City Council   2/6/2017

On tonight's consent agenda, council has a resolution for an honorary street name in recognition of the work of Reverend Rufus Hayes on Old 5th Street, which is the 800 block of 5th Street Southwest.

The application for an honorary street name for Reverend Hayes was submitted by his granddaughter, Kim Hayes, and reads as follows.

And sir?

Present?

OK.

If you're comfortable, we'd love to have you come up and receive the award and also say any words.

Do we have a microphone for presentations, Ms. Brazelton, like the portable mic?

OK. For the last 50 years, you could hear the distinct voice of Reverend Hayes on WINA radio every Sunday morning on the gospel sermonette with a word of encouragement to his many listeners.

There are many who came to know God through messages given by Reverend Hayes over the years.

When starting his church in Charlottesville in 1965 with only a handful of members, he had no idea the reach the church would have, seeing significant growth over the years and becoming a staple in the community.

Understanding the need for community outreach

Reverend Hayes started having tent church services in low income housing areas to bring the church to the community and to instill hope and show the power of faith.

Many spectators later became members of the church and improved their life conditions based on a spiritual belief that things could change.

Hayes would also frequent local hospitals to provide prayer and healing to sick and shut in members of the community.

His demeanor and resolute faith attracted many residents of the city to request prayers from him based on their trust in his leadership over the years.

Reverend Hayes showed support to his parishioners along with community members by appearing at court hearings or legal proceedings requiring a character witness to those lacking an alternative support system.

He is the type of person who would show up at his local car garage with a box of donuts on a random morning just to show gratitude.

from previous service appointments.

He always supports local businesses and gives new businesses a chance by patronizing their establishment and endorsing them if the service was up to standard.

With a vision given by God, Rev.

Hayes carried out his passion project by building a church for all people from the ground up.

Commitment and dedication Hayes gave to this project was an example of how much he believed in it.

You could always find Rev.

Hayes working on the site with his own hands for years to construct the edifice that we now know as the Charlottesville Church of Christ.

His perseverance in having the church built was remarkable and a huge symbol of pride once the church was completed.

Years after the opening, the church suffered a massive fire, causing $20,000 worth of damage, but was later restored in part by the community support and the faith he preached about to others.

As a longtime community leader, Reverend Hayes is highly deserving of this honor.

His resilience, even at the young age of 91, is a beacon for all to see.

My words will be short.

I just want to thank this community and their many friends and

listeners to the broadcast for 50 years and encouraging my heart to keep the work going in Charlottesville, Virginia.

I recently had a major stroke, which I had to give up the work because I wasn't able to carry it on.

But I do want to say I really appreciate your appearance tonight.

You encourage my heart and make me feel encouraged for the labor I work in this city

Okay, and we have a range of other announcements from my colleagues.

City Hall will be closed Monday, February 20th for President's Day.

City offices will be closed on February 20th.

The Charlottesville area transit will operate full service.

City trash and recycling will be collected as usual.

Good evening, everyone.

Good evening.

Y'all know the routine by now.

Good evening, everyone.

There we go.

There we go.

So we have a couple of special people to acknowledge tonight.

In honor of African American History Month we have a proclamation from the city of Charlottesville and whereas February has been set aside nationally as a time to remember and learn facts

about the contributions of African Americans to our country and whereas during February in particular we remember the stories of those who have helped build our nation and our city and advanced the cause of freedom and civil rights and we remember those who helped build our families, places of worship and communities and whereas as we celebrate African American history we teach our children and all Americans to rise above brutality and bigotry

and to be champions of human dignity and equality and whereas we rededicate ourselves to reaffirming and promise

the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.

That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Now, therefore, we, the City Council of the City of Charlottesville, Virginia, do hereby celebrate February 2017 as African American History Month.

In recognition, amen.

In recognition of the struggles and contributions of African Americans and to make all citizens aware of the significance of the achievements of African Americans in our community and throughout this country, we hereby urge all citizens to mark this month by supporting and encouraging the efforts of all interested groups and organizations.

We have two different proclamations that we are going to present to two different individuals.

One who, as many have stated, was the baddest point guard to ever come through the city of Charlottesville, Mr. Jerome Swamp Saylor.

Can we give him a round of applause, please?

Come on up, Mr. Saylor.

Mr. Saylor has been working for Parks and Recs here in the city for many years now.

He has been a dedicated member of this community who has selflessly given his time, his talents, his treasure to help young people for decades now.

There is not a young person who has come through the city of Charlottesville who has attended either South First Street, who's played basketball at Tonsil Park, or who's just been in the community as a whole who is not aware

of Mr.

Swamp, as we like to call him.

He is an individual who selflessly puts on community events every summer, including popsicle giveaways, where he makes me buy a bunch of popsicles.

Not getting any this year.

This is my pay.

He's an individual who puts together bike drives, rallies.

He helps people, all those who are in need, no matter what you look like, regardless of your race, creed, or religion.

And this is our token of appreciation to you, Mr.

Swamp.

I didn't see this coming until I saw Wes last week and I know he had some up his sleeve.

But I know most of the people from Ms. Galvin, Ms. Szakos, I've heard of Wes Haven, of course I know Mr. Jones over here, Mr. Freeman I met a couple of times.

When Wes first came to town, I think he knew who to seek out to get some attention, so he found me.

But other than that, I want to thank everybody, my family, my friends.

So the next proclamation that we'll be providing is to a man who needs very little introduction.

Mr. Damian Snake Banks, if we can give him a round of applause, please.

Mr. Banks, who is often known as a community-wide hero, is the co-founder, along with his lovely wife, of the BCBA Banks Collage Basketball League here in the city of Charlottesville, which is a venture that has several different components to it, including men's basketball, youth basketball, youth cheerleading, youth dancing, flag football, and now volleyball, correct?

I got a spike for you.

So this gentleman has been a lifesaver to this community.

His efforts every summer has led to a reduction in violence, has brought the community together in several different ways, and he has truly been a beacon of light in terms of being a voice of reason and calm when needed, as well as a voice of force to let the little ones know that we're not going to have any of that out here.

You are appreciated.

Your commitment is appreciated.

Your tremendous valor and your time and effort that you provide to this community is appreciated.

And as we like to call you, Mr. Snake, thank you, sir.

I just want to say thank you to everybody who came out to support or whatever you know what I'm saying and everybody who supported because everybody did support it's not just me you know I'm like the last guy on the totem pole that seemed like it you know what I'm saying it take all of us to put everything together and I like to thank my wife and my kids and everybody out in the hallway you know y'all took up all the seats

I'd like to thank all y'all.

I thank Tanisha too because she come out and help every summer.

Thank you.

You two gentlemen are indeed the definitions of black history.

Thank you, sir.

I have one more resolution that as my colleagues have seen in regards to Freedom Day.

So this resolution to transform the city of Charlottesville's core public spaces.

Yeah, I was going to say.

Other business, I think.

Is it to vote on?

No, no, no.

So, to recognize March 3rd as Liberation and Freedom Day in Charlottesville, whereas more than half of the population of Charlottesville and of Albemarle County

at the time of the Civil War was enslaved, and whereas this historical fact remained little known until the recent, excuse me, solitary work of the Charlottesville Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Monuments, and Public Spaces, which promoted public knowledge of this important aspect of the history of our city and county, and whereas the city of Charlottesville endeavors to change the narrative on race by recognizing and celebrating African American history

as an important constituent of the city's collective history, and whereas 14,000 members of our community, having struggled for generations in bondage, began to be freed on March 3rd, 1865, owing to the arrival of Union forces under the command of Generals Custer and Sheridan,

who enforced the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and whereas the values of freedom and justice are universal and are thus rightly celebrated by everyone.

Now therefore be it resolved by declaration of the Charlottesville City Council that March the 3rd shall henceforth be recognized by the city and celebrated as Liberation and Freedom Day.

Welcome.

Well, after all of those, mine is rather pedantic, but upcoming council meetings.

We have scheduled a joint city council Albemarle County Board of Supervisors meeting for Tuesday, February 14th, Valentine's Day at 10 a.m. at the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission Office on Water Street at the Water Street Center.

We'll be discussing a variety of things, but it's open to the public if you want to come.

On Tuesday, February 21st is our regular next City Council meeting because of President's Day.

It's on a Tuesday.

Okay.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor and audience and Council.

I would like to say a few words about Carol Troxell.

She passed away at the end of January.

A lot of people passed away in January, it seems.

and if I may say a few words based on an article that was written by Sandy Houseman just to give people an idea of who this woman was and then if we could have a moment of silence after I finish, that would be wonderful.

So after years of giving ground to chain stores and online sales, independent booksellers are reporting gains.

Membership in a trade group was up for the seventh year in a row with shops in more than 2,300 locations.

New Dominion,

is one, a community hub on Charlottesville's downtown mall.

Credit for its success goes to owner Carol Troxell, who suffered a stroke last month and died at the age of 68.

New Dominion has been in business since 1924, owned at first by Christopher Columbus Wells and then by a woman who had worked in the shop for 10 years, Carol Troxell.

Quote, she had an encyclopedic memory of titles and authors and frequently would know with a single question that someone was looking for a particular title, recalls Rebecca Keyes, one of six people who worked in the shop and wanted to talk about their remarkable boss.

Stories like that abound.

In addition to books, she loved cats, roses, grew her own behind the shop.

Authors wandered in for a chat, one of whom was John Grisham.

And she protected his privacy by simply calling him Mr. G. But you didn't have to be famous to enjoy her attention.

She often stepped up to assist customers in finding whatever they were looking for, just the right volume.

And it could be at the very tippy top of the bookshelf.

So she will be sorely missed by everyone on the downtown mall.

She'll be missed by this council, this city.

And I want to thank her wherever she is for standing up to the big box store and proving that personal touch and personal care still wins out in today's markets.

All right.

I'd like to move the appointment of the following boards and commissions.

Board of Architectural Review, Corey Claiborne, Breck Gastinger.

MACA Board, John Fink, Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee, Marnie Allen, Lizelle Dugger, and John Santoski, Region 10 Community Services Board, Brian Pinkston, RSWA and RWSA, Michael Gaffney, Social Services Board, Ivy Orpetage,

Towing Advisory Board, Thomas Scholl, Tree Commission, Michael Ronane, Water Resources Protection Program Advisory Committee, Brian Becker, Morgan Butler, and Dave Hirschman.

And we are looking for one more on the Region 10 Community Services Board.

I'd appreciate it if people would think about volunteering for that.

We have a couple boards.

The Towing Advisory Board needs two more people.

and the CTAC, the Citizens Advisory Board for Regional Transportation Planning, and they're starting to go into a very important planning operation.

Any discussion, questions?

Okay, all in favor?

Motion carries five to zero.

Congratulations, everyone.

Okay, we now move to city manager response to matters by the public.

This is something we do where matters by the public that are raised during our first couple, well, either of our public comment sessions that have a response from the city manager, we have a couple weeks to research them and then respond the next meeting.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

There was one item to respond to from last meeting.

As you may recall, we had a discussion with Council about this expenditure and the budget process for last year.

the current fiscal year that we're in right now.

At the time, it was envisioned that that money would not be needed in fiscal year 17.

And so we did make a commitment to reconsider that for fiscal year 18.

Staff has done that.

It is in our it will be in my budget that I will present to you and the first meeting in March.

So just wanted to give an update on that, that the seventy five thousand dollars will be part of that budget recommendation from the city manager's office.

May I ask one other question for the update?

This is not something that came up in city

or Madison, the public at the last meeting but we've gotten several emails about it and I wondered if you could give us any sort of report about the Water Street construction and the impact on the businesses along there.

Yes, we're in the process, right now we are working with the contractor to change the traffic flow.

Right now it's one-way and we're going to change it back to two-way traffic within the next couple of weeks or so.

They are working on a particular part of the project right now

Okay, so if anybody wants to go to any of the businesses along there, there's the C&O, there's the melting pot, they're all open for business?

Absolutely.

We encourage people to find their way to get there.

OK, thank you.

Before we get to matters of the public, I'm going to read an initial statement.

I've done this a couple of meetings in the past, but I'd appreciate it if everybody just bears with me.

So I want to start off tonight's meeting with a request for civility and for order and for decorum.

I've done this before.

Please just take a moment to look around you.

I'm not going to go on until everybody just takes a moment to look around them.

Everyone you see is a human being with his or her private struggles, opinions, aspirations and fears.

We are all members of the same human community.

A lot of us are members of the same Charlottesville community.

even about the most difficult matters we should be able at the very least to disagree without being disagreeable.

And so I'm asking everyone tonight to proceed in the spirit of civil and civic dialogue.

We're going to be addressing a matter.

It is number four on our agenda.

So I know that everyone is extremely passionate about the grant of easement for electric duck bank under Emmett Street.

You are going to

This is going to be awesome, folks.

And the conditional release of bike and pedestrian access easement on Meadowbrook Road.

But after that, we are going to get to the statutes.

We are going to be addressing that matter.

It draws very strong feelings from many people.

Our city code requires the mayor to maintain the quote is order and decorum.

It does not actually even give me an option about that.

The language is that I shall provide those things.

I'm going to read the section from our governing procedures on this, but before I do that, just as I ask you to take a moment to look around, I'd like to introduce you to two gentlemen here, Officer Sprouse and Blackwell.

These are members of Charlottesville's finest.

They are really nice people.

They are, you know, they're working tonight.

We've had a conversation.

I'm going to read to you just a section from our governing procedures here.

And this is going to cover both the matters by the public and also the discussion that's going to go on after this.

Improper comments and disorderly conduct are not permitted.

Persons appearing before the council will not be allowed to A.

Campaign for public office, B.

Promote private business ventures, C. Use profanity or vulgar language or gestures, D. Threaten violence toward council city staff or members of the public, E. Engage in behavior that intimidates others, F. Interrupt other speakers or engage in behavior that disrupts the meeting.

10, section, that was 9, 10.

Any speaker violates the rules will be called to order by the mayor.

If the remarks or conduct persists, the mayor shall order the speaker to cease speaking and be seated.

If the order is not heeded, the mayor shall direct the sergeant in arms, which are these two gentlemen, to escort the individual from the meeting room.

Section 11, the mayor may also order the expulsion of any person for a serious violation of these rules, disruptive behavior or any words or action that incite violence or disorder subject to appeal to city council.

Any person so expelled shall not be readmitted for the remainder of the meeting from which expelled.

Subject to City Council approval.

So that means I can't go off and be rogue or be some kind of tyrant here.

It is subject to the vote and approval of my colleagues here.

At our last meeting on the subject, things got a little out of hand.

We essentially had some, you know, I would equate it to civil disobedience of those rules, and I allowed it.

I made the decision in that meeting to allow a number of folks to sort of interact in such a way that it was hard to proceed for a while.

We suspended the meeting three times, very difficult.

Well, there's definitely a place for civil disobedience in many public events.

There's also, we're playing the role of the government up here, so it puts us in the role and these gentlemen under our rules of having to move the meeting along and get on with the deliberation.

Tonight, I do want everyone to be on notice that we will be strictly enforcing these rules.

We will, if

If there is a disruption, I will call that person to order.

If the disruption continues, then we will escort that person out of the room.

We will wait until that happens.

If we have to go all night, we'll go all night.

But that's the feedback I've gotten.

We kind of let it go one time.

These are difficult judgment calls for any mayor, any chair of any local government meeting.

Hard to get this right, but that is what we'll be doing tonight.

So is that

I'm seeing a lot of heads nodding.

I think it will be in the interest of everyone here on both sides, on all sides of these issues.

I will, I want to give one other thought and I'm going to give some credit to Ms. Szakos here for some ideas she's had in the past.

I will tonight be distinguishing between expressions of approval and disapproval and efforts that actually disrupt the order

and Decorum necessary for our deliberations.

I would ask everyone to heed a suggestion that Councilor Szakos has made in the past, which has proved very useful, that if you agree with something somebody is saying, raise your hand.

And if you don't agree with it, how about if you go like this?

Give a thumbs down, okay?

You'll probably have some opportunity.

Trust me, we will be paying attention.

It'll show up in the cameras.

The camera mics, everyone should know this, they don't pick up noise from the audience anyway.

They only pick up the person speaking.

So even if you're, there's a lot of hooting and hollering out in the crowd, it doesn't make its way through to this one mic here.

We don't have mics hanging over the crowd.

So it's just going to be a, you know, you'll be heard anyway.

That sound good?

pretty much okay thank you for understanding if we work together I believe we can't have a meeting where all viewpoints will be expressed and where we're able to deliberate for the public as well and I should say just a final thing

Then a ton of conversation.

We're going to come back to the meeting procedures in March, which will be around the year anniversary of when they were adopted.

Lots of discussion about whether the random selection process we use right now, if we go over, we've got nine slots that you can sign up for ahead of time.

We've got three spots you can sign up for first come, first served.

It used to be all 12 spots were first come, first served.

debates about whether we should have limits at all, et cetera, et cetera.

Just so you all know, the last several meetings we've been running double or triple those amount of 12 spots.

Tonight, there were 25 people who did not get one of the nine

early sign up spots.

Again, we are constantly figuring out what do we do when we have a lot more people that can speak than we traditionally have had these 12 spots.

If we were to go just, you know, have everybody speak tonight, it would go about an hour and a half at the beginning of the meeting, actually probably longer.

There was interest in, two of my colleagues have a separate public hearing tonight in this agenda item where everyone has spoken, but that was not, there were not three votes for that, because the, and I, but everyone who wants, and I supported that, but everybody who wants to speak

At the end of the meeting we will have an open Matters by the Public at the end of this meeting and this should be a fairly quick meeting so everyone who wants to wait around can speak in an unlimited fashion at the end of the meeting.

That's how our rules are.

So we would love to hear from you after these 12 spots are finished at the beginning.

Okay?

All right, so we're going to go on with our first nine spots right now.

We do have one person didn't show up.

So we're going to go on to the wait list of which we have 25 people.

And then we're going to go on to the three

First come first serve spots.

So the first person on the on the pre-reserved spot is Jelaine Schmidt.

And I would ask that and we go through this every time we welcome public comment.

It's an important part of our meeting.

If you're here to speak for public hearing, please wait to speak in that matter.

And we've got a couple of those sign ups here to report for that item as presented.

Each speaker has three minutes to speak.

Please give your name and address before beginning.

We're beginning your remarks.

My name is Jelaine Schmidt.

I live at 11 Altamont Circle in Charlottesville.

I commend Council's brave action to publicly declare Charlottesville a sanctuary city.

Although we risk losing HUD funding as a result, I believe that standing shoulder to shoulder with vulnerable refugees is still the right thing to do.

My concern is the empathy gap that I perceive between the enthusiasm for welcoming current international refugees while the plight of previous generations of African-American refugees who fled our city receives much less fanfare.

At the time of the Civil War, over half the residents of Charlottesville and Albemarle County were enslaved.

Local runaway slaves who were recaptured were whipped and even hung in Court Square.

During the Civil War, many slaves escaped behind advancing Union lines.

Later, post-Reconstruction black residents of Charlottesville fled lynching and intimidation by local chapters of the KKK.

During Jim Crow segregation, many local African Americans voted with their feet by moving north in the Great Migration.

Our local black population declined precipitously from 54% to now around 20%.

These African-American refugees of previous generations were driven from our town.

They found no sanctuary city here in Charlottesville.

And in the 1920s, leading white citizens' contempt for black humanity was enshrined in Charlottesville's public spaces.

Monuments of generals who fought to defend a slaveholding republic were installed in our parks.

These statues promoted and still perpetuate a romantic false narrative of the lost cause which effaces memory of the suffering of the enslaved majority.

These statues warn blacks, and indeed all people of goodwill, to conform to the immoral white supremacist order or leave.

Imagine how traumatized Syrian refugees of the present day might feel if they were resettled in a sanctuary city that featured a park dominated by a bronze monument of Bashar al-Assad.

These hypothetical Syrian refugees

would rightly be wary if their neighbors made a convoluted effort to transform and recontextualize in place a monument of the very despot that had fled.

It is a shameful contradiction that the Charlottesville of today, a seemingly righteous sanctuary city, still maintains statues of Confederate generals who defended the miserable conditions which caused our own flood of African-American refugees.

The sanctuary city declaration reveals Charlottesville's empathy gap.

Our town is willing to shelter international refugees, even if it means losing HUD funding.

Yet we debate the cost of removing monuments of a white supremacist order that drove African-American refugees from our own town.

The capital of the resistance should close the empathy gap and be a sanctuary city that recognizes the humanity of all those who flee oppression.

Good evening, Mayor Signer, Councilor Jones, Mr. Brown, I'm Jean Hyatt, 1534 Rugby Avenue.

I'm here representing Preservation Piedmont.

We presented detailed statements to both the Blue Ribbon Commission and the Council previously, both informed

by our expert board of advisors.

We continue to support reinterpreting and contextualizing or transforming in place our monuments in their present locations as does the city's historic resource committee.

We've been working on bridge building.

For example, some of our members have recently researched and written up all the earlier

recipients of the Drury Brown Bridge Builder Award in order to create a booklet and permanent record.

Today, we urge you to avoid a divisive decision that will not build any bridges and will likely generate a divide in our community for years to come.

Can we please come together with a compromise?

My solution, what if we do away with the name of Lee Park, plant tall, fast-growing evergreen trees on the Market Street side of Lee's statue?

We could also build a plexiglass structure along that side and add plaques and photos with the purpose of reinterpretation for the 21st century.

Contextualization will allow us to introduce African-American themes and achievements in a public space and create them to speak to our own time and help to transform

for the future.

A democracy is built on careful, well-researched, fair-minded compromise.

This perhaps might not seem as a compromise by some, but along with this project, the city is also planning on providing more support for Jefferson School, the African American Heritage Center, a new remembrance of the slave auction block, support for the Vinegar Hill Park, Daughters of Zion Cemetery, and other worthwhile projects.

The city is working hard to address the needs of its citizens.

Moving the Lee statues seems like an enormous waste of money that could be spent on worthwhile and very appreciated projects.

It's clear that, to me, the majority of city residents favor retaining the statues in place and adding reinterpretation and contextualization.

This would be far less expensive and not waste taxpayer money.

Many longtime leaders of the African American community, like Eugene Williams and Teresa Price,

refer to retain the statues saves taxpayer dollars.

They also feel that retaining the statues preserves our historic narrative and keeps the painful story of slavery and repression of African Americans front and center.

A similar statement is included on page 11 of the Blue Ribbon Commission's report.

We ask that you consider deferring this vote this evening until the public can be informed, such as when the statues would be relocated

and details on costs associated with both relocating the statues or retaining them in place with reinterpretation.

Then we ask that you hold the public hearing after the information is presented to the public.

Thank you.

Hi, Malcolm.

Malcolm Bell.

I live at 433 North First Street.

members of City Council.

My wife and I moved to Charlottesville in 1971 and for the past 40 years we've lived downtown.

Until my retirement in 2009, I taught art history at the university where I served as chair of the art department.

I grew up in Savannah, Georgia.

A powerful memory of my youth is of listening in 1963 to a speech by the Reverend Hosea Williams as he stood on top of a public monument in Savannah and said that democracy should be brought out of the classroom and into the streets.

This happened, and we know there was a great movement that followed.

The monument on which Reverend Williams stood commemorates a Native American chief, but Wright Square, where he spoke, was named for the royal governor of Georgia, a Tory who tried hard to prevent the province from joining the revolution.

So as not to rewrite history, but to make us think about its complex meanings, the name of Wright Square in Savannah was not changed after Georgia became a state.

My aim now this evening is to urge Council to return to the second less divisive, less expensive, but more challenging recommendation of the Blue Ribbon Commission, which is to recontextualize the works in place, and these are some reasons.

The bronze equestrian sculpture, sculptures of Lee and Jackson, are major works of art by prominent sculptors.

works that were created as public monuments.

Their makers were neither politicians nor historians, but visual artists who intended their sculptures to be studied and appreciated as works of art for placement in prominent public spaces that were specially designed for them.

Both parts were created specifically for these sculptures.

The urban spaces and the equestrian figures belong together.

Both figures have been a part of the visual fabric of the city for almost a century.

Exiling them to some necessarily obscure low spot in McIntyre Park would be to diminish both the sculptures and the places where they have stood.

Removing them would be a weak solution that uncourageously evades the more challenging question

The commission offered the alternative of leaving the sculptures in place.

By keeping them where they are, we would be called upon to tell their story without resorting to the false narratives of the past.

They ought to become catalysts for an honest retelling.

of the Real Cause of the Civil War.

The statue of Lee might offer a start.

It is not a heroic or triumphal image, but rather the depiction of a defeated man.

Lee's original sculptor, Henry Shrady, died before his full-scale play model could be cast into bronze, and his successor copied it for the work we have.

Shrady's first idea depicted a confident Lee wearing his broad-brimmed hat, but his final version, Shrady showed Lee bareheaded, holding his hat in his lowered hand,

Confidence is given way to resignation and defeat.

Lee is shown as a broken man.

The sculpture implies a realistic, even negative judgment of the cause for which Lee fought, opening a door for a more nuanced reading of the work's relevance today.

Wes, I want to thank you for that tribute for Black History Month.

I had this feeling when I came that no one was going to do that.

No one was going to do that.

I had that feeling, but I'm glad that you did that.

And so I'm going to do the same thing.

History, as most folks know, is a clock that people use to tell the political and cultural time of the day

It is also a compass we use to find ourselves on the map of human geography.

It tells us where we are, but more importantly, what we are and what we must be.

This is a time to look at that clock and recognize the central role and revolutionary impact of black people in America.

Historian Carter G. Woodson

created Negro History Week in 1926, and it officially evolved into a month-long celebration 40 years later.

With white history being the dominant narrative in America, the work of revolutionary black Americans is often neglected.

And while this should be acknowledged all the time,

February serves as the time to educate ourselves and especially all of our children on the invaluable contributions of these trailblazers.

This year, Black History Month, a time meant to celebrate and embrace inclusion, arrived at a shameful moment in American history.

Our president ran on a platform of racism, emboldening white supremacists, and in his first week of office, has signed executive order to put marginal groups in danger.

History teaches us that black men and women have been victims of oppression, discrimination, and hate for centuries.

We understand the fears

that Muslim Americans feel right now.

History also teaches us that men and women of color have been among some of the most revolutionary and heroic people to fight against racist challenges.

Among those heroes is Langston Hughes, a black poet born in 1902.

He first published his poem, I Too.

in 1926, the same year that Negro history was created.

I too, I too sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes.

But I laugh and eat well and grow strong.

Tomorrow I'll be at the table when company comes.

Nobody there says to me, eat in the kitchen.

Then, besides, they see how beautiful I am and be ashamed.

I, too, am American.

Thank you, sir.

Savannah Lynn Meisner, 3519 River and Lane.

I would like to comment on the General Lee statue removal.

I'm a 12 year old military kid and we recently moved here from Texas.

I have five dogs, General Sherman, Grant, Longstreet, and of course General Jackson and General Lee.

We followed our family's tradition to honor Civil War generals by naming our dogs after them.

We bought a pair of American Eskimos and naturally named them Grant and Lee.

If one was Grant, the other one was obvious.

Robert E. Lee was our nation's greatest combat leader.

He was at top of his class at West Point and President Lincoln's first choice to command the Union Army.

General Lee, more than any other political or military leader from the South, set the stage for a peaceful transition from war to peace.

There is no doubt that slavery was America's original and greatest sin.

But this is not about that.

This is about partisans, politics, and cheap political points.

We have more important issues to discuss, like education, infrastructure, poverty, and public safety of all things.

This move will cost taxpayers money, money we don't have.

Yes, my mom and dad helped me with this, but rest assured, I know what I'm talking about.

I am very politically active.

I have volunteered at polling places, raised funds for the new VFW in Texas when ours burnt down.

I run two small businesses selling dog treats and homemade doll dresses.

I give 20% of all of my profits to military and animal charities, so please don't discount me just because I'm a kid.

Lee is simply a historical figure.

Robert E. Lee had the courage of his convictions to never take up arms against his home, his old Virginie.

I simply can't believe we're even talking about this.

What a waste of our two most precious possessions, time and treasure.

I look forward to November of 2022, when I can vote.

Today is Ronald Reagan's birthday.

He once said, the government isn't the answer to our problems.

The government can be the problem.

I am sad for my lili today, but this is why my dad says I'm a Virginian by birth and a Texan by choice.

All right, everyone.

Theresa K. Lamb.

Teresa Lamb

I'm Theresa K. Lamb.

I currently live in Elkton, but as you all know by now, this is my hometown.

It saddens me to be before city council again defending our defenseless statues.

Attacked by a vice mayor and a city councilor making inaccurate statements in Facebook posts stating the Richmond Blues in their uniforms were the KKK

and somehow that she knew what Robert E. Lee would want some 146 years after his death from reading one book.

All the while, y'all talk about equity.

Where's the equity for the Confederate veterans, Generals Lee, Jackson and Rosser buried in Riverview Cemetery?

And let's not forget their descendants and my ancestors.

They can't be here to stand up and speak for themselves, but I am, and I won't let you forget.

Standards were different in 1861.

Today's ideas and views should not be applied to these men from a bygone era.

If this is going to be the case, then every person alive today should be put on trial for the egregious actions their ancestors committed, beginning with Sherman, Grant, and Abraham Lincoln's descendants.

Do you hear how ludicrous that sounds?

To me, that's the logic you are applying to the statues tonight.

I've offered solutions that are viable and equitable that will build a bridge to the healing while permitting our statues to remain.

Mr. Bellamy, Ms. Szakos, and Mr. Fenwick have refused to build that bridge.

Please do not remove or transform our statues.

They add culture and history to Charlottesville that once lost is forever gone.

The statues do bring tourists to town, unlike the statement Mr. Fenwick made on WINA.

I had dozens of people walk up to me in less than an hour in Lee Park from all around the world to see the Lee statue, period.

Our history and heritage must be protected for future generations to decide and understand history for themselves without the help from city council.

A good friend who could not be here due to illness, Mr. Donald Call, a descendant of many Confederate veterans and local kid and loving relatives, wished his opinion be expressed as well.

He asked, why hasn't a commission been established to have sculptures or statues erected to minorities or ladies who have accomplished great things, not only for the city of Charlottesville, but for mankind as a whole?

In closing, I'd like to quote Jeb Stuart on the anniversary of his birth.

and do your duty as I have done mine and our country will be safe.

Hello, Michael Payne, 3164 Autumnwood Drive.

I'd just like to comment as a citizen who's been attending city council meetings and saw the State of the City address last month, that a lot of the State of the City address sort of struck me as odd.

A lot of issues like gentrification and other things were talked about passively, as if gentrification is just something that appeared in the city one day.

I think it is the result of specific policy decisions.

Specific policies got us here.

Specific policies can get us out.

I think fundamentally it's a matter of priorities.

If affordable housing is truly the number one priority, we find a way.

We go to communities that need affordable housing, we listen to their needs, and we organize to enact creative solutions.

But, and you know, and I think it gets at a larger point, which is, you know, we are at a moment where it's no longer enough for Democrats to just say the right things and expect to have success, whether it be in

City Council, State Senate, or higher office.

And, you know, we say we want to be a capital of the resistance and, you know, I take that seriously and I think it's a very important thing.

But what does resistance mean?

To my mind, it means enacting policies that help the communities in Charlottesville that are going to be most hurt by the Trump administration.

So where are we at with that?

Are we going to raise the minimum wage for city employees?

Are we going to build 1,000 units of affordable housing?

Are we going to devote more money in the budget to free health clinics?

Are we going to

You know, are we going to change the budget process so that marginalized communities have more control over how money is spent in their neighborhoods instead of a million dollars just being wasted on a consultant?

Are we going to formally declare ourselves a sanctuary city?

We know the pros and cons.

We can say yes or no.

We don't need to kick the can down the road for months with endless commissions and meetings like we've done with the statue issue.

Are we going to create a municipal ID to circumvent the Trump administration's immigration agenda?

You know, on and on and on.

and, you know, I think locally and across the country, we're tired of talk, we're tired of commissions, we're tired of promises down the road.

We need action now.

And because, you know, at the end of the day, if resistance is just the same status quo, pro-developer, pro-corporate, pro-big business policies, it's not resistance at all.

And I would add, you know, finally that voting to remove the statute would be a good

beginning point in the long road of transforming the city and resisting the Trump agenda.

All right.

We're now moving on to our wait list for those nine spaces early sign up.

Teresa Woods.

We have two more spots left on this.

Is Teresa Woods in that?

Audience?

Sure.

Hi, my name's Ned Fry.

I live in Albemarle County.

I support the Lee monument remaining in my hometown because it is a historical work of art and more importantly because Henry Schreedy is my great-great-great-uncle.

Schreedy is the original sculptor commissioned by McIntyre to create the Lee statue in 1917.

Like my relative, I am also a sculptor and I know firsthand

the amount of work and dedication it takes to create art.

But art of the scale and scope of the Lee monument requires more than just time and dedication.

It requires God-given talent and sacrifice.

My great uncle died before the monument was completed, and it is reported that his final words reflected concern for the Lee statue.

As he lay dying in a hospital bed, he pleaded with anyone who would listen, keep the canvas wet, keep the canvas wet.

While doctors and nurses thought him delusional,

He knew the canvas covering the yet-to-be-cast sculpture needed to be kept moist in order to prevent damaging the sculpture.

Knowing that my relative's final thoughts were about the Lee sculpture makes it all the more important to me that it remain in Charlottesville.

When I look at the sculpture, I see beauty, I see sacrifice, but I also see the final efforts of a dying man, but not just any man, my relative, my own blood.

The Grant Memorial, which sits in the front of the U.S. Capitol, is my uncle's greatest artistic achievement and is currently undergoing renovation.

My uncle worked on the Grant Memorial for 19 years, but unfortunately died two weeks prior to this dedication ceremony.

It's interesting that during the last five years of his life, Shrady worked on sculptures depicting two of Civil War's most prominent figures, Generals Lee and Grant.

These works are companion pieces and both have artistic and historic merit.

Washington, D.C. recognizes the importance of maintaining and preserving historical art.

Why can't the city of Charlottesville?

While many of you may have heard of Henry Schrady, you probably have never heard of his son, Frederick Schrady.

Frederick Schrady was also a sculptor and also one of the Monuments Men who helped save over 15,000 priceless works of art that had been stolen and hidden by Nazis during World War II.

I find it ironic that Frederick Strady risked his life to preserve art, but yet here we are in 2017 talking about essentially hiding his father's art.

The Lee Monument has been in Charlottesville for nearly 100 years and has been part of the story of this town and it belongs in the park created for it.

Mr. Mayor, City Council, will you discuss me to stand here at the age of 50 and to be arguing

over something that's been a part of our history.

When this was Vinegar Hill, and so you'll know, you didn't need to go to a blue ribbon commission.

My great grandfather was a slave.

My grandfather was the son of a freed slave.

It wasn't freed when everybody got freed.

It trickled down.

I don't understand my own people.

And as I can turn around and see, we don't have a lot of us here.

because we're more concerned with keeping our neighborhoods up.

We're more concerned with getting our kids an education, not just the black kids, but the white kids as well.

Mr. Bellamy, you're old enough to be my child.

Yes, you are.

Thanks, Pops.

So I can tell you right now, and I can tell a lot of y'all, we didn't have these issues.

We all grew up together.

Kim Sprouts in the back and I grew up in elementary school together.

I used to walk through every neighborhood.

Gentrification ain't just black.

Look at Belmont.

You took the blue collar white people and moved them out.

You want us to be at your back door and to come work for you and nothing else.

But you can build condos that nobody can afford.

But you can give us $600,000 and we'll sweep it on over.

You don't have to put in mixed use and stuff.

Where's that $600,000?

I've been to the high rise.

I've been to Sixth Street.

I've been to our housing projects.

Don't sit there and speculate about you know how I feel.

Don't play black folks for a fool so you can get a proud piece of real estate.

This disgusts me.

and you are supposed to be our leaders.

And I'm sorry about some of you white people out here.

I don't know if you've got white guilt about removing the statue.

There's removing this statue.

And if you want to sit here and talk to Reverend Hayes and give him all these acclamations and stuff.

This man, I remember his church right across from Bell's funeral home and every Sunday I didn't have to turn on the radio.

Our parents did not teach us to hate the statue.

It was in Dreniger Hill when it was an all-black neighborhood.

So if you want to know about my family, this young man wants to speak.

I wish you would at least give him at least a minute and a half.

Ms. Szakos, you can do whatever you want to.

I'm sorry, we're finished with your time.

We have a whole lot of people here.

We're moving on to the three.

These are the three spots that were first come, first serve.

And there were a lot of people who waited.

So these are the folks who got the first come, first serve spots.

There's three of them.

Teresa Roan.

Excuse me.

We're going to need the audience to be quiet, please.

If you have a conversation, you can take it out into the hallway.

Good evening.

I am Theresa Rome, 1452 Brownleaf Drive.

I am from Richmond, but I have ties to this city.

My mother was from Charlottesville.

I have only one question to ask you.

Before you vote to remove General Robbie Lee's statue,

Are you willing to acknowledge that you are removing black history?

On December 29th, 1862, Robbie Lee signed the manumission document that freed the slaves of his father-in-law's plantation, White House, Roman Coke, and Arlington.

This document was signed in Spotsylvania County because Arlington was under Union occupation.

Why is this important?

This document had force of law, unlike the Emancipation Proclamation, which was a war measure that freed no one.

I have brought you copies of the original document.

This is Black History Month.

So let me remind you one more time.

Are you going to vote to remove black history tonight?

Education is the key.

Jenna Bernstein Hi, how are you guys doing?

Can I alter all the tension, like no texting or anything, while I speak?

Because I drove from Florida.

Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, no interruptions please.

I'm speaking because I'm an American citizen, okay?

I'm also Jewish.

I've traveled extensively throughout the Southland in this country.

So if anybody wants to talk to me about white supremacy, I've been to Dachau and Auschwitz.

I know about anti-Semitism.

I know about being Jewed down on a tractor.

Blacks don't have a corner on the market when it comes to anti-Semitism or hate.

But I'm coming here because... What did you say?

Please.

I want my respect.

Excuse me.

Ma'am, if there's an interruption again, this was once.

I've got a lot to say, so no.

I want to talk about a slave.

Excuse me, sir.

A slave in Chester, South Carolina.

You're all...

The Union.

Read your paper.

It's very funny.

I'm looking at you.

I know.

I understand.

But I want you to read it.

I'll read it.

Because he wasn't lynched one time, three times, until he lost his breath and died.

And you know what the Union chairman under his march to the C did?

Used him as target practice.

Let's talk about Alexander Darden from Florida, Edmie Kirby Smith's servant that was paid for the Confederacy.

And guess what?

The first black doctor in Florida

I'm just so sick and sad that people cannot come together with unity because I marched on Selma in 2013 for the 50th anniversary.

I did the whole bridge.

I didn't have a helicopter and fly away like Obama.

I did the whole march because I'm 47.

I'm not making any reparations for anything that happened, but I'm fair to the civil rights movement and I'm fair and fair for everything in our American history.

And Robert E. Lee is not a white supremacist.

okay he's not and I traveled here and I want you to know I'm sick and tired of thousands of dollars speaking to city councils and all you with your blue signs give them each a thousand bucks thousand bucks raise the money to move the statue instead of you paying for it tough guys tough guys right your city I clean those you got my email I cleaned your statues that the parks both parks Page knows I came here

Six months ago.

It took me hours.

Picked up every cigarette bud.

Every cigarette bud.

I've talked to the homeless that sleep there that love those statues.

Why am I even speaking to you?

I do not want this to be what could possibly move into a totalitarianism type, like,

Hello, my name is Darren Face.

I live at 750 Belmont Avenue.

I strongly encourage city council to keep the Lee statue in place and recontextualize it.

As a work of art, the statue is of the highest quality.

Visually, it provides a sense of place to an otherwise ordinary park and is certainly beautiful to behold.

However, the state's historical significance as a point of pride and valor needs to drastically change.

The park should be renamed and a historical marker should be added that effectively conveys the idea that the primary and overarching reason that southern states seceded was to keep the institution of slavery and that they attempted to break the union of the United States of America.

There exists an alternative universe of facts among some people that the Civil War was not about slavery and that it was all about honor and righteous principle.

This false history needs to be refuted in the strongest terms.

Wiping away our history by removing a statue will not teach children truth.

It will only obscure what needs to be brought to light.

Some have suggested the statue be taken to McIntire Park or some other location where it is not at the center of town.

McIntyre Park will one day be a beautiful botanical garden and tourist destination, so it makes little sense to move it from one beloved park to another.

It would still require a historical marker to correctly convey its place in history.

We should not spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to achieve so little.

In Europe, I've seen tourists and citizens alike picnicking on the grounds of palaces

Thank you.

We have concluded our Matters by the Public first session.

I would say to everybody, I would remind everybody, we have an unlimited Matters by the Public after this meeting concludes.

So we will hear it from everybody then.

Anyone have anything they want to say?

Okay.

All right.

Item A, minutes for January 17th.

Item B, appropriation, Charlottesville City Schools to the CCS Enhanced Entrance Security Project, $7,582.49, second of two readings.

Item C, appropriation, Charlottesville, Albemarle Health Department restroom and service area renovations, request from returned city funds, $49,034.80, second of two readings.

Item D, appropriation, additional funding for social services benefits programs, $14,519, first of two readings.

Item E, appropriation, crisis intervention team grant, Department of Criminal Justice Services, $20,000, first of two readings.

Item F, Appropriation, Check and Connect Student Engagement Continuation Grant, $147,000, first of two readings.

Item G, Appropriation, Donations for Community Risk Reduction Initiatives, $3,246, first of two readings.

Item H, Resolution, Honorary Street Name Designation, Reverend Rufus Hayes, first of one reading.

item I resolution tax payment refund to campus investors Seville 1000 West Main LLC first of one meeting item J resolution allocation of Charlottesville affordable housing fund for costs associated with the purchase of 1406

Forest Ridge Road by the Thomas Deverson Community Land Trust, $4,595, first of one reading.

Item K, Ordinance, Amendments to Snow Removal, Ordinance, second of two readings.

Item L, Ordinance, CenturyLink Communications, Telecommunications, Franchise Renewal, first of two readings.

Thank you.

Second.

Any questions, any comments?

All in favor?

Consent agenda carries five to zero.

And I want to reiterate for the public, our normal clerk, Paige Rice, will be on maternity leave for the next several months.

Thank you.

uh... alright moving on to the next item public hearing ordinance and there is a public hearing on this so if anybody here would like to speak the sign up sheet is right here i think we have one signed up so far but uh... this is a grant of easement for electrical for electric duct bank under Emmett Street, Stadium Road, Jefferson Park Avenue, Monroe Lane to the University of Virginia this is the first of two readings which means we will just need a motion and a second we have ten minutes allocated to this on the

Members of council, as referenced by the mayor, this is a proposed ordinance offered for first reading tonight, which would grant the University of Virginia an easement for an electrical duct bank to be placed within city right-of-way along Emmett Street, Stadium Road, Jefferson Park Avenue, and Monroe Lane.

The purpose of this Duck Bank would be to connect three substations that are identified on a drawing that is in your package.

If I may, I would like to read from the letter from the university requesting

this easement because I think it succinctly states the reason that they are requesting it.

The university averages 30 power disturbances each year due to problems associated with overhead power lines.

These outages cause significant disruptions to research, teaching, patient care, and building operations.

The connections will enhance reliability and minimize interruptions.

The Duck Bank will not remove or replace existing overhead lines or provide service to buildings.

The new lines will solely connect the substations.

The resulting reliability will benefit many buildings serving the university and the community, to include the university hospital, the 911 center, and certain emergency shelters.

This is a letter from Mr. Hurt from the university who's present tonight.

When this was originally designed and brought to city staff, staff did have some concerns about it.

I think to their credit the university heard those concerns and went back to the drawing board and came back with this route and this plan.

It has now been reviewed by our public utilities and the city engineer and they have endorsed it.

As you said Mr. Mayor, it is scheduled for a public hearing tonight.

Any questions?

Comments?

Okay, let's open the public hearing.

We have, if anybody else would like to sign up for this, you're more than welcome.

We have, uh, Ms. Charlie Hurt will be speaking.

Oh, right there.

Well, could you, can you just speak from the microphone?

We need to have you.

So Charlie Hurt from the university, Mr. Brown.

succinctly expressed our position.

Okay, any questions, Mr. Hurt?

Very eloquent, thank you.

Okay, well I think we're ready for their motion.

So just a motion.

That was public hearing.

Well, I'm opening, closing the public hearing.

Yeah.

I mean, we have no other, no one else signed up, so no one volunteered.

Is there anyone else who would like to speak?

Closing public hearing.

Second.

Any further discussion, questions?

Mr. Mayor, this is a position of power.

Yet again, we had a motion and a second.

And for any new watches, I make that mistake frequently.

It's supposed to be finished in the first year of your mayorship.

But we had a motion and a second.

Public Hearing Ordinance Conditional Release of Bike Pedestrian Access Eastman on Meadowbrook Road to Accommodate Retail Development at 1200 Emmett Street.

This again is first of two readings, so it again will be a motion and a second, unless I screw it up again.

So we're going to have Craig Brown, the city attorney, presenting again.

And we have a public hearing on this as well.

We have one person signed up.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Members of Council, I suspect you're all probably familiar with a vacant tract of property.

It's at the northeast corner of Barracks Road and Emmett Street.

Probably 10 years ago, that was

slated for development as a branch bank, but it never took place.

But in that process where it was being approved, the city acquired a bike and pedestrian easement across the rear of that lot.

and as I say it has never been developed.

The contract purchaser has now requested from the city a release of that easement so that it can relocate the bike and pedestrian passageway on that property to allow for parking that's required to get site plan approval.

Action requested tonight is first reading of an ordinance following a public hearing.

The release of this easement is contingent on the contract purchaser actually acquiring the property and obtaining site plan approval.

I have a question, Mr. Brown.

I just want to make it very clear that we are not giving up this requirement for a bike pedestrian easement on this property.

Any further?

Okay, opening the public hearing on this matter we have

One person signed up again.

If anybody else wants to sign up, it's right here.

I had a hard time reading.

Vamesha Hicks?

Okay.

Ashley Davies and I am here just on behalf of Riverbend Development.

Thank you.

Okay, any other takers?

Closing the public hearing.

Any further questions, comments?

Okay, we now need a motion and then just a second.

Is there a motion to approve the ordinance?

Is there a second?

Okay, thank you all very much.

All right, now we come to the

evening's main attraction.

So I will remind everyone of everything I said at the beginning, strong emotions, lots of feelings on both sides.

Please, we're here to listen.

We're here to deliberate.

We're here to make some decisions.

We've heard from a lot of people.

If you have sentiments you'd like to share, we have a public hearing after this.

If you like what you're hearing,

Hand up or thumbs up if you don't like what you're hearing, thumbs down.

Microphone does not pick anything up, you all are saying anyway, but we do need to be able to proceed.

We need to be able to deliberate and I will reintroduce you to our friends, Officer Sprouse and Blackwell right here.

You don't need to meet them more than being right here.

They'll be happy to talk to you after the meeting.

And

We are going to have Maurice Jones, the city manager, and we have cookies, everyone.

We need a little sweetness in your lives.

We have cookies right here.

And we'll be breaking around 9 if you didn't get a chance to get them.

Ms. Szakos brings them as a contribution to our proceedings every time.

And I will furthermore, just to all my colleagues, we do actually have in our governing procedures, I'm going to remind all of us of our rules that we have, which is five minutes when you make a motion and three minutes when you are making comments on a motion.

And we can extend each other's time if we want by vote.

This is a significant topic, but we have 30 minutes allocated for this on the agenda, so we may go over.

We can do that by majority decision as we go on.

But those are our rules, so we'll try to, so Ms. Grazelton, if you could set the clock when we do start speaking, that would be great once we get into motions.

Sir, Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, just to provide some background to the City Council.

The Council created the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces on May 2nd of last year to address questions and concerns that were brought before the City Council regarding the statutes of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

Nine BRC members were appointed after an application process.

They were charged with providing Council with options

for telling the full story of Charlottesville's history of race relations and for changing the city's narrative through public spaces.

A final report was presented to the City Council on December 19th of last year and the Council reviewed the BRC recommendations at its January 17th meeting of this year.

The BRC made the following recommendations in their report to the City Council.

They deliberated and voted on two primary sculpture options in a two-step process.

They ultimately chose to recommend sending both the relocate of the Lee statue and the transform and place options to city council for deliberation.

The Blue Ribbon Commission decided to keep the Jackson statue where it was in terms of the recommendation, so it centered primarily on the Lee statue.

The BRC voted unanimously to rename Lee Park to reflect the broad and inclusive vision of Charlottesville's history consistent with the Commission's intent to transform the parks and engage the community and citizens in determining the new names.

On January 17th, the City Council voted in favor of considering the funding request made by Vice Mayor Bellamy as part of his proposed equity package.

During the upcoming budget deliberations, the City Council began discussions on those

on those items about a week and a half ago.

The council, however, did not reach consensus on whether to remove the Lee statue from Lee Park or to contextualize or transform in place the statue in its current location.

Council is being asked this evening to consider a couple of new resolutions, one of which is to remove the Lee statue and rename the park.

and to direct city staff to return within 60 days of an affirmative vote to provide details on advancing the terms of the resolution.

Another resolution under consideration is to transform the area of Lee Park, Stonewall Jackson Park and also the slave auction block and to do that through a design RFP.

And I will allow the two councilors who are bringing forth these resolutions to

Okay, so we've got two motions.

So I know I have five minutes, so I won't dawdle with my beginning,

I have time to myself, so I won't go over.

But I don't know if many of you know this, but I actually studied for the ministry before deciding instead to become a journalist and a writer.

I am a Christian, and I personally believe in a God who is infinite, far beyond the power of mere mortals to grasp.

For me, Christianity is a way that I try to catch some glimpse of that infinite.

Others approach the divine in different ways, and I don't claim that the faith I profess is the only path to truth, but it is my path.

Because of the distinction between my personal convictions and my public position as an elected member of city council, I don't often talk about my faith.

And yet, along with what I read and hear from constituents and experts and staff and my fellow councilors, it helps to inform the way that I approach certain issues, particularly issues with a moral ethical component.

So I hope that those of you who practiced religion differently or not at all will excuse me for a couple of minutes while I share a bit about my faith

as it pertains to this decision and the motion that I plan to make.

It may explain why I believe this issue is so important and why I've reached the conclusion that I have.

When Jesus was asked by the Pharisees what the most important commandment of God was, he told them, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

This is the first and greatest commandment.

And the second is like it.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.

And when they asked him, who is my neighbor?

He told them the story of the good Samaritan.

Time after time in his teachings, Jesus called out the need to act with mercy for those with less power in society.

Whether it was the woman at the well or the tax collector or the man possessed by demons or the unclean Samaritan faced with the beaten man beside the road, Jesus consistently sided with those in positions of little power.

And this position echoes God's commitment throughout scripture, favoring the widow and the orphan, the outcast, the poor, those in prison, those facing injustice.

And in the Christian tradition, God calls us to do the same.

In Isaiah 58, God says, how can I respond to your fasting when you're still doing injustice?

A fast pleasing to the Lord would be loosing the chains of injustice, untying the cords of the yoke.

If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like noonday.

My faith calls me to be concerned with what hurts my neighbor and to do everything in my power to address that hurt, to be concerned with injustice toward my neighbor and to do everything in my power to stop that injustice.

As a member of the Charlottesville City Council, I have heard from many people who experienced continued hurt and frustration at the fact that our city has for more than 90 years venerated a larger than life statue of the General of the Confederacy, a general whose army fought to keep enslaved the majority of the then residents of our city and who fought against the United States government for the right to do so.

Granted, others don't experience the statue in the same way.

but that doesn't delegitimize the feelings of those who do.

And this is not just a black versus white issue.

While as the mother of African American children, I am particularly aware of how the Confederate cause would have affected them, white residents of Charlottesville have also told us that they too find the veneration of the Confederacy hurtful as it purports to represent their community in a way that they find inappropriate to the 21st century reality of Charlottesville.

I am confident that if someone were to propose such a statue today, no one on this council would vote to put it in a downtown park to honor the commander of the Confederacy.

In all our discussions about this issue, I am convinced that this council is unanimous in feeling that these statues of fallen rebel commanders do not represent our interpretation of history or the way we should treat our neighbors.

If we voted tonight not to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee,

Council would almost certainly vote for the Blue Ribbon Commission's second most supported position to transform it in place.

Therefore, both because I feel it is the right thing to do,

and because I believe it is the most cost-effective way to reduce the harm that has been inflicted by nine decades of veneration, I move the following resolution and I'd like to read the following language into the record as the motion printed on our agenda is slightly different than what I had originally submitted.

So, now therefore be it resolved that the City of Charlottesville shall remove the statue of Robert E. Lee from the park currently known as Lee Park and be it further resolved that the park currently known as Lee Park shall be renamed

Get it out of your system, everyone.

Okay, any further?

Okay, now we're going to move on.

We're going to move on to our next comments, to a second, to our procedural, to our process.

Mayor Signer, I would, may I ask if Councilor Szakos would entertain a friendly amendment to separate the two motions, the relocating the statute from the renaming of the statute.

Yeah, point of order.

Do we second it before we have this discussion?

It was already seconded.

OK. Well, I didn't.

I didn't hear that, but it was seconded.

OK, so it's been seconded.

OK, now we have a question about a friendly amendment.

I guess both of us need to agree to it for it to be a friendly amendment.

So is that?

Yeah, OK.

It's fine with me, too.

And I actually have some alternative language to break the two apart in this event.

So the first motion is therefore be it resolved that the city of Charlottesville shall remove the statue of Robert E. Lee from the park currently known as Lee Park and be it further resolved that we hereby direct staff to bring council a range of recommended options for moving forward with decisions on destination and design within 60 days for our consideration.

okay so a second motion now pursuant to this friendly amendment to rename the park will happen separately with a separate vote so now we're more likely to have another motion later on in the debate okay all right everyone cool okay all right probably made and seconded and then that is as amended so now we're debating the motion as amended all right second on on your new motion is that correct

Mr. Brown?

OK. Mr. Bellamy, will you second the amended motion?

Yes.

OK. All right.

We good?

Parliamentarily now?

All right.

Well, before I start my prepared remarks, I would like to thank the members of the Blue Ribbon Commission

A number of them are in this room, and I think the rest of them are out in the hallway.

We do appreciate your volunteer work, nine people who volunteered for this.

And we have already started work on the other recommendations, and we will continue that as well.

So tonight we vote on moving the statue of Robert E. Lee from Lee Park.

For some, it will be a confusing night.

A night when a vote is taken seemingly contrary to historical scholarship for some academics and professional historical preservationists.

For others it will be a night fraught with unknown but not unimagined consequences to hear them wail and bluster.

A night, they say, they and their country will never recover from.

Well, they sell the rest of it short because it will also be a night of celebration

of a governmental action of the people, by the people, and for the people.

An act of acknowledgement not of the majority, but a strong, patient minority.

Tens of thousands of our neighbors in our community, the largest group by far of immigrants in the state of Virginia and the surrounding counties with African American roots and their friends who stand by them in their march to the sometimes elusive goal of equality.

and everyone should recognize there are many difficult steps ahead.

So I would like to take this opportunity to put this action in perspective.

First, for those listening or watching who say this will be the end of our country as we know it.

Our neighbors and friends who want this statue moved are United States citizens who have built our cities, paid taxes,

fought in our wars, served on our juries.

They are us and we are Americans, all of us.

Second, for those of you enjoying the dark recesses of the internet, we are not voting to destroy the statue or to bury it.

So stop with the ISIS comparisons.

They make you look foolish and taint the important argument of those who say, leave it where it is because it has historical and educational value.

Third, Robert E. Lee knew exactly what he was fighting for.

It was his free choice to take command.

He lobbied for it.

He got it.

In today's vernacular, own it.

There is a large body of thought that all wars are economic,

He was the general of the Confederate Army, and the mission of that federal armed force was to preserve the economic lifeblood of the Confederacy, literally.

And that was the enslavement of human beings.

Decades after England and France had both banned slavery, the army of which Robert E. Lee was commander was fighting to preserve it.

Would you have us believe that an educated man who rose to be superintendent of West Point had no knowledge of these historic and, for him, contemporaneous events?

We hear over and over the war was fought for states' rights, but there's more to that phrase.

It was fought for states' rights to enslave people.

Hey, all right, sir, sir, you've been called to order.

If you speak out again and disrupt the order, you're going to have to be escorted out.

Same deal here.

Mr. Burris, that's what we need to be able to move forward.

Fourth, fourth, if we, fourth, I've heard, if we give in to them on this, there's no telling where it will lead.

Well, that's possible.

If we are not careful, it may lead to restoring the vote for ex-felons who have paid their penalty to society but can't yet vote.

As if they are expected to wear a scarlet letter and be relegated to second-class status for the rest of their lives.

Do not join the political process of our country and have to fight for economic justice till the day they die.

If we're not careful, it may lead to providing public money not for prisons and jails, which for some jurisdictions is a major economic development project, but to diversion and mentoring programs.

So young men and women have an alternative to prisons, or we could lead to adequately funding community centers, not as an afterthought, but as a primary goal of budgeting and neighborhood protection.

and then there are those who say this is only being advocated for by a few malcontents.

So the First Amendment only applies if you have over what?

Seven citizens?

Sixteen citizens?

What is your number?

What exactly would your threshold be to exercise your rights under the Constitution?

To those people I would say you haven't been paying attention.

There is not just one way, our way, to honor history, particularly at the expense of many of our neighbors.

There is not just one way to make a park vibrant and a center of community life.

I've learned a lot about freedom of speech or lack thereof during the last few months.

And the price some pay to exercise a basic right of free speech and to petition the government for redress of a grievance.

without fear of intimidation or repercussions.

I have in front of me a copy of just one of scores of racist comments sent to the young man on my left in an attempt to intimidate and destroy.

I was going to read it, but we have people, we have children and families watching.

I will not read it.

These are so bereft of rational thinking and coherent focus

that there can only be one driving force behind them and that is racism.

And for those of you who think death threats will keep me from doing my duty as I see it, you must not know my background.

I have been through much worse.

Our city has worked hard to ensure race is not the pivot point around which community decisions are made, community decisions are made.

Whether it's municipal funding, legal justice, economic justice, I know the citizens, my friends and neighbors, too well, and we will continue our efforts to ensure that the words, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal, are not mere words uttered

when it is to our political advantage but are a way of life.

These words and Abraham Lincoln's words I mentioned earlier uttered at Gettysburg are already in our DNA, so deeply ingrained that the mere hint of unfairness gets everybody riled up.

It is our challenge to make sure we don't get riled up at each other.

and to instead focus on those things around us that prompt this reaction.

I am well aware that there has been a lawsuit threatened.

I would welcome one.

For the sake of our city and our state, this matter should be litigated by the courts without delay.

We are not the first city to address public monuments from our distant past.

Already Alexandria, Danville, Richmond, Lynchburg and others have struggled with a law that is still not settled.

Particularly in these days we should all strive to find the community equity guaranteed in the Constitution, protected in the Bill of Rights, and enforced in our local laws that we all preach.

Thank you.

Who's next?

And we had a little thing back here.

I want to remind everybody of the rules that have worked pretty well so far.

We are paying attention.

If you agree with something you're hearing, hands up, thumbs up.

If you disagree, thumbs down, we will see you.

The audience will see you on TV.

It will get across.

All right, we have other statements here.

I can go.

Mr. Bellamy, do you want to go, or do you want to say yours for last?

No.

Okay, I mean... Yeah, Ms. Galvin.

Well, thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you for very moving comments.

This has been a very stressful and very, very difficult decision for all of us to make, so I think it would be important for not only that you look at each other as human beings, but look at us as human beings as well.

So far, too often, our public spaces and histories have ignored, silenced, and suppressed African American history, as well as the story of white supremacy and the unimaginable harms done under that cause.

Indeed, American slavery, as was said earlier tonight, is America's original sin.

The fighting between armies of the North and South and the Civil War has stopped.

But the injustice towards African American citizens has not.

The Lee statue erected during the time of Jim Crow was a pretty bald attempt to mask that injustice and even reframe why the Civil War was fought.

Everyone on this council sees that.

So why is the decision to relocate the Lee statue not unanimous?

And why did the Blue Ribbon Commission give counsel

the option to transform these statues in place.

That statue of Robert E. Lee is viewed through many lenses.

The Blue Ribbon Commission report noted that many Charlottesville African-American residents who lived through decades of suppression of their history opposed removal of the statue on the grounds that it would be another example of hiding their experience.

In other words, if the Lee statue were removed from its central location,

centrally located so it was accessible to all neighborhoods, not in the far northern part of the city.

No one, black or white, would see it or learn from our city's history.

Others, many of them not from Charlottesville originally, see this as a destructive act designed to remove an art that makes us feel uncomfortable about our past.

And the problem with removing art, be it a book, a building, or a statue, makes some feel like their thought is trying to be controlled.

Transform the statue in place is a way to keep these works in place, but compel people to remember the dominance of slavery and Jim Crow, white supremacy,

in Charlottesville within the context within which they were designed.

As one landscape architect wrote to me and probably all of us, quote, the more powerful the symbol, the more it means when the symbol is spatially undermined.

We five on council agree that the worst scenario is status quo, meaning that nothing happens to that park or that statue.

But in my view, removing the statue precludes the possibility

of a dynamic provocative tension between old memorials and new in our own hometown.

It is in that space in between where the questions will be asked continually.

In that way, the transformed public space reframes our public social discourse and ultimately transforms us.

As one woman said at the first community forum, quote, removing a symbol won't fix anything.

it is in our hearts, end of quote.

So a theory or a philosophy imposed from above will not subvert racism or tribalism.

I believe that only each one of us in honest dialogue with one another in public spaces designed to provoke questions can do that.

I and others have argued that transforming the sculpture in place would be less costly freeing us

funds and staff time for other causes that get at the systemic problems that were born out of slavery in Jim Crow.

That argument has been criticized as being insensitive.

I apologize if my often very straightforward, pragmatic, practical approach comes across that way.

But I too have a very deep heart and I think about this deeply.

But to my mind, the impact of moving that statue is not measurable on the well-being of anyone in our community.

Moving that statue is, in my mind, an opportunity cost that poses a moral problem.

The relocation of a statue can also seem reckless when it's done without knowing the cost

without knowing the location and without knowing the expected outcomes.

We have never made a capital decision like that.

I pray that I am wrong.

I sincerely pray that I am wrong.

But all I see in the wake of this destructive act is more division and possibly more discord.

Instead of building bridges, we're building moats and once again drawing battle lines.

and I too am motivated by the Beatitudes.

We're called to be righteous and we're also called to be peacemakers.

It's not a cafeteria menu.

You got to do it all.

And it's hard to balance it all.

And I can pledge to you all tonight and my colleagues that I will continue to be that bridge builder.

I will continue to be talking with everybody on all sides of this issue.

Thank you.

Mr. Bellamy, I'll speak and then Mr. Bellamy will as he works on it.

It looks like we've moved to five minutes, but I think I should be able to get through this.

Some discretion on how we run these, but there's a lot, people have a lot to say.

I too am going to vote against this motion for reasons I'll explain shortly, but I want to be very clear.

My vote is not for this statue.

I despise the Jim Crow era.

I revile the racism and white supremacy of our past that certainly is included in the statue's history and in their meaning to many today.

However, as I've explained in the past, my vote will be to support one of the Blue Ribbon Commission's two recommendations that in this case we add to history rather than subtract from it.

The commission's charge was to change the narrative in Charlottesville by telling the full story of race through our public spaces.

I do want to add my thanks to their exhaustive and very, very difficult but valuable to us public service.

After studying the issue for six months and listening to thousands of people, they voted no matter what to keep the statues within the city borders of Charlottesville.

One of their two recommendations was to, quote, transform in place.

I will be voting today for a motion to support such a plan, one that would tie together Lee Park, Jackson Park, the slave auction block, and the Freedmen's Bureau in such a way that would challenge and transform the statue's Jim Crow legacy and that would forever change the narrative in Charlottesville.

I envision a magnificent new memorial to civil rights victories in Lee Park and a magnificent new memorial to the slave auction block in Jackson Park.

that would create a dynamic conversation adding to our history and changing the narrative.

And that all can happen regardless of whether and when the Lee statue is ultimately moved.

In focusing on addition rather than subtraction, I believe we'd be continuing an approach that's already making real progress in Charlottesville.

And we'd be focusing on the impressive list of less controversial but still extremely important recommendations that were contained in the Blue Ribbon Commission's report.

In the last year alone, this City Council has allocated $80,000 to the rehabilitation of the Daughters of Zion Cemetery.

We've reinstituted the Bridge Builders Award.

At Jury Brown Bridge, we funded a new Vinegar Hill Park in the downtown mall and we recently committed to funding the African American Heritage Center with almost a million dollars of new funding.

Meanwhile, a new memorial to Gregory Swanson who desegregated UVA Law School in a historic case was installed in our public library which previously served as a courthouse and which overlooks the Lee statue.

It's worth noting that the Commission did make a second recommendation to move the Lee statue to McIntire Park

but that recommendation did not consider many variables including the existing master plan for McIntyre Park or any cost, legal or logistical concerns.

The Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee was not even consulted.

And just as there's opposition to the statue being in Lee Park, there will certainly be opposition to it being moved to the pristine turf of McIntyre Park.

That brings me to my conclusion on the motion here.

I'm not supporting this motion for three main reasons.

First, I worry about the impulse to remove, delete and expunge that which offends us.

It's no accident that in the course of this debate, many on both sides have attacked their opponents as immoral.

To me, that approach means the two sides are unlikely ever to try to understand one another to see the issue through one another's eyes.

But in a year of grappling with this issue, the one thing that is even more clear to me than when we started, and I think you've seen it tonight, is that this is an issue about which people of good faith can disagree.

Otherwise, how can so many good people believe the statue should stay?

And so I'm concerned that this enterprise may unintentionally damage the progressive project itself.

Attempts to cleanse the public realm of irritants to progressive aims, to barricade liberal values behind seeming victories such as removing a statue, can lead to more fury over those walls.

Indeed, what we have just seen, that violent cycle with the campaign of Donald Trump, where we saw an intense campaign against progressivism in general, which resonated with millions of people.

Second, I'm concerned...

Okay, this may have been an instance of civil disobedience, which I respect, but you don't look ill, ma'am, so if that happens again, I'll have to ask you to be escorted out, because I wasn't able to continue.

I respect the attempt, though.

Okay, well now you're warned.

Okay, alright I'm moving on to my second point.

Second, I'm concerned that this approach can deprive the project for racial justice of the richness and context that needs to thrive.

The following quote is from the Blue Ribbon Commission's report.

Numerous Charlottesville African-American residents who have lived through decades of suppression of their history oppose removal on the grounds that it would be yet another example of hiding their experience.

For them, transforming the statues in place forces remembrance of the dominance of slavery and Jim Crow

White supremacy.

The commission's finding was consistent with what I've heard in two town hall meetings at black churches and private conversations with hundreds of folks in the city.

For instance, the night before the last vote, an MLK Day celebration convened by the Abundant Life Ministry, five African American women who grew up in Charlottesville told me they thought the statue should stay.

I've heard ideas from many notable African American leaders in the city that they should remain as, quote, teachable amendments.

Some have said that I should not be so deeply impacted by these voices.

They've said that African Americans who oppose moving the statues are doing so out of fear, denial, or an inability to support change, that they're exhibiting a sort of false consciousness.

Some have argued that in weighing those voices so heavily, I'm forcing on them a burden to make the decision that's not fair to them.

But I find those arguments patronizing at best.

The idea I believe they are expressing, after having thought about it for a long time, is that to move forward, we must visibly

and transparently push against the past, that we must see and defy these monuments to overcome what they mean.

That is a more uncomfortable reality to be sure, but I believe that this dialectical exhibit and the underlying process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis will create more vibrancy and dynamism for the progressive project in Charlottesville than the alternative.

Finally, there are the specific practical, legal and logistical obstacles that suggest that this vote will not actually result in any action for a very long time.

An existing state statute does prohibit this removal.

There are also documents associated with the gift from Paul Goodlow McIntyre that prohibit removal.

We will likely be sued immediately on both fronts.

We will be forced to pay for the cost, not only of removal, but of defending those lawsuits.

All of those concerns can certainly be outweighed by other benefits, but on an issue that is not just black and white, but that contains many shades of gray, and requires, for me at least, the balancing of so many concerns, I believe the transform in place option represents a better option, a better path for our government and for our city.

My colleagues, I believe, will vote tonight to move the statue, as this will likely not lead to the statue being moved any time in the near future.

One solution I'd like to

tell folks about that has been proposed to me in the meantime as an advisory citizen referendum which is authorized by section 5.1 of the city code.

Such a referendum would need to be signed by about 2,500 citizens.

I believe such an effort could be very helpful if it were directed and organized by civic groups and citizens.

In conclusion, I see my job as being one to try and represent all of Charlottesville as best as I can.

I have tried to do my best to make decisions to fulfill the mission we set out for the Bloorman Commission with the understanding that I am most certainly a fallible and flawed human being and with the understanding that a very diverse portion of Charlottesville will be upset with me no matter what decision I make.

So thank you.

Good evening, everybody.

Thank you all for coming.

So very interesting meeting, to say the least.

So I begin my comments with it's been said on several different occasions that Charlottesville is one of the best cities in the country for varieties of reasons.

Food, tourist attractions, including Monticello, an outstanding university, one of the top school systems in the state,

so on and so forth are excellent reasons for people to live in the city of Charlottesville and frequent this great municipality.

I've said this in similar statements on several occasions.

I love this city.

Officers, was there a warning here?

okay and if you're okay sit down please okay you've been called to order all right no sir you need to be escorted out thank you all right we're just if we can do this all night guys we we can do this all night i'm the one who needs to remember when somebody's called order so i i well

I don't remember that, so I'm sorry.

We're gonna move ahead.

You're gonna put your hands up if you agree.

You're gonna go like this if you don't agree, okay?

Otherwise, we're just gonna be here all night.

I can do this all night.

All right, Mr. Bellamy.

I gotta get home, so let's try to move this home.

Not a slight demarcala, but I just want us to move forward.

So as I was saying, I love this city, truly do.

And because I love this city, this state, and this country, I reserve the right to make sure that it is a better place.

When we talk about making this city a better place for all, we cannot look through the lens of our own.

I have the responsibility to do the things that others need me to do.

I've heard some say that we should spend tax money and taxpayer dollars on affordable housing, on education, on getting people jobs, and in some cases, creating other statutes to commemorate people of color.

The fact of the matter remains that we are doing those things.

Some will say that we need to spend our money on our community.

Well, in this year's budget, we presented an equity package that has been, to the best of my ability, an effort to address these same issues.

For those who may not be aware, please bear with me so that you can hear, including those who are from far away.

Education.

We, the City of Charlottesville, have been exploring a certain way for us to establish a $5,000 a year scholarship through the Charlottesville Scholarship Program in the name of several different community leaders to Charlottesville City Schools graduates to attend historically black colleges and universities of their choice.

While we have agreed in principle to this, we are working with our legal team and the Charlottesville Scholarship Program to move this request forward.

GED training and course assistance.

City Council will allocate up to $20,000 in one-time money to work with the Charlottesville Housing Authority and Adult Learning Program to provide the free GED training and cover the costs of the GED exams for residents of our public housing sites and work to seek assistance for at least 50% of the tuition to PVCC for the GED completers.

In principle, my colleagues and I have agreed to this issue, however, we're working out the specifics.

Course curriculums in our local schools.

City Council will offer a grant of $15,000 for the creation of an ethnic studies course to be taught in our local schools, focusing on the history of people of color in this city in conjunction with the Charlottesville City Schools.

This course will comply with all standards of learning guidelines and requirements.

Sometimes people want to take your focus away.

For those who are in attendance and who are listening, I need you to focus up here because the information that we are going to provide to you will have long lasting impact here within our community.

So, continuing on.

We have a grant to teach ethnic studies as well as the history of several different people here in the city of Charlottesville.

Again, in principle we have agreed to doing such.

This will have to be approved by our local school board and with their approval we'll be able to move forward.

the coordinator for the Black Youth Achievement Initiative.

As initially proposed by the Charlottesville Youth Council, which is comprised of individuals from several different backgrounds, races, and ethnicities throughout the city of Charlottesville, this new position will focus on a community-wide effort to close gaps in opportunity and achievement in education and employment.

Housing, the affordable housing piece that so many people love to talk about.

Well, we are actually doing something about it.

I must give Mayor Signer, as well as others on this council, a lot of credit.

We have agreed to double the amount of money that we put into the affordable housing fund.

That will have lasting impact here in this city.

But we have chose to not stop there.

Charlottesville City Council, based on the Equity Package's recommendations, will prioritize the allocation of $2.5 million, which is $500,000 over the next five years, into the city's capital improvement plan for redevelopment of our local public housing sites.

City Council, thank you.

City Council and their lead staff will convene a town hall meeting to explain in detail the partnership with City Council, CRHA, FAR, and the new CACF grant to ensure that everyone is well informed and equipped of the information and what we plan to do moving forward.

So when you talk about housing, when you talk about education, and when you talk about youth achievement, we are working on those things.

Workforce Training and Employment.

The Charlottesville City Council will prioritize workforce training for residents who live not only in the SIA to assist with upward mobility, but throughout the city of Charlottesville.

This is an initiative that has been led and also championed by several of my colleagues right here on the city council.

We will continue to push our GO, Growing Opportunities Initiative, which includes GO Driver, GO Utility, GO Electric,

and so on and so forth to ensure that everyone in the city of Charlottesville who is looking for an opportunity, we will do our best to make sure that you get that opportunity.

It doesn't mean that we're going to get it right or be perfect, but we are going to try.

The Black Youth Achievement position, the coordinator, will continue to work with an initiative that Ms. Szakos and I started nearly a year and a half ago, the Alliance for Black Male Achievement, to ensure that that position continues to eliminate the achievement gaps, workforce gaps, and ensure that individuals are put in the places that they need to be successful.

This is not a handout.

This is not us making sure that someone gets a level up on someone else.

This is about equity.

The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, a staple in this community, a school in which many of the elders, who several people have talked about, have said that they want the statues to stay, may be in jeopardy of not being able to continue to be open.

Well, this council has decided to step up to the plate and do what we can to keep their doors as wide open as we can make it.

We've agreed in principle to a one-time grant for funding that will be able to be used by the Jefferson School in a manner in which they choose to make sure that that place continues to be a beacon of light here in this community.

The dialogue on race.

One of the most interesting things that I have heard throughout the last year is that issues and topics like this make race relations worse.

However, it is very simple in my personal estimation.

If I have a gunshot wound that requires surgery, you cannot put a band-aid on it to make sure that I am okay.

The wound is so deep that it's going to require a lot of work and intensive care to ensure that we get to where we need to be.

In order to fix this wound, we have to be able to deal with the difficult conversations.

For far too long, too many individuals have said, we don't have these issues.

Let's either sweep them under the rug or let's pretend as if they're not here.

Well, no longer will that day be.

We have pushed this conversation forward.

And when I say we, it is not me.

It's not the people on council.

And it's not just individuals in this stand.

It is everyone.

We have all been forced to deal with a very difficult conversation.

And we ask ourselves, if not for this, would we have truly got there?

Would we have truly been able to deal with these issues?

Maybe we would have.

Maybe we wouldn't have.

But I do know that now we are doing so.

And in an effort to continue to do so, we are looking to allocate $10,000 in one-time funding to the Human Rights Commission and task this group with prioritizing a second round of the dialogue on race to the Charlottesville community.

This will help with improving race relations.

Will it make everything perfect and make it right?

No, it will not.

However, the conversation will continue.

People from different sides of the fence will continue to be able to talk to each other.

There's an individual in this crowd right now who many people would think on the surface we must hate each other.

He is vehemently for the statues, saying, I have been vocal about my desire for them to be moved.

However, this gentleman I consider to be a great friend, person who's come to my wedding,

a person who we've had several different conversations, a person who we can agree to disagree on several things.

And we began our conversation, excuse me, we began our relationship through the dialogue on race and things of that nature.

And to Mr. Lewis Martin, thank you for standing up for what you believe in, but just as you have a responsibility to do so, I have the responsibility to do so for what I believe in also.

the slave auction block.

In agreeance with the Blue Ribbon Commission report, Charlottesville City Council will allocate $50,000 for a design competition and reinterpretation of the current slave auction block.

We've agreed to do so.

For those who say they want reinterpretation and more monuments and symbols, there we have it.

That is one effort of the many that we are pushing to move towards.

Tonsler Park.

We have agreed in principle to put the money in our capital improvement plan to make sure that that park is on par with all of the others in our city, in addition to adding a field house to that staple of our community.

Now I'm not doing this alone.

This is not a one-man show.

And while yes, I may be seen as the leader of this issue for a variety of reasons, including the color of my skin,

We as a council are moving forward.

To my fellow colleague, Ms. Kathy Galvin, you are not my enemy because we may disagree on this one issue.

Your tough northeastern grit is appreciated.

I look forward to us continuing to work together.

To the mayor of this city, Mr. Mike Signer, you're not my enemy.

We came into this together.

We've disagreed and fought on several issues, both privately and publicly.

But we both have also agreed on several others.

And I'm pretty sure that because we both have very strong personalities, we will continue to agree and disagree.

But I look forward to us continuing to work together.

I'll be honest, as the only African American on this city council and the one who often frequents communities, segments, and pockets of this city that others rarely interact with, the ideas that some people have stated have been disappointing, but they are not deal breakers.

Because we do not agree on certain issues does not mean that we cannot work together and agree on others.

The true champion of the people,

A true champion, the true champion, we, all of us, the true champions of us all, and our own champions in a variety of lights, all have a responsibility.

It is okay to disagree.

It is okay for us to not understand each other on the surface.

But if we can make a commitment to understanding where the other person comes from, that will lead us to a better place.

So, to those of you with the signs who like to say, save our history, for the signs who like to say that they believe this is heritage and not hate, you are not my enemy.

I am not yours.

However, because we disagree, that is okay.

What we will agree on in the future is that we want to make this city a better place.

And if you agree with that, and I'm fine with us disagreeing on this, if you agree that you want this city to be a better place for your children as well as mine, then we can work together in the future.

If you agree that the city of Charlottesville must move forward in the way in which we interact with each other, the way in which we respect each other, the way in which we listen and value each other, then you, my friends, regardless of your skin color, regardless of your position on this issue, are not my enemy.

However, I will be very clear, we will not be bullied.

We will not be pushed away.

And we, we, for the last time, are not going anywhere.

Thank you.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

We are ready to vote.

This is the motion to relocate the statue as amended.

Yeah, that is all that we are voting on.

And I think what we're going to do, everyone, we're going to take a five after the five minute break after this.

Then we'll come back into the two next motions.

OK, we typically have a break at nine.

And all right.

So let's ready for this.

We're calling the question.

All right.

To remove the statue.

All right, the motion carries three to two.

All right, so colleagues, do you all want to take a break or should we go through with the next two?

Ten minutes would be a nice thing to have.

All right, we're going to take a ten minute break.

Alright, terrific.

We are coming back into session, folks.

Alright, same ground rules as before, apply, okay?

Hands up if you agree, thumbs down if you don't agree.

Same ground rules apply, everything the same, still under the same rules.

Mr. Mayor, as we separated my original motion, I'd like to make the second motion.

Is there a second?

Second.

Any further discussions, questions?

Let's close.

Sir, can we close the door over there?

Would you mind?

All right, one second.

I would like to make comment that I strongly support this.

I think it's something we can immediately do.

I think it will send a very clear message.

It will offer us a great opportunity very publicly to commemorate current values.

And I believe it's something that is, anyway, I think it's something with real opportunity to move right now, and I strongly support it, and I welcome the motion.

Okay, all in favor.

And that motion carries five to zero.

All right.

Okay.

Now we believe we have another.

Yes, Mr. Mayor, I have put forth before you all earlier today, but another resolution to pretty much complete the recommendations that were made by the Blue Ribbon Commission for the other parts of the North Downtown Historic Precinct.

And so I think I need to read this because it wasn't posted in the council packet.

So the resolution to transform the city of Charlottesville's core public spaces in keeping with the recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces

known herein as BRC, such that a more complete history of race is told and the city's commitment to truth, freedom, and equity is affirmed.

Whereas the Charlottesville City Council made a clear commitment to reveal and tell the full story of race through our city's public spaces when it established the BRC in May 2016, and whereas the BRC's final report acknowledged that far too often our public spaces and histories have ignored, silenced, or suppressed African American history,

as well as the legacy of white supremacy and the unimaginable harms done under that cause.

And whereas the public spaces of Charlottesville's historic North Downtown and Court Square districts contain the Robert E. Lee statue in Lee Park, the Stonewall Jackson statue in Jackson Park, the slave auction block, and the Reconstruction Era's Freedmen's Bureau, be it resolved that the City Council of Charlottesville directs staff to

in consultation with those members of the Place Design Task Force, the Human Rights Commission, and the Historic Resources Committee, who are also members of the BRC, write and issue within 90 days of the adoption of this resolution a request for proposal for professional design services to create a master plan for the historic North Downtown and Court Square districts that would redesign and transform Jackson Park to the addition of a new memorial to Charlottesville's enslaved population,

Redesign Lee Park, replace as possible

the current plaque at the slave auction block with one that is legible and identify and acknowledge the site of the Freedmen's Bureau.

Be it further resolved that all submissions through the RFP process, that's the request for proposal process, shall provide at least two preliminary master plan options of the above inclusive of new site plans, elevations and sections, 3D visualizations and specifications for signage, commemorative plaques, lighting and landscape elements,

as appropriate throughout the historic precinct so as to create a coherent narrative.

Engage the community at large as well as the Board of Architectural Review, the Historic Resources Committee, the Human Rights Commission, the Place Assigned Task Force, Planning Commission, and City Council.

Provide preliminary cost estimates on all options, establish a timeline to be completed within 12 months of contract siting, and allow for the development, design, and implementation of a final master plan as adopted by City Council through a total project budget

not to exceed $1 million.

Be it further resolved that the City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia supports renaming Jackson Park and hereby directs staff to bring council a range of options on how and what to rename the park within 60 days of the adoption of this resolution for its consideration.

There is one note and it's with regards to the total project budget.

Thank you.

Is there a second?

I'll second that.

I will say that we got this this afternoon.

I'm wondering if we can do sort of a motion and a second and have a vote at the next meeting because I'd like to really kind of go through some of the details of it because it has so many.

One thing that sort of jumps to mind immediately is we have the members of the Design Task Force Human Rights Commission Historic Resources Committee who are members of the BRC

So I certainly can see that we would we could move and second but vote again with amendments if you want.

I mean, that's I do think, though, that we need to act.

I would like to know what the rest of the council thinks.

If we can, I could entertain that amendment now, as suggested by Councillor Szakos, and then we could vote on this tonight.

I think there are some

Clarity and direction that we would be giving staff all in one night without delaying this and we'll also be sending a very strong message to the community that we valued the work of the Blue Ribbon Commission and that we are implementing those recommendations at a pace that will probably go quicker than the relocating the statute because of

probably ensuing litigation.

Or could I, may I suggest Ms. Galvin a way to maybe reconcile these?

Given that Mr. Jones was the staff director and advisor to the Blue Ribbon Commission, we could, if Ms. Galvin was amenable to this, we could just leave it up to his discretion.

We could say in consultation with

Or such as, okay, such as.

One of the, and I wouldn't want this next suggestion to kind of hold this up because I agree with Ms. Galvin.

Just one of the issues that we have, and I mean we've heard this repeatedly,

is that the engagement from communities in which we don't often hear from is important.

The input from those communities and those voices are important.

And if we use the same mechanisms that we often use, this is not a slight in any shape, form, or fashion in regards to Jefferson School or

If I may, there's two parts of this.

One is the part of writing the RFP, the Request for Proposal, but then in the second part of the Be It Further Resolved, it is clearly to engage the community at large.

This resolution isn't explaining how to do all that.

Mr. Bellamy, is there additional language that would make you more comfortable?

Yeah, I can see how that works.

I know what you're struggling with Wes and it's because we haven't done it up to now that's so we can find some vehicle some vehicle to do that but while we're thinking about that I mean I just make the point that we must acknowledge that we have given the city manager a boatload tonight he's he's really got a lot on his plate now so

Thankfully I'm not doing it all by myself, council member.

I appreciate that.

You weren't supposed to say that.

If I may, Mr. Fenwick, the point of this resolution is to acknowledge the fact that there will probably be a delay in actually relocating the statute because of the litigation that will ensue.

And having that status quo remain in those parks, I don't think is acceptable to anybody.

So this was an opportunity

to begin moving in that direction to get some actual tangible change in the parks to begin telling that clearer, more honest narrative of racial history in the city of Charlottesville.

That's why I feel that there's a need to act on this.

at the same time as we're acting on the statue relocation.

Well, I understand all of that.

I think the staff could come back to council if this is a problem and from a timing standpoint we could certainly come back to council and express that concern.

I think I understand Vice Mayor Bellamy's concerns about involvement

Once again, I think Councilor Galvin has addressed that.

It's rare that we have a lot of citizen engagement on developing an RFP.

and we've heard from a lot of people through this entire process, the Blue Ribbon Commission process on things that they'd like to see in our community.

So I think we have an understanding and especially coming out of council this evening, we have an understanding of what the expectations are in terms of the development of the RFP and I think that we will, without question, build in citizen engagement as part of the process once we have someone on board who's going to do that.

I have one other, as I read through it again, I have just one other thing I'd like to pull out a little bit.

The fourth, third whereas, the public spaces of Charlottesville's historic North, Downtown, and Court Square districts contain the Robert E. Lee statue in Lee Park.

Because we don't know what the timetable is for the removal of that statue, I think perhaps an asterisk there, below a resolution was passed on February 6th, 2017,

And I've got to say, I'm a little concerned about the million dollar budget.

It's not this year's budget.

And this isn't necessarily committing us to that budget, I assume.

But I would like to at least call that out and see if we're going to do an RFP

I may just say, to clarify, that is for the development design and implementation.

I understand.

But if we're putting here that we approve an implementation and development

budget of a million dollars and later we say, wait, you know what, we really don't want to spend that much on this particular project.

Is this the moment that we're deciding to spend a million dollars on this project?

I've always said it would cost a lot.

I'm just saying if I voted tonight on something that didn't make it through the public, is that something we should be doing?

And it's not a budget item, so that's why I'm asking.

My response to this would be this is

This is correct.

It's not a budget item.

It's not an appropriation.

What it is, is it specifics about the scoping of the design options that we will get back.

This is saying it's not a $5 million, it's not a $10 million, but it's not $150,000.

It's basically right-sized.

It's twice what we committed.

We committed $500,000 in the

out of the surplus last year.

So it's saying, and this is out of some consultation with landscape designers who have said, yeah, you could do a couple of memorials, you could put them in.

It's not a lavish amount of money, but it's enough to do something right.

And it would enable the possibility for some additional fundraising.

But they need to know that there are some scopes and some specifics to what they're going to come back to us with.

And staff, very importantly, needs to know that.

and this provides at least some, you know, like this is not going to be a solid gold monument that worked that, I mean, you know, not that it would be anyway, but we need to have specifics and scoping.

We need to do this the right way.

But it's real dollars toward a real serious commitment that would transform downtown.

And again, I would like to stress over and over again, this is not just for the design fee.

This is to actually build

And it's too early to tell, I mean, we don't even know how much something like this would eventually cost us, right?

So at this point, putting in a million dollars, once again, it's establishing the ceiling at this point for what we'd be willing to spend on this, but it is not an allocation of funds, right?

And we won't have an understanding of an estimate of this until we've gone through a design process

I was just going to say just in kind of finishing that thought perhaps wording that would that would help my anxiety about that instead of through a total project budget not to exceed a million dollars say with a projected estimated budget of

you know not to exceed a million dollars.

So I'm going to second all these friendly amendments if that's okay.

Seconded.

Mr. Bellamy.

I think it's important for us to note take essentially this is a backup plan.

Alright so in the event we move forward we've already voted in regards to the issue of moving the statues and while that is taking place

In some event, some people say it's likely, some people say it's unlikely.

In the event that we will be able to move the statue, then we just proceed.

In the event that we can't move the statue, this is another viral option.

I don't think that's what Counselor Galvin is proposing.

Agreed, but while they're moving parallel, I mean,

I understand what you're saying.

Right, because the vote is already been made to relocate the Lee statue.

But this means that while that may not happen, this allows a process to go into place that starts putting new signage in the Lee Park.

And if it does happen, it still puts new signage in the Lee Park.

Agreed.

And I think that's important for everyone to understand.

In the event that the statue does move,

That this deal will take place and this will be placed in the park.

And you have two options, correct?

Just so everyone is understood, there's two options for the RFP.

Well, not necessarily.

It's just saying that they would give us two options of some

I think it's really important to just kind of decouple that from the statute.

This is based on, it's predicated on that statute being relocated.

See, we agree.

And I also want to, I just want to highlight, Redesign Lee Park, independent of the Lee statue, which means whatever goes in there that's new, Lee statue can go and this still has to have its own integrity and it still has to retain the park's ability to function as a community gathering space, which is certainly, so that, it's got to be pretty artful because there's geometry there and it's a

Or they can phase it saying after the removal this would happen, before that this would happen.

And again that's why it's important that Mr. Jones be able to consult with the people that were intimately involved with the recommendations and others so that they can get the scope right.

Yeah.

All right.

Any other?

So I've seconded all the friendly motion, friendly amendments.

Any further discussion, questions?

I want to add, I'm thrilled with this.

I appreciate the flexibility of colleagues.

I think that it's a very subtle, multifaceted way that we're moving, that we're working together tonight.

I hope, I think this is really, it's a testament to this body to be able to move.

To be able to grapple with this in a couple different ways, and I think this does speak to a lot of the Blue Ribbon Commission's very hard work.

They're explicitly cited, a lot of the research that went into this part here very explicitly, and the designers will look at that report very explicitly.

It's all good.

Ready for a vote?

All in favor for this motion as amended?

All right.

Now we are moving on to another thing you all are all here for, which is the Charlottesville Albemarle Airport update.

15 minutes, item number five in our agenda.

And we do have public here.

We do have matters of the public after this.

Anyone who wants to speak, just we've got three more items on our agenda.

So we're moving forward to the airport update.

Thank you, we're glad to have you.

I think you're the only one who has to actually get away from the screen.

Good evening and thank you very much for letting me have the opportunity to come talk about one of my favorite subjects and that's your airport.

I was very fortunate to have been appointed your airport director about four years ago

and just to give you a little overview of where I came from and how I got to Charlottesville and to be overseeing your airport.

This is my fourth airport and she's become one of my favorite things in life is to oversee this airport.

You know,

Cho serves as your first and last impression to your community, and it served as your front door for your community for decades.

In fact, in the early 1950s, members of the Charlottesville City Council and the Albemarle Board of Supervisors and local business leaders decided that you needed a local airport.

And when they did, they decided to come together and develop the airport.

Federal approval was given in 1954 for our identifier, which is Cho.

And believe it or not, when I go into the communities, one of the first things people ask me is, how did we become Cho and not Char or some other word?

We are a young airport.

This airport was built in the 50s.

Most local airports were built in the 30s with the war department, the war program came in and rebuilt after the Depression.

And then they were turned over to the war department during World War II and expanded.

That was not the case with Cho.

So she's a relatively, and I do call her She.

And if I refer to her as that way, just bear with me.

She's a younger airport and she's a smaller airport with only 700 acres of property.

one of Cho's first flights with Piedmont Air in 1955.

We just celebrated our 60th anniversary where she's been in the same location serving these publics since 1955.

That flight would go from Richmond to D.C. and back through Cho.

It was sort of like a, we referred to it like a milk route.

But now we've come a long way.

You've got six hubs, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Charlotte, and Atlanta.

And those hubs can get you anywhere in the world.

Those hubs can get you to nearly 29,000 weekly flights to about 900 airports.

You can truly go from anywhere, from your airport to anywhere in the world.

But one of the good things about it is show's grown.

We have three major airlines and we have about 134 departing flights a week.

An airport is ruled by the number of seats it has.

We can't grow any larger than the number of seats that we have.

Currently we have about 7,000 seats a week.

The key factor on this slide that I hope you take away from one of the items to take away, there's about 544 commercial airports across this country.

The FAA classifies us as a 139 airport.

Cho, based on the number of in-plane passengers getting into planes, is the 162nd largest airport in the country.

One other little unique fact that you might find interesting, Cho also has a female airport director, me, and I'm only, there's only 30 of us in the nation.

Last year, Cho served 592,000 passengers coming through that door as not only the front door, but sometimes that was their first opportunity to be introduced to not only this area, but to the United States.

If you've been out to the airport recently in the last about five months, the governor placed a sign at one of our entrances that says, Welcome to Virginia.

And the reason he did that is because they recognize

that people coming in and out of that airport have never seen any other part of Virginia until some of them step off that plane and come through.

One of the items, we serve about 10 counties.

One thing you'll find interesting is about 70% of our passengers come from Albemarle County and Charlottesville.

But one thing that you might not recognize, we had nearly 100,000 passengers coming over the mountain from the valley last year.

So we truly are a regional airport.

This is how CHO operates.

People ask us, they don't really understand.

We're an airport authority.

One of the things that you do for me and you do for this airport is you appoint three members of that commission.

That joint airport commission is, they make recommendation and advisory to my board.

But one of the other things, Albemarle County appoints those three.

Together, you come together and appoint the joint member, which is my seventh member.

That's something that is very important to us because this oversees the operation of this airport.

That individual, that seventh member, is a joint appointee.

He serves, or in this case, it's Mr. Donald Long.