City Council Meeting   10/21/2019

Music playing

Good evening.

Ms. Hill?

Here.

Ms. Walker?

Present.

Mr. Signer?

Here.

All right, any announcements?

I have an announcement.

The City of Charlottesville Boards and Commissions application process is open for appointments to be considered at the November 18th, 2019 City Council meeting.

Information regarding vacancies is available on the city website under Departments and Services, Boards and Commissions.

Thank you.

I have an announcement, Mayor Walker.

Good evening, everybody.

Should have a fun meeting tonight.

This announcement is from Ms. Charlene Green on behalf of the NAACP.

At 1 PM this Wednesday, there will be a brief unveiling of the latest historic marker addressing school desegregation to be placed near the school's interest on Cherry Avenue.

And this will be taking place at Buford.

Afterwards, the ceremony will begin at 1.30 PM in the school auditorium honoring the trailblazers who were part of the school's desegregation.

This effort was led in part by then NAACP President Eugene Williams and his wife Lorraine, who at that time rather was a teacher in the city schools.

You must park at the Cherry Avenue Baptist Church and a jaunt shuttle will take you to Johnson.

1pm, and again this took place 1pm in front of Johnson Elementary this Wednesday, October 23rd.

Forgive me, I said Buford, I meant to say Johnson Elementary.

So again, this Wednesday, 1pm, there will be an historic marker unveiling.

The ceremony will begin at 1.30 and this is to commemorate the desegregations of our schools jointly led by Mr. Eugene Williams and his wife Lorraine.

Hope to see you there.

Mayor Walker, I have a few announcements.

Okay, so this is an RFP, a request for proposal notice for 2020-2021 CDBG and home proposals.

The City of Charlottesville will be accepting proposals for 2020 CDBG, that's Community Development Block Grants, and home funding beginning October 25, 2019 and ending at 4 p.m. on December 3, 2019.

Projects will support a viable urban community through the provision of decent housing,

a suitable living environment and economic opportunity for low and moderate income citizens.

Beginning October 25, 2019, the RFP and related documents can be found on the city's website at www.Charlottesville.org slash CDBGHOMERFP.

All one word, all caps.

Online submission is required.

There is a mandatory technical assistance session with this.

The city will require all applicants to schedule and attend a 30 minute mandatory technical assistance session with the grants coordinator.

The meeting must be held between October 25, 2019 and November 29, 2019 and prior to this proposal submissions.

To schedule a technical assistance session or for questions concerning the RFP, contact Erin ATAC, Grants Coordinator at ATAC at Charlottesville.org.

That's A-T-A-K-E at Charlottesville.org or call 434-970-3093.

Can you repeat that number again?

Thank you.

So I'm sorry, one point I failed to mention, Dr. Richardson is at a conference this week and our deputy city manager, COO, Ms. Leticia Shelton is here today.

One little teeny one.

It was in the newspaper, but

through a partnership with the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority and this is the Virginia Oyster Shell Recycling and Restoration Program.

We've created an opportunity to have a bin at the McIntire Recycling so that restaurants can actually put their oysters in for recycling and the beauty of that is that they then create

um... beds for the the seating of new baby oysters and that's they're critically important to to cleanse the Chesapeake Bay uh... it's very important that we do that and it's wonderful partnership that this came up and uh... their space so in a lot of area restaurants are are using that facility and and i know people love oysters around here so uh... just wanna let you know the the ribbon cutting for this

New aspect of the McIntire Recycling Center is Wednesday, October 23 at 11 a.m. at the McIntire Recycling Center on McIntire Road.

Thank you.

Sorry, Mayor Walker.

I have one more.

I apologize.

This comes from our friends at Sembereres as well as our Latino and Latinx community, Seaville Sabaroso.

There's going to be a Latin Music and Folk Festival taking place at the IX Art Park on Saturday, November 2nd from 7 p.m. to midnight celebrating Dia de los Miratos

and it's a beautiful Mexican celebration where we celebrate the lives of our ancestors and loved ones who have passed on with music, dance, art and food.

Hundreds of people come out each year to celebrate with us and remember their loved ones together and the event is open to the entire public so if you want to go out and have some fun with the DJ, some great food, musicians, live music and so forth, go on out to the ICS Art Park.

November 2nd, Saturday November 2nd from 7pm to midnight and that's being hosted by Cevil Savaroso and Sam Perez.

Any other announcements?

All right.

Next we're moving on to the consent agenda.

Ms. Thomas, could you read the consent agenda, please?

Consent Agenda 1A, September 9, City-County Joint Meeting, September 12, Budget Work Session, B, Appropriation, Parks and Recreation Gift Guide Memorials Account, $3,260, first of two readings, C, Appropriation, State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, $14,230, first of two readings, D, Resolution,

accepting streets within the Sunrise Park planned unit development into the city's street system, one reading.

E, resolution, Piedmont District Baptist Association off-cycle funding request, SAT preparation course, $2,000, one reading.

F, resolution, initiation of zoning ordinance amendments, strategic investment area, form-based code, one reading.

G. Resolution, Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority's Observatory Water Treatment Plant, Raw Water Pumping and Piping Upgrade Cost, and Capacity Allocation Agreement.

One reading.

H, Ordinance, Ordinance Repealing Chapter 31, Section 31-103, Buck Mountain, Surcharge for Water Connections, first of two readings.

I, Ordinance, PEG Bandwidth, Virginia, LLC, Telecommunications Franchise, second reading.

J, Ordinance, Release of Portion of Sewer Easement, McIntire Plaza, second reading.

Is there anyone from the public who would like to speak on an item on the consent agenda after hearing it read?

Alright.

Is there a motion?

Are there any further questions or comments?

Please vote.

That's important.

Is there a motion?

All right.

So we're going to vote separately on that?

All right, please vote.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, City Council and public.

There were three items from the last council meeting that the city manager is responding to.

The first one in response to why can't family members be notified to take care of the children of mothers or fathers who are temporarily detained by our legal system.

We're having human services review.

to review the feasibility of this recommendation by the citizen at the last meeting.

In response to moving the John West Placker currently located at 10th Northwest Street and West Main Street to Hardy Drive, staff is researching the property whether Placker is currently residing to determine if it's private property.

And then the third one, the request for audio signal at Preston and Rose Hill.

All right, thank you.

Next up we have the community matters, public comment.

I had some notes that I was going to speak on, but

I'm gonna save him for a later date.

So I'm here on behalf of the CRB and for people who have lived a life that I have lived on the other side of the law doing things that's not right.

However, what I know to be true and factual is that growing up in the 10th and Page Street area neighborhoods, I was harassed, disrespected, stripped, searched, patted down, taken behind bills and stabbed, my clothes taken off to see if I had drugs.

At that particular time, at 15, 16 years old, I did not know that that stuff was not legal.

So the purpose for having something as a CRB board today is a simple question.

When I'm walking through Hardy Drive, an officer may come to me and say, hey, what are you doing here?

Right?

That question in itself is illegal, right?

But I wouldn't know that.

And then who would I complain to?

Who would have my back if I go tell somebody, hey, the officer just asked me what am I doing here?

Because I can guarantee you my friends that I went to school with at CHS that lived in and around CHS area, they never had to go through that.

They walked wherever they wanted, did whatever they wanted to do.

They never had no police interaction where they was being patted down, stripped, searched, and things of that nature.

So, if we can't have a CRB, if we can't have an auditor, I just don't see where people like me will have any recourse.

I don't see people like me having someone to have their back for people who don't have a voice.

Right?

So,

As I think about a lot of situations and then I come back to just these low income areas in Charlottesville, there's hundreds of people like me.

I know this, I have conversations with these dudes, women's, right?

I have conversations with them, but when we look out again, they don't come here because they feel that whatever they have to say, they won't be heard.

What they have to say is not essential to the changing of the guard, so to speak, in Charlottesville.

And I would hope that city council finds something where the police

don't police themselves.

The history of this town has proven, if we listen to the people, that the police have done things that are illegal.

But there is no recourse.

So what do we do?

If we continue to go the route that we've been going, we're going to always get what we've always gotten, period.

There's no way around that.

So I always like to talk about soda zones, standard designated drug zones.

They don't exist in word, but they exist in mindset.

On June 4, 2018, City Council chose a group of citizens to form a CRB, Civilian Review Board, because of the actions that took place on August 12, 2017.

From the beginning, we had some pushback from City Council when they did not choose two of the people that the citizens of Charlottesville thought would be good for the CRB.

After backlash about the two people that were denied a spot, Ms. Rosia Parker was then given a spot and Mr. Jeff Fogel was still denied a spot on the board.

The board started off with eight members and within six months, two of the members resigned.

For the next seven months, the remaining six members of the board worked countless hours doing research and even holding an eight hour meeting with NACO.

National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement to make sure we had a good understanding of how a CRB works.

Members face countless attacks on them like being threatened with legal actions, being accused of saying things that were not said, being called tokens, being disrespected when the chief of police walked out of a meeting with two CRB members, being accused

of being the reason the police were quitting the police department, I could go on and on.

The bylaws that council has presented feels like a slap in the face to the people who worked their asses to the bone to write these bylaws that would hold police accountable for their actions when they do wrong.

Do you care about what happens to the citizens of Charlottesville?

We are only asking for accountability and transparency from the police department.

We ask that you don't water the bylaws, water down the bylaws to where we might as well not have a CRB.

We ask that you do not water the bylaws.

and Ordinance down.

We ask that you put the auditor's position back into the bylaws now and not wait until December 2020.

We ask it to fully include funding for the upcoming CRB.

I would also like to ask council what happened to the funds that were left over from the initial CRB.

Ms. Gloria Beard has asked that the money left over be divided and given to the board members.

Have you considered that?

The reason people do not file complaints when something happens is because they know nothing is going to happen to the officer.

There are complaints out there.

People just don't feel safe coming forward about them.

I know

Everybody on city council knows there's a problem with our police department.

And there's too many people coming forward now letting y'all know that there's a problem in this department.

All we need is justice for everybody.

George Worthington.

George Worthington.

Hi, my name's Kim Rolla.

My name is Tanya Jackson.

I am a resident of Charlottesville and I have been a resident here for probably about 15 years.

This is my daughter Ayana Mallory.

I am nervous, I'm sorry.

I am nervous, but I do want to share my experience.

I am a single mother.

I've raised three children.

My two girls here, one Ayana, 24 years old, no criminal record.

went to a local bar slash club, witnessed an attack on a downtown mall.

She witnessed the aftermath of a person getting stabbed six times.

And they're back.

Her first reaction was to go to a person who I raised her to think that they were protecting a servant, which was a CPD officer.

We have video.

As a mother, it hurt me to see my child getting choked by a police officer, her hands around her neck.

When she came home, as an answer, I couldn't give her one.

And I still can't.

And I am emotional behind that because we all have children.

And when you want to see your child do good in this community, and then she turns to the police for help for someone else, it's a feeling that I can never explain.

And it hurts.

But as a mother, I wanted to stand up and show her that I'm strong.

And I'm going to be strong for her.

With that being said, I helped her because she didn't believe that

that anything would happen.

So I helped her file a complaint.

Once we walked in to file the complaint, she became stronger than me.

She realized that this process doesn't seem right.

When we walked in, we didn't get help.

We watched people eat their dinner as we sat there.

They didn't know who to call for us to even speak to on the complaint.

Is that correct?

She had to ask the officer, which his name was Pleasance at that time, do you want to take my name?

They had no, I mean he was going to let us leave out without even feeling as if she was a person, an identity for the complaint that she wanted to file.

I watched all that, and it do hurt.

And I wouldn't want to see anyone go through that.

So whatever this board that's supposed to be coming through, I do feel like it would help people like us.

Since this has been happening, I've been hearing more stories.

Honestly, my phone have videos coming to me.

I'm just a person, a single mom.

But people reach out to me because they feel like I'm strong for my child, and they want to tell me their story.

I do know that, you know, Brianna was, she's an adult.

So, you know, as a parent, I had to go in and just be her strength, but also teach her that you have rights.

So with that being said,

With that being said, I can honestly admit that our first encounter with another police officer, which was called personally on our phones, both of our phones, they wanted us to come in and just feel comfortable telling her story.

She became emotional in tears and anger.

She felt like, and she used the word, she felt like she was being interrogated, asked for the whole interview or whatever it was.

at that time which felt like interrogation to be stopped.

She was asked questions that didn't have anything to do with the actual complaint.

She was asking questions about a brother who has been incarcerated for the last 10 years.

So I just feel that whatever Charlottesville is trying to do, there is residents out there like myself and like my 24-year-old daughter who do not have a criminal background.

I emphasize on that because sometimes people think just because you've been in trouble before, like you don't, your story doesn't matter.

But for a person who's never been in trouble before, I want her to be heard.

I want her story to matter.

So, you know.

I'm just here just telling my story and I thank you guys for your time.

Good evening, everybody.

To keep in the theme of things, I did get a chance to get a meeting with the chief of police, but it didn't turn out too pleasant.

It turned into an interrogation on her part.

Every time I tried to speak, it was met with arrogance.

And she kept on raising her voice and raising her voice the entire time.

Oh, somebody needs this room.

We need to get out of here.

The meeting was never completed.

Mr. Richardson sat there during the meeting.

When we got up from the meeting, he apologized.

because he didn't feel I was treated right.

During that meeting, she told her sergeant to take me to the police station so I could file a formal complaint against two officers.

Yes, I was taken over there.

I was handed a complaint form, here, go fill it out, bring it back.

This was after the chief of police said that they would take a sworn statement from me and fill it out in the police station.

Here's a paper.

Fill it out.

Bring it back.

Do it yourself.

Again, I go into Mr. Richardson's office and I speak with him.

He's again apologizing.

Nothing's done.

Nothing at all.

I go back two weeks later, ask, well, what's being done about it?

Nothing.

I would like to continue this talk with the chief of police.

Well, we didn't think after the meeting that you would be willing to speak with, oh no, I want to finish this conversation.

The chief of police has done everything in her power to avoid me.

Two weeks ago during the city council meeting, she made it a point to walk in the back aisle and say hello to everybody, calling them out by name.

walked right past me.

She knows my name.

But yet do you think she said hello, kissed my whatever or anything?

No, she walked right on past me but made it a point to say hello to everybody that was around me because her ego will not allow her to do the right thing.

She needs to learn who she works for.

I've stood up here and I've said it before.

She works for the people.

And you guys need to put her in check.

And that's what this board that is being set up needs to put the police in check and the board needs to put all of them in check.

Abby Guskin, Charlottesville.

I share my time with Don Gathers.

Good evening everyone.

I too want to rise in support of a fully funded CRB.

Before I do though, I want to make reference to a vote that was taken at the last meeting where an SUP was pushed forward.

A representative of the city was allowed to speak on behalf of the developer.

A representative of the developer was allowed to speak on behalf

yet there was no input allowed from the citizens.

The process is slanted and is flawed.

If you're going to allow developers to speak that night of a vote, then the citizens should have that same opportunity.

In regards to the CRB, in his letter from the Birmingham jail, Dr. King said, oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.

The urge for freedom will come.

The mandate for the CRB was the urge for freedom from the citizens.

They were given a directive to write bylaws and they've done that.

I urge you before you throw another dime at a developer or builder that you find the money to fully fund those two spots that they request.

Please do not dismantle or destroy the work that they put in.

Let the bylaws stand as they are.

They have been reviewed legally and they are fit.

So I request that you do indeed uphold the work of the CRB.

They did what they were asked to do.

So often council will go in a different direction after a board is empaneled and not accept the recommendations that they bring forth.

Carol Fodor.

So I want to say that we the People's Coalition want City Council to fully fund the CRB and we really wanted a public hearing but with that said I'm going to cede my time to Ms.

Good afternoon.

I'm Gloria Beard.

Y'all know me.

Except Ms. Shelton may not know me.

But I'm here because when I heard that things were changed with the CRB, the one that we actually, we put our whole self into this.

We studied.

We called people from different communities, you know, like North Carolina, Fairfax.

So we really did.

And then they brought in NACo.

And nobody came because everybody, I guess, thought that we didn't want you all there.

None of the councils were there, I don't think.

That was open to the public.

It was very informative.

And it made a difference with our board, our layout and all.

And I gotta give props to Josh.

Wow, he was very good, him and Sarah.

and you know I didn't know anything and I was asked to apply for that you know to be on the board and I was chosen and I really really learned a lot and I didn't want I never been into politics and learned anything about all of this and I learned a lot and things are not fair in this city you all I've been here 46 years my kids grew up here and all of them gone because it's nothing here for black and poor people and you all know it my neighborhood has been gentrified

I don't even know half the neighbors now.

And everybody keep wanting my house.

Y'all need to keep this board the way we put it together.

Please, please.

People come to us and want help.

We can't help them.

We was just hired to make the board, the CRB, put it together.

Help these people in this town, you all.

They are trying to run us away.

The old people don't matter and our children need a chance.

We need help.

They need help.

These people, they come to support us because this is what we did was really from the heart.

I have grandchildren.

We got to think about our future, you all.

We can't keep letting this town do what they are doing to the poor and the black people.

I'm old.

I'm the oldest person on the board.

In a press release, then-Acting City Manager Mike Murphy said, quote, genuine oversight cannot be achieved in any relationship without collaboration, transparency, and integrity by all stakeholders involved, and that the City of Charlottesville and CPD have no fear of scrutiny in the form of a well-thought-out CRB.

If that was a true statement, then why did council water down the ordinance and bylaws and stray so far from the initial CRB's proposal?

If the police department, quote, has no fear of scrutiny and a well thought out board, then why remove the much necessary auditor position that analyzes data independent of the police department?

We need to be unmasking the illusion, including the illusion that police auditing themselves, that's called juking the stats.

Why propose a board with no budget, much less than funding it with at least 1% of CPD's budget, which is a national standard?

If the city is, quote, interested in transparency, why did you all carefully skirt public meeting laws when writing your proposal, and why is there no transparency in the way that the board and its director are selected?

If the city is interested in, quote, collaboration, then why gut the initial CRB's proposal without speaking with them or members of the public?

This council has asked for respect but has failed to show it to members of the public, victims of the police and the initial CRB.

The initial CRB fulfilled the mandate that was passed by this council.

It delivered the proposal that you asked for to provide true oversight and you all castrated that proposal.

Your proposal will not create accountability nor address CPD's long, vile history.

You're opening the door for another Pleasance to use chemical weapons on nonviolent protesters like he did in July 17 and then brag about defying a direct order.

You're damn right I gassed him.

It needed to be done.

You're opening the door on more transgender neighbors to go missing without real investigations.

A free pass for the police to go on strike again like they did on August 12th or to choke out Sister Ayanna.

or for another dispatcher to thank crying Nazi Chris Cantwell for his support and reply, well that's awesome, when Cantwell said that protesters should be put in a wood chipper.

We demand the public hearing to discuss the differences between the comprehensive proposal that you all asked for and was delivered by the initial CRB and the really weak one that you all had proposed last Wednesday and given us no chance to really respond to that just has a veneer of oversight.

And I also would like to paraphrase what Nikuyah Walker asked Mike Signer on August 12th.

Good evening.

I'm Andy Orban, city resident.

I have two items I'd like to comment on.

One is the CRB guidelines.

The other is the middle school reconfiguration.

So first, I do want to voice my support as well for the strong CRB and the People's Coalition requests.

It's important to have an independent board that can properly represent the community when concerns about policing arise.

Second, I'm a parent of a Walker student and a Buford student.

We really appreciate the teachers and administrators to help our kids have a positive experience.

My concern is about the current state of the school buildings and the needed funding for proposed reconfiguration in light of the recent request for a new city hall.

The schools must take top priority.

There have been years of deferred maintenance on the Walker and Buford buildings and it shows.

It sends the wrong message to the kids and staff at the schools.

The bathrooms are in bad shape.

Last year, one of the participatory budget ideas the sixth grade students presented was bathroom beautification.

The indoor air quality is very poor and there's still no playground for Walker, which is an elementary school.

Please make sure the school reconfiguration moves forward and because it is a lengthy process also make sure we keep the buildings we have in a functional and safe condition which means responding promptly to maintenance requests and having funding to fulfill them.

I'm requesting this to council and city manager because school facilities

Maintenance is done by public works and not by the schools.

Other parents have brought up concerns to the attention of the school board and things have not improved.

Hi, Kate Fraley, City resident.

I just want to point out five particular areas that the bylaws are missing.

There's no auditor.

There's no inclusion of data collection, which is necessary to examine policy issues.

The CRB should be able to change its bylaws.

There needs to be a budget.

The majority of the voting members of the CRB should be people representing the community experiencing police contact.

The selection process for the CRB members and the executive director needs to be transparent and public.

That's what I want to talk about the most.

So when the CRB wrote the bylaws, they said four people needed to be from historically disadvantaged communities that have traditionally experienced disparate policing.

Your version, uh oh, I lost my thing.

Oh well.

Your version says three.

The reason four is really important is because it's a majority of the board.

The board is seven people.

People who are experiencing disparate policing and have the most contact with the police need to be in the majority.

Nobody is going to come and expect a CRB that is not majority people who have suffered from police action.

They're just not going to come.

One of the reasons I heard that it was shrunk maybe was that there was some fear there wouldn't be enough people.

But if you don't have a majority, people aren't going to apply because they'll think it's futile.

We've already heard that people think it's futile already on the basis of what's already happened.

The other thing is about selection.

So in the resolu- sorry.

The resolution that you all, three of you, voted for said that the council seeks to answer the call for a police civilian review board that places emphasis on independence, accountability and transparency.

So the issue of selection of both the executive director and the board members needs to be transparent.

So you cut out like a whole page of ways that the CRB suggested it be transparent.

You at least need to have all the names of the applicants, their application.

and a forum.

The purpose of a forum isn't just to bombard the applicants and make them nervous.

It's to set up a relationship so that the people in the community can say to the applicants, this is what is important.

And the applicants can say to the community, I agree with those priorities.

It's the beginning of a relationship.

It's the beginning of community outreach.

So you need to make it transparent.

Walt Heinecky, 1521 Amherst Street.

I want to cede my time to Josh Bowers, who's an original member of the initial PCRB.

Just before I do that, I just want to say that the proposal that you've offered in response

Josh Bowers, City Resident, initial member of the Civilian Review Board.

First off, I just want to thank the other members of the Civilian Review Board and all of the members of the community who are with us and supporting us and helping educate us throughout the year.

People like Harold Foley and Kay Fraley who came to practically every one of our meetings.

And we all, they put a lot of time in, we put a lot of time in.

So it's extremely disappointing to see the ways in which the board has been and the model that we proposed has been neutered.

Because quite frankly, if this is what you guys wanted, you didn't need us to work on this for the past year.

This could have been done in an afternoon by cutting and pasting the most plain vanilla provisions from the majority of civilian review boards out there.

We were trained by NACOL to tailor our board proposal to the needs of this community.

All of that has been stripped away.

And it's really disappointing, because you had the chance, and you still have the chance, to build a model

Board, Model Police Oversight.

This isn't it.

It really isn't.

And the pragmatist in me is fully in favor of the notion of getting something done and seeing where that leads.

But I don't have

Much in the way of confidence that getting something done here will lead to anything more than the watered down proposal that you guys are planning to vote upon.

because in order for me to believe that, in order for other members of the public to believe that this is going to grow into if the need is there, because frankly the need is already there, the need for an auditor or expanded powers beyond reactive review as the only facet of the board's authority, in order to believe that that's where we're going, there would have had to have been a showing of good faith

on the part of the CPD, the Chief of Police, and frankly, you all.

And we haven't seen that.

You guys said you were entrusting us to build something.

We built something thoughtful, legal, and robust.

And you've turned around and put before the city something that's anything but.

I thank you for your initial trust in us.

I wish that trust extended to voting on our proposal or at most engaging in an ongoing dialogue with us about how to proceed.

Good afternoon.

I'm very upset.

Even though this has been hard for me mentally and emotionally to help to be able to create this, these bylaws and ordinance,

from being a victim here in Charlottesville with the police, not just 2017 being gassed, but years before, generational.

I mean, I'm not from here.

I'm from DC, so I know it's triple worse there than it is here.

But compared to what I've seen here these 14 years,

The city have allowed these white officers, these white men to stand up and take over Charlottesville and do what they want to do.

I've watched these police officers hurt our children, slam them, drag them, hog tie drag them.

I mean being treated like animals and not humans.

For me, as a woman, to have seven officers on me, which was uncalled for.

But nothing was done but me taking a charge of either going to jail for 24 months because of y'all's legal system.

They don't want to help the poor or the black.

And it's sad.

And y'all have all that we went through from 2017

Y'all have a chance to make something so different that this world is looking for.

Charlottesville decides a precedent to.

So it's like.

It's like everything is a joke to y'all because y'all aren't facing this and what was faced before is still getting worse for the future.

Are y'all looking for y'all's children and y'all's children's children?

Because I'd be damned if I'ma stand up here and let y'all water down anything when it comes to leaving a legacy to mine and others.

I've watched so much.

Everybody keep hollering about what was, what was then, what's now.

and this chief of police that y'all got that everybody's kissing ass to.

She's one of the worst police chiefs we have had here.

No, we haven't got on Chief Longo yet, but we are.

I didn't ask you that.

No, I'm just letting y'all know because, you know, I've read what's been out there, but we're on our way to Chief Longo too.

It's not a game.

We're not playing with nobody no more.

Enough is enough.

Enough is enough.

Like you said, unmask the illusion that illusion has been double masked.

and I'm tired.

I've been out here in these streets 14 years, no job.

Making sure that I'm the face that needs to be, being able to speak for the people that couldn't be spoken for.

April Bruh.

I'm gonna take a seat actually.

Good evening Council, or rather, everyone who has actually made it an effort to be here tonight, unlike our Sheriff and unlike our City Mayor, or I'm sorry, you're here, I'm a little bit flustered.

Yeah, City Manager, sorry, thank you.

Who didn't bother to make this meeting a priority tonight.

I stand or sit rather here before you, not as an educated white woman, you may see at first glance, but as a minority in this community, as a poor disabled veteran, I've had the misfortune to be classified as by not only our police department, but by all of our city's first responders.

I would ask that the PCRB be expanded to not only include our police department but to include all of our city first responders because it trickles down, baby.

So I find that I have not only had to act as my own advocate in situations where I've called rescue for medical conditions

But for other individuals in my depressed, poor communities that I've lived in throughout my stay here in Charlottesville, because a poor, disabled veteran, there is no place for you to live affordably in this town.

Therefore, you are restricted to only being in the ghettos of Charlottesville or having so many college roommates that you can't stand to go home.

So the biggest deficits I see in the city are victim advocates.

To have to call the police department in Charlottesville or for rescue or fire, you will become a victim of our system.

Doesn't matter what color your skin is in this city.

I've had, just recently, one of the last places I lived was over on Mason Street here in Charlottesville, in Hogwaller.

And I, anytime I saw flashing lights in my community, I had to go be a victim's advocate because I knew what was going on and what was happening to that person who simply was having a bad pain episode or something to that effect.

They are automatically classified

as drug addicts.

They're automatically classified as the scum of this city, honestly, and treated as such.

You are more likely to be thrown in jail when you call with a medical issue if you have any amount of PTSD than to actually receive services.

I know I've had that happen to me.

I have Lyme disease and extreme PTSD and unfortunately the city has done nothing but procreate the PTSD and worsen it because there is no help.

There has to absolutely be separate reporting.

I'm sorry but no citizen should have to sit under the thumb of a police officer in order to make a complaint about the police department.

that is in itself just asinine.

You put your name in their mouth and now if they hear your name, they see your name, they see you on the streets, you are automatically targeted by our police department and by our first responders as well because they're all friends.

Let's be serious.

The rescue squad, the fire department, the police department.

They're all buddy-buddy.

They all swap notes and talk about every one of these citizens that they think is scum.

So to have them report on a police officer in the police department, that person has then been made a victim.

They've been forced to further victimize themselves.

and to, even if you didn't have PTSD from the first round, they gonna make sure you have it by the end.

You're asking for self-serve justice here and that's what you're gonna get.

That's what real cities are about because they don't call the police because they know what the system has to offer.

Instead, they dole out their own justice and that's how gangs and things like that are developed.

So if you choose to not fund the PCRB,

I hate to imagine what the ramifications truly in the future will be because I can tell you what they will be.

Could you finish your thoughts?

I'm trying.

I'm sorry.

I'm trying to let you finish.

Um, I would, like I said, ask that this PCRB not only be fully funded with the advocates that were originally proposed, but be expanded to also include all of our first responders and to have additional funding provided for

for sensitivity training for all of our first responders, not just our police department.

I can't read the writing on the first name, but the last name is Scott.

Good evening city councilors and others.

My name is Leslie Harris-Scott.

I'm a city resident.

I've emailed you each a copy to the link of a child welfare study.

I did not have our new city manager's email.

And this was published in August of last year.

From the executive summary, studies throughout the U.S. have repeatedly shown that black children and their families are disproportionately represented in the child welfare system and frequently experience disparate and less favorable outcomes relative to white children and their families.

This study assesses Charlottesville's child welfare caseload for evidence of racial disproportionality.

A representation of racial groups in the child welfare system relative to their presence in the population and racial disparity, less favorable outcomes for some racial groups compared to others at multiple stages of interaction with the child welfare system.

Using administrative data on children reported to Child Protective Services from July 1st, 2014 to June 30th, 2017, referrals in new clients, post-referral decisions and foster care outcomes by race were examined.

Charlottesville DSS was interested in a study to examine and measure racial and other disparities in the child welfare caseload at points along the child welfare continuum.

The Public Interest Data Lab collaborated with CDSS to complete a PALLUS study intended to help CDSS better understand the presence and location of any differential outcomes to enable informed responses to uncovered disparities.

According to the Virginia DSS website, child welfare services in Virginia are family-focused, child-centered, and community-based with a focus on permanence for all children.

Services are intended to protect children, preserve families, and prevent further maltreatment.

The summary, data, analysis, and final thoughts of the child welfare study provide the clear message that our system is not working well here in Charlottesville and needs improvement in many areas.

Recently, Ms. Kukniyo, CDSS Director, stated that there will be a required 12 hours of cultural competency training required for staff.

This is not enough.

There is more that needs to be done.

My family continues to have a very challenging experience with Charlottesville Department of Social Services concerning my nephew who is in foster care.

My sister has multiple sclerosis and is unable to keep up with her 12 year old son who has some behavioral issues.

There was no issue of abuse and neglect.

Recently my nephew was sent all the way to Chesterfield, Virginia, which is a great hardship on my sister who no longer drives due to her illness.

as a family.

We made suggestions and given our opinions in an effort to work together in the process to have William come home.

The CDSS staff have been, is my time up?

Okay.

The CDSS staff have been

Now I consider myself a well-informed citizen and I've worked in the human services field here in Charlottesville.

I'm a native for over 28 years.

I've been truly appalled at the eye-rolling of social workers and CASA workers as well as the non-response to emails that I've sent from the director of CDSS when requesting a meeting

After our last treatment team meeting so I'm thinking if this is happening to my family then what is happening to other families involved with the system I've only spoken to a few families and I know that there that I know are connected to foster care and my findings We have a problem here in Charlottesville

with DSS and the way the families are being treated while a part of the foster care system.

I'm hoping that you will follow up on the child welfare study I sent you and this issue.

I'm willing to meet with you all.

I plan to meet with the city manager about this.

I plan to meet with the CDSS advisory board.

Anyone who wants to talk about this, we got a problem.

And I went to UVA.

I have a master's degree.

I have two bachelor's degrees.

I have been treated like nothing by the CDSS staff.

And I'm very upset.

I have one quick question.

Did you all get the email?

Kathy Galvin got it.

Yes, I'm definitely going to talk with him.

It's possible for us to potentially, not just in response, because this is a complaint that we've heard on several occasions.

They actually have a schedule.

I'm on that board.

They have a scheduled report to us that's part of their duties.

Well, they do an annual, right?

I mean, they prepare an annual on a schedule that's, I think, arranged by the city manager.

So yeah, they should

A separate, yeah, a response specifically.

Yeah, it would be here.

Michael Payne, City Resident, I just wanted to speak in support of the bylaws submitted by the initial Civilian Police Review Board and the public comments tonight just reminded me about how this has been a difficult process to get to this place, there's been conflict but the issue of policing is a systemic issue not one of personalities or individuals and systemic issues require systemic solutions and I do believe that the draft bylaws submitted by the

initial police civilian review board can be part of a structural solution.

There are three particular discrepancies that I know myself and others are concerned about.

One is the issue of in their bylaws submitted to you, the police review board had more oversight and input over internal policy changes within the police department.

That has been changed.

There's significantly fewer policies that they have oversight and input on.

Again, best practices show that that's important for changing outcomes in policing practice.

Removing the auditor position that was requested and consolidating it within an auditor position within the police department.

I do understand, you know, the reasoning behind that, but I think it's problematic in the sense that police chiefs come and go.

The culture of policing changes, individual officers change, and I believe that you're setting up institutional conflict of interest to have auditing happen within the department.

that itself is being audited.

And again, the other component of that is there may be people who are well-meaning and working on it, but if you don't have the trust of the community, they're not going to report complaints.

And I believe that if it's within the police department, you won't have full trust.

And the final piece is just, again, the issue of making sure there's a full budget and full support for the staff positions there.

I know that's something that will be worked on going forward.

But at the joint work session with Fairfax Police Review Board, they said if you're not willing to fully fund and fully support it, it's not worth doing.

And however, the process moves forward.

Again, I just want to reiterate to everyone that

Don't underestimate the gap between how much trust there is between the community and local government.

And if you don't have an outcome on these bylaws and you haven't gotten to your finished product with a process that has full buy-in, it will be impossible to function as intended, regardless of your intentions on council.

But again, I want to thank city staff, city council for the hard work they have put in, and especially thank the Initial Police Civilian Review Board, which has worked incredibly hard for no pay.

OK, so we have two available slots.

Sorry I didn't get a chance to sign up.

I was out at the Volunteer Film Festival Orientation Yay Film Festival for this weekend.

But what I want to say is that I certainly do support the bylaws like Michael Payne said of unpaid citizen volunteers that looked at a problem and decided they wanted to do something about it and consulted for very little cost some people who have done it like in Fairfax

I think about, and some people have said, well, why since 2017?

It's not been since 2017.

There are people in this auditorium who have a lived experience beyond what I have ever lived that can talk about why now.

It didn't happen then, but it needs to happen now.

I also think of Fort Worth, Texas, who right now

Their city council is grappling with a civilian oversight committee after the murder in her own home of Ms. Tatiana Jefferson.

We don't want that to happen here.

We have issues.

We have some really bad issues.

Thank God we haven't had that issue yet, but to me it's only a matter of time.

and I really think that Fairfax, Virginia, they've shown the way, they've been leading.

I know there's some questions about money salaried positions and I think there have been some people here this evening that have certainly spoken to that.

But I think that if we are going to be the city that is going to pull back the veneer,

of what a lot of us have lived under under white supremacy whether we knew it or not and white privilege.

This is one step in the right direction and I hope that you will adopt the bylaws that these individuals work so diligently on, so hard on, put their heart and soul in and that we need that.

Hi, I'm Robin, I live in the city of Charlottesville.

So I want to say that I come to these hearings a lot because it really does give me ideas about what's going on in the city.

mirrors a lot of what I know from other cities that I've lived in.

And then also I want to highlight, I'm sorry because it seems like I'm just advertising or something, but we do have a platform, a place to go to for freedom of speech still and I want everybody to sign on.

So that we can all talk about what we have issues weekly, biweekly, monthly, whatever you want to do.

And it's really inexpensive.

I am raising money for scholarship for producers who can't afford to sign on.

It's $50 a year if you're going to do a show.

It's $25 just to be a member, a supportive member.

So on my show right now, I'm going to invite guests for $50 if they don't want to be members or produce.

And also I'm selling my paintings at an auction eventually that I'm doing on my show.

I'm just putting this out there for people to use Charlottesville Public Access TV or Charlottesville Communication Media Center.

You don't have to be on TV.

You can also just do a production.

I know certain departments in the city are using it to train and things like that.

There are people who want to do promotions for themselves.

If you want to start a business or if you're knitting or if you're cooking or if you're doing something and you want to sell a product,

You can do that on Charlottesville Public Access TV as long as you don't sell a corporate entity product corporation.

Then the other thing is Saturday we're having an orientation and it's from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. this Saturday and it will be held at York Place

which is on the downtown mall right next to Christians.

You can also walk into York Place, the media center, and 9 to 5 and just sign up and David Dylan will give you instructions on how to use the facility and help you.

So, I mean, all of that is inclusive and please take into consideration that you will have a voice.

and people will acknowledge that it's a really good thing to have freedom of speech and that it will be popular hopefully like Netflix and people can't wait to be there and to speak and to hear each other.

I just have a couple comments.

And I just wanted to say in case individuals had to leave or you know wouldn't be here we have two items before this should go pretty quickly they shouldn't take long to public hearings

and then the item following that will be our discussion on the Civilian Review Board and the proposals.

And I just wanted to address just the transparency

We have not had a meeting together.

So every meeting that we have had together, the last one about this was the work session.

It was recorded and the public was there.

So we had individuals or two council members to staff meetings about the Civilian Review Board.

So this would be the first time that we will all be together discussing this.

So I just wanted to

There was some concerns about whether we had gotten together and all decided on this and that wasn't the case.

We were not in the room together with this.

I, as you all know, had two, I think a Facebook Live Thursday and then another one yesterday.

with the main concern around the auditor position.

So I have expressed those concerns, had several conversations today, attempted to have several more around some thoughts around it.

And the only other thing that I wanted to address that may not come up, I just wanted to make sure I didn't forget, was the internal policy review and the changes that was there.

I did email

Sarah who was on the initial review board about policies because there are a lot of police department policies anywhere from what kind of shoes you need to wear to pants and so my question was what policies did you want to make sure were included here instead of just like this broad review so if during the next two public hearings and

I just wanted to give people time to kind of think about that because we did have an email exchange about that and I didn't receive a list to be able to

to present.

I'm not saying that it will be voted on.

I'm just letting you all know that if there is a list of policies that you all definitely want to include it, then I did ask a question that I didn't receive one to process with the city attorney and the other counselors.

All right, that's all that I had for now.

So you said there were police policies that were going to be reviewed in the next two meetings, correct?

No.

No.

That's not what you said.

That's not what you said.

All right, I call this meeting back to order.

Next we have releasing a gas line easement.

Are there two?

Mayor and Councillors, I'm Lauren Hildebrand.

I'm the Director of Utilities for the City.

In April 2017, the City of Charlottesville acquired a natural gas line easement across property in the Oakley development along Rio Road.

After construction of the development began, minor changes were made to the fire access road area, which is where the natural gas line was to be located.

These changes were made to accommodate an existing tree in the site conditions.

The City of Charlottesville has received a request to vacate the 2017 gas easement.

The property owner has already granted a new easement for the new location of a gas line.

A public hearing is required by law to give

the public an opportunity to comment on the proposed conveyance of a property interest.

Staff recommends council approve the ordinance releasing the 2017 gas easement in the Oakley development.

And I'm available if you have any questions.

Thank you.

OK. We'll open this to public hearing.

Is there anyone who would like to speak?

No?

All right.

Closing public hearing.

Council discussion?

All right.

Thank you.

Um, so next we have a public hearing, um, vacating a public utility easement.

In May, 2018, the city was granted a five foot wide,

Public Utility Easement across property at the intersection of Emmett and Barracks Road for the CVS project.

The development is owned by Meadowbrook Corner LLC.

The purpose of the easement was to install a water meter, but the city, in coordination with the development, decided to place the water meter in another location that did not require an easement.

The owner has requested release of the easement area.

A public hearing is required by law to give the public an opportunity to comment.

Staff recommends council approve the ordinance vacating the five foot wide public utility easement for the CVS project.

All right.

Questions?

All right.

Open the public hearing.

Is there anyone who would like to speak on this matter?

All right.

Closing.

All right, next we have, are we doing these together?

Yes, ma'am.

an ordinance resolution related to the Civilian Review Board and bylaws to Chapter 2, Administration of the Code of the City of Charlottesville 1990 as amended and a resolution to establish reporting requirements for the

Police Civilian Review Board's Executive Director to be considered upon approval of ordinance.

Thank you, Mayor Walker and Councillors.

Good evening and what I'd like to do, I think you've all heard a number of public comments tonight as well as comments from the public over the weekend.

I will highlight a few aspects of the bylaws and ordinance, also try to address a couple of things heard tonight and then sort of open it up for Council to discuss amongst yourselves.

One thing that I would like to address up front are the bylaws and the ordinance.

I think some of the speakers were asking why the CRB could not amend its bylaws without council's approval.

Take a look at the ordinance.

A couple of the functions are tied to the bylaws.

For instance, the internal investigation review, it says that the civilian review board is enabled by the bylaws approved by the council.

So there is an interplay there between the bylaws and the ordinance.

If it's the council's preference, I can go back and rewrite the ordinance so that the ordinance and bylaws do not have that interplay.

That's one thing I wanted to address.

A second aspect that came up, Mayor Walker, at the end of the matters from the public concerned the policy review.

And as you stated, you had asked during the 221s, when the council was discussing these bylaws and the ordinance, the idea right now

The Charlottesville Police Department is to provide any proposed amendment to its internal investigation in citizens' complaint policy, which is really, we would colloquially call the IA policy, to the Police Civilian Review Board at least 30 days before its enactment.

And I know you had, like you'd stated, you've asked,

Are there other specific policies that the council might consider presenting to the CRB and having their comment on the policy before they're enacted?

I think, you know, based on your conversation, you did ask Ms. Burke, I think, for a list, but I think that's something that the council could certainly look at.

Are there other specific policies that the council would like to consider as having to go through the Civilian Review Board before its enactment by the Charlottesville Police Department?

I would point out on policy recommendations that

It does say that the Civilian Review Board can recommend policies or procedures to the City Council or the Charlottesville Police Department concerning police practices.

So that, just the general, the CRB once it is appointed does have that authority to make recommendations to the Council or the Police Department if it wishes, but as to having to give the CRB advance

opportunity to comment before CPD enacts a policy.

Right now, that's limited to, again, what we would colloquially call the IA policy.

Concerning the auditor, during the meetings, there was not any

I didn't, in the conversations I had with counselors, nobody seemed to favor right now hiring an auditor.

Therefore, the reason that the resolution is there is that everybody did express they wanted, they had some interest in looking at this further.

It's just a proposal right now in terms of this resolution to say

Once there's an executive director on board for the CRB, they should have an opportunity to take a look and consult with their board and come back to council and make a recommendation again about the auditing position to council, which would also be a budgetary proposal.

I did want to discuss the budgetary aspect

Right now this is simply a bylaws and ordinance passage.

I think if the council does enact the ordinance and bylaws, I think by implication there would then be an appropriation that would come before you for the full cost of the board and the office.

So it's not, I mean I understand there's a question about fully funding this, but at the same time the council, if they enact the bylaws and ordinance, I think then again there would be an appropriation that would come before you for your consideration to fund the board and staff at whatever level you say.

So those were just some introductory comments.

Obviously there's more in the council memo, but I did

I'd like to, I have a question as the counselor who originally worked on and proposed the CRB resolution.

I would be interested if my colleagues today, just based off of what we've heard from public comment, would be able to open to entertaining maybe a

a 10-minute public comment session just for those who may have been on the CRB to respond to Mr. Blair's remarks, kind of what we've heard and then because it seems to be what I was looking at the faces you all didn't quite understand our logic until Mr. Blair just described what he said and then we can move forward.

If we are open to that, we probably should have our conversation first.

Just to make a public comment, something to hear from them briefly.

So again, so they can respond to what they heard from Mr. Blair.

Because I think he just cleared up a great deal of what some people were thinking.

But we still want to give them an opportunity to respond to such.

Would you all be open to it?

I was literally going to say to Mayor Walker's point, I think that's a good idea.

We have our discussion and then it can be after.

It's fine?

Okay, cool.

I think I would advise whether you want to use the council memo is sort of where you want to start where it does highlight some of the variances between the initial CRB's review and the ordinance and bylaws before you.

That could be one place to start.

So the first is the counselor membership?

Anyone?

I believe in the Independents.

And I did support this.

I thought that, you know, I've thought all along that, you know, a council member being a part of the group, it's the non-voting, which was the recommendation that, you know, it would make sure that the issues that were being

brought up in the Civilian Review Board that I just felt like we would be invested.

I shared that sentiment and even again like as a non-voting member that kind of quelled some of the concerns about quote-unquote government entities being involved but I do think it's important for council to show their commitment be in the loop and then you know really be an advocate

when you look at other boards, and I only can compare this to my experience as the council rep on the Housing Authority Board.

As the counselor on the Housing Authority Board, it puts me in a position to advocate for CRHA when it comes to not only funding but different measures or just different opportunities to present things from the board and kind of wear that hat in two roles.

So really it's more or less as an ally.

When you have a counselor because it allows someone to quickly be able to bring your issues back to the council, whether that is advocating for funding or different resources or whatever the case may be.

And that's literally how I've used my role in the Housing Authority Board.

I think it may behoove the CRB to have someone in a similar role, but if it's not the will,

And I think the way the process is set up is that there is a process by which it's brought to our attention a number of different scenarios as needed.

And I mean, these are meetings that are open to the public, and I would assume that one or two counselors might go voluntarily.

I know that with this initial review board, we actually gave them the option to have a counselor participate.

They declined and I read in their proposal that this was one of the things that was kind of at our discretion to determine if we felt it was necessary.

And as Ms. Galvin said, I just think it's important that there is some independence.

My fear is that there might be just even unintended just this feeling that there's a balance of power.

We have more power over this board than we should even as a non-voting member just by virtue of having a representative there.

So if we could, I mean if we were going to attend the sessions potentially anyway, I just think that we sit on a lot of boards.

Like this would be one that is one of the most important boards, so I just think that that

If it's something that they were okay with versus maybe during the initial time there was some kind of debate and hesitation about it, but if it's in this proposal, as a non-voting member,

And I think we all could agree there's a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes and when you have a counselor who's on the board they can advocate to the rest of the council behind the scenes about some of the things that are going on opposed to just what happens when they're up on the dice and whatnot and we all know like you know a lot of the work is done not just when you get up here but

you know by different conversations and so forth and I think it's a benefit.

So what would be the role of the executive director then?

But I see that as the employee, per se.

So, and again, I only can base this off of my experience on the housing authority, but that's literally like the only thing I can kind of equate this to.

But I don't see, like Mr. Duffield, in his role as executive director of the housing authority, he's separate from the board.

He works at the will of the board, so he's not

I think that my feeling about the independence is that members of council are in a very unique position with regard to the police chief hire because it's one of the only ones that were consulted on.

And so we're not in any kind of executive position with that job.

That job reports to the city manager and the structure of the government, but

To me it does, counselors have a more, they have a relationship because of the fact that the city manager does work for us through to the police chief and I think it does create more independence to not have a member of council on this body because the members of council are in a direct relationship to the police chief.

It creates a, it's not analogous to the CRHA or to any other body that I can think of because there's no other body we have that

whose job is to serve as a check on a staff member and their people.

And what I think is going to be, in this discussion we're about to have, I just want to, and I'm sure we're all, I think that there are, among all five of us, we want, everybody's going to speak for themselves, I want there to be a strong CRB.

and we're going to have a lot of discussion about different like that's where I am and that's where the discussion has been the last several months and I think we all do there's a lot of discussion about details and about and was fascinating hearing Professor Bowers describe the initial goals and the perceptions of this

We want a robust, strong CRB that does achieve these functions and that creates a lot more trust and that does solve a lot of what we just heard.

That's at least where I'm coming from.

And there can be whatever the reactions are of what I just said, but I literally believe that having a member of city council who also is part of the hiring of the police chief, that having them in that room will make the CRB less

It's less independent than I think it should be to be as strong as it can be.

But I'm not coming at that with anything other than the intention to make the CRB strong and independent.

I'm willing to be corrected or to have my view changed, but I see it as different from CRHA, and that's why we're having this discussion.

Okay.

But it could be something as simple as what you just said.

I mean, assuming that this would be something where there would have to be an employee who is checked, when the complaint just came up about DSS, you were able to just say there's a report coming.

because you've been in the meetings and so you were able to say that that should be on the agenda within the next month or so.

So it's just little details like that.

Also, the amount of time that we spend in meetings while someone may put this on their calendar to make sure they are in every meeting, that's still different.

then if you are a member of that board and you are expected to be there.

So I show up at the meetings that I took over for you and probably would have gotten a letter just like you had

had I not known that was part of the process.

I mean, I think I would have a different interest in the Civilian Review Board, but I mean, I don't think it would be on my calendar if it wasn't mandatory for me to attend the first Thursday of every month.

And I just, setting the intention and just knowing that it's a firm commitment, it just really makes a difference.

All right, so I guess then the question is, is there any support?

No, I was just concurring with what you were saying.

I guess I'm not also clear with the process of going through step by step.

I don't know either.

What I would like is to just make sure

on each of these issues among yourselves.

I prefer the independents.

Are you an independent as well, Mike?

I haven't heard...

If somebody has an argument that would address my concern about having

I think it's totally different from DSS or from CRHA.

I think that also if we're going to hear from members of the board after this, like you suggested, and if somebody can say something that would change my mind, then I'm willing to do that.

I just haven't heard anything that addresses that concern.

So I don't want to vote right now.

And talking to those I've connected with, I just think we all want this function to be addressed.

And we're just trying to figure out what is the most effective and efficient way of doing it.

Because right now what we're proposing is that we get the board seated, we get the executive director in place, and then they help to kind of guide what the auditor function looks like.

And that could be a different timeline than what's laid out here.

I just think that if we're being honest with ourselves, if we're going through the budget cycle, the director would not be even hired until basically the next fiscal year.

or is that something that we were going to maybe allocate funding for to get someone a few months ahead of the end of the fiscal year?

I'm trying to understand timing.

Well, let's talk about that just logistically.

Obviously City Manager and Ms. Shelton, I think there were, you know, obviously the Council can do an off budget funding once the Council decides on what it wishes to do in terms of positions.

But logistically, and again, this is all a malleable process open to Council's will.

But I think realistically based on the input, the initial bylaws that were received, people are expecting, at least I don't believe there's any expectation that this would be just like any other board in commission and once there's an enactment,

put it on the Clerk of Council's website for 30 days and then appoint people.

I think there's an expectation there will be a more robust process than that.

So realistically, probably a board's going to be seated in January or February.

If you go along with the executive director idea of having two CRB board members set on an interview panel with the executive director,

for the executive director that would be ultimately hired by the city manager.

They'd be hired probably late March, early April.

It's probably, when you look at, again, the idea of getting people seated in January or February, having those interview panels, selecting a candidate, and as the executive director, and this was

You know, I hate to hopscotch a bit with these topics, but both Mayor Walker and Councilor Signer preferred the idea of council confirming the executive director of the board.

And just like the council confirms the police chief.

And so again, when you look at that process logistically, you're probably hiring an executive director in late March, early April is realistic timeline.

That's still before July and there needs to be an appropriation for the position as well as office expenses.

I understand where you're coming from in terms of the timeline.

I think well even especially the board and this is where I would rather

Dr. Bellamy, you've got two holidays.

I mean, you've got staff figuring out that it would be ideal.

Yeah, but we also have heard a lot of little bit.

I mean, it would be interesting to hear the city manager's office talk about the operability of that.

We have a new HR director.

And I understand that.

No, I mean from the board, not the executive director.

We can do it.

I mean, it makes me really as one of the remaining councilors.

to go through that selection process without having the board confirmed by the individuals who made this commitment and have to go through that process.

So I understand that it may be.

Do you think it's possible at all?

No?

Well, it's open right now already, but we really don't know the composition until we actually vote on these decisions.

Yes.

So I agree with you.

Right.

So we open up 30 days after the November 4th.

Well I think you'd want to at least have the ordinance passed before that in the sense of again based on the composition and that's something again to talk about tonight with the council as to the board's composition.

Two things come to mind I mean when you say can it be done I think if the council wants to pass something November 4th

30 days from that would be December 4th.

Your first meeting in December is December 2nd.

So December 16th, you could conceivably appoint then or at a special meeting if you wanted to call one then.

Those are options the council, again, can choose if you want to do that.

But I mean, you know, there are options, as always.

But I think that's more council choice.

Do you want to appoint December 16th or at a special meeting?

Or leave it to the January?

But it's also hard to know until we see the applications because we certainly want to have applications that are reflective of the composition that we agreed to.

And if we don't in that first 30 days, we have to go back out.

And that's not unusual that we've had to do that before.

At the same time, we could make December 16 the goal.

What's the goal?

Sure.

Knowing that we've got to get...

That would be my preference and I feel like we laid it out.

Logistically then I would advise then

Or I mean if we, so if we truly, if this board, and I think this comes down into another way in which we talk about and look at this board, if it's similar to others, they don't all have interview quote unquote processes.

so I mean they have their applications and then we review the applications and then we appoint if we want to talk about because I think we're gonna have to look at and now I'm speaking to both my colleagues on council and the public we have to figure out which way we want it if we want this done in a more expedient way then we don't really have time to do interviews for

You know, 40 people.

This means this is going to have to be like we do other boards.

They submit the applications and then we pick.

I just want to raise one thing that came up, which is people should know these are public, so these are FOIA-able.

Anybody applies to a city board, that is a public record.

So when we did the Blue Ribbon Commission and we could stipulate, we'd have to make sure that certain information be redacted, because this is a sensitive thing, and we hear people even being worried about giving certain information when they come up here, so we could redact some.

And I'd like to remind the council that the Human Rights Commission and the CRHA board are all interviewed.

Oh no, I think we should be interviewing, but I don't think it has to be every applicant.

I think we can maybe consolidate down to a subset of applicants to interview.

It's hard to say.

Interview finalists?

Yeah.

I don't know until we see who's applied.

Okay, so we can look at December 16th as the goal and try to make that happen.

So back to the auditor audit function, I think

So I haven't talked to two of you about just a thought that I had around giving the, and I spoke to Mr. Blair and Mr. Blair would need time to process this and talk to the Commonwealth Attorney Office and the police chief.

But if we gave the CRB the resources during the budget allocation to be able to hire a consultant that would serve initially in this auditor function

and be able to give them some of the feedback on some of the issues surrounding why this position was presented.

That report would then come back to us.

for recommendation and then we can make a decision at that time about whether we would have, you know, be ready to have a full-time staff member and they would also be able to look at one of the very confusing points for me was that the Fourth Amendment specialist that the

Police Chief has hired, I think the initial term was the sensitive data specialist in response to some of the community concerns, be able to look at that too and make recommendations, but that the

Board that's put in place would be able to and the executive director would be able to hire you know this consulting and ask them you know give them a list and ask and so counselor Hill and Galvin I hadn't had a chance to talk to them and I just had

Mr. Blair, do you have a comment on that?

Because, well, Mayor Walker, in truth, I also was talking about that too with Mr. Blair at one point, but I'm not sure.

Well, I think right now, I think, and just want to clarify with the mayor.

Right now, the ordinance and bylaws are written without an auditor or audit function.

I just want to flesh this out.

I think they would, you know, my thought and then some of the public could, you know, answer this, but just surrounding some of the issues that the CRB sees the auditor performing in this function, I know there are concerns about the data that's being received.

If they had someone that they hired say that, hey, this data I've looked into, you know,

a month worth of this data.

I don't know.

And this was something that, Mr. Blair, you did write a resolution, and that would be a way to get the decision about the auditor

finalized it.

In this case, it was a final report would be submitted in December 2020.

There are several be it resolves.

One of the third be it resolved was that the executive director's report shall detail which, if any, aspects of the Charlottesville Police Department's operations should be audited.

And I wanted to add specifically, address whether or not the Charlottesville Police Department's operations with regards to Fourth Amendment contacts, also known as stop and frisk, should be audited.

So I think we're close on being able to maybe modify the resolution to get more specific about what we want that position to audit.

The question is the timing.

Too long.

But to have a report.

So that's the question.

Well, you could change the resolution about the report to being no later than December 2020.

And the only reason I bring that up is, again, you've got a brand new person coming into a brand new role that would be dealing with a brand new board.

I don't know what they would really, you know, how long it would take them, even with a consultant.

I like where you're going with this and I wanted to say just explaining where I'm coming from and this is what happened when I met with Mr. Foley, this is where I explained was I think the concern that a couple of us have is that

If you build in two FDEs at the very beginning and there isn't enough for them to do, now that is not necessarily the case, but if there weren't, and this was a real problem that happened with the Human Rights Office and it created a lot of challenges for us on staff because there was a lot of incoming, a lot of FOIAs, a lot of concern about the amount of workload that was happening for that office, there was a lot of churn, we had somebody leave.

So the question is, can you build it so that it addresses what we're hearing from the public, the concerns about doing this function, while avoiding that problem, which is if you've built two FTEs and we are one-fiftieth the size of, or whatever it is, of twentieth of Fairfax,

So I'm a little worried about the person being isolated.

I mean, if you hire one person and it's their job to just do this entire office, and they're by themselves every day.

So I was like, could we have a half-time person, which is what happened with the Human Rights Office.

Could you somehow?

But I like where the mayor is going.

Maybe you could just establish a budget, a consulting budget for them that's a discretionary budget for the ED once they're in their seat to start at their option, because they're the one who can be overseeing this person.

to work on some of those functions and maybe not have it wait until they have to file a final report.

The final report would be do you want to hire somebody full time?

What's your design of the office that you want to do?

And I think based on the initial CRB's concerns and the direction that the community sees this going, I think this would become a top priority.

Of course, I expect it would.

That would probably be something they would push for to be done rather.

I don't know how quickly it can be done.

I don't know everything that they would want looked at.

You know, maybe, you know, six months instead of, I mean, I don't know.

In July.

So there's an interim report that's made that at that point that's when it's decided whether or not they they may have a realization they need the auditor or they may be able to say well we really only need an outside consultant firm to help us do the research we want because of the volume's just not there yet but it gives the flexibility to either contract out or to hire without being stuck with the full-time FTE

And we could make sure that during the budget cycle that we reserve funding if the recommendation is to hire.

I like that idea.

I think early June yeah for that.

Oh so that we can then.

Yeah before and then the funding

I just want to say, so how does, because I know that so much of what initiated this whole concern was the Fourth Amendment contacts and stop and frisk.

So I wanted to tease out whether or not that was one specific thing we could say specifically does that need to be looked at.

But I'll leave that up to the rest of, so because that was that third bit further resolved

Yeah and I think that is you know

The police chief has been responding to the concerns of citizens, but citizens have not been trusting the process of those responses.

And so that is why we're still hearing having this conversation.

As you all know, I feel differently about the info, but I haven't been able to check.

So here would be just sort of a proposal that would be that

There should be an off budget cycle that would include a certain amount of money for a consultant to be hired by the executive director if the executive director feels that they need to use that service.

And then the executive director would make an interim report to the council June 1, 2020 about

Yes, but I think that there would be some need, someone who specializes in this to be able to, if the executive director

Well that gets into our next point because I do agree that we need to make sure the ED job description is written the right way.

So we need to make sure that the skill sets are in there and that's something that we can direct John again to write up

the kind of the skill sets that we need to be able to have an executive director that can actually write the RFP for such a contract that can actually then administer that contract.

And that means that he or she would have to have the ability to do internal intake and investigations preliminary in their own right.

So I mean, I and then Naikal has some language about that as well.

And I wasn't clear, like job descriptions to me were independent right now of what we're looking at.

Because I see there was a lot of detail both in the initial CRB proposed that I think we should be pulling language from there.

That's just another step to me.

So I want to make sure that we're focusing on

But I think we need a resolution that we vote on the time we vote on this ordinance and bylaws that explain in some degree that give direction to the city manager what kind of a job description to write.

and that can fall from the descriptions in the preliminary CRB, but I would think at the very least that includes but not limited to receiving and screening complaints and processing them for investigation.

You've got to know stuff in order to be able to just do that.

So I think if that's possible,

Job descriptions as well as the human resources function is under the city manager.

I think the council can certainly pass a resolution that recommends certain skills.

I mean, I don't the council, though, couldn't vote on it, for instance, again, that I understand where we can have conversations about what we would like to without passing the resolution see included in the

You can go either way, right?

The only thing is that that isn't necessarily a corporate decision then.

It's one-on-one and we don't know how at all.

I mean, I'm just advocating for the possibility of having a resolution that we can all vote on, that we agree on.

These are the fundamentals.

And that doesn't preclude being able to also look at the job description as drafted by the city manager, but that we start off with a shared understanding of the fundamentals for this position.

So it's really kind of, I'm not thinking about detailed job description, but these are an outline.

Yeah.

But I think we would need to see what the people who specialize in this comes up.

I would want the HR director, I don't want to do that job.

I want them to do their job and make their initial recommendations.

Yeah, I think that's another process, right?

So can I recommend that you guys send us the skills that you would like to see in the Executive Director?

and we can encompass that and then get that memo back out to you with the direct description.

Well, see, I mean, if that's the will of the council, I'm fond of that.

But I defer a little bit because I think part of the reason why we want to appoint the board in the immediate is that they can appoint their own executive director.

Because I think there is a conflict.

There's an inherent conflict.

OK, I got you.

We got you.

There's an inherent conflict when we,

Appoint the ED for the and they're gonna Excuse me, we being the city the city manager hires the individual that the board is going to be working directly with Yeah, like if we want but if we want we talked about independence None of the other boards that kind of work in this minute like they to get to pick their own I just don't get why wouldn't we allow the

OK, we're going to get to that discussion.

But I think right now the discussion is about the job description.

And an HR director would normally be the person to write the job description.

We want feedback.

I think everybody has heard that there's going to be a job description, so we can just ask for feedback to come in and then they'll see the job description when it's posted.

We again are talking about a December 16th goal.

But that's setting up the council to essentially have, not necessarily yelled at, but if you just give them the process in terms of them working with the HR director to create their own job description of what they want, it takes

Maybe I'm not describing this in the most articulate manner, but I think that the owner should be on the CRB to write the job description for the executive director.

Because they're going to be working directly with this individual.

And so even when we have had changes for job descriptions, we've worked

We've had, what, three or four since we've been on that we've worked very closely with HR.

So the HR director doesn't get to say, this is all that can be included.

I think we're talking about, we would talk to the HR director.

City Attorney's Office, Dr. Richardson, and say this is the proposed guidelines and just like we would be submitting what we think and I know I would have to do some research and I would be listening to members of the public who would be sending information in that Mr. Blair,

Why should this be included?

What I'm saying is that's not for us to do.

That's for the CRB to do.

It's their process.

This is their ED.

Let them describe what kind of person they want.

Let them go and choose the person.

They work with the attorney.

They work with HR.

We're out of this.

And that's fine.

The other thing, too, is that that's assuming that this CRB and this ED are always going to be together.

What happens when the CRB keeps changing and then each CRB is going to then, oh, we get to then rewrite the job description and we get to have a new ED?

The idea is that you need continuity.

What boards are there where the board hires the staff director?

They're an authority.

I'm hearing two different things.

Writing a job description is what we're talking about right now.

If we are going to have a discussion about who sits in on, which is maybe

or you're maybe talking about both but right now in terms of I know that what the process has looked like for us to get job descriptions reviewed and the pay scale categories and all of that.

That's an internal function.

Okay.

I said my piece.

But I think I hope you all, and when you all come up, if you all feel, you know, like have some feedback on that, I definitely think that we would, I mean, how could we not say if you have any feedback about what skills should be included in this job description.

The job description is public, everybody will see it, so it's not like we would hide anything.

And this is new for all of us, so if there's some feedback on what that would look like.

I understand that initial CRB did put a lot of thought into that.

And there's a lot of detail in the materials they've provided that has done a lot of that work.

They worked on it for a year.

Yeah, I think with executive director, I just wanted to, the only confirmation I did need

Again, Mayor Walker and Councillor Signer both brought up the idea of the Executive Director being confirmed by the Council and that is in the ordinance.

Okay.

All right, so the next topic is the executive director will be hired by the city manager.

Two members of the CRB will be on the interview panel and then

Similarly to the Chief of Police Council, which we just confirmed that.

Mm-hmm.

All right.

Legal counsel.

Ultimately, in local government law, the city attorney's office represents the government as a whole, as a body.

Is there truly a legal conflict

I'm not really certain that there is in terms of this is an advisory board established pursuant to 15.2-1405 just like the Planning Commission.

Our office represents both the Planning Commission and the City Council and I'll give you a good example.

The Planning Commission, I believe it was Flint Hill, gave a unanimous recommendation to approve that project and Ms. Robertson represents the Planning Commission, helped them

write work on those proffers and the like.

This body rejected that unanimously back in August.

So, saying that, I think there is enough, you know, when we talk about community trust and how to build more trust, the idea of giving the CRB a budget to have their own legal counsel

in terms of the functions of the CRB.

Our office would still be available if the executive director had, you know, just everyday legal questions.

Like, we get FOIA questions every day throughout the city.

Mr. Wheeler can confirm that.

And, you know, like if the executive director said,

What do we need to do to call a special meeting?

They could come to our office, we'd still give them some advice on that.

And I'm just thinking back to the way there was like a liaison for DSS, CRHA at one time, right?

Is that a possibility and then matters that you think would present a conflict to have those

I mean we could work on a memo and that's really what I hope that the ordinance and bylaws are getting at is to say look on those everyday issues where there really wouldn't be any perceived conflict feel free to come to the city attorney's office but

Something like a review hearing where a police officer's conduct would be reviewed.

We also do represent the police department.

OK. And so this would be established before there was a review process.

Right.

I just want to point, just the language here that has been drafted is pretty strong in terms of the body having its own attorney.

It says, shall be empowered to employ its own legal counsel.

You have to go through the bureaucracy stuff, but this is robust.

It means that they have their own lawyer, their fiduciary, who's looking out for their interests, and they can do that.

No, I think that's all.

I have a solution.

Next, what do we have?

So procedural matters.

So we're talking about a complaint needing to be made within one year of the event, giving rise to the complaint, and a review request being made within 75 days of the complainant receipt of the CPD internal affairs determination letter.

Those are the two points.

OK.

So any comments there?

All right, so legislative agenda.

The CRB and ED board would be able to suggest legislative changes for council's consideration when we do our annual.

So board composition.

I think it was at least four members who come from historically disadvantaged communities that have traditionally experienced disparate policing or who were residents of public housing.

And then there was also a membership for a board

a board member who represents an organization that seeks racial or social justice on behalf of historically disadvantaged communities.

So there was a response to one of the comments from a public comment.

in regards to there no longer being a majority from individuals from low income neighborhoods or neighborhoods or environments, i.e.

environments that have been adversely affected by such.

Okay, so based on the proposal now you'd have the three and the individual who represents an organization that seeks racial or social justice on behalf of historically disadvantaged communities.

That person could also be one of those three, right?

The other four members, there's no- Or they could be the fourth.

Or it could be the fourth.

The other board members, there's no specific criteria, except, please give me, yes, there's a prohibition on

A current City of Charlottesville employee, a current candidate for public office, a former member of the Charlottesville Police Department, an immediate family member of a current Charlottesville Police Department employee, or a current employee of a law enforcement agency.

I just wanted to, not kind of, to come specifically from you because I think that addresses the concern from some of the members of the public earlier.

So essentially if we're talking about a seven person board, three persons would be from these neighborhoods in which have been described.

One individual from specific organizations that have a history of advocating for social justice or racial justice.

And that gets you to four people.

That does, in fact, lead to a quote unquote majority.

And then the other three persons would be from the community as a whole, with the exception of those persons who Mr.

Blood just described.

Technically, you could check both boxes, though.

And I also would say that there's nothing saying that not everyone could come from those neighborhoods.

Correct.

I guess my only comment would be to, the way I was looking at this was that it would be

And I guess that's up to Council.

I mean, I think, Mayor Walker, what you're really saying is that, in effect, there would be a 3-1-3 composition.

There could not be a 3-4 composition, right?

Right now, as it's currently structured, there could be a 3-4 composition, but with your proposal, it would definitely be a 3-1-3.

And I'm saying I certainly want to strive for that.

I don't want us to hamper ourselves too much.

It's hard to know until we see the applications that come in.

If we're too prescriptive, I'm just concerned about us being able to seed a board.

And I'm also just really interested in other skill sets that we think might help this board to be as successful as possible.

Are there other professions or other backgrounds of experience with social services?

But I think the way that that's set up, we would have that option.

Yeah, I think there's still three people at large that could get urban sociologists from UVA that know how to do really deep dive regression analysis or something.

And so they work with the data.

So we're not precluding that.

Also, the other thing is that you could have community members at large.

The other trust and the other buy we need to get is broader understanding of this problem.

So we do need to make sure that we have other people in the community on this board.

As I recall, some of the issues with the disproportionate stop and frisk was that the police were responding to calls from people that were white and just automatically assumed that the people of color were the ones committing some sort of violation.

The only question I have about coming from an organization that seeks racial social justice, we're saying that they're all citizens of the city, so it's not that the organization resides in the city, but even the person who, so it could be that someone

Okay I'm just making sure that we're all on the same page of that because that could limit that because it could be the organization resides in the city and serves the city but that person who works the organization who may be best appropriate to sit on this board may not be a city resident and I'm just making sure I'm just raising the issue I think we should have all city residents but that was a concern that came to my mind thinking about these organizations

So I don't know.

So for example, Legal Aid, if someone came from that organization, it's less clear if they are a city resident or not.

I think if they work at an organization like Legal Aid, it's in the city.

and they are wanting to be one of the applicants, I think that we should be able to allow that.

Well, no, I don't think it would be problematic.

But to your point, if you were to say

Live or work.

I agree with you.

Now I do think, well I agree with you, let's also have this, keep this in mind, we're limiting our pool to a certain extent and then also that may lead to having a smaller applicant

It's true.

It's true.

You know what I mean.

Sorry, my brain freeze.

Pool.

Pool.

I just said pool.

I forgot.

He did.

All these damn degrees for nothing.

There's a smile.

Everybody smiles a little bit.

Thank goodness.

OK, board member selection.

So the council favors a CRB selection similar to planning commission.

The council will interview prospective CRB members in a closed session pursuant to Virginia Freedom of Information Act and vote on the appointing members to the CRB in an open meeting.

The CRB would not have a role in the council appointment process.

And I'm fine with when we did this once before looking at some parts of our applications being able to be public that doesn't have personal information.

And we've already separated our applications.

And we might probably have a more robust version for this, but we've separated our application that page one is public available and page two is more personal information.

And it just sounds like awfully negative.

I mean, the CRB could.

There's all kinds of ways that people support to counsel people who are appointed or applying to boards and we can hear because the applications will be public from

the CRB and from members of the public about people who are applying to be on this board.

That would be great.

But a lot of people don't know it, and this would be a much higher profile than a lot of other.

Policy review.

The IPCRB proposed that the CPD would need to provide all new proposed general orders and policies to the CRB at least 30 days in advance before the policy or general orders could be enacted.

A majority of councilors did not favor this.

However, the majority of councilors do favor having a CPD provide any amendments to its policies concerning internal affairs investigations to the CRB at least 30 days in advance before the policy is enacted.

So that's the IA that Mr. Blair talked about.

And additionally, counselors favored the CPD providing a copy of all policy amendments to the CRB for comment and for the CRB to be empowered to make policy recommendations to the CPD and city manager.

That was my question that I sent out.

You know, Sarah is watching and she has sent an email and we've exchanged a couple of times, but that was my question.

Are there policies that you would want to make sure there was a list

to possibly review and then based on the conversations that we had internally when I brought up that conversation, the city manager, police chief and the city attorney would want to have a conversation.

about that list and then make recommendations.

My question then to Mr. Blair is,

Well I can look at something like that.

What I would say though is you would have to change the list via resolution.

I mean the council as a corporate body would have to change that list.

But if you're talking about could there be a mechanism to have like a standing list via ordinance but that the council rather than the two readings could have a resolution that could change that list.

I can try to write something like that.

But ultimately I would say this, that would ultimately, you all as a corporate body would need to consider

See now that's something that I would think that that isn't that why we want the CRB to help us understand which policies need to be reviewed.

Right.

Yeah, I think that makes sense.

So put that in the resolution?

Yeah.

So the IPCRB proposed annual compensation of $1500 for board members.

The council does not favor this compensation for CRB members, so I'll just start with

The question that Ms.

Beard asked about the remaining funding for whatever was in the budget and paying current CRB members.

We did have that discussion and there was agreement among council since we did not set that in the initial guidelines that we would not pay.

The other recommendation that I have made here and have talked to, I think, I don't know who I talked to at this point.

I didn't get a nap today.

There was a lot of concern about how much work other boards do also.

We are reviewing or in the process of trying to review.

There are a couple of people who could update us.

The boards overall right now, the planning commission is the only board that gets a stipend.

and my recommendation that in this review process that we review based on the workload, because there are definitely some boards that do a lot less work, just meet their one time, you know,

One hour meeting you know 60 minutes a month or quarterly or whatever and they don't do as much but if there's a recommendation based on this review process that it's some boards like maybe the CRB Housing Authority Board, boards that do a lot of

Bylaws, amendments.

So it just says that the, yeah, we got that.

All right, so community outreach.

We don't need to discuss anything here.

Everybody agree?

And investigations.

Well, this was just you.

All right.

I don't have any.

A great way to structure the conversation.

All right.

So I guess now

We've got two other items.

And if we could, Mike, I think that's a good point in explaining why, Mayor Walker, she suggested two minutes per, not to stifle anyone, but as Council Signer just alluded to, we still have two other items to address and we've been trying to be in the spirit of keeping the meetings finishing before 11, as we've done the past few.

Dr. Richardson is watching the meeting now and he's ecstatic that

Mayor brought this up before, but there was one public comment that alluded to Dr. Richardson not being here.

He's not here because he's at the city manager association conference representing the city and getting best practices.

Heather and I talked to him and didn't think that we should use the resources that way so he did offer.

Thank you Josh Powers, city resident, member of the initial Police Civilian Review Board.

With respect to the auditor position, I think it's refreshing to hear and it makes me feel like maybe there is a commitment

in the direction of ultimately realizing and having a position of the auditor.

And to that end I thought the mayor's suggestion of a consultant has some promise but I'm not sure that it has promise.

without an MOU.

I mean, because what I need to know is in order to enlist a consultant to decide whether we need an auditor position, you guys said, oh, look at the situation.

Well, what is the situation?

I wish the chief were here so she could tell us what she's prepared to share with the executive director and in turn with a consultant who would be looking into the viability and necessity for an auditor.

What data and information is this person going to be looking at?

And I'm especially sensitive to this considering how little we got access to this year.

And when you look at the proposed ordinance and the proposed bylaws, there's nothing in there about an MOU, which was part of the initial resolution.

And what is in there about the CPD and the chief's obligations to hand over

information and data to the board is limited, and this is what I meant when I said neutered, it's limited really to just what Internal Affairs uses.

Not even what Internal Affairs has access to, but just what they use as part of investigations.

And everything seems to be channeled on the current proposal around internal affairs.

And in fact, it's not even clear that this board would be able to review everything internal affairs does.

It actually seems as it's written that the board would only get to review complaints

that came into the CRB itself and other investigations that IA was a part of, it's not obvious that the Civilian Review Board would have jurisdiction over that.

So, I mean, I think a lot of what you guys are saying is

Really great, but it's a little bit cart before the horse.

I mean, likewise, when it comes to a job description for the executive director.

First of all, I'd point you guys to our initial bylaws and ordinance where we actively structured the language around the tasks and the responsibilities of the executive director with an eye towards making this almost look like a job description.

So I think you guys have that information already.

But before we even get to a job description, how much is this person going to get paid?

Because that's going to, and I understand you can't necessarily commit to a hard number, but are we talking about $40,000 or are we talking about $80,000?

Because there are certain skills that are necessary here.

And if you try to do it on the cheap, you're not going to get a person who's equipped to do the job.

Guillermo Ubea.

I was on the initial review board.

And I just, if you could hold and I just want to say that the reason for me making my comments is I've had a lot of people talk to me who maybe didn't read both and make assumptions and accusations towards us that is just like just go read what is written, right?

And so to not leave

I don't understand that.

So two of the big things I think I'll cover quickly is one, the bylaws and the ordinance should be separated so that the board can make changes to their bylaws without coming to the city council.

I think we're really talking about independent, as independent as a city board can be.

I think it's important that the board can change their own bylaws without having to come to future city councils for a vote.

And then the other thing is we were talking about policies and what policies we

Do we have a list of policies that we think we should review, the CRB should review?

And we took the opposite approach and we didn't come up with a list on purpose because we wanted to take a look at all of the policies.

Because if we're talking about changes that the police are making to their policies, why can't the public be aware of those changes?

And why can't the CRB be sort of a way to distribute those changes, that information, to the public?

And it doesn't mean that the CRB has to respond to every single one of those policies.

It could be just we get them, we understand them, and then we pass them on to the public so that everybody is aware of what's happening.

And that way the CRB understands one more about the police and the changes the police are making to their own policies.

But then they can decide which ones are important to respond to.

And then the one thing that's missing in terms of policies from what I see is that there's no requirement for the police to respond to what the CRB puts out there.

So the way I read what you all put out there, the CRB can make a recommendation to the policy and then it just dies.

But in what we put out there for you all, the police had to respond back to us.

And we understand the board can't make policy changes, but it would certainly be nice to know that the police read the future board recommendations and has a requirement to respond.

And I think with time limits, I'll leave it there.

Hi, Angela Ogunkeite, Legal Aid Justice Center.

I'm sorry, this might be a little scattered because I think the conversation that just happened was a bit all over the place.

I think I want to step back for a second

And this may sound critical, but I'm trying to come from a place of trying to be helpful.

I think what I just heard from counselors is worrisome because I think it has become clear that what is happening right now with this process is

Council not being familiar enough and well-versed enough in a really complicated issue area, a very complicated issue area, and now trying to potentially rush a decision based off of the limited knowledge that you have.

And I think it's really clear.

You don't know what you don't know.

And this is not to call you out, Mr. Signer, but to the extent that you have a concern, and I take it as a valid concern in your head, that

You think there could not be enough work for an auditor.

Every day that the police engage in policing, they are creating data that would be subject to an auditor's review.

And so I think what we're missing here are sort of like a fundamental understanding of the different roles created by

the initial CRB's proposal because when I hear you say well will there be enough work to justify a second FTE in the auditor position that to me signals that you don't understand that what they're doing is being proactive and not responding to complaints.

When I also hear talk of potentially having

you know the executive director function decide whether an auditor is or isn't needed I worry because again an auditor in most of the models of CRBs that exist does not report to the executive director it is a separate independent function

that does auditing on the regular of the data generated by everyday police interactions with communities.

When I also hear questions of please provide a list of policies the way it's done, and this comes from Legal Aid studying CRBs for the past two plus years, I think Councilor Bellamy will say that before the resolution was passed in December 2017,

There were discussions of should there be a set of bylaws created that then gets voted on as early as December 2017 and Legal Aid was asked to look at potential bylaws.

So we've been looking at this issue for the better part of two years and I think it really does come down to a really complicated issue area that

If one is not immersed in it, they don't know what is being missed.

And so most boards do not create a list of policies.

Instead, they take the broader flexible view to say policies that concern

Public Safety and Police Community Relations.

And then they trust that a well-trained CRB will not delve into policies such as what uniforms an officer does or doesn't wear.

can put a check on the board if they are delving into those policies.

But most policies are not delineated by a very specific list.

And I know it may again be something like you don't know what's out there.

I don't know if you've ever seen police department general orders.

They are vast.

There are two departments that I know of right now that have their general orders public in Virginia.

Fairfax makes all of their general orders public.

Alexandria also makes all of their general orders public.

These are documents of hundreds of pages that speak to many different police functions beyond stop and frisk, beyond Fourth Amendment issues.

Just how does a community get police?

How do police interact with their community is all proper subject for a civilian review board.

in the sense that it's called a Civilian Review Board is actually serving in an oversight proactive function where it has auditing ability and things of that nature.

And so I guess I'll wrap to just say I worry that this process won't actually result in something that is meaningful because right now council as it stands does not actually have a deep enough understanding of the issue and the folks that had the deepest understanding

which was the initial CRB proposed something that really does show a mastery of the complexity and the nuances that need to go into creating this and so I guess I would urge again

if not deference to what they've created, bringing them back into this process to engage in this dialogue with you.

Because what you all have done here is propose additional potential models in just your own conversation.

And this is, again, not a slight to Mr. Blair, but to the extent that Mr. Blair, in his capacity,

right deals with a broad scope of issues as the city attorney and this is about a very specific issue that has its own legal complexities having the wisdom and the counsel of the initial CRB members who did all of this study and did all of this research I think is invaluable when it comes to

crafting the thing and I take it that what came out on Wednesday is not like the unified voice of council.

It is what Mr. Blair put together based on his individual conversations with you all.

So to the extent that Mr. Blair's tasked with going back to now make changes based on what was discussed, I

Thank you.

And so before you, I just have a couple of comments about that.

So we were in a meeting with two of the initial civilian review board members and all policies were requested.

Correct?

That's happened.

So that's why I brought up the range of policies and made the comment that I made about because that was part of the conversation.

Do you really need to look at policies that are related to like shoes or uniforms?

So I wasn't off.

We've had that discussion.

So and I had another point and I should have wrote it down.

But it'll come to me.

Madam Mayor, just one response also to this.

I do not want to be the face of the concerns about whether you have two FTEs here for a city of 50,000 people.

That is something that's been broadly expressed, so I will stand down here and just, I believe the mayor made a similar

No, and I've been very public.

I did two Facebook Lives and I answered questions and I always state what I feel and why I feel that way.

And I have been open to hearing the feedback from it.

And it was never a never, it was just hiring this, for me, hiring this position.

First, and then going from there and understanding even through conversations today and even a conversation with you, the auditor function, and I talked about, you know, and I still feel the same way about the police chief responding to the concerns from the community with hiring the status specialist

and what would be different and I understand today the conversations around being proactive versus reactive and looking at trends and all of that stuff and we haven't had a

We haven't been together to have that discussion as council or with even council members and staff today, but I think at least just speaking for myself, I made a point to have this conversation.

and the way that I communicate with the public is through Facebook Lives and having it on there and on a Facebook Live you can't, it's clear, I'm saying it's recorded and it's posted, right, what I think and feel and always being open, that was my other point.

So while I am not an expert and I have a lot to learn, I will say that during this process I

attempted to commit to being in the room every meeting and that wasn't what was wanted and I asked Mr. Blair and we were in a meeting where I said we would come to each meeting to figure it out.

So I think all of us have to own the discord that was created with the initial and how that played into us building this together as a community.

I would like to add one other thing on the point that was made earlier about the data.

And Mr. Blair and other counselors, I think this is a really valuable, important point about what is the degree, what is the rawness of the data that the auditor, however it's set up, can gather against the concerns that the police have about personnel, the personnel process, which is a whole legal thing.

And I would be

That does seem to be a really important kind of not to untie here.

How much and what can the auditor that is hired, however, starting as a consultant and ultimately maybe a staff person, what can they get?

And I think an MOU could be a way of addressing that.

I know that when we set up the city's open data policy, that was a major issue in a far less controversial area, but it was the degree of

it was how was the data that the city was going to make public going to be dictated and there the city manager ended up having a fair amount of authority but the language said that it was like to the maximum extent possible but subject to city manager approval according with legal blah blah blah blah because there were concerns about the data you know that the parks department had like they have names so you don't let personally identifiable information go up I don't know what the right answer is here and I'm not sure that it's just because we haven't read the

the depth of our knowledge.

I think that it's probably really tough to figure out.

I would like, I think that it could be an area to help to address maybe in the item that goes up for consent if there is a way of talking about the degree, to the extent practicable, the auditor position shall gain access to

And that does remind me that the MOU piece was a topic that we covered a lot in our joint meetings with this group and we have kind of let that fall.

I would not, but I mean I think that's probably more again, you would want an executive director hired

So what the bylaws and what the ordinance though establishes the authority to go and have access to that data.

What you're talking about is the mechanism at that point where you go get the data.

But there's a policy question there.

I think that this is correct.

Council does have a role to play in setting the baseline of the goal.

of the transparency of the data and of how much of it is original.

I agree with that.

And I don't think it should just be up to the police chief.

We should have a role in setting the standard.

Alright.

Okay, I'll be brief.

I totally agree and I commend Bellamy for wanting to expedite this process because standing in the shoes of the public, we're looking at two years already.

and we're not anywhere close to having a strong CRB, to having actual audit of the police.

So the offenses have continued and they're going to continue until this is finished.

So I totally agree that the public should be granted due process and everything should be expedited and there should be special council meetings for this.

specific issue rather than tying it into regular council meetings because it's obvious that it's a much, much deeper issue.

And I would say that even expediting to even December 16th,

How many mass shootings are going to happen in the United States between now and December 16th?

Sadly.

I just want to remind everyone that you've had this since I think August and now all of a sudden we're in October and we get a council packet four days ago that has significant changes to something that a commission worked on for an entire year and now we're talking about a second reading where it's on the consent agenda and it's passed based on the way that you've been making decisions tonight and actually creating a third draft.

and I'm going to ask the question of do we really want this to have on the consent agenda and go through the same process all over again where we get your third draft the Wednesday before council and we have four days to respond to it.

Do we really want to go through that again?

Because I think that process is what's really pissing the community off.

The People's Coalition has six pages of comments on the draft that was submitted for this meeting.

And we haven't even had a chance to finish them and get them to you yet.

And so I'm really starting to ask the question of, why are we talking about hiring processes and those kinds of things before we have the structure set up correctly?

And we have to get it right.

before we start making decisions about hiring and those kinds of things.

So I don't care if the hiring happens in February or April.

I don't really care at that point.

What I want to do is make sure that we get this process right.

And I think what you're hearing from the community tonight is that the initial CRB has it about 80% to 90% right.

And that's where we have to go back to start and think about what we're going to do when we come to a consent item.

Now the whole thing about the auditor,

Whenever you guys want to do something that you like and that you're in favor, you talk about pilot projects.

You say, let's do this for two years and see how it goes.

That's what you do.

So why couldn't we flip the narrative on the auditor and say, look, this seems like a good idea.

Let's hire him or her for two years and then revisit it in two years and see how it goes.

Because you all know from the Human Rights Commission about the build it and they will come problem that we had with that.

and all due respect Mr. Signer, you all know the history of the Human Rights Commission.

It was Council's failure to make that Commission effective that has created a complete disaster and why we don't have the kinds of complaints that we should have and the demand for complaints.

That's on Council.

So let's not do that again.

Let's not do what we did with the Human Rights Commission with this particular commission for police review.

Let's do it right from the get-go.

Why don't we have an auditor for two years and see how it goes and then make the position a two-year position and then revisit it in two years.

So we start with building it in a way that the community will trust it and will actually give you complaints because we know the demand is out there.

One quick question to add on the wall.

So my comment to, we haven't been twiddling our thumbs, I hope that's clear.

This process, setting up the work session, having the other people from Fairfax come in here, we had to each set up individual meetings with the attorney.

Some of those meetings included the city manager.

We weren't even able to get the city manager included based on schedules.

I know from my meeting we had it without the city manager.

I just want to say that as somebody who signed up for this but it's hardly ever home and never really sees my kid as a single mother to have the comments made about like what why this was just received and I thought I explained it well and this is just you know for me that

We all had individuals meeting so this is the first time that we are even having the conversation about this.

So again, we can probably do whatever.

But I want to make it real clear from my perspective, you all do not know who's going to be elected in November.

No, I'm just saying.

I mean, just to have the conversation with the community and being honest, that is

A fear of mine, maybe it's nobody else's fear.

I would just say this, Mr. Blair asked me to hold off on the recommendation because he wanted to have the conversation.

I just think it's important for us to know what we're holding off for, which is why we even had the initial discussion without even being able to talk to Councillor Hill and Councillor Galvin about a thought I just had earlier this afternoon.

I think the rushing is us trying to figure out how we can do it.

It's not to push some trash through.