City Council

Minutes from the Petersburg City Council Special Called meeting held on: December 18, 2018 -1– ______________________________________________________________________________ The Special Called Meeting of the Petersburg City Council was held on Tuesday, December 18, 2018, at City Hall in Council Chambers. Mayor Parham called the Special Called meeting to order at 5:30p.m. 1. ROLL CALL: Present: Council Member Charles H. Cuthbert, Jr Council Member Annette Smith-Lee Council Member W. Howard Myers Council Member Darrin Hill Vice Mayor John A. Hart Mayor Samuel Parham Absent: Council Member Wilson-Smith Present from City Administration: Assistant City Attorney Rashaad Bey City Manager Aretha R. Ferrell-Benavides 2. PURPOSE: a. A public hearing to receive citizen comments relating to a request to the General Assembly of Virginia to amend the Charter removing all City financial functions from the office of the Treasurer and adding all financial function to the collector of city taxes. Mayor Parham opened the floor for public comments. Barb Rudolph, 1675 Mt. Vernon Street, stated, “I wanted to comment first on the process. It was interesting to me at the last meeting that you all voted to have this public hearing on charter change proposals, but you later voted on various elements of the Legislative Agenda and kind of reduced it down to like this one charter change. And I just wanted to express that I hope in future years that this is done differently so that the capacity for citizen input is closer to the front end. Because I think that it would be valuable for citizens to be able to discuss some of the other charter changes that you all dismissed. I remember that Council Member Hill said something about the Senator told them not to pursue this one. I am paraphrasing the words. The just of it was that the Senator said we cannot do this and that is nice, but I do not think you all work for the Senator, you work for the citizens. So, I would like to have a process where citizens can actually comment on the proposed charter changes. You all obviously are the authority on what you are going to propose and not propose. You left a lot of potential input out of the process. Now to the actually charter change at hand with the financial duties. I know that I am telling you guys this and probably most of you or all of you have thought the same thing and it’s unfortunate that this is where it comes to because it appears that the origin of this changed over a year ago was because of some issues with the treasurer at the time, Mr. Brown, and that he wasn’t getting the job done. That is the person and not the position. We have put a new person in the position and probably for some different reasons the job still isn’t getting done from what I heard and observed. And apparently most of you if not all of you feel the same way since you are pursuing this change. Having said that it probably is necessary because right now it seems like no one other than the citizens has any control over the treasurer. And we know that we cannot do anything about it except every four years. With this particular change I think you can all create more accountability within the City government and get the things done. I do hope that it is successful. I feel like that the current situation; the treasurer has been able because he doesn’t work for you but works for the citizens and not many citizens are paying attention to what is going on. He is able to say that City Council is against me or they are not giving me the tools that I need to do the job and it put you all and Mrs. Benavides and her staff in a difficult position. I think that everybody, the treasurer and the City administration has come in for a lot of criticism from the tax collections and people not being credited for what *Audio available  Minutes from the Petersburg City Council Special Called meeting held on: December 18, 2018 -2– ______________________________________________________________________________ they paid and lots of problems. So, there is plenty of blame to go around and I realize that. If the accountability rest in one place I think it is going to work better. I don’t think that it is ideal but the whole idea of having constitutional officers elected to do technical jobs like a treasurer is sort of I think is an antiquated idea. When you elect your commonwealth attorney that person has to be an attorney but the person who is elected as treasurer does not have to be a financial person. And I don’t think the current incumbent is really a financial person. And because of the situation maybe what he can add to the mix hasn’t really been fulfilled. Please go forward and do good with this. Thank you for the opportunity to comment on this particular measurement.” Ken Pritchett (Treasurer), 1113 Overbrook Road, stated, “In an article that I kind of put together I kind of labeled Mrs. Rudolph and her group as the special city administration. So, that is fine. I just wanted to make a comment from the standpoint that there are a lot of things that I do not do and haven’t done or won’t do. But there was no list of things that the treasurer was supposed to do when I took to office. I ran for the office for a position that previous treasurers for the past hundred years or so been in and that you all of course changed that job as I was running. There is a couple of things that you all wanted to be done like moving over to the annex which I have refused to do that. I discussed it with the City Manager and I thought that it was a security issue with a person in the billing and collections office walk that money across the street everyday especially like a day we had recently with ice. There is vulnerability to outside forces to do harm to that person as well as a police officer being assigned to that duty. That would have not made a timely thing. We get our money in the bank and most of the time we get money from the city collector on time. Sometimes there are mistakes that we have straighten out. We straighten it out and then it goes to the bank. The only issue that we have had that just in July alone there were 5,400 checks that have been in the drop box for several months and we got those processed in July. I couldn’t find my figures, but it was several million dollars that we got deposited that we could have deposited during the actual fiscal year of 2018. I do have one comment and it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t take a jab at somebody. The thing that I am concerned about is the checks and balance system. We can put it all in one place instead of two places. You have it in one area and I will paraphrase what Mr. Cuthbert said one time about the situation. He said ‘There is no reason to question the honesty of the treasurer elected, Kenneth M. Pritchett. That said there is only a question of time before Petersburg has a treasurer who a thief is.’ I am just going to say that we are going to get a lot of people. We have gone from eight to nine people in the treasurer’s office to somewhere of 11 to 15 in the collector’s office. And we will have more people plus finance. You need to think about the possibility of embezzlement. That is pretty much my comments. I will go back to say that in your wisdom to let the 29-year veteran who knew everything that needed to be done but with her gone by taking $18,000 away from her and not keeping her that is where a lot of the problems have come from.” Sara Melissa Witiak, 22 Centre Hill Court, stated, “So, I would agree with the idea of having some checks and balances. I spoke with Mr. Cuthbert and his argument for shifting the responsibility to a tax collector was that this person could be fired. I do have questions about in the proposed amendment that this tax collector would take an oath was crossed out. And so, I am wondering why somebody wouldn’t be kept under oath for reporting their monies. I think that goes with the idea of holding someone accountable. I also think whatever gets decided in any City Council position that just like you have in the workplace there should be some really clearly defined roles. Both for councilors and anybody working in City government. You should be working to define those roles and that can help people have more respect and more trust in each and more clarity in how they are accountable to citizens. So, if you do end of changing the tax collector position I think that it is important to have a contract and job description to have some type of very clear expectation or for city treasurer.” Gary Talley, 2324 Fort Rice, stated, “Obviously there is a problem here. But it seems to me nudering an elected official is not the answer and basically that is what we are doing here. We are moving everything over to the collector’s office when there are problems there. My water bill is still not right. And so, we are going to give all these responsibilities to them and they cannot do that right. That doesn’t make sense either. It is time to start working together.” *Audio available  Minutes from the Petersburg City Council Special Called meeting held on: December 18, 2018 -3– ______________________________________________________________________________ Veronica Person, 1800 East Boulevard, stated, “I was just reading that you asked the General Assembly to remove all City financial functions from the office of the treasurer to the collections. How does that help or change the way things are operated? That is what I need to know. If somebody can give me an answer I would really and truly appreciate it.” Seeing no further hands, Mayor Parham closed the public hearing. Council Member Cuthbert made a motion to approve the resolution to amend the charter removing all city financial functions from the office of the treasurer and adding all financial functions to the collector of taxes. The motion was seconded by Council Member Myers. There was discussion on the motion. The motion was approved on roll call vote. On roll call vote, voting yes: Cuthbert, Smith-Lee, Myers, Hill, Hart and Parham; Absent: Wilson-Smith 18-R-59 A RESOLUTION TO AMEND THE CHARTER REMOVING ALL CITY FINANCIAL FUNCTIONS FROM THE OFFICE OF THE TREASURER AND ADDING ALL FINANCIAL FUNCTIONS TO THE COLLECTOR OF TAXES. 3. ADJOURNMENT: City Council adjourned at 6:04 p.m. _________________________ Clerk of City Council APPROVED: _________________________ Mayor *Audio available