City Council   5/21/2018

Ms. Hill.

Here.

Ms. Walker.

Here.

Here.

Here.

All right.

Thank you, Mayor Walker.

I have the pleasure tonight to introduce my recommendation for our next police chief.

The city manager's office began our search for a new chief in December of 2017.

Altogether, the city received 169 applications for the position.

Six candidates were invited to participate in interviews here in Charlottesville.

with four panels comprised of representatives from the city manager's office and department directors, staff from the police department, and two community panels.

The six finalists also interviewed with the city council on that day.

At the conclusion of the interviews and a series of reference and background checks, I have chosen Chief Rochelle Brackney as my recommendation.

formal approval by the city council.

Chief Brackney was introduced at a public press conference last Tuesday on May 15th and I'm pleased to have her coming aboard with us.

Chief Brackney is a retired 30-year veteran of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police and the former chief of police of the George Washington University Police Department.

Chief Brackney has received a number of awards in her time in law enforcement.

She was recognized as 50 Women of Excellence by the New Pittsburgh Courier in 2014, a Community Peacekeeper of the Year Award by the Northside Coalition for Fair Housing,

in 2014, the Community Police Officer of the Year Award by the Alliance for Police Accountability, and the Otto Davis Award for Social and Racial Justice at Carnegie Mellon University in 2011.

Chief Brackney will be joining us on June 18th after she is approved of this evening by the City Council during your consent agenda.

Good evening.

Can you hear me?

Thank you.

I come from one of six children, so we learned to speak loudly and brave and boldly right from the very beginning.

I know Charlottesville has undergone a lot of trauma and turmoil, particularly over the last year, and know that I am not here to add to your burden at all.

If anything,

I'm here to see if there's a way in which we can move the conversation forward, particularly around policing, policing equity, and narrowing the gap between the communities that we serve and the communities that we represent.

So I look forward.

Thank you so much to the resolution later today.

The thing that I would ask between now and the time I come on board, if you could just be patient with us and be kind to each other and be kind for those of us who are attempting to move through the process because that's what really does make a difference regardless of whatever the laws are.

And remember there are human beings behind each and one of the statements that we make towards and about each other.

Yes.

And so there was, Dave Norris is actually going to come up.

He should have been here under proclamations.

We have a great mayor, Harold.

Mayor Walker, Vice Mayor Hill, City Councillors, Mr. Jones, Ms. Robertson, Ms. Rice, thank you for the opportunity to share a brief report on our recent sister city visit to Winneba, Ghana.

My name is Dave Norris and I'm speaking with you tonight in my role as volunteer executive director of the Charlottesville Winneba Foundation, which is a nonprofit organization that works to promote mutually beneficial exchanges between Charlottesville and Winneba.

Charlottesville and Winneba became sister cities in 2009.

And as you know, this is the first and only sister city relationship that Charlottesville has outside of Europe.

Charlottesville chose to become sister cities with Winneba because of the many commonalities that our communities share.

We are similar in population size.

We are both university towns.

We are both rich in history.

I could go on.

But one of the main reasons we chose to have a sister city in Ghana, in West Africa,

was due to the fact that so many Charlottesville residents can trace their ancestry back to and through Ghana and West Africa as a result of the centuries-long transatlantic slave trade.

Ghana was one of the main transit points for the slave trade, and the people of Ghana have done a commendable job of preserving the history of that horrific era because they do not want to see such an inhuman travesty repeated ever again.

We chose as the focus of our recent trip to do a deep dive into the origins of slavery and the history of the transatlantic slave trade.

Given the events of last summer and the heightened attention to local issues, heightened local attention to issues of race, history, and inequity, we received an outpouring of interest in the trip.

This was our fifth sister city delegation to Winneba since 2009.

and where the others averaged about 10 participants each, this time we had 56, including several members of this audience tonight.

We would have had more, but we had to put a cap on the size of the group.

Our travel dates were April 30th to May 10th.

It was a very large and diverse delegation, 60% African American, 40% Caucasian and other high school students to retirees.

We had community activists, local historians, artists, business owners, pastors, journalists, the Charlottesville Firefighter,

the president of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, people from a wide variety of economic backgrounds and life experiences, some of whom had never traveled outside of the United States before and most of whom who had never traveled to the African continent before.

Especially among the African-American members of the delegation, a common refrain we heard was that traveling to Africa, to the motherland, had been a lifelong dream.

We compiled the suggested reading list for the group in advance of the trip

and the title of the first book on the list captured for many of the spirit of this journey, Homegoing.

The trip was not easy.

There is no way you can stand in the oppressive heat of a darkened dungeons in the bowels of a coastal slave castle where hundreds of captive Africans were packed in together for weeks and months at a time, forced to lie in their own urine and feces and vomit and menses while awaiting the arrival of the ships that would transport them here to the New World to be auctioned off in places

like Court Square, just one block north of where we're gathered tonight, and not be affected deeply.

And by the way, don't blink next time you're strolling through Court Square or else you'll miss the one paltry acknowledgment of the fact that slavery even existed here in our city.

There is no way you can walk barefoot along the very path down which countless captives were marched at the point of a gun on their way to the slave trading posts

after taking their final baths and being oiled up and branded like animals and not be affected deeply.

There is no way you can hear the stories of the female captives who were singled out for exploitation and abuse by the colonial authorities and not be affected deeply.

As I said, the trip was not easy.

But this is our history.

And it's important for anyone who has been touched by the legacy of slavery, which is to say all Americans,

to be aware of what happened in places like Ghana.

As Marcus Garvey once said, a people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots.

The question for us now is what to do with this knowledge that we've gained.

I suspect you'll be hearing more on that in the weeks and months to come after each of us has had more of a chance to reflect on what we learned.

So yes, some of this trip involved an eye-opening and gut-wrenching exploration of the past,

But we balanced out those experiences with opportunities for our delegation members to experience the vibrant culture of modern day Ghana through the prism of our lively sister city of Winneba.

Before I invite Myra Anderson to share some reflections about her time in Ghana, I want to close with a few words of thanks.

Most of the members of our delegation paid out of pocket to participate.

But we didn't want cost to be a barrier for members of our community who eagerly wished to travel with the group, but couldn't afford the participation fee.

So the Charles F. Winneba Foundation committed to raising funds in the community for a number of full or partial travel scholarships.

And I want to thank the dozens of individuals and organizations who stepped up and made generous contributions toward that cause.

In particular, I want to acknowledge Unity Seaville, World Strides, Olivette Presbyterian Church, Random Row Brewery,

and the Office of Diversity and Equity at the University of Virginia for their support.

It made a world of difference.

Mayor Walker, thank you for the terrific job you did as the leader of our delegation.

On numerous occasions during the trip, you were asked to speak on behalf of our group and you always captured the moment perfectly.

While no public dollars were used to cover the cost of your trip, you nonetheless represented the Charlottesville public exceedingly well.

To my fellow delegation members, thank you for your patience, your good cheer, and your openness to new experiences.

I would happily travel again with this fine group of people anywhere and anytime.

And last, but certainly not least,

We want to give thanks to our wonderful hosts in the Winneba community for their incredible hospitality, to Mayor John Bartholomew Ninson and his team, Tina Yawson and the members of the Winneba Sister City Commission, Charlottesville's own Nana Garty, the world's best bus driver, Dominic, and everyone else who welcomed us, fed us, sheltered us, celebrated with us, grieved with us, and helped us to expand our horizons.

Good evening.

I'm Mara Anderson, a local entrepreneur, poet, and a member of the delegation that went to Ghana.

I just want to say that I don't think words can accurately express what it was like to travel, for me, with a group of almost complete strangers over 5,000 miles into a developing country, different time zone, different language, all of these things.

Words really can't

bring life to the experience.

But I will say because this is our sister city and this was the fifth delegation, there's a lot of work that is being done there through the Charlottesville Winneba Foundation.

So one of the things that stood out to me is that we were able to visit a hospital where we send

things like crutches and various things like that, medical supplies.

So the whole hospital staff from the head doctor and nurses were there to greet us and they showed so much gratitude and appreciation for the fact that when patients come in and don't have the money for these very basic things, have a broken bone and don't have crutches, they thanked us for the things that we were able

to send to them.

We did a lot of things while we were there.

Another thing that stood out is that when we got there, the Ghanaians are the most gracious people I've ever encountered.

I'm telling you, the mayor was at the airport.

Mind you, we've been traveling all day long.

We come out the airport and there is the mayor and his whole delegation to greet our mayor and to greet us.

And that gratitude extended the whole time we were there.

it's so much to be done in Winneba and I feel like I left there with a renewed spirit not just what we can do as a sister city to help them but how we can cultivate that and bring that heat back here and make it more practical and this was a delegation to explore the origins of slavery and just to quickly piggyback on what Dave has already said there is no way

that anyone can go to those slave castles without closely examining the cost of human cost of slavery then and as it still prevails today.

So I came back with just a renewed spirit to try to work harder for my community and to try to do things more here but also to connect with our sister city.

One of the things that gave me hope towards the end was seeing the two youngest members

of our delegation who are both students at Charlottesville High School and they were talking on the way back about how they wanted to connect Charlottesville High School with the high school in Ghana over in Winneba over the internet to be able so that they can have that kind of communication.

So at the farewell party, the mayor threw us a very, very big farewell party and at this party each, all 56 of us, our names were called and we were presented with a scarf.

I read this poem which basically illustrates how I felt about the whole trip before going and it's called Dear Africa.

Dear Africa,

Since I was a young girl, I vividly dreamed of thee.

I've longed to touch and hold your hand, mother of God's creation, mother of the land.

I've yearned for your embrace and to hear your song, to feel your sun upon my face.

It's been way, way too long.

Africa, mother of resilient seeds, the cradle of birth, straddling the equator, nurture of the earth, your radiance quenches my spirit and draws me towards your abundance, my eyes wide as the ocean, my mouth exploding with your praises, my uncharted home, my unsung song, bearing the legacy of people, proud, brave and strong, home of germination, divine manifestation in Winneba, our beloved sister city.

As the elders were honored, my head was bowed.

As celebration erupted, my feet became alive and dancing.

I was not birthed in the motherland, but my heart beats from the blood of the ancestors.

So I am rooted in African soil that ever producing soil is engraved in my soul.

and it is well in my soul.

And even though we may not speak the same tongues, I can still move to the beat of that drum.

My blood pulses to its rhythm as it becomes the essence of sound and when the drum beats in the wind and when the beauty dazzles the sun and when the stories of the ancestors are echoed over and over and over, my soul was nurtured, my spirit rejuvenated, my heart began to ignite and it was then that I was walking in the footprints

Thank you.

Dave said, many of us are still processing, processing this trip.

I'm still processing the trip.

One thing that stood out to me the most was standing at the castles on the top floor, they have a sale.

and for anyone who had the audacity to think that they should not be enslaved by colonizers, they would put them in these cells and they were left there, Africa heat with no food, no water,

and they were left there to die.

And no matter how many people were in the cell until the last person who was in the cell died, then they dragged them out and threw their bodies in the ocean.

The work that we are now claiming that we are ready to do since last summer, that I've been telling us that we needed to have been doing long before last summer,

Everyone needs to have this activity level knowledge and that book knowledge that we experienced on this trip for you to understand when you are asking because it's a very different patience that I was asking for last week when I'm like we have a new police chief coming on that kind of patience versus the patience I think I hear that I hear from most people when they're asking especially black members of this community to just be a little bit

Moore, Patience.

There's no more, there's no more patience.

And when we get, when we understand that the abuses did not stop, they only continued and changed form.

And when you are faced with that on a beautiful shore, can you imagine people who were never able to experience

the beach, the beauty, the sand of it because everything about their experiences were abusive.

So we have a lot of work to do.

and even, and I've said this, people who think they're doing the work, there's still a lot of work to do.

And most of the time, people push to that comfort place and then they don't wanna push past it.

But we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to push past it.

So I'm sure that more, I mean, there were 56 of us and again, every day was full, every day was an adventure,

Every day was a learning experience to be able to stand on a riverbank where it was the last bath that you received before you were marched 31 miles to this castle where if you had the audacity to rebel you could be placed into a cell.

That was our trip.

It was not relaxing.

It was a lot of work.

And I think people who came back have a renewed sense of what it means to do the work that we're claiming that we're going to do in Charlottesville.

So thank you, and thank you Myra.

I'm afraid, Mayor Walker, this proclamation is going to seem a little bit out of place, but it's pretty basic.

This is the National Public Works Week 2018.

Whereas public works professionals focus on infrastructure facilities and services that are of vital importance to a sustainable and resilient community and to the public health, high quality of life and well-being of the people of Charlottesville.

And whereas these infrastructure facilities and services could not be provided without the dedicated efforts of public works professionals who are responsible for rebuilding and improving

and protecting our transportation, water supply, water treatment and solid waste systems, public building and other structures and facilities essential for our citizens.

And whereas the city is thankful to all those public works professionals, and whereas it is critical that the people of Charlottesville gain knowledge of and maintain

A progressive interest and understanding of the importance of public works and public works programs in our community.

And whereas the American Public Works Association has celebrated the annual National Public Works Week since 1960, now therefore we, the City Council of Shostel, Virginia, do hereby recognize the week May 20 to 26, 2018, as National Public Works Week in the City of Shostel and call this observance to the attention of all our citizens

signed and sealed this 21st day of May 2018 by Mayor Nikuyah Walker.

Is there anyone here to receive this?

So good evening, everyone.

We have one quick announcement on behalf of the Banks Collage BCBA Basketball League.

our own, bless you, our own Super Bowl champion, Rashad Davis, CHS grad, and Grace, the game reduction through active community engagement task force.

We're gonna be having a cookout on June 9th from 5 to 9 p.m. and that'll be at Tonsil Park.

So at the event, you will have free food for everyone, a kickball tournament, a kids' moon bounce, live music, and there'll also be games, bless you, there'll also be games there from the BCBA.

So again, please feel free to come out.

It'll be from 5 to 9 at Tonsil Park.

There are some flyers there.

Mr. Foley has one, and we'll have some more for everyone.

But again, it'll be a great day for everyone.

And there was just one more that we were asked to share.

Preservers of the Daughters of Zion Cemetery and the Albemarle, Charlottesville Historical Society cordially invite you to attend Decoration Day 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 27, 2018 at Daughters of Zion Cemetery at the corner of Oak and South First Streets.

There are no specific issues that I didn't respond to from the last City Council meeting.

However, I am going to provide an update to the City Council and to the public on the work that's been done to prepare our community and our organization for this summer.

I do have a PowerPoint presentation if you'd like to move or if you're okay with where you are.

So this work began actually last fall after the events of the summer and several really important issues we've taken on and continue to work on beginning with our permitting process.

We made significant changes in the city's permitting process for

We banned a large number of items from being carried into events and demonstrations including sticks, shields, and open flames.

And we changed the requirements for when a permit application can be submitted as well as part of that permitting process.

We had legal pursuits that we have taken.

We joined the Georgetown Law Center's lawsuit to kill militias and militia-like groups from coming back to Charlottesville.

A number of those groups have settled and agreed to not return to Charlottesville as paramilitary groups as they have in the past.

So that is an important step forward to try to keep some of those groups from coming back again to Charlottesville.

Training and planning, a lot has gone on to help us prepare for any events this summer.

We designated the fire chief as a local emergency management coordinator.

We created the Committee on Safety and Emergency Preparedness, which the chief is overseeing.

CSEP is overseeing our NIMS and ICS training and its national incident management system and incident command system training for the city employees and for regional planning purposes.

We have a regional special event planning group that's been formed and is meeting biweekly and includes the city, Albemarle County, UVA, the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, and the Virginia State Police.

We've also created a smaller incident management team with assistance from VDEM, and we're providing outside sources to develop incident action plans, and we are preparing for those plans to be finalized in the next few weeks.

We're also establishing protocols for mutual aid here in the city with our regional partners.

Key staff have been through the Virginia Municipal League's training on policing demonstrations, protests, and civil unrest.

We had two major training sessions there.

Over 80% of our department's personnel have received additional crowd training, crowd management training.

And we've had an adoption of the IACP, that's the International Association of Chiefs of Police, model policy for crowd management and civil disturbances.

We've had joint training days and we are preparing to schedule more of those with our regional and state partners.

We've had additional de-escalation training that's been scheduled for officers in June.

We have an upcoming three-day training course on preparation and response to civil disorders as well.

City employees have received introductory NIMS and ICS training and will receive that by mid-summer.

Supervisors and managers will receive more advanced training in June.

The city's leadership team received an introductory course in stress first aid and implicit bias.

And city employees were given the opportunity to attend a session on implicit bias with UVA's Brian Nosek at the Paramount Theater.

They were also, Mr. Nosek is working with our Office of Human Rights to offer up another implicit bias training for the public that's on June 11th at 6 p.m. at the Martin Luther King Performing Arts Center.

And that's free and open to the public.

So one of the things that we had hoped for going into the fall and winter of last year was to get some assistance from the General Assembly.

Our local representatives were very helpful, Delegate Discano and Senator Creed Eades, but unfortunately we were not successful.

and getting several bills passed that would have given the city some authority to limit weapons, more specifically firearms, in public spaces.

We had asked for the authority to control the safety of public spaces and buildings, the prohibition of certain firearms in Charlottesville, and the authority to make local decisions on Confederate monuments.

None of those bills passed in the General Assembly.

So one of the areas that folks focused on last year was attempts to restore faith in local government.

And so the city council has taken some significant steps in order to do that.

Establishing a civilian review board, which we'll hear more about in a few minutes and hear from the public on in a few minutes.

They created an equity package of a million dollars.

That was back in December.

That came out of surplus funding from last year.

That's in addition to the equity package that the city council passed in April of 2017.

With our current budget, the most recently adopted budget, we increased the living wage to $14.40 per hour for all of our employees with the hope of moving it to $15 an hour in fiscal year 20.

We've continued to support workforce development here in the community.

We've increased the affordable housing fund to $3.4 million.

added another $500,000 to CRHA for redevelopment and created a minority business coordinator position as well to help here in the city.

So those are some of the steps that the city has taken to try to address real challenges and concerns that we have in our community.

So as we move forward, we'll be providing regular updates for the city council and the public.

We'll continue to prep for this summer's events and communicating that out to the community as to what we're doing and how they can be involved.

And we're working to try to build a resilient Charlottesville as we move forward.

This was the first step in that process tonight, providing that information on what's occurred.

Over the course of the next few weeks and the next couple of months we'll provide more information out to the public via social media, on our website, and also through the mainstream media as well, providing updates to folks as we move forward.

They can contact the city manager's office at 970-3101.

At some point in the very near future, we're going to establish a web page where people can get information, and then we'll have some contact information on there as well.

Sure.

Any other comments, questions?

This evening, the city council has appointed the following to boards and commissions.

The Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society, Ray Berry, John Conover, Phyllis Leffler.

Building Code Board of Appeals, Keith Woodard,

the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau, Jennifer Mayo, the Charlottesville Economic Development Authority, Edward Schmitz, the Citizen Transportation Advisory Committee, Michael Smith, the Java Board of Directors, Richard Brew and Elaine Phillips, the Region 10 Community Board, John Crostain and Sina McGill, the Sister City Commission, Cliff Maxwell,

Second.

All right, so we're gonna, we have some time, so we'll continue with the community matters.

So first up is Paul Wright.

Paul Wright.

Mary Currie, city resident, Myra, girl.

She was great.

I love that point.

I'd like to all take this time to thank all y'all that went on that trip because I was supposed to have gone.

I didn't quite make it and Dave asked me and asked me and I just couldn't do it.

But I see I missed a very, very rewarding experience.

And I think I would be up here crying now if I had have gone because I am deep into my black history.

But anyway, I don't want to get emotional up here.

So I just want to say, Mr. Jones, thank you for answering my email so promptly.

You did good.

because like I usually take you at least a week but you did in a couple days thank you very much and by going down there the other day in a rainstorm by the rain raining in this we almost got waterlogged here this last week that tree is out this far because when we were coming down Cherry Avenue to turn into First Street there was a car all the way out in the road blowing at us because we can't get around

because the tree is blocking him from looking to the left.

So as soon as you can get that taken care of, you know, people will love to have that done before it grow anymore because if it grow anymore, it's going to grow all the way up the hill.

And I'd like to welcome the new chief and her handsome husband.

to the city.

And to all of you councilmen, Ms. Galvin, I love you very much.

You've been good and everything like that, whatever.

But please stop saying that you're the oldest sitting councilperson.

Because I feel like I'm the oldest speaker.

Because I've been coming in here before he, which I'm pointing to Mr. Bellamy, was born.

So this make me feel like I'm ancient.

And Ms. Walker, I appreciate you.

I love you.

I will support you as long as you're sitting in that seat.

Regardless of what's going on in this city, I've heard a lot of negative things one way and I heard a lot of very good things the other way.

So all the negative stuff, forget it.

And as far as the police coming over there to Crescent Halls the other day and searching people's apartments, I was wondering if they had a search warrant.

I'm just saying a 76-year-old woman with nowhere to go.

It's ridiculous.

You got people over there breaking into machines, people setting the building on fire, and they haven't been evicted.

So think about it.

Mark Heise, Albemarle County.

I wanted to share a few thoughts about police accountability.

We haven't had any police accountability since the events of this summer.

We need accountability.

So you know with the CRB coming up we need that board to be able to hold police accountable.

I was told that I wasn't allowed to speak during public comment on this matter so I'm completely unprepared.

So I'll just share a few thoughts that I think I have together.

So there's a couple things that have already concerned me about Dr. Brackney.

One is that she said that she wouldn't be investigating police misconduct around 8-12, which is really concerning considering that she hasn't even taken office yet.

So I'm wondering what decision, what she's basing that decision on.

If it's the HAFE report, which she has read, but if she's taking that recommendation from the HAFE report, I would ask her not to.

The Hayford Report was paid for by the city and was seriously flawed, especially around J8.

We saw a black female activist arrested violently by the police and then later Judge Downer determined that she wasn't even doing anything even illegal at the time.

She was trying to do civil disobedience and before she could she was violently arrested by the cops.

We saw them stand back and allow Nazis and white supremacists to terrorize, traumatize, injure people in our community and kill Heather Heyer.

That there needs to be some accountability for that and that she's already determined that there won't be as deeply concerning.

The other major recommendation in the HAFE report was that police do more surveillance.

That's deeply troubling and especially given the fact that based on her resume I do believe that Dr. Brackney is very capable

of doing surveillance, but I would ask her not to give more surveillance powers to the Charlottesville Police Department.

We saw in the lead up to August 12th that they showed up at the homes of activists of color who have already been targeted by the state, while they sent polite emails to white activists, and we know why that is.

We know that police infiltrated meetings of anti-racist organizers in the lead up to A12.

We know that anti-racists were more heavily surveilled than self-proclaimed Nazis leading up to August 12th because in a world where the idea of a black identity extremist is believed to be credible, we know who the police will surveil and who they're concerned about.

We know that surveillance won't make us more safe, that it will make us less safe, and we know that it's the members of this community who have been targeted by police surveillance who have been keeping the

Community Safe, and that they'll be less able to do that if they're oppressed by the state.

Thank you.

I'm Liz Reynolds.

I live in the city.

So I saw a young black man pulled over by a white cop today on the side of Rugby Road.

And I thought, as I do pretty often these days, that we really need to find more and better ways to talk about race in this country.

There's a growing subset of the white population with the will and desire to explore our whiteness and our power and our privilege, but most of us truly have no idea how to go about doing that.

And so because thinking about and talking about race is a choice for most of us who are white, not a necessity, it gets pushed aside very often because of the inevitable fear and discomfort that comes with confronting the darker sides of ourselves.

I believe that issues like racial profiling, segregation in schools, and unequal access to fair housing link back to a very different lived experience of black and white Americans.

And to bridge this gap in knowledge for white people who have been willfully or simply, ignorantly, sheltered in their understanding of this country, we really need education.

about institutional racism and the country, this country that has been built upon it.

So southern cities like Atlanta and Raleigh have embraced the model of sponsoring trainings for city leaders and key stakeholders as a mode of institutional transformation and the places that already hold power and the ability to effect change.

The Racial Equity Institute based out of Greensboro, North Carolina

offer such trainings throughout the southeast.

And I would like to encourage the council to read over the materials I have brought from communicating with them and consider allocating funds to sponsor one of their trainings.

In closing, I'd like to say that a lot of what seems to go on here, I have very limited experience with Saudi government, but it seems like we're talking about very real inequities through a somewhat removed lens.

When we elect a new police chief or when we approve a new condo development, race is a very real issue, but oftentimes we're not talking about it.

So I would like to sincerely encourage council to point some of our resources and attention on this issue of institutional racism historically, culturally, and currently in the hopes that education can bring change to all the other aspects of governmental domain where transformation is needed.

I have a booklet here that they sent me.

I hope one of you reads it.

Madam Mayor, so under our new rules we can have some we have some back and forth so Mr. Jones would you mind so Mr. Bellamy and I last fall met with a gentleman named Brian Nosek who runs who does implicit bias trainings around the country and if and he offered to do workshops for the city and for the community and I know that there have been if you wouldn't mind sharing what's happened in the city so far because I think there was one already for city staff and then this one that's coming up was a result of

Actually, there was a training that was done for all city employees.

All city employees were invited to be part of that discussion.

And that occurred at the Paramount Theater a couple months ago.

Over 400 people.

Thank you.

And I'll look at it and I think all of us are

You know, really serious about I mean, implicit bias is one avenue.

I don't it's not on my list at all.

But and I think there are some serious issues with accountability with it.

But it's, I guess, a starting point for someone.

But I will.

But I think we we all will look at this and see.

And there are some other

other avenues that we're exploring too.

Good evening.

I'm Jim Hengele, a city resident.

I was reading in the Seaville this week about the pilgrimage that's being planned to Montgomery and the lynching memorial from a lynching that happened in 1898 in Albemarle County.

and is reading through the article and something I'd like to give the council as a quote from the article, Andrea Douglas speaking about local history.

And she says, quote, it's important to be able to create a full and inclusive Charlottesville history, end quote, says Douglas, one that includes black people.

Quote, Charlottesville didn't become integrated because white people said it was the right thing to do.

That brings me to a point that I've expressed to council before, something I ask council to continue considering because the final decision is coming up in July, and that is to consider naming Emancipation Park Swanson Legacy Park.

And Swanson Legacy Park is a way of illustrating and remembering local Charlottesville history of a black person who went up against the white supremacists in the University of Virginia Board of Visitors and succeeded in integrating the University of Virginia in 1950.

and in addition, in reference to Andrea Douglas' comments about the inclusive history including black people, his legal team was all black lawyers including Thurgood Marshall and Oliver Hill and Spotswood Robinson.

These are heroes of the civil rights movement.

So I ask you to continue to be considering the possibility of naming Emancipation Park, Swanson Legacy Park.

So I wanted to just take a few moments and speak

about mental health because May is Mental Health Awareness Month and one in four people struggle with a mental health condition.

I am one of those individuals and I've struggled most of my life and I just think that I could sum it up in the words of

Ms. Sophia, all my life I had to fight.

And there is the devastation of being diagnosed with a mental illness.

and it becomes a double-edged sword when you are met with a society that is stigmatizing, that is discriminating and that does not make it easy for you to heal, does not create an environment that is conducive to healing.

It is very, very, very hard and I've been able to take a stand and stand up for the things that I think

are right and to challenge injustices.

But I shouldn't have to do that.

My job should be to just get better.

I shouldn't have to continually come up against a system and challenge a system and fight a system when I'm just fighting every day just to stay well and just to stay here.

And although there are a lot of things that we've moved forward as far as mental health,

If you're in a mental health crisis in the city, it is likely that you can stay in the emergency room for 8, 12, 18, 24 hours, 48 hours before there's a bed available somewhere else in the state.

But if you had any other problem and you needed to be hospitalized, it would just be as simple as them arranging one of the 600 rooms in the local hospital.

It shouldn't be because now you've gone somewhere else and you don't even have access to your family and friends to come visit you every single day.

The facts are one in four people struggle.

This is a physiological condition.

This isn't a condition where you can just will yourself better, where you can just get up and everything is going to be okay.

And I think we need to start as a community and as a city

start exploring the issue more of mental health because the reality is a lot of people are struggling and they don't even feel comfortable going to the places that we have to receive help because of the stigma.

It should not be like that.

Having a mental health problem should be no different than saying, oh, I'm in remission from cancer, only I'm recovering from mental health.

And we need a commitment from the top, from the leadership down to move us forward.

I'm from Monticello High School and I'm here just to talk a little bit about the Habitat for Humanity Albemarle County partnership that has gone on for the redevelopment of Southwood and to encourage you all to maybe implement some similar projects and public-private partnerships when you all explore the housing crisis that's going on in Charlottesville City and Albemarle County and surrounding land.

So the project of redeveloping the Southwood mobile home park on 5th Street is a very large project so Habitat could not take it on a loan.

So Albemarle County has partnered with them to provide funding and access to grants while Habitat actually heads up the projects and puts in all of the sweat hours and everything.

So Habitat's unique approach engages the homeowners and

and they commit to educating their homeowners on financial issues and financial literacy before they actually give them their home.

So they make sure that everything, everybody knows what they're doing before they get into it so that they can actually help people to

to kind of pull themselves up instead of just saying this is a house, live in it and hopefully you can make your payments.

So we believe that Charlottesville could greatly benefit from a partnership like this and this project is going to improve the community that already exists and create more mixed income housing because Habitat is dedicated to teaching their homeowners financial skills and listening to the comments and desires of the community before they even start building.

it makes the projects very successful.

So the county has been able to improve the living conditions of their residents and they will be making money off of the commercialization of the land around the city, so it's a nice win-win.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I came here to speak to you about gentrification, but I also was a member of the sister city delegation with Mayor Nikaya, and I want to just briefly mention that I'm not real comfortable talking about my personal experiences in a public manner, as some of these other speakers have,

It was an incredibly powerful experience and I learned a lot from my fellow travelers and the people.

that were so kind to us there, and I would highly recommend it to anyone.

I'm not gonna talk about it anymore, or I will not get through my comment that I came here to talk to you about gentrification, so I'm going to switch gears now.

And some people knocked on my door today, or today, this weekend, just a couple days ago, sorry, I'm a little tired, still a little jet lagged, about giving me a free tree.

Right?

But it's very specific about where this tree can go.

So it's part of the Parks and Rec and the Charlottesville area tree stewards and the tree commission.

So this is a city government promoted program to give people trees.

And the benefits of trees are they provide shade and they lower stormwater runoff.

And I should say that I've studied environmental science and that's true.

They do provide shade and they lower stormwater runoff.

Those are great things.

But these trees are only for the front yard and they're only small ornamental trees, which don't really provide a lot of shade or do much for stormwater runoff when you put them in the front yard.

These are required to go in the front yard.

They've got to be small trees because of all those pipes.

These are strictly ornamentals.

And you know what I think is also interesting here underneath the provide shade and lowering stormwater runoff is it increases real estate value.

There's lots of studies about how making everything prettier increases real estate value.

And here we have what appears to be some city-sponsored gentrification programs.

Dear Walker, may I make a comment?

So, thank you.

A very interesting interpretation of that.

And I ask, so, is it supposed to be that people who are in poverty or don't have wealth are supposed to live in neighborhoods devoid of trees and green?

I'm asking a question.

You can have trees in your backyard, right?

Trees in your backyard can improve your quality of life.

You can have, sure, put some trees in the backyard, but this is only for the front yard.

So that doesn't quite fit.

I was actually on the tree commission when they were discussing this.

So you have no problems with trees.

I was on the tree commission when they were discussing this.

That's all I want to know.

I love trees, right?

Okay.

But we brought up, why are these only in the front yards?

Why are these only in the front yards of houses that are small, that have small front yards?

If you really care about trees and tree canopy and quality of life and providing shade, why can they only be in the front yard in tiny little ornamental trees that increase property values?

because that was my question, sir.

I was asking Miss Seville if only rich people were supposed to have trees.

So that was the question I was asking because I don't believe that's the case.

OK, so Starr is up here.

We're moving.

My name is Starr Peterson and Charlottesville is my home.

I'm appalled that the new police chief does not want to investigate the deadly events of last summer.

Some of us cannot so easily leave that pain and trauma behind.

Everyone who was present that day wrestles with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Many people like myself who were physically injured are still fighting to regain the skills that we once took for granted.

I can't just leave last summer behind.

I just had my fourth surgery on the leg that James Fields ran over because Charlottesville Police failed to put the proper barriers on our streets.

Every single step I take hurts.

It hurts to stand.

It hurts to drive.

I can't play tag with my little boy.

The pain of physical therapy brings me to tears.

The leadership within the police department has a responsibility to acknowledge the police's failures of last summer and to hold the responsible parties accountable.

We cannot move forward until we address the horrendous events of last summer and the racism that is deeply entrenched within all police departments.

Our pain will not let us leave last summer behind.

We will not let you move on so easily.

That is a promise.

And I have one more thing.

Are you asking me?

Chill, chill, chill, chill.

Good evening.

Brandon Collins.

I live in the city of Charlottesville.

I've lived here my entire life.

I have three children who've lived here their entire lives.

I also was on the ground on August 11th, 12th, and 13th, as was my daughter and as was probably at least half of the room in here.

you know I think it is extremely important that what happened gets recognized by our new police chief when she comes on board and I'm here to actually talk about the land bank but I will just give a few examples so my friend Starr, deeply injured, there was a death, there was at least 19 other extreme injuries

There were people beaten in the streets.

I cannot count the amount of violent attacks I witnessed on Market Street on the 12th.

I cannot count the number of people who were severely injured on the 11th.

There were gunshots fired at people.

A woman in a wheelchair was doused in lighter fluid with torches thrown at her on the 11th, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

We hear more and more, and as I talk to my friends, we hear more and more of these things.

So we can't ignore that, and our new chief certainly should not, and we hope that our new chief will stand up for us and protect us.

Now the Land Bank, I'm so tired of talking about the Land Bank and I know it's really boring but to go back to July, the idea of a Land Bank was brought forward as a way to bypass the Housing Authority and create some affordable housing and we all had some issues with that and then the Land Bank came forward and we brought forward those issues.

and the Land Bank went to the Housing Advisory Committee who discussed it and they had listened to the public, they had listened to the concerns and they had a community process to talk about what was acceptable for the Land Bank.

Myself and many of my colleagues were opposed to Land Bank and so we sat down with the hack and we kind of tolerated the idea of a Land Bank when they came forward with some fairly big ideas in terms of how we would use that in terms of

it had to only be used for affordable housing there needs to be a connection with nonprofits to provide affordable housing in this city and a number of other things and here we are again looking at the land bank with very little change in the ordinance for you to consider except that it does sort of mention affordable housing but it does not in any way shape or form tell you affordable for whom it does not talk about AMI levels it doesn't talk about extremely low income

It just chalks it up to this new board that will get created and we can go battle all this out again.

So I would like to say we need a land bank that's going to be explicit in the ordinance that it's for affordable housing for extremely low income people, that non-profits, the Charlottesville Redevelopment Housing Authority

are the proper places to use that land bank, that we need a community process for how land is dealt with in that land bank, and a bunch of other things.

And I think if you can't get that right tonight, there is no reason and no rush to pass the land bank tonight.

My name is Rosia Parker.

All I keep hearing is patience.

I have none.

I have no respect, still, for none of you.

So how would I have patience for any of you?

The patience is every day I wake up.

and I gotta go figure what's next for me.

How am I gonna survive mentally, emotionally, every day that May comes, every day the closer I'm getting to May 24th,

and thereafter, or May 17th till now, I'm devastated.

I don't know if I'm coming or I'm going.

My PTSD and bipolar is through the roof.

I have no medication, no money, no way of getting it.

The money that was here, there is nothing else left for me.

So can y'all explain as city councilmen that did not take heed to everything that was presented last year,

to the devastation that took place July 8th, August 11th and 12th to now that y'all want to feel some type of compassion.

Compassion is late, too late for the ones that are hurting you, that are physically, mentally and emotionally hurt.

Our children are far more devastated than I am standing here

Do y'all have an understanding of what that is to watch these children suffer and have no understanding why?

There are still no apologies to Friendship Court.

There are still no apologies, really, from city council to the community.

And y'all still want to talk about patience.

I have none.

And neither do my black people that stand with me from Black Lives Matter.

There ain't no patience, nor patience.

I might not have been to Africa, but my child was with Dave Norris.

And I had been doing the fight since 09, when my child came back from Africa explaining the things that took place, the pictures that took place.

I know what it's like being a black African queen mama, standing up, being a revolutionary, fighting for what belongs to me.

And that's my people and humanity.

and you, I appreciate you coming, but are you truly ready?

Because just because you're a trans person, and you know what you're saying, honey boo boo, don't mean not being here.

If they couldn't defend, if the black men couldn't defend the black people here, what are you gonna do about that?

Your sister's a champion.

I don't care if you're the sister or not.

Look at the sisters that came and have come here before, and they have not,

My name is Anthony.

I just have one little small topic pertaining to the pedestrian and motor safeties in the city of Charlottesville.

Under the current city code of 28-31, here you go, it speaks on the prohibited areas that pedestrians should

Solicitation is prohibited at certain intersections and basically I copied it twice but on one of those papers that y'all got you'll see a little should see a little I'm sorry a little asterisk on on which ain't on y'all's copy but uh anyway it will show that the intersection of

U.S. Route 250 in Hydraulic Road should be inserted as subdivision or subsection E of that statute code to go along with the other four prohibited areas because if you look at number D, that is less high volume, less speed,

You know, indeed, it is an E. I think that the intersection should be added among the list of other intersections.

Route 250 and Hydraulic is more higher speed than downtown, up on Main Street and Ridge and McIntyre.

and plus the median strips are real narrow because the other day a pedestrian just walked out and got some money, came back and I nearly hit him.

I had the choice of whether I should stop or just keep going and hit him.

So I chose this thing to stop and I brought it to a friend of mine's attention.

He said, I'm going to take it to city council.

So I think that the intersection is highly dangerous just like the rest of them.

So that should be inserted among that list.

And as far as the city police department's concerned, I look at it like this.

I've had my little issues with them in the past, but we've got over them.

But you cannot expect the police to do everything at 100% that any person's one satisfaction.

Just like if a police officer rolls up on a vehicle, pulls a vehicle over, and you got five people in it.

If people do what they're supposed to do when the officers encounter action with them, then it'd be a lot less hatred, a lot less...

I don't care what color you do, if I can get this city attorney to do his hand like this, and I put my hand up the side of his palm with his hand, it's the same skin color, it's just that black's got the darker skin color than the whites.

If we all bleed, we all bleed the same color red.

Katrina, Nancy, We don't ask for nothing that's done to us around here by the police.

Nothing.

Who do you think you are to say that to me, man?

and I just got out the hospital having freaking heart pain.

You've got an awful lot to do on that work plan it seems like.

My name is Nancy Carpenter, I'm a city resident.

I'm here tonight with a couple of comments.

One is on the comprehensive plan that your planning commission is currently undergoing some revitalization.

If it doesn't include a strong housing strategy, because housing is the hub.

Housing is the hub where the spokes for every other chapter that comprehensive plan comes out of.

Okay.

You're paying $50,000 to a consultant to do a housing strategy study.

Well, you know, we tend to look at what Austin, Texas does, but we see that that's a similar city to what Charlottesville is.

Well, they're involved

in an initiative.

It's called Policy Link.

It's a policy link all in cities anti-displacement policy network.

And that's very important.

If your housing strategy doesn't include strong anti-displacement strategies, toss it out.

What they're going to be looking at in their strategies are strong anti-eviction policies.

They're going to be looking at land trusts, not land banks, because land trusts create more equity when it comes to housing affordability.

They're also going to be looking at inclusionary zoning, which I think some of my comrades have talked about, and some other strategies.

Because believe it or not, 51% of renters in this country are burdened by the cost

We've heard over the weekend that 40% of Americans are burdened by the cost of shelter, food, and health care.

And out of that 51% that I just talked about, 60% are female heads of household that are women of color who struggle day and I see it every day.

I see it every day with the cohort that I work with.

And I know that it goes up the AMI.

Index.

So I'm hoping that you will adopt a strong housing strategy, if that's not the core.

And you don't need to spend $50,000 to do it.

You can Google search all the information you want.

The other thing is, you may be spending $100,000 for a strategy on some pedestrian security risk assessment.

Close across streets.

Save $100,000.

Put that towards an anti-eviction policy for people in this city.

You spent $75,000 to give the DBAC.

What have they done with that money?

There apparently are some minority-owned businesses on the downtown mall that don't even know they can be a member of this, that have not had any outreach activity towards them, who might be able to benefit from that.

So that's over a quarter of a million dollars

that you're planning to use in studies and things that I think that you could do a little bit more in-house.

You haven't used the money.

Don't know where it's going.

And the other thing is we have a new police chief.

Ms. Carpenter?

Ms. Carpenter?

Mayor Walker?

May I respond?

So Ms. Carpenter, thanks for your comments, specifically in regards to PolicyLink.

So I spoke at PolicyLink earlier in the year, and when you look at their anti-eviction and inclusionary zoning practices, it's a little different from what we're able to do.

So the anti-eviction piece is something that we could look at, but the inclusionary zoning, by Dillon rule, we're not allowed to do.

So there are some, no, no, so there are some jurisdictions in Virginia

who they don't call it inclusionary zoning, but they use different practices, something that we definitely can look at, but I would, in regards to the land bank and the land trust, I agree with you, but I think that's something that we should have further conversation about, not just me, maybe all of us, and when we look at the housing study and then also talking to the HAC, so it's some meat in there, and I'd love to hook you up with some folks from PolicyLink, but I think it's also important,

when we're making the suggestion, specifically looking at anti-eviction practices and our policies, like how the ramifications that they have across the gamut, right?

So from some individuals who may possibly own a home, like it could be a person of color who just has a really, really bad tenant, right?

And do we create policies that then prevent them from being able to actually take care of the places they have,

and or it's allowing a tenant to stay in who is just, has shown that they don't care about being there.

So maybe it's a further conversation.

One of the strategies would be every person who's on the docket like tomorrow that has an unlawful container should have a free of charge.

A very quick response also just to add on to Mr. Bellamy's.

Ms. Carpenter and Mr. Jones, we included as part of the equity package that

There was a part of that which was about gentrification measures and we have just created a new staff position to help counsel with policy and with getting better ideas and doing research because you're right, I mean there's a ton of new stuff out there about

best practices on anti-displacement.

There are public advocate positions that have been proposed.

So I think this would be a great thing to work on quickly, and we have actually allocated some money, although it hasn't been specifically allocated yet, to deal with, to help us get forward on gentrification.

and Mayor Walker, if I may say one more thing, about the idea about the land banks, the land trusts, the housing authority,

Charlottesville Economic Development Authority, they're all supposed to work together and complement one another.

And one thing that really is different about a land bank, and when you look at the landscape in Charlottesville, so much of what we have left by way of land to build on is like a parking lot or it's an old obsolete building.

A land bank can clean the land up

I can get the resources to do that.

And then it's charged with then selling that land to a nonprofit or the housing authority or someone, some entity that's designed to be developing affordable housing.

And it will be inherently less expensive because that hard work of ground cleanup and brownfield remediation can be done already.

I just want to start by sort of piggybacking on something that was said earlier and just reinforcing that I think checking the anti-racist training box by attending implicit bias training sessions is like

basically like doing nothing.

So really definitely push that window further and explore other local resources in that vein.

So what I have to say tonight is in response to my experience attending the recent Planning Commission Public, I'm sorry, Comprehensive Plan, Public Workshops.

And it seems kind of trivial in the context of the really passionate

Things that people have had to share tonight but I'm going to share it because I feel like it's really relevant to in a sort of broad sense to some of the frustrations that we're all having.

So I've been attending these comprehensive plan public workshops over the last month or so and it's obvious to me that the city's put a great deal of effort into making these meetings accessible to the public.

They've taken place in different locations throughout the city at different times of day.

There's snacks, there's drinks available.

It's a very hospitable environment, but what stood out for me is just how esoteric a process this is.

Though it's convenient, perhaps, there's little opportunity for anything resembling actual participation.

accessibility has become sort of a stand-in I think for participation and so what I really want to put a fine point on is sort of the difference between community engagement and

Real participation.

And I think we're just at this moment of deep audit in the way that we conceptualize democracy in our city, in our country.

And so that's why I'm going to elaborate on this.

So let's see.

The content of the plan itself is highly technical.

It requires a great deal of knowledge and various topics of advanced study.

The meetings are highly choreographed with breakout sessions that do little more than sort of intimidate the casual participant, which sort of

has the end result of assuring the authority of the city staffers that are facilitating at each table.

It's really difficult to imagine how this method of engagement could possibly be accessible in any way to the average citizen, let alone that anyone's experiences or thoughts or desires or recommendations could possibly really be integrated in a big way to the broader vision.

And this process has been professionally facilitated, which really leaves little room for citizen-driven learning and deliberation.

It's like a very corporate feeling experience.

And so at any rate, if you have any hope, I think, as a citizen of participating in any real way, you'd have to have been able to access the comprehensive plan online, read it thoroughly, study, develop a response.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any comments?

All right, so it's going to break.

When you want us back?

I don't know what to say.

Music playing...

D.C.

and Michael

The End

you

I don't know what to say.

I'm

Fifeville

you

Item I, minutes for May 7, 2018.

Item B, an appropriation transfer of funds from school HVAC operations to school HVAC capital improvement program, $130,000, second of two readings.

Item C, an appropriation funds for 2018-2019 community development block grant, $389,291.49, second of two readings.

Item D, an appropriation, funds for the 2018-19 home fund, $99,488.45, second of two readings.

Item E, an appropriation for the community development block grant reprogramming FY18-19 funds, second of two readings.

Item F, an appropriation for the home investment partnership account reprogramming FY18-19 funds, second of two readings.

Item G, an appropriation, spay and neuter program at SPCA, $1,998.52, second of two readings.

Item H, an appropriation, transfer of funds for the new salt storage facilities, $300,000, second of two readings.

Item I, a resolution, appointment of the chief of police, first of one reading.

Item J, a resolution, regional hazard mitigation plan, first of one reading.

Item K, a resolution, reallocation of existing funds for the McIntire State Park, $150,000, first of one reading.

Item L, a resolution, renewal of Sprint franchise agreement, first of one reading.

Thank you, counsel.

Congratulations, Chief.

All right, so next we have the public hearing for the Police Civilian Review Board.

Thank you, Mayor Walker.

Late last year, the City Council voted to form an independent Police Civilian Review Board in order to provide for the board's operation as a truly independent entity.

Council supported tasking the initial board with drafting bylaws and defining their mission.

The Council resolution forming an initial Police Civilian Review Board reflected

the intent of the city council that the board shall explore and outline their charge including the ability to work with local law enforcement to address and investigate community complaints and engage in a community-focused process that regularly involves all segments of the public inclusive of the city's minority and low-wealth communities.

The city has conducted an open application process including opportunities

for input at regular city council meetings and a public civilian review board community forum, which was held at the Jefferson School on April 24th.

Of the 25 initial applications received, council selected the 17 applicants who are city residents to participate in the community forum and to go further along in the review process.

A total of 12 applicants attended the forum, with five applicants electing to withdraw themselves from consideration before the forum occurred.

More information, including a link to a feedback survey that was created, which closes on May 24th, may be found at charlesville.org slash boards.

That is another opportunity for folks to comment on the civilian review board candidates before council makes a decision at its next meeting on June 14th.

Tonight, as you mentioned, we do have a public hearing on this.

The initial board will have seven members for council to appoint.

Each of them will be appointed to a one-year term.

and following council's appointments to this initial board, the board will convene public meetings and engage the community for a period of approximately six months, after which they will provide a written report with proposed mission and draft bylaws for council's consideration by no later than nine months after the appointments have been made.

All right, so I open the public hearing.

Good evening, everybody.

My name is Jim Shea.

I live in Fry's Spring.

Counselors, our city is in crisis and ironically, it's a crisis brought about by the behavior of our own police department.

The first of two main elements of this crisis was evident last summer.

especially on August the 12th, the day that we were famously invaded by hundreds of right-wing racist thugs who told us weeks before they got here that they wanted to cause turmoil and havoc and they threatened black people and Jews in our city.

But when they got here, our police department stood aside and left the city to the tender mercies of these hooligans

with results that were tragic and grievous as we know.

And if they weren't worse, that's no thanks to the Charlottesville Police Department.

And we have no idea whether next time it'll be worse.

And there will be a next time, you can count on that.

So this is a very dangerous situation and it's intolerable and must be remedied.

The second element of our crisis is less dramatic but equally dangerous.

It is the day after day after day, year after year, bullying, disrespecting of the black people of our city by members of the Charlottesville Police Department.

Now defenders of the police department will say there's not really a problem here.

This is just a misunderstanding.

But this is flatly contradicted by the police department's own documents, their own data, and by abundant, and I mean abundant, credible testimony from people who have been victims and witnesses of this racist abuse in our city.

This is dangerous, but it's also shameful and has to be remedied.

Counselors, for the sake of our people in our city, we must mount

a resolute, aggressive, impatient campaign focused on fundamental reform of our police department with a view toward establishing one day, hopefully soon, a police department that is 100% dedicated to protecting life and property, preserving public order,

and 100% committed to respecting the civil rights of each and every person regardless of race or class.

The Review Board, the Civilian Review Board, must be a key element in this campaign.

But in order for it to do its job, Council has to make sure that the Board has the necessary resources, authorities and muscle to do that job.

Walt Heinecky, Amherst Street.

So it's really nice to hear the connection tonight between the Ghana trip and the anti-racist work that needs to be done in this town.

I'm really encouraged to hear that connection being made because I too am really, really impatient with what we're doing with anti-racism in this town, whether it's the Human Rights Commission or the Civilian Review Board that we're now about to talk about.

First and foremost, you've heard it many times tonight, and I'm going to repeat it, there needs to be some accountability for last summer.

It's not over.

There needs to be an investigation.

You need to take some responsibility for figuring out what went wrong and how it went wrong and take some ownership of how that went wrong.

Accountability is incredibly important for what City Manager Jones put up on one of the slides, which is rebuilding public trust.

You're not going to get that without accountability and a serious amount of attention to accountability.

Firing the last police chief and rehiring this new police chief, which is great, is only symbolic.

It's just a symbol of the problem.

The problem runs much deeper in terms of the culture of the CPD, right?

And you're going to have to address that.

The real solution to the CRB is rebuilding trust with this community

that the community, especially the community that showed up last summer.

You've marginalized them in the past.

You have to start listening to those people in the community.

Many of them are here tonight, here and out there.

That's how you rebuild trust.

You start building a civilian review board based on the views and the perspectives of the people that showed up prior to May and showed you what was gonna happen

going forward.

It's time to bring those folks into the fold through the CRB process.

So what you do with the CRB appointments is incredibly important.

Let's not repeat the mistake of the Human Rights Commission which we're now digging out of.

Three years, five years later we're trying to fix the problem.

You have a great opportunity to circumvent that problem five years from now by appointing the right people to that board.

And we know what happens in these boards and commissions.

It's like a big washing machine in which a lot of values get thrown around

Right?

And what happens is in that washing machine of the city government, equity and justice and racial justice gets washed out.

Right?

That's what happens in these processes.

And that's what you have to sort of be aware of in terms of making this first initial appointments, which are huge.

Right?

So the first job

is creating an independent CRB that can actually do what I would say is an organizational development review of the police department.

You have to do a cultural review of the organization.

And I don't think it's up to the police chief to do it.

I think it's up to you.

And you have to appoint these trusted people of our community to help you do that by your appointments to the CRB.

Katrina Turner.

Katrina Turner, Charlottesville.

I just want to say that when the new chief spoke and said she wasn't going to hold the police accountable for last summer

I want to know if that also means she's not going to hold them accountable for everything else they've done also.

All the complaints that have been filed against these police here, is that going to be thrown to the side also?

Is she going to ignore all those complaints and not reopen them?

Because as y'all know, I have a complaint and it's been going on for two years.

And y'all heard my son's story.

but the story is that I raised my sons not to put their hand on women because over 30 years ago I was in a domestic abuse relationship where I had to take my son and hide him in a closet one night and lock him in his door

and I had to jump out the window myself because my abuser was about to jump through my front room window to kill me.

My son is six months old, the same one that the police arrested.

When he called for help, at six months old, he was put in front of a car, told, kill him, run him over, kill him.

and thank God somebody took my son from him somewhere in front of that car.

But I was in a domestic abuse relationship for a long time and it took a long time for me to get out and for me to have raised my sons to do the right thing and not put their hand on a woman because of what I went through.

and then to turn around and him get arrested by the police because he called for help because they chose to be the judge and the jury that night and not do their job and help the person who called for them.

Your officers need a whole lot of training around here.

There's a lot of them that need to be out of the police department.

Gary Pleasance is one of the ones that did that to my son.

Officer Hickey was another one.

But instead of them reprimanding these two officers, they promoted them.

Why promote these officers for what they're out here doing to us out here on the street?

It might not have happened to me that night, but I saw everything the police did to my son that night while he was handcuffed.

So there needs to be some accountability in Charlottesville.

Good evening again Brandon Collins, I live in the city of Charlottesville and I work for FAR, the Public Housing Association of Residents.

and FAR is very much in support of the creation of an independent civilian review board of the police.

And I want to stress independence with this review board.

I know that when the conversations first came up about what was and wasn't possible in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the Confederate State of Virginia that has the Dillon Rule that won't let it do anything cool,

that it severely limits your ability to put in an ordinance anything that really makes sense, anything that gives this board true power, subpoena power, anything that makes it truly independent.

However, there are administrative remedies and there's nothing to keep the police department, there's nothing to keep the city council,

from supporting this independent review board from acting as if it's truly independent and as if it has subpoena power and as if the recommendations it makes for discipline are truly implemented, right?

So if the police department can say yes when the civilian review board recommends discipline for an officer,

we are going to implement what that board says.

Now you can't necessarily put that in law but I think that's the spirit that you should go for and I think that's the kind of big thinking that we need in this city.

What we don't need is setting up yet another board that's just on the surface looks like it's doing something and we can look at the Human Rights Commission and we can look at the potential for this to really not go anywhere so I think it's highly important

that the spirit of independence that this board have its own power to do what really needs to happen and that it's truly community driven because it's true.

The only thing that's going to fix this relationship is if the community has control of the police department and that's what's going to start changing things, I hope.

Some of us are skeptical.

I hear from residents over the past seven or eight years and they say they have a problem with the police.

and I say, well, did you make a complaint?

And they say, yeah.

And I say, well, what happened?

And nothing.

It goes into a black hole.

In some circumstances, they do get a response and it's always the same response.

Well, the police have determined that the officer was not at fault.

And they seldom get any other detail and that definitely has to change.

When I hear Ms. Turner's story, and I've heard it a few times, I'm just perplexed that she's never gotten any real answer to that problem.

Good afternoon.

The reason why I still believe that CRBs should be in effect is because I am a citizen that has had several white officers, men, put their hands on me from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet to be dragged down the street and there's no black officers in sight.

In the black low-income, we, like I say, we need to be policed

protected and served, but not over-policed.

There's a difference between over-policing and policing.

Policing is when you come into your community, you get to know your community.

You get to have a relationship with your community.

But if you're not having a relationship with your community, where you're not trying to get to know your community members, besides when they're just coming in for a drug bust, or when they're coming in for a J-Task Force, or when they're coming in to just try to set us up, or why they're out there watching us,

I feel that there is some accountability that needs to be taken.

And the accountability of what, two weeks ago, Katrina?

Three weeks ago?

How y'all's police officers was wrong in what they were doing because they went off on informants information.

I'm a taxpayer just because I live in low income.

I still pay for their checks.

And I feel that they were dead wrong in what they were doing.

And then for them to come off at the community in the way that they did, that was definitely dead wrong.

I felt that when they're wrong, they need to start apologizing to people.

Because when you set a whole community in an uproar for something that an informant said, and when your police officer is so-called sitting up on top of that hill watching, and you're still wrong, and then you're going to run up in this woman's house without a warrant, that's definitely a problem that we have in our black communities.

And we're not going to continue to be harassed having pictures taken of us.

Just because we're black on a nice good Sunday or a nice good warm day that we cannot sit in our community, five or six black people in the front yard without being harassed.

And then y'all talk about another thing of transparency and community policing.

Okay, last year y'all came into West Haven to call yourself doing a pilot program.

for unity in the community.

Okay, well mighty funny, more blacks got locked up for unity in the community and being barred than the white folks that walked through our neighborhood like it wasn't a problem.

That's a problem.

It's not only just West Haven that we have these issues in.

It's in all the low income neighborhoods.

No, we're not right.

and things that we do, but we're not always wrong either.

So I still say that somebody has to take accountability and these are bias issues.

This should have been in effect years ago for generations.

But how many times are we going to keep talking about it and not being about it?

Because we've been talking for years and I've been, I know I've been at this mic for, I don't know how many years since I've been in Charlottesville.

The city.

Oh, you don't?

What was that man that ran for city council?

Jackson?

Kenny Jackson.

Kenny Jackson was in our neighborhood on August 11th.

That's not a city program.

He was doing that on his own.

No!

Otis and Thomas told me that.

Unity in the community.

With Ken of Jackson, August 11th.

Do we not have a problem there?

In West Haven?

Where's Miss Joy at?

Was he not doing unity in the community?

But the program, when it came to us, they said it was a 30 day pilot program.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Accountability, responsibility, independence.

These are the pillars that we've got to build this CRB on.

And it is of a tad amount of importance that we give, that that particular board has subpoena powers and investigative powers.

Otherwise, it's just another paper committee

is sliding paper airplanes across the table at each other.

And I don't think that anyone who signed up to be a part of that is interested in being part of a paper committee.

Dr. Brackney, God bless you, I welcome you.

You have got to build some microcosm of trust back into this community with the police.

And that's what's sorely lacking, more so than anything else.

There's not a modicum of trust, especially between the black community

and the police department right now that exist.

And it's going to take a lot of effort, as Honorable Mayor Walker said, it's going to take a lot of work.

We've got a lot of work to do, and we can't talk about this work anymore.

We've got to actually get out and do it.

We've got to be a part of it.

So unless we are willing to actually put some teeth into this CRB,

and give the people the weight behind them that they need in order to do the work that obviously is necessary, we're wasting time again.

This community has been through so much already.

We actually need to be about moving forward, making real progress, and the CRB, you have an opportunity here to do this.

And the true dichotomy here, if done properly,

It will manifest itself not only the things that are going wrong with the police department, but it may also reveal some things that are being done correctly.

I know people don't want to believe that there are any things that are being done correctly, but it's a double-edged sword and it truly should reveal and cut both ways and show both the problems and the successes.

So I urge you, I implore you, please get behind these people

Give them what they need without staff interference.

If staff wants to assist, that's one thing, but not interfere.

Thank you.

Yes, I'm also in support of a very strong independent and the operative word is very independent civilian review board.

I think that they need to have the investigative powers and the subpoena powers that previous speakers have talked about.

Things that Ms. Katrina and Ms. Rosie say are very important to the conversation that what Jim and Walt

and Brandon were talking about are very important to this community.

I do think that there is an extreme level of distrust.

We haven't had the accountability over the past year.

We have, you know, who knows what will happen this summer.

There are some things that, you know, even the Civilian Hopefully Review Board could do, which would be to, you know, have subpoena powers, perhaps even get the charges dropped against redneck revolt.

Corey Long, John Blakey.

And to, you know,

For someone to say that to go against command orders from their commander and gas counter protesters, no, that person should not have the graciousness of being allowed to resign admirably.

He does not deserve that kind of consideration.

So those are the kinds of things I hope the Civilian Review Board can look into as a strong, independent commission, devoid of bureaucratic interference and be able to

Mary Curry again, city resident.

Now I grew up in this town 72 years ago.

They had police officers walking beats.

We knew these police officers.

We protected these police officers from the KKK, who was protecting us from the KKK.

Now we need that protection from the police, from the KKK, but a lot of the police officers are the KKK.

So what are we going to do?

All I got to say is right now, city council people, is that it's for y'all to understand that it's so much hurt and pain in the city.

It's been here for years.

I marched in the 60s.

I was a teenager.

I was here to listen to Dr. Martin Luther King and Jesse Jackson three times in Charlottesville.

I went along with all that.

It's still here.

Now, if you can get a citizen review board here to kind of like combat some of this hatred, some of this racism in the police department, we'll be all right.

It's not all the guys, because I know a lot of police officers that they may look at you like this and like that and like that.

But deep down inside, they don't like what's going on either.

But it must be fear that they're not turning on these bad ones.

But I tell you one thing, they got to suck it up, Buttercup.

But I'm going to tell you like this.

This is what I came up here to say.

When you start getting committees and boards and things in Charlottesville, it seems like it's a personal thing.

It's like they're doing it for their own personal gain or whatever.

The bar, the whatever.

They go around and they vote on things only because it's not in their neighborhood.

and then they don't do it right.

But when you do something right, you get a lot out of it, Mr. Jones.

And I've noticed that, like Ms. Carpenter said, and Mr.

Gather said, you don't need no staff telling people what to do when you appoint boards.

You appoint boards.

So why would you put a staff member in there?

Because that's just what they had at their Human Rights Commission.

They had staff in there.

Tell me what to do.

Neighborhood Development, the little man.

What's his name?

Alex.

He is so mean and nasty.

I don't know what's going on with him.

Y'all need to talk to him because he need to be on medication.

But I'm going to tell you something now.

If y'all get a board, a review board, I was thinking about getting on that board, but I think I'll wait till the next rank.

My boys, my youngest son is 45 years old.

I got three sons.

They grew up with police.

They did boxing.

They took trips to different cities with the police.

Right down there at Carter Center Gym.

My son got trophies of boxing.

He went to Ohio.

He went to Wisconsin.

They even went to San Diego one time.

This Charlottesville Police Department, where is it now?

Police need to get off the saddle and start walking.

So I'm Madison and we're with Monticello High School and I did want to start this off by saying thank you for approving and establishing the civilian police report.

There is an extensive history of police communication in the community and

I think that's important to acknowledge and I'm blanking, sorry.

When we talk about different points in our history and acknowledge what the police have done wrong and done right, we have to talk about how citizens are able to communicate and level the playing field and be able to

talk at a level that, sorry, we've gathered my thoughts in a sec.

Being treated as equals, yes, to put it nicely.

And of course, you know, the protest of August 12th comes up again and again and again, and I think that if anything was a breaking point, where all of this started to spill over, and

A little bit is my first time doing this.

in a way that helps protect people's individual rights as well as maintain public safety at the same time which I know is hard to do and it's hard to come from an outsider's point of view just saying that but just from our research and observation as Charlottesville citizens I think our community is built so much on

communication and creativity and just that open connection with each other and just have an event like this happen really sends a tidal wave of, you know, it's a wake-up call.

To close that out, it is a positive opportunity for change and of course correction in Charlottesville's narrative.

Christian Means, Monticello High School senior.

As you heard, my group just recently presented our findings from a research project that we've been doing in school.

But I felt the need to come up here and speak myself just because there's so much more to the topic.

This review board, it's a great opportunity to make change in our city.

but I've only lived here for about five and a half years and I've picked up that Charlottesville is a lot about status and it's a lot about committees and boards and I just don't want this board to, I really see the things that this board could change and I don't want this board to go down the list of other boards that have just been made for status and just to say that it exists and say that we are making change and so

I guess what I'm trying to say is that when you're appointing these board members that we truly look into their character, we truly look into who these people are and make this board effective.

We do so much to have the name to reach a level of success in this city so that we can't have a voice.

Well, now they're going to have a voice, so please just allow them all the liberties that they may need to

get the job done and to really bring back the love that this community I know and can see that it has.

My group, we recently sat down with former police chief Tim Wonga and he was on a Georgetown panel discussion and he talked about how it was heartbreaking for him to see our community divided once again from police that they've been trying to build back together the community relations between police officers and that's gone right now, let's just

Be blunt about it.

That connection's gone between the community and the police right now.

And this advisory board, I think that's the hopes of all the people here is that they can rebuild that connection, bring back Charlottesville that I saw and the future that I see in it.

Thank you.

Jeff Fogel?

Good evening, my name is Jeff Fogel, I live in the Belmont section of town.

Of course, the idea of this panel is long overdue.

Just about 165, 170 years overdue, but overdue.

But I have more questions than I have comments tonight.

You have signed on to the notion of an independent review board.

How are you going to ensure that it's independent?

Have you thought about it?

Have you come up with any ideas of how you're going to make that assurance?

How do you ensure a board is independent when it is politicians who are picking the people who are the members of the board, each of whom have their own views?

How do you do that?

Is this body going to support the Civilian Review Board when it asks for information?

Let's take some obvious ones, like the narrations for the stop and frisk data, the ones that we've been asking for for six years, the ones that we asked for without any identifying information on them, without the name of the police officer, without the name of the person accosted, without any witnesses.

What was the reason we couldn't get it?

We went to court.

You know that.

You defended it.

We went to court and the judge ruled that there's a large hole in the FOIA law that a Mack truck would float through for the police department and that they were not required to turn it over.

Well, the fact that they're not required to turn it over doesn't mean that they can't turn it over.

And so I sought and obtained a meeting with the city manager, who I will remind you

is the Public Safety Director.

And I asked him, Mr. Jones, why can't we have this information?

What problems are implicated by our getting it?

And his answer was, just what our lawyer said in court.

And I said, your lawyer never said anything in court about why you won't give it to us.

The police chief won't tell us.

So the question is, why didn't we get it?

We've never gotten an answer for you, Mr. Jones.

But again, that's been typical, as I said last time.

You never respond to my comments.

And I do object to it still calling it responses to the public because it's Mr. Jones deciding who and what he wants to talk about.

I give you a series of questions.

What did you do on August 12th?

How much did you know about them stopping to keep statistics about stop and frisk?

Has that been changed?

What did you know about the problem of the police, the narratives?

Why couldn't we get them?

Presumably it was your direction, but you don't want to tell anybody and you don't want to answer.

I really urge you not to call this responses to the public, but to call it Mr. Jones's opportunity to say whatever he wants.

because what we were given tonight was another public relations job about how wonderful the city is.

We don't need public relations jobs.

We need hard work.

We need to dig down.

We need to recognize specifically what our problems are and address them.

And this BS that comes out of the city in every possible way in all of the workshops I've been to on the comprehensive plan and otherwise is all, we're great, we're doing a wonderful job.

Evan Brown, Charlottesville resident.

I'd like to agree with everyone that has come up here speaking on behalf of the Civilians Review Board.

I'd like to mention something that hasn't been part of the conversation for this board and that is the problem of police militarization.

We see this throughout the country.

We've seen it here on July 8th when police deployed chemical weapons against their own people, their own residents.

And it's not just weapons, it's also how police officers interact with people.

We've seen

at least myself and others have seen a police officer slam presumably a homeless man to the ground, knocking him unconscious, dragging him bleeding, and slumping him over a bench.

And I even ask you, Mr. Jones, if we know if that man is alive.

We don't.

We still don't know if he's alive.

He could have been killed.

And just outside the city, another man was killed by police, Marcus Peters, who was naked.

Naked.

Now the police, again, in this community, as we've seen, in this country, hell, even worldwide, they are acting more and more like an occupying force rather than actual members of our community.

So I ask that when you think about appointing people to the CRB and the people who are on the CRB are drafting bylaws and figuring out what they can and can't do,

Think about how you can combat police militarization.

Figure out what kind of weapons they're buying, what kind of training they're doing this summer.

Are they training as soldiers?

Are they training to kill people this summer?

Because I wouldn't be surprised if that happens.

I'm surprised it hasn't happened.

Okay?

And that needs to be made at least, you know, made available to the CRB this summer.

They need to know what kind of plans are being made and if they will treat

us residents as just, you know, enemy combatants, because that's what it feels like.

It feels like, and I know this, like just as a white person here, like it feels like it, so I can't even imagine what it's like as a black person or anyone else.

Hi, I am here as a participant with other members of the Charlottesville Community Resilience Fund who

for a second year, participated in the Southerners on New Ground Black Mama bailout action for Mother's Day 2018.

Once again, Charlottesville far exceeded

the fundraising efforts that the fundraising goals that were set for us by the national campaign.

And despite the amount of money that mostly wealthy white people here in Charlottesville were able to throw at this fund, we were for the second year in a row unable to bail out any black women for Mother's Day.

despite the fact that we were able to identify several black women being detained at Albemarle, Charlottesville Regional Jail at the time who were being detained pretrial or pre-sentencing and denied bond for non-violent offenses including check fraud and violation of probation where the original offense was non-violent.

But then on the other side we had Richard Preston, who is a Grand Wizard of the KKK, who showed up in Charlottesville on August the 12th and discharged a firearm twice at community defender Corey Long, who faces charges himself.

by this city.

Richard Preston was convicted of his charges, his violent charges, and Judge Downer saw fit to let him go home to Maryland to sit in peace until his sentencing in August.

The crying Nazi Chris Cantwell is also sitting comfortably at home awaiting his trial despite the fact that he attacked students and community members on August 11th at the base of the rapist Thomas Jefferson statue on UVA grounds.

So we see these discrepancies in how very specific groups of people are treated in Charlottesville.

So yes, accountability for egregious police actions is obviously necessary as long as we live in this violent police state.

But there is a whole system at play, which includes the courts, its judges, and the Commonwealth's Attorney's Office.

whose biased practices must be addressed, but we cannot get to that place of accountability if the city and its council fail in establishing a robust review board for its police.

I personally do not trust the city to adequately address the grievances against its own police

I call on this community to continue to challenge the egregious abuse of powers by the city's police forces, its staff, these courts, their judges, and the jail until true justice is served.

And just very quickly, I know my time is up, but in response to the presentation made by Mr. Jones and the way that former Mayor Signer responded as if, you know, these

you know these proclamations and things or some kind of thing to be celebrated by us.

There were no reports of gun injuries or deaths on August the 12th.

The Georgetown lawsuit

against the Nazis that has caused many of the Nazis to decide not to come back.

It's just creating this legal loophole that will be easy for them to get through.

So they don't show up affiliated with some known neo-Nazi group.

They just show up as individuals and say that, oh, we all happen to be here together at the same time.

Thank you, Donna.

So, you know, these things are not going to keep the Nazis out of here.

Like, creating these legal loopholes is not going to protect us from Nazis.

You have to ban the Nazis.

I'm Gleason Wilson.

But let me talk about something else.

With the Civilian Review Board?

Mm-hmm.

I can get it.

You can get it.

Hello, my name is Helen Plaisance and I am one of the 13 or 12 candidates for the Citizen Police Review Board.

And what I'd like to say is that

It's been quite an experience both on April 24th and this evening to hear the strength and passion behind people who have been wronged by a system that is supposed to protect them.

One of the reasons I applied for this position was because I work for an employer who has a novel set of values.

The first one is always keeps you safe.

And when I first heard some of my friends

talk about the things that had happened to them or that were done to them.

I thought, wow, there's a novel concept.

Maybe we should start with a vision that says everyone in Charlottesville should be kept safe.

I know that the work associated with things like mission and vision and bylaws is pretty dry.

It's intense, but it really forms the basis for what a good civilian review board can do.

And I believe that with the base idea of everyone's job is to keep everyone else safe, we can start there and build something that will really work for the city and heal it.

Hello, Luis Oyola, Old Lynchburg Road.

I am very concerned that in this conversation about the Civilian Review Board where the disappearance of Sage Smith will be dropped by the wayside.

Sage Smith has been missing, is a black trans woman who has been missing since November 20th, 2012.

The police a couple weeks ago went to her residence at the time of the disappearance for the first time.

since her disappearance.

It took five and a half years for them to decide to do that.

This is just one of many examples of negligence in the hands of the Charlottesville Police Department.

And the Charlottesville Police Department does not need to wait for the Civilian Review Board to order them to do so before they do a public apology to Sage Smith's family for their negligence.

The investigation of Sage's residence shows that police always knew where to go, who to interview, where to search, because they also did that for Hannah Graham.

The civilian review boards got to have access to internal communications about disappearances.

They got to be able to review evidence, and they have to have binding conclusions.

the info that they got to start their investigation, they got it from Sage's family and friends.

And a lot of that info has only been made public now with the ID channels feature documentary, which by the way had a rampant detonating of Sage and misgendering.

And we need to be absolutely clear that Sage was identifying as a trans woman at the time of the disappearance.

These are the media standards.

These are the legal standards for how we identify people.

It is the identity at the time that they decided to have that identity.

And it is important they say excuses of, oh, well, it helps with finding people.

But the transphobia in the police department, the transphobia in Charlottesville is part of the reason why people don't care about finding sage.

We need to look into all discrepancies around ignored disappearances, going back to Woolford's case as well, and justice for their family.

The Civilian Review Board appointees, as part of the bylaws process, must be educated about these cases, and they must gather these stories directly from the families as part of that process, and not wait until the review board is established.

Mark Heise, Albemarle County.

Yeah, so I'd just like to go back to a previous point, which is that in order for this civilian review board to have any kind of effect in this city, it needs to be able to hold the Charlottesville Police Department and Charlottesville police officers to account.

There needs to be accountability.

As long as there's policing, we need to be able to hold police accountable for their actions.

As Louise just mentioned, Sage Smith disappeared over five years ago and until just recently, CPD did nothing to investigate her disappearance and no one's been held accountable.

A black woman was repeatedly raped by a white police officer here in the city because he admitted it, he was fired, but the city wasn't able to convict the police officer, which is not only, proves culpability on the part

of the Commonwealth's Attorney, the jury, the officer who did it, but also on the police department who was in charge of investigating that criminal rape.

A black female activist was arrested in the middle of the night.

No one was held accountable.

Jeff Fogel was arrested in the middle of the night.

No one was held accountable.

Veronica was arrested for yelling at a Nazi.

Jeff was arrested for touching a Nazi.

And no one was held accountable for their arrest.

Gary Pleasant, without authorization, tear-gassed members of the community who were non-violently demonstrating against the KKK.

No one's been held accountable.

In fact, Pleasant is about to retire with a full pension.

Five anti-racist activists were arrested for covering their faces with scarves and bandanas to protect themselves from the tear gas that cops had shot at them.

No one's been held accountable for their arrest.

They were charged with felony masking, no one was held accountable.

The police held back and did nothing while Nazis beat members of this community and killed Heather Heyer.

No one's been held accountable.

Ms. Katrina's son was arrested and beaten two years ago as she already talked about when he called for help.

She's filed a claim and has been waiting for anything to be done by the city on that claim for two years.

No one's been held accountable.

While Charlottesville residents are 20% black, stop and frisks, 70% of them are against black folks.

No one's been held accountable for that.

Hi, I'm Frank Richards.

I live in the city of Pine Street.

Obviously the cases are legion that are on the table right away that we have to deal with A11, Katrina's case, stop and frisk, and so many others.

I would also hope though that somewhere down the line

and just kind of piggyback to what Evan was saying, that we really consider what the nature of policing is in this town and in society more broadly.

We're criminalizing so many areas of modern life, drug use and economic crimes and everything else.

That may be beyond the purview, at least in the immediate sense, of what the CRB is, but we've really got to think about that.

Do we really need people with guns showing up when somebody's suffering a mental health crisis?

After the fact, you may be able to investigate

We've really got to consider what policing means in this city and more broadly in this society so I would hope that the CRB if it truly strives to be independent would like try to think outside the box a little bit and not just kind of like you know kind of judge a pre-existing narrative but like to push the envelope a little bit let's consider

You know, what thing, you know, are police social workers?

Do we really need people with guns doing social work and mental health outreach?

I would propose no, but I hope the CRB can also see it that way.

Hi, my name's Jake Mooney.

I'm a city resident.

and I just want to talk briefly about August 12th and public trust in the police.

We had another white supremacist, violent white supremacist plead guilty today.

I can't help noticing though that, sorry, all those men have been arrested, two have now pled guilty, one was found guilty.

They're all identified by activists and people on the internet.

Maybe the police were trying and didn't get there quick enough.

I don't know.

But it's a little puzzling.

There was a story in ProPublica recently about an active duty U.S. Marine who bragged about coming to Charlottesville and cracking skulls.

He hasn't been arrested.

He's identified by name.

A citizen journalist on Twitter asked Steve Ubman of the Charlottesville Police Department, the public information officer, whether he was going to be charged.

And Ubman's response was, at this time there has been no complaint filed.

Should any victims denoted in the article wish to file a report, the Charlottesville Police Department will investigate.

That seems like a crazy threshold to me, frankly.

This incident, it's a pretty famous picture of some neo-Nazis beating up an activist on August 12th.

Those men have been identified, again, by ProPublica.

Their names are published here.

They live in California, but I don't know, as a resident of this city, why those men haven't been charged.

And I think this is the kind of thing that just makes me wonder sort of what the police department has been doing for the last 9, 10 months.

Okay, closing public hearing.

Well, Mayor Walker, if I may open this up, it does seem like we need to discuss what will it take to make this a truly independent board.

And I just open that up for discussion with

with our colleagues.

And one thing that was just came to mind is that we do need to resource this organization.

Should this organization then be allowed to hire its own staff person?

Because there does seem to be some concern about whether it's staffed by the city or the police department.

Okay, but that would require different resources than us providing a staff person to it, because they're going to need some assistance, I would think, to write and do investigation and just to do

kind of administrative work.

Yeah, I think the most important thing is that whatever we are presented with based on this year's findings that we honor what they present to us.

Oh, absolutely.

One of the things the community has watched over the last many months is the awkwardness of the design of how council interacts on operational questions like policing.

It's very challenging in our form of government because council doesn't direct policing.

So I would very much like to know some answers to the questions that were raised by Mr. Mooney about this intelligence about these military

members who have been identified who seem to have been documented to have been here.

I've read some of these articles too and it is, it seems insane and infuriating, bewildering and frightening and it seems like there should be some action about this and I would, but then also I know that one of the things that was going on with some of the

with the delay that, like I don't know this other than from reading about it, but I know that with the delay that happened with the work that Sean King was doing and how long it seemed to take is that the police sometimes take a while to put together an investigation.

So they are, it takes them more time to dot all the I's and cross all the T's so that they know that they can win in court.

So there's a process that does the gears move a little more slowly.

But I would really like to know to the extent that we can know what the hell is happening with these stories about active duty military.

I guess if there is some way we can communicate to the public what the schedule is for the next steps, that might be helpful.

And I'll just say as someone who has grown up in the community, who has lived in places when we're talking about over-policing, who Sage was in our, my friend group, our first baby.

So it's a very different

It's not a place of activism for me.

When you talk about Quinn Woodfalk, my cousin was dating Quinn's brother, has a daughter.

that cousin best friend's daughter is his her uncle is missing like it's different so I am aware of what's needed I have lived it and every time I sit in a room I'm not coming with just

stories that I've read.

I'm coming from a very lived experience and people who are asking me questions on a daily basis.

And it's a very different place.

So almost as Miss Kerry was sitting up here saying, I haven't been here that long.

But from being here and living here, I am aware

and I'm aware on a very personal level of how bad it has been, the changes that are needed and what overall, not just with police accountability, but overall the systemic issues that we have in Charlottesville and what needs to change.

So I know that whatever comes out of this year,

Okay.

No.

What time is that?

Yeah, you can.

That's right.

Uh-huh.

No.

Sorry.

This break will be about 10.

Yeah, it's a long time.

I'm sorry.

It feels very break-like.

No, we're moving on.

Lisa is presenting, I think.

Yeah, we talked, we had a good talk.

He was like, yo, she good.

She's like, she can hear a little bit.

Okay.

You have in front of you an application from

an LLC by the name of LBQ Properties.

The individual associated with the application is Jeffrey Quinn, who's the owner of property at 928 Monticello Avenue.

Mr. Quinn has submitted a petition to close a portion of a 12-foot wide alley that was created many years ago by a subdivision plat or some other deed, but has never been accepted by the city.

which is located off of Castalia Street.

There are five adjoining property owners and the alley has been in existence since 1891.

Mr. Quinn is asking to close the alley because a large garage or shed on his property encroaches into the area of it and has created some title problems.

The mechanism for closing this type of alley is an ordinance that's proposed to be adopted by city council.

You have in front of you a staff report that focuses on the provisions of an existing street policy that was adopted by city council in 2005.

The application

can be approved by adoption of the ordinance.

If city council ultimately decides not to approve the application, that that decision can be adopted by a motion.

I think you all have had a chance to read the staff report and there are no clear objections by anyone from utilities or public works or that sort of thing.

So you're you're free to review the application and consider any

I've originally applied for the alley from my property.

to Castilla Street to be abandoned in order to resolve this encroachment issue that we became aware of right after closing.

I have since talked to several of the neighbors and a couple of them do have issues with closing the alley.

So taking that into consideration, I was hoping that I could possibly amend my application to not close the alley from my property all the way to Castilia Street, but just behind my property.

I have been in touch with my neighbor directly to the rear, Alyssa Ferretti, and she is 100% supportive of the closure.

I've also, since

Deciding to make this change I supplied you with some photographs As you can see on the top page that is a picture looking down the alleyway from my property Over the next two properties and it's got trees that have to be

20 plus years old growing in the middle of it and their fences and sheds and trees going all the way down.

Just for purposes of complete openness, I've also included a picture on the second page which is from my property to Castelia Street.

which is the portion I had originally requested to be closed as well as photographs at the far other end of the alley from Meridian Street down, which there seems to be a bit of a grass alley going for a few houses, but again then dead ends and fences and tree lines going all the way in.

No, there's no way to pass through it, but after speaking with a couple of the neighbors, they are, they want, they live to the left of me toward Castilla Street, there's

I believe two houses behind and one on Montavista, Monticello.

They had concerns and they were interested in keeping the alley open at least to their portion of the house.

So taking that into consideration,

trying to be a good neighbor and trying to see what works for everybody.

That's why I just wanted to change it from closing from my house to Castilla Street to just behind my house.

Well we discovered it that it was encroaching like right after closing.

We didn't have a, I did a boundary survey and that's when we discovered it.

This property actually belongs to a cousin of a very good friend of mine.

They inherited it.

They have absolutely nothing.

that they could possibly do to deal with the house, to deal with the encroachment.

And so we're working together to redo the house and sell it and kind of work together.

So a prior owner will put that garage in?

Oh, no, not me or them.

I think that garage, to my understanding, was built back in the 50s when they purchased the house originally.

Yeah, I just want to make it right.

I mean, honestly, if I didn't think to do a boundary survey, I probably could have just sold it off to somebody else with the encroachment.

No one would have known or cared because it's been there forever.

And it shows on the plat.

It's sitting there.

But when I did an actual boundary survey, that's when it came up.

Ms. Robertson, do we not have other options for how we can accommodate this given the timeline?

Oh, I'm sorry.

You're right.

Thank you.

This wasn't really what I came here to talk about tonight, but Mark Cabot, 400 Altamont Street.

Seems to me that you all need to have a survey of what he actually wants to do.

There's no question as to what may come up on this matter in the future.

It also looks like that if a

I'm concerned about the neighbors as far as them having access to this area.

There seems to be some concern that the neighbors don't necessarily want to see a total closure of the place.

Maybe an easement that would be granted would also be something that could be done to give the neighbors that are involved in this ability to use this or enter the property, depending on what needs to be done completely with it.

But I'd be very concerned about total closure

Hi, I'm Joy Fuse, my wife is Belver.

We live at 917 Bowling Avenue, so this alley is in the backyard of our property and we oppose closing the alley.

Our home was newer construction in Belmont and when the builder built it he was told to provide off-street parking and in working with City Development Office they approved an off-street parking that is accessible from the alley.

So we have a parking pad back there and may in the future want to utilize that.

When we also put the shed on the back of the property we use this alley to bring in

materials for the shed instead of, because it's a pretty big slope down to bowling at the front so you don't really want to be carrying things up that hill.

So we do use the alley.

Not feeling great about the flipping of the house and sort of the honesty.

When we talked to the city attorney's office, they said that this gentleman had spoken to the neighbors and gotten approval and we had never spoken to him before, I guess a few days ago.

So just a few sort of trust issues about what the intent is with the house and

saying he spoke to the neighbors.

And our neighbors, Mark and Dream at 919 Bowling Avenue, you should have a letter in your packet, they're out of town.

They also oppose the alley for similar reasons.

The closing of the alley, sorry.

Yes, okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else here?

So if the city had title to the land, we sometimes use what's called an encroachment agreement that could be approved short of actually selling the land.

But because this is such an old alley, we don't have title.

We just have an interest that hasn't been perfected yet.

Staff report, as you saw, or the agenda materials indicated that at least at some point the owner of 915 Bowling Avenue had indicated that he or she would give Mr. Quinn an easement.

So to the extent that Mr. Quinn and that property owner actually continue to have the underlying title, that easement would resolve

the encroachment of the garage into that adjacent property owner's land, but wouldn't necessarily resolve any infringement on the city's sort of unperfected interest.

But right now, because the city hasn't decided to use it for anything and hasn't taken title yet, there's no

sort of urgent city reason to care whether or not that encroachment is there.

So there are there the easement would resolve any.

The easement from the the opposite property owner would resolve any sort of media issues as to whether or not the garage is on one

I think that's right.

So if this is the alley and it's 12 feet wide, technically the title to each property owner goes to the center line.

So that's six feet of property for each adjacent owner.

Are there any more comments?

I could get the ball rolling.

So I move that council deny the adoption of a formal ordinance to dedicate the subject alley off Castalia Street as alleys in general still serve a distinct public interest.

I'll second it so we have a discussion.

What I'd like to make the point is that alleys are very much a way to access property without impinging upon the ease and walkability of the public street.

And driveways in particular are a particular challenge for people in wheelchairs, people with strollers, when they're encroaching upon the main right of way on the sidewalk.

and Alley is a very good, easy way to consolidate all the entry and exit points for cars, limiting the conflict points between cars and pedestrians.

And we had a good example of that just during the public hearing as one of the residents talked about how they use that alley for very good reasons.

It's also really important to note that this is also part of a building body of city policy.

The streets that work,

references the importance of resolving conflicts between driveways and pedestrians.

And it, by reference, is including what they call the National Association of City Transportation Official Street Design Guidelines, which directly call for the importance and retention of alleys as a way to segregate conflicts between pedestrians and cyclists and cars.

So I think

If anything, we should be looking towards trying to preserve and activate the alleys that we have in our possession, not give them up.

And it is very much in keeping with, as I said, our Streets That Work policy, which is now being turned into our Standards and Design Manual.

So that is my motion, and I know historically,

It's been the default of the city to vacate alleys.

And I think we're moving towards a situation where our default should be to protect and preserve our alleys and look towards ways of, as Miss Robertson put it, perfecting our entitlement.

So that is the one motion I have right now.

I do have another motion to make that deals with researching this.

And I support that motion on the whole.

I'd like to call the question.

It's no vote.

It's a first of two.

It's not first of two readings of the question.

That's right.

So this is a full vote.

All right.

The vote.

Motion to deny.

So if I may, Miss Walker, Mayor Walker, I have another proposal.

And it is given the resolution would be to develop a new policy on the public right of way as it pertains to alleys and what we call paper streets.

And you got a copy at your seats at the dais.

and I had been advised by Ms. Robertson before the meeting that it was better to break up the two motions.

We just passed one motion, but now this is a motion that in light of our growing city policy about the importance of alleys, that we would direct, that the city council would direct the places on task force, legal counsel, staff and city consultant to revise and create policies and procedures for the vacation preservation creation of public way as it pertains to alleys

and Paper Streets, including but not limited to defining it, measuring it, inventorying them in the city, retaining and activating them for public use, particularly for existing allies in Paper Streets, looking into the design and construction allies for new public allies within a block, determining instances where the vacation of existing allies in Paper Streets may be warranted

and incorporating these standards and metrics and findings into other important city documents such as the standards and design manual and other city policies and procedures for the vacation, closing and abandonment of streets and alleys.

And that the further be it resolved that the places like task force, legal counsel, staff and city consultant would submit draft policies and procedures as it pertains to these alleys and paper streets by December 2018.

and that should be in keeping with the completion of the standards and design manual.

If we could put this on to another evening, that this was just an introduction.

I'm still confused how we're directing this citizen with this circumstance.

I mean, are we saying that it hasn't been a problem, so kind of just move forward?

Well, the garage has been there for a really long time.

I'm not, it's a very difficult thing to resolve for something that's been there for so long.

It wasn't clear to me what the reason, why we needed to resolve it right now.

OK. All right.

And Mayor Walker and Ms. Robertson, just Mr. Jones, just a point of clarification for the proposed resolution that I just brought forth that can be brought back in the June or something like that or because it sounds like June 4th might be getting pretty packed.

OK, thank you very much.

I mean, is there support among council for bringing this back?

Do we have something like that?

Yeah, I'm talking about it further.

Yes.

It's my understanding that it's, Ms. Rice asked that question.

You've always done three.

Did we change that in the whole system?

But I think that this is something that we can discuss further because it's just new information.

Well, if I may, it was a resolution to get more information to make a policy about alleys that we don't currently have.

So it was directing staff in an advisory group to pursue that research and to do that work.

I don't want to belabor the point that Ms. Galvin is right in regards to it only being two because if it was two, we had this discussion before, distinctively, and I remember us discussing if it was three people then

And I thought it was you that said it.

No, there's been many examples where we've had to get three.

The council's going to be having discussions about procedures and policies and protocols at a church unit on the 29th, so that would be a good time to clarify that.

Cool.

Yes, ma'am.

Yeah, OK.

Good evening.

Good evening.

I was just saying.

It's been a long day.

This is a

This is connected to the Main Street Arena Project or the CORE building or Charlottesville Technology Center, whichever name you know it by.

The applicant is requesting the 64 square feet as a part of the design of the building.

There's a

kind of a wall that they have that would this would straighten out by having this land they would be able to straighten out a wall that currently has a very slight kind of corner and it in exchange for the 64 square feet of Water Street right-of-way they're proposing to donate to the city over 400 square feet of right-of-way further down Water Street

which is another design issue that they're having to deal with which is the setback of the building is causing kind of a stair step effect as you go down the street and so by donating that land they move their setback up so it's even with the rest of the wall on Water Street and kind of flattens that out and that was a comment that the BAR had about the original design of this building so I think this is something that the BAR would welcome is getting this additional right of way and moving that setback.

Additionally, there is a temporary construction and grading and access easement.

tied into this and that is coming out of some initial discussions with the applicant regarding how to construct this building.

So that's the item that you see there.

I'm not exactly sure how much that is.

I know that's the fullest extent, I believe, of that construction easement.

I do know we have a representative of the applicant here that may be able to talk to that.

One of the very first things we had in discussion with the applicant was the need to maintain ADA accessibility through here.

We've had discussions about

I say ADA accessibility, it's too steep for ADA accessibility now.

So while it is at grade all the way down, the grade is still steeper than desired for ADA accessibility.

But there is discussions with the applicant as a part of this that they would maintain full pedestrian accessibility through this area.

Great.

Thank you.

Right.

OK. Any other?

All right, open public hearing.

Hello, Mayor Walker, Members of Council.

I'm Valerie Long, here representing the owner and applicant, the owner of the property, Brands Hatch LLC, and the developer, CHS Development.

I think you all are familiar with the property, the former Ice Park.

It's proposed to be now called the Code Building, Center of Developing Entrepreneurs.

Thank you to Mr. Haleska for his good summary of the issue.

As he said, we're proposing to exchange a small portion of land from the city

in exchange for a much larger piece of land from the owners to balance out the building, make it work better with the setbacks.

We have a sort of a triple challenge of an irregularly shaped parcel, zero setback lines, and then just to add more interest to it, we have kind of an irregular shaped, irregular some jogs in the property line along Water Street.

So in order to try and comply with the zero setbacks,

have a building that's straight and also provide more space for the pedestrian environment by adding the land back or donating the land back to the city along Water Street, we'll be able to have a much larger pedestrian area.

The sidewalk in that location is fairly narrow.

I do have some photographs if anyone's interested.

I also have some slides that I'd be happy to show if anyone wants any specifics.

We think it will significantly improve the pedestrian environment in that location.

Part of the

Building is an open gallery space that will lead directly from the mall side through an open courtyard of the building, connect to Water Street.

So it'll be a very functional and attractive pedestrian corridor, will almost serve as almost like another parallel street as part of the street grid, very much open it up.

It's gonna be open, publicly accessible space.

So right on the Water Street side of that open gallery,

is where the owners are proposing to give land back to the city, which will increase the width of the sidewalk in that location, add more room for some street trees, just generally improve that pedestrian environment on that side and strengthen the connection between the water street side and the mall side.

So we also, as noted, have a proposed construction easement for access so that they can get the equipment in and actually construct the building on the mall.

We've been working.

The team has been working with Mr. Haluska on sort of a construction management plan to ensure that public access is maintained.