Tuesday, June 22
Affordable digs in Albemarle
Albemarle County has successfully negotiated its first batch of affordable housing in a new development project. Under a rule instituted in February, 15 percent of the homes in a new development must be affordable. But the new policy is flexible, and had yet to prod developers to build much in the way of new affordable housing. Today, however, the County Planning Commission approved a plan for a 59-unit housing development that hits the 15 percent affordable mark with nine townhouses that will be sold for under $180,000. But, as David Dadurka of The Daily Progress reports, the proposed development has some neighbors complaining about the denser, cheaper homes. The project is slated for Avon Street Extended, near the Mill Creek South subdivision, and is being developed by Vito Cetta.
Wednesday, June 23
Earl Washington case dismissed
A Federal judge dismissed Earl Washington’s lawsuit against his hometown of Culpeper and the six police officers who helped to wrongly convict Washington of murder. But Washington will still have his day in court. In a Federal suit pending in Charlottesville, an all-star team of civil rights lawyers contend that police officers coerced a murder confession from Washington, a black, retarded farmhand. Today, U.S. District Judge Norman K. Moon dismissed all the defendants except one—Curtis Reese Wilmore, a dead state police investigator. “This simplifies the suit,” says Steve Rosenfield, a Charlottesville attorney assisting in the suit. “Wilmore is the main figure.”
Thursday, June 24
Paying for roads
Virginia State Senator John Chichester, a Republican from Stafford, played a key role in this year’s budget standoff when he and a group of fellow Republicans backed tax hikes, creating a deep rift in the party. Speaking today at a Miller Center forum, Chichester said more revenue boosts were needed—and likely—to keep Virginia’s highways from going from bad to worse. The recently passed $1.4 billion tax boost included no new money for roads, and Chichester hinted that new road taxes could come as soon as next year, according to a Media General account of the forum. Highway money could come from boosts to gas taxes, among other sources.
Friday, June 25
Docu-drama
Michael Moore’s latest film, the much-ballyhooed Fahrenheit 9/11, opened in 21 theaters across Virginia today, including Vinegar Hill Theatre. The movie arrived with a massive amount of publicity, stoked as much by Disney’s decision to not distribute the film as by its startling footage of President Bush on September 11, 2001. People were lined up around the block at Vinegar Hill when tickets went on sale at 1pm. In just 90 minutes, all four of today’s shows for the 220-seat theater were sold out, says Reid Oechslin, Vinegar Hill’s manager. The Downtown art house has screened all of Moore’s documentaries. And, according to Oechslin, the cinematic provocateur himself once came to the theater to conduct a Q&A session for the release of his 1989 classic Roger & Me. “We’re down with Michael Moore,” Oechslin says.
Saturday, June 26
Falun Gong at City Hall
A small group of Falun Gong practitioners today held a demonstration at City Hall to mark persecution of the practice in China. Falun Gong, which is a spiritual practice involving exercise and meditation, was first taught in China in 1992. Since then, followers claim that the Chinese government has brutally repressed Falun Gong, sending as many as 100,000 people to labor camps. At today’s demonstration, four members of the Charlottesville Falun Gong Group moved through a slow series of stretches, all set to a recording of soft music and chanting.
Sunday, June 27
UVA student drowns in Potomac
The body of UVA student John Steve Catilo, 20, was today recovered in the Potomac River, The Daily Progress reports. On Friday, Catilo apparently fell into the river while trying to restart the engine on a boat. Catilo had been working as a crew coach for an Alexandria high school, and was on the river with many teenage rowers at the time of the accident.
Monday, June 28
Changing of the guard
City Council will likely select two new School Board members at tonight’s special meeting. The terms of two current members, including Chairperson Linda Bowen, expire on Wednesday. The Council, in the last session to include Mayor Maurice Cox and Vice-Mayor Meredith Richards, will choose from nine candidates, among them incumbent Julie Gronlund. School Superintendent Ron Hutchinson will also be stepping down this week.
—Written by Paul Fain from local news sources and staff reports
“I love you, man”
City Hall gets gushy as Councilors bow out
In January 1996, when C-VILLE reported that Maurice Cox and Meredith Richards each had decided to enter that year’s City Council race, the paper’s “City Journal” section carried headlines on the biggest debate of the year: reversion.
As middle-class homeowners fled to Albemarle, the City’s property tax base atrophied, social service costs swelled and studies predicted Charlottesville’s budget would soon run into the red. A political movement formed around the ultimately failed idea that Charlottesville should disband City Council, revert from an independent city to an Albemarle town and place its future in the hands of the County Board of Supervisors.
Since then, national magazines have crowned Charlottesville a great place for golf, tennis, retirement and outdoor sports, and, most recently, the City added “Best Place to Live in America” to its accolades. Monday, June 21, marked the final City Council meeting for outgoing Mayor Cox and Vice-Mayor Richards, and they both invoked Charlottesville’s reversal of fortune as bookends to their tenure on Council.
Although the City and County eventually rejected the reversion scheme, “most of what we’ve done on Council is an outgrowth of what we learned through the reversion debate,” says Richards.
Both Cox and Richards came to politics after making names for themselves in neighborhood associations. Cox organized Ridge Street residents to help shape a development project in that neighborhood; Richards fought a developer who wanted to extend Shamrock Road to Fifth Street, making her Johnson Village neighborhood a cut-through. (Ironically, some critics now bash Cox for underplaying public input and Richards for supporting road projects.) Reflecting on their tenures, each says they tried to make Charlottesville neighborhoods attractive to people who could afford to move to the suburbs.
Cox and Richards both saw government as an active force to change Charlottesville for the better. They were both popular Councilors who worked together to make UVA more responsive to City concerns; they pushed for a progressive transit system and partnered with developers to stimulate economic growth.
While Cox earned more votes than any other candidate in 1996 and 2000, he drew more criticism than other Councilors, too, from conservatives who viewed his ambition as arrogance, and from members of his own party who accused him of gentrifying black neighborhoods.
“There is no public mandate to lead,” says Cox. “I thought people would embrace innovation, but I’ve found that people have to be brought kicking and screaming.”
Cox championed the idea that people should be able to live, work and play all within walking distance. While developers initially seemed skittish about mixed-use architecture, the style has proven profitable on the Downtown Mall. Under Cox’s tenure, mixed-use has spread to south Downtown, and a new zoning code will eventually reshape areas like Jefferson Park Avenue, Cherry Avenue, Fifth Street and Preston Avenue.
“You have to rely on your own personal will to make change, because there’s never going to be a consensus,” says Cox. In August, he will begin a year at Harvard, studying politics and urban design on a Loeb Fellowship to the Graduate Schoolof Design. Cox vows to return to Charlottesville, and possibly politics. “I’d like to see if some of the lessons I’ve learned locally can be applied statewide,” he says.
Despite his healthy instinct for change, Cox stonewalled his fair share of projects, too. As their tenure wound down, he often clashed with Richards over the Meadowcreek Parkway. His refusal to support the road often frustrated Richards, who arguably worked harder than anyone locally to change the Virginia Department of Transportation’s attitude toward Charlottesville.
Richards first encountered VDOT in 1994, when she joined the City’s planning commission. That year, the commission deflected VDOT’s proposal for a huge interchange at Hydraulic Road. After joining Council in 1996, Richards immediately joined the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), and has worked on that transportation policy-making body ever since.
“I began to understand the connections between transportation, land use and environmental health,” says Richards.
Through the MPO, Richards helped convince VDOT to redesign the Meadowcreek Parkway from a four-lane monster to a two-lane road with parklike accouterments. Despite these concessions, Cox (along with recently re-elected Councilor Kevin Lynch) still refused to support the Parkway. Richards’ pro-Parkway stance helped derail her bid this year for reelection, and hard feelings still linger between the Councilors and their supporters in the Democratic party.
Regardless of the Parkway’s future, Richards has made her mark—in June, Council tentatively went forward with a State plan to give localities more control over State and Federal transportation dollars. This may aid future Councils in implementing a project Richards has long championed—redeveloping the City’s bus system. Also, Richards has been working on a State rail line called the TransDominion Express, and she expects to see a line between Washington, D.C., and Charlottesville within two years.
Last week, Governor Mark Warner appointed Richards to a State railway commission. She has also applied for a job as executive director of Virginia First Cities, a group she helped to found in 2002 to advocate for the Commonwealth’s historic urban areas.
Monday’s meeting also featured more than 180 slides documenting the 32-year career of retiring planning director Satyendra Huja, as famous for his brightly colored Sikh turbans that cover his waist-length hair as his relentless drive to remake the City. The lovey-dovey June 21 meeting even featured some free verse poetics from City Manager Gary O’Connell, with Richards earning the most Whitmanesque line: “Meredith Richards—A Texan, a redhead…a lover of fresh oysters.”
Information, or infomercial?
Monday’s meeting also featured O’Connell’s answer to Republican critics who say the City is wasting money on a $6.6 million computer upgrade.
“It’s going to be an exhaustive presentation,” said Cox as an introduction. Perhaps he meant “exhausting”—the infomercial, produced by O’Connell and municipal public relations director Maurice Jones, managed to consume nearly 20 minutes without directly answering any questions.
John Pfaltz, a UVA computer science professor and onetime Republican Council candidate, and computer expert Jim Moore say the City should scrap its multi-million dollar system. On Monday, Moore said the City could get a similar system for $859,000.
After enduring the Councilors’ extended stroll down memory lane, Pfaltz says he had hoped the presentation would explain why the City could not have purchased a cheaper system.
“It was little more than a sales pitch,” says Pfaltz. “It really answered no questions.”—John Borgmeyer
Sideline savants
Are Hoo sports highlights a click away?
When the UVA football team fumbles the ball, even in a victory, there are plenty of fans who want the scoop. Did a lineman miss a block? Is the freshman running back (gasp!) a fumbler? These answers might be a mouse-click away this fall in the form of game highlights (and lowlights) from TheSabre.com.
The UVA fan website, already a popular link for recruiting news, game summaries and message boards, hopes to launch audio and video highlights from both football and men’s basketball games next year. The footage will be available to subscribers to The Sabre’s premium service, which costs $34.95 per year, says Matt Welsh, president of SportsWar, which owns The Sabre and a similar website for Virginia Tech fans.
“Hopefully after a game, we’ll have something up in an hour,” Welsh says. “We’re practicing and working our way through it right now.”
The Sabre will have competition, as AM radio station WINA, local and national television outlets, ESPN.com and UVA’s own website already air snippets from hoops and football games. Additionally, WINA and TV networks such as ABC often own the rights to broadcast the games live.
However, Welsh, the son of former UVA football coach George Welsh, thinks there’s fan interest for more diverse UVA sports coverage. The Sabre’s advantage, Welsh says, is the “grassroots” approach of sideline-savvy sports writers, such as former Daily Progress writer John Galinksy, and the creative potential the Internet provides for in-depth coverage. For example, The Sabre just taped a 40-minute interview with UVA Athletic Director Craig Littlepage.
“That’s something you’re not going to see anywhere else,” Welsh says.
In addition, The Sabre won’t shy away from airing UVA mishaps such as penalties, coaching flubs and dumb fouls, all of which fans are unlikely to catch on UVA’s promotional site.
“They’re going to show all the good plays. We might show a little bit broader perspective,” Welsh says.
The Sabre, as a credentialed media organization, currently gets access to UVA athletes and coaches, as well as the sidelines. According to Michael Colley, UVA’s assistant sports information director, The Sabre is free to broadcast highlight footage in a “news-type format.” Colley and Welsh think there may be some limit to the amount of footage that can be used, but neither knows what those limits might be because, as Colley says, “that hasn’t come up yet.”
Though Andrew Gottman, a ’96 UVA alum who lives in Dayton, Ohio, says he has logged onto The Sabre in the past, he adds that he wouldn’t pay for access to Web casts or other bonuses.
“I can get highlights pretty fast on ESPN assuming the games aren’t televised anyway,” Gottman writes via e-mail, adding, “the basketball team is so bad that I wouldn’t pay anything to watch them anywhere.”
UVA alum John Pulley, class of ’90, who is a fan of The Sabre, says he too is unlikely to drop $35 on a subscription, highlights or not. For Pulley, it’s not so much money, but the fear that he’d be crossing “that fuzzy line that separates avid sports fan from pathetic sports geeks.”
Pulley’s hesitancy, however, seems unlikely among many of the rabid fans who post comments to The Sabre’s website. For the fans discussing “throwback” mini-helmets styled after the 1978 uniforms, one more sideline angle on a touchdown run might be a big draw.—Paul Fain