City Council Work Session

Brian FosterstaffMayor Reed. Yes. Before you go back into the regular meeting and have your motion for closed session, a couple of things uh preferably discussed beforehand but i guess you could discuss it afterwards um legit uh is we had sought feedback on work session items for the 14th did not hear back from everyone as to whether you want us to leave them on or push them given the public hearings and anticipated attendance so it would just it would be helpful for us to know so we can staff and change the posted agenda if you want to push. I would say that none of them are necessarily time sensitive as far as needing to happen on the 14th. That's just when they are scheduled.

Rachel McQuillenSo being the person who brought this up and had requested a closed session on this topic, since we're bringing it public, I'll just flat out say that my

Stacy HallMy mistake, I thought we had entered into a closed session. Well, it's

Rachel McQuillenalready out there, so I'll just go ahead. My purpose was to bring transparency. It was to create more trust. It was to, there's a way in which we could approach that communication, but what I received was not de-escalating. It read to me as very accusatory. And as it was stated, and I agreed with Councilmember Hall in our closed session, I agreed with what she just mentioned on the record, that it wasn't meant to be a tip for tat thing, that we didn't want to publicly go off and blame certain individuals. That wasn't the purpose of that. So it completely did not align with a lot of what I thought the purpose of what and the intent of what we were doing to put that out there. are not on the same page when it comes to that because I'm not going to get into a

I have very little trust in this process right now because initially I was told that As a council, we don't bring things out of nowhere like this. And so for this to be handled in this manner is completely unacceptable, and it goes against everything as a council that we in the very beginning established and said that we would work this way together. So I am already very frustrated that this discussion has occurred this way because it has completely eliminated the ability for us to speak in a trustworthy, confidential way, and that's what closed sessions are about. we're talking about it right now, but I think it's completely inappropriate, and I'm very, very frustrated that I'm in this position, and that Council Member Hall was actually

put in a position as well to be stating where she thought she was in a closed session or it wasn't public, and now it's everywhere out there. So I don't agree with that. I think there's a way in which you communicate to the public when there's something controversial that comes up, and it should be done in a way that shows respect for the community, for different opinions, but that also then explains the information and the processes and conveys the manner in which we handled things. And that's not what the statement that we were provided said. It felt like it was just an attack and a huge defensive. It went off on a completely different thing. And I wasn't given the opportunity to discuss that with you guys personally in a closed session.

Billy BatesWell, it was very clear to me that When the city manager said that we wanted you know before we go into closed session and And also that this was simply a reminder that, you know, they're waiting to hear back. I didn't hear any requests specifically for us to have a full-blown discussion on this tonight. I mean, that could have been by email if people didn't want to discuss this tonight. I didn't see the statement that way. but certainly again as Councilmember Hardy Chandler mentioned open to edits and look forward to seeing that by Friday

Stacy Halli would just like to add i'm virtual and so i'm i'm picking up most words but did not recognize that and i also saw from the owl that most people had cleared out there i did notice that jc was still there which i thought was slightly interesting because he wasn't in the closed session but uh you know we don't always seem to get a conversation on who's supposed to be present or not. So had I known, I certainly would not have said what I said. And I don't appreciate being put on the spot like that to ask what I thought about something. So at this point, I feel like the residents are owed some sort of conversation. And so I think the bigger topic here, trying not to hit on any closed session stuff,

Catherine ReadWell, if that's all there, we're going to discuss on this, and I think it probably should be, we will now go into a closed session. Uh, the city council convene a closed meeting under 11.81 of the Code of Virginia to discuss personnel matters. All council members in favor of the motion, please signify by voting aye. Aye. Those opposed to the motion, please vote nay. The vote is unanimous in favor of the motion. The city council retired into a closed session at 1044 p.m. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.