City Council Special Meeting   12/4/2017

And then we will be concentrating the normal meeting time at seven o'clock on the Haiti report and a discussion of it and a public hearing which will occur in the body of that meeting and various other items.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic

Mr. Benwick?

Here.

Dr. Bellamy?

Here.

Mr. Signer?

Here.

Ms. Akus?

Here.

Yes, and it doesn't seem like we have very many tonight Mr. Mayor.

So I will begin from my end tonight with the first announcement and then proceed towards Mr. Fenwick.

First announcement, Belmont Bridge.

Minor work under the Belmont Bridge will start as early as December 5, 2017.

This work is related to maintenance beneath the bridge and not part of the bridge replacement project.

The work will cause intermittent traffic delays on Water Street and Old Avon and require minimal use of the parking for staging and lay down under the bridge.

Work is anticipated to last approximately one to two weeks.

No work is anticipated on top of the bridge.

Mr. Jones, is there going to be something posted on our website about the traffic delays and the timing and the rerouting?

Yes.

Okay, so it's just the main city's website.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Counselor Zagos.

All right.

The Dialogue on Race Follow-Up to Vote on Community Priorities.

The Dialogue on Race began as a city initiative in 2009.

and led to the creation of the City of Promise, the Chamber Business Diversity Council, Human Rights Commission and the Office of Human Rights, as well as other programs.

The Dialogue on Race has just completed a round of discussion circles on race and race relations in Charlottesville.

Now we are asking the public to come together and vote on the ideas that came out of these race dialogues to determine which should become action priorities and actions to address for Charlottesville, just as we did during the first time in our community.

the first time our community came together in 2009.

Everyone is welcome to attend.

It's Monday, December 11th, that's next Monday, 6 p.m. to 730 p.m. at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center and child care will be provided.

For more information contact the Office of Human Rights at 9703023 or check the Facebook page at Charlottesville Human Rights Commission.

and the other announcement is about the Daughters of Zion Cemetery.

Join the Daughters of Zion Cemetery for the dedication of the Memorial to the Unknown on Saturday, December 16th from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Daughters of Zion Cemetery.

It's located on the corner of Oak and South First Street.

Refreshments will be served at the Tonsil Park Recreation Center located at 500 Cherry Avenue.

And for those of you who don't know about the Daughters of Zion Cemetery, it was formed by a group of African-American women, I think 100 years ago, as a place where African-Americans could be buried in the city.

Over the years, some of the headstones have been lost, and we don't any longer know who all the people are.

Thank you.

Two announcements.

Community input budget survey.

As we plan for the next fiscal year budget beginning July 1st, 2018, your views on how tax dollars are spent are essential to help us create a budget that best serves all of our citizens.

City Council invites you to be a part of this process by identifying your service and spending priorities for the upcoming fiscal year.

Your input will be considered in the development of the next year's budget.

Visit the budget website at www.charlesville.org forward slash budget and click on balancing act to submit your feedback.

It's a pretty cool tool with a lot of visuals.

If you have any question about the information provided, please email budget at charlottesville.org or call 434-970-3174.

The paper version of this web tool is also available here in council chambers tonight in the city manager's office and at the city treasurer customer service desk at the main entrance of City Hall.

Paper responses can be returned to mail.cityhall605, East Main Street, Charlottesville, Virginia 22902.

The fax is 4349703890.

And the email, again, is budget.charlottesville.org.

Thank you.

Just one announcement.

Free parking downtown for the holidays.

The City of Charlottesville will provide free parking in the Market Street parking garage on weekends beginning Friday, November 17th and continuing through Monday, January 1st.

There will be no charge for downtown visitors to park in the garage starting at 5 p.m. Friday through Sunday each weekend.

In addition, the metered spaces surrounding the downtown mall that are currently part of the city's parking meter pilot

will also be available at no cost, seven days a week beginning Friday, November 17th and continuing through Monday, January 1st.

The two hour time restriction indicated on signage at these spaces will still apply.

Visitors planning on staying longer than two hours are encouraged to use the parking garage.

The city remains committed to continue to assess the parking meter pilot program as a tool for managing mobility in the downtown area.

The parking meter pilot, including meter enforcement, will restart on Tuesday, January 2nd at 8 AM.

So again, just for clarification, if you want to come downtown, we are not charging people to park on the side where the meter spaces are.

But if you're going to stay longer than two hours, we encourage you to go into the garage.

Thank you.

and the one everybody's been waiting for this announcement is taxes due.

Second half 2017 personal property and real estate taxes are due.

Timely payments must be received or postmarked by Tuesday, December 5th.

There are five payment methods online at www.Charlottesville.org

by mail to P.O.

Box 2854, Charlottesville, Virginia 22902 by phone at 1-866-660-5185 in person

at our customer service counter in City Hall located at 605 East Main Street Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and at a drop box.

Pedestrian accessible drop boxes are located at 6th Street Northeast in the alley beside City Hall and at the 7th Street Northeast entrance to City Hall.

Thank you, Mr. Fedwick.

Mr. Jones, do you have any response to the matters of the public?

No, ma'am.

From last meeting.

Thank you.

All right, so I think public comment form is still down there, so I think we'll grab that.

All right.

So the next item on the agenda is matters from the public.

Thank you all for coming early.

We will have several opportunities for public engagement today.

This is the first.

We have 10 folks who signed up online and then actually nine folks who signed up online.

Then we have two, three folks who signed up here.

And I believe that we had some waiting list people as well who I have here.

So pardon.

Oh, they made it all on.

OK, great.

OK, thanks.

All right, so first, I will give the rules.

The rules for public comment are the same as always.

There will be no cussing, no interruptions, no speaking out of turn.

If you can make your comments in less than that, that's great.

The people behind you will appreciate it.

The timer right here will help you keep track of time.

When the yellow light goes on, you have 20 seconds left.

If you go over, I will ask you to stop.

And finally, I'd just also like to, as a point of personal privilege, note that I am delighted to see Ms. Peterson here in the audience, who was horribly injured on August 12th.

And I'm glad to see you recovering.

And I know it's a long process.

We'll do our best.

Thank you.

All right.

My name is Nancy Carpenter.

I haven't been in this number one spot very often, so I hope I can lead off with some good comments.

You state that transparency is a mission value as we move forward with our CRB, with appointing civilians to this board.

I would tell you, not ask you, but tell you that positions should be earmarked

for agencies that work specifically, specifically with those communities that are targeted or impacted by law enforcement.

I put forward the names of the Public Housing Association of Residents, Legal Aid Justice Center, Charlottesville Low Income Housing Coalition, Sin Vareras and Crescendo Juntos.

Additionally, these organizations must remain autonomous

as they choose who their representatives should be on this board.

As a civilian, the participants around the table are important to me to have the working knowledge about the communities that are impacted by law enforcement to deal with the issues that the CRB will be tasked with dealing with.

Our community, our community needs reconciliation.

from what went on this past spring and summer.

And what continues to go on today, because as you well know, Matt Hembach or Hemback or Heimlich or I don't know what his last name is, was spotted in town with some of his Nazi thugs taking pictures at the park.

So we know we're not through it yet.

In fact, it wouldn't be surprising if because we have the report tonight that there's activity.

Who knows?

Who knows?

Because you all won't pay attention to the noise.

that comes before you to give you information.

So I want to see us move past the status quo.

It is up to you to move that status quo.

We want more ownership of the process.

And I am not asking, as a civilian, I am telling you what I want.

And if those in the audience want to follow along with me with a little shout out and call out, if we don't get it, what do we do?

Good evening.

I'm here to talk about the Starr's house special use permit.

We live next door to the Starr's house.

We've lived there for over 17 years.

And I just want to let you all know that we've never opposed that house for being there when they had eight girls.

What we are opposed to is their request to increase the number of girls to 16.

This is my husband and I and many neighbors.

While we agree that these are troubled girls that need help, we just think that 16 girls in one house is just too much.

Starr's has two homes.

They have eight girls in each home.

What they're trying to do

is consolidate their two homes and put all the girls in one house.

I remind you that they're a for-profit business and what they're trying to do is cut their costs.

Also, you probably all know that the last time we had this public hearing and many people spoke, before the Planning Commission, the Planning Commission unanimously voted to deny this request.

Parking is very tight there.

There are six spots they have behind their house.

They have four resident parking permits on the street.

And across the street at the Common Hall house, they have bought five parking spots.

And there's constantly cars going in and out of these spaces.

And Parkway, which is the side area that goes into their alley, is a very narrow street for all these cars to be going in and out.

Some girls are troubled enough that they cannot go to CHS, so they're at home tutoring.

The tutoring is provided by the city of Charlottesville schools and that's more cars that are coming in and out.

The girls have social workers, they have psychologists, they have home tutors, and there's just a lot of traffic in and out.

Also, there have been over 41 police calls to this house.

I just have 41.

between January and September of this year.

And the police are called not by residents, they're called by the staff at the Starr's house.

Predominantly there are runaway girls, missing girls, disorderly conduct, search warrants.

So I just feel that the staff at the Starr's house are having difficulty maintaining control of eight girls and I question

how they will be able to maintain control with 16 girls.

So I just hope that you will go along with the Planning Commission and deny this request.

All right.

Good afternoon.

My name is Rosia Parker, and I'm coming here to speak on behalf of the CRB.

And the reason I want to speak on the CRB, because as a citizen,

I feel very disrespected.

I feel some feelings that I shouldn't be feeling.

I don't even know how to wake up and take day-to-day because of the situation that has taken place that has traumatized me so much.

And then to hear the Heafy Report, that really traumatized me.

I feel with him not bringing up the point of racism, and racism is the biggest part that played in this fiasco,

So I think that y'all should take a good look at who y'all put on the CRB.

Because if you're supposed to be my local government, like I said, I have to hold myself accountable, therefore I must hold you accountable.

So I'm speaking on behalf of my people as a leader that I'm not going to ask, but I was asking, but I'm going to now demand.

Because things were told to you and you did not take heed.

I'm here about the Civilian Review Board because I myself have a case against two police officers with Charlottesville Police Department.

I've written counsel.

I spoke to Wes.

I had an appointment with the Chief of Police with Maurice Jones.

And in this case, Maurice Jones, as I said, admitted that the Chief of Police said there is ways about changing things on the police report.

recording of everything I'm saying of that meeting we had that day when the chief of police told me and my son that we needed to get any and everything out that we needed on that day because we don't get too many chances to sit and talk to him.

Now everybody's praising this chief of police but behind closed doors the chief of police is totally different.

I've been told that the only way my case could be open is if I get a lawyer to go to court and appeal to the decision.

But I want to know why.

I want to know why my son doesn't even know why he actually got arrested only because of probable cause.

I want to know how a man calls for help but ends up getting arrested.

I want to know how the police on that night says to my son, to myself, when I asked why my son was arrested,

They tell me just because he's the one that called doesn't mean he's not the one at fault.

So we have a lot of problems, not just the police that night, but the then Chief of Police Gary Pleasant said the same thing.

Also, O'Donnell said the same thing.

Not just that, Officer Hickey was under investigation.

Officer Hickey was allowed to testify against my son while he's under investigation for lying himself and much more.

It isn't your turn yet.

Good afternoon, Dave Gamondi.

Your city slogans are a joke.

You got another one.

Seville is a quote great place to live for all of its citizens, but only if all means rich and white.

Not if you're dead like Heather, or wounded like DeAndre and dozens of others, not unless you're that sister who came up in front of you all and showed you the scars on her face, or if you're poor and black.

We don't live in a democracy and we never have, but now you all aren't even pretending.

You all treat this town and its community like occupied territory, and right now this council is an illegitimate government.

I mean, I really feel like this is a small taste of what it must feel like when you're in a country that the U.S. invades.

You know, you go in and rob the community of its wealth and resources and keep some for yourself and give the rest to your friends and the capitalists.

And poor colored people are the ones who are always going to pay the highest price.

You know your rule is illegitimate, which is why you're relying on armed force.

When you give fascist cops military gear and military equipment, of course they're going to go into the community viewing them as enemies.

Pleasance the Elder would have drone-striked unarmed protesters if he could.

The crimes of this small town are a small-time version of U.S. imperialism.

Here's your action plan, because no one in the community wants to hear what Maurice Jones is going to present at seven.

Because you need to fire Maurice Jones.

Who would imagine that a sportscaster posing as a city manager would end up being a colossal failure?

You also need to fire Al Thomas and the commanders.

If Hapey's report is even half true, there should be a criminal investigation and potential criminal charges.

If you don't, it means that Hafey's report was full of lies, and it means you need to demand the $100,000 back, not give him $350,000.

I'm saying the $100 that's been paid.

We also need to demand the resignation of Mr. Brown.

The man usually can barely stay awake at the meetings, and he can't mount a legal defense to save his life, let alone those in the community.

This would only be the beginning of the accountability that's demanded of you all by the community.

And after that, Mr. Signer, Ms. Galvin, you all need to resign too.

The two of you voted to keep the Confederate monuments twice.

As of August 12th, your position was to keep the Confederate monuments.

You all served the rich and the powerful, not the community.

Signer, did you ever exercise that quote excess of caution and return the $200 political donation to Mr. Hafee?

Is there proof of that return?

Please make it more publicly available.

Last word, accountability is not a matter of race.

Maurice Jones and Al Thomas do not demand special protections because they are black.

They failed in spectacular fashion and they need to go.

I know you all are Democrats, which means you all don't have a spine, but that's what accountability would mean.

Now is not the time to count votes.

Kim Rolla.

Hello, good afternoon.

My name is Kim Rolla and I'm an attorney at Legal Aid Justice Center and I am here to speak to you about the Civilian Review Board once again.

We saw that that item was on your consent agenda and we're very happy to see that, but I'm here to deliver some additional comments from community members who couldn't make it on to this evening's early meeting.

So first off, the community would like the City Council to amend the name of the CRB.

We've chosen a different C than the community asked for.

The community has been calling for a civilian review board, while your consent agenda has a citizen review board resolution.

We want to make clear that the greater police accountability is necessary for everyone in this city, regardless of their citizenship status.

So we ask that you change the name of that body to a civilian review board.

Second, the council has committed to a quote open application process.

There's not many details in that resolution and the community would like to ask that the city make specific commitments to ensure that this is a transparent and accountable process.

Specifically, we'd like to ask that the city release the application as soon as possible, hopefully immediately, and post that both on your website and make a paper copy available.

Once you do that, we ask that the city provide at least two weeks, no sooner than two weeks for a deadline for that application to be submitted because we'd like time to reach out to potentially interested community members and ensure that we can get a diverse applicant pool that represents our community.

and finally we'd like to ask you to tell us who applied whether that's on a rolling basis or on a weekly basis if you can provide a list to the community to see who the applicants are for this body and then the final request we have around transparency and accountability is that the City Council

organize and attend an applicant forum where all the applicants can present their qualifications, explain their interest in being on the body.

We'd also like the community to be able to attend, ask questions of the applicants, express their preference among the applicants and also express any concerns they have about potential applicants.

Third, and again this is a pretty bare bones resolution, but we would like to make clear that we think a truly independent CRB excludes from potential membership any CPD officer or staff person, any city official or staff person, and any family members of either of that group.

And just to make clear, both of the CRBs that currently exist in Virginia, both in Fairfax County and in Virginia Beach, they contain similar restrictions in their bylaws.

So we'd encourage that council do that up front for the application process for the initial CRB and also mandate that the CRB bylaws drafted contain similar restrictions going forward.

And then lastly, and I think that someone else will address this more fully, the community feels very strongly that people who have directly experienced over-policing and over-criminalization should be represented on this initial CRB because they have unique wisdom to offer this police department as it becomes a more accountable body.

Good evening.

John Gathers, city resident.

As we approach the end of the year, it's wonderful to discover that now for the third consecutive year, we have a budget surplus.

Over the last three years, it's totaled some roughly $20 million.

Considering the current flux of disorganization and finger pointing in our city government, allow me to offer up some viable and meaningful ways to spend the suddenly discovered windfall.

I'm going to write this down.

I'm about to give you some good stuff.

Three million dollars to go towards affordable housing.

Start by building some $80,000 starter homes and then create and allocate some vouchers with the rest of the money.

Two million dollars towards homelessness,

where you can purchase, renovate, rebuild some of the vacant properties here in town and also hire a staff to manage.

1.2 million towards the creation of a citizen's advocate office to handle citizen's concerns across the various city departments.

That amount represents both salary and benefits for approximately 8 to 10 year period.

$700,000 to cover the cost of statue removals.

I pray I don't need to elaborate on that.

$500,000 for planning and organizing specific campaigns to stop and fight Nazis and white supremacy.

$500,000 to find, identify, and pay reparations to the families of those displaced by the vicious gentrification project of Venator Hill.

The final $1 million to go to the school system.

So before we offer up another $1 million in tax breaks or incentives to developers that don't develop,

or another $350,000 to friends or political donors for what amounts to a 220 page roll of Charmin toilet tissue.

Before we install another parking meter that we don't intend to use, I encourage you to consider these proposals.

Matthew 5 and 5 says that the meek shall inherit the earth.

Thank you.

My name is Isabelle Hahn.

Hi, good afternoon.

I'm Adeola Ogunkade.

I'm the legal director of the Civil Rights and Racial Justice Program at the Legal Aid Justice Center.

I'm going to follow up on my colleague Kim Rolla's comments with respect to additional concerns that the community has regarding the Civilian Review Board that

is on today's consent agenda.

Specifically, with respect to the composition of what's being called the initial civilian review board, whether it's an initial civilian review board or the permanent civilian review board, I think council has to be aware that people are looking at this moment for you to counter the history in Charlottesville of intentionally ignoring

the perspective of communities of color, low wealth communities in Charlottesville and

take affirmative steps to ensure that the composition of the Civilian Review Board reflects those perspectives, specifically because those perspectives are invaluable.

They have direct experience with the policing failures that a CRB is going to hopefully address, right?

When you have residents such as Miss Turner and Miss Parker coming up here, they can speak to a level of

personal experience that I think must be present on a civilian review board for it to function in the way that it is intended to, specifically at this moment in time in Charlottesville where you have Tim Hafee's report specifically making a recommendation about restoring faith in government.

That process must begin

with Government taking a hard and critical look at its failures historically.

Whether you were sitting here at the time it happened or not it is your responsibility currently to make sure that you intentionally counter the history that has left a significant portion of

the Charlottesville community behind.

And so you have the Heafey Report saying that there's community skepticism of the Charlottesville Police Department and that it's particularly acute and it's also informed by concerns over racial profiling, drug enforcement, and other systemic issues that are beyond the protest events.

and the HAFE report is specifically referring to things that have happened that led up to and were the precedent for the protest events.

And so in order for the Civilian Review Board to take a step in the right direction of restoring faith in government, you must appoint

members of the community who have specific and direct experience with those policing failures that the CAFE report names.

Mary Carey?

She's out in the hallway.

We can call her after.

Good afternoon.

My name is Jeffrey Fogel.

I'm a resident of the city.

I'm here again to bolster, if it needed to be bolstered, what's been said by the two previous speakers, Adeola and Kim.

I frankly have to say that I was quite surprised, and happily so, that it seemed that a majority of the people on this board thought that we should have some kind of civilian review.

But I was surprised, and you shouldn't be surprised about my surprise, because I've been asking

and others have been asking for some kind of remedy, for example, for stop and frisk for four years now.

totally ignored.

Ignored by you, ignored by your panel, your advisory panel, ignored by the police department, and now presumably, since you've included it in the memo, that will be reviewed by that body as well.

But I'll have to tell you that people who share the notion that we should have such a panel are very skeptical that this body will actually appoint the panel that will work.

and many of us rely on the history we had with the Council regarding the Human Rights Commission.

Now that Human Rights Commission was designed to look at some of the systemic problems in our community affecting civil rights.

Never did it.

Never did it.

And my impression from having voted in some of those meetings was that was an effort that was controlled either by the council or the city manager's office to make sure that it didn't criticize the city.

We even had the spectacle of the mayor, the prior mayor, saying, please, criticize us.

That's what you're here for.

and of course they don't criticize you.

And I don't even know why they're here anymore.

But that's the background on which we're very skeptical about the city, the city's willingness to let go.

Because the issue has been controlled.

Controlled by the city manager's office or controlled by the council.

And that's why it becomes a critical issue as to the process by which people are appointed to this body.

That's the only conceivable way that you can assure that skepticism would be lifted.

And so that is the key issue.

How that's done, I think they've come up with some terrific ideas from the Legal Aid Justice Center about how to vet people for a commission like this.

I think it's really impressive that they thought about it, that they've come up with one that I think should satisfy all interests here.

But what's critical here is that this be a real, a real civilian review board.

I have other concerns with that.

I think they need to be discussed during the course of this first term, whether or not this body should have any investigative powers.

It certainly doesn't have any resources to do so.

and according to at least what some people think, it will act as an appellate court, meaning it would have to accept all the fact finding by the police department.

Well, that may be problematic, but that's something I don't think has to be decided tonight.

That's something to be addressed to this initial group and I think it's very important

that as you did give it six months at least to get itself together and as I agree very much with my colleagues from Legal Aid Justice Center we need a little more time to get the act together about who gets appointed to it and how and I don't know that there's after all these years such a rush.

Good evening, Councillors, members of staff.

My name is Morgan Butler.

I'm with the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Thank you for the chance to speak tonight.

I just wanted to say a quick word to endorse one of the items that's on your consent agenda tonight.

Those are the zoning text amendments.

These resolve a couple of problematic interpretations of the zoning code that have been on the books and have been causing headaches and confusion for well over a year.

They've been recognized by Council as well as staff as needing to be addressed.

We're glad they're finally before you and we urge you to move those forward.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Hello.

I wanted to talk about the Civilian Review Board and I wanted to echo what Kim and Adeola and Katrina and Rosia and Jeff all had to say about the importance of having a Civilian Review Board.

and to make sure that it has proper representation.

And it is both linked to many things that happened before the summer and definitely linked to the events of this summer.

Reading the report this weekend of the Haythe report was very hard to do.

And I'm seeing nods from on the dais, but I don't think it was hard for the same reasons for the many of us here in the audience.

As I read through it, there were some things that were very definitely omitted.

For instance, the history of the Klan as a racist organization that lynched people and targeted people, minorities, and then of course the Unite the Right also omitted, and it was cast as if this was something that the

you know Antifa or the counter protesters or whatever did on purpose sort of out of spite or something was that they didn't cooperate with the investigation or with the police over the course of the summer and that just simply is not true.

It's true that we didn't really enjoy it when police were directed to come to the homes of people and knock on their doors or send them emails or go to their places of business.

Certainly people weren't eager

to be targeted, especially when those same people had been arrested for speaking up and speaking out.

There's a lot.

It's hard to get up here and in three minutes say all the things that we want to say.

But I think there are some major institutional and structural changes that need to happen.

And there's a lot of discussion about wanting to fire Jones and fire Thomas

And then when I read the report, there's a lot of other people who were culpable, who made decisions on their own without following the chain of command, who took on what was not their responsibility, who used city resources in ways that were irresponsible and actually damaging.

So I

I'm ready as a county resident for this beloved city of mine to be better and for us to be better.

And I don't know how that happens, but I do know that there needs to be some major changes in how things happen.

I'm looking forward to a new mayor.

So I just would like to say that I'm really eager to see people listening to each other.

We are told as the counter protesters or the Antifa or whatever to listen to you guys.

Thank you.

And Ms. Turner, you only had one minute earlier.

Would you like to speak again?

To continue, the reason we need a Civilian Review Board.

When my son got arrested, his rights weren't read.

He was thrown against the wall, thrown against the police car, cassette of keys hit him in the back door and hit him in the back of the head.

When my son got out of jail, my son was let out of jail because the judge knew me.

OK. After we filed this complaint four months later, we find out that my son supposedly put three officers' lives in danger.

If my son put three officers' lives in danger, how did the judge let him out on Monday morning?

Even after being accused of slamming my 16-month-old son down, after being accused of doing all this

whatever to his ex-girlfriend.

How did my son get out of jail when he put three officers' lives in danger?

Not just that, on the decision letter there's an officer thrown in there that we didn't even file a complaint against.

The decision letter literally has nothing

about what we complained about.

Not one thing.

This decision letter is full of everything.

All my son's cases.

And I still say, how was Officer Hinton

while under investigation for lying, for assault, for assaulting my son and many more things.

How was this officer allowed to testify in order to get my son found guilty if he's under investigation himself?

So what, how can,

You all tell us that we can file a complaint against the police but allow that police that assaulted us testify in court against us when they're under investigation.

So this is the reason why we need a review board because the citizens here are being assaulted and nobody is listening.

If you've seen my decision letter, I don't know if anybody other than Maurice has seen my decision letter, but literally everyone who has seen this decision letter says it's bull crap.

Because there's nothing about what the police did.

Where is the investigation?

Why should I have to go to court and get a lawyer in order to find out why my son even got arrested?

What's going on?

So what I want to know now, will my son's case be reopened and looked into?

Because records were changed in my son's case, and I have proof.

And I'm saying this in front of everybody in front of the cameras.

All right, so that is the last of the people who've signed up for public comment.

So public comment period is over.

I do, Mr.

Counselor Zagos, I'd like to clarify for the record about my votes with regards to the Confederate statues.

For the record, in February, February 6, 2017, I voted against moving the Lee statue, and I voted along with five counselors to add context to the Jackson statue.

On subsequent to August 12,

I believe it was very much like two weeks after that in the most subsequent council meeting.

I put forth a resolution that was to take down both the Jackson statue as well as the Lee statue and redesign the parks.

We were unanimous in taking down the Jackson statue as well as the Lee statue.

So I wanted that for the record.

I just wanted to clarify the record.

The public comment period is over.

Mr. Jones to Ms. Walker's, I'm sorry, I would like to open up, I'd like to treat that as a request about the facts about this arrest and look into it as we would any other request to go into the file with these allegations that we've heard.

Sure.

So, I'd like to thank the ladies from, the women from Legal Aid for coming out and providing their input.

I know this item is on the consent agenda, so we have the opportunity to potentially discuss it.

In addition to that, I'd just like to thank everyone for coming out.

So, is this going to conclude the special meeting and come back and start the

So now we're going to go right into the regular consent agenda, right?

And then we'll go into the regular business items and then we'll finish this meeting up probably around 6, 6.30 and then we'll go, we'll recess for a short time, then we'll come into the regular meeting at 7.

And then there's a full public hearing where anybody can sign up, probably about 60 people will be able to speak in that meeting.

And there will be a sign up sheet here for that.

Mr. Feimlich, is that?

That's you.

All right.

We're now going to move to the regular items, the regular meeting.

We have a consent agenda.

Item A, minutes for November 20th, 2017.

Item B, an appropriation additional funding for employment not welfare program, $22,881, second of two readings.

Item C, an appropriation Check and Connect student engagement continuation grant, $110,250, second of two readings.

Item D, an appropriation City Schools Check and Connect student engagement grant, $50,000, second of two readings.

Item E, an appropriation housing opportunities for people with AIDS and HIV, $19,543, first of two readings.

Item F, an appropriation FY 2018 transit grants, $793,270, first of two readings.

Item G, an appropriation city schools reimbursement for Greenbrier Elementary Modular Classroom Project, $6,306.28, first of two readings.

Item H, a resolution regional emergency operations plan, first of one reading.

Item I, a resolution 604 Cynthia Avenue special use permit request, first of one reading.

Item J, a resolution allocation of previously appropriated community mental health and wellness coalition funds to region 10.

$41,572.90, first of one reading.

Item K, a resolution establishing a citizen review board for the police department, first of one reading.

Item L, an ordinance, abandoned portion of Gassy's Mitten, Dunlora Park subdivision, second of two readings.

Item M, an ordinance, vacate stories minute 600 Brandon Avenue, UVA, second of two readings.

Item N, an ordinance, zoning text amendments, first of two readings.

I support pulling that, so let's, there's others.

Thank you.

Working with the Place Design Task Force to finalize their recommended alternative approach to establishing building heights, incorporating approaches that promote massing compatible with adjacent districts, such as bulk plane restrictions, and clarifying how to count partially below ground stories.

These things should be part of the overall zoning ordinance rewrite that will get started in 2018.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Yes.

I don't want to pull it, but on item H, the regional emergency operations plan, I would like, as the city considers the HEFE report and other kind of after event planning and training

that this report or that this operation plan be incorporated into some of that planning.

N is not.

And just for the record, that means that Kay will be discussed at the end of this part of the meeting.

But we had one meeting.

We had one item pulled, so.

Second?

Second.

All in favor?

All right, consent agenda passes.

So we, our next item has a public hearing attached to it and there's a sign up sheet here if anybody would like to speak about the auditor's presentation and the year-end appropriation, this is the time to sign up for it.

So the next item is a public hearing and I want to tell everybody one item on this regular agenda has been, was removed at the applicant's request, which is the next one, which is the 201 West Water Street SEP request.

We're only going to be considering now

the 517 Park Street SUP request, and then also now the Citizen Review Board.

This is the first of two readings, which means we're only going to need a motion and a second.

Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, members of council.

My name is Chris Cullinan.

I'm the city's director of finance.

This agenda item closes the books for fiscal year 2017, which will conclude on June 30th of this year.

As the mayor mentioned, there are several components of this agenda item beginning with a presentation from the city's auditor.

Mr. John Aldrich, CPA, partner with Brown, Edwards & Company, will present their report and be available for any questions you might have.

Next, there will be a discussion and public hearing on near-end adjustments and the use of surplus funds from FY 17.

And then finally, you'll be taking action on the appropriating these year-end funds.

A full copy of the FY 17 financial report is available on the finance department's web page.

The Code of Virginia requires that localities have all of their accounts and records audited annually

as of June 30th by an independently certified public accountant in accordance with the specifications furnished by the auditor of public accounts.

The state code also requires the city's auditor to report to the governing body at a public session.

I'd like to introduce Mr. John Aldridge from Brown Edwards & Company and invite him to the podium to present their report.

Mr. Aldridge will be referencing the documents you have in front of you on Brown Edwards' letterhead titled Independent Auditor's Report.

Mayor, Members of Council, good to see you all this evening.

As was spoken, we are here to present the audit results for the year to June 30th, 2017.

And as you know, when we do the audit of the city, it also includes the school board and the economic development authority.

So they're all encompassed in that document that you have.

In the actual report that you have on our letterhead, the first one being the independent auditor's report.

The second page is the one you need to focus on.

It talks about opinions.

and where it says in our opinion the financial statements referred to above present fairly in all material respects.

We issued an unmodified opinion on your financial report this year so that's akin to a clean opinion.

That's the highest level of assurance we'll put on your financial information so you had a clean opinion and again that also echoes and carries over to the school board and economic development authority as well.

So you're pleased to report that to you.

Also as part of your audit, we have to look at controls, internal controls, we have to look at processes, get an understanding of those.

And what we do there, we go throughout the city and look at various departments that we deem to be key areas from a financial standpoint.

And in doing so, we often have recommendations.

Okay, what I've presented you with this evening

as a status of all the recommendations we brought up in the past.

Staff has done a good job of addressing those.

There are a few things they're still working on, but by and large, staff took those recommendations we made last year and they're putting the things in place to address those.

Also, the other document that you have in front of you is a letter that's called

for those charged with governance.

And that just kind of spells out what an audit is and what an audit is not.

At the end of the day, we're putting an opinion on your financial statements, meaning your staff pulls together this audit report.

Our responsibility is just to put an opinion on that report.

It talks about if there are any disagreements with management, there were none.

Any difficulties in dealing with management, there were none.

And I will tell you this, your staff did a good job this year to get everything done on time.

In the past, we've been able to meet the state deadline as far as filing, but the report maybe wasn't finalized until mid-December.

The report was done last week, everything's done.

by November 30th.

And that's the first time in a few years where everything was bound up and ready to go at the end of the month.

So again I know you all have a busy agenda tonight.

I know there's a lot of information in these numbers.

Thank you.

I've got a clarifying question.

So

These allocations, it's not an appropriation.

This is an allocation to a fund.

Page three is what I'm reading.

As an example, Public Works, Streets, $300,000.

And well, let me get to the direct question.

Is any money for Tim Haffey in this?

That's for more questions for Mr. Cullinan.

OK.

I think we haven't gotten to the point of clarification that ended in July.

I guess the only question I'd have is, again, this feeds into our bond rating and and

that gives us better leverage in trying to get additional resources.

One of the things I would mention is oftentimes we look at the general fund and you want to look at your fund balance and you look at unassigned fund balance.

That's just oftentimes an indicative of how healthy an organization is

And if you look at your unassigned fund balance in the general fund, that equates to about 3.8 months of reserves sitting there.

So I guess I do have one more question then.

Given that this is one of the largest surpluses that I've, in fact, this is the largest surplus I've ever seen in the six years I've been on council.

So I'm wondering, I'm just asking this question,

So as you recall, we have a, as part of our financial management policies, a target of 14% fund balance for the general fund and a 3% economic downturn fund.

and so to the extent that we need to put more money in to get to those levels we do and it's a fairly small amount because that changes a fairly small amount from year to year and we already have that money set aside.

Anything above and beyond that

as you'll see in the staff recommendation.

We have some carryover requests, some new requests, but the majority of that would go off to the CIP contingency fund as cash.

And what that would allow the city to do is it allows it to have the flexibility of having cash on hand

so that we don't have to issue additional debt, that we can more quickly fund unforeseen capital needs as they may come up through the course of a year.

One of the things that the motion tonight will include is what portion of the surplus that's there to spend now on things that were carried over from the previous year and what proportion to put in CIP.

Is this the time that we're going to be discussing that?

I mean, we could answer questions on that at this point, or we could have the public hearing.

But is that decision made tonight?

This is a first reading on what happens at the surplus, but there's another cut second half.

That's correct.

If I could suggest we have any questions for Mr. Aldrich regarding the audit portion of the agenda item.

We can take those and wrap that up.

I'm good for that.

So regarding the year end, the city's general fund ended FY17 with a positive surplus of about $8.9 million or about 5.2% within the adopted budget amount.

The surplus was a result of revenues performing better than expected and expenditures being less than budget.

This relationship, this phenomena is very similar to what we've seen the last few years.

We've had a surplus for a number of years now and typically it results from revenues doing better than we thought and we don't spend as much as we planned.

That being said, though, as was discussed earlier, the amount of this surplus is higher than recent years, primarily as a result of revenues performing better than expected.

Revenues were about six and a half million dollars to the good and with many of the revenues based on the city's economy performing especially well, such as real estate taxes, personal property taxes, lodging taxes and meals taxes.

Expenditures were about 2.4 million dollars under budget primarily as a result of vacancies in city departments resulting from retirements, departures or promotions as well as lower operating costs and efficiencies within city departments.

and just as a point of comparison Albemarle County poured a budget surplus of approximately 14 million dollars for FY 17 and keep in mind their budget is larger than ours but when you compare the results as a percentage of the budget they're very comparable about five to five and a half percent of the adopted budget with regards to the 8.9 million dollar surplus staff recommends 2.7 million be appropriated for carryover and new requests which are itemized and described in your agenda item the balance of about 6.2 million

is recommended to be appropriate to the Capital Improvements Fund contingency for future or unforeseen needs.

We're happy to answer any questions you might have, either now or after the public hearing.

I have a question, Mr. Coleman.

Is there a precedent for kind of counsel acting to,

whatever the discussion goes, but to really direct, I mean I know that the best practice is the bulk of it goes to CIP and that's a list of projects that the community develops, like the Tonsler water park are things that really do take, like I just was in a meeting about the windows at McGuffey, I mean those take quite a while in their lead time and there's a good process, they benefit the community in lots of ways, but that, you know, of a major priority that really is

on the top of the community's minds.

We're hearing gentrification, obviously, as so many people are concerned about it in the community this year.

And is there precedent, since you've been doing this, that where there could be an action to steer some portion toward an effort to address maybe with something new, that there would be a decision to depart from that practice?

Having only done this the three previous fiscal years, I don't have a great deal of experience, but I would simply offer that this is an appropriation.

It is available for discussion.

I would just offer a note of caution.

One of the things we want to be cognizant of is we treat these as one-time revenues.

We don't plan on a surplus every year.

We certainly plan to be conservative in how we manage the finances and the surplus as a result of that.

I'd rather be having that conversation than if we didn't.

But we treat those surpluses as one-time events.

We want to make sure we're spending them on one-time sorts of expenditures.

Expenditures have big returns on investment.

We don't want to get in a situation where

We use one-time funds to start something that has ongoing costs and then struggle to find a way to sustainably finance that over a number of years.

So that's one note of caution I would offer in terms of how we think about using those funds to really be strategic in our thinking, make sure we're doing one-time expenditures with one-time revenues.

And Mr. Mayor I'd also remind you that we're taking the excess funds from this about six million dollars and putting it into our CAP contingency fund which at any point City Council could have a discussion about another potential investment and come back and tap into that fund if necessary so if there's a

Just if I may ask a question, follow-up question to that to further clarify.

So, for example, and I'm understanding that there's been some progress made, and Mr. Bellamy, or Vice Mayor Bellamy, you might know more than I do, on plans to

begin to improve Crescent Halls and so if we had gotten a plan before us that the council agreed to that would be something we could tap into similarly as Friendship Court moves forward with its plans there may be a need to

Plug in a gap of funding so that they can actually move forward with getting their low income housing tax credits.

That's correct.

In addition to the CIP budgeting process, that will do as well.

We obviously engaged in that with the City Council beginning in February, March of next year.

And so that's another opportunity for us to talk about these types of projects that are out there.

So just for clarification, the surplus is how much, just for the public?

8.9 million dollars.

So essentially 9 million dollars, 6 million of which is going to the CIP, correct?

Yes sir.

CIP capital improvement plan.

Yes sir.

In your packet, it goes through each one of those and itemizes how much and for what those things are.

No, I understand.

And again, one more point of clarification.

Correct.

So actually, just to follow up, can you just kind of give an overview, as much for the public's sake as for ours, of the recommendations that you're bringing forward for use of that $2.7 million?

Mr. Jones, is there anything that you would really want to emphasize?

Yeah, it's a pretty lengthy list.

The community arts coordination funding, there's $200,000 appropriation for 3D modeling for proposed zoning and development projects.

There's money that's been put aside for the land bank corporation once the council decides on what direction you want to move in with that.

There's $25,000 in there for the Vinegar Hill Monument Contingency Grant, close to $100,000, $99,000 for a diversion program for lowest offenders.

We talked about that at the last city council meeting.

There is money in there, about $53,000 transferred to a parking fund for the city.

We do have the funding in there, $350,000 for the RS-12

review, the independent review that was done by Mr. Hafey.

There is smaller projects like the public works traffic sign retro reflectivity study that needs to be done.

$300,000 for a salt storage facility.

Ours is failing, and we need to replace that.

So those are the types of projects that are out there.

$10,000 for the Tonsler splash pad.

So those are some of the things that we have in the

in the report for recommended appropriations.

And again, we'll have the opportunity to be able to discuss those.

Sure.

But two that I just have questions about.

There's a citywide reserve of 650,000.

Is that part of what is required for our bond rating balance, or is that something that we are then going to be able to use, or Council will be able to use in the coming year as things come up?

Because I know we did get one

reporting we can have discussion about later, but with the tax cuts that seem to be poised to clear Congress very soon, we expect that there will be some real pain locally.

The city-wide reserve, so you mentioned $650,000, it's actually $350,000 for the review and $300,000 that would replenish the reserve that we have every year that's used for smaller types of projects that come up.

Okay, great.

Okay.

Got it.

And Thursday.

What's the public on Thursday at the budget hearing?

Well that's certainly a next opportunity to the extent that there is money put aside in the CIP contingency.

For example, we're getting ready to head right into the FY19 budget process and so certainly those funds would be available to do projects either part of that budget or to do projects sooner.

Now is the time to let us know what you think we should be spending on it.

Thank you.

So I guess now we'll move to the open hearing on the budget.

I see it's down here.

We have four folks signed up.

You have three minutes, as usual.

Please start with your name.

and your address, and other folks can talk after these four have signed up.

Thank you, councillors, city staff, I appreciate your opportunity for the less than raucous part of the meeting.

Nine million dollars

in some view taken unnecessarily out of the economy of Charlottesville.

You were just running down a list.

It was almost like Dr. Seuss, all the wonderful places you would go and all the things you could do with the $9 million.

You could pay for 25 more Tim Heafey reports.

You could hold 90,000 pizza parties or community engagement parties with it.

You could start up all the bureaucracies that Mr. Gathers suggested.

You could fix the air conditioners in the elevators as you or Ms. Galvin mentioned in Crescent Hall.

It would be easy for me to say that you should just send it back to the businesses you confiscated it from unnecessarily.

But more than that, after spending three hours I'm not getting back on Saturday reading Mr. Heafey's report, the idea of spending time I'm not getting back is what I'm thinking about here.

This is a year these businesses are not getting back.

Nine million dollars that they could have hired employees with, trained new employees with, expanded their business.

They're not getting that nine million dollars back, but how about this?

while you're discussing all the things you can do with this $9 million, how about you think about cutting the taxes on the businesses for next year?

since it doesn't sound like they're going to get the $9 million back.

Because if you take the research done by the Seville Works Initiative, 25% of the city of Charlottesville can't find a job that pays them more than $30,000 a year.

If you do the math, that's about 8,000 people.

If you divvy this $9 million up amongst those 8,000 people, it's only about $1,100 each, which sounds nice, but a better paying job would be a lot better for all of them.

So my suggestion is for next year,

Take that 30% you increased on average, the business property taxes, and cut them by that amount.

My name is Peter Krebs, Charlottesville resident.

Today I'm speaking on behalf of Piedmont Environmental Council.

And sorry about my voice, I was just in the dentist, so I sound a little strange.

Anyway, I'm here to urge you to invest a significant portion of the reported budget surplus on connectivity between neighborhoods and communities.

We're at the beginning of our engagement process, but we're already extraordinarily pleased with the response we have received from many sectors of the community.

They each have their own point of view, but they say similar things.

They would like to be able to get around easily and safely without a car.

And in fact, some of them don't have a choice.

We're seeing an interesting nexus between physical connectivity, social mobility,

economic vitality, and healthy communities.

I'll get more into that in a more deep way in a future visit.

This isn't the time for that.

Connectivity is an investment, but like all investments, it is not free.

The good news, though, is that greenways and trails are durable.

Once they are built, they last a long, long time, and they actually pay back in a variety of ways.

When you build a greenway, it lasts there.

It connects communities.

It allows people to get to school or the grocery store or to work more easily.

It allows people to spend time joyfully with their kids while getting exercise.

Localities throughout the Commonwealth and around the nation appreciate that, and they're making significant investments of their own.

I'm not here to advocate for a specific connection.

It's too early for that.

I will say, though, that the Parks Department has a queue of worthy projects, and an infusion of capital would allow them to do them much sooner.

Similarly, a boost of CIP funding would help speed implementation of the city's bike pedestrian plan and safe routes to school, which people love, but they want to see them done much sooner.

Monies you spend will help unlock other funds, and there will be

Strong demonstration to our partners, including the county that we are serious.

We would like for the children of today, not just their grandchildren, to enjoy the benefits of a more connected community.

They deserve that.

By investing a significant portion of the surplus CIP funds for trails and connectivity, you will be bringing that moment a little bit closer.

Thank you.

Still Nancy, still here.

This is December.

This is one of the coldest months, not one of the coldest months, but the beginning of our cold months.

Every year for the last about eight or nine years there's been a National Homeless Memorial Day.

December 21st, which will have another observation for that about 3.30 in the afternoon at the Haven.

So you all are invited to come where we recognize those individuals that have succumbed to the effects, long-term effects of homelessness as well as untreated other chronic issues.

One of the things that's near and dear to my heart is ending homelessness in the Charlottesville area.

We do not have an insurmountable problem.

We don't have a thousand people out in the streets like the larger metropolitan areas in this city and some of the more larger national metropolitan areas have tens of thousands of people.

Perhaps two million dollars could assist with creating another crossings type project.

You all have the land.

We just need building.

We just need a building.

And what's really cool about that model is that not only is it chronically homeless people, but also low income people.

Those are at probably 60 percent of AMI.

So it's been a fairly successful model.

The city has a history, a timeline of really committing to ending homelessness.

It started years ago with the talk about the crossings and resulted in that building.

You went ahead and did spring for housing several years ago, which a large percentage of those people are still housed.

You have $900,000 in voucher money, which is like, why aren't we issuing vouchers?

OK, that's my question.

But you're doing that.

So we could actually really end chronic homelessness.

Those people who have disabilities that have been outside for at least a year, or those people with disabilities

that have had four episodes of homelessness within the last three years.

We are that close to being able to at least end chronic homelessness.

Are we going to have people that are rent challenged?

Yes, because it sucks out there.

And HUD has presented a report to Congress

called Housing Worst Case Scenarios 2017 about how really bad it is.

Let's see if I can find a couple of statistics that I thought were pretty amazing that between 2013 and 2015 there's been an 8%

increase in people in households that have worst case housing needs.

And those are individuals that, number one, are not on housing assistance.

Okay, so let's make that clear.

These are people that are not on housing assistance.

They're at 50% of AMI.

They either live in substandard or severely inadequate housing or severely rent burdened, paying more than 50% of their income in rent, or they have both of those.

So these are not people that are on

you know the government dime.

Okay, these are working class poor.

So what that means is that we've had a half a million, 582,000 household increase in that.

So we know these comments have no influence on policy because it's decided behind closed doors.

So all I'm going to say is budgets are moral documents.

Today, Fred Hampton was murdered.

So I'm going to speak the words of Fred Hampton.

Maybe some of these words will sink in.

Because he had it right when he said, you can kill the revolutionary, but you can't kill the revolution.

I'm thinking of the people arrested on July 8th.

We have Sister Veronica.

You can jail the liberatory, but you can't jail the liberation.

We've got to face some facts that the masses are poor.

Well, first of all, I've got to practice this barring Brother Wes's non-endorsement endorsement.

I'm just quoting.

I don't necessarily endorse these words, but we've got to face some facts that the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class.

When I talk about the masses, I'm talking about the white masses.

I'm talking about the black masses, the brown masses, the yellow masses, too.

We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire with fire, but I say you put out fire with water.

We don't say you fight racism with racism, we say you fight racism with solidarity.

And you don't fight capitalism with black capitalism, you fight it with socialism.

You have to understand that the people have to pay a price for peace.

You dare to struggle, you dare to win.

If you do not struggle, then god damn it, you don't deserve to win.

I was born in a bourgeois community and had some of the better things in life, but I found that there were more people starving than there were people eating.

More people that didn't have clothes than did have clothes.

And I just happened to be one of the few.

So I decided that I wouldn't stop doing what I'm doing until all of those people are free.

Mary Carey says she's going to fight until she dies.

I hope that scared you all.

Fred Hampton said, I believe I'm going to die doing the things I was born to do.

I believe I'm going to die high off the people.

I believe I'm going to die a revolutionary into international revolutionary proletarian struggle.

We're going to have to do more than talk.

We're going to have to do more than listen.

We're going to have to do more than learn.

We're going to have to start practicing, and that's very hard.

We're going to have to start getting out there with the people, and that's difficult.

Sometimes we think we're better than the people, so that's going to take a lot of hard work.

A couple final comments.

Once again, I'm quoting.

I don't necessarily endorse these words.

You're going to have to keep on saying that.

I'm the proletariat.

I'm the people.

I am not the pig.

You've got to make a distinction.

And finally, I'm just going to say it.

Any other comments?

Let me just say again I like my ideas a lot more than those offered by the auditor or those by Mr. Thomas.

I don't see the necessity in giving money back to business people who obviously already have money as opposed to giving it to the folks that need it most here in our community.

Even from the auditor I didn't hear anything about anything that would help the low-income or the homelessness issue

in our city or the affordable housing issue.

So if we're going to look at doing something really, really viable with these funds that have suddenly appeared magically on our radar, let's do something to help the people that need it the most.

Even if you come up and devise a way to raise the minimum wage here in this town, anything that's going to help the people move forward as opposed to, as we've previously heard,

helping the businesses continue to push forward and further the gap that already exists here in our community.

I wasn't planning on speaking tonight, but I'm a little pissed.

A little pissed at all of y'all.

I'm very disappointed of all of y'all.

I've got a couple Facebook friends with all of y'all.

You are on the CRJ board since you've been on the CRJ board.

You haven't been to West Haven to do anything for us.

They moved me out of my bedroom apartment into an apartment 30 minutes before I asked three times to let that apartment be seen to me before I accepted that apartment down below upstairs.

I have lived in five years of inchworms

Water leaking from the commode into the bedroom into the bathroom.

I have lived with copperheads coming in my back door.

I've lived with black snakes this summer and inchworms coming into my back doors again.

I've had to sleep with my bedroom lights on in order to keep from walking on the inchworms to go to the bathroom at nighttime.

So I asked for a transfer.

I asked three times to look at this apartment building.

All I got was, be down here at quarter after 10, the movers had done come in, packed everything up, and was moving me in the process when I went to see this damn apartment.

You know that I've got OCD, that I'm spotless.

This apartment here is a piece of shit.

And that's the only way to put it.

I'm leaving tomorrow to go home to see my son.

I'm not in no shape to drive.

They took me off my medicines and me fighting cancer, cold turkey, and put me on another pill that I don't think is working.

And then they put me in this apartment.

And it is absolutely, positively filthy.

There's two other people who lived in this apartment besides the lady that lived there two years ago with long hair.

Her long hair is still on the wall in the bathroom.

and there's a black lady that lived beside me at Crescent Hall when I lived over there for a year.

She's my neighbor underneath.

She lived upstairs and then a guy moved upstairs and he passed away in a work job.

The apartment has not been cleaned, no time whatsoever between the two years that anybody's lived in it and then they moved me in this piece of shit and that's exactly what it is.

and as far as everybody in here at the rally, I was at the July 8th rally.

I got hurt.

I got knocked down.

I got a concussion.

There was no damn rescue squads on each end of High Street.

I got carried out.

It was on Facebook.

Eight people carried me out to go around to the thing to get into the rescue squad.

I was down for a whole friggin' month and I'm still not myself.

So y'all got a lot of blame in all of this.

And to blame all these people out here for us being at the rallies, we have a damn right to be in rallies.

And we're gonna stay going in rallies.

I've got cancer.

Ms. Connie, Ms. Rosenbaugh will be over tomorrow.

We'll have Housing Authority come look at it.

Yes, ma'am.

Yes, ma'am.

Did y'all find anything about the transportation?

Nelson County?

Can you hear me?

Yeah, I was here last time.

We had a meeting and I asked about the transportation.

in Nelson County, y'all say I was going to check it out?

Ms.

They're going to follow up?

Yeah.

Can you make sure to check with them and make sure that that happens and that we find out when it's called?

Absolutely.

Anyone else?

About this money, just, what was it?

How many million?

$9 million.

$9 million.

I'm still living in, like I'm living at the jail.

I'm still living in cinnablock and brick and mortar.

But y'all want to?

Oh.

The mold and dirt.

graveyard dirt that the building is sinking in under.

Maintenance.

CRHA hasn't been staffed well enough and y'all claim y'all gonna help them to do this and do that.

Air conditioning in Crescent Hall is not gonna do it.

Those people are living just as bad as we are in Crescent Hall.

There's a lot of death.

West Haven is gonna have a lot of death soon because these children are continuously getting sick.

I'm sick.

I might not act like it because I'm not supposed to.

But as Ms. Rosenbaum said, regardless of how sick we are, we're going to fight until the day we die, or at least until as long as I'm in Charlottesville.

But they were just talking about a parking lot.

Didn't we just have a conversation about a parking lot the last meeting where y'all approved it?

And this man's still standing here talking about another parking lot?

Y'all still got all these motels, hotels, and things coming?

Where is the things for the children?

Where's the money for the children?

I know y'all got a children's fund in that budget.

I ain't hear none of that.

So y'all only give children enough money to work for the summer.

The children should be working all year around.

Because y'all's local government is continuing to arrest them to have them locked up so the current and the taxpayers can pay their money.

Y'all got the money.

Utilize it.

But like I said, I still haven't heard anything about children's fund.

So what are y'all going to do with that?

and I would like to know, where is it at?

Because all these years I've been fighting city council, I've never heard anything about the Children's Fund.

Maurice.

What else?

Education more so in the school system.

Yeah, y'all gotta check and connect.

But there's more things that's more important than check and connect in the school system.

Okay, foster care, my God.

Where is the money for that?

What are y'all going to do to help train your staff in the social services to be able to properly identify how to keep from taking black women's children from them?

How to not get them in the system and lose paperwork and act like they don't know where the paperwork is?

Two, when are you going to stop our children or our people of color, men and women,

from going to the jail system and for us to have to pay it out of our pocket when y'all's police officers aren't trained enough to be able to handle us as citizens.

So therefore, y'all are wasting y'all's money and y'all are wasting our money because y'all's people aren't correctly trained or I would say it ain't even the right word to say what they are.

All right.

Are we going to have any discussion about this one?

Yep.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, after closing the public hearing.

OK.

So close the public hearing.

Comments?

One item I'd like to address specifically from Ms. Parker's last comments about the Children's Fund, or just monies in particular.

So CAYAP, the Children and Youth

We have an intervention program that we have that lasts for longer than just the summer.

So we have it in the eyes of some, it's essentially year round.

If need be, I can get you some of the application process.

We have a partnership with the City of Providence, with COP, where we are ensuring that those kids specifically

in West Haven, 10th Street, Starr Hill neighborhood are making sure they have access to the applications to apply year round.

Agreed.

So we just hired a youth opportunity coordinator also.

So that individual's job will be not only looking at African American male youth, but youth as a whole and ensuring that we connect those dots.

So we're putting it there.

And you and I could talk offline about some of the other ways in which we can

figure out ways in which we can make sure the resources that we do have allocated are connected to the people.

I have two items that I would like to bring forward as possibilities.

One could be used out of the Capital Contingency Fund next year if it doesn't pass this year, but it is a one-time expense.

It's something we've talked about certainly for the eight years that I've been on council.

And I actually was just at the National League of Cities meeting

and saw one, a standalone version from a Canadian company set up there and got to look at it.

Standalone toilet for a downtown mall that can be open all night.

We've been talking about issues of homelessness, people who are out in the night and don't have a place to go to the bathroom.

It's especially problematic.

We've heard a lot of national reports recently for women who are homeless or who are out and don't have a place to go without spending money at a business.

This seemed, you know, I'm not recommending this company necessarily, but this is one example of a

and basically a public toilet that stays locked for five minutes so you can go in and use it.

When you come out it washes itself so it needs very little actual operating costs.

It's hooked up to sewage and electricity in the base.

Pretty instructable and it's something that I think we should be considering.

And I must say I don't know exactly how much it is but I would really like to urge us to try to

get that sort of thing on the mall before any more terms pass.

I think $250,000 is about what they were talking about.

$250,000 is an amount that the person who was doing it was saying that was an average for these when they're put into cities.

Can you please control the meeting agenda?

Is there any information that should be conveyed?

The other is we have talked at various points in this council about a racial equity scan.

There are nonprofits that help cities do this.

I also just met with one of those when I was in Charlotte.

And that is also a one-time thing that we could do to look at some of our policies, things like the way that we do hiring, the way that we do promotions, the way that we do policies of various kinds, kind of

do a scan, hopefully, with the Human Rights Commission, who have been talking about this sort of thing, and actually put that into place.

Mr. Mayor, and thank you, Council Zagos, I really think those are two really excellent ideas.

Thank you for bringing that back from the National League of Cities.

I'd like to bring forward some ideas that

that were discussed during a place design task force meeting that also included planning commissioners.

And it's relative to the amount of money that's been allocated to NDS.

There's a concern.

Number one, there's a real appreciation for the importance of being able to show

what zoning means in three dimension.

It's really important for our community to understand what's being proposed when developers come in, what's being proposed in a comprehensive plan so that people can really visualize.

The concern is that the amount of money $200,000 may

may not be wisely spent in the direction that staff's leading because the experiment, if you will, that was used to come up with a program that was done with the University of Virginia isn't user friendly.

It isn't clear.

It doesn't depict the images very well.

So I would just like to advocate for making that a lot more flexible and actually work with the Planning Commission and the Placeline Task Force

to come up with

just kind of dig up in my own archives.

We did once have a draft handbook to guide citizen engagement.

It was from December 2014.

As we've been moving forward, say, for example, with the zoning questions and the form-based code, and we're moving forward with the low-income housing coalition to actually engage them more completely in the process of creating their own zoning code, that needs to be done citywide.

So there's a real interest on the part of a lot of people to put more investment in getting a good, racially sensitive, class sensitive facilitator citywide that can begin to work with the Planning Commission

and staff to engage the community about what they want to see in terms of future development and how it will impact their neighborhoods.

So those are the two items that I'd like to propose that we look into that we pick up the ball on the community engagement in a really serious way through all our departments.

Thank you.

I don't see, Chris is still back here, but it occurs to me that CRHA, which I think now is three short other maintenance people,

I think we ought to set aside a fund to make sure the CRHA, which has been the subject of many comments in this chamber, has the people and the assets to take care of the properties.

I would put that up at the top of the list, basically, and I think that's going to

If it comes out of the CIP Continency Fund, that would be something after I'm off the council, but I would just like to put that idea out there.

They're doing beautification on the outside.

I'd like to add my support to all the items that have been raised and then if there, you know, kind of when staff's advice, if there is a single effort that could

address gentrification in some way.

There'll be meaningful neighborhood protection or through the land bank that's being talked about because we already have $120,000 space for it, but maybe we're looking at, if it is a one-time, it's looking at investing it with some dollars that could almost be an endowment or a real startup fund, not just a seed fund, but it could, you know, so maybe a significant amount of money could go into that.

There would be, I think,

If I might add to that though, Mr. Mayor, that at our last discussion about the land bank, it was made very clear and we supported the motion to actually have the Housing Advisory Committee take a better look at the land bank so that we would actually have more representation from the community on that land bank corporation board.

That could come out of

But what that corporation does, and this is another thing that I really would like us to pursue and understand better, one of the biggest problems with the housing authority is that they are not capitalized.

They don't have capital.

They don't have a bond rating, so they cannot float their own bonds to do the development and the redevelopment that

that they are duty bound to do.

So I would like to be able to figure out, and if somebody could please tell us, if we capitalize the land bank, is that land bank the tool that could be used to capitalize the housing authority so it can finally get going on building and rebuilding and replacing these horrible units?

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion that we adopt the resolution as it appears on our agenda with the following changes that by the next meeting that we have amounts for a downtown standalone

Okay, I can't verify this until I find out what happened.

Hold on.

Okay, hold on.

I just need to ask the officer.

Just hold on.

This is up to the police.

We don't direct.

It's not true.

It's not true.

It's not true.

We correspond with the Sergeant at Arms.

We correspond with them.

Okay, he's being, he's being, he's leaving under our rules.

Thank you.

Thank you.

He's being, he's leaving under our rules.

So let me um can everybody does everyone want to hear the rules that we actually have because that might be helpful because okay okay all right because it's well because the police and the city council are sharing the meeting both can

Call somebody to account.

Just so you let me know.

They did.

So we're moving on now to

We will have a public hearing on this also.

All right, item number four of resolution, Brian Huluska will be presenting.

This is the first of one readings.

Mr. Mayor, members of council, this is a special use permit request for 517 Park Street.

The request is for a residential treatment facility of up to 12 residents.

a property located at 517 Park.

It is zoned R3, Planning Commission heard this item at their November public hearing and recommended denial by a vote of 6 to 0.

I don't have any questions.

I'm sorry.

Is the applicant?

The applicant is present.

And actually I do have a question for Mr. Hosko.

So this is, it's an SUP, so it's a zoning, it's to make a use of property that is not otherwise allowed by zoning.

And so this would go with the property, so?

Correct.

Hi, I'm Kara Glockner.

I'm the owner of the STARRS program and we just passed our 20 years of being in business and serving foster care youth, the abused and neglected and disadvantaged children of the state of Virginia.

And my request is to increase our population of children that we can serve by four.

So I had a neighbor who spoke earlier and our original request was 416.

We, at the beginning, at the onset, decided on 16 because the building was built for that amount.

So in 1984, when the building was erected, it was built on a special use permit.

So it wasn't like a regular house where an attic and a basement got remodeled with bedrooms.

It is an eight bedroom home, each bedroom with two full closets.

and we also have a basement and an attic and lots of mezzanine and living room and dining area spaces.

It originally had 16 and then it was changed to a special use permit for school.

Virginia Institute for Autism had that property and I got it from them.

When the first special use was let go to make for a new special use permit at the school, when we bought it, we didn't realize we were getting it without the special use permit.

So we just have been there as eight, which is the by right federal mandate for group homes.

But this space completely allows for 16.

We, at the onset of this,

had our community meeting and kind of laid out our plans and our neighbors were concerned about the number 16.

So we immediately changed the number to 12 as a compromise and a halfway point.

So we're looking in hopes of adding four teenage girls.

We had planning commission meeting and it was actually my understanding that they unanimously voted to not make a recommendation, neither support or denial.

The VAR.

The VAR.

So thinking about the school being there, 25 kids getting dropped off and all the staff there, they stayed until they outgrew the building.

But our needs are considerably less than the two previous owners.

So that's just an important point, I want to say.

A lot of the neighbors who came to the community meeting expressed concern about the girls

sort of the population that I serve as if you know there was an element of deviance and that they were worried and was there going to be problems with criminal behavior and things like that.

I just like to say I've been there 14, 15 years and we've never broken the noise ordinance.

We've never

I've been the perpetrators of any crime, vandalism.

When we call the police, it's usually a mandated contact where we have to report the kids who haven't come back on time.

And we have had six incidences of disorder where the police have come, but they don't usually come with lights.

Six and fifteen years?

Up until September, which was when we pulled all the information.

And also in this neighborhood, there were 17 other locations who also had disorders.

I don't think that we are the main draw for

I am downsizing the program by consolidating two houses so the overall use of services going for these kids is going to be reduced with this new plan.

There was a concern about parking.

and it was brought up that a parking study should be done and so I did an amateur one.

I got advice on how to do one which basically was every day divided up by hours and then identify which spaces were used and which spaces were open.

and so I did that for 15 days and consolidated the information and I've provided you all with a letter.

I'm not really sure if you all received it and reviewed it but my goal was to number one, show what I'm currently doing.

I already have enough parking spaces for and number two, if you approve my special use permit request, we will actually be reducing the number of parking spaces and traffic in the neighborhood.

Sorry, I'm very nervous.

Miss Keira, I have a couple of questions if it's appropriate.

So hearing initially from individuals that you are requesting 16 and now that we are well aware that that number is 12 and we've understood that there's been some community concern, personally I see a great deal of value in having a program like this within our city as a whole.

I've met with individuals who've been in your program personally, young women whose lives have been turned around.

It was my understanding based on a conversation and I'm asking if you could clarify.

So when the Virginia Autism Institute was there, they were allotted 25 spaces?

So the similarity in which they had 25 students being dropped off and picked up

or any of your... My students will live there so there will be no traffic to drop off or pick up but they will walk to the bus stop, get on the bus and right now during the day the entire program is facilitated through that house on Park Street so any kid who is not in school or whatever they are involved in the day program which is housed on that as well.

So social workers

visitors who will come to the property.

Just one last question and I know my colleagues may have other questions.

So when we look at the overall, according to youth, the overall increase of traffic will be reduced.

One other

Statistics that you pointed out that in my opinion was poignant to say the least.

You stated that this year you've had six occurrences in which the police have been called for a variety of reasons.

I work with this similar population right now, so we know that sometimes people have to call the police.

As you said, it's mandated.

It's not always because they did something bad.

You also stated, though, in that current neighborhood,

that there's been 17 occurrences in which the police have been called.

So all of the police interaction is not just at your location or facility, correct?

Correct.

Yes, thank you for that clarification.

On a timing note, I'm just going to... Also, the police calls are all internal.

Our neighbors have never called the police on us.

I just think that's an important piece.

And most of our calls are mandated calls.

We have to call.

It's, you know, a licensing thing.

And the concern that was expressed about was 16 too many.

And I just kind of want to hold that number because Department of Social Services is the entity that puts together the regulations for care for these kids.

and they will approve 16.

I'm upgrading to a license with the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services.

They have a higher level of criteria for skill and they will approve 16.

And even above that is the Medicaid funding.

If children could not get well in an environment of 16, they would not fund.

Thank you.

Just a timing note, my colleagues, Ms. Rice let me know that we advertise a hard stop for the meeting at six o'clock in parts of the room can be so that more folks can come in.

Because of timing, I'm not sure everyone else feels, but I'd like to recommend or introduce the motion and ask for a second to approve the special use permit.

That's proper.

I would like to offer a counter motion and what I'd like to say as I make my motion, it is not because I don't support the work that you're doing.

I have a daughter and several foster children who have been in and out of group homes and it is the kind of solution of last resort.

We really want kids to be in family settings and in other settings that are less restrictive but sometimes

Hospitalizations, jail, or detention.

But this proposal, I mean, it is a zoning issue and so your program is not really what we're supposed to consider in

in making that decision.

It's really the appropriateness for the site.

But I will say that, as you say, this is actually a proposal to reduce your population of girls served in our community by two, not to add four.

One house is proposed to be closed, and then four of those girls moved over to this house.

So it isn't an expansion of services.

It's actually a reduction of services.

So, you know, if you were coming to us to ask for another group home for four to eight girls, I would be wholeheartedly for it, even if it, not from a zoning perspective, but I think that there's certainly a need in our community for that service.

That said, I believe that this is not the 16 as

as the original amount, or even the 12 as is being requested here.

I'd just like to echo Ms. Zago's comments.

It is an important service you provide, but the scale of it isn't appropriate.

We already have it in our zoning.

While we're on comment,

Thank you for your service.

And I think it's also important to note that we make accommodations often.

We don't always go with what's stated by the Planning Commission, although I do understand where my colleagues are coming from.

OK, so the motion is as made as to deny.

It was properly made and seconded.

Any discussion, questions over?

All right, we have reached a regular business round.

The movement, the civilian review?

We have the consent agenda, is that what it is?

Yes.

So moving, we've pulled one item from the consent agenda, which is about citizen civilian review board, however it's going to be named.

Yes, I offered a few amendments, although we have heard more amendments tonight, which I would be willing to entertain friendly amendments to my amendment if that's the event.

But the amendments that I've made to Mr. Bellamy's or Vice Mayor Bellamy's original resolution was simply to clarify what the proposed board membership would

and the representation and membership criteria would actually, when they're writing the bylaws, would include the length of time of their terms.

And so I think the one issue that Vice Mayor Bellamy is concerned about is that if we're instituting an initial CRB,

that is intended to investigate good practice, good models, and come up with its own bylaws, which would include length of term, which would include the ultimate number of people on that board, it seemed highly restrictive to me that we would limit and specify those terms in this resolution.

That is something to be determined by the initial CRB.

be it further resolved that was the first one.

I propose changing that the initial board shall have seven members to be appointed by vote of counsel and to serve up to the delivery of a final report to counsel but be eligible for appointment by counsel to the permanent board.

So again, I just wanted to

reiterate that as a charge of this initial CRB is to draw up bylaws and those bylaws would include board membership, number of members, representation, membership criteria, it should include length of term.

It made more sense to make that clarification and to be it further resolved.

Second, in light of what we have been learning about in the HAVI report,

that there was a lack of research of best practices on the part of our police department in understanding the best approach to the rallies of last summer.

So I'm feeling very much on edge about the need for best practices research.

And one of the best groups, as I understand, for researching independent citizen review boards is this group called the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement.

or Nicole.

And I just included that in the bullet point that talks about researching, that that would be one of the items to be included in what they review.

And then I also wanted their research to be documented so that it's on record as to what was being investigated.

Finally, I also wanted to make sure that we sought counsel from our city attorney, Como's attorney and the chief of police as to whether or not we needed any special enabling legislation or ordinances and just to make sure it's all out there for us and that they would so that we would have it to approve as required to make sure that the what is now called the citizen review board is actually

by ordinance or by law.

So those are my changes.

And again, I do think that there were valid comments made earlier tonight about calling it a civilian board instead of a citizen board, and then adding specific low wealth advocacy groups representation.

So this is my motion.

So you're making those?

I'm making those amendments to your motion.

So I guess it's a second.

Right.

So I would be amicable with accepting all of your friendly amendments with the exception of where it is being further resolved.

And your amendment in which it reads that the initial board shall have seven members to be appointed by the vote of counsel.

and to serve up through the delivery of a final report to council but be eligible for appointment by council to the permanent board.

It's just my, I'm of the position that the individuals once we go through the application process and whomever is chosen, those would be the individuals who serve on the board.

So that's where I stand.

I don't know where my colleagues are.

In addition to

I would also like to ask my colleagues to entertain an amendment to my motion.

Coming from what we heard tonight from the legal aid, if you all look at the document in which they sent to us, or excuse me, that handed out to us, item one, city council must amend the name of the CRB to reflect that it will benefit all members of the Charlottesville community and not just citizens.

So, striking citizen review board and making sure that it's called civilian review board.

I'd like to accept that.

When you look at item 2 the suggestion for the Civilian Review Board point 3 specifically tell us who applied.

The names of all applicants must be published on the city's website on a rolling or weekly basis to create transparency around the candidate pool.

I'd just like to ensure that we

Make sure that after the applications are put in, we inform the community who applied.

Similar to what we did with the Blue Ribbon Commission, so that's the issue there.

And also when you look at

Item 3, specifically ensuring that council or city entities are not necessarily on these boards, making sure that this board is completely independent and there is indeed precedent set, Virginia Beach and Fairfax County, just to name the two.

they're requesting that City Council go on record with the support for a truly independent CRB if that could be included in the resolution that we will again clearly state that this will be independent of all city, I don't know if you can say city affiliation just making sure that none of us are on it and no city staff are on it but ensuring that there is a staff member to support it

Those are two distinctions.

Lastly, looking at Council Must Appoint People of Color and Low Wealth People to the CRB, I'm pretty confident that we will do so.

Ms. Galvin, would you be open to accepting

I have a question.

So my little logic kind of conundrum here was if after we get the report from this initial CRB, and it's in July, and they say

and I've seen it in some of the other models that really it would be better to have seven members or eleven members.

It would be better that we had three year terms, not one year terms.

I'm having trouble having the group that we have assigned to come up with the bylaws and the structure of the CRB

to be then restricted by the very resolution that enables them.

So you want fluidity from that board, I guess where, for the sake of time, I guess where my question comes is that

If we appoint seven and they say that they prefer nine or they believe that they need eleven, could we not just in their bylaws allow for them to add members or do we have to again go through the entire process?

That's what I want to avoid.

Ms. Galvin, I'd like to offer a possible way forward for this discussion because I think the original language said for a one year term.

And generally this council reappoints people who finish a term if they reapply for a second term, unless there's cause not to.

So there is some kind of self, not exactly limiting, but sort of a stop there.

My other thing that I was going to bring along with the Civilian Review Board, the title makes a lot of sense, but the timeline I think we heard in public comment and also I was concerned

seems a little tight.

Yeah, it would make more sense to do 30 days.

Then they're going to have to schedule their first meeting for the time that they can all come.

So that's going to take another couple of weeks.

So by the time they have their first meeting, they're already two months into our six months.

And that doesn't give them a whole lot of time to do

public engagement and research plus come together with a report and bylaws.

I can accept these changes.

Mr. Bellamy, did you, this bullet here that was raised by Lee Lane, City Council must appoint people who are caught in low wealth, is there, can we put that, or say shall consider, in the resolution that it goes into the, I think that's important to include in the resolution.

Yeah, I would be fine with adding that.

And it be further resolved?

The original motion as friendly amended by this discussion which Ms. Rice has, I believe, the document shall be available to everybody

Any further questions?

Stephanie has stepped in the right direction.

We just renewed the, yeah, the motion.

So now we vote.

We need to see, we need to see.

All right, great.

Okay, everybody.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

So we're already out to nine months.

We're already out to nine months.

Now the citizen advisory panel, why they couldn't make this thing work was because they didn't have the assets.

There were no appropriations for that.

And you can see the difficulty that we have run into just before we've even gotten started.

All right.

OK.

We've already moved ahead.

Like I said, it's in the minutes.

I think that this ship has sailed, but that's in the minutes.

All right, thank you, Mr. Fenwick.

I thought it would be voted on at the next meeting.

The next meeting.

Do we have clarity that we can put that on the consent agenda at the next meeting?

If it's the same, can't we just put it on the consent agenda?

Yeah, okay.

Thank you.

Okay, all right, so we have concluded

And we have concluded that part of our regular meeting.

Under our rules, we're going to conclude this meeting now.

And we're going to adjourn the meeting.

We're going to recess it because we're coming back into the regular meeting at 7 o'clock.

So I believe there's a procedure for staying in your seats or other.

Ms. Rice, do you want to say anything about how the

So we're adjourning the meeting right now, a special meeting that we're coming back in at 7 o'clock.