At its regular meeting Thursday, the Fayetteville City Council voted unanimously to provide legal representation to a former and current police officer, as well as Mayor Mitch Colvin and former Police Chief Gina Hawkins, who are named in a suit filed by a woman who alleges she was injured and falsely detained during a 2020 encounter with Fayetteville police.
The council appeared to have come to that conclusion during an hour-long, closed session before the regular meeting. During the council’s agenda discussion before the regular meeting, Council Member Banks-McLaughlin suggested the council pull the item from the consent agenda and discuss it instead.
There was some confusion about when that discussion would take place, but Mayor Pro Tem Kathy Jensen confirmed the item was on the agenda for the closed session the council planned to go into after determining the agenda. Momentarily, the council went into closed session without further discussion of agenda items.
At the start of the official meeting an hour later, Council Member Brenda McNair made a motion to pull the item from the consent agenda and add it as the meeting’s final discussion item. That motion was approved unanimously.
When it came time for that discussion, there was none. McNair made a motion to approve the legal representation — with the caveat that the council petition the court for the body camera footage of the incident. In North Carolina, police body camera footage is not public record, but qualifying individuals or groups can request for it to be released via a Superior Court order.
“I would like to move that we authorize the request for legal representation and petition the court for disclosure of the body cam footage,” McNair said.
Council Member Lynne Greene seconded the motion. It was approved 9-0, with Mayor Mitch Colvin, who was absent, not voting.
Resident survey results
The city hired the ETC Institute, a national consulting agency, to administer a resident survey this winter and analyze the results. This is the fifth resident survey Fayetteville has asked residents to complete, with the last resident survey administered in 2019, Jason Morado, director of community research at the ETC Institute, said at the meeting.
Morado said a total of 605 residents completed the most recent survey. The race and ethnicity of survey-takers aligned with Fayetteville’s overall demographics: 42% of respondents were Black, 39% of respondents were white, 13% of respondents were Hispanic/Latin American and 7% of respondents were other races/ethnicities. Morado said this was intentional, as the ETC Institute ensures survey responders accurately represent the demographics of cities.
In summarizing the survey’s results, Morado said, “The positive ratings far outweigh the negative,” with the major exceptions being dissatisfaction with the overall maintenance of city streets and code enforcement.
According to the survey results, in the next two years, residents think the city council should place the most emphasis on addressing the quality of police protection (59%), the maintenance of city streets (54%) and the enforcement of codes and ordinances (36%).
The ETC’s analysis determined that, by focusing on these three areas, city leaders can “have the most impact on overall satisfaction” in the next two years.
Residents’ satisfaction with the overall quality of major city services — answering with “very satisfied” or “satisfied” — is as follows:
Compared to national and regional ETC survey-takers (Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C.), Fayetteville residents had higher satisfaction levels in several categories:
“When we compared your results to other communities, one of the areas that stood out was customer service provided by city employees, where you rated 17 percentage points above the U.S. average,” Morado said. “And the top overall priorities were maintenance of city streets, quality of police protection, enforcing codes and ordinances and in communication with the public.”
Compared to the last resident survey in 2019, residents’ satisfaction levels with city service categories and perceptions of the city trended downward
“Overall, the satisfaction ratings are a bit lower now than they were in 2019, but that's a trend we've seen all over the country, so that certainly is not a surprise,” Morado said.
There were some increases since the 2019 survey, particularly in customer services areas, Morado said.
“The biggest increases since the 2019 survey are in efforts to run fires, resolving residents' issues and concerns, how well residents' issues were handled and the time it took for residents requests to be answered, and then enforcing fire codes,” Morado said.
Survey results showed the most notable resident satisfaction decreases since 2019 were in the overall quality of life in the city (-11%), the overall quality of police protection (-16%) and the overall image and appearance of the city (-19%).
Read the full survey results here.
Here’s what else happened Thursday:
Contact Evey Weisblat at eweisblat@cityviewnc.com or 216-527-3608.
To keep CityView Today going and to grow our impact even more, we're asking our committed readers to consider becoming a member. Click here to join.
