City Council Meeting   10/20/2014

Dede Smith, Dede Smith

Dede Smith

Special allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

Hey, would you please call the roll call?

Mr. Fenwick?

Here.

Here.

We'll start with Mr. Fenwick today.

Is there a project here?

Could I have it please?

Just Google Love Your Melon Day, Charlottesville, Virginia.

It's a child's size.

That's what's going to happen.

That's right.

Would you like to say something else?

I think that's it.

Why don't you continue with that?

I have other announcements, but I'll defer until we get back to me.

I'm going to be a judge for Halloween, too.

Oh, are you really excited?

Anyone interested in donating a tree should contact Tim Hughes, our urban forester, at Hughes at Charlottesville.org, or there is a phone number, 970-3587.

All right.

and whereas reforming factory farms to protect the environment and farm animals is necessary to sustain future generations.

I totally agree with that.

You hereby proclaim Friday, October 24th as Food Day.

Did you have some more?

Do we have anyone here to receive this proclamation?

Do you have any other announcements?

renowned mayor to accept this award.

Very proud.

You too.

Would you like to come forward and talk about it for a moment?

Thank you all so very much.

Before we move on to the next item, I want to ask Ms. Smith to present appointments for City Council.

To be nominated by the CAT advisory board.

and we need to make a motion to amend our original.

I'll second that too.

Good.

We have five ayes.

Cynthia Schroeder.

Good evening, Councillors, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you.

Can people, excuse me, can young women still enter?

I think a lot of people don't know about the pageant and it's going to be beautifully done and very exciting and the girls have worked very hard and there's a lot of opportunity.

I do.

Thank you.

Kim Nice Hi, City Council Mayor.

So we've traveled across the state.

Can you tell us phone number or website where people can apply for?

Thank you.

Jeff, I'm not sure you qualify for Miss Virginia.

This provision gives new meaning to the phrase, the People's Republic of Charlottesville.

And don't you think the city of second chances and all this friendly city, it's going to be heard not only in Richmond but all over the state of Virginia.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Lewis Schultz.

It is time for counsel's empty talk of accountability to finally start meaning something.

Thank you.

I'd just like to know who I have to talk to to get the same discount you got.

Rebecca Quinn?

Rebecca Quinn, 1044th Street here in the city.

This affects us all, and I'm shocked that you would even get it to this point without public discussion.

I would also like to thank the law enforcement and other individuals for their efforts in regards to keeping the public safe as possible throughout the city and Albemarle County.

Nina Seville

And I would urge you to include that resolution that you passed last month on your legislative package.

Is there anyone else who would like to speak?

Thank you.

This will be the last speaker.

So, now that you know the Youth Council's ideas, I was hoping to hear your opinions on the matter.

Responses on three customers.

Rest of it is going to be either on our agenda or thank you all for coming up.

but I understand your concern about the different rates at which they're assessed and there is a place where you can appeal your assessment and that is?

The Real Estate Assessor's Office.

And that's all I've got for now.

Now the details we will get to, but I do think it's really important to understand why this council felt it was important to do that.

Mr. Fenwick?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

May you please read that.

Item M, an ordinance changes to neighborhood development services fee schedule, second of two readings.

Any members of the council like to pull out one of the items here?

Yes, I would request that K, Approval of Housing Policy 1 be pulled for discussion at the end of the meeting.

Okay, any other?

And with that, I'd like to make a motion that we adopt the consent agenda with the exception of item K. Second.

City Council policies and procedures.

the staff and those committees.

With that I will open it up to questions.

And now we bring them to you tonight for discussion.

Mr. Mayor?

I'm sorry.

Our intent was that people have a right to express their viewpoint any time they want, but once consultation has been made, you need to accept that it has been made.

Is that a problem?

I'm sorry?

What page are you?

Number five.

Can you please say, because we don't have it written as... Well, let me just read it.

It's just one sentence.

Ninety-three.

So page five.

So at the appropriate time, it could be now, I would move that we pull this item from the agenda and get the public involved and get our act together and then readdress it.

We can have citizen input also but right now we have a agenda which does not work.

I move that we pull this from the agenda and get it in shape.

How will we get it in shape if we can't talk about it?

They don't know what's going on.

I have no problem in deferring a decision, but I would like to have a discussion.

agenda item tonight, but allow discussion.

Would you accept that?

I'd accept that.

Do you want to call a question?

Just so everybody's comfortable, we're not going to vote on it.

We're going to be discussing it and making note of the modifications that we recommend.

I agree, I want to make some forward progress on this.

Let's vote.

Deferring a vote.

What page are we on now?

and I would think that ultimately, if we're going to have policies and procedures like this, they need to look more professional.

I think we need to do that, but let's discuss it.

with some, making this conversation have a little bit of use.

It is true.

Is this something that you're participating in?

But I will not abide by these if there's any freedom of speech restrictions in them.

But you'll say so during the discussion rather than just wait till it's done.

I will say what those notes are.

Okay.

That's why I'm saying now, this is not ripe for discussion right now.

Let's discuss what we can on page two.

And who they're directed at is going to vary by the number.

And we have a question?

If somebody writes to council at Charlottesville.org and it goes to everyone, it goes to the five of us, it goes to the city manager, it goes to, who else does it go to?

Let's see, the assistant city manager, the CEO, CFO, and the clerk of council.

Thank you.

under certain circumstances it's appropriate but there are other circumstances where it's yeah I often comment just to somebody say yeah you know that's thanks a lot I agree with thank you or you know and God knows we don't want our mailboxes littered with a lot of so how can we make so could it just simply be read councils will copy responses to residents to the mayor and city manager as appropriate

And I believe one of the reasons that the council suggested that was so that the mayor and the city manager could follow up on any issues that may have occurred or any thoughts that one of the councilors had to advance an issue.

And so that was the intent behind this direction, this guideline.

Although what we had talked about was the mayor responding, so that we didn't all do the responding.

And yet I don't think that any of us really thought we should be forbidden from responding.

so that we weren't bombarding staff with multiple emails.

The idea was to avoid duplication if you can and to inform any restrictions needed.

I think it was also a concern that somebody responded.

Yeah.

So counselors will copy responses to counsel at Charlottesville.org emails when appropriate to the mayor and city manager.

Page two.

I think when there's a meeting and we're actually talking about policy and it's something where we're expecting a follow up, then I think we need to inform the city manager because that's who follows up and monitors that.

But if I just-

I'm not sure that that really needs, so how can we word that in a way that says that?

our city manager, and if there's any issue then, you know, with that particular meeting.

For example, if you want to just do information on comprehensive planning or housing, that you should be able to just get it full scale.

But what is the problem with just simply copying the city manager?

No problem.

I mean, just because we're kind of splitting hairs on it.

Will you give me a copy of the housing recommendation?

Because I think, you know, if you just happen to meet somebody on the street, that's technically meeting them, but if they request a meeting with staff.

Particularly since we expect our city manager to be also overseeing staff as we

So that's why that is in there.

This is just underlining that.

But if a Councillor meets with a staff person and says, I want you to do this report, it puts the staff member in a rather awkward position.

Well, in there it says that they have the permission or whatever of the majority of the Council.

So there'd be no problem with CC.

Okay, page three.

I think that is important as a concept but I think there may be a way that we can put that that it's a little less vague.

That's number four under effective counsel because I find, for one, many questions raised by other councils to be extremely useful in getting at what a core problem might be.

The other function is to policy.

Yeah, but if our policies aren't getting implemented or there's some problem with it, then asking questions is legitimate.

His job is to make sure it gets implemented.

I think that's more of a concern about direction, once again, going back to the other issue.

And it's our job to do so.

Page 3.

Because I just, I think it's really vague and different people could interpret it very differently and we wouldn't really be saying anything at all.

Mr. Mayor, would it be any less vague to say the Councillors will avoid becoming involved in the day-to-day operations of the city?

Yeah, that would be fine.

Just get rid of the policy level segment.

It should be mentioned in there.

Which one is that, agenda meeting management?

Yes.

Number one.

I would actually suggest that instead of agenda meeting management, just say meeting management.

But that's not what these are about.

by limiting the number of items on the agenda.

That's the mayor's role.

What needs to be made is the council.

But the rest of these are councilor.

And what if nothing's done?

You need to bring that up.

I mean, what will be the sort of the penalty if the city manager does not do anything about it?

Well, it may be there isn't, are you saying that one councilor feels that there's a problem and the city manager doesn't do anything about it, or if all the city councilors feel there's something?

Well, if all the city, if a majority, at least, of the city councilors.

So in other words, the problem would just sit there with nothing being done until the next... And we each have a meeting with the city manager before these meetings, and you could also bring it to the mayor.

But nothing seems to be done about the problem.

I'm not aware of any personnel matters that the council has agreed need attention.

And that's accountability.

If the majority of the council feels that we need to do that, then we can have meetings.

If one councilor doesn't like the way something is happening and nothing happens, I'm not sure that there's really, I think going to the mayor is probably the place to go or maybe going individually to your fellow councilors to see if you have agreement.

But Mayor Huja, if I may say, but it is my understanding, I think we're saying that, is that the opportunity to have this kind of discussion is when we are evaluating the city manager.

And we will be having that very soon.

I'm not saying you're doing that, but I think that that's why it's important to have something like that there.

So how are we going to address that as a policy on the City Council?

Well, I think, first of all, I don't agree to this.

I mean, they speak in general terms like that, but the sentiment, the sentiment is like that.

Does that make sense?

Is there a way you'd like to word that, Bob, that would make more sense to you?

I just like to see problems solved when people come with problems.

I'm not aware of one.

I think we're going to get into that probably when we do the critique.

And so at this point I don't think we can say that it hasn't happened because we haven't asked for it.

That's the kind of thing I'm talking about.

Regardless if she agrees or not, I think it was a good location.

And with Ms. Watson I think that the council did make a decision and that's the decision that staff has implemented and so the fact that she I mean I'm sorry she's not happy I think we gave her a lot of what she needed and what she asked for but not everything.

My point was it took 18 months those were her words it shouldn't take 18 months

Well, that's a city manager.

And we will be continuing it through into November.

Other comments on page three?

And so I don't want to go too far that direction.

We were talking about repeating the same idea again and again and again.

I'm just saying that that's a little strongly stated for my taste.

anything undone would be left over to the next agenda.

But starting the meeting at 6.30 is very difficult for the public because they can't get out of work, they have to go home, get dinner and come back to the meeting.

I would maintain that it's more difficult for them to stay here until 1030 or 11.

I would say put up a limit somewhere on the other side, 1030 or 11.

I'd like to hear from the public on that.

We're elected to actually do the business of the city and we have to... Yeah, the county runs their meetings until 9.30.

You don't need to say until midnight because nobody listens to us after 10 o'clock.

Although they have changed their timeline.

I would say 10th Sunday will be a good time to get over.

Limiting the number of items on the agenda is going to automatically start making us more reasonably timed.

I think the time limit would be better.

You might want to think about the very beginning of the meeting and all of our announcements and things.

Half an hour.

including the public.

So is there some consensus that we can try to finish meetings by 1030 or 11?

would encourage the public to comment on the length of meetings.

There's lots of ways to reach us.

In commenting here where it is televised across the city is a lot better than an email or a personal face-to-face.

I would ask during public comment that we also really respect the three-minute limit because when people talk longer than it is.

My question is, this is guidelines.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to see the guideline 1030.

I think that's a little unrealistic if we have public comment at the end.

Mayor Huja, if I may, that to me is only going to be workable if councillors do not take the time to respond to matters of the public.

As I have said, that we don't need to respond, all of us, at every item, and we can minimize that.

And yet, when the public comes and speaks, I think when people don't respond at all, it's offensive.

Well, I'm just saying that we can't continue doing everything the same and limit the amount of time and expect that nothing will happen.

I would rather have a robust public engagement.

So we're going to shoot for 10, 30, or 11.

Is that on page three?

No, it was that item number three that I think Ms. Szakos had an idea.

This has no place in this kind of document.

Unfortunately, if it didn't happen, this wouldn't have been necessary, but I think it's important to acknowledge that we want to maintain civility and respectfulness.

That would be a good way to say it, as opposed to saying it negatively.

And we do have Robert's Rules of Order.

But on number three, what about the idea of after council reaches a consensus that the vote is taken, councilors will avoid undermining the decision?

What does that mean?

That means not calling state officials and asking them not to fund it.

Yes, so that means not spreading around messages and emails that are untrue about what was being passed and what was done.

Number three.

And then change number two to a positive.

Okay?

So we've completely removed number three?

You don't have to support it.

No, you don't have to support it.

And I think that that shouldn't have been there.

And I thought we had removed that at the retreat.

Yeah, I thought we had too.

That was not a popular one at the retreat.

Okay, so let's take out those three and substitute with what we just agreed with.

Kristin, you had some good language.

We took that segment out.

I move that we remove three completely.

We agreed not to make a decision tonight.

I think there's a consensus to remove three.

I would like staff to see if there's a way to more positively put that.

There's three of us who have said that they want

So I'd like to ask for different language and then we can decide if we want to take it out after we have to.

Well, so how do you address what was brought up tonight

I mean, how does that play into that sentiment?

It's the undermining the decision in the meantime that I think is something that we really, I wish we didn't have to say it out loud, but I think we really do.

I'm not sure if I agree with the undermining, but people have

Maybe there's a less inflammatory word.

People have changes, councils change and decisions change.

And council changes.

So I would say more that we, once a decision is made, we need to accept it and live with it and live with that.

Why don't we just get rid of it?

We'll just leave that blank.

It should.

You're trying to find an alternate language.

So the way we have left it, as I understand it, is that we've asked staff to try to craft an alternative statement that is not as inflammatory.

OK. Next page.

Yeah, that's good.

OK.

And HAC is another example of those if we wanted another example.

I'm talking about one.

On your hard copy, it's page three at the very bottom.

Or when a councilor should be ex officio.

because I think it's useful like on the hack I think it's useful just because that's the one I'm on so I can speak to it and you may disagree but just from my perspective I think it's useful to have a counselor there so that when they're doing something that's that the council has already discussed and said no we don't want to go that way or when you know so that you have the institutional memory of council in the room so that they're not bringing up stuff that's not good.

I think that in fact is the danger of having a counselor in a meeting like that.

So I don't vote on this.

It's whether you have the contribution of one councilor at the exclusion of the others for advice that will ultimately come to council.

Where you want counselors or you don't want counselors?

And there are just recommendations that come from those, not decisions.

People, the ones I'm on, people keep turning to the counselor to see if it's okay what they said.

Maybe we shouldn't have counselors in it.

Well, I mean, if they sit there and take notes or in some cases they shouldn't have counselors on it.

trying to figure out which councilors should not be on which committee, then there is no council liaison on any of them.

Any committee like that, you need representation from the city.

May I make a point of order?

So that's why I'm just saying that the way they're characterized informs the question.

Because I think that is an important decision, but I'm not sure we need to, I don't think we need to bring it in.

It's actually very helpful.

And I agree that there may be times and committees where we decide to do that, but I would rather not do that as part of this conversation for these policies right now and look at them before we make our next, in January of next year when we make our appointments again to have made those decisions before then.

Any questions on page four?

So I would say on policy recommendations.

Is that when the counselor is the chair?

I'm not sure where that language came from.

I think Ms. Smith is the chair of the CAT advisory.

I think that was just, again, notes.

So I just think that that needs to be struck, because there's no large role that any liaison plays on these committees.

They constantly look for guidance from the council person.

We should not be offering guidance.

It's kind of like a circular argument here.

It would probably be good to find out which of those committees find it hard to function without getting that sort of information.

So that's why they're in question.

And you know, this will come up with the item I removed with the Housing Advisory Committee, which in fact, but I'll just speak to that at the time.

Thank you for the clarification Mr. Jones though because this is kind of a framework for us when we are forming a committee.

I think that individual viewpoints are fine to present, but not to present them as a council position.

I disagree.

and so therefore your own viewpoint is your own interest.

Only council positions.

Okay.

Okay.

He has charts.

How are we going to address that?

This is a formula for council packages.

And I didn't bring that part with me because I didn't realize we'd be discussing it here.

The roles and responsibilities of the manager, the mayor and the council were sent to the council.

Separately, and those I'm not prepared to.

Do you have them and you can point to them?

Well, it's because of public seeing them.

I don't know if we're going to make any decisions on the internet.

Well, you know, but we should avoid talking about things publicly.

All I'm saying is we need to make sure that it gets as far as package for next time.

And I just wanted to get that out there.

Well, I think we have been doing better than before.

But it is true that that was community engagement, and this is a response to requests from the community.

When you come back, please have policies and procedures separate items and not part of the memo.

I think that would be very helpful.

But we can't change, you know... No, the content would be the same, but the formatting, I think there's some examples of formatting in those other links that might be useful.

I think a lot of this content doesn't need to be in guidelines, or they can be wrapped up into, again, something more positive than what we have here.

Is this time for a five minute break?

Take a five minute break.

Sorry.

Music Playing

Dede Smith

Music playing...

Dede Smith.

Dede Smith

It's a critical part of the discussion that hopefully we'll begin to have with our legislators later this month at the legislative forum, but also into the 2015 session.

Just a couple of observations about the other priorities.

He's a longtime fiscal analyst with the State Senate Finance Committee and I think will give us a really good background for our discussion with our legislators that evening.

Jim Retchenbaugh is also, he staffs the Virginia First Cities as our legislative and financial person and is incredibly informative and clear.

So if I may, Mr. Bayer, Ms. Robertson.

And if you'd like to give me direction, I'll make changes, and hopefully we can have you in a position to vote on them tonight.

We have a question from a citizen.

Should we also add it to this or is there a policy not to do that or can we add that tonight?

I think what you could do would be as simple as reference a sentence or two saying we support One Virginia as indicated in the attached resolution and we can send that along to the legislators with this.

If I make a motion, I'll ask for that addition.

Any other comments or questions or ideas?

Oh, go ahead.

And on projects, it may not be in our best interest.

Because they're the ones who do that funding.

Well, isn't this for legislative action, these kind of comments and all that?

It's a very broad... Lisa?

in determining at the local level how highway funds and highway maintenance funds can be utilized for projects in our city.

That'd be great to keep it simple.

Any other additions or deletions?

We also moved education funding up into state budget and local revenues generally rather than giving it a separate section, but it's basically the same.

Other comments or ideas?

Is that by state code or is there?

specific about what types of idling we're trying to get at as opposed to creating concerns that it's a more broad prohibition.

Would it address what we saw with all the media that came from all over the world?

So I was trying to tie it to some definition that the state is already familiar with.

They're readily visible.

Is there a resolution to adopt?

I move that we adopt this legislative packet with the addition of the support of the one Virginia 2025 resolution.

And what was the finish?

In the language about the local flexibility.

I second.

5-0.

Another unanimous vote.

So we'd like to thank you for all your really hard work.

And then if you'll also make a motion for the TJPD's agenda, that would be helpful.

I would like to recommend that we express our support for the Thomas Jefferson Planning District priority state.

Second.

Second.

You know, we've been talking about this project for ages, and I think we may be close to a solution.