City Council   11/19/2018

Thank you.

I'm

you

Yay!

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The End

All right, good evening.

How are you all?

Dr. Bellamy?

Here.

Ms. Hill?

Here.

Mr. Signer?

Here.

Here.

Sure.

All right.

So I have a couple of announcements.

One, we have National Citizen Survey.

So the city of Charlottesville is one of many jurisdictions in the United States to participate in the National Citizen Survey in 2018.

Starting on Friday, October 19th, pre-notification postcards were mailed to a random sample

of 1800 Charlottesville households, informing them that a questionnaire will follow asking for feedback on the quality and usefulness of city services.

For those who did receive a postcard, you have received two surveys by now.

This is a crucial component of a healthy response rate since about a third of the returns come from the second wave.

You only need to return one, so please ignore the second survey if you have already responded.

The results will be included in a final report that city officials and residents will use to guide future strategic plan setting processes and budgeting decisions.

The National Citizen Survey is sponsored by the International City slash County Management Association.

in cooperation with National Research Center Incorporated.

The questionnaire and survey procedure 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 ensure accurate and reliable results.

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

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

We hope you should receive a survey in the mail, that you return it and share your opinion.

So that is the first announcement.

Secondly, I just have a major thank you and kudos to everyone from the community.

who donated yesterday to the turkey giveaway, as well as the sneaker giveaway.

So we had about 225 turkeys yesterday at the Jefferson School that were given away.

And then another 75 pairs of sneakers that all within the first hour of those turkeys and sneakers went to, again, people from throughout the community, as well as the homeless shelters, i.e.

The Haven, Salvation Army and the like.

So personally, for myself,

New Hill, from those who were at week old two, the Kluge family, Dream Diamonds, the Dream Foundation, and several others throughout the community who all donated and participated.

We really, really appreciate it.

And we'll be doing a toy drive.

So get your toys ready.

If you have time to donate, that'll be on December 22nd, right before Christmas.

So we'll be looking to give away as many toys as we can to the community.

So if you have a toy, let me know.

and we'll be sure to give it away to a child who's in need.

Just real quick, Downtown Business Association is spearheading a coat drive for students in both the city and county schools.

They said, do you know that kids cannot go to recess if they don't have proper winter jackets and hats?

If you have a new or gently used coat, please donate it.

Okay, and Mayor Walker, I actually have another announcement in addition to the one that you just gave me, but the Virginia Municipal League held its 10th anniversary Go Green Challenge this year, and the city of Charlottesville has been certified at the platinum level.

The challenge is a friendly competition tailored to address issues and opportunities relevant to Virginia's local governments by recognizing policies and actions that reduce energy usage and promote sustainability.

which I guess is something that the Green Grannies is really happy to hear about.

After winning first place in its size category the first year of the competition the city has received a platinum designation.

The challenge awards points in categories ranging from community involvement and employee engagement, energy efficiency and renewable energy, procurement, land use and transportation,

Environmental Stewardship, Waste Management, and Resiliency.

Each year the city identifies actions which have been done before and during the challenge and compiles a list of the new and innovative actions that earn extra credit, such as expanding the online city green map with the addition of a green tourism theme, supporting and participating in round three of the Better Business Challenge, partnering with the local energy alliance program on commercial residential energy,

collaborating through a Virginia network of energy and sustainability peers on solar strategies.

And then, of course, our water conservation program is award-winning.

Tonight, Mary Wockel will present the platinum certification to our very own Crystal Riddevald, the city's environmental sustainability and facilities development manager.

And Mayor, the other announcement that I have, last week the Friendship Court redevelopment effort was honored with the Inclusive Communities Virginia Housing Award at the 2018 Governor's Housing Conference.

The award recognizes the partnered work between Piedmont Housing Alliance and the resident-led Friendship Court Advisory Committee.

as together they plan a transformational redevelopment that is directly accountable to the residents and their aspirations.

A number of residents on the advisory committee were able to attend the award ceremony in Arlington that was keynoted by the governor himself, Governor Northam.

And I just want to say that I was able to go and join the Friendship Court Steering Committee on Thursday and it was really pretty exciting to see

to see our residents honored for all the hard work that they've done and are continuing to do.

And it felt like that they were in good company.

So as we plan for next fiscal year, which begins July 1st, 2019, your views on how tax dollars are spent are essential to creating a budget that best serves all of our citizens.

City Council and City staff invites you to be a part of the process by helping us identify your service and spending priorities for the upcoming fiscal year.

Your input will be aggregated and presented to City Council.

Visit www.shawlsville.org budget and click balancing act to submit your feedback.

If you would like a paper version of this web tool sent to you, please call 434-970-3101.

Thank you.

Not an announcement, Mayor Walker, but I did want to say very quickly,

I was really pleased with how we all conducted ourselves at our last meeting.

I think it was quite welcomed from the audience as well as those who were watching how we were all able to respect each other.

And even when we disagree with each other, we are able to again keep a certain level of calmness within the meeting.

So I hope that that's a trend that can continue.

So I appreciate all of you who were there at the last meeting.

All right, and I would like for us to take just a brief moment of silence.

This morning on Facebook, Dean Smith, who is Sage Smith's father, posted that November 19th, 2012 was the last time that he spoke this age.

And so I just think that we can offer the family some love and support by a moment of silence.

You may need to jiggle your mic.

This evening, a council is appointing the following to its boards and commissions.

The board of architectural review, the planning commission rep, Jody LaHendro.

the Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee, T. Donna Chen, Jaunt, Audrey Dannenberg, Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee, Amy Carter and Jeffrey Frazier, Region 10 Community Services Board, Jari Bell, Retirement Commission, David Hughes,

The Rivanna River Basin Commission, Robert Woodside The Social Services Advisory Board, L.D.

Perry The Towing Advisory Board, Robert Woodside The Water Resources Protection Program Advisory Committee, Jacqueline Goodrum, Michael Ramsey, Trey Stigman The Housing Advisory Committee

Applications we received there are some transitions going on in terms of the roles that will be fulfilling those and so right now at the request of the Housing Advisory Committee we're going to put a hold on making those appointments and we're anticipating we'll be able to resume that process in early January after we get some feedback from them on some of those roles and the transitions that are taking place.

From among council we are transitioning who will be representing us at the TJPDC to Mayor Walker and the Social Services Advisory Board to Mr. Signer.

I guess that's a motion.

OK. All in favor.

Just a really quick word on the TJDPC.

There was an article in the paper last week about my attendance at these meetings.

There were some misleading elements in the article, and I just wanted to

just to talk about it quickly.

This is the only board that meets at 7 o'clock on a weekday night.

The bylaws require notice to the chair of the body of the

it represents five localities so a letter was sent because I'd missed three meetings in a row three meetings in a row it doesn't require removal but it has been I will admit it has been a struggle I've got a couple I've got two four year olds it has been very difficult we have and then you start getting into when you talk to your community about why it's hard sometimes miss meetings there's a lot of personal stuff that it's hard to talk about about why it's hard with two four year olds to miss

to make meetings at 7 o'clock at night, but it kind of goes to choices that I've decided to make.

And then there were two other conflicts which led to me missing meetings which were very specific.

One was a friend who was in a horrible accident in New York City and I had to go and be with him who later died.

And then there was another one which was a heart attack in my wife's family and she was out of town.

And that week it seemed to be the best thing for me to be around with kids.

So we're humans.

I definitely miss these meetings.

I'm grateful to Mayor Walker for agreeing to make the swap.

Also in this email that I sent back to the reporter, I didn't, I actually, the first line of it was, I don't think there's much of a story here.

And in going through a fairly lengthy email, I did not mean to be critical of Mayor Walker for other meetings.

I didn't intend that.

I understand that it came across that way, but I did not intend that.

I want to apologize for any impression that that created.

I didn't know that this would be a story.

I was trying to get it to not be a story because this is, as I've told you about, it's kind of a complicated thing.

I appreciate, I used to be on social services board.

I think it's a better thing for me to do and it is very challenging in these roles, part time roles, to do a lot of night time meetings when you have young kids and that's something that I certainly have

struggled with and done imperfectly.

OK.

Item A, the minutes from November 5th and November 14th, 2018.

Item B, an appropriation, VDOT funding for multimodal improvements in the amount of $413,217, second of two readings.

Item C, an appropriation, the West Main streetscape improvements, revenue sharing funds in the amount of $3,112,000.

$413, second of two readings.

Item D in appropriation, Urban Construction Initiative Annual Meeting for $2,064.02, first of two readings.

Item E in appropriation,

Special Nutrition Program Food Grant for $32,000, first of two readings.

Item F in appropriation, the Community Forest Grant for Land Acquisition at Ragged Mountain, $600,000, first of two readings.

Item G in appropriation, City Schools Check and Connect Student Engagement Grant for $62,691 first of two readings.

Item H in appropriation, Drug Treatment Court Administration Grant for $293,745 first of two readings.

Item I in appropriation, the Runaway Emergency Shelter Program Grant for $209,444, first of two readings.

Item J in appropriation, the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund repayment of a substantial rehab loan in the amount of $28,282, first of two readings.

Item K in appropriation,

from the same fund in the amount of $23,478.94, first of two readings.

And then the last three are all quitclaim gas easements, item 11, an ordinance of quitclaim gas easement for North Berkshire Road to VDOT, first of two readings.

Item M, an ordinance

to Dunlora subdivision to VDOT, first of two readings.

Thank you.

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

All right.

So moved.

All right, we'll vote.

It carries five to zero.

Mayor Walker, members of council, there were a number of items in our last council meeting that I have some follow up on.

First was for Ms. Cassandra Mathis commenting on the trash removal schedule on the mall and whether we were providing bags for dog waste and to have

I've personally gone out and verified that we do have two of those areas, one at the western end and one at the eastern end of the mall.

Trash removal on the mall is conducted by staff from Parks and Recreation at least two and sometimes three times every day.

And you're certainly aware of the times that there is most frequently need, which is times when it's warmer, typically, or on weekends, and verified all that with Mr. Daley.

One of the follow-up items was a comment from Ms. Parker about a request for the police chief to meet with Lolita Smith and the belief arrangements were made but did not work out.

There was a question based on a comment from Nancy Carpenter with regard to

Emergency assistance that residents may need and what the resources are and what the city might do differently based on a request from Dr. Bellamy.

Currently, the city provides $84,516 per year to a fund for emergency needs.

There are about $100,000 that come to us from the Department of

Housing and Community Development for prevention.

And I think that based on discussions both with city staff and the provider community and the end of the

Quickness with which the resources get exhausted as they're dispensed in the past quarterly and this year monthly.

It is believed that roughly about three times that amount is needed from the city.

I do.

During the item for West Main Street from the regular agenda, there were several items for follow-up.

Kerry Rainey will be working with the consultants on website updates.

Most pertinent at this time will be adding in a schedule.

All the files are uploaded and are complete as of right now.

Staff is reviewing some files that will be uploaded in early 2019 and there are a number of significant actions in 2019 to be taken.

Request for an update on the release of the $5 million commitment from UVA towards West Main.

I've discussed that with Colette Sheehy from the COO's office.

And they are open to developing an MOU.

We did agree that that would probably not be for phase one, but it could be spread into phases two, three, and four in a way that suited both parties.

Ms. Galvin, you had a question about Dominion Undergrounding.

Mr. Acafuno gave you a lengthy response but for the public's benefit and I think that the answer is that

that we're not eligible for that particularly in this area and that the only time that Dominion has offered to do cost sharing on undergrounding here has been for areas that are particularly difficult for them in recovery efforts.

One notable example is the Lewis Mountain Road neighborhood where I believe they wanted to do that because power outages can last for a long time if they happen in that neighborhood basically because of the mature tree canopy.

Also from that same agenda item, bus turning radius is under review.

Most of the specs, this is based on a comment from Mr. Bandy, for taking out that slip lane were based on fire trucks and the current size of Greyhound bus.

We understand that there is a bus size that they don't use here locally, but we will spec against that and make sure that the turning radius still works.

Mayor Walker made some comments about the statue and I would say that the current plan is for the statue to move 24 feet and it was endorsed by council and I believe the BAR at some point.

It's not currently part of the design work that we're doing with Roadside and Harwell for it to move

all together and I would assume that you would want some engagement of the public if you want to consider that and ask them to do new design elements prior to phase one because it is at that eastern end of West Main Street which is in the first phase.

And final thing I have on that section is that I've met with a number of staff and will provide a kind of a workforce update on construction projects at a future council meeting.

I have requested.

If that's a request from council, we should probably formalize that in some way rather than it coming as part of just a conversation with me and the staff.

For tonight's manager's responses, I've also asked

two different presentations to happen.

You are aware that there were significant comments at our last meeting about bullying and I said during the last meeting that I was aware of some grants in the past and it was possible that the Charlottesville City Schools would want to present on that this evening.

and so Dr. Rosa Atkins is here and I believe Patrick Farrell and Associate Superintendent Jim Henderson will provide you all with a presentation.

That will be followed by another short presentation that we advertise.

Chief Brackney promised two months ago to give you an update on warrantless searches and she is back to give you the next month's data.

Mayor Walker, council members, and our audience, thank you for having us tonight.

We'd like to go over a very brief overview of the systems of support that we have in Charlottesville City Schools to respond to bullying or any efforts around bullying.

Mayor Walker, City Council, acting City Manager Mr. Murphy, good evening.

Tonight Patrick Farrell who is the coordinator of behavioral support systems for Charlottesville City Schools will provide you an input, I mean will provide you a

An update on the culture and climate of Charlottesville City Schools and also share with you a model that addresses the engagement with our students and meeting their needs throughout their years in Charlottesville City Schools.

So I'm going to turn things over to Patrick and he'll walk you through many of the things that we are doing in our school division.

You notice from the diagram up there, we have, we realize that we need to look at our students in a very interconnected way.

Historically, when our students have struggled, whether academically, behaviorally, or with mental health issues, those tended to be kind of in silos, where a certain group of people would talk about it and maybe they wouldn't be necessarily understanding that

We were having a similar conversation with academics and so we realized that we to be much more intentional and aligned and integrated that we need to be thinking with a an integrated lens for all five of these domains and so Basically, I'm gonna be touching on mostly on the behavior and mental wellness aspect of for that tonight so the idea of tiers systems of support is that

There's three tiers that we use.

Tier one is what we do for all students and all staff.

And we do that for literacy, for math, attendance, behavior, and mental wellness.

And that's a bit of a change of how we've approached behavior and mental wellness before.

We've tended to mostly think about when something goes wrong what we do and not necessarily kind of have a proactive system of instruction about here are the positive things that we believe that all students should know how to do as far as

being an independent adult, things like decision-making, social awareness, self-awareness, relationship skills.

And so what we're doing, that would be the tier one that we do for all students.

Tier two is some students might struggle and not get that first instruction.

And so we want to have, again, thinking about a small number of students might need a little more follow-up, slightly more intensive support.

and then tier three would be for the students who really struggle and hopefully that's just like one to five percent of our student population who really need a very individualized approach.

And so we have this in place for all five of the domains but again I'll be focusing mostly on the behavior and mental wellness tonight.

So for tier one for all students who are again thinking specifically of what we're talking about with climate and belief prevention, we have a nationally or actually internationally known system called positive behavior interventions and support framework.

where each school kind of decides what are the three to five school wide expectations that both students and staff will share and then things like show respect, be safe, be a learner.

But each school decides which are the ones that they want to do and then they instruct the students on here's how that looks like in the hallway, here's what it may look like in the cafeteria and it's modeled, it's reinforced,

when students kind of need some additional support for instruction, it's given to them.

And so that is a system that we've been doing here in the city.

Started at Johnson Elementary about six years ago.

We brought on Walker and Buford about four or five years ago.

And right now, all of our division schools are in the system.

Charlottesville High School is this year in a planning mode for full implementation of the positive behavior supports for next school year.

A practice that we've done, again, one of those grants that Mr. Murphy was referring to as well is called Responsive Classroom, which is really a community building kind of program primarily focused at the elementary level where students kind of learn how to interact with each other and problem solve about issues that might come up in the classroom.

Classroom circles is probably the version of it that you might use at secondary level where, again, based on restorative practices,

This idea of creating a community, an intentional community and helping people, making sure that everyone knows that they're valued and that, again, use that for problem solving.

A major new initiative that we started last year is social-emotional learning.

This idea of direct instruction on some of these what we call social-emotional competencies, like I was referring to before.

That's the self-awareness, the self-management.

Responsible decision-making, things like that.

And so we're using three nationally recognized curricula for that.

We're doing it division-wide at preschool at the four-year-old and kindergarten, and then we're doing pilots at various different grades and various different schools throughout our division as well, including at Buford Middle School, and they're using Second Step.

Some schools have had more specific programs and strategies, some kind of leftover from the previous grants.

So there's a national stopbullying.gov website that supports upstanders, not bystanders.

P-Squad is associated with Walker.

Bullying Out is at Jackson Valley.

And again, these are just ongoing practices that are happening in all our schools.

For students who need a bit more support, a lot of the many times either

Our speech language pathologists or school counselors might do things like friendship groups, lunch bunches.

We're again gathering kids together and just giving them a little support and maybe applying some of those lessons about how to be a friend and how to

how to interact with each other and kind of in a very supportive casual way.

One of those grant programs was the Olweus Bullying Prevention Strategies and so many of our schools are still implementing those.

Social skills groups can, this might kind of depend each year depending on the data and the particular challenges that either a grade or a school might be facing that these might be ad hoc groups that we pull together for specific students who will, both kind of might have a shared need for again friendship building, things like that.

Check In Check Out is another nationally recognized program that kind of pairs a student with an adult in the building, a trusted adult where they set goals and then the adult kind of checks in the morning, checks out at the afternoon and kind of gives them some incentives to kind of not only kind of meet those goals but also create that positive relationship between the adult and the student.

And the last piece is restorative practices where, again, addressing bullying or peer conflicts.

These are things, again, that we try to think about things like repairing the harm,

We're pulling both victim and person who might be doing the building, trying to pull them both back into the community in a very constructive way.

Knowing that many of our students who interact with each other, they're going to be interacting with each other for the next 12 years in our system and we want to be thinking long term about how we can be as inclusive as possible.

and I have other kinds of exclusionary type practices.

And the last tier for the individualized one is for just a few students, hopefully.

And so this might involve direct counseling.

We have an arrangement with a number of our local mental health nonprofits for therapeutic day treatment support, where students are found eligible for additional supports during the school day.

For students who require individualized support,

we go through this process called a function behavior assessment behavior intervention plan where we really try to find out what is behind the behavior and we look at it as an instructional issue what skill deficit do they have or how can the adults better plan for this particular student and so the student can increase in their skills and again be more independent and another big point of emphasis that we've done this year is something called re-regulation zones where this idea of many times our students whether they needed sensory breaks where they just need a place to kind of

Madam Mayor, I have a question.

Through my travels and some of the Conference of Mayors work, I met the mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, who works with the Curry School, I think, on their mindfulness work at a very robust level.

And I don't know much more about it other than that, other than he said, oh, we work.

And then I've heard that it is very popular.

I mean, you mentioned mindfulness some, but I don't know the level or how systematic it is or how it's worked and whether it's with Curry or anything.

The person you are identifying is Tish Jennings, Dr. Jennings.

And at this point in time, we are working with her.

And we also work with our teachers during the summer on mindfulness and then they use those strategies in the classroom with our students.

Is that at every level?

We started at the elementary school level

Mr. Walker, I have a question.

And Dr. Atkins and Mr. Henderson, thank you very much.

Could you just walk us through what happens when you get a complaint about a case of bullying?

Well, it depends on what the case is.

Whether where the bullying occurred or where the behaviors have occurred, there's an investigation that takes place.

There's a conferencing with the families or the reporter.

There are quite a bit of note taking that happens.

There's conferencing with teachers and any other of the adults or students who may have been involved in the activity.

and after that has taken place then the principal, counselor at the school and perhaps some teachers then will get involved in deciding which one of those, either tier 2 or tier 3 interventions need to take place.

Some examples of those interventions might be contracts that the students will enter into, no contact contracts.

that students and sometimes the adults will sign, making sure that there's no contact happening.

investigation reveals where some of these behaviors may have occurred, making sure strategies are put in place that no opportunity is given for those contacts to happen again or those interactions in the school environment.

Now sometimes those behaviors will occur outside of the school environment and then we work with community supports and families in order to help those contacts not to happen.

outside.

Mr. Henderson probably has some suggestions but what I think we're seeing is we all know that social media can add to and help to inflame many situations that are going on so helping to

inform our families and our students about the use of social media and the great benefits that social media can provide, but also some of the dangers that are there and where conflict can occur in those settings.

I think one of the things that works is seeming to work for us is when we're providing peer mediation in the community.

When we have someone that helps either students or adults in the community to develop some very healthy strategies on how to resolve conflict because at any moment any of us can get pretty agitated about various situations and to know how to resolve some of those conflicts

without it getting to a point of violence or hurting one another, I think can be beneficial for all of us.

So one question.

I have a couple of questions.

Thank you all for the presentation.

Actually, over the last several years, our

A number of bullying incidences have gone down and we've recorded nine.

I think the key thing with bullying is that making sure we define it correctly.

Bullying is usually when there's an imbalance of power between one or another person, either verbally or using cyber bullying would be another source.

And also that event occurs over and over and over again.

Most of our issues tend to be with peer conflicts and you have to separate whether that's a bullying incident or it's peer conflict, particularly at

Upper Elementary, Middle and High School.

And the difference is that different strategies work for different purposes.

When you're dealing with a bully, you can't mediate.

You have to find ways to work with the bully, making sure that we have strategies in place.

And then we have to look at ways of how we get that person and restore that person back into the community in a positive way, which is the purpose of the school is to helping all kids.

Second thing with conflicts, you can mediate conflicts and you have to look at strategies of how you do that.

A couple of things that we are working at is building up leadership opportunities for our students so that they play a bigger role in actually managing and governing our schools with our teachers and how they become

And it sounds like to a certain extent we are using PBIS for those who don't know Positive Behavior Intervention Strategies.

Do we have like a culturally responsive

And so that integrates with PBIS.

And then last question for me.

Fortunately, I know sometimes because it's pure conflict and parents may think that, well, my child may be being bullied and there's

clear line between the two.

In the event in which a parent may say, hey, my child is being bullied.

They've had this issue with this child.

And then they may be told, well, it's just a pure conflict.

There's nothing that we can do.

And then something happens in which things may go too far.

How do we kind of address those issues?

Because I think from parents, that's kind of a general consensus that we hear often.

So I'm just asking if you all want to address that at all.

I think we have to address

both and we have to be sensitive to the child's needs and the parent's concerns and so I think what helps us is to determine which is the issue and address it with the appropriate strategies so that we can resolve it, create, getting them back in a restorative way with the community

so that they're working together in a collective way.

I think part of the thing that we're trying to do in the school division is really work toward collective efficacy.

Adults working together, students working together, building relationships and creating a climate that is responsive to everyone's needs.

And so I think whether a child or a parent

That's a serious matter.

It's not about who is at fault.

A child has been injured.

When bullying gets to that point where there is an injury for a child, it's time for not only the school personnel but the community members.

We all then come together.

because when we have conflicts to that level, it's not going to be resolved just by the strategies that are happening in the school.

It's gonna take wraparound strategies for the students who are involved and for the adults who are involved in order to make sure we, first of all, keep the children safe and then start to address those underlying issues because you and I both know that children can be best friends today

I'm really glad you brought up that point as I like to kind of echo that statement I think we hear from the schools especially in the community so often people are saying well the school should be doing this or the school should be doing that

but there's tons of data that shows kids actually spend more time out of school than they do in school and the schools only play one component in regards to keeping them safe.

So it's really easy for us to point the fingers and say things aren't happening in the schools but kids sometimes walk around our neighborhoods every day and we see them have these issues and we don't intervene because we say we don't want to get involved or that child doesn't want to listen or this or that we make excuses but then we come back and say the school should have done X, Y and Z.

So Dr. Atkins' point is well taken.

It's a community and collective effort.

Don't point the finger just at the schools while you're sitting at home or just sitting down not doing anything.

Our children belong to all of us.

I agree.

Thank you.

This is a follow-up to our previous presentation last month in which we had asked and solicited input from council on a briefing on how we could better engage our encounters with those individuals that we have based on warrantless search and seizures.

So as I get everything together.

But before I start that, I do want to just echo Dr. Atkins's sentiments.

We actually have a meeting scheduled, I think they may have just left,

We do have a meeting scheduled later this month to see how those behaviors that occur in the school manifest themselves back out in the community and then back into the school again.

So these don't occur in isolation.

The thing that I would also echo is when we talk about our children being best friends today and not tomorrow, there's also the possibility on day three they're back being best friends again.

And that's a good thing.

The problem is sometimes us as adults,

don't allow them to do that, right?

We take a stake and an interest in it and that peer conflict can't get resolved because we as adults aren't providing that positive support for them to be able to do that.

So we want to think about that as we come up with our strategies that we take a holistic approach and that we all see how we may contribute to the problem and then see how we can all help solve this issue at the exact same time.

seeing what we can do to make this a better place for all of our citizens.

Another lead into that is what do our encounters look like this October?

As you know, we are now have standardized our tracking and detentions regardless of outcomes.

Prior, we only would track those detentions in which there was no arrest or a citation or things of that nature.

It was just those ones in which we did not have it filled to completion.

We continue to standardize our definitions, including having training with our officers so they understand exactly what needs to be done.

in those reports.

The triangulation of our data is continuing by first point of contact is any report that an officer submits.

They then triangulate that or match it against what came in as possible 911 calls or air or radio traffic.

And then they pull the body cam videos that are associated with that.

As a reminder, we are doing all of this by hand.

There is no software that does that for us.

As I mentioned before, we currently have a part-time person who is doing that for us.

So let's look at this month, the month of October.

And what we had this time, we had a total of 51 incidents in which our officers encountered individuals and they stopped a total of 68 individuals in those 51 incidents.

Of those incidents, 28 of those resulted in arrest.

There was probable cause to arrest in a total of 25 of those and no arrests.

We had reasonable suspicion to stop them in 15 of those and there were no consensual encounters or what we are calling those encounters where you walk up and ask a person, can I have a conversation with you?

and they move forward on it.

Absolutely.

So the number of incidents versus the number of individuals.

So the officer may get a call for

Let's say a fight on the street.

That would be considered one incident, but there may be five people involved in that singular incident.

So you will often have more individuals involved than you will actually have incidents as well.

So all of those definitions will be on the website as well.

This is just for yours in terms of how the data may be presented.

We will keep on the website all the definitions that we used at the last presentation.

as well, what that standardization looks like, how we categorize it, the definitions of arrest, probable cause, reasonable suspicion.

We will also too have on there what a consensual encounter looks like so that any individual will know what their rights are and how they can engage an officer or how they can disengage from an officer if it rises to that level where they are not being detained.

Of those encounters, there were 51 incidents in which the officers encountered and had a detention with an individual.

The things I've been focusing on are those, not the ones that come from 911, the non-officer initiated, but really what do those encounters look like when an officer engages an individual in which they have not been directed there by either a victim, by 911, being flagged down on the street,

That's the officer's decision to engage them.

Of those 51 incidents, 23 are officer initiated in which they witnessed or engaged somebody for some reason.

When you see suspect on the scene, that comes from someone else telling us that this is the suspect that was involved in a crime, not the officer.

And a description was provided either through 911 or some other investigative tool or model, not based on what the officer and how they engaged them.

Of those 23 officer initiated contacts, there were 35 individuals in which we came into contact with them.

As you can see, they're broken down by gender and or racial categories.

As I told you and informed you last month, we were able to add ethnicity, which the officers now, if they engage someone

Musk and cannot proceed forward unless they add their ethnicity because a lot of UCR does not cover ethnicity.

They only cover your race, but we're trying to do a deeper dive into who we encounter and how we engage them.

The majority of the time that they encountered someone was for alcohol related and that may be an open container that we see and it has to be very clear evidence that it is an open container.

The next highest level is narcotics and that's either when they engage in whether there was a smell or odor of marijuana, something coming from a vehicle, what they might have believed to be a transaction and then of course

Traffic.

What you're going to see is one of the traffic ones.

Typically those are not.

When you see those, you'll see that officer sees a moving violation.

One of them you'll see later on there was a suspect that was in the car that had a warrant.

So they actually pulled over the driver who was a white female, but the suspect was not the person who was the intended.

That driver would fall in under that detention because they were the ones that we stopped.

of those officer initiated detentions.

Four of those incidents, they had reasonable suspicion to do that and they involved six individuals.

And then you can see those categories and those breakdowns in which they stopped them individually based purely on reasonable suspicion.

Again, believed it to be alcohol that they had or in the one case where it says it was a warrant.

They believe that the person in the car had a warrant for their arrest.

It did turn out later that they did.

But the person who was driving the car would be that person who you technically are detaining.

If you look a little further too, narcotics is the other one.

and on minor crimes of a person in which they engage them.

I have intentionally again left out in terms of some of this reporting breaking it down specifically by our juveniles.

They are embedded within these but I'm not pulling the juveniles out because our juvenile crimes one have a bit more protections but also two because there's so few incidents you can easily identify who that might have been that we engaged.

So you have to be very careful about releasing certain types of data.

And particularly recently too with some of the more high profile juvenile incidents that we've had and have made either the newspapers or found themselves through the school systems trying to provide as many protections for those persons who are suspects as well as those persons who are victims.

Of the officer initiated detentions, remember I said there were 23 of those, 10 of those incidents involved 10 individuals in which we actually did arrest the person.

Again, alcohol seems to be the driving force and I know we've had some emails back and forth about what we can do about alcohol issues in this community.

the problems that typically arise when it's being fueled by alcohol.

I know Councilor Galvin has sent us some emails and asked us to look at that and our city attorney has weighed in on what we can do better about some of these crimes that may be alcohol fueled or alcohol related.

Realizing that although this may be a college town, there are some things that we should think about in terms of restorative practices, narcotics and low level things like that.

Do we want to introduce people into systems

when there's the ability to avoid that.

next of those officers initiated, they had probable cause to arrest but did not arrest.

There were nine incidents in which they had probable cause to arrest but did not arrest those individuals.

And you can see the breakdown again of their gender and or race and the type of incidents they could have arrested someone for but chose instead basically to issue some sort of warning.

We document that in a police report and we document it through our contacts but those individuals were allowed

to move forward.

Again, the question is asked about how often do we search or how often do we pat individuals down.

Of those individual 23 incidents in which we contacted someone and the 38 persons, they patted down two individuals, searched

a total of seven individuals and six vehicles for 13 total searches.

When you see N.A.

you cannot pat down a vehicle.

And if you want we can explain on the website for clarity what's the difference between a pat down or a warrantless search.

Whatever you would want for clarity is we're going to put this as the final format on our website so I will take your direction how you would like that done.

If you see an asterisk, it normally means that something else has happened as well.

We have been able to now, I'm asking you to pull out of those searches, how many were consent, where you actually asked the person to search them or the driver of the vehicle.

One person consented to a search of their person and one person consented to a search of their vehicle.

You'll see my note there that there were no items found of contraband or any of those nature of those two consents.

So just to

included and be as inclusive as we can about how we engage, when we engage a person, and what those outcomes are.

So just a more compressed or compact way in which we do it.

We had 23 detentions for 35 different individuals.

And of those, this is what the arrests look like.

Physical arrest, move through the systems, what we summons for and what we did warnings for.

As you can see, the majority of the times that we encounter a person, we actually give them warnings more than we do introduce them into any systems.

again sometimes this number may not be exactly correct because you may have an individual that you stopped who receives several summons so don't the numbers may not always be exactly correct because a person can receive a summons for several different types of incidents but it's for one person so we're trying to be as accurate as reflective as we can

to do a one for one so that you can see it.

So the way we're currently counting it, one person, one summons, even if there were several summons issued, but the outcome would still have been the same.

Of those here, the 68 total individuals that we encountered, we're putting it in now, moving it by where they first stopped the individual before they were categorizing it by where they actually had the final encounter.

And as you can see, by neighborhood, the last one I presented for you, if the neighborhood did not have any contacts, we had that

off of the screen so you didn't see it.

Now we put them in just so that every neighborhood, if they want to look up what their neighborhood was, we didn't forget the community, we just have zeros there representing them so that they know that their neighborhoods are there and represented.

The question that council had asked me before was the number of officers involved and are they the same officers.

So here's what we were able to say of the 23 encounters that were self-initiated, not those that came from the other ways.

They were 16 different officers who initiated those contacts.

and several of those officers had more than one contact.

In other words, they stopped people several times and I broke that out as well.

So the first one is when you see that they had an individual contact, we had officers with two or more contacts.

That was a total of four of those and then I looked at the shifts where those contacts are occurring, where there were two or more and daylight and midnight tend to be those two and that would make sense.

Midnight actually starts around that 1030

at night in the morning or through the next morning when we're looking at those types of detentions.

So that's in terms of the number of officers.

Not sure if you want that broken down any further or how I could do that in a way that was meaningful and could provide you with more data.

I'm willing to hear how that could occur.

and moving forward.

Just as a reminder, the last time I was here, I did ask for community support, our input as to what they would like to see or how we could dive deeper into the data.

I did not receive any requests from anyone else to add anything additional to that.

After we get through this and answer your questions, if this is how you would like the data presented, we will put it on our website.

It could go in a PDF form.

It could go as the PowerPoint that I presented.

Not that I would be here every month doing that.

We're hoping to just get that out and then we could focus on other issues.

but whatever that format would look like.

Mr. Wheeler has advised us that he could do it for us a lot easier than if we had to integrate it into IT.

Just post it on our website.

We could do it as the city as well as linking it to the CPD's website as well.

Whatever we could do to be most transparent and as much access as possible.

Thank you.

But it's just on the data part.

So we passed an open data policy last year and it includes in it that the data, when we put it up, should be machine readable.

So we really want people to be able to access this kind of data and really be able to comb through it, put it together as they want independently.

It's perfect for that.

So I just wanted to

Thank you.

I created those charts myself by entering the data.

You can import a chart in PowerPoint so that they can do exactly that.

Great.

And when you broke it up by neighborhood, is there a map?

that people can refer back to to understand what those neighborhood designations mean.

We can do those kinds of things.

I mean, if we think we can get more value out of that, I don't know how we then connect those maps

I think the vice mayor just asked can we create the map with just the boundary lines showing this is the mall as we defined it.

I'm sure you have people who do maps.

They can create the map for you.

Vice Mayor, I think one of the examples that comes to mind is when Rich Schuyler did his orange dot mapping where he was able to demonstrate where the high incidence of poverty occurs in the city.

and they used ranges of income levels and then intensity of color.

I think that might be helpful to understand, well, where is the higher incidence of certain activity?

where this activity is taking

that the city and IT would help to do that with.

Would we have to use outside vendors to create those hot spots or trending or what does each of that look like?

So, council would have to decide would that be worth our investment in terms of

and what we would be attempting to accomplish from that.

I can guarantee you I don't have staff that can do that.

I mean, this would be something in GIS.

And so I think correlations, for example, looking at health data, looking at income data, looking at the crime data.

I'm just speaking from experience when we were putting together the choice neighborhood application.

This was the kind of information that was extremely helpful and necessary to become competitive for making grant applications.

for Federal Monies.

Typically, geography isn't necessarily the deployment factor.

I mean, we are able to trend to some degree, and that's, again, a lot of it is being done manually.

but as and we can speak to this we've actually put into our budget request for an authentic crime analysis not an officer who's been tasked to do that which is typically what happens is that there's a need and then someone has to fill that need so you grab whoever's available and then they become your crime analyst or they become your financial planner or they become your logistics person

So the arrest, because alcohol, if I'm remembering correctly, was probably the number one last

And I think it's probably different last month, and it's different from the emails that were going around about the students.

I mean, we used to have the Moore Center, and instead of taking people to jail or arresting them, we could drop them off at the Moore Center where they would be safe until they were sober.

So is that

I know when Robert Johnson gave the presentation, he talked about that as being something that was outdated, but this is the second month, and I'm sure if we had data from previous months, that that's just something from a community perspective.

Yeah, I would ask that you do some research, and the only thing is, I'm not familiar with the Moore Center and what they did and what the facility actually looked like.

Was it individual rooms or was it an open space or how they engaged them?

I can just speak with some knowledge on what happened in Pittsburgh.

When we took people into custody, for just that is the danger to possibly to themselves because they were drinking too much.

Once you take them in, you have due custody and care.

that you've done that.

So a person got in a fight there, broke another person's jaw, and then the city got sued for that because they said you took me in for protective purposes and you didn't protect me.

So what does that staffing look like?

But I'd be more than willing to look at that with or revisit it to see how we could be a part of that as a conduit, just like we do with those other persons who may have mental health issues, how we divert them to another place.

I have another question about are you all internally keeping track of the officer initiated to because I mean knowing that is one thing but I guess knowing if it's a consistent

Right.

Are there some interventions that we say if we have someone who's trending, right?

Or is there somebody who has canned language and it starts to show up every single time on a report?

Yes.

So of those 23 officers initiated where you saw that there were 16 officers involved in those and then the ones who had multiple encounters, right?

You do want to look at those persons who may be having multiple encounters, but I also need to balance that with

If the officers are out there engaging people proactively, we don't want them also to think that I'm going to be so focused on them that they now stop doing anything.

Because there are a lot of personnel who will respond to say, listen, if I'm always under scrutiny because I'm the one who's proactive and out there, do I fly under the radar and just now only answer 911 calls?

So what we're hoping to develop is a culture of which the officers understand that we are here as part of the community.

and we're not a separate and occupying force of the community.

Thank you so much, I appreciate it.

Yes, I have it right here.

All right, so we're going to start with community matters.

Good evening.

Hi.

Mayor Walker, city council members, thank you so much for this opportunity to speak.

My name is Kendall Crawford and I'm a Richmond resident, but I am the director of Virginia Interfaith Power and Light, which is a member of Seville 100.

We are an organization that works with people of all faiths to grow healthy communities and advance climate justice through education, advocacy, and worship.

Climate action is tightly linked to social justice issues.

We are painfully aware of the scourge of environmental racism in Virginia, which subjects communities of color to higher levels of polluted air, water, and land.

People of color and low-income communities are disproportionately impacted by our dangerous energy choices.

According to a recent United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, we only have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe.

The report says that we need urgent and unprecedented change right now.

To make this clear, inaction will sentence hundreds of millions of people around the world, particularly in poor countries, to be at risk of climate-related poverty.

Rising sea levels, longer allergy seasons, increased asthma attacks, stronger rainfall, and increased mosquito and tick-borne infections are impacts right here in Virginia.

Climate change in our fossil fuel infrastructure exacerbates the issues that people of faith are already working on, such as hunger, clean water, immigration, refugees, sickness, and global conflict.

We applaud the steps Charlottesville has taken to embrace renewable energy and sustainability.

We encourage the city to continue its commitment to a future worthy of the next generation, one that harnesses ecological wisdom and neighborly love for a just and healthy Charlottesville.

As people driven by faith to uphold a vision of the intrinsic worth of creation, shared abundance, and the sanctity of life, we advocate for science-based, faith-driven solutions to the climate crisis.

And we refuse to be content knowing that our neighbors are living in sacrifice zones caused by fossil fuels.

Climate change is a moral issue.

Cutting dangerous carbon pollution from sectors such as transportation and energy production will save lives.

We can increase health and abundance while addressing our pressing economic needs, including affordable energy and job creation.

And in this vein, I encourage the city of Charlottesville to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 45% by 2030 based on 2010 emission levels

and to be net carbon zero by 2050.

Access to affordable renewable energy plays a vital role in ensuring that every community, not only in Charlottesville but across the Commonwealth can become healthier and more resilient in the face of climate disruption.

Thank you.

Hello, good evening Council members.

I'm Laura Allen.

I am the National Organizer for Generation 180 as well as an Executive Committee Member for Seville 100.

And I'm here to speak about the City's climate goals.

First off, I'd like to thank the City Council for pursuing action on climate change initiatives.

Signing on to the Global Covenant of Mayors, and I'd also like to thank Crystal Rivervold and Susan Elliott for their work in engaging the community around this issue.

I know the greenhouse gas emission reduction targets do not sound very interesting to most people.

But when I think about GHG reductions, I think about helping families.

Clean energy sources and energy efficiency are the two best ways to reduce GHG emissions.

The first gives you jobs, and the second reduces utility bills and improves quality of life.

Charlottesville is making a name for itself as a sort of clean energy Silicon Valley, bringing jobs for people with skills ranging from engineering to marketing and construction work.

These companies offer stability to the workforce and support the city's economy.

It only makes sense that the energy policies of Charlottesville match the clean energy industry that it is grooming.

Prioritizing clean energy solutions opens up new choices for homeowners, too.

For the first time in history, your energy sources can align with your moral compass.

We do not need coal or foreign oil or dirty energy to reduce electricity when there is competitive market for solar and wind energy locally.

Solar panels are freeing residents to make their own choices, and this helps the energy grids become more resilient.

The cost of solar panels is now one-third of what it was just ten years ago.

And solar power is now the fastest growing source of new energy in the world.

Regardless of your stance on global politics or the Paris Climate Accord, it is clear that the future will depend on renewable energy.

With severe storms and extreme weather events becoming increasingly normal, the availability of solar panels and on-site energy storage can make a huge difference.

For our emergency shelters, our hospitals, our schools, and during power outages, these are the things that we rely on, not to mention our homes and our families.

If we diversify our energy sources, we will have many more options during an emergency situation.

There are gains to be made by saving energy, too.

Efficient homes have better air quality and lower utility bills, reducing sick days and saving people money.

Low-income families stand to benefit the most from energy efficiency measures as those with the least pay the highest percentages of their incomes on utilities.

Generation 180 firmly believes that a community-wide transition to clean energy is essential for a healthy society, which is why we support the setting of greenhouse gas emissions reduction target that is in line with the recommendations of the IPCC report.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Walker and members of council.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak.

My name is Gray McLean.

I'm the founder of the Charlottesville Climate Collaborative, or C3 for short.

We're a local nonprofit focused upon fostering cross sector, community wide climate action in the Charlottesville area specifically, and also a member of Acebo 100.

Currently through our programs we have 86 area businesses including the city of Charlottesville and 110 area households directly reducing and greening their energy use.

Moreover, 271 local citizens have joined us in calling for the Charlottesville area to lead on climate.

C3 is excited about the opportunity before the city.

The results of the recently released inventory show declining emissions.

We are off to a very strong start.

The city should seize this momentum.

To that end, I'd like to make just a few more points.

Number one, the climate goal-setting process presents a golden opportunity for us to lead.

Historically, specifically on climate goals, Charlottesville has lagged other communities in the Commonwealth of Virginia, including Arlington, Alexandria, Richmond, Blacksburg, and Roanoke.

The upcoming process gives Charlottesville an opportunity to lead its peers and to build a better future for all of its citizens.

Secondly, leading on climate is critical to our long-term economic development.

Our businesses need Seaville to lead in order to attract and retain employee talent.

Our hospitality industry needs Charlottesville to lead in order to attract visitors to our community.

Our clean energy sector needs Charlottesville to lead in order to support their missions and values and those of their employees.

Thirdly, broad stakeholder engagement is essential to success.

The vast majority of emissions do not come from government operations.

They come from three sources, businesses, residences, and community transport.

Due to the Dillon Rule, the city is very limited in what it can do directly to limit emissions from these sources.

As a result, the city must engage businesses and residents deeply in a community stakeholder process.

If not, whatever plan is developed is highly unlikely to be successful.

And fourth and finally, the city should require that a greenhouse gas inventory be conducted every two years.

Inventories, as has been recently completed, are resource intensive, but there is an old saying that what gets measured gets done.

We cannot afford to wait three, four, or five years to figure out whether or not we're on track.

Thank you.

I'm Marcia Guyer.

I live in Charlottesville on Pear Tree Lane.

I'm secretary of three

sorry, Secretary of 350 Central Virginia and Treasurer of the Seville 100 Climate Coalition.

You may not have heard of the Climate Coalition before, by the way.

We're only a little less than a year old, but it's bringing together all the different organizations in the city and Albemarle County that are working on climate issues.

So, okay.

So I urge city council to go ahead with actions that are sure to be included in Charlottesville's climate action plan without waiting for a couple of years more for the plan to be finalized.

Time is of the essence to cope with the climate emergency.

I'll use my three minutes to take a quick look at how climate change is making asthma worse and what to do about it.

This is a little bit about skin in the game.

You may not have realized that asthma is becoming both more severe and more common for three reasons directly related to climate change.

First, fine particulate matter accumulates in the air we breathe from burning fossil fuels.

and it gets stuck in our lungs.

Second, ground level ozone pollution, a lung irritant, is formed in the presence of sunlight and now more powerful sunlight from chemicals in vehicle exhaust fumes and power plants.

Third, mold from dampness in periods of heavy rain is worsening the cause of asthma.

Now, asthma rates matter because asthma correlates strongly with poor overall health.

In Virginia, only 13.6% of adults without asthma report having poor or only fair health.

But 32.4% of adults who do have asthma, almost three times as many, report having poor or only fair health.

Controlling asthma with prescription drugs is really expensive, around $400 a year in 2016, an impossible expense for some low income and uninsured families.

Not surprisingly, low income correlates quite highly with high asthma rates.

Other factors are gender, women are twice as high, likely, uh-oh, can I continue?

just for a couple seconds.

Well, women are twice as likely to have asthma as men.

Race and ethnicity were the highest level for black non-Hispanics and higher rates for city dwellers.

That's us.

Thank you.

Mayor Walker, may we have a copy of what she wrote?

I can email a copy, yes.

Thank you.

Anna Bella Korbata.

I'd actually like to cede my time to Rich Alibi.

My name is Richard Levy.

I am a citizen of Charlottesville at 109 Chisholm Place.

I'm here tonight also to represent the Charlottesville Renewable Energy Alliance, which I am the board chair.

Everybody said everything before me pretty elegantly and thoroughly, so I'll try to keep it to the point here.

So our organization represents eight companies in Charlottesville that all work in the renewable energy industry.

and we represent over 300 employees in the city.

Our mission is to establish Charlottesville as the renewable energy hub of the southeast to support the local transition to sustainable energy practices and to advocate for the growth of the renewable energy economy.

So the pillar associated with helping Charlottesville and

with their transition to sustainable energy practices is very relevant, especially with regard to setting the carbon offset targets.

So part of our commitment in fulfilling this mission is actually to provide support to the city in the process of developing their sustainability plan.

As an organization, we strongly encourage and support the city in setting a carbon reduction target that's consistent with the most recent report that was released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is this October.

Just to reiterate that goal, a 45% reduction by 2035 and full carbon offset by 2050.

So the reason that we suggest this is because the results of the IPCC report show that science from the Paris Climate Agreement, it actually wasn't sufficient to maintain a livable planet.

So the IPCC report suggests a stronger target.

And so we believe that we should maintain consistency with that.

Obviously, as companies, we're committed to greenhouse gas reduction, but really the point I'm trying to make here is that we're also here as an organization to give our support to the city.

The city's not alone.

We have an incredible resource at the Charlottesville Renewable Energy Alliance, 300 employees, eight companies that are nationwide, so please do not feel alone in this.

Thank you, Carl.

Dear authorities, members of the community, and fellow NGOs, my name is Kai Teno, and today I'm here representing Citizens' Climate Lobby, an organization with approximately 100,000 members across the United States that recently started a chapter here in Charlottesville.

CCL, the organization, believes that for the city to be a leader on climate action it must take a significant commitment to reducing its greenhouse gases emissions to targets that are in line with what's called by the world's most eminent scientists.

As many in this room stated before, the IPCC, the International Panel for Climate Change report, says that by 2030 we must reduce greenhouse emission gas by 45% of what they were in 2010 and reach carbon neutrality by the year of 2050.

We believe that to honor its leadership and its commitment made by signing the Global Compact of Mayors, Charlottesville must establish ambitious and inseparable greenhouse gas emissions goals in line with these targets.

regarding how to achieve greenhouse gas reductions.

CCL believes that a carbon fee and dividend system is an effective solution for mitigating anthropogenic man-made climate change.

This system works as a type of carbon pricing, a policy acclaimed by the IPCC as the most efficient solution for mankind to achieve its greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal.

Likewise, carbon pricing is defended by the recently awarded Nobel Prize in economics and globally by 74 countries and more than 1,000 companies and investors, including six major energy companies.

For these reasons, we would like to ask the city of Charlottesville to include as part of its climate actions a resolution endorsing a national carbon pricing.

In this way, it would be joining 118 other municipalities across the United States, such as Blacksburg, Virginia, that already support this widely praised solution.

Good evening Mayor Walker and city councilors.

My name is Brad Slocum.

I'm a city resident.

I'd like to follow on from the previous speakers and comment on tonight's climate report, but I'd like to focus on the climate change risk or vulnerability assessment portion of the compact plan.

While greenhouse gas reduction is extremely important, I see regional climate event preparedness as an equally high priority and we need to take a more critical approach.

When I reviewed the regional natural hazard mitigation plan, the following passage jumped out at me.

Some segments of the population are more adversely affected than others by hazards.

The elderly, low-income households, people with disabilities, and families with young children may be less able to prepare for a disaster, be put at high risk during a disaster, and slower to recover after a disaster.

This problem is already well documented in climate-related disasters such as fires out west and the droughts, famines, and wars in Syria and Yemen.

However, neither immigrant nor refugee populations are specifically referenced in the Hazard Mitigation Plan, and immigration and refugees are not mentioned in the city's Local Climate Action Planning Process, or LCAPP.

On top of these omissions, as far as I could tell, no mention is made of race or ethnicity whatsoever in either document.

I see this as another example of how our community's structural issues regarding race, immigration, and income inequality are not adequately addressed by city and regional governments, despite comments such as the following made in the hazard mitigation plan.

Low income residents are often disproportionately affected by natural disasters.

Typically, the only land available to low income families is in less desirable locations in or near high hazard risk areas, such as along flood plains.

Affordable housing may not be well constructed as other housing, and therefore is more susceptible to damage from natural hazards.

Low income families may also have less disposable income to make their homes more disaster resistant.

Which brings me to my final point.

We must connect climate adaptation to other city and regional issues such as housing, transportation, and equitable economic development.

This is our chance to get it right, so let's take it.

With that in mind, we also shouldn't have to do this alone or reinvent the wheel.

What can we learn from our sister cities and other cities similar to ours in this global compact?

How have they handled low-income and vulnerable populations, immigration and refugees?

How have they handled issues like affordable housing and water shortages?

And finally, what about the University of Virginia?

I saw that Crystal Rittervold was on the program for last month's UVA Sustainability Leadership Summit.

But on the program, I saw hardly any mention of city or local connections or efforts.

So are we capitalizing on that resource that's available to us and why not if we're not?

Joan Chapman.

Joan Chapman.

And that's a first.

We are the elders in the community.

and we've been talking the statistics, the concerns for years and we have seen blank faces.

Now is the time for action or else future children, my granddaughters, are not going to have the lives that we all are used to.

We need to listen to all the details.

We need to listen to Sustainability Office.

We need to move and we need to move quickly.

1.5 degrees centigrade.

And all of the problems that you have on your plate right now, which are immense, which are important, every one of them will become meaningless because all the species

All of the species, including man, woman, and children, are going to be annihilated.

And this is not me, this is the science.

So, the green grannies dress up in weird clothes.

We get out there and we try to be as eccentric as possible to make the sugar make the medicine go down.

So right now, prepare yourself.

We need to wake up, we need to wind up We need to open our eyes and do it now, now, now We need to build a better future

And we need to start right now We're on a planet that has a problem We've got to solve it, get involved and do it now, now, now We need to build a better future And we need to start right now Make it greener

Make it cleaner, make it last Make it fast and do it now, now, now We need to build a better future And we need to start right now We need to wake up, we need to wind up

Thank you.

Mayor Walker, I thought you were going to put the hat on and go sing with them.

Hey, I'm a granny.

I mean, why did you just call us?

No, I'm old enough to be.

I don't, I don't, clear that record up.

All right, Zenita Howard and Susan.

The Knights.

Mayor Walker, Councillors

As you may remember, I was here last week, two weeks ago, speaking about Berlin.

I have a little more to say that maybe I'll speak to later.

In the course of the time last council meeting, there was an incident with my granddaughter, who has been bullied at Buford Middle School, to the point where she was also assaulted by four girls.

and it really disrupted the family as you can imagine.

She was here that night hoping to speak but she got very triggered, especially then they went out to the hallway and she saw a video of, you know, the monitor of another child speaking about having been beaten five years ago.

She fainted, she had a

really a full blown PTSD attack, all of which has a result of the baleen that she has suffered and I wrote to you all and because I wanted you to, first of all I wanted to apologize for the disruption I know that caused but also to say to you that you basically witnessed the effects of baleen.

In that letter, however, I also mentioned Ms. Howard's daughter, and I regret doing that.

I have apologized to you in a mediation session today, and I apologize to all of you.

There was no need to mention that child.

The point I was trying to make to you, I think, could have been made without that, and it was hurtful to you, and I apologize.

So I just wanted to say that to everybody.

And also, what I feel very strongly about is that this issue of bullying in the schools has got to be a coalition of all our citizens.

And my daughter did not have anything to do with the incident on the downtown mall.

We want to keep those separate and not

put my children in that mix at all.

There was some correspondence that went out on social media and a lot of people chimed in and said different things and I just want you all to be aware as we talk about the cyberbullying and as social media we have to be as adults to be very careful, mindful of what we say because a juvenile in a child's language

in that original post and a lot of people chimed in on it and it was very hurtful, disrespectful to me and my family.

My children have come to plenty of meetings before so for anyone to say they've never seen my children here before, that was a total lie.

But once again, me and Miss Susan did have a mediation today.

We can come to some common ground and we're hoping to help put an end to some of this bullying issue at Buford Middle School but we need the help of everyone.

I have also signed up separately.

I just want to include in the conversation about climate change, again, the unfortunate reality that the Paris Climate Agreement and the Mayor's Climate Compact, while they are a very positive and absolutely necessary step, are woefully inadequate.

And this is coming from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's recent report.

The goals of the Paris Agreement, which means the goals of the mayor's climate compact, would commit us to over 3 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century.

In the UN's climate change report this year, they have outlined what that means specifically.

It means desertification and severe drought affecting one-fourth of the world's population.

It means the forest fires we're seeing in California presently are just the beginning.

It means coral reefs 100% died off.

It means no Arctic ice during the summer.

It means sea level rises which will inundate and force complete displacement of major cities like Miami, parts of New York City.

It means tens to hundreds of millions of climate refugees leaving primarily Africa and the Middle East because of desertification, meaning there's no food and water.

That's our goal.

So we need to go way beyond that and I think as a city we need to do something unprecedented.

We need to engage in deep community organizing and go beyond what we think is possible because anything less is a form of climate change denial.

So I think we need to commit ourselves as a city to 100% renewable energy by 2030.

We need complete divestment of fossil fuels.

We need a robust system of pedestrian and bike paths that connects the city and the county.

We need a regional plan for public transportation.

and as others have mentioned we need to recognize locally what climate change means because it's going to affect the working class first and it's going to affect the working class the most.

Affordable housing is the housing that tends to be in floodplains and floodplain data is already completely out of date.

And so concretely what does climate change look like in Charlottesville right now?

It looks like a basement, apartment, flooding,

in what didn't used to be a flood zone and you don't have runner's insurance, you don't have flood insurance.

It means public housing getting damaged in storms more frequently and there being no money to rehab it.

It means the IRCs guard in flooding and being inoperable for months.

this is going

is the planning commission in our legislative packet today supporting Delegate Sam Rasul's bill that was introduced last session for Virginia to transition to 100% renewable energy by 2035.

Thank you.

Thank you for letting me speak tonight.

My name is Emily Little and I live in Albemarle, but I volunteer in Charlottesville and I spent a lot of time in Charlottesville and I used to work in the ER at UVA.

In this moment I have the privilege of being a stay-at-home mom.

I feel that two of the most foundational roles as a mother are firstly letting my children know love, unconditional love, fierce love, and secondly keeping my children safe.

When I think ahead

to the future, to their future, and I read the IPCC report put out by the UN, and I think about what 2030 and 2050 might look for them, I feel sick.

I think about all these little things I do every day to make them feel safe.

Buckle them repeatedly into car seats, put up gates, chop their grapes in half.

Those are all these small things.

And then I think about how we are using up our planet's resources so fast that their dreams will never be realized because of what generations of humans have done before them to this beautiful earth and what we are doing right now.

We have to act now as a city and a county to set aggressive greenhouse gas emission goals.

so that when our children look at us in 17 years, in 32 years, we can say, yes, we did something.

I was there.

We did something.

We started something in our own homes, in our own businesses, in our own city, in our own county.

And in 2018, we shifted something and we did something more.

We have to set bigger goals and we cannot be afraid of failing or falling short because we knew how serious it was.

We know how serious it was.

All of our little everyday things will not mean anything if we can't stop climate change.

Thank you.

Mr. Walker, may I make a comment about what's being said at this point?

And it's really pretty dramatic how I'm hearing the combination of sustainability and equity fusing together as goals.

It's long overdue and it's been a situation where actually the sustainability folks have been on one side of the fence and the equity people have been on the other and quite frankly taken potshots at each other.

This is a really revolutionary moment.

I'm hearing the importance for walkable communities.

There have been many, many times where that has been chastised, is roundly rejected as something purely as a fuel for gentrification.

Actually, it's fundamental to making us a green city.

We've mentioned the greenhouse gas emissions.

A third of that does come from the transportation sector.

But we are an employment hub where more people drive to work here than live here.

80% of city employees don't live in this city because they can't find workforce housing.

That's not the very low income housing, that's the middle tier housing.

If we're going to get serious about reducing the greenhouse gas emissions to transportation, we have to get serious about people living in the city, and we have to get serious about investing in public transportation.

Now the other thing that we're about to embark upon is a rezoning, rewriting our zoning.

Now you've got on one argument, you've got the development community saying we must go high rise.

It's the only way we get the densities up.

And then you've got the other end of the spectrum where it's like we've got to keep our areas biodiverse.

That means low density, small, single family detached homes.

Actually the most, the very most sustainable building type is in the middle.

They've got shared party walls.

They're not taller than trees, so trees can cool them in the summer so you reduce cooling loads, and the shared party walls reduce heating loads in the wintertime.

That means people working and living closer together.

Is this community ready for that?

Well, we're going to have conversations about affordable housing.

Why don't we integrate affordable housing discussions with sustainability?

So we do have to get serious here.

I've been serious about sustainability for an awful long time.

It's time for us to now join forces and not be opposed to each other.

So thank you very much.

Good evening, good evening, Quinton Harrell, Blue Jay Way.

Council on behalf of the New Hill Development Corporation, I'd like to thank you for your support.

We are convicted by your confidence as well as by the need of our community to create a winning environment and to right some generational wrongs.

The general public knows me as Quinton Harrell and the streets knows me as Papers.

I've been a small business owner and resident of Charlottesville for 20 plus years.

I had great gains in this community and I've lost almost everything because of my lack of financial literacy.

I'm a two-time college dropout who graduated as an adult.

I've been called a multitude of names in the streets, some good and some not so good.

Nonetheless, no one can deny that I work hard.

I'm always working towards improving myself, and I've learned to give back.

I was raised to be a go-getter by a single mother who relentlessly struggled for a better life.

Persevering through rape, abuse, and trauma, she worked hard.

She took risks.

As an eight-year-old, I remember doing my homework while sitting in her electronics class at Paul D. Camp Community College in Franklin, Virginia.

where she used to commute weekly with me in tow to improve a hard life.

She moved to DC twice, pursuing opportunity.

The story goes on, but my point is I got my drive to do better from my mother.

It is our God-given right to pursue a better life, unencumbered by anyone else's opinion to the otherwise.

The larger point is I know there are multitudes of single mothers, brothers, sisters, and couples out there in this community who aspire to higher heights.

Our people need to see what it looks like and have a clear pathway that they can relate to and trust in, addressing fear and managing risk along the way.

That would be a part of the secret sauce in the New Hill Development Corporation.

We are grateful for the seed capital from the city, but we recognize it as the beginning as opposed to the end game.

I understood some and was surprised by other actions taken by some folks in response to the city providing the seed capital.

However, it presents us with a tremendous opportunity to practice grace.

which can often go missing in our work.

Where will we all be without someone exercising grace and mercy with us?

We recognize the lane for housing the homeless.

We recognize the lane for a better low income housing.

Yet we acknowledge and move on the need for black ownership and wealth creation which opens up more lanes for opportunity in this community.

My name's Dave Redding, and I'm with Eco Village Charlottesville.

And I'm on the board of advisors for community bikes.

And I want to talk to you about what we're doing for climate change, rather than asking you for something.

Actually, I will ask you for something.

That's coming down the road.

Community Bikes has, in the past year, we used to give away six to eight bikes a week.

We've decided that climate change is important.

We've decided that we need to do more for our community.

So we now have a full-time shop manager.

We are giving away or we're providing to the community between 20 and 40 bikes a week at this point in time.

We need more bike routes, we need to have more paths for the bikes to be and it may come to maybe closing some of the streets or provide because some of our roads, streets as you know are very narrow and it's a difficult thing to do and we are also getting other modes of transportation

We now have the scooters and that type of thing in town.

So we have to find ways of having people, pedestrians and bicycles and these rental bicycles that are coming to town.

And also the scooters.

People are wanting to do this.

I live just, my neighbors are in the city, I'm in the county, but I can get to town quicker on my bike.

I get downtown much quicker on my bike than anybody can do in their car.

And guess what?

I just take my bike, I glue it up to the closest no parking sign, and I'm in business.

So it's a nice way.

People from out in the county can park their bikes.

They can park their cars at the mall or some of the churches and that type of thing and just ride downtown on their bikes because we have bike lanes pretty much all the way now into town through the John Warner Parkway.

So this is something we can do.

Community Bikes wants to help and we would like to have more bike paths.

I just wanted to just, Madam Mayor, I bought my bike at Community Bikes, and he was great.

Thank you, counselors.

I just came to say thank you.

You guys do a lot of work, a lot of work that goes unappreciated, and got a lot of

That's about it.

So thank you so much for doing hard work.

Wow.

This is an amazing night.

I appreciate that you all took the issue that I brought seriously enough to bring school board, school

whatever the superintendent people here.

If you are satisfied with their answers then I really don't have a lot I can say but I want to say that there's a lot more that could be done.

This pamphlet, which I held up last time as well, this is a manual for addressing bullying in the schools which was

drafted and passed in October of 2013 with very specific things that should be done in Virginia Schools for Bullying.

They are not being done in the Charlottesville City Schools.

One of the principal things right away is that there needs to be a bullying coordinator who investigates every instance of bullying and makes a report.

When I was with Dr. Atkins and her team, I asked, who is your bullying coordinator?

They do not have a bullying coordinator.

I realize that that's a funding issue also, and I don't know how you

managed that one, but if you are not having someone who's the focal point for bullying, who's willing to investigate each of the instances of bullying, they will continue, I can guarantee you.

This is, this at least provides for accountability and documentation.

I have copies for everybody if you'd like them.

It's not being done.

This also is still just a step in the direction of recording and taking seriously what is brought to their attention.

There is actually a 2004 law that requires teachers to monitor and report bullying.

That's not happening.

That's not being enforced.

We have decided that Buford is not going to be safe from our granddaughter, so we will be leaving.

We have talked to many, many people who have left due to bullying.

And unfortunately, I have to turn it over to you and to the school board, because I can't keep doing this anymore.

But I think there's a lot more you could do.

I've submitted to you before an ordinance by a municipality of comparable size in Illinois that created an ordinance for clearly defining bullying, the consequences, and it works.

It actually isn't that hard if you record everything and then you have consequences

It goes.

Here's a copy of the law.

Thank you.

If you don't do it, I think you're going to keep having a big problem.

And I have spoken to Miss Carter, and she's really behind trying to do more.

Thank you.

I can't do more.

Thank you, Mayor, Councilman.

I just want to come back and say that a couple years ago I came to Charlottesville and I spoke here and I said that you were visionaries.

and you're still visionaries.

And I appreciate what you've done.

First of all, I'm a board member of the New Hill Development Corporation, which is a community development corporation.

And it's good to see council people thinking outside the box.

And I just want to tell you that you have my support.

And I just want to just say a few words about

New Hill Development is a device to uplift and to empower people of color.

It's to give them a chance to develop new businesses, affordable housing, a chance for them to have a new type of life.

We keep throwing money at low income, low income.

It seems like we want to keep

This is

make a life for themselves and not just have a life with a handout.

So I'd like your support, I appreciate your support and I hope you continue with the support because we're developing a new idea that's going to impact Charlottesville, it's going to impact the community

and we're going to find out that not only affordable housing, but as you said, sustainability is going to be part of that.

So I'm going to comment because I'm the only person that didn't vote for New Hill and there have been a lot of comments over the past two weeks as of why I did not support and I would have preferred that we would have had these conversations privately and I did speak to

Dr. Bellamy and Quentin Harrell and Yolanda Harrell in the past.

So I have been clear about my ask for the commitment to fiscal responsibility from the city.

I've asked everyone that has come before us how you all are spending taxpayers' money with the full acknowledgement that it is not our money.

I'm also a big proponent of transparency and public engagement, which is neither.

Neither happened in this case.

As I said, and I left it at that statement, that this could be amazing, but the public was left out of it.

It actually created more scrutiny than it needed to have based on how the public

was left out of the process.

I am not one to keep people asking for handouts but if you intend to help the community and support the community, the community needs to be a part of the phase and there needs to be trust among

the people who are running the corporations and the people who will be recipients of those services.

Also, there was questions aligned with the small area plan, how the city has conducted those small area plans in the past and how they were going to use, conduct the small area plan under New Hill.

Also, in terms of the budget that was submitted,

I would have asked for as if you go back and look at the project for West 2nd Street.

I even questioned whether Keith Woodard had the money to build the project that he was telling the city that he was going to build.

So I can go on and on.

I have been consistent the entire time that I was up here.

It was not anything against New Hill.

It was against the process and that the people who were left out of the process.

So over the past two weeks I have endured a lot of comments and conversations after I sat here and just said I hope it will be an amazing project about why I didn't vote for the project and we could have had those conversations in a one-on-one.

But those are some of the reasons.

And you can go back and look at my track record from January.

I've been asking everybody how money will be spent.

I've questioned those handouts that we've been given, money that we've been given to non-profits that haven't been moving the needle at all.

That actually year after year, month after month, even our agenda, consent agenda,

today.

You have a lot of money going that is off the backs of people, but people, their lives are not changing.

So I've been saying that consistently since I've been up here.

I talked about it my entire campaign year.

And so those were some of the concerns that I had.

giving seed money to a corporation that hasn't done development in the past, that was another question that I had.

So in the future, we can have this conversation.

But as I had and expressed some of the concerns that I had with Dr. Bellamy, and I did not express any of those concerns two weeks ago, I just said,

this could be amazing and I look forward to supporting in the future and I'm still I hope that what you all intend to do happens it is something that needed that's needed our small area plans haven't been completed we have development when you're talking about you know counselor Galvin just made a comment about walkable communities but we need to make sure that those walkable communities are not

leading to gentrification and more displacement.

So there's a lot of areas.

This could be one where equity is involved since the list and the Operation Hope it is, so you can have that secure and stable foundation so that you can grow.

Maybe it is a palette for the rest of the city.

And that is what, when I left it at my comment last year, maybe you all actually show us with who you're partnering with.

because the city has had an issue with looking at things through an equity lens that you all show us how to complete this in an equitable fashion, prevent further displacement, and help some people who have been pushed out of the city return to the city.

But, and there wasn't, we didn't know the full scope, there wasn't the public engagement, and those were some of my concerns, and as I've been asking everyone that has come before us, I asked, I would ask of you all too.

and that's it.

But we do need, and I was watching a council meeting from Atlanta, I think November 5th, Atlanta council meeting, and looking for things related to Operation Hope.

And someone was there speaking about Operation Hope and their intention and why.

They were in support of a project that a lot of the citizens were not, but you know how that can go.

But we need

something to change here where we don't have a city just working for one group of people, and that's primarily been wealthy and white.

So I am hoping that this is something that leads us there.

Mayor Walker, can I ask a question?

She's on a wait list.

Because I do want to follow up on some things related to New Hill, and it's related to Ms. Carey's question that she asked in the last two weeks.

So I'll wait until she comes up to speak.

Not only if she is, if she doesn't, I'll respond to her email anyway.

I just would like to make a comment, because I know Ms. Carey had sent an email where she

felt that I had misspoken on November 5th, and I'd just like to reiterate that when I went and gave my full throttle support to New Hill on November 5th, I made a statement that it did, the Starr Hill neighborhood did include part of Vinegar Hill.

The area that's called Vinegar Hill's shopping center today really was part of Vinegar Hill, the historic Vinegar Hill.

And when, in 1965, this government wiped clean

the African American business district known as Vinegar Hill.

It then broke it in two and grafted half of it to Starr Hill and grafted the other half to north downtown.

So I want to thank Miss Kerry for bringing to our attention this disgraceful erasure of African American geography and history that not only got rid of the place, but get rid of the name.

So I just wanted to underscore that.

I understood that, but I did not misspeak.

It really is, Brenegar Hill Shopping Center is really old Venator Hill, and it is included in Starr Hill.

Now, if I am guilty of anything, it is because I am in full throttle support of New Hill.

And I think, as Mayor Walker said, we've been trying a lot of different things, and they haven't been moving the needle.

I think in this particular case, I look at it in a situation where there's also been references that we've received in some emails that this was somehow a heist.

To me, the only heist was in 1965 when the government purchased Vinegar Hill for a song and then did not recuperate and then the African-American community did not recuperate the benefits.

This is a time to change that dynamic, a big time to change that dynamic.

The other thing that strikes me is when we talk about giving tax credits and tax breaks, we give over $100,000 a year to tech startups, tax credits.

This to me was seed money for an African American community development corporation to start a new business.

and the business was totally and exclusively about creating ladders out of poverty to build wealth, to close the wealth gap that is plaguing this country between black and white.

Yeah, all the things we try, I look back on from when I was working in public housing in Boston to building and rehabbing buildings in Charlottesville.

Many of you weren't even born yet.

It felt like it was moving the needle, but it wasn't.

That wealth gap persists.

That income gap persists.

I did get on the school board.

I did work on items like differentiated instruction, leveling classrooms, looking at avid programs, making sure there's consistent instruction across the division.

That wasn't moving the needle.

Our children, we chose to put our children in a Southside school, majority African American high poverty.

In my son's class, five children were homeless out of 20.

They were all African American.

Something was desperately wrong with that.

So when we do think back on what is it we're doing and not doing right, you have to think outside the box.

Coming into the city council,

I came in after we studied doing a choice neighborhood grant as a school board member.

We were trying to change the dynamic of multi-generational poverty in the area south of town.

That area is now known as the strategic investment area.

That's when I learned about the fact that black folks make 55% median income as white people do in this town.

Terribly segregated by class.

So then you get out of the city council and you try to do all the things you can from job programs inspired by Drew Brown.

Got the job center going.

We got a lot of growing opportunity programs, getting people better jobs without college degrees.

Then he goes on and on and you start linking your jobs to infrastructure improvements inspired by Miss Holly Edwards, the Housing Authority, the Public Housing Association of Residents program to link job training to rehabbing the units.

All seems to be a way to grow opportunity.

Still not moving the needle.

There's still 2%, only 2% of this country's wealth is in the hands of African Americans.

Only 2% of people in control of banking and development are African Americans.

That's not going to change the needle.

Something like New Hill, where it's African American led, driven, owned community development corporation to purposely grow and expand black ownership of homes, black ownership of businesses and industries.

That changes the needle.

and that's what we committed to.

All right, I call this meeting back to order.

Next, we have the resolution for the 2019 legislative programs.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

I thought we would go through this piece by piece and first up for your consideration would be the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission legislative packet.

Good evening Madam Mayor, Members of Council and I will be very brief this evening just to let you know that the speaking really to the priorities that are in the draft legislative program that they've been the priorities across the region in the legislative program for a number of years their general statements they've been

Morphed over time, they may change in their language, they may change in their emphasis or their priority, but again, all in all have represented the priorities of the region for a number of years in much the way you see them now.

There are also broad statements that give some flexibility to be able to

oppose or support certain specific pieces of legislation since we can't really include in the program a listing of all the specific bills that we expect to see that we've seen in the past and expect to see again.

Those are reflected, those six priority areas are reflected in the memo that accompanies the longer program that's in your packet.

Also included a one page list that highlights the major changes from the current version of the program that are being proposed.

And I guess the last thing I would say, you'll note in looking at the priority statements and the other statements, there are a lot of statements that are asking the General Assembly not to do things to us.

We sometimes look at this program as being a defense mechanism or a shield because there are a number of specific proposals that we face every year during the General Assembly.

that at the local government level we don't necessarily like.

So again there's that flexibility in the broader statements but also a lot of those things that help us to be able to advocate for those things that we would not like to see.

All of the other localities in the region have approved the program as it is before you.

Now I'd like to sort of first go over some of the changes that you all have asked for in your position statements and then the individual bills.

I won't highlight each one, but there are some things that are very substantive.

First, Councilor Galvin has requested state assistance for localities in terms of alternative fuel for mass transit projects.

and in the position statement you'll also see asking for the General Assembly to conduct a study for what's called a tax circuit breaker program so that if your real estate taxes exceed a certain threshold at a certain income level the state would give you a refund on your state income tax.

Councillor Bellamy had two

major changes that he asked to be included in your position statements.

One includes looking at limited driver's licenses for undocumented individuals.

And the other is something that has occurred the past few sessions in Richmond.

There have been a number of bills to try to constrict or completely choke off localities abilities to

in the

Councilor Hill is asking for legislators to give localities the option to regulate the use and disposal of disposable plastic bags.

And Mayor Walker I think has one of the big ones that we hear almost every meeting and that is asking our legislators to end the Dillon Rule interpretation and permit localities to have home mode.

So those are your highlights and your position statements from the counselors.

I did also want to highlight the Human Rights Commission.

A couple of things that they're advocating for in your position statements are first ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution.

and second, they are also asking for legislation that promotes equal housing and employment opportunities for all without regard to sexual orientation or gender identity.

As for the specific bills that are being requested this year, there are four bills

that the council is asking for but wanted to highlight the newest one first and that is from Mayor Walker inclusionary zoning and it's a fairly simple change

but it could be a very big change and what we ultimately are asking is that the General Assembly include Charlottesville in the list of localities that includes Albemarle County in having the authority to have a very broad affordable housing program that includes inclusionary zoning as an option for rezonings, which again can be a very big step towards

grappling with these land use questions when they come to you.

And I know constantly, I know last week, hearing the Planning Commission talk about the development over in Belmont, there was a lot of talk about affordable housing.

I know coming to this council, there's always a lot of talk about affordable housing when it comes to rezonings.

And this could be a really, really useful tool in your toolbox.

On the other three specific bills, bill request, we have a request for Charlottesville this year.

I think Councilor Bellamy wanted to change it instead of all localities being sort of exempt from the War Memorial Statute legislation.

We wanted to sort of tailor the request to make it just that Charlottesville would be exempt from those provisions in the code concerning war memorials.

There's also public safety bills that are being requested.

They were the same as last year.

We wanted to prohibit burning torches in public places.

Also prohibiting certain firearms in public spaces.

Just like other densely populated localities including Norfolk, Alexandria, and Virginia Beach all have this authority.

The council is asking the legislature to include Charlottesville in that list and also the authority to control weapons at public meetings and public buildings.

Finally, there is a request for speed cameras and that would allow localities, a specific request for a bill to allow localities to deploy automated speed cameras.

This was on the council's legislative agenda last year.

It would add us to that list.

Is that how it would work?

I'm not aware of that in Falls Church.

This is the same one that Senator Deeds put forth last year.

Yes.

I might mistaken that.

There were red light cameras.

There were even some in Albemarle County.

I have another point of order question.

OK. Well, I move that we adopt the TJPDC legislative packet.

All right, that carries five to zero.

I move that we adopt the city council legislative position statements and requested bills as put forth by our attorney John Blair.

I'd like to make a comment, and I'm sure maybe others would.

So as last year, I don't want to argue against it strenuously, but I don't support the speed cameras part of this.

I will vote for the whole package.

I don't want to vote against it just because of that, unless there's support to take it out.

I am concerned about the automation of law enforcement.

I'm concerned about putting in the hands of robots, basically some part of law enforcement.

It's kind of a philosophical debate, but it's not philosophical once you talk to people or you know people who have been caught up in these things.

Everybody's experience is personal.

I had an experience where I got

a speed camera ticket in Washington and I was lucky enough, sophisticated enough I guess to get out of it because it had caught me in another car in the same frame and I was able to, and I believed that it was the case that the other car had been speeding, not me and these there are technical things that are difficult.

I also one time got pulled over by a license plate reader that

had confused my license plate with somebody else's because mine did not have a space between two letters and somebody else's didn't.

So I was pulled over and exposed to a cop looking into my front seat.

And I'm a white guy, so it's a very different if you think about how I feel when this sort of thing happens with the privileges that we have.

And I do worry about shifting over law enforcement to robots and machines.

I fret about it, although I think there are lots of good arguments on the other side.

So I'm not ready to do it yet.

I might add, though, that this is just to give us the authority.

It still is not the ordinance that we would have to write locally.

So we're not anywhere near that yet.

Is there a motion?

And now we move on.

Just want to clarify why these are separate from your legislative package tonight.

Charter amendments, there are two proposed charter amendments going through the legislative process as opposed to a voter referendum require a public hearing.

And so tonight I thought the council could take each of these proposed charter amendments and decide whether it wants to authorize a public hearing at your December 3rd meeting.

The first charter amendment I will discuss, and I do want to make one other comment.

I think as all of you know, the charter is severely outdated throughout the entire document.

It needs an enormous amount of cleanup.

There are

for instance gender specific terms, there are outdated code references, there are just a number of aspects of the charter that haven't been updated for decades and they do need some updating and it's my hope that next year our office, the city attorney's office, can present to you all sort of an updated charter that just for cleanup, not substantive, but just to get the references

cleaned up so that they reflect next year 2019 rather than the 1940s or 1970s when there were a lot of amendments made.

But what you'll see tonight on the two charter amendments that were proposed when they did in fact address a section, I just decided to also put that cleanup language in the charter

a portion that's proposed to be amended.

And so I'll walk you through that.

The first amendment tonight would be Councilor Bellamy's.

He had asked that Charlottesville voters get to elect the mayor directly.

And this is very similar to Roanoke, Virginia, the city of Roanoke.

They have in effect an elected mayor

But just like Charlottesville, the mayor does not have any additional powers.

However, the mayor is directly elected by the voters.

You might ask, how does that work?

In Roanoke's charter and in this proposed charter amendment, an individual could not run for mayor and council at the same time.

There is a separate ballot for mayor when you elect the city council in Roanoke every four years.

And individuals can only run for mayor, and they cannot.

I just want to clarify for my own head here.

No, they're staggered.

Right.

Right.

They elect a mayor, and I believe

One cycle and then two years later they elect three more councilors.

Do you?

No, I was going to say I think where I believe Vice Mayor Hill is getting to, which I would be open to a friendly amendment if my colleagues wanted only for the mayor position to be elected every two years.

I didn't know if that's where you were going.

I may be speaking ahead.

But I know we did see an email like that, and I had some conversation with some people, which I'm open to.

I mean, the mayor only being in two years like we have it now.

Correct.

Correct.

Again, we don't have to go that route.

That's one of the things I was trying to understand is how that works for them.

As Mr. Blair said though, in Roanoke and in other cities who have this weak elected mayor, it's four years.

I also wanted to flesh out a few more of the details on Councilor Bellamy's proposal.

His proposal, also the Vice Mayor, would be the individual every two years who receives the most votes for the council elections.

So you'd have

Theoretically, if this were enacted by the Assembly in 2019, there would be a mayor elected and there would be two council, councilors elected at the same time.

Whichever one of those individuals was elected to council with the most votes would automatically be the vice mayor.

Then in 2021, there would be another election for two more city councilors.

Whichever individual received the most votes in that election would then be the vice mayor for two years.

But again, everybody, including the mayor, all of the individuals are still city councilors with one vote.

The other thing as part of what I mentioned, the cleanup portion,

One of Councillor Bellamy's sections that needed to be amended also included the special election process and what would happen if somebody were to resign from council?

currently the city charter even though it isn't in conformity with state law says an individual actually I believe the council has to elect an individual or appoint an individual to that seat at its next meeting which yeah I'm sort of that you know that could be a very odd process but the state law which I've reflected in the charter amendment

says that the council has 45 days to appoint an individual to that seat.

So again, that's more technical.

Are there other models that you are aware of relative to like, I mean, I'm a firm believer that I could really want to give more input from the community on some of these decisions, but at the same time, I think that there's a lot of limitations to this Roanoke approach.

I'm just curious, are there other things that you've looked at that have more flexibility?

I mean, for example, like that if a mayor is being selected, that all five counselors can be considered for that role.

at any election cycle regardless of kind of where they, I'm just, the staggering just seems to be kind of limiting because I mean, I know like there's been a lot, there was a lot of criticism when two of us as new people were the ones that came in and took these roles and in this case, depending on who wants to be reelected or not, let's just say that there was a whole, all new people looking at it again, you'd be, by default, your new, two new people would be in those leadership roles.

again in the future.

I mean, there's a high probability of that without really considering where some of that experience is coming from.

And I'm just, obviously, we were in that case, so I'm not excluding ourselves.

I'm just seeing that that's just a consideration, especially when I think about just the dynamics.

I think, and I understand the public, and I really appreciate, and I really just first and foremost just think we need to have more of a discussion about this.

I think right now for me tonight to say, yes, I want to put this specific

Initiative this specific approach forward to a public hearing I just think there's so much more robust discussion to be had not only on this but also on like is there a ward system that seems like that was of interest when we

The last time we talked about this as a group, I just felt like there was a lot of other facets that were raised beyond just this one specific thing.

And I want that to be more of a more robust conversation that we can all really engage meaningfully with the public.

Because ultimately, it really should be up to the public to decide the direction that we go.

So if I may just briefly in response to that, Ms. Hill, I think one thing to keep in mind is that there's going to be people who offer criticism no matter what.

And to be honest, I think that you and Mayor Walker have done a phenomenal job since y'all have come on, especially with a lot of the extra tasks that you have taken on.

So I don't know if necessarily experience on council, what I do think it plays a role, if a council of five individuals are working together,

we can get to where we need to be as we've collectively done contrary to I think what some people think we do work together in a variety of different ways.

Secondly, when I initially sent the stuff to Mr. Blair, while a large portion of it was the Roanoke model, some of it had the Norfolk model in it, which is somewhat similar to Roanoke but a little different

But this is the role model, in my opinion, is probably one of the most comprehensive, weak mayor models that they have that allows citizens to still be able to provide their input in regards to who they want to see at the top of leadership while still maintaining a level of equivalence amongst the five counselors.

But if it would make you and the colleagues feel better with, as Mr. Blair alluded to earlier,

having a public hearing at the December 3 meeting and hearing for more members of the public.

or if you have some suggestions, I'm open to amending or taking a little bit more time with it.

I think Harvard is just the time, because right now it's proposing that it would be for this next election.

And let's be honest, there should be some people declaring that they want to participate in this election as soon as a few weeks from now.

And so I'm just not sure of the timing of how all of that would work.

And my other main concern is, let's be honest, we haven't exactly always rolled out the wealth.

Rolling out the welcome mat for people to want to kind of step into this role.

I think it's a big task for someone to want to come in and join us up here at this stage in our community.

And my concern is if we're having two kind of competing seats being that we could have a couple strong people that want to be the mayor.

And I really respect that people want to step up and do that.

But if there's only one of them can go and then the other person can't succeed in a council seat, are we really losing out on some really great talent because we're only allowing

One person through that process where it's not a default to go into a counselor seat.

And so I'm not, and that's why I would ask my other models, because I just feel like this is a little more restrictive than I would want us to be.

I don't want, I mean, if people want to step up and into this role, I want to give them as much of an opportunity to succeed in becoming a counselor.

That's what you, they know that going into it.

You kind of sign up for if you're a current counselor, you run for mayor, you know that you may win, you may lose.

Or even the people coming in.

Neera, can I ask a question?

Sure.

So a couple of reasons.

One, I think we've heard from the community.

Well, let me not say we speak for myself.

I've heard a great deal from the community in regards to

When it comes down to leadership, I'm asked this question all the time.

Why can't we vote for our own mayor?

Or are we going to be able to vote for who the mayor is?

Or why did this decision happen or that decision happen?

and I think again this just allows for the public to be able to be included in the process of the selection of the leadership of their local government.

I think when we as five individuals are elected as city councilors and then we as the only five people decide who's going to be the mayor or the vice mayor,

It kind of takes a little bit away from the citizens and I want them to be, personally, I would like for them to have a little bit more skin in the game when it comes to picking their leadership.

But if I may ask, though, the mayor has no more power than a councilor.

So isn't it also kind of misleading to the public that the public is believing they're electing a leader of the community when it's not?

This is a leader of the council to run a meeting.

So I don't understand what gains, what are you gaining when the power of the mayor isn't changed?

Well, I do think that the mayor, I think our mayor,

has a little bit more.

I think we're five equals, but you're electing the chair of the meeting.

And when it comes to deciding what goes on the agenda, what doesn't go on the agenda, kind of curving the direction and the conversations that we have up here, I think is important.

And let's allow the public to be able to choose who they want to be able to do those things.

I don't think it, in my personal opinion, it hurts us for allow the people to decide who's going to be the chair of this body.

I had not so much questions for Mr. Bellamy, just a couple of comments.

When this last came up, we had a preliminary conversation up here and we had an interesting discussion but a lot of consensus that whatever we might do here, we would want a lot of community engagement because

and there were there were there was agreement only on that because there were a lot of different ways that we could go about this sort of dramatic reform and then if you think about like look at the community engagement we just did about the new names for the parks that involved I think multiple surveys involved multiple conversations here it went over a period of months people really got situated and comfortable I think you know as well as we kind of do this sort of thing

Um...

and that this would be for something that touches everybody in the community and that would be a structural reform that would be that would go on for a very long time and I don't we have not had even we have not even scratched the surface of that kind of community engagement thinking about a range of different options to address whatever concerns there are about the form of government so and I floated a couple before and we didn't really even get far down the road of those I don't know what our process would be for

which ones make it into the gate of what we do our community engagement about.

But one of them, I'll just say two specific ones here, one would be electing the city manager, which they do do in Maryland.

And that would give members of the community a voice in deciding the most powerful part of the community, the most powerful staffer.

Now, Ms. Mayor Walker raised a good question during our very brief discussion then, which is, well,

Would that mean they would have to be a member of the relatively small city of Charlottesville to stand for office?

Good question.

Don't know what the models are dealing with in Maryland.

Maybe there's not support of three to get that idea into the final discussion.

But to me, it's as we're chewing over what we've learned about the shortcomings this form of government,

one of them is that the people don't have a direct voice over the CEO of the government and they do do that in other states and so there's that was one thought another one would be to retitle the mayor one of the things that I learned and that I think the communities are going through is the title is confusing because people think the mayor is a chief executive as in big urban cities like Philadelphia or Chicago or New York and they're not they're the chair of the board in counties the mayor is called the chair

So Albemarle County as a mayor, but it's the chair of the board.

They have a similar form of government to we, as we do.

So if you, for discussion purposes, there may not be sufficient support for this among my colleagues, among the public, but these are the sorts of things that you would go through in a thoughtful process like we went through for the names of the parks, which I think is less

consequential in terms of how the government is actually running, how are we engaging with the people running the government on a going basis for years and years and years.

And I think that if we do what we said we did the last time this came up, which is like, let's do real community engagement about this.

Let's have a couple town halls about it.

Let's have a work session in our meeting where we are prepared to elect officials to submit those ideas that we would like to talk over.

Let's put some time into it.

come up with the best alternatives.

Let's look at examples.

Let's have a brief here in our book that we really think about, and then let's see what the public says.

We have gotten very little feedback from the public about this.

I mean, this just came up the last week.

It's not like there's a, you know, so I appreciate a lot, Councilor Bellamy, bringing this up.

2021, yes.

We were originally going to have a work session on this.

I don't know what happened to that idea because this is premature.

My question is that that public hearing, I don't want it to be just only about this one option.

I want it to be more open than that.

But we've had citizens bring these.

Right, but we've only, this is only addressing one facet of it, in my opinion.

Well, we could have, I mean, if you guys wanted, so one, the public elected us to be able to make decisions.

So that's the first part.

When it comes to us making decisions, we have to bring forth ideas.

If we felt as if we wanted to include the ward system or we wanted to include any of those other items, I don't understand why didn't any of you say to put that into the packet?

Mr. Blair asked us all for what would we like in the packet.

That was six to eight weeks ago, at least a month ago.

So I mean, if you all saw the formal request then, it's like, I hear the caution for like, let's make sure we cook the turkey the right way.

But let's not also be so reluctant to change.

I've given a lot of turkeys this weekend, so I got turkeys on my mind.

But let's not allow that to prolong us from creating change.

I mean, change can be scary in some regards, but I think this is something that we've heard from a lot of people that they want, and let's give them the opportunity.

We can make it public right now on our next meeting on December 3rd, you said?

December 3rd.

Come voice your opinion, and we can make a decision.

Again, Mr. Bellamy, a member of the public called me today about this and said, was there a survey done?

There wasn't a survey done about this.

No one knows what we're, so again, I totally understand the importance of making decisions.

We have to make decisions and we're always getting dinged for making decisions one way or the other.

50% of the people are happy, 50% aren't.

But I'm just not,

prepared to make this as a legislative request because it is one option of possibly many.

I really thought we were going to have a work session on this and discuss it in a much more complete picture that we could have included the board system discussion.

And now we have, I'm afraid, public fatigue with engagement.

We've got the community, the comprehensive plan update.

We've got a city manager search.

The public has just done a survey on that one.

And now we're gonna be bringing up restructuring our government structure.

In fact.

It's engagement.

But I think timing matters when we do it.

And so my hope is that we would have a work session on this in the early spring and do it methodically.

for two years.

Yeah.

I'm fine.

I'm just saying, I don't, I can't, it would be a real stretch for me to see that I'm going to be able to get behind one proposal in two weeks time.

I'm happy to hear from the public on that day.

If we had these issues, why didn't anybody?

Wes, we've been doing a lot of things, okay?

We've been doing a lot of things.

We literally all have been doing a lot of things, but we could have said that, well, let's include that, or let's talk about this, or hey, can you add this?

An email takes like five minutes.

I'm just a little perplexed that I'm hearing this now, and maybe we need to talk about this, maybe we need to add that.

I just thought when we were up here the last time we had this topic come up that we did agree to having more of a work session type of conversation and then an engagement process that would follow because this is just one facet of many that we were hearing from the public that mattered to them because we have heard some stuff from the public that's just been the type of the iceberg and our biggest concern is just the timing of the feasibility of having this happen for anyone who is considering this next election cycle and when we would find out from the General Assembly I guess it wouldn't be till February we would know

Well, I was wondering if Mr. Blount might come up.

Yeah, from a process standpoint, charter change bills are required to be introduced on the first day, the first day legislation, which is January the 8th, 9th, I believe.

This is the short legislative session, 46 days, which means by the end of February, we're done with everything.

Charter bills require a two-thirds vote majority of each chamber.

And Mr. Bellamy, I haven't answered your question.

I've been trying to think about it the last few months.

I think that, at least speaking for myself, what happens, I think it was July that we talked about it, is we became very focused on the new city manager and the city manager search.

some changes within there.

So I think that in terms of my bandwidth for my capacity for thinking about big governmental change, that's where all of it went.

And I, we had a very interesting discussion up here.

I did not, you know, I mean, I'm not very often making agenda requests, but the agenda is made, you know, by the city manager, usually with the mayor and we do do requests and you lobby for it.

But I think that just being honest that my, I talked up here with detail that I thought this was a really good discussion for the staff.

but I think it begins with a discussion.

So however it ended up that we end up here with just one idea being proposed for one bill, to me, I wish I weren't here.

I think that it's a great time to have a work session where we talk about where we get everything off our chest and we start talking about, hey, I just gave two.

I'd like to know what people think about those.

I'd like to have another, look at the examples out there.

This is a really, you've pushed one idea here based on Roanoke, get it.

but I it's however it all happened that's where we are right now and I just think it's one idea and has not been it's not ready to be the piece of legislation that we asked for.

I would like the public hearing I'd like the public hearing to happen during a work session.

No, no, like we used to do work sessions.

So I think this would be fitting for when we started moving the work sessions from Thursday under the, I think it's sort of still in the new rules, the point was you can carve out real time on Tuesday night where the whole public can watch and you really openly, it's not on Robert's Rules, we just chew over and we ask questions and it's open.

That would be an interesting work session for the public to watch and it would be, it's an important topic.

Monday, I'm sorry, I meant Monday.

If we're going to have that kind of discussion in two weeks, I personally would have to spend some time looking at a lot of other options.

Because I just think that this has to be a much broader conversation.

And I would like to hear from people in the community about the types.

I mean, we have some of that from the July meeting.

I will go back to those minutes and remind myself.

But I feel like it's a tall order for the next two weeks.

There's a lot going on right now.

And it's typical that work sessions don't result in action.

They're taking in information that then gives staff direction to create a more formal resolution or ordinance.

That's how they're typically done.

It's time for us to make decisions sometimes.

We have to wait and let's talk to hear the same thing that we know people are going to say.

But OK, I'm fine if you all want to wait.

December 3 is packed.

Sure.

I'm just saying, I'm just telling you, I want to be able to, personally, I want to be able to go and evaluate other ways that this is done, like I want to do the research, and if I have a timeline of when we're going to talk about it, I'll prepare for it.

But honestly, I wasn't, I really wasn't prepared until I got my agenda packet for both these charter amendments to be here with this decision point being made right now.

But I am interested in hearing from the public.

Or can it be more broadly?

Well, Mayor Walker, you could set in just a special public hearing on that topic in an upcoming meeting.

And they've been sending their comments in over the past few days, too.

Yeah, we could still hear the direction over the next two weeks.

I'm sure people are paying very close attention so that they will start chiming in and we can just hear the direction that they, you know, the people who voice their concerns.

We also have to just look at who we've heard from and who we haven't heard from.

again, and even some of the other groups that have come forth before and talked about what they had hoped would be proposed before, like the award system.

We have a city that, when you're talking about displacement, there is necessarily no segment of the community.

that probably fits into, like they were thinking of when they first proposed the award system.

We also have to think about, which is one reason that I haven't really been, I mean, either way, I support this, but we have to think about who typically has been elected in Charlottesville, who typically has been on council, and who has been

You know, Mayor, and this doesn't necessarily fix that because you just have more of our current population voting for the elected officials.

So I think because of the

conditions that we have produced, none of this is necessarily the fix that we think that it's going to have.

I responded to a Facebook post today and said, I'm sure that mayor will be white again soon.

You can calm down.

That was what I said to this person who was not being very nice on their Facebook post.

This isn't about me.

I'm strong in any position that I am and I don't need a title of any sort to be that for me.

But what people are thinking when you're talking about these type of changes.

and where we are as a city and we have to acknowledge that and how it's really preventing really any progress.

If I could add just one aspect to this.

Councilor Bellamy has a charter proposal and if the council wants to advance it, you can vote to hold a public hearing on December 3rd.

That does not obligate the council to in fact vote to send this on as a request to your legislators.

The other aspect that's been talked about tonight and I don't see that there'd be anything that would prohibit

Mr. Blair, what I would say is that

The cart is before the horse because setting even one bill up for a public hearing suggests that there are three strong council votes for that bill.

Otherwise, why would you put the council through that exercise?

We're having the right discussion now.

That's true.

That could technically happen, but I think there are risks to that.

Now, if there are three votes for us, for council supporting that bill,

then we should put, I mean, but I can't think of a precedent where we've had, I mean, we could just do an open hearing on a topic that's kind of without, that's the general topic, but I can't think of one where we would go into it, going into it not being sure that there's support for that one idea.

Is there a motion to at least have the public hearing about this on December 3rd?

Well, I'd like to make that motion.

But I do want to let you know that in effect this proposal, it dies.

That's past the pre-filing?