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Did you get your thing approved?

Yeah.

You're Hallelujah.

Where is the charge?

Good afternoon, everyone.

I'm Alan Joins, Mayor Westalo, and it's a pleasure to call to order the special meeting of the West of Sam City Council and ask the city clerk to call the role, please.

Councilmember joyner.

Present.

Councilmember Clark.

Here.

Councilmember Andrew Bowen.

Here.

Councilmember Scipio.

Present.

Mayor Pro Tim Adams.

Councilmember Taylor.

Present.

Councilmember Hall.

Present.

And Councilmember Burke here.

Thank you, everyone, and thank you, uh Mayor Pro Tim for joining us via Zoom today.

I'll try not to I'll try to watch for you thing there.

So uh maybe we have uh item G one, please.

Item G one, consideration of the twenty twenty-six city council meeting calendar.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um we we uh took the couple of items that council asked about last time, um, taken off the international uh Black Theater Festival, as that's not necessarily a council event, just want to make sure you were aware that was in that recess period and created the two uh two town hall dates, and otherwise it's uh the same as you had last time.

Uh so go ahead and get those dates booked if council desires.

Do we need a motion on those tonight to approve the calendar?

So move.

Thank you, Councilman Scipio.

Second by Councilmore Clark.

Any discussion?

Uh discussion.

Yes, sir, Councilmember Hall.

Thank you, Mayor Joins.

I just wanted to make sure because I hadn't been able to talk to different uh council members.

There is a um Monday, right after the July fourth holiday, just want to make sure everybody plans to be back in town that Monday, and I'm not showing up by myself while everybody is recovering from fireworks, so that seems to be okay.

We'll be back.

Okay.

Uh-huh.

But just to provide a little context on on that one.

Typically, as I've mentioned, our our meeting schedule generally goes from committees to the the second meeting of the month, which has our public hearings and public comment period, then to the first meeting of the following month, which usually take up the items that were on the council committee agendas.

Uh so that using that process is the way the calendar is laid out.

When we get into the end of those June meetings, if there is not a lot of committee business that needs to be carried over, then there's a potential for council to take some of those meetings that information that has to be dealt with in the end of June, and then determine whether you actually need that first meeting in July.

But it is on the calendar to follow our normal schedule.

Oh Mayor Pratim, do you have a comment?

Okay.

Anyone opposed?

No.

And that is unanimous.

Thank you.

We have item G two, please.

Item G two, adoption of civil service board appeal hearing rules.

Thank you.

Um Sharon, do you want to kick this off?

Or um, I don't know uh the city attorney is going to lead this discussion, but yeah, I mean, I can kick it up.

Uh good afternoon, Mayor.

Ray of Pro Tim, uh, Council.

I can kick this off, but City Attorney Um French, not Jerry Contos.

Um, we'll be providing most of the comments on this.

So as we talked briefly at last week's meeting, um, we are presenting the rules of the civil service board, which per state statute requires council to adopt those rules before the CSB can then begin.

We need those in place before they can start having hearings, um, grievance appeal hearings.

So we have two items on the agenda, the rules as approved by the CSB, and then um an item with kind of highlights, um added language changes as recommended by staff, and those changes are supported by both of the um chiefs who I think are both here, Chief Penn, but Chief Mayo is here.

Um so with that, I'll turn it over to Camille, and she can kind of talk through and provide some context on each of those areas where there were differences in the two versions.

Which let me just uh recognize our chairman of the uh board uh Esther Miller, thank you for continuing to be with us and help with air and other members of the council maybe here as well.

Thank you for your service there.

Uh Ms.

French.

Thank you.

Um, Mayor Joins, good afternoon.

Um, Mayor Joins, Mayor Pro Tim Adams, and members of City Council.

Um, want to thank you all for your time today.

I know this is a special session, just so we can go through this, but we wanted to give you an opportunity to ask any questions and highlight anything that you might have concern about.

Um, I want to first thank the board for their due diligence in working with staff to get us to this point.

Um, and um with that, I am just going to kind of jump right into the meat of it.

Um, essentially, as Sharon outlined um here earlier, what you will see.

I am going to work from the highlighted um version of the rules, primarily because I think that that will help you see um, you know, where the board has proposals as well as where we have our own set of proposals, it'll kind of overlay those two items together.

At the outset, I would like to say that I do believe that um that we have we are at about 95 to 99 percent of this document is um agreed upon between the board and staff.

Um we modeled our ordinance um off of um and the and of course the rule itself, the statutory guidance itself was modeled off the city of Asheville, and so we brought a draft of proposed rules based on that model, and then we worked our way out from there.

So I'm just gonna start at the top and I'll kind of explain to you as we go, just stop me if you have any questions.

Um these first two at the beginning, the um highlighted title and board purpose, not necessarily disagreements, just an um opportunity for us to clarify um what this document is, number one, and number two, the board's purpose, which was recommended by one of the members.

We just cleaned that up a little bit and brought a little bit more general terms to the table.

So um no general disagreement or pushback or anything there.

We just made a few changes and highlighted them for consistency.

If you turn to the next page, um we're going through the definitions in section B.

Um, you will see that items six, seven, I'm sorry, six, eight, and nine, um, were are highlighted, not because of any type of concern, but in the original rules that we proposed, those returns were not defined.

And so we felt that it was prudent to define those terms in conjunction with what's in our personnel resolution and I hand handbook for clarity and consistency across the documentation that you currently have in place.

Um item number 10 is a space where um we had some um concerns, transfer against their will.

Uh as you can see, the struct through language um was indeed was proposed by the board, meaning a reassignment of a member, such that the transfer is a defective and a demotion, which is part of what we agreed to, but it goes further to call into question in voluntary reassignments that materially alter the employee shift, location, reporting structure, or core responsibilities in a manner that could reasonably be viewed as punitive or professionally disadvantageous.

Um when you get into that language, our concern as staff, and as we spoke with both of the chiefs as well, was that um that language could also interfere with the day-to-day operations of the chiefs and their management team.

Um if I have they have to do a reassignment or any of those types of things that could be called into question by any employee for any reason, but they do that on a regular and daily basis.

And um we did not want to have these rules interfere with the operational concerns of the two departments.

So we felt that transfer against their will should be defined as listed where it a demotion would be considered the result of a disciplinary action.

Um, and so that that was that is the rationale for us making that change.

If you go on over then into section, there are no additional concerns on the officers and duties, but if you go into section D, which talks about CSB members item number four, um, this was a change that staff made to indicate what is already aligned for our boards and commissions currently in conjunction with the city ordinance.

So that just aligns with what is currently our practice as an organization.

Going same same section, just second the next page on page four, where it says if you fail to attend at least the 65% of the regularly scheduled meetings, any work sessions and hearings of the CSB during a calendar year, uh, we inserted shall as opposed to may, again, in alignment with what is required already by our boards and commissions, uh may be removed from the CSB and their vacant position.

Um we just wanted to be in alignment with that, um, and that is why we recommended that change.

Um I do have articles and section numbers if you want all of that to show you where that is outlined in the ordinance, but we can come back to that at a later time.

I'll work my way through the document if you have more questions.

Moving on to Section E meetings of the CSV.

If you go down to item number five, that wasn't necessarily any disagreement either, but I do believe we just wanted to clarify which meetings that we were talking about that they would be referring to, and so we wanted to make sure to put CSB in that section.

Going over to Section F appeals hearings on the next page, which would be page number five, um, item number two.

Um this is um language that we felt that we needed to add because there was a lot of discussion around the CSB's authority to hear matters and what needed to happen.

So if you go back to your session law, you will see that one of the criteria for matters to come before the board for items of appeal, they must go through the city's grievance process first.

There is no circumventing that process as the statute has outlined.

And so this Civil Service Board can't hear an appeal unless it is appealing a decision that has already been made by the manager's office.

So it must go all the way up to the manager's level, have a determination made, and then if the um the employee in fire or police has been um has has filed a grievance on one of those bases that we just defined in the previous sections, then they are allowed to appeal that um to the board, but they must go through that entire process first.

And so we wanted to make sure to highlight that in this section, and so it indicates that it is in um line with the statutory guidance, and if they fail to exhaust that remedy, um the board will not be able to hear that matter.

Um so we wanted to make sure that that was clear because that was the um outlining as it was lined out in the statute.

Okay.

Um the other piece of that, and where is it um the employees' failure to timely exhaust any administrative remedy?

Our rationale behind that was that removal of the provision was not in line with statute is written, and basically again the employee has to go through the final determination before the appeal is heard.

Moving on to that same section, page number six, item number five.

So this is something that we did add um that was a little different from not even the statutory guidance, but the original draft rules that were proposed.

So as you know, just like any city council meeting, um board and commission meetings are open meetings, okay.

But these are going to be a little different because we will be discussing in the terms of the board personnel and private information that may come in, and we wanted to make sure that we were protecting employees and their personnel and private information.

So we went the extra step of indicating that the public hearing, um, we did not want it to violate personnel privacy, and we wanted to make sure to protect that, and so we wanted to add that language in number five, and we wanted to make sure that we have appeals hearings closed.

And so in the and that's why that was added.

Number six, then when you go to stat standard of review, um, the concern there was about the um introduction of new and material evidence.

So essentially, the Civil Service Board is a final board of appeal, not an initial board of appeal.

As I just indicated, it has to go through the grievance process before it gets to the Civil Service Board.

The goal here is to make sure that everybody is hearing the same information and making a determination at the final level of appeal based on what has already been presented.

If you think about this in the course of a hearing that goes on appeal in the regular court system, when new introduction material evidence is introduced, sometimes that case is remanded back to a lower court to make a determination on what new information has been presented.

In this case, and we did a lot of information gathering on this from sister cities who have similar ordinances, as well as I've spoken to the two attorneys in Ashville, our current city attorney there, as well as the city attorney that was in place when their ordinance was enacted.

And one of the concerns was if all of the information is given at the outset, when the matter is going through the department and up to the manager's level, then maybe that outcome would have been different.

And so instead of the board hearing that new evidence, it should be taken back to the department, even but definitely to the manager's level for reconsideration before the board can hear it.

And so the recommendation is that the CSB allow the process to function as it should, go back through the grievance process to the manager's level for that new information to be considered.

Okay, let's see.

Going on, same section, but number eight.

Oh, I'm sorry, let's back up to number seven.

Right at the end of that, it says irrelevant and material and unduly repetitious evidence shall be the excluded.

I think the board wanted that to be determined by the chairperson, and our thought was that that should not rest solely on the chairperson, that that should probably just allow the civil service board to determine make that determination as a group and by majority vote as opposed to that being on the shoulders of just the chair.

Item number eight representation of parties and the civil service board.

Um this language we did add back.

Um make well, we made sure that this language was added because it is directly taken from the statute.

Um it does allow the board, um, it indicates that the office of the city attorney shall serve as legal advisor to or attorney for the board or both, but the board does have to agree to that in writing, and a majority of the board has to agree to that.

That is a provision of the statute.

We wanted to make sure that it was included in the language here.

Okay, going on.

I think the next section is item number 12, same section, next page, page eight.

Um civil service board shall not call witnesses or gather evidence on behalf of either party to an appeal.

Rationale here is that function for calling witnesses should lie solely with the employee who is making the appeal.

When we go through the grievance process, an employee is allowed to call witnesses that can testify on their behalf as a part of the grievance process.

We do not do that.

That is the responsibility of the employee, and in keeping with the integrity of that process and keeping in line with that process, we did not feel that it should be appropriate for the board itself to call those witnesses or gather evidence, and that is because then we have gone through this with the board as a part of their orientation.

This is a quite this is a quasi-judicial judicial board, and so they should only be considering evidence and information that is placed in front of them.

They should not be going and gathering evidence on behalf of either party.

And so it is imperative, I think that we allow the employee to do that.

And if you see right there at the top of item 12, it does say parties are responsible for arranging for appearance and testimony by witnesses on their behalf, and so that should lie with the employee to continue to make that support as opposed to sitting with the board.

And so that should lie with the employee to continue to make that support as opposed to sitting with the board.

Okay.

We flip a few more pages, and I think we come to our final indication here on page 11 where it says amendments.

Again, uh board approved amendments to these rules of procedure shall be presented as opposed to maybe presented to council.

Again, that is in line with our statutory guidance.

The statute indicates that the board does have the authority to make or amend um rules of procedures for appeals hearings.

However, um those amendments must be and shall be presented to council for adoption, which is one of the reasons why we're here so you can have you know as have your questions answered and that sort of thing.

So we made that change to be in line with the statutory guidance.

That brings me to the end of the document.

I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have about any of the provisions.

Councilman Clark.

I had a question on Five.

This microphone is off.

Oh we got my microphone on.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Uh F five, uh, which is on page six.

Yes, sir.

It just seemed like to me you're gonna be dealing with a lot of personnel confidentiality things.

And do you have procedures in place for for going into closed session and coming out?

In closed session a lot.

Yes, sir.

So we will be so to keep in mind this is only as it pertains to the appeals hearings.

All civil service board meetings are open meetings.

So we'll go into open session, much like we do here with city council.

If it is an appeals hearing, however, we would have a motion made to go into closed session, and then the appeals hearing would begin from there.

But the board will have other items, other matters for their agendas for their regular meetings that need not be in closed session, and so um we wanted to make that distinction specifically for the appeals hearings.

Okay, thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Um because these are open meetings, will they be um recorded or viewed, streamed, or what is the process for this particular board?

So we have been recording the meetings since we started having them, I think, in July.

Um so we have meeting minutes.

Um we have an agenda for the meeting just like we would for our other um meetings, boards, and commissions.

Um I'm not sure about the um live streaming or any of that.

I don't think we do that for any of our other boards, but we do uh record them and we do keep minutes for each of those meetings.

We would have closed session minutes for the closed sessions as well.

But residents wouldn't be able to um view them in a video later unless that's not what we do.

No, ma'am, but but they can come to the meeting and we have had it.

Yes, ma'am.

We have and we have had had several uh civilian folks that have come in just to join the meetings and observe as of this point.

Madam Attorney, uh, I just want to make sure my understanding is a number of these changes were made by your your office and staff to make sure we're in compliance with the state statute.

Yes, sir.

And um, you know, again, if that we can certainly provide that guidance and clarity um for anybody who has a question about where these pieces align um statutorily if um if that's required.

All right, thank you.

Councilmore Hall.

Thank you, Mayor Joins.

Um, Attorney French, I was curious in um section F number seven.

There was um the portion that you all um proposed to strike out, which was irrelevant and immaterial and unduly repetitious evidence shall be excluded as determined by the chairperson.

I I was curious of whether or not you all knew why that was determined, why they placed that in there for the chairman.

Is that something that other municipalities that have this in place that they have done or that just was or or do you even know was that discussed of why they originally had that in there?

Um I think that when we did have the discussion, it was more around allowing just the chair to make that determination.

Um you know, something just that simple.

I don't think there was any um you know material um concern about it, but again, once we looked at it, I think our concern was that we didn't want one person to bear that burden.

We wanted to allow um the board you know, as a majority to be able to say whether they considered that um information irrelevant immaterial or unduly repetitious.

We just thought that would be a better um use of the language.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um so you mentioned earlier that uh the city staff and the board or about five percent differences in what is still there.

Are you is there still a little bit small by that small divide between the board and the city staff?

So I don't I can't answer that part.

All I know is that what they presented is what they agreed on.

The board as a majority um agreed on a set of rules um that they wanted to be presented, and we have presented those to you so that you could clearly see their concerns and what they wanted highlighted.

Um what we had uh we felt it prudent to do was just to review those rules as they had presented them and ensure that though the the rules that they were had presented were in line with the statutory guidance.

And so that's what we've done.

Um hopefully um we can you know, like I said, I think the majority of this document was was um we were united in our thinking on how it needed to be applied.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh so we're not asking uh for a motion tonight to to approve these.

We'd like for you to think about any of them.

It sounds like there's uh general uh concurrence on on those, and we will be bringing those back for a formal vote uh Sharon's soon, uh I guess December.

Uh so if there's any questions uh between now and them, but obviously feel free to contact the attorney or Sharon for any questions or additional information.

Thank you, uh City Attorney.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

All right.

Uh City Manager, you had some comments.

I have just a a couple of quick items for you.

One is we we talked about bringing some additional information back on uh the noise ordinance.

But in follow-up discussions that we had, we've determined that there's some more issues that need to be addressed.

I'm gonna let Ben speak for just a moment on those.

Afternoon, Mayor Joins, Mayor Pro Temporians, members of council.

Yes, we're surveying the uh noise ordinances in several uh other North Carolina cities, and it seems that you know what's common to those ordinances they establish uh standards for different types of uh areas of the city like commercial districts, uh central business districts, you know, those types of areas, and then they have a standard, and then they uh you know list out the activities you know that are allowable.

In a number of the cases, they do identify exceptions uh to those particular standards venues like an amphitheater or a stadium are exempted, but then they have some kind of uh process to authorize or to allow those particular venues to exceed those standards uh in those particular areas.

Uh and it looks like that they at least a few of them they do that through some kind of permitting process.

And so I'm gonna uh at the manager's direction to convene a group of staff, probably from planning and development services, police, economic development, to get together and kind of further talk about what kind of comprehensive changes we want to or we want to recommend uh to the noise ordinance to where it's something that would apply citywide and not necessarily be just a particular kind of carve out for any particular venue, uh because we know that we have several uh public assembly facilities uh throughout the city, and we know that we have events and things that go on in commercial areas, and we want to make sure that what we put in place uh you know would apply across the city.

So, but but definitely want to look at something that puts objective standards in place so that promoters and and venue operators know exactly what it is they have to comply with.

Also, you know, uh uh language about how we're gonna measure compliance, how we would go about doing that, and then what the consequences would be for not complying with with the uh standards.

Ben are are we uh providing some guidance back to the Afit theater developers in terms of their ability to move forward with their design and so on?

So right now I I am in regular communication with Mr.

Dame just to hear you know more about you know their concerns about what they you know hope to see in an ordinance, which I think the main thing is the objectivity uh as far as standards and compliance are concerned, and so uh I've been in regular communication with Mr.

Dame.

Okay, Consumer Jordan No, I I didn't have a question.

I'm sorry.

Thank you.

Uh Customer Hall.

Thank you, Mayor Joins.

Just wanted to uplift something that I mentioned last week as we're continuing to research other municipalities and what they're doing around noise ordinances that we continue to keep residents in mind of you know how things will affect them and also communicating with them on um what we're thinking about.

I know I had at least two groups to email me since last week um to provide feedback, and so I'll make sure that I I make sure that I get that um to you so that you all can also have that, and I would encourage my colleagues to do the same in the event that folks do reach out to them that they also will help staff as they're getting things together and compiling this data.

Thank you, Councilman Hall.

I mean, I I will say we've done a little bit of testing on the decibel level meters, and so when the uh when the mayor or council committee member uh bangs the gavel in the other room, you're above the decibel levels that are that would have been allowed under any of the any of the proposals that we've been looking at so far.

You see, I'm a heavy banger here.

Uh not necessarily.

I think that's just uh it's it's really just to ex uh to explore the fact that the decibel levels that they're looking at really are within a normal range, and it's uh there's a lot of sounds that you hear that are much higher than the numbers that we're looking at as a part of the ordinance.

So that doesn't mean everybody's gonna be happy as has been mentioned, but I think we're trying to make sure we're comprehensive in looking at all those issues for the community as a whole, but also to make sure that the community has two interests.

One is to to be to feel good in their homes and not to be intruded by lots of noise, but a lot of folks also want to have outdoor events that by nature are going to create some noise uh in living in an urban area.

So we're trying to balance those two out.

Uh one other item, unless there's a any other question on that, and I I appreciate Councilmember Hall.

If you are getting any comments from folks, please pass them back along to us and particularly to Ben so we can get those incorporated.

Thank you.

All right, go ahead.

Um a second item, just uh I've I've spoken I I believe to the to everybody, but at least I know a majority of council, and and I appreciate your concurrence with uh allowing us to look at uh putting in an implementation of a uh a revision to the parking in the downtown area during the uh upcoming holidays.

So we're we're looking at uh bringing something back that that'll come out between Thanksgiving and New Year's to give uh folks a little bit of relief from the parking uh on street parking requirements.

Um and again I I appreciate council's concurrence with uh with us moving forward.

So we'll have more details on that that will be coming out in the probably in this week so that folks can have an an understanding of what we're trying to do to help our downtown businesses and restaurants as they we know this is a a very uh busy season going through the through the holidays and we want everybody to be successful uh in the community.

So we're gonna uh move forward with that as we've uh talked to you.

And if you have questions about that as we're finalizing that, please uh please let me know so we can get that incorporated or uh Jeff and or Aaron either.

Okay, thank you.

Questions from Mr.

Pate.

Oh, Customer Andrew Bulling.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Would this just be are we just looking at on street parking or on street and the parking deck uh city parking?

Uh primarily we're looking at the on-street parking, uh which is where we get uh most of the comments that come back in uh just to give people an opportunity to to know that they can come downtown and shop or uh visit one of our restaurants and and not worry about the the time frame if you're gonna shop a little bit longer in the stores.

We encourage you to to spend your money and help our downtown businesses.

That's all we had on our agenda.

Uh I would uh if it might ready, uh entertain a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Motion by Councilman Clark, seconded by Councilmember Hall.

Those in favor adjourning, please say aye.

Aye.

No, we are adjourned and a light.