Tuesday, March 15
Tinsley fiddles with First Amendment
DMB fiddler Boyd Tinsley can add “trustee” to his list of creds as today the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression announces he will join its Board of Trustees. The Center, which hands out annual Muzzle Awards for egregious acts of censorship across the nation, is also now putting together the free expression chalkboard that will adjoin the new, improved Downtown Amphitheater, a pet project of DMB manager Coran Capshaw currently underway.
Help wanted
According to the results of a Manpower survey released today, local employers expect to be filling a lot of new jobs in the second quarter. Fifty-seven percent of Charlottesville-area companies interviewed plan to hire more workers between April and June, up nearly 50 percent from the first quarter. Fields that look good include construction, retail and real estate.
Wednesday, March 16
County Dems pick sacrificial lamb
At a meeting of the Albemarle County Democratic Committee, 10-year School Board veteran Steve Koleszar announced his plan to challenge Republican Rob Bell for the 58th seat in the House of Delegates. Koleszar admits that Bell, a crafty politician with Eagle Scout charm, will be tough to beat. “I take comfort in the story of David and Goliath,” says Koleszar, who paints Bell as a no-tax ideologue who would rather underfund schools and transportation than raise taxes. “How Bell votes is not the same as his persona,” Koleszar says.
Introducing Tim Kaine: tax savior
Making it real today, Lt. Governor Tim Kaine officially kicked off his campaign to succeed fellow Democrat, Governor Mark Warner. Though the onetime civil rights lawyer and Jesuit missionary has solid blue credentials, across the state today he chose instead to focus on “fiscal responsibility.” “I cut homeowner’s taxes as mayor, and I’ll fight to cut homeowner’s taxes as your next governor,” Kaine told a crowd in Roanoke, according to The Washington Post. “And we’ll do it in a fiscally conservative way.” Local Dems will have a chance to meet and question the candidate next Wednesday when he visits The Nook. Also that morning, Kaine’s chief rival, Republican Jerry Kilgore will drop by the Doubletree Hotel.
Thursday, March 17
UVA getting serious about rape?
Today UVA announced a revised policy regarding sexual assaults in the wake of student outcry. Last fall, student activists protested what they claimed was UVA’s indifference to sexual assault victims, suggesting the University punishes liars, cheaters and thieves more severely than rapists. In response, UVA’s new sexual assault policy says students should be suspended or expelled if they’re found guilty of sexual assault. A committee of administrators, faculty and students will decide sexual assault cases. The new policy aims to speed up justice. The rules also guarantee a student’s right to speak publicly about the assault and trial after the process concludes.
Friday, March 18
No escape now for would-be jailbreakers
Forever starts today for Michael A. Carpenter, 28, a convict who yesterday had 30 years added to his life sentence for his role in last August’s failed jailbreak at the Charlottesville-Albemarle Regional Jail. In that bloody incident, during which one elderly guard was beaten unconscious and hog-tied, Carpenter, Timothy Wayne Jason Lee Mawyer and Antinne Anderson were foiled in their attempts to escape from custody by the efforts of other inmates to assist the guards who were attacked. Anderson was sentenced yesterday to 13 additional years in the incident. Mawyer got 10 years on top of his existing sentence.
Saturday, March 19
1,500 Americans dead in Iraq
Today about 50 people gathered at the Rotunda to join a “Global Day of Action” marking the second anniversary of the Iraq War and organized by the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition. “I think the war is totally unfounded. We’re in for a long haul,” said David Rodriguez, wearing a fuzzy Uncle Sam top hat and carrying a picket sign that read “END THE WAR.” The group earned supportive honks from passing traffic, as well as intermittent applause and heckling from pedestrian ‘Hoos. The point, which organizer Sarah Landsman stressed with a bullhorn, was to let people know that “George Bush does not speak for us.”
Sunday, March 20
Ryan returns to NCAA form
After failing to make the NCAA tournament for the first time in 20 years last season, Coach Debbie Ryan’s efforts to get UVA’s women’s basketball team back in The Dance paid off tonight with the Cavs’ 79-57 win over Old Dominion University. But the road to the Sweet Sixteen will get rougher in the second round on Monday night when Virginia (21-10) has to beat the Golden Gophers (25-7) in their home state of Minnesota.
Monday, March 21
Research the speed of light at the speed of light
Mark Warner, Virginia’s millionaire techie governor is expected at UVA this afternoon to announce the creation of VORTEX, a broadband optical fiber network that will connect Virginia’s universities to new worldwide research networks. “These tools are essential if our schools are to compete for major science and engineering projects,” Warner’s flaks have him saying in a news release. Following the news conference, Warner is scheduled to drop in on Larry Sabato’s government class.
Written by Cathy Harding from news sources and staff reports.
Low down on the high life
Pot busts are a low priority for police
Lieutenant Don Campbell, head of the drug task force, calculates from grams to pounds as quickly as a dealer. (Working undercover will do that.) By his count, Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement (JADE) seized 2,600 hundred grams of cocaine in the last year. JADE released its year-end report recently, and deep within it lies the surprising news that only 1,600 grams of marijuana were seized in the last year (about 2.2 pounds Campbell says). The year prior JADE seized nearly 15 times as much weed—32 pounds.
Those falling numbers square with the information in a new report by NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, which shows that Charlottesville is a relatively safe place to toke, compared to the rest of the country.
JADE’s report tallies seizures and arrests for the last year, and NORML’s report takes a national look at arrests for marijuana from 1995 to 2002. While the methods of counting are different, the conclusions align. The forces of sobriety and those of lawlessness rarely agree on much, but here is a blissful bit of accord: Law enforcement should focus on more destructive drugs than marijuana.
Lt. Campbell says the task force focused on mid- and upper-level dealers of crack especially, and “eradicated” five drug-dealing groups last year. “Our focus is on dealing with groups of people who organize and conspire together to violate the drug laws and who are committing violence on the streets,” he says.
The focus on violent groups naturally leads to prioritizing cocaine over marijuana, Campbell says. “Usually, crack cocaine, violence comes with it. That is just the nature of the beast.”
JADE has been tasked with drug interdiction for the last 10 years, combining 14 detectives from Charlottesville, Albemarle, UVA and Virginia State Police. It also works with the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms on the big stuff. Overall the force conducted 225 investigations, leading to 211 arrests in 2004. “I couldn’t tell you the conviction rate, but it’s pretty high. We don’t lose many,” Campbell says.
NORML’s report confirms the surprising news that small-time stoners are not at high risk of being busted locally. It tallies marijuana possession and sales arrests nationally by city, county and state. The report says about 239 people of every 100,000 are arrested for a marijuana crime on average. Virginia was right at that rate in 1995, but had fallen to 195 per 100,000 by 2002. Marijuana arrests are consistently less than 5 percent of total arrests but more than half of all drug arrests in the Commonwealth.
Albemarle and Charlottesville are either a safe haven for pot smokers or relatively lacking in the species by comparison. Albemarle County had only 143 arrests
per 100,000 residents in 2002, and Charlottesville had a shockingly low 10.77 arrests per 100,000.
Then again, NORML’s report shows five arrests in the city and 117 in the county in 2002, and Lt. Campbell insists that those numbers are screwy. On the topic of stupid stoners, Campbell has a few other good stories. Once, he bagged a grower by following a trail of leaves from a grow operation to the suspect’s house. Another time, he says, “They were planting in the woods, floating it down in canoes and bringing it into these sheds to dry. There were probably pounds on the ground from where they had been dragging it.”
To summarize, then, for those who are a little baked, “If we do develop information that people are dealing marijuana, we will follow up on it,” according to Campbell, but “we are not trying to find people who are smoking or using.”
And with that, one can hear Charlottesville issue a collective exhalation … of relief.—Lacey Phillabaum
Power up!
Gray TV set to dominate local airwaves, adding Fox to its CBS/ABC affiliates
Gray Television Inc., the Atlanta-based owner of Charlottesville’s new CBS and ABC affiliates, WCAV and WVAW, won the “geographic lottery” in political advertising last year, according to executives, finding its franchise of 31 network-affiliated stations happily situated in key battleground states. Flush with record-setting earnings of $41 million in 2004, the company was a big spender, too. Much of the $36.3 million it plunked down to build out its stations went toward developing digital broadcasting capacity, but a big chunk was used tolaunch operations in Charlottesville—about $7 million to construct broadcast facilities and $1 million for a license.
But it will take a much smaller investment to increase the company’s local presence by half. In a $475,000 deal inked on February 10, Gray has agreed to buy WADA, Tiger Eye Broadcasting’s PAX affiliate in Charlottesville. Gray, which focuses on small and mid-sized markets, largely in college towns and state capitals, plans to adopt the call sign WAHU for the station. It will broadcast a mixture of FOX and PAX programming on channel 27 over the air and on channel 18 or 19 on cable, according to WCAV/WVAW station manager Roger Burchett.
“Whatever people have said they want to watch based on the ratings, that’s what we’ll give them,” Burchett, who will also manage WAHU, says of the split between FOX and PAX shows.
Burchett says he expects the deal to close—and WAHU to begin broadcasting—in late April or May. Gray Television has recently rolled out UPN signals on its digital spectrum in several markets, but has no plans to do so here. “If they add another station to us, we’re going to collapse,” Burchett says.
WCAV and WVAW began broadcasting last August. CBS 19’s local news operation went on the air in November and ABC 16 went live with its local news show in February. Burchett expects to have a WAHU news program about 30 days after the station launches.
The WCAV and WVAW news broadcasts borrow footage and stories from each other liberally, not to mention a weatherman, and the WAHU program will also share content, Burchett says.
“We’ll try to write the stories so that they’re, No. 1, the most informative that we can be to the people who watch us,” Burchett says. “Second, told in a way that the demographics of the people who watch the particular station—CBS, ABC and FOX—enjoy watching them. Our first obligation is to get it right, to get it on time. But we can still do that and tell them in a way that allows each station to remain its own and hold on to its own identity.”
Both WVAW and the future WAHU are low-power stations with a limited over-the-air broadcast range. But contemporary distribution systems make that matter a bit of a technicality. “We’re hooked into the cable system, so if you’ve got cable it’s the same thing as full power,” says Gray Television president Robert Prather.
Prather downplays the cost advantages in running several stations from a single facility. “We have separate news teams, separate sales teams, things like that,” he says. “But there are some advantages to having two in one station, really from kind of the backroom operations standpoint.”
Burchett is also cautious about the competitive power Gray’s Charlottesville cost structure gives it in pricing advertising slots over an enormous amount of airtime.
“The first thing you’ve got to have is a product that people want to watch. You can have 10 stations but you can’t leverage them if they’re not what the people want to watch,” he says. “We want to put a news product on the air that people say, ‘I like it because it’s accurate, it’s well-presented, it’s timely and I enjoy watching it. I trust these people.’ We’re brand new, so to get all those goals lined up, all working at the same time, it takes time.”—Harry Terris
Waiting for the Guv
Labor activists put their charter hopes in Mark Warner
Wait and see—that’s the current status of the charter legislation that would change higher education in Virginia.
Legislation to give Virginia colleges more autonomy from the State sailed through the General Assembly this year, but the bill is no longer known as “charter.”
In keeping with the State government’s stellar track record of making things more complicated than they already
are, the charter legislation is now known as “Restructured Higher Education Financial and Administrative Operations.”
Don’t know what that means? Apparently many legislators don’t either.
“I voted against it,” says Charlottesville Delegate Mitch Van Yahres, “because it went through without much understanding of what we were doing. [The charter bill] was very complicated and it went through very fast.”
In the wake of declining State funds for higher education, three major schools—UVA, Virginia Tech and William and Mary—asked the General Assembly last year for more autonomy from State oversight. One of the most important aspects of charter is that it would give the schools more authority to raise tuition without State permission.
Not surprisingly, smaller colleges balked, fearing that the State would get even stingier with the three biggest schools out of the political loop. A revised version of the charter bill created three different levels of autonomy. Schools with more fundraising ability could choose more fiscal freedom, while smaller schools could keep closer ties to the State. Once charter became available to all schools, the bill sailed through the assembly.
But the resistance didn’t disappear.
“Is this going to let the State off the hook as far as their responsibility to higher education?” says Van Yahres. “We’ve been cheap to start off, now we can be cheaper, and tuition will be the way out. What about making [higher education] affordable?”
Meanwhile, labor activists object to charter because it would create two tiers of employees—one group hired before charter with certain State-mandated benefits, and another hired after charter, with a different set of benefits.
“You just can’t have employees working side by side with different benefits,” says Jan Cornell, president of the Staff Union at UVA. “Unions have fought this for 50 years.”
Now charter—along with about 900 other bills—will go before Governor Mark Warner for him to sign, amend or veto by April 6. Cornell is hoping Warner will add an amendment addressing the two-tier issue.
Virginia chapters of the AFL-CIO and the Communication Workers of America have met with the Guv, asking for an amendment that would give him oversight of the schools’ employment policies, so that workers have someplace to take their grievances. A spokesman for Warner says he hasn’t made any decisions.
“We don’t believe we’re asking for something outrageous, but governors never give you any indication of what they’re thinking,” says Jim Leaman, Treasurer for the Virginia AFL-CIO. “They do all the easy stuff first and save the big stuff for the end. We’ll just wait and see.”—John Borgmeyer
The road to hell is paved with city dollars
Why does Virginia make cities pay for suburban sprawl?
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that Virginia loses about 233 acres of farmland to development every day. Losing pristine land forever is bad enough—what’s worse is that we’re helping to pay for it.
Each year Charlottesville pays about $13.5 million in gasoline and sales taxes earmarked for transportation funding, but we only get back $6.7 million for maintenance, new projects and transit funding.
The County gets an even worse deal. It pays about $26.6 million in taxes earmarked for transportation, while Albemarle gets back a measly $7 million, more or less, for new roads.
That means the federal and State governments pilfer about $26 million from Charlottesville and Albemarle. Some of that money pays for maintenance on the interstate highway system. The rest goes to the State to pay for large projects in the sprawling suburbs of Northern Virginia and Virginia Beach, according to City Councilor Kevin Lynch, who compiled the data.
This series, “War on Cities” has examined in the previous two issues of C-VILLE the way Virginia’s urban communities are being stressed by State budget cuts for public safety, social services and education. As the costs for these items continues to skyrocket in cities like Charlottesville, the State’s negligence shifts the burden to local taxpayers.
The filching of our transportation money is another example of how the State fails to protect its urban environments. Some of the problem can be traced back to former Governor Jim Gilmore, says Lynch. Gilmore used federal revenue bonds to pay for major road projects in NoVa in the late 1990s. While the projects may have been good for Gilmore’s political career, the bonds must be repaid with Virginia’s federal transportation money.
That money would come in handy right now, as traffic congestion becomes a growing problem for people who live and work in Charlottesville.
“We are long overdue for a few key medium-sized projects,” says Lynch. “If the City and County could keep the excess transportation taxes that we pay in a single year, it would be more than enough to build the Meadowcreek Parkway interchange. Another year and we could build the Eastern Connector. A third year would make some major improvements to 29.”
The State takes transportation money from cities and gives it to the suburbs. Not only does it fuel the demise of Virginia’s countryside, it means there’s less money for smaller city roads and transportation such as buses, rail, bike trails and pedestrian walkways. Moreover, the State’s transportation funding imbalance leads also to a harsh political reality: Urban concerns are pushed further into the background.
In the General Assembly, representatives from the suburbs vastly outnumber those from cities. John Moeser, who studies urban policy at Virginia Commonwealth University and who recently contributed his expertise to Governor Mark Warner’s Urban Policy Task Force, says that as suburban wealth and power grows, the special problems faced by cities like Charlottesville receive less attention from state leaders.
“You have these suburban communities who view cities with some suspicion,” says Moeser. “People think of solving urban problems as a ‘Robin Hood’ scheme… robbing from the rich to give to the poor. There’s not the political will, so anything urban doesn’t get much traction.”
Cities are a great treasure, says Moeser. “The built environment reflects our history,” he says. “The old buildings, the cobblestone streets, the steeples…. I like what the writer Lewis Mumford said. He said: ‘In cities, time becomes visible.’”
In suburbs, says Moeser, “all the connections to the past have been obliterated.” Cities, he says, are a way to “root” people.
“Cities are the repository of our culture, our art and our museums,” Moeser continues. “You have people of different classes using the same space, and you don’t find that in suburbs. Cities have always brought people together from different backgrounds. They are where immigrants became Americans.”
Nevertheless, recent events have made clear that what wins elections are the suburban values of intolerance and exclusion. Still, Virginia’s cities aren’t just waiting for an inevitable decline. In 2000, 15 cities formed the Virginia First Cities coalition to advocate for urban interests in the General Assembly.
“The older cities have a lot of common interests,” says VFC chairman Neal Barber. “They are typically the focal point for a lot of activities. They have historically experienced fiscal and economic distress, and they have high concentrations of poverty because they’re the location for social services, transportation and affordable housing.”
Barber says the Commonwealth needs to be more supportive of cities. The group has successfully advocated for more money for law enforcement and tax breaks for redeveloping blighted property in Virginia’s aging cities, and they continue to lobby for more funding for mass transit and at-risk students.
In some cities, an urban revival is under way. “Older, pre-World War II neighborhoods are beginning to attract folks back into the cities,” says Barber. “People want to be within walking distance of downtown, to churches. Cities are attracting young people because that’s where the entertainment is. They have attracted empty nesters, folks who are interested in not dealing with the hassles of gridlock on a daily basis.”
Indeed, evidence of the revival can be seen in the southern half of Charlottesville’s downtown, where converted warehouse apartments fetch monthly rents of $1,200. “Charlottesville,” says Barber, “has done extremely well.”
In the future, Barber says, the health of Virginia cities depends on the General Assembly’s willingness to grant cities new powers to spur redevelopment in urban centers. In a state confined by the 150-year-old Dillon Rule (which states that local governments can’t do anything without the explicit permission of the General Assembly) such changes may not be easy to make.
The bad news for cities, however, is that today it remains cheaper for developers to build on virgin land and demand new roads that reach further into the countryside. Don’t look for progressive land-use policies to come out of Richmond—last year, real estate and construction interests donated nearly $4.8 million to Virginia politicians, more than any other industry or political group.—John Borgmeyer