Attention, Giant shoppers
Wal-Mart-fueled benefits dispute comes to local groceries
Checkout lines might not be the only lines Giant Food shoppers spot during visits to the two Charlottesville stores this week. Workers from the region’s Giant and Safeway grocery stores will vote on a new contract on March 30, and signs are pointing to a potential strike or lockout of employees, which could bring picket lines to the stores.
The two supermarket mammoths have wrangled with the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 over worker wages and health benefits in recent weeks. A key sticking point has been the amount clerks and meat cutters must kick in for health coverage, according to trade publication Food World.
“The Giant propaganda machine is geared up to try to convince you that you are not entitled to what you have earned. Health care, wages, pensions, premiums and many other issues are being discussed at the bargaining table,” C. James Lowthers, the president of the UFCW Local 400 said in a recent letter to Giant employees. “Giant will try to convince you that you should sacrifice things you have earned while they rake in millions of dollars in profits.”
One reported proposal from the two companies is to require new employees to work three years before they can take New Year’s Day as a holiday.
Employees at the Giant on Pantops kept mum when asked about the looming strike on a recent morning, and a union spokesperson refused to comment on contract discussions. The company negotiator did not return a call. However, both sides were preparing for a strike or lockout, with the union selecting strike captains and Giant advertising online for temporary clerk and cashier positions.
Labor costs for non-union supermarkets in the region, such as Food Lion, Whole Foods, Harris Teeter and the ever-encroaching Wal-Mart, are typically less than those for Giant and Safeway, prompting the two companies to cite the need to cut costs to maintain a competitive edge. The lead negotiator for Giant, Harry Burton, told The Washington Post that the two chains spend twice what non-union stores spend on labor, and three times more on health care.
Giant has long been the largest supermarket chain in the region, with 67 stores in Virginia. In the mid-Atlantic, the company earned $5 billion during a recent 12-month stretch, $2 billion more than Food Lion, its closest competitor, and more than double the grocery-related revenue of the region’s Wal-Marts, according to Food World. But though Securities and Exchange Commission documents show increasing sales for Giant in recent years, non-union grocery stores are closing the gap. —Paul Fain
Best laid plans
Funding questions remain after passage of Crozet Master Plan
After 12 meetings and more than two years of work, the Albemarle County Planning Commission on Tuesday, March 23, unanimously approved a comprehensive “master plan” for Crozet that seeks to shepherd the community’s growth by encouraging a focus on downtown, pedestrian options and distinct neighborhoods.
Before the vote, planners sat through a lengthy public hearing in which several Crozet residents bashed the plan. Though unmoved, planners strongly agreed with critics’ call for funding for the planned roads, sidewalks, libraries and schools.
Voicing that oft-heard refrain, longtime resident Paul Grady said the plan “is not going to amount to a hill of beans unless there is going to be infrastructure funding.”
Commissioner William Rieley added a request for the Albemarle Board of Supervisors to prioritize funding for the plan. But as Bill Edgerton of the Commission said, financial support for the plan would “require, probably, an increase in taxation. And that’s not a popular thing in Virginia right now.” (The Board of Supervisors decided, also that day, not to cut the County real estate tax by two cents, as had been discussed in earlier budget planning.)
The master plan is based on growth projections that see the rustic village growing to 12,000 residents from its current population of 3,000. During the hearing, Jack Marshall, the president of Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population, said the pace of growth requires either more funding or significant slowing. But several commissioners and residents said a rush of transplants was coming to Crozet with or without a master plan.
“This is the attempt to bridle some of the growth,” said Marcia Joseph of the Commission.
During the hearing, Crozet native R. Carroll Conley perhaps best expressed the belief that changes to the Crozet way of life were inevitable. Conley owns the J. Bruce Barnes lumber company, which he says is Crozet’s oldest business.
“We know we can’t stop growth. Crozet was the best-kept secret there ever was, I think,” Conley said. Though Conley stoically said he doesn’t oppose Crozet’s development or the master plan, he did have a beef with a proposed road that would bisect part of his lumberyard.
However, planners sought to assuage residents’ fears about road sites by saying the exact locations were not final. “We can’t draw these lines as firm lines at this point,” Edgerton said.
But though commissioners downplayed the finality of some specifics, they also stressed the plan’s overall importance. With other similar plans perhaps looming for the County, Rieley said the Crozet plan’s success “was critical for future planning in Albemarle County.”
On this point, Rieley’s fellow commissioner, Calvin Morris, again brought up money, saying the County should not draw up other master plans, “unless we’re willing to put our money where our mouth is.”—Paul Fain
Money talks
Democrats seek funds for yard signs and other “necessary evils”
Two years ago, Rob Schilling defeated Alexandria Searls to become the first Republican in 12 years to capture a City Council seat. Democrats didn’t take defeat well—Searls claimed the party let her down, and Lloyd Snook suggested he wanted to surrender the party chair. It seems the Dems are still smarting.
On March 17, former Mayor and Dem finance chair David Toscano sent out a letter apparently designed to scare the party faithful into opening their checkbooks.
“As we are all aware, our last City Council campaign had mixed success, as one Republican was able to win a seat,” Toscano writes.
“Much of this failure was caused by our own inability to organize an effective campaign from the start. We cannot afford to repeat that experience. Much is at stake.”
Specifically, the letter claims that Democrats “in recent years have pledged up to 40 percent of new revenue to meet the budget request of the school board; our Republican member would abandon that pledge.”
Snook told C-VILLE that the Democrats want to guarantee the school board a percentage of new money, while “Republicans from Washington, D.C. to Richmond to City Council are going to talk about cutting.”
The slam is misleading, counters Schilling. “Does that mean funding will be anywhere from 0 percent to 40 percent? That’s not a policy,” he says.
“Maybe some years the schools need 50 percent of new revenues, maybe some years they need 20 percent,” says Schilling. “Instead of asking for what they think they can get, the school board needs to ask for and justify what they really need.”
Regardless, Toscano’s letter indicates the Democrats plan a more aggressive stance against their Republican challengers this year. In 2002, Searls and her ticketmate Blake Caravati (the incumbent who was ultimately re-elected that year) seemed to spend more time arguing with each other than with Schilling, the lone Republican candidate.
“The single biggest difference [from two years ago] is that we have three candidates this time around who are comfortable with each other, who largely agree with one another and can share the same stage,” says Snook. “Last time, the most interesting battles were between the two Democratic candidates.”
Those intra-party rivalries also cost the Dems money in 2002. Snook estimates that six Democrats spent about $17,000 fighting each other for the party nomination then, while the Caravati-Searls campaign spent a meager $11,000 in the race against Schilling.
This year, former Councilor John Conover is running the Dems’ campaign, and he says the party’s three candidates—David Brown, Kendra Hamilton and incumbent Kevin Lynch—need to raise $30,000 to take on Republicans Ann Reinicke and Kenneth Jackson. (Independent Vance High has also declared his candidacy.) Conover estimates that about a third of the money will be spent on mailings, which he says is the best way to reach people. The rest will pay for radio and television ads and “other things.” Yard signs, says Conover, “are a necessary evil.”
In the past, Conover says, Democrats and Republicans had a friendly agreement not to put out yard signs until after the Dogwood Festival, which this year ends on April 25. No such agreement exists anymore, Conover says. Indeed, some Republican yard signs have already sprouted on City lawns.
“We’re trying to raise funds,” says Republican chair Bob Hodous, although he wouldn’t say how much the party is seeking. “We’re contacting people in ways we believe are appropriate. We’re out working.”
Democrats say they will start putting out yard signs this week, and claim they’ll be worth the wait. In what may foreshadow the tone of this spring’s race, even aesthetics has become a partisan issue.
“We took a little bit more time in terms of design aspects,” says Snook. “The graphic content of the Democratic yard signs and bumper stickers will show there has been a little bit more planning than the Republicans did.”—John Borgmeyer
Disc-o inferno
UVA’s women’s ultimate frisbee team is hot
A “huck,” in ultimate frisbee jargon, is a deep throw into enemy territory, much like a “long bomb” in football. But a frisbee can stay aloft much longer, and the dramatic moment between the throw and the catch is stretched out interminably, causing a viewer to hold several breaths instead of just one.
At a Wednesday night scrimmage, Beth Oppenheimer throws a beauty—a slightly arcing half-field huck right into the waiting hands of a teammate in the endzone. Oppenheimer, a law student, is co-captain of the UVA women’s ultimate team, Agent Orange, a little-recognized squad that has grown to 25 players from eight in 1998. For the first time ever the group is ranked the No. 1 women’s team in the country.
For those who don’t understand how frisbee can be a competitive sport, a short primer might help: Two teams put seven players on opposite ends of the field, and one team “pulls” the disc to the other (essentially a kickoff). The other team receives the disc and works it up the field toward the opposite endzone. A player may not walk with the disc—it can only be advanced by throwing it to a teammate. Meanwhile, the players on the other team try to intercept it or knock it down, resulting in a turnover. A team scores a point when one player passes the disc to a teammate in the endzone. Games are usually played to 15, and can last more than two hours.
Charlottesville has recently become a hotbed of ultimate. Besides the men’s and women’s collegiate teams, the City is home to two coed club, or post-college, teams: Monkey Knife Fight, a new squad that won two of its last four tournaments (and of which, in the interest of full disclosure, I admit to being a member), and Blue Ridge Ultimate, which competed in the national championships the past three years and took fourth place at the world championships in 2002. The Charlottesville ultimate organizers also sponsor summer and winter community tournaments for the more than 200 local players.
This is a breakout year for UVA ultimate, with Agent Orange the only undefeated team in the country at 24-0, and the men’s team, Virginia Disorder, ranked sixth in the open (a.k.a. men’s) division. “It’s an exciting time for everyone,” says Oppenheimer. “We have been working hard in our practices and I know we have the potential to do very well at nationals.”
While there is no shortage of talent on either squad, there is a dearth of resources—it’ll cost each team about $450 per player to go to the national championships in Seattle in May, where the top 16 teams in both the open and women’s divisions will battle it out for the title of national champion. With a likely spot at nationals, the UVA women are already holding fundraisers for the trip. For more fundraising information, e-mail efo5c@virginia.edu.
No matter the tournament outcome, Oppenheimer looks forward to the growing future of frisbee in the City. “I think UVA is going to have a strong women’s ultimate program for many years from this foundation we have built,” she says.—Chris Smith
Tapped out
The RWSA is running out of options
For at least one more summer, this will be the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority’s official drought management policy: Pray for rain.
It’s true. Charlottesville and Albemarle are no better equipped to handle a major drought than we were in the summer of 2002, when long showers and car washes were strictly verboten.
Don’t blame water officials, they say. Blame the State and Federal regulators instead, not to mention that nasty ol’ drought for long delays in improving the region’s water supply.
Two years ago, RWSA officials tried to implement a $13 million plan to expand the capacity of the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir in two ways: by building a 4-foot bladder across the dam to raise water levels, and by dredging out the sediment that flows into the reservoir. Sediment has reduced the reservoir’s 1.68 billion-gallon capacity by more than 500 million gallons since it was built in 1966—the last time the area expanded its water supply.
Here’s the snag: At least 11 different Federal and State agencies—including the Army Corps of Engineers, the Federal Emergency Regulatory Commission, the Federal and State departments of Fish and Game and the Department of Natural Resources—have a say in any local plan to alter the water supply. The agencies required the RWSA to include information on how a “drought of record” would affect water supply. Since the 2002 drought eclipsed a drought in 1930, the Authority had to take more time to update their data.
Then, in January, with the new “drought of record” data figured into their studies, the RWSA discovered that a 4-foot bladder on the South Fork Rivanna wouldn’t be enough to meet the region’s projected 2030 demand of 16.5 million gallons a day.
“We had to back up,” says RWSA interm director Lonnie Wood. “We can’t build this thing, then tell people we can’t meet projected demand.”
Dredging sediment out of the Rivanna reservoir was also nixed, Wood says, because the resulting pile would cover 200 acres with nine feet of muck. “There’s just no place to put it all,” says Wood.
This is just the latest in a series of wrong turns that have plagued the RWSA, as detailed in a C-VILLE cover story published on December 2, 2002.
The Authority spent $6 million and most of the ’80s planning a reservoir on Buck Mountain Creek, only to have the Environmental Protection Agency shoot down the project. Today, a new reservoir is not an option. “The regulators have told us they won’t consider any new impoundment,” says Bill Brent, director of Albemarle County’s Service Authority.
Now the RWSA is looking to raise water levels at Ragged Mountain Reservoir instead. Water officials say they understand people’s frustration, but that the RWSA is trying to both satisfy the regulatory agencies and give residents the most water for their dollar.
“We’re trying to be methodical,” says Brent. “We’ve come to many forks in the road, and we’re trying to make sure we take the right fork.”—John Borgmeyer
Green house
NatureNeutral stocks eco-friendly building supplies
Charlottesville’s newest eco-entrepreneur, John Meggs, sits among cans of nontoxic paint and samples of natural cork flooring in the new showroom of NatureNeutral, a modest but growing environmentally friendly home-improvement store in Berkmar Crossing.
Instead of delivering a slick sales pitch, Meggs emphasizes what’s missing from NatureNeutral products, including harsh chemical compounds, skin irritants and allergens. To wit, Meggs tosses a small square of fluffy blue cotton insulation from hand to hand, stopping for a moment to bring his face closer, inspecting it carefully. “See? It’s made from recycled denim,” he explains.
Sure enough, the blue coloring is not an artificial dye, and small shreds of denim are visible to the eye. Yet the biggest difference between this natural cotton insulation and its traditional fiberglass counterpart is that you don’t need to wear a respirator, safety glasses, work gloves or full skin protection when handling it.
Meggs, 42, moved to Charlottesville with his family in 2003 and launched his green business last month with NatureNeutral.com, an online store that he says gets in excess of 10,000 hits per week. That was followed by a warehouse on Greenbrier Drive and a showroom in Berkmar Crossing that opened to the public Monday, March 22.
As president of the company, Meggs started with “products that we felt people would be most comfortable with and would get the most benefit from” and stocked the shelves with bamboo flooring, nontoxic paint, eco-friendly carpets and his favorite, richly colored natural cork flooring harvested from live trees, without damaging them.
The market for environmentally friendly products is “wide open,” according to Meggs, and although green home improvement stores dot the West Coast, he admits “there’s really not a whole lot east of the Mississippi.” He’s counting on the “above average awareness about environmental issues” of local residents to sustain his business. Research from the Natural Marketing Institute confirms Meggs’ business instincts, finding that the market for eco-friendly products is 30 percent of all U.S. households.
When asked if NatureNeutral’s products cost more than traditional home products, Meggs is quick to answer, “A typical can of premium paint costs about $20-30 and our paint costs about $25-35. There is a premium to be paid in one sense, but I think you see enough of a benefit to justify the price.”
Although some people choose green home products because they find them aesthetically interesting or good conversation pieces (“Aren’t our kitchen cabinets lovely? They’re made from compressed straw”), others pick them for serious health reasons.
Scott Snow did. When building his house Stuart, Virginia, he knew he wanted nontoxic materials. After working around pesticides, Snow’s skin became irritated and developed into a condition that can occasionally flare up. “If I stay in a house that’s been newly built with conventional materials, I can feel the sensitivity in my skin coming back,” Snow says. He bought natural cotton insulation, wood stains and sealers through NatureNeutral—and drove more than two hours to pick them up.
For the chemically sensitive, green products aren’t a fad or a symbol of environmental values, they are a necessity. According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Indoor Air Quality website, “building materials” are listed among common products that can “release pollutants more or less continuously” in the home. It’s for this reason that Meggs personally scrutinizes every product NatureNeutral sells, saying, “the goal in the long run is to give people safer and healthier alternatives.”—Kimberly Wilson