To City Manager Marc Ott, City Attorney David Smith & Police Chief Art Acevedo
(cc: Mayor, City Council, assistants & aides):
At our community meeting last night regarding the uncovering of the full KeyPoint investigation, we discussed several action items, one of which includes a town hall meeting where we can properly vet the community concerns and receive input from City leaders on what the collective stance is in terms of openness, what the law does/doesn't allow and the process and progression of events behind the scenes in the City's response to the Sanders shooting a year ago today.
Our main focus would be on the City Manager, City Attorney and the Police Chief - recognizing that the limitations on Mayor and Council, and their roles, are still in dispute in-house. We'd like to start at core of this matter with the three main players, and have Mayor, Council, aides and the Police Monitor also in attendance mainly as witnesses to both sides of the discussion.
We will be utilizing trained facilitators, have a structured agenda/guidelines and pre-collected questions and concerns to present. We wish to seek resolution, not revenge.
We initially were calling this for the evening of Tuesday, May 18, but the site we were looking at using isn't available, but is the evening of Wed, May 19. We may need a bigger space anyway--so I offer these 2 dates to poll you on availability. If there is a City space available either evening, we could broadcast it on Channel 6, and promote it in that manner such that we might have more remote viewers. The idea is to suss out some of the burning questions, that can be answered within the framework of disclosure as you see it (that's part of the discussion, in fact), and we wish to get that message out directly from the source to the people rather than filtered through media.
I hope you will receive this in good faith and respond accordingly. Please respond as soon as possible with a preferred date: 5/18 or 5/19 (especially Ott, Smith & Acevedo).
Several organizations will co-sponsor this, and the Austin Center for Peace & Justice will be the facilitating host organization.
In justice,
Debbie Russell,
vice president, Austin Center for Peace & Justice
