City Council Meeting   11/2/2020

1. Closed session as provided by Sections 2.2-3711 and 2.2-3712 of the Virginia Code (Public contract, legal advice, personnel)

• • SPEAKER_17
  • 00:00:01
    All right, Councilor Hill, would you read us out of closed session, please?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:00:06
    Yes, I move that this council certify by recorded vote to the best of each council member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion convene the closed session were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed session.
• • Lloyd Snook
  • 00:00:22
    Second the motion.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 00:00:26
    Ms.
  • 00:00:26
    Thomas.
• • Kyna Thomas
  • 00:00:32
    Mr. Payne?
  • 00:00:33
    Yes.
  • 00:00:35
    Mr. Snook?
• • Lloyd Snook
  • 00:00:36
    Yes.
• • Kyna Thomas
  • 00:00:37
    Ms.
  • 00:00:37
    Walker?
  • 00:00:38
    Yes.
  • 00:00:40
    Ms.
  • 00:00:40
    Magill?
  • 00:00:41
    Yes.
  • 00:00:42
    Ms.
  • 00:00:42
    Hill?
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 00:00:43
    Yes.
  • 00:00:46
    All right, thank you.
  • 00:00:47
    So I call this meeting, regular meeting to order.
  • 00:00:52
    First, we'll have a moment of silence.
  • 00:01:12
    All right, thank you.
  • 00:01:13
    Ms.
  • 00:01:13
    Thomas, roll call, please.
• • Kyna Thomas
  • 00:01:16
    Councilor Payne?
• • Lloyd Snook
  • 00:01:18
    Here.
• • Kyna Thomas
  • 00:01:19
    Councilor Snook?
• • Lloyd Snook
  • 00:01:20
    Here.
• • Kyna Thomas
  • 00:01:21
    Mayor Walker?
  • 00:01:22
    Present.
  • 00:01:23
    Vice Mayor Magill?
  • 00:01:25
    Here.
  • 00:01:26
    Councilor Hill?
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 00:01:27
    Here.
  • 00:01:28
    All right, thank you.
  • 00:01:31
    Is there a motion to approve the agenda?
• • SPEAKER_19
  • 00:01:36
    I move to approve the agenda.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 00:01:43
    Second.
  • 00:01:46
    All right, Ms.
  • 00:01:46
    Thomas.
• • Kyna Thomas
  • 00:01:53
    Councillor Payne.
  • 00:01:53
    I didn't hear you.
  • 00:02:01
    Yes.
  • 00:02:02
    Okay, Councillor Snook.
• • Lloyd Snook
  • 00:02:04
    Yes.
• • Kyna Thomas
  • 00:02:05
    Mayor Walker.
• • Lloyd Snook
  • 00:02:07
    Yes.
• • Kyna Thomas
  • 00:02:08
    Vice Mayor Magill.
  • 00:02:10
    Yes.
  • 00:02:11
    Councillor Hill.
  • 00:02:13
    Yes.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 00:02:15
    Okay, thank you.
  • 00:02:17
    Are there any announcements?
  • 00:02:22
    All right, if no announcements, then Dr. Bonds will give her update, COVID-19 update.
  • 00:02:29
    Dr. Bonds?
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:02:33
    Good evening, Mayor Walker, city council members.
  • 00:02:36
    Thank you so much for having me here today.
  • 00:02:38
    If I could share my screen with you.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:02:44
    You should be able to.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:02:46
    Hopefully you are all seeing that.
  • 00:02:50
    So tonight I'll update you on where we are with COVID-19 here in Charlottesville.
  • 00:03:06
    So currently right now there are just over 4,500 cases in the district with
  • 00:03:14
    1625 here in Charlottesville.
  • 00:03:17
    We've had 239 individuals hospitalized with COVID-19.
  • 00:03:23
    38 of those individuals have been citizens of Charlottesville.
  • 00:03:27
    We've had 77 fatalities across the district.
  • 00:03:31
    31 of those have been here in Charlottesville.
  • 00:03:34
    As you can see here on the daily case count for Charlottesville, we did have a pretty big uptick in September and October.
  • 00:03:42
    Here we are in the later part of October and you can see it's gotten much smaller.
  • 00:03:46
    This is also indicated by the cumulative case count where we began to see the leveling off here at the end.
  • 00:03:57
    As has been present before, we still continue to see an overrepresentation of cases, hospitalizations, and fatality amongst individuals from communities of color.
  • 00:04:09
    As you can see here for cases, 13% of our cases are amongst Black or African-American, 17% in Latino.
  • 00:04:19
    I have over here for your reference the percentage of various groups for the entire district.
  • 00:04:27
    When you get to hospitalizations, that disparity becomes even greater.
  • 00:04:32
    Thirty-five percent of our hospitalizations in our district have been among Blacks or African Americans.
  • 00:04:39
    Fourteen percent among Latino.
  • 00:04:42
    And again, down in fatalities, 23 percent of our fatalities have been among individuals who are Black or African American.
  • 00:04:53
    I did point out earlier the flattening of the curve and the reduction in the number of cases recently and I think that that's indicated here in this where we've pulled out just COVID cases between 18 to 24 year olds.
  • 00:05:08
    These are the individuals
  • 00:05:10
    that not exclusively but primarily are UVA students.
  • 00:05:14
    And we did see a very large uptick in UVA students when they returned back.
  • 00:05:21
    That since slowed down considerably.
  • 00:05:24
    As you can see here, we have a much smaller number of cases in the last parts of October.
  • 00:05:33
    Testing continues here in the district.
  • 00:05:36
    In fact, we're doing a very large number of tests, nearly 100,000 PCR tests, and now we're getting even more antigen tests and antibody tests that are occurring in the district.
  • 00:05:47
    Our positivity rate is very low.
  • 00:05:50
    This is attributed to the very large number of tests that UVA is doing on an almost daily basis.
  • 00:05:56
    And you can see here these large upswings that happen on a fairly regular basis.
  • 00:06:03
    UVA is doing a lot of pooled testing, some saliva testing.
  • 00:06:08
    They've done a number of point prevalence surveys of dorms on grounds.
  • 00:06:15
    and so that we get very large numbers of tests but a relatively small number of positive cases resulting in a very low positivity rate.
  • 00:06:28
    I've shown these before.
  • 00:06:29
    These are surveys of both emergency rooms up here in this corner and urgent care centers down here.
  • 00:06:37
    This is for the district and it's the percentage of visits that have a COVID-like illness.
  • 00:06:42
    It's a constellation of symptoms that could be consistent with COVID.
  • 00:06:49
    You can see here our emergency room visits are tracking below the state.
  • 00:06:53
    The state is the lighter blue line at the top.
  • 00:06:56
    Our percentage is down here.
  • 00:06:58
    And similarly for urgent care visits.
  • 00:07:02
    I would note for the state, we are beginning to see an uptick in urgent care visits for COVID-like illness.
  • 00:07:09
    And that is consistent with what we're seeing across the nation right now with an increasing
  • 00:07:15
    Number of individuals presenting with flu-like and COVID-like symptoms.
  • 00:07:22
    The pandemic metric dashboard is now public and available to all of you.
  • 00:07:28
    I've put the link down here at the bottom.
  • 00:07:31
    Here is the map by region.

2. ROLL CALL

• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:07:34
    Since the last time I was here, we do have more regions, particularly in the southern half of the state, that have a very high burden and have substantial community transmission.
  • 00:07:47
    The Northwest, which is what Charlottesville is part of, is still in moderate.
  • 00:07:54
    with a fluctuating transmission trend here at the bottom and moderate community transmission overall.
  • 00:08:07
    I'm just going to show you two of the locality metrics.
  • 00:08:12
    I am hopeful that this will soon become public as well, although currently it's not, and we do share it with the emergency planners on a regular basis.

3. AGENDA APPROVAL

• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:08:22
    Here are cases.
  • 00:08:23
    This is a daily case incident rate per 100,000.

4. ANNOUNCEMENTS

• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:08:27
    There's a threshold for moderate and a threshold for high.
  • 00:08:32
    We were trending quite high.
  • 00:08:34
    And if at some point this becomes live, you can actually pan over it and it'll give you the dates.
  • 00:08:40
    And these correspond to where we saw the large dates, the large increases.
  • 00:08:45
    on cases primarily amongst that 18 to 24 year old group.
  • 00:08:51
    It has fallen, we're seeing a smaller rise right now and again a decrease here.
  • 00:08:56
    And then the PCR percent positivity, again a really steep drop off here driven primarily by the large number of tests that are happening in our community.
  • 00:09:12
    These are the other two metrics.
  • 00:09:14
    I'll skip over that for today.
  • 00:09:15
    They're not really showing much at this point in time.
  • 00:09:20
    The school map of school indicators is now part of the pandemic metric.
  • 00:09:24
    It is publicly available and you can go.
  • 00:09:28
    There is a map which allows you to look at a variety of different indicators.
  • 00:09:32
    I've shown the one for 14 day case incidents.
  • 00:09:35
    Charlottesville is this little dot right there in the middle.
  • 00:09:40
    We are in the red because of the number of new cases per 100,000 people in the last 14 days.
  • 00:09:47
    So we haven't had 239 cases.
  • 00:09:51
    This is normalized so that we can compare all of the localities across the state to a common denominator of 100,000.
  • 00:09:58
    And that's a fairly standard common denominator that's used in epidemiology.
  • 00:10:04
    As you can see the other core indicator and the secondary indicators do show a more favorable trend.
  • 00:10:15
    Again, we have a very low
  • 00:10:19
    This is a little different number than the one that I just showed you because this is looking at it over a 14-day average.
  • 00:10:27
    We have here the percent change in new cases, so our new cases are dropping over time, which puts us in the green zone.
  • 00:10:35
    Hospital inpatient beds that are occupied, we're at about 80% occupation for the region right now.
  • 00:10:44
    And the number of hospital beds that are occupied by individuals who have COVID-19 diagnosis, and that's just over 3% for our region.
  • 00:10:56
    There are two other outbreak websites that I'm just going to make you aware of.
  • 00:11:03
    One has been up and available for quite some time.
  • 00:11:06
    This is our nursing home assisted living and multi-care facilities.
  • 00:11:11
    So I've given you the link down here.
  • 00:11:13
    It's not in an obvious place on the VDH website, unfortunately.
  • 00:11:18
    But I've pulled here for Charlottesville.
  • 00:11:20
    You can toggle between all outbreaks at long-term care facilities, those that are currently open, those that are closed.
  • 00:11:29
    And you can see Charlottesville's had two.
  • 00:11:31
    The Cedars that happened back in July that ended up with 142 cases and nine deaths.
  • 00:11:38
    It's closed or says pending closure, but it's closed.
  • 00:11:41
    There's not been any significant cases recently.
  • 00:11:45
    Rosewood is ongoing right now.
  • 00:11:47
    We have a total of 26 cases.
  • 00:11:50
    No deaths attributed to COVID-19 at this moment in time when it was last updated.
  • 00:11:56
    This is updated on a weekly basis.
  • 00:11:58
    You can go in and check on that.
  • 00:12:01
    As a result of legislation that happened in the emergency session, we are now also reporting K through 12 school outbreaks.
  • 00:12:10
    I've given you the website for this as well.
  • 00:12:14
    And again, it's not in a particularly obvious place.
  • 00:12:18
    So far here in Charlottesville, we have not had any K through 12 reported outbreaks.
  • 00:12:24
    This is not to say we haven't had any cases.
  • 00:12:27
    of COVID-19 in individuals in K through 12.
  • 00:12:31
    But we haven't had any, an outbreak is two linked cases and we haven't had any of that.
  • 00:12:36
    We've had some individual cases in school settings.
  • 00:12:40
    So again, you can toggle between whether an outbreak is in progress or closed.
  • 00:12:46
    And they'll give you the date we were notified and the number of cases and the number of deaths.
  • 00:12:51
    Excuse me.
  • 00:12:54
    So sorry.
  • 00:12:56
    Too much talking today.
  • 00:12:58
    I've shown this slide before.
  • 00:13:00
    I think it's really important to know that there are things that people can do to prevent COVID.
  • 00:13:05
    We encourage everyone to download COVIDwise.
  • 00:13:07
    It's the app that goes on your phone.
  • 00:13:09
    If you leave your Bluetooth and your smartphone on and you have the app, it will send out pings essentially to other phones that you spend the appropriate amount of time in.
  • 00:13:19
    And then if one of those individuals tests positive and downloads the code that we provide to cases,
  • 00:13:26
    It'll send out a little alert saying that you might have been exposed and encouraging you to get tested.
  • 00:13:32
    I've shown this video before.
  • 00:13:34
    I'm going to leave it up here again as well.
  • 00:13:36
    It's a really great video showing how effective cloth face coverings are.
  • 00:13:42
    The New York Times just came out with a similar graphic that shows how it actually works.
  • 00:13:48
    That was published on 1030.
  • 00:13:49
    There's a link here, and I can send these slides in.
  • 00:13:54
    But if you go to the New York Times and put mask work for 1030, it'll come up.
  • 00:13:59
    And of course, we always encourage people to use that physical distance to allow the disbursement of any aerosols.
  • 00:14:09
    Finally, we continue to do testing for COVID-19 every Monday and Tuesday.
  • 00:14:15
    UVA hosts testing Monday at the Church of Incarnation, Tuesday at Mount Zion First African Baptist Church.
  • 00:14:21
    I will let everyone know that tomorrow's is postponed until November 4th because of election.
  • 00:14:28
    And then every Friday, the 6th, 13th, and 20th, there's testing here at the Charlottesville Health Department on Rose Hill Drive.
  • 00:14:36
    That's hosted by Thomas Jefferson.
  • 00:14:45
    Test, as I said, from five to seven o'clock.
  • 00:14:47
    There are, if none of those work, for anybody that's listening, there are other testing events in Albemarle and our surrounding localities.
  • 00:14:56
    They're on our website at tjhd.org.
  • 00:14:59
    The full link is down here, or you can call the hotline number, and they'll provide you with an update and get you registered for an appropriate event.
  • 00:15:09
    And finally, I want to remind everybody that it's really critical that you get your flu shot this year.
  • 00:15:15
    We're having one final big flu shot bang up drive-thru event on November 7th at the Charlottesville High School.
  • 00:15:24
    It'll be between 2 and 5 p.m.
  • 00:15:26
    First come first serve, we have 500 doses of vaccine available and it's available to those who are three and older.
  • 00:15:33
    We do not have the high dose senior vaccine, so if you fit that criteria you should probably seek that one out from your primary care provider.
  • 00:15:42
    And of course we do offer flu shots at the health department by appointment and on a sliding scale as well.
  • 00:15:49
    And so I think that is it and I will stop now and answer any questions that you may all have.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 00:15:57
    Thank you, Dr. Bonds, for providing that update to the community.
  • 00:16:01
    Counselors, are there any questions, comments?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:16:10
    No, I appreciate the update and the communication.
  • 00:16:12
    I got my flu shot today.
• • Lloyd Snook
  • 00:16:19
    I just want to echo that as well.
  • 00:16:20
    I've always been impressed with Dr. Bond's reports and the statistics that they've been putting together.
  • 00:16:25
    And I consult them daily.
  • 00:16:29
    I have to note this morning, the TJ Health District one was late, but I was trying to look at it about 10 o'clock, so I didn't get a chance to look at it.
  • 00:16:39
    And today I'll have to go back and take a look.
  • 00:16:41
    But anyway, Dr. Bonds, thank you so much.
  • 00:16:42
    It's been very helpful.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 00:16:48
    Thank you.
  • 00:16:49
    and we will see you next month.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:16:52
    All right, thank you all and I appreciate all the work you all are doing and I guess I'll make one final plea out there.
  • 00:16:58
    It's really helpful if you all talk to your constituents and really encourage them all to follow all of the preventive medicine practices, particularly with Thanksgiving coming up.
  • 00:17:09
    It's really critical that people, good hand hygiene, keep your distance, wear your cloth face covering.
  • 00:17:16
    So thank you all.
• • SPEAKER_19
  • 00:17:19
    Thank you.
  • 00:17:22
    All right.
  • 00:17:23
    We'll be celebrating Thanksgiving in 2021.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 00:17:24
    Next, we have the consent agenda.
  • 00:17:32
    Ms.
  • 00:17:32
    Thomas, would you read the consent agenda, please?
• • Kyna Thomas
  • 00:17:37
    Consent agenda minutes, September 21st, closed and regular meetings, September 30th, work session, resolution, measurements and solution groups,
  • 00:17:48
    reporting deadline extension, one reading, appropriation, victim witness assistance program grant, $265,024, second reading, appropriation, Annie E. Casey Foundation Grant Awards, $10,000, second reading, appropriation, Virginia Juvenile Community Crime Control Act grant, $452,704, second reading, ordinance,
  • 00:18:19
    Authorizing a grant of public funding to subsidize construction of for rent affordable housing to be occupied by persons of low and moderate income as part of a redevelopment of public housing.
  • 00:18:31
    Second reading a South First Street phase one redevelopment the Crescent Halls redevelopment.
  • 00:18:39
    And there's a note that these ordinances have been revised to delete reference to reimbursement requests.
  • 00:18:47
    Ordinance, authorization of a forgivable loan to Piedmont Housing Alliance to support redevelopment of Friendship Court for the purpose of producing new housing for low and moderate income persons, second reading.
  • 00:19:01
    Appropriation, housing opportunities for people with AIDS and HIV, HOPWA, COVID supplement, $20,050, second reading.
  • 00:19:09
    Appropriation,
  • 00:19:14
    Virginia Department of Education Special Nutrition Program, Child and Adult Care Food Program, $30,000, first of two readings.
  • 00:19:23
    Appropriation, Virginia Outdoors Foundation Grant, Ragged Mountain Land Acquisition, $65,000, first of two readings.
  • 00:19:33
    Appropriation, Runaway Emergency Shelter Program Grant, $209,444, first of two readings.
  • 00:19:43
    Appropriation, local emergency management performance grant, $7,500, first of two readings.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 00:19:55
    Okay, thank you.
  • 00:19:59
    Mr. Wheeler, would you check to see if there's anyone who would like to make public comments on an item on the consent agenda?
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:20:10
    For those in the audience, you can click the raise hand icon to get in line to make a comment about one of these 12 items.
  • 00:20:17
    We will go to community matters in just a few minutes.
  • 00:20:20
    Right now we have one person with their hand raised.
  • 00:20:23
    That's Rex Linville.
  • 00:20:25
    Rex, you've got three minutes and you're on with city council.
• • SPEAKER_02
  • 00:20:29
    Thank you very much Mr. Wheeler.
  • 00:20:30
    My name is Rex Lindo with the Piedmont Environmental Council and I just want to take a second to highlight item number 10 on the consent agenda.
  • 00:20:39
    This is the appropriation of $65,000 from the Virginia Outdoors Foundation and all I really want to do is thank the city for your leadership on this land conservation acquisition and thank your staff for the diligence and the great work they've done to help put together this project.
  • 00:20:56
    This is a
  • 00:20:57
    an acquisition of five acres of land out at the end of Ragon Mountain or at the end of Reservoir Road.
  • 00:21:03
    And it's in addition to a project that the city closed last year to create the community forest out there at Ragon Mountain.
  • 00:21:11
    The neat thing about this project is that it's really a community wide effort.
  • 00:21:17
    You've got that $65,000 coming in from the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, some leftover money that your staff is taking advantage of from
  • 00:21:26
    a federal grant that you received last year.
  • 00:21:28
    Piedmont Environmental Council raised a little bit of money to help pay for the appraisal to make this deal happen.
  • 00:21:35
    The Rivanna Trails Foundation was instrumental in helping get the property under contract so the city could acquire it.
  • 00:21:43
    Bama Works put a little bit of money into helping us raise money for the appraisal as well as a private individual.
  • 00:21:50
    and then the Charlottesville area mountain bike club and the Charlottesville track club have both are putting some money into the city to help with or they've at least pledged some money to help with trail construction out at the community forest property out there.
  • 00:22:06
    So this has got a lot and I'm probably forgetting somebody somewhere along the way.
  • 00:22:09
    So I just wanted to highlight the great work your staff has done to pull this project together and coordinate all of these different organizations to help get this wonderful land conservation project done.
  • 00:22:18
    Thank you all very much.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 00:22:21
    Thank you.
  • 00:22:24
    Mr. Will, any other speakers?
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:22:26
    There are no other hands raised.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 00:22:30
    All right.
  • 00:22:30
    Thank you.
  • 00:22:31
    Counselors, any comments?
  • 00:22:36
    No?
  • 00:22:36
    All right.
  • 00:22:37
    Is there a motion?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:22:39
    I move we adopt the consent agenda as presented.
• • SPEAKER_19
  • 00:22:45
    Second.
  • 00:22:47
    Ms.
  • 00:22:47
    Thomas?
• • Kyna Thomas
  • 00:22:49
    Councilor Payne?
  • 00:22:55
    I think you're having some trouble with your audio.
  • 00:22:58
    Okay, got it.
  • 00:23:00
    Counselor Snook?
• • Lloyd Snook
  • 00:23:02
    Yes.
• • Kyna Thomas
  • 00:23:02
    Mayor Walker?
  • 00:23:05
    Yes.
  • 00:23:06
    Vice Mayor Magill?
  • 00:23:08
    Yes.
  • 00:23:09
    Counselor Hill?
  • 00:23:11
    Yes.
  • 00:23:12
    And Mr. Payne was a yes.
• • SPEAKER_28
  • 00:23:15
    Can you hear me now?
• • Kyna Thomas
  • 00:23:16
    Yes.
• • SPEAKER_28
  • 00:23:16
    Okay, thank you.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 00:23:19
    Thank you.
  • 00:23:20
    All right, thank you.
  • 00:23:22
    All right, next we have the city manager's response to the community matters.
  • 00:23:27
    Our interim city manager, Mr. Blair, will give an update.

5. CONSENT AGENDA*

• • SPEAKER_03
  • 00:23:33
    Thank you, Mayor Walker and Council.
  • 00:23:35
    I wanted to respond to one inquiry from the last meeting.
  • 00:23:41
    We had a question about the status of the Charlottesville City Schools reconfiguration contract.
  • 00:23:47
    I just want to give an update that staff's in the process of negotiating this contract with a design firm for the full scope of the reconfiguration planning and design RFP and it's the hope to conclude that by the end of the year and hopefully to start work on the project in January of next year 2021.
  • 00:24:08
    I just wanted to also provide two quick updates on upcoming meetings to the public.
  • 00:24:17
    Next Tuesday, November 10th, Council has a joint work session with the Planning Commission that will focus on a rezoning as well as a proposed affordable housing strategy for the comp plan update.
  • 00:24:31
    And that'll be at 6 p.m.
  • 00:24:34
    And then next Thursday, January 12th, Council has a CIP work session at 6 p.m.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 00:24:47
    All right, thank you, Mr. Boyer.
  • 00:24:50
    Next, we are at the community matters.
  • 00:24:53
    I'll turn it over to Mr. Will.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:24:56
    Thank you, Mayor Walker.
  • 00:24:57
    We had one person sign up in advance, and that's Marsha Guyer.
  • 00:25:03
    And if you'd like to get in line to speak to council, they will take up to 16 people at this time.
  • 00:25:08
    You can click the Raise Hand icon in the Zoom webinar to get in line.
  • 00:25:14
    And we'll call on people in the order
  • 00:25:16
    in which they raise their hands.
  • 00:25:17
    Each person will get three minutes.
  • 00:25:20
    And first up is Marsha Guyer.
  • 00:25:21
    Marsha, you're on with city council.
  • 00:25:24
    You've got three minutes.
  • 00:25:26
    Can you hear us?
• • SPEAKER_13
  • 00:25:29
    I can hear you.
  • 00:25:30
    Can you hear me?
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:25:31
    We can.
  • 00:25:32
    Go ahead.
• • SPEAKER_13
  • 00:25:33
    Great.
  • 00:25:34
    Good morning.
  • 00:25:35
    Good evening, Madam Mayor, city councilors, Mr. Blair.
  • 00:25:40
    I'm Marsha Guyer.
  • 00:25:41
    I live on Airfield Lane in Charlottesville.
  • 00:25:45
    I'm speaking for myself tonight, but as the lead organizer of the CVO 100
  • 00:25:51
    Network of 15 nonprofits with a climate mission, I want to recommend the scope and strengths of our local climate movement.
  • 00:26:02
    Since about 95% of fossil fuel consumption comes from the residential and business sectors, and only about 5% from the municipal sector, we can't realistically expect climate action to be done for us by city staff.
  • 00:26:18
    The city must partner
  • 00:26:21
    actively with residents and businesses, outreach, education, financing of inducements to change, and most of all, the active engagement of our residents and businesses are needed.
  • 00:26:35
    But you don't need to reinvent the wheel.
  • 00:26:39
    A number of local nonprofits are already doing climate outreach.
  • 00:26:44
    education and engagement with various audiences.
  • 00:26:49
    You can utilize their knowledge and networks.
  • 00:26:53
    To create the most effective climate action program, the city needs a climate board or commission.
  • 00:27:02
    Through it, climate action leaders would contribute not only to the planning process, but best as importantly, to the operation of the city's climate action programs.
  • 00:27:15
    Because the CEBO 100 coalition members communicate our plans and results among ourselves, the coalition members are most able to nominate very knowledgeable representatives to a climate board or commission for council's final selection.
  • 00:27:39
    is our stakeholder representatives who will contribute the most added value to the Climate Action Program.
  • 00:27:48
    Councilors and Mr. Blair, please hear these remarks as suggesting the core of a feasible plan to beef up Charlottesville's climate action with zero budgetary costs that you could implement
  • 00:28:07
    Right now, hope of a federal turnaround is soon, and there is hope of a federal turnaround soon, and definitely strong new state actions and policies.
  • 00:28:23
    So now is the time that a robust local climate action program can help us all to stay safe.
  • 00:28:33
    Thank you for your attention.
  • 00:28:37
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:28:37
    Mayor Walker, we have three hands raised at the moment.
  • 00:28:44
    First, we'll go to Tanisha Hudson, followed by Neil Halverson-Taylor, followed by Nancy Carpenter.
  • 00:28:54
    Tanisha, you're on the City Council.
  • 00:28:55
    You've got three minutes.
• • SPEAKER_14
  • 00:28:59
    Good evening, Tanisha Hudson.
  • 00:29:01
    I'm speaking on behalf of Ms.
  • 00:29:02
    Bensa Rose tonight.
  • 00:29:05
    There's a livechange.org petition out there with, as we speak right now, 437 signatures.
  • 00:29:12
    I'm going to read the top of the petition.
  • 00:29:18
    It says, my name is Benton Rose.
  • 00:29:19
    I lost my son, Rameen Rose, August 30th, 2020 on Fifth Street, extended to a motorcycle accident.
  • 00:29:26
    I'm asking folks to please sign this petition so that we can get Fifth Street changed so no one else has to experience the heart wrenching loss of a child or family member on Fifth Street.

6. CITY MANAGER RESPONSE TO COMMUNITY MATTERS (FROM PREVIOUS MEETINGS)

• • SPEAKER_14
  • 00:29:37
    Now, 437 signatures.
  • 00:29:39
    I know she's not very satisfied with the way the Charlottesville Police Department is handling the investigation.
  • 00:29:45
    She's called several times to speak to not the officers handling the investigation, but to speak specifically to Chief Bratton.
  • 00:29:56
    in which I then had to send an email in order for her to get a response from anybody.
  • 00:30:03
    She called and spoke to Chief Brackney's assistant numerous times, leaving her information for Brackney to call her back and she did not.
  • 00:30:14
    Then instead of your chief of police, mayor, responding to Benton, right, because she's not happy with the way I emailed her and talked to her.
  • 00:30:25
    She not happy with the way I email, she chooses to argue with me.
  • 00:30:30
    Chooses to have a full-fledged argument with me instead of helping a grieving mother.
  • 00:30:35
    Stuff is just, I cannot stress enough how personal stuff is down there.
  • 00:30:40
    Cause it ain't about the work for some of y'all.
  • 00:30:43
    And you know that, that's why you twitching.
  • 00:30:46
    It's not about the work.
  • 00:30:47
    And it shouldn't take for somebody to call in there with a little bit of bass in their voice to get stuff done.
  • 00:30:54
    But that's what it takes.
  • 00:30:56
    So that's the first thing I want to comment on.

7. COMMUNITY MATTERS

• • SPEAKER_14
  • 00:30:59
    But the next thing I want to comment on is when are y'all going to open these meetings to the public?
  • 00:31:04
    Because every other place is opening the meetings to the public.
  • 00:31:08
    So to the people who are afraid of being out and about, yes, it's a small space.
  • 00:31:13
    But you can still fit people in the space.
  • 00:31:16
    You could do a sign-up sheet.
  • 00:31:17
    You could have people rotate.
  • 00:31:20
    You come to this meeting one Monday, you come to the next one, it's things that y'all can do.
  • 00:31:25
    Because y'all getting bad with a lot of stuff because you don't have to physically look at people.
  • 00:31:30
    Hiding behind the internet because you don't got to physically look at people.
  • 00:31:36
    There's so many people that want to be on these meetings that are not.
  • 00:31:40
    Normal people who participate that y'all know have not been on one Zoom meeting because they want to physically show up.
  • 00:31:48
    So we just saw the numbers, the COVID number.
  • 00:31:51
    It's really not that bad in Charlottesville.
  • 00:31:54
    You have a whole cleaning staff that you pay to be there.
  • 00:31:58
    Your utility workers are there.
  • 00:32:01
    Everybody else is there.
  • 00:32:03
    You can open these meetings back up.
  • 00:32:05
    There's no excuse at this point.
  • 00:32:08
    Y'all can spread out.
  • 00:32:10
    Whoever don't want to be there can sit in a back office.
  • 00:32:13
    But you need to open these meetings up.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 00:32:21
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:32:21
    Mayor Walker, next up is Neil Halverson-Taylor.
  • 00:32:29
    Neil, you're on the City Council.
  • 00:32:30
    You've got three minutes.
• • SPEAKER_24
  • 00:32:37
    Good evening.
  • 00:32:38
    Can you hear me?
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:32:39
    We can.
  • 00:32:39
    Go ahead.
• • SPEAKER_24
  • 00:32:40
    Good evening, Mayor Walker, city councilors and city personnel.
  • 00:32:44
    My name is Neil Alberston-Taylor.
  • 00:32:45
    I live at 214 Cameron Lane.
  • 00:32:48
    My two daughters graduated from CHS and my son is a junior there.
  • 00:32:53
    I'm grateful for the work you do on behalf of the city and can only imagine the time and effort you expend on a daily basis to do this work.
  • 00:33:02
    I'm the parish priest of Grace Church, a faith community whose mission it is to be deeply rooted, boldly inclusive, and fully committed to the well-being of the earth and all living things.
  • 00:33:15
    We are discovering how to live more consciously and conscientiously in the James River watershed, the biodiverse ecosystem in which we all live.
  • 00:33:25
    Even as our nation struggles under pandemic precautions, restrictions, and loss,
  • 00:33:31
    The most catastrophic reality we face is climate change.
  • 00:33:35
    Across the globe, climate change is the cause of more extreme weather systems that have already put millions of lives in danger.
  • 00:33:42
    Hurricanes, fires, droughts, and the social unrest they generate have created climate refugees.
  • 00:33:50
    Climate change will disrupt many more lives if we don't act now.
  • 00:33:55
    The urgency of climate change demands bold commitments, and you have made them.
  • 00:34:01
    A little over three years ago, the council committed the city to do a biannual carbon emissions inventory to set a climate goal and to develop a climate action plan by 2020.
  • 00:34:13
    Last summer, you committed the city to an ambitious and critical goal to reduce our carbon footprint by 45% by 2030.
  • 00:34:22
    And just last month, you recommitted the city to develop its climate action plan.
  • 00:34:29
    I urge you now to stay on track.
  • 00:34:31
    Please complete the Climate Action Plan by March 31, 2021, the end of the first quarter next year.
  • 00:34:39
    In doing so, organize the stakeholder engagement opportunities as soon as possible.
  • 00:34:44
    In addition, set up the carbon emissions inventory so that it is taken every two years.
  • 00:34:51
    and please adopt climate as a priority in your strategic plan as a city council and the city's comprehensive plan.
  • 00:35:00
    The only effective way to face the climate change crisis is to do so together, a lesson we have learned the hard way during this pandemic.
  • 00:35:08
    Addressing climate change needs everyone at the table, especially historically disadvantaged communities who study after study has shown will be the most directly impacted by the detrimental effects of climate change.
  • 00:35:21
    C3's recent Uncovering Energy Inequity report found that one in four Charlottesville households
  • 00:35:28
    currently experience unsustainable levels of energy burden.
  • 00:35:31
    The rising temperatures of the climate change will only exacerbate these inequities.
  • 00:35:40
    We must act now to develop a climate action plan that reduces our greenhouse gas emissions and protects our community.
  • 00:35:47
    Our care for the Earth and all living things compels us to end our dependency on fossil fuels.
  • 00:35:52
    and invest in an energy infrastructure that is renewable and driven by the best science and technology.
  • 00:35:58
    And we are likewise compelled to build a social infrastructure that is equitable and just, one that contributes to the common good.
  • 00:36:06
    It is our collective and effective response to climate change.
  • 00:36:10
    In our collective and effective response to climate change, we will accomplish both.
  • 00:36:15
    Thank you very much.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:36:19
    Mayor Walker, we have three hands raised at the moment.
  • 00:36:21
    We'll go first to Nancy Carpenter, followed by Gloria Beard, then Don Gathers.
  • 00:36:28
    Nancy, you're on the city council.
  • 00:36:30
    You've got three minutes.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:36:32
    Good evening and thank you all for allowing me the opportunity to speak this evening.
  • 00:36:36
    I was very interested in Dr. Bonds' statistics this evening showing the breakout between race and gender and age and some other things like that because to me, where she's saying we're kind of flattening a particular curve, I think that is also
  • 00:36:54
    have been impacted by the moratoriums on rent and evictions that both nationally and by the state and as a public health emergency have kept people in their homes.
  • 00:37:07
    And I think that's how we keep people safe is to keep them in their homes.
  • 00:37:12
    The safest thing they can do is create their own little pod of people by having their own little door to walk through and their own bathrooms to wash their hands.
  • 00:37:21
    and maintain their stock of other supplies to keep this virus at bay as best as possible.
  • 00:37:28
    So we are facing a cliff at the end of December 31st when the public health moratorium expires.
  • 00:37:36
    And right now there doesn't seem to be, well, there's inertia at the federal level about protecting people and giving them the best optimum chance to maintain their health.
  • 00:37:48
    and to not be severely impacted because looking at who rents primarily in this city that pretty much mirrors the people who are at risk for this terrible virus and disease that we are having a second wave.
  • 00:38:05
    both internationally and in various states in this country.
  • 00:38:09
    So I hope that you all will work very diligently individually and as a group to lobby Delegate Hudson and Senator Dietz because
  • 00:38:19
    January's coming up, not too many weeks away.
  • 00:38:22
    We'll have another assembly session starting.
  • 00:38:25
    And we need to have a more robust moratorium statewide to have the governor talk to the chief judge about enacting another one.
  • 00:38:38
    We have economic concerns about some of our service industries where the businesses will go flat up.
  • 00:38:46
    and those folks will be without work and without a pandemic employment money from the federal government and not very much from the state to keep themselves housed.
  • 00:38:56
    The CARES money is running out.
  • 00:38:58
    It has a timeline of when that money should be spent and that's fast approaching and there's not much coming down the pike for relief
  • 00:39:09
    of people.
  • 00:39:11
    COVID knows no political spectrum.
  • 00:39:14
    Being a renter knows no political spectrum.
  • 00:39:17
    I just want people to stay housed as long as they possibly can and continue to stay housed, but especially now through this pandemic.
  • 00:39:26
    Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this evening.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 00:39:30
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:39:35
    Next up is Gloria Beard.
  • 00:39:38
    Gloria, you're on the city council.
  • 00:39:40
    Can you hear us?
  • 00:39:50
    Gloria, can you unmute?
  • 00:39:51
    Right now it appears you're muted.
  • 00:40:00
    There you go.
  • 00:40:06
    Can you say a few words?
  • 00:40:14
    Ms.
  • 00:40:14
    Beard?
  • 00:40:17
    How about now?
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 00:40:20
    Can y'all hear me?
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:40:22
    We can.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 00:40:23
    Oh, Lord.
  • 00:40:24
    I ain't never said.
  • 00:40:27
    I don't know.
  • 00:40:29
    It's a tablet I'm on.
  • 00:40:30
    Well, I'm sorry.
  • 00:40:32
    We got you.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:40:34
    Welcome.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 00:40:36
    Thank you.
  • 00:40:37
    I just had a few questions I wanted to ask.
  • 00:40:40
    OK, y'all know this election is coming up tomorrow, and y'all been keeping up with it like I have.
  • 00:40:46
    Trump is talking.
  • 00:40:46
    It's really simple.
  • 00:40:48
    So I want to know, is anything set up, you know, just in case people start acting crazy here in Charlottesville to protect the citizens?
  • 00:40:57
    And the second question, eventually, are the police going to do community policing
  • 00:41:05
    So we can get to know who our policemen are.
  • 00:41:07
    I have no clue.
  • 00:41:08
    I don't see them in a uniform.
  • 00:41:10
    And just because they're in a uniform, don't mean I need it, because it could be somebody else.
  • 00:41:14
    But I don't know any policemen in this town, except two rats.
  • 00:41:20
    And the third question, what is going to happen to the tent in Page Street?
  • 00:41:26
    I went to a meeting about four months ago up at the dairy.
  • 00:41:30
    Have anybody been up there?
  • 00:41:32
    They have started working again.
  • 00:41:34
    And I heard that VDOT is making plans to do a whole lot of extension for, you know, streets.
  • 00:41:42
    And I'd like to hear things about that from, you know,
  • 00:41:46
    VDOT or City Council, what are they going to do to our streets?
  • 00:41:50
    Because I live on 10th and Page.
  • 00:41:52
    So those are my three questions.
  • 00:41:55
    Thank you.
  • 00:41:55
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:42:02
    On the last one, I think we're just referring to some of the preliminary engagement for the Smart Scale, which is still several years out, but there certainly was an interest in being really proactive about starting that engagement sooner versus later.
  • 00:42:14
    So I think that's what that's pertaining to.
  • 00:42:17
    in terms of how we're going to address that intersection longer term.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 00:42:25
    And Mayor Walker, just briefly to answer Ms.
  • 00:42:29
    Beard's first question, the city is monitoring the election situation and our critical incident management team has been working on that and we will certainly we hope
  • 00:42:44
    that there isn't any incidents that require any of the critical incident management team.
  • 00:42:50
    But to answer Ms.
  • 00:42:51
    Beard's first question, we have been monitoring the situation.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:43:00
    And Don Gathers was next.
  • 00:43:02
    I don't see his hand up at the moment.
  • 00:43:03
    We'll come back to him if he raises his hand again.
  • 00:43:07
    Next up is Rosea Parker.
  • 00:43:10
    Rosea, you're on the city council.
  • 00:43:11
    Can you hear us?
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 00:43:14
    Good afternoon.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:43:14
    Hello go ahead.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 00:43:17
    Yes, I wanted to bring up about a thing that was in the daily progress about CRHAs housing and that is 30 empty houses, but I'm trying to figure out how is things not being told to city council if the mayor is sitting on the housing board.
  • 00:43:41
    And these houses have been empty for years.
  • 00:43:45
    and I'm just trying to figure out how there's a lot of things that's going on in housing that don't nobody seem to know.
  • 00:43:53
    Have anybody checked about these lights that are still missing in West Haven that have been missing for three years that we've been asking for through redevelopment and I've brought it to the city's attention in several city council meetings.
  • 00:44:10
    Our
  • 00:44:13
    Playground, not our playground, but our basketball court.
  • 00:44:17
    The grass around here looks terrible.
  • 00:44:19
    It's up above our knees.
  • 00:44:22
    I mean, if we have a mayor that's sitting on the housing board, have y'all really looked at West Haven?
  • 00:44:28
    Have y'all really looked at these properties?
  • 00:44:31
    I mean, I understand we need the money to get the housing up and running for, built for people to live in, but we need to look at these houses, how we're living now that aren't suitable for us to live in.
  • 00:44:44
    Then we also would like to, it seems like when we talk about the homeless, it's falling on city council's deaf ear.
  • 00:44:52
    They're the ones that are still out here struggling too with this COVID situation, unhoused, have nowhere to live.
  • 00:44:59
    Also too, I brought it to city council's attention about some of these homeless men that have been assaulted by the police officers.
  • 00:45:08
    that still have not been said anything about for the last two years that I've brought it up.
  • 00:45:14
    Also I want to bring up too about the CRB.
  • 00:45:17
    Why is there still an opening sitting on the CRB where there's supposed to be seven people sitting on the board at all times, not at a
  • 00:45:28
    when y'all feel that it's convenient for one person to be missing.
  • 00:45:32
    It's supposed to be at all, all people supposed to be sitting on that board to be able to carry out the correct business.
  • 00:45:39
    And when is that next opening going to be coming available for the next interview?
  • 00:45:46
    And I believe that's all I have to say this evening.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 00:45:51
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:45:56
    Mayor Walker, next up is Don Gathers.
  • 00:45:59
    Don, you're on the city council.
  • 00:46:00
    You've got three minutes.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 00:46:03
    Good evening, everyone.
  • 00:46:04
    God bless you.
  • 00:46:05
    Thank you for the opportunity.
  • 00:46:06
    I just like Ms.
  • 00:46:08
    Beard had a question about plans that may be in place for not only for the election tomorrow, but in the days after in case we are visited by some of the
  • 00:46:24
    some of the crazies, some of the militia, some of the Trumpsters with some evil intent.
  • 00:46:32
    Just want to make sure that our city is protected and taken care of.
  • 00:46:38
    And I think that the citizens deserve to know that there is an emergency plan in place.
  • 00:46:43
    And if so, what that may be.
  • 00:46:46
    Also, as we're talking about elections moving forward,
  • 00:46:50
    Can we please, as much as we want people to participate in the democratic process, can we please make it easier on them to do so?
  • 00:47:00
    Folks standing in line for an hour, we have to consider our elderly if we can install some seats or benches, even if it's just temporary, if we want people to vote early, and also make use of the availability of the facilities so that folks after they stand in line for an hour at a time or
  • 00:47:19
    during that time can at least have use of a public restroom.
  • 00:47:25
    I myself requested it and was told that it was not available in the annex building.
  • 00:47:34
    Went over to City Hall.
  • 00:47:35
    Of course, City Hall was closed.
  • 00:47:37
    They on the day that I was there said that they would normally direct people over to the transit station.
  • 00:47:43
    However, on Wednesday, the transit station also is closed and people shouldn't have to, if they come in to vote, they shouldn't have to wander down the mall to try to find a restaurant willing to let them in to use a public restaurant.
  • 00:47:56
    That's that, we just need to think, be more forward thinking than that.
  • 00:48:02
    I mean, even if we use the, under the canvas right next door,
  • 00:48:13
    in cases of weather or in cases of extreme heat, I'm sure we can set up something there so that people can vote.
  • 00:48:19
    And if necessary, put some porta johns out somewhere.
  • 00:48:24
    But we've got to make the process easier as opposed to throwing up more roadblocks for people, either intentionally or unintentionally.
  • 00:48:32
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 00:48:35
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:48:40
    Mayor Walker, right now there are no other hands raised.
  • 00:48:42
    We'll see if somebody wants to raise their hand.
  • 00:48:46
    Just click the raise hand icon in the Zoom webinar.
  • 00:48:49
    We've had seven speakers thus far.
  • 00:48:51
    We have a couple more hands going up.
  • 00:48:56
    Next up is Matthew Gilliken, who will be followed by John Hall.
  • 00:49:01
    Matthew, you're on with City Council.
• • SPEAKER_27
  • 00:49:04
    Good evening, councilors.
  • 00:49:05
    Thank you for the chance to speak with you tonight.
  • 00:49:08
    I wanted to speak briefly about 5th Street extended.
  • 00:49:12
    As was mentioned before, there's a petition going around right now to try to address the safety issues on 5th Street.
  • 00:49:18
    And it's my understanding that there's gonna be a presentation at an upcoming council meeting from the city's traffic engineer about 5th Street and what can be done.
  • 00:49:30
    My hope is that we can be thinking about projects that can make that street safer in the short term, very quickly in the medium term, the next three to five years, and then long term to ultimately make it a safe street for walkers, bikers, and pedestrians.
  • 00:49:46
    I live right adjacent to 5th Street, and it's really kind of an intense, scary street to be along, particularly as a pedestrian, particularly as a pedestrian with young children.
  • 00:49:57
    And I definitely would invite each of you to take the opportunity to walk along Fifth Street, particularly in the morning or during evening rush hour and get a sense of what it's like for people that live, the many people that live along Fifth Street.
  • 00:50:14
    and one thing that I think it might be helpful for I know it's been helpful for me to have some of these kind of conversations is to ask the city's traffic engineer as he's going through some possible solutions to the problem to also discuss things that are not solutions because in my mind
  • 00:50:33
    I would think that maybe putting up a stoplight or something like that along 5th Street would help with the traffic flow.
  • 00:50:38
    But I've heard kind of through the grapevine that maybe that's not actually the best solution.
  • 00:50:43
    So as we're thinking about what does work might be helpful for people to also hear what won't work there as a solution.
  • 00:50:50
    And I think it would also be a good idea for council to think about what kind of money we're willing to spend to make projects happen sooner than later along Fifth Street.
  • 00:50:59
    The VDOT smart scale process, if we were to go through that, means we're looking at a decade before we can make some of these changes versus if we look to fund things ourselves, we can make it happen a lot faster.
  • 00:51:12
    Thank you for your time.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 00:51:15
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:51:20
    Next up is John Hall.
  • 00:51:23
    John, you're on the city council.
  • 00:51:24
    Can you hear us?
• • SPEAKER_12
  • 00:51:27
    Yes, I'm here.
  • 00:51:29
    Go ahead.
  • 00:51:31
    A couple of things I'd like to say about as an aside to Dr. Bond, I'd like to say
  • 00:51:40
    Why haven't we seen a vaccine yet for COVID-19?
  • 00:51:44
    It was promised.
  • 00:51:45
    It should be here by now.
  • 00:51:47
    I'd like to know why we haven't seen a vaccine for COVID-19.
  • 00:51:51
    I'd also like to say as an aside that way back when on Charlottesville 360, I was talking to Fire Chief Andrew Baxter on
  • 00:52:08
    Charlottesville 360, and I said, we ought to be wearing masks, you know, especially for first responders so that the public would get the idea of, it's a good idea to wear a mask.
  • 00:52:21
    And he liked that idea.
  • 00:52:24
    I didn't get a chance to say, I did get, you gave me three chances to speak, and I really appreciate that, Brian.
  • 00:52:32
    I'd also like to say now
  • 00:52:35
    which I wanted to say then is what we ought to do is take Lysol concentrated toilet bowl cleaner, mix it with a can of beer, the size that you get at the supermarket, mix them together.
  • 00:52:50
    That would be my recipe to spray on doorknobs.
  • 00:52:55
    You wouldn't want to spray it on people, but you spray it on doorknobs.
  • 00:53:00
    It would kill 100% of all coronaviruses.
  • 00:53:05
    for about five hours.
  • 00:53:07
    Then you come back and spray the doorknob again all throughout the town, all throughout the city.
  • 00:53:13
    And that way, you'd really cut down on transmission of COVID-19 and hospitalization that way and have an impact on the virus.
  • 00:53:23
    Now, I've improved that idea to
  • 00:53:27
    substitute in my formula, in my recipe, Mrine Antiseptic.
  • 00:53:33
    It also kills 100% of the COVID or coronavirus germ or any other germ, any other virus, any other bacterium.
  • 00:53:45
    100% of the time, mix it with a can of beer in the right proportions.
  • 00:53:52
    You have a new recipe that you can spray on people.
  • 00:53:55
    You can get it in their mouth.
  • 00:53:57
    They can swallow it.
  • 00:53:58
    Might be effective being a good elixir to control what really COVID-19 attacks the gastrointestinal tract.
  • 00:54:09
    does damage to the heart, whatnot.
  • 00:54:12
    You take care of that virus, even if it goes into the people.
  • 00:54:16
    OK, that's the aside I wanted to mention on there.
  • 00:54:19
    The main thing I wanted to speak to you about in my three minutes, composting, first thing.
  • 00:54:26
    I talked to Marty Silman, professional engineer, head of public works last week.
  • 00:54:32
    He really liked this idea.
  • 00:54:35
    What we want to do is,
  • 00:54:38
    As City Council, if you like this idea, appropriate $150,000 for Marty Sillman, not for me, Marty Sillman, to get these 96-gallon containers, these green containers that you see throughout the city, and a lot of people's, you know, for recycling.
  • 00:55:01
    but don't use them for recycling, use them for composting.
  • 00:55:05
    Have the composting leaves.
  • 00:55:08
    See, we're in an emergency situation now because all the leaves are falling and people from yesteryear are thinking, I'd like to have.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:55:19
    Thank you, Mr. Hall.
  • 00:55:20
    We've ran out of time.
  • 00:55:22
    If there are other people who'd like to speak to council, you can click the raise hand icon and join us on the webinar.
  • 00:55:33
    going once, going twice.
  • 00:55:41
    Mayor Walker, there are no other hands raised.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 00:55:44
    All right, thank you.
  • 00:55:48
    Next up, we have the ordinance amendment to text
  • 00:55:53
    Chapter 34 Zoning Ordinance of the City of Charlottesville 1990 as amended to provide updates to family gay home uses.
  • 00:56:01
    First of two readings.
  • 00:56:04
    Ms.
  • 00:56:04
    Creasy will speak up.
• • SPEAKER_01
  • 00:56:07
    Thank you, Mayor.
  • 00:56:08
    Thank you,
  • 00:56:10
    Good to see everyone.
  • 00:56:12
    I'll just go over the report briefly and I'll be available for any questions.
  • 00:56:19
    We had a commissioner recommend that we initiate changes to the family day home ordinance to try and make this a little more flexible for those in our community who are looking to start family day homes.
  • 00:56:36
    We also needed to comply with changes that had occurred with the state code, and so we took this opportunity to update the code for that as well.
  • 00:56:49
    So once this was initiated, we took two different routes.
  • 00:56:52
    One route were a number of things that would have to go through state legislation.
  • 00:56:57
    for any sort of change.
  • 00:56:59
    And so we worked with Ms.
  • 00:57:00
    Robertson to put together information that went to the city's legislative subcommittee, and that was given on to our state representatives.
  • 00:57:09
    And we'll hear from that at some other point in time.
  • 00:57:12
    But the items that we could address ourselves
  • 00:57:18
    We put together code changes to address and the main key here making it as flexible yet as safe as possible within our current environment and also to comply with the state code.
  • 00:57:34
    So what we brought before you all is amendments to the use matrices to allow family day home one to four children as a buy right use in all areas that allow for residential use.
  • 00:57:51
    And the change from one to four versus one to five is a change that the state made.
  • 00:57:57
    and then a family day home from five children to 12 children by provisional use permit in all districts which allow for a residential use.
  • 00:58:08
    And this is a change because as of now family day homes with that number of children would need to go forward for a special use permit so they would have to pay for that special use permit process and they would have to go through
  • 00:58:25
    The public hearing process, in addition to the state requirements that they have to go through because any family day home five to 12 children requires state licensure.
  • 00:58:39
    Now the provisional use permit does give some flexibility in that if the person who wants to provide this service has their state license or obtains their state license and is able to comply with a few zoning items, they're basically signing a piece of paper that, yes, I'm going to comply with this, that they'll be able to get their provisional use permit.
  • 00:59:04
    There are community outreach opportunities within this as well because the state requires that there be a 30-day time period where the neighbors are informed of the request that's been made to have a family day home and they have the opportunity to provide comment.
  • 00:59:26
    and if those comments rise to a certain level, then we would take it through the additional public process of coming to council.
  • 00:59:35
    So there are still community opportunities for comment on family day homes, but it does allow the individual to not have to go through quite as much on the local level when they've already had to go through quite a bit of work on the state level.
  • 00:59:54
    So we worked through the ordinance.
  • 00:59:57
    We met with the Planning Commission in September for a work session where we talked about the proposal that we had.
  • 01:00:06
    The main change that we spent a lot of time discussing were hours of operation.
  • 01:00:12
    And so our zoning staff was able to come up with a range zone for that time frame that would allow for the greatest flexibility, yet have some structure.
  • 01:00:26
    and then we moved to the public hearing in October where we had a joint hearing and the ordinance moved forward for you all and so we're here this evening with a recommendation for approval from staff as well as the Planning Commission to move forward with these changes to the family day home ordinance and I'm here for whatever questions you may have.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 01:00:56
    Okay, thank you.
  • 01:00:57
    I do have a couple questions.
  • 01:00:59
    Counselors, do you all have any questions, comments?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:01:01
    A few of us are actively participating when it came to Planning Commission.
  • 01:01:08
    I feel like at that time my questions actually had been addressed, so I'm good.
  • 01:01:12
    Same.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 01:01:12
    All right, thanks.
  • 01:01:19
    Generally, the fact that this came up, I think earlier in the summer when it came up, just the concern there about
  • 01:01:31
    attempting to make this as flexible as possible so that there are options for people doing this time that we're currently in.
  • 01:01:41
    And so I get it, but I still have the same problem that I've stated in the past with we have gone out of our way to attempt to keep teachers safe who have insurance.

8. Amendment to the text of Chapter 34 (Zoning Ordinance) of the City of Charlottesville, 1990, as amended, to provide updates to family day home uses (1st of 2 readings)

ORD_ZTA - Family Day Home
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 01:01:55
    and if this was more holistic in terms of ensuring that people who start home daycares have access to insurance options, things that we can't, you know, guarantee at this and I know quite a few providers who don't have the resources to have health insurance.
  • 01:02:16
    And so while I understand why this was brought up, I am concerned about their overall health and there is a need and their
  • 01:02:24
    If they are willing to do it, they will probably meet this 1 to 12 number and just concerned for them.
  • 01:02:39
    Having family members who have home daycares, I understand that this is a much easier process.
  • 01:02:48
    I just wish it was under different circumstances that we are considering this and taking into account their health and wellbeing and not just what the community needs are.
  • 01:03:04
    I do have questions.
  • 01:03:06
    So my first one is number three, and it's what you said you all spent a lot of time on.
  • 01:03:12
    My first thought was I've known providers in the past who had clients that worked at hospitals.
  • 01:03:24
    So they may call in, it may be outside of this 6 a.m.
  • 01:03:29
    to 11 p.m.
  • 01:03:29
    time,
  • 01:03:31
    and that they may be dropping their kid off.
  • 01:03:40
    I know there's not necessarily a person out there who is monitoring if you are called in to cover for a coworker or something and it's midnight, but based on this ordinance, I know things like that have happened, that this is saying that there will be no clients or employees allowed to visit the property during those hours, so that was a,
  • 01:04:06
    One of my thoughts, and you answered the other question, just if there was some community conversation concern around the providing the provisional use permit.
  • 01:04:22
    Number seven, I just wanted to make sure that outside of losing their state license, would there be a warning
  • 01:04:32
    process if there was, you know, failure to meet compliance or would it just be that they would automatically, you know, the provisional use permit would be revoked.
  • 01:04:46
    So that's my other question.
• • SPEAKER_01
  • 01:04:49
    Well, I'll start with your second one.
  • 01:04:51
    Given how we work with enforcement of zoning, we do it on a complaint basis.
  • 01:04:58
    And so we would receive a concern.
  • 01:05:01
    We do what we can to work with individuals to get them into compliance.
  • 01:05:07
    Our goal is compliance.
  • 01:05:12
    We don't want to take things away from people.
  • 01:05:14
    We want to make sure that folks are
  • 01:05:17
    falling within the same rule path.
  • 01:05:20
    And so we would work with an individual that was in a difficult situation.
  • 01:05:25
    This is something that we actually work with family day home providers quite a bit.
  • 01:05:31
    Our zoning staff, actually, when they made that huge change in the state changes, we had most of our providers have to come in and work with our zoning staff to get themselves into compliance.
  • 01:05:45
    And so,
  • 01:05:46
    We have some good working relationships with our family day home providers, some of which that we work with regularly.
  • 01:05:55
    Concerning number three, which is the hours of operation, we spent quite a bit of time talking about this.
  • 01:06:02
    And we recognize that we have a lot of opportunities where we would have individuals who would need care in later hours.
  • 01:06:12
    And what we found, at least for this first round, was that it would be more likely for it to be a smaller number of children for an overnight opportunity.
  • 01:06:26
    This is another thing where if we found that there was a community need for larger daycare, family day home service in the evenings, then we are into the night, then we could revisit at that time.
  • 01:06:43
    The impacts are really the things that it came down
  • 01:06:47
    from a concerning standpoint is the potential for impacts into the night are different than those into the daytime.
  • 01:06:56
    And so this was a compromise of sorts to have a set period of time to start with and allow for flexibility within that range.
  • 01:07:08
    However, if we ended up with a provider or even a number of providers where we're finding that we need overnight hours, then we would bring this back for consideration.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:07:21
    Those that have the one to three clients, that doesn't apply to.
• • SPEAKER_01
  • 01:07:27
    One to four.
  • 01:07:28
    Sorry, wonderful.
  • 01:07:30
    Yes.
  • 01:07:31
    A household can, or a residential use can have a family day home today.
  • 01:07:36
    One to four residents, they don't have to register, or one to four children, they don't have to register.
  • 01:07:42
    And this does not include the household's children.
  • 01:07:47
    So there are a lot of flexibility that's built into that as well.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 01:07:57
    All right, any other questions or comments?
  • 01:08:02
    All right, is there support to move this to the November 16th consent agenda?
• • Lloyd Snook
  • 01:08:09
    Certainly for me, yes.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 01:08:11
    Yes.
• • Lloyd Snook
  • 01:08:11
    Support as well.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 01:08:16
    Okay.
  • 01:08:18
    Thank you.
  • 01:08:19
    We move to the November 16th consent agenda.
• • SPEAKER_01
  • 01:08:24
    Thank you, Ms.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 01:08:24
    Kruski.
  • 01:08:28
    Thank you.
  • 01:08:30
    All right, next we have the Allocation Bridge Ministry Request for Allocation of $54,750 of Cures Contingency Reserve.
  • 01:08:41
    And it's one reading.
  • 01:08:41
    And Mr. Cullinan?
• • SPEAKER_23
  • 01:08:51
    Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of council.
  • 01:08:53
    My name is Chris Cullinan.
  • 01:08:54
    I'm the director of finance for the city.
  • 01:08:57
    The item here for your consideration this evening is a request for an allocation of $54,750 to the bridge ministry from the CARES round two contingency reserve.
  • 01:09:10
    As you'll recall at your last meeting, this request was discussed without resolution, and council raised several questions.
  • 01:09:21
    including whether the request met the requirements of the CARES Fund, how many of the individuals who received services from Bridge Ministries were from the City of Charlottesville, and then finally there were questions about whether an audit had been completed.
  • 01:09:37
    In the time since, Ms.
  • 01:09:39
    Demick and myself have reviewed the information provided by Bridge Ministry and have concluded that yes, the services that they are providing are eligible for CARES funding.
  • 01:09:55
    Two, that of the nine participants that were mentioned in the update that they provided, the information that they provided, eight were from the city of Charlottesville.
  • 01:10:06
    And then finally, we were provided a copy of the bridge ministry's audit for the most recently completed, which was just in May 2020 for the fiscal year ending 2017.
  • 01:10:19
    They received an unqualified or a clean audit from a local CPA firm.
  • 01:10:25
    Ms.
  • 01:10:25
    Dimmitt can certainly, and I can certainly answer any questions you may have on those specific items.
  • 01:10:32
    The amount, the $54,750 represents approximately one sixth or two months worth of the annual cost of the services they provide, so for the months of November and December.
  • 01:10:46
    As we know, the CARES funds have a shelf life to the end of the calendar year, so these funds would be for those two months.
  • 01:10:54
    And if council were to make this allocation from the round two contingency reserve, it would take it down from $210,000 to just a little over $155,000.
  • 01:11:06
    That concludes my presentation.
  • 01:11:10
    And again, Ms.
  • 01:11:10
    Dimmick and I would be happy to answer any questions you might have.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 01:11:12
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_19
  • 01:11:16
    Councilors, any questions?
  • 01:11:19
    I have a few clarifying.
  • 01:11:21
    I just want to make sure.
  • 01:11:23
    Now, I understand this is for CARES funds, not for our Vibrant Community Grants, which would require a yearly audit, correct, of an organization of this size.
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 01:11:37
    Yes, ma'am.
  • 01:11:38
    The current guidance for the Vibrant Community Fund is that an organization of this size with an operating revenue of more than $500,000 a year would need to have an audit every year.
• • SPEAKER_19
  • 01:11:51
    And I just, but for the CARES grant, we do have one that's now three years old, but that's, yeah.
  • 01:11:59
    Additionally, want to, I understand that the bridge is talking about holding nine beds for Charlottesville residents being moved out of ACRJ.
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 01:12:14
    They actually have more than nine Charlottesville residents who have moved out of the jail to the program at this point.
  • 01:12:22
    It was nine at the time of the writing of that update.
  • 01:12:25
    I don't know how many beds they're actually holding at this moment, but I know that they're serving in excess of nine residents from Charlottesville at the moment.
• • SPEAKER_19
  • 01:12:33
    And those were nine people who were moved out of ACRJ specifically because of COVID
  • 01:12:39
    Indeed.
  • 01:12:40
    OK.
  • 01:12:40
    I just wanted to make sure of that piece to fit the COVID criteria.
  • 01:12:44
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 01:12:49
    Any other questions?
• • Lloyd Snook
  • 01:12:52
    Let me just say, I had expressed some concerns last time around, particularly about the lack of an up-to-date audit.
  • 01:12:59
    I still have those concerns, but I've talked to enough other people about the situation that I'm persuaded that this is a good idea for this project, for this money at this time.
  • 01:13:13
    If they want to get vibrant community funds, as they have tried in years past, they will have to comply with those other requirements.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 01:13:26
    All right.
  • 01:13:27
    Any other comments?
• • SPEAKER_28
  • 01:13:31
    Is there any sense of what other potential CARES Act investments that could be made or other requests from organizations in terms of just trying to evaluate the trade-offs of any investment we make with these funds
• • SPEAKER_23
  • 01:13:51
    At this point, I'm unaware of any other requests that are pending, although obviously with the calendars turning to November, we still have two months potentially in which to spend these funds.
  • 01:14:06
    And so I'm unaware of any at this point.
  • 01:14:10
    But as we've seen over the last few months, as COVID impacts our community and continues to, it has lingering effects and different impacts as we go along.
  • 01:14:21
    And so again, there will still be some contingency reserve available to potentially address any of those requests over the next two months.

9. Bridge Ministry Request for Allocation of $54,750 of CARES Contingency Reserve (1 reading)

Allocation_$54,750 The Bridge Ministry CARES Contingency request
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:14:35
    Mr. Cullen you've also said in the past that there's no shortage of needs within the city's needs so that if we get to that point we can easily just allocate those to our internal needs that meet the CARES requirements.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 01:14:48
    Absolutely.
• • SPEAKER_28
  • 01:14:51
    Well again you know the only concern I have which
  • 01:14:55
    If there are requests, perhaps it's not relevant, but the only concern I have is, again, any decisions we make about allocating these CARES Fund, any request can be justified, and certainly this one can as well.
  • 01:15:09
    So it's just, again, evaluating the trade-off of what's the relative impact, and I'm very concerned about, particularly as the end of November and December comes, about the
  • 01:15:20
    issues of evictions, homelessness, particularly as our churches and faith community aren't able to provide housing through the fall and winter season as they normally would, and the monetary need there's going to be to be able to continue to house people in hotels.
  • 01:15:39
    Our Pathways Fund and the eviction relief programs, certainly there's more need there than the money that exists.
  • 01:15:48
    And I know that the free clinic as well is potentially going to have need for support since they've had to move offices due to COVID, which is bringing them new costs.
  • 01:15:58
    And I do think all those things would make a greater impact with our very limited resources than this investment.
  • 01:16:07
    But perhaps if those requests aren't coming in, it's not germane to this, but that's my only concern.
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 01:16:14
    At this point, Council Member Payne, the churches have agreed to open up limited congregate shelter for the folks who are unable to be in the hotels.
  • 01:16:25
    And so Pacham actually, I believe starts next week in the more traditional sense.
  • 01:16:33
    and will operate through, has enough churches that have committed space through I believe the end of February, maybe even early March to accommodate additional homeless folks who are not able to be in the hotel.
  • 01:16:49
    Nevertheless, there's a great deal of concern and if I were to shift my focus with a third round of care, it would go back to emergency feeding.
  • 01:16:58
    because the winter is going to put on a great deal of pressure on our local community to keep up with the level of need for all the agencies that are out there doing this kind of Herculean work.
  • 01:17:10
    I do believe that the funding from the state has come through for additional months at the hotels.
  • 01:17:18
    And so while that certainly will be a need that comes back up probably in very early spring at the very moment, they're doing okay.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:17:27
    So to Councilor Payne's point though, Ms.
  • 01:17:29
    Demick, do you feel that there are things that could absorb some additional CARES funding that would address these immediate needs?
  • 01:17:37
    Or do you feel it's because of the timing of when those funds can be expended that we kind of hit a hurdle?
  • 01:17:42
    Because I agree with him that we need to be as efficient as possible in making sure that we're meeting the greatest needs.
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 01:17:48
    I think that with the level of contingency that we currently have remaining even after potentially saying yes to this request plus whatever possibilities we have for folks who are unable to spend what they agreed to spend now that in December that I think it would be reasonable to have a conversation where we look back at the emergency need for the community and say what other kinds of services are out there that have an urgency that we might want to address in addition to some of the internal expenses.
  • 01:18:17
    And then if there's a third round of CARES that comes, certainly I think that there would be, I would want to renew our commitment to understanding the community needs before we started allocating any of that money in earnest for community support.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:18:34
    Mr. Cohen, when are we due to have like a formal update again on the status of CARES?
  • 01:18:39
    Is that the next meeting or the first?
• • Lloyd Snook
  • 01:18:41
    One of the public comment people said, what happened to this vaccine we're supposed to be having?
  • 01:18:45
    Lloyd, you're not muted.
• • Kyna Thomas
  • 01:18:48
    Oops.
• • SPEAKER_23
  • 01:18:51
    Sorry about that.
  • 01:18:55
    So we're beginning the process this week actually with city staff, the staff leads of the various funding categories to assess where they are and begin that process with the clock ticking even louder now that we're down to November and December.
  • 01:19:15
    I think we were looking sometime in the December timeframe, early December, to ascertain where folks are in terms of their spending, what can realistically be incurred prior to December 30th, and then potentially having to make some tough calls of whether to continue
  • 01:19:34
    try to expend those funds for the end of the year or to pull them back into a pool for additional consideration.
  • 01:19:41
    So we'll be getting that process this week internally and looking at those.
  • 01:19:46
    We do know that some things have been delayed.
  • 01:19:50
    We've also received additional guidance from the U.S.
  • 01:19:52
    Treasury as to what incurred means by December 30th, and so we'll be looking at that as well.
  • 01:19:58
    So that process is getting underway and we're looking sometime in the early December timeframe to have that conversation.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 01:20:06
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_28
  • 01:20:11
    What's the funding level now of like the Pathways Fund currently?
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 01:20:17
    I'm afraid I can't answer that.
  • 01:20:19
    I can get that information probably tomorrow and pass it on.
  • 01:20:22
    There are a number of
  • 01:20:26
    The most recent allocation I believe for, I can't remember how much it was, maybe $360,000 I think has only just arrived at the United Way and so that money remains to be spent but may have already been committed.
  • 01:20:42
    So I can do some checking and get back to you all this week on that.
  • 01:20:48
    I do know that the city staff have been at the eviction courts doing proactive daily like on the spot diversions for evictions with support from the judge so United Way is actually we're processing applications in advance of the court hearings and United Way is cutting checks on the spot to landlords to avoid conclusion of eviction court which is going quite well.
• • SPEAKER_28
  • 01:21:13
    Okay.
  • 01:21:14
    I mean, that's the only questions I had.
  • 01:21:16
    And again, perhaps that trade-off doesn't exist at this moment, but that's my concern is I would perhaps give that a higher priority than this while recognizing that this is also meeting a very real existing need.
  • 01:21:27
    Just again, unfortunately, the trade-offs of our limited budget, but if that's not the state currently, then it's less of an immediate issue on this vote, I suppose.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 01:21:41
    Any other comments?
  • 01:21:43
    All right, is there a motion?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:21:49
    I move that we allocate $54,750 of the CARES contingency reserve to the bridge ministry.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 01:21:57
    Is there a second?
• • Lloyd Snook
  • 01:22:04
    I'll second that motion.
• • Kyna Thomas
  • 01:22:05
    All right, Ms.
  • 01:22:07
    Thomas?
  • 01:22:09
    Councilor Payne?
• • SPEAKER_28
  • 01:22:11
    Yes.
• • Kyna Thomas
  • 01:22:12
    Councilor Snook?
• • SPEAKER_28
  • 01:22:13
    Yes.
• • Kyna Thomas
  • 01:22:14
    Sena Walker.
  • 01:22:16
    Yes.
  • 01:22:17
    Vice Mayor Magill.
  • 01:22:19
    Yes.
  • 01:22:20
    Councillor Hill.
  • 01:22:21
    Yes.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 01:22:22
    All right, thank you.
  • 01:22:29
    Let's see what we have next.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 01:22:32
    So we'll just, we'll take our 15-minute break now, because it's only probably about six minutes before.
  • 01:22:44
    eight.
  • 01:22:45
    And so we'll come back.
  • 01:22:46
    Let's just say 10.
• • 01:25:55
    Celine Dion
  • 01:34:17
    you
  • 01:34:43
    you
  • 01:37:30
    you
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 01:40:07
    All right, Councilor Snook, are you there?
• • Lloyd Snook
  • 01:40:17
    Gotcha.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 01:40:18
    All right, I'll call this meeting back to order.
  • 01:40:23
    Next, we have an update on the unmarked burials near the Gilmer Craven Hop Top Cemetery at Penn Park.
• • SPEAKER_26
  • 01:40:39
    Well good evening everyone.
  • 01:40:45
    I know we have a lot on our minds tonight, as we will tomorrow.
  • 01:40:48
    But I'm here this evening.
  • 01:40:51
    I'm the city's historic preservation and design planner.
  • 01:40:55
    With me, we hope, is Ben Ford.
  • 01:40:58
    He's a local archaeologist with Rivanna Archaeological Services.
  • 01:41:02
    We're having a little technical difficulty, so hopefully he's all set.
  • 01:41:06
    But last December, you all approved funding for an archaeological evaluation of possible unmarked
  • 01:41:12
    graves outside the enclosed family plots at the Gilmer Craven Hotop Cemetery, which is at Penn Park.
  • 01:41:19
    We retained Rivanna Archaeological Services to conduct the investigation, and we're here tonight to update you on those results.
  • 01:41:25
    Just some quick background.
  • 01:41:27
    This city acquired Penn Park, and it is Penn with one N. It acquired Penn Park in the 1970s.
  • 01:41:33
    Dr. George Gilmer had acquired it in 1786 and gave it that name.
  • 01:41:38
    Over the next 180 years, the property changed hands several times.
  • 01:41:42
    However, only three owners established family cemeteries there.
  • 01:41:45
    The Gilmers, who occupied the property from 1786 to 1812, then the Cravens, who were there from 1819 to 1845, and then the Hotop family from 1866 to 1904.
  • 01:41:51
    This past July, Rivanna Archaeology and
  • 01:42:04
    Nava, Geophysicist Inc., conducted fieldwork at Penn Park using ground penetrating radar or GPR.
  • 01:42:12
    The GPR data suggests the likelihood of 43 unmarked and unrecorded graves outside the walls of the three family plots is roughly in
  • 01:42:23
    three rows primarily to the east and opposite the entrances to the family plot.
  • 01:42:30
    So in other words, these are behind the family cemeteries.
  • 01:42:33
    The majority of these graves lie outside the Gilmer and Craven sections and we know that both of those families enslaved individuals and the evidence suggests these graves are most likely those of individuals who had been enslaved at Penn Park.
  • 01:42:47
    There are at least four parent graves directly outside the Hotop section, possibly representing graves of enslaved individuals associated with prior owners or possibly individuals who lived on the property and were employed by the Hotop family.
  • 01:43:01
    We don't know.
  • 01:43:03
    There are three other graves, two to the south and one to the north, which we're just not sure how to interpret those.
  • 01:43:11
    They are not, as you see on the map here, they're not associated with the rest of the clustering.
  • 01:43:19
    Quickly, the GPR evidence indicates a pattern in the subsurface anomalies, as they call them.
  • 01:43:25
    The sizes, the depths, the alignments in rows, the east-west orientation are all consistent with human burials.
  • 01:43:32
    However, despite the strength of the GPR data, the number of likely graves can only be estimated.
  • 01:43:38
    Precise determination of the number and location will require physical disturbance of the upper layer of soil.
  • 01:43:45
    However, at this time we're recommending the archaeologists and staff that the GPR findings are conclusive enough to establish the presence of human graves here without further physical disturbance.
  • 01:43:59
    And also tonight, this is an awful lot to throw at you all.
  • 01:44:04
    I know.
  • 01:44:04
    I will say that when we first looked at this a year ago, we thought there might be 10 to 12 burials there.
  • 01:44:10
    We were not expecting this at all.
  • 01:44:13
    and so tonight we're really not recommending any action by you all, given the scale, the nature and particularly the sensitivity of this discovery.
  • 01:44:23
    We're recommending a period of reflection and discussion prior to any decision making and in fact, I wanna invite council to read through the report, ask questions and Ben and I certainly meet you all out there and kind of explain physically what
  • 01:44:40
    what the GPR data indicates.

10. GENERAL BUSINESS

• • SPEAKER_26
  • 01:44:42
    And I can say, going out there now with this data, it's a very different place.
  • 01:44:47
    It is a very different feel to it.
  • 01:44:51
    But I think that would be helpful for you all because this is,
  • 01:44:55
    on city property.
  • 01:44:56
    We have a responsibility here, and I think we all want to do it right.
  • 01:45:00
    So I'll just wrap up and say, you know, we expect you all have questions.
  • 01:45:03
    We can try to answer them.
  • 01:45:05
    We have a number of discussion items and recommendations that are summarized in the staff report, and we can certainly discuss those tonight if you wish, but I'll leave it there, and Ben, if you're there, we can certainly help with any questions that, Councilor, you may have.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 01:45:22
    I'm here via phone, Jeff.
  • 01:45:24
    Can you hear me?
• • SPEAKER_26
  • 01:45:25
    Yes.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 01:45:27
    Well, thank you for that report.
  • 01:45:32
    I agree that we have an obligation here and it's something that we would want to do right.
  • 01:45:43
    The two discussion points I was interested in to move forward, I think that outreach
  • 01:45:54
    would be very important for us to get a group of individuals together who are familiar with this sort of process to make
  • 01:46:09
    which the next section, the moving forward and the potential things for us to consider, I think it's some guidance from that group and maybe even initial research because we have to know through some sort of record to

11. Update on unmarked burials near the Gilmer/Craven/Hotopp Cemetery at Pen Park

REP_Pen Park cemetery update
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 01:46:27
    you know potentially you know who were was enslaved there and you know there there's probably a possibility of connecting maybe family members today and I think that's a very important
  • 01:46:42
    part to figure out how they would want their ancestors to be honored without us just going and making recommendations without even full information.
  • 01:46:56
    And yeah, so I know it said one thing, any attempt to do so will require invasive disturbance, and I think
  • 01:47:11
    It's so important to make sure that the families are as many as possible aware of what the options are and it's something they're on board with.
• • SPEAKER_26
  • 01:47:24
    And part of what I'm hoping we get tonight is some more coverage of this.
  • 01:47:28
    I know a little bit has been said in the paper.
  • 01:47:30
    I think Ben has talked to some news folks.
  • 01:47:33
    I've already had conversations with the folks at Daughters of Science who've offered some wonderful advice.
  • 01:47:40
    A woman at the university that's very involved in this type of thing has been in contact with me.
  • 01:47:44
    So we're slowly building that circle of trying to determine who are these people?
  • 01:47:55
    Can we find that?
  • 01:47:57
    and that's where some additional documentary research may be necessary.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 01:48:04
    Was any of that done, like looking at the census to see who... And Ben, you can touch on that.
• • SPEAKER_26
  • 01:48:10
    Okay.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 01:48:13
    Coming in, what is the question?
• • SPEAKER_26
  • 01:48:15
    The archival research, what steps could we take to explore a little further?
  • 01:48:22
    You did some, but to the extent that we could try to determine names or connections, anything.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 01:48:28
    Sure.
  • 01:48:29
    There are several options, and I would first preface this by saying that three large institutions in our area, Monticello, Montpelier, and apparently the University of Virginia have done in-depth, long-term genealogical research, so there are resources and individuals that can
  • 01:48:54
    tremendous help here in terms of guiding this type of research and perhaps performing it as well.
  • 01:49:02
    But for additional research, the state has burial records for municipalities including Albemarle County from the 1850s on through the 20th century.
  • 01:49:17
    So it's quite possible with a little bit additional effort.
  • 01:49:21
    Those records can be researched for Toad Top family members and deaths in their family and perhaps African Americans who were living and working on the site as well.
  • 01:49:40
    And hopefully those leads can provide
  • 01:49:45
    Some information as to who was living on the property in the postbellum period and the early 20th century period.
  • 01:49:55
    When you're looking at the pre-emancipation period in terms of slavery, it becomes a bit harder.
  • 01:50:01
    We do have
  • 01:50:04
    Excellent names of individuals, not surnames, but names of individuals held by the Gilmer and the Craven family during certain periods.
  • 01:50:17
    And I think it's a reasonable assumption that some of those individuals who died on the property would have been buried there.
  • 01:50:27
    But these graves are all unmarked.
  • 01:50:32
    and finding which individual was buried where I think is going to be quite difficult.
  • 01:50:40
    It's not impossible, but I do think this type of research has been done and there are individuals who I believe would be willing to lend their expertise on how to pursue this type of research, the contacts that need to be made and how productive it is, giving us a good idea of what
  • 01:51:01
    one might expect after a significant amount of research.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 01:51:09
    1966, just real quick, so was there any mention of this being a possible cemetery then?
• • SPEAKER_26
  • 01:51:18
    This has been listed as a cemetery since the first transaction from out of the Gilmer family in 1812.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 01:51:24
    I mean the unmarked graves, was there any mention of those?
• • SPEAKER_26
  • 01:51:29
    except for, well Ben you can talk, there was, the way I found out about this was contacted by a Gilmer family member just asking about the burials at that site and I looked it up online and found Lynn Rainville's website which
  • 01:51:46
    a registry of black cemeteries throughout the state.
  • 01:51:49
    And it said, you know, there are oral histories of slave burials out here.
  • 01:51:55
    So that's when Ben and Steve Thompson and I went out there and we're like, oh my gosh, look at these.
  • 01:52:01
    You can see the depressions through there.
  • 01:52:04
    And so when we start to look further, and if you look at the aerial photograph that Brian had up a second ago, you'll see that, I think this is a 1937 photograph,
  • 01:52:14
    that this is an area around these three, they're all, the Gilmer's are in brick, the Craven's got a stone wall and then the Hotops have a metal fence.
  • 01:52:25
    But you can see this shape here is clearly an area that's uncultivated and so there has to be a reason, that's sort of what we keep asking ourselves, why did they not disturb that site?
  • 01:52:37
    There must have been some knowledge of it but as far as
  • 01:52:42
    Me finding anything that people have said there or on Mark Graves there.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 01:52:47
    Very little.
  • 01:52:49
    I would echo what Jeff had said.
  • 01:52:51
    My archival research did not come across any evidence to suggest that there were individuals buried in this location.
  • 01:53:03
    We recently worked at the university in Slave Cemetery in 2012.
  • 01:53:08
    and after the initial cemetery was discovered we went back into the archives and did find an indirect reference to the burial of servants quote behind and outside of the cemetery.
  • 01:53:21
    To my knowledge there is no reference like that here indicating that individuals were buried outside of the cemetery as Jeff noted it was
  • 01:53:31
    a curious number of surface depressions which some individuals had recognized almost two decades ago and that Jeff followed up on.
• • SPEAKER_26
  • 01:53:45
    We know where the Gilmer's are, we know where most of the Craven's are, and they're either inside the walls or elsewhere.
  • 01:53:53
    So the evidence is extremely strong for the conclusions we've made.
• • SPEAKER_19
  • 01:54:02
    Counselor Magill, you have.
  • 01:54:06
    Oh, I was just going to mention that Montpelier has done a lot of work with historic research onto finding records for slaves who were owned at Montpelier.
  • 01:54:24
    And then I was just wondering, if these two graves in the South, could those have traveled
• • SPEAKER_26
  • 01:54:33
    Just, Ben, you can.
• • SPEAKER_19
  • 01:54:38
    But those originally originally been up higher and then kind of moved down?
• • SPEAKER_26
  • 01:54:42
    Well, I'll say this and then Ben follow up with this.
  • 01:54:45
    One of the things that the GPR data is, there's, it's just interesting being out there with them.
  • 01:54:51
    And these guys are walking there and go, oh, there's one, there's one.
  • 01:54:54
    And there's a graphic, Brian, if you would put that up there, that we included for this reason.
  • 01:54:59
    It's some of the things that appear as graves.
  • 01:55:04
    So on the left, you see that's kind of the prototype.
  • 01:55:06
    This is, you know, a perfect grave with a coffin in it.
  • 01:55:10
    What you're dealing with are burials that probably don't have coffins and they're shallow.
  • 01:55:14
    and they're on top of Hill, we've had some erosion away from it.
  • 01:55:17
    So what you see on the right is actual data from what they get.
  • 01:55:20
    So imagine a bunch of these slices that they can line them up kind of three-dimensionally and say, all right, here's a anomaly as they call it and it's two meters long.
  • 01:55:32
    So that and it's oriented east-west.
  • 01:55:34
    So that's what gives us the clues.
  • 01:55:35
    But some of these are so old, there's just not much of an echo there.
  • 01:55:40
    And so they have to kind of,
  • 01:55:46
    They don't want to find everything.
  • 01:55:47
    They want to find what's meaningful, so they have to kind of calibrate it.
  • 01:55:50
    And so some of these may not in fact be graves, and some graves may not be showing up.
  • 01:55:56
    And so that's why there's no way to know for certain, unless like they did at UVA, kind of pull back that top layer of soil, then you can identify.
  • 01:56:06
    And that's why what's
  • 01:56:09
    I keep thinking is, are there more to the northeast because of the area?
  • 01:56:12
    But what's to the south and why those are there?
  • 01:56:15
    We just have no idea.
  • 01:56:17
    It's a mystery.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 01:56:19
    Yeah, the clustering, Councilor Magill, is quite compelling.
  • 01:56:24
    When you look at the east side of the existing Penn Park Cemetery, you see, or at least I can see, at least two, if not three, rows.
  • 01:56:32
    And then, as Jeff pointed out, there is one sort
  • 01:56:35
    We have isolated graves to the north and, as you mentioned, two or more to the south.
  • 01:56:42
    And it's difficult to sit here and explain what those can be.
  • 01:56:46
    I think I'm confident that the GPR analysis has identified those as potential graves based on their horizontal and vertical distribution in space.
  • 01:56:57
    And they seem to appear to have the same hallmarks of human interments as those on the east side.
  • 01:57:06
    Yeah, I think that is a question that remains to be answered and how to explain why those graves are in the location that they are.
  • 01:57:16
    Perhaps the one on the north you can explain away as being within five or seven feet from
  • 01:57:22
    Stone, or the enclosure that maybe the wall was just built a little bit on the inside of all of the burials.
  • 01:57:31
    But on the south end, difficult.
  • 01:57:34
    I'm not sure that I'm able to answer that question right now.
• • SPEAKER_26
  • 01:57:39
    And I'll offer, because I asked this question when we discussed this a month ago, do the shorter shapes indicate a size or an age?
  • 01:57:49
    And they can't make that.
  • 01:57:52
    That's sort of the data is just not
  • 01:57:54
    It's not clear enough to suggest that, oh, these smaller ones are children or shorter people or whatever.
  • 01:58:00
    So try to not think of it in those terms.
  • 01:58:04
    I will say the one to the north, when you stand out there, there's clearly a depression right there.
  • 01:58:08
    That one's very evident.
  • 01:58:10
    The other two on the south, I couldn't find them, or at least as a depression.
  • 01:58:21
    Yeah.
  • 01:58:22
    But I said, I invite you guys, I'll meet you out there.
  • 01:58:25
    It really is.
  • 01:58:28
    I described talking to Jane Smith the other day, and who's been also helpful in this, and I just described it.
  • 01:58:35
    It's usually inside the walls of a cemetery.
  • 01:58:37
    You have that strange feeling.
  • 01:58:39
    It's not outside.
  • 01:58:40
    But when you walk outside into this very open space, knowing now what's there,
  • 01:58:46
    It's very, it's unsettling.
  • 01:58:49
    And it really takes a visit out there to kind of see what's going on there.
  • 01:58:57
    And it raises a lot of questions, but I definitely would welcome any of you all that want to meet me out there whenever.
  • 01:59:03
    It's nice to get out of the house, if you don't mind.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 01:59:09
    Yeah, I definitely am interested.
  • 01:59:10
    Okay.
• • SPEAKER_28
  • 01:59:19
    I'm curious in the short term how feasible some of the other recommendations around like its proximity to the golf course and I don't know how often you know people are, I know there was mention of that area being used as a temporary parking space for golf carts or just
  • 01:59:38
    In the more immediate term, you know, what if anything can be done to try to limit or restrict that activity because I think clearly that proximity to that is just not at all appropriate when you think about how to properly memorialize and honor that space.
• • SPEAKER_26
  • 01:59:53
    I've been in contact with Todd Brown and Ryan Summers out there for some time.
  • 02:00:00
    about what can you do.
  • 02:00:04
    You don't, I mean, people have access to it just like any other cemetery, in a sense, inside, outside, people to walk through.
  • 02:00:10
    But I said that it's absolutely inappropriate that someone takes a golf cart and, you know, loses their ball and happens to drive up there.
  • 02:00:18
    So, they're working out something to put up there.
  • 02:00:21
    It's a large space.
  • 02:00:24
    to restrict all of it, but I think it's the right thing to do.
  • 02:00:27
    The second thing, as we said, is to get this memorialized on whatever the legal documents are that say, you know, this place shall not be touched.
  • 02:00:37
    And now John can talk about this more.
  • 02:00:40
    The question of whose cemetery is it, we still need to figure out, and I think, Mayor Walker, you said it perfectly, really,
  • 02:00:48
    identify who the descendant community is or might be.
  • 02:00:51
    And so that we're very much honoring what they would like to see happen here.
  • 02:00:55
    This is their land in the sense that cemetery plots, cemeteries, we may own them as the city and be responsible for cutting the grass, but they are, those graves belong to the families.
  • 02:01:06
    And so I think we need to do everything we can and that's come up with a work plan to do that and get that back to you.
  • 02:01:16
    And then as far as, I don't know, every time I've been out there, I haven't seen anybody drive a golf cart over it.
  • 02:01:22
    People seem to be respectful to some extent of that it is a graveyard, but the idea of
  • 02:01:31
    It's just like at Daughters of Zion, we recently determined twice as many burials in there as we had anticipated.
  • 02:01:39
    And so what do you do?
  • 02:01:40
    How do you designate those?
  • 02:01:44
    The best thing we can come up right now is set that area aside so that at least it doesn't get disturbed, it doesn't get traffic on it, and then we can evaluate how to memorialize it, if at all, as we learn more.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 02:02:01
    Are there any other questions?
• • SPEAKER_26
  • 02:02:05
    You all know how to reach me.
  • 02:02:06
    Send me an email and certainly can, I said, easy for me to get out there.
  • 02:02:12
    And it's really easy to walk down to this.
  • 02:02:14
    You just walk to the left of the clubhouse, you walk down the hill past where they're
  • 02:02:22
    kind of the golf maintenance shed is, and you see the signs that say to the cemetery.
  • 02:02:26
    And when you get to the cemetery, walk to the far side, sort of the downhill side.
  • 02:02:30
    That's the eastern side where you'll see.
  • 02:02:32
    I will tell you, if you go inside the family plots, be very, very, very careful.
  • 02:02:36
    There are a lot of cover holes.
  • 02:02:40
    It's not a safe place to walk around without paying attention.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 02:02:46
    So it seems like there's going to be an ongoing discussion, and it'll progress.
  • 02:02:51
    But in the meantime, we can feel assured that there will be no further disruption of that area.
• • SPEAKER_26
  • 02:02:56
    I'm doing everything I can.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 02:02:57
    I mean, as much as we can anything.
• • SPEAKER_26
  • 02:03:01
    But no, we're not touching anything out there physically until you all have further discussion about this, and we sort of lay out the pros and cons of what
  • 02:03:14
    additional work might reveal if we do that at all.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 02:03:18
    So is the first step seeking more community input from those other groups?
• • SPEAKER_26
  • 02:03:25
    You know, it's been sort of a building as I go.
  • 02:03:29
    I know talking to Edwina, they've got so much going on at Daughters of Zion.
  • 02:03:35
    She's, boy, I want to help here, but they're focusing on still trying to determine who's buried at that site.
  • 02:03:43
    The woman at—Shelley Murphy, I think, is her name.
  • 02:03:45
    I spoke with her the other day.
  • 02:03:47
    a lot of folks willing to pitch in and help.
  • 02:03:50
    It's sort of trying to figure out how do I, what's my role?
  • 02:03:53
    Am I the lead?
  • 02:03:55
    Do we work with a consultant to help on this?
  • 02:04:00
    What's the best use of the resources we have?
  • 02:04:04
    I wear so many hats with the city.
  • 02:04:07
    Am I the best person or what's the way to do it?
  • 02:04:10
    And I think we need to put together a plan to do that.
  • 02:04:16
    and get back with you on it.
  • 02:04:17
    Like I said, the thing I've talked, when I've reached out to different people, I've just said, hell, we can't do this wrong.
  • 02:04:25
    We gotta do this right.
  • 02:04:26
    This is a very important site.
  • 02:04:29
    There's probably others around the city that we don't even know about, and I do know of other small cemeteries in the city that people aren't aware of.
  • 02:04:37
    We really have to recognize what our obligations are here and do it right, and I wanna do that, but I'm gonna need a lot of help.
  • 02:04:48
    With that, I think we've said enough, and I look forward to talking to you all later.
  • 02:04:53
    Let's hope tomorrow is a pleasant day.
• • Lloyd Snook
  • 02:04:57
    I just wanted to add I was really very impressed with the completeness and the depth and the technology that I was really frankly unaware of for archaeologists.
  • 02:05:08
    I thought archaeologists got down on their knees and dug up things with toothbrushes and so on, but this is a fascinating report.
  • 02:05:17
    Thank you very much.
• • SPEAKER_26
  • 02:05:18
    Yeah, I wanted to go buy one of those things and just, you know, just tool around town looking at stuff and I looked up what they cost and
  • 02:05:25
    that changed things.
  • 02:05:26
    But yeah, it is fascinating.
  • 02:05:27
    It's fascinating to be with these folks that are able to see things in three dimension.
  • 02:05:32
    It was amazing to be part of this.
  • 02:05:35
    It was also very troubling.
  • 02:05:36
    And I'm glad you all are, we're gonna be working together on this and I appreciate that.
  • 02:05:44
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 02:05:47
    I spent some time thinking about what to present to us next.
  • 02:05:50
    Is that, I'm just not clear on what next steps.
• • SPEAKER_26
  • 02:05:54
    And that's exactly it.
  • 02:05:56
    I know that the Historic Resources Committee has a role to offer recommendations, but I'll say, and Ms.
  • 02:06:02
    Hill can certainly respond to this as well, the Historic Resources Committee's got their hands full.
  • 02:06:11
    and there's an awful lot of initiatives they're working on and sort of it's a to what extent we're able to accomplish things particularly in this era of Hollywood squares meeting on computers.
  • 02:06:23
    So there are limitations but I think first and foremost and most important is we know where this area is and we know that we can set it aside and not let it be served.
  • 02:06:34
    And that's the most important part.
  • 02:06:38
    it gives us time to, you know, to do it right.
  • 02:06:44
    And I said, I'm gonna reach out to these various folks and say, you know, what can you do?
  • 02:06:48
    If it's Jeff, you ought to, and you need to, and everybody telling me what I should be doing, you know, then I'll have to put together a plan and, you know, maybe we have to consider how to allocate resources so that it's done.
  • 02:06:59
    Something to the extent like we did at Daughters of Zion where there is a group that's sort of taking control of that site.
  • 02:07:06
    So, all right.
  • 02:07:08
    Sorry.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 02:07:10
    All right, thank you.
  • 02:07:11
    Any other questions?
• • SPEAKER_25
  • 02:07:16
    Have a good evening, y'all.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 02:07:17
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_25
  • 02:07:18
    Thank you.
  • 02:07:19
    Bye-bye.
  • 02:07:19
    Fine, thank you.
  • 02:07:20
    Ben, thank you.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 02:07:24
    Next up, we have a report mapping Seaville update.
• • SPEAKER_22
  • 02:07:31
    Hey, everybody.
  • 02:07:32
    It's Jordy.
  • 02:07:33
    Can you hear me?
  • 02:07:35
    Yeah, okay, wonderful.
  • 02:07:37
    And this is the first time I've done this virtually, so how do I get access to my slides?
  • 02:07:44
    Do I share my screen?
  • 02:07:46
    Yes.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 02:07:47
    Okay.
  • 02:07:48
    Actually, Jordi, I'm gonna share it for you.
• • SPEAKER_22
  • 02:07:51
    Oh, perfect, okay.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 02:07:52
    Okay.
  • 02:07:53
    So you can just tell me when to advance.
• • SPEAKER_22
  • 02:07:55
    When to advance, okay.
  • 02:07:56
    Great, everybody can see that.
  • 02:07:59
    So I'll just cut right to the chase.
  • 02:08:03
    I'm really glad to be with you all, Mayor Walker and fellow Councillors and Manager Blair.
  • 02:08:10
    I am just here to deliver a brief update on where we are with Mapping Seagull projects.
  • 02:08:16
    As you can see and hear, I'm here at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, and we have not stopped through all of this pandemic.
  • 02:08:24
    So progress is continuing, and I just wanted to share a little bit of it.
  • 02:08:28
    First and foremost, I should say that we're not doing this alone.
  • 02:08:33
    So while I am the digital humanities fellow here at the Heritage Center and the journalist by training, I am building on the work of many, many others.
  • 02:08:41
    who have come before me and also who are continuing this work to this day.
  • 02:08:45
    So here's a list of just a few of those folks without which none of this would be possible.
  • 02:08:51
    And so I'm here tonight with you sharing it and in the face and voice of it right now, but it is far larger than either myself or Dr. Douglas.
  • 02:09:01
    And so I just wanted to really acknowledge and give thanks to that first.
  • 02:09:06
    And we can hit to the next slide, Brian.
  • 02:09:09
    So the Mapping SEVO project is a comprehensive attempt at analyzing, cataloging, indexing, and then mapping the entirety of Charlottesville's racist covenants as they exist in our property records.
  • 02:09:25
    And so we did not get a redlining map as a city, and I'll talk a little bit more about that, but we don't have a comprehensive way at this point to really pinpoint exactly how widespread and how granular all of
  • 02:09:38
    We did so initially by grabbing 150,000 pages of property records from the city's clerk's office, and so they were kind enough to make those accessible.
  • 02:09:47
    Those span from 1888, when the city incorporates, to 1968, when the Fair Housing Act is enacted.
  • 02:10:09
    And so it is a wide range of material.
  • 02:10:13
    And before I get too far ahead, we can do the next slide and talk a little bit about what racist covenants are.
  • 02:10:21
    So each deed, I imagine that you are familiar with this.
  • 02:10:25
    It's basically a bill of sale.
  • 02:10:26
    It's a receipt.
  • 02:10:27
    So it's a who, what, where, how much essentially of a property.
  • 02:10:31
    and within that are those details, those kind of mundane details of when was this deed made and when was the sale of a property made.
  • 02:10:40
    But also containing within that starting in about 1897 here in Charlottesville were racist covenants that dictated no one other than Caucasian race shall own or occupy a home.
  • 02:10:53
    And so this is not unique to Charlottesville.
  • 02:10:54
    They happen all over the country from Minneapolis to Portland to Austin to New York
  • 02:11:01
    They were widespread, and if you've ever read or listened to Richard Rothstein, they are probably the biggest red herring in terms of not being able to fully grasp the extent to which racist policy was enacted that had
  • 02:11:17
    Far reaching and in many instances catastrophic effects when it came to disallowing African Americans and black people from access to capital, access to generational wealth, and access to almost every beneficial life outcome.
  • 02:11:35
    And so in our attempts, we are identifying all of these racist covenants by running them through a process of what's called optical character recognition, which allows us to pinpoint exactly where these covenants are.
  • 02:11:48
    And if you hit to the next slide.
  • 02:11:52
    This is really laying the groundwork for connecting other dots.
  • 02:11:58
    So with this base map, with this template of where racism occurred on a policy level geospatially, so geographically, we can then start to put together the other dots.
  • 02:12:09
    And some of those have been really made
  • 02:12:12
    quite plain and public by the work of Rich Schuyler, who through a series of orange dot reports, not only catalog exactly how much it costs to survive in Charlottesville, what is the standard of living in terms of what it takes to earn an income of that level, but also how many people are not making that.
  • 02:12:31
    So one in four, about 25%.
  • 02:12:34
    And then that information, if you take it and apply it to a map of where are those people living,
  • 02:12:39
    where are those one in four residents in Charlottesville is the work of Raj Chetty.
  • 02:12:45
    And so he's a Harvard economist who created something called the Opportunity Atlas, which takes all of the census data that's available and applies it to census tract level.
  • 02:12:56
    So I highly encourage if you haven't yet tried to
  • 02:12:59
    find some time and explore that because it's really amazing you can you can find everything from you know marriage and divorce rates to what you're looking at right now is median income household income rates and of course you you can toggle on and off gender you can toggle on and off race and what it's doing so while it's called the opportunity atlas is saying that
  • 02:13:20
    If nothing changes, if the status quo is maintained, this will be the future of our children.
  • 02:13:25
    This will be the future of people who are growing up right now in these neighborhoods.

12. Mapping Cville  Update

REP_MappingCvilleReport
• • SPEAKER_22
  • 02:13:30
    And he's saying without a doubt that is predictable.
  • 02:13:33
    And he takes this apart a little bit further looking at income mobility and that Charlottesville is one of the cities that he has studied.
  • 02:13:41
    finding that it has a relatively stagnant income mobility, meaning that if you're born into poverty, the chances are very slim that you will find your way out of poverty.
  • 02:13:50
    And again, attaching that to where one lives.
  • 02:13:54
    So he has found that the number one predictor of life outcomes is really where you live, so your environment.
  • 02:14:00
    And the next slide starts to show that in Charlottesville.
  • 02:14:05
    You know, we're looking at a whole variety of life outcomes.
  • 02:14:08
    I'll just give you a couple.
  • 02:14:09
    But this is life expectancy, and it's divided by census tract.
  • 02:14:13
    And for these two census tracts towards the bottom with the highest life expectancy, you see that in those neighborhoods going back as much as 80 years to their formation, you have racist covenants attached.
  • 02:14:25
    And so for the first 80 years of their development up until 1968, there was exclusively available only to white residents.
  • 02:14:32
    and largely those neighborhoods have not desegregated as we know and yet the life expectancy is six, seven years higher than those two neighborhoods I've circled above it.
  • 02:14:42
    That's Orangedale and South First Street and those are historically and primarily black neighborhoods right now.
  • 02:14:49
    And so you see that this has very real ramifications, not just in the kind of, you know, historical civil rights, racial justice aspect, but also in terms of what actually happens to people in life.
  • 02:15:02
    The next slide, please, Brian, looks at something that Jeff Fogel has collected over a number of years, which is the rate at which police stop and frisk people.
  • 02:15:13
    And there are two time periods.
  • 02:15:16
    partnered through Vinegar Hill Magazine and Charlottesville Tomorrow.
  • 02:15:19
    We partnered with the UVA Equity Center to really analyze this data and look at it geospatially.
  • 02:15:24
    So I am happy to share links directly to that if you haven't seen it already.
  • 02:15:28
    But one of the things that immediately popped out was over these same time periods, the rate at which police were stopping and frisking individuals in neighborhoods
  • 02:15:38
    and then when you break those down into historically black neighborhoods and or exclusively discriminatorily white neighborhoods as made possible through racist covenants, you see that over the same time period there were three interactions with police officers as there were several dozen in a black neighborhood.
  • 02:15:56
    So that this reality is very much one of geographic proportions as well that where you live again determines what happens to you on a daily basis.
  • 02:16:07
    And for the next slide, you know, redlining, you know, there's a tendency to kind of use these terms interchangeably.
  • 02:16:15
    So people say, you know, with the Mapping Sebo project, you're studying redlining.
  • 02:16:19
    And, you know, inadvertently, that's correct.
  • 02:16:21
    But logistically, they're very different.
  • 02:16:24
    So redlining was a process that was really shepherded in through the federal government and the Home Owners Loan Corporation.
  • 02:16:31
    in which in the 1930s and 1940s this corporation, this entity, ascribed letter grades and corresponding colors to the risk level that it deemed if a mortgage was made to a resident in a neighborhood, the risk level that that mortgage would not be paid back.
  • 02:16:48
    and so a green being the highest that means there was no risk that was very likely that return on an investment would be made and then d the lowest and that was deemed as a color red and that was the most it was called hazardous and so
  • 02:17:03
    Redlining almost exclusively throughout the country happened to all black neighborhoods.
  • 02:17:10
    And that this was a way that the government was able to enact racist policy on a sweeping scale saying we will only back federally subsidized mortgages and federally secure mortgages to those neighborhoods that have high letter and high ranking grades.
  • 02:17:26
    And so this practice of redlining was really, really, really harmful, no doubt about it.
  • 02:17:32
    But how do you tell where that harm actually was in Charlottesville if we never got a redlining map?
  • 02:17:38
    And we did not, because we were not of a significant size population-wise to warrant that map.
  • 02:17:44
    So while cities like Norfolk and Roanoke, Richmond, Lynchburg, these cities were more populous and did get redlining maps, they can then take that map and apply these disproportionate disparate life outcomes that we're now seeing.
  • 02:17:58
    And I'm sure you all saw, I think NPR was the one to release this correlatory effect of tree canopy, right, or a heat index.
  • 02:18:06
    This correlation was made fairly recently looking at how that lined up over the redlining map.
  • 02:18:12
    And so this is a project run out of the University of Richmond called Mapping Inequality that does a tremendous amount.
  • 02:18:17
    They actually just released a whole new host of correlatory effects, lining up different life outcomes with these redlining maps.
  • 02:18:26
    So that's a tremendous resource for people trying to understand where these legacies still exist today, but we don't have this.
  • 02:18:33
    And so what we are doing is attempting to create this same map
  • 02:18:39
    on a granular and block by block basis, house by house really basis here in Charlottesville and in the surrounding county.
  • 02:18:45
    And for the next slide, please.
  • 02:18:49
    So this means, as I said, 152,000 pages of property records, we've digitized them, we've scanned them through OCR, and if you hit to the next slide, that means that we need people's help.
  • 02:19:00
    And so what we did is taking a cue from Mapping Prejudice, which is a similar effort in Minneapolis,
  • 02:19:06
    So it should be noted we're the third city in America to ever take this on, Minneapolis being the first, Washington D.C.
  • 02:19:11
    the second, and we the third.
  • 02:19:13
    And so they gave us a tremendous amount of insight and have really helped us along.
  • 02:19:17
    And they suggested this crowdsourced website called Zooniverse, where we upload all of those deeds that have racist covenants in them and pose a series of questions on the right.
  • 02:19:27
    And using that information that people insert into those question boxes, the answers of when was this deed made, how much did somebody pay for it, what is the racist covenant language, these sorts of things, we get a spreadsheet on the back end.
  • 02:19:39
    And as you see to my right, we start to map those, so we apply a spatial ID to all of that information.
  • 02:19:48
    There will be a virtual map, and there is a virtual map, it just hasn't been made public yet, but at the end of this there will be a virtual map and digital map that you'll be able to click on a property and have all of this information.
  • 02:19:57
    Who owned it, who bought it, how much did they pay, what is the racist covenant?
  • 02:20:02
    All of these sorts of details will be interactive through that map.
  • 02:20:07
    And for the next slide, please.
  • 02:20:10
    So we recently finished editing and uploading the last of the city's deeds, actually just yesterday.
  • 02:20:17
    And so this means that we've searched through 53 years worth of deeds and found a total of 2021 deeds that had racist covenants in it.
  • 02:20:25
    Now, two caveats.
  • 02:20:27
    One, this does not include the county.
  • 02:20:28
    And as you well know, through the process of annexation, much of what we consider now the city did exist in the county.
  • 02:20:35
    And so we need to go through the entirety of the county's records to say without a doubt, this is how many covenants, racist covenants exist in the city.
  • 02:20:43
    So it should be noted that there
  • 02:20:45
    probably on the average of probably another 1,000 to maybe 2,000 more covenants in addition to this.
  • 02:20:52
    And so the other caveat is that some of these are reselling of properties.
  • 02:20:57
    So we have not accounted yet for the resale of a particular deed.
  • 02:21:01
    So some of these were counting a deed twice.
  • 02:21:04
    And that's really key in that we can then measure generational wealth and how much a property was initially sold for
  • 02:21:11
    Covenant is attached, and then how much it's then resold for.
  • 02:21:14
    And that is quite literally how generational wealth was accumulated for much of the country, including in Charlottesville and in Albemarle County.
  • 02:21:23
    So that means we've reviewed about nearly 1,600 deeds, and we review them three, on average, about three different times so that we allow for human mistakes and human, kind of the law of human averages.
  • 02:21:36
    And so that means that we've done about 5,000 separate classifications, and we're about 79% of the way through reviewing the entirety of those deeds.
  • 02:21:46
    We're a little bit, you know, much further behind in terms of actually then mapping them, but that means that we have detailed information on about 79% of the deeds that we've found so far.
  • 02:21:56
    And for the next slide.
  • 02:21:58
    The way we've been able to do that is to really engage with people.
  • 02:22:02
    So this is all pre-COVID of course, but we have at least 500 people have logged at least one deed and more than 250 people have logged more than one.
  • 02:22:12
    Sometimes people are doing this every single day.
  • 02:22:16
    Sometimes it's a one-off.
  • 02:22:17
    We have given talks to the library system, to the Human Rights Commission, to the National Radio Astronomical Observatory, to CHS, the Village School, Murray High School, to Belmont North Downtown and Greenbrier Neighborhood Associations, to CLIC, to the Central Virginia Historical Researchers.
  • 02:22:36
    The list goes on.
  • 02:22:37
    Quaker Meeting House, Christ Episcopal, UVA Pediatricians.
  • 02:22:40
    You name it, we have tried to get this information into people's hands so that they can not only learn it,
  • 02:22:45
    but then have an action item attached to it so they can say, okay, what are you going to do about it?
  • 02:22:49
    Well, here's something that you can do.
  • 02:22:52
    Recently, we also had 120 undergraduate students through Professor Andrew Carl's class in the history department.
  • 02:22:58
    He's also a member of the Woodson Institute there.
  • 02:23:02
    And they logged two hours each in going through these deeds.
  • 02:23:07
    And for the next slide.
  • 02:23:08
    We also did workshops.
  • 02:23:11
    And so we held some in-person ones here at the Heritage Center before
  • 02:23:16
    We have done several through virtual means as well but we got mostly adults in that setting and so what we decided to do was take it into classrooms not just as talking but to really engage and so working with five
  • 02:23:32
    11th grade English teachers at CHS, my alma mater, they said, you know what, we're reading A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, which I don't know the last time you have read that, but it deals heavily with the discriminatory housing market in Chicago and looking at the legacy of, or kind of the, yeah, the legacy of wealth garnish through home ownership, through the lens of a family in Chicago.
  • 02:23:56
    And so as they're learning this, as part of their curriculum, as part of their standards of learning, we said, well, let's pair it with something that is exactly that but in their backyard.
  • 02:24:05
    And so here is how all of this stuff that you're reading about really plays out literally in the streets that you know and with some of the potential families and people that you know as well.
  • 02:24:15
    So just some of the feedback we got.
  • 02:24:17
    One student said, we should be going back to look at these old records to get this history right.
  • 02:24:22
    If we come together over these facts, we can create true equity here.
  • 02:24:26
    Another student said, it felt enlightening and empowering.
  • 02:24:29
    It felt like I was in the past decoding an actual document.
  • 02:24:32
    Another student said, it felt good contributing to authentic research.
  • 02:24:36
    I felt like I was a part of something bigger and better than myself.
  • 02:24:40
    When people find out what I learned today, then they'll learn a lot too.
  • 02:24:45
    For the next slide, please, Brian.
  • 02:24:47
    So this is definitely, you know, part and parcel, but really at the core of the Heritage Center's mission of education.
  • 02:24:55
    And so I think we saw that no more this summer than with the educational
  • 02:25:01
    that was a teacher training program.
  • 02:25:02
    It was called Embracing Our Narrative.
  • 02:25:04
    It was a pilot and it will be continued annually.
  • 02:25:07
    And it was conducted by Dr. Kimberly Dickerson with the support of Dr. Andrea Douglas.
  • 02:25:12
    And this was a five day, all intensive, immersive local history curriculum that stretched from the early 1700s to present day and paired real life lived experiences with academic and expertise.
  • 02:25:26
    And so, excuse me, I gotta sometimes move to make sure that they still know I'm alive here.
  • 02:25:32
    And with that program, teachers can then take it into their classrooms.
  • 02:25:36
    This is meant to be part of the curriculum that they then are able to weave for their students, but more importantly, it's meant to be a way for them to understand the students that they're teaching.
  • 02:25:46
    And so, it's oftentimes the case that teachers in our classrooms are not from here, and yet we expect them to know this breadth of history without any blinking an eye and be able to conduct themselves accordingly.
  • 02:25:59
    But I think that's a tall order,
  • 02:26:01
    and so do they.
  • 02:26:02
    And so they have asked for this educational experience and it's one that we expect to grow.
  • 02:26:08
    This first cohort was about 20 teachers and that was in the middle of a pandemic and so we expect that to grow as we get more in person.
  • 02:26:17
    And for the next slide please.
  • 02:26:19
    So the other way that we reach out is through digital means, and we've had about 16,000 views on our website from about 6,000 visitors, unique visitors, and that they are reading these properties, that as we map certain neighborhoods, we are writing up blogs about each neighborhood.
  • 02:26:39
    giving people a long history of you know back to the Monacan nation all the way to today looking at the grants you know the whole scope of where do these covenants fit into that arc of history we have also released several two-minute long videos looking at the progression of these of these covenants and we will continue to do so as we map them
  • 02:26:58
    To date, we've mapped about 17% of the properties that have covenants attached to them.
  • 02:27:04
    So we have about 83% left to go, but I expect that to go pretty quickly now that we've gotten all of these done.
  • 02:27:11
    And for the next slide.
  • 02:27:14
    So the other component to this, once we get the covenant base layer, we're looking at infrastructure.
  • 02:27:18
    We know historically and anecdotally that through the work of Karen Waters Wicks and many other public historians that this is indeed not an anomaly, these articles.
  • 02:27:28
    And these articles are citing instances where historically black neighborhoods have been denied access to water lines, sewer lines.
  • 02:27:57
    and analyzes all of the petitions that we found in the city council minute books and breaks them out by type, by eventuality, what happened to them, and then we can tag them with spatial IDs again to show you the evolution of water lines over the course of time and show that in relationship to property values, right, so that what happens to your property if you get a water line in your neighborhood as they go up or down in value.
  • 02:28:21
    I think we all have a hypothesis, but this really allows us to see that play out.
  • 02:28:30
    And I've only got two more.
  • 02:28:31
    So the other thing that's been really, really amazing is looking at how this has played out through the role of banks.
  • 02:28:38
    So as I mentioned, we do not have a redlining map, which means that tracing the financial racist history of these policies is a tall order, let alone almost an impossible one.
  • 02:28:49
    But now through this OCR recognized deeds that we're able to dive into the role of the banks.
  • 02:28:56
    And this is something that Richard Rothstein, the author of Color of Law, has really pointed out as being really key to making any sort of reparative and structural changes going forward.
  • 02:29:08
    That those who profited from these policies will need to step up and not only acknowledge, but perhaps even take steps to repair the ways in which they have profited and extorted those who were at the affect of that.
  • 02:29:23
    And so we can not only trace the history of the banks, but we have the ability to trace the history of the federal government through the Federal Housing Administration.
  • 02:29:32
    And you start to see that in the 1950s when homeowners here in Charlottesville are actually asking to remove these covenants from their deeds for some clearly stated reasons that they cannot
  • 02:29:45
    except they cannot get federal financial backing for loans if they still have a covenant in their deed.
  • 02:29:51
    And of course, this comes a couple years after the Buchanan v. Worley Supreme Court decision, which makes the federal involvement in racist covenants illegal.
  • 02:30:00
    So for the next slide, we have started to see and imagine to see much, much more as we continue to go through this, the ways in which black families resisted and then broke
  • 02:30:12
    these racist covenants here.
  • 02:30:13
    And so that was through lawsuits, it was also through neighborhood petitions, and really community organizing at its finest.
  • 02:30:21
    And so through the help of many community members, we have started to compile this.
  • 02:30:27
    This will all live in an exhibit here at the Heritage Center, and so it'll be both digitally accessible as well as physically accessible, but
  • 02:30:34
    These are ways in which neighbors individually but also as collective as neighborhoods said we do not want these deeds and they Expunged them.
  • 02:30:45
    They took them out of their deeds what was missing and what is still missing is any sort of policy or financial backing to Ensure that these neighborhoods were then desegregated
  • 02:30:57
    and so that while legally there was no longer possible to segregate, as we'll see in a minute, it became racist and discriminatory by different means.
  • 02:31:08
    And the next slide.
  • 02:31:11
    As a state, we passed a bill, H788, this past General Assembly session that allows for property owners to actually remove these covenants from their deeds with no cost to themselves.
  • 02:31:25
    before you could do so, but it would actually cost you money.
  • 02:31:27
    And this is a way to do that.
  • 02:31:30
    I would argue and several others throughout the state also feel this way in Fairfax, Arlington, Richmond, that this process is a step, but it's also just checking a box.
  • 02:31:41
    and that you need to really make repair and to really start to translate this into future policy.
  • 02:31:49
    You need to do the work that we're doing here in terms of making this process of cataloging the entirety of racist covenants and then showing
  • 02:31:59
    where their effect still exists today, you need to make that possible.
  • 02:32:03
    And so we're working on a template, a blueprint, if you will, of how to do this city by city, the different types of records that exist in courts and the ways in which you can access them and the hurdles that you may face along the way.
  • 02:32:17
    And so really making kind of the cliff notes and a guide for municipalities and hoping to get state backing with that.
  • 02:32:24
    And then the next slide, please.
  • 02:32:27
    So the next steps for us are looking at, you know, once this map starts to take form, to look at how this translates for the comprehensive plan and the affordable housing strategy and the zoning strategy.
  • 02:32:39
    So this is something we know exists, at least in part.
  • 02:32:44
    And so now we're finally getting an opportunity to see its entirety.
  • 02:32:47
    So we know that R1 or single-family zoning was coupled.
  • 02:32:51
    Here you see an instance where right next to one another was the racist covenant and the single-family designation.
  • 02:33:00
    And so as we start to overlay single family, the single family zoning is of course that yellow right there when we overlay the covenants as they existed.
  • 02:33:08
    You see that transition from 1968 into the 1970s and today where that zoning designation is taking up the baton of that explicitly racist mechanism of a covenant.
  • 02:33:20
    and moving it forward and saying this is the way that we will restrict who lives here.
  • 02:33:25
    And of course you see this throughout the country.
  • 02:33:27
    Minneapolis I think most recently with this comprehensive 2040 plan is looking at how do we take apart this in a way that then incentivizes affordable housing in these neighborhoods.
  • 02:33:39
    And so that is something I'm talking with CLIC, the Charlottesville Low Income Housing Coalition, and strategizing with them about as well as with the comprehensive planning folks.
  • 02:33:48
    And so one more slide.
  • 02:33:51
    We also got a grant through the National Trust for Historic Preservation, thanks to the help of Niya Bates and Dr. Andrew Douglas, to take this to the next level and start looking at historically black properties.
  • 02:34:05
    That covers a whole host of ground and it also lays the opportunity to really build that next generation of black public historians here at the Heritage Center so that they will have this catalog of material to then make connections that we never dreamed possible.
  • 02:34:24
    But for instance, one of the things that we just recently discovered and put together was where the property for the expansion of the Jefferson School came from.
  • 02:34:32
    And we had anecdotally had known this, but we never had the property records to actually fill out some of those details.
  • 02:34:38
    And so we see here that through both the Johnson family and the Jackson family, that their property was used and deeded to the city school board to then use and expand the Jefferson School.
  • 02:34:50
    We are also arming black residents with their chain of title for their homes so that they can understand the history and the legacy that their homes now carry with them and empower them to take steps towards preservation status and or whatever that next step really is for them.
  • 02:35:08
    And then the last step, or I should say the last two steps are really building this into exhibition here.
  • 02:35:15
    So those hallways are where the exhibition will live.
  • 02:35:17
    It'll be a giant digital display wall.
  • 02:35:19
    it'll have pre-constructed narratives but also kind of a choose your own adventure feature where you're able to connect the dots and see all of these different aspects that we're talking about in a very clear and coherent way and then finally you know there are 150,000 pages of property records at Albemarle County and so we have those thanks to an agreement with County Clerk John Zug and we are planning to go through them and that is really what the bulk of 2021 will entail
  • 02:35:43
    is going through those.
  • 02:35:44
    And working with Siri Russell, the Director of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion there to make sure that this is as community engaged as the city process has been here.
  • 02:35:54
    So I know I'm well over my time and I thank you for your patience.
  • 02:35:57
    I know it's late, but I'm happy to answer any questions either here or over email.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 02:36:07
    Thank you.
  • 02:36:08
    Counselors, any questions?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 02:36:11
    That question was just a comment.
  • 02:36:11
    I mean, you've come and presented before and I'm just continue to be just amazed at the tremendous effort that has come forward and how many folks that you've been able to engage in this process.
  • 02:36:21
    And I think that just makes it so unique and so special is just the engagement approach and letting the community participate in this way.
  • 02:36:28
    And so I'm just really looking forward to seeing how things continue to progress and understanding ways that we can continue to support your work.
• • Lloyd Snook
  • 02:36:38
    I would add that what I find particularly intriguing about this is the multiple layers of completely different kinds of data that end up getting mapped onto the same map.
  • 02:36:54
    over and over and over and overlays and things like that.
  • 02:36:57
    I find myself in awe in part of the statistical abilities that went into it and in part to the imagination that it took to put all of that together into one place.
  • 02:37:14
    So I'm fascinated.
• • SPEAKER_19
  • 02:37:15
    Thank you.
  • 02:37:20
    It's really great work and I'm really glad it's being done here.
• • SPEAKER_28
  • 02:37:26
    Likewise, and I never realized that only three localities in the entire country had begun this process.
  • 02:37:32
    And it really underlines for me, for us as a council, in our comprehensive plan, our strategic plan, our housing strategy, our zoning, how do we incorporate this into us taking action in community wealth building and upending this?
  • 02:37:44
    And I think that's really, that's a challenge for us that we have to take on and not just be satisfied with checking boxes, but really dig into that work and do it.
  • 02:37:54
    Again, thank you.
• • SPEAKER_22
  • 02:37:56
    Great, thanks.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 02:38:00
    Yeah, thanks and that's my main interest and not just that you all are doing this research and we have something to access but what is the reparation aspect of this and how do we
  • 02:38:19
    Not only learn from it, but repair some or all of the damage that has been done.
  • 02:38:29
    And that's the link that I'm most interested in building.
  • 02:38:39
    So Mr. Blair, is there a comment?
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 02:38:44
    If you would indulge me, I just had one question, which was, what's the most surprising aspect of your research so far, if you don't mind sharing?
  • 02:38:55
    Has there been anything that really just shocked you?
• • SPEAKER_22
  • 02:39:01
    I think just the breadth of it, the widespreadness.
  • 02:39:04
    We knew that these covenants were here.
  • 02:39:07
    But as you see, we've mapped from 1903 to 1933 so far.
  • 02:39:12
    And you just see the evolution of it.
  • 02:39:14
    And I think it'll be interesting to start.
  • 02:39:18
    One component of this is to talk to families whose descendants are still alive and with us today, but who
  • 02:39:26
    We've all experienced either the discriminatory side of this or for whom this was their first home and what did this allow them then to do in terms of how did it affect their healthcare, their education, their financial and generational wealth status.
  • 02:39:44
    But in terms of surprises, the things that we didn't really know were these elements of protest.
  • 02:39:52
    And I think that's really key in, again, lending that agency to
  • 02:40:00
    a story that we knew was there, but we've never really had the details to put, you know, to give voice to it in ways that, you know, because that generation is no longer alive, that many of those people who were involved in those protests have passed on.
  • 02:40:16
    And so through these records that we're able to start to, again, tell that story and, again, through generational kind of descendancy work, I think that that's where that will start to come to life, working with Lorenzo Dickerson and other filmmakers locally, storytellers.
  • 02:40:30
    So those are, yeah, the breadth of it I think is probably the biggest surprise that how widespread.
  • 02:40:36
    You know, other surprises are just the role of the university.
  • 02:40:39
    You know, the university would occasionally act as financier or backer, you know, financial backing for massive developments in properties.
  • 02:40:48
    And again, we kind of know that intuitively that it's of course that would be the case.
  • 02:40:52
    It's a major
  • 02:40:53
    one of the major institutions here.
  • 02:40:55
    But just to see it and to have it come to life on the paper that's just indisputable is a whole other thing.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 02:41:06
    Do we know the difference in life expectancy from Black families who were able to maybe through that organizing
  • 02:41:19
    end up with homes and locations that they may not have in the past to families in the area who were not, maybe still lived in like the public housing community.
  • 02:41:33
    It's not something I've seen, but that's something you said just made me think of that.
• • SPEAKER_22
  • 02:41:39
    Yeah, no, I haven't seen that exact data, Mayor Walker.
  • 02:41:42
    I think that, I know there have been several attempts to try to collect that level of data, so both from the health department side, but also from the UVA and Martha Jefferson Hospital side.
  • 02:41:53
    For obvious reasons, it's pretty safe, it's pretty well guarded in terms of, you know, it has to be disaggregated, it has to be depersonalized, and so that the OSHA rules are not violated.
  • 02:42:05
    And, you know, so you can,
  • 02:42:08
    You can kind of get to a certain age of that data.
  • 02:42:11
    And I know that there are several folks that I'm happy to share with you that are doing that work of trying to piece that together.
  • 02:42:19
    But it's taken several years to get to this point.
  • 02:42:23
    And so it's not easy.
  • 02:42:26
    But I think that data is there into a variety of levels.
  • 02:42:29
    I think that when you go as far back as like tuberculosis rates, there certainly is that data.
  • 02:42:35
    There's other data similar to that as well.
  • 02:42:39
    And I don't know how granular it is block by block or house by house, but certainly in different neighborhoods that it's pinpointable is my understanding.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 02:42:55
    All right, any other questions or comments?
  • 02:43:00
    Well, thank you for providing this update and just a reminder for us and the community that this research exists and that there's a role for the community to play in this in 2021 to help continue mapping this.
• • SPEAKER_22
  • 02:43:24
    Thank you all.
  • 02:43:25
    I appreciate your support.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 02:43:32
    I guess that's one thing that we brought up but didn't ask.
  • 02:43:34
    Was there any support that was needed from the city for this to continue or is it well funded and are you all feeling confident that you're able to continue?
• • SPEAKER_22
  • 02:43:49
    I would defer to Dr. Douglas on that, but we are still operating on the seed money that the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation provided for us, however long ago that was, two years maybe, through the HEAL Fund.
  • 02:44:05
    About half of that $25,000 has been reserved for the installation of the exhibit.
  • 02:44:10
    And so all of this work has been done with probably about $10,000 to $15,000 over the last two years helping to support the various folks that are contributing to the project.
  • 02:44:24
    and so we are nearing the end of that and we'll need more and so where that comes from we're not sure.
  • 02:44:30
    You know as I mentioned we got the Saving Places grant through the National Trust and that'll cover that other iteration but that is strictly dealing with African-American properties so not looking at this covenant mapping process per se.
  • 02:44:43
    So we are in the always in the state of perpetual grant writing and trying to figure out where
  • 02:44:49
    where we can get that next grant from.
  • 02:44:51
    So I know money is tight for the city, though.
  • 02:44:53
    So I've been trying to avoid coming to you to ask for funding, because there are other far more important things you can spend it on.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 02:45:00
    All right, thank you.
  • 02:45:06
    It's good to know.
  • 02:45:07
    And we all heard, so it's something that we can keep on our list.
  • 02:45:15
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_24
  • 02:45:16
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 02:45:23
    OK.
  • 02:45:23
    Is there any other business?
• • SPEAKER_28
  • 02:45:28
    Vote tomorrow if you haven't.
• • SPEAKER_19
  • 02:45:33
    That's what I was going to say.
  • 02:45:34
    I was going to say it, too.
  • 02:45:35
    All right.
  • 02:45:36
    I think we're all going to say it.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 02:45:38
    Go vote if you haven't.
  • 02:45:39
    Polls are open 6 AM till 7 PM in the city, regular polling locations.
  • 02:45:48
    And so many people have voted in advance, it may not be crazy.
  • 02:45:50
    We'll see.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 02:45:55
    Okay.
  • 02:45:58
    Next, turn it over to Mr. Wheeler for our Matters by the Public.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 02:46:05
    So we're at the end of the meeting under Matters by the Public.
  • 02:46:07
    If you want to make a comment to council, you can have up to three minutes.
  • 02:46:11
    Click the raise hand icon in the Zoom webinar.
  • 02:46:15
    If you're on via telephone, you can press star nine.
  • 02:46:17
    And if you're watching on Facebook or another channel, you can join the webinar at Charlottesville.gov slash Zoom.
  • 02:46:25
    First up is Brandon Collins.
  • 02:46:28
    Brandon, you're on the city council.
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 02:46:30
    Thank you.
  • 02:46:31
    Good evening, city council.
  • 02:46:32
    I know you're ready to go to bed on an early night for y'all.
  • 02:46:36
    I wasn't actually going to speak, but watching Jordy's presentation, I just figured I would throw in a couple of things.
  • 02:46:44
    I think the work that Mapping Seaville has done is some of the most important stuff for the city council to consider.
  • 02:46:51
    And I really urge you to dig in even more into that effort.
  • 02:46:58
    because I think even though the work isn't completed, it's an indictment of Charlottesville.
  • 02:47:05
    It's an indictment of a whole lot of systems in Charlottesville, and I think it really throws in the lap of city council in particular a mandate
  • 02:47:19
    to make reparations, to make amends and make change for this.
  • 02:47:24
    Because really what he's doing by looking at the past is really presenting a measurement for the present.
  • 02:47:31
    And based on that measurement, you can set goals and objectives.
  • 02:47:34
    And as you look at the strategic plan, look at the affordable housing strategy, you can find ways to get around racial covenants and their lasting impact through zoning and various other things.
  • 02:47:48
    And I think if you take seriously the idea that you have to affirmatively take steps
  • 02:47:56
    to right the ship for all the wrongs that have happened.
  • 02:48:00
    This information really needs to guide you towards that and I just really, I'm excited, I'm really glad to have seen that presentation for you all this evening.
  • 02:48:10
    Excited to see all the history on your agenda tonight.
  • 02:48:14
    These are things that really are in your lap and I think this time in history for this city is the time to
  • 02:48:20
    take those things as more than just interesting data, but things that you have a responsibility to act on.
  • 02:48:26
    And so I really encourage you to do that.
  • 02:48:28
    And that's all I got.
  • 02:48:31
    Have a wonderful Tuesday.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 02:48:32
    Thank you.
  • 02:48:35
    And last call for any additional folks who want to address council.
  • 02:48:48
    Mayor Walker, there are no other hands raised.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 02:48:52
    All right, thank you, Mr. Wheeler.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 02:48:53
    You're welcome.
  • 02:48:56
    Well, 919.
  • 02:48:56
    Good evening, meeting adjourned.
  • 02:48:58
    Good evening.
  • 02:48:59
    Good night.
  • 02:48:59
    Good night.
  • 02:49:00
    Vote.

13. OTHER BUSINESS

14. MATTERS BY THE PUBLIC