Tuesday, March 22
For use in case of emergencies
A Planned Parenthood survey shows that if other methods fail, for the women of Charlottesville, emergency contraception is relatively accessible. Collecting data today from local pharmacies as part of national Back Up Your Birth Control Day, PP found that more than 90 percent carry emergency contraception (EC), compared to only 50 percent in Waynesboro. “EC is most effective when taken within the first 24 hours,” says PP’s Becky Reid. “There are a number of steps to get a very time-sensitive medication, and we are just trying to find out what barriers are thrown up that could prevent a woman from accessing EC within a 72-hour time frame.” The local PP clinic, in the disputed Hydraulic Road location, also offered EC at half off its regular $25 price today. The volume of customers today was five times normal.
They never listen to anything he says
In his annual “State of the University” address, UVA president John Casteen said the school plans to eventually replace the dorms on Alderman Road, which he called “utterly incorrigible as buildings,” according to media reports.
Wednesday, March 23
All hat, no cattle
On this cold and rainy morning, Republican gubernatorial candidate Jerry Kilgore rode into town (actually, the Doubletree Hotel) on a steed of small-town breeding. He joked about his accent and his penchant for aw-shucksisms, like “That dog don’t hunt.” Former Albemarle County Delegate Paul Harris set the tone, saying, “It is wonderful to have public servants who embrace small town values, and we have such a leader in Jerry Kilgore.” Naturally, Kilgore took aim at his main rival, Tim Kaine, who was campaigning at the other end of town, calling him a slick salesman and show horse.
Ready to ride rough
Former Richmond mayor and Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Tim Kaine received a standing ovation from fellow Democrats when he showed up for a political rally this morning at The Nook on the Downtown Mall. “This is a good recharge,” the itinerant Kaine said to the overflow crowd, after a week of heavy campaigning. Lt. Governor Kaine, the recent beneficiary of a $5 million shot in the arm from national Dems, is also a Christian missionary. His squeaky-voiced rival needs to step off, he said. “You may throw the first punch, but I always throw the last one,” he said of Kilgore.
Thursday, March 24
Mall rocked by rape rumors
Rumors spread out across the Downtown Mall when police officers cordoned off the parking lot at Second and Market streets today. City cops were typically tight-lipped, but stories were soon flying that a bar employee had been raped in the early morning hours. A deliveryman at the crime scene told passers-by that the victim was found in a dumpster. Local shopkeepers had heard she was in the hospital. The site was cordoned off with crime tape from 8:30am to 2pm, and a lone evidence technician measured here and there. Abandoned beer bottles were collected and inspected. By afternoon, the merchants who usually park there had reclaimed their spots and the bar fed its lunch crowd to the mournful tunes of Bon Jovi. The police would eventually confirm that they were investigating a robbery and sexual assault and that the perpetrator has been described as a white male.
Friday, March 25
Warner widens health-care coverage
Governor Mark Warner today signed a bill that allows private employers to extend group health insurance beyond spouses and dependent children, bringing Virginia in line with the other 49 states. Under the new measure, private businesses can offer group health coverage to siblings, in-laws, or domestic partners, according to The Washington Post. Supporters say the more flexible insurance will make Virginia more competitive; opponents say it’s another step toward legalizing same-sex partnerships.
Saturday, March 26
Kids raise the roof
Geraldine Goffney’s not worried about letting kids build her home. “They’ll probably do it better than me. It’s a lot of work,” she says. She should know; she’s already put in 100 volunteer hours herself. Today local high-school students celebrated the groundbreaking for Goffney’s Habitat for Humanity house near Blue Ridge Commons. Goffney and her sons hope to move into what is now just a muddy lot by November, after 27 workdays and 250 hours of sweat equity. Students from 12 local schools raised $60,000 in six months for the house, including staging a production of Fiddler on the Roof. “When you think about how many students are going to learn construction and become sensitized to affordable housing, it’s really incredible,” says Kelly Epless of Habitat.
Sunday, March 27
Make sure they hear you now
Today’s Daily Progress carries a notice giving the public 30 days to comment on a proposed 49-foot tower that Alltel wants to construct on top of 10 University Circle. Specifically the company seeks “public comments regarding potential effects from this project on historic properties.” Get connected at corp.environmental. compliance@alltel.com.
Monday, March 28
Get bloomin’ already!
Although it feels as though it’s been raining for weeks, and there is more rain in the forecast for the start of this week, in fact the precipitation to date is at only about 80 percent of normal. As of yesterday, precipitation was only 7.92 inches year-to-date. Normal rain- and snowfall at this point in the year is 10.46 inches, according to Weather Central Inc. Thirsty flowers say, bring it on!
Written by Cathy Harding from news sources and staff reports.
Civil unrest
NAACP chair Julian Bond speaks out for gay rights
Julian Bond seems perfectly comfortable standing on the lonely ground of unpopular opinion.
The 64-year-old UVA professor and chairman of the NAACP is a living legend of the civil rights movement. In 1960 Bond led sit-ins to end segregation in Atlanta. Five years later, the Georgia House of Representatives denied Bond his rightfully elected seat there because of his outspoken criticism of the Vietnam War.
Bond is still taking heat—but not just from The Man. When he told Ebony magazine last summer that gay rights are “of course” a civil rights issue, some African-American church leaders criticized him for contradicting what they say is Biblical teaching against homosexuality. On April 2, the state gay rights group Equality Virginia will honor Bond with the “Equality Commonwealth Award” for his stand on equal marriage rights.
“He’s certainly an authority on civil rights issues,” says EV director Dyana Mason. “He’s making the connection between the civil rights movement of the ’60s with the gay rights movement today.”
Last week, the unflappable Bond talked with C-VILLE about gay rights, civil rights and the price of dissent in America under George W. Bush. What follows is an edited transcript of that interview.—John Borgmeyer
C-VILLE: Was it difficult for you to say publicly that gay rights are civil rights?
Julian Bond: First, I should say that this is my position, not the NAACP’s position. The Association opposes the proposed federal constitutional amendments [that would ban gay marriage]. But the NAACP hasn’t taken a vote on supporting gay marriage. If we did, I’m not sure it would go the way I’d want it to go.
Does that disappoint you?
It does. I understand some religious people can find arguments against being gay. If you feel strongly that way, that’s O.K., but don’t try to force that on the rest of society.
I’ve been married twice. Both times were civil marriages, where religion had nothing to do with it. Just two people who were in love and wanted to get married… that strikes me as sufficient basis for extending the civil protections of marriage to any two people.
Part of the divide be-tween people on this issue is that many people think it is a choice, that some man or woman at age 10 or 12 and says, “Gee, I think I’ll be gay.” We know that’s wrong. It’s like race. I can’t choose to be white or Chinese or anything else. This is the way I am.
Have you taken hits for this idea?
Oh yes, many hits. I’ve had harsh things said against me by the clergy. When the Ebony article appeared, it caused a firestorm.
I was unanimously re-elected to the chairmanship in February. Every year for six years, I’ve been re-elected and it’s always unanimous. There are people who disagree with my views, and I think they’re saying, “He may be wacky on this, but on the whole he’s O.K.”
How does the struggle for gay rights compare to the civil rights movement?
It doesn’t compare, exactly, because back then there was almost no one, even the most unrepentant segregationist, who would say black people didn’t deserve the right to eat at lunch counters. That’s what they meant, but they didn’t say it. Instead, they couched their argument in terms of states’ rights, or in terms of the businessperson’s right to discriminate.
But now people feel bold enough to say gays and lesbians don’t deserve these rights, that they’re outside the protection of the law and the Constitution. That’s a radical shift.
How does the treatment of dissenting views differ between the ’60s and today?
In some ways I think it is more severe today. I’ve never seen a time when criticism of the president was so vigorously rejected as it is today. It’s scary. It’s Orwellian. I never thought this day would come in the United States. It didn’t come in the ’60s, and I’m just outraged that it’s come now.
Hell hath no fury
Kendra Hamilton emerges as a peacemaker
Coming into City Council’s meeting on Monday, March 21, we were keeping our fingers crossed hoping for some rhetorical fisticuffs. Alas, we were disappointed.
That morning The Daily Progress’ John Yellig had quoted Councilor Blake Caravati promising to “raise hell” regarding a proposed letter to Albemarle County and the Virginia Department Of Transportation. The letter would outline the City’s conditions for supporting the much-debated Meadowcreek Parkway, so the letter’s wording is of concern to people on either side of the controversial road project.
The Parkway would run from the intersection of McIntire Road and the 250 Bypass north through McIntire Park and intersect Rio Road in the county.
Councilor Kevin Lynch favors a strongly worded letter saying the City’s support of the Parkway is contingent on three factors. He wants the County to provide replacement parkland, and to help fund location studies for two new roads (one in southern Albemarle and one in the eastern part of the county). Lynch also says he won’t support the Parkway unless it can be built with a grade-separated interchange at its intersection with the Bypass.
Caravati, though, favors a softer letter that wouldn’t pin the City’s support of the Parkway to specific conditions—thus his promise to raise hell if Lynch pushed for tougher language. And when Caravati promises bluster, he rarely fails to deliver.
Unfortunately for muckraking journalists, Councilor Kendra Hamilton emerged with a compromise that stemmed any hell raising. Hamilton said she feared that constituents would view Council as obstructionist if the body made too many demands.
Indeed, former Chamber of Commerce president Tim Hulbert suggested as much at the beginning of the meeting. “If you want to kill the roadway, kill the roadway. Do it straight up,” he said.
So when it came time to debate the letter’s wording, Hamilton stopped the argument in its tracks. “I suggest we hold off on the letter, so we can have a meeting with our counterparts in the county,” she said. “A lot of people’s concerns will be alleviated if we can come together and talk about what we want to do.”
What a party pooper.
Also on Monday, Council did approve spending $1.5 million of State money
on an engineering study for the interchange. If Council decides not to build the interchange, the City will have to repay that money.
Lynch says he’s optimistic that his conditions will be met. The trickiest part will be getting VDOT to pony up dough for the interchange, which some estimate at as much as $25 million. Lynch believes that if the City and County can agree on a plan for a regional network of roads, VDOT will be more likely to fund local projects.
“It really comes down to political will,” says Lynch. “We’ve been told it will be easier to get money if [the City and County] are on the same page. I think we’re closer to being on the same page.”
People who would build the Parkway without the interchange—including Caravati, Councilor Rob Schilling and the Chamber of Commerce—“have a defeatist attitude,” says Lynch. “Everybody’s beating their breast that it will take 25 years to fund the interchange. We need to work harder to get the money, not just throw up our hands.”
Lynch’s conditions are “bad politics,” Caravati says. Recalling Lynch’s longtime opposition to the road, he suspects Lynch still wants to kill the Parkway. “I don’t trust him. My memory is too good,” says Caravati.
Sweet… a little hellraising after all.—John Borgmeyer
State plays nice with polluters
But high-school activists aren’t smiling
Environmental regulation in Virginia is a joke, and Allied Concrete is the punch line. The Rivanna watershed pays the expense.
Even as the City and County ante up millions to bring the storm water system up to par, separate regulations for industry allow chronic polluters to escape scot-free. The Department of Environmental Quality’s lackadaisical approach to Allied Concrete doesn’t sit well with local school kids, however.
The storm water system is the knot of drains and pipes that collects rainwater from the streets after a storm. Theoretically, the system only carries water straight from the sky. Practically, storm drains collect every mote of dust and speck of oil on the street. Cumulatively, it adds up to a lot of pollution in local waterways.
While the federal Clean Water Act requires localities to tighten controls on storm water pollutants, DEQ continues a feel-good enforcement program that emphasizes cooperation over compliance. Companies can violate their storm water management plan and discharge waste into a stream at least three times before real enforcement even begins. The first “apparent violation” provokes “informal compliance.” The second precipitates a warning letter. A third might invoke a notice of violation.
In the twisted logic of bureaucracy, even a notice of violation “must not state that a facility ‘has violated’ or ‘is in violation’ of a standard or regulation,” according to DEQ’s enforcement manual, even though the thing is called a notice of violation.
While DEQ pussyfoots, violations continue. Witness Allied Concrete. “They have a long history of problems. It goes back 15 years probably,” says DEQ inspector Bill Maddox. Even the lenient rules state that enforcement should jump to a notice of violation when there are repeated infractions, possible environmental impacts or remedies that will take longer than three months.
Allied Concrete seems to fit the bill. Since 2003, DEQ has conducted three complaint-driven inspections and found apparent violations each time. “There are multiple incidences of potential unpermitted discharges involving the same outfall,” Maddox states carefully.
DEQ isn’t a stickler for the rules when it comes to Allied because it believes the company is showing a good-faith effort to move in the right direction. The agency is currently contemplating enforcement. “The company, from what I understand, is working on corrective actions,” says DEQ enforcement officer Steven Hetrick. “And that is what we are primarily looking at.”
A more skeptical read of Allied’s file suggests the company is consistently recalcitrant. The company’s permit requires it to file an annual report about its discharges, which Allied failed to do this year. It’s also supposed to notify DEQ about any unpermitted material leaking into the stream. Allied has not filed such a notice, but the three last inspections have all uncovered such discharge.
Allied Concrete President Gus Lorber did not respond to questions, but replied to the DEQ’s March 3 inspection by writing, “The facility has taken many actions to reduce solids loss in storm water discharges,” noting changes made over the last year, according to DEQ.
Given the DEQ’s loose timeline for compliance, the City could step in. The City’s new water protection ordinance gives it the power to oversee a company’s pollution prevention program. “We have opted to give DEQ the chance to go through the process that exists right now,” City Environmental Administrator Kristel Riddervold says.
In the face of professional niceties, crap keeps flowing into the Schenk’s Branch of Meadow Creek. While DEQ pursues the “least adversarial” approach, a scrappy crew of kids from the Living Education Center alternative school look out for the creek. After the school adopted the creek in 1998, the kids in the stream ecology class started jumping in the muddy flow along McIntire Road a couple times a year to fish out skateboards, beer cans and cigarettes. The first year they did a survey they found a single macroinvertebrate, a snail that died when they picked it up. Now they occasionally find crawfish and other small fish.
Running Bird Webb is a student who helps with the stream monitoring. “The first time we went to check up on it, we noticed that there was a whole bunch of concrete,” she says. “And we noticed a pipe from Allied Concrete… and it is pouring concrete sludge into the river. That is killing pretty much anything living in it.” On one trip to the creek they found a crawfish seemingly encrusted in concrete.
The kids aren’t looking to put Allied out of business. They don’t want the company slapped with unreasonable fines. They aren’t regulators, and they aren’t literate in the technical jargon of dry weather discharges, outfalls and benthic surveys. They just want a clean creek. It’s DEQ’s job to deliver, and that’s no joke.—Lacey Phillabaum
Crawford: It was an accident
Accused wife-killer’s case moves on to a grand jury
Charlottesville’s Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court was only about half full mid-afternoon on Friday, March 25, when Anthony Dale Crawford shuffled in for his pretrial hearing and took a seat behind defense council, Liz Murtagh. A Manassas resident, Crawford faces use of a firearm, abduction and first-degree murder charges in conjunction with the death of his estranged wife, Sarah Louise Crawford. After an hour-and-a-half of testimony, Judge Edward DeJ. Berry certified the charges against the 45-year-old Crawford and scheduled a grand jury hearing for mid-April.
Outlining a timeline from the last time she was seen alive in Northern Virginia on November 18 to the morning her body was discovered here four days later, Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Jon R. Zug argued that 33-year-old Sarah Crawford was murdered in Northern Virginia. Her estranged husband, Zug reasoned, then “unceremoniously dumped [her], nude and dead” in Room 118 of the Quality Inn off Emmet Street before hightailing it down Interstate 95 to Jacksonville, Florida, from where he was extradited a week later.
This theory hinged on a box found by the side of the road in Fauquier County, three days before Sarah’s body was discovered. Sarah’s boss, Michael Stern, had given her the package earlier in the week, requesting she send it off. Concerned since Sarah had not shown up for work, Stern picked up the box from the finder and left it on her desk to take care of the following Monday.
That Monday however, November 22, Stern received news that Sarah was dead. That day, Charlottesville police confiscated evidence from Sarah’s workplace, including the box, on which evidence technicians later found her blood proving, Zug contended, she was murdered before she ever got to Charlottesville.
According to testimony from Officer Mike Flaherty, one of the first police officers on the scene, “The first thing I noticed when I opened the door [to the hotel room] was the smell. Someone or something had passed away.”
He described Room 118 of the Quality Inn as “orderly.” There was a black suitcase on the dresser and assorted piles of folded men’s clothes. The bedcovers were pulled up “as if it had been made, but you could tell there was something” under them, said Flaherty.
Flaherty pulled back the covers and found Sarah Crawford’s body. She was naked, her head on the pillow, her legs in “a frog-like position,” and her hands folded across her abdomen.
Upon inspection, Flaherty testified he found a red-stained washcloth beneath Sarah’s right armpit. Underneath it revealed what he believed to be a stab wound. There was no other evidence of struggle or force.
Later, after Flaherty’s testimony, Zug revealed that the defendant’s DNA had been found in Sarah’s body, suggesting a “sexual act.”
“When this occurred,” said Zug, “is unsure.”
At Zug’s insinuation of necrophilia, Crawford—balding, overweight, handcuffed, and sporting black and white striped inmates’ attire—snorted loudly from his bench, smirked and shook his head.
Upon hearing Crawford had been taken into custody by police in Jacksonville, Florida, Charlottesville Detective Sergeant Richard Hudson flew down for the extradition. There, Hudson testified, he spoke with Crawford about what had happened.
According to Hudson, Crawford said he and Sarah were re-conciling and had planned a weekend jaunt. Discussing matters in the park-ing lot of a Charlottesville McDonald’s, Crawford decided he wanted to kill himself. Pistol in hand, he cocked it and pointed it towards himself. Sarah then grabbed the gun. It went off and hit her. Crawford said she told him she loved him and then “expired,” recounted Hudson.
Hudson said Crawford then claimed not to know what to do, so he left her body in the hotel room “and started driving.”
According to their testimony, neither Sarah Crawford’s father nor Stern knew anything about reconciliation.
Moreover, Sarah’s father, John Powers, was familiar with Crawford’s history of domestic violence and didn’t like his son-in-law.
“It goes way back,” said Powers. “We knew some of his history.”
Crawford was acquitted on charges of marital rape brought against him by his first wife in 1992. Evidence in that case included a videotape of the woman naked, bound and gagged, which Crawford defended as a “sex game.”
Sarah Crawford, too, was familiar with her husband’s capacity for roughness. In two affidavits for preliminary protective orders filed before her death, she described beatings at his hands that sent her to the hospital—once for stitches in her head, another for a cast for her hand, among others. In the second affidavit, filed just weeks before her death, Sarah alleged Crawford told her he “understands why husbands kill their wives.”
The next step in Crawford’s case is the grand jury hearing, which is set for April 18.—Nell Boeschenstein
Trojan Goat in the house
Solar home fuels new affordable house
The Trojan Goat has been a show pony for the UVA architecture program, and now maybe a cash cow for the Piedmont Housing Alliance.
Trojan Goat was the loving appellation UVA architecture students gave their award-winning solar design in 2002. Solar Decathlon jurors wrote then that, “The design of solar homes must be as poetic as it is rational.” UVA’s donation of the house to the Piedmont Housing Alliance will give the new owner a chance to judge it as a rational and intelligent living space.
UVA architecture students poetically advertise the Goat as a living, breathing space that puts occupants in touch with the natural world, even while inhabiting a constructed one. The Goat is mobile, with hinged fold-up decks, window shades and louvers. A quarter of the “green roof” is a garden space. A mirror on the roof in the shape of a satellite dish concentrates sunshine into a cable that de-livers natural light inside. The device is a first-of-its-kind residential “luminaire,” developed in conjunction with Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Since the 85,000-pound beast was trucked back from the Solar Decathlon on Washington’s National Mall in 2002, it has taken up residence on a lot in Crozet. PHA will bring it back to life by selling the house and using the proceeds to fund a new cooperative project with UVA students. They have already started working on three “ecoMOD” houses loosely based on the Trojan Goat idea. Construction on the first ecological, modular home will begin this summer.
The highly experimental Goat cost $300,000 in grants, materials and student time, and the ecoMOD houses will move the prototype into the real world, incorporating a few of the ideas at a fraction of the cost. UVA assistant professor of architecture John Quale says the first house will be around 1,200 square feet and include a rainwater collection system and a solar water heater. PHA would like to keep the mortgages for the ecoMODs around $100,000.
Quale and his students opted not to compete in the upcoming Solar Decathlon because they wanted to work in the Charlottesville community. Quale is ecstatic to see the Trojan Goat project come full circle and be recycled to fuel affordable housing. “We have a partnership with PHA to place these homes in communities where we want to see families be able to live and not be pushed out to outer sprawl or neighboring counties,” he says. Constructed off-site, the ecoMODs will eventually be sited in Fifeville, the neighborhood behind the train station, where “real estate prices and development are encroaching on a traditionally African-American community,” Quale says.
The Piedmont Housing Alliance has also embraced the house as part of a broader vision. “The Solar House donation symbolizes our mutual values in harvesting new technologies that produce sustainable building models for the future,” says Stu Armstrong, executive director of Piedmont Housing Alliance.
“That is a very exciting partnership, working with the students to help them learn design and creative infill opportunities in an urban stetting using spillover benefits of the solar house project,” he adds.
PHA intends to sell the Trojan Goat this spring and is currently deciding on listing it with a real estate agent or auctioning it online. Once planted in a new lot, the Goat can be set up to be entirely off the grid, or unconnected to outside utilities. Armstrong will say only that he hopes the house fetches a lot. Any buyer will have to be prepared to pay the cost of moving the house from Crozet, approximately $25,000. The parties intend to organize an open house soon.—Lacey Phillabaum