I may regret these tweets, but I cannot sleep until I leave these thoughts here. Not too many hours ago I attended my first HRC meeting w/o the chair title. I began the meeting happy as the fair housing rep we’d been working to get for nearly a year finally attended a meeting.

I was happy to shepard that in being that so many community members want to see the office strengthened like everyone else on the commission. The annoying part is government moves so slow to do anything which is a detriment to us all. But atleast it was happening!

If anyone watched the meeting they may have noticed I was uncharacteristically silent for most of it. This silence was out of bewilderment. This was bc the new chair was treated with a dose of freedom of respect I never had the privilege to know as chair.

I spent most of my time being policed so critically that I wasn’t able to craft a response email to any party without commission review. Where this chair voiced we should reprimand council for not hiring a new director, she did so without any feedback or debate on how.

I rarely experienced an opportunity where I could flex my authority unmonitored by the “process oriented, robert rule procedure overlords” who are still on the commission by the way. I truly am astonished by my colleagues. I truly am perplexed by the stark difference.

Charlottesville knows the people it wants to lead. It shows us in the willingness to forgive mistakes and accept flaws. It shows us in the way it passively enforces standards for some while ignoring those same standards for others. It’s the worst character flaw this city harbors.