not for people.

Our neighborhoods, our neighborhoods of North Downtown that we overlay historic and say we want to preserve these, we can't build them.

We can't do it.

The neighborhoods, the streets that we like are unbuildable because of this standards and design manual.

So this is my ask.

My ask is simple.

Defer a vote tonight until the Planning Commission, Housing Advisory Committee place can have a look at this.

I've read every single line of the CADRE recommendations for improvement, and I've got to tell you, they are spot on.

So in the process, I would very much like to see the revisions that CADRE, a group of professionals who deal every day in the standards and design manual,

I would like to see the specific revisions that they suggested put side by side with the draft of the manual and let you decide what makes sense, what doesn't make sense.

Thank you very much.

I actually think that's fair.

I agree.

Just for the public's view, I know that some stakeholders are aware, but we had decided coming into this meeting that we were really going to use this opportunity just for staff to provide to us just an overview of the draft as well as the process by which it was taken, but we all have agreed with Mr. Murphy and staff that they are going to be looking at the additional information not only coming from the CADRE group but other stakeholder groups in parallel and that we've asked for a joint session with the Planning Commission so that we can

to look at this in parallel.

Good evening, counselors, Heather Walker.

I'd like to return to some comments I made a couple weeks ago regarding water and also the climate.

I'm a little more prepared today, so I'm going to try to move quick, especially because I didn't know Michael Payne would be speaking so eloquently on the same topic.

But I'd like to start with our city's current green outlook.

Just running real quick through some items.

The main first one is green infrastructure.

The first item there is stormwater management followed by flood mitigation, air quality improvements, urban heat island effect, reduced water and energy usage.

based at least on the city's website.

The other focus is green themes, which also starts with stormwater infrastructure, sustainable buildings, natural resources, so on and so forth.

So just picking on stormwater management a little bit, I know there have been a lot of efforts over the last few years about updating a lot of the infrastructure, but I pulled some images from a local resident

He took some photos, posted them on Twitter.

This is the bridge near the corner in UVA.

It's completely submerged.

Here's some boxes and stuff floating away.

So I don't want to be mean.

I know people are working hard.

But that's our first item on two lists.

And there's major flooding through a major thoroughfare right between the city and the university.

So my next main point is that last year, the former mayor signed us up for at least two climate initiatives, the Mayor's National Climate Action Agenda, which is a network of mayors pledging to uphold goals embodied in the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The other is the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, which is a group of 9,000 cities representing more than 750 million people.

Our commitment under that covenant is 10% greenhouse gas reduction by 2035.

The recent report that was mentioned by Michael says that we'll be facing catastrophes by 2035.

Our goal is 10% reduction by then.

So what we have right now with hurricanes like Florence and Michael, that's one degree of warming.

They're expecting four degrees of warming by the end of the century.

So all the things that were mentioned, massive crop failures, massive refugee movement.

I'd like you guys to consider this instead of just as a green themes kind of thing, which was nice like 10 or 15 years ago when we pretended this wasn't a problem.

Think of it as a security issue.

Water security, food security, and vulnerable populations.

We know that climate effects are going to hit minorities, immigrants, refugees the hardest.

Build that into your plan, please.

The Navy already treats, the military already treats this as a security issue.

The Navy moved their fleets out like a week ahead of Florence.

I know I'm out of time, but I'd just like to focus or bring to your attention one other point.

I just heard today that

The federal government approved reimbursing the state of Virginia for 75% of the costs related to response to Hurricane Michael.

I don't know how much longer FEMA and the federal government can keep subsidizing our state in response to repeated disasters.

Those were two category four hurricanes in like two weeks.

This is the new normal.

This is the new normal.

Good evening.

I'm Peter Krebs, 1022 Tufton Avenue and Piedmont Environmental Council.

I wanted to give just a quick shout out to the kids and the families who walked to school last week.

There must have been hundreds of them.

There were small groups of families walking up.

I saw a walk-in school bus that

Came from Friendship Court.

There were like 20 kids that all got together and walked together like it was a school bus.

It was not only cute, but it was great.

And I ran into Kyle Rodland today.

He's our Safe Routes Coordinator.

And he said that he's hearing that kids who didn't walk before walk to school day are still walking.

So that's really great news.

For people who are interested in a more walkable, bikable region, the planning district is having an open house on our regional bike pedestrian plan and that's

That's next Wednesday from 5.30 to 7.30 at the Planning District.

That's 407 Eastwater Street.

This Wednesday.

Sorry, this Wednesday after tomorrow.

And we're having an Advocate Social after to talk about immediate things we can do to make the place better.

And also we've confirmed a date with Charles Brown.

He'll be Wednesday, November 28th at the Jefferson School.

So that's a little ways away.

I just wanted to give you a heads up.

The main reason I'm here tonight though is to endorse the food equity initiative.

I admire their work and my organization admires their work and their work is actually closely related to mine which is about getting ahead of health problems and building wellness and making life better for communities.

We know the

The Health District and all the partners will be rigorous and analytical.

You can definitely be sure that everyone will be held accountable.

And we also know that the groups that are part of the network are deeply committed to justice.

And we think you should support it.

Ms. Kathy Galvin, back in July when we were in Alabama and we were in that museum and I asked you a question after, you know, you broke down and we hugged and I asked you a question then and I haven't heard anything about it, but I would like to know when are our slave plaques?

going to be able to be uprooted, that people can be able to see our work, where our slave blocks, where our slaves were captured.

Our slave blocks need to be up so our people can see it.

Because I'm tired of walking across Snookies and walking over top of me.

I'm tired of going up to UVA, walking over that little piece.

We are more than a baby plaque.

So I would appreciate you keeping your word as you promised me.

Also, Mr. Mike, I'm disappointed when you spoke up quickly for that UVA student, and that work still hasn't been done with these lighting and crosswalks.

Don't look crazy, because that's what you did, because Mr. West spoke upon it.

So I appreciate it when that gets done.

And also, I want to speak on your police chief.

In this urban plantation that we're still dealing with, with this Dillon rule,

I don't see how you can bring a combative chief into this place with knowing everything that we've been through when you speak to her or say something that she don't really want to pertain to because she's not here.

She want to use big words.

People don't understand all these big words that she want to come in here and try to deform whatever her techniques or reality is.

That's not the reality here on this urban plantation down here in Charlottesville, Virginia.

So I appreciate her stop lying.

to the black and brown people.

And when she came here, you didn't come here to save Charlottesville, honey.

People in Charlottesville is already working to save this.

And yes, there will be, just because if you feel that you don't do your duty, there will still be another black woman who is still will be able to stand in your place.

Because as long as we are black women, as long as we got these people that are here, we're going to save Charlottesville.

So just because you claim that you're coming to save the, what we call,

The Affordable Housing Community, but you know where Crap Houses and the Wave and Trap Houses, don't put that with us because you're already not protecting us.

But make sure when you come to us, make sure you stop lying.

Because every time you lie you get proved wrong.

And not only do you get proved wrong, but you do not own up to yours the way that you say that you own up to us.

Jeff.

Mayor Walker, may I say something before Miss Parker leaves?

Miss Parker, could you, can I respond to you?

Yeah.

So, um, okay, so yes, we, the city has passed a resolution back in November 2017 to redesign the whole downtown parks and

including the Court Square area where they have the block for enslaved people, where they were sold.

Since that time, the courts have put a stop on a lot of our activity.

However, I'm beginning to think if there's some way, Mr. Murphy, that we might be able to

I hate to say it, I mean, because the resolution was written, I think, two times.

But at this point, because of the delay, if we can break it apart, because I think the problem with the court orders is that it's the parks themselves, but this is outside the park.

We had put it all together so that it could be done in one process with one team of people, but it seems that

along with the Equal Justice Initiative, we had to break that out and we're gonna be meeting with our county colleagues to talk about where the module might go.

Maybe we gotta look at that again and break it apart and see what can happen sooner versus later.

I hate to do that because it means the public will get multiple different community engagement processes, but I'm sensing that you want something now versus later.

But that's the explanation.

is because it was part of this whole resolution that the park designs of where the Jackson statue is and where the Lee statue is and the area around Court Square was gonna all be redesigned together with the community input, a lot of public process.

Well, I'm not saying that.

I'm saying that right now the resolution is written, yes.

So Ms. Parker, actually I'm really glad you brought this up.

I think that, one, there's a couple of steps that we need to take in regards to the initial resolution that looked at everything in its totality.

I do think it needs to be broken up, and we can specifically look at the parts of our city that aren't affected by the statues, so one being the slave auction blocks or the plaque, the Vinegar Hill plaque on the downtown mall.

I mean, there's a lot of different things.

I think it would behoove us to look at in a meeting in November or even, I don't know if the process would be commissioning another

Task Force, which I hope that wouldn't be it, to look at creating more solutions in regards to addressing some plaques and monuments.

Does that mean that we look at building another statue to commemorate those of African descent somewhere else in the community?

I think there's a litany of things that we can do that can be outside of just talking about the statues and they could begin to move even with the situation with the courts and the statues going on because that's going to be a long

Regardless of what happens in January, I'm pretty sure there's going to be an appeal and then we'll be going even longer there.

So I would welcome working with you with that.

Ms. Galvin, maybe we could present something to council before the next couple of meetings about a process.

Maybe Ms. Parker, you can work with us on that and if there's any others in the community.

And that allows us to bring about a solution to the issue as a whole.

You up for it?

Yeah?

For those who can't see, she said yes.

So Ms. Galvin and I could talk about that and then maybe we could provide an update.

I don't know if we can provide one next council meeting, but definitely probably in November or so.

I'm sure Mayor Walker and others would want to be involved.

That would be nice.

It might be, I think, the second meeting in November.

But Mayor Walker and I are going to be meeting with, like I said, with some county colleagues to talk about the Equal Justice Initiative Memorial because it, as we know, John Henry James was lynched on Almonte County soil.

So that's going to be a joint discussion with the county and the city.

But we're hoping that we could get that module to be put on the county courthouse site so it's facing off

So anything that we can do outside of the city parks, we're going to try to do.

So that's exactly right what you're saying.

And so let's keep moving on that.

Ms. Parker, I've been notified that the markings and the signs were up as of a week ago.

Before that happened, it took me two years.

And then when she came in here, it was like, boom.

It was a response.

It hadn't been a response that quick for me.

I mean, you keep saying that looking crazy.

Anybody that was in here last week, Wes, did you not speak on it?

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you.

She's talking.

Which of the lighting issue that came up.

Did something happen?

No.

The Grady Avenue?

It was just that we were listened and said we think it's a priority.

But her request was fulfilled.

Okay.

Yeah, so one thing that I would like to, and I'm trying to figure out exactly what this looks like in my head, but in terms of the comments to the police chief, if you all go back and look at previous reports,

Is this not on?

Can you not hear me?

If you all go back and look at previous reports that we received from the previous police chiefs, they were not this detailed.

And when there's community input asked if there's something that you would like to see differently,

in the report then you see you have an opportunity to provide input.

And basing facts on, basing your interpretation of the work that's being done in our police department that has had a long history of injustice on a case, I think that we should all challenge that.

I agree.

because if there's work being done that makes these numbers look differently, and I'm talking about from a place where I don't know a family, a native family of Charlottesville that has not been in the criminal justice system.

So if there's someone who's willing to come to Charlottesville and do the work of helping us to change that, while they're still police officers,

and they still are very different from a social justice advocate, I think that we need to look at that.

I would just say for myself, if there was a videotape that I could give Ms. Turner, I would give it to her.

If people make mistakes, this contract that we're talking about, the contract, I haven't personally read the contract, but if we look at it as the contracts that are coming out of council

today moving forward, are they different than the contracts that other people had the responsibility of initiating?

And those things are not being looked at.

So there's a dwelling in the past that I understand if things are not resolved, but it would be in all of our best interests to resolve them.

So if I had a videotape, I'll just say, if I could undo a contract, I tried, so if you all were paying attention, you all would have seen the efforts that I put into the contracts and the ones that are currently being negotiated.

And I would also like for us to look at it as a community, because I think that I'm experiencing the same thing of how women and black women in particular are treated when they are in positions of power.

and leadership and the perception of what that looks like and how individuals work really hard to make sure that you are not respected.

I mean, I'm being compared to President Trump, repeatedly in public and in emails.

And so when you all are talking about where we are,

I think it's twofold to that though.

And I think you're absolutely right.

I think from some people's perspective, they feel as if it's accountability.

And because like, regardless of who it is, individuals believe that everyone should be held accountable.

Because if it was someone else, would you do it that way?

All right.

Just wanted, had a thought or two.

Good evening everyone.

Some very interesting conversations are being had this evening.

I appreciate all the passion and all the comments.

I am Nancy Carpenter.

I live in Rose Hill.

My first comment is to, sort of to Mr. Murphy, to ask him to either get his traffic engineer or himself to

send me as the representative of the Rose Hill Neighborhood Association a determinant letter about that curve on 10th and Henry Avenue.

We have our monthly meeting next week and I would sure like to let the resident who asked that question to give them back the findings of the traffic engineer.

and I really don't agree with him because in looking at what one of the Planning Commission members has been reviewing on some of the comprehensive plan survey and doing some word clouding, it seems like one of the most popular places for the low income neighborhoods or low income people in this community is Washington Park.

which is very very close to that corner that I was talking about and I think that it's not intermittent I mean it may be intermittent because he doesn't live there we do and we know what that looks like so hopefully that you can

We'll have a conversation with him as we look into whether the neighborhood will get some kind of historic designation.

We found out through a survey that we have quite a few as expected historic buildings there.

There's also, if you've seen in your social medias, an effort to get Jackson P. Burley High School

recognize it as a historic building in this community.

So I would urge if folks see that, come across their social media, that they sign that petition and definitely move it on because I do think that that building was, that school was very important to a lot of people I know in this community and certainly to those who have graced the doors of that fine establishment.

Also the main reason I'm here this evening is to remind folks that the end of this month, the end of October,

The thermal warm shelter will be opening.

Hotchum will be opening.

And so a lot of the folks that we see will have to make a choice whether to come in to a low barrier shelter or whether they can not handle the pressures of being in a closed space with people they may or may not.

have much in common with and would prefer to be outside.

I know that there are a lot of drives going on.

I appreciate that in the homeless community for different things that they will need throughout this cold season.

But the biggest thing they need are houses.

That's the biggest need.

I found it very interesting.

Just a few people that were arrested for drunken public were white males, and I would guarantee

that I probably know all of them or they've come across my path in some way through the homeless system of care.

The initiative for food justice is very important because instability in getting food can also lead to housing instability for children.

and you see that that sometimes homelessness is a result of PTSD through sometimes childhood trauma that's never addressed and I think that one thing I'd like to ask for in the next budget or budgets to come would be social workers who are not associated with agencies to actually be embedded within neighborhoods

so that they don't have, unfortunately there is a stigma still with social services in this community and I understand why and why that continues but I think that it would be nice to have folks that could develop relationships and be able to be there during those crisis times that are not associated with our mental health agencies or our social services agencies.

Thank you.

So we're going to take a 10-minute break.

And before we leave, I will say that starting the next city council meeting, I'm going to try to do what I've been asked to do from my colleagues for the rest of the year and enforce the three-minute rule.

I try to give everybody a chance to talk.

You all know what I've been trying to do.

But I'm just going to try to be a stickler for time, which is not me, but we'll see how it goes for the rest of the year.

Yes, so don't do that.

So now y'all getting up on me, all right.

I have been watching the clock on people, and I've been trying to let people finish their thoughts, which I think is important.

And like the presentation earlier allowed them to

finish and when other people come up, but I will, and every presentation that we've had this year allow people to finish and get more time.

So I will try this time commitment way.

So when it's tweeted out, make sure you put after a 10 month attempt.

All right?

Small Cell Wireless Facilities, first of two readings.

Thank you, Mayor Walker.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Members of Council.

My name is Lori Schweller, attorney with LeClaire Ryan representing Verizon Wireless.

As you recall, we discussed the state legislation that was adopted in 2016 and 17 regarding provision of wireless services through small cell facilities and city rights-of-way.

Another aspect of that

legislation in addition to the streamline zoning that you've previously approved by ordinance was the agreements between the wireless providers on the one hand and the cities or VDOT on the other hand so what we're requesting tonight is your approval of a franchise agreement which is subject to the Virginia Constitution may not exceed 40 years and requires bids as we're having today

The terms are straightforward.

The memorandum summarizes very well what this agreement is about, and the agreement is enclosed in your packet.

So any questions?

All right.

May I say we also have asked for a waiver of the second reading.

I just wanted to make a note of that.

All right, public hearing.

If we could ask, are there any other bids to

Place small cell facilities on utility poles.

Is there any other bid?

Mr. Walker, I move that we approve of the permit and the lease.

as included in our council packet.

If it is, the ordinance itself includes that language Ms. Schweller referred to.

So if there's a 4-0 vote, it would pass.

All right.

All right, it carries four to zero.

All right.

I think we have a short presentation, just a PowerPoint slide presentation.

I don't know if you all can see those on your computers.

So I guess first, thank you all for your time this evening.

My name is Marty Silliman with the City of Charlottesville, and with me is Melanie Alston-Brick with Tool to Time Group.

All right, so there's a really quick agenda.

Just go over introductions I've already done, give you a quick overview of the process, and then I'll turn it over to Melanie and she'll go over the purpose of the manual, talk about the engagement process we went through, go through the process for collecting feedback and the resolution of some of that feedback, where we are now and what the next steps are going forward.

Just real quick, the design manual that we have today is an existing manual.

It was adopted by City Council in 2008.

Since 2008, there have been pretty much no significant revisions.

There might have been over the years a few small tweaks here and there to correct some

You know, errors or update construction details, things like that.

But largely, it's been a pretty much stagnant document since 2008.

And so, as a result, it's out of date in a lot of areas.

In December of 2016, City Council approved funding for us to hire a consultant, which is when we brought on Tool Design Group and Arcane K as a sub-consultant.

And then that contract was executed last August, basically.

And then, so over the last 14 months, we've been kind of working through the outline.

doing workshops both with city staff and stakeholders and then doing just draft and revisions and reviewing comments and there's been some some back and forth between certain folks that have provided feedback just who we get clarity on kind of what they were exactly exactly looking for and so that's kind of been sort of the real quick you know overview over the last 14 months for this process

As far as goals go, one of the main goals was to incorporate the Streets at Work Plan, which I think there's a lot of folks that are familiar with that, which has the street typologies that have their associated characteristics and make that more of a formal, I guess, requirement for development projects and also guide city projects as well.

In addition to that, there was a need to provide clear design expectations for development projects that impact the public right of way, clarify requirements for inspections, revise outdated construction details, and provide a distinct reference to other governing agencies that influence the city's infrastructure like VDOT, AASHTO, etc.

OK, so Marty went over this already, and let me know if I'm too loud.

I'll stand back for like a little bit.

So the goal of the manual was to, as Marty said, incorporate streets that work, align the manual better with the code.

The two hadn't been perhaps keeping track with one another all along since the manual hadn't been updated in a while.

And then to align it with other standards that have jurisdiction within the city of Charlottesville.

So first and foremost, just wanted to point out that the manual, contrary to what was perhaps talked about earlier, does not guide development.

It is merely a how-to manual.

The development code and the site plan regulations talk about how development should go.

The planning documents talk about that.

This is once we've decided what goes in our development, how do we design it?

How do we put it on paper?

What do we need to show the city in order to have them approve our plan?

So that's really what the manual does.

And during the writing, it was very hard to keep focused on that goal.

But we were also trying to provide flexibility, providing more options for the ways that you can design streets.

and other things in the public right of way.

It is focused on the public space.

It does not talk about really what you can do on your development parcel unless it extends into the public right of way like light trespass or pipes that you need to connect.

We've incorporated other modes of transportation, more pedestrian and bicycle focused, slowing the speeds of the vehicles to make walking and biking more comfortable.

for all the users of the roadways.

We also wanted to enhance sustainability and maintainability.

So the city has to maintain all this stuff that gets built long after the developer is gone.

So we want to make sure that that's as easy as possible for the city for as many years to come as possible.

And then incorporating lessons learned, city staff gave us many, many examples of things that have given them problems over the years with plans from plans that don't have enough information to utilities that are designed in such a way that it's difficult to connect into the system or they're difficult to maintain.

So we took all those lessons learned and incorporated them into the manual.

And finally,

clarifying what is required on the plans of the developers so that they know this is what you have to put on your drawing and in your stormwater report to get our approval.

And so it covers a host of different topics.

It's far more comprehensive than the old manual was, incorporates the new environmental things like green infrastructure, incorporates new road typologies that are not VDOT standards.

talks more about the lighting, the materials, and the city's long-term maintenance.

And so again, what it doesn't do, it does not set policy, it does not guide how you develop a particular piece of land, it does not modify city code.

Although we did track adjustments that would need to be made to the code,

in order to bring them into alignment.

There were very few adjustments.

And then it does not define what's allowed outside of public right-of-way.

And it does not limit the flexibility.

And I wanted to state for the record that the street typologies that are being proposed and some of the comments that are much narrower

than perhaps a typical VDOT street or a typical traditional Charlottesville street.

They're not disallowed by this manual.

There's a section in the manual dedicated to innovative design proposals.

And the reason that that section is in the manual is because we wanted to allow flexibility to propose things other than what's in there.

The manual is really for the purpose of knowing how to design those things that you use every day.

Innovative design allows you to propose different things and allow it to be considered by the city.

We wanted to take a cautious approach.

For example, yield streets are one of the things that's proposed.

It's a very narrow street where traffic would have to yield to oncoming traffic, there's parking or other obstacles.

There's not many of them in the country.

There are none of them in Charlottesville.

And so, we took the Kochis approach saying, why don't we let them try it out once or twice?

Then if we have to tweak it, or we don't like it, then we don't put it in the manual.

But if we like it, we can add it to the manual.

So that's really the whole point of the innovative design portion of the manual.

So we did have quite a lengthy public and stakeholder engagement process.

We started with initial workshops a year ago almost, and have been really taking comments almost continuously between April and the middle of September, even though we technically ended the comment period at the beginning of August.

There have still been numerous comments coming in, all of which have been addressed.

and we received more than 400 comments.

We have provided responses and those are on the website for each and every one of those comments.

Majority of them were incorporated into the manual.

We now have some late-breaking comments which are not out of line with what we're trying to do with the manual.

But again, much of it is

things that would fall under the innovation portion of the manual.

And, you know, we do have to also recognize the competing goals of the development community who are trying to build on every possible square inch of that property that they can.

But the city, again, has to have room for utilities and trees and sidewalks.

And so it's a compromise.

it's always going to be a compromise.

And it's different in new development than it is in historic districts where the stuff has been there for centuries.

And a lot of it requires a case-by-case look.

It's not as simple as just putting this manual down on paper.

But the big thing is what we're trying to do with the manual

with the city in mind was to, again, reduce the cost of long-term maintenance and make things as sustainable and able for the city residents to enjoy as long as possible.

So we understand that we are not here tonight, I guess, to have an approval.

but we have read the additional comments.

I don't know if there are others.

We've seen the cadre ones.

We intend to incorporate comments that are not in conflict with the city's goals but again, we have to look at those lessons learned and look at what the city is trying to accomplish and again, compromise.

We are already allowing those innovative design proposals

As far as next steps, I think it sounds like everybody is on the same page to go ahead and conduct some additional workshops, which we can certainly do that.

We can kind of review the comments that came in late from Cadre and see how we can incorporate those.

And beyond the immediate concerns with the feedback and everything that's been received or not been received, I think the only other real phase with this is phase two, which is the construction details, the specifications, and the checklists.

The initial plan was to get phase one get all the text drafted and kind of get initial buy-in on that and approval of that and then we can come back and get the details and the specifications and everything done because a lot of the text in the manual

really drives the details and the specifications and so I think we want to cautiously kind of dip into phase two because we don't want to you know get too far with that that next section until the draft is actually you know you know vetted I guess and so I guess what we're looking for tonight is kind of directional and what you all would like to do as far as additional workshops or

how you feel like the approach should move forward.

I know a lot of the workshops that we did, we tried to keep a pretty lean engagement strategy just for budget reasons.

It is a technical manual, but we did, you know, solicit to basically, I think it was nine stakeholder groups.

Those I can tell you I know is, you know, the place design task force, cadre.

City Council, Planning Commission, Tree Commission, the Code Audit Streets, the Work Advisory Committee, 8-Day Advisory Committee, Board of Architectural Review, and the Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee.

I don't think that those groups all felt left out.

I think in some of those cases that they did contribute feedback, but some of them thought they'd have another opportunity to see the final version before it came in front of this body.

That includes, I always name a few that we've gotten from the last couple days.

Beephead, Tree Commission, obviously, Cadre has still there.

This is really their first time giving a formal.

They've had members provide

it's in pieces but the formal feedback has been received more recently but there were multiple and I feel like we certainly wanted our Planning Commission I mean I'm not an expert in this stuff this is a lot of technical stuff and so I really would rely on those groups to kind of help me understand is this where we are is this really

And I think it's important to note to not force if it doesn't fit.