City Council Special Meeting: Consideration of Emergency Ordinance to Address COVID-19   7/27/2020

Meeting will be going live in about one minute.

Hello, Vice Mayor Magill.

I think we have four members of council before we were expecting today.

And I saw Michael Payne there briefly.

Okay.

OK, I'll do roll call.

Ms.

Walker?

Absent.

Ms.

Magill?

Here.

Ms.

Hill?

All right.

Well, good late afternoon to everyone.

Wanted to go over the proposed ordinance and first wanted to give a little background and then sort of go through some specifics with this proposed ordinance.

The background is that the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors

at their July 15th meeting, I believe started to talk about enacting a local ordinance that had some stricter guidelines than the current executive order issued by Governor Northam when it comes to activities related to COVID-19.

The Board of Supervisors met last week and again discussed in a special meeting enacting such an ordinance but they wanted to hold off at that time because they would like for the city and the county to coordinate their efforts and so that if the city council wants to enact an ordinance that it could enact it at about the same time as the county and

the effective dates of the ordinances would be the same.

So that again, individuals and businesses within both the city and county do have some consistency in the regulations that would apply.

Last, I believe it was last Thursday, Mayor Walker had spoken with you all and there was consensus to go forward with a special meeting today

for the city to consider its own ordinance that, again, has some stricter guidelines than those instituted by Governor Northam's executive order.

And it's my understanding, I know that the County Board of Supervisors met today at 3 p.m., and they enacted their ordinance just recently, I think within the last 15 minutes,

So I did want to walk you through a bit about the ordinance before you.

Really, there are three specific aspects in this ordinance that are what most would term stricter than the current executive order by Governor Northam.

The first such aspect is the in-person gatherings of 50 or less.

Executive order number 67 on June 30th by Governor Northam took Virginia into phase three.

And in executive order 67, what had been a 50 person limit on gatherings expanded to a 250 person limit on gatherings.

This ordinance before you would take the city back to, again, the phase two guidelines, which still limited in-person gatherings to 50 people or less.

The second aspect, substantively in which this local ordinance would be incongruent with the state's executive order, is restaurant capacity.

In phase two, there was still a 50% occupancy limit on restaurants.

And again, phase three, which was issued, the executive order was issued on June 30th, removed the occupancy limits on restaurants.

But it did, it's important to note that while occupancy limits were lifted on restaurants,

it still had a requirement for social distancing within restaurants of six feet between tables and chairs.

Then the third substantive aspect that applies is the face cover.

And Governor Northam had a

May 29th executive order for cloth face coverings and that applied to certain indoor spaces but I did want to talk about it only applied to certain workplaces and it also it

There were a few indoor spaces that weren't actually listed in that executive order.

What this local ordinance would do would be to capture almost all indoor spaces, indoor public spaces.

And it's important to note that the ordinance itself

When I talk about workplaces, the state also issued, the Department of Labor issued a set of guidelines for all employers.

And the ordinance makes it clear that if your enterprise or where you work is covered by the state Department of Labor guidelines, that in fact, those guidelines would apply rather than this ordinance.

Those are the substantive aspects.

Now, there are some differences in the county and the city proposed ordinances that I wanted to go over.

There aren't many, but it is worth talking about them.

Number one, the city's ordinance is premised on the city charter and the county's ordinance is premised on the state code that applies to counties.

they substantively say the same thing.

This is to prevent the spread of contagious diseases and the enabling authority in both the charter and in the state code are the same.

But it's important to note that, again, when we talk about differences, that's a difference.

Another difference that you will find is that in the penalty section of this ordinance,

What you will find is that we require that law enforcement officers provide a warning before any action is taken on any individual or business.

I think the counties did not have a warning for every particular aspect of the penalty section.

Another aspect that is different, and again, this is more just based on geography, really.

You will notice in the county's ordinance, there are a lot of listings of farm breweries, wineries, and distilleries.

Our ordinance, instead of saying farm brewery, winery, or distillery, talks about micro

producers, as well as small breweries, and that would be the more applicable business enterprise in the city rather than farm breweries, wineries, and distilleries.

One other difference, and this is something it's worth

Perhaps the council talking about it's my understanding and talking to most of you that you do not want this to be a jailable offense.

And therefore, penalties are class three and class four misdemeanors within this ordinance.

Over the weekend, the county did change the face covering penalty to a class one misdemeanor.

And the reason that they did that is that the executive order by the governor for face coverings is a class, a violation, there is a class one misdemeanor and

You know, again, the county is going that way.

It's my understanding from talking to each of you, I believe, that you do not favor a jail penalty at this time in your penalty section.

And therefore, your penalty section, again, makes everything either a class three or class four misdemeanor, which they are not punishable by jail time.

Those are kind of the points I wanted to raise.

Again, the county did pass their ordinance about, I guess, 20 minutes ago now.

The question that I've got, and certainly we've been getting a lot of emails from people running restaurants.

The question I have is really not a legal question, but a practical question, which is to go to where we're headed to 50% occupancy,

as opposed to the phase three, which has no occupancy limits, but still requires social distancing.

I would think that for most indoor facilities requiring social distancing comes pretty close to a 50% limit anyway.

I don't know if there's any specific person who's able to answer that, but that was an observation that I had, especially I think consider the restaurants in the city specifically, which are typically smaller in format.

And I have a related question, but I'll let if anyone else has any thoughts on that.

I don't know that any of our staff has a specific thought on that.

But my curiosity is around what that means for exterior seating.

And so some cases of restaurants expanding their

their exterior seating to be on what they maybe normally do, whether it's in the city or the county, that should not be impacted by these capacity limits.

I would be curious to know what the practical effect of this is going to be because my suspicion is that the difference is going to be fairly small between the you've got to do social distancing and you can't have more than 50%.

I also suspect that if you're talking about social distancing, probably the major effect would be in places like bars and so on where you can have all the limits you want on where the chairs and tables are set up, but people aren't sitting at the tables anyway in a lot of cases.

And so at that point, the 50% occupancy has a specific number attached to it that is more readily enforceable than looking around and saying, oh, I see some people standing three feet apart, and they should be six feet apart.

So and the restaurant owner would know better.

He's going to know or she's going to know what the occupancy load is.

And therefore, they will know, OK, I'm allowed 100 people in here right now.

I'm only going to let 50 people in the door.

I can count that.

That's a helpful thing, it seems to me.

And it would allow for some certainty on the part of the restaurateur.

that does just, okay, you've got to keep everybody six feet away is not going to let, you're just not going to be able to enforce that.

So the 50% of the occupancy load, as I've thought about how I would respond to my restaurateur friends who have been contacting me, my suspicion is number one, it's not going to hurt them.

And number two, that it's going to help them if they are truly trying to enforce what the law would require.

So that's my thought on that.

I also add on the question of making it a jailable offense.

First of all, no judge is going to put somebody in jail for failing to wear a mask.

And if you make it a jailable offense, all you really do is you give them the right to have a lawyer.

And then ultimately we have to pay for the lawyer, probably, if it's a court appointed lawyer that's coming up.

So I see all kinds of reasons why that's a problem.

Yeah, I don't want to be putting the police in the situation where they're potentially arresting somebody and taking them to jail where we're trying to get people out of jail because they're not wearing a mask.

A little divergent.

So I did observe the county's meeting and just got some things going in my head.

And I wasn't sure if Paul or someone from the city manager's office can just speak to

What our plans are to kind of do some things in parallel with the county relative to signage, relative to this ambassador program that they're promoting.

Sure, I'd be happy to speak to that.

So we had a discussion with the county last week on Friday late in the day about the ambassador program and essentially spinning up a joint effort to educate, inform, reinforce the idea of wearing masks and following the guidelines out in businesses as well as public gatherings in places where people will

will be out in the public and as part of that proposal there was two elements to it.

One would be a contracted service with a third party that we're proposing and the other piece to that would be also using available staff within the park and rec.

Department.

They're customer service agents.

They're familiar with public engagement and the elements of engaging the public in behavioral guidance.

So we're working with them early on on what that program would look like, who would be necessarily involved in it, what the messaging would be.

Obviously having the messaging be the same across both the county and the city is very important.

People don't delineate once you cross the border where you're at.

So we want not just the messaging, but the program elements to be the same.

That's the advantage to having

One contractor actually managed the program.

The other piece to that is also the technology piece.

So as part of the program, there would be surveys conducted to gather information on where people are collecting and taking that survey data to create heat maps and understanding where are areas that we need to focus geographically on having ambassadors present and

I had a couple questions that people from the public had brought up to me.

And one is, what is sort of the reasoning behind the wedding exemption?

I know that's now in Albemarle's, but

particularly because those are events that would probably are potentially bringing a lot of out of state people.

And that again was just trying to be congruent with the county.

Now, if the council would like to remove that,

which again is sort of an exemption, it is an exemption for the 50 person limit.

And the second question I have relates to the, let me,

Get it up.

And I think this does deviate from the county version.

And I'm just curious, the reasoning behind it is in section five, B, the third item related to expressive activity on public street, public sidewalk, and on other public property as permitted by a special event permit issued by the city manager.

I just got a couple of questions about that relating to

you know, questions around free speech and why, what reasoning is it that it differs from the counties, which is a little bit broader.

Right.

If you can give me a moment to bring up the county's ordinance.

Because I want to get their exact language that they had

Yeah.

And I will just read off what I think are the

differences in a public park subject to park rules and on other public property expressly designated for expressive activity by its governmental owner or occupant.

In order for, we do not, the city currently does not have public property expressly designated for expressive activity by its governmental owner or occupant.

I think you might recall the county

who's either this spring or early summer designated, I believe, in front of the county office building on McIntyre Street.

They actually did designate that an area for expressive activity, if I'm not mistaken.

And also for in the city to have a special event,

which is using public property for demonstrations that are not spontaneous.

Right, right.

I think so primarily.

I mean, there's obviously longer conversations around that whole process, but I think the

OK.

Well, I mean, if the council wants to make an amendment, once you get to that point, we can about spontaneous events, because they actually are covered within the special event.

I don't know if there's any functional difference.

Again, I know I've heard concerns from members of the public, so it may help to just clarify that point and be more clear on it.

Sure, while he thaws.

Okay, I have no idea what I may have said that anybody heard.

I don't know why I suddenly

seem to have gotten everybody frozen.

As far as I could tell, y'all were frozen.

Anyway, so my concern is that we don't really know epidemiologically.

Waypoints are really important.

I don't know what's going on.

Okay.

We don't know epidemiologically what the important facts are.

We don't know, for example, whether the RT, which is for Virginia now, it is down to 1.03, which is still above the 1.0 kind of magic number.

We don't know what that tells us for here in Charlottesville and Albemarle.

The statistics I've seen show Albemarle below one, so Charlottesville about 1.07.

We also don't know whether the new cases that are coming

and the new cases continue to rise rather quickly, but they're not reflecting in new hospitalizations or additional deaths.

And so the question I suppose is, and what I'd love to be able to ask Dr. Bonds or somebody is, are we seeing a lot of marginal, technically COVID, but not really symptomatic cases because we're doing contact tracing now and is the situation

truly different from the way it was a month ago.

And I don't know how to think about that.

I don't know what the right answers are.

I guess the best answer I would give is that for these purposes, we're putting a very short timeline on it and we would certainly have to revisit it within a couple of months.

And if we went ahead and gave it and said, okay, yes, we will do this.

But with a short timeline and just see how it works, are we going to get to an acceptable position?

Because I fully agree with the people in the restaurant business that they were just beginning to start thinking that maybe things were heading in the right direction and now we're trying to pull the rug out from under it.

As I said before, I don't really think that's the case, but it's their business.

It's not mine and it's their perception and not mine.

Well, and I think I would agree with all that.

I think the other major variable, obviously, which we all recognize, is just that UVA students will be returning and how that variable will interact with the whole situation.

And maybe by putting this out there for two months,

I mean, right now, anybody coming from the 757 area code should be kind of assumed to be infectious.

Their infection rate is really high.

And to that end, I just think it's worth noting, because I know that Supervisor McKeel mentioned it during their meeting, that President Ryan did reach out to the Council and the Board of Supervisors earlier today just to express support for these ordinances and

Michael, I wanted to make sure that your questions were fully, you felt your questions were fully answered.

I think so, as well as I understand the wedding exemption and how it aligns with the counties.

I still don't, I'm not sure I

My guess is that the important piece there is that we often have a situation where there are wedding ceremonies in one jurisdiction and the reception in the other jurisdiction.

And it doesn't flow logically one way or the other.

It happens both ways.

And I think, again, we're just talking about two months here.

My guess is that there are not gonna be a lot of weddings

ceremonies and receptions in the next two months anyway, just because most people have been canceling them.

But I don't know.

I'm inclined to say let's leave it in there because, again, we've got to work with both the university and the county.

I'm comfortable with keeping it in, given I definitely recognize that there could be cross-jurisdictional.

And I also think there's a lot of venues for a wedding.

And I'm just not clear, like, the 50-person rule, Mr. Blair.

So let's think about in a county situation where you're at a winery and there's an event.

Well, the county's ordinance, again, like I stated earlier, they had some special

They had specific wording for farm wineries, breweries, and distilleries.

And I believe that included events at those particular venues.

So if you had a special event for a farm winery, brewery, or distillery,

I think that was accepted under section 5B in their ordinance.

And again, that is also state code driven as well.

And I mean, my concern would just be indoor far more than anything outdoor, which quite frankly, you know, not suggesting changing anything in it, but quite frankly, I think that it wouldn't be unreasonable to have a larger limit outdoors than indoors in terms of number of people.

But again, I don't think it's that huge.

The wedding thing is that huge of an issue.

I'm sure the county feels it's very important for their business.

And it is worth noting, I think,

In terms of that particular exception, section 5B1, gatherings for religious exercise, including but not limited to religious ceremonies.

Yeah, I was just about to bring that up.

I'm fully in support of that.

It is kind of what we're practicing, but it helped add some clarity because I know we've gotten questions already about some of the events that have taken place spontaneously not being permitted.

And I've tried to do my best to explain the subtle differences there, but I think that clarification would be helpful.

Yeah, I would probably add the language

Spontaneous demonstrations as defined in the city's special event permit regulations.

B3.

I would just add a comma and add that language in there.

I know that we're treading on tricky first amendment grounds anytime we try to get too picky as to spontaneous versus planned versus other way to look at these demonstrations.

And I would just ask as some of these more like logistical things come in play if the city manager's officers could keep all of council informed so that we can continue to pass that along to the community and

Well, I'm happy to make the motion if we're ready for that.

Okay.

Second.

Thomas, will you take a roll or take a vote?

Okay.

Ms.

Ms.

Hill?

Thank you.

And I just, I mean, I hope that the community understands, like, you know, we certainly have heard calls from a number of different sides of this issue, but just doing our best to walk that tightrope, I think is what another supervisor said around, you know, just the health of our community and the economic impact.

And we know that that involves both our constituents as well as our business base, but

We're just continuing and we will continue to listen to you and to partner as Mr. Snook said earlier, you know, in a couple months time, we'll be certainly revisiting this and working forward as new information and patterns evolve.

And I would add on again, particularly with the number one priority is the public health impact.

But we've also got a lot of questions about economic impact.

And I think part of, at least for me, I'm sure all of us, the motivation for this is that nothing would be worse for the economy than for UVA students coming back as well as other things changing to be a super spreader event.

That's not going to be good for economic development or the economy in any way.

And I just want to commend the county.

Obviously, this is something that they have certainly taken the lead on and really helpful to kind of have them kind of lay the foundation from which we could build and just really appreciate their partnership in this and throughout this pandemic, as well as universities.

And Mr. Blair, thank you for your work to convert the versions that they presented and in a way that council could entertain them today.

None of these things.

when it comes to balancing public well-being and economic well-being, which is also public well-being.

So we're just doing the best we can and trying to project with what our numbers are showing us.

Thank you all.

Talking about this.

I had offered.

Well, one of us will be on.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Brian and team.