Blood on the tracks
Are the CSX tracks the most crime-friendly spot in Charlottesville?
Every community has its proverbial “dark alleys,” mysterious places where boogiemen live.
One of UVA’s scary spots is a half-mile leg of CSX railroad that arcs northeast from University Avenue to Rugby Road. The tracks form a popular, but potentially dangerous, shortcut from the Corner bars and restaurants to the houses and apartments in the student neighborhoods north of campus.
“It’s like an urban legend,” says Jen Silvers, a junior and president of the Delta Delta Delta (“Tri-Delt”) sorority on Virginia Avenue, located just yards from the CSX line. During rush, she says, the older sisters tell prospective Tri-Delts that “a bad little sorority girl got eaten on the tracks.”
Silvers is joking, of course. Yet there’s a serious undercurrent to the conversation about safety along the popular informal thoroughfare.
On April 2, three male students were robbed on the CSX tracks in two separate incidents that occurred within minutes of each other. In both cases, the robbers reportedly flashed a silver handgun and demanded money. At 2:30am on Friday, April 16, another male student reported getting robbed near the tracks on Chancellor Street.
“I can tell you it’s not the pit of Charlottesville,” says Charlottesville Police Department Detective Tom McKean. “But it is an area for crime convenience.”
He says UVA students walking home from the bars along the tracks make easy targets, and drunken students are unlikely to clearly remember the incident the following day. The setting doesn’t help, as the tracks are dark and vegetation creates shady hiding spots for prospective perps.
Statistics are unavailable, because officers record incidents on the tracks as happening on one of the nearby streets. Plus most tracks crimes go unreported, McKean says. “They figure they’re not going to get their money back anyway, so why bother,” he explains of the victims.
Students get mixed signals about hiking the tracks. As they are property of CSX, walking on the tracks is technically trespassing. Since it’s not an official campus walkway, there are no lights or emergency phones. Yet the lack of fences and the absence of visible “No Trespassing” signs indicate a tolerance of pedestrians. Walking the tracks saves about three minutes on the journey from the Corner to student neighborhoods.
Flotsam of college life litters the tracks—discarded containers from all manner of snacks and beverages, beer cans of every variety, broken bottles, cigarette butts, the nearly decomposed carcass of an old sofa. Beyond Rugby’s famed Beta Bridge, there are rusted paint cans, a smoke detector, tent stakes and the guts of broken televisions.
Like many students, Silvers frequently uses the tracks as a shortcut. She warns new house members that the tracks can be dangerous.
“I walk there all the time myself, so I can’t really tell people not to do it,” says Silvers. “I think there’s better ways to keep people safe than just telling them not to do something.”
Most students, especially women, say the best way to travel safely on foot—along the tracks, or anywhere else—is to walk in groups.
Senior Stephanie Sanders says news of the robberies and the serial rapist saga has made her more skeptical about safety at UVA, but she still walks the tracks—alone during the day, in groups at night.
“It’s crazy that these tracks are so open,” says Sanders. “Trains come through here all the time.” Three a day, according to CSX officials.
Junior Tri-Delt Alexis Geocaris says she’d like to see school and police officials acknowledge that students use the tracks and take steps to make the area safer. A pedestrian bridge, she suggests, or more police patrols.
“It seems like the police just pick a target, like the serial rapist, to make it seem like they’re doing something,” Geocaris says.—John Borgmeyer
Election? What election?
Media snoozes through campaign season
In two weeks, Charlottesville’s voters will choose among six candidates—three Democrats, two Republicans and an independent—for three open spots on the five-member City Council.
If this information is a news flash, don’t feel bad. The candidates haven’t seen much attention in recent weeks.
“It has certainly been very quiet,” says Jon Bright, owner of the three local Spectacle Shops and a Republican Council candidate in 2000, of this year’s election. “I would be interested to know why the local press doesn’t get more into the Council campaign.”
A notable media washout was the candidate forum hosted by the Fry’s Spring Neighborhood Association on Tuesday, April 6. Joe Mooney of the group says the event “turned out pretty well,” with about 33 residents and all six candidates attending. But no reporters showed up. Other forums have received little or no mention by local media.
Besides a few issue-specific interview pieces by Elizabeth Nelson in The Daily Progress, the “Hot Seat” interviews in The Hook, a weekly news piece in this newspaper and a smattering of coverage on radio station WINA-AM and in other media outlets, this campaign has been hard to find in the news.
George Loper, a Democrat activist, says the candidates are not to blame for any lack of interest in the campaign.
“The candidates are really out there at the forums and they’re accessible,” Loper says.
Loper thinks the complexity of common campaign topics, such as affordable housing and the education “achievement gap,” as well as the lack of “any defining issues,” could be keeping candidates out of the news.
Though he admits the candidate forums have shortcomings, such as the lack of follow-up questions, John Conover, who runs the Democrats’ campaign, says the media, particularly The Daily Progress, has a responsibility to cover the Council race.
“How can people participate if the fourth leg of government isn’t there?” Conover asks.
Both campaigns are likely to spend cash on advertising in coming days. WINA reported that Republicans were planning to begin broadcast advertisements last week, and Conover says the Dems will buy television ads.
“It’s expensive stuff,” Conover says of ads on Channel 29, which he says can cost as much as $1,200 a day. Conover says the campaign is still deciding whether to run radio ads.
Charlottesville Registrar Sheri Iachetta says the election has been slow for her office as well, with only 40 absentee votes trickling in thus far. Iachetta suspects many people are waiting to make up their minds on who to vote for until after the candidate forums. With three forums scheduled between April 20 and April 26, Iachetta says, “I’m expecting a busy week.”
Jon Bright hopes Iachetta is right. He says he’s surprised by the apathy about the Council election, which he likens to a vote for the board of directors of a $100 million corporation.
“It seems like we just don’t care,” Bright says. “It’s sad.”—Paul Fain
Home business
Residents and nonprofits clash over zoning
On the 500 block of Grove Ave., one home has a kid’s playhouse in the yard. There’s a home with plywood boards astride sawhorses, one with a “Say No to War” sign and one with overgrown bushes.
Viewed from the street, the Victorian house at 506 Grove Ave. is no different than any other home in the neighborhood, except for the wheelchair ramp climbing to the front porch past yellow flowers and an American flag.
What’s unusual about 506 Grove is its owner, and its occupants. In October, a non-profit brain-injury center called Virginia NeuroCare bought the house for veterans of the Iraq war who returned home with head injuries. Up to eight veterans, whom the company calls its “clients,” live in the house, and two NeuroCare staff work there 24 hours a day.
Is 506 Grove a business or a residence? The City isn’t exactly sure, and the uncertainty has prompted conflicts over nonprofit group homes moving into neighborhoods zoned for single-family residences.
Richard Myers, who lives next door at 504 Grove, calls NeuroCare’s group home “a business,” and he says the company shouldn’t be allowed in the neighborhood. Grove is zoned R-2, for single- and two-family residences.
Technically, Myers is right. Armed with a petition signed by 20 of his neighbors, he asked the City to review the group home. The City’s law is designed to encourage permanent, instead of transient, residents in R-2 neighborhoods. But the law is awkward, and the City seems unwilling to enforce it.
Section 34-1200 of the City’s zoning law distinguishes between “residential treatment facilities,” which are licensed by the Department of Mental Health, and “adult assisted living facilities,” which are licensed by the State Department of Social Services. Because NeuroCare is licensed by the latter, City Zoning Administrator Barbara Venerus told the company it was prohibited on Grove, and Deputy City Attorney Lisa Kelly backed her up in a letter to NeuroCare on December 9.
The next day, Kenneth Bucci, NeuroCare’s lawyer, sent a letter to the Virginia Office for Protection and Advocacy, asserting that the City’s zoning ordinance violates the Federal Fair Housing Act and the Virginia Fair Housing Law. In what seems like a legal warning shot to the City, Bucci copied his letter to Kelly.
Kelly sent the VOPA a letter explaining that NeuroCare had not provided enough information about what exactly would happen at 506 Grove. But after meeting with NeuroCare representatives, Kelly decided the City could not legally prohibit the group home.
“They got intimidated,” says Myers.
Kelly says she changed her mind when she learned customers would not be coming to 506 Grove for services.
“From a PR perspective, [NeuroCare] could have handled things differently,” says Kelly. “But my opinion would have been the same whether or not they threatened to sue.”
NeuroCare was founded five years ago by George Zitnay. It was known as the John Jane Center until 2002. That year, according to the company’s most recent IRS 990 forms, it was $135,000 in the red, and Zitnay paid himself a salary of $174,694.
“I did not threaten the City,” says Zitnay. “We didn’t contact the advocacy group until we were threatened.
“To discriminate against people on active duty from the United States military is absolutely shameful,” says Zitnay. “It’s like what happened after Vietnam.”
Myers says he’s not discriminating against the injured soldiers. “That keeps getting thrown in my face. It’s bullshit,” he says. “It’s not about the cause. NeuroCare is a business.”—John BorgmeyerEye on Charlottesville
City considers security cameras on the MallIt’s becoming a rite of spring around here—the weather warms up, people of all ages flood Downtown and City officials start fretting about safety on the Mall.
According to the City police website at www.charlottesville.org, the Mall is statistically no more or less dangerous than any other City neighborhood. (It’s a different story for your car, however. The Mall leads all neighborhoods with 49 towed vehicles in 2003). Yet, every spring, it seems business owners and patrons ask the City to beef up Mall security.
“You have packs of kids whose language is different than adults. Some people feel intimidated by that,” says City Manager Gary O’Connell, summing up an oft-heard bellyache.
The City is considering a variety of different security measures, including a neighborhood watch program, citizen patrols, more police officers and—at the more Ashcroftian end of the spectrum—security cameras.
The City’s 2004 budget, which Council approved by a vote of 4-1 on Tuesday, April 13, shifts control of the Mall to the City’s new Department of Parks and Recreation, and out of the public works department. The change will consolidate maintenance into one department. Along with this shift, the City will consider a host of other changes for the Mall—replacing bricks and trees; revising the trash and maintenance routines; and adding new lights, signs and security measures.
“We love seeing all the activity, but at the same time it means you have to be able to provide enough oversight to make sure everything is good,” says Bob Stroh, co-president of the Downtown Business Association.
Schilling’s budget redux
Last year, sparks flew after Council approved its FY 2003 budget. In a post-vote press conference, Councilor Rob Schilling announced that Council hadn’t worked hard enough to reduce the budget, while Kevin Lynch countered that it was Schilling who was the slacker.
Although this year’s budget approval process on Tuesday was more civil, Schilling was again the lone nay vote, and an argument over his effort surfaced in interviews afterwards.
“Basically, [Schilling] doesn’t show up anywhere unless there’s going to be media there,” says Lynch.
Councilor Blake Caravati says Schilling did even less work on this year’s budget than he did last year, his first budget session. “It’s gotten a lot worse,” says Caravati. “He’s not at the wheel. He’s not even in the bus.”
This year, Schilling presented City staff with a list of more than 150 questions. Although staff answered them all, it is unclear how Schilling used that information to reduce the City’s budget, which he claims is one of his priorities.
In an e-mailed statement, Schilling says his work has focused on suggesting ways to change the budgeting process. Council, he says, should tell staff how much money to spend instead of scrutinizing the budget themselves.
Most of Council’s labor on the budget happened in three work sessions during March. According to the minutes of those sessions—which are still in draft form and have not been approved by Council—Schilling didn’t offer many suggestions for cutting.
On March 17, Schilling, who sits on the School Capital Projects Committee, asked whether proposed renovations to Charlottesville High School could be postponed. He also suggested cutting funds for improvements to McIntire Park.
According to the minutes, both Caravati and Lynch proposed various cuts. Schilling said Council “should not micromanage” the budget, and that “it comes down to what we want to do versus what we need to do.”
On March 10, City Manager O’Connell seemed to agree with Schilling, saying that if Council wanted to significantly reduce the budget, they should have set priorities in the fall.—John Borgmeyer