Central Virginia
City of Charlottesville
City Council 3/5/2018
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City Council
3/5/2018
Attachments
March52018agenda.pdf
March52018withbackground.pdf
20180305Mar05.pdf
ROLL CALL
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1:51
PROCLAMATIONS
CITY MANAGER RESPONSE TO COMMUNITY MATTERS
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10:48
COMMUNITY MATTERS
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13:41
CONSENT AGENDA:
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1:48:14
Minutes for February 20, 2018
APPROPRIATION: Additional Funding for VIEW Program - $16,900 (2nd reading)
APPROPRIATION: Disproportionate Minority Contact in the Charlottesville/Albemarle Criminal Justice System Research Project - $100,000 (Carried)
RESOLUTION: CRHA Funding Drawdown Request
RESOLUTION: Sublease Renewal - Sentara Starr Hill Health Center at Carver Recreation Center
RESOLUTION: City Council Initiation of a Zoning Map Amendment
RESOLUTION: Comprehensive Plan Extension
ORDINANCE: Amend Ordinance to Change Start Time of Regular Council Meetings (2nd reading)
ORDINANCE: Conveyance of Portion of Ridge Street Right-of-Way for William Taylor Plaza Project (2nd reading)
REPORT: School Board’s Adopted FY 2019 Budget
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1:52:18
REPORT: City Manager’s Proposed FY 2019 Budget
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2:10:31
REPORT: Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society Lease Terms
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2:42:26
ORDINANCE*: Closing and Vacating Brandon Avenue and a Portion of Monroe Lane/15th Street (2nd reading)
RESOLUTION: Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville (DBAC) Funding Request - $75,000
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3:11:34
OTHER BUSINESS
MATTERS BY THE PUBLIC
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3:43:51
ROLL CALL
00:01:51
I'm
00:02:18
I don't know.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:09:16
Pledge of Allegiance.
00:09:26
All right, Ms. Rice, roll call.
SPEAKER_02
00:09:47
Dr. Bellamy, Ms. Hill?
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:09:49
Here.
SPEAKER_02
00:09:50
Ms. Walker?
00:09:51
Here.
00:09:51
Mr. Signer?
SPEAKER_42
00:09:52
Here.
SPEAKER_02
00:09:53
Ms. Galvin?
00:09:53
Here.
Heather Hill
Vice Mayor, City Council
00:09:56
Mayor Walker, I think to start things off, I'd like to make a motion to amend the agenda this evening.
00:10:04
Council will be removing item number five of the closing and vacating of Brandon Avenue and a portion of Marrone Lane, Fifth Street from this evening's agenda.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
00:10:16
Second that.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:10:21
All right, Mr. Jones, responses to the February 5th council meeting.
CITY MANAGER RESPONSE TO COMMUNITY MATTERS
Maurice Jones
City Manager
00:10:48
Thank you, Mayor Walker.
00:10:49
A couple of
00:10:50
A couple of issues that were raised.
00:10:52
Ms. Lena Seville raised concerns about the public participation chapter of the comprehensive plan.
00:10:58
The staff did have a conversation with the planning commission at one of the recent work sessions about that.
00:11:04
The planning commission right now is working on the land use part of the comprehensive plan and the housing part.
00:11:10
When they are done with those two chapters, they will work on the public participation chapter and get that finished.
00:11:16
There's a discussion over issues related to stop and frisk at the last meeting.
00:11:23
We will be having a presentation from the police department on March 19th and our next meeting on March 19th to provide an update and to hear from counsel on that.
00:11:35
There was a question raised about ex-offenders by Mr. Anthony Henry.
00:11:41
We've spoken to Mr. Henry about the situation
00:11:44
that he is in and also more importantly some folks he's talked to that they're dealing with.
00:11:50
Council had asked for an update on that.
00:11:52
We will be providing an update to Council at one of our April meetings.
00:11:55
That's yet to be determined, but it will be one of the April meetings.
00:11:59
There was a discussion from Mr. Don Gathers about the Dewberry Hotel.
00:12:04
and that issue coming up again.
00:12:06
We do not have plans to bring back a discussion over the performance agreement on the Dewberry Hotel to Council at any time soon.
00:12:13
So just wanted to clarify that for you as well.
00:12:16
Another update for you.
00:12:20
on the issue of the renaming of the parks in downtown.
00:12:24
We will be launching an online survey for that beginning tomorrow on our website.
00:12:30
That will run for March 6th until March 28th, I believe, or 29th.
00:12:36
And then we will share those results with the city council.
00:12:39
at the City Council meeting on April 2nd.
00:12:42
We'll explain the rankings and we'll talk a little bit about the public's opinion and then we'll talk to the Council about the second chapter or second phase of that process if Council's interested in doing additional surveying on the results that come back on April 2nd.
00:12:59
And so that's what we'll do with the renaming process.
00:13:02
And we'll also be getting results.
00:13:06
We can get results through feedback through the city manager's office.
00:13:09
We'll be setting up a voicemail box for folks where they can call in.
00:13:13
We'll have that number.
00:13:14
We'll publicize that as well over the course of the next couple of days.
00:13:17
Or folks can come in and drop off suggestions to the city council and the city manager's office as well.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:13:24
Thank you.
00:13:27
All right, and we'll begin the community matters.
00:13:32
We have Megan Bloom.
COMMUNITY MATTERS
SPEAKER_34
00:13:41
Hi, Megan Bloom, 7461 Greenwood Station Road, Greenwood, Virginia.
00:13:46
I'd like to speak on issues related to the budget.
00:13:50
The draft budget seems to send a clear message that the city prioritizes profit and vanity over equity
00:13:58
The city needs to reject the downtown business association's funding request for $75,000 tonight.
00:14:05
Fluctuations in revenues downtown cannot be remedied by a handout just from the city.
00:14:10
At the same time, Jaunt has requested money from the city in order to pay its staff a living wage.
00:14:18
Please incorporate John's funding request into the city budget.
00:14:21
This will benefit some of our lowest paid city workers whose jobs it is literally to serve some of the most vulnerable people in our community.
00:14:30
And if coming up with the extra cash proves difficult, consider funneling it away from the $100,000 contribution to the golf fund that's currently designated in the budget.
00:14:40
and finally the city must prioritize adequate funding for the Human Rights Commission.
00:14:44
The Human Rights Commission was created to fulfill a promise of anti-discrimination enforcement in Charlottesville.
00:14:50
Underfunding and understaffing have prevented the HRC from achieving that mission.
00:14:55
The HRC must be staffed with a full-time civil rights attorney and must have the funds to do so this budget cycle.
00:15:03
City Council must prioritize its citizens over profitability, reject bailouts to downtown businesses and golf funds until city employees are paid a living wage and the city has the adequate infrastructure to address the very real problems of workplace discrimination and abuse.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:15:19
Thank you.
00:15:28
All right.
00:15:29
I'm Jeff Vogel.
Jeff Fogel
00:15:35
My name is Jeff Odell, I reside at 215 Spruce Street here in Belmont.
00:15:40
It appears, although we haven't heard anything from council, that you're not only going to reconsider West 2nd Street, but you're going to approve it.
00:15:48
Now, of course, this has all been done, from what I can tell, behind closed doors, through secret negotiations.
00:15:54
We don't know what's going on, and we can't react to it if we don't know what's going on.
00:15:58
I also understand that this is being done and ignoring the mayor.
00:16:02
Well, if you have not talked to the mayor about this,
00:16:08
We, the people who voted for her, more than anybody else in history will remember that, as to each of you who did that.
00:16:17
That is unacceptable.
00:16:19
Now since you have decided that, remember what it was that Mr. Woodard asked you?
00:16:22
He asked you to change the design that you approve, change the market that you approve, so that he could make a profit.
00:16:30
Now without commenting on that question, since you're readily willing to revisit and re-decide issues involving people's right to get a profit, maybe I thought you'd be interested in revisiting some human rights issues as well.
00:16:45
For some of you, they may not be as important as a prophet, but to some of us, they are.
00:16:50
And so, for example, I wrote each of you after last session about the permitting scheme.
00:16:56
And I asked you to tell me what it meant, what is a uniform-like clothing badge for which somebody can be convicted of a misdemeanor form?
00:17:05
What is a hat or insignia that suggests or implies that you're a member of law enforcement or the military?
00:17:13
What is a law enforcement-like uniform that is not already covered by statute which prohibits impersonating a law enforcement officer?
00:17:22
not a single person responded and I suspect because you can't respond because you don't know what it means and when you don't know what it means you're putting police officers in a terrible position of being out on the street without sufficient guidance about what people can and can't do and of course you put all of us at risk when we engage in activities and we know that the police officers don't know what it means because the city council had passed it doesn't know what it means
00:17:47
You must revisit that question.
00:17:49
You don't know what it means.
00:17:50
You cannot allow this.
00:17:52
You don't know anything about the First Amendment.
00:17:54
You would think that by now the council would recognize the fact that it has fallen on its face in every First Amendment case that it's had.
00:18:02
And then maybe you ought to look elsewhere rather than your own supposed knowledge of the First Amendment to learn something.
00:18:08
Secondly, let's revisit stop and frisk.
00:18:10
Do you really think this is acceptable?
00:18:13
Ms. Galvin, you've been on this council for years.
00:18:16
You've heard me for years talking about it.
00:18:18
Is 80% of the people being stopped and frisked black?
00:18:21
Is that acceptable to you?
00:18:22
Apparently because I have not heard you say a word about it.
00:18:25
The same for you, Mr. Signer.
00:18:26
You can hear fewer times, but apparently it's acceptable to you.
00:18:29
I know it's not acceptable to the mayor because he's talked about it.
00:18:32
and Ms. Hill, I don't know, is it acceptable to you?
00:18:35
It's been going on for five years.
00:18:39
Now we're told you're going to get some manipulation at the next meeting as you had gotten last year from Chief Thomas who didn't want to come here but was told by Mr. Jones to come here.
00:18:48
Mr. Jones can answer the question.
00:18:50
What, if anything, has been done in the last five years to change these numbers?
00:18:55
We don't need to wait for an interim police chief to come here and try to figure it out.
00:18:58
You know you're the public safety director.
00:19:00
Just tell us what's been done in the last five years to change these numbers.
00:19:04
Thank you.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:19:11
Dan Brown.
SPEAKER_01
00:19:14
Good evening.
00:19:15
I'm Dan Brown, and I'd like to yield my time to Luis Eula.
SPEAKER_16
00:19:24
Hello, my name is Luis.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:19:26
I live in Kessler's nightmares.
SPEAKER_16
00:19:40
Last week a letter to Charlottesville High School was sent announcing that the school will host a forum on school safety on March 15th, presumably in light of the Parkland shooting.
00:19:50
The original speakers included Chief Deputy Plessant after community residents spoke out about his involvement for abuses in his name that had been listed before his name was taken out.
00:20:02
So now I'm here to commend the CHS parents who spoke out against this decision.
00:20:08
So instead, I'm here to advocate for the CHS students who are looking to mobilize in order to stop getting killed.
00:20:15
This includes the students who are acting in solidarity with Parkland, but also includes the students of the Black Student Union, which has also been targeted, and activists who have called out our district's use of so-called school resource officers.
00:20:38
People with dangerous weapons at our schools accept that instead of calling them white kids with mental health issues, we call them cops.
00:20:46
And much like Nicholas Cruz, these people want to go after black and brown children.
00:20:51
So I commend the students fighting violence and I demand that you don't get in their way as they plan walkouts and strikes, hopefully with the teachers joining them as it is in West Virginia.
00:21:02
Last, I want to call out that today Judge Moore
00:21:05
threatened two black women in court for having on shirts that said Black Lives Matter, claiming that the phrase skews the objectivity of a jury deliberating on whether or not we should believe a black woman saying that she was assaulted by a police officer.
00:21:19
The fact he believes saying Black Lives Matter skews people's perception about black people says a lot about how he feels about black people.
00:21:28
With that in mind, I also demand that Judge Moore not be allowed to oversee the case about the statute removals because he believes black lives don't matter.
SPEAKER_14
00:21:38
Thank you.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:21:46
Emily G.
SPEAKER_13
00:21:56
My name is Emily Goracinski.
00:21:57
I live in Fifeville.
00:21:58
If you want my exact address, you can ask that from Jason Kessler.
00:22:03
When I stood here in July of last year, I handed a document to this council that included threats of violence made against this community.
00:22:13
You failed to take that document seriously, and it appears nowhere as an exhibit in your defense to the permit revocation lawsuit that was filed in August.
00:22:24
Yet that document has been cited half a dozen times in your lawsuit against the militias.
00:22:30
So after the fact, you choose to accept those threats as real.
00:22:37
Threats against this community are ongoing.
00:22:40
In the past several months, I have documented threats that include misdemeanors, felonies, and federal offenses made to members of this community, rolled those threats up to various law enforcement agencies to see nothing done with them.
00:22:56
Hours ago news leaked or news was released from leaked chats that indicate that a man who goes by the name Pale Horse or Jack Corbin or any other various names has been working with Charlottesville police detectives Declan I'm sorry, what is his name?
00:23:19
Declan Hickey and Detective Braden Kirby to target Charlottesville residents
00:23:26
He has created a list of over 600 members of this community and others, libelously labeling us as domestic terrorists.
00:23:36
This list includes three members sitting on this council, Virginia State Senator Craig Deeds, and former Congressman Tom Perriello, including at least a dozen people sitting in this room.
00:23:48
The police do nothing, but they work with him to target the people in this community.
00:23:55
What is going to be done about the ongoing harassment as we try to heal?
00:24:01
What is going to be done about the violence that continues to be visited upon our community?
00:24:07
Just this weekend news hit that somebody's cars were vandalized with racial slurs and images of swastikas.
00:24:17
You stand here talking about what you're going to do to create the world that you want, to create the city that you want.
00:24:24
You don't have the courage to do what is necessary to create the world that you want to be.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:24:41
Michael Kaplan.
00:24:47
Michael Kaplan, so Lee Freilich.
SPEAKER_42
00:25:09
My name is Lee Freilich.
00:25:10
I'm a resident of the city of Charlottesville.
00:25:13
I'm here to talk tonight about the statues and about neglect.
00:25:19
Neglect is a transitive verb.
00:25:21
It means to give little attention or respect to to leave undone or attended to, especially through carelessness.
00:25:29
City Council, you have been careless and you have neglected us when it has mattered most.
00:25:34
I am sickened and angered by the pervasive disregard the city has shown for the well-being of black and brown people.
00:25:40
Jewish people, trans people, queer people and poor people in our community.
00:25:46
For years, this city has carelessly dismissed the concerns of marginalized people as unimportant or not significant enough.
00:25:54
I am sick of the neglect of the concerns raised by residents of public housing.
00:25:59
I am sick of the neglect of people whose lives are at risk every day because of the color of their skin.
00:26:04
I am sick of talking about these statues.
00:26:07
I am beyond sick.
00:26:08
I am incensed by this council's abuse of its power and the neglect of vulnerable people's concerns.
00:26:14
More than a year ago, before the racist violence in our community culminated in a car attack that killed Heather Heyer and the brutal beating of DeAndre Harris, I wrote a letter to every city council member to express my worries and concerns about the statues as a public health issue.
00:26:31
Only one person responded.
00:26:33
Now that people have been beaten, injured, permanently disfigured, disabled, and died, now will you listen?
00:26:41
Why did it take a white woman's murder for you to take this seriously?
00:26:47
Racist violence happens every day in our community all the time.
00:26:51
People have been trying to tell you this for years, generations.
00:26:54
The statues have become a rallying point for racist, homophobic, transphobic and anti-Semitic white nationalists who wish to cause harm to our community.
00:27:04
The failure of this city council to heed the warnings we gave you well in advance of the violence last August is willful and intentional neglect.
00:27:13
I am speaking tonight to demand immediate removal of the statues
00:27:16
as other cities have done in other parts of the country.
00:27:20
Now is the time for you to act.
00:27:22
No more discussions, no more closed door deliberations.
00:27:26
Black and brown people have died, been beaten and brutalized for centuries by white people in positions of power, people not unlike some of you who have had the ability to act and looked the other way or dismiss the concerns of people most directly affected by the problems in our society.
00:27:43
You have the ability to change how this racist violence continues in our day and time.
00:27:47
Hate speech is intolerable, and these monuments to racist, state-sanctioned violence deserve no place in our community.
00:27:54
Remove the statues now, even if it means you get sued, because it is the right thing to do, and because people's lives depend on it.
00:28:05
You know, on Friday, the Virginia Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a man
00:28:11
who was serving jail time for hanging a noose with a black dummy in his yard.
00:28:17
They upheld that conviction.
00:28:19
How are these statues any different?
00:28:21
Does it take it looking like a noose for it to matter?
SPEAKER_14
00:28:26
Thank you.
SPEAKER_38
00:28:55
Mary Curry, city resident.
00:28:59
I have two things to say tonight.
00:29:01
And one of the things that happened, that's happening at the court today, it brings back when I was in the fourth grade, which most of y'all weren't even born, Emmett Till.
00:29:16
He looked at a white woman and he said,
00:29:20
Couldn't even hear him whistle.
00:29:22
He got beat, burned, stabbed, and killed.
00:29:28
You got a white man pushing a black woman around, and her lawyer said it was consensual.
00:29:39
This white lady, after she got all old, wrinkled and tired, she decided to say he never did it.
00:29:46
But he'd been gone.
00:29:47
He's 15 years old.
00:29:49
Another thing I got to talk to you about, prime real estate.
00:29:56
When I was a teenager, Bernard Hill was prime real estate.
00:30:01
So you came and tore it down, kept it burned for 35 years.
00:30:05
Now you're looking at Crescent Halls, South First Street, Garrett Street, Sixth Street, prime real estate.
00:30:18
One time it was someplace nobody wanted to go.
00:30:22
Now all of a sudden there's a whole lot of stuff happening.
00:30:26
And when you talk about Woodard, the slum lord of Charlottesville, y'all want to revisit his project.
00:30:36
He don't care about no affordable housing.
00:30:38
Ms. Hill, he cares about money.
00:30:41
You claim you ran on that platform.
00:30:47
I don't even know if you know what it means, because it's three definitions.
00:30:52
Mr. Wooder thinks his definition is the best definition to be on 97 apartments, 10th stories high, for $400,000 to a million dollars and give $800,000
00:31:05
Low income people, something that he don't know when he gonna start building up.
00:31:11
But he want y'all to hurry up and do his little thing, Miss Gabby.
00:31:14
So, when y'all start doing stuff like that, do you know you upset the city?
00:31:20
Y'all don't know that, okay?
00:31:22
Jason Kesse was sitting back there upsetting me right now, I can't even see him.
00:31:24
This eye right here, you're looking at him.
00:31:27
But I'm gonna tell you right now, when y'all start doing stuff like that, you're neglecting the city,
00:31:34
You're neglecting the people in the city.
00:31:37
I'll give you five years, Mr. Jones, downtown gonna look like nothing.
00:31:41
The mall ain't gonna look like nothing.
00:31:43
Cause these crazy people going around there threatening people like they own the town.
00:31:49
Trying to start stuff with folk.
00:31:51
See, they want a black and white wall here that they can't win.
00:31:56
But see, when they come here and start a messin' over there at Guy's Square and Hardy Drive and Sixth Street, they gotta fight on they damn hands.
00:32:06
Now they can come in here and talk that BS to y'all, but they ain't comin' in the black neighborhood with that bullshit.
SPEAKER_14
00:32:19
Thank you.
SPEAKER_12
00:32:27
Mark Heise, I live in Albemarle County and I'm here to ask City Council to do everything in your power to pressure the Commonwealth's Attorney Office and Joe Plutania to drop the charges against people of color who stood up and defended this community on August 11th and August 12th.
00:32:54
Anyone who was there that day knows that no one in this city, no one who represents this city, no one who is charged with keeping public order and preserving public safety in this city did anything to protect people on that day.
00:33:08
It was left to community members to step up and to defend themselves and to defend their friends and their families.
00:33:16
A lot of people did that and
00:33:20
Jason Kessler and his friends are employing an alt-right tactic, a fascist tactic, a white supremacist tactic, bringing charges against these people.
00:33:31
And the attorney's office, the police department, they all seem more than happy to comply.
00:33:36
And so it's not just the racists who were here on August 12 who are responsible, but it's those who are helping them with their agenda.
00:33:44
And this is clearly what's happening here.
00:33:46
Whether you acknowledge it or not,
00:33:49
These charges against black activists and black community members are racist.
00:33:54
They're white supremacists, they're violent, and they need to end.
00:34:18
It's wrong that this community was targeted with violence and it's wrong that this city continues to perpetuate violence through the court system.
00:34:27
It wasn't just on the streets of Charlottesville that violence happened in Charlottesville, but it's in the court every day.
00:34:33
We saw that today when two friends of mine who are black were threatened with jail because they wore shirts that say Black Lives Matter.
00:34:42
Someone's already said that.
00:34:43
It's wrong that police
00:34:45
can abuse their power, can terrorize people, can assault people and that residents can't defend themselves.
00:34:55
The city does not and should not have a monopoly on violence when we've seen how illegitimate the governing bodies of the city are, how illegitimate the police officers in the city are, how illegitimately they use their power and employ violence against people of color and poor people, queer people and trans people.
00:35:16
and it needs to end.
00:35:17
Drop the charges.
00:35:19
Pressure Platania to drop the charges.
00:35:20
Tell them that this is wrong and it needs to stop.
00:35:23
Do it like Durham.
SPEAKER_14
00:35:24
Thank you.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:35:33
Jason Kessler.
00:35:38
No platform for Nazis.
00:35:40
Bye bye, white fry.
00:35:42
No platform for Nazis.
00:35:43
No platform for Nazis.
SPEAKER_24
00:35:51
Go home Jason!
00:35:53
Go home Jason!
00:35:56
Go home Jason!
00:35:58
Go home Jason!
00:36:00
Go home Jason!
00:36:05
Go home Jason!
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:36:16
Excuse me.
00:36:40
So we have three minutes.
00:36:42
Jeff was just up here talking about First Amendment rights, right?
SPEAKER_24
00:36:48
Jeff didn't kill anybody.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:36:49
Nancy, so this is, so if we, he has three minutes, right?
00:37:01
So we can, I understand, but he has three minutes.
00:37:05
So we can either get through this three minutes, in three minutes, or it can take,
00:37:12
Forever and Disruptive.
00:37:15
But I understand.
00:37:16
All right.
00:37:19
So one thing to consider is the energy that you give out.
00:37:27
OK, and whether people are deserving of that energy.
00:37:31
All right.
00:37:33
And the best thing to do if this is something that's completely difficult for you is to attempt to enter
00:37:41
a state that's way beyond any place that a person that you and how you feel about that person in front of you could arrive at.
00:37:52
Okay?
00:37:53
So we can get through the three minutes.
00:37:56
That's it.
00:37:57
All right?
SPEAKER_22
00:38:00
All right.
00:38:00
My name is Jason Kessler.
00:38:02
I'm a resident of Charlottesville, Virginia.
00:38:04
And one of the first things that I want to address is the unruly and intimidating atmosphere in the Charlottesville City Council chamber.
00:38:11
Everybody has rights to a platform and speaking their views before the public officials.
00:38:18
Now, I'm not going to stand here while these people are interrupting me.
00:38:21
You can't hear me.
00:38:22
You are my elected officials.
00:38:25
Bring some order and decorum to this chamber and give me my time back.
00:38:39
I'm going to need that time back.
00:38:40
You people are allowing them to interrupt me.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:38:43
We have stopped the time, so if you just give it a second.
SPEAKER_22
00:38:48
I'm going to wait here until I get my time back.
00:38:50
We understand that.
00:38:51
You're allowing the crowd to interrupt me.
00:38:53
Excuse me, and your time is stopped.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:38:58
So if you just, yes.
SPEAKER_22
00:39:00
So can I have my time back?
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:39:03
We heard everything that you were saying.
00:39:05
We are attempting to wait.
SPEAKER_22
00:39:07
No, I'm going to wait until I get my time back.
00:39:12
Leave some decorum in this chamber so that I can redress my grievance.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:39:15
So again, excuse me.
00:39:17
Excuse me.
00:39:19
This is unpleasant for me.
00:39:21
So I would like for him to get through his three minutes so that we can move on to something that's more productive and more beneficial to the community that we are trying to build.
00:39:31
Okay?
00:39:32
So if we can get him from here to wherever he's going once he leaves here, I would appreciate him getting through his three minutes.
00:39:43
Alright?
00:39:46
I appreciate it and thank you.
SPEAKER_22
00:39:54
Okay, so one of the primary issues I wanted to speak about here today is the unruly and intimidating atmosphere of these people, these anti-white bigots who are trying to keep people from being able to express their First Amendment rights.
00:40:07
Everybody has a right to a platform to address their grievances before the government.
00:40:12
Page.
SPEAKER_40
00:40:15
Let the vacuum talk.
SPEAKER_22
00:40:18
Give me my time back.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:40:19
Jason, you have your time, okay?
SPEAKER_22
00:40:21
You're allowing these people to interrupt me to the point where I can't be heard.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:40:23
No, I'm not allowing anything.
00:40:25
We have stopped your time, both time, and it's been added.
00:40:27
You can see, okay?
00:40:30
And we're listening.
SPEAKER_22
00:40:31
I need that time back that you just took from me while... We heard everything you said.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
00:40:36
Please get through it.
SPEAKER_22
00:40:38
What did I just say then?
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
00:40:39
It's not my responsibility to recite it, but it was heard and it was recorded.
SPEAKER_22
00:40:43
You did not hear what I said.
00:40:43
What did I just say?
00:40:44
I don't have to listen to you.
00:40:45
We have to hear you.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:40:46
Okay, excuse me.
00:40:47
Excuse me.
00:40:48
All right.
00:40:50
We still have two minutes and 42 seconds.
SPEAKER_22
00:40:53
I'm going to need my time back.
00:40:54
I have a right to be uninterrupted through my speech.
00:40:57
I have a right to redress my government of my grievances without being shouted down by a mob.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:41:02
Okay, Page, he's using his time.
00:41:07
All right.
00:41:08
Okay, stop.
SPEAKER_22
00:41:14
I'm going to need my time back that I lost while the people were screaming at me.
00:41:19
I won't go forward until you give me my time back.
00:41:21
I have a right to redress my grievances before my government without this mob that agrees with your point of view, shouting me down and taking my time away.
SPEAKER_14
00:41:30
Madam Mayor, if I may contribute.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
00:41:36
He spoke for about 30 seconds.
00:41:38
I think this is a disorderly speaker if he's refusing to acknowledge that we heard him for about 30 seconds.
00:41:43
He needs to get through this.
00:41:44
He needs to get through it.
00:41:46
But if he persists, this is an unreasonable demand.
00:41:49
It is disorderly.
00:41:50
So we can give him the option of continuing for two and a half minutes, then we're finished with it.
00:41:53
But there's no right to get the 30 seconds back.
SPEAKER_22
00:41:58
I have a right to redress my grievances before the government without being shouted down.
00:42:01
I want my time back.
00:42:03
I won't go forward without getting my time back.
00:42:05
Your time is... No, I'm gonna need my full time.
00:42:13
Every time I speak, you allow these people to interrupt me.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:42:16
No one's interrupting you.
SPEAKER_03
00:42:17
You're interrupting me as well.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:42:30
Excuse me.
00:42:31
We're still here.
SPEAKER_22
00:42:32
All right.
00:42:36
I'm going to need my time back.
00:42:38
You keep allowing these people to interrupt me.
00:42:40
I have a right to have my three minutes where I redress the government without having a state-sponsored mob shouting me down.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:42:50
Excuse me.
00:42:52
Hey, stop it, please.
SPEAKER_22
00:42:53
I have a right, and I won't allow you to take that away and not give me my time to speak.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:43:00
You have been talking, OK?
00:43:02
Do you understand when words come out of your mouth, you are speaking?
00:43:07
So you have a minute and 41 seconds.
SPEAKER_22
00:43:10
I want my time back.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:43:11
Page, you can start.
00:43:12
Please let's get through this.
SPEAKER_22
00:43:15
I'm not going to continue with the redress of my grievances until I get my time back.
00:43:22
You can't allow these people to use up my time screaming over me.
00:43:37
Give me my time back.
00:43:47
I need my time back.
00:43:49
You can't just allow these people to interrupt me every time I start speaking.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:44:02
Please.
SPEAKER_22
00:44:06
I need my time back.
00:44:08
Please give me my time back so that I can address my grievances before the government.
00:44:36
You're letting the clock run while I'm asking you to start the clock so that I can speak.
00:44:59
I need my full three minutes of time so that I can speak uninterrupted without being interrupted by the mob.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:45:06
Have a good evening.
SPEAKER_22
00:45:08
I'm a citizen and I have a right to my time.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
00:45:17
Yeah, as a point of order I would move that we move on to the next speaker.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:45:22
Alright, Paul Long.
SPEAKER_22
00:45:34
Jason Kessler needs some assistance.
SPEAKER_14
00:46:05
Goodbye, nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey, goodbye, nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey hey, goodbye, nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey hey hey, goodbye, nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey
00:46:32
Hey Paul, how are you doing?
SPEAKER_39
00:46:59
My name is Paul Long.
00:47:00
I live at 100 Ridge Street here in the city.
00:47:03
And I'm coming here to address council that I read in the paper that the city council is going to reduce by $63,000 the city contribution to the Charlottesville area transit.
00:47:14
and on account of that, they'll be cutting back service on Route 9.
00:47:18
I'm utterly opposed to that, to any cutback in service and in the Charlottesville transit.
00:47:23
In fact, I think that the City Council should be giving at least a couple hundred thousand dollars more to CAT so that we can have full CAT service on Sundays and legal holidays.
00:47:34
This is an important issue that can contribute to the economic revitalization of Charlottesville, but it's also important to people who don't own cars
00:47:43
that would love to go downtown on legal holidays and Sundays to shop, to go to movies.
00:47:50
And it's also a very important issue.
00:47:53
You have to drive around the city with all the construction.
00:47:56
I've lived in Charlottesville for 20 years.
00:47:58
You don't need a master's degree in public.
00:48:00
and planning to realize that with the traffic and the millions of dollars that we're spending on new roads, if we had a very efficient, substantial public transit system, that would cut down the money that you have to spend on improving and expanding highways.
00:48:15
Thank you very much.
00:48:16
Thank you.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:48:24
Lena Seville.
SPEAKER_00
00:48:28
My name is Lena Seville.
00:48:30
I live in Belmont in the city of Charlottesville.
00:48:32
I'm ceding my time to another city resident.
Rosia Parker
00:48:38
Good afternoon, City Council.
00:48:39
My name is Rosia Parker and I live in Charlottesville, the city.
00:48:43
I am one of those black women.
00:48:45
that was told in the courtroom today that if I wear my Black Lives Matter shirt to support another black woman that a white police officer has raped, and I cannot support her in any type of way that I feel that I should be able to, I feel very appalled that the judge called me back in, me and my friend Katrina, to tell us that we cannot wear these shirts, and if we do wear these shirts because of the defense, we will be held in contempt and going to jail.
00:49:14
What kind of judge is that?
00:49:15
Judge Moore, we are supposed to be able to support our community in any type of way that we feel.
00:49:21
If a shirt means that it will sway the jury, would it sway you to change the things in Charlottesville that need to be changed?
00:49:31
I don't think so.
00:49:34
If I had one.
00:49:37
but my thing is also we cannot have pleasant in the school system.
00:49:44
I was also the victim of being hit twice with the tear gas grenade.
00:49:49
Three, CRB Board.
00:49:51
I have not heard nothing from city council about when the forum shall come forth.
00:49:55
I am waiting to hear that answer as soon as possible.
00:49:59
I still have not heard an apology to Friendship Court.
00:50:04
I still have not heard
00:50:06
anything of change to Charlottesville.
00:50:10
I see things are still running in the same manner.
00:50:13
For one, the old, I'm gonna go with the old city council because the new city council didn't have anything to do with it.
00:50:19
But when you put your stuff in writing and when you make decisions, make sure it's proper and correct.
00:50:25
So therefore when it gets to the judge,
00:50:27
and the lawyers are supposed to be defending Charlottesville of the message you made, then things could be correctly taken care of.
00:50:34
That tarp wouldn't have been down if you had correctly put in the number of days we would have been mourning.
00:50:41
We're still mourning.
00:50:42
I don't think we will not stop no time soon.
00:50:45
So because the top is down, that's because of city council.
00:50:48
So therefore, you need to start putting a lot of more paperwork.
00:50:51
Make sure you go over top of it.
00:50:53
If you've got to get somebody to proofread it before it goes in, make sure it's correct.
00:50:57
Because I'm not going to be sitting in the courtroom doing court support for my community.
00:51:02
And I'm hearing that our city council, that we're bringing these problems to, or they're making spontaneous decisions.
00:51:08
Even the lawyers don't even know how to handle the decision.
00:51:11
Ma'am, you was in there, Ms. Robinson.
00:51:15
But according to y'all, y'all needed to get it together.
00:51:18
And until then, I'm going to continue to stay right here in your faces.
00:51:21
And I'm going to continue to fight for my people.
00:51:24
So we need to get that done.
00:51:26
And the chief of police, I would like to be on that force, on that interview, because I need to be, because I am tired of the police.
00:51:34
I'm tired of the harassment.
00:51:35
I'm tired of being black and being harassed.
00:51:37
I'm tired of being the woman that I shouldn't have to be doing a man's job and defending our community.
Heather Hill
Vice Mayor, City Council
00:51:43
Thank you.
00:51:45
So all the applications that we received in our last meeting, we went through all the applications for all the boards and commissions, and that was one that we obviously wanted to have more of a public engagement for.
00:52:00
And so right now we have tentatively, I think, on calendar towards the end of March, early April, a date where we will open up to the public an opportunity to meet all of those who applied to be on the CRB that were city residents.
00:52:11
We had a number of applications, but in order to get to a manageable
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
00:52:13
I would just like to ask Mr. Jones, does he have any idea when we're going to be able to get that information out to the public in a much more comprehensive way?
Maurice Jones
City Manager
00:52:34
I think within the next few days once we settle on that date and get that out there.
00:52:40
We're working on the format.
00:52:42
I think we sent that information to council for review and then we will put a date out there and have the public process.
00:52:50
Thank you.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
00:52:54
We're kind of in a new, in our new rules where we can respond to questions after they happen.
00:53:01
I just wanted, I know we can do it at the end, but just, I don't see her still here, but Ms. Grosensky, I would very much appreciate if we can, I haven't seen the intelligence that she was mentioning
00:53:13
Go to me as a member of city council an email.
00:53:18
I have not received an email from her.
00:53:21
So I'm just saying that I have not seen it so I would like to know what is going on and I would like it to go directly to the attention of the city manager and I would like to know because that was correct.
00:53:31
She did bring some very
00:53:33
concerning intelligence before, and our lawyers advised us that it didn't meet the legal standard of credible legal threat, which was a, that was what happened.
00:53:42
So, and then afterward there was undercover intelligence that was gotten from the dark net by people who went
00:53:49
into the planning site and found more specific planned acts of violence than they had gotten when she brought that to us in city council.
00:53:57
That is what happened and we need to, but if there is more intelligence here that would suggest this community is under even more threat, I think that we should listen to exactly what she's gathered and it should be brought to the highest levels.
00:54:11
I just haven't seen it, so I would like to ask that and that we be advised of it if you can, given legal concerns and so on.
Maurice Jones
City Manager
00:54:17
But I would certainly be interested in that information.
SPEAKER_41
00:54:19
Thank you.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:54:21
All right, Tyler Mora.
SPEAKER_18
00:54:39
So how about we just take a deep breath and relax together.
00:54:47
I want to give like a rather unbiased analysis of what we have going on here.
00:54:53
I'm a native to New York State.
00:54:56
I'm a New York State resident natively.
00:54:58
I've been in Charlottesville for about three years now and it's kind of alarming to see what happens in the city council chambers.
00:55:10
General Lee was a very important person in creating the history of America, as was Abraham Lincoln.
00:55:21
No matter where we come from, there's a good and a bad to everything.
00:55:34
Well, it comes from Bellamy writing the paper for the school student to say that she felt uncomfortable in Lee Park.
00:55:43
You know, that's kind of a little corrupt if you ask me.
00:55:51
But let me get on.
00:55:52
So the Lewis and Clark statue that I pass
00:55:56
Probably once every two or three days with the CAT system, that's quite a bit more disturbing with its Native American suppression than a man standing proud on a horse.
00:56:10
And there's a number of other statues.
00:56:13
The George Rogers Clark statue with a whole bunch of Native Americans being suppressed.
00:56:25
Do we want to destroy all of these as well?
00:56:37
As a UVA architecture student puts it, quote, to wipe the place clean, end quote.
00:56:47
But ask yourselves.
00:56:50
What it boils down to is history.
00:56:53
It is our history, whether we like it or not.
00:56:57
And America and the world.
00:57:01
If we fail to remember and learn from history, it is doomed to repeat itself.
00:57:09
So we need to preserve, reflect, and learn from history.
00:57:15
I do say thank you to the circuit court for allowing to view the history statue of Lee and Jackson and to remember our heritage for the time.
00:57:34
Like I say, I'm from the north.
00:57:36
I have no local historical connections.
00:57:40
I'm from New York State.
00:57:41
I was against the Confederacy, or my ancestors were at least.
00:57:46
So let's remember history and learn from it.
00:57:54
We want to live happier and better lives today than we did yesterday.
00:57:59
Live better tomorrow than we did today.
00:58:03
I said nothing of racism.
00:58:07
But if you destroy the foundation of our history, we are doomed to repeat itself.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
00:58:28
So the first name here, last name is Hammond.
SPEAKER_26
00:58:35
Good evening.
00:58:36
My name is Court Hammond.
00:58:38
Address is 1410 Grady Avenue.
00:58:41
I'm here on behalf of the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee.
00:58:46
I'd like to speak a little bit about some of the advantages of investing in our bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, namely the improvement of access for all people to our most affordable and equitable
00:59:04
modes of transportation available to us biking and walking is critical that all of the citizens of this city have access to these, to improved facilities for walking and biking both for their health and for equal economic opportunity.
00:59:27
Recently the CDC has determined that
00:59:33
for every hour spent in a car.
00:59:37
There is a 6% increase in the likelihood of obesity and less than half of Americans get the recommended physical activity each day.
00:59:48
Providing the opportunity to bike and walk both to work and for recreation is critical to the health of Americans.
00:59:56
The CDC has determined that by encouraging walking and cycling,
01:00:01
The return on investment is up to 300%.
01:00:05
Furthermore, over 10% of the people in Charlottesville do not have access to a vehicle, and another 40% only have access to one vehicle.
01:00:16
This leaves a large portion of the population unable to get around by any other means besides walking and biking.
01:00:27
Therefore, we need to invest in more bike lanes and better sidewalks.
01:00:34
That way, those of us who have maybe less chance to own a car or cannot drive, those who are disabled can get around safely and quickly.
01:00:48
For these reasons and many more outlined in this letter that I will pass on to you,
01:00:53
We are encouraging you to carefully consider the city manager's proposed budget for 2019 and approve those items that relate to capital improvements for bicycling and walking.
01:01:08
And I'm passing this on to you.
01:01:12
Thank you.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
01:01:13
Thank you.
SPEAKER_26
01:01:13
Thank you very much and keep the future in mind.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
01:01:18
I'm Michael Payne.
SPEAKER_15
01:01:36
I have concerns about one specific item coming up tonight.
01:01:40
There's an ordinance to allocate $75,000 to the Downtown Business Association.
01:01:48
This is part of the budget process I believe and I have grave concerns about this because this is not an allocation for
01:01:56
structural improvements.
01:01:57
It's not for lights.
01:01:58
It's not for bricks.
01:01:58
It's just for marketing.
01:02:01
And there's no clarity as to who will be receiving that money.
01:02:05
Is it a specific individual?
01:02:06
Is it a specific firm?
01:02:07
Does that firm have any past relationship to city staff or city councilors?
01:02:12
There's no clarity.
01:02:14
There's no oversight.
01:02:15
There's no clarity as to what $75,000 of city money would do to improve the downtown mall.
01:02:22
There was a short-term loss in revenues for the downtown businesses, but that was a result of structural business cycles.
01:02:28
$75,000 for marketing is not going to change that, and I worry that it's going to be a giveaway with no oversight that will have no benefit to the public.
01:02:40
And at the same time, $75,000 is up to vote to give to the Downtown Business Association.
01:02:45
and the city manager's proposed budget.
01:02:47
Jaunt's request for $140,000 to pay bus drivers living wage was denied.
01:02:53
The increasing the minimum wage for city employees to $15 beginning scaling that up was denied.
01:03:00
And but we have $75,000 going to the Downtown Business Association.
01:03:05
Just under $150,000 was allocated to the city's golf fund in order to subsidize a projected decrease in golf course revenues.
01:03:16
and we also have new city staff position for community outreach for city council.
01:03:24
I don't know if these are the priorities we need to have.
01:03:27
If at the end of the day there's not enough money in the city budget to pay city employees and all bus drivers a living wage, then let's be honest about that but let's prioritize and be clear that there should be no money to the Downtown Business Association, no public money
01:03:41
to the Tom Tom Festival and no money to the golf fund until every jaunt bus driver has paid a living wage, every city employee has paid a living wage, and we are able to fully staff the Human Rights Commission with a full-time civil rights attorney that can prosecute and investigate workplace discrimination and housing discrimination.
01:04:02
We need to prioritize and begin that with rejecting $75,000 for marketing with no oversight
01:04:11
No Metrics for Success to the Downtown Business Association.
01:04:15
Thank you.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
01:04:26
So I have a comment about the budget and this is with learning.
01:04:31
So my phone was dinging all day, which is interesting, the process.
01:04:39
But it was in regards to Jaunt and a campaign that they had today.
01:04:48
And I see at work every day people who cannot move around if it wasn't for.
01:04:57
But what I think we're having a hard time as a city doing
01:05:00
is looking at the holistic picture, setting priorities and moving from there.
01:05:06
Everybody in the city who's funded by the city has a need, and in their world, their need is most important.
01:05:16
And when we get the request,
01:05:20
for to support the budget request, there isn't, the thought process isn't aligned to looking at it holistically long term and in terms of like, this should have been the way that things have been going a long time ago and it just, so everyone is like 5,000 here, 15, 25, 75, 100,000 and, but no one wants to talk about where that money comes from and how
01:05:49
We get there in a healthy way.
01:05:52
So I keep looking at these requests and for the most part I am reading about a community who doesn't really understand like how the budgeting process works.
01:06:04
All of these needs are very important but if we don't prioritize and decide where we are going to put taxpayers funding, we're going to be in big trouble long term.
01:06:15
So every time the Dean, at some point I just stopped looking, but I knew what was coming up and it was passion filled of why this request should be funded, but no one was looking at the whole picture.
01:06:31
And one of the comments I made earlier is even in a non-profit, they should not be functioned outside of the way a business functions.
01:06:40
So you can't make a decision to pay your employees
01:06:44
a wage and then not look at how that money comes in to the equation.
01:06:50
There's been an expectation in the city and anybody who watched me on the campaign trail talking about the ABRT process, how organizations are funded, the flaws that I saw in that.
01:07:01
But you can't sit at your boardroom table and make a decision about funding and how you're going to allocate monies you don't have without that discussion, you know, having that discussion with the community as a whole.
01:07:17
And then what happened today in terms of
01:07:19
John was just tons of people flowing in, you know, pouring in their support, which I understand, but I think as a community we need to understand that there is a bigger picture
01:07:33
and it hasn't at all been working the way it should be working and frankly someone will have to be told no, right?
01:07:43
And we have to, so my encouragement is that you all attend the budget, the meetings that start Wednesday and really this is something that I'm still learning but it's something that we have to figure out and have to get right.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
01:08:01
Mayor Walker, can I just follow up on that if I may?
01:08:04
And it is and it is related to Jaunt and Mayor Walker and I are both on the Regional Transit Partnership.
01:08:11
That was a partnership formed last year for the very reason of trying to get CAT, Jaunt, the university transit system and the rideshare program all to be better coordinated and to work together.
01:08:26
What we're finding out is that everybody measures success differently.
01:08:32
Everybody formats their budgets differently.
01:08:36
Jaunt is what you call a demand and response model.
01:08:39
They're called to come and respond to requests.
01:08:43
They're often dealing with people with medical disabilities.
01:08:48
But in terms of
01:08:49
who their biggest coverage and ridership are on a percentage basis, they actually service Fluvanna, Louisa, Buckingham, Nelson County, Charlottesville and Albemarle County.
01:09:01
So they're a bigger spread.
01:09:04
What we do with CAT, it's pretty much Charlottesville focused and it's also Albemarle County.
01:09:10
But they are what you call a fixed route system.
01:09:13
They are a totally different way to measure success, measure how to account for their costs.
01:09:19
So the Regional Transit Partnership right now is studying this very issue.
01:09:24
How do you get parity between all the different players, all the different bus drivers?
01:09:32
This isn't, I think there's a comment about living wage.
01:09:35
This is about getting the bus drivers to get paid the same way that the city of Charlottesville bus drivers get paid.
01:09:44
And it has just not been the same system.
01:09:47
I double checked to make sure we're not going to be unfair to our school bus drivers.
01:09:52
If we make the rate of paid high for joint, we're going to make sure we're not dissing our school bus drivers.
01:10:00
So those are all the issues we're looking into and it is a high priority for the Regional Transit Partnership to look at that very issue.
01:10:07
We don't have that information right now.
01:10:10
Anyway, just wanted to follow up on that and people are welcome to come to the Regional Transit Partnership meetings.
01:10:16
We can get that, make sure that's posted.
SPEAKER_14
01:10:19
John people have to pay to ride.
SPEAKER_38
01:10:22
They gotta pay both ways.
01:10:24
Is that included?
01:10:25
When they pick them up, they gotta pay.
01:10:28
If they pick them up and bring them back, they gotta pay.
01:10:33
Is that included?
01:10:33
They gotta pay just like you ride the street city bus.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
01:10:36
Yes, they do, and they do have Medicaid reimbursements, but it is a different model.
01:10:41
It's not like there's a set route.
01:10:43
They go on demand.
01:10:46
But I would be more than happy to talk with you more about this at the break, but I just wanted to underscore that this is a much more complex issue, and we are going to be looking at it.
01:10:59
One of the first things of the Regional Transit Partnership is to come up with a strategy for this.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
01:11:07
So Carl Schwartz.
SPEAKER_41
01:11:14
Carl Schwartz, 711 Anderson Street.
01:11:16
I want to second the comments in regard to the budget for bicycle and pedestrian improvements as well as a healthy transit system.
01:11:21
Other necessary expenditures for safe and low cost modes of transportation that improve their health and counteract the problems of traffic and parking in our town.
01:11:28
And also put out a plug for the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee.
01:11:31
We meet the first Thursday of every month and we're always looking for new members from the public.
01:11:36
and I want to concede the rest of my time to Claire Turner.
SPEAKER_08
01:11:41
My name is Claire Turney.
01:11:42
I'm here from 10 Course Hospitality, and I'd like to encourage you to support the downtown recovery package.
01:11:48
In the last six months, 10 Course has worked to bring the Cured BBQ Festival back downtown.
01:11:54
Whiskey Jar has held a community outreach dinner with Mr. Bellamy just before the Black Panther proceedings.
01:12:01
And we are also working with Lenny Sorensen, Ian Wallace, and Craig Harmon
01:12:07
to identify unique Charlottesville cuisine and to share it with others.
01:12:11
The fund will be used for a number of things including brick maintenance, campaigning to get downtown mall designated as a historic neighborhood, other public facilities on the mall, and
01:12:26
What I am hoping, as someone who works for 10 Course, I think about all the people who are not necessarily owners, but who do come there to work.
01:12:36
The downtown mall employs hundreds of people.
01:12:39
If the mall isn't busy, we're not working.
01:12:41
So I'm hopeful that you will consider funding the project.
01:12:46
Thanks so much.
01:12:48
Thank you.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
01:12:51
Lawson Lavelle.
SPEAKER_03
01:12:57
Thank you for having me City Council.
01:13:00
My name is Lawson Lavelle.
01:13:02
I am the chair of the Charlottesville Green Party and I'm running in 2019 for City Council.
01:13:11
But that's not what I'm here to talk about.
01:13:14
Evening all.
01:13:17
I stand with all the former speakers on justice, the four pillars of the
01:13:25
Green Party is actually social justice, peace, democracy, and ecology, all things that unfortunately, I'm sorry to say, an all-Democrat council for the last couple of years have been weakened, which is why we need a Green in office.
01:13:45
I'm here to talk about environmental things that our city can do.
01:13:48
For example, in our state alone, Blacksburg
01:13:54
excuse me if I mispronounce that or any of these cities, Roanoke, Arlington, Alexandria, and Richmond have made substantial commitments to reduce climate pollution.
01:14:05
Meanwhile, Charlottesville has only committed to reduce emissions by 10% by 2035.
01:14:12
I hope that we could come up with a comprehensive plan to fix that issue.
01:14:24
On another note, we need to improve public transportation.
01:14:27
Not only is that going to help many of the less fortunate people in our community who aren't able to drive or can't even afford to do it, but it's better for the air quality that we all depend on in this city.
01:14:42
Our city can do more to support solar.
01:14:45
I suggest purchase agreements.
01:14:49
We can have more green areas.
01:14:52
We can pass regulations to outlaw plastic, plasticware specifically, and plastic bags.
01:15:00
Right now, we could replace it with bioplastic.
01:15:05
I believe it's called biofilm.
01:15:07
And we could put that in our laws.
01:15:09
Other cities have already done that.
01:15:11
And it's not controversial at all.
01:15:14
Actually, the city will thank you.
01:15:17
Finally, every tree that this city cuts down, we can replace with another tree.
01:15:24
Other cities have done that already in both Canada and the United States that I'm tracking.
01:15:30
It doesn't have to, of course, go where the city has removed the tree, but we can find a new place to put the tree that belongs to the city.
01:15:41
That's everything.
01:15:42
Thank you.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
01:15:46
Madam Mayor, could I make a quick minute?
01:15:49
So thank you very much for those ideas.
01:15:53
Just to give one response, the plastic bill law, that would be great if we could do it, but that is
01:16:00
specifically in a Dylan's Rule state, which is what we are, where the cities can't do anything unless they are allowed to by the state capitol.
01:16:07
That has been repeatedly rejected by the state capitol, so that would be awesome if we could do that.
01:16:13
I just went to Kroger and had 50 plastic bags when I came back, but we cannot, as a city, pass that law unless they allow it in the General Assembly, and they should, because a lot of other states have done that, and we really ought to have that law.
01:16:25
It's a simple, easy thing to do, but they have repeatedly not
01:16:29
even though there's been a lot of bi-partisans who've wanted it.
01:16:32
So that's a really good thing to act for at the state level.
01:16:39
It's true, you're right and that was a mistake of mine and you're right.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
01:16:50
Alright, Jojo Robertson.
SPEAKER_32
01:17:04
It's one thing.
01:17:06
Sorry.
01:17:13
I'm getting it.
01:17:14
Hold on.
01:17:26
All right.
01:17:27
I had a lot to say tonight, like I usually do.
01:17:30
But a friend actually asked me to come here in his place and say the following.
01:17:40
and it's Don Gather's so he couldn't make it tonight.
01:17:44
So he sent me this email.
01:17:46
I'm going to read it.
01:17:48
It's time for the city to fulfill its promise of anti-discrimination enforcement in Charlottesville.
01:17:55
Human rights committees was derived from the original dialogue on race,
01:17:59
people, especially people of color, asked for a local place to bring complaints of racial unemployment and housing discrimination.
01:18:09
The original intentions of the HRC was to accomplish number one that I just said above and to conduct major studies of discrimination and equity in Charlottesville.
01:18:21
The original Human Rights Commission's Office of Human Rights was staffed with a full-time civil rights attorney.
01:18:29
to do complaint resolution and direct major studies of discrimination and equity and assistance to do the dialogue of race work.
01:18:40
The original Human Rights Ordinance was undermined by restricting its investigation authority to cases where company sizes were 5 to 14 employees.
01:18:53
The OHR promised to bring in the Richmond Equal Employment Opportunity Commission once a month for investigations of complaints of companies 15 and greater employees.
01:19:06
Since that time, the civil rights attorney director of the OHR has been pushed out and not rehired.
01:19:13
The EEOC does not come to town anymore.
01:19:16
The Office of the Human Rights has been well, he writes good.
01:19:20
E.V.I.
01:19:21
eviscerated, there you go, and had its original intention undermined.
01:19:28
The original director of the OHR was pushing to the center into a work share agreement with the Richmond EEOC called a FEPA agreement that would have allowed our office to conduct investigations on all complaints regardless of the six
01:19:48
Of the company ads, we would be paid $550 per investigation.
01:19:54
This would have made our office a local agency that could have taken complaints, investigated complaints and resolved complaints much faster than going to the Richmond EEOC.
01:20:07
This has been blocked by City Hall.
01:20:11
First, rehire a civil rights attorney director investigator.
01:20:15
This can be done by taking the current budget request for the 40K now in the budget for an outreach specialist and combining it with an additional request for 40K in order to hire a director who can take to do the work intended.
01:20:34
This must be accompanied by a resolution by counsel that the OAR HRC that directs them
01:20:41
to enter into a FEPA agreement with the Richmond EEOC.
01:20:46
This way, the office will be mandated to do investigations and will receive 550 per case to do it.
01:20:53
The same, I'm almost done.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
01:20:56
This is not me.
SPEAKER_32
01:20:58
The same type of agreement to be entered into the HUD that would allow the OHR HRC to do investigations of housing discrimination in Charlottesville.
01:21:09
I did it, y'all.
Heather Hill
Vice Mayor, City Council
01:21:15
Comments?
01:21:17
This is a topic I've been meeting with different citizens about and trying to get my own kind of history on.
01:21:23
Would it be possible, what is the right forum for us to be able to kind of allocate some time to talking about our options for addressing some of these concerns?
01:21:30
because to me it's beyond like a two-minute discussion.
01:21:33
I'm just curious because I'm interested in understanding a little more about the history that we've had here and the changes in staffing that have taken place over the last several years as well as what options we have for moving forward to ensure that our community's needs are being met.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
01:21:46
Mayor Walker, if I may, I would appreciate, you know, Mr. Jones giving us a review, a report on what happened, how we got from the first day it was open to
01:22:01
We hired the attorney to the fact that then the attorney was let go.
01:22:05
I think a refresher on the history would be great.
Maurice Jones
City Manager
01:22:09
The attorney was not let go.
01:22:10
I just want to clarify.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
01:22:11
Well, I mean, that's just it.
01:22:12
We need to know what really happened.
01:22:14
And then I certainly wouldn't mind, since there are budget implications, then we should be able to talk about it.
01:22:20
But we all need to be on the same page, literally, with the information.
Maurice Jones
City Manager
01:22:24
If counsel would talk about it as part of a budget process, we can mention it at one of the work sessions, for sure.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
01:22:29
I would be okay with that since these are budget requests.
01:22:36
But it does, or is it the will of the council to have it on the agenda to talk about the actual direction of the Human Rights Commission and the Office of Human Rights?
01:22:53
I would just like to see the history.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
01:22:56
Again, we're asking for resources for a position that someone already was in and it didn't work out accordingly.
01:23:03
We still have the same systemic issues that we had why it didn't work the first time based on everything that I know to be true.
01:23:12
And so is that the best investment
01:23:16
for, and this is the conversation I've been having, will we hire someone that can actually do what was the original intention of the position?
01:23:28
And I think we still are a long way away from city departments functioning like they should.
Maurice Jones
City Manager
01:23:35
One thing to remember is that there's a very clear charge that the city council had for the Human Rights Commission when this was put in place several years ago.
01:23:44
In order to do the types of things that are being requested via email and again tonight, you'd have to change that charge of the Human Rights Commission and the Office of Human Rights.
01:23:52
So it's not, it's not a matter of whether or not they could, they could do certain things.
01:23:58
You would have to change the charge in order for that to happen, accountable.
Heather Hill
Vice Mayor, City Council
01:24:03
Well then, for that reason, I think it's beyond a budget discussion.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
01:24:07
We still need to get a review of the history.
01:24:10
And then it does sound like we need to have it on a future agenda item, but it's not going to be resolved this budget cycle.
01:24:23
I mean it doesn't sound like it will.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
01:24:26
So could you get us that information for us to review and again, but I mean it's all documented.
01:24:37
before but again I'm open to reviewing it you know at this point and I've had some back and forth with you know about you know the position but I mean if we're gonna we have to figure out a way to get these things right instead of just pouring money into them and then getting them all.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
01:24:58
And your point Mayor Walker is the reason why the council was advised at the time that
01:25:03
That the attorney was not required is because there wasn't a demonstrated need for it.
01:25:09
And that's what we need to get to the bottom of.
01:25:12
That's what we were informed.
01:25:14
And so when you don't see a need,
01:25:16
It makes no sense to keep funding that position.
01:25:20
But now we're hearing, that's why I want to see the history again because it has been quite a while since we started that.
01:25:27
That was about, that's about five years ago that that was instituted.
Heather Hill
Vice Mayor, City Council
01:25:31
And some would say that the need seems, I've heard the perspective and again I want to hear more information, but that the need doesn't seem as high because there's not trust in the system.
01:25:41
And that's what I really would like to understand and get to the bottom of.
01:25:48
All right.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
01:25:49
It's been great.
01:25:51
It's time for a break.
01:25:54
I do have one more request.
01:25:56
OK. Oh, yes.
01:26:00
Sorry.
01:26:00
Proclamations.
01:26:01
Did I miss that?
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
01:26:02
If I may make one more request.
01:26:04
Yes.
01:26:06
And Mr. Jones, when the interim police chief does present to us about the stop and frisk on March 19, could we please have
01:26:17
some longitudinal information as to what, because I remember Chief Longo presenting the stop and frisk data to us about five years ago.
01:26:26
I do want to see trend information, what has happened in that interim and I do want to understand why there has, if there has been a change in numbers or if there hasn't been a change in numbers, why.
Maurice Jones
City Manager
01:26:39
We can provide that information.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
01:26:39
So just to give you some parameters on the report.
01:26:45
Thank you.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
01:26:48
All right, proclamations.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
01:26:53
All right, so 2018 Virginia Festival of the Book.
01:27:02
Whereas the city of Charlottesville believes that literacy is critical to active and engaged citizenship and is committed to promoting reading, writing, storytelling for all, both within and outside its borders.
01:27:12
Whereas reading stimulates the creative and intellectual growth of individuals while also building community through shared experiences, discourse, and understanding.
01:27:21
Whereas the Virginia Festival of the Book draws attendees, authors, illustrators, and publishing professionals from the region, the Commonwealth, other states, and indeed the world serving as an economically significant annual event for this area while providing the majority of programs free of charge.
01:27:37
And whereas Virginia Humanities, the Virginia Center for the Book, and University of Virginia, local businesses and schools, as well as cultural and civic organizations collaborate with the Virginia Festival of the Book to explore the world through reading,
01:27:49
foster empathy for the stories of others and promote literacy for all.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
01:27:53
Now therefore I, Nikuyah Walker, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, Virginia, do hereby proclaim Wednesday, March 21st through Sunday, March 25th, 2018 as the 24th Annual Virginia Festival of the Book and encourage community members to participate fully in the wide range of available programs and activity.
01:28:17
Thank you.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
01:28:18
Is there someone here to...
SPEAKER_40
01:28:43
Thank you, Councillors and Mayor.
01:28:46
We are very excited to host another Virginia Festival of the Book in the coming weeks and encourage everyone to attend.
01:28:53
As noted, almost all of our events are completely free and open to the public.
01:28:57
They are great places to foster discussions like many of those that have taken place tonight and continue to take place in these chambers.
01:29:04
And we appreciate community support and community involvement.
01:29:07
To learn more, you can visit our website at vabook.org.
01:29:11
Thank you.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
01:29:11
Thank you.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
01:29:14
I have one more quick announcement just to let the public know that Thursday March 8th at the Schausel High School there will be a presentation on the three options for the hydraulic Route 29 intersection.
01:29:28
It's a very important intersection improvement.
01:29:31
We're going to be putting in more bicycle pedestrian infrastructure.
01:29:34
It's also being
01:29:36
Project that's actually funded by the Virginia Department of Transportation.
01:29:40
So your input is extremely important.
01:29:42
So please come six o'clock to eight o'clock, Charlottesville High School, and make known what you want to see there.
01:29:48
It's one of the most dangerous intersections, though, in the state of Virginia.
01:29:54
Currently, that's why we got to fix it.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
01:30:00
Madam Mayor, it's a proclamation, same page, 2018, what we talk about when we talk about Anne Frank, whereas same page provides citizens with the opportunity to read and discuss a single book within their community by an author appearing at the Virginia Festival of the Book, and whereas the Jefferson Madison Regional Library invites all book lovers to participate in same page, which will be held throughout March 2018, and whereas the library's goal
01:30:26
is to encourage all residents of Central Virginia to read and discuss.
01:30:29
They've just given us all copies.
01:30:31
What we
01:30:32
talk about when we talk about Anne Frank by Nathan Englander, a collection of eight stories that explore themes such as trust, neighborliness and the Jewish identity.
01:30:41
And whereas same page is generously funded by the Friends of JMRL and supported by the Art and Jane Hess Fund, the Library Endowment and the Virginia Festival Book.
01:30:51
Now, therefore, be it resolved that Nikuyah Walker, do you mind if I read your?
01:30:54
The Nikuyah Walker, mayor of the city of Charlottesville, does hereby proclaim same page month during March 2018.
01:31:01
and encourages all residents to read what we talk about during this time, signed and sealed this fifth day of March.
01:31:07
Is there anybody here to receive this?
SPEAKER_43
01:31:25
Hello.
01:31:25
Yes, you all have copies of the book and you also have a program of the events that are happening this month.
01:31:31
And to the community, please come by any of the Jefferson Madison Regional Library locations and you can get a copy of the book or put a copy on reserve and pick up the program brochure with all the activities that are going on this month.
01:31:43
The programs are all free.
01:31:44
There are a few that require registration, but they are all free.
01:31:47
So we encourage everyone to participate.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
01:31:49
Is this different from the Big Read?
SPEAKER_43
01:31:51
I knew you were going to ask me that.
01:31:53
It is different.
01:31:55
You might be familiar with the Big Read, which we had been doing for 10 years.
01:31:58
We applied for a grant again this year, and we did not get the grant.
01:32:03
So through the generous funding of the Friends of the Library and the Art and Jane Hess Foundation, we are doing our own community read.
01:32:08
And we partnered with the Virginia Festival of the Book.
01:32:11
Since they have authors coming, we thought, why not capitalize on that and build on that?
01:32:14
So that's what we're doing this year.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
01:32:16
Thank you.
01:32:17
Thank you.
01:32:22
OK, now it's time for a break.
01:32:24
All right, the 10 minutes.
01:33:56
you
01:34:38
The End
SPEAKER_14
01:35:05
I don't know.
01:38:18
The End
SPEAKER_14
01:39:12
I love it all, love it all I love it all, love it all I love it all, love it all
01:39:38
The River
01:40:08
The End
01:41:48
you
01:44:04
Music playing
01:45:12
Thank you.
SPEAKER_14
01:45:39
and Michael Kochis
01:45:55
Music Playing
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
01:47:07
Excuse me, we're going to get started.
CONSENT AGENDA:
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
01:48:14
Pardon, Ms. Rice, could you read the consent agenda, please?
SPEAKER_02
01:48:18
Item A, minutes for February 20th, 2018.
01:48:21
Item B, an appropriation, additional funding for VIEW program, $16,900, second of two readings.
01:48:27
Item C, an appropriation disproportionate minority contact in the Charlottesville Albemarle Criminal Justice System Research Project, $100,000, first of two readings.
01:48:36
Item D, a resolution CRHA funding drawdown request, first of one reading.
01:48:41
Item E, a resolution sublease renewal, Sentara Starr Hill Health Center at Carver Recreation Center, first of one reading.
01:48:49
Item F, a resolution city council initiation of a zoning map amendment, first of one reading.
01:48:54
Item G, a resolution comprehensive plan extension, first of one reading.
01:48:59
Item H, an ordinance amend ordinance to change start time of regular council meeting, second of two readings.
01:49:04
And item I, an ordinance conveyance of portion of Ridge Street right of way for William Taylor Plaza project, second of two readings.
Heather Hill
Vice Mayor, City Council
01:49:14
I just had a question related to the disproportionate minority contact.
01:49:21
This is the first of two readings.
01:49:23
At some point I'd just really be curious to understand what has been done for this historically and where is that data and where is that research.
01:49:31
And two, if part of the RFP that will go out for this could ensure that we are, and Mr. Jones I spoke about this last week, that we are really looking at consultants who have expertise in working with
01:49:42
You know, low income and minority populations is a major consideration.
01:49:46
I think it's really important who is the consultant on this project and that they have that experience.
Maurice Jones
City Manager
01:49:52
That is certainly part of the RFP process and the review process for that.
01:49:59
That type of experience is critical.
01:50:02
In terms of the history, we, several years ago, five, six years ago, we did a DMC on the juvenile justice system, had a series of recommendations that were put into place not only on the part of the city and folks that are part of the justice system,
01:50:18
but also folks in the community.
01:50:20
Nonprofits worked with us on some of these issues.
01:50:22
And then just within the last year turned our sights to the DMC for adults.
Heather Hill
Vice Mayor, City Council
01:50:27
And so that one in the last year, how did that play out?
01:50:31
Were there an output from that?
01:50:33
Or is this just a continuation of that work?
Maurice Jones
City Manager
01:50:35
Well, it's a continuation of it.
01:50:36
But it's a different consultant.
01:50:38
It's a different consultant that we're hiring, yes.
Heather Hill
Vice Mayor, City Council
01:50:39
So what did last year's look like?
Maurice Jones
City Manager
01:50:42
What do you mean?
Heather Hill
Vice Mayor, City Council
01:50:44
So what is it that's different than what we did then and what we're going to do now?
Maurice Jones
City Manager
01:50:48
This is building off of what was done in terms of the research that was done on the front end of that.
01:50:53
There was focus group discussions that we will build on from that and we do have output from that that we will build upon in this next phase of the project.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
01:51:03
Okay, thank you.
01:51:07
Any other questions?
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
01:51:11
Alright, vote.
01:51:13
I move that we adopt the consent agenda.
01:51:17
Second.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
01:51:29
Vote is four to zero.
01:51:30
Thank you, Mike.
01:51:33
So next we have the report from the school board adopted budget for fiscal year 2019.
Maurice Jones
City Manager
01:51:40
And counsel, this is a PowerPoint.
Juandiego Wade
01:52:02
Good evening Mayor Walker and council members and other guests.
01:52:08
My name is Juan Diego Ricardo Wade.
01:52:09
I'm chair of the City of Charlottesville School Board.
01:52:11
It's my pleasure to be here this evening with a few other school board members.
01:52:14
Will you please raise your hand?
01:52:16
Leah and Lisa.
REPORT: School Board’s Adopted FY 2019 Budget
Juandiego Wade
01:52:18
And we also have staff here from central office to present the 2018-2019 budget to you all.
01:52:27
Before we start with the budget request for the fiscal year, we want to provide you some information about the Charlottesville City Schools and what we're accomplishing with an investment of what you all have given us thus far.
01:52:40
The four-year graduation rate is 90%, and if you look at the five-year index, it's 92%.
01:52:49
The graphs that you see here show the increase in the graduation rate from 2008 to 2017.
01:52:56
The increase in African Americans enrollments in honor classes during enrollment AP and also it shows some of the shows how Charlottesville High School continues to outperform both in state and national on the SAT scores.
01:53:14
On the next slide, if we look at, again, how our schools rank nationally, and as well as in Virginia, we're ranked number five in the Nation in Technology Innovation for Med Site Schools Division, and over 40% of our seniors earn college credits for at least one AP class.
01:53:37
Again, looking at some of the accomplishment, Charlottesville High School recently presented their medical research to the future leaders in healthcare research symposiums sponsored by UVA Medical School and UVA Healthcare Systems.
01:53:55
Our average students earned $10,000 to pursue their community service project and were invited to present their project at the
01:54:03
Public Education Foundation luncheon a couple of weeks ago, I believe it was.
01:54:08
Charlottesville High School art students, our paintings are used for
01:54:15
photography students that were affected by a hurricane in Puerto Rico.
01:54:20
And you will be able to see a full gamut of our students work.
01:54:26
October, I'm sorry, March the 17th and 10 to 2 at Charlottesville High School at the Arts Connection.
01:54:32
That's always a great event to attend.
01:54:35
Again, looking at some more of our efforts that we're doing.
01:54:38
Charlottesville High School band was invited to perform in the 2018 London New Year's Day Parade, the largest New Year's Day parade in the world with more than 8,000 performers and 500,000 viewing it.
01:54:54
Our Charlottesville Marching Knights won first place overall in the AAA class in Lynchburg this year.
01:55:04
The students at Berlin Moran are collaborating with the Blue Ridge Juvenile Academic Program to beautify the schools in the hallways and corridors and it was really amazing to see this over a course of several weeks and the students and the teachers would send out updates and it's really amazing to see they understanding the work and seeing it finished.
01:55:27
Looking at athletics, our athletic programs continue to be a significant part of our students' growth and development.
01:55:34
Our student athletes represent the Charlottesville community very well.
01:55:38
They are on numerous teams and individual accomplishments including
01:55:42
District, Regional, State Honors as well as Athletic Scholarships and these are just a few and I believe just a few weeks ago Rashad Davis was at Charlottesville High School and he finished Charlottesville High School and James Madison was part of the Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl team so it was really inspirational for him to come back and spend some time with the students with that.
01:56:07
Looking at some STEM efforts, science, technology, engineering, math is an important part of what we do in Charlottesville High School starting from elementary grades and continuing through high school.
01:56:19
Charlottesville High School offers access for engineering programs which allow students at any level to enroll without application or prerequisites and students can then advance at their own pace throughout a wide variety of STEM options.
01:56:36
As students
01:56:37
routinely compete and win in state, national, and international competitions.
01:56:42
Just one example, our zero robotics team recently finished first in the world and traveled to MIT to compete in finals.
01:56:52
These students got to see their code work
01:56:56
at the International Space Station.
01:56:58
These are real life applications that probably some college students would not take advantage of and we're doing it right here at Charlottesville High School.
01:57:08
Again, this fall, Governor McAuliffe visited Charlottesville and attended Clark Elementary STEM Fair.
01:57:18
Clark fourth graders along with the governor rotated through different activities and drones and robots and driverless cars and they were run by volunteers including our very own high school students from the Bacon Club.
01:57:31
As I mentioned,
01:57:32
Engineering is open to all of our students.
01:57:35
Our middle school students are invited to present at international and national conferences here in Washington.
01:57:45
In the fall, Charlottesville hosted a group of singers from the Metro Nashville Public Schools to collaborate on a joint recording of B.B.
01:57:54
Winans.
01:57:55
Right now, this video was shown at the Dave Matthews Band Concert for Charlottesville.
01:58:01
And if you haven't seen that yet, I would encourage everyone to go to YouTube and Google.
01:58:07
That is really powerful support for students that they did for our school district.
01:58:14
Again, a few more comments.
01:58:16
All of our schools celebrate kindness week.
01:58:19
with different activities.
01:58:21
And this year, the focus on unity and supporting one another in our schools has been particularly strong.
01:58:28
Our own student investment club donated $1,350 of their investment earnings to city schoolyard gardens.
01:58:38
And school administration, school board members, and Charlottesville student leaders spent a day in Richmond visiting General Assembly,
01:58:47
meeting various lawmakers and seeing our government in action.
01:58:54
Charlottesville is part of a consortium of local organization partnered to sponsor the Charlottesville One Book Initiative and this year the program aims to bring together the students
01:59:07
from public and independent middle and high schools as well as University of Virginia community members by encouraging community members to read one book.
01:59:16
This year the book is The Hate That You Give by Angie Thomas.
01:59:20
The First Lady visited Johnston Elementary School in conjunction with the City School Yard Garden during Virginia Farm to Work Week.
01:59:29
We have increased our family engagement efforts.
01:59:31
with particular focus on making early connection with grades K through second.
01:59:37
And Charlottesville will host the fifth annual Google for Education Summit for Virginia.
01:59:42
These are just some of the highlights that's happening in our school district.
01:59:49
Kind of moving forward, I want to talk about the budget.
01:59:52
To keep our district moving forward, the school board has developed a budget proposal that addresses the non-discretionary items, our competitive position, and our school programs and our overall operation.
02:00:10
The school proposal we adopted has not changed from the details that we shared with you guys during our work session on
02:00:19
January the 25th.
02:00:21
This just summarizes the areas that we have seen increases.
02:00:26
Under the non-discretionary, the medical insurance and the city contract increased because of medical insurance and costs have gone up.
02:00:34
Competitive positions is a focus to us because education
02:00:39
It's a people-focused business and we are trying to stay ahead of the teacher shortage that is facing our nation as well as our state.
02:00:49
When you look at the school-based programs
02:00:51
and support improvements, you will see that our focus is addressing growth, social, emotional and academic learning and continue to innovate with the programs and the opportunities we provide to our students.
02:01:06
Last but not least, we want to make some improvements in the areas of information, technology, security and support and we want to maintain our strong
02:01:15
partnership with the city schoolyard garden program.
02:01:19
And as I mentioned, it was several opportunities where we saw that that was into a part of what we do.
02:01:25
This chart here, this pie here shows the relative percentage of each of the areas of our budget request for fiscal year 18-19.
02:01:35
Most of the request, almost 50%, is to maintain or improve our competitive position.
02:01:41
The second large portion of our request is devoted to
02:01:46
supporting and improving our school-based programs.
02:01:50
And then you will see that the division level improvements, community partnerships, and other non-disquestions makes up the other 15, 20 percent.
02:02:01
Every item that the school board considers in developing our budget is evaluated in relation to our strategic plan, which focuses on academic excellence, safe and supportive schools, and organization support.
02:02:15
And you can find our strategic plan on our website.
02:02:20
Just Google City of Charlottesville schools.
02:02:24
To talk a little bit more in detail about what we plan to do,
02:02:27
Local support is what makes this happen.
02:02:31
We couldn't do it without the support of the community and city council.
02:02:35
The budget proposal increase is an increase that's just under 3% for the total next year.
02:02:41
You can see that the increase to the general fund budget is the same as it was during the detailed information we gave you on January 25th.
02:02:52
We are experiencing a net decrease in our special revenue budget for next year.
02:02:58
The decrease is primarily driven by the adult education program moving under PVCC so that state and federal monies won't be flowing through the Charlottesville school system in the future.
02:03:11
We also have a STEM grant that expires at the end of the school year.
02:03:15
Considering all of the changes with the budget proposal,
02:03:20
The total budget increase is $2,417,000.
02:03:25
But there is a significant question regarding state funding that has come up since the board adopted our budget.
02:03:35
And I'll get into that in one second.
02:03:38
But this chart here summarizes our revenue projection and our current budget proposal.
02:03:44
The state revenue is projected to increase by approximately
02:03:49
$83,000 based on the governor's proposed budget and the local miscellaneous revenue are expected to decrease by approximately $20,000.
02:03:59
Given the general fund budget increase of approximately $2,700,000, this leaves a city request of $2,676,000 to fund the school budget proposal, the same number we gave you all earlier.
02:04:15
However, if the state
02:04:17
The budget is closer to the Senate proposal instead of the Governor's proposal.
02:04:23
Charlottesville schools will decrease between $350,000 and $420,000.
02:04:29
This decrease is driven by no-loss funding that was included in the governor's budget.
02:04:36
No-loss or hold-homeless funding is fairly common when the state re-benchmarks the local composite index of local, of ability to pay every two years.
02:04:49
Charlottesville LCI increased almost 2% for the next biennium, that's 2019 and 2020, primarily due to the increased property values.
02:04:59
The LCI is the relative measure that assess each locality's ability to pay to raise funds locally.
02:05:08
When the LCI goes up, the stability, the locality's relative proportion of state funding for the school goes down.
02:05:19
Without any no-loss funds, Charlottesville will experience the entire impact of the LCI increase up front
02:05:25
in the first year of the new biennium.
02:05:28
And we will know more about this when we deal with when the final budget is complete.
02:05:35
And that was basically, what, four or five months worth of work in a few minutes.
02:05:42
So we're available to answer any questions that you might have.
Heather Hill
Vice Mayor, City Council
02:06:09
That's a big concern.
02:06:10
I mean, I'm a parent of a child.
02:06:12
I'm sorry, what did you say?
02:06:13
Safety.
02:06:14
Safety, yes, yes.
02:06:15
That's a big concern.
02:06:16
And just curious of, obviously you guys are going to have an open community meeting to discuss some of the policies in place.
02:06:22
Do you see any other additional budgetary impacts in response to some of the concerns that are being raised by the community or through your own due diligence looking at what other school systems are doing to ensure safety?
Juandiego Wade
02:06:32
We spent a significant amount of our time at our last school board meeting talking about that.
02:06:38
Some passionate pleas from parents, but I think most importantly to me as a school board member we have student reps on the school board and the comments that you had was very poignant.
02:06:52
And so we've taken that into consideration, but we're not going to make any decisions until we hear from the public.
02:06:58
And that's going to take place on March the 15th at Charlottesville High School at MLK Center.
02:07:05
So it's not anything particularly, I mean safety, as we said at the meeting, that's our number one priority.
02:07:13
That's what we, when things like Parkland happens, that
02:07:16
for school board members and superintendents and staff, that just brings shivers to us because safety is what we can't begin to educate them or feed them or anything if they don't feel safe.
02:07:26
And so that is what we look forward to hearing from the public on the 15th about some more ideas of what they have is what we can do.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
02:07:41
Any other questions, comments?
02:07:43
I do, Mayor Walker.
02:07:47
Is there any, there is no idea when you're going to find out from the state whether or not we're going to, you're going to get that $350,000 deduction?
Juandiego Wade
02:07:56
No.
02:07:57
Do we know anything about when we're going to hear from them?
SPEAKER_35
02:08:02
Good afternoon, council members, mayor and council members, and now city manager.
02:08:08
Thank you.
02:08:09
We anticipate that the General Assembly will be concluding its business around the 10th of March.
02:08:15
So we should know something around Friday.
02:08:18
No later than next Monday we should have a fairly good idea as to where we stand.
02:08:23
Right now, with both the House and the Senate version of the bill, we will stand to lose.
02:08:29
We have contacted Senator Deeds and Delegate Toscano to make them aware of the impact on the schools.
02:08:37
So they're working now on our behalf on trying to impact those two budgets.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
02:08:43
Would it be of any value for the City Council to write a letter?
SPEAKER_35
02:08:46
Absolutely.
02:08:47
I'll call them, write a letter, but it needs to be done probably within the next 24 hours because they're having the conferees a meeting now to finish up the budget.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
02:09:02
I'm wondering, Mr. Jones, could you draft us a letter for Mayor Walker's signature?
02:09:07
We all endorse it.
02:09:09
I mean, we won't.
02:09:09
I mean, Mayor Walker
02:09:11
by her signing means that we all endorse it.
02:09:14
Is that possible?
Maurice Jones
City Manager
02:09:15
I certainly can work with the schools first thing tomorrow morning.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
02:09:18
That's great.
02:09:19
Thank you.
Juandiego Wade
02:09:21
Thank you very much.
02:09:34
Is that it?
Maurice Jones
City Manager
02:09:34
Are there no other questions?
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
02:09:45
Thank you very much.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
02:09:46
All right, so next we have the city managers presentation for the proposed budget for fiscal year 2019.
Maurice Jones
City Manager
02:10:02
Council, I also have a PowerPoint presentation.
02:10:25
Good evening, everyone.
02:10:26
It's my pleasure to present the city manager's proposed budget for fiscal year 2019.
REPORT: City Manager’s Proposed FY 2019 Budget
Maurice Jones
City Manager
02:10:31
This is the official beginning of our budget season.
02:10:36
I'd like to begin by highlighting an award that the city has won now for 16 consecutive years, the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award from the Government Finance Officers Association.
02:10:49
This is, as I mentioned, the 16th consecutive year.
02:10:52
We've won it 25 times overall.
02:10:55
We received a 100% rating for the second consecutive year.
02:11:01
Although this is the formal start of our budget season, there have been many people involved with developing the budget since the fall of last year, including the team responsible for reviewing the budgets of our department heads that are submitted by our departments.
02:11:15
It's Leslie Beauregard, our assistant city manager, Mike Murphy, our other assistant city manager,
02:11:20
Galloway Beck, who's the Human Resources Director, Paul Oberdorfer, our Director of Public Works, and Chris Cullinan, who is our Finance Director, and then our Budget Office staff, Ryan Davidson and Maya Kumazawa.
02:11:34
Those are just some of the folks who've been involved with putting this budget together over the course of the last six months or so.
02:11:42
Our major budget themes for this year, strong support for our city schools, preserving and enhancing quality services,
02:11:49
affordable housing investments, focus on organizational efficiencies, aligning with our strategic plan and council priorities, and maintaining the real estate tax rate at 95 cents per $100 of assessed value.
02:12:02
All the information related to this budget can be found at our website, www.charlottesville.org slash budget, including materials that will be added during the next month of work.
02:12:14
So we will have a budget presentation and discussion at our work session on Wednesday.
02:12:18
The materials for that will be posted in advance and then any discussion that happens out of that and response to that from our city council will be posted online as well.
02:12:31
This year's proposed budget is coming in at a little over $179 million.
02:12:35
That's a 4.48% increase from fiscal year 18.
02:12:39
You've seen the relatively small increases that have occurred over the course of the last six or seven years coming out of the recession.
02:12:47
But it's been pretty stable at between 3% and 5%, 6% in the last few years.
02:12:54
Real estate assessments are growing at a modest pace here in the city.
02:12:58
The real estate assessments were up and we'll talk about that in detail in just a moment as we continue to see development and growth here in the city.
02:13:08
The meals and sales tax revenue are projected to see a decrease from fiscal year 18.
02:13:13
Other areas of the economy are performing well such as our lodging and personal property taxes and revenue.
02:13:19
We believe we have revenue that's diverse and well balanced throughout our community.
02:13:26
On the revenue side, the local taxes make up the great majority of our budget at nearly 70%.
02:13:33
And then there's intergovernmental revenue at 8.5%, charges for services at 7.1%, the city-county revenue sharing at 6%, and licenses and permits at 5.7%.
02:13:50
On the projection side of the real estate, as I mentioned before, we are projecting that we're going to see an increase next year.
02:13:57
The projection is at $68.2 million, and that is a pretty sizable increase from the current year's projections.
02:14:09
The overall assessments for 2018 were up 4.9%.
02:14:13
On the personal property side,
02:14:17
It is expected to rise to $8.6 million in fiscal year 19.
02:14:23
Sales and use, you're seeing a drop there from what our original budget was for the current fiscal year that we're in at 2018, about a $700,000 drop or so, somewhere in that range.
02:14:35
We saw that in the first part of the year.
02:14:38
We revised our budget based on what we saw.
02:14:40
But we are seeing a little bit of an uptick in the last few months and so we'll be watching that closely as we go through the budget process and then of course later on this year and into next fiscal year.
02:14:54
The meals tax is also forecasted lower than fiscal year 18 at $11.7 million.
02:15:00
You'll see it'll be close to what our original budget was for 18, and certainly, I'm sorry, down slightly from the original budget and up from the revised budget based on the numbers that we've seen, and an uptick a little bit over what the actuals were over fiscal year 17.
02:15:21
The lodging tax, also known as the transient occupancy tax, we anticipate moving up and reaching 5.1 million dollars in fiscal year 19.
02:15:30
That shows a number of people are still coming to our community and using up hotel rooms.
02:15:37
The general fund expenditures, you'll see there the local contribution to our schools is 32.8%, close to 33%, public safety and justice at 25%, healthy families and community at 18%, and in infrastructure and transportation at 8.7%.
02:15:55
Our strategic plan is the document that we use as we're developing our budget.
02:16:00
We try to make connections back to our strategic plan with our expenditures.
02:16:04
We have five goal areas.
02:16:06
Goal one, an exclusive community of self-sufficient residents.
02:16:09
Goal two, a healthy and safe city.
02:16:12
Goal three, a beautiful and sustainable, natural, and built environment.
02:16:16
Goal four, a strong, creative, and diversified economy.
02:16:20
And goal five, a well-managed and responsive organization.
02:16:26
So we've had discussions with council over the course of the last couple of years actually when it comes to priorities and you're seeing that bear out in the investments that we're making in affordable housing.
02:16:37
Last year the council asked to double the affordable housing fund and we did that in stages.
02:16:44
The first year going up to about 2.3 million and then for this fiscal year, fiscal year 19, we're looking at 3.4 million dollars in the affordable housing fund.
02:16:55
We have in next year's budget a half a million dollars to help support the CRHA in their public housing redevelopment efforts.
02:17:04
And then we have $70,000 in new funding for the Charlottesville Housing Affordability Program.
02:17:10
a tax reduction program that we have for folks here in the city.
02:17:15
We're proposing to increase the grant amounts from $375 to $450 for taxpayers with household incomes of zero to $25,000 and then to increase the grant amounts from $525 to $625 for taxpayers with household incomes of $25,000 to $50,000.
02:17:36
Issues of race and equity in our community.
02:17:38
We have $500,000 included for the African-American Heritage Center at the Jefferson School.
02:17:42
This is the second year of a two-year commitment by the City Council.
02:17:48
The Council gave $450,000 in this current fiscal year.
02:17:52
We do have $38,000 that's budgeted for the Office of Human Rights to convert an existing community outreach position to a full-time status.
02:17:59
And this is on top of the million dollars that the City Council committed
02:18:02
back in December as part of our year-end surplus from fiscal year 17 to address issues of equity in our community and we'll be bringing back over the course of the next few months, probably after the budget, we'll be bringing back some of the ideas that were generated by city council and we'll have votes on that and the funding's already been allocated by the council to address some of those issues.
02:18:25
Workforce development and economic development are both very important in our community.
02:18:30
We have $72,000 budgeted for a new minority business development coordinator to focus on efforts to increase city procurement with small women and minority-owned businesses and to also to help
02:18:44
minority business owners or folks who want to start their own business to help them do that and help provide them with the tools that they need to be successful.
02:18:52
And so we felt that was something that was desperately needed in our community to help increase the numbers of women owned and minority owned businesses and this is one step in that direction in addition to the minority business procurement coordinator who was added during fiscal year 18.
02:19:10
The fiscal year 19 budget includes a couple of other really important programs, $187,000 for our downtown job center.
02:19:17
Our job center has been open for several years now and we've had over 2,000 people who've come through there, between 2 and 3,000 people who've come through the job center seeking assistance with finding employment in our community.
02:19:31
We have $121,000 that's been budgeted for the Summer Community Attention Youth Internship Program, also known as KHIP.
02:19:38
And then our GO programs will continue in fiscal year 19.
02:19:43
We plan to have
02:19:45
Ten programs operate in the next fiscal year.
02:19:52
Safety and security, there's $94,000 in the CIP for downtown pedestrian intersection lighting.
02:19:58
There is funding in this budget to fully fund the first full year of the new EMS transport services that are being offered in the city by the Charlottesville Fire Department in conjunction with our partners with CAR.
02:20:16
Funding for our schools, our total operating contribution is $54 million in fiscal year 19.
02:20:21
That's an increase of $2.7 million.
02:20:24
It fully funds the school's request, and that's a 5.2% increase from this current fiscal year that we're in.
02:20:31
It's the largest single increase in the total city general fund budget.
02:20:35
and we also have in our CIP, this is something we started in fiscal year 18 as well, a million dollars for the schools to spend on strategic improvements within the school system.
02:20:49
Compensation and benefits, we are proposing a 3% salary increase that would begin on July 1st, that's $1.4 million.
02:20:57
Healthcare costs, $270,000 increase in the city's contribution.
02:21:02
It fully funds the
02:21:04
compensation side the budget fully funds the city's requirement towards its retirement fund that's 9.4 million dollar contribution and then we have a hundred and sixty thousand dollars in compression adjustments as a result of the fiscal year 18 living wage increases we took some steps with the budget last year and now we're taking more with next year's budget to address those increases.
02:21:26
The City Council's strategic initiatives, there are several ideas that have been floated to City Council for consideration.
02:21:33
$100,000 in the fund will be used to pilot a participatory budgeting initiative.
02:21:41
We'll be talking more about that over the course of the next few weeks.
02:21:43
$225,000 is proposed to be used to fund two new positions and to reclassify two positions in the City Council's office to reclassify
02:21:54
the Clerk of City Council to reclassify the Administrative Assistant and then a new position on Research and Development and another new position on Community Engagement and Media Relations.
02:22:06
Department additions and service enhancements, we are proposing $122,000 for an assistant city attorney to provide support for the legal representation of the city and then $100,000 as part of the NDS efficiency study to support a position that has not been designated or agreed to just yet.
02:22:27
We still need to talk to council and the department about that.
02:22:30
We'll be doing that over the course of the next
02:22:31
month or so or two months reviewing that efficiency study deeper dive and then talking about how to utilize that money but we thought it would be best if we put the money aside for now to address those concerns for next year.
02:22:48
There's $160,000 for two full-time employees in the Parks and Recreation Department to support the new skate park, which will be constructed next year.
02:22:57
There's $50,000 for proactive tree maintenance and management at city parks, schools, and public right-of-ways.
02:23:04
And there's some changes as well and some efficiencies that we've identified, changing the outdoor pool hours from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. all season.
02:23:14
That will save us $28,000.
02:23:16
And one of the things that we do is we take a look at the data, how many folks are using the parks at a certain time.
02:23:23
And this is one way to save some money because there are a few folks who are actually using it after 7 o'clock.
02:23:29
Public Works is eliminating a number of vacant positions to save us about $282,000 in savings for next year.
02:23:39
What we will do is take a close look at those positions over the course of the next year to see if those efficiencies have caused any sort of problems with the service delivery.
02:23:52
And we'll reevaluate that towards the end of this calendar year as we prepare for the budget for next year.
02:24:00
There are some changes and efficiencies at CAT.
02:24:04
We are proposing that CAT reduce service on Route 9 due to the lack of ridership on this portion of the route at a certain time of the day.
02:24:13
This was added in fiscal year 18.
02:24:15
We've been looking at that very closely.
02:24:18
There are just not a lot of folks who are using it at certain times of the day, so we decided to make some changes Monday through Friday.
02:24:25
It's still going 17 hours a day.
02:24:27
but we are making some slight changes to it because we don't have the ridership and we are keeping the Sunday service the same and that saves us approximately $63,000.
02:24:38
Outside in nonprofit agencies, we have $250,000 as a reserve that's intended to support the arts and culture planning and coordination here in the city.
02:24:48
It increases contractual agency funding by $200,000.
02:24:51
That's money that's going to the regional jail, general detention center, library system, the ECC, and the paratransit services.
02:25:03
Other expenditure changes that we expect, the general fund transfer to the debt service is increasing by $592,000.
02:25:09
That's because our CIP is going up.
02:25:13
We're making those investments and we have to find ways to pay that off each year.
02:25:18
The general fund contribution to the CIP is increasing by close to $210,000.
02:25:23
and there's 2.2 million dollars from the CIP Contingency Fund that will be used to help cash fund capital projects for next year and that will help lower the debt service requirements.
02:25:36
So some of the capital improvement program highlights, mentioned affordable housing, we mentioned public housing redevelopment in the schools.
02:25:45
Overall capital program, we mentioned the million dollars, but overall it'll be close to three million dollars for capital projects for the schools.
02:25:53
West Main Street, the West Main Street streetscape improvement project, there's 3.25 million dollars in the budget for that.
02:26:01
Undergrounding of utilities at 1.3 million dollars, new sidewalks and sidewalk repair,
02:26:05
a little over $800,000.
02:26:06
The Tonsler Park Master Plan implementation, another $750,000 towards that.
02:26:13
The cultural landscape study at $50,000.
02:26:16
The SIA implementation, $250,000.
02:26:20
Economic development strategic initiatives at $150,000.
02:26:22
And then some fire replacement apparatus at close to $1.3 million.
02:26:28
And I mentioned the pedestrian intersection lighting.
02:26:32
So that gives you a general sense of the
02:26:35
of the budget.
02:26:36
We have our budget calendar.
02:26:38
In the next couple of days, on March 7th, we'll have our first budget work session, which will review the revenues and expenditures.
02:26:46
The public is invited to that.
02:26:47
It's at city space from 5 to 7.
02:26:49
There's an open discussion for the council with the staff, and then there's public comment that we reserve at the end of each one of our work sessions.
02:26:57
We'll move on to the 15th on another work session that will concentrate on our capital improvement program.
02:27:01
That's from 5 to 7 at City Space.
02:27:04
On March 19th, we'll have our first public hearing on the city manager's budget at 630 here in City Council Chambers.
02:27:10
And we'll also
02:27:13
that'll be on the real estate tax levy and the proposed budget for that night on the 19th.
02:27:19
March 28th we'll have our community budget forum at 6 p.m. at City Space.
02:27:22
That's the opportunity for the public to speak with the city council and to provide some information and that's after a short presentation by me but then it's pretty much open to the public and they can weigh in on the budget in whichever way they feel.
02:27:40
March 29th, work session from five to seven at City Space.
02:27:44
That's on the outside and nonprofit agencies.
02:27:47
And then April 2nd, we'll have our second public hearing.
02:27:49
This will be on the City Council budget.
02:27:51
It will at that point be your budget at 6.30 here in the City Council chambers.
02:27:56
April 5th, a work session from five to seven.
02:27:59
That's kind of a budget wrap up.
02:28:00
Once again, the public's invited.
02:28:02
We'll have public comment.
02:28:03
And then April 10th, the budget will be approved by City Council at 5.30 in the second floor conference room here in City Hall.
02:28:10
As I mentioned before, all this budget information can be found on our website, Charlottesville.org slash budget.
02:28:16
And then we do have copies of the 19 proposed budget in the city manager's office that people can review, and then at the Central and Gordon Avenue libraries as well.
02:28:29
So with that, I will take any questions that you may have before moving on.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
02:28:54
Comments?
Maurice Jones
City Manager
02:29:05
There will be plenty of opportunities for council to weigh in on these issues and to hear from you and respond to any questions that you may have over the course of the next five to six weeks.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
02:29:14
And if I may, I guess this is kind of a big picture and since I've
02:29:21
been here the longest on council.
02:29:23
I was reflecting back on my first year on council and that was going from 2011 to 2012.
02:29:33
And our budget that year was 126 million, 345, so 126 million.
02:29:46
At that time, it had gone down 0.77 percent lower
02:29:51
before, the year before.
02:29:53
And I just bring that up because it, at that time, your, your budget letter, Mr. Jones, was the, Charlottesville is not immune to the trend of declining assessments currently being experienced in most parts of the nation.
02:30:09
In fiscal year 2011, total assessments projected to decline by 0.76%, coupled with no growth through new construction.
02:30:18
It was, that translated to a loss in revenue of almost $800,000.
02:30:23
It was a pretty dark, dark scene.
02:30:28
Now we panned the proposed 2019 budget and we're at 179 million, which I looked at the numbers, that's a 42% change from 2011.
02:30:45
We've got
02:30:46
job growth, 9% increase over the last decade, highest level of commercial construction at over $88 million.
02:30:56
The projected revenue increases on all fronts is very high.
02:31:02
And I looked at also the growth in our full-time employees.
02:31:06
In 2011, we had 917 full-time employees.
02:31:10
By 2019, we'd have 976.
02:31:14
So on the one hand I'm saying, wow, this really pulled the city out of a nosedive.
02:31:21
The city really did start growing its budget and growing its revenue.
02:31:26
But I want to get a, if there's any way, maybe just ponder this.
02:31:31
But what were some of the big items that you can think of that has given rise to the bigger, the much, the 42% increased budget that we have?
02:31:42
and we're all experiencing stress feeling like we don't have enough money still.
02:31:48
But that's a major change in six years, six, seven years to go from that $126 million to $179 million.
02:32:00
And I think it might be helpful to understand
02:32:06
because even the growth in employees was only, when I looked at the numbers, it was like a 6.5% increase in the number of full-time employees between 2011 and 2019.
02:32:24
But then our population did grow 13% in that time.
02:32:28
The school population grew 11%.
02:32:34
I didn't know, that six and a half percent increase in full-time employees didn't strike me as being the major driver, but perhaps it could have been because I did see the health insurance increase, the retirement increases, so, and I just would like to get a better gauge on what really drove those big increases.
Maurice Jones
City Manager
02:32:55
Sure, and I can certainly talk to you generally about that tonight, and we can get numbers for you if you'd like.
02:33:00
I would imagine that, you know, you kind of
02:33:04
You kind of hit the nail on the head when you talked about growth in our community.
02:33:08
There's been a lot of growth here, and there's been a growth in the expectation of service delivery over that period of time.
02:33:14
The number one driver I would imagine would be our school system.
02:33:18
So we've provided significant increases to the school system, even in very lean years, because we felt it was important, especially as the state funding was being reduced back in the early 2010, 2011, 2012, during that time period.
02:33:32
and so we stepped up as a locality and said this is really important.
02:33:36
We're going to continue to fund this at a higher level because we think it's really important to do that.
02:33:41
We were very fortunate that when we went through the recession, even though we saw that dip back in 2010, 2011, that wasn't nearly as bad as you saw in other places around the country where they were laying people off, they were cutting, significantly cutting services.
02:33:53
We didn't have to do that here in Charlottesville.
02:33:55
We didn't see a significant drop in our services.
02:33:58
We had to tighten our belts a little bit, but we feared
02:34:01
we got through that fairly well and now we're seeing this growth that's happening in our community and one of the things that we started doing as well is when we've identified like for instance significant capital improvement projects we've also identified the operational costs that are associated with that as well which will result in an increase the construction of things like the 250 interchange and the parkway which increased our landscaping budget significantly
02:34:29
Those are the types of things that added to that as well over the course of the last seven or eight years or so.
02:34:36
But we can certainly get City Council some numbers on that over the course of the next couple of weeks or so to really give you a sense of that.
02:34:42
But I would imagine that number one was the investment that we're making in our schools.
02:34:47
And then everything else after that certainly contributed a little bit over the course of the last seven years.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
02:34:53
And I think it is also important to note too that it was when we started seeing the trending
02:34:59
of that increased revenue coming from redevelopment, that that's when there was the realization that we could be putting more and more money into the housing fund.
02:35:10
But now we really are focused on, so how do you produce that housing?
02:35:14
But you needed that income first.
02:35:18
You needed that revenue first to begin to even have
02:35:22
a pool of money to draw upon.
Maurice Jones
City Manager
02:35:24
Of course most of that funding went to our nonprofit partners who are either creating new affordable housing or preserving affordable housing in our community.
02:35:34
In addition we made expenditures on things like the property where the crossing sits today.
02:35:42
The city took the initiative working with Virginia Supportive Housing
02:35:45
to make that happen, bought the piece of property, worked with Virginia's Board of Housing to construct the building and then they run the operations there.
02:35:54
So there are certainly those types of investments that have paid off and just this past fall the city council made a commitment to a local voucher program to help increase the number of units that would be affordable to folks in our community, about $900,000 to help with that.
02:36:07
So there's been significant investment on the part of the city when it comes to affordable housing and just in the last two years it's doubled.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
02:36:14
Thank you.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
02:36:22
And my comment would be just you know Mr. Bellamy has had us look at an equity lens and figuring out how to look at what we do as a city through the equity lens.
02:36:41
and even with the school being the primary driver, our school system is doing really well in a lot of areas.
02:36:50
But it's not doing really well based on race and class.
02:36:55
If you looked at the two drivers for the budget here, there was public safety and then the school system.
02:37:03
And we can't ignore the school to prison pipeline that we have in this area.
02:37:10
So, I mean, this is still being a part of the budget meetings and process and paying very close attention over the past three years.
02:37:23
Still learning, but I think we have a lot of work to do to make sure that the community as a whole benefits from the investments that we make.
02:37:34
And I think that's our greatest challenge.
02:37:43
Any other?
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
02:37:44
Well, the only thing I'll mention is that I just got word that, as we all know, beginning of February, I had put forth the idea of using an overlay district for our growth corridors to capture a certain percentage of that revenue to actually turn that back into our highest need.
02:38:06
And the idea behind that, patterned after other places, was to make it very clear
02:38:12
that redevelopment was being beneficial to the adjacent community.
02:38:17
I know I'm going to be meeting with staff to go over some of the details of that, but I do think we are at a stage now where we must really be very, very overt and clear as to what we're doing with the revenue now so that it is obvious that it's being turned in to improve the
02:38:39
the physical well-being of so many of our community that have been left behind for an awful long time.
02:38:47
I will say this, that I think this Council is very clear to the Housing Authority that we just stand ready to help them, work with them when they are ready.
02:38:59
And that is, I just want to make that very clear.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
02:39:06
I do want to make just one point to the public watching on TV here, which is that our new communications director, Brian Wheeler, is making a more active effort to get more information out about the things that are in the budget.
02:39:17
It's easy to lose commitments or things that we're doing, like the tax rebate we do back to people who fall into certain lower income brackets, which is a subject of debate.
02:39:27
It's quite costly.
02:39:28
We put $70,000 in this year.
02:39:30
We could do more.
02:39:31
But it's important the public knows what we do.
02:39:34
And there's a lot in a budget that is the inheritance.
02:39:37
Budgets are moral documents.
02:39:38
There's a ton that we do.
02:39:39
There's a ton of new things we do.
02:39:40
You saw a lot of them in Mr. Jones's presentation.
02:39:42
But it's easy to lose them in the sweep of an event in a given week.
02:39:48
So it's very good for us to get out more information to the public about the dozens and dozens of individual initiatives that we debate heavily and that do represent our values.
02:39:58
And you saw a lot of them, like the new position about,
02:40:02
trying to help minority businesses in the community.
02:40:04
We spent a lot of time deliberating that and working on how do we set that up.
02:40:07
That was what's the best way to try and work within Virginia law in a city like this to actually help with that part of our economy in a smaller city, in a 50,000 person city.
02:40:17
So it's funded this year.
02:40:18
That's the result of a debate that happened last year.
02:40:21
So I just think it's good that we're getting the word out.
02:40:23
More specifically, we need to keep on doing it.
02:40:25
We need to make sure that the public knows everything that's in here and that doesn't just get lost in the 100th page document.
02:40:33
So I'm glad.
02:40:34
Everybody, please follow the Twitter feed if you can, because it is singling things out.
02:40:39
And we're going to keep on doing that, I think, more, I hope.
02:40:47
It's actually, I just, so is the city, is it Seville City Hall?
02:40:53
Seville City Hall, just tonight I was noting that there's a lot more that you're doing.
02:40:58
And Facebook Live, we're on Facebook Live now, that's been happening tonight.
02:41:04
Breaking into the 20th century.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
02:41:09
Alright, any other comments?
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
02:41:12
The one comment I might add, and it's related to communications, and I know all of us have gotten in some habit of communicating with different circles and I will send my own email flyers out about meetings and I think, is there going to be more of an overt announcement to let people know about council meetings and times and
02:41:37
because that gets lost.
02:41:39
People don't know to check the website, the homepage, and that has not been updated routinely.
02:41:47
So the announcement that we make tonight about meetings, hopefully that will kind of, the need to do that will wane over time.
Jeff Fogel
02:41:57
Yep, and at your next meeting, there'll be a full update on communications.
02:42:01
Very good, thank you.
02:42:02
See those initiatives?
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
02:42:07
All right.
02:42:11
So the moving on the next report that we are going to hear from the Albemarle, Charlottesville Historical Society about the lease terms.
REPORT: Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society Lease Terms
Maurice Jones
City Manager
02:42:26
Mayor Walker, Paul Oberdorf, our Director of Public Works will be presenting.
SPEAKER_04
02:42:31
Good evening.
02:42:33
I was just going to give you a quick update on the status of the lease of the McIntyre building.
02:42:39
And I thought it would be good if I went through the chronology starting back on July 1 of 2013 when council authorized the lease of the McIntyre building to the Historical Society.
02:42:51
That lease was for $182 a month.
02:42:55
It commenced on July 1, 2013 and expired June 30 of 2017.
02:43:03
As an option with that, Council had the ability to renew the lease at a rate of $750 a month, provided the Historical Society met six Council conditions of the lease.
02:43:18
On September 18, 2017, Council was updated on the status of the lease of the McIntyre building at that time by myself.
02:43:28
The Historical Society had asked for modifications to be made to the lease and council agreed to extend the lease until March 1st of 2018 in order to allow them time to meet 10 conditions that were updated by council at that time.
02:43:46
On October 10th, Leslie Beauregard, the Assistant City Manager,
02:43:51
sent email and also a USPS letter to the Historical Society asking them about the conditions of the lease in the letter from the city manager's office and
02:44:05
On March 1st of this year we had yet to receive that letter back in the city manager's office sign that they indeed were going to commit to those conditions of the lease.
02:44:18
On November 29th the Historical Society was notified by mail as well as email that there was some past new rent on the lease that was due from July 1 from the time that council determined
02:44:34
to raise the rent from the $182 a month rent to $750, and they have since then corrected that arrearage.
02:44:44
On January 10th, Mayor Walker's office was notified by a property maintenance complaint about the courtyard at the back entire building.
02:44:53
and the property maintenance complaint was investigated by the city and it was found to be in violation of Charlottesville's Code of Ordinances Chapter 5 building regulations, property maintenance, having unsanitary conditions.
02:45:08
We notified the Historical Society.
02:45:10
They had 10 days to remediate the conditions there and failed to do so, so the city stepped in with a private contractor and remediated the issue.
02:45:21
The cost of that was $3,592.51 and we're still in the process of working that out with the historical society.
02:45:31
Just over the last period of time since I've been up here, we've been making an effort to communicate with the historical society.
02:45:41
Numerous occasions, 23 to date, we've reached out and really made an effort to try to work out the conditions of the lease.
02:45:51
However, not until February 8th when Ms. Beauregard was contacted by Mr. Lister, a former board member who asked to speak with her about the terms.
02:46:01
They spoke on the phone February 10th and met later that same week.
02:46:07
The board held a board meeting and appointed Mr. Lister board president for a period of six months in transition prior to Mr. Meeks resigning his position as board president.
02:46:21
Mr. Lister and two other board members met with Mr. Jones, Ms. Beauregard and myself February 27th again to provide an update as to the activities they had been doing since they last notified us to meet the conditions of council and work towards the goals that were set forth so that they could renew the lease.
02:46:43
To date we're here, I believe Mr. Lister and some of the board members are present and
02:46:49
So they would like to speak to you about these conditions and that's the end of my report.
SPEAKER_31
02:47:00
Good evening, Madam Mayor, Madam Vice Mayor and Members of Council, Mr. Jones.
02:47:05
Thank you for letting me come up here to answer any questions you have on the 10 conditions that you requested for this lease.
02:47:13
We've decided to meet
02:47:15
All ten of those conditions, there is one line item that the board is not interested in meeting, which is outside appointment of board members by a third party, which in this case would be city council.
02:47:28
And before I do start, I would like to point out we have some of our board members here, not all of them, because some are a little concerned about coming down due to some previous speakers, but we have Dr. Ken Wallenborn, Professor Irvin Jordan, and we have
02:47:42
Mr. Angus Arrington here in the back.
02:47:45
And we have one of our prospective board appointees, Mr. Coy Barefoot here.
02:47:49
Dr. Shelley Murphy had planned on coming down this evening as well, but she was put off by one of the previous speakers.
02:47:59
So anyway, if you have questions of me for these conditions, I'd be happy to answer them.
02:48:05
Or anything else about where we are at this point?
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
02:48:08
So what's the hesitation with having a city representative appointed to the bill?
SPEAKER_31
02:48:12
Well, we feel that if the 10 conditions that are met already give council enough transparency and an idea that we have good governance over the society, then there wouldn't be a need for appointees by council.
02:48:28
And I think you'll see that some of the people that are coming on board with us now are going to be very acceptable to council.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
02:48:44
This is pretty, well I appreciate a lot everything you're doing but that is, that was a very clearly debated desired outcome of council here and council is in the driver's seat with this because it's clearly something we have a very strong interest in because we are the owner of the property and history is a huge topic here so if council wanted
02:49:12
representatives on the board council should have that, I would think.
SPEAKER_31
02:49:16
Well, has this been looked at?
02:49:19
We need to ensure that our bylaws would meet that, too, which they currently wouldn't, but I don't know how the law applies to that, too.
02:49:28
That might be something that we might need to ask the city attorney or look into whether or not that can be done.
02:49:35
I don't know if that's been investigated or not.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
02:49:39
If I might add, I think I'm
02:49:42
I'm trying to remember exactly the conversations that we had on council many months ago, but we really were intent on changing the governance structure, because as we all know, the governance of this organization had been run to the ground.
02:49:57
It was not functioning.
02:49:58
It was not functioning well at all.
02:50:00
That's correct.
02:50:01
In fact, it was quite harmful to many people.
02:50:03
Yes.
02:50:04
So I'm finding, I agree with Councillor Signer that that was a major piece
02:50:11
to ensure for us, especially, and correct me if I'm wrong, we were giving an extremely reduced lease arrangements and that's city property.
02:50:22
So the idea is that it was already a city organizational partnership.
02:50:28
and yet we would not have any say in your governance after learning how the governance structure failed miserably.
02:50:35
So we're not being good stewards of the public's resources if we're not providing some accountability on that board.
SPEAKER_31
02:50:46
Well, we have part of our conditions is to provide you with updates as well as far as our programs, exhibits and other parts of the society.
02:50:53
and as I said we have new people coming on board and I think that you will see that there is going to be good governance here.
02:51:01
I'm pretty confident of that.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
02:51:03
And again I appreciate that and I do think that will change.
SPEAKER_31
02:51:07
We've lost the previous malignancy from that as we all know and I don't want to go in too deep with that but that part of the society is gone and I think a lot of us are thankful for that.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
02:51:19
So how many of the current board members or board members
02:51:22
Five.
02:51:27
And those five are still currently board members?
SPEAKER_31
02:51:31
Yes.
02:51:32
Two of them, I believe, are new since maybe right around the time of the last council meeting, which I guess was in September of 2017.
02:51:42
They may have come on at that point.
Heather Hill
Vice Mayor, City Council
02:51:45
What is your total board membership?
SPEAKER_31
02:51:47
Well the bylaws asked to try to get between 7 and 11 and right now I think we're at 8.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
02:51:55
So there are 11, there are 8 and that's where you all would like to keep it at this point?
SPEAKER_31
02:52:06
No, like I said we've invited Dr. Shelley Murphy and we've invited Mr. Poi Barefoot here and I believe that one of the other board members may have a potential nominee as well.
02:52:18
We've invited several people from the community that are well known to many people on council as well.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
02:52:26
So are there any legal issues with us appointing someone?
Maurice Jones
City Manager
02:52:32
I'm not sure.
02:52:33
Ms. Robertson, is that something that's a concern that you may have?
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
02:52:38
Why would there be?
02:52:39
We have appointees on other nonprofits that can't make us write their own, amend their bylaws.
02:52:44
I mean, they could just make it legal if there's any issues.
02:52:49
I can't understand.
SPEAKER_17
02:52:50
It's my understanding that this is something that you previously considered last year and that you approved.
02:52:59
So I'm not going to say that you can't do it.
02:53:02
It's a bit of an unusual circumstance.
02:53:08
It's not something that city council typically gets into in a landlord tenant situation.
02:53:16
But as you said, if you are offering a reduced rental, you were looking for something in return.
02:53:28
It's just a very unusual situation.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
02:53:35
Well, if I may, I mean, there's something similar to this the way this council and in partnership with Albemarle County went forward and changed
02:53:46
legislation at the state level to allow elected persons to be members of the tourist bureau.
02:53:53
In our case, it's the Shostal Albemarle Visitor and Conference Board.
02:53:57
And that was because between the two city and county entities, our transient occupancy tax was basically giving the board, the CACBB, close to $2 million total, $1.8 million exactly.
02:54:15
that gave rise to a lot of concern on this council as well as the Board of Supervisors that we were not having oversight over public monies, over public resources.
02:54:26
And we won the day in the General Assembly and we will be changing the governance structure of the CAZCBB and then putting some representation of council and board on that body.
02:54:38
So that this is being done and it's directly related, directly related
02:54:45
to our responsibility of being stewards of the public money and public resources, as is that building.
02:54:51
So I'm afraid I can't give up on that one.
SPEAKER_31
02:54:56
Well maybe there's a proposal that we could make because I accepted the nomination to this position but not for the full two years I did it and said I'll give you six months to try and help bring everything up to speed so I can go back to the board and talk to the board and ask them would we be willing to accept appointments and do it for those six months while we're putting other people on board and setting the board together for the future
02:55:24
and maybe that's an alternative that we can look at.
02:55:29
We do plan on new leadership after six months.
02:55:32
I'm just in this to continue what we started last year and see it through.
02:55:37
I've already told the board if we have candidates that come in and they're qualified to be elected to office that I would go ahead and step down at that point too because I have plenty of other commitments.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
02:55:49
I just want to clarify, it doesn't necessarily mean that we would put counselors on your... No, that's true.
02:55:54
We would put appointees that counsel selects on your board.
SPEAKER_31
02:55:58
I understand.
02:55:59
I understand.
02:56:00
Now I have to go back to the board to speak to them about that, but I think that's at least something that we can get to a compromise.
02:56:07
And I'd have to ask them... And what were the number of board members?
Heather Hill
Vice Mayor, City Council
02:56:11
It was like a fraction of the total, and I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_31
02:56:13
It said it was one-third.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
02:56:15
That was the proposal.
02:56:16
If there were eight, it would be two.
02:56:19
If there were nine, it would be three.
02:56:23
I'm just confused because it's not like a negotiation.
Maurice Jones
City Manager
02:56:29
I don't know what your leverage is.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
02:56:35
I mean you guys were like in the basement and there was no...
SPEAKER_31
02:56:42
Things have changed in the leadership which I think we all agree for the good and I think we're on a good trajectory at this point.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
02:56:50
That may be so but there's still a very clear well-cooked set of requirements by the governing body that
SPEAKER_31
02:56:58
Would you agree that the other conditions do provide the oversight that you're looking for?
02:57:04
No, not at all.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
02:57:05
I think if you look at the minutes of our discussion, this was very clearly the requirement of the council was that council should have a substantial say in the governance in the fiduciary board of directors.
02:57:18
That was exactly why we put in that there should be a third, that we should have appointment rights over the board.
02:57:23
That's it.
SPEAKER_31
02:57:27
I'm just going to have to go back to the board.
02:57:28
I would like to make that suggestion to do that for three months and maybe you would see for six months and see what happens with the board from that point forward.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
02:57:36
I'm not understanding where the limitation is at the time.
SPEAKER_31
02:57:40
I can't change it right now and have to speak to the board and that was the board decision so I'm just bringing it to you at this point.
02:57:47
Okay.
02:57:48
So.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
02:57:48
Oh, Mayor Walker, just for the record, I would just like to say that I'm not interested in any term limit.
02:57:55
on this.
02:57:56
I am very strongly in favor of the terms that we set forth several months ago that we need to have council appointees on the board.
02:58:08
I just wanted to make that very clear.
02:58:10
We're not voting on anything tonight, I don't think.
02:58:12
But I do think you need some direction.
02:58:17
And again, I appreciate what you've done.
02:58:19
I feel the enthusiasm.
02:58:21
I think this is exactly what we need.
02:58:25
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
SPEAKER_31
02:58:27
Well, you're also asking, you're saying no term limits.
02:58:30
I mean, is this in perpetuity for 15 years or however long it may end up being?
02:58:35
I mean, it doesn't designate that in the terms, only for this one lease.
02:58:39
What happens at the end of the next lease?
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
02:58:45
There's nothing wrong with having clarifying questions that would happen afterward, but it's OK.
SPEAKER_31
02:58:51
Professor Jordan says he might have a solution or an idea.
SPEAKER_14
02:58:55
if you may.
SPEAKER_05
02:59:00
Good evening members of the city council.
02:59:02
I'm professor of in Jordan, University of Virginia.
02:59:05
I've been on the plantation there for 40 years.
02:59:08
I specialize in Civil War history and African-American history.
02:59:12
I've been on the board at the Albemarle County, Governor of Charlottesville Historical Society for two weeks.
02:59:18
For two weeks.
02:59:20
And I would not join a sinking ship.
02:59:26
I believe that things can be fixed if given the opportunity.
02:59:31
The meetings I have attended so far have not dissuaded me from the decision I made to join the board.
02:59:37
Now, the issue at hand at the moment is about having three members appointed by this body to the board.
02:59:44
I simply would like to propose that
02:59:47
Well, I have a question.
02:59:48
Are you saying that the three members would have to be residents of the city of Charlottesville?
02:59:52
Now, if that is the case, I can tell you that the board is in the process of approaching people in Charlottesville to see if they would be willing to be on this board.
03:00:03
If this can be done, this might resolve the issue here, at least for the length of the term of Mr. Lister, which is supposedly as president will expire in August.
03:00:13
I say this only because as an academic,
03:00:16
and as a historian my goal is to provide solutions to historical issues and problems.
03:00:22
I would like to think that what I have proposed before you might go in some ways to addressing that.
03:00:28
But I want to assure you that I personally, being a Charlottesville historian, I've written books on Charlottesville and articles on Charlottesville history, I can assure you that I would not be a member of this board if I did not believe in the future of this society.
03:00:42
And I believe, well not that I believe, I would
03:00:46
I respectfully ask you to give this board the opportunity to initiate some of the changes that we are trying to do to help us to support Mr. Lister in this work.
03:00:56
I'm very impressed with Mr. Lister.
03:00:57
I did not know him two weeks ago when I joined this board.
03:01:01
Give us the opportunity to make things right.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
03:01:04
Thank you.
03:01:08
Why does it matter whether they come from council appointment or if you all select them?
SPEAKER_05
03:01:14
If it was a requirement?
03:01:15
Just from my point of view, my understanding is that if you point, if the council is going to appoint three people to this board, I assume that they would have to be Charlottesville city residents.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
03:01:24
No.
SPEAKER_05
03:01:26
And I'm speaking from my own experience from last year with the civil war commission, which, you know, I was not appointed to that because I was told because I was an Albemarle County resident, which I am.
03:01:37
So that's what I'm trying to find out from you folks.
03:01:40
I don't really know.
03:01:41
So what I'm saying is if we if the board can convince three people from the city to join the board, wouldn't that meet the condition that you're trying to set?
03:01:50
That's just what I'm just asking.
03:01:52
I'm not telling you.
03:01:53
I'm just telling
03:01:54
making this point.
Heather Hill
Vice Mayor, City Council
03:01:55
I don't know that it was a condition of residence.
03:01:57
It was more just to ensure that there was diversity on the board in a number of different forms.
03:02:01
And I guess my question would be to my colleagues, because again, this was discussed last year.
03:02:06
Is it possible just for us to evaluate the current makeup of the board?
03:02:10
Because it has had a lot of turnover just to understand what is the experience base and what is the profile of this board to see are there already folks in positions that we would be comfortable with?
03:02:19
I'm not saying that we
03:02:20
We aren't going to appoint additional people, but I just even think it's a starting point to understand what is the makeup of the board to even know where we're going to go beyond that if we were to appoint directly ourselves.
03:02:29
I'm just trying to understand is there any kind of way to work together with this group.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
03:02:33
Well, I just have, this is all creating another question for you.
03:02:40
May I ask a question?
03:02:42
I'm going to turn it around and ask you, given that this is not a majority, we're not making appointments that are a majority of your board, I'm asking you, what is it that is causing you so much consternation for us to appoint people to a body that is sitting on property that the city owns and must be a good steward of?
SPEAKER_31
03:03:05
Well, as I explained earlier is because the other 10 conditions would provide that information back to you.
03:03:13
The other option is that if, as Vice Mayor Hill says, you may find that some of the applicants or the nominees might actually be people you were planning on appointing.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
03:03:26
This is like lawyer talk.
03:03:28
We're looking for governance.
03:03:30
You haven't responded.
03:03:30
So governance, it's not a matter of getting information on one time thing.
03:03:33
It's a matter of knowing that the people who make ongoing decisions are people that we appointed.
03:03:38
And you haven't answered Ms. Galvin's question, which is, what's your concern about that?
03:03:42
It's not a matter of information.
03:03:44
It's what's your concern about having three appointees who help govern the organization on a weekly basis.
SPEAKER_31
03:03:50
The board has a variety of reasons.
03:03:52
Each board member has their own.
03:03:53
And the vote was taken.
03:03:56
what they decided.
03:03:57
Right now our bylaws don't allow for it as it is.
03:04:01
We'd have to go through a bylaw amendment, which we do plan on doing in this summer.
03:04:07
But in the meantime, that's just one of the conditions that they agreed that they couldn't abide by.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
03:04:12
So the lease was up March 1st?
03:04:14
Is that?
Maurice Jones
City Manager
03:04:16
We're on a month by month lease with them.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
03:04:20
So how long are we continuing that?
Maurice Jones
City Manager
03:04:23
Well it depends on what the council wants to do.
03:04:26
We've been operating under that for quite some time now because council identified some concerns as Mr. Lister and others have talked about responding to and so it's up to council to say do you want to
03:04:42
Go back and have a formal lease that's longer, or would you rather at this point continue on month to month to see, you know, how things progress over the course of the spring and summer and into the fall?
SPEAKER_31
03:04:54
Might I also add that, you know, this is part of, in our eyes, there is negotiation.
03:05:01
You may be able to say, here are three people, and we might say, that's perfect.
03:05:06
Instead of, it seems more of a heavy-handed approach of, here, these three and that's it.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
03:05:13
So how much time do you all need to discuss as a board whether you all want to amend your bylaws to meet the request of council to appoint members to your board?
SPEAKER_31
03:05:29
Well, it would probably only take one board meeting to determine all that.
03:05:34
So I could schedule a board meeting and get everybody to come and discuss it.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
03:05:41
So you need a date?
Maurice Jones
City Manager
03:05:45
If you could do it within the next week or so, so we can inform the council by March 19th, that would be helpful.
Heather Hill
Vice Mayor, City Council
03:05:51
OK. Because right now the lease is active on a rolling basis.
03:05:56
So when you hit the first of the month, it automatically activates for the following month, unless we make some other decision.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
03:06:00
Unless we make other decisions.
03:06:03
So Madam Mayor, one approach might be that we would, if there's consensus or three votes here,
03:06:11
If we're willing to go with, I mean I guess the question is what we're going with or how long, but if this is the only hang up, but it's a real hang up, that we would make this conditional on you all changing your bylaws and agreeing to let council do what we required and then, then it could just be in a consent agenda going forward and we just don't have to talk about it again.
03:06:31
But, but that would be, because a lot else has been done, but it is quite, it feels like it's important to the
SPEAKER_31
03:06:37
From our position, we're looking to work with you and partner with you.
03:06:41
A lot of things have changed.
03:06:44
So if this is a consideration you could give on our behalf as well, we're still interested in talking about that.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
03:06:52
I'm not interested in that.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
03:06:56
And again, you keep repeating that a lot has changed.
03:07:01
We have not seen that.
03:07:03
Okay, the only thing we have control over are appointees and we need to make sure that there are people that this governing body feels comfortable with is working on your board.
SPEAKER_31
03:07:17
Great, so if we had three people that met your conditions then you would be in agreement with that.
03:07:24
So if we had three qualified people that you normally would have been happy with, we would have to get rid of those three people.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
03:07:33
A lot goes into our appointments, a lot.
03:07:36
We take applications, we review, sometimes we interview.
03:07:40
It's an independent process and they're meant to be independent appointees when we do this sort of thing.
03:07:44
And that's designed that way specifically so that we have
03:07:48
our agents who we have chosen to be on a board.
03:07:51
That was what went into this deliberation.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
03:07:53
I'll take it back to the board for you.
03:07:56
So I think that would, if you would, just take that back to your board.
03:08:00
And if your board refuses to do that, then that's a haul of the ballgame.
03:08:04
In which case, we're talking about not renewing the lease.
03:08:10
Okay.
03:08:12
We want to work with you, but you've got to work with us.
SPEAKER_31
03:08:16
Well, we've met 10 conditions with one caveat.
03:08:19
I'd say that's working with you.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
03:08:22
We didn't say any of them are optional.
SPEAKER_31
03:08:26
It's part of the lease negotiation.
03:08:29
That's what we're making with you.
03:08:30
So if you're not going to see it that way, I don't know what to tell you.
SPEAKER_28
03:08:40
Would it be like the planning commission where you would invite people to apply to serve on that particular board and then in the future they would apply and be interviewed and then you would make those appointments?
03:09:01
Is that how this is envisioned?
03:09:02
And if so, are there any other independent non-profits in Charlottesville where you do that routinely?
03:09:08
That's a separate organization.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
03:09:10
The LEAP board is like this.
03:09:11
What are the other ones?
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
03:09:12
We appoint members to Jaunt.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
03:09:14
Yeah, the LEAP, Jaunt.
03:09:17
I'm the city council appointed to you as the LEAP.
SPEAKER_28
03:09:21
But you're an elected person.
Heather Hill
Vice Mayor, City Council
03:09:22
But we have other people who we appoint to, yeah.
03:09:26
There's non-council members too.
03:09:27
Java.
Maurice Jones
City Manager
03:09:29
It's not unprecedented.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
03:09:33
And it's also very common that the boards that we are making appointments to, the chair, vice chair, will write letters of recommendation, will give us people that they support.
03:09:49
That happens many times.
03:09:52
And we take those under consideration.
03:09:55
So this is not unusual.
03:09:57
What has been unusual
03:09:59
was what was going on there.
SPEAKER_28
03:10:02
And we couldn't agree more with that.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
03:10:04
Yes.
03:10:05
And that was we never wanted to go back there again.
SPEAKER_28
03:10:08
No, none of us want to go back there.
03:10:09
And it was sad and just unnecessary ill will.
03:10:13
And we are all, I mean, I can tell you and I've written to you that there's a number of former directors and board members who have come out of the woodwork once they learned of his resignation.
03:10:23
And that era of dysfunction is over.
03:10:26
It is done.
03:10:28
It's done because he's gone.
03:10:29
So and everyone who is involved is absolutely committed to professionalizing this organization and making it truly inclusive and representative of this community.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
03:10:38
Well, thank you.
03:10:39
I appreciate that.
03:10:40
The hard work, though, is informing your so-called constitution.
03:10:44
And we're going to be we want to participate in the membership of that new government.
03:10:50
And I think you've heard that message really clearly.
03:10:53
Appreciate the work you've done.
03:10:54
All those items, none of them were negotiable.
03:10:58
and I think it's going to be, it's not unusual for us to have appointments to nonprofit boards and especially a board that's sitting on land that the city owns.
03:11:11
So I think, look forward to hearing your results and we look forward to working with you.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
03:11:17
Thank you for all you've done.
RESOLUTION: Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville (DBAC) Funding Request - $75,000
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
03:11:34
So next we have a presentation about the Downtown Business Association on funding requests of $75,000.
03:11:46
Jason Ness, Business Development Manager is presenting.
SPEAKER_27
03:11:49
Mayor Walker, Vice Mayor Hill and others.
03:11:52
I'm Jason Ness.
03:11:52
I work in the Office of Economic Development.
03:11:54
I'm here tonight to discuss the Downtown Mall and give an update with the city's efforts to address the Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville's concerns and ideas for the Downtown Mall.
03:12:03
Additionally, there's a resolution before you to support the downtown area with the marketing assistance grant.
03:12:08
As a quick overview, nearly a year ago, DBAC increased their interest in city services on the downtown mall.
03:12:14
This began with a mall walkthrough with key city staff and DBAC representatives in March.
03:12:19
As a result, DBAC formed a budget sub subcommittee and that group has began in earnest in the fall.
03:12:25
This group had a meeting in November with city staff to discuss small operations and the upcoming budget cycle.
03:12:30
Following that meeting, DBAC sent a letter to council highlighting 20 items and requests.
03:12:35
As a result, city staff had two subsequent meetings with DBAC to review the letter and the OED staff memo included in your packet tonight highlights the letter and the current status of each of those requests.
03:12:46
I'm happy to answer any questions and provide information as council considers providing DBAC with this one-time marketing grant.
03:12:51
These grants have been awarded at various times to DBAC and the city has supported the downtown mall since it was formed over 40 years ago.
03:12:59
We see this marketing grant as another example of the city's support for this vital district in our city.
03:13:04
And the intention of this grant is to support local businesses that play an important role in our community.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
03:13:12
I do have a question.
03:13:14
Could you detail how your office would provide assistance as well as oversight to the management of this grant?
SPEAKER_27
03:13:23
Sure.
03:13:23
As we mentioned before, we've provided these grants to not only the Downtown Business Association, but we have other marketing programs, mainly the construction assistance program for business areas that are having large construction projects.
03:13:38
The request that we're working with DBAC on, they would need to submit a detailed events calendar as well as a marketing plan that we would work with them on
03:13:49
to see what that is and then work on performance metrics and goals from all those events and then follow up with them after each significant spend to see how the event went and provide feedback.
03:14:03
And that is, it's reimbursement based.
03:14:05
So they would submit an invoice and a letter and the receipts to the city.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
03:14:09
Is this a, in my conversation with Mr. Jones earlier in the week, this isn't necessarily a one for one match.
03:14:18
We could set a limit to what they need to match because I looked at the history of their matching and the most they've ever matched was 50,000, not 75,000.
SPEAKER_27
03:14:28
Correct.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
03:14:29
So we could set it to a lower level?
SPEAKER_27
03:14:31
Yes, a lower ratio.
03:14:33
Yes, you could.
Heather Hill
Vice Mayor, City Council
03:14:44
I was just kind of curious of thoughts of just how prescriptive do we want to be or should we be being in terms of how these funds, the way in which these funds are allocated.
03:14:53
Obviously with diversity being at the forefront of wanting to make sure that this downtown area is more welcoming to a broader base of our population.
03:15:03
I'm just kind of curious of what kind of influence we may have and how prescriptive we would be with these marketing dollars.
03:15:10
because I certainly feel like we have an ownership also of promoting the downtown area.
03:15:14
I mean, this is the city, and we own the downtown area, and I want to support these businesses.
03:15:19
But I also am sensitive to the fact that there are certain types of events I think we should be partnering with them to increase promotion of, to increase the diversity of those that are frequenting the downtown mall.
03:15:30
So I'm just trying to get a sense for, you know.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
03:15:32
I'm wondering if Mayor and Vice Mayor, if we could ask Ms. Fenton to come to the podium to see what's
03:15:40
Have her explain some of the ideas that she's expressed about programming and marketing outreach to underrepresented groups.
SPEAKER_33
03:15:48
Since this fall, we've been having regular weekly meetings trying to brainstorm and come up with ideas of things that we can do that reaches out to the community.
03:15:58
One of the programs we initiated in the fall was Free Arts in the Park, where we have free classes that we did from September till December.
03:16:06
that's open to anybody in the community.
03:16:08
We ask people near or on the downtown mall to volunteer their time, volunteer supplies.
03:16:14
And we did that in the fall.
03:16:16
We didn't publicize it, partially because we wanted to try it, see if it worked.
03:16:21
It did work.
03:16:22
So going forward, we're going to be doing that again in the spring.
03:16:25
So we feel that that has the ability to reach out across every community.
03:16:30
So we're going to be working with the West African drummers.
03:16:35
a singing program with somebody else.
03:16:37
We're looking at doing Tai Chi and yoga so that we're going across a broad spectrum but it's free classes that would engage the whole community.
03:16:47
We had asked to do banners on the mall for Black History Month which was done very quickly and we've reached out to Andrea at the Jefferson Center to see if next year we could do a sort of a contest to design
03:17:04
banners for the mall.
03:17:05
And if we can get that to work, one of the thoughts is to have artists submit their drawings, people vote on them, create the banners, and then possibly even have award prizes for whoever does the best banners, possibly do an auction of those banners to help fund the program.
03:17:23
So those are some of the kinds of outreach programs we're doing.
03:17:26
And what we're, I think that sometimes we get called as being the business versus
03:17:34
social issues.
03:17:35
And we don't, we feel that we are a major employer for people that, when we make more money, we're the ones that pay more salaries.
03:17:48
We're not like a large corporation, you know, where you get a tax break and the money goes back to the owners.
03:17:56
I hear from everybody that before the downturn
03:18:00
stories about giving raises and then all of a sudden there's a downtown on the mall and all of a sudden you don't have that funds to pay salaries.
03:18:08
There's a lot of business owners that had to take out loans to make their payroll and we don't think about that.
03:18:14
But we're still part of the community and we're trying to think of what are the ideas and I would urge anybody in the community that wants to partner with us on any kind of event that we'd like to do that.
03:18:25
that we're looking at all possibilities and I think there's a huge interest so our membership has doubled probably since this summer because of concerns both about the economy but also that concern about caring about the community and trying to figure out what we can be doing and yeah it takes a while to figure it out and we're still working on it but I think a lot of this funding allows us then
03:18:50
We've tried to create programs and they're small because we don't have the funding to promote them.
03:18:55
And if we can promote them, get more people involved with it, it allows it to grow, it helps the downtown businesses, but it also helps the community to have a focal space and a place to be and to have events that are open to everybody.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
03:19:14
One more question for Ms. Fenton.
03:19:20
What if we on council specifically asked, for example, that you make a special effort to do outreach to the neighborhoods south of the downtown mall?
03:19:35
Would that be something?
SPEAKER_33
03:19:37
I think we'd be happy to.
03:19:39
And if you look at our request, particularly like we asked for lighting, and at one of the budget meetings I was asked where we wanted the lighting to go.
03:19:48
and I chose two spots.
03:19:50
One was to go north to the north downtown neighborhood and the other is to go south to Garrett Street to Friendship Court.
03:19:58
So we are trying to reach out and we'd be happy to reach out on programming and everything else.
03:20:03
And sometimes it's just making those connections and figuring out who to work with and who wants to work with us.
03:20:08
But yeah, absolutely.
03:20:13
And can I add one more thing which I think you know sometimes gets forgotten is most of what the city spends money on is investing in people and the money goes out and you see results on people's lives but it's so well documented that when you invest in marketing and when a city partners with downtown you get a return on investment and the figures are from every dollar you spend you get up to five to seven dollars back
03:20:41
So on a $75,000 marketing program, I think the city can easily expect to get $375,000 to $500,000 back in income, which is about the money that was lost this fall when we had the downturn as the results of August 12th.
03:21:00
And I think when you're looking at your city figures, it looks like things are better, but the city doesn't have the ability to distinguish by neighborhood what's going on
03:21:12
and if you talk to the business people downtown they'll still tell you that they are down, that maybe there's an increase in other places but they're down or you know it may be happening elsewhere.
03:21:24
So I think it's really necessary and I also see it as the city is the economic driver, downtown is the economic driver for the city and if we thrive the city gets that extra
03:21:39
42% in the budget to spend on all the social programs that everybody wants.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
03:21:48
So in the past, has the return that she's talking about, have we seen that in investments that the city has made in downtown?
SPEAKER_27
03:21:59
The most significant investment was in 2007 and 2008 with the re-bricking.
03:22:04
and then also we supported them with money this fall for the holidays.
03:22:10
Looking at those numbers and how you saw a small uptick towards November and December, I would think so.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
03:22:19
I would just like to say too that the last time we had numbers where we were able to look at the downtown mall as a geographic district, which is about 1% of the land area of the city,
03:22:34
it generated 16% of all city tax revenue.
03:22:39
And it generated 22.26% of the meals tax revenue and 8.77% of the sales tax revenue.
03:22:51
So just on those two taxes alone, it was a major, major generator of revenue for the city and on a very, very small postage stamp size of land.
03:23:03
So I think that, and we do want to get more data moving forward on that.
03:23:11
We were able to do that once, and hopefully that can get more systematized as we get better technology.
03:23:20
But it's an important data point, I think, to understand just how much this small area of the city generates revenue.
Heather Hill
Vice Mayor, City Council
03:23:28
This is a one-time thing.
03:23:30
This is not a sustaining thing like some of the other budget items that were being compared against this.
03:23:34
And it's coming from our council's strategic initiatives fund.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
03:23:40
But I also think the reason that it's being requested, so the
03:23:44
Meeting from Saturday, Parks and Rec, bring that up.
03:23:50
You know, they did a PowerPoint and they talked about that there was a significant, the day, the summer events, August 12th, they had to close down the market.
03:24:00
But every other Saturday after that point, they had similar
03:24:10
they had similar interests in the market as they had had before.
03:24:14
So when you're talking about safety concerns or business dwindling because of the summer events, you have the market that's an outdoor space where people can't really go anywhere for protection and the very next Saturday they were back in full swing.
03:24:32
So it's hard for me to wrap my head around the
03:24:35
The public sometimes we get hundreds and hundreds of emails and some of them are
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
03:24:56
You know, some of them have facts that are relevant when we discuss with the public.
03:24:59
So this was one from, that we got today.
03:25:01
My name is Tracy Riffle and I'm the owner of Smoke Break Vapes at 108 Second Street, NW.
03:25:07
Tonight the City Council will be voting on whether or not $75,000 should be allocated to DBAC for marketing as part of a recovery package.
03:25:13
Below I have attached four photos of my gross sales of both of my business locations from July 1, 2016 to December 31, 2016, also the numbers for the same months of 2017.
03:25:23
In an industry that's mushrooming right now, my gross sales in Charlottesville are down $20,000 and my customer count is down by 1,000 customers in just those few short months compared to the previous years.
03:25:32
My sales in Orange has another store gone up.
03:25:34
$30,000 in my customer account has risen by almost 1,000.
03:25:38
As you can clearly see, the events of August 12th have crippled my downtown shop, whereas the sales in my Orange location have gone up.
03:25:43
We do everything exactly the same in both shops.
03:25:46
I've been open for three years, was voted the best vape shop in Charlottesville by the SEVA Weekly, and I have a prime location.
03:25:51
All the cards are stacked in our favor, yet the difference in the two-year comparison is pretty alarming.
03:25:56
So I don't even know the vape industry.
03:26:01
I don't feel one way or the other about it, but these are constituents of ours.
03:26:05
They do employ people here most significantly, I think, and this is what we're hearing.
03:26:13
Anyway, I'm inclined to support this for reasons like this.
Heather Hill
Vice Mayor, City Council
03:26:16
And that was just one example of many that I feel like we've heard.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
03:26:19
Right, and these are small businesses.
03:26:20
I don't think she's, this is not some acid profiteer.
03:26:24
I think she owns two stores.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
03:26:25
Is that the only bait shop in town?
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
03:26:29
No, I think there's the one on the...
03:26:35
I don't know why that matters.
03:26:37
We could easily have gotten another email from the other one, so...
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
03:26:43
Okay.
03:26:43
Do we need them?
SPEAKER_27
03:26:47
Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_33
03:26:49
Are there any other... Can I add one more thing though?
03:26:51
I think the city market's very different from a retail store, and it's a very different
03:26:56
clientele and customer base that's going to come for that market, which is people that are close and walking by.
03:27:03
Whereas for your retail, you're looking for... No, I'm not saying that it's the same.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
03:27:09
What I'm saying is that part of what I heard before was the safety issues and why people are not coming downtown anymore.
03:27:15
And if people are coming downtown just a block over, then I don't, and in a very open space, it's just hard for me to wrap my head around that the safety issue is the issue.
03:27:26
So that was my point.
SPEAKER_33
03:27:29
But I think they're very different.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
03:27:31
But they're still outdoors, right?
03:27:33
There are still people in the downtown area, and they are still coming, even though the events of the summer happened.
03:27:41
They had to shut the market.
03:27:43
down that day, you know, as with other things.
03:27:47
But they were, according to the slides that we saw this weekend, that they were back in, you know, full swing the next week and have been since.
03:27:57
So I'm just addressing what I've, you know, the safety concern aspects of why business may be at the point that it's at currently.
03:28:06
And I'm just saying with that comparison, even though I understand it's different,
03:28:10
that if it was a safety concern, I would think that on Saturday mornings that people would have an issue going to the parking lot just a block from the mall.
Heather Hill
Vice Mayor, City Council
03:28:23
The only thing I would just comment to that is the friends that I have in the county, it's not about the Saturday morning they're concerned.
03:28:29
It's about coming and dining in the evenings and staying in the evening hours, which is a huge revenue time for our downtown area.
03:28:36
And I just really think that we have to compare those apples and oranges in a way.
03:28:41
and I just hear from them just straight from their mouth like I'm just not coming downtown because the perception and often the reality is it's not safe and it's turning me away and I have so many other options I'd rather be at.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
03:28:57
If I may make some comments.
03:28:58
I think August 2017 was a real jolt for the downtown mall.
03:29:08
It was a jolt for the entire city.
03:29:10
but that was the business district that was very close to ground zero in our city.
03:29:18
At the same time that's happening, you do see that there's the growth of other destinations in the county and in that period of time where we saw that 13% drop in retail sales, in meals tax,
03:29:36
Sales in the citywide was in that interim was where other people decided to go elsewhere.
03:29:46
The point of marketing is to get people to be attracted again, to understand things are better, things are well again, please come back home.
03:29:59
The other opportunity that this presents is because of all the revelations of
03:30:06
of August 12, the conversations that have been happening in our low wealth communities.
03:30:15
I've shared some of those communications with Ms. Fenton.
03:30:20
There is now an understanding, more so than ever before, we have to do overt outreach to our neighbors south of the downtown mall who do not feel comfortable coming on the mall.
03:30:32
That is not the same thing that's going on in the north or the west or the east.
03:30:37
where there is comfort that people come down.
03:30:40
But I think this is an opportunity to to redress the issues that have been communicated to us about how the downtown mall is has not been as diverse, I would say, as income diverse as we would like.
03:30:55
And I do believe that with some direction that we've been giving to the to the downtown business association, that we would like aggressive outreach
03:31:06
in partnership with our neighborhoods to the south of the mall.
03:31:11
I do feel comfortable in giving this this one time grant.
03:31:16
I would also like to ask that it be matched at the thirty thousand dollar level, because that seems to be on balance with the DBAC has been able to contribute in the past whenever we've we've created a matching grant opportunity.
03:31:31
So that would be the one amendment that I would make is to make it very clear
03:31:34
that there would be a $30,000 matching grant from DBAC to receive the $75,000.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
03:31:41
But if this is something that they are saying that they need, why wouldn't they match it dollar for dollar?
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
03:31:56
I've given you my argument.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
03:32:00
Even if we're talking about the events of August 12th and the downturn, there's still been major issues like you're talking about and there wasn't necessarily a request to fix that before putting it in with this package to make sure that it's
03:32:18
you know at the forefront of the discussion and if businesses are going if clients are doing business elsewhere right is that because of the summer or is that because the other places are more enticing to them and that's a different I would argue the other places are much more exclusive and they are very private
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
03:32:41
When you look at Stonefield, that's all private property.
03:32:43
They can tell anybody they want to get off their property.
03:32:46
We are public land.
03:32:48
This is a public space, and that is something worth celebrating.
03:32:53
We are a public space on the downtown mall.
03:32:57
People that campaign in any of the shopping centers on 29, in fact, someone was arrested for campaigning.
03:33:05
He was trespassing, and he was arrested.
03:33:09
That can't happen.
03:33:10
We are truly public space on the downtown mall.
03:33:13
And this is an opportunity to both reinforce those.
03:33:16
These are mom and pop businesses.
03:33:18
This is not Wall Street.
03:33:21
These are people that have put their lives, their heart and soul into creating wonderful places that employ lots of people that give us a lot of a lot of a lot of people that that feel that this is
03:33:39
This is their home.
03:33:40
And we now have an opportunity to make good on these conversations that we've all been having since August about how can we be even more inclusive than we already have attempted to be.
03:33:55
So I see this as an opportunity.
03:33:57
I do see that we're asking the DBAC to put some of its own skin in the game, but I was putting it at the level that they had demonstrated they'd been able to do in the past.
03:34:09
and I do think that this was a very, you know, extenuating circumstance that's colliding with also changes in the county and we need to make sure that we make them competitive and strong again.
Heather Hill
Vice Mayor, City Council
03:34:22
Yeah, I don't think it's exclusive to the events of the summer.
03:34:24
I think that there's these other factors that involve the county and marketing does really provide an avenue for really promoting again the downtown area and I think it benefits the city and not just the businesses.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
03:34:39
Mr. Jones, can I just have one other question?
03:34:41
So it does say the staff recommendation, one-time marketing grant, it can be either in-kind or monetary.
03:34:47
Is it dollar to dollar?
03:34:49
Is that what's meant?
03:34:51
What's the recommendation?
Maurice Jones
City Manager
03:34:52
I mean historically it's been dollar for dollar at lower levels but I think a lower level would make sense because of the situation we find ourselves in.
03:35:05
If this was something that was going to happen on a regular basis I think we'd be in a different place but because it's a one-time gift to help with marketing I think you could lower it.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
03:35:18
Ready for a motion?
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
03:35:19
So I move that we pass the resolution to support the downtown marketing efforts, $75,000 with the following amendment to be matched by the DBAC with a minimum amount of $30,000.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
03:35:32
So why 30?
03:35:35
Why can't it be?
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
03:35:39
Well, I mean, that's debatable.
03:35:41
I will entertain a friendly amendment.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
03:35:43
So I'm going to second that.
Heather Hill
Vice Mayor, City Council
03:35:45
And is that in-kind or cash?
03:35:48
Or it's open to either?
03:35:50
Because in the write-up that Mr. Nessa put together, it seemed like in the past they have matched it with both in-kind and in-cash.
03:35:56
Yes.
03:35:58
Nikuyah, is there a different amount?
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
03:36:03
I mean, I think that if you all were going to give them the money, that they should have to match it, which was originally
03:36:17
So that's what we were under the impression when we arrived here today.
03:36:31
That was right.
03:36:33
It was happening.
03:36:34
That it would be a match of 70
Maurice Jones
City Manager
03:36:37
There's no expectation when we come before city council that the council can make that big changes as they deem fit.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
03:36:46
So I would, if I might, my explanation would be that it could because this is a very small operation that are facing a real shock and we do have a lot of evidence that is real evidence of the, and data of a downturn and it is, my argument would be
03:37:01
It is distinguishable from a lot of other things because this is a public investment.
03:37:05
We spent how many?
03:37:05
Eight million dollars to rebrick the downtown mall.
03:37:07
We stood fast against an effort to privatize the Water Street parking garage, which has been expensive and arduous and difficult.
03:37:14
But we have done it because we helped build the garage.
03:37:16
We're members in a condo association governing.
03:37:19
We keep the parking rates lower than they otherwise would be.
03:37:22
So the whole envelope is a public enterprise.
03:37:25
And that's one of the reasons that the businesses that are keeping this going.
03:37:28
And it is different.
03:37:29
The reason that panhandling
03:37:31
can happen in lots of the political activities in Nassau Mall because that's public property.
03:37:34
It cannot happen at Stonefield because it's private property.
03:37:38
So this is an investment of the city of Charlottesville.
03:37:40
And it is part of our whole economic engine because it is a public open space that the city has committed to trying to keep thrive.
03:37:49
And it does have threats.
03:37:51
So I would say that the $30,000 can be in kind or monetary and that it's in staff's good judgment, which we've used in the past to
03:38:01
show that this is meeting our standards.
03:38:03
That would be my, and I'm not sure if we need an amendment to your... No, okay.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
03:38:10
So I just amended the motion to include the 30,000.
03:38:13
And I would just perhaps offer too that we could request that Mr. Ness reports to us and, you know, within six months.
03:38:28
So we, and I could say that to be matched by DBAC with a minimum amount of $30,000 with a follow-up report within six months, with a progress report within six months.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
03:38:47
Or we could have a mid-course progress report.
03:38:49
I mean, we could have something sooner than that if it wouldn't be...
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
03:38:57
I think that because we have a staff person who's monitoring this.
03:39:06
This is not like a staff person monitoring our nonprofit organizations as they run their business.
03:39:13
This is a staff person under our Office of Economic Development who is monitoring this activity.
03:39:19
So I am very comfortable in Mr. Jason Ness's ability to do that.
03:39:24
And I would just say that
03:39:26
We have a bi-annual report on the progress of the marketing and the outreach efforts.
03:39:39
So that's the motion.
03:39:40
I'll second it.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
03:39:41
Okay, vote.
03:39:51
3 to 1.
03:39:56
All right, and now it's break time.
SPEAKER_14
03:40:08
We don't need a break, right?
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
03:40:17
We're taking a break now?
03:40:18
Is the meeting over?
03:40:20
Oh, I'm sorry.
03:40:22
OK.
03:40:40
The End
03:42:04
you
SPEAKER_14
03:42:57
Ooh, I love it all, love it all, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
03:43:26
Back in session.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
03:43:41
Other business?
03:43:46
All right.
03:43:48
Matters by the public.
MATTERS BY THE PUBLIC
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
03:43:51
Anyone wish to speak?
Olivia Gabbay
03:43:58
Hi, my name is Olivia Patton.
03:44:00
I am a resident of the county.
03:44:02
I was a resident of Charlottesville for six years before moving to the county.
03:44:06
I think that this is
03:44:08
Pretty big joke of an agreement, the Downtown Business Association.
03:44:12
There's been added competition.
03:44:15
Sure, that has caused their businesses to decrease, but in even the example of the smoke shop, there were two other smoke shops within a mile that opened up at the same time.
03:44:26
It's really stupid.
03:44:27
I just, I can't believe that it passed.
03:44:29
I have seen many, many proposals come up here that have requested one-time monetary donations or
03:44:37
because that's what this is, is a donation to the stupid businesses and they don't pass even though they are people who are not making half as much of what the owners of these downtown businesses are.
SPEAKER_43
03:44:51
I just can't believe you guys.
Olivia Gabbay
03:44:53
It's really embarrassing.
03:44:54
You guys have been talking about equity and how you guys want to stand up for us and then you make
03:44:59
decisions like this and it is why nobody likes you.
03:45:02
Nobody feels like you're here for us.
03:45:04
You're here for the rich.
03:45:05
You're here for those who have paid for your campaigns and sure you can say that we need the development in order to pay for all these other things but still you don't even add the money to those other things.
03:45:15
So why the fuck do we care?
03:45:16
Excuse my language.
03:45:18
I just don't understand.
03:45:19
I just can't wrap my head around it.
03:45:21
It seems so silly and so stupid and there's very little public input and I'm just disappointed.
SPEAKER_23
03:45:31
Hi, my name is Lindsay Daniels.
03:45:38
I live in Fifeville and I am the general manager at Revolutionary Soup.
03:45:43
I just wanted to thank you for passing for the DBA because you can hiss me all you want.
03:45:49
Y'all can be disrespectful to Nazis, but we serve vegan food.
03:45:54
I don't know why you're being disrespectful to me.
03:45:56
We're very open to everyone.
03:46:00
Our business supports the downtown mall.
03:46:02
We've been around for 20 years now.
03:46:05
This is not about the owners.
03:46:07
I don't get paid to be here right now.
03:46:11
I'm an employee.
03:46:13
I worked until four, that's what I got paid for.
03:46:15
I stayed downtown all day so that I could come here and talk to you guys because this is about me being able to hire people who need jobs and they walk from Garrett Square to come work with me.
03:46:27
I would really appreciate being able to print more flyers and have more people come in.
03:46:32
The one thing I really wanted to point out about the difference with the market and with people who come to the downtown mall to their businesses, it's about the tourism industry also.
03:46:42
There's a huge thing that I've heard.
03:46:44
I have lots of friends in restaurants and hotels.
03:46:46
There have been so many people calling and saying, can we still come to Charlottesville?
03:46:51
Everyone who comes to the market, not everyone, most people, they're from Charlottesville.
03:46:55
They know that something different is not going to happen that Saturday.
03:46:58
They know that was one Saturday.
03:47:00
But people who are from out of town, I had people from all over, people I went to high school with saying, are you safe two months later?
03:47:10
And that's the impact that we got.
03:47:11
Those are the people who are not coming to RevSoup.
03:47:13
Those are the people who are not coming to the Omni.
03:47:15
So I just wanted to say I really appreciate it and thank you.
SPEAKER_15
03:47:20
I would just say briefly, I mean I agree, I think the downtown business association
03:47:33
and certainly the downtown area and downtown businesses are not the enemy.
03:47:38
Most of these are small, locally owned businesses and that's what needs to be the driver of our local economy.
03:47:45
The issue I have is, this seems to happen a lot, is accurate statements are made about the downtown mall, the challenges that downtown businesses are facing, but I just don't see how the policy connects as a solution to those accurate statements and accurate problems.
03:48:02
Concretely, I mean, I'm just having trouble seeing what $70,000 in marketing campaigns would do structurally to change.
03:48:10
I mean, at least from my perspective, the biggest, and again, I don't think the downtown businesses are the enemy, and I think it's unfortunate that this Band-Aid has been presented as the solution to their problems.
03:48:23
I think if you're looking at the downtown
03:48:25
Area.
03:48:26
The biggest threat I've seen, besides obviously August 12th, is Jaffrey Woodruff buying the Main Street Arena to build an innovation center for tech startups to invest in that displaced S Cafe, displaced a local smoke shop, displaced a couple other businesses
03:48:48
That's the threat to the downtown businesses is rising property values, displacing local businesses so big outside corporations can build these massive, and you mean we're seeing it on the corner with sheets and other national corporations moving and displacing local businesses.
03:49:04
And so I, again, it's not the biggest deal in the world, but I just think it's unfortunate that the conversation ended up centering around $70,000 in marketing that I just, I don't see having any
03:49:15
I hope I'm proven wrong and I hope those resources are used to do outreach to low-wealth communities and are used to generate conversations about how black-owned businesses have been displaced on the mall.
03:49:27
We'll see if that's the case.
03:49:29
Beyond the negativity, let's move it to that larger positive conversation about what's happening to the Main Street arena, what's happening with the Landmark Hotel,
03:49:39
what's happening with zoning and development around the city because that's the fundamental problem.
03:49:44
This is just one thing that flared up.
03:49:46
We need to focus on these big long term structural problems.
03:49:49
Thank you.
SPEAKER_24
03:49:57
Nancy Carpenter, proud resident of this city.
03:50:01
Couple of things I want to touch base on.
03:50:03
One has to do with the upcoming discussion of the SGP on the second street, the amended process that he wants.
03:50:09
He wants to put his, and that's Keith Water, he wants to put his affordable units, if this all goes
03:50:16
through in the neighborhood I live in, in an empty lot right across the street from southern states on Harris Street, if you all haven't gone out there to look at the site or even know where that is.
03:50:28
It's in an area that is not served by transit, so if we're talking about, I don't know, 40, 50 percent AMI individuals, they may be individuals that may be transit-reliant, and so there's no transit there.
03:50:39
The second thing is it is in a, you know, commercial area
03:50:45
and one that I'm sure will have a master plan at some point in time.
03:50:50
And so do we want to start putting small residential areas in that particular location if that is going to be a major development area in the future for the city as it goes along?
03:51:02
We already see what's going on at Preston Avenue.
03:51:04
Secondly, this goes to public safety.
03:51:08
In that Thursday evening, Charlottesville Area Transit put out a Facebook post, I don't know if they tweeted it out or whatever, but they talked about a severe shortage of drivers.
03:51:19
At a time when most people are trying to go home, they're trying to go pick their kids up from daycare so they don't get any additional costs in daycare.
03:51:28
They had, and it doesn't look like they had any other protocol other than just say,
03:51:32
sorry for the inconvenience.
03:51:35
They had the free trolley that couldn't run from five o'clock on out of the downtown transit center.
03:51:42
They had the seven that couldn't run through prime time out of the transit center.
03:51:47
They had the five
03:51:48
that couldn't run because of a lack of drivers.
03:51:51
And there were people on my social media feeds that were talking, should we just go around to these stops and ask people do they need rides home?
03:51:58
Because it didn't seem like CAT was going to do anything except, sorry, no drivers.
03:52:03
And you have these go classes that are training these CDL trained drivers to do CAT, jaunt, school bus.
03:52:11
You know, what's the contingency plan?
03:52:13
I hope
03:52:14
that during the budget process that that department chair is called about what the contingency plan.
03:52:20
The next night, March 2nd, we had a lot of high wind.
03:52:24
There were several routes that they couldn't do because the roads were blocked due to downed trees, maybe downed lines, I don't know.
03:52:30
But what is the contingency plan?
03:52:33
What's the emergency plan?
03:52:34
And I hope that the city manager can come back with an answer about that.
03:52:38
The last thing that I'm pissed about is that one of my work colleagues, who she and I
03:52:44
took some time to do some free speech walling this week, has now been profiled by one of CPD's own to come and talk to him about an incident.
03:52:55
I don't know why and why they targeted her.
03:52:58
I'm white.
03:53:00
She's black.
03:53:01
I don't know.
03:53:01
I'm just doing the math.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
03:53:03
Thank you.
SPEAKER_07
03:53:12
Good evening, Brandon Collins.
03:53:13
I live at 418 Fairway Avenue.
03:53:15
I've lived in Charlottesville my entire life.
03:53:16
I have three children who've lived here their entire lives.
03:53:20
And I work for FAR, Public Housing Association of Residents, at 1000 Preston Avenue.
03:53:26
I'm actually here to talk about the comprehensive plan.
03:53:29
Three things.
03:53:31
On your consent agenda earlier, you approved postponing
03:53:37
and the passage of the comprehensive plan, which I think was a wise idea.
03:53:41
What I would like to encourage you to do is to kind of get out into the open what happened because it's my understanding that the Planning Commission had asked for this to be postponed some time ago and I know they had approached this council at the housing summit a few weeks back.
03:54:00
There was discussion of this.
03:54:02
The NDS director, a city councilor, and a planning commissioner were all kind of like
03:54:07
Nobody seemed to know what had happened and why this had never made it to your agenda.
03:54:12
I have some ideas of how that may have happened, but I think it would serve the public's interest for that information to be made public where that went so sour.
03:54:23
Now, it's really important that you put the comprehensive plan off for a little bit as you can develop a housing strategy so that the Planning Commission can make zoning changes
03:54:35
Modifications, other things in the comprehensive plan that are going to fit a comprehensive housing strategy community driven by the Charlottesville community.
03:54:45
I'm a little worried that October may still be a little too close for that to happen, but I think you know you can roll with that.
03:54:53
We don't want to rush this process, but we do know we have an affordable housing crisis.
03:54:58
We know we are steps away from having a community
03:55:01
Strategy towards addressing the housing crisis that we have and providing more affordable housing for extremely low income people in this community.
03:55:11
So it's extremely important that we get this right and that the comprehensive plan be put on hold.
03:55:16
Now, it's also really important that we begin to include the Planning Commission in all these conversations because I've talked to a number of Planning Commissioners
03:55:25
who feel like they're operating in a silo.
03:55:27
They don't know who to trust.
03:55:29
They don't know what's going on.
03:55:31
They feel like they're just kind of winging it.
03:55:32
They're kind of on their own, doing the best they can.
03:55:35
They put a lot of time and a lot of expertise into things, but they're not getting the input from the public, from nonprofits, from city council, any of the coalitions related to affordable housing.
03:55:48
They need to be brought into the fold in order for that wider housing strategy to be created.
03:55:54
Lastly, Comprehensive Plan, I'm a little surprised you didn't announce it, but on Wednesday at 5 o'clock there is a gathering of all the boards and commissions in this city to work with the Planning Commission on the Comprehensive Plan and I think that should be announced to the public and the public should be encouraged to attend that and certainly all members of boards and commissions should be attending that.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
03:56:17
Thank you.
SPEAKER_38
03:56:27
Mary Curry, city resident.
03:56:33
I was on your side all night long until you voted.
03:56:38
You too, Ms. Galvin.
03:56:39
I was on your side all night long, and I liked the way y'all performed up there tonight.
03:56:43
I never seen y'all do it none last year.
03:56:46
I didn't see you do it the year before last.
03:56:49
But tonight, Ms. Galvin, you can win an Academy Award with that man from the historical side.
03:56:55
because I'm going to tell you what they did to me.
03:56:58
They had somebody of color call me and tell me, tell her that her petition will not work because that trainer left the station.
03:57:12
And what does that tell you?
03:57:15
Will Lester.
03:57:17
He's going to stand out in the hall and won't shake my hand.
03:57:20
And you know what that's all about, Ms. Signer.
03:57:23
If you've done something to hurt me, I'm not going to touch you.
03:57:26
That man told my friend, I don't know if he told him, but it came from the historical site.
03:57:34
And that young man sitting back there from New York, he don't know history of Charlottesville.
03:57:39
He know what he read.
03:57:40
He don't know Robert E. Lee.
03:57:43
He know what he read or what he was taught or was told to believe.
03:57:50
I think those statutes need to go.
03:57:51
That's the reason why these people want to come back.
03:57:55
They gotta have some kind of ground to stand on.
03:57:59
Now, they come back over there to that Lee Park over there, and ain't no statute there.
03:58:05
They gonna leave.
03:58:07
I told them at the church when they were doing that July 8th thing, I said, y'all let them come to Charlottesville.
03:58:16
Stay away from them.
03:58:18
because I've been through this before back in the 60s and they'll leave.
03:58:24
How many did they bring?
03:58:25
50, maybe 60.
03:58:29
They say, oh hey, they start licking their lips and rubbing their hands.
03:58:33
Charlottesville is a pushover.
03:58:36
Next time they come with thousands.
03:58:38
This time they come with more.
03:58:40
I'm telling you now.
03:58:42
If y'all let a racist judge make decisions on our city, y'all don't need to be sitting up there.
03:58:50
Y'all don't need to be there.
03:58:52
And I didn't vote for a couple of y'all, but I'm going to tell you something.
03:58:56
You shocked me.
03:58:58
It shocked me tonight.
03:58:59
You made me a believer here tonight until you did that last vote.
03:59:04
And that lady back there that was talking about not coming down to the mall and all that stuff, she sounded mighty racist to me.
03:59:14
And I'm going to tell you something.
03:59:16
How many black people work in these stores down on the mall?
03:59:22
How many people of color?
03:59:24
Tell me how many.
03:59:26
And the reason why no black people come down here on this mall is because they are discriminated against.
03:59:34
People talk about them.
03:59:36
They try to start fights with them.
03:59:38
They think they want to steal.
03:59:40
They don't think they got enough money.
03:59:44
That's what it's all about.
03:59:46
And we're building that building.
03:59:48
It's going to take two, three years.
03:59:50
They still ain't going to have no business down there.
03:59:53
Because he's going to block off everything.
03:59:55
Ain't no traffic coming downtown.
03:59:57
You're going to stop the water flow.
04:00:00
And Mr. Jones, like I told you last time, told us six, seven years ago when Charlottesville got enough water to last 50 years.
04:00:08
Well, what did you do last summer?
04:00:10
We're going to start building on that building.
04:00:12
We're going to have worse than that.
04:00:14
It's too much construction going on around here and talking about Rita Batman.
04:00:19
You gotta read about these minds.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
04:00:28
Anyone else?
SPEAKER_19
04:00:31
I have a couple of things to say.
SPEAKER_20
04:00:37
My name is Elliot Brown and I live on Druid.
04:00:41
I think $75,000 for your lawsuit when you knock down the statues in the next couple weeks would do better for the ball.
04:00:55
Nikuyah, thank you.
04:00:56
I did not give you one because it was about white privilege and I'll bring you one if you would like one.
04:01:02
I want to thank you for educating us and taking the time during
04:01:06
the week to do the videos because that's been very helpful for me learning about everything going on.
SPEAKER_19
04:01:12
I just wanted to point out a few things on this white fragility thing that I gave y'all and I'm just going to read a few things.
04:01:19
The systemic and institutional control allows us, those of us who are white in North America to live in a social environment that protects and insulates us from race-based stress.
04:01:29
So just, this is an example, following examples are the kind of challenges that trigger racial stress for white people.
04:01:36
suggesting that a white person's viewpoint comes from a racialized frame of reference, people of color talking directly about their own racial perspectives, people of color choosing not to protect the racial feelings of white people in regards to race.
04:01:50
I'm going to skip over to the back and entitlement to racial comfort.
04:01:56
And the dominant position rights are almost always racially comfortable and thus have developed unchallenged expectations to remain so.
04:02:04
We have not had to build tolerance for racial discomfort.
04:02:06
Thus, when racial discomfort arises, whites typically respond as if something is wrong and they blame the person of color.
04:02:14
Racial arrogance.
04:02:14
Most whites have a limited understanding of racism because we have not been trained to think of complex ways about it.
04:02:20
because it benefits white dominance not to do so.
04:02:23
Yet we have no problem debating the knowledge of people who have thought complexly about race.
04:02:29
Whites generally feel free to dismiss these informed perspectives rather than have the humility to acknowledge that they are unfamiliar, reflect on them further, and seek more information.
SPEAKER_20
04:02:39
I'm reading this to you because I've asked y'all several times if y'all understood white privilege, or not the white privilege, white fragility.
04:02:46
And by the way y'all voted for the downtown council, I don't see that.
04:02:51
And I just wanted to give you the information that has actually helped me turn around and understand my own white fragility issues.
04:02:58
And I have one last question.
04:02:59
Are y'all able to do anything about the judge that wouldn't let people wear Black Lives Matter clothes?
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
04:03:15
Anyone else?
SPEAKER_18
04:03:27
Tyler of JPA.
04:03:30
Again, on the comments about the statue,
04:03:35
The Lewis and Clark and the George Rogers Clark are a lot more disturbing than Lee.
04:03:45
But like my grandmother tells me, you have to destroy history and forget about your lessons and it's doomed to repeat itself.
04:03:54
So whether it's in a textbook or it's on public property, we have to preserve it so we learn from it.
04:04:04
I'm certainly
04:04:05
I encourage other statues to be put up on both sides, but we shouldn't destroy history just because it's inconvenient.
04:04:20
It's like the inconvenient truth.
04:04:25
As far as the downtown mall money and stuff,
04:04:30
Since I got a resident of Charlottesville, I go down there pretty much undisturbed from any events or seasons.
04:04:41
I find it very fascinating, like the brickwork, it's pretty neat.
04:04:45
I haven't seen anything like that anywhere else, that it's just a brick road.
04:04:50
and everything, and I like a lot of the businesses there.
04:04:53
But it is expensive for buying food, prepped food, and so forth, but you know, I do my banking down there, I go to the JMRL regularly.
04:05:07
You know, it's not a frightening or
04:05:12
Thank you.
SPEAKER_11
04:05:47
and Horn.
04:05:47
I live in the county.
04:05:48
I just wanted to say at the end here that I feel like the living wage discussion got lost tonight.
04:05:54
And I don't necessarily have an issue with, you know, giving some money to downtown businesses, but I think it was done really irresponsibly in terms of there being no proposal, no plan, no details about how that money is going to be spent.
04:06:09
And I think that the city budget is like a reflection of the values and the morals and the ethics of the city.
04:06:14
And so when you're giving money over here,
04:06:16
you have to kind of wonder like well where are you not giving money when you're giving it over here and someone I think Mike said something about you know this is like a real investment in the city but what is a better investment in the city than paying the city workers a living wage and you may not have the money to do that right now but
04:06:38
You're giving money to these other areas.
04:06:42
And so I just think that that's something that has to be dealt with and tended to.
04:06:48
And I think Nikuyah said earlier, it's not just about John.
04:06:51
And I agree.
04:06:51
It's about, across the board, all the city workers.
04:06:55
So please do what you can to pay attention to that.
04:07:00
And I think that's the real investment in this city, so people can pay for their families, pay for their kids, have a nice place
04:07:07
work are to live, spend money in the community.
04:07:12
There are so many reasons why I think that's the real investment.
04:07:14
And the last piece is just about the statues.
04:07:17
I really think you all need to remove the statues, take the lawsuit.
04:07:22
We could crowdsource a ton of money to pay for whatever lawsuits come up, if need be.
04:07:29
Yeah, but we don't need to worry about that.
04:07:33
I think we just need to get rid of the statues.
04:07:36
Is that something you guys would ever consider?
SPEAKER_14
04:07:38
Please consider it.
SPEAKER_11
04:07:45
I think the city would be behind you 100%.
04:07:47
Thank you.
SPEAKER_14
04:07:49
No, no, like remove them like right away.
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
04:07:58
Can I just, I mean, we're sworn officers of the court, and we're under a court order, and that's a serious thing.
04:08:04
I mean, we are a member of, we're government officials, so, and there's a court order that enjoins us from doing that under Virginia law, so that's what you're just asking there, at least that's my response to that.
04:08:16
I hear the passion in it, I understand what you're saying, but you're talking about government officials.
SPEAKER_11
04:08:20
What would it be, like, jail time, would it be a fine, what would it be?
Mike Signer
Member, City Council
04:08:23
Yeah, it's a criminal, I mean, it's contempt of court, so to be.
SPEAKER_11
04:08:30
It's just something to really consider and talk about and to know what the consequences are and make a decision because the city is not safe right now.
04:08:37
It's going to continue to be.
04:08:41
Who knows what's going to happen, but the longer this draws out, the more the more issues with the safety of the city.
04:08:49
And so just something to consider.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
04:08:57
Any other speakers?
04:09:00
I do have a question for Mr. Jones and Ms. Robertson, if I may.
04:09:06
What we heard tonight about what happened in the courts with regards to clothing and what clothing people in the courts were wearing was disturbing.
04:09:20
And is there a way to verify whether that was
04:09:24
Breaking the bounds of any sort of rules of decorum or personal liberty.
04:09:34
It just seemed very strange that a judge could tell people not to come or stay in the courtroom because of a shirt they were wearing.
Maurice Jones
City Manager
04:09:45
I don't see where the city is in a position to tell the judge.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
04:09:48
I'm just asking a question.
Maurice Jones
City Manager
04:09:50
I know and I'm responding to your question.
04:09:52
I don't think there's something the city can do to tell the judge to react in a certain way.
04:09:59
But we could certainly give some information, try to get some information from council on
04:10:03
what may have occurred.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
04:10:05
It would be good to get some detail what actually happened.
Maurice Jones
City Manager
04:10:08
And then to find out what would happen in a situation like that.
SPEAKER_14
04:10:15
But I don't think there's a situation under which the city could do something about that.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
04:10:30
All right.
04:10:33
Any other comments?
04:10:36
and I spoke to Katrina today about after court was over and they know that I fully support them but I had the same question and they spoke with an attorney to try to get feedback on what they could do about what happened in court so that's an update there.
Kathy Galvin
Member, City Council
04:11:04
Well, it would be great to get updated.
Nikuyah Walker
Mayor, City Council
04:11:09
All right.
04:11:10
So we are done.
04:11:12
Is it?
04:11:14
That's it.
04:11:15
Yeah.
04:11:15
Thank you.