City Council Meeting   4/15/2013

Rule called.

We'll start our meeting today with a moment of silence for memory of a horrific event in Boston Marathon today.

Two people have been killed and 110 injured.

Many people from Charlottesville also attended the marathon, so we'll have a few seconds of silence.

There are a number of announcements and recognitions today and there are quite a few of them so we are going to abbreviate those as far as possible but we will want to give a chance to everybody.

First, I'll start today, World Tai Chi Congo Day.

I'm going to read the whole proclamation.

We have done a proclamation to honor citizens in this area.

There's a special thing which I want to mention today.

There is a special day on April, Saturday, April 27th in Lee Park.

for World Tai Chi Day event.

Now, therefore, I, Senator Singh Huja, Mayor of Sileshore, will do hereby proclaim April 27, 2013 as World Tai Chi Day, signed on April 2013.

I have one declaring US Veg Week, which I'm told is a way to make sure to include both vegetarians and vegans.

So maybe it's Veeg Week.

But because the city of Charlottesville is a green city and plant-based diet has been shown to use fewer resources and cause less pollution and reports have demonstrated we can lower our negative impact on the planet simply by cutting down on the animal products we eat.

Hello.

Hosted by Compassion Over Killing, US Veg Week is a seven-day campaign encouraging others to choose vegetarian foods as a way to make a kinder, cleaner, and more healthier world.

We are thankful to the city of Charlottesville for this recognition, and we invite the city council and residents to join us starting on Earth Day for a seven-day veg pledge.

You can find out more at usvegweek.com.

Military Child Month.

Whereas thousands of brave Americans have demonstrated their courage and commitment to freedom by serving the armed forces of the United States both on active duty and in the National Guard and Reserves,

and more than 150,260 children and youth with a parent on active duty stationed in Virginia and whereas Virginia has the highest number of active duty school-age children in the nation and whereas the children of our service members are major contributors to the strength of their parents every day and whereas the children of military personnel make significant contributions to family schools, communities and city and nation despite repeated and prolonged absences of one or more parents

Now therefore... Now therefore, I say tell us a little thing, which I do hereby recognize April 13th as Military Child Month, the City of Charlottesville, and I call this observance to the attention of all our citizens.

Is anybody here to receive the proclamation?

If not we move to the next one.

First of all, we have a proclamation to honor the Monticello District Boy Scouts of America, whereas Boy Scouts of America was established on February 8, 1910, and has created a strong foundation of leadership, service, and community for millions of American youth for over 103 years.

Whereas the scouts of the Monticello District continued to demonstrate citizenship by providing over 11,000 hours of community service annually in all fields, including business, education, and government, using the confidence gained through scouting values to make ethical choices and realize full potential as citizens.

On behalf of the 2200 registered adult and youth leaders in the Monticello District, we would like to thank the City Council for the recognition that our youth leaders do in the community.

Next we have Fair Housing Month 2013, and this is appropriate given what's on our agenda later tonight.

Whereas April is Fair Housing Month, it marks the 45th anniversary of the passage of the Federal Fair Housing Act.

Whereas the Fair Housing Act provides

Now therefore I stand in saying, Huja, to hereby declare April as a fair housing month and encourage all citizens to educate themselves about the importance of fair housing.

Thank you for recognizing Fair Housing Month and the importance of equal housing opportunity as a civil right and a shared value.

I just wanted to quickly highlight two special events happening during Fair Housing Month this year.

The first is the annual Fair Housing Forum and that's happening April 23rd here in City Council Chambers.

The topic is, is there a fair housing gap in the Charlottesville area?

The second event is Wednesday, April 24th.

It's a fair and accessible housing seminar for people with disabilities and their advocates.

And I want to encourage all citizens, planners, government officials, people in the housing industry to attend the forum on the 23rd.

We'll be having Sylvia Barry, who's the Director of the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity out of HUD's Richmond office.

We'll also be having the Thomas Richardson Planning District Committee representatives speak about the Fair Housing and Equity Assessment.

Sylvia from HUD will also be talking about local governments' responsibility to affirmatively further fair housing.

and PHA will be talking about the recent testing compliance report that revealed that there is differential treatment and barriers to housing for people based on race, familial status and disability.

So this will be an interactive discussion and we'll be moving forward with suggestive improvements.

I have a proclamation for Arbor Day and then a little mini announcement associated with it.

This is whereas in 1872 J.

Sterling Morton proposed to the Nebraska Board of Agriculture that a special day be set aside for the planting of trees and whereas this holiday called Arbor Day was first observed

with the planting of more than a million trees in Nebraska and whereas Arbor Day is now observed throughout the nation and the world and whereas trees can reduce the erosion of our precious topsoil by wind and water by cutting and cooling costs, moderate the temperature, clean the air, produce life-giving oxygen and provide habitat for wildlife and whereas trees are a renewable resource

Now, therefore, I, Sister Lisa Huja, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, would you hereby proclaim April 26, 2013 as Arbor Day in the City of Charlottesville.

And further, we urge all citizens to plant trees to gladden the heart and promote the well-being of this and future generations.

I believe we have Chris Jensen and Robin Haynes.

And while you come up, we

I'd just like to recognize we have a letter from the Arbor Day Foundation congratulating Charlottesville on once again earning recognition as a Tree City USA for 2012.

Residents of Charlottesville ought to be proud to live in a community that makes planting trees such a priority.

I got to carry the Tree City flag in the Dogwood parade last year.

That was a beautiful heartfelt talk, Councilwoman Smith.

On behalf of the Charlottesville area tree stewards and the tree commission, I want to thank you for this great proclamation.

and say welcome you all to the events on the 26th.

Arbor Day is becoming a tradition in the city here and we'll have a dedication of the beautiful Sycamore in Quarry Park at 10 in the morning and we would love for all of you guys

and the mayor to come and speak at that.

And there will be some plantings that the staff will have made that day also, especially some more sycamores because one of the sycamores, which is just like the big one, fell in a big storm not too long ago.

Then we're also having a big educational event for children at Riverview Park and that'll be most of the day starting 930 and noon and 4 o'clock and there'll be like five stations, there'll be tree planting again and

Learning about different kinds of bark and different...

I can't remember what we're doing.

It's enormous.

It'll be great.

It will.

It's April 26th?

That's the 26th.

So Friday.

Yes, and we have new tree identification tags for the walk at the park there, so there's lots of things to see.

Thank you.

Okay, so announcements.

Let me start with announcements.

This is the second annual MACE challenge for water conservation.

Americans use more than 150 million gallons of fresh water a year.

With more people and more demand on water ever, water conservation is one of the best solutions to growing issue.

In simple terms, we all have to pledge to conserve water and energy in our community

and our daily living.

And if you want to take part in the contest, you need to call www.mywaterpledge.com www.mywaterpledge.com.

We are competing with other localities.

We are number 10 in the nation right now.

So if you do more conservation and go to www.mywaterpledge.com, we can be more than improving

Higher ranking.

So I encourage you to take part in it.

Yes.

The 2013 Charlottesville community spring job fair will be on May 1st, Wednesday, from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. at John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville.

There will be over 60 employers and hundreds of open positions from a wide variety of industries.

Every level to upper level management positions will be available, so there's something for everyone.

Participation is free.

Pre-register for quicker access to employers the day of the event and to learn more you can go to www.Charlottesville.org slash job fair.

And I also would like to announce the next Our Town Charlottesville when the entire city council and department heads go on the road.

We bring City Council to you.

We'll be at Jackson Via on April 25th.

It'll be for the neighborhoods of Ridge Street, Willoughby, and Burnett Commons.

Okay, this is a notice of a very special and important meeting.

of the Schossel City Council will be held on Tuesday, April 16 at 5 p.m. That's tomorrow at the Carver Recreation Center, 233 4th Street NW.

The agenda is as follows.

It is a work session on the downtown mall.

This has been a burning topic for many of us in the city and we're bringing together many, many different perspectives.

to actually work together on a solution that has many components to it for both an improvement as well as a maintenance strategy for the downtown mall.

So you better show up.

I have a few in chronological order.

This week is the week of the young child.

The Charlottesville Albemarle Smart Beginnings Coalition and other local organizations are celebrating this year with the theme early years are learning years.

I know some of us are going to be reading to young children this week.

Smart Beginnings and the Pinwheel Collaborative are celebrating this week by hosting a free pinwheel parade and concert on Tuesday, April 23rd at 10.15.

Families can join the parade on the mall side of the Omni Hotel at 10.15 and there will be a concert at the pavilion at 10.45.

and then on April 21st is the annual Children's Bike Rodeo that's hosted by Community Bikes.

This is the same day as the Eco Fair.

and that's a Sunday, April 21st.

And the bike rodeo is at the Frank Ickx building.

The Eco Fair is at the Main Street Arena.

And then from May 11th to the week of May 11th to 17th is Race Unity Week.

And we can talk more about this as it gets closer.

Dialogue on Race is hosting that with a number of interesting activities.

And you can go online to Charlottesville.org slash dialogue.

You have to know how to spell dialogue.

It's hard to spell.

Three quick things.

Thank you.

Also, I just want to announce under other business, I'd like to have us entertain a discussion about the ongoing detonation work that's being done at and around the Charlottesville Airport.

and then lastly, I'm very excited to announce an event that's happening this Wednesday in and around the downtown area.

It's called Winneba Wednesday and this is a fundraiser, it's an all-day fundraiser to raise money to support ongoing sister city collaborations between Charlottesville and our sister city in Ghana, Winneba.

Vice Mayor Szakos and I are going to be accompanying a delegation of

10 Charlottesville community residents to Winneba later this month for about 10 days.

We're very excited about that.

And this is a fundraiser to support not only that trip, but also ongoing collaborations between Charlottesville and Winneba.

So if you're in and around the downtown area on Wednesday, there's four different venues that are all donating 20% of food or drink proceeds to the Charlottesville-Winneba Foundation.

and in the morning we have Millie Joe at the corner of Preston and McIntyre from 7.30 to 11.30, so coffee, tea and pastries.

Orzo in the Main Street Market for lunch from 11.30 to 2 p.m., they're participating for a lunch service.

Rapture is doing dinner for Winneba Wednesday, that's on the downtown mall, 303 East Main Street, dinner from 5.30 to 8.

And then Escafay on Waters Street is having our Winneba Wednesday wrap party from 8 p.m. until midnight.

Please do come and participate.

Support these great businesses, locally owned businesses that have volunteered to help out and raise money for this valuable cause.

I would encourage you all to take part in that.

Food is great and the cause is great.

I have one other thing that is on the schedule of things, but just want to make sure people know.

The Vietnam Memorial Rededication is on Friday, even though there's construction around it.

From what I understand, they'll just come around from behind.

And if I may just make one other one and be looking for this poster, the bugs, she said, he said, they said, whoa, yo, let it go, and move on.

This is a great, this is a project of Alaxan's who is a motivational speaker born and raised in Charlottesville.

So watch for this going around.

Thank you.

Another opportunity for members of the public on your list.

Please limit your comments for three minutes and identify your name and address.

Mayor Huja and members of the City Council, please forgive me for coming again and seemingly beating a dead horse to death.

But my name is Paul Long and I live at 1410 Grady Avenue in the city.

and Charlottesville and the surrounding counties need an extensive regional public transportation system.

We need such a regional public transportation system if we were to continue to grow economically and to attract new businesses to our area and to cut down on the increased traffic ingestions and to be able to get

cut back on the increased cost of highway and road maintenance and new highway construction.

I urge the Council to reject in total the recent Nelson-Nygert recommendations on our public transit system.

Their recommendation is only you're addressing minor treats to the system and it doesn't address the need to vastly increase the public transportation system that we need.

My name is Lena Marie Seville.

I live on Alta Vista Avenue in the neighborhood of Belmont in the city of Charlottesville.

I'm here to talk to you about the trust that is placed in our elected officials.

There has been a court of supervisor in Albemarle County who's been convicted of a non-consensual sex crime.

And this is more than just about Albemarle County.

This is about elected officials and

a higher standard that they need to be held to.

The Virginia state code allows, what is it, 24.2-233 allows for the removal of elected and certain appointed officers by court for certain reasons.

There's one very general reason and then there's a second reason for lots of drug crimes.

There's a third reason for a hate crime.

I think this needs to be updated.

Not only are people who do these things not to be trusted, but they can also be easily blackmailed if they're involved in illegal activity.

It's just wrong.

Anybody who's convicted of child abuse or a non-consensual sex crime or an accessory to child abuse or an accessory to a non-consensual sex crime has lost the ability to truly represent the citizens.

Thank you.

Celia Reed from 208

Hi, I'm Khalil Reed.

I'm here to talk about housing.

There's too many expensive properties around this town.

There needs to be more stuff for people who can't afford it.

I'm lucky enough to get the house that I live in now because there was a landlord that was willing to sell for the price and see

Not everybody's like that.

Not everybody's lucky.

So, I mean, there needs to be something to where, you know, either people can get affordable housing and there's no problem with the system or, you know,

There needs to be more, you know, working with these developers to, you know, make housing more affordable for the people, you know.

And, you know, it's said that Charlottesville is a great place to live, then, you know, we really need to show that by, you know, you know, not pushing the poor people away.

Thank you mayor and thank you council members for the opportunity to speak.

My name is Rick Deveneris.

I'm the chair of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport Commission.

I'm a five-year member of that commission.

I'm also a resident of Walnut Hills, a community that borders the airport property to the west.

On behalf of the residents of Walnut Hills, I'm here to ask for your help to halt the blasting that has been going on for seven months and may continue to next year at the airport.

The blasts are causing significant damages to our homes in our neighborhood, and as City Council is a partner with the county in its representation in the airport authority, we are pleading for your help.

The blasting that started in October as a part of the runway extension has caused extensive damages to our homes, with 15 homes now reporting damages.

Our homes have been subject to three to four blasts per week over the last seven months.

The damages have ranged from cracks in dry walls, cracks in windows, cracks in floor tiles, cracks to foundations, as well to septic fields starting to fail, wells being contaminated, and even a well drying up the middle of winter.

One neighbor has actually reported that he contends a gas leak may have been caused by the stress from the repeated blasts.

These types of damages are consistent with the continued movement of the earth underneath our home's foundations.

Despite our repeated pleas to the airport, they refuse to stop blasting, or even pause blasting for that matter, as they claim they cannot afford to stop.

As this blasting is not necessary, however, it is a cheaper alternative than bringing in the fill they need, and that is in part why the project is five to six million dollars under the original budget.

It seems negligent and reckless that a government authority will knowingly inflict repeated harm on the public, especially when there are other options.

The airport's defense is all these blasts are within safe limits, so they can't be causing damage.

But what they have failed to assess is the impacts of repeated blasts that would have on the structures or the environment.

If you think of a paperclip bending it back and forth once, it's going to be fine.

But if you keep bending it, eventually that stress will cause it to break.

And that's what the repeated blasts are doing to our homes three to four times a week over the last seven months.

Despite complaints going back to October, the airport only today agreed to hire an engineer to undertake assessments to the homes and the environment from the repeated blasts.

However, they're going to continue blasting without waiting for answers from those engineers.

The airport seems to be acknowledging there's a problem, but is not waiting until the data comes back.

The airport is hanging their hat on a fire marshal's report dated April 4th, which states blasts cannot be causing damages.

However, the fire marshal never actually went to inspect the damages.

I don't know how you can come to a conclusion on damages and investigation without actually going to look at the damages.

The report also contains a number of erroneous statements, and my attorney has filed a request to have the report withdrawn.

What the situation needs is leadership and it seems that no one in the airport authority is willing to step up and recognize what is going on here is just plain wrong.

Instead, the airport continues to talk around the issue and the airport and the blasting contractor are refusing to process damage claims until all the blasting is done, which could be sometime next year.

The airport is trying to wait us out and the airport is failing to act appropriately.

It seems someone needs to step in and act.

On behalf of the homeowners of Walnut Hills, I'm here to ask the city council to halt the unnecessary blasting so that proper assessments may be done and alternatives may be explored.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Jeffrey Fogel.

I reside at 215 Spruce Street here in the city.

I was quite surprised to learn that the city in the budget process had decided to provide $127,500 to the Commonwealth Attorney's Office and not a cent to the Public Defender's Office.

The impact of the decision that you've made is to reduce the quality of lawyers that will be available to indigent defendants.

That is if you believe in the market system that we all have.

I don't understand why you did it.

tried to think about why might you have done this.

I thought well possibly Dave Chapman is another Democratic politician and maybe among politicians you like to scratch each other's backs.

Perhaps that's not the reason but in any event the message that you've sent

in addition to the fact that you're going to lower the quality of representation for indigents, the message is that you prefer the prosecution side of the criminal justice system to the defense side.

Notwithstanding the fact, of course, that we have a great concern in our constitution for overreaching by the police and prosecution reflected in no less than four amendments in the Bill of Rights, notwithstanding the fact

that we arrest, prosecute and incarcerate as a matter of percentage more people than any other society in the history of the world, you've decided to prefer the prosecution function.

and the message again that you're sending for those of you who have been so concerned all the time about messages being related to the community is that you prefer that punitive approach that you believe that prosecution is more important than defense and that you agree that we should be locking up yet more people with the additional resources that will be available to the Commonwealth's Attorney's Office.

Shame on you for doing so.

Shame on you for doing so.

If you really had a concern about the amount of money that was available to spend on this function

In addition to the additional money that you were able to find for flowers, which were very nice, you could have split the money in half.

You could have given half of the money to the public defender's office and half the money to the Commonwealth Attorney's office.

But instead you chose only to give money to the Commonwealth Attorney's office.

I'm going to make one other comment about the budget process, which is once again, you have failed to address the problem of poverty in this community.

you know that twenty percent of this community lives in abject poverty you know that over thirty percent of the community struggles on a daily basis to have adequate money to meet their basic marginal needs and yet you have ignored this problem other than its absolute fringes someday, someday it is my hope that this council or some elected leadership in this city will respect the fact that we have a very serious problem of poverty in this community it's not unrelated to race

and that you as elected officials have the responsibility to do something about it and that you can't simply shunt it off by saying that's a problem for the national government to deal with and if they won't there's nothing we can do.

This is our community, these are our comrades, this is our fellow citizens.

Someday you're gonna have to take on this issue.

You cannot push it off into the future, into the future, into the future.

The only thing that's worked in this country so far to get people to pay attention has been riots in the streets in the late 60s.

That got the attention of the country and we did start what was called a war on poverty.

Martin Luther King later referred to it as a skirmish and it was only a skirmish.

Don't wait for civil riots in our community to do something about this problem.

Good evening.

My name is Peter Evelyn.

I live at 204 Todd Avenue.

And I'm here to speak in favor of lowering the speed limit on Jefferson Park Avenue extended.

I'd like to thank the city, particularly the city staff, for taking this issue seriously and conducting a study.

However, I'd like to strongly disagree with the outcome of that study, which is to recommend that the speed limits stay at 35 on that stretch.

I'd also like to thank the city for planting trees along the median there.

I've noticed a few new trees in honor of I guess upcoming Arbor Day.

That's nice to see.

This issue of reducing the speed limit is really important to the people in our neighborhood.

I had people coming up to me at work today who found out that this issue was on the agenda tonight saying, you know, please, please, please pass along, you know, how important this is to us in the neighborhood.

I know you've received a lot of emails about it.

It's a big deal.

You got an email from Hardy Whitten, who's the current president of the Fry's Spring Neighborhood Association.

You know this issue goes back almost 10 years to when I was the president of the Neighborhood Association.

People have been wanting and waiting for this to happen for a long time.

There's only one officially sanctioned crosswalk on that entire stretch of Jefferson Park Avenue.

And I walk across there almost every day with my dog and it's very difficult to get across when rush hour cars are speeding along at 35 miles an hour.

If you're inclined to side with the staff's recommendation, I'd ask you to please just go down there during a rush hour, try to cross Jefferson Park Avenue before you agree to go along with the status quo.

What do you know?

I just got a little intro.

My name is Hardy Whitten.

I'm the president of 2521 Woodland Drive.

I'm the president of Fry's Spring Neighborhood Association.

And as Peter mentioned, y'all have received a letter from our neighborhood association regarding this issue about the speed limit on Jefferson Park Avenue from the bridge to Old Lynchburg Road or the Beach Club.

I'll save you reiterating the entire

I'm going to underscore the last paragraph where we say the Fry's Spring Neighborhood Association wishes for council

to approve the 25-mile-per-hour speed limit on this section of JPA and include a directive to Neighborhood Development Services and City Traffic Engineering to determine what traffic engineering change measures are needed to support this 25-mile-per-hour speed limit to include marking of the roadway or other traffic measures that will encourage the 25-mile-per-hour speed limit.

Is there anyone else who would like to speak?

Who has spoken so far?

Okay, public conference finished.

Mr. Long, I know that you feel like you're not being heard because we're not doing what you're asking and I know that that's frustrating and I really appreciate your coming and I think you represent, there are people, when we look at the new traffic study or the new transit study and what it recommends,

It really brings access to transit to a lot more people and gives a lot of people better transit but there are people who end up with less access and there's a map that shows where those areas are and I know that you live in one of them that doesn't get as much service as you got and I know that you use transit to get to work and I think not only for yourself but you're representing other people who are in that similar situation so I appreciate your being here.

Mr. Reed, I agree, that was easy.

Mr. Fogel, I'm not sure, I think you were at the work session that we had on the budget, at least you're talking about the flowers, makes me think you were there.

What you might have missed in our discussion about the public defender's office is that we did talk about that and we would like to support the public defender.

We're currently talking to the county because it doesn't seem fair for only the city to do it and so we're trying to figure out a way that both can support it.

So I'm not sure that the land-based thing that you just gave us was entirely deserved.

On the other hand, I think that when we talk about the 20% of our residents who live in poverty, over 50% of the children in our public schools are on free and reduced price lunches.

It is not just a problem, not just an issue.

I would like to again underline Ms. Zago's comments to Mr. Long.

I really eagerly await the moment and the time when we will have a good partner in the county to begin these discussions.

The day is, we lost Mr. Rooker, he was a very strong advocate for transportation and an RTA, Regional Transit Authority, but we will just have to wait and see what happens in the future.

but that is a firm commitment of ours and we have the authority, we have the funding ability.

It's now a matter of just getting the players to work together.

We don't have the mechanism yet.

We just have the okay from the General Assembly.

The Nelson Nygaard study was admittedly limited.

That's the only scope we had because that was the only reach we had was within the city boundaries.

And having said that, the tweaks they made were really essential tweaks and we're going to be deliberating that later on in the future.

With regards to the blasting, I suspect we're going to need to talk about that later.

And with regards to Mr. Fogel's comments about poverty and addressing it, it seems like there's not a day or a week that goes by that one of us is not in one sort of meeting working with some member of the community and one member of staff or several members of staff to try to create the partnerships needed to get people up and out of poverty.

up and out of assisted housing, structured housing, public housing, but also not just into a different kind of housing but a different kind of a job situation where they have more opportunities.

First and foremost in everyone's mind is getting people who are partially past their GEDs to get them to complete that battery of tests.

And just today we were working with Ms. Shepherd who's working with the Housing Authority.

and several members of our staff in economic development and human resources to human services to do just that, figure out how do we get people plugged into both the GED on track to getting a job.

It's a very complex problem as you well know.

I know you know how complex it is.

But we have a serious problem with the poverty alignment not only with race but education level.

The highest poverty rates are among people who do not have anything more than a GED or less

I'll just make a few notes.

Thank you all for coming.

It's interesting to hear about poverty and housing.

We'll be talking about the human rights in Charlottesville later on, all tied together.

Much sympathy with the airport issues, kind of like concussions, little

That was what I thought of when you were talking about that and I look forward to talking about the JPA.

I've lived there for more than 30 years and I know well the issue.

Warning, it's after the Human Rights Commission discussion.

I just echo a lot of what's already been said, but I fully agree that we need to rectify the imbalance in pay between the Commonwealth's Attorney's Office and the Public Defender's Office, so I appreciate your bringing that to our attention.

I hope we can get something agreed to with our partners in the county and it really is an imbalance that we need to address.

The other issue, as Ms. Galvin said, there are a lot of issues underway.

Not only do we have to look at how do we better prepare our residents for economic success and economic opportunity and achievement, but also how do we grow and attract and retain the kind of jobs that are going to help

our lower income residents climb the ladder and so there's some initiatives happening along those lines as well which you'll be hearing more about very soon.

And then I also wanted to thank you, and I'm blanking on your last name, Seville, thank you, Ms. Seville for asking us

to go on record, and I think the town of Scottsville has already done this, I don't know if the county board has already done this, but I think it makes sense for local governments to go on record in favor of the state law change that you've requested.

I have one comment about blasting and I would like to ask the staff who's representing the city on the airport board.

Any other comments?

Thank you.

Next to head of our agenda is consent agenda.

Item A, minutes for April 1st.

Item B, appropriation approve and appropriate CDBG and home funds for FY 2013 through 2014, second of two readings.

Item C, an appropriation insurance settlement for damaged police car, $20,506, second of two readings.

Item D, an appropriation JDR phone system upgrade, $39,954.16, first of two readings.

Item E, a resolution city manager's contract, first of one reading.

Item F, a resolution Charlottesville area transit proposal to submit grant application, first of one reading.

Item G, a resolution to designate John Jones' authorized official signatory, first of one reading.

Item H, an ordinance for the Johnson Village PUD amendment, second of two readings.

Item I, an ordinance for the Elliott Avenue PUD, second of two readings.

Item J, an ordinance vending from vehicles chapter 28, first of two readings.

I have just two quick things that I'm hoping we can just make an amendment while they stay in the consent agenda.

In the vending

There are several places where it doesn't call them vending vehicles, it just calls them vehicles.

So we end up with a sentence, a whole section that's called, no unattended vehicle shall be permitted to park on any city street between the hours of 2 a.m. and 7 a.m. And I think it would clarify things a lot if it said no unattended vending vehicle or food vending vehicle on several occasions throughout.

Is there a second?

Second.

Second item of agenda is a public hearing on Human Rights Commission.

Good evening City Council.

Before we get too involved, I just want to take a few moments and kind of walk through the history and bring folks up to speed in terms of how we got here.

In January of 2009, City Council authorized the establishment of the Dialogue on Race.

In 2011, the Government Action Team of the Dialogue on Race put forth a proposal for the establishment of the Charlottesville Commission on Human Rights, Diversity and Race Relations.

In February of 2012, City Council approved the establishment of a Human Rights Task Force to first determine if the City of Charlottesville needed a Human Rights Commission and, if so, what model would be appropriate for the City of Charlottesville.

The Human Rights Task Force met for eight months visiting and speaking with Human Rights Commissions throughout the state to learn more about the roles of the Human Rights Commissions, but also to learn about the outcomes that they were able to establish.

The Human Rights Task Force also collected data from victims of alleged discrimination and referred them to appropriate agencies to work with.

They also held multiple town hall meetings, hearing from folks in the community about alleged acts of, excuse me, about acts of discrimination.

Members of the group also met on a monthly basis and shared personal stories about being victims of discrimination or witnessing discrimination here in the city or in their lifetime.

When it came down to come up with a recommendation, all members of the Human Rights Task Force agreed that there's some level of discrimination here in the city of Charlottesville.

Where things differed, what would be the best way to address discrimination in the city?

Three of the recommendations that came from the Human Rights Task Force were that the city should develop a strong anti-discrimination ordinance

The city should form a human rights commission that is enabled to utilize the full scope and remedies provided by state and federal statutes to uphold the ordinance.

And the city should ensure comprehensive anti-discrimination education and training opportunities are available for all residents and businesses within the city.

On February 4th of this year,

We held the first reading on the Human Rights Ordinance, which you have in front of you.

That prohibited discrimination in housing, public accommodation, credit and education on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, national origin, age, marital status or disability.

In this ordinance, the Human Rights Commission would not engage in investigation of complaints but provided future council the ability to convey that authority to the commission by vote.

The city, also within that partnership, the city would and the city has established a partnership with the EEOC

where they would expand their presence here in the city of Charlottesville and would work out of the city one day a week, excuse me, one day a month.

And we would also strengthen our partnership with PHA.

Sometimes what has gotten forgotten about the Human Rights Commission are some of the other aspects that we've asked them to consider doing.

One looked at systemic and institutional change.

the other one was community awareness and also community dialogue.

We really, we've talked a lot about the investigation piece which is extremely important but there's also a lot of work that the commission will be responsible for in terms of working with members of the community, community business leaders and residents to educate individuals on what discrimination is and how we can prevent discrimination in our community.

On March 4th,

An amendment to the original ordinance was proposed and while there are many similarities to the ordinance there are some differences and I'd just like to draw your attention to within your packet there's a comparison between the two ordinances.

It's a column sheet and if you look there are, as I mentioned, quite a few similarities but I just want to touch briefly on what some of the differences are.

In section 2-432, Human Rights Commission, the original version talked about did not include third party contracting.

In the alternate version of version B, the director is responsible for coordination between the commission and any party contracting with the city to provide investigatory services.

Section 2-433C, Role of the Human Rights Commission.

Initially, in the original version, it did not include mediation, conducting hearings as tools to assist those who have been victims of discrimination.

The alternative version actually includes those and it would be utilizing the third party contractor.

Another difference in the two were duties and responsibilities of the commission.

The original version provided the city manager with the authority to contract with, excuse me, to form partnerships to facilitate receipt and processing of individual complaints of discrimination.

In version B, it provides the city manager with the authority to enter into a partnership, but also to contract with the third party contractor.

Section 2-437, Duties and Responsibilities in Future Enforcement.

The first one, as I mentioned, provides a passageway for city council to provide, if a future city council wanted to provide the enforcement ability to the commission, that is in there.

In version B, it's already been bestowed upon the commission.

So after our previous meeting, staff was asked to go out and actually look into the feasibility of the alternative version, try to develop some numbers that could be put around the proposal.

What we found there, we could not find any localities in Virginia that were actually contracting out the third party investigatory piece.

We actually couldn't find any in the United States.

the director of the Prince William County Human Rights Commission referred me to the federal government where we were able to find quite a few private companies who actually provide EEOC investigative services for the federal government.

Makes me worry about the federal government a little more.

But we were able to have a conversation with some of those folks and the numbers they provided us are reflective in the

We recognize that it's not an apples to apples comparison and the numbers would probably be somewhat lower just due to the complexity of the federal government employment.

But for budgeting purposes, we went with what they provided us on a local level and those numbers would range, I believe, from 2,800 to 3,200, possibly 4,000 to investigate cases.

And that's just for investigation.

Mediation services was something different.

And so what you have in front of you is the research that staff did in terms of the alternative version.

The federal contractors.

I've been trying to listen to

Some of the concerns as we've discussed these first two versions to see if there was something that we could do that wouldn't be starting over but that would bring in both recommendations from the task force and things that we've been hearing both from counselors and from people who are

coming before us both in the public meetings that the task force had and the report that the task force did and in other ways that people have come forward.

And so I submitted the original version of the ordinance with some amendments on Friday and I believe it was put online and so it's been there for people to look at.

There's nothing really new in it, it's just some of it is moved around within the ordinance and some of it is from the minority report of the task force.

And it basically, one concern that I know I had was that what we might end up with was a human rights ordinance that said that discrimination is illegal in the city but we don't have any way to actually make that

and

under the current budget we already have.

It's two full-time staff people.

So this envisions one of those staff people, whether it's the director or the other.

As the person who does all intake of complaints of actual violations of civil rights under the local ordinance, the complaints that would be eligible for review by the EEOC or through PHA or where somebody is already doing that locally, the complaint would come through the city but then be

assigned to those agencies that they would be dealt with here locally.

And that any cases that are covered by ordinance and covered by state and federal regulations but are not covered by somebody doing investigations currently, such as smaller employers, education, public services, the categories that are covered

that the EEOC does not deal with, we would do in-house.

And if I can read what I have or I can give a slightly more informal descriptive version and maybe I can count on our attorney to call me if there's anything that I'm saying that isn't written in here because I know that what I wrote he was able to take and put into totally legal language and make sure there were no contradictions.

So the idea is that somebody would feel that they had been complained against, they would bring it to the city,

staff person, the commissioner, and say, you know, I feel that I was discriminated against, I didn't get a loan at this bank, or I didn't get this job.

And the person would look at the complaint and see on its face, you know, if everything you say is true, that might be a violation.

Or if everything you say is true, that's just not illegal.

And sometimes a case might be resolved right there when a person didn't really understand what the law was.

but if it does rise to the next level would then go to the person or the organization against whom the complaint has been filed and get their side of the story offer mediation to the two sides if there isn't a quick resolution offer mediation in that case in-house there is I think in the ordinance the possibility that if it were needed to contract that out that would be allowable but I'm envisioning in most cases

presidents that we've seen in other localities show that most of these cases are going to be resolved in those first two steps, either in it not really being a violation or within mediation.

And at that point, if they go through mediation and mediation does not resolve the issue, then the director, the commissioner would continue the investigation, finish the investigation

and come to a finding either of dismissing it saying that there was no violation found or a finding of violation of the local code, the local ordinance against human rights.

And while state law does not allow us at this point from what I understand to actually prosecute that under our local ordinance, it does give the person who's filed the complaint

validation of what they've done, of what they've said happened, that somebody who really knows how these things works say it really did happen, so that if they then can be given guidance for how to take that to court or whatever they're going to do next with that.

It's not, unfortunately, binding.

I would prefer that it were, but I don't, you know, that's, this is where I'm trying to find a way through that we can all agree to.

But it does save somebody if they feel they've been violated from hiring a lawyer, going through the legal process when there are other ways to deal with it.

So I think for 90 to 95 percent of cases, this will handle everything that they need.

For those few cases that go beyond, what I'm hoping will happen is that we'll see what sort of need there is because we'll be dealing with violations

We'll be dealing with accusations and we'll be resolving them locally so that people will be able to bring those to us so we can actually use that caseload to collect data for what the need is in the community.

And I would strongly urge us to go ahead and ask, and this is not in the ordinance, but to ask the legislature for enforcement authority so that if we then at that point decide

after going through this for a certain period, that we need enforcement, we would be able to get it.

So that is basically, am I missing anything critical in our?

Yes, under the same budget.

Okay.

Can I just clarify something?

So the commission itself doesn't

come into play in your version?

Except for the other two components, correct.

But in this amendment.

It retains the language for future enforcement, a council of some future decides to implement

So are there any other clarifications needed before you open a public hearing?

If not, I'll open a public hearing.

The first person to sign is Abigail Turner.

Everything's game.

Thank you.

I want to thank the council first for the time that you spent in working on this issue.

We know it's been time consuming that you've heard from a lot of people.

I'm Abigail Turner.

I'm off council for the Legal Aid Justice Center, whose offices are here in Charlottesville.

Our director Alex Gulotta unfortunately had a prior commitment in Richmond tonight and cannot be here.

So I speak for the Legal Aid Justice Center and I also speak as a member of the Human Rights Task Force.

First of all I want to talk about the institutionalized discrimination provisions.

We support the work that the different proposals say should be done about institutionalized discrimination.

We agree that there's some institutions in the city that need

closure scrutiny from the perspective of their human rights treatment of citizens and of other residents in the city.

We urge you to give word to and power to, as the proposals do, to have a continuing dialogue about human rights, to expand the dialogue on race to be a dialogue on human rights.

And we think the third logical piece of this is a strong process to allow individuals who have been discriminated against to get help from the city in resolving those issues.

I participated in the dialogue on race and all the individual sessions and the larger sessions.

And I think we heard a lot of frustrated citizens, both African American and white, who thought that for too long the city had had before them anecdotal stories as well as statistics to demonstrate there is not racial equity in Charlottesville.

and so we think that this council needs to take the next step and have a powerful tool for those individuals to be recompensed, to have their stories heard, to have some advice about whether there is, council member Szakos said, whether this is illegal discrimination but not to stop there, to let the commission hear their claims and recommend

the remedy that they should receive.

As you know in some of the proposals that are before you the city would have power to ask the city attorney to enforce what the commission finds and we ask you to keep that because we think that the institutionalized piece will not be nearly as strong in getting concrete recommendations if you don't have the

individual piece to show people who may be violating the law that the city is serious.

Now there's been some questions about how you can do this and real concerns about whether the individual piece might eat up all the resources that you are allocating to this activity.

You have the power of the purse strings.

You have the authority to say we want

this to be the maximum amount of money that will be spent on individual cases.

We don't know what's going to happen in individual cases.

They're likely to be a significant number because the city has not been in a position to help people in the past who have individual issues.

But you can control that by what you do with allocation of the money.

We hope that you will reject any suggestions that I've seen in some emails about relying on the office of the Virginia Attorney General to do anything to protect human rights.

That's not their business.

They don't have a track record of doing that.

And what we're talking about is local help and local enforcement.

So we really encourage you to go to that.

Finally, I want to comment very quickly on the issue about how much individual complaints will cost.

The numbers I have seen are 3,000 and 4,000 per complaint.

Those are from Northern Virginia and I think those are much higher than we would be spending in Charlottesville.

For example, assume that the work on those complaints cost $50 an hour.

$4,000 would be 80 hours per case.

Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am.

I appreciate that.

It's been a while to get here, Mr. Mayor.

You're already one of my clients.

My name is Timothy Holbert.

I work for the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce, which is down the road and across the street, one block.

We'll be commemorating our 100th anniversary later this week on Thursday and Friday.

I'm always happy to be here in front of the city council, not always, but most of the time.

I also am a resident of the city.

I live on Vanney Wine Drive.

Our chamber supports enactment of a strong, unequivocal city ordinance reaffirming the city's full support for federal and state anti-discrimination statutes.

our chamber concurs with the task force about the efficacy of a local city venue for citizens to bring complaints of discrimination forward and for the establishment of a local city authority to ameliorate matters between parties towards resolution and of course we continue to believe that the dialogue on race has merit we respectfully disagree however with proposals for an appointed city human rights commission with an investigatory subpoena enforcement authority with no apparent appeal

Our chamber has continuing serious concerns about the major scope, jurisdiction, authority and operation of such a tribunal.

Our chamber member enterprises have communicated very grave concerns about the unintended adverse consequences of such a mechanism, raising among other things the specter of business and jobs relocation from the city.

In establishing such a panel, the city runs a high risk of treading on ground rife with complexity and exposing the city, its taxpayers, and in fact the commissioners themselves to unsuspected repercussion.

Our chamber offers a different, prudent, non-political and professional approach.

I can tell you that I have not seen, I didn't, I don't sit hovering over the internet waiting to see what's going to get posted on any website on a Friday afternoon, so I haven't seen your piece, Counselor Szakos, although I have to tell you, hearing this this evening sounds like a major step in the right direction.

where we can have this local authority.

That's something that's very important.

That is a missing ingredient.

That needs to happen here.

But a politically appointed tribunal with subpoena power with no apparent appeal process is not something our chamber can support.

And I don't think you can get

the mechanics of that through the General Assembly on enforcement.

And I suspect our chamber and others would oppose that.

So I think you're moving in the right direction.

It's awfully hard to judge something you haven't seen.

So I haven't seen it.

But I think you're on the right track in a general sense.

But I would reserve final judgment until I saw the darn thing.

So thank you.

I'm up.

Time is up.

Walt Heineke My name is Walt Heineke.

I live at 1521 Amherst Street in the city of Charlottesville.

I first wanted to thank you for all of your hard work in trying to figure out the best way to provide anti-discrimination protection for the citizens of Charlottesville.

I am especially thankful to Councillors Szakos, Norris and Smith who have been trying incredibly hard to craft an ordinance that includes local enforcement and that thinks strategically about costs.

The dialogue on race was a promise by the city to, quote, engage every segment of our community in an open, honest, ongoing discussion of race, racism, and diversity and to identify problems and propose concrete solutions and paths to action that promote racial reconciliation, economic justice, and equity.

The intention of the Human Rights Ordinance has always been to eradicate discrimination from Charlottesville and to make this a better place to live for everyone.

Sometimes I've learned the means or the vehicle of a policy undermines the original intentions of the policy.

I think that's what's happening here tonight in this process over the last year.

The Jones-Ellis proposal, the Chamber's proposal, and the new amendments offered by Counselor Szakos eliminate the enforcement component of the Human Rights Commission.

They put all the power in the hands of a human rights director, an advocate, that pretty much directs complaints elsewhere.

The advocate will be susceptible to special interest pressure where the Citizen Commission would not be susceptible to that pressure.

These proposals deny our citizens the protection against discrimination allowed by the Virginia Human Rights Act, and I disagree with what I heard earlier.

The Human Rights Act of Virginia does allow the Human Rights Commission to have public hearings.

They deny our citizens from the protection against discrimination offered by such places as Prince William County, Alexandria, Fairfax, Arlington, and Waterloo, Iowa.

This, despite the fact that we know from an article in the Seaville Weekly that the Chamber of Commerce in Prince William County has no problems with their enforcement component.

As we read in an article that states, quote, for almost two decades, the Prince William County Human Rights Commission has been receiving and resolving discrimination complaints.

Debbie Jones, executive vice president at the Prince William Chamber of Commerce said, the commission's work hasn't raised the hackles of the business owners

her organizations represent.

I've been in the chamber world for 22 years and I don't recall there being anything negative about it, she said, end quote.

A commission with no enforcement is not what the people ask for when we have the dialogue on race study circles.

In essence, you ignore the recommendations of your own human rights task force and eliminate the enforcement component, you give the people of Charlottesville a bad check.

a check that has come back marked insufficient funds.

I think you can come to a reasonable compromise tonight by allowing the Commission to work with the EEC on cases where employers are larger than 15, but if you eliminate the enforcement capability of the full Commission to hold hearings on cases that fail at mediation, you have gone too far and violated the intentions of the original policy proposal.

I still have faith that tonight you will find the three votes to give our citizens the best protection allowed by the state law and enable a commission with the Virginia Human Rights Act enforcement ability.

This is what droves of citizens who came out to the public hearing in February were asking you to do.

Don't send the message to this town tomorrow morning that it's okay to continue to discriminate.

My name is Paul Long.

I live at 1410 Grady Avenue.

And I just wanted to come up and say that I'm in favor of the Human Rights Commission with enforcement capacities.

And my home city of Philadelphia was the founding city of the United States.

And the problem of race and discrimination has been with this country ever since its founding.

And the founding fathers were cowards.

and allowing slavery to continue in the Constitution.

We had to go through a civil war to have the 13th Amendment passed.

And even in my lifetime, when I was looking around to see how many people had white hair, I came of age in the 1960s and I graduated from high school in 1967.

And I remember as a 10-year-old boy, my mother and father talking about Prince Edward County, Virginia shutting down rather than accepting desegregation.

I remember as Mr. Folger commented about the race riots in the 60s.

And I remember as opposed to him, I think fond memories of Lyndon Johnson and what he did with the passage of the Civil Rights Acts and the war on poverty.

and my father was from New York, my mother was from Louisiana and I want to say that the problem with race is not just a southern problem.

I'm an amateur student of history.

President Franklin Roosevelt had to send federal troops to Philadelphia because when the public transit system was desegregated, the white workers refused to come in and work and they had to operate the public transit system.

I remember Senator Edward Kennedy being chased in the streets of Boston when the city of Boston was ordered to desegregate to schools.

So the kind of nonsense and aggravation that I frequently think of as occurring in the South with Lester Maddox and Governor Burnett of Mississippi has occurred frequently in the North.

Racism isn't as terrible as it was 30 or 40 years ago, but it does exist.

and the Commission should have an educational component as well.

I know a lot of African American people who tell me that the businesses in the downtown mall are a prejudice, that there's a prejudice against African Americans coming to the downtown mall.

I don't know whether that's true or not, but the perception a lot of times can be just as bad as the facts.

And I think all of Charlottesville has to sit down, as well as the entire country, and discuss this, try to solve it in a good faith measure.

Just because Mr. Obama is in the White House as President of the United States, the problem of race, racial discrimination, hasn't gone away and it still needs to be addressed.

Jeffrey Fogle, 215 Spruce Street here in the city.

The first thing I wanted to say is I expected Rod Sterling to get up, because this is truly the twilight zone.

At your last public hearing, you all agreed that this ordinance, however it comes out in terms of enforcement, will prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, including gender identity, transgender status, or sexual orientation.

and then tonight you honored an organization whose policy and practice is to discriminate on that basis.

It's unbelievable.

Are you really serious?

Are you sitting here serious about dealing with the issue of discrimination?

How in God's name could you honor the Boy Scouts of America if you're serious about this issue?

I was a Boy Scout.

I liked the time.

I didn't realize when I was 12 years old what they were doing.

But when I realized it, I realized that's not an institution that can be supported.

And it is just extraordinary.

It's unbelievable for me to sit here and hear you say, we're going to outlaw this, and we're going to honor the very entities that engage in that practice.

Unbelievable to me.

Unbelievable.

On the other side, I simply want to say,

I do agree with enforcement.

I have said before, EEOC does not, and I will repeat this, does not, does not, does not enforce our anti-discrimination laws.

They are a gatekeeper for the federal courts.

They sometimes mediate.

They are sometimes successful at that.

They almost never litigate and they have no basis for resolving any of those complaints.

So if you believe that people should have the right to enforce a violation of the anti-discrimination law that you are, all the greed should be passed, the only way to do that is locally.

And if you exclude all of the entities that are subject to the jurisdiction of the EEOC, which is those entities which I think employ 15 people or more, you've said everybody who works for a large company

You don't get an enforcement mechanism only if you work for a small company.

In fact, the truth is it should be the reverse, which is why it was set that way in the original Title VII.

I'll only need a minute and a half.

I'm Peter Kleeman.

I live at 407 Hedge Street in the city.

I can't claim to be an expert on what is under the umbrella of human rights.

Clearly, there's many forms of discrimination on age, sex, various handicaps, et cetera.

But in my experience, the forms of discrimination or the actual events

occur locally within the community.

It's with our neighbors, with our bosses, with our landlords, with service providers, businesses, etc.

So these are local problems.

And the way I look at resolving problems of a legal or quasi-legal issue is that you go to the most local level to solve local problems.

In our courts we have cases held where the crimes are committed in the communities where these things happen.

And it seems to me that that's a great guideline for us to consider in a human rights commission.

So my feeling is that these being locally experienced events

and that we need to grow as a community if these are occurring within our community.

I think to the extent possible all of the issues that can be addressed locally should be addressed locally.

If enforcement can be done local, it should be done locally.

If investigations can be done locally, it should be done locally.

If we need to include members of our own community, we as a community will grow.

We will become much better at understanding what are the nuances of violations of human rights and forms of discrimination that occur here.

And we as a community can solve those problems better locally than relying on state, federal, or other organizations to do it for us.

Thank you.

Anybody else would like to speak?

I have a couple questions for Ms. Szakos.

Well, I think, I mean, I, as you know, am an advocate for enforcement.

For me, this is a compromise position.

But I do see that they have more of an impetus than they would under what we had previously.

I think that most employers in the community want to do the right thing.

And if somebody has a problem with them, they want to sit down and talk to them.

I think that's one of the real values, as Mr. Kleeman was talking about, in dealing locally with local issues.

These are local issues.

And most businesses,

If it was unintentional or they don't feel that they've discriminated intentionally or at all, they're going to want to come and clear the air and talk to each other.

I guess I wonder if you would be open to a friendly amendment to your amendment that would allow some recourse, and we can sort of wordsmith it, but some recourse for cases where you do have an employer or a landlord, and the evidence indicates that there is, in fact, an egregious act of discrimination that's occurred, where the director of the commission

isn't just telling the complainant good luck, but actually is assisting that complainant in pursuing legal recourse through the courts.

Well one thing it already includes, and I think that's an interesting idea, one of the things it already includes is that if the parties are not able to find solutions through mediation, whether that's having gone through it or not, that the investigation would still go forward.

So there would be an investigation under this.

Yeah, creating some mechanism, again I'm open to ideas on how that could work.

There is a process envisioned under state law that allows the city to assist an individual where the investigation indicates that a violation has occurred that allows the city to support an individual in pursuing legal remedies.

Well, I'm only open to it if it doesn't

May I ask a technical question then of our attorney?

How could that work?

I'm not sure which Councilor Norris meant.

I would be comfortable assisting the Director.

I wouldn't undertake There's a process that's already spelled out under the future legislative authority here which talks about if there is a case where a finding has occurred of violation

Okay, if the commission finds that a respondent has committed a violation of this ordinance and determines that the appropriate remedial measures have not been taken, the commission, through the city attorney and subject to approval by the city council, may file an appropriate action in any court of competent jurisdiction to prove de novo that the respondent violated this chapter, secure compliance with this chapter, and to obtain appropriate relief available under any applicable state or federal statute or regulation, etc., etc., etc.

But that's not what he's suggesting.

Again, I'm open to the mechanism.

So Kristin, yours goes to the finding, to a finding, and then after that it's future.

And in the future, it would then go before a public hearing to the Human Rights Commission.

Is that still confidential at that point?

I guess that's what the word public means.

Oh, so the finding is public?

In some cases, with the finding, there's an opportunity for the two parties to sit down.

Right, so a finding doesn't necessarily mean that's going to become public.

I would just like to add though too that in Ms. Szakos' ordinance, because there is the future enforcement mechanism, it's also a big stick as well.

There is a built-in incentive

for employers, property owners to respond in a much more collaborative manner before it becomes an enforcement mechanism.

And that, I think, is kind of the wisdom of it, that the director now has a more robust investigation role than in the original Ellis plan and does allow to move on to mediation, which was

in our repeated discussions over the last three months, it was the opportunity to have the mediation, which was what was really critically important because that was where most cases they ended.

And it was also the rationale for saying why we didn't need to have an, it wouldn't be that expensive because they would never go to court.

So it's an interesting kind of twist that people are talking about making this the vehicle to get people to court when we all admit that that wasn't the big kind of

outcome.

It was going to be achieving the mediation born out of investigation.

What it does do is, and you're right, it isn't a big stick.

It's a small stick.

You know, it's public shaming, really, and it's saying on behalf of our community that this is not okay.

We believe that this is a violation of our local law.

What I would hope would happen is that with the finding like that, that one can't sue or take

you know take these things to court because it is a violation of state and federal law as well and with a finding like that I think that a person who had the complaint

would have some confidence and their attorney would have some confidence that they would prevail.

And the business or the institution against whom they were bringing that case would probably have some confidence that they would lose.

And I think that when we see, one of the things that I felt was going on before when all we really had, it seemed the votes for was only the community piece without any enforcement or investigation.

The idea was that we needed time to know, and I, well, I felt that I know, but I think that we don't have the data to show what the

the incidents of serious violations are in this community.

And this is a way to gather that data.

And I think we can gather it quickly.

So the next insight, from where you've stopped in your proposal, the fact finding, where it's still not public, it's still private,

I don't think it's private or public.

Well, from our discussion right now, though, that's one of the sticks is public, going public.

I personally think that making the record public would be some kind of punishment.

So is that a good thing or a bad thing?

But I think what the matter at hand, Mayor Huja, is whether or not there is the need for the Human Rights Commission at this point to be the panel that does that decision making.

And the amendment at hand is where the director is making that call.

And I don't see a need.

I mean, if you're asking about the attorney, I'm just hearing the attorney's question.

I'm trying to get back to my answer to your question, which is still hanging there.

If for the attorney to feel that he would need to have that public hearing first, where both sides bring all their evidence forward, to me, that seems like kind of a waste of everybody's time and money if we can't do the final enforcement at the end of it.

And so I would keep those together, whether they're present or future, rather than take that one piece out separately.

So you wouldn't stop.

I would go all the way.

Just go for it.

Yeah, I mean, do always keeping in mind that the chances, the percentage of cases that

go to each of these points really dramatically drops.

So it's all of the threats of time spent by our Human Rights Commission and the money involved with litigation that they're really all

No, I'm just starting.

So I'm just wondering, just sort of conceptually, are there any other categories of law?

We're talking about passing a local law here, a local ordinance, and are there any other categories of local ordinances where

If somebody violates that ordinance, it's on the citizen who's been wronged to

pursue legal recourse on their own dime.

Well, that's why I'm asking.

What are the precedents for that?

We're talking about creating a law and saying if somebody breaks the law, it's on the person who's been discriminated against, on the person who's been subject of illegal action to pursue legal recourse.

Mr. Brown, do you have any thoughts on that?

The first one that comes to mind is barking dogs.

Yeah, we have an ordinance that's subject solely to private enforcement.

And I don't mean to be frivolous by citing that as an example.

So again, I guess the question is, we're talking about a category of, let's say in the case of workplace discrimination, a category of employees, if they don't work for an employer that has 15 or more employees and can get recourse through EEOC, hypothetically,

and they are denied a job based on the color of their skin.

All the evidence indicates they were denied that job based on the color of their skin.

We're basically saying to them, you're on your own.

I mean, we'll offer mediation and try to come up with a resolution, but if the employer doesn't

doesn't willingly go along with this, you're on your own.

And I'm not sure that's the signal we should be sending to the community to say in those very few, hopefully, very few cases a year, if any, where we find evidence, clear evidence of egregious violations of anti-discrimination laws, that we should be telling people they're on their own.

And I'm wondering if there is any mechanism, even if it's short of what's spelled out here under future enforcement authority, any mechanism where we can

send a different kind of signal.

I do have a question.

It could.

I think the advantage under that scenario would be that the investigative work would be done and if the complainant chose to file a complaint at the state level, they could do so with the results of that investigation, presumably with evidence that had been generated that supports their claim.

I don't think the state division of human rights would

simply defer to whatever finding has been made locally and take it from there.

I just don't know.

I guess I've been looking at this as, you know, from the perspective

of someone who might be discriminated against as the mother of people who are more likely to be discriminated against.

I think that what people need to understand is that if we're going to have an ordinance at all, it needs to be an ordinance that we mean.

I would love to see us

spend the money that we would need to do full enforcement.

I think under $180,000, as Mr. Norris has pointed out, that you wouldn't support full enforcement with that budget because it would all go toward enforcement.

I think the numbers that came forward apply to those few cases a year, and you're talking about $3,000 or $4,000 a case, apply to those few cases a year that aren't resolved through mediation, which everybody has pointed out are

In Prince William County, for instance, last year they didn't end up taking a single case to court.

There were only 30 cases out of 598 initial claims that even went to mediation.

So I'm fully confident that we can have a robust

local enforcement program for well under $100,000 a year.

And I would support Ms. Turner's suggestion, which is that we actually allocate part of those funds toward the funds we would need to both contract out whatever pieces we need to contract out and any enforcement on the assumption that those costs that are going to be greater, which will be the enforcement pieces, will be

Few and far between, if any in a city our size, particularly when we're talking about city businesses only fewer than half of which even apply to state and federal cases.

Fewer than half of our businesses have enough employees and fewer than a quarter of them have enough for the EEOC.

So we really keep narrowing the field

and to even compare it to Prince William County, which is so much bigger.

So I'd say, you're just making an argument as to why we don't need a large local enforcement mechanism because we're a very small jurisdiction.

We don't have many employers.

And what this is doing is the fact of the matter is we don't have the data for our locality.

But we will.

And I don't think that's an argument against having an enforcement piece.

I think if anything it's not as big a financial threat as is being put out there.

I mean, I understand that it could, in fact, be costly should it happen, but that's why you put a limit on it.

We're not going to give a blank check.

Let's say we have $180,000 if we had a director and a half.

What does that leave us?

Well, Councillor Smith, I must say that

I'm surprised to hear that over there.

I didn't frame it actually as not supporting enforcement as much as you're right.

I've been all along concerned about city

I have also had that issue with the fact that when 30% of our employees live here and the rest don't, that this was investing in a local enforcement mechanism that did not give us any information as to where these folks were living and whether they were our constituents or not.

was also problematic to me.

And now again, this is an opportunity to address, I had even asked about whether or not this service could be provided for city residents, that that would be a way to really make sure that it was going to be honed in to our constituents' needs.

I don't know if there's any feeling on council for that.

I don't want to lard this with any more additional amendments other than a few here and there because I think it is a pretty significant amendment to the original ordinance that Mr. Ralles put together.

And there's a clarity to it that is also clearly making the director more like that advocate, more like that ombudsman.

but it also then has the Human Rights Commission acting in the role of educator and researcher and conciliator which again as the language in Mr. Ellis' original ordinance I found compelling that the first year or so we were going to be working on making those relationships between businesses, between employees, between landlords, between tenants much more of

an honest dialogue and much more greater understanding between all the parties involved.

And I believe that Szakos adds that added layer of attention to detail to get people some sense of closure about their complaint without quashing both the spirit and the resources to handle the other work of the Commission, which is again doing the research on systematic issues as well as building the foundations for a

Mr. Brown or Mr. Ellis, could you envision, if we don't have three votes for doing the full sort of enforcement authority as authorized by state law, could you envision a scenario in which we create a fund and or we enter into a contractual agreement

with an organization that would provide support for individuals in cases where satisfactory resolution was not achieved through mediation to be able to pursue legal remedies in the courts.

In other words, where we are not doing that in-house, we're not taking on the case legally, but we are supporting individuals

I'm saying take Mistakes' amended version and just add one more section to it which basically creates a fund.

I agree with Ms. Smith that we can fully staff the other pieces of this commission with 140,000 roughly

We had one and a half FTEs with just public education.

If we have one and a half, I'm convinced we need at least one full employee doing this because most of this is the intake, the dealing with people, the building relationships with the EEOC, making sure that those cases proceed, making sure that people are kind of helped through that if somebody comes and their case was not unlawful discrimination and yet they still need

to figure out what happened, to work with them to try to figure out what other services they need.

I don't want to low ball.

No, but I'm saying at the high end we had 55 through EEOCs and many of those cases will not even get past intakes.

I really don't see it, if we're not doing the enforced piece, if we're simply

doing some basic fact finding and for a percentage of them doing some mediation.

I wonder if a way to approach it might be instead to say to keep this in the future, but to have that be a trigger.

A couple of concerns, I'm not sure our enabling legislation goes that far to authorize the retention of outside counsel for a private party.

A more practical consideration though is if someone has gone through the

the procedure as outlined by Szakos and there is a finding of violation.

I suspect that person will be able to find an attorney to represent them without any upfront expenditure of funds.

When we were putting together the $180,000, it was for two

personnel, two staff members, but also we were building into that some funding for the other pieces that we talked about, education and pursuing the institutional side.

So that 180 is not just two people, it's two people and operating costs to help the commission as well.

Other comments or questions?

Well, I mean, are we really

Ready for a motion yet.

Again, I don't know how we get past, even under Ms. Hakos's proposal we need money to contract with outside services for these

niche that is not EEOC but is still eligible.

I'm picturing hiring somebody who's capable of doing this, somebody with a paralegal background or who has some experience in civil rights law.

Well, but I think what we're saying though is the budget is 180, 180,000 dollars and so if there is mediation,

Well, because that's what I'm asking.

So, you know, if we could define what that is, it would give us at least a better sense for... After a year you'll find out how much of that would be needed.

Or again, it's going to be up to the discretion of the director to hire his or her staff.

And as this is implemented across the course of the year, the understanding of the workload and need for mediation become apparent.

And it might very well be that there is going to be only a half FTE committed to

helping to set up the dialogue on race functions, for instance, but then the balance could be used for a mediation fund for outside disinterested third party.

I do think that because this wasn't really, because we're talking about this fresh, I would feel more comfortable not having any different budget arrangements with this amendment because if we are adding to this budget, it is

So are you saying the limit of the budget for everything is 180 and after that what happens?

I mean what if there isn't money after hiring people and education?

I mean you have to be somewhat confident that there is enough money budgeted to do what you say you're going to do.

Which is if it's this proposal then

I have a suggestion which is that we pass this as it is with maybe some tweaks but basically this and that we have a series of public meetings where we ask people to come and talk to us about implementation of what that looks like and if we feel that you know after that after those meetings that there is need for another budget thing that to me that that would you know

We've heard a lot of people saying, stop, don't do anything now.

This is all different.

We don't know what this is.

I think that the way that we can move forward now is if it's not that different, if it's not another budget item.

It may be, but I would support more enforcement, Kristin.

I agree.

No, but right now I would support more enforcement.

More enforcement would cost a lot more money, and I'm not sure we can do that without another...

There's no evidence to say that... Well, what you're talking about enforcement is paying lawyers to go to court.

I don't think it's going to happen.

There's no evidence.

There is a cost.

There are studies on this.

We were given these papers.

No, I see where you're coming from.

This is something that we don't have in our budget.

And it may be that those meetings will find that it wouldn't cost money.

I'm just saying, I sort of

I'm pulling your bluff a little bit.

After all the research, after all the meetings, after all of the information that we've been given, I'm confident particularly with a fund of money that we can

So what happens to the person who is told, if you go through this process, we'll have your back.

We'll take you to court.

And whoops, sorry, we passed our limit.

We can't.

Well, that's why it goes through city council.

And that's the checks and balances.

I think there's a lot of checks and balances in here.

The director is a check, is a check.

The Human Rights Commission is a check.

The city council is a check, to be sure.

And if you had a case that made it through all those checks,

It seems to me that we have been having some discussion as to what City Councils will do.

That's a good question.

Gosh, I'd have to go back and look.

Because you were not two weeks ago.

You were very much against the two weeks ago.

And again, I would, the cost estimates that we were given for doing that was reflective of the ordinance Mr. Norris put forth.

And what I heard, and we have staff, the discussion here is basically saying that staff doesn't know what they're doing.

We got information from our staff, our city manager and assistant city manager that said that it was going to cost around $160,000 for the

the Norris Ordinance, then you add $180,000 on top of that for the dialogue on race functions.

Neither Mr. Jones nor Mr. Ellis ever said that.

Never.

What they said was that for cases that require full in-depth investigation, they may run as high as $4,000 plus mediation costs.

Is that accurate?

That's correct, yes.

No, I will say that in terms of our baseline, I think the EEOC numbers of the number of 55 cases from FY11 provides us a good baseline.

This is page 5 of the staff memo.

There were 55 cases from Seville reported to the EEOC in 2011.

If roughly half of those cases were fully investigated, 8 dismissed and the rest sent to mediation, 20.

That's correct.

What we have learned is that of the 55 cases that were brought to EEOC in 2011, not one of them was mediated or dismissed.

And what we know from real world experience is that in Prince William County, which has had an active ongoing Human Rights Commission for many years now,

is that the vast majority of those cases never even see mediation.

Forget about full in-depth investigation.

Forget about court action.

Five hundred and ninety-eight cases initiated complaints increase slash complaints.

Out of that 130 actually made it past the intake stage.

And out of those only 30 ended up being mediated.

So we're talking about a tiny handful each year that will likely incur a few thousand dollars in costs.

And I suspect that if we have cases like this, they will indeed be pretty egregious.

And again, I go back to my original question, which is,

Well, let me offer something here which I know is going to upset some people and please other people.

with recognition that there are going to be people who are worried about this and that it frightens.

But I think sometimes, just like all major legislation about human rights causes a lot of turmoil, I would renew my motion that I made two weeks ago, four weeks ago, whenever it was that we first had this.

Well, actually, no.

I do not see that we have had the data to do that.

It was never clear to us through the report from the study commission that commissions was basically a hung jury, four against, one abstained.

and it was clearly a situation that there is a lot of disagreement in the community about what is the appropriate tack to take in terms of the local enforcement mechanism.

I thought what you proposed tonight, Ms. Szakos, was extremely balanced and it was addressing the needs of every component of this community and I think as counselors that is our job.

We have to look at the entire community.

I could not support

the original pending version with the future mechanism present.

And if that is the situation, then I'm on record saying that I do believe that we need to be working more and more in the direction of building relationships with our business community, building trust between members of our community, understanding that there are multiple obstacles to employment besides discrimination.

They have an awful lot to do with education.

adult workforce training, daycare, transportation.

I realize that that is not the sentiment of the group that's been pushing for this for the last year, but it is the sentiment of the group of a lot of people in the community that we need to be working towards solving the problems that have a material impact on our poor families, families living in poverty, not making

very unpredictably costly gestures to appease what a handful of people have been saying is the only course of action that we need to take.

And I thought that this was a very good compromise.

I understand that and I appreciate that.

I have supported full enforcement from the beginning and I was working very hard to get more than nothing, which is what I was worried would happen if we didn't have support for enforcement.

I have seen, and not in the city specifically, but I have seen in my family incidents of

racial discrimination.

I've certainly seen incidents of racial discrimination in my life and I think if we're going to have an ordinance that says that it is illegal in this community to discriminate on the basis of race or sex or disability or any of the things that we've said that we believe in, just like I think at the federal level, if we're going to say that these things are illegal,

that we should be willing to put our enforcement where our mouth is.

And I've said so all along.

And I know that this was a more popular compromise, as good compromises are.

And I think it was a good compromise.

But I'm not willing to compromise when it's with the lives of people who are our most vulnerable citizens.

And what I'm hoping will happen, and I really am convinced of this, or I would not support the position that I'm taking,

that for local businesses in Charlottesville, this is a good thing.

I'm supporting it because I believe that it's a good thing.

I believe that as long as we have a community where we have this wall between us, where people on each side of the wall are convinced that people on the other side hate them,

and where the dialogue continues on either side of that wall, oh, I was discriminated against, this happened, this happened, but nobody can ever actually look at it and investigate it and determine whether it was indeed a violation of the law, that we continue to run into resentments, we continue to run into

rumors, we continue to run into what one of our public comment people said about, oh, you know, businesses on the downtown mall, they discriminate.

I don't believe it's true.

But I think until we're able to use some sort of mechanism for investigating that and finding that out, that that story will continue to be the dominant dialogue in our community.

I think that this will

over time.

And I think public meetings are a necessity in the next couple of months before we implement anything.

And we may not have three votes for it.

You know, it's only a motion at this point.

You know what I'd suggest is we read it aloud.

And what I do not want to have happen tonight is delay.

Because I think that to delay it means, A, two of us are gone next month or two of us

for the first meeting in next month, and I don't think we would do it then.

I think that would be another month.

We've already delayed almost, well, over a year on this.

I think we need to enact something tonight.

So just to clarify, your suggestion is to still utilize EEOC for EEOC cases, use PHA for fair housing cases.

Well, you know, I withdraw my motion because

Yeah, because that's not what the original one was.

So it does do something different to our smaller businesses than to our larger businesses.

If they don't...

So what part of EEOC does not go to court?

I'm totally confused at this point.

Which ordinance are we looking at?

Finds a violation.

The EEOC issues what's called a right to sue letter.

And they will issue that regardless of whether they believe the case has merit or not, because that's the complainant's ticket to get into federal court.

And you heard statements here tonight from the public that

EEOC very, very rarely goes to court on behalf of a single individual.

I don't have personal knowledge of that, but I tend to think that's correct, that EEOC intervenes in court more often in cases where there is a class of individuals who have been discriminated against.

But the EEOC takes the complaint under a variety of federal discrimination statutes.

They try mediation, they do investigation and they attempt to get a resolution and if they don't, or if they don't think the cause has merit, they will issue what's called a right to sue letter.

And if the case is strong and verified through the discrimination,

What attracted me about your original proposal, Ms. Szakos, was that it did provide some help

Mediation, 99% of the cases will be taken care of.

Very little will be left to be done by private attorneys.

To me that still is a good solution.

We have taken care of most of the people right away.

I would be willing to, given that we had that estimate, I believe it was $190 per hour, average of 12 per case, mediation case.

If you do apply the ratios of the Prince William percentage of mediations given the investigations they do, it was like only 5% of what was taken in.

And so that translated to three mediations for Charlottesville, if we applied that to some of the cases that we've had, the 28 to 55.

So I would be willing to add an additional item to that degree to deal with three mediations for the first year using your unit costs.

But it would be relative to make sure that we had

the director's robust kind of job description that is in the amended version that Ms. Szakos gave us.

So that would be the director with investigative and mediation.

So it would be 180,000 plus.

I can't imagine that being more than

Well, you're budgeting, right?

You're trying to figure out, so I'm trying to anticipate what we would be projecting.

Because you keep saying on the one hand that there's not much by way of a problem, and on the other hand when you try to put a dollar figure on it, you say, that's too expensive.

So it's like I'm trying to figure out how can we budget for this?

How can we budget for this?

So we're talking about $6,600 we're committing to mediations to the city's role in this?

To add to the 180.

Well, I'm still absolutely utterly convinced that we can have a fully effective enforcement program for, you know, if we have a full-time director who's working on the education and systemic piece, and that's, let's say, $100,000 including benefits and everything, that frees up $80,000 for other pieces, and some of that's programmatic costs.

But once again, there needs to be a clarification because there are 55 cases, not just inquiries.

And in Prince William County, an inquiry could be a phone call.

And that could be an inquiry.

It's not a case.

So that's why we just need to be careful about confusing inquiries.

And as I mentioned in my memo, a lot of it is guesswork.

And can we, another clarification from Mr. Brown.

Is there any other difference?

Is the 6 to 14, or I know that the different arenas have different numbers of employees.

Right.

EEOC administers not only what I would call the basic prohibition against employment discrimination.

It's called Title VII.

It also handles things such as the Equal Pay Act and age discrimination in employment.

A whole variety of non-discrimination.

And they have different thresholds in terms of the number of employees.

The Equal Pay Act applies to all employers who are covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The equal pay act is, they do, but it's a little bit different because that is one of the statutes where, if you want, you can go directly to court.

OK.

So the only question, the reason I bring that up is that we were talking about taking on all the cases that EEOC and PHA don't.

and really, what does it leave?

It does leave some of the ones that we talked about, credit and things, but they were not the bulk of the charges that we saw.

So, I mean, we're really talking, and then if we're going to take on the state's difference, it sounds like we're really talking about a slice of employment

One other further kind of complicated factor, and this is something you pointed out, Councilor Smith, and that is this working arrangement between the state, what was the State Council on Human Rights and the EEOC, where they take each other's complaints.

In other words, if an employment discrimination case is submitted to the state, it may be outside the scope of state law, but they can accept it if it's otherwise within EEOC's jurisdiction.

I think one of the challenges in terms of not knowing is it's kind of known that EEOC will deal with employers that have 15 or more.

So we've got a handle on that.

The question is folks who work for businesses with less than that, there hasn't been an option potentially before.

And so we don't know.

Put that option out there, it could be five, it could be ten.

But the law doesn't protect for necessarily for

Discharge.

It's a very small slice and so if there really aren't legal remedies, we're not talking about those people.

Shame and horrible if they don't have legal remedies.

So it's really to my understanding is that it's businesses between 5 and 14 for hiring, right, as well?

That's what I mean.

So we would be covering those.

The state statute for employment discrimination applies to discharges of that

You just can't let anybody go based on those reasons.

So this whole arm of the Human Rights Commission really is dictated by what the laws say.

And it's really the other piece, the institutional piece.

And I would hope that the director, as he or she hears cases that, quite frankly, do not

fit under the state and federal laws would perhaps give them an avenue through the Human Rights Commission to just, not necessarily hear their case, but to take that information.

They wouldn't.

So then why doesn't the original amended version that Ms. Szakos presented applicable?

It's only applicable to those cases that fall under state and federal law.

Non-employment, non-fair housing that under your version are referred to EEOC or PHA, for example, if someone who worked for an employer with less than 15 employees is fired.

And there's 490 businesses that fall into that particular niche but really what we're doing by offering services for credit and for public accommodation and things is then we're solving a lot of the problems that I had which is that those are much more directed towards city residents.

I mean city residents are, you know, we would only serve city residents under, I assume, under those violations.

I suppose you could come up with a scenario where we wouldn't, but the arena that we're even talking about accommodating is really quite narrow.

I have a question because I

And it could be.

I don't know.

For banks, you know, where's the bank?

No, I don't mean where the bank is from.

I mean where the person bringing the complaint is from.

Right.

But if the discrimination happened here.

Yeah, and that's a question I don't know.

Is it the corporate headquarters?

But in that case, that would be an EEOC.

No, that's only employment.

And the bigger corporations have the ability to absorb lawsuits, quite frankly.

It is the smaller companies that have a very small margin of error in their

in their profit margins that are going to be the ones that will immediately be hiring their own attorneys and trying to get their own defense.

And so I think there's that implication as well.

Because if they're going to be facing a situation where they've been accused and they're being brought in, I think immediately, immediately they're going to be seeking legal counsel because of the nature of this

this being tied to the local enforcement mechanism right now.

And so you're dealing with, and I would like to point out that I think there's, we're not only talking about businesses that are owned by white people.

I mean, we have a growing minority population that's owning businesses as well.

So I just want to lay it out there that we're working very, very hard to create a diverse economic system with a lot more minority and female owned businesses.

They're always the very small ones, very, very narrow profit margins.

And so they will be incurring legal costs as well, which is interesting.

We're not talking about trying to assist the small businesses in these kinds of additional costs.

Just in terms of the credit, we did get some feedback from one of the Northern Virginia Human Rights Directors that they're few and far in between, but they can be very time intensive in terms of particularly if you're dealing with a large bank or something like that.

And we can't have subpoena powers or we can't?

What's that?

Can we have subpoena powers?

During the hearing stage.

So I want to make a comment about getting back to Ms. Akus' proposal, because I actually think there are aspects of your proposal which really were, I think, a compromise that I think could help bring people on both sides together, which is

You had the one group saying we need the local Human Rights Commission to hear all cases.

And the other group saying we don't want a Human Rights Commission hearing any cases.

And I think what you were trying to do with your proposal, at least one part of your proposal, was to say, well, let's take advantage of the resources, the state and federal resources, the EEOC, PHA, et cetera.

but at least provide an outlet for cases that aren't covered through those resources.

And so I hope you would be willing to consider sort of a modification of that which says

that for those cases that aren't covered by EEOCRP or aren't covered under existing resources that we will provide the enforcement authority.

Just two comments I wanted to make.

I know you guys have a fair amount of comments.

One that when initially Mr. Norris talked about the proposal and not having enforcement because of institutional issues, I still think it's a valid point even though you've changed your positions a little bit since last time.

Since two months ago, yeah.

It was recent, not too long ago.

Anyway, you're right to change minds anytime you like.

My other question which is my concern is the more procedural concern, which I think I raised it to Ms. Szakos even today, this afternoon, that her proposal, we had a public hearing today and nobody has seen her proposal until basically today.

It was on a website.

I saw it in writing today at six o'clock.

And there was a public hearing.

I'm worried that it is the right way to have a hearing when the public hasn't even seen the proposal in writing at least in hard copy form.

I'm not sure how we can actually talk to the possibility of having a first reading and then a second reading when she comes back.

But may I ask what are we going to be having a first reading on?

I don't know if this is a motion on the floor.

version of the pending version as is, or were there amendments made to the amendment?

Yes.

For the purposes of argument or discussion or moving this forward, I would like to make a motion that we approve Ms. Szakos' pending version.

I have a couple of wording changes, but we can discuss those in a minute.

Well, I'll second that, at least for the sake of conversation.

I would actually go along with Mr. Huja's suggestion that we consider that a motion and a second on a first reading.

because it is significantly different than what I brought forward today.

Absolutely.

Can we do that?

Well, it's not being amended, that was Councillor Norris' motion.

because this is... We have one already on the table, which is the original version.

The one that's on the table was the one in your notebook called pending version.

What I would suggest that Mr. Norris move is that the Kristin Szakos version be substitute with Kristin Szakos version

Right, okay.

I would second that.

Sorry, Ms. Smith.

Can I back up here?

But that it was future.

But that the alternate was the one that had the local enforcement mechanism now.

So to call, to

So, and then the version that Ms. Szakos brought forward to us broke off some part of the alternate version, put it in the present, and kept two other parts of the future, the future.

So, I am very confused now as to why we're just changing the pending ordinance into

Kristin Szakos' version with the future removed, which completely obliterates the integrity of that first pending ordinance, which I could support.

Yes.

What Mr. Brown was suggesting is that we need to vote on

Mr. Norris's substitution of this for that, which is exactly what you're saying.

But I am saying I would like to have the ability to vote for one of these ordinances and be on record as supporting a Human Rights Commission.

OK, I withdraw my motion.

And if you want to move on second reading, you'll approve the unamended.

which has no enforcement, no investigation, no intake.

I understand.

But that is not going to be the one on the table anyway, correct?

Am I understanding that?

Correct.

So I wanted to vote only for study and public education.

And with the future possibility of a local enforcement mechanism.

If we're talking about what's called the pending version, that does not require a motion.

That is currently before council.

It has been moved and seconded on first reading.

I'm not talking about my version.

Okay, so we are moving on pending motion.

I missed.

Okay, sorry about that.

And we need Huja and Galvin.

Can I just have a couple of points of clarification?

Page 5, 438, Future Enforcement Authority.

No, he's right.

That's redundant.

Second clarification, as drafted, and this is in paragraph E near the bottom of page 3, you'll recall that after mediation that's not successful, there is a finding of violation.

I think there's some inconsistency with page five, paragraph B, where it talks about if mediation is unsuccessful, the director shall prepare a written summary of the evidence on which the determination of probable cause is based and shall recommend appropriate remedies for the discriminatory actions.

Yes.

So what do you recommend?

But can you just make sure this is consistent throughout?

Yeah.

At the bottom of page 3 in E, I would say that the director will either dismiss the complaint as not constituting a violation or proceed pursuant to and then reference that section on page 5.

And I had a couple other minor wording changes on Page 1, Section 2-432A, the last one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight words of that paragraph should be stricken.

It should have been stricken before.

Shall serve at the pleasure of city council.

Which page?

Oh, I was looking at the other A where the last words were race, color, religion.

Shall serve as a player.

Oh, because it's redundant, not because it changes anything.

And I would also under Section 2-434 on page 3, under Section B,

It starts by saying, upon the filing of a complaint alleging an unlawful discriminatory practice, the director shall promptly serve a copy of the complaint on each respondent name therein.

I would put that.

requirement down in the next paragraph where it says...

It's already there.

Well, it says, the complaint may be dismissed by the director without investigation if it fails to adequately allege a violation.

Right.

Otherwise, it's officially on place.

But it's already there.

Well, that's the written determination of probable cause.

I guess the question is, do you want your complaint served on the respondent before the finding of probable cause or at that time?

Okay, that's fine, that's fine.

You can strike the first sentence of B and then in C provide for

So in D it would say if the director determines that there is probable cause to believe a violation has occurred, the director will

You certainly can do it that way.

I have actually suggested putting it in C, where it says that it can be dismissed if it fails to adequately allege a violation.

and then under Section B on that same page says fair rental housing complaints addressed by Piedmont Housing Alliance.

I would strike the word rental there.

They handle all housing complaints, not just rental.

It says investigation and enforcement will be conducted by those bodies.

Maybe.

And then PHA actually doesn't do enforcement.

So we could say they will.

Yeah, something like that.

I just want to make sure we're not.

Oh, it starts on page three.

So the top line says contract on behalf of the city with any

Disinterested third party, be it a person, partnership, corporation, or other entity qualified.

Right.

Or objective, neutral.