HomeMy WebLinkAboutHuman Relations Commission - Minutes - 01/12/1990City of Fort Collins
Boards and Commissions •
13"1NIN 13hIIIT
DATE: January 12, 1990
TO: Human Relations Commission Members
FROM: Steve Francis, Chairman
Human relations Commission
RE: Meeting January 11, 1990
Ladies and Gentlemen:
We had a very interesting and productive meeting on
January 11. Unfortunately only two persons, Elaine Boni
and myself, attended. We did not have a quorum and were
unable to take any action. We need to take action soon,
and those members who did not attend missed hearing a lot
of comment and receiving a lot of information that they
would have found useful.
I will try to sum up what we did in this memo and
to raise for you some of the issues that seemed important
but I do not promise that this will be exhaustive.
We discussed two issues: administrative enforcement,
that is, how the complaint process is administered by the
City Manager's office and code changes, that is, whether
the HRC should recommend changes to the city code.
Administrative Procedures: The proposal sent to us
by Peter Dallow met, I think, with general approval. You
should note that it will take approximately 80 work days,
or approximately 100 days, to go through the process, and
if reconciliation cannot be reached for the City, to file
a criminal complaint. This means that violations will
continue for at least three months if the process is followed.
On the other hand, the time tables seemed reasonable; indeed,
there was a question whether part 4 of the time table,
for making a determination of probable cause, gave sufficient
time - it provides 10 working days. Some other suggestions
which were raised in the discussion of the administrative
procedures are these:
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Human Relations Commission Members
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January 12, 1990
to handle these complaints? Ms. Kirkpatrick
said that if we recommended this, it should be
in the form of a recommendation to Council, since
it would have to do the budgeting.
office? Currently, enforcement of our Code has
supposedly been contracted to Colorado Civil
Rights Commission. However, Ed Gibbs, the Commis-
sion representative who attended, said that he
thought that the Commission could only administer
state law and could not administer the city law.
As I understand the contract, (I will get a copy
for Commission members) complaints for violations
of the city code are treated as violations of
the state code (which is different than the city
code) and given to the state of Colorado for
processing. The question was raised whether
this practice should continue, and, in fact,
whether the entire enforcement of civil rights
violations should be handled by the state. If
all violations were handled by the state and
the state only investigated or prosecuted viola-
tions of state law then the city code would become,
in effect, irrelevant. Perhaps this would be
a real result, as the state has expertise in
dealing with civil rights violations and the
city government does not. However, that issue
was certainly not resolved at the meeting.
maintained? Would public pressure about civil
rights violations help resolve them? As an example,
the club which is violating the code has been
in violation now for over a year, and there has
been no publicity about it whatsoever, since
the entire process is kept secret. Indeed, after
the process is concluded, the matter is still
kept secret.
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January 12, 1990
people generally felt that this was a good idea,
and perhaps could be worked into the administrative
procedures in some way.
Should there be a final deadline, by which
either reconciliation agreement was reached
or charges would be filed? The City Manager's
office felt that if their procedures provided
that if, after the repetition of steps 5 and
6 of the complaint's processing procedure, there
is no resolution, at that point criminal charges
would have to be filed. This would put an approx-
imately 100 day deadline on reaching an agreement.
how the City Manager's process works? This could
then be distributed to complainants so that they
would know how the process was working.
Should the parties know what the other side
is doing in the complaint process? For instance,
I have little knowledge about communications
between the City Manager's and City Attorney's
office and the respondent's in the complaints
that have been filed even though I am one of
the complainants. The City Attorney's office
expressed the concern that if complainants were
told of what was going on, they might breach
the confidentiality rules and tell someone else.
From a "consumers" standpoint, I can tell you
that the way the system currently operates, com-
plainants have the feeling that nothing whatsoever
is being done.
Changes in the City Code: The only changes that were
discussed were procedural:
Should the confidentiality requirement be
eliminated?
Should the City, in effect, get out of the
civil rights business?
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January 12, 1990
Should money be budgeted to create expertise
in civil rights' matters within the City Manager's
office? If not, how would the complaint procedure
be handled and paid for?
Should a policeman who sees a civil rights
violation be able to file a complaint or "write
a ticket" regarding the violation. If so, how
is this handled: as a "ticket" or through the
normal complaint process?
At this time, the only remedy the City has
is to file criminal charges. The other issue
discussed is whether the City should have injunc-
tive powers; that is, should the City have the
power to go to court and get an order directing
that what would appear to be violations of the
code cease and desist, while the complaint process
is completed? At this time, the City appears
to be powerless to anything about civil rights
violations until a complaint is filed and the
lengthy administrative procedures are completed.
This allows open violations of the code, such
as the club violation, to continue unabated so
long as the reconciliation process is under way,
and, perhaps, until our court enters a judgment
of conviction.
The question seems to be whether the City needs a
more "flexible response" to violations than it now has.
I must say that the City Attorney's office was not
prepared to give much help in our discussion on these issues.
POSSIBLE NEW HRC MEMBERS
We are now down to six members. Susan Kirkpatrick
asked whether we would consider holding off on making recom-
mendations until we had a full commission. She suggested
we wait until March. However, we could not have new members
by March unless the position were advertised this coming
week. Supposedly, we will be advised during the week of
January 15 whether the new positions will be advertised.
If so, I am sure that all of you have potential candidates
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January 12, 1990
for the HRC, and we can solicit people to join the Commission.
I will put the matter for administrative procedures and code
amendments on the agenda for February, and we will know by then
whether there is a chance of having new members by March.
A review of attendance policy and procedure to follow should members
not be able to attend meetings. (Refer to green Boards and Commissions
manual for procedure.)
I have prepared the February agenda in advance and it is included
with this letter. There is a fair amount of work to do at this meeting.
Very truly yours,
HUMAN GHTS COMMISSION
OF R COLLI
St a G. Francis
Chairman
SGF/wk
Enclosure