Council waives rules to expedite vote on Human Rights Ordinance

For at least the fourth time in six months, the Charlottesville City Council has voted to bypass a second reading required by law to speed up the decision-making process.

The latest example took place on January 21 when Council voted to waive second reading of amendments to Charlottesville’s Human Rights Ordinance to allow city staff to perform fair housing investigations on behalf of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Todd Niemeier, the director of the city’s Human Rights Office, said staff has been working with HUD on the necessary language for the program to begin.

“They brought us back a few sort of minor changes that we could make and they said this time we guarantee they did a much more comprehensive informal review for us,” Niemeier said. And they said if you do these, this should get it through the screening process for the Fair Housing Assistance Program.”

HUD works with agencies all across the country that have qualified to be known as “substantially equivalent agencies.”

“Having fair housing professionals based in the locality (or the same state, district, possession or territory) where the alleged discrimination occurred benefits all parties to a housing discrimination complaint,” reads the HUD program’s website as of January 22, 2025. “These individuals often have a greater familiarity with local housing stock and trends.”

Currently no agencies in Virginia have qualified and Charlottesville is hoping to become the first. That has meant getting the language in the city’s ordinance to match what have been federal expectations.

“They noted that we had to change a few things to make the process not unnecessarily burdensome for entry for complainants,” Niemeier said. “And they also needed us to ensure that all the decision making was happening in house with regard to complaints.”

Niemeier went through all of those specific details and said he would forward them to the director of the program as soon as Council adopted the amended ordinance.

“I feel like there’s no question that we’ve got it solid this time,” Neimeier said. “And you know, that was the thing they had said too, is if you can get it in before the administration change, all the better because they’re looking at an uncertain future as well.”

Vice Mayor Brian Pinkston said he did not prefer to waive second readings, but felt that might be prudent givenv the timing. This had been on Council’s agenda at the January 6 meeting that was canceled due to a snow storm.

Councilor Michael Payne made a motion to waive second reading, which Councilor Natalie Oschrin seconded. The vote was unanimous.

Before you go: This article was posted first to this website, but then went out as part of the January 22, 2025 edition of the Charlottesville Community Engagement newsletter. Both are functions of Town Crier Productions. You can support the work by purchasing a paid subscription or contributing monthly through Patreon. You can also send in a check or send an email, but drop me a line first.