City Council Meeting   2/18/2020

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Thanks for watching

I apologize for the delay.

Our closed session ran a little bit longer, of course, since we're 20 minutes late getting started.

Mr. Lloyd Stone, please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Ms.

Thomas Rollcall, please.

Mr. Snook.

He's here.

Ms.

Walker.

Present.

Ms.

Magill.

Present.

Ms.

And Counselor Snook is in the building, so he'll be joining us just shortly.

Are there any announcements?

Do you have an announcement?

I'm just looking for it.

about the liberation and freedom day event coming up.

So, starting March 1st, there will be a series of Liberation Freedom Days events going on at the Jefferson School and a few other places including the Haven and City Space.

So, there's

Eight days of different events going on all throughout town and I highly recommend attending some of them.

They'll be the Racial Justice and Black Feminism, the Slave Auction Block Vigil, Black Liberation in Civil War Charlottesville, the Procession of Freedom, the Community Dinner and Discussion by Descendants of Local and Slave Community.

The Aeolians of Oakwood University Concert, Hush Harbor African American Sacred Song Concert, multiple events, please see the website at the jeffersonschoolheritagecenter.org slash events slash liberation.

And Mr. Alexander wanted to make sure that you all were aware that it's Black History Month and that you all were participating in Black History Month activities.

I would like to remind everyone that Black History is a 365 day event and so make sure that every day that you are engaged in learning about history and totality and not compartmentalizing in the way that a lot of people have done.

So we're 18 days in, hopefully you've done something special for this month.

Proclamations.

We have a proclamation celebrating the 100th anniversary of the League of Women Voters in the United States.

Whereas the League of Women Voters was founded in 1920 as a mighty political experiment by the foremothers of the suffragist movement at the National American Women's Suffrage Association.

And whereas their goal was to help the 20 million women who were granted the right to vote by the 19th Amendment understand and carry out their new responsibility as voters.

and whereas with the success of this effort and the tireless efforts over the last 100 years to strengthen and uphold its mission to empower voters and defend democracy, the League has become a trusted, nonpartisan, grassroots organization and whereas the League has sponsored legislation and fought in the courts to protect and strengthen voting rights and access for free and fair elections, civil rights,

Children, Community Health, and Education.

And whereas the League has consistently been noted for its nonpartisan election information, including sponsorship of candidate forums and information on state and local ballot issues, as well as its commitment to register, educate, and mobilize voters.

And whereas the League champions government systems that are open, transparent, inclusive, and equitable.

and whereas the League believes that active and engaged citizens, irrespective of gender, ethnicity, or political affiliation, are the hallmark of democracy.

Now, therefore, in recognition of this 100th birthday on February 14th, 2020, it proclaimed that Mayor Nikuyah Walker and the Charlottesville City Council wish the League of Women Voters and its local affiliate, the League of Women Voters of the Charlottesville area, many more years of defending democracy.

We honor and congratulate the League of Women Voters on its 100th anniversary and commend the League for its significant contributions to empowering voters and making democracy work, signed and sealed this 18th day of February 2020 by Mayor Nikuyah Walker.

We continue to do the work a hundred years later after our founders have begun and especially these times when there's so much

This information and interference with people being able to vote, our work is more important than ever and we have a lot of very dedicated people working very hard to educate our voters and to make it able to register.

I have another proclamation, Same Page 2020, Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson.

Whereas Same Page provides residents with the opportunity to read and discuss a single book within their community by an author appearing at the Virginia Festival of the Book.

And whereas the Jefferson Madison Regional Library invites all book lovers to participate in Same Page.

which will be held throughout March 2020.

And whereas the library's goal is to encourage all residents of Central Virginia to read and discuss Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson.

And whereas the book is a collection of vivid poems that describe what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 70s.

And whereas same page is generously funded

by the Friends of JMRL and supported by the Art and Jane Hess Fund of the Library Endowment and the Virginia Festival of the Book.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Nikuyah Walker, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville and Charlottesville City Council, do hereby proclaim same page month during March 2020 and encourage all residents to read Brown Girl Dreaming during this time.

So we have copies of the book here for counsel and Dr. Richardson.

I would encourage the rest of you to come on our kickoff day, which is February 29th, to any JMRL branch, and you can get a copy of the book while supplies last.

So my name is Krista Farrell, and I'm the branch manager and the assistant library director.

This is our third year doing same-page programming with the Virginia Festival.

The book and the way it's worked is they have authors that are coming, and we're very fortunate that this year Jacqueline Woodson is one of the authors, and we were able to use one of her earlier titles, which is actually geared towards young adult, but it's a very acclaimed and award-winning novel, and we'd encourage that you all read it and pass it on.

As I said, you can get copies at any JMRL branch.

There are programs inside of your books, and there's also a webpage devoted to same-page programming.

for the month of March.

There will be book groups, there will be films, there will be of course the visit by Jacqueline Woodson.

Her appearance at PVCC on March the 18th will be free for the public to attend and you can look at the website for more details.

Thank you.

And just before we move on to the consent agenda, and Councillor Hill has some announcements to make for the CRB board.

We do have a request for Liberation and Freedom Day that we are going to, um, for the events that, um, counselor Magill read off earlier, um, for, um, funding.

There's been funding, um, support from the, from UVA and the County.

And so it's just the city requested that.

So we're going to consider that during other business.

Um, so just wanted to give you all a heads up if you were in the, um,

I make a motion around council approving the following individuals to represent at Charlottesville Police Civilian Review Board.

There are seven names that will be relayed.

They include the three memberships of residents of public housing or come from historically disadvantaged communities that have traditionally experienced disparate policing, as well as racial or social justice representatives and at-large members.

We still have one opening just to let you all know for the non-voting member with law enforcement experience.

So again, I should make a motion that the following be appointed by the City Council to the Charlottesville Police Civilian Review Board Gwendolyn Allen Nancy Carpenter Stewart Evans Deirdre Gilmore Dorinda Johnson William Mendez and James Watson

Second.

All right.

Any discussion?

All right.

Please vote.

All right.

That carries five to zero.

All right.

Consent Agenda A Minutes January 6, 2020 Regular Meeting January 21, 2020 Special and Regular Meetings January 23, 2020 Council Budget Retreat January 24, 2020 Council Retreat

B. Appropriation Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant JAG Program Fiscal Year 2019 $25,072 First two readings C. Appropriation Byrne JAG Youth Engagement Programs Grant

$99,291, first of two readings.

D, resolution support for South First Street, phase two redevelopment, one reading.

E, resolution adoption of council meeting rules and procedures as amended, one reading.

F, resolution Commonwealth's attorney summer law clerk transfer of funds, $12,000, one reading.

G, resolution refund of tax payment,

to transient occupancy taxpayer, $164,618.53, one reading.

No?

All right.

So I move we adopt the consent agenda.

for items A through G. Second.

All right, please vote.

I have a question, Mr. Blair.

So it says here that it's the first of two readings.

Yes ma'am.

It's more to move it on to the next agenda.

Okay.

Okay.

Yes.

To move it to the next?

So that should be in motion?

There still should be.

Okay.

To move it to the second reading.

Yes, ma'am.

From what I understand, this is so that people have the option of putting a boot on someone's car versus having it towed?

Yes.

Yeah, the rate increase is now $25, I guess.

Which would allow to hire an outside agency to actually do that.

I just think if we looked at other possibilities.

OK, of how you get a vehicle.

But that's still expensive in terms of rate.

So I understand it may be easier for the company or this is what the advisory board.

And I wasn't opening up for discussion.

Second.

All right, any discussion?

All right, please vote.

All right, carries four to one.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, members of the City Council, public.

I got about three items today.

I wanted to talk about the waterline replacement markings that was in the street.

Our plan of action in terms of trying to address that moving forward is to do door hangers whenever we're proposing to do any major construction work.

I just forgot, what was the topic again?

Remember, the gentleman came about the white ribbons and the markings on the street.

So what our plan action is to make sure we put door hangers out before we start construction or even when we begin the process of doing the surveys so that people be aware of that.

The second item is dealing with the crosswalk at Main Street where it intersects with Roosevelt, Brown and Tim Street.

I had the engineers go out and look at that and it met the standards in terms of the timing for the crossings of those intersections there on Main Street.

The last item is pertaining to the Oakwood Cemetery and the drainage issues.

We have to look a little bit further into that to basically find a solution to that issue.

So that's going to be ongoing right now in terms of us being able to really identify the drainage issues and look at finding a solution.

OK.

Thank you.

Next we have Community Matters.

Good evening.

Thanks for having me.

I brought these exhibits.

I'll leave them so you can see them.

Essentially, to try to get the private sector involved in affordable housing, attempted to try to create a system using many of the cottage elements that we use in houses that actually are smaller.

but gain full value.

So if you look at the sheets of paper quickly, and I'll be out of here here, you look at this particular beginning, you take a piece of property and divide it into a grid and the grid is 16 by 16 and that's 256 feet and that is

That is a house that's 256 feet.

So if you take that house, again, quickly to the next page, you see that twin of that house, which is right here.

Now it's two houses.

It's got a stair, so it's got a second floor.

But you also take these two square pieces of property.

See them next to it?

See a little square that's darker?

And you buy that.

This is a fee simple prospect.

So you have this unit and you have this square, which is outside the unit.

You have the option of buying that.

So you basically are buying the future and you have two of them there.

We take the top floor of the next page and you start out with a one bedroom house, okay?

A large one bedroom house on the second floor.

That's 470 feet.

Again, these are patterns that we've found in many houses that we've done.

We've just assembled them into one spot.

The key thing is that

Setbacks, we actually try to negate front yards and create integrated side yards with our diamond effect.

Also, when you look at the last sheet, you actually take that spot you may have reserved and you build phase two of your own house, which is the second bedroom.

So now you're up to 760 square feet.

It's not a big house, but if in fact you can take a piece of property and divide it into these grids, you'll get more freestanding homes per acre.

And if you can build one over the other, one of the reasons why I call it auto, that's what it is, is because it's the size of two parking spots in any parking lot.

And it's also, hopefully,

as cheap as a new Buick.

I mean essentially these things are very efficient.

The idea being if you cluster them in a certain way, you get kind of a vision of a village and even though they're mainly simple alone, together they'll be quite nice and pretty much free-standing.

The other thing I'd like to just bring up, because I came down and awaited, is cat fees are ridiculous for affordable housing.

You want houses that people can buy.

And landlords rule this town.

And if you've got something there for $50,000, you can buy it.

Good evening and thank you for letting me speak tonight.

I live in the county and I've been here for about 25 years or so and I'm here tonight because I came to follow up on a meeting when I came in several months ago in my many travels meeting with people of all different walks of life.

I have met someone

who has the capacity and the passion both to purchase the statues and remove them from Charlottesville.

He's delighted to do this.

He's been looking for an opportunity.

And last time I came in, the stage was not quite set.

There was a lawsuit hanging and the state legislature hadn't moved on anything.

But given the progress in Richmond recently, I thought this would be a good time to bring it before you all again and see

If as a takeaway, we could arrange a phone call conversation sometime at your earliest convenience just to see if it works for you all.

I know he would love to see these things removed from the public space.

And it would be a great relief, I think, to the city to see them gone.

No, I think we have your information.

If it's something that is possible or we're interested in, then we'll contact you.

Thank you very much.

Thanks.

Good evening, everyone.

I want to talk about why we're in the conversation of discussing equity and being a city inclusive for everyone that we need to really focus down on Parks and Rec.

And I know we met and we did have a meeting.

However, I feel like we need to meet again.

And I'm only having this discussion at public comment because I want people that's not able to make it to this meeting to know and understand that

You know, they need to come forward and speak up because there's a lot of AAU teams that aren't able to use gym space.

And then when they inquire about gym space, they're being charged enormous amounts of money, starting with Beaufort, whose floor is absolutely terrible.

It's not an unbreakable room at Beaufort.

They have the oldest basketball equipment in the gym.

I mean, the floor you can literally ice skate on.

It's horrible.

So while we're having this discussion about equity and spaces being for everyone and being inclusive, we need to understand who's renting these spaces, who has access to these spaces more than others, who can afford these spaces, what are we doing to make these spaces available for people who we know are not making a living wage, to coaches who are struggling to get funding for their AAU teams.

And then as far as the

The Slave Auction Block.

I really didn't want to talk about this but I might as well go ahead and talk about this for people that's not here at this meeting.

This city has been in a position many times before, council members in particular, to really change the narrative and make change.

And you guys

continue to push the same narrative out.

I said this publicly on social media.

I'm not mad at the Richard Allen guy for what he did.

You shouldn't be either because it's disrespectful.

I think that so many of us are just really fed up with being disrespected, not only by the city but by the university.

When we have these race discussions, it's going to be uncomfortable for a lot of you that don't look like me.

Let me just say it plain and simple, for white people, this is going to be very uncomfortable for you.

But you have to understand and acknowledge that this has been very uncomfortable for 400 years for people of color and that we are asking for things that we should have already had.

and when you say things like the Pledge of Allegiance or you acknowledge Thomas Jefferson for the preamble saying that we hold these truths to be self-evident.

Self-evident means that it's obvious.

There's no further discussion needed.

You know what it is.

Black people deserve that same respect when we demand for our history to be acknowledged, to be shown,

and to be in a position as high as a Lee statue or any other form of white supremacy that you guys continue to want to display and hold on to.

So let's please do the right thing when y'all put a new monument right there for the slave block.

Put it back on the house.

That's a historical building.

The stone should have never been removed anyway.

I don't care who bought the building.

You ain't removing nothing on Main Street.

That's historical.

Everything there still stands.

So let's have that same energy.

Just go around.

So I do have some comments about I didn't agree with the and

the actions but again I will comment at a later date overall but I've been staying pretty out of it.

I know that there is a group of people who are working on how you transform that space and truly honor.

It hasn't come up yet for discussion but as you can see from our meetings it's never a dull

moment so it's not as especially for my term on council that it's been something that's been worked on and I understand the sense of urgency and wanting things to honor and not as that and that that space did not do it I think there's agreement there but how things panned out could have I think been a lot different.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Good evening and thank you.

My name is Greg Wright of Charlottesville.

Thank you again for taking the time to hear my concerns.

I'm very appreciative of council's continued attention regarding the staffing of Charlottesville Fire Department.

Many of you have heard me speak about the concerns we, the Charlottesville professional firefighters, have regarding the current staffing levels and the lack of medic level transport ambulances dedicated to the city.

Before I begin, I wanted to highlight the continued dedicated service that our partners at the Charlottesville Albemarle Rescue Squad provide each and every day.

They're an integral part of public safety in our city, as well as the county, and this discussion is not and never was intended to create division between public safety entities that have proven their worth countless times over.

Rather, it is to inform the public and U.S.

city leaders about the shortfalls of an increasingly stressed EMS transport system.

The narrative is clear.

CARS is operating beyond capacity, the Charlottesville Fire Department is operating beyond its capacity, and it's the public that suffers.

Frequently, due to the increasing number of emergency responses, ambulances are delayed and answering the 911 calls they are urgently needed on.

These delays are not only unsafe for our citizens, but it is unsafe for all of our public safety employees and volunteers alike.

Simply put, rapid responses and rapid transport save lives.

The absolute priority for somebody suffering from a heart attack, stroke or other life threatening illness or injury is rapid transport to one of our area hospitals.

But at this moment in time, a prompt transport is not something we can promise the citizens of Charlottesville.

In addition to the delays, oftentimes there is only one or in some cases no medic level ambulances available for a population of 50,000 residents and 22,000 students.

A population this dense with so few ambulances is a formula that will prove to be deadly.

The city of Charlottesville has identified five values that were intended to lead our city as a whole.

One of these values is excellence.

The city is divided, the value is following.

We provide excellent services.

We are responsive to requests and seek to implement the most effective approaches to our work.

We follow best practices and we measure the outcomes for our performance.

We provide accurate and timely delivery of service.

I can say that from a public safety standpoint, we need a significant investment from the community, the city council, and the city manager before we can consider our EMS transport capabilities excellent.

To date, we are not in line with industry best practice, nor can we guarantee timely delivery of service.

With these service gaps in mind, Charlottesville Fire Department employees increasingly have been working 48 and 72 hours straight to ensure adequate fire and EMS coverage

for our city.

Our delivery model is sound as proven with our ISO 1 rating and our international accreditation.

Our firefighters are well trained and equipped and our equipment is second to none.

However, there's no longer enough firefighters to safely accomplish all the missions we're being tasked with.

We ask that you consider the funding of nine new positions knowing that $300,000 of that cost will be offset in the salary savings of the overtime currently being paid.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Rosia Parker, City.

I wanted to start off with one thing that has been constantly brought to City Council's attention.

If it's not just this City Council, this new one, but the old one about Mr. Cyrus Tyree, the gentleman that was held by knife on

the city on the mall.

Still he's been going to the police department.

He's been asking questions about exactly what is going to go on with his case.

He has not been to court.

He hasn't heard anything from the police officer.

The only thing he said that he had heard that the gentleman was in a mental institution.

He wants

that man brought forth for criminal charges to be pressed because he felt that his life was at stake when two officers walked by and didn't say anything or intervene on his behalf so he feels that he's been violated so he wants the city to look into it and he wants some charges brought and pressed against that.

Gentlemen.

about the plaque.

I've been asking city council for the last year or so with Kathy Galvin as to what was going on with that situation and I was told in November that something would have been done about what was going on with the plaques and I would have heard something back, which I didn't.

and from what email I've received from Richard Allen that he's been coming to the city council since 2014 asking about that plaque.

A couple of other people, Mr. Eugene Williams, Mr. Uriah Fields, they have asked about this plaque.

And so he felt that it was time that something

Had to be done about it because it seemed like the city wasn't taking was taking their time on Even having an understanding as what was going to be done with those plaques even five years ago So and it's been a year for me.

So I guess he felt that it was time for things to be done quickly about the

the cameras as well.

I still haven't heard anything as to where these cameras going, what was going on with these cameras and also that we need an MOU with housing and the police chief.

That's been a year since the police officer got shot last year.

There's still no MOU so that still makes a problem for my safety between public housing and the police that they can have a better way of coming over

And I'm still not understanding why are we still being over-policed.

If it's only a certain amount of officers, it's quite few more officers than you would think that we would need to be policed by, once again.

And thank y'all for the park that is coming up.

And if those cameras are to come back, I would hopefully hope that y'all would have a town hall meeting with us before those things take place.

I just have one quick response for the MOU.

I did speak to Chief Brackney briefly.

We do have to meet again about this was one of the requests that came from my first board meeting.

It was setting up that and getting city

to assist with hiring the executive director for CRHA.

So we are working on both of those things.

We're a little bit further along with HR assistant with the hiring process, and we'll be looking at what a potential agreement could look like with the police department.

And I have broader questions as well about if there's any city policy in general about the use of cameras.

It's not quite related, but I know a number of cities have signed MOUs with Amazon for monitoring footage from Ring cameras and other similar devices like that.

And I have a question as well as if those devices are used in any way in investigations and what possible impact that has on privacy.

And I've stated before with the cameras, I wouldn't necessarily vote in favor of them, but I think if we're going to use them just to let the public know that they are being used.

And I understand there could be some issues with location, but I think it's a discussion.

At least make sure that the information is out there about that we are at least using them.

I think people just aren't sure what occurred after they were taken down.

is what's causing a lot of the current questions.

OK.

That's it for the list that we had signed up.

So if there's anyone else who would like to speak.

No one would like to speak?

OK.

Closing public.

Oh.

You're going to take your time.

Good evening, Don Gathers, City of Charlottesville.

I would still like to know where the councilors and the city stands on the DMC report.

Unless I've missed it, I haven't heard anything come back since that was published.

I rise in support of the firefighters and their request for

Funding, I don't think we can put a price on the safety of the citizens of Charlottesville and I support Ms.

Rozier about the cameras.

If they're going to be placed in a community, the community should at least have some right to know what's going on there.

I think that that's only right and only proper.

and please get out and support the Liberation and Freedom Days events that will be going on.

I believe that something's going on every night that first week in March, except Friday.

So if anyone has an event that they'd like to plug for Friday, please let us know.

Other than that, I think that was them telling you there were enough.

Yeah, I know.

I know.

I believe that that's it.

Thank you all so very much.

And please, again, just please support the firefighters.

Please give us some stance on the DMC.

And also, if anyone has the opportunity, please support the young lady who has been being trolled and harassed because of her stance over at UVA.

Last meeting.

Final meeting in April to give us a next steps recommendation.

So that came out of the meeting that we had.

And if you, I guess, have ideas before that list comes, it would be nice to just email them, anyone in the public, for them to be able to consider

There was one other thing and I didn't mean to speak on it tonight, but since it's come up two seated councils ago the Blue Ribbon Commission and their report and their findings urged that the city do something more viable and more visible with the slave auction marker the block and

Now, the iteration of council has been replaced twice and still nothing's been done.

Yeah, I think you've spent some time with one of the people who's been working on recommendations for us, right?

Yes.

She just made, okay.

Yes.

Just want to make sure.

All right, is there anyone else who would like to speak?

All right.

Closing public comment.

All right.

So we're going to go we'll break at eight, but we'll continue now with the item number two resolution.

OK.

Yes.

Good evening, Madam Mayor and Councillors.

Before you tonight, you have a resolution.

And just to give you a little more background than what's provided in the memo, VHDA has a financing program for mixed income developments.

I think usually for Mayor Walker and Councillor Hill, I think last year and the year before that usually what council has been presented with

has been light see resolutions and resolutions that relate to the low end, and I shouldn't use their acronym, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program.

This is a different program that VHDA sponsors.

It is financing for mixed income and the state code requires that if the city wishes to

to have VHDA consider this application.

The resolution in your packet the council needs to pass with its findings concerning the availability of residential housing and that private enterprise and investment aren't reasonably expected for this particular housing project.

As you probably read in the memorandum, this is the last parcel in the Sunrise PUD.

It's in the northeast quadrant, Borders-Carlton.

It was bought by a different entity called Sunrise Seaville LLC, and they are planning, if the council passes this resolution, to apply for the mixed income financing from VHDA.

Sunrise Park?

Yes.

Okay.

Certainly, and that's policy consideration.

I would offer that the proffers for the PUD were fulfilled in the other properties.

Yeah, but even the location of this, it's on the outskirts.

And that's one of the concerns that I had with phase four of another development is that it's like the prime piece within that development.

or is it not the intention?

The requirement for the program is 80%.

So will we have an opportunity after they apply for the funding to talk about ratios?

Well, the reason this didn't go through the Planning Commission is that this is purely financial and that there's not a land use component to this.

But they're going to build something here.

More than likely.

Well, I can't I can't.

I mean, I can't say that I know for a fact they're going to build something here.

Well, this is a resolution so they can apply for the financing.

So once they develop a site plan, that would still go through NDS and the Planning Commission?

Let me address that concern.

What would happen is, let's say they receive the financing, they'd have to put in the site plan.

Are there income limits on the other 80 percent?

So there's 22 units, right?

There would be.

No, I get that, but just only the 80 percent.

our market rate.

And so right now they would have an absolute buy right ability to build anything that conformed with the PUD which could be all market rate at this point?

Well have they, because they weren't the original owners, right?

So they haven't.

But the PUD itself, the proffers related to the... So because they purchased it, it still applies to them because it's related, it's attached to the land.

And this request just allows them to have a financing option that would allow them to apply for it.

So my concern would be the same that it has been for any development.

I don't think that this is any different in terms of other developments that come before us.

And I know that we need housing and we do have a work session coming up and hopefully that we'll have some possibilities with legislation.

I just don't, um,

I have so many questions around just this process that seems to be like typical of how the use of city monies to purchase land to build on and then the sale of that property and then the attached

PUD that we or the approved land use for those properties and then private owners being able to utilize that.

Well, and I think the challenge is, as I'm sure we'll discuss at the meeting, like there's those larger structural issues which are huge problems, and then there's these immediate votes that come before us that this vote has no opportunity or relation to that larger structural issue, it's just

Yes or no, can they apply for funding or not?

Oh, I understand that.

I just don't make my decisions like that.

I just think we should still point out that it is problematic that the 80% is not meeting the affordable housing needs.

And while there are needs that more 80% and marker rate units have been built in the past.

And that's all that I'm highlighting.

Voting no doesn't change it either, but what incentive would developers ever have to even think differently if we just voted yes just because both options are horrible choices?

I agree.

So I think every development that has been before me, this is no different from what private developers present to us in terms of like 80% market rate.

That's the rate that people are comfortable with.

This is what is currently being offered on Preston.

It's problematic.

It's not going to

you know put a significant dent in this the way the city has been building for a long time and the people that they've been in a lot of people have been interested in housing and I'm just voicing the same concern so that they are heard and so hopefully they prompt discussions about how do you

I agree.

I think the process is broken at so many points where 80% of AMI is largely catering to young professionals, not deep affordability.

The question, which is obviously just very difficult with no easy answer, is there's that larger structural problem of treating housing like a commodity that's gentrifying and pushing people out.

What is that structural change that decomodifies land?

I don't know either, but that's a much it's a long term structural thing that is going to be hard.

OK, so any other clarifying questions from council?

All right.

I move that we adapt the resolution supporting VHDA supported housing development summarized PUD Parcel 560085W00.

All right.

Any further discussion?

All right.

Please vote.

All right.

It carries four to one.

Good afternoon.

Mayor Walker, Vice Mayor McGill, members of the city council.

My name is Garland Williams, Director of Transit for CAT.

I want to bring you an update on the detour of the trolley program.

So council authorized in September a detour for our free trolley.

It was set to be for a 90-day period of time.

That detour started on October 6.

Approximately 90 days has passed.

The trolley itself, the ridership has dropped a little bit.

So one of the things that we were trying to assess was the need for a permanent change to the route.

At this point in time, I don't think the trolley is the proper route to be modified.

Knowing that the state has put a new measure on all transit agencies.

where productivity is kind of the highest component and as our ridership continues to get affected it affects our funding.

So what I'm proposing to do at this point in time is in your packet you saw that there was ridership counts.

There was also an average for the usage of the Midway Manor.

On the daily basis, it's only averaging ons, about three ons at that stop, 18 off at that stop.

That's primarily because it's the first stop before you get on the mall.

On the Saturday, it's one and 20 off.

Sunday, no one on, three off.

I'm bringing in some consultants, hopefully.

I put in a technical assistance grant with the state.

Hopefully it will be in-house next month, and at that point in time we'll take a look at the whole system.

Hopefully we can come up with another route that we can potentially modify to bring access to midway amendment on a permanent basis.

That will give us time to potentially go through the public process, bring it back to council.

and a proposal that happened on or before May 12th.

Well, I wasn't clear about so obviously just the route itself but also just the traffic patterns with the one-ways because I mean I've heard from several people about just how tricky that can be to even be able to go into park because the one-ways are parallel parallel one-ways are one block after they're going in the same direction.

Yes.

Unfortunately, if we change the pattern, I won't be able to keep the route.

And one of the concerns that individuals from Midway Manor, they did bring up some other issues that I'm going to meet with them to potentially address.

But at this point in time, I would not recommend that we change it until we can have an opportunity to address those other side issues.

There are some major concerns in a couple of things that they've asked, so I want to

Me and my team an opportunity to really sit down with the professionals and then come back with a permanent solution.

I know it's a little bit of an inconvenience.

And not just potentially route change, but it's also

We're having major delays as we continue to go on South Street, park cars, not being in our way.

So there are a number of things.

But we don't want to continue to affect the positives associated with the free trolley.

Are there any other questions?

So the short of it is this pilot will be basically extended.

If we can do it sooner, we'll come back.

Great.

Thank you.

All right.

All right.

There's a no vote there.

Yeah, you're good.

I'm just saying it out loud.

So we should break now before this one.

Thank you.

Music

That's fine.

They're punctual.

Sena, you don't know how to let the conversation go.

Just okay.

All right, I call this meeting back to order.

So Mayor Walker, thanks for having me here tonight and thank you to the council for hearing about some updates about the United Way.

I've been able to meet with most of you and know most of you here in the community but I'm new to the United Way.

I've only been there about 18 months so I thought it was time that we kind of gave you an update on what we're up to and as you know we get some ABRT funds and so I wanted to share with you how we're spending them.

So first off, we've been over a strategic planning session over the last summer and fall, and we've actually come up with a vision and mission statement, which our agency never had, and we also modified our name.

So we used to be the United Way of Thomas Jefferson area, and we are now the United Way of Greater Charlottesville.

We got a lot of feedback from people that that better suited the community that we served.

We felt like it was the right thing to do.

and it certainly is better for our clients who ultimately we're here to serve here in the community and our vision is a strong equitable community where every person thrives.

We put equitable in there because we think that's the most important thing that we do is making sure that every person has a place at the table to make decisions about their welfare and their outcome and we also went with a mission of the Inanna Way of Greater Charlottesville connects our community enabling individuals and families to achieve their potential.

So we like this visual and Charlottesville takes more than baby steps.

And our next slide is to scale the economic ladder.

So folks probably know this, but Charlottesville is one of the toughest places in the nation to climb the ladder to financial stability, where nearly 25% of the Charlottesville population currently lives in poverty.

As most of you know, that really hasn't changed in the past 10 years.

So one of the things United Way is working diligently on is changing the narrative and the conversation around poverty and what is causing that.

And with so many nonprofits working in the space, why aren't we seeing that number change substantially?

We also talk about what that looks like.

So 12 years is the average reduction of life expectancy when one lives in poverty.

I don't think most people realize that your zip code can have a bigger impact on your health outcome than any other factors, even your DNA, for example.

Nearly 17% is the amount of people in Charlottesville that are hungry and cannot afford housing.

And 154% is the likelihood that Charlottesville kindergartners living in poverty will fail literacy benchmarks compared to their peers.

So we really believe that a lot of this information, while it's out there, not everybody's aware, not everybody understands why.

And so a lot of what we're working on now is starting to change the conversation.

So in Charlottesville community, over 12,035 families currently fall within 200% of the federal poverty line.

100% is most of the clients who serve at United Way.

So a family of four is earning probably about $30,000 a year.

They're struggling to meet their basic needs.

And a lack of financial resources leads to all different kinds of issues, as we know.

But we talked about it tonight, unstable and unaffordable housing being at the top of that list, unemployment, issues around child care, issues around transportation, food insecurity.

issues of incarceration and then undereducated adults.

So these are all issues that our clients face and they're all things that United Way is working to reduce in our community.

So as I said over the summer we went through strategic planning and we really focused on three impact areas that we do our work and I'm going to kind of run through what they are tonight and I'm not sure kind of what we have in terms of timing but if people want to ask questions during the presentation you can or I'll give you the handout at the end and I'd welcome to meet with each of you and answer questions individually.

So financial stability, our definition is our goal is to help adults who are on the path to becoming financially stable and economically independent by supporting customized holistic solutions that address obstacles encountered along the way.

So in other words, how do we remove barriers that help people become economically stable?

One of them is our Seville Tax Aid Program.

This is probably our biggest direct service program that we run under financial stability.

Last year we did 2,719 returns.

We'd love to get to 3,000 returns this year.

The biggest population that we serve again is low income.

And what we do is help them with something called the earned income tax credit.

So the earned income tax credit is something that you're eligible for when you're low income and if you're head of household.

A lot of our clients don't realize that they can get a fairly large amount of money back as a deduction.

Sometimes it can be two, three, four thousand dollars, which is the largest chunk of money that people are going to get in a year that's kind of unexpected.

And so that partnership is something we do at the University of Virginia Madison House.

We have about 268 student volunteers this year that are helping families file their tax return around the community.

So we have over seven different sites and we have a new site this year that's right on Water Street, the Thomas Jefferson Planning District, which is accessible by bus line.

And we're seeing a huge surge in clients coming over from Friendship Court because they can walk there.

a lot of what we're trying to look at is accessibility so it's not enough to run a program if it doesn't meet the clients that it's intended to serve and so how do we do business differently in terms of placing locations that are accessible for members of the community.

ABRT contribution to this program currently is $10,582 and I wanted to include a little bit of the demographics around the populations that we serve so 86% are single head of household families

As you can see, difficulty just paying for food one to two times a year.

A lot of them are UVA employees, actually, so a lot of our UVA employees, as many of us know, are very low income, and so they're able to take advantage of this program.

And over to the right, you can see where people spent that money.

So some went to savings, which we do encourage if people are in a position to save, utility bills, debt, food, rent, and mortgage.

So this money is going to essential needs that families have just to get by.

None of the areas that we work, so we're united and we convene.

That's one of the things that United Way is able to do well.

So we have a financial stability task force, which we launched over the summer.

A lot of the agencies that you see represented and individuals you're familiar with, but the idea of this group is to come together

and see how we can actually work to reduce poverty in our community and how do we pull our resources and have a common goal.

So one of the first things we're working on is creating a work plan and that work plan will identify one problem that we want to solve and we're doing it around equity as it relates to poverty.

So if we look at families in our community that earn $35,000 or less, preponderance them are minority communities.

And so we see 56% of those families are black and brown families versus about 26% being white families.

And so that's the case.

What are the reasons that that is an issue?

How can we unpack that?

How do we track data around that?

And how do we start to put some metrics in place where we can work collectively to reduce those numbers?

One of the other things we're doing is trying to just create awareness about the space.

So for example, you say 12,000 families, does that mean all the families are in the same position?

Not necessarily.

And so a lot of times when we talk about low-income people, we sort of just lump them all together.

And that's really not what we see when we start to unpack it a little bit.

So we have families that might be using The Haven.

They're homeless, and they need a lot of social services and support systems.

And then we have people kind of working their way through the entire financial continuum up to being able to be at Habitat.

in a position to save for a down payment and purchase their first home.

And so we wanted to create sort of a matrix of what people need in that continuum.

And so this is something that we're developing into

what will become an online tool that agencies and also partners can use to kind of understand the space better and then more importantly who's working in that space.

One of the challenges that we have in the nonprofit community is we're sort of aware of how each other working together but if we can better communicate and better collaborate then we feel like we can better utilize the resources that we have and so this is one of the tools that we're working on putting together to explain what's happening in the space around families who need to access these services.

And another program that we developed over the past two years is our family investment program.

Essentially, we work with families over two years to help them create a program where they can improve their credit score and they can improve their income.

We do this by getting nominations from other nonprofit agencies.

Habitat for Humanity, for example, is one of our partners, and we're getting ready to do an MOU with Network to Work, the program with Rich Giler for PVCC.

And the idea there, as families create a work plan of how they want to improve their economics, we invest with the family.

It might be that they want to return to get a GED or they want to earn a CNA.

It might be that they don't currently have a vehicle, so we'll invest in money to buy a vehicle.

They may not have a scholarship for their child to attend early preschool, so we'll provide that scholarship.

But essentially, we're investing up to $10,000 per family over two years.

with the idea being that when they graduate from this program they'll see an increase in their income and an increase in their credit score.

We've had two families currently in the program and we're getting ready to add another four families so it's a new program for us but we believe in them in the long term this is something that we'll be able to offer to more and more nonprofits and as I say we're looking to expand it to work with Network to Work so once people go through the Network to Work program then they would graduate and come into the family investment program.

So school readiness is another impact area that United Way is known for, and our goal here is to close the opportunity gap by promoting strategies to provide all children with the most appropriate and effective early services, supports, and high quality childcare and education.

And we do that in many ways, but one of the programs that people are very familiar with here in Charlottesville is our Early Learner Scholarship Program.

We currently serve 75 children in this program, 98% of those families are single family households.

and so that basically can mean anything up to $12,000 a year is what we invest in these children and we also make sure that they're in a quality center so that they're being prepared for kindergarten so not just daycare but what are the things that we need to do to make sure a child is getting the type of instruction where they can succeed along with their more economically advantaged peers when they get to kindergarten.

And so through AVRT investment, we have $192,504 that was given to this program this past year, for which we are incredibly grateful.

So I want to make sure I express my gratitude to each of you here this evening.

And then I wanted to break out again the demographics on that program.

So currently 30 are Albemarle County and 43 are city residents.

And you can see sort of the breakdown racially in terms of the population served.

So this isn't just for the child and giving them an opportunity to be prepared for kindergarten, but what we see it as an opportunity for the preponderance of single mothers that we serve to be able to have economic advantage and be able to stay employed and be able to keep employment.

Child care is one of the biggest issues that our clients face in terms of being able to have steady employment.

And the Children's Data Consortium is a program that we're involved with.

It's about collecting data that look at the best mix of early ed services for children 0 to 5.

One of the areas of the Children's Data Consortium tonight, I'll talk about our community dashboards.

And so we're just working on developing these now and it's something that we hope we can work with the city and the future on.

but actually coming up with profiles of what demographics look like here in this community.

And so these are really meant to be forward-facing dashboards that we could share with anybody in the community to better understand what's happening around, how many families are in the community, what's the median household income, how many children are living in poverty.

And we can look at other statistics that the city might be interested but we really feel that over the next five years data is going to become the most important thing that we can do in terms of really providing some facts to people about what's happening in our community.

And we also look at it from an equity lens.

So this is current data.

And right now, like I said, 154 percent more likely to fill kindergarten benchmarks if you're in a minority community and 137 percent more likely to drop out of high school.

So these are the stats that currently exist.

And our goal is to make sure that this information is readily available here.

The early education task force is sort of like what we described for the financial resiliency task force.

And as you can see, many of the community leaders you're probably familiar with.

come together basically to look at what interventions can we do collectively for children 0 to 5 to make a difference in terms of quality in the community, quality care in the community, making sure that the non-profit care centers have what they need to even provide data.

to all of the participants.

This is a little bit of a definition of what the task force vision and mission is, which is every child in Charlottesville and Albemarle living risk factors that impact success in school and life will have access to high quality early education.

This simple, clear vision is unclouded by concerns over funding and is endorsed by our city and county executives, city and county school superintendents, and the leaders of numerous child care

We've been working on this program for the past three or four years and we've been able to see a really great increase in quality in the different providers here in our community.

And one of the programs that we run is what we call the Soho Book Project.

So this is just around literacy.

We give out 10,000 books a year.

We work with the City of Charlottesville, Piedmont Housing Alliance, City of Promise, Southwood, to give out free books so that children, it's really up to probably the ages of fourth or fifth grade, have access to books that are basically a gift in partnership with the Soho Center.

And then lastly, we have our Connected Community focus, which is the United Way connects, convenes, and supports the collaboration of organizations in our community.

Among this network, we were able to identify the needs in the community and work towards some collaborative goals.

And sort of the items that fall under this category is our Day of Caring, which we'll talk about in a minute, Women United, which is an organization of women leaders that are looking to raise funds and give grants back into the community for women and children, our community table work, our partnership with TomTom Summit,

Multicultural Health Celebration, Our Racial Equity Efforts, and Inclusive Communities of Excellence, which I'll also talk about in a minute.

So Inclusive Communities of Excellence is a new framework that Kevin McDonald, who is

VP of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the University of Virginia has developed after being in Ferguson and he was there after the race riots and actually came up with a community platform and framework that agencies such as United Way, Chamber of Commerce, CNE can engage in and look at how we lift up equity in community and so there's sort of five key areas and over the next six months we'll be looking at how United Way engages in this framework and how we can be a participant in leadership in this area.

Day of Caring is our big sort of annual day celebration of service and so we have about 3,000 volunteers that come out we work with about 225 different different nonprofits to do a one-day blitz of community service and really the idea here is to get people engaged in service and giving back in their community we just completed our 27th year so it's probably our our biggest event that we host every year

and we keep seeing an uptick in people wanting to get involved in different nonprofits wanting to get involved so it's been a great way to get people thinking about how they can get back and it also helps promote our volunteer website where anybody can log on anytime and have access to all of the different nonprofits who are looking for support and volunteering year-round.

And Community Table work is something we've been engaged in since August 2017.

The idea here is to get people from diverse communities together to be able to have a meal and just simply have a conversation and build some relationships.

It's not meant to be more complicated than that.

We hosted one over the summer at ICS Art Park and we actually did a mural with some data statistics.

It's called a data mural.

Again, information is power and so we're just trying to share out what people are experiencing in this community, what people have been through in this community, and hope that people can get some different perspectives by being able to just sit down and share a meal with somebody.

We did the multicultural health fair this year.

That's something we might do again in the future.

This really came out of a desire to have more diversity in terms of how we deliver health in our community.

And so we were an underwriter and supporter of this.

We worked with 100 black women, the UVA Latino Health Coalition, and we were able to basically serve, I guess, 150 attendees.

I think we had even more people come.

These are basic things like just health screenings, vaccines, things that people don't typically have access to and so it was a one-day event and everything again was free.

We had the mammogram event come out and the idea is to get people connected to a primary care physician so that was one of the areas we really focused in and then making sure people were signed up for Medicaid, Medicare, that type of thing to have ongoing health care.

The TomTom Summit this year is focused on equity and inclusion and so we've put together essentially a three-day curated event where we're bringing other United Way leadership from around the country to work with different leaders in our community around some of the issues that we face and some of the issues that we continue to work on.

So we have a health equity issues for small college towns that Dana Matthews is going to be leading with the Equity Institute at UVA.

improving equity in early education with Amanda Williford but again we're looking at ways to have platforms where we can do basically have education and outreach and kind of bring some of these issues to light for a broader audience.

And lastly, we just launched our new Chamber Minority Business Alliance grant program.

We're doing up to two, three grants, up to 10,000.

This is through the Chamber of Commerce, and this is meant to get to small businesses, minority-owned businesses.

Access to capital that is in the form of a grant does not need to be repaid.

And this is for things like operating expenses, web development, marketing, computer hardware tools, copiers, et cetera.

This is a new program for us.

It's a pilot program, but it's something we hope that grows.

Ultimately, we hope that Chamber members will be contributing to this fund and we can really build it into something substantial to help the minority business community in Charlottesville.

In general, we do some grant makings.

We used to do more grant making, now we're more focused on programmatic areas, but we still do financial stability, score readiness.

We do about 290 in investments in grant making and we work with people.

We work with nonprofits that specifically are doing score readiness or financial stability, so they have to be

within those two priority areas.

And over the next five years, we'll probably put about a million dollars back into the community around financial stability.

So we work with the CIC, for example, we work with Network to Work.

So it's partners that were already involved in work to basically help them with their mission as it relates to our priorities.

So that's really it.

I just wanted to thank you for your commitment to our community, what all of you do to serve here, and what you do to support the United Way.

Thank you.

Do you have any questions?

I'll just hand out.

All right.

I appreciate it.

Thanks.

I have a comment as well.

OK.

All right.

Now, next, we have a report from the Office of the City Assessor's Office.

Good evening.

How are you?

My name's Jeffrey Davis.

I'm the city assessor.

Sorry about that.

One of the first things that came to mind about describing the process for what we do, the assessment process, the Board of Equalization training manual.

And this is, the State Department of Taxation uses this

to train the Board of Equalization members.

It has a lot of information on the appraisal process as well as the Board of Equalization's role in the appeal process.

It's very good reference material, and I didn't make everyone a copy of this, so I'm going to send it to you electronically.

The Assessor's Office consists of eight employees.

We have two residential appraisers, one residential supervisor, one commercial appraiser, one GIS CAMA coordinator, and two administrative assistants.

Our major challenge each year is completing the reassessment on time.

Another goal is to provide the best possible customer service, and I believe that we do that because we make it a top priority.

The city code requires that real estate assessments are done annually.

We were responsible for this year for valuing 15,606 parcels, as well as new construction and property divisions.

One misconception is that tax-exempt properties do not have to be assessed the same as taxable properties, and that's not the case.

They have to be assessed annually using the same methodology as taxable properties.

We also administer the abatement solar energy and energy efficiency programs.

For the abatement program this year, the total abated amount of taxes is $189,300.

And for the solar energy program, the amount is $28,300.

We receive no energy efficient

efficiency program applications this year.

The Commissioner of Revenues Office administers other tax relief programs.

In order to determine, well, the Code of Virginia states that assessments shall be at 100% of fair market value.

One frequently asked question that we get all the time is why can't assessments be phased in?

and the code simply doesn't allow for phasing in of assessments.

It states that they have to be at 100% of fair market value.

In order for us to determine fair market value, we analyze property sales grouped by neighborhood.

This is the basis which we assess residential property.

The first step is to identify and validate the sales.

In order to determine the validity of a sale, we mail out sales verification forms to new property owners.

That's basically a questionnaire that relates to the circumstances revolving around the sale.

We also make site visits to properties that sell to try to verify and make sure their information is still accurate.

Often changes are made during the times when we've last visited there and there can be additions of porches or garages or any number of items, renovations that we don't have a record of.

So we want to make sure that we identify these changes.

Once we've verified all of the sales data in the neighborhood, we're then able to compare the assessed values to the selling prices, and from there we're able to determine if and to what degree any changes are necessary.

Once we decide that a change is necessary, we move the entire neighborhood accordingly, allocating changes between land and building values.

Assessing groups of properties is the primary difference between mass appraisal and private appraisal.

A private appraiser has to just deal with one property and we're dealing with groups of properties.

Matter of fact, the state code emphasizes that uniformity is equally, if not more important than the value.

Not all property types change the same amount each year.

The location, price range, and property type are some of the factors that affect value.

As an example, condominium values in our area have been flat for several years, where attached houses have increased greatly.

Particular segments of the market can also change at different rates, so a $300,000 neighborhood may be impacted differently than a half a million dollar neighborhood or a $250,000 neighborhood.

For assessment purposes, the city is divided into 51 residential neighborhoods and 21 commercial neighborhoods.

Each neighborhood is considered individually in order to assure that similar land values are applied.

That's not to say that all land values will be the same in a neighborhood, but they have to start at the same basis.

Values can always be adjusted to allow for individual characteristics that might affect the lot or the land.

For commercial properties, land is typically valued on a per square foot basis.

Buildings are often valued using a cost approach, and that's where the building is valued as if it's new and then depreciated so much for its age and its condition.

We also use an income approach for some commercial properties, such as hotels, apartments, some offices, and shopping centers.

Due to the wide variety of commercial buildings within the neighborhood, they tend to be valued more on an individual basis rather than a mass application as residential properties are.

Once the reassessment is completed, there's a 30-day appeal period.

The first step in the appeal period is to speak with the appraiser responsible for appraising the property.

If there's no agreement at that time, then the next step is for the property owner to file an assessment appeal application.

And when an assessment appeal application is filed, that means that we're going to do an internal review of the property and make a property visit to, again, ensure the data that we have about the property is correct.

And we'll move from there.

If there's still no movement,

As far as agreement between what the value should be, then the property owner has the ability to file an application with the Board of Equalization.

The Board of Equalization consists of three city property owners who are appointed by the circuit court judge and have been trained by the state in order to hear property assessment appeals.

Board of Equalization members are not city employees, they are part of the judicial system.

The board has the authority to do any of the following three things.

They can affirm the assessment, increase or decrease it.

The burden of proof is upon the taxpayer to prove the assessment is incorrect or not uniform.

Otherwise, it is presumed to be correct.

The next step in the appraisal challenge would be the circuit court.

Then finally, the state provides localities with an annual sales assessment ratio report.

This report gives the statistics on a yearly basis of the accuracy of the localities assessments.

That pretty much concludes what I've prepared.

We have we have access to their to their building permit system and we pull those straight off their system to in order to go out and because you just mentioned like sometimes they weren't aware of changes happening but I would think that any garages additions would all have to have permits.

Not everyone gets a permit for things.

We generally just do the assessment.

No, we'll try to make contact with the owner and walk around the house and we'll have a copy of our record with us that has a drawing of the house and you should match that up to make sure that what you have on file is what is actually there if you don't get to talk to the owner.

And the reason I asked you to come is because we get a lot of questions, especially this time of year regarding the difference between tax increases and the assessment, new assessment and the value being assessed higher, so the increase there.

And the other question that I hear a lot is how developments impact older neighborhoods.

So you described that a little bit when you talked about the mass appraisal and taking it into consideration.

So something like the new development over on Preston and how that impacts the neighborhood around.

Well, the development on Preston that you're talking about is really not going to have a direct impact on the appraisals around it.

What happens is other properties begin to sell for higher prices because of this development.

And as a result of that, we will recognize those sales at a later date.

So just that property itself being renovated

So you're saying that you don't necessarily foresee an increase based on just that development, but because that development is there, neighbors could potentially sell their property for a higher market rate versus the assess rate?

That's true.

Okay.

And that's what we use.

The commercial and residential generally don't impact each other so much.

However, like you're talking about on Preston, that's a commercial development and I'm sure that's going to bring interest in the area.

And you'll probably see some of the residential homes around there start selling for more because there's an office next door, there's an opportunity.

So I'm sure that that's going to bring change to the residential market in that area.

But we follow the market.

We don't set the market.

And that's another misconception is we work on what has taken place in the market.

You have just sort of like a ballpark number.

I should probably have that with me, but I don't have it exactly.

150 maybe appeals and often appeals are changed due to incorrect information that we find because we go visit the property and we find that we have incorrect information and it may not, it can be just something that's not very substantial but you still make a change.

Yeah, I mean, just it sounds like the number of

assessments that are appealed and adjusted as a relatively high percentage of the appeals do result in a change.

Well, we do run sales ratio studies of the neighborhood once we've assessed it to ensure that our assessments are in line with where they should be or reflect the market value of the property.

However, the one issue that we really have that's all the time is trying to keep up with changes in property.

That's the one aspect of property that's very fluid.

It's changing all the time.

Thank you.

I think, Councillor Hill, you didn't ask the question but it seemed like you were wondering about what happens if there's sort of an alteration or a building put on a piece of property that

that they discover, but I think that's more a building permit issue, building inspections.

I'm in awe that at some point the city is discovering this is not something that was reported.

No, but if we saw a substantial building, like a house or a garage, for something like a porch or decks or things like that, we're not going to chase that down because, honestly, more than likely nothing would be done with it.

and just building codes.

So I think I have another question.

I'm trying to figure out if so if one property sells for hire in an area, the next just someone just buys it.

So I'm thinking now of like

No, we're going to discount that.

Well, no, we're going to find out.

We're going to find out who purchased it because we want to make sure that that sale is not from someone who's related to each other.

So we investigate the sales to try to find out what's behind them.

oftentimes their sales will we just can't use.

They're so far out of reason.

OK.

And then the income and expense forms.

How many citizens participate in that annual?

We send those out to income producing properties.

And I would say we probably send out

200 of those or 250 and we might get back 20%.

All right.

Well, thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Good evening.

Last but certainly not least, it's nice that you guys get to get out early tonight.

So my name is Chantelle Bingham and a lot of the things I get to do in Charlottesville I also get to chair the Human Rights Commission.

I'm here on behalf of the Human Rights Commission to just give you guys an update and then Todd is going to give an update on the Office of Human Rights and the activities that have been going on in our city in terms of unlawful discrimination contacts and things like that.

We're doing this in partnership and in

Ms.

Charlene Green is retiring.

She thought it would be befitting of Todd and I to come and give this presentation.

We're going to be holding down the fort until we get somebody new in there.

So yesterday I had the opportunity of going to Nicole Hannah-Jones 1619 project talk.

And one of the things that I took away from that talk is that, yes, things have happened over the past 400 years, but there were a lot of resources and energy and human capital and money put into building systems of injustice and inequity.

I left that talk feeling a little bit happy and proud about the city of Charlottesville for having an Office of Human Rights and a Human Rights Commission, though we started in 2013.

It's that type of movement that shows the city is committed to building that infrastructure to really start walking our talk around racial equity and justice.

The core mission of the Office of Human Rights and the Human Rights Commission is to act as a strong advocate

for justice and equal opportunity by providing citywide leadership and guidance in the area of civil rights.

This is just from the bylaws of the ordinance.

It lays out what the Human Rights Commission sets out to do.

We identify and review policies and practices for the city of Charlottesville and its boards of commissions and other public agencies.

We also collaborate with public and private sectors for the purpose of providing awareness, education, and guidance on methods to prevent and eliminate discrimination citywide.

The office is involved with assisting individuals who believe they are a victim.

of an act of unlawful discrimination within the city.

And then we also try to partner with the city departments to make recommendations regarding the city's annual legislative program with an emphasis on enabling legislation that may be needed to implement programs and policies that will address discrimination.

When I became chair of the Human Rights Commission, I will not lie, the Human Rights Commission had been a little bit dormant for the past couple years.

So one of the things we really set out to do for the year 2019 is just prove ourselves and prove that we're able to fulfill the ordinance.

This is a quick list of the things that the Human Rights Commission has done over the past year for 2019.

One of those is passing a resolution to endorse the continuation and expansion of

Charlottesville Supplemental Rental Assistance Program.

We've also had a number of endorsements around affordable housing support for the Belmont apartment residents.

Piedmont Environmental Council submitted a proposal for open streets, and then we also submitted a letter of support in objection of ICE raids.

You can see that we've also reviewed some policies.

I'll get down to what that actually meant.

We spent a lot of time, there's an ad hoc committee,

that focused on the bias-based policing policy, constitutional procedures, and then also giving general recommendations for police policies to make them more accessible to the public.

Those policies, though they were reviewed without that infrastructure in partnership with CPD, with the city of Charlottesville, it's really hard to get those recommendations implemented.

This next year we're looking forward to building better partnerships and then there's some miscellaneous down there and street renaming recommendations and a PSA for people living with disabilities.

These are the activities categorized by role in relation to what has happened over the past three years.

In 2017 you can see in red that was a resolution for standing committees so not too much and then in 2018 they approved a UVA student liaison.

So 2019 is blue.

Those are the activities that I've already highlighted in the slide before, the resolutions, policies, and miscellaneous just showing that there's an uptick in the Human Rights Commission being able to fulfill our role for the city, but still we really want to do more.

Like I said, we did review some policies and

tried on multiple times to get that on the docket with different stakeholders of the police department as well as the city lawyers.

And because there's so much going on in our city at a lot of points in time, we were not able to take those recommendations and implement them with the proper stakeholders.

This is just an overview of our different duties and responsibilities of the Office of Human Rights and the Human Rights Commission.

A lot of the bulk of the activities and the report that you'll receive on electronics soon will just give a layout that we've been doing a lot of community dialogue and engagement.

The biggest thing that's happened over the past year

was obviously Unity Days that had a lot of attraction.

There was a lot of different events that happened around the city.

We looked at a lot of systems issues and then Todd is going to review the investigation of individual complaints and enforcements that I know that you all are excited to learn about that's happened in the city.

Here's a quick summary of what all that means for us in terms of our duties and responsibilities.

Many of those Human Rights Commission activities, as I said, has fallen under community dialogue and engagement.

And again, talking about while we've done a lot of work within our commission, we haven't been able to provide a proper check and balance for the city in some ways because of those partnerships that have been missing.

It would be really nice to have a direct line

of Accountability with the City Manager's Office.

I know that there's a lot of shuffling around that's going around, so that's okay.

But if we can start having those conversations sooner rather than later, I think that that would ensure with Charlene's departure that some of the stuff, work that we've been able to do is able to continue.

The Commission has not yet engaged in individual complaints under enforcement, and Todd is going to explain this a little bit more.

There have been individual complaints, and once an investigation pursues, if it rises to the level of the Human Rights Commission, we then review that complaint.

That hasn't happened this year yet, but there has been some allegations that Todd will go over.

And overall, our commission activity has increased significantly.

Moving forward, we hope to build more effective partnerships with city leadership.

and the Human Rights Commissioners to cultivate better handoff of work in progress for the city's collective work.

We also look forward to hiring a replacement for the Director of the Human Rights Commission, who's also the manager of the Office of Human Rights, aka Charlene Green's old job.

We really want to help the city to further define their leadership in advancing civil rights.

This city, more than any other city in the nation, I think, really has a lot to say about human rights and we need to stand at the forefront of that conversation.

And we also look forward to working with other organizations to better define equity and inclusion and ensuring that our city remains a participant in these conversations.

That is all I have.

Thanks for giving us a chance to talk about the work that we do, and I'm going to hit on

Keena's got a handout for you that has all the numbers on it.

It's a lot to digest.

We're not going to go over all those numbers tonight.

But I wanted to highlight some of the key points that the data from the work that we do in the office on a daily basis presents to us.

I'm going to go through the things highlighted in green as they pop up here.

So first of all, the Office of Human Rights received 1,993 incoming contacts.

So we're talking about walk-ins, phone calls, emails from individuals reaching out to us.

That's an average of about eight incoming contacts a day.

over 252 open office days, that's excluding holidays and weekends.

What that means in practice for us is that with an office of two people, we're trying to work with about 2,000 contacts and so that can, we're sort of at our upper limit in that regard at the present date in order to

receive those folks and then respond to them in an appropriate way through follow-up and resolution of concerns that people bring to us.

Bring that up so you understand kind of the capacity that we're starting to work with currently.

So the other key thing to note there is that if we're engaged in other activities that don't keep us in the office, like doing outreach or engagement work, we can't be there to receive people who are walking in.

So just a thing to think about in terms of how we look at how the office gets structured in the future.

So one of the key pieces that the ordinance

empowers the office to do is to investigate or receive allegations of discrimination that happen within the city that are under the protected activities and classes defined by the Human Rights Ordinance.

And so what I present here is that we had 41 incoming contacts that involved an allegation of discrimination.

So not all of those were in the city of Charlottesville, but I'm going to highlight the ones that were.

So 14 of those were allegations of employment discrimination within the city of Charlottesville.

Two, obviously housing discrimination, and nine in the realm of public accommodation.

One of those resulting in a formal investigation that's still pending, still ongoing.

Remaining 16 occurred outside the city of Charlottesville or involved other unprotected activities.

When I say unprotected, I'm talking about things that aren't protected by the Human Rights Ordinance.

So to go back up to, I think, one of the key pieces there, the 14 allegations of employment discrimination,

Now that doesn't mean that we can investigate all those.

The Human Rights Ordinance is very specific in what it allows us to do currently in our current standing as an office.

You may have heard the talk about becoming a fair employment practices agency.

That's a process an Office of Human Rights or a municipality can go through to get approval from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate a broader array of employment concerns within its geographic jurisdiction.

We have that process sort of in play, but I'm not exactly sure where that lies currently.

I think there's still some dialogue between the EEOC and the city.

Were that to take place in the Office of Human Rights become a FIPA, that would expand our jurisdiction over employment a bit.

Now, knowing how many new cases we would actually take on because the EEOC in Richmond would then start referring things to us that come to them that are within our geographic jurisdiction, we don't know.

Based on stats from the last ones I saw from 2019, I believe they had 29 cases of employment discrimination from Charlottesville.

That was 2017.

I haven't foiled the data for 2018 and 19 yet, but it would be interesting to know if all of those would come back to us or if they were, if those were all founded

So, interesting to know.

It's a little bit of a venturing into unknown territory, were we to become a FIPA, would that mean likely we would have to have more staff to be able to pull that off in terms of investigation and resolution of those complaints.

So the next piece here is looking at things that didn't necessarily involve an accusation of discrimination, right?

So I mentioned that we had about 1,993 incoming contacts.

Overall, there were 2,395 in-going and out-going contacts, and what that means is that we're not only receiving

people coming into us.

We're also doing a lot of follow-up and referrals, things like that.

And so one of the key pieces to that is that 543 of this 2,395 involve some sort of counseling service.

We define it as counseling in the sense that

What we're doing is providing some sort of guidance to people who bring us a concern.

And I think the one I want to highlight there is 414 of those 543 counseling services provided were related to housing.

And I think the key piece to that is

People are coming to us and not only bringing us allegations of housing discrimination, which you can see above was only a two, but they're also asking us, how do we navigate this complex system?

How do we access affordable housing?

How do we access assistance with move-in costs and deposits, things like that?

So they're coming to us for services we don't actually provide, but we're providing that connection to the folks who can provide those services.

It's an important piece.

I think part of that is about the fact that we're very accessible, right?

We're an office with a glass door that faces Fifth Street, right?

Anybody can walk up to that door, knock on it, and I'll let them in.

And so we don't typically turn anybody away, but we find out, what are you trying to bring to us?

What issue are you trying to resolve, and how can we make that the easiest for you as possible?

So I bring that up just so you know that a lot of the activity that's happening in the office on a daily basis

isn't around discrimination at all, it's just about people trying to navigate a system they don't understand.

OK, last but not least, talking a little bit about the protected classes that are defined by the Human Rights Ordinance.

So this is when somebody brings a claim of discrimination, it has to be within one of the five protected activities of housing, employment, credit, private education, or what am I, hit me, what's the last one?

Public accommodation.

Thank you.

And so within each one of those protected activities, we then identify what is the protected class that the person identifies with that they've been discriminated against on the basis of.

So in this case, of the 153 new inquiries and new complaints,

Just to clarify a little bit, inquiries are also encompassing concerns of discrimination that fall outside of our jurisdiction, either geographically or just because the ordinance doesn't allow us to investigate them.

Of those 153 plus 6 actual complaints, which are within our jurisdiction, 20 identified race and skin color as the protected class that they self-identified was the reason for the discrimination.

So I think that's an important thing.

when somebody actually does identify one of the protected classes races at the top seconded only by disability.

So you'll note that down below there there's 106 people who identified no specific connection to a protected class and that's often because they're not bringing us a case of discrimination

They're just bringing us a concern.

And so we rely on them to self-identify what is the concern related to in terms of protected class.

So that's the whole summary of the key points of the data.

That's a lot of numbers and facts just to throw at you.

The paper you have there goes into greater depth with all those numbers.

There's also a glossary that defines some of these data points in further depth if you have questions about what they mean.

Thanks for that.

I was curious, I see you mentioned employment allegations in Albemarle County.

Obviously, with a glass door, we're getting people walking in and who often don't even know if they're living in the county or the city until further investigation.

Yeah, it's in that stack of numbers there.

So just to be clear, it's not necessarily where you live.

It's where the incident of discrimination occurred, right?

So there's a lot of people who work in the city, who live in the county.

That we don't identify so much.

That's actually what I meant more.

Sure, indeed, indeed.

So yeah, if you look at...

In this handy-dandy page, there's actually a spot.

If you're looking at allegations specifically, those are in red, that red block there, and I break it down by housing, employment, and public accommodation, which are the

really the only protected activities for which we receive allegations of discrimination.

So that data is there.

But yeah, I should get my glasses out.

I could actually tell you what it said.

Thanks.

OK.

Thank you Todd and Chantal.

Good evening everyone.

We would not be able to give you those kinds of numbers if it weren't for Todd.

because as another body in the office who's a full-time employee, he is able to keep track of all the ways in which people are seeking assistance through the office when you're just talking about the protected activities and classes that we try to address.

And then the other way that we deal with

Our responsibilities with the office is through the outreach and education and

We do that in several different ways in providing just general outreach.

We also do it in the way of leadership with participating on committees.

And we also develop workshops and work with not only the different city departments, but also the different partners that we work with across the city and the county.

So there are just three things that I want to leave you with in terms of thinking about the Office of Human Rights and our Human Rights Commission.

One is staff.

In order for this work to be done and done well, not only do we need a budget, but we also need the staff to handle all of the work well.

And so to keep that in mind as you're

and this is actually my second point as you're connecting the dots.

There are lots of conversations about equity happening across the city and the county.

Just the number of committees alone that I have sat on and will continue to sit on in my new position means that in this area alone there is this attention that people are trying desperately to work on in order to do the right thing.

And so it's real important to think about where and how the city is sitting at the table of those conversations, because if we're missing

then we're not connecting the dots in the way that I know you all expect the city to operate.

And then the third point I want to make is to not forget all of the amazing work that has been going on in this area and I'm just going to point to 2009 starting with the Dialogue on Race.

The Dialogue on Race started the City of Promise.

the Chamber's Minority Business Council in addition to creating the ordinance that created the office and the commission for human rights.

It has some indirect connections with other things that have happened in the city that have to do with the CIC, the Community Investment Collaborative, the believers and achievers that has its starts and stops, but the focus on re-entry has some strong connections through the dialogue on race because of the way in which that initiative supported all of the work that Dr. Holly Edwards wanted to focus on.

And so there have been numerous engagements.

And because it's the city and all of the baggage that comes with the city, some people don't always think about the positive things that have occurred.

But for us to be in the place that we're in now, considering

CRB, the Civilian Review Board, creating a Department of Equity and Inclusion.

The fact that we have an Office of Human Rights when I speak with my colleagues across the state, the one thing that they point to to Charlottesville is not only do we have the enforcement arm of what we do, but we also have the education and outreach that a number of them, especially in Northern Virginia, are trying to replicate because they haven't been doing it as well as we have been doing it.

And so,

to remember all of the things that got us to this place.

Some of it has been nasty and tragic, but the fact that we have in place by the city that is resourced by the city around having conversations and having action connected to equity and diversity is important.

And it is something that doesn't happen in any other city across the state of Virginia.

So to not forget that piece I think is real important.

Because sometimes it's real easy to have a short memory and not realize that, oh, when we have these conversations about the statues and we have a monument to Vinegar Hill that needs to get funded.

The work that occurs at the Jefferson School, you know, that's connected

very tightly to the work that comes out of the Office of Human Rights.

And so thinking about those positive things, I think, is real important.

But in my position, I have always appreciated the support of counsel.

We couldn't have done what we have done without counsel's support.

And so thank you for that.

So I have a quick thank you.

But just.

So.

First, I just want to say thank you.

Our last conversation, which hopefully you got my text, but I have thought often about what if I could have said anything different.

I wish I had known

what I guess the possibilities were.

I'll just say speaking from just my standpoint

I hope that you know that I have fully understood the connection between even what you were just talking about with reentry.

That was one of the things that I've been clear about, that I am continuing and not creating anything new and from scratch, even though the way this program was built was different, but always honoring.

Holly's work and attention to and the role that you played and that other people have played in that.

I wish I had been able to say something different.

At no point in my mind with talking about a creation of, you know, even a deputy city manager position, the Office of Equity, or the CRB, did I not think that you would be an essential

part of those discussions about how those pieces fit together.

And so when I was made aware that this change was occurring, I thought back to the conversation that we had last and whether I clearly didn't convey that, I feel.

and I just want to say that I hope that you know that was my intention if I didn't do that I'm not saying that was the basis of your decision but I think we're at a critical place in the city and some of this can get lost no matter what council's intention are because we are not the ones on the ground doing the work

and we need people who are committed and have that history and that's one of the things that I'm most fearful about is that we're losing people who, even though you're gonna be still in the city, we're still losing you in terms of helping to expand what we're doing within the city and as a government.

And that made me sad.

Well thank you, I appreciate that.

And I need you especially and everyone to know that this was one of the most difficult decisions in my life.

And I know it sounds cheesy when I say it that this is going to give me a little bit more time with my family, but this is going to give me a little bit more time with my family.

And I think with our family's busy, busy schedule, I'm in the position to

make that choice to be home more for him because he needs that.

And I don't want to have any regrets of not doing that.

I think moving to Piedmont Housing Alliance and knowing how much the city has been focusing on housing means that there's going to be some significant opportunities to still partner in that way.

And then all the things that intersect with housing, with criminal

history, race, familia status, all of those things that are still there means that I'm gonna rely heavily on the Commission and Todd and that work there through the city's efforts of ensuring social equity but

I don't walk away from this lightly or easily.

take away from my experiences here, which is 30 years plus in Charlottesville, having the opportunity, the honor to work with people in our community with the relationships that I've built.

And people are still here, so the work is still gonna happen.

I think that's important to remember.

The work is still gonna happen.

because of you all.

But there's delays, you know.

Delays happen.

Maybe a little bit.

Maybe just a little bit.

But I think it's important for us as a council to make sure that, you know, like the request, you know, the ask I guess is like what's next.

Right.

And how does it fit?

And that was even one of the questions I didn't really know how to answer because I think you need the staff to be able to say how everything fits and who does what and be willing to say, oh, these are some things that we can do differently.

These are some things we definitely want to keep.

And I think the two people sitting right here behind me, Chantelle is the chair who also has a reputation in the community of her focus on social equity.

She can answer some of those questions.

Todd can also answer some of those questions that I think you're going to be asking to figure out how you're going to move forward.

And I am just a phone call or a text away.

I'm not happy about this.

I was looking forward to working with you.

See, yes, but you are.

and it's still like how we advance this work as a city is something we have to really think about because you know the path isn't clear it's not.

Oh, I know because I'm feeling miserable.

We had that whole teenage thing right now.

Well, yeah, I mean, I would echo other things that have been said in terms of just thank you for the years of work you've done.

I think this is a big loss for the city in terms of institutional knowledge, experience and vision.

And I think

We're going to really have to step up to think about, as you were saying, what are the next steps, especially with what, like you said, with connecting the dots?

What does it really mean for us to transform how we operate as a city government with the Human Rights Commission, the Office of Human Rights, an Office of Equity, potentially a high-level city staff member working on equity issues,

I don't think we have any clear idea as a council how to even structure that and move forward.

And the fact that's one of the things that's most alarming to me is while we have been trying to do this work

As you said, for over a decade now, I see the UVA and the county taking that energy especially after 2016 and running full speed ahead and it feels like sometimes we are running into the cow on the side of the dairy building.

I'm just saying like running into a brick wall going nowhere.

That's all I was trying to say.

So I just think it's important for us to be clear about

Well, yeah, I mean, I feel like, you know, at this moment, you know, there's a lot of loss and change and institutional knowledge and experience happening.

And it's going to be really important that we make sure that foundation of institutional support and the structures of the institution are not allowing this work to move to the back burner.

And I just wanted to say, Charlene, that as many times as I've seen you out and about in the community and dealing with the education and the outreach components, as many different times as there have been lectures that you've been giving or talks that you've been giving about this problem and the many facets,

I can well understand why it's time for you to spend some time at home.

You've really done a lot of work for all of us, and I don't see what you do in the office.

I only see what you do out of the office, and that's been an awful lot.

It's like there's six of you all around at all times, so I just want to echo the things.

It's been a pleasure to work with you, and I look forward to continuing that work in other ways.

While we're talking about honoring Charlene Green, the Human Rights Commission does have a meeting this Thursday at 6 p.m.

and we will be taking time out to honor her legacy and the foundation that she's laid and we definitely invite you all to come if you can.

Michael, you did say something about a work session.

Let's just do it.

I mean, no one knows how to do this work.

We're treading in the territory that's new, but it's also critical and necessary.

And so I would love to have

a work session with city council talking about the Office of Human Rights, talking about the Department of Equity, also the Police Civilian Review Board that's been out there floating around.

I think these are all important organizational tools that we can use to start building more equity in our community and we just have to do it.

What are we now?

June's got canceled.

Well, it's up to you all if you want to meet in June.

So it was a break for those weeks.

So then it would be the July one.

Unfortunately this Thursday we have a work session.

We're not.

All right, we'll get back.

We'll make sure.

July before then?

All right, I'm writing that down.

This also does not procure me from sending you emails.

And the commission will continue to work and define things and send those materials.

I know, Nikuyah, we've had a conversation about that.

And I think just the earlier we get drafts out,

And I even think some of those recommendations in the future I would recommend just sending them if it's something that you know we should see.

There are also human rights commissioners in the audience today.

We don't have a big audience today, but the commissioners are out.

And so I just wanted to give a nod to Olivia, Gabby, Ernest Chambers, Adil and Rob.

Yeah.

Thank you all for being here.

And it does come to all of our viewers.

Thanks.

All right.

OK.

So I shared this letter and also this proposal of a possible path forward.

So the Historic Resources Committee met in full, but in the meantime, the Court Square

Marker subcommittee had been engaged in a lot of efforts for other markers that are going to be going on throughout that part of the community over a long period of time that's been going on.

The main point we wanted to discuss tonight is what steps you might want to take to do something in an interim capacity that's, you know, and I guess it's semi-permanent and we don't want it to be something that could easily be

how I ever want to describe that it's something that's going to be sustained because it might be a couple years because there's two things going on.

We have long term, the RFP process will likely get re-energized at some point once we get through some other hurdles and that will be a more comprehensive view.

We have to consider that the county is doing their courts renovations and so that's going to be somewhat disruptive and they're doing a pretty active community engagement piece there and what that looks like.

What the committee is looking to get alignment from council on is

providing a temporary marker at the same location within the same footprint as the auction block that was recently removed.

There's a schematic drawing that I share that was coming from that subcommittee and has been discussed with the broader HRC and complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

And so there's proposed language that is in this letter.

And then on top of that, then it's more like the long-term things that we're going to be pursuing as well.

And so where they're going to be looking at engaging with the descendant community to ensure that the narrative we convey long-term is both accurate and profit, but they were going to do some level of engagement even in the short term.

So right now, because this is not something we can take action on tonight, I just wanted to make sure that everyone had a chance to review this letter and have us discuss what actual items we may want to take place going forward, because I think there's certainly a lot of community desire to do something.

in this interim phase which we can think could be a couple years that whatever we put in place is probably going to be there for that kind of length of time while the more robust things are taking place which includes again Albemarle County's courts renovations as well as our parks redesign.

So is there

I know that what I brought up to them last week was that, and that's what I confirmed with Ryan Davidson on Friday, was that there is a million dollars set aside as part of the park's redesign.

So I feel like there are dollars that could be easily allocated a portion of that.

I think they just need the go-ahead to say is this kind of approach something that councils align with and that we can then come back with a more formal decision-making point.

Today I told them we were not voting but that we would at least provide some direction so that they could put something in front of us that we could vote on.

So I think they just want a kind of reaction to what the direction they're looking to go.

Sounds good.

I like the fact that you can't step on the marker.

I mean, on this new one, that it's both ADA compliant and that it's actually up.

But in the proposed text is substantially different, obviously.

But that would be that that's what would be on it.

That proposed text potentially.

But ultimately, what would have to come in front of us?

Right.

I think it's the funding question.

All right.

So right now we are comfortable as a council with saying, yes, HRC subcommittee and broader HRC proceed forward in this direction.

Let's get some information around what kind of cost estimates there are to pursue this vision.

One of the themes of some of the emails I've been getting

I assume you all have as well, is that this marker ought not to be there.

That it ought to be around the corner.

Because around the corner is apparently where the slave auctions actually occurred.

And I think that comes at more of this broader, longer term piece.

I think right now what's being requested is to basically occupy the space that's been left and to have it to be at more of an eye level off the ground and that this is going to be an interim while we do a much more robust evaluation and engaging a broader group of audience stakeholders.

And we discussed that the language would include in it that this was a temporary.

Correct, Jordi?

We talked about making sure that that was actually

The piece itself, just to acknowledge that this is a temporary... Well, that could ruin the piece.

That was just what's been discussed, is making sure that people are, like to Lloyd's point, the concern is like, are we going to get feedback?

And then sort of separate from that, someone at public comment brought up putting it back at eye level in the building.

There was a separate piece and it was also attempted to be taken and it wasn't able to be taken in completion and the city has possession of that piece.

But that was the owner of the property.

And the answer is because it's private property and we don't have the authority to require it to be done, but the owner of that property is willing to be a part of the discussion going forward as to what

That was my understanding, too.

I have a quick question.

Yeah.

So, could you check on that?

So next we have the

Request for Liberation and Freedom Day.

What time did that come through?

Mr. Blair sent us 821.

Possible.

I had a hard time.

It wasn't first coming through on my email.

No, I have that.

I just wanted to give more information if it was needed.

No, I've read the budget now.

Mr. Blair sent me

Okay, so the allocation request is for the city to commit $3,425 to the week long minus Friday, right?

events for Liberation and Freedom Day.

And there has been a commitment from, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but from the county, was it 2,500?

UVA.

Let me stop guessing.

Yes, please.

Because I can neither find my email.

I'm like, I read it.

Just to sort of give you a sense of even why this request is as much as it might be, is because when we first started out, it was just a afternoon event at the Heritage Center that was based on a series of lectures.

This thing has now grown to a seven-day event in multiple locations throughout the city.

It also includes a significant art exhibition in the schools.

Both Albemarle County and Charlottesville schools are going to come together and create a

installation around Liberation and Freedom Day at Stonefield.

So it really has gone on considerably.

In the past, we had had a lot of help from UVA.

And that help is, they're still a partner on the project.

But in terms of actually helping to fund some of the sort of details like promotion, like things like that, we're not receiving as much from the Office of

Equity, diversity, and equity.

But we do have several UVA partners.

So largely, what started out as a budget of 300 has grown now to a budget of over $11,000.

And we have raised a good portion of that.

And that's pretty much it.

Exactly, exactly.

And so by expanding in this way, we're sort of making the reflection that this was not just a one-off event on a day.

The cornerstone activity

is the activity that actually happens on the third.

That is a procession from the university that starts at the monument to enslaved workers and then moves through Main Street with several stops and includes reenactments.

So we'll leave from the university, stop at St.

Thomas?

St.

Paul's, thank you.

I'm not the only one.

There's also a stop at First Baptist and then it will end at the Heritage Center with a descendant panel and then a community dinner thereafter.

So that's the cornerstone.

And then there are multiple events thereafter.

A hush harbor event that is going to be at the Haven on that Thursday night.

And so the other piece of it is to

The way in which this program informs the community about the broader histories of African American people.

Most people when you say hush harbor don't know what you're talking about.

So that has everything to do with religious practice.

It is the place where African American people would leave the plantation and

have a worship service that would include singing and reading the word that was off and away from the larger life of the plantation.

So being able to bring that kind of scholarship, being able to talk about the moment of the end of the Civil War in Charlottesville, that's being managed by the NOW Center at UVA.

So you can see that it's

It's a much more elaborate thing than when we first started out with the recommendation from the BRC to go and do this.

And Dr. Schmidt and I are the main contacts in sort of planning it.

And we've had several meetings throughout the year to bring us to this point.

Is the essay contest for students?

Yes.

Last year's essay contest was associated with the EJI project.

We had 175 11th grade students participate in that.

gave out $6,000 worth of prize money.

We don't have that much money this year, but between the Heritage Center and the Office of Diversity and Equity, we are going to offer a prize.

Scheduling made it impossible for us to run that program in time for Liberation and Freedom Day, but it will be announced during that week that this is happening.

And we anticipate that the 11th grade, again, will respond in that way.

We're working several projects, some of them around the mapping project.

Jordie's been working with them on that.

Sounds great.

I'm still confused about both those funds.

It just seemed to me that this was

Again, it was a one-time expense.

It's going to a large community, large part of our community.

Yes, so do you want to make the motion?

I would love to make the motion.

Do I just read this whole thing now?

A resolution allocating $3,425 from the City Council Strategic Initiative Fund to Jefferson School African American Heritage Center in fiscal year 2020.

Be it resolved.

All right, any additional questions?

Next, any other business?

No, that we are not having a retreat next week and we're looking for dates.

I'm still working on the dates for, and I can ask here, right?

Because I think I'm missing two responses.

I'm sorry, I was tied up late afternoon.

I'm sorry, what time was this sent?

of what day of my month May oh oh my gosh because that's where we are because April is pretty based on what miss Thomas sent me and what the availability of it just didn't work for April on the spring break okay so May 8th May 8th or 9th

or May 8th and 9th or May 8th and 11th.

And Friday, Saturday or Friday?

All right.

And then.

Just put a little meat on the bone, so to speak.

This we really hope is to be a work session.

We've got some ideas about affordable housing, how it relates to the zoning ordinance.

Specifically, a couple things we're going to be looking at is accessory dwelling units and also I know we hear often about missing middle housing, maybe some ideas that

Alright, any other business?

Oh, five o'clock.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

Um, so are there, next we have the, um, last matters by the public.

Is there anyone here who would like to speak?

All right, meeting adjourned.