Thread by @socialistdogmom

whole lotta cops here at the albemarle county office building for the board of supervisors meeting. a surprising number of people in the gallery for 1pm on a wednesday, maybe 40 or so. i’m not sure if that’s typical for a BOS meeting.

i suspect it will be largely the same information offered by city, county, and state police at previous community briefings about the weekend of august 10-12, but i’ll post it either way.

oh dear, i think i’m the only person in this auditorium who didn’t stand for the pledge.
much love to our city councilors who remain seated during this bit of performative nationalism during our cville city council meetings.

here’s the full agenda, if anyone’s interested. i likely won’t stay past the presentation about A12.

i’m told the auditorium is likely full of staff for the recognition of a retirement.

albemarle.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=A&…

apparently i missed the albemarle county fair. bummer.

this proclamation for women’s equality day is careful to acknowledge the important work of men.

(i should confess that i only attend these meetings because i don’t have health insurance and i have very low blood pressure. the constant rage is all that’s keeping me conscious.)

the gallery has filled up quite a bit since we got started, maybe 70 people here — it’s about 2x the size of cville council chambers (which holds ~120 people). we’ll see how many of these people stick around after the retirement announcement.

about a dozen people left after the retirement announcement. their matters by the public has only one man signed up — he must be a regular. there was some good natured ribbing about how he knows the rules.

i’m not plugged in to county business, so i don’t know what this is about, but one of the items on their consent agenda was to cancel their august 8th evening meeting. 🤷‍♀️

and now on to the item i came for.

first up: the albemarle county chief of police. says they started planning for august 12th in may (other panels have claimed regional planning started much sooner)

he reiterates that staff will be on 12 hour shifts that weekend, all leave requests were declined, and we’ll see increased presence everywhere.
“if you see something, say something” — he encourages people to call the police about anything unusual.

now up: captain eggleston from the county fire department. “we, too, have been involved since the beginning”
“we have a rather unique situation” due to our regional emergency communications structure with the city, county, and UVA. he praises staff in all jurisdictions.

he says he has a “high level of confidence” in “our process and our plans” without really saying anything about what those might be.

past panels put on by the city have included county police, but i believe this is the first time i’ve heard from the county fire department.

he reminds us that there were other events going on that day last year, unrelated to the unite the right rally — there was a major structure fire and an unrelated homicide that day.

now up: charlottesville police chief brackney.
she first addresses kessler’s withdrawal of his request for a permit. says this doesn’t change planning.
“our planning is to be very flexible and to be very nimble.”

“we’re gonna restrict vehicular traffic” downtown, “establish a perimeter.”
major road closures & parking restrictions downtown from the 10th-12th

cville police chief brackney: “we learned last year that vehicular traffic and pedestrian traffic are not a healthy mix.”

she just called homeless people “residentially challenged” again

chief brackney managed to make her full statement without naming or even concretely alluding to any specific events or people. incredible.

now up: virginia state police
“we are excited and humbled” to be here.

VSP says we’ll start to see a lot more troopers in the area starting next monday or tuesday & they’ll be here “for the duration.”

a vague allusion to “equipment” being borrowed from other agencies so they have everything they need to “keep your community safe.”
can’t wait to see what new toys they’ve got to terrorize us with.

VSP sent a team to seattle in march to look at “their concepts and the way that they handled that event.”

gloria graham, vp of safety and security at UVA, up now. “we are fully integrated into this plan. i consider this group family now.”
“this is one plan. it is one team.”
every speaker has underlined this point hard.

the emergency management coordinator, allison farole, up now. she will be the EOC manager that weekend. says they had a “pretty successful exercise” in june.

andrew baxter, cville fire chief up now.
he says they first met with the state incident management team back in january to “settle on some operational philosophies”

cville fire chief baxter: “make no mistake: we are planning for worst case scenarios. we don’t say that to scare people - we do that every day. but this is a unique threat.”

fire chief baxter’s remarks have been very consistent across all community meetings i’ve attended. many statements have been verbatim repeated each time. he always says he will be happy if on monday they can say “we were too prepared.”

he identifies behavior health as an area they were underprepared for last year.

all agencies have concluded their prepared statements. a member of the BOS says it’s important that we “tell a different story” this year and support the alternative programming going on that weekend.

another BOS member is asking is there is any published information about what events may or may not be going on, what events may or may not be permitted.

cville comms director brian wheeler: points to the resilient cville calendar as a list of all community events the city is aware of. says the city is not officially sponsoring any events that day.

the BOS member is worried people won’t know which gatherings are safe - “there’s going to be some heightened sensitivity” that weekend, people will be “assuming the worst” when they see gatherings.

wheeler emphasizes that law enforcement has asked people to call the police about... anything. everything. “don’t worry about how many calls” they can handle.
there will also be an information line staffed by volunteers that weekend. more on that later.

“we are telling city councilors that their role is not to be in the emergency operations center” - brian wheeler, obviously alluding to the fiasco last year when then-mayor mike signer pitched a fit about being denied access to that space.

fire chief baxter using a large wild fire covering multiple jurisdictions as an example - no one individual is appropriate to manage it, there is a unified command structure.

baxter: “it’s primarily, logically, a law enforcement operation” but “if you look at civil disturbances around the world,” fire & EMS play very important roles in managing the situation.
he emphasizes again that they have a unified command structure.

the BOS, as we’ve seen in many previous meetings on the subject, are very concerned with EXACTLY WHO IS IN CHARGE. who makes the calls? this question is always answered obliquely.

the state trooper is up now saying “there’s gotta be a great amount of trust.”
“we’re doing all that we can”... “not to have a redo of last year”
“is the decision gonna go to one person? the real answer to that is no.”

VSP: “first of all, you have to have a command post that’s free of distractions.” (wonder what he’s alluding to here?)
“we have to make sure that we can communicate with each other.” (maybe make sure your radios are all on the same frequency this year, bud)

he says he just took some calls today “relative to that communications plan.”
he says there is a “large scale table top exercise next week” re: the communications plan.

“there will always be one person there representing each of those agencies” in the command center
(that’s: city police, city fire, county police, county fire, state police, and UVA)

BOS member says she heard issues from constituents last year re: transit. “we have a lot of areas that are not the downtown mall. and life goes on.” there were issues with buses, residents left stranded. CAT & JAUNT must be part of the process & the community needs to know.

brian wheeler: adjustments to public transit are posted on the resilient cville site. downtown transit station will be closed. maps are posted. “we’re trying to draw people’s attentions to the adjustments made to those routes” and will continue to do so over the next week.

the board thanked them for their time & their hard work & are moving on to the next agenda item. the majority of the gallery has cleared out.
nothing new or unexpected from this briefing.