City Council Meeting   2/16/2016

This meeting will come to order

We would do the Pledge of Allegiance first if everyone would join me in standing and reading the flag.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

It's nice to see so many people here.

Ms. Szakos?

Here.

OK, awards and recognitions.

This is the part of the meeting where we go over

General Statements.

Ms. Galvin.

Yes, this is always a nice annual event.

On February 9, 2016, the Planning Commission presented their annual awards to recognize great planning efforts in the community for the previous year.

The following were recognized and City Council would like to take this opportunity to again congratulate the winners.

and recognize any who were able to attend this evening.

The first award was the Herman Key Jr. Access to the Disabled Award.

2016 winner was the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee.

Are they here?

Thank you very much.

The second award is the Eldon Fields Wood Design Professional of the Year.

2016 winner is the Tool Design Group.

Anybody from Tool here?

Anyway, I know that our staff works with them very closely.

Neighborhood of the Year.

2016 winner is 10th and Page Neighborhood.

Outstanding Neighborhood Effort 2016 winner is the IxArt Park.

Citizen Planner of the Year 2016 winner is Mr. Francis Fife.

and Outstanding Sustainable Development.

I'm glad we have this category.

2016 winner is the Coca-Cola Building at 722 Preston Avenue.

Is anybody from the contractor development team here?

All right, we have one more which I will read about, The Big Read.

I hope everybody knows about this wonderful event that the library does every year.

This is a proclamation from the city of Charlottesville.

The Big Read 2016, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers.

And we have some copies here.

Whereas The Big Read is designed to restore reading to the center of American culture and provides our citizens with the opportunity to read and discuss a single book within our community.

And whereas the Jefferson Madison Regional Library

invites all book lovers to participate in the Big Read that will be held throughout March 2016.

The library's goal is to encourage all residents of Central Virginia to read and discuss The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, and whereas the novel tells a dramatic story of poverty and racism, in the 1930s, Georgia Milltown explores themes such as isolation and deaf culture, and whereas the Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts,

in partnership with Arts Midwest and is supported by the Art and Jane Hess Fund of the Library Endowment.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Mike Signer, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, proclaim the big read during March 2016, and I encourage all residents to read this book during this time.

And I would like to say that I will be reading the book, as will our clerk, Ms. Rice, and I encourage everybody else in joining discussions, everybody else, too, as well.

Oh, gifts.

Thank you.

So we don't have books for everyone tonight, but if you want a book, come to the February 27th think-off party, we'll be giving books out to the community, come to the library and ask for a copy.

Okay, now we're moving on to announcements.

What?

OK, so Mr. Bellamy.

Sure.

So in honor of African-American or Black History Month, we have two very, very special acknowledgments and awards to give out.

The first is to Miss Celia Thompson, who is the first and only African-American firefighter in the history of the city of Charlottesville.

Female firefighter.

Female firefighter.

Oh, thank you.

A little excited there.

A little excited.

Let's give her a round of applause.

Some of her colleagues are here.

So as she comes down, I'd like to read this very quickly.

Dear Ms. Celia, on behalf of the Charlottesville City Council and the City of Charlottesville, I would like to thank you for your bold and courageous efforts in becoming the first and only African American female firefighter in the history of our city.

You are widely known across the Commonwealth as a leader, an activist, and a trailblazer, but for me, you are a hero.

You are the true definition of black history, and your courageous efforts to stand alone in gender, and sometimes race, are nothing short of heroic.

It is my vow to you, and I promise you, not only myself, but the rest of this council, as is the pledge of this council to work to diversify our local firefighter community.

and staff.

This city is lucky and extremely fortunate to have someone like you serve as a community leader.

So we have someone else that we're going to acknowledge, so if she could just stand right there and then we'll take nice pictures at the end.

This next one, as Miss Celia, is also very special to me, as well as the rest of this council, but this is the first African American mayor of the city of Charlottesville, Mr. Charles Barber, who's standing right there in the back.

Mr. Barber, if you could come up.

He's still sharp as a tack, man.

I gotta take some pointers.

But your letter also reads, on behalf of the City of Charlottesville and the Charlottesville City Council, I would like to thank you for your bold and courageous efforts in becoming the first African American mayor

and the history of our city.

You, too, are widely known across the Commonwealth as a leader, an activist and a trailblazer, but you are also a hero.

From attending the segregated Burleigh School to becoming a member of the local NAACP in the 1960s to leading the entire city as mayor, you are, too, the definition of black history and black excellence.

This city is lucky and extremely fortunate to have someone like you serving as a community leader, and I pray

that you will continue to be an inspiration and a mentor for younger gentlemen like me.

Thank you for blazing the way and letting us all know that no matter what you look like, no matter what your gender is, that we can make black history.

Thank you, Mr. Barber and Ms. Thompson.

One more for the fire department.

Hey, the good part hasn't started yet.

Where are y'all going?

You got lives to save.

OK. All right.

You're still working.

We'll give you a pass.

Is Ruth Grayson Hill here?

Oh good, okay, wonderful.

Mr. Mayor, it's my pleasure to introduce Ms. Ruth Hill.

She is a crossing guard at Clark Elementary School, and she was recently selected as one of Virginia's Safe Routes to Schools' most outstanding crossing guards.

Thirty school crossing guards were nominated across the state, and only six

were selected for this prestigious honor.

Ms. Hill was nominated by members of the Clark School for her dedication to student safety and for the kindness she displays on a daily basis.

Just a couple of comments from parents who

helped to select Ms. Hill.

Ruth is my first wave in the morning and last wave in the afternoon.

I'm sure I'm not the only one to say she consistently brightens up my mornings and afternoons.

Another quote, Ms. Ruth always smiles and waves, if you're following the speed limit that is, and says kind things.

Everyone in the neighborhood appreciates her and talks to her

and she keeps the kids and their families safe.

She is amazing and I agree.

So thank you, Miss Hill.

Could you please come up?

The mayor would like to shake your hand.

Miss Hill, would you like to say a few words?

Speech.

I just want to thank the Koch family, everybody that nominated me to teach us, the parents, kids, everybody.

I'm honored.

I'd like to note that there was a newspaper article about your award and usually when you read the comments and newspaper articles online

It's not really fun, but this time it was really fun because it was all these families from Clark and people who've been at Clark and knew you and talked about just how much they enjoyed your presence and your spirit there.

So I guess people appreciate you're keeping their children safe.

This is the trash and recycling collection delayed.

And you're going to have to pay attention because it's going to get a little confusing in just a second here.

Due to inclement weather on Monday, February 15th, city curbside trash and recycling will be delayed by one day for the week.

So the Monday collection was today, which is Tuesday.

The Tuesday collection will be on Wednesday.

Wednesday will be on Thursday.

Friday will be on Saturday.

So it's still going to be collected.

All right, thank you.

I have a couple of quick announcements, Mayor Signer.

So on Saturday, February 20th, the Alliance for Black Male Achievement, which is a city-sponsored initiative, the Black Professional Network of Charlottesville, as well as the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, will be having the second annual Umoja Self-Love Teen Symposium.

So this is a conference for youth in grades five through 12.

The conference will include workshops that discuss self-love, education, friendship, health,

and much more.

It is free and open to the entire public.

All the kids have to do is show up.

We'll feed them free breakfast.

They all get a t-shirt and they get free lunch.

So it'll be a fun event to say the least.

We'll have a DJ there.

We'll have a kind of an open mic thing.

It's going to be a lot of fun.

I know one of our little ones has been promoting it a great deal.

So we're looking forward to seeing everybody there this Saturday.

I also would like to point out on two weeks ago there was the first female women empowerment initiative meeting that was at City Space.

They have set a consistent date so they will be meeting

the third Sunday of every month at City Space at 3 p.m.

This is an initiative that is being led by the city as well as community leaders.

We had about 30, 35 women show up at the first meeting and this is to get a female, young female mentoring program started to make sure that the young ladies have a counterpart to the Black Male Achievement Initiative and the 100 Black Men and so on and so forth.

We will not leave

All you have to do is go to www.charlesville.org backslash jobcenter or you can go over to the regional jobcenter.

We're going to start our ground game starting next week so we'll be registering any and everybody who wants to come and at the resource fair you'll learn about services that can help you overcome barriers to employment, explore your education options, discover resources and organizations that offer housing and legal assistance, connect with organizations that offer transportation and child care services,

Meet with health professionals and get financial assistance.

This is an effort to show that the city of Charlottesville is indeed a second chance city.

We promised you all during different times that we're going to work on this and these are just a few initiatives that we have going.

So trust us, Charlottesville, we hear you and we are working for you.

Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor.

Ms. Galvin?

I have a couple of announcements.

I held my first open office hour a couple of weeks ago, and I'm happy to report that it was a really

I thought it was a great experience.

Five folks came and the presentations, we had our slots on the presentations were on expanding broadband in the city and we had a really good discussion about that.

They were on

Open Data Policy, that was a really rich, good discussion and I learned a lot.

They were on expanding street trees and there were a couple other issues that came up.

We're following up with the folks and so I think I thought it worked really well.

The next ones are on Thursday, March 3rd from 12 o'clock to 1 o'clock here at City Hall in the office of the mayor.

and everybody just has to contact Page Rice here, our clerk, which is RiceP at Charlottesville.org or 434-970-3113 for a slot.

But walk-ins are welcome as well.

It just helps a little bit if you call in advance.

And one other item of note is that I would like the community to know that with all the

Action and discussion regarding the Landmark Hotel on the Downtown Mall.

We have a meeting with Dewberry Properties, Mr. Dewberry, next Monday.

Hopefully, it was intended to be this week, but it had to be rescheduled because of the weather.

And in that meeting, we will be hopefully discussing in very serious terms what the plans are and based on the resolution that we passed several weeks ago.

and if any members of the community want to share their feedback, thoughts, ideas, and experiences, especially with the public safety conditions of that property, please contact either me and Msigner at charltsville.org or counsel at charltsville.org.

We are ready and willing to hear and we need your opinions and your experiences with the property.

Here, Signer, I'm sorry.

Yes, sir.

Oh, yes.

I'm sorry, forgive me.

No problem.

Our Clerk of Council will beat me up if I don't read this correctly.

We have another announcement.

The Seville Time Bank, Community Bikes, Better World Betty, IxArtPart, and numerous other organizations and businesses are working together to create and organize a Seville Repair Cafe.

This will be on Saturday, March 5th from noon to 4 p.m. at the Ix Events Hall.

and the Repair Cafe, either by volunteering to help or bringing items for repair.

those concerns that go to city staff.

We're doing a new process where the city manager reports out to the issues that were raised at the prior meeting.

So Mr. Jones.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

So just a few responses this week to some of the comments that were raised and questions that were raised during our last meeting a little over two weeks ago.

The first was Miss Mika Solstra mentioned her concerns about the notice

that she received in the aftermath of the storm and for cleaning her sidewalk.

Councilor Szakos expressed concern about the notices at work.

distributed.

They were old notices that were distributed for some reason.

All of them have been taken out of circulation and have been replaced with new notices that accurately reflect the ramifications of failing to remove snow from a sidewalk.

As you mentioned during the last meeting, residents do not face jail time.

That was changed several years ago.

Instead, a contractor will remove snow from the offending property and

and the city will charge them for those services.

I will say, even under the old notice, I don't think we ever actually charged anybody with a misdemeanor and took them to court.

But folks are charged now for those services that are done by contractors.

Another update, staff is developing a detailed update to the council on the after action report from the snowstorm

of January 22nd and 23rd.

That report will be presented to the City Council at its March 7th meeting.

That was an issue raised by Councilor Fenwick.

Mr. Paul Reynolds raised concerns about speeding along Lucas Avenue.

He has set up a very elaborate

We're working on updating our standard operating procedures on the use of city vehicles to include a section on speeding.

and we'll be informing our staff about those changes in the next week or so.

We'll be highlighting the importance of following the speed limit on our city streets and also talking about the consequences for not doing so.

So we'll be communicating that out to the staff.

Pastor Elizabeth Emery raised concerns about the lack of center for women who are struggling with

Addiction and Alcoholism.

Region 10 has proposed to open a center here in Charlottesville to address those needs.

They've yet to begin the regulatory process to build a facility, but we do know that's in their plans.

Generally speaking, the city is supportive of such a center, but if necessary, Region 10 must move through the planning process and then establish agreements over funding and when that funding will actually be needed.

And so we've had some preliminary conversations with Region 10 about that.

I believe Albemarle County has as well.

we should know more about that in the next few months or so and the direction that they're taking there.

Mr. Mayor, members of Council, I believe this was prompted by a question from Councillor Szakos to me and it came up I think due to the

proposed procedures that you will consider later tonight on your agenda and there is a sentence in those procedures, it's paragraph F3A which says if any member abstain, and any member meaning any member of city council abstains from voting, the reason for the abstention shall be included in the minutes of the meeting.

That frequently is required when a council member has to abstain due to a conflict of interest.

There are very specific requirements under the State and Local Government Conflict of Interest Act that require disclosure of that interest and at least in my experience historically

when a member of council abstains.

It's not due to indifference or indecision, but rather compelled by the fact that they have a conflict of interest.

I think I did allude to a court case when I initially responded to Councillor Szakos.

And there is a federal court case which involves an ordinance that required someone to vote yea or nay or to obtain permission not to vote at all.

And the court in that case, I think correctly so,

held that was a violation of the First Amendment because the First Amendment not only protects the right to speak, but the right not to speak.

So I don't think that's what's addressed here in this particular procedure, but I think in the context of the state and local government conflict of interest act, this is accurate.

Guidelines for public comment.

We welcome public comment.

It's an important part of our meeting.

Time is reserved near the beginning and at the end of each regular City Council meeting for matters of the public.

Please follow these guidelines.

If you're here to speak for a public hearing, please wait to speak on the matter until a report for that item has been presented and the public hearing has been opened.

Each speaker has three minutes to speak.

Please give your name and address before beginning your remarks.

On this device here, there's a traffic signal.

When you're in the clear, it's green.

When you're getting close to the end, it's yellow.

And when you've run out of three minutes, it's red.

And a tone also sounds.

Please do not interrupt speakers whether or not you agree with them.

Please refrain from using obscenities.

If you cannot follow these guidelines, you'll be escorted from city council chambers and not permitted to re-enter.

I'm Peter Kleeman, 407 Hedge Street in the city.

Council's proposed public involvement policy was developed at the council retreat and posted on the city's website all since the last council meeting.

There's been no invitation to the public to comment on the proposed policy, although there is apparently a great deal of public interest in how public involvement at a council meeting should be structured.

One councilor stated that, quote, hundreds of citizen comments were provided to councils by email or in person regarding public input prior to the proposing this policy.

I was one of those citizens, and I received no feedback from council on my suggested proposal.

I wonder if others did.

If hundreds of comments does not rise to the level where a public hearing gets scheduled, what might that threshold be?

Shouldn't the public get at least a summary of these hundreds of comments that led to the proposal and an opportunity to comment

and have a conversation with council.

As I have gathered from social media, Charlottesville Weekly articles just published and the city's website, the goals of this proposal is to be inviting to the public and open public input to more people.

Two, make the public input process more accessible and three, hear from a broader selection of Charlottesville's populace.

more people may accept the invitation to be involved but still only 12 citizens can comment that the first matters by the public on the agenda with city manager Maurice Jones and council clerk Page Rice suggesting in this article in the Siebel Weekly that more than twice as many citizens would be interested in speaking if speakers could sign up in advance and thus a significantly greater number of citizens will be denied the opportunity to speak through this lottery process and there is no proposed change to the public participation at the end of the meeting

I spent much of my professional and academic career in the area of decision science and I have never encountered a serious suggestion until now that selection of a random sample of relevant decision input and deferring all other relevant input to a time after the decision has been made

is a recommended strategy.

Although I am not expert in the field of public administration, I have not been able to identify in the past few days that either random consideration of relevant decision data or setting public policy decisions as a trial without previous comprehensive review of alternatives is a recommended strategy.

I urge you to defer this item for revision and engage the public in developing a set of alternative strategies and mechanisms for better prioritizing speakers to better meet what

the needs of council and the members of the public.

I suggest, and I sent this earlier, that speakers commenting on items where council action is scheduled during the meeting be given highest priority and there are a significant number of requests at a public hearing and if there are a significant number of requests it would make sense that a public hearing be scheduled.

Speakers addressing matters on the agenda without council action be second and other speakers considered third.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So, I'm here to talk about a couple of different things.

I'm going to have to run through them pretty quickly.

Changing the public comment.

If you want to hear from more people, I would much rather that you expanded the number of slots.

Albemarle County has an unlimited number.

If they have a huge number of people, they make the time slightly shorter.

Well, I'm not

you know, happy about that, at least it lets more people talk.

Because to wait till the end of the evening, if you're deciding something about zoning and I wait till the end of the evening, it's an opportunity lost.

Thank you.

So that's just not available for everybody.

So, I'm sure you're going to hear more about the comments, so I'm going to skip to a few other parts of the new rules.

One, if you want to be inviting to the public, I'm a little confused because it appears that you're cutting out some public comments at work sessions.

that public comments are frequently not allowed at special meetings such as work sessions but they have been for the last few years.

It hasn't been a problem.

The last 10 minutes or so has been devoted to it.

Usually there's only a few members of the public that want to speak and it's very valuable if a consultant or somebody is making a presentation and you have people who are local that are on boards and commissions that have been following it for months and months and months and years sometimes and know all the details.

Sometimes it's an opportunity to bring up something that's missing from the process.

And to not have the opportunity for public comment, it becomes really difficult.

You have to try and catch people at the end of the meeting.

It doesn't work.

So having that 10 minutes of public comment at the end of a work session has been very, very valuable.

The other thing I noticed in the regular agenda items, page 57 of the background information, first item was general, second item was motions and debate, third item is voting, and under voting,

It seemed an odd place to put that the mayor can determine that a proposal is clear and that the mayor can determine unanimous consent without a motion being introduced.

If that were in motions and debate, it might make more sense, but having it in the voting section makes it sound like the mayor can decide that there's agreement on something because people are quiet.

And I'd just like to reiterate that silence does not mean consent.

What it means is that people might be thinking about it.

Okay, so I see the yellow flag up.

I'm going to switch to another thing.

The police camera's on the downtown mall.

There are no more questions I have.

Is it audio or is it video?

Audio is for surveillance.

Video helps solve crimes.

So which one of those is it?

Will there be live monitoring like we've heard in the past?

And will there be a policy in place before activating the street cameras just like they're requiring a policy for the body cameras?

Thank you.

Mayor Signer and members of the City Council, my name is Paul Long and I live at 1410 Brady Avenue here in the city.

And I came tonight to strongly oppose the suggestions that I read in the dealing progress of changing how City Council conducts its meetings.

And limiting Council members' comments to three minutes when they're discussing issues I think is anti-democratic.

And I feel that an in-depth discussion

particularly when there's disagreements amongst city council members is democratic and enlightens the public and that we're entitled to listen to those disagreements.

I'm a little bit taken aback by your insistence, Mayor Signer, on adherence to the rules, Robert's Rules of Order and this isn't the, you know, House of Representatives, it's not the United States Senate or the House of Commons.

This is a city of 48,000 people in the South

I don't think we have to have that strict formality in how city council meetings are held.

And I feel that the proposal to allow the public to sign up to speak at the council meetings by email or telephone is an effort to filter who's speaking at this section of the meeting.

I think if people are concerned about issues, they'll make the effort to come down here and sign up.

I agree with Lena's comment.

I think 24 people should be allowed to speak.

If that means starting the meeting at 5.30 or 6, I feel that that's part of the job that you guys signed up to when you ran for city council.

I also want to make mention that the House of Commons

every week has a two to four hour session where the Prime Minister gets up and fills all kinds of questions by members of the House of Commons.

I'm not suggesting that here, but in that spirit of the democracy, I think city council members should be ready to engage the public in discussions of public issues that come before the council.

Thanks a lot for your time.

Thank you, Mr. Alderman.

Rebecca Quinn, 1044th Street here in the city.

I appreciate city manager's feedback on matters by the public.

However, the city attorney didn't address the specific comment question I posed in city in public comments, and that is whether a counselor must ask the mayor's permission to abstain.

But I come tonight primarily to speak not just to counsel, but to everyone watching and everyone here and everyone who may watch.

Tonight, the mayor presents changes to council procedures that will severely restrict what and how we know about city council's business.

We should all be very unhappy.

It's especially ironic, the intent is to adopt without any public discussion or input from the public.

As voters and residents, we want and need to hear from councilors what their views are and why they vote the way they do.

How else can we understand why they're doing what they're doing to us and the city?

I appreciate the mayor and perhaps some others don't like long sessions, but is their convenience so important it's worth stifling even councilor comments on reports managed by the public and items they vote on.

Good discussion is valuable for the city manager, city staff and the public to understand council reasonings.

And yet the proposal allots only 10 minutes.

That's two minutes per councilor for discussion.

I object to the statement in the agenda that action is required tonight.

Clearly it's not.

Please postpone until after a public discussion, preferably a public hearing.

But if it is adopted tonight, I ask everyone to join me in asking that council suspend it until after public discussion.

If not adopted, I am sure you will find there will be vigorous public discussion.

And I encourage everyone to come out and let council know

Good evening.

Thanks for the opportunity to be here.

My name is Emily Dreyfus.

I am a community organizer with the Legal Aid Justice Center and on the Advisory Council of the Public Housing Association of Residents, and we're located at 1000 Preston Avenue.

I'm here also to make a comment about the proposed changes.

And as an organizer with Legal Aid, I spend a lot of time thinking about the school to prison pipeline.

and we've been working on that issue for many years.

I've come to realize that many of our current problems are due to overreactions and unnecessary fear.

Although parts of your job as a counselor may be less enjoyable than others, we do not need to foster a public comment to prison pipeline.

I'm particularly concerned about the proposal to discontinue broadcasting or taping meetings if a disruption is perceived.

People watching from home should have a full and accurate picture of every meeting.

What breeds respect is respect.

Responsiveness and respect will foster smooth operations of counsel.

I encourage you to delay your vote on this proposal and have an opportunity for additional public input and discussion.

Thank you.

Good evening, my name is Jeffrey Fogel.

I think there are two things that are quite sad about this.

One is that you're spending time on it.

You've heard me before, we have horrendous problems in our city, wealth discrepancy, poverty, income disparity, the lack of jobs for people who are seeking a second chance, problems with education, but you're going to focus on something we don't need, a more rigid structure.

The second part is, I think it reflects once again a feeling that many of us have had that this council does not believe in robust debate, and that's clearly reflected in his document.

that came up previously in the last council session when there was an effort to require that counselors agree once a decision had been made with the decision that had been made regardless of their opposition to it.

Some of the things in here are quite bizarre and I say that from a legal point of view.

I'm glad that Mr. Brown reminded the council that there is a First Amendment, that it is applicable to you, and it is applicable in this particular setting.

For example,

Can you actually tell me that I must make my remarks directly to the council and not speak to city staff and not speak to the media and not be able to speak to the audience?

Are you going to throw me out of the room for doing that?

Do you think you can?

Even with respect to something like campaigning for office, I think we need an entire new council and I'm looking forward to the opportunity to work with other people in replacing the council.

Am I campaigning?

Are you going to throw me out for that?

I think this whole procedure sucks.

Is that vulgar language in your opinion that you could throw me out for?

You've failed to define what you mean by vulgar language.

You've used profanity, which has some semblance of definition, but vulgar language or gestures may not.

You prohibit defamatory attacks on individuals or groups.

You may not be aware of the First Amendment, but the First Amendment allows these things to happen.

You may not like it, but the First Amendment's purpose is not to provide a forum for the people whose ideas we like, for the people whose ideas are comfortable, for the people whose ideas won't bother us.

It's precisely the opposite.

Those people have the opportunity to speak to you.

It's the people who have robust ideas that may not be in the current milieu that require listening to because there will never, ever be change unless we have that going.

The city, the council president may exclude people not only for the particular meeting in which he's found that they violated the rules, but for future meetings.

On what standard is that going to be used to determine whether or not you'll be barred in a future meeting?

Or how many future meetings?

And how are you going to determine whether it's one meeting or four meetings or five meetings?

You're stepping on very dangerous footsteps here when you're going to be precluding people from speaking.

In debate, speakers shall be collegial in their language, avoid all reference to personalities, and shall never, never allude to the motives of council members.

What if I know one of them was, one of you was bribed, and the others are gonna say, no, our rules require not to mention the motive.

It's okay if you bribe, we're not gonna say anything.

These rules are preposterous.

Thank you.

I'm Trevor Sheely, I live on 14th Street.

And I'm Gunner Sterman, I live on 37 University Circle and we are not here to talk about the new changes.

First of all, I'd like to thank Councilman Fenwick for being so supportive of the University of Virginia.

He's come out to a lot of public service forums and we really appreciate that and I'd also like to thank the council for

listening to us today.

Hello, I'm Gunner and this is Trevor and we are the co-chairs for community outreach for the Big Event at UVA.

And the Big Event is the largest day of community service nationwide for college students and Madison House is bringing it to Charlottesville for the second year in a row.

In 2015, Madison House's The Big Event had about 40 job sites with the help of 400 student volunteers.

In 2016, Madison House hopes that the Big Event will be even bigger.

Hundreds of UVA students will come together to perform acts of service throughout the Charlottesville community.

on Saturday, April 9, 2016, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The goal of the Madison House's The Big Event is to encourage the UVA student body to serve neighboring residents as well as the local organizations that work tirelessly to improve the city that we call home.

Charlottesville residents and organizations may submit a variety of job requests, including beautification work, gardening work, elderly assistance, painting, and minor home repairs.

Many nonprofit organizations, charities, and individuals in the Charlottesville community have a wish list of projects that they never seem to have the time and resources to finish.

Volunteers with the big event will help complete these projects.

Madison House will review requests for job sites until February 29th, 2016.

That's February 29th, 2016.

Early submission is encouraged, applications will be reviewed, and sites will be checked on a rolling basis.

Trevor and I brought job site request forms with us tonight

So please come see us if you have a house project that needs to be done and you'd like UVA students to do it for free.

You can also take a form and give it to your neighbor and the job site request form is available online at madisonhouse.org slash the big event.

Thank you very much.

Can we get one of those?

I'm afraid that the city and the media may have blood on their hands.

For several years and especially during that period when we were having all those home invasion robberies and store holdups, I was here complaining to you about the city and the media not reporting suspect descriptions.

We heard no descriptions, saw no surveillance footage or victim accounts.

We now know that some of those

if not all were committed by those goons now on trial for the murder of Kevin Quick.

I told you that back in 2014 only to be allowed to be shouted down by protesters.

Had the city and the media done their jobs and reported suspect descriptions as I implored you to do, maybe they would have been caught and he would be alive today.

This liberal agenda of political correctness in this city and the media

does nothing but perpetuate the resentment by both sides.

Mr. Bellamy, I believe you to be a reasoned and passionate man.

I know you believe what you believe.

So when you talk about systemic racism, I'd like for you with specificity to tell us who you're talking about.

Until people like you and I are allowed to have a conversation and not a lecture,

The resentment will never change, which leads me to my next point of this lottery for turns to speak here.

First off, I'd like to know exactly whose idea that was.

It was working fine for over 20 years that I've been coming here.

Will this lottery be picked in private?

What criteria would decide who speaks and who doesn't?

Would it be decided by subject matter?

Could it be controlled by favoritism, bias, or ideology?

We've already seen you use your authority to break the rules for those who, for whatever reason, you allowed to speak out of turn while denying others that same privilege.

This seems to be nothing more than a way to deny those with whom you disagree or those who bring legal issues up the ability to air their grievances.

It clearly could be claimed that this is another way to deny me my First Amendment right to free speech.

Although often overlooked in favor of other famous freedoms and sometimes taken for granted, many other civil liberties are enforceable against the government only by exercising this basic right.

The right to petition is regarded as fundamental in the United States and as a means of

My name is Lewis Schultz.

I live at 1809 East Market Street.

Wes Bellamy, we have heard a lot of talk from you and other counselors about the dawn of a new era of transparency and responsiveness to citizen concerns, but you keep doing everything you can to avoid answering some very important questions that should be simple to answer.

You've known about these issues for six weeks and were given these specific questions two weeks ago.

The only possible reason I can imagine for you not answering already or refusing to do so again tonight is that you agree that something is very wrong, that counsel is not obeying the law, and you are taking the fifth.

That's not what you promised in your campaign nor in your oath of office.

Dr. King said, the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Wes, tonight I'm challenging you

It's time to take your measurements and post the video on YouTube.

Question number one.

Section 9 of Charlottesville's charter and Section 238 of Charlottesville's code say that the terms of the mayor and vice mayor begin in July.

The charter says that a vacancy in either office can be filled only for the remainder of the original term.

Wes, you were elected vice mayor on January 4th of this year to a two-year term.

Do you believe that to be lawful?

If so, what law authorizes that two-year term if it began in January?

Question number two, section 35 of the city's charter says very plainly, the council shall fix by ordinance the time for holding their stated meetings.

Chapter two, section 41 of the city's code is that ordinance.

By law, it can only be amended by another ordinance.

On January 4th, you voted in favor of a resolution purporting to establish a meeting schedule

that differs from what the ordinance requires.

Do you believe that to have been a lawful action on your part?

If so, what law authorized council to pass that resolution and how could it amend an ordinance?

How do you explain the conflict between that resolution and the one you will be voting on later this evening?

Question three, section 7A of the city manager Maurice Jones' employment contract explicitly states twice that his employment is to be for a definite term and that it ends on a specific date.

Virginia Code section 15.2-1503 says very plainly, all appointments of officers and hiring of other employees by locality shall be without definite term.

Is the employment contract between the city and Maurice Jones valid?

If you believe it to be valid, can you please explain how that can be since it does not comply with state law?

Can anyone explain why seven weeks after I first raised that question with you and six weeks after you publicly asked the city attorney to respond to my question, we still don't have an answer?

Question 4.

Charlottesville's charter is an act of the General Assembly, which the city has no authority to modify.

Section 5A of the charter says the city council shall be elected at the intervals and on the day prescribed for such elections by the laws of the state.

Section 5D says, in accordance with the general laws of the Commonwealth, the election of councilmen shall be held in May of 1972 and biennially hereafter.

You and everyone else acting as a councilor here tonight was elected in November, which is very different from what the charter requires.

Do you believe that your authority as a city councilor is legitimate?

If so, how can that be when your election was not at all what the charter requires?

Thank you.

And I should say to everyone, we have two public hearings coming up later on because we have two ordinances on our regular agenda.

So there are sign-up sheets here if anybody wants to speak about the two items about the Enoch Vinegar Hill and the encroachment and the conveyance of city-owned land at Hillcrest Road.

Okay, so Council response if you choose to respond?

Well, I appreciate everybody who came down to talk about the council policies.

Yeah, most of what people brought up is on the agenda.

I did want to thank Trevor and Gunner.

I was going to ask them a question.

If it's just individuals and nonprofits that can ask or if neighborhoods and the city itself can ask.

So I will suggest that we might want to do a couple of trash pickups maybe along the railroad tracks, things like that, and ask them if they would help with that.

So that's all I have for now.

And actually, may I just offer one, I just forgot one thing, the abstention thing.

Mr. Mayor, I don't know if I responded to it directly because the existing rules and proposed rules don't require permission.

It's not in there.

I only have one comment in regards to Mr. Hayden.

I want to leave my card up here for you.

Well I guess it's time for me to cash in.

Bails on me.

I'm planning on addressing most of what we heard.

Are you done?

OK. OK. All right.

Let's let's move on.

So we're going on to the next consent agenda.

Item A minutes for February 1st.

Item B an appropriation Albemarle County reimbursement for the Preston Morris building envelope restoration project $34,378.08 second of two readings.

Item C an appropriation state assistance and citizen donation for Spaniard program at SPCA $1,001.64 second of two readings.

Item D, an appropriation, Department of Criminal Justice Services, Byron Special Fund Grant, $9,990, first of two readings.

Item E, an appropriation for donations to Fire Department for training and safety initiatives, $1,350, first of two readings.

Item F, an appropriation for the proffer payment for DGIF-directed stream project on Moore's Creek, $10,000, first of two readings.

Item G, a resolution for the donation to support DGIF-directed stream project on Moore's Creek, $10,000, first of one reading.

Item H, a resolution to accept Water Street extended into the city street system, first of one reading.

I have one.

On the Water Street item, I think what we're being asked to decide is accepting the street, and I have no problem with that, so I don't necessarily want to take it off the agenda here, but I do want to look at the

the continued closing of that street and request that we try to either open the street or have some sort of the kind of fee that we would offer on any open street to have it closed if it has to be closed for any period of time.

Mayor Signer?

Yes.

I'm content to leave it on the consent agenda and vote for the acceptance as long as we hear the will of council is to open the street.

But for any other street in the city, if people were putting lateral lines in and having to close the street, there would be a way that you would deal with that.

Well, that's true.

That's true.

But I think the reason the staff suggested that this time was simply because of the timing of it with the other

the other project.

Mr. Fenwick.

And I would too.

Okay.

Very good.

So I make a motion that we accept the consent agenda.

Okay.

I'll second.

Second?

All in favor?

Okay, consent agenda carries.

Okay, five to zero.

So now we're moving on to the council meeting procedures.

Excuse me, Mayor Signer.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Excuse me.

You're right.

That was...

Excuse me.

It's just one appointment, if I may.

I would... Council, I move that we appoint Ms. Christine Apert to be on the Jaunt Board of Directors.

Is there a second?

Is there a second?

All in favor?

That motion carries 5-0.

OK, council meeting procedures.

The way that we're going to do this is we usually have a presentation before something like this.

And I'm going to do the presentation on this.

The motion will be made by a different councilor, however.

and we have, so that everybody knows, we have two different resolutions that are on the agenda.

We have one about the general procedures and then we have one about the pilot project for the public comments which will be introduced after we discuss this by Mr. Bellamy.

Okay, so in my first meeting as mayor I spoke about my desire and my hope that council, that this council would model deliberation for our community and I can speak for most of my colleagues when I say that these rules are intended

to do that.

We want our children to watch city council meetings and say, I'd like to be on city council someday.

And I can say that myself, I've written two books on constitutionalism.

I teach governance and democratic theory.

I care deeply personally about the freedom of speech and constitutionalism and civic values.

And I'm gonna speak now about why I think these ideas flow from that commitment and that interest of mine.

So the perception of many of us is that the status quo of our meetings is problematic in many ways.

I've heard a lot of concern over the course of campaigning for this office for a year that our meetings go on too long and so late that working people or people with families find it

Impossible to watch till the end.

If a meeting goes after 11 o'clock or 1130, it's very difficult to watch it all the way through.

It creates problems for people who take the bus because the bus, public bus stops at 11 o'clock, so if they were to stay here, then it's hard to get home if you use the bus.

News organizations have to report their stories.

If it's going to be on the 11 o'clock news, which is a function,

in terms of getting word out about what we're doing to the public.

If we go past 11 o'clock, then it's hard for them to report what has happened in a meeting.

Since time immemorial, this council has had 12 spots for public comment.

But that period is also frequently, there's a few voices who come into those 12 spots, which means that other people who might speak in those 12 spots aren't necessarily getting into them.

We all have discussed that the current first come first serve process can, we believe, risk free speech because it's intimidating to people, it benefits people who can afford to wait for an hour or more who can come up here, and it discriminates against those people who cannot come in person to find out if they can speak.

I'm thinking about the

the single mother who has to put her kids down at seven o'clock and if she's to get a babysitter then she's got to do that in advance of knowing if she's even going to get a spot to speak or not.

There's other situations like that.

Our meetings are also extremely informal and often they have been in the past year somewhat disorganized.

There have been interruptions, there's been a level of acrimony occasionally that is unusual for

for Local Elected Bodies, and that I have heard from people I have heard from has undermined confidence and interest in our deliberations.

So, these new procedures which we're talking about tonight are the product of a pretty

considerable amount of research and discussion with our council, our clerk, our city manager, among members of city council, among us and members of other city councils and other mayors in many other cities and counties around Virginia.

And people may speak to that later on.

I've had dozens of conversations with other city councilors and several other mayors around Virginia about other procedures that are employed around other cities.

I'll refer to some of those now.

These were discussed at an open work session that was noticed at City Hall a week ago last Saturday.

Charlottesville Tomorrow was there.

It was open to citizens.

A citizen was there.

It was in the afternoon on Saturday.

So it was open.

It was at City Hall.

These are also within the Code of Virginia's authority that is given to local elected bodies to govern by resolution.

That's a plenary authority that we have.

And we have gotten a ton of feedback since that work session.

And I personally have responded to a number of emails and a lot of calls and there was a whole discussion on Mr. Bellamy's Facebook page and so there has been a discussion and feedback and we've heard from a number of folks tonight, which I think is great.

So here's a number of the things that these rules accomplish.

Okay, just first of all, one thing they will accomplish is having written procedures at all that are available on our website.

The problem right now is that we don't have that.

We have no manual for the public that explains how our meetings are run.

There is a section in the ordinances, which you have to go into the Code of Virginia to find, and there's a memorandum that was implemented two years ago.

But that's it.

This is far and away different from many Virginia cities and counties which have a public manual that I think increases the transparency for the public in how we do our business.

So just even doing this is a significant move in that direction.

And the model that we chose looking at many different cities and counties out there, Arlington County has kind of the simplest, most accessible manual that just, you click on it, it opens a page, it's five sections, it's short.

Williamsburg, by contrast, nothing against Williamsburg, has like a 40 page PDF with a lot of recitations and an org chart, and it's kind of impenetrable, whereas these are meant to be very legible and accessible.

So that was the model that we worked from.

A lot also, there's been a little bit of confusion about that.

A lot of what is in here, probably 75 or 80%, is just reiterating existing rules that we already currently are under in the section in the ordinances that govern Charlottesville.

So the examples of those, the ability of the mayor to maintain order, all of that language has taken whole cloth from the existing law.

The guidelines for public comment, the business about not campaigning, that is in existing procedures.

And that also is identical to, I mean I've looked at dozens of other Virginia cities and counties and they all have that exact same language.

The right to eject somebody who's been disruptive, that is an existing procedure.

Robert's Rules of Order is in the existing ordinance.

So none of those are new.

That's actually what we're under right now.

So a lot of this is just re-

Okay time limits for agenda items this was brought up

The problem that we've seen is that some of our agency presentations are running over an hour.

We had a Parks and Rec presentation, nothing against Parks and Rec, we love Parks and Rec, but it did go over an hour.

It went through the 9 o'clock break and went quite a long time after that.

I've heard a lot of feedback from constituents about that, about

The efficiency and focus, focus would really be a better word, of our meetings.

And so, again, looking at a lot of other localities, a lot of localities have a 15-minute allocation for most agenda items.

We tried to err on the side of being more flexible and generous than that by going to 20 and then also by including a significant

exception here which is that the mayor in consultation with the city manager and keep in mind I'm only doing this I'm only have a two-year position as mayor this this will go on for hopefully many more mayors or they may choose to amend it

But we can change that.

We can put more time for an item on the agenda if we think it makes sense.

If it's a particularly, you know, if it's a particularly complicated or intricate issue, then we can put more time.

And we can do the same thing for the 10-minute presentation guideline for somebody to make a presentation, but we do need some kind of rules because the reason, in the absence of these sorts of guidelines, we're ending up with, like last meeting and the one before that, we had two or three items on the agenda and the meetings went past 11 o'clock.

both times.

And I heard a lot of negative feedback about that.

So we may be hearing from different people, but this is the perspective that I'm getting.

Okay.

The other thing is that I think there's a misconception about the role of having what, it's our job to read all the material that we're given beforehand.

It's not necessarily the best practice to have it read for half an hour, 45 minutes.

in front of everybody.

It does serve a public function.

I can understand that, but we're weighing that against the interests in a meeting that people can actually watch before they go to sleep.

So the agenda materials are publicly available.

They are posted.

We've gone to a lot of lengths to make that accessible, legible to people.

You click on it.

It's a PDF.

You can find it.

There are copies also in the clerk's office so all of the materials that we're going to get from a presentation we're already going to hopefully have read and read very carefully.

You're electing us and if you were to sense that we're doing a really bad job at that then we shouldn't win re-election office.

Our job is to be diligent with the materials that we're given.

Okay, so that's agenda time limits.

Formality of debate proceedings.

Okay, the problem, Robert's Rules was brought up in a couple of times, the problem right now that we have talked about is that a lot of the times the proceedings of this body has been very informal and loose to the detriment of the deliberation that we're engaging in.

There's also been acrimony which is not allowed by Robert's Rules.

One of the reasons that bodies that are under Robert's Rules refer to each other as Mr. and Mrs. and Ms. and that they go out of their way, I'm not talking about members in the audience, I'm talking about members in the body, they say

They refer to the ideas, they don't refer to the personalities because the intent of Robert's Rules is to focus deliberation on the issues, not on the personalities.

Because when you focus on the personalities, it can be intimidating and it can inhibit the ability of somebody to speak their mind openly.

And we want people to speak their mind and engage in deliberative debates.

between us, between the five elected members here.

So Robert's Rules, we currently in this body, we are under Robert's Rules of order under our ordinances, but we have been operating for many years under what is called a small group exception under Robert's Rules.

When you don't do, the kind of keystone of Robert's Rules is that you only engage in a debate once a motion is on the floor.

I'm gonna read

This is from Robert's Rules for Dummies.

Robert's Rules helps keep things on track by requiring that no discussion be undertaken until somebody proposes an idea for action.

It's through motions that everything your group ever accomplishes gets its start.

So we're not supposed to be up here saying, hey, guys, what do you think?

We're supposed to be having procedural debate based on orderly comments.

on a motion.

A motion is an action.

You're watching us deliberate about actions that we can take.

That throws the responsibility on us about what we want to do with government, not just what we want to talk about it.

And that's the reason for shifting to formal Roberts rules.

Now the alternative, another thing that we did with Robert's Rules was if you look at a lot of other city councils and a lot of other county boards in Virginia, there are actually a lot of limitations on the number of comments that somebody can make when a motion is on the floor.

We didn't do that.

This is unlimited discussion that can occur with a motion on the floor.

And I want to say that the biggest purpose of Robert's Rules of Order, when you go back into the history of it, is to ensure that minority voices are fully heard in a deliberative process.

The alternative to Robert's Rules, and I say this as a, is that dominant personalities can control debate and can be, can drown out other people.

The point of Robert's Rules is that anybody who has a point of order, anybody who has a comment to make on a motion,

must be heard.

So the point is that the minority is heard.

That's why we came up with this in our going back in constitutional bodies in the very beginning.

So I feel very strongly about the purpose of going to Robert's Rules is to ensure a full, whole, multifaceted debate where every opinion is completely heard in an orderly fashion.

And the idea that orderly fashion is somehow inhibitive of free speech is wrong.

Emphasis on collegiality.

This is directly, well, I already raised this, but that is also canonical Robert's Rules.

I don't think that there is any locality that I know of in Virginia that's not under Robert's Rules' border and that's not following it.

Another change in the procedures is to do two types of meetings.

The problem that we have seen and talked about is that there are too many work sessions.

Currently, the number of work sessions over the last four or five years has gone from three or four to 23, I think the number was last year.

We have a regular work session the first Thursday of every month.

Work sessions that occur on the Thursday of every month are not on television.

People can't see us deliberate.

So by having two different kinds of meetings, one which is a business meeting, which is focused on information, education, public engagement, and votes on ordinances, and the second one, which is a working meeting, which is work sessions, city manager reports, and the way that we've set this up is that the second one, the working meeting, can also include a business meeting before it, if there's regular business.

So we will be able to get everything done.

If we need a second reading to occur within that same month, we can do that.

That's just a matter of designing agendas well.

but the reason to do this is to be more transparent and to put deliberation in the public eye more.

The work sessions are not run under regular Robert's Rules, they're run under the small group accession because that's meant for us to have full and open exchange where we can, it's not about motions and about, because that's the point of a work session is you're working together, you're not doing necessarily a vote right on the table.

I'm very excited about this change because the public will get to watch us work over an issue and we'll get to watch us deliberate and it's not going to be on off TV in city space.

It will be here.

So that is a significant move ahead in showcasing our deliberation and exposing our deliberations to the public eye.

And to Ms. Seville's point about whether there can be public hearings during work sessions, we can have other work sessions still at our discretion and there can be by our design of the meeting.

We haven't made any, there's no decisions about that.

And there will always be these public comments at the end of every meeting.

and Albemarle and Blacksburg and other cities have similar structures to this where they bifurcated the types of meetings.

Okay, time limits on counselors speaking.

The problem that we are talking about is that we have, we do become our own worst enemies sometimes because, and I'm guilty of this, it becomes very hard to limit another counselor if one has already spoken.

It creates expectations that we will all speak for a long time and it can also lead to a lack of focus rather than focus.

For that reason, you know, it's actually not

There has been, and Charlottesville used to use an egg timer.

This was regular practice, and this body was handing around an egg timer and doing three minutes for our comments.

This is not radical.

This is actually a return to past practice.

The only thing that we have now is this fancy device here, but we used to have an egg timer that was handed around.

It was some years ago, but I've heard stories from many past mayors about it.

We also have looked at best practice from a lot of other cities about different time limits that you have for counselor speaking and the three-minute limit will be the same that we asked for speakers.

There is a misconception that this would somehow cut into

I think that's fundamentally mistaken.

You have five minutes to make a presentation where you're making a motion.

You have three minutes to respond to one.

Again, you can respond over and over.

We didn't limit the number of responses a lot of other councils do.

You only get to respond once more.

And if you can't say something in three minutes, then you'll have another three minutes.

I mean, my experience is that that leads you to organize your presentation a little more efficiently and with more focus.

It doesn't cut into your substance at all.

And this is why they have time limits on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, among other bodies in the world.

And many other local elected bodies have time limits for the elected officials.

City Manager response and no council response.

The problem that we have talked about right now is that this creates false expectations that we can solve all of the problems that are raised in public comments.

The point, one of the points of public comments, so a lot of people need to understand the form of government we have.

We are part-time policy makers.

We are, that is how this government is set up.

Mr. Jones is the CEO of our government.

We are like the board of directors to the government.

Mr. Jones runs and is the chief of our staff.

Everybody reports to him.

So when problems are raised in public comments, it makes a lot more sense for him to respond to them as we've started doing.

We can respond, but to have that extra kind of competitive loop where everybody feels as if there's this pressure to give a general response to all 12 comments that were given,

We didn't used to respond to comments in the past, again, back in the egg timer days, and every single city council and county board that I've talked to in Virginia, they don't do these responses either because they see the same perils in it.

Their city manager, county board, county executive responds.

And there are a couple of other important changes here, which

are part of the package seeking answers from staff.

There's language here about how we should go through the city manager.

This is kind of behind the scenes stuff, but it's really important for us to always be reading the city manager, to be making requests to staff through him.

So one of the reasons for including this new language is to clarify for the public and for ourselves

that changed.

It's a really important one.

I want people to understand it.

Presenting council policy, this is another change in here.

An individual councilor should always be able to state their disagreement with council decisions as a personal opinion.

However, as a matter of rule, it can create a lot of confusion among the public when somebody is speaking off the cuff and the public doesn't understand, are they speaking on behalf of council, are they speaking

on behalf of

that didn't happen because they're speaking for the government.

What we're doing in here is we're adding language saying that the council should say that they're speaking for themselves.

Again, this is very similar to language in lots of other city councils which have experienced the same issues that we have.

And it may be that other cities, there may be other cities that haven't done this, but they may not have the intense level of interest that we do in this wonderful community that we have where we have a lot of people

interested, focused on what we're doing.

The final thing, this is a smaller one but it's also another important change, is right now we counselors are sometimes forgetting to notify each other of the events that we're doing in public areas.

And one of the changes here is just to affirmatively notice the other counselors when we're doing something because it can create a situation where three of us might end up showing up there and then we've created a public meeting and then we have to scramble and figure it out and somebody has to leave the room.

So again, there's a lot in here that's meant to make these meetings more

Responsive to increase the governance, make them more transparent, and to professionalize the whole operation.

So that is my presentation.

Yes.

Mayor Signer.

No England Roots just popped up.

Mayor Signer.

Is there a second?

Second.

As the one who initiated the motion, Mayor Signer, I believe I have the right of the first debate.

I would like to just make a few comments.

And I do support the change in the council procedures.

The remote selection is something that is a pilot and has caused a lot of concern among the public, but I do believe it will allow a lot more of our own local residents to have voice in our chambers.

This will be especially true when we're dealing with matters that have a regional or national significance, as was the case when we were debating the Confederate holiday change or even the marijuana ordinances.

There were times that people in our community just simply could not make it and fit into the room to get to the podium.

Second, curbing council responses to citizen comments allows the council to focus on matters on the agenda in a very timely fashion.

I think it's very important to note that the press is an important component

of our democracy.

This is when press time is usually before 10 o'clock.

That means that much of what council needs to deliberate on does not even get communicated to the general public.

So the sooner council gets to the agenda, the more coverage council gets on a broader area on its deliberations about the agenda.

Now, the third point, putting work sessions on a monthly schedule in the council chambers ensures, as Mayor Signer said, that they are going to be televised and recorded.

It also will require us as a council to be more proactive about charting an annual calendar and more discerning about which topics are ready for action and which ones need more deliberation.

Work session outcomes should inform policy and ordinances which are enacted during a business session.

So with that, I would like to entertain discussion on a couple of points.

I'm not offering any amendment to my motion, but I would like to hear what counselors have to say about one point, which would be in paragraph C3, talking about ordering audio and visual equipment temporarily turned off.

That is one item that I would like us to have some debate on.

I believe we just need to clarify that work sessions do not have the same time limitations on counselors as the regular meetings do.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to just offer a couple of word corrections.

May I do that outside of my three minute debate time?

Which we haven't adopted anyway.

So the first is at D8, item D8, where we have to provide an additional mechanism to communicate with council on agenda items and matters by the public online comment form is provided on the city website.

I just wanted to clarify that this should

should not say on agenda items because it's certainly not limited to agenda items.

So, um, to provide an additional mechanism to communicate with council and matters by the public online comment form.

And then there's another place in that sentence that it says on agenda items, just delete that.

Um, and I think that that was something we had discussed at our retreat and it just, um, ended up there.

The, the other was F C,

which is the opening presentations for regular agenda items shall be limited to 10 minutes.

We had I thought agreed or at least discussed adding the language from B at the end of that unless the mayor in consultation with the city manager determines otherwise.

Because I think it's true that some things like for instance this that we just had was a 20 minute presentation.

And I think that we need, there's some things that need a longer presentation and I think that we just need to acknowledge that in these.

the other was just a minor thing is that we don't really need a signature on a resolution so to take that line out and I actually would like to offer a couple of thoughts this was I have long felt that we needed some sort of document like this I must say that I'm not in total agreement with everything in it there were things that I actually prefer the Roberts Rules of Order for small groups I think with five people on a council we don't necessarily

have to have such formality, but I think that a majority of our counselors, and I, well, we'll have a vote later, but seem to feel that we do, and I don't think that that's a bad thing.

It was just a difference of opinion.

We've talked about it, and I'm willing to give this a try and see how it works.

I think that there are good, compelling reasons for it and against it, and so that's something that I'm happy to see happen.

thing that I want to make sure is in the meetings that are work sessions, I was under the understanding

retreat that we had discussed that the public comment period would be before all city council meetings, not just before regular city council meetings.

So people don't have to wait a whole month before they can speak to us again, especially if they take a bus.

So those will happen no matter what the meeting is.

And just in response to one of the questions from the public at the beginning, where we have at work sessions, whether the work session at a council time here or a separate work session that we have somewhere else, the language in this

Actually, this may be from the next item, which is matters from the public, so I'll wait until then for that.

But basically, this is a little more structure and rigidity than I would have wanted, but I don't think that that's a bad thing.

I think that, you know, I will say that

that I kind of enjoy the free flow, but it's true that sometimes we end up going until midnight and there is a real concern that things that happen between 11 and 12 are hardly an open meeting because nobody's left.

Everybody's gone home, everybody's sleeping.

In regards to, I have some comments.

for the matters of the public portion, but I will save that for the second vote.

I wanted to comment on Councillor Galvin's point in regards to possibly shutting down the television and audio when different things arise.

One of the reasons why I feel that is very important, if I may, I'll tell a very, very quick story.

So I'm a teacher.

essentially everyone knows that.

I was literally in my classroom a couple weeks ago and this was after a council meeting and one of my students said to me, Mr. B, someone call me Mr. B, he said, Mr. B, I was watching the council meeting, which first of all was unbelievable that you stayed up to watch the council meeting, but he says, Mr. B, I was watching the council meeting and you always tell us that when we have a disagreement with someone we don't shout back and forth.

You talk to them in a calm manner

like men and this in particular instance was a man and he says that well why is it that in public in front of everybody that person was shouting and then that person was doing that for everybody to see and we saw it and I literally had no answer for him.

All I could tell him was that yes, son, I do tell you that when you have a disagreement with someone, you should conduct yourself in a certain way.

And there are different ways in which you can handle situations.

Specifically, when you are in public, you do not get into shouting matches with people for any reason.

But yet, this young man, this 16-year-old 10th grader, was watching us on television and this is what he saw.

In my personal estimation,

That is unacceptable.

That is not the model that we want to set for our young people or for anyone watching.

I wouldn't want anyone to see people yelling at a council meeting.

So in regards to Ms. Galvin's point about having the mayor having the authority,

to ask for the audio and the visual to be shut down at its discretion in the event that something just gets completely out of hand.

I agree with them because there are several people who are watching us, many of them young people, many of them impressionable, and we are setting an example.

Thank you.

I'd like to make an amendment, offer an amendment to the motion on the floor.

You can, if you would like to make comments that will lead into your amendment, I think that that might be appropriate.

What we have to remember

and this will be a combination of questions and comments is that we are talking about freedom of speech.

Now, 35 feet from this chamber is we have a freedom of speech wall and on it is the First Amendment and that says government shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.

Government is a governmental body as is city council.

A law is what they do.

In this policy, in the six page policy, I think 15 times the word rule is mentioned.

So substituting those two words in what is etched in stone in front of this chamber is city council shall make no rule abridging the freedom of speech.

And that's what's being done, with all due respect,

with this policy.

So with that as a background, I'll make a motion to amend the proposal that's on the floor.

I move the following amendment to the motion on the floor and some of these will be items that I went over this Saturday in this work session.

and I understand there was some talk about a unanimous consent in this work session.

First of all, it was a work session and I entered it as a negotiation in a way to compromise to get what I thought were important things in this.

I had no compromises.

Nothing that I proposed was accepted.

I think they were all defeated four to one, so there was no compromise.

So that was a poll.

It was not a vote that was taken.

An individual from the public was there, but he was not allowed to speak.

To me, it was like spring training.

The game didn't count because now we're in the regular season, and this game tonight counts.

This is when my vote counts.

So I'd like to move the following amendment.

Start the matters before the public in the council meeting at 5.30.

The regular meeting at 6.00.

No new business starts after 9.30 except final public comments.

Counselors will have adequate time to respond to their constituents in matters before public.

Staff presentations will be limited to 10 minutes.

Seniors disabled and mothers and caregivers for children or the elderly will be first in line.

And as part of that motion, I would remove section I

Paragraphs 1, 2, 3, and 4, and Section F, Paragraph 2B.

Section D, Paragraphs 3 and 9, and remove Section E, Paragraph 2.

And I don't know when the appropriate time would be to, I don't want to, I think I know how this vote's going to go.

So it's,

Making my comments heard to the community from what I've heard from the community and I want to strike a balance of a quicker meeting but still acknowledging the importance of freedom of speech to our community above all others.

I don't think we have to go around the state of Virginia to find communities to emulate.

They should emulate us.

It's not just what we have out in front of this building that matters, it's what we have as our heritage.

James Madison, James Monroe, Thomas Jefferson.

So I will take the guidance from the mayor as to how I proceed.

The motion on the floor is Ms. Galvin, so whether to accept that as a friendly amendment is up to her at this point.

The practice of this body in the past has been to follow this idea of a friendly amendment, in which case I think the person that made the motion and the second can't accept it.

Okay so but it's not ready to discuss until there would be a second on it.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

I would consider offering a second to one small piece of it, which is the D9, which is, repetitious testimony is discouraged.

Groups are encouraged to organize to a minimum, to minimize such and to appear at the microphone to speak as a group.

I'll say I'm disappointed that I'm not being given an opportunity to discuss my reasons for taking those other parts out.

If that is the only thing...

Yeah, actually you can.

You can ask him a question.

We now have a suggestion for an amendment of the amendment.

Correct.

So in regards to Councillor Fenwick's comments about us possibly prohibiting free speech, I have one question for you.

And your point was very well eloquent, excuse me,

Very well stated in regards to we have 35 feet away there's a free speech wall.

My question to you in regards to whether or not we have the authority or whether or not we should have the autonomy to stop certain speech.

If someone was to come in here and call me the n-word.

Would that mean that the council, would that be speech, based on the free speech, would they be able to do that?

Well, not being an attorney, I would say those are like fighting words to me, Wes.

Yeah.

But based under what you were saying, you were saying that we shouldn't be able to stop or prohibit anyone from essentially saying anything.

Yeah, there are restrictions.

Well, I mean, we're kind of going in circles here.

Like I said, there are restrictions.

It's, I think the exchange has been had, which is the question has been answered and well put.

And you've made an answer to it.

Okay, so thank you.

We have another, we've had an exchange, we have an amendment.

In general or point by point?

We're going to get back to that.

And then we're going to get back to Kristin's thing.

And part of that motion was also to postpone this until we've had public input.

I'm disappointed that a proposal has been brought forward to restructure council actions in such a way that results not in freedom of speech but control of speech.

We are public figures.

We don't need a six-page policy statement to tell us not to demean our colleagues in public, not to run the staff, not to speak for the council on public matters unless we actually do represent the council.

We know that.

That's not efficiency.

That's redundancy.

Section I, page 5 starts out, in the interests of efficient government.

In the very next paragraph, 2, this policy tells me what to say and when to say it.

And I quote, when, this is the when, when presenting their individual opinions and positions, council members shall explicitly state they do not represent their body or the city.

This is the what.

nor will they allow the inference that they do.

It is telling me the actual words I must use as a preamble whenever I speak in public.

Not just that, but I should bear the responsibility for what others think I said.

It is calling this document with no public input a policy

merely a dodge around the right of freedom of speech.

Did I lose my right of freedom of speech when I was elected and does our community lose freedom of speech in the name of efficiency?

Now I do believe we need to tighten up the running of the council meeting.

The easiest, quickest, and most efficient way to do this is for us to talk less and I think we've made moves in that direction.

We don't need a new policy that restricts free speech

or ignores the consent of the government.

Now, just as a side note, we cite other cities around the state and around the country.

We pride ourselves on being the best city in Virginia.

Why should we mimic what they do?

They should mimic what we do.

There are people who don't like my saying the West Main Street consultant fee was a waste of taxpayer money or that actually fixing streets that don't work and addressing speeding is more important than talking about streets that work.

So the answer is to limit my response to matters by the public to one response.

Unless I get permission.

Now I understand there will be disagreement up here when I say this.

So once again, I will quote from the six-page document.

Paragraph D, Section 3.

Members of council shall not respond to public comments as a whole.

However, at the discretion of the mayor, members of council may be recognized to respond to individual public comments.

If this doesn't mean what it says, then it should be removed.

There should be no permission required to exercise freedom of speech.

Now the man who gave us the First Amendment to the Constitution, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, is memorialized on the southeast corner of this building along with James Monroe and Thomas Jefferson.

I believe James Madison would not have supported this measure if, as a compromise effort he did, he would immediately begin to plot to have it overturned.

I do have a question of clarification though.

Can I ask?

I am not sure what is being modified in item D9.

You're just removing that whole piece.

And Ms. Szakos would support that.

I guess for me this is

It's something that I hear what Mr. Fenwick is saying and I think that it really

I've got to say public comment is my favorite part of the meeting and I don't even mind horribly when it gets very energized but I think that for us to tell other people how to present their position is perhaps more than I'm comfortable with.

Mr. Claire, would you mind reading it?

Repetitious testimony is discouraged.

Groups are encouraged to organize, to minimize such and to appear at the microphone to speak as a group.

Individuals are encouraged to associate themselves with the remarks of previous speakers where applicable.

Of course, that's lovely when people do that because it saves time and more people get to speak.

But I don't think that we should be putting that in with our rules.

Okay, so Mr. Fenwick, do you accept the change?

And that means that your motion is only because there wasn't a second that I heard that was for any of the other pieces.

So it's become removing?

Yes, I understand.

Section D9.

I can accept removal of section D9.

I can support as well, Mr. Bellamy.

Same.

Okay, so we have Mr. Venwick's motion, we have a second.

Is there any further discussion on that?

And Mr. Bellamy did as well.

If these procedures do pass, this might be an example where you've already gotten a unanimous consent to remove that, but a vote is fine.

May I ask a question?

So, Ms. Galvin, may I assume that in your original motion and now in the amended motion that you are accepting the corrections that I had offered before?

and a point of order.

Well, at this point, Ms. Galvin made a motion.

It was seconded.

With that piece of it.

He had five counselors agree to that.

If these procedures

are adopted, I think that would be an example where, by unanimous consent, you could proceed without a formal motion, second and vote.

This is F3B.

For the amendment.

This was which was raised, which is in the event that the mayor determines that a proposal is perfectly clear at all present, requires no discussion, the mayor may determine unanimous consent without a motion having been introduced.

We're still doing a vote.

The vote, which the mayor is getting ready to call, I think, will be whether Ms. Galvin's motion to adopt these is amended by taking that provision out.

We're not voting on the amendment because you've accepted it.

Okay, so great.

Well, let me tell you where I'm heading.

I am not going to support this council policy vote.

So if I have erred, I want to make sure.

You can still vote against the little box.

Okay.

So is there any further, well I'm going to make a comment in the comment section here pertinent to Mr. Fenwick's citation of James Madison.

I have a book about James Madison that came out last year called Becoming Madison.

I've studied James Madison for five years.

The climax of my book

is actually Madison's confrontation with Patrick Henry at the Virginia Ratifying Convention in 1788, where Madison actually was the driver of rules for the conduct of that debate against Patrick Henry.

Henry tried to abandon the rules and the procedures that have been set up for three weeks of debate.

James Madison, his hallmark in his driving force was forcing

structure and significant limitations on debate on the agenda items and forcing the debate in the ratifying convention.

This was the most important convention to ratify the Constitution of the United States of all the states because it came down to Virginia.

Madison was the biggest fan and supporter of structured debate, significant constraints, and orderly procedure according to an agenda, whereas Patrick Henry wanted a free-for-all.

And Madison won that debate because he swayed all of his colleagues on the side of it.

So in fact, I would disagree

He is, yes, which I appreciate too.

Okay, that was a comment.

I have one request of my colleagues.

because I am concerned that it isn't clear enough in these procedures that the constraints on time only apply to the regular meeting, that's the business work session.

And I would like to propose language that simply says in section FB, these time constraints do not apply to work sessions.

And in section F,

OK.

So again, that language would be with the exception of work sessions.

So instead of the word general, it says general, comma, with the exception of work sessions?

Yes.

OK.

Yes.

Page three.

Well, we're on F1B, I think.

F1B.

Right.

So this is going to be really, really nerdy, but Mr. Brown, can we, does including language in a header have the same forces when it's in the body of an actual

Regulation, I mean I like because it would apply equally, but it's a little, the headings are sometimes a little dicey.

Okay, so we should go segment by segment.

With the exception of work sessions on F1B, comma,

and then it could be with the exception of work sessions F1C, and then with the exception of work sessions on F2A, and F2A the entire thing, yes, that would be acceptable to me.

And this would also apply to any other work sessions we might set up, because we could set up other ones if we want.

OK, so it sounds like you have amended your own.

Yes.

Yes, I'm fine.

Mr. Fenwick, are you opposed to this?

No, I'm fine.

You're fine with that?

Yeah.

OK, so I think any other comments or clarifications?

OK, I think we're ready to call to questions.

So we had a second.

We are now moving on to the public comments selection procedure, which Mr. Bellamy will present.

Well, let's take a break first.

We'll go over 9 o'clock.

you

John F.

you

The End

Fifeville

I don't know.

you

.

.

.

Dr. Robert F. Kennedy

Okay, we are back in session.

Sure, so thank you Mr. Mayor.

Now there's been a great deal of comments and different people saying a lot of different things about the comment portion of the matters of the public and here are a few things that we want to make sure that the public understands and then goes into why we decided to come up with this decision to go this route.

Here are a few of the reasons.

Now, the overarching goal for all of us is to ensure the public that we are huge advocates of freedom of speech.

We also have taken advantage of ourselves of the public comment section.

So there was a comment that was made by someone, I think it was Joe Thomas, and he said, you know, I can't believe the council is thinking about changing the way in which

the public comment session works, Wes Bellamy got his start doing public comments and he's absolutely right.

But let's be clear, we are not prohibiting or stifling anyone from coming up and speaking.

Very clearly, if you would like to speak before council, if you want to be one of the 12 individuals who come up and speak, the process is rather simple.

Okay?

What we would like for you to do is you have essentially two weeks, correct, from anytime you can call from the previous council meeting.

So if you want to speak at the next council meeting, you can call or send an email tonight.

And that, you will be assigned a number.

From there, Ms.

Page Rice, who is our cloak of counsel, she will put your name on a list.

Under your name, you will be assigned a number.

That number then goes into a computer-generated system in which that is how we decide who goes in what order.

So let's say, for example, that only seven people sign up.

And what was the number of comments tonight?

Nine.

So there were only nine people who decided to send an email or call in and say that, look, I want to be one of the individuals who speak on the public comment section.

you would be guaranteed a slot because there's 12 slots.

Only nine people contacted us and said that they would like to speak and there will still be three slots remaining.

Of those three slots we will still allow individuals who are in the audience to come up and fill the remaining three slots because again there are 12 slots in total.

So you will still have the opportunity to come before council during the beginning of the meeting and speak during matters of the public.

Furthermore, if you didn't get a chance to speak at the beginning, you will have the opportunity to speak at the end.

We just went over the procedures and these are measures in which we are hoping that will make the meetings more efficient and shorter so that we are not here until 1030 or 11 o'clock at night and that's the only time that you can speak during the end of matters from the public.

Another very important part that we heard repeatedly, and there were some people saying that, well, only certain members of the community were heard, or you didn't hear from everyone, and you're absolutely right.

We didn't hear from all 44,000 residents of the city of Charlottesville, but we did hear from a great deal of them.

And this is why we have decided that this new method of public comment will only be for six months.

Within six months, or excuse me, after six months, if we find or we deem that this is not working, then we have the ability to open it back up to the public, open it back up to council and figure out a new method that is more efficient.

We were asked over and over again, can we please find a different way for us to be able to do something?

This is our effort and our plea and our try to try and create change to make this more equitable and fair for everyone.

I have personally heard on several different occasions from people or mothers who are single mothers, and I've asked them over and over, well, you want your voice to be heard about X, Y, and Z, then come out to the council meeting.

And what they responded to me was, well, Wes, I have a kid.

or I have two kids.

I'm a single mom.

So who's going to be able to watch my kid?

Because if I get there at 645 and, Lord forbid, there's already 14 people who are in the line to sign up, I've just wasted my time and times of trying to get there and then I still didn't even get a slot.

Is that fair to that mother who still wants to come and speak just like everyone else, but she didn't even have a fighting chance to be able to do so?

Is that fair for her?

Or we've heard from the family members who say, well, look, it's a hassle for me.

I've got to get dinner ready for the kids.

I've got to make accommodations for if I'm going to have to ride the bus or if I need another means of transportation to get there.

And I get there at even 620, and all the slots are full.

Is that fair to that person to not have the opportunity or the ability to still come and speak before us?

We want to make this equitable for everyone.

For a student, a high school student, or excuse me, a college student.

And yeah, we have plenty of them here.

If they want to come and they want to speak before council, but they have a six o'clock class,

Well, how will they be able to come and speak for us because if they miss that class and they still get here at 6.30 and the slots are full, they won't have the opportunity to speak.

It's not fair for them.

Under this method, we are trying something new to make it equitable for everyone.

One of the things that we often heard is intimidation.

People are sometimes scared of the long lines.

Sometimes they need time to prepare for what they're going to say.

Well, under this method, everyone who has been selected based on the selection process will know by one o'clock on Monday afternoon whether or not you've been selected.

This will then give you time to prepare.

You can get some more people to come with you if you want to for moral support.

And then you can also make the proper accommodations to be able to come and speak for us and do so in an efficient manner.

We often heard, and we've seen from hot topic items, such as the meals tax or when Ms. Galvin brought it up in regards to the Confederate flag issue.

And there's been tons of hot button issues that have taken place here in Charlottesville.

And there will be more that take place.

So I want to pose this question.

and some will agree and some will disagree.

But when there is one in particular issue, for example, and 15 people come at 6 o'clock and they get in line and they want to talk about their in particular issue.

Well, what if someone else has an issue that they feel is equally important, but they couldn't get here at 6 o'clock?

And because there were 15 people here before them, they didn't have the opportunity to even sign up.

Is it fair for those 15 people who came at six to be able to speak and monopolize the entire list while this one or two other people who may be coming from a local issue or whatever the case may be and they want to speak and they don't have the opportunity to.

Is that balance and is that fair?

We think not.

And again, this is only a six-month proposal.

It makes it easier

to plan to come.

It makes it a lot easier for individuals to know exactly what they need to do when they get here.

The process is well identified and laid out.

And then we also think about how this will empower several of our residents.

We've decided, excuse me, our city manager and our clerk have estimated that twice as many people will try and speak under the new plan because now they know they won't have to come down and sign up and wait in line or whatever the case may be.

No one knows who's going to sign up.

No one knows exactly what you're going to be talking about.

No one knows except for you.

So you have the ability to be able to do so.

This again, I can't state it enough, is a pilot.

This is something that we are trying.

The city as a whole has elected these five individuals to come up with new ideas or come up with ideas in general to move our city forward.

This is something that we want to do to make the city better.

Will it be perfect?

Only time will tell.

But the only thing that we're asking is that you can please give us the six months to try it.

To try it.

And change is hard.

Change is very difficult.

But if we don't try, we never know what will happen.

And at the end of six months, I think we all can agree that we'll be willing to open the process back up.

We can even have a public comment session, something that we didn't do this time, but we can open it up to the public, open it up to have comments from everyone, and find out the best solution if this one doesn't work.

But we're going to try.

Nothing else.

So we would you like to sort of let me make a motion about so that the motion will be the the one that's at the and then we can have discussion just like last time on that motion.

So just the resolution page.

Thank you.

So be it hereby resolved that

that the attached City Council meeting procedures be adopted and put into place.

So here is the resolution in regards to matters by the public during City Council meetings.

Whereas the Charlottesville City Council, in consultation with peers, researchers, best practices across the state, and the appropriate city staff members, seek to create an equitable and accessible process for citizen participation in matters by the public.

Be it resolved that council does hereby establish the following process for matters by the public.

A.

Members of the public may request one of 12 speaking slots for the first session of matters by the public by email, telephone, or in person with the clerk by 9 a.m. on the day of the meeting.

Through a random and transparent process, which shall be publicly described and provided to the public, the clerk shall distribute and publicize the speaking slots by 12 noon on the day of the meeting.

A second session of Matters by the Public will also be held at the end of each regular meeting and is not limited by number of speakers.

For other public hearings, a sign-up sheet will be provided by the clerk at the meeting.

Be it further resolved that this shall go into effect beginning March 7, 2016 and shall run for a trial period of six months.

Council shall evaluate the process and make a final determination after the conclusion of the trial period.

There's a motion on the floor.

Okay, we have a second.

Okay.

Oh, yeah, yeah, that was right there.

Yeah.

Want to go this way this time?

Okay.

Mayor Signer, may I talk to Mr. Weld?

I call them Willoughby.

Mr. Bellamy about.

That's a new one.

It's getting really hot under these lights.

I do have a question and would he entertain an amendment that would just be related again to clarify that this applies only to the regular meeting.

You don't think that's necessary?

Oh yes, but this remote selection would also apply to the work session or no?

Like it doesn't apply to those, those two public hearings that we have right now.

Mr. Mayor, just a point of clarification.

You mean the matters by the public at the beginning of the meetings?

That's right.

Because it says for the first session of matters by the public in A. Yeah, for the first session.

Yeah.

Mr.

Yeah, I think with this end, since we did the other way that time, but you know, whatever.

Well, we're going through a lot of work, not just from the council, but from the public.

And it seems to me that there should be a problem that we're trying to solve if we do this.

And it's just very ironic that

Tonight, when we're talking about the number of people who can talk at matters before public, we had open slots.

So if we're not really addressing a specific problem, this seems to me to be change for the sake of change, which doesn't seem to be very efficient.

I think the fatal flaw in this proposal

is when you have a strong advocate group, some people call them evangelistic in their fervor, who could send out an email blast and say sign up for public comment and say 50 or 60 of them sign up, knowing that not everybody is gonna be chosen, but the odds that their issue will take center stage is much higher

when they do this, and I'm certain that will happen.

And I don't think this system addresses that.

We're hoping it will work better.

We have no idea if it's going to work better.

We're trading something that we know for something that we don't know, and I feel very uncomfortable doing that.

And once again, it's the public.

This early on was characterized as a council policy.

This is absolutely a public policy in the sense that it's for the public.

In fact, it's more for them than it is for us.

So I don't have a amendment to offer.

I'd like to say a couple of things on this.

So we are faced, like any public body, with difficult choices between imperfect alternatives.

The question is whether you're going to have, there are a couple of threshold questions.

Are you going to have any limitation at all on your public speakers?

Most localities do, Mr. Fenwick has made arguments that we shouldn't be judging ourselves by most localities, but we certainly have for many, many, many years.

There's been a number of 12 at the beginning and then the comment period at the end, there's been unlimited.

There has not been widespread disagreement with having a limited number at the beginning, but that would be an available choice to any public body to just have no limit on slots at all.

So assuming that we're sticking with the current policy of having a limited number, which is 12, the question then is what do you do when you have more than 12?

Which again is a blessing, but it's also a challenge to figure out.

A lot of localities in Virginia don't have the issue that we have, which is

and so on.

The current pattern we have is unfair to a lot of people who either can't plan to show up, they don't know if they're going to be able to come and wait.

A lot of the pushback I've heard on this proposed rule has been from well set up corporate folks in town who said we're accustomed to being able to come and definitely get a spot because we have an issue to speak about that relates to planning or zoning or some business issue.

Those folks can afford to come here at six o'clock or earlier and just kind of spend time here waiting.

The single mom or the person with three jobs who I try in Fifeville or some of the neighborhoods downtown to come, it's a lot harder for them to just say, I'm going to go hang out there uncertain if it's a busy night, whether I'm going to speak.

So the intent here is to open it up to a lot more people.

You also right now can't make a reservation through phone.

Our capital city in Richmond right now only takes public comment lists by phone.

You have to call.

You can call up to noon the day of the meeting, and they only do them by phone.

They don't do them in person because of the, you know, I don't know what reasons they chose, but there is a lot of different options out there that different localities have chosen.

Is any of them perfect?

No, but the intent here is to

throw open the doors to lots more people and I know that I'm gonna be trying to get lots of people that I know who never would come down right now and wait to contact us, call, call Page, call us, get a spot, email, show up in person and hopefully we populate that list with a lot more folks who are interested and as Mr. Bellamy said, it is a pilot project so we can learn from it and we can change it at the conclusion of six months.

I guess this was the part of the council policies that I had the hardest time with.

I think that I have very little problem with council deciding on its own rules of engagement, as long as they include robust public discussion.

But this part is tougher, and I think it does affect a lot of people.

And I really, I balked.

I kind of came at this, there are scratch marks on the ground where my heels were.

I am ready to give it six months and actually a couple of us on council during the work session insisted that it would do better to try it as a six month trial rather than incorporate it into the other policies because it is important that the public have a chance to weigh in on this and I think that weighing in while we're doing it makes sense to me.

Weighing in with it kind of in the abstract, it's hard to tell how it's going to work.

We haven't done it.

So I'm uncomfortable with the six month trial.

I'm especially comfortable with it because in the years that

that we've been, that I've been on council at least, we've expanded the number of ways that people can communicate with council.

We have a website place where you can go and offer your comment there.

You can write to council at Charlottesville.org and email us.

All of us have our phone numbers.

I think all of us have our phone numbers on the website, so you can call us anytime you want.

You can leave messages for us at the clerk.

We'll be starting up soon again the town halls where we go into neighborhoods and have unlimited public comment.

That's what they're for, where we have dinner together, where we have childcare provided for free, and where anybody can speak on any matter they want for as long as they want.

And we have free interchange of ideas where council can answer

Department Heads can answer.

And also all of us live in town.

And so I know when I walk down the street, people stop me and say, hey, you know, I really wanted to talk to you about this issue.

That's why I'm always late.

I'm going to stick to that story.

But I think, like I said before, public comment is my favorite part of the council meeting.

And I want people to feel like they can come, and I want people to feel like it's accessible.

I think that, like as Mr. Bellamy said, there is a chance that this will help people feel that way who don't feel that way.

I think the people who come all the time are very comfortable with the current system.

And that's what we heard today.

It's working for them.

I think that the people we haven't heard from may be the ones that benefit from this.

And I'll just be brief.

I kind of articulate a lot of my ideas earlier on, but I do think this is a way to open up again the whole arena for people to come and give us their comments.

It has been challenging.

I've seen this going for the last four years where people have felt they could not come into the council chambers and basically assert themselves to get to the podium.

I think

It's still 12 slots.

Everyone still has three minutes.

We are not limiting that free speech.

Some of the emails that I've read have felt that we're limiting both the time and the number.

and that is absolutely not the case.

We've created an open, broader source of people to come and sign up.

That's all we've done.

And I think after six months, if we have the situation where we've gotten a lot more public comment because of it, I think we do have to assess and look at what does that mean too.

So I'm in support of this.

And I think to your point, Ms. Galvin, the comments will continue to be televised.

The comments will still be online.

And Ms. Szakos' point is very well taken.

We have heard from several individuals who are accustomed and particularly familiar and okay with coming and speaking before the council.

They are used to doing so, so for them it's not really an issue.

But for those individuals who have only come maybe once, or they've never come and spoken before council, this empowers them.

And this allows us to just try something new.

And it's only for six months.

So thank you Ms. Galvin, Ms. Szakos, Mr. Fenwick and Mayor Signer for your comments.

I just think we have a second.

Is there any additional comments or clarifications?

I think we're ready for a vote on the motion.

All in favor?

Motion carries four to one.

Okay, we're moving on to the next item on our agenda.

Thank you everyone.

Public hearing and an ordinance.

Easement to cure encroachment at the Inn at Vinegar Hill Hotel.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, the next item on your agenda is a proposed ordinance offered for first reading tonight that would address an encroachment

on Ridge McIntyre Road that arose as a result of the construction of the inn at Venator Hill, perhaps more commonly known as the Marriott Residence Inn Hotel.

As you can see from the letter from counsel for the hotel, there was a minor encroachment along the Ridge McIntyre sidewalk.

of three inches for a distance, I believe it was about 24 feet.

I know developers and builders endeavor greatly to build buildings on their own property, but this type of mistake is not unprecedented.

We deal with it on occasion.

I can think

A couple of other examples where this has come up, especially in heavily developed areas, urban areas, where there is a build to line, where you have to build to the property line.

And in some of our older residential neighborhoods it's come up.

But there is a proposed ordinance which would authorize the continued presence of this building on this very narrow piece of city-owned sidewalk.

It is scheduled for a public hearing, and as I say, the ordinance is offered for first reading tonight.

Is there any consequence for such a thing?

Yeah, I believe the city can adopt an ordinance providing for penalties.

Not to my knowledge.

Yeah, I recall, I think there were two instances in the past 12 years, very similar situation, and council in those circumstances opted not to charge the property owner.

That is an option that you have, however.

And how much would that be?

I don't know.

I think it would be a pretty nominal amount if you would base it on the—because it is just such a small area, it's a little over two square feet, I think.

We have the attorney for the—are you prepared, Ms. Long, to speak to this?

And I'm going to ask you to keep this pretty brief, if you could.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the Council.

I'm Valerie Long, the law firm of Williams Mullen, 321 East Main Street.

Joining me tonight, I'm here tonight on behalf of the owner and developer of the Residence Inn at

315 West Main Street.

Joining me is Mr. Charles Wendell, who is the manager of the entity that owns the land and the hotel.

Also Trent Lawhorn, who is with Trident Construction, which is the general contractor.

First, let me say, to answer the question briefly, it is the total area in question is 2.81 square feet.

So it is a very small area.

Certainly, we certainly respect the situation at hand.

It is a challenge with

as Mr. Brown indicated when you have a zero lot line or a Bill 2 line that does not provide any room for error.

Unfortunately, there was a small error here.

We respect that.

One thing, I was actually meeting with Ms. Galvin this afternoon on an unrelated matter and was discussing this issue and just wanted to, one thing that came to mind which I honestly did not remember at the time, wished that I had put in my letter to council.

was that actually, her comment was similar to yours Ms. Szakos, is there any consequence or compensation that your client can provide?

And actually, we actually did that at the front end as part of working with the NDS staff as part of the site plan.

And I have copies of this I'm happy to share.

The owner and developer actually granted an easement to the city back in 2013.

The total area is 607 square feet all along West Main Street.

I know you can't see this, but I'll hold it up just to help orient for future reference.

This is West Main Street.

It's along the frontage of West Main Street.

It's a sliver of an area, it's very slim in certain areas, but it's all the portions of the property, the lot in question that's privately owned, that are beyond the building, became part of the sidewalk.

The developer dedicated an easement to the city, a pedestrian sidewalk easement, so that that area, for all intents and purposes, it's all looks and feels like sidewalk easement.

So again, that area was 607 square feet, still not a huge area,

but by comparison to the 2.81 square feet, it's over a 200% difference.

So obviously we didn't do that on the front end to compensate.

We certainly wish we had avoided this minor error with the construction but we did want to at least point out that that was something that we worked out with.

It was a request from NDS staff at the site plan stage.

We were very happy to do it.

It certainly improves the pedestrian friendly nature of that area and I think will help

further invigorate that area along West Main Street, which I know is part of the goals of the current West Main Street proposal.

So we look forward to opening the hotel, hopefully within the next month.

Two other things that may just be of interest to you is the zoning on the property had been changed prior to our client buying the property.

It was changed by a prior developer who originally proposed to build condominium units there.

As a result, as part of that zoning process, and I was not involved in it, there was a $300,000 proffer that was made for affordable housing.

Our client essentially inherited that proffer obligation.

So one of the many benefits to the city of this project, in addition to the significant tax revenue that will be generated by the lodging taxes from these units, is the $300,000 that will go to the city's affordable housing fund.

So I'd certainly be happy to answer any questions,

We would graciously request the Council's support for the easement for the encroachment.

And with that, I will take a seat.

I'd be happy to pass out copies of this if Council would like, if that would be helpful.

Pardon me, one other thing.

I do also have some photographs of that area, or copies of the photos, if that would be helpful.

That would be helpful.

For the public's benefit, you'll see when it gets to you, there are two red arrows that mark two corners.

The corner in the front is where the encroachment begins.

At that point, that corner is right on the property line.

As you go further back down the sidewalk towards the second red arrow, that's where the encroachment ends.

So you at least have a bit of a frame of reference for the area in question.

Is that the front door?

It's not the front door.

It's the side door.

So as a point of reference again, because I showed you this already, again, West Main Street in the front, Ridge McIntyre, the curve of that building that you see right at the window in the foreground of the photo is essentially right there.

So that corner where it says corner, it's supposed to say corner shot here, but it says corner show.

That is where the encroachment begins.

That corresponds with this point right here.

So I wanted

So I'm going to hold you for one second and say that you were the only person signed up as long in the public hearing.

But is there anyone else here who wanted to speak in the public hearing list as to this ordinance?

Do you need to open the public hearing and then close it again?

Yeah.

Yeah, I should.

So yes, let's.

So we're opening the public hearing.