time for the second meeting of the new charlottesville police civilian review board

we're having some technical difficulties, but we're underway now. board member deirdre gilmore is dialed in on her phone & non-voting member phillip seay is absent tonight.

board chair james watson is having board members introduce themselves again & give a brief statement of why they applied for the board.
i won't recap this again - but here were the intros from the last meeting https://twitter.com/socialistdogmom/status/1277651696374726657?s=20

board member bill mendez's audio is so staticky that it's just about totally incomprehensible.

the zoom medium is different from being physically together - it's important to know who's in the room. it should be standard procedure to make that information known.

deirdre notes the different attitude she has observed from officers on the downtown mall vs how they acted when they came to her neighborhood on south first street.

james asks bill to speak a bit about the job description the city has written for the position of the executive director of the PCRB. (bill's audio is really, really bad. he should call in on his phone. this is not working.)

bill says the job description as it is written does not provide enough independence for the exec director, placing them squarely within the city bureaucracy.
city manager dr richardson interjects to say he can't understand bill.

james tells dr richardson the board's commentary on the job description was emailed to richardson earlier today.
(everyone on the call is echoing the concerns about bill's audio)

nancy is concerned about waiting for the results of the special legislative session before any next steps are taken, something the city has indicated they would prefer.
state legislators have put forth some ideas for the special session that could affect what our CRB can do.

stuart notes that if we have to wait to change the ordinance until after the GA special session and the ordinance affects the job description, maybe we shouldn't finalize the job description now?

bill is dialed in now and his audio is still somehow awful

bill is taking the lead on working on the job description. nancy has gently noted that having stuart & bill working on that is... fairly homogenous & not representative of the board.

the plan seems to be to extend the time the job is posted to both allow it to be posted ASAP but leave it open long enough to be amended after the special session. nancy is concerned that changing the job description mid-search is less than ideal.