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damn they started on time without me
look, i gotta be honest with you: i’m already bored. 
we’re through the announcements already! tonight’s agenda is here:
charlottesville.org/home/showdocum…
charlottesville.org/home/showdocum…
there are so many things this could’ve been about. whose contract do you need legal advice about? the former police chief you’re still paying? the former city manager you wrote off a huge interest free loan for?
this weird promotional video for our french sister city was not on the agenda.
no sign of city communications director brian wheeler, who is also the current acting clerk of council. city staffer sarah brazleton is in the clerk of council seat tonight.
mike signer also seems to be missing. well, he’s not here anyway. i wouldn’t say i’m missing him.
mike signer also seems to be missing. well, he’s not here anyway. i wouldn’t say i’m missing him.
it sounds like they had a really nice trip to our french sister city but this moment by moment recap of the trip is an exquisite waste of everyone’s time and should not be taking place at the top of this meeting.
i think this is the third time she has talked about wine tasting.
i’m glad they’ve stopped arresting people at city council meetings but this woman needs to be arrested for stealing so much time from all these people.
it’s been nearly twenty minutes and not one mention of a guillotine. zero stars.
here’s the thing: i don’t attend or cover sister city commission meetings because i don’t give a fuck about them. i don’t appreciate being subjected to one by surprise.
wow incredibly prescient of me to wear my IDGAF sweatshirt tonight for this presentation i give exactly no fucks about
wow that was a full thirty minutes. now for public comment specifically on consent agenda items (general matters by the public now takes place AFTER the consent agenda).
consent agenda passes unanimously. now on to response from the city manager to matters raised by last meeting’s matters by the public. good god mike murphy has an eeyore voice.
mike murphy slips in as a very tiny aside that he has an upcoming meeting with jeff fogel about internal affairs.
another presentation that wasn’t on the agenda.... police chief brackney is gonna show us a powerpoint.
brackney on stop & frisk data: there apparently didn’t used to be any formal standardized definition of an encounter, resulting in inconsistent documentatiJGl4
JGl4oh so you CAN get the data.
it turns out it is a number after all
white men love being drunk in public
note that this data doesn’t separate hispanic or asian people into their own racial/ethnic categories. she doesn’t say where that data ended up... my guess is they’re all classed as “white” in this data.
white men also get a lot of warnings
chief brackney says they need a full time position for this data mining in order to accomplish their goal of getting this data pulled from the system & published for the community to 8gd6
8gd6as brackney’s powerpoint ends, there was a huge exodus from chambers. this usually happens after an agenda item ends that a big group of people came out for... but this wasn’t on the agenda. who knew about this presentation ahead of time?
“it’s easy to skew data,” chief brackney says. ain’t that the truth.
she says officers are “becoming more comfortable” with her style & her standards.
“what we do is retrain. they can be counseled either formally or informally,” brackney says about officers who may be self initiating a disproportionate number of these investigative detentions.
wes asks her if she’s interested or open to collaborating with community members. she says yes, but we have to have all the data first “so they can ask an informed question.”
wes asks why council wasn’t given a chance to see this presentation before it was shown to the public tonight. mike murphy says he’s never seen a report ahead of time and that would be a “new practice.” he sounds awfully defensive.
nikuyah asks chief brackney to indicate in the data if the same officer is initiating these stops. they can’t use names, but it would be important to know if a small number of individual officers were responsible for the bulk of these stops.
“before i say yes and/or no...” to kathy’s question about better recording of officer narratives, chief brackney says they don’t have the resources for it & asks what the value of such an effort would be.
the part time temporary employee they have doing the data extraction right now can’t stay on past february. mike murphy says with the vacancies they have now, they may have the budget to go ahead and post this new position.
wes asks brackney how the system handles race & ethnicity. until recently, it only had a field for race. it now requires race AND ethnicity and officers are instructed to enter data as self reported by the individual.
“when we make a mistake, we own it,” says police chief brackney. this is met by raucous laughter and jeering from the gallery. she quickly exits council chambers.
and now, 90 minutes into this meeting, we begin public comment. a community member is reading a letter from a resident of friendship court about the food equity initiative.
one in six charlottesville residents lives with food insecurity.
one in six charlottesville residents lives with food insecurity.
the developer for 1206 carlton says his project meets the need for housing for the “missing middle.” my take: ultimately, that property is getting developed & same # of cars are gonna end up on that street regardless. makes more sense to allow the upzonz8Y5
“the communities that respond best to climate change are those that have developed strong solidarity.” comrade at the mic talking about the impending climate disaster.
kathy says the city will be piloting hydrogen buses. interesting. first i’ve heard about this.
ms katrina is playing audio of the former chief of police promising her records related to her son’s arrest “aren’t going anywhere,” and asks why she can’t see these records.
chief brackney must’ve reentered chambers after scurrying out when we laughed at her. ms katrina turned to the back of the room and addressed her directly - she says brackney has called her a liar.
brackney now addressing the case directly for what i believe is the first time in public. her voice is dripping with condescension.
she had at one point told ms katrina she viewed a VIDEO of the arrest, but later said she couldn’t produce the video, and now admits there isn’t one
she had at one point told ms katrina she viewed a VIDEO of the arrest, but later said she couldn’t produce the video, and now admits there isn’t one
“the finding is that the officers were not discourteous,” brackney says. the allegation is that they used EXCESSIVE FORCE.
look, if you can’t tell a photo from a video maybe you aren’t qualified to be handling or evaluating evidence
smirk more, chief brackney.
“why is our downtown mall not safe for pedestrians to walk on sometimes?” asks the next speaker. city trucks block the 4th street crossing (note: this is where a woman was murdered by a vehicle last summer) for some events but not others.
the downtown pedestrian mall should be just that - a PEDESTRIAN mall. there is no reason for there to be vehicle crossings.
mike murphy says it’s common practice to close 4th street (but not 2nd) anytime there is an event at the pavilion.
they are already working with homeland security & others about safety precautions downtown but there’s been no formal discussion of permanent closures.
they are already working with homeland security & others about safety precautions downtown but there’s been no formal discussion of permanent closures.
wes says he’d love to see council have a discussion about permanently closing the fourth st crossing out of respect for what happened.
kathy says this comes up every 3-4 years but she wants to see data about if anyone’s been injured.
if
anyone
has
been
injured
on fourth street
kathy says this comes up every 3-4 years but she wants to see data about if anyone’s been injured.
if
anyone
has
been
injured
on fourth street
it hurt kathy’s feeling that i laughed at her. she says she can’t have an intelligent conversation about this if people are being disruptive, to which jeff fogel says “you’re NOT having an intelligent conversation!”
hey kathy, fuckin’ retire already.
i’d actually like to see a current traffic study on the downtown mall vehicle crossings. how many cars cross per day, not including the 2nd street trolley stop? how long does the average vehicle wait to cross? does this data exist anywhere already?
jeff fogel at the mic. “this is the fourth police chief in a row that’s bamboozled you about stop & frisk.” “there’s no reason to trust this police department or this police chief.”
jeff talking now about the sudden & quiet departure of former police chief al thomas. it was said at the time that he was just retiring. jeff contends there must be a provision of non disclosure & non disparagement in order for thomas to have been paid nearly $300k in severance
remember that thomas disagreed with several key findings of the heaphy report. he departed suddenly not long after the report came to light. jeff says if council participates in this cover up they are deliberately obstructing justice.
another reminder from a member of the community that we’re all doomed to die in the coming climate disaster, complete with pictures from the recent flash flood
ms rosia up next, addressing kathy directly - when will the plaques go up recognizing the slave auction site? she says kathy made a personal promise to her while on the pilgrimage over the summer.
ms rosia asks why they can bring in a combative police chief who obfuscates with her big words.
she says black women will save this city & they will do it without chief brackney.
she’s turned around addressing brackney, standing by the door, directly
she says black women will save this city & they will do it without chief brackney.
she’s turned around addressing brackney, standing by the door, directly
jeff fogel re entered chambers and loudly addressed chief brackney, asking if she’d like to make out a report about an officer assaulting him. he’s out in the hallway with another officer now & i hear some yelling. unclear what’s happened.
kathy says the plaques ms rosia asked about are all part of a larger park redesign that’s being held up by the lawsuit about the confederate monuments.
the officer & chief brackney are back in council chambers. no sign of jeff.
wes & kathy agree that council should work to find a solution that allows the plaques to be placed separate from the larger park redesign process, as the court case is likely to drag on for a while.
wes & kathy agree that council should work to find a solution that allows the plaques to be placed separate from the larger park redesign process, as the court case is likely to drag on for a while.
we are still in public comment. nancy at the mic asking about the 10th & Henry intersection that mike murphy said at the start of the meeting that the traffic engineer advised taking no action on. she says maybe he feels that way because he doesn’t live in that neighborhood.
PACEM, the warming shelter for unhoused folks, will be opening for the winter at the end of this month. nancy reminds council that the real need is HOUSING.
finally reached the end of public comment. going into a ten minute recess, but first nikuyah says that starting at the next meeting, she will start more strictly enforcing the 3 minute time limit. (what about 30 minute presentations about french wine tasting?)
i should note that she closed her comment with, “and when it’s tweeted out, make sure you say this is after a ten-month attempt.”
was that for me, nikuyah?
was that for me, nikuyah?
i’ve really appreciated her allowing people to finish their thoughts when they are mid-sentence when the timer goes off. the meetings DO go long. very long. but giving 10 people an extra 20 seconds to finish their statement isn’t what’s making them long.
for example, a ten minute recess taking 17 minutes eats up more time than giving every single public commenter an entire additional minute.
no public comment & unanimous passage on tZYco
ZYcowe’re watching another powerpoint, my friends.
there won’t be a vote on this matter tonight.
there won’t be a vote on this matter tonight.
if you’re following along at home, the livestream picks up here
i was gonna refer you to @EDevonRobinson’s coverage of the last half hour, but he must’ve been as bored & zoned out as i was
acting city manager mike murphy reappeared just now apologizing for stepping out to meet with police chief brackney. wonder what that was about? 👀
next up is the first of two readings about funding for a clinic coordinator position at west haven
kathy tries to move to approve the appropriation, but it’s just the first reading. it’ll go on the consent agenda at the next meeting.
this passed unanimously
wow a lot more questions are getting asked about exactly how the food equity initiative is going to use the proposed funds than anyone ever asked the downtown business association. weird.
nikuyah asks why we’re still in such an early information gathering phase on this subject. based on the agenda background, this funding is mostly for another year of evaluation, rather than any kind of program implementation.
the food equity initiative carries 3-1 with nikuyah dissenting.
next up is the rezoning application for the property at 1206 carlton. we heard about this at the last council meeting
kathy asks if they didn’t already vote against this at the last meeting. the city atty says no, that was a first reading. she is still confused, saying it would’ve gone on the consent agenda if they approved it. that’s... not how this works.
they’ve unanimously denied the rezoning. so the developer can’t build a 6 unit apartment building but he CAN, under the existing zoning, build two 4BR “suite style” units. so... that actually seems like a worse outcome?
do it
staff report on participatory budgeting was brief & no action was taken
and now, another powerpoint. the annual report from the charlottesville department of social services advisory board.
there’s nothing better than a very involved discussion of the finer points of roberts rules at 11:25pm
back to public comment. this man claims the developer for the 1206 carlton property (whose upzoning application was denied tonight) misrepresented the community engagement he did. does have a good point about the number of absentee landlords in this town, though.
next public commenter apologizes for the late hour & thanks nikuyah for her commitment to keeping people to their 3 minutes but hopes she can control the “outbursts” and the “screaming” that disrupts meetings. 🙄
kathy says the behavior is “bullying” and “juvenile” and when council doesn’t shut it down it “condones that behavior.” she “hopes that the public will begin treating each other with respect.”
nikuyah: “even though meetings have been very civil in the past, the results of those meetings have been disastrous for people’s lives.” there was less shouting, but the policies have not been “civil” in their effects.
wes: “i don’t think we should be in the business of monitoring people’s behavior”
“i do think we need to find a balance of sorts.”
“i do think we need to find a balance of sorts.”
wes says he understands some people don’t feel comfortable because they don’t want to be heckled... but for a long time many people weren’t comfortable here because they weren’t heard
“this is what we asked for when we asked for community engagement.”
“this is what we asked for when we asked for community engagement.”
heather cites a community member who left the meeting early because “they didn’t find the environment acceptable.”
“some of it i find very unproductive. i don’t see the goal.”
“some of it i find very unproductive. i don’t see the goal.”
“these are still individuals who have to be heard,” says wes.
heather says “i feel like they’re just here for the political theater of it.” “that’s not an environment i want to create.”
heather says “i feel like they’re just here for the political theater of it.” “that’s not an environment i want to create.”
wes pushes her on this... who is being prevented from speaking? heather thinks being comfortable is a right, i guess.
“they’re not speaking, they’re just yelling!” heather snaps. nikuyah adjourns the meeting.
