News
By Joseph Liss
|
February 7, 2012
Members of Charlottesville City Council voted yesterday to create a Council-appointed human rights task force to review the proposed Charlottesville human rights commission and report their findings to the Council in 10 months.
Most Council members have voiced support for the creation of a human rights commission, which would aim to address discrimination complaints in the City.
Mayor Satyendra Huja, Vice Mayor Kristin Szakos, Council member Kathy Galvin and Council member Dede Smith each voted in favor of City Manager Maurice Jones' recommendation to review the human rights commission before creating it, while Council member and former mayor Dave Norris wanted more immediate action.
Huja said the commission would work with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to educate the public about discrimination and mediate discussions about discrimination complaints in the workplace and housing market.
Some members of the Dialogue on Race, a city-backed grassroots initiative to discuss and suggest solutions for race relations problems in Charlottesville, the Legal Aid Justice Center and Virginia Organizing called for the creation of an active anti-discrimination commission and commission director this fiscal year to break what Dialogue on Race leader Walt Heinecke called its 25-year cycle of study groups and initiatives.
"We determined that folks around town wanted [a commission] with some enforcement teeth," Heinecke said.
Szakos said her time as a board member for the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People showed her that Charlottesville needs a human rights commission to deal with discrimination issues.
At the meeting, Szakos successfully encouraged Council members to move the task force's timeline up by two months from the original 12-month timetable proposed by Jones.
Szakos said she hopes the Council will continue to discuss the commission, but she wants the City to begin addressing discrimination immediately.
"What I would like to do during this particular year, partly due to our budget situation ... is to form a commission ... and commit ourselves to the process," Szakos said before the Council meeting.
