City Council Regular Meeting

URBANA COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE MEETING MINUTES DATE: Monday, August 17, 2020 TIME: 7:00 P.M. PLACE: *Held virtually due to Governor’s and Mayoral Emergency Orders The City Council of the City of Urbana, Illinois, met in regular session on Monday, August 17, 2020, at 7:00pm via Zoom. ELECTED OFFICIALS PHYSICALLY PRESENT: Diane Wolfe Marlin, Mayor; Phyllis D. Clark, City Clerk ELECTED OFFICIALS PRESENT VIA ZOOM: Maryalice Wu, Ward 1; Julie Laut, Ward 2; Shirese Hursey, Ward 3; Bill Brown, Ward 4; Dennis Roberts, Ward 5; Bill Colbrook, Ward 6; Jared Miller, Ward 7 ELECTED OFFICIALS ABSENT: None STAFF PRESENT VIA ZOOM: Kay Meharry; Carol Mitten; Joel Sanders; Bryant Seraphin; James Simon OTHERS PRESENT ELECTRONICALLY: Celeste Choate; Rob Dalhaus III; Joey Rosecrance; Heather Hintz; Public comment via Zoom: Benjamin Stone; Allan Axelrod; Austin Hoffman; Tracy Chong; Sarah Nixon; Meghan McDonald; Christopher Hansen; Karie Brown Tess; Ameena Payne; Sarka Petrickova 1. Call to Order and Roll Call With a quorum present, Chair Dennis Roberts called the meeting of the Committee of the Whole to order at 7:01pm. 2. Approval of Minutes from Previous Meeting CM Miller made a motion to approve the minutes from the August 3, 2020 meeting. Motion seconded by CM Wu and carried by roll call vote as follows: Aye: Wu, Laut, Hursey, Brown, Roberts Colbrook, Miller No: None 3. Additions to the Agenda There were no additions to the agenda. 4. Public Input and Presentations a. Urbana Free Library Annual Report Library Director Celeste Choate presented this report, which began with a PowerPoint presentation showing some library activities that took place in the last year. Ms. Choate said the library went through a strategic planning process over the past year and a plan with four pillars was approved by the library board. The four pillars are: • Embrace – welcome all • Enrich – spark curiosity • Empower – contribute to a strong social fabric • Enhance – the library is a strong organization Page 1 of 3  Ms. Choate spoke about various programs, activities and community events. She said this year the foundation reached out to donors, sponsored two events and doubled the number of donors. The foundation raised over $65,000 last year for the library. She said Friends of the Library started their own Amazon store and are selling from $800 to $1,200 a month. The News Gazette moved out their building in downtown Champaign, and left their archival holdings to the Champaign County Historical Archives, which consisted of over 1,000 cubic feet of materials. Ms. Choate responded to questions from council members as discussion ensued. b. One Door Presentation Mayor Marlin began this presentation by stating that over the next few years the City of Urbana will redefine the role of policing and public safety. The process begins with looking at the activities police are responding to, and asking if there might be someone better equipped to respond to some of those calls. She said Police Lieutenant Joel Sanders and the Urbana police department have been working with community partners including Carle Hospital, Rosecrance and C-U at Home for the last several years to develop a model program, called One Door, that will better meet the needs of the public. Lt. Sanders provided a PowerPoint presentation and said One Door offers a new approach for response to individuals in crisis. The response would depart from traditional accepted roles and responsibilities of responders. According to Lt. Sanders, it would be comparable to convenient care for individuals in crisis. He went on to talk about the mission of the One Door system of response to individuals in crisis, which would offer: • Open, single door solution to offer opportunity to be recognized, stabilized, engaged with and treated with dignity and respect. • Services to those in crisis and a resource for most vulnerable citizens. • Enhanced resources and decreased contact with law enforcement. • Strengthened collaboration between community stakeholders, service providers and local law enforcement agencies. Lt. Sanders went on to explain the goals and steps of response for various crisis situations. He also went over estimated costs for the first year, which would be from $1.847 million to $2.147 million. Each subsequent year the cost would be about $2.2 million. He explained that C-U at Home will manage the program, Rosecrance will manage the crisis response team. Each entity using the program will set their own policy and decide how they will use the resources from the program. Lt. Sanders said he would like to set a goal of January 2021 or the first quarter of 2021 to begin a pilot program with the crisis response team. Rob Dalhaus, Executive Director of C-U at Home, Joey King, Executive Director of Rosecrance Central Illinois, and Heather Hintz with Carle Behavioral Health were present and answered questions and concerns from council members. They said that the program is still in the planning stages and this discussion was not to present a final project. c. Public Input Public Input via Zoom: Public input via Zoom included the following comments: drop charges against Aleyah Lewis; free the 27 protesters; congratulations to the library for successful programs; glad the mayor spoke to the governor about extending the eviction moratorium; no transparency in FOIA process; glad One Door is underway; need to hear from healthcare professionals about their approach to One Door; take money from funding police and use for social services; find alternatives to incarceration of children of color; smell of asphalt is coming from Emulsicoat; Page 2 of 3  Public Input via email Public input via email was received from Jon Hays and Ameena Payne. 5 Staff Report Mayor Marlin announced there will be a Census table at Market at the Square until the end of September to assist people in responding to the 2020 Census. 6. Closed Session a. To Consider pending, probable or imminent litigation pursuant to 5 ILCS 120/2(c)(11) At 10:16pm CM Wu moved to extend the meeting until 11:00pm Motion seconded by CM Hursey and carried by roll call vote as follows: Aye: Wu, Laut, Hursey, Brown, Roberts, Colbrook, Miller Nay: None At 10:17pm CM Hursey made a motion to go into closed session. Motion seconded by CM Colbrook and carried by roll call vote as follows: Aye: Wu, Laut, Hursey, Brown, Roberts, Colbrook, Miller, Marlin Nay: None City council members, Mayor Marlin and staff then moved to a separate closed Zoom meeting at 10:17pm. City council members, Mayor Marlin and staff left the closed Zoom session at 11:00pm and returned to the open Zoom session. Motion to return to open session was made by CM Miller, seconded by CM Wu and carried by roll call vote as follows: Aye: Wu, Laut, Hursey, Brown, Roberts, Colbrook, Miller, Marlin Nay: None 7. Adjournment With no further business to come before the council, Chair Roberts adjourned the meeting at 11:01pm. Kay Meharry Assistant City Clerk This meeting was video recorded and is viewable on-demand. Minutes Approved: September 8, 2020 Page 3 of 3 From: To: !City Council Subject: [*** SPAM ***] PUBLIC INPUT 08/17 Date: Monday, August 17, 2020 11:38:48 AM Importance: Low Mayor Marlin and City Council I am writing again to continue the conversation about police, to ask that we find a way to defund them soon, and that we all request Reitz to drop all charges against Aleyah Lewis and the 27 protestors. First, I am losing some patience at the continual pleas from city council and the mayor that change cannot happen overnight, but obviously, it has been months of nights stacked up, still with no change. And instead of action being taken, we are now focused more on creating an advisory committee to make suggestions to city council. This committee, I anticipate, will take many nights, weeks, maybe months to form. And then, it will become nights, weeks and months that the committee must exist to formulate a, hopefully, cohesive list of suggestions. And once those suggestions are put forward, will the city council once again have to deliberate and debate over some weeks and months? The basic problem remains; however, that the police, who supposedly are supposed to enact justice, have not in the case of Aleyah Lewis. I do not care if in the meantime the UPD has managed to do ten good acts, or twenty, or more. What happened April 10th was wrong. And city council doesn't seem to be talking about that, and instead we are focused on One Door, which I have many reservations about, and some general reforms. But could any reform to the UPD have prevented what happened April 10th? Nine officers responded to the 911 call on April 10, and it wasn't that nine officers responded out of an abundance of care that someone might be injured as the 911 caller indicated, but that nine officers responded ready for an active shooter. The UPD interpreted the 911 call in such a way that allowed the UPD to escalate. Because the situation was escalated, due to police actions, Aleyah Lewis was arrested, allowing for the UPD to claim they were acting lawfully and restoring order. But I am fatigued at how we are focusing too much on what Aleyah did or did not do. She did not act without context, and the entire context of that day was created by the UPD. Seemingly whole-cloth, the UPD created an escalated situation. So even if the UPD had been operating with a different Use of Force Policy, would it have mattered? And what happened April 10th was emblematic of the institution that is the UPD. It was not one, or two, or three officers behaving badly, it was nine. Nine. Under the direction of Seraphin. Even if we had had One Door back on April 10th, could that have made the difference? Because no matter what policies were in place to supposedly protect citizens against police violence, the UPD found a way to interpret events in a way that led to an innocent woman's arrest. Aleyah's charges must be dropped, or it will highlight the extreme hypocrisy that the Urbana city is displaying. What will it matter if meaningful change happens to the UPD, but meanwhile Aleyah was still sacrificed to the criminal justice system? Twelve years a prisoner. followed by a lifetime of stigma that will make the attainment of basic human dignities enormously difficult. From: To: !City Council Cc: statesatty@co.champaign.il.us; Seraphin, Bryant; board@usd116.org Subject: 17 August Public Input Date: Monday, August 17, 2020 1:57:13 PM Members of the City Council, Mayor Marlin, Chief Seraphin, and State’s Attorney Julia Reitz – I am writing to encourage action on the data presented last week by Chief Seraphin showing that 82% of juvenile arrests in 2019 were of Black children. When we see data like this, we need policy change and that comes from you. I would urge you in your next meeting to set aside time to discuss study sessions/put forth amendments/whatever other options for you as council members to do something with this data. Find out the answers to your own questions such as "why do the data look like this?" and "what neighborhoods are these children from?” Do you remember Kiwane Carrington? He was a student at the READY Program School. READY is a regional "Safe School." It is where USD116 sends students who are up for expulsion without having to count them as expulsions. If you look at state or federal data about expulsions, you will see that USD116 has expelled almost no students in the past 10 years. A small number of students do well at READY. A larger number get banned from the Illinois Terminal building (where READY is housed), which means they are out on the street for the remainder of their expulsion. Two officers shot and killed 15 year old Kiwane Carrington on Friday, 9 October 2009 at approximately 1:30pm. The City paid out over $400K to former Officer Daniel Norbits who killed the 15-year old. When the community asks you to taking meaningful, measurable steps and you inevitably reply that there are no funds to do so; we expect you to not use funds to monetarily reward police for inflicting trauma and killing our kids. We also ask that you discontinue contracts with the Fraternal Order of Police – the same organisation that released a statement that Kiwane’s death was his own fault even though the Champaign Police Department's Firearms Discharge Review Board determined Officer Norbits violated Police Department policy when he failed to maintain control of his weapon. What I am seeing here and striving to point to are the systemic failures and barriers for high hope Black children. I am hopeful that our council will see a way forward to work together on solutions with transparency and accountability. Respectfully, Ameena Payne, FHEA AmeenaPayne.com I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which I work, and pay my respects to the Elders, past and present.