City Council   12/17/2018

I don't know.

Ms. Hill?

Here.

Mr. Secretary?

Ms. Galvin?

Here.

I have two.

All of you.

One announcement from Mr. Alexander.

He requested that we read two items.

Sorry, Mayor Walker, I'm just pulling them up.

The initial one reads, words, words matter more than we know at home, school, or wherever we go.

Words can help or hurt.

This we all know.

So think, then speak, and you will grow.

And secondly, this is in regards to the Kwanzaa celebration at the African American Heritage Center.

So on

Wednesday, December 26 from 1 to 4 p.m.

There will be a Kwanzaa celebration featuring Soweto Street Beat and the Zulu Nation will be there as well.

The activities for the day include libation, culture activities for adults and children,

Vendors will be selling African fabric and clothes, jewelry, children's books, quasas, symbols, paintings, and more.

Again, this will be Wednesday, December 26, 2018, from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center.

Thank you.

They're checking on my mic.

Item A, minutes from December 3rd, December 5th, December 6th.

Item B, an appropriation, VDOT recreational access grant, McIntire Park bicycle and pedestrian bridge, $125,000, second of two readings.

Item C in appropriation, the 2018 Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant for $26,044, second of two readings.

Item D in appropriation, the 2019 Aid to Localities Funding for Fire Programs, $150,480, second of two readings.

Item E in appropriation, the year-end appropriation for fiscal year 2018, second of two readings.

Item F in appropriation, certified local government grant funding for the Little High neighborhood national register nomination, $33,714, first of two readings.

Item G, an appropriation reimbursement of funds for Portland State University ADU program, $5,000, first of two readings.

Item H, an appropriation reimbursement of funds for Public Works Summit, $400, first of one reading.

Item I, a resolution.

Funding for the Kwanzaa program at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, $4,500, first of one reading.

Item J, a resolution.

So is there anyone after hearing the reading of the consent agenda, is there anyone that would like to speak on any of the items?

All right.

Good evening, Councillors.

Just rising in support of item I, the resolution regarding the Kwanzaa funding for the Jefferson School.

Just think that it is very important and timely and I'm very much appreciative of you all considering this.

The Kwanzaa celebration is very much a huge part of the African-American culture and community and I truly

I'm appreciative that it's on the consent agenda and hope that you will indeed go ahead and fund that on the scene.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

All right.

Is there a motion?

So moved.

Any vote?

And Mayor Walker, I believe we have an amendment to the agenda.

Correct.

All right.

So we arrived at community matters pretty quickly.

So here we are.

And let's see who we have first.

First, Bill Emery.

Here you go, Mike was, thank you, Mr. Murphy.

Four quick items, Madam Mayor.

First is a question about whether the entirety of the traffic implementation has occurred at 8th and Main.

and I have confirmed with the traffic engineer and been on site that that is the case.

The second was a request from council that we consider needle exchange after the presentation by two individuals from the harm reduction group.

You all are aware, having had a good presentation,

from the Health Department Director about kind of what the bar is for that and how we would need to apply to the state after we had the qualifying data.

And you are aware that it's her opinion that we're not there yet.

So next item is what would it take in order for us to have officers trained

in the use of and travel with Narcan.

and I have spoken with Chief Brackney about that issue and I think she's amenable to continuing that discussion.

I do want folks to know that we do have our fire and EMS personnel trained already.

They're often corresponding to scenes and in addition want to make sure that we think through the ramifications on the law enforcement side and with the Commonwealth Attorney

about what it might mean as far as charges that may arise should this become a practice.

But we're continuing to investigate that.

And finally, you all had requested that the auditor who made presentation

provide you a document demonstrating the ratio of local government support to school systems throughout the state and you did receive that document.

If you have a follow-up question in regards to the syringe exchange, so

I went out to Richmond and spoke with the health department as well in regards to what they're doing because they have a similar program.

Well, I mean,

I'm not the health director, but what I would say to you is perhaps it's a good sign that we don't qualify because if we don't have the kind of rates of HIV transmission or hepatitis transmission or fatalities resulting from overdose that I don't know that we quote unquote want to get

better at that, right?

We don't want to have higher statistics in those areas.

I think it's a measure to a certain extent of being proactive opposed to reactive, because we wouldn't want to, after the syringe exchange, after we get on the list, in all actuality, in my opinion, you would want to begin with having these mechanisms in place before we see the numbers that will constitute us being worthy, quote unquote, through the state's eyes of having a crisis so that we could be on the list.

And we know that this is an issue.

because we know it's an issue just because we're not on the list doesn't mean that we shouldn't

I can certainly appreciate that.

I guess for me, right, maybe it's a timing issue.

Had you had those folks in in October, maybe you'd have added it to your legislative packet.

Yeah, I don't like that.

I mean, I know, I just don't like it.

I think that's absolutely the case.

And we might investigate whether there are other localities who have the interest in this legislative session.

Maybe somebody is pursuing amendment to the needle exchange regulations and we could join on with that.

All right.

So now we're going to start with community matters.

Mayor Walker, Councillors, my name is Phil Emery.

I live at 1604 East Market Street.

How many of y'all grew up in a people warehouse?

A high density multi-family structure with nowhere outside to play, nowhere to sit under cover, nowhere to grill, nowhere to plant a flower, nowhere to throw a ball.

Residents of Carlton View's need and deserve useful outdoor recreational space.

and they've got none promised.

Carlton View's developers are skilled professionals.

They know how to design, finance, and build affordable housing.

As a society, we've set up this low-income housing tax credit, the LIHTC credit, and the developer's fee, payable after lease up.

To get developers and investors interested in providing affordable housing, money makes the world go round.

As a council, I hope you will not set the precedent that unit count and affordability is all that matters.

Quality and community matter too.

People need outdoor space to congregate and recreate, a place to jump, run, and laugh.

Build the carbon views we'll all be proud of.

Build a place that works for residents, young and old alike.

Build a place you'd be happy to call home.

Make it happen.

and if I could still get a little bit more time, comprehensive plan.

Very pleased to see that the river was recognized in the environmental chapter.

That's really cool.

Appreciate that.

You know, our neighborhood has been asking for a smaller plan since 1988.

Seems like planning is something that's not really in the DNA of the city, but it's a good thing to have to plan.

and so I was distressed to see that like the SIA and the hydraulic area plan, I mean, I guess the city spent a couple hundred thousand on the SIA and maybe dot afforded hydraulic area, small area plan, but you look at the, the land use map, the draft land use map, and there's no indication that more planning has been done.

It's more just kind of very blunt coloring and it would really make sense to

use the planning that these very skilled people have done for our city.

And then, of course, in the Willam Mills, we're pretty shocked about the purple rain that's fallen, sorry to pronounce, that's fallen all the way along from the Rivanna corridor, from the 4.2 mile Rivanna corridor from the Willam Mills up to Locust Grove.

Thank you.

My name is Kim Rolla, and I would like to share my time with Mr. Harold Foley.

Carol Foley, 1407 Memphis Street, the Civil Rights and Research Justice organizer for Legal Aid.

I'm here tonight to talk about the People's Coalition and the work that we do.

The People's Coalition is a coalition of individuals, groups, and organizations that convened after the very violent events that happened on August the 12th, 2017.

As you recall, the police was ordered to stand by and do nothing to stop the violence.

We have been organizing around the Civilian Review Board to make sure appointments are transparent that the CRB has the power that it needs to be useful here in Charlottesville.

Our purpose is also to safeguard people of color against unjust policies.

with the police department.

More black males in the past in Charlottesville have been stopped because of police practice which target them.

And we want to correct that problem through organizing for policy reform in the criminal justice system and expose police practices which target black males.

And the CRB can make that happen.

We have done a lot of organizing around the PCRB.

but now we still must keep an eye on the process.

The People's Coalition had noticed the lack of help from City Council and the Charlottesville Police Department that has the Police Civilian Review Board uncertain what their charge is.

They have asked for data from CPD and have gotten negative or sometimes no response.

We asked you to address our concerns tonight about data support for the CRB and the lack of transparency.

The people's coalition, those who are part of the people's coalition,

The People's Coalition organized in Charlottesville, Albemarle area in opposition to our unjust and racial criminal justice, criminal legal system.

We raise our voices in the community to combat oppressive criminal justice practice through public education, public pressure, and public action.

The People's Coalition worked towards this mission in numerous ways.

We advocate for community-driven policies at the city and county level.

We put pressure on government bodies and address oppressive practice in criminal justice process.

We push for transparency and accountability for all local bodies working on criminal justice issues.

And one more thing.

This coalition is made up of PSA, CLIC, FAR, the National Lawyers Guild, Lending Hands, and Legal Aid.

If I miss somebody, please let me know.

Thank you.

So I have a question.

So we've been attending the

the CRB meetings.

And from one of the members from the CRB, they wanted some information from the Charlottesville Police Department.

And from what I heard at the meeting, one of the members said that the chief said, get it from Jeff Fogel, because Jeff Fogel has that information.

And what we believe is the police department should give the CRB the information they need to create good bylaws to make sure that

They are covering everything.

Transparency, policy change, whatever it takes for them to become a strong board.

And so I'll just say I was at the meeting, and so if I didn't make it clear, I was there with our attorney.

The comment that was made regarding that information was that it had been out before that point, that Chief Brackney assumed it had been shared.

We are not going to give it to you because

No, actually, the coalition wasn't convened yet.

No, I understand what you're saying.

That was the only time that I think that comment came up.

was the information we had the meeting and then we sent the information.

Did you all not?

Yeah, but the information was full of holes.

So we're going to have some other folks talk about data too.

Okay.

My name is Matthew Gillican.

I live at 726 Orange Dale Avenue.

I'm a speech therapist at University Hospital and my wife is a teacher at Jackson Viya Elementary School.

We have three children.

Our oldest is a first grader at Jackson Viya.

I want to come out and just encourage you all as the Council to continue to think hard and in support of what the Planning Commission is doing with this new comprehensive plan.

I think they've done some really amazing work.

The work isn't done yet, but I think what they're coming up with is pretty extraordinary.

I've spent the last

year or so being fascinated by, first of all, my own lack of ignorance about the history of housing in Charlottesville, but then trying to understand how we got to a place where we need 3,000 affordable units to meet our affordable goals and where market price housing is not available for most people.

So I did some digging and some learning.

And about 100 years ago, the Supreme Court said you couldn't explicitly prevent a black person from moving into your neighborhood.

So about 10 minutes after that, the city planner in St. Louis said, I have an idea.

Let's create this thing called single-family zoning.

We'll mainly do it in predominantly white neighborhoods, and it'll happen to have the power of keeping undesirables out of those neighborhoods.

A few years after that, the city of Atlanta decided, forget what the Supreme Court said, we'll create two categories of zoning, one for white people, one for black people.

A few years after that, the city of Charlottesville hired that city planner from St. Louis as its consultant.

His name was Harlan Bartholomew.

And he came up with such good ideas as getting rid of corner stores, widening streets in African American neighborhoods, and destroying Vinegar Hill.

Shortly after that, the city of Charlottesville said, we like how Atlanta thinks about zoning.

We want to use the nomenclature they used.

Let's have R1 zoning, which is what Atlanta originally called their whites only zoning.

Today 55% of the land in the city of Charlottesville is R1 zoning.

It's the most expensive type of housing possible.

This also happens to be the most racist form of zoning possible.

This comprehensive plan is seeking to undo for the first time that legacy.

A lot of people aren't going to like this.

A lot of people are going to be uncertain.

I would encourage you all to really put your heads down.

There's been people that have sat in your seats who have created this situation.

You all have the opportunity to start to undo it.

I think you're going to have some legitimate concerns from those in our community who have never seen people in your seats really look in their favor when it comes to housing.

Please listen to them.

Please encourage them.

Please support them.

You're going to have some crazy concerns from people that have benefited from this plan for years and years.

They're going to talk about neighborhood character.

They're going to talk like constantly about parking and traffic.

Listen.

Read their long emails.

Focus on the goal that we have here of creating a more just city for everyone that lives here.

Thank you.

Andrea Massey

Good evening.

Good evening.

My name is Laura Baker.

I live in Charlottesville, and I'm a National Lawyers Field Representative for the People's Coalition.

I'd like to talk about the data we've been given by Police Chief Brackney about investigative detentions, popularly known as stop and frisks.

In all of the Chief's communications, she consistently emphasizes two things.

First, that her department is collecting demographic data on every civilian encounter, and second, that data is captured in a new software system that cannot create the same reports that we received in the past.

Chief Brackney goes on to explain that the department is making up for this deficiency by using a part-time data professional to manually create reports.

I am a digital publishing professional and I work at a local software company.

I have experience with software platforms, data management systems, and data manipulation languages.

I've researched the city's new world law enforcement record management system developed by Tyler Technologies.

It seems to be a Microsoft .NET framework with a SQL server.

I've worked on a platform that is a .NET framework using a SQL server and I've been able to report on almost any data you'd like fairly quickly.

Because the situation Chief Brackney describes does not align with what I know about databases, the People's Coalition has requested to meet with the Chief and her data professional and any lawyer she wants in the room to get a better technical understanding of the situation.

Unfortunately, the Chief says no.

First, she told the People's Coalition in a face-to-face meeting that we needed to put our request in writing.

We did.

Then, she told us that I couldn't meet with the department's data professional because they are doing only clerical tasks.

When we repeated our software concerns, it reminded her that she told us all at city council that the data person was actually triangulating reports with body cam footage, hardly clerical work.

She told us that she was invoking her legal discretion to say no to this meeting.

Let me be clear, I am not interested in reviewing any confidential data, nor am I questioning the Chief's integrity.

There are a number of scenarios that could be at play here and they could be surfaced quickly and easily between technical experts.

So now I am asking for the Council's help in learning about this software platform.

I believe Councillor Bellamy and Councillor Galvin have technology backgrounds similar to mine, so I am asking both of you.

Does it make sense to you that a software platform designed to capture data cannot output that data using tools like the user interface or an API or even garden variety data scraping?

How do you suggest I get answers to these questions so that we can all feel confident, not only in the stop and frisk data, but also in the technology practices into which we are investing city resources?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

What I can say about that is that certainly I am aware of a number of problems with the New World implementation in this locality.

So is it possible that a database with the structure that Ms. Massey talked about should be able to retrieve data easily?

I very much believe so.

I know the amount of effort that went into building the RFP where this platform was selected.

What I know is that they have literally hundreds of deliverables that have not occurred, and it's a problem that is being investigated by the ECC board, which is the city, county, and UVA about a path forward, whether it's with or without this technology.

A well-functioning system I would have certainly expected would deliver the data easily.

It was certainly the intent in the way the RFP was crafted.

You're well aware of the work that happened on DMC in the past and what the additional data fields are that we requested be in a new system.

I think that we want to probably wait and see the actions of the ECC board.

The ECC is represented by its council and I mean obviously not knowing the specifics of this situation but if there are deliverables proposed in an RFP and a contract sign that incorporates the RFP then there could be a breach of contract action or something of that nature.

Now again not knowing the specifics of this but that would be a possibility in a in the hypothetical scenario where deliverable

Mayor Walker?

Okay, I did have a quick response to a couple of the things that I just heard.

First, you were talking about easy access.

We don't need easy access.

We just need access, right?

There are a lot of workarounds for things when the user interface doesn't work.

That's not that big of a deal.

Our main concern is seeing all of this, so can we see the RFPs?

Can we see the failed deliverables?

Can we see the requests to the software company that aren't being met?

All of those kinds of things will help with transparency and help us understand what's going on.

Thank you.

She just answered my question.

Tyler Industries is being sued because they're not producing deliverables and people have to create workarounds, they have to, excuse me, they have to create workarounds, they have to hire manually for someone to be able to extract that data.

These are all systems that were put in place long before I got here including the Tyler Industries was 18 months late even going live trying to put the information into the systems.

So as for what the RFP is, that was all put out through ECC approximately what, three and a half, four years ago, in terms of what it should or should not do and how it extracts data.

As for the advice of our city attorney as well, working with the county city attorney who represents the ECC on the ECC board, they are in negotiations as to will they ever be able to meet?

some of the RFP deliverables that they said and what are those next steps.

How do you move forward with your midway through a project where are you too far ahead to then you just push through it and continue to do workarounds or do you have to scrap it, start all over and go again.

So just answering the question, saying that Tyler Industries, who created New World, is in serious litigation with literally almost hundreds of agencies around these same data systems that are not producing the type of data and information that they were originally RFP to do.

So that is all in public record.

I'm sure that the ECC board can get that to you.

You can work with—what is Amanda's last name?

My question remains though, I want to see evidence of this because I don't understand the system that doesn't let you do data scraping.

You can.

And so if there's a reason we can't, that would be easily shown between software experts.

I would like to clarify that.

Tyler Technologies is being sued for their court software.

I have not seen the New World software being sued yet, so I would love to see

what Chief Brackney is referring to there.

What I know is that the overall technology company is being sued for some of their software.

So the specific situation we're in in Charlottesville I have not seen.

which is why I would like to see the requests for the deliverables.

Like I said before, I work at a software company so I know that this can happen, but I would like to see it.

That would just help understand what the picture is.

But the other part about this is any database can be queried and scraped.

It may not be perfect, but it's not manual.

That's the part of this that I don't understand and I wanna see.

I'm not saying it's wrong.

My name is Graham Scharf.

I live at 808 Village Road.

I have two kids in the Charlottesville City Schools, one at CHS and one in fourth grade at Johnson.

I'm here today to ask you to authorize and mandate neighborhood development services and any other appropriate departments to prioritize and expedite site approval for the learning cottages at Walker Upper Elementary School.

Walker Upper Elementary School is dramatically overcrowded, serving, memory serves me, 678 students currently.

It was built for 515.

When educators at Walker ask their principal, when are we going to get the learning cottages, he answers, October 1st.

Because that's the only date that he has received from the city.

I met with the principal and with school board members to ask, what's the holdup?

School board members told me that the holdup is getting site approval for those learning cottages to be put on the soccer field at Walker Upper Elementary School.

If that log jam was broken, then those could be placed there and the pressure could be relieved on Walker Upper Elementary.

I'm just here to ask whatever log jam there is within city government that's preventing that from happening, you have the opportunity to make a decision as non-educators, not a school board, that will dramatically improve the learning environment of the children in Walker Upper Elementary School.

As you probably know, there's been a lot of disruptive behavior this year, and when I asked our principal

What can your elected representatives do for you?

He said the two things I need are space, because he doesn't control that, he doesn't control the learning cottages, and he needs great teachers, because they've had teacher attrition this fall.

You can work on one of those too, and so I'm asking you to do it.

I guess it was last December I sat in on one of the capital meetings with the schools and I thought we were going to try to take a proactive approach looking at every school in the district to understand what would a site plan be like even not expecting that we're going to have to have them ever but just to be

So we can be more proactive there than reactive when it comes to needing to implement these cottages in a quick turnaround time.

Can we have an update on that during the next meeting?

Thank you.

Mayor Walker, Councillors, my name is Oliver Platz-Mills.

I live at 600 Dice Street.

I have two young children and I can't wait for them to grow up and go into the city schools.

As a council you are often forced to engage on the immediate and most pressing issues on your plate.

There are many pressing issues and no one begrudges you the time you spend on them.

And yet our city needs you to find the time and place to not only manage the immediate but to think about our future.

Tonight you will hear a presentation on the comprehensive plan.

Soon thereafter, you will begin to hear from citizens about a myriad of legitimate concerns that come up whenever we discuss future development.

The plan will be accused of encouraging large buildings where today there is a lovely view of the mountains.

Citizens from every corner of Charlottesville will voice their frustration about traffic and parking and their fears of it getting worse.

Many landowners will worry that increasing density will negatively affect their property values while other neighbors will express their fear that new construction will only add to the rising cost of living in our city.

All of the concerns you will hear are legitimate, and your role is to understand and empathize with all of our problems.

I'm not so naive as to imply that changing our zoning laws alone will create a level playing field.

It will not.

but increasing density equitably across Charlottesville can be a solution to a great many problems in our city.

Concentrating housing near employment hubs is friendly to the environment and will usher in some of the benefits of urbanization.

Equal access to amenities, improvement to public transportation, increased access to affordable housing.

Increased density appropriately within our residential neighborhoods will allow for small neighborhood stores that were once prevalent.

Increased density encourages street level human to human interactions that strengthen our community, our family, and ourselves.

The single, adopting a new map and making changes to the zoning code does not mean that we will see instantaneous unrestrained development throughout Charlottesville.

Allowing for a diversity of housing types within our neighborhoods is not going to banish single family houses and the families who occupy them.

Our city is made up of young families, single adults, retirees, in-laws, extended family students, et cetera.

What I urge you to pursue is all types of housing for all types of people throughout all parts of our town.

The single family zoning that dominates Charlottesville was created as a tool for segregation by race.

This proposed comp plan's land use narrative explicitly encourages more diverse housing types throughout our city.

Allowing and encouraging the development of more places to live can help slow the accelerating cost of living.

I grew up in this area and have spent the majority of my adult life as a resident of Charlottesville.

I'm a father of two young girls who are on their way to school.

It is the families that live here that make up our community.

not the occurrence of matching roof lines, manicured lawns, or abundance of on-street parking.

We need you to think about future needs and not focus on protecting existing norms.

Engage with this process with open minds and a view to the future of our small urbanizing city that is a central hub of a rapidly growing region.

If you choose to stick with the status quo, the increasing demand to live here,

will grow the chasm that exists between the haves and the have-nots.

Thank you.

Michael Payne, resident of Belmont.

I'm going to echo what other speakers have said, and I'll just say I think

The Carleton Views project got me thinking on how is it that over and over again, council and the city are presented when it comes to affordable housing, two bad options, and we're left to fight about which of those bad options is really worst.

How can we break out of being forced to make these kind of decisions on affordable housing?

And I think a large part of that does come down to our zoning and our land use.

As other speakers have highlighted, 55% of our land can only be used for single-family housing.

There is a de facto ban in over half the city on apartments, duplexes, triplexes.

In effect, there is a de facto ban on affordable housing.

55% of the city, all you can build is single family housing.

Over 60% of the city are renters.

The majority of people, homeowners and renters now, are not traditional nuclear families.

The majority are a mix of people who are single adults or single mothers who need different housing options than just what we're requiring can only be built, which is single family housing.

I think

our comprehensive plan the draft comprehensive plan is an exciting opportunity to change that into a route our zoning which is grounded in segregation and which has produced that

I think it's not the only thing that's going to solve the affordable housing crisis but I think it's one of the biggest tools we could use and I think if we do our comprehensive plan right and we're bold and we have political courage about it we can become a statewide example of how you can transform your zoning to uproot segregation and promote affordable housing because if we don't do that

the most developable areas in the land all that is allowed is single-family homes which I think is what's pushing affordable housing into the outer regions of the city into areas that are in floodplains and hard to develop because those are the only areas we said that you can build apartments or duplexes or triplexes and we have to change that otherwise the only projects on affordable housing we're going to get are going to be in these areas that do have some flaws in terms of being in floodplains or requiring

a lot of difficult construction in order to clear areas and things like that.

So again, the comprehensive plan process is just beginning, but don't overlook how transformative and powerful this draft comprehensive plan could be if it's done right.

Thank you.

Good evening city council.

I'm going to cede my time to Mary Carey this evening.

Mary Carey, city resident.

I got two questions for two counselors.

Mr. Bellamy.

First you, uh, I've been talking to a lot of residents in housing and they want to know,

if there's anything that you, since you are one of the board of commissioners with CRHA, what is the merger between FAR and CRHA?

FAR used to be the champion for housing and now they're kind of absent.

And I just want to know if there's a question you can give me because they don't look at city council meeting, but they're going to look at it tonight to see what your response is.

or whoever up here that can answer it.

And the other councilor, Ms. Galvin, I'm still waiting on your apology because the young man that just spoke and he spoke very well about the zoning thing, Venable Hill has never been a part of Starr Hill.

You came to Charlottesville in the 80s.

I came in 1946.

And you told me that you saw something or a map or something, that it was changed in 1965.

In 1965, I was a teenager out there fighting and struggling for civil rights.

So the greedy old men that was up here on city council was the ones that made the demise of Venable Hill.

They were so greedy they were taking money off the backs of those people for years.

Kept saying, we gonna renovate, we gonna do this, we gonna do that.

But it was a removal plan.

which you do all the time when you say rezoning.

You already rezoned all our black history neighborhoods.

You put hotels up there, Ms. Galvin, bless your heart.

But what I'm saying is you cannot do that.

You cannot change people's culture.

You cannot change people's heritage.

They've been trying to stomp us out for centuries.

We are not weeds.

We are seeds.

And I want to tell you something right now.

You cannot rewrite history.

I don't care what you do.

You can get anything you want that's written out there saying that Venable Hill is Starr Hill or whatever.

That's rewriting history.

You can't do it.

And we've been waiting on an apology for 400 years.

And we ain't got it yet.

So you think I mind waiting on you?

You got a year or a little more up here?

I can wait that long.

Now, Mr. Bellamy, is there any way you can answer that question, please?

No, you don't have to sit down, Ms. Kidd.

I'm talking about

I'm talking about maintenance in housing because Farr, when Brandon Collins first came to Farr, he was a force to be reckoned with.

He used to go to CRHA and tell them, hey, look, these people need this and they need that and they need that.

But now you don't even hear Brandon anymore.

You don't hear Farr going to the aid of people.

People down there in Riverside are suffering from COPD or whatever you call that.

They can hardly breathe down there.

Y'all talkin' about Crescent Halls and Hardy Drive?

Yeah, that's fine.

But you got other sites that'll be neglected.

You got sinkholes over there on Madison.

You got Inter, inside plumbing and windows and cabinets falling apart on Mickey Drive.

And they be callin' Pharr, and Pharr used to be

Go out there, CRHA.

We gotta do this.

We gotta do that.

These people are living in poverty out there.

Close to damn near.

And y'all keep on talking about rebuilding.

And the people over there at Carlton View complaining about mold, Ms. Gavin.

and dripping and leaks and smelling of all kinds of stuff coming through the walls.

And you want to give these investors and contractors more money to do more damage?

What is wrong with you?

Yes, ma'am.

So let me let me do this.

Let me get back with you so I can have a conversation with Mr. Collins as well as Farrar.

No, ma'am, not tonight because I don't want to speak for Mr. Collins.

Why can't you say something about that merger?

Why would FAR go to CRHA when they were the ones that were like the enforcers to get CRHA to do things for people in housing?

They were the ones that say, OK, this is wrong.

Go in and fix it.

Now they don't say anything.

That's what I'm saying.

It has nothing to do with Brandon as a person because Brandon is a good person.

It seems like they don't put a seal on him.

He can't do anything.

I'll tell you one thing.

Yeah, that's what you always say.

Okay.

See, when you say you going to check, you have to check.

Thank you, Ms. Carey.

Thank you very much.

Thank y'all.

Seena McGill, 10th and Page, Anderson Street.

And with that, I'm going to cede my time to Tammy Wright.

Good evening.

Tamara Wright, Friendship Court.

Tonight I'm speaking on behalf of Takara Nelson, who couldn't make it here tonight.

She is the UVA Black Law Student Association's representative for the People's Coalition.

Last spring, our city created the Civilian Review Board to improve police accountability with the Charlottesville Police Department.

Through the CRB, CPD has the opportunity to be national leaders in policing through honesty, increasing transparency, and building community relations.

But instead, the CPD and Chief Brackney have decided to delay the CRB from doing the work that the community so desires.

To date, CPD has prevented the CRB from accepting and reviewing citizen policing complaints.

CPD has also delayed CRB from obtaining use of force, investigative detention reports, civilian complaints, internal investigation, and other information that the CRB needs to draft permanent bylaws.

The CPD has also stalled the CRB from installing temporary bylaws needed for the CRB to accept and review complaints.

The CRB has proven that it is ready to work.

The CRB wants to help, not hinder the CPD.

We, the People's Coalition, ask the City and the City Manager to direct Chief Brackney to allow the CRB to do the work that other CRBs in Fairfax, Virginia Beach, and other cities do to promote

Police Accountability, and improved police-community relations.

We asked City Council and the City Manager to direct Charlottesville's Chief of Police to allow the CRB to implement temporary bylaws so the CRB can begin reviewing citizen police complaints and compiling data to draft bylaws so that the CRB can be a long-lasting fixture in the Charlottesville community.

We need City Council to take action.

That's the end of her statements, but I was present when we spoke with the Chief.

and she made us feel like there was going to be transparency, but at this point it doesn't seem that way.

We are in no way holding her accountable for the things that happened with the police department before she came, but she has the perfect opportunity to turn things around and bridge this gap that the citizens have with the police and to turn things around and make the community feel comfortable with our police department.

Myself being a mother of three African American boys,

want to see something different for my city.

I was born and raised here in Charlottesville and I just think that this is a beautiful opportunity to give a fresh start and I think that it's an opportunity to do it now when it needs to be done the most.

So we're hoping that you will support us and encourage her and I want her to know that we're here to support you.

We're not against you.

We're out here doing the work for you.

So we're out here talking, excuse me,

to the community and getting the insight from them and bringing it directly to her and giving her the opportunity to do something with it.

So hopefully we can move forward with this.

I was just trying to get clarification on the, I know that those intermediate bylaws for the existing CRB were put in front of us and a smaller group of us met with representatives from the CRB and there's nothing stopping them from operating under those.

We just said as a council we weren't going to formally vote on those bylaws until we get to the permanent bylaws.

I was just trying to get clarification.

I guess I do have a question then about, so the bylaws, as I understand it, the final ones are due before us in May.

Yeah.

And what, you know, from the meeting and then when we attended, because Mr. Blair and I also attended the last CRB meeting, and, you know, Mr. Blair, the city attorney, encouraged the members to treat

the current bylaws as a working draft and that if they wanted to keep presenting those to us and working, you know, so that we could review them along the way versus, you know, at the final, you know, when the final date then that was fine.

So, no one said that you couldn't work on

reaching the final bylaws.

And if someone feels that you can't write the bylaws, because I'm so confused about this whole process, and I just don't understand where the disconnect is.

So if the CRB members feel like they can't write the bylaws at this point,

Hi, Addie Oluwinkade, Legal Director of the Civil Rights and Racial Justice Program at the Legal Aid Justice Center.

The working bylaws contain provisions for the CRB members to collect data

for their own edification to understand the various systems and processes in place currently with police practice and policy.

They don't plan on making decisions or recommendations from that data collection.

It is a way to inform themselves.

The resolution that council passed specifically addresses the initial CRB's ability

to collect all relevant information to inform itself as it goes through the process of drafting permanent bylaws.

They cannot actually operate under the working bylaws, what they have presented in that small group to you all, without some actual agreement, either a temporary agreement from the police department or

Council's direction to the city manager to direct the police department to turn over that information.

It isn't in their power to just walk into the police department and demand that data.

So to the extent that the working bylaws are just a matter of

How is that, I guess the question that we've been asking is how is that preventing the final bylaws from being written?

So part of the conversation we had with Josh and Sarah, two of the CRB members, was in that request, it was seven years worth of data, right?

And so based on what you all heard in that meeting, one of the city attorneys said that any part of that, getting just a portion of it would take maybe a year or so to get.

Okay, she acknowledged that the data system is not where it should be in the city.

We have admitted that we have an issue that should have been corrected a long time ago.

So to get seven years worth of data in the time frame that is needed to complete the bylaws isn't, according to them, possible.

So within the timeframe.

The question then is what is actually possible?

I think if we're engaging in a process that is to be open and transparent and actually productive to move the conversation forward, then the city and its various agencies should present what is actually possible as opposed to them just saying, you've requested seven years,

We cannot produce seven years worth of data and then being silent.

We came to the meeting.

There was information sent.

So I'm speaking on behalf of not the Civilian Review Board.

Maybe if you all look at the information that was sent and let us know what else is needed other than that information, and is someone going to come up and say that?

So, yes.

Someone else will come up and say that.

Okay.

I was just going to follow up similarly to you, Madam Mayor, and say that

So, we made, so is Josh or Sarah here?

Okay, so we made, we sat in the meeting, we made a list and everything that was on that list, they got.

So if there's something else after they came to the meeting with us and I sat in the CRB meeting as requested after that meeting with the city attorney, we haven't received a new list.

So Mike, are you talking about the email that the chief sent out to the People's Coalition and city council and the CRB?

We have several CRB members in the audience tonight.

They empowered two of their membership to meet with city staff and city council.

They made requests.

We fulfilled the request.

I don't know what else to say about that, Mr. Foley.

If the People's Coalition has separate requests than the CRB, I don't understand

And we didn't send seven years of data.

Like that was one of the requests on there.

So Josh and Sarah for CRB members were supposed to come back and say, this is this discussion that we had with the two council members, the city attorney, this is what they said.

I'm giving that legal advice to the CRB members who are attending a public meeting of the City Council in their individual personal capacities, instructing them that because multiple members of the community who happen to be CRB members are present, that would invoke the CRB's public meeting rule that would then have required notice

That is the very most conservative reading of the law possible.

The actual law, where you can read it more expansively, many attorneys can read the same law and come to different conclusions, the city is taking the position to stifle the CRB members from speaking publicly at a public meeting of city council in their individual capacities by falling back on a very conservative reading of the law that doesn't allow them to stand up and give their own personal opinion, calling this meeting

as the same as a public meeting of the Civilian Review Board where

three or more members of that body are present is in fact stifling their ability to speak publicly about what they are concerned for.

And so to the extent that lawyers can sit here, and I understand you're a lawyer, Mr. Speaker, and I understand the city attorney has given them that advice, that advice is the very type of advice

that is stifling the process because it is advice that shows that the city does not trust that it has the back of its own agency, the CRB.

There is no infirmity in the law to have multiple CRB members present at a public meeting.

and then one of them decides to speak at a city council meeting and that meeting therefore should have been noticed to the public.

It's already noticed to the public that this meeting is happening.

Well, under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, in the entrance

of the, I guess you'd say public participation and transparency.

Number one, under the notice provision, it's true the city council meeting has been noticed, but there has not been notice provided of a police civilian review board meeting.

Under FOIA, both bodies are required, as they are separate public bodies, to provide a notice.

There has not been a notice of the civilian review board meeting tonight.

member.

Then as to meetings, meetings are defined as the gathering of three or more members of a public body to discuss public business.

If we're not saying anything and we're not up here, don't call us out.

Please don't do that.

Because that right there shows on the city side or how you are being combative to the community.

Yeah, I mean, we didn't say anything at first, but you called us out by name.

You should have said, is there any CRB members in here?

who with something but for you to say Katrina and Rosea.

So for me to acknowledge you.

It's no problem.

That's why we're sitting here now because even if we didn't say anything just because we made a gesture with our face

We know, as CRB members, we can't speak when it's three or more.

And as city council, people that should have read the resolutions and made all these things, y'all should know that as well.

So he wouldn't have to say what he had to say for us to have been called out for two of our members to have to walk out for us to stand here to be able to speak.

But it's been conflict and confusion with the CRB and the People's Coalition.

There's a lot of data that has been asked for that we're getting on certain hands.

but on other hands we're not.

So if y'all don't even understand to be able to explain to us even to how to write our bylaws even though we want to be independent but if we can't get independent results, we can't be an independent board.

And as long as we have people that are not willing to help push situations with us as far as transparency instead of defensiveness, it's not gonna work.

because nobody is willing to work with one another.

The city keeps calling transparency, but where's the transparency on the side of the city?

There is not none.

No sooner than y'all get defensive because either the right information came out or things have been hidden, then when things come up, it's like boom.

For what?

I mean, that's not our fault.

We're citizens.

We're coming to ask these same questions that we need to know.

So we shouldn't be

I don't even know the word I'm looking for because it shouldn't even be a word that I'm looking for.

Because we should be able to come to y'all as citizens the same way we voted y'all in here.

The same way we should be able to stand up here and ask y'all questions.

Y'all ask questions when y'all got our taxpayers' money building these houses and doing whatever else y'all doing with it.

And then y'all are sitting up here, and I've been watching y'all since I've been here, y'all not even paying attention to what is being said to everything that's being said when it comes to the people.

And I don't feel that's right.

So do you have...

Charlottesville local government is not taking accountability for their wrongness and their actions to be able to make things accountability and being presented so that other boards can successively be successful in the community.

The people's correlation got more information than the CRB, but when certain things of the CRB was asked, and I cannot even, and I can't even go into that because that's going to say I'm seeing what she's seeing because she was in that meeting, but the meeting

The meeting, matter of fact, just put it this way, CRB meetings needs to be televised.

So everybody know what's said and who said what and why we said.

It shouldn't be, you know, we should have to come here and try to figure out what this was and that was and all these different meetings and all that.

I'm confused.

I'm confused as, you know, trying to be the best community person that I could be to speak up for my people and to work on transparency.

We have a meeting tomorrow, I'll bring that up in the meeting, exactly what is it more that is needed, but for the chief to say that

Yes it was, it was said at that meeting when it was Jeff Fogle or the People's Coalition.

We shouldn't have to give anything.

Regardless, anything that has been requested that has been knocked back, knocked back, knocked back, knocked back.

It's been so many times that everything has been requested for you, this, that, and the third.

Now it's this, that, and the third.

It's confusing, this, that, and the third.

Just have everybody in a room.

and what is needed, get it done.

Because every time you all have asked, we have come.

We've asked her for so much.

OK. We've asked her for so much.

And it's just getting to that point that, you know, for her to get defensive when what was being read or asked, you know, about the data, we understand that everything is not perfect.

But don't keep coming at the community combative when it's wrong.

And when was this information going to come out if our person hadn't said nothing?

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Rebecca Deeds and I'm here on behalf of Preservation Piedmont.

We are a nonprofit, all-volunteer organization dedicated to preserving our history in the built environment, including landscapes, gardens, and trees, preserving the cultural landscape, and preventing displacement of people across the Piedmont region.

We attempt to speak to the character of our community, the sense of place, and the life of the people in the community.

We applaud the city staff, city council and the planning commission for their efforts over the past year as they re-envisioned the comprehensive plan for the city of Charlottesville.

We express gratitude particularly for the criterion by which our local community was included in the planning process for the past several months.

We know a tremendous effort has gone into this and we thank you for the time and energy given to this important matter.

We ask that the same rationale of community inclusiveness that was committed to the comprehensive plan process be applied to the envisioning of the land use map and narrative because it will guide city zoning.

We don't believe Charlottesville residents are aware of the contents of the current draft because we're in the midst of the holiday season.

We ask that time be allocated to assess the proposed map and

consequences of proposed changes be further illuminated.

Our organization has concerns about the current draft, and we have questions and ideas that will be provided to Council and the Planning Commission this week.

For example, how do you define terms like intensity, describing examples of the incentives often referred to in the land use draft,

and describing transition zones including green areas and how you define affordable housing as well in terms of average monthly income.

Our hope is for time to discuss the rationale behind the proposed changes so that a concrete plan can be implemented with limited, negative, undefined or unintended consequences.

We worry that without definition and evidence to back up the proposed map, citizens will face dramatic, unforeseen changes to their neighborhoods and developers will seek to utilize expectations that may not have been intended.

The economic implications of this future land use vision must be examined to determine if they will actually alleviate housing inequality and affordability or instead exacerbate it.

We are especially concerned because most of the affordable housing in our city now is older housing.

We need to be better informed about the effects of this vision on those areas where this housing now exists.

For this reason, we again ask that the proposed assistant city manager level position on long range planning be filled since implementation of the comp plan goals will require dedicated and high level leadership beyond the capacity of neighborhood development services.

and we hope that you'll thoughtfully consider our request to not rush this process that the Planning Commission be instructed to take more time to refine and test the vision through a process of community inclusiveness with the goal to not displace people.

Thank you.

Well, a lot's changed since I've written what I was going to write, what I was going to say.

I'm Kate Braley, and I'm an individual participant in the People's Coalition.

The People's Coalition wanted you all to review publicly and vote publicly on temporary bylaws, but it sounds as if that decision has been passed.

It is true that Chief Brackney did supply some information as requested to the People's Coalition and to the Civilian Review Board.

I believe that the sequence of meetings was such that the last meeting of the Civilian Review Board was held prior to the receipt of the most recent information from Chief Brackney.

So the Civilian Review Board has not had a chance.

They will tomorrow.

to be able to discuss that.

I attend a lot of those meetings.

So I'm really glad that this discussion is happening out in public and that we can hear that you all support, it sounds like, the Civilian Review Board and the Civilian Review Board's right to get information.

from the police department so that they can write their bylaws.

One of the things that I'll read to you the part of the charge that you gave to the civilian review board.

It says that the city council tasks the board with drafting bylaws which shall address matters including but not limited to developing procedures for reviewing police matters including but not limited to

investigative detention reports, use of force incidents, and internal affairs appeals.

So the attempt at the temporary bylaws was to outline the data of those three things plus the things that would be included in but not limited to so that they could access.

In my understanding, in the beginning of the Civilian Review Board, they were told that they couldn't get that information

because they didn't have any bylaws.

So they were in between Iraq and a hard place because they didn't have the authority to get it, so they couldn't get it.

So I'm glad that there has been some progress.

And I think that, let's see.

Let me just read my notes a minute.

So the reason they want the information is to see what

you ask them to do research.

So this is research.

What is this current state of what's happening in the police department?

What are the policies which have not been provided to the CRB, even though they've been requested?

And then they can determine the focus of their, was that a red light?

A focus of their bylaws.

So I would like you all to say that yes, the CRB should have access

My name is Lynn Finn.

I live in Charlottesville, and I am a National Lawyers Guild representative for the People's Coalition.

Some of my information may be repetitive based on previous speakers, but as a criminology instructor at UVA, I found that repetition never hurts.

The Police Civilian Review Board was created in direct response to our police department's decision to not act to protect communities of color on the original August 12th.

I think it's important to keep this in mind when we think about how this board should be treated and how it should be supported.

Our police department has been given a gift in the form of community members who care deeply enough about this city and fair policing that we have organized.

We have stepped forward to advocate about our concerns and work with the police department because we care about this community.

However, this department has delayed requests from the CRB to look at citizen policing complaints to see where the problems lie in order to write their bylaws.

The department has also delayed the CRB from reviewing use of force data, investigative detention data, and internal investigation data.

The CRB needs that material in order to create their permanent bylaws.

They need that information in order to know what's going on, what policing looks like in Charlottesville, and where the problems are in order to know what areas they need to be overseeing to begin with.

The CRB has asked for this information from the police department many times, but the department has responded in the past by saying that because the CRB doesn't have bylaws, they don't have to give them the information.

When the People's Coalition asked for the police department policies and data after our meeting with the Chief in October, we received our requested information in less than a month.

But the CRB didn't receive their requested information on stop-and-frisk data for months until December 7th.

The issue here is not whether or not the CRB eventually got the data, but that this behavior is not what true transparency and true cooperation looks like.

Data transparency should be consistent, open, collaborative, not sporadically given based on when the department chooses to do so.

Things like timeliness and cooperation towards a city government created entity should be a given for our police department, especially an entity that was created because the community came together to ask for it.

This lack of cooperation was why the Civilian Review Board has taken steps to create temporary bylaws, because the Department has made it clear that they will not fully cooperate with the Board to give them the information that they need to do their job, the job mandated to them by City Council, to create permanent bylaws without some kind of bylaw established in the meantime.

We asked City Council and the City Manager to either one, allow the CRB to officially implement temporary bylaws so the CRB can begin reviewing data to draft permanent bylaws or to ensure that the police department provides all the data that the CRB needs and give some kind of feedback on their temporary bylaws to aid in the creation of their permanent ones.

So I'm going to read this email unless there's a reason I can't.

Can I?

Okay.

Okay.

So the email sent Monday, December 10th, 2018 at 5 37 PM from Chief Brackney says, good evening, Ms. Burke and Mr. Bowers.

Thank you for your approach and your work towards creating a solution to creating the CRB bylaws.

As a follow up to our meeting, I promised to provide documents that would allow the board to make a more informed choice about the direction or type of board that would be possible under Virginia law.

Per your request, attached are the PowerPoint presentations to council regarding investigative detentions.

In addition, below is the data regarding complaints that have been received by our department.

or cases initiated internally since my arrival.

June 18th, 2018 through December 10th, 2018, 17 cases have been open.

With the department of those 17, eight cases are open and under investigation and nine cases have been closed.

I have included the allegations for all cases and the disposition for the cases which have been closed.

The specifics are as follows.

Open cases eight.

Case 13 received June 26, 2018, allegations inadequate performance of duties.

Case 15 received July 5, 2018, rudeness and discourtesy.

Case 20 received October 15, 2018, allegation inadequate performance of duties.

Case 22 received September 10, 2018, allegation performance of duties.

Case 23 received September 20th, 2018, allegation performance of duties.

Case 24 received September 8th, 2018, allegation performance of duty.

It starred internal investigation.

Case 25 received October 12th, 2018, allegations inadequate performance of duty.

Case 28 received November 20th, 2018, allegations inadequate performance of duty.

Closed cases 9, case 13 received June 26, 2018.

Closed September 18, 2018.

Allegations inadequate, performance of duties, determination unfounded.

Case 16 received July 9, 2018.

Closed December 10, 2018.

Allegation rudeness and discourtesy, determination sustained.

Case 17 received July 30th, 2018, closed November 8th, 2018, allegations mishandling of evidence, determination unfounded.

Case 18 received August 6th, 2018, closed November 8th, 2018, allegations rudeness, determination exonerated.

Case 19 received August 7, 2018.

Closed November 8, 2018.

Allegations, abuse of authority, unlawful detention, determination exonerated two counts, internal policy, violation noted, failure to activate body cam and document detention, determination sustained.

Case 21 received September 5, 2018.

Closed November 6, 2018.

Allegation, inadequate performance of duty.

Determination exonerated one count.

Internal policy violation noted.

Failure to correctly complete paperwork.

Determination sustained.

Case 26 received October 22, 2018.

Closed December 10th, 2018.

Allegation bias-based policing determination exonerated.

Case 27th received October 23rd, 2018.

Closed November 8th, 2018.

Bias-based policing determination exonerated.

Case 28 received November 20th, 2018.

Received October 23rd, 2018.

Closed December 10th, 2018.

Allegation, discourtesy, inadequate performance of duties sustained.

Police, Citizens Police Academy.

Although a date has not been set for the next class, I have attached a link to the academy and I will have our liaison

Sergeant Haney sent out notification registration opportunities for up and coming classes and the link is attached.

Use of force trends.

I'm currently working with our personnel to provide data trends regarding number of times force was deployed over the past 12 months, levels of force utilized, injury levels,

to the suspect or officers, etc.

I should be able to provide more data within a week or two.

Per your request, the below options are available to intervene, develop, or train an employee who may need additional support or corrective action.

Corrective action options for the officers, counseling, training, education, performance improvement plan, remediation with a field training officer.

Discipline options for the officers either

for the officer's oral reprimand, written reprimand, suspension without pay, demotion, reassignment with the department, termination.

I look forward towards a continued dialogue and if you require a more robust or in-depth explanation of the information currently provided in the email, please do not hesitate.

That information was sent.

Then we got a link thank you from Sarah Burke.

Thank you Chief Brackney for getting these items to us so promptly we will certainly be in touch soon.

and what was supposed to happen after that was the CRB was supposed to review it and if there was something else that was needed there were also several points from the conversation that we had that they were going to go back to and see if instead of like seven years of data there was fewer years that could potentially be helpful and what out of that information

could be extracted and we were going to have that conversation.

So I don't know if we didn't get yet that there was something that was requested and agreed upon from that meeting that did not happen.

There was also a request for myself and the attorney to come to the next CERB meeting and we showed up.

I've been to, I think three meetings.

Counselor Hill has been to one,

We've asked if you wanted a council representative at every meeting, you wanted the attorney.

I had a complaint in that time that it's not on the first.

Received on June 22nd, cited December 7th.

Now I'm just saying, just a note.

So my question was how, with the complaint review, how were they all concluded within the same three days?

Because she's working so diligently to work with us.

When we requested those, it wasn't provided.

And now we have closed cases.

Hello, my name is Emily Kingsley.

I live in Ivy and I am the Showing Up for Racial Justice representative on the People's Coalition.

I'm here to voice my support for the work of the Civilian Review Board.

And honestly, just to echo much of what's already been said by other members of the People's Coalition, so this isn't too much new information, but just to

Say it once again.

First I want to echo what was already said about the temporary bylaws and I understand there was already some conversation tonight about why there wasn't like a more official vote on that.

But we in the People's Coalition do believe that having a more formal vote from council or some kind of feedback on the temporary bylaws would be helpful for the CRB.

It would help give them more direction and feedback and be a symbol that the City Council has their backs in this process.

and as already been mentioned, having the temporary bylaws approved by you all also has the more tangible function of helping the CRB secure the police records that it has asked for from the police department, records that the CPD so far has been largely unwilling to provide, citing the CRB's lack of bylaws as the reason that they cannot provide the data.

However, in order to draft effective permanent bylaws and determine what the scope of their work will be, the CRB needs to have a full picture of what policing looks like in Charlottesville now and being able to review CPD data, including investigative detention reports, use of force incidents, and internal affairs appeals is a crucial part of that process.

Without a vote on the temporary bylaws, the CRB has been left without the data it needs and with little recourse for getting it.

We want to know, does the Council support a strong CRB with the eventual ability to review civilian complaint data?

Voting on the temporary bylaws would be a clear signal of that support.

In addition to voting on the CRB's temporary bylaws, Council could also push for police accountability by doing more work to support the People's Coalition.

The coalition, which is made up of representatives from a number of different activist groups and organizations, has been working hard to secure more transparency from CPD.

One particular focus for our group has been CPD's continual obscuring of the methods used to calculate stop and frisk data, or investigative detentions, as the police chief calls it.

Members of the Coalition have been trying to get more clarity from Chief Brackney about the new software system the Department is using and how it impacts both the ability to provide old stop-and-frisk data as well as the process for generating the current numbers.

While we acknowledge the data that has been shared with Council in recent reports by the Chief, the People's Coalition believes that in addition to being presented with the already calculated numbers, the public should be able to see and understand the process behind how this data was generated in the first place.

To this end, we've been asking for months if a member of our coalition, who already spoke tonight, could meet with the CPD's part-time data analyst in order to better understand the process.

My name is Lewis Schultz.

I live at 1809 East Market Street.

At its last regular meeting, Council held a public hearing on several amendments to Section 5 of Charlottesville's charter.

The City Attorney's explanation of the proposed amendments and Council's discussion focused entirely on Section 5C of the Charter and the issue of local control of Council salaries.

The proposed changes to Section 5D of the Charter, however, which are arguably more significant, seem to have been deliberately ignored or downplayed.

With the proposed amendment to that section of the Charter, Council is asking the General Assembly to change the timing of Charlottesville City Council elections

from May of even-numbered years to November of odd-numbered years.

Not only does the General Assembly have authority over counsel's salaries, Article II, Section 4 of the state's Constitution gives it control over election timing as well.

That exposes a significant problem that I recognized a long time ago and counsel has now formally acknowledged, which is that not a single member of counsel was elected in May, though the General Assembly requires that in the city's charter.

They have been held in November since 2007 in knowing defiance of the charter.

That is an unusual if not entirely unprecedented situation.

It wasn't until 2016 that the law authorizing some Virginia cities to have November council elections was amended to allow cities like Charlottesville with charter conflicts to do the same.

The legal standard since at least as early as the 1860s is that in the case of a conflict, a charter takes precedence unless a statute explicitly says otherwise.

The local ordinance from 2004 changing election times was void upon its passage, and the 2016 amendment didn't retroactively fix the problem.

As a result of that, every member of the acting City Council was elected at a time other than what is called for by law.

In its proposed amendment, Council is asking the General Assembly to confirm them in office despite that.

That creates a real conundrum, since that request would have to come from the city's governing body.

But, Charlottesville doesn't seem to have one, as defined by Article 7, Section 5 of the Constitution, which says the governing body shall be elected in the manner provided by law.

Section 5A of Charlottesville's charter creates another problem, since it only grants authority to a council elected at the intervals and on the day prescribed for such elections by the laws of the state.

The current acting council does not meet the requirements of either of those fundamental laws.

We cannot simply ignore the state's constitution or the city's charter.

There has been an attempt to explain the problem away by saying the proposed changes to Section 5D simply cleaned things up, but if the charter isn't the law, then no one would be asking for Section 5 to be amended in the first place.

Mayor Walker has said if the problem I've described mattered, then someone in Richmond would have stepped in by now.

I tried to get in attention from Richmond by speaking to the local electoral board on June 7th, 2017.

Registrar Rosanna Benkirch knew who I, who I

who knew I had written to a board member about the problem recognized me before the meeting started and knew what I might say.

She called the police and two officers detained me with no explanation at all, just long enough to keep me from the public comment section of that meeting.

Thank you.

Mr. Blair, I know that we've discussed this since the last time it was raised.

Yes.

Um, Mr. Schultz points out, pointed out at the last council meeting that, uh, Virginia code section 24 to dash two to 2.1 was amended in 2016 the 2016 session of the general assembly and added the words and not withstanding any contrary provisions of a city or town charter.

Um,

There has been some question about not just Charlottesville but others having elections in Virginia that don't conform with the May election provisions in city and town charters.

In the 2017 session of the Virginia General Assembly, Senate Bill 1304

stated that the provisions of this act shall be retroactively effective beginning on July 1st, 2000.

Okay, so in response to that, we have a couple of issues here.

First of all, you were talking about a statute, if I understand what you're correctly saying, is a statute which retroactively amended another statute which then was made retroactive.

So I think we have been tonight, but can you just add whatever you're going to say?

Continue.

Well the city changed, well I would say this that in doing some research on Senate Bill 1304 it said that it was to clarify the legislative intent of when the General Assembly

The General Assembly passes laws and the courts interpret it.

Well, no court has interpreted this law to this point, so you're left with legislative intent.

Yeah.

And the General Assembly, Senator Vogel, you can look on Virginia Legislative Information Services, it says it's to clarify that the intent of the General Assembly when it passed the law was that

cities and towns could hold their elections in November, notwithstanding their city charters.

They added that language in 2016.

Okay, so what that means is that we had a city attorney and a city

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Schor, thank you.

Thank you.

They question and argue quite effectively that a substantive law cannot be made retroactively.

That has been the city's official position.

Mr. Blair here is absolutely contradicting the city's position in another case.

And so I'm questioning whether you have the authority to even ask me to sit down here.

But right now we're moving on.

Lyle Soliez, 10th Street, 10th and Page Neighborhood, Planning Commission, and Housing Advisory Committee, though I'm speaking as a private citizen.

Public service is hard.

Solving problems, it's hard.

We have a lot of problems.

We have more problems than we can solve.

We don't have a lot of solutions to address them.

Housing Strategy coming probably next December and the Comprehensive Plan and the rezoning coming probably around then too.

We'll give you more tools.

They will help you.

But we're not there.

We've got time to get there and it will hurt in between.

Carleton Views has many problems we've heard tonight.

I agree.

I see them too.

We talked about them extensively.

I would urge you to please consider solving problems, addressing them, remembering people as we go through.

We need this housing now.

Thank you.

So I said I know they have children and I know they have elderly parents or they're dealing with elderly.

So when y'all get old or when y'all was young, y'all had somewhere to play, right?

Y'all had something to do or you would like to have something to do.

So I think Carlton views need things for the elderly and the children.

It seems like

People forgot where they come from, where they used to live and how things was built and how things are being taken care of now.

As counselors, are y'all really worried about the city and how people are actually living?

Y'all say y'all do, but y'all's actions speaks differently.

And Mr. Wes, I'm gonna give it to you like it was given to me.

Miss Maybell said, are you a good liar or are you a bad liar?

She says she's been waiting months for you to contact her.

She said, did you have been talking to her about bringing this proclamation and having lunch with her?

And you haven't.

So Miss Maybell, I hope you're listening because I'm doing what you asked me to do.

So I appreciate if you get in contact with her as soon as possible.

And as far as the police being.

See, and that's the thing that's always funny because the community people behind this TV and stuff, they don't see that funny.

I do.

They don't.

Hold up, hold up.

Let me finish.

Let me finish.

They don't see it because you tell people so many things, and then when it's brought up here in front of this podium, in front of the TV,

Y'all act like everything is funny or either y'all got something smart to say or y'all very defensive.

People don't come here with their problems just waking up in the middle of the night or in the morning and be like, oh, well, let me go to the podium and say this is what I'm going to say.

This lady has been saying this to different citizens for a long time.

But she said, Rosia, I need you to do it because I know that you're going to do it.

So everything is not funny, Wes.

And you know, a lot of things that we've watched you do,

and you know I can pull cards but I'm not.

But you know we keep it real and you know I keep it real and funky.

I don't have no cup cards.

So I'm not gonna sit up here and go back and forth with you on something that I was asked to do.

So if you got something to say, you explain that to Ms. Maybell because Ms. Maybell asked you to do something for her a long time ago.

And as far as Narcan's, y'all's police, you can still tell y'all still way behind in y'all's law because

Y'all still 20 years behind, but then y'all got a new chief coming in here with 30, 40 years before.

But still back to Narcan, y'all should have already been trained for Narcan.

Overdose has been epidemic for years, especially for a white person.

If this hadn't been a white person, y'all should have been trained.

But for a black person, y'all don't want to get trained like talking about it, because if it is, it's a charge.

Thank you.

I'm sure Ms. Maybell is watching.

Ms. Maybell, as I'm rather shocked.

You told Ms. Parker this considering I spoke to you shortly after Thanksgiving.

We've talked right here about having the proclamation three different times, which we've tried to present it.

I've spoken to Ms. Joy about getting the proclamation to Ms. Maybell.

So in regards to me saying I haven't spoken to Ms. Maybell in months.

Not quite sure where that came from, but rest assured, we can try again to get the proclamation to her.

Well, I mean the thing.

OK, well, for those who are listening, Miss Parker just said she's tired of trying.

She wants it done.

So in the whole list, we talk a lot about transparency.

So let's be rather transparent in regards to this.

It's been three different occasions in which we have tried to have the proclamation for Miss Maybell.

On one occasion, there was a transportation issue on her end.

On another occasion, she had another health issue.

The third time in which we tried to have the proclamation for, there was another reason in which she couldn't attend.

I can attest to that, Mr. Collins.

So I can attest to that.

Mr. Collins can attest to that.

Ms. Joy Johnson can attest to that.

So there's been three different instances in which we have specifically tried to honor Ms. Maybell here.

So Ms. Parker, I allowed you to speak.

All right.

I'm gonna call the meeting back to order.

Next we have a rezone of properties on Carlton Avenue on Franklin Street.

Carlton views to plan unit development.

Matt Alpley, City Planner, NDS.

At your last meeting this was presented to City Council with a recommendation of approval from Planning Commission.

City Council was in debate on it.

Thank you.

Mee-Walker, is this a time for clarification or observations, or is that something?

Madam Mayor, the only procedural issue I was going to ask about is also, I think, the consent agenda item was pulled as it related to this as well.

whether you want to address that as well during the discussion or not.

Thank you.

And I just want to get clear in my mind, and I guess it's Mr. Blair, there is a motion on the floor.

There isn't.

We're just going to discuss.

We could make the motion and then you discuss it.

I move that we approve the PUD.

I have a question for Ms. Galvin since she made the motion.

For Ms. Galvin, as well as the applicant, specifically in regards to the amenities piece,

and I saw the revised plan or the revision rather that the applicant set forth.

But for me, it still doesn't get to where we need to in regards to green space, amenities that seniors would need or those who are just occupants within the building.

And that's still rather troubling for me.

Well, sure.

And so on Friday, I did go and I visited the units.

Mr. Wood took me there.

I spoke with several residents.

And I saw several units.

And I also saw the common areas.

And I did get the distinct impression that

For many of the residents, they do use the Pace Center.

They do use that as the community space.

It gave rise to a lot of conversation about how the management of the Carlton Views II has improved tremendously since the last complaints were, the first complaints were lodged.

So, and I was in the company of the resident manager, and they're increasingly talking about bringing

a person over to assist with activity planning, program planning, with the community space they have in Carlton Views 2 right now.

And the same thing would apply when they have the new building, Carlton Views 3.

I did see common space that's at each floor, and I understand more completely where Carlton Views comes from.

You get a beautiful view of Carter Mountain, Carter's Mountain, which is a view that most people would pay a premium for, but I was really quite

Happy that this was affordable housing.

And this is some of the best real estate in the city.

So then secondly, when you look at the street, and as a city street, it's got sidewalks, plantings, on-street parking that protects pedestrians.

There's sidewalks that get people to Franklin, down to Market.

It's about a half mile to three quarters of a mile to the river, the river park.

I'm still a proponent of small area plans.

I've always been that proponent.

In a city, a small area plan does help communities determine where public parks would go.

Not every building in a city has its own public space, its own plaza.

It's a city where those public spaces are shared.

Having said that, the proposed new building will have a plaza space in front of the building, which is about a 20-foot depth.

And I think that given that it's a walkable street, given that I was assured and I could see that the moisture problems were being fixed, it was a question of condensing lines being plugged and drip pans overflowing from the

the HVAC equipment.

They're going unit to unit to fix that.

And in doing so, the moisture problem, the mildew will go away.

And it has already.

So I feel that management is critical, and they're addressing that.

It's not just design and construction that matters.

I understand our building inspections department had been out there.

There has been no cracks in the foundation.

There was an explosion.

There was blasting across the river in the Pantops area that caused the building to shake, but it didn't cause any cracks in the foundation.

So I think that the building is well made.

The residents were happy.

The residents themselves are saying, we need more of these units.

And I think

that it's very close to public space for older children.

And over time, we get a vision plan for where public space, public parks should go in that area as it redevelops.

Then there will be a place for smaller playgrounds, for smaller children.

I just feel that that is the way cities grow.

They grow step by step.

It's not a suburban apartment complex where you would have that amenity like part of the apartment complex.

So I went on Saturday, unplanned visit, and met Mr. Woods there.

And we knocked on I think at least one apartment on every

and talk to some neighbors out, you know, who were just like coming into the building on the elevator standing.

I mean, one of the residents said that because of, she just said whatever's in the air that she thought was making her sicker, she was moving to Timberland.

There was one household we knocked on.

I think there were four or five kids.

Really loud going when they ran out the door down the hallway.

It's clear that and with talking to mom about

what the kids needed.

She definitely would have liked there to have been some, you know, spaces for them to be able to play.

I think every apartment besides the first one said something about like cracks or holes

and the wall.

One door we were standing outside of, there were cracks around the door trim that apparently happened once this blasting took place.

One apartment we went into, the AC unit was leaking.

It's off now.

There was an attempt to fix it, she said, but it was still leaking.

I think she may have been the

two of those individuals said that they she was one of them that like overall the space was good that they liked it and it was I guess livable trying to think the first

The first floor, the first house that we went into said something that I can't remember, that I can't remember yet, right now.

But there were concerns about the, definitely the air quality.

We were on the elevator, there was an older gentleman on the elevator who

you know got off the elevator and was like you know there's stuff going on but he wouldn't elaborate on it.

There was a young lady on the elevator with us who said that other people had issues but walked off the elevator and went to her place so

I'm still inclined to say that the initial emails and then the complaints that we have followed up by talking to completely different people.

I think one of the apartments that I went to was one.

maybe the first floor one that they took you to and that I still feel you know the same way about making sure that people are in healthy and healthy spaces.

It would have been nice to be able to talk to everyone but as we were talking to people they were pointing out you know other

Apartments where people had some issues going on that had something to do with the building.

So I can see from walking in, if you all have been there, you know, again, you walk in and based on like some of the concerns that we're having about housing that we're talking about redeveloping, it's clear that there's a different in terms of the look of the, you know, you have the, you know, the bottom floor, high ceilings.

I mean, there's the common area when you walk in, but the other floors, they have that

Little window area two cheers, but I still think if Individuals are complaining about everyone said

that the new management was much better.

So everybody that we spoke to said the new management was much better than the previous management and that they feel like if some of those problems had started coming up while the new management was there, they would have listened to them earlier.

Because the individuals who are there now, I'm trying to remember.

you know that was there but even under the new management there were still individuals who were saying that they still had concerns you know even people who like the new management still said you know like they they put the work order and it was actually looked at but it wasn't you know repaired or they answered me immediately when I reach out to them but I'm still moving you know things like that so that was my my experience Saturday

Have there been any allegations, thank you, that there has been, Mr. Murphy or anybody, that there's been actual, I mean, so there's the Landlord, Residential Landlord Tenant Act in Virginia that governs, that has pretty strict requirements about what landlords must

do in terms of servicing their tenants.

There's very strict requirements about checklists and mold reporting and mediation.

I mean, there's law around this that I assume would apply equally to commercial.

And I know that does.

So have there been any allegations that the law has actually been broken with regard to, or that there have been legal violations or any problems that

It is my understanding that the gentleman who was before you had discussed the conditions in his apartment with legal aid, and they had given him some advice.

OK.

I guess when they were installed, they plugged them while they're in package kind of

Packages and then they install them and they neglected to take the plugs out of the condensate lines and so there was backup and they then overflowed the drip pans and that's what caused water and moisture problems.

So they're going unit by unit to get rid of those plugs and make sure all the circulate lines are clear of all the HVAC units.

So there was definitely a problem and they fixed it and it's getting better.

I guess the question before us right now is that

We have a development corporation that is prepared to now improve the next parcel on this site, which is, when you go look at it, it's currently a derelict industrial site, not inhabitable, vacant.

And by putting more activity, more people living there, you get a critical mass of people living on that street to make it actually even more active, more

More safe, more walkable and you get a critical mass of people that will then be able to then participate in their planning of the area, get a small park at park across the street or nearby.

At some point you can get a corner store.

Right now there's no way anything is going to be invested there without people living there.

You have to have human beings living in the place and the building

As I saw it, it was well made.

The management is doing a much better job.

The residents I talked to overall were very pleased.

And I think this level of scrutiny is important.

It's necessary for transparency's sake and accountability's sake.

I think they've cut muster.

And if we don't approve this project,

they will not make their application by March and then we will not get 48 units of affordable housing through the low-income housing tax program.

So I think we have to be cognizant of that as well, that this, you don't get every day a development corporation that is producing 100% affordable housing.

And this is the only development company in town right now that has been producing the units

Another question that I had that I hadn't received an answer to yet was whether the individuals who were living there were former residents of the city and do we have the answer?

So whether they, when we were talking about the like current list of CRHA, like who gets first priority for the homes that Carlton views?

I do know that housing choice voucher residents get first priority.

So that would be either at CRHA or in Albemarle County voucher holders.

And at this stage, I think that about half of the tenancy are voucher holders.

So I do know that information.

So Mr. Wood, and I owe you an apology.

I think I have to give you credit.

And here in front of everyone, I owe you an apology.

You've been trying to get together, and my schedule just wouldn't allow.

And I appreciate that.

Here's the gist of it for me, why this is in addition to the amenities.

And I think Ms. Galvin spoke.

I appreciate that perspective.

Ms. Galvin, here's another reason why this is troubling for me.

And I'd love to hear your response.

it's very difficult, I'm really torn because I'm a staunch advocate for more housing, no matter what.

More units to me is, okay, we need to get more units.

But when we hear so much about the condition of the property, it makes it really difficult for me to say, yes, let's proceed with granting this PUD, and even the process is gonna have

I'm not saying necessarily backed into it, but to a certain extent, it's just really troubling.

Like, all right, let's grant it, provide funding for people who literally told us that they're living with mold.

Yeah.

And I understand that.

And I do think that we had significant problems with the first management team.

And they were just recently solved, unfortunately, probably in the last four months.

and what was nice about the site visits is that we found that the new management team is well respected and much more responsive and it's all new.

We did have a major problem with plugs in the condensate lines that we were trying to track down.

I think what happened was because we tended to start to see some problems, including this blasting was an issue, because they weren't getting the responses they needed, the concern sort of spread like wildfire.

So that was my impression of what had happened.

We actually just ran this problem down in the last few weeks.

We've had a mold analysis done by Joel Loving, TJL Environmental, that he assures us that there's no, he checked each of the units and he assures us that there's no outstanding mold in the building.

Now I think there were some black areas where water had leaked down out of the condensate pans and that was fixed.

But I do think that the problem was that because management was not responsive, tenants got very concerned that there were major issues in the building.

I don't think there were major issues.

No, that people were talking, individuals were still talking about that they were smelling or the unit was leaking.

The one lady that I'm thinking about who said that she could still smell something in the air, she was moving out of the building because of her concern.

I believe that they're fixed.

And I do, you know, it's interesting that the overall air quality is questioned.

Each of the units have their own individual HVAC system.

Right.

So you wouldn't anticipate an overall problem with the air quality.

Yeah.

It might be a problem in a specific unit.

And for me it's more about just making sure that in a sustaining basis that we are continuing to maintain these units because we certainly don't want to find ourselves 10 years from now feeling like we have to start over.

I mean we need to live well beyond that time and so I'm hopeful that with the more units it actually creates some efficiencies for you at a management perspective so that these things can be addressed more immediately and more thoroughly.

And I think that when we were having our discussion on funding that we have put some precautions,

kind of belts and suspenders in place to ensure that there is some accountability with that regard.

And I also think you have a great partner in VHDA.

They have a compliance regime over the compliance period, which is 15 years.

So they will come out annually and inspect each the building and each of the units.

I'll just say, I mean, it's tough, but

Overall, the units supersede.

And the need for the units, it just supersedes my other concerns.

I don't really agree with several aspects of it, just being completely transparent.

But we desperately need these units.

And I mean, I was with some families today.

And even talking to some folks outside just now who are

I get these calls every day, like, Wes, I need a voucher, I need Wes, I need to find somewhere to stay.

And this is going to bring about 50 new units, 48 new units.

And you feel as if you have the management concerns under control.

It's just really difficult for me to say no.

We need the units.

People need a place to stay.

I would like to, if there's nothing further, I'd like to call a question.

No.

Well, no, I have to request.

Yes, you can call a question.

No, this right here is just the pure rezoning matter.

I have a point of order then, if I may, Mr. Blair.

Is the designation of this area as a revitalization area a requirement or a kind of a protocol of VHDA?

Yeah, the revitalization area is something that we did at Carleton I and Carleton II.

It is a point item on the application.

I believe it's at least five, if not 10 points, and those are points that go toward us earning the tax credits.

It's my understanding it's not dependent but again it certainly adds points to the application.

That's correct.

I think, excuse me, Alex E.K.

from the NDS director.

This particular area is not a designated revitalization area or enterprise zone or opportunity zone.

So in approving the designation, the city is essentially making the application very competitive.

Because in a low income housing tax credit, every point matters.

Mr. Ikeven, the definition of a revitalization area is

It has to deal with it being like a former underutilized or obsolete industrial area.

Just one last thing before we vote.

No, everybody believed that the new management was much better.

That didn't necessarily

then changed their viewpoint on what was wrong or what they felt was wrong with them.

What's wrong with the building?

And Mr. Wood, from your perspective, you believe that the building isn't a like y'all are working to get the building where it needs to be.

And specifically, this new housing will all be top notch.

Correct.

Well, that was one.

I mean, you know, that's part of my concerns is the building is so new.

that a lot of the concerns should have never been concerns, MI.

you know, opinion.

There's also on our end, you know, and I told one of the families that I was talking to, you know, they were talking about supportive services.

And, you know, I said, you know, that's not necessarily, you know, the manager's job or the developer's.

That's something we as a city have to, you know, figure out to make sure supportive services were there.

So we had, you know, I mean, pretty full conversations with

but still concerns about the building overall.

I think we've seen, and we're dealing with it now with Crescent Halls, West Haven, for me, First Street, when people are building buildings that they don't live in, that it's a different process.

So wanna make sure that people are building

places that are going to last and that people are going to be healthy and thriving.

Did I get that answer?

I just want to say that the families that I talked to admitted that there were problems in the past and the families that I talked to said they loved their units.

I don't know what else to say.

But I think your visit was also planned.

They did not know I was coming.

So I do.

We knocked on random people doors versus you.

They set up visits for you.

Well, and I think that matters.

So, um, so just I really appreciate Mr Bellamy.

I very much appreciate hearing how you're thinking about this and Ms. Galvin.

Just to kind of put this in context of some of the bigger things we're looking at with where the city's going to go and housing and the housing problems we have is, just on how I'm personally wrestling with this, is the perfect being the enemy, the good.

It sounds like at least there's a process in place here to fix the problems, and there were real problems that generated a climate of people being concerned about, and that is a real problem when you have management, because that's the people that you touch when you have to report a problem.

And the thing that reassures me most is that there seem to be

a mechanism for that to be improved.

It seems like the city has exerted leverage for that fix to happen so that I'm not sure if that would have, hopefully that would have happened on its own.

I did meet with this developer at the very beginning and that was in the summer of last year and that was one of the things that set forth using the expansion of the affordable housing monies toward this property in part because

what we have learned, and we've seen this with some of the debates in this council, it is so freaking hard to create affordable units in significant numbers in a landlocked city where the margins are really tight.

It's really hard.

You saw the debates that we even have had about West 2nd to all these other things.

It's just really, really hard.

And if we're gonna even approach, one of the things that's happened is we doubled the rate of creation of affordable housing in the last year.

October, that was what the housing report showed.

I think it was over 200 units.

But if we're going to increase this, we're going to have a lot of sausage to make in terms of, and the margins are really tough on these.

So if you're going to do all units are affordable, we've seen the frustration of creating

even like three or four, the lengths that we have to go.

And then we have ended up not doing some of those projects.

So meanwhile, we're left holding the bag.

And so at least in this, if there is the mechanism to improve the management of it, I think that the win of getting a significant chunk, I mean, this would be, you know, 48 units at once is like, is, you know, a quarter of what we were able to do

without much expense from the city because that's the thing about the leverage is it's just very hard to spend money and we're gonna see this with the public debate about how are we gonna get remotely close to 3,000 units within our FISC, within the monies that we actually have and the tools that we have.

We're gonna look at what the rules are about affordable dwelling units and all this other stuff and the quest for silver bullets.

So anyway, so I'm glad that there is significant movement.

To me, the main thing is does the city have any leverage to demand

continue better management if there are complaints.

And the one thing to me, just looking at the law, it's the Residential Landlord Tenant Act.

It's 55-248.13, which is landlord to maintain fit premises.

And these are legal requirements.

The landlord shall comply with the requirements applicable building and housing codes.

This has make all repairs, you have to

maintain common areas shared by two of our dwelling units in a clean and structurally safe condition, maintaining good and safe working order, all electrical.

It has conditions about moisture and mold in here.

These are legal requirements.

So there's any aid that can be provided, which is what legal aid does, to make sure that the law is damn sure being followed.

This is what does protect

Tenants in Virginia.

This protects tenants from abusive landlords, landlords that create unsafe conditions.

So this is a lot better than discussion here, but it needs to be enforced.

So I want to raise that.

But we still know that that's in theory for a lot of people because look at the state of our own public housing that we should have been maintaining.

So it should work like that, but we know that based on who you are, it doesn't work like that.

So I just want to put that out there for that too.

I'm sorry, I have one more question.

I know.

Mr. Wood.

One last question.

So for the individuals, like I received communication in regards to someone saying like new tenant over there and they've had a floor cave in or they've had like severe issues.

What do you all do to remedy those who

have had prior issues in the other buildings.

I'm not familiar with having that type of issue that we would need to move somebody out of the unit.

Okay.

But at this stage, we haven't had any major foundational issues.

OK.

Thank you.

Mayor Walker.

All right.

It carries four to one.

Is there a motion?

All right, and vote.

Okay.

Try it again.

All right, and that carries four to one.

All right, thank you.

I do like to wander around.

Plus I'm still trying to breathe.

Where'd they go?

I done scared Wes and Michael.

This is certainly a different perspective and so I too sometimes have...

I'm Lisa Green.

I am the chair of the Planning Commission.

Hello to you all.

I'm going to kind of run through.

You've seen this presentation before.

I know you've been looking at it because I've been getting a lot of emails.

And then just stop me at any point while I ask questions.

I'm here for questions.

I know staff is here.

All right.

We met once before back in the fall and had some conversations to kind of guide us in the direction on where we need to go with this comprehensive plan.

I don't think that it's any surprise that this is a major undertaking and that probably we understand how important this particular comprehensive plan is to our city at this time.

So what we have and what you have received before you is still yet a draft of a land use map.

We know that we have some work to do and still some thought to put into this.

What you have to understand is we started this back in May of 2016.

Is that right?

September of 2016, it feels like a lifetime ago, but we had a much different planning commission at that point and we had heard, we started listening to our citizens and having some public engagement at that point and this has kind of taken a life of its own and now we're over half, our commission is over half new.

as well as probably some of the staff.

So we've gone through a lot of staff through this comp plan as well.

So this is where we are right now.

The land use narrative, while we got much further with this than we had previously from what you saw, there's still some, we need to put some numbers to that.

We need to put some density ranges.

Some of the things we've talked about are ranges.

The land use chapter also still we're looking at some changes to the narrative of that chapter itself, not just the narrative to the map.

The community facilities chapter, Economic Sustainability, Environment, Housing, Transportation, Historic Preservation or Urban Design.

Those chapters, we think that we've got those to a place where you can take a look at those and make the edits and changes.

Those were, we had a lot of help from staff on those that had chapter champions and they set forth some information and then we took a look at the information that was brought to us or we heard from the public about changes that needed to be made and so we kind of think

We're there now.

I will say this about the housing chapter, and I don't want anybody to make any mistake.

We understand a housing strategy needs to be adopted.

What we've left room in that housing chapter is a place to say when we get this housing strategy,

we need to insert that in the housing chapter and we've done that in the past in our 2013 plan we were working on the strategic investment area was being worked on and that wasn't quite finished at the time that that comprehensive plan was done and so we made an amendment to that comprehensive plan at that time to make sure that the strategic at the SIA was a part of the comprehensive plan so that that can be done

But we do think, and again, the jury is out for everybody, everybody's got an opinion about how we need to wait or move forward or do this or do that, but as long as we think this

Completion of this is going to take us and then really begin the zoning changes, the comprehensive zoning changes that need to happen.

We need to start really moving on this.

The community engagement chapter is still under development.

That's a story in itself.

If y'all want to ask questions about that, I'll be happy to answer any questions on that.

But it is not yet ready.

So OK.

So again, we started this in May with some community outreach meetings.

And these were at different locations.

I know you've seen this a hundred times, and I feel like I've said it about 102.

But I do feel like some of those first community engagement meetings were some of the ones that we had the most attendance.

Again,

We're not suggesting that we had the most diverse cross-section at any of these meetings.

It is something that we are still definitely striving to achieve.

And then after those meetings we went out, we called it the roadshow, we went out to different locations, city markets, different festivals, West Haven days, tried to engage the public.

It's a hard thing to wrap your mind around.

comprehensive plan.

What does this mean, right?

So we tried to do some, you know, hey, if you wanted to see different types of housing and do it more in a generic way as opposed to people getting down in the weeds about the design of something, we tried to do it in a more generic way about where do you think our city moving forward, knowing that we need to increase density and grow,

Increase area for jobs.

We know this where we are That where do you see this?

Where would you like to see this happen?

And so that's where this magnetic board happened

Again, with those being more stop by scenarios, we did not take demographics on these.

So we're unsure about the demographics for who attended this kind of thing.

It was more of a, you know, like I said, festivals and different things like that.

So it was harder to take those demographics.

September to February, I think we met every Friday morning at 7 a.m. to try to disseminate all the information we got based off of those meetings and looked at the data and what did that mean.

One of the things that we really looked at during this time as well is our 2013 comprehensive plan was more corridor based and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in a minute.

And we were really talking about places because one of the things that we heard in some of those earlier meetings is, you know, what do you like, what do you like, you know, where do you want to go, what do you like about the city, where would you like to be, you know.

And we heard a lot of people talk about their community and where they live.

A lot.

No matter who it was.

And so we thought, okay, but they'd like to have amenities in their area.

And again, I'm gonna talk about that in a second in a little bit more depth as well.

But this is where some of this concept, we really talked about those going from less of a corridor-based planning to more of a place-based.

We, like I said, we met with different boards, different commissions.

At one point we brought in every board and commission that the city has, which I don't know if you realize how many boards and commissions you all have.

You have a lot to see how to do better outreach as well.

And met with, tried to, you know, bring as many community leaders as we could to these meetings.

And then we've spent a lot of time talking about and going over just this land use map.

What does it mean?

Also in this time there's been a lot of transitions so you need to understand that so there's a lot of backtrack let's catch up we've got new commissioners and trying to get everybody up to speed to kind of what we heard if you can you know because as you all just sat up here you all had different experiences at a location so your experience is one thing your experience and so it's kind of hard to relay that so it's kind of you know there's a lot and I feel bad because I feel like I gained

a lot of knowledge from just talking to people and that's one of the things that I enjoyed about this process.

So I feel bad for some of the new commissioners who didn't get to experience some of that.

This heat map came from some of those first and you've seen this heat map and we've talked about this and some of the people, I'm sorry that you're watching this again, but these were some of the questions that we focused on in the beginning.

We really wanted to know

Not the question, do you think our city should grow and do we need more housing?

Because we know.

that the city is growing.

We know we need jobs.

We know we need housing.

But, you know, where are the places in Charlottesville that you like?

And where do you think there should be more residential focused?

And where do you think that more employment centers should be focused?

Those are specific questions we ask in all the meetings.

And so it created this heat map, and then we overlaid those heat maps, which you can see on this graphic.

This is where we started getting that kind of guidance about the place-based zoning because what we were not seeing is that corridor-based comprehensive plan that we had done in 2013.

So as you see here, we're kind of looking at things in a quarter mile radius except for the larger circle in the middle, which is more than a quarter mile because there's some planning theory out there that people will walk a quarter mile.

So the smaller circles that you see there are quarter mile radius circles and we started seeing some kind of trends there and again a comprehensive plan is comprehensive.

You have to look at transportation, infrastructure and all the things to make sure that all this works comprehensively.

So we started looking at

serving the community needs, kind of the place base, walk, bike, transit, how we're connected.

And then something that we've heard a lot on the dais is, how could you let this 10-story building be next to this two-story house?

So transition areas is something that we hear just sitting where you are.

When we started thinking about serving the community, for that quarter mile, we hear it all the time, food deserts, I want to walk down to the market, I want to walk to the park, I want to be near employment, I like to live work.

And so we started kind of putting these together.

This is not a scientific formula, this is really just what we came up with as we brainstorm.

What's the ideal place?

And the colors are not necessarily, there's no

I mean, the housing is on the right side and kind of the retail situations are on the left side or the service side.

But it's not one color is not more important than the other or anything like that.

It was just a way to see what's missing in some locations.

So when we put that over our quarter mile radius so you could kind of see where this kind of place based, so what would it look like if our city in these areas where you can connect and where there's infrastructure and have the ideal places in these locations where we heard from the public back on these heat maps that I like to be here, I want to live here, I want to work here, I want to bike here, I want to shop here, I want to, this is where I want to live.

and then we started looking at what's missing and I don't know, to me this is a pretty important slide, what's missing and as you see, this is not going to surprise anyone, affordable housing is missing from almost all and a lot of other services and

things to make what we were kind of talking about is that kind of ideal place.

And again, that's not a term, that's not something we defined, ideal place.

It's not, it could be anyone's ideal place.

When we started looking at that, then we started connecting that with what we call the spider web, but it does make sense.

And again, those quarter mile radiuses were, again, the planning theory where people walk.

But to connect between those two, we're looking at transit.

And if you look at those times to connect things, because maybe, you know, you're at Cherry Ave, but at Ix is where your favorite barber is, how are you going to get there if it's not in your quarter mile radius?

So we started looking at how does this all connect together if I want to go from place to place to place.

And we found that this was some of the most telling that we really need to focus on transportation and to do this comprehensive plan that this is an area that is really, in some places, deficient.

And as you see, the transit time is on the right, the walking time is on the left, and the biking time is in the middle, and almost every case that biking time is definitely a shorter way to travel.

We do not have scooter times on there.

That was not part of this and I don't know that we would have gotten accurate times in the snow when those were released, so that's not there yet.

And then we started having some conversation and speaking of transition, what does that look like?

And we had a lot of discussion about the missing middle.

Where are we deficient?

And what is the missing middle of the housing that we are deficient in order to create more density?

And so you'll notice there's the color, that gradient at the bottom is how we kind of defined and we started looking to put colors on our land use map is to kind of what that looks like.

So if you're looking at the yellow, you're not just speaking of single family homes, and you'll see that in your narrative, but then how that translates to what is kind of orangey, purplish, red,

This plan we also really wanted to focus.

We looked at different localities who looked and had very hard edges about and really looked and said, okay, yes, this comprehensive plan, this parcel isn't this and this parcel isn't across the street is not.

If you'll see, there's a lot of

It's not clearly defined and we've heard that on the dais a lot as well is flexibility.

So as we were looking at these kind of gradient colors, we thought about how this could be more flexible as a land use plan as well.

So when you're looking at that, you could say, gosh,

Is that close enough to this area to be able to do this as opposed to just having that hard line?

And you guys see this all the time.

Well, you know, right after we either approve or deny, you go, wait a second, that doesn't make sense.

On the left side of the road, it's this and on the right side of the road, it's that.

So kind of looking at what does that make sense?

Because we do have areas in our town where, you know, there's some hard lines that we can work with.

I mean, the 250 bypass, some of that doesn't always

translate the same zoning across that across these train tracks that we you just looked at it Carlton views does it make same sense to do the same thing across the track up that 20-foot grade situation so we looked at that as being able to be more flexible and then we kind of put those in our nodes as well as transition areas to how that would kind of look this is how we created the original

kind of shaded map, which is the original version, the original draft from back in fall of last year.

Prior to going out to do more outreach, which the public asked for, we said yes and we think so.

So prior to that, this is where this original kind of gradation color map, as we were doing that too, we still realized we needed to connect with some corridors, so you will see some of that gradient color through the corridors.

So it's February, right?

Not here yet.

Right.

And different commissioners ago.

And at this point, we had not nailed down the land use key narrative.

It was still very rough, right?

and we were getting a lot of conversation and we recognize the I want to I honestly the first thing I want to do on this land-use map and take that yellow out and go okay all right because it's got such bad stigma right now all the way around it the yellow area is our

is definitely how things were zoned for systematic racism for certain.

We know that.

There's no question about that.

So let's make the change.

Let's just take out yellow altogether and start over and say, okay, here's what we need to do so that we can start to process and focus on things where we know that when we started changing the narrative of this, that we started adding density to those areas as opposed to just

leaving this as the same maybe errors of the past.

Now this is where we got to when we started going back out and again we started having a lot of change in our staffing whether it be on commission level or actual staffing.

That's what that looked like without the transition areas, but as you can see, we did overlay those to kind of and how that comes into play.

This fall of 2018, after we sat down and started looking at these narratives and creating a narrative,

and so this was one of our past, one of the last work sessions we had knowing that we still had some work to do.

This was kind of putting an onion skin over the top of that and where do we need to look at this more.

That's right, that's right.

There was some discussion about that.